Dexys Midnight Runners 'Don't Stand Me Down'

Yeah, I thought I'd reminisce.

Browsing on itunes the other day, I noticed that 'Don't Stand Me Down' by Dexys is not on there. Pretty much any album you might want is on itunes, so how appropriate that a record that was all but unavailable on cd for twelve years since it's release should now be one of the last to 'go digital'.

I started listening to it again for the first time in a while.

I was a Dexys 'fan' when I was a kid, in as much as I bought 'Come on Eileen' and 'Jackie Wilson Said', but who didn't? They had no impact on my life at all until the mid 90s when my friend Lee (see recent 'Smiths' post) played me 'Too Rye Ay' and I fell in love with songs like 'Let's Make This Precious' and 'I Believe In My Soul', songs that were much more rich and soulful than I ever imagined Dexys were. As so often happens, I then made it my mission to locate and purchase everything Dexys had ever recorded. A trip to Andy's Records allowed me to acquire 'Searching For The Young Soul Rebels' and a couple of compilations, but had Dexys really recorded nothing since 1983?

In these pre-internet days, quests like this were difficult. I purchased Record Collector and found an advert for a Dexys/Kevin Rowland fanzine. I sent off a cheque and received the new and back issues of 'Keep On Running', a superb fanzine which alerted me to the existence of the great 'lost' Dexys album 'Don't Stand Me Down'. A quite ridiculously long quest followed and finally, after sending off another cheque (for £3. little did the guy know I would have paid ten times that) I received a second hand vinl copy of 'Don't Stand Me Down'.

This would never happen these days. I knew NOTHING of the record before I heard it. No leaks, no online streams, no audio clips, nothing. OK, so it was eleven years since it had been released, but still. I listened to it for the first time on my mum and dad's hi-fi, sat at the dining room table, wearing headphones, nothing prepared me for what I was about to hear.

Seven songs. Seven masterpieces. 'The Occasional Flicker' sets the scene. "Compromise is the devil talking/ and he spoke to me...", sung over a melody that was both soulful and groovy and then for the first time, the singing stops and Kevin Rowland has a conversation with Billy Adams. Kevin is still having trouble with his "burning problem", its not heartburn, its not a bit like that...its just a little matter of a burning.

'This Is What She's Like', all 12 minutes of it, is one of the greatest songs I have ever heard. Opening with an extended conversation, over no backing at all, Adams tried to get Rowland to tell us 'what she's like', instead he tells us all the things she isn't, and then describes her by singing wordlessly. The music is rich and powerful, strings and brass working perfectly together and the instrumental coda is perfection. The nearest we get to an answer is that things can be summed up by "the Italian word for thunderbolt".

Things slow down for 'Knowledge Of Beauty', a laid back ballad, with some gorgeous pedal steel guitar where Rowland sings about his love for Ireland. This is a man who people said couldn't sing and he sounds sensational, controlled and clear, full of joy and passion.

After 'One Of Those Things', a dissection of the music scene and an attack on people's lazy attitudes towards both music and politics at the time, the record heads for home with three moving love songs. 'Reminisce Part 2' a spoken word recollection of an early love builds into a beautiful take on 'I'll Say Forever My Love' by Jimm Ruffin. 'Listen To This' is a three minute, brass led, pop song with Rowland struggling to find the courage to say 'I Love You' but finally doing it and 'The Waltz' is a stirring hymn to Ireland, building into a frantic coda with Rowland repeating "here is a protest".

Nothing I can say about this album can adequately describe how much it means to me. I listened to it so much for the few weeks after I first heard it, recorded from vinyl onto cassette, that even when I listen to it now I still imagine I can hear the sound of the needle on the groove, the way I heard it first. There has been two cd reissues in the last ten years, the second because Rowland wasn't 100% happy with the sound of the first.

Every word and every note on 'Don't Stand Me Down' was worked to perfection. It is the sound of a man making the record he had to make at that point in his life and completely disregarding any worries about what anyone else might think. It is one of the most pure records I have ever heard. It is the strongest thing I have ever heard.

10.0

[copies of this album on vinyl regularly go for 99p on ebay. buy yourself one, listen to it with headphones and discover the most amazing record you will ever hear]

Denison Witmer 'Carry The Weight'

Denison Witmer has spent over ten years making consistently good indie-folk albums and in that time he has made two really excellent records.

'Philadelphia Songs', one of his early albums, is a collection of songs about home, growing up and moving on that anyone would find touching. Mainly consisting of vocal, acoustic guitar and piano, it breaks no boundaries but does what it sets out to do, very well. 2005's 'Are You A Dreamer' was better still. With songs this time about dreaming, sleep and loneliness and contributions from Sufjan Stevens, Rosie Thomas and Innocence Mission's Don Peris, this was a lovely record. In particular, 'Castles and Cathedrals', a sparse, whispered snapshot of a postcard from England was, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful songs written in the last five years. Surely with his next album, Witmer would get the recognition he deserves to stand him alongside better known peers such as Stevens, Will Oldham and the like...

Well, this album may do better commercially that it's predecessors but that won't change the disappointing fact that Witmer has made a staggeringly dull record. From the start it is clear that he has tried to move on from the slow, quiet sound of his previous records and has introduced a fuller band sound. Drums and keyboards are much more to the forefront than on earlier recordings. Opener 'Beautiful Boys and Girls' is jaunty but says almost nothing beyond repeating the title line over and over again. 'Life Without Aesthetics' is similar but better, featuring a nice lyric about bygone days and pretty harmonies at the end.

From here the album follows, almost completely, the formula of ballad followed by upbeat song. He appears to have nothing to say though. 'Carry The Weight' is trite in the extreme, to the point where you can guess the next lines before he sings them, 'From Here On Out' is an attempt at his old sound but is deathly dull and the hookline 'from here on out/ it looks like you and me' sounds more like a threat than a promise. Other songs are forgettable and 'If You Are The Writer' with it's electric guitar flurishes is dragged down by a lazy lyric. Other lyrics seem to try too hard to be interesting, what does 'patches on the elbows of my eyes' mean?

Only with the bittersweet finale 'Chesapeake Watershed' does he get anywhere near the quality of songwriting of some of his previous efforts. This is a real disappointment. Witmer sounds bored himself, so how on earth can he expect the listener to feel any differently?

4.5

['Carry The Weight' is out now on import and on vinyl from Burnt Toast records]

The Twilight Sad '...Killed My Parents and Hit The Road'

I may have said this before, but The Twilight Sad can do no wrong.

They followed up 2007's revelatory debut '14 Autumns and 15 Winters' with a mini-album 'Here It Never Snowed...' which showed a completely different side to their sound, offering slower, tension filled versions of some of their songs. Now, they return with a compilation of live tracks, instrumentals and covers released to fund their participation in a European tour with Mogwai.

There are four live versions of tracks from '14 Autumns...' recorded at a gig in Glasgow, all sounding absolutely great and truly ear-shredding. 'Cold Days From The Birdhouse' in particular starts slow and brooding but you are just waiting for the crescendo to hit and when it does the explosion of noise and feedback just makes you wish you'd been at the gig. A live cover of Joy Division's 'Twenty Four Hours' is similar, starting off with an almost jaunty bassline it is drenched in guitar noise before the first minute is over, somehow James Graham's vocal still manages to hold the attention, sounding in turns aggressive and then sensitive.

The cover of The Smiths' 'Half A Person' meanwhile is gentle and acoustic. Their take on Yeah Yeah Yeahs' 'Modern Romance' is quite brilliant, Graham sings softly over a guitar refrain, all sounding wonderfully intimate.

For the third straight release The Twilight Sad sound confident and adventurous. Their next album proper, due in 2009, should be quite something.

9.0

['The Twilight Sad Killed My Parents and Hit The Road' is streaming now at Fat Cat Records's website and is out on mp3 and cd on 8th December from indie stores only (way to go!)]

Single Of The Week

Emmy The Great 'We Almost Had A Baby'

I first saw Emmy The Great supporting The Mountain Goats at Union Chapel about a year ago and left thinking that she was a very talented singer-songwriter and one to watch. Mixing clever and sometimes cutting lyrics with sweet melodies, her set at the Chapel perfectly fitted the folky vibe of the night.

Her album has been a very long time coming. Despite lots of record company interest, she has insisted on making the album her way and self-financing it. Judging by this first single it will be worth the wait when released in January. 'We Almost Had A Baby' is a jangly pop song of the highest order with swooning strings and 60s style backing vocals. It all sounds very accomplished indeed and while the song has a warm, Christmassy vibe, the lyrics are sharp and witty. Perfect for listening to on a walkman as you stroll along on a crisp Winter's night.

I'm going to stop now as I've used the word 'vibe' twice already in this review and it is all I can do to stop myself using 'cutting' a second time as well. This is SINGLE OF THE WEEK anyway.

['We Almost Had A Baby' is out now on 7" vinyl and digital download. 'Emmy The Great' is actually Emma-Lee Moss and assorted helpers, I meant to mention this in the actual review.]

what happened to the sound that left you lying on the floor, laughing, crying, jumping and singing

Nothing to review at the moment. Well, there is one cd, but I can't be bothered to do it yet (not a glowing endorsement, I guess).

I've been listening a lot to Belle & Sebastian's 'Dear Catastrophe Waitress' lately. I love the feeling of joyful lethargy (is that a phrase? or even a combination of words that can be used together in any reasonable way at all?) in it. I don't know this, and I may very well be wrong, but I imagine that Stuart Murdoch went through quite a lot before recording this album and instead of dwelling on those things, he pulled everything apart and started again and DCW is the sound of him making those steps. That is how it sounds to me anyway.

It relates at the moment because, career-wise, I feel a bit like that at the moment. Have made some bad career decisions this year and at times in the last few days I have felt a bit like 'Dear Catastrophe Administrator'. I kind of think it might be time for me to strip everything away and start again, although I am a bit old to do so perhaps (34). How I wish I could have made the right decisions when I was 18 and then perhaps now I could be writing about music for a living. Instead of which I'm doing something else for a living and writing about music for a hobby. Badly.

So thats one possible reason why I've been listening to DCW so much. The other likely one is just that it feels like an Autumnal album. Sometimes a record hits you at a particular moment and then that moment in time will always be indicative of the album. DCW, as it happens, really clicked with me over a sequence of 3-4 days back in 2003 when I was delivering some scintillating training sessions at the L&D (scintillating in my head. in reality they probably involved me jabbering, laptops not doing what I want them to do and students yawning). I can vividly remember walking down Leagrave High Street and thinking what a great record DCW was.

Now we're sort of going round in circles cos that has reminded me of a time when I was doing a job I enjoyed. Enough. None of this is 'for here'. Although if I leave this post un-tagged, the fact that hardly anyone (no-one) visits this site on a daily basis, like as a rule by going to the main page means that I can say pretty much whatever I like, cos nobody will read it. Hmmm.

Anyway, if anyone wants me to write about music for them or write bios for bands or do anything at all, you can contact me. Not that I'm desperate for a career change or anything.

Christ, lets hope there's something to review soon eh? If only Amazon would dispatch my Denison Witmer import cd (6-9 days, my arse) we'd be alright and I could just witter on inanely about that instead.

Bye for now 'readers'.

Belle & Sebastian 'Life In Belfast 2001'

See last month's review of the 'BBC Sessions' cd. The 2cd has now arrived containing the live recording from Belfast in 2001...

..and what a good snapshot it is of how a Belle & Sebastian gig was in 2001. Before they decided to become more 'professional' and take playing live more seriously their gigs were often ramshackle and erratic. I remember seeing them play in London around the same time as this recording and they disappeared mid-set for what seemed like an age, while we were 'entertained' by a local steel-drum group that Stuart Murdoch was fond of. From many bands this would come over as arrogant, but from B&S it was just misguided.

This recording is similarly unfocused. A member of the audience joins the band to sing 'Waiting For The Man' and while the selection process and song choosing is edited down here, I can imagine that on the night it took some time. Isobel Campbell sounds completely dis-interested and her vocals are at times, almost inaudible. But still there are some triumphs here: 'The Model' and 'The Wrong Girl' remind you that 'Fold Your Hands Child..' was a decent album in places and 'The Boy With The Arab Strap' is always magical to hear.

This is a pretty good representation of how B&S were at the time and while it is fun and sometimes heartwarming, it also demonstrates why things had to change. Its well worth buying the 2CD to reminisce though.

Tindersticks live album

I'm well aware that I have written about Tindersticks far too much on here this year, but....nevermind.

Not only do they return to London on December 16th at Union Chapel but they will bring with them a brand new live cd. Recorded in Glasgow in October, during the same leg of the tour as the Brighton gig that I reviewed in September, it is a full recording of the gig and will be, therefore, absolutely brilliant.

Only sold on the Winter tour, you can hear a track from it, the magnificent 'The Turns We Took' at the band's Myspace here:

http://www.myspace.com/tindersticksofficial

Fleet Foxes on 'Later...'

My favourite song at the moment is 'He Doesn't Know Why' by Fleet Foxes.

Their debut album has grown on me an extraordinary amount. I'm slightly embarrassed by my initial review of it now. I liked it, but I didn't think it was special, not as good as the Bon Iver album for example. Silly me, although I guess, this is what album of the year lists are for. The best albums generally aren't immediate and many times in the last few months I've had a song stuck in my head and wondered what it was, then realising it was a Fleet Foxes song.

If you haven't seen their performance on Friday's 'Later With Jools Holland', go to BBC Iplayer and watch it now. In particular the performance of 'He Doesn't Know Why' is incredible. I'd heard that they were a lot better live than on record and it seems to be true. Watching Robin Pecknold hit every note and singing with such control and power is wonderful, one of the musical moments this year that has made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

I've got tickets to see them at the Roundhouse in February. Counting the days already.

The Smiths 'The Sound of The Smiths'

6am on a cold, wet, grey Monday morning. Walking to the swimming pool and contemplating, afterwards, a day at work. What else could I listen to but 'The Sound of The Smiths'?

If you perused the racks at a record shop (wikipedia it, kids) you would never guess that The Smiths are one of the greatest and most influential bands...ever. Their back catalogue has been left in such a shabby state that all we have are 1993 reissues of their studio albums and a couple of 'best ofs' put together without much thought or care. It was great news then, a couple of years ago, when it was announced that Morrissey and Marr would work together on a series of deluxe editions of Smiths albums and, at last, a proper boxset.

This collection is not actually a legacy of that announcement, although it is endorsed by Morrissey (who came up with the title) and Marr (who supervised the remastering) and it is the most comprehensive and best collection of The Smiths' music yet released.

Everyone should know these songs and to know them is to love them. I remember being introduced to the wonderful world of Morrissey and Marr by my best friend Lee, who made me a compilation tape which I still have. I remember playing the tape and being amazed by how joyous the music was, so far from the popular perception of what The Smiths are actually like. Morrissey's words and singing struck me first, how could they not, somehow it seemed I knew what he was going to sing next before I'd even heard it. Then I listened again and I could hear the most fantastic, innovative guitar playing. What a combination, what a band!

The start of this compilation is spookily similar to the start of the tape Lee made me. Only 'Still Ill' in the place of 'William It Was Really Nothing' changes in the sequence of the first six songs. The running order is roughly chronological, meaning that there is an absolutely stunning run of songs about two thirds of the way through...'the boy with the thorn in his side', 'bigmouth strikes again', 'there is a light...', 'panic', 'ask'. Seriously, how many bands can do better than that?

We can all quibble about some songs that are left out. What would a Smiths 'best of' be without 'I Know Its Over' and 'The Queen Is Dead'? But this is not a 'Best Of', it is the sound of the Smiths, and it is an extremely good representation of that. Listening to the bonus cd is for another day, for now I want the joy of listening to these wonderful songs again to last.

The World has moved on of course. Teenagers used to play Smiths songs on their walkmans while sitting on buses, now they play tinny, barely recognisable music out loud through their mobile phones. To paraphrase both Kevin Rowland and Thom Yorke...take me back to those old days, I wish it was the 80s.

Pop music gets no better than this.

9.8

['Sound of The Smiths' is out now on cd and 2cd]

The T&G 11

TracksandGigs is preparing its 'Album of The Year' list. In advance of this, it has nominated eleven albums to form the 'album of the year' shortlist. Each of these records has given T&G an enormous amount of pleasure this year. The list, in alphabetical order, is...

American Music Club 'The Golden Age'

A few weak tracks here but many strong ones and it features one of Eitzel's most beautiful songs, the incredibly visual and moving 'Sleeping Beauty'

Beck 'Modern Guilt'

Short and sweet, his most cohesive record to date. An exciting, tremendously alive set of songs.

Fleet Foxes 'Fleet Foxes'

Deserving of all the hype. A delicious mix of country, soul, pop and folk. Gorgeous harmonies and a great Summer record.

Jenny Lewis 'Acid Tongue'

Unfairly slated by some, this is a luxurious, rewarding album to listen to. It is also a lovely recording with plenty of space allowed and each instrument given room to breathe.

Micah P Hinson 'Red Empire..'

A warm and inviting country-noir album that is all the better for Hinson finally sounding happy and content.

Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks 'Real Emotional Trash'

Just about his best since Pavement. A guitar masterclass and some great songs too.

The Dodos 'Visitor'

Sweet ballads, innovative percussion and great songs. This came from nowhere but will stand the test of time.

The Mountain Goats 'Heretic Pride'

An album of horror, monsters, death and fun from John Darnielle. Some of his best 'loud' songs for years. A really consistent album too.

The Sleeping Years 'We're Becoming Islands, One By One'

Quietly beautiful folk/pop songs from ex-Catchers frontman Dale Grundle.

The Twilight Sad 'Here It Never Snowed...'

Atmospheric mini-album with the band playing in a completely different style from their debut LP. Including  a stunning Daniel Johnston cover.

Tindersticks 'The Hungry Saw'

Unconcerned with the past, this is a fresh, vibrant piece of music that has formed the centre-piece of the band's shows this year. It has left the band rejuvinated and open to all possibilities for the future. A near-perfect 45 minutes.

Full list soon.

gig of the year.....and it hasn't happened yet

Loads coming up in the next couple of days including, gasp, a gig review! But, you need to know that Tindersticks are playing the Union Chapel on 16th December. Tickets on sale NOW. Get them from wegottickets, they are nice.

So that is the best band in the World playing the nicest venue in the UK, for the first time. Get your tickets now. (It will be the third time TracksandGigs has seen them this year!)

single of the week...

Difficult decision this week with three great singles released, spookily all on nicely packaged white vinyl. 3rd place goes to Beck's 'Gamma Ray', he has already released the best single of the year so shouldn't be too greedy. In second place is Jenny Lewis' 'Carpetbaggers', complete with a thrilling contribution from Elvis Costello but single of the week is...

Low 'Santa's Coming Over'

Santa's coming over? Not yet, he's not. Unless Low know something we don't. They may well do, as they are releasing a Christmas single at the start of November and playing Christmas shows a couple of weeks later. Maybe its a Mormon thing?!

Anyway, this is a great single. Beautifully packaged in a snowflake sleeve and sounding NOTHING like Low's previous Christmas music. This is a dark Christmas song with foreboding drums and dirgy guitar and chanted vocals that make the arrive of Santa seem positively terrifying. It also sounds more like traditional Low than anything they have released in a long time. Bizarrely, the b side is a jolly reggae track.

Great single. Everyone should play this on Christmas Eve!

Belle & Sebastian 'BBC Sessions'

If you think of Belle & Sebastian's career thus far as having two pretty distinct phases, one with Isobel Campbell in the band and one without, this BBC sessions compilation is a pretty comprehensive record of phase one and almost works as a 'best of' from that era.

Since 200, B&S have discovered that playing live is fun after all and that making cohesive albums rather than a disparate collections of songs is a good thing. Their last two albums have probably been their best but some of the finest songs came from the first era. This collection of sessions for Lamacq, Radcliffe and Peel gathers most of these up.

The arrangements are sparse and intimate, meaning that a song like 'The State That I'm In' works perfectly, as gentle and touching as it is on record. Elsewhere, Stevie Jackson's 'Seymour Stein' probably wouldn't have got him anywhere on the X Factor but is marvellous; funny, heartfelt and somehow, righteous.

The most interesting session though, is the Peel recording from 2001 (which I vividly remember listening to on my old radio at my Mum and Dad's). The last set of recordings to feature Isobel Campbell, none of these songs made it onto 'Dear Catastrophe Waitress' so are previously unreleased. It is the sound of a band at a crossroads. Stuart Murdoch's tribute to The Go Betweens, 'Shoot The Sexual Athlete', is fun, while Isobel Campbell's 'The Magic of a Kind Word' is perfect pop with a similar sound to their 'Legal Man' single. 'Miraculous Techinique' is the highlight though with Murdoch's shout out to 'JP at Maida Vale' particularly poignant. Hard to believe this was only seven years ago.

Since then B&S have undoubtably become a better band with professional gigs and consistently good records. This is a nice reminder of the old, ramshackle, innocent days. Plenty to love here.

8.6

[This was reviewed from a promo. 'BBC Sessions' is out on cd and 2cd (containing a live recording from Belfast) on November 17]