Category: Tunes

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Best tunes of 1993: #22 Slowdive “Alison”

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My friend Tim was always a bigger fan of Slowdive than I was, and I suspect that his appreciation of the group was influenced greatly by his crush on one of the principal vocalists of the group, Rachel Goswell. He tried to get me into them and I did my best to give them a shot. I tape-recorded a copy of the “Souvlaki” CD he loaned me. Unfortunately, I would never get very far with it, rarely more than a few songs past the opening track (but more on that in a bit).

Much like the rest of the music world, critics and writers who never appreciated Slowdive until they were gone, I didn’t get into the Reading-based five-piece until much later. I’ve already documented* on these pages that it was long after they had lost a couple members, changed musical directions, and rebranded that I caught up with them again, just after they had released their third album as Mojave 3. When I listen to “Souvlaki” now, though, I can’t help but wonder: “What were we all thinking?”

The album is lush and ambient, the sadness and hurt palpable in every wash and echo. More deliberate and difficult than its predecessor, it is a sophomore album multiplied by a hundred, informed equally by the knowledge that anything they produced would be panned and by the internal strife in the band created by the romantic split of Neil Halstead and the aforementioned Goswell. If it weren’t for the rise of Grunge and Britpop, it may have been just as hailed at the time as it is now. Hands down, it was one of the greatest shoegaze albums ever recorded.

“Alison” is the one track that I can honestly say that I’ve always loved from the album. As an opener, it was a hard one to move past and I rarely did. The guitars jangle and waver, a shimmering of light highlighting millions of tiny specks of dust, lifted and disrupted ever so gently by a passing breeze, the same that caused flutters in the gossamer curtains of sound. Drums are far off in the distance and deep down in the mix, like a harrowing memory. The reverb is like a third person in the room, pushing together the lilting voices of Halstead and Goswell, even as it as ripping them apart. “Alison” could be anyone who’s ever broken your heart, a smoker’s cough and an ashtray overflowing with butts, a hangover and a dozen empty merlot bottles.

“Alison, I’m lost
Alison, I’ll drink your wine
And wear your clothes when we’re both high
Alison, I said we’re sinking
But she laughs and tells me it’s just fine
I guess she’s out there somewhere”

Sigh.

*And likely will do so again…

For the rest of the Best tunes of 1993 list, click here.

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Best tunes of 2020: #30 Morrissey “Jim Jim Falls”

#29 >>

Well howdy! It’s 2022. A new year, but one that’s feeling much the same as the last two. And what better way to start off the year than with a post kicking off a countdown of my favourite tunes from the year that started this mess. Dark humour? A sucker for punishment? Perhaps. But for me, it’s more about remembering that there was still some good to come out of these dark times.

Take my number thirty for the year, for instance. Morrissey released a new album in 2020 and though this sort of news has once again fallen smack dab into the ho-hum category, I found myself liking quite a bit of “I am not a dog on a chain”.

I first discovered Stephen Patrick Morrissey shortly after he went solo and I loved his first bunch of early 90s albums. I later discovered his work fronting the legendary British rock band, The Smiths, right around the time that was releasing his late 90s work, a period in his solo career to which I remain to this day mostly ambivalent. Then, he released what many (including myself) consider his comeback album, “You are the quarry”, in the early 2000s. He followed that with a string of albums of diminishing returns, to the point where I couldn’t even have been bothered to check out his album of covers, 2019’s “California son”.

Morrissey has always been a polarizing figure, eliciting equal amounts of gag reflex, eye-rolling, cheers, and undying love from all parts of the music-buying public. He actually seems to have become more known for his penchant for cancelling concerts and tours and for his increasingly right wing views than he is for any new music that he manages to record. He has lost a number of fans along the way, been dropped from record labels, and had numerous fellow artists publicly express their disappointment in him. I’ve always tried to separate the artist and their art, which is why I still try to give his albums a listen, just in case there’s a gem or two to pluck from the mire. And in 2020, there were a few on his latest and, in fact, I distinctly remember listening and bopping right along to it on the first spin while working away at my dining room table.

The opening track, “Jim Jim Falls”, starts off not sounding like typical Morrissey at all but then the industrial/electronic percussion and synth crashes give way to his familiar vocal delivery. It’s dark and ominous and harrowing in feel but the tone, biting and no holds barred, rings true. Lyrically, he sets death (particularly suicide) against living life for real, walking the walk and jumping the jump instead of talking the talk. And it rocks and it rolls. Seriously. When else but with Morrissey would you find yourself happily singing along with the lines: “If you’re gonna kill yourself, then for God’s sake, just kill yourself?”

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

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Best tunes of 2012: #7 Porcelain Raft “Drifting in and out”

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Wake up all you dream pop fanatics, just long enough to open up your Spotify app, locate the album “Strange weekend” by Porcelain Raft, press play, and drift back into the musical haze of its opening track: “Drifting in and out”.

Yeah, that’s the spot. Right there. An itch you didn’t know you needed scratched. I know because I’ve been there myself. In fact, why don’t you go listen to it again. I’ll wait (or perhaps I’ll give it another go myself).

This beautiful piece and the nine tracks that follow it are the work of the unfortunately-named Porcelain Raft, a “basement” project of Italian-born composer/songwriter, Mauro Remiddi. “Strange weekend” was in fact the debut album under this name but you couldn’t mark Remiddi down as fresh-faced kid with a crazy dream, even at the time. He had already been at the music game for many years in 2012, cutting his teeth working as a musician in projects all around the world and dabbling in musical styles ranging from gypsy Klezmer music to North Korean traditional music.

This particular chapter in his music story was inspired by his move to New York City. Remiddi worked alone on the album, without a lot of external intervention, but it does not feel as detached and self-aggrandizing as these types of projects tend to feel. This could have something to do with how quickly Remiddi reportedly recorded the album, just focusing on the music in the moment, as fleeting as that can be.

“Strange weekend” was released very early in 2012. It made an impression on me from the get-go and though I remember doing my best to discover and listen to as much new music as I could that year, somehow, this one was never very far from my ear phones. So many great mind-expanding and explosive moments for me and I’ve likened it many times over to an alien retelling of Primal Scream’s “Screamadelica”. And it all starts here, with this track.

If you haven’t heard it already, I’ll just point out the similarity here to Chapterhouse’s “Mesmerise” and now you won’t be able unhear it. The dreamy danceable vibe. The skull latching medicine. The synths that flit about in shards of light and in between wispy clouds. The lasers beaming out from the retro spaceship. The half-remembered saturday night on the town played in reverse and in slow motion. This is blissful dream pop. Yeah, let’s listen to it again.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2012 list, click here.