Emily's Albums A to Z

Listened: Thursday June 3

ballboy is a another band I don’t remember how I discovered, but I’m glad I did, as they are a band I have listened to for years and still love. I’m sure it was another “minor Scottish band I have heard I should check out” situation. Club Anthems is a collection of their initial EPs and the title is a total put-on – their music in no way resembles club anthems in the slightest.

I would describe ballboy as similar in lyrical tone to the most witty and sarcastic Belle and Sebastian songs, and at times the degree of hilarious self-loathing can resemble Morrissey. Let me see if I can illustrate:

I Hate Scotland lists the many faults of Scotland.

Sex is Boring: “Take me back to your room, tie me up and strip me naked and lie me on your floor. Then you’ll see that sex is boring with me, it’s not what I came here for.”

Donald in the Bushes with a Bag of Glue: “The last time I saw you you were lying in a bush with a bag of glue. Now you’re making cakes for middle-aged ladies and you’re married too.”

But I shouldn’t give the impression that all their songs are just jokes. The music is always well-crafted and beautiful, even during the funny songs, and ballboy have just gotten better and better over the years at both the humor and the music.

Listened: Thursday June 3

Besides Blonde on Blonde, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s debut album has one of the more annoying opening tracks ever. It seems purposely designed to scare people off so the band would be artificially limited in fan base and therefore keep their indie cred. The rest of the songs are pretty catchy and good, though the singer’s voice takes some getting used to as it’s not really what you might call “singing” much of the time – more like yelping. I would call them a modern Talking Heads stylistically.

Definitely this band is very painfully cool though – they take themselves a little too seriously for me to become much of a fan.

Listened: Thursday June 3

Fran and Andy are two guys from Travis, one of my favorite bands. Chronological Acoustical Journey is acoustic versions of their greatest hits, with assorted anecdotes told extremely endearingly by Fran. These include the horrors of a small Scottish man trying to rap, poor naming conventions of Scottish small towns, heterosexual man-crushes on Jake Gyllenhaal – the list goes on – all told with a very cute Scottish accent.

Through a scheduling cock-up (as a Scot might say) I missed the live tour when they came to town, so I’m glad they released this album, though the hilarity of it makes me even more sad I missed it!