Chartsengrafs (29/06/06)

Sunday just gone: Nelly Furtado stayed number one for a quietly impressive third week. Shakira climbed a further place to number two, as much through lack of competition as anything else, forcing Sandi Thom to three. "Supermassive Black Hole" did indeed outdo "Do Somethin'" at 4 (and a ha at John Earls' "Muse have always suffered comparisons - first to Radiohead, now to Britney" on PS today) with The Automatic completing the top 5.
Lower down in brief: equally surprisingly high entries at 8 for Lostprophets and 9 for The Zutons. Pussycat Dolls at 12, The bloody Kooks got 14 just on downloads, jesus, with "Naive" back up to 26 - go away already! I wish I hadn't given good news that it was about to a few weeks ago now! All American Rejects (18), Ne-Yo (21; downloads), Michael Jackson (22), Lupe Fiasco (29), Young Knives (38) and Editors (39) completed the list of new or sort of new top 40 entries.

Sunday coming: Nelly Furtado will still be there. Surely not another 9 week run coming up? Pussycat Dolls, Ne-Yo and The Kooks all to climb to the top ten in a rather sparse looking week. Next highest is Michael Jackson for now although he'll surely fall. The Long Blondes are heading top twenty! Hooray! Shame about the particular song. So, bizarrely, are CORD.

Guillemots are really finally going to have a hit! In the top 30 maybe! Unless they've broken some obscure rule again. Too many versions of a video on the beach anyone? Oh and to anonymous commenter on their album the other day... haven't heard it yet so can't say much but must admit that as wonderful as it is live the idea of "Blue Would Still Be Blue" being made five minutes long is slightly worrying. Will see!
Kelly Clarkson's toomanyth single from Breakaway is just below, along with Belle & Sebastian's "White Collar Boy" which I must admit to having thought was out in a few weeks time. Lacuna Coil and Larrikin Love may just slip into the top 40 too.

Notes From Wireless

(some nice photos) (they're not mine)

• Turning up in time only to see the last three main stage acts of the day doesn't do much to help get an impression of a festival atmosphere (I was watching England v Ecuador in the world cup in a pub with a projector that broke down every twenty minutes. I missed GoodBooks sadly... not much else though)
  
• What kind of festival finishes at just gone 10pm anyway though?
• 2/3 acts mention the football: Dave Gahan gives a shout of 'One-nil!' midsong and Mystery Jets are all in matching England shirts. Well, matching apart from the drummer, who ruins things by wearing an actual replica shirt instead of the unofficial ones of the rest

• They get saddled with absolutely atrocious sound for "Little Bag Of Hair" in particular
• Also slightly overuse Blaine Harrison's additional percussion
• And still sing "you picked me up at the station" in "Alas Agnes" instead of King's Cross like on the demo (and album lyrics booklet!) which annoys me far more than it should
  
• Enjoyable set though

• Goldfrapp don't quite have a whole set of twisted pop masterpieces and so their distance (barely a word between songs, of course) just occasionally translates to boredom
• They nearly do though, and Alison looks very cool indeed
• They also have some dancers for about half the songs who liven things up, almost sexy but just too weirdly dressed to be entirely comfortable considered as such
• The person next to me loves "Ooh La La" and it's her favourite Goldfrapp song ever and that's why she knew they had to come and see Goldfrapp!!
• She still spends most of the song on her phone and/or watching her friend pull his cocaine out of his underwear and snort it though.
• She and her friends believe that one song goes "I'm in love with a sex machine" and sing along loudly. Which is hilarious enough to make up for anything else.

• Depeche Mode have a lot of Eastern European fans
• They have got really, really good at what they do, as a lot of bands their size do I guess
• Dave Gahan looks far better with his shirt off than could be expected
• He is also struck with some kind of ailment which makes him unable to last a song without shouting "Woo!" though. I believe Bernard Sumner suffers from something similar...
• My knowledge of their songs beyond Violator is sketchy at best. It's amazing how many intros I can kid myself into thinking are either "Personal Jesus" or "Enjoy The Silence" as a result
• They really do play them both though! Together! Before the encore!
• Yeah, they're really impressive
• I guess I don't feel too ripped off but it still isn't really much of a festival
  

Since actual posts here are a bit thin on the ground for now...

If you haven't already seen it, this week's fine Stylus Singles Jukebox has, as usual, a few of my contributions. Not included: More gushing about Guillemots [10], liking Augie March's single at first and then somehow going off it a lot [5] and praise for Death Cab For Cutie's best moment from Plans [7].

Favourite comment of the week: Jessica Popper's ' the singer sounds like he should only ever sing Christmas songs' on Ben Gibbard.

More TOTP

A couple of excellent pieces on the demise of Top Of The Pops:

Pete Baran on FreakyTrigger
Marcello Carlin on Stylus

Chartsengrafs (22/06/06)

Sunday just gone: Nelly Furtado more comfortably gained a second week at number one. Shakira climbed to three, The Automatic managed an impressive second week at 4 and Bon Jovi of course didn't live up to the midweeks and finished at 5. Let's not mention 2. Baddiel, Skinner and The Lightning Seeds' ten year old song went up another place to 9, but that can be put down to "Crazy" being disqualified as you can't buy it in old peoples' music shops anymore.
Armand Van Helden climbed to 11 with the also a couple of years old "My My My" - I thought that sounded familiar! No idea who Solu Music (18) are, but they helped to keep The Fratellis (19) down a place so may well be a good thing. Dannii Minogue was the final top 20 entry at 20.
Lower down: TI (a surprisingly high 22), Michael Jackson (26, how much longer do these go on for??), Sergio Mendes (19, downloads), Lostprophets (39, downloads), The Zutons (41, downloads), John Parr VS Tommyknockers (43), AFI (44) and Muse (46, downloads).
The Divine Comedy's 52 for the slightly overly-smug "Diva Lady" is at least 8 places ahead of Battle, and doesn't seem too bad, until you consider that even after the album of the same name had been released, "Absent Friends" still scraped into the top 40 two years ago. Ah well, blame the football.

Sunday coming: Nelly Furtado for a third week at number one, still selling not too badly. Muse starting the week impressive but falling; they will still likely stay top 5 and get their biggest hit ever. Plus they have "Do Somethin'"'s mark at 6 to aim at beating of course! Lostprophets, The Zutons and Sergio Mendes to climb to the top 10 - has "Mas Que Nada" even been on any football adverts this time round? Or just the load for his album?
Outside the top twenty, Editors' neverending rereleases are still kind of working, Ricky get as many people as possible to sing on their football song so they'll all buy it, The Kooks' next single appears on downloads even before "Naive" finally gets lost, and entries for All American Rejects, The Young Knives, Placebo and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Liberty X are outside the top 40.
Keane for a second week in the albums of course, ahead of The Automatic and Fatboy Slim's greatest hits.

Not always and forever

It's with no great surprise that I see that JJ72 have announced their split.

The near comical tale of the third album, On, that they completely finished around a year ago, but have been unable to release following a couple of flop singles, has dragged on and on. They changed line-up, threatened legal action against their label last year and have been updating less and less regularly; eventually it has to come to this:
'JJ72 decided it was the end as it did not want to undermine its achievements by continuing a ridiculous argument with a label that would not be able to support the release and touring of the third JJ opus - a label who lost funding from Sony/BMG some time ago.'

It's a bit of a shame really: their singer had a voice which was certainly a stumbling block to many, and their was something decidedly teenage about a lot of their songs but I loved (and still do) a lot of them regardless. Underrated second album I To Sky even added a lot of craft and depth to the forceful angst and had some really great moments like "Sinking". The fact that they started in much the same time and (musically) place as Muse may have hindered them somewhat as they were clearlynot going to reach such heights, perhaps?

Hopefully "Radio", admittedly the only new song to sound especially great when they played new songs live, will see release at some point.

Inevitable, really.

Yes, I'm still here. Chartsengrafs should be with you within a couple of days at the longest, in short Nelly Furtado was number one last week and will be again, same for Keane.

Anyway... the BBC are finally giving up on Top Of The Pops. Tony Blackburn's verdict: It went wrong because of their choice of presenters: "for some reason, they started introducing small little blondes from children's programmes. And you thought 'they're not really music people". Er, I see.

Personally I lost track of it somewhat once it got moved to Sunday and switched around every other week. Before then, though, the point where it really stopped being essential viewing was when they stopped booking acts on the basis of chart positions and started having the same old predictable faces nearly every week. That's even before we get onto the ridiculously pointless time consuming interviews - yes, cd:uk had them but it had nearly twice the time and didn't attract as many viewers.
Anyway, with choices just based on who was expected to do well and with risk thoroughly avoided, no longer could an appearance feel like some kind of triumph to cap a chart success - the same thing happened to Radio 1's chart show at much the same time.

Of course, a lot of people will say that this is because the charts don't matter any more and no one's buying singles. They may well have a point, and we might be seeing the end of TOTP now regardless. But it would have been nice to have seen them give it a go.

More World Cup thoughts

Kasabian's version of ""Heroes"" (ah, that's where that formatting isn't a good idea) is, I think, the single worst thing of all about ITV's coverage.
Quite an achievement when it has to beat Comic Sans captions and an insistence on not actually talking about whichever game they're showing, really.

Chartsengrafs (14/06/06)

Sunday just gone: She did it! With an impressively tiny difference in sales (48724 v 48538), Nelly Furtado took the top spot from Sandi Thom. She did to number one at the head of an all-new top 5 in the albums though, ahead of The Feeling, Ronan Keating, Paul Simon and Primal Scream. The last two were seperated by an even smaller margin of 32 copies.
Embrace went up to 3, with such a shedload of football songs ranging from bad to worse following that I can't even be bothered to list them. Although at 30, "Scotland Scotland Jason Scotland" by The Trinidad And Tobago Tartan Army possibly deserves a special mention of some kind though I have (sadly?) not heard it yet. What chance a top 20 place in the rather unlikely event (ie he isn't playing) of him scoring against England?
In what passes for chart normalcy, The Automatic somehow took their massive shouty chorus and not much else all the way to the 4, Morrissey (14) and Depeche Mode's (18) fanbases couldn't stop them getting crowded out of the top 10, Lordi (25) have missed their chance and Sugababes (32) and Duncan James (35) suffered shockingly bad results probably even worse than Ukraine's today. Hope Of The States fell down from a surprisingly promising midweek to bring up the rear at 39. Oh and The Kooks' increasingly annoying "Naive" (38) may at long last be on its way out!





Sunday just coming: Nelly Furtado looks pretty comfortable for a second week, with a bizarre number two for Bon Jovi making them the current nearest contenders. Extremely unlikely to last the week, though. Shakira for highest new-ish entry at 5, with Sham 69 (bleh), The Fratellis (double bleh), Dannii Minogue and Armand van Helden also going top 20.
Lower down in the top 40, we have Solu Music, Sergio Mendes and his Black Eyed Peas, T.I, and The Divine Comedy, still just about clinging on despite choosing a first single which is just about everything bad he's always accused of being.
Battle are just outside, next to download only entries for The Zutons and Muse, who maybe won't get quite such a Britney-sized hit next week then.
In the albums, Keane will take number one. But you didn't need midweeks to tell you that, right?

Vashti Bunyan / Emma Pollock / Adem / Final Fantasy / Chris Stills at Homefires (04/06/06)

Homefires has probably the most good-natured and welcoming atmosphere of any music event I've been to - taking place in a hall in central London which, complete with hanging paper banners and more paper circle stuck all over the wall, has somewhat of the feel of a school assembly about it, especially when everyone sits down cross-legged, apart from those who have come prepared with cushions and really relax. Being allowed to bring in food and water is as great as it is sadly novel, with just alcohol having to be purchased on site (from a wider variety than the Carling or else of most venues...) and some tasty looking food on offer too.

Chris Stills is first on and shows off an amazing voice which comes a lot closer to Jeff Buckley than any of his appointed successors that I can think of. Unfortunately he still lacks the songs to get much beyond mediocre folksy singer-songwriter stuff, except on a cover of "Rock The Casbah" so ridiculous it works.

Later on, Final Fantasy eventually turns up over half an hour late for his slot and seems audibly and visibly out of sorts for a while, not helped by having misplaced his belt, leaving him alternately pulling up his jeans and showing off his arse troughout. Choosing to start with "This Lamb Sells Condos" probably doesn't help either as even by He Poos Clouds' general standards it's absurdly ambitious and impossible to play solo with a violin, no matter how many clever effects pedals and playback devices he has within reach of his feet. His vocals are worryingly muted too, and the second song, "Hey Dad", which seems to be an extended version of "->", fares no better.
"The reason that I'm not saying much is that I'm filled with rage" says Owen Pallett, worringly calmly as anything, but things do pick up and watching him assemble (the word is really fitting in this case as he patiently records and plays back layer after layer) a perfect version of "This Is The Dream Of Win And Regine" is captivating. The rest of the set seems to further prove that Has A Good Home, while the weaker album of his two, is much better suited to a solo live show, although recording the backing shouts of "Many Lives -> 49 MP" through his violin and playing back the distorted results is winningly creepy.

While waiting for him to turn up, organiser and host Adem did an excellent and charming job of keeping the audience occupied, playing several warmly enveloping versions of his songs. In possibly the highlight of the whole day, he received a phone call from his mum during one of them, holding the phone up to the microphone for everyone to hear her responses to his perfectly dry mentions that he was going to be on at seven but was actually also on stage now. He returns later for his assigned slot with the Ellysian Quartet in tow, who add some nice arrangements to his songs, but without knowing any of them in advance, the same songs played on his own when he was put on the spot earlier seemed that much more magical.

The downside of the homely atmosphere seems to be various organisational and equipment problems, with ex-Delgado Emma Pollock's set having a complete false-start when none of the effects pedals on her sole present band member's piano work and they have to spend a good 20 minutes fixing matters. Her set is rather underwhelming, with even her vocals seeming a bit thin and not as gorgeous as expected, although things pick up towards the end and a couple of songs, including one called "The Optimist", suggest that hope shouldn't be abandoned yet. She promises that they'll all be "much louder" on record as well which is a good sign - more massive orchestration like Hate please! She also comments on being unable to play the guitar while standing up because she's "too wee" which is rather adorable.

Vashti Bunyan is too twee for words, whispering throughout her set and seeming a little embarassed to be back in front of a crowd and receiving so much love. While a little samey her gentle folk songs bring a smile are all short enough to not drag and her band is really excellent. "Diamond Day" is the inevitable highlight, questions about whether the hippy image can take being used by T-Mobile notwithstanding, and it's a fine end to a very enjoyable day.

Guillemots at Scala (30/05/06)

[my even more condensed review of this appeared on Planet Sound this week]!

I fall even more in love with Guillemots practically by the week at the moment. This show was presumably meant to be in promotion for their long-delayed album Through The Windowpane before it got moved back another month (Fyfe Dangerfield announces that they've just finally finished it before wryly suggesting that perhaps he'll destroy it all and start again) but instead they're still in the position of only having released a few singles.
It doesn't matter though because they have so many great songs and never, ever alienate or seem uninvolving or dull, even when showcasing two completely new songs as an encore. "Go Away" and "Sea Out", longstanding highlights of the live set, are as great as ever but aren't even on the album.
Even better, they have the ability to play everything differently each time so at the fifth viewing their older songs still seem fresh. Fyfe gets around problems with reproducing the recorded scale of "We're Here" by playing a solo acoustic version, "Trains To Brazil" gets a freaky white noise intro and "Made Up Love Song #43" is lovlier than ever in a wobbly music box form.
With four equally incredibly talented and enthusiastic band members, plus regular contributions from sax and one from (earlier pretty impressive in her own right) support act Joan As Policewoman there is always something to watch too, MC Lord Magrão's various typewriter/drill trickery and insistense on never playing his guitar in such a way that it sounds like a guitar particularly standing out.
They can already confidently play for over an hour and a half before concluding, in the second encore, with the hilariously enjoyable glam racket of "She's Evil" and never have a single moment that isn't fantastic - imagine what they'll be like a few years on!

Free Music notFriday

Things might get a bit off schedule here with Blogger being annoying recently and the World Cup on - yesterday evening was spent watching Poland v Ecuador and saying "No, really, almost all the games will be better than this" a lot. I'll try to stick to music around though so if you want to read more about that you should go here.

Sound Team have a touch of the shoegazers about them, creating dense, echoey washes of noise with songs ranging from tantalising glimpses beneath to more strident and dancey numbers - pretty impressive stuff which you can listen to a few examples of on Red Blondehead.

Next Monday sees the release of The Delgados' Complete Peel Sessions, which should not only offer some great different versions of their songs and provide an overview of their career and show just why they were one of the very best bands of recent years, but also showcases quite a few excellent covers - OneLouder have one of The Dead Kennedys' "California Über Alles" which sees them in excellent noisy form akin to their own debut Domestiques.
Emma Pollock's official site is still offering "Fortune", for those after a taste of where she'll go next. No word yet on other singer Alun Woodward.

And on the new covers front, two things for you. First and inevitably from live lounge, My Old Kentucky Blog have Nelly Furtado's version of the omnipresent "Crazy", which is really rather likable and not just because she needs to be supported against Sandi Thom this week.

Secondly, from GoodBooks who impressed so much at the Camden Crawl and have just signed to Columbia, an interesting version of Mystery Jets' You Can't Fool Me Dennis from the recent rerelease of said single. (click)

Chartsengrafs (07/06/06)

Sorry for the lateness, further caused by Blogger being down last night.

Sunday just gone: Sandi Thom climbed to number one. There isn’t really anything to say against her which hasn’t been said many many other places, really, not least in Popjustice's fabulously nasty piece. And since she actually sold more than the previous week it wasn’t even really by default thanks to the Gnarls Barkley deletion! Speaking of which there seem to still be plenty of copies left, and certainly enough last week to have kept them at two ahead of Keane who had to settle for equalling their best ever position. Infernal fell down a place before resorting to World Cup versions, Pink somehow made five, Ronan Keating and Kate Rusby 6 (yawn), Oakenfold and Brittany Murphy 7, and Nelly Furtado 8 on downloads alone. Woah! (sorry). Also surprising, Primal Scream’s second week in the top ten.
Just outside, Tony Christie’s laughable “(Is This The Way To) The World Cup” got to eleven with the worrying possibility that it will rise once the tournament's actually started. Full onslaught of World Cup songs coming up, but also making the top 40 last week were Stan Boardman (19… yikes) and Embrace (38 on downloads alone), alongside even more non-football related songs than Embrace’s by LeAnn Rimes (22), The Automatic (23; downloads), Michael Jackson (30), Loleatta Holloway (37) and Corinne Bailey Rae scraping in at 40. We seem to have had an awful lot of those recently, huh?

Sunday coming: Time for an unlikely saviour of pop, as Nelly Furtado is currently leading the way ahead of Sandi Thom - though by a painfully narrow margin. Embrace may also have a slight outside chance at climbing from 3 over the weekend like Tony Christie is doing already - now heading top 10! The Automatic will surprise everyone if they can hang on to a top 5 place, as will Hope Of The States if their return goes top 20 and doesn't fail completely. Morrissey's inevitable top 10 place will surprise no one, however.
Elsewhere in the top 20, Depeche Mode, Crazy Frog, Stan Boardman and Mariah Carey (what song is that?).
20-30: Duncan James, Baddiel & Skinner & Lightning Seeds (someone should probably put that one to rest soon), Sugababes underperforming badly and The Streets even more so. His single also raises something I've wondered for a while about downloads counting for the chart - I bought Guillemots' lovely version of "Never Went To Church" which is technically a B-side to his, does it count as a sale for The Streets or for no one?
30-40: Tonedef Allstars, Fightstar, Lordi (who can't really use late 6/6/6 release date as an excuse because I saw copies of it on sale on Monday!) and Talksport Allstars.

Guillemots - Through The Windowpane

Just a quick note to say that while I’m planning to wait til its release to listen myself (unless they put it off forever like Final Fantasy – current release date for his album next week but don’t hold out not much hope on that), Through The Windowpane has leaked. I’m sure some of you know how to find it much better than me anyway.

And since nowhere else seems to have it yet, here’s the tracklisting:

• “Little Bear”
• “Made Up Love Song #43”
• “Trains To Brazil”
• “Redwings”
• “A Samba In The Snowy Rain” (which was previously the first half of…)
• “Through The Windowpane”
• “If The World Ends”
• “We’re Here”
• “Blue Would Still Be Blue”
• “Annie, Why Wait?”
• “And If All…”
• “Sao Paolo” (all near twelve minutes of it, oh yes!)

On a totally unrelated note I’m just hearing Jim Noir’s “Eanie Meanie” on the radio and it’s very nice, but it’s practically “Ask Me How I Am” by Snow Patrol, isn’t it? Or is it just me?

Infernal

I've been pondering doing a post on all the appalling football songs around (and there are more than ever) but can't bring myself to listen to more than a little of any of them even for the purpose. Today my digital TV videos thing has added one which I hadn't heard of elsewhere and which almost defies belief to a degree that makes it worth mentioning though - "Paris To Berlin (World Cup Mix)"
In which Infernal's (Danish) singer, who appears to have only a passing acquaintance with the English language, never mind the football team, sings "From London to Berlin, with every game that we win, England will win the world cup" and a load of stuff about "Roo". Is someone really buying this stuff??

Hot Fuss

Sorry for the lack of updates lately, I've been kind of busy but should be back in force next week.
But there's a couple of things I can direct you towards quickly. Number one, this guy, whose taste in music bar James Blunt, The Kooks, Orson etc. is actually weirdly close to mine as well as his name.
And number two, if you haven't gawped at it yet, the results of the recent poll for greatest album ever by NME.com and the Guiness Book Of British Hit Singles (hope I got that name right). Really, I don't know where to start.