North East roundup

I moved back to the North-East about a year ago and wanted to post some righteous Northumbrian-accented music. Here's Richard Dawson:




My fave Kenickie song by about a million miles: Pee You En Kay Eyyyy! (It wouldn't let me embed that, soz.)

Saving the best for last, here's a clip from the BFI documentary Roll Out The Barrel: The British Pub On Film. I wish we got to see the woman singer here, and I know y'all postmodern fucks are going to mention Vic Reeves' Club Singer Round, which is a fair point.

What a joyous sound though - imagine an X-Factor/BGT with folks like these.

The Magnetic Fields - Epitaph For My Heart

The Magnetic Fields - Epitaph For My Heart

Stephin Merritt, the brains behind the Magnetic Fields, harmonises with himself at the start of this song - a move, I would contend, that only a truly great singer can pull off (with any grace). Merritt has the kind of louche, lifeworn voice I dig; the kind of voice you can read a lot into, whether the singer would like you to or not. I also like him because he's equally adept at sincerity and irony - today's new troubadours (to generalise massively) tend to be deadly serious, as if being deadly serious all the time makes their seriousness more believable. As if confining yourself to descriptors of emotion that are sincere, but never self-aware, certainly never self-parodic, is more meaningful, somehow more pure? In this song Merritt, as ever, maintains the low register with such laconic ease it simultaneously increases the song’s impact as both a sincere love song and a knowing pastiche - a trick they can't teach you at the BRIT school.

Anyone who likes the Magnetic Fields should check out Strange Powers, in which Stephin is just as stubborn, vunerable and wonderful as you'd expect.