Feel-good record of the decade!
Well, alright, the first album of 2009 to really tickle me. It's Walking On A Dream by Empire Of The Sun, who are Luke Steele from The Sleepy Jackson (whose first album, the Australian Recording Industry Association award-winning Lovers, I enjoyed very much in 2003 - Good Dancers a 6 Music staple ie. we playlisted the arse out of it) and someone called Nick Littlemore, a fellow Australian of whom I've never heard but is apparently in a dance duo called Pnau. Anyway, it's a gorgeous mix of soaring vocals, every sound you can make on a guitar and a brilliantly relentless, crunching electronic beat, a bit like Stars On 45. I'm getting Beach Boys ... Fleetwood Mac ... Supertramp ... Air ... I'm getting on with writing my review of it for Word. It's released on 23 February. The single is on YouTube - but I warn you, they're not pretty!Incidentally, Steele - a lovely, gentle, thoughtful, genuine guy, if decidely odd - came onto my 6 Music show and he had the hardest handshake I have ever experience in all my 21 years of shaking rock stars' hands. I will never forget it. It still hurts.
posted by Andrew Collins @ 10:01 AM
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Great song, great band.
Would never have expected you to say "I warn you, they're not pretty!" though.
But they're wilfully not pretty. It's their gig. (I find their look oddly beguiling.)
Had this long-player on a loop for weeks now, Andrew. I think the Word website had a recent set-to about 'great albums - crap covers'. Can I nominate this sublime effort?
Ooh, I'd be interested to hear this. I adored Lovers when it came out but was really disappointed by the follow-up (apart from the song that sounded like Raspberry Beret - that was ace)
The cover looks a little like a free DVD that's fallen out of your paper. "Ah, Empire of the Sun. I haven't seen that. Oh, hang on. It's the Cirque du Soleil version. Bollocks."
I loved the Sleepy Jackson so I'll give this a go.
My nomination for best album of the year so far would be 'Welcome to the Welcome Wagon' by Welcome Wagon - even though I think it probably trickled out at theend of last year in the States.
If you are an admirer of our Lord God Sufjan Stevens (and you should be) then you'll like this too. In fact SS is all over it. He produced it, plays on it, sings on it. I suspect if the band may resent the comparisons but both the sound and the lyrics are not a million miles away from St Sufjan's 'Seven Swans' with a touch of 'Greetings from Michigan'. However the more I listen to it the more the comparisons fade and it comes into its own.
Smashing.
Hmm, I think come the end of the year Empire Of The Sun will be regarded as all hype, no substance. I'm generally good at these predicty things, so we'll see.
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