The Underground of Happiness

Photo: Simone Della Fornace www.flickr.com/softblackstar I had the great pleasure of exchanging correspondence recently with Little Annie . As you know, I was a huge fan of her album with Baby Dee last year on Tin Angel Records , State of grace . It had a great dignity about it, some wonderful instrumentation (especially Dee’s fluid piano playing at the core of it) and it brilliantly evoked real life, earthily, through a kind of debauched New York prism. That moniker “Little” is no word of a lie by the way, she really is very dainty and looks like a puff of wind might blow her over. I know this because I was lucky enough to see her play live as well in Cork at the Southern Gothic Festival earlier in May, with Baby Dee and backed by a double bass player and violinist. In fact, she was carrying a walking stick that evening as a result of a leg injury, she told us. I wrote a review of that gig for WeAreNoise , here it is – http://wearenoise.com/index.php/2013/05/souther...

More from the great new William Tyler album this week – he plays Ireland in May – and paired with another beautiful instrumental, along more ambient lines, from show favourite Slow Place Like Home . Belfast’s Girls Names also have a fine album out, we had some of their moody New Wave stylings. Also K-X-P , soon to visit Ireland as well, with their new version of kraut-disco; John Grant’s searching self-analysis; The Vincent(s)’ debut single; the beautiful chamber pop of Liam Singer ; the sweeping synth pop of Monocle ; new singles also from Elephant, Eleanor Friedberger and Woman’s Hour . And an archive treasure from the wonderful Trunk Records , an album of songs sung by actor Bernard Cribbins (pic), from which we heard the Lerner & Lowe classic from My Fair Lady ‘I’ve grown accustomed to her face’, not so much crooned as caressed lovingly. Mar 19 2013 show w/ William Tyler, KXP, Little Annie&Baby Dee, The Vincent(s),John Grant, Girls Name by Theundergroundofhappines...

Some reviews now of the music that's been featured regularly on the show over the last few weeks, starting with Little Annie & Baby Dee . This is the label blurb for the album. “ State Of Grace is a record that covers love, loss, leaving and the confusion of time. It features collaborations with such luminaries and modern mavericks as Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Eric Chenaux, Chris Cundy (Guillemots, Cold Specks) and Jordan Hunt (Irrepresibles, Hidden Cameras). Little Annie aka Annie Anxiety Bandez, is a smokey contralto, raconteur and restless spirit who has spent the last 30 years creating a body of work that would take much more space than available here to list. Baby Dee is an enchanting composer, performance artist, classically trained harpist, circus sideshow veteran, and transgender street legend .” A thrilling, invigorating record bringing Baby Dee’s brilliantly fluid piano work together with Little Annie’s thoroughly lived-in (the definition of authentic) voice o...

We started the show this week with XTC from an album I only picked up again over the weekend, having "lost" it years ago, the great Apple Venus . River of orchids is such a strange but uplifting piece of music, Andy Partidge's vocal is brilliantly unhinged. There's a new Hauschka remix album out in the new year, we had Michael Mayer's lovely, slow building house re-do of Radar . He's the head of the Kompakt label, based in Cologne, and with Hauschka/Volker Bertelmann from Dusseldorf, that's an axis of current German electronic music right there. Jon DeRosa was back again with the gorgeous Snow coffin , the most moving anti-war song in a long time (at least I think I detect a war comment in it). Get Well Soon also in there, with another epic piece of orchestral, sweeping pop music, using Italian 60s/70s film music as his (Konstantin Gropper) drawing board, Rota, Argento, Morricone and the like. Also TOPS' nice New Wave sound, Seti The First...