Parallax Jukebox
Ten songs helping Dead Kenny forget about West Ham's wretched start to the Premiership season.
1. Cellphone's Dead - Beck
Mr Hansen plays his simcards right with this all-signal no-noise lead single from upcoming album 'The Information'.
2. Internalize - Tall Birds
Catheters spin-off make gloriously messy garage-rawk noize with a chorus that recalls 999's 'Emergency'.
3. Sea Of Trouble - Cord
If you haven't got enough cash to afford the Echo & The Bunnymen compilation, Norwich outfit Cord do a pretty smart cut-and-pastiche job with this stirring ballad. If they can build upon this, they might prove to be 2007's biggest breakthrough act and make Coldplay even more superfluous in the process.
4. A Promise - Echo and the Bunnymen
Oft-overlooked back-catalogue single that in Dead Kenny's view represents Mac the Mouth's finest vocal performance of his career.
5. Pull Shapes - The Pipettes
Their live shows were always fun, but few could have guessed these Brighton belles had an all-frills no-fills album of such pop perfection as 'We Are The Pipettes' in them. 'Pull Shapes' is the pick of the bunch, a strings-attached scorcher great enough to make geometry groovy again.
6. City - Lo-Fi Fnk
Not totally convinced by the nu-rave hype, but this cut from the Swedish duo's 'Boylife' LP throbs and shimmers enough to leave Dead Kenny's reservations alongside his parka in the cloakroom.
7. Forty Dollars - Twilight Singers
'Love don't mean a thing/but two am and a telephone ring' advises Greg Dulli on standout track from his best post-Afghan Whigs album to date.
8. Ageing Had Never Been His Friend - Love Is All
'I've left/the one/I love/in the freezer': the cryogenic game's up on sonic stormer from the Stockholm dance-punk outfit's misleadingly entitled 'Nine Times The Same Song'.
9. Cherry Lips - Archie Bronson Outfit
Yes, you're right, the third single from 'Derdang Derdang' is almost certainly about Very Rude Things Indeed. But when it's delivered with this much ferocity who's complaining?
10. Drain Cosmetics - Serena-Maneesh
The opening track from these Norwegian noizeniks' self-titled album is quite simply the most evil-sounding rock music we've heard for a long time.
Ten songs helping Dead Kenny forget about West Ham's wretched start to the Premiership season.
1. Cellphone's Dead - Beck
Mr Hansen plays his simcards right with this all-signal no-noise lead single from upcoming album 'The Information'.
2. Internalize - Tall Birds
Catheters spin-off make gloriously messy garage-rawk noize with a chorus that recalls 999's 'Emergency'.
3. Sea Of Trouble - Cord
If you haven't got enough cash to afford the Echo & The Bunnymen compilation, Norwich outfit Cord do a pretty smart cut-and-pastiche job with this stirring ballad. If they can build upon this, they might prove to be 2007's biggest breakthrough act and make Coldplay even more superfluous in the process.
4. A Promise - Echo and the Bunnymen
Oft-overlooked back-catalogue single that in Dead Kenny's view represents Mac the Mouth's finest vocal performance of his career.
5. Pull Shapes - The Pipettes
Their live shows were always fun, but few could have guessed these Brighton belles had an all-frills no-fills album of such pop perfection as 'We Are The Pipettes' in them. 'Pull Shapes' is the pick of the bunch, a strings-attached scorcher great enough to make geometry groovy again.
6. City - Lo-Fi Fnk
Not totally convinced by the nu-rave hype, but this cut from the Swedish duo's 'Boylife' LP throbs and shimmers enough to leave Dead Kenny's reservations alongside his parka in the cloakroom.
7. Forty Dollars - Twilight Singers
'Love don't mean a thing/but two am and a telephone ring' advises Greg Dulli on standout track from his best post-Afghan Whigs album to date.
8. Ageing Had Never Been His Friend - Love Is All
'I've left/the one/I love/in the freezer': the cryogenic game's up on sonic stormer from the Stockholm dance-punk outfit's misleadingly entitled 'Nine Times The Same Song'.
9. Cherry Lips - Archie Bronson Outfit
Yes, you're right, the third single from 'Derdang Derdang' is almost certainly about Very Rude Things Indeed. But when it's delivered with this much ferocity who's complaining?
10. Drain Cosmetics - Serena-Maneesh
The opening track from these Norwegian noizeniks' self-titled album is quite simply the most evil-sounding rock music we've heard for a long time.
4 Comments:
I've just taken an instant shine to 'Drain Cosmetics'. Not the most evil song I've heard for a long time - just got back from seeing Norwegian sludge metallers Noxagt...
Quite enjoyed the Catheters album Static Delusions And Stone-Still Days - wondered what had happened to them, and now I know.
Ought to invest in the Pipettes LP, really. And The Archie Bronson Outfit album (even if the track on the recent Domino sampler is nothing special). And the latest offering from The Twilight Singers (though I thought Afghan Whigs went seriously off the boil towards the end with 1965).
Drain Cosmetics definitely reminds me of something I can't quite place, possibly from a black-clad band with very thick hair from 1991. Really must hear that Love Is All album.
I seem to be out of step with most right-thinking people on the Pipettes album, because while the pop hits are decent enough I prefer the tracks which aren't sugar hit immediate but secretly seem cleverer than any of them will let on (Because It's Not Love, I Love You, A Winter's Sky). Obviously, "the Pipettes? Yeah. Met 'em" has turned out to be an effective dinner party conversation stopper.
Ben: assuming it's the same one I've got that starts with Adem, that Archie Bronson Outfit track is a very odd reworking of a ferocious garage-blues monster. Derdang Derdang is, if mildly samey, intensely fun, if you can have such a concept.
Simon: Yes, that's the one. Hadn't realised it was a reworking. But it's really not that good, is it? The sampler version, at least.
(Apologies Ken for having conversations with other readers in your comments box.)
Ben, Simon: salutations, and chatter away, as it may mask the herculean levels of inactivity here at PV Towers.
Re. The Pipettes, Dead Kenny expected the album to be the singles, a couple of other good ones, and then some filler: but there isn't a duff track on it (although the idea of reworking early single ABC by singing in a lower key is arguably the worst decision in modern history since the invasion of Iraq). They're all good tunes so I embrace them all within the World of Pop, but that might just be another example of my lack of genre awareness!
As for ABO, Simon, Dead Kenny makes you right in that their singularity of delivery and style is very much part of their appeal. The album becomes greater than the sum of its parts through sheer cumulative force of will.
As for Love Is All, would recommend the album but if you're at all nervous the record's best track (and former Parallax Jukebox selection) 'Make Out Fall Out Make Up' is released as a single on Monday, I think. Any song that starts with the lines 'records and clothes on the floor!/reminds me of the night before!' is mighty fine in Dead Kenny's Parallax View.
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