Hard to pick a fave from Zuzu’s recent stuff but for today I’m going to go with Lie To Myself for skillfully, and perfectly, getting the lyric “that was a dick move” into a slice of indie pop perfection.
Anyway. Go listen to Zuzu. They’re great.
Tag: Perfect Songs
I realise I’m probably the only person on the planet who listens to The Anvil on quite the regular basis but I can live with that.
Whilst I reckon The Damned Don’t Cry is far and away the strongest song on there, I’ve long had a love of Look What They’ve Done To Me. Amongst other things, it sits really nicely next to Ultravox’s Lament on a mixtape/playlist, tried and tested since the eighties and still works for me now.
Whilst I still struggle to listen to the third album, the Visage stuff from just before Steve Strange passed away is some remarkably excellent new romantic stuff and well worth a listen if you haven’t given it a go. Shameless Fashion especially is solid pop gold and every bit as strong a pop record as Fade To Grey and deserves to be remembered as such.
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Been having a bit of a grumpy old time of it these past few weeks so time to crack out the big guns.
Madonna Of The Wasps is one of three Hitchcock numbers that never fails to cheer me up (for the record: Heaven and Ted, Woody And Junior are the other two).
Honourable mention to Neko Case whose cover version works the exact same magic.
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Not the theme song to the once popular soap opera (though I suppose that was alright as a signal that it would be safe to use the phone in half an hour), the song from Liverpool’s finest – Shack.
Mick Head’s one of the few performers who can nail kitchen sink drama as song, whether that’s about itching for drugs, looking to buy drugs, taking drugs… I’m half joking, half not. Obviously there’s a lot of songs about drugs in his oeuvre but there’s also the most wonderful ordinariness, Shack songs are working class songs, they’re Liverpool songs, they’re songs about your neighbours, songs about football, tea, bondage, being somewhere.
‘Comedy’ got me through homelessness, Neighbours is their finest tho.
There’s a frustration to Neighbours that I don’t think I’ve ever heard in any other song. The scream midway offers no release from the humdrum, from the checking the window. It just is.
That’s where Shack shine – music that just is. It’s wonderful stuff.
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Our Time In Eden is peak 10,000 Maniacs for me, some tremendous jangly folk tinged stuff there and what an album for Nathalie Merchant to bow out on.
However, as much as I love it as a coherent album, it’s Don’t Talk from In My Tribe that’s been getting me through this week.
Between the jangle, the thunderous drums and Merchant’s voice, the incredibly vivid lyrics, it’s just a complete ooooh of a song. Gets me every single time.
Did have a moment of “gosh, is it really that old now?” but given last week seems a lifetime away in 2020, understandable really.
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Every single song on Miya Folick’s “Premonitions” is solid pop gold. It opens strong with Thingamajig and somehow, incredibly, gets better and better as it goes on. To the point where picking one song as best seems utterly rude.
I’m going with Stock Image today though because right this second, it’s my favourite track. Ask me again in five minutes and I’ll no doubt have changed my mind. Even writing this, I’m sitting here thinking “No, wait, Baby Girl? Dead Body? Cost Your Love!” which means I best have a listen to the album again. Again.
That chorus tho. Bloody hell.
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One of my favourite things about Paul Simpson’s work post The Care is how it teeters perpetually on the brink of cabaret. The Worst Year Of My Life especially sounds like the sort of thing you’d hear whilst passing a pub during karaoke hour and I adore it for that.
But it’s not a perfect song, that’s Bringing Home The Ashes. Ashes is still borderline cabaret but it somehow transcends that into the sublime. It’s very Liverpool indie, albeit tuxedo’d up. It’s great.