Things You Can't Do On A Friday

This time last Friday, I was mithering about what a trial it was, having to choose tunes from a great pile that'd built up since last time I got around to doing a music post, when Redbeard made the eminently sensible suggestion in the comments that I just pick a day and stick to it. He also suggested that day be Friday. 

Solid idea though it is, I'm not going to follow through with it, for two reasons:

1) I won't always have enough new songs I want to post every Friday

2) I often do a music post just because I'm in the mood to play some music. Loudly.

That said, it's Friday and here we are, so I'm clearly not not taking his advice, either. 

I can't say this is strictly a ""What I've Been Listening To Lately"" post because most of these I'd only heard once before I started writing but I have heard all of them at least twice now. More to the point, it was this week that I heard them, so I'm saying that counts double. My blog, my rules.

Most importantly of all, it puts me on track for the year. After yesterday's post, I'm sensing some kind of theme...

Starting and Staring - Gustaf

Gustaf call themselves a "No-Wave" band or so I hear. They seem a bit too tuneful and a lot too cheerful for that. I mean to say, just look past the faux-anger of the singer and they all look like they're having a great time, smiling and bopping along. Catch Lydia Lunch doing that!

I listened to some of their set for Audiotree and they really remind me of a local band I used to go see live every chance I got, back when I was about eighteen or nineteen - The Glaxo Babies. It's not like we need any more young bands pumping out late 70s post-punk but since we're going to get them anyway, we can only wish they're all as clean and sharp and fun as this lot. I'm keeping my eye on them.

Tarkovski - Bodega

This also reminds me of another local band I used to go see a lot in the 1980s and early '90s - The Blue Aeroplanes. Especially that bit where the guy in the hat chants rhythmically (Around the 3.20 mark.) which brings to mind Gerard Langley's staccato bark. The video also looks exactly like something that would have flashed up briefly on SnubTV around 1989.

There's nothing new in the world any more, is there?

J Christ - Lil Nas X

Okay, maybe there is... I'm pretty sure we never had anything quite like Lil Nas X in the nineteen-eighties. 

What is going on in that video, anyway? Is he Jesus or is he Noah? Why is there a dinosaur trotting towards the Ark? Why does Satan have the same symbol on his trainers as the one on the flag Nas runs up the flagpole at the end? Do you think he's trying to tell us something?

 

I Want You Forever - Jeymes Samuel x D'Angelo x Jay Z

While we're on the subject of religion... This gorgeous, close on ten-minute slab of 1970s style funk is from a movie called The Book of Clarence, the plot of which, according to Wikipedia, goes something like this: "A struggling down-on-his-luck man named Clarence living in A.D. 33 Jerusalem looks to capitalize on the rise of Jesus Christ by claiming to be a new Messiah sent by God, in an attempt to free himself of debt and start a life of glory for himself." 

It's a comedy that seems to be both parodying a style of movie no-one makes or watches any more , while making points about the way the New Testament has been whitewashed over the past couple of millennia. I don't think you need to know or care much about any of that to lose yourself in the music. Screw biblical epics. That`s an epic groove.

I Can't Ride A Bike - Phoebe Green

And now the first in a diptych of songs about things people can't do. It's a wide open field. I'm surprised there aren't more.

Since almost everything we`ve heard so far sounds almost exactly like something else I'll just name-drop Camera Obscura yet again and move on...

You Look Like You Can't Swim - Matilda Mann

Seems like an oddly specific observation, doesn't it? Can you really tell, just by looking at someone? I took the trouble to read the full lyric and I'm still not clear on the implications of the title but who cares? The melody's a drifting, dreamy delight and that's what matters. 

 

I Saw Jon Hamm At The Beach - Loose Buttons

Just goes to prove you can write a song about anything. I wonder if he looked like he could swim? 

Someone at one of the music zines, which is where I came across this, thought it sounded a little like Alex Turner, which was why I clicked. It really, really doesn't, does it? The Beatles, maybe? E.L.O?  I can't stick E.L.O. though so I hope it's not them.

And that brings me entirely up to date - except for all the stuff I moved into another folder and conveniently forgot about.

Let's try to keep it that way, OK?