Best of the month.

Ok I've just made a new spotify playlist I thought I'd share with you lot, it's only short (8 songs) but it's just some of the tracks I've enjoyed from (what I would consider) the best records of the last month, up to and including today as represented by the Cut Copy song. Like I say it's not long but I think 8 really good records in a month is actually pretty good going and they're varied too, from the garage rock of The Parting Gifts through to the dreampop of Minks. There's no rhyme or reason to the running order I've just whacked things on there. The link is below.

Playlist best of Jan - Feb '11

Apologies if you don't have spotify I tried to find links to all these songs elsewhere online but couldn't but if you want to try and at least listen to some of them I've put the tracklisting below.

1. Understand It All - Cloud Nothings
2. Pharoahs and Pyramids - Cut Copy
3. Rabbit Will Run - Iron & Wine
4. Sleepwalking After Midnight - Wooden Wand
5. January Hymn - The Decemberists
6. Cemetary Rain - Minks
7. You Girls Smoke Cigarettes? - No Joy
8. Keep Walking - The Parting Gifts

Monday mix #1

You wait for one post and then two turn up at once, typical.

I've just had the idea that I could easily make a Spotify mix every Monday. On a theme perhaps, or just a bunch of songs that I like. So I've run with it. Apologies if you don't have Spotify. It's worth getting though.

Anyway this first one has worked out (completely unintentionally as it happens) at exactly 1 hour. It's not exactly inspired, but it features some new and some old stuff that I'm enjoying at the moment. Future mixes might be a bit more eclectic but this will do for now. Please do listen if you have the inclination.

Monday mix #1

Guided By Voices

There seems to be a fair bit of excitement (read, slight hysteria) building up around these forthcoming Pavement shows on the internet at the moment. It's fair enough I suppose, I enjoy most of their stuff myself and I'd probably go and see them given the chance, but I found myself thinking about who else I'd like to see reform and realised that I'd much much rather see Guided By Voices (with Tobin Sprout, of course) then I'd ever want to see Pavement. It's unlikely to happen, though Robert Pollard has never ruled it out, but one can dream.

Then I got to thinking that there's probably still a lot of people who've never heard GBV before, and so I decided to try to put together a little Guided By Voices 101. It's not easy, for a start they did a lot of records (how many other bands have a top 100 songs, dedicated solely to them?) and the first thing a lot of people find out with GBV is that even on the best of their records there can be a fair bit of filler. That said most of their records are over 20 songs long and there are a lot of them, so even if only half of the songs on every album are great that's still be a pretty big hit ratio, lucky it turns out to be more than that. All I'm trying to get over from that sentence really is that it can be hard for the uninitiated to know where to start with the band; it's like dipping your hand into a newly opened box of Cadbury's Roses having never had any before. Everyone tells you they are lovely, but you end up getting a chocolate one for your first try. It'd be enough to put you off for life.

I could do a whole potted history of the band, but it would take up too much space, I'd miss things, I'd get things wrong, so I'm keeping it simple. The bands website will tell you all you need to know anyway. It includes mp3's, setlists and chords too (if you are musically inclined in that way). It's here

So I thought I'd try and help along by making a spotify playlist of some of their best stuff. It's a thankless task in all honesty. Being a band with so many songs, there's always going to be disagreement on what deserves inclusion and what doesn't. There's also stuff that isn't on Spotify, like 'Bee Thousand'. In fact go and find a copy of 'Gold Star For Robot Boy' off that record now, and hear the strength of things that couldn't be included. There's more too.

If you want to buy GBV records though, the best place to start is definitely 'Human Amusements At Hourly Rates'. It's a collection put together by Robert Pollard himself. There's not really a bad song out of the 32, so it's well worth a listen. It's on Spotify too, which probably makes things easier. As are a whole bunch of other albums.

Or if you want a DVD then 'Guided By Voices, The Electrifying Conclusion' is for you. Capturing them at their last ever show, all 4 hours of it.

Anyway I've written more than I'd planned to so without further ado, here's the playlist link

P.s if you like the whole spotify playlist thing, then check out indiefy, they do this kind of thing, but better.

Slow news day

xHmm, a bit slow with this I guess but seeing as we are over three quarters of the way through the year now (more or less) I thought I'd do a bit of a retrospective and list what I think are my albums of the year so far.

Well I thought I'd do that, but then I realised that it would be a boring way to end the week and writing a list is never as fun as I think it's going to be so I did something else instead. I've picked favourite songs from favourite albums of the year and put them into a spotify playlist.

I know that there's probably things I've missed and there's definitely albums I couldn't use due to them not being on spotify (The Pains, Grizzly Bear) but hopefully you'll enjoy listening to the little thing I've put together. Oh yes, also I've not really paid attention to tracklisting here so don't know how it runs in terms of listening, hopefully it'll be ok.

Linkage HERE.

Sorry about the short post today, normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.