Read on for the bullshit:
Hey there! Happy new year!
OK, so it’s two weeks on and well past the statute of limitations for saying that, but it’s my newsletter and my rules. So there. Plus, this batch of songs, which I’m unofficially subtitling “From Astley to Zevon” was mostly inspired by some of the things I was playing on a groggy New Year’s morning.
I’m not sure where I think things are gonna go in 2024, endless parade of global geopolitical nightmares notwithstanding. A big part of my head’s in “getting the third Fightmilk album out there” mode, another firmly back in “getting a job” mode. And if there’s one thing we strive for here at Radio Bullshit, it’s steering clear of trends, so there’ll be no ins and outs list here.
This year, as with every year, I’m going to do what Zevon said - enjoy every sandwich.
Until your next sandwich, enjoy the radio.
Alex
The songs:
Theme from Radio Bullshit: Yo La Tengo – Esportes Casual (There’s a Riot Going On, 2018)New year, same theme. Don’t @ me.
Virginia Astley - A summer long since passed (From Gardens Where We Feel Secure, 1983)Ground zero for pastoral ambient, from the bird noises on up. From Gardens… was one of the first albums I put on to pass the time on January 1st, a captivating but unintrusive soundtrack to sore heads gradually lifting. In some sense, this whole mix is informed by the uniquely bleary possibility that only exists on New Year’s Day - this year, we really could do anything. Just give me some time to see if I can keep a slice of toast down first, yeah?
Fucked Up w/Miya Folick - Joy Stops Time (Dose Your Dreams, 2018)A few folks I know are going to see Miya Folick in May (MAY?! Imagine something as futuristic as May 2024…), which reminded me that this is the only work of hers I’m truly familiar with, and I should do something about that. The sprawling, hyperambitious Dose Your Dreams is probably still my favourite Fucked Up record, though that feels like a slight towards their frontman. Damien Abraham takes a backseat for much of the album, often yielding the mic to friends and bandmates. But its best moments, like this hefty slab of roiling hardcore krautrock, let the guest vocalists bob and weave around Abraham’s granite-hard growl.
The Organ - Basement Band Song (Grab That Gun, 2004)And now for a little more CanCon. 2004 is going to be a bad year for a lot of folks my age, as we enter a golden age of 20th anniversary thinkpieces about some genuinely formative albums in our lives. I recently told a bandmate that The Libertines and Hot Fuss turn 20 this year, and was met with a cold hard stare and a stentorian “No.” That about sums it up. Luckily for my self esteem, I came to the Organ’s one and only album late, but still find new favourite versions of their one song every time I press play. This has been the most recent, and the most lingering - I’d have been lethal if I’d heard this chorus at 15.
Chet Atkins and The Boston Pops, conducted by Arthur Fiedler - By the Time I Get to Phoenix (Chet Picks on the Pops, 1969)If I said that a) I watched Stroszek for the first time about ten days ago, and b) that I am considering seeing it again when it screens at the BFI later this month, would you believe that c) I’m fine, honestly? At the very least, it’s the best Werner Herzog movie I’ve seen so far.
Anyway, this lighter-than-air Jimmy Webb cover fits right at home on the soundtrack to that film. If you listen to it in just the right light, you can hear it cut right to the core of the chintzy mid-Vietnam-War image of Americana that papered over the cracks created by the counterculture.
Open Mike Eagle - (How Could Anybody) Feel at Home (Brick Body Kids Still Daydream, 2017)OME’s best rhymes tend to be rooted in his travails as an independent musician or (as this album mostly deals with) gentrification and the end of an era for local scenes and venues. DJ Nobody’s woozy, Mellotron-laden beat makes that feeling of being “spun around in circles on the globe” audible, and even if you’ve never been to O’Doyle’s, you remember your O’Doyle’s. Because it probably closed.
Jorge Ben - Taj Mahal (África Brasil, 1976)I’m still very much at novice level with most Brazilian music, which may explain why it took me until now to properly listen to Jorge Ben, even though I call myself a fan of Tropicalia. Then again, in the face of the country’s political climate in the mid-70s, acid-drenched psychedelic rock wasn’t going to cut it, and África Brasil seems to have invited listeners to dance through it instead. It’s also interesting to me how, while Ben was clearly listening to Fela Kuti and taking notes, Rod Stewart must have heard something he liked in this song too. He was a little less smart about what he did with it though.
The Olivia Tremor Control - A New Day (Black Foliage: Animation Music Volume 1, 1999)There’s been a fair few Elephant 6 bands showing up in previous editions of Radio Bullshit - the long-awaited release of the finished E6 documentary helped - but The Olivia Tremor Control remain the nearest and dearest to my heart. If Robert Schneider’s Apples In Stereo are the blueprint for the collective at their purest and poppiest, The OTC were Elephant 6’s psychedelic pstandard-bearers - the chief flyers of its freak flag. “A New Day” keeps trying to put its optimistic, uplifting message across as clearly as possible, but you’re never too far from something popping up in the mix that sounds like the tape eating itself inside the four-track. As a pretty utopian group of bands, the Elephant 6 collective rarely dipped a toe into anything you could call capital-p Political, but there’s probably something worth reading between the lines there, if you can stare directly into their light for long enough.
Richard & Linda Thompson - Night Comes In (Live at the Theatre Royal, London, 1977) (Hard Luck Stories 1972-1982, 2020)In its studio version, “Night Comes In” sounds cold and defiant; Richard Thompson takes full charge, not only fielding vocal duties, but leading the band through one of its most ominous workouts that culminates in a stomping climax that invents “Marquee Moon” two years ahead of time. This recording comes from their first tour after leaving the Sufi commune they called home and church since the song was first released. Having stepped away from their faith, the pair sound looser and freer - with Linda front and centre - but there’s also audible uncertainty. The song’s purposeful climax never quite comes, and while the sprawling solos don’t exactly fall apart (and at one point seems built on nothing but shards from Richard’s Stratocaster), they seem to be searching for something more concrete to hang on to. That may not make for a satisfying listen every time, but it feels oddly fitting for this first edition of the new year.
Swamp Dogg - Sam Stone (Cuffed, Collared and Tagged, 1972)As the unofficial patron saint of terribly awesome cover art, Swamp Dogg’s music can sometimes get short shrift, despite spanning decades. This bruising cover of one of John Prine’s signature songs ditches the original’s queasy, haunted calliope organ for something more straightforwardly mournful, and those sweeping strings help the man born Jerry Williams Jr to wring out every last drop of ache from Prine’s story of a drug-addicted Vietnam vet. Also praying for a chance to see this just-announced documentary on the man, Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted, sometime this year.
Cotton Mather - Camp Hill Rail Operator (Kontiki, 1997)NB: There’s a pretty disarming volume jump from the last song to this, so do please adjust your set accordingly.
Yet more from the seemingly bottomless well of lo-fi power pop that exists in my record collection. Any resemblance between riffs in this and a certain song on the most recent Fightmilk album is entirely coincidental, and only occurred to me about three years after I wrote it.
Mac Miller - Good News (Circles, 2020)This was one of those records that had my full attention in early 2020, until everything got uh…swallowed up. I wasn’t exactly a Mac guy until he started working with Jon Brion (one of those towering figures in my personal pantheon), which gave me approximately two months to enjoy Miller’s music while he was still here. Brion oversaw the entirety of Circles as a posthumous project, and even did a full (for him) press cycle, which seemed to hover between explaining what he did to the songs and insisting that nothing was released that Mac wouldn’t have wanted to see the light of day. “Good News” is an immaculate proof of concept - Brion’s arrangements are perfectly pitched, and Miller’s vocals swing from hook to hook, less a topline than someone trying stuff out and realising that it all works. There are worse things to leave behind.
Judee Sill - When the Bridegroom Comes (Heart Food, 1973)My prediction is that 2024 will be the year that everyone finally comes around on Judee Sill, thanks to an imminent documentary that I’ve been excited to see since it was first announced god knows how long ago. Sill’s Bach-inspired arrangements and crystalline vocals have always pitched her higher than being merely another Laurel Canyon cult casualty, and even at her most stripped-back, there’s little you can do but marvel at what you’re hearing.
Klaxons - Wildeflowers (Landmarks of Lunacy EP, 2010)This song popped on my radar after listening to an interview with Jamie Reynolds on 22 Grand Pod, the kind of nostalgic project that could have only sprung up during a pandemic-induced spate of lockdowns. Reynolds’ stories were as fascinating as they were bonkers, but reminded me that New Rave never made sense to me at the time, despite everyone I knew at college getting fully involved in the scene.
Obviously, sick fuck that I am, it’s the fallout from that halcyon era that I found interesting, and “Wildeflowers”, which emerged from aborted initial sessions for the follow-up to their scene-defining, Mercury Music Prize-winning, now-Poundshop-lining debut, couldn’t be more my shit if it tried. Up the tempo and fuck with the rhythm a bit, and it probably could have been another “Golden Skans”. Then again, from the sound of Klaxons’ promo schedule back then, it was probably the last thing on your mind.
Michael Nyman - Fish Beach (Drowning by Numbers, 1988)Best known, to me, as the romantic theme from The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, but actually sourced from a different Peter Greenaway movie which I’ve still not seen. I’m almost scared to see which of Greenaway’s beautiful grotesqueries actually inspired Nyman to write this piece. For now, I’d much rather picture Helen Mirren, Alan Howard and a barrelful of feathers.
Serafina Steer - Disco Compilation (Jarvis Cocker Remix) (Disco Compilation single, 2013)The barebones original is a statement in and of itself, but this totemic remix somehow manages to serve as a brief history of dance music 1973-2013. No mean feat for a harp-and-vocal track. Steer is now best known as part of post punk dance partiers Bas Jan (and member of Cocker’s itinerant Jarv Is… combo), but her 2012 album The Moths Are Real is always worth revisiting. It’s also a crime that this remix never appeared on either a 12” single or a disco compilation. In some way, this is my attempt to set things right.
Mos Def - May-December (Black on Both Sides, 1999)A loose, floating instrumental beat wasn’t how most folks expected Mos’s first album to end, but he was always a smart enough MC to know when to step away from the mic. Credit where it’s due to DJ Premier. Its presence here has nothing to do with Todd Haynes, but you should definitely watch that movie too.
Warren Zevon - Desperados Under the Eaves (Warren Zevon, 1976)The hard-boiled king of the morning after was another no-brainer choice to soundtrack the extended New Year’s Day stretch between wake-up and breakfast. But this song’s special. Like…really special. I could say there’s never been a better album closer before or since, I could insist that all human life is contained somewhere within it. Instead, I’d just ask you to listen to the air conditioner hum.