A slight return to New Orleans.
Bluebottle Kiss - "Slight Return"
(2:56, 4.91mb)
Track 8, Doubt Seeds, 2006.

Bluebottle Kiss, with some exceptions, were always one of those bands that'd pass me by. You'd see people waxing rhapsodic about them, see people writing into Rolling Stone whenever a Bluebottle Kiss album got less than 5 stars, see people who loved bands I loved go interstate to see Bluebottle Kiss. I did enjoy the energy of the live shows I had seen - there was a certain power when I saw them at a Homebake which most other bands that day lacked. But I generally found Jamie Hutchings' voice histrionic rather than emotional, and found their songs to be trying a little too hard to be artistic and deep and meaningful. I guess, essentially, the appeal of Bluebottle Kiss was in aspects of music I don't relate to - they seemed to get by less on song things like chords and melodies, and more on energy, sonics and mood. There were the few songs where they just got it right, to my ears - a "Gangsterland" or "Boredom Is Breaking My Heart".

I was impressed with Jamie Hutchings earlier this year at an extravaganza where Sydney musicians played the entirety of the Beatles' White Album to raise money for the community radio station FBi; at very late notice he was roped in to play two songs that Jack Ladder had pulled out of playing, including Blackbird and Mother Nature's Son, from memory. He sung them well, avoided histrionics and focused on the song. I was somewhat less impressed with the rest of Bluebottle Kiss's attempts at turning Revolution #9 into a freeform noise jam that lasted way too long (admittedly I contributed to that schmozzle).

My housemate Tim (of tyreswingtigers fame) is one of those Bluebottle Kiss freaks I mentioned earlier. Hi Tim, you freak. In any case Doubt Seeds, their new album, isn't really doing anything out of the ordinary for Bluebottle Kiss, but for some reason it seems more coherent, songwise, than what I'm used to hearing from them. I'm liking it.

"Slight Return" is a good example. It has a twin guitar attack - one in each speaker - one of which has a nice, insistent riff, rounded off with some nervy percussive drumming. The riff starts the song. The secret to the song is the great, intense, almost tribal drumming by Jared Harrison. The rhythm of the song is insistent, powerful. Especially when the song decompresses into organised guitar-noise chaos, as Bluebottle Kiss tend to do at times, the rhythms especially come alive; for some reason the effect reminds me of At The Drive In at their best.

"I take my information from Dante's inferno/ I've got my reservations about the current state of rock and roll" sings Hutchings; the vocals are percussive too, spitting out the information with a somewhat contemptuous sounding air.

Fats Domino - "Let The Four Winds Blow"
(2:13, 2.54mb)
Track 30, Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour: Weather, 2006.

Okay, here's a game: pick the song that's sampled the beginning of this.

The winner gets the satisfaction of being the biggest music nerd to be in the comments of this page, apart from probably me.

Bob Dylan has been doing this radio show for XM Radio, apparently, and I've been lucky enough to have found a website wherein some of these shows he's done have been uploaded. Unfortunately said hosting is now down. Dylan makes a great radio host,has a great voice for it, even if you don't have much love for his voice. He does themed radio hours - one week it's about weddings, the next it's about divorce (and yes, the show about divorce is just slightly bitter*, as you'd expect from the man who.). Basically it sounds like an excuse for Dylan to tell some stories and play some mixtapes of oldtimey tracks on the radio (the newest thing I've heard on the mix is either Squeeze or the Pretenders, but most of the time it sounds like the 40s and 50s - everything from Sinatra to the Carter Family to Fats Domino to Jimi Hendrix.) The first one, was about the weather though, and there's another 500 good songs about the weather that Dylan hasn't included, of course.

Before this track by 1950s rock'n'roll pioneer/New Orleans r&b legend Fats Domino, Dylan says "we seem to be playing lots of records from New Orleans - well, it only makes sense...New Orleans has been hit pretty hard by the weather. Fats Domino himself was missing for a few days, they finally found him and pulled him up in a boat."

The track itself is great, a nice slice of 1950s New Orleans r&b. You just want to dance to the thing. The best bit about it is the way it gets out of the slightly ominous opening riff, into a train-tracks groove of a song, with that insistent swing. "I want a girl like you to tell all my troubles to/don't be afraid, I know you understand", Fats sings. Nothing fancy, no crazy chords or anything out of the ordinary. It's just a groove. The chords do about what you'd expect. Fats sounds warm and inviting. The lyrics are something Fats could have tossed off in 10 minutes. The guitar plays funky little stabs in the background. There's a nice sax solo.

Doesn't add up to much, but somehow it's more than the sum of its parts. They don't make songs like this anymore.

*by this I mean it's one of the bitterest hours of radio I've ever heard.

tim.