Seven Songs for the Week #126 - 3rd Sept 25

Spoon: They never let you down. Two new songs have come out of sessions ahead of an unnamed new album coming out at some undetermined time in the future. It's good to hear from them again. First listen... "this doesn't compare to the mightiest of their works"... fifth listen... "this is the greatest Spoon song ever". In short, I love them.

I read some discourse saying that there hadn't really been a "song of the summer" for 2025, unlike Espresso or Charli xcx last year. This time last year I was watching the Netflix doc about KATSEYE being put together, and I saw someone suggest this track as song of the summer for 2025. I hadn't heard it, but it is great. Again, first listen is "what??", second listen kicks open the door.

Rooting around on my odd tv-freeview-satellite tuners I found a station called Rewind and they were playing this song. I remember liking this a lot when it came out and realising it was the lady from the Kiss video.

Memory is a strange thing. From the same 1987 hinterland as Wendy & Lisa comes this song. Now, for background, as a kid in 1987 the most exciting thing to happen was when Music Box/Super Channel launched and MTV Europe thereafter. There was access to a bunch of music that hadn't been there before.

Skip to 2025, and I'm reading about the upcoming rerelease of The Who's Who Are You album, which had been co-produced by Jon Astley who is someone known to any big Who fan as the man Pete goes to to remaster and organise Who reissues for over 30 years. He was also Pete's brother-in-law until Pete divorced his first wife.

Reading about Jon Astley I learned he had a brief recording career of his own in the 1980s, and that this was his only "hit". I immediately remembered the song having not thought about it or heard it (AFAIK) for 38 years. It would have been in that 1987 milieu. Memory is strange.

Earlier in the year I picked up this Flaming Lips set for €10 and I'm slowly going through it in the car. This radio gig/session is a hoot and this Floyd cover makes you want to jam in a garage.

I picked up the first Jobriath album on Record Store Day a few years ago. Gave it another spin this week and it really clicked. From 1973, recorded while Queen were recording their debut across the Atlantic. The story that goes with Jobriath is "curious overhyped failure" instead of seeing how well the music has aged. There's a short distance between this track and, say, Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy, and I hear John Grant and Rufus Wainright here too. I must track down the Jobriath AD documentary.

This week I was brought to see COLORFUL STAGE! The Movie: A Miku Who Can't Sing. One of the in-house teens is a massive fan of Hatsune Miku and this film being in an actual cinema for a day was a big deal. The movie theatre was half-full but everyone there was having the time of their lives: dressed up, badges, handing out glow sticks, cheering and applauding whenever a beloved character appeared, and all excitedly chatting afterwards. I know nothing about Anime but the animation was excellent and it was hard not to be swept along by the loveliness of it all. The kids are alright. This song is the key song in the movie, comparable to, say, That Thing You Do in That Thing You Do.