Weird. This band is long gone, it’s barely possible to get hold of any of their stuff, and apart from enthusiastic music fans barely anyone has heard of them.

And yet and yet and yet… Remember The Turtles? No, me neither, but they are clearly well loved amongst the actual makers of music because people keep covering them, and it seems The Left Banke are similar. Most people reading this will know Walk Away Renee, either because The Four Tops covered it or because, after a fashion, so did Billy Bragg. Or indeed because it was a pretty big hit in its own right. What I didn’t realise – yes, I know, you probably knew this all along – was that the splendid Pretty Ballerina, which I thought was a new Eels track from the Eels With Strings album, was also a cover of a Left Banke song. And it truly is brilliant.

Anyhow, I have finally managed to acquire a copy of their first release “Walk Away Renee/Pretty Ballerina” and am really enjoying it. It’s a sort of chamber pop with heavy use of orchestration, topped off with a sort of wonderfully dreamy, quite high pitched vocal. They had a bit of classical training between them and you can really hear it in the music, and the songs below are absolutely phenomenally good. A surprise lost gem, for me anyways.

The Left Banke – Evening Gown
The Left Banke – I’ve Got Something On My Mind
And those covers:
The Left Banke – Walk Away Renee
The Four Tops – Walk Away Renee
Billy Bragg – Walk Away Renee
The Left Banke – Pretty Ballerina It’s the off-key piano that makes this, isn’t it. Genius.
Eels – Pretty Ballerina

Well, I couldn’t find an mp3 for this one, but this is JC‘s entry to the Campest Song in the Universe competition. Alan Cumming. Gosh. Is this the one you meant JC or have I got a comedy version by mistake? Or is this genuinely as sensible as this song ever gets? Judge for yourselves people, I can’t bring myself to write any more about this fiasco.

Next is the turn of the lovely China from Choir Croak Out Them Goodies, although frankly she’ll be going some to top this rubbish.  That said, this is clearly not entirely serious, so I’m not sure it doesn’t lose points for that.  Something 100% sincere, but still screamingly camp would probably pip it at the post.  Come on people, get going!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hMt6KTSz_g]

I’m sure you’ve heard of this lad already, as he has already made an appearance on a few blogs but, never one to be silent when there’s needless chattering to do, I thought I stick in my tuppence-worth.

There really seems to be a lot of this sort of folky, bluesy stuff around and I think it’s possible Mr. Flynn is one of the best of the lot. His stuff drifts so easily across genres that I suppose the easiest thing to call it is acoustic pop with heavy traditional influences, be they folk, bluegrass or blues.

Brown Trout Blues is a masterpiece of slightly regretful but unapologetic introspection.
Other songs, such as Tickle Me Pink potter along a a good clip, but the atmosphere of the music never gets as far as raucous. In fact, between the pace of the music and the intimate, shipwrecked quality of his voice it makes for a rich, gorgeous sound, despite the often sparse instrumentation. Although, you know me, this lighter touch is something I tend to prefer and it always makes a group seem more confident when they are able to be restrained with their arrangements.

He has two singles out, neither of which I can bloody well buy because they’re both on vinyl, which is an enormous pain in the arse. I know why record companies do this, and I do understand, but it’s frustrating for us digital types nonetheless. Anyhow, that shouldn’t stop you lot, who are presumably all muso types with turntables, from going off and shelling out for them. Honestly, they’re money well spent and I am really looking forward to more.

Johnny Flynn & the Sussex Wit – Brown Trout Blues
Johnny Flynn & the Sussex Wit – Eyeless in Holloway

myspace | buy his 7″ singles online

Well I thought gay Star Wars was the campest song in the history of popular music, but as usual you lot disagree.  JC from The Vinyl Villain threw his toys oot the pram and declared it ‘shit’ which, whilst hardly a disputable statement, was largely the point of the original post.  I wasn’t suggesting dinner party music, JC!

Anyhow, bunch of smart-arses that my readers are, you all reckon you can do better so I present The Campest Song in the Universe Ever, Part 2: the Campfires & Battlefields edition, featuring The Nomi Song, by Klaus Nomi.  What do you reckon – even camper?  Screamingly, squealingly camp?  Or is Star Wars still out in front?  I think I am going to keep a running tally.  JC has a suggestion of his own, but I’m going to make you wait for that.

Klaus Nomi – The Nomi Song

Maybe to avoid accusations of homophobia (get over it lads, I hate everyone) I should start a Most Hetero Song in the Universe competition.  Songs about Nascar and fights and wrapping the lay-deez around one’s little finger.  David Hasselhoff could easily win both prizes, come to think of it.

I often get the impression that Rilo Kiley generate a blinding fever of Indie Kid Panting Hots syndrome, simply due to the cocky foxiness of eye-candy-in-chief, Miss Jenny Lewis. She’s clearly decided in recent years that she is indeed a bit of a tasty morsel and that she shall be enjoying that for the foreseeable future, thank you very much. Indie kids have, in return for her kindness in parading about in a bunch of extremely short skirts and slightly mystifying leotard thingies, responded by elevating Rilo Kiley to the flagrantly undeserved status of indie heroes.

They’re not gods, they’re shit. Honestly, just not very good at all I’m afraid. I have fucking tried with this lot, honestly I have. Lewis’ collaboration with the Watson Twins on Rabbit Fur Coat produced a truly exceptional album and as such I convinced myself that there must be more merit in her other band than I had managed to notice thus far. I was wrong.

They have a couple of decent songs on More Adventurous – namely It’s a Hit and Science vs Romance – but that’s about it. Eventually I had to give in and admit they were crap, and I felt freer for doing so: liberated of the indie orthodoxy. None of the songs I have heard so far from their latest album persuade me that I am mistaken in discarding them either, and the excruciating video implies that the self-appreciative posturing is only going to increase.

Thing is, how did someone who produced something as lovely as Rabbit Fur Coat find herself unable to write a decent indie album? It’s clearly not just Joanna Newsom syndrome, whereby the highly unusual appearance of an extremely attractive woman in the indie sphere sends all the boys into a state of such frantic excitement that they blindly over-state her talents because they wish she was as talented as the girl in their heads. I mean, Lewis has at least written one blinding record, and having seen her live, she can really, really sing. But once she becomes a part of the band again it just doesn’t work and you get a mediocre album of unmemorable West Coast indie-pop-light. Don’t listen to your hormones boys, Rilo Kiley are the most overrated group in the world of indie at the moment.

Rilo Kiley – It’s a Hit
Jenny Lewis & the Watson Twins – The Charging Sky
Rilo Kiley – Silver Lining

website | amazon

Given the rude health of the Sheffield music scene and the more celebrated representatives thereof, it seems downright incongruous to see Richard Hawley as being part of the same beast. And I suppose he isn’t, really, despite his music being so rooted in the geography – both physical and emotional – of the place.

No, Hawley is a genuine iconoclast. Not that his music is all that original – it’s basically just a straightforward re-interpretation of 50s lounge croon with a little country mixed in for good effect. Also, he’s not really changed his template since his wonderful six-track debut EP back in 2001, so given he announced prior to the release of this album that he wasn’t really interested in trying to re-invent the wheel, why is it so satisfying?

As I see it, it’s simply because over the years Richard Hawley has been honing his craft and he is now very, very good at what he does. I was not all that taken with his first album proper, and I found his follow up, Lowedges, downright soporific. But one dazzling performance at the Liquid Rooms last year and a belated purchase of Cole’s Corner later, and I was converted all over again.

Ultimately, the difference for me was the liveliness of the music. Live, he brought so much more glow and charm to songs which I had begun to find increasingly one-paced and flat on record, so I thought I’d go and give Cole’s Corner a try. Well, it wasn’t just live, the whole album was a vastly more engaging collection than anything he had produced since that debut EP five years ago. There was variation, a bit more pep, more hooks and melodies, and less morose monotone. It was like, after several years of trying, he had finally cracked what it was he was trying to achieve in the first place.

Now that’s probably nothing like how Hawley himself would tell it, and it may offend the hardcore fans, but that’s how I grew into his music. Lady’s Bridge is very much ‘as you were’ after the increased commercial success of Cole’s Corner, with a wonderful sweeping trajectory from the rich, intimate ballads to the anachronistic rock ‘n’ roll – emphasis on the roll – of I’m Looking For Someone to Find Me or Serious. Tonight the Streets Are Ours is an absolutely archetypcal Hawley anthem, all mandolins (I think) and soaring strings – grandiose even, in its own way. And on it goes – it’s all classic Hawley, just brighter and better.

For my money, Hawley may not change much, but he just seems to keep improving.

Richard Hawley – Serious
Richard Hawley – Sun Refused to Shine

website | myspace | amazon

You may wish to contradict me on this, but you’d better have a cast-iron, big hairy beast from the depths of hell counter-argument, because I think my case is watertight.

Have you ever, anywhere, in all your born days heard a song so screamingly, mincingly, gloriously prancingly pirouetting in a spangly silver jumpsuitingly camp as this anywhere in the universe, ever? I just don’t think it can be done – listen to it, it’s 24-Carat genius!

Meco – Star Wars

Submissions please.

I hate – I really hate – to just quote the blurb from a record’s publicity chappies. Let’s face it, you lot have Google, you don’t need me to just regurgitate information for you, but in the case of this album it’s really quite interesting:

In 2006 Portland Institute for Contemporary Art commissioned collaborators Lori Goldston and Kyle Hanson of Spectratone International to create an insect-inspired song cycle with K Records recording artist Mirah. Set to a suite of 12 short animated films by Britta Johnson, the resulting multi-media performance premiered at Seattle International Children’s Festival in May 2007.

Influenced in part by the writings of 19th century French naturalist J. Henri Fabre (called “The Homer of Insects” by Victor Hugo), Share This Place also draws from Karel Capek’s surrealist Insect Play and a host of other sources. Layered with the luxuriant sounds of Spectratone International, Mirah’s beautifully delivered lyrics combine an epic scale and intimate tone.

Er, what? I find myself asking. Well it sounds for all the world like a peculiar musical, which is I suppose in part explained by the provenance of the album itself. In this sense it’s quite Tom Waits-y – that other lover of slightly bonkers theatre music – although still very much part of that ‘eccentric female literary drama-pop’ landscape that I was so scathing about last week.

In truth, some of this album is squarely in the part of that territory that I find a bit too yelpsomely irritating, but the other half – and it is just about half – makes for an intriguingly arranged exercise in jazzy fairytales. It could almost, some of it, have been the soundtrack to Tim Burton’s rather excellent adaptation of Roald Dahl’s James & the Giant Peach. The instrumentation is often quite cabaret chanteuse style – accordions, plucked guitar and eerie violins – and Mirah’s voice is the perfect fit.

So it’s not exactly a perfect album, from the perspective of this recalcitrant indie kid, but it’s intriguing, and there’s plenty of really good songs here in amongst the more mental ones. Definitely worth investigating, people, although I would advise you to do so with caution.

Mirah & Spectratone International – Supper
Mirah & Spectratone International – Community

website | emusic

When I last wrote about the fabulous Art Pedro it was on the back of a quite brilliant Picket Fence release called A Surprising Return to Form.  This terrific little CD wa… actually, CDs are all the same size aren’t they.  Well, most of them.  Well it was short.  And very good.  It’s a little box of tricks actually; eccentric, playful and hugely enjoyable – one of my favourite records of the year so far.

Well his follow up and first proper album Here’s to Everyone I’ve Wounded is less unpredictable, focussing instead on the more melancholy, introverted aspects of his songwriting.  Although the pace and subject matter are slightly narrower this time around, the unusual, slightly atonal delivery remains the same.  It may take some getting used to, especially the slightly furry quality of his voice, but once you do it’s a genuine pleasure.

Some of the lyrics are so personal and alienated it can be a slightly difficult listen at times, feeling like a bit of a confessional or even like a bit of a torrent of dislocated anguish from someone who sits just slightly at odds with the modern world.  Musically the discordant beeps and drones that accompany the gentle guitar and gorgeous droplets of piano frequently serve to heighten the slight sense of unease, but nevertheless it is an intimate and often comforting record.

He’s an odd ‘un, Arthur Pedro, but he has rather surprisingly produced a couple of genuine left field gems this year, out of absolutely nowhere.  I do admit, I rather miss some of the instrumental jauntiness of the first release, but this is still a splendid album.

Art Pedro – You’re (Not) Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone
Art Pedro – Leave Me Alone
Art Pedro – You Smell Nice

myspace | buy from fence records (sold out for now, but keep an eye out – they are likely to print more)

Well I’m really rather surprised to like this as much as I do.  Which is not loads and loads, mind, but plenty.  It’s actually, despite the rather irritatingly NME-friendly marketing, a pretty good record.

Something about her name, the skinny lass on the cover of her album and various other blind and unfounded prejudices led me to sort of dismiss Candie Payne as a Cabaret Kate Nash, which reflects far worse on me than it does on her. The album itself, now I’ve got my head out of my arse and actually listened to it, is a kind of amalgamation of Barry Adamson’s devil-take-me jazz style and the kind of slightly pubescent modern white-girl soul that is simmering around the UK at the moment.

This is perhaps one of those reverse-expectations moments actually.  I was rather expecting this to be rubbish, so the fact that it isn’t seems like a refreshing surprise.  Have a pop, it’s definitely worth a sniff, this one and you might be pleasantly surprised as I was.  Don’t expect to be blown away by unimaginable genius and you might find some nice surprises that play perfectly over an evening in with some smelly cheese and a glass of Cotes du Rhone.  None of yer Aussie pish though.

Candie Payne – In the Morning
Candie Payne – All I Need to Hear

website | myspace | amazon