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W♥M199: Black Box Recorder

W♥M199 (16 mins) Read More Black Box Recorder Black Box Recorder is John Moore, Sarah Nixey (vocals) and Luke Haines. Luke Haines is originally from the Auteurs (does anyone remember them?), and he's brilliant …

It's solo-vu for W♥M Radio #199 because it's the calm before the #200 storm (which is being recorded this Saturday, hopefully).

This episode is dedicated to Black Box Recorder.

I followed BBR mainly because I was a big fan of The Auteurs' Luke Haines. I love anything that he was doing, so of course, I love BBR.

The trio was made up of Luke Haines, singer Sarah Nixey, and John Moore (formerly of The Jesus and Mary Chain).

I didn't know this until just now, but apparently Moore and Nixey were married between 2001 and 2006. By 2010, the band officially split with their goodbye release two-track single, Final Statement.

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vu () ♥ weheartmusic.com ♥ podcast.weheartmusic.com ♥ twitter.com/weheartmusic

W♥M059: The Girls of Britpop (Wave 2)

W♥M059 [download (51 min, 47 mb)]

Subscribe to our show at gcast.com (RSS), more information at podcast.w♥m.com.

BRITPOPCAST #6: THE GIRLS OF BRITPOP (wave 2)

Theaudience - Penis Size and Cars

The show was actually longer, but I'm including more Jarvis-stalking festivities until next week. This week is all about the second wave of girls of Britpop (the first wave consists of Powder, Sleeper, Salad, Echobelly, Elastica). Since we've talked so much about them already, I thought talking about the second wave was a little more interesting.

Second wave:

• Kenickie (Lauren Laverne - all girls band)
  • Kenickie, believe it or not, was the only all-girls Britpop band. There was another band called Fluffy around this era, but they were more hard-rock than brit-pop. While Fluffy's ultimate was branded with "eight tits no talent", Kenickie was more loved in general. While their music is often more polished punk/pop early on, they shifted their sound to more lounge for their second album. Obviously the band was still in their infancy ... but eventually broke up shortly after the second album.
• Lush (Miki Berenyi & Emma Anderson)
  • In early Lush's history, they were two best friends, Miki Berenyi & Emma Anderson. They were fanzine producers, and started their own band based on their love of shoegazing music with their EPs and debut album Spooky. You can hear their love of melodies as they sing in and out. Of course, when you have two songwriters, they often clash if they have other interests. In this case, at the time Split came out in 1994, some of the songs were clearly "britpop"esque. Even the naming of the album (Split) was an indication, between aggressive pop songs like "Kiss Chase" and "Hypocrite" - the britpop songs would later continue with "Ladykiller" and their ultimate britpop moment with Jarvis Cocker on "Ciao!" While I did tend to like the Miki songs, Emma did coin a few great pop gems like "Shake Baby Shake" (which is about the love of her car).
  • When we heard that drummer, Chris Acland committed suicide by hanging himself, we all knew the band would be split up after this. And it's true, they never quite recover. I was lucky enough to catch them before the tragedy and continued to follow to see what the band's been up to. The last I heard, Emma is in Sing-Sing, which had a great pop song called "Feels Like Summer".
• Catatonia (Cerys Matthews)
  • Since we previously talked about Catatonia in our previous Welsh Britpop bands, I'll only briefly mention them here. The thing with Catatonia for me was that each of their song was either a hit or miss... no inbetween feeling. I either hated or love it. But the songs I really love, I really love, so that makes up for them. I love the way Cerys sings, in fact, all Welsh people have a particularly weird accent to them and it's always a nice earful when you do hear them sing or talk. It's like they're speaking English, but learned it from another planet.
  • Favorite songs: "Mulder & Scully", "I Am the Mob", "Karaokee Queen", "Road Rage", "Dead from the Waist Down"
• Theaudience (Sophie Ellis-Bextor)
  • This was a very brief band from 97-99, fronted by Sophie Ellis-Bextor - who went on to have a series of very successful Eurodisco releases. I must admit, I never followed the band that much - they arrived a little too late for me. I didn't buy their debut album (it was never released in the US), but managed to get their debut single, "I Got the Wherewithal". The song is quite good, and even their b-side "Penis Size and Cars" is amusingly catchy.
• Bis (Amanda MacKinnon)
  • I love this Scottish band. Although they were far too "kiddish" in their cute unreadable spellings and anime-influence, they were pretty damn cute and catchy. Songs like "Kandy Pop" topped many playlist around this time, although in retrospect, looking back, it was a pretty mindless dum (dumb as in DUM) song. Unfortunately, many people, including myself, didn't regard Bis as a Britpop band, but they're often grouped in. My favorite song: "Action & Drama"!

Honorable mentions:

• Black Box Recorder (Sarah Nixey)
  • Very catchy/dancey, but not Britpop. Their bassist is Luke Haines, formerly of the Britpop band The Auteurs.
• Dubstar (Sarah Blackwood)
  • This British act came out during the birth of Britpop, but they were far too alternative-dance/electronica to be considered Britpop. The singer is Sarah Blackwood, who, I reckon the band ditched toward their later music releases.
• Sneaker Pimps (Kelli Dayton)
• Fluffy
• Republica (Saffron)
• Fat Les (Lily Allen sings on their last single???)

12/30/2009 03:45:48♥ vu () ♥weheartmusic.com♥twitter.com/weheartmusic♥news.weheartmusic.com

The Auteurs - Car Crazy

 

 

The Auteurs - Car Crazy

The Auteurs

 

I thought I was leaving for Chicago on Friday, but I guess we're leaving tomorrow morning. I haven't even thought about packing yet, but I'm a pretty light packer.

So, a while back, I thought about making a mix-CD of nothing but driving, fast driving, or car songs. It ended up being too depressing because a lot of those songs were about car crashes! Such as "Motorcrash", "Traffic Accident", "Crash" (The Primitives), and "Girl Singing in the Wreckage".

Anyroad, for our road trip this weekend, I thought I'd leave you with some Luke Haines car songs. Luke Haines has been around forever, I met and interview him during The Auteurs' "Now I'm a Cowboy" tour and have been following his career ever since. He joined in Black Box Recorder, which had some minor success. He's currently a solo artist (I believe he's still doing random gigs in England & Ireland).

 

 

Black Box Recorder - The Art Of Driving

So! The two fitting songs are "Car Crazy", which has a very slow country-western feel to it. The lyrics seems to suggest that the narrator was trying to get a snog from the girl, but she denied him and took over the driving. And apparently she was a bad driver, running red lights and ignoring the law.

"The Art of Driving" is not really a song. It's more of a dialogue between Sarah Nixey and John Moore. The song is from the Facts of Life album, but I'm going to include a youtube video. If you want the mpeg video, it's available as a bonus file from their The Worst of Black Box Recorder album.

Well, off to Chicago we go! I don't know what kind of internet access I will have, but expect this to be my last entry until Monday.

vu Links: deeden.co.uk/auteurs (fan website)

Black Box Recorder - Brutality

Black Box Recorder - Brutality

Black Box Recorder

Black Box Recorder is John Moore, Sarah Nixey (vocals) and Luke Haines.

Luke Haines is originally from the Auteurs (does anyone remember them?), and he's brilliant.  I met Luke a while back when I interviewed them for my radio show.

I recommend "The worst of Black Box Recorder" if you're just getting into them, as it is their greatest hits CD (it also comes with some bonus MOV videos).... which I'm sure are all on youtube.

More on the Auteurs later on.