Dusky black windows to light the dark stair

[glenatron]

Weeks go by and the pace doesn't really let up. At the weekend we bought a new car- it is an old Isuzu Trooper, a big 4WD affair that we can potentially use to pull a horsebox about the place and would be a great getting to Larp events kind of a vehicle, assuming we ever manage to get to any of those. It is a doubly good Larp car on account of it's number plate ends with FEY- surely a good sign.

This seems to have been a good week for CDs as well- we have had the Bloc Party and Kaiser Chiefs albums on in the office a lot (the first is generally pretty good, the second has fantastic tunes but the lyrics were clearly an afterthought - its a bit like a fresher version of Blur's Great Escape ) and I just bought the new Emiliana Torrini CD which is sounding good so far. Most people will only have heard of her either from the song over the credits of The Two Towers or dismissed (unfairly) as a poor man's Bjork. She is from iceland but you would be hard pressed to confuse them. Her first album was kind of coffee-table trip hop in sound but good with it, this time around she is working much more acoustic and made me very happy when I realized it included a cover of Next Time Around from Sandy Denny's classic early seventies album The North Star Grassman and the Ravens. Sandy Denny is not as well known as she deserves to be- she sang for Fairport Convention when they first got started and then sang solo for most of the seventies until her untimely death after falling down stairs in 1978.The North Star Grassman and the Ravens is a dark album of shadowy harmonies and gothic (in a literary way) lyrics that is broadly sabotaged by two absolutely abysmal rock and roll numbers. If you buy it, copy it to your PC and remove them from the playlist it becomes a fantastic listen.

I'm looking forward to the weekend- there is rocking to be had in Reading on Saturday night and our good friend Shiva is coming to visit which will be a great pleasure.

Comments

[life-of-tom.livejournal.com]

oh, and i did get the impression that the Kaiser chiefs are trying very hard indeed to capture a zeitgeist, and the whole 'graduates in shit jobs' market, if i read it right, though i might just be projecting my situation onto it. they're not too bad. the current one reminds me of something, can't quite place it...

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

You would prefer Bloc Party- they are going to be one of the years forgotten classics, or at least they are trying hard to, much more original and musically interesting. Kaiser Chiefs are the band most likely to pull a Franz Ferdinand this year and be part of the background music of 2005.

Idlewild's new album is excellent from the few listens I have given it.

[life-of-tom.livejournal.com]

I've just got the Bloc Party album, actually. It's pretty amazing, and I'm really rueing the two gigs of theirs that I missed in cardiff. listening to their drummer is simultaneously exciting and galling: that's how I always wanted to play. I didn't qutie get there, but it was nice to know i was on the right track.

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

When I listened back to some of those old Halo recordings the drumming is absolutely outstanding. Bloc Party reminded me of your playing.