Biffy Clyro - Buddy Holly (Weezer Cover)
I actually heard this cover before I heard the original. I assumed that the original would be pretty out there too; I went looking for it and found a sweet American pop song. Biffy have magically transformed this track into something very impressive. Built around ridiculously complex time signatures and shifting melodies, this is an amazing musical masterpiece. Then the Scottish voices singing the lyrics over the brilliance, following the original tune but fitting it very loosely around the backing just make the song what it is. They made it better. Obviously I'm biased, Biffy being my favourite band, but seriously, this would be a good cover either way.
Envy & Other Sins - Help Yourself
This song is so damn happy. I bought it on the Prodigal Son single at a gig in Stratford, a self-released venture by Envy & Other Sins which didn't really get anywhere, but which is really quite brilliant. Two days afterwards I fell madly in love with them on stage at Birmingham ArtsFest, and for days after that I was playing Help Yourself on repeat in blissful retreat from the world around me, and for that time I was happy. So it's a happy song for me now, very happy.
I can't explain my love for this song very well, it's all emotional. For a start, it's my dad's music, which brings an element of guilt into it for me, but I can't deny how great it is. It's a love song with quite melancholy lyrics (when translated from Portugese) but the tune and the rhythm is so uplifting and cheerful. It makes me want to skip down the street, it's so beautiful and carefree.
Radiohead - Planet Telex Ah Radiohead. I suppose I'm late to discover Radiohead - it's not my fault I was born at the wrong time! This song is everything at the moment, eerie and sad but also perfect for encapsulating everything I feel. "Everything is broken." It's a dreary lyric, but it fits my mood - the rest of the words are generic enough to capture hundreds of people's feelings, but specific enough to feel like they apply to me only. It's set to very moving music too. My Iron Lung is also capable of this, the funk-rock heaviness towards the end giving me something to mosh to in my front room. Love.
This song is a bit dull to be honest. It's a twisted love song with sweet but predictable melodies and very little lyrical or rhythmic interest. But it's sexy, I suppose, the sleepy, deep vocals compelling and disobedient; the song is gorgeously morose and angsty, and when I don't want to hear something happy and I don't want to hear something sad, it's the perfect compromise. Damon's voice always gets me too. It's special.
Flight of the Conchords - The Most Beautiful Girl (in the Room)
I don't know, this song is just hilarious. The lyrics are hilarious and very cruel ("You're so beautiful like a tree or a high class prostitute, you could be a part-time model but you'd probably sitll have to keep your normal job"), but beneath them there's a very sweet tinge to this song which makes anyone with half a heart go 'awwwww'. He really seems to want to be with this girl, just has no tact whatsoever. It's cute and sweet and outrageously funny.
Biffy Clyro - Stress on the Sky
I love everything about this song. I love its name and its lyrics and the cover of the album it is on (Blackened Sky) and its screamo patches and quiet patches, its intro and its beautiful harmonies, and most of all I love the quiet, considered riff after about a whole minute of heavy guitar and aimless shouting. This song is tied to a very depressed few months in my existence, and whenever I listened to it, it took the world off my shoulders and made me sink into bliss for 4 minutes. The need for that has passed now, but I cannot help but feel a ridiculous attachment to the beauty of it.
This song is a very pretty melodic slow one about the mundanity of modern life (Blur's favourite topic) but I find it more attractive than others they have done of the same type. It brings up images of a failing relationship, going so well, so much love being lost to a tide of boredom and repetition. The chorus has such lovely harmonies and melancholy sweetness. It's an emotional sigh of a song.
It's mostly the intro to this song which makes it great. It's sexy and raw and the whole track is upbeat without being too upbeat to listen to when you are miserable. It's simple but attractive, and best of all, I can play it on my guitar!
Marmaduke Duke - The Beaver and the Rabbit
Finally, Marmaduke Duke. Simon Neil's side project, I was bound to like it really. This song is angry and it doesn't fit into any of the usual structures songs have. There's no time signature that you can stick to, it's always morphing, the guitar work is simply amazing, and while the screamo bits are almost TOO experimental, it works. Stunning moments of harmony puncture the very hard and rough tune and it's impossible to listen to it without an open mouth.My 10 tunes of right now, explained.
Go and listen, go and explore, they are all mind-blowing.
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