Here come: Dirty Pretty Things, The White Stripes, The Raconteurs, Placebo as well as the Tsotsi soundtrack and Band of Horses.
Dirty Pretty Things – Waterloo to Anywhere
The world didn’t end after the demise of the wonderful Libertines. Surprisingly. And after Pete Doherty found some times between his press coverage to release a so-so album with the Babyshambles, now it’s Carl Barat’s time to move on and release an album with his new band Dirty Pretty Things.
Waterloo is an OK album that starts of well with songs like Deadwood, the slightly addictive Doctors and Dealers or the the very Libertinesesque Blood Thirsty Bastards and Gin & Milk. But in between there are just songs like The Gentry Cove which even at just 2:32 are incredibly boring or other songs which appear to be completely unmotivated.
In total, I thought the album was a bit better than the Babyshambles’ but not by much. The lack of motivation or direction in many songs kills the energy that still seems to be in them.
A shame. And a hint that the old ‘more than the sum of its parts’ saying may not be as ridiculous as it sounds.
The White Stripes – Get Behind Me Satan
I’m a big White Stripes fan. And getting hold of the Blue Orchid single on iTMS before the album was released was an interesting – but slightly misleading – pointer for the things to come on the album. A very solid and traditionally acoustic sound which was a bit more energetic than what we had on Elephant. I was definitely in for that!
Getting the album then was a bit disappointing as many of the album’s other songs lack the extra speed and energy of Blue Orchid and took a fair amount of time for getting used to (turning up the volume helps!). Their more quiet approach suggests that the days of knock-out songs like Hotel Yorba, Seven Nation Army and the thrashing Black Math may be over. Which I disapprove of. Instead there is a somewhat ‘bluesy’ component to the music with many acoustic sounds standing out.
Wonderful: My Doorbell; A bit Dull: White Moon; Sweet: Little Ghost; Disgusting: The ‘bearded’ look of Jack White on the Cover; Solid: The Denial Twist.
By now I can enjoy the album but I’m not really sure where this is going. And perhaps they aren’t sure themselves either. At least there’s a ‘break’ for now and we got the following instead:
The Raconteurs
So we take Jack White, Brendan Benson, Patrick Keeler and Jack Lawrence (the latter two from Greenhornes fame) and you’ll expect to be impressed but not necessarily rocked. And – going by the name of The Raconteurs (Funny Flash website warning! I’m not sure how 1980s computer design or a web page that is accessibly by keyboard only fit in with the band’s concept.) – those guys manage to offer you a rather solid album going by the name of Broken Boy Soldiers.
A lot of acoustic goodness is in there. You can hear the different band members’ styles mixing wonderfully in many places. The album’s namesake song Broken Boy Soldier is solidly brilliant and Intimate Secretary right after it is slower but rather good as well. But even in the short running time they managed to squeeze in some boredom in Call A Day before going for a Greenhornesish finish Blue Veins.
While I don’t like the cover photo with a photo of the pseudo beaten-up band members too much, what surrounds it is a brilliant bit of drawing and calligraphy. Looks a bit like a more swooshy version of Ray Fenwick’s cool drawings to me.
For a live recording of the band with some additional songs look no further than here.
The Subways – Young for Eternity
Another bit of goodness – poppy goodness, perhaps – from 2005 is The Subways’ charmingly titled album Young for Eternity. While this album keeps feeling like a little low-brow dirty pleasure to me, it’s a pleasure nonetheless.
Just the opening track I Want To Hear What You Have Got To Say is pretty addictive on its own (perhaps another song for the ‘blogging anthems’ compilations?). But Mary and Oh Yeah are quite great as well. In fact I keep thinking that The White Stripes should cover Oh Yeah, because girl singing sounds like it should be done by Meg White.
In between those highlights – and partially even within them – I sometimes think that the band is a bit too tacky or poppy. ‘Dirty pleasure’ as I said.
Placebo – Meds
And while I’m at dirty pleasures let me mention Placebo as well. Seeing that many of their songs aren’t that great and most of their fans seem to be hysterical fourteen year olds, I really shouldn’t like them. And seeing them live two years ago kind of disappointed as well. But they have a number of songs like Special K or 36 Degrees or a few others which I keep enjoying. As a ‘dirty pleasure’ if you wish. Even on the newer albums they managed to sneak in a good song or two – English Summer Rain, say – so I couldn’t completely dismiss them.
But it appears that their latest album Meds is so bland that it lets me do just that. Huh, well done!
Tsotsi soundtrack
When seeing the film Tsotsi the music in it caught my attention. So I ignored my usual way of racism in music taste and forgot about my dislike of rap-style music and had a go at the films soundtrack. I don’t like it completely and it sounds a bit synthetic at some places but in all it’s quite enjoyable and good music to keep you going.
Perhaps it’s just the fact that I don’t understand the lyrics which makes me find this interesting… or the fact that it just sounds different for a change. No wholehearted recommendation, but certainly worth giving a try!
Band of Horses – Everything all the Time
After coming across Band of Horses’ Funeral and using it in my latest mix CD (which is going down really well with everybody around here), I wanted to hear more. Listening to more of their songs made me conclude that, yes, they’re all right but not exactly my type of thing. Beautiful but a bit too ‘spherical’ for my taste. That said, I quite like the album’s overly acoustic song St. Augustine as well… and I quite like their combination of Akzidenz Grotesk and a script font (Polonaise) on the cover.
Uh, I really like this. And technically this one’s quite interesting as well as I only very recently discovered that my flatmates Powershot G3 camera can take RAW format photos as well, which I tried out here.
]]>I already went to see them last year when they played at Logo a little and studenty club which can take about 200 people. Considering all the recent hype for The White Stripes, a little club like this didn't do this year and they played at Große Freiheit 36, just off the Reeperbahn. I hadn't been there before and it's a considerable larger venue (I saw the capacity stated as 1500 somewhere) while still being quite sympathetic and not appearing to be huge. I went there together with Jörg whom I met for that purpose at the railway station. Richard, who went with me last year, couldn't make it but he got the tickets for us and offered some space on his floor to crash on.
We tried – and managed – to be there reasonably early, ensuring that we're able to have a good place right at the front. Probably that wasn't strictly necessary as we could've still pushed our way through the crowd later on. But that would've been quite rude. The little extra time we had there made us notice that large parts of the audience were considerably younger than we were.
Then Whirlwind Heat came on. They already supported The White Stripes last year. While I didn't think they were bad, I wasn't too impressed either. I also thought their singer was by far too theatrical. The band seems to have improved considerably since last year. I enjoyed many of their songs, the lead singer was just a little bit too theatrical and they tried to look slick and stylish this time around. I like the idea of making music using only percussion, a bass and a singer (and synthesizer) – with the music still being distinctly hand-made.
After a little break, The White Stripes came on and the audience was well excited. The club was quite full by then, so we were happy to have had secured some space right in the third row or so. Once they started playing, everybody was going mad with a lot of jumping about happening. It was quite an effort to keep a good place in all that, but that's part of the fun. They managed to exhaust us quickly by playing many of the faster pieces first. This way everybody was quite happy to hear a few of the older and more quiet songs later on. Meg singing In the cold cold night (predictably?) went down particularly well and cheered a lot.
We didn't really notice how long the gig was, but I had the impression it was long enough, which is good. Sympathetically they only played one short-ish encore not going for the silly encore circus you sometimes see. In short: a good night out.
Other random remarks on the subject: I like the fact that both this year and last year they played plenty of older songs as well. I wasn't too impressed by Jack's new costume-thingy – makes him look like a clown. The same holds for the roadies who (have to?) wear clothes matching The White Stripes' colour schemes. Hotel Yorba is a brilliant song; and it's even better when played live with the couple of extra melody bits added in.
Meg is the goddess on single-handed and hands-free drumming. She looks really bored and annoyed when doing it. Which is sad as she's quite sweet when she smiles. The way she plays the drums looks really girlish but it doesn't sound like it.
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They even had a full-page interview in our daily newspaper today. In the interview they pointed out their not-liking of new technology, pointing out that their new album – will have to get it sooner rather than later – was produced entirely on analogue gear. They also seem to be sceptical about modern means of 'communication' using mobile phones and the internet.
While at the topic of The White Stripes, I have to mention the re-run of the Fast Forward episode with the White Stripes I saw shortly before leaving for my holiday. It was recorded in a hotel room with Jack sitting on the bed doing the talking and Meg lying there, sleeping. The songs they played were
- Beck, Devil's Haircut – definitely a very cool song by a cool artist. Don't like his latest album too much, though.
- Bob Dylan, Tangled In Blue – video of some live performance with Bob Dylan wearing white makeup that makes him look really scary and ill.
- Beth Gibbons and Rustin' Man, Mysteries – Dan copied this for me. I find it quite relaxing and it reminds me of Joan Baez.
- Death in Vegas feat. Liam Gallagher, Scorpio Rising – Didn't like that one too much, probably because I find Liam's voice annoying. I am also deeply sceptical about songs 'featuring' other people.
- Johnny Cash, Hurt – Nice one. I am not really a Johnny Cash person, thinking he is to country-ish for my taste ever since I heard that old Johnny Cash CD my dad has. I changed my mind concerning the The man comes around record that my dad got last christmas, though. Quite cool.
- The White Stripes, Hotel Yorba – what can I say, one of their best songs. It seems to be underrated by many people, though.
- Brendan Benson, Tiny Spark – He's from Detroit as well. The song wasn't bad, though I didn't really get the hang of it.
- John Lee Hooker, Boom Boom – a classic. I'm not particularly fond of it, though. Probably owed to The White Stripes' appreciation for old-fashioned blues-style music.
- The Avalanches, Frontier Psychiatrist – Jack warned viewers to look out for the drummer in there. Definitely a fun video to watch and song to listen to. Jack couldn't resist pointing out that he disapproved of the sampling, though.
- Sigur Rós, Viðrar vel til loftárása – this must have been a special version of the song, considering that the CD version lasts for over ten minutes. The video is well done and tells a sad little story. Jack said he didn't know this song but Meg wanted it played and she could be trusted on those things.
- Good witch of the South, Did it – hadn't heard of before, didn't find it too remarkable either.
- Electric 6, Danger! High Voltage – another fun song and video by a band from Detroit.
short, The White Stripes are brilliant. A lot of 70s-ish noise and only two people making all of it. I loved the White Blood Cells album when I first heard it, and got myself their debut album and the De Stijl LP as well since. In fact I even bought the Fell in Love with a Girl 7" - despite hating 7"s because they're so much work to play (and switching the speed is a bit tricky on my record player). And I guess after seeing them live at the Logo in Hamburg this spring, I was somewhat devoted.
With everybody rightly saying that their debut album pretty much sounds like Led Zeppelin (which I consider a good thing of course), I thought you could reverse that statement. When re-listening to Led Zeppelin III, the second last song on the B-side, Bron-Y-Aur-Stomp caught my attention. “Just like the White Stripes”, I thought.
While it were songs like Hotel Yorba or Little Room that got me hooked in the first place - and are still my favourites for DJing, I started to think De Stijl is an even better album, with the first and last songs of the B-side, Truth doesn't make a noise and Your Southern Can Is Mine being brilliant in a “It's not Rock'n'Roll but I like it”-way, not to forget You're Pretty Good Looking.
Yesterday, I finally watched Fast Forward again after a long time. It's probably the only reasonable show on German music television. They were running a show on New York and apparently cool US bands in general. And it was the first time I saw the Dark Leaves and the Dirty Ground video by the White Stripes. It's not my favourite song on the album, but the video is definitely brilliant, showing two storylines at the same time by having one played for real and the other projected onto the scene. Very well done, very cool and yes, I do want to see it again. Also, Jack has a very Robert Smith-esque hairstyle in the video.
It might sound silly
For me to think childish thoughts like these,
But I'm so tired of acting tough
And I'm gonna do as I please.