Fool on the hill

A few days ago I watched one of the Steve Carrell's films, Dinner for Schmucks which is actually a remake of the 1998 french film Le diner de cons. It proved to be better than my expectations were. No doubt that I really like his acting, both in The office and in his films, but did not expect such a cool story and nice atmosphere. It is really a sweet film - and funny as well.

Its soundtrack, which we can hear in the perfect mice-dream-world intro and the closing title is Beatles' Fool on the hill. For a very long time I haven't heard such a clever and witty lyrics. This beautiful song was perfectly suitable for the film, and, if we are from the same kind, hearing these words can be a delight for our souls.

Day after day,

Alone on a hill,

The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still

But nobody wants to know him,

They can see that he's just a fool,

And he never gives an answer,

But the fool on the hill,

Sees the sun going down,

And the eyes in his head,

See the world spinning 'round.

Dinner for Schmucks - IMDB

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tg1k_G6fRpQ

July flame

One of my friends showed me recently this awesome song of Laura Veirs, from the album July flame, and I had to realize, that I missed it. I knew that her new album is Tumble bee, with children songs, but somehow I thought that it is the next album after Saltbreakers.

I listened to the song in our weekend house for the first time and took a great effect on me. Maybe it was one of the thousand reasons for which I started my blog again, because I felt that "It would be cool to write a post about it".

To sum up, it is a very nice song of the well-known Laura Veirs style, nothing less, nothing more, which is an advantage. Since I stopped writing my blog, all of my favourite singer-songwriters have released at least one new album, and unfortunately I have to say that the average quality is less than their earlier records. Later I will share my opinion with you about each album, now let's focus on the titles:

• Ane Brun - It all starts with one
• Anna Ternheim - The night visitor
• Hanne Hukkelberg - Featherbrain
• Laura Veirs - July flame, Tumble bee

On the other hand, the video for this song is amazing. I like its simplicity and it is full with those  nice things we often dream about: constellations, campfire, nice animals.

Watch the music video here: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLilpPtY2JU

Or read the post about Laura's Saltbreakers and Carbon glacier:

Two albums of Laura Veirs'

Marissa Nadler - Little hells

Conversation between two young men in early spring, 2009, as the first strange sounds fill the room.

- See? It's very fresh, it has been released in February*.

- Oh. If the world is like this today, I would...

I don't really remember what he said but it was some kind of negativitiy I think. It isn't surprising: the first sounds of Heart paper lover on Marissa Nadler's Little hells are not too friendly (* - I always think that the music being made in a year or decade shows the feelings of that milieu and not just the product of somebody's soul/mind). But later it changes, and melt into a strange mood which is melancholic, yes, but also hopeful and sometimes peaceful. The atmosphere is painted very well by the songs. This album is another fruit of my 2009 winter/early spring singer-songwriter research-era. Marissa Nadler is a singer-songwriter from America and has a very special voice and singing technique: it's depressing, but soft and enchanting. I don't listen to her music too often, but every now and then it can take a nice effect on us - related to our actual feelings and the season. Last.fm says the following: Nadler writes strange, yet classic, melancholy songs. Her voice is often bathed in a wash of reverb and space echo and creates a ghostly, atmospheric feeling to the music.

She also has a blog, visit it at: http://marissanadler.blogspot.com/

Little hells:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziLDpVYXwXg

Ghosts and lovers (live):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvPdNCbUq5c

Hanne Hukkelberg - Rykestrasse 68

Staring out the window, and watching the snow as it falls, as it's being thickened, as it doesn't want to stop. Rykestrasse 68 is a real "winter" album by the Norwegian singer-songwriter - but rather experimental music maker - lady, Hanne Hukkelberg. It's her second album, a much more listenable than her first, Little things, but it fortunately keeps the advantages of that earlier one. These advantages are: widening and mixing the styles, using both English and Norwegian language on the same album (it's an exciting thing for foreigners, like me), making melodies and rhythms of noises and other sounds, creating a new little world, making experiments and exciting effects with her own voice. This mix leads to a half acoustic-half electronic sound, which is half-natural and half-strange.

My favourite songs on this album: the first one, Berlin (a nice introducing melody, with a cosy lyrics, see below), A cheater's armoury (the most "pop" song on this disc - if I can say this - which also got a video, see below, too), Northwind (with a more and more strenghtening refrain and some typewriting sounds), the rhythmic Ticking bomb, and the last song, Pynt, with the speciality of Norwegian singing.

Have a nice trip to Rykestrasse 68.

Read about her newest album, Blood from a stone.

Berlin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UCf5NDRmXY

A cheater's armoury:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aXZkHSVo3U

Northwind (live):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JERZ9NuYdWk

Ticking bomb (live):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCg9DWsv6DU

Anna Ternheim - Leaving on a mayday

It's an album from 2008 but today Verve also released it. I think because of this label Anna Ternheim's reputation will grow immediately. She's a Norwegian singer-songwriter, with a nice voice and a cool singer-songwriter style which leads us out to pop/rock: her first album, Somebody outside was released in 2004, on which we can hear the single Shoreline and To be gone which also got a place on an other album Halfway to fivepoints / Separation Road.

Her newest, Leaving on a mayday is a little bit more serious mix of songs than the earlier records. Starting with the harder What have I done, the album gets a strong inception. The arrangement also got more complex, by the strings, newer instrumental solutions and the structured vocals. For example in Terrified the deep and reverbed drums and the nice string melody make an oppisitional atmosphere which often achieve an effective result in any kind of music. The role of strings is emphasized on this album, they can be sane, beautiful and can have a faintly agressive sound.

Let it rain leads us back to the world of What have I done with its slightly monotonical and deeper base pattern to reach My heart still beats for you, which is the most silent song on the album, creating its middle point. Later, one of my favourites No, I don't remember is from that mentioned style, but we also meet Summer rain, a slow song based on a chorus, and for example, Losing you which is rather indie pop than singer-songwriter. But no one wants to set up limits for this music, it's interesting to hear these things which sometimes steps on the frontier of a genre.

Anna Ternheim also released an ep in the topic of Sinatra, on which she perform five songs by him in a very, very different way. I'm looking forward to her next projects.

No, I don't remember:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmngmHSHoS4

Black Sunday afternoon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0hd0B5ZvY4

What have I done:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8QKKlmwlOs

Anna Ternheim's website:
http://www.annaternheim.com/

Anna on Verve:
http://www.vervemusicgroup.com/artist/music/detail.aspx?pid=12065&aid=7351

Sophie Zelmani - Love affair

The softest and most fragile singing voice I've ever heard is Sophie Zelmani's. She's a Swedish singer-songwriter, and kept to be one of the world's shiest stars. After releasing her first album, she claimed that she won't give any interviews or concerts. Of course, things happened differently.

Love affair from 2003, with an autumn-feeling cool photograph cover, is a sensitive, beautiful and melancholic world. And sometimes it isn't happy and isn't sad, just something between these. September tears, the first song, like an intro introduces us this kind of music where the feelings are the most important. The pleasant acoustic arrangement is perfectly matched to Sophie's thin voice in the whole album, and because of that it isn't a loud music, we can hear clearly the little parts of her voice. Sometimes these little parts make the whole music unique. It's interesting that her voice can be serious and strict in Truth, but the softest in Fade, which is the most silent song on the album. My favourite is To know you, listen to it below.

When you happen to be emotional in September, choose this one.

Visit her website:
http://www.sophie-zelmani.com/

To know you:

Hanne Hukkelberg - Blood from a stone

Hanne Hukkelberg is a Norwegian singer-songwriter. I have known her two earlier albums, with its strangeness and the strong intention to make experiments, so when I first saw this new third title few days ago, I got interested immediately.

I had many feelings and expectations about what will I hear... that familiar northern tone... but in the end it changed. This is a newer Hanne, who exited that deep introspective world - as she says: "and i find it really relieving to make this sort of non introvert music now. this is a record more direct, more loud and from the hip. lyrically as well." But this exiting is partial. Until the half of the album we meet nice songs, with some rock-indie touch, but they didn't tell me any more, I missed that old excitement, crazyness, weirdness as earlier - though, besides it - they show some signs of life and loosening, more carefree moods. Especially the song Blood from a stone, which became the single, is the most "new Hanne" song on the album. The video is perfectly like Anna Ternheim's To be gone, you can watch it on her website, see the link below.

So when we get to Salt of the Earth, the mood changes and those older memories wake up in our minds. From here the tracks feature more aggressive and introspective feelings, with dissonant vocals and sounds created by anything. I mean, she likes using kitchen obejcts or other tools to play it in her music. See the lyrics menu on the website, there you find detailed informations about it. In other words, as we get to the second half of the album, the circumstances of the creation are cleaner: "i’ve been sitting on an island north for the polar circle, Senja, and composed songs for my new album which is called “Blood From a Stone”. this took about seven months, and the rest of the year 2008, i spent recording it all in Propeller studios with my regular producer Kåre Vestrheim." Fortunately, in the last track we can also hear Norwegian lyrics.

Have yourself this adventure, which is probably just a stage in a longer trip.
http://www.hannehukkelberg.com

Salt of the Earth:

In memoriam Cseh Tamás

It's nearly a week ago that Cseh Tamás, the Hungarian composer, guitarist and singer died. A big loss in the Hungarian music and especially for the age of my parents.

He was special. Lyrics was very important in his music - fiction, and I think often real stories - he usually mixed the speaking (that kind of story-teller speaking) with the singing and the result was quite unique. His singing voice was also interesting and this, paired with beautiful melodies and more that twenty albums and many film themes made him a real character.

The next lyrics is a part of the Hatvanas évek (The sixties), and I translate it for you, to understand, but I do it against the grain.

A hatvanas években nyár felé tetőzött az ifjúsági probléma.

Emlékszem nap mint nap hajóval átmentünk Almádiból Siófokra.

Ó a régi, ó a Balaton, régi nyarakon, bár nem volt vitorláshajónk.

Ó a régi, ó a teraszon, ültünk nyarakon, úgy néztünk végig a tavon.

In the sixties around summer the problem of youth culminated.

I remember we traveled to Siófok from Almádi all of the days.

O that old, o the Balaton, in old summers, although we hadn't any sailboat.

O that old, o on the terrace, we sat in old summers, we glanced over the lake.

The comments of these videos are all about the sadness of Cseh Tamás's passing.

Hatvanas évek:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG6INjVFWdM

Budapest:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dukoAaxVHUA

Shoreline

I first got acquainted with this song in the performance of Anna Ternheim, who's a Swedish singer-songwriter, one of my favourites in this genre. She made it very simple, but this simplicity has a cause. With the clear piano sounding she made it more serious than the original version. I didn't even think that someone else wrote it. And when the harmonica starts (on the album version), it creates a fascinating feeling for me, which don't want to stop - yes, it plays for a long time, in a monotonic way.

Later I noticed that it originally belongs to a Swedish indie/emo band, called Broder Daniel, and it's very far from the acoustic version. In spite of that the genre "rock" isn't my favourite, let alone emo, I like this version, too, because that great melody has the same effect on me as in the version of Anna Ternheim. And the melody of singing has little changes, which are good, I think.

ever since I was eight or nine

I've been standing on the shoreline

always waiting for something lasting

loose your hunger, you loose your way

get confused and you fade away

oh this town

kills you when you are young

oh this town

kills you when you are young

I'm not the boy I used to be

this town has got the youth of me

all eyes turn hollow

from the work of sorrow

standing on the paving

by the office building

they've got so much to do

never time for you

we are shadows

oh we're shadows

shadows in the alley

you die when you're young

you die when you're young

you die when you're young

Broder Daniel version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djLRO8wjdKw

Anna Ternheim version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDfbrdQKwjk

Two albums of Laura Veirs'

These rainy days made me upload these two albums on my iPod again. Again, because there was a singer-songwriter period in my life, around February-March this year, when I listened to a lot of albums from this genre. It seems to be very nostalgic now.

Saltbreakers and Carbon glacier, both from Laura Veirs, who's a singer-songwriter from the USA. This style seems to be very simple but in fact it can be complex. There's a song (a queue of melodies) and you have to perform/arrange it somehow - but how? There are a million ways of it. This is the main reason for the fact that this kind of music isn't boring. I think on a good singer-songwriter album the songs are usually silent, I mean there is enough place left for each instrument to hear its details and good sound quality. And because of this simple elegance, there's an emphasis on the vocals. The singer can experiment with his/her voice and can show the most little details of it.

First I get interested in Laura Veirs' music when I read the following on Last.fm: she gets inspiration from her childhood memories, especially from the summer campings, etc. And yes, you can feel it while listening to it. The songs on these two albums are similar, but Saltbreakers is more pop-sounding than Carbon glacier. Carbon glacier wants to "be alone" a little bit. But it's not sad. It's a kind of melancholy, a beautiful melancholy which isn't connected with depressive feelings - just contemplation, questions about life and about what we're doing here, and I could continue this list for good. Saltbreakers has a little bit of indie feeling, too. The absolute hits on this album are Don't lose yourself and Wandering kind. On Carbon galcier I think the most beautiful song is Shadow blues. It starts in an uncertain mood and also stays until the end, and as the song plays it gets into a solemn, beautiful deepness.

Now I think these two albums are cool music for every kind of weather and season. I think Laura Veirs is talented and can take the advantages of this genre very well.

Visit her on Last.fm: http://www.last.fm/music/Laura+Veirs

Shadow blues: