Thirty Days of Music Day 26 - A Song That You Can Play On An Instrument

Laura Marling's second album, released in January last year, was a costume drama-reminiscent meditation on women's responsibilities, love and loss.  Receiving great critical acclaim across the board, it also reached number three on my list of the top albums of 2010. 

Blackberry Stone, the fourth track off I Speak Because I Can, was the first song that Emma and I did a cover of.  The guitar is rolling, trickling and gentle but maintains a steady tempo and the melody is beautiful, Marling repeating some beautiful lyrics: 'But I couldn't turn my back on the world for what I like wouldn't let me.'.

When we did our cover - me on guitar and Emma singing - I think that we really captured the kind of atmosphere that Marling wrote into the song.  Our recording equipment  wasn't great but when you have such a great song to work with anyway, it's hard to go too wrong.  Hopefully we didn't go too wrong. 

Thirty Days of Music Day 18 - A Song You Wish You Often Heard On The Radio

The Decemberists are one of those bands that get a lot of respect among certain indie spheres but have never really even made it into the indie mainstream.  They have been quietly ploughing away with the indie folk now for about eight years and even though they manage to perform reasonably in America - with their last album reaching #14 in the chart - and with the critics, The Crane Wife receiving a solid 8.4 from Pitchfork, they never seem to make a large impact on the UK music scene.

The Crane Wife, for me, is their best album to date and Yankee Bayonet, their most famous release, is one of the catchiest songs on the album.  They've managed to grab the incredibly gifted American singer-songwriter Laura Veirs to duet with Meloy, narrating the discourse of two lovers that have been separated by war.  The guitar is wonderfully simple; the drums are so delicate they're barely even noticeable; the vocals are uplifting and evocative.  Even though the song is about heartbreak and lost lovers ('Though our bodies may be parted/ Though our skin may not touch skin') the melody and intrumentation make the song surprisingly uplifting.  Veirs and Meloy are euphoric in combination, their voices coordinating perfectly in the chorus singing.  They sing with great unity, and both of them have stunning voices.  It's songs like this that deserve to be on the radio - Yankee Bayonet is catchy and joyful, yet meaningful and complex in nature. 

Thirty Days of Music Day 15 - A Song That Describes You

So I've just about reached the half way point of this little challenge I've set myself, and it's going ok.  I've had to bend the rules a few times and I've enjoyed writing about some songs more than others.  This time around was a very hard choice - it's so hard to choose a song that describes yourself without being arrogant, pretentious or unnecessarily modest.  A few songs came to mind straight away, including Creep, Charmer, The Fool and Your Protector but most of these seem a bit stupidly comic and blatant.

In the end I went for Devil's Spoke/ Sneh Ko Marg because it is a fusion of English and Asian in the same way that I am of a similar fusion.  This, once again, is a bit of a cop-out but I still wanted to choose a damn good song for this category and so this was the only thing I could come up with.

Devil's Spoke is a great song on it's own - creating a wonderfully dark atmosphere - but when it's combined with the dreamily quick, flowing Indian singing it works brilliantly.  The voices of Laura and the Dharohar Project are absolutely stunning and it's a shame there is only a live version available at the moment because it would be great to hear the polished-up tune.  There is great contrast between Marling's and the other vocals and the Dharohar Project make great use of variations in note length to create a mystical, intangible tone to their music.

Usually I get jealous when great artists go and tour other countries, leaving us English fans neglected, but this song was born from Marling touring India with Mumford and Sons.  If we're going to be gifted with such gems every time she tours another country, then I don't want to see her back in Hampshire for a good few years.

Thirty Days of Music Day 05 - A Song That Reminds You of Someone

When the Cardigans released Long Gone Before Daylight in 2003, it wasn't long before a copy of it was on its way to my house.  My mum, who I have to thank for lots of my musical discoveries (including Fleet Foxes, Laura Veirs, Jackson Browne and Josh Rouse), introduced me to the album almost as soon as it arrived.  She's so into music that when a new album enters the house it tends to get played almost non-stop and I soon came to know almost the entire album off by heart.

Communication, a soft ballad of love and relationships, is probably the best track on the CD.  It starts with gentle guitar and Persson's beautiful vocals and progresses beautifully.  The song finishes with a beautiful blend of guitar solos and vocals that complement each other perfectly.  Persson sings out: 'But I don't know how to connect/ So I disconnect' and the song revolves almost solidly around her voice - of course, they knew their strengths when they made the song.  Persson's voice is so flawless throughout the entire album, and it is that which provides the driving force for most of the songs.

This song, and this album, remind of me of cold winters about six years ago when I would sit in the back room doing work and my mum would have this album on.  Most of all, though, it reminds me of my mum and her music taste and how similar hers is to mine. 

Other songs to check out from the album are You're the Storm, For What It's Worth and Please Sister.

Mercury Prize

I've been away for a while so this post is a bit late, but I just wanted to talk about the Mercury Prize from a few weeks back.

 For me, the highlights of the nominations were Laura Marling, Foals and The XX.

 20 year-old singer-songerwriter Laura Marling's second album I Speak Because I Can is her second to be nominated for the Mercury Prize.  It is a mature, dark, brooding record - unexpected from someone of her age - that contrasts with her previous nomination Alas, I Cannot Swim.  She fully utilises her voice's primitive punch in this album, teaming it perfectly with ominous backing and her characteristic trickling fingerpicking.  These songs seem more melancholy than her previous offerings, and they take on mammoth subjects - life, death, heartbreak, responsibility.  It's as if, to me, the album reeks of history - songs such as What He Wrote, Made in Maid and Devil's Spoke all hearken back to a more uncomplicated time without losing any of their own sophistication.  All that's brought to mind is costume dramas, witches and denied love.

 Marling expertly emulates an old traditional folk style, and uses great contrast in her instrumentation.  The single, Devil's Spoke, sees running, rolling guitar and Marling's singing keeping pace whilst album highlight Blackberry Stone is much more gentle - you are lulled as you listen by the simple guitar, lamenting violins and her soft vocals.

 Oxford indie band Foals' second album also saw them depart from their debut's style.  Antidotes was filled with uncompromisingly stubborn math rock - barked vocals, odd time signatures and jerking, awkward guitar.  Total Life Forever, on the other hand, is an ambient, aquatic, synthesised masterpiece that even sees lead singer Yannis move into the unexplored realms of gentle melody and falsetto.

 First single, This Orient, is an uplifting, emotional web of carefully arranged sounds - multiple voices, synths, guitar, bass and drums all combine to create a beautiful end product.  The rise and fall found in This Orient is characteristic of the album - the band have created a perfect mix of gentle and loud music, and they masterfully transfer between the two.  Spanish Sahara is an escalating riot of the sound and singing that builds from near silence, Alabaster is an almost perfect synergy between vocals and instruments that creates a lamenting, uniquely structured song.  Every song seems to have a natural, catchy beat and the hooks are far more accessible than those in Antidotes.  They still retain a penchant for high, jerking guitar but it is rendered so much more subtly.  Total Life Forever is my album of the year so far - buy it if you can and see them live if you can.

 The XX, who won the award, are the hipster band of the moment.  Famous for their incredibly stylised, minimalistic approach to music, their debut album XX received critical acclaim.  Now I don't intend to oppose all those critics who think the album is quality, because it is.  They take a refreshingly different approach to music, and both Oilver and Romy have incredible voices.  Single Crystalised is a work of art, and the two vocalists always combine perfectly both live and on recording.  However, I feel that the other two albums I have talked about are better.  The minimalistic style of The XX is not condusive to putting great emotion into their songs, and this can lead to a sterility in their music.  Furthermore, the lack of variation in the album let it down.  Intro, possibly the best song on XX, is a faster piece - the exception in an otherwise slow album.


I'm not trying to take anything away from The XX, because the album is great(especially for a debut) and in a way they do deserve recognition for their acheivements.  However, like Nihal stated on the Mercury Prize show, I feel there's better stuff to come from them.

 Top Songs:
Foals: Alabaster, This Orient, 2 Trees, Spanish Sahara
Laura Marling: Devil's Spoke, Blackberry Stone, Made in Maid, I Speak Because I Can
The XX: Crsytalised, Islands, Infinity