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I sat down this morning, thinking I might do a music post. I was in the mood for one but I didn't have a convenient peg to hang it on. I'd as soon just have gone with the regular grab-bag of new favorites, only I was pretty sure I hadn't stashed enough away these last couple of weeks to fill a whole post. 

I was toying with the idea of doing something about the current glut of old rockers clogging up the news, most of whom still seem convinced they have it, whatever it is and whether they do or not. That would obviously have been off the back of the frankly disturbing news that the Rolling Stones (Average age 78.) are releasing a new album. 

I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to associate myself with the unnerving tendency of former flag-wavers for youthful rebellion (cf Pete Docherty, Bobby Gillespie later in this post.) to go on and on and on and anyway there was a potential conflict of irony involving my own refusal to grow up. It would take some sensitive handling and I wasn't convinced I was up to it just then.

While I was thinking about it, I opened the folder where I keep the possibles for What I've Been Listening To Lately™. There were way more than I expected: nineteen songs by sixteen different artists, at least ten of whom I'd never featured on the blog before. 

Well, I don't think I have. Please don't test me on my own blog. You know I'll fail!

Anyway, that seemed to solve the problem so, I guess we're set. It's just going to be a good old WIBLTL after all. I'm not even going to use everything I have. It'd be too much. And I am (God forgive me.) going to open with one that's not even on the list at all, namely the first salvo from Hackney Diamonds, that Stones' album none of us thought we needed. 

I'm pretty sure we were right about that but it seems we're getting it anyway so we may as well roll over and try to enjoy it.

Angry - The Rolling Stones

Even though the first album I ever bought with my own money was by The Beatles (Abbey Road), I've been a Stones fan all my life. I still listen to Beggars Banquet, Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main Street and especially the underrated Goats Head Soup, on occasion. The last Stones album I felt the  need to buy, though, was Some Girls, which came out in 1978. When they played the Ashton Gate stadium in Bristol four years later, all my friends went to see them but I refused to go because I thought the Stones were old and past it and it would be embarassing to go see them in 1982. If I'd known they'd still be at it more than forty years later...

I'd still think I made the right decision. It would have been embarrassing - for me.  The fact that Jagger, Richards and Wood are beyond embarassment is no reason to join them in their collective delusion. And yet... Angry is half a good song, isn't it? Not the verse, which is lacklustre, but the chorus and the extended coda, where they just slip into that groove they've been doing for more than half a century and work it... I could listen to that for a while.

Shiny Happy People  - Micky Dolenz

Okay... seems like we're doing this thing after all. Micky Dolenz is - guess what? - seventy-eight years old. He may have been in what was once thought of as the least hip band of all time (The Monkees, as I'm sure I don't need to tell anyone reading this but just did anyway.) but he could teach the Stones a thing or two about growing old gracefully, that's for sure. This is a solid cover, welded to a knowing video that suggests someone who knows who he is, where he's been and where he's going. Like the video for Angry, it harks back to youth but unlike that queasy affair, it doesn't attempt to appropriate it. 

I felt slightly uncomfortable all the way through the Stones video, which I only watched in its entirety for quality control reasons before including it here. Micky's montage, on the contrary, made me smile. Always loved his voice, too. He very definitely still has it. 

This is from an upcoming EP of REM covers. I look forward to hearing the rest. I never really liked REM but I wouldn't deny they had some good tunes. It'll be nice to hear them done well by someone I enjoy listening to.

Ghosted At Home - Lol Tolhurst, Budgie and Jacknife Lee (feat. Bobby Gillespie)

OMG! Where to begin? We've jumped half a generation for a start. This bunch are in their mid-sixties. Well, Lol, Budgie and Billy are. I don't know about Jacknife Lee. I'd guess a bit younger. Also, for a while there, back in the 'nineties, Bobby made out like a bandit by sounding more like the Stones than the Stones did.

On this he sounds like a louche, looser Jagger. There are even a few Sympathy-style ooh-oohs in the background. It's shameless, which is to be expected. It also sounds much more dangerous and unhinged than anything the Stones have managed since at least Undercover of the Night, particularly when the (uncredited) bass kicks in two-thirds of the way through.

And yet... much though I enjoy it, I can't entirely dismiss the underlying sentiment behind this comment on YouTube: "I love each and every one of these guys and their respective bands, enormously — but this is dated shit. The truth is, this sound is thirty years out-of-date and each of the musicians were too old THEN to have put out this tripe." 

I wouldn't go that far but... 

These Hands aka Danny The Knife - Pregoblin (feat. Pete Doherty)

At forty-four, Pete Doherty is a babe in arms compared to everyone we've seen so far but don't kid yourself; forty-four is still old. I have no idea how old Alex Sebley and Jessica Winter, the two people who make up all of Pregoblin are, although I'd guess significantly younger. 

I listened to a couple of other Pregoblin tunes but they didn't quite have the effortless swagger of this, which sits squarely in a tradition of boho ragamuffin balladry that runs unbroken back at least to the 1960s and quite possibly the 1560s.

How much of it is down to Pete Doherty? I wouldn't like to say. There are some Fat White Family associations in there somewhere, too, and they're out of the same mould. Pete's so steeped in that sound, though, it's likely to seep into anything he touches. And stain it. 

I don't complain. It's a good stain, plum-colored and rich, like spilled red wine on threadbare velvet.

Nikki Sudden was the vagabond king of this sort of thing but Pete makes a fair crown prince. Luckily, it also happens to be a sound and a look that ages well. He should still be able to swing it when he's in his sixties, always assuming he gets there, which is a big "if". I hope he does and I hope I'm still around to hear him. I think he's getting better as he grows older.

Motorbike - Poppy

Okay, I know this looks like a sudden swerve but bear with me. What's that chorus? "Girl on a Motorbike". I think the video makes it clear Poppy's channelling Mick Jagger's one-time paramour, Marianne Faithful, in the sixties' cult classic movie of the same name aka Naked Under Leather, which is also, not at all co-incidentally, the title of one of the best songs I ever wrote. It was about the Stones. I said I was a fan.

get him back! - Olivia Rodrigo

I was going to go with Brian Eno by Work Wife next just because Eno is another old "rocker" (Yeah, I bet he'd just love that...) but it's super-slow and dreamy and it fucks up the flow so let's ditch the geezers and carry on rocking with our girl Olivia. Gods, but she's good. 

In the interests of having something to tell people when they ask me want I want for my birthday, I have not yet heard, much less bought, Olivia Rodrigo's sophomore album, GUTS. This is the kind of selfless self-restraint I hope to be karmically rewarded for in the next life.

K2 - Melenas

I saw this lot described as the Spanish Stereolab. It's not a responsibility I'd want to carry but they seem to be up to it. Melenas hail from Pamplona, by the way. It's a lovely city. Kind of wish I was there right now. 

Spain is one of the hothouses of indie these days. So much of the good stuff I hear comes from there. Like this...

Se Me Ha Muerto Una Flor - Lisasinson

The ever-reliable Lisasinson. That opening bass riff is so familiar. Is it The Damned?

There are a couple more I definitely want to fit in today so I think we'd better have them now and screw the flow. Can't expect anyone to keep patience with more than a dozen new songs in a single post. In the words of every tedious, self-satisfied late night radio DJ, then, let's slow things down...

Engine - Slaughter Beach, Dog

Remember what I was saying about liking my songs short? This is seven seconds short of nine minutes and it couldn't be any less if it tried. I'd been meaning to listen to Slaughter Beach, Dog for a while, just for the name, but nothing had triggered me to click through until this came up in Stereogum's ever-reliable 5 Best Songs of the Week. 

It gets a couple of great paragraphs by "Chris", who I presume is Chris deVille, but the part that got me to listen was "The track is not particularly catchy or bombastic, either. But it casts its spell instantly and carries you along in its current to the end." Music journalism tends towards the bombastic. Understatement is rare. It gets your attention. So does the song, which drifts like mist over firm ground, ethereal and solid all at once.

I used the studio version because the dynamics are perfect and I think the song paints its own pictures in the mind but if you want to see moving images while you listen, there's a luxuriant live take here.

Wedding Singer - Modern Baseball

Jake Ewald, who is Slaughter Beach, Dog, used to be the lead singer for Modern Baseball. They're another act whose name I keep skipping past, thinking I'll get to them one day but not today. Well, I got to them and they're great. Were great. They split up a while back.

The more midwestern emo I hear, the more I want to hear. Of course, what qualifies as midwestern emo is another matter. Not Modern Baseball, apparently. Don't you love genre wars?

No Caffeine - Marika Hackman

I can always use a new Jane Weaver. Or a new Snowpony, even better. Not nearly enough people plowing this furrow. This video gets an "Explicit" warning on YouTube for reasons that escape me. Is there something about nosebleeds I'm missing? 

Sugar - Cherry Glazerr

Wow, they've changed! This fits right next to Maria Hackman and all the fuzzed up fucked up drone tone nineties psyche I like. If this wasn't called "Sugar", would I be hearing Sneaker Pimps? Yep, I think I would.

So, this is going long. Again. Oh hell, oh well...

Swallow - Girlpuppy

Another Jarret Wolfson tip. I purged my YouTube subscriptions last week. Dropped a couple of really big music channels because I finally realised I never listened to them because they never link to video or live performance. I mean, who just wants to listen to the song? That's so twentieth century.

And finally... oh no, wait... I said I was going to get to Brian Eno by Work Wife, didn't I? 

Brian Eno - Work Wife

And there it is. Starts soft but really builds. Apparently American Football are an influence. They're midwestern emo... I think. This certainly isn't. Well, they're from Brooklyn, for a start...

And so we come to the end. Nearly got everyone in. Didn't think I'd do it. Going to have to drop a couple - Sorry, Prince Daddy & The Hyena (That's one band.). Sorry Lifeguard. See, if we hadn't had all those old geezers at the start, there'd have been room for the young 'uns. Then again, that's a Jam cover I just linked...

Just room for one more so let's make it a good one.

Sulky Baby - yeule

Do you ever feel like the nineties never ended? Nat Cmiel aka yeule there, tunneling the same temporal wormhole as the last four. I swear I didn't plan it that way. It's a talent.

I was actually going to give you Sofstscars, the title track from yeule's new album, but it doesn't have a video and you heard what I said before. Don't fret. We'll be hearing from her again. And again, I'm pretty sure.

Not now, though. I'm done for today. Have a great weekend!