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We Mattered (Once Upon A Time). The Silverbeets
The slightly neurotic sound of We Mattered (Once Upon A Time) will ring bells in the minds of those loving music from around 1980, when XTC scored with 'Making Plans For Nigel' and Split Enz sang 'My Mistake' into the charts. The Silverbeets use the same sort of rhythm and short-paused organ sounds, making the song feel a bit gibberish.
The band from Hobart on Tasmania, perhaps my first Tasmanian band ever, knows where it gets its mustard and translates that into a song that is part tribute, part parked in 2020. Musically far from easily digestible, with parts that are not easy to sing along to. We Mattered ... challenges its listeners, just like the two examples mentioned did. Be challenged and find, as there is enough to find along the less than three minutes road The Silverbeets presents. Like Beatlesque harmonies and a free flowing lead guitar part.
A few weeks back a new eels single was announced. Mark Oliver Everett presents a new song to the world that is instantly recognisable. The music, the voice, it can only be one person/band singing and playing here. What You Say You Are is an eels song of the quiet and sober kind. If the single wasn't so beautiful it would be easy to dismiss it as a slightly boring remake of his older songs. Yes, I allow you the comment that there's nothing truly new to be heard here, but not that eels has hit the bull's eye once again with this new song. Never a happy person, at least in his music, Everett strikes the right notes here. This song doesn't need any words more than presented here.
Temples was one of the many bands that rose to prominence in the first wave of new-psychedelia. It's album did not convince me at the time. What was it? 2014? I truly can't remember. Since then I hadn't heard from the band and read that a new single was released. I have to make short shrift here. What a horrible song. It must be hard to actually make every single decision wrong. The disco sound, the sound of the 70s over-aged singers trying to be hip used to score a hit. The 'Love Boat' kind of violins. And on top of it all a meagre composition, as a good one in a way would have excused all the other ones. A good song is a good song. I don't like all ABBA songs but I know which ones are outstanding songs. Paraphernalia is a dragon of a song, as we say in The Netherlands.
Not a single but the third The Rolling Stones song to be released on the re-release of 'Goat's Head Soup', the band's 1973 album that received due interest on the release date earlier this month. It is the kind of rocker I love to hear the Stones play. Jagger's singing is strained, suggesting his vocal would not have been the final one had the song been selected for the album. The song is fun though. A good melody, fiery lead guitar and again a prominent piano. Ian Stewart? The song is rock and roll enough for him to be part of it. It is most in line with 'Star Star' which is slightly better song, but only slightly. Like the other two songs, 'Criss Cross' and 'Scarlet', All The Rage could have been on the album without bringing it down in quality. In fact this song would have been excellent on 'Some Girls' as it is far superior to 'When The Whip Comes Down' and on par with 'Neighbours' on 'Tattoo You'. Criss Cross is a song I truly like. In fact, because of it I may just buy the new version of 'Goat's Head Soup' any way.
A psychedelic Britpop band, from The Netherlands? Yes, Anemone is just that. Started by two people working behind the scenes of pop and rock music, Xander van Dijck and Ricardo Jupijn. After releasing its first album in 2018, in 2020 its time for the first single of an upcoming album that is ready. It's not the time to release a new record Anemone states. The single in which the words "I'm isolated" is repeated regularly reflects the past half year pretty well. The music does as well. The general mood is downcast, the singing follows this tag, creating a song where joy is hard to find and sparks of light few and wide apart. A good, down-hearted ballad can be exquisite. Separated strives for this top position without fully reaching the mount. For that the vocal melody is only just too bland. The music however makes up as the band knows when to add a beautiful embellishment to the whole. The song certainly falls to my good side.
All good things must come to an end, so this also goes to the monthly releases of Garlands, the Glasgow alternative rock band that more and more becomes one of the hidden treasures of pop music but luckily not for me. Let me not get too far ahead, as I still have to listen to Forest Noises, but based on the previous four songs, no matter what the new single sounds like, they would have made a hell of a mini album. So let me put on Forest Noises now.
Rest assured, folks. Again, and I know from just how the first guitar strokes sound, this again is a stellar rock song. The U.S. alternative rock bands from the 90s are a strong influence here. Gordon Harrow in the past worked with Ken Stringfellow and The Posies certainly come to mind. A strong melody, the band going full out but always with a knack for embellishing the song in any way possible. Surprising as well, as a piano has a clear role in Forest Noises. That beginning is so nice. Its just a fast strummed guitar with a full sound and somehow it is enough. Like the best songs of Weezer, Fountains of Wayne and The Posies offer. Loud songs but instantly recognisable, singable and lovable. "I'm the monster you don't wanna know" Harrow sings over and over. I hope multitudes will beg to differ as this is a great alternative powerpop song if I know one. In a league with 'My Sharona'.
With Forest Noises the Garlands summer is coming to an end. All good things stop sometime. Let's just hope Gordon, Stef and Darran will not make us wait too long before there's more from Garlands.
Esoteric and ethereal. Just two words that spring to my mind listening the The Weeping Souls for the first time. In this remix by Alain Johannes, who's worked with several bands and artists of fame, Polonski sings his lyrics in a dreamy fashion, while underneath his voice the world is torn apart by a guitar with a ton of effects on it, but mixed nicely and "quietly" into the background. Taken that the start is a banjo or some sort of instrument and a quiet keyboard, the turn the song takes does come as a surprise. I haven't heard the original version the song, so decide to put that on first. The differences are clear straight away. The sound is much clearer, there's drumming and the eery guitar noise is not present. Only the dreamy part in the singing remains. Jeff Buckley comes to mind fast. Not so in the remix. Johannes has truly managed to make The Weeping Souls a different kind of song. Both have their merit.
Manbird. Anton Barbeau
Not to confuse people Anton Barbeau has called his album 'Manbiird' and his single 'Manbird'. That taken care of we can start to listen to the song. Barbeau, a Californian living in Berlin but recording wherever his fancy takes him, makes music as if time hasn't changed much over the past decades. Electronic percussion and an 80s vibe clearly shows in Manbird. In the lyrics things are more modern. Singing about a green screen would have made several brows furrow in the 80s, while today everyone working with Zoom knows how to work a trick or two in the background. Manbird is a song that holds back while some instruments try to turn loose from their shackles. Barbeau does not totally allow it, keeping the song in check. I can only wonder what would have happened had he done so. Just listen to the end where the bass (synth?) is allowed to go it alone. A moment where the true glory of Manbird shines through.
Once upon a time one of the least melodic and confrontational bands, New Order in the past 40 years seems to have learned to write a good pop song. Forever associated with 'Blue Monday', the song has nothing to do with Be A Rebel. On its latest single New Order produces a just as danceable track but so commercial in sound; had it been 1983. Today this song is totally archaic, a sound from a long gone era. To my slowly ageing ears however Be A Rebel sounds quite nice. The rhythm works, the melody has it and the arrangement does the rest. Bernard Sumner will never be among the best of singers but knows what he can do best and delivers here.
Over a disco rhythm New Order keeps finding new melodies to play over the melody lying at the heart of Be A Rebel. Does it come dangerously close to Pet Shop Boys?, yes, New Order does. But there's no comparison, I'm afraid. I may have danced to 'Suburbia' et al in the 80s, I would have bought Be A Rebel instantly. Just listen what the guitar that pops up does, the layer upon layer of synths. There's a new melody that joins the song over and over during the whole song only to disappear to make room for the next melody. Be A Rebel is a top song, ranking as high as the live version of 'Just Can't Get Enough'. If only it was 1985..., man, what a hit this song would have been. It wouldn't have missed a single tape I made for our house parties. (And, beautiful artwork by the way.)
"Where Are You Now That We Need You brings you into psychedelic, satanic spheres and makes you feel as it were the darkness itself", roughly translates the start of the bio of Yukon Onoma's debut single. The sentence intrigued me, so I wrote the song down to remember it later.
His musical work is a reflection of his past life, when as a child living in a religious, Christian sect in The Netherlands. After breaking with his past he decided to study Satanism as a way to get to grips with his past by studying the anti of things Christian.
I would have expected dark metal but Yukon Onoma stays wide from that kind of music. The result is a dark, slow electronic music that would fit into the Kairos show with ease. Slow moving electronic chords hover over and through my room, like a slivering, undefinable but most likely hostile entity. I can't make much of it to describe what I'm hearing. The music is dark and top heavy and without joy for certain. My curiosity certainly presented a song I did not see coming. Am I up for more? I doubt it.
Listen to our Spotify Playlist to find out what we are writing about:
https://open.spotify.com/user/glazu53/playlist/6R9FgPd2btrMuMaIrYeCh6?si=KI6LzLaAS5K-wsez5oSO2g
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