Play To Z: Remix After All to Shut Up, Dude

Some Observations

No central thesis at the end of this series of observations, in part because this run of albums was so fantastic that narrowing down to one artist would be impossible. That said, there's a common theme that emerges through the observations...

  Return To Cookie Mountain was my introduction to TV On The Radio. Well, I say it was my introduction - my real introduction was seeing them perform live at a one-day festival in Mountain View, California (home of Google). It wasn't the perfect introduction: we were far back from the stage, they were on early in the day, and I think they're one of those bands that are better suited to a venue than a festival (The Shins also played, and their sound was lost in the larger arena). That said, they made enough of an impact with their performance that I went out and bought the album, and it didn't disappoint. Their sound was unlike anything else I was listening to at that time, fusing electro, funk, blues and rock and making something new from them. They're one of those bands that's not afraid to push their sound in new directions, and that's always rewarding.

  Talking of pushing your sound...Revolver. What can I write about Revolver (that hasn't been written already, by people much smarter than me)? It's a truly remarkable album, my favourite of the Beatles' discography, and really shows the band as they transition from their original Merseybeat pop sound to something a lot more experimental.

  And from Revolver, we move on to The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, with Bowie going full blown concept-album space opera and embracing one of his most iconic personas. Again, it sees an artist pushing themselves to create something wholly new but still powered by a pop sensibility.

  And leaping forward in time, we have Robyn, with everyone's favourite batshit insane Swede fusing her pop heritage with electronica and hip-hop and crafting something fierce and angular but still run through with warmth and humour. Robyn is one of those artists who has constantly evolved over time, moving from prepackaged pop starlet to an iconic pop mistress for the new millennium, all while playing entirely by her own rules. We need more pop stars like her.



  "Bust-Out Brigade" by The Go! Team does strange things to my head. It's one of those songs I can listen to 10 times in a row and never grow bored of. It transports me to a different world, one where marching bands move in synchronised patterns around double dutch teams as blaxploitation detectives and kung fu fighters leap from fireballs. It makes me feel invincible.

  And we come to Romance Is Boring, my favourite album by my favourite band, Los Campesinos! If we ignore the EEP released in between, the leap from Hold On Now, Youngster to this album is considerable. Romance... is a much more adult, serious record, leaving behind a lot of the twee conceits of their first album but retaining their incisive observations and lyrical flourishes. Their sound is expanded, adding horns and a richer palette of instruments. It manages to move from rollicking anthems of romantic cynicism to heartbreaking hymns of young death easily. It is a wonder.

  Beck's Sea Change is his most personal record, a heartfelt collection of slow, haunting songs after several albums drenched in ironic distance. It's like mainlining melancholy; a brave choice for a artist most wouldn't have associated with this kind of work before, but it pays off. It shows a whole other side of Beck's songwriting talent, and gives us songs of breath-taking beauty.

  In case you were wondering, the best Bond theme is "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" and there is absolutely no contest.

Rediscovered Gem

"Honeybear" by Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Play To Z: Abbey Road to All She Wrote

Here are the rules:

  I'm going to listen to every song I own, in alphabetical order by album. Every track gets listened to once, and once only. I won't listen to any songs out of order. If I get new songs, they get slotted into place - if I'm already passed where they would be, they are placed at the front; if not, then I have to wait to listen to them.

  It begin, quite appropriately, with The Beatles.

"The Beatles are generally seen as the single most important rock band of all time, allegedly because they wrote all the best songs. Since both of these suppositions are true, the Beatles are rated properly by everyone."
                                                                                                                - Chuck Klosterman

  Abbey Road is a great album. The Beatles, much like Doctor Who, seem to be one of those cultural institutions that people just absorb as they grow up. I always had a respect for them, but I never truly appreciated them until a couple of years ago, when my friend and Beatles superfan Nick loaned me his Beatles mono boxset. Listening to their entire discography, the sheer skill of their songwriting is astonishing. More importantly, the way their sound evolved over their seven years of putting out studio albums is mind-blowing. I've often railed against bands like Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Foo Fighters that find a sound that works and just stop trying to push themselves. The Beatles had the opposite attitude, continually pushing at the boundaries of pop music and bringing in new influences.  

  Abbey Road, from close to the end of their recording period, exemplifies this, covering a huge amount of ground and swirling genres and song styles together in a brilliant whirlwind of noise. The interlinked series of songs from "Sun King" to "She Came In Through The Bathroom Window" moves effortlessly from one to the other while still maintaining musical themes. It's a virtuoso piece of songwriting, brilliantly realised.

Sigur Rós And Earning Your Fist-Pumps

  I don't speak Icelandic. It's my one and only flaw*, but it definitely impacts my enjoyment of Sigur Rós. Most people (especially their fans) would say that you don't need to understand the words: it's all about the vast soundscapes that they create, the harmonised vocals that conjure images of Icelandic plains and mountains. However, they seem to largely trade in that feeling of fist-pumping triumphalism that makes people wish they were surrounded by their friends in a field at sunset; the kind of thing that works well under TV montages of athletics or music festivals. I like that feeling (who doesn't?) but I'm a big believer in earning your happy endings. Bands like LCD Soundsystem and Arcade Fire create similar emotions, but their songs also tap into loneliness, anger and despair. Sigur Rós' songs might do this, but I have no way of knowing that. To me, it's just noise, and to that end it feels oddly calculated in the way it looks to trigger an emotional reaction.

Always All Day

  I've written a fair bit about All Day by Girl Talk in the past, and I've read some great articles (check out this piece by pal Alex Spencer with links to some other great writing) so I'll just go ahead and say that I listened to it while doing the washing up with a friend who hadn't heard it before, and by the end of the first track, the kitchen had turned into a dance party and I was burning her a copy to take home. It is a perfectly constructed piece of party-starting insanity.

Rediscovered Gem

"Golden Slumbers" by The Beatles



*This may be inaccurate.