The White Stripes - Icky Thump

Jesus wept, the tottering great stomp of it. The testosterone-sozzled, tomcat yowl. The very-metal Led Zep rolling riff and the non-more-Prog squealy-twiddly keyboard...

Apparently, the new album has bagpipes on it. Nothing good has ever come from bagpipes, and Jack White still faces a long crawl back to credibility after the Coca-Cola cocksuck.

But if this is the standard-setter, he could knock up an in-store Starbucks muzak medley with Richard Ashcroft and Johnny Borrell on vocals and I'd still wave it off as a momentary glitch.

[MP3] The White Stripes - Icky Thump

Something For The Weekend: The Eagles - Hotel California

"Warm smell of colitas rising up through the air..."

While current(ish) music is the general theme around here, I'll stick up a 'classic' track at weekends. Something that would make my All-Time Favourite Playlist. And, because these songs are inevitably going to be (over)familiar, I'll have a bash at a bit of context...

So, Hotel California is one of those mythical songs that everyone thinks is about Vietnam, or Aleister Crowley's mansion (because of the "they just can't kill the beast" line) or a Christian church that was abandoned in 1969 and taken over by Satan worshippers and that you can see Nicky-Boy himself in the window on the album cover (smudge, bottom-left)...

But it's more of a lament for the death of the hippy era (1969 seems about right), with writer/singer Don Henley reflecting on his culture's loss of innocence, courtesy of the rapacious LA music biz.

It's Henley world-weary and bloated after a decadent decade of groupie-collecting, dollar-hoarding and drug-hoovering. More broadly, it's a bittersweet flex of regret at the way heads-down hedonism gnaws away the soul.

A face-slap for ol' William Blake, then. The road of excess doesn't lead to the palace of wisdom. It dirt-tracks out to some whitewashed flophouse where the palm trees sway seductively but the interiors are hollow. And once you step inside that world, there's no going back ("You can check out any time you like/But you can never leave...").

And if that's not bleak enough for ya, have a go on my favourite Don Henley solo song about sudden-death anxiety...

[MP3] The Eagles - Hotel California
[MP3] Don Henley - New York Minute

The Twang - Either Way

The trouble with love songs is that they're often too neat and modulated. As if something so raw and consuming and contradictory could ever be adequately captured with a few carefully selected words and a nice tune.

This is the least articulate love song ever. It's buzzing on speed, bouncing off the walls of a shabby phone kiosk, trying to syphon the contents of your heart into a greasy mouthpiece. "You should never drink and dial", goes the line in Sideways. That's exactly what's happening here - unfiltered outpouring.

There's a laugh-out-loud perfect moment where he's practically hyperventilating and... and... desperately trying to tell her... and... and... maybe isn't explaining himself too well... and... and... he just thinks fuck it, and shouts, "I LOVE YER!" in a gutteral great Stan Collymore voice.

And there's a xylophone solo!

[MP3] The Twang - Either Way

Grand National - Talk Amongst Yourselves (Sasha Remix)

Grand National are a pair of British blokes called Rupert Lyddon and Lawrence Rudd, who used to be in a Police/Queen covers band and whose 2004 debut album, 'Kicking The National Habit', was a sly burst of choppy, dubby, reggae/ska-flecked pop that really deserved to be noticed a bit more than it did (hardly at all). Dig it up and have a go on 'Playing In The Distance' and the ace, Police-like 'Daylight Goes'.

They've just released a B-sides and rarities album and while Sasha's monolithic rework of 'Talk Amongst Yourselves' has been around on his terrific 'Involver' mix album for a while now, it's nice to finally get an isolated version of it - the chugging, mournful original thrillingly reworked around a rumbling great black hole of thrumming bass and glacial angst ("And there's nothing to say 'cos I won't go through it/And there's nothing to do 'till I put myself up to it...")

It's so loose and vague, it could be 'about' pretty much anything - self-doubt, self-destruction, something aching and unrequited...

Take what you will. I just hope they're named after the Blackpool rollercoaster rather than the horse-race.

[MP3] Grand National - Talk Amongst Yourselves (Sasha Remix)

John Cooper Clarke - Evidently Chickentown

This recently popped up as the closing track in, of all places, a Sopranos episode. Which, on paper/screen, seems deeply strange - like Ted Chippington appearing as a guest star on The Simpsons - but it worked beautifully as the backdrop to an oppressive montage of Mob boss Tony and prodigal son/successor Christopher.

JCC is a manky Manc who, back in the '70s, had the gleaming brass bollocks to stand up in front of crowds of gob-happy Sex Pistols and Buzzcocks fans and bark his poetry at them. With its toytown synth metronome clattering away behind JCC's pummelling monotone, 'Evidently Chickentown' is, pretty much, rap. Comin' up from the streets. The back streets. Of Salford.

It's the first track on the album 'Snap, Crackle & Bop' which, when I was at school, had a peculiar, extra-obscure cult appeal. Because the voice sounded like someone your dad might know, because it had loads of swearing, because it featured JCC's other highlight, Beasley Street ("Belladonna is your flower/Manslaughter your meat/Spend a year in a couple of hours/On the edge of Beasley Street...").

But mostly because it was really hard to find. These days, of course, in cosy, homogenised Internetland, you can't move for the bastard thing. Shame, that. Kind of blunts the exotic edge of music that needs a bit of hunting down. The chase often being as good as/better than the catch. And that.

[MP3] John Cooper Clarke - Evidently Chickentown

Bat For Lashes - What's A Girl To Do?

Christ! It's Lily Allen's Satanic hippy death-cult evil twin.

This is Natasha Khan (aka Bat For Lashes) and I keep reading that she's sort of Kate Bush with a bit of Bjork and maybe a sprinkle of Tori Amos. But I love this because it sounds like something that's spent the last forty years swirling through a time-warp after being booted out of the Ready, Steady, Go! studio for being smoky and sexy instead of kooky and kinky.

And her album's called Fur And Gold, which sounds vaguely filthy.

[MP3] Bat For Lashes - What's A Girl To Do?

Arctic Monkeys - Do Me A Favour

Sometimes, you get the odd song that feels, y'know, bespoke. Like you personally commissioned it to soundtrack a specific flavour of your life...

This is the sleeper track on the darker, smarter new album. 'Fluorescent Adolescent' may have the anthemic festival flush, and 'Brianstorm' is Blur's 'Charmless Man' written by someone funnier. But this is the one for me. Fatty.

See, that chiming guitar bit sounds like The Smiths because Arctic Monkeys are this generation's Smiths. Oh yes they are.

I know, I know. And there was you, thinking they were
the new Judas Priest...

Me? I feel the gummy breath of middle-age bristling my neck-hairs, but this still gets me good. If, however, your age has a 'teen' in it, then - sorry to break it to you - but it's no good rebelling against your parents any more. Their work is pretty much done. You're on your own from here. These four people will serve you well.

[MP3] Arctic Monkeys - Do Me A Favour

The National - Mistaken For Strangers

Well, yeah...

"You get mistaken for strangers by your own friends
When you pass them at night
Under the silvery, silvery Citybank lights
Arm in arm in arm and eyes and eyes glazing under
You wouldn't want an angel watching over
Surprise surprise they wouldn't wanna watch
Another uninnocent, elegant fall
Into the unmagnificent lives of adults..."

[MP3] The National - Mistaken For Strangers

Soulsavers - Revival

So, this is the opener from the 'It's Not How Far You Fall, It's The Way You Land' album and it's a swelling great gospel twist on REM's equally flooring 'Country Feedback'. The album is pretty much a Mark Lanegan (ex-Screaming Trees) solo work (he does most of the vocals) with producers Rich Machin and Ian Glover occasionally wheeling in the likes of Bonnie Prince Billy and the singer out of Doves. And it's magnificent. Stately and doomy and a little bit Spiritualised and a fuck of a lot Death In Vegas' 'The Contino Sessions'. Y'know - sozzled and tear-streaked, down but far from out, doomy but not gloomy. It's a wallow thing...

[MP3] Soulsavers - Revival