What’s been going on? Almost two weeks since my last update! I’ll tell you what’s been going on. Summer’s been going on. BBQ dinin’ with friends, clubbin’, workin’ and just enjoyin’ the weather outside of the room where my computer’s at. Still I apologize for being distracted from music blogging, I feel like I need to distract you before I post my first real blog post in a long time. So in the meantime I present to you a song that Family Guy sort of dishonoured once by randomly showing this following ”random” 2 minute 44 second clip. If wanting me to join them ridiculing the whole spectacle was the mission, it was nothing short of a completel failure, because I’ve really fallen for this song. No really. True story. The facial emoting in the video, the melody and that clear-voiced singing. It’s bliss. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Conway Twitty!
Embedding was forbidden so go to the youtube page here to watch it!
About the same time when Peter Bjorn And John’s Young Folks started to circulate outside indie circles and its whistling became a minor international sensation, Shout Out Louds emerged with Tonight I Have To Leave It. The year was 2007 and the two bands became part of the top tier of Swedish music export, cementing a stereotypical image of bubbly Swedish indie pop with high hit factor.
2007 seems far back but it’s really only four years. Young Folks with all enormous, due respect but Tonight I Have To Leave It constantly feels topical and still brings out that joyous feeling as if you’ve heard it for the first time. It feels like it should be older because since its release it has been a common nominator for all indie kids and kids with alternative leanings in Sweden. It felt like it filled a void where we could all unite under one wonderful song that everyone know. The band has been a festival staple practically every year and this has been the song everyone’s been waiting for. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t love or at least like or at least could pass it down. I think it’s because its melody, text and performance strikes a chord right on the thin line between heartfelt melancholia and blissful euphoria that’s universal. I think it’s one of those songs that surprisingly many can agree is a good, if not fantastic, song. Unequalled in Shout Out Louds’ discography and over the entire indie scene.
Before Alice Glass became indie queen of being fucked up. Before Gaga came along and wore clothes that made her look mental. Before electro and punk started hanging out more frequently. Mutsumi Kanamori a.k.a. MU was the absolute shit. She still is. It’s un freaking believable that since her groundbreaking 2003 debut album Afro Finger And Gel came out her acknowledgement and legacy has not grown over the years. As of today that album is still a mental experience. It’s all dynamic shiftings between minimalist tribal discopunk percussion and gatherings of noise with Mutsumi chanting in some language from another galaxy and acid house on acid and soundcollages and whatnot.
I discovered her music in 2007 during the whole electroblog craze era and it sounded freaking life-affirming then and it sounds probably even more life-affirming today, in 2011. And she came along in 2003. I don’t know how to express in words so you’ll get a scope of how incredibly ahead of the curve she was and still is. If Afro Finger And Gel was released in 2011 it would generate heaps of buzz and hype. But it didn’t, Crystal Castles are still the hype nowadays when it comes to in-the-zone music and Mutsumi is fairly unknown to larger audiences. Fact remains Mutsumi is the hippest person alive and her music is the best kept secret of any ”scene”. No really. I honestly think she is the hippest thing you can listen to south of the arctic circle.
And I want to keep it that way. It just makes her more hip. It’s weird that I’m writing this because at the same time I want to be alone knowing about her awesomeness. But that’s just what it likes to be a music geeking indie hipster douchebag. You want to hear the latest and coolest, you want to love it, hype it and be alone about it while still presenting it to the world so everyone can see what a cool, hip and knowledgeable person you are. But not me though. Hell no. Let’s just get sick.
The Drums are quite cheeky to be so hip. They’re in the middle of indie pop’s most beloved snake pit where bands slither around each other trying to get the attention and playtime. At first, when their eponymous debut album dropped last year, I felt like their music was a bit calculated and feather light to make a lasting impression. But if the album cover tells us anything it’s that The Drums belong on stage. They’re one of very few bands who manage to not sound more rocking onstage which benefits their simple and effective pop music and makes it sound full and rich instead of weighing it down. And Jonathan Pierce is a force of nature. When I saw The Drums play at Debaser Medis in Stockholm last Autumn he was cocky, happy, cool, relaxed and charismatic all at the same time and had an average energy level of 110% throughout the entire concert. He’s probably one of the most charming frontmen out there making The Drums a must-see of all the buzzbands you could see. I’ve never listened to their music in the same way again.
Let’s Go Surfing at first sounded like a super-simple indie pop ditty sending a semi-ironic wink to the lazy, sunbaked, beach-based waves washing over indie music of the last few years. Now I can hear Pierce’s charisma shining through, because I’ve seen him lunging himself to and fro’ over the stage in an ectastic state of urgency. In the future The Drums should be remembered for making indie kids all over the world address the president of the United States and, shouting, letting him know that they care about nothing and wanna go surfing. It’s the song we all shout along and dance to because we know that we’re perceived as the lazy slacker generation and allow ourselves to act like it for 3 minutes just so we can face the next day of hard work and no future. It doesn’t get more post-punky than this.
There are many things about the man they call Owen Pallett confounding and fascinating me. It might be the music. It might be him being musically very talented and a string arranger for bands such as Arcade Fire and Pet Shop Boys. It might be him being into Dungeons & Dragons and, obviously, Final Fantasy. It might be that he’s openly gay and that his boyfriend is his manager and that the management company is conveniently called Boyfriend Management. I mean just that last bit sends me flying off my chair by sheer fascination.
It might also be the many strange connections I’m drawing between him and Patrick Wolf.
1. They are both musically talented, multi-instrumental and both prominently play the violin (Wolf plays the viola).
2. They both share that carefully arranged orchestral, baroque, chamber folktronica pop vibe in their music.
3. They’re fairly the same age. Owen born 1979 and Wolf born 1983.
3. Owen Pallett is homosexual. Patrick Wolf is bisexual, wether he wants to be an individualist bitch and disliking giving his sexuality a terminology or not. Has anyone ever given birth to the thought that they’d be an awesome couple? Or can they at least collaborate? I’d think they’d make some pretty awesome music. Owen embracing his ambitious pop side and Patrick learning about the virtue of subtlety.
4. Owen’s boyfriend’s name is also named Patrick. How freaky a coincidence is that?!
Or it might just be his splendid album Heartland sending my brain into loops. It’s sort of a concept album from the perspective of an ”ultra-violent farmer” in a world called Spectrum, opposing his creator Owen Pallett. It’s basically Ys on hallucinogenic drugs. And I love Ys. And I love the feeling of hallucinogenic drugs without having to actually take them and deal with the consequences.
To be more specific it’s the song Lewis Takes His Shirt Off that’s catching my interest. The title itself hints at his queer sides. The song is ever so subtle in its progression with a tinkering electronic base providing the rhythm and string arrangements expanding the soundscape ever so gently but surely not without leaving a lasting impression on the listener. Pallett’s melodies are politely sung but stick like gum in your head just because of that discretion that leaves you wanting more. As the song ends with this cool, rhythmically consistent tapping sound echoing out and down, after the string section has built up to a rush-of-blood-to-the-head crescendo, you’re ready to hit the repeat button to once again experience this mind-boggling episode of the Heartland saga. But all the while you know it’s perhaps mostly because you want to hear that brilliantly poppy melodic and unusually addicting line sung over and over again, ringing inside your head:
I’m never gonna give it you
I’m never gonna give it you
I’m never gonna give it you
I’m never gonna give it you
I’m never gonna give it you
I’m never gonna give it you
Or watch the youtube video below. After you’ve listened to the song here below I’ll allow you to go see the very confusing music video. It totally takes up all the attention on that crucial, magic first listen of a song. It’s one of the weirdest videos I’ve seen. The song is so ambitious so I don’t know why anyone would want to watch that nonsense video to experience the song. They’re two very different experiences so please, listen to the song and then watch the video.
