Tír Na HiFi

Great music and a great recording. 👍

Listening tonight to an album from Haley Heynderickx, I Need To Start A Garden. A fully-formed debut with richly inventive songs and a deeply beautiful voice that goes straight to your heart.

Listening to the Haley Heynderickx album, I was reminded of the wonderful album by This is the Kit, Moonshine Freeze, and I had to dig it out and listen to it. Such a brilliant album which bristles with invention and daring. Lyrically quite dark there is a worldliness here which makes it a reflective rather than a depressing listen. Musically this album grooves and pulses with a passion. Highly recommended.

Some of today's listening.....

Listening for the first time today to Fiona Apple’s new album, Fetch Me The Bolt Cutters, and it is an absolute delight. 8 years since her last album, the ingeniously titled The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do, this was worth the wait. I believe her record company pushed her to delay the release until September when they could physically release the product and promote the album more widely but she insisted on an April digital only release.

It is an album charged with a manic, freewheeling sense of invention that startles and inspires. Apple has always had this mastery of pop song composition but what is interesting is just how she can twist and subvert that mastery to best serve the song and to maximise the emotional effect. It never sounds contrived and premeditated but always sounds fresh and surprising. This musical mastery is matched by her lyrical dextrousness and her emotional forcefulness as a singer. As an artist, she is a true original, an auteur whose music always bears her idiomatic stamp. I look forward to losing myself in this album as I have in all of her previous albums.

Speaking of Fiona Apple....

Came across Madison Cunningham while checking guitar gear...(it's not the destination, it is the journey)...


She seems very inspired by the 90's sounds like Fiona Apple, Aimee Mann and she even mentions K's Choice (a band, my pals and I followed religiously back in the mid 90's)!

She recommended another artist that had escaped my attention: Juana Molina!



Incredibly creative and talented lady with a great sense of humour!

Thanks for that, Claus. Ms. Cunningham is indeed an interesting and very promising artist. She has also been touring recently as part of Andrew Bird’s band. Here is her beautiful version of Judee Sill’s immortal The Kiss:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r6sjro2jKgU

And Juana Molina is an artist who I have heard of but never quite made the time to fully investigate. I have been intrigued by what I have heard online from her album, Halo.

Reacquainting myself with Henry Cow (specifically the albums, Unrest and in Praise of Learning) this evening and I find the greatness of this music compounded anew. So alive with the breath of the new which surpasses the merely virtuosic, this communicates directly to the heart with a passion and a vigour that is truly remarkable. I think back to the struggles I had with this music when I first heard it over 30 years ago and how I persevered with it because of these little chinks of light that appeared to hint at some thing behind its stark, forbidding exterior. With every passing listen, these chinks of lights widened a little more and revealed more of this great music’s secrets. And here I am 30 years later, still startled at this music and still hearing new things.

Henry Cow were rarely captured by TV cameras in their absolute prime but this concert in Vevey in 1975 has thankfully been preserved and remastered for the ages. This remains a wonderfully potent crystallisation of the band at work in a live setting. The sheer commitment of vocalist Dagmar Krause, rooted to her spot behind the mic, and lost in her own private world. And such a wonderful group of musicians: Lindsay Cooper on woodwinds, Fred Frith on guitar, Georgie Born on bass, Tim Hodgkinson on keyboards and Chris Cutler on drums. What glorious music they made!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ic9qN3g6ybA

mcq wrote: ↑Sun Apr 26, 2020 1:13 am Reacquainting myself with Henry Cow (specifically the albums, Unrest and in Praise of Learning) this evening and I find the greatness of this music compounded anew. So alive with the breath of the new which surpasses the merely virtuosic, this communicates directly to the heart with a passion and a vigour that is truly remarkable. I think back to the struggles I had with this music when I first heard it over 30 years ago and how I persevered with it because of these little chinks of light that appeared to hint at some thing behind its stark, forbidding exterior. With every passing listen, these chinks of lights widened a little more and revealed more of this great music’s secrets. And here I am 30 years later, still startled at this music and still hearing new things.

Henry Cow were rarely captured by TV cameras in their absolute prime but this concert in Vevey in 1975 has thankfully been preserved and remastered for the ages. This remains a wonderfully potent crystallisation of the band at work in a live setting. The sheer commitment of vocalist Dagmar Krause, rooted to her spot behind the mic, and lost in her own private world. And such a wonderful group of musicians: Lindsay Cooper on woodwinds, Fred Frith on guitar, Georgie Born on bass, Tim Hodgkinson on keyboards and Chris Cutler on drums. What glorious music they made!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ic9qN3g6ybA

Wow, that's some find, of the scariest music anyone will ever listen to. Like a complete band of Derek Baileys locked in their own universe. I also have those two albums mentioned. It took me nearly 30 years to pluck up the courage to check them out. I was so glad I did. A completely unique listening experience but very worthwhile and most definitely NOT for the faint hearted.

Have you been tempted by the 18 cd box set "The Henry Cow Box Redux: The Complete Henry Cow"? I very nearly went for it before the pandemic broke but chickened out. Scary thought: I won't be here in another 30 years......so maybe, just maybe?

Amazon Customer Review:
"Long ago, a few months after In Praise of Learning first came out, my friend and I were standing around the bins, anxious for whatever might be new from the then outstanding Virgin label (what happened there?) or Ohr, or Sky, or Brain, or Vertigo, when a hanger-on strolled up. My pal and I were talking about Henry Cow and the hanger-on interrupted with some specious comment. "O, which is your favorite?" my friend asked. "The one with the sock on the cover" came the reply.

The music and performances of Henry Cow have not aged one whit since those days. The transformations brought by Lindsay Cooper and then the entirety of Slapp Happy seemed to set in motion a practically endless series of innovations and inspirations within the group and in the wider world. In fact, and of no interest to anyone, I'd say that Unrest is perhaps the finest record ever recorded.

No point in going on -- I can find nothing to negate the worth and power of this music. But to say that no matter how many versions of the Cow catalog you may already possess, do acquire Redux as well. The remastering is both revelatory and respectful of the originals, further perfecting the already perfect."

mcq wrote: ↑Sun Apr 26, 2020 1:12 am Thanks for that, Claus. Ms. Cunningham is indeed an interesting and very promising artist. She has also been touring recently as part of Andrew Bird’s band. Here is her beautiful version of Judee Sill’s immortal The Kiss:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r6sjro2jKgU

And Juana Molina is an artist who I have heard of but never quite made the time to fully investigate. I have been intrigued by what I have heard online from her album, Halo.

What a beautiful rendition! There is definitely something very special about her. Thanks to Claus for bringing her to our attention. Time to check out Juana now....