mp3: Brian Eno - Bonebomb

I find it hard and rare to be shocked these days by music, that is, in the real, physical sense - to have it swipe a bearclaw at my sensibilities, leave me dazed, even, by its power, even close to tears. This closing track of Eno’s last album, Another Day On Earth, manages to do just that to me every time I hear it, and on repeated plays, I’ve found the feeling doesn’t diminish.

The idea for the song was taken from a newspaper article Eno read where an Israeli doctor discussed the fact that one of the major causes of death and further injury in suicide bombings is human shrapnel fragments from the bones of the bomber themselves.

This is grim stuff, undoubtedly, but he doesn’t parade around the showground with flags a-flying telling us all what we know already; instead, manipulating words recited impassively by poet Aylie Cooke, he brings out a ghostly, broken story with such humanity that ‘Bonebomb’ just won’t go away after you hear it, and puts the rest of what’s already a really good album in the shade - probably why he wisely stuck it on at the end.

mp3: Helium - Vibrations

I don’t often get to listen to Mary Timony these days, but I still love her. Wee Mary and her underwear sewing hands…

Before she went solo, she was of course fronting Helium - a band whose back catalogue was a struggle to complete around five or six years. I did manage to pick up the album The Magic City (which this song is from) second hand around 2000 or so, but almost everything else was out of print for some time and it took a lot of patience, online shopping and help from travelling friends to complete my Helium collection.

Timony’s work is pretty much instantly recognisable. It’s the tunings, arpeggios and her rather sullen voice, and for some reason I’ve always been hugely attached to it. I came to Helium too late unfortunately, so never got to see them live, but at least I got to see Mary supporting Sleater-Kinney in Glasgow once. Let’s not go into the time we tried to drive to Amsterdam for her, got lost and missed the concert…

Oh, and she’s now an official member of the Kill Rock Stars family.

mp3: Kenickie - Nightlife

Ahh, 1997… Kenickie were so much fun while they lasted, it just obviously couldn’t go on that long, really. Nightlife is the just about the peak of Kenickie brilliance, a song that simultaneously makes me want to go out right now and confront the horror of (say) Glasgow on a Saturday night head on and have a superb time, and also reminds me of the sheer incomparable violent drunken nightmare terror misery of a Saturday night in (say) Glasgow and makes me want to stay inside the house forever wishing the sun would come up.

You can’t doubt the proud insight of lines like “Can’t work with heavy coats/They’re not revealing/Have to see each other’s clothes/So we’re all freezing”. Thing is, you can’t sit and dissect Nightlife any more than you would a 3am kebab, so I just listen and be glad I’m safe and warm and domestic tonight, not hazily wondering why the bouncers are  looking at me funny, and the cloakroom’s shut. And that’s not my coat ticket anyway. I’m sure the number had a 9 in it. And it was blue. I feel sick.

Buy.

mp3: Cocteau Twins - Carolyn’s Fingers

It seems my selections are always all a bit “popular”. I’m not as good at the seeking out new music thing as Steven, and for the first time, this random thing has bitten me on the arse - on the strength of this first one, it seems I’ve got a heap of music on my mp3 player I don’t even like.

I think I must have put this Cocteau Twins stuff on because I bought the damn best-of CD and thought I should at least try and like them. I’m a fully paid-up 80s 4AD fan, keen on the big hitters like Pixies, Throwing Muses, Breeders, even stomaching stuff like The Wolfgang Press and (pre-Motown) His Name Is Alive on occasion, but my God, how long is it going to take before I even remotely like the Cocteau Twins? I just can’t get over the idea they sound like someone rhythmically hitting a goose. With a baby.

So it’s fortunate that it was at least one of their more immediately poppy, tuneful ones that the Zen alighted upon instead of the more nails-down-a-blackboard
goblin-in-a-tunnel stuff. It’s quite a sweet song, Liz trills, the guitars don’t screech too much and you come away happy and quite relieved, and look, the title’s even in English so you can actually remember what it’s called.

Buy.

mp3: Tom Waits - Murder In The Red Barn

I’m not a massive Tom Waits fan, but I’m very, very keen on his 1992 album Bone Machine, and this is one of the best tracks on it. It’s a pretty terrifying song, all that autumnal, dying imagery, all the unanswered questions - “is that blood on the tree or is it autumn’s red blaze…?”; a friend of mine likes the irony in the lines “Now Slam the Crank from Wheezer slept outside last night and froze” and “One plays a violin, and sleeps inside a fridge”, but then he’s an English teacher and it’s his job.

I love the hoarseness of the whole thing and the way Waits sings “There’s nothing strange about an axe with bloodstains in the barn; there’s always some killin’ you got to do around the farm“, like he’s really savouring it, axe in hand.

Apparently there really was a Murder in the Red Barn, and while Steven’s away I have no problems in hijacking Stayfun for my own sick ends, as a means of education and enlightenment, and while you’re there, someone made a film out of it too. Go on, knock yourself out on the Red Barn Murder.

I can’t help thinking if flies could sing, they’d sound almost exactly like Tom Waits on Bone Machine.

Buy.

mp3: The Birthday Party - Happy Birthday

I put my Zen on random this morning as I had a busride to the deepest darkest reaches of the South Side of Glasgow to contend with, and I had to go on a bus; I hate buses. So I switched on, and what came out, but this gem. I was immediately whisked back to 1994, to St Petersburg, Russia, and a conversation in a dingy badly wallpapered dormitory room with a friend called Piers. Piers was considered a bit odd by most of them, with his squeaky voice and withered hand - you could hear him coming because of his curious arrhythmic limp as he stalked the corridors of our beige hostel - but he talkes a lot of sense, and it was Piers and Piers alone who introduced me the The Birthday Party.

I can take or leave some of it - the more histrionic stuff just grates - but stuff like ‘Mr Clarinet’, ‘Zoo Music Girl’, ‘Mutiny in Heaven’ (one of my favourites) and the above ‘Happy Birthday’ are just like Piers - witty, loud, awkward and lolloping. Hearing the now terribly sophisticated Nick Cave barking like a stupid dog and gurgling “What a red surprise!” will always somehow remind me of those cold winter (and autumn, and spring…) nights and Piers’s screeing Essex drawl.

Buy.

mp3 album: Pfaff - How to Explain de Flipstand to a Friend

If you ever see this Bas or Lars, sorry for not doing it proper justice. Anyway…last week I tried to buy the new Pfaff album via (very cool Dutch label) Narrowminded. It was a bargain price of €5 - not bad for a full album and artwork. But then nothing happened. No link to download. No email. I actually forgot I had ordered, until I finally remembered to email them last night. Then I ended up with a refund and an email telling me that from today the album would be free to download. Bravo! Although I feel a little guilty because Pfaff is well worth paying for.

Anyway, it happened. How to Explain de Flipstand to a Friend is currently a free album, and I hope that encourages a few of you to give it a go. Personally, I really like Pfaff. Some will know him as a former member of Seedling. Some will know him as a mad bugger from Amsterdam whose band/project is continually transforming. Some even know him as an integral part of That Dam Magazine. Others just know him as Bas. Always performing with passion, energy and humour, his frenetic indie rock chaos equals fun.

I have no computer time left, so I’m skipping through this rapidly. I just wanted to get the news out as quick as possible. Everything is all zipped up in one file, so it’s not even any effort to download.