Inverness Preamble & Some Weekend Groove Material

This weekend is already looking to be pretty exciting - B and I are hopping on the train on Saturday afternoon to head north to Inverness for a couple of days, so expect a full recap of our trip next week sometime. Until then, since I've been meaning to do a music post for some time now, here are some of the things that have been keeping things groovy in the flat recently.

Jim Noir - S/T

When I got Jim Noir's first album a year or two ago, I was a bit obsessed with it for a couple of months, and I didn't listen to much else. When I read that he had a new album coming out, I actually marked the date on my calendar, and on the day it was released I went and bought it. In an odd similarity to another band I know, his second album has a bit of an outer-space theme to it, although it's accomplished by using more electronic blips and noises than theremins. The vocal harmonies on this album are, once again, stellar. Most (possibly all?) of the new album is streamed from his website.

Jim Noir - Same Place Holiday


Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Real Emotional Trash

SM is another one of those guys whose albums I will always get. So far, through 4 solo albums and 5 or 6 Pavement records, I have yet to be disappointed by anything he's released. I had heard that he was coming out with a new album "sometime", but I didn't realize it had been released until I saw it in the store, and I'm pretty sure I just grabbed it off the shelf without really even looking at it (or the price) and just brought it straight up to the cash. It's a fantastic record, too. There are some longer jam-ish songs on here (he usually does one or two per album) and while it may not displace Pig Lib as my favorite SM record, it's definitely up there with the others. (He's also playing in Glasgow in June, which is a show I'm going to for sure.)

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Gardenia


V/A - Chop Suey Rock (Volume 1)

This one's a bit more racy - it's a compilation of songs from a time long before the era of Political Correctness™, when "Asians" were called "Oriental" and China and Japan were thought of by many as being more or less the same country. It was a little strange to listen to at first (particularly the parts where some one who is quite obviously from the States is trying to mimic fractured English). The thing is, these songs are just so awesome it's hard to not get these stuck in your head. (Here's a secret - If you want to hear the whole thing, it can be acquired here, which was posted on this blog.

Bernie Turner & The Armorettes - Ching Ching Wong


Finally, as a coda to the music post, here's an interesting factoid. I stumbled on this site the other day, where you type in your birthday and it tells you what the #1 single and the #1 album was on that day. So what was the top album in the UK on my birthday? 20 Golden Greats by The Shadows. Go figure.

See you all next week!