Weekly Listening

Various Artists - Worried Noodles

This is an interesting experiment. Poet and artist David Shrigley wrote 40 poems and asked 40 musicians to cover his songs. In theory this could be a disaster but when your artists range from T.V. on the Radio to Franz Ferdinand you know that the results will be good. Most of the time it does work, scarily well. It seems that each band had a lot of fun sculpting music and singing Shrigley's warped and slightly perverted poems. Some of the standouts include Final Fantasy, YACHT, David Bryne and No Kids ( a side project of the group P:ano). There are some stinkers as well, most of them on the second disc but this collection should be checked out.





Richard and Linda Thompson - Shoot out the Lights

This is an album with a history. In the late 70's Richard and Linda Thompson were recording an album with Gerry Rafferty and it was an absolute mess. The duo scrapped the album and gave their demos to Joe Boyd ( Nick Drake's producer) Apparently the Boyd sessions sparked a lot of of creative juices and some new songs were recorded as well.

Thus Shoot the Lights was made.

It is a great album of beefy folk rock songs, Richard Thompson is a first class lyricist and good guitarist and his wife Linda knew how complement his music. Although the couple were having marriage problems and the lyrics are riddled with that imagry, it is worth noting that the songs were written in the mid seventies when there weren't any problems between the couple ( at least according to interviews and the forthcoming 33 1/3 book on the album)

This is an album which balances power and fragility in a brief half hour and should make it's way in every collection or at least be heard.





Justice - Cross

Six months old and this album actually sounds better! Although sometimes it can be a bit rough, Justice's debut album is an action non stop barrage of rough sounds, blazing techno and the odd 80's squiggle. Fun fun fun




No age - Weirdo Rippers

Now these guys are AMAZING. A whirlwind of guitars, feedback and noise. Yet underneath all the scuzz there are melodies blasting out of every corner. Weirdo Rippers is just a collection of No Age's vinyl singles and a couple of new tracks. a band that shows a lot of promise.