A little bit later than usual (sorry, I was out watching Batman Begins), here are your weekly Earworms. This week's Guest Editor was also at the Glastonbury Festival and is something of a musical connoisseur, as regular readers of his blog will know.....
Ladies & Gentlemen, I am proud to present:
Earworms of the Week - Guest Editor #6 - Ben from Silent Words Speak Loudest
A big thank you to SwissToni for inviting me to share my earworms with you. They may or may not be contagious.
Like Toni, I’ve just returned from the Glastonbury Festival Of Performing Arts, and given that Toni posted his fifteen pre-Glasto earworms last week, I thought I’d take the opportunity to post the fifteen songs that have been clogging up my ears since the festival ended. Well, it’s either that or mud I’ve been unable to dislodge in the shower.
15. Bad Weekend – Art Brut
There was a time on Friday morning – more specifically, when we awoke to discover a small river flowing through our campsite and under our tents – that Art Brut looked like they might have pre-emptively summed up our festival experience in song. Thankfully, though, the heavens eventually closed, the waters subsided and by the time it got an airing on Saturday afternoon Bad Weekend was simply an endearingly ramshackle racket with which the band ended their set. We were stood in a lot of mud for the pleasure of hearing it, mind you.
14. Tongues (Everybody’s Got One) – Modey Lemon
In any case, Modey Lemon had all-comers licked for the most prescient album title of any band appearing at the festival, Thunder + Lightning, on which Tongues (Everybody’s Got One) appears. For the most part a very loud garage band in the mould of The Stooges, Modey Lemon also throw some evilly deep throbbing keyboard sections into the mix.
13. Oliver’s Army – Elvis Costello
The first of several “Yes, I really AM hearing this song played live!” moments of the weekend.
12. Gay Messiah – Rufus Wainwright
You know what, I think Rufus Wainwright might just be gay. A grand song from a consummate master of the grandiose gesture.
11. Losing My Edge – LCD Soundsystem
Hipster logic dictates that if you haven’t heard Losing My Edge, then you’ve either lost yours or you never had any in the first place. Me? Well, I’d lost it, but found it again when I heard LCD Soundsystem crank out that bassline for the very first time on Sunday night. Ahhhh, NOW I see what all the fuss and froth was about!
10. Arabian Sand – The Coral
Their cheery pop tunes Pass It On and Dreaming Of You having failed to clear the cloudy early evening skies, James Skelly and company opted to end their Pyramid Stage set with this unsettling gem from new album The Incredible Invasion, full of nausea and anger. A welcome reminder that excessive weed smoking can sometimes make you obsessively paranoid rather than blissed-out and relaxed.
9. This Modern Love – Bloc Party
Oh Bloc Party you did flatter to deceive. What I was led to expect was something incredibly exciting, but what transpired was a fairly insipid run-through of the album. Even still, though, you can’t argue with songs of the quality of This Modern Love, and their debut LP Silent Alarm will quite rightly be up there at the top of the end-of-year polls.
8. War Pigs – Dresden Dolls
Dresden Dolls were – to my knowledge – the second band of the weekend to cover the Black Sabbath classic, but their version featured rather less furious fiddling and banjoing than that of Hayseed Dixie on Saturday. Not surprising, really – they’re a very odd goth-looking performance-art-inspired keyboard and drums two-piece. Unpredictable, then – though War Pigs was dedicated to Dubya, predictably enough.
7. Wheels On Fire – The Magic Numbers
Get Mr Eavis on the phone – this band could very well be headlining come 2007. Despite the slight clash with Coldplay, the John Peel Stage tent was packed. Wheels On Fire, an encore after the baying crowd demanded more, is a delicate torch song lit up by some glorious three part harmonies and was played by a band who look genuinely delighted to be the object of such adoration.
6. Not Even Jail – Interpol
Perhaps the finest cut from the New Yorkers’ second LP Antics, which is a grower just like their first, and played back-to-back with the transcendent ‘NYC’. Antics doesn’t even come close to describing what some members of my group got up to over the course of the weekend…
5. I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself – The White Stripes
Because at various points over the course of the weekend I too was unsure as to what I’d done with myself, though my head and stomach were telling me that whatever it was, it wasn’t good…
4. Graffiti – Maximo Park
How spiffing to be united with some fellow exiles from Geordonia! Especially when those particular exiles know their way around a new wave punk tune like I know the way to the Burrow Hill Cider stall. Maximo Park have gone far already – all the way from Tyneside to Somerset, for a start – but they’re destined to go much further.
3. First Day – The Futureheads
As regular SWSL readers will know, I’m not usually inclined to look favourably upon those from the Dark Side Of The Tyne, so the fact that Mackems The Futureheads have had me gobbling hungrily out of their collective hands over the past two years is testimony to their brilliance. Only slightly more remarkable is the fact that, despite their origins, they could be described as “literate”. All together now: “FASTER FASTER!!!”
2. Love Will Tear Us Apart – New Order
Look at the big screen and you see two fat middle-aged men perspiring. Close your eyes and listen, and it’s a very, very special hairs-on-the-back-of-the-neck-standing-rigidly-to-attention moment.
1. Good Vibrations – Brian Wilson
Pardon my French but F*** ME IT’S F***ING HOT AND F***ING SUNNY AND I’M AT F***ING GLASTONBURY AND FEELING F***ING GREAT AND BRIAN WILSON OF THE F***ING BEACH BOYS IS ON STAGE AND HE’S ONLY F***ING PLAYING GOOD F***ING VIBRATIONS!!! Life will get no better than this. It’s all downhill from here.
----
Cheers Ben! (keep your eyes peeled on Ben's blog - he's putting up his Glastonbury diary any time now)
Once I've finished watching The All Blacks polish off the British & Irish Lions (sigh), and been on my training run (my London Triathlon numbers arrived this morning. sigh), I'm off into town to pick up the Anthony & The Johnsons and Maximo Park albums....
As it's high time we had a bit of input from the fairer sex, next week's Guest Editor will be beaming her earworms to us all the way from an apparently quite chilly Brisbane. Yup, it's OLS from Observant Little...
Until next time pop pickers.
No comments:
Post a Comment