“Burning a Path for Us to Share” (the 2006-11-25 Saturday Fetch-it)

Seven months before they recorded Twelve for Give Me a Wall (I just bought that this Thursday 'cos I rock), “spazz-rock heroes” ¡Forward, Russia! recorded another, unreleased, version at a place called Ghost Town in Leeds. They said so.

The most distinct difference (if there's anything distinct about a ¡Forward, Russia! track) is the vocal on “your conscience is low” at the end of each chorus. (Well, it's only a chorus to the extent that there even are any in a ¡Forward, Russia! track.) In the Sahara Sound version (the one on the single and album), Tom Woodhead sings it, using a grand total of two notes for the word “low”. By contrast, in the Ghost Town version it's a single, drawn-out, unmelodious, much-less-reassuring gasp/yelp. The album version sounds more like “your conscience is low... but y'know what? I've come to terms with that, and it's OK with me”; but this way is more uncomfortable, suggests urgency and some sort of crisis and leaves the song hanging more at the end. It makes me want to react rather than just sit there satisfied that everything's gonna be fine.

From the start the Ghost Town version is more chaotic and less tidy; it seems less premeditated. The introductory guitar lick is distorted – perhaps even a little bit jangly – and it doesn't stick with surgical precision to a single note at a time.

I've repeatedly compared ¡Forward, Russia! to Maxïmo Park (well, I've compared lots of things to both of them at the same time, but that's pretty much the same thing) and the comparison is particularly apt for the Ghost Town version. Like The Russia's, Maxïmo Park's songs tend to have a lot of distinct sections, and the song flits between them in different orders throughout. Often in the transition between sections, the music comes to a halt for a second, there's a single drum tap or beat in the middle, and then the bass resumes and the song sets off again, usually beginning a little more subdued than before and then building up again.

Twelve does this after the choruses (of which there are only about two, depending on how you count), and the halt is more distinct in the Ghost Town version. There are fewer layers of noise going on and so less to stop, plus the word “low” doesn't carry on for quite as long so the guitar is bashed into you a few more times before stopping. It sounds particularly Maxïmo Parky the second time (before “Ninety nine...”), when there's only bass and no lead guitar upon resumption. Also like The Park, Twelve crams craploads of music into the time interval it takes Sigur Rós to complete a single note.

And just when you think the song's finished – short of two minutes in – it goes back to “But he couldn't find another way” and skips through another quick verse before finally relenting.

The album version's pretty good as well. If you download one song this week, make it ¡12!. Stay tuned.

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(This entry was originally published on Last.fm.)

“Knocking the Aeroplanes Down with Stones” (the 2006-11-17 Friday Fetch-it)

Do the Whirlwind is a combination of twinkling chimes; garbled chatter; an improbably catchy bassline; an outro; a wood block counter-rhythm; some bongos; multiple Australian singers; the word "quivers"; a cymbal; twee-æsthetic melodies; some increasingly sluggish trombones; a 16-bit video depicting the band as a motley accumulation of cool kids dance/march/strutting along through a succession of weird and wonderful, side-scrolling locales; some increasingly sluggish saxophones; miscellaneous grooveability; probably a sitar; a chorus of harmonising vocals; tapes rewinding; mostly-nonsensical lyrics; some dings; some pops; some whistles; the word "abandon"; plenty of handclaps; and a single extra beat when the phrase "the beat" crops up.

...which it therefore does twice, obviously. If you download one song this week, make it Whirlwind. Stay tuned.

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(This entry was originally published on Last.fm.)

“Promises of Passion and Adventure” (the 2006-11-11 Saturday Fetch-it)

Animator passes the whistle test. After hearing it once or twice, about a month later I remembered the chorus and the instrumental hook just from the title. Yay me.

Guillemotsishly, Pull Tiger Tail perform under almost-plausible pseudonyms – Marcus Ardere, the mild-mannered janitor, becomes Marcus Firefly; the already-moderately-implausibly-named David McKenzie-McConville is transformed into David "Davo" Huevo upon eating a banana; and by night Jack Navarone is the evil Jack O'Moriarty.

Animator begins with the guitar hook, which uses a grand total of three notes and (once again) is bouncily Fingers in the Factoriesish. A bassline that sounds vaguely like Y Control joins in, then lots of percussion.

In the verse the instruments drop to accompaniment and focus shifts to the lead vocal; the verse's structure and accompaniment are reminiscent of a Maxïmo Park or ¡Forward, Russia! song.

The lead vocals hold the chorus – the title repeated lots – together. They're part-¡Forward, Russia! (but less frantically mental), part-Tom Robinson (but nestle in amongst the instrumentation better) and at times part-Morrissey (but less disdain/depression/apathy–inducing). The backing vocals add a succession of rising "aaah"s to the chorus, which lend the song an epic-like-Dante's-Divine-Comedy-not-like-Doves feel; they're almost dæmonic.

The guitar hook pops up half-way through the chorus, and reappears between the first chorus and the second verse. After the second chorus the lead-up to the bridge is a lot quieter, led by a legato vocal line (of "oooh"s) with the bass playing a take on the hook.

In the bridge and final chorus the accompaniment goes at full pelt, and escalates with added hi-hats and increasingly frantic bass half-way through the bridge. The lead singer (presumably the Firefly bloke, since his name's first) comes closest to unrestraint during the last chorus (prompting accusations of Morrissiness).

A ten-second guitar solo carries the song to its climax, before returning to the hook to close the song.

Now try whistling it. If you download one song this week, make it Animator. Stay tuned.

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(This entry was originally published on Last.fm.)

“I Bet You Find Life Hard to Live with” (the 2006-11-04 Saturday Fetch-it)

Shack Up is dead funky. It begins with bass, percussion, some sultry breaths and clip-clop sounds going off left, right and centre, forming a funk bassline. That's how it sounds, but on closer inspection all of the various unidentifiable noises are intentional – they're repeated two bars later. Gradually a guitar joins in, and then the funk escalates, and then it escalates again.

This is the first twenty seconds.

They're twenty of the grooviest seconds I can recall hearing, and I've heard Pick Up the Pieces. As Camille starts singing, the funkstruments seem to briefly recoil a little as if accommodating her. As the verse progresses they're joined by what sound like (and what I'm gonna choose to refer to as) panpipes, playing a simple tune over the top.

During the instrumental break, which essentially serves as a chorus, the guitar and panpipes play off each other in call-and-response style, with the panpipes carrying the lead melody. They sit out the first couple of lines in the second verse and the funkstrumentation again minimises to accommodate Camille. Of course, when it all resumes it's groovier than ever.

At the end of the second instrumental break, a few disco-style twinkles “conclude” the song and prompt the obligatory applause. Yep, false ending. The funk beat resumes, backed with general breathiness from Camille, and almost seems to peter out before a reprise of the first verse kicks in, funked up to the max.

Throughout, the notes the panpipes hit are often jazzily distorted or discordant, in fact the whole thing has a certain jazziness about it, complementing Camille's voice. Her vocals are half-whispered, half-moaned, increasingly so throughout the song. During the second verse, her “shack up”s (which, in Banbarra's original and A Certain Ratio's more famous cover, were a response to the lead vocal's call) descend to a whisper, but by the song's conclusion are emphatic.

Add to this miscellaneous breaths and the occasional whispered “shack up” and the whole thing exudes sultry.

It's not bossa nova. If you download one song this week, Shack Up, baby. Stay tuned.

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(This entry was originally published on Last.fm. It later transpired that the singer was someone other than Camille.)