Category: Tunes

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Best tunes of 2011: #24 Lykke Li “Love out of lust”

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Lykke Li is the stage name (one based on a derivative of her birth name) of Swedish singer/songwriter Li Lykke Timotej Zachrisson. She released her critically acclaimed debut album, “Youth novels”, at 22 years of age, and followed it up with “Wounded rhymes” three years later, an album most have agreed was an improvement on the debut. I really liked both of her first two albums, loving both the quirky and the macabre feel of the tunes, music that traverses a taut tightrope, just this side of pop. With each successive album afterwards, however, it sounds to me like she has fallen victim to the lure of the mighty pop dollar and I’ve liked each of them less to a greater degree.

Her sophomore release, though, was a delight. She went to California to record it, admitting, herself, that she wanted to escape the dreariness of Stockholm winters and find some sunshine. Also, there were journeys to the desert in search of the ghostly channels of her heroes in Jim Morrison and Joni Mitchell. It’s not at all Haight Ashbury or Laurel Canyon, though, still very much keeping to the blueprint of the debut, a percussive and atmospheric canvas for her to paint her childlike, haunting vocals upon.

“Love out of lust” was actually not one of the three singles released off the album but I cannot understand for the life of me why it wasn’t. It’s so freaking beautiful and it’s damned catchy. Lykke Li is pleading her case for love while the world shimmers around her, tribal drummers beating upon large bass toms and gigantic brass gongs and pixies whisper and flit, posing as synthesizers and samples. It is a song for slow dancing in the ephemera.

“We will live longer than I will
We will be better than I was
We can cross rivers with our will
We can do better than I can
So dance while you can
Dance ’cause you must.”

Indeed. Dance because you must.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2011 list, click here.

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Best tunes of 1991: #15 Chapterhouse “Pearl”

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February 20, 1994. I had tickets to see my then favourite band, The Wonder Stuff, a concert for which I had doled out a measly $10. I met my friend Tim and a group of his friends in the lineup for the show and I was a bit shocked to learn that many of them were mainly there to see the opening band: Chapterhouse. I wasn’t unfamiliar with the group, of course, far from it. I had a copy of their debut album, “Whirlpool”, on the other side of a C90 of Blur’s “Leisure”. I had liked it quite a bit and went out to get a copy of their sophomore release, “Blood music” when it came out. However, it was their blazing opening set that night that really got me into them (the Stuffies were pretty awesome too but that’s a story for another time).

Chapterhouse were a five-piece from Reading, England that were led by Andrew Sherrif and Stephen Patman. They were in existence from 1987 to 1994 and in that time released two albums, a bunch of EPs, and were pigeonholed twice, in two very difference music scenes around during that time. The band never identified with either the acid house/baggy or the shoegaze scenes, but you can definitely hear smacks of both in “Pearl”. Thanks to its heavy, muscle-flexing drum samples and heavenly organ sounds it begs for dance floor nirvana but the fuzzed out guitars and Andrew Sherrif’s whispery vocals allow for plenty of floor-staring introspection. It’s explosive and dreamy, foot-stomping and floating, a real beaut of dichotomy. Of course, the fact that Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell added her backing vocals to the mix didn’t hurt the song’s pedigree in the latter genre.

The song was released in two versions on an EP of the same name and as the second track on the band’s legendary debut album. I heard it first on the album, that cassette was rewound many times to this song, especially after that concert. It’s become one of my favourite songs ever over the years. And if you’re looking at that number in the title and wondering how such a favourite song falls so far out of the top ten, that just shows how much I loved the music from 1991. Stay tuned for the rest of this list – it’s going to be great.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 1991 list, click here.

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Best tunes of 2011: #25 Lanterns on the Lake “Lungs quicken”

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Sometimes the way we classify and typify bands and sounds and try to put names to certain styles or movements really turns me off. Words like “Emo” and “Screamo“ and “Nugaze” and “Chillwave” and “Folktronica” just make me shake my head. I get it. And these terms often do aptly describe the music they are meant to represent. However, if I had heard the term “Folktronica”, for instance, in reference to Lanterns on the Lake before listening to their debut album, “Gracious tide, take me home”, I might never have picked it up.

As it stands right now, I don’t actually remember at all how I came across them. In 2011, I was listening to everything that was being released, an exercise in futile mass consumption that was initiated by a fledgling blog. I all of a sudden felt that I had to have my finger even more fully pressed down hard on the pulse of music, everything new and hip. It was futile because there’s just too much out there and I was forced to decide whether I liked something in fewer samples, one or two go arounds, rather than five or six. I was also discovering bands in bunches, which meant I wasn’t always getting the time I wanted with each album before I was on to the next. I’ve been trying to remedy this in the last couple of years, since putting that old blog to bed and starting afresh, to go back to spend more time with albums that did stick out amongst the rest and give them their due. “Gracious tide, take me home” is one of these and I’ve so been looking forward to spending more time with it to write this post.

Lanterns on the Lake are a five-piece from Newcastle-on-Tyne that has released three studio albums in total, a live album, and a handful of EPs since their formation in 2007. They recently toured in support of one of my very favourite bands, James, and by all accounts, they got on quite well. Listening to both bands, this doesn’t surprise me in the least. Like James, Lanterns on the Lake doesn’t just write music, as much as build it. Their sound is very atmospheric and big and beautiful.

“Lungs quicken”, the album opener, is a prime of example of what I speak. It’s washes of synths, a subdued electronic beat and the hint of strings. Lead vocalist Hazel Wilde lightly touches her brush to the canvas, breathy and whispery, a tinkling of keys. It makes you think that their name is perfect. Candles in paper lanterns, hundreds of them, maybe thousands, just visible in the mist out on the grey lake. And then the wind whips up, the music builds in volume and gusto, and the lanterns jostle on the waves, crashing and splashing but not going out. At five and a half minutes, “Lungs quicken” does just that, light breathing becomes breathless and just when you think you have to give up, it ends, leaving you wanting to start all over again.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2011 list, click here.