I mentioned this here recently and, since Friday afternoon is often a good time to do such frivolous things and the opportunity presented itself, I mentioned it - albeit in slightly different terms - to my colleagues at work.
"What? pop... singles... in 2008?"
"Yes, that's right."
They were probably protesting their innocence but I added "if that's too much choice then that's fine, let's only consider ones by female artists or all-female bands!"
Pop, in all its disguises, has returned in 2008 and here - according to the above criteria - are ten singles (in alphabetical order) that I think matter in this respect.
Pop is back for sure and, although it takes a lot from the past, it also offers something new. That is why, after over half a century, pop still matters.For the last couple of weeks I've spent much of my time thinking about, and listening to, all the new music I have come across in 2008. That is interesting in itself but it has made me think more generally about about the ways in which music evolves - why certain things come round again and how and why they are reinvented or recycled.
Things crossing my mind currently include my favourite singles of 2008, particularly widely successful ones and for a reason, also a top ten of cover versions from 2008, and why I think both topics matter.
One of the cover versions that I really like is a bit like a comet - it comes back to shine brightly every ten years and so - thus at least for those under twenty-something it will probably always be associated with Emma Bunton and TinTinOut (for whom it was a 1999 UK single). It was originally written by Edie Brickell and Kenny Withrow and appeared on the 1988 album 'Shooting Rubber Bands at the Stars', which was the début by Texan band Edie Brickell and The New Bohemians.
It has appeared once again in 2008 as one of the few covers on 'Deranged', the self-released début album by West Virginian singer-songwriter Stacee Lawson.
I like this version of 'What I Am' to bits and actually most of the rest of the album too - it came within a whisker of being included on the second of the two lists of Albums of 2008 that I posted last week.
I find categories with many competing possibilities particularly difficult by dint of the selection criteria: on one hand I don't want to appear biased but, on the other hand, that is exactly why I'm writing it!
This is the easiest category to deal with as there are relatively few contenders. Last year the selection process was pretty easy and this year it has not been too difficult either but there still are important differences: last year both artists/acts came from the UK and sung in English but this year that is not true!
The problem with doing this is that, having listened to the contenders for the category, what to listen to while writing that is not apt to influence the decision and is yet complementary? My answer, available on CD and well worth a listen, is Kiln House - Fleetwood Mac (1970, 12" vinyl, RSLP9004).
In 2008 one of the two doesn't come from the UK and one doesn't sing in English (on the EP)! At least you can't say that I've not chosen two that are in a similar genre, though that was not true last year either. Here they are, in no order:
Released in the US in late 2007 and, following their signing to Bella Union, in the UK in early 2008, is this EP by Seattle all-male five-piece 'Fleet Foxes'. They made tight vocal harmonies cool again - even before the release of their eponymous début album later in 2008 - and they sing in English.-cate+le+bon.jpg)
The long promised album, apparently to be entitled Pet Deaths, has still not appeared but in early summer 2008 this 5-track EP, released only on 10" vinyl and sung entirely in Welsh, more than made up for that! Some of the tracks are far more complex than those she has show-cased before.I can think of plenty of things to say but this song, and many others on the album Carry The Light, amongst them - 'No More Lies' and 'Time For A Change' - tell a story far better than I could ever hope to:
Run Like Hell
Building bridges
Across rivers deep and wide
We might need a telescope
To see the other side
We all know
That something must be done
'Cause the future is fading fast
just like a setting sun.
We can hear a distant sound
Like the ringing of a bell
We better do something fast or
RUN LIKE HELL!
War here, war there,
War everywhere.
A leader lies and someone dies
But do they really care
And could we face the truth
If truth were even there.
Who's gonna tell our children
The future isn't their's...
We can hear a distant sound
Like the ringing of a bell
We better do something fast or
RUN LIKE HELL!
Now don't get me wrong
The ending isn't clear
Many chapters of this book
Have all been filled with fear
I can hear the pages turn
It's the chance we've waited for
We're ALL in this together
And we've seen it - ALL before.
As we wake up in the in the morning
To face another day
Wishin' for blue skies
And all we get is grey
We try to keep our hope alive
No matter what they say
It is time that we get busy
And do something more than pray
We can hear a distant sound
Like the ringing of a bell
We better do something fast or
RUN LIKE HELL!
If the album 'Carry The Light' puts me in mind of any other that I have then it is 'Live - Frank Marino and Mahogany Rush' (1978) and that is no bad thing at all. This classic rock album has recently been re-released on CD and it is one of the favourite live albums that I own.
Things can, and in time will, get better...
A Change Is Gonna Come - Leela James (2005)Here goes with another selection from 2008 and these are already on order and, indeed the last I already have. One of the most common enquiries here in the last few weeks are about who is supporting Seth Lakeman on his autumn UK tour. I don't know and, when I saw Seth Lakeman live in Frome in July the support act was not advertised in advance as far as I could find.
Only later, when it finally occurred to me that she was not completely overshadowed by Seth Lakeman, I realised that should have bought this at the time but I didn't. Now I have it on order and can't wait to hear her renditions of delta blues and rock again.
With backing musicians playing various instruments on various tracks, this is not the same as the remarkably visceral, if slightly messy, solo performance that she provided when supporting Seth Lakeman back in July. That is not to say that I was disappointed, for I wasn't, but I did wonder at the time that perhaps with backing musicians...
I also, rather contrary-wise, anticipated not liking the album as much. I was possibly wrong on both counts: NOT playing solo seems to make her sound more focussed on CD. Live with a band I can't say but now I wonder.
That topic tempts me to mention another artist of whom, until very recently indeed, I was completely unaware:
Kelly Richey - Carry The Light (2008)I said earlier in the week that I was going to try and work out the lyrics for this album, even though it is probably one with which few are yet acquainted.
Jill Jackson live in Edinburgh in 2008.I rarely mention singles, unless in the context of albums, but this one - (Not a) Love Song - has caught my attention good and proper. I'm not quite sure why but clearly UK radio feels much the same as it is getting prodigious airplay.
It is taken from the forthcoming album, Little Voice, which is never mentioned on the radio but clearly should be, so here is the track list:
This is not a thank-you note
This is just a few words that I wrote.
They were never meant for you to hear
It's just that they kept ringing in my ear.
Now you can read me like an open book
Read about the beatings that I took
About happiness all shot to hell
A weekend at the Thunderbird Motel.
At the Thunderbird Motel.
Well, the bitter moon is hanging low
Neil Diamond pours his heart out on the radio
And nothing seems to go my way
Sad, sad songs and cheap Chardonnay.
Three days in the wilderness
Was all it took to make my life a mess
My happiness all shot to hell
A weekend at the Thunderbird motel.
At the Thunderbird Motel.
This is hardly a cheerful song but may be a tonic for those revising for exams because things will get better soon - believe me. It is also, perhaps, not a well known one. The band is Oh Laura, the singer Frida Öhrn and the album A Song Inside My Head, a Demon In My Bed. The UK release was 2008, on Cosmos Records, but it was released in some parts of northern Europe in 2007.
It is not as if Scandinavia - Oh Laura is a five-piece band from Sweden - is ever remotely short of good new music and 2008 is looking particularly interesting on this front but this is rather different to much that we have become accustomed to in the last few years.
It is not all gloom, perhaps in Scandinavian pop it never is, but on this one even the ostensibly optimistic 'Out Of Bounds' still has worrisome shadows.
It is consistently good and certainly one of the best albums I have bought in 2008.
Sometimes I feel you're not listening,The title may be odd but for me it is something that has happened at about this time of year for several years now. In recent months, and while I was hardly short of new music that I wanted to hear, this time last week searching for new things was an effort of which I was faintly conscious. This week it isn't, it seems to be finding me, and perhaps because of that I'm finding things that sound fascinating almost by accident. You should see the list I now have and in time you probably will see at least some of it realised!
That said this week's UK #1 album looks a dead certainty as 'The Age of the Understatement' by The Last Shadow Puppets is hardly going to fail. It is a collaboration and side project for both key members, Alex Turner of The Arctic Monkeys and Miles Kane of The Rascals. If it does make #1 it will mean that the first three albums on which Turner has featured will all have gone to #1 on the week of release and make Domino Records justifiably proud; the label signed the Arctic Monkeys against competition from all the 'majors'. It deserves to succeed because, whatever the background of the collaborators and side projects like this can prove to be particularly dangerous territory, this one is remarkably good.
This is a temporary image and I'll add a better one as soon as I can not least because this album is available on 12" vinyl.
In the meantime, and if you have any interest in modern British folk, this is an absolute bargain. The cover looks cheap, it is hard to dispute that, but all thirteen tracks of the music most certainly are not. The price is perhaps the real shock.
They are in no particular order:I had somehow got it in my mind that Moon Rock, the second album by Paul Steel, was to be released either at the start of this week or the start of next. It could have been me who got that all wrong, or maybe some label issue is involved, but either way give it at least one listen from start to finish! This following is not wrong, on my part at least, as I have had a copy for several weeks now:
It is pop and although quite listenable and also slightly different to most, I still rather hope that this will not be amongst my favourite albums of 2008. It may grow on me in time but like Mika's Life In Cartoon Motion in 2007, which did somewhat, it probably still won't be enough to quite conquer my initial ambivalence. I'd still be interested to hear Paul Steel's first album 'April and I' though. Only released, by Raygun, in the spring of 2007 what I have read of it tends me to think that it might be rather more original (just a random thought).
I admit that this is a somewhat so-so review and an "I'm not really impressed" start to 2008 but then again not everything can be better than everything else and very occasionally I feel duty-bound to point it out. I don't think, on a more positive note, that it sets a trend for 2008...
Why? Simply because I want to believe that! Here I am, for the second New Year in blogland, thinking about those things that I think might just be the new best things. This time, and for what that is worth, my inclination is that 2008 will be the year that sees pop, folk, dance and punk (in almost any combination imaginable), and possibly also country too, staging a revival that simply defies any reasonable definition. If you don't like that idea then, I'm sorry to say, that is your problem and not mine.
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