Guter Rat, gute Platten, schlechte Platte

Lange habe ich nichts mehr geschrieben. Sehr ärgerlich eigentlich, denn genügend interessante Musik gab es ja schon in letzter Zeit. Ich sollte mich wohl einfach erst einmal kürzer fassen, aber nicht auf die Empfehlungen verzichten. Denn an einem Mangel an toller Musik lag mein Schweigen nicht. Hier also ein paar Empfehlungen.

The Ladybug Transistor

Die fabelhafte, mit dem Elephant-6-Kollektiv assoziierte Band aus Brooklyn hat ihr Klangbild im Laufe vieler Jahre doch einigen Metamorphosen unterzogen. Und alle Gewänder standen ihr famos. Am siebten Juni kommt endlich "Clutching Stems", dessen Titeltrack einen ähnlichen Weg einschlägt wie die letzten beiden Platten, auf diesem aber bei gleichbleibender Eleganz ein wenig leichtfüßiger wandert. Zum Download findet man das feine Stück hier in hoher Qualität.

The Wave Pictures

Die großartigen Wave Pictures, deren Sänger und Songwriter Dave Tattersall ich hier ja auch bereits an anderer Stelle zu ihrer letzten Single interviewt habe, lassen sich eigentlich nie lange bitten. Gleich zwei neue Wave-Pictures-Alben soll es dieses Jahr geben (und zwei Tattersall-Soloscheiben). Ein wenig düsterer als die Vorgänger sei "Beer In The Breakers", so Loud Horizon. Spontan aufgenommen, an nur einem Tag nämlich, verfolgt es eine ästhetische Linie der "Direktheit", die auch deutlich aus den Antworten sprach, die Tattersall mir gab. Was auch immer man von einem solchen Überbau hält - der Rekurs auf 50er/60er-Aufnahmeprozesse steht einer Band, die so formidabel zusammenspielt, sicherlich sehr gut zu Gesicht. Die Vorabsingle, die am 18.04. auf Vinyl erscheint, ist in jedem Falle toll. Und auch nicht übertrieben düster.

The Wave Pictures - Little Surprise by moshi moshi music

Interview The Wave Pictures

Mighty Clouds

Mighty Clouds haben bereits im November ihr selbstbetiteltes Debütalbum herausgebracht. Zum Download für fünf Dollar bei Bandcamp und auf Vinyl. Lohnt auf jeden Fall. Ich geh sie mir gleich in der Astrastube angucken. Nachfolgeband von Saturday Looks Good To Me übrigens. Mein Lieblingslied von einer durchweg tollen Platte gibt es freundlicherweise sogar für lau:

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, neue Platte

Ist Ihnen schon einmal aufgefallen, daß seit geraumer Zeit Platten nur noch lobend oder gar nicht besprochen werden? Klar, die Zeitschriften besprechen ohnehin nur, was man auch im Anzeigenteil wiederfindet - das Geld kommt ja nicht mit der Post - und als Blogger beschäftigt man sich ja lieber mit dem, was man mag. Viele mögen zum Beispiel diese Platte sehr gerne. Andererseits: Viele mögen auch Radiohead. Ich nicht. Die erste Pains-LP hatte zwei Lieder. Eines einmal, eines neunmal. Und ich habe alle zehn Tracks geliebt. Aber wie! Auf dem neuen Album ist leider kein einziger Song mehr, und wenn doch, ist es mir egal, denn das Teil langweilt mich zu Tränen. Den Titel habe ich vergessen, guck ich jetzt aber auch nicht nach. Zum Werk nur soviel und ganz objektiv: Die Produzenten haben schon mit U2 zusammengearbeitet.

Are the Martians gone? - a couple of questions to Stanley Brinks

Ein Tausendsassa und einer der letzten unabhängigen Vollzeitmusiker: auf die Ausnahmeerscheinung des Stanley Brinks habe ich bereits an anderer Stelle hingewiesen. Zusammengefaßt: Mr. Brinks ist Ex-Mitglied von Herman Düne, solo aber noch viel besser, einer der produktivsten Musiker (über 50 Langspieler in 12 Jahren) und einer der eloquentesten Texter dieser Tage. Ich habe mit ihm gesprochen über seine neue Platte "Yodels", das Verhältnis des Künstlers zum Werk in produktionsästhetischer wie wirtschaftlicher Hinsicht, über Marsianer und Unabhängigkeit.

Interview

Bashful Dodger: Good Evening, Stan! You just released a new album, entitled "Stanley Brinks Yodels". Does that designation just refer to your yodelling in opener? The cover photo also shows you with a big glass of beer, which looks quite Bavarian to me, especially in combination with the title...

Stanley Brinks: Obviously, yes. It's my most german album, it's got all my berlinisms in it. It's funny to look at Berlin as a part of Germany, and to look at Germany as the real birthplace of 20th century music. I think it is.

Q: How would you describe the sound of the album? I have the impression there's a hint of country music, both musically and sometimes also thematically (as in "Don't Drown Your Sorrows In Beer")...even though it's always the distinctive Stanley Brinks sound.

A: I wouldn't have thought so. I did think of Harry Nilsson's version of "everybody's talkin'" when i wrote Don't Drown... A few songs on the album have classic chord progressions, like folk music, country music, and schlager... I like the idea of a Stanley Brinks sound, when i need a reference i almost always listen to another album of mine.

Q: You've been recording with lots of different artists; on the new album, Freschard is playing the drums and singing backing vocals, and both of you do a lot with The Wave Pictures. With the latter, you also released an album (and David Tattersall told me there is one more to come, soon). Any other collaborations in the near future?

A: I've just recorded an album in Norway, with local folk musicians. There's a lot of fiddle and beer on it, and some west coast style jazz trombone. No drums, everything live and acoustic. Amazing musicians. I didn't play any instrument myself. It'll take a little while to be released, because it'll be on a label for a change, a norwegian one. It'll be on vinyl too, maybe vinyl only.

Q: On the album with the Wave Pictures, the Martians are mentioned, same in "In My Wildest Dreams" on "Yodels". A laser gun is also mentioned. Are you fascinated with science fiction? Or is it rather the position of the "alien", for instance in political and/or artistic respects?

A: I like martians a lot. I like calling all aliens martians too. Mostly i like talking about martians because they are the trolls of my time, the imaginary friends of 20th century kids. Of course they have an interesting weltanschauung as well.

Q: You seem to record stuff very spontaneously. Do you really record your songs as quickly as possible, or do you work on some songs for a long period of time till they're finished?

A: I work hard, of course. But i do it full time, so i get things done. It takes a couple of hours to write a song, and a couple more to record it i'd say. I don't know if you think that's quick or slow, but one album can be written and recorded in a week that way. The funny part is that mixing takes longer than that if you want to get it right.

Q: Are the songs you record very planned out, or does coincidence/accident play an important role in the recording process?

A: There are absolutely no accidents or coincidences of any kind. There is improvisation, the jazz thing. And sometimes the sound of something that fell out my pocket, or someone laughing, if that's what you mean. That's not planned. I'm into first takes, although sometimes i like a second one too, because i want the words to be very clear.

Q: You've been releasing lots of albums under various monikers. Are you keeping score?

A: I wrote a list somewhere, but i don't know if i can find it again. I've been sticking to Stanley Brinks for a long time now. The name changes are a thing of the past it seems.

Q: You release most of your songs on CD-R and as downloads. Would you say this is the most viable option for an artist to be independent AND have control where the money goes?

A: I'm not very good with business. I have the vague notion that the best way to be independent and have control is to work with a manager, a publisher, and a big record company. That's what i imagine. You tell them what you want and you don't have to think about all the crap yourself. I have no idea how downloads work, i don't do that stuff. I make CDRs cause i can't make vinyl records, and tapes take an awful time to copy. I kinda like the CD format too, come to think of it. It doesn't take much space but you can still look at it. I'll miss it when it's gone.

Q: The album with The Wave Pictures also got released on vinyl. Many music lovers still think it's the best, sonic and aesthetically. But its production is expensive. Would you say it's becoming a medium merely for enthusiasts which is dying out?

A: I do believe the sound of vinyl records is usually better, but it's not always true. Everything sounded better before the 80s though, and there were no cds. Maybe that's why records sound good, just cause the people who made the machines had better taste. Also, they weren't deaf from using headphones all the time. I like that records are big, and i like that they are from another time. I can't wait for the 78s to be back in style.

Bashful Dodger: Mr, Brinks, thank you for this interview!

Stanley Brinks: Thank you

7 Fragen an die Wave Pictures

The Wave Pictures - Now You Are Pregnant from Anousonne Savanchomkeo on Vimeo.

Die permanent tourenden Wave Pictures (siehe auch hier) sind nach meinem Dafürhalten eine der aufregendsten Kapellen derzeit - nicht zuletzt der begnadeten Texte David Tattersalls wegen. Trotz des ständigen Unterweggsseins fand dieser freundlicherweise die Zeit, mir ein paar Fragen zu beantworten.

Interview

The Bashful Dodger: Good evening, Mr. Tattersall, thanks for taking the time! „Now You Are Pregnant“ is, from my point of view, one of your best songs, full of both lyrical and musical surprises and unexpected rhymes. It even has some anthemic traits, and yet, it has only been released as a single. But you are frequently playing it live. Is it ever going to end up on an album?


David Tattersall: We don't have any plans to ever put it on an album. It's a song that seems to one of our more popular ones. I'm glad that people like it, though it's never been one of my personal favourites.


Q: Your next release is a single with Jonny singing this song and „Sleepy Eyes“, both originally sung by Dave. Was Jonny involved in the writing process of the songs and is getting his share now, or has he been taking posession of the song little by little? Is there more Jonny-on-the-mic stuff to be expected in the future?


A: No, Jonny isn't involved with the writing of the songs, it is more that he takes certain ones over little by little. But he does a great job singing them. The Wave Pictures don't make plans about things like that. The first time Jonny sang that song it was quite spontaneous. We usually like to go into shows not knowing exactly what we are going to do. We don't write set lists or discuss the set. We just wing it. Just make it up as we go along really. So, maybe there will be more of Jonny singing in the future, maybe not. I guess that I will always sing most of the material because I write it, but it's nice to imagine Jonny being a kind of Doug Yule figure to my Lou Reed!


Q: I read some pretty informative liner notes to the „Instant Coffee Baby“ album on The Line Of Best Fit. Would you mind doing that about „Now You Are Pregnant“ for me?


A: Well, I can tell you I wrote it in about five minutes, it just came right out of me really fast. Songwriters say those are usually the best ones, but I have never noticed that. Sometimes the best ones are ones you work hard at for a while, and sometimes the best ones come easily. It's the same with bad ones, some come quick and some come slow! But Now You Are Pregnant I wrote in about five minutes. I already had lots of different pieces and I put them together really fast. I had lots of notes laid out in front of me. I had previously, about a month before, written a song called "Jonny Cash Died Today", on the day that Jonny Cash died. That was a rubbish song, but there it was. Then there were three other elements to the story I guess: one girl I knew who worked in a shoe shop, another girl who had gotten pregnant very young, and thirdly a drunk in a bar in Glasgow who went on and on about Elvis. At the time I wrote Now You Are Pregnant, I wasn't a fan of Elvis or Jonny Cash. I appreciate them both a bit more now, but I still must admit I'm a much bigger fan of Chuck Berry out of all the rock n' rollers. I also wasn't in love with anybody, it just makes for a better song if you say you are. I just put these different things together, as if the girl in the shoe shop and the pregnant girl were one girl and made up a song very very quickly. It took about the same length of time to write it as it takes to sing it. The funny thing about the chord sequence is that it is cut off. It lasts six bars, whereas a normal chord sequence would be four or eight, so it would resolve, but Now You Are Pregnant doesn't resolve, it just goes round and round. It's a nice song to play on the guitar. I like to play it on the guitar and for Jonny to sing it. He sings it beautifully, much better than me. I don't relate to that song particularly well. For me, it's not one of my best, simply because I don't much feel like that guy in that song! It doesn't have a lot of my personality in it. But people like it, so that's nice. I like it better with Jonny singing it, his version is my favourite ever recording of it; it suits him better. The funny thing is that everyone assumes these things are totally autobiographical. They aren't. They have bits and pieces of your life in them, of course, but never the whole truth. I suppose it just means it's a good song if people think it is true. A good song, for me, is a song that is true to itself, not true to life. And audiences can mistake a song that is true to itself for being true to life. That's OK. I do that, too, with other people's songs. It would be nice to think that Now You Are Pregnant, or any of my songs, was true to itself. One other thing: some friends at the time who were first to hear it said I shouldn't call it "Now You Are Pregnant" because they said it is a sad song and getting pregnant shouldn't be a sad thing. I said "no, it shouldn't, but it is sometimes!" So I kept the title. The idea of the title is that it makes sense of the whole song, of everything said in the second verse, even though I never sing "now you are pregnant", knowing that she is makes sense of the whole thing. It becomes that the protagonist is going after this girl to help her, this girl who is pregnant by another man, which is an altogether more interesting idea than if he was just going after her because he loved her. It's quite beautiful in a way. He never quite makes his mind up about it, though, and at the end of the song you don't know whether he is going to go or not, which is a nice ambiguity. I got the idea of a title you don't sing from a great song by The Mountain Goats called "No Children". The song is a husband singing about how he and his wife have grown to hate each other. It's very funny and also very bitter and sad and beautiful. He never sings "no children" or "we couldn't have children" or anything, but then you see the title and it gives this whole extra depth and layer of meaning to the song.


Q: How do you select the songs that are going to be on an album? In the case of „We Dress Up Like Snowmen“ and the above-mentioned song, you opted to put them out as a 7“ and „I Shall Be A Ditchdigger“ from the last album is a pretty old song by your standards which had to wait until the fourth album...


A: It's usually new things I've written and maybe something old (like Ditchdigger) that has become new to us again after such a long gap, or something that we want people to hear who have never had a chance to. Then you're looking for the right ten or twelve songs out of the twenty or so you have recorded to create a unified whole - the album - which also has the best variety or the best feeling. Sometimes you pick a song and put it on an album because the guitar solo is great. Sometimes it's the right mood, sometimes it it the lyrics. It varies. Another reason we did those older songs was to get Jonny Helm on them. On the original, older versions it was a different drummer. And we were playing them live at the time and wanted a recording with Jonny on it. We like to do so many songs, I've written hundreds since I was about fifteen. "Sleepy Eye" on the new seven inch, I wrote when I was 16 years old. I'm 27 now! It's nice to keep as much going though, I'm proud of all of it, proud we have a big repertoire. It's nice to go on stage and know you can do so many different songs, and then to sing what you really feel. It's a very nice, nostalgic kind of feeling to hear Jonny sing a song I wrote that long ago. Then again, it's also important to keep doing new songs, and we have about twenty totally new songs we haven't released yet that we'll also be playing at new shows. It's good, I like the really old and the really new. I like the stuff in between the least! You have to wait for things to get old again, so that they become new again to me.


Q: You are all good musicians who are playing together all the time, but your recordings always have this certain edge of spontaneity. How do you manage to preserve this while many bands sound too professional on recordings? Do you do it all live, book a studio for one or two days and done you are?


A: Well, bands don't play the way we like, or sound the way we like any more. To my ears, the way we sound is a human sound. You can hear each of us playing our instruments, and you can hear us responding to each other, you can even hear the strings of our guitars. That's what I like to hear. Like The Velvet Underground's third album or John Wesley Harding by Dylan, or even things like field recordings and live albums, or older things from the thirties and forties. John Lee Hooker, Robert Johnson, Joseph Spence, Django Reinhardt. I don't really enjoy modern music because mostly it sounds fake to me. It sounds like a computer churning out robot music. Bands, too; not just pop but modern indie-rock is a pile of shit. It's very inhuman. It's people turning themselves into machines, because machines are perceived to better since they don't make mistakes. But it's not a sound of love. Machines cannot love! Humans make mistakes and are fragile but they are also warm and vital. I know that all sounds like a lot of bullshit! But it is what I hear. You can hear the technology taking over and replacing the human being. Because when you hear a Kings of Leon album, say, you hear a snare drum set through a computer to trigger off forty other snares perfectly in sync, it is neither the sound of one man drumming, nor of forty men drumming (which could never be perfectly in sync), it is the sound only a machine could make. It is the same with the guitars, they put hundreds on there, until it doesn't sound like a human with a guitar anymore. It's totally fake and unemotional to my ears. We record each of the players and try to get something rough and natural and something that feels and sounds like people in a room. You close your eyes and you can picture us in the room, you can hear the room and imagine where we are all stood. That's what happens if you listen to my favourite records, to "Tonight's The Night" by Neil Young or to Jimmy Reed or whatever, and that's what we aspire to. Ensemble playing. For me, something went wrong with recording in the mid seventies and it's never been good since. We're trying to swim against the current and I know most people don't agree with us. It's not to be retro or what have you, it's not a pose, it's just the sound we like to hear. I like it rough and ready. That moves me more. We always record live and we always do it quickly and we're looking for something, some spark you can't get any other way. You know, "Brown Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison, "La Bamba" by Ritchie Valens, "Like A Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan, "I'm Straight" by The Modern Lovers... that's the ideal! That's a bunch of guys in a room and they made magic! It's all done live and I always hope I'll go back through to the control room and hear something like those records, but we've never managed it yet! But we'll keep going at it and maybe one day we'll get something that great.


Q: You've been touring and recording a lot, it actually seems like you're on the road almost all year. When you're not recording. Do you even have time to write and practise new songs?


A: Oh yeah, we work up things in sound checks and so forth. We have new stuff all the time. We like doing what we do. You find a way.


Q: This year, the Stanley Brinks & The Wave Pictures album was released, a Wave Pictures album and a David Tattersall solo album (with Freschard playing the drums, if my information is right). What's up next? New collaborations? A break from touring?

A: We are working on two Wave Pictures albums, one recorded by Darren Hayman, and one recorded partly in Leeds and partly in London. I hope to get both of them out over the next 18 months or so. And I made an album with Howard Hughes called "The Lobster Boat". Howard is the lead singer of French band Coming Soon. He and I made an album together. It's a really strong album, we are both very proud of it. I play some slide guitar on it, which I was happy to do again since I haven't played slide guitar for years. Ry Cooder style! We made that and that will be released in the upcoming year as well. Also, there is another new album of Stanley Brinks and The Wave Pictures called "Another One Just Like That", which I think is even better than "Stanley Brinks and The Wave Pictures". His songs are amazing, it's a great album. So we've got a lot of good things going on.


The Bashful Dodger: Thank you for this interview, Sir!


David Tattersall: Thanks.

Wave Pictures / Coming Soon out now

...und Tripping The Light Fantastic coming soon.

Eigentlich sollte an dieser Stelle, das war schon fest geplant, dem formidablen Stanley Brinks gehuldigt werden, doch das muß jetzt für einen Augenblick in die Warteschleife. Denn Stanley-Brinks-Lobhudelung ist ja ein zeitloses Vergnügen, doch gelegentlich müssen - trotz der unangezweifelten Angebrachtheit desselben - Dinge aus dem Tagesgeschehen in den Vordergrund treten. So befand ich mich neulich, es war letzten Freitag, in der Karo-Ecke, um mit meiner Band einen Kaffee zu trinken, den wir uns mit den Tripping-The-Light-Fantastic-Byte.fm-Sessions verdient hatten, wie wir fanden. Doch dann überschlugen sich die Ereignisse, von denen zumindest eines erwähnt sei: ich habe meinen Bibliotheksausweis verlängert. Viel wichtiger war aber: Burnout Records rief an, um mir mitzuteilen, die Split-Single von The Wave Pictures und Coming Soon liege zur Abholung bereit. Und die Wave Pictures sind ja bekanntlich die Band der Stunde. Zumindest mir ist dies Bekannt, und ich weiß auch von anderen Trägern des Wissens, daß niemand zur Zeit so eloquent wunderbare Texte zu so feiner Musik schreibt wie David Tattersall von den WPs. Weswegen deren Lobeshymne auch baldigst ansteht, hell yeah!

Auf der Single jedenfalls covern die Wave Picures ein Lied von Coming Soon und vice versa. Das Wave-Pictures-Stück trägt den Titel "Sweetheart" und ist auch auf dem fabelhaften diesjährigen Album "Susan Rode The Cyclone" enthalten:

Von Coming Soon, die aus Frankreich (naja, oder doch aus England...Kidderminster in Frankreich, sagt ihre Myspaceseite) kommen und in ihren besten Momenten klingen wie gleichberechtigte Homies von Mr. Brinks und den Wellenbildern und in den schlechteren wie deren Plagiatoren, klingt das gleiche Stück ungefähr so:

Und das ist durchaus auch nicht schlecht, nicht wahr? Ihr Stück, das von den WPs gecovert wird (beide sind auf der 7" auch im Original enthalten), hört auf den Namen "Wu". Das ist auch ganz nett. Besser ist da aber "Dr. Wu" von Steely Dan. Auch im Minutemen-Cover. Oder halt "Sweetheart".

Coming soon ist auch die erste 7" von Tripping The Light Fantastic, deren Erscheinen am 17.10. gemeinsam mit den phantastischen Sleeping Policemen und Konzertgästen in der Astra-Stube zu Hamburg begossen wird. Und damit diese Einlassung rund wird und es außerdem wahr ist: auch diese 7" hielt ich an besagtem Freitag erstmalig in meinen Händen.