Right, that cements it. After my fourth Misty’s Big Adventure gig I am now happy to say that they are my favourite band in the world ever. I’ve not danced so much at a gig in ages. My favourite song of the evening was I Can’t Take The Time Back or as I originally called it on here:
That blippy keyboard bit at 2:15 or so gets me every time. Their new album Television’s People is out now and is rather marvellous. I’d show you the cover but the lyrics sheet produced in the style of Radio Times is rather more exciting to me.
Some of you have dared ask for a guess at my favourite music of 2008 already. With only Of Montreal and Tim Ten Yen yet to play their hands Misty’s do look like they are in a good position for the coveted number one slot in my year end round up. Although thanks in no small part to my colleague Alister I’ll be waxing lyrical about oddball oldies as well such as the Joe Meek produced Dumb Head by Sharades.
Astute, observant or just plain obsessed readers may well have noticed that after many years of calling this Alex’s Blog I’ve finally decided to change name to nutty’s nuggets. I’d love to claim that this change was precipitated by weeks of research or even some discussion. But no, instead it’s me ignoring what made this happen:
Above is a chart of my views by week, as you can see 2007 was barely scraping along fed in part thanks to my total lack of blogging at times. Then I made my annual blog about music of the year a month early. As of today that post has had 1,078 views on the site here, more than 10 times the next most popular post which is merely a couple of linked Gondry youtube clips. Now I think some of what caused that success was calling the blog Alex’s Blog which made it float up to the top of largeheartedboy‘s roundup which fed me nearly 1,000 of those 1,078 views! However, I’ve come to the conclusion that if I’m going to get linked elsewhere I should have a snappier name hence nutty’s nuggets, which at least is as endearingly rubbish as my site design.
Anyone who’s been following the blog since then, don’t panic!, musical content here will ramp up as I get off my arse to go to gigs and as the new albums by Devotchka, Misty’s Big Adventure and Madness turn up…
As part of the continuing August gigs extravaganza I’ve seen two great American Indie bands, both of whom gained plenty of fame last year for contributing large potions of soundtracks for films that I completely failed to get around to seeing. First off was Spoon, who I came across via the excellent yet sadly cancelled US TV seriesVeronica Mars where they used their excellent I Turn My Camera On as backing to some late night telephoto snooping scenes, which was also used in the trailer for and actual soundtrack of the film Stranger Than Fiction.
Their set was lengthy, nearing two hours, and focussed largely on their most recent album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga which I have enthused over before. However, they played lots of their earlier hits, and I’ve become completely besotted with Kill The Moonlight, one of their earlier albums thanks to their stunning live versions of Stay Don’t Go and Paper Tiger, and they opened with a great version of Small Stakes. Their whole sound is very tightly produced but their live act replicates and improves on almost all of it. Though I was disappointed that they didn’t play The Ghost Of You Lingers they did do a great You Got Yr Cherry Bomb even without horns.
In the days after I started listenning a lot to the music of Devotchka wondering to myself if when I saw them live they could possibly make their sound even approach the rich sound of their albums. I realised early on that unless they had some kind of virtuoso violin/accordion player, crazy drummer/trumpet player, powerful bass/sousaphone player and manic front man there wouldn’t be much chance of that. (you can guess that this is my kind of band already, can’t you?). However, from the very first bar of their theme song, Devotchka, it was clear that they were every bit the swaggering act you’d expect of a band that started as a backing troupe for the likes of Dita Von Teese.
There sadly aren’t many videos around online or live concert recordings that come close to capturing the experience of seeing Devotchka live, though this capture of them performing We’re Leaving (which I think was first encore) is not far off. I think they pull off bringing in Balkan and other eastern folk influences far better than Beirut or Gogol Bordello, though Beirut at least is always fun if a tad earnest.
I went to see Fog play their only UK gig for their new album Ditherer last week at The Luminaire (a rather nice venue in Kilburn). It was a really good evening, with some especially strange support from Napoleon 3rd and Team Brick. Both of whom were interesting and pretty damn fun, I certainly have the line
This is not my life, it’s just my day job.
The way I pay the rent
still stuck in my head from Napoleon IIIrd’s Hit Schmooze For Me. It was an evening of indie worker boy anthems.
It’s easy to capture how Fog’s sound has evolved on the album opener We Will Have Vanished where the song seems split into three even thirds lasting ninety seconds which build slowly up to a chaotic and complex arrangements. However, unlike in previous outings where there would be structures of pop songs giving way to free-er jazzier arrangements there is much more thought here (for once these songs were extensively demo’d) and thus each song hangs together in a way that earlier works didn’t Obviously there’s some loss of the organic and sparse genius that made much earlier Fog so intriguing but it does make the whole thing about three times more rocking and twice as memorable.
Might just be my album of the year, at least until Misty’s Big Adventure’s new record appears. Go and listen!
