1. Montparnasse
– Floating Points
2. People
of the Sticks – The Besnard Lakes
3. Junebouvier
– Whirr
4. The
Big Nod – Soft Walls
5. Sand
Dance – Temples
6. Stoned
and Starving – Parquet Courts
7. Mum’s
the Word – Chain & The Gang
8. I Miss
Your Bones – Hospitality
9. No
Need for a Leader – Unknown Mortal Orchestra
10. Fat
Lady of Limbourg – Dirt Dress
11. Wont’
Remember my Name – Soft Walls
12. The
Upsetter – Metronomy
13. Passing
Out Pieces – Mac Demarco
14. Pretty
Machines – Parkay Quarts
15. John
Brown – Papercuts
16. Far
from Any Road – The Handsome Family
17. Pulling
on a Line – Great Lake Swimmers
18. Would That Not be Nice – Divine Fits
19. Fever Boy – Femme
20. Pseudologia Fantastica – Foster the People
21. What a Pleasure – Beach Fossils
22. Talking Backwards – Real Estate
23. Re. Stacks – Bon Iver
24. Rocky
Mountain High – John Denver
25. Hellhole
Ratrace – Girls
26. Winter
Sundays – Your Headlights are On
Fed up with working
peripatetically, I accepted a full-time position with an engineering firm in
Kennington. I only bother to mention this because of the impact it had upon my
listening habits. It was all to do with Spotify and this associated thing
called Discover Weekly, which we listened to while we worked. It’s basically a playlist derived from an algorithm that predicts the sort of things you
might like based on what you’ve previously searched for, and it’s surprisingly
astute. What I used to do was write down in a draft email the names of songs
that caught my ear. Once I’d accumulated four or five, I’d send them to my personal
email address and then go over them in the evening, probably on YouTube. Not
all tracks stood up to closer inspection but, judging by the length of this
playlist, many did.
Floating Points
is the name that neuroscientist Sam Shepherd records under, and he can count
snooker legend Steve Davis as a fan. 'Montparnasse' is 11 minutes’ worth of down-tempo electronica, and not
the sort of thing I’d usually use to kick off any compilation. It is one of the
few tracks here that recalls a specific memory outside of environment in which it
was discovered; it reminds me of waiting for the train at Putney after an evening's bouldering at Urban Ascent (now The Climbing Hangar) in Parsons Green.
So strong is this association that I wonder whether my enthusiasm for music had
been invigorated, for I hardly ever listen to music through headphones these
days, not even on trains – I’m more likely to read a book.
At around 8 minutes and 45 seconds in, the shuffling deep-house of 'Montparnasse' sabotages itself: the
drumbeat vanishes and the track plays out to an ambient, Orbital-esque kind of
refrain, and then just stops. This is how I can get away with following it up with 'People of the Sticks' by Canadian band The Besnard Lakes. It all plays out like the beginning of a
James Bond film: 'Montparnasse' scores
the opening action sequence and 'People of
the Sticks' is the official theme, whence the credits role. That’s not how I
intended it; the analogy suggested itself after the fact. The Besnard Lakes could be described as post-rock with a touch of shoegaze.
So too could 'Junebouvier' by
Whirr, who hail from the San Francisco Bay Area. Their contribution to my
playlist is more urgent, with the bass guitar playing a more integral part. Is this
what the kids had been listening to
since I’d been away? Were those in the know also digging the Soft Walls?
Information was scarce. I wanted to buy their LP but couldn’t find it anywhere
(No Time, released July 2014). The
Soft Walls sound like what might have happened if the John Cale-era Velvet
Underground had decamped to Marrakech with Brian Eno, although a simile like
that can lead your imagination almost anywhere. There’s also a North-West
African sort of vibe going on in 'Sand
Dance' by Temples, a band that could be more generally described as
merely psychedelic. Listening to it now, the shift between these two songs is
too abrupt for my liking, but I can live with it. Parquet
Courts’ 'Stoned and Starving' imagines what the Velvet Underground might have sounded like if they’d invited
John Cale to contribute towards Loaded.
I’d not heard of any of these bands before, let alone the individual
tracks, and was pleasantly surprised that music like this was being recorded. Not that I had my ear to the ground, but artists such as Alt-J,
The War on Drugs, Warpaint, etc. were getting airplay, so why not the Soft Walls?
I hadn’t purchased a Chain & The Gang record since 2009’s Down With Liberty… Up With Chains!. I’m
not sure why but I only found out about 2011’s Music’s Not For Everyone a
year or so after its release, whereas 2012’s In Cool Blood completely passed me by. Then in May 2014, Chain & The Gang played The Dome in Tufnell Park (supported by Comet Gain) to promote the release of their latest album, Minimum
Rock N Roll, which I subsequently purchased after the gig. (I also got Ian to sign my copy of his book, The
Psychic Soviet.)
Back to Spotify. 'I Miss Your Bones' by New York band Hospitality
sounds a bit like The Breeders, which is all you need to know. At work, once
we’d had enough of Discover Weekly, members of staff would take it in turns
playing their personal preferences. I took the opportunity to explore further
the Unknown Mortal Orchestra and selected their track 'No Need for a Leader' for inclusion on this compilation.
'The Fat Lady of Limbourg' by
Dirt Dress is a cover of a Brian Eno tune, and the sort of thing the guy who
used to own all the indie tapes would have gone crazy for back in the day. I only
became aware of this fact just now, literally before writing that last sentence,
after rummaging around on the internet looking for something to say about Dirt
Dress. There’s not much information out there, which suggests they’re no longer
active, but their raucous take on 'The Fat
Lady of Limbourg' is certainly equal to Eno’s slower, slightly sinister original.
Another contribution from the Soft Walls, and probably the better of the
two, 'Won’t Remember My Name' sounds
like The Jesus and Mary Chain reinterpreting 'All Tomorrow’s Parties' by the Velvet Underground, maybe off the
back of a particularly heavy session.
Metronomy are on a bit of a downer too, but of a different kind. 'Why you
giving me a hard time tonight?' asks the protagonist in 'The Upsetter', presumably to the object of his affection. I’m not
sure of the song’s precise meaning but hearts have obviously been broken, as the
wistful guitar solo that plays the song out firmly attests.
'Passing Out Pieces' by Mac DeMarco
is a weird tune. A discordant keyboard hammers out a discomfiting melody
while Mac ponders the price of following his chosen profession. The video is even weirder. Mr Wilkinson and one our bouldering buddies (let's call him The Florist on account of his profession) went to see him play
live, and they rated the experience very highly.
Parquet Courts again, except this time they’re referring to themselves as
Parkay Quarts. Due to a combination of familial and scholarly commitments, the
rhythm section didn’t contribute much to the album Content Nausea, which may explain the nomenclatural reconfiguration. 'Pretty Machines' harks back to The
Strokes at the start of their career, while again sounding a lot like Loaded-era Velvet Underground.
'John Brown' by Papercuts was
released in 2007, which goes to show how Spotify’s Discover Weekly isn’t all to do with pushing new music onto the listener. I could have done with something like this
in 2007 – indie-folk before it went mainstream. This also applies to 'Far from Any Road' by The Handsome
Family, which dates back even further to 2003. I didn’t realise at the time,
but the reason this song was probably doing the rounds was because it was being
used as the theme song for HBO’s Gothic crime drama True Detective. It exhibits more of an alternative-country sound
than the Papercuts’ track, but the terms ‘country’ and ‘folk’ are quite often
interchangeable. 'Pulling on a Line'
(2009) by Canadian folk rock band the Great Lake Swimmers occupies the same
ballpark. You can see from this how Spotify does its business.
My enthusiasm for my place of work was already beginning
to wane. The managing director, although a nice man, worried too much
about things he needn’t have worried about, which meant I was kept on a tight
leash. This is a common affliction among managers. They are, after all, control freaks by nature, and probably need to
be. I also hadn’t taken a holiday in a long while, which was put right when I flew to Valencia with my partner for a long weekend towards the end
of the summer, providing the perfect antidote to what would be the coolest
August in 21 years, as well as one of the wettest.
This paled into insignificance when set against the grave illness of our friend from North Yorkshire. It didn’t end well – life is a seedy business at
times. What can you do, other than manage one’s own sense of terror. Maybe
that’s why I’m bothering to write any of this: to deny my mortality, or to overcome
it – my own memento mori.
Divine Fits was the result of a collaboration between
Britt Daniel from Spoon and Dan Boeckner from Wolf Parade that spawned 2012’s A Thing Called Divine Fits. 'Would That Not Be Nice' is a piece of slightly
polished, slightly jagged alternative rock with a strong melody, which pushes this
compilation up a notch.
Femme (real name Laura Bettinson) released the single 'Fever Boy' in late 2013. I can’t
understand why it wasn’t a massive hit. ‘Alternative dance’ you might call it,
comparable to music made by people like M.I.A. or Santigold.
When Foster the People broke through with the single 'Pumped Up Kicks' in 2010-2011 I wasn’t at all impressed. I couldn’t
stand the overly jolly bass line, nor the treatment of the lead vocal which had
been synthesized in some way. For a while, I mistakenly thought the song was
called Pumped Up Kids and that it related to children who were into bodybuilding. After realising my error I then assumed
it to be about trainers. It sort of is, but not in a celebratory sense: it’s
about kids wearing kicks having to run for their life from a psychotic adolescent
carrying a gun. All this aside, 'Pseudologia
Fantastica' is from the group’s second album, Supermodel, released in 2014, and has been described by one critic
as ‘psychedelic dance-pop’ and by another as a ‘psychedelic, shoe-gazey wig-out’.
You decide.
Beach Fossils were a band that I always intended to follow up on, but I
never got around to it. Maybe I will now. The reason for this is that their
song 'What a Pleasure' (taken from
their 2011 EP What a Pleasure)
reminded me of some of the bands signed to Sarah Records – The Springfields
perhaps.
Released as a single in January 2014, 'Talking
Backwards' by Real Estate also evokes the spirit of Sarah – this time it’s
the Field Mice that comes to mind. The production is warmer here; less echo and
delay. The Florist likes this song, and it makes me think of driving
in his van back from Bermondsey after a session at the Biscuit Factory, or down
to Fontainebleau for a climbing holiday in 2015.
Now for
something altogether gloomier: 'Re. Stacks'
by Bon Iver. All I knew regarding Bon Iver was that their principle songwriter, Justin Vernon, had a
beard. That’s still pretty much all I know about them, which doesn’t in any way
diminish my enthusiasm for 'Re. Stacks'. It concerns Vernon’s gambling habits, although the
bigger picture is that he was also in the process of surmounting a number of personal
obstacles. 'Re. Stacks' is a folkish
sort of tune and so opens the door for 'Rocky
Mountain High' by John Denver, even if it does come from a very different mental place.
Did you know that in the USA there’s such a thing as state songs? Moreover,
sometimes a state may have more than one, as is the case with Colorado, whose
state songs are 'Where the Columbines Grow' by A J Fynn, and – you’ve guessed it – 'Rocky
Mountain High' by John Denver. Under normal circumstances I might have
drawn a line here and finished on a (Rocky Mountain) high, but Discover Weekly had other ideas.
'Hellhole Ratrace' by Girls would
have made for a great climax. It’s a slow burner lasting all
of 6 minutes and 56 seconds.
The sucker punch comes at 3 minutes 45, where an electric guitar kicks in and singer
Christopher Owens proceeds to plead the following lines four times over:
But I don't want to cry my whole life
through,
Yeah I wanna do some laughing too,
So come on, come on, come on, come on and
laugh with me.
And I don't want to die without shaking up a
leg or two,
Yeah I wanna do some dancing too,
So come on, come on, come on, come on and
dance with me.
It pains me to hear people say that they don’t like this or that
song because they find it depressing. This sentiment will often be lazily directed
towards artistes like The Smiths, R.E.M. or Leonard Cohen. What they really mean is that such music demands
too much of their attention and that they can’t be bothered to listen to the
actual words. All they’re reacting to are minor chords, a slower tempo, or a lugubrious
vocal – the lyrical content could veritably be triumphalist.
I don’t know whether 'Winter Sundays'
by Norwegian band Your Headlights are On is supposed to be sad or not, although
you’d think so given the title. Whatever the sentiment, it is not depressing
but a thing of beauty, and it's where I draw my line.
[Listen to here.]
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