Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs - Under The Covers Vol 1

Inspired by the last Bangles album, I have been looking again at Susanna Hoffs’s extra curricula catalogue but this time with some foreboding.  I did this once before following The Bangles’ break-up in 1989 and bought her solo effort ‘When You’re a Boy’ but it didn’t do much for me, hence the slight anxiety.  But this time I have chanced upon her collaboration with producer and multi-instrumentalist, Matthew Sweet and this time it was worth the money.

Sweet and Hoffs, or Sid ‘n’ Susie as they are billing themselves, have tapped into their love of the 60s and 70s and created a series of ‘Under the Covers’ releases (two volumes to date).  Volume 1 spans the 1960s and mixes well known songs like ‘Monday Monday’ and ‘Alone Again Or’ with lesser known efforts from the big hitters of the day like the Beach Boys (‘The Warmth of the Sun’), The Zombies (‘Care of Cell 44’) and a killer version of The Beatles’ ‘And Your Bird Can Sing’.

The prickly subject of covers has been aired numerous times in this blog and it bears stating here that these are not deliberate re-workings of the original songs but more loving reconstructions, done with infinite care in a totally modern environment – no analogue and sticky tape here.  What really sets them apart from the blueprints is the vocal performances which are nothing short of awesome from both Ms Hoffs and Mr Sweet and despite having vocal tones at opposite ends of the scale they combine beautifully.  You can almost hear the fun they had doing these songs which are clearly close to their collective hearts.

Dare I say that Hoffs’ take on ‘Who Knows where the Time Goes’ is on a par with Sandy Denny’s original?  It works, yet somehow you don’t expect an American voice to gel with Fairport’s quintessentially English folk sound.  Sweet struggles a bit with the Wilson falsetto on ‘Warmth of the Sun’ but his rasping performance of Neil Young’s ‘Cinnamon Girl’ is a great cut, as is his interpretation of The Who’s ‘The Kids are Alright’.  Let’s face it, this is not high art in the accepted sense but nor is it downmarket karaoke but something in between.  Mainly, it’s a fun record made by people with talent and a real love of their subject matter and one that I shall return to on a regular basis.

So with Volume 1 in the bag, I may well have to have a look at Volume 2 which majors on the 1970s.  I couldn’t resist having a listen to their take on a surprising choice of Yes’s ‘I’ve Seen All Good People/Your Move’, and am staggered to report that if Susanna Hoffs is not the next Yes singer, I’ll eat…something.  She really nails it.  Is there nothing she can’t sing?  And with Clapton’s ‘Bell Bottom Blues’ and ‘You’re So Vain’ on the setlist, I don’t think I’ll be resisting for long.

Diamond Jubilee Concert

Well, it rained.  What did you expect? This is Britain after all.  At chez Music Obsessive we initially struck lucky whilst attending a Diamond Jubilee party on the Saturday with Kiwi neighbours and stayed dry despite a threatening, brooding sky but by the time we hosted our own tea party on Tuesday, it bucketed down requiring a smart move indoors where we all crushed together and got bunting tangled in our hair.

But now that we have put away the Union Jack tea-set ready for the next Royal event we can get down to the real business of this blog – the Diamond Jubilee Concert.  Designed to showcase the best of British over the last 60 years, it was typically British; bathed in nostalgia for lost glories, a bizarre mixture of the quite brilliant and the terribly naff, yet warm hearted and a mini-triumph against all odds.  Whilst you could quibble with the playlist, you can’t really argue with the likes of (Sirs) Cliff Richard, Elton John, Paul McCartney, Tom Jones…oh and Robbie Williams although quite what Stevie Wonder was doing there, I’m not sure even he knew but when he did an awesome ‘Superstition’, I was past caring.  The stage, built around the Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace was magnificent and the laser light projections onto the Palace itself were breath-taking, especially during Madness’s stint on the roof.

 I admit, I enjoyed it immensely but there was undoubtedly an elephant in the room, or on the stage, and that was voices.  I’m afraid to say that when singers reach their sixties, seventies and beyond, the voice diminishes and Cliff, Elton, Paul and even Annie Lennox all struggled.  Tom Jones fared better but even the great Shirley Bassey (and no one sings Bond themes like Shirl) has fallen victim to the ravages of time.  Sad but inevitable.

Of course, if you’re going to present the Best of British, one attribute that must be present and correct is outrageous eccentricity and one or two performers stepped up to the plate in grand style.  Annie Lennox and her entire band sported Angel Wings for her rendition of ‘There Must Be An Angel’ and honorary Brit, Kylie, did her hits medley clad in a sort of Pearly-Queen-on-Acid outfit.  But no one could compete with Grace Jones who hula-hooped without a hitch through the entire performance of ‘Slave to the Rhythm’ despite her oiled body and slippery-looking rubber-leotard-type costume complete with what looked like a giant orchid on her head.  Brilliant.

Another of my abiding memories of the evening will be when the TV cameras picked out the most Reverend Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in the crowd and he was singing along to McCartney’s ‘All My Lovin’’ – and knew all the words. So much for the Devil and best tunes.  I’ve always thought that The Archbishop hides a secret musical past.  His sermon at the Jubilee Thanksgiving Service at St Paul’s Cathedral bordered on that of an aging hippy, all give-up-your-possessions and peace and love, maan.  Also, he lost no time adding fuel to my theory by referencing Ray Davies in his Sermon.  According to the Archbishop, Davies’ use of the word ‘dedicated’ in his seminal 60s tune, ‘Dedicated Follower of Fashion’ is not strictly correct.  I’ll bet Ray Davies, when he conceived the lyrics all those years ago, never envisaged having them picked apart by an Archbishop of Canterbury to a global audience at a Royal Event.

Still, makes you proud to be British.

Playlists and the Ultimate Test

Eureka!  I have just discovered a foolproof way of discovering what you like, what you really really like.  You know how it is, there are always social occasions where you get asked what your favourite songs are by, let’s say for the sake of argument, Queen.  At this point, you are immediately on show and the choices you make reflect upon your standing in society, so you probably do the following.

First up, you pick a few popular titles so as to establish a rapport with your enquirer (Bohemian Rhapsody, We Are the Champions etc), then you add a few early titles so as to show that you’re not a Johnny-come-lately to the band (Seven Seas of Rye or anything earlier if you dare) and then pick a few obscurities to round off the list just to prove that you know all their albums and not just the singles.  Job done.

But do you actually like any of these songs?  At the time, you may think so but I’ll wager not all of them are true favourites.  The way to test this assumption is to create a playlist of about a dozen of these so-called favourites and then play them every day for weeks.  Very soon, you begin to realise that there are some on the list that you can’t wait to get to and others where your finger is itching to press the skip button.

I discovered this phenomenon when I complied what I thought were my very bestest loved Smiths songs into a playlist of about 15 culled mainly from ‘Hatful of Hollow’ and their four studio albums.  After a few days I’d already pared this list down to 10 and after a few more it was down to about half a dozen.  Interestingly, many of those songs that I would’ve sworn blind were my all-time favs fell off the list early on – and all of them were from ‘Hatful of Hollow’, still my favourite Smiths album.

Finally, the list stabilised for some days and comprised the following five:

1. Hand in Glove
2. The Headmaster Ritual
3. I Want the One I Can’t Have
4. Bigmouth Strikes Again
5. Stop Me if You Think You’ve Heard This One Before

I think it is safe to say that these are my true favourites, born of trial by fire and Ipod playlist, but whether I would’ve come up with this list before is very debateable.  Interestingly, two of these songs have been covered by others and there is no doubt that the act of a new interpretation has elevated them in my estimation as a different side to their nature has been revealed.  The two in question are ‘Hand in Glove’ covered by Sandie Shaw and ‘Stop Me…’ covered by Sarah Blackwood of Dubstar and both show how the songs can live outside of the unique Morrissey/Marr environment.

I must try and remember these the next time I’m asked.

Marina and The Diamonds - Electra Heart

There was a time when I regularly bought LPs on their day of release, even to the point of waiting outside music shops so as to rush inside the minute they opened so as to be heading homewards with a brand new LP clutched in my sweaty paw by 9.01 am.  Happy days.  Since the advent of the CD and now Downloads that initial enthusiasm has waned for the most part although some items have been snapped up immediately but these days that just means clicking the pre-order button.

Despite my aging cynicism, there is one album that I have been awaiting for some few months and it is ‘Electra Heart’ by the strangely accented Marina Diamandis (or Marina and the Diamonds as she has styled herself).  When her debut, ‘The Family Jewels’ arrived in 2010 I decided to give it a listen despite the hype from the music press and found that there was substance to the hyperbole.  In fact it turned out to be one of my favourite albums of the year, melding astute lyrics to crafted melodies sung in that peculiar half Welsh, half Greek accent.  It sounded different.  It was different.

So her follow up album has been on my list ever since and as the months have passed, it has grown into a must buy.  Hence my first day of release purchase like the awe-struck teenager that I once was.  But was it worth it?  Now read on.

Well, after several plays I can report that the voice is still as beguiling as it ever was.  That low register growl that shoots up to a pure falsetto inflected with that kooky Welsh/Greek accent is one of pop’s most unique instruments.  Also present and correct are the thoughtful yet pointed lyrics.  I haven’t found myself really listening to what a song is actually saying since ooh…the days of Joni Mitchell in the 70s.  She really does have a way with words, this girl.

Nevertheless, as with many second albums, the music is not quite up to the standard of ‘Family Jewels’.  There are exceptions, like the storming opener ‘Bubblegum Bitch’ and the atmospheric closer ‘Fear and Loathing’ and one or two in between but generally, it is not quite as consistent, but this was almost inevitable given the quality of FJ.  My feeling is that Marina wants to be a star and is prepared to be drawn into the ‘star-making machinery’ (to quote the aforementioned Ms Mitchell).  There are no less than 8 producer/writers credited on this album, one of them being star-maker writer himself, Rick Nowells.  As a result, the album is all over the place, style-wise and struggles for consistency.  It lurches from crunching cutting edge synthesised ‘beats’ one minute to old-school rock arrangements the next.  Little Boots’ debut ‘Hands’ suffered the same way – it seems that the current music industry is so paranoid of failure that it will dress up all potential new talent with a slick everything-but-the-kitchen-sink production believing this will make them mass audience friendly rather than letting them breathe by themselves.

But in the case of Ms Diamandis, I can’t help feeling that all this paraphernalia is totally unnecessary.  The fact is that Marina has the most important tools required to be a star already on board – her unique voice and her undoubted song writing ability, both with tunes and lyrics.  The issue with this album is that both are submerged in a mess of over-production and too many song writing collaborations.  Aimee Mann and Nerina Pallot have also been pushed down the ‘must collaborate’ path and it didn’t work for them either.  ‘Fear and Loathing’ and the excellent 'Teen Idle' are by far the best songs in the set and she wrote them by herself.  QED.

Despite all this, I still like ‘Electra Heart’, and seeing the ‘acoustic’ versions of some of the songs on YouTube just confirms my views about production (see video attached to this post).  Marina, please just take a deep breath, write some great songs and find a producer who will set them sympathetically to show off your thought-provoking lyrics and that fascinating voice.  Those are your USPs - not an all-enveloping production.  You don’t need to be Katy Perry to succeed.

Queen - Now I'm Here

Looking through my motley collection of vinyl singles the other day, it struck me how different were their reasons for being there.  Some sit there anonymously as if I’d never bought them at all and they had just sneaked in by chance during a dark night, yet others are full of pride and bursting to tell their story.  One of those eager storytellers is ‘Now I’m Here’ by Queen.

In the early 1970s I had become a fully fledged album buyer after spending much of the late sixties amassing a small, yet top quality (ahem) singles collection but as I became a student at University in the autumn of 1974 the restrictions of a student grant (remember them?) meant that in order to satisfy my rampant music possession syndrome urge I had to reduce myself yet again to a singles buyer.

This was a pain in the backside yet it did lead to my purchase of Queen’s ‘Now I’m Here’ in early ‘75, which if memory serves, was the first Queen record I ever bought.  Now, the second issue I was faced with was this: not wanting to uproot my beloved stereo system, I didn’t have a record player with me – only a tape player and a load of LPs hastily transferred to cassette the previous summer.  True, my first year room mate had brought with him an ancient autochanger-in-a-box, the sort of kit that every sixties teenager owned in order to annoy the older generation with the new-fangled beat music.  But it was his, not mine.

So the reason this single has its very own back story is partly because it didn’t get played very much…until I went home for the weekend, that is.  In my first year, I went home for a weekend once or twice a term.  Of course this didn’t happen at all after the first few terms as life away from home became infinitely preferable to life at home but that’s another story and probably one that everyone knows.  I always managed to arrive home about midday on the Friday when the house was empty, all occupants still being at work or school and this was the moment that ‘Now I’m Here’ came into its own.

My own prized stereo system still sat in my room and I cranked it up to ‘11’ to play my still pristine Queen single.  It’s a great rock number in anyone’s book but at deafening volume in an empty house it sounded sublime.  You could even play a bit of air guitar and leap around without anyone seeing.  This is what teenage years were made for.  Brilliant.

Music and the Loss of Community

One of the inevitable consequences of age is that reflection follows.  Now that the popular music genre we call Rock ‘n’ Roll has staggered past its fiftieth birthday, television is awash with retrospective documentaries about this band and that time and so on.  In particular I have just watched a three part documentary tucked away on BBC4 about the attempts of British bands to crack the vast American market from Beatles in 1964 to the New Romantics of the 1980s.  All fascinating stuff, especially the bits where you try to work out who is being interviewed by matching up the fresh faced youths in the archive film to the ravaged face of the interviewee.

But more than anything else, I came away with a sense of loss for a musical community that seemed to exist in the 60s and 70s and has now dissipated.  Admittedly, because of the nature of the programme subject matter, most of the band names were British but the likes of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and the Animals in the 60s together with Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, ELP, Jethro Tull and Pink Floyd in the 70s are known to a generation of music lovers on a global scale.  Throw in the American contributions such as Neil Young, The Beach Boys, Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan and so on and you have a community of musicians that is part of the life of everyone of a certain age.

When I converse with my Blogosphere Buddies throughout the world, it is obvious that those of us of a similar age have much in common whether we live in the US, the UK, Australia, Canada or even the non-English speaking countries in Europe and beyond.  For those of us born in the 50s and 60s when the musical community was much smaller than it is today, there are common touchstones that allow us to converse easily and understand each other.

I’m not convinced that this sense of commonality exits today.  Having rashly opined that many of my fellow bloggers have a common past, when it comes to today’s music, we have very little in common.  When I read blogs containing reviews of recently released music, I very rarely know of the artist, let alone the album itself.

Music today is a vast industry comprising numerous genres and sub-markets.  Unless you are Lady Gaga or Adele or similar there is no real global connection.  Most artists today work in a niche of hardcore fans, despite the efforts of the internet.  The singles chart, such as it is, is an irrelevance, changing almost wholesale week by week.  There’s no (adopts slightly nasal Fluff Freeman voice), ‘ and … moves up 6 places to number 27’ type jostling for position over several weeks – you get in, shine for a week and are gone.

I wonder whether today’s generation will be able to reminisce about the music of their youth en masse like we can?  I rather suspect not.