Smoog - Red Apple falls

Today is the day for Bill Callahan! I was a bit lazy last days and I didnt post nothing. Anyway. I am back from work and i want to listen something..i open my files and i find Smoog. Great! What to listen  from him?I have chosen the album Red apple falls. It is simply brilliant. I feel like going to the forest and listen to some music while cycling. Autumn in Berlin is very beautiful. Oh, this record is really beautiful as well..I was a stranger!

Here it is a review-retrospective from the blog of a guy from London  loftandlost.com. A very nice blog indeed! Enjoy!

Bill Callahan’s got a new album out today. As the man behind Smog, and (Smog), he’s been one of my favourite musicians for over a decade now, since the release of “Knock Knock” got my attention back in 1998. Thanks to my (hopefully) temporarily straightened circumstances, I haven’t pre-ordered the new one, but I spent last night listening to some of his older stuff. Just for old times sake, you know.


For me, Bill Callahan has been one of the best lyricists around for some years. He has a disturbing ability to be able to say just enough to discombobulate you. Sometimes, it’s just with a few well-placed words that, on their own, don’t seem to mean much, but as he builds a song to its climax, he says something that makes you stop in your tracks.

One of the great early examples of this is the song “All Your Women Things” off The Doctor Came At Dawn. In it, he describes how a woman that is no longer with him (and whether she actually left him of her own volition, or whether he got rid of her in some way is tantalisingly, and typically, left unsaid) left all her clothes and other items in his room. All fine and creepy, but then he sings (and look away now if you want to hear it for yourself before going on further):

“Oh all of these things\I gathered them\And I made a dolly”

You what?

“I made a dolly\A spread-eagle dolly\Out of your frilly things”

Oh Lordy. It was bad enough saying he’d made a dolly out of them, but then saying “A spread-eagle dolly” makes you really, really scared.

It gets worse:

“Why couldn’t I have loved you\This tenderly\When you were here?”

I really hope he means “love” in the cerebral, pure sense, rather than the “make love” sense. Or that would be….eeeeugh. And all this is gently intoned, in almost a monotone, over plucked repetative guitar lines and mournful cello. It’s seriously creepy.

Next up was “I Break Horses”. I was first turned onto this song by the music journalist Ben Thompson, who in the great Seven Years of Plenty: Handbook of Irrefutable Pop Greatness, 1991-98, described this song as “One that can reduce strong people…to heaps of quivering gelatin”. He’s not wrong. Again, Smog uses his deadpan voice, with just a hint of emotion, to describe how he breaks horses – “Just a few well placed words/And their wandering hearts are gone”.

But it’s clear that it isn’t horses he’s talking about. His horribly detailed eye for human failings has come to the fore again, and he ends the song with the unpleasantness of “Tonight I’m swimming to my favorite island\And I don’t want to see you swimming behind\I break horses\I don’t tend to them”. Again, it’s about saying just enough to tell you how truly horrible the subject of the song is, without any histrionics.

Early Smog was generally pretty lo-fi, usually just scratchy guitar and drums, with the occasional cello. But 1997′s LP “Red Apple Falls” was a shock, as the opener started with French horns, of all things. He’d gone through a major change in the way he used instrumentation, and with producer Jim O’Rourke, really opened up the sound. All the better to scare you with, my dear.

And scariness was still there, to devastating effect, on that album’s “I Was A Stranger”. Still a huge fan favourite, it tells the tale of a new man in town. When my wife (then a new girlfriend) heard it, as we sped through German forests on a weekend trip, she got rather worried that I was actually some kind of serial killer. Listen to it now then carry on reading:

(Yes, I know it’s rather odd to video yourself miming a song then post it on YouTube, but if the Internet has done one thing, it’s showed the astonishing diversity of humanity)

Right, got that last line? I wouldn’t want to spoil it for you. It’s one of the best ending lines of any song – and again, done by just saying the absolute minimum to get his message across. And what’s more, you’re still unclear as to what he’d actually done in the last town. In all the best horror movies, the mind fills in what you’re not shown, and the human brain is really rather good at scaring itself. He doesn’t need to say what he’s done – just say that he was “well known”, and criticises the locals: “And why do you women in this town\Let me look at you so bold?”. Classic.

Last in this short little retrospective is a rather gentler song, from his last album as (Smog). Now, I wouldn’t want you to think all Bill Callahan/Smog/(Smog) songs are about sociopaths and worse; this song is about how your family can help drag you back from whatever depths you’ve sunk to. To do this, he tells a tale of seeing a gold ring at the bottom of a river, and dives in to take it. But when he’s in the water, he can’t swim back from the bottom and is pulled out by his mother, father, and sisters. Yet again, in simplicity lies beauty. This time, there’s no punchline, just a repetition of the chorus – but now you have the understanding of what he’s gone through to sing those lines.

I first heard him play this live well before the album came out, and along with “The Well” (sample line: “I guess everybody has their own thing\That they yell into a well”), it got the biggest cheer of the night. By the way, he’s also the only musician I’ve ever seen who does his set-list, then says “Ok, that’s my list – what do you want to hear?” and then takes requests. Having seen him do four live shows now, he does this every time – and he doesn’t appear to be cherry-picking the songs that he’d already decided to play. For a man who really doesn’t seem at all comfortable playing in front of an audience (Ben Thompson described him as “calling into question the whole meaning of the word ‘live’”), it’s an amazing thing to do.

Anyway, I hope I haven’t scared you off with those songs. There’s loads more I could talk about – even the song titles alone give you some sense of how good he is, from “Dress Sexy At My Funeral” to “Prince Alone In A Studio”. He’s an amazing artist; I just hope that he manages to get the recognition he deserves. And look, no mention of either Cat Power or Joanna Newsom.

Aztec Camera - High land, hard rain.

Today I am posting a great album from a Scottish band Aztec Camera released in the early eighties. This record I have discovered after listing the song “Walk out the winter”. There is indeed a beautiful compilation with the same name that contains many beautiful songs of the eighties.  I listen to this record quite frequently as I get always good vibrations. I recommend it to anyone. It is a jewel, creation of a Scottish young man!

 

The review comes from a blog: coolalbumreview

John Driscoll, Chicago, Illinois, USA
Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#564 in the Series) is Aztec Camera, High Land, Hard Rain

This was the first record from Roddy Frame. Roddy, then 19, wrote and produced all 13 songs. A few of the songs were even written a few years before that tender age.

His work on the acoustic guitar is most impressive. This is evident right from the opening track, that being the very catchy “Oblivious.” It was actually the only popular song on the album, at least State side.  Roddy’s thoughtful lyrics are accompanied by his underappreciated voice.  He’s also backed by a chorus of background singers. His sense of humor is always quite evident live. When I saw him years back, he complained that that the chorus “cost him a bloody quid,” and that he could have hired the “hum along audience” from Cabaret Metro for much cheaper.

The second track comes back with equal appeal and sound. “Walk out to Winter” has as much pop appeal as it does promise. “The Bugle Sounds the Horn” is  a beautifully written track that again uses the acoustic guitar in the lead and shows off some serious skills, though strumming and not picking it this time.

The next two numbers pushed Melody Maker’s Paul Lester to say about Frame,   “He celebrates the romance of pain and the pain of romance.”

“We Could Send Letters” promises the hope of long distance romance kept alive and “Pillar to Post” promises love that lasts forever.

“Release” and “Lost Outside the Tunnel” are somewhat forgettable, they‘re followed by “Back on Board” which is an instant classic that showed songwriting maturity well beyond the years of a teenager. The chorus, which again gets taken over by a choir, is the kind that sticks in your head in a good, not gooey way. The start of the next song bumps up against its end, and is a sweet ballad where Frame lets his Scottish accent out not accidentally.

This is where the original release ended, but subsequent releases included three songs that Frame had recorded in years earlier. “Haywire” sounds slightly off key by design, “Orchid Girl” is yet another lovely love song, and “Queens Tattoos” takes on an almost rockabilly sound, the kind that is fun to play at the pub with a pint in front of you.

High Land, Hard Rain was an extremely solid debut that offered much promise for such a young and talented musician. It is filled with guitar hooks of the acoustic kind and his voice is more sweet and soulful than new wave.

Aztec Camera were far more popular in the U.K. than here in Chicago. The only song that many may be familiar with could be “Oblivious.” If you fall in that category, I say check out the rest of this gem of a record. It’s well-crafted and multi layered, and may get you to the point where you find yourself playing it over and over again. I know I still do!

High Land, Hard Rain was produced by John Brand and Bernie Clarke.

Los Toreros Muertos. Yo no me llamo Javier.

 

 

No nena tu te equivocas
yo no te conoci en la playayaya
no nos fuimos juntos a comer paella
y nunca pasaste una noche en mi hotel

no soy el primo de chade defesia
no tengo parche en la puerta
no te has bañado con migo
en la pisina de mi chanel

yo no me llamo javier

no,si,no,que si,noooo
no,si,no no no no no no no

nunca te pedi
un duro en la calle
tu no me presentaste
a tus padres
no me invitaste a tu casa
ni a dormir ni a comer

yo no me llamo javier

deja ya de joder
yo no me llamo javier
sueltame mujer
yo no me llamo javier

hola como etas
que niño tan bonito
¿como?
que es mio
que yo soy el padre
pero eso como va a ser
si yo soy impotente
yo no me llamo javier
no te quiero volver a ver
deja ya de joder
yo no me llamo javier
sueltame mujer
yo no me llamo javier

yo no me llamo javier

deja ya de joder
yo no me llamo javier
sueltame mujer
yo no me llamo javier

yo no me llamo javier

Salgan de sus cocinas!!

He aquí un artículo que leí recientemente sobre lo que realmente esta sucediendo en la transformación de nuestra sociedad en cuanto hábitos y costumbres se refiere. La industria que todos sabemos quienes son, lleva muy bien sus planes para que la gente simplemente deje de cocinar y así seguir maniobrando el control de la poblacion mientras las sartenes se llenen de polvo y los huertos de malas hierbas..algunos ya saben de que hablo verdad? Cuán dificil es comer bien hoy en día en algunos sitios más que en otros. En cualquier caso, no hay que irse lejos para ver esta tendencia y ver que casda vez hay mas gente con problemas de salud..una verdadera lástima. Más vale que nos cuidemos un poco más y que no nos dejemos que nos saquen de las cocinas..hoy mismo, ahora mismo voy a cocinar un curry con una coliflor, zanahoria y un poco de pollo que he comprado en el mercado..

Salgan de sus cocinas!! es un artículo que he encontrado en el blog de  Justicia Alimentaria Global de Javier Guzman:

http://javiergusmao.wordpress.com 

nos muestra como se lleva a cabo la lucha alimentaria en diferentes partes del mundo. Más vale que seamos conscientes de estas cosas que nos afectan a todos, si realemnte queremos hacer un mundo mejor..

"Para los de arriba hablar de comida es una pérdida de tiempo. Y se comprende, porque ya han comido” (Bertolt Brecht)

Salgan de sus cocinas!!

El mundo culinario parece que se pone de moda en televisión. En los últimos años ha habido un boom en toda Europa de reallity relacionados con la cocina, programas que se llevan las mejores audiencias e invaden las conversaciones entre amigos y familiares. Esta tendencia pudiera llevarnos a pensar que nunca había habido tanto interés social por la cocina doméstica y una preocupación real por alimentarnos de manera sana y cercana FoodStuffPhoto.

Pero la realidad que gobierna nuestros platos es bien distinta. Vivimos un cambio vertiginoso en nuestra manera de alimentarnos inducido por la industria alimentaria. Hace años que vemos desaparecer ante nuestros ojos la alimentación tradicional cocinada en casa, como si se tratara de un destino  inexorable de esta sociedad del siglo XXI, para dar paso a la comida rápida y precocinada, tendencias que impone la industria alimentaria. Así que nuestras neveras se llenan de alimentos industriales, comida preparada, alimentos funcionales o alicamentos, destruyendo el equilibrio de nuestra dieta, con un aumento evidente de azúcares y grasas.

Pero lo grave está por llegar. El caso es que, para que el gran negocio alimentario funcione y se perpetúe,  la industria necesita ir un paso más allá y expulsarnos físicamente de la cocina. A esta estrategia los norteamericanos  la llaman deskilling, incapacitarnos para cocinar. Así que volvemos a aquello de “No pierdas el tiempo en cocinar”. Podemos comprobar como la publidad nos va sistemáticamente enviando este mensaje, y parece que es efectivo, así en en España hay estudios que determinan que  el 67% de los jóvenes se excede en el consumo de comida preparada.

Erosionar nuestra capacidad de  cocinar es perder control sobre nuestra alimentación y   nos convierte a nosotros y a nuestros hijos en dependientes absolutos de la gran industria . Si no se lo cree, pregúntese cuanto tiempo pasa viendo programas de cocina y cuánto tiempo realmente cocinando. En Gran Bretaña hay estudios que afirman que no más de 40 minutos a la semana.

Javier Guzmán

Spoon - Ga ga ga ga ga

Once again I have selected one of these records I always keep with myself anywhere I go I always bring it with me. Just in case I have to feel cool! I mean, I am in the mood that something good is going to happen and I am going to make it well, well! Spoon like many other bands I love, I have discovered in the morning show of John Richards at KEXP Seattle!

Spoon is a great band a prolific band and according to the reviewer they have good stuff. And still I have to discover because I have hardly had listened to this record.. Zeth Lundy brigs us his review of the record “Ga ga ga ga ga” from the website Popmatters

 

Spoon, perhaps the greatest American band of the ‘00s, is a dissident in the studio, for its record-making methodology is counterintuitive to the common practices of its 21st-century peers.  It nips and tucks the places that others would normally bulk up, disassembles the structural conceits that are prone to sky-high ostentation, and is an unorthodox decision-maker when it comes to arrangements.  Take, for example, “The Underdog”, the catchiest song and first single from the band’s sixth LP, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga.  It’s a dazzling little pop nugget, one that manages stylistic allusions to both Paul Simon’s “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard” and the Beatles’ “Got to Get You into My Life”, but its arrangement is streamlined and subversive: pieces of the mix drop out when least expected and big-music build-ups turn out to be nothing more than strategic teases; we’re often left to contend with nothing more than a sprinkling of metallic percussion, peppy horns, and/or acoustic guitar strums.  A less tactful band would have stumbled upon the song’s hook and shot it straight to the stars, cocooned in layers of unnecessary sound, and you could hardly blame them for it—pop songs this hot practically scream for the wall-of-sound treatment.  But in refusing to go the obvious route, Spoon fashions a fresh perspective on an otherwise familiar undertaking.

Fresh and familiar is a consistent hallmark of the Austin band, and Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga proves to be no exception.  It crackles with Revolver pragmatism and Motown propulsion, and is populated with copious amounts of tambourine and handclaps—the most convivial of all pop-music touchstones and instrumentation.  Unlike 2005’s Gimme Fiction, which was helmed primarily by Spoon’s core duo of Britt Daniel and Jim Eno, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga employs the rest of the band’s touring lineup: keyboardist Eric Harvey and former Get Up Kids/White Whale bassist Rob Pope, who replaces longtime member Josh Zarbo.  As a result, the album is the most groove-oriented effort since 2001’s Girls Can Tell, an efficient rhythm machine with a sinuous palate.  The grooves run the stylistic gamut, from hard rockers (the standoffish “Don’t Make Me a Target”, which recycles the descending-riff ferocity of Kill the Moonlight‘s “The Way We Get By”, and the galloping, scrunched-note jam “Finer Feelings”), to Detroit strut (“You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb”), the minimalist pulse of Reichian repetition (“The Ghost of You Lingers”), bubbly bass-driven dance fodder (“Don’t You Evah”, a cover of an unreleased song by the NYC band the Natural History), and skinny-tied aggression (“Eddie’s Ragga”).

The legroom in Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga‘s mixes allows the grooves to really take off without the burden of excessive baggage.  The reliance on bass in “Don’t You Evah” and drums and percussion in “Finer Feelings” preempts the need for a dominant guitar (so often a rock-music norm); when guitar is added to both songs, it serves to blossom the established momentum.  “Eddie’s Ragga”, on the other hand, boasts big steely electric guitar stabs throughout, yet they’re relegated to one channel and intermittently soaked in reverb.  Where that song manufactures movement from the residue of echoes, “The Underdog” (the album’s one song produced by Jon Brion; usual suspect Mike McCarthy helmed the other nine tracks) builds from more skeletal remains and achieves almost aerodynamic liftoff.  Eno’s drum sound, tremendously boxy in “Don’t Make Me a Target” and skin-tight for the closing track “Black Like Me”, is perhaps the most vital aspect of each track’s animation, even if Daniel’s voice is the band’s more idiosyncratic attribute.

While Daniel may have a limited vocal range, he possesses a sandpapery rock ‘n’ roll voice, as well as a ruthless predisposition to amputate consonants.  He’s loyal to the feel of the words and the malleable sounds they make (in his hands, “defective heart” becomes “defecti-hah”, a fragment of sentiment mashed into a cluster of sensation); often, his word choice and delivery is more provocative than the topics he sings about.  In “Rhthm & Soul”, a minor-key strummer with a razor-blade groove, Daniel strings together a litany of abrupt verse-pieces with a shared cadence: “Tract houses / Square couches / Short legs and square shoulders / Pot holders / Egg and soldiers / Y’ tank rollers / You all know this”.  It’s all phonetic bravado, a spate of concrete images that serve as variations on sympathetic meter and pronunciation.  He keeps a loathsome figure at arm’s length in “Don’t Make Me a Target”, while tongue-twisting descriptive passages into barbed insults: “Clubs and sticks and bats and balls / For nuclear dicks with their dialect drawls”. And “My Little Japanese Cigarette Case”, tightly wound and circularly built, subsists of one tidy mantra, “Bring me my Japanese cigarette case / Bring a mirror to my face / Let all my memories be gone”, repeated between bouts of finicky instrumentation, which include koto and flamenco guitar.  In this particular case, the reductive lyrics and simple melody contrast the more exotic ambitions of the arrangement.

The handful of purposely misspelled song titles (“Rhthm & Soul”, “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb”, “Don’t You Evah”) only reinforce Spoon’s championing of rebellious diction.  (Ditto for the seemingly absurd album title, which is in fact a reference to the throbbing eighth notes cycling through “The Ghost of You Lingers”.)  It’s the mark of a band in love with the sound of things, with the precision in miniature of its timepiece-like structural knack and the rock ‘n’ roll cool that slouches informally across the calibrated clockwork.  Or, as Daniel sings in “The Underdog”, “I wanna forget how convention fits / But can I get out from under it?”  Spoon is clearly acquainted with convention, but there’s plenty on Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga to suggest that the band harbors its most intimate operational relelationships outside the norm.

The Charlatans - Tellin' stories

Charlatans and their "telling stories", They were bands that I really like how they sounded when I discovered and I am never tired of listening over and over..The more I listen to Charlatans, the more I like them, old stuff is great, new stuff is also great. They are simply great artists! Nice stories from a band of Manchester! Oh, yeah!

The review of the record I have taken from  www.ultimate-guitar.com.

The Charlatans have always been one of those bands who really should have been bigger than they are. It's a shame that a lot of people have only heard a couple of songs by them as they really are a fantastic and extremely versatile band. Tellin' Stories has a very Britpop sound to it, not suprising as it was released in 1997, just as britpop was coming to an end. Songs like North Country Boy and the standout track How High are incredibly catchy. With No Shoes is another track which will catch the listeners attention. Keyboardist Rob Collins was killed during the making of Tellin Stories so his sound is missing from some tracks that was so evident in previous Charlatans albums. 

As said before, Rob Collins died during the recording of this album. As a result, the rest of the band wrote a song called Rob's Theme in his memory. The rest of the album has very good lyrics but its the sound that is the main reason why this album sold so well. Tim Burgess is perhaps one of Britain's best singers and one of the most underated. His voice is so versatile and he sounds on top form in Tellin Stories. Examples where he's in top form come in songs like How High, With No Shoes and One To Another. 

For me this is perhaps my favourite Charlatans album and many other people would agree. Its fantastic and there is hardly a bad track on this album. For me With No Shoes, North Country Boy and How High are the standout tracks but there are more. It got to number 1 in the charts when it was released and I can see why, it is fantastic. If you love catchy britpop tunes that are relatively straight forward then this album is definetly for you!

what the fuck is going on with the colour of the letters...there is no way to modify them. I am going to sleep..tomorrow i will give it a try.

The Byrds - The fifth dimension

This is my contribution to the blog today! This summer I fell in love with an old classic band, I tried again the flavor of the sixties..and I found something amazing, something that made me feel just great. The Byrds! I knew already some songs from them but never had the chance to listen the whole record from them. They have such a beautiful psychedelic sound I just feel cool when I listen to them.. Great music and great people. I was very pleased this summer to talk about them with my friends Toni and Civi! Toni buying records of the Byrds, incredible! Anyway…here you are the Byrds and the 5th dimension!

I have taken the review of this record from a blogger:  Psychodelichar in his blog the60sound.

The Byrds were a popular American rock band formed in Los Angeles, California in 1964. They are considered one of the most important and influential bands of the 1960s.

Their music bridged the gap between the socially and spiritually conscious folk music of Bob Dylan and the complex pop of The Beatles. Throughout their career they helped forge such subgenres as folk rock, raga rock, psychedelic rock, jangle pop, and – on their 1968 classic Sweetheart Of The Rodeo –country rock inviting Gram Parsons on rhythm guitar. The original lineup consisted of Chris Hillman, David Crosby, Michael Clarke, Jim (Roger) McGuinn and Gene Clark. After several line-up changes (with lead singer/guitarist McGuinn as the only consistent member), they broke up in 1973.

The Byrds

from left to right : David Crosby (guitar, back vocals), Chris Hillman (bass guitar), Roger McGuinn (lead vocals, banjo, moog), Michael Clarke (drums), Gene Clark (guitar, harp, tambourine, back vocals)

My words : When someone mention the Byrds, first thought that come to my mind are these : Beatlesque folky rock with elements of psychedelic rock that ruled the 60s with evergreen hits; the group that covered Bob Dylan the most, but also : brilliant group that captured flowy feel of careless 60s during heydays of psychedelia. This album is their introduction to psychedelic rock and is the one of best albums to start if you're into this kind of rock. First tune is mellow "5D (Fifth Dimension)" with translucent feel; some speculated it's about feeling high while on drugs, but there's some science in it, too :) It's also their intro to country style they'll later adopt. "Wild Mountain Thyme" is their way of seeing folk rock - vocals singing harmonies with jangly guitar that speaks out "The Byrds" with it's tone. "Mr. Spaceman" is rock n roll story about alien abduction, it's really fun to listen, because most of people are afraid of alien, but here - the Byrds are begging aliens to take them on a trip. Awesome. "I See You" has strong the-60s-LA-sound - you can clearly hear where Strawberry Alarm Clock picked up their influence. "What's Happening ! !" is Crosby's song that started asking insoluble questions. Song explores oriental culture, adopting raga rock into their opus. "I Come and Stand at Every Door" is song adaptation of Nazim Kihmet's poem Kız Çocuğu (The Little Girl) - anti-war song about ghost of a young kid (I hope I understand it right?) that died in Hiroshima during atomic bombing. "Eight Miles High" is their most-known song from this album and it's a truly masterpiece of psychedelic rock. Droning intro pours into a wild-running guitar solo that ends with beautiful harmonies singing chorus. I love how they use their vocals as one instrument, bending and shaping path of the song.

"Hey Joe (Where You Gonna Go)" is covered rock classic by Billy Roberts that's already been covered by numerous bands including Love and Jimi Hendrix Experience. Its good version, but can't stand a chance next to Hendrix's. Next one is psychedelic instrumental "Captain Soul" that grew out from studio jamming to Lee Dorsey's "Get Out My Life,Woman" , but I've got to add that this sounds like a homage to Booker T & MG's, really nice and refreshing. "John Riley" is cover of a traditional song, but however this tune didn't seemed so special to me. Nice intro riff, but except that there's nothing exciting. "2-4-2 Fox Trot (The Lear Jet Song)" is just a cheery tune with repeating refrain and background sounds of   airplanes, nothing really special. This album would feel much better if it isn't so much pop-oriented (no longer songs than 3:38). However, there's some bonus tracks (the best one is "I Know You Rider") to keep you occupied when you finish the album. This is one of the most essential psychedelic albums before Summer of Love and I recommend this to you if you're into 60s psychedelic rock-pop bands like Jefferson Airplane, Buffalo Springfield, Moby Grape, Strawberry Alarm Rock and others. Peace