Jens Lekman @ Lido, Berlin

Saturday night and Jens Lekman is in town! How could I dare not going, especially when I got the ticket as a present (thank you!). As expected, Jens got the masses making a pilgrimage to the Lido, the metro to the venue was packed with people speaking in scandinavian tongues. The growing population of Scandinavians in Berlin is no secret, and neither is Jens' fondness of the city. He has been very charmingly building up a song by describing in detail how to get to Berlin when you are coming from Sweden or Denmark (Easyjet takes 45 min, but Saefflebussen costs 5 euro less, and "knowing Berlin I was sure I could make use of that 5 euro somehow". I enjoyed this story very much, as I am familiar with the pleasures of seeing the baltic sea from the sky and 20 hours on the road all through Denmark and over the bridge to Sweden). The crowd, very likely comprising of Scandinavian-enthusiasts like me, screamed with laughter. Jens definitely is one of an entertainer who knows how to grab the audience by the balls. His show was not that long at a first glance, but three encores really did the deal. In fact, he sang until there was "no more song to sing" (I am sure he has got 10 new songs in his mind at any time) and he said he felt like dancing. No dancing for us there, though, as the after show party was not at the Lido, but in a different venue far away. After hanging around at the venue for at least another hour and a quick drop-in at the döner round the corner we decided to go to the party. It took us 45 mins to get there, changing train twice and freezing, just to be turned down at the door: We were told our tickets are not valid for the after show party and it was 6 Euro entry. I had just spend 6 Euro on a Jens Lekman record and the stupid temptation to speak to the gorgeous drummer about my attempts at banging the drums. I guess I made a little fool out of myself with little-girlish talk, but at least I bought the record. Anyway, no fucking Karrera Klub after show party for us, back to the concert: The record I bought, Friday Night At The Drive-In Bingo, was the last regular song they played and it had this little showdown built in when all the members of the band put down their instruments and danced up and down the stage. There was still music playing then... No hard feelings here, the band was great and I eat my hat if this talented bunch of girls (plus one boy) was not playing life. However, girls (exxageration for dramatic puposes: it was only just one girl) in front of me were sobbing quite noisily when Jens played Pocketfull Of Money, alone with his acoustic guitar. I had no reason to cry last night, I enjoyed it very much.

02 - The Coral: Roots & Echoes

02
THE CORAL: ROOTS & ECHOES (2007)

Similar to Rjd2's The Third Hand, Roots & Echoes has been frequently on the turntable in autumn 2007. And I literally mean "turntable" this time, as there was no way of avoiding The Coral whenever I went out to listen and dance to great records. All of The Coral's albums have their great moments and when I heard the band at clubs or bars, it was not even that likely I would get to hear a song from their latest record. But I have chosen this one as my favourite because it is the one I have listened to most frequently. Plus Who's Gonna Find Me definitely is one of the songs of the year for me, and it is on this album. But then again, I only discovered Dreaming Of You (from The Coral) this year, and it should have been inside my heart and head from 2002 on. But maybe I would not have been ready for this sixties-influenced, bright and shining pop/rock music back then, I think I was listening to quite different stuff then. That is why I'd rather have the latest record as my favourite in this list, but all the others are great, too.
Anyway, Rjd2 and The Coral is what I have been listening to heavily over the past few months, and to be honest, maybe this is one of the reason they ended up so high in the ranking. For the records that you listened to in the first half of the year may not be in your short-time memory when you are compiling the list, and the ones that you found out about by the very end of the year may be to fresh to really mean something to you. You will soon see how I tried to overcome this problem in my number one.

Digitalism

One of the spearheads of the so-called "New Rave"-movement is a band based in Hamburg/Germany, called "Digitalism". Tracks are released on the french label "Kitsune", and after a few singles/EPs the two dudes have finally finished their Debut-Album called "Idealism". And I don't actually want to write alot about this except that I love their music and urge you to check them out too.

"Zdarlight"-Video, their first big hit :

"Pogo"-Video, the current Single :

Digitalism on myspace.

Herman Dune @ Roadhouse, Manchester

This cool pic suggests that Herman Dune is another of these multicombo bands, with loads of people that are difficult to keep track of. It's not quite like that.
I am still not really familiar with the band's history or background, but as far as I understood the band actually just comprises two brothers from France or Israel or Sweden or the USA or all four or so?

But what do I care about where they are from when the song I like the most is about "being away". It is called I wish that I could see you soon.



When I saw them live in Manchester about a week after Easter, this song was the first of a row of songs that really caught me.
Maybe I wouldn't have liked them, had I just listened to this song, but seeing a band live of course always makes a difference. The beautiful female voice you can here in the song was provided by a singer from Baby Skins on stage. This woman had a really nice array of percussion instruments that I could never be able to name, yet describe. She used a different one for every single song, to accompany the drums and make things a bit more strange and dreamy.

The audience must have been crazy for Herman Dune's music. They even booed the singer when he didn't sing. When Andre Herman Dune, the singer, came back on stage for an encore, he chatted a bit at first, talking about music distribution, and how much better vinyls are compared to mp3s. He said he didn't have the time to go record shopping in Manchester, which he really regretted, and that he loved the idea of kids wanting records rather than mp3 downloads. This got him a little passionate (aren't we all, when it comes to this subject) and he kept on talking, for so long that people started to shout for a song. In the Roadhouse, there was a club night after the gig, and people feared there might not be time for a song if he went on talking.

But a brand new, very sweet love song was sung, everybody embraced, souls saved. Thank you, Herman Dune!

foals house party

Friday, 2nd March, left me with the most packed party I've ever been to so far.

About 70 people squashed into the living room of an ordinary english house, and another 200 or so in the rest of the building, piling up in the hallway and on the stairs. We all came to see foals, an uprising british band who had a very nice idea: Free gigs at house parties. They are on tour around the UK at the moment, and told their myspace friends to let them now if they wanted them to perform in their city when they were there. And in Manchester, it did happen. After playing a gig for the public in the night and day cafe they packed their instruments and headed down to the house party. We all were eagerly awaiting them. Excitement was so high, and I knew that evening was gonna be special when, for the first time in my life, I was offered E. (Amazing, 4 years of clubbing in Berlin and no one ever want to sell me anything, but at my first party in smiley rave city I did not have to wait anz longer than five minutes). I don't do drugs, though, just so you know!

The band arrived around midnight (who knows...) and we all had to make room for them to bring their instruments into the living room. after that, the great pushing began, lots of people wanted to see them. I managed to get instead the room. It was so packed, a pin could not have dropped on the floor. I do not really remember how long their set was, it felt quite short, though, and left everybody so sweaty that people stuck to each other.

A very nice night out!

04 cocorosie - la maison de mon reve (2004)

04 cocorosie - la maison de mon reve (2004)

'oooh, cocorosie...' seems to be the normal reaction from everyone who has heard their music. cocorosie wrap you in their music, they put you in a dreamy state and make you feel dizzy and stoned without drugs.
when i listened to them, i wondered how someone could come up with music as fragile as this and yet be so strong and humourous. i wondered why there had been a time in my life when i disliked female voices and it's own sensuous touch. cocorosie's songs are like carefully constructed swings that look instable, but when you ride them you can reach heights you never reached before. their fragileness and the open-hearted lyrics actually prevent vulnerability. the vulnerability i would have expected from girls making music like this.
to the songs: by your side is a perfect example of what i like about cocorosie. you've got this sporadic, yet unignorable beat, a beautiful melody and lots of extra sounds. squeaks, clangs, chirps with a voice like glass. yet the lyrics are far away from being naive schoolgirls' dreams, are rather extremely ironic:

"i'll be the best girl you'd ever meet
and for a diamond ring
i'll do these kinds of things
i'll scrub your floor
never be a bore
i'd tuck you in
i do not snore
i'd wear your black eyes
bake you apple pies
i won't ask whys
and i try not to cry
i'll always be by your side
even when you're down and out
i'll always be by your side
even when you're down and out
and its nearly midnight
and all i want with my life
is to be a housewife"

not convinced yet? how about these lyrics from jesus loves me:

"jesus loves me
but not my wife
not my nigger friends
or their nigger lives
but jesus loves me
dat for sure
'cause the bible tell me so"



(nevermind the video, i don't think it is an official one)

this is a fan video for not for sale:

06 jens lekman - oh you're so silent jens (2005)

06 jens lekman - oh you're so silent jens (2005)

the a-flirt-to-come-back-to record

i got into jens lekman because pocketful of money was on a mixtape i got. I didn't instantly recognise this song's beauty, but one day at work it totally hit me. I had to press play again and lekman's gorgeous voice filled the shop with warmth. Then the girl who had made the mixtape for me and i discussed him. So here come the (very random) facts: jens lekman, living in göteborg, sweden, 25 years of age, loves music and travelling, gives away his music for free on his website, keeps a blog about music that outshines this one here. jens lekman and i had a short flirt this summer, but recently i put his record on again, and i think it is one of those that you don't listen to regularly, but will come back to every once in a while for a very long time. Read more here where i wrote about him before.

07 professor pez - we found the beach, where is the ocean (2005)

07 professor pez - we found the beach, where is the ocean (2005)

the from-zero-to-hundred-
in-eight-months record

professor pez is a special case, and a hard one indeed. i did not at all like we found the beach, where is the ocean when i got it back in february/march. i had lots of trouble with the singer's voice, something that thankfully has been confirmed by another extensive listener. sometimes i still do not feel that comfortable with it. yet i gave the record a few spins and the chance to find its way into my musical memory. i realised this when suddenly i woke up with imperial airwaves playing in my mind or when the perfect test became my earworm for a whole week. there even was a song i instantly liked: steady amputations was so damn catchy it did get hold of my right at the very first time i heard it. what i love about professor pez is the lightness with which they create great melodies, the playfulness of their songs and arrangements, and the fact that they are an adorably bunch of young people – creative, intelligent, not at all made-up musicians playing the games of the record industry. these guys deserve not stardom, but praise for the fact that they love to make music. And hell, my wish for 2007 would be the chance to see them live on stage – either in bergen, where they come from, or because of a german release of their material.

the perfect test video. the ninjas are a norwegian bunch of people who call themselves new age ninjas:

08 the whitest boy alive - dreams (2006)

08 the whitest boy alive - dreams (2006)

the love-at-first-sight-and-not
-even-the-slightest-doubt-before record

a record fof the category „i would never have discovered on my one". It was a present by a smart friend, the kind of friends that make a note somewhere in their mind when you say things like „i think erlend oye has one the greatest voices ever." and then they give you his latest record, a project called the whitest boy alive. A record that sounds like a unity. cosy, but danceable at the same time, with oye's voice very present in the foreground. I obviously share my favour with lots of other people: myspace is full of whitest boy alive fans, music press adores him. And this is very much a berlin thing. erlend oye, who put the musical world in awe with his band kings of convience and their records quiet is the new loud (2001) and riot on an empty street (2004), moved from bergen, norway to berlin in to become a dj at the club wmf. From there he made it into all sorts of music and arts magazines all over the world and onto the wall of the loo of my current favourite astro bar:

pencil: „... ?? ... be quiet"
blue writing: „quiet is the new loud"
black writing: „riot on an empty street"

ok, not that funny, but quite striking after three beers.

this live recording of burning gives a good impression of the sound and the people's love:

10 postal service - give up (2003)

10 the postal service - give up (2003)

the gonna-need-this-kind-of-

shit-for-the-rest-of-my-life record

because i listened to death cab for cutie's plans already in 2005 and because i listened to it extensively when i was unhappily in love (so it has this bad taste to it now) i'd rather want the postal service's give up in this list. the music is similar, but more electronical, more dreamy, less guitar. give up is not as good as death cab for cutie's plans, though. On plans i love every single song, am able to recall every single melody. give up is not that catchy. But i have ben gibbard's voice stroking my ear drums with lyrics just as sensitive and poetic as those on plans:

'tells your new friends
i am a visitor here
I am not permanent'

(the district sleeps alone tonight)



'they will see us waving from such great heights
"come down now" they'll say
but everything looks perfect from far away
"come down now" but we'll stay'
(such great heights)



'i want so badly to believe
that there is truth and love is real
and I want life in every word
to the extent that it's absurd'
(clark gable)

that's how you feel when you feel lonely, that how i feel when i yearn for something i don't know what it is. these songs, the district sleeps alone tonight, such great heights and clark gable are just randomly picked examples, the whole record is soo good.

just like plans, give up was there to lull me into sleep without making me cry, and to make me get out of bed the very next morning (when i put it on again) without making me skip forward to whichever song was my current fave.

This record was given to me by one of the dearest friends i gained this year, to let me know what kind of music he was into. Bingo – me, too. great way to become really good friends.

robotron and maria's radio

yesterday i went to see a friends' friends' band...nobody in our group really knew what they sounded like and what was to be expected. well, nobody would have expected this.

the mentioned band was called maria's radio, apparently a group of friends from school from a surburban area of berlin. this sounds cliche-ish, but they were in fact very good. one singer wore a chapeau clappe and long hair, looking like he just jumped out of one of the latest replay commercials, the other one wore a furry coat, appearing to be a bit more rebellious. the bass player was a cute, very small girl and the second guitar player the afforementioned friends' friend. (i didn't see the drummer). their music had a kind of psychedelic sixties appeal, they even had long blues-ish guitar parts. definitely a band with the potential to release a record!

it's sad the bad things have to be the highlight of this blog, but i just have to write about the band that preceded maria's radio: robotron were suggested as support act by the guitarist of maria's radio, so i was told, and wondering about what had gotten into him was just one of the many things we wondered about last night.
robotron had two people on stage, a guitar player in normal jeans and t-shirt, with the usual indie kid hair-do and, most importantly, a sane behaviour.
his counterpart on vocals was the exact opposite. this guy wore a brown mechanic's overall, a green scarf and bicycle helmet, and extremly big sunglasses. nothing wrong with that, people in recent tv reports about the latest band from nyc look exactly the same. neither did the fact that he took off the helmet to reveal a mullet with shaved parts in it shock me, not at all the fact that under his overall he wore a dirty old singlet with robotron written on it, plus fishnet stockings with an extremely short glittering mini skirt. i actually do respect that, having the guts to perform like this, in a small bar in front of very few people who were all square in the "we-are-fucking-cool"-way of thinking.
the thing that bothered me, and seemingly everybody else, was that their music was just so bad! every song consisted of guitar sounds, which, would they have been played with a "band", would actually have shown talent. but here we had those guitar sounds alone, without any consistency or change in rhythm, very sporadically accompanied by one or two hits on an electronical drum device (the singer, apparently, had no sense of rhythm). he started his performance with screaming loudly: "aaaaaah". and it was not like he tried to make this fit the melody or rhythm of the music, he simply, monotonously screamed. lyrics, when there were any, were impossible to understand. but i do recall they did a cover version of the kinks' you really got me.
a clever idea it was, actually, to offer figs to make the audience come closer to the stage, but how stupid it was to throw it at them later.
the whole show lasted about 45 minutes and i can't tell how many song they played, because each and every single on of them really sounded exactly the same.

robotron and maria's radio were like different poles last night and it actually is a shame that the second band was very good, but the first one will be subject of a story i can tell for the rest of my life.

my current favourite song: jens lekman - pocketful of money

jens lekman is a solo artist from gothenburg, sweden. being only 25 years old, he has already released a nice amount of albums and compilations. the good thing about him is that he is seeing the whole music business in a very relaxed way: 'If you like my music , please buy my records or download them legally' he writes on his webpage, but he also offers links for free downloads.

this page, however, is worth looking at once in a while, because he keeps on adding thoughts about his music and his life on the road. it's almost like a blog of it's on.

the song that got me into him about two months ago is pocketful of money, to be found on the 2005 compilation oh you're so silent, jens.
starting with finger-snapping and a piano, gently accompanied by bass, this song slowly turns into a hymn with brass and vocals in two voices. it's one of these songs that catch you right when you're listening to it for the first time, and then creates this certain feeling of desire and yearning every time you hear it.

the fastest way for you to listen to it now would be to follow this link.

here are the lyrics:

i got my pockets full of money
i'm gonna spend it all tonight
i got my pockets full of money
i'm gonna spend it all tonight

i hold my salary
i'm gonna set it to flames
on some girl i just met recently
i barely know her name

oh take me some place decent
where we meet up with true friends
where the people are pleasant
where the music never ends
where the music never ends

i can say that you are pretty
that would make me a liar
but you turn my legs to spaghetti
and set my heart on fire

you set my heart on fire
you set my heart on fire
you set my heart on fire

i'll come running with a heart on fire
...

you set my heart on fire
...

sugarcubes re-union

according to very official sources (www.bjork.com) the sugarcubes are reuniting!

though a new release would certainly whirl up some dust, i believe it's better to feel their magic for just a single night: one the 17th of november 2006 the sugarcubes are performing in, you guessed it, reykjavik.

flight might be a bit to expensive for me, so let's hope for worldwide tv coverage and a live internet broadcast!

tea?
no thanks, i'll just take the sugar!

steso songs

you'll hardly find recommendations for yet-to-become famous musicians on this blog, because i usually start to like a band after their biggest hit has been out of the 'charts' again for half a year. but this time i'm the early bird who catches the worm.

on myspace i got a request by a singer from malmö who calls herself steso songs. i listened to one song, added her to my friends and found myself still clicking on the same four songs two hours later. try the same.

and visit her website

i hope she will go on making music, i like her stuff.