Those who have had the benefit of a musical education from my good self will know that I am not above touting all sorts of genres. But one may have been left off the list, and that was Europop. Those who also know me, will know I also love to watch the Eurovision Song Contest, so whyso the not having any oddball continental records? (Sure there are European bands in my collection, but not native ones, singing in native tongues. Maybe. My memory has just been sold.)
So, with a poke from our able-to-get-oddball-native-european-music-channels-eeklandia contingent I was introduced to Superbus. One track. At which point I went to get their latest album (and will get their older albums now, too.)
Touchstones first. The guitarist has spent too long listening to ‘Nevermind’, the bassist evidently wants to be in ‘Interpol’, and dear woman, please just sing in French, not because the songs you sing in English are bad (gotta love the soon-to-be-immortal line I wanna touch you, I know I’m not a guy as, a certain song goes, there is always a chance) but it is so much better in French. You could be singing your shopping list, I don’t care. And no, this isn’t breathy French-chick singing, as that really wouldn’t work given the influences on display.)
Infused with Visage, early nineties indie, pop, Bis, a few ropey-ish ballad-esque bits and bobs, No Doubt (but good), Goldfrapp (ish). I reckon if this was an English band, I would have ignored it. But as decent pop goes, it is great. Which belies the use of the word decent. A good find. And it is now my quest to find other obscure (to us here) foreign music, and go even more elitist.
Her: yes. Blokes: Not so sure
I feel the need to pad this post out a bit, so here is a bit of progeny-aggrandisement.
Exams. I am glad to see they still do them. Given the destructive nature of this odious drag-everyone-down-to-lowest-common-denominator Government (ok, I stop with that line of thinking)…
Exams. Which my eldest polymath sat before the half-term break. Now, I always expect him to do well (no pressure there then, not that I tell him that) and he invariably does. Although he missed the chance to troll me yesterday, which is suprising. Mayhap because I had recalled that there might be a reason he would troll me. It goes like this. He got his result from his math paper. How did he do? (Struggles for exact number, but it is about) 35 out of 50.
What??! shout you all. Has he taken to being a teenage huffy layabout? (Well, almost, but that isn’t the reason.) No. They gave the top math set a paper from the year above. Which contained at least 50% of stuff they hadn’t done, and harder level questions of the stuff they had done. And he still hit 35/50. Go him! (He couldn’t tell me where he was in relation to the others in his class, as he doesn’t care about that stat as much as I do. Gaussians, people, it is all about Gaussians.)
If you want to go elitist you need to move beyond French music. For that you’re going to have to go Nordic, Baltic, or Russian. Unfortunately I don’t have many recommendations on that front yet, as there’s a really high dross ratio at play here.
One vaguely interesting song: Ithaka Maria - Confession. I didn’t like this at all the first few times I heard it, but it’s gradually grown on me:
The best I’ve come across yet is still Brainstorm’s Tin Drums. CDs that can only be bought at amazon.de certainly raises your ‘elitist’ cred…
1
Tony
Sat 24 Feb, 12:34PM