SEVEN NOISES

The Vivian Girls have been lucky. They got a lot of media attention with a couple of singles and one LP and they probably were the first ones who didn't expected. Their music is simple, they don't offer anything new or different from many other bands but they make songs that stay with you forever after a couple of listenings. And they have been touring since they started playing. I was lucky to see them in their first ever non USA gig here in London and the gig was fun even they were incredibly nervous and couldn't believe they were here.
Between gig and gig they have already managed to record their second album to be released later this year. And this single, not sure if it's going to be included in their new record, has been put out this week. And as with many of the new songs I heard at that gig, they have put the tempo a bit down and I have to say it works so well with them. These two songs are the closest they've been to a ballad and are also two of the best tunes they have done.

Released 11/05/09


Vivian Girls - Moped Girls.mp3

I never was a Belle and Sebastian fan. Actually I never payed much attention to them as I used to hate their fans. Sometimes it takes something as stupid as this not to like a band but this was the case until long after they stopped making any good albums, by the time of their fourth I think, that a friend of mine insisted I should listen carefully to the red album (Belle and Sebastian fans don't call their albums by their names, they do it by the colour of the covers and they also used to wear shirts and ties in Spanish summer festivals at more than 40 degrees) and I really enjoyed it but never aroused my curiosity to check the rest of the records. But now, Stuart Murdoch has a new project, God help the Girl, and I felt I could give it a try. And it feels so Belle and Sebastian from the beginning; the cover is 100% his style, two melancholic girls thinking, but this time is not monochrome, the same as the song on the A side, Come Monday Night, full of string arrangements, pretty 60s sunshine pop with female vocals, pretty catchy and beautiful and pretty "red album though" which I think it's good. The B side though, Howard Jones Is My Mozart, is the most experimental you can imagine this guy to be, being a kind of recited diary page of one of the melancholic girls of the cover, I imagine, with different musical parts of different styles, sometimes more folky, sometimes more jazzy but interesting anyway. And yes, all the songs in this project are going to be sung by girls, none by him, and are supposed to be the soundtrack of a musical film.
Who knows, maybe one of these days I'll try to listen to another colour...