Song of the day – 402: Tashaki Miyaki

One of my favourite QLD writers, Bianca Valentino linked me to this.

Their sound is lovely. They bring the whole … insert your favourite band here: you can say Giant Drag and I’ll say Madder Rose; you can say Dum Dum Girls or Best Coast and I’ll say She And Him or La Sera; you can cite Crocodiles and I’ll stretch back deep into time and recall the softer side of Shop Assistants … approach to old soul standards. Sam Cooke. Everly Brothers. Teen Commandments (obscure joke: not really relevant). Guess it depends what trips your trigger. Psychedelic shoegaze, some call it. I don’t recall shoegazing bands ever being so hot on the tunes (or vocals). Personally, I – and half of 2011 from the looks of it – am a sucker for that deep relentless Velvet Underground drum sound and reverb-laden female vocals that immediately summon up ennui, melancholy and too many wastrel afternoons spent agonising over the words of Sylvia Plath. Frankly, I ain’t yet reached my limit for this sound, especially when accompanied by world-weary, gorgeously inflamed, harmonies and it doesn’t feel like I’m anywhere near reaching it either. My wife, on the other hand, just remarked that the following sounds like two different songs playing simultaneously …

That’s not so bad, is it? I recall the time when I was sent that Flaming Lips album that required playing on four CD-players minimum simultaneously – and so I did, on all four levels of my Brighton house, loud. I couldn’t get them to play in sync though, and maybe that’s what my wife is referring to here: like watching a dubbed film where the lip movements are a fraction of a second behind the sound. I rather like the effect.

Here, listen for yourself.

You can pre-order the debut album here. I doubt it will disappoint (and that, of course, is worrying in itself). There again, this is an obvious music so what the hell is wrong with being obvious when you play it?

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Here are the Californian two-piece themselves, in interview with Bianca.

Please tell me about your songwriting partnership, how did you go about crafting songs for your self-titled EP?
Lucy: For the EP songs, I wrote them on acoustic guitar… I find it to be a great instrument to write on … so I wrote them and would bring the skeletons of songs to Rocky and he would create some amazing guitar part. Usually I have an idea about the rhythm. We generally try to play to the vocal melody, but there were one or two tracks we tried a few different ways before settling on something. We also write together right on the spot, or sometimes Rocky will write a riff and send it to me and I’ll add melody and lyrics… it really just depends on the song.

How do you know when a song you’ve written is complete?
Lucy: You just know. You know when it feels right.

Rocky: I guess when we record it? But maybe not even then.

How did you come to cover the Everly Brothers’ ‘All I Have To Do Is Dream’, Buddy Holly’s ‘Heartbeat’ and Sam Cooke’s ‘Nothing Can Change This Love’? I’m detecting a love of music from the 50s?

Lucy: There is a definite love of music from the 50s but it wasn’t planned that way…we love covers and have been working out some new ones from Bowie to Dylan to Nirvana. We were jamming a Blink 182 song recently with our friends who are in another band and it was really cool. We like all kinds of music. We aren’t really purists or anything.

Rocky: We love all kinds of stuff. I think it was just easier to learn the lyrics to ‘Dream’ as opposed to say, Jay-Z’s 99 ‘Problems’.

Read more of this interview here.

*See how I managed to get through the whole article without mentioning the debut Mary Chain album once? Oops.

by Everett True

My name is Everett True. I am a music critic. This is what I do. I criticise music. The clue is in my job description – music critic. I do not consider myself a journalist, as I do not research or report hard news. I do not consider myself a commentator as I believe that everyone should be a participant. I criticise people and in return I am not surprised if other people criticise me. It is part of the whole deal of being in the public arena. I am Everett True. Believe in me and I have power like a God. Quit believing in me and I no longer exist.