unpopular

Call It Blazing

You may have spotted the latest copy of This Almighty Pop! in last week’s photo of recent arrivals. Inside there is a lovely piece proclaiming the brilliance of A Classic Education whilst the free mix CDR features their mesmerisingly magical ‘Stay, Son’. ‘Stay, Son’ was the song that first turned me onto A Classic Education. It feels like forever ago. A glance through my back pages tells me it was nearly five years ago. Is that close enough to forever?

So, yes, four years on and we finally have a fully fledged album from A Classic Education. And what a magnificent treat it is. The uncompromising willingness to think big without being Big that marked ‘Stay, Son’ out as being so special invests much of ‘Call It Blazing’. By which I mean that A Classic Education are not afraid of reaching for a sense of stature in their sound. They do not shy away from the sheen of fine production. They dress sharp and know that style trumps fashion every time.

Produced by Jarvis Taviniere of Woods, ‘Call It Blazing’ sounds at once impeccably cool and full of sincere warmth; intimate yet superbly spacious. Space is important. The group say that it is “an album about that sense of mischief, disenchantment, escapism and desire to not comply to any given set of rules or laws.” I say it’s fighting hard for accolade of the best album of 2011.

But don't just take my word for it (whaddya mean you weren’t going to?). Go listen to a couple of tracks on their website here and here (or on Pitchf**k if you absolutely insist) and then pop over to Lefse to pre-order the album ahead of the October 25th release date. May I humbly suggest you opt for the delicious 12” vinyl edition to fully savour what I am reliably informed is some exquisite artwork based on the iconic ‘Bikeriders’ photographs of Danny Lyon.

And if you are in Europe you can catch A Classic Education playing with British Sea Power. Details over on the band’s ‘classic’ website.

Your Love Is Calling My Name

Wu Tang Clan - Allo Darlin' (on Bandcamp)
The Stars, The Moon, The Sun and the Clouds - The French (from Local Information)
Finally - Philco Fiction (Soundcloud)
half open - The Bilinda Butchers (Soundcloud)
Jetstream - Pacific (YouTube)
Falling Asleep - Painted Palms (Bandcamp)
Telepathic Boys - Alligator Indian (Bandcamp)
Piglet - Sarandon (Soundcloud)
She Didn't Know - The Twerps (Bandcamp)
The Path Home - Bad Indians (Bandcamp)
Your Love Is Calling My Name - The War On Drugs (Soundcloud)
In, Out, And Around - Tiger Waves (Bandcamp)
Daisy Miller pt.2 - Moscow Club (Bandcamp)
Bedroom Eyes - Dum Dum Girls (Soundcloud)
A Teenager Told Me: Be Careful - My Darling YOU! (from I Will Exclude You With My Body Language)
Love is a Fragile Thing (Sleazy version) - the second hand marching band (on Bandcamp)
Half Moon Street - Pete And The Pirates (from One Thousand Pictures)
The Mannequin - Sam Duckworth (from The Mannequin)
Pouring Rain At Dawn - The Jayhawks (from Mockingbird Time)

In Stoke Canon we don't have VIP lines

Fanzines, cards, picture discs and CDR's. That almost kind of rhymes/scans, doesn't it? No? Suit yourselves then. Here are some nice things that cheered up this otherwise rather downbeat week, including the new Jens Lekman EP and the latest from This Almighty Pop! Fab.

Abandoned

I used to love the Retronaut site. Actually, that's not strictly true. I still love the Retronaut, it’s just that these days there seem to be so many regular updates and I can’t keep up. I glance at my Google Reader and it says there are eighteen unread articles. Do I really have the time to look at all those? No. So I hit up ‘mark all as read’ and let it slip. Same thing happens the next day, and so on and so forth. So when it comes to blogs and other interweb content, when is too much regular updating a turn-off? And before anyone posts a comment to tell me, let me assure you that I know that whatever that threshold is, I am in no danger of crossing it...

And I Feel Fine

I had 'Murmur' lined up to play on my iPod over breakfast on Tuesday this week but in the end I thought 'sod it, no'. It would appear that R.E.M. were thinking much the same. I can't say that the news of their disbandment bothers me any. To be honest I kind of assumed they had split up years ago anyway and I have not knowingly heard anything new by them for well over a decade. As my aborted re-acquaintance with 'Murmur' suggests though, I do have several R.E.M. records in my collection, and I do return to them on occasion. Those occasions invariably fill me with delight, as I noted a few years back when I was asked to review the 'Best of the IRS years' collection for Plan B. Here's what I wrote:

It’s easy to be dismissive of R.E.M. but when they appeared nearly a quarter of a century ago they were truly startling and special. For then R.E.M. were a group that made connections to the likes of The Byrds, the Beats, the Velvets, post-punk, Pop Art and weird traditional US folk when such source texts were still the stuff you could only find in the obscurest of outlets and second hand stalls. Their sound was peculiarly angular yet melodic, and it helped too that you couldn’t quite figure out what the hell Michael Stipe was singing about; mystery and intrigue being essential ingredients in great Pop after all. Most of their output from 1982 to 1987 as collected here was really quite extraordinary, and you would be hard pushed to find anything from any era as spectacularly splendid as ‘So. Central Rain (I’m Sorry)’, ‘(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville’ or the mesmerising ‘Feeling Gravity’s Pull’. Even their ‘It’s the end of the world…’ remodel of ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ still stirs in a way it really has no right to do. From a personal point of view there are omissions: the cover of Pylon’s ‘Crazy’ should really be here, as should the beatific ‘Voice Of Harold’, although the inclusion of various live tracks and demo versions more than makes up for the loss. Some will argue otherwise, but from 1987 onwards R.E.M. lost the majority of their appeal, moving more and more down the tracks of obvious Rock tradition. But as this collection proves, for a brief five years they really were as peerless a Pop group as you could find.

Arrivals

Most of these arrivals have been sitting around the Geek Lair for several weeks. I thought it was time to finally scoop them up for a photo opportunity before filing them away in their various homes. In other words I finally tidied up and put the records (Allo Darlin' and James Brooks 7"s) in the record box and the CDs (Prince Edward Island and Veronica Falls) on the shelves.

They Saved My Life

We bundled up a month or so's worth of syringes used for our cat's insulin injections this morning. I thought they looked quite pretty all piled together inside an old Tesco carrier bag so I took this photo. And then promptly forgot to take them to the vet. Typical.

Since I Was A Little Girl - They Saved My Life by wiaiwya

Gardens Galore

Deborah Orr makes mention of the walled garden of the Ardfin estate on Jura in today’s G2. I admit that I remember it only vaguely from a holiday on the island back in 1981 when my brother and I cycled over from Troon. As I recall Jura House was the venue for the island’s annual summer sports day; an overcast and drizzly event but nonetheless enormously enjoyable. 

According to Ms Orr, it seems that the garden has been closed to the public ‘for refurbishment’ since an Australian hedge fund manager snapped up the estate just under a year ago. Perhaps unsurprisingly the banker in question has apparently not even visited the estate. I wonder if he even knows where Jura is? Perhaps he’s already forgotten that he owns a slice of its beautiful wilderness?

It all got me thinking about how it’s a situation crying out for some kind of community direct action. All it needs is for a few locals to get together and ease open the gates to the garden. Then they need to offer what one assumes is an estate staff of other locals a deal (a couple of bottles of the very fine Jura single malt ought to do it) to just, you know, not tell the hedge fund manager about it. Then everyone can get back to enjoying the garden.

So, have I just suggested a story line for a rip-roaring comedy in the vein of a modern day 'Whisky Galore', or am I just suggesting pure criminality? 

Try a little kind(le)ness

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'Young and Foolish', my 1998 collection of musical musings originally published by Stride Books is now available for your Kindle reader. Alongside some 'classic' articles on the likes of Felt, Go-Betweens and Strawberry Switchblade you'll find a thoroughly entertaining treatise on the definition of Pop carried out in the form of email discussions through the legendary 'Sinister' mailing group of fledgling Belle & Sebastian fans. Heady times.

All original typos, grammatical cock-ups and spelling errors are intact in the Kindle version so the spirit of being literally young foolish is perfectly preserved. Grab it here on the Amazon UK store or here on the Amazon USA store.

Similarly crammed full of typos and in addition peppered with upsetting asterisks is 'Big Flame'. Written at the end of the 1980s by a twitchy, nervous, awkward cyclist in his early twenties, the prose is purposely erratic, fractured and messy. It’s a coming-of-age novel where no-one learns a damn thing. Why aren’t there more of those?

Again, grab it here on the Amazon UK store or here on the Amazon USA store.

Crashing The Sky

Steve - Molly Wagger (from 'Flambeaux'. Listen on Bandcamp)
Ranting And Raving (The Time And Space Machine Third Mix) - Free School (on Soundcloud)
The Way That You Move - The Orchids (on Soundcloud)
Bit of Tongue - Mr. Gnome (listen over on Reverbnation)
Ancient Mysteries - Brakes (from 'Touchdown')
Beneath the Flowers - Charles Douglas (from 'Statecraft')
You're Too Popular - All About Chad (from 'Down In Front')
Tapes - Lmnop (from 'New rose story vol.3')
Heyday Past Heyday Due - Nodzzz (on Soundcloud)
The Man In The Room That Time Forgot - The Tonighters (on Bandcamp)
Peepshow - Simon Felton (from 'Surrender, Dorothy!')
Crashing The Sky - Dark Ocean Colors (from Rainbow Quartz Records)
In Our Lifetimes - The Dreaming Spires (on Soundcloud)
Back to Bristol - Hans Rotenberry and Brad Jones (from 'Mountain Jack')
The Keith Disaster Fund - Prince Edward Island (on Soundcloud)
Know Your Exit - Little Scout (on Bandcamp)