Musical Mutterings 2

As the rain pours down upon my gaff, let me dip into this week’s musical mutterings!

My top five bands for the previous week were:

1.     Om

2.     Metallica

3.     Gil Scott Heron

4.     The Birthday Suit

5.     Charlie Parr

Ok so last time out I muttered somewhat about Om and how awesome they are. That would explain their position in this weeks chart. Still absolutely loving ‘Sinai’ and ‘State of Non-Return’.

But on to the first of two artists I’m looking at this week – The Birthday Suit. Currently I am in possession only of their 3 song EP called ‘Less Worthless Years’ but have pre-ordered their new album due for release sometime this month I think? They are headed by currently hiatussed Idlewild guitarist Rod Jones. He’s joined by Jacqueline Irvine, David Jack, Steve Morrison, Séan McLaughlin and Catrin Pryce-Jones. They offer nice melodic rock/folk songs. ‘Past Passes By’ is a lovely song. It’s a slow moving (not in a negative sense) song that builds beautifully and the singing just ‘goes’. It is It’s 3.40 of niceness! ‘Sing It Alone’ is a bit more of a straight up song. It starts as it means to sound, getting slightly more guitary for the chorus. Still a decent song! ‘The Longingness of Time Comp’ I like a lot. It starts with a nice picked melody with good vocals, builds gently over the first minute, adds intensity for the chorus which kind of reminds me of The Decemberists in a way, then reverses to the nice picking. They are (in my opinion) a slightly rockier version of a beauty of a band called In TheWillows. 

I’m also going to talk about Charlie Parr. Charlie was recommended by a friend in the old US of A. He’s a bluesy folk singer/songwriter. He is truly fantastic. His voice is softer than you’d imagine when you look at him but it still sounds like it has a story to tell. And tell it he does. The album I listened to last week was ‘Cheap Wine’. Seriously – check it out. Opening with a beautiful number called 1922 Blues it grabs your attention straight off. It rolls into my favourite song on the album ‘To A Scrapyard Bus Stop’. Check out the linked video. It’s a beauty. It caught my ear the very first time I heard it. Charlie is an extremely talented guitarist and the story telling in his songs really kept me listening to both the words and music solidly through this album.

That’s it for this musical mutterings. I’m working on a bigger piece for a blog due tomorrow so this is a short mutter!