The Underground of Happiness

There’s something about duets, and something extra about husband and wife duets. This week we had the new song from The Saxophones , another gorgeous/unsettling dream pop number straight out of a David Lynch soundtrack. Then later one of the classics of the genre, Serge Gainsbourg & Jane Birkin with the lesser known yang to the yin of 'Je t’aime'. And Dean & Britta with what is probably a homage to Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra/Suzi Jane Hokom and isn’t that just fine. Other than that some sumptuous cuts from The Clientele, Hater and This is the Kit . And wonderful Russian film music from 1975 from Mikael Tariverdiev . More on these pages. The Underground of Happiness uplifting pop music of every creed www.theundergroundofhappiness.blogspot.com www.facebook.com/theundergroundofhappiness Twitter: UndergroundOfHappy Playlist 461 Tues Sept 26 2017 11.00am-12.00pm (repeated on Tuesdays 8.30pm) UCC 98.3FM listen live on the web...

First show back after the August holiday and we’re working through a bit of a backlog but that can be good. Russian soundtrack maestro Mikael Tariverdiev , a great melancholic string swoon. Colleen , a beautiful Moog-based kosmische. Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra , wonderful quixotic orchestral shapes. Ariel Pink , glorious lovelorn jangle pop. And The Clientele , adding brass to a sunset Byrdsian sound quite brilliantly. More on these pages. The Underground of Happiness uplifting pop music of every creed www.theundergroundofhappiness.blogspot.com www.facebook.com/theundergroundofhappiness Twitter: UndergroundOfHappy Playlist 458 Tues Sept 5 2017 11.00am-12.00pm (repeated on Tuesdays 8.30pm) UCC 98.3FM listen live on the web at www.ucc.ie/983fm *listen back to this show here goo.gl/tt2fiQ Playlist Colleen – November Lali Puna - Two windows Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra – Vula ( playing Musikbrauerei, Berlin, Oct 14 ) Diagnos -...

Sometimes a plainly gorgeous piece of music is enough. Other times the softly muted fanfare of brass like the beloved sound of Eric Matthews can make all the difference. No sense of Mr Matthews’ baroque flourishes here though. More akin to some of The Byrds’ subtler experiments. Around the Younger than yesterday album when David Crosby in particular struck out on a tantalising dreamy limb before heading off into the sunset. There’s a distinct domestic feel. An idyll. As Alisdair MacLean details a daily routine around Silver Street and singing strings buoy up every word. It amounts to a kind of soaring chamber pop as poignant as it is uplifting.

As if any excuse was needed, we had some great Esquivel to open the show this week on top of the signature tune of the show of course. It really is music guaranteed to put a spring in your step. After that we had some beautiful new music from The Clientele , back with a new album and sounding brilliantly atmospheric. A twilight kind of sound. Michael Nau and Harry Nilsson tend to remind one of each other so good to hear them together. Late night melancholy crooning par excellence. Superior ambient drones from Portland's Golden Retriever . Wonderful Indian inflected folk music from Yorkston Thorne Khan . And Brona McVittie from County Down with some beautiful harp work in a rarefied folk setting. More on these pages. The Underground of Happiness uplifting pop music of every creed www.theundergroundofhappiness.blogspot.com www.facebook.com/theundergroundofhappiness Twitter: UndergroundOfHappy Playlist 453 Tues June 27 2017 11.00am-12.00pm (repea...

And so Part 2 of this end of year series. There seems to have been less up tempo electronic music on my radar this year, hence a few crop up in this mostly-guitar set. (There are some ambient and other electronic cuts to come in the final part of the round-up.) Let's not get hung up on that. Enjoy. 1. Future Islands – Seasons (Waiting on you) (4AD) With all due respect to Hozier (who owed a lot in turn to the work of Feel Good Lost, plus maybe ‘Take me to church’ was more of a 2013 thing in any case?) and Kim Kardashian’s buttocks, here was the true thing that broke the internet this year. It showed the power to light up the world of sheer chutzpah – a short, barrel-chested man who can sing his heart out all night and dances like he doesn’t give a fuck who’s watching. On paper those are not the most promising ingredients, perhaps, but Sam Herring turns them into gold, when combined with the thrumming, soaring melodies of Will Cashion and Gerrit Welmers. Funnily enough,...

One of my favourite albums of last year was The house at sea by Amor de Dias on Merge Records , an Anglo-Spanish duo made up of Alasdair MacLean and Lupe Nunez-Fernandez. Their brand of chamber folk might have been too twee for some people but it resonated in a major way with my inner Go Between. There was a nostalgia and a writerly quality to it that Grant McLennan would have been proud of. MacLean used to front English group The Clientele , a band who shared some of the atmospheres of Amor de Dias, although leaning more towards electric guitars than acoustic or Spanish for its core sound. Now Merge have reissued that band’s debut album Suburban light (a collection of singles originally released in 2000), remastered and including previously unreleased tracks and alternate versions. Where it failed to find much of an audience at that time, it should find a much more receptive public these days. It’s warm and fuzzy, blissful dream pop with a strain of sadcore running through...

A few new things of note this week. English garage rocker Laurie Shaw has another new album out, another intriguing foot stomper full of great tunes. From it, we had 'Black wolf blues'. The Clientele debut album Suburban light is being reissued on Merge, we took a great slice of jangle pop from that. And not so new but an album I've just been getting into recently by Sun Kil Moon . That's Mark Kozelek, ex Red House Painters. 'Ben's my friend' is a rollercoaster of nostalgic memoir from middle life, surfing on a wave of bossa nova. It's wonderful. Also St Vincent (fresh from her storming Primavera turn at the w'end), Roll the Dice (whose compelling new album is now out), The Elwins (one of the pop songs of the year) & Red Snapper (writhing synth funk). Plus a classic from The Zombies from 1968. Yes, always room for that. More on these pages. June 3 2014 w/ The Elwins,The Clientele,Laurie Shaw,The Zombies,Sun Kil Moon,Laetit...