Currently Listening to

Started by Steve, April 08, 2007, 08:56:52

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Ulrich


The lyrics (song was first released in 2018) fit strangely into this time...


Quote from: undefinedWe stand alone
Lost in our homes
...

The pubs get closed
The future's unknown
Our only hope for salvation
And escape from isolation
Is to fight our way outside our comfort zone

Controlled by rules and procedure
And anti-social media
In the end we stand alone
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

SueC

I like a good protest song, @Ulrich:cool

Today, music is helping me get around a million things.

I've never tired of this one - just my sort of soundscape...


Also highly recommended for vacuuming (but not lawnmowing, I recommend Paris for that!).
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SueC

And because it's finally here, this is getting a spin.  Took about four months to get here because of having to go by sea etc...


Love the album version of this song - I don't know why people sawed everything down to make singles (other than the strange demands of radio and the public) - the opening just makes my hair stand on end...


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Ulrich

The holy city breathed like a dying man...

SueC

Finally listening to The Crossing is taking me on an inevitable deep dive into Gaelic folk music again.  If the only folk music you ever hear is the twee stuff piped out of Irish bars on St Patrick's Day, try some real folk music instead:


...and then have a listen to Big Country - who take that spirit and that sound, and amp it up, and play on guitars what's usually played on fiddles and bagpipes in traditional folk.


I love love love the rhythm section on this, as I always do with my very favourite music.  I think it's fabulous how this song strips back to just drums and vocal at intervals.  Lots of Scottish folk music is for singing while walking, or indeed while waulking (working cloth by beating it against a table) as well, and has that innate rhythm and energy - here's a traditional vocals-only piece:


...and here's what one of my favourite bands ever, Capercaillie, do with this kind of thing:


...and OMG, Karen Matheson's voice just completely arrests me - go to 2:17 on this and see if you can remember to breathe...

Here's another piece like it, with extraordinarily mesmeric percussion and lovely singing, this time by Cape Breton musician Mary Jane Lamond:


If you backtrack to the Big Country song at the start of this piece, or the album version of In A Big Country from my previous post, there's that breathtaking big-drum sound this band does so well - and I just wanted to slip in another Steve Lillywhite production from the same year (1983) which I also love love love because of the sound and the energy and the never-say-die attitude:


U2 were so fabulous before they started sounding like everyone else in the late 1980s.  I'm going to put in a live track from around that time, from a concert I would travel back to if I had a TARDIS - because I never got to see U2 in the raw like this; by 1988, when I saw them, it was already too late.


Equally raw and fabulous around this time were The Waterboys:


The 80s were insipid with music like 2-minute noodles - empty non-food, just add hot water - but the alternative music of the time was full of gems like this, which kept me very happy as a young person and if anything, like anything good given more time, I love even more now.  The thing about the Irish and the Scots and their traditional music was that these were people under attack a long, long time and always fighting to survive, and I love the spirit this summoned in them - that you might defeat their bodies, but you could never defeat their souls, and they'd always rise up again.  Big Country, U2 and The Waterboys were steeped in this and it just beamed out of them, and psychologically was a perfect fit for having to grow up with extraordinarily dysfunctional, physically and emotionally violent adults - which, interestingly (as I found out much later), the lead singers of these three bands all seemed to have a fair bit of personal experience in from their childhoods, too - and maybe that's one of the reasons they were drawn to this kind of music, as well.  It's a sane reaction in the face of insanity.

Here's another track from Big Country; this time live:


The audio is a bit compromised and it's worth looking up the studio track if you like this song, but this also was a fabulous live band.

It kills me that Stuart Adamson died in his early 40s; I want to cry and scream and rage over the premature removal of this inspirational musician from the universe.  Also, he was someone who gave a damn.  There's so many horrible people who live well past middle age - if there was a God, for example, the Resident Rump would have been struck by a meteor a long time ago - but, as the Germans say, "Unkraut vergeht nicht" (roughly, "Weeds don't die" but translated, it doesn't have the same ring to it).

We were talking about this last night; the terrible sadness that a person who was well versed in drawing hope even when looking terrible circumstances in the face ended up suiciding.  Brett was kind of, "Well, doesn't work then does it?" but I don't think that's true, I think it does, but there's so many other variables in equations like this, and sadly, alcoholism - also such a common thing in these cultures - played a part - and how I wish people could adopt, I don't know, chocolate and running (together), or profiteroles and bungee jumping (together), as a coping strategy instead of alcohol because it's far more helpful.  Suicide is something that happens when people hit terrible lows, and reflects the extreme bottom, not the overall life experience - not the best times, not the many many wonderful things, but a crash into the valley of the shadow, and sadly when people end up in this place they're so reluctant to reach out.  I lost a friend to suicide when she was just in her mid-30s, and none of us knew she ever bottomed out because she hid it so well and just refused to come out of her house when she got like this (which we found out later happened regularly, from her brother who came to Australia for the funeral - concealed bipolar).

I want to go out with a track from The Cure which I love for similar reasons as a lot of these songs.  The Cure don't do "you can crush my body but you will never, ever crush my soul" but they certainly know how to create a soundscape - here's a track with gorgeous melodies played with such intent and focus that it makes me soar into the stratosphere and want to weep at the same time.  This is painting with sound.

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SueC

In postscript to all that, I found an interesting interview with some Big Country "originals" talking about writing, recording, to change or not to change, and losing Stuart Adamson.  I've never heard interviews with any of this group before but it's amazing how often the people whose music I've loved also turned out to be personable and intelligent and with their hearts in the right place.  ♥

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Ulrich

The holy city breathed like a dying man...

Ulrich

The holy city breathed like a dying man...

SueC

Aaah, Yeats.  :heart-eyes  Today's beauty spot, worth closing your eyes and sitting on the floor for.  Gorgeously set to music by The Waterboys (and Watergirls, if you look at the sleeve notes)...


Mike Scott is one of the very few artists in contemporary music who enunciates so clearly that it's easy to understand each and every word he sings.  :smth023
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SueC

...and while in a Celtic mood...


I tried to find their excellent version of Granny Hold The Candle While I Shave The Chicken's Lip online but no luck so far.  :lol:

PS: Found it!  :cool

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SueC

Another gorgeous poem, wonderfully presented.  The transition to the female voice (Katie Kim, the Irish singer) gives me goosebumps...


We were really wondering how they were going to approach The Lake Isle of Innisfree, considering how Mike Scott is comfortable in all sorts of genres.  He made it all bluesy and it actually works!

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Ulrich

The holy city breathed like a dying man...

SueC

Quote from: Ulrich on September 01, 2020, 11:12:15

I particularly liked the first two minutes of this - super beautiful intro! ♥

Here's something spine-tingling I've always loved - it's not as accomplished as the above track but they were all teenagers at the time and it's so raw, in a good way:


And an amazing instrumental... done entirely without synthesisers:



PS:  I've listened to that Mogwai track a dozen times while doing some computer stuff and I now like all of it equally - I think the rest of the track is as lovely as the start, and this is the best "new" thing I've had the pleasure of hearing in a while. :)
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Ulrich

The holy city breathed like a dying man...

SueC

This is for a friend who shall remain nameless.  You know, just where things might lead to with this pandemic and everything.  :angel


Disclaimer:  I don't actually like this artist.  But it's kind of humorous, like Get A Haircut...
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