A few good times in my life
Life's Hard And Then You Die was the title of It's Immaterials debut album and probably the best title back in 1986. It was an album full of great pop songs and shows the potential of this Liverpool band. I came back to this album a couple of days ago while I was sorting my CD's once again and I enjoyed this album once again after decades.
It's Immaterial - Driving Away From Home (Wicked Weather For Walking)
After a very long time I went to watch my team live again. After the pandemic, I didn't renew my season ticket anymore because I didn't want to watch how Stuttgart lost almost every game at home and spoil a whole Saturday away from home. I watched the games particular on a TV-scream at my local pub or missed the games at all and I took the chance to watch them in the stadium when a working mate asked me if I am willing to join him because a friend of him didn't have the time to see the game. So I started at late morning and hit the train to meet the supporters on a sunny and warm day in cult-pub. They were all surprised to see me again after many months and we had a great time talking about this and that with a couple of beers beside. The game itself was what I expected from a team that is close to relegation. Dominating Augsburg over the whole time but not able to create scoring chances until the last 20 minutes. Until then it was a draw 1:1 and Stuttgart started fighting and winning the game. They created in 10 minutes more chances than in the 80 minute before. But not successful because shooting the ball on the post or Augsburg's keeper had every ball safe. You can't imagine how the crowd went crazy when Stuttgart made the final goal to win in the third minute of the extra time. And this is what I sometimes missed during the last months.
Today's song is the new one by Dives, a three piece female band from Vienna that was featured at this place a couple of years ago. I liked their sound inspired by pop, punk, surf and garage with a massive feeling for vocal harmonies. Wanna Take You There impresses with its catchy indie sound, multi-voiced vocal harmonies and a beautiful hookline that won't let you go so quickly. "The perfect late summer/autumn soundtrack: melancholic but extremely danceable.
The news arrived that Jerry Lee Lewis died at the age of 87 today. He was a bigamist when he was 18. With 22 a world star, a year later a persona non grata. After he became well known during a tour in England that his third wife, Myra Gale Brown, was his cousin and just 13 years old, the world turned away from him. Before that she had willingly received his songs like "Whole Lotta Shakin 'Going On," "Great Balls of Fire," "Breathless" or "High School Confidential." These were lustful manifestos in the dress of the rock 'n' roll conquering the world, whose craziest tailor he was: Jerry Lee Lewis, whom they called the killer. One of the first to live rock'n'roll and who hasn't cared about anything (and I'm sure I'm not going to call everything he's done good). One of the great ones from the early days of music has left us.
Rest well Killer
Adam over at Bagging Area featured a song by the latest compilation of Higher Love records on Monday. I thought about featuring this song during this week but he was faster than me. But this doesn't detain me to feature this album at this little place in the internet again. Higher Love records is one of these labels featuring Balearic sounds during the last years. And this compilation shows once again how many artists are able to create a smooth and interesting sound of laid back and relaxed sounds for recreating yourself after a hard days work. As far as I know Vijnana is a remix by Coyote that gave me the most relaxing sounds during the last years. Softly flowing sounds over a floor of rhythmic beats made this one outstanding of many other songs released this year so far.
20 years ago a Sheffield based band appeared with thrilling guitar sound with a mixture of post-punk and garage rock on the scene. Arctic Monkeys and their debut album reached very high places in the charts and many called them the next big thing in music. I have to admit that I liked a few of their songs but they didn't really fascinated me. Now they returned with their seventh album The Car and they got a lot of critical acclaim. That made me starting listening to them once again. And after listening to this album I am not sure what I should think about this album. Is it a masterpiece of brit-pop and great songwriting or just another arty album showing their abilities in songwriting and ending in a Coldplay-like disaster? There are songs on this album, written and arranged well like I Ain't Quite Where I Think I Am but overproduced where Alex Turner can't decide if he plays a guitar like Mick Ronson or if he would wallow in a wah-wah-sound. On the other hand he tries to be a crooner like Elvis Costello trying to play an Bacharach-song. All in all every song was heard before in better quality. Sadly I am disappointed by this album. But this is only my opinion - maybe other people would like this one.
Another new release I got aware last week was the Hyena Hopscotch Remixes a remix project of an album London based DJ and producer Pete Bones released earlier this year. The original album was hybrid of industrial funk with a massive pop feeling and psychedelic elements. Now the re-work of this album is made by today's most talented DJ's like Duncan Gray, Justin Robertson and Jezebell. This album will be released next week and will reach probably in my years end list.
