Cat Power: Jukebox

It used to be the case that you either hated her or loved her: no contest now,  The new album is a second covers job, Jukebox.  I believe that I am right in saying that the good people of Matador Records have sanctioned her cover of her own song as the one to blog, and mighty fine it is. Matador have asked that no posts of the new album be put out, but her Metal Heart can be heard on their site here.

Her prowess on the covers front is well known, as proven by this awesome item from The Covers Record:

mp3 Cat Power: Satisfaction

She's also done a pretty decent job on the soundtrack to the 'Dylan' movie soundtrack I'm Not There:

mp3 Cat Power: Stuck Inside a Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again

But Cat Power here, and download DRM-free here.

Lest we Forget: The Auteurs' After Murder Park

Remember britpop?  Whilst there was quite a bit of it worth forgetting, one nineties classic slipped under the radar somewhat then, and still seems to.  Luke Haines' Auteurs were one of the more interesting and literate bands of that period.  His songs were able to move seamlessly from post-glam or punk rock, to baroque pop, all with brilliantly incisive lyrics.  After Murder Park was their masterpiece, a kind of tour of England's darker little corners: child murder, alcoholics...

Try these two and then get the album.  I promise you that you will never regret it.

mp3 The Auteurs: Unsolved Child Murder

mp3 The Auteurs: Married to a Lazy Lover

As a bonus, here's a b-side acoustic version of another song on the album.

mp3 The Auteurs: Everything We Say Will Destroy You

You can buy the Auteurs' music here.

Covers: Bowie, Elton John

More covers, that go somewhere else.  As I grew up a glam rock kid, I grew up with Bowie and Elton John; truth be told, not Elton John really,  Having said that, the early albums still stand up in parts.  Certainly, these two covers do:

mp3 My Morning Jacket: Rocket Man

mp3 Bettye LaVette: Talking Old Soldiers

As for Bowie, there are remarkably few great covers of his great stuff (all of which was from the '70s).  However, there is this cover of a less than great bowie track, transformed

mp3 Last Town Chorus: Modern Love

And this of a great Bowie track

mp3 Joan as a Police Woman: Sweet Thing 

Buy the artists' albums here, and some DRM-free here

Drive-by Truckers

The new Drive-by Truckers' album is out.  At first hearing(s), a more countrified and soulful effort than their sometimes somewhat strained last outing.  America's greatest rock'n'roll band made their name with the epic Southern Rock Opera.  Mostly because I've had them on the old ipod for a week or so, two Patterson Hood songs stand out early on: mind you, the themes come pretty close to home (I'll take the second as a theme song).

mp3 Drive-by Truckers: Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife

mp3 Drive-by Truckers: Daddy Needs a Drink

In some ways, these songs echo some of their earlier efforts.  Try this from Pizza Deliverance.

mp3 Drive-by Truckers: Bulldozers and Dirt

The lead songwriter has always been Patterson Hood; there are some great Mike Cooley songs on the new album.  This one's from Gangstabilly.

mp3 Drive-by Truckers: Panties in Your Purse

They really are the business, believe me...

Buy Truckers' albums here, and most of their earlier work here, DRM-free.

The Race: The Archers of Loaf, Mark Knopfler & Gram Parsons

So, it hits Nevada & South Carolina; once more, is it the economy?

mp3 Archers of Loaf: South Carolina

mp3 Mark Knopfler: Sands of Nevada

And the late great Gram Parsons visits both:

mp3 Gram Parsons: Ooh Las Vegas

mp3 The Byrds: Hickory Wind

Buy the artists here.

Covertime: Springsteen

Got an email from a friend who's spent a few weeks in the USA and it included a few photos of Asbury Park et al.  So, as a quid pro quo here a six covers of the Boss, all of which do something special with well known songs, sometimes radically. Townes van Zandt turned Racing in the Street into a classic American folk song; Johnny Cash did something similar. Elvis Costello turned Brilliant Disguise into a country song. Bettye LaVette made Streets of Philadelphia a soul ballad.  The Swedes Junip take The Ghost of Tom Joad to Europe, where Bat for Lashes takes I'm on Fire where only Natasha Khan knows...

mp3 Townes van Zandt: Racing in the Street

mp3 Johnny Cash: Further on up the Road

mp3 Elvis Costello: Brilliant Disguise

mp3 Bettye LaVette: Streets of Philadelphia

mp3 Junip: The Ghost of Tom Joad

mp3 Bat for Lashes: I'm on Fire

Of cousre, another great re-interpreter of the Boss is the man himself; I feel another post coming on...

Buy the artists' music here. or download some DRM free here

Michigan: Red House Painters, Josh Rouse & Sufjan Stevens

The bandwagon rolls on to Michigan.  Three state songs:

mp3 Red House Painters: Michigan

mp3 Josh Rouse: Michigan

mp3 Ambulance LTD: Michigan

And as he did a whole album about the state, and this fits in all sorts of ways:

mp3 Sufjan Stevens: For The Widows In Paradise, For The Fatherless In Ypsilanti

Buy the artists' music here, download Sufjan Stevens DRM free here.

Lest we Forget: Roy Harper's HQ

Another English masterpiece: I promise you they won't all be from Blighty. Roy Harper was one of those artists of the 1970s who were better known because of others: he was the vocalist on Pink Floyd's Have a Cigar, from Wish You Were Here, and Led Zep saluted him on Hats Off to Harper on their third album.  Of his numerous 1970s albums my favourite is HQ which featured, among others, David Gilmour.  His best known song comes from that album, featuring a great brass band arrangement by by David Bedford:

mp3 Roy Harper: When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease

I love the very Englishness of it, redolent of an early autumn day.

The other killer song is Hallucinating Light.  This is a single b-side version:

mp3 Roy Harper: Hallucinating Light

Another great song crops up in a very different version here.

mp3 Roy Harper: Legend

From another album, his song Another Day here done by Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel, video on youtube.

And, just a great song...

mp3 Roy Harper: Waiting for Godot

Buy Roy Harper here.

Great Lake Swimmers, trains & Guy Clark

It's funny how for boys of a certain vintage, old diesel trains do the same thing steam trains did for my Dad.  This shows Whitley Bay in the '70s, Glaswegians en route for le grande caravan et piss up, as the they say a la franglais dans Lanarkshire: my boyhood pulses race. There's something sad about these grand old stations; a Victorian heyday overcome by the Costa del Crap.  Mind you, who the **** in their right minds would go on holiday dans le North Tyneside Riviera?  Just think of the nuclear holocaust that was the town centre on New Year's Day...

Anyway, I'm on the train tomorrow, so tenuous connection, one of my favourite albums of last year, and two favourite songs:

mp3  Great Lake Swimmers: Passenger Song 

mp3  Great Lake Swimmers: Your Rocky Spine

While we're on train connections, one of the finest train songs:

mp3 Guy Clark: Desperadoes Waiting on a Train

Download Great Lake Swimmers Ongiara here DRM free, and buy here

Buy Guy Clark here

New Hampshire: Matt Pond PA, Nic Garcia, Anais Mitchell

Following Iowa, New Hampshire; only one state song...

mp3 Matt Pond PA: New Hampshire

For Hillary & McCain

mp3 Nic Garcia: Triumph

Related Song:

Mp3 Anais Mitchell:  Before the Eyes of Storytelling Girls

 

Buy the artists' music  here; buy Nic Garcia & Anais Mitchell DRM-free here

Christy Moore, box set secrets and stuff

"Shut up. yer bollocks, I'll pick my own feckin' songs"; a picture of the house in case Russell's worried about Lorcan.

My family, and other animals, have their ancestral wheelbarrow and china pig in Co Kildare, Ireland; a few miles from the homelands of Ireland's great Christy Moore of Newbridge.  I first saw Christy in the 70s, both with Planxty and on his own.  Most recently, I saw him at the Sage, in my neck of the woods, when the above quote was cheerfully hurled at a pissed (for Americans, read drunk) audience member who wouldn't stop yelling for Spancilhill; a fantastic gig.  Christy's solo recorded output has been, to be honest, somewhat patchy: when he hits the heights, great; live, he is as good as it gets.

A few years back, he released a box set of unreleased stuff;  I have been re-listening lately.  It contained gems galore, and reflected all sides of his various musical personas.  Politics has been a constant thread, and whilst I've never been able to connect with his republicanism too easily, this theme comes all too compellingly. Anne Lovett was a fifteen year old girl;secretly pregnant in the hidebound Catholic rural Ireland of 1984 she took herself off to give birth in a grotto of Our Lady.  In the words of the song, 'it was a sad, slow, stupid death for them both'.  There is a great live version in the box, but the original featured the beautiful voice of Sinead O'Connor:

mp3 Christy Moore: The Middle of the Island buy here

There are some genuine secrets on the box set, hidden in the last tracks.  One is a version of his account of the old DTs.  Christy was a fierce one for the stout on the old days...

mp3 Christy Moore: Delirium Tremens

And celebrating, sort of, the locality.

mp3  Christy Moore: The City of Chicago

Sometime around 1980ish, it's all a bit hazy from those days, I saw him with his old band Planxty and they turned Dylan's I Pity the Poor Immigrant into an Irish ballad.  Try this version, about which I know nowt. 

mp3 Christy Moore: I Pity the Poor Immigrant

Finally, a song about what seems to have been the national sport; while we're on the subject, read John McGahern's The Dark (indeed, read everything by him).

mp3 Christy Moore: Strangeways

Buy the box set here, and see the man live if at all possible.

Covers: The Velvet Underground

One regular feature I hope will be covers.  I first heard of The Velvet Underground around the time Bowie produced Lou Reed's Transformer. I bought the first album in 1976 (in Virgin records of the Tottenham Court Road, for Londoners of a certain vintage). I was blown away (still am); just as much though, a couple of years on I got into their third album, their neglected masterpiece (well along with Live 1969 - I feel a post coming).  a difficult band to cover.  

From the first album, two of those delicate pop songs. Clem Snide turns I'll Be Your Mirror into a confessional love song; REM turn Femme Fatale into a retread of the Live 1969 version.

mp3 Clem Snide: I'll Be Your Mirror

mp3 REM: Femme Fatale

From the 'difficult' second album David Bowie turns White Light/White Heat from the junkie's love song in to rock'n'roll; from the BBC recordings Mick Ronson was in blistering guitar hero form.  

mp3 David Bowie: White Light/White Heat

The third album was quiet, ironic, meditative and beautiful.  Antony & the Johnsons' version works because, simply, of that voice (and a bit of stringage).

mp3 Antony & The Johnsons: Candy Says

The most startling cover is Cat Power, who turns a pastiche pop song from the fourth album into, well, another song entirely.

mp3 Cat Power: I Found a Reason

The best is the famous Cowboy Junkies' cover which, as you will hear, is based on the 1969 version.

mp3 Cowboy Junkies: Sweet Jane

And then, Bowie's Velvet's homage from '72 (as the album version said, 'some VU with thanks'): Queen Bitch, on youtube. And, the Velvet's on youtube doing Femme Fatale

And, as I said, that 1969 live album:

mp3 The Velvet Underground: Sweet Jane

mp3 The Velvet Underground: Femme Fatale

Buy the artists' music here, you can also buy some here DRM-free.

 

Lest we Forget: Kevin Coyne's Millionaires & Teddy Bears

Kevin Coyne was an English singer and songwriter who began recording in the late 1960s.  After starting his recording career with John Peel's Dandelion records, he signed to Virgin which was, in those long lost days, a small hippy independent label and London record shop which offered a home to avant garde waifs and strays.  Coyne then went on to record a series of unevenly brilliant albums including Marjory Razorblade, Matching Head and Feet, Dynamite Daze and Millionaires & Teddy Bears.  Coyne's ouvre varied more than most, from the beautifully weird, the righteously angry to the plaintively lyrical, but always focused on an extraordinary voice: a kind of English music-hall blues.  Of his albums, I listen to Dynamite Daze and Millionaires & teddy Bears, but have opted to focus on the latter here because the album's out of print.  Come on Virgin, get your act together.  Of all those '70s albums, this was probably his most tender and reflective.  This is reflected in the two tracks chosen here, the last two tracks off the album. Wendy Dreams of a celtic mist far away from what I have always had in my mind's eye as the Seven Sisters Road (Tottenham, London, for those who don't know; for those that do, plastic palm trees); the World is Full of Fools, but what's new?

mp3 Kevin Coyne: Wendy's Dream

mp3 Kevin Coyne: The World is Full of Fools

There is a youtube video of Coyne performing Having a Party.  Also on youtube, Houses on the Hill and I Want My Crown, showing the blues singer side.

Bonus track off Dynamite Daze. 

mp3 Kevin Coyne: Juliet & Mark

What characterised all of his music was a deep, underlying faith in the human spirit despite it all, befitting a man who had worked as a psychiatric nurse and went on to suffer mental health and drink problems himself.  He died in 2004, still active.  Buy some Kevin Coyne here.  Virgin, do it.

Iowa

I've always had an interest in US politics, and a weird thing about songs about US place names. So following on yesterday's posts, I thought I might shadow the primaries and caucuses with songs about the places and about some of the issues.  We'll begin with Iowa.

mp3 Dar Williams: Iowa

And, here's one for Hilary Clinton and Rudi G.

mp3 Kelly Pardekooper: Not in Iowa

Bill Bryson famously opened The Lost Continent with 'I come from Des Moines, somebody had to.'  An old Mark Olson song.

mp3 Mark Olson: It Sure Can Get Cold in Des Moines

I'll kick off the politics with a reflection on the fact that Huckabee was seen playing bass on Sweet Home Alabama.

mp3 Drive-By Truckers: The Three Alabama Icons live

Incidentally, the very mp3 that converted me to the Truckers.

Buy these artists' music here.

Crap Cycling Lanes & Bonnie "Prince" Billy

Cyclists' book of the year was Crap Cycle Lanes, in which triumphs of green transport planning such as that on the left are lauded with only a small mountain of irony.

I was bought up near Harlow, from where this picture was taken of a cycle way beside the A414. As the Warrington Cycle Campaign's Facility of the Month feature says:

Essex County Council is promoting cycling as an effective and enjoyable form of aerobic exercise to reduce the incidence heart disease, high blood pressure and obesity in the county. Unfortunately it was discovered that, rather than pedalling briskly, Harlow's cyclists were freewheeling down this gently sloping path. To counter this, signs have been introduced at regular intervals requiring cyclists to get off and walk.

This particularly daunting section, requires seven dismounts within a distance of 380 yards Note, how at each junction the kerbs are maintained on the downhill side of the path, thus ensuring that even the laziest cyclists gain the full health benefits from their activity. 

I can add that I counted, when being driven along this 2 mile stretch this summer, some 39 such signs: the shortest stretch being a lung-busting epic of continuous riding of about six feet!

Support this contribution to cycling common sense and have a real laugh by buying Crap Cycle Lanes here.

Coincidentally Bonnie "Prince" Billy has a new ep out, Ask Forgiveness, made up (mostly) of covers.  One of these is an old Frank Sinatra song:

mp3 Bonnie "Prince" Billy: Cycles

And, in memory of the beauties of Harlow in the '70s. 

mp3 Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit: In a Razor Town live in Nashville.

The original of that song is from the excellent solo album by Jason Isbell (formerly of the Drive-by Truckers) Sirens of the Ditch.

Please note: new host, click on file & get taken to host, then download.

Buy the artists' music here.

Surfin' Whitley Bay: Christian Kiefer, Wilco & Damien Rice

Surfin' Whitley Bay: a round up of stuff and some randomly themed music... plus, this post, Donkeys.

One of the best things on the net is Daytrotter, an online repository of sessions recorded in their very own studios by numerous luminaries of the independent music scene.  It features a number of great sets by artists which should be heard, including the likes of The National, Elvis Perkins, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Will Johnson, Page France and David Bazan.  The most recent I've got into is Oakley Hall, whose new session here follows up their excellent 2006 set, here. 

The new Drive-By Truckers album, Brighter than Creation's Dark, is due soon.  You can hear three songs here.  

Meanwhile, here on youtube is  a post of Joan Baez and Steve Earle doing a live version of Christmas in Washington, posted by songs: illinois, which seems kind of fitting as the primary season gets underway in Iowa.  

Talking of youtube, for those of us of a certain vintage, there are loads of Monty Python goodies. Try this and this and this and this, for example.  It made me larf out loud guv.

The above picture of donkeys, incidentally, indicates no party affiliation in the US of A: they were Tynemouth donkeys, from time of yore.  Mind you, if any current politician deserves the nickname given to Andrew Jackson (which was in fact derived from 'jackass') we all know who it is.  Incidentally, Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, makers of one of my favourite albums of 2007 Sky Blue Sky, has played in support of Barack Obama; meanwhile, Ted Nugent has threatened to kill Hilary Clinton and Obama: that somehow makes a statement.

In honour of that fact, one or two randomly not very relevant items:

mp3 Wilco: Jesus, Etc

mp3 Christian Kiefer: Benevolence

Two years ago Christian Kiefer along with Jeff Pitcher and Matthew Gerken wrote a series of songs about US Presidents, known as The February Presidents.  This was Kiefer's song about the aforementioned Andrew Jackson.

To balance the ticket:

mp3 Damien Rice: Elephant (demo version)

Happy New year y'all...

Magnolia Electric Co.

The idea here is to share some music with old friends, pass on a bit of other stuff, and just do it.  So, for a start, one favourite: Jason Molina's Magnolia Electric Co. released a magnificent box set, Sojourner.  From the emusic version, try this one.

Magnolia Electric Co. Montgomery (Echo Park Full Band Demo) mp3

There is also some great live stuff on the web, especially a gig at Cafe Del Teatre Escorxador, Lleida from June 2007.  try this one:

Magnolia Electric Co. Shiloh Temple Bell mp3

The full show is posted up on the internet archive, here

More Jason Molina stuff here, from the band's site.  

Buy Jason Molina & Magnolia Electric Co. DRM-free here, with a free offer too.