Wednesday, April 15, 2020

Artists #2 - IDLES & Baxter Dury

Hey everyone
So last week Antoine decided to start posting about underrated artists he likes, and as the other half of the music club, I thought it would be a good idea to do the same. This way, you’ll get two artists at once, and so a bigger chance to find something you like!

The band I’m going to be talking about is a fairly recent, English punk band called IDLES. They are faithful to the ‘traditional’ punk, with very political lyrics and noise-like music. If you’ve watched Peaky Blinders, they had some songs in the soundtrack, so you might already know them from that! They have played some big festivals, such as Glastonbury in 2019, but unfortunately they remain quite unknown. They go absolutely crazy on stage, and the I’ve never seen the guitarist wearing anything but his underwear.

Some songs you should check out if you’re interested:

Danny Nedelko: If I remember correctly, it was named after one of the band’s mates, but the song has nothing to do with him; it has a beautiful message of unity and is overall a great song!

Colossus: This song is what introduced me to them, it’s very intense and heavy I guess, keeps your attention from start to finish.

I’m Scum: This is the song I remember being in the Peaky Blinders soundtrack, it plays when Oswald Mosley’s character is on screen (surely you can see why).

Anyway, that’s all for today, see you next week and in the meantime I’ll let Antoine present the artist he picked!
-Sibylle

__________

Hi bloggers, Antoine here, and I’m going to talk about Baxter Dury ! If you know a bit about punk music, you could know his father, Ian Dury, who wrote the song Sex & drugs & rock & roll. But the topic is Baxter Dury, so let’s stick to him. 

So he’s an English singer who is now already 44 or 45, and released 6 albums, on of which was released not long ago. Anyway, his music is really hard to define, it is a sort of British pop, but that is mixed with a lot of sadness. Wikipedia says, new wave, indie rock, alternative pop, but I’m not really sure about these, so don’t listen to them. However, I agree on the ‘alternative’ or ‘indie’ terms (this article is full of contradictions), because his music does not look like anything else.

His tracks always almost follow the same recipe : loud and omnipresent bass, some piano, strings (that come later in the song), lyrics (often the chorus) sung by women – looks like a charm – and of course, his voice ; it seems like he speaks to the listener and it’s really soothing. The overall atmosphere is really melancholic and sad that is offset with the music that could seem joyful.

Again, here are some of my favourite songs by him, they’ll all be in the playlist ; I really advise you to listen to at least 3 of his albums – Happy Soup, It’s a pleasure, and Prince of Tears – which are absolute masterpieces in my view. I need to pick no more than 2 songs per album, it’s going to be really tough for me :(

Prince of tears : in my view his best song, there’s so much emotion, it’s really calm and soothing

Isabel : perfect first song for an album, really dynamic ; this song really represents his style overall

Palm Trees : if I were a bit more emotional, this song would really make me cry, the female voices really take to that higher ground (;)) that I can’t define – does the same with Radiohead, even if more powerful with them.

Hotel in Brixton : one of his most peculiar songs, no other tracks sound like this one, but again really soothing.

Ok, so that’s it, the rest (like lives) will be in the playlist, see you soon Charlie, I have to go ! 




This was Sib and Ant1, at your service  !

1 comment:

  1. So many artists to discover. I am so clueless when it comes to music.

    ReplyDelete