Say Something New

i'd like to have company during thunderstorms/

2008-08-07T16:28:00.007+08:00

tracyanne campbell live, which I hope to see soon.

I woke from a restless 13 hour sleep today.

God knows when was the last time I slept that long.

Oh and the fitful snatches of dreams I had that were just plain huh. Imagine a combination of hamsters, evil supervillians and some other damn weird stuff.

To tell the truth I do not think I have slept as well as I did last night for the past few years ever since the first day I entered military, then the hectic working at hmv after that, and the supposed 'rest' period just done. I like to think the start of university and the rest of my life is on a fresh page.

And what joy I wake to when random browsing online led me to find out that Camera Obscura is coming down to perform in Singapore late October. New films like The Go Master which I have been waiting for some time are *finally* opening here next week. Analogue Girl at the end of this month maybe too just to see what the fuss is all about her, and just to see how electro pop sounds like live. Ohh and the lucksmiths soon too. Ah im happy.

All that is left is getting my new laptop and transferring all the music into it, and soon my dream of a 24 hour jukebox room will come true. And the rest that I hope for is that ill meet people here in nus who share the same music and kind of things that I do. haha but i'm not greedy so let's just see what comes eh.

there is a nice five o clockish rain floating outside of my home now, which sealed my decision for this camera obscura song. I've decided to not write anything about this because well, for me this tune is just = happiness right now, and words really cant find a way around that. Enjoy!

Camera Obscura - I Don't Do Crowds

or do you seek loving

2008-07-21T03:07:00.006+08:00

Hold My Hand Video

Sometimes, you cant go wrong with a little dark tune with a dirty glamourous tint to it can you?

I know I cant.

I never was the dance or electronica kid, and only came into the whole thing rather recently. The popular ones like Hot Chip, The Whip and the like were all discovered whenever Ali, the hmv resident dance go to guy, put them on the shopfloor radio during the nights. Unkle too once, and I was quite blown away by it.

Sure unkle may be a little gimmicky and uneven but it was sufficiently interesting for me that I plugged the album in on the long walk down the streets of town to dhoby ghaut one night and realized it was very good music to *go with*. And listening to alone. I suppose it was something to do with a kind of grittiness that pervaded Unkle's music which went well with the concrete jungle of this fine island. Like the video you see, all dark muted colours of grey and dark green.

The song that struck me most was this, " Hold My Hand".

The lyrics are simple and straightforward, but the vocalists drones it in such a way that, along with the whole apocalyptic morbidness of the song, evokes such a bleak and eerie soundscape that it is actually quite frightening. Plus the guitars actually *groan*, and I do not know how that exactly works but it does, and rather effectively gives the utterly already intense texture of the song a visceral quality that just makes it more immediate.

Oh and the video, the video. It basically is just one extended metaphor for a relationship, but I really like the narrative focus and determination that carries very well throughout. Is he dead weight or not? *Why* exactly is she willing to drag him around? What could possibly explain it? Can the simple act of holding a person's hand ever mean so much? Ever been in a relationship where on retrospect, it just feels like someone has been dragging the other? Well I have not, so dont go thinking too much into my interpretation of this clip.

However the very interesting thing that happens in the video is right at the end. The part where he finally responds, right after she *lowers herself down to his eye level*. Says a little doesnt it?

But I don't know.

UNKLE - Hold My Hand

i wont let you/

2008-06-23T02:15:00.005+08:00

Turn up the volume if you can, dim the lights if it is convenient, make sure you will not be interrupted for the next 8 minutes or so, and watch through the *entire* song above. I refuse to let you read the rest of this post until you have done so, and I trust that you trust me.

done?

good.

Let me get this straight. I never trusted Death Cab For Cutie from the start. Sure I only had a couple of songs from their OC days, but still I always felt for some reason they were the poor man's version of The Decemberists. Songs about immortal love and stuff like that are fair and fine enough by themselves, but they were not particularly *memorable* nor scything like how Colin Meloy and co. do it. That and their stiff band name. I mean Death Cab? For Cutie? Wha?

So I was rather indifferent when I first put on their new album that came into hmv the last couple of weeks I was there, but found it actually not so bad at all. I started to find myself playing the CD as often I could, but not too long at a stretch since the songs inside were not exactly what you called ' commercial' ( oh well upstairs still wanted nauseating replays of madonna's album then). I mean just take a listen to their first single, ' I Will Possess Your Heart', where the vocals only come in *4 minutes and a half * after the start. " You can hear their record label bosses gently weep as the vocals finally come in" so aptly described by NME. DcFc could have went all bland and stuff after finding fame and widespread popularity after their OC stint and grammy nomination, but nope, I respect them for their trying out something new on ' Narrow Stairs'.

If you are looking for the same instant hooks like ' Title & Registration' or the warm kind of ' Army Corps of Architects' then you probably will not find it here. Most of the lyrics here have a healthy tint of genuine melancholy that I find really gives colour to each individual song, or as Allmusic puts it rather succinctly, raw rather than polished, heartbroken rather than optimistic, enigmatic rather than energetic. The album really does grow on you, and there is no better example of that then ' I Will Possess Your Heart'.

It starts slow and innocent enough, with that rev and the bass guitar that settles into its own rhythm, the drums sliding in unnoticed, the keyboard chiming as his turn finally comes. It is in one word, gorgeous to put it simply. To just sit back, close your eyes, and listen to how everything falls into place and builds up to a tantalizing height. Stunts like this cant be pulled often on us listeners, but when pulled off like that, how can one say no?

The lyrics are firm and to the point here, something refreshing from a band that I found liked too much dithering semi romantic love songs with protagonists that refuse to just get on with it when enough is enough. But I guess those were what attracted DcFc's main core group of female fans to them in the beginning. Granted, saying " I will possess your heart" straight upfront may seem too eerily forward and scary ( and rightfully so), but really I find in context here it is not really about that. All the lyrics here are asking for is just a *chance*. Nothing more but just to spend some time together. It may be heartbreak, or it may be finally love, but before any of that at least a chance of any kind would be good is all the protagonist is asking for, honest, upfront, and sincere. It actually is quite good isnt it?

Plus I do like the video too, the traveling bits. Ok I admit precious shots of a rather attractive girl with wispy hair set against the sun cant really go wrong but that's not the point. Well it just reminds me I still got a bit of wanderlust to do before ill be satisfied, and the short run around in Vietnam last year will only be the beginning. Couple of nights back I dropped by xj's and desi's lot at the the tanglin mall flea market, and found out that des just came back from a two week trip up Vietnam too. The route she took was different, though the direction was the same, most of it being on a 5 day hired motorbike tour up the midlands. The photos on her camera were telling too, very different from the kind me and the rest took. She had people. A lot of people. Each one captured differently, each one probably meant something to her. Many close ups too. While we had lots of interesting bits and wide scenery shots. Says a lot about what we were looking at doesnt it?

haa so maybe we were a bit too absorbed in ourselves then, but im fine with the way my experience as it is. But ill keep that in mind the next time. Somewhere to the west next I think. Europe I hope, but ill see what comes eh?

Death Cab For Cutie is coming down to singapore for show in early august too. So are the lucksmiths!

Death Cab For Cutie - I Will Possess Your Heart

/let me down so easily

may it be tomorrow/ that I can love again

2008-06-15T23:57:00.006+08:00

saying hello to the rest of my life.

and a good accompaniment to it would be a new discovery among my last day along the aisles of hmv.

Husky Rescue- New Light Of Tomorrow ( Live Acoustic)

the other versions are all good too, but as usual the acoustic one strikes me the most.

- thanks to noy for tipping them off to me

you gave me hope amidst my sorrow
may it be tomorrow, that i can love again
and in return for what i've borrowed
be with you tomorrow and until the end

i know the road we're on is narrow
along comes tomorrow, we're gonna see the sun
and with the wings of the first sparrow
new light of tomorrow
we will be as one

oh im worried/ im worried

2008-06-12T12:21:00.003+08:00

I didnt know why I chose to pick up Wilco's album yesterday, but I did, and I didnt know why I chose to go on a late night small exploration of the town area with two complete strangers, but I did.

And somehow along the way in these rushes of spontaneity, sitting on the concrete above the tunnel watching the whizzing headlights of the cars underneath and in turned being watched by a luminous half moon sandwiched between the tall buildings along the emerald hill condos, it seemed right to play this song, the right earphone on my ear, and the left one on hers.

And nothing much else in the world makes me happier than sharing music, and being shared music in return.

Wilco - Im Always In Love ( Acoustic)

cause moth believes in an afterglow

2008-05-28T02:15:00.009+08:00

I get the feeling that she would be a great live performance

And there goes an unforgettable seven months.

It had been a complete whirl and swash of discovering new things, not just musically, and meeting so many different people that to tell the truth I feel a bit lost as to where I am now. But that is me best I suppose, going along and making my way as it all goes, like the invariable weed in westerns that tumbles his way onwards amid all the bangs and bullets overhead. Never in my life had I been so disentangled with my past, counterpoint with so many new views and doors opening each day that it is refreshing and freeing, though oddly disconcerting at times.

And there it was, Aimee Mann's " Lost In Space" sitting so benignly on the browser under the tag A. Here was a record that was a reliable companion for me stretching all the way back to secondary school. Each song individually found and burnt onto a cdr after discovering Mann from her wonderful track to the film Magnolia -"Save Me". I fell in love with her subdued eloquence. Her intelligent lyrics. Her grounded vocals. On hindsight, a teenager like me then should not have been exposed to such melancholic adult introspections on love, life, and everything in between, but there you go, and I do not regret it.

I remember still having the disc in my early college year, playing it many times in the old musty tsd room before the room was made over into the glass and plastic clinic it has now become. I lost the cd sometime later, most likely lent to someone, but I never found out what became of it.

There were times in the years since then that I would find myself yearning to hum along to a mann song on this album, but the funny thing was I never really tried to look for them all again, allowing myself long replays of " Save Me" and just a few other songs I still had on iTunes on a few late night occasions.

Listening to the songs now, somehow I think I remembered them different. Nostalgia never had a good memory, for she never had need of it. Or perhaps it was just that my ear had changed over the years. The lyrics seem much more biting as I remember, and the melodies not as important anymore.

" The Moth" was not my first favourite back then ( Pavlov's Bell was that), but I find myself irresistibly attracted to putting it on repeat these days. There is something oddly satisfying in the lyrics now, and the slight strings and productions throughout never feel out of place.

The song is really quite bleak actually, but I couldnt help but smile.

Aimee Mann - The Moth

a little weary, a little cynical, but very sharp and catchy. It's not really called pessimism, nor optimism, it's just very .. comforting.

and the air it all feels clear

2008-05-24T02:25:00.005+08:00

haa you know you have been working at hmv for some time when..

a) you start to hit F7 instead of enter on a keyboard far too often

b) your home webpage is allmusic.com

c) your hands automatically ( it's subconscious I tell you!) reach out to straighten racks of CDs even when you are at Borders

d) you reach for your backpocket for a penknife when you need something cut

e) when surprised your immediate reaction is to look up and say " yep can I help you?"

f) you are unfazed when people say who are the Beatles?

g) you know exactly which mrt cab to board at serangoon so it deposits you straight onto the escalators at dhoby ghaut

h) you sigh when another girl asks you for the german version of tokio hotel's " scream"

i) you can actually recognize songs weird people " whistle" the chorus to you

j) your music library expands more than you can handle

k) the first thing you type into google preceding all else is the word lyrics

l) you hate the rolling stones and bob dylan if only because they have too many albums

m) you start to doublecheck your change a lot

n) you imagine what a tiesto remix of everything would be like after hearing his actually not bad at all version of ' back in your head'

o) you inwardly smile when you meet another who clearly loves his or her music too

ah nothing but delicious UK pure powerpop to suit my last two weeks at hmv.

Ting Tings, The - Keep Your Head

I like this song from their album best, the ' name' song that I understand is their fist single is really quite irritating after dragging on too long. Tell me if the guitar hook here doesnt make you tap your feet and I say you are one cold hard person. I get the feeling that the Ting Tings would be much better on stage than evidenced by their studio songs. Something like CSS I guess. bleh I want to go to europe just to watch bands I like play their music live.

( chime)

2008-04-23T01:19:00.006+08:00

Oh dont you just love the rush of spontaneity and the weird detours it can lead you to take?

I was at the first floor of hmv today for most of the morning, busying myself with nothing much other than just the odd tidying up of the stray cd case and random digging around on amazon ( what was a front page link to kayaks that initially caught my eye ( yeh damn imagine if I can fit one of those in my packs and cycle. Paddle? eh) somehow led to a ' Equipment For Everything From A Disaster To A Zombie Invasion' guide list which in turn led me to this book which I'm really interested in now and woah ok im sidetracking. You get the idea. )

Anyhow a customer came up to the counter clutching a magazine and a book. It turned out to be the Other Boelyn Girl, and that piqued my interest because I just had a running argument with js at NUS the day before about Portman and Johansson in the film. I asked whether she watched it already or not, and yeh she said she did, and asked the same about me too. Nope I have not, I replied, and heh she scowled a bit when I told her that I wasnt going to watch the film because word of mouth goes that it is not that good. So she said that maybe it was a ' girl show', and that you have to go ' deeper' because of the politics and rivalry etc to which I expectedly I went wha?

But no, the clincher is this. She then asked whether I knew a bit of the backstory, and upon me saying yeh she said this:

" I watched the show with my sister, and it was kinda weird because I do have a love-hate relationship with her too."

Huh.

Wow.

I never really thought of it * that* way, but really wow. You know certain times where a lightbulb just suddenly switches on in your head and for that brief instant of time you are completely floored by the sudden realization as to all the other scenarios out there with doors that just opened? All due to a pivot that suddenly turned and just for that small second, that wisp, you feel like things have to be thought in a different way in light of this new development..

I may not be really clear, and rereading the above paragraph I realize I'm not exactly doing it justice, but yeh just that one statement made by a random passerby. Makes you think doesnt it?
I mean a second and a half after she said it, an image of her and her sister beside leaning back on their seats at the cinema, flicking wary glances at each other while watching a *period* piece about the rivalry between two siblings, flashed by. I wonder what her thoughts were then. I wonder what her sister's thoughts were then. I wonder about the awkwardness. I wonder how they felt later.

Here's a song from another period piece I watched before that stunned me so too the first time I heard it. It is a piano tune by the Aphex Twins. Go google them up, and perhaps you may understand why put their name in italics, and why that particular one is worthing posting.

The show was Marie Antoinette.

Aphex Twins - Avril 14th

/ that left my heart in a mess

2008-04-08T16:18:00.004+08:00

Attn:

Next time, do not be shocked if you ever see what seems to be a guy with a turtle back, skipping home as if without a hell in the world at eleven pm plus around the serangoon or kovan areas.

Try to stay calm, for past observations report that he means no harm, in fact he seems completely oblivious to the world around him. Closer surveillance has found that he has a pair of earphones plugged comfortably into his ears, but it is anyone's guess what could he be possibly listening to with such a slight grin and a step.

Tantalizing clues have, however been discovered that may shed further light on this mystery.

Through superior use of technology we have intercepted signals from the subject's small black zen player, which seems to be capable of so much more but just suffers from the singaporean mentality that foreign is good, and thus suffers from being heavily intimidated by the Ipod.

Initial transcripts of said intercepts have revealed the origin of the signals to be from a band named THE MYSTERY JETS. More intelligence on this nefarious influence will be released in due time as our sources unearth more. Early reports of a very retro sound with dastardly irresistible jangly guitars have attributed the resultant catchiness to the band built around the core duo of the lead singer being the son of the lead guitarist, who had undoubtedly brought the best of the 60/70s rock and roll melodies to the present.

Such simple indie neo-psychedalia rock should pose no threat on its own though, but reports of a fantastic female singer named LAURA MARLING being featured in the song too should be taken very seriously. Though she may be two years younger than even the mysterious turtle-backed subject, her own songs have been known to bring a smile to even people who have been caught completely fucked in the middle of a sudden downpour that has been battering this island with increasing frequency lately.

We have attempted to write up reports of our earlier contact with her tunes before, but all have ended up half done and unready to be published for every one of our agents have been reduced to a perky idiot babbling something about her quietly matured lyrics that bring her so much above the rash of recent ' indie' female singer-songwriters like yael naim, kate voegal, sandrine, fine frenzy, sara bareilles, duffy etc etc to have emerged all over the world and started stealing so much shelf space at HMV.

We hereby advise all to beware of her semi folk debut album ALAS, I CANNOT SWIM that has been making its way around unsuspecting targets. Do NOT be fooled be her sanguine voice for beneath it hides MALICIOUS and ultimately SOUL EATING wry lyrics laced with traces of darkness.

Young Love could be this year's Young Folks. Remember that blasted 2006 tune that infiltrated even local radio airplay and infected so many pretentious twats that thought it glorious all because it sounded so ' fresh' and ' different' from everything else on the radio? Well it could happen again. And with your help, we can stop this from sweeping the general populace again. Like dengue, only the symptoms ( easy going happiness/ off key delightful humming/ skipping) of listening to such music can be dealt with small doses of depression and rain. No known cure, even heartbreak or prolonged boredom, has been successful in killing the root virus.

Remember, it could strike even YOU!

Clear your house of still water too. Dengue is terrible.

Thank you.

Mystery Jets - Young Love

careful and quiet/ but who would call it cautious

2008-04-03T02:07:00.007+08:00

There's really so much at hmv that im considering staying past the May/June deadline I set myself. The till isnt really that bad actually, and besides you get to mess about with the airplay while at it. Rotating shifts on the first floor is terrible though. Reduced to nothing more than a glorified receptionist, directing people upstairs or just using the computer. You dont really get to help people find the music they want.

Anyhow im afraid that i've allowed myself into a whole deluge of new music that i've previously never got a chance to listen to because they were a) impossible to download b) expensive and risky for $30. I do not think im giving sufficient listening time to everything, and I may be falling into ' skipping to the singles' tracks of each album. I think by the time I leave the store I will have more than enough music to last me through university. Haha a fleeting thought of thinking of a way to soundproof my future hostel room came to mind.

There are really lots of songs I want to write about here, but really I think im too lazy at times. In fact when I started this post I had another band in mind, but screw that. So here's a song from a new cd that came in just a few nights back, from a band called I Was A Cub Scout. Their sound is a bit like a cross between Snow Patrol and Pinback, with slight tinges of catchy syths layered over a semi blase male vocal. To tell the truth it's a bit ' teenagerish' kind of music, however saying it like that is very prone to misunderstanding so I shall just focus on the song here.

" Lucean" is friggin gorgeous. It's probably those tingling piano chords that echo throughout. The real thing that caught me was how the many instruments used were layered and introduced in, bit by bit, and entering a harmony that is really wow. Im usually doubtful of trumpets, but here it's actually quite nice. I can keep this song on repeat, just to listen each time when each instrument is brought in, and completely just focus on that weave.

It's such a song you would expect to be at the end of an album, a song that takes time to catch on and show its true colours, plus I was impressed too that I Was A Club Scout chose to track this as number three on the disc. Nothing else on the album struck me as much as this, or maybe it's just the ' skip to the singles' trap again.

A good song to listen to on the train.

I WAS A CUB SCOUT - LUCEAN

random: I think cat steven song covers as soundtracks are good. Just watched Charlie Bartlett and If You Want To Sing, Sing Out featured prominently. So as I told xj the similarities to ' Rushmore' are really quite a few, including a cat stevens cover it seems.

cold blooded claws never offered anything at all

2008-03-24T11:36:00.005+08:00

campus does this to you

hoho, I've finally given in, and started surreptitiously plugging my player into the computer at work. Alas the airiness of a fast emptying pocket is much more striking than the loftiness of the moral high ground.

ok the result: sia's new album ( which we only brought in #&$% three!)/ kimya dawson/ yael naim/ pianist ost/ unkle's more stories/ we are scientists/ the teenagers/ the kills ( which I think I will buy anyway since it's so bloody good) / sparklehorse/ justice/ hercules & love affair/ eels best of/ mgmt/ radio 1's live lounge ( some only)/. So fun. But I might as well wear an eyepatch and go yarr! now.

I've only started going through a little of this gold mine, but already MGMT is already stealing many repeats that should go to listening more of the other stuff. Probably have to thank a senior manager at hmv who put them on once one morning shift. It's like screwy pop songs, but terribly fun nonetheless. Reminded me of The Flaming Lips, then I read that this new band were given the same producer as them when they answered to their newly-signed-onto label whom they would like to work with:

" Prince, Nigel Godrich, Barrack Obama, not Sheryl Crow."

Heh anyway, MGMT started out as two guys just clowning around while in university, apparently just playing for fun. Which perhaps kinda explains their sarcastic response above when they couldn't really believe a major label was picking them up after they graduated. hm I wonder if this can ever happen here in sunny Singapore, but probably nah, probably no.

I've got here two tracks, " Kids " and " Pieces of What". The first is a fantastic song with a killer keyboard section that I say is guaranteed to bring the house down at any dance party. Barring hip-hop ones, but I never really liked those anyway.

Ah but " Pieces of What" is the absolute clincher. The lyrics are striking enough, enough to have caught my step a couple of times the first few times I really listened to the song. But it's the whole magical progression of the song over two and three quarters minutes that is really amazing. Oh how many times I've tabbed " back" on my godforsaken-for-better-or-worse -whiter-thou-goest-i-goest creative Zen ( yeh right *zen*) just to hear again when a particular instrument comes in. First just the acoustic guitar, then a bass guitar, then a slight stirring of strings, and man the piano! the piano! Finally the crashing cymbals/drums/ backing vocals that herald the denoument of the whole song just when you think it really only got started..

Wow. It's like a Shakespearean tragedy. With music instruments as players. The kind that thinks if all the world's a stage, they want a better sound mixer.

All in all, go give their album " Oracular Spectacular" a listen online. The rest on the album have a consistently good quality too, and I think I just might hold back one of the two last copies on the shopfloor for myself.

right time to get back to hmv. Not long now, perhaps a couple more months, but i'll make sure they are good.

MGMT - Kids
MGMT - Pieces Of What

pardon me the music is moving/ moving from left to right

2008-03-13T02:10:00.004+08:00

Inara and Greg

Ah just came back from watching semi electronic/jazz/dancey The Bird And The Bee, and wow bloody hell it was good!

Was there early so was right at the front, just a meter away from Inara and her backing singers. What made the band shine was the utter *clarity* of everything. The sound mix was very good, and Inara's voice, oh that sweet sonorous voice, came through more crystal and fine than even the released records. The synths/ keyboards by Greg were amazing too, but a large part of my ' viewtime' were the two lovely backing singers that were probably the closest I could ever get to watching the Pipettes live here, what with their absolutely delightful bababaas that were best heard on " I Hate Camera" and their coordinated dance sways.

Backing vocals Alex Lilly and the pretty-girl-in-green. Both absolute delights to watch.

The overall sense in that small tight space was one of an slightly ethereal floating quality.. with an offhand quirkiness as evidenced by the clothes they wore and especially with Inara's vocals. Retroish.. but not retro, never over the top and always precisely clear. The spontaneity by those on stage were borne out of a sincere familiarity with each other and it was really fun to watch.

and there's the setlist, god bless the zoom function on JS's camera. Note how they alternated between their slower jazzy stuff and more dancey fast numbers. ' Polite Dance Song' was an absolute blast, but ' Fucking Boyfriend' was the most memorable with Inara somehow getting the audience of mostly 20-30s to sing and clap along.

All in all, it was a totally enjoyable and fun gig to be in, and Im really glad to have had caught them. Somewhere at the start they asked, " So where did you hear us from?". Someone said " the internet!" ( yep god bless the net too), and another shouted " grey's anatomy!" to laughter from all. =)

a crazy kick ass beat

Teme mi corazón de ir adelante/ viendo estar su dolor puesto en celada

2008-03-07T02:05:00.003+08:00

Electrelane's Mia Clarke

Creaking, the wooden decks awakens you back to the salty air of the sea. You fumble and stand up on the deck, taking a moment to reorient yourself to the sway of the ship.

Still and moonless, yet an ominously growing sense of awareness of what to break starts to creep into the edges of your senses.You lean forward, squinting into the distance.

It's a moonless night, and the clouds look like as they should be. But something catches your eye, and you strain to stare into the darkness of the skies.

And it is exactly in this darkness that you find that something is different. Like as if they carried too much within that threatened to burst any moment. Like as if so much searing intensity can never be contained within something so insubstantial as mere wisps of clouds.

A flare from a single flash illuminates the skies, and that is the only warning you get. The breeze starts to rush, a low hoarse howl that burns right through you. Before you know it, the heavens let loose with a crash and you run for the helm of the ship.

A slight patter as the sheer raindrops hit the ship, growing into a deafening envelopment that stuns your still sleepy mind. Grabbing the wheel, you pull against the wind, slowing knowing it is futile in the face of the roaring storm, but a sense of self preservation and wonderment, yes wonderment at the hypnotic intensity of the rousing storm, drives you to hang on with gritted teeth..

Electrelane's magnificent ' Oh Sombra!' feels exactly like this. An alternatingly rousing and eerie wall of brazen sonic energy that takes no chances. Founded in Brighton, England's Electrelane formed in 1998, eventually comprising guitarist Mia Clarke, bassist Rachel Dalley, drummer Emma Gaze ( oh what a name!), and keyboardist/guitarist Verity Susman. An all girl band that manages a rare marriage of raucous sophistication to a fiery primal energy.

They are amazingly adventurous, and willing to try anything that fancies them. " Oh Sombra!" is sung entirely in Spanish. In actual fact it is a complete sonnet by 16th century Catalan poet Juan Boscán Almogáver. The song is in essence, not a love song but a song about *love*. And the way they have chosen to lay the tune in all its searing honest glory just leaves me agape.

No matter how many times I listen to this song, I inevitably feel the same rush. A rush that presses me down to my seat. A rush that raises the hairs on the back of my neck. A rush that I just cant say no to.

Some may find this song nothing more than a wall of sound, with nothing that appeals even remotely to them for Electrelane eschews so many usual conventions of a song. But to me, somewhere in that eerie intensity is an elegant honesty which is so rare to find, and utterly, completely breathtaking.

Electrelane - Oh Sombra! ( Live)

Como aquel que en soñar gusto recibe,
su gusto procediendo de locura,
así el imaginar con su figuravanamente su gozo en mí concibe.

Otro bien en mí, triste, no se escribe,
si no es aquel que en mi pensar procura;
de cuanto ha sido hecho en mi ventura
lo sólo imaginado es lo que vive.

Teme mi corazón de ir adelante,
viendo estar su dolor puesto en celada;
y así revuelve atrás en un instante

a contemplar su gloria ya pasada.
¡Oh sombra de remedio inconstante,
ser en mí lo mejor lo que no es nada!

Like one receiving pleasure from a dream,
his pleasure thus proceeding from delusion,
so does imagination with illusions conceive in vain its happiness in me.

No other good's inscribed on my sad heart,
except what in my thoughts I might procure;
of all the good I ever have endured,
what lives is only the imagined part.

My heart is frightened to proceed ahead,
seeing that its pain in ambush lies;
and so after a moment it turns back

to contemplate those glories that have fled.
Oh, shadow of relief, that fickle flies,
to make what's best in me be what I lack!

ohhh-oh/ where do we go from here?

2008-02-23T23:09:00.006+08:00

mm too much. Been buying and borrowing too much from hmv for the past couple of weeks. I count 8 albums to mix into my mp3 player and only one hour each day listening to them on the trip to work and back. Give or take maybe one or two hours more depending how long I dally with the computer before going to sleep each night.

Tired actually too. Tired of biting off more than I chew. Or rather, going for what I know there isnt much chance allowed for me to hold onto.

So it's always back to songs. Oh these jangly ghosts of emotion and feeling that are only lent existence by a simple twitch of a string, or a knock on a bar. So terribly insubstantial, yet at times so much more reliable than anyone can ever be. Just think about it, what we call music is nothing but air bouncing around in a certain way down our earholes in a seemingly random way. But the thing with music is that more often than not *you simply dont know what's going on*. You cannot exactly pinpoint a particular chord, or progression, or twang that means oh that's it for me, that particular bit makes me happy.

The only real reason, I think anyway, why humans always have a thing for music is that here then, finally is something that we can never really understand or more importantly control, but strangely *dont need to fear* which runs so contrary to a fundamental need in humans to adjust and maintain their surroundings as much as possible to their liking. It's the sole solace in a world of scary unpredictability, whether be it from others or just simply how things work. For once unpredictability is welcome, but more importantly *so easily enjoyed*. The only price to pay is that we can never fully understand it, never able to fashion something that can create the same feeling within us again in another way. In the same way everyone leaves a different memory in you, every single tune leaves a different imprint too, sometimes similar, but never wholly alike.

There is no such thing as a ' perfect' song, because no one really knows what that means right? But sometimes along come one that feels just right. Why and how? You can never really say. Saying I like that harmonica intro standing in the middle of two guitar strums by itself doesnt really mean anything. It doesnt explain why. What possible good can a harmonica intro standing in the middle of two guitar strums do to a human body that we enjoy it?

Why do we then, allow something we dont really understand to control us so much for once? The touchy topic of religion sounds close here, but really it's not really an apt comparison for there are many out there simply flabbergasted at how a human can allow something they cant see ( in the loosest terms here) to control so much. Not with music though. Find me a person who doesnt have any single *tune* out there that is unable to move him, not even a flicker in the heart or brain, not even a twitch or nod. Sweeping generalization it may be, but I think in this case it's warranted.

Because sometimes along comes a song that comes along that just feels *right*, like a person, but you can give everything to it never fearing of any consequence, which a person might just do.

Taken By Trees - Sweet Child O' Mine ( Cover)

absolutely gorgeous.

i let my music take me where my heart wants to go

2008-02-16T02:07:00.006+08:00

take that generic Hillsong song!

I normally would not use the word ' pure' to describe a song, but *pure* this is, and utterly searing too. What melody, and lyrics, strung together by a simple guitar strum that has never failed to hook my ears and heart despite countless repeats.

" The Wind" was sent to me by a friend on a compilation, which has really impressed me very much so. The song was featured in the movie ' Rushmore', which I mentioned once before, at the point in the show where Max finally stops being a complete idiot. Fitting in more ways than one.

The one thing that stands out most about this song are its lyrics. Simple, evocative, and most importantly honest. It is not overtly a " religious" song, but for me it speaks to me so much more than any of the rather bland and directionless ( for me anyway) ' praise/ worship' songs out there so liked by many. I mean just take a look at the line " Where I'll end up well I think/ Only God really knows". Simple, utterly unpretentious, and rarest to find of all, sung with a pure humility that kinda sums up how silly people can be when they think too much of anything.

Yusuf Islam wrote this in the mid seventies, just when he was about to retreat from the whole pop music scene to sort himself out. I'm amazed at how such simple lyrics can conjure up such a dazzling evocative journey. The title - The Wind, speaks volume by itself already, segues perfectly with a melody that slips along nicely. There's a certain unforgotten quiet mischievousness that carries the lyrics along very well too, which adds real life and intimacy from the singer.

I don't know but I think this would be the kind of song I'd like to be able to sing truthfully and fully when I'm old and wizened. hah. For really the overwhelming sense of ' The Wind ' ( wonderfully paradoxically dont you think) is one of sheer plaintive -peace.

You know how sometimes, being around a certain person brings a certain sense of ' just right'? well it's the same with this song too.

i like the sweet life and the silence/

2008-02-07T03:20:00.000+08:00

but it's the storm I believe in

Not a bad two weeks at the shopfloor. Due to the onset of chinese new year, and probable slowing down of the local distribution channels for the next few days, the higher ups decided to push for as many shipments to be brought forward. The result?

A natural bottleneck of the back room processing side that is starting to fray everyone's nerves. The good thing is that out of the many new releases, there are a couple of gems that finally make for fresh airplay choices.

You cant go wrong with more Swedish pop though, so just a week or so back the Cardigans finally released a ' best of' that came into store. I have not fully explored their old stuff yet, so this is a godsend though I have a faint feeling that they are the kind of band whose strength lies in an overall strong catalogue instead of a few chart burning singles. Eh ' Lovefool' not withstanding.

There is nothing like basking in the tune of the Cardigans' ' Rise & Shine' as one opens the shopfloor in the morning. My whistling has improved ( I think. Hope) over the past few weeks, and even as the usual few morning millers go about the aisles I still cant resist whistling a quick Cardigans chorus as it comes on the airplay.

There was a song in the collection that struck me over while I was behind the counter. It wasnt the usual ones like ' erase/rewind' ( I love you but it's best to forget it), for what's it worth ( I love you even though I dont really have a reason to anymore) or even 'connection ' ( a classic of classic break up song), oh arent the Swedes good at being sweet, but a song that was hidden halfway through entitled ' You're The Storm'.

You know how there are some songs that can just pass you by, but plain amazing when played * loud*? Well this is one of those songs. Don't believe me? Try it. Put the song on the right on, and turn the volume way up. Wait till the bit where Nina Persson blasts into the chorus..

and there you go. The lyrics are not particularly jaw dropping as songs on such a traditionally touchy topic go, but Nina has a way with words that go very well with her voice. I mean if you look at the lyrics of ' lovefool' and 'you're the storm' they can be too sweetly cringey if you want to look at it that way . Somehow she gets it right pat down and never goes aboard, resulting in an overall tune that you just cant say no to. I think this might be a Swedish secret racial trait.

If you watched ' across the universe' and remember the last part where the guy picks up the microphone on the roof and starts singing ' all you need is love', well if there ever was an occasion for me to do the same thing, which in all likelihood wont happen since im not that sort, I guess it would be this song, strong and full, blasting across the air in all its glory, not some pansy ' all you need is love'.

The Cardigans - You're The Storm

I read in the liner notes that it was awhile before Nina Persson stopped cringing at playbacks of her recorded voice. Im glad she did not give up then, for hers is a very unique voice that deserves to be appreciated very much so. Are there more people like that out there? Possibly possessing something that really is very attractive just that do not know it, and thus subsequently fade?

try this live set of the same song on a KCRW recording too.

The Cardigans - You're The Storm (Live)

surely time will come to an end soon/ but it's still on your side

2008-01-30T03:15:00.000+08:00

Finally some time to sit and write. Or at least to finish up the half attempts at finishing up the post I started last Wednesday. About the first time I've finally gone to a live gig by a Swedish band, and was not disappointed in the least bit all. About the two who I went with without whom I'd not have heard about it in the first place.

Club 8/ Pelle Carlberg ( a double bill!) were scheduled to perform at the Esplanade's recital studio at eight, but dinner and agonizing choices that paralyzed us three over whether to buy their albums at the small counter set up in front of the entrance had to be overcome first. Well Jen got edson and a club 8 album, Grace the legends and another club 8 cd, while I cunningly cheated and bought a compilation of swedish music carried by the Labrador label.

We got pretty good seats as we were early in the queue, sitting ourselves to the left, not five meters away from the band's space. The intimacy and warmth of the studio was palpable and I loved it so, for the sheer proximity and lack of any barrier between us and the band allowed a real feeling of sincerity that was appropriate for the sparse/ heartfelt music to come. Note I do not use the word stage, just space. Until I figure out a way to transfer the pictures from my phone to the computer, we shall just have to make do though.

The spotlights warmed, and Club 8 took their places. Karolina was the last to walk in, but you can tell the whole studio really livened then. Her hair tied tightly back into a shoulder length tail, languid fingers that slowly wrapped themselves around the microphone, she had the whole sense of a coldness that is at once a touch chilling, yet unmistakably *alluring*. The banter was light and at ease, her remarking how pleasantly surprised the band was when they were greeted with a little tropical warmth after stepping off the airport. Sweden is *cold*, she said with a clear and crisp lightly accented english that just about tingled with little crystals at the edges, a characteristic I find common in much of the swedish music I hear.

The highlight of their performance for me would be a close fight between two songs. " The Next Step You'll Take" and their ' famous, or infamous rock and roll song' " Saturday Night Engine". You probably expect this from me now, as both songs were as different from each other as can be.

" The Next Step.." an autumnal and delicately bittersweet yet going along with a spring that belied its melancholy stood out with its particular lyrics, while " Saturday Night Engine" a full blast of unabashed hooky fun that was riffed through with so much energy and sheer life that it just swept me off. The recorded version here does not a single bit of justice to the one we heard. The live version was done twice as fast, sung with an immediancy of *here* and *now* that can never be captured on a mere microphone. My goal now is to hunt down a live version of this song, but still no luck though.

Pelle Carlberg took the stage after the brief interval, and what can I say. Hit songs and ping pong do not usually go together but there he does it. His songs are a fascinating blend of seemingly random inspirations-anecdotes, like when you want to sit down and ' offhandedly' write a poem, spend one hour wracking your brains for any memory to latch on, and finally scrounging out something that does not really matter in the end because it winds up sounding too forced anyway. The only difference is that Carlberg pulls it off. How? I have no idea. A song about a hit song his record label called him up to write? A song about a review of his first album? A song about hearing Im From Barcelona on the radio and being jealous about their chorus?

The thing is that while these were all interesting and catchy, they were too *at the moment*. I get the faint feeling that once the novelty is lost in these songs well they would be probably lost by then. Carlberg covered Mika's ' Grace Kelly' before he left the space. hm I still am just lukewarm towards that song.

There was an autograph session after the gig, which by sheer luck we found ourselves very near the front of the queue. Which meant that we would not feel as embarrassed to pester them with questions and requests then had we begun at the back of the queue and saw how tired they really were. Please allow a bit of embellishment, for a week can do many tricks to the fickle thing memory is.

me: would you recommend other Swedish bands to come to Singapore too?

Karolina: yes, of course.

me: ( before I could stop myself) what about the Concretes?

her: oh you heard of them? you know Victoria Bergsman has a solo album out.. taken by trees i think. You heard it? It's better than the Concretes I think.

me: ( inwardly --- urk! arhjhh! or if there ever is a single word to describe the kind of surprised contentment that comes when something unexpected happily overturns everything else) yes! Any chance you can ask her to come down to Singapore too?

her: yes ok, she has a really lovely voice. Ill be sure to tell her.

here then she smiled.
and my day was made.

Club 8 - The Next Step You'll Take

\
for Grace it would be when she was getting an autograph from Pelle Carlberg, and told him how sad she was that he did not play " Sunday, Lovely Sunday".

" ah so you were the one who shouted for it just now", referring to the part of his gig when he asked the floor for any requests. I admit I goaded grace a little I think * innocent look*. An interesting thing would be that the rest of audience was completely quiet, a fact that I only remember now.

So Carlberg, right there and there at the autograph table, serenaded ( yes serenaded) Grace. Jen was visibly impressed too.

Sundays are slow
Never pretentious, oh no
Silent and closed
And we don't really have to know
Where to go

Holding hands with the one I love
She wears mittens, I wear gloves
There must be someone above
Holding hands with the one I love

And her day was made there and then.
Probably for the next few days too.

i don't care where you're going/ if the music's fine

2008-01-24T02:07:00.000+08:00

Club 8 - Saturday Night Engine

What a thoroughly enjoyable Scandinavian evening.
*nods to Jen and Grace*

ah but I really do need sleep now!

and then came the rush of the flood

2008-01-21T11:19:00.000+08:00

norah jones was actually not bad at all

Quite unplanned, I watched another double bill, but this time on the big screen. My Blueberry Nights/ Cloverfield may seem an odd match just like how Breakfast At Tiffany's/ Die Hard 4.0 was, but that's just how it goes and I really like it that way.

A very strong highlight of Nights was the soundtrack, which I had for some reason bought way earlier beforehand when the shipment of ltd ed of the cds came into HMV. To the surprise of me then, the only forty copies we brought in sold out *completely* within two days. After watching the show I understand why though, for music is such a nuanced cornerstone of every wong kar wai film so much so that it's not just appropriate background music but as much of the story itself.

It sounds childish now thinking about it, but I was a tad disappointed when what was easily the strongest song was introduced so early in the show. I'm always a believer in saving the best for last see? Cat Power's " The Greatest" segues effortlessly with lyrics that take a look at anyone who have realized that getting what they want and being happy are two entirely different things. How this ties into the film I'll leave it up to you.

Nights is one of those rare shows that may seem draggy while you watch it, but coalesces nicely and more importantly, *warmly* as it goes along, which even extends to even after you watch it. Just cut away some of the cheesy exchanges between jude law and norah jones along with toning down the overuse of jarring ' fade to blacks', a wariness of which I still harbor probably left over from my tsd days, and it would have much better for me.

Cat Power - The Greatest

On another note. Another Concretes album was sold! This time to a twentyfivish girl who came in last night looking for Peter, Bjorn and John not simply because of hearing another of those bleh techno mixes of Young Folks on the dance floor, which happens often enough that I just shrug whenever I see Writer's Block sandwiched between Groove Armada and something else while I do cashiering. hai saying it like that is so music snobbish, but *still*.

Anyhow what piqued my interest in her was that she came in asking for their *first* album, and well it somehow led to the Concretes in her hands which she took just one listen of and immediately paid for it. yay.

And someone else in Singapore has the US import of the Pipettes too now. Too bad I didnt see who got it.

and you'll forgive your heart for wasting any time

2008-01-10T03:45:00.000+08:00

Neh. Whatever happens at hmv would all be worth it, for I have managed to get a single copy of the Pipette's debut release from the states that would otherwise not have been brought into Singapore at all. Hah yes I know but the uk version of ' We Are The Pipettes' is not enough for me! For s$23 too, about half the price of the uk one.

Besides there are two additional tracks plus the songs have been tweaked and reproduced, and there is a blast of the cover art and inside liner notes. There is nothing quite like turning up your jacket's collar and plugging in the pipettes at eleven at night while walking through a light rain along the road in town to dhoby ghaut. Well it may had developed into a full scale bloody downpour and a sprint like hell later on, but who cares.

The Pipettes sound as refreshing and ever so lively as the first time I heard them two years back, and some of them really do sound better after the new productions. Especially the new extended " It Hurts To See You Dance So Well", which seems much polished and punched than the previous versions of which I've heard.

I supposed the new sleekness and spunk is a reflection of how the Pipettes have grown, from an underground cult live hit to a fully fledged stage act that is in demand in stages from around the world ( the states/ aus/ and oh what I would give to see them here). Their raw sweet sound that was as much a part of their endearing charm has subtly changed into a polished candid tone that is as attractive, if not more so, than before.

More importantly would be that somehow, there is this sense of maturity in the way they sing now, something a little surer, or perhaps the word would be with a honed * elegance*. Haha dont ask me to describe that exactly, for it is the same as one those feelings you sometimes get when you know how someone is just *like*, by being around them even without you even really looking at all.

There is no better example of this than in one of their two new tracks in this album. The opening oooh-ahs are simply magic, sung so plainly sincere that it gives such a refreshing slant to the classic retro opening. The Pipettes know that their vocal harmonies are their most alluring aspect of the music, and have honed it to an absolute stunning peak in " Baby, Just Be Yourself". I mean just listen to the part where they go " I know it's hard/ ..." and tell me if you do not agree with me.

There is only so much I can say with words though so just put the song on please, and enjoy.

The Pipettes - Baby, Just Be Yourself

if I don't care to eat and get running instead

2008-01-07T03:29:00.000+08:00

(nope, cant find the image with the bicycle)

Meh my sleep schedule is totally screwed.

2008 rolled in, and if I remember correctly it was the Concrete's ' You Cant Hurry Love' around 12. Just a quirk I find myself doing every year that does not mean anything, to note the song that comes up on my player, and the only way I really ' celebrate' when a year gasps out its last few seconds.

The first show on the small screen I watched this year would be Wes Anderson's Rushmore, which was delightfully lent to me. As again in his films, some of the songs arent bad at all! If a show didn't slip my mind, the last film I watched for the last year was the Breakfast At Tiffany's/ Die Hard 4.0 double bill at 4am viv's place. Weird combination you may think, but nothing like a brainless action show to unwind after hepburn. Tiffany's really not what you think though, there is a certain kind of absurd in it, and I mean the beckett/ harold pinter kind, and of course, there is hepburn. hah thanks for the poster viv. Anyhow I enjoyed both shows thoroughly , but really these musings do not belong here, so I shall leave them for another blog at another time.

Back to the screwed sleep schedule. I think it is actually affecting my playlists. For instance there is a certain kind of music that I find myself selecting as I wake in the morning and run like hell for the train. It's becoming a routine actually. Wake up grab breakfast plug on earphones get to station get on train carriage number 16 since it would exit right at dhoby ghaut's escalators. And when the shift is done, plug on another certain kind of music for the leisure walk from town to dhoby ghaut. Oh what happened to the days of having my playlists decided randomly by shuffle to ensure fairplay to all? ah how circumstances change.

I would be hard pressed to explain the *kind* of music I put on simply with words. But this song invariably finds itself played as the first song every morning for the past two weeks or so.

So someone said it was the perfect " my song" when she suggested tagging a song in a particular album to those that were there. I leave it up to the rest of the readers who know me here to judge. *takes cover*

Im From Barcelona - Oversleeping

Go look this band up if something in this song strikes and tugs at your interest. They are a Swedish ( haha what else can they be ) band that specializes in really constantly hyped music that you just *cant* not but smile to when you hear them.

Careful though tunes like this should be rationed for they lose their magic really quick overplayed. Argh but the temptation!

damn swedes.

apologies, for losing my cool

2007-12-31T02:05:00.000+08:00

a certain vintage never gets old

How did the duo from Bird And The Bee meet? well according to allmusic they met one day by accident when sweet eyed Inara George needed a pianist for an album she was working on. A friend started to call in contacts, and in walked Greg Kurstin.

You know how sometimes, in very rare moments of time, you meet a person who shares so much so with you, be it poetry or chainsaws ( who knows?), that for the next two hours both of you can do nothing but talk and amaze each other?

Well it was like that between Inara and Greg, just that it was all exchanged in music. and as quoted from their myspace:" nerded out for a couple of hours playing every song they knew.. and then wrote and recorded a record together."

It is always the things that you dont expect that bears the most surprising fruit, that I always never fail to continue to discover. A bit of initiative on your own part cant be lacking too of course. The Smiths would never have formed if Morrissey did not one day decided to go up to Johnny Marr's door and knock just like that.

Anyway the Bird and the Bee would probably fall somewhere into indie electronic/pop ( which im so much more comfortable with than the headbanging type). So if youre a fan of frou frou/ sia/ feist/ psapp/ ivy and the like you probably already have a sort of idea. Just a couple mornings back I managed to sneak The Bird And The Bee onto the shopfloor's airplay and this girl suddenly asks me whether that was Lily Allen playing, I never really thought of both them the same way, but I guess you can call them similar if you are really so inclined to with the quirky and stylized electronic beats.

The album and EP are really starting to grow on me as the year draws to an end. It's not too heavy nor pensive, neither is it too light and sugar sweet. Furthermore a fair amount of the songs are solid gems, far too many for me to post up here but are terribly memorable nonetheless. It kinda captures the ' indie sound' well ( whatever that means), a particular blend of laid back intensity that is really very attractive to be around and with.

Be sure to check them out on their myspace for more of their songs, and feel free to ask me online for more of their stuff.

The Bird And The Bee - Polite Dance Song

and yeh, im definitely saving up for when they come to Singapore some early next year. Them and feist. Perhaps KT tunstall too if I have enough to spare.

wont you open your eyes

2007-12-28T02:31:00.000+08:00

For awhile I thought " Dear Prudence" was a Siouxsie & the Banshess original. Well awhile was a couple of years, until one day I leafed through the liner notes and found * written by lennon/mccartney. It did not change the way I liked her version of it, though I have not listened to the Beatles's original until just last week when I got the White Album.

The lyrics are simple and straightforward, a persuasion of a kid to come out of the house and well, just play in the garden. But with Lennon's deft pen and perhaps a coincidence of the young girl's name to be Prudence, the lyrics take many a level if one is so inclined to read it that way.

As a mark of a truly good cover, Siouxsie does not simply imitate but she does it her way. One may expect the fuzzy overlay of electric guitars to be chaotic and smothering, but it never really does tip that way, and with her voice the simple sincerity, which I think was what the original was about, goes along very nicely.

So why did I not see that in Prudence of 'Across The Universe' until Jas pointed it out after the film? Sure she may not exactly be completely essential to the plot, but some things exist because they just are like that. I suppose sincerity is not simply about reducing things to a bit that *what* really matters, though in a sense it is; a lot of it, perhaps most of it, is from an understanding of *why* that one last bit matters from all the other things around it and this is what is expressed to another.

So Prudence may actually have no bearing on any of the characters in the film. But that's not the point really is it? For people like her really do exist, and if you are so inclined, but im still not fully convinced, you can take Jas' view that she's there as a sole bastion of unrequitedness in a film that bursts ( like strawberry) from so much of everything else.

Siouxsie And The Banshees - Dear Prudence (Cover)

there's a light in your eyes and it never goes out

2007-12-24T01:25:00.001+08:00

right enough about the electronica. I've come to realize that I kinda do enjoy house dance music like Daft Punk and the softer kind like Goldfrapp, but there is no way I can stand up to the pounding pulses of the real club stuff that the dance maestro colleague of mine likes to put on in the evenings at hmv. It got so bad that I actually had a headache come on, and it is kinda seriously distracting to devote half your brain to damping down the pulsating beats while helping out the next customer. Hm.

I suppose im simply not the hard clubber kind of person, the sort more who rather much prefers just settling down for a warm drink for the night and just talking till that magic 3am time where everyone starts blabbing no matter their real shell in the day. And this I just did last night, with three of the most memorable people I've met while at work. Grace, Jenn, and her sister Jasmine. I did mention in my last post about writing up the interesting people I've met at work, and the reason why it has taken so long is because well, it was already baked and done in my head, but as things go I was not expecting two people to walk in late one night just last week asking to try out the Apples In Stereo, Arcade Fire and Rilo Kiley ( was it her? i cant remember you have to jog my memory) and well, one thing just led to another. Thankfully we were winding down for the night then, so I could just hang around the counter. It's not everyday you meet someone who takes in so readily to the sparseness of Taken by Trees and the liveliness of Camera Obscura so equally.

For all the over analytical semi brooding ( must be the weather) observations in the last post, the people who walk town arent all just like that. It's always amazing how much a person opens up just as soon as one decides to make just a bit effort and take a small interest in their interests. If not then perhaps I 'd not have had met that 80s music loving fair air stewardness who really did not look like she was was from abu dubai. You know she's someone special when she brazenly leans over the counter and exclaims " Smile! Stop frowning!" to a colleague of mine who I think, is sort of hardened after close to a decade helping people from the other side. Hah and even now I cant stop myself from smiling when I remember her humming the tune to UB40's " red red wine" in a game of guess the tune.

Or how about that old man who walked in asking for our selection of karaoke hits and me finding out that the reason he was looking for " quando quando quando" was it was requested at a pub/club he frequented because he just loved taking the stage on open mic nights and singing for the whole fun of it. His wife attested personally of his singing prowess to me while he went off to the toilet, and that I believe is proof enough.

Maybe I'd not have met then, Scott the American who was more than happy to share his love for the Beatles when I on a whim, decided to ask which album of theirs he would recommend to someone who has never really got into their music before. " Ah," he says, " there's no doubt it's this.", showing me the album I just hunted down for him on the first floor. He told me how he owns the original vinyl for the Beatles' "White Album", one of only 2000 in the world, with the original cover showing Lennon and Ono *completely* naked from the front and them from the back on the back sleeve. Since it has never been opened before and is in perfect mint condition he reckons an estimate of 100,000 usd. He remembers the first time he saw the Beatles when he was six, how he couldnt hear anything for the whole crowd was screaming, and how he described the whole Beatles experience for him in his life. " It was just - wow!- so different from anything we've ever heard before." before puffing out his cheeks and widening his eyes in an expression that I just remember, I find so familiar because old Mr Lofthouse from tsd did *exactly* the same when we spoke of it once before.

Then there's the Tokio Hotel sisters; the aunt who was looking for songs for her 6 yr old niece to sing at her compeition; the small kid who listens to terrifyingly heavy metal; the indiepop couple; the techno-trance-music only tatooed guys; the Japanese mom and daughter. Well you kinda get to meet all sorts. Everyone from the Malay mom in conservative headscarf who was totally lost in the heavy metal section while looking for a present to get for her son whom she knows like listening to that kind of music, to the ang mo lang girls who walk in and simply open boxes of shirt one after another with an air of "ooh I dont care because the world owes me a favour". There is just something within me that gets me extremely pissed off when people, no matter who they are, start acting like that. No exceptions.

Funny. Seems like my stint over at hmv will not be defined by the music around me like I initially thought, but more by the people I meet along the way who can be so much more unpredictable and interesting than any song can ever hope to be. But perhaps you are right Jas, people are like songs, in a way I guess.

In a way.

ok look, Grace, Jenn, and Jas. This song's for you. The Lucksmiths vibe kinda fits.

The Lucksmiths - There Is A Light That Never Goes Out (Cover)

written by Morrissey from the Smiths fame, for a random stranger he met and struck him so.

it really didnt make sense/

2007-12-13T01:58:00.000+08:00

Daft punk live shows -
apparently a feast not only for the ears but also the eyes

So. I wonder if this new found fascination with electronica is here to stay, but really let's enjoy it as much as we can whatever may happen after that no?

I borrowed cobra starship's first album and sigur ros's hvarf/heim last week just to see why both are so high on the charts. I can see why cobra starship is kinda popular, for they deliver rather infectious tunes that are kinda guiltily pleasurable, but not really for sigur ros though. But perhaps it's just hard to reconcile that with the electronic streak im in right now.

Funny isnt it? A friend told me once to face it, that there is a hip hop/ urban/ rnb kid hidden inside me, and she sent over a couple of mia songs that were good but I just couldnt *catch*. I could see why they were good, but something in me just could not latch on to them for long. Of course there are exceptions though, recently that amazing track from Timbaland, especially the live mix from the Shodown album that finds rather often airplay on the hmv shopfloor. It's " The Way I Are", and I force myself not to have it anywhere on the computer or player for fear that I will overplay it too much and kill the magic.

Could it have been an an inner electronica kid inside all the while then? hah. The seeds were probably sown by listening to some Black Box Recorder on the sides while I was in secondary school, maybe a little bit of Air too and dashes of Goldfrapp for good measure. So for this week I borrowed Daft Punk's " Alive 2007", a near perfect transcript of their show that ran in Paris in July this year. I've often read about their live shows online, and suffice to say even listening to it on CD impressed me enough.

Of course there's their most famous song which seems to have recently reignited interest in the Parisian duo who have been steadily mixing crowd firing music since the early 90s. " Bigger Better Faster Stronger" was sampled in a recent hip hop song that was extremely popular but I never did really catch the name of. But what interested me the most was the version here of " Face to Face", a song which I've heard from them before, and possessed much more, and actually more meaningful lyrics than the cursory rudimentary words that passed for " lyrics" in typical crowd dancing tunes. I wasnt disappointed at all, and plugging these album in as I make my way through the evening crowd on the streets of town past the filtering crowd of holiday shoppers is utterly enjoyable.

The thing I've noticed is, is that listening to this kind of music especially alone unphases you a bit. You are drawn very much into yourself, but at the same time you are more aware of things like faces around you. I cant really explain it well and it is probably hard to understand if you do not experience it yourself. You kinda become * colder*, and things which are normally on your mind are pushed away in the haze. I am not saying that this is exactly a good thing, but more and more I find this atmosphere fitting in a town whose streets are the temple for most Singaporeans. A place where we shop, eat, be alone, go with friends, celebrate, flirt, wander and just about anything else. The approaching Christmas is probably heightening all this, but still it's always been there, and just like a temple does blankets everyone with its sense of comfort so much so that most do not admit it.

I hope I do not lose myself by the time Christmas comes round, for though I have not really been the christmas celebrating person what with presents and singings and whatnot, I do sorta find myself looking forward to it this season? Why? I have no idea, I have nothing especially to expect or look forward to, and christmas eve is effectively gone for im working the latest shift at hmv ( god knows how am I to make my way through the crowd once it ends at 11). Perhaps it's just the weather, or perhaps it's just another symptom of me finally coming to understand the malaise that afflicts so many Singaporeans, or people, the feeling of being at once lonely yet seeking the solace of the temple of the streets where noone is alone, and christmas might actually offer the chance of a hope that there is a greater meaning to it this time than what the streets just are at any other time of the year.

DAFT PUNK - FACE TO FACE/ SHORT CIRCUIT

And Im so glad i managed to convince a couple of customers to buy the Concretes album and the doppel live discs from Kraftwerk. The next post will be about some of the most memorable customers Ive seen to, so hang around if you are interested.

I do sound rather alienating dont I? mm hope it passes.

and your kisses at night are replaced with tears

2007-12-01T00:08:00.000+08:00

Pakistan born Natasha Khan

Kraftwerk accompanied me for most of Vietnam.

There is something rather therapeutic listening to the German granddaddies of electronic while passing the time in a stranded train that is unable to move due to the mass floods. God knows how many times I've listened to ' Dentaku' and ' Das Model' during that stifling 12 hours. Feist was always over my shoulder, ensuring I never had a dull moment in the long bus journeys on our path through the central highlands. Tullycraft and Log Lady Train added colour to the incessant rain that threatened to kill our explorations many a time.

So there I was then, plugged into kraut and Swedish music in Vietnam, and meeting German and Swedish travelers who were along our way too. I was very tempted to ask the Swedish couple if they knew Victoria Bergsman once they said they lived in Stockholm, but thankfully I managed to stop myself in time.

Oh and music from Vietnam.. we heard everything from the old communist kitsch anthems to the terrible pop music videos that invariably featured the generic ballad nonsense with lots of requisite oohh look im dramatically looking far away into the distance! that gets extremely wearying after awhile. But if you ever find yourself in Saigon, wake yourself up from five plus to seven in the morning and go to any of the many parks in the city. You'll see a sizable group of people, both young and old, lined up in rows doing a morning exercise that is best described as a damn cool synchronized dance routine. To pulsating Viet techno dance beats. A real treat for the eyes and ears. Singapore workout be shamed!

Two weeks at HMV since then, and what can I say. Ill just put it like how I told a friend: " I just couldn't help but suppress a grin when they showed me around the shopfloor after I switched to the ubiquitous black hmv shirt." I have yet to learn cashiering, but I rather it that way, for that means I can spend my time in the aisles rearranging the selections. I am not exactly a file and careful labels kind of person, in most things anyway, but for some reason I find no problem at all being very meticulous when i'm around music. Racking up discs alphabetically, figuring out a way to display the greatest variety in the least space, subtly bringing those I like to the front, it's just like I'm being paid for what I love to do with my songs at home.

And the best part is simply just seeing people when they find what they want. In this case it is *always* satisfying to hunt down a particular song from a few lyrics snippets someone provides. It is against HMV policy to use google and the full arsenal of the internet at the counter computers but screw that.

The pay isnt really *that* fantastic but I do not really care. It's terribly absorbing work for sure, that's another post for another time, and my weekends are all wrecked, along with Christmas Eve it seems now, but really, windows in life for chances like these to do what you like and *get away with it* do not really come often.

A very attractive perk of being a staff at HMV is the freedom to pick any two titles and borrow them for a couple of days. The only catch is that there must be five or more copies of the title on the shopfloor. So for my first week it was Sia's ' Colour the Small One' and Lindy recommended Bats For Lashes' ' Fur And Gold'.

And what a gem Bat For Lashes turned out the be! I have only heard brief mentions of Natasha Khan before, and I regret never really following up on her earlier. " What's A Girl To Do" sounds very Pulpish, what with the spoken lyrics and ominous harpsichords that are simply magic. In fact I can just about imagine Jarvis Cocker doing a cover of this called " What's A Guy To Do?". Plus Khan sounds very much like Sarah Nixey from Black Box Recorder fame, who was my top female singer for sometime before someone else came along. Sarah Nixey + Jarvis = wow.

If you have the time, watch her video linked below too. The only way I can describe it would be it's got the Donnie Darko vibe. If you do not understand then never mind, just click play. You'll be pleasantly surprised, or seriously disturbed at the very least. But cheers for the song.

Bats For Lashes - What's A Girl To Do?

I wonder if this is what is being tried to get told to me, so I'll just leave it be, for yes, I get the point.

oh youre changing your heart/ oh you know who you are

2007-11-08T09:34:00.000+08:00

Feist - 1234
Uploaded by ListenToFeist

Ai dont you just want to fall in love with Leslie Feist? sure she may be exactly ten years older but still. She just has so much spunk and life I just cant help it. Anyway, the video's a lesson in simplicity but challenging technicalities.

Here's hoping that I come back in one piece. See you!

keep the punk rock ska beats house / fuck me im twee!

2007-11-05T12:30:00.000+08:00

I suppose you know how from time to time moments of pure zaniness ( ooh spellcheck actually passed that word) threatens to overtake your mind, and you just drop whatever you have in your hands and do something completely *fresh*.

So that's this post, typed out in less than 15 minutes while I was struggling through a very different sort of post I had in mind which was already a day late. I suppose I still work best in spontaneity.

Towards the end of my military term ( and it's over now!), there was an interesting change I noticed in the kind of music that started to turn up high on my itunes playlist.

Sheer indiepop! all in the sense of the word twee! and that word means just what it sounds! and you kind of get what it means too by the multiple exclamation marks! which I always try to keep to a minimum!

Hah but seriously the word twee is often used for music that is alluring, charming, but tending to be also terribly saccharine. Depends a lot on your mood though. It could be the most expressively fresh and boldest thing that brings a shine to your eyes and a skip in your heartbeat; or if blue thunderclouds are more your cup of tea that day it could be so sickeningly *sweet* that you instinctively recoil from the utter insensitivity of it.

Bleh I do not care.

Got a theory. There are certain kinds of music you just *cant* listen to while in the military, no matter where you are. I cannot for the life of myself imagine putting on the song posted here while running around random jungles and getting stuff done in the army way. I mean, there's also a reputation to consider. Watched Stardust already yes? Reputation in the sense of Captain Shakespeare yarrr piratey sense. A sergeant is *just not* given to listening to such jaunty music no matter what one says alright? Look there is just no way I can pull my earphones off while a song like this is on and shout " oi you bunch of monkeys the boats arent going to move themselves" with maybe some chinese dialect emphasis somewhere and maintain a straight no nonsense sneering sergeant face.

So perhaps a song like this is a reaction to the past two years. In essence, the military is just about doing the stuff in front of you not because you might *like* it but because it is *in front of you* and it *has to be done*. The best thing it taught me, and the most dangerous too. One becomes terribly focused, and things get done, but it is all very isolated, things outside are not thought of, or even more importantly you do not think with the *perspective* of the outside, which might explain the disjointed absurdity one sees from time to time everywhere in the military world.

What better way to answer to such honed and at the same time deadened senses than a colourful explosion of life and expressiveness?

Tullycraft has been around since the mid 90s at least, crafting amiable underground indie gems that were probably counter cultural to the counter culture of the times. Imagine such a goodnatured song like ' Pop Songs Your New Boyfriend's Too Stupid To Hear About' that just screams fun! in the times of Nirvina/ Oasis/ Blur and the like. Kind of puts things in perspective about musical boldness yes?

But the magic in Tullycraft's music isnt all just in the plain exuberance that threatens to burst out into fluffy rabbits anytime, it's the self referential wry tone that underlines each lyric and every beat. Just take a listen to' If You Take Away the Make-Up (Then The Vampires They Will Die)' and tell me if you do not feel a slight smile creeping up the edges of your lips.

As if to say look I know you may not agree with what we are doing here but to hell with that! Sure what we are doing may not exactly be very promising and safely predictable but we dont care! And we choose to carry on with a laugh and jaunt, whatever may come.

In other words, the self same kind of attitude that I find myself in as I start a new phase in life ( ooh that sounds big and so bloggish sheesh), the same self same sense of a refusal to give in and lower you head, and to *carry on*, for incongruity is no reason not to jaunt along with a swagger and laugh even when things seem like they have been shot up to hell and back.

Tullycraft - Pop Songs Your New Boyfriend's Too Stupid to Know About
Their earliest gem. Supposedly now considered an indiepop classic. It is very raw and rough if you wish to compare it to their later material, but the lyrics are an absolute blast and if you dont know what magic is, magic = 1.10 and 2.20 of the song.

Chris Munford's vocals might just put you off though, it you arent prepared for it. Be warned!

Tullycraft - Twee
oh you know how some things just shimmer? well this *shimmers*

Tullycraft - The Punks Are Writing Love Songs
guaranteed to leave you humming. or your bandwidth back.

Tullycraft - If You Take Away the Make-Up (Then The Vampires They Will Die)
you arent human if you do not remotely in any way like this song.

Tullycraft - Neutron
exactly what the hell is a neutron dance? there never was any such thing but just the title of an insanely catchy song only an insanely catchy song in the 80s can be! dont believe what the line dancing Victorian sheep tell you.

oh but it had been a long while since a song like tullycraft's ' Neutron' came along and made me jump to the side and shake out crazily to the song beside the computer. Yes. Zhanhui admitted to that freely. Just do not go overboard in making fun about that of him and he'll try to not regret deleting that line before he clicked ' publish post'. Hell.

Tullycraft - Georgette Plays A Goth
a waitress for a posh restaurant decides to dress up goth.

there's a failure in me/ there's a flaw in you

2007-10-23T03:37:00.001+08:00

Cant resist another lo-fi indie song the constant rain is perfect for such a mood these nights.

Though I wonder why the above should be so, for my recent memories of nights like these are not in the least bit pensive or anything such. Running to pull a damn boat up from the flooding shoreline/ huddled around a can of shared beef cubes ( I think) with friends at the back of a truckful of snoring guys while it rained cows outside/ and this one stretches one year back keeping sentry on a soggy hill while pointlessly discussing life, the universe, and everything inbetween with the other posted watcher/ stuff like that. So fun.

Anyhow, Orillia Opry is Daniel Noble and Emma Baxter, from Montreal, Canada, where I seem to be featuring lots of people from lately. Cant help it I like their kind of indiepop along with the swedes. He plays the guitars and sings, while she provides marvelously enchanting vocals that harmonizes with everything near perfectly. Put the song on, go on it's just a click to the right side, and tell me if her lilting woven voice isnt of just the right timbre, the right suppleness, in a perfect weave with the song's other elements. What irony though, such harmony in a song plainly about a breakup.

Dont we all wish we can meet the sadness of any heartbreak with the same " plainest of adornment, with the evenest of tones", as how this duet is done? or so as the listener at Said The Gramophone puts it very succinctly:

" Such a fearsome, gentle chorus: "If you come back / come back with a heart attack". A heart attack! Like it's the easiest thing to sing, like there's nothing tightening in their chest as they stare you down.."

I do not know about you but I have not heard another that is as pretty and bitter a breakup song as " I Lied".

Perfect for nights like these.

Orilla Opry - I Lied

you can tell this looking in my eyes

2007-10-20T03:18:00.000+08:00

hm I really got to stop this habit of only transferring posts long overdued in my mind to type at four am in the morning. Never really liked sitting down in front of the keyboard just because a blog needs life, well see this and you might understand what I try to avoid---> http://xkcd.com/77/ .

Anyway, I finally decided to snap up Victoria Bergsman ( of swedish Concretes fame) debut solo album " Open Field" just last week. Looking back I do not understand why I had doubts about it when I first saw it on the shelf about a month ago but there we go. Just after I grabbed hold of the cd, an american couple came up and handed me a HMV stampcard, which just needed a purchase of $20 more in order to get the reward of $25 worth of anything from HMV. Oh yeh and in classic Zhanhui fashion of happily losing the bird in hand he drops the damned card while filling up the job application form at said outlet later. Bloody hell. Keep forgetting *both* my hands can be used to hold stuff now.

I suppose things like to balance themselves out, in a fashion anyway, as everything went smooth for the form and subsequent interviews the next day.

No that is a lie. It was only yesterday that I realized with a twisting fear in my gut that under " which artist released 'Blonde on Blonde' " I had filled in *Blondie* without thinking much...

No I may not really listen much to Bob Dylan but *still*, Blondie?!?!

Hah right that's enough, here is the song which you are here for.

Branching away from the 'sounds-complex- but-truthfully-devastatingly-elegant-and-simple' aesthetic of her ex band The Concretes, Victoria has chosen instead to focus on simpler, tighter arrangements woven around just her voice and a few other sparse instruments. What she fashioned, is this sense of *space*, of a starkness that has a kind of unblinking sincerity behind it. An openness that doesn't envelope but instead encompasses. It is the same kind of wow as ' Say Something New', but approached from the other direction, the beauty in pure sheerness kind.

She is right in bringing her amazing vocals to the forefront, for that and the careful arrangement in the songs make this album shine. Not in the sense of a bright burning star but the sure quiet glow of embers. But truly, like I quote from another " we don’t really need stripped-down arrangements and a cappella passages to know that Bergsman’s voice is special—this smoky, fragile/strong, entirely distinctive thing."

Ill put up the most obvious single from ' Open Field' here. The song is penned by Tracyanne Campbell of Camera Obscura for her friend Victoria, and that I supposed lent the measured indie catchiness to the tune. There's a video up for it on youtube too.

Be sure to check up her myspace link too, you can practically sample the whole album there. ' Cedar Trees' is another gem.

Taken By Trees - Lost And Found

Well, call me different but there is this sense of Northern stoicism that Victoria Bergsman sings with, that I just kind of find myself identifying with.

well you know i've tried

2007-10-07T04:35:00.000+08:00

I have no idea how this found its way into my 'songs' folder, I think I once meant to put it up on this blog before, but never could find the appropriate words to go along with it.

Anyhow, this song was somehow striking enough to catch my ears once again while randomly going through my archives. It shies just over two minutes long, but within this devastatingly fragile and plaintive frame of a serene melody, so much sentimentality and heartbreak is contained within that it *is* kinda hard to get through it completely sometimes. Haha laugh all you want, but that is the way it catches and simply is.

I cant find out the name of the singer, but well, her voice is - meh cant think of a better term- sensitively mature in a very attractive fashion. She possesses just the right touch of distance even though " We Used To Talk" is basically a lament. A lament for a dissolution of a relationship where not even a slightest silver of communication goes across anymore. She does not mention the reasons so, but that makes sense because really those do not really matter, and are not the point here.

After repeated listens, there's a hint, somewhere in there of a buried wonder, or as close as I can tell anyway, a wonder why she or the other person is unable to find the time or effort to pick up a phone and well, talk.

So there.

HELLO STRANGER - WE USED TO TALK

well, of course you did

2007-09-28T01:38:00.001+08:00

Wow. Where have I been the past full year?

That I have come to realize just this afternoon while packing my things in preparation for my exit from the military soon. I decided to drop by a friend's bunk earlier, another who shared my taste for the alternative music and plugged in his ipod, and was happily blown away by so many songs I discovered.

Somewhere along the way I think I lost, or perhaps forgot, the simple enjoyment I got from keeping an ear out for new music from everywhere. Not just from musicblogs, like all I do now which I have come to realize had been a lazy way out for me. They should only point me in the direction, not be the main source of everything that I'm interested in. Come to think of it if it was not for that buying of a compilation of alternative tunes back in college while on a random trip to hmv, and subsequently being enchanted by a particular song ' You Can't Hurry Love' and the wonders of allmusic, I would never had discovered The Concretes and the whole amazing field of Swedish indie.

Anyway back to the point. Had I been purposely throwing myself into work all these months? Ignoring the simple things that makes it all worthwhile, letting go of things that I should have held on to instead of shrugging them off, but what the hell, it is time to move on to a new beginning in five weeks time.

Which brings me to this particular song. It is by Imogen Heap, one half of the band Frou Frou which zling tried introducing to me a couple of years back but which I never followed up on perhaps due to the reasons I stated above ( sorry.) If I did like I might usually had done, I might have had discovered this song earlier. Even other artists especially another called Sia, whom I imagine to be a younger and more contempory Tori Amos, seem to be a recurring artist on many a friends' playlists, hold such potential but somehow I missed along the way.

According to allmusic.com, Imogen Heap has been making electronic tinged indie hits since '98 at least, but it was not until '05 with the release of her second album did she break it in. One song on it that helped propel her to left field fame was ' Hide And Seek', an utterly alluringly melancholic tune wrapped in the cold harsh tones of an electronic soundscape. Her strong female voice comes unmistakably through though, and it's amazingly intimate.

One might think that the synthesizers screws everything up, like Cher/ Madonna ( sometimes) is wont to do, but here somehow, instead of distancing one away from the lyrics, her reverbed laden voice serves to emphasize a song that is, from what I can tell, of a very deep loneliness and melancholy, as if her feelings are too raw that they have to be masked by a cold sheen of electronic processing for it would simply be to painful then. If this song is already so affecting like this, I wonder how it would be like purely acoustic. Hahh perhaps it is better not to. Some things should be taken just as they are.

All in all. Utterly beautiful. Put it on alone at night, and close your eyes.

IMOGEN HEAP - HIDE AND SEEK

Perfectly sums up the kind of feeling im working under as I prepare to go on once a phase of my life ends soon enough.

i would stand in line for this

2007-08-21T22:18:00.000+08:00

I try to maintain only posting up songs based on their own merit rather than because of something else that is unavoidably twined with them in memory, because I do not want people to hear something they would not appreciate on a same level as me simply because they have not experienced the same memory. A particularly good example would be soundtracks from films, since your mind automatically links a lot of the song you hear with what you see on the reel at the same time, leading to a judgment that may be a little skewered, however good or bad.

I never touched the second, nor ever watched the first in its entirety, but decided the third might be worth a shot at the midnight show. The tagline helped too. Sure it may not be entirely original or even slightly cheesy, but there's something unabashedly poignant about ' Remember Everything. Forgive Nothing.' that does not really mean a thing but makes its point well.

If by now you have not, go watch The Bourne Ultimatum. As an action show, it does not rely on the same magic of suspense like The Prestige, instead a finely directed fashion of a pacing for action that never lets go satisfies the same, if not more so.

It is a perfectly good diversion from whatever you may be busy with the rest of the week, and it's not a bad way to spend $9.50 at the cinema instead of most other mundane stuff on the reel now. A friend explained bits and connections to me along the way though, probably much to the irritation of those sitting behind, but still it is easy to catch up even though you may have missed the first two in the series.

Hah now I have lost the focus of the song. Anyway, Moby's contribution to the Bourne series is not particularly jaw dropping, but like the film, it knows what it's doing and does it well. There is something terribly catchy as to how Moby sings the chorus in that particular low drone of his.

I remember watching the video on the Soundtrack Cable channel back to back with the Cardigan's Erase/Rewind and it was.. ok. Actually I prefer the video version of " Extreme Ways" rather than the one they have for the Ultimatum soundtrack, if only because it does not have the extra backing vocals that are kinda distracting.

MOBY - EXTREME WAYS

Food for thought. I watched 881 the night before this, and enjoyed it too. It has been a long time since I have watched a show with as much sincerity and heart pored into it ( amelie comes to mind) done tastefully, and you cannot help but walk away feeling appreciative after the show despite the at times haphazard wayward plot. Unfortunately the friends I watched it with did not share the same sentiments, but shrug. I enjoyed The Bourne Ultimatum equally too, if not more so, though the show was obviously a different ' type' of film with cold smart pacing and well thought out scripted action that carried it through instead of the warm keenness and sincerity that was all 881.

I am not very sure what I am trying to say though, perhaps it is just as simple as I like things that for all they may seem to be different, simply have a way of being enjoyed the same way by me.

oh yeh and I hate admitting it but Julia Stile's 'kind of' smile at the end floored me.

i took a plane i took a train/ ah who cares you always end up in the city

2007-08-08T10:02:00.000+08:00

Canadians!

So many things to do so many things to see as if ord came early, hah one hand down wont keep me down. If that does not make sense to you then neveryoumind, you are here for the music.

Vancouver based The New Pornographers are back with a new album due out soon, and it sounds their brash kinetic energy has not waned but sounds a bit more.. organic? Try checking your music library, more likely than not you would have ' Twin Cinema' if i have traded songs with you online during the last couple of years.

Normally I do not trust songs that start with falsettos ( sorry beegees, not sorry mika) but here it actually works. Why? I blame the utterly sweet yet scything refrain that comes immediately after it, and one cant really go wrong with such addictive twangy guitars to seal it cant you?

Thankfully, this attitude is carried along well throughout the song, an ode to New York City probably reflecting her kind of spirit. An indomitable lunging spirit laced with a little happy sarcasm, or at least that's what I gather. Songs like these speak more of the city than any ' national song', dont they? And I rather much prefer them too.

THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS - MYRAID HARBOUR

i can see light/ i can feel love/ i can see the sun

2007-08-01T17:13:00.000+08:00

Never thought I would be doing this but im posting up a techno song! Yeh, not saying anything about techno with that but is just I never really could listen to all that pulsating whirlwind beats for long so far in my twenty years of life. Fact I remember once converting a techno listener to Tori Amos.

Well not until a certain DJ from Brazil, Gui Boratto mixed up ' Beautiful Life'. Supposedly, this is a little deviant from his usual stuff he spins out, but to hell with that i'm glad he came up with this.

It is hard, and probably impossible for me to tell you how much I love this song from a critical dissection of such a tune, because frankly a) I would not know where to begin b) eh just listen to it and tell me where *you* would start. It does not have much in the way of lyrics, but that only resonates even more with its theme. The implacable beauty of the unseen, stuff that go unnoticed, or are just *missed*. The love of the asymmetrical over the symmetry. Things that are impossible to describe in bits and pieces if they turn around and ask " so list the things you like about me" because it's the whole that is always looked at and *just* appreciated.

But that's not all, what makes it even more pristine is that there is nothing terribly 'arthouse' about this. It just is plain fun to listen to, begging to turn the volume up, perking your ears up and twitching your feet. It's perfect to listen to on a lazy day. In the bustle and rush of business. Zen moments. When you're free. When your heart is broken. When you want to lie down. When you want to get up. When you want to forget. When you want to reminiscence.

GUI BORATTO - BEAUTIFUL LIFE

Good stuff.

cover up love's alibi

2007-07-16T01:12:00.000+08:00

An absolute blast from the past.

I have been meaning to post a Debbie Harry song for some time now, and even have a half draft of it somewhere but never could find the occasion to actually do it. Hearing it being blasted at the Ministry of Sound further made my night, kudos to the dj for putting it on when he did, for though the name of the song before slipped my mind the transition was good and well remembered.

When people talk genres like ' punk rock' and point out Avril Lavinge as a good example while name dropping sum 41 and the like, I keep mostly silent since I know there's no way I can successfully carry off " huh that's punk? I know they werent ' in our time' but have you heard Blondie?" without sounding like an indignant music snob. ohh yes ever wondered how Coldplay would sound like covered by ms Lavinge? mm slaughter.

I would give it a fair guess that Debbie Harry was *the* sex icon of the 70s/80s, fronting a band that consistently topped charts in both UK and the US ( cross Atlantic success being tougher and a big thing back then it seems), framing the typical ' girl group shangri- las-style' of a decade earlier with an ironic new wave sheen. The thing about Debbie was that she was able to combine a gutsily acerbic yet playful sweet image that I find more than stood toe to toe with the raucous classic punk guitar wall of sound her contemporaries The Ramones exemplified.

It's that tough-girl-with-a-tender-tone ( or as so Allmusic.com puts it and I cant think of anything better to describe such a contradiction) that one falls terribly in love with. Take a closer listen to the lyrics, then think of how she's singing it. You can take her either way, and her attitude says she couldnt less for she has said what she wants to say how she wants to say it, leaving you to sort it out. Hah call me suicidal for always being hopelessly attracted to a girl like that, but I always had, and probably always will, find that kind of spirit refreshing and just captivating.

BLONDIE - CALL ME

Anyway more likely than not one would most likely recognize Blondie now due to a recent Korean movie soundtrack cover of another of her hit songs. One reason why a Blondie post took so long to come up was an internal debate between ' Call Me' and ' Maria' as to which I should feature. Hearing a digitized ' Maria' in Korean ringing from just about every phone nowadays resolved it instantly.

Wow that's all I will say and she's what? 50+ when she did that live? Proof that being absoulutely hot does not all come from looks.

Just an expanded thought. Come to think of it, The Pipettes are kind of an ' update' of Blondie, just that their modernity reflects the globality of the times in that inflections from many different kinds of music are present in Rose & Co's songs. More down to earth, honest and less flashy than glam superstar Debbie Harry too, sung from the point of view of a typical 20 odd girl who goes pubbing and gets happily drunk. Lily Allen lists her as an inspiration too, just look for her cover of Blondie's first hit ' Heart Of Glass' on youtube.

hm The Pipettes have been out of listening rotation for awhile now.. hope I can lay my hands on new songs by them soon.

A happy birthday to you Cheryl
yes I know im 2 hours late

and all the things I had in mind for you and me

2007-07-11T21:40:00.000+08:00

Amazing the SAF finally allows access to YouTube and Blogger with certain computers in the camps.

If I could, I would try it all over again.

I found out that it's been some time since I last heard The Concretes. Not even " Say Something New". It's good hearing it again. Makes one realize that I have forgotten a little of its spirit along the way the last few months, doing things too fast and taking things too seriously, not really listening as much as I would like to another.

Forgetting the whimsical derring-do, the smile and grit, the easy flow of chimes and melody, the commitment failure heart.

Amazing too, what a song can do yes?

oooh shameless cut and paste

2007-07-02T23:08:00.000+08:00

Remember When I Was So Strange And Likeable?

Tegan and Sara "Back In Your Head" - This song is an enormous pile-up of neuroses, but its issues are stacked neat and deliberately, just like the "wall of books" mentioned in the very first line. It's an internal tug of war: You want intimacy, but it's terrifying. You love someone, but you push them away, in part because you never let yourself believe that they love you. You want the comfort of familiarity, but things get boring if they never change. You get frozen by indecision even when you know exactly what you want. The song feels light and casual; it fits into the smallest, stillest moments while quietly (almost silently) freaking out.

-Fluxblog.com June 26th

woke up this evening

2007-05-01T21:10:00.000+08:00

Well. It's been 58 days. Or so radioblog says.

It has not been so much a hiatus but a stasis, and I freely admit so. Perhaps it was just a lull, but on hindsight I suppose it was more of familiarity, of routine, and doesnt the military like that so? My usual want and intrigue for exploring and hunting down new music somehow took a backseat to a cycle of WoW/ Boat/ Bookout and nothing much inbetween. Not even touching a book, watching a movie, spending real time with anyone, or just cycling again.

But you aren't here to hear all that, so I shall go on.

According to Itunes, this next song was added about a month ago, but I think I got it from fluxblog a longer time ago and just never took notice of it. It's alternative, weird, whatever you call it I do not care, but it's pure gold. No not gold, but of a breeze perhaps, a roll that uplifts and is different from anything you have ever experienced, that just makes you do a double take. It is useless analyzing emotions, for one can never accurately pin down a *feeling* in words that can always be shaped to do whatever you want. And it is the same for this song.

Could it be the unique drumbeat that never ceases to freewheelingly reverbrate without a care in the world from start to finish? Or is it the chimes that peek at you as they teasingly dart from window to window? The old but playful guitars as they strum while sitting on their rocking chairs? Or is it her voice, Maria Erikkson of Concretes fame, gently layered over each other as she pulls you in through the door?

I dont know, but hearing this makes me not care. And I can just sit and close my eyes.

Perhaps it's time to start again.

SANTA MARIA - LALALALALAAA

you teach me french

2007-03-05T01:00:00.000+08:00

" running in the zoo is the normal thing to do "

A visit with Kash to Serenaide's recent gig at Esplanade yielded a disc worth of sparkling indiepop gems courtesy of Fruit Records. The title, " Peachy Little Secrets", is telling of its contents, 20 odd songs gathered from bands ranging from local to Indonesian and of course, Swedish that are common in their twee pop sensibilties, and are simply a pleasure to listen with a skip in the step and a cool breeze.

Hong Kong's entry in this compilation is a short ditty entitled " Japan ' sat gua' ". Whatever that means I have no idea, but one cant help but love the way the slightly accented singers bounce their lines off each other over a twangy guitar rhythm. And the lyrics., well it may sound like sweet nothings but what sweet nothings they are. Sugary twee, yet sung to a point so honest and sincere that one cant help but break out a slight innocent grin when the female vocalist delicately sings ' i say je pense à toi...'

My Little Airport has a couple of albums out, most of it in Cantonese, but equally shimmering and whimsical. Just head on over to their myspace if you do not believe me.

MY LITTLE AIRPORT - JAPAN ' SAT GUA'

ok i lied/ it wasnt an accident

2007-02-11T19:14:00.000+08:00

When one reads Nashville, one thinks of serious country folksy twangs.. or according to this wiki: the " hollywood of christian entertainment industry". But oh no, there will always be a few apples in the barrel that choose to stand out on purpose.

Introducing Lylas ( go wiki their name, but dont ask me whether that's really where they got it from) with " Bit By A Witch", lifted from a Halloween special they did. At my first pass at this song I simply did not know what to make of it. The tune managed to sound noddingly folksy yet cutefully twee at the same time, but whatever it was the result was delightful. The ' dear diary' start should be a classic, never before had I thought a first line like this could actually make it.. plus I think it would be hilarous to see this song live.

This song does really stand out, and rightfully so. Such freshness and originality is reassuring, and I cant exactly place my finger on it but the kind of cheerful irony in the song is utterly enjoyable.

LYLAS - BIT BY A WITCH

Lylas lists ' christmas songs' as one of its influences on myspace.

way down the lights are dimmer

2007-02-11T18:25:00.000+08:00

ooooh funky electric guitar with ominous piano chord intro wins all! * guilty pleasure*

The first thing that struck me was that this song sorta sounded very Coldplayish in terms of its ' epicness' and the singer's voice hinted at the same English drawl as Chris Martin. Plus the lyrics are equally foggily vague ( " now i'm looking out, I'm looking in/ way down the lights are dimmer" now where did that come from?). Thankfully, Thirteen Senses does not turn out as draggingly dour, perhaps because their pop sensibilities and influences like The Flaming Lips/ REM/ and such remind them to polish and add a little vibrancy to their music.

The soundscape is lush, but not too much so it escapes from degenerating into a emo forgettable mess. Though I'm not usually a massive fan of swoony piano arena rock, this song was simply too catchy and filled with so many hooks to pass up. To tell the truth, for me, the best parts of the song are the bits where there's no singing, so make of that what you will.

I discovered Thirteen Senses through the music mag Mojo, which featured an upcoming song from them ( 'Follow Me' - which is highly recommended too) on their CD of " 15 handpicked tracks of hurt, pain and despair" in celebration of Joy Division. Enjoy.

THIRTEEN SENSES - INTO THE FIRE
THIRTEEN SENSES - FOLLOW ME

check them out on myspace here.

you were what i wanted/ i gave what i gave

2007-01-30T11:17:00.000+08:00

Ever had a could-have-been relationship that happily went up in flames? Ever had to interact with that person again, and deal with a whole mash of indescribible feelings that you never felt before?

Irony. Nostalgia. Bitterness. Introspection. Gentle detachment. An uncertain still-fondness. Melancholic joy. A song that captures all these emotions is a rare thing indeed, perhaps as rare as the kind of person that brings them.

Definitely not your stock love song, Torquil Campbell and Amy Millann of Canuck band Stars offer a unique view of a relationship that does not rekindle, but neither are any apologies made for its end. Both start off singing their own bits, but when they finally come together to harmonize it's a harmony that is not borne out of mutual understanding but rather something each comes round to on their own, and just happens to conincide with what the other has decided on. ' im not sorry i met you/ im not sorry it's over/ im not sorry there's nothing to save'. Such simple evocative lyrics sung so precisely give the song a very polished and sincere sheen too.

Notice how towards the song's end, the strings and brass build up to a surging outro. As if a wordless acknowledgement or last paean to everything they once had.

One more thing, I do not think a song like that can ever be written in sunny Singapore. I have never really seen snow before, much less been to Montreal, Canada, but somehow this song seems that it can only be written dead set in a frosty winter.

STARS - YOUR EX LOVER IS DEAD

Listen to this and more on their myspace spot. Reunion' is recommended too, especially its video.

Many thanks to yimei for this song.

i find it hard to take/ when people run in circles

2006-12-31T13:37:00.000+08:00

Reflecting my recent trend of listening to lots of piano centered songs, here's another. Originally a Tears For Fears classic, Gary Jules gave a brilliant rendition of it for a film called Donnie Darko. A show I watched recently, which is actually pretty good and enjoyable save for the fact that it's utterly unexplainable on its own without surreptious extra reading provided on the dvd's extras section to figure out everything.

Decidedly more omninous and foreboding than the original, Jules stripped down version sears with a darkly attractive piano melody and a steady voice that pays perfect justice to the rather nihilist lyrics. I like the paricularly nuanced and steadily jaded sound, and the mellow cello that comes on a minute and a half in is simply brilliant.

Just like how 12 Monkeys, another one of my favourite films also dealing with time travel, made Louis Armstrongs' " What A Beautiful World" even more poignant, tying together Donnie Darko and " Mad World" creates a resonance of themes that echo and enhance each other. I hope to see more of such fitting combinations of films and music in every new show I watch, but they dont come often enough.

GARY JULES & MICHAEL ANDREW - MAD WORLD ( COVER)

Click to read more about how this cover came about, and the band Tears For Fears' comments on it. The soundtrack costs S$40+ at HMV...

plus, this guy " learned to play this song for ( his) grade 8 graduation exam".

growing apart was not veiled in words

2006-12-27T15:45:00.000+08:00

Hazy laziness have never heard so good. Me in my musical ignorance, would think that repeated revolutions around a single piano chord that does not really change throughout would be rather boring and pointless, but well, we learn something new everyday.

Aptly titled ' Childhood Song', this nicely captures a carefree freewheeling spirit. But something in it, perhaps in the rather haunting voice, the sneaky crashing percussions, hints at a little darkness. Not malevolent or childishly vacillating as grownups wont to do, but something just.. ambivalent. The gentle ascent and descent of the vocals wrapped round the pianos that eventually grow to a regal rhythm, weave to create a song that is intoxicatingly catchy.

WHITE MAGIC - CHILDHOOD SONG

my-ring-ting-ma-ding-ti-me-li-lie-doh-ring-ti-me-ding-ti-me-doodle

2006-12-03T00:01:00.000+08:00

I do not know the original artist Colin Mehoy of the Decemberists covers here, but still this song is one of those gems that lurk very quietly while gently worming their way into your ears over time.

Both Colin's and Carson Ellis' ( album illustrator for the Decemberists) voices are at the very least - unusual. Here however, they are perfect for the gangly folksy tune that I'd like to think mysterious and wild gypsies dance to around a campfire as faint embers wisp upwards towards the bright moon. Although I have never met a real gypsy before. Heh look it's just a romantic sterotype brought on by authors like Gaiman and the like so leave me alone.

It is songs like this that make me constantly try to dig up music from anywhere, as you never know when one might surprise you just like that, and you find yourself in love with something you never heard before...gently pointing you in another direction you once overlooked.

COLIN MELOY - CHARLIE

december special I

2006-12-01T13:19:00.000+08:00

I have a friend by the name of Esther. A few years ago, she wanted to post a different christmas song daily to celebrate the arrival of Christmas. I suddenly recalled this incident and decided that I should do the same for the month of December and the reasons are not strictly pertaining to christmas. Since I'm not a stay-out personnel and would be unable to post a new entry everyday, so I'll have to do it weekly. Zhanhui seems rather supportive of my idea.

I'm in the "happy December" mood.

December. It is the last month of the year and is also my favourite month of the year. It is the month of happy moments as it is usually holidays during December. In fact, it is the first time I'm going through December as though it is a normal month. December is also the month of my birthday and many of my friends'. Everyone wants the month of December to last, because once it is over, another new year begins. Another reason why I love the month of December is that it is a rainy month and I love rainy days.

1st December
Green Day - Wake Me Up When September Ends

Wake Me Up When September Ends by Green Day is the kind of song you wish to listen to and sleep through the rest of the year till a certain month is here. I would love the song even more if it was titled "Wake Me Up When November Ends" as to December means more to me than October. I would be happy to slumber through the rest of the months and wake up only when December arrives.

2nd December
Aliyah - Once Upon a December

I have always thought of December as a magical month - maybe it is the effect of Christmas; maybe it is the effect of a long deserved break. The song by Aliyah is part of the soundtrack for the movie Anastasia. Every time I listen to the song I feel like I am under a magical spell which makes me want to dance to the song and hum along. This is one of the perfect song to get into the "December" mood.

3rd December
Linkin Park - My December

I like the beginning of the song as I totally agree with the song (December is my time of the year!). It goes:

"This is my december
This is my time of the year
This is my december
This is all so clear"

This must be one of the rare Linkin Park song that I actually listen to and like it, though just like most songs it is related to love.

you only get to see the light one time in your life

2006-11-11T22:00:00.000+08:00

There are a few artistes that I have not dared to touch on although they were a very huge part of my music listening history. Putting on Tori, The Cure, Bowie, Pulp, Smiths and other alternative bands on before I did my homework back in secondary school was a common routine then, putting on magic to fill the air after a day at school.

And magical all these music were. Effectively shaping the kind of music for my ears in the future. Well to put it this way, Oasis and Blur were the two big Britpop bands around then, but Pulp was always sort of an undercurrent that surfaced from time to time with hits like ' Common People' that managed to be played a lot in the mainstream. I remember borrowing Pulp from my brother's cd collection one day and did not really like it, but eventually, play after play, I found I rather actually liked them, and Pulp eventually displaced Oasis as
my brit band of choice.

' Black magic' is about the moments in your life that happen just once inawhile if you are lucky, that " blows your mind away/ and brings you places you want to stay", that lights up bits of your mind and world whether you like it or not, forcing you to change the way you look at things after. The ringing bells, distortion, Pulpy keyboards, layered with that unmistakable voice somehow lends a sensitive sincerity to the whole subject, and Jarvis somehow manages to sneak in a streak of optimism into something that is concerning life changing epiphanies to be lived for.

There is one thing I have to disagree with the lyrics though. Moments like these do not come " just once - in your life". Sometimes it does not have to be single earth shattering things that causes one to see things in a different light. Rather, seemingly random and unconnected ' small' experiences can subtly alter many things as much as one single concentrated of black magic.

Like songs, every choice made, probably decides something later.

JARVIS COCKER - BLACK MAGIC

where you can sample his latest album,

the only girl i've ever loved was born with roses in her eyes

2006-10-22T23:49:00.000+08:00

You have probably felt this feeling before: the vague nudging in your mind that what you are reading or hearing is trying to convey something * important*, but it is simply too abstract and eccentric that figuring out what it exactly is about would be an exercise in futility. Whether this is good or bad doesnt really matter in such cases though, for sometimes the eccentricty overtakes the actual intent of the subject and one is mystifically satisfied without actually understanding what it's all * exactly* about.

' Holland, 1945' is a lot like this. It is supposed to deal with the death of Anne Frank, and wait for it, the reincarnation of her as " a little boy in Spain/ Playing pianos filled with flames". Don't ask. If you can figure it out tell me too. Anyway how this startling claim is revealed speaks more for the song than the lyrics do, the musical turn to a carthatic intensity exactly at 0.26 a near perfect counterpoint to the noise rock that came before. This again is repeated at 1.20, and for some reason these always sound fresh and amazing to my ears every time I play this song.

I suppose the reason why I'm putting up this song is that sometimes, a song has to taken in it's overall stucture and texture in order to be fully appreciated. Uh I just realized that that sounds a lot like PC for lit, but nevermind. All in all, a very unique song, what with it's interesting tinny horns, tumbling drums and obscure-but-somehow-one-feels-they-are-important obscure lyrics. Enjoy.

NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL - HOLLAND, 1945

a fan made myspace site, give " King of Carrot Flowers pt 1" a listen if you can:

there's twenty seven shades of blue

2006-10-08T22:18:00.000+08:00

I cannot say I know much of the music in the 50s/60s, but somehow this song reminds me of what I would like to think that period exemplified: the pop goodness of Dusty Springfield comes to mind. If sunshine could be distilled, it would probably be in the form of the gorgeous melody here, at home in a soaring resigned-to-heartache of an epic epic glazed with Ali Howard's ( the blonde songtress in the picture below)clear and luscious vocals singing lyrics enough to get you through and dark night.

As did I, the song may strike you as a little too sacharrine and sweet at first. Partly due to how unique Ali sounds. But give her a chance, her voice really did start to grow on me as I realized every single nuance and tinge in her uniqueness was sheer warmth and sincerity that was not artificial at all in anyway.Actually, me merely describing this tight timeless tune is not enough to do it justice, so let me quote Lucky Soul's guitarist and songwriter Andrew Laidlaw words that pin down what they wove into the song in a way that I am simply unable to express with mere adjectives.

“ It’s like a big, luscious happy-heartache, like watching the sun go down, getting dumped and patting a dog at the same time. Soul music by small town dreamers who don’t pretend to come from the Deep South; Beautiful and self-effacing, bittersweet. Like romance, it seems superficial but runs deep. It doesn’t try to be clever: your guts aren’t clever.”

So there you are.

LUCKY SOUL - LIPS ARE UNHAPPY

Shimmering, super-melodic, heartache and charm on myspace:

And anyway, in the words of music blogger thetorturegarden.blogspot.com: "I'm sick of describing bands by comparing them to other bands. Ok. Unashamed joyous dancing in the street sixties 'Grease' infectious heartfelt sweet motown girl-group wall-of-sound-stealing lovingly written Bacharach-adoring hand-clap clapping utterly enrapturing very very good."

This is a song that has to be carefully played though. Dont put it too often or it will lose its magic..

It starts out easy, something simple, something sleazy, something inching past the edge of the reserve

2006-10-05T21:45:00.000+08:00

Yeh it does start out like that.But woah does everything bursts out in a blazing powerhouse of indelible bliss soon...

The above may apply to many things, but only sometimes in a song so brashly sparkling. ' Here It Goes Again' exemplifies Ok Go's modus operandi of tirelessly energetic rock pop, razor sharp sarcastic wit, and just simply a complete sensibiltity for unforgettable hooks and harmonies with killer electric guitars. And all these neatly packaged into three minutes of charming energy.

Like all good things too, this song really only starts after it has started. Dont understand what I mean? Right forward the little bar to around 0.50 of the tune, and let it go from there.
And you discover the song could just as well had started from there without the prior gem of a pre 0.50 and still remain good. But what raises the song above merely *good* is that the whole energy and passion of the start never dies down but instead, against all expectations, actually not only builds up but morphs into a steady tightly controlled house fire.

But that's not all. The video too.

Pure low budget ingenuity that manages to flip a finger right up to so many other typically flashy expensive big MTVs! Just goes to show that sometimes all anything needs is a simple yet memorable premise and there's really no need to make it all so fuzzily complicated.

OK GO - HERE IT GOES AGAIN

be sure to check out their myspace,

here's another of their videos. It's traditional but still unique. Maybe I should just leave you with their own description:

Video for OK Go's new single, Invincible. Directed by the band, it features OK Go dragging things into a room and blowing them to pieces. This video is popular with people who like a) explosions; b) music; c) both.

it's not so much the way you hurt me/ it's more like the way you make me want to hurt myself

2006-10-01T19:44:00.000+08:00

Tentatively giving a first listen to ' Hellodrama' will be a welcome surprise to a ear that is rather sick of hearing songs that tend to repeat themselves rather quickly. Apparently it seems What Made Milwaukee Famous believe in not one, nor even even three, but at least eight different verse seperations in a song.

Yeh yeh quality over quantity and all that, but no worries WMFF has lots of that too in spades. Combining unique keyboards in their sound and a fun yet serious tone to their lyrics, this song is of the just so likable and accessibly catchy but yet still 'indie' sounding enough sort ( whatever that means) that OC kids would like to hear. Which is good. or bad. Depending on how you look at it. But I admit watching the OC is a guilty pleasure lalalala. Anyway it's a long shot but I hope Singapore radio would play more summery pop songs that have such originality and smoothness like this.

Instead of more repeats of that im sorry but, #$&@& irritating dingdingding DINGDINGDING-DING dingdingding bloody theme song of a certain recent movie.

WHAT MADE MILWAUKEE FAMOUS - HELLODRAMA

on myspace,

i'm not saying i'm free from blame

2006-09-21T21:49:00.000+08:00

I have never heard such unbearably melancholic and intimate lyrics sung by a voice so sweet and direct that it adds a new dimension of laidback intimacy to the whole issue at hand.

Tracyanne Campbell of Camera Obscura does just that, with her wry soprano and tender songwriting layered over the sextet's restrained and gentle playing. Perhaps it is again the quirky beauty in combined incongruity, the whole when opposites attract wonder. But whatever it is, the combination of music, lyrics, melodies, and vocals work in a fresh and interesting way for a topic that is so often carelessly tripped over by mainstream music.

It's a spring like romance. Warm reminiscience. Mellow wistfulness. You might not find heartbreak as enchanting as this anywhere else.

CAMERA OBSCURA - I NEED ALL THE FRIENDS I CAN GET

their site,

Allmusic
and them on myspace

oh, I've never met anyone quite like you before/ oh, it's the last time

2006-09-17T04:41:00.000+08:00

Stepping along the way home from the station this song comes on, and hahh yeh if I could dedicate a last song to one particular young lady I think, it just would be this.

Hm to tell the truth I myself was quite surprised a little of the pain is still there. But it is not the same, like a song that has been covered and sang in a different way, what was once a mix of heady confusion and messy intensity had somehow, along the way turned into a swaggering tune that *actually* has a glimmer to it.

Perhaps it is the playful backing uh-woos that reflect the whole absurdity of the mess as seen from hindsight that makes this particular song a dedication to you. Perhaps it is in the way how the same lyrics says something new when simply sung in another way. Perhaps it is the kind of spirit in this song that I can only best explain by offering a comparison to the neighbourhood kid who jumps up on a low wall and with furrowed brows skips on it, concerned only with the next careful step because that really is the only thing that should matter for him now.

Things happens, perspectives change... and perhaps it is simply the way the song captures what I would like say in a way and fashion that is simple and true.

And I shall wish you all the best.

Always.

Oh you've got unforgettable eyes.

COBRA VERDE - TEMPTATION (COVER)

Heaven, a gateway, a hope
Just like a feeling I need, it's no joke
And though it hurts me to see you this way
Betrayed by words, I'd never heard, too hard to say
Up, down, turn around
Please don't let me hit the ground
Tonight I think I'll walk alone
I'll find my soul as I go home.

Each way I turn, I know I'll always try
To break this circle that's been placed around me
From time to time, I find I've lost some need
That was urgent to myself, I do believe
Up, down, turn around
Please don't let me hit the ground
Tonight I think I'll walk alone
I'll find my soul as I go home.

Oh, you've got green eyes
Oh, you've got blue eyes
Oh, you've got gray eyes
Oh, you've got green eyes
Oh, you've got blue eyes
Oh, you've got gray eyes

And I've never seen anyone quite like you before
No, I've never met anyone quite like you before
Thoughts from above hit the people down below
People in this world, we have no place to go

Oh, it's the last time
Oh, I've never met anyone quite like you before

a super non-stop uber-rocking disco party

2006-09-10T23:59:00.000+08:00

Screw it, time for a song that's actually all out dancefloor meltdown as compared to the many other typical hands-in-pocket 'indie' kind of songs here.

Remember the Brakes? From their honest to goodness duet with the Pipettes in ' Sometimes Always'? Right here's a tune from the same album of theirs, but very much different. The title of ' All Night Disco Party says it all. It is built around a solid chorus and probably a single guitar riff, a song all stripped down with the sole intention of teaching those indie feet to get up and dance the whole night through.

And man is it good. It never lets go, sweeping you right up and just out for a good night of plain fun. Sometimes artistes get so caught up with capturing epic and momentous emotions in a song that they forget to sprinkle a good dosing from the box labelled ' fun'. Not the Brakes though. Lyrically meaningless actually, but catchy as hell.

What a way to start a night.

BRAKES - ALL NIGHT DISCO PARTY

The video is of a good eskimo led party at the northpole. If I pick up DJing, I would invite seals and penguins to come:

we could stick around and see this night through

2006-09-07T23:54:00.000+08:00

It's the bongos I tell you! The bongos!

There has to be something in the Swedish air that subtly lead the people to create such amazing music inspite of their dark 30 day long nights ( thanks Frostbite, for that bit of knowledge). Here's Peter, Bjorn and John, joined by Victoria Bergman of The Concretes fame in a duet that sings of that fuzzy wordless happiness that can only come during that dazed first period of a relationship. When you’ve just met and only want to be with each other, whilst at the same time worrying about how much you want to show your true self to the other person so as not to scare them.

" Its lyrics capture the first mad rush of new love (and the strange calmness and certainty that can exist at the centre of its storm) with heartbreaking beauty." so say The Times in their review, and I can not agree more.

Her voice is a big draw, but it's the whole thing that eventually counts. Those crazy bongos ( the background hand-drummed pongpongpong-pongs that start about a minute and a half in... ) anywhere else would sound utterly insane, and the whistling is simply summer lovely. The slinky bassline that thumps itself happily away under your nose as you take in the pretenseless lyrics never tires you out, and before long you know you are listening to one of the best tunes of 06.

Edgy pop. Alternative folk. It does not really matter what you call it, for sometimes, you discover something so especially unique that you can never again find the same in another.

If I told you things I did before, told you how I used to be/
would you go along with someone like me?

That's cute.

Peter, Bjorn and John with Victoria Bergsman - Young Folks

Below for a link to PBJ's myspace site, where you can find a video of the song.

Yep that's Victoria. She recently split from the Concretes and gone solo. Her voice has always been around this blog, just listen to the first song on the radio blog above. Just for the record, iTunes shows that the playcount for Say Something New is 65 since sept 1 of last year.

but he stayed in the city/ and kept on changing clothes

2006-09-04T01:23:00.000+08:00

I don't know about you but sometimes, there comes a point when it is easy to simply feel *tired*. Tired not from being physically pushed ( which the Army trains everyone well and isnt really anything special contary to what typical army guys would like you to believe), but more so tired from being just *drained*. Of what naturally it is different for everyone, for some it may be spiritually, or the mundanity of daily work, or it may even be something like maintaining a relationship and the like, but I never thought I would have to experience the kind of ****ing worried sickness so soon that comes when family and the prospect of death sit in the same room. The ICU in this case. If simply because although I know that such things happen, even know that my grandfather died of it, it did not really cross my mind ( more likely it was my mind not wanting to not think like this) that it would strike someone close just like that.

Neh but enough of that, I shall uphold my promise of keeping this blog soley on music, so here is today's post all done up and here for your enjoyment.

Quirky and melancholic may seem like an odd combination to many out there, heh but look it's stuff I like. 'Superman Song' is the whole package, like those moments that hit you at those times when you take a double take on things that happen around you and perspectives change. Possessing the same folksy lilt like other mid 90s college favourites like the Barenaked Ladies, 10 000 Maniacs and the Indigo Girls, the Crash Test Dummies from Canada sing a gentle yet bitingly sharp song about Superman's death. Yeh supe's dead and it is his eulogy. The song's a little dark, a little good natured, a little mildly laid back and a little smugly self conscious all bundled together. But before you think this song is a joke based simply on its premise, here's the lyrics:

Crash Test Dummies - Superman Song

Tarzan wasn't a ladies' man

He'd just come along and scoop 'em up under his arm

Like that, quick as a cat in the jungle

But Clark Kent, now there was a real gent

He would not be caught sittin' around in no

Junglescape, dumb as an ape doing nothing

[CHORUS]

Superman never made any money

For saving the world from Solomon Grundy

And sometimes I despair the world will never see

Another man like him

Hey Bob, Supe had a straight job

Even though he could have smashed through any bank

In the United States, he had the strength, but he would now

Folks said his family were all dead.

Their planet crumbled but Superman, he forced himself

To carry on, forget Krypton, and keep going

Tarzan was king of the jungle and Lord over all the apes

But he could hardly string together four words: "I Tarzan, You Jane."

Sometimes when Supe was stopping crimes

I'll bet that he was tempted to just quit and turn his back

On man, join Tarzan in the forest

But he stayed in the city, and kept on changing clothes

In dirty old phonebooths till his work was through

And nothing to do but go on home

here's the video too, which I think captures the whole song perfectly. Listen and watch it here rather than on radioblog.

" makes me feel all puzzled and mixed up" so says Xijie.

it's hard to make a stew when the meat keeps looking up at you

2006-08-27T23:59:00.000+08:00

I first heard Elastica on Trigger Happy TV back when in sec 3 or 4, one of those nuts british kind of humour show that I really liked and never failed to watch every Tuesday. The song was Elastica's ' Connection', and a certain acerbic yet smooth detachness in the lead singer's Justine Frischmann cool voice caught my happy and anti establishment hungry teenage ear back then. Anyway forward a few years and I finally started digging around for more of their stuff, and Fluxblog's recent post sorta reminded me of them with an amazing version of another of their song.

Here's ' Hold Me Now', a slightly off center crowd pleasing tune that is sure to grab you by the ears and make you pay attention. Lyrically, it's typically British off kilter but with a killer sass helped in no small part by Frischmann's brash and frank charm. You can imagine her slitted eyes stabbing right into you as she sings and cooly plays her guitar, imploring, begging and warning you all at once.

It's best to watch a video of her live performance below to see what I mean.

Elastica - Hold Me Now ( Live BBC session)

since they had disbanded, there is no official site or something like that. Unofficial net writeups are all rather dead and outdated too. The best site online for more information on Elastica is still over @Allmusic.com

Things really started to heat up about 30 seconds in..

the summer sunshine slowly stole my eyesight

2006-08-17T00:27:00.000+08:00

Life is full of inconsistencies, and this is just going to be another one of them. Oh fiddlesticks yes.

SWIRLIES - HOUSE OF PANCAKE

In the Layman dictionary of alternative indie music, looking up the entry on 'inconsistency' would probably point you to the Swirlies/Sneakyflute/Yes Girls. Such are the loose, atypical tendencies of the band's actions and identity that one can't help but be befuddled by them.

However, like a nugget of gold surfacing amongst all the sediment in a swirling pan, that would be House of Pancake for me. For an alternative dance mix of track of shoegazing music to be looping on my playlist, it is truly remarkable. A swirly strange song indeed.

Clicky below for lyrics to Pancake on official band site (trust me when I say you'll need them):

At best, I would sum up House of Pancake as a new extended twist of Mono's Life in Mono (plus, guitar riffs!). Ah but the way she starts off the song is so catchy in a weirdly pleasing manner that I can't help but fall in love... ... If only reality were that easy.

Singing bu wup bu wuuuuu~
-whytea

break prime time with surprise and lies

2006-08-14T02:21:00.000+08:00

It took me quite a bit of effort, but I finally managed to track down the origins of the artist of this addictively succinct song.

LO - EVENING NEWS

With a name like that, imagine my frustration to attempt to find any sense in the mass of "lo-fi" results returned from Google.

Hence, my immense surprise when I finally hit bullseye and discovered that Jason Lo owns his own label (Fatboysrecords) and is the first Malaysian to ever reach the Top Three on Pepsi Top 20 International charts and various other MTV accolades in the region, especially as the 'Winner of Malaysian MTV Music Video Awards'.

"Born in a small town called Kuching on the island of Borneo Sarawak (and educated in Singapore & UK), music is what drives LO." - LO on myspace. But why is it that he is barely known on the internet and more of an underground success story with his own fan following (on a Yahoo! group, no less)?

His official site, jam packed with wonderful musical goodness that would be all the lyrics, tracks and MTVs of his albums so far:

Lyrically sensual and vocally talented, Lo is not just a crowd pleaser. His music may seem like that of regular pop flavour, but original lyrics and a feel for exploration of music styles within or out of his own genre prove time and again that he just ain't another reinventor of that darned wheel.

This has been whytea who will be taking you for this week's ride on Say Something New.

so what can i do when i'm thinking of you

2006-08-05T21:21:00.000+08:00

I swear i'm not inundating the readers with Swedish music on purpose but I really did not know The Shout Out Louds were from Sweden too until after I decided to write up about them and checked them out on allmusic.com.

Anyway The SOLs are sorta more like an ' indier' version of Mando Diao. The sheer energy and boyish confidence is as much present in here as it is in Mando Diao, perhaps a little brasher and rawer that may not be as " bluesy and soulful" rocky but veering along in a more sparkling and hearts-on-sleeve fashion. It is the catchy and distinctive arrangements that really make the SOLs stand out, all creative and unforgettable hooks ( like the Cure). It is easy for most songs singing of love and the dicey stuff to go overly kitschy and self indulgent, here fortunately the lead singer Adam always keeps it from turning that way ( unlike the Cure sometimes), instead using his unique voice to gel and match the sound together nicely.

Heh nice harmonicas on the song too.

THE SHOUT OUT LOUDS - MY FRIEND AND THE INK

their site, where you can sample more of their songs:

i've been away but now i'm back

2006-08-03T20:30:00.001+08:00

Maybe it's just a reflection, but I find myself drawn to things, be they songs and things that consist of what may seem oddly incongruent differences that cannot simply.. work with each other ( mm 'sometimes always') but somehow oddly, at the end of it all, after much trial and error and false starts, find a way to mesh eventually creating something profoundly new and, so I would like to think, more amazing and wonderful than if one merely worked with the same similar components initially. The unexpected from the usual expected. Here again this tendency surfaces again, for I cannot seem to settle on who I like more, the sway of quiet melancholic alluring Mazzy Star ( just look at the video in the previous post) or the dance of all plainly cutesy and yay sunshine zest of the Pipettes.

So imagine my reaction when I came across a cover of ' Sometimes Always' rendered by Brakes & The Pipettes. Interestingly, they have switched the male/female positions in the duet, and subtly changed the whole nature of the song. Depending on you, you can decide that it's a triumph for post-feminism feminism or perfect summer coy pop, but look, now I am simply unable decide which version of the song I prefer, and that is really very telling.

BRAKES & THE PIPETTES - SOMETIMES ALWAYS (COVER)

click to see a video of the Pipette's album single previously mentioned here:

That is Rose again on the left. You can hear and see Hope Sandoval on another video if you scroll down.

you went away you can't come back

2006-07-30T15:09:00.000+08:00

So what do you get when one of your favourite bands hooks up with another of your top vocalists?

A duet that is at once one of the most honest and sweetest of its kind out there, and yet is so delicate and dark that a melody borne out of these searing polar contradictions is masterfully crafted. Whirling you up by the ears and heart, Sandoval of Mazzy Star and Jim Reid of JAMC offer a window into an exchange speaking of mistakes and forgiveness, that could very well be heard anywhere and often but never as telling and sincere as this.

Sandoval's trademark seemingly lazy drawl comes on perfectly and without any pretensions right at the start of the song, coming straight to the point, serving as the perfect foil to the strangled voice of a man who is clearly the kind of guy who prefers not to blurt sorry in front of you but to be sorry whether you know it or not. Here however, he realizes that what he needs is simply too pressing and painful to continue dithering and decides to just shut his manliness ego up for once and plough headlong into the whole mess with a direct plea to her. Naturally it comes out clumsy and awkward, but oh well.

When a song is able to capture that much in 2 and a half minutes, you know you are listening to an absolute gem. Netting such nuances with disquieting tension that just cannot be ignored overlayed by what actually sounds like an upbeat tune? After awhile you realize it's appropiate, for the coasting upbeat here exists not in the same happy shiny generically teenagerish way most love songs out there mindlessly cram into, but because this is not exactly another of those happy stories with a certified happy end where it's all kiss and make up it's all a misunderstanding etc etc. The focus is simply on two people who are clearly dreading this moment but go ahead anyway, dropping all previous confusing murky nonsense and simply being honest to each other.

That is where the wry cheerfulness comes from.

Jamc & Hope Sandoval - Sometimes Always

the video is all good and really tops my list too. Press play.

talk about the annoying weather/ while we are together

2006-07-23T16:24:00.000+08:00

Yes it's another Swedish band, but don't worry it's not a screwy one like Komeda. Here's a gem of the old school garage rock kind, shaded with a little more bluesy and souful tint that makes it even more of a find.

There is a certain kind of swagger in ' She's So' that makes it particularly unique. I cant place whether that is due to the singer's scraggy offhand swedish lazy draw, the guitar mash in the background, or the lyrics that dont really make sense by themselves but suffice enough to create a certain fresh, cheerful and stylish way of looking at a very old subject- a crush on a girl.

You know how sometimes listening to a song reminds you very much of a certain place, whether it's because of the stuff you did there before or perhaps it is just that the general feel of the place fits the song? Right somehow, I associate this song very much with Parkway Parade ( look I really have no idea =/). Specifically PP's evening crowd, the outdoors Starbucks there.

There's just something about the East Coast I can't place, and something in ' She's So' echoes it.

MANDO DIAO - SHE'S SO

them on myspace, where you can get a few more songs:

and in a blindling flash/ we ended in a crash

2006-07-16T09:27:00.000+08:00

Yay in order to celebrate me missing baybeats at the esplanade ( note to self: always write full name and IC no. instead of just an index number lest the officer examiner gets pissed) , here's a madcap jingly made-in-singapore tune that my brother introduced to the hard disk just a couple of years. Right maybe Serenaide has been around for some time already and this song was released much earlier but eh I have never heard them on radio before back then so shoot me.

The only other song I can think of that might feature a local district or sight is that irritating ' let's take a walk down Singapore town/ it's an unforgettable sight' tune that you can hear around from time to time on any Singapore Tourism Board sanctioned advertisment or something. I dont know about you but finally hearing someone singing about a place which you can actually identify with, or at least pass by on a bus ride ( no. 76 for me) is a plus. But of course novelty gimmicks would fast wear themselves out if there was nothing underneath ( no wait I would give a LOT to hear a decent song about Upper Serangoon Shopping Center or perhaps Girl From Hougang -- there was a girl from hougang, she lived right next to me/ curse that name of a place Minton Rise/ lalalaaa la laa--)

Anyway apart from the local reference another thing that makes this song shine is the insanely eh.. *sparkly* guitar hooks. Like the lyrics they arent exactly amazing by themselves plus they are might be rather same sounding throughout but look, who cares? Fluff singaporean powerpop with something in it that begs you to put in on again and again without any idea why. And hooray to globalization and the net for Serenaide's latest single with "a very strong ' Friday, I'm In Love' vibe ", was featured on a pretty popular musicblog by this guy from US, Annapolis who describes them as "clearly influenced highly by The Cure and Belle and Sebastian". And that's a combo I have always been trying to find in new bands, the Cure's hookfilled wide eyed dark brash teen feel ( heh I shall think of something nicer sounding later) with B&S's gorgeous and delicate slightly whimsy melodies, but I never thought of looking in the backyard..

Hm but it puts The Cure's hit Love Cats in a new light if you sorta imagine that it was inspired by one of those gangly singapore matted mewing strays that Robert Smith encountered one day when he walked out of his HDB flat.

Serenaide - Girl From Katong

here's their site, and look for them on myspace for more songs too:

heh and scroll down a little from the Skatterbrain article I linked above for a view I entirely agree with Matt about the Pipettes and a read of a hilarious transcript.

an interview with the band done by a Victorian a few months back too

CHO CHANG WHAT HAVE I DONE?

2006-07-13T20:00:00.000+08:00

Right so two brothers read the books, thought it might be a whole lot of fun to write lovingly crafted indie pop songs from the point of view of JK Rowling's star wizard, and come up with some utterly hilarious, sometimes actually touching, magical gems. Which they did, and I have to say they did it with such jaw dropping clarity and straightforward cheek that if I actually decide to one day read through the entire book series, it's thanks to them.

I mean I never expected such a searing and honest postmortem of a relationship to be inspired from a character in a book. What the hell you can hear the whole gamut of emotions that usually arise when someone breaks your heart for unfathomable reasons, that whole ball of hurt and shock wrapped up in defensive cynicism that has to be gone through in order for it all to be painfully purged.

The song starts with merely a slight tremble in the singer's voice and it's even kinda sweet.. but it rapidly shatters.. and the next thing you know, poor Potter unleashes a barrage of pent up questions and I dont think you can maintain a straightface when he bursts into the chorus buildup, screaming " why if you wanted to go out with Roger Davis HOW COME YOU ARE HERE WITH ME?" But look, he sounds like he really means it, even when he knows that the girl in question in such situations cannot be bothered to answer anyway, and you end up feeling up a little guilty and maybe a little apologetic to the hurt guy who is bearing his heart and you are laughing.

These guys are geniuses.

HARRY AND THE POTTERS - THE HUMAN HOSEPIPE

them on myspace, where the song and a couple others are able for download. Try " Saving Ginny Weasly" .

so Cho Chang, I think we're through.

happy lucky people (don't know/don't owe)

2006-07-09T18:36:00.000+08:00

Bloody Swedes!

What is it with them that allows such bloody *bright* music to be spun out so often from a land covered 2/3rds of the time in long scandinavian nights? Whatever it is, they need to bottle it up and send it over to singapore. The ingredients list would probably go something like:

1/24 guitar rhythms so sparkingly addictive that you do not know
whether to laugh or cry
1/24 CASIO worthy beepy electronics
1/18 sweetly summery sassy vocals that do not let go
1/18 TGIF burst out of school/office/camp doors with
trailing swirly colours
1/18 criminally simple lyrical directions for leading life
1/4 roundandroundandroundandroundandroundkickasschorus
1/2 sincerity that makes all the above grounded and never
over the top

NO ARTIFICIAL FLAVOURINGS OR COLOURINGS
MAY CONTAIN NUTS

Komeda - Happyment

since they have disbanded and their site folded..on allmusic:

something to listen to after too much jamc, mazzy star and the like

so call out to nothing see if it awakens

2006-07-06T22:34:00.000+08:00

Like coffee, this song hits and perks you up without you actually noticing it, and it's only when you stare down at that empty mug with brown foam the only remnants and evidence of the mix now swirling around in you body that you realize that what you have just downed is good. Very good.

I am not very sure where I snagged this song from, but I am grateful for it. It lurked around in my hard disk for a long while until I loaded it up onto my mp3 player sometime last year, and found its way worming into my ear quite often. The reveberating electric guitar at the fore is reason enough for repeated listens, you can't quite put your finger on it, but you follow its up and downs, changes in key, and shifts in tone that constantly keep the jingle fresh. Another thing is that the song is cleverly arranged such that the guitar, no doubt the backbone , is given ample time to settle in for close to a minute before the vocals come in, adding appropiately to the whole pristine and patient nature of the song that sings of leaving and creating memories.

Music perfect for watching the world go by, or at least for cycling along east coast with a good view of an oranging sky if youre the romantically nostalgic sort. The only complaint I have is that the song halts a little too abruptly.

Twin Atlas - Roll On

their site, nothing on them about them on allmusic though.

what happens at the beginning of time is that there is no time at all

2006-07-02T16:57:00.000+08:00

For some reason I do not trust songs that start with a drum roll. Of any kind.

I have not figured out why actually.

But here is a band that proved me decidedly wrong, The Shimura Curves, or " four girls from london playing pristine electro pop" which is how they describe themselves on their myspace account. Listing under Influences in the same breath are The Jesus And Mary Chain, Destiny's Child, and Sterolab. What to make of that, I have no idea, but if Im Not Afraid is a product of that mismash, then I dont really care.

The song sounds kitschly pop, what with the blatant electronic effects sprinkled everywhere and oo-ah echoing vocals, plus the lyrics are all mathematical geekery, but somehow in all this a jaunty infectious tune is created that will have you humming " i'm not afraid.. of electricity" at suspicious times. Think something like the Pipettes, but without the colourful sashaying and cutesy stuff in the music and you have this. Not as slick and luxuriant, but all honest to goodness finely tuned melodic chaos.

An interesting quality of this song lies in that while it may sound simplisitically repetitious at first, no thanks in part to that computer doo-dee that goes on happily in the background as if it were the most natural thing in the world, it merely *sounds* deceptively simple. Like the universe of singularities and infinities it sings of, the song is best taken in its beautiful whole, a simple easily appreciable whole made up of tiny invisible bits and processes that are very complicated upon closer inspection.

Shimura Curves - I'm Not Afraid

from their myspace site, captioned "Effects pedals and glamourous shoes - that's what we're all about!"

thanks to fluxblog.

and the way i feel tonight i could die and i wouldnt mind

2006-06-25T21:07:00.000+08:00

It was back in my first year of college that I discovered one of the best things that ever happened to me, and as such things go for me I was not even looking for it. My classmates and I happily highjacked one of those computer rooms one day inbetween lessons, and I grabbed the console usually reserved for the teacher. Propping my feet up on the table I logged on to the net, tuned into accuradio, and left it on the Brit Rock channel.

A peculiar song came on that at once reminded me very much of New Order, ( another brit post-punk band I was starting to put into heavy rotation then) a pumping and snarling celebration of dissonance in sound that seemed both joyously lightbeat yet somehow laced with a bit of visceral melancholy at the same time. It was not until after I looked the Jesus And Mary Chain up on Amazon and a visit to HMV that I found out that they specialized in two kinds of sound, one all revved up and charging like in the one I just heard and the other fuzzy droning guitar distortion.

It is this ability to meld both together, in an atmospheric and darkly poppy (?) way, that make them high on my list of favourite bands.

The Jesus And Mary Chain - Head On

an unofficial site, but is a good place to start..

Jamc's best of, " 21 Singles", does not wear out upon repeated listens but instead, like good things in life ( mm grape juice) turn out something new and interesting you never noticed before the more you listen to them.

i never really wanted your heart

2006-06-17T23:55:00.000+08:00

Swathes of folk and psyschedelia cloaked in Hope Sandoval's trademark hypnotic vocals make for very good listening on rainy days and late nights. Her calm and understated singing set off against rambling distortions in the backgroundhere make for a song that manages just a right balance between a sense of capitivating ennui and delicate adult cynicism.

Though ' Blue Flower' is not one of Mazzy Star's more recognizable hits like ' Fade Into You' and 'Flowers In December', I find that this song exemplifies well a certain kind of sound that if I ever were in a band, would like to make. The noisy Velvet Undergroundish backscape by guitarist David Roback is already amazing enough, but it is Sandoval's singing and presence that is so utterly unique. Like eyes that seem to draw you in the more you look into them, she communicates more than what the plaintive folksy lyrics do with every nuance and inflection in her breathy and husky voice. Hope remains one of my favourite vocalists, for listening to her
never tires.

Look around for their other songs if you find you like what you hear. ' Blue Flower' is a fine example of Mazzy Star's earlier playful and noisy workouts, but the band's mellower and slower songs like ' Into Dust' demonstrates that they are very much capable too of music that make a virtue out of simplicity.

Something many look for, but few actually pull off. But when they do, it's beautiful.

Mazzy Star - Blue Flower

it's not official, but it's very well made. Look here if you want info, lyrics, chords and such.

The quality of the video is not very good, but here's another of Mazzy Star's that shows a different folksier side of the band. A better sounding version of the song is on radioblog just up there.

Mazzy Star - I've Been Let Down

It is not just her voice but the way she holds herself actually, and yep, that's a harmonica attractively played by a very attractive lady.

The popular alternative

2006-06-14T21:34:00.000+08:00

Death Cab for Cutie provides a simple solution for the some of us who are frequently caught between the simplistic likes of popular music and the overwhelmingly anarchic nature of garage-born alternative tracks. Indeed, by weaving captivating (and occasionally haunting) tunes into song structures that go beyond the pre-chorus--chorus build so often seen in popular music, and presenting the resultant music with some very soulful notes on the instruments, the band, like Coldplay, has won its support from both the masses and the avant-garde.

In choosing which songs to put up here I have noticed there is no way I can give the reader a valid account of what Death Cab for Cutie is all about. They have come a long way since Ben Gibbard first started out alone, and the ground the band has covered between You Can Play These Songs with Chords and Plans, their latest album, is commendable and indicative of their willingness to experiment (and that is the ingredient that keeps alternative music alive, no?). That being said, “Brothers on a Hotel Bed” and “Death of an Interior Designer”, two of my personal favourites, remain shining examples of what it feels to pass through torpid days singing and fading to the rhythms of pleasant melancholy. Enjoy.

Note: More alternative tracks can be found in their earlier albums. Any song—and I really do mean any song--from the albums The Photo Album and Transatlanticism is good, and the song Transatlanticism itself is extremely potent when you’re down in your bed wishing you could be out there somewhere in space.

Note too that I am not Zhanhui.

Death Cab For Cutie - Brothers On A Hotel Bed

Death Cab For Cutie - Death Of An Interior Decorator

a happy ending or a broken heart

2006-06-07T20:00:00.000+08:00

Songs dealing with rabid indecision and wavering vacillations do not often come off quite as spazzy and freewheeling as this. Precise chiming vocals and an oddly cheerful bassline square off against evocative songwriting, somehow turning into a rambunctious ode to hesitation and realtionships of the could-have-been kind that is actually quite fun to listen to.

I guess I have a thing for songs which lace otherwise depressive issues with a tinge of quirky cheerfulness. It is as if they have a life of their own, little worlds of freewheeling courage that tumble along a backdrop of red skies and craggy rocks. Bouncing along taking each bump as an excuse to create a kickass tune, happily dashing the expectations of those around that stand by and eye suspiciously. naa nana naaa..

The Futureheads - Skip To The End

where you can listen to their archive of earlier songs on video:

The Futureheads somewhat remind me of The Proclaimers. The video even more so.

summer is only winter with you

2006-06-04T03:22:00.000+08:00

Obscure lyrics, creative acoustics, delicate song structures.. the typical marks of ' indie' bands are all here in these two songs. But the package does not often come better than this.

What separates these from the rest of the ( admittedly formuliac) pack is Pinback's abilty to weave all these elements together into an intimate tapestry of music that is at once nuanced and subtly sophisticated. A lush brown cloth interwoven with threads of wry darkness, stitched with tangles of just-there swaying guitar chords, colourful yet reserved, patterned with evening tinged strands that seem to be perfectly laced from the feel of quiet bus rides home. Of just sitting back and leaning your head on the window. Of crisp leaves underfoot. Of dusk and sundown. Of stillness and withdrawl. Of peace that comes with the night which we sometimes forget in the bustle of life.

It took me quite a while to discover ' 3x0'.. but that is the way with these kind of songs I suppose. They detach themselves into the noisy wallpaper and bid their time, waiting for just the right moment to slip out and take you completely, quietly enthralling you. Hm bliss.

Pinback - 3xO

Pinback - Fortress

See? War brings no good.

their site, where you can sample a couple more of their songs:

i just want to move, i don't care what the song's about

2006-05-21T20:22:00.000+08:00

Push back your chair, clear the space, put the song on and start moving those feet!

Throw all your musical bias out the window, the lovely trio of British lasses in polka-dot dresses are back again with yet another insanely irresistable adorable ditty of a song in the form of ' Pull Shapes', probably the lead song ( and damn rightly so!) in their debut album to come.

Everything is just about done as close to perfection as you may want in a pop song here; the strings flawlessly executed and not a grandoise by the way trap that many songs out there fall to when the songwriter is unable to think of a better arrangement; the live clapping bits unintrusively layered in that just enhance the simple wish of fun and dance the Pipettes so sweetly sing of. Wait for that lovely bit about thirty seconds in when each of them starts shaping the song in the style of their favoured muisc/ dance and I gurantee a smile on your face.

Dammit, listening to cute British girls singing about wanting you out on the dance floor is impossible to resist - go ahead and try.

The Pipettes - Pull Shapes

their site..

And.. a live set of both singles from their planned-for-July album, ' Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me' and which I once mentioned before, ' Dirty Mind' :

Bloody hell I think Im falling in love with The Pipettes. Especially Rose. !@#*% what have they done to this typical cynical and indifferent indie-music-loving kid..

it'll all work out eventually /better off with him than here with me

2006-05-07T15:24:00.000+08:00

A song is not simply words set to a tune. It reaches one in a sincerer fashion, skipping pass the structured banks of the brain that have been educated and stored with specific meanings and intent, straight to your heart that is pure and simply, you.And sometimes when the two meet perfectly, lyrics and music, something more than a song is created. Saying much more than words themselves ever could, more striking and heartfelt than a beautiful melody ever conveyed, you have a piece like this that does not come along very often.

This unassuming little gem slipped into my hands from a listen of Elizabethtown's soundtrack ( carap I still have not watched it yet), and though I was never really that big a fan of dylaneque folksy songwriting something in here grabbed me all the way from the initial tingling on strings ( are those mandolins? I cant figure them out) right to the lingering end, which goes off not because the song is done but because the singer has walked past you with a rough smile and starts to disapper into the distance, bringing his song into the sunset. He may have been broken once, but it is no longer a burden for he is done with the past he sings of, and he goes along his way.

Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers - It'll All Work Out

A link to Tom Petty's biography on allmusic. Salute when you reach the bit about him withholding an album from his record company in protest against their too high intended price listing of his release. Plus his words.

Still I think of her when the sun goes down
It never goes away, but it all works out

This one is for you.

i can’t make head nor tail of this fizzing on my tongue

2006-04-30T23:35:00.000+08:00

Early morning and you wake. The 8am Singapore warmth spreads itself on your arm, mynahs are chirping, andyou hear water streaming. Yes it's a concrete canal but look who cares?

Shifting your head to the side you lazily open a groggy eye, and in that muddled threshold of wakefulness and sweet sleep a sense of unutterable delight forms as a half smile grows on your lips. For some reason, for that exact moment in time, in that perfect encapsulation of a Perfect Morning, even though you have seen it often before, you never cease to be amazed and be wonderfully, simply delighted by the sight of her, like you, attempting to open her eyes as her head oh so gently rests on the same pillow.

It is not the wild deep passion so often described in movies and books, not the utterly sweet kind of fluff one is inundated by the world, but simply a feeling that.. is just there.

Not forced nor even concious of it.
Existing in that special half realm
that comes
only once a day.
Lulling
and slow. You know it cannot last
as the morning will eventually go

like dew. You know your mind will
crawl back to wake

and reality,

but just for that moment,

that single point in time,

you are happy.

And so is she

as she returns
a wry smile.

And that is all that matters.

The Reindeer Section - I'll Be Here When You Wake

i am the heart that you call home

2006-04-23T18:36:00.000+08:00

A discovery thanks to a friend, and the Decemberists have been lurking in my playlists ever since. How can they not? I cannot think of any who surpasses them as masters of wistful poetic yearning that somehow manages to be both theatrically exuberant yet melancholically autumnal at the same time. An American ' indie band', Colin Meloy leads a motly crew of five, and that coyingly mysterious vocalist you hear echoing in the background is Jenny Conlee who plays the accordion too. Together, they fashion a sound that evokes an unforgettable world of victorian swashbuckling adventures and ladies and eye patched pirates. With an exception. The protaganist is a simple travelling minstrel, not a high and honourable hero everyone so loves.

" The Engine Driver" rises to the occasion of driving passionate heartbreak I have never heard finer done before. Starting with a few simple strums that widens, growing more beautiful as the song progresses, and swelling to a blooming crest about a minute and a half in. Wait for that bit when the xylophones come twinkling in, and that is the sound of a searing heart that at once recognizes it's imploring her to let it go, because he realizes he cant do the same thing he asks.

The Decemberists - The Engine Driver

a link to their site, if only to vist a fine place where the design reflects The Decemberist's sound:

get their latest album picaresque too, available at most good ( and maybe not so good) music retail shops out there! And listen to " The Mariner's Revenge Song".

the actors seemed so happy/ but somehow ended all washed up

2006-04-15T23:45:00.000+08:00

Close to a year back a band of five came together in Brooklyn, worked hard, practiced hard, played well, and simply crafted good songs. Following that, they self-released, self-promoted, and self-distributed their very own self-titled debut album. Saidthegramaphone picked them up, pitchfork gave them a 9.0, with one thing leadomg to another Clap Your Hands Say Yeah rode upon a tidal wave of overnight success. All this while refusing to sign on to any big name record label.

Most of the songs put up during the initial frenzy were " The Skin Of My Yellow Country Teeth" and " Upon This Tidal Wave of Young Blood". And they are good. Very good. Possesing the trademark indie sound of brash unpolishness, CYHS mixes pure hopeful abandon with drunken melodies that tinkle and shine as beautiful as windchimes on a cool windy evening. Sure you may have to contend with Alec Ounsworth's quirky singing voice, but these songs deserve more than what first impressions may give. Endearingly slippery, CYHS sounds like nothing you have ever heard of.. yet they evoke the sounds of all your favourite songs ever heard, happily defying any sort of attempt at any direct comparisons.

'Poppy, '80s-tinged, and hooky as hell' as how allmusic.com puts them. And it's right. Unfortunately forget about ever hearing CYHS on Singapore radio. Naturally they would rather put up the Arctic Monkeys or something, but the fact is that it seems everyone's *cough* current favourite completely unheard of indie underground pop band (especially by hipster yuppies like these ) is worth listening to. Give them a spin.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Heavy Metal

where you can get the above two mentioned songs:

You will probably die if you live on these kind of songs. Simply too rich, sincere and pure encouraging to stare down all life's troubles with sheer musical goodness and a glint in the eye, oh no it is absoulutely not healthy.

Hah but it's just my cup of tea.

last night what we talked about it made so much sense/ but now the haze has ascended it dont make no sense anymore

2006-04-09T19:47:00.000+08:00

Yeh you have heard of them before. On the radio. On the net. Even in the Sunday Times recently. The band who exploded onto the scene by smartly building up a critical mass of hype through free downloads, a testament to the strength of the grassroots-indie-blog machine, bypassing the traditional major label release/publicity/blah route.

The Arctic Monkeys sorts of sums up the kind of the print in British consciousness that has been around the past few years, their thick and fast riffs a mash of everything from Oasis to The Strokes. No sense wasting time and space here, just look about anywhere on the net if you want more info about them. Instead, for me I find ' From the Ritz to the Rubble' a pretty good encapsulation of the kind of sound they do.. cool and cockiness jammed into a tune with rabid guitars and clanking drums that just about, almost, catch up with singer/ songwriter Alex Turner's brash energy that tears through lyrics.

It's music for teenagers. A *very* specific sort though. Late beer fueled saturdays out in a country "where fundamentalism is allegiance to a soccer club rather than religion." ( pitchfork). Music with cheeky lyrics for impressing a girl with. Music that brings you through to the dancefloor and out in the morning with a headache. Music that gets overplayed on the radio. Meh.

The Arctic Monkeys - From The Ritz To The Rubble

a link to where it all started..

if i had one million dollars/ i'll buy you a monkey (haven't you always wanted a monkey?)

2006-04-05T19:30:00.000+08:00

You know how there are bands out there you recognize by hearing them occasionaly mentioned over the radio , but you never got around to really buying their records or finding out more about them thinking that they are just ' usual' bands that come and go with radio hits, and then one day someone tells you more about them, send s you a couple of older singles and bang! you are gobsmacked when you realize that the band was so much more and different from what you thought.

Introducing The Barenaked Ladies.. they of " Pinch Me", " One Week" and that song about chinese chicken fame. Amiable and giddly irreverent, TBL were different in that they were simply more interested in making someone laugh than being reflective and ' deep'. From what I can tell, a huge aspect of their popularity stemmed from live shows where TBL's signature improvised rapping and stage banter continued to draw in new fans who simply wanted to enjoy a gleeful evening out with friends. Oh well maybe that is why I did not really take notice of them as a lot of their magic were probably lost due to me only listening to their studio hits over the radio.

Nevertheless, " If I Had $1, 000, 000" captures some of that lost sparkle. A charming crowd favourite back when it was released in their native Canada, it rolls along just nicely with a sprinkle of piano here, a dash of violins, a lovely bass that happily tags along in the background. All in all, a gem.

The Barenaked Ladies - If I Had $1, 000, 000

A link to an excellent bio of TBL on allmusic.com..

if you pull me apart dont swallow my heart/ heart!

2006-04-01T23:59:00.000+08:00

With a band name like The Starlight Mints, you know what you are in for. Delightfully off kilter music yet oddly melodious, they specialize in songs like ' Submarine #3'. You are happily intrigued when a few playful pulls on the violin starts the song, and before you know it a bizarre smile forms on your face as you simultaneously try to go huh? and wow! when the vocals come on. Not a very easy thing to do I think.

A bit more focused and sharp than fellow pop oddballs Oklahoma mates The Flaming Lips, the Mints are masters of song arrangements that feature all sorts of instruments from trombones, cellos, trumpets to funky sound effects layered with the cheekily boyish vocals of Allan Vest, and somehow, through the whole mix of it all, end up sounding surprisingly and irresisitably simple. Part psychedelic, part groovy, part retro, as another musicblog puts them, imagine a quirky modern Beatles aptly described by a friend of mine. Whenever I put on music by the Mints, their music seem to take on a life of its own, joining you in a world that seem to just infect you, just you, a small and compact private world where things and tunes come together no matter how complicated they initially sound.

Hahh or maybe it's just the feel good vibe they do undeniably well.

The Starlight Mints - Submarine #3

Click on down to their site where they put up some of their other music too.

Plus a bonus song from their latest album, ' Drowaton'. Is not available at HMV though, might have to hunt around at Gramaphone or some Roxy Records. If they release a first single from there, it should be ' Inside Of Me'. *singing* " Well, I don’t need your sympathy, but I could use your company."

The Starlight Mints - Inside Of Me

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

2006-03-25T23:25:00.000+08:00

Quirky and laid back, indie's darling band The Flaming Lips are probably one of the weirdiest around for some time, having allegedly started in 1983 when Wayne Coyne stole a collection of musical instruments from a local church hall and enlisted his vocalist brother Mark and bassist Michael Ivins to start a band. Hah I know where to go if I want to do the same.

Although The Flaming Lips are known for continually being written off as *multiple* 'one-hit wonders', they simply refused to give in to the odds, instead rearing up with a new hit single time and time again. Taking their first big single as an example, " She Don't Use Jelly" took a year after release to suddenly break into top charts everywhere. It started off an undergroud hit, led to a brief exposure of 15 minutes of fame on mtv, and to a "memorably surreal lip-synched performance on the teen soap opera Beverly Hills 90210, where a character uttered the immortal words, 'You know, I've never been a big fan of alternative music, but these guys rocked the house! ' " ( as quoted from allmusic.com) . The song bore no resemblance to the rest of the same album.

I guess it is the same kind of spirit pervasive in their songs that I sort of identify with, and this is best evident with the " Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Song". A demented pop song with an insane yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah hook, pretty good lyrics that I actually believe in, and just wait for the bit somewhere two thirds through where there's a fool singing against the yeahyeahyeahyeahyeah that just refuses to go away. Wow.

The Flaming Lips - Yeah Yeah Yeah Song

and their official site:

Oh yeah if I ever have a funeral this tune will figure into it somehow. I would like to think I have a bit of this song. Bouncing along taking a swing at everything and simply.. there.

oh I do believe in all the things you say/ what comes is better than what came before

2006-03-21T22:37:00.000+08:00

Before anything, put on Cat Power's " I Found A Reason", then read on.

And what's there for me to write? Her raw etheral voice speaks for itself. This is the song I imagine that when it plays just about anywhere, everything simply stops.. and listens. This is the song I imagine Wordsworth's solitary reaper to be singing as she bends against the wind. This is the song I imagine that plays at those sheer moments, when you feel things start collapsing towards the center.

Chan Marshall, or Cat Power as she performs under, had released 7 albums over the course of a decade, each to what seemed like almost always critical acclaim. Little wonder, for her sparse and simple arrangements bring out her catharic and bittersweet vocals to the forefront, burning away every thought in your head, every worry in your heart, every sand in your eye as you listen, and know that it all has to end soon. This song was taken off her album of covers, an amazing collection of Marshall's reinterpretations of songs ranging from the Stones' anthem "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" to Bowie's " Wild Is The Wind".

Plus " I Found A Reason" was recently featured in V For Vendetta.

Cat Power - I Found A Reason (Cover)

Her official site here:

alternative? maybe tis the other extreme

2006-03-19T22:24:00.000+08:00

Now when the artist Björk is mentioned, what is the first thing that comes to your head? I can bet that it is the image of Björk dressing up as a swan. Even my mother knows about Björk dressing up as a swan. But set that aside, Björk is a vocalist with icelandic blood and her songs have this unique characteristic. I must admit that her music might be too alternative for the mainstream - not everyone can take the songs by Björk.

Hyper-ballad is sang as though Björk were in great pain - the song is virtually packed with all her emotions and it sends a chill down my spine everytime I listen to the song. I would recommend that you listen to it late at night when everyone's asleep and you play it full blast. It is then you can feel the impact of her song on you. Somehow as time passes, you would gradually be attracted to this song. Would you throw things down the mountain to relieve all that stress built up? Who knows, it might be a good way to relief stress, but don't throw things off your HDB as you can be charged for that.

"Basically, 'Hyper-ballad' is about having this kind of bag going on and three years have passed and you're not high anymore. You have to make an effort consciously and nature's not helping you anymore. So you wake up early in the morning and you sneak outside and you do something horrible and destructive, break whatever you can find, watch a horrible film, read a bit of William Burroughs, something really gross and come home and be like, 'Hi honey, how are you?'."
-Björk

Björk - Hyperballad

Hop over to Björk website if you need some lyrics for this song. This song comes from her debut album Post.

there she goes with a twinkle in her eye/ dont take a genius to understand the reason why

2006-03-18T23:55:00.000+08:00

Sometimes it is possible to listen to too much dour 'indie'/alternative music dullards ( yes *you* Coldplay) and feel rather.. stale. You wish for music that brings a quickstep, laugh and a smile easily, preferably all three together and without any 'heavy' listening. And sometimes, along comes a band like The Pipettes who unabashly do all the above. The three lead ladies come in matching retro polka dot dresses set off against synchronized routines, and sing so sweetly your heart melts to their gushing fun dewdrop pop that could ice a cupcake . Come on they even have their own theme song!

Consisting of Rose, 19, Becki and Gwen, both 23, and an all male backing band The Cassettes, they have played many well received gigs in London ( Sweden once too) and released a couple of singles. Both impossible to find here though. " Dirty Mind" was their debut, and underneath this clever ditty of a song you can tell the Pipettes are masters of pure pop, masking sheer perfect timing and harmonies underneath a cute veneer of old 60s Shangri-las style call and catty echoes with an utterly bewitching ba-ba-ba-baa-ba-baa that just twines your way into your tapping foot.

Listen! And fall in love with music again!

The Pipettes - Dirty Mind

Find out more of them from their site, and watch their video of their latest single " Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me" here:

and Rose is gorgeous dont you think?

sweetness, sweetness I was only joking/ when I said I'd like to smash every tooth in your head

2006-03-17T22:50:00.000+08:00

The first time I heard The Smiths was when my brother put on " The Queen Is Dead" in his room. To tell you the truth I did not think much of it then. The lead singer was whining his way through everything, but still I noticed it was played often by my brother and I got intrigued. And in this album that is so typical of indie albums that refuse to be listenable on its first few runs laid buried a song filled with two simple jangly chords that got stuck in my head for a long while. " Big Mouth Strikes Again" gives you the bravado to run out and piss someone off just for the fun of it, feel rightfully good about it and swagger around like an idiot.

Anyway The Smiths were the quintessential Brit indie rock band about twenty years ago, somewhere in between the end of ' synth-driven new wave ( like New Order/ Joy Div I suppose) and the beginning of the guitar rock that dominated English rock into the '90s' ( as quoted from allmusic.com). Somehow, to all the people I have met, you either loved or hated The Smiths, thanks in no small part to Morrissey's unique voice. I fell in love with them, got their two " Best Of" albums if simply because I did not have enough money, and both became a rather big component to the soundtrack of my secondary school life. Witty playful cynical brit pop, with a lead singer that Wilde would find a good companion ( meh he always perfomed on stage with a pocketful of flowers, even on videos), that ranged from irresistable yarrrr! songs such as this to pure all-woe-is-me epics like " Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me" were all done in a short span of five years before the band broke up in '87.

Morrissey still releases solo albums. But personally I prefer The Smiths. Shrug.

The Smiths - Big Mouth Strikes Again

Visit here for a good place to start discovering The Smiths. Ask me I won't say no how could I?

hm as a bonus, here's one more single from them. A raw swirling interwined array of Marr's guitarwork at his best complete with Morrissey's mutiple overlaid voices, for once totally stripped of all pretensions like in " Big Mouth..". Raw, deadpan, and to the point, with a devasting soundscape of anguish.

I've seen this happen in other people's lives/
And now it's happening in mine

The Smiths - That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore

p.s. one day If I ever do a ' Joke' album, this will end it while The Wallflowers cover of " I Started A Joke" will start it.

now for rock music

2006-03-16T14:54:00.001+08:00

Alright, we have all seen the song selections by Zhanhui. Now here's the type of music that I listen to. ( meh. one of the first CDs I patiently saved and went out to buy was the Cranberries' ' Best of 92-02', featuring the single " Stars", which up till now still finds heavy rotation on my muvo -Zhan ) Rock - ahhh it is so lovely at times, especially when it's done by The Cranberries. They are an Irish band who specialize in songs that are immediately catchy and recognizable, and would somehow make you want to tap your feet and hunt low or wide for that one song you only heard once but know it's from them since they seem to have some kind of Cranberry™ mark on their songs.

You might have heard of "Dreams" before as it was used in one of the TV commercials by a certain local jewellery shop. Dolores O'Riordan's voice is unique and impossible to imitate - this song is very hard to sing along to, even though it is really easy for me to hum along to the tune. Listen carefully, and soon sadness will seep into your soul...

The Cranberries - Dreams

Do pop over to their site as they have audio samples - you might want to listen to the other songs they have created, all which are lovely.

And that was a feature post by Victor, a good friend and technical wizard without whom there is a high probability that I would now still be smashing my keyboard, giving a 1x good loud curse, and generally jumping around in an attempt to get radioblog to work. Ah the wonders of technology. - Zhan

you drink from the heart and you pour from the soul/ you listen to trash but it's not rock n roll

2006-03-15T03:14:00.000+08:00

If there's a reason why I would like to spend a year or so overseas would be due to a desire to watch bands like Howling Bells play live at pub gigs. From what I can gather online, they are an Australian band just about to release their self titled debut album in a couple of months time ( hopefully a good record store here in Singapore will stock it), but have vast experience touring all over the world from Tokyo to London. " Low Happening" wastes no time hooking you in with a pounding drumbeat and relentless guitars that simply do not seem to let up through the song, but instead seem singularly intent on exquisitely stretching the tension, never once letting go.

If the melodies remind one of a darkening and brooding storm, then Juanita Stein's vocals are the mesmerizing flashes of lightning that stitch their way across the horizon, at once sharply bringing into focus a kind of silky allure that all one can do is to simply stop and be entranced. The first rain hits, but by then you are already too far enraptured in the song to notice, and there you remain.. being led on an uncompromising dance with her enveloping voice.

Howling Bells - Low Happening

A link to their site, and watch their video on 300k, plus the song is in a better quality than that offered by radioblog. The video's simplicity and elegance ( in a way) caputures Howling Bells well, and is one of the best I have seen in awhile.

oh yeh and Howling Bells was discovered from Fluxblog. Scroll down to the 1st of March and you can download the song from there too.

what a strange thing to say as you passed me by on your way out

2006-03-14T01:10:00.000+08:00

Welcome.

Here's a blog, simply about music I love. What you will find here will be songs I have somehow stumbled across and have grown to appreciate so much so that I find them worth sharing. They are not bound by genre or age or any of that sort, but do not look here if you are looking for informed and professional music criticism. This blog is just a journal of sorts of the tunes I discover along the way, and from time to time one or two 'older' songs will be featured. To sample the songs, use the nifty radioblog on the right, and if you find that you like some, dont hesitate to ask me on messenger! It will be my pleasure.

To kick things off, here's the song that this blog is named after. The Concretes are a band from Sweden that realizes sometimes, all it takes is just a simple guitar hook, one woman's voice, and a melancholic melody to create a beautiful piece of music. Gorgeously lush, yet somehow shimmering with a quiet promise, this is the kind of tune that you do not take note on your first listen. But after some time, whether five minutes later or a month, it slowly seeps back in your mind and just sits there, beckoning for you to listen to it once more. Again. And again.

The Concretes - Say Something New

Even better, catch the video on their site.