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Best tunes of 2020: #21 Dream Wife “Hasta la vista”

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From what I’ve read, London-based Dream Wife started from an art school project in which its three principal members portrayed a 90’s alt rock influenced band in a Spinal Tap-like mockumentary*. Rakel Mjöll, Alice Go, and Bella Podpadec (along with drummer Alex Paveley) still seem to be having fun but now, they’re damned serious as well. They are well-known for their electric live shows, not shying away from tough subjects in their lyrics and their unwavering support of women and non-binary, especially in terms of their underrepresentation.

I came upon the group after the release of their sophomore album, “So when you gonna…”, in 2020 and I made the immediate and obvious comparison to the riot grrl** punk acts that emerged out of the early nineties. But I also noted that it wasn’t all about the rage, hearing a certain embrace of melodic pop and felt there were whiffs of bands like Elastica and Sleeper and Echobelly from the Britpop era. To be honest, it was this latter element that led me towards repeat listens because as counterintuitive as it might sound, the introduction of pop elements to the harder edge suggested a willingness to expand and experiment.

I still haven’t gone back to explore the self-titled debut but I certainly will make the time, just as I plan to give their upcoming third album, “Social lubrication”, a go. “So when you gonna…”, though, is an enduring listen to my ears and the album’s second single, “Hasta la vista”, is all kinds of fun. But don’t be fooled by the title that smacks of the old Schwarzenegger tagline. Gimmicky, this song is not. The giddy-up bassline and ticky-tack drums get you moving and the synths just hang out there in the background, a humming wash, setting a warm tone. The guitars dance a pogo and frontwoman Rakel Mjöll softly bemoans and at the same time, celebrates relationships lost and never to be re-discovered. The band has admitted that “Hasta la vista” was the first song to be written for the new album after returning from a long period of the touring and coming home to find everything changed.

“Remember me in the morning light
Remember none of the wrong, just the right
Remember all the joy we gave
Remember that it paved the way”

This is a sentiment with which many can appreciate and identify. And now, they can dance to it as well.

*I loved Spinal Tap so I’d be curious to check it out, though I have no idea if it’s available anywhere online.

**As well other all female bands with a similar sound and aesthetic that had been mislabelled as such, like L7 and Hole.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2020 list, click here.

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100 best covers: #49 Rymes With Orange “Itchycoo park”

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This one might be a bit more obscure for those of you outside of Canada. Still, I gotta say: while searching for the YouTube videos to include with this particular post, I was pleasantly taken on a small jaunt through nostalgia with the one posted by the band themselves for the cover version of today’s song. There’s a small clip at the beginning from the old MuchMusic alternative video show, The Wedge, including the musical intro segment and then, Simon Evans, the VJ who hosted the show, introducing the band and music video in that bumbling way he had.

If memory serves, I actually watched that particular episode of The Wedge on one weekday afternoon at some point in 1993 and this very same bumbling intro was how I came upon this group and this cover. I remember thinking at the time that Rymes with Orange was a great band name* (and still do) and I loved their sound because it was so obviously influenced by the baggy Madchester aesthetic, of which I was quite enamoured. I started looking for their debut album (“Peel”) whenever I was out at the music stores but had to settle for a CD single copy of “Marvin”, one of the album’s three singles, that included 6 or 7 mixes of it, plus this very same cover of “Itchycoo park”.

Rymes with Orange was an alternative rock band that formed in 1991 in Vancouver BC by guitarist Rob Lulic, keyboardist Bob D’Eith, and drummer Alex Dias after a number of their previous bands had formed and folded. Various members came and went in the early days but things really started to come together when they settled on UK-born Lyndon Johnson for lead vocals and moved their sound towards the aforementioned Manchester-influenced dance rock. Their 1992 debut garnered them some success and to build upon that they embraced a harder edge for their sophomore album, 1994’s “Trapped in the machine”. They managed a few alternative radio hits here and a couple tracks that I enjoyed but I lost track of the group in the years that followed**. I still love this cover though.

The original “Itchycoo Park” was written and first performed by English Rock band The Small Faces back in 1967. It was released as a standalone single and went on to be one of the group’s biggest hits. I personally don’t know a lot about the group but do love this song and will eventually explore their catalogue further. Theirs is a laidback, psychedelic rendition calling to mind a lazy Sunday or idyllic jaunt in nature. Either way, the sun is shining and everything is perfect. The Rymes with Orange cover builds on the psychedelia of the original but ups the tempo and adds a flash mob dance routine to the equation.

I refuse to pick a preferred version in this case.

Cover:

The original:

*The following year while at a Wonder Stuff concert I saw someone wearing one of Rymes with Orange’s concert Tees and it was just as brilliantly emblazoned with the words “Rhymes with f*ck all”.

**Apparently, the group had been off again, on again through to the late 2000s and had a reunion of sorts back in 2017.

For the rest of the 100 best covers list, click here.

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Best tunes of 2013: #27 Lanterns on the Lake “Elodie”

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Back in 2018, when I was counting down my favourite tunes of 2011, “Lungs quicken” from Lanterns on the Lake’s debut album, “Gracious tide, take me home” came in at number twenty-five on said list. I mused, then, at how perfect their name was, in terms of how it forewarned of what you would experience should you take the chance to listen to their music. “Lungs quicken”, and many of the tracks on their debut, evoked the image of “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.”

“Elodie”, the song of today’s focus, is also an opening track by the band but in this case, off their sophomore record, “Until the colours run”. And if the band were looking to forewarn of the change in sound, a portent of another coming sea storm perhaps, they succeeded here.

The indie pop band from Newcastle-on-Tyne, England, had lost a couple members, brothers Brendan and Adam Ian Sykes, since their first album. They replaced Brendan with Bob Allen on bass but the other brother would have been much more difficult to replace since he co-led on vocals on much of the debut, so instead the band chose not to. Hazel Wilde took sole responsibility for vocal duties moving forward and that seems like it gave the band more direction. Interestingly, there’s less electronic trickery* on “Until the colours run” and more focus on the stringed instruments and at the same time, Wilde’s vocals seem less fragile and more assured.

“Forget the barricades
We’re four years too late
And all your mother’s words
Strength’s not in numbers”

“Elodie” starts the album with a feedback warning and if you didn’t heed it, you’d run headlong into the brick wall of guitar noise that follows. Then, just when thought you’d need to come up for air, the guitars fade to echo, replaced with the high speed ticking of a clock, the tentative dabs on the piano keys, and Wilde’s plaintive tones. Of course, the guitars make a return and there’s this delicious push and pull between the angry noise and the delicate strings and inferred beauty. Whoever this Elodie was, she has invoked a lot of passion and for this, we can be thankful.

Happy Sunday!

*The “folktronica” is all but gone.

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