Inhabiting the Narrative – Housekeeping and the Hounds of Love
Wednesday, November 14th, 2012Being a Girl You’ve seen the film: a man looks behind an office filing cabinet to find a portal into another man’s consciousness – someone who turns out to be a famous actor. The intruder remains inside this other life for a quarter of an hour or so before being ejected onto the side of [...]
The Monkeys’ Playlist 15/03/2012
Thursday, March 15th, 2012Here’s the first installment of what’s going to be a regular feature on TMO, where we introduce you to tracks/albums/artists that we’re listening to at the Monkeys’ HQ at the moment. There are no rules, and no specific criteria – except that we have to be able to include a video/stream of the song, and [...]
The Futureheads sneek a preview of Rant
Wednesday, March 14th, 2012TMO favourites The Futureheads have been working on an accapella album, Rant, which will be released on April 2nd 2012. The band from Sutherland, already well known for their adventurous song structures and harmonies (for example their electrifying version of Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love – released as a single in 2004, and now some [...]
De los Picos d’Europa – Anabel Santiago
Monday, July 27th, 2009An astounding series of peaks across North-West Spain are reified in folklore as instantly recognisable landmarks nefarious conquistadors and regular Joes all fixed upon as they finally sailed into the serenity of home waters. Anabel Santiago’s 2007 album Desnuda is in effect a rejuvenation of a musical heritage which sails between those many Spanish traditions, the ghosts of imperialism, the [...]
Top Seven Songs Namechecking Jesus
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009Words launch other words, and names have a way of establishing themselves as footholds – nothing could be truer than with the name Jesus, which – thanks to the centuries of teaching, tradition, imposition and imperialism which have used him as currency – has come to mean whatever you earnestly wish. The devil may have [...]
Beautiful World – Colin Hay
Saturday, April 25th, 2009April is the cruellest month – always has been, and always will be, just like tuesdays never come out right; but there is hope at the end of the tunnel, glimpsed briefly through the showers. In those long northern winters, when you’re cooped up, it seems natural to think ahead, to dream – more often [...]
Tell Me – Terry Kath
Friday, April 24th, 2009Wailing “God Bless America…” is not the selling point on which you can convince someone of a song’s cathartic merits, even if this song magnifies in grace over one of the most astounding cinematic closing sequences ever, James Guercio’s wirey, disillusioned, Electra Glide In Blue. Tell Me, also written by Guercio, and delivered as a [...]
Lo Scudetto In Sardegna – Serafino Murru
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009Serafino Murru passed away in 1994. It would be difficult though to accept the terminal shockwaves of this roughly sketched street balladeer after the scraping acoustic spears of Lo Scudetto In Sardegna rip through any dustclouds gathered in the decades since Luigi Riva and the Rossoblu last ran rings around mainland hierarchies. Murru is the archetypal everyman, [...]
Heads Roll Off – Frightened Rabbit
Monday, March 23rd, 2009“Jesus” And that’s the way the song starts, leaving a man-god hanging as an insistent but quiet guitar chisels rythmically in the background. All the more potent for the Scottish accent blunting the edges of the singer’s troubled voice. “Is just a Spanish boy’s name” And that’s the bit when the chisel breaks off a [...]
Paul Brady – The Island
Saturday, March 21st, 2009Though it’s officially springtime, celebrating the sunshine I find myself paradoxically listeing to Paddy Casey’s Ancient Sorrow (rather than the more appropriate Sunnyside of the Street by the Pogues) – a song that, with a brave production that highlights the voices of Casey and the real foundation given by the soulful singing of Terry Sutton. [...]
