The Underground of Happiness

RF solo. With acoustic guitar. And many bottles of water. Older. Less hair. But still with some moves. Well cut suit. And the pout is intact. When I was growing up I had four brothers. David (Bowie). Lou (Reed). David (Byrne). And Tom (Verlaine). A fine set of siblings. Surfing magazines. With the crowd singing the da-das. The crowd singing along to every song. Let me imagine you. His most streamed song. The announcement of the guitar solo. The sublime melody of Dive for your memory that would cut you in two. We may not see him live again. We will never see his like again. The Candle And The Flame by Robert Forster Songs to Play by Robert Forster

There's a few tunes there now like... Playlist Fixity – Becoming an earthworm (Penske Recordings) Spill Gold – Dali (Meduse MagiQ) Laurence Pike – Drum chant (The Leaf Label) Pozi – Watching you suffer (Prah Recordings) Drahla – Stimulus for living (Captured Tracks) Pill Fangs – Pain inside (Sunstone Records) The Pinheads – Feel it now (Stolen Body Records) Mdou Moctar – Ilana (Sahel Sounds) Death & Vanilla – A flaw in the iris (Fire Records) Rozi Plain – Conditions (Memphis Industries) Lali Puna – Being water (Morr Music) Vanishing Twin – KRK (At home in strange places) (Fire Records) Von Spar feat. Laetitia Sadier – Extend the song (Bureau B) Wand – Scarecrow (Drag City) Samsara – Yellow fangs (Tiny Room/Hidden Shoal) The Proper Ornaments – Please release me (Tapete) Dana Gavanski – One by one (Full Time Hobby) Bobby Oroza – Your love is too cold (Big Crown Roecords) Hiss Golden Messenger – Everybody needs somebody (Merge) Nilufer Yanya – Tears (Ato...

New music in the ether in this new year.* (*A couple of exceptions, The Shacks who I just learned of lately, released last year, and a few others from end of 2018.) Music from Oslo, Cork, Berlin, Glasgow, Brooklyn, Brisbane, North Carolina, Athens, Rotterdam, Dublin, Niger, Bavaria, Bilbao, Tucson and more in here. Enjoy. ********************* Playlist Lali Puna – Being water (Morr Music) Coldharbourstores – Disenchantment (Enraptured Records) Deerhunter – Plains (4AD) C Duncan – Impossible (Fat Cat) Tim Presley’s White Fence – I can dream you (Drag City) Cosmic Range – Breathing water (Idee Fixe Records) Sarah Louise – Rime (Thrill Jockey) The Telescopes – Don’t place your happiness in the hands of another (Tapete) The Last Sound – Cyclical pang (Fort Evil Fruit) Julia Kent – Crepusculo (The Leaf Label) Rozi Plain – Symmetrical (Memphis Industries) North Sea Radio Orchestra – The flower (Bandcamp) Shana Cleveland – Face of the sun (Hardly Art Records)...

Part 2 of this list, out of four in total, the others to follow in January. There will be another Best of Mix also over the next week, stay tuned to Mixcloud. ********************************************************************* 1. Trashcan Sinatras – Let me inside (Or let me out) A monumental year for fans of this treasured Scottish band. A new crowdfunded album, the wonderful Wild pendulum , possibly their best ever work, and tours in America and Europe. And having seen them play live in November, the big insight (other than the obvious genius on show) was the sheer soulfulness of the songs. So yeah, top notch tunes and buckets of soul. I’ll take that any year. http://theundergroundofhappiness.blogspot.ie/2016/11/trashcan-sinatras-workmans-club-dublin.html Track 14 in this playlist 2. Britta Phillips – One fine summer morning (from the album Luck or magic, Double Feature) Another artist I saw play live in 2016. In these thoughts from last June, I was zoning...

I went to see Robert Forster a couple of weeks ago. It was the fifth time I’d seen him in the flesh. There was the first time in The Mean Fiddler in Dublin in late 1996 around the time of the Warm nights album. I love that album and the gig was a great upbeat joyous occasion. The next time was in the same venue about 9 months later, in June 1997. It was the same rhythm section from the 1996 solo gig (Adele Pickvance and Glenn Thompson) with Grant McLennan added, The Go Betweens reunion tour. There was a kind of gospel service atmosphere in the packed room. A palpable air of expectation. When they came on stage the emotion was hard to take. By the time they finished the first song (I can’t remember what it was now), I was in tears. In fact, I felt like I could leave satisfied at that point. Something in me had been fulfilled, already, within the space of a few minutes. You see, I became a fan of The Go Betweens after they broke up so I’d never seen them play live before. B...

And so the final instalment of this Best of 2015 review, which has a Soul/Dream Pop tag ostensibly but really is a collection of odds and ends left over. (Floating Points, for example, could certainly have belonged in Part 1 if I had my head on straight a few weeks ago.) These round ups are by nature a time travel exercise, some of the music here being a year old. But even since Part 1 of the review in mid-December, the world seems a very different place. It's now a post-David Bowie time, a post-Mick Lynch time, mortality comes for all of us, better get used to it. Enjoy the music while you can. ************************************************************************************************ 1. Marker Starling – Husbands (from the album Rosy Maze , Tin Angel Records) Spring 2015 was all about my obsession with this song, a glorious discovery and an enduring memory from the year. From February - There’s an automatic association for Steely Dan, I think, a kin...

As you know, Robert Forster was a founder member of The Go Betweens with Grant McLennan in Brisbane . Together they released 6 albums of literate off kilter pop music in the 1980s. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) they did not make the commercial breakthrough achieved by other indie bands of the time like The Smiths and REM. The prevailing consensus goes that McLennan had the better melodies and singing voice but that Forster had the spikier lyrical talent. (McLennan’s style had a more poetic, and often nostalgic, quality.) The band broke up in 1989 and the two songwriters embarked on solo careers. They reformed in 1997, initially to tour, and subsequently recorded three further albums together until Grant McLennan’s untimely death in 2006. Robert Forster then released The Evangelist in 2008, a solo album but which included three songs of Grant’s, so it’s thought of as a de facto Go Betweens album by many. Not surprisingly, most of the reviews so far have painted this first re...

First show back and a few new albums which came in during the summer break. Robert Forster's 1st solo album in 7 years is a beautiful slow burn of Blonde on Blonde -ish folk moves and faux memoir. Blank Realm , also from Brisbane, are a powerful psych rock beast taking in elements of No Wave on this the opening track from their new album Illegals in heaven . Seminal jangle pop Marxists McCarthy are getting a reissue on Optic Nerve . This is the Kit play Sounds from a Safe Harbour festival in Cork this month. Sublime soul crooning from August Wells . And The Chap being extremely Chappish once again, setting the internet on fire with their electric sound of desire (that excellent line is a quote from the song 'Guitar Messiah'). More on these pages as always. Sept 1 2015 w/ Robert Forster,Blank Realm,Television,August Wells,The Chap,McCarthy,Ergo Phizmiz++ by The Underground Of Happiness on Mixcloud The Underground of Happiness uplifting pop music o...

1996 and ex-Go Between Robert Forster releases his fourth solo album recorded with old friend and recently crowned king of the world Edwyn Collins. (Famously beer drinkers in a Cork bar danced to his monster smash ‘A girl like you’ while the man himself played virtually unnoticed with his band in the venue at the back.) Warm nights is my own personal favourite from his solo output, another killer combination of wry songcraft and rock n roll stance with a beautiful warm sound palette. A first listen to the upcoming new album Songs to play suggests a return to this palette and how welcome it is. First single ‘Let me imagine you’ has a familiar up front acoustic guitar figure with lovely supple backing from Scott Bromley and Luke McDonald of The John Steel Singers and Forster’s touring drummer Matt Piele, including a beautiful Blonde on Blonde -ish organ. In fact, there might be more in that Blonde on Blonde hint in terms of the album as a whole. Songs which feature th...

Back in the days when Comet Records existed in Cork , I got into The Go-Betweens (Comet later became Plugd , which has now moved around the corner from Washington Street to the Triskel Arts Centre building). In those days, Comet used to sell Beggars Banquet releases on cassette for a fiver - and in those Walkman days, cassettes were my medium of choice. And so I found The Go-Betweens: 1978-1990 . I was vaguely aware of the band - I think I had heard Bachelor kisses on Dave Fanning's radio show a few times during the 80's. But I didn't own anything by the band. Of course, typical me, to become interested in the band after they'd broken up (in fact, both Grant McLennan and Robert Forster had released their first solo efforts by this time). I think it was the sleevenotes that sold me on it. Each song had a short note from either Grant or Robert. Like this one by Grant, for Bye bye pride - Cairns is a lazy, small town full of boats and cane fields. It is also unbea...