What Sound Is This? (Face B)

Flip that first C60 for 2012 over and here's what you find on Face B. Free for a day download too!

What Sound Is This? - The Verlaines

Did you know that there was a new Verlaines record in the offing? Did you know too that although the Flying Nun page on Bandcamp offers you the chance to ‘pre-order’ the album ahead of it’s official release date in February, you will actually get an immediate download copy? Honestly, I felt like Christmas had come again when I discovered this on my return to Devon at the end of December. Actually, for one reason or another it just felt like Christmas had come at last.

I am sure it was Daniel who introduced me to The Verlaines for the first time through the wildly wondrous ‘Hallelujah All The Way Home’ and the strange beast of ‘Bird Dog’. Dan, if you are reading this, I remain eternally grateful.

Now didn’t Wire once describe their music as Pop taken apart and put back together in a way where the parts didn't quite fit? Or something like that, anyway. It always struck me as a perfect description of Verlaines too, with their classical angles and influences coming together with pop and rock’s back pages. It always made for captivating sounds that went in directions you could not quite anticipate

And if Untimely Meditations is more clearly infused with the rock aspect of those influences than any others it nevertheless casts intriguing shadows. The sound still darts and dives, still noses into the not quite expected. And never quite so deliciously as on this, the album closer from which the title of this mix is lifted.

It clocks in at over five minutes yet feels like a short burst of bittersweetness. Opening like P.I.L. spinning The Fall or Factory Star, it eases forward in mesmerising fashion with sharp horns over hypnotic rhythm and sparky guitar jabs. It’s a magnificent closure to a fine album and the perfect way to open side 2 of this mix.

Grab your ‘pre-order’ of the new Verlaines set from the Flying Nun bandcamp site.

Daylight - Robert Scott

Continuing on the New Zealand/Flying Nun axis with a cut from Robert Scott’s solo set from 2011. The Bats’s frontman delivered another fine collection in ‘Ends Run Together’; a (perhaps predictably) less folky outing than his excellent ‘Songs of Otago’s Past’. It’s a record full of the sounds of matured, warm world weariness and love; the curious mixture that increasingly it seems to me is made by those who have weathered the storms and have nothing left to prove except that they can still turn a devil of a tune and kindle the flames in our dark hardened hearts. ‘Daylight’ is a prime example, reverberating like a grumbling old VW in the snow or at least like an Appliance playing ageing crackly Krautrock albums.

Pick up ‘Ends Run Together’ from the Flying Nun store.

Coffee & cigarettes Stand up against heart crime - Stand Up Against Heart Crime

There is an argument that says acts like Stand Up Against Heart Crime are ten-a-penny these days. You know the scene; the electro coffee shop chillwave hipster swing. Yawn. But I dunno. I thought their ‘Talented Loser’ track was lovely and have thoroughly enjoyed picking my way through the earlier (March 2011) eponymous release from which this cut is lifted. For me they are cut from similar cloth that dress(ed) the likes of Air France, Tough Alliance and Swissair; an artful, cool and pretty stylishness that nods equally to Sumner and Summer, to Belmondo and Bacall. Classy.

Check out Stand Up Against Heart Crime on their Bandcamp where the eopnymous EP and the ‘Lost In Time and Space’ singles are free to download.

Downstate Update - Roy Moller 15 Beauty Tips For The Modern Pop Lover
Rolling Stone - Skytone 15 Beauty Tips For The Modern Pop Lover

These two cuts came from the fine and free ‘15 Beauty Tips For The Modern Pop Lover’ compilation from The Beautiful Music at the end of December. TBM are perhaps best known for their collections of Television Personalities covers and indeed there were a couple of those on this set. I’m opting instead for the Edinburgh’s Belle & Sebastian collaborator Roy Moller, whose ‘Downstate Update’ is a fine baroque sixties pop inflected folk rock nugget and Canadian duo Skytone, whose ‘Rolling Stone’ comes over with a blushing ‘80s mod revivalist flush. Indeed, to those of a certain generation I am certain that it will conjure memories of no less than this next track... 

'15 Beauty Tips For The Modern Pop Lover' is free from The Beautiful Music

Back of My Hand - The Jags

I couldn’t resist it. In 1979 or now. History tells me that The Jags recorded two full albums of other songs but I could not tell you what they sounded like. Could anyone? Perhaps. And perhaps too they will tell us that those two albums were criminally ignored powerpop classics worthy of salvage action. And then again, perhaps not.

Not that it would matter either way. For me this is full of the awful thrill of being thirteen, a whirling dervish on the school disco dance floor. Or hiding in a bedroom terrified of picking up the phone.

Listening to this again now it’s clearer than ever that there was a direct line leading here from Bay City Rollers via Slik. Once upon a time I would have thought of that as damning in the extreme. Now I think it’s rather a compliment.

Grab 'Back Of My Hand' on 'The Best Of The Jags'

Call Me Up - Standard Fare

Don’t you love the connections here? From ‘Back Of My Hand’ to ‘Call Me Up’. Magic. And does that mean we can connect Standard Fare to Bay City Rollers? Of course, of course. For what are they both if not purveyors of classic Pop. Okay, so the Rollers probably wouldn’t have used a line like “... I’m not looking for love, it’s just a one-off, it’s only a fuck.” At least not so explicitly. You know damn well it was there in the background though.

I fell in love with Standard Fare with their ‘The Noyelle Beat’ set in 2010. I wrote about that  in my advent of the year and really what is there to add with the release of the ‘Out Of Sight, Out Of Town’ follow-up except to say it cements their claim to being one of the finest purveyors of bittersweet indierockandpop around in 2012. And if that sounds like damning with faint praise then maybe that says more about our mistrust of such oftentimes dreary genres as it does about Standard Fare. 

So instead let’s reiterate that we’d happily spin Standard Fare alongside The Bay City Rollers and that if you don’t understand the magic in that then perhaps you’re better off with your goddamn Indie Schmindie by numbers (see, I’m too lazy/clueless to give you a band name there).

Catch ' Out Of Sight, Out Of Town' on the Melodic label.

Bye Bye Baby - The Bay City Rollers

So you see, it was all designed to lead to this. The finest two minutes and fifty seconds of frustrated teenage hormones of 1975. Or at least the biggest selling single of the year in the UK. And rightly so. Purists may tell you that The Four Seasons’ original is the one to opt for but they would be wrong. Tennis racket guitars, hairbrush microphones and tartan fringed tracksuits in front of the bedroom mirror. Heady days. Basically, if you don’t love this you have no heart.

'Bye Bye Baby' was on the 'Once Upon A Star' album.

Comments

[awildslimalien]

I am indeed (belatedly) reading this. And now to complete a circle, you've tipped me off about the Verlaines' new record, which I'm just about to purchase.

Hope all's well.

[alistair]

Hope you enjoy the new Verlaines' record. Completing the circle indeed, or perhaps completing a loop on an ever increasing spiral? Have you been getting my Unpopular mix gang emails? Hope so, and that you may have also picked up one or two interesting tunes from those. We really must aim to hook up at some point this year! It's been too long....