I admit I had this mischievous idea that we'd turn the blog into a vast meta-joke where we just recommended and re-recommended 'Fortunate Son' to each other, backwards and forwards, ad infinitum. That would have been kinda funny, but it wouldn't have got either of us any new music though, so we won't do that. What I will do, though, is open up with two bands that are drinking from the well of seventies hard-riff guitar and turning it into magic rainbow-coloured music. It's sobering to think it's been seven and half years since ...Van Occupanther was released (!!???! jesusgod) and we all turned our heads back to stuff that had tunes like Mannassas-era Stephen Stills but rocked about twelve hundred times harder. And then we all looked around for something that sounded like 'Roscoe' and, uh, we came up a bit dry. And that was Midlake's great success, because back in 2006 there was flip-all else that was wearing those influences as loud and as proud, and turning it into something that still sounded all good and all now. Since then we've had Dry the River, Tame Impala, and Helplessness Blues, all of which at different points sucked up the melodic, psych, harmonising side of their influences, but less stuff that just laid it the fuck down. At the moment, though, I'm scratching that itch with huge helpings of Wooden Shjips and Wolf People; completely different sounds, completely different origins points and influences, but with beautifully similar results: heavy riffs front-and-centre and me, earphones in and eyes screwed up tight, rocking the fuck out on the bus. Oddly too, they also share something else in common: I'm listening far more to each band's last album much more than the one they released this year (Wooden Shjips West from 2011, over Back to Land; Wolf People's Steeple from 2010 over Fain). In both cases, I think they're making superb music that isn't afraid to reference either seventies hard(ish) American rock music, or British Liege and Lief-era folkrock and/or early spacerock respectively and spin it beautifully into something of both then and now.
First, I love both of these songs, and I've never heard of either of these bands. So your recommendation score scoots up to 3 for 3!
ReplyDeleteSecond, do you remember the night we met up at my place on Kyme St in York before going out and you said, 'Before we go, you totally have to hear this,' and put on 'Roscoe'? And I said, 'OMG this bass is like Fleetwood Mac!!!' Yeah, that was kind of a perfect introduction to Midlake.
For me, between American classic rock being on the radio in every public establishment in the 1970s and 1980s and my dad rinsing Harvest Gold and CCR at home, the issue was less rediscovery than something finally cycling back around to being forgotten long enough to be cool again.
That sounds more dismissive than I mean it. I love this music, and I love that there's a cycle of discovery that allows things that have fallen out of fashion to be fresh and compelling and new ground again.
It's a great memory! I love how much we both loved 'Roscoe': it was just a perfect song that seemed to kick off precisely one of those cycles of re-cooling the past.
ReplyDeleteAnother beautifully-judged and intricate bit of past-inhabitation I play a lot is the last Beachwood Sparks album, especially the opener, which is all over that sun-drenched Byrds and Gram Parsons-vibe:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZNklrdSonc