Musical Mutterings

Good day to you all. Last weeks top five artists were:

1.     Grinderman

2.     Queens of the Stone Age

3.     Mogwai

4.     Django Reinhardt (read his history - amazing)

5.     We Cut Corners

Grinderman are awesome. A side project to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – they bring something amazing to my music library. Nick Cave can be a bit down, with weighty lyrics at the best of times – that’s not a disparaging remark at all by the way, I love his music, but didn’t you just wish sometimes he’d just rock out a bit?! Grinderman are that. Their songs are rocking, they’re raw and they’re good! No Pussy Blues is a brilliant example of Grinderman in my view. Nick Cave’s brilliant frustrated lyrics detail how he’s doing everything he can to get a woman to sleep with him:

'I read her Eliot, I read her Yeats, I tried my best to stay up late, I fixed the hinges on her gate, but still she just never wanted to...'

But it’s his brilliance at arranging such a rocking song with an instrument he wasn’t noted for using too much – the guitar – that strikes you. His long time collaborator Warren Ellis and him are too amazing musicians. If you’re a fan of the quieter stuff, check out ‘White Lunar’ – it’s their music from movie scores they’ve written and there are some beautifully arranged and beautifully written songs. Well worth a listen.

We Cut Corners are the other band I’ll write about this week. They’re a two piece Irish band from Dublin whose debut album was released last year. ‘Today I Realised I Could Go Home Backwards’ went in my cd player the day I received it and didn’t leave it for a few days. Not only did it get played there, it was on constant play on my ipod too! The album got so many plays that We Cut Corners were in my top 5 most listened to bands last year! They were only surpassed by the big heavies Rammstein and Metallica. They have a few of their songs available here http://www.last.fm/music/We+Cut+Corners and their album is available from the Delphi Records website. Why do I think it’s so good? It has a bit of everything from the ‘Indie’ genre. It has a bit of screechy rock in ‘Three People’, 'Go Easy’ is a lively little song, soft yet moves nicely along. ‘A Pirate’s Life' is a lovely chilled out number. The rest of the album is as strong and worth supporting! They’re also playing in the Pavillion in Cork on November 2^nd so if you’re free it wouldn’t be a wasted evening!

Lastly, I’ll probably be reviewing this  next week as it’s newly released and these guys ROCK. I was lucky to see them in Dublin in 2010 and it was one of the best gigs I was ever at. Give it your time and ears for an hour