Melissa Waterfiel, one of The Mold Ones moderators arranged another birthday/project/present for The Mild Ones. This time for Suede wonderful bassist Mat Osman.
We both picked Europe Is Our Playground for the project. Both in it’s full instrumental version – Melissa – and just the baseline – me.
From Ohio to Portugal the World is Our Playground. 🙂
Here’s what Melissa wrote on the Mild Ones Facebook :
“🎶Happy Birthday Mat🥳🎂🎶
Europe Is Our Playground…….
“One of the most beautiful Suede songs written by our favorite birthday bassist inspired Raquel Pinheiro and I to collaborate on this celebration video for his special day. Raquel combined her amazing photos of Porto with Mat’s bass line while I used photos from my European adventures to see Suede💙 So grateful to Mat and Suede for motivating me to travel more and to go from 🎶Heathrow to Hounslow🎶😉 Wishing Mat a birthday as wonderful as he is!!!!”
The Age of Everything, Johnny Marr’s fifth solo studio album came out a week ago.
It’s the first album in a very long time I felt like writing about. Even more surprising, because it’s the first of Johnny’s solo albums I fully click and resonate with.
I danced to it from beginning to end. Sang along to it. Picked up the guitar and strummed something out of pure joy. Played air drums again.
The Age of Everything made me to want to write pop, catchy songs and have a band again.
I like everything on the album. The music, the voice, the production, the mix, the lyrics, the backing vocals – they are absolutely stunning – the cover, the fact that if not all, many or most of the guitars Johnny plays were gone on his Christie’s auction held September 17.
I like that as Johnny put it “Sharp, fast and dynamic, filled with ideas and possibilities.” Particularly the full of possibilities part.
The songs on The Age Of Everything were written in London – you can feel the city bursting through them – developed on the road on tour on the East Coast of North America – there’s a certain East Coast flavour too – and recorded in Manchester at Crazy Face Factory – Johnny’s custom build studio and creative space.
The Age Of Everything is a fresh, danceable, guitar driven with great drums and bass, elegant, pop album with a big sound. Not exactly a wall of sound, more of an expansive fell-good vibe of sound.
There are very audible guitar nudges and lines to Johnny’s trademark guitar playing in The Smiths. Particularly in It’s Time, Ophelia, In And Out of Love, But they are layered with other guitars, and instruments transforming them into their own thing.
My favourite song from the album is the final one, All in a Life.
I deliberately wanted my words about The Age of Everything to be published after the official release. I wanted to let it wrap me, feel it, absorb it. Give it time. The Age of Everything is not an album for a day, or week, or a month. I suspect it’s an album I will be returning to often.
Which fits the idea behind the album, that in the age of everything is immediately available. Which can be overwhelming, and asking for an immediate response. There’s endless benefits of technology, but there’s also value in taking our time.
The Age of Everything Tracklist: 1. Spin 2. Beyond the Rain 3. It’s Time 4. How Come 5. Ophelia 6. That Feeling 7. In and Out of Love 8. Just Once More 9. Fire with Fire 10. All in a Life
Personnel: Johnny Marr: vocals, guitars, songwriting, production James Doviak,: guitar, keyboards, co-writing, production Iwan Gronow: bass Jack Mitchell: drums Meredith Sheldon: backing vocals Nile Marr: backing vocals Claudius Mittendorfer: mix Frank Arkwright: mastering
Recorded at Crazy Face Factory, Manchester; and Mastered at Abbey Road Studios, London.
The Age of Everything is released by New Voodoo Limited/BMG
Coming Back To The Foundations of The Listening Room HQ my new post on The Listening Room HQ, my men’s practice – and The Polymath sister site – is a return to its fundamentals. Stabilize and Deepen, in a somatic practice of attention rooted in neuroscience, intuition and lived experience that offers with Sessions for Men, and Maps & Readings for everyone. Coming Back To The Foundations of The Listening Room HQ can be read on the Listening Room HQ site.
My radio show Amazing Songs & Other Delights is on edition #100 – The Poetry edition II is broadcasted Monday 05 & 12 October, 3-4pm (London time) on Yé Yé Radio: yeyeradio.com (or on the app).
I love poetry. Two recent birthday projects/presents by The Mild Ones. one for Brett Anderson’s birthday, the other for Richard Oakes’ birthday have me reading poetry. On the second instance The House Martin purpose written haiku by me for Richard.
There have been poems of mine put to music by among others, Francisco Silva (Old Jerusalem/The June Carriers/Velho Homem) and João Diogo Zagalo (Silver & Scout, Vox Mambo, Dead Violets, The Lone Ranger) and my Poem #80 turned into the song Lucid One by Francisco Silva.
Amazing Songs & Other Delights #100 – The Poetry edition II has my own poetry sang by others, said/read my me, changed into a song
The Latin word for poem is carmen, hence Bizet’s Carmen in the voice of Maria Callas.
William Blake serves the lyrics of The Doors’ End of the Night, is named in The The’s Some Days I Drink My Coffee By The Grave of William Blake, and the inspiration subject of Patti Smith’s My Blakean Year.
Lorca comes in Leonard Cohen’s adaptation of Lorca’s Pequeño vals vienés, Take This Waltz. One of my favourite poems T.S. Eliot’s The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock is on Sibylle Baier’s Says Elliott.
Eminem’s Stan (Long Version) ft. Dido, and Rowland S Howard’s Autoluminescent gives another dimension of poetry and sounds.
Dietrich Fischer Dieskau singing Der Lindenbaum (The Linden Tree) from Schubert’s Die Winterreise (Winter Journey) a dark folk song by Wilhelm Müller arranged by Friedrich Silche, takes us back to the classical world.
The House Martin, and haiku for Richard Oakes by Raquel Pinheiro
In the cliff and the cave The House Martin nested Then, to the city it moved to
Tracklist: 01: Raquel Pinheiro – Autopsicografia (Fernando Pessoa) 02: Maria Callas – Carmen live (from Bizet’s Carmen) 03: Marianne Faithfull & Warren Ellis – Ozymandias (an adaptation of Shelley’s poem) 04: The Doors – End of the Night (lyrics from William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence) 05: Suede – Heroine (Byron’s She Walks in Beauty 1st lines) 06: Francisco Silva & Raquel Pinheiro – Lucid One 07: Eminem – Stan (Long Version) ft. Dido 08: Francisco Silva & Raquel Pinheiro – Poem 43 09: The The – Some Days I Drink My Coffee By The Grave of William Blake 10: Patti Smith – My Blakean Year 11: Leonard Cohen – Take This Waltz (an adaptation of Lorca’s Pequeño vals vienés) 12: Rowland S Howard – Autoluminescent 13: João Diogo Zagalo & Raquel Pinheiro – Poem 51 14: Sibylle Baier – Says Elliott (lines from T.S. Eliot’s The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock) 15: Dietrich Fischer Dieskau sings Der Lindenbaum from Schubert’s Die Winterreise (Wilhelm Müller arranged by Friedrich Silche) 16: Johnny Marr – All in a Life 17: Raquel Pinheiro – The House Martin, an haiku for Richard Oakes
Good morning with our Middle of the Week Song – And God Saw by Linus + Bonnie “Prince” Billy from the album The Outsider – The Music of Jules de Corte. Have a nice day.
Melissa Waterfield, one of The Mild Ones moderators had a challenge. A birthday project/present for Richard Oakes, Suede’s guitarist.
Part of what Melissa wrote on the Mild Ones Facebook: “Raquel Pinheiro and I were inspired by hearing of Richard’s appreciation for birds, an appreciation that we share, and decided upon this collaboration of field recordings, a Haiku, and her original piece to commemorate his 50th year🎂”
My original piece is called Richard’s Theme, and the Haiku, written on purpose for Richard, The House Martin.
The House Martin
In the cliff and the cave The House Martin nested Then, to the city it moved to
Carlos Paredes – Verdes Anos. From Paulo Rocha’s 1963 film. Verdes Anos. An instrumental piece in which the Mestre and his Portuguese guitar carry the atmosphere without needing words.
Paradise Lost – The Last Time From by beloved album of theirs Draconian Times. Heavy, dark and beautifully atmospheric, with that particular sense of weight and beat that Paradise Lost can create.
Ethel Ennis – Dreamer Dreamer From the album Lullabies for Losers. A voice carrying longing and vulnerability with extraordinary warmth upon an arrowing musical background.
Hildegard von Bingen – Ave GenerosaMusic from the twelfth century, luminous and otherworldly. Hildegard is also one of my main inspirations and central to The Polymath
