BL30 review
There’s some great stuff this month that I’ve been listening to over and over in my car on the way to and from work. Well done one and all. Here are a few quick thoughts.
Brother Ray - a return to form! Welcome back!
For Will - loved the dramatic opening music, sounds like an epic film soundtrack. Then a huge dynamic contrast as we enter the sung part. Like the ‘baroque’ bit. Then back to the powerful stuff with the big drums. Great.
Miss You Kiss You - raising the bar to a new level of kinkiness!
Rescue Me - another classic Ray show-tune. The plot for a musical that has been forming in my head keeps taking new directions!
Sugar Daddy - another great long intro, slowly building into a nice edgy pop song.
Sister Selkie
Great session, well done. Gentle Beginnings is beautiful. If early on in the day you were feeling like you didn’t have a single thing to say (track 3), you certainly turned it around by the end of the session with the amazing folk pastiche Robin’s Tale. Loved Wedding Vows and Cuckoo’s Melody too. Really nice recorder playing.
Brother Turville
From the Corner of My Eye - a great guitar riff, and really interesting use of the diminished chords for a slightly uneasy feel.
Made for the Camera - another trademark riff/vocal melody combo. Liked the lyrics too. Very appropriate as the Chilcott Inquiry goes on.
Zombie Eyes - I know you said the drums were boring, but I like the sound of your drum machine - it does what it needs to do.
Sister and Brother Biccies (is that incest?)
An impressive quantity of songs with some real gems within. Your ’stream of consciousness’ vocals are remarkably well formed a lot of the time.
My favourites tend to be the simpler guitar/vocal tracks, such as Coffee and Tea, Tears and Bears and When You Were Young. But there is some good comedy to be had with the ones that use backing tracks. It would be great if there really was a huge commercial AOR smash hit about inappropriate spellchecker suggestions.
The lyrical idea conveyed in If I Were a Giant is really nice too. Nice one, Will.
Brother Typewriter
The tracks to which we listened again on Saturday were Through Hollow LANS and Is It Really Relaxing? Some great guitar soloing in the latter. Similarly in Santana’s Last Stand. I need to work on my vibrato to get it as good as yours! The Sin Plant was really interesting - must follow your link and try it out for myself. And Cold Callers was good comedy.
Myself (the Buffalo)
I am particularly pleased with all 3 random card songs - and especially the lyrical inspiration derived from a tube of Homebase Essentials Quick Drying Filler.
Great stuff everyone. This all bodes extremely well for next month’s Derbyshire LiveLodge.
BB x
January 29th, 2010 at 8:54 pm
Downloaded all the available stuff onto my iPod yesterday and listened to it on the train. Very enjoyable session and I will post comments soon.
We seem to be missing the tracks from Sister & Brother Biccies. Would very much like to hear them, especially after hearing the Biccies tracks from BL29.
BTU
January 31st, 2010 at 5:16 pm
I’ve uploaded the Biccies tracks so you can check them out.
BTW on my original post I forgot to say - Brother Typewriter’s barbershop-style backing vocals on Lame-Ass - awesome!
BB
February 24th, 2010 at 9:56 am
Had an incredibly belated listen on the train into work today.
BTY
Some lovely sounds on ‘Through Hollow Lans.’ Seemed to be a bit more of an ambient session, which went very well when I was half asleep this morning.
SS
Another strong bluesy acoustic number - ‘Blue Skies’ - I think this is a good direction for you
BB
Enjoyed the instrumentals a lot. ‘Bleeding’ is really pumping - another shift in production quality
SB
Generally mental session. My favourite line of session ‘You’re a pretty spiritual dude / it helps that you smoke too’
BR
Love the synth stabs in ‘Miss You Kiss You.’ Like the way the lyric is kind of safe, and then suddenly goes decidedly un-Radio2 half way through with the line about ‘I want to cuff you.’ There’s two meanings there, and neither of them are respectable. Ian Drury would be proud.
BTU
Like the chorus melody for ‘Made for the camera’
We must be heading towards a thousand tracks soon …