Saturday evening after work. Clocks go forward tonight. Not going to be writing any long, thoughtful posts, that's for sure. I was planning on holding the weird cat suit post back for exactly this reason but I was short of ideas yesterday too. So.
How about let's just have some songs I heard this week that I like? Not very inspired but every day can't be ice cream. I had an ice cream on Wednesday, as it happens. First of the year, I think. It was a Magnum Classic. We went to the seaside because of the current mini-heat wave. Well, warm wave, I guess. Seventeen celsius is pleasant, not hot. I caught the sun, though.
Enough chat. Let's have a tune.
Levitation - Let's Eat Grandma
Fourth single off the upcoming album which, as regular readers won't remember, I have on pre-order. It's been put back to the end of April due to a vinyl shortage, something I find a tad irksome since I've ordered the CD and as regular readers also won't remember I have small patience with the current fad for vinyl.
Four singles is a lot to release from an album that hasn't come out yet. It's a lot to release from an album at all although I know it's not unusual. I still don't really understand what "singles" are in the current market, anyway. Sometimes I think it's just a marketing term now.
Of the four, I thought this was the weakest on first hearing but the video is very strong and now I've heard it a few times so is the song. Still sounds more of an album track than a single to me but then maybe my ideas of what a single is are mired in the muck of the past.
Milk Teeth - Prima Queen
Of all the bands I mentioned in this post the one I've listened to the most by far since then is Prima Queen. There isn't all that much so it's mostly been about four songs on a loop. Their Bandcamp only has four tracks. I wish they'd make a full album. I'd pre-order that.
Canned Air - The Klittens
This kept cropping up on YouTube's suggestions and in the end I cracked and clicked. I ended up watching it a few times. It has that nihilistic trudge that does things to me. If you stick with it resolves, too, which is always very satisfying.
I watched a couple of their others and I fear they may be situationists. Either that or drama majors. They're definitely Dutch.
Last Year's Model Club - The Let Go
Very strange video. I get the point but the narrative's a little hard to untangle. I do like to see a video set in a launderette, though. I've always had a thing for launderettes. One of the very first songs I ever wrote was called "At the Laundromat". The chorus, such as it was, claimed "We do strange things there" although I never specified what they were. We never played it live, as far as I recall. I'm not entirely convinced we even rehearsed it. No recording exists. Shame, really.
Baby - Charli XCX
From the just-released album Crash, which seems to be somewhat controversial, one way and another. It's apparently a return to her pop roots but also a contractual obligation album, the fifth and final one under a contract she signed when she was sixteen. Is that even legal? I don't know, I can't keep up with this stuff.
Whatever, it's her first UK #1 album so I imagine both she and the record company are happy. As one of the Johnny-come-lately new "fans of her more outré work" with the likes of Sophie and 100 Gecs, I was indeed "underwhelmed by Crash's early singles" although only by comparison to the wilder hyperpop stuff. They're still great pop songs and the reviews have been stellar. The more I hear them, though, the better they sound, which is how all great pop music should work. Suck on that, fairweather fans!
Ex Stasi Spy - Luke Haines
Someone you can rely on never to surprise you with an unwanted change of direction. Okay, maybe a little unfair. Black Box Recorder was a departure. I've been listening to Luke since The Auteurs were a Band To Watch in the early '90s, though, and pretty much every record he's made sounds like this. Catchy, though, isn't it?
Love Story - Black Midi
And finally, as if to prove that you absolutely need to listen to things before passing judgment, as if you didn't already know that, here come a band I previously had very little time for covering a song I love and it's both nothing remotely like I could have imagined it would be and also very fine indeed. Black Midi, from what I know of them, which isn't much, are an experimental band with distinct math rock tendencies. Who would have thought they'd cover a Taylor Swift song and make it sound, as one YT commenter aptly puts it, " like 14 year old Bruce Springsteen's cover."
And that will do for now. Gives me an hour to do my Guild Wars 2 dailies before bed. What I'm going to fill this space with tomorrow I have no idea.
I'll think of something.
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