The Expressos' Want

The Expresso's Want (a.k.a. What She Wants), not previously available on youtube, is my favorite album track from the splendid Pillows and Ties (1981). It broadly apes the great Doc Pomus song (Marie's the Name Of) His Latest Flame which was a hit for Elvis in 1961. The Smiths' Rusholme Ruffians strip-mined the same tune 3 years later to excellent effect on Meat is Murder, but the Expressos got there first!

My visuals are from the Drum Boogie sequence in Hawks's Ball of Fire (1941). Although I regard BOF as second-tier Hawks and second-tier screwball more generally, Barbara Stanwyck is incandescent in it, and the Drum Boogie number lights that fuse. The unadulterated Drum Boogie number is widely available on youtube, e.g., here, so I hope that purists won't object to me adapting it to give the unjustly overlooked Expressos a boost. And if you like new wave girl pop, you owe it to yourself to see some screwballs of the '30s and '40s. There's a still under-explored connection between the feisty movie gal generation of Stanwyck, Colbert, Lombard, Arthur, etc. and the music generation of Pattie Smith, Siouxsie, Pauline Murray, Chrissie Hynde, and Debbie Harry (to which The Expressos' Roz Rayner certainly belongs).

Want's lyrics near as I can make out (corrections/improvements welcome) are as follows:

Want
Want
Want
[That's what] Is there someone to meet here
[What you want] Every thing I see here
[Want] Somebody tell me
What you gonna do for a guy that's true?
[Want] A pretty conversation
[What you want] Electric lubrication
[Want] A whole lotta love from you

Is there someone here I can call on tonight?
Take me by the hand, I'll lead you to unite
Our feelings grow so tired I want to get out
And when I get the chance I can show you what I want

[You know you want] A little bit of loving
[What you want] A little bit of something
[Want] A whole lotta love from you

Got my tickets in the hand and I'm walking out the door
If you stop me now, I'll never walk away no more
If these sophisticated people for a while
And when I get the chance I can show you what I want

[You knows you want] Uh oh, come on
[What you want] Gimme gimme gimme gimme
[Want] Gimme gimme gimme gimme Owwww

(Solo)

If these sophisticated people for a while
And when I get the chance I can show you what I want

[You knows you want] Oh
[What you want] Oh, come on
[want] Gimme gimme gimme gimme
[Want] Give it to me
[Want] Gimme gimme gimme gimme
[Want] Gimme gimme gimme gimme
[Want] Ohhh
[What you want] Gimme gimme gimme gimme
[What you want]

Jane Siberry's Symmetry (The Way Things Have To Be)

Jane Siberry's brilliant, gorgeous, but relatively obscure, geek-girl anthem, Symmetry (The Way Things Have to Be) from her 1984 album No Borders Here hasn't been represented anywhere on youtube. My video plugs that gap. Our visuals are from the title number of Dames (1934), created and arranged by Busby Berkeley.

Dames is a 'must see' film in my view (see this blog post for terrific promotional images from the film including the ultra-classy ad. image at right), but it has recently drawn attention mainly because Michel Gondry and Matthew Barney have spent the last 15 years strip-mining it! Edgar Wright, however, has repeatedly advocated for Dames itself by screening it at various festivals. At any rate, I think the combination of Siberry and Busby Berkeley works well - two genius level items together for the first time, what could go wrong! - and hope that the relatively distinct audiences for these materials might productively cross-pollinate.
While many people nowadays associate symmetry in film with Wes Anderson or Kubrick, Busby Berkeley got there first and deepest, especially in the numbers for a remarkable string of somewhat risque, pre-Code, pictures he directed for Warner Bros in the early 1930s. Note that Dames probably isn't the best starting point if you're new to Busby B., for that I recommend the very topical (Depression-themed) Gold-diggers of 1933, e.g., here, here and here.
Berkeley influenced Escher and the wider development of Topology, and since he occasionally had his chorines dance and rearrange themselves on what look for all the world like giant folded proteins and viruses, Berkeley's influence on the sciences probably hasn't fully played out even now.

Mind-bogglingly, given that it's now a favorite, I only heard Siberry's track for the first time just over a week ago thanks to the wonderful Now you're at Songblague! blog. (Forget politics, a week is a long time in music appreciation!) Since one of my discoveries of last year was (the original mix of) Moev's Cracked Mirror - which I only heard about from a College remix 'tape' after liking their contribution to Drive (2011)'s soundtrack - I'm beginning to think I've got a thing for '80s C(anadian)-pop, as the kids might say.

Finally, a couple of other (recently-new-to-me) Siberry exceptionally-goodies from the '80s. From The Speckless Sky (1985), Taxi Ride:

and from The Walking (1987), the official video (with somewhat unfortunate poor audio quality) for The Walking (And Constantly):

Clara Bow would like Metronomy (if she time-travelled forwards from 1927)

Yes she would. Must set some of It or Dangerous Curves to some of English Riviera.

Listening again to Metronomy's English Riviera

Metronomy's English Riviera was one of the most acclaimed albums of the last year (2011). I agreed with that consensus, but I'm further starting to think that it's a real classic (the sort of thing that'll be on 'end of decade' lists in 2020). So, let's listen through again, as if for the first time...

ER's first real track is the exquisite scene-setter, We Broke Free:

Airily Air-y, every note and timbre in its right place, ultra-precvise drums and percussion, a very 'dry' mix overall, nice. That's the sound of the record.
Onto the first single on the record (the actual fourth single released):

Roxanne Clifford (who? she's in a band called Veronica Falls and was in The Sexy Kids, but I don't know either of those) is drafted to do essential female vox. It's as livening for ER as Kim Deal is for The Pixies or Morgan Kibby is for M83. Great simple shaker percussion and handclaps matches a great, simple lyric about being surprised by love. The astringent ghost of Young Marble Giants' first record hangs heavily over this track, which is a good thing in my view. I wish I'd written this song. (Note that in my experience, at least when you're past 30 say,, and perhaps especially if you've been in a band or at least tried to write songs yourself at some point, it's always a good sign when an album has you asking yourself questions like 'Why didn't I write this?', 'This great song has always been "out there" to be discovered, why didn't someone else figure it out?' Not to mention if it provokes flat out envy and admiration: 'I wish I'd written this/I'd be so proud to have written this'!).
Now to ER's (actual and on the record) second single:

With its slightly spooky seaside fun fair feel, The Look has its Sea and Cake and eats it, topping off with a Winwood-y keyboard-trumpet fanfare/solo at the 3 min mark. Unbelievably tasty stuff.
Time for the lead-off single (third on the record):

Cooler and cooler. Twitchy bass and synth tones, feels a little Franz-ish overall but James Mount's restrained vocal unwinding into a repeated 'The Hours come...' refrain at the end of the track is the opposite of histrionic and is singular pure Metronomy delight. Probably the killer blow: listening from the beginning of the record, as with Let Down on OK Computer this is the track that inspires love. The album has you bad now.

Trouble's title reminds us of Coldplay's first album and sure enough the track does sound a little like that, albeit with enough touches to prevent anything too ernest or saccharine from breaking out. It's like all of the good song-writing and arranging ideas from Parachutes (since largely abandoned by Coldplay) bundled into one song, only without any of the irritating bits.
The third single (fourth on the actual album):

A fun imaginary travelogue, but The Bay's retro-disco beat is only OK in my view. This is the first track on ER that doesn't conspicuously over-achieve.

Loving Arm is more conspicuous coolness. Nice keyboards.

Corinne is the most rocking song on the record (so far and overall). Female vox return for the first time since Everything Goes My Way, although this time it's drummer Anna Prior chiming in. Great stuff.

More dry coolness. Not going to be everyone's cup of tea (but neither is Air or Stereolab or Jon Brion-period Aimee Mann, all of which are points of reference here), but I like it a lot. Drums rock out at the end, mad PA organ comes more front and center than its been before. Whirlygigs and bumper-cars, and pier-end funfairs - six minutes of English fading entropy perhaps. That fades into the final track:

A bit darker, what is going on here? Is the Metronomy show at the end of time now, careering off the rails, with sex pushing through the cool gentility ('She wants it all the time')? Mount plays his cards close to his chest at the end here. No, this record will stay in its comfort zone.

In sum, ER is an intensely contained record, rather like a Graham Greene or Iris Murdoch novel. It's obviously a 9/10 or 10/10 album - not a duff track on it and you want to listen to the whole thing again immediately to give its elements more chance to sink in. The absence of incredible highs and lows is inherently a little disturbing and makes its potential classic status difficult to judge. If I had to guess tho' I'd say that ER is going to be seminal. Like, say, the Cure's Disintegration or MBV's Loveless, ER is an exercise in purity and fastidiouness. It finds a note and a space and holds it. That sort of restraint and control risks boring people, but the purity will beguile if you can get on its wavelength, and over time, I'd say that more and more people will. I could be wrong, but with ER, Metronomy have announced themselves as a classic band, prepared to play the legacy/waiting game for an audience to grow behind them. Good for them and for us.

Hiroshima's (and J-pop's? and J-or-K-pop's?) Finest: Perfume

I'm new to J-pop and K-pop... but the trio from Hiroshima, Perfume, stand out. They've got some of En Vogue's glamor but with lots of sweet hooks in 'Nee' (only an appreviated vid. is embeddable; the full vid. is viewable here):

And there's some Bacharach (perhaps via Pizzicato 5) in 'Voice''s changes if you listen closely:

I'm not quite sure how they pull off having such skinny legs etc. without looking unhealthy (being v. young helps a lot obviously!), but they do. I'm also not completely sure about the lasting value of tightly-formatted, producer-driven pop (Perfume's big producer is Yasutaka Nakata) when one doesn't understand the language (as I don't here). Consider how much even musically great stuff like The Supremes and The Shangri-las (to stick with girl-centric dance-pop) suffers if you lose almost all lyrical content. Videos can help make up those losses, but not completely I suspect. That said, very melodic stuff from the Supremes through to Perfume seems to be more inherently intelligible (independent of language) than funk and hip-hop (which emphasize rhythm and lyrical and attitudinal richness over melody and chord changes). With Public Enemy or En Vogue or Missy Elliott, say, you really need to speak the language (and sharing a lot of very culturally specific background is also very desirable). Key K-popsters, 2NE1, have a harder row to hoe world-wide I think than Perfume or Kyary (Pon Pon Pon) precisely because they've got more hip-hop in them (but, chiming with freakytrigger's Frank Kogan, Spin Magazine doesn't see any problem for them).

Update: Perfume's Polyrhythm is a delicious, Daft Punk-ish confection (I think it substantially improves on the DP track, One More Time, that it apes), and this live video shows the potential for subtitling to work very well for music vids.:

Polyrhythm is used in this scene from Pixar's Cars 2:

which has caused some hand-wringing by some of Perfume's early fans. Perfume themselves didn't see the problem, and were downright adorable at the film's LA premiere to boot:

Perfume are so very corporate, but it works for them.

London Belongs to Mia

[Unfortunately, youtube/Warner Bros appears to be blocking this vid. almost everywhere except in the UK. You'll have to click and see whether it works for you. My apologies if it doesn't. (Shakes fist in general direction of LA.)]

Andrea Arnold's instant-classic second feature, Fish Tank (2009), is the story of 15-year old Mia (Katie Jarvis) who lives in a housing estate near Tilbury on the edge of Greater London. 'London Belongs To Me' is a bizarrely-not-on-youtube-anywhere, track from Saint Etienne's classic debut album, Foxbase Alpha (1991). My video brings these two personal favorites together, I hope productively (and not just punningly). Fish Tank of course has its own musical agenda (Mia dances mainly to hip-hop) and Saint Etienne are more middle class/college/central London than Mia (and SE's title comes from a central-London-set 1945 novel, which was apparently well-filmed in 1948). Still, I think the pairing works. Maybe it's Arnold and Saint Etienne who are simpatico, and, of course my short vid. favors the severely beautiful (and Mia alone) above the more cumulative, tense and desperate (and Mia in conflict with others) aspects of Arnold's vision, thereby skewing matters towards SE's wry, near beatific take on London life. At any rate, all Saint Etienne Fans need to see Fish Tank, and Mia/Katie Jarvis fans (who are probably into Katy B nowadays) should explore SE generally and Foxbase Alpha in particular. And Katie Jarvis needs to act again! Cast her somebody.

Great Songs of the '90s: Prince's When The Lights Go Down

Prince in retiring muso mode channels Curtis Mayfield, shows off some jazz chops, and just rolls. Perfect in every way. An anonymizing, submerging antidote to the attention-seeking but also ADD-ed, personal-branding degradation that is the core of most popular and dance music.