unpopular

Sunday Supplement pt 15: Sunday Morning - Salim Nourallah

Not much to say on this one, other than it’s a slice of fine Americana in the vein of Elliott Smith and is from his 2006 set Beautiful Noise. And that it’s now Sunday evening (at least it is where I'm writing from)... Normal service might be resumed next week, but I wouldn’t put any money on that or anything.

'Sunday Morning' - Salim Nourallah

Sunday Supplement pt 14: Sunday Morning - Acid House Kings

Still on a Swedish tip (and indeed, still on the Labrador label), this time with Acid House Kings with a cut from their 2002 Mondays are like Tuesdays and Tuesdays are like Wednesdays set. Actually an investigation of my library points out that I have this track on several other collections too, including two Labrador compilations (Kingsize Vol 2 and the free 2007 Summer Sampler download) and a Parasol Sweet Sixteen. So is it worth having this track in four different places? Well, perhaps not, but it is nevertheless a sparkling example of the smooth Swedish pop sound that so utterly seduced me some years ago. Of course there is a fine line to tread between blending a collection of obvious reference points and streams of influence into a confection that delights the palette and being so utterly derivative it makes you retch. Acid House Kings, I should stress, have always been one of the groups who have danced deliciously on the right side of the line; throwing a nod to Saint Etienne, The Free Design, Belle & Sebastian and the complex aesthetics of Sarah and El records whilst hardly ever straying into the realms of the dreaded (and hated) Twee.

'Sunday Morning' - Acid House Kings

Sunday Supplement pt 13: Sunday In The City - Mondial

Following on from Copenhagen’s Labrador, we nip over the Öresund bridge and find ourselves on Swedish soil this week with Mondial, and a cut from their lovely Always Dreaming Of Something Else set from 2001. Which, coincidentally came out on the Labrador label. Ah, don’t you just love these connections? Mondial made rather sparkly, classy Pop in the vein of Saint Etienne or indeed label-mates Club 8 and ‘Sunday In The City’ is as fine an example as you will find. I always want to play it alongside The Dreamers’ exquisite and aching ‘All Across This City’ as there is a similar sense of soft sadness and melancholy, and you know I’m just a sucker for that kind of feeling.

And how can you resist a song that includes the line “my only company is my bicycle”?

Sunday In The City - Mondial

Sunday Supplement pt 12: Sunday Girl - Labrador

Let’s face it, you’re really up against it writing a song called ‘Sunday Girl’, aren’t you? I mean, who isn’t going to immediately compare it to Blondie’s classic and find it coming up short? But if this one, from the 2004 Instamatic Lovelife set by Copenhagen’s Labrador, doesn’t quite reach the heady heights of Blondie then at least it makes a damn fine attempt. And really it does fly dizzyingly high on wings polished to the shiny lustre of pure Pop sensibility. I especially like the momentary pauses which punctuate the track, like brief moments of double take as the Sunday Girl in question goes wandering past on the sands, eyes fixed on the distant coast across the sound.

Labrador - 'Sunday Girl'

Sunday Supplement pt 11: Sunday Best - Turquoise

We’re staying with the RevOla stable for a third week with this one from Turquoise. And if it sounds remarkably Kinky, then that’s surely no surprise, as the group were not only contemporaneous with our beloved Muswell Hillbillies, but were also from the same neighbourhood (three quarters of the group growing up not 200 yards from the Davies’ front door). Indeed, I’d maintain that the vast majority ofTurquoise’s tracks collected on The Further Adventures of Flossie Fillett stand up remarkably well next to the bulk of the Kinks material recorded in the same period (1966 - 1969). And that’s really saying something.

The unfortunate thing is, however, that this ‘Sunday Best’ track is far from being the strongest on the collection. As Jeff Peters of the group says in the extensive and intriguing sleevenotes:

“I cringe at this because it sounds like I’m auditioning for the part of the artful dodger in Oliver! My dumb, way over the top cockney accent sounds so forced. What was I thinking?”

So, as a very special treat, I've included the title cut from the set for your additional pleasure. Now, off you toddle to place that order for the CD on the Cherry Red site.

Turquoise - ‘Sunday Best’
Turquoise - ‘Tales of Flossie Fillett’

Sunday Supplement pt 9: Sunday - The Claim

After the fabled Great Music Hard Drive Failure of Summer 2009, some regular readers will have noticed the somewhat abrupt cessation of the Sunday Supplement series. Now, however, with the Unpopular iTunes library more or less back to pre-crash fitness, I’m pleased to announce that the series is striding out once more on it’s regular weekend sojourns.

And what better way to begin again than with The Claim, with one side of their third single for the mighty Esurient label (for which I was honoured to design the sleeve). Of course there has been much talk of The Claim again recently, and rightly so. Their recent reunion show in deepest Kent was, by all accounts, an unqualified success, whilst the imminent appearance of the Black Path retrospective on the legendary RevOla reclamation label is rightly anticipated by many to be the re-issue highlight of the year.

Daniel has blogged recently about The Claim, including some scans of pages from his old Pantry For The World fanzine, and Kevin has written eloquently (as ever) about his own vital part in the story over on the Your Heart Out blog. Indeed, the last three posts on Your Heart Out have been sharp stabs of passion; punctuation marks of various stories shifting between past, present and future. Essential reading. But then you knew that already, didn't you? Because you’d already been following Your Heart Out assiduously, hadn’t you?

Hopefully too you’ve got A Jumped Up Pantry Boy in your RSS feed, and will therefore not miss the up-coming memoirs of our Fire Raising exploits from the early ‘90s. Dan and I will be spreading our recollections over our blogs in the weeks / months ahead. Well, I’m sure someone will find it of interest / amusement...

The Claim: Sunday (crackly 7” vinyl rip)

Sunday Supplement pt 8: Suicide On The Hillside Sunday Morning After Tea - Euphoria

Okay, so here’s a Gift From Euphoria. Or at least a cut from that album. It’s a gift that’s a treasure for sure, full of country psych pleasures that often as not stray off the beaten path and lurch deliriously into the foothills of experimental madness. One for all you Byrds and Neil Young fans, maybe, and if you’re not a fan of those dudes then, hey, perhaps Euphoria will do it for you anyway. The themes on the record are mostly dark, (departure, death, suicide) so it’s certainly well suited to a gloomy rainy Sunday morning. You could probably make a case for drawing lines of connection from this Euphoria record through early ‘70s progressive  to  goth/emo or something, but I’m going to leave that to someone else’s imagination to piece together because if I thought about it too much it would probably just put me off. Hopefully I’ve not just done so for you.

Suicide On The Hillside Sunday Morning After Tea - Euphoria

 

 

Sunday Supplement pt 7: My Girl Sunday - Chicory Tip

I was only five years old when ‘Son Of My Father’ was a number one smash hit single in the UK, so no, I don’t really have any memories of Chicory Tip aside from knowing their name from those old Top Of The Pops albums your parents always had lurking in the K-Tel record rack. It was only much later that I consciously listened to them, when Lawrence shone a light on so much of those bubblegum and novelty records from the ‘70s.

Now I read that Chicory Tip were unhappy with being marketed as a Pop group, and saw themselves instead as more of a Deep Purple act. I guess that’s the old story about the desire for demonstrating ‘authenticity’ at work. How ridiculous. Rather a novelty one-hit Pop wonder than another bunch of long hairs touting their Rock credentials any day. “We’re on a tip, on a tip, on a Chicory Tip” indeed.

 My Girl Sunday - Chicory Tip

Sunday Supplement pt 6: A Month of Sundays - The Church

I was never quite sure what to do with The Church. Were they really just Australia’s version of The Bunnymen? Plus they had long hair, didn’t they? So in my head I had them down with The Alarm and the Psychedelic Furs, which was probably a mistake. When I finally did pick up the Hindsight compilation I realized that really I should have had them slotted in with The Chameleons and then with the Paisley Underground bands like Rain Parade, whose dreamy psych tinged guitar sound ‘A Month Of Sundays’ most exquisitely tips towards.

A Month of Sundays - The Church

Sunday Supplement pt 5: Gloomy Sunday - The Associates

It is too. Gloomy, I mean. As a Sunday, it reminds me of a summer in Troon when I was nineteen. Or any age post-fourteen maybe. Windy. Threat of rain at all times. Colder than it ought to be, or at least colder than you remember mid-July being when you were younger than fourteen. You know, when the apples were sweet and the summers were long. Those imaginary, illusory summers of your youth… Well, you get the idea.

I expect summers were the same on the east coast of Scotland as well. Sundays too. Certainly this track from The Associates’ Sulk set would seem to suggest so. Though for all I know it was written in London, so meh. Gloomy Sunday’s are geographically neutral after all, so it’s not as though it really matters.

Everett found a copy of Sulk recently and wrote about it on his Record Rummage blog. He suggests that “The Associates at their best were like Soft Cell minus the romance and great tunes and hunky tattoos and love for a pithy putdown, and at their worst like a seafaring version of Haircut 100” which seems a little harsh. I always found them quite seductively glamorous. Like a couple of poor make-do-and-menders having a ball in a sequin factory. Kids from the council estates stealing Peacock feathers, dreaming of stardust and kissing moonbeams with kiskadees.

'Gloomy Sunday' - The Associates