I came to EBTG backwards. Tracy Thorn is a fantastic lyrics writer, and her collaboration in Everything But the Girl, a band with her husband, hinges on a louche sound and her fine songs.
This sort of English soul music has some seriously specific cultural touchpoints, which I don’t know, but it sounds good, especially when the lyrics aren’t stupid (or, as the English say, duff).
A lot of this stuff sounds the same, they work the same dance music rhythms, but this is one of the tunes EBTG made that sounds first rate to me. Meaning I walk around singing, Wherever you go, I will follow you.
These are Australians, but they count. Read it here.
Two of the Australians have a band called the Arcadian, which is a bad name for Googling (there are lots of them), but when I finally found them they’re kind of a stock hardcore band. But they get excited about a record by a band called Frenzel Rhomb, an Australian punky band from the 90s that does-but-doesn’t-overdo the pop punk cuteness on this tune from 1996.
I was thinking today about how sucky French rock and roll was.
We all love Johnny Hallyday, but he is no Edith Piaf. He is no Charles Aznavour. Edith and Charles have nothing to do with rock, because French is the language of longeurs and triste, and not the language of the hammer, the beat, the job, the drummer.
So, I Googled best French rock songs. The first one listed was not a rock song at all. Typical.
The second one is this one, which is okay. It’s not just a Jack White ripoff, it’s not just a simulation, it sounds of a place and time. Not a great tune, French is not a great language for rock (except for C’est Plan Pour Moi), but it’s growing on me each time I play it.
The Times art section is full of reviews of bands that played the CMJ music thing a ma bob over the weekend. Throwback lo-fi feedbacky rock with slurred vocals seems to be as much a rage now as it was in 1992
I listened to a song or two by Diet Cig, Destruction Unit, and Weave, without finding anything to talk about.
This tune, by a Toronto band called Dilly Dally, sounds a lot like one of my fave 1992 bands, Come. Twenty three years ago, the plodding rhythm section and the careening guitars, merge with slurred and blurted vocals, to rise up and sound just fine. Nothing exciting here, but this works.
I went with my daughter to see these four young men called Darlingside last night at the excellent Rockwood Music Hall in lower Manhattan. It’s a clever but lousy name. Darlingside, I mean. Rockwood is a clever and excellent name. We were there at the invitation of the author, John Seabrook, who is writing about the band for the New Yorker, who was there with his son Harry. Lucy and Harry were born two months apart 16 and a half years ago, and have grown up together in many ways. Rockwood is a 21+ venue. Special exceptions were granted. They were the youngest people in the room, surely, just as John and I were probably, statistically at least, the tallest. And maybe the oldest, now that I think about it.
John knew about Darlingside because his wife’s niece went to college with them recently at Williams. They’re very cute and apparently the kids at Williams thought they were great. These two things aren’t unrelated, but cuteness doesn’t diminish their skills. They are talented multi instrumentalists and harmonizers. Their first album came out yesterday and the show we saw was their first on their record-release tour. All of which is supposed to suggest that I didn’t know much about them until I listened to the album yesterday. It is full of very smart lyrics, and soft but engaging arrangements and vocals. In other words, it is not rock.
But watching their lovely show, which was thoroughly enjoyable and displayed a sense of humor the earnest songs on the album don’t, it was kind of easy to project back a few years to a band that was perhaps a little edgier, a lot less interested in being lovely and a lot more interested in telling it like it is. With drums.
Today my daughter found this old (from 2012) music video from Darlingside. It’s not hard rock by any stretch, but it’s a strong song with a rock beat and a sharp video that came way too late to hit the indie boom. But the harmonies are still front and center, and delightful, as is the dark storyline with a happy ending. This, I think, is Darlingside.
I may have posted this song when it came out, because Sophie Muller’s video is so clear.
But in the many months since, I’ve grown attached to this slow song simply because it is a very simple song about longing. Similar to some of the tunes on Adele’s monster hit collection, this isn’t devoid of production, but it sounds like a tune.
The song was written by the falsetto-voiced dude, Mikky Ekko, who you have to assume is Scandinavian. That’s cool. It’s not rock ‘n’ roll, at all, but I like it.
This clip is from a live show the Cramps did at the California State Mental Hospital in Napa in 1978. I found it in a blog post about the excellent music that has come from Ohio over the years. This is kind of funny because a few days ago my daughter played me some music by a band called Twenty One Pilots. They play in that style of modern rock that has a huge drum sound but no guitars, is sometimes rapping and sometimes singing, and lots and lots of added noises from various machines, which means they don’t really rock at all. But they’re from Columbus, Ohio. I asked her if she knew that and she said she didn’t care. I’m not sure why I do.
More than most of my friends here, I’m a fan of 90s indie rock. I think Pavement is major, I dig Beck, have a fondness for Bettie Seveert and the Pixies and many others.
Yesterday I read about this English band called Yuck. Good name!
And not exactly bad music, but just outright copying of music that was made 20 some odd years ago. If you are 15 years old now and into rock and heard this, I can’t argue against that. This is indie rock that sounds pretty great and fuzzy.
But on the other hand, this sound is all about marketing. It sold once, it will sell again. It peddles nostalgia to those who aren’t old enough to realize that this stuff was all done before.
In fact, you can Google Yuck and find their songs. Here’s a Bettie Seveert song instead.
