The Underground of Happiness

The Underground of Happiness uplifting pop music of every creed www.theundergroundofhappiness.blogspot.com www.facebook.com/theundergroundofhappiness Playlist 173 Tues Apr 26th 2011 11.00am-12.00pm (repeated on Tuesdays 8.30pm) Cork Campus Radio, 98.3FM listen live on the web at www.ucc.ie/ccr *listen back to this show at https://rapidshare.com/files/459281930/UOH_Podcast_Apr_26_2011.mp3 Playlist Wires Under Tension - Irreversible machines Grimes - intor/flowers ( playing Whelan's Upstairs, Dublin, Aug 3 w/ Catscars, re-scheduled from May 15 ) Thursten Moore - Benediction Patrick Kelleher - This sporting life Justice - Civilization (radio edit) Gablé - Too fat to fart to fight ( playing Great Escape Festival, Brighton, May 12 ) Connan Mockasin - Megumi the Milkyway above ( playing Tripod, Dublin, May 15, w/ Warpaint ) The Doomed Bird of Providence - The wild beast of Goat Island ( playing Wilmington Arms, London, June 15 ) Josh T. Pearson - Drive her out ( ...

Here's a new one on me, solo project from Jenn Wassner of Baltimore's Wye Oak . Wonderful lilting vocal over a concrete purée (it's all about the babyfood at the moment...) of guitar chords and piano arpeggios. Souper duper. Prison Bride by Flock of Dimes

Fleet Foxes - Grown ocean (Sub Pop, from the album Helplessness blues ) Among the many comments about beards and vocal harmonies, what is sometimes overlooked about Fleet Foxes is their fine grasp of the dynamics of a pop song - when to rise, when to fall, a timely key change to shift the mood, an instrumental flourish to spice an arrangement. The second track to see the light of day from their upcoming second album showcases all these qualities (the trilling flute is my own favourite moment). And it's a tune you'll want to sing along to. Oh yeah, and the vocal harmonies (beards) are irresistible and sound like they've arrived from another time. Playing The Marquee, Cork, June 26

World's End Girlfriend - Les enfants du Paradis (Erased Tapes, from the album Seven idiots) Beautiful and challenging 7 minute opus from the Japanese composer's new album. Comparisons to Cornelius are inevitable and WEG does skim across genres like a stone over water (pointedly, another track on the album is titled Teen age Ziggy ). Amidst various classical and IDM references though, the overriding impression of this epic instrumental is of the golden ages of pop music, with Bacharach-like string sweeps and 80's power pop, punch-the-air choruses. There are also cameos straight out of the Hard Rock Café. Nothing but glorious and uplifting pop music, all round. World's End Girlfriend – Les Enfants Du Paradis by erasedtapes *Check out too the great accompanying video, directed by Yohei Saita , featuring a wonderful solo dance interpretation.

Connan Mockasin - Forever dolphin love (Full length original) (Because Music, single) A genuinely mind-bending and envelope-pushing addition to the canon of surreal New Zealand pop. Atonal piano string arpeggios, followed by the fusion of several high-pitched synth drones, before falling away to be replaced by jam-room bass and drums introducing some lovely woozy guitars. That's just the prelude. At that point the tune kicks in with underwater atmospherics around a chillout drumbeat and high tone bass sound. Plus the vocal has an outer space character as befitting a lyric about inter-species amour. It sounds ridiculous on paper but believe me it's completely convincing in the flesh. It's intriguing, slightly haunting and makes you want to press play again and again. (Stay around for the full 10-minutes of very strange theatre below.) *As for the rest of the album, experimentation is never for its own sake or at the expense of catchy hooks. For example, the sublime tr...

Tune-Yards - whokill (4AD) After recording her debut, Bird-Brains , using a dictaphone and freeware, album number two sees Merrill Garbus making full use of a studio, in terms of scope and sound. Unlike that album, there's a lot less ukulele in sight (one exception is Wolly wolly gong with its spooky fairytale quality, a kind of hip-hop lullaby). The other main difference is a more prominent dub influence running throughout - a prime example is Powa with its lovely loping tempo and heavily reverbed vocals. The single Gangsta has a great caustic energy (brass and strident vocals); check out the street funk of My country , with a memorable fuzz synth line, freewheeling brass section and playground chant na-na-na-na-na outro. However, if you have no other contact with this album, you must at least hear the transcendant moment during Doorstep when a bevvy of layered Merrill's (all sha-la-la's and whoa-oo-whoa's) contrive to produce an intimate atmosphere straight off a ...

The interview (phone) with Blake Madden from Seattle band Hotels is available to download now in full ( 23m45s, 70MB approx ) - we had played a short extract on this week's show. The conversation ranged over film music, casinos, manipulating mood in pop music, John Barry, being based in Seattle, playing bass while singing, surf guitar, and of course the excellent new Hotels album On the casino floor . These were my thoughts on that album, from a few weeks ago. Hotels - On the casino floor (Hidden Shoal) A concept album of sorts from the Seattle band with a madly ambitious premise, too good not to quote from the press blurb. The plot concerns a " secret agent, his former mentor and current arch-nemesis, and a nefarious prince's plan to destroy Earth during the grand opening of the universe's only outer space casino complex " (!). This would be good enough in itself but happily the musical chops match the scale of the ambition, with elements of surf-rock and po...