Tag: British rock

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 2002: #3 The Coral “Dreaming of you”

<< #4    |    #2 >>

You want an ear worm? Well, have I got one for you!

Those who are already fans, you know what I’m talking about. If you’ve heard this before but maybe have forgotten about its pure joy, chances are you’re going to thank me for the reminder. If you haven’t heard this track before, well… press play below and get ready to jump up and dance like a maniac.

This is The Coral’s third ever single and early hit, “Dreaming of you”.

The group was formed in 1996 in Hoylake, England when its six members were all still in high school. By the time the group released its debut, self-titled album, they had developed and fine-tuned a sound that was uniquely their own but one that was made up of instantly recognizable sounds. Steeped in old country folk, dub reggae, and all things psychedelic, they sounded old, yet new, and really, out of time altogether. Their relative youth fed their experimentation, their tendency towards fun and the lack of any sense of what shouldn’t work but in the end, did. The album was nominated for the Mercury prize and it and the band are seen as the first in the new wave of British guitar rock bands that kicked off the 2000s.

“Dreaming of you” comes in at track four on the album so if you’re listening to “The Coral” in full, you are already warmed up to the group’s energy, antics, and crazed pace. But I don’t think anything can prepare you for the smile that will instantly form on your face and how your feet will immediately start tapping. The hopping on one foot bass line begins the proceedings but the staccato guitars and whirling organs are not far behind. There’s horns, there’s vibraphone, there’s old style choral backup vocals and of course, there’s James Skelly’s soulful lead vocal turn. It’s like a crazed carnival on an old creaking ship caught in a turbulent ocean storm, navigating the giant waves with no one at the wheel because everyone is caught up in the party. It is mayhem and bedlam and hilarity. And all this in just a shade over two minutes.

“Up in my lonely room
When I’m dreaming of you
Oh what can I do
I still need you, but
I don’t want you now”

Whether you’re on the side of the lyrics being about heroin addiction or on the side of a love that’s no good but can’t be helped, there’s no arguing how wonderful the track is.

You are now guaranteed to be singing or humming this song all day.

You’re welcome.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2002 list, click here.

Categories
Live music galleries

Live music galleries: New Order [2013]

(I got the idea for this series while sifting through the ‘piles’ of digital photos on my laptop. It occurred to me to share some of these great pics from some of my favourite concert sets from time to time. Until I get around to the next one, I invite you to peruse my ever-growing list of concerts page.)

New Order at Osheaga 2013

Artist: New Order
When: August 4th, 2013
Where: Mountain stage, Osheaga, Parc Jean Drapeau, Montréal
Context: A week ago, the organizers of Montreal’s Osheaga music and arts festival announced that much like last year, this year’s event would not take place due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was hardly a surprise and yet, though I hadn’t attended in many years, I felt a bit sad at the news. Every year, I get excited around lineup announcement time and I peruse the acts, weighing whether it is worthwhile to attend and whether I think I might be able to convince friends to go with. The last time I was able to achieve such a feat was in 2013 and though the lineup was favourable, it was mostly because my friends Mark, Tim, and I were all celebrating a certain landmark birthday. The headliner on the final night was Mumford and Sons but we were way more excited to see New Order, who were slated to perform just beforehand. Original keyboardist Gillian Gilbert had recently rejoined the group but Peter Hook had departed and was touring with his own band, performing landmark New Order and Joy Division albums in full. New Order, meanwhile, was touring in support of their latest album, “Lost sirens”, but the set list that night featured none of its songs and instead, read like a greatest hits album, much like that of The Cure’s set, two nights earlier. And then, just when we thought it was over, the band blew our mind’s further by performing three classic Joy Division tracks, going well over their allotted set time and cutting into Mumford’s set. The indie kids were pissed but we were in heaven. Afterwards, the headliners felt pedestrian by comparison and we were tired of drinking macro brewed beer so we ducked out of the final night early and went off to a local pub.
Point of reference song: “Crystal”

Bernard Sumner of New Order
Stephen Morris of New Order
Gillian Gilbert of New Order
Bernard Sumner, Tom Chapman and the multimedia light show
Phil Cunnngham of New Order
Bernard Sumner (and Stephen Morris obscured by the drum kit)
Forever Joy Division
Categories
Tunes

100 best covers: #59 Placebo “Bigmouth strikes again”

<< #60    |    #58 >>

One Sunday night in January, very shortly after New Year’s day in 1997, I ventured downtown Toronto to meet up with my friend Darrell from my Prose fiction workshop. I’m pretty sure the place was called Lion’s Bar and I am reasonably sure it was on College street somewhere near Kensington market but I now couldn’t tell you for sure. I remember the bar being in a basement and that it was a relatively small space but what I remember the most was that the music was awesome. Of course, that was why we were there.

The DJ that night was a friend of Darrell’s and I knew him, but only as a nodding acquaintance, mostly from a couple years of seeing him and requesting songs while he manned the decks on Saturday nights at one of York University’s college pubs. It was this same DJ that drove both Darrell and me back up to North York afterwards, long after last call, rather than subject us to the joys of the night bus. Once at his car, he handed us both promo copies of Catherine Wheel’s “Like cats and dogs” from his trunk and then played for us an advance copy James’s upcoming album “Whiplash” on his car stereo on the way home. But I am digressing here…

At some point that evening, I was on the dance floor taking a swig from my bottle of Labatt 50 just as whatever song it was that I was dancing to came to an end. It was replaced by a familiar guitar strum intro but one that was slightly edgier. Still, I placed it as “Bigmouth strikes again” and got back into dancing mode. By the time the vocals kicked in and instead of Morrissey’s plaintive warble, a Richard O’Brien-like sinister sneer chimed in, I knew that this was more than a different mix or take of the original Smiths track. And this brought a smile to my face, a smile that only widened and broke into outright laughter when the “hearing aid” lyric was modernized to “Walkman” and “Discman” for a bit of brazen hipness. This version was harder, noisier, and most definitely more glammed up than the original and that extra thirty seconds in length and increased tempo had this particular dancer slightly sweatier by the end. At its closing notes, I hurried over to the DJ to ask after the artist, which I repeated to myself over a number of times and even procured a pen to scrawl it on the inside of my cigarette pack because I no longer trusted my drunken brain to retain it.

Just over a year later, my ears pricked up when I heard the same band announced over the radio with a brand new song called “Pure morning”, which I loved immediately and this song ended up being a big hit for Placebo. I later came across the “Bigmouth strikes again” cover on the bonus disc that came with the deluxe edition of their 2003 album, “Sleeping with ghosts”, and I was immediately transported back to that very fun evening. And I experience the same sort of joy every time I hear this song now.

Is the Placebo cover better than The Smiths’ original? I can’t say that it is. But it’s probably just as fun to dance to.

Cover:

The original:

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