That Music List: December 2017

Friday, 22 December 2017

LIST 228 - 22/12/17

Hello again,

Not often I start a List with an in-loving-memory track, but the sad passing (albeit at the fine age of 89) in the past few days of the much-loved bioengineer, educator and television and radio presenter Professor Heinz Wolff practically demanded the inclusion of the theme tune to arguably his most popular vehicle, BBC2's The Great Egg Race. As it happens, the Denton and Cook-penned piece is also among my very favourite theme tunes of all time, if not indeed the favourite, being as it is a note-perfect take on the almost-pop of Before and After Science-era Brian Eno. Rest easy, Professor Wolff.

Newer material this week includes the impassioned anti-Brexit highlight from Gavin Osborn's Echo Bridge album (one of the most important pieces of art you'll consume all year); no less politically charged new fare from Billy Bragg; and amazing, achingly gorgeous electronic indiepop from Deerful.

The evidence of the fine Goose Feather Bed confirms Wave Pictures/Slow Club amalgamation Surfing Magazines as being more than the sum of their parts, as far as I'm concerned, Slow Club having long since disappointed me although Wave Pictures have not. Just for fun, the Go-Betweens song which may or may not have given this project their name is also included.

There's no dedicated Christmas List this year, but I've found a few festive tracks new and old with which to finish, including MJ Hibbett's take on a track by deathless Cologne popsters Bläck Fööss; a Boy Least Likely To number imbued with rather more poignancy now than when released in 2010; and what I understand might actually have been the first ever commercially available track by The School.

J xx

RICHARD DENTON AND MARTIN COOK – The Great Egg Race Theme (1979)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQUFeyORZOY

GAVIN OSBORN – European (2017)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNp9z6ostXE

SURFING MAGAZINES – Goose Feather Bed (2017)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CwlxL05MZA

THE GO-BETWEENS – Surfing Magazines (2001)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBJYP_nfMmg

PEACH PIT – Seventeen (2017)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI8fL77-0e0

DEERFUL – Peach Rose Tea (2017)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F18gd9a94M

TEENAGE FANCLUB - About You (1995)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svgdTKzXl8Y

SLOWDIVE – Star Roving (2017)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogCih4OavoY

SLOWDIVE – Catch the Breeze (1991)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVY9p1IHops

CHROMEO – Juice (2017)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j-ED6tL85o

BILLY BRAGG - Saffiyah Smiles (2017)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkNN81Ta2ik

BIFF BANG POW! – In a Mourning Town (1987)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSYerRHy8EE

BJORK - The Gate (2017)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIGgn1s3AvI

MJ HIBBETT & THE VALIDATORS – Have A Drink with Us (Drink Doch Eine Met) (2017)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZnMc7Uq0D4

THE SCHOOL – Kiss You in the Snow (2007)

https://elefantrecordsclassics.bandcamp.com/track/kiss-you-in-the-snow

WEEBLS-STUFF.COM – Christmas Badgers (2005)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_pWTlN15bc

THE BOY LEAST LIKELY TO – George and Andrew (2010)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5CJpVUYOY8

PHIL PRESTWICH – Mexican Nativity Scene (2016)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y63NavHEOVU

THE SPOOK SCHOOL – Someone to Spend Christmas With (2017)

https://soundcloud.com/spookschool/someone-to-spend-christmas-with

BELLE AND SEBASTIAN – Twelve Days of Christmas (Peel Session) (2002)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BT9SPWwxzgI

Friday, 15 December 2017

LIST 227 - 15/12/17

Hello once again,

Another mixed bag for this third List since we returned, and a small portion dedicated to acts already on my will-see-in-2018 list (Field Music, Belle and Sebastian) or else recently seen (Alasdair Roberts, Diet Cig, The Lovely Eggs; the last-named heroically determined the show must go on, despite the Unity Works in Wakefield's sudden demise only days before they were due to play it). How self-absorbed of me...

The cuckoo in the nest for some of you in this List will be a track from the soundtrack of the original cast recording of Everybody's Talking About Jamie, all the more so when you learn that the thing was written by Dan Gillespie Sells, the guy out of The Feeling. If, however, there's been a funnier, smarter, more on-point musical created so far this decade, I'm yet to see it, and how lucky were we in Sheffield to have enjoyed the world premiere run before it transferred to London.

If only Gillespie Sells imbued the music from his day job with quite the same lyrical sass and, well, feeling. And if only the pop charts still worked in the same way they did around the time of musicals such as Chess, whereby tracks from the soundtrack would become monster hits months before the parent musical was released. There are a few tracks in ...Jamie which in another era would have enjoyed the same crossover as the likes of I Know Him So Well or One Night in Bangkok. Ah well.

J xx

THE LOVELY EGGS - I Shouldn't HaveSaid That (2017)

BELLE AND SEBASTIAN – I’ll Be YourPilot (2017)

YOUNG MARBLE GIANTS – Ode to Booker T(1979)

CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG – DeadlyValentine (2017)

THE ALL SEEING I – Starson Sunday (1999)

ALASDAIR ROBERTS - Pangs (2017)

ALASDAIR ROBERTS – I Had a Little Boat(2003)

DIET CIG - Barf Day (2017)

FRANKIE VALLI & THE FOUR SEASONS –The Night (1972)

WHITE TOWN – Your Woman 1917 (2017)

MAZZY STAR – Into Dust(1993)

EVERYBODY’S TALKING ABOUT JAMIEORIGINAL CAST – Don’t Even Know It (2017)

FIELD MUSIC – Count it Up (2017)

SOPHIE & PETER JOHNSTON – SomeSunny Day (1987)

MOGWAI – Party in the Dark (2017)

OMD – The Punishment of Luxury (2017)

EX ORKEST – Meer Nieuws (2001)

JUANA MOLINA – Paraguaya (2017)

KEITH CHEGWIN – I’ll Never Fall inLove Again (1977)

Friday, 8 December 2017

LIST 226 - 08/12/17

Hello again,

I don't regret much missing gigs-wise, but one that definitely got away was missing a by then extremely rare sojourn to Britain by Even As We Speak in summer 2008 in order to see a friend's band instead. With the recent first release by the Sydney indiepop veterans in well over a decade due to be followed by UK dates next year as part of a Sarah Showcase tour being arranged by Boyracer head honcho Stewart Anderson, I'm very, very determined not to make the same mistake twice.

Apologies in advance to any other friends' bands planning to tread the boards on whichever evening it turns out to be :-)

Elsewhere in this List, it's a pleasure to share a track I discovered on a compilation entitled Motown Meets the Beatles, in which Stevie Wonder's (still just about) then wife Syreeta Wright delivers a Wonder-produced interpretation of She's Leaving Home which you'd swear was created three decades later had you not seen the release date, so ahead of its time are the R&B stylings, voicebox treatments, and so on. Quite extraordinary.

Fazerdaze offers delightful shoegaze pop not terribly far removed from Alvvays - I'd love the New Zealand-based Amelia Murray to take in Indietracks and the like in 2018. Mammoth Penguins and Friends were of course there for all to see at the finest DIY festival of them all this last summer, and The Sailor is as Standard Fare-alike as anything on their valedictory effort John Doe, as deftly a realised indiepop concept album as you'll ever come across.

The passing of the French Elvis is reason enough to include one of his most enduring early rock'n'roll efforts at the end of this week's List. The passing of Christine Keeler is similarly all the excuse needed to unearth a single from one of the early-mid 1990s most regular fixtures at all good sticky floor venues near you :-)

J xx

THE SPOOK SCHOOL - Still Alive (2017)

FATHER JOHN MISTY – Pure Comedy (2017)

SYREETA – She’s LeavingHome (1972)

FAZERDAZE – Lucky Girl (2017)

THUNDERCAT – Friend Zone (2017)

A WITNESS – Red Snake(1987)

EVEN AS WE SPEAK – Clouds (2017)

EVEN AS WE SPEAK – Drown(1993)

STORMZY – Big For Your Boots (2017)

ALEX LAHEY – You Don’t Think You LikePeople Like Me (2017)

PORTER WAGONER – TheRubber Room (1972)

MAMMOTH PENGUINS AND FRIENDS – TheSailor (2017)

THE MAGNETIC FIELDS – ’68 A Cat CalledDionysus (2017)

ORBITAL – P.E.T.R.O.L.(1997)

THE HORRORS – Something To Remember Me By (2017)

WIRE – I Feel MysteriousToday (1978)

JENS LEKMAN - Wedding In Finistère(2017)

SENSELESS THINGS – Christine Keeler(1994)

JOHNNY HALLYDAY ‎– Souvenirs,Souvenirs (1960)

Friday, 1 December 2017

LIST 225 - 01/12/17

Well, hello there.

Been a little while, hasn't it? More or less eleven months since season eight of That Music List finished, but here at last after a 2017 of unprecedented personal changes (including, but not limited to, marriage and a house move) is the start of season nine. Genuinely no idea how long this one will go on for - a few weeks or all of 2018, or some point inbetween.

Either way, the hiatus has allowed me to frontload the first few Lists back with some of my absolute highlights of 2017, starting with my favourite single of the entire year. What a joy it was to see Alvvays when they took in the Sheffield Leadmill as part of the tour accompanying the release of the tremendous Antisocialites album; hopefully our advice to Molly Rankin on all matters from what's in Glossop to the difference between trousers and pants was appreciated.

Alasdair Roberts at Regather, again in Sheffield, in November was an altogether different delight - delicate, masterful folk plucking and a fabulous showcase of his original songwriting as well as his gifts of interpretation. Scarce of Fishing, written for a refugee benefit album in 2016, is included here; there'll be more from him in the coming weeks.

Older fare from my big pile of unplayed stuff has also been belatedly attended to since last we spoke. I must be the last music fan on the planet to get round to listening to some Faust, and hence notice the similarities between the opening track of second album So Far and a particular Stereolab track - I get there in the end. Check them out at the end of this List and see what you think.

It's also a pleasure to include some prime Vini Reilly thirty years on, plus a towering, snotty single from Killing Joke from five years before even that. Some of you will be familiar with the Top of the Pops appearance promoting Empire Song, one in which Jaz Coleman - hiding in Iceland at the time in an attempt to survive the impending Apocalypse - was replaced on stage by someone in a beekeeper's outfit miming his keyboard parts. But of course.

J xx

ALVVAYS - In Undertow (2017)

REAL ESTATE – Darling (2017)

THE DURUTTI COLUMN -What Is It To Me (Woman) (1987)

SUNFLOWER BEAN – I Was a Fool (2017)

VERSUS – Shangri-La(2000)

ALASDAIR ROBERTS - Scarce of Fishing(2016)

ROSE ELINOR DOUGALL – Stellular (2017)

KILLING JOKE – Empire Song (1982)

SAINT ETIENNE – Magpie Eyes (2017)

SAINT ETIENNE – Saturday(Fugu Mix) (1999)

ENDERBY’S ROOM – Lakeside (2016)

THE OTHER TWO – The Greatest Thing (1993)