Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 2020: #22 Say Hi “And then some miniature golfing”

<< #23    |    #21>>

I had never heard, nor heard of, Say Hi prior to 2020 but this album called “Diamonds & donuts” came across my radar in the early days of the pandemic and it hit all the right notes with me. As it turned out, I would spend many hours listening to it over my headphones, while working away at my dining room table, while my lovely wife was doing the same across from me*. And this track, “And then some miniature golfing” was the album’s opening number.

Eric Elbogen started this project, originally called Say Hi to Your Mom, in Brooklyn back in 2002 and then, relocated operations to Seattle in 2006. He is the main creative force and its only real full-time member, though he has sometimes enlisted musicians to help realize his work in a live context. He has recorded and mixed pretty much all of the project’s 13 (!) albums (including this one) from the comfort of his home studio**, performing it all by himself. Word has it that a fourteenth album is due to be released later in 2023 and I would hazard that it would continue the trend as a real DIY bedroom pop project.

According to Elbogen himself, “Diamonds & donuts” was influenced by the idea of a series of psychological focus group tests, with each of the thirteen synth pop songs on the album representing a different experiment. “And then some miniature golf” posits the theory that “the saddest experience achievable by a human being is to be jolted awake from the false belief that you’ve truly found your soulmate.”

Oh, you even met her parents
And talked about traveling the world
‘Til she said “No matter what you think
I will never ever be your girl”

It’s 80s synth new wave with layers upon layers of hurt and pain, like they stuck Duckie Dale in the friend zone, but rather than at the prom, OMD is performing at a downtown New York punk club and the vocalist is channelling Joe Cocker and the Boss. It’s nostalgic and wistful with sidelong and knowing glances. Elbogen knows this kind of hurt and knows the only cure is more synths.

*Minus the earphones and the Say Hi album

**A laptop on a small desk in a bedroom

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

Categories
Tunes

100 best covers: #50 The Beautiful South “Everybody’s talkin'”

<< #51    |    #49 >>

The Beautiful South were one of my favourite groups in the first few years of the 1990s. I’ve already written on these pages a number of times about how I wrote all my first year university papers to their third record, 1992’s “0898”. So of course when their fourth album hit the shelves here in Canada in 1994, I was right there to purchase a copy of the CD. I noticed a big difference in the sound right away. Gone were the shrill, childlike backup vocals of Brianna Corrigan, who I later learned left the group before recording sessions began, and these were replaced by the richer hued voice of Jacqui Abbott.

This change was most evident on track four, “Miaow”’s second single, a cover of “Everybody’s talkin’”, on which she took on lead vocals and the inimitable Paul Heaton slid to backup duties. I recognized the track from the first listen because it was super faithful, in sound and in feeling, to one my father enjoyed and that would see the volume pumped up in the car whenever it made the appearance on oldies radio. I’m talking about Harry Nilsson’s version, of course, which I thought until recently was the original. It was his cover that made the song what it is, its appearance on the “Midnight cowboy” soundtrack giving Nilsson his biggest hit. It was a jangling and rambling yearning to be somewhere, anywhere but there, exhausted but hopeful, not letting all the talking heads get you down. It’s the kind of song that rings true with musicians and songwriters, which is likely why it’s been covered by hundreds* of artists.

I only learned that it was originally written and recorded by folk singer/songwriter Fred Neil a few years before Nilsson did it when I sat down to write this post a week or so ago. I had to change tack for obvious reasons but I loved learning about how this songwriter I’d never heard of wrote this classic tune and recorded it in only one take just so that he could finally go home. His original is austere, hints at plucking and strumming, a shadow and inference of the fuller sound we are used to with the many covers. It’s good, perhaps even great, it’s just not what I’m used to.

In closing, I’m realizing that I may not have made such a strong case for The Beautiful South version but I do very much love it. It’s always made me happy. So I can’t in conscience pick the original here but I’m definitely curious to check out Fred Neil’s other work.

Cover:

The original:

*One of these was the lovely, mellow rendition by Luna, which I also considered including on this list.

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

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: Spiritualized “Royal Albert Hall October 10 1997”

(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)

Artist: Spiritualized
Album Title: Royal Albert Hall October 10 1997
Year released: 1998
Year reissued: 2014
Details: 2 x 180 gram

The skinny: We interrupt this backwards journey through Spiritualized’s exceptional studio album output to bring you a live album. But not just any live album. “Royal Albert Hall October 10 1997” is perhaps one of my favourite ever live albums, being one of only a small handful on my record shelves*. As its title suggests, Jason Pierce brought his band, along with a horn section, a string quartet, and a gospel choir, to Royal Albert Hall one night in October in 1997 and blew the doors off the place. I know this is true, not just because of the recording that blows my mind every time I hear it, but also from the stories recounted by my friend Tim**, who was lucky enough to be in attendance that night in London. The double album contains blissed out and freak out jams of most of the tunes off their latest album at the time***, plus samplings off their first two records, and as a bonus, one song from Pierce’s pre-Spiritualized lifetime, Spaceman 3. Though this pressing is another bare bones reissue by Plain Recordings, it’s a limited edition release on two lovely sounding 180-gram discs and the artwork is (almost)**** like I remember from the original copy I had on CD.

Standout track: “I think I’m in love (live)”

*Indeed, it’s only one of two that I purchased specifically for the live record, the others being bonus discs or parts of box sets.

**Happy birthday Tim!

***Yes, yes, “Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space“.

****As you can see in the cover photo above, the circle at the end of the band name on the cover, that usually includes a registered trademark notation, but here, is supposed to surround the concert venue, has somewhat missed the mark.