Editors - Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors -- An End Has A Start (2007)

Up next is one of my favorite bands of all time, with for me the best album they made so far. I had little to no inspiration today so I let Miri decide what I should post. And lets face it, she did well! Not only is this band one of my top 3 most played bands of all time, as well did she pick the right album from them to talk about. 

The album is a former number one album in England and the second album made by the band after the debut album The Back Room of course. The album is characterized by the indie rock and the post punk revival music the band plays, with the pretty unique and awesome vocals of Tom Smith obviously. Back in the post about Joy Division I said he reminded me of Ian, or the other way around... This still is the case and again I will say that they are basically Joy Division on speed, a description others often gave them over the years. The album contains hit songs like Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors, An End Has A Start and The Racing Rats and it made me absolutely fall in love with them. I bought The Back Room short after its release but didn't give it much plays back in in 2005 and 2006. I did give them a lot of attention in the summer of 2007 though, for the simple reason they were coming to Pukkelpop and I was planning to see them live. In the two weeks before Pukkelpop I played their material an awful lot and I absolutely fell in love with An End Has A Start that came out two months earlier.

The song I chose to post is Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors, because it's after Swing Life Away my favorite track I'd say. The last few days before the festival I had it constantly on repeat and when they finally played it live I just closed my eyes and had goosebumps for the total duration of the song. So it was an easy choice to make I'd say! Because of this I have picked a live version of the song as well. Before I conclude this post with an enjoy, I'd like to say that new material should be coming later this year. It's not officially announced I think but few media mention a fourth album for later this year. Enjoy!

Official site

last.fm artist page

Rise Against - Swing Life Away -- Siren Song Of The Counter Culture (2004)

Right now I'll be talking about in my opinion one of the best songs and one of the best bands out there. The Swing Life Away song is for quite some time my absolute favorite. Before I had last fm it had around 1000 plays in my itunes library, since I use this platform it is ranked second with nearly 200 plays when I'm done with this post. Only the Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors song of Editors has been played more since I made my account in 2007. 

If we look at the band you have one of the better punk rock bands in the scene, even some melodic hardcore in some songs  if you wish. Rise Against is one of the few punk rock bands I still listen to as mentioned in my post about Yellowcard and it's by far my favorite band in the genre. I Bought 4 of the albums by Rise Against and I obviously downloaded the others. Except The Unraveling which only is decent for me I can honestly say all the albums they produced are at least excellent. OK you need to like the genre, but when you are into the genre I think it's very hard to dislike Rise Against. Vocals of Tim Mcllrath are brilliant for me, he's able to sing very good (something were other punk rock bands often screw up in my opinion) as well is he able to bring the more powerful songs with excellent screaming when needed. Music wise the band is even more Brilliant and last but not least, lyrics do have a meaning with this band, something I absolutely support.

The song is like I said my most played track in general and often used as titles for my blog, the video is lovely for me, since I'm so fond of the song itself I think though. If you're not familiar with the song or the band (which I hardly doubt...) Swing Life Away is one of the few acoustic songs by the band and is featured on a punk goes acoustic album as well as the band's Siren Song Of The Counter Culture album. Enjoy!

Official site

last.fm artist page

Cut City - Such Verve -- Exit Decades (2007)

After my Pixies post yesterday I put my ipod on shuffle again since I had no desire to listen to anything specific. It took about 30 songs until I stumbled upon a Swedish gem I had forgotten about. Cut City is like I said a Swedish four piece band that produces music sounding like a mix of Joy Division, Interpol, Editors... Basically it sounds like a lot of bands that have Joy Division as their main influence. 

So why give them some attention if they sound like so many other bands? well because they were able to make me listen to their debut album a few times in a row. Exit Decades is a very decent, if not to say good, album produced in 2007 already. It contains a lot of good tunes like Damaged, Like Ashes Like Millions and the song I'm putting online Such Verve. So it's definitely worth checking. I will be checking some of the more recent albums myself in the hope to find some more good albums produced by them. 

Like I said the song I'm posting is Such Verve. Reason for this is simple, it was the song I stumbled upon while shuffle-ling my entire library. Good guy Ipod right? Enjoy!

Bandcamp page

last.fm artist page

Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart -- Substance (1988)

Next up is a band that I never really disliked but never really liked either. I always had the Unknown Pleasures album and this Love Will Tear Us Apart single from the compilation album that came out later. But I didn't listen much to them. Yesterday I decided to put it on once more, and I have to tell it's really growing on me, even made me download the (rather small) discography. I can't consider this to be a big surprise really, since I'm a rather big fan of Editors, and they often get the following description: Joy Division on speed. Mostly because of the voices of Ian and Tom though. I'm not sure which of those two voices I like best to be honest, which is a good sign since I only recently start to listen to Joy Division for real. I know I know, late, but that's often the case with me. I just have so much music on my computer... But it's nice to rediscover something I think. Anyways my apologies.

Just like the last post with Nirvana, I can't tell much about Joy Division you don't know already. It was of course the leading band of the Postpunk movement late 70s early 80s, the band formed around Manchester if I'm not mistaken. And just like Kurt Cobain at Nirvana Ian Curtis committed suicide and the world lost and excellent band. Well not entirely since New Order was founded out of the remaining members the same year as the death of Ian. But as you can guess... I really need to listen to New Order too, haha. I will soon, I promise. Well I can't tell you anything about the remaining band members out of my own experience but they had very good critics about their later work and I'm looking forward to try them out. But first some more Joy Division!

The song is like I said Love Will Tear Us Apart, since I don't have much experience with the band, so I picked their most famous song, makes some sense no? Enjoy! 

I don't think there is an official site, leave a comment if I'm mistaken. 

last.fm artist page