Halloween!

[kill-yr-idols.livejournal.com]

Pet Shop Boys - "Vampires": off Nightlife (DO YOU SEE?!?), which I know next to nothing about - this is the only track I've heard off it (wait, a kylie duet?!) "Vampires" is a frictionless, fussy/prissy take on trip-hop, but, um, good. "I'm a vampire, you're a vampire too" is an appropriate a mantra as any for the dancefloor I'll be playing this at.

Kate Bush - "Hammer Horror": . . . I'll let atommickbrane fill you in on this one.

Five Man Electrical Band

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Particularly attentive/bored poptimists will recall "Signs" by the Five Man Electrical Band which I posted a week or two ago. It was a tale of the man telling the kids to do stuff with signs, signs such as "NO LONG HAIRED FREAKY PEOPLE NEED APPLY", a blatant disregard of employment law you'll agree. Anyway that was amusing but this one, "Absolutely Right", is AWESOME, I can't wait to play it out, it turns from strummy hippie pop into a big BEAT GROUP freakout w/a killer chorus, and the song is very funny too, being the pleadings of somebody whose lady has locked him out of their flat.

"Absolutely right, you've been right all along, you're absolutely right and I was wrong"

EDIT: also check out NYLPM today for an MP3 of the highly thrill-powered "Troglodyte"!

It's magnificent - but is it pop?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Alexis Petridis on ABBA. The stuff about wow-ABBA-had-hidden-depths has surely long since crossed the line from smart observation to bleeding obvious. We touched on ABBA the other day on my own LJ, when talking about the Spice Girls. Like them or hate them, in their day they were the dons of pop but I don't know how much someone encountering them now would 'register' their stuff as pop at all. It sometimes seems to exist in its own odd universe of dark-light entertainment and songs from imaginary musicals.

Here are some things that ARE pop (probably):

LUV - "Trojan Horse": "You walked in through the door - like a Trojan Horse!", LUV were Scando contemporaries of ABBA but they were an ABBA who never really evolved beyond the Ring Ring years, except to add bagpipes. The tunes are all great though, mind you the lyrics pose a problem. Clearly here the songwriter liked the phrase "like a Trojan Horse" so much that they just added it to every line of the verses: METAPHOR DANGER!

Stella - "Ca Plane Pour Moi": another from the land of REPLAY DANCE MANIA, this cover of Ca Plane Pour Moi takes an unusual route by rewriting the tune completely, and not I have to admit with total success. Certainly worth hearing as a curio tho!

Lynn Anderson - "Rose Garden": very well-known track I suspect, but I've been listening to it incessantly for the last couple of weeks. Brilliantly used by Kon Kan on "I Beg Your Pardon".

Loose Joints - "Tell You Today": my favourite Arthur Russell production and quite simply one of my favourite ever love songs, as one of the best parts of being in love with someone is when you're able to make them happier.

Modern Rocketry - "Homosexuality": Hi-NRG disco that does exactly what it says on the tin. "Yes Sir!".

here's another track suitable for Halloween

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

I Put A Spell On You, by Screamin' Jay Hawkins