Graham Reid | | <1 min read
Django Django: Porpoise Song
The pleasure in the on-going Late Night Tales series which started in 2001 is in just what obscurities the artists chosen to collate the compilation pull out. As aldums they often hang together rather well (altough I'm not persuaded by the on-going readings of a story as the final track, here Benedict Cumberbatch is up to part four of Flat of Angles).
The British band Django Django bring some highly eccentric choices into this 20 song collection (closing with their cover of the Monkees' Porpoise Song from their film Head).
Along the way the mood shifts from Leo Kottke acoustic guitar (Tennessee Toad) to quasi-ambient electronica (Game Love by Gulp) into jazzy treaments (Bob James' Nautilus, a kitschy James last version of Marvin Gaye's Inner City BLues) into blues (the raw Bone by Map of Africa) and then . . .
Well what follows are Seals and Croft, Philip Glass, the Millennium and the Beach Boys (joined at the breezy harmony hip on To Claudia on Thursday and Surf's Up), Primal Scream, Massive Attack . . .
See whtat I mean about eccentric choices?
High points and obscurities (or reminders) are the romantic minimalism of the Glass (Floe), OutKast with the quirky electro-Sly Stone funk of Slum Beautiful, Timmy Thomas with the old Seventies plea Why Can't We Live Together and Canned Heat with Poor Moon.
A damn fine mood piece where nothing outstays its welcome.
For others in this Late Night Tales series go here.
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