Now Hear This! May 2010
CD, 2010, Heftbeilage, Cardsleeve

matrix: CA WORDMAY10 @@
15 brand-new tracks hand-picked by The WORD
With Issue 87 Of The Word



The WORD/What's on the CD:
1. Sambassadeur - Stranded
In Sweden in the mid-2000s there was a bit of a boom in home-recorded pop. Sambassadeur were one of the bands who managed to make a career out of it. With a proper Wuthering Heights piano intro and grand sweep of strings, this is perfect both as the opener for our CD and as a taster for their own delightful third album European.
From the album European

2. The Avett Brothers - And It Spread
If “Rubenesque” means voluptuous then perhaps we need “Rubinesque” to denote the sort of music that producer Rick Rubin signs to his American Recordings label. Avett siblings Seth and Scott, of Concord, North Carolina, play an inspiring melange of county-roots rock and accelerated singalongs. They jokingly call their faster aspect “punkgrass” but the track on our CD, And It Spreads, showcases a beautifully plangent side. “As soon as I heard the depth of their singing and songwriting, I was in for the ride,” explains Rubin. “Their songs have such a sincere emotional resonance. It’s unusual to hear such open-hearted personal sentiment from young artists." A word from the Avetts as they take their place alongside rock brothers Allman, Everly, Doobie and Chemical? “We always had the mentality that if we kept doing what we were doing, good things would come,” says Scott. “It might sound rehearsed, but it’s the honest truth.”
From the album I And Love And You

3. Lucky Soul - Woah Billy!
Some songs are just pure uncut delight, and we can’t stop playing this mighty rallying cry to live now, whatever the consequences, for tomorrow we may die. Lucky Soul’s musical director Andrew Laidlaw made the song when he was so skint he had to sleep on the floor of the band’s draughty studio. But such is his confidence in their material that he later declined an offer to produce the album from the great Tony Visconti in favour of doing it himself. Such commitment deserves your attention, especially when it results in an album that sounds like a lost English Motown band, or a joyous rock version of Saint Etienne.
From the album A Coming Of Age

4. Tamikrest - Tamiditin
This generation rules the nation… with ululation. Tamikrest are the “spiritual sons” of Tuareg electric bluesmen Tinariwen, their name means “the knot or junction” and they come from Mali, Niger and Algeria under the motto “a desert hosts us, a language unites us, a culture binds us”. You need no additional information to enjoy this thrilling, melodious bulletin from rock’s outer limits. Pop fact: “Adagh” is another word for Tuareg.
From the album Adagh

5. Black Francis - Wheels
The resurrection of the Pixies has been an example to heritage bands – play the good stuff, don’t milk it and keep each member’s own work alive as a going concern. The reunion could have given Charles Francis IV an opportunity to rest on his laurels but it led to a prolific spate of creativity. Nonstoperotik is his sixth solo release since the Pixies reconvened in 2003 and sees him rediscover big, fat guitars and the shadowy sexuality that marked early Pixies releases. If you sense something hovering in the background of this lusty cover of the Flying Burrito Brothers song, it’s because Francis is convinced that both of the studios in which he made the album – in San Luis Obispo, California and St John’s Wood – were haunted. “I wrote many a couplet by the studio candlelight, slept very little and only felt the need to get the fuck out of there on the very last night,” he writes of the London studio. For more notes on the paranormal, follow his tweets at http://twitter.com/MrBlackFrancis
From the album Nonstoperotik
5.: FRANK BLACK / Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV born April 06, 1965, Boston, MA // currently Portland, OR.
FRANK BLACK aka Black Francis | Frank Black Francis | B. Francis | Black | Black Francis (Michael Charles Thompson) | Blackfrancis | Blank Francis | F. Black | Francis | Francis Black | Francis Black Rice | Frank |
[Member of: Frank Black and The Catholics, Grand Duchy, Pixies]


6.: 'Marz' aka I Wanna Go To Marz taken from 'Queen of Denmark' released April 19, 2010 (Bella Union BELLACD235).
- Bella Union Wednesday, 17-Feb-10:
‘I Wanna Go To Marz’ is the first single to be taken from ‘Queen Of Denmark’ - the debut solo album from JOHN GRANT.
2009 Bella Union promo: 'A Bella Union Sampler - Beneath The Surface Vol. 4':
John Grant feat. Midlake - I Wanna Go To Marz (Demo)
wikipedia in 2010: "'Queen of Denmark' is the debut solo album by former The Czars frontman John Grant, released on April 19, 2010 on the Bella Union label. 'Queen of Denmark' is a collaboration between Grant and Denton band Midlake and produced by Grant himself in collaboration with Paul Alexander and Eric Pulido."

6. John Grant - I Wanna Go To Marz
The former singer with The Czars hit rock bottom with cocaine and alcohol dependency as his band foundered, but returns to dazzlingly expressive form on this solo record made with the aid and belief of longtime admirers – and Word favourites – Midlake. The album is marinaded in the sustaining strengths of ’70s rock and sounds beautifully life-affirming. This song’s nominally about a sweetshop but it actually contains all the longing anyone could feel for a lost past that’s within tantalising reach. Lovely.
From the album Queen Of Denmark

7. Maika Makovski - Lava Love
Singer, songwriter, guitarist and pianist Maika Makovski is of Macedonian and Andalusian descent, is now resident in Barcelona and is an astonishing beauty. With her band she plays sinister blues-inflected rock to fit on the axis between Eels/Midlake regretful rock balladry and the darker, more bloodstained works typified by Nick Cave and PJ Harvey. Lava Love is her debut UK single and we are delighted to have it on the Word CD. Though Maika’s self-titled album is her first to come out in the UK, it’s actually her third full-length release. She’s been writing and performing since her early teens, with a string of awards in Spain and Macedonia to her name. Her first album, released in 2005, led Spanish newspaper El Mundo to enthuse that she was “the best female artist to come out of the underground rock scene in years”. The new one is produced by PJ Harvey’s long-time collaborator John Parrish, who makes a perfect foil for Maika’s spectral love songs.
From the album Maika Makovski

8. Jukebox The Ghost - Hold It In
Piano-led pop is a hard nut to crack but Washington DC band Jukebox The Ghost are wise enough to treat the old joanna as a rock and roll instrument. The result is stupefyingly infectious, summoning up the notion of a punk rock Billy Joel or Roddy Frame who fell in love with black and white keys instead of a fretboard. Moral: it’s the Steinway or the highway.
From the album Live And Let Ghosts

9. Maja Sharp - Death By Perfection
A working musician since 1993, Sharp has written songs for Cher, The Dixie Chicks and others, and collaborated with Art Garfunkel on a 2002 album that was – incredibly – Garfunkel’s debut as a songwriter. Her Don Was-produced fourth solo album Echo mixes country rock and grown-up pop and is well worth investigating.
From the album Echo

10. Dave Formula - Elvis In Space
On page 33 of this issue you’ll find a personal recollection of the strange occurrence in the Manchester childhood of Dave Formula – keyboard master of Magazine and Visage – that inspired this, his first solo album, 49 years later. The heroic but melancholy spirit of Soviet cosmonaught Yuri Gagarin – dead at 34 after his MiG-15 jet plane crashed in March 1968 – presides over Dave’s new album, itself a project of vaulting ambition. Here the retro-future romance of outer space rubs up against Manchester’s multi-cultural heritage. There’s joy as Clint Boon sings of an imagined orbiting Elvis (it’s on our CD) but also sadness in the final track The Anti-Hero, which features the guitars of Magazine’s John McGeoch, who died in 2004. Elsewhere other members of the now-reactivated Magazine – Howard Devoto, Barry Adamson and John Doyle – appear alongside David McAlmont, Robert Wyatt and Corinne Drewery. It’s great, extravagant fun and we commend it to your ears.
From the album Satellite Sweetheart

10.: Dave Formula | D. Formula | Formula AKA Dave Tomlinson [Member of: The Angel Brothers, Magazine, St. Louis Union, Visage]


11. Woodpigeon - Woodpigeon Vs Eagleowl (Strength In Numbers)
A song title with a “vs” in the middle might lead you to think you’re in for a quarrelsome few minutes of dance music in the style of MC Tunes vs 808 State. Not at all; Woodpigeon are a pastoral Canadian collective (eight to fourteen members, depending) and their world is all leaf piles, wood smoke, the simple beauty of nature and the not-so-simple beauty of human relationships. Songwriter Mark Hamilton and friends used to play in Edinburgh as Woodpigeon Divided By Antelope Equals Squirrel. (One member, Malcolm Benzie, is now in the band Eagleowl and plays on this track.) After returning to Canada, Hamilton shortened the band name and it focused his music. In this third album their lush, orchestral folk-pop takes full flight, leading to comparisons with Arcade Fire and Sufjan Stevens. “If it was five years ago,” Hamilton says, “anything you’d read about us would say that we were Belle & Sebastian, because there were a lot of us – and because I sing like a girl.”
From the album Die Stadt Muzikanten

12. Darwin Deez - Up In The Clouds
We like feelgood turn-your-brain-off Top 40 pop and we like sophisticated art music from the bleeding edge (well, sometimes). But which is best? New York-based pop geek Darwin Deez can’t decide either, so he synthesises both into a gawky and totally appealing sound that puts the joy back into art and the grit back into pop.
From the album Darwin Deez

13. Sparrow & The Workshop - Last Chance
We’ve had pagan folk-stompers Sparrow And The Workshop on the Word CD before – Devil Song, in July last year – and we’re delighted to have them back with a track to herald their new debut album. Mighty producer Paul Savage of Phantom Band fame adds depth to their Led Zep/Sandy Denny mind-meld, and unadulterated wonderfulness ensues.
From the album Crystal Falls

13.: Sparrow & the Workshop AKA Sparrow and the Workshop | Sparrow And The Workshop

14. The Candle Thieves - The Sunshine Song
This Peterborough duo have Casio VL-Tone keyboards in their musical DNA, rescuing the lo-fi ideal from slovenly Americans and sprucing it up good and proper. “Glock” of the band defines their music thus: “I like to think of our music as the sound of a child stuck in an adult’s body, wishing he was a child pretending to be an adult.”
From the album Sunshine And Other Misfortunes

15. Patch William - Take Me Home To Marylebone
The middle bit of a Venn diagram composed of Nick Drake, Jamie T, Jimi Hendrix and Talking Heads would be an odd place, but this is where you will find youthful London four-piece Patch William. The sound is spare but the melodies dreamy, and the performances assured for a group who are only a few years out of university. Admirably, they’re taking their music forward with a mixture of old- and new-school techniques. They’re working under the wing of producer Steve Levine of Culture Club fame, but have released their album via iTunes with a plan to grow their following fan by fan. Coincidences brought them to Levine’s attention. First his daughter saw a Patch William gig at university and brought a CD home. Then 6Music DJ Tom Robinson recommended the band to Levine, and it turned out that Levine had their demo on his iPod at that very moment. Amazing! Remember where you heard them first – unless you heard them somewhere else.
From the album Patch William