Welcome to The Song Bar, a sociable establishment where visitors enthuse and share in their music tastes, indulge in civilised discussion and create playlists on a whole variety of subjects. Feel free to drop in anytime. We profile music new and old, but our main event is the song blog, where each Thursday a topic will be set, and readers around the globe nominate and recommend music on that theme, culminating in a playlist compiled by a guest writer on the following Wednesday.
So find yourself a seat, grab a drink, have a read and listen, and if you like it, join in ...
– Your friendly Landlord
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Latest from Themes & Playlists ...
Frogs, toads, salamanders and axolotls all leap into view in this week’s musical menagerie of amazing amphibious numbers across a fabulous pond of genres from folk to hip hop, jazz and much more, stylishly chosen by guest Suzi from last week’s topic
Frogs, toads, newts, salamanders, caecilians, and not forgetting the amazing axolotl, in literal or metaphorical contexts, myth or fairytale, sounds or more, these amazing creatures seem to straddle that subjective line between cute, creepy and ugly. But how to they leap up in song?
Metaphors, narratives, figures of speech and a whole selection of objects that carry stories and emotions. With a vast range of styles and contexts, they are all inside the pocket of these playlists, as skilfully picked by guest ajostu from last week’s topic
They’re everyday but also precious, the portal to possessions, they reveal much about ourselves and our daily lives, as well as being an opening for many idioms and metaphors. But what’s in them, and now are they expressed in song?
LATEST FROM New Albums ...
New album: Silky, soulful new work by the falsetto-smooth London-based New Zealand-Australian musician, singer-songwriter and producer with a sophisticated cocktail or perky pop, jazz, and R&B
New album: Following 2022’s Limbs, another extraordinary, experimental release by the rich-voiced British singer and actress from Oldham of atmospheric, beautiful, evocative, at times vocalisations
New album: Menacingly poetic, darkly humorous, searingly sordid and the sweetly sarcastic? It can only be the return of Scotland’s Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton with another fabulously articulate assault on the self and society’s sadness and strangeness
New album: Superbly smoky, soulful, sensual, richly woozy and also insightful new work about relationships by the Toronto singer-songwriter in this follow-up to 2021’s excellent Alpha album
New album: Another cracking release by the London collective fronted by London-born Nigerian singer Eno Williams, a catchy, infectious concoction of Afrobeat, funk, disco, pysch and electronica, with punchy, enticing beats and grooves
Latest from New Songs …
Song of the Day: A dazzling new single by the indie-psychedelic band from the Wirral, Merseyside, fronted by singer/songwriter Louisa Roach about our ancestry, time, atoms and how elements of our bodies formed in the hearts of long dead stars over billions of years
Song of the Day: Following his last Rock Konducta albums in two parts and Sound Ancestors, the prolific US hip-hop producer and songwriter returns with two stellar rappers with a sharp new single, including The Roots’ Black Thought
Song of the Day: This mesmeric, haunting, piano-accompanied new single comes from the Icelandic-Chinese singer-songwriter Laufey Lín Bing Jónsdóttir about her experience in a relationship with someone who is more in love with her image as an artist than her as a person
Song of the Day: Classic catchy indie-rock with a glam- and Rolling Stones vibe, beautiful chord changes, a singalong chorus and an owl-inspired video by the Melbourne-based quaret, heralding their forthcoming new album, Oyster Cuts, out on 9 August via Merge Records
Song of the Day: Mesmeric dynamic, shimmering, grinding but also delicate fuzz in a shower haze of shoegaze-psychedelia by the improvisation Los Angeles guitar band fronted by Cory Hanson, from their forthcoming new album Vertigo, out on Drag City Records on 26 July
Latest from Word of the week …
Word of the week: This evocative term is derived from the Yiddish expression gelt afn tish, meaning cash money on the table, ooftish was common slang for money or cash in late-19th to mid-20th century English, with oofless in turn meaning skint, poor or bankrupt
Word of the week: Huge, gigantic, enormous, voracious or insatiable, this colourful adjective derives from the character in the pioneering 16th-century French prose writer François Rabelais’s multiple volume work, Gargantua and Pantagruel
Word of the week: An adjective with origins in the late 17th century meaning pointing or heading off in all directions – particularly as in the point of a compass, sometimes pertaining to geographical structure, or such as with an exploding firework
Word of the week: This beautifully strange, rhythmic, rhyming, onomatopoeic English word hails from the 18th century, meaning crumpled or gathered up, often pertaining to cloth or clothing, and deriving from the word for crease – a ruckle
Word of the week: This colourfully archaic English verb, thought to have origins in the Leeds and immediate Yorkshire area, means to shake or knock something violently
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Human or animal, trousers or American pants, breeches, pantaloons, hose, stockings or simply fully exposed, it’s time for legs and their coverings to do the walking, or take a stand, in this week’s possibly lengthy topic …