Richard Ashcroft - Slow Was My Heart

I don't know if anyone has heard but apparently the Verve are back together? Someone also mentioned a new Coldplay album, but I don't anything more about that either.

Richard Ashcroft - Slow Was My Heart

For Tess.

Slow was my heart
And so you had gone

So we move on
Please stay strong

It keeps on turning yeah yeah for everyone
We keep on learning yeah yeah to kiss the sun

Weak was my strength
Your hand I should have lend

So we move on
Please stay strong

It keeps on turning yeah yeah for everyone
We keep on learning yeah yeah to kiss the sun
Like everyone

Fly, fly my plane
To an eastern runway

And tell me why
Love must die

It keeps on turning yeah yeah for everyone
You keep on learning yeah yeah to kiss the sun

I'm just like everyone
(Keep on learning yeah yeah)

Katherine Gehl - A Pound of Kumquats

I get a kind of thrill when I start listening to a track I've found and then check out the last.fm page and see that hardly anyone else has listened. In the kind of world where people like Radiohead have almost 110 million individual recorded play counts there's something special to be said for listening to an artist that has less than 300. Celebrate that difference! Katherine Gehl is one such artist. And the thing is, quantity of play counts is not necessarily an indicator of quality. There's something delightful about Katherine Gehl. Bits of this track are undeniably a bit shambolic but, let's be fair, she's playing what sounds like a Casio keyboard. Shambolic is how you play them. Let's get her a few more play counts!

http://www.last.fm/music/Katherine+Gehl

Katherine Gehl - A Pound Of Kumquats

Laura Viers - Spelunking

Of all the presents I got from my ex, this is perhaps my favourite. It's a track from Laura Viers' 2005 album, Year of Meteors. The second verse is one of the most special things I have ever come across.

If I took you darling
To the caverns of my heart
Would you light the lamp dear?
Would you light the lamp dear?
And see fish without eyes
Bats with their heads
Hanging down towards the ground
Would you still come around
Come around?

And as he lights the lamp, a subdued and echoey electric guitar enters, spilling light all around.

Laura Viers is touring the UK this month, starting in Winchester tonight! Well, I say the UK, she's basically touring England. I know that's synonymous to a lot of people who aren't from the UK but, please, bands of the world, remember that Wales and Scotland and Northern Ireland also exist and would welcome you with open arms and probably legs, if I'm honest.

Laura Viers - Spelunking

Best Friends Forever - Abe Lincoln

Sometimes shuffly indie bands sound very studied in their shuffliness, as if they've decided that awkward and clunky is somehow the sound for them. I must be honest and say that in the first few seconds of this track I thought it was one of those bands.

But.

(And as you can see it's a "but" important enough to get it's own paragraph.)

BUT the lyrics in this track, Abe Lincoln, are really good. They're funny, charming, and idiosyncratic. They actually made me laugh out loud a couple of times. They don't sound like someone trying too hard, they sound like a bunch of teenagers or early twenty-somethings sitting around and writing a ridiculous, funny, charming, and idiosyncratic song.

Best Friends Forever are a pop trio from Minneapolis, MN. They'll be on acloudofstarlings again cause they're fucking awesome!

Best Friends Forever - Abe Lincoln

Dennis Wilson - Dreamer

Another lush track from Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue album, re-released earlier this month. Apparently the deep buzzing that accompanies pretty much throughout is a bass harmonica.

Please forgive brevity; I am so very tired and sore after my operation...

Dennis Wilson - Dreamer

After that relatively religious orientated track, here's something to redress the balance...

David Bowie - Bring Me The Disco King

There's something about this track that makes me ache. It's beautiful. It's the last track of David Bowie's most recent studio album, Reality. The lyrics are obviously nostalgic but couched in typical Bowie suggestive ambiguity. You can easily spend hours trying to pin down exactly what he means, but I'm starting to think that to do so is to miss the point.

David Bowie - Bring Me The Disco King

You promised me the ending would be clear
You'd let me know when the time was now
Don't let me know when you're opening the door
Stab me in the dark, let me disappear

Memories that flutter like bats out of hell
Stab you from the city spires
Life wasn't worth the balance
Or the crumpled paper it was written on

Don't let me know we're invisible
Don't let me know we're invisible

Hot cash days that you trailed around
Cold cold nights under chrome and glass
Led me down river of perfumed limbs
Sent me to the streets with the good time girls

Don't let me know we're invisible
Don't let me know we're invisible
We could dance, dance, dance thru' the fire
Dance, dance, dance thru' the fire

Feed me no lies
I don't know about you, I don't know about you
Breathe through the years
I don't know about you, I don't know about you
Bring me the disco king
I don't know about you, I don't know about you
Dead or alive, bring me the disco king
Bring me the disco king, bring me the disco king
Bring me the disco king

Spin-offs with those who slept like corpses
Damp morning rays in the stiff bad clubs
Killing time in the '70s
Smelling of love through the moist winds
Don't let me know when you're opening the door
Close me in the dark, let me disappear
Soon there'll be nothing left of me
Nothing left to release

Dance, dance, dance thru' the fire
Dance, dance, dance thru' the fire
Feed me no lies
I don't know about you, I don't know about you
Breathe through the years
I don't know about you, I don't know about you
Bring me the disco king
I don't know about you, I don't know about you
Dead or alive, bring me the disco king
Bring me the disco king
Bring me the disco king, bring me the disco king
Bring me the disco king, bring me the disco king
Bring me the disco king, bring me the disco king

The Dresden Dolls - Night Reconnaissance

Nothing is crueller than children who come from good homes
Gotta forgive them, I guess, but whose side are you on?
Driving around my hometown, I remember it all
Dropping my lunchbox and tampax all over the hall
And they said...

You are a socialist cokehead, we know from your clothes
You are a Satanist worshipper, oh, that's evil
You think you're poet, a folksinger, ???
A volleyball player?! you've got to be kidding us all

So we hide from the cunts
On a night reconnaissance
Steal flamingos and gnomes
From the dark side of the lawn

No one can stop us
The script is a work of genius
No one has bought the rights yet but
We're not giving up
Every unwanted lawn jockey fits in the script
Directed by Spielberg and starring the masochist club

Marion looked like hell
Stuck in that ridicules shell
Give us some light and god's pure love
We know what you've been dreaming of
Give us some light and god's pure love
We know what you've been dreaming of
Give us some light and god's pure love
We know what you've been dreaming of
We're taking you to Hollywood
Hollywood

And we hide from the cunts
On a night reconnaissance
Steal flamingos and gnomes
From the dark side of the lawn

One is a socialist cock-head they dressed in my clothes
One is a Satanist worshipping who's evil
One is a poet who starts up a band of his own
One is a volleyball player with both of her wrists broke

And we hide from the cunts
On a night reconnaissance
Steal flamingos girls and gnomes
From the dark side of the lawn

And we give them good homes
Give them love they've never known
In the loft, in the lawn,
In the town where I was born
In the loft, in the bar,
In the town where I was born

How's that for a set of lyrics? What I particularly like about this song is that before reading the lyrics I thought she was singing "Nothing is cooler than kids from good homes" in the first verse, and "And we hide from the guns" in the chorus. I never know whether bands do this on purpose but it adds something else for us to get our heads around and that's always a good thing.

/obligatory paragraph about band which I don't particularly feel is necessary when the lyrics are that interesting

blah blah blah ... so-called "Brechtian Punk Cabaret" ... yada yada ... Boston, MA ... flim flam flim flam ... don't call them "gothic" ... schnuzz schnuzz ... map of Amanda Dresden Doll's teenage soul...



The Dresden Dolls - Night Reconnaissance