Four Records Old and New

Loula Yorke Volta (2024)

I'm basically so impressionable that when one of my social media buds said that a former classmate of his had released a record and that it was quite good I went straight to Bandcamp and downloaded a copy. It is plinky electronic music of a relatively downtempo variety, with a retro sound to it. Verdict: appealing.

Buy it on Bandcamp.

v/a Fantastic Voyage - New Sounds For The European Canon 1977-1981 (2024)

This is an Ace Records compilation put together by Bob Stanley & Jason Wood of late 1970s tunes supposedly inspired by David Bowie's Berlin period. It is kind of a sequel to their Cafe Exil record, which is meant to evoke the music Bowie was listening to before recording Station to Station, Low, Heroes, The Lodger, etc. It is a top notch collection and I recommend it to all readers. Most of the tracks are by UK artists imagining what it would be like to be living in somewhere like Berlin, but there is also "Eisbär", sung in German by actual German-speaking Swiss people (I gather the song is quite well-known and deals with a man who would like to be a polar bear).

The album features many great tunes, often of an edgy electronic quality, but top marks go to the compilers dredging up a tune from the strange period when Daryl Hall released a Robert Fripp produced album. The other amusing track on the record is the Walker Brothers "Nite Flights", from the album of the same name. One hears of this record as Scott Walker's first step along the road to weird unlistenability but the track is a surprisingly groovey number, almost cheesy, and one that you could happily play to your most conservative disco loving aunt.

Buy it from Ace Records

Serge Gainsbourg Histoire de Melody Nelson (1971)

OK so yes I had this before on vinyl but I thought it would be a good idea to pick up a digital copy I can listen to on my iPod. If you haven't living under a stone you will surely be at least aware of this record: Gainsbourg's masterpiece, produced in collaboration with arranger Jean-Claude Vannier and an army of top notch session musicians, very influential on artists as diverse as Air and Beck. And this is the extended version, with a load of extra tracks that are mostly extended versions of the main tunes or else a couple of tracks that were left off the original release for reasons.

Melody Nelson is an odd record. It's very short for one thing, and it begins and ends with what sounds suspiciously like the same very long song. These tracks, "Melody" and "Cargo Culte", both feature Gainsbourg muttering rather than singing over freakouts by the musicians. And the music really is amazing, with what sounds like jazz influenced drums combining with throbbing bass and sensuous guitar licks to create an incredible sonic groove. Gainsbourg does actually sing on the other tracks but it his spoken word pieces that are the most memorable, particularly on "Cargo Culte" where they are offset by the music building, building and building.

And of course if you are a non-francophone like me you only know what the record is about by reading a summary of it on Wikipedia. People who can understand French generally talk about how it greatly improves one's enjoyment of Gainsbourg's music to get what he is saying, but there are times when I have my doubts about this. For Melody Nelson is a concept album, telling the story of a dirty rotter who meets a teenage girl, brings her to a hotel and shags her, after which she dies in a plane crash, leaving the dirty rotter to feel sad. It's not really the sordid story that I like about the record so the full details of the lyrics are perhaps left unknown to me.

Because it is the music that is so striking about the record you would have to wonder whether Gainsbourg is coasting here and it is actually Vannier we should be crediting with everything likeable about it. Vannier is only credited aa a co-writer on some of the tracks, and not on the key ones, but he arranges all of them and arguably that is the key thing here. And yet, I have heard a Jean-Claude Vannier solo record, and while it is enjoyable enough to listen to, it does tend a bit towards tuneless nonsense, which makes me think that maybe the Melody Nelson X-factor is Serge after all.

Extended versions of albums are often terrible but here the addition of extra material works by giving you more of what you want, in particular an extended version of "Melody" and an instrumental version of "Cargo Culte". If you already like Melody Nelson you need this. If you don't already like Melody Nelson then you still need this as you should give it another listen.

Mary & the Pigeons Like Water (2024)

I would love to say that this is a record by a woman who has trained pigeons to play instruments but this is not the case. Instead it is a record by Mary Barnecutt, with the Pigeons being the extra musicians she plays with. I first came across Barnecutt when she played at the first Stoneybatter Festival concert, impressing me with her idiosyncratic music. Like her previous music, this album is fronted by Barnecutt on both voice and cello, with other people coming in on other instruments on different tracks. It sounds completely adrift from anything else going on in music at the moment and doesn't even sound that much like most of the other music I am listening to these days, which I think is a good thing. It's very song-based and maybe nods towards modern composition (that could just be me being seduced by the cello) but there maybe is a slight jazz influence to the drumming.

Actually I did find myself thinking of one thing the record kind of reminds me of: Dresden Dolls. The record has the same kind of slightly bouncey cabaret-esque sound to it at times, and not just because it features piano-keyboards, but it doesn't have the gothic angst of Amanda Palmer's vocals and lyrics, which some might consider a plus point.

Buy it on Bandcamp.