'06 AKA the music post

All the links in the following post got to videos. I've tried to link to live performances where possible. If you enjoy some of the new bands I encourage you to join Pandora (if you don't live in the US simply enter 90210 as the zip code) and discover even more!

Before I became a massive film fan, my biggest passion was music. At school I was pretty much just into British indie. My school wasn't exactly awash with people going out and discovering unknown bands so we pretty much followed what Jo Whiley and Steve Lamaq offered up for us: so we went through Blur, Oasis, the Manic Street Preachers, Stereophonics, Garbage and the album that everyone born from 1978-1984 seems to have been issued with: Alanis Morisette - Jagged Little Pill. In fact the more adventurous of us were fans of Radiohead and the real music fans were the ones who tracked down all the Oasis B-sides...

The fantastic thing about university was that I was suddenly thrown into the mix with people from all over the country, and indeed, the world. This brought a whole new selection of music that I'd never considered. My next door neighbour for example was also a massive Radiohead fan and gave me a tape with a load of b-sides. He broadened my taste in rock by introducing me to bands such as Faith No More, Limp Bizkit, The Lemonheads and rock outfits like Soulfly and Orgy. Then my friend on the adjacent landing introduced me to Moby. At the time Play had been out for over a year and had done nothing in the charts so when a group of us went to see him live it was before he hit the big time and the gig was in the wonderfully intimate venue of Newcastle student union. Within weeks he was playing Wembley. Also that year I discovered Muse and, with some advice from a friend from home, Coldplay and Doves. In the second year I was finally introduced to Pink Floyd who I'd never have got into otherwise. Honestly, I think most people get into these old bands through their parents but mine don't seem to like modern music so I've had to do all the leg (or ear) work myself. The third year brought about the discovery of Ben Folds Five and Lemonjelly.


Moby with Feeling So Real at Glastonbury 2000

It's along time since these discoveries and so many "next big thing" bands have dropped away. My friend told me to look through an old copy of Select magazine from my first year and see the bands that had vanished. Sure enough whatever happened to: Travis (ok they have a new album due soon), JJ72, Feeder, Gomez, Nine Inch Nails, Embrace and Supergrass?

I've written before about the power of the internet and how it's shrinking the world. With sites like Youtube and Pandora it's very easy to find new music. 2006 for me was the year of the foreign band. Being English it's easy and a bit arrogant to assume that the only music that's worth listening to is in English. However it's pretty liberating to realise the most countries have their own music scene. Right at the start of the year we were exposed to Norweigan music as an acoustic session kicked off at the bar we happened to be in in Oslo one night. I got into "Scando-rock" and now own albums by Poor Rich Ones (Norway), Kent (Sweden) and Sigur Ros (Iceland) - click the links for some videos.


Kent and Den döda vinkeln (the dead angle)

Given I was in Japan for 2 weeks I was a bit disappointed with how little Jpop I actually heard. In fact the only songs I heard were the 2 from the film Nana - and that was on the flight over. All was not lost however as I was bitten by the bug as soon as I imported the DS game Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan. The whole game is based around 15 Jpop songs from the last 20 years or so; from some I'd heard before (The Blue Hearts and L'arc en Ciel) to the kitsch girl group with a constant revolving door of members: Morning Musume (warning: this link leads to very cheesy Jpop) and reliable indie groups B'z and the Yellow Monkey. A combination of Pandora and Youtube led me to pick up several albums - a couple by L'arc en Ciel and a couple by Yaida Hitomi who really puts me in mind of a cross between Natalie Imbruglia (in that her songs are very catchy and a cut above generic pop and she has a very capable backing band), Alanis Morisette (similar voice) and Garbage (the backing band, Diamond Head, are all studio producers).


Yaiko and the amazing Over the Distance

I'm still trying to track down some B'z and Yellow Monkey albums and I'd love to get hold of some X Japan. X Japan are the band that started the whole visual kei movement in Japan and are sort of a cross between Megadeath, Guns n' Roses and the Scorpions. They vary between speed rock, power ballads and classical-esque songs and were huge influences on a wide range of western artists.


X Japan with the power ballad Endless Rain.

As I've mentioned (again and again) the soundtracks to various Zach Braff productions (Garden State and Scrubs) have been an invaluable source of new music inspiration. So far I've discovered Colin Hay, Imogen Heap and Frou Frou, Josh Radin, The Shins, The Postal Service, Rhett Miller and Cary Brothers. Late 2006 brought another Braff-created OST for the film The Last Kiss. Once again it features a cross of well known bands (Snow Patrol, Coldplay, Turin Breaks and Aimee Mann) and less known artists (Josh Radin, Athlete, Rachel Yamagata and Remy Zero). Its very much a stripped back album and Chocolate by Snow Patrol is about as rocky as it gets. However, there are some amazing songs such as Radin's duet with Schuyler Fisk Paperweight and Ray LaMontagne's Hold You In My Arms.


Josh Radin and Schuyler Fisk duet on Paperweight - the most beautiful song I've heard in ages.

So, since getting into music in the mid 90s, I just needed to get to university to develop an ear for music beyond indie. My 1st year roommate told me "When I met you you were indie-boy." Now my tastes have broadened to nearly all extremes. At the moment I'm very fond of acoustic singer songwriters such as Colin Hay and Josh Radin, but at the same time I love rock bands such as Black Stone Cherry and Muse. From the samples of Lemonjelly and the Go! Team to the urgency of the nu-metal/hip hop Jay-Z/Linkin Park crossover Collision Course. I can even just about take jazz and country music now too.


LemonJelly with The Staunton Lick


Linkin Park vs Jay-Z with Jigga What/Faint

It seems weird, but modern indie seems to have gone too mainstream. Bands like The Kaiserchiefs, Snow Patrol and The Killers are prime Radio 1 fodder. The weird thing is they are very middle of the road. Snow Patrol's last album Final Straw is very good up to about track 8, but it just keeps going and the good momentum it built up is lost and whenever I've seen them playing, the singer always seems heavily out of tune which doesn't help. The Killers too had a great 7 or 8 songs on their first album, but the rest of it along with the few songs I've heard off Sam's Town just don't appeal. Even old favourites such as Weezer are putting out very iffy albums - I honestly can't remember the last time I listened to the 2nd half of Make Believe. It seems like a lot of bands have forgotten how to make an album and instead just bundle a load of songs together on a CD.

The best thing happening in indie at the moment is Bloc Party. I got into them late last year (about 18 months late). When I first heard them I didn't like it but there was something about it that kept me coming back for another listen.


Bloc Party's tv debut with Helicopter

Muse are the other big British band of the moment. I was actually a bit disappointed with Absolution - there were some great songs like Time Is Running Out and Hysteria but there were a lot of forgettable songs. I got my first taste of 2006's Black Holes and Revelations in my ryokan room in Tokyo via the music video for Supermassive Black Hole. The sound was so different to anything they'd done before and was skirting into Prince territory - no bad thing. When the album came out a lot of people were disappointed, myself included. Sure tracks such as Knights of Cydonia were instant classics but Supermassive... was the only song with a new sound, Soldier's Poem completely broke the flow of the album and there weren't any songs that jumped out at you in the way something like Cave or Plug-in Baby did. However, over time the album really grew on me and it's down to the subtleties in the tracks. Take a song like Map Of The Problematique: it's the same 4 chords all the way through but little things like the step-filter on the introduction and the background guitar lines really make the track stand out.


Map of the Problematique by Muse

Perhaps drifting a bit from indie are Doves who are quite happy to ignore genres and just release their songs. Their albums drift between indie and chill-out with ease and I'm always looking forward to what they will produce next.


Doves on Jools Holland with Pounding

I don't know what bands and artists are going to attract my attention next. Thanks to the web the chances are they may not even have been heard of in this country. For example, The Fray are just launching their album over here, but I heard current single How To Save A Life a year ago via a Scrubs episode.

Finally I have to mention a few more albums I'm really eager to pick up. Fred Deakin, half of LemonJelly, has released a 3CD mix album called Triptych which sounds pretty amazing and I still have to pick up the new Shins album, Wincing The Night Away. I've heard very mixed reports about the new Bloc Party album but I'll give it a go.

That's part 1 done. Part 2 will be about why music is so important to me. It'll probably appear here rather than this blog (there you go Lue - something will appear there).