Farraginous Friday #19 – True colours

Hello my farraginous friends and welcome to the 19th edition of Farraginous Fridays! This week will be a colourful affair, with the songs having to include a colour of some variety in their title. Let us begin…

Farraginous Friday #19 – True colours (SPOTIFY)

Farraginous Friday #19 – True colours (YOUTUBE)

Fleet Foxes

A swarm of harmonious brilliance starts off our playlist this week with Fleet Foxes and their heartstring-tugging White Winter Hymnal. This comes from their much celebrated and wonderful eponymous debut album of 2008.

Okkervil River‘s Will Sheff is genuinely one of my favourite songwriters and in Black, he steps away from his usual morose ballads to slap us round the face with this rousing effort from their 2005 ode to Tim Hardin (via Scott Walker) Black Sheep Boy.

The eerily talented Devendra Banhart is up next with Little Yellow Spider. Banhart apparently slots in to the New Weird America genre and on first listen, you can hear why! Glorious psych folk from the half-Venezuelan troubadour.

Chubby Australian Alex Lloyd is next on the agenda with his genius pop masterpiece, Green. Better known for his successful, if dire, track Amazing, Lloyd’s second album Watching Angels Mend went double platinum in Australia after it’s 2001 release.

Billy Joel

More tender and touching verse from the incredible James Mercer of The Shins. Red Rabbits comes from their Grammy-nominated album of 2007, Wincing The Night Away. The album is so-called as Mercer apparently suffers hugely from insomnia.

Weezer are one of the biggest selling artists in America. Pink Triangle is from their second album Pinkerton and is about a man who sets his sights on a lesbian who thinks that he’s gay. Classic!

Shades Of Grey is a great foot-tapper taken from Billy Joel‘s River Of Dreams. A man who’s understanding of the world around him doesn’t seem to be any clearer the older her gets, is the theme of this track.

Gay icons Erasure are up next yet with possibly my favourite track from their impressive back catalogue. Crisp and full synths swoop through the incredibly uplifting Blue Savannah.

LCD Soundsystem

As you might be able to tell from previous Farraginous postings, I am a huge fan of The Flaming Lips. Lips front man Wayne Coyne provides the vocals to The Golden Path. Mixing Coyne’s genius delivery with a pounding beat and sensitive arrangement cunningly supplied by The Chemical Brothers, does a good track make!

Signing off this week are alt-dance-punk legends LCD Soundsystem. Sound Of Silver is from their second album of the same name. The bands 3rd album This Is Happening came out this year and band leader James Murphy declared it would be their last. “”We’ll make this the last record and we’ll do exactly what we want and go out happy” were Murphy’s words. But something tells me this won’t be the last we’ll here from him!

Well that’s all for this week! I hope you’ve enjoyed the colourful palette that was this week’s list.

Do leave your suggestions below as I’m sure many of you have many of your own ideas of what you’d like to include on a colour themed playlist!

Please do continue to tell your friend’s about Farraginous Fridays. Send them along to the Facebook group here – http://groups.to/farraginousfridays or just invite them straight to the blog at http://farraginousfridays.com.

Until next time…

Love
Farraginous Francis x

Farraginous Friday #19 – True colours (SPOTIFY)

Farraginous Friday #19 – True colours (YOUTUBE)

Farraginous Friday #10 – Mark Linkous R.I.P.

Hello farraginous friends and welcome to the tenth installment of Farraginous Fridays. This week is the first Farraginous Special where we’ll be paying tribute to Sparklehorse‘s Mark Linkous who tragically took his life last week at the age of 47.

Farraginous Friday #10 – Mark Linkous R.I.P. (SPOTIFY)

Farraginous Friday #10 – Mark Linkous R.I.P. (YOUTUBE)

Having been in many a small punk band in the 80s and early 90s and after an unsuccessful move to L.A., in an attempt to hit the big time, Linkous returned to his hometown of Virginia. There, he formed Sparklehorse and in 1995 released their debut album, Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot. This was a hit with the British media and gave Linkous the chance to tour with Radiohead the following year. Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood said “They were great every night…[Mark's] first two records were very important to me, and I carried his music from the tour into my life, and my friends’ lives too.”

Mark Linkous

It was on this tour that Linkous nearly died. A combination of alcohol, anti-depressants and Valium resulted in him laying unconscious for 14 hours. His legs were trapped under him so when he was found and lifted, the sodium build up resulted in him going into cardiac arrest and he lost the use of his legs for  6 months.

This near-death experience is a strong theme in the 1999 album Good Morning Spider. Following the album’s release he said of the accident ““For a while there, I was really scared that when I technically died — which I guess I did for a few minutes — that the part of my brain that allowed me my ability to write songs would be damaged”.

2001 saw the release of It’s Wonderful Life, another haunting collection of tragically beautiful songs which although well received by critics and musicians alike, did not have a huge amount of commercial success. This album includes collaborations with Tom Waits, Nina Persson (The Cardigans), PJ Harvey and Dave Fridmann.

Linkous also had a close working relationship with the troubled singer/songwriter Daniel Johnston, who has had a life long battle with mental illness. He produced his 2003 album Fear Yourself and also The Late Great Daniel Johnston which saw him bring together many great musicians to cover the songs of the still-living artist. This album also features a collaboration with the Flaming Lips, which I have included on this playlist.

Dark Night Of The Soul

His last completed work was Dark Night Of The Soul. On this album he collaborated with Danger Mouse and David Lynch and brought another incredible group of musicians to contribute to the album.  James Mercer (The Shins), Julian Casablancas (The Strokes), Frank Black (Pixies) just to name a few. Although legal issues have meant the album has not had an official release, the album can be listened to in its entirity HERE.

On Saturday 6th March Mark Linkous took his own life by shooting himself in the chest with a rifle outside a friend’s home. He had apparently been drinking heavily and had been having many personal problems. Alcohol and depression was something he had battled with for the most part of his adult life.

His tender voice, bittersweet lyrics, intriguing collaborations and interestingly complex, yet subtle arrangements have always fascinated me. So many of his songs can make me simultaneously smile and cry. He will be sorely missed and I hope those of you less familiar with his work will enjoy some of the wonderful music created by this truly beautiful and honest artist.

Please do leave your comments and thoughts on the playlist and Sparklehorse or any feelings you have regarding Mark’s death or his music.

Thanks
Farraginous Francis x

Farraginous Friday #10 – Mark Linkous R.I.P. (SPOTIFY)

Farraginous Friday #10 – Mark Linkous R.I.P. (YOUTUBE)