Now Placebo aren’t a band I have much cause to listen to, and “Pure Morning” was the song at which I thought “Are this lot taking the piss, or are they actually serious?”. The answer being, a bit of both, but as time went on it became far more of the latter than the former. Squeaky-voiced annoyance-bot Brian Molko was amusing in small doses (the whole thing about getting London journalists thinking he might be a laydee, and being successful in some cases, was definitely quite a ripping yarn), but after a while it all got a bit tedious. “A friend with breasts and all the rest” indeed. Plus, I had the misfortune of seeing them live in Zurich some years back, and this counts as the second worst gig I can remember.

But I started this blog to be nice about bands, not to slag them off. Lots of people like Placebo, and who am I to criticise their tastes? On that note I decided to listen to a couple of tunes from their debut, which I’d loved when it came out, in those heady heady mid-’90′s days of Britpop and Camden and spending my days driving round the country to visit pubs to tell them what music to play (seriously). Guess what, dear reader? Yep, some of their early stuff is good. Not superb, not marvellous, but still, pretty good.

“36 Degrees” sounds like The Undertones gone crazy with PCP and Motorhead, though the chorus of “Someone tried to do me ache” is the most clumsy thing I’ve heard for many a year:

“Nancy Boy” takes their Therapy? and Smashing Pumpkins love to new heights, and both “Bruise Pristine” and “Come Home” thunder around like a Velociraptor that’s been told that no, it can’t wear that ripped shirt to Granny’s birthday party, and what have you done to your hair, tidy yourself up, lad, before running back upstairs to its bedroom to sulk a bit more.

Yep, the whole I’ve-done-drugs-and-felt-a-girls-naughty-bits-and-now-I’m-sad schtick does wear somewhat thin over the course of an album, but this is a band that got it completely right the first time round and then it was all downhill (apart from “Brick Shithouse”, of course). The energy, the superb drumming, the sheer velocity of these songs keeps them from sounding that dated. They definitely sound better than most other songs of their era, I’ll say that for nothing. Go on, go and listen to some Verve songs. Quelle drear.

So let’s raise a glass filled with absinthe to little Brian Molko and his chums, for making a record which sounds suprisingly good many years later, then let’s go and do some drugs, pick up some questionable ladies-who-may-be-men, have our hearts broken, get all moany, sing loudly about being moany, then do some speed. Bonzer! Isn’t being a teenager great?

(Note: I would happily post one of these songs, but I noticed on Hype Machine that anyone who has posted them before hasn’t got them up any more. This is normally a sign of a very heavy-handed record label or publisher, and frankly, I’ve had enough of that shit before. So here’s “Pure Morning”, even though it’s not the song I like. C’est la new world of the Internet. If only Placebo would use Soundcloud, eh, lads?)

MP3: Pure Morning by Placebo

Placebo by Placebo (It’s The One To Get)

Sounding like The Besnard Lakes after a night on Mogadon listening to Spaceman 3, this is a marvellously odd piece of acid-tinged narcotic wooziness, featuring a two minute krautrock intro followed by some undecipherable lyrics, before coming to a rather unexpected halt. Over this all is the a buzzy hum that feels like the kind of sound that valves make to keep themselves warm. All in all, I’ve become inordinately fond of it.

Plus, the band, which pretty much consists of Phil Elverum and a couple of folks helping out here and there, has possibly the best band website I have seen in years. Go on, go and have a look now. Brilliant design, a marvellous photoshopped image of a P.W. Elverum & Sun store, and all the lovely photos you can shake a stick at. This kind of site, with lots of things to buy, nice photos, lovely posters to buy, and even a $60 photo book, make me think that there’s life in the record industry yet, that there’s a way to be a proper Indie when you’ve got talent.

The album from which this stems is “Clear Moon”, and it’s released on May 22nd. I’d pre-order it if I were you. Going by this, it’s going to be marvellous.

Note: At time of writing this song has 48 “Likes” on Hype Machine. What the hell is wrong with everyone? Come on, this deserves more than that.

It was the first of those options which nearly led me to zoom straight through Grimes. I hadn’t actually heard any of her music, but what I’d picked up was that she was going to be some tedious electro-pop act, like Florence and the Whatsit, but thankfully I gave her a go. Thankfully because I had one of those increasingly rare moments of hearing something new on Jools Holland that I rather liked.

Yes, “Genesis” does sound alarmingly like a very good Orbital record from 1993, all melancholy euphoria and a couple of synth sounds that should have been abandoned in the factory, but her beautiful, yearning voice overlain onto those interlocking melodies and whatnot made me go all funny. Which is a good thing, clearly.

Once I get over this bout of tinnitus¹ and start listening to music on my daily commute again, her album “Visions” will be top of my list. Honest it will.

MP3: Genesis by Grimes

¹ Seriously. This explains, to a large extent, the total absence of any updates around here. Difficult to write about music when you’re not listening to any. I am off to see Russian Circles on Monday though, which is a kill-or-cure thing, I guess.

Buy “Visions” by Grimes (CD/MP3)

For they are one of the Great Lost Bands of the 90’s/00’s. I’ll never understand why they didn’t make it big (or at least bigger); they made music quite unlike any of their peers, mixing weird old analogue synths with fuzzed guitars, with the sweetest tunes you can imagine, sung by a man with the resigned air of a fellow who’s just seen his girlfriend run off with a snowboard instructor, singing tales of broken robots, miners on a distant planet viewing their loved ones but unable to talk to them, the perils of doing science, paeans to the outdoor life and how cities slowly kill you, and that’s just off one album. The songs were wistful, funny, achingly sad, thoughtful, whimsical, wry and pointed. They felt utterly human, even when singing about how their robot had died.

Unlike 99.999% of their contemporaries, they were about modern life, about suburbia, about dull jobs, about sci-fi, about skating, about cats, about anything that Jason Lytle was curious about. I’ve missed them, and seeing him play solo back in 2010 was a highlight of my gigging career.

I can only hope they play some shows in London.

AM180:

Crystal Lake:

Hewlett’s Daughter:

El Caminos In The West:

Buy stuff from Grandaddy’s Amazon Store.

But every time I hear his name I can’t help but think of this:

Ah, those amateurish TOTP staff. I do miss that. Miss Dexy’s too, a little, for they are one of those bands that liked being just a bit different. RIP, Jocky.

Buy The Excellent “Let’s Make This Precious: the Best of Dexys Midnight Runners”

MP3: Jackie Wilson Said by Dexy’s Midnight Runners

The other site that’s taken a rather more serious hiatus is the fantastic Scarlet Mist. Why fantastic? Because the site was an easy, quick and painless way to sell tickets at face value to other music fans, rather than dealing with horrendous corporate rip-off merchants like Viagogo, TicketShyster and the like, or worse, dealing with touts outside the venue (“Nah mate, a fiver all it’s worth”). Back in September last year, they had to close their doors due to being targeted by criminals and have since reopened their doors with a new security model and a whizzy new messaging interface, and a new concept of finding likeminded people to go to gigs with.

Now I’m not too sure about that last one, but then I am a miserable old curmudgeon who finds being alone with 2000 other people once every few months a joyful experience (and weirdly I’ve met some nice folk at gigs when on my own, like the lot at Mastodon who were arguing whether they were Prog or not). Still, I’m sure some people will enjoy this kind of thing and who am I to complain?

In any case, it’s marvellous having Scarlet Mist back. I love it. Please, please use it when you’ve got a spare or when you just can’t face buying from a tout. There’s tickets for sale for all sorts of gigs now, all at face value, and every single person I have met whilst buying and selling has been an absolute delight. This is the truth.

¹ I’m safely Atheist now, don’t you worry.

Oh put that flower down, you're 32 for Christ's sake

M. Ward – Primitive Girl (Single Version) by MergeRecords

Another track has popped out today, called “Primitive Girl”, and I can safely say he’s not returning to the acoustics round the campfire feel of Duet For Guitars #2. I would say this is a disappointment, but after playing this a few times, I’m quite enjoying, so I’ll just have to wait and see what the whole record is like before making a knee-jerk reaction.

¹ I’m assuming this is not a reference to Fallout 3, though I’d have to be impressed if it was. I am a geek.

Buy Stuff From Amazon’s M Ward Store

Happy Valentines day.

MP3: A Song For The Lovers by Richard Ashcroft

Buy Richard Ashcroft (And The Verve) Stuff Here. I recommend “History”

For those of you only used to the The Trees! The Flowers! Wibbly Wobbly Woo! version of Cocteau Twins, have a listen to “Wax And Wane” below. Yes, the basic ingredients are there but in a strange, twisted form. You can just tell this is a band that needed to make music, but making it was tough, and they were taking in whatever musical influences that could reach Grangemouth (The Cure, PiL, Joy Division) and churning them into something utterly unique.

And the thing about Garlands is that the bloody thing is 30 this year. Bella Union’s Twitter feed (@bellaunion – a good follow, even if they are Sp*rs fans) mentioned it earlier today, Liz Fraser’s mentioned briefly in Word magazine this month, and my brother keeps hassling me to listen to a YouTube clip of them in Brixton, so now’s a good a time to talk about them as any, frankly.

From this start they’d go on to make Peppermint Pig, something different again, and then songs like Sugar Hiccup would be the first rushing steps toward the glorious run of form from Treasure to Heaven Or Las Vegas, a seven year purple patch that few bands before or since could match. Bassist Will Heggie departed not long after the release of Garlands, forming a band called Lowlife⁴, and his dark and doomy and surprisingly innovative bass was replaced by the equally innovative, but somewhat less dark and doomy playing of Simon Raymonde. Garlands wasn’t the first of their records I heard (that would be, I think, something off Head Over Heels) but it was one of the first CDs I bought, and whilst I’ve pretty much ignored it for, ooh, 20 years, there’s nothing quite like a big birthday like this to make you look back and evaluate the start of a stunning band, and band who I have lived with for nearly 30 years now. Thirty bloody years old, eh? Don’t they grow up fast?

MP3: Wax And Wane by Cocteau Twins

¹ Here’s a test for you. Have you ever met anyone who didn’t like Cocteau Twins and wasn’t a cloth-eared, blithering baboon? Nope? Me neither.

² Which, it may surprise you to note, were indeed only apparently nonsense; they were, by and large, proper lyrics, even if their meaning was somewhat opaque.

³ Go to Google now and type in “sonic cathedrals of sound”. See? If I can ever claim to have done anything in this world, because it certainly hasn’t been spreading joy and fucking happiness, it’s to get to the top of Google page rankings for something obscure, that will make at least two other people on this planet smile wryly and think “What a bloody fool”.

⁴ Who I’ll, one day, write about.

Buy “Garlands” Here