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This is a great rock and roll album. I haven’t found anything like this in ages, good straightforward (on the face of it) noisy rock and roll. But not dumb rock and roll. The Hold Steady tell stories of drugs, booze and partying, having fun and the consequences.

Musically there are plenty of guitars, a keyboard that can played at a pretty frenetic pace and the drums driving through. They can change pace through a song, there is a lot more to this than a lot of ‘rock’ out there. They can settle back into anthemic choruses, and bring back it to a smaller sound when it is appropriate. The next song can be a lot of a smaller and intimate song, but with a bit of a punch underneath to maintain some strength.

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In keeping with my promise, i started down the path of exploring the ‘bamboo band’ genre of music, but alas it did not lead me very far. Now obviously anyone can update Wikipedia, and so it seems that some dude has made up a brand new musical genre, and then linked it to the page that he created for his own apparently genre-defying band, the ‘Bamboos’. The spiel written for the bamboos goes something like this -

‘…Francisco “Bamboo” Mañalac serves as the band’s frontman. Contrary to popular belief, the band is not named after him….’

‘… According to the guitarist, the word bamboo relates to strength and durability with an island feel to it.Also, it’s very Filipino and Asian at the same time. Their first priority for a band name during 2000s was “Audio Barangay” which means “Audio Neighborhood” in English. However, they realized that its a bit hard to pronounce and it is not that catchy compared to just “Bamboo.” They also dropped the name “Audio Barangay” because Audioslave was formed roughly the same time during their band’s formation, to avoid confusion….’

Ok that’s all very well and good, but slightly delusional. Audio Neighborhood? C’mon. The fact that there is one less ‘real’ musical genre is quite a relief though, and it does bring me to the topic of Audioslave.

Audioslave – crap?

 I was, in a former life, a big fan of both Soundgarden and Rage Against The Machine. But, let’s be honest, both of those bands had their day, and the same chemistry was not re-ignited in Audioslave. You don’t even need to listen to Audioslave to know they’re bad. If they can get confused with  “Audio Barangay” then they must be bad, right?

Coming out of this short musical journey though, out of the archives -  i have uncovered a great Soundgarden track to download. It’s called ‘Like Suicide’ and it’s on the ‘Superunknown’ CD. Don’t play it on your iPods though unless it’s got good sound with plenty of bass. It’s quite heavy as you would expect, Chris Cornell has done well in the lyrics department with his trademark gothic imagery, and the solo is pure psychedelia. Apparently it was written by Cornell after a bird flew into a window of his house. He found the suffering animal and subsequently put the bird out of its misery by hitting it with a brick.

Isn’t that funny? Usually it only takes a few minutes to recover from the shock and the bird will get up and fly away. I’m glad Cornell is not a vet.

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These classifications are often arbitrary and controversial, and closely related styles often overlap, etc.

One of the first genres I’d like to explore /  review is the Bamboo band style, which is music played by hitting bamboo tubes with sandals

Exploring the various genre names on Wikipedia, I came across ‘Blue-Eyed Soul’ and was reminded that Wilco had a song of the same name on their A.M. album. The best song on that album though was ‘ How to Fight Loneliness’, which I myself discovered had the same chords in the verse as the song ‘Maneater’ by Hall & Oates, who pretty much define the ‘Blue-Eyed Soul’ genre. So the connection is complete – Wilco were listening to Hall & Oates circa 1982 when they did A.M. in 1995, and they ripped off the chords to Maneater.

There you have it – a great piece of musical detective work by me.

I really should be doing some work.

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For me it’s not often that an album can start off from being disliked to being one of my all time favourites. As a Film by The Bank Holidays is one such album.

From the A capella opening track, “The Voice I hear when I alone” the album has a bright and airy feel. When you listen to the lyrics the songs become all the more captivating hooking you into the music. This is best done in quiet contemplation which lets the lyrics shine to the chirpy sound.

I call it jingle jangle pop primarily taken from The Byrds song which uses jingle jangle in its lyrics. (Turn, Turn, Turn)

Cheating, Cheating has a very much a Beatles sound to it as does Like a Piano. (Although both from different Beatle periods. ) Like a piano makes me laugh and wince all at the same time with the idea that a piano that falls on you can make you chest feel strange.

This Elated Height has clever lyrics and provides a nice link, I feel, to Cheating, Cheating. Folded in Half  starts off with male and the female voices lyrics before launching in the first verse which  has my favourite “relate to” lyric.

Its a great album where the songs have nice and short tracks. Perfect for this type of music but sometimes you almost wish they went just a little bit longer. But what the hey. Just play it the whole album all over again.

Highly recommended if you like jingle jangle airy guitar based music with lyrics that you listen out for

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