Effin' Hell

False Flags (single) - Massive Attack
Family is for Sharing - Brothers in Sound
Fashion Nugget (only one track - I Will Survive) - Cake
Feel Good Lost - Broken Social Scene
Fever to Tell - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Fight Club SE - The Dust Brothers

OK, I promise I will try and stop the horrendously bad puns that have made up the last couple of post titles, but it's Friday, it's been a long week, and 'Effin' Hell' is the best I can come up with. So far, so effin' good (sorry, I have no control over what I write - you may have noticed). False Flags sounded like a decent return to form for Massive Attack. I've got 100th Window but it is the least played Massive Attack album I own. The others are inviolable classics, each of them with the power to take me back to the place I first heard them and recreate an entire period of my life in my head. Sometimes this makes for uneasy listening but it's surely a sign of a great album.

Cake are a band that I always thought I'd hate - one trick pony smart arses who had one decent idea and flogged the fucker to death. My girlfriend lent me some of their albums and I was surprised to hear that they weren't actually that bad. This however, was downloaded when I only wanted to hear this song, hence its solitary nature. I remember reading somewhere that one test of whether a cover version was worthwhile or not was to ask if it added anything new or unique to the original. I think it's fair to say that Cake's reworking of I Will Survive fulfills this criteria as it removes every last ounce of disco glitter and turns the song into a tired but resolute 'fuck you' to the man/woman who's done the dirty on the singer. I like it when bands surprise me - I wonder if there's anything Babyshambles could do to make see a reason for their continued existence?

Two final points - I think Fever to Tell has been the first album that I've listened to in this challenge that has made me wish I hadn't buried it away on my iPod. I borrowed it from a friend because I'd fallen in love with the track Pin the last time I'd been back in the UK. This song made it on to numerous playlists on my iPod but I don't think I gave the album itself much more than a cursory listen. Shows you what I know about music - it's fucking fantastic. It batters along with a verve that most current 'rock' bands can only dream about. Karen O sounds like the re-incarnation of every punky female singer that melted my over-eager teenage heart, and the musicians are tighter than the duck's nether regions. They're definitely not getting punted off the iPod. Not sure I can say the same for the Fight Club soundtrack, though. I loved the film and the novel but certain soundtracks shouldn't be listened to in isolation. In the film it was there in the background, helping create the atmosphere that made the film so successful. On its own it sounds like a lost child clattering noisily around the supermarket trying to find their mother. I'm listening to it as I write this and praying for the moment when Where Is My Mind? kicks in at the end.

One tenth of the way through

Black Session - Interpol
Blacklisted - Neko Case
Bleed Me White (Double CD single) - Eat
Blonde Redhead - Blonde Redhead
Blue Lines - Massive Attack
Boc Maxima - Boards of Canada
Bootleg - Belle & Sebastian
Boss Hog - Boss Hog
Bossanova - Pixies

Finally some synchronicity between my mood and the music playing: Blue Lines to smooth my way home after a rough day on Tuesday; Boc Maxima yesterday morning to take the edge off my hangover and ease me gently into what was promising to be another rough day; a Belle & Sebastian bootleg that kicked in mid-morning, coincidentally about the same time my brain kicked in and I started to function. Just as I started to flag in the afternoon, the loud and jarring Boss Hog album came along and kicked my arse back into gear, and then finally Black Francis and his troop of jolly little pixies deafened me all the way home. I doubt this run of ideally matched music and mood can continue much longer. Today is a holiday here but I'm working, so I'm not sure if there's any music that can match that mood - perhaps the extreme dissonance of a live Throbbing Gristle album, or Metal Machine Music, but neither of those are on the iPod.