Many years ago, I stumbled upon a magazine review that hailed this particular album an emotional masterpiece. With such big words, how can I not want to sink my ears into it?
I was unfortunately dissapointed. At that point of time, I coudn’t understand the fuss that everyone was making. Thinking the critics have inferior taste, I shelved this record for dust collection purposes.
Time fortunately, taught me the error of my ways. It took 2 years before my mind was developed enough to fully understand the brilliance of Jason Pierce and his work on Spiritualized. Combining gospel music with big sound horn sections, Piece’s work is nothing short of an absolute wonder.
On his latest record, Songs in A&E, Pierce speaks about death. Which makes sense considering how the album was conceieved on his death bed, while he was battling a chronic respiratory dissease. He recovered, got back on his feet to cut this album which infuses sounds of the hospital, respiratory machines and his forlorn dying voice.
On his most critically acclaimed record, Ladies and gentlemen, we’re floating in space, Pierce goes “All I want in life’s a little bit of love to take the pain away”, under the backing of black gospel singers. The dynamism of his sound is unbelievably profound.
I could go on really, but this is one of those cases where words cannot do justice. Just listen and you’d understand where I’m coming from. I took a couple of years to appreciate the beauty of Spiritualized, but you’re probably smarter than me so waiting need not be on your agenda.
Listen to the monstrously epic track, Ladies and gentlemen we’re floating in space.
You know you’ve heard something incredible when you’ve got tears rolling down your face.
Someone once said that music is the only thing that still makes sense, and if we play them loud enough, we’ll keep the demons at bay. Because sometimes, even the most quietest, the most serene music cannot chase away the monsters that circle around you like vultures, and perhaps that’s all they need to swoop down and pick at your brains in the depths of the night.
Since the cat is away somewhere out there looking for his shadow, I thought we’d try something new this time around. So, I guess you’re stuck with me; sorry to hear you are missing him.
I have never really paid attention to Brand New. Their earlier music seems pretty much, on the surface, like another one of those Get Up Kids bands out there. That is, until I heard At The Bottom and its chilling lyrics of: “I’d serve you drugs on a silver plate / If I thought it would help you get away / I hope that you will do this for me”. That’s like saying, hey, let me cut your wrist for you and talk to you about what sucks in life as you bleed to death.
While I was busy minding other musical business, Brand New has been doing what NME referred to as “rock growing up gracefully“. And if one has been following the progression of their music, you would agree to that. Word has it that Brand New broke through in their sophomore album, Deja Entendu, and progressively but surely, grown into the current sound of Daisy- grittier guitar riffs and shrieking vocals that seems to push you into a puddle of mud and make you roll about in an intense mess.
Unlike the preceding The Devil and God Are Raging Inside of Me, this album shortens all dilly-dallying build-ups and jumps straight to the screamo climax. Once in a while, they will catch you off guard with their rather out-of-place gospel country add-ons, like the snippets of Bertrand Brown’s gospel hymn On Life’s Highway opening Vices (and closing Noro). And these little quirky additions are what make Brand New special in their own way, a tad different from the other mindlessly screaming bands out there.
Borrow Brand New’s music to scream a little more, because God knows we all need that once in a while. Play it loud. Crank it up till it’s tearing up your speakers and giving you a headache on your headphones. It won’t count if you don’t.
“Years will come, years will go, and politicians will do fuck all to make the world a better place. But all over the world, young men and young women will always dream dreams and put those dreams into song. Nothing important dies tonight, just a few ugly guys on a crappy ship. The only sadness tonight is that, in future years, there’ll be so many fantastic songs that it will not be our privilege to play. But, believe you me, they will still be written, they will still be sung and they will be the wonder of the world.”
- The Count
If you are looking for a Sunday afternoon matinee to indulge in – nothing that goes too deep with hidden messages about love, life and death, or too artsy fartsy that you need to decipher every single action of every single second – just good ol’ ha-ha humour along with those popular 60s and 70s song your parents could have been listening to while conceiving you. May I suggest some Brit comedy in The Boat That Rocked, also known as Pirate Radio.
The Boat That Rocked is a fictitious depiction of a true event back in the 1960s about a pirate radio station, Radio Rock, broadcasting from a ship in the United Kingdom waters.
Back then, apparently, rock and pop music is frowned upon and the British government was doing everything in their power to shut down such stations on UK soil. Since Radio Rock was not technically in the UK, the radio crew gave the government a hell of a run trying to find ways to shut them down.
The story began when Carl (by Tom Sturridge) was sent by his mother to live with his godfather, Quentin (by Bill Nighy – that rockstar dude from Love Actually), who is basically the manager of Radio Rock.
From there, Carl and we, the audience, were brought into the lives of Radio Rock and the DJs on board, such as: The Count (by Philip Seymour Hoffman), who is the only American DJ on Radio Rock and an avid Rock lover; Dave (by Nick Frost), a suave DJ who seems to get all the ladies going with his charm; Midnight Mark (by Tom Wisdom), who also is kind of like Dave but up three levels of suaveness; and Smooth Bob (by Ralph Brown), a recluse that even the Radio Rock crew themselves knew he was on board.
We learned about the life on Radio Rock. How once in a while they would have a ship load of girls on board to get jiggy with. The animosity and misunderstandings that happened on board. The red tapes they have to work around with to not give more reasons for the government to shut them down, although a lot of times they tend to just snap past the tapes anyway. So on so forth.
My favourite scene was towards the end when the boat sinks. (Yeah, well, rebellion can only take you so far, what can you do). Hence, the one bravado speech every movie has to have up there, just like those leadership pep talk before going to war in war movies. Everyone was figuring out how to get out of the boat alive when Carl noticed that Bob was not amongst them. Turning back, he went to find Bob and they were both eventually caught in the waters.
It stirred something in me to see Bob clinging onto his heavy box of records, which could be the end of him if he does not let go. Upon bubbly coaxing from Carl, he reluctantly let it go and only managed to save one piece of record, and abandoned the many he had.
Which made me wonder: what would be the one CD I would salvage if I were in Bob’s situation. Maybe Damien Rice, maybe Death Cab, maybe Sigur Ros. But it would be hard for me to just choose one, but fortunately for modern technology, I just had to make sure my iPod is in my hands before abandoning ship. And that it has ample battery life, or a battery charger, of course.
The soundtrack for The Boat That Rocked is like the Mother of all Greatest Hits combined, an extravagant 2 CD set with 36 of your famous 60s and 70s pop songs you would probably have come across at least one, at least once in your life. All those songs that made you do that slow hammering thing with your arms , and pop your hips from side to side to the beat (The Kinks’ All Day and All of the Night, The Beach Boys’ Wouldn’t It Be Nice, The Who’s My Generation), or ballads that make you feel a little more depressed (Skeeter Davis’ End of the World, Duffy’s Stay With Me Baby, Dusty Springfield’s You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me).
Don’t expect this movie to blow you away with its dialogue or cinematography or whatever. (It did fail to impress their own people). Its jokes are funny, but it won’t make you go ROTFLMAO-copter, catching your breath. Although I wouldn’t say the same if you were watching it high on pot. It’s lame, but haa-haa kind of lame. It is Richard Curtis, after all. Heh.
But I suppose, it is one of those movies it won’t hurt to watch on an aimless Sunday afternoon, especially if you are a fan of music for old times’ sake, or someone who believes in rebel with a cause. Or without.
Editors returns with their latest album In This Light and On This Eveningwith a much approved synths that are rawer and more gripping compared to their previous albums. That, to me, adds depths to their often repetitive beats I was quick enough to brushed aside when I heard their music in The Back Room.
Editors were formally known as Snowfield, and I did prefer the latter’s version of Distance with a piano-driven melody and a broken vocal, to the former’s techno synth pop and a deeper robotic vocal one.
They fell out of my map until Papillion caught my attention, and eventually, I came upon their album. In This Light and On This Evening opens with the title track that hangs you by a thread as Tom Smith’s hypnotism keeps you in suspense and promises a climb to an explosive climax that you won’t regret.
Other tracks to look out for are their first single, Papillion and Eat Raw Meat = Blood Drool with these addictive synths that is said to be quite similar to the ending era of Depeche Mode. Also, an attention seeker is the slow and minor-infused The Boxer, that pretty much stands out from the rest as a ballad.
I can’t say that the album is something I could fancy as a whole, but I think the song deserves a little room here.
I hate December. I hate the shortage of staff in the office. I hate the jingle music at Cold Storage. I hate Last Christmas on repeat. I hate NYE parties. I hate artificial snow from spray cans. I hate family gathering dinners. I hate the end of the year. And I especially hate that there’s nothing to look forward to.
Well, what can I say? Shining – oh I’m sorry, SPARKLING – vampires aside, New Moon has a pretty good ensemble when it comes to the soundtrack. It’s OK, you aren’t the only one who moan in discomfort and guilt when they announce the tracklist for the soundtrack a few months back. I am sure the entire indie-hood went on an uniamous “Whhhyyyy…???!!!” that day.
Unlike the Twilight soundtrack, this one is more mellow and minus the emo punk music from Linkin Park and Paramore. The resonating and slow Satellite Heart by Anya Marina (who reminds me of Boomkat’s Taryn Manning and MoZella), and the hauntingly quiet and distant Rosyln by Bon Iver and St Vincent, and Editors‘ No Sound but the Wind with Tom Smith’s chilling bass vocals together with the steady strums of the keys that is worth a tear or two.
Other outstanding lyrical tracks include Death Cab for Cutie with their signature Gibbardish track Meet Me On the Equinox, Sea Wolf’s perky and poetic The Violet Hour - “Your lips are nettles / Your tongue is wine / Your laughter’s liquid / But your body’s pine”, and OK Go’s waltz-like Shooting the Moon.
So, let’s just pretend the movie doesn’t exist, or just agree without seeing it that it sucks balls. (But if you still need proof, read here and here and here). And go straight to enjoying the only thing that is good in the package – the music.
I don’t know about you but there are 3 things in life that I simply cannot resist.
1) A Mild Seven fag after 1 week of abstainance, accompanied by cold winds in a foreign land with hot, strong coffee in hand
2) Watching Good Will Hunting and not smile at the part where Robin Williams say, “damn he stole my line” in reference to Matt Damon having to go “see about a girl”
3) Sigur Ros.
If like me, you’re subscribed to Jonsi’s mailing list (fanboy-la), you’d know that Jonsi’s solo album Go is almost in completion. I will republish excerpts of what John Best, Jonsi’s manager has to say about the record.
For years – I mean literally since I’ve known him (10 years now) -
Jonsi has been beavering away in his kitchen, bedroom or living room
making music extra-curricular to Sigur Ros. To be honest we’d kind of
gotten used to these being drawing board propositions only – the
ambient album, the electronic album, the pop album, the acoustic
album, etc. It’s not that we didn’t doubt his work ethic; these things
certainly existed, it’s just that they seemed more conceptual than
real; creation to sate Jonsi’s enormous energy rather than anything
we’d ever have to put on a release schedule. But then last year he
went and finished ‘Riceboy Sleeps’, an album that had existed as a
soundtrack to his and Alex Somer’s artwork far in advance of being an
actual record. And then he started on about the *acoustic* album and
bounced straight off the back of ‘Med sud i eyrum…’ into the studio
(alright, apartment) with Icelander-by-proxy Nico Muhly.
It seemed apparent to us that it would be missing a trick to limit a
bona fide Jonsi solo album to being a small scale acoustic project, so
some subtle cajoling and encouragement to reach beyond his comfort
zone was the order of the day. we shot the breeze about producers and
Peter Katis’s name came up off the back of his work with Fanfarlo and
The National. Jonsi weighed in with drummer Samuli from Mum, who he’d
heard playing with Alex in Nordic art supergroup Kira Kira. Suddenly
the *acoustic* record wasn’t looking so acoustic after all. From then
on it’s been a slow and ineluctable slide towards the full-on, barely
contained, glorious mayhem soon to be available on ‘Go’.
Everything about this record has a seat of the pants feel about it,
its wildly shifted focus, the way nothing (including the album itself)
had a title til about an hour before the news hit the blogs; the fact
that as I type I still have no idea what is going to be on the cover;
or that, even though Jonsi is currently on a plane to New York to
master the record we’ve no clear idea of what order the songs are
going to appear in, or even, in some cases, which versions of songs
are going to be used. It’s edge of the seat, it’s exciting, it’s
infectious. I think we are beginning to sense that maybe Jonsi has
created something super special here. More than that in fact, I think
he has created something really special here. I’m not sure I’ve felt
this excited about a project since the time I first heard Agaetis
Byrjun, right back in 1999. Holy fuck. Are you ready?
You can download Boy Lilkoi, the first single (i think) off the record here. I’ve heard it and damn, mother fucker it is good. Call me biased whatever but the ears do not lie. When I hear good music, the heart and crotch feels it, right through the veins.
Pledge allegiance to jiwangism*, boys and girls, because Chris Carrabba is back.
I didn’t know how much I miss him until I caught his familiar lovesick croon for Belle of the Boulevard playing in One Tree Hill (Why yes, I am still watching that show, for loyalty reasons). Oh, how he recaptured my heart with soothing lines like: “In all your silver rings / And all your silk and things / That song you softly sing is keeping you from breaking”. It’s like an old lover coming back with a romantic line that made you fall for him all over again. Damn these musicians.
Ever since that day I have been waiting impatiently for Alter the Ending to hit the shelves. So much so that I have practically tired out the album even before its release, listening to it on Dashboard Confessional’s MySpace page.
Dusk and Summer got off easy because it has the title track, So Long, So Long and Stolen to keep things afloat, but things sizzled out for me in The Shade of Poison Trees; one kiss does not make a summer, and the one title track, sad to say, did not manage to hold the entire album together.
With Alter the Ending, I feel like there is a direction. A lot of Dashboard’s songs seem to have a flow that is a little too uncomfortable to get used to. Like the need to hit on the brakes just as you were about to accelerate down the lane in tight traffic. Eventually, you get tired and a little hard to breathe that you just want to crash into the car in front of you to get the suspense over with. After only two years since the last, Dashboard’s new album manages to sail through bad roads and reach home in time for dinner.
Notable tracks are Until Morning with its gripping guitar opening and Carrabba’s somewhat cheesy line of “It was the year I crashed my motorbike” and the addictive but short percussion solo after the bridge; Belle of the Boulevard, of course; I Know About You with rhythmic lyrics of infidelities: “When the forest of your weekend hangs like smoke on to your clothes”; and Water and Bridges about regret on a failed relationship.
Not to mention Carrabba’s at its best in acoustic-infused Even Now and Hell On the Throat. When he goes: “When the path I have made from the grass to the grave / I will love you still / And when the sand turns to glass, and all that’s left is the past / I will love you still” – You just melt; because that is what he’s good at, writing lyrics that’ll reach into your heart and kiss you passionately, achingly.
The deluxe edition of Alter The Ending comes with acoustic version of the entire album. Standard acoustic affairs. Nothing really out of the way, as the original version has already done its part when it comes to acoustics. But there are a few that includes strings like Belle of the Boulevard and Water and Bridges.
Here and there, there are almost mirror images of what is from the past, but generally, I am satisfied with this album. In fact, I think it’s the best Carrabba has come up with thus far. And also, might I add he is less whiny in this one, which is a good thing.
Welcome back, Chris Carrabba. You have definitely alter the ending with this one. Ah, cheesy me. Must be all the One Tree Hill I have been watching. Meh.
It’s that time of the year when I go away for reflection, epiphany, inspiration and whatever emo shit you can think of. I’ll be tackling the golden triangle of IndoChina this time around. I’m trying to sneak past the Junta and see if I can bring Aung Yang Suu Kyi home with me. Oh not in that sexual way you may think.
I’ll see you guys in December, everyone’s favourite time of year. Wish me luck. I’ll leave you with my new found obsession. Jay Farrar and Ben Gibbard’s personal soundtrack to Kerouc’s Big Sur.
If you need to contact me for whatever gossip, rumours, bitchfits, find me at vernadium@gmail.com.
This radio station has been playing static for a while now. So, I’m going to turn your dial to a station that is worthy of tuning in to, while we try to get something nice to play on this channel.
I have been listening to this Internet radio by a weekly British magazine called NME Magazine. Known as ‘New Music Express’, it has been a popular music magazine in the United Kingdom by IPC Media since early 1952. And just recently, they have elected their first ever female editor to run the magazine. And in their last issue, they featured rock stars from the past, including essays by current rock musicians talking about their favourite legends, which I thought could be a pretty good read if I can just get my hands on a copy.
The magazine went online in 1996 at NME.com, and more than a decade later in 2008, they launched NME Radio, playing their first ever tune – Knights of Cydonia by Muse.
I guess I like this station because I have always enjoyed British music. Face it, Malaysian radio stations suck balls, and although many may find salvation with BFM Radio, but they can only go so far because they put business first and music not so much. And I do admit that often I find the music a little too mellow; I do like the occasional rock out in my headphones.
With NME Radio, imagine listening to Hitz FM or Fly FM playing again and again mainstream music from Akon, Beyonce, Taylor Swift and the likes, but only with brilliant musicians like Brand New, Kings of Leon, The Smiths and the likes.
I wake up 6ish in the morning and, being 7 hours behind us, NME Radio would just have launched into their overnight indie alternatives slot. I cannot say it keeps me from getting drowsy every morning (Air does not really scream wake up!), but it has its days, and I would say it is a good thing when they play more often than once Jeff Buckley’s Grace and The Verve’s Sonnet, and the occasional Sigur Ros too.
After lunchtime is when a new day begins on the other side of the world, and DJs Sarah Kerr and Jon Hillcock play quite upbeat music to keep you energetic for the rest of the working day. Playlists include U2, Brand New, The Cribs, Oasis, Kasabian, The XX, Radiohead, The Temper Trap and many more.
Also, the DJs don’t hog the airwaves, and talk more than playing music, or have the ads going on and on. That’s definitely a plus point for me.
There are also occasional general news and gig guides hitting the UK. Not that it has anything to do with us over here, but I guess it beats listening to ridiculous politics going on here.
So, if you would like something edgier than Love Story or Single Ladies, log online and click for NME Radio for something new like Underdog, At the Bottom and Islands, or something old but familiar like The Street Has No Name, Roll with it and Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll.
Tune in to NME Radio on their website HERE, or follow their tweet (@NMEMagazine) for up to date music news, or if you are in the UK, just grab a weekly copy. And you know, share with us what is the latest song that caught your attention there.
Posted by vernadium 
