10 Songs I Love Right Now - 6/07/09

Blur - Caravan

Caravan wasn't the standout song when I first heard Think Tank: Crazy Beat and Brothers and Sisters were my instant favourites, but Caravan is a grower and I've had it on repeat lately. Beautiful simplistic melodies gently chug along over sprinklings of keyboard, and typically eloquent Damon Albarn lyrics sung in a heavy, faraway voice make this song perfect for drifting away into.

Sucioperro - Liquids

The recent Sucioperro album, Pain Agency, is a proper experimental rock album, pulling out the stops on instrumental skill and raw emotion. Liquids is the opener and it has it all: riffs that Sucioperro will be offered serious money for by whoever makes Guitar Hero, angsty lyrics, little quiet sections with really weird guitar runs in, a melodic section at the end, aggressive drumming. Played back to back with Conception Territory's strange cowbell solos, you're going to go on some serious trip.

Ali M Forbes - Under Her Sails

So, Envy & Other Sins split up this week, to the great disappointment of their fans, who are a lot more sympathetic than their ex-record company. Ali's first demo is this song, as yet unreleased, but a lovely ditty with xylophone and acoustic instruments. It's pretty. Hear it here.

Sonic Youth - Walking Blue

I was always a fan of Lee Ranaldo from Sonic Youth, and I tend to love his songs best on their recent albums. He writes intense lyrics and sings them in rich, deep tones. This song is the same, with gorgeous percussion (I think it's a metal thing you scrape?) and nice chord progressions. Also a fan of What We Know, similar, but driven more by bass.

Stiff Little Fingers - Doesn't Make it All Right

Laid-back punk-ska track, made good by the fiddly bass part and the vocals - anti-prejudice lyrics are sung with a mixture of anger, disdain and exasperation, until it builds up into a percussion-and-mantra-powered punk song at the end.

Dirty Pretty Things - The Weekenders

A Dirty Pretty Things B-side, this track is just a daft Didz Hammond-ish retelling of the end of a relationship ("I showed you nearly all my heart and you showed me the door"), but it's done with nice guitar parts and upbeat chords. And Carl Barât's voice in the chorus is delicious. But that's just a given.

Blur - Popscene

It's deservedly on their new getting-back-together-and-making-a-lot-of-cash CD, Midlife, deservedly because it's a fantastically mad track, padded out with a brass section. This track is credited with giving birth to Britpop. It's certainly a lot of fun, I'll give it that.

The Coral - Who's Gonna Find Me

The Coral are fantastic at vocal harmonies, and that's what I love about this track: that and the slightly Hawaiian slides on the guitar. Pretty simple in structure and lyrics, this track is nothing to get excited about, really, but it's the sound of (a slightly angsty) summer and I'm temporarily addicted to it.

Yeti - Till The Weekend Comes

My favourite from 2008 album The Legend Of Yeti Gonzales so far, Till the Weekend Comes is a relaxed and slightly melancholy pop tune. Four-part harmonies and a day off: it's about as free as I ever feel these days. Don't Go Back To The One You Love is my second favourite, with cinematic lyrics describing some kind of thrilling escapade through the wilds of America, as well as containing Yeti's usual precise harmonies. There's a nomad in his mustang and everything.

The Specials - Ghost Town

The Specials are back together! The Specials! Despite a patchy Glastonbury performance, The Specials are back in full force, most still jumping round that stage, Terry Hall still staring intently into the crowd with an intimidating expression on his face. This song doesn't need justifying. It's fucking ace.

Leave me a comment if you'd like, if you agree or disagree with the above. Always open to debate.

A video for you.

I should explain why you should love this band. While my taste is usually a lot more garage-rock-punk than Envy & Other Sins, who create what can only be described as excellent pop, Envy have stolen my heart and could easily steal yours. They won an essentially average talent competition called Act Unsigned in December 2007 and have been teetering on the brink of success for the past year; Polydor, who they gained a contract with after winning Act Unsigned, seemed to pay very little attention to them despite their obvious saleability (quirky clothing, intelligence, a great work ethic, catchy songs, a good dynamic as a band, talent), maybe because the talent show hung over Envy's name like a contagious disease and no-one seemed to want to touch them for fear of sacrificing their credibility. Zero advertising will add up to very few sales: the music business is built on advertising, and with a bit of it, Envy would now be 'big'. But no - they had to stick to touring 200 venues with very few album sales and yes they filled many of them, but those numbers dwindled and their fan-built forum struggles to keep afloat with 30 members. They are good enough for so much more. They can write proper pop gems and are masters at weaving traditional rock instruments into the pop framework. They make upbeat, modern, intelligent pop-rock and it's such a shame if you miss it because of their record company's indifference.

I've seen them six times live and once playing Pheasant, an ingenious cross between football and tennis, in a park with no public toilets. Six is a small number really, considering some of the Kaiser Chiefs fans I know who have seen Chiefs over fifty times. However small, it is my claim to them, along with keeping in contact with them over MySpace and having been onstage with them once doing their light show. I like to think, however audaciously, that Jarvey, Ali, Jim and Mark are friends as well as being in one of my favourite bands. They cheer me up musically and simply by perpetually being a part of me, as a live show in the future or memories in the past.

They aren't The Beatles, but they're ten times most of the local scene around where I live now. There are a million copy-bands struggling in the wake of Oasis and The Libertines, and Envy & Other Sins break free of that shit-quality-but-it's-okay-because-that's-the-way-the-Gallagher's-recorded-it mould that so many bands fit into.

Just watch the video and click on their name in this post, please? I don't know who is reading this yet, but hopefully someone will heed this call and we can get Envy to one more listener...they deserve it. Besides, check out that lead singer. ;)

10 Songs I Love Right Now - 28/09/08

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.

Caetano Veloso - Irene

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.

Blur - Wear Me Down

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.

Blur - Blue Jeans

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.

The Cribs - Baby Don't Sweat

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.