Timeless songs and a contagious youthful optimism are the foundations of Wisconsin raised, Brooklyn based Locksley. Their modern garage-pop comes from combining the melody, harmony and songwriting ethos of the 60s with the performance sensibilities of early American Punk and modern garage, drawing comparisons to The Beatles, The Kinks, The Stray Cats, The Libertines and The Strokes.
Tune-Yards / Hatari Electric ukulele, trashy hip-hop drums, yodeling, and all in such a catchy pop song package that you just can’t get it out of your head. We were lucky enough to play with Tuneyards in Des Moines on a random one-off show and she’s even better live.
Hailing from Southend, London, Hexes are a hardcore quartet who describe their sound as being ‘a cyclopean howl, as a burning torch is thrust into a drunken eye’. Indeed.
The Dillinger Escape Plan / Milk Lizard Ire Works was my album of the year when it was released. To play the way they do and then temper the super technical aural carnage with songs like this and Black Bubblegum. They are a truly inspirational band, and are superbly technical players yet fantastic songwriters too. As far as live bands go, they can pretty much take anyone touring right now as well. Ferocious.
Don’t be fooled! I’m From Barcelona are actually a 29 member Swedish pop group, whose sound has been descibred by Filter magazine as being ‘kaleidoscopic pop’. They released their debut album, Let Me Introduce My Friends, in March 2007. This Playlist by frontman Emanual Lundgren is either a collection of ‘eight sad songs with cheesy lyrics or eight cheesy songs with sad lyrics’.
Paul Simon / Still Crazy After All These Years The perfect it’s-3am-we-have-a-piano-and-a-bottle-of-wine-singalong. I would love to hear it covered by Tom Waits.
Durham, North Carolina, indie quartet Bombadil claim, somewhat toungue in cheek, that their conceptual starting point is the folk music of Bolivia. They released their debut album, A Buzz, A Buzz, in the spring of 2008.
Red Collar / Used Guitars This track has an infectious vocal riff and a strong intro and buildup. We’re attracted to the Springsteen-esque vocals and the image of used guitars as a sad thing — symbolic of a dream someone gave up on. Live, it is another animal entirely. Nothing beats the collective catharsis of a crowd shouting the ‘Bah bah, bah nah!’ hook at the tops of their PBR-greased lungs.
People in Planes are a five piece indie rock band from Cardiff, Wales, signed to Wind-Up Records. They have a new album out, Beyond The Horizon, which is a follow-up on their 2006 debut release, As Far As The Eye Can See.
Foals / Hummer Why? Simple. When you need to get the party started and all else is failing, just throw on this tune and watch the room start vibrating as if an Ann Summers party has just kicked off in your next door neighbour’s house. Just read that last sentence back and it sounds like some really bad advertising slogan. Hell, just go with it.
Beginning its incarnation in Torquay, coastal Victoria, Outrun evolved out of the shared ambitions of old friends and founders Dan Preston and Josh Armistead – the latter of whom also writes and produces as part of experimental act TeamYes!, and plays in thrash-prog band, Slazenger. Brash and catchy — with an unsuppressed affection for retro synthetics and icy Italo ambiance — Outrun’s debut album, FutureNature [out on Snowball through Inertia], is thrilling, with the apocalyptic lead track, Out Of The Ashes, tracing unpleasant times of burning out and messing up, only to be reborn a better and more powerful creature.
John Maus / Do Your Best This song has been on repeat in my head for about two years. I’m not that familiar with the rest of the album, but if you go to his MySpace page, the reviews of the album are hilarious. There is something about the slow driving beat and his near monotone drawl that sucks you in. I kind of like anything to do with Ariel Pink and these guys have collaborated a bit. This song couldn’t be simpler and that’s what I love about it. This song sounds as if Joy Division were in the K Hole while fucking around in the studio.
Yitz Jordon, aka Brooklyn hip-hop artist Y-Love, is an Hasidic rapper who creates ‘faith-based rhymes in a mixture of English and Aramaic, the ancient language of the Talmud and Kabbalah’, and with his full-length release, Youth, reached number four on the Billboard’s album chart.
Daler Mehndi / Tunak Tunak Tun I’m not normally a fan of Bhangra, but this song’s “internet phenomenon” status (Wikipedia) made me curious. It inspired me to learn its lyrics in Punjabi, showing it to be a beautiful song with religious overtones of a Sikh religion I previously knew nothing about.
Former Split Enz frontman and Crowded House band member Tim Finn has delivered his most intimate album to date with his latest release, The Conversation. Recorded at Roundhead studios in Auckland and featuring just vocals, guitar, piano and violin, the record was co-produced by former Split Enz member Eddie Rayner.
The Kinks / Waterloo Sunset A perfectly formed melody with lyrics that contain just the right amount of yearning and apprehension. I read an interview with Ray Davies where he talked of how he was ill as a boy in hospital near Waterloo bridge. The nurse used to wheel him out on to the balcony to watch the sunset. The musical arrangement and production details provide a sublime context for the half-recommended, half imagined narrative. Probably my favourite song.
Freaks was originally the brain child of Bournemouth’s Justin Harris and London based, Luke Solomon. They began recording for Phono, home of Herbert and Swag, and their first few releases, which came in three parts, saw them journey through filter disco (The Shrunken Head), quirky mid tempo house (Journey’s Through Happiness), and minimal techno (The Milwaukee Stance). The guys continue to release Freaks material on their new Music for Freaks imprint. Earlier this year they released a digital version of their single, Boiling Point, featuring remixes from Derrick Carter.
LCD Soundsystem / Get Innocuous This is a great example of modern dance music that has captured the past so well for me. The beats are reminiscent of Carl Craig’s Paperclip People records and vocals that owe a great deal to David Bowie. It made me like LCD in a very different way, and it made realize that they meant business.
Breakbeat duo, Evil Nine’s new album, They Live!, is one of the stand out dance releases of the year. Having already received 5 star reviews from the UK press, They Live! is powerful second album after 2005’s, You Can Be Special Too, its gruesome lyrics paying homage to all those misunderstood zombies out there. Automatom selects the first four songs here, Pardytron the second four.
Toto / Africa The epitome of ’smooth’ music, words can’t express how much this song rules! When the synths come in and the drums echo in the night, I’m immediately transported back to my youth. Some people might say this is a guilty pleasure, but I don’t feel no guilt. I just stick it on and bask in their mellow might.
My Secret Playlist is a music discovery website and weekly email publication. We invite our favourite bands and musicians to give us the rundown on their eight favourite songs right now. These are their words on the music that inspires them.
