An excellent morning in the company of the untouchably brilliant Everly Brothers, starting with 1960's third album, It's Everly Time. Everybody knows that the Everly's harmonies were as good as harmonies can get, but it's not so often discussed what superb songwriting skills they had themselves from very early on, nor what impeccable taste they had when it came to using other songwriters work. It's Everly Time has not one dud in its running time, every song is a two minute slice of pop perfection, the absolute definition of why pop music was so much more than Elvis' nonsensical grandstanding. These songs are alternately funny, sappy, heartfelt, emotional, but they are always faultlessly written, absolutely cast-iron, unchallengeably perfect. A Date With the Everly Brothers (1961) is not up to the standard of It's Everly Time, but nothing really could be. A Date With has some great stuff on it nonetheless. There's the fantastic 'Cathy's Clown', the heartbreaking 'Always It's You', the superior pre-Orbison version of 'Love Hurts'. Any album with these three on can only be described as superb even if the rest was cack. It isn't though, the rest is almost but not quite as good. Don and Phil's voices are, if anything, in even better form, but perhaps the real reason that A Date With doesn't stand up to It's Everly Time is because it's rather more earnestly produced.
Rock'n Soul (1965) is a fairly uninspired set of cover versions of old hits and as far as the Everly's go it's a fairly uninteresting offering. There is a weird slow, brilliant arrangement of 'Love Hurts' though. Things improve dramatically with the superb Two Yanks in England (1966). There's virtually no original material on the album, and most of the songs were actually written by members of the Hollies. But what's great about the record is that these are much, much better versions of the songs than the Hollies themselves would or could record, and it goes to show just how superb the Everly's were at interpreting other people's work. The songs are elevated from second rate 60's Brit-pop to first rate singer-songwriter pop by the Everly's superlative delivery. There's a much heavier emphasis on the guitar and the musical arrangements than usual, but it's not inappropriate and certainly doesn't overwhelm Don and Phil's fantastic vocal harmonies.
The Everly Brothers went back through their earliest recollections, together with their home recorded tapes with their mum and dad for 1968's Roots. A collection of mostly covers of old country songs that their parents brought them up with, it's not only an affection exercise in nostalgia, it's also a superb demonstration of interpretive skill. This is not so much a country song covers album as one of the first Americana works, utilising traditional country within a more contemporary rock framework. It's a fabulous album and it also proved that the Everly's were unusually capable of adapting with the times - there's no sense that this is a desperate attempt to remain contemporary, it's so casually and artfully up to date, and their performances are alternately brilliantly bright and nostalgically weary. Finally for the Evs it's a sprawling 3CD cheapo compilation, The Works 1960-1973 (2007). Much of the five albums so far covered are largely represented but there's plenty of other stuff from the multitude of other Everly's albums released in that period. The early stuff is all gold, the middle period an uneasy mix, the last lot is eclectic to say the least, but there's great stuff even there - the countryish string driven sound collage of 'Lord of the Manor' is awesome.
Everything Everything were voted band most likely to a few years back which of course means that they were immediately then slagged off by everybody. Who cares about that kind of horsecrap though? Man Alive (2010) in my opinion is one of the brilliant bits of fidgetty hyperactive indie pop yet made, drawing its all too oft used XTC and Talking Heads influences together but blending them with Beach Boys falsetto harmonies, shifty nu-rave rhythms and, least discussed of all, Volcano I'm Still Excited's 80's Casio revisionism. The result is an album full of zesty and angular pop songs which won't be pinned down stylistically or rhythmically as they lurch about from here to there, vocal lines suddenly heading off down entirely different paths to the ones they seemed to going down. It's a fine record and the idiocy of being feted meaning being panned seems to have been highlighted to a great degree by Man Alive. It's a lovely album cover too.
New York skronk artists the Ex-Models second album Zoo Psychology (2003) is a concentrated 20 minute blast of various bits of unpleasant noise, calculated to create the impression that if you don't get it you're the least cool person in the world. From scratchy guitar noise to thudding drum tracks with nothing else going on, these 30 second to 2 minute bits of vicious antagonism are artfully put together and brilliantly performed for maximum effect. It's brilliant and I get it, therefore I am cool.
Next up would be the sole record by one of the great David Mitchell's bands, the Exploding Budgies. The Grotesque Singers (1984) however only has two of its five songs on the internet and my copy is on vinyl. The songs I can find are, 'Kenneth Anger' and 'Hank Marvin' which are both decent bits of typical Mitchell songwriting. That indie Aussie off-key wooziness to the whole thing is present and correct, with the perfect spooky pop melody of the type that he's so adept at, but of the two 'Hank Marvin' points much more clearly to the type of great stuff he would come up with in the 3D's.
Last thing for the day is the second proper studio album by post-rock heart-string tuggers Explosions in the Sky, called The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place (2003). Very firmly in the tradition of the post-Slint Mogwai school of instrumental rock dynamics, I have rather more time for Explosions In the Sky, because they don't rely exclusively on the quiet, quiet, LOUD principle which I find a bit cheap. Instead things are allowed to build up much more gradually and with a much more stately kind of grace and when things do finally erupt it's the natural consequence of the build-up of tension, and their songs are just as likely not to break out but instead to reach a peak from which the tunes then climb down from just as gradually. It's nice stuff and although it's clearly designed to be a kind of emo-math-rock, it's not so showy as to be irritating and not so self-satisfied as to be frustrating. Instead it's just wholesome smart-arsery given a loose rein and there's nothing wrong with that.
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