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Best tunes of 2013: #19 Chvrches “Recover”

<< #20    |    #18 >>

Chvrches (or CHVRCHES) is a synthpop trio out of Glasgow, Scotland that formed back in 2011. Ian Cook and Martin Doherty were university friends and had performed in a bunch of failed bands together over the years and were almost ready to call it quits and get ‘real jobs’. However, Cook had taken an interest in electronic music and was messing around with synthesizers around the same time that he was doing some production work for another band and he found that he liked the sound of their vocalist’s style. Lauren Mayberry was intrigued by Cook’s invitation to work together on some material and after some exploratory sessions, the three musicians realized they were clicking and might have something to build off of. They chose their name, not because of any religious connotations, but because they liked the sound of it and played with the spelling as a nod to a certain esoteric indie subgenre of music.

“Recover” is the group’s second proper single and appears on their debut album, “The bones of what you believe”. It is the first track that I ever heard by the group and though it hooked me immediately, I haven’t been a fan everything they’ve done over the years. They tiptoe quite precariously on the tightrope between indie pop and outright dance pop. I can only tolerate the latter sound for short periods but they do the former so well that I will never outright dismiss them. I also respect their integrity, the way all three members contribute equally, and how frontwoman Mayberry has never allowed big money music to focus on her and use her sex appeal to sell their music.

“I’ll give you one more chance to say we can change our old ways
And you take what you need, and you know you don’t need me”

“Recover” is a blast of energy, lasers streaming and confetti flying. It is dancing in a sweaty and crowded hall while the strobe lights transform reality and melt your ability to properly perceive space and time. You’re tired and all the bodies writhing around you are tired and it is way past midnight and still hours before the sun comes up but the music won’t let you and any of your friends rest. The synths play alternatively like washes, handclaps, backing vocals, distorted bass. It’s all very retro futuristic, like robots made from 80s muscle car parts. And all the while, Mayberry is your guide and ringmaster, breathless herself in her high octave, childlike voice, commanding though, demanding you to live and experience the moment fully.

Wow.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2013 list, click here.

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Eighties’ best 100 redux: #84 Peter Schilling “Major Tom (Coming home)” (1982, 1983)

<< #85    |    #83 >>

At song #84, we have Peter Schilling’s “Major Tom (Coming home)”, the New German Wave re-telling of David Bowie’s classic tune, “Space oddity”.

Of course, when listening to the song at the time, I was too young to have been at all familiar with “Space oddity” so I never could have made the connection between “Major Tom” and the ‘weird’ singer of “Blue Jean”. It was only perhaps a decade later, when, having completely forgotten this track, I rediscovered it while dancing at an 80s night at some dance club whose name I no longer remember in Oshawa, and having further explored Bowie’s music and becoming a fan in the intervening years, that I made the connection.

To this day, I know very little about Peter Schilling and have never heard anything else by him. In fact, I only learned that he was part of the New German Wave scene and that this song was originally recorded in his native German language, while reading up on Nena for the post I wrote about her famous track quite some time ago.

“Major Tom (Coming home)” was originally released in German in 1982 as part of his album “Fehler im system” (the English version of the same album is called “Error in the system”) and was released in English the following year, when it became an international hit. The English version is part of my Apple Music library courtesy of an eighties compilation CD called “Retro night” that was released and purchased by yours truly in 1996 during the time that ‘retro’ music was making a comeback. The song is often lumped in with the synth pop music scene that was on the rise at the time but while it certainly does include synthesizers, I feel that they are used mostly to complement the sound created by using more traditional instruments (especially that wicked bass line).

If you are completely unfamiliar with the story of Major Tom, I would definitely recommend starting with David Bowie’s “Space oddity” but Peter Schilling’s tune makes an excellent companion to the original telling and has a better beat to dance to.

Here is the version I grew up listening to:

And here is the original German version from 1982 for you purists out there:

Original Eighties best 100 position: #87

Favourite lyric: “Across the stratosphere, a final message: ‘Give my wife my love.’ Then nothing more.” And the way he sings it is so ominous and haunting.

Where are they now?: At 69 years of age, Peter Schilling seems to be still very much active in music in his native Germany. For many years, he kept to German language releases but in the last four or five years, he’s seen something of a resurgence due to tracks from his early days, especially this very one.

For the rest of the Eighties’ best 100 redux list, click here.

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Best tunes of 2003: #11 The Decemberists “Los Angeles, I’m yours”

<< #12    |    #10 >>

I’ve spilled plenty of virtual ink already on the Portland, Oregon based indie-folk quintet led by Colin Meloy. However, the band keeps coming up on these lists of mine because I love them so much, so I might as well spill a little bit more.

“Los Angeles, I’m yours” is a track off The Decemberists’ second album, “Her majesty The Decemberists”. As I’ve already shared, I first heard this album, along with the debut, a year after its release and promptly fell for the literate tales* that frontman Colin Meloy spins into his globalized and folkloric indie rock. Apparently, he wrote this track after his band’s first visit to the great metropolis on the west coast and found that he hated it. The song is a hilarious number where he pokes fun at its denizens and their collective fashion sense**, the sights and the smells, and likens the entirety of it all to vomit from the Pacific Ocean.

“It’s streets and boulevards
Orphans and oligarchs are here
A plaintive melody
Truncated symphony
An ocean’s garbled vomit on the shore”

In true Decemberists fashion, though, the song is not a straight-ahead diss track. The music tells a completely different story, giving the feel of an answer to Sinatra’s “New York, New York”. The melody is at times joyful and wistful but always upbeat. There’s an aggressive strum on the acoustic that sets the mark and the tone. There’s strings. There’s a harmonica. You can almost hear birds chirping at one point… but maybe that would be too much.

As a post script to this entire thing, it’s worth noting Meloy’s story about the first time The Decemberists played this song live in LA after it was released into the world. He had been half expecting to be pelted by tomatoes by the crowd. Instead, the crowd all happily sang along, loudly and proudly, and this changed Mr. Meloy’s mind about the city and its people.

Happy endings all around.

*It was no big surprise to me when Meloy started publishing works of fiction, all of which are great. I just finished “The stars did wander darkling”.

**The women with their underwear straps showing about the waist of their pants and the men with their pants hanging off of them, well below their bottoms.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2003 list, click here.