Please note that this is called the Remmcast, rather than the Ariyemcast, for little better reason than that it sounds better.
R.E.M. split up this week, which is sort of like the death of an elderly relative: you know it’s sad, and you mourn the loss, but they hadn’t been themselves for a while, everyone knew it was probably coming, and maybe it’s for the best after all.
Due to not really wanting to pontificate too much, I haven’t really produced what could be in any way described as a ‘career retrospective’ or anything, nor have I really gone into much about their contemporaries or influences nor indeed the enduring influence they themselves have had. Nope, I have simply recorded a podcast as per usual, but with three R.E.M. songs in it because they were fucking brilliant.
01. Ezra Furman & the Harpoons – Hard Time in a Terrible Land (00.26)
02. Burning Yellows – False Horizons (04.33)
03. R.E.M. – Perfect Circle (11.44)
04. The Twilight Sad – Kill it in the Morning (17.52)
05. Niwel Tsumbu – It’s All Vibrations (23.35)
06. R.E.M. – Star Me Kitten (33.03)
07. The Fair Ohs – I’m a Woman, I’m Your Wife (38:15)
08. Zoey Van Goey – You Told the Drunks I Knew Karate (GRNR Remix) (39.10)
09. The Whines – Electric Current (45.02)
10. Youthfall – Secular Child (49.01)
11. R.E.M. – Parakeet (59.47)
This is called the Fullcast for no better reason than that I tried to fit far too many songs onto the playlist. I’d have used half the Palmist Records stable if possible, but eventually decided to settle for one single track. There’s always next week.
I didn’t even make room for a song from the new Clap Your Hands Say Yeah record, although to be fair I haven’t really listened to that enough to actually know what I think about it, so maybe that would have been hasty.
If anything this reminded me of the really early podcasts, when I tried to squish two hours of music into a single recording, and the things were just sprawling behemoths of wittering and tuneage. I can’t say I regret the decision to trim it down to either ten songs or an hour.
01. Beaters – Dark Haunter (00.22)
02. Body Wash – Cool Bike (06.34)
03. High Pop – For Jord (08.23)
04. Django Django – Waveforms (11.35)
05. Steven Malkmus & the Jicks – No One Is (As I Are Be) (17.31)
06. Milkshakes – Track 1 (24.57)
07. Kurt Vile – The Creature (27.37)
08. Ezra Furman & the Harpoons – Don’t Turn Your Back on Love (34.41)
09. Steel Phantoms – Bedouin (41.50)
10. Eagulls – Possessed (47.24)
11. Sands – Fares & Tolls (53.15)
12. U2 – Lemon (60.17)
I am learning to despise hotel internet. Whether I book myself and end up staying in a fucking Travelodge or Mrs. Toad books and we end up staying on one of the larger guest suites at Buckingham fucking Palace, absolutely all of them have such risibly bad internet connections that recording a podcast leaves me tearing my fucking hair out.
I couldn’t even get the online image editor to load properly, so the image is that rather pathetic, borderline clipart stinker you see in the top right hand corner. Dreadful. My art teachers would be justifiably disappointed.
Anyhow, this is called the Plancast for one simple and far from compelling reason: the fact that Mrs. Toad and I are down in London and have had to be clinically heartless in who we do and don’t see. We don’t exactly have lots of friends down South, but still far too many to see in one weekend and at times in the past we have tried to do too much and ended up being inadvertently rude to everyone.
01. Love Inks – Blackeye (00.06)
02. Dubstar – The Day I See You Again (04.57)
03. Rev I.B. Ware with Wife and Son – I Wouldn’t Mind Dying (But I Gotta Go By Myself (12.01)
04. Billy Bragg & Wilco – Airline to Heaven (18.30)
05. Ezra Furman & the Harpoons – Hard Time in a Terrible Land (23.12)
06. I Break Horses – Hearts (29.39)
07. Tusk Tusk – Out of Tune and Out of Time (37.22)
08. Sandy Denny – By the Time it Gets Dark (41.01)
09. Girls Names – Nothing More to Say (46.02)
10. Thomas Tantrum – Hot Hot Summer (51.33)
11. Jarad Miles – Darjeeling (56.04)
This review has been such a long time coming because I really didn’t like this album at all at first. Primarily I think what put me off was Furman’s infernal nasal wail. It’s the sort of voice that fits his rattle-along music really well, but takes an awful, awful lot of getting used to. It’s mostly fine, but a few songs have climactic moments where he really lets it loose – to its ear-twisting best.
It’s taken me months, but I have adjusted. I got the album at about the same as our favourite Secret Squirrel, DC, judging from when Ezra appeared on The Waiting Room, and it has honestly taken me this long to really appreciate Banging Down the Doors. DC played God is a Middle-Aged Woman, if I remember, and despite being three-quarters excellent, the screeching climax of that song gets a bit much and embodies the side of this album I am still not quite on board with.
The music itself is a furiously paced clatter of the sort of acoustic troubadourism that has entirely embraced the electric guitar, turned the fucking volume up and decided to wake the audience the fuck up for a change. He bangs through his songs with a helter-skelter fury that few can match. If anything he perhaps reminds me what Frank Turner might sound like if he were American and had a fondness for allegory. Early Bob Dylan is also not a bad comparison. He was angry in his time, was Bob, and we tend to forget that when we put Tangled Up in Blue on our compilations.
Ezra Furman & the Harpoons – American Highway
Ezra Furman & the Harpoons – How Long, Diana?
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