I’ll throw away the candle…

Some illicit fumblings with a couple of portable disk drives over the summer and an esteemed colleague, meant that I acquired a whole bunch of swell recordings, some of which I’ve still not really investigated properly.

One of these was the Animal Collective record, Merriweather Post Pavilion, that people were going on about last year. I’ve tried, really I have but it still remains something of a closed book to me, just can’t find a way in…

Invariably, when I try to devote a bit of concerted effort to a “difficult” recording, my butterfly nature takes over and I end up clicking on something else. And I find myself hearing “Vegetable or Native” on Last FM.

Here We Go Magic

Wow! Light. Breezy. Easy on the ear, effortlessly produced, not terribly serious! Just what this punter ordered really.

Here We Go Magic are based in Brooklyn and are essentially, songwriter Luke Temple and a bunch of friends brought into animate the sounds of his expansive imagination. I’ve just bought his second major album, Pigeons, and it’s choc full of light, busy rhythms, frantic bass lines and dancing keyboard pieces – it reminds me a lot of some of the Of Montreal records.

The irony is that, having spent some time wading through the Pitchfork review of Merriweather Post Pavilion, it seems to me that a lot of the signature phrases applied to Animal Collective (“booming electro-pop”; “head in the clouds dreaminess”; “long wisps of West Coast harmony”;”harmonic development existing outside rigid formats” – a personal favourite), could just as well be applied to large parts of Pigeons.

Have a listen to them performing “Surprise” and “Collector” on KCRW radio (makes you glad to be alive). The whole set is available to listen to on the KCRW site.

“Collector” and “Casual” from the record are available from Secretly Canadian as free downloads, and the whole album’s available on the these days sadly diminished but still magnificent Emusic, here…

[btw, I haven’t quite given up on Animal Collective and shall be renewing my MPP studies as soon as I can get Pigeons off the iPod…]

Huw M – more quirky Welsh folk…

It’s been a couple of weeks, hasn’t it, and I do have at least three posts I’ve been meaning to make. This is probably only going to be a quickie, as well. Apologies. Truth is the ad hoc work is building up and I’ve been fairly busy. This is clearly a good thing (this is clearly a bad thing…).

Anyway.

Sheesh! What is it with the Welsh? So much good music coming out of the Principality these days. Has it always been like this and I’ve just not noticed? Recently I’ve written about Y Niwl, Sweet Baboo, Jonny and H Hawkline. I’ve also blogged innumerable times on Gruff Rhys, Cate Le Bon and the various Gorky’s side projects. But it seems like the tap is well truly on…

Huw M

I’m afraid I still don’t know much about this feller (I know, I know, but you can Google as well as I). To be honest, all you need to know is that he soundsuncannily like the early Gorky’s records – maybe not quite as quirky, but with all the heart-breakingly beautiful harmonies, tongue-mangling Welsh lyrics and clog dancing. Have a watch of this rather charming little vid…

He has a record out, which you can get from Emusic (here) and it’s all beautiful, the same simple, unassuming songs and arrangements with ukuleles, guitars, cellos and the like.

All very satisfying…

(oh and yeah, missed him at Green Man too…)

Down the ward, the men are dreaming, drooling in their cots…

Here’s something very different to the standard Party Porpoise fare that I write about on these pages.

Sarah Kirkland Snider

I was scrolling through the Emusic Best Albums of 2010, when I came across something called “Penelope” a cross-over album mixing the music of Sarah Kirkland Snider and the voice of Shara Worden. Snider is a composer (no less), of Classical Music, (with real orchestras and stuff) and Worden is the singer and song writer for her own band, My Brightest Diamond, and has recently sung with the Decembrists on tour and Sufjan Stevens on The Age of Adz.

Now Classical Music is not something I know anything about and to be honest I haven’t bothered with at all. The review by John Schaefer for Emusic, was enough, however, to wet my appetite and get me to swallow my prejudices (Read it here). Basically, Penelope is a series of songs based around a story of a woman whose husband returns from the war, unable to communicate with her or even remember who he is. The Penelope of the title (apologies if you’re ahead of me) refers to the wife of Odysseus  who was left to wait ten years for her husband’s return from the Trojan War. Each song refers to chapters of Odysseus’ adventure; they are all immersed in melancholy and no little bitterness, and are movingly performed by Shara Worden.

Here’s the official video from New Amsterdam Records for No 4, The Lotus Eaters:

And this is a trailer about the whole record which fills in a lot of the details:

“Beautiful” is a much over-used word in music writing, one which I am also guilty of applying very easily. But… this whole record is quite simply, well, beautiful and one I think I’ll be returning to regularly in the next months.

Confusion in her eyes that says it all…

Just a couple of bits and bobs…

#lpgroup

#lpgroup was a lot of fun actually, thanks for asking. Bunch of us got together and selected an album to run through in a bookclub sort of a style. This time we chose Unknown Pleasures and tweeted comments about it as we went along.

I haven’t listened to any Joy Division for a very long time, although I was pretty keen at the time. On Sunday, though, I was surprised just how powerful a record it was. In my head I’d remembered it as an album of pretty slow and miserable tempo – all “Candidate” and “I Remember Nothing” – but I’d forgotten just how forceful, compelling and just plain rough a lot of the tracks are. Found some of Martin Hannett’s incursions a little irritating after a while, too. A great listen, mind.

Lest we forget…

The other piece of news is that recent PP faves, Welsh surf wizards, Y Niwl, are now officially cool, popping up as they have with this week’s CD of the Week award from (bizarrely) the Sunday Times.

Turns out I’m going to be seeing them in a month’s time, as they’re supporting Gruff Rhys at St Georges. Should be fun if this is anything go by…