Springs have Sprung
Like a highly intelligent and sexy hedgehog, the Steve Show Posse website has been in a kind of hibernation during the barren, permafrost musical months of January to April.
Sure, we’ve occasionally popped our pretty little heads out from our Sonic Youth slankets for long enough to toss out the odd wordy nugget, but we’ve mostly kept ourselves to ourselves while waiting for sunshine and the tunes that will form the soundtrack to a summer of frisbee championships, barbecue riots and outdoors baby-making.
The first such tune to come our way is the all-new single from The Bitter Springs – My Life As A Dog In A Pigsty.
If you didn’t pay attention last time, then listen up now and listen up good – no-one else is making records like this at the moment, and you need to be involved for your own good.
Propelled by guest Terry Edwards’ (Tindersticks, Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, etc) majestic trumpet, My Life… combines warmth, wisdom and high comedy in the tale of a young man’s turbulent life, all set to a majestic tune. To hell and Bacharach*, you might say.
Of course, it’s yet another song about breaking up with the missus after she discovers your inter-species affair with the family’s pet dog Beyonce, of empathising with terrorists after getting off at the wrong stop in Canary Wharf, and of rhyming slang carveries (Jean Claude? Penelope?**), so if you’ve heard enough of those sort of songs, don’t bother. The kids on Glee probably did one like it last week.
And if you’ve ever been given better advice than ”Pray to whoe’er you choose, keep one good pair of shoes, some you’ll win, some you’ll lose“, then you can pass too.
But for everyone else (ie everyone), this is a wonderful record, blighted only by the fact it’s not getting a physical release. You can buy it online from Monday at Amazon, Play and iTunes, and by doing so improve the quality of your life by several notches.
And if you’re going to be in London this weekend, The Bitter Springs are playing a frustratingly rare gig at the Wilmington Arms on Saturday night (the 24th) – buy your ticket in advance here or hope that there are some left on the night.
* I just googled this – astonishingly, no-one has used it before. Therefore, it’s mine. I own it. Hah. ** Jean Claude Van Damme – Lamb, Penelope Keith – BeefIf you liked this, then you may like these too
Looks sweet – I will check it out.
Also, there’s this cracking Australian tribute album from the late 90s that takes the Bacharach pun to its unnatural conclusion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Hal_and_Bacharach
Thank you posse.
Robert.
Is the Steve Crew planning on attending festivals this summer? http://blog.metrotwin.com/index.php/2010/04/28/music-festivals-in-london-this-summer/
Robert – pffft, I knew it was too good to be true. Another handy tribute album is Our Boy Roy, out earlier this year on Telephone Explosion records, featuring big Harry faves Jacuzzi Boys doing You Got It…
http://garagepunk.ning.com/forum/topics/out-soon-our-boy-roy-featuring
Neets – festivals are great in principle but soul destroying hell in practice. Camden Crawl looks pretty good this year but I prefer to line up a summer of standard gigs and take the festival experience to them – wear a lot of tie died gear, give myself food poisoning and inject filth under my fingernails. Lots of good gigs coming… Built To Spill/Dinosaur Jr, Metric, Dan Sartain, etc etc.
I’d wager Sammy will be festing like a lunatic…
Harry — they might be soul-destroying in practice but they produce excellent stories for parties, like how you had to spend the night in mud weeing into an Evian bottle. Good times…