Kicker’s Monthly Mix – October 2014

October, eh? By rights, of course, the eighth month, but here we are 5/6 of the way through the year and the numbers are all over the place. Appropriate, then, that my first three selections for this month are all not on Spotify and therefore not on the playlist below. You’ll have to listen elsewhere or write to us begging for a copy of the Monthly Mix on CD if you want the full impact.

However, I wanted to share with you the pleasing (non-instrumental) start to proceedings that rather brilliantly [we will be the judge of that – TTW Ed.] links They Might Be Giants and Luke Haines. We kick off with Welcome To The Jungle, no not that one, the one on TMBG’s The Guitar (The Lion Sleeps Tonight) EP – I think you’re gonna like it. This is followed by my favourite track on Luke Haines’ new LP, and third part of a trilogy of quite brilliant concept albums, New York In The 70s, it’s Cerne Abbas Man. And the link? Well, apart from the ‘mythic’ chorus, the song also includes the repeated line ‘I wanna be like you’, which has to be a steal from The Jungle Book, right? Oh, please yerselves. The third unavailable track is also a newie, Road from We Are Shining’s album Kara. It sounds like Jimi Hendrix fronting Goat to me, which is very much a good thing, and should be, ahem, tracked down.

muthafucking rock and roll

By the time this playlist is posted, I will have been to the Liverpool Psychedelic Festival and apart from the aforementioned Goat, one of the bands I am very keen on catching is Amen Dunes. Their Love LP is a particularly fine thing, full of lo-fi songs of heartbreak much like the one on offer here. A fabulous listen. Brightening things up somewhat are Pizzicato Five, my favourite Shibuya-kei band, with a song I know from a great compilation on the Matador label back in the day – Matador At 21 – that for some reason contains casino chips. Anyway, enjoy what the band liked to term ‘A New Stereophonic Sound Spectacular’. Another new song next, this time from a well established artist. It’s taken from the album Red Beans And Weiss by Chuck E himself and rather neat it is too; Tupelo Joe opens the album and is the standout track in my view.

amen

With the recent news that the most recent version of Guided By Voices had split up leaving GBV fans like me with only a new Circus Devils LP and another Robert Pollard solo album to look forward to this year, it seems only right to return to one of their classics this month. From Propeller, how about a song that starts with the immortal line “I dare not say the way I feel /About your inability to suck it up and win the game”? Yes, that’s you Leeds United/QPR/Bolton Wanderers (delete as applicable). Another act I’m hoping to catch at the Psych Fest is former Black Angels guitarist Christian Bland and his newly formed Revelators – their Pig Boat Blues album is a real grower and I reckon they’ll be a blast live. More new stuff next from Debbie Harry soundalike Alice from the band Cosines and the track Binary Primary from their latest Oscillations LP, which features some excellent accurate adding up and is undeniably great.

where are all the balck ones, Christian?

where are all the black ones, Christian?

Best band name of the mix time now, it’s Jesus And His Judgemental Father with the, frankly, marvellous, Princess Piss from their Kings & Queens collection. This band came to my attention following a recommendation from Nathan of the band Oh No Shit It’s Neil Diamond and this track is just a fantastic singalong tune. Some classic garage rock sound after that from The Chesterfield Kings with the track She Told Me Lies that I really like with its Ramonesy vocals and Stranglersy organ. Another Nathan recommendation next with the closing track from The Spook School album Dress Up that now comes highly recommended from me. Check them out.

of course, you don’t want to leave

Next up is a track from another Kickstarter project I was pleased to be invloved in. This one came my way via Chuck Prophet and involved supporting the work of one Kris Delmhorst, whose Blood Test LP is a moody piece that showcases her fantastic voice to great effect. As part of the deal, I not only bagged myself a signed copy of the LP, but also received 2 of her favourite books. You can’t say fairer than that. Recently, when filing away some of my newer 7″ acquisitions I came upon an old favourite from Andrew Bird – See My Enemy, which is actually a B-side, and stills sounds brilliant. The picked violin (possibly?) at the start reminded me of the opening track on XTC’s Apple Venus -which you can find below – but, it is the Bird-Partridge link I have gone for with a track from Andy’s Fuzzy Warbles collection that I have also been revisiting lately. The track My Land Is Burning comes from Volume 5.

Time for a band from one of our favourite labels, the legendary Alcopop, and it’s Liverpool’s own punctuation-ignorers, goFASTER with a track taken from the brilliantly titled AQA Does Not Much Care For Alcopop. Pimm’s Is Delicious from some 6 years ago. Surely time for this lot to reform. A more recent release comes from Hi-Fiction Science’s James McKeown, whose blending of Folk and Krautrock (Fraut Rock, anyone?) is served up beautifully on his 2010 self-titled album, which came my way, as so many things seem to have done recently, via our friends at Fruits de Mer and one of their generous goodie bags. This is followed by another garage band classic from The Music Machine and a track that I resisted following with anything off Spirit Of Eden. This version craps all over the better known Alice Cooper cover in my view.

slow the fuck down (and capitalise)

As threatened last month, we now turn to the irregular feature that is Tex Pix. Friend of the pod, and all-round rootin’ tootin’ gun-totin’ good guy, Texas Paul gives us The United States Of America. Not all of it, and not even just Texas, but rather a track from said band’s eponymous, and only, album. Very nice. This is followed by a track I found on The Rough Guide To The Music Of Palestine compilation. The most interesting track was by Jowan Safadi, but I am afraid that is all I know about it. See what you think. Then, finally, to close, it’s a track from the ever prolific, Stephen Jones, here recording under his own name with a track from the album Dream Walking – a 3 LP affair that purports to be a soundtrack to a film. I really love all his instrumental stuff (and he has produced a lot of it – just the 175 tracks this year alone), but I do hope we get a full vocal album at some point too.

See you next month.