Tag: Indie

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 2010: #13 Gorillaz “On melancholy hill”

<< #14    |    #12 >>

Anyone who’s been reading my words on music for a while now knows that I’ve been a pretty big Blur fan since the very beginning. But what about Damon Albarn’s other music projects? Well, I did enjoy me some of The Good, The Bad & The Queen’s only LP and his solo album, “Everyday robots” also had some very fine moments. Where Gorillaz are concerned, however, my thoughts are decidedly mixed.

I thought the concept was fantastic. A virtual band that was just as much a multimedia experiment as it was a serious musical project, throw in Albarn’s talents and those of Jamie Hewlett, one of the comic artists behind “Tank girl” and you have some serious potential. But given the heavy hip hop influence, especially on the first couple of albums, I didn’t find myself all that interested. There were exceptions, of course. I really liked the first single, “Clint Eastwood”, and also, “Hong Kong”, off the “Help: a day in the life” compilation and this track, “Up on melancholy hill”.

It appears on Gorillaz third album, “Plastic beach”, but I didn’t hear it there first. I blame AUX TV for this. For a while there back in 2010, I spent a lot of time watching that channel, or half-watching it, as the case may be. I was quite enthused to find a cable channel that actually played music videos again. And not just the popular music videos, but quite the mix of music, much of it new and hip. It became part of my early morning routine to switch AUX TV on and listen to tunes while I was making my lunch and brewing espresso for my wife’s and my morning lattes. I discovered a lot of music in this way that year and also rediscovered my love for watching music videos.

The video for “On melancholy hill” was played regularly on AUX in the summer of 2010 and it’s a great one too. Some pretty fantastic animation by Hewlett has band member Noodle gunning down some Korean War era planes before surviving a boat explosion in the open waters. Other fantastic adventures follow under the deep blue sea that include the other band members and some “superfast jellyfish” but you don’t need me to explain all that. You can just watch the video below.

And oh yeah, the song… well, it’s a catchy one. A real pop gem. It could have something to do with the time of year that I first heard it but it’s a real summer song for me. It’s sunshine and happy days. It’s not your typical danceable number but I think it would be a fun one to hear at a club nonetheless. Alternatively, it fits quite nicely in a lounge or playing on your boombox while you languish out by the pool. The melody is just so simple and laidback and Damon Albarn’s vocals are forefront, drifting lazily over the synths, like he’s there just singing you off to la la land. Beautiful.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2010 list, click here.

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 2010: #14 Diamond Rings “Wait and see”

<< #15    |    #13 >>

Number 14 on this list marks the third artist, following P.S. I Love You at #30 and Library Voices at #25, that I discovered at the 2011 edition of Ottawa Bluesfest. Like the two others, Diamond Rings, one of the many performing names for John O’Regan, hails from Canada. His set that year was part of his tour supporting his debut album, “Special affections”, and took place early on a Sunday afternoon on the festival’s smallest stage. I had heard the album in advance, which was the only reason I had made such a special effort to be there so early in the day, but I wasn’t at all prepared for the Diamond Rings experience.

I’m also reasonably sure the early, sun-baked crowd weren’t sure what to make of the skinny white dude with bleached blonde hair and a swath of rainbow coloured makeup swiped across his eyes. And the confusion likely increased when he started, using loops, drum machines, programming, and other trickery while strutting and dancing across the stage with his guitar, brimming with all the confidence of a glam rock hero performing in front of a stadium of adoring fans rather than a handful of people scattered around on the hill facing him. His performance was infectious, though, and he had the crowd, which grew substantially, by the end and it turned out to be one of my favourite sets of the year. Two years later, when he returned to the festival in support of his sophomore album, it was also on a Sunday but this time, it was the headlining set on the medium sized stage. And now, he fittingly had a full band backing him, smoke machines, cool lighting, and a bigger, more adoring crowd.

“Wait and see” is the second track from that debut album, which I went out and bought for my vinyl collection early on. It’s a phenomenal track that you really have to listen closely to in order to guess that it’s a one man show. The sensibility is post-punk revival with a touch of darkness and a whole load of glam. The guitars are like chain saws messing with the industrial beat but it’s O’Regan’s silky baritone vocals that raise this track up to the rock heavens. You can hear and almost taste his persona in the song. He’s like a time traveller from the eighties, a forgotten rebel that had fallen asleep behind a stage, waking up almost thirty years later, and decided to wreak havoc on his new reality.

I loved this song and album and even the next one but lost track of O’Regan, and his Diamond Rings persona, after hearing he was touring with OMD in 2013. It seems like I wasn’t the only one because putting his name into google resulted in a handful of articles titled “Whatever happened to…” and one by Exclaim from last year that talked about a newish, yet still mysterious, project that had nothing to do with Diamond Rings called JG Ballad.

It is a bit of an unfortunate and unfinished story, but I feel like Diamond Rings was never really meant to be anything more than an experiment for O’Regan. Whatever he had to prove, though, I’m sure he did… and then some.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2010 list, click here.

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 2010: #15 LCD Soundsystem “Drunk girls”

<< #16    |    #14 >>

There’s not too many bands or artists out there right now that are as well-respected and well-reviewed or have as much indie rock cred as James Murphy’s dance punk collective, LCD Soundsystem.

I couldn’t tell you how I heard about them originally but my first exposure was their self-titled debut LP, shortly after its release in 2005. I loved that album from the first and how it seemed to traverse pretty much every musical genre within its nine songs, from classic rock to glam to post-punk to techno, and at the same time, name check pretty much any influential musical artist ever. On the other hand, I wasn’t quite as enthused with their sophomore release, 2007’s “Sound of silver”, given its solid push into dance territory (I was likely alone with this sentiment) but there were still some great tracks within. In 2010, the band released their third record, “This is happening”, and then, called it quits, performing one ‘last’ show at Madison Square Garden that famously became the subject of the documentary/concert film, “The long goodbye”. But as we all know now, that show in 2011 wasn’t truly the end and Murphy and friends reunited for more shows and have released yet another well-reviewed album, titled “American dream”, last month.

“Drunk girls” was the second single released from that third (and ‘final’) album back in 2010 and incidentally, appears second in the track order. Murphy has called it a ‘dumb song’ and I suppose it is somewhat nonsensical, but it’s far from dumb. Maybe he considers it so because of its accessibility. It’s the shortest song on the album and yet, perhaps the rowdiest of the bunch, proudly living up to its name. With the repeated line, alternatively “drunk girls” or “drunk boys”, it’s an easy song to shout along with and gather up steam on the dance floor. But the intermingling lines are the real gems, often hilarious observations on societal absurdities, poking fun at clubland mating rituals. At the same time, the beat and Murphy’s brilliantly off-kilter delivery make for good times indeed, often conducive to another round of Jaegermeister or tequila shots. Played at exactly the right time at a packed club on a Saturday night, it could make things very messy indeed.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2010 list, click here.