Raspberry Beret

WHO: Singer-songwriter, debut album released 2010 - but I really only know this and his covers of Steve Winwood’s Higher Love (schmaltzy but good) and Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game (used in GoT, less good). 

WHAT: Hipsterish, but still warm and uplifting - kind of like a very commercial, poppy James Blake. Apparently this is a new R&B-influenced direction for him - his other stuff is much more folksy. 

WHEN: Lead single from third eponymous album released July 2016. 

WHERE: Hails from Ireland. 

...asking me if I was still blogging. 

Posting one of twelve-year-old me’s favourite songs, in honour of the 90s throwback YA literary salon I attended last night, starring Ann M Martin, genius creator and author of The Baby-Sitters’ Club. 

Ingenious, insidious, under-your-skin creepy: a gorgeous, dreamy, sick feast for the eyes.

This was playing in the car when I arrived back home in Suffolk to see my little sister and her even smaller daughter. 

This is such a Lady Bakewell song. 

That pseudo-U2 intro. The perky, 80s party vibe. Relentless sunshine, breezing through Lionel Richie and Huey Lewis and the News, parties and nostalgia and zero shame about cheesiness or optimism. 

My little sister has a tendency to overuse certain emoticons; the kissy smiley face and the triumphant fist. 

Possibly one of the best openers to an album in recent years.

Yes, it’s total drivetime AOR, but when that stuff’s done well, it’s gooooood.

Sprawling, generous and expansive, this track is like a hug, or a journey, or a dance. It sweeps you up and kisses you hard and takes you with it, effortlessly.

I love this. Fell right into my ears at the perfect time. 

Early hours of the morning on Tuesday 5th April. Dozing, but not dreaming yet. Only dimly aware of the gentle strains of Jason Isbell lulling me to sleep.

It’s the first time in a long time that I’m unable to sleep, not because I’m stressed, or because something feels “off”, but because I am *excited*.

Work is hard and demanding but ridiculously rewarding and stimulating. Life is weird, and surprising and changing. Everyone’s fucking getting married or getting divorced or having epiphanies or winning awards or finding their feet or falling in love or buying houses or leaving home. Everyone around me is working their socks off to make stuff happen. My niece is about to start talking any day now. Every single day leaves me exhausted and laughing.  

And I was just drifting off, hearing this track playing, sinking into absurd dreams about manuscripts and tigers and friends’ weddings and parties... 

The strings kick in on the second minute, and they stirred me out of my haze. I became acutely aware of where I was in that moment, lying in bed, happy and busy and with no life plan ahead of tomorrow.

The song grew. The drums kicked it. The strings soared. The guitar wailed. 

And it hit me like a hurricane. 

Joy. But also fear. And excitement. And extreme grief. Leaving one life and launching into another, with no parachute. 

It’s not often I agree with The Daily Telegraph. But what Nathan Rabin wrote about this track, crowning it #1 of the 50 Best Duets Ever in the newspaper’s 2003 list, is spot on.

One of the strangest, druggiest, most darkly sexual songs ever written - ambitious, beautiful and unforgettable...  Hazlewood and Sinatra sound like they don’t inhabit the same universe, let alone the same song. Over loping spaghetti-Western guitar, Hazlewood sings of Greek mythology and “some velvet morning when I’m straight,” while Sinatra coos about flowers and daffodils in a stoned haze against a backdrop of bubblegum psychedelia. “Some Velvet Morning” sounds like two songs spliced together by a madman, or an avant-garde short film in song form.

One of my favourite songs. 

Ever.

This morning (Sun 3rd April), someone - whose taste and judgement I respect, admire and chime with - demanded I sit down and listen to Eddie Vedder’s vocal on this and be suitably moved and awed by it. 

Of course, I refused, shrugging my shoulders in a non-committal fashion, and reaffirming my long-standing tribal allegiance to Nirvana. 

Childish, I know. On all counts.

But I hate HATE being told what to think or how to react to a piece of music/cinema/theatre/art - even if I agree with every breath of what the person is saying. So I couldn’t acknowledge it then. 

But now, on my own, revisiting this again, I can sit here and admit that, yes, there are fast, fleeting moments in this track where Eddie Vedder gives me the chills. (2:08: I’ll ride the wave, where it takes me/I’ll hold the pain, release me)

On Saturday 2nd April, I was lucky enough to be invited to a test run of Sedos’s Such Stuff, a wildly inventive and ambitious immersive production of The Tempest, written and directed by @badlydrawndrownedman and directed by @priceyc.I won’t say too much for fear of spoiling things...but seriously, if you have tickets, you are in for a treat.

This song belongs to that afternoon, and to a gorgeous moment where, having finally broken away from the audience gathered in one of the main spaces, I headed off to explore on my own. To my delight, I arrived in a place, beautifully constructed but inaccessible, and across the way, saw another group of audience members, eyes fixed on two performers engaged in a lyrical, romantic dance, while this music played in the background. 

I swear, it gave my heart a little flutter.

I desperately wanted to get closer to those mysterious characters dancing, yet could not work out how to get there in time - and besides, I was enjoying the strangeness of seeing them, and their spectators, from this serendipitous angle. 

That mix of excitement and surprise and frustration - all soundtracked by a lush, dreamy song...

Can are one of those bands I know I’ve got to get into sooner or later, if only on the strength of this track. Sexy, shuffly, latin-influenced beats; a distant, almost slurry vocal; dreamy, hazy production - and the whole thing treads this remarkably fine line between sounding super-chilled and incredibly sinister.