The Cheerful Insanity of Me

So, time for icelandic pop. The next CD in the pile is the Sugarcubes 1988 debut album "Life's Too Good". Given the number of divorces and remarriages after it's release and the tensions that eventually led to the bands breakup, it clearly it must have been.

The music of the Sugarcubes may have been heavily overshadowed by the solo work of Bjork, but if you're not familiar with them they are well worth a look. While Bjork's solo stuff was far more dance influenced, the Sugarcubes sees the same distinctive vocal style in a more rock-based situation. There is something strangely reminiscient of early B-52s in the result and it's certainly just as eccentric.

That said, Bjork does share the vocals with Einar Benediktsson. While Benediktsson's vocals are more simplistic, being little more than just spoken word, they contrast well with Bjork's. The opening track "Traitor", features Benediktsson taking the main vocals with Bjork providing more abstract backing vocals, which results in one of the strongest tracks on the whole album.

Other highlights of the album include Motorcrash, a cheerful little number about someone witnessing a motor accident and taking one of the victims home with her; Birthday, the single that got the band recognition outside Iceland, particularly from John Peel; Deus, one of the more eccentric ways to declare God doesn't exist; and F***ing in Rhythm & Sorrow, which sees them at their most eccentric lyrically having the style of a caberet song, but about a woman finding a naked man in her flat. The hidden track, Taktu Bensín Elskan, which is sung entirely in Icelandic, is also worth a listen.

As a taster, here's the video of Motorcrash

(Direct link)

Haven't done one of these for a while, as the pile of cds is threatening to bury me alive probably should.

The next album in the pile is Warblefly's latest: Tenerife to Dover, which I bought after they stalked me through all the summer festivals. OK, maybe that's an exaggeration, but they were performing at Broadstairs and Wallingford. It's also not a bad album (to follow the exaggeration with an understatement).

Contemporary folk rock at it's finest, Warblefly sound like what might have resulted if the Pogues had decided to try their hand at the indie rock of the 90s/00s and by some miracle had managed to pull it off. This is an album which would happily sit on the shelf beside both contemporary folk and mainstream indie-rock.

Quite often when buying studio albums of bands seen live, the albums never seem to capture the energy of the live performance. Warblefly seem to be an exception to this rule however, with just as much power in their recording. Then again there are millions of them playing (well 8) and they do work together really well. They manage to get all the raw guitar power of some of the best modern rock band without overpowering the traditional instruments. The whole sound sits together without anyone of the players stealing all the limelight. Track after track they just launch themselves upon you as a whole, there's not a single weak song on the album.

There may be a strong influence of the Pogues which comes across in the album, but this blends with many other influences from far and wide. "Shoplifter" may be the only folk-rock-ska anthem I've ever heard, but it's certainly worthy of the title of the finest, and if you've never heard a Zappa influenced folk-rock instrumental "Axle Strumpet" is highly recommended.

The real highlights of the album are Sack of Seeds, which echos the epic songs of the likes of Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span, but with a contemporary edge; Shrimp Boy, which is like being sliced to pieces by fiddles and Underwater Breathing Competition, a morbid glam-slipjig with attitude.

At which point, I've probably enthused about them enough, so I'll just share a link to Underwater Breathing Competition on last.fm and mention the the rest of the album's on there too.

This is cool...

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(Direct Link)

(via richardwiseman)

...but from a modern perspective, this cropped up on the Gogs mailing list today:

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It's a tune we dance to, but not generally played quite like that.

Apparently there's a Stonehenge replica in Nebraska. It looks like this:



carhenge - 36 cars each placed in the position of one of the boulders of the original Stonehenge.

Either that or we had an end of the world type disaster and I didn't notice...

(via inhabitat)

Having been tipped off by @Tate on twitter. I wondered over to Tate Modern to see this this afternoon:



Robert Therrien has basically just created a standard table and 4 chairs


...at 3.5 times their usual size.

Very cool, but gave me that sudden feeling that I shouldn't have touched that bottled labelled "Drink Me"

It's on display on the third floor until 24 October. Well worth a look, but unfortunately you're not allowed to sit on the chairs or eat off the table.

They've also got Therrien's "Red Room" on display (it's basically what the name suggests - picture here), also on the third floor, but in with surrealist stuff, but unfortunately where they've placed it only a few people can view it at once so it's difficult to get at.

I do like following cyberinsekt on here, for the occasional musical gem you find in amongst his posts.

I must admit, I'm not familiar with much Turkish psychedelic jazz, but this is excellent:

Okay Temiz - Denizalti Rüzgarlan

It's somewhat like the Ozric Tentacles gone ethnic in a toy shop with a pet monkey, only more so!

...and I can't stop listening to it... help!

Meant to post about this earlier, but for those of you who enjoyed the slides and don't already know, the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall is filled with balance beams, seesaw type things and assorted climby things.

In the other words, they are displaying a recreation of Robert Morris's Bodyspacemotionthings exhibition originally shown briefly at the Tate in 1971 (until director Norman Reid closed it due to "exuberant and over excited behaviour" by some visitors)



I popped along during my lunchbreak on Friday in order to beat the queues and it is great fun and left me feeling all exuberant and over excited leaving me with no choice but to go back to work to calm myself down again...

Unfortunately, it's only there for the bank holiday weekend, so if you haven't been yet, you'll have to go tomorrow.

EDIT: The exhibition has been extended until 14 June for those of you who missed it.

This is a rather elegant idea:



Elongate the tap and turn it into a towel rail. Genius!

(via craziestgadgets)

So the weather clearly loves me and gave us the sunniest evening in ages just when I was planning to go to the Globe (or at least it was when we went it. It somehow gets less sunny late at night for some reason...).

The Frontline was excellent.

Clearly the thing to do if you want to do a modern play at the Globe is( ... cut for mild spoilers )

In short everyone in the whole world should go and see it, and if you haven't already you've got 3 days.

The Frontline is showing at the Globe until 23rd May.

Oh, and somehow this post wouldn't be complete without a photographic homeage to the true star of the show: ( behind cut )