Penguin Prison

Penguin Prison is New Yorker Chris Glover. He was first introduced to the world by influential boutique label Neon Gold who specialise in pop music. Bloggers gobble up Neon Gold’s blog posts and spit them out on their own sites perhaps partly due to laziness but mostly because the music they put out is just so good. Success stories include Marina and the Diamonds and Ellie Goulding who occupied the top spots on the BBC’s Sound of 2010 list showing how their influence had infiltrated the mainstream.

Penguin Prison has also received a warm welcome by the blogs and will want to emulate the label’s success stories as he goes on. All his songs so far have been offered as free downloads. His first song ‘Animal Animal#, a slightly lacklustre pop song with reggae-lite noises was underwhelming compared to his remixes making you think that perhaps he’s a better producer than a pop star. His remix of Erik (not really worth the) Hassle (of checking out the rest of his music) in particular takes away all the middle of the road dullness and transforms the song into an incredibly listenable heartbreaker showing off Hassle’s interesting voice and lyrics. Everything else since then has proved the “better producer” theory wrong. ‘A Funny Thing’ is a sparkly mellow dance number with a brilliant Monarchy remix.

He attended a professional performing arts school and sang in a gospel choir with Alicia Keys, which will probably be an interview soundbite that keeps haunting him, and this probably didn’t dampen his ambitious side and on double A-side release ‘The Worse It Gets’/'Something I’m Not’ he gets to show off more of his singing abilities. The fidgety synth-pop of ‘Something I’m Not’ contrasts with the more laid-back ‘The Worse It Gets; and both are his best songs to date.

The album, which is apparently coming soon but hasn’t been given a definite release date, has been co-produced by Dan Grech-Marguerat, who has previously worked with Wiley, Sound of Arrows and Tom Jones (that’s one dinner party we’d etc. etc.) so it promises to be a twinkly synth extravaganza.

The one man electro pop scene hasn’t set the chart alight over the past few years despite a lot of hype surrounding many from the self-made Frankmusik to the more manufactured Alex Gardner and the aforementioned Erik Hassle. Recently pretending to be in a band has become the new acceptable face of the solo artist with their Machines and Diamonds. Penguin Prison feels more like a band’s frontman and may prove a more credible option for those who can’t handle the thought of liking a male pop star and in the few live gigs he’s done he’s played with a proper band with guitars and everything.  He is most definitely a talented performer and producer who doesn’t deserve to be dismissed.

They didn’t initially realise that they were on to such a good thing though. Prior to their first collaboration in 2006, they each performed as solo artists and mainly doing so at open mike nights at beachside bars throughout the Sydney region. Following their first fruitful collaboration (the EP Chocolates and Cigarettes), they were launched on the Australian festival circuit, with performances most notably at The Great Escape Festival in Sydney and Splendour in the Grass in Byron Bay, both two key Australian music events in terms of festival tickets sales and annual attendance figures.

A trip to London, a collaboration with UK band Travis, their first Australian national tour – and the rest is history. Subsequent years have seen the duo’s second EP, Heart Full of Wine, wide acclaim for the single “Paper Aeroplane” and the release of their debut album A Book Like This. Apart from other solo concerts and festival appearances where tickets have been hard to come by (including sold-out Scala shows in London), the group has furthermore supported Martha Wainwright, The Magic Numbers, Brett Dennen, Newton Faulkner and David Gray in various venues across Australia, the UK and Europe, and the United States.

So would Angus and Julia Stone be the type of music for you? If you’re into hauntingly beautiful creations that seem so fragile they could break at a touch, yet with an ephemeral delicacy that somehow endures time after time – then it would certainly be worth giving the Stone siblings a listen and permit yourself to be transported into their world for any amount of live or recorded time from the impressive duo.

Bowie's Lodger

By 1977, the collaboration between David Bowie and Brian Eno was running out of steam, which is fair enough when the last two years had each produced a genuine masterpiece of ambition and invention. Their final work together, Lodger, a more blurred musical vision than either of the previous two, is seen to represent the duo veering away from each others musical trajectories. After it, Bowie would lunge again at the mainstream, at first cautiously with Scary Monsters, and then without abandon with Let’s Dance. Eno, on the other hand, was busy hitching his wagon to David Byrne’s jerky star, making albums every bit as experimental and impressive as Low and Heroes.

Lodger is indeed noticeably distinct from the duo’s previous efforts. The first track hints at it – an epic ballad, ‘Fantastic Voyage’, is driven entirely by a piano and Bowie’s beautiful vocal, crooning a lyric which has a clear narrative of Cold War-era paranoia (it even contains a clear threat, that Bowie would ‘never sing anything nice again’ if bombs were dropped. The Cold War ended a mere ten years after this song – coincidence?). Its coherence and traditionalism would not have got anywhere near the preceding albums. Nor would the three chart-friendly singles, ‘DJ’, ‘Boys Keep Swinging’, and ‘Look Back in Anger’, all placed next to each other in the centre of the album for ease of picking. And following these, there are simply more songs  – no more long ambient tracks of harsh, isolated piano stabs. There are in fact no instrumentals on this album, and without Adrian Belew’s coruscating guitar continually turning songs on their head with layers of noise, it would be Bowie’s most accessible album for some years.

Not necessarily a bad thing though, and if this is the sound of a duo running out of steam, it still manages to be exciting and infused with an energy most bands would give their lead guitarists left arm  to possess. The triumvirate of singles which make up the middle section are great, slightly discordant slices of art-rock, particularly ‘Look Back in Anger’, which rumbles along with a Can-like metronome beat, its incessancy and repetitiveness something rarely heard in popular music. ‘Red Sails’ is the cousin of ‘Blackout’ from Heroes, a hugely enjoyable romp with Bowie’s inexplicable melodies merging with the uplifting brass backing and a typical Belew solo. Mentioned already, ‘Fantastic Voyage’  is a triumph of emotion, and contrasts with ‘Repetition’, led by Bowie’s dispassionate vocals and a detuned bass-line. Just like the opener, it is a song with a narrative, this time of domestic violence, and is as clear as anything from Young Americans, if not quite as uplifting. The whole feel of the album is one of adventure and travel, which, while not particularly subtle (’Fantastic Voyage’, ‘African Night Flite’, the front cover being a postcard), gives the album a restless and invigorating feel.

Exploration brings with it risks though, and the album has its fair share of missteps. Songs such as ‘Move On’, dont do enough to hold the attention of the listener, and sound like ideas being sketched out  rather than fully formed. The world music influence, too, is clumsy. Bowie should be applauded for the attempt, as it precedes more landmark albums such as Remain In Light by the Talking Heads. But whereas songs on that album use polyrhythm and single chord grooves in a way which still sounds fresh today, Bowie’s attempts are more superficial, with silly chanting on  ‘African Nite Flight’ and overbearing Middle Eastern strings on ‘Yassassin’. Bowie clearly wasn’t as intrigued by the possibilities of African music as Eno – ever the musical chameleon, he showed no hint of world music influence until 1983’s ‘China Girl’. It’s debatable whether this belated attempt would have impressed Eno.

Perhaps it was the very beginning of the end – Bowie’s priorities had already began changing, becoming slightly more conservative, and albums after this got progressively worse for a miserably long period. But overall, that does not diminish anything about this one, which takes pride of place in Bowie and Eno’s masterful Berlin trilogy. Lodger’s charms survive its missteps and what emerges from a full listen is an endearing hodgepodge of styles, with high-points that rank well up there with Bowie’s best work. After all, you don’t need a side of instrumentals to make an adventurous album.

Perhaps most famous as a member of The Birthday Party, Howard was involved in numerous musical projects, from his tenure with The Boys Next Door through to a latent solo career. His guitar playing was often at the forefront and an inspiration to many.

As a sixteen year old he penned ‘Shivers’, a song that would later become a hit for The Boys Next Door, the band that became The Birthday Party. Following their dissolution he would be a key player in the early work of Crime & The City Solution (with whom he appeared in Wim Wenders’ cinematic masterpiece Wings Of Desire), lead singer of These Immortal Souls, and a significant collaborator of both Nikki Sudden and Lydia Lunch, among others.

His most recent works were the solo albums, 2000’s Teenage Snuff Film and 2009’s Pop Crimes. Although the latter has been a critical hit in his homeland, it is yet to see a proper worldwide release.

It was probably something of a surprise to many that he made it to this century, let alone the end of this decade, having endured periods of drug abuse and hard living in the past. Howard had however reputedly been encouraged by a renewed creativity and his return to the limelight this year. He was due to play his final gig of the year with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in Melbourne at their request, on what was to be the night before he died, unfortunately having to cancel for now obvious reasons.

Lifelong friend and frequent collaborator Mick Harvey remarked to Australia’s The Age on hearing of his passing, “Sometimes people are ready to go because they have been sick for a long time, but Rowland really wanted to live. Things were going well for him outside of his health and he wanted to take advantage of that, and he was very disappointed that he wasn’t well enough to do so.”

On a personal note, his passing is terribly sad, not only as a music fan, but as one of the many musicians to have been heavily influenced by him. As a guitarist, he was among the best of his generation, and will continue to shift the perception of those who listen to his records as to what that can mean. It would seem likely that a long-overdue assessment of his not insignificant back-catalogue will come, but it’s a shame (as is so often the case with artists) that he has had to pass away for it to happen. To hear that a talent such as his has gone forever is certainly tragic, especially when he had plenty left to give, and the desire to do so.

Rowland Stuart Howard, influential guitarist and songwriter, born October 24, 1979, died December 30, 2009.

Whether they actually met at a Swedish summer camp at the age of 14 as they say is unknown, as is the number of them involved in the band, whether they’re actually Swedish, whether they’re OAPs, kids etc. It’s that old adage of wanting to know the bits you’re kept away from, and not being interested when they’re there.

But while this may seem a gimmick enough in itself, it’s the music rather than the rhapsody that’s got me. The five songs available on the MySpace (http://www.myspace.com/morganwaves) are astounding, reaching Best Band of 2009 levels even without so much as a single release.

The five songs open with quotes from staple ’80s flicks (John Hughes, you know the sort), setting out Summer Camp’s vervy, knowing-bittersweetness.

Take ‘Ghost Train’, a wash of nostalgia placed carefully on top of teen-heartbreak-esque “ba ba ba”s, long-held-onto notes by the female vocalist and shiny, glimmering synths loitering a few spaces back. It sounds touchable, full of wist and wooziness. Such is the addictive nature of ‘Ghost Train’, currently being screamed about but those in the know, that I can only listen to it in 30-minute periods.

And then there’s their cover of ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’, a cover of a song written for Dames, a musical from the 1930s. Summer Camp hand-pick moments from bygone eras far from your common-place reference. The thing in common is once again a heartfelt  melodrama which fits nicely with Summer Camp’s musical cryptogram.

‘Why Don’t You Stay’, also available on the MySpace, is an even gentler affair, woozily doo-wopping through its path. It’s the sound of years of yearning bottled up and finally set free. ‘Round The Moon’, only made available to the world on December 22, is as beautiful as ever, but this time featuring a new male vocal. The lyrics are so muffled that meaning only comes from the rising and falling pitch, and the background “oh”-ing.

Summer Camp are a band your life will be better with. Go have a listen now: http://www.myspace.com/morganwaves

Sleigh Bells

So I found this amazing new band. They’re called Sleigh Bells, which is pretty seasonal, and they’re just incredible.

I say ‘found’, I mean located through a few links on elbo.ws originating from tracking down the much-hyped Freelance Whales (who turned out to be ‘just ok’).

Anyhow it’s been a while since this has happened, what with bands being shoved at me by labels and PR companies combined with that other necessity – sleep. So my first listen to an mp3 of ‘Crown On The Ground’ was truly something. Watch the song being performed live at New York’s Le Poisson Rouge right here:

It’s got a really abrasive sound with cymbals crashing on every beat of the bar and offbeat chords played in sync by guitars, bass and keyboards providing a stark contrast with the shouty, ferocious vocals. It’s such an incredibly basic combination when you think about it, the only addition being a few more parts that sound looped in. It’s robotic. My initial reaction was that ‘Crown To The Ground’ sounded like M.I.A. having been given the Telepathe treatment but that was so as to ignore its all-out power.

‘Infinity Guitars’ is sparser, another great snapshot of Sleigh Bells’ energy:

I’ve been scouring for reactions on this band and have mostly found comparisons with Crystal Castles, suggesting Sleigh Bells are like the duo but with tunes, but I don’t understand that. Electronics are just part of the sound, after all.

While they may have under 1,500 friends on MySpace, each song has received close to or just over 30,000 plays and is totally rad. Cotton on NOW.

Cymbals Eat Guitars

And so our hot, new, overly-innovative series continues! This week, we’ve employed one of our favourite bands of 2009, Cymbals Eat Guitars, to review the week’s singles releases. We’ve caught them on camera (as filmed by the ever-talented Tim Boddy) reviewing ‘Swim Until You Can’t See Land’ by Scottish amazings Frightened Rabbit, ‘Little Secrets’ by ball-squeeze-at-the-disco’ers Passion Pit and ‘Russian Roulette’ by seems-to-be-2009’s-Aaliyah, Rihanna. And without even a prompt, they invent an impromptu (and very un-Muso’s Guide) rating system quantified in peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.

If you’ve been following this series, you’ll have noticed that we’ve been picking our very favourite bands to take part, and it’s a great honour to have Cymbals Eat Guitars in with us this week. Their debut album Why There Are Mountains wraps wild experimentation around a core of bombastic indie rock, and is certainly in my personal favourites of the year. Album-opener ‘… And The Hazy Sea’ is the finest opening track I’ve heard all year, drawing me all the way into Cymbals Eat Guitars’ passages of crashing guitars, noisy brass and quietly shimmering jangle. The mastery comes in the way they combine these sounds so fluently without ever sounding awkward, brash or ungrounded; very rarely has a debut album sounded so intense and bouncy at the same time.

The album’s gaps and ramshackle are what makes it, and it was our honour to catch up with them last week not only for A Chat but also to see how they would deal with the task of being our guest reviewers for the week. It’s more curious as they’re one of the few bands of the current glut to have received nigh-on universal praise across the most prestigious parts of the reviewing world. How does being on the other side feel?

Enough fluent prose, here’s something interactive!

Cymbals Eat Guitars on ‘Little Secrets’ by Passion Pit:

Cymbals Eat Guitars on ‘Swim Until You Can’t See Land’ by Frightened Rabbit:

Cymbals Eat Guitars on ‘Russian Roulette’ by Rihanna:

Wasn’t that fun! Now go on, run along to your record-warehouse of choice and invest in some singles like you used to in the ’90s. It’s a really awesome thing to do and what’s more, you can still totally do it!

We Do Not Negotiate With Terrorists

Allow us to introduce to you Swedish favourites We Do Not Negotiate With Terrorists. They’re situated in Gothenburg but have come there via Manchester – and you can certainly hear the fuzzy grey skies in their music. Here they are…

Muso’s Guide: How are you being received in Gothenburg? Do you find yourselves sticking out like a sore thumb in their love for indiepop/Balearic beats?

WDNNWT: When we first came out 2 years ago people were buzzing, which is an achievement considering there is a lot of competition here. Everyone commented on how cocky the music was -I was worried that the British sound was going to get us run out of town but the press really picked up on what we are trying to do and respect it. There is clearly a need for a band like us in Sweden. Yeah we do stick out though, there are a lot of very professional unsigned bands here (much more so than the UK) but no one does what we do. I think people just assume we are hooligans! The only other band here we have much in common with musically is The Oholics, which is why I asked their singer Krille to come in and do backing vocals on the CD. Things are going very well for them now too which is encouraging.

MG: Would you like The Supremes to hear ‘Wrong Eyes’?

WDNNWT: Haha! Great question! Well I suppose legal issues aside – yes and no, I love Diana Ross but I have to be honest we slaughtered her song. I mean the idea is that it is more ’street’ punk -like doing a sample in a mix, so I don’t think the Supremes would really get that context. The girls (Christina Wehage from Be the Bear, and Sanna Gulle) did a great job on that though, can’t be easy fitting Supremes onto ska guitars, New Order basslines and Oasis vocals! You can hear on the outtakes we made that they had a laugh though, probably a bit of a shock for them too.

MG: What are all of your tastes – is there overlap or do you have lots of clashes?

WDNNWT: Jacques really understands the Manchester bass sound very well but he translates it to US terms like BRMC sometimes, which is fine. He gets all the references though, despite being a yank he actually grew up in London so if I say ‘Pulp’ he knows what I mean. For the most part though I write the music and so there are no clashes apart from the ones I make. Some songs you write don’t work. Jacques has been very critical with me and that has helped us develop. As with ‘Wrong Eyes’ though, most of my tracks are like doing sampling in my head, I write songs with my record collection in mind. I like making references in the lyrics, riffs and melodies. I suppose it has worked out well too, since people have namedropped so many artists when talking about us. That it is just mad- I love it, but it’s just got so mad. On the other hand we have never been called a rip-off or derivative, which means we are doing something right I reckon. I think we are the only band mixing so many bits of other genres or bands. I love the fact that people get it, that’s success that.

MG: How long have you been gigging?

WDNNWT: We haven’t really, we did some gigs back when the CD came out but we just haven’t focussed on live shows since. We have had a few line-up changes over the last year that have slowed things down but it was a stage we needed to go through. It went from a solo project to a more solid collective. In the beginning I had only really seen the band as a studio project, since I was moving around a lot between UK, Sweden and Spain, but I feel that gigging is really on the menu now. It’s exciting to have that nut to crack especially because we are a ‘rock band’. It will be a rush. For them as well as us.

MG: What inspired the band name?

WDNNWT: Politics. At the time I was writing the songs without any plan. there was a lot of talk about terrorism, it just seemed to be getting out of hand and all over the place. What was really in my mind was that the governments were quite rightly being accused of terrorism themselves especially with Michael Moore’s allegations that the US had orchestrated 9/11. My songs were more about me asserting my emotions though, I had a lot of people around me telling me that I should really sort my life out, and on the other hand I had people telling me I was a troublemaker. So I felt that I was surrounded by people holding me to ransom and yet they were calling me basically ‘a terrorist’. It was all relevant to politics I suppose, so the name just evolved out of joking it off. At the end of the day though, the music is about relationships not the TV. I had one young woman and her daughter come up to me and say, ‘we were scared that you were some kind of right wing christian group and then we heard you sing’ …Oh how we laughed…

MG: How did you find each other?

WDNNWT: Down the pub.

MG: What do you want for the band in an ideal world where you could have it all?

WDNNWT: I have modest tastes you know, I would just like to release records and do gigs- I have no ambitions to be U2. I am quite happy to stay unsigned as well, of course not making money from the music means you have to survive another way to support your ‘hobby’ and that just makes it a nightmare to be an active musician. Which is why most bands are on the dole.

MG: How do you feel about the music industry now compared with 10 years ago?

WDNNWT: That’s a big question. I am really disappointed at the way the big labels have still managed to keep control. There was a dream once that CD.s and the internet would bring about some golden age of underground music, but the opposite has happened I think. Of course there are still attempts to get around their monopoly on distribution and media, stuff like these music download programs, but they are always short-lived and get sued, until the next one comes along. Things aren’t that much different from bands messing about with cassettes in the old days. I think venues are also becoming a lot thinner on the ground. In Sweden it is much more noticeable, you can’t get away with some seedy bar in the back end of an alley anymore. Don’t know why that is really. Progress? EU? People stay at home more?

MG: Of course a foreword on the band would be excellent too…

WDNNWT: I think the most relevant thing with the music is that I grew up in Salford in the early 90s, I think you can hear that, and it was a pretty conscious thing too. I got tired of being told that if you like Oasis you need to do Indie, if you like New Order you have to do synth music. When you are in a band that just does say, The Smiths, the band, the fans, the gigs- the whole mentality is so narrow-minded and you can never come up with anything new. When I started the Terrorists it was just natural that I used all the tools at hand. I like to think the music is part of an open-minded generation. Of course Terrorists are part of an established style, but for me there is no excuse for being repetitive or predictable. Besides which I like to provoke people, I think we all need it, we all deserve it.

Listen here: We Do Not Negotiate With Terrorists – The Boy With The Wrong Eyes

Magpie Wedding - image by Sonia Piedad Marinangeli

Well, to be honest, they introduce themselves. Like all good folk should!

We’re an indie folk quartet from Bologna who play enough instruments to supply a small orchestra. I sing, play guitar and accordion, and Magpie Wedding is my first ever band. It started in May 2007 with fellow songwriter Paolo (guitars, piano). I’d been writing songs for a few months having failed to find interesting songwriters to play with. My idea was to find folks to sing and play the guitar parts, then go back to playing accordion accompaniments, which was far more fun.

I remember the first time I recorded a song, in January 2007. I was so scared of my voice that I built a fort in my bedroom, draping a heavy quilt across the space between my upright futon and my clothes rail, and crawled inside to do the deed. I deliberately wrote songs with scared or apprehensive protagonists, so I could pretend that the tremor in my voice was necessary to the lyric, and not just because I was shaking so hard.

Fortunately, by the time I met Paolo, through a Musicians Wanted internet ad, my confidence had somewhat improved. We played a little music in my bedroom, then listened to records together. I introduced him to Neutral Milk Hotel. He introduced me to the Incredible String Band. And that was all we needed to know.

Alessandro showed up that autumn with this lovely vintage bass tone and a willingness to play his instrument with the bracelets round his wrists if that was what was it took to make the noise he wanted. That was when our sound started changing from acoustic songwritery stuff to the weird postrock/folk hybrid that it’s become. We went into the studio a few months later with our then drummer and violinist (during asomewhat difficult process we lost both drummer and violinist) and managed to finish our first EP, ‘Torches’. We spent all summer and all autumn trying to find a drummer. Just before Christmas 2008, we found Giorgio. In addition to being an ace drummer, he also brought the snazzy clothes, fancy shoes, and all-round rockstar element that the rest of us lack.

Making music with people who don’t speak your mother tongue creates unexpected limits. Much as I’d love to write one, there’s no way my Italian bandmates will stand for a 20-verse murder ballad where nothing changes but the English lyrics. But, as a former writer and novice musician, it’s also encouraging that these three guys, who I admire so much as musicians, play with me because of my musicianship, however inept, and not my lyrics.

When we started this band, I was heavily into messy orchestral indie rock like Okkervil River, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Arcade Fire. Simple song structures that anyone could play, but with dense chaotic textures. We wanted French horn players and violinists and kazoo players and everything. No space left unfilled. I thought that minimal singer-songwriters weren’t playing fair, that if all they had to offer was their voice and their story, then maybe they should find the balls to write short stories instead of singing songs. I still love that orchestral stuff, but, thanks to Mark Hollis, Shirley Collins, and more recent Shearwater records, I’ve come round to the idea that silence and empty space in one’s music might actually be the most generous thing a musician can give to a listener. My bandmates don’t always agree, which leads to lots of spirited fights and, I hope, an interesting tension in the music we make.

“Imagine Slint fronted by Vashti Bunyan. Imagine Shirley Collins singing with the Arcade Fire” is how I describe our music. It’s not the truth, but close enough for rock’n’roll. Alessandro’s last band were postrockers. Paolo’s last band played hardcore metal. Giorgio’s hometown band play Sixties beat. There are very few bands all four of us love and none of them – The Dresden Dolls, System of a Down – sound anything like us. It’s a miracle we make it work, but it does. And it’s a stupid amount of fun.

http://www.magpiewedding.com/

The Beatles

The coverage and discussion of The Beatles‘ re-issues this September carried with it the associated feeling that it marks the death of the CD-age in the same way the band helped to usher it in. Coupled with the sense that there’s very little that can be written about the greatest and most popular music of the 20th Century in the 21st, we decided to shine a light on a few of the Fab Four’s fabbest moments that don’t typically find their way onto compilations.

‘There’s A Place’ from Please Please Me (1963)

It’s well known that final track recorded in the marathon session at Abbey Road on 11th February 1963 was the closer ‘Twist and Shout’, the song leading in to it was the first committed to tape. With the technological limits of the day meaning that there was only so much prominence that bass could have without it causing the stylus to jump this as near as the band and George Martin got to capturing their live rawness with the ramshackle nature of the harmonies, alternating between McCartney dominating and Lennon (who wrote this bold declaration of independence) adding his phlegm drenched vowels to the end of the lines as well the punctuating harmonica found throughout the album.

‘I’ll Be Back’ from A Hard Day’s Night (1964)

One of the songs on the second half of the LP and so not appearing on the film of the same name and at the time one of the more intricate and complex songs Lennon had written. It has a loose Spanish flavour to the acoustic backing and Lennon vocal as naked, personally and passionate as that on ‘Help!’ It doesn’t have a chorus and seems to be compromised solely of middle-eights and bridges which contain some fabulous, unexpected key shifts. Like many of these songs we’ve highlighted it points the way forward to where they were heading.

‘No Reply’ from Beatles For Sale (1964)

Of all the re-masters Beatles For Sale is the one that most benefitted versus the original CD versions, you can finally hear the whooshing crash of Ringo’s cymbals alongside the bossa-nova thump of the rhythm section. The doomy, tucked into the background, piano from George Martin lurks in the shadows much like Lennon. Amongst the almost jazz like air to the track the lyrics seem to come from a rather dark place. The casual snarl that Lennon works into when delivers the ‘That’s a li-i-ie’ line and the crashing doom of the ‘I nearly died’ line.  The glorious hand-claps and wrong footing that section delivers when it sticks the ball through your legs and sprints past you. Not to mention the final, chilling ringing chord of acceptance.

‘Yes It Is’ B-side to ‘Ticket To Ride’ (1965)

Sounding dazed and woozy like it’s been drinking red wine before it starts up it’s a surprisingly romantic turn from Lennon who would go onto write the worryingly misogynistic ‘Run For Your Life’ that same year. Despite the hissing snake sound of Starr’s snare, there’s no suggestion that the women in red is like the disinterested soon to be arson victim of ‘Norwegian Wood’ or ‘prick teaser’ as ‘Day Tripper’ almost had. It’s generally accepted as a paean to Lennon’s late, red-haired mother, Julia and ties in with the creeping nagging sense of death that permeates throughout as Lennon castigates himself for his inability to forget this idolisation in the presence of a woman who could make him happy if he could lose his ideal.  Not to forget gorgeous three way harmonies as good as those lauded on ‘Because’.

‘I’ve Just Seen A Face’ from Help! (1965)

You have noticed the lack of McCartney so far in this article. This is mainly as the best of his pre- Rubber Soul material was written ‘eyeball-to-eyeball’ with Lennon or is too well known for this feature. Lennon had provided the more interesting and challenging songs on the previous two LPs as well as the majority of the a-sides around that time. McCartney stepped up his game again with this song which like ‘I’ll Be Back’ was surely good enough to feature in the film the album soundtracks but was recorded slightly too late to make the cut. The thing that I really like about ‘I’ve Just Seen A Face’ is the sheer simplicity of it.  The joy, fate and wonder of falling of love in at first sight captured in the gleeful skipping and cheerful nature of it as it breathlessly sails past us.

‘The Word’ from Rubber Soul (1965)

At this point the band were frankly taking the piss, not content with releasing what dullards think was their first great album they also released one of their best singles, ‘Day Tripper’ / ‘We Can Work It Out’ on the same day! ‘The Word’ could have easily, to my ears, have appeared on Revolver without too much disruption. The lyrics sound like Lennon inventing the hippy anthem before the word phrase had even been coined. Between the comedy piano intro, the stabbing one note guitar bites from Harrison and George Martin’s harmonium at the end we also get one of McCartney’s best wobbling basslines and Starr’s back-to-front drum fills. A song that would point them in the direction explored on ‘Rain’, Taxman’, ‘Paperback Writer’ and ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ six months later.

‘I’m Only Sleeping’ from Revolver (1966)

As a young boy my first exposure to this song, aged eleven, was when Suggs was let near it in the mid-nineties. Lennon’s original is one of the first real examples of the band throwing aside any inclination of creating something that could possibly be performed live (along with, of course, ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ which was started earlier that same month.) Lennon’s LSD induced apathy with the world of the squares and love of his bed (hinted at in his annoyance of not getting a good night’s sleep in ‘Norwegian Wood’ and brought up again in ‘I’m So Tired’) is luxuriously spread across this atmospheric track helped mainly by Starr’s dopey drumming, McCartney’s stalking bass and Harrison’s acidic and Eastern infused guitar solo, which was re-recorded ‘frontwards’ after he had learnt it backwards. The best moments however are reserved for Lennon drawling the title as ‘I’m only seeping’ and the yawn exactly two minutes in.  Quick fact, every track on the album is at most three minutes and a couple of seconds. That’s how you do it.

‘Getting Better’ from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band (1967)

Despite starting with those urgent pulses of guitar, throwaway Beatle humour (’It can’t get any worse’) McCartney’s ‘Getting Better’ might have been considered a lightweight addition to their catalogue Indeed with the cheerfulness and unrelenting chord progression it  might be looked on as an inferior remake of ‘Good Day Sunshine’ and/or ‘Penny Lane’. That is if it wasn’t one of the best examples of the production techniques employed on Sgt. Pepper (aside from dripping the tracks in cellos.) With the droning tambura, Martin hitting a pianette strings with a mallet and congas add yet another element of Indian mysticism to the mix and stomp to the piece. It’s also worth noting the auto-biographical lyrics added by Lennon about beating women and angry youth adding yet more snap.

‘It’s All Too Much’ from Yellow Submarine (1969)

One of Harrison’s more overlooked pieces. Days before the release of Sgt Pepper and without the pressure of touring the band were almost free to pop into EMI studios at Abbey Road on a whim and almost certainly with his brain fogged with LSD Harrison delivered one of the bands longest songs (an 8 minute mono mix is widely bootlegged) and one of the most vividly psychedelic tracks in their oeuvre. Clattering percussion, Hammond organ, trumpets and with that restrained wave of feedback it’s no surprise that it was covered by The House of Love twenty years later.  Like a lot of the English psychedelic music produced around this time despite the mind-altering and consciousness widening property of LSD there is an amount of turning in one oneself that’s also displayed in acid casualty #1 Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd’s writing. The influence of Lewis Carrol’s Alice through the Looking-Glass reflected in the apparent importance of birthday cake and getting home for tea, these were certainly not themes to be found in the lyrics of the Haight-Ashbury hippies.  It found a suitable home in the Yellow Submarine film after not making it on to the Magical Mystery Tour double EP.

‘Dear Prudence’ from The Beatles (1968)

For all the variety on offer on The White Album, there does seem to be a consensus developing that this is the most representative track from the album. Moving from the psychedelic, sonic experimentation to a simpler, acoustic based form of song writing with George Martin used to add studio trickery and effects to complement, not as a vitally important stage in a song’s development. ‘Dear Prudence’, a call for Mia Farrow’s sister to emerge from her chalet in Rishikesh with it’s almost nursery rhyme simplicity, common on many of Lennon’s songs from this period and coloured by the descending finger picking by Lennon and Harrison’s gently playful stings on lead. After Starr’s temporary departure, McCartney does a passing job behind the drum-kit and the climatic fill, aided by handclaps and piano is one of the bands most quietly euphoric.

‘Cry , Baby Cry’ from The Beatles (1968)

The wealth of material written in the spring of 1968 in India and demoed at Harrison’s Esher mansion on their return that would not only feature on The Beatles but Abbey Road and even all three songwriter’s first few solo albums. Most would agree that a good deal of the material on The White Album isn’t amongst the best that the band wrote. However, there is something persuasive about the way that the album is brilliant sequenced and cemented what could a rambling and incoherent mess into a work fondly thought of and in my case my favourite album of all time. Like ‘Dear Prudence’ and ‘Sexy Sadie’ there’s an chugging descent of chords and piano as well as more of the childlike lyrics with the song not only taking the form of a nursery rhyme but could even pass for one. That is if Lennon hadn’t punctuated with creepy allusion to a séances. Right at the end, leading into ‘Revolution #9′ is a short burst of McCartney singing ‘Can you take me back where I came from.’ One of the glorious little moments tucked away into the vast folds of this intricate album.

‘You Never Give Me Your Money’ from Abbey Road (1969)

The founding stone on the so-called Long Melody that closes both this record and pretty much The Beatles as recording entity was one of the first tracks attempted by McCartney after the problematic ‘Get Back’ sessions (That would go on to be Let It Be.) It’s one of the saddest things the band put to tape, anyone that has listened to the band’s songs in a marathon session will feel a pull on the heart strings at this point as McCartney mournfully conveys his sense of sorrow that the band has all but disintegrated and squabbles about money, Allan Klein and so on are the order of the day. Being the Beatles it is also inevitable that this song represents them going all out to wrap things up with a flourish with this mini-suite remind us of why we love them and that as they kiss goodbye to the Sixties,  four lads who did so much to define it both at the time (and to those looking back) had ‘nowhere to go’ as a band anymore. None of them were even thirty years old at the time.