Now, Today, Tomorrow, and Always: 4/13 show

Music notes for this week:

Brigitte Fontaine is a name I recognized from the music segment of NPR's The World — she'd put out a new album, and it was very avant garde and interesting, and I thought about buying it. I never did. But this morning I found an album of hers from 1971 in the WLUW collection, and so I pulled it out and played something from it. Avante garde and interesting it was, indeed.

The London Suede (In London, they are just called "Suede".) This song and this album was one of many I discovered in 1999 while we were staying in Paris. I discovered Oui FM, a rock radio station in Paris (a relative rarity in France) that had a great playlist. There was a lot of Brit Pop, and a lot of French rock. I had to listen very hard to catch the names of the artists. Through that station, I discovered The London Suede, Supergrass, Travis, Manu Chao, Sargent Garcia, and Les Innocents (all of which I bought), as well as Chris Cornell and Skunk Anansie (which I did not). (Chris Cornell is in fact American — the former lead singer the very successful band Soundgarden, out of Seattle. I never heard his solo work at all, stateside.) For years I continued to listen to Oui FM over the internet, though I haven't done so nearly as much since discovering WLUW. In any event, "Everything Will Flow" is a very evocative song for me. I feel like I'm sitting in that tiny, ridiculous apartment, listening to the boombox I bought in Portugal eating maybe a lemon tart or some stinky cheese. Ah, that was a very good month. (Read about our 2½-month Europe trip here)

CocoRosie is a band made up of a pair of sisters... I will spare you the rehash of the odd details of their lives, except to say that they reunited in Paris after not having seen each other for 10 years, and then began making music. It's hard to imagine that two sisters who had been more or less estranged could come together to produce work this idiosyndratic. In order to create work that is this strange (even for independent music), you need people who are profoundly in tune with each other — who bring the same goals and desires to their music. I've heard a few songs from their earlier albums; I've always wanted to explore them further.

Bobby Conn is a local artist who make funk and glam music and tries to create a sort of mythos around himself. (For example, I seem to recall his web site proudly touted an earlier conviction for telephone fraud.) The piece I played is an extremely entertaining 1½-minute spoken word item. I REALLY enjoyed playing it. It's particularly fun over headphones, because the monologue alternates channels.

Tracey Thorn I reviewed this CD quickly and got it into the station so it could be possibly put into rotation. It didn't go ito rotation, though, it just went into the catalogue — because I gave it a lackluster review. It grew on me as I listened to it, and I ended up liking it pretty well, but frankly, I expected more. I have one Everything But the Girl album (which does not make me an expert); by comparison, Thorn's solo work is just a bit uneven. Still, I do like some of it, especially the song I played today. This song sounds to me a lot like the 80's song "Let the Music Play" by Shannon. I seem to recall reading somewhere that it had made it onto the in-store playlist at the Gap. I'm not sure how I feel about that. These chain stores are certainly corporate and soulless, but the music they have put together for in-store play is generally better than the music you hear on most radio stations. I wonder why that is?


*: new stuff
(r): requests

artist	song	album	label
The Smiths	Shoplifters of the World Unite	Singles	Reprise
The Cells	Grocery Store	Self-Released EP	Self-released thecells.net
*Cornelius	Wataridori	Sensuous	Everloving
*Joakim	I Wish You Were Gone	Monsters and Silly Songs	!K7
Alison Moyet	Whispering Your Name	Essex	Columbia
Brigitte Fontaine et Areki avec Art Ensemble of Chicago	L'été l'été	Comme à la radio	Saravah
*Air	Photograph	Pocket Symphony	Astralwerks
The London Suede	Everything Will Flow	Headmusic	nude/Columbia
The Scotland Yard Gospel Choir	Would You Still Love Me If I Were in a Knife Fight	I Bet You Say That to All the Boys	Fashion Brigade
*Jarvis Cocker	Fat Children	The Jarvis Cocker Record	Rough Trade
The Gossip	Holy Water	Standing in the Way of Control	Kill Rock Stars
*Tinariwen	Imidiwan Winakalin	Aman Iman: Water is Life	World Willage
Grace Jones	Living My Life	Private Life: The Compass Point Sessions	Island
Martha and the Muffins	You Sold the Cottage	This Is the Ice Age	Dindisc/EMI/Virgin
The Clash	Lost in the Supermarket	London Calling	Epic
Wanda Jackson	Fujiyama Mama	Vintage Collection	Epic
*CocoRosie	Rainbowarriors	The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn	Touch and Go
*TV on the Radio	Province	Live at Amoeba Music	Interscope
The Folk Implosion	One Part Lullaby	One Part Lullaby	Interscope
*Patrick Wolf	The Stars	The Magic Position	Tomlab
Bobby Conn	Punch the Sky!	King for a Day	Thrill Jockey
*Tracey Thorn	It's All True	Out of the Woods	Astralwerks
The Speedies	You Need Pop	Yellow Pills: Prefill	Numero Group
LCD Soundsystem	Time to Get Away	Sound of Silver	DFA/Capitol
The Willowz	Get Down	The Willowz	Posh Boy
Zerostars	Like Young Lovers Do	The Good Can't Escape	Self-released zerostars.com
*The Rosebuds	When the Lights Went Down	Night of the Furies	Merge
John Vanderslice	When It Hits My Blood	Cellar Door	Barsuk

Labels: music, playlists

posted by Tony at 9:27 PM