This bittersweet song with a very catchy melody has been running through my head for the last couple of weeks. I love it for the same reasons I love Belle and Sebastian, even though you couldn’t mistake one for the other.
Articles about music
I Can’t Remember the Dream — They Might Be Giants
TMBG are still good at writing about everyday things that nobody else writes about. I have often woken up with a strong feeling — disquiet, or happiness, or yearning — from a dream that I can’t recall. And this song nails it. And because it also has a typically tricky melody that I still haven’t got the hang of, I find that it’s stuck whirring around in my brain. I can’t remember the dream, but I can’t forget this song.
The Ring of the Nibelungen — P. Craig Russell; Rudolf Sabor
I’ve heard of comic operas, but here is a comic based on an opera. My children have some books illustrated by P. Craig Russell, so I was excited to find that he has produced a comic book adaptation of Richard Wagner’s Ring operas. It’s pretty impressive: the opera cycle runs to about 15 hours long, and this comic book adaptation (or graphic novel, if you like) is over 400 full-colour pages.
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Meg
Meg is the Italian Björk. And if you think that’s glib, try this: Meg would be the result if Björk joined Fever Ray and they went clubbing in Naples. Glib, yes, but maybe on the right track. Of course there is a lot more to her music than those easy comparisons, but they are a good place to start.
Continue readingHallelujah
Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah is a great song. I often find it running through my head. I love how the lyrics are evocative without being literal, and the way the verses all have the same feel but are pretty much independent. I find myself half-making up new verses all the time. So did Leonard: apparently he wrote 80 verses for the song, whittling them down to the four in the final version.
Continue readingThe Lost Albums
When I relocated to (or was it from) the other side of the world 14 years ago, my chattels included 1000-odd CDs. (Some very odd). It took more than ten years for me to finally collate all of them and rip them onto hard disk. Unfortunately, and perhaps unsurprisingly, a small number of them fell by the wayside. I think I know where they ended up, and with whom. I have since replaced a few of them:
The Orb — Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld
I’ve replaced this already, with the super-extended version from iTunes featuring a heap of pointless remixes. It’s still a magnificent album.
Here Comes Science — They Might Be Giants
Here comes science! This is a great CD/DVD for the young people in your life — and that includes you. I gave it to Jay for his 5th birthday recently. TMBG do a nice line in kids’ music and video, and this is the best so far.
I love TMBG’s regular albums, but their kids’ stuff is understandably not always my cup of tea. No! was pretty good, but Here Come the ABCs was just too simplistic for my sophisticated musical sensibilities. (My pre-school children quite liked it though.) But Here Comes Science is just about on a par with their best. I didn’t like all the “funny” voices on ABCs, but Science keeps them to a minimum.
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This journal/review is about CDs, children, music, They Might Be Giants. Bookmark the permalink. Leave a comment
Sunny Disposish
Any time the thunder starts to rumble down
Don’t let hope tumble down
Or castles crumble down
If the blues appear just make the best of them
Just make a jest of them
Don’t be possessed of them
Headless Chickens — live in Auckland
Headless Chickens played their first gig in almost a decade last Friday. The setlist was packed with great songs, the crowd was into it, the sound was excellent. They rocked.
Headless Chickens have been one of my favourite bands since the early ’90s, even though they pretty much called it a day in about 2000. I remember listening to their first recordings on BFM in New Zealand 20 years ago, and then the splash they made in Australia a few years later with their Body Blow album. I still listen to their music now, so imagine my surprise when the Fiona McDonald we met when we moved back to Auckland turned out to be Fiona Headless Chicken, whose sweet yet gutsy voice helped make the Chooks such a unique band. And imagine my even more surprised surprise when I found out that the band were going to re-form for a tour of Australia and New Zealand.
So along we went. The venue was the Powerstation in Mount Eden. The last act I saw there was Beats International, one of Norman Cook’s pre-Fatboy Slim guises, about 20 years ago. I was also there the night they ignored fire regulations and crammed 1400 people into the 600-capacity venue for a Deborah Harry show… now that was a hot night. It all seems so long ago now. Because it was. But this is 2008 and so we went in to see the support band Brand New Math giving their all to a few interested spectators. They made a decent noise, but I prefer their recorded output. Anyway, people came in throughout the evening so by the time the Chickens strolled on stage the Powerstation was full. And they started.
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Earth From Space — The Bads
Mellow mellifluous melodies. The Bads are a girl/boy duo from New Zealand; you could call them a guitar-based pop/rock group, or even a “popular beat combo” (as John Peel used to say). But that would just be lazy pigeonholing, so if you pretend you didn’t read that then I will pretend I didn’t write it. Anyway, it seems that of the two Bads, Diane does most of the singing, with Brett singing backup and breaking into the lead occasionally. I can’t find any information on what they each play, so I suppose they are both prodigious multi-instrumentalist polymaths.
Song titles such as Feels Like Rain, Trouble Rides A Fast Horse and Bush Fire Sunset make this sound like good ol’ country music. The first of these songs does sound pretty much like that, with its lazy drawl and twangin’ guitar, but the rest of the album shows some nice variation. The opening song Off The Rails has just the most irresistible chorus — I find it tremendously uplifting, in a minor-key sort of way. The driving Carry The Weight is another of my favourites, with powerful guitar and nice male/female harmonies.