“You’re the Cables that Connect Me” (the 2009-02-13 Friday Fetch-it)

A couple of years ago, Swedish record label Labrador released a summer sampler of gargantuan proportions. A lot of those 68 songs are unremarkable (though none is truly awful).

But I keep coming back to Chasing Dorotea's unabashedly romantic The Anchor Song.

Part of the song's charm is its simplicity: two voices singing mostly in unison, backed by an acoustic guitar, with a harmonica decorating the space around the verses.

The singers exude tranquillity and relaxation, right from “You've got a sparkle in your eyes, stronger than the brightest sun”. Even the instruments seem carefree as they ebb and flow amongst the vocals.

But the real joy is in the lyrics' endless river of metaphors and fond exaggerations.

This song is guaranteed to leave you with a lower blood pressure, a subdued heartbeat and a wistful smile. If you download one song this week, make it The Anchor Song.

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(How do you follow that? Something slightly more lively but equally lovely: “Spring Came, Rain Fell” by Club 8, from the same sampler.)

“You Wrote Your Number on My Hand & It Came Off in the Rain” (the 2008-02-29 Friday Fetch-it)

For ages, all I knew of the Mystery Jets was “You Can't Fool Me, Dennis”; and that one of the band members was one of the other ones's dad. But Young Love, their new single (even though I usually steer clear of recommending those), is the epitome of English pop.

The bassline it kicks off with is simple, but with a definite twang to it. From here, the song launches straight into a chorus, through which weaves a guitar line that complements the wry vocals, seemingly skipping along beside them.

The verses are underpinned instrumentally by strong, marching drums; and a bassline that rises and falls, dancing around the vocals. Shimmering guitar crescendos also make an appearance every so often. Half-way through, some backing vocals chip in, contributing staccato, fey “aah”s on the offbeats; they become legato (but remain fey) in the second chorus and start alternating between “ooh” and “ahh”.

At this point, the song's punctuated by a bridge: off-kilter clangs herald successive choruses of “woawoawoaw, woawoawoa-ooo!” and crescendos of those marching drumbeats; until the verse re-emerges—and brings current indie-folk up-and-comer Laura Marling with it.

Laura Marling's voice is the poshest this side of Sophie Ellis-Bextor. It's ably escorted by the rising-and-falling, dancing guitar line; marching drums; and finger-clicks, provided in the video by the disembodied hands of three off-screen Mystery Jets.

After a final chorus featuring Laura singing an alto counter-melody, the song arrives at another bridge, and this is where it concludes—no chorus repeat (aptly enough, I feel like I'm repeating myself here) and no fade-out: an extended bridge and then stop. This is the mark of a durable pop song: it leaves you only 90% satisfied rather than outstaying its welcome. Moreover, the guest vocalist actually feels like a guest for a change, instead of an ill-advised attempt at a full duet.

The song's lyrics comprise rhyming couplets that, with plenty of hyperbole, depict their protagonist hopelessly in love with a fleeting acquaintance. Despite being pretty straightforward in structure, they simultaneously manage to be poetically vivid and immensely catchy: “Is that you on the bus? is that you on the train? / You wrote your number on my hand and it came off in the rain” is definitely couplet of the week.

But it never seems twee, like a lot of Scando-Scottish indie-popsters (seriously, who can tell Camera Obscura and the Concretes apart?)—the rattling drums and precise guitars prevent the sound from becoming syrupy. Earnest and foppish, yes: but not twee.

So it is quintessentially English pop music—not only due to Laura Marling's accent, but because of the attitude it exhibits: a combination of resigned exasperation but recklessly unremitting determination nonetheless. You'd not hear that from Belle & Seb.

It's the sort of song Hugh Grant would sing if only he wasn't so frightfully shy. If you download one song this week, make it Young Love.

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(How do you follow that? The “aah”s echo the Rakes' “We Danced Together” (an English band); the guitar and overall rhythm, (English) Field Music's “A House Is Not A Home”; and the bridge—annoyingly—“This Fffire”, by Scandinavian-produced Scots Franz Ferdinand.)

“I Did Your Wife a Favour” (the 2008-01-11 Friday Fetch-it)

Melancholy is a subtle mood. There are lots of songs I find uplifting and essentially happy, that other people think are morose, sad and a general downer. So, depending on which half of the glass you prefer to focus on, Winter Killing could go either way.

It begins abruptly—not “Decent Days And Nights” abruptly, but abruptly nonetheless: there's no intro (strictly, there are 1½ beats before Stina Nordenstam starts singing—hardly an intro) and the song arrives fully-formed.

The intimate electric guitar line (which acts as a bassline despite being much further up in the register) and percussive rhythm that form the song's backbone are present right from the start, as are Stina's vocals. Her vocals are distinctive: close-mic'ed, quiet and understated, with a breathiness and an accent that tend to knit the words together in a slur; her vocals are almost drawled.

When the chorus arrives for the first time, the accompaniment does little to acknowledge that this is actually the chorus; the few extra sparkles are subtle. It doesn't have to do much—the lyrics drop back and let the instruments take over, while still asserting themselves by their repetition.

The lyrics seem to speak warmly of togetherness: “you're safer with me here”. Then, after three of those affirmations and half a minute in that frame of mind, the punchline comes with a wry smile: “and you there”.

As understated as the chorus is, it's still a grooveable sing-, hum- and foot-tap-along, largely thanks to that percussive rhythm, which could easily be transplanted into an upbeat dance-pop tune. (In fact it's very reminiscent of the rhythm underpinning “5 Years” by Björk.)

The second verse retains most of the embellishments from the chorus, and has a bigger feel to it than the first verse. Conversely, though, it's only half as long before launching into another chorus. This second chorus is the song's fully-rounded “complete” sound that you'll be singing back to yourself next time you hear the first chorus—forgetting how restrained most of Winter Killing is.

As with much of the rest of the album, The World Is Saved (and “Parliament Square” is a particularly good example of this), it's the accompaniment's instrumental flourishes that really make the song—here a jazz-influenced, echo-y piano counter-melody most evident in the second chorus.

A modified, dampened third verse takes the place of a middle 8. When the chorus returns it too is subdued and adds a note of fragility: “I'm safer with me here”. The music does kick back in, but only fleetingly, and after the bulk of the words have passed.

Perhaps it's just the title, but Winter Killing does bring winter to my mind. Each piano note is a tiny white light peeking through the leaves of a tree; that percussive rhythm is the sound of snow cracking underfoot; the jangling bells are flurries of snow falling beneath a streetlight or, well, jangling bells. If there were a video for Winter Killing, Stina would be wearing a woolly hat and gloves, with her breath crystallising as she sings.

Throughout, it feels frosty and minimal—not in a white-cube zen–type way; more in that it sounds completely un-produced, or perhaps un-overproduced. There's no wall of sound, no pithy vocal effects and no overdubs. And there's certainly no big, celebratory, radio-friendly, stadium-rocking chorus repeat. In fact, there aren't even any backing vocals: perhaps that's what gives Winter Killing (and the rest of The World Is Saved) such an air of intimacy. There's nothing lacking, but equally nothing excessive. It's not laden with grandeur, pretension or ego.

It's as if she's taken the skeleton of a song and added individual notes, each glistening, until it's just beautiful enough. If you download one song this week, make it Winter Killing.

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(How do you follow that? I'm still not really sure. It's the mood of “Hotel” by Broken Social Scene married to the rhythm of “5 Years” by Björk (plus a smattering of frost), so those two go well. “Leaving the City” by Róisín Murphy has lyrics that actually follow and make sense, and the style of Stina's vocals is even (sort-of) echoed in the breathiness of Róisín's. “Rewrite” by Sia also follows it nicely, as does “Waiting” by Cibelle.)

“It’s Forgetting that would Beat it All” (the 2007-11-23 Friday Fetch-it)

“So Much Trouble” (by Matt Pond PA) has surprisingly little in the way of chorus…-age, for what's otherwise a very straightforwardly upbeat, cheery pop song. I just noticed that recently.

Maybe it's because it's so generally singalong-able throughout that you don't notice the choruslessness. And there's extensive bridge…-iness, which sounds rather like a chorus in most songs would (“I don't think I want to think about it”—that bit); but it definitely approximates the tune of a verse, with a little bit more tension and less resolution in the voice.

(Hey, let's assume the guy singing is actually called Matt Pond, whether or not this is really the case. You can never properly tell with ostensibly-eponymous bands.)

… So it's not a chorus. The chorus starts “You're in so much trouble; you can't hide in your covers”—it even has the title in it. (Yeah, I know, but lyrics almost always sound silly taken out of the music.) And that bit only occurs once, right at the start (well, after the first verse).

Then there are four—count 'em: four—bridge-like bits: they alternate between the bit I called the bridge earlier (and shall continue to so call); and another bit (with the words “We don't want to make mistakes”) to which I could dryly refer as “the second bridge”, but shall instead dub “the tunnel”. Not only does this make for a pleasing automotive-architecture–based pun, it's also kind of apt: bridges and tunnels are often one and the same thing, appear together and complement each other.

I digress. In the middle of the two bridge-and-tunnel pairs there's an instrumental break, where the song slows to a dawdle. It's as if Matt Pond and his merry posse of accompaniment-ists (collectively known as “PA”) have been sauntering along in an autumnal park and gradually and pensively come to a halt while they decide which way to go next. (Maybe Matt Pond just has a personal assistant to help him with all the music?)

Anyhow, they end up deciding to carry on in the same direction, but have somehow returned to where they were a full minute ago. (Maybe they were going in circles?) This time, however, they have a few extra deep, reassuring guitar tones as companions, and the journey's a lot more familiar—despite not being a verse or a chorus.

It soon transpires that the verse was just the other side of a hedge all along (metaphor becoming tenuous, I know), and it's back sooner than expected, with a couple of extra drum flourishes for effect. There's even a glimmer of hope for the chorus, as this new verse borrows some of its lyrics.

Another contemplative pause later (will this song ever gain any momentum?), the bridge returns in full swing; by now it's grown up into a chorus in its own right. Nonetheless, it soon gives way to the chorus-proper, the first half of which—only—repeats satisfyingly.

Loath to satiate, though, the song ends on a minor note. It's as if they want you to play it again.

If you download one song this week, make it So Much Trouble—it's like a wistful stroll through an autumnal park (with a personal assistant).

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(How do you follow that? Try “Don't Falter” by Mint Royale & Lauren Laverne.)

“Necessity Conquers Fear” (the 2007-10-26 Friday Fetch-it)

I was going to do my usual shtick of describing what the vocals and instruments do, and when they come in, and how they come out of nowhere and sound wonderful, and all of that—after making a general point about a particular musical technique and using that to introduce the song.

But it wouldn't really have done the song justice—musically, at least, it's not revolutionary (though there are some beats nestled in amongst the instrumentation that wouldn't sound out of place on Homogenic), but that's not the point. Yes, it's a piano that happens to convey a lot of the warmth; again, not the point. And that synth line coming out of each chorus (or serving as its second half) is just lovely—not really the point. The point:

“Don't Lose Yourself” by Laura Veirs is simply beautiful.

Though it's impossible not to enjoy on a visceral level (lest your soul be judged stony and dead), the song's also blessed with intelligence. There are a full four verses (though the second half of the last segués into the final chorus): each and every line would have made a good title for the album, or for this entry, or for some other blog post, or for a personal blog, or for an episode of a TV programme; if “Tiger Ointment and the Cosmic Collision” isn't an actual band in ten years' time, I may have to start one.

The lyrics aren't particularly complex, however—every fourth line usually completes a simple rhyme, and that's about it. They're just inventive and thoughtful and good. So intriguing are the verses' lyrics, and so good is the accompanying groove, the words in the chorus don't need to extend beyond Don't lose yourself; don't let yourself be lost. Anyone can sing along with that.

Through most of “Don't Lose Yourself”, Laura's voice is actually a bit deadpan—she sings simply and without affectation. Her singing's only punctuated by the backing briefly dropping before launching into the second chorus.

But at the end, right where you'd expect a fifth verse, the chorus's instrumental groove instead continues, and Laura comes in with a lyric-less vocal—the type that may well have been ad-libbed—as the song fades away. It's clearly a heartfelt expression of emotion (and not a showing-off exercise), quiet and understated enough to be missed by those not paying attention (or with the volume too low).

Just that little, quiet sound perfectly conveys the elation I feel listening to this song. If you download one song this week, make it Don't Lose Yourself. Then smile.

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(How do you follow that? Try “Can't Be Sure” (from Reading, Writing and Arithmetic) by the Sundays.)

“It’s in the Eyes of the Beholder” (the 2007-09-28 Friday Fetch-it)

Over the course of the last fifteen years, the Cardigans have covered genres ranging from bubblegum pop (“Carnival”, “Lovefool”) via subdued, smouldering indie (“My Favourite Game”, “Erase/Rewind”) to country (“For What It's Worth”). Most of the 2005 album Super Extra Gravity falls into the latter category; but a couple of tracks stand out.

The gloriously-named “I Need Some Fine Wine And You, You Need To Be Nicer”—the album's lead single—is a medium-paced all-out rock tune, a near-perfect example of what I keep referring to as “driving rock”; as such, it shares little in common with anything else on the album-proper.

But then there're the bonus tracks—songs that half-count as part of the album and half-don't, depending on who you ask or which country your copy comes from. Elusive little buggers.

Super Extra Gravity actually includes a track entitled “Bonus Tracks” (if you buy it in the UK, at least)—a twenty-second ditty consisting substantially of footsteps approaching what turns out to be a harpsichord (or, y'know, something that sounds like what I think a harpsichord sounds like), upon which a short tune is played, culminating in a chorus of voices emphatically intoning the title. I'm not recommending this—I haven't gone that outlandish yet—but the next bit:

“Give Me Your Eyes” begins unassumingly with a rising wind noise (which briefly implies a continuation of the weirdness of “Bonus Tracks”) followed by a cautious acoustic guitar verse that ends on a ponderous rising note (I think it's called a seventh). And then all hell breaks loose: a brash, cyclical electric-guitar rhythm dominates what's nominally a restatement of the introductory guitar verse, and leads into sixteen loud, relentless drumbeats.

So this is unbridled rock—by now there's no doubt about it. Throughout the first verse the bassline builds up an amount of tension, slowly alternating between two nearby notes; into the chorus there's a cathartic screech of feedback, diffusing the tension and allowing the chorus itself to proceed unencumbered.

The end of the chorus is punctuated by another set of sixteen drumbeats, before continuing full-speed into the second verse; the song's filled out by now and there's less of the first verse's tension. The calmly aggressive tone of Nina Persson's voice, along with the instrumentation's insistence, lends a dash of the sinister at the end of that verse—when she sings “it's in the eyes of the beholder, now give 'em to me” it occurs to you that she might actually mean “give me your eyes” literally—!

Halfway through the second chorus, the song neatly veers off towards a fairly straightforward middle eight, followed by another set of drumbeats leading into the breakdown. This bit's pretty standard too—a quietly-accompanied verse that introduces a speedy synopsis of the entire song. It borrows the chorus's lyrics for its second half and leads to a half-length reprise of the chorus. The chorus ascends into a solo, culminating in that brash guitar cycle (Nina sings along too); and those damn drumbeats bash the song out of existence.

On paper, it's actually quite a conventional song, and it's hard to compellingly describe a song that distinguishes itself in its execution, rather than by a spark of compositional cleverness—this is why recordings by bands have superseded sheet music. If you download one song this week, make it Give Me Your Eyes.

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(I'm guessing this was written and recorded too late to make the album-proper, and that's why it's a bonus track; if that's the case and this is an indication of the style of the next album, said album will rock.)

(How do you follow that? Let's say “Chemistry” by Semisonic (since I already mentioned “Memorize The City” a while ago)).

“Pour Salt into that Wound of Yours” (the 2007-08-31 Friday Fetch-it)

I don't really know how to go about recommending Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by CC & the Spades (which partially explains the large gap since the last entry and why the following isn't my usual neatly-structured, eloquent prose)—I don't know why I like the song so much. I know that I do like it. And I think that's because it's damn good, but I can't be sure.

Incidentally, I don't usually recommend songs that I discovered on another music blog, my logic being that if I found it, you could too. But this was a full year ago, and the band still have well under five hundred listens on Last.fm. (They've now accrued 59 hits on Google, but 17 of them are me).

There are two versions (that I'm aware of): the original, rough demo version—which is what I'm mainly writing about—and a vastly tidied-up version, which uses a slightly different lyric and adds some extra guitar bits. (That one's presently on CC & the Spades' MySpace page.)

The song basically comprises vocals, guitar, bass and drums. It's fairly straightforward by my standards—there are no weird time signatures and no clever rhythms; it doesn't suddenly shift sideways; it's not less than a minute long and it's not seventeen minutes long; there are no wacky instruments and no macho guitar acrobatics. (I wouldn't recommend bringing it home to meet your grandma, though—it uses the “fuck” word.)

Where the tidier version finishes with a long-held strum, the demo version stops on a drumbeat, as abruptly as it started—its departure smacks you in the face as much as its arrival did. There's no particular melody or even rhythm to the vocals in the chorus—it's almost as if CC's improvising the vocals here.

In fact the whole song is very rough, unpolished and raw: a lot of the time the microphone can't quite contain CC's voice; the bass guitar (which plays up in almost the same register as the lead) is noticeably off-rhythm during the choruses and I think it hits the wrong note at the start of the instrumental towards the end.

It's this sort of coarse sincerity that defined punk. If you download one song this week, make it Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

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(That link is to the rough, demo version as an MP3; it was on their MySpace profile for a while, but the tidier version replaced it.)

(How do you follow that? Usually with the same song again... or 8 Hours (also by CC & the Spades; see eashfa to download that too). More usefully, perhaps: Swimmers by Broken Social Scene follows the demo version particularly nicely.)

“Under a Sinking Sun” (the 2007-06-22 Friday Fetch-it)

One review of The Deep Blue claimed that Charlotte Hatherley does “a spot-on impersonation of the Sundays' Harriet Wheeler” in the first half of Roll Over (Let It Go). This isn't quite true; but she does do a spot-on impersonation of herself singing very nicely. (The way she sings “lover” and “harbour” makes me want to hump her.) Charlotte's usually better at angular (Lazy Use of a Popular Musical Adjective #1) guitar-pop-punk-rock than at lush dream-pop. Even in Roll Over her “sha-la-la”s and “ooh”s don't bed into the instrumentation fully enough to match up to the Sundays or the Cocteau Twins: however soft the vocals' surfaces are, they still have sharp edges.

Hidden tracks—meanwhile—are generally a bit rubbish: they're the recorded equivalent of leaving the stage for a minute or two, before returning to perform—surprise!—an encore. Supposedly “hidden” tracks are even easier to see coming: enter track length display. Nonetheless, there's the obligatory minute or two of silence after the last song-proper, to fool you into thinking the album's over... as well as to royally screw up shuffled playlists and mix discs. Only if you leave the thing alone, either by the serendipity of sheer laziness, or by taking keen notice of the fact that it's still playing, may you bask in the bounty of the hidden track. ...which is usually about half a minute long and fades out just as it starts to resemble a decent song. Not so on The Deep Blue.

The last track, Siberia, ends with an improv-y crescendo of guitar and piano that gives way to a final guitar loop; six iterations later, the loop drops abruptly to silence. It's a strong conclusion to an album that never loses momentum throughout, despite many changes of pace and mood.

Two minutes of silence ensue.

Two minutes—that's a long time.

It's probably taken you about that long to read this far.

The silence draws you in. It makes you listen more carefully, in case there's something quiet going on that you're otherwise missing.

Silence is far more potent than leaving a large break in text—you can just read faster, skip over a blank page in the space of a second or two.

It makes you wonder: when will the silence be broken? And by what? And when it is broken, it makes the sound that breaks it that much more profound.

Two minutes of silence.

After two minutes, Siberia and the rest of the album are a fond memory rather than a present experience, and what follows stands separately from the album.

All momentum has now ceased.

Out of the silence springs a quiet guitar, at times reverberating like a sonar pulse; accompanied by a slow, almost occasional, soft drumbeat. By this point it sounds like it could be your heartbeat. After a little while a deep, resonating, warm acoustic guitar joins; and then Charlotte's singing.

Those sharp edges in her voice are entirely engulfed by the rich, expansive acoustic guitar and the other sonance swirling around her. There's the occasional glugging sound, probably produced on a xylophone, but sounding more like air escaping from an underwater cove, or a seahorse scarpering as a pebble falls towards it.

Three minutes in, although it feels like about half that, the rich swirls of sound die down, returning to the more minimal arrangement of the intro. It's at this point—if not before—that lesser hidden tracks would just have faded out, and you half-expect this intro arrangement to be the song's conclusion.

Instead, the same intro riff acquires the accompaniment of the deep acoustic guitar and a violin, which plays a legato, swaying, floating line. The violin stays around while the main, warm riff resumes and Charlotte sings another chorus.

Again, she's accompanied by the same swirling sonance, with the addition of the reverberating whooshes of a couple of passing space-dolphins. (Lost In Time could be described as the musical analogue to Ecco the Dolphin 2: The Tides of Time on the Mega-Drive.)

The guitar riff from the intro concludes the song with the full resonant lushness of the song's body, and the acoustic guitar resonates into silence.

This is dream-pop. If you download one song this week, make it Lost In Time.

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(How do you follow that? With Death Cock by Broken Social Scene Hjertebarn by Under byen. Or, preferably, another two minutes of silence.)

Previously on the Friday Fetch-it...

Once upon a time, there lived a music recommendation blog called the Friday Fetch-it. It lived in the magical land of Last.fm, where it spent its days frolicking with its friends surrounded by pink social-musicky goodness.

But then, after a few months of pink! pink! other stuff! things that aren't the blog!, the Friday Fetch-it found itself increasingly confined by all the other pink stuff flying about around it, and it decided to move out of its parents' house and get a job.

No job later, the Friday Fetch-it finds itself uprooted from its familiar, old, pink (did I mention that Last.fm is pink?) pot and planted in a new, bigger, less-pink pot... like a plant being replanted... by a gardener who represents a poor metaphor.

Anyhow: so as not to forget its old life in Pinksville, the Friday Fetch-it made a list on itself (because it's a blog, remember (this anthropomorphised-blog business gets confusing sometimes)) of all the old posts. And in time-honoured story-referencing-itself and effect-preceding-cause fashion, this is that very list:

(This bit's the montage of quick shots of the characters emoting and/or in action-packed situations, overlaid with snippets of dialogue, that goes some way to explaining what happened last week when you forgot to set the video:)

1. the 2006-04-14 Friday Fetch-it, in which the Friday Fetch-it was introduced and I recommended Slits Grapevine
2. the 2006-04-21 Friday Fetch-it, in which I recommended Area
3. the 2006-04-29 Saturday Fetch-it, in which I recommended By The Water
4. the 2006-05-05 Friday Fetch-it, in which I recommended The Big Sky
5. the 2006-05-12 Friday Fetch-it, in which I recommended Shoreline
6. the 2006-05-19 Friday Fetch-it, in which I recommended Can't Hurry Love
7. the 2006-05-26 Friday Fetch-it, in which I recommended Pioneers Remixed
8. the 2006-06-06 Tuesday Fetch-it, in which I recommended Love In The Making
9. the 2006-06-09 Friday Fetch-it, in which I recommended Iwe
10. the 2006-06-23 Friday Fetch-its, in which I recommended Set The Fire & La Rit
11. the 2006-07-07 Friday Fetch-its, in which I recommended Confide In Me & Colours
12. the 2006-07-14 Friday Fetch-it, in which I recommended Poison
13. the 2006-10-15 Sunday Fetch-it, in which I recommended Give Me Strength
14. the 2006-10-20 Friday Fetch-it, in which I recommended Rush Hour
15. the 2006-10-29 Sunday Fetch-it, in which I recommended Memorize
16. the 2006-11-04 Saturday Fetch-it, in which I recommended Shack Up
17. the 2006-11-11 Saturday Fetch-it, in which I recommended Animator
18. the 2006-11-17 Friday Fetch-it, in which I recommended Whirlwind
19. the 2006-11-25 Saturday Fetch-it, in which I recommended ¡12!

(Cue the title sequence.)

“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.)

“You Threw Pennies In and Wished” (the 2006-10-29 Sunday Fetch-it)

Memorize the City begins with electric guitar jangle, backed with electric organ chords, which is soon joined by hi-hats and then bass as the song gets up to speed. Katie Sketch's vocals are subdued and effortless – she's clearly not setting out to prove anything. The tune is quite simple; it doesn't hurry from one note to the next. This dwelling on one note really drums the words in.

During the chorus the vocals remain subdued, and only occasionally stray from a single, insistent note. The guitar carries the main melody, with the singing and the bass each assuming a different counter-melody.

Coming out of the chorus, the second verse uses a different melody to the first and sounds more like an addendum to the chorus. By half-way through the second verse, the tune has rejoined that of the first verse. Again the lyrics are punched in at the end of the second verse, with almost mechanical determination. Sketch tersely sings "...more. More. More. More." leading into the warm guitar melody of the chorus.

The bridge reassumes the tune of the second verse, as the organ provides an extra melody and the lead guitar hammers out a rhythm very reminiscent of Fingers in the Factories. The guitar, organ and drums build to a crescendo and then subside, giving way to the lead guitar and an instrumental chorus.

Unusually, the instrumental feels more agreeable and has less tension than the sung choruses. Reduced to just the primary melody and without Katie's brooding vocals, it evokes less hostility. To cap it off, there are tambourine shakes and handclaps on every other line, but shrewdly not on all of them. I don't know why, but somehow it seems better that they're absent from the second and fourth lines.

As the lyrics come full-circle, the guitar, organ and vocals combine to lead the song up to its pounding conclusion.

Handclaps. If you download one song this week, make it Memorize. Stay tuned.

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

“In Your Eyes that Certain Shine” (the 2006-10-20 Friday Fetch-it)

I can't figure out why I like Rush Hour quite so much. It uses the same driving 8-beat throughout; the chord progression is bog-standard; the instruments are probably all synthesised; the lyrics aren't particularly inventive or clever; Jane Wiedlin's vocals are nice, but not astounding; you can spot the guitar solo a mile off; and at the end it just repeats to fade.

In fact it's almost stereotypical of a 1980s pop song.

But it is impeccably produced. At no point does either the singing or the backing sound at all jarring or contrived. The entire song flows seamlessly from one part to the next, largely due to the way the vocals spill over from one bar into the next. So by the time the song finishes, you don't realise you've just spent the last four minutes listening to it.

And Jane's singing is nice – very nice – without sounding sugar-coated; her personality hasn't been overproduced away.

And she played Joan of Arc in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure – what more could you want? If you download one song this week, make it Rush Hour. Stay tuned.

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

“Something’s Drawn Me Here Again” (the 2006-10-15 Sunday Fetch-it)

There's drama in Give Me Strength right from the outset. In the intro the droning chords, simple drumbeat and ominous electric guitar riff set up an intense atmosphere, which is maintained by the grungy guitar strums that lead into the verse.

Dischordant, eerie electronic warbles appear amongst the brooding guitars and vocals, half-way through the first verse and again at the end. Going into the bridge they give way to rumbling guitar, joined in the chorus by lurking, offbeat percussion, that sounds like steel drums heard through an unnaturally heavy fog.

All of this accompaniment is offset by Over the Rhine's usual country-esque singing. The vocals come to the fore going into the second chorus, when the instrumental melody recedes, its echo lingering, as a swirling ambience swells to engulf the resonating vocals. All of this noise is carried into and throughout the second chorus. It all disappears in an instant as the final line is sung, a cappella, and resonates into the silence.

When I first heard the song, I thought it was Dido singing; it's not, but she does share a writing credit.

So she's not entirely awful. If you download one song this week, make it Give Me Strength. Stay tuned.

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

“Up Her Dosage” (the 2006-07-14 Friday Fetch-it)

Poison conjures up an image of a stark, white room in a futuristic hospital; in which, on a white cuboid table, Gigi Edgley reclines and is inspected as alien by the bespectacled, plummy-voiced retro-sci-fi staff, much to her amusement.

The first minute is dominated by this staff's mostly-impenetrable dialogue, textured with Gigi's breaths and the throbbing hums of background machinery. This use of quaint spoken voice samples is quite reminiscent of Just Give 'em Whiskey.

After a minute this gives way to the actual song; its backbone is an almost ambient, liquid combination of hi-hat, synth, bass, a funk-infused pseudo-guitar line, some eerie whistling, and miscellaneous blips, whirs, breaths and distortion, all of which wouldn't sound out of place in The X-Files.

Gigi's vocals are breathy and sensual; their layering is æthereal and eludes to a fantastical dislocation from reality, with an accompanying inquisitiveness. The instrumentation – especially the mutedness of the grunge-guitar towards the end – reinforces this.

By the time the voices re-emerge four minutes in, the whole thing is sounding very much like a drug-induced altered state of conciousness, and eventually descends into catatonic incoherence.

Yeah, her out of Farscape. If you download one track this week, make it Poison. Stay tuned.

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

“I View from Afar” / “Once I Have Found the Words” (the 2006-07-07 Friday Fetch-its)

I often bang on about songs building tension; here that shall be mostly implicit. Confide in Me begins ponderously, almost coming to a halt twice in the first minute. In the first prelude, the sweeping strings and vocals lend an air of tragedy, and the minor-key piano suggests drama. The sound of distorted voices, as if coming over a radio, suggests some sort of concealment or conspiracy, especially since it's so quiet, hardly noticeable. The whole thing feels nocturnal.

After the first pause the second prelude uses none of the same instrumental pieces. Here the piano is major-key, there's an electric guitar flourish in the background, and although the muted voices remain, they no longer sound sinister – more like a conversation. (You can see where this is going, can't you?) This bit sounds like a dawn to the first prelude's night. Or perhaps each is the introduction of a character, the first the confider, the second the confidant. (It's all very GCSE English.)

The intro-proper begins after the other pause and the main string loop begins, full of anticipation. The drumbeat kicks in and flecks of detuned, slightly Asian-sounding plucked strings appear. The verses' vocals are sung almost in a whisper, growing to a sweeping, strings-like, almost operatic legato for the chorus.

As the song progresses, chanting of “confide in me”, “and then you'll see” and some other lyric I can't make out is added to the chorus parts, bringing extra urgency with it. Those flecks of plucked strings increase to a full-blown instrumental part, almost taking the lead towards the end.

Throughout the song there are spots of other sounds; in the verses, more noticeable in the second, there are little whirs and clunks of distortion that remind me of The Blue Room EP. There's even a bit of funk guitar under the Asianesque string solo after the second chorus. And at times the electric guitar hints at Hendrixianism (I just made that word up now – good, isn't it?). The whole song is very much a layered piece.

In the last minute-and-a-half, the plucked strings' repetitious, urgent pseudo–ad libbing (while slightly gratuitous); the main string loop's insistent repetition; the legato lead vocal; and the background chanting; all combine to build tension towards the end, when all the instrumentation comes to a head and drops, leaving the lead vocal to close the song.

Yes, I am recommending a Kylie Minogue song. If you download one track last week... Wait a sec – I did that joke last time.

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Colours is quite typical of Editors. It begins with drums and several guitars forming a driving rhythm and a repeating riff, with a little bit of a screech at the end. Few notes are used and small sections are repeated, hammering them into the listener.

The vocals are typically minimal – few and repeated. And the lyrics are also quite typical – “You mean a lot to me, you've got a heart of gold” and “You are the colour, my dear” are the sort of nonsense Tom Smith often comes out with, to great effect.

So the first two minutes proceed pretty much like any other Editors song. Then after the brief pause at the end of the second chorus, the driving rhythm disappears. The repeating riff that replaces it verges on the socks-off-knockingly good. It's particularly long among Editors riffs, and its 3-3-3-3-2-2 rhythm lends it a striking complexity. The drumming that backs it is minimalistic but distinctive.

Not to dwell on this wonder-riff for too long, after two iterations Tom's vocals re-emerge, overlaying it with “Fill your life with something else, baby”. The two parts carry the song whilst the bass, drums and vocals all gradually intensify. Half a minute before the end, the wonder-riff makes way for a good old-fashioned cymbal-thrashing, still in 3-3-3-3-2-2 rhythm. It and the vocals take the song to its abrupt conclusion.

Even though there's such a schism between its two halves, somehow it all still holds together as one song. Don't ask me how.

If you download two tracks this week, make them Confide In Me and Colours. Stay tuned.

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

“There is No Peace that I’ve Found So Far” / “Drift In Your Eyes” (the 2006-06-23 Friday Fetch-its)

Fans of Breathe Me will like this. I don't know who wrote Set the Fire to the Third Bar, but it sounds to me like more of a Martha song than a Snow Patrol song. The lyrics are very personal – almost every line contains “I”, “you”, “we” or some variation thereof.

Its backbone is the combined vocal of Gary Lightbody and Martha Wainwright, but calling Set The Fire a duet is somewhat misleading. Here they both sing one vocal part together, rather than the more usual call-and-response format adopted by most duets. Their voices blend together impeccably; somehow both voices seem to stand out at the same time.

Fairly conventionally, the verses smoulder – the instruments and vocals are all quite subdued, as befits the tone of the lyrics – and then at the chorus the instrumentation swells and the lid comes off. The song's structure (two verses, a chorus, another verse, then two choruses) gives an overall sense of escalation.

For a song with such a sweeping, epic feel to it, it does seem a tiny bit brief at 3:23. Having said that, it's definitely good that they haven't dragged it out to unnecessary length. There's no long, protracted coda and no excessive chorus repeat; they stop as soon as the song's finished.

And because of its succinctness, you will want to hear it again. If you download one track last week... oh, hang on.

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La Ritournelle opens with just a piano, a drumkit and some subtle string backing. To these are soon added lots of sweeping strings, which if I was more knowledgeable I'd be able to identify as particular instruments; suffice it to say they all sound lovely.

The piano and strings take turns at providing the leading melody, through an incredibly natural chord progression until, before you know it, it nears the end of the fourth minute and the strings once more build to a climax. And then he starts singing.

The singing bit is backed by some funky electric bass, ever-so-slightly reminiscent of Lady (Hear Me Tonight). After only eight lines and forty-odd seconds, the strings once again take the lead, with the piano in tow. Over the next three minutes, the strings and then the piano quietly fade out, and the music comes to a gentle coda.

Amazingly, for a seven-and-a-half-minute piece of music – and especially such a simple piece of music, with no sudden twists and turns, and only eight lyrics – La Rit never seems stale. The music never seems to be standing still, nor going around in circles; it always sounds like it's going somewhere.

So this is a piece of music that repeats itself for seven and a half minutes, and yet doesn't repeat itself at all. Try figuring that one out.

If you download two tracks this week, make them Set The Fire and La Rit. Stay tuned.

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

“Change Before I Slip Away” (the 2006-06-09 Friday Fetch-it)

After a couple of agenda-setting chords, Iwe opens with a driving drumbeat topped by Shingai Shoniwa's smouldering vocals. As the music's urgency builds, Shingai's vocal delivery stays audibly restrained. At the chorus, the guitar, drums and vocals all erupt into an all-out rock frenzy. As the guitar fades into the second verse, Shingai slides back into tempered mode.

Throughout the second verse she slips effortlessly between menacing temperament and unrestrained screaming, at times dwarfing the instrumentation (which gains a couple of flourishes over the first verse), at times barely discernible above it. All the while the music builds in intensity, so that by the time the second chorus comes around, no change of volume or pace is needed going into it.

When the chorus reaches its natural conclusion, the music recedes to mellow chords that by now sound positively quiet. Naturally, Shingai's vocals catch up instantly. Melodiously, over a surprising chord progression, she repeats – she chants – “Iwe”. The rhythm guitar returns and, with the vocals, builds tension to a crescendo. After exhausting one last breath, Shingai leaves a classic rock guitar solo to conclude the song.

You could not want for a stronger vocal performance, nor better-suited accompaniment.

And no, I've no idea what “Iwe” means. If you download one track this week, make it Iwe. Stay tuned.

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