The Underground of Happiness

A bunch of great British music on the show this week, in two main camps. In the folk department The Nightjar , stirring haunted atmospherics The Bevis Frond , enduring drones with sitar Alasdair Roberts & Gordon Ferries , from the wonderful Shakespeare songs Food of Love project, getting courtly. And more of a post punk buzz Shaking Chains , compelling spoken word delivery Animals That Swim , fierce guitar tune with brilliant narrative drive Warm Digits feat. Field Music on vocals, banging electro. And Francois & the Atlas Mountains , slippery woozy psych pop from France. More on these pages. The Underground of Happiness uplifting pop music of every creed www.theundergroundofhappiness.blogspot.com www.facebook.com/theundergroundofhappiness Twitter: UndergroundOfHappy Playlist 438 Tues Mar 14 2017 11.00am-12.00pm (repeated on Tuesdays 8.30pm) UCC 98.3FM listen live on the web at www.ucc.ie/983fm *listen back to this show here goo.gl/...

A couple of love songs (of sorts) to kick off the Valentine's Day show. The sublime version of 'My funny valentine' by Kathryn WIlliams & Anthony Kerr , a smouldering take with a distinct air of desolation in the spaces between the lines. Laetitia Sadier Source Ensemble showing 'Undying love for humanity', which is tough to do but music as great as this makes it so convincing. Warm Digits are a duo from Newcastle who make furious beat driven animals and here have Field Music in on guest vocals to wonderful effect. Goldfrapp being filthy and there's not much better in life than Goldfrapp being filthy. Urban Farm Hand make a lovely folk/kosmische hybrid. And Foxygen being bonkers and beautiful and soulful. More on these pages. The Underground of Happiness uplifting pop music of every creed www.theundergroundofhappiness.blogspot.com www.facebook.com/theundergroundofhappiness Twitter: UndergroundOfHappy Playlist 434...

Delirious sweeping white soul from the LA duo, adding some welcome bonkers baroque flourishes to the cosmic stew. We like progressive tendencies around here and a part of this is a heady brand of progressive pop. It comes on like Todd Rundgren arranged by Curtis Mayfield, with top notes of swooning strings and the middle ground full of wonderful staccato brass. Apparently a 40-piece orchestra was involved on the album, arranged by Matthew E. White no less, and this song shows every sign of that (why bother says you if there wasn’t going to be every sign of it). Not to get bogged down in politics, but this kind of vaguely unhinged and entirely distracting pop belter could be THE most effective political response in these times, know what I’m sayin? *Plus check out this killer version live on Conan which is nothing less than joyous, while not surrendering an inch of its mad genius. Wielding a bomber jacket and eye shadow in place of a guitar, singer Sam France manages...

This is the Angel Olsen record I was waiting for. There’s a lovely garage rock feel to the guitars, a setting that works very well with her voice. It’s a wonderful voice of course. It can be tender, it can be harsh, soft, berating, pleading, encouraging. Soulful needless to say, capable of turning the direction of a line with some crucial inflection or a change of gear. Usually simmering with intent and always laden with emotion. This guitar vocal combination is best showcased in the early sequence of ‘Never be mine’, ‘Shut up kiss me’ and ‘Give it up’, a killer run of love, loss and fuzzy guitars. (She also does a marvellous thing midway through ‘Shut up kiss me’ which involves a bank of Angel voices racking up the tension on one repeated note in glorious harmony.) It must be said that she tries on other clothes over the course of the album (‘Those were the days’ is an especially gorgeous cosmic soul turn), and there’s no doubt she can turn her hand to many things, bu...

Broadly, there was a kind of genre flow to this week's show. We began with a run of electronic pieces of different shades - Future Islands, Eyedress ("nothing special" is the subtitle of the song by the way, not a comment from me on the quality of it - I think it's quite special), Matmos with some mental radio, new Roll the Dice ,an industrial meltdown with sumptuous strings and culminating in a wonderful track from the debut SlowPlaceLikeHome album, due next month. The mid-section featured a series of singers - Cormac O Caoimh with some lovely jazz-folk tones from his fine new album, the unforgettable Angel Olsen who plays Cork with Jaye Bartell next month, Sontag Shogun from NY feat. the great voice of Liam Singer . A bit of punk rock in the shape of Thomas Truax and Shonen Knife . And some kosmische to finish from Eat Lights Become Lights plus the Conny Plank-produced Eno-Moebius-Roedelius . More on these pages as always. May 6 2014 w/ Roll th...