Indierider

Q‘s 50 Best Albums Of 2011

2011-12-12T16:11:00.000+02:00

50 Justice – Audio, Video, Disco
49 Frank Ocean – Nostalgia, Ultra.
48 Noah And The Whale – Last Night On Earth
47 Mastodon – The Hunter
46 SBTRKT – SBTRKT
45 Miles Kane – The Colour Of The Trap
44 Death In Vegas – Trans-Love Energies
43 King Creosote – Diamond Mine
42 Josh T. Pearson – Last Of The Country Gentlemen
41 Girls – Father, Son, Holy Ghost
40 Danger Mouse & Danielle Luppi – Rome
39 James Blake – James Blake
28 Feist – Metals
37 Washed Out – Within And Without
36 Katy B – On A Mission
35 Cass McCombs – Humour Risk
34 Gruff Rhys – Hotel Shampoo
33 tUnE-yArDs – w h o k i l l
32 Radiohead – The King Of Limbs
31 Beastie Boys – Hot Sauce Committee, Part Two
30 Lady Gaga - Born This Way
29 Kasabian – Velociraptor
28 Gillian Welch – The Harrows And The Harvest
27 Ed Sheeran – +
26 Lykke Li – Wounded Rhymes
25 Wild Beasts – Smother
24 Real Estate – Days
23 Björk – Biophilia
22 White Lies – Ritual
21 Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds – Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds
20 The Weeknd – Thursday
19 Cass McCombs – WIT’S END
18 Anna Calvi – Anna Calvi
17 Metronomy – The English Riviera
16 Kurt Vile – Smoke Rings For My Halo
15 Baxter Drury – Happy Soup
14 The Weeknd – House Of Balloons
13 Bombay Bicycle Club – A Different Kind Of Fix
12 Laura Marling – A Creature I Don’t Know
11 The Horrors – Skying
10 Elbow – Build A Rocket Boys
09 WU LYF – Go Tell Fire To The Mountain
08 St. Vincent – Strange Mercy
07 Arctic Monkeys – Suck It And See
06 Jay-Z & Kanye West – Watch The Throne
05 Coldplay – Mylo Xyloto
04 Bon Iver – Bon Iver, Bon Iver
03 Adele – 21
02 PJ Harvey – Let England Shake
01 Florence & The Machine – Ceremonials

MOJO‘s Top 50 Albums Of 2011

2011-12-12T16:09:00.000+02:00

50 Joe Henry – Revere
49 Frank Ocean – Nostalgia, Ultra
48 Wire – Red Barked Tree
47 Radiohead: The King Of Limbs
46 Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds – Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds
45 tUnE-yArDs – w h o k i l l
44 Glen Campbell – Ghost On The Canvas
43 Gwilym Simcock – Good Days At Scholss Elmau
42 Booker T. Jones – The Road From Memphis
41 Destroyer – Kaputt
40 Charles Bradley - No Time For Dreaming
39 Arctic Monkeys – Suck It And See
38 The Sand Bag – All Through The Night
37 Duane Eddy – Road Trip
36 Shabazz Palaces – Black Up
35 Tinariwen – Tassili
34 Gillian Welch – The Harrow & The Harvest
33 Glenn Jones – The Wanting
32 Björk – Biophilia
31 Nick Lowe – That Old Magic
30 Girls – Father, Son, Holy Ghost
29 Wilco – The Whole Love
28 Lykke Li – Wounded Rhymes
27 Arbouretum – The Gathering
26 Drive-By Truckers – Go-Go Boots
25 The Stepkids - The Stepkids
24 EMA – Past Life Martyred Saints
23 Bill Callahan – Apocalypse
22 Beirut – The Rip Tide
21 The War On Drugs – Slave Ambient
20 My Morning Jacket – Circuital
19 James Blake – James Blake
18 Thurston Moore – Demolished Thoughts
17 Bill Wells & Aidan Moffat – Everything’s Getting Older
16 Bon Iver – Bon Iver, Bon Iver
15 Paul Simon – So Beautiful Or So What
14 King Creosote & Jon Hopkins – Diamond Mine
13 Cat’s Eyes – Cat’s Eyes
12 Kurt Vile – Smoke Rings For My Halo
11 Laura Marling – A Creature I Don’t Know
10 Wild Beasts – Smother
09 Tom Waits – Bad As Me
08 Anna Calvi – Anna Calvi
07 Josh T Pearson – Last Of The Country Gentlemen
06 White Denim – D
05 Kate Bush – 50 Words For Snow
04 Jonathan Wilson – Gentle Spirit
03 Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues
02 The Horrors – Skying
01 PJ Harvey – Let England Shake

Uncut‘s Top 50 Albums Of 2011

2011-12-12T16:07:00.000+02:00

50 Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Unknown Mortal Orchestra
49 Arbouretum – The Gathering
48 Cornershop Featuring Bubbley Kaur – Cornershop And The Double-O Groove Of
47 The Caretaker – An Empty Bliss Beyond This World
46 Iceage – New Brigade
45 Mikal Cronin – Mikal Cronin
44 tUnE-yArDs – w h o k i l l
43 St. Vincent – Strange Mercy
42 Jenny Hval – Viscera
41 Raphael Saadiq – Stone Rollin’
40 Kate Bush – 50 Words For Snow
39 Dawes – Nothing Is Wrong
38 His Golden Messenger – From Country Hai East Cotton
37 Little Dragon – Ritual Union
36 Jonny – Jonny
35 My Morning Jacket – Circuital
34 Fatoumata Diawara – Fatou
33 Low – C’Mon
32 Gil Scott Heron & Jamie XX – We’re New Here
31 Destroyer – Kaputt
30 Tim Hecker – Ravendeath, 1972
29 Paul Simon – So Beautiful Or So What
28 King Creosote & Jon Hopkins – Diamond Mine
27 Björk – Biophilia
26 The Decemberists – The King Is Dead
25 Bill Callahan – Apocolypse
24 Real Estate – Days
23 Thurston Moore – Demolished Thoughts
22 Gang Gang Dance – Eye Contact
21 James Blake – James Blake
20 Ry Cooder – Pull Up Some Dust And Sit Down
19 Drive-By Truckers – Go-Go Boots
18 Tinariwen – Tassili
17 Feist – Metals
16 Jonathan Wilson – Gentle Spirit
15 Wilco – The Whole Love
14 Kurt Vile – Smoke Ring For My Halo
13 Tom Waits – Bad As Me
12 Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues
11 Laura Marling – A Creature I Don’t Know
10 The War On Drugs – Slave Ambient
09 Bon Iver – Bon Iver
08 Wild Beasts – Smother
07 Radiohead – The King Of Limbs
06 The Horrors – Skying
05 Josh T. Pearson – Last Of The Country Gentlemen
04 White Denim – D
03 Metronomy – The English Riviera
02 Gillian Welch – The Harrow & The Harvest
01 PJ Harvey – Let England Shake

Cover of the day

2011-12-12T15:56:00.001+02:00

Franklin J. Schaffner:"Papillon" (1973)

2011-12-12T15:51:00.000+02:00

Although it's overly exhaustive as it catalogues its protagonist's many attempts to regain his freedom, Papillon remains the mother, or at least the master, of all prison-escape flicks. Less of a straight-up procedural than such heirs to the throne as Escape From Alcatraz, the film tempers its unashamedly psychological approach (dream sequences, tests of will, and triumph-of-the-downtrodden hokum) with enough gritty realism (knife fights, guillotines, malaria, and leprous smugglers) to appease those who want their depravity served up extra stark. Escape-film vet Steve McQueen showcases his range both physically and mentally as his character seems to age forward and backward and go in and out of sanity depending on the barbarity of his method of incarceration at any given time. Dustin Hoffman, meanwhile, gets to have it both ways, outrageous vocal and physical tics and subtle psychological shadings, as the rich counterfeiter whose colonic stash of cash finances several of Papillon's attempts to bust out. Viewers may watch the closing credits incredulously, unable to believe that after 150 minutes, director Franklin J. Schaffner still has to resort to a spoken-word epilogue to wrap up loose ends, but for devotees of the genre and fans of McQueen's tough-guy oeuvre, Papillon is worth the investment of time.

Anna Calvi:"Anna Calvi" (2011)

2011-12-12T15:45:00.000+02:00

When one of the most successful independent record labels of the past decade puts out only a mere smattering of work by female solo artists, you can’t help but feel that they’ve got something of a mental block. However, it seems that Domino were just waiting for the right woman to come along.

Anna Calvi is certainly that. Rather than the Brit School background that seems par for the course for any hotly tipped British female solo talent, Anna Calvi is instead the product of a rather more traditional music degree at Southampton Uni. Evidently, her obsession with the multi-textured work of early 20th century impressionist composers was allowed to flourish there, rather than be dampened by lessons on how best to impress dead-eyed X Factor judges.

As such, Calvi’s sumptuously gothic debut is shot through with more references than an encyclopaedia. Thrilling and chilling in equal measure, this self-titled collection of 10 songs is perhaps the first great record of 2011.

Instrumental opener ‘Rider To The Sea’ is an updated echo of the groove of ‘Riders On The Storm,’ yet stripped of Jim Morrison’s macho posturing and replaced with a virtuosity that’s neither indulgent nor dull.

Vocals kick in, somewhat ironically, on ‘No More Words’, where Calvi offers up a cut-glass English accent that’s a little sister to Sarah Nixey of defunct pop pervs Black Box Recorder. This is the prefect purr that nuzzles up against her own take on Ry Cooder’s slide guitar and Angelo Badalamenti’s atmospheric work for David Lynch across haunting tracks such as ‘Love Won’t Be Leaving’.

The upshot is a more cultured and studied take on Florence Welch’s baroque operatics. Calvi is a diva, no doubt, but instead of a speaker stack-humping, sparkly hotpant-wearing dervish, she treads a more reflective, refined path. Even considering such sophistication, she’s not afraid of an all-out hit, like the standout, chiming ‘Blackout’. Her glistening croon is placed centre stage in ‘The Devil’ as flamenco guitar trickles like a waterfall that’s been wired for sound. The Cure make their presence felt in the ‘80s jangle of ‘Suzanne And I’ and she goes seriously Siouxsie on the thunderous ‘Desire’.

It’d be hard not to draw parallels between Calvi and her co-producer Rob Ellis’s near constant collaborator of the last 20 years, PJ Harvey. Yet while both women ooze an elemental kind of passion, Calvi is unashamedly slicker, especially when compared to Harvey’s earlier, grungier work. Like Harvey though, we have a funny feeling that Calvi is in this for the long haul.

Dick Richards:"Farewell, My Lovely" (1975)

2011-11-23T14:51:00.000+02:00

Soaked in period detail, the third remake of Raymond Chandler's eponymous novel is fascinating to look at if a mite leisurely in pacing. Gumshoe Philip Marlowe (Robert Mitchum) is hired by mountainous criminal Moose Malloy (Jack O'Halloran) to find a former girlfriend. Raymond Chandler had many qualities as a writer but reverence was hardly one of them. Thus, the reverence for the period, manifest in the impressively detailed art direction, seems strangely out of place for a writer whose tone of cynical romanticism often expressed contempt for the Los Angeles of the '30s and '40s, the time and place of which he wrote. The film has retained his romanticism but muted his biting wit, and in casting the laconic, aging Mitchum to play the younger, highly verbal detective, and insisting on a halting pace, it casts its lot with nostalgia rather than excitement. But, if less well-made than the previous version, Edward Dmytryk's Murder, My Sweet (1944), the film has its pleasures, among them the iconographic performance of Mitchum, the wonderful camerawork of John Alonzo, and the brooding score of David Shire.

Lee Hazlewood:"Trouble Is a Lonesome Town" (1963)

2011-11-23T14:44:00.000+02:00

Trouble Is a Lonesome Town was Lee Hazlewood's first proper solo album, following his prosperous late-'50s partnership with Duane Eddy and prior to his mentoring and making of '60s boot-walker Nancy Sinatra. Hazlewood considered it a "writer's album" from which other artists could cull songs, but Trouble is a perfectly legitimate effort in its own right and characteristically wonderful Hazlewood. The songs are succinct, country-drenched cowboy ballads given a certain undeniable authority by Hazlewood's warm, bottomless baritone, which booms out of the music like a voice amplified from the heavens. The album runs through jail songs ("Six Feet of Chain"), railroad songs ("The Railroad"), traveling songs ("Long Black Train"), and cold-hearted love songs ("Look at That Woman") peppered with outlaws, itinerants, dead-end women, card players, and beat-down heroes, too. Between the songs, Hazlewood shows his storyteller's gift by offering up bits of narration, and the album itself is a storyteller's record. Trouble is like a cross between a novel full of idiosyncratic character studies (à la Faulkner) and a John Wayne Western, with Hazlewood -- looking a lot like a dharma bum on the album cover, sitting on the railroad tracks with his guitar and a dangling cigarette -- spinning out intricate yarns about all manner of interesting souls with names like Orville Dobkins and Emory Zickfoose Brown, all residents of the hard-scrabbled fictitious town Trouble ("nothing with a railroad running through it"), which is loosely based on his birthplace. The music is as somber and loping as such subject matter demands, mostly consisting of strummed acoustic guitars and woeful harmonica wails that weep the blues. But it is in the purposefully humorous, sympathetic, and colorful storytelling that the distinct, dead-on Americana heart of Trouble lays

Milos Forman:"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975)

2011-11-23T02:16:00.000+02:00

Milos Forman had proven his talent for astute social comedy in such earlier Czech films as Loves of a Blonde (1965) and The Firemen's Ball (1967), and his adept treatment of Cuckoo's Nest's metaphorically loaded conflict fulfilled the promise of an immigrant observer of American culture indicated in his first U.S. feature, Taking Off (1971). Shot on location at the Oregon State Hospital, and visually imprisoning the characters in tightly framed compositions, Haskell Wexler's and Bill Butler's cinematography underlines the psychological as well as physical confinement dogging the patients. The restrained, soft-spoken control of Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched contrasts with the thoughtful vigor of Jack Nicholson's McMurphy, further emphasizing both the need to revolt and the difficulty in doing so posed by such consistent, quiet, internalized power. For a culture battered by the chaotic rebellions of the late 1960s/early 1970s, and the serial failures of institutional authority culminating in Watergate and the fall of Saigon, Cuckoo's Nest's resigned yet hopeful portrayal of spirited non-conformity touched a nerve, turning it into one of the most popular films of 1975. The independently produced film became only the second film in history to sweep all five top Academy Awards, winning Best Picture for producers Saul Zaentz and 31-year-old Michael Douglas, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay for Lawrence Hauben's and Bo Goldman's adaptation of the Kesey novel. Shrewdly combining roustabout fervor and humor with an acknowledgement of society's different limits, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest effectively communicated the disillusionment of the waning counter-culture even as it optimistically asserted that one rebel could make a difference.

Sleater-Kinney:"The Hot Rock" (1999)

2011-11-23T02:08:00.001+02:00

Expectations for Sleater-Kinney's fourth album were stratospheric, with the raging, tuneful feminist catharsis of Call the Doctor and Dig Me Out having garnered near-universal critical raves and outlandish media hype. Afraid of falling into a predictable rut, though, the band bravely pushed its range of expression into more personal, subdued, and cerebral territory on The Hot Rock. That means the record isn't quite as immediately satisfying as its two brilliant predecessors, but it does reward those willing to spend time absorbing its nervy introspection and moodiness. Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein push relentlessly for more complex interplay, both in their vocal and instrumental work; even the gentlest songs might break into unexpected dissonance or take an angular, off-kilter melodic direction. As such, there's never an obvious, gut-level anthem that jumps out at the listener in the manner of an "I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone" or "Words and Guitar," but the intensity simmering under the surface does bubble over often, thanks to the group's greater use of dynamic shifts. There are fewer protest songs this time around, as most of the lyrics explore failed relationships and personal uncertainty, yet it manages to retain the sense of empowering catharsis that makes the group so compelling. The Hot Rock can invite comparisons to a less jam-oriented Television or a minimalist version of indie compatriots Helium (not to mention the obvious Kim Gordon homage on "Get Up"), but in the end, it stands on its own as Sleater-Kinney's most progressive and experimental work, as well as their darkest.

Cover of the day

2011-11-15T10:35:00.000+02:00

Wong Kar-Wai:"In The Mood For Love" (2000)

2011-11-15T10:31:00.000+02:00

In the Mood for Love is a lushly romantic, intensely sensual film, even though the two principals rarely so much as hold hands onscreen. The leads are photographed to emphasize their movie star looks, and Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and Maggie Cheung each give the sort of performance in which a glance or gesture means more than much of the dialogue. Director Wong Kar-wai's use of color, music, and sound is simultaneously nostalgic and refreshingly original. The gorgeous photography pours color through each scene, making everything from Li-Zhen's extraordinary dresses to the drab hallways seem beautiful. One often thinks of great cinematography as being stunning scenery, but the canvas here is of alleys, stairways, cramped offices, and even more cramped apartments and is every bit as breathtaking, perhaps even more so because beauty has been found in the most unexpected of places. Wong's use of tight shots and low lighting adds to the intimate atmosphere, as well as his reliance on a slow-moving camera that takes its time to absorb all that is going on, practically moving in sync with the music. Similarly, there is the continual presence of food. In scene after scene, the characters are either eating or preparing to eat, creating the feeling for the audience that they are peeking in on the characters' quieter, more personal moments. Throughout the film, what is unsaid is almost more important than what is actually said, and there is a sense that the film is a memory of one or both of the leads, looking back with regret at lost opportunities. In the Mood for Love ultimately provides a rare look at a director who is maturing as a cinematic storyteller.

Pavement:"Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain" (1994)

2011-11-15T10:26:00.000+02:00

It may be a bit reductive to call Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain the Reckoning to Slanted & Enchanted's Murmur -- not mention easy, considering that Pavement recorded a song-long tribute to R.E.M.'s second album during the Crooked Rain sessions -- but there's a certain truth in that statement all the same. Slanted & Enchanted is an enigmatic masterpiece, retaining its mystique after countless spins, but Crooked Rain strips away the hiss and fog of S&E, removing some of Pavement's mystery yet retaining their fractured sound and spirit. It's filled with loose ends and ragged transitions, but compared to the fuzzy, dense Slanted, Crooked Rain is direct and immediately engaging -- it puts the band's casual melodicism, sprawling squalls of feedback, disheveled country-rock, and Stephen Malkmus' deft wordplay in sharp relief. It's the sound of a band discovering its own voice as a band, which is only appropriate because up until Crooked Rain, Pavement was more of a recording project between Malkmus and Scott Kannberg than a full-fledged rock & roll group. During the supporting tour for Slanted, Malkmus and Kannberg recruited bassist Mark Ibold and percussionist Bob Nastanovich, and original drummer Gary Young was replaced by Steve West early into the recording for this album, and the new blood gives the band a different feel, even if the aesthetic hasn't changed much. The full band gives the music a richer, warmer vibe that's as apparent on the rampaging, noise-ravaged "Unfair" as it is on the breezy, sun-kissed country-rock of "Range Life" or its weary, late-night counterpart, "Heaven Is a Truck." Pavement may still be messy, but it's a meaningful, musical messiness from the performance to the production: listen to how "Silence Kit" begins by falling into place with its layers of fuzz guitars, wah wahs, cowbells, thumping bass, and drum fills, how what initially seems random gives way into a lush Californian pop song. That's Crooked Rain a nutshell -- what initially seems chaotic has purpose, leading listeners into the bittersweet heart and impish humor at the core of the album. Many bands attempted to replicate the sound or the vibe of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, but they never came close to the quicksilver shifts in music and emotion that give this album such lasting appeal. Here, Pavement follow the heartbroken ballad "Stop Breathin'" with the wry, hooky alt-rock hit "Cut Your Hair" without missing a beat. They throw out a jazzy Dave Brubeck tribute in "5-4=Unity" as easily as they mimic the Fall and mock the Happy Mondays on "Hit the Plane Down." By drawing on so many different influences, Pavement discovered its own distinctive voice as a band on Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, creating a vibrant, dynamic, emotionally resonant album that stands as a touchstone of underground rock in the '90s and one of the great albums of its decade.

Cover of the day

2011-11-09T13:49:00.000+02:00

Joel Coen:"Blood Simple" (1984)

2011-11-09T13:44:00.000+02:00

A tribute to American film noir, Blood Simple was the Coen Brothers' remarkably confident film debut. It introduced the world to the brothers' dark and enjoyably warped vision, setting the tone for their later and increasingly famous works. Blood Simple also established the Coens as some of the most innovative filmmakers of their generation, featuring acrobatic camera manipulation and stunningly effective point-of-view shots, the most memorable of which is M. Emmet Walsh's view of a dripping sink. For his part, Walsh gave one of the best performances of his career, a savory blend of amoral sleaze and mean-eyed greed. His performance is the black heart and soul of Blood Simple, a film that churns with sadistic good humor as it delivers a brutal yet beautifully executed shot to the head.

Dusty Spriengfield:"Dusty in Memphis" (1969)

2011-11-09T13:36:00.000+02:00

Already a well regarded pop singer, British blonde Dusty Springfield landed in Memphis in 1969, and the stage was set for her finest hour. Dusty In Memphis is a beautiful marriage of immaculate production work, classy string-heavy arrangements, a great band of session players, and truly wonderful vocals (by Dusty and the Sweet Inspirations, whose backing vocals bring a gospel touch to the proceedings). Considering the circumstances and production personnel (the legendary team of Jerry Wexler, Tom Dowd, and Arif Mardin), one might’ve expected this to be a gritty soul album in the grand old Atlantic/Stax tradition. Instead we get treated to an exceptional album of symphonic pop songs, and though the album didn’t sell in impressive numbers upon its release it has since been belatedly recognized as a classic of blue-eyed soul. What makes these intimate pop songs so soulful is Dusty’s ultra sexy voice; her husky, hushed tones have a naturally sad pitch that conveys a sensual sense of longing. Interpreting songs from some of the best and most sophisticated songwriters of the day, including four compositions from Gerry Goffin and Carole King, the album contains a warm, lushly layered sound that is singular in its stately elegance. I could go on and name some standout songs (“Son Of A Preacher Man” is the album’s best known song and its lone hit), but the whole album is one big highlight that should be listened to in its entirety. Out of print for some time but reissued by Rhino Records in 1992, Dusty In Memphis shows off a great singer in the right place at the right time at the peak of her powers

Cover of the day

2011-11-08T14:15:00.000+02:00

From Lpcoverlover.com

Hal Hartley:"Trust " (1990)

2011-11-08T14:01:00.000+02:00

Hal Hartley's second excursion to absurd suburbia, Trust offers audiences the surreal farce and deadpan wit that Hartley made his calling cards. It also offers a surprisingly touching romance, marked by wry irony and universally resonant concerns, centering on trust as a substitute for love. Trust also works as a calm, unforced, deeply precise meditation on identity, and the ways in which it can be built, destroyed, and re-formed into something new and unanticipated. Clad in purple lipstick and a neon mini-skirt at the film's beginning, Maria (Adrienne Shelly) gradually transforms into a serious, intelligent young woman, with glasses and pulled-back hair. It's a believable transformation, thanks to Shelly's remarkable performance; one of the film's truest moments comes when Maria writes in her diary, "I am ashamed. I am ashamed of being young. I am ashamed of being stupid." Fortunately, in Martin Donovan's Matthew, Maria finds someone who understands this. Donovan makes no apologies for his character's difficult personality, making the misanthropic, emotionally stunted repairman's idiosyncrasies raggedly endearing. He and Shelly navigate the flat Formica landscape of Hartley's dialogue with great ease, their blunt, no-frills performances forming the heart of an ornery but immensely satisfying film.

Miles Davis:"Ascenseur Pour l'Échafaud" (1958)

2011-11-08T13:54:00.000+02:00

Jazz and film noir are perfect bedfellows, as evidenced by the soundtrack of Louis Malle's Ascenseur Pour L'Echafaud (Lift to the Scaffold). This dark and seductive tale is wonderfully accentuated by the late-'50s cool or bop music of Miles Davis, played with French jazzmen -- bassist Pierre Michelot, pianist René Urtreger, and tenor saxophonist Barney Wilen -- and American expatriate drummer Kenny Clarke. This recording evokes the sensual nature of a mysterious chanteuse and the contrasting scurrying rat race lifestyle of the times, when the popularity of the automobile, cigarettes, and the late-night bar scene were central figures. Davis had seen a screening of the movie prior to his making of this music, and knew exactly how to portray the smoky hazed or frantic scenes though sonic imagery, dictated by the trumpeter mainly in D-minor and C-seventh chords. Michelot is as important a figure as the trumpeter because he sets the tone, as on the stalking "Visite du Vigile." While the mood of the soundtrack is generally dour and somber, the group collectively picks up the pace exponentially on "Diner au Motel." At times the distinctive Davis trumpet style is echoed into dire straits or death wish motifs, as on "Generique" or "L'Assassinat de Carala," respectively. Clarke is his usual marvelous self, and listeners should pay close attention to the able Urtreger, by no means a virtuoso but a capable and flexible accompanist. This recording can stand proudly alongside Duke Ellington's music from Anatomy of a Murder and the soundtrack of Play Misty for Me as great achievements of artistic excellence in fusing dramatic scenes with equally compelling modern jazz music.

Steven Sheinberg:"Secretary" (2002)

2011-11-07T15:10:00.000+02:00

Maggie Gyllenhaal's first starring role provides her with the opportunity to explore a rather demanding character, which she performs with depth and humor in Secretary. As Lee Holloway, she portrays a young woman with a strange addiction to pain, but remains engaging and easily empathized with. Lee's endeavors in the "real" world, after a youth with an emotionally disruptive family life, prove to be a bizarre representation of one's willingness to comply, in order to fulfill one's desires. By taking a secretarial job with E. Edward Grey (James Spader), she learns that taking orders is not only within her capacity as an employee, but in fact, serves a higher purpose for the whole of her person. Gyllenhaal makes magic as Lee, with a blatantly erotic upward gaze somehow innocent enough to leave both Mr. Grey and the audience wondering whether Lee -- or Gyllenhaal herself -- is aware of just how hot she really is. Lee becomes both emotionally and physically charged by her encounters with Spader's Mr. Grey, who issues commands in an unbearably sexy low voice. Spader's attractive forcefulness equals Gyllenhaal's more vulnerable role in its effectiveness of characterization. Tenaciously exacting, Mr. Grey's affection for obedience turns darkly appealing when sexy Spader ruthlessly delivers his demands. This strong opposition might suggest issues of stereotypical gender roles, but the film does not presume to make generalizations. Instead, it speaks specifically of the circumstances within one unique relationship that will define itself by the needs of the two individuals involved, however disturbing they may be. Within the deep mental and emotional issues of a somewhat alternative relationship, director Steven Shainberg creates a careful balance of mood using well-timed humor to prevent getting bogged down by the severity of the story. Meanwhile, the film pushes the boundaries of the R rating by use of implication. The things it doesn't show explicitly -- like masturbation -- are more than hinted at, while not officially breaking any limits. Taking metaphor to the extreme, Secretary allows access to the laughter and the pain of love in raw form.

De La Soul: "3 Feet High and Rising" (1989)

2011-11-07T15:06:00.000+02:00

The most inventive, assured, and playful debut in hip-hop history, 3 Feet High and Rising not only proved that rappers didn't have to talk about the streets to succeed, but also expanded the palette of sampling material with a kaleidoscope of sounds and references culled from pop, soul, disco, and even country music. Weaving clever wordplay and deft rhymes across two dozen tracks loosely organized around a game-show theme, De La Soul broke down boundaries all over the LP, moving easily from the groovy my-philosophy intro "The Magic Number" to an intelligent, caring inner-city vignette named "Ghetto Thang" to the freewheeling end-of-innocence tale "Jenifa Taught Me (Derwin's Revenge)." Rappers Posdnuos and Trugoy the Dove talked about anything they wanted (up to and including body odor), playing fast and loose on the mic like Biz Markie. Thinly disguised under a layer of humor, their lyrical themes ranged from true love ("Eye Know") to the destructive power of drugs ("Say No Go") to Daisy Age philosophy ("Tread Water") to sex ("Buddy"). Prince Paul (from Stetsasonic) and DJ Pasemaster Mase led the way on the production end, with dozens of samples from all sorts of left-field artists -- including Johnny Cash, the Mad Lads, Steely Dan, Public Enemy, Hall & Oates, and the Turtles. The pair didn't just use those samples as hooks or drumbreaks -- like most hip-hop producers had in the past -- but as split-second fills and in-jokes that made some tracks sound more like DJ records. Even "Potholes on My Lawn," which samples a mouth harp and yodeling (for the chorus, no less), became a big R&B hit. If it was easy to believe the revolution was here from listening to the rapping and production on Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, with De La Soul the Daisy Age seemed to promise a new era of positivity in hip-hop.

Alfred Hitchcock:"The Birds" (1963)

2011-11-04T17:21:00.002+02:00

The Birds features a classic Alfred Hitchcock setup: average people placed in circumstances turned upside down. And of course, there are the requisite dark insinuations and strange psychological underpinnings. Though we're never sure why the birds are rising up, their behavior seems to be a response to humankind's complacency and arrogance. It's a frightening yet sportive vision of Judgment Day. As in Psycho, Hitchcock's previous film, the normalcy of the setting is allowed to set in before the audience is thrown into the perverse drama. When the bird violence comes, Hitchcock pulls out all the stops to make it as realistic as one could imagine. There are 371 trick shots in the film. Some have dated, but for the most part the effects are still effective. The last shots are especially memorable. And the movie features a unique soundtrack from frequent Hitchcock collaborator Bernard Herrmann: no music, only bird sounds organized as if they were music, for maximum creepy impact. The Birds stands as the end of an unprecedented period when Hitchcock could no wrong; he made only five more features, with decidedly mixed artistic and financial results.

Neu!:"Neu! 75" (1975)

2011-11-04T17:15:00.000+02:00

After a three-year break, Neu! members Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother buried their differences temporarily, and reunited for another go at the "motorik" sound they had developed with their debut in 1971. The strange tension and presentation of Neu! 2 and the emergence of their former band Kraftwerk may have precipitated the reunion, but, whatever the reason, the end result proved worth the time, effort, and bickering it took to crank this one out. One thing that is noticeably different on 75 is the presence of synthesizers and the preference of them, it seems, over Rother's guitar. "Isi," which opens the album, features Dinger's metronymic percussion holding down the 2/4 rhythm and a trademark one-note bassline provided by a piano, but the gorgeous sonic washes and flourishes normally handled by Rother's guitar-slinging hands are now painted with a synth. "Seeland" offers a return to the six strings with what would in subsequent years become Rother's ornate "singing" style of playing. Dinger's rhythmic patterns here are deceptively simple. They create a long, trudging 4/4, syncopated every other line, and punctuated by a small ride cymbal at the end of each phrase as Rother's guitar provides both cascading single string notes and a shifting, pulsing bassline. It's a beautiful wasteland, this track; sparse yet full of melodic interplay and layered guitars and keyboards. The last track on side one is "Leb Wohl," an exercise in white noise, industrial textures, and natural or, "found" sounds, a piano and gorgeous, spare and intricate guitar chords. For side two, Neu! adds Dinger's brother, Thomas, and Hans Lampe on various percussions to allow Dinger to play guitar, piano, and organ, and to add some bottom end to the band's sound. The funny thing is they come off sounding more like a melodic punk band on "Hero," with Dinger's growling vocals being reminiscent of a young Mick Jagger on steroids. His Keith Richards-style chords stand in stark contrast to Rother's more lyrical approach. Perhaps this isn't such a surprise when we consider the Damned's first album was recorded in 1975. The ten-minute "E-Musick" becomes Neu!'s signature track for this disc, however. With distorted percussion -- courtesy of a synth and sequencer, as well as a drum kit put through a phase shifter, Rother's melodic synth lines are free to roam, wide and far, carrying within them a foreshadowing of his guitar solos a few minutes later. These long screaming lines, reminiscent of Steve Hillage at his best, with Dinger's wonderful rhythm backing and treatments of the instruments, provides a definitive statement on the Neu! "motorik" sound. This is music not only for traveling, from one place to the next, but also for disappearance into the ether at a steady pace. This may have been Neu!'s final statement -- at least in the studio; Dinger issued (without Rother's permission) an inferior live '72 album -- but at least they went out on a much higher note than Neu! 2, and in a place where their innovations are still being not only recognized, but utilized.

Jean-Luc Godard:"Pierrot Le Fou" (1965)

2011-11-03T17:12:00.001+02:00

Based on Lionel White's novel Obsession, Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le Fou (1965) transforms a story about a couple on the run into an existential romance and an essay on the possibilities of film. With no script, Jean-Paul Belmondo's and Anna Karina's flight to southern France becomes a spontaneous series of incidents that reflect on romance, aesthetics, story-telling, and art as an antidote to alienation. Equating men with the intellect and women with the body, and using the widescreen frame to emphasize the couple's psychic division, Godard unites them in romantic moments and musical numbers, but these gestures cannot prevent their final, explosive separation. Stylized colors and compositions celebrate art for art's sake (even though the colors also carry potential meaning), as in the repetition of the couple's response to a murder in three different shooting styles. Allusions to other films, the brief appearance of Hollywood tough-guy director Samuel Fuller, and references to writers, writing, and painters all emphasize Godard's concern with the meaning of cinema and art, and their place in life. Though not as popular as its predecessor Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou won the Critics' Prize at the 1965 Venice Film Festival, and it was a key precursor to his most radical 1960s film, Weekend (1968).
Directed by: Jean-Luc Godard Staring: Jean-Paul Belmndo, Anna Karina

The Black Keys:"The Big Come Up" (2002)

2011-11-03T17:02:00.000+02:00

On paper, two Ohio white guys forming a drum-and-guitar blues duo seemed like the last thing the world needed in 2002. Fortunately, the guys revisiting the tried and true were guitarist-vocalist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney a.k.a. the Black Keys. With the former's blown-cone distortion and slinky riffs, and the latter's positively Bonham-esque way of inhabiting each change with a loose power, they smacked judgment out of one's brain before anyone could call it cliche. Taking cues from Fat Possum-centric blues legends like Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside (both covered here on the first two tracks) and garage fetishists like Billy Childish and Jack White alike, the Akron duo arrived with swagger on these 13 tracks. Tackling covers traditional (like Sleepy John Estes's "Leavin' Trunk") and non (the Beatles's "She Said, She Said") and their own workouts (the aptly titled "Heavy Soul"), THE BIG COME UP wins on the strength of Auerbach's ravagedly expressive vocals--which match the egdes in his guitar tone crag for crag.

William Friedkin:"To Live and Die in L.A." (1985)

2011-11-03T16:49:00.000+02:00

William Friedkin's crime thriller, based on a book by U.S. Secret Service agent Gerald Petievich, concerns an arrogant Secret Service official who wants to get his man at any price. Willem Dafoe plays Eric Masters, an ultra-smooth counterfeiter who has managed to sidestep the police for years. He is so up-front about his dealings, in fact, that when some undercover agents try to make a deal with him at his health club, Eric tells them, "I've been coming to this gym three times a week for five years. I'm an easy guy to find. People know they can trust me." But when young and eager Secret Service agent Richard Chance (William L. Petersen) finds out that his partner has been cold-bloodedly murdered by Eric, he trains his relentlessness upon capturing Eric -- whether it means robbery, murder, or exploiting his friends and associates. As Chance erases the dividing line between good and evil, he drags his new partner John Vukovich (John Pankow) and Ruth Lanier (Darlanne Fluegel), an ex-con, down into the maelstrom with him.

Directed by: William Friedkin Starring: William Petersen,Willem Dafoe, John Pankow

Curtis Mayfield:"Superfly" (1972)

2011-11-03T16:32:00.001+02:00

This soundtrack to the flash and clever Superfly is as pleasing and pretty in your living room as it is mingled with the images that it aurally represents. In fact the anti-drug message on the record is far stronger and more definite than in the film, which was diluted by schizoid cross purposes. Superfly, the film, glamorizes machismo-cocaine consciousness while making a political moralization about the process that keeps drugs illegal yet sees that they are supplied in quantity to the ghetto. The only way that black political consciousness is treated is to make it seem impotent and trivial.
Yet the implied "plot" in Curtis Mayfield's music and lyrics closely follows the line of the film; each song is readily identifiable with various scenes; the many attitudes and poses that Curtis adopts in his music, whether it be the tough-yet-sensitive persona or a sort of narrative third person, all point to rejection of dope control and self-liberation, the most positive themes of what will be a heavily influential film.
But the greatest quality of any soundtrack is that it can stand alone. Superfly is not only a superior, imaginative soundtrack, but fine funky music as well and the best of Curtis Mayfield's four albums made since he left the Impressions since the "Gypsy Woman" days. The Mayfield-Pate team dipped into three distinct musical satchels to pull out this lovely and energetic song cycle -- the established Shaft system of dramatic, heaving chords and souped-up, insectine guitar and synthesizer chops by Isaac Hayes; the lyrical power of the song style and orchestration of Marvin Gaye and David Van dePitte; and, certainly not least, the amazing emotive skill of Curtis Mayfield, whose technique is honed and carried to strange extremes. "Pusherman," the major vocal theme of the film, identifying the protagonist ("a man of odd circumstance, a victim of ghetto demands"), is almost scary and perverse, given Curtis' manner: He kisses the word "pusherman" rather than sings it. The implications are so heavy that this truly amazing song, with its metallic percussion and hypnotic, drugged tone, couldn't possibly be released as a single. The more conservative "Freddie's Dead," which deals with the demise of a sad fat stooge, was doled out instead to a faunching public and is now at the top of everyone's Hot Hundred.
"Little Child Runnin' Wild" sets the tone of the whole record -- episodic, tragic, hungry and telling tales of psychic misery. The story is that the coke dealer wants to split the scene, leave it clean and is all pent up with conflicts of values. Mayfield's soothing falsetto purr transforms into an anxious cry during climactic moments in the song/stories -- he is a tremendous vocal actor: "Pusherman," "Freddie's Dead" and "Eddie You Should Know Better" are crawling with tension; "Nothing On Me" and "Superfly" are triumphant and wailing, and "Give Me Your Love" is fine accompaniment for the slippery bathtub-fuck scene that makes the whole picture worthwhile for many of its patrons. The moral is that ol' Superfly is still badass stuff even if the cops are behind it, and also that this record is currently selling as well as good coke and deserves to do so.
- Bob Donat, Rolling Stone, 11/9/72.

Selah Sue

2011-11-02T12:20:00.000+02:00

Zooey Deschanel and Ben Gibbard Split Up

2011-11-02T12:08:00.000+02:00

This isn't a good time to be part of a famous indie-rock couple: Just weeks after Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore announced they were separating, She & Him's Zooey Deschanel and Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard have split up, too.
Us Weekly reports the dissolution of the rock'n'roll union was "mutual and amicable," and a source told the magazine, "There was no third party involved." The pair got engaged in December 2008 and married in September 2009 near Seattle. Just a year ago, the two enjoyed the baseball postseason together; last week Deschanel returned to the MLB to sing the National Anthem solo.
This means SPIN must revise our gallery of 12 Indie Rock Couples Keeping the Dream Alive. Farewell, Zooey and Ben, and hello Bethany and Nathan!

U2 'Achtung Baby (Super Deluxe Edition)'

2011-11-02T12:03:00.001+02:00

U2 weren't known for their ambiguity, but by 1991 they'd turned into a teenager: pissy, confused, quitting sports they were good at. From Achtung Baby on, panoramic ballads sat side by side with mini-rebellions masquerading as "art," peaking with 1993's Zooropa, also included here, featuring Bono's drag-queen falsetto on "Lemon." Repackaging it all as a six-disc set (including remixes and alternate versions) is pretentious, extravagant, and romantic -- U2, after all.

Florence And The Machine - 'Ceremonials'

2011-11-02T11:58:00.000+02:00

In the 19th century, society had a method for sweeping women whose behaviour was deemed strange and unusual under the carpet: they’d be spirited away to places with large lawns and high walls, and left to keep counsel with sprites and faeries on a brainful of laudanum. Thankfully, in the liberal and enlightened 21st century, we now recognise that they’re actually far better suited to being pop stars, an arrangement that’s worked out happily for everyone.

In fact, now that their male counterparts have retreated onto the endangered species list, the onus of providing pop music with the “strange fascination” that Bowie once sang about has fallen more or less squarely on the padded shoulders of the Lady Gagas, Janelle Monáes and Florence Welchs of this world. Like those artists, Florence is possessed of her own idiosyncracies and odd preoccupations (sometimes self-consciously so: she recently told one interviewer that her favourite pastime was “dancing down supermarket aisles”), but she’s no fool. For evidence of that, you only need to listen to ‘Ceremonials’ and consider the album she could have made.

When asked by her label if she fancied following the massive success of her 2009 debut by recording its follow-up in the States with a phalanx of exorbitantly priced R&B producers, Welch toyed with the notion, but ultimately had the good sense to decide, “No. No. No. No! I can’t do that. I can’t just suddenly leave behind everything that made ‘Lungs’.” The record she has made is really more of a refinement of ‘Lungs’’ sound and spirit than any sort of departure. Indeed, you could argue ‘Ceremonials’ is actually quite a cautious album. It’s also a very good one.

From the off, everything is (of course) bigger, grander, more dramatic; this is an album that’s absorbed every kitchen sink hurled its way and is still ravenous for more, like the matter-engorging spawn of a collision between Large Hadron Colliders. Opener ‘Only If For A Night’ blows away the cobwebs with a fragmented dream-narrative about a ghostly visitor for whom Flo oh-so-quaintly does “cartwheels in your honour” over palindromic layers of stiletto strings and crashing drums, while the chorus of ‘Shake It Out’, the first single proper, announces itself with a sudden, overpowering immensity akin to sheets of ice being atomised by a ruddy great hammer. It’s as though indie’s self-styled Lady of Shalott has discovered how to emote through a bullhorn.

There’s more to ‘Ceremonials’ than simply ‘Lungs’-with-bigger-lungs, though. She might have sidestepped the venal, vapid pop album her label were nudging her towards, but nonetheless, there’s a distinct R&B flavour to songs like ‘Heartlines’ and, especially, ‘Spectrum’, whose histrionic urgings to “Say my name!” are a bit like having your eyes angrily jabbed out by an irate Beyoncé (a good thing). Elsewhere, she indulges her love of ’60s soul on ‘Lover To Lover’, taking a sound that’s become as second nature to today’s female singer-songwriters as drawing breath, and bucking the odds by eking what must surely be the last remaining ounce of fun from it.

We’ve mentioned before that ‘Ceremonials’ is big. Clocking in at a shade under an hour long, it’s perhaps a little too big. The album closes on a frustratingly superfluous note with the shallow bluster of ‘Leave My Body’, and a few other tracks (the enchanting, but scarcely epic, likes of ‘Seven Devils’ and ‘All This And Heaven Too’) feel abnormally drawn-out. On a record of big ambitions and grandiose production, that’s an easy trap to fall into, but a little brevity – think of what ‘Kiss With A Fist’ achieved in just 124 seconds – might’ve gone a long way.

No matter. There’s an air of inevitability around this album’s impending ubiquity, and its success will be richly deserved. It’s not a strategy that will work indefinitely, but by taking what worked about ‘Lungs’ and amplifying those qualities to a natural, satisfying conclusion, Florence has made a near-great pop record that should afford her the creative freedom to do whatever the hell she wants next time around. She may be away with the faeries, but she knows exactly what she’s doing.

Barry Nicolson NME

Kurt Vile 'Smoke Ring for My Halo'

2011-10-21T19:56:00.000+03:00

Kurt Vile has rock's most believable sneer. When on his fourth album the Philly singer-songwriter confesses to being "a puppet to the man" and that his life's been "one long running gag," his voice slithers into every corner of defiance and resignation, earning your trust with that insistent lip-curl of brutal everydude humility. Having inhaled the obliquely fucked hauteur of the Stooges/Neil Young/ J Mascis axis, Vile frames his own more hushed musings with alternately anxious and serene guitar. But thanks to John Agnello's warm, enveloping production, Smoke Ring for My Halo feels almost suspenseful. "Christ was born / I was there," Vile intones, as if he's about to confide a mystery of the universe.

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks: Tigers

2011-10-21T18:12:00.000+03:00

Marvin Gaye What's Going On [40th Anniversary Edition]

2011-10-21T17:54:00.000+03:00

Marvin Gaye submitted a version of the most important single of his career, "What's Going On", to Motown Records in the summer of 1970. Over the previous seven years, the relationship between the singer and his label was contentious yet fruitful; gritty uptempo songs like "Stubborn Kind of Fellow" and "Hitch Hike" were hits, but they undermined Gaye's dream to be a balladeer in the mold of Nat King Cole. Those lusty trifles also roused the internal conflict between the artist's gospel upbringing and his endless desire for carnal pleasure. And while Gaye aspired to be more than just a singer within Motown's assembly-line chug, his boss, brother-in-law, and fellow hard-headed egoist Berry Gordy Jr. wasn't so crazy about the idea. So when Gordy heard that original "What's Going On" mix-- which is included in this box set for the first time-- he rejected the song, reportedly calling it "the worst thing I've ever heard in my life."
Instead of releasing "What's Going On" that fall, Motown put out the Gaye compilation Super Hits, which depicts its clean-shaven star as a cartoon superhero flying through the air and fixing a radio tower as a buxom damsel perilously hangs from his shoulder. But Gaye wanted nothing more than to blow up that gleaming image of himself-- now in his early 30s, he would accept nothing but complete control over his art. And if Motown wasn't going to release his first self-produced song, he wasn't going to make music for Motown. Gaye sat idle for months until his label, desperate to put out something-- anything-- from its biggest solo star, finally eked the single out under Gordy's nose on January 21, 1971. It was an instant success, hitting No. 2 on the pop charts and, perhaps more importantly for Gaye, giving him a win in his constant battle with Gordy, who couldn't deny a smash. Five months later, Marvin Gaye released his full-grown symphony to God, What's Going On, with little resistance.
Forty years of ubiquity have made the title track commonplace, so it's easy to forget that the song was the "most avant-garde hit Motown ever had," according to Ben Edmonds' thorough album history What's Going On: Marvin Gaye and the Last Days of the Motown Sound. With this album, Gaye wished to sidestep the sound that made him and others famous during Motown's untouchable 60s run, trading in that trademark big, bright beat for laid-back grooves inspired by Duke Ellington, Curtis Mayfield, Isaac Hayes, and Santana. And not only was the album a coming-out party for Gaye as a producer and songwriter, he found his signature voice-- soft, floating, airy-- on What's Going On, too. "I felt like I'd finally learned to sing," he told biographer David Ritz. "I'd been studying the microphone for a dozen years, and I suddenly saw what I'd been doing wrong. I'd been singing too loud." The record and its creative revelations led to his stunning 70s auteur period, which birthed three more classics: 1973's Let's Get It On, 1976's I Want You, and 1978's Here, My Dear. Yet What's Going On still stands tallest, making this 40th anniversary, 2CD/LP edition more of a welcome reminder than just another eulogy to baby-boomer culture.
Much has been made of What's Going On's political bent, and it's true that the music was partially inspired by Marvin's brother Frankie, who had come back from a three-year tour of Vietnam, along with troublingly violent episodes like the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Kent State shootings that saw four students killed by national guardsmen. Songs like peace-espousing title track and "What's Happening Brother", which finds Gaye expressing a war veteran's helplessness upon returning home, show Marvin's dismay toward his country and government. But this album isn't just a protest time capsule. Far from it. Gaye's disappointment isn't just societal, it's personal as well. During this period, the singer had lost his duet partner and dear friend, Tammi Terrell, and his marriage to Gordy's sister Anna was violently breaking down, and he was being tailed by the IRS for unpaid back taxes. His resulting depression is evident throughout; What's Going On isn't a fiery album filled with timely sloganeering. Part of its long-lasting appeal involves an element of true-to-life resignation. "Who's willing to try to save a world/ That's destined to die," he sings on "Save the Children", pinpointing an American melancholia-- a mix of world-saving power and funereal inevitability-- that endures today.
But the album doesn't wallow, either. It hums and glides on the effortless, multi-tracked Marvins that swoop through the stereo spectrum like ghosts. Gaye's signature vocal ad libs started here and have endured through R&B and hip-hop ever since. His marijuana-soaked delivery, along with the album's mutating, percussion-fueled rhythms, majestic strings, and jazzy horns, give the affair levity. Perhaps this smooth front also has to do with the fact that Gaye was "hardly an activist in the traditional sense," according to Edmonds. While his Vietnam-battered brother was an emotional catalyst, Gaye had neglected to send him one letter during his army stint. And though he was certainly aware of the Detroit race riot that left 43 people dead in 1967, he viewed the sad display on TV from his cushy home on the outskirts of town. Not to say Gaye didn't wholeheartedly believe in the progressive observations found on What's Going On, but his relative distance from his subjects allows him to fly over top of them, providing a healing pulse to the disarray below.
For an album as timeless as this one, reissue bonus material can provide worthy footnotes to the main article. Probably thanks to the last decade's vinyl resurgence, this 40th anniversary edition immediately sets itself apart from 2001's 30th anniversary release by presenting its iconic cover in a glorious 12"x12" square. The package's lone LP features the more straightforward, early Detroit mix of the album, while the final, L.A. mix is relegated to a CD. For die-hards, the most alluring part of the package may be the second compact disc, which features 18 mostly instrumental demos recorded in Gaye's post-What's Going On honeymoon period, when his vast artistic ambitions and abilities were being embraced by the greater public. These somewhat experimental demos-- deep, in-the-pocket funk in the vein of Sly Stone, George Clinton, and Jimi Hendrix-- clearly laid the groundwork for much of his subsequent 70s material. Though he doesn't sing on most of these tracks, it's exciting to hear him get loose as keyboardist and band leader.
Just as What's Going On marked the emergence of Marvin Gaye as an all-in-one talent, it also signaled the decline of Motown's reign. It's tempting to simply side with Gaye in his battles with the label that raised him and play into the auteur myth. But it's more complicated than that. Without his tutelage at Motown, first as a session player then as a singer, Gaye wouldn't have been able to conceive a work like this. The help of Motown backing band the Funk Brothers-- credited in the What's Going On liner notes after years of anonymity-- was also essential. Before he was shot and killed by his own father at age 44 in 1984, Gaye was afforded the schooling of America's finest pop academy and then the freedom to flourish and act on his own whims afterward. His 70s brilliance is unfathomable without his 60s pop triumphs. And What's Going On is the turning point, the moment when he was able to bypass his selfishness and self-destructiveness in the name of God, peace, love. It's a nice dream. One that he knew was too good to last. "Mercy, mercy me," he pleaded calmly, desperately.

GIRLS:"Father,Son,Holy Ghost"

2011-10-21T17:50:00.001+03:00

We may eventually remember 2011 as the Year of Retro. Critic Simon Reynolds' recent book on the subject tapped into a feeling a lot of people had but couldn't quite pin down: In the age of the limitless archive, the relationship between new artists and their influences are changing. Since the retirement of LCD Soundsystem, San Francisco's Girls, who return here after the terrific debut LP Album and an also-great follow-up EP, just might be the band best making use of the current situation. Their music pilfers from the past without shame but also manages to sound like no one else.

The first listen to Father, Son, Holy Ghost brings with it an almost eerie sense of familiarity, like these are songs you've been hearing your whole life even when you can't place them, and it's sometimes startling just how specific the references can be. The opening "Honey Bunny" has a shuffling beat and riff that is close to Paul Simon's "Kodachrome"; "Love Like a River" has a verse structure, chord changes, and tinkling piano arrangement almost identical to the Beatles' "Oh! Darlin", which was itself a direct rip of songs like "Blueberry Hill". "Magic" has bouncy sunshine pop chords that bring to mind something from a Have a Nice Day comp, "Die" has almost the same melody as Deep Purple's "Highway Star". The arrangements throughout have whirring organ, guitar fills, solos, flutes, and backing vocals borrowed from classic rock and placed exactly where you would expect them to be. And tying it all together is the production from Doug Boehm and the band, which sounds "old" simply because it sounds so incredibly good. This is one of the best-sounding rock records in years, redolent of a time when there was more money to spend in getting the basic tracks perfect, better ears to figure out which microphone should be used and precisely where it should be placed, and no pressure to make the mix ultra-hot for digitally-driven radio.

But if Father were merely an exceptionally recorded album built on obvious nods to the past, it wouldn't add up to much. Instead, the record comes alive with color and personality largely thanks to Girls' singer and songwriter Christopher Owens. He has a preternatural gift for turning clichés into into deeply affecting songs, and as they jump from one style to the next, from delicate acoustic balladry to noisy rave-ups, Owens' voice and point of view ground the record and make it distinctive. He is the center. As long as he is writing and singing, no matter what else is going on and being referenced, the music will be utterly his.

A lot of that is up to the timbre of his voice. On Album, Owens often had the pinched, clogged-sinus tone of Elvis Costello without the sneer, but here his vocals are warmer and softer, often bringing to mind the whispery tone of Elliott Smith. It's a testament to the care of the recording that even when he seems to be cooing into the microphone while the sometimes-thick arrangements grow around him, every word is clear and in balance. His voice exhibits both weariness and innocence and manages to convey hope and despair in equal measure. It also has an androgynous quality that fits the themes of Girls' music.

Owens' songs often seem to have an undefined and undirected desire for love and sex and friendship that exists outside of any one idea of sexuality. It's about feelings first, and the object of them second; who or what the singer wants is less important than the fact that the yearning is there, and it's unfulfilled, and that hurts. The lack of specificity can give Owens' songs a narcissistic slant, but it feels most like the self-obsession of early childhood, where lines between the self and the outside world aren't clear. "I can see so much clearer when I just close my eyes," he sings at one point, and it feels like the work of someone who has done a lot of thinking in the dark.

Indeed, so much about Owens' lyrical outlook, from how he uses shopworn imagery to the disarming simplicity of his declarations, conveys the sense of a child feeling around, discovering for the first time things we all found and absorbed years ago. So when he sings "My love is like a river/ She just keeps on rolling on" and "Lay my burden down by the river's edge" in "Love Like a River", it sounds like someone starting from the simplest conventions of the pop song and working inward to see if life actually functions the way that the songs tell us it does. Not since Jonathan Richman has there been a songwriter so willing to convey honest and deep feelings through the most basic pop syntax, and Owens also shares Richman's desire to use familiar song forms to get these essential messages across.

On Album, it was easy to hear the words and focus on Owens' backstory, which included being raised in a cult whose belief system contributed to the premature death of his brother. But these songs feel too essential and relatable to connect it to Owens' life alone. It's more about what we make of it as listeners and less about the damage of his early years. There's also a layer of awareness in his delivery, and he's able to tweak his own naïvteté in interesting ways. On the opening song, "Honey Bunny", he sings about how his mother loved and accepted him and told him that "everything will be all right" and then follows by saying, "I need a woman who loves me! me! me! me!"

This lyrical simplicity shouldn't obscure the fact that these are sharply constructed songs that take unusual turns. One of Girls' specialities is their willingness to go completely over the top but somehow keep us right there with them. Early single "Vomit" is one such epic, folding in soulful organ and the kind of wailing gospel-like vocals that signified "authenticity" when the Stones and Floyd ruled the world; but, with Owens' wounded voice in the middle of it all, even this bombastic song feels personal and even intimate. "Just a Song" begins with a gorgeously basic nylon string guitar figure and slowly drifts into a whispered refrain that stretches endlessly, Owens intoning, "Love, it's just a song," in his softest way as flutes swirl around him. He seems to be slipping into a widening hole that's half oceanic bliss and half fade-out death, and that combination nods to Spiritualized, an influence that was there on Album and is sometimes present here, particularly in the way Girls don't shy away from repetition and mix sonic decadence with wide-eyed spiritual yearning.

The largest canvas of all stretches across "Forgiveness", the eight-minute song that serves as the album's emotionally exhausting peak. It builds slowly and winds around in circles as Owens offers homilies about love and fear and redemption, and then it explodes into a melodic and moving guitar solo that releases the considerable tension. It's a big moment on an album that has so many they're almost hard to pick out, and it also happens to contain some of Owens' most straightforward writing: "You'll have to forgive me brother/ You'll have to forgive me sister/ And I'll have to forgive you if we're ever going to move on/ No one's going to find any answers/ If you're looking in the dark/ And looking for a reason to give up." He's right, but while there's nothing remotely new here, somehow the way Owens sings these words makes it feel like we're hearing them for the first time too.

EMA

2011-10-20T08:50:00.001+03:00

Formerly of California's nerve-fraying, positive-feedback crew Gowns, Erika M. Anderson finds more catharsis on her first solo release, Past Lives Martyred Saints. Her shambolic, breathless, damaged, nakedly confessional poetry is a drugged-out fever dream; a dizzying trip amplified when her voice is struggling to compete with suffocating drones and prismatic guitar noise.

Serge Gainsbourg - Histoire de Melody Nelson

2011-10-19T14:24:00.001+03:00

A deluxe edition of Serge Gainsbourg’s 1971 masterpiece, Histoire de Melody Nelson, will be released on November 7 and is set to feature unreleased material including alternate takes and a new DVD documentary.

Histoire de Melody Nelson will be available as a Super Deluxe 2CD/2LP/DVD Limited Edition, a Deluxe Edition (2CD/DVD) and a Vinyl Picture Edition.

A film based on Histoire de Melody Nelson (entitled Melody) was made for French TV in 1971 and was directed by Jean Christophe Averty. It stars Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin in the lead roles. And here it is!

Damn Dogs

2011-10-19T13:19:00.000+03:00

Smith Westerns:"Dye it Blonde"

2011-10-18T09:05:00.001+03:00

Smith Westerns have cleaned up nicely. Just over a year ago, the Chicago foursome were of the strictly "lo-fi" persuasion, stirring up hot, filthy garage-rock candy out of Marc Bolan and Beatles signifiers. It was youthful music in feeling and sound-- their noisy full-length debut was recorded while they were still in high school-- but the remarkable hooks buried therein were clear enough to land them on the increasingly stacked Fat Possum roster. And suddenly, they had a studio budget the likes of which they definitely hadn't enjoyed before. Though the leap is audibly huge, Dye It Blonde's many successes aren't wholly the result of its gilded production values and ambition. This band was able to furnish first-class melodies from the beginning. Now they've grown along with their resources.
You can hear the progress right away in "Imagine, Pt. 3", a song originally released as part of a split 7" in April 2010. Sped up here just a touch, it's also been re-outfitted with a far creamier set of synths and guitars. The way the latter seem to clasp hands during the coda is particularly breathtaking, frontman Cullen Omori and guitarist Max Kakacek letting their individual lines mate rather than duel. While the melodic foundation was already sturdy throughout, here, what once sounded ragged in stretches is now plush-upholstered from start to finish. Every single piece of Dye It Blonde is similarly decadent, whether it's the sweet whine of semi-titular closer "Dye the World" or the twilight jangle of "End of the Night".
In an interview not long after the album's completion, Omori noted that this otherwise new set of songs was influenced by 90s Britpop luminaries like Oasis, Teenage Fanclub, and Suede. All are present sonically and spiritually, be it in brash tones, melodic IQ or the sheer scope of these recordings. Where a Smith Westerns hook may have once sounded like another fuzzy member of the Nuggets family/genus, it now unfolds like crane-shot, mainstage festival fare. "Still New" for example floats some phasered guitar interplay before Kakacek rips a hole across the chest of the song with a woozy line so big it essentially serves as a chorus. Like "Weekend", whose central, hair-flipping lick also hugs all its parts together perfectly, the song just sounds so drunk-- drunk on love, drunk on heavy petting, drunk on drink, or maybe just drunk on a some combination of the above. In song, it all depends on the lean of Omori's voice and the whip of his chord changes, the curves of his brother Cameron's bass lines.
That moony/beery-eyed feel bleeds through every corridor of this album and in turn forms a crystalline expression of what moves this band. Their use of the studio in augmenting that never goes overboard, though: this music still retains the innately psychedelic, lamplit, tongue-kissed sense of atmosphere that set it apart. There's perhaps no better instance of all that than "All Die Young", the album's centerpiece. It's a ballad turned hymn whose grand, tumbling scale and "Oh Yoko"-indebted outro celebration are peaks on an album rich in them. In its closing moments, Omori sings what sounds like, "Love is lovely when you are young." They were convincing before, but now they seem like experts.

Eminem: Prescription drug Ambien ‘wiped out five years of my life’

2011-10-18T08:33:00.001+03:00

The rapper also says that the sedative contributed to a four year long stretch of writer’s block. Eminem says that the pills were ‘wiping out brain cells’. He added:

…a lot of my memory is gone. I don't know if you've ever taken Ambien, but it's kind of a memory-eraser. That shit wiped out five years of my life. People will tell me stories, and it's like, "I did that?" I saw myself doing this thing on [television network] BET recently, and I was like, "When was that?"

In the interview with Rolling Stone, Eminem said that he kept some of his writing from that period and that: “It fucking creeps me out. Letters all down the page – it was like my hand weighed 400 pounds. I have all that shit in a box in my closet. As a reminder that I don't ever want to go back.”

During the peak of his drug addiction, he revealed that he was taking up to 60 Valium and 30 Vicodin pills a day. In 2007, he overdosed on methadone. “The doctors told me I'd done the equivalent of four bags of heroin,” says Eminem. “They said I was about two hours from dying.”

The ‘Recovery’ artist revealed that Elton John was one of the people who helped him to overcome his addictions. “He usually calls me once a week to check on me, just to make sure I'm on the up-and-up,” says Eminem. “He was actually one of the first people I called when I wanted to get clean.”

Sonic Youth

2011-10-18T08:27:00.001+03:00

"I Love You Golden Blue"
Throughout the band's major label heyday in the '90s, Gordon and Moore's lyrics didn't dive into topics of domesticity or romance — Gordon opted to write lyrics with a feminist bent ("Shoot," "Little Trouble Girl," "Panty Lies"), while Moore's tunes grew increasingly fixed on the political ("Youth Against Fascism"), the musical ("Theresa's Sound World," "Screaming Skull"), or the straight-up inscrutable ("Starfield Road"). That changed on 2004's Sonic Nurse, particularly with Gordon's devastating ballad "I Love You Golden Blue." This remains one of her most aching and confessional tunes ever — not to mention one of the band's most haunting and gorgeous. Over drizzling guitars and drummer Steve Shelley's delicate pitter-patter, she whispers about missing a long-lost lover's presence — and losing the will the hang on. "I can't find the time," she coos. "I love you, Golden Blue, I miss you." It's hard not to think that cracks in Gordon and Moore's relationship began to show around this time.

Review of the day

2011-10-17T22:53:00.000+03:00

Feist

'Metals'

Polishing  the Apple: The high priestess of artful  pop chanteuses invites us  to bask in her subtle glow

Spin Rating7 of 10

It seems a little weird to call Leslie Feist an elder stateswoman of anything -- she's 35, this is her fourth full-length -- but for a second, let's just say she is, and let's call her sphere of influence iRock. Before her, we had Elliott Smith and Cat Power: tormented, uncomfortably intimate, awesome, not particularly mainstream. After her came St. Vincent, A Fine Frenzy, Adele, Lykke Li, Yael Naim, and Florence and the Machine, who were frequently, unfortunately, described as "chanteuses"; they also enjoyed varying levels of success, ranging from insider critical acclaim to colossal commercial validation. With a little help from Steve Jobs and Elmo, Feist helped blur the line between indie rock and pop, DIY songstress and gussied-up diva, bedroom hush and Coachella roar.
Is any of this bad? Of course not. Breezy pop is wonderful; Grey's Anatomy is a fine show. Feist's breakout, 2007's The Reminder, remains both a very lovely album and a bellwether -- the Nevermind of iRock. The only bummer now would be if a certain elder stateswoman returned to the house she helped build (shooing away the raccoons who've since moved in) and became caught between two worlds -- the clever, confident pop she's known for and something graver, darker, more serious -- and didn't comfortably inhabit either. Indeed, that could bum a few folks out.
But that's not what happens here. The refreshing new Feist record, Metals, opens like a processional: drums thump, guitars ring out, and she belts the album's first, definitive line -- "'Speak plain,' he said." And that's before the horns arrive, the strings, the backing vocals -- it's exactly like the beginning of The Lion King (sort of). That initial thrill persists through "Graveyard," a slow-building tune featuring the album's best hook, stridently sung by a multitracked chorus of Feists: "Wooahhh / Bring them all back to life."
"Caught a Long Wind" is a smoky, understated nod to Lena Horne, "A Commotion" is a careering wink to TV on the Radio, complete with a bunch of dudes discordantly chanting in the middle. "The Undiscovered First" mines a similar vein: tempestuous, capering. Sweetly soporific jams abound here, from "Bittersweet Melodies" to the brazenly Iron & Wine-y "Cicadas and Gulls."
Taken individually, each song is as sturdy as oak -- the guitars have a magnesium shimmer, and every instrument seems bathed in its own spotlight, especially Feist's vocals, which feel like they're being whispered directly into your ear (admit it: you'd buy an album called Feist Blows Out Birthday Candles). The production is so refined the album occasionally creaks, which is not to imply it sounds old-timey, but simply that there's a craftsman's attention to detail.
And yet Metals lacks a certain cohesive magic, despite being recorded in Big Sur by Feist's usual coterie (Mocky, Chilly Gonzales). Even with its sonic detours -- the slightly nutty percussion, a lot of general yelling -- the record feels a bit monochromatic, like a just-fun-enough surrey ride whose background keeps repeating.
That's a shame. Leslie Feist herself is so wonderfully, yes, plainspoken that you really root for her, especially now that the market's saturated with chanteuses (sorry) who have clearly studied her playbook: misty crooning, light-on-your-feet phrasing. But Metals' lyrical sentiments never go for simply soothing, like this epitaph: "When you comfort me / It doesn't bring me comfort, actually." Those new voices could learn a thing or two from Feist's balance of nuance and forthrightness, even if Metals isn't the keenest example of that alchemy.

Bon Iver

2011-10-17T22:44:00.004+03:00

Bon Iver

Bon Iver (Jagjaguwar)

On his 2008 debut For Emma, Forever Ago, Bon Iver's Justin Vernon delivered spare, emotionally-charged folk tunes that chronicled a messy break-up. The album earned him no shortage of fans — most notably, Kanye West, who featured the elusive Wisconsin-based singer on last year's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. On his second set, Vernon has upped the ante and expanded his circle to include ace session whizzes like pedal-steel player Greg Leisz. Once again, Vernon scores big by cultivating enchanted atmosphere, gorgeous melodies, unique textures, and beautiful singing. And his idiosyncratic gift for lyric-writing only adds to the album's sonic mysteries. "Armour let it through/Borne the arboretic truth you kept posing"? It's the kind of couplet that would trip up even the most accomplished of Joyce scholars.

Smith Westerns

2011-10-17T22:36:00.001+03:00

On their second CD, the Chicago teenagers teamed with producer Chris Coady (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Beach House), who adds glossy production to the group's fuzzed-out garage-rock sound. The Smith Westerns haven't shied away from their love of Bowie and T. Rex; on Dye It Blonde, the boys end up worshipping their heroes in the most devout way possible — by trying to top them.

Sonic Youth

2011-10-17T22:18:00.002+03:00

A band shot by Dave Markey around the time 1991: The Year Punk Broke arrived.

NME‘s 150 Best Tracks Of The Past 15 Years

2011-10-17T22:07:00.001+03:00

NME‘s website is just now marking its 15th anniversary, a sure sign that, if nothing else, the British music magazine figured out that the internet meant something before most people did. To celebrate, they’ve published their list of the 150 best songs of the last 15 years.
The list is heavy on the Brit-rock that NME understandably favors, and the weird time-frame (1996 to 2011) means there’s a wide breadth of stuff to choose from. Radiohead figures heavily on the list, with five songs placing and “Paranoid Android” appearing in the top spot. And it’s fun to see a few of the past NME faves who didn’t quite pan out, like the Coral and Mystery Jets, showing up. (The Vines, sadly, have apparently been erased from history.)
As with any list of this type, there’s plenty to quibble with. No way does Coldplay’s “Clocks” deserve to be all the way down at #148. I can’t believe that anyone, even a British person, would call “Empire State Of Mind” the best rap song of the past 15 years. And the placement of Blink-182′s “What’s My Age Again?” directly above LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends” feels like NME‘s attempt to make fun of all of us. Still, it’s hard to complain about much of what made it into the top 20, and the list is long enough that it gives some shine to a few underappreciated classics: Wu-Tang Clan’s “Gravel Pit”! Hole’s “Celebrity Skin”! The Spice Girls’ “Wannabe”! (Whatever, that song is great. Stop hating.) Check the full list below, and let us know what you thought of it in the comments section.
150 Manic Street Preachers – “Australia”
149 Crystal Castles – “Crimewave”
148 Coldplay – “Clocks”
147 Morrissey – “First Of The Gang To Die”
146 Laura Marling – “My Manic And I”
145 Fever Ray – “If I Had A Heart”
144 The Killers – “Human”
143 Oasis – “The Hindu Times”
142 Foals – “Hummer”
141 Gorillaz – “Clint Eastwood”
140 Arctic Monkeys – “A Certain Romance”
139 Coldplay – “Yellow”
138 Bat For Lashes – “What’s A Girl To Do?”
137 Doves – “There Goes The Fear”
136 Kelis – “Milkshake”
135 Kelly Clarkson – “Since U Been Gone”
134 Antony & The Johnsons – “Hope There’s Someone”
133 The Strokes – “Under Cover Of Darkness”
132 Daft Punk – “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”
131 Radiohead – “Pyramid Song”
130 Belle And Sebastian – “The Boy With The Arab Strap”
129 The Strokes – “Reptilia”
128 Hercules And Love Affair – “Blind”
127 En Vogue – “Don’t Let Go (Love)”
126 Hole – “Celebrity Skin”
125 Klaxons – “Atlantis To Interzone”
124 Supergrass – “Pumping On Your Stereo”
123 Glasvegas – “Daddy’s Gone”
122 Mercury Rev – “Goddess On A Highway”
121 Santogold -“LES Artistes”
120 Pulp – “This Is Hardcore”
119 Aaliyah & Timbaland – “We Need A Resolution”
118 LCD Soundsystem – “All My Friends”
117 Blink-182 – “What’s My Age Again?”
116 Wu-Tang Clan – “Gravel Pit”
115 Kings Of Leon – “Charmer”
114 Primal Scream – “Accelerator”
113 At The Drive-In – “One Armed Scissor”
112 Cee Lo Green – “Fuck You”
111 The Spice Girls – “Wannabe”
110 Sebastien Tellier – “La Ritournelle”
109 Ultrasound – “Stay Young”
108 Kasabian – “Club Foot”
107 Radiohead – “No Surprises”
106 Radiohead – “Let Down”
105 Cornershop – “Brimful Of Asha (Fatboy Slim Remix)”
104 Lily Allen – “Smile”
103 Lady Gaga – “Poker Face”
102 Art Brut – “Formed A Band”
101 The Horrors – “Sea Within A Sea”
100 Mystery Jets – “Two Doors Down”
99 MGMT – “Kids”
98 The Cribs – “Men’s Needs”
97 Klaxons – “Golden Skans”
96 The Horrors – “Sheena Is A Parasite”
95 The Knife – “Heartbeats”
94 CSS – “Let’s Make Love And Listen To Death From Above”
93 Radiohead – “Reckoner”
92 Peter Bjorn & John – “Young Folks”
91 Animal Collective – “My Girls”
90 Yeasayer – “O.N.E.”
89 The Futureheads – “Hounds Of Love”
88 Jeff Buckley – “Everybody Here Wants You”
87 The Streets – “Dry Your Eyes”
86 The Rapture – “House Of Jealous Lovers”
85 The Coral – “Dreaming Of You”
84 The Hives – “Hate To Say I Told You So”
83 Kylie Minogue – “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head”
82 Queens Of The Stone Age – “Feel Good Hit Of The Summer”
81 Outkast – “Ms. Jackson”
80 Eminem – “The Real Slim Shady”
79 Blur – “Song 2”
78 The Verve – “The Drugs Don’t Work”
77 Oasis – “D’You Know What I Mean?”
76 Beck – “Where It’s At”
75 Manic Street Preachers – “A Design For Life”
74 Muse – “Supermassive Black Hole”
73 Blur – “Out Of Time”
72 The Big Pink – “Dominos”
71 The Libertines – “Don’t Look Back Into The Sun”
70 M.I.A. – “XXXO”
69 Kanye West – “Jesus Walks”
68 Liars – “Scarecrows On A Killer Slant”
67 Ian Brown – “F.E.A.R.”
66 Super Furry Animals – “The Man Don’t Give A Fuck”
65 Kasabian – “Fire”
64 La Roux – “In For The Kill”
63 Rihanna – “Umbrella”
62 Vampire Weekend – “A-Punk”
61 Arcade Fire – “Keep The Car Running”
60 The Drums – “Let’s Go Surfing”
59 Dizzee Rascal – “Bonkers”
58 Destiny’s Child – “Say My Name”
57 Eminem – “Lose Yourself”
56 The Killers – “All These Things That I’ve Done”
55 Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Maps”
54 Battles – “Atlas”
53 Kanye West – “Monster”
52 The Prodigy – “Firestarter”
51 Sugababes – “Overload”
50 The Chemical Brothers – “Hey Boy Hey Girl”
49 Best Coast – “Boyfriend”
48 Foo Fighters – “Everlong”
47 Friendly Fires – “Paris”
46 TV On The Radio – “Wolf Like Me”
45 Primal Scream – “Swastika Eyes”
44 Muse – “Nights Of Cydonia”
43 Mumford And Sons – “Little Lion Man”
42 Aphex Twin – “Come To Daddy”
41 Elbow – “One Day Like This”
40 LCD Soundsystem – “Losing My Edge”
39 Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Zero”
38 Kings Of Leon – “The Bucket”
37 Coldplay – “The Scientist”
36 The Strokes – “Hard To Explain”
35 Johnny Cash – “Hurt”
34 Gossip – “Standing In The Way Of Control”
33 Florence & The Machine – “Dog Days Are Over”
32 Gnarls Barkley – “Crazy”
31 The Walkmen – “The Rat”
30 Robyn – “With Every Heartbeat”
29 Crystal Castles – “Alice Practice”
28 the xx – “Islands”
27 Franz Ferdinand – “Take Me Out”
26 The Libertines – “Can’t Stand Me Now”
25 Dizzee Rascal – “Fix Up, Look Sharp”
24 Jay-Z – “99 Problems”
23 The White Stripes – “Seven Nation Army”
22 Arcade Fire – “Wake Up”
21 Daft Punk – “Around The World”
20 Bloc Party – “Banquet”
19 Justice Vs. Simian – “We Are Your Friends”
18 Queens Of The Stone Age – “No One Knows”
17 Missy Elliott – “Get Ur Freak On”
16 Beyoncé – “Crazy In Love”
15 M.I.A. – “Paper Planes”
14 Foals – “Spanish Sahara”
13 Jay-Z & Alica Keys – “Empire State Of Mind”
12 MGMT – “Time To Pretend”
11 Arctic Monkeys – “I Bet You Look Good On The Dance Floor”
10 The Libertines – “Time For Heroes”
09 The Verve – “Bitter Sweet Symphony”
08 Amy Winehouse – “Rehab”
07 Hot Chip – “Over And Over”
06 The White Stripes – “Fell In Love With A Girl”
05 The Killers – “Mr. Brightside”
04 The Strokes – “Last Nite”
03 OutKast – “Hey Ya!”
02 Arcade Fire – “Rebellion (Lies)”
01 Radiohead – “Paranoid Androi

CULT RECORD: GO-GO'S: "BEAUTY AND THE BEAT"

2010-04-07T06:59:00.000+03:00

The Go-Go's were a culture club, a band who never would've sat together in the high school cafeteria. There were two sassy punks (Jane Wiedlin, Kathy Valentine), two blonde Real-Girl cheerleaders (Berlinda Carlisle, Charlotte Caffey), and an East Coast metalhead tomboy named Gina Schock. And in "This Town," they busted their cliques to salute their true audience: "We all know the chosen toys/ Of catty girls and pretty boys just kept their mouths shut and preened, while the catty girls took center stage to make up that face, jump in the race, and get dressed up to get messed up, whether flashing their underwear in public fountains or prowling by night. The Go-Go's eventually developed a knack for songs about men ("Turn to You," "Yes or No"), but their grand theme was always femme bonding: we rule the streets tonight, this town is our town, our lips are sealed.
Beauty and the Beat is the Go-Go's at their brashest, a record that broke out of the late-'70's L.A. hardcore scene to define the California mystique of the Square Pegs era. Gina Schock's drums flesh out the music's Buzzcocks/Ramones fixation with her own libidinally propulsive beat, making up for Carlisle's quavery voice. Jane Wiedlin establishes herself as the hyphen in the Go-Go's: their punk conscience as well as their most charmingly tuneful melodist. "Fading Fast" and "Skidmarks on My Heart" bookended many a breakup tape in 1982. while the heartbreaking "How Much More" celebrates the thrill of thwarted obsession. In "Our Lips Are Sealed" (at least the version not sung by Fun Boy 3) two catty girls roam the streets of Guyville getting hassled by jerks, but they strut proudly, they don't answer back, and when they look at them, they look right through them. Bells ring, cymbals crash, Jane chimes in with a seraphic lullaby, and you never doubt for a second that they're sticking together.

THE 100 SINGLES YOU MUST OWN

2010-04-06T22:24:00.001+03:00

14. FREDA PAYNE: Band Of Gold/ The Easiest Way To Fall (1970)
"We kissed after taking vows/ But that night on our honeymoon/ We stayed in separate rooms," Freda Payne, Invictus' answer to Diana Ross, confessed on this Ronald Dunbar and Edith Wayne-penned wedding night melodrama. While we'll never know the reason for the split--"I think it was about a situation where the woman was scared," reckons Payne, "but it's funny because most people have the opposite opinion, that it's about the guy"-- we can still thrill to Freda's poignant yet silky voiced plea for her husband's return and the sumptuous galloping Motown-esque background. Payne, who had first traded on her sultry torch singing tones with the big bands of Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Quincy Jones respectively, had never wanted to voice a song centered around such an innocent character, but it;s a good job she did. It sold more than all her previous releases put together, reaching number 1 in the UK and number 3 Stateside, and also spawned a hit album of the same name.
Availability: Unhooked Generation Invictus CD

CULT MOVIE: MYSTERY TRAIN (1990)

2010-04-06T21:59:00.000+03:00

Hard to describe the crime in this three-into-one-must-go film without giving it all away. This tells three apparently unrelated stories (all based in Memphis) of a pair of Japanese tourists, a young Italian widow and a gang which rob a liquor store. Uniting all three stories are a gunshot and Elvis, either as a ghost or the singer of the ghostly Blue Moon which is playing on almost every radio anybody listens to. It's an odd film in which crime provides some kind of resolution and is a constant threat (as when the widow has to pay a wacko, who tells her the story of Graceland's hitchhiking ghost, just to leave her alone).

CULT RECORD: LIVING COLOUR: "VIVID" (1988)

2010-04-06T21:32:00.000+03:00

In 1988, Living Colour rode into the hard-rock arena on two mighty riffs:one,the colossal,avant-Zeppelin guitar line of "Cult of Personality";the other,the manifesto that African-Americans,inventors of rock'n'roll,have as much right to guitars,amps,and hair-waving arena rock as white boys do.Both were the work of guitarist Vernon Reid,m.v.p.of New York's downtown music scene,sometime journalist, and co-founder of the Black Rock Coalition-a support network for black, rock-playing musicians including Family Stand, Mother's Finest, Follow For Now, and 24-7 Spyz.While none of these bands went much further than B.R.C. compilation and major-label deals, Living Colour truly broke through to suburbia.Vivid--a politically-minded album of bombastic prog-rock-- sold two million copies and the band toured with the Rolling Stones, loudly challenging racist assumptions and the same people who jeered Prince on his Stones dates

THE 100 SINGLES YOU MUST OWN

2010-03-17T07:48:00.000+02:00

16. THE KINKS: You Really Got Me/ It's Alright (1964)
Thanks to Dave Davies' guitar distortion, You Really Got Me is credited with inventing heavy metal. It's equally a paradigm of visceral '60s beat economy. Its primeval riff, clipped verses and stomping chorus cut a swathe through the docile jangle of 1964 pop. Of course, distortion had been around since Link Wray's Rumble and three-chord pop nirvana since The Champs' Tequila, but nobody had put the two together before. Whatever the historic nuances, any public airing of You Really Got Me will dare you not to bawl along.
Availability: The Ultimate Collection Sanctuary CD
15. THE EVERLY BROTHERS: Walk Right Back/ Ebony Eyes (1961)
Walk Right Back should never have been a hit. Intended as the flip to Ebony Eyes, it ended up higher in the charts than the original A-side, probably because it was a lot more fun, Penned by Sonny Curtis of The Crickets, and given to the Everlys shortly before Curtis entered the armed forces, it was really a work in progress, half-finished and lacking a second verse. But Don and Phil recorded what they had and, thiygh the song was basically about being lonesome, it had an upbeat, feel-good energy,making it an instantly infectious hit.
Availability: Walk Right Back WARNER BROS CD

CULT RECORD: MINUTEMEN: "DOUBLE NICKELS ON THE DIME" (1984)

2010-03-17T07:22:00.000+02:00

The Minutemen made punk rock that sounded like overheard conversation, with brief, angular song fragments flowing together in thew rhythm of babble. Guitarist/ vocalist D. Boon, bassist Mike Watt, and drummer George Hurley mixed and matched these fragments with the surgical precision of beboppers, splicing their hardcore rant with folkie didding and jazz skronk. But they never sounded arch about it; their songs were earthy and almost always funny, the handiwork of three regular corndogs from San Pedro, lifelong friends who wore ugly black computer watches and didn't worry about their cholesterol intake. They accepted propaganda into their conversational mix because it was part of their language, and they let their fragmentary rhythms dramatize the chaos and internal contradictions of their propaganda. Their music always generated its own chatty energy, from Boon's guitar blurts to lyrics like "Force-fed sifted tin can turn handle puppet (pull toy)."
Double Nickels on the Dime is overkill at its most humane, pilling on the babble, cracking jokes, submerging intense musical climaxes into the "Spillage" of urban routine. The Minutemen haven't gotten the hang of writing songs about other people ("Jesus and Tequila" is facile satire worthy of Joe Jackson), but they nail down the details of their own lives, whether it's the rage of "This Ain't No Picnic," the loneliness of "Storm in My House," or, most importantly, the loyal fellowship of "History Lesson (Part II)." The splendidly titled "Do You Want New Wave (Or Do You Want the Truth?)" (answer:yes) admits the role of doubt and confusion in their politics, and when Boon sings "fuck advertising," it sounds like "fuck Eric Clapton." A jovial masterpiece that made its own unique place in a season that also produced Zen Arcade, Let It Be, and Meat Puppets II.

CULT MOVIE: TROUBLE MAN (1972)

2010-03-17T06:39:00.001+02:00

"So man if you don't dig this super cool black... stay away from the box office you motherf--." That, at least, was how one critic greeted the arrival of the original Mr T-- not the A-Team star, but the hero of this blaxploitation film. Another reviewer obviously felt threatened by Hooks' bullet-proof private eye ( who can close halls with a stern glance), complaining that the character looked " so cool as to make one suspect it isn't Coke he is constantly drinking but antifreeze". The soundtrack is by Marvin Gaye and it's a pity he didn't write the script. It's a pity somebody didn't write the script.
Director: Ivan Dixon Cast: Robert Hooks, Paul Wonfield, Ralph Waite

THE 100 SINGLES YOU MUST OWN

2010-03-15T21:56:00.000+02:00

18. THE SMITHS: How Soon Is Now/ Well I Wonder (1985)
Sire boss Seymour Stein called it, "the Stairway To Heaven of the '80s" which may well be on the money. Certainly, it's expansive, ambitious--and, importantly, formed the musical backdrop to many a teenage night out. In that sense, it's a great Saturday night record-- but only if you've endured the kind of minor nightmare that was Morrissey's meat and drink:" There's a club if you'd like to go/ You could meet somebody who really loves you/ So you go and you stand on your own/ And you leave on your own/ And you go home, and you cry and you want to die." Lyrics apart, its most remarkable aspect is the musical backdrop created by Marr, Rourke and Joyce; the former's Bo Diddley-gone-sci-fi guitar part in particular. It was recorded under light bulbs by minds taken to the next level by heavy weed intake-- an unlikely example of Moz-assisted stoner rock The B-side is a falsetto-strewn ballad, bolstered by one illustration of Marr's grasp of jukebox aesthetics: the grafted-on sound of a downpour, inspired by The Ronettes' Walking In The Rain.
Availability: Hatful Of Hollow WEA CD
17. BETTY WRIGHT:Clean Up Woman/I'll Love You Forever Heart And Soul (1971)
Miami-born Wright was only 17 when she cut this delectable slice of sun-kissed Florida soul for Henry Stone's Atlantic-distributed Alston imprint. Co-written by the eminent southern soul man and TK Records' in-house tunesmith, Clarence " Blowfly" Reid, the song's distinctive rhythm guitar reflected the influence of cheery Caribbean music on the Miami soul sound. Wright, who evinces an astonishing maturity, claimed to have disliked the song on first hearing. Ironically, it proved her biggest US hit.
Availability: The Best Of Betty Wright Rhino CD

CULT RECORD: PRIMUS: "FRIZZLE FRY" (1990)

2010-03-15T20:59:00.000+02:00

If the Melvins had chops, if Rush did acid, if the Police were skatepunks and smart enough to like metal-- well, none of them could have been Primus, a band as hopelessly original as Don Knotts or the platypus. Such invocations are useful, though, if only to derail the more looming one of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, with whom theb Bay Area trio shares little more than bass slaping and blame for the early-'90s plague of post-punk minstrelsy known as "thrash funk." Actually, Primus play funk simply to the degree that leader Les Claypool's phenomenal bass playing gobbles up local influences like Larry Graham.
Frizzle Fry reveals Claypool the urban raconteur and fisherman. Folksy ruminations about late-night TV and crackhead acquaintances borded "John the Fisherman" and "Too Many Puppies,' slightly more straight-faced rock songs that bring Claypool's nasally operatic, Ethel Merman-meets-Mr. Magoo wail to the fore. It's not a pretty thing, but then neither is Primus, whose fan club has copyrighted the slogan, "You suck!"

CULT MOVIE: AI NO CORRIDA (1976)

2010-03-15T20:27:00.000+02:00

This tale of obsessive sex between an innkeeper and a servant was seized by US customs in the year of its release, hit by an obscenity charge in Japan and only came to British cinemas in 1991. The appeal may pale if your passion for onscreen passion doesn't match the director's but this is no porn film. For once, the sex really is vital to the development of the central characters as it takes over their lives until, finally, violence has its way.
Director: Nagisa Oshima Cast: Tatsuya Fuji, Eiko Matsuda

MY TOP 10

2010-03-13T03:19:00.000+02:00

BY NICK HORNBY
1. THE PREMIERS
Farmer John Warner
2. THE CONTOURS
Do You Love Me? Oriole
3. FATS DOMINO
Let The Four Winds Blow London
4. SONNY BOY WILLIAMSON
Help Me Pye International
5. CAPTAIN BEEFHEART
Diddy Wah Diddy A&M
6. LOU CHRISTIE
I'm Gonna Make You Mine Buddah
7. ROD STEWART AND THE FACES
You Can Make Me Dance, Sing or Anything Warner Bros
8. AL GREEN
Love and Happiness London
9. THE JACKSON 5
I Want You Back Tamla Motown
10. IAN DURY AND THE BLOCKHEADS
Reasons To Be Cheerful(Part 3) Stiff

THE 100 SINGLES YOU MUST OWN

2010-03-13T02:57:00.000+02:00

20. CHUCK HIGGINS: Broke/ I'll Be There (1954)
Usually at home on low-budget LA labels, the summer of '54 saw honking Hollywood sax man Chuck Higgins in the relative splendour of Specialty, working with pianist HB Barnum and future James Brown guitarist Jimmy Nolen. A carefree tale of high times and squandered riches, Broke is a brazen celebration of skintness--"Now I'm a low down dirty bum/ Right back where I started from!/ Broke! Broke! Broke!" Backed with I'll Be There's rocking doo wop, it's the perfect single for the end of the night, when the money's all gone but no one's going home.
Availability: Pachuko Hop Specialty/ Ace CD
19. SAM THE SHAM AND THE PHARAOHS: Wooly Bully/ Lil' Red Riding Hood (1965)
"Uno, dos, one, two, tres, quatro!" It takes only this daft polyglot count-in to cheer up anyone familiar with the great Wooly Bully. The work of Domingo Samudio and his Memphis-based ensemble, it's one of the most remarkable Nuggets-era 45s for two reasons: firstly, it doesn't just ape a British Invasion sound but has its own Tex-Mex flavour; and second, it's not about long hair, groovy chicks or acid. In fact, it's not about anything the rest of us can fathom, making it the best bit of nonsense in all of rock'n'roll.
Availability: Nuggets Rhino 4-CD Box Set

CULT RECORD: DAVID BOWIE: "THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS" (1972)

2010-03-13T02:29:00.000+02:00

David Bowie has a justly earned rep as a karma chameleon, repackaging himself as Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke, the Man Who Fell to Earth, and various other disguises. But his enduring persona, the one that owns him body and soul, is Major Tom, the glam-rock space cadet, too beautiful for physical desires, who floats above the audience in a ghostly satellite. Major Tom's space capsule is where Bowie found a safe synthetic place to explore his gay and bi identities, in his "Space Oddity" and "Ashes to Ashes." Bowie's influence on modern music can be measured by the dozens of songs rewriting the tale of Major Tom, from Peter Schilling's "Major Tom (Coming Home)" to Joy Division's "Disorder," from Lou Reed's "Satellite of Love" to U2's "Bad," from Spacemen 3's "Come Down Easy" to Nirvana's "The Man Who Sold The World." Bowie gave punk its most pernicious beautiful-loser myths as well as some of its most provocative poses. He can't sing worth a damn, of course, but then, neither could C-3PO.
With Ziggy Stardust, Bowie reinvented himself as a glitter-rocking starchild, composing an eleven-song operetta on the subject of the rock star as isolated aesthete, hopelessly in love with distant objects and, ultimately, distance itself. Nobody has ever really deciphered this sucker-- who the hell are all those spiders, anyway?-- but Bowie came up with catchphrases worthy of Mick Ronson's electric guitars, from "making love with his ego" to "let the children boogie," not to mention the useful idiom "she's a total blam-blam."

CULT MOVIE: BOOGIE NIGHTS (1992)

2010-03-13T01:32:00.000+02:00

Wahlberg is the porn star (Dirk Diggler) who is so blessed by nature that if he hung around Newmarket when a race was going off he'd be dragged into a paddock. After a prolonged build up, we finally get see the organ known as Mr Torpedo Area at the end of this dazzling memoir of the 1970s porn business. Reynolds is excellent as a sleazy but sincere porn baron. Anderson shows off with the camera to good effect, especially in the scene around Reynolds' swimming pool which is worthy of Altman. Sadly by the end of the movie, Diggler is shouting: "I'm ready to shoot my scene right now!" A reminder that those who live by Mr Torpedo Area, may die by it too.
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Burt Reynolds, Julianne Moore

THE 100 SINGLES YOU MUST OWN

2010-03-12T03:58:00.000+02:00

22. THE CLASH: (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais/ The Prisoner (1978)
Between their first two albums, The Clash were deeply into reggae, at one point recording with Lee Perry when he was staying in London. This rough-skanking tune came about at a reggae gig,where Joe Strummer entered into a searing meditation on the point of it all-- cultural exchange, political purpose, punk in the face of their contemporaries who were, as Joe put it, "turning rebellion into money"-- all with the awesomely humane bottom-line that he was, "only looking for fun." The finest legacy of a brilliant, searching mind.
Availability: The Clash On Broadway EPIC/LEGACY BOX SET
21. ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA: Mr Blue Sky/ One Summer Dream (1978)
Before Jeff Lynne produced the real Beatles on Free As A Bird, he had to content himself with his own Fab soundalikes, the Electric Light Orchestra. Cloned from the middle section of A Day In The Life, Mr Blue Sky's joy de vivre sparkles through the passages-- the breathless intro, the heavy harmonies on the chorus, the operatic vocals and the orchestral coda. There's also a Vocoder in there to remind you that ELO live in a flying saucer. The flip is a more pastoral take on life.
Availability:Out Of The Blue SONY CD

CULT RECORD: PUBLIC ENEMY:" IT TAKES A NATION OF MILLIONS TO HOLD US BACK " (1988)

2010-03-12T03:30:00.000+02:00

Public Enemy is, hands down, the most influential and important group in the history of hip hop. By roughly stitching together contrapuntal noise and prophetic rabble-rousing, the avant-garde group quickly became rap's conscience. The contrasting personalities of PE's duo-- straight man and heavy-duty lyricist Chuck D and trickster sidekick Flavor Flav-- play off of one another to great effect. PE's work in toto has confronted, and at times embodied, most of the conflicts faced by young blacks over the last two decades. Racist white media and sellout black bourgeoisie. Black-Jewish relations and the woes of interracial relationships. The narrowness of black radio and the betrayal of blacks by dope dealers. Through it all, PE has maintained its integrity and vision. This even as the group's themes-- and popularity-- have had to take a back seat to the mass appeal of gangsta rap in the '90s.
From its first words-- a British voice introducing the group as if to indicate the essential foreignness of what's to come-- to its final beats, the revolutionary It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back lunges far beyond anything in rap's past to help secure its future. Just one year after Run-D.M.C.'s Raising Hell cemented rap's commercial appeal, It Takes a Nation gave the genre ideological vitality. Bombastic beats and clashing polyrhythms ferociously leap off the sound-scape, a tribute to production crew the Bomb Squad's orchestrated cacophony. On "Bring the Noise," Chuck's startling, irrepressible flow, punctuated by snippets of Flav's off-kilter commentary, strikes close to home. "Radio stations I question their blackness/ They call themselves black, but we'll see if they play this/ Turn it up! Bring the noise!" And on "Don't Believe the Hype," Chuck and Flavor rap over a repetitive shrieking noise, intermittent scratching, a ghoulish moan down the vocal scale, and a breezy bass. Chuck proclaims himself the "follower of Farrakhan/ Don't tell me that you understand/ Until you hear the man." As the song boomed out of car stereos across the US in the summer of 1988, it was clear the group's leader had truly accomplished his stated goal: "Teach the bourgeois, and rock the boulevard."

CULT MOVIE: HALLOWEEN (1978)

2010-03-12T02:36:00.000+02:00

The daddy of all those 1980s slasher movies(including its own five sequels-- Part III, Season Of The Witch doesn't count), this grips from the opening long single take that introduced the world to Michael Myers. Fifteen years after slashing his sister to death and being institutionalized, Myers returns to his hometown of Haddonfield for a knife-wielding reunion. Shot in only three weeks for just $300,000, Halloween marked the feature debut of "scream queen" Jamie Lee Curtis (who also starred in Carpenter's The Fog and two of Halloween's sequels) and became an incredibly influential horror movie. From the stalk-and-slash "he's behind you" shocks that have been ripped off ad infinitum to Carpenter's unforgettable score and direction, this classic has caused whole generations to check what's behind the wardrobe door before going to bed.
Director: John Carpenter Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence

THE 100 SINGLES YOU MUST OWN

2010-03-11T03:52:00.000+02:00

24. THE PREMIERS: Farmer John/ Duffy's Blues (1964)
In two short years, The Premiers made it from the barrios of East LA to Hollywood, where they cut this furious party number. Despite those high-pitched screams, Farmer John was recorded in a studio, rather than, " live at the Rhythm Room" as the label proclaims. The girls were brought in from the Chevelles' car club to spice up the atmosphere and The Premiers' simple 1-4-5 chord progression and sing-a-long lyrics make this a popular number at the booziest of late night joints even today.
Availability: Nuggets Rhino 4-CD Box set
23. STEVIE WONDER: Superstition/ You've Got It Bad Girl (1973)
It's almost impossible to imagine today, but 30 years ago, Superstition almost signalled the death knell of Stevie Wonder's career. On its first airing in front of the Harlem Apollo crowd, the song was booed. Originally written for Jeff Beck, Superstition's insistent down-tempo shuffle, spiky clavinet and southern-style horn flourishes, surrounding Stevie's paranoid vocal, soon caught on with the US public, who bought enough to take it to number 1. It still sounds startling-- a record this far ahead of its time will never go out of fashion.
Availability: Talking Book Motown CD

CULT RECORD: PSYCHEDELIC FURS: " TALK TALK TALK " (1981)

2010-03-11T03:23:00.000+02:00

"You didn't leave me anything/ That I can understand/ Now I'm left with all of this/ A room full of your trash." Richard Butler's plaintive cry to a disorganized ex-lover, from "All of This & Nothing," could refer as easily to the Furs' messy career. At times a mess like a great party in progress, with honking horns and way over-flanged guitars thrown over a raucous mix, at other times a mess like the huge slick spot you find after the party (champagne, beer, hairball), they were the self-conscious post-punks who listened hardest to their marketing departments and paid for it.
Talk Talk Talk has real playing and songs less snotty and more complete. Butler doesn't sing actual notes, but fortunately no one's slipped him any throat lozenges. His persona of either denouncing socio-political hypocrisy-- you get the impression he went to a lot of parties he detested, and didn't vote for a lot of other parties-- or singing love songs about quirky girls, like "She Is Mine," a ballad even more clumsily tender than Modern English's "I Melt With You." Not surprisingly, the Furs' most successful songs combine Butler's two favorite subjects. "Pretty in Pink" denounces the sexist double standards of quirky girl Caroline's ex-boyfriends, gathered together to trash her. "The one who insists he was first in the line/ Is the last to remember her name/ He's walking around in this dress that she wore/ She's gone but the joke's the same." Butler's devotion to uncovering sanctimony would ring truer if Talk Talk Talk's second half did not include not one but two paeans to unadulterated lust, "Into You Like a Train" and "I Wanna Sleep With You."

CULT MOVIE: NAKED LUNCH (1991)

2010-03-11T02:31:00.000+02:00

Cronenberg's fantasy masterpiece interweaves various parts of writer William S Burroughs' bizarre novel with episodes from his real-life experiences. Bill Lee (Weller) accidentally shoots his own wife and is embroiled in dodgy dealing in a shadowy port called Interzone. Then his typewriter morphs into a giant cockroach. Viewers who are unfamiliar with Burroughs' work are quite likely to feel utterly lost in this film, and even reading the original novel is unlikely to throw a great deal of light on the subject. Best just to accept the film as a discussion about drug-induced creativity and destruction, rather than a coherent story of a man's life. Be warned though-- while watching this, you may start to suspect that someone has slipped something in your popcorn.
Director: David Cronenberg Cast: Peter Weller, Judy Davis

THE 100 SINGLES YOU MUST OWN

2010-03-10T03:39:00.000+02:00

26. STEVE HARLEY AND COCKNEY REBEL: Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me)/ Another Journey (1975)
Written as a sardonic riposte to former band-mates who wanted to get in on the songwriting royalties, Harley hit on a pop formula that was as potent as it was unorthodox. Melodic, immediate and made pleasingly annoying by Harley's vocal affectations, there's an undertone of acerbic regret that's timeless. The PRS names it as one of the most played records in the UK. "It's quite vicious, lyrically," Harley says, "but you still want to sing and dance to it."
Availability: The Cream Of Steve Harley And Cockney Rebel EMI GOLD CD
25. BOB DYLAN: Subterranean Homesick Blues/ She Belongs To Me (1965)
For the multitudes who never heard his flop 1962 single Mixed Up Confusion, this was the first sign that the poet of protest had rock'n'roll pumping through his veins. Part tribute to Chuck Berry's Too Much Monkey Business, part identikit instruction for the post-beat generation, this was a rapper's delight. US urban terrorists The Weathermen stole their name from this song, but they weren't alone in liking it: every hung-up outsider recognized it as an anthem.
Availability: Bringing It All Back Home Columbia CD

CULT RECORD: THROWING MUSES: "THROWING MUSES" (1986)

2010-03-10T03:11:00.000+02:00

Throwing Muses' melodic hooks,willed riffs and hypnotic rhythms are islands rising out of chaos-- safe but slippery stones leading across a river of needs and disappointments. Originally a group of Newport, Rhode Island, teenagers inspired by Velvet Underground records to create odd songs with dark moods, the Muses have become an accomplished vehicle for principal songwriter Kristin Hersh's intense salvos in her battles against depression and domesticity. Hersh's obscure yet intimate lyrics, and unique sense of songcraft and guitar-playing,recall Nick Drake or Joni Mitchell, but the Muses splice skittering punk into their folk, raising the decibels on their confrontations with confusion.
Following a seven-inch EP and an excellent but hard-to-find self-distributed cassette, Throwing Muses, the first release of an American band on 4AD, captures the angst of a gifted, strong-willed adolescent struggling not to get swallowed into the compromises of womanhood. "A kitchen is a place where you break things, and clean up," Hersh sings in "Vicky's Box." Hersh moans, screams and shakes her voice in a death-rattle vibrato; she has admitted suffering from often severe depression. Her songs are complex assemblages patterned more on mood swings than trad song forms, with inventive mixtures of rock, reggae, tribal and martial rhythms, and the band veering suddenly from a loping waltz to a mad march-- as if the tunes were breaking down and recovering in front of us. Guitarist Tanya Donelly's two Throwing Muses compositions contain similar sonic elements poured into a more melodic pop form and sung in her sweeter voice.

CULT MOVIE: THE IPCRESS FILE (1965)

2010-03-10T02:32:00.000+02:00

The first problem Furie, Caine and producer Harry Saltzman had when filming Len Deighton's novel was that the spy in it didn't have a name. They wanted a really boring name and Caine finally said Harry was the most boring name he could think of. There was a stunned silence while Saltzman's acolytes waited to see if the boss would take umbrage. But he laughed and just said: "Harry it is. My real name's Herschel." Saltzman said the most boring man he'd ever met was called Palmer and so Harry Palmer was born. Saltzman also suggested Caine wear glasses, which he did in real life, because the producer was sick of seeing actors who didn't wear glasses in real life mishandle them in movies. They did have one difference of opinion: Saltzman was worried a scene where Palmer pushed his own supermarket trolley would be taken to mean the spy was gay. (They solved this by making him use the trolley as a weapon.) It's a toss up between this and The Spy Who Came In From The Cold for the best spy movie of the 1960s.
Director: Sidney J Furie Cast: Michael Caine, Nigel Green

THE 100 SINGLES YOU MUST OWN

2010-03-09T04:19:00.000+02:00

28. THE WHO: Won't Get Fooled Again/ I Don't Even Know Myself (1971)
It doesn't sound like the greatest idea: hauling Pete Townshend's eight-minute treatise on the contradictions of revolution off Who's Next; crudely hacking down its synth parts and ensemble passages; and squeezing it on to a 7-inch single. In fairness, though, enough of the song's elemental force remains to allow Won't Get Fooled Again to boom forth with a righteous fury-- and besides, there's the added pleasure of a flipside that deals with the all-too-familiar subject of inner emotional turmoil, and points squarely in the direction of 1973's Quadrophenia.
Availability: Who's Next Polydor CD
27. ARETHA FRANKLIN: Respect/ Save Me (1967)
Respect seems to speak to everyone, which is why it became an anthem for all the social movements of the late '60s. It wasn't just civil rights campaigners who adopted the song; so did feminists, despite the fact it was written by no less a man than Otis Redding. Franklin's most-requested song was given a rattling, bouncing arrangement, over which Aretha's vocals soar without inhibition, showing that Lady Soul had found her spiritual home in the musical embrace of the Muscle Shoals rhythm machine. And in Save Me it boasts one of the greatest B-sides ever.
Availability: Respect- The Very Best Of Warner Bros CD

CULT RECORD: THE SLITS: " CUT " (1979)

2010-03-09T03:48:00.000+02:00

In the punk movie Jubilee, Derek Jarman cast the Slits as a wild girl gang marauding the streets of London. That was how the Slits liked to project themselves: as urban primitives who'd just picked up their instruments for the first time-- which most of them had. Viv Albertine, Ari Up, Tessa Pollite and Palmolive launched the Slits in 1977 (Albertine having already played in Flowers of Romance, a short-lived band with Sid Vicious and Keith Levene), thrashing out a gleeful punk-reggae pandemonium of loose rhythms, warbly unison vocals and proto-feministic lyrics.
Cut is the Slits' true masterpiece. Dubmeister Dennis Bovell's crisp and spacious production enables us to hear, for the first time, just how mutinous and eccentric the Slits' version of rock'n'roll is. Their music pulsates with the fitful biorhythms of adolescence. Continually shifting tempos lunge between bravado and hesitancy; girl-harmonies clash and overlap; guitars scrape and stutter. Every verse is an adventure full of unrepeatable collisions and unexpected noises ( a spoon dropping, coins clinking, vaporous voices from some distant radio).
"Typical Girls," the closest they get to an anthem, pokes wicked fun at conventional zombified females who "Don't create/ Don't rebel" but instead "worry about... unnatural smells." The songs' targets-- consumer capitalism, normative notions of romance and gender-- were standard issue in the post-punk era. But unlike their agit-pop contemporaries Gang of Four and the Au Pairs, the Slits inject their cultural critique with so much joyous abandon that they sound riotous, not righteous. "Shoplifting" transforms that most female form of delinquency into glorious liberation: "We pay FUCK ALL!" Ari's earth-shattering howl dissolves into bladder-busting hilarity as she giggles, "Ooh, I pissed in my knickers!"

CULT MOVIE: BLUE VELVET (1986)

2010-03-09T03:06:00.000+02:00

Repellent, fascinating, surreal-- this is the kind of film for which critics ransack their entire vocabulary of adjectives. Never comfortable viewing, with the tone set from the opening shot of impossibly blue skies and white fences contrasted with wet, dark beetles. MacLachlan plays Jeffrey Beaumont, a character with certain similarities to the director (echoes which the actor played up by dressing and buttoning his shirt like Lynch) who finds a human ear and is embroiled in a horrific small-town mystery. Underneath all of Lynch's trickery, this is a very personal film. Many scenes (including the controversial scene where Hopper rapes and degrades Rossellini) have some link to the director's childhood memories. That may be why, for all the violence, this story always has a weird logic which propels it relentlessly forward.
Director: David Lynch Cast: Isabella Rossellini, Kyle MacLachlan, Dennis Hopper

THE 100 SINGLES YOU MUST OWN

2010-03-08T03:31:00.000+02:00

30. DAVID BOWIE: Changes/ Andy Warhol (1972)
He'd had three UK flop singles since Space Oddity, and this fared little better in the charts. His debut single on RCA-- and the opening track on the Hunky Dory LP -- represented a sea change for both Bowie and pop music. A charged, accusatory lyric, a colourful volley of piano and sax and then you're into that irresistible chorus. Guaranteed to stop any pub dead in its tracks, the ch-ch-changes stutter is a real masterstroke. The B-side, Andy Warhol, reflected Bowie's fascination with the avant garde and enhanced his sense of mystery and danger all the more.
Availability: The Best Of Bowie EMI CD
29. JAMES BROWN: It's A Man's Man's World/ Is It Yes Or Is It No?
From Prisoner Of Love to the epic I Cried, the Godfather of Funk never hid his concurrent ambition of being America's baddest balladeer. Ignore the gimmicky title, a pastiche of the movie, It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World: this passionate howl from the heart softened its raw( and undeniably sexist) emotion with a lavish Sammy Lowe orchestration. Brown was inspired to write the song when his girlfriend commented sarcastically on his habit of lauding himself to the skies. His performance mixed arrogance and anguish in equal measure, to create a masterpiece of self-pity which doubled as a statement of pride.
Availability: The 40th Anniversary Collection Polydor CD

CULT RECORD: SCREAMING TREES: "SWEET OBLIVION" (1992)

2010-03-08T03:04:00.000+02:00

Northwest indie rockers back when grunge was still just something that ringed your bathtub, the Screaming Trees have spent their entire career trying to reconcile punk and classic rock. Singer Mark Lanegan, guitarist Gary Lee Conner, his brother bassist Van Conner, and drummer Mark Pickerel erupted from Ellensburg, a dull cow-town on the wrong side of Washington's Cascade Mountains. Like many early indie bands, especially rural ones, the Trees had few prior reference points besides classic rock yet couldn't ignore the siren call of DIY punk.
Released at the height of Seattlemania, produced by Don Fleming (Teenage Fanclub) and mixed by Andy Wallace (Nevermind) , 1992's fantastic Sweet Oblivion promised to be the band's commercial breakthrough. The album contained song after catchy song about self-laceration drenched in Catholic guilt--Lanegan's reading of the old spiritual "Peace in the Valley" on the "Dollar Bill" single (along with an inspired cover of Sabbath's "Tomorrow's Dream") says it all. "Nearly Lost You" was a certifiably great single, while "Dollar Bill," straight out of the "Feelin' Alright"/ "Can't Always Get What You Want" songbook, is a Lanegan tour de force. Slyly quoting bands like the Who, Small Faces, and Cream, the Trees were finally making some classic rock of their own. It never did hit, but Sweet Oblivion is still the Trees' best album by far.

CULT MOVIE: ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (1975)

2010-03-08T02:24:00.001+02:00

James Caan turned down Nicholson's role because there'd be "too many white walls", a fact for which we and Jack should be eternally grateful. Nicholson and his character Randle McMurphy seem to merge in this harrowing tale of life and rebellion in an asylum. Many of the group therapy scenes were refilmed with actors adding detail and nuance as they went along. Danny DeVito has a small role and Anjelica Huston is a member of the crowd on the pier when McMurphy and the boys go fishing. Ken Kesey, who wrote the book, says he'll never watch it. It's his loss. Nicholson would return to similar territory with As Good As It Gets (1997) which isn't as good as Jack gets but is one of the few Hollywood films where a patient is seen getting effective medical treatment.
Director: Milos Forman Cast: Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher

THE 100 SINGLES YOU MUST OWN

2010-03-07T05:13:00.000+02:00

32. IKE AND TINA TURNER: River Deep Mountain High/ I'll Keep You Happy (1966)
Some records are cut so loud and dense that the needle can jump out of the grooves-- purpose-built for the heavy-weight arm of a jukebox. River Deep Mountain High isn't just dense; it's a black hole. Phil Spector's intention was to take R&B to a new dimension, sucking in and spitting out the folkniks, jug bands and longhairs who had stormed pop's citadel since his last major hit-- The Righteous Brothers' You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' in late '64. It was a last throw of the dice. Back came his favourite songwriters, the semi-retired Barry and Greenwich with a weirdly innocent/ intense lyric about rag dolls, puppy dogs, schoolboys and pie. In came the searing Tina. For the only time he used two drummers. It was do or die, and in the States it duly died at number 88. Still, in Britain ( where it made number 3), Spector's Waterloo pumped out of Wurlitzers across the land, destroying everything in its path.
Availability: River Deep Mountain High A&M CD
31. GENE VINCENT AND HIS BLUE CAPS: Be Bop A Lula/ Woman Love (1956)
Gene Vincent's debut 45 made immediate contact with teenagers the world over. Delivered with an intensity that's scarcely been matched since, Gene sounds like he's about to explode. It's more of a Marlon Brando film script than a song, with impending tragedy lurking at the end of every line and one million teens' sexual frustrations jam-packed into the strained yet restrained 45. Perhaps that explains why Elvis Presley's mum thought it was her own offspring singing the song.
Availability: Blue Jean Bop! Capitol CD

CULT RECORD: NINE INCH NAILS: " THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL" (1994)

2010-03-07T04:32:00.000+02:00

When Trent Reznor went gold in a genre that had never been there, singing "Head like a hole/ Black as your soul/ I'd rather die than give you control" on the first Lollapalooza tour, the key to his triumph wasn't just adding extra guitars to Pretty Hate Machine's teenybop death disco-- it was writing an industrial song with the word "I" in it. In the music Reznor loves, artists reject the confessional to act like carnival barkers, drawing you into the fun house: the goal is to blast or pervert a listener clear out of any settled individuality. But Reznor is different. Though it clearly embarrasses him-- causing him to hide behind the name of a nonexistent band, shy from putting his face on his records, and let friends like Foetus and Coil spend an album's length of time removing his personality from his songs( the Fixed remixes of the Broken EP)-- his instincts as an artist ultimately serve the superbly egotistical, needy rock star within. No wonder Axl Rose wanted NIN to open for GN'R.
On Downward Spiral, Reznor opens up his palette, which for this artist is as brave and idealistic as anything he's ever permitted of himself. One minute into "March of the Pigs," the industrial raving strips down to a regular old piano tinkle; Reznor sings, "Now doesn't that make you feel better?" Well, yes, actually. Didn't think you had it in you, Trent. With interplays of hard and soft, electronic and acoustic, hyper-masculine and falsetto, ranting and crooning, the pacing and buried surprises on this album are close to perfect. Besides the lurching, Zeplike "Reptile," the peak moment is "Closer". An arch new-wavey vocal dallies over a riff like Bowie's "Fame." Reznor gets to the chorus-- "I want to fuck you like an animal/ Iwant to feel you from the inside"-- and the song finds a groove, powerful without fraying off into white noise. Central to the innovative soundscape, which includes King Crimson's Adrian Belew on "texture generating guitars," are NIN's multiple nods to classic rock. As Sonic Youth taught us long ago, an anti-rock sound embracing rock forms is as delicious as it gets.

CULT MOVIE: KISS ME DEADLY (1955)

2010-03-07T03:41:00.000+02:00

Watch this and feel Hammer's pain. He's driven over a cliff, given a needle, knocked out by a blackjack, strapped to a bed and worked over by heavies and finally shot. Not since Rasputin has one man taken so much punishment and lived. Of course, the mad monk was finally thrown into a river with weights attached, one of the few kinds of violence not seen in this flashy, brutal, movie. (The highlight, or lowlight for the squeamish, is when a woman gets tortured almost to death with a pair of pliers.) Hammer's only mistake is to give a lift to a woman he finds running along the road. And some mistakes you never stop paying for. But then Hammer, played here by movie heavy Meeker, is not a character we are encouraged to like. Just as well because most of the sympathetic characters get killed in Aldrich's vision of an America run by con men, fascists and gangsters. Probably the biggest single influence on the French Wave, this is a thoroughly nasty gem.
Director: Robert Aldrich Cast: Ralph Meeker, Albert Dekker

THE 100 SINGLES YOU MUST OWN

2010-03-06T03:36:00.000+02:00

34. CHIC: Good Times/ A W arm Summer Night (1979)
Strip away the mirror balls and you'll find that Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards were actually acute social observers. By the late '70's, the fruits on America's vine were withering; recession was taking hold and form its jet airliner take-off, Good Times was an ironic recreation of the Depression-era standard, Happy Days Are Here Again. With the "disco sucks" movement taking hold in the US, Chic's career effectively collapsed the very same moment Good Times hit number 1. For unlike other bands who "went disco", they had no pre-disco past to fall back on.
Availability: Risque Atlantic CD
33. BLUE OYSTER CULT: (Don't Fear) The Reaper/ R U Ready 2 Rock (1976)
That a hard rock supergroup could come up with such an exquisite evocation of such a timeless theme is one of life's mysteries. Disturbingly blissful in its exhortations to accept oncoming death as part of Nature's cycle, the song assures listeners that, "Forty thousand men and women everyday" succumb to said portent of doom, but no worry, it's no big deal. After all, there's that great, nagging guitar riff accompaniment to take your mind off it. Best keep off the gin, though-- and demand your money back if you get the short version, without the eerie middle section.
Availability: Don't Fear The Reaper: The Best Of The Blue Oyster Cult Sony CD

CULT RECORD: ICE CUBE: "AMERIKKKA'S MOST WANTED" (1990)

2010-03-06T03:06:00.000+02:00

Ice Cube's obsession lies in lyrically unearthing the horrors and subversive pleasures of the South Central ghettoes he helped cloak in rap mythology. Even when he misses the mark, the furious intelligence and rhetorical skill of his gangstAfronationalist aesthetic manages to provoke and inspire. Breaking with N.W.A at an extraordinarily young age for one who'd already given gangsta its most believable character, Cube went gone on to imprint his blunt anger over several crucial solo albums, flourishing the self-contained doomy presence that also gained him critical acclaim apart from music in the film Boyz N the Hood.
On AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted, Ice Cube seizes the spotlight. On "The Nigga Ya Love to Hate," he is "kickin' shit called street knowledge," demanding to know " Why more niggas in the pen than in college?" The track is bolstered by a swaggering bass line, the key to an aural assault that, throughout the album. is presided over by Public Enemy's Bomb Squad. Cube relentlessly exposes the terror of police brutality ("AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted"), yet mirrors such treatment in his own attacks on the fairer sex ("Once Upon a Time in the Projects" and "I'm Only Out for One Thing"). Cube also gets delirious joy in rattling the pieties of the black bourgeoisie; "Turn Off the Radio," a propulsive synthesis of horns and psychedelic guitars, acerbically blasts the R&B lovers who in the late '80s crowded rap off the black airwaves.

CULT MOVIE: THE DEER HUNTER (1978)

2010-03-06T02:27:00.000+02:00

An epic stunner about the effects of the Vietnam War on the lives of the people from a small industrial town in Pennsylvania, especially three young steelworkers who enlist in the US army and find themselves caught up in a brutality they had never bargained for. The film is long (three hours) and slow in places, but this is a deliberate and effective ploy to make sure the audience is totally involved in the lives of those on screen, and is shattered as events both during and after the war change the men's lives forever. The Russian roulette scene with De Niro and Walken will have your heart in your mouth as well as serving as a powerful metaphor for the whole business of going to war. The scene where the plane gets snagged on the bridge was accidental, a member of the crew actually frees it and Cimino just kept the cameras rolling.
Director: Michael Cimino Cast: Robert De Niro, John Savage, Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep, John Cazale

THE 100 SINGLES YOU MUST OWN

2010-03-05T02:01:00.000+02:00

36. JANE WIELDIN: Rush Hour/ The End Of Love (1988)
The first to bail from the Go-gos, in 1984, rhythm guitarist Jane Wieldin was widely considered "most likely to succeed" in the pop mainstream, on the strength of her self-titled debut album. But the affections of a fickle public eluded her until this 1988 single from her second album, Fur. The cutesy stylings of singer Belinda Carlisle may have hit pay dirt quicker, but Rush Hour was the perfect setting for Wieldin's helium vocals and ebullient new wave sassiness. It's also a master-class in the kind of rounded vowel sounds that made 17-year-old boys come over all "unnecessary".
Availability: Now That's What I Call Music 1988: The Millennium Series EMI
35. RAY CHARLES: What'd I Say (Part 1)/ What'd I Say (Part 2) (1959)
What began as an on-stage jam session when Brother Ray and his band ran out of material one night resulted in a defining moment in the evolution of R&B. Atlantic chopped the original six-and-a-half minute tune in two and spread it over both sides of a 45. Part 1 features a lengthy instrumental intro, dominated by Charles' bluesy electric piano, over a propulsive Latin-tinged groove. The flipside arguably contains the most exciting segment, when Charles and The Raeletts engage in a churchy call and response vocal interplay that leads to an incendiary climax.
Availability: The Definitive Ray Charles Warners CD

CULT RECORD: SEBADOH: "SEBADOH III" (1992)

2010-03-05T01:33:00.000+02:00

Freed from Dinosaur Jr. in 1989, tune machine Lou Barlow has chiseled out a body of work that spans the spectrum of '90s postpunk. Barlow has both followed post-Nirvana moves toward the mainstream by making the sloppy college-radio fave Sebadoh into a tight construction of indie tune and hard rock, while continuing to lead the lo-fi avant-garde, reinterpreting rock and folk cliches from the privacy of his living room.
Sebadoh III consolidated Barlow's folk and punk sides into a lengthy, varied summation of college-rock, beginning with an anthemic dis of either former bandmate J Mascis or an ex-girlfriend ("Freed Pig), and running through a catalog of acoustic love and confusion ("Truly Great Thing"), lo-fi guitar mess ("Limb by Limb"), and offhanded pop catchiness ("Kath"). The album was a meeting place for indie universes, the lyrics encapsulating a post-grad world equal parts earnest good sense and absurdity, the music adding abstraction and a hard edge to R.E.M.-style folk-pop.

CULT MOVIE: CECIL B. DEMENTED (2000)

2010-03-05T01:02:00.001+02:00

Griffith reminds everyone what a fine comic actress she can be in this affectionate satire about the movie business. She plays a star who is kidnapped by a cult leader (Dorft) to be used as part of his revolutionary assault on mainstream cinema. Griffith queens it as an egomaniac star who is made over to look more and more like Waters' departed muse Divine. The gags are fast, furious and usually funny ( the cinema multiplex they attack is showing Patch Adams: The Director's Cut and Gump Again) and movie in- abound. The scene where Griffiths rejects her limo because it's the wrong color really happened (Ginger Rogers did the spurning). Thank God for John Waters.
Director: John Water Cast: Melanie Griffith, Stephen Dorff, Alicia Witt, Ricki Lake, Patty Hearst

THE 100 SINGLES YOU MUST OWN

2010-03-03T21:01:00.001+02:00

38. THE SKATALITES: Guns Of Navarone/ Marcus Garvey (1967)
One of the foremost pioneers of Jamaican music, The Skatalites were together for just over a year, but in that time they invented ska; a bold, boisterous mix of R&B, bebop, big band swing and Latin rhythms, courtesy of trombonist Don Drummond. They backed a who's who of reggae stars, including Jackie Opel, The Maytals and The Wailers; and recorded the biggest selling ska single of all time with this, their glorious take on Dimitri Tiomkin's theme to the 1961 film. Originally credited to the group's tenor saxist, Roland Alphonso in Jamaica in 1965, it gave them their first and only pop hit (number 36) in the UK two years later. By this time they'd already split, but with its rebel rousing horns, exuberant shouting and irresistible dance beat, Guns Of Navarone set alight the Soho clubs and provided a stark contrast to its B-side. Where's Marcus Garvey? was the group's ode to the political leader, featuring the spirited vocals of Rastafarian, Bongo Man Byfield. It all ended badly for Drummond, who committed suicide in 1969 after murdering his girlfriend.
Availability: Guns Of Navarone Trojan CD
37. PHIL PHILLIPS WITH THE TWILIGHTS: Sea Of Love/Juella (1959)
Swirling, mystery-filled and with a touch of the Bayou, as befitting a singer from Lake Charles, Louisiana, this gave the man John Phollip Baptiste one-hit-wonder status but remained ever-memorable, gaining a fresh audience when it lent its title to a 1989 Al Pacino thriller. A cover by The Honeydrippers, a band comprising Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, Jeff Beck and Nile Rodgers also charted in the '80s.
Availability: Various Sea Of Love Spectrum CD

CULT RECORD: THE VELVET UNDERGROUND: "THE VELVET UNDERGROUND AND NICO" (1967)

2010-03-03T20:26:00.000+02:00

It's not just that the Velvets redefined rock as bohemian underground rather than youth culture. It's that their underground sound proved nearly as big, as spacious and fertile, as rock. As all aboveground rock. One band's sound. Now, when punk is your image of rock you prize rebellion above sound: Iggy Pop or Johnny Rotten's ability to freeze time and stand outside the world, rather than VU or the Ramones' ability to reshape how we live inside it. The one is a rupture; the other a gesture of state-building. The one sparks an inferno; the other lays the foundation for a school.
This distinction is worth holding in mind when listening to the Velvets, for what you hear, a generation later, has as much in common with blues and especially gospel as it does punk. There's call-and-response vocals, more giggly and burbling than anything Lou Reed would ever offer the world again, with little exhortations thrown into the empty spaces; there's testifying music that rides on its chord changes and ramrod beats like congregants sweaty and happy to have called down the Lord. To be sure, the tunings are odd, and the lyrics dark, and this mattered too, but only as devices to escape the oppressive do-re-mi of hippie sounds ripe for embalming on FM. The Velvets sound the way they do for the same reason a great singer will hit a note slightly flat and just behind the beat: that's where the rapture is waiting. The secret of the band's endurance is that it was never at war with rock; it just heard it differently. Correctly.
So you really do need to hear every note of every album. The Velvet Underground & Nico is the prototype: La Monte Young monorail rock on "I'm Waiting for the Man" and "Run Run Run," "Heroin" and "Venus in Furs" paperback tales of drugs and S/M, "The Black Angel's Death Song" and "European Son" dangling viola and guitar chaos, "I'll Be Your Mirror" and "Sunday Morning" improbably lounge-ish, the stolen Marvin Gaye riff that powers "There She Goes Again" demonstrating Reed's pop savvy. John Cale's Cageian sonic disruptions and Andy Warhol's famously absent production prevent the album from ever finding a full groove (the guitars, especially, remain bound to 1966), but history's plowed a groove in anyway, helped by Tucker's oceanically gongish, backbeat-indifferent drumming.

CULT MOVIE: "WILLY WONKA & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY" (1971)

2010-03-03T19:28:00.001+02:00

Dahl's work has a streak of cruelty in it which children familiar with such fairy tales as Hansel and Gretel quickly latch on to. Most of the children who win a tour of a chocolate factory come to decidedly sticky ends. Wilder plays Wonka superbly, at times seeming firm but fair and at others downright perverse. Keep an eye out for the scene where the Paraguayan newsreader holds up the photo of the man whose chocolate bar contained a lucky ticket; the photo is of Nazi exile Martin Bormann.
Director: Mel Stuart Cast: Gene Wilder, Jack Albertson, Peter Ostrum

THE 100 SINGLES YOU MUST OWN

2010-03-02T20:11:00.000+02:00

40. LOU CHRISTIE: I'm Gonna Make You Mine/ I'm Gonna Get Married (1969)
Lou's bubblegum smash was the perfect accompaniment to days bunked off school in the corner cafe. The falsetto washed the tea down, the harpsichord and bicycle bell percussion sound-tracked the daydreams. The A-side was penned by Tony Romeo, then of The Trout, later to rackup hits with The Partridge Family. The flip was written by Christie and his gypsy queen sidekick, Twyla Herbert. At a gig in Birmingham two years later, Lou met Miss UK, Frances Winfield, and duly popped the question.
Availability: Gonna Make You Mine Camden CD
39. RAINBOW: Since You've Been Gone/ Bad Girls (1979)
Richie Blackmore's decision to take Rainbow on a poppier road after the 1978 departure of Ronnie James Dio was cemented by the addition of vocalist Graham Bonnett and Blackmore's old Deep Purple sparring partner, Roger Glover, on bass. Plus this choice of a Russ Ballard-written song, previously a minor US hit by Head East. With its high-Blackmore solo, its key change after Bonnett's incredible "uh" two minutes, 15 seconds in, and its sing-song finale, this gave the group their first UK Top Ten single, reaching Number 6 in September 1979.
Availability: Various: Music Of The Year 1979 Spectrum CD

CULT RECORD: THE CARS: "CANDY-O" (1979)

2010-03-02T19:42:00.000+02:00

The Cars defined the wing of American synth-pop that wanted to brush your rock'n'roll hair. They were Lou Reed fans who cheerfully mixed glossy keyboards with rockist guitar hooks. Ric Ocasek tried laughably hard to sound jaded and ironic (" alienation is the craze," eh?), but that only made his songs of adolescent yearning sound gawkier, and therefore more accurate.
Candy-O is the Cars' stickiest synth-gunk, and their finest hour. "Let's Go" unforgettably serenades a barefoot muse with a risque mouth. Chaste young geeks pine away for hopelessly distant objects of desire in "Double Life," "Dangerous Type," and my personal favorite, "It's All I Can Do."

CULT MOVIE: BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA (1952)

2010-03-02T19:17:00.001+02:00

In the course of this curious movie, Lugosi ( a mad scientist on- hey!- a jungle- covered Pacific island) injects a de-evolution serum into " entertainer" Duke Mitchell, turning him into a single gorilla. After watching 74 minutes of this film, the only rational conclusion is that a similar serum must have been used on Beaudine and scriptwriter Tim Ryan. Mitchell and Petrillo were the B movies' answer to Martin and Lewis who, in turn were the less expensive version of Hope and Crosby. This movie's only purpose is to emphasize how far Lugosi had sunk since he personified Dracula for Universal in 1931. There was worse to come, including a chance comic encounter with Old Mother Riley later in the same year. By 1935, Lugosi had succumbed to drug addiction and died a year later. The final indignity came when Martin Landau won an Oscar as Lugosi in Ed Wood in 1994, an honor the Hungarian horror king had never won.
Director: William Beaudine Cast: Bella Lugosi, Sammy Petrillo, Duke Mitchel

THE 100 SINGLES YOU MUST OWN

2010-03-01T20:30:00.000+02:00

42. FRANKIE VALLI AND THE SEASONS:The Night/ When The Morning Comes (1972)
Recorded during a brief spell at Motown, The Night is an unusual blend of the group's early harmony pop and their Valli-less disco hits. It opens with a touch of menace: a creepy bass-line over a church organ, and the guys breathing: "Beware of his promise..." Suddenly, the voices explode: "Before! I go forever!" and Frankie takes the lead for a pounding, irresistible tune. A regular in Northern Soul clubs before it hit the Top 10 in 1975. Soft Cell covered it.
Availability: The Definitive Frankie Valli And The Four Seasons Warner CD
41. ABBA: SOS/ Man In The Middle (1975)
A Top 10 UK hit in late summer 1975, SOS cemented Abba's reputation as exotic Euro-pop prodigies, paving the way for the string of number 1 smashes we all know and love. Switching between forlorn verses and thumping glam choruses, the glory of this ode to a failing relationship lies in its keening, almost childlike evocation of the sadness and anger behind an unfathomable break-up. Just check out those simplistic, Swedish-into-English lyrics: "All this over baroque, quasi-classical keyboard flourishes and beefy power-chords that invite a rousing, air-guitar-enhanced pub sing-along.
Availability: Abba Gold: The Greatest Hits Polar/Universal CD

CULT RECORD: ROXY MUSIC: "SIREN" (1975)

2010-03-01T19:57:00.000+02:00

Nobody really knows where Bryan Ferry came from. All you can tell from Roxy Music's records is that at a tender age, Bryan suffered a vision of beauty too intense for mortal eye. Ever since, he's been condemned to wander the earth in exile, haunted by its memory, changing wardrobes every twenty minutes and mixing great martinis. Not a bad trick, coming on like a sad-eyed wandering minstrel and a haughty supermodel at the same time. But Ferry's forlorn croon makes all his guises credible, since he offers so much emotional succor in return for your belief. No matter how intricate his songs, no matter how tight his toreador pants or how arch his lounge-lizard falsetto, Bryan Ferry always convinces you he cares. Tired of the tango, fed up with fandango, he performs the rituals of romance like a high priest who loves the rituals as much as the romance.
Siren is Roxy Music's masterpiece, with elegantly funky rockers and strangely humble ballads. In "Could It Happen to Me?" and "Just Another High," Ferry faces the music and dances into the realization that "my old-world charm isn't quite enough," which only adds to his old-world charm.

CULT MOVIE: BONNIE & CLYDE (1967)

2010-03-01T19:15:00.000+02:00

Despite Warner Bros giving the film only a limited release and the critical slaughtering at the hands of New York Times critic Bosley Crowther ( he later changed his review and subsequently left the newspaper), the film became an unprecedented success with the public and created ( or so it seemed at the time) a new Hollywood. The old Hollywood wasn't that impressed: studio boss Jack Warner, after a private screening, scolded Beatty about its length: "This is a three-piss picture." The tale of a 1920s gang of bank robbers led by Chris Barrow and Bonnie Parker is essentially a film about reacting against the establishment, a kind of Rebel Without a Cause but with a gun. Although Splendor In The Grass had been a hit for Beatty in 1961, Clyde made him, and was a turning point in the careers of Faye Dunaway and Gene Hackman. Funnily enough, Beatty had originally wanted to cast Bob Dylan as the "runtish" Clyde but was encouraged to star himself. Penn wanted the final scene where a bit of Clyde's head is blown away by a bullet to remind viewers of the assassination of JFK.
Director: Arthur Penn Cast: Warren Beatty, Faye Danaway

THE 100 SINGLES YOU MUST OWN

2010-02-28T21:21:00.002+02:00

44. BOSTON: More Than A Feeling/ Smokin' (1976)
Masterminded by Tom Scholz, the Brian Wilson of AOR, this delightful paean to the redemptive power of music and lost love is the definitive slice of hair metal for those who own no heavy rock; a joyous rapture of three-and-a-half minutes of pop beauty. With its repeated suggestion to, "hide in my music and forget the day," aching guitar and Brad Delp's soaring, operatic tones, it has rightfully become an anthem that unites stoner and superintendent alike. Kurt Cobain, of course, was later to rewrite it and call it Smells Like Teen Spirit.
Availability: More Than A Feeling Collectables CD
43. THE JACKSON 5 : I Want You Back/Who's Lovin' You (1970)
When The Jackson 5 made their US debut with this, on live TV in autumn '69. Michael Jackson was a dynamic nine-year-old who desperately wanted to be a star. The song, penned by The Corporation (Freddie Perren, Fonze Mizzel, and Deke Richards) for Diana Ross, was given to the Jackson family by Berry Gordy.With it they took the world by storm, zooming straight to the top of the US pop and R&B charts. Rappers Naughty By Nature sampled the bubblegum smash for their own hit single, 1991's OPP.
Availability: Diana Ross Presents The Jackson 5/ABC Motown CD

CULT RECORD: DE LA SOUL:"THREE FEET HIGH AND RISING" (1989)

2010-02-28T20:23:00.000+02:00

De La Soul appeared on the scene in 1989 as the polar opposite of Public Enemy and N.W.A., proclaiming a "Daisy Age" and sampling Schoolhouse Rock, Johnny Cash, and learn-French-yourself records. The music steered by producer Prince Paul of Stetsasonic, was rooted on black pop at its most cheery and integrationist: doo-wop, '60s soul, and, most presciently, P-Funk. Fans who'd grown tired of the stereotypical crotch-grabbing, trash-talking rapper flocked to the band, though the cut "De La Orgee" is as misogynistic as anything on a Dr. Dre album and "Potholes in My Lawn" aims at sucker MCs. In fact, De La Soul's private metaphor jive and boho musicality represented a challenge to rap from within; the group remained every bit as obsessed with identity ("Me, Myself, And I") and cool ("Plug Tunin'") as anyone else in the genre. Perhaps the true difference marking 3 Feet High and Rising as the definitive arrival of "alternative hip-hop--though, race excepted, the Beastie Boys achieved the same thing first-- is its (middle class?) tone of prosperity and entitlement. Most hip-hop sounds pulled from adversity; De La Soul languidly gorges on the fruit of the vine.

CULT MOVIE: SHADOW OF A DOUBT (1943)

2010-02-28T19:46:00.000+02:00

The ambiguous blend of good and evil so suited Hitchcock that many of his films could have been mentioned here.(His other classic noirs include Notorious and The Wrong Man, a fine tale about a family wrecked by police procedure.) In this film, Wright plays a bored young girl called Charlie who invites her uncle Charlie (Cotten) to visit but soon discovers that he is a murderer. The film is full of pairs (both obvious and subtle): the two Charlies, the two detectives, the two suspects, even the two conversations about murder techniques and the double brandy Charlie orders in the Till Two bar. This is said to be Hitchcock's favorite film possibly because he worked some of the details of his early life into the script including a rare (for him) glimpse of a benevolent screen mum called Emma (the director's own mother Emma was very ill when he made this).
Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: Teressa Wright, Joseph Cotten

CULT RECORD: CAN: " TAGO MAGO " (1971)

2010-02-27T19:29:00.000+02:00

In creating a unique sound-world of wanderlust and wonderment, Can is up there with Hendrix and Miles Davis. Each phase of Can's meandering career has opened up vast vistas of fertile terrain for subsequent bands to colonize and cultivate: avant-funk( Talking Heads, PiL, Cabaret Voltaire), trance-rock (Loop, f/i, Cul de Sac), lo-fi (Pavement, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282) and post-rock (Bark Psychosis, Laika). Can also uncannily anticipated many moves made by entire genres of contemporary "sampladelic" music, such as ethno-techno, jungle, and ambient hip hop. Basically, when it comes to psychedelic, dance music, those crafty Krauts wrote the goddamn book.
Can's core members-- bassist Holger Czukay, keyboardist Irmin Schmidt, drummer Jaki Liebezeit and guitarist Michael Karoli-- came from avant-garde and improv-jazz backgrounds; Czukay and Schmidt had both studied with Stockhausen. But instead of exploring aleatory noise or jerky time signatures, Can discovered-- through the Velvet Underground, and later via James Brown-- the Zen power of repetition and restriction. Minimalism and mantra-ism were hallmarks of the Krautrock aesthetic, but what set Can apart from its peers was a fervent embrace of groove. Like Miles Davis's early-'70s albums ( On The Corner, Dark Magus, etc.), Can's best work fuses "black" funk with "white" neo-psych freakitude. Recording in its own studio in a Cologne castle, the band adopted a jam-and-chop methodology similar to that used by Davis and his producer Teo Macero: improvise for hours, then edit the best bits into coherent tracks. As then band's Macero figure, Czukay worked miracles with a handful of mikes and two-track recording. Can's proto-ambient spatiality actually diminished when they went to 16-track in the mid '70s.
Named after a sorcerer, Tago Mago contains Can's most disorienting, shamanistic work. Torn between two impulses-- James Brownian motion and post-Floyd chromatic flux-- the double album spans the polyrhythmic roil of "Mushroom" and "Oh Yeah,"Aumgn'"s dub-reverberant catacombs, and the fractal sound-daubings and scat-gibberish of "Peking O"-- a meisterwerk.

THE 100 SINGLES YOU MUST OWN

2010-02-27T19:28:00.000+02:00

46. CURTIS MAYFIELD: Move On Up/ Beautiful Brother Of Mine/ Give It Up (1971)
Lifted from the Gentle Genius' eponymous debut LP, this eloquent, uplifting anthem for black empowerment proved a big hit with the British public, rising to number 12 in the UK charts in 1971. Edited down to just under three minutes from its original eight-minute album length, Move On Up appeared on a 3-track maxi single with two equally soulful cuts on the flip. Mystifyingly-- given its infectious chorus, rich instrumentation and sleek dance pulse-- the song failed to dent the US charts.
Availability: Move On Up-- The Singles Anthology 1970-90 Sequel CD
45. FLEETWOOD MAC: Oh Well (Part 1)/ Oh Well (Part 2) (1969)
Following the timeless Albatross and Man Of The World, Peter Green made it three smashes in a row with an upbeat shuffle based on an acoustic guitar hook and a simple, yet quietly profound song. It breaks down into a totally unexpected Spanish guitar and recorder instrumental, as atmospheric as Albatross, which spills across the B-side and makes Oh Well an audacious little eight-minute symphony. Awesome.

CULT MOVIE: THE EVIL-DOLL ( 1936 )

2010-02-27T18:02:00.001+02:00

Best known for Freaks and 1931's Dracula, director Browning's 20-year career also included this oddity. His last but one film before retirement, it was originally titled The Witch Of Timbuctoo but the title was changed when the script was altered because of censorship concerns.. Co-written by actor/director Erich von Stroheim, the story follows a Devil's Island escapee (Barrymore) who hits upon the idea of shrinking humans to doll size for his own evil ends (can't think why no one's thought of it before). Undeniably silly, the bizarre film mixes horror, sci-fi, melodrama and revenge thriller all into one, and contains a plethora of ideas and images ( Barrymore in drag being one of them) that were considered shocking in 1936.
Director: Tod Browning Cast: Lionel Barrymore, Maureen O'Sullivan

THE 100 SINGLES YOU MUST OWN

2010-02-26T21:11:00.000+02:00

48. SMALL FACES: Tin Soldier/ I Feel Much Better (1967)
Many's the fan who fantasizes about a whole Small Faces album the calibre of this two-headed monster. Their masterpiece compresses everything they excelled at into a fiery three minutes, 20 seconds. From Steve Marriott's count-in to Kenny Jones' conclusive tumble of tom-toms, it's a feral rock'n'soul hybrid that presaged The Rolling Stones' Exile sound, beautifully captured by engineer Glyn Johns, Ian McLAgan's broody Wurlitzer and Hammond introduction summons a squall of guitar and drums, which becalms for the tensile verse sung by Steve--"I am a little tin soldier who wants to jump into your fire," invoking Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tale-- before he goes off like a volcano on a river-deep, mountain-high chorus with guest female vocalist PP Arnold, Ronnie Lane and Mac all singing. If this performance doesn't stir you, you're made of ice. On the flip, they turn a throwaway ditty into a psychedelic tour-de-force complete with speeded-up vocals, fake fade and a roaring coda which anticipates Led Zeppelin by a couple of years.
Availability: Small Faces Castle CD
47. QUEEN: Bohemian Rhapsody/ I'm In Love With My Car (1975)
Recorded on the same piano as the Fabs' Hey Jude, Bo Rap is one of the most complex and beguiling singles ever made. Overrated by those who love it and underrated by those who don't, the public voted it the most popular UK number 1. No one can deny the copper-bottomed durability of this the very embodiment of utter pop nonsense. It's the ultimate 3-in-1 offer-- ballad, heavy rock and high camp on a scale unseen since Kenneth Williams screamed "Infamy, infamy! They've all got it in for me!" 11 years previously.
Availability: The Platinum Collection: Queen Greatest Hits I, II, III EMI CD