SARA LOV | Well I Wonder (The Smiths)

I can’t say I know much about singer-songwriter Sara Lov, but she’s one of the artists featured on “Please, Please, Please: A Tribute to The Smiths”, a 20-track double-CD tribute to the music of The Smiths, due out on December 13th. I’d written more extensively about this record back in October, but it doesn’t hurt to remind you about this cool idea. Click here to read the previous Their Bated Breath post with a full tracklist available. (Where you can also hear Stars’ version of “Asleep”.) As many of you have come to understand, The Smiths are my all-time favorite band, which means covers have to pass that difficult test that comes from those of us who would rather not hear our favorite songs reworked. However, as clean-sounding as this version of “Well I Wonder” is, I think it keeps that sense of elegance of the original. Lov’s inviting vocals seem the perfect complement to the gorgeous melodrama of Morrissey’s oh-so Moz verse, “Gasping, dying, but somehow still alive / This is the final stand of all I am / Please keep me in mind.” Thanks to Sara lov for posting this track for streaming at her official soundcloud page. You can pre-order your copy of the tribute record here. — David D. Robbins Jr.

THE SMITHS | A Tribute

Okay, so there are more The Smiths tributes, covers, and ‘Best Of’ collections than anyone can count. And frankly, Mr. Shankly, there are a good number of bad Smiths covers. But it’s still difficult to stay away from it all. There’s always that chance you’ll find that one cover that will make you forget, if just for a few minutes, that we’ll never have new Smiths song ever again. American Laundromat Records is releasing a 20-track, double-CD tribute to the music of The Smiths, plus three bonus songs on 7-inch. It’s called “Please, Please, Please: A Tribute to The Smiths”. The album will be out Dec. 13th, but you can pre-order yours at the official site here. Listen to Stars sing the deathly lullaby, “Asleep”, below. The cover was first released as a bonus track on the band’s 2010 record, “The Five Ghosts”. I’m assuming the same recording is also on this tribute. The tracklist is below. — David D. Robbins Jr.

Double CD
01. Kitten “Panic”
02. The Rest “Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before”
03. Joy Zipper – “What Difference Does It Make?”
04. Tanya Donelly w/ Dylan in the Movies “Shoplifters Of The World Unite”
05. William Fitzsimmons “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want”
06. Sixpence None the Richer “I Won’t Share You”
07. Sara Lov “Well I Wonder”
08. Greg Laswell “Half A Person”
09. Dala “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me”
10. Chikita Violenta “Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others”
11. Telekinesis “Sheila Take A Bow”
12. Solvents “Is It Really So Strange?”
13. The Wedding Present “Hand In Glove”
14. Mike Viola and The Section Quartet “How Soon Is Now?”
15. Trespassers William “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out”
16. Girl in a Coma “Rubber Ring”
17. Elk City “I Know It’s Over”
18. Katy Goodman (La Sera, Vivian Girls) “What She Said”
19. Cinerama “London”
20. Doug Martsch (Built To Spill) “Reel Around the Fountain”

Bonus 7-inch
01. Stars “Asleep”
02. C’est la Mort “Girl Afraid”
03. The Caulfield Sisters “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want”

MORRISSEY | New Tracks

Former Smiths frontman Morrissey has three new tracks he unveiled live at Maida Vale Studios for BBC Radio 2 to kick off a new tour which begins in Perth, Australia tomorrow. The songs are posted at YouTube by a user “sdsuedehead”. The rollicking rocker, “The Kid’s A Looker”, begins with this classic Morrissey verse: “He can’t dance or sing / He can’t do anything, but what the hell?”, and continues with a line about crass consumers lining up shoulder to shoulder. “Action is My Middle Name” is a morbid piano ballad that would have made 17th-century British poet Andrew Marvell proud, the song lyrics expressing an urgency like “To His Coy Mistress”: “Writing my initials into your neck / You are my possession, you don’t realize yet / Am I moving too fast for you? / Am I beginning to confuse you? / Action is my middle name / I can’t waste time anymore.” Morrissey’s third track, “People Are the Same Everywhere”, is another missive, this time aimed at country and god, “Then our creator had to stumble and stall / And our creator had to make the biggest mistake of all / Set me aside and find people are the same everywhere … / Land of the free and the home of the brave exists nowhere / Here in our loveless nation, we’re all in a rush / To find a lover’s touch / And when it’s found you wonder why it meant so much.” I’ll have to spend more time with these cuts, but there are moments of typically wonderful Morrissey lyricism. — David D. Robbins Jr.

The Kid’s A Looker

People Are The Same Everywhere

Action Is My Middle Name

MORRISSEY | Glamorous Glue

Okay, so this is just a two-track CD/7-inch release, featuring the previously-released, “Glamorous Glue”, remastered from Morrissey’s “Your Arsenal” — and the other is a previously unreleased demo called “Treat Me Like a Human Being”, that’s been floating around the internet under the title, “Treat Me Like A New York Doll”. It’s easy to see why the latter of the two songs never made it onto “Viva Hate” — because it’s fairly middling. It’s a song that drifts along, lyrically and musically, with a sort of aimlessness. Morrissey’s vocals are pretty as always, and the refrain is melodic enough. The slow drums and sitar give it a weightless quality, but it feels about as impassioned as mushy papier-mâché.

But I didn’t create this post to rip an officially-released demo. Many Morrissey fans, despite their love for his music, groan under their breath when they hear of yet another “Best of” or the release of a remastered old track. But this one seems different to me. Morrissey doesn’t act without some reason behind it. And the release of “Glamorous Glue”, which had only been issued in the U.S. officially until now, coincides with a trend I’ve been writing about lately in music: Disillusionment in one’s country. Both PJ Harvey, and Morrissey seem to be suggesting a need for revival. A revival of culture, of connection, of life and humanity. PJ’s newest record, “Let England Shake”, finds her singing of barren, apocalyptic lands and augmenting her music with the ironic fanfare of an old-English fox hunt.

Now here’s Morrissey selecting “Glamorous Glue” (which is a great track by the way) from all the songs in his catalog, a song that thrashes London as much as any he’s written. And the album art is an old photo of himself in an England t-shirt, dripping wonderfully with unctuousness — Morrissey’s look suggesting he knows something we don’t. Let’s not forget the lyrics of the track: “Everyone lies, nobody minds / Everyone lies / Where is the man you respect? /And where is the woman you love? … / I used to dream, and I used to vow / I wouldn’t dream of it now / We look to Los Angeles /For the language we use / London is dead … / I know I’ll go empty hand, from the land.” It’s not too far removed from PJ’s “The Glorious Land”, where she mixes criticism of war with judgement on the future of a nation: “How is our glorious country sown? / Not with wheat and corn / What is the glorious fruit of our land? / Its fruit is deformed children.” Take heed from two of the world’s greatest musicians. Take action. Live to love. A rush and a push and the land is ours. — David D. Robbins Jr.

THE SMITHS | The Troy Tate Sessions

The story of The Troy Tate Sessions is legendary among fans of The Smiths. The Smiths had recorded 14 songs with producer Troy Tate in the summer of 1983, 13 of which were supposed to become their debut album, seemingly titled “The Hand That Rocks The Cradle”. Disagreements arose regarding the sound production, and The Smiths end up going to John Porter, who produced from scratch what is considered the first official Smiths album, the self-titled “The Smiths”. Of course, “The Troy Tate Sessions” exist in various bootleg formats everywhere. To make matters a bit confusing, the early Tate bootlegs seemed too slow, with wrong pitch and rough sound quality. These were corrected in later bootlegs. Then a second batch of Troy Tate recordings appeared. One of the songs recorded is “Accept Yourself”, which ended up being officially released as the B-side to “This Charming Man” in 1983. Now a new set of Troy Tate mixes has surfaced. Basically, they’re much clearer, cleaner versions of what we’ve heard, albeit with some noise issues still apparent. But even cooler is that among the new mixes is a previously unreleased version of “Accept Yourself” featuring Morrissey’s falsetto yelps, and another falsetto vocal overlay close to the end of the track. It’s quite beautiful really. I enjoy the added energy. The thought is that this version comes from the original Troy Tate recordings re-worked by Porter and later scrapped. The recording was made available via someone named ‘Soundsville Paul’ at smithstorrents.co.uk, and then was remastered by ‘Analog Loyalist’ at the blog Extra Track (and a tacky badge). You can hear it below. — David D. Robbins Jr.
The Smiths “Accept Yourself #1” (Troy Tate unreleased)

PAST MADE PRESENT | The Smiths

Starting today, I’m going to try and post something once a week about the music that has come before. To make the past present so to speak. Maybe it’s an old video I love. Maybe it’s a short piece about a long-gone style of music or an essay about a critic or album from the past. Let’s face it, music isn’t always about what’s new or this blogger game of see who can post a new track the fastest. I get tired of that, as I’m sure you all do too. So, it’s good to have a change of pace and look back on what we love. I’m going to call these posts, “Past Made Present”. The first one, significantly, is about my favorite band, The Smiths. — David D. Robbins Jr.

Fans of The Smiths know about “Extra Track (and a tacky badge)”, a website dedicated to restoring The Smiths songs on Rough Trade. All of the songs being restored are out of print, rarely heard or existed in some diminished form. One of the records the site’s owner streamlined was The Smiths’ 1984 “Hand In Glove” 7-inch — sans Morrissey. Instead, you have Johnny Marr, Andy Rourke, Mike Joyce and an English singer named Sandie Shaw, an idol of Morrissey’s, better known for her work in the 1960s. She was called the “barefoot pop princess” for always performing without shoes. She scored a hit with a re-working of Burt Bachrach’s “(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me”, a number one single in 1964. But it was in 1984 that The Smiths called her to sing with the band.