trouser press: cat power, frida hyvönen and more

in today’s trouser press:
- more Cat Power covers lurk at the Dark End Of The Street
- Frida Hyvönen goes Wild on new album
- preview the new Jolie Holland album in full
- ex-Pipette Rose announces debut solo single
- Electric Proms sign up Sharleen Spiteri for ‘Saturday Night Fever’ tribute
- new album on the way from Amadou & Mariam
- is Duffy on the edge?
- hear Paramore’s new vampire film song
- Tegan & Sara talk about hanging with the ‘bad boys’ of rock
- listen to new Doctors & Dealers songs
- Girls Aloud’s Nicola confronts Chris Moyles
- who thinks Sarah Palin is rock ‘n’ roll?

* * *

Once she wanted to be the greatest. Now she just can’t stop covering ‘em. Cat Power releases a new 6-track EP featuring some of the leftovers from the sessions for Chan Marshall’s second covers album, Jukebox, on December 9th. It comes as a limited edition double 10″ vinyl set in a gatefold sleeve or as a much less exciting clutch of MP3s. There will be no CD issue.

There will no doubt be grumbles that Dark End Of The Street doesn’t feature either her cover of David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ or Cat Stevens’ ‘How Can I Tell You’, short clips from which have soundtracked adverts in the US, but I’m personally quite happy that a studio version of Sandy Denny/Fairport Convention’s classic ‘Who Knows Where The Time Goes’ will finally be seeing the light of day. That and three of the other songs are previously unreleased in any form.

Dark End Of The Street EP
01 Auld Triangle [Pogues cover] +
02 Dark End Of The Street [James Carr/Aretha Franklin cover] +
03 Who Knows Where The Time Goes [Sandy Denny cover] +
04 Fortune Son [Creedence Clearwater Revival cover]
05 I’ve Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now) [Otis Redding cover]
06 It Ain’t Fair [Aretha Franklin cover] +

+ previously unreleased

* * *

Eccentric piano-pounding Swede Frida Hyvönen will release her second album proper, Silence Is Wild, in late January 2009. Unless you’re lucky enough to live in the US or Canada and can buy it in November. Teaming up once more with producer Jari Haapalainen, Hyvönen hasn’t reined in her bizarre and sometimes shocking way with a lyric – who can forget ‘Once I Was A Serene Teenaged Child’?. Her raw confessionals and scattershot sexuality have always been her most compelling elements, and it seems that we can expect more along those lines with Silence Is Wild. ‘Pony’ is a rewrite of Smog’s ‘I Break Horses’, while ‘December’ deals with abortion in a way that showcases Hyvönen’s “distinct talent for political and social ambivalence”, to quote directly from the press release.

You could argue that now really is not the time for political ambivalence, especially in the US where the record is out on polling day (November 4th). Which brings us nicely to ‘Enemy Within’, a new song that you can have for free by clicking right here. Okay, so it’s not about George W Bush, but it was too good a tenuous link to miss.

Silence Is Wild
01 Dirty Dancing
02 Enemy Within
03 Highway 2 U
04 London!
05 My Cousin
06 Science
07 Scandinavian Blonde
08 December
09 Birds
10 Pony
11 Sic Transit Gloria
12 Oh Shanghai
13 Why Do You Love Me So Much

* * *

All ten tracks from the new Jolie Holland album, The Living & The Dead, are currently streaming individually from her Myspace player. The former Be Good Tanya checked in with her first ever blog the other day, revealing some details about the forthcoming video for new song ‘Mexico City’. Filmed on location in Joshua Tree, California, the clip was directed by Stoney Sharp – the man who directed the clip for Jolie-featuring Sage Francis song ‘Got Up This Morning’ – and features some homemade lettering by Jason Leonard (who you may remember was involved in the recording of Laura Gibson’s Six White Horses EP earlier this year). Jolie doesn’t give much else away, except to reveal that by pure coincidence she happens to be wearing the same dress in the video as she does on the cover of the new album, which is out on Monday through Anti-. We’ll post the video when it surfaces, and watch this space for our review of The Living & The Dead.

* * *

Coming around far sooner than we’d expected is the debut solo single from Rose Elinor Dougall. The ex-Pipette has a limited edition 7″ vinyl coming out through Scarlett Records on December 8th. Called ‘Another Version Of Pop Song’, it was produced by Lee ‘Muddy’ Baker (James, My Federation) and comes with an exclusive remix by Chris Rotter. Nope, we’ve never heard of him either, but he looks like a good sort from his Myspace.

Don’t expect a Pipettes-alike retro feast, ‘Another Version Of Pop Song’ takes its cues from bands like Broadcast, Penguin Café Orchestra and The Silver Apples. That’s what it says in the press release anyway. We haven’t heard it yet. You too can hear three songs that are not the single on Rose’s Myspace.

A full album is anticipated in Summer 2009.

* * *

Sharleen Spiteri and Gabriella Cilmi will join the likes of Sam Sparro and Boyzone members Ronan Keating and Stephen Gateley at a special Electric Proms event celebrating the 30th anniversary of ‘Saturday Night Fever’, performing alongside Bee Gee Robin Gibb and the BBC Concert Orchestra at London’s Roundhouse. The event takes place on October 25th.

See here for the rest of the Electric Proms line-up, which includes Goldfrapp, Santogold, Chaka Khan and Kitty, Daisy & Lewis.

* * *

Also performing at the Electric Proms as part of the ongoing Africa Express series of events will be Malian husband and wife duo Amadou & Mariam, whose new album Welcome To Mali is release on November 17th. Recorded over the last year in Bamako, Dakar, Paris and London, the album sees the blind couple team up with the likes of Toumani Diabaté, Keziah Jones and Damon Albarn. Albarn has produced the opening track, ‘Sabali’, which also happens to be the first single, digitally released on October 27th. If you saw the duo play at Latitude Festival over the summer, you’ll know how good this is likely to be. Mark it in your diaries.

* * *

Duffy has admitted she’s been finding the pressures of fame a bit too much. In a recent interview with the Western Mail she claimed to be “borderline on a nervous breakdown”. The 24 year old who is about to tour the US as support for Coldplay – whose idea was that?! – reflected on her past experiences on the other side of the Atlantic without much fondness. “I spent 80% of my time in the US playing shit-holes, and when I say shit-holes I mean it,” she said. “Two thousand tickets sold but the toilets don’t have a seat on them, or they don’t have a shower – and I flew a long way to be there. You stand there thinking ‘Wow, this thing that I created is changing so much of who I am.’”

It seems that she’s not exactly rolling in the money you’d expect a million-selling album to bring either, admitting she doesn’t even know whether she “can afford to buy a new pair of tights. I just do it…Maybe for Christmas we can go on a big holiday, and buy a big turkey from M&S instead of Aldi this year.”

“It would be wrong for me to disappear,” she added. “I have to go and play for the fans. It’s not about selling the product, it’s about doing it right for the people who have bought it.”

* * *

Want to hear a new song by Paramore? From the soundtrack to the new vampire film ‘Twilight’? Well then, get yourself over to the website of ‘Twilight’ author Stephenie Meyer to hear it. It’s called ‘Decode’, a title that Paramore singer Hayley Williams says she chose “because the song is about the building tension, awkwardness, anger and confusion between Bella and Edward.” Find out who the hell they are either by reading the book or by watching the film, although we’ve no idea when that will hit the UK. It comes out in the US on November 21st.

* * *

We all know that the majority of rock festivals are distinctly short on female artists most summers. Rolling Stone caught up with Tegan & Sara, and their pal Tom Gabel of Against Me!, at Austin City Limits earlier this week to find out what it’s like for them to be among all the male rockers. They didn’t seem to mind.

* * *

Following on from our Doctors & Dealers interview the other week, we’ve received notice from singer Sparrow that you can now hear five finished songs from her second album Lost Friends & Newfound Habits, out early next year, on her Myspace. These include ‘The Butterfly Effect’, ‘Sunday Morning’, ‘He Went Down’, ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Dreams’ and, my personal favourite, ‘How Many Hours Can A Cat Stay Asleep?’

* * *

Girls Aloud singer Nicola Roberts has confronted Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles about his constant on air comments about the way she looks. You can see her point, it has been going on for six years. In an interview with Heat magazine, Nicola demanded that Moyles stop his bullying.

“His obsession with me needs to stop,” she said. “I don’t care what he says about me, but what bothers me is that there are loads of people being bullied for the way they look or act…They are made to feel shit about themselves because they don’t conform to how society wants them to be…I have bright red hair, pale skin and, yeah, I can be quite shy, but that doesn’t mean I’m rude or miserable. I’m growing up, I’m learning and I’m slowly becoming more confident.”

The new Girls Aloud album, Out Of Control, is released on November 10th, preceded by the single, ‘The Promise’, on October 27th.

* * *

Finally, does Sarah Palin = rock ‘n’ roll? I know she has her own doll and everything but some people have way too much time on their hands…

* * *

Alan Pedder

Written by: Wears The Trousers magazine

Tags: alan pedder, amadou and mariam, bbc, cat power, chris moyles, damon albarn, doctors and dealers, duffy, electric proms, frida hyvönen, gabriella cilmi, girls aloud, jolie holland, news, paramore, robin gibb, rose elinor dougall, sarah palin, saturday night fever, sharleen spiteri, tegan and sara, the pipettes

This entry was posted on Friday, October 3rd, 2008 at 12:42 am and is filed under news, the inside leg. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.