Category Archives: Pop/Rock

Feb20

Roxy Music Perform “Avalon”

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Roxy Music Perform “Avalon”

Listen to this track by new romantic trailblazers and former first-tier glam-rockers Roxy Music. It’s “Avalon”, the title track from their final (to date) album from 1982, Avalon. The record was something of a breakthrough record Stateside after the seven albums that had made their name in Britain. Having said that, their North American breakthrough would take a while saleswise, even after the band were no longer recording under the Roxy name.

The singles from this album were released just when the era of US college radio was building up a head of steam, and where the songs gained their initial exposure. Success in the U.S mainstream would arrive eventually , finally receiving Rolling Stone’s blessing as #31 on their 100 Greatest Albums of the 1980s list.

But despite the potential for even greater successes, this would be their final (recorded) curtain under the Roxy Music name, with a shift in style that moved them into more refined sonic territory carried forward by lead singer and head writer Bryan Ferry.

Things were definitely changing for Roxy Music. But, it wasn’t just because this would be their last album as a band.

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Feb6

Klaatu Performs “Sub-Rosa Subway”

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Klaatu Performs “Sub-Rosa Subway”

Listen to this track by Canadian space rockers and Beatles reunion suspects Klaatu. It’s their 1977 hit single “Sub-Rosa Subway”, a song that bothered the charts less than the rumours surrounding it bothered the music press and rock fandom at the height of the “will-they-or-won’t-they” era of hoped for Beatles reunions of the mid-to-late ’70s.

And for Beatles fans, this tune was certainly a treat to the ears, making many a Beatles circa ’67 musical reference as it does. The song was a double-A side hit with another song of theirs, “Calling Occupants (Of Interplanetary Craft)”, which would later be covered by the Carpenters, of all people. Both songs appeared on the band’s 1976 LP 3:47 EST.

Yet, with this song it wasn’t just that the tune sounded Beatlesque. At the time, it was actually thought to be a surreptitious move on the part of the Fab Four themselves to reunite, with “clues” that were thrown around to make the “Paul Is Dead” rumours of a decade previous seem almost sensible.

But, Klaatu were a real band -Terry Draper, John Woloschuk, and Dee Long – albeit one that owed a debt to the Beatles on this song. Even they were surprised, and probably not just a little put out, to learn that a journalist had outed them as being a front for a real life Beatles reunion.

How on earth did this happen? Read the rest of this entry →

Jan30

Teddy Thompson Sings “Take Care of Yourself”

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Teddy Thompson Sings “Take Care of Yourself”

Photo: Anthony Pepitone

Listen to this track by British folk dynasty progeny, and superlative singer-songwriter besides, Teddy Thompson. It’s “Take Care Of Yourself”, a gem of a tune from his 2011 album Bella.

The album traces the episodes in meeting someone, falling in love, and then being faced with the reality of having to say goodbye. The music here on this track can be described as a sort of country-folk torch song along the lines of a Chris Isaak, k.d lang, and Rufus Wainwright. Teddy Thompson and Rufus Wainwright are well acquainted as friends and artistic collaborators, too. The commonalities between the two are notable,with both artists forging their own paths, and being the offspring of folk-singing families albeit on either sides of the Atlantic.

Teddy was born in 1976 while his parents Richard & Linda Thompson had been living in a Sufi community outside of London. This was around the time when they were creating some of their most celebrated work as a duo in I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight and Pour Down Like Silver, among others.

As such, his pedigree as a musician and songwriter is well-established, and the melancholy found in his own work is come by honestly. Since he established himself as a musician, he’s played a part in the creation of his parents’ solo records, including as co-producer on his mother’s Fashionably Late album, and has been the opening act for father Richard in the 1990s. But, in 2000, he struck out on his own with his own recording career apart from his work with his parents.

And with this song, he brings maturity and subtlety to one of the more bittersweet chapters in the span of a love affair; the mutually agreed upon break-up. Thompson treats his subject matter seriously, and accentuates his writing with an emotionally infused vocal delivery, helped along by twangy guitar, and swelling strings, the latter inspired by the strings Buddy Holly used on his records, and arranged in this case by producer David Kahne. His soaring vocals towards the end is a real treat, evoking yet another style; a sort of Bobby Hatfield-like soul-pop.

What comes out of all of that is a song that sounds as though it could have been written in any era, perhaps because the ecstasies and sorrows of love are just as timeless.

For more information about Teddy Thompson, check out the Teddy Thompson official site.

Enjoy!

Jan26

Graham Parker Sings “Partner For Life”

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Graham Parker Sings “Partner For Life”

Listen to this track by former angry young man turned happily-married stalwart singer-songwriter Graham Parker. It’s “Partner For Life”, an ode to love, commitment, and the realities of adult relationships as featured on Parker’s 1995 album 12 Haunted Episodes.

By the 1990s, Parker had been prolific as a writer and performer, even if his mainstream success didn’t match that of his contemporaries to whom he is often compared; Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson, both of whom held Parker as an influence. He had become, and remained to be, a cult artist.

Parker had been through the wringer with various major label record companies as a result, suffering a lack of support and poor sales of his albums. Or was it the other way around, with the lack of support resulting in his cult status?

Either way, he’d established himself as an artist with a consistent body of work, despite the hardships and vicious cycles he’d experienced while tangling with the majors. He  certainly succeeded in consolidating a lasting core audience, doing so by being a steadfast songwriter, record maker, and tireless live performer.

By this record, he’d cut the shackles of major label skulduggery loose and gone indie on the Razor & Tie label. As such, there is a certain liberation that can be heard in a song like “Partner For Life”. And there is another kind of liberation to be found in this song, too.

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Jan23

Heaven 17 Play “Temptation”

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Heaven 17 Play “Temptation”

Listen to this track by Sheffieldian one-time Human League splinter group, and sonically ambitious hitmakers in their own right, Heaven 17. It’s their smash UK single “Temptation” as taken from their 1983 album The Luxury Gap.

One of the features here is guest vocalist Carol Kenyon, who sings in a Northern Soul influenced style, contrasting the synth-pop groove. The tune would also incorporate a full orchestra, creating even more textural contrast, and producing a high-charting single that year for the band, reaching number 2 in the UK pop charts.

The Luxury Gap was the group’s second record, after 1981′s Penthouse and Pavement. The band had been one of the most prominent proponents of Northern synth pop, although initially split off from the Human League, a project that was abandoned by keyboardists Ian Craig-Marsh and Martyn Ware. They’d left the band in the hands of vocalist Phil Oakey. That version of the Human League under Oakey’s leadership would become an international success with a new line-up.

But, Craig-Marsh and Ware had pop smarts of their own to draw from. Read the rest of this entry →

Jan16

The Sonics Perform “Have Love Will Travel”

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The Sonics Perform “Have Love Will Travel”

Listen to this track by Pacific Northwest R&B supplicants the Sonics. It’s “Have Love Will Travel” (that title being a possible reference to Have Gun Will Travel, a TV western program), a well-travelled rock tune, written by the same guy who wrote “Louie Louie” , Richard Berry. This tune would be covered by many from Stiv Bators, to Tom Petty & The Heartbrekers, to the Black Keys.

This version of the song appears on the Sonics 1965 album Here Are the Sonics, a release that would characterize ’60s garage music, and later be seen as the roots of punk in the 1970s. The group grew out of the growing Seattle rock scene, among the first bands to forge a scene in that city that would endure for decades. The band were quintessential garage rockers, with a clear mission to deliver scrappy and loud R&B in a rock context.

The album contains several of what can be considered classics of the R&B catlog including Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven”, Rufus Thomas’ “Walkin’ The Dog”, Barrett Strong’s “Money (That’s What I Want”), and Ray Charles “Night Time Is the Right Time”, among others.

All of these songs were the early templates for the British bands that had loved the originals and that had sold them back to American audiences during the British Invasion. And even if the Animals, The Stones, Them, the Yardbirds, and others had gone past this canon of material by the mid-60s, it was still very much alive and well on garage scenes all over the United States and Canada, even if many bands would not distinguish themselves by covering them.

But, what of this song by R&B vocalist and writer Richard Berry, and why is the Sonic’s version of it so undeniable, influencing so many down the decades? Read the rest of this entry →

Jan12

Ron Sexsmith & The Uncool Play “Don’t Mind Losing”

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Ron Sexsmith & The Uncool Play “Don’t Mind Losing”

Listen to this track by St. Catharines Ontario favourite son and effortlessly awesome singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith, with his former collective known as The Uncool – Steve Charles on bass, and Don Kerr on drums and backing vocals. It’s “Don’t Mind Losing”, a jubilant Moondance-era Van The Man style acoustic soul-pop gem as taken from his 1991 independently released album Grand Opera Lane.

The song, and the album off of which it comes exists as something of a prequel to his major label debut Ron Sexsmith in 1995. You can hear the decidedly different tone and approach to presentation and style characterized by more overt soul and rockabilly references.

Ron Sexsmith had spent some time living in rural Quebec, letting his dream of becoming a songwriter steep while mapping out how he was going to pay for his life in the meantime. While working out how to bring his talent to the table of the music industry, he had a wife and newborn son in tow, with a daughter soon to join them by the end of the 1980s. So, in returning to St Catharines, and then to Toronto, he had to secure a day job as a courier, wondering if his real calling as a songwriter and musician would ever really come to fruition.

It’s a pretty common tale, many versions of which we’ll never get to hear from songwriters who never found their path.

With that in mind, never has a song about feeling set upon by circumstance and existential despair sounded so bright and bouncy, gleaming with horns, a seriously groovy bassline, and ecstatic backing vocals.  But, in all of that aural joy, where does it connect with where Sexsmith was going as a professional musician?

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Jan9

David Bowie Sings “The Jean Genie”

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David Bowie Sings “The Jean Genie”

Here’s a clip of androgynous musical brushfire-starting alien pin up David Bowie, and his soon-to-be-erstwhile Spiders From Mars. It’s the recently discovered clip of his 1973 performance of “The Jean Genie” on the British music program Top of the Pops.

The song is taken from the album Aladdin Sane, a record released that very year in April. This song was the lead single, actually released earlier in November of 1972.  This was the height of the glam-rock period, when colourful costuming and gender-bending stage personas met the vintage Chess blues ‘n’ boogie sound.

This particular clip was discovered recently, and broadcast on the Top of the Pops 2011 Christmas special. Bowie and TOTPs go hand in hand, particularly in this phase of his career. His performance of “Starman” in the summer of 1972 galvanized rock fans all over the country and kick-started the seeds of British punk, post-punk, and New Romanticism. But despite all that, Bowie had his own preoccupations, namely making sense out of America, the fascination and disorientation he felt about it, and then putting it into his work.

So, how is that revealed in this tune? Read the rest of this entry →

Jan5

Spoons Play “Smiling In Winter”

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Spoons Play “Smiling In Winter”

Listen to this track by new wave suburbanites and registered Canadian anglophiles Spoons. It’s their 1982 hit single “Smiling In Winter” as taken from their album Arias & Symphonies, the band’s second. The song outlines the impression of a season that their country, and mine (the same one, as it happens) is known, delivered in a style that demonstrates their love of British pop music, specifically new wave, post punk, and New Romantic.

Spoons were formed in 1979 out of high school. They’d put out an indie single in 1980, and later a debut album in Stick Figure Neighbourhood the following year with what would be their classic line-up: Gordon Deppe (lead vocal, guitar), Sandy Horne (vocals, bass), Rob Preuss (keyboards), and Derrick Ross (drums). They would go on to tour with some of the biggest acts of the era in Culture Club, The Police, and Simple Minds.

This song was one of three singles off of what would be their breakthrough on mainstream radio and help to define the era in early ’80s Southern Ontario, especially in the suburbs. The other two would be the title track, “Arias & Symphonies”, and “Nova Heart”. And these were all from a local band from Burlington, Ontario – actually one town over from where I grew up in Oakville – rather than from Sheffield, Liverpool, London, or other British musical mecca of early-’80s post punk and synth-based pop.

But, Spoons were no copycat band. They understood that the core of that new wave sound is about playing shadows against light on all kinds of levels. They knew that taking rock instruments and contrasting it against synths was really just the base ingredient of that dynamic. But, what of this song, and the contrasting forces working within it?
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Jan2

Hannah Georgas Sings “The Deep End”

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Hannah Georgas Sings “The Deep End”

Photo: Brenda Lee

Listen to this track by Ontario born and Vancouver-based singer-songwriter Hannah Georgas. It’s her radio single “The Deep End” as taken from her 2010 record with the self-explanatory title This Is Good.  This is certainly one of those songs that has dueling forces at work within it, with a joie de vivre to be found in the way it sounds, musically speaking, working against some pretty serious lyrical darkness.

Georgas began recording songs in earnest while a university student, having moved to Victoria B.C from Newmarket Ontario. Her career since has so far included TV spots for jingles, an EP, songwriting accolades and best new performer results from CBC3, and a debut record – this one. She has opened shows for Royal Wood, Joel Plaskett, and City and Colour, and is about to start touring the UK with Kathleen Edwards. At the time of this writing, the follow up to This Is Good is in progress.

So, as much as an artist who has been active for nearly half a decade or more can be thought of as new on the scene, Hannah Georgas’ star is rising steadily. But, what of this song, a loping, banjo-abetted joyous thing that lights up the radio, even while it deals with darker human concerns lyrically?

The situation is common. We have a friend who’s always in trouble. And when the shit comes down, we get the call. This is what this song seems to be dealing with; that vortex of helplessness, of pain, and of obligation that often comes out of trying to help someone who, perhaps, won’t help themselves in favour drawing on the energy of others instead. This is prime songwriting material, with Georgas’ otherwise encouraging “don’t let them break you down” sounding rather leaden and weary to support the emotional undercurrents of the song. That’s good performance, and good songwriting too.

For more information, check out the Hannah Georgas official site.

Enjoy!