Bulldog

And here we go again.


If I walked up to you and said 'hi, whoever you are - I listen to shitloads of modern soul music' I'd not only be a bit strange but also telling you a nasty fib. The way I see it, in the most obvious cases the soul and r'n'b that I adore of the 60s and 70s has mostly mutated in a hideously deplorable way, be it into the nauseating disco sounds or the contemporary urban r'n'b fluff. If you're reading this and actually quite like a bit of that stuff every now and then, good for you. I'd rather listen to MP3s of cricket commentaries from down the years myself, but each to their own.

Anyway, what I'm driving at is that classic soul and r'n'b hasn't evolved wholly into the kind of stuff I myself wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. There remains an interesting variation of the whole thing and (getting this baby sharply on topic again) such a sound is to be heard on the above album - Cat Power's mightily impressive seventh album and possibly her finest too (at least in my eyes). I've looked up some of the tags for this in various places on the world wide web and found stuff like 'folk-rock' and whatever 'sadcore' is being used to describe her. When it comes to this album at least, cast those shackles off as bullshit - this is a modern soul album, and a damn fine one at that. Alright, maybe it's quite far removed from, say, Shake a Tail Feather, but I reckon it's a modern take on the genre and that calling it indie pop/rock is just pure laziness and doesn't really do this marvellous album justice.

There's certainly a very melancholic feel to this Cat Power (real name Charlyn Marshall) album, but it makes for a great mix-up when it's married with sparse, slow musical backings, the smooth, groovy soul-reminiscent basslines and the lady's soaring, beautiful voice. In that sense, two-fold is the triumph of this album - both in some very classy songwriting from Marshall herself and a neat, uncluttered production sound courtesy of Stuart Sikes, which as a component of the overall sound does neither too much nor too little to the album. The Greatest here features in a lot of albums of the 2000s lists you may or may not come across and deservedly so, because the Greatest is indeed that great.


From what I've heard of them (four out of however many other albums they've released), there are two artists you could split this group into. One is their latter-day incarnation, and the result of one of a change in musical direction of David Bowie-type success; that being a move towards down-tempo electronic fusions of chillout vibes and breakbeats. Such is my personal favourite area of Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt's musical career, but not one I'd call pop to a degree thatit warrants a place in this thread. Couldn't recommend Walking Wounded and [I]Temperamental[/Ienough as far as that goes though.

The other would be the folk-pop duo that Watt and Thorn started out as. The two albums of theirs that I've got which you could go so far as to describe as folk-pop in one way or the other are both pretty awesome. Amplified Heart, coming just before they disappeared off the pop radar they'd initially been on, is one I'd highly recommend in this category as well. When it comes to which one I'll stick in this thread though, I'm gonna go with Idlewild here because, apart from sharing its name with a mediocre Scottish indie band, it also presents Everything But the Girl at their most softly vibrant and melodic (at least from what I've heard). So, basically there's a lot more melody to proceedings here, as well as a heavier use of full backing bands in the studio to flesh the songs out in a more conventional way. It's also the album I'm listening to as I type this, and subsequently the one I feel like droning on about the most.

For anyone who (for whatever bizarre reason) may not have heard an Everything But the Girl song before, the focal point of their sound (no matter what genre they'd find themselves working in) is the soothing, gentle touch that Tracey Thorn's voice brings to things. A lot of the music you'll hear on this album, especially Ben Watt's gorgeous acoustic guitar, is the perfect foil for her. All in all, you're looking at a very soothing and laid back pop album here - certainly more flat-out pop than Amplified Heart to these ears. It's one of those perfect late night/early morning in albums - silky smooth, melodic and memorable enough all over to really get you involved as the listener and therefore enjoy immensely (or at least that's the case with me).


It was only a matter of time eh. I've probably posted this album in the Albums You're Digging thread about 750 times, and dropped it subtly into conversation twice as much as that, so I won't go on too long about this one. As a lot of you may know already, I fucking love Scott Walker. To give you a nice, kinda broad statement about the fella, there are three heads to this beast. The first sang with his uber-successful mid-60s pop group the Walker Brothers (who may yet get a mention here depending on how quick I am to run outof ideas) and on his first six solo albums (including this one). The second didn't really give a shit and released a bunch of fairly average, MOR covers albums in the 70s. The third is the one I prefer and think of as the most profound, this being the very one that recorded some of the best art music I've ever heard, resulting in two sheer masterpieces in the shape of Tilt and the Drift.

Calling those albums pop would be like calling Eamon Dunphy a shining beacon of impartiality and calm composure, so the aforementioned first six of Walker's solo efforts are the ones that'll be represented here, by the fourth of them no less. Basically, for an idea of what this album sounds like, imagine a musical hybrid of the Cat Power and Frank Sinatra I've already mentioned. Just so you can't call me lazy, what that means is that while there's a very prominent and important, although faceless backing band (tight bass, drum and percussion rhythms as well as some great, unintrusive guitar work) holding up a very string-heavy musical sound. On the face of it, it's kinda like In the Wee Small Hours being run with a more rock/pop-leaning motor, but this is where the vocals come in. I'll first say that Scott Walker is possibly my favourite singer of all time - he holds notes, swoops in falsetto and changes key (at times here while singing the same line) like no-one else I've heard. He pulls it all off so effortlessly and does it with more soul and passion than you could shake a stick at. Put all this together and you get songs like the below. Apart from being my favourite chamber pop album of all time, it's only about half an hour long in total (which might be a flaw, but shouldn't stop you checking it out eh).

As an artist, I find that Scott Walker is pretty divisive as far as listeners' opinions on him go. If you're new to him, you're just as likely to end up on one side of the fence as the other. Should be obvious which I'm on though.


And that's another six albums done, so here are another 12 tracks for you to peruse. Again, click the pop tart to download...


^ Also, to make things a bit more interesting, I've stuck a couple of unrelated pop songs I pretty much love on the end. Bear in mind when/if you listen to them that one has an awesome bassline and the video for the other was filmed in parts about 20 miles from the house I'm currently typing this message in.

Anyway, hope you enjoy!