Day 0737 - New Wave

The Auteurs “New Wave” (1993)

The Auteurs were started by then couple Luke Haines and Alice Redman with former classmate Glenn Collins.  They put together a demo and were quickly signed to Hut Records.  “New Wave” was their first full-length release.

The entry in the book talks about them being progenitors of ‘Britpop’… but then, as frequently happens with genres or musical movements, several albums in the book have been given this honour.   I do find it interesting that so many of these musical movements can spring up like this, with multiple different bands all relatively independently arriving at similar musical destinations.

While I was living in the UK there seemed to be this trend towards artists who ruminated on everyday things (the Streets, Arctic Monkeys) whereas I’ve always preferred more obscure lyrics that maybe use a bit of clever or creative wordplay.   This band seems to have a more cinematic/theatrical vibe, such as on opening track "Show Girl" with the crashing, flashy intro suddenly vanishing into a quietly subdued verse.  The arrangements are bit more interesting than straight-ahead ‘rawk n roll’ and I could certainly hear similarities between this band and artists like Blur or Suede (Supergrass at a stretch).

While I won’t say they’re my new favourite band, I do think they are an artist that requires further investigation.  

Day 0603 - Opus Dei

Laibach "Opus Dei" (1987)

One of those "what did I just listen to?!" albums.  It's hard to listen to the guttural vocals and Teutonic groove of Laibach and NOT assume that Rammstein were heavily influenced by them.

The band were musical magpies, with a reworked version of Queen's "One Vision" (as "Geburt einer Nation").  Pieces of Bernard Hermann's edgy film scores are mixed in with other pieces of Queen music, industrial rhythms and wild synthesizers on "Trans-national" to produce something that sounds like Kraftwerk on meth!

The Slovenian band courted political controversy by naming themselves with the name historically given to Slovenia's capital Ljubjana by the Germans, alluding to the Nazi occupation during WWII.  In the face of socialism, they poked everyone in the eye by draping themselves in the trappings of nationalism and totalitarianism.   They were the provocative musical arm of a political artistic collective called 'Neue Slowenische Kunst' (New Slovenian Art).

Day 0269 - Let's Stay Together

Al Green "Let's stay together" (1972) - got it

 
As with Roxy Music, I got into Al Green through a slightly indirect route.  I saw/heard a slightly warped cover of his song "Simply Beautiful" by Mike Patton's band Fantômas.

Loved the song so I checked out a couple of Green's tracks on youtube ended up picking up a 4-pack of Green's classic albums for Hi records.

Green's voice is a thing of beauty.  It moves from a delicate, barely audible falsetto whisper to a raspy bold cry, giving each song exactly what it needs.  Whether it's the soul grooves of 'La la for you' and 'So you're leaving', the laid back RnB of 'What is this feeling?', or the epic, emotive 6 minute reading of "How can you mend a broken heart?" in which you could imagine that Green is actually searching for the broken shards.