YorkeDaddy

For the most part I'm not a huge fan of these songs...

But, 1234 is an awesome song

TockTockTock

Badlittlekitten

37
Robyn Hitchcock - Star Of Venus
Propeller Time
2010
Maybe I'm just over excited having just discovered this. And I fear that what sounds so scarred and profound will end up sounding like a boring folk dirge down the line. But screw it. This just sounds so scarred and profound. Hitchcock was a member of influential jangle pop geeks The Soft Boys. In the 80s he went solo and made a number of irreverent oddball gems. In recent years he's ditched some of the surrealism and gone back to his folk roots. 'Star Of Venus' is unspectacular musically (despite Peter Bucks presence on mandolin) and it doesn't really have a chorus, but I adore it for one reason:the voice. Too old now to get away with forced/false quirkiness, Hitchcock plays it straight and sounds better then ever as a result. He exerts wisdom with every line with a fag damaged (fag as in cigarette you saucy Americans!) rasp reminiscent of John Lennon. The way his voice almost cracks at the end of the opening line ("You must have seen it coming a long time ago. The ship of all your feelings, shipwrecked in one goooo.") is especially devastating. You can almost picture a swooning Robyn, dewy eyed at a misty harbour, watching his life sail on by. And with the line when he asks, "Does it make you cry?", I answer "Well yes it does sir. You sound so scarred and erm . . . . profound."

Not on youtube but found:
Star Of venus

__________________
'Said do you feel it? Do you feel it when you TOUCH ME?. THERE'S A FIRE! THERE'S A FIRE!' The Stooges. Dirt.

https://soundcloud.com/bad-little-kittens
My Top 100 LPs
My Top 52 Indie Tracks Of The 21st Century (incomplete)

Badlittlekitten

36
Charlotte Hatherley - Summer
Grey Will Fade
2004
That bird who played guitar in Ash does a sun kissed scruffy pop curiosity. This hope-post-break-up song will be far to cheesy and saccharine for most, but I'm listening to it now, looking out the window at the rain pissing down. I've a feeling that if this was early June then this would sound like the greatest thing that's ever happened.
"Open the windows. Serotonin and the vitamins C D and E. Oh let it all sink in to your skin, close your eyes. And you can feel the release.", she sings gleefully, and I call my calender a lazy slob bastard for only being at February.
What brings me back to this song is its slight oddness, from the complex and quirky vocal melodies in the verses and Charlotte's impatience with the typical four-beats-a-bar structure, to the lyrics of the great chorus (with handclaps!):
I confused myself with somebody else
I didn’t know what to do, cos I was somebody new
Oh now I know that
I confused myself with somebody else
I didn’t know what to do, know what to do.
It's the sound of someone coming back from mental collapse, rediscovering their identity and hoping that the temperamental English summer will make things better so that she can "leave my room, my cocoon, find the door and walk out to the sun." The song almost ruins itself by going on over a minute longer than it should do (on the album version), but at least it leaves us on an emotional cliff hanger as your left unsure as to whether Hatherly's really recovered or not, with her final line, "Took my time to come around. Breathing in and breathing out, won’t you see what I can do.
When I leave my room"

__________________
'Said do you feel it? Do you feel it when you TOUCH ME?. THERE'S A FIRE! THERE'S A FIRE!' The Stooges. Dirt.

https://soundcloud.com/bad-little-kittens
My Top 100 LPs
My Top 52 Indie Tracks Of The 21st Century (incomplete)