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Best tunes of 2013: #16 Black Hearted Brother “This is how it feels”

<< #17    |    #15 >>

For a time back at the end of 2013, I found myself listening to nothing but Black Hearted Brother and their debut album, “Stars are our home”.

The album was released in October of that year and took me completely by surprise. At the time, I had pretty much given up on any new material from Mojave 3, and well, forget about Slowdive, and Halstead’s solo work, while excellent, had never been mind-blowing. I hadn’t heard any peep or rumour about any possible new Neil Halstead projects. The only reason I listened to this album at all was that the name, Black Hearted Brother, jumped out at me from the album release pages as one that I fancied. So, yes, the album was a surprise but it was even more so when I first put it on. Indeed, that voice was instantly familiar to me and a quick Google search had me smiling at the discovery.

The term supergroup was bandied about in the press immediately after the release of “Stars are our home” but the album was far from a planned project, really more of a happy accident that came together between friends. Neil Halstead, Nick Holton, and Mark Van Hoen, all had a wealth of prior recording experience between them. They knew what worked and what didn’t. But if you’re a fan of their previous work, don’t go into this album expecting a rehash of any of their respective bands’ classic albums. Rather, it’s a synthesis of what these guys are and do and what they haven’t done before and as a group, seemed to have made a conscious decision with this project to just let go of everything and not let themselves be restricted by their own musical history. In that sense, “Stars are our home” is an experimental album and for me, it’s an experiment that worked wondrously.

When I listen to it still, I picture these guys just having a blast in the studio, just playing with different sounds and not thinking too much about whether any of the songs will make a good single or not. Indeed, you can tell that this is an album that the musicians wanted to make for themselves and nobody else. It feels like a shake up (shake down) to the dream pop scene of the 21st century, their record label, the mighty Slumberland Records, calling it “space-rock/shoegaze/post-everything”. It’s the veterans showing the young pups how it’s done. It’s noisy, electronic, gentle, beautiful, ugly, and delicious. “Stars are our home” rocks*.

There’s certainly plenty to like on “Stars are our home” but “This is how it feels” became an early favourite around these parts and remains so to this day. Never since Spiritualized’s “Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space” has a song practically forced me to picture myself orbiting the earth from outer space, encapsulating the feeling of weightlessness and solitude. By times gentle and by times brash, it dances daringly between genres, flitting between folk and synth, splashing bright colours and loud washes over the already blurred lines of psychedelia. It lulls you, lullaby-like, into a false sense of security with its gentle drum rhythm and barely there guitar strums and then, shakes you wide awake at each freakout chorus.

*Unfortunately, “Stars are our home” would turn out to be the one and only release by the project. I’m not even sure they ever did any shows to promote it, though I’m sure these shows would’ve been amazing. Slowdive announced their reunion not long into 2014, taking up the lion’s share of Neil Halstead’s over the last decade or so.

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

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Best tunes of 1994: #26 Sonic Youth “Bull in the heather”

<< #27   |   #25 >>

On my old, long defunct blog Music Insanity, I remember writing a post about all those bands that I’ve respected and tried many times over the years to ‘get into’ but ultimately, failed. The list at that time included The Ramones, Skinny Puppy, Husker Du, Bon Iver, Destroyer, Broken Social Scene*, and of course, Sonic Youth. I later wrote about this difficulty to fully enjoy Sonic Youth and anything more than a handful of their singles on this very blog, when one of these singles, “Kool thing”, appeared at number twenty four on my Best tunes of 1990 list. And today, we’re here to consider another of the tracks that appears on their ‘best of’ compilation, “Hits are for squares”**, and my 26th favourite song of 1994: “Bull in the heather”.

Sonic Youth was formed in New York City in 1981 by Thurston Moore (guitar, vocals), Kim Gordon (bass, vocals), and Lee Ranaldo (rhythm guitar). This trio remained a constant in the group throughout their thirty year history and were complemented during that time by a series of drummers. For their first decade of existence, they toiled in the underground, toying with art rock, punk, and noise, making a name for themselves with their use of alternative guitar tunings, feedback, and generally changing the way we think about guitar rock. Indeed, their influence on alternative and indie rock is unfathomable, counting Teenage Fanclub, Slowdive, Pavement, Swervedriver, Sleater-Kinney, Dinosaur Jr., and Superchunk amongst their fans. Sonic Youth broke into the mainstream around the time that alternative rock was being crowned as the music of choice in the 90s before fading back into the background in the 2000s. They called it quits in 2011, around the time that Moore and Gordon divorced after a 27 year marriage, and all three members have had relatively active solo careers since.

“Time to tell your dirty story
Time turning over and over
Time turning, four leaf clover
Betting on the bull in the heather”

“Bull in the heather”*** is track two on Sonic Youth’s eighth studio album, “Experimental jet set, trash and no star”, was released as the album’s lead single, and its video was notable for featuring Riot Grrl icon and Bikini Kill vocalist, Kathleen Hanna dancing and generally hanging around the set while the band performed the song. It has an instantly recognizable intro, the band as usual playing with guitar effects, a guitar pick screeching down a guitar string like nails on a chalk board and fingers tapping on strings feeling like running a wet finger around the rim of crystal glass. In true Sonic Youth fashion, there’s lots of feedback and avant garde noise, a raunchy mess, oddly tuned guitars screeching and ringing, but there’s some play here with straight ahead guitar rock, like they are allowing mainstream to creep into their consciousness just slightly. What makes this song for me is the funky beat, the drummer using a maraca shaker as a drumstick and of course, there’s Kim Gordon’s vocals, as if under duress, each line pained and forced. She’s singing like she’s just run 10 laps around the high school track.

“Bull in the heather” feels completely of its time and place: slacker angst at its best. But sorry Sonic Youth fans, I’m still not one of you.

*I have managed to get into Broken Social Scene since that time, largely helped along by seeing them perform live.

**Sonic Youth’s only representation in my Apple Music library.

***I’ve read that the song title was the name of a race horse known around that time.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 1994 list, click here.

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Best tunes of 2003: #8 David Bowie “Days”

<< #9    |    #7 >>

We’re pretty sure it was Victoria’s idea. It sounds like something she might have come up with and has definitely had similar ideas a few times during our many years together.

She surprised me one day early in 2004 by asking if I would be interested in seeing David Bowie in concert. Neither of us could tell you how she heard that he was coming to town on his latest tour and playing the arena out in Kanata that used to be called the Corel Centre, but perhaps she heard mention of it on the radio. Of course, I was always game to see live music, but even more so if it was an artist I enjoyed. And though I honestly had never considered seeing Bowie live before, was really only casual fan at that point, knowing his hits and appreciating his contributions to modern music, I was most definitely in. Victoria invited a new friend from work, Eileen, who we are still friends with today, and her husband Tom* and we made a night of it, heading out for dinner first, at Johnny Farina’s on Elgin Street for pizza.

It was such a great night. Memorable in so many ways. It was probably our first trip out to Kanata, not knowing that we would buy a house spitting distance from the arena a handful of years later. We were introduced to The Polyphonic Spree, the 24 member psychedelic symphony led by sometime Tripping Daisy frontman, Tim DeLaughter, because we managed to get to the arena early enough to our seats to catch the lion’s share of their opening set. And of course, the biggest highlight was seeing Bowie himself, performing live on his last ever tour, a set representative of the many phases of his storied career. He made an even bigger fan out of me and played a whole bunch of tunes that Victoria didn’t know she knew and definitely didn’t know he wrote and performed.

I mention all this because this particular night is the sole reason “Days” ever came to my attention and has found itself at the number eight position on this list of my favourite tunes of 2003.

As I started doing at some point, possibly with this very concert, I wanted to ensure I was prepared for the show, beyond the best of compilation I already had in my compact disc collection. I borrowed a handful of Bowie’s more recent albums, including 2002’s “Heathen” and 2003’s “Reality”, from the Ottawa Public Library to familiarize myself with them and was pleasantly surprised at how easily I connected. There were, of course, a bunch of early standouts: “Slip away” and “Everyone says ‘hi’” from the former and “Never get old” and this one, “Days” from the latter, most which he performed at the concert.

“All you gave
You gave for free
I gave nothing in return
And there’s little left of me”

Track seven on David Bowie’s twenty-fourth studio album is steeped in themes of mortality, as are most of the songs of “Reality”. It’s so much self-reflection and realization, feelings of regret, like he’s looking back at his life and all the women he’s loved and lost, all the wrongs he wishes he could right. It begins with a lackadaisical bongo beat, synth washes, and expansive acoustic strums. Once the song kicks in to a higher gear after the first chorus, some alien percussive keys take over, all atmospheric and gossamer light. There’s so many layers of synths, like an alien angel choir, and Bowie is leading it all with that inimitable voice, layers upon layers to peel away, like the pages on a day calendar.

And looking back at this song, this night, those memories, twenty years later, I feel like I can better pick up what David Bowie is laying down.

*Who is sadly no longer with us.

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