Rounding off the November trio of guests, it’s a welcome back to Fraser Maxwell for his second guest blog picking some more of his top tunes to write about. Enjoy!

First Word

Thanks to Alan for again letting me contribute to WIS while he’s away on his hols, and I look forward to hearing the songs that south-east Asia inspires when he’s back. 

I haven’t set out a specific theme in the way that Alan does, my only criteria were that the songs had to be from artists that hadn’t (directly) featured in WIS to date and that I thought would fit with his normal readership. Other than that I have just tried to come up with a varied mix that I’ve been listening to over the last couple of months and trying to be as varied as possible in the range of sounds and styles that they have.   

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I’m Not Your Dog – Baxter Dury (2020)

Any song that starts with the lyric “I’m not your fucking friend” has a bit of an edge to it, and there’s no doubt that the album it comes from, The Night Chancers, is looking at the sleazy and sordid underbelly of life. This is backed up by the video showing Dury having been stabbed on the beach in Benidorm in the early hours. Of course, Baxter has featured indirectly already in the blog, posing (at age 5) with his father Ian Dury on the album cover of New Boots And Panties in WIS 7July23. But he’s been established as an artist in his own right since 2002, trademarked by his Cockney drawl vocals and melodic tunes. I first heard him on the 2017 LP Prince of Tears, and each album has wry character studies and observation, some bleakness, and sharp observations of the well-heeled and badly behaved. I’ve seen him described as a mix of London Leonard Cohen and Serge Gainsbourg mixed with Gary Numan and Gorillaz…that’s probably not too far off the mark. If you haven’t listened to him, and like this, there’s a huge amount of unique and great music to be found.  The Night Chancers doesn’t deviate from that description all – it is my favourite album of his to date and I have been well and truly sucked in by his downbeat charisma and his deadpan humour. I know Alan is a fan too, so he may well re-appear at a later date.

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Forks and Knives (La Fete) – Beirut (2007)

Beirut is an indie band hailing from New Mexico, founded by the multi-instrumentalist musician Zach Condon.  Condon named the band after Lebanon’s capital, because of the city’s history of conflict and as a place where cultures collide, which he wanted to reflect in his music. His first album, Gulag Orkestar, was heavily influenced by Balkan folk music that Condon was first exposed to on previous visits to France. The album that this track comes from (The Flying Club Cup), is very much a return to France, with both Gallic brass and accordion featuring front and centre, and song titles that reference French cities and locations. Condon said that each song on the album was intended to evoke a different French city – tracks include Nantes and Cherbourg – and he’s cited Francophone singers Jacques Brel, Serge Gainsbourg and Yves Montand as key influences in his music for this album.  He wanted the songs on this album to be shrouded in big, glorious, over-the-top arrangements, and so started buying French horns and euphoniums, to carry the epic sounding brass parts, with added accordion and organ. It creates a really distinctive sound that I haven’t really heard matched anywhere elsewhere, and I can imagine sitting in the sun outside a French bar and having a beer while listening to this, I love it.  There’s a charming live performance filmed in a French bar with accompanying percussion from pool balls and table tennis. 

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Phoenix – Big Red Machine (2021)

Big Red Machine is an American indie folk band that began as a collaboration between musicians Aaron Dessner of The National and Justin Vernon, frontman of Bon Iver.  But the really interesting thing to me is that the band effectively work as a collective and the range of collaborators is extensive – Richard Reed Parry of Arcade Fire, Taylor Swift, Bryce Dessner and Bryan Devendorf both of The National, Phoebe Bridgers, Sharon Van Etten, Ben Howard, This Is The Kit, and Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes. This track is from their second album How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last? and the range of guests make it a really varied and interesting listen, no two songs sound the same. And while Swift and the single ‘Renegade’ got all the attention in the music press (Swift had already worked with Dessner and Vernon on her folklore album that featured away back in WIS 24Mar23), I think the track that really soars is Phoenix with Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes on lead vocals and Anais Mitchell as backing.  There’s a lovely live version here with Bon Iver not present for some reason.  A song with an interesting genesis, Vernon had the chorus melody come into his head and Dessner then sent the resulting song sketch to Pecknold who wrote the verses and pre-chorus. Later Mitchell wrote words to the chorus and the Westerlies added their magic to the instrumental before JT Bates added the drums. I believe the lyric ‘you were making my heart change shape’ is a beauty in the context of the song and, according to Dessner, “I think it’s what I always imagined Big Red Machine would sound like.” 

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The Hustle Unlimited – Lambchop (2017)

I first came across Lambchop in 2000 with their album Nixon, and in particular the song Up With People, which has been a firm favourite ever since. I’m only playlisting a different song, as that one has about ten times the plays of all their other tracks on Spotify and so there’s every chance you’ve heard it. In the late 90s, Lambchop were described by Pitchfork as ‘14 outcasts in denim and pearl buttons, standing onstage and staring at their shoes, playing the pro-social sounds of country and soul with the graceful reluctance of indie rockers too polite to beg for attention but too obstinate to shut up and go home’. However, when Nixon was released, it was immediately adored by the British music press, though remained less well known in the States. Q magazine gave it a 5 star review and Uncut made it their album of the year – it’s very much worth checking out.  Another song with a strange genesis, The Hustle appeared on their 2016 album FLOTUS, all 18 minutes of it as the album closer. The album itself was quite a break from their other albums, with a far more electronic sound, and the use of a vocoder for the vocals throughout the album. This version was reworked after the album sessions and released a year later, and is definitely closer to the more usual Lambchop sound, with the lush piano and strings, and Kurt Wagner’s warm baritone making it feel like an end-of-night tearjerker.

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September Fields – Frazey Ford (2014)

I only know of this song because of the joy of Spotify algorithms. I was playing a playlist of my own a couple of months back, and at the end, the next track that auto-played was this. I hadn’t heard of Frazey Ford before, but the tune immediately captured my attention, and it was one that quickly went on heavy rotation. Ford is a Canadian singer-songwriter known for her folk, soul, and blues influences. Born in Vancouver, she was previously the lead vocalist of the critically acclaimed folk trio The Be Good Tanyas in the early 2000s. I need to explore their music too, as her voice is really soulful and honeyed on everything that I’ve heard her sing to date. In 2010, Ford embarked on a successful solo career with the release of her debut album, Obadia and the playlisted September Fields is from the follow up Indian Ocean. The promotional video captures the song being recorded at Hi Records in Memphis, home of Al Green. It features Green’s band, the Hi Rhythm Section, including guitarist Teenie Hodges shortly before his death that year, and they add a real groove to the song and there seems to be a real joy to the recording sessions. Other Spotify quirks – more often that not (80% of the time?) when I’ve finished listening to the six tracks from Week in Sound, the song that plays next is George Harrison’s Give Me Love from week two of the blog!  I must have played it heavily at the time, who knows?.  

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Inní mér syngur vitleysingur – Sigur Rós (2008)

I’d gauge that everyone knows a Sigur Ros song whether they know it or not – Hoppipolla was the soundtrack to the BBC and Sir David Attenborough’s Planet Earth series, and it really is synonymous with that series. A striking piece of music. They’re an Icelandic ‘post-rock’ band, and their ethereal and otherworldly soundscapes match their home landscape. Formed in Reykjavik in 1994, the band’s name translates to ‘Victory Rose’ in English, combining the Icelandic word for victory with the name of one of the band members’ sister, Ros. Their trademark is a unique blend of atmospheric music, melodic crescendos, and Jónsi Birgisson’s distinct falsetto vocals, and this playlisted track ticks all those boxes.  Inní mér syngur vitleysingur (Icelandic for “Within me a lunatic sings” – the last line of the song lyric) is the second track on Sigur Rós’ fifth album, Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust. This live video shows the band playing the song at the free Náttúra (Nature) concert in Reykjavík in June 2008 (to a strangely subdued crowd!). I love the four-handed piano part, not something that I’d seen before, and the backing band seem to be having a ball. My favourite bit, though – the drummer’s headware! Björk and Sigur Rós teamed up to hold the concert to raise awareness for Icelandic nature, and the band have previously played to 130,000 folks in Iceland, an estimated third of the entire population. It really is joyous and uplifting song.   

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Last Word

So I really hope there’s something there that appeals to everyone and that it’s been a varied contribution, worthy of being on Alan’s blog. Any comments on any of the tunes, just pop them below. Back to the main man next week and I know he won’t forgive me if I don’t plug the Master Paylist – consider it done!

WeekInSoundMaster

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