A Head Full of Wishes is a site for Galaxie 500, Luna, Damon & Naomi, Dean & Britta and Dean Wareham. With news, articles and lists of releases and past and future shows.
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A Head Full of Wishes newsletter #42
I’m throwing this together a bit late so it might be a little lighter than usual. No real reason.
Yesterday I went to The Tyneside Cinema to see a preview of the very enjoyable new Wings documentary Man on the Run which I think will be on Amazon in a couple of weeks. Anyone who’s followed AHFoW for any length of time might already have encountered just how highly I regard Macca’s post-Beatles work!
Tomorrow Whitelands are playing in Newcastle in support of their very excellent Sunlight Echoes.
AHFoW upcoming anniversaries
- This week in 2005 Luna were wrapping up the end of their first phase. In next week’s Tuesday post I look at how the end of Luna, and the future of it’s members looked at the time:
https://open.substack.com/pub/aheadfullofwishes/p/the-end-of-luna-2005?r=2bfyn9&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
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At the end of February in 1992 I encountered the (well at least my) beginning of Luna’s phase one when they played at The Underworld in London - you can read about it, and listen to two different recordings of it, on AHFoW. While in town they also recorded their only Peel session.
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In February 1990 Galaxie 500 played at Maxwell’s in NJ, I shared that recording a few years back and can still be grabbed from here (mp3)
My record collection [327] Cheval Sombre - Mad Love (promo CD)
This is the third copy of Cheval Sombre’s second album Mad Love, this time a promo CD in a plastic wallet with a plain black and white insert.
I can’t actually remember but I think this must have been sent to me by Nat at Sonic Cathedral ahead of the album’s release. I’m not sure there’s too much more I can add so let’s look at what other folk had to say…
Although Kember's trademark floaty production sound is omnipresent at the forefront throughout, its Porpora's disconsolate vocal performance that steals the show. Even when Mad Love gathers an upbeat momentum, as on the terse rhapsody 'I Fell In Love', a crescendo of weeping violins steal the pleasantries before a lonely voice declares insidiously "Don't matter to me if she stays".
Dom Gourlay - Drowned in Sound (November 2012)
It will take one listen to grasp the loping feel and defeated sentiments of Mad Love, and a few dozen more to reveal the hidden importance of all the parts, the pacing and changes. Porpora has managed an album that is at points a tiny bit distressing, yet it offers sweet refuge from the uneasiness he himself creates.
Barnaby Smith - The Quietus (November 2012)
A continually evolving amalgam of influences and sonic oddities, it slowly creeps into the subconscious, unsettling and calming as it works its magic. The trance like state it provokes is not the most comfortable admittedly, but then love is not always an easy ride.
Sam Shepherd - musicomh.com (October 2012)
Definitely a beautiful album but its hopelessness is never-ending, like a friend telling you their relationship troubles for hours and hours.
Rebecca Schiller - NME (October 2012)
The languid mood is captured perfectly on ‘Walking In The Desert’ – which sounds like the best song Dean Wareham’s never written – on which Porpora sings “I’m tired of looking around”, and then again on the 10 minute ‘Couldn’t Do’ which vibes on a one-chord riff and spacey electronics yet doesn’t outstay its sleepy welcome.
Andrew Hannah - The Line of Best Fit
- Catalogue Number: AHFOW 10/018
- Artist: Cheval Sombre
- Title: Mad Love
- Notes: promo
- Format: CD
- Buy ‘Mad Love’ on Bandcamp
Previously in my record collection:
My record collection [328] Damon & Naomi - Playback Singers (CD)
Playback Singers was Damon & Naomi’s third album, released on Sub Pop in the US and Rykodisc in Europe. This is a rarity in the series (possibly unique) in being a studio album by one of the main acts that only appears once. That is because sadly, Playback Singers has never had a vinyl release (and I never got sent, or bought, a promo - although there is one on Discogs atm…).
Playback Singers was the first album Damon and Naomi recorded without Kramer at the helm, it was recorded in their home studio - they had initially been uncertain about the feasibility of that:
...when [Masaki] Batoh from Ghost first visited us, he stepped in the living room, clapped his hands to hear the echo and said, 'I want to record here!' At the time we thought it was a charming but unrealistic idea...
Damon Krukowski (subpop.com, 1998)
Everything on Playback Singers was played and recorded by Damon and/or Naomi in their living room “for an audience consisting solely of their cat (and even she mysteriously disappeared during the recording of the drum tracks)”.
The album has a new recording of In The Sun that had first appeared on their first post-Galaxie release Pierre Etoile although this time Naomi sings. It also has a cover of Ghost’s Awake in a Muddle and Tom Rapp’s Translucent Carriages the first encounters we have with acts that would play a significant part in Damon & Naomi’s progression,
The album’s title Playback Singers is a reference to the artists who perform the soundtrack in Indian cinema - they are never seen on the screen, having the actors lip-synch to the songs - but, unlike in western cinema, they are always credited which means that they are as much stars and household names as the on-screen talent.
On the promo website for the album Damon & Naomi wrote about listening to Indian music while making the album:
As our new album title might indicate, we have been listening to a lot of Indian movie music lately, especially from the 1950s and 60s -- there is a multi-volume history from EMI called "Play Back: the 50 Melodious Years," with enough melody for at least the entire century. Among the women singers perhaps we love Asha Bhosle best, and among the men Mahendra Kapoor. He is very suave. They sing duets on many tracks, including our most favorite soundtrack (with music by Ravi), "Gumrah." We asked a Hindi speaker what this title means, and he said, "Sadness." No wonder!
Sub Pop / Damon & Naomi website 1998
Here’s Mahendra Kapoor and Asha Bhosle singing while Sunil Dutt and Mala Sinha are on screen:
I have grown up watching Indian cinema, my mum was Anglo-Indian and raised in Calcutta/Kolkata until she moved to the UK when she was 20… although I must admit to only gaining an appreciation of it in my later adulthood.
Despite the many years of exposure I have barely scratched the surface of Indian cinema, but here’s one of my fave songs/performances, this is from the cracking 1956 crime thriller C.I.D. - it features actor Johnny Walker lip-synching to Mohammed Rafi and Kumkum lip-synching to Geeta Dutt
I’m not sure there is a great deal of Indian classical music influence on Playback Singers… except perhaps Naomi’s use of the Sruti box and Harmonium - I think when they played the 12 Bar in March 1997 Naomi brought her Sruti box, she then started bringing the Harmonium until that got replaced by the Nord keyboard.
- Catalogue Number: AHFOW 10/116
- Artist: Damon & Naomi
- Title: Playback Singers
- Format: CD
- Buy ‘Playback Singers’ on Bandcamp
That’s it for this week - tune in next week for the end of Luna!