A few good times in my life
This week are less songs to remember but those who appear today are still worth a listen.
1975: Bruce Springsteen
1979: The Jam
1986: Bruce Hornsby T The Range
1968: Mary Hopkin
1967: The Who
1969: Elvis Presley
1996: Sublime
1959: Buddy Holly
1975: Aerosmith (I prefer the version by Run DMC)
1964: The Supremes
1990: Cocteau Twins
1964: Roy Orbison
Last week I grabbed AR Kane's debut album 69 from 1988 out of my rack to listen to it once again. While listening to this record I thought it will be a good idea to write about this underrated band. A few days ago Adam made a superb piece of writing about them and with his 40 Minutes Of AR Kane the most is said. I discovered this record in our local record shop and and was fascinated by the cover. The plate cover is emerging as also on white background a dark circle in the middle of which we can faintly make out the number 69, which is shaped like two dark, undulating spirals. Inner-case's intricate shading shows the blue background and more clearly six-figure as a pregnant woman and nine-figure as a man, both swimming, in harmonious movements. After a few minutes watching the cover I bought this record without listening to any sons because I thought artist, that are able to create a cover like this couldn't make a bad record. When I came home I put the record on the turntable and started to listen. It seldom happened that I was so confused about what I heard. Not that I didn't liked what I heard but I was unprepared about the facets of their music. It started with a jazzy scat intro on Crazy Blue to turn into one the best pop songs of this era (they described it as dreampop later). Rudy Tambala once joked years later that AR Kane sound like a band with a bit of Velvet Underground and a bit of Cocteau Twins, Miles Davis and Joni Mitchel. And this describes their sound very good. A lot of everything good and always the ability to combine their influences with a massive pop attitude. An outstanding band and an outstanding album and the blueprint for a new generation in music.
AR Kane - Crazy Blue
AR Kane - Suicide Kiss
AR Kane - Baby Milk Snatcher
Their roots are certainly on bands like JAMC and noisy feedbacked guitar sounds. Best shown on their debut single.
AR Kane - When You're Sad (Long Version)
It is almost one year ago when Preston romantics White Flowers released Day By Day their first full album. I got this one digital, listened to it and forgot. When I cleaned um my hard drive I found this album once again and finally I saw the beauty of this record. Some might call it another shoegaze record or a poor copy of the Cocteau Twins or a slow version of Siouxie but I think they have all the named ingredients but on a very own way. There are ethereous voices over all songs and sparse orchestrated but always with a touch of dark sound. For some times this albums works very well and it is worth to be featured at this little place of the internet.
Day By Day by from Preston based band White Flowers is one of those shoegazed albums that I didn't ignored even if it was a genre I am not really familiar with. White Flowers make this kind of dream-pop many artist try to reach. It is certainly not a groundbreaking album but it touches my with it's post-punk influenced soft sound and the whispered Katie Drew. Both, Drew and Joey Cobb started as a songwriter duo during their art-school studies in London and went back to their hometown in Preston to finish their first album. Their songs are filled with their experiences various session on their late 80's independent sound and the result is a introverted version of the legacy by post-punk with blustering wall-of-sound guitars and the melancholic sound of Cocteau Twins. An album you can dive into if you can let it happen.
