No artist has got under my skin over the last few years quite like Swedish songstress Frida Hyvonen; I’m forever grateful to Lambretinha and ElDerino (where he?) for introducing me to her. So I wasn’t going to miss her one and only UK date this year, at Kings Place, a really rather wonderful arts centre in the really rather wonderful regeneration area around Kings Cross, yards away from the Guardian’s HQ.

I didn’t know what sort of gig to expect. The last clip I saw of Frida playing live was performing The Sound of Silence for Paul Simon at the Polar Music Prize (kind of like the Brits for Scandinavians), complete with full orchestra. She’s a big star in Sweden, and her new album, To The Soul, is full of big tunes and big production.

Tonight, though, we’re treated to a recital of rare intimacy. It’s just her and a Steinway grand, with a friend adding some understated backing vocals. The stalls of the concert hall are less than half full – there’s probably about 60 people, and half of them are Swedish. Halfway through she asks to have the houselights on so she can take a photo of us for her Instagram.

There’s nothing small about her performance though. She becomes totally consumed by her songs, her voice able to shift from detached Scandinavian coolness to unbridled passion. Some songs respond particularly well to this stripped down treatment. “Farmor”, from her latest album, is a highlight. An elegy for her grandmother, it’s perhaps overproduced on the record, but almost has me in tears tonight, as the huge chorus fades into a poignant coda that perfectly captures the reminiscences and chitchat of an old woman’s wandering mind.

Frida has a gift for taking an experience from her life and spinning it into something profound. So in “Picking Apples”, an impulse stop as she’s passing her late grandparents’ house sends her off into a reverie about families, mortality and writing her own epitaph. “Pony” is a nostalgic hymn to a childhood love of riding horses, with an undercurrent of sexuality (“The stable’s where you learned to be in charge and not take shit / Dressed for the occasion, leather boots and a stiff black whip”).

In between songs, she’s witty and a little shy. After “Dirty Dancing”, we learn that she never got round to putting a net on her chimney to keep the birds off, as her chimney sweep childhood sweetheart advises in the song, and had to call him back to do it a couple of weeks ago. She doesn’t, though, reveal what he thinks of the song – or whether she’s written a new one about this latest encounter.

She plays for a little over an hour, returning for a single encore: “December”, a sad, wry account of a visit to an abortion clinic. Presumably autobiographical, it’s an uncomfortable listen on record – when the singer’s only yards away, it’s painfully compelling.

Five minutes later, she’s sitting on the steps outside in the freezing cold, selling records and T-shirts. Like a besotted fan, I buy a CD I already own to get her autograph and a moment to chat. She’s currently without a label in the UK, and the latest album hasn’t been released here yet. That’s a travesty, and will surely be put to rights before long. In the meantime, I feel privileged to have seen her like this.

I’ve put together a Spotify playlist of the songs she played, possibly not in quite the right order, for anyone who’s interested:

You vote one in
You vote one out
In, out, in, out
Shake it all about

You all know the rules by now. Or maybe you don’t. Actually, I’m not sure there are any rules, are there? Maybe. Who knows?

Here are 11 songs. Tell us which you’d save from a burning building and which you’d throw from a deflating hot air balloon. Or something.

It’s surprisingly difficult to choose a playlist with no parameters whatsoever. Tincanman began this game by trying to find the 10 most perfect songs of all time, so here are 11 perfect songs which particularly wanted you to hear them. I’m going to be terribly hurt whichever one you choose to vote off, so please be gentle.

Warning: may contain music of a melancholy and/or romantic nature.

Artists and titles after the break…

Continue reading →

- “What’s your favourite Beatles album?”
- “Hmm, tough one. I think I’d have to say… the Best of the Beatles.”

I’d hazard a guess that most of us look down on Greatest Hits and Best Ofs. We’re the types who own the original albums, the 12″ singles, the rare bootlegs – not the rushed cash-in aimed at casual fans who buy 3 CDs a year, from Tesco’s.

But Best Ofs can be bloody brilliant. They do exactly what they say on the package: all the best, no filler.

Sometimes they’re a gateway into a band’s other records, or complement an album or two. But sometimes, that one compilation is enough.

So this week’s challenge is to pick a song from a Best Of or Greatest Hits collection that you love, but which is the only thing you own by that artist, and the only thing you need to own.

General views on Best Ofs are welcomed, as are tips for great tracks missing from nominated compilations.

Tuesday night and all that…

All of us have discovered some wonderful music both here and on the mothership. This week’s challenge couldn’t be simpler, or harder:

What’s your favourite RR/’Spill discovery?

This is probably one of those where it’s best to go with the first thing that comes to mind, so here’s mine… I can’t remember the topic, but I’m pretty sure GarethI recommended it, and ToffeeBoy immediately donded it. Their recommendation was enough for me to click on the link, listen, and fall in love:

Today, just in case you’re somehow unaware of it, is Charles Dickens’ 200th birthday. So following on from Jane Austen’s iPod, what would Mr Dickens be listening to?

Here’s one to get us started:

I recently stumbled across Lotte Kestner’s wonderful covers album from last year, Stolen. Lotte Kestner is the solo project of Anna-Lynne Williams, lead singer of Seattle dream-folk-shoegazers Trespassers William, and the album is a collection of understatedly gorgeous versions of songs by the likes of Bon Iver, The National and Vic Chestnut. It also has this version of New Order’s “True Faith”, which made me realise I own more New Order covers than originals:

I do love “Blue Monday”, but I’d never really realised there was a proper song underneath it until I heard Hannah Peel’s version:

Nouvelle Vague do that one too, but they also do an utterly loveable “Bizarre Love Triangle”:

Anyone got any more?

New Order (possibly incorporating Joy Division and side projects) would be another good subject for a ‘SpillOVERview… Anyone?

I haven’t been around here much over the last month. We’ve had another couple of weeks of ventilators, feeding tubes and worry as Matilda has been in hospital in London with bronchiolitis. But she’s home now, much better, and asleep on my lap as I type. She’s not yet 7 pounds, and should be a month old tomorrow, instead of nearly 4. But she’s doing well, and we’re looking forward to Christmas together as a family.

Anyway, I wanted to take the opportunity to thank you all for the music and the company over the last year, and wish everyone a very Merry Christmas.

Here’s a song with a winter-y, celestial choir-y feel (hoping I’m not gazzumping anyone’s Festive ‘Spill no.1):

So, REM decided to call it a day a couple of weeks ago. It wasn’t exactly unexpected, and I can’t say I’m that upset. Even the most vociferous advocates of their later work – of whom I’m one – would admit that it’s been a case of diminishing returns for the last few years (I haven’t actually got round to buying the latest album yet, although that perhaps says as much about my music buying habits these days as the record itself, which sounds pretty fine).

All the same, they’re probably the greatest band to have bestrode the Earth in my lifetime, and I wanted to do something here to mark their passing. I didn’t discover REM till 1991 – my musical Year Zero – when Out of Time came out. My big brother quickly proclaimed them the best band in the universe, and, as in most things musical around then, I followed his lead. We acquired the IRS albums on cassette (mostly from French hypermarkets) while waiting with almost religious fervour for the follow-up – luckily Automatic for the People turned out to be one of the greatest albums we’d ever heard.

Anyway, I thought of putting together a playlist of my favourite songs, but abandoned that idea when it got above 50 tracks. So I’ve picked one track off each album – sometimes obvious, sometimes less so – in chronological order in the playlist below.

REM fans, enjoy. Lost REM disciples, hope you enjoy the later ones. REM doubters, please give it a try.

And why not post your favourite REM songs in the comments?

Meet Matilda… She was born on the morning of September 1, rather sooner than she was supposed to be: at just 28 weeks, weighing 2lb 9oz.

Everything is going as well as it possibly could be in the circumstances. She’s breathing on her own, and can cry, yawn, stretch, poo and grip your finger in her unimaginably tiny hands. One of the neo-natal nurses has described her as “verging on the obscenely feisty”, which bodes well for the next few weeks (the next 20 years, maybe not so much…).

She’s in an incubator on the special care unit in Brighton, and will be in hospital for many weeks. It’s not going to be an easy time, but after a rollercoaster few days, we’re looking ahead with hope.

This is the most moving song in the world:

Don’t know what to say really.

I was listening to Back to Black a few days ago for the first time in a while. It was as good as I’d remembered it. I said I hoped she’d get things together to record a new record – and for her own sake.

I’m shocked, sad, unamused that fate should snuff out yet another star at 27, and angry that a media that hounded, mocked, pilloried and generally did a troubled young person no favours will now inevitably be weeping crocodile tears (with a few morality lectures thrown in).

I hope history will judge her on the merits of her music. Half a dozen tracks on Back to Black are right up there with the greats – off the top of my head, I can’t think of many albums with a stronger opening 3 songs than “Rehab”, “You Know That I’m No Good” and “Me and Mr Jones”.

Here’s a fitting epitaph – a song that sounds like it was written for Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald:

I was expecting more fuss to be made over the 40th anniversary of Blue, which was a couple of weeks ago.

It is, after all, the definitive singer-songwriter record. Never before or since has someone distilled their joy and heartbreak, memories and dreams into such raw, beautiful songs. It’s intensely personal, full of characters and real settings and telling details, but all the more universal for that. It’s much more than a break-up album, or an album about depression, or travelling, or the end of the 60s and the death of hippy dreams, though it’s all those things.

The word that keeps coming into my head when I try to describe it is “yearning”. There’s an underlying sadness to the happy songs, and a tantalising hope in the sad ones: only a dull cocoon until I get my gorgeous wings and fly away.

If you put a gun to my head and told me to choose one record I could have in my life, it would more often than not be this one.

So, what does anyone else think?

Listen on we7

I’d been planning an AOTW to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Primal Scream’s Screamadelica this year. The BBC have just given it the Classic Albums treatment, so I thought I’d post something now, and encourage anyone with a vague interest to watch it on iPlayer as soon as possible.

Not many albums are perfect. This one is – from the title and the cover artwork, to the sequencing (I’ll come back to the sequencing), to the way it both captures the spirit of the times and still sounds fresh as anything.

How did it happen? Late ’80s Primal Scream were a deeply unfashionable bunch of leather-clad punk rockers. But they had an unlikely fan in the shape of a young acid house DJ called Andy Weatherall. He’d never been in a recording studio before, but the band invited him to remix a song off their previous album, called I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have. The brief: “fucking destroy it.”

He did. And created an instant classic. Not much of the original remains – the bass, a piano loop, some horns brought to the forefront. In place of Bobby Gillespie’s vocal, there’s a sample from a Peter Fonda film: “We wanna be free to do what we wanna do. And we wanna get loaded. And we wanna have a good time.”

It’s fair to say those words struck a chord with a few hundred thousand young people in 1990. And at this point, we should mention Ecstasy. Because this is an E album through and through, and such a coming together of musical worlds simply wouldn’t have happened without it. (This helps explain why, aged 13, I didn’t really get the dancey parts of Screamadelica. I do now.)

You could argue – in fact, it would be hard not to – that the album follows the trajectory of an Ecstasy trip. It doesn’t hurt that it kicks off with “Movin’ On Up”, a perfect gospel pastiche and surely one of the great album openers. Things carry on coming up nicely with an interpretation of The 13th Floor Elevators’ “Slip Inside This House” and dancefloor magnet “Don’t Fight It, Feel It” (“What’s this crap?”, I remember thinking at the time). Then we’re onto a blissed-out trip with The Orb’s mix of “Higher Than The Sun” (drug songs don’t come much more blatant, or better) and the instrumental “Inner Flight”, before the full on hug-a-stranger euphoria of “Come Together” and “Loaded”.

That high can’t possibly last – but the comedown is exquisite. First we get the gorgeously sad (and under-rated) “Damaged” – produced by Rolling Stones producer Jimmy Miller and, frankly, the best Stones ballad ever. That’s followed by the self-explanatory “I’m Comin’ Down”, with its freeform sax and closing Paris, Texas sample, and the woozy return of “Higher Than The Sun” as a “dub symphony” with Jah Wobble on bass. When closing track “Shine Like Stars” shimmers in, it feels like you’ve drifted off to heaven.

The funny thing is, I wouldn’t particularly call myself a Primal Scream fan. I’ve not paid much attention to their subsequent albums – I like a lot of what I’ve heard, but can’t fully shake the (possibly unfair) suspicion that they’re actually a bunch of derivative chancers who somehow struck lucky. I suspect Andy Weatherall is the true visionary here, but I don’t own anything else he’s done either – I’m still not really a fan of “dance” music.

However it came about, Screamadelica is a masterpiece. Unquestionably a 10 out of 10. I’m sure everyone here agrees …

… don’t you?

Shall we have an album of the week? It’s been a while. OK then…

In their minds, Jack are Artists with a capital A, true Bohemians, the last of the great romantics. They rub shoulders with Warhol and the Velvets, are on first name terms with Pasolini and Fellini, discuss Satre and poetry in Left Bank cafes and woo starlets in underground clubs in Berlin. They’re “behind in the rent and ahead in evolution”. They find romance in cheap booze and tragedy in cigarette embers.

They are unashamedly pretentious and faintly preposterous. Their liner notes contain “Further reading” lists. Their third album boasts the immortal line “I am the ‘and’ in Tolstoy’s War and Peace“.

And yet – they carry it off superbly. Suspend your disbelief for 50 minutes, and you’ll discover an incredibly accomplished debut album. The brooding seven-minute spoken-word opener “…of Lights” (yes, they’re the kind of band who start song titles with an ellipsis) is a panoramic, apolcalyptic vision of London on “the eve of the revolution”. “Wintercomessummer” sounds like The Fall colliding with early REM. Brett Anderson would kill to write a song like “Filthy Names”. The Tindersticks are another point of reference, with the string arrangements and Anthony Reynolds’ rich baritone. There’s some gorgeous guitar work, smart lyrical turns and widescreen production from Scott Walker producer Peter Walsh.

The follow-up, The Jazz Age, is equally impressive (my first paragraph above probably applies more to that album). But if a semi-malevolent genie made me choose, I think I’d have to plump for this one. I know bethnoir and tracyk are fans, and former RR-er CraneSpire used to nominate them a lot. The rest of you… it’s boxed, or listen below (and if anyone has the 10th anniversary edition with the bonus CD, let me know…)

Here’s a hypothetical question I’ve been pondering when I really should be thinking about more significant things. Let’s imagine a semi-malevolent genie offers you the following choice: you can either keep your favourite song by an artist, or all the rest of their output bar that song.

Sometimes it’s easy enough. Good as The La’s only album is, I’ll happily ditch the rest of it to keep “There She Goes”. I’m not too bothered about any Love song beyond “Alone Again Or”, and I’ve never got into Joy Division, so “Love Will Tear Us Apart” it is. There Might Be Giants can carry on churning out quirky, clever-clever pop for all eternity and it will never add up to one “Birdhouse In Your Soul”.

And the other way round: sad as I’d be never to hear “Like A Rolling Stone” or “A Day in the Life” again, I wouldn’t have a moment’s hesitation in keeping the rest of Dylan and The Beatles’ back catalogues.

What I’m interested in are the really difficult or controversial decisions. I don’t think I can imagine a world without “God Only Knows”, so I’m reluctantly ditching “Good Vibrations”, “Surf’s Up”, “Caroline, No” and all the rest. Similarly, I can’t bear to part with “Waterloo Sunset”, so everything else by The Kinks has to go (I may have the consolation of Kirsty McCall’s version of “Days” along with the rest of her stuff, at the expense of “A New England”, but that’s another tough one…). I love Pulp, but they wouldn’t be Pulp with “Common People”.

“Smells Like Teen Spirit” or the rest of Nirvana?
The Beautiful South without “A Little Time”?
Dozens of Bob Marley songs or one “Redemption Song?”

So, over to you. What are the hardest decisions you’ve had to make? Any hypothetical posers of your own?