Discover the Loaf: October 2010

Sunday, 24 October 2010

Other stuff

Yeah Yeah Yeahs Vids

Date With The Night
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOL-lzVT5Jc
Pin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evMVTZgxyVk
Y Control (live)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yL3rze8ixo
Maps
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIIxlgcuQRU

68. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever To Tell (2003)

Initially Yeah Yeah Yeahs comfortably slotted into the swathe of NYC post-punk art groups that came following the post millennial taste for back to basics garage led by The White Stripes/Detroit scene, The Strokes and the DFA/Rapture axis. Karen O, Nick Zinner and Brian Chase began by supporting their peers, pedaling a dancefloor friendly garage rock, namechecking the likes of Jon Spencer & Girls Against Boys. With their debut album Fever To Tell however the Yeahs showed an emotional and musical depth which belied their onstage beer spilling persona, with a tribal repetitive garage rock layered with electronic squall guitar and Karen O as charismatic frontwoman either Joan Jett, Suzy Q, PJ raunchy or Siouxsie, Slits, Janis downright dangerous, 'Let's do it to each other, like a sister and a brother'. As if this wasn't enough Karen O showed a devastatingly vunerable side on third single Maps, reminiscent of Chrissie Hynde somehow, and contender for single of 2003, all together now, 'Wait, they don't love you like I love you, Wait, they don't love you like I love you, Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaps'

Wednesday, 13 October 2010

Early Britpop

Pulp We Love Life vids

Sunrise - Live at Eden Project (Me & my wife were there!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XMcAH6qd3U
Cocaine Socialism (rarely heard)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7b7DgOeMnW4
The Trees
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvkiAw0ZIw4
Bad Cover Version
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x42bep_pulp-bad-cover-version_music

Pulp influences

Saturday, 9 October 2010

69. Pulp - We Love Life (2001)

Pulp's eighth and final album was a perfect end to one of the greatest pop groups of recent years. Pulp's career from 1978-02 followed majestic conceptual peaks and troughs, from post punk obscurity to discovering house music and injecting with glam, disco and Jarvis' British kitchen sink obsessions as viewed through the opulent gauze of Scott Walker and Serge Gainsborough. Generating the first Britpop wave with Suede, Auteurs and Blur, with the classic His ' N' Hers followed by the mainstream supernova of Different Class. Stardom, cocaine, Michael Jackson, Ali G, that funny pointy dance. Then the painful delayed comedown of This Is Hardcore. Where could Pulp go next, if anywhere?
We Love Life appeared after a long gestation and is an honest, more organic sounding, open hearted and ultimately positive Pulp, whilst keeping the usual dramas, clever lyrics and relationship failures intact, this is a proper grown up pop album, that can still be enjoyed as visceral fun.
The opening Weeds is a great metaphor for the underclasses, and speaks of their resilience and the fear, fascination and hatred felt toward them (travellers, gypsys, chavs etc...) reminds me of the travellers camps when Jarvis sings 'trying to get rid of us by planting trees and shrubs, but you still come to visit us when you fancy booze and drugs'. This track stands as one of the few with the nerve to tackle immigration (Robert Wyatt's A Forest being another).
Other standouts include the teenage murder ballad 'The Night that Minnie Timperley Died', the epic story/song of strange English suburbia and rivers 'Wickerman' which reminds me of a bloke my uncle knows who dons a diving costume and lies at the bottom of river as a way to relax. Imagine the people who have passed by the river bank or on boats with no idea that a man is lying on the river bed!
Bad Cover Version provides a list of artistic disappointments including the second half of Til the Band Comes In by Scott Walker, who incidentally produced the album, and a hilarious Band Aid themed video. Roadkill is a beautifully understated ballad by Pulp standards concerning the breakup of a relationship, David Gedge style. Perhaps best of all is the double A-Side tracks Sunrise/The Trees, Trees combines themes of love, decay and environment in a way few other pop acts would ever be able to, and Sunrise epically confirms the environmental/organic undertow of the final Pulp. Pulp left a body of work that makes narrative sense and seems satisfyingly rounded (until they reform).

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