The Underground of Happiness

******************************************************************************************************** Bill MacKay & Ryley Walker – Spider Beetlebee (Drag City) Beautiful album of bright and bracing guitar instrumentals from this Chicago duo collaboration. The range of styles spanned over the course of just half an hour is a clue to the open mindedness and sense of adventure of both musicians. There’s a real sense of the shared joy in playing about the whole piece. A gorgeous miniature body of work and in many ways perfect music for this time of year. SpiderBeetleBee by Bill MacKay & Ryley Walker Laura Cannell – Lines of copper gold (Brawl Records) Bracing is also a word to describe this blast of overbowed fiddle from Laura Cannell of East Anglia recorded in a semi ruined church from her current album Hunter Huntress Hawker . Call it early music. Improvised. Experimental. It is primal and it is stirring. It feels essential. HUNTER HUN...

A frankly startling album made up of what you might call a jazz trio. (A different brand of jazz trio to your garden variety.) There’s Penny Rimbaud the co-founder of Crass whose voice is a most effective vehicle for the musical words of Wilfred Owen . Backing that are the considerable talents of Kate Short on cello and Liam Noble on piano. It’s world weary with a sly sidelong glance at times. The cello thrums and keens. The piano bypasses chords for the most part playing brilliantly off the rhythm of the words in its restless improvisations. It presents a compelling picture of war in all its banality horror sadness brutality pity but also starkness stillness humanity. What Passing Bells (The War Poems Of Wilfred Owen) by Penny Rimbaud

A bracing cut from the heady days of 1994, now remastered and reissued and sounding arguably miles more relevant than in those pre-Blair days. There’s a certain post punk feel, some kind of bearing, authority, swagger. Not just in Hank Starrs’ deadpan but somehow not lacking pathos semi-spoken vocal (something in it would remind you of Stewart Lee somehow). But in the genius guitar riffs, two of them, non-identical twins - the first a seemingly friendly Britpop wolf in sheep’s clothing, the second consisting of mostly the same notes but with a bend and a twist and a smear of rock n roll danger about it. In the space of only two minutes, there’s also room for a pummelling breakdown and a blaring trumpet crescendo. And all the way through the existential lyric, the epitome of lying in the gutter but looking at the stars - trying to make a chandelier from the glass of car windows broken by his own hand but only succeeding in cutting himself. Thrilling rock n roll but more tha...

A distinct echo in this from Bjork’s Post album which is one that always has a soft spot in my heart. Presumably it’s those bending swooping Bollywood strings. Those alone and her vocal are enough to make this captivating. The backbeats are more reminiscient of the Homogenic album maybe. Thudding and brooding. Notice too the wonderful layering of her vocal at the beginning of the song. Not double tracking. Quixotic and out of sync. The triumph here overall is taking deeply emotional content and turning it into a strangely uplifting experience for the listener. Masterful as always.

We started this week with something wonderful from the new Tandem Felix EP, a Dublin band probing the space between Sufjan Stevens & Lambchop. Aldous Harding , also wondrous and touring Europe soon. Noveller is one woman Sarah Lipstate with an electric guitar making epic soundscapes. And some classic Ryuichi Sakamoto is always welcome. It's blubbery Burberry baby, big bottom swing big bottom, how much is the fish does the fish have chips - take your pick, a Stump refrain is the best refrain. Death & Vanilla play an intriguing brand of psych pop, Bjork in intense hyperballad mode and Kathryn Williams with something great based on the work of Sylvia Plath. Plus Robert Pollard x 2, any time's a good time for a double dose. More on these pages. Apr 21 2015 w/ Tandem Felix,Aldous HArding,Noveller,Ryuichi Sakamoto,Death & Vanilla,Bork,Stump++ by The Underground Of Happiness on Mixcloud The Underground of Happiness uplifting pop music of every c...

Been enjoying the new Mark Fry album very much lately, reminding me of Bert Jansch a bit with its low acoustic drone and keening string parts. So, good to hear those two together at the start of this week's show. Also, Laetitia Sadier doing lush Philly soul; Ariel Pink doing swoonsome jangle pop; Tennis doing sweet blue-eyed soul. Mid-show, another mini-folk run with the bounce of Rachael Dadd , plaintive tones of Olof Arnalds and spare instrumental piano of Soley . And two FM Cornog songs, one covered by Lambchop from 1998, the other from Cornog's own East River Pipe , from the reissued 1999 album The gasoline age . Songs as good as those are a treasure for humanity. More on these pages. Oct 14 2014 w/ Ariel Pink,Laetitia Sadier,Olof Arnalds,Polar Bear,Lambchop,East River Pipe++ by The Underground Of Happiness on Mixcloud The Underground of Happiness uplifting pop music of every creed www.theundergroundofhappiness.blogspot.com www.facebook.com/t...

Very tasty album collaboration between Joe Pernice (Pernice Brothers, Scud Mountain Boys) and Norman Blake (Teenage Fanclub), which would remind you of the reasons why those bands were such treasures. Among the unexpected pleasures on the album are the perfect pop structures of Rubber Soul -era Beatles, in the shape of ‘Cruel Annette’, ‘If you only knew her’ and the particularly wonderful (with a touch of ‘Michelle’ to it) ‘High on the skyline’. These still have enough of a burnished Big Star/Teenage Fanclub finish to make the uplift bittersweet, gorgeously so. Having said that (and I am a huge Rubber Soul fan), it’s hard to get past the gloriously burnished nostalgia of album opener ‘Sarasota’ - handclaps, glockenspiels, swooning vocal harmonies and sunburst guitars, it’s a really beautiful thing.