Dark Was the Night – Red Hot Compilation
Good grief this is like a gigantic great indie-kid wet dream. The short story: this has been put together by Bryce and Aaron Dessner of The National and released on 4AD to benefit the Red Hot Organisation, an AIDS/HIV project.
From a musical point of view, you really couldn’t ask for a better snapshot of this particular moment in independent music. It’s phenomenal, from the amazing Feist and Ben Gibbard collaboration, to the gorgeous Iron & Wine, to all the other curiosities and unreleased gems they have managed to pull together. Compilations like this are usually either done by labels, hence limiting their scope, or by marketeers, hence polluting their musical potential with populsim.
This one appears to be largely free of that – or at least, it has the confidence to target the indie audience with genuine flair. Rather than just slapping on songs by all the box-ticked big sellers on Amazon, they seem happy to assume that we either all know who Dave Sitek, Kevin Drew and Stewart Murdoch are, or at least that we are capable of finding out, and hence is able to absolutely pepper the playlist with genuine jewels of curiosity for those of us with indie inclinations.
So, really, there’s no excuse not to buy one. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you don’t buy one then you’re a fucking idiot, because there’s just so much on here to love. Get ten indie kids round a table, and I bet they’d all have different hits and different misses from this, and that is a very, very good thing.
Oh, and have you heard of HIV denialists? There are people who deny that HIV causes AIDS, and insist that the whole thing is one Big Pharma conspiracy to sell more drugs. This was even the official position of the South African government for some time, which basically led the Mbeki administration to allow the deaths of over three hundred thousand of its own citizens by refusing to participate in emergency medical relief programs.
As if African AIDS patients didn’t have enough on their plate with Western homeopaths exploiting their conditions for money. Homeopathy is basically the administration of either water or a sugar pill, entirely devoid of active ingredients, accompanied by hilarious claims of medical efficacy. It works, according to Jack Killen, the Acting Deputy Director of the National Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine “beyond current understanding of chemistry and physics”. This is a claim which would be ludicrous enough, were it not for the fact that actually it doesn’t work at all, never mind by what mechanism. As the same fellow states: “There is, to my knowledge, no condition for which homeopathy has been proven to be an effective treatment”.
In the Western world homeopathy is generally just a tax on ignorance, or the self-indulgence of the worried well, and easy to ignore. In Africa it is basically exploiting the suffering of people, who do not count in the West, in order to profit from their illness. And then letting them die.
Just in case you didn’t think it was important to make a contribution in this particular case.
Feist w. Ben Gibbard – Train Song
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The Books w. Jose Gonzalez – Cello Song
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Stuart Murdoch – Another Saturday
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I was reading about this compilation in The Skinny.
It does look like an irresistable smörgåsbord of delicious treats.
The first two tracks are both fantastic, aren’t they.
The male/female vocal interplay on the Feist song is spot on, and thankfully there are no silly cod-medieval accents to be heard.
The Books track is built on a very effective blend of acoustics and electronics.
And the Stuart Murdoch song is frankly a bit listless and derivative. I’ll probably be reaching for the track skip button for this song when I get the CD.
But an exciting prospect overall!
I don’t even like Feist or Death Cab that much, but Train Song is amazing, you’re right. The Books one is great too.
There are definitely a couple of misses on this, but overall it’s really good.
I’m not sure I see the point of Stuart Murdoch using a folk tune/Burns’ song (whatever it is – can;t think of the name of it) and giving it different lyrics. I’d be interested to hear his side of the story. Perhaps he’s trying to bring some Scottish heritage to a wider audience (which would be a good reason) but, if so, then why change the lyrics?
I’ve been keeping tabs on this as the songs have come out on the myspace and my favourites are the Sufjan track (which is ruddy mental) and the National track (which is an excellent pop song).
Well folk music is generally full of that kind of re-working, so it’s not entirely against the spirit of the genre. Maybe he just liked the tune and wanted to do something with it. That might not have worked well within the context of a Belle & Sebastian album, but would be perfect for a project like this.
What a great version of Cello Song!! This already sounds like a interesting mix, and for a very good cause.
on the subject of the stuart murdoch track i think you have to remember that not every song is written with the intention of being something original or even whether evreryone will like it or not. this goes for the new beirut album as well. although people wont like it(and i know this is a forum for exactly these kind of comments) but you cant always question the motives of drastic changes in style because it might just be that beirut was in the mood to make some cheesy casio type electronic sounding music and who gives a shit what everyone thinks. however we do also all have the right to piss all over it. which we have done.
Well I agree that folk music, and actually all music, begs, steals and borrows from everything else, and that an artist obviously has to have the freedom to release whatever they want to release based on whatever whim takes their fancy.
But, I’m still just a little disappointed by the SM track and I thought that, given the company, he might contribute something “better” (in my subjective view) than he did. He has such a way with melody that I find it weird that he should appropriate something else, especially something so mundane.
But, as you say, perhaps he just likes it, in which case, furry muff I suppose.
Oh I wasn’t defending it in the sense that I was insisting what a brilliant song it was, just saying that I could understand how it came to happen.
Good indie comps are few and far between. This one is a fuckin’ gold star. Bravo.