Some music by old white guys
Dec. 31st, 2008 09:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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psychochicken , I present my own Best of 2008?
This has been a funny music year for me. I’ve been to more gigs than usual, and seen many more new bands, but I’ve bought fewer albums. For one thing, Tom Waits and Steve Earle are both touring last year’s albums, and Lloyd Cole is releasing a rarities collection and a live album in January. So room for the new guys…
1. Glasvegas, Glasvegas
I was a bit late finding this, but when I did it just blew me away. I’m a sucker for songs sung in my own accent, and these songs come from my earliest tongue. The concerns, too, of Glasgow’s working class haven’t changed from when I was a boy – gang violence, drugs, family breakup, abandonment. Oh, it’s a laugh a minute all right. Glasvegas have taken a bit of flack for reflecting the problems too accurately. “Go Square Go” uses the voice of someone swept up in the violence, and even if “Stabbed” focuses on the loser, the Daily Mail didn’t have to go far to accuse them of glorifying knife crime. But this isn’t an album about strength, it’s about weakness, despair, and finding hope in the most unlikely places – I was out for a meal with some old friends a couple of weeks back, and one of the guys, a down-to-earth Geordie, was almost in tears trying to put across how moved he’d been by “Flowers and Football Tops”. It’s a hard old world out there, but if you’re lucky there’s someone to help you through it: As my favourite track puts it:
“When your sparkle evades your soul
I`ll be at your side to console
When your standing on the window ledge
I`ll talk you back from the edge.
I will turn your tide
Be your shepherd and your guide
When you’re lost in the deep and darkest place around
May my words walk you home safe and sound.
When you say that I’m no good and you feel like walking
I need to make sure you know that’s just the prescription talking
When your feet decide to walk you on the wayward side
up upon the stairs and down the downward slide
I will turn your tide
Do all that I can to heal you inside
I`ll be the angel on your shoulder
My name is Geraldine, I’m your social worker”
2. Billy Bragg, Mr Love and Justice
Billy Bragg never had much of a voice, so he doesn’t have much to lose as he gets older. He always had buckets of romanticism, anger and a lyrical twist to his most radical songs, and he hasn’t lost a step on them. I bought this as a double CD, with band and solo versions of the songs. I can’t make my mind up which versions I prefer, since it depends on the songs. Standouts for me are “The Johnny Carcinogenic Show”, “The Beach is Free”, and probably my song of the year, “I Keep Faith”.
“If you want to make the weather
Then you have to take the blame.
If sometimes dark clouds fill the sky
and it starts to rain,
Folks complain.
And though your head may tell you
To run and hide,
Listen to your heart and you'll find me
Right by your side,
Because
I keep faith
I keep faith
I keep faith
I keep faith in you.
Yes I do, I keep faith in you.”
3. Elbow, The Seldom Seen Kid
Not much to add to Psychochicken’s excellent summing up on his own best of the year. I was attracted to this by the title, The Seldom Seen Kid is one of Damon Runyon’s Broadway “Guys and Dolls”, and I didn’t mind at all that it’s an in-joke for the band.
4. American Music Club, The Golden Age
I saw AMC at a tiny, sweaty venue in Glasgow this year, and when we got to the encores Mark Eitzel said “I know you all want to hear something special to you from my 10 years of songs, (I shouted out 20 years, and he grimaced) but I want to play this, because I think it’s the best song I’ve ever written”, before launching into “Windows on The World”. You know something? I think he’s right.
5. Colin Train, Days for the Driven
Just a very competent, very engaging debut from a singer-songwriter, but lifted out of the ordinary for me by the warmth and charm of his voice. Try listening to “Me and My Pals” without smiling.
6. Alabhama Three, Hits and Exit Wounds
Another belated find for me – I just fell in love with “Hello My Name is Johnny Cash” and “You Don’t Dance to Techno Anymore.”
High on my list of bands to see this year.
7. Kathryn Williams and Neil MacColl, Two
I’ve listened to Neil he was in “The Patron Saints of Imperfection” about 20 years ago. Kathryn is one of unblinkered’s favourites, and we saw them together this year. This is a fabulous wee album.
8. Edwyn Collins, Home Again
Leaving aside the story that goes with it (if you can) this is a piece of beautiful fragility, his voice as tremulous as it ever was, his words as affecting as ever. For the man who wrote “You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever”, no loyalty is undeserved.
9. The Ting Tings, We Started Nothing
Very, very silly. Toni Basil, and The Tom Tom Club, and a wee bit of T-Rex. I loved it.
10. Duke Special, I Never Thought This Day Would Come
A controversial choice, since I’ve listened to it approximately 0.9 times since downloading it from iTunes about an hour ago, but this is another gem from his Grace. If nothing else he gets the prize for the best song-title of the year - I Never Thought This Day Would Come (and Now It Won’t Go Away), which has gone some way to exorcising a completely different song from my brain.
psychochicken , I present my own Best of 2008?This has been a funny music year for me. I’ve been to more gigs than usual, and seen many more new bands, but I’ve bought fewer albums. For one thing, Tom Waits and Steve Earle are both touring last year’s albums, and Lloyd Cole is releasing a rarities collection and a live album in January. So room for the new guys…
1. Glasvegas, Glasvegas
I was a bit late finding this, but when I did it just blew me away. I’m a sucker for songs sung in my own accent, and these songs come from my earliest tongue. The concerns, too, of Glasgow’s working class haven’t changed from when I was a boy – gang violence, drugs, family breakup, abandonment. Oh, it’s a laugh a minute all right. Glasvegas have taken a bit of flack for reflecting the problems too accurately. “Go Square Go” uses the voice of someone swept up in the violence, and even if “Stabbed” focuses on the loser, the Daily Mail didn’t have to go far to accuse them of glorifying knife crime. But this isn’t an album about strength, it’s about weakness, despair, and finding hope in the most unlikely places – I was out for a meal with some old friends a couple of weeks back, and one of the guys, a down-to-earth Geordie, was almost in tears trying to put across how moved he’d been by “Flowers and Football Tops”. It’s a hard old world out there, but if you’re lucky there’s someone to help you through it: As my favourite track puts it:
“When your sparkle evades your soul
I`ll be at your side to console
When your standing on the window ledge
I`ll talk you back from the edge.
I will turn your tide
Be your shepherd and your guide
When you’re lost in the deep and darkest place around
May my words walk you home safe and sound.
When you say that I’m no good and you feel like walking
I need to make sure you know that’s just the prescription talking
When your feet decide to walk you on the wayward side
up upon the stairs and down the downward slide
I will turn your tide
Do all that I can to heal you inside
I`ll be the angel on your shoulder
My name is Geraldine, I’m your social worker”
2. Billy Bragg, Mr Love and Justice
Billy Bragg never had much of a voice, so he doesn’t have much to lose as he gets older. He always had buckets of romanticism, anger and a lyrical twist to his most radical songs, and he hasn’t lost a step on them. I bought this as a double CD, with band and solo versions of the songs. I can’t make my mind up which versions I prefer, since it depends on the songs. Standouts for me are “The Johnny Carcinogenic Show”, “The Beach is Free”, and probably my song of the year, “I Keep Faith”.
“If you want to make the weather
Then you have to take the blame.
If sometimes dark clouds fill the sky
and it starts to rain,
Folks complain.
And though your head may tell you
To run and hide,
Listen to your heart and you'll find me
Right by your side,
Because
I keep faith
I keep faith
I keep faith
I keep faith in you.
Yes I do, I keep faith in you.”
3. Elbow, The Seldom Seen Kid
Not much to add to Psychochicken’s excellent summing up on his own best of the year. I was attracted to this by the title, The Seldom Seen Kid is one of Damon Runyon’s Broadway “Guys and Dolls”, and I didn’t mind at all that it’s an in-joke for the band.
4. American Music Club, The Golden Age
I saw AMC at a tiny, sweaty venue in Glasgow this year, and when we got to the encores Mark Eitzel said “I know you all want to hear something special to you from my 10 years of songs, (I shouted out 20 years, and he grimaced) but I want to play this, because I think it’s the best song I’ve ever written”, before launching into “Windows on The World”. You know something? I think he’s right.
5. Colin Train, Days for the Driven
Just a very competent, very engaging debut from a singer-songwriter, but lifted out of the ordinary for me by the warmth and charm of his voice. Try listening to “Me and My Pals” without smiling.
6. Alabhama Three, Hits and Exit Wounds
Another belated find for me – I just fell in love with “Hello My Name is Johnny Cash” and “You Don’t Dance to Techno Anymore.”
High on my list of bands to see this year.
7. Kathryn Williams and Neil MacColl, Two
I’ve listened to Neil he was in “The Patron Saints of Imperfection” about 20 years ago. Kathryn is one of unblinkered’s favourites, and we saw them together this year. This is a fabulous wee album.
8. Edwyn Collins, Home Again
Leaving aside the story that goes with it (if you can) this is a piece of beautiful fragility, his voice as tremulous as it ever was, his words as affecting as ever. For the man who wrote “You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever”, no loyalty is undeserved.
9. The Ting Tings, We Started Nothing
Very, very silly. Toni Basil, and The Tom Tom Club, and a wee bit of T-Rex. I loved it.
10. Duke Special, I Never Thought This Day Would Come
A controversial choice, since I’ve listened to it approximately 0.9 times since downloading it from iTunes about an hour ago, but this is another gem from his Grace. If nothing else he gets the prize for the best song-title of the year - I Never Thought This Day Would Come (and Now It Won’t Go Away), which has gone some way to exorcising a completely different song from my brain.
