Beers to Cry Into

For many many years, more than I'd like to admit, the days following Valentine's Day always went the same way. There was the numb realisation that nothing had changed, that there had been no card this year either, and the fact that other people did was just the icing on the cake. On days like those you just wanted to wallow in the self-pity and the shame, the failure to be like everyone else - sure, other people had no cards but that was not a permanent or forever thing.

My own history is littered with days like those, and not just on the day after Valentine's either. So, for people who want to give up on the whole pressure of a commercialised mandated day of romantic liaisons; who wish they could be nonchalant and avant garde about it all, declare it gauche and thus beneath them; but who remain, nevertheless, slightly depressed (though they could never talk about that to anyone else in public or in private)... for those people, I present to you some beers to cry into.

Would you care to drown your sorrows?

Ales for Albums: Sonic Highways

Around Christmas I received a gift from my family's favourite Belgian (see here) and a challenge, which I think was part of the gift, and it's had me thinking ever since. If this goes well I suspect I shan't be long in trying a second bash at this sort of thing as it was an interesting exercise and, to my knowledge, it's not been done by anyone I have contact with before. What is this? Well, I was sent the album Sonic Highways by the Foo Fighters - this album is a concept album in which they take eight US cities and using their experiences there they created a song to match that inspiration.

The challenge was to listen to the album and then find an ale that was inspired by the music. That is, each of the tracks would be linked to an ale that would match their style and their rhythm and beat. Now, it goes without saying (I hope) that drinking an ale to each track (them being between four and seven minutes long) would result in rapid loss of use of one's body and is not to be recommended.

Would you like to see what this challenge has called forth from the dark recesses of my mind? You would? Excellent, click on the finely hand-crafted 'read more' link below!

Stay

Music review time. Because this place has been dead for too long of late and I must try and get it going again. What better way, thought I, than hearkening back to a time and a place that is far removed from today. Sunday School, when I was still but a callow youth and not yet fully in my teens, a place where I heard, for the first ever time by the by, the term 'Satanic' used about popular culture. Now, don't get me wrong, my Sunday School was not one to use that term very much (if at all) and my experience of religion was not to be tainted very much by it being applied to popular culture. No, this was special.

I refer, of course, to the music video for one of the songs that really helped me define the early '90s whilstr I was still there rather than helped me to define what they were long after I had left. Shakespeare's Sister's Stay. Eh, this could get boring quickly. Would you like to know more?

Bastille Day

After I discovered that EDM was a thing and that I had been waiting for this for most of my life I went looking around to see what else was out there. I found Archive, about whom I have previously written, and couldn't believe that I was not already aware of them (they've been going for ages). Anna had previously sent me a rather cool song that mixed Haddaway's What is Love? with Adagio for Strings from Platoon. I liked it and played the hell out of it, duh. But then I wondered about the artist, Bastille, had he done more mash-ups like this?

Apparently, he had, because he had released an album called Other Peoples' Heartache. I looked, I was busy, and I was intrigued but then left alone whilst I indulged with Parralox and Archive a little more, enjoying the strict electronic stylings of this eminently familiar (to me) EDM and how much it mixed and matched with the latest Pet Shop Boys album Electric (and why haven't you bought that yet? Because you should, you really really should, and you won't regret it!). Anyway, I went looking again.

I was not disappointed.

Would you like the full horror?

Reviews of things!

Tonight I shall mostly be reviewing Electric by the Pet Shop Boys because I got it and it is amazing. Of course I would say that because I am a bit of a fan of the Pet Shop Boys and also it appears to have done better critically (and in fan circles) than their last album Elysium. Now me, I like both but for completely different reasons. Their last album is definitely driving music or mood music for me. It doesn't do well in the background or if I'm working or if I'm doing housework or whatever. This latest album fills those spaces and is also driving music.

Are you sure you want to go on?

EDM time

Apparently there is a thing called EDM which is big at the moment and is rising in the States. It includes artists like Parralox, and is indicative in their latest single, and also covers stuff like Moby and Archive as well as the greats like Depeche Mode and Pet Shop Boys. It is 'Electronic Dance Music' and, if I'm honest, the term confuses me. How can dance music ever be anything other than electronic and how come it's only a thing now? I mean, including all those artists in it then this has been going since the early 80s when it was called House, a term I never fully understood. To catch homages to the Pet Shop Boys and Depeche Mode in Parralox tracks is one thing but to see Mode, Moby and PSB collected deliberately together is quite another.

I have never managed to attend a rave or any kind of club that played the kind of music that I enjoy. The nearest I've ever got was a goth club that had some precursor to dubstep playing in the basement. All hard music and vibrating floors with people dressed in masks. And there I was in jeans a crappy CCCP t-shirt. Heh. I never did muster the courage to dress in line with my musical taste.

Would you like to know more?

Archive?

So, I have been listening to Archive tracks a lot since I last posted and I have been enjoying them and I appear to have created a review of some of their stuff, some of which I only found while putting this together. I wish I could have been more productive, I wish there was a more interesting blog post here about something that mattered or relating the whisper stories that have been filling the time with the children, so are relevant to this blog. But there isn't. There is only music. and so I shall just have to do with what I can create. If you haven't listened to any of these tracks before then I can recommend them and advise you to take the time to listen. It's worth it.

Oh, I'll warn you straight out, there's swearing, so listen with caution!

Would you like to know more?

Musicals everywhere!

I'm not really what you would call a musicals fan. Well, okay, my mother thinks I am a musical fan, but she's not right, she bases this idea on the fact that my friends and I used to sing songs from Les Miserables on the way home and the fact that I had a thing for Phantom of the Opera for a while back in the mid- to late nineties. I suppose I am more prone to enjoying musicals because I have a guilty secret love affair with Eurovision every year - my wife and I score them out of ten and actually ended up buying every CD between 2009 and 2012 (we also bought 2007 but not 2008). This would make us pretty sad individuals.

Would you like to know more?

Prog Rock Noodlings

Next up on our journey through things that are vaguely inspiring or beautiful or just rather nice to keep this place from being totally, and boringly, about beer is the, frankly, awesome Forever Autumn from the War of the Worlds double album.

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Music - Jean Michel Jarre is a fraud

When I think of beautiful music I think of the sort of thing that would make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up on end, the sort of music that would make me think of things beyond where I was. It transports me to somewhere, and often somewhen, else.

Would you like to know more?