Category Archives: I Like This Song

Perfume Genius, Just Like Love

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I stumbled across a Top 50 albums of 2017 list that was published on a website in July. No reason to share, so far the returns have been a big yawn, except for this tune.

Just to get this out of the way, I think Perfume Genius is a terrible, perhaps career wrecking, band name (even if this is a single artist taking a collective name). The artist’s real name is Mike Hadreas, which is better I think, but whatever. It’s his choice.

His latest album is called No Shape, and I’d suggest that the record lacks shape. It has too many spare slow songs that don’t really go anywhere, even when they’re adorned with interesting rhythms and strong singing. Maybe more listens will reveal more. If there are more listens it will be because of the song Just Like Love.

It has that Chris Isaac reverb and a little Willy DeVille strut. It sounds like the fifties, like Roy Orbison (and Isaac and DeVille), and it sounds contemporary, not nostalgic. Or maybe it’s on other songs, where he can sound like Prince and at other times like David Longstreth of Dirty Projectors, that he doesn’t sound nostalgic. Ultimately, this is an art band, and in the case of Just Like Love, often the best art steals from the best sources.

Hadreas is from Seattle, but lived for a number of years in Williamsburg and worked in an East Village bar. I hope he adopted his nom de tunes because he knows that when the New York Times writes about him, on the second reference to his name, they’ll have to call him Mr. Genius. Aim high!

Update: Original post called Perfume Genius Patrick Hadreas. His given name is actually Mike. I fixed it.

Worth Noting: The album track and the live track are arranged similarly, but the album track is sonically very different. The music on the album is electronic and layered track upon track. The live version captures the shape of the song, but is a much more organic version than the album version. This is not an indictment of the album.

This is a Google Music link to the album track. I don’t know what happens if you’re not a Google Music subscriber. https://play.google.com/music/m/T3coz2krxwyb7s5jzkgwd73txpm?t=Just_Like_Love_-_Perfume_Genius 

Obit: Gord Downie

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I’ve only been to see Saturday Night Live live once, in 1995, and the musical guest that night was Canadian band The Tragically Hip, which I’m told all Canadians call The Hip.

What I noticed is that they took their name from an Elvis Costello lyric (Town Crier), and they rocked, but seemed oddly removed. I’ve heard about them over the years, but never really revisited them until today. They had a rep as one of those bands that can’t find an audience outside of Canada. So there you go.

But the band’s lyricist and leader, Gord Downie, died this week at 53 after a long struggle with brain cancer. Reading an obit in New York magazine turned me on to the song Fifty-Mission Cap, from a 1993 album. It’s a driving rocker that tells the shaggy dog story of a Canadian hockey player, a Maple Leaf, who disappears in 1951 while on a fishing trip, and whose body isn’t found until a 1962 plane crash. Good lyrics, tough song, weird combo. I’ll be listening some more.

The Clash, Armagideon Time

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After hearing this Clash cover and profound remix I bought the Willie Williams version. Williams has all the parts, but doesn’t have the whatever it is that makes the Clash version epic.

The Clash version is also not religious. And while the whole Clash excursion into the Third World is culturally suspect. To their credit, they seemed to know that. At least a little bit.

If pressed, I’d call this my favorite (most powerful) Clash song.

The Selecter, Everyday

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I found myself quoting this song to my internet service provider today. Bye bye Spectrum.

Which reminds me that this is a cover. The Pioneers version is great, but a little different. Maybe that’s the change of islands.

On YouTube there are also versions of the song by George Acard and George Dekkard that seem to be the Pioneers version. Can’t have too much of a good thing.

And little enough of crappy Spectrum internet.

Ps. The Selecter version of the tune is credited to Petty Harding, and is called Everyday, while the Pioneers much earlier version is called Time Hard.

Is it coincidence that Petty Hardin are the songwriters of Buddy Holly’s much different classic tune Everyday?

What is weird is that in the Wikipedia page’s exhaustive list of Pioneers singles, Time Hard isn’t listed.

But in a footnote the Selecter are credited with covering Time Hard as Everyday.

All Music credits the song to Composed by George Agard / Jackie Robinson / Sydney Crooks

In the UK the song was credited to George Dekker, the band’s lead singer.

What a mess. I suspect some royalties are owed somewhere. Or everywhere.

Tom Petty Has Died.

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This was the first song most of us heard by Tom Petty, I’m pretty confident to say. At least those who were alive when that record, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers came out. Some of us were confused, there was another band called the Heartbreakers out there already, playing around the neighborhood. But LAMF, that band’s first album, didn’t come out until late in 1977. Tom Petty’s band’s first eponymous elpee dropped in February, and with it this amazing song that seemed to meld southern rock, LA country and NY punk into a perfect song.

Petty turned out be a giant star who had at least a bit of the heart of a remnant. He kept playing with his high school band, all through his life, and he genuinely seemed to enjoy the whole process, the writing and performing and being a star while also being himself. He wrote and sang and performed everywhere since those early days, and has had scores of hits and a ton of fame, but this is the song that comes to me first and foremost when I hear something awful, like I did today.

Hiss Golden Messenger

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I wish I could limit this to a song. Or a video. But the fact is that this is a fantastic band. Maybe the best I’ve ever heard. They’re that good. (Okay, this is overstatement, but I hope it got your attention.)

The problem is that they play classic rock, or classic country rock. This is a style of music that is so overplayed, so worn out, that you would think that creating new songs and sounds in the style would be impossible. But somehow Hiss Golden Messenger makes these old sounds sound fresh. The arrangements are fantastic. The songs are very good.

I find this confounding. Listening I hear Delaney and Bonnie meeting mellow Clapton, with some Allmans and Van Morrison, vocals by Steve Earle, a track here is a little like Dylan, that one is a little like the Band, but none of them ripoffs or lazily derivative. They use the phonemes of classic country rock and create a dream team. That is what this band does, on every cut, of the two albums I’ve listened to.

So, here are a few songs for your delectation. Rave on. These aren’t punk gods, like Hans Condor. They’re not innovators, but they’re not nostalgists either. They inhabit their music in a way that only the very best do. They are regular musicians trying to find a pay day. But I think you’re going to like what they do.