Goldfrapp - Happiness

Somehow I completely missed the release of the new Goldfrapp album (Seventh Tree) and I'd still be completely ignorant of it if I hadn't whizzed through their Wikipedia page on one of my many "oooh that looks interesting" web rambles. It's lush, really quite lo-fi compared to previous efforts, and reminds me quite a lot of the most recent Air album, Pocket Symphony. Typically, Alison Goldfrapp looks absolutely beautiful in her rather quirky way in the promotional photos...

Goldfrapp - Happiness

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Now playing: Goldfrapp - Happiness

Seabear - I Sing I Swim

Yey! A jingly-jangly Icelandic band with strummy guitars and a rippling piano and clinky glockenspiels and evocative lyrics! Ideal for a sunny March day when it's cold but beautiful outside and you're sitting nice and warm up against a radiator by the window watching spring unfurl. Originally a one-man project by Sindri Sigfússon, Seabear released an EP - which can be downloaded in full for free on the website, got 6 more members ("and there will be no more!" says Sindri), and released The Ghost That Carried Us Away on Morr in 2007. Here are the rather lovely lyrics of the opening verse of this song, "I Sing, I Swim":

When the birds are sleeping
That's when the trees sing
You left your winter clothes,
And your teeth marks in my skin

Seabear - I Sing I Swim

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Now playing: David Bowie - Bring Me The Disco King

The Bird And The Bee - F***ing Boyfriend

I'll be honest, I'm a fairly simple man, and oftentimes I just like a song with a bit of swearing in it. Particularly when it sounds out of place. Here Greg Kurstin and Inara George have taken what could just be an innocent sweet sounding electro-pop song, inserted the word "fucking", thereby creating my favourite singalong chorus of the year.

The Bird And The Bee - F***ing Boyfriend

Batido Do Corpo - Amazonas (Fatboy Slim Remix)

Second post, second confession of ignorance: I've never actually paid much attentions to remixes. It has always seemed to me that the main creative act went into the original and the remix was just a kind of appendix. Obviously I kind of knew that that wasn't actually the case but I've never really actually taken the time to really explore it. But a charity called Bottletop recently released a double album of original Brazilian tracks remixed by fairly big names (Bungle; Bonobo; Get Cape, Wear Cape Fly) and there is an absolutely awesome remix of a pretty damned funky original track. The original, by Batido Do Corpo, is all weird vocal noises and stompy rhythm. The remix breaks the track down and builds it up again, adding all sorts of new bits that change it into something else entirely, before a quasi-return to how it all began. You genuinely could study the remix in high-brow classical terms. To get a real sense of it, listen to both tracks back to back - original first.

Now this is a charity track, raising money primarily for sexual health education in South America and Africa so if you do like it please please please buy it from the website or from iTunes. Other retailers are available! (But I don't like them)

Batido Do Corpo - Amazonas /Amazonas (Fatboy Slim remix)

Dig, Lazarus, Dig! - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

Generally, if someone started talking about spoken words over rock I'd think of the two albums William Shatner recorded. They veer between being so bad they're good, and so bad that your eyebrows can't go any higher. I'd never heard Nick Cave before and, to be honest, if I'd have known that the first track had a large amount of spoken word then I wouldn't have bothered - however, I'm really glad I did. It's just right: he sounds appropriately like a rambling, impassioned preacher. The exaggerated facial expressions he pulls in the video only make it better. And what a moustache.



The lyrics are fantastic: a narrative of what happened after Lazarus of biblical fame rose from the dead at Jesus's bidding - except set in modern day USA. The idea is strikingly similar to a subplot in the current season of Torchwood revolving around Owen being brought back to life by Captain Jack (incidentally, tonight's episode of Torchwood was AWFUL, quite literally the most boring episode of a show that I have seen in a good few years). Owen doesn't especially want to be alive. The song explores how Lazarus responds to being risen from the dead...

"I mean he, he never asked to be raised from the tomb"

... all over a funky organ riff.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Dig, Lazarus, Dig!