Zer0

I love Camera Obscura so much. It's so hard to pick a favourite album from them, at the moment Let's Get Out Of This Country is probably my favourite but My Maudlin Career is excellent and I have plenty of memories attached to it. Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi is a great album as well and has what is probably my favourite Camera Obscura song, 'Eighties Fan'. I wouldn't really say they're running out of ideas just yet, they slowly evolve from album to album and My Maudlin Career was a step in the right direction for the band. My only worry is, and perhaps there were some signs of it on My Maudlin Career, is that they might slide too close to easy-listening on their next album. But hopefully it will be another cracking album from them.

I pretty much know how you feel about them, there's just something about Tracyanne that's just irresistible and makes you hang on to her every word, but I try not to get too obsessed with them in case I burn out on them.

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Badlittlekitten

I hope your right about them Zer0.

Yeah, I almost burnt myself out with Underachievers. I only listen on special occasions now.

__________________
'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

My Female 100 Pt.3

Antena - Camino del Sol (1982)

Delicous electro-lounge with chanteuse vocals and odd echos of Young Marble Giants. If you're interested in this, then make sure to get this extended version of the original LP.


Astrud Gilberto - The Astrud Gilberto Album (1965)

Side one of this thing is the sweetest sugar bossa-nova 60s pop I can imagine existing.
The gorgeous album sleeve makes up for the occasionally plodding second side.




Joni Mitchell - Blue (1971)

Of all the records on this list, this is the one I'm most bemused by not making the top RYM 100. Not only is it stupendously great, it's also kinda middlebrow with potential huge appeal.


Morena y Clara - Morena y Clara (1976)

Spanish flamenco pop babes with acid-fuzz vibes. Oddly trippy, slightly sinister and endlessly funky. The songs are sung in unison and neither singer dares stray into a harmony and all the tracks sound the same and have bits that go "naa na na na na noii na na", and it's definitely better than Bob Dylan.




Cat Power - Moon Pix (1998)

The sound of someone at the very edge of their nerves. It's a beautiful, brittle sound, painted by barely tuned open guitar strings, percussion that comes and goes like a quite storm and a voice too distraught to worry about trivialities like tuning and melody, instead relying on pure gut instinct. That Chan Marshall's voice is so sweet is a bonus.

Bottle in hand, picking at the label, howling at the moon.


Iris DeMent - Infamous Angel (1992)

At first appearance, a pleasant, conventional country pop album. But then, without warning, DeMent's voice stops you dead in your tracks, innocent, hurt, so pure and removed from the modern country chick diva. Yes, having a duet with Mum is dead cheesy but make no mistake, this is the real deal.


Vashti Bunyan - Just Another Diamond Day (1970)

Magical, heartfelt collection of serene British folk and lost lullabies. Bunyan's voice is a beautiful, ghostly thing that cuts through any pretence of 'twee' or cuteness.

One of a kind.




TLC - CrazySexyCool (1994)

The peak of the modern girl group.


Siouxsie and the Banshees - A Kiss in the Dreamhouse (1982)

How something this colourful, psychedelic, funny and sexually demented gets described as 'goth' I don't know. Must've been the lipstick.


Le Tigre - Le Tigre -(1999)

I've always taken 'Transformer''s "who took the bomp from the bompalompalomp?" to mean who took the 'roll' from 'rock n' roll'. The answer being blokey of course.

Furious, feminist, garage punk - pop wailing from the ex - Bikini Kill.

__________________
'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

Abida Parveen - Chants Soufis du Pakistan (Live) (1995)

I know next to nothing about Parveen but intend to find out much more as this album is glorious. Qawwali is a type of Pakistani folk music. This Lp consists of a fluttering harmonium that seems to weave in and out of the bubbly tabla beats, all majestic like. Then there's the voice, a big, proud, powerful thing. Parveen's vocals might seem impenetrable at first but like Coltrane's sax it's a rewarding thing to follow, through its peaks and troughs, commanding warbles to childlike gargles, heartbreak to heartmake. Brooding then ecstatic in a change of a note.

With a lot of tracks going beyond ten minutes it's a lengthy album. But for me it's a constant joy.


Aretha Franklin - Aretha's Gold (1969) (Comp)
The voice. The songs.


Beach House -Devotion (2008)

A plodding, generic, indie bore, thought I. But given the right place (night, with headphones) and mood (depressed, natch) Beach House got me crumbling like a polystyrene man. Victoria Legrand's crystalline voice, so majestic, so commanding, reverberates around swirling church organs and sliding guitar whimsy. Devotion speaks to me, baby.

Middle of the road, but I'll still get there.


Judy Henske - Judy Henske (1963)

Live album. Judy has an extraordinary voice, full of grit and power and she does calm and mellow just as good. The audience laps it up, whether she's performing swing or folk ballads. That her stories and audience banter are so funny and occasionally surreal is a sweet bonus.




Bessie Smith -The Empress of the Blues 1923-1933 (1971) [Compilation]

Just essential really. The harshness of Smith's voice and lyrics juxtaposed with the gleeful swing of the brass and piano captivates me. This stuff may have been recorded when our great grandparents were still about but it's likely to be better than anything that was released last week.




Victoria Williams - Loose (1994)

There's so much going against this record - William's over quirky voice, her lame Tom Waitisms, ultra polished production, dreadful lyrics - yet I really enjoy Loose. I guess this is all down to the fact that Williams knows how to write a tune. Everything here is instantly catchy and memorable and sounds like the comfort of a trusty old friend. The sound is very commercial folk pop fair, but the musics tasteful and tactful and there's enough strings, blowing of horns, washes of harp and harmony and fiddles of fiddle to keep me intrigued. Actually, the only song I don't like here is the cover of 'It's a Wonderful World'.


Rita Lee - Build Up (1970)

Eccentric Brazilian pop from the bird in psych legends Os Mutantes. That groups wackiness is contained in a pop context for Build Up and I like it about 10x more than anything by Os Mutantes, a group I find irritating, frankly.

I'm trying to think of a song that sonically conveys joy as satisfyingly as "Hulla-Hulla", and I'm struggling.




Robin Roberts - Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies (1959)

Striking, pastoral Celtic folk. Robert's bruised voice is one of the saddest I've heard.


The Raincoats - The Raincoats (1979)

Scruffy, scatty, bratty punk oddity. I don't no how they manage to make violins sound so fucking beautiful in this context, but they do, outdoing the Velvet Undies in the process.


Yma Sumac - Voice of the Xtabay (1950)

It always seemed unlikely to have a human voice that could mimic Louis Armstrong, Marge Simpson and a theremin in the space of a single bar, but here it is, the Voice of the Xtabay, warbling with joy over lush lounge muzak with eastern percussive backbone, production technique being way ahead of its time.

__________________
'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)