Of Montreal vs Marmaduke Duke

If you've read this for a while, you'll know that my music taste fluctuates seasonally - in winter, I ply you with my Seasonal Affective Disorder and am generally a miserable sod, until the springtime when I find sunshine bands and am generally a miserable sod with manic patches. About three years ago, I loved Biffy Clyro (winter) and then Simon Neil went and made an album with Marmaduke Duke (summer). This year, I've gone from Portishead to of Montreal. I sense distinct similarities between the style of song which heralds my sunshine. Compare (and note how the music taste has improved).

10 Songs I Love Right Now (6) - 17/05/09

The Libertines - I Got Sweets

Libertines are my favourite band, and I Got Sweets is my favourite B-side at the moment, along with Half-Cocked Boy with its sumptuous chords in the chorus. I love I Got Sweets because it is jazzy, breaking into a walking bassline and instrumental solos in the middle. It's proper music, this, and Carl's voice couldn't be more attractive. I've been over-listening to Eight Days A Week (Beatles Cover) too. Let's hope this reunion happens, which their gig in London last night seemed to make more imminent.

The Kinks - Sunny Afternoon

The film The Boat That Rocked brought this song back to my attention. I've always loved it, however simple the chord progressions are. The lyrics about the taxman 'taking all my dough' work in the recession - it's a very miserable song lyrically, but it's so relaxed and manages to be uplifting at the same time.

Sonic Youth - Paper Cup Exit

Paper Cup Exit starts quietly, with repetitive drums and then a soft guitar riff. It seems like a 'skip' track until the unnerving verse comes in, with slightly discordant guitar chords against Lee Ranaldo's severly underrated, rich voice. After the crypic lyrics 'I don't mind if you sing a different song, just as long as you sing along', it drops to an edgy, almost scary riff. From there, it gets more and more tense. This track is haunting, but in the most amazing way.

Carcrashlander - Coast To Coast

On CarCrashLander's album Mountains On Our Backs, this wasn't a standout track to me, at first. I loved Quoting Dead Comedians and Capillary Webs. They're still good, but this proved to be a more elusive gem, with catchy lyrics and melodies that got trapped in my head, but were subtle enough not to get on my nerves.

Babyshambles - Wolfman

Wolfmaaaan! You're giving me the hump, maaaan! I don't know why this track is quite so memorable, or catchy, or sexy, but it is. There is a long drum solo at the end too that sounds almost like African fusion - it's a great track, and I can see why it was a live favourite back in the Down in Albion days.

Blur - On the Way to the Club

This is a track filled with such sincere-sounding tenderness, with such well-chosen words, it is impossible not to fall in love with it. Building up slowly from a simple drum beat, through soft sprinklings of guitar, to the soaring chorus, 'I just want to be, darling, with you', it is intoxicating. And it helps me sleep, which for once, is not damning.

Django Reinhardt - Minor Swing

If you can spell his name, Django is a brilliant find - I found him because he is said to have influenced Carl Barât's guitar playing style very much, which I can see. So surprised was I to hear a song from the soundtrack to the Johnny Depp film Chocolat, that I went and downloaded it straight away. Minor Swing is exciting, jazzy, displays musical virtuosity and reminds me of Johnny Depp, which has to be good.

Pavement - Stereo

After getting over the inital shock of hearing my stereo singing 'Oh! Listen to me! I'm on the stereo!' I found this to be a great song. The vocals are very American, which would usually put me off, but this time added to the lilting feeling of the song, with its lo-fi but uplifting edge.

Graham Coxon - Sorrow's Army

The first thing I thought when I heard this was 'Man, he can play guitar!' Graham has mastered the fine art of finger picking here, or at least showcases it to its full advantage for the first time. It's a great track, very simple and repetitive rhythmically, but energetic, well-played and very danceable (it may not be in the dictionary, but you know what I mean, right?)

Marmaduke Duke - Je Suis Un Funky Homme

The album (Duke Pandemonium) is thrilling enough before this track comes on, but this comes like the cherry on a particularly delicious cake. Daft and excellent in equal measure, Je Suis Un Funky Homme is a wonderful slice of experimental dance pop - that high-pitched organ and those mad vocals...it's a musical delight.

A 405 Update and Other Bits & Pieces

My first ever very positive review has gone up on The 405, a review of the CarCrashLander album Mountains On Our Backs. I decided to give it 8/10, for reasons you can find out if you read the review. That 'job' is going quite well, I've reviewed quite a few things already, and I'm about to submit a Graham Coxon single review, which is also very positive. I must be mellowing with age, or I've just been inundated with great music.

While on the topic of Graham Coxon, can anyone actually translate his Twitter updates for me? He has so many injokes with himself I can barely understand a word of it. That doesn't matter though, really. What matters is that he's got even more fantastic at the guitar for this current album The Spinning Top, which is out now. I reckon he's picked up an acoustic tenderness from Peter Doherty, judging by the single. If I had the money, I'd buy it. However, I've spent that money on going to see Blur in Wolverhampton; at least he profits.

I heard a snatch of Frank Zappa yesterday, one of the artists I really should know about and listen to, but don't. A few weeks ago I reviewed Marmaduke Duke's new album, saying I'd never heard anything like it. Well, now I have, and Frank Zappa did that stuff decades ago, so I'd like to mention that in retrospect. The nod for originality I gave Marmaduke is not quite so deserved, especially as if Zappa did experimental electronics in that style, someone else probably did too. My fault entirely for being too young to know Zappa first hand.

'Duke Pandemonium', Marmaduke Duke

Marmaduke Duke is the side project of Simon Neil from Biffy Clyro (The Atmosphere) and J P Reid from Sucioperro (The Dragon), and their first album The Magnificent Duke was a mad conceptual screamo-meets-noise-rock 18-track explosion of sound. Even if you decided to give up trying to dissect the album for its various 'concepts', it was a musical masterpiece which left you feeling bemused, emotionally tired and mildly enlightened.

On first listening, Duke Pandemonium could have been made by a different band to The Magnificent Duke. It is electronic synth-and-drum-machine-based pop, but it's amazing. I listened to it first on the bus, finding it hard to control my shocked facial expressions, especially in the breathtaking, muted soaring guitars in Erotic Robotic, and during the very weird Skin The Mofo Alive, in which there is every type of percussion you can dream of, including tropical drums and...spoons? I can definitely hear pots and pans being hit elsewhere. Tracks like Skin The Mofo Alive border on parody, though what it would be a parody of, I do not know; this is by no means a bad thing. In fact, it's genius.

This is what side projects should be like. In Plato's world of ideals, this would be the archetypal side project. It's exciting, always changing; all of the Biffy and Sucioperro ideas that were just too daft or mad to use have been rolled together to make this, and skilfully. Highlights include the seven minute extravaganza Pandemonium, sexy and lyrically amusing Erotic Robotic, and the ridiculous but sublime Je Suis Un Funky Homme. Anything here could be a dancefloor classic, but each track deserves more listening to that.

Have I ever heard anything like it before? No way. Is it too daft? Maybe for some. Do I like daft music? Hell yeah. Marmaduke put the 'mental' back into experimental.

9/10

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.