Back to the 80′s with FDH…

If anyone is looking for something new to add to their music collection, I’d like to recommend the new Furthest Drive Home single, Lover Boy (out 09/03/09). Some of you might remember Furthest Drive Home as the band whose drummer hit me with his rhythm stick when B and I went to see Forever The Sickest Kids.

I’m a big fan… been listening to them since they opened for Kill Hannah in December ’07 and while their first EP, The Complete First Series, was pretty awesome, the new stuff is a massive step-up. First of all you can now hear what vocalist, Joe, is actually singing. I defy anyone to figure out the lyrics to Director’s Cut without assistance. Secondly, they have gone full 80’s revival… and we know how much I fricking love the 80’s!

Lover Boy is total 80’s pop froth and I have an image of Erasure and Talking Heads Having a party at the Spandau Ballet mansion. It’s worth buying for the backing vocals alone. In essence the song is catchier than fleas at a dog parlour and you’ll end up singing “Lover Boy, Lover Boy…” all day.

B-side, Don’t You Worry, sticks with the 80’s and we’ve got that kind of teased hair rock that made Bon Jovi (when they were still cool), Whitesnake and Def Leppard big but with a slightly more modern darkness. Listening to the riffs, there is no doubt here that lead guitarist, Tommy H, is indulging his well documented obsession with Journey and loving it.

Go buy!

And while I’m on this brand of music… does anyone else think Save It For the Bedroom by You Me At Six sounded better before their record company produced all the charm out of it?

In spite of my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage

While noodling around last night writing blogs, making CDs and moving the ridiculous haul of beauty products I have amassed in my bathroom (I could open a salon tomorrow and I’d be fully stocked… shampoo and body lotion is my heroin), I got sucked into a show about Alaska’s toughest prison. Strange choice, I concede, but I had just watched Prison Break and I was too lazy to change the channel. It was genuinely one of the most frightening things I have ever seen.

 

They interviewed a number of the inmates in this high security prison and I sat riveted. These guys are like a completely different breed. There was one guy who genuinely seemed to believe that anyone who irritated him deserved to die and that his “unusual” moral code was completely justified and another who claimed not be a violent person… well except when he was killing people. It wasn’t like the usual thuggishness that you see on something like Ross Kemp On Gangs, where the subjects are aware that what they are doing is essentially wrong… they just don’t care… these guys believed that the world was wrong and they were right.

 

The point of all of this is that it got me thinking about the whole nature vs nurture debate. How does someone end up like that? There is a big argument for the idea that they were born like that since there was a big indication that brain chemistry had a lot to do with it. But I can imagine that the kind of home life someone has had must play a massive part. Of course an unstable or even violent or abusive home life as a child doesn’t necessarily result in a psychopathic adult. Hmm… I wonder if it comes down to a very careful mixture of both or if there is a catalyst that just pushes some people over the edge. Of course I have no idea what I am talking about… I have a degree in, um, public relations… sigh… so anyway… what do you guys think?

 

Today’s obsession is Only By The Night, the week(ish) old new release by Garage/Southern rock heros, Kings Of Leon. They’ve been warming up the crowds with for this one with single, Sex On Fire, which is about the most instantly addictive song I’ve heard in a very long time. There have been a few grumbles from some fans that the album has deviated too far from the out-of-control, amp kicking, guitar swinging squall of the earlier albums, into gentler more atmospheric territory, but bands evolve and change. If you want the same album over and over again, I would suggest listening to Nickleback. Only By The Night may be more radio-friendly than Youth And Young Manhood or Aha Shake Heartbreak but the Kings have lost none of their edge and if the odd nasal whine of Caleb Followill’s voice makes you go weak at the knees the same way it does me (ok, maybe I’m a teeny bit biased), then you need this album… now. I leave you with the Sex On Fire video (which I can’t embed because some clever record company person has had all the YouTube embedding disabled)…