| Author | Message | ||
     Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10676 Registered: 05-2005 |
Marina Allen - Love Comes Back. I think she's heard a Go-Betweens record or two. https://marinagallen.bandcamp.com/album/ eight-pointed-star | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10677 Registered: 05-2005 |
She lives in LA, Randy. Have you come across her? | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4913 Registered: 03-2005 |
No Pádraig, I haven't heard of her before. On my first admittedly superficial listen I think she needs to listen to her Go-Betweens some more and borrow the chord craft from Robert or Grant. Too many songs have only 2 or 3 chords until maybe you get lucky and there's a change for a bridge or middle 8 two minutes into the song. On "Red Cloud" for the worst instance, the song never does wander away from its two chords. In my book that's barely a song. Finally, it gets better: on "Swinging Doors" there are finally some chord changes and that's also true for "Bad Eye Opal." Ditto "Easy." I guess whoever sequenced her album had the weird--and IMO terrible--idea of lining up three minimal songs first. Maybe all she needed to do was wait until she had some more songs for the album so that she could elbow off the first three. I'm now wondering if I'll find that her first album is a lot stronger. In fairness to her I've pretty much wandered off the folkie reservation in my listening nowadays. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10678 Registered: 05-2005 |
Ouch. I hope she’s not reading this. Slim chance. I’ve only listened to that one song, Love Comes Back, as I saw a review that compared it to Robert Forster. I liked it, but now I’m scared to play the rest of it. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4914 Registered: 03-2005 |
Well, I shouldn't have been so harsh. It does improve after the first 3 songs. And I only got as far as "Easy," thus still shy of "Love Comes Back." | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10679 Registered: 05-2005 |
Randy, I've just listened to the whole album and it's certainly a lot better in the second half. Your musical and songwriting ability gives you a perspective that I don't have. I was going to say it's more adventurous in the second half, but that'd be stretching it. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4915 Registered: 03-2005 |
Sometimes my own writing experience gets in the way. And there are always the exceptions to my own personal general rules. Velvet Underground's "Heroin" is only two chords but between Lou Reed's gripping word picture of opiate intoxication and addiction and the band's dynamic delivery (for me, especially the drums of Mo Tucker and the violin of John Cale) it's an unforgettable masterpiece. "I guess I just don't know." | ||
| Burgers Member Username: Burgers Post Number: 220 Registered: 05-2005 |
I think Marina Allen’s album is pretty good, I definitely think it’s better than her first two. Album of the year so far for me is Sierra Ferrell’s Trail of Flowers. Perhaps the best country album since Margo Price’s debut. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2277 Registered: 10-2006 |
Françoise Hardy – Les madeleines A picture of her midway through my otherwise deadly dull high school text book Le français aujourd’hui was transfixing, though for some reason the teacher skipped that particular lesson. I bought a double album of her hits and decided to move to Paris. That never happened, but I did see a lot of French cinema. Then she slipped out of my sight until Blur’s brilliant To the end reminded me to check up on her, and I started realising what a rich and wonderful stream of work she had produced over the years. Coming upon stuff like Le danger, with its no-brainer idea of pitching the delicate strength of her voice against a tougher, moodier background, was pure delight, and a path she might usefully have explored. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpn5hABf P3Y | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10681 Registered: 05-2005 |
My introduction to Françoise Hardy was in about 1994 when Virgin Records in Dublin had a sale of budget compilations that were £20 for five CDs. One of her best ofs was part of my initial five picks (I returned to that well a few times). There was definitely a Sinatra compilation in the initial bunch too. I had just bought my first CD player (I realise now I was pretty late to the game) and catalogue sales, which Virgin were far better at than HMV or Tower, were a great way to expand my musical horizons on my student budget. Françoise Hardy - Le Danger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyQIT9g7 BXw Thanks for mentioning it, Stuart. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4916 Registered: 03-2005 |
I'm pretty sure Francoise Hardy is where my French music exploration started. I started with a two CD collection of the best of her Vogue years supplanted later with a box of the individual Vogue albums on CD with miniature album covers for each disc. After she left Vogue she explored the various musical seams. I enjoyed her take on the California-ish singer/songwriter sound on her (unhelpfully untitled) 1970 album, later reissued under the title Soleil. She was a natural for that sort of sound. And Le Danger is definitely my favorite from her later years. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4917 Registered: 03-2005 |
And relevant to Pádraig's new thread, this was my pleasant surprise last night which will now serve as my Song of the Day: The Girl with the Replaceable Head -- (I'm) Stranded https://thegirlwiththereplaceablehead.ba ndcamp.com/track/im-stranded-kuepper-bai ley It becomes a ballad. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10682 Registered: 05-2005 |
The Ex - El Tren Blindado, from the glorious 1936 - The Spanish Revolution EP. I wish I had the double 7" of it that was released 38 years ago this month. But The Ex were not on my must buy list back then (if I'd even heard of them at the time, I paid no attention). https://theex.bandcamp.com/album/1936-th e-spanish-revolution | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2281 Registered: 10-2006 |
Apple Boutique - The Ballad of Jet Harris | ||
| Simon Withers Member Username: Sfwithers Post Number: 784 Registered: 08-2005 |
The Foo Fighters - I'm in Love With a German Film Star I'm not sure it adds to the fantastic original, but it's such an unlikely cover. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82A4Lbr3 5UU | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10691 Registered: 05-2005 |
I’d never heard that Foo Fighters cover before. The best I can say about it is I hope it sent some of their fans to find the original by The Passions, who I’m claiming as Irish as their singer/guitarist/co-songwriter Barbara Gogan was from Dublin. The original https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeKurL-3 JmI | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4922 Registered: 03-2005 |
Following up on my entry to the streaming thread, during my long 6 hour drive downstate, the random play from the 22,000+ songs on my biggest iPod pitched this gem I hadn't heard in years: Radio Birdman - Hand of Law https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RXIlhvG woY Unusually I was not at all late to Radio Birdman. They were one of the earlier punk era bands I listened to before I moved to Los Angeles in 1978. |