Guess who's back...

Hi!

This is my back to normality post. After all the listing and tipping (not in a losing my balance way), it's time to get back into the groove for Yer Mam!, the blog that those in the know are calling a poor-man's The Bellyaches. So that means that we'll be back down to one, maybe two posts a week, most of which will be nonesensical ramblings about music you've either never heard of or don't really give two shites about. Business as usual then, kicking off with this week's Single Of The Week, as if any of you are really interested. Oh yeah, self-deprecation is the theme for 2007.

SINGLE OF THE WEEK

Peter Visti - Balaeric Love/Bad Weather (Eskimo)

The Glimmers' Eskimo label don't release stuff on what you might call a regular basis, but they definitely favour quality over quantity. Peter Visti is one half of Visti & Meyland, who some of you may well know and this 12" is the latest in a great recent run of singles from Eskimo that has included Reverso 68's 'Tokyo Disko', Jose Manuel's 'El Sonida De Pamela' and L.S.B.'s enormous 'Original Highway Delight'. The winner of the two is most definitely 'Bad Weather', with its lascivious walking bassline, the like of which you wouldn't take home to meet your parents, lest it do something horrible to your grandma, while near-cheesy, dramatic synths stab and soar. This plays out and sprawls until it's burrowed into your brain and just when you think it couldn't get any more ecstatic, a lazily strummed Spanish guitar lick is beamed in from the heavens to up the ante just that little further. 'Balearic Love' extrapolates on that guitar, but has more of an electronic, less organic vibe to it, but while it's the lesser of the two, it's still better than anything else out this week. Eskimo really are on a roll (geddit?!) and with 12"s on the way from both Reverso 68 and L.S.B., things are just going to get better.

Buy it now, as if your life depended on it, from Piccadilly Records.

While I'm not even entertaining the idea of starting to compile my best of 2007 lists (just the idea that I'm going to have to do it at some point just sent a chill up my spine), this year has got off to a good start, with some very good albums either already in the shops or just over the horizon from the likes of Field Music, Gruff Rhys, Of Montreal, Busdriver and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah to name but a few. Here's ten reasons why a certain album from the DFA camp is chief among them all...

Ten Reasons Why LCD Soundsystem's Sound Of Silver Is The Best Album Of 2007 That I've Actually Heard So Far OR How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Hyperbole

1. The opening to 'Get Innocuous'. LCD kick their sophomore album off with the aural equivalent of a contingency plan. 'Get Innocuous' starts with a recycled, but slightly cheaper-sounding beat that will be familiar to anyone au fait with 'Losing My Edge' (I don't think there is anyone who isn't these days is there?). It's as if Murphy is saying, "Well, we've done a few tracks on this album that you may find similar to songs from our past. We don't care about that though, so we'll start as we mean to go on with a big, fat cheeky nod to the song we started our career with, but with our tongues so far inside our collective cheek that any carping on about self-plagiarism that you were intending to do is rendered irrelevant. Stitch that!". A smart move from one of the sharpest tools in the box.

2. The false ending in 'Time To Get Away'. I'm a sucker for a good rug-pull and this is a good one as it picks back up, after a moment of silence, with just a shouted, spare funk breakdown and then ends properly. Classy.

3. The fact that 'North American Scum' sums up the dichotomy of the USA from an insider's point of view pretty much perfectly. The lyrics to this, the first single, are, at turns, celebratory and damning, a lyrical theme that Murphy picks up again in the album closer, 'New York I Love You'.

4. 'Someone Great'. I'm starting to think now that this song is LCD Soundsystem's crowning glory. It's certainly the most heartbreaking, nakedly emotional song that Murphy has ever penned. But what's it about? I've got my theory, but as with all songs like this, it works better if you attach your own meaning. The first song in many a year to actually make me cry, rather than just being the tipping point when I'm already feeling down.

5. Playing 'All My Friends' when you're getting ready for a night out. Try it, you'll be so geared up you'll bounce to the pub with "If I could see all my friends tonight" playing in your head on a loop.

6. 'Us Vs. Them' = 'Yeah (Crass Version)' Mk. 2. Because if an idea is good, then it's most definitely worth repeating. What chance of a medley on the tour dates?

7. That wobbly-throated "Ah-ahhh" in 'Watch The Tapes'. Probably the least successful track on the album has one brilliant curveball where Murph gets all Hiawatha as if the palefaces are on their way to ravage the settlement.

8. The corny indie part-timers are going to fucking loathe 'Sound Of Silver'. The title track has Murphy's campest vocal ever (he sounds so much like Heaven 17's Glenn Gregory that it's untrue) and is a meandering, but hypnotic slab of rumbling space disco, like Lindstrom on bad drugs.

9. Murphy's Kermit The Frog impression on 'New York I Love You'. Cheers to Grammar for pointing this one out. I lol, focl and rofl everytime I hear it now.

10. It just is. Okay. Pre-order it now, bitches. Or you could snaffle it off one of them there peer-to-peer file-sharing network thingies. Not that I in any way condone this behaviour of course.

Another year, another uninspiring batch of Brit Award nominations. Not that I was expecting anything wildly different from this year's bunch or anything but, despite the surprise inclusion of Guillemots in the Best British Live Act section, a deaf-blind five year-old could have predicted them. I'm glad that Miss Allen is up for three awards and everything, but the rest of the noms are so bleeding obvious that it seems pointless to even bother. In fact, they couldn't have been much lazier if an overly tired sloth on mogadon had announced them.

All the usual suspects are present and incorrect; Muse, Arctic Monkeys, Gnarls Barkley, Razor-fucking-light, James shitting Morrison, blah, blah, fucking blah. All of which will probably share one each and neither will probably remember the next day exactly which one they won and does it really even matter who got voted the Best International Breakthrough Act when the nominees are as beige as Gnarls, The Raconteurs, Wolfmother, Ray Lamontagne and sodding Orson? Just get them to stand in a circle, lob the award in the middle and whichever one catches it gets it rammed up their anus or something.

In fact, I'm so nonplussed (Is that the right word?) about the whole thing that I can't even get angry about the likes of Hot Chip, The Long Blondes and The Knife being snubbed for cosier fare. Jarvis is up for Best British Male though. Yay for him! He won't win though, that honour will go to the immensely talented Lemar of course, for about the seventh year running. Shall we just ignore that it's even happening? I think that's for the best.

Elsewhere, it's not everyday that you're quoted by the BBC. Result! And what's this? Justin Timberlake in not-too-shabby remix shockah! Remixes of mainstream pop music are nearly always so wide of the mark that they barely even register, so thank the lord for Justin Timberlake (or more specifically, Justin Timberlake's 'people') for enlisting electro-tech god, Sebastien Leger on re-fit duties. See what you think...

Justin Timberlake - What Goes Around Comes Around (Sebastien Leger Remix) (mp3)

Back later in the week with more fragmented gubbins,

JMx