on warbling from a to d [ari-up to devendra banhart]

Some deaths are bludgeoning and Ari-Up’s recent dying was one such. You can hear why just by listening to that great first album, Cut [1979], the maddened monkeying in heaven singularity of her manifested voice on ‘New Town’ etc. All those sounds went in to me so faithfully and long ago that really I don’t need to hear them from without as it were.

However, listening to ‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine’ today sounded more like tomorrow than yesterday; striking for one of the least digitally conceived songs ever [despite its very crisp production]…

I realised too that the warbling [not a good word for such a great incarnated attitude] on that track, of “some other guUuUy …” is where Devendra Banhart got his great warbling inspiration from -at least in part. Yes! Must be! If Kurt was obsessed with The Raincoats, Devendra heard his ‘At the HoOoOp’ on the bassvine, surely?

Both of them and these songs have gone out with me on foot and made the sun warmer on my face and the day peculiarly mine by tickling even the coldest or wettest back towards an affirmative realm of my own making. Those warbles being what utterly relaxed pleasure or warm bodied relaxedness sound like.

The world and its warble were better with Ari-Up present …

John Lydon ‘Arianna’ here.

Jon Savage The G. Music blog here.

John Robb Obit in The G. here.

Chris Salewicz Obit in The Inde. here.

‘Typical Girls’ original very homemade vid is on youtube here.