More Conor Oberst

Just an update - I am now writing for the music section of the Oxford Student newspaper, so if you ever manage to get your hands on a copy, or fancy clicking here, you can see me in 'print'! It's almost certainly irrelevant to you because you've probably happened across this page by unfortunate accident... however, the topic's quite fun: are music awards still relevant? Do music awards have any legitimate gravity in the indie and rock world? Hear me thrash my editor at the link above. Plug over.

I didn't only start this post purely to link you to more of me - I intended only to post this awesome video. I found this album for £3 in the HMV sale in Oxford today. Pretty cool.

Desaparecidos are back!

10 years ago, Conor Oberst and pals formed a band called Desaparecidos for one passionate, political album. They then gracefully retired into their respective projects, Oberst having said all he had to say at the time about the ridiculousness of fashion, destructive 'progress', materialism and the lie of the American dream. Oberst has always been fairly political, standing up for the rights of Mexicans in the southern states recently, and publicly supporting Obama in the last election.

Now, the band affectionately termed Desa are back, because let's face it, things haven't got much better. New track 'MariKKKopa' was inspired by the comments of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who recently said it was 'an honour' to be compared to the KKK because it 'means you're doing something'. I have to say, if anything were to inspire me to get a political band together, ridiculous comments like that in my home nation would definitely help. The song, below, is a return to form - straight back in with the angry vocals, speaking through the voice of an all-American racist.

They've also released another track, 'Backsell', which has more ambiguous lyrics but seems to be about the shallowness and cruelty of the fame industries in the US. It's a great reinvigoration - good political music is quite difficult to find at the moment; there's been no great political musical movement in a while. Indie folk mostly wants to tell us about itself, pop wants to tell us about its lovers, rap wants to tell us about its sex life, emo and post-punk want to tell us about their break-ups and kick-ass parties, and screamo... who the Hell knows what that wants to tell us? Hearing new and revived bands making a stand will always be heart-warming to anyone with a revolutionary bone in them.

Lee Ranaldo Free Downloads and Streaming

A while ago, I think I posted the video for 'Off the Wall', Lee Ranaldo's new single. The former Sonic Youth 'super-cool' guitarist has released a show on good quality MP3 files, recorded live from New York recently. I downloaded it speculatively and after a couple of listens, immediately went out and bought the album - though in retrospect, while both are insanely good, the live show has captured the atmosphere perfectly, and so some of the tracks (particularly 'Hammer Blows') are enriched by the gig feel, and are possibly even better than the album versions. Have a look, it's free!

Download the MP3s here

Glitters Like Gold

Ah, The Cribs. Anyone who's ever been a few pages back on this blog knows of my obsession with the Wakefield punk rockers, and I have to say, unlike some of my other musical passions, my love for this band has remained constant for years. The Cribs are brothers who've been playing under that name since 2001 - their 11-year career has spawned 5 albums so far, each different to the one before, but all sharing the common features that their cult following loves - an underlying punk ethos, idiosyncratic guitars and the edgy, slightly off-key vocals of the twin Jarmans, Ryan and Gary.

The Cribs haven't made many concessions to the modern music industry. There have been no American accents, no fashion labels giving out lanyards at gigs, no abandonment of the bands they professed to love in their teens. Thanks to The Libertines and The Strokes, the early noughties was a good time for The Cribs to launch, as that wave of indie was decidedly in vogue - but they rejected the scene that had adopted them, denouncing the sexism in the lad-rock around them and writing the cutting tracks 'Hey Scenesters' and 'Mirror Kissers' to slate the very people that shouted their lyrics at gigs.

The slightly derisive edge didn't seem to hurt the fans' feelings though - the hipsters probably didn't regard themselves as such anyway. The Cribs were gathering momentum just as that indie scene melted away in around 2008 to make way for singer-songwriters and electro-indie of the sort peddled by Friendly Fires, White Lies and their compatriots. The Cribs released what was probably their most well-known album, Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever during the final throes of this scene, making an unexpected splash with the track 'Men's Needs', an enigmatic attack on misogyny. They'd signed to a bigger label and got Franz Ferdinand's Alex Kapranos in to do the production, but their third album still didn't concede much to pop - the uncompromisingly angry 'Our Bovine Public' is as seething as anything on The New Fellas, and the musicianship was getting increasingly adept, Ryan's lead guitar in particular (though it had been incredibly raw in the first two albums, admittedly).

After this success, The Cribs took on another member - Johnny Marr of The Smiths, one of their principal influences. I still think this was a match made in heaven, though they got some inevitable stick from some of the fans; I saw them live for the first, second and third time during Marr's tours with the band, and enjoyed every performance - he fit right in. I felt that the addition of a second guitar enriched the atmosphere of Ignore the Ignorant too. Though the anti-Marr feeling was oddly strong, I think they came through it unscathed. Tracks like 'We Share the Same Skies', 'Emasculate Me' and 'Save Your Secrets' are as worth listening to as anything of theirs, and much more skilful than early tracks like 'The Watch Trick', which have a certain raw appeal but sound like a load of teenagers messing about with a 4-track by comparison. That's almost certainly what they were.

In the Belly of the Brazen Bull, their newest album, is the one they always wanted to make - through the thick feedback and fuzziness, you can hear Comet Gain, Sonic Youth, The Smiths - all those bands they've loved throughout their career. It may have a Smithsy touch, but Marr departed from the band this year, because - well, who knows? Marr's a musical nomad at the moment anyway, probably scared of commitment after his embittered marriage to Morrissey. The Cribs are a trio once more, and album number five gives two fingers to expectation, in that it's managed to keep the ground-roots style, but it's also got technique and cryptic but profound lyrics, and it still made it into the top ten, even without Marr.

Here's a video of them performing 'Glitters Like Gold', their new single, for Radio 1. I like this version because the vocals are more pronounced than on the recording, and it's organic - they were made to be a live band.

Beautiful Voices

So far this summer, it's been all about beautiful voices. Beautiful for different reasons, but beautiful all the same. I happened across the tunes I am about to recommend for different reasons - the first at several clubs, the second during an iconic romcom I am too ashamed to name, not being a romcom girl, and the third by random chance in the HMV sale.

Arctic Monkeys

There's something compellingly naughty about Arctic Monkeys, even when they're not talking about little books of sex tips - something disobedient and free, even when they're being musically tame. It's got something to do with Alex Turner's voice. The richness of it against the unrelentingly Northern dialect is appealing - he can play with how much of his accent goes into his vocal line, and unlike most indie artists of the same sort, he has the technical skill to mess with the melody. 'R U Mine', Arctic Monkeys' most recent single, is a return to form for the lads. At clubs, it stands out as miles ahead of most other new tracks in that it balances simplicity with perfect production and well-judged instrumentation; it has the raw energy of their first album, but they've grown into a wilder beast since then. The video is laddish but entertaining - they're still arrogant teenagers at heart, and I suppose that's how people love them.

Marvin Gaye

He's quite a jump from Alex Turner, but variety is the spice of life - Marvin Gaye has also been making many an appearance on my iPod playlists recently. Alright, I'll tell you, it was Bridget Jones - the placement of 'Ain't No Mountain High Enough' in that film is epic, in spite of the... y'know, the rest of that film. Gaye's voice alongside that of Tammy Terrell is perfect; it's a real summer song, empowering and perfected by their lovely, smooth vocals. The video for this always cheers me up - they look so content, so relaxed. Voices like these don't need fancy footage to rack up 21,000,000 views.

On the widget below, I've also added 'I Heard It Through the Grapevine' - the Slits cover is brilliant in its own way, but this surpasses it - and 'Sunny', a song my mum used to listen to when I was a child. I heard it again at a cinema, in the pre-show music, and it was so eerily familiar that I had to look it up. Turns out it's a great upbeat song.

Joan Armatrading

The last of my artists is Joan Armatrading - the wonderful 20th century star whose CD I happened upon by chance in HMV the other day. I knew of her so I thought I'd give it a try, and I struck gold. She has moments of brilliance, dipping in and out of genres. The first on the widget below is 'Opportunity', my current favourite, a bluesy number about underhanded dealing. A lot faster and funkier is 'Show Some Emotion', with which Armatrading had a hit a few decades ago. 'Like Fire' showcases some of her raw talent on the guitar - she plays with rhythmic techniques and still manages to sing over the top. As a struggling beginner, I have respect for anyone that can do that. Finally, I've put one of her slower numbers on, 'Tall in the Saddle', mostly for its first lines, and how insanely gorgeous they are against their syrupy backdrop. It breaks down a bit when she starts singing "We had fun fun fun fun", I always think the word 'fun' makes things more S Club than jazz club, but hey, she didn't know about the 90s when she wrote that line.

No Doubt

At the risk of invoking a feminist-induced roll-eyes (as goes with the anti-feminist stance so popular in our modern media), I'm not comfortable with most music videos because of the women in them. There isn't a genre which releases singles which is above the sexualisation of women in their videos. Before you stop reading, just consider the last time you turned on music TV, or have a try now - sit there for a half hour, or flick through the channels, and record how many of the videos feature these things:

• Women dancing, wearing bikinis, or crop-tops and little shorts, or just underwear

• Numerous women dancing around or in front of a singular male, or a small group of males

• At least one woman with less clothes on than would be deemed 'normal' or 'not slutty' in public

• Close-ups of women's bodies, usually bums, boobs, legs and stomachs.

You may come across a couple of videos without these things, but my own personal (admittedly confirmational) scan through the channels suggests it's rare, even in genres not usually reknowned for their sexism. And of course, videos differ in the level to which they use the depersonalised female body - but it's there alright, most of the time.

Anyway, I initially went on for another 4 paragraphs about why this is a bad thing, but I don't think it'd win any converts - you either get what I mean or you think it's all harmless, a bit of fun. I'm a killjoy, a jealous bitch even. I've heard it before. They're two fundamentally different stances, sure, and I'll grant that on a good day, I can sit through one of those videos emotionlessly and know that plenty of people do the same, desensitised to the images they're presented with. But I am a great believer in the idea that things seep into our psyche; we don't always see that what's 'normal' to us is not actually the only path, the only way the world could be. Music videos show a world of ideals, but those are NOT biological ideals. They are cultural ideals, and therefore, they could easily be re-shaped. They're only showing 80%-naked girls and half-dressed guys because they're perpetuating our media's images, and our media's images are there because being thin, tanned, made-up, well-dressed down to the underwear, shaven, perfumed and bejewelled is the most expensive way to live, and our media is based on advertising. Simple as that. (Well, almost...)

All this has, tangentially enough, been leading up to a discussion of No Doubt. I always used to see Gwen Stefani as another sugar-pop princess, with slightly better music, because I saw her having an interview on Channel 4 a long time ago and she appeared pretty vacuous. It was definitely a cruel assessment, I know that now, but the pretty costumes, blonde bombshell haircut and heavy make-up don't do her music justice, really. I was too used to pop producing mindless music by women who were just a front, lip-syncing, taking pin-up girl photos and grinding the camera in videos. Therefore, when I watched 'Just A Girl', it was a very pleasant surprise. The lyrics mean srsbsns, and she's got a srsbsns voice to go with them.

"'Cause I'm just a girl, little 'ol me Don't let me out of your sight I'm just a girl, all pretty and petite So don't let me have any rights."

I hope no-one missed the sarcasm. I think it's pretty blatant but it was released in America. (No offence, Americans, but your Bible Belt makes us all lol over here in the UK.)

"I'm just a girl, Take a good look at me Just your typical prototype...

I'm just a girl in the world... That's all that you'll let me be!"

Tropicalia

I've probably mentioned Tropicalia before, but if I haven't, now's as good a time as any. I was working today and I stuck my iPod on, and decided it was time for some 'random world music', as my boss put it. Tropicalia was a great movement of the cultural revolution - in Brazil. Unfortunately, the regime at the time wasn't up for a cultural revolution, so the history of Tropicalia is incredibly political, littered with attempts at oppression. It's freedom music, combining traditional South American instrumentation, language and rhythms with decidedly beat-pop-esque songs, 60s guitars and harmonies. Not only that, it also manages to have an intro that sounds like Duffy, yet pre-dates her by several decades. Have some glorious start-of-summer listening!