All of the following were chosen by the prestige laden quorum that includes me and my winged teddy bear Pegasus. So let me take you by the hand and hold your head under the murkily putrescent waters of knowledge, wisdom and truth with the following electronic mini tome.
Everyone on this list is highly-recommended
and come with my shimmering stamp of
approval. One could say almost all these muchachas are pop-stars without being
popular, if that makes sense. Just a carefully collected bundle of stars that
I’ve gathered together in this particular constellation of harmonious glory.
#8 Fever Ray
Fever
Ray is the alter ego of Karin Dreijer
Andersson (who is half of the
incredibly wacky duo called The Knife
which also features her brother Olof
Dreijer), a singer who is known for her lyrics that are interesting to say
the least. Especially in a song called Pass This On, which has a spicy
undercarriage of implied incest. Edgy indeed. The album that this particular
song is off, is called Deep Cuts, and
it is a pulsating compendium of lust and heartache, with a fine dusting of
feminist undertones. These three come together into a musical milkshake, which
makes some people squirm, when you consider that these two are related, but eh,
eccentricity is a virtue.
Andersson is also known for her flamboyant live persona in
which she often rocks up on stage with some kind of obstacle obscuring her from
the audience, ranging from face paint and masks, to an entire screen which
coupled with her wildly varying vocal delivery creates a dramatically mystical
façade of wholesomeness. These idiosyncrasies also occur in public life in
which she often appears in public for interviews, like wearing a plague
doctor’s mask complete with a massive beak. How endearing!
Both her solo effort
(which is a lot more slower, and has less of the honkin’ and bonkin’ tunes of The Knife, but it’s good as it shows her
diverse inspirations and methods of concoction in the studio which are odd and
fantastic. Oddtastic), and the music she made with The Knife, are definitely something worth looking at as long as you
have a tolerance for the weird and the wacky. Which I guess stands as a caveat
for the rest of this article.
#7 Kate Nash
“I’m A Feminist, You’re Still A Whore”. If
ever there was a song title to capture the imagination and elicit a few
chuckles there you have it.
This girl’s predilections remind one so
much of Courtney Love, especially
during the early 90’s when Hole was
starting to be showered in the festive confetti they call fame. She is one of
the buccaneers in the seemingly never ending bull rush of a stampede, with the
name ‘indie pop/rock’ branded on it (although these days the term ’indie’ has
had its meaning diluted as indie appears to be the new mainstream).
She is quite special because her debutante
effort Made of Bricks, reached that
lofty celestial post of #1 on the charts (in her home country at least),
despite receiving almost no radio play until much later on. This in itself is astonishing and this is the
kind of pain a lot of metal bands could relate to. This meteoric rise was
helped in part by one of the grand daddies of the social network family, Myspace, which also helped luminaries such
as the Arctic Monkeys get themselves heard
midway through last decade. The prose of this lady’s lyrics is also tip-top
(introduction to article notwithstanding although it’s necessarily crass for
the sake of being crass like a poo floating in a urinal like a dinghy made of low
quality mahogany or something), and it’s a real talent to mix potty mouth and
pomp and strike the balance so as not to look like a chav and she does well in
this regard without being too loquacious or verbose. Well I think so anyway.
#6 PJ Harvey
A right polymath of the musical arts that
can play many different instruments to a degree of proficiency, Madam Harvey came to prominence in the
mid-nineties with her album To Bring You
My Love, one of a plethora of artists that came crashing and splashing into
our ears in the tsunami of alternative rock that was all the rage back then.
Her abilities as a musical whore have led
to her recording albums that sound drastically different to each other ranging
from electronica to folk (Folktronica? Eureka! I’m onto something. Wait, nope
it exists already. Fuck), and this kind
of diversity is something to be celebrated, as opposed to rehashing the same
thing over and over again which has led to some ostentatious recordings. Being another eccentric entry on this list,
she has gone through several stylistic changes in her live shows as well as her
musical produce, ranging from performing in a brassiere and knickers, to
dressing up like a painted, perfumed jezebel to match the changes she’s made
with her music too.
Her latest effort, Let England Shake, was a conquistador-like expedition into the
realm of folk music that was critical of the seemingly endless state of
hostilities in the Middle East, among other places and has a strong anti-war
sentiment.
My mate Robert Frost once said ‘A civilized society is one which
tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity’
and this quote is apropos to apply to PJ
Harvey, that sometimes you just have to wonder whether she’s lost her
biscuits or not, as she loves to flit between singing about sex or homicide or
something else ending in –cide. These points most saliently raise themselves in
the song Rid Of Me which comes off
her second album of the same name which was released during her lo-fi grunge
period and these lyrics go as follows;
I'll
tie your legs
Keep
you against my chest
Oh, you're not rid of me
Yeah, you're not rid of me
I'll make you lick my injuries
I'm gonna twist your head off, see
Oh, you're not rid of me
Yeah, you're not rid of me
I'll make you lick my injuries
I'm gonna twist your head off, see
How deliriously maniacal. Jolly good show.
Such lurid lyrics are sure to have you all getting randy and onanistic. Or
running to the hills.
#5 Chelsea Wolfe
Definitely the most Daedalian diva on the
list, Chelsea here is a difficult
one. Her brand of gothic/experimental/psychedelia mish-mash, are the prismatic
threads in the rich tapestry of her four albums that are definitely something
imaginative and wondrous that I’d like to see more of from singer-songwriter
types.
Her songs, and indeed her entire image, is
very dark and ominous. Ominous of what? I don’t know, but it’s profound. Black
ambience if you will. This ambience is brought about by the droning effect
brought on by the heavily distorted guitar effects and also a voice that’s been
modified by reverb pedals which gives off the effect of an apparition roaming
around in a haunted house in certain songs such as Halfsleeper. She hasn’t gone completely balls out like Lou Reed on his album Metal Machine Music (steaming, tightly
formed coil of horseshit it must be said), which of course is a good thing and
the similarities to the previously mentioned PJ Harvey are plain to see when you listen to them both with in a
small period of time. But like drinking Coke and Pepsi straight after each
other, you can notice a slight difference.
The fixation on death, dying and expiration
in her lyrics, is prevalent in many of her songs, but this comes about without
bleating like a raped lamb which you could common to most emo songs and that’s
what sets her on the other side of a fine line that separates the emo aesthetic
from the gothic one. Which can prove to be a very complicated and long winded thing
to explain. (No I’m not going to explain it here).
I can understand people mistaking her doomy
ambience as nothing but dull, thumping flatulence to the ears, but it’s more
profound than that. It’s painting a scene. A shadowy, atramentous soundscape to
evoke your emotions, like a mandrake being ripped screaming from the soil. Much
like Fever Ray, she has an aversion
to performing live, but unlike Fever Ray
this isn’t due to a TISM-esque general apathy of the whole music industry, but
rather due to an extreme case of stage-fright, and early in her career it
wasn’t uncommon to see her on stage with
a veil obscuring her visage.
#4 Fiona Apple
Sometimes something a little more piano
driven is exactly what you need in your particular circumstances. Most of Fiona
Apple’s work is controlled predominantly by her cascading piano tone, while
other instruments such as the guitar and the timpani (yes, timpani) take the
back seat. Despite being known for her onstage mental disintegration and
occasional philippic tirades about the state of the world and the music
business in general (pretty funny to watch I must say), her music is the
opposite of what her rambunctious demeanour might suggest. She also holds the
record for one of the most rambling song titles of all time which came shortly
after one of her widely televised rant at the VMA’s, so I’m going to assume it
was intended as a chutzpah loaded kick in the balls aimed squarely at the
society she is madly in anger with.
Ready? Her album Called:
“When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks like a King What He Knows
Throws the Blows When He Goes to the Fight and He'll Win the Whole Thing 'fore
He Enters the Ring There's No Body to Batter When Your Mind Is Your Might so
When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand and Remember That Depth Is the
Greatest of Heights and If You Know Where You Stand, Then You Know Where to
Land and If You Fall It Won't Matter, Cuz” (saving space with
colloquialisms like this is important you see) You'll Know
That You're Right is actually intended to be a short poem that just got
carried over and plastered on the front of an album. Wow.
Despite the knob-headed title, the album actually
isn’t too bad of a listen, and is a good introduction to the glottal depth of
her voice (for a female anyway), but my favourite album by her has a more
sensible title, called Extraordinary Machine. This is probably what I’d
show someone if I was to try to proselytize like a forceful missionary on a
musical mujahedeen and gain follows to the Holy Church of The Sacred Apple and
you know what? I’ve done exactly that for you to see her for yourselves.
Her latest album is completely stripped back from
the orchestral arrangements of her earlier work, but that doesn’t take anything
away from her, as we all know old-school punk is good fun for its basic nature.
(For the most part at least, because punk bands like Television
absolutely shred, but then we get into the nitty gritty of genre politics. Is
Art Punk real Punk? I’ll leave that to a profounder elucidator).
#3 Courtney Barnett
In rock’s current state of malaise and
dangling entropy, it has left a void, and as a result more members of the community
possessing two X -chromosomes have been picking up rosewood guitar necks and
getting involved, and this has resulted in unique exemplars such as our Courtney arising with their own unique
brand. Her kind of waffling delivery is
not too different to an English essay one would have written in Year 12 about
the juxtaposition of Shakespeare’s head to his own ass. (Only joking, it’s
actually enjoyable to listen to, especially in that ocker accent).
Her debut album is due to be released
sometime soon, last time I consulted the local haruspex clairvoyant, so all I
have to go off are a triumvirate of EP’s, one of which contained the
interesting breakout single Avant
Gardener. About an aborted attempt at trimming the hedges during an
obscenely hot summer’s day, which culminates in a hospital visit, but what
really gets me excited is the reference to Mia Wallace’s overkill on the
heroin. References to Pulp Fiction usually indicate a good sort. Perhaps as a
result of undiagnosed malevolent misanthropy I find this song relaxing and
somewhat hilarious.
Recent forays into America and the
motherland England will hopefully see her popularity continue to proudly sprout
like that Lotus Blossom I saw in the Kamasutra (I think it was a flower anyway),
and I guess her career is still young which probably explains why she is by far
the most underground musician on this list. But I have faith!
#2 Joanna Newsom
The dryad with the distinctively monumental
falsetto, coupled with her bucolic medieval sounding fingering of her harp, has
achieved the limelight through her bizarrely alluring style of folk music, and
harkens back to a time where peasants served their lords in the fields with the
ever looming threat of the bubonic plague and Genghis Khan lingered over their
heads.
One
needs to only listen to her music once to realise she is a one-of-a-kind, perfect
for a relaxing Sunday afternoon while it drizzles outside and your mate wants
to play chess with you. I can’t really state enough how much each one of her
music is sui generis in this modern age.
My guess is that her naturalism came from a widely publicised adventure
she had in her teens where she disappeared in the wilds of the willowwacks for
three days to be a hippy. I can confirm she wasn’t in the kaleidoscopic hamster
under the influence of acid at the time, but she came back a different person.
Her first album showcased her voice to the
world in the song named Sadie, where
she wastes no time ripping into her chipmunk like falsetto. Gives me the chills
every time. Almost like the first time I heard Geddy Lee of Rush’s
voice. Met it with total bemusement, but eventually came to accept it into my
home like a stray puppy with the mange.
In summation, her unique styles come
together to make what the propeller heads in the business call Psychedelic Folk, which seems apt after
several listens of her entire catalogue.
#1 Kate Bush
Why this lustrous Madonna isn’t up in the
higher echelons of the firmament of public consciousness in the same way insufferable
cunts like Britney Spears are, I’ll never know. And every time I think about it
too much, it brings me to a crescendo of tears. I guess it’s partially/entirely
her own fault, as this year she’s performing her first live shows in over 30
years, but then again The Beatles
weren’t really known for their love of touring all places from Atlanta to
Aleppo, so these gripes are just mere fissures in her very solid core of
talent.
Acting in my eyes as a sort of female, Serj Tankian (or maybe Serj Tankian is a male Kate Bush. Oh! The
possibilities are endless!), this strain of the galloping crazies is no better
exemplified than on her album The
Dreaming, which needs to be heard to be believed, as it’s one of the most
dada things I’ve ever heard (that is to say really fucking good. Really. Go
listen to it right now).
The themes are broad, ranging from the
plight of the Aboriginals to cognitive dissonance in regards to religion.
Interestingly enough, superhero guitarist David
Gilmour of Pink Floyd royalty is
featured on the album, but only provides his voice for background vocals which
is exactly like getting a combine harvester to trim a bonsai tree. Gilmour was
also the one responsible for bringing her into the musical side of life when
she was sixteen (I’m going to hope he didn’t have romantic intentions when he
performed this kind favour. Bad Davey!). It was this kind of experimental alchemy that
paved the way for artists that didn’t really fit into the carefully crafted
plutonium box of what pop should be to still gain a degree of fame.
Her vocal range can be seen at its absolute
apogee on the song Wuthering Heights,
which no doubt everyone has heard in some place or another, and this was
actually her first song and the music video accompanying the single also
features her psychotic method of interpretive dance which I personally think is
cracking. One of the most criminally underrated artisans of all time male,
female, androgen or clothed chimp, Kate definitely deserves a listen and if
you’re feeling charitable maybe even a second listen.