Music to listen to and enjoy

Tunes on Sunday.
Here’s some recommendations for you.

Alpinism and other spring pursuits
My Last Fm widget gives the game away (particularly now I have the scrobbler on my phone) current faves are School of Seven Bells and the Byrds and some of the songs off the latest War child charity records.
First up School of Seven Bells Alpinism* who are really good I’ve seen umpteen descriptions of them suffice to say they have lush guitars with lush harmonised female voices and some electronics thrown in it’s all a bit 4AD or perhaps Stereolab but not as furrow browed & continental but you know well really good none the less. There’s even one track that’s got a Hooky/Joy Division bass line.

War what is it good for.......
Which brings us to the Hotchip's cover of Transmission on the Warchild LP which is good too, they turn up the Kraftwerk pedal and throw in some steel pan percussion hurrah! I’m also taken with Sister Sisters version of “Do the Strand” which I can see going down a storm at weddings this summer. The Lp’s all covers, you should avoid Beck’s (just in general not just here!) and for the same reasons The Kooks who make the mistake of covering a song previously covered by The Fall (which is always a hiding to nuffin’).
The rest of the tracks aren’t bad even Lilly Allen doesn’t have me shuffling past but the stand out track and further proof that Elbow are the greatest thing to come out of Bury since the flying shuttle .

Using the source material of a U2 song (running to stand still) they transmute it to if not gold one of those pebbles you find at the beach that sparkles when slick with sea water. I’ll stop now but it is excellent.
Not sure with this being for charity what you should do either buy the full lp it’s only a few quid or buy the tracks you like and top up the funds direct via gift aid.

12 string heroes well on most worlds anyway.
Other music prompted by Ali’s post is the Byrds. It’s one of the greatest sadness that we live in the one parallel world where The Byrds and their followers aren’t permanently top of the charts. In every other parallel world peace has broken out largely due to the sound of 12 string Rickenbacker guitars and roger McGuin’s little glasses. These worlds were even David Crosby’s occasional loud mouth nonsense is tolerated where no child goes without shoes, every women is educated and Marathons never go renamed Snickers. Sadly on this version of earth Simon Callow even muscles his way on to the cover of Orange Juice singles and for some reason any band who sound like the Byrds will never be more successful than Coldplay and all those country stars you’ve never heard off but sell 45 million albums.

Anyway if you like Byrds and don’t live on earth2.3 you need to head to down to Fopp where all 5 of their albums including extra tracks are going for 15 quid for 5 cds and some jolly repro sleeves in one tasty package.

Oh and I have also been spinning “Felicity” By the Juice mainly because I found the picture sleeve the other day and rescued it.

Cale the voice
Lastly I drove past an abandoned coalmine in Wales the last day and deep from its hidden depths I could hear an echo of a song if you listened carefully you could hear it John Cale’s version of LCD soundsystem’s “All My friends”. Which is just wonderfully I like the original but JC’s version just opens up the lyrics and well its just great.

So to conclude on a Welsh tip and to misquote Mr E Bevan these are my tunes show me yours?

*Things you’ll get sick of hearing about the band very soon, the singers are identical twins (except they look more like close sisters in the pictures!) and there name comes from a mythical south American pickpocket training test you know put some bells in teacher’s pocket if you make a noise nicking his wallet.....