Ballboy is the Scottish Belle and Sebastian. Oh, wait…hmmm… Maybe they’re Scottish cousins of Carissa’s Wierd, then, with a little more twee, and a little bit less chamber pop. They’ve got a great energy, prominent strings, warm guitars, and a lot of songs about love, hearts, and all that stuff. They don’t have quite the songwriting ability of the bands I’ve compared them to, nor the ability to make harmonies that just make you want to melt, but they’re still a pretty neat band.
I came across them a couple years ago doing a Bruce Springsteen cover:
Born in the USA
It’s an interesting take on the song. The Boss himself has a couple versions, the bombastic, huge, and powerful version that everyone knows, but also the stripped down, acoustic version originally recorded for Nebraska that’s now on the Tracks box-set. The Ballboy version takes the song in a slightly different direction. While both of Springsteen’s versions emphasize the gut-wrenching elements of the narrative (either with screaming vocals that pummel you, or with a sparse, almost bluesy approach).
Ballboy, however, make the sound sad more than painful. With that warm acoustic strumming and weary, forelorn vocals, it takes on a slightly different feeling. No longer an attempt to expulse the pain, it is mournful.
I still prefer the original Springsteen version, but I definitely enjoy this one a lot, too.
Another song by them I enjoy:
Frankie and Johnny
This one is a lovely little tale about young lovebirds who share a blissful life until Frankie discovers him cheating on her, and blows his head off. Oops. I hate it when things end that way. Considering the subject matter, it’s a very bouncy quick-paced and fun-sounding song. It wasn’t until the second or third listen that I paid attention to the lyrics and realized it wasn’t nearly as happy as I had thought.
They’ve got a number of MP3s available for download on their website. And you can even get their most recent album in MP3 format from them.
Apparently Matt strongly disagrees with me about the new Flaming Lips. I dunno. Like I said, a lot of people seem to like it and who am I to argue with taste, but…it just doesn’t do it for me.
According to Stereogum, Mark Knopfler has an album of duets with Emmylou Harris coming out next week. Woohoo! Mark Knopfler, creator of my all-time, desert island, number one favorite song of all-time: Romeo and Juliet.
On a non-musical note, I just watched Manor House, which is pretty much the coolest thing ever. Reality TV, BBC style. They bring a family in to play the role of Edwardian aristocrats, and a bunch of other people to take on the roles of the servants. Upstairs/downstairs politics, a little history about early 20th century England, and a whole lot of crazy stuff. I had two main thoughts. First, it’s amazing how quickly and how deeply the family falls into the role of the “benevolent masters” – they quickly begin to think of themselves as noble, deserving of the constant attention of servants, completely unaware of how hard the life is for those who do all the work. It calls to mind Kurt Vonnegut’s admonishment from Mother Night: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
Second, it’s pretty amazing to watch an empire falling apart. It’s a small microcosm, to be sure, but seeing just how obsessed these people were with maintaing strict social hiearchies, with adhering to rules of etiquette, and with honoring their past reveals a lot about the state of the British Empire. It had become decadent, weak. Those in power did everything they could to maintain their hold on that power, creating an intensely stratified society that would soon be torn apart by world wars and economic realities which forced a drastic reevaluation of the role of workers in society. Obsession with etiquette did not cause British power to collapse, but it certainly helped things along. When they could have devoted their efforts to expanding their power, developing new technologies, modernizing the economic and political environment, instead they strove for stagnation. Very interesting stuff…