This punk pop-influenced Danish trio might bring to mind the Vines or the Fratellis. Their second album tones down the anger some from the debut and polishes up the sound and the hooks–possibly disappointing some of their more punk-leaning fans, but hey–a band’s got to survive to be relevant, right?
One thing is clear: the album’s first single, “Harlem”–about a fling singer David Boyd had with a girl from Spanish Harlem–is a rousing, contagious bit of fun. And so is the video.
Funnily enough, I was just recently thinking (and feeling a little guilty for) how little use I have for Bonnie Raitt’s particular brand of roots rock. I always feel a twinge of guilt when I’m not partial to a critical favorite–like there must be something I’m missing or am too uncouth to appreciate. But no, I’m pretty comfortable with the idea of not loving “Love Sneakin’ Up on You”, and can live quite happily without Raitt’s slide guitar-infused covers of “Right Down the Line”, “You Got It” and “Thing Called Love”–I prefer the original in each case.
However…
I’ve been exposed to a most non-Raitt sounding Raitt song continually over a period of months via the loop of easy listening pop that plays where I work. And one day it finally hit me what a beautiful song I was listening to. To be honest, I was pretty sure it wasn’t Bonnie Raitt but k.d. lang I was listening to. To me at least, “Fearless Love” sounds exactly like something from lang’s excellent Ingenue album. The quietly affecting melody, the unusual chorus harmonies, most definitely the arrangement–even Raitt’s singing all mimic lang on this song. It’s uncanny actually.
It’s nice to be wrong once in a while. Doesn’t make me love the rest of Bonnie’s catalogue any more than I already don’t. But for these four minutes, the lady has surprised and delighted me.
Come my love Come bravely to me Let your heart be still
For our time Has come my tender one To be free of will
And fly Blind on fearless love Let them wild winds blow
We’ll shine On all we’re fearful of Then we’ll let it go
Skippin’ stones Across the great unknown Safe at water’s edge
Don’t look down, baby We’re gonna leave this losin’ town Leap out from the ledge
And fly Blind on fearless love Let them wild winds blow
We’ll shine On all we’re fearful of Then we’ll let it go
Fly Blind on fearless love Let them wild winds blow
We’ll shine On all we’re fearful of Then we’ll let it go Let it go
Sometimes it just works out that one of an artist’s best works never follows one of the paths through to legacy status. People who either actually owned Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album on vinyl or are big enough fans to have purchased it in a more recent format probably agree that the album-opening “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding” medley is among Sir Elton’s finest moments.
Similarly, “Fire on High”, the instrumental curtain-raiser on ELO’s fine 1975 release Face the Music, is a definitive Jeff Lynne/ELO song.
But the two major threads a pop song can follow to a timeless popular status (think “Bohemian Rhapsody” or “Hotel California”) are continued radio airplay and inclusion on Best-of compilations. And although “Fire on High” got FM airplay in its day (as opposed to actual top 40 radio airplay, which was on the AM dial in 1975) you don’t really hear it on the oldies formats today. And as for being included on greatest hits collections, well, since it was never a single in the first place, the people who compile such collections don’t seem to think it merits inclusion.
In other words, ELO fans from back in the day most likely remember it. But to the younger generation fans–those who came to the band via a greatest hits collection or digital downloads of such perennials as “Mr. Blue Sky” and “Don’t Bring Me Down”–this is probably unfamiliar. If so, enjoy! And do check out the catalog further. Face the Music, A New World Record and Out of the Blue represent the band’s peak. And all three contain great album tracks to be explored.
Electric Light Orchestra were much more than their hit singles.
In his early days, before he became associated with the “greeting card pop” of “Leader of the Band”, “Longer”, and “Same Auld Lang Syne” Dan Fogelberg was a credible album artist with a musical kinship to the Eagles, America and Jackson Browne.
Guest artists his first few albums included Don Henley, Joe Walsh, Glenn Frey, Randy Meisner, Graham Nash and Chris Hillman. Fogelberg opened concerts for Van Morrison.
Like John Denver, with whom he shared an appeal that never carried overseas to the European market, Fogelberg’s seemed to create his own inimitable genre of folk-infused California rock (even though he wasn’t from California). Once in a while a banjo even came to the fore, just as on early Eagles albums. “Morning Sky” might be a side of Dan you either haven’t heard or had forgotten about.
Nashville power poppers The Shazam can rock it out (see below) but are equally adept with a melancholy melody and pensive lyric. This one sounds like a lost Badfinger song to me.
This is pretty honest stuff. A love song about the nuts-and-bolts, every day slog that love usually ends up being. How rare is a song that, rather than taking the tact of idealizing love, incorporates it into the fabric of mundane, un-ideal everyday existence…
David Ramirez has realistic expectations–just a determined hope that there’s more pretty than gritty to it all. It isn’t what we’re used to in a love song. It almost rings too true.
Rob Montague’s video is every bit as honest and slice-of-life as the song’s sentiments–a perfect tact to take here.
Every Moment Has A Song 