Click to Spotify. There. That’s better.
Just caught Vampire Weekend playing a free gig at Somerset House… Ended up finding out about it via Informed, but was gutted when I realised it had already started - I hot-footed it over the road but the gates were shut. And then I remembered who I worked for and whipped out my building pass for the New Wing. Score.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Thus sang zakazaka. Although make no mistake, I am definitely of the opinion that:
- Christmas should be left until… well… Christmas
- I can’t sing particularly well (or that Dan chose the wrong takes)
Nonetheless, here I am posting me singing a song called Christmas.
In my (slightly unfestive) defence, there isn’t a sleigh bell in sight (or rather earshot), nor is it the kind of “feelgood” fromage-fest that gets put on infinite repeat in a soul-destroying shopping mall near you from the 1st of September - every bloody year.
Also, Jay Z says autotune is dead, so I think that lets me off the hook on the proverbial “singing in tune” coat rack. And that’s my numbered list put to bed.
Anyway, the whole endeavour is actually part of something much bigger: the fifth album from fellow (honorary) Croydoner Dan Bird (aka The Wind Up Bird), fittingly called Two Hits and Ten Pieces of Junk. Departing from his usual thing of writing all the songs, singing on all the tracks, and playing all the instruments, this time he’s merely done everything except sing (and even there he provides most of the backing vocals).
All the front-of-stage duty gets left to his merry band of friends, with a different vocalist on each of eleven tracks, with everyone recombining for a repeat-to-fade, feel-good finale (Track 12) that culminates in the noise Dan’s Washing machine makes when it’s finished its final cycle. Sublime.
The keen mathematicians among you will realise that this means everyone sings on two tracks, which allows each of us to delude ourselves into thinking that the eponymous “pieces of junk” are the other ten fillers. A winning formula!
You can download/stream the below tracks from the rather unsurprisingly named thewindupbird.co.uk right now! Or just get your right click action going on this lot here:
- Consumption
- Johnny Held Up the Post Office
- Hope
- Pretending
- If You Believe That
- I Can’t Give You Anything But Love
- Christmas
- Last Train to Croydon
- Lucy
- A Perfect Weekend
- Leave That Girl Alone
- The Patron Saint of Lost Causes
We’ll be having a wee little launch later on, and videos for all tracks apparently soon come, so this (sadly) may not be the last you hear of my voice just yet. Sorry.
