Hospitality (2012).

Possibly my new favorite band, or my favorite new band.  My first impression of Hospitality was, while listening to Eighth Avenue, the opening track from their debut album, that they might be another twee band stuck in the endless revolving door of the I / IV / I chord change. 

But after they go to the IV chord the second time, I heard something refreshing.  The IV chord is an E Maj 7 (the song is in B), which begins a beautiful sequence of chromatically descending chords:  the E Maj 7 is followed by an E flat 7, then D Maj 7, and a D flat 7, all above a pedal point on B.  The sequence is repeated, now with the bass providing the root notes, resolving not on the I, but on the tonic minor with a raised 6, a very interesting decision. Nice stuff.  It’s like something out of the American Songbook, or Franz Schubert. Good to hear an Indiepop band messing around with some pretty suave harmonies.  

This is just a taste of the pleasant surprises on this album. There are noisy guitar outbursts, squirrley synth riffs, and quirky rhythmic motifs, none of which last for more than a moment, always allowing the song at hand itself to be the focus.  And their songs, written by Amber Papini, are terrific: wistful or animated, idiosyncratic, kooky and hooky, sweet, but not naive.  Amber grew up listening to Cole Porter and Gershwin, so that’s probably where her ear for sophisticated harmony comes from.   

After a few listens, I kept thinking, where have I heard this voice before?  Then it hit me - Audrey Hepburn, which made me like Hospitality even more.

Eighth Avenue:

Mari Wilson

The stylish and amusing retro chanteuse Mari Wilson, and her beehive, had 6 Top 100 hits from 1982 to ‘84 in the UK, while signed to Tot Taylor’s boutique pop label, The Compact Organization.  Some of her out-of-print CD’s are now worth hundreds of $.  At 57, Mari is still touring and performing, and maintaining a happy and healthy life, despite suffering from Type 1 diabetes, coeliac disease, and an underactive thyroid.

Mari Wilson in 1983 (the vast entourage of musicians, singers and dancers on stage with Mari were not extras - that was actually her real band, The Wilsonettes):

Nicola Roberts. Cinderella's Eyes (2011).

No one foresaw that during the Girls Aloud hiatus the most critically acclaimed solo release would be by the shy and slightly awkward red head of the group, yet that was exactly what happened when Nicola came out with Cinderella’s Eyes last year.  
For those unaware, Girls Aloud are the best selling female singing group in UK history, with over 20 top 10 singles, knocking Bananarama out of first place in that category.  Solo albums by Girls Aloud members, Cheryl and Nadine, sold well, but disappointed the critics who had formerly praised the group for their innovative pop songs, written and produced by the hit making machine, Xenomania.  

For her debut album, Nicole co-wrote all of the tracks, with the help of some top electronica musicians and producers, such as Diplo, Dragonette, and Metronomy.  Nicole’s appealingly quirky vocal style is reminiscent of Gwen Stefani, Kate Bush, and I even hear Katie White of the Ting Tings, and Marnie Stern to some degree.

This is the kind of Pop that doesn’t translate too well into the US markets.  It’s positive, has lots of energy, relies on melodic content, and it’s a little eccentric.  US Pop seems in contrast, to me, predominately stuck in wooden, faux R’n’B grooves, takes itself too seriously, and is afraid to branch out into something more idiosyncratic.

Well, however you look at it... Nicola Roberts has something special, no denying it.  Cinderella's Eyes is probably my most favorite release of 2011. 

Pizzicato Five

 Something or other happened in Tokyo in the late 80's/early 90’s that inspired musicians to evoke and emulate the latter period of the mid-60’s, a trend that began as a form of anti-pop but ended up being the signature sound of Japanese pop by the late 90’s.

As Momus said in an article in the Guardian, probably over 10 years ago (or more):
“The epicenter of global retro culture is Shibuya, the trendy shopping district of west Tokyo which gave Shibuya-kei (literally 'Shibuya style') its name. Here the record shops are the best stocked in the world. Fashions change every five minutes, and the moment a style is invented it's also revived and parodied. Shops and museums are the same thing, and shopping and curating are creative activities on a par with making art.” http://imomus.com/jpop.html

A couple dozen bands could have been filed under Shibuya-kei by the end of the 90’s, but my favorite was Pizzicato Five.  P5 was a prolific and long-lived band, beginning back in 1979, and they released over two dozen records during their career.  The band sustained a number of personnel changes, which eventually left only the duo of mastermind Yasuharu Konishi and the profoundly chic Maki Nomiya.  Together, they produced the classic P5 sound before breaking up at the dawn of the millennium.  

Almost unfathomably stylish, they adopted references to mid-60’s British and American pop, some French yé-yé and lounge, mixing in occasional touches of drum ‘n’ bass, house, and elements of sampling from DJ culture.  This kind of thing was repeated later by non-Japanese bands such as Mono, The Postmarks, and Bittersweet, but with one important distinction: P5’s wit and whimsy puts a smile on your face instead of a shadow over your heart.  They have inspired a second generation of Japanese musicians, such as Hideki Kaji, The Aprils , and The Lady Spade.  

Their sense of humor was visually extended to their videos, some of which are joyously goofy:

Twiggy Twiggy (1994)


It may require a certain taste to appreciate P5’s aesthetisized pastiches.  However, their songwriting skills were strong enough to offset the sometimes archness of their presentation:

Baby Portable Rock (1996)


Some of the earlier stuff reminds me of the gentle jazz ballads of later period Swing Out Sister (who are enormously popular in Japan), but by the late 90’s P5 seemed to embrace a pop sound full of infectious energy:

La Règle Du Jeu (1999)


Yasuharu Konishi seems to be still involved with his Readymade Entertainment label, and he wrote the score for a musical, Talk Like Singing, that ran in New York in 2009.

Maki is still recording, performing as a solo artist, and blogs about culture and fashion.  Here’s a recent picture of Maki with Yasuharu from her blog.

I heart Jeff Beck.

I love Jeff Beck. Renowned since the 1960’s for his paint-peeling lead guitar work, combined with his tough guy stance, and avocation as a hot rod enthusiast, his image is ripe for rock star parody. In fact, the characterization of Nigel Tufnel in This Is Spinal Tap owes at least some of its inspiration to Beck. But I believe his legacy will endure as a player in possession of one of the most refined senses of nuance and sensitivity. Since his 1975 album, Blow By Blow, Beck has populated his albums with slow ballads that demonstrate a level of taste that is almost indescribable. 

Clearly a master of his instrument, Beck transcends the category of “great rock guitar player.” He is, rather, an artist in possession of a talent on the highest plane of refinement. Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers, Diamond Dust, Goodbye Pork Pie Hat, Angels (Footsteps), and Where Were You, are a few of the tunes where the our jaw-dropping is not in relation to the number of notes Beck can play, but in the exquisite finesse with which he is able to express melodic ideas:  

Beck has mentioned as long ago as the mid 80’s that he wanted to work with a symphony orchestra, saying how he listens to lots of classical music and would love to work within that context. He finally fulfilled that ambition on Emotion & Commotion (2010), which includes a rendition of Somewhere Over the Rainbow:

Trish Keenan / Broadcast

I’m fairly late in eulogizing Trish Keenan, but there is no reason to omit my own brief tribute to her and her band, Broadcast.  I always liked Broadcast, but I didn’t really “get” them until recently when I connected them to their influences in mid-sixties psychedelia and early electronic music.  This would have been, of course, obvious to any of their fans, but it just clicked for me since lately I’ve been interested in why the mid-sixties holds a profoundly mysterious and unshakable attraction for me.  According to Simon Reynolds, in his new book, Retromania, it was around 1966 that the last really new thing appeared in Pop culture, and we’ve been recycling ever since.  It was also about that time, at age 10, I think I started to become aware that culture could be something beyond mere entertainment.  At that time, culture was represented primarily for me by The Beatles and The Avengers (you have to start somewhere).

Broadcast's beguiling sound combined almost folksy, lullaby melodies, with layers of experimental effects evoking vintage electronic music, wrapped in an atmosphere of creepy darkness.  Their first full length album, Noise Made By People (2000), was reminiscent of mid-60’s pop.  HaHa Sound (2003) delved into a more swirling, psychedelic style, and Tender Buttons (2005) was reduced to minimal arrangements, à la Young Marble Giants.  Their compilations of rarities and B-sides are treasured for their more experimental work, some of it sounding very much like Julian House’s project, The Focus Group.

The last couple of weeks, I’ve been playing Broadcast’s 3 full-length albums over and over and over, along with their collaboration with The Focus Group, Witch Cults of the Radio Age (2009), which, I suppose, must stand as their last release.  The first track from their first album, Come On Let’s Go, has continued to have some kind of haunted hold on me.  I’ve been going to sleep with it running in my head, and then waking up to it still looping in my mental ear.  There’s something about the beginning that is so unsettling.  At first it sounds as if it’s in the Lydian mode, until the second chord, which is the tonic, and you realize that it all started on the IV chord instead of the I.  The B section is quite sophisticated too, it’s a stream of lovely modulations.  The bones of Broadcast was great songwriting, the results of which evoke, for me, what could have been hits by 60’s British girl singers, like Petula Clark, Lulu, or Cilla Black, if they had collaborated with Delia Derbyshire.

Here’s the official video for Come One Let’s Go, from 2000.



Broadcast performing Come On Let's Go live on Jools Holland's Later show in May 2000, two months after the release of their first full-length, The Noise Made By People.



Trish died in January of this year from complications with pneumonia after battling the illness for two weeks in intensive care, having contracted H1N1 following the band's December 2010 tour in Australia.

Broadcast performing Lunch Hour Pops live at the HiFi bar, Melbourne, Australia, only 4 weeks before Trish’s passing:



One more video, this one directed by Trish for the song, Black Cat, from the album Tender Buttons (2005).  It appears Trish had an eerie and beautiful eye for visual art as well:

Genesis / Motown

Back when Peter Gabriel was still with Genesis, the band was quoted as saying one of their big influences was Motown.  Right.


However, when Watcher of the Skies recently popped up on my iPod during a shuffle, I noticed how tight the rhythm section of Michael Rutherford and Phil Collins sounded.  Not exactly the Funk Brothers, you know, but still, I thought, maybe there is something to that...



Now, almost 40 years later, Phil Collins has recorded an album with the surviving members of the original Funk Brothers.  OK, so maybe they were serious about the Motown thing after all.