Decoy’s Completely Biased Non-Definitive Guide To Music
Have a Musical Christmas
This came out around the time I was getting into Low, which is cool because it has stayed one of my favourite albs/EPs of theirs. I actually noticed “Just Like Christmas” being used in an ad on TV the other day, and I thought: Oh well, it’s only taken people 12 years to wise up to what a great band they are, and what a great song it is. Better late than never, I suppose…
Queen – A Kind of Magic (1986)
Queen took prog’s cerebral bookish head and reattached it to its body, then gave it a nervous system via strong melodies delivered with a maximum of passion and heart-pumping surges of adrenal energy. In doing so they managed to create a unique style of rock/pop with brawn and brains…
Suzanne Vega – Solitude Standing (1987)
She’s the kind of artist I imagine who has some pretty devoted (read: borderline obsessive) fans who debate the definitions and decipher her imagery ’til dawn. And good on ‘em, but it’s not for me. These days I tend to leave her on in the background, like ambient music, and fill the room with that aromatic Vega vapour and just breathe it…
Róisín Murphy – Overpowered (2007)
Whether it’s the hot lava landscape of “Cry Baby”, or the sweat-soaked swamps of “Primitive”, or the dark neon city of “Overpowered”, or the icy caverns of “Scarlet Ribbon”, or the urban fast-lane of “Movie Star”, or the oceanic pulses of “Checkin’ On Me”, or one of the other extrasolar songs on this album, they will all lure you at some point. And once crash-landed, you may debate whether to try and escape at all…
The Afghan Whigs – Gentlemen (1993)
This became a private soundtrack to many nights, alone, staying up late, reading, thinking, staring at the carpet, holding mental court over various recriminations. The album is one long confessional…a conceptual ode to the id. Greg Dulli is having it out with himself, never sparing his psyche, which may be ready to collapse, or perhaps through the furnace of these songs rise up and Phoenix from the flames…
Radio Free Metropolis (or Show Me The Monáe)
Janelle Monáe has something she wants to say, and it’s an empowering message of love and empathy (laced with a subtext that raises cautionary questions about our behaviour in the future…)
RIP…
If you don’t know them, get on Google and find out, and seek out the music – because each of these artists laid down some impressive work. From the avant-garde to classic-rock radio, in no particular order, let’s raise our glasses to the following cool cats…
Röyksopp – Senior (2010)
Last year when Norwegian electro-duo Röyksopp released their 3rd album, Junior, they were obviously continuing the development of 2005’s The Understanding, which was a more synth-pop orientated sound than their 2001 debut Melody A.M. That tasty first album was adding dimension to the ambient electronic landscape mapped by Warp label operatives like Aphex Twin, Autechre and Boards of Canada…
The Sisters of Mercy – Floodland (1987)
I would not be surprised in the slightest if Andrew Eldritch outlives us all. If vampiric rockstars do exist outside of Anne Rice, there’s no question that he is our prime suspect. Secretly watching countless waves of us come and go as our civilisations fall, and noting indifferently, in his ageless whisper: ‘I hear empire down’…
Barry White – Stone Gon’ (1973)
If I needed another reason to dig this album, just get a load of that cover, the ambient/sci-fi/prog undertones were superbly visualised here with Barry looking like some intergalactic prophet of love, beamed down from Venus to rescue the human race from an unfeeling future of empty detachment and soulless internet porn. Right on, Barry, right on…
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