Category: music

Good People, For You

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I watched a film last night. Regular readers will be aware that this is somewhat of an unusual occurrence, so it probably deserves a mention here. The flick in question was called Good People and scored a massive 11% on Rotten Tomatoes. And I can understand why: it was a bit shoddy, wholly implausible from start to finish and rather (very) predictable. But, that said, it was quite fun if you overlooked the nonsense and there was Kate Hudson, so it wasn’t all bad. What definitely deserves a mention is the theme music of said film, and so I’m doing that too:

I’m getting whiffs of Shirley Bassey, Amy Whitehouse and a thick layer of Bond Theme on the palate. Serena Ryder is a 32 year old Canadian singer who I had never heard of, but that’s quite a voice right there. I’ll be exploring a bit more in the coming weeks. Incidentally, the only other music mentioned in the credits was:

Excerpt from ‘Mansquito’ Written by Joseph Conlan and Sophia Morizet Published by Brevity Music, Inc.; Asymptotote Music BV, Inc.

and was dark and brooding in a very David Arnoldesque way. Upon further googling, ‘Mansquito’ appears to be a 2005 TV Movie with the following plot synopsis:

While trying to find a cure for the West Nile virus, a scientist turns herself and her subject into mutant insects.

Which sounds only slightly less believable than Good People. Film: 5/10 (for the lolz) Theme music: A strong 8½/10 (dem lungs)

Re-release

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Ooh. Exciting news for the legion of a-ha fans that follow this blog in order to hear exciting a-ha news. This are that day!

Marking the 30th [weeps slightly] anniversary of the release of their first album Hunting High And Low, a-ha are releasing… Hunting High And Low. But this one is “a Super Deluxe Edition of the album… remastered and packed full of bonus content”!

Colour me excited. So excited, in fact, that here’s the title track of that 1985 classic:

Morten featuring as both singer and super-predator there. (Aquila chrysaetos, Carcharodon carcharias and Panthera leo for the Linnean purists.) Although that notched caudal fin at 2:29 looks far more like that of Prionace glauca, I’m sure you’ll agree.

But minor shark identification discrepancies apart, what a song – drama, an orchestral background, harmonies deluxe and when you’ve seen it performed live, several (or more) goosebump moments.

Habits cover

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We’ve mentioned Swedish music here before: more than once. Most recently was Postiljonen’s dream pop efforts, described by me as being “full of lazy 80s sax” and by one reader as “elevator music which sounds like Enya with a bit of drum machine”.

Eina.

And then there was Swedish songstress Tove Lo on this post. I featured Out Of Mind and its spectacular video on that one, but Tove is probably best known for her 2014 hit Habits and it’s that which has been brilliantly covered by Fryars for Radio 1’s Live Lounge:

Fryars (real name Ben Garrett) is new to me, but based on this performance and the very favourable reviews I’ve read, I’m going to give his album Power a shot.
I’ll report back presently.

Everlasting Light

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More from Dry The River, who announced a mini UK tour last night, a couple of months or less too late for me to see any of their performances. To Youtube then, and this video of the boys being flung around a gym by some female judoistas.

Nice song. And it’s even better live, as this video of the band at Glastonbury last year proves.

I guess I’ll just have to wait for the announcement of their Cape Town dates.

I downloaded this

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New music (new to me, anyway). It’s Swedish “dream pop” band Postiljonen. (We really are just adding adjectives to musical genres to create ever more sub-genres now, aren’t we?)

Much lazy 80’s sax there, much comparison with M83 and the like.
This is going to go down very nicely on the beach this morning.

I downloaded the album Skyer, and I’m happy to tell you that there’s plenty more where this came from.
Go play.