Merry Pianomas

Guillemots, "Never Went To Church" (Streets cover) - It's really tough to know where to start with this song, mostly because it lays itself open to criticism so thoroughly - I mean, (a) novelty cover, (b) radical restructuring of an original song, (c) I stopped paying attention to Mike Skinner within about four seconds of doing so becoming a Virtuous Act Of Musical Appreciation, (d) how the fuck do you take a choir off of any song ever?, and so on. But I seriously doubt that I've stumbled over many songs since discovering this cover (at GvB via Alison, who has shown herself to be both consistent and fulsome in her praise of yr boy and is therefore thoroughly worthy of your attention) - it's just such an elegant little piece of nearly-broken sounding pop music, and apparently that's been right down my street lately for whatever reason. I suppose it could also have something to do with the near-complete absence of Skinner on this track - to be clear, it's not that I have anything against him (fuck, I still dust off "Has It Come To This" every so often), but the more I listen to his music, the more I get that creeping feeling that any thrills I'm getting from it has more to do with the dreaded Cultural Tourism than with the honesty or accuracy of the content of his songs, and what the fuck do you really have left when you strip a Streets song of its content?

Well, occasionally you get something really pretty, that's what. I can't deny that "Never Went To Church" is a minor stunner, the sort of song that sounds like the chipmunk-soul slow-burner aesthetic with flesh and a pulse instead of an on-off switch (I mean, lest we forget how the Streets are beloved by various and sundry schools of Indie Rock Bros). And yet it never would have occurred to me to hand the song over to the Guillemots for reinvention - I'd have just imagined that they'd have turned it into something practically peripheral to the original, and as it turns out, I would have been right. It's really not hard to see why fans of Skinner don't seem to be taking to this cover; if his verses appear on here at all, they do so all scrambled up in between Fyfe Dangerfield warbling the chorus all by himself with only a piano for accompaniment. It's just that I can't get past how retarded a reason to hate on a song this happens to be; as far as my ears are concerned, Fyfe can warble plaintatively with about as much license as Jay-Z can brag about his success, i.e. whenever he wants to and at the expense of whoever else's song. I mean, seriously - I'm sure there's plenty of value to be found in Skinner paying tribute to his dad or God or etc, but anyone who doesn't find at least the same level of poignancy when the chorus loops back around with another vocal track underneath it, well, sorry to waste all your time. But hey, I'm not a hater; I'd probably be pretty pissed at someone who liked a (hypothetical) Voxtrot cover of "Moment of Clarity" more than Jay's original. It's a big-assed world. (Click here to buy the "Never Went To Church" single or here to preorder the Guillemots' forthcoming and sure-to-please debut album Through The Windowpane from Amazon.co.uk)

The Concretes, "On The Radio" - For some reason, I seem to have gotten it in my head that I read somewhere that this song, the most recent and arguably best ever single from the Concretes, was a cover of something; I can't for the life of me find a source for this now that my crack high seems to be receding, but if you recognize it from somewhere else, the comment box is your friend. And my friend too - original or cover, this song is fucking rad, an exquisitely sunny slice of Monkees-esque pop which would probably go down easy whenever it surfaced but genuinely goes down a treat now that we've hit the summer. There's really no shortage of stuff to love about this song; Victoria Bergsman's aching coo may be what keeps me coming back to this song, but it's not the first thing that pops into my mind when I think about it (that would be the little moment after the first chorus where the plinky-plonky guitar picking plays against the piano, for the record. Oh, and let's not forget that bit with the flutes, either). It really is quite a decent little song, even moreso when you take it as a step forward from their past (also quite decent) songs - I seriously doubt that any of the bands taking dead aim at Johnny Boy's "You Are The Generation That Bought More Shoes And You Get What You Deserve" have any hope of hitting their target, but a shift in quality this pronounced makes me think the Concretes may actually have a shot someday. (Click here to buy In Colour from Amazon.com)

David Mead, "Choosing Teams" - I have to admit to being a little bit nervous upon finding a copy of David Mead's Tangerine in my mailbox last week; after all, if I have learned one thing from growing up in the South, it's gotta be that nine times out of ten, any album recorded South of the Mason-Dixon line prominently featuring a peach on the cover is to be assiduously avoided in order to prevent unwanted exposure to miserable Blueshammery buttrock (I believe this was derived from the Parrothead Corrollary, but I may have to check my dates on that one). Fortunately for me, Mead's album was nothing of the sort; I have to admit that I'm not much of a fan of the presence of the drums on this album - I mean, they'd be fine if they were lower in the mix, but as they are they smack of come-hither-to-the-dancefloor-ness, and that really goes against the rather-impressive singer-songwritership going on here. I mean, parts of Tangerine had me thinking about Harry Nilsson - not that Mead has either Nilsson's range or captivating craziness, of course, but in terms of the arrangements and compositions, yeah, Harry Nilsson, and I try really hard not to drop that name very often (some things, after all, should be kept sacrosanct). "Choosing Teams", which closes the album out, probably exemplifies that better than any song on the album; you could splice those xylophones or violins or that genuinely impassioned orchestral swell before the chorus into "Don't Forget Me" and I wouldn't bat an eye. And THAT is something worth telling people about. (Click here to buy Tangerine from Echomusic - I think it's Mead's own store, so try and buy it from there so's the artist gets more money)