Guitar driven, harmony laced indie pop
more clips here :
"On Trigger Happy Love there are no uncertain riches of melody and harmony .. Kane pursues a suave, luxuriant brand of pop that recalls." Edwyn Collins. Doug Wallen, Mess and Noise Album review,14.10.09
"What a gorgeous, austere song. Jim Kane sounds like a songwriter from a different era, a man who possesses a great, emotive voice. " Dom Alessio, Triple J (re: 'the thing that i love') 03.07.09
"Kane has an amazing songwriting ability, "The Girl I'll never know is one of the most beautiful love songs to have surfaced in a while. A sound you are guaranteed to fall in love with." Dave Griffiths, Subculture Entertainment Website.
click here to
more songs and downloads at reverbnation :
Blog
click on menu below or page corners
Aug '11 - Guitar driven pop, laced with sweet harmonies and great tunes. This is the kind of music I love. From the Beatles and the Kinks and the 60's mods through to the jangle pop kids of the 80's, Madchester, Britpop and the noughties indie-folk movement, I've followed it pretty obsessively for twenty plus years.
I'm also an independent singer and songwriter who has been playing around the Melbourne scene for many years. Melbourne has a thriving pop scene and I'm going to spread the word about some great local acts that should be getting way more exposure than they're currently receiving.
Melody is the king of my musical world and it's all about fitting the lyrics into the musical notes, not the other way around. I do venture into folky troubadourship from time to time, where Leonard Cohen is my undisputed inspiration. I have no problem paying homage to these key influences as I don't pretend to be doing anything ground-breakingly new.
I have spent many thousands of hours honing my writing chops in pursuit of the perfect pop song, and countless more trying to nail the perfect arrangement in the studio with my producer Neil Kelly.
At the moment there are a few records that are currently getting flogged on my iphone. Todd Rundgren's something/anything, The Beach boy's 'Surf's up' Midlake's 'Van Occupanther' , Super furry animals' 'Rings around the world' and the Smiths' 'Strangeways..'
Australian acts that I dig include You Am I, The Go Betweens, The Triffids, The Church and the Saints. As mentioned there are also a stack of obscure Melbourne acts that are also great.
This will give you some idea about the type music that i'll be blogging about. I hope to find a few like-minded bloggers out there I can share stories and tunes with.
Sep 11 - 'I Spy' is a song I wrote about religious fundamentalists and/or charlatans. I have nothing against most forms of organized religion. In fact I was brought up as a catholic and I think this has mainly had a positive effect on my life (although admittedly i have since 'lapsed'). But it is people like these nutcases at the extreme end that give religion a bad name.
The idea of this song came about just after I received a random visit from some religious types one hungover Sunday a few years back. I was having one of those hangovers where you've just had a great night out, there's still some bevvy still left in your system and the world is basically a pretty lovely place. The upshot is I didn't chase them away, I chatted with them for a bit and even let them give me one of their funny little books. My catholic guilt is such that it took me ages to bring myself to eventually throwing the thing in the rubbish. (I mean it's got a picture of Jesus on the cover, i'll go straight to hell man)
I wrote this song about the confusion that sometimes occurs in us catholic defector types after we embrace a life of hedonistic abandon (possibly a slight exaggeration here) and we're confronted with
this religious question out the blue. We can laugh at the zealots - well they are pretty much worth laughing at - but what replaces it? This can be a difficult question.
If you want to give the track a listen, it's track 6 on the 'tunes' page of this site.
A curious footnote - the apocalyptic sound effects at the end of this track (screaming, car crashes, flames, and so on) were recorded on the day of Australia's biggest bushfire which were raging only about an hour or so's drive from the studio in northern melbourne, at the very time we were editing . We thought about scrapping them due to the circumstances, but as the song is entirely unrelated to bushfires or the theme of natural disasters, we ended up keeping them in.
Oct '11
Vagbond Heart - October Mix
This one is getting there. We put some electric guitar down to toughen it up, and also to take some of the cheese off the pre-chorus trumpets. We also put some traffic noises down to give it that saturday night feel, with the voice initially coming through some kind of faraway Radio am sound. I love the old 50s footage of vegas, and the fireworks are a bit corny but they kind of suit the straight ahead anthemic vibe that Im going for here. Its kind of a springsteeny fist pumping heart-on-sleeve vibe and a bit earnest, but why not add a touch of earnest to the mix every once and a while? The toms add a nice 80s cock-rockin touch, I had them all over this track but Neils reined me in a bit here.
To view the Vagabond Heart video, go to the 'Clips' page of this site
If you want to get in touch just drop me a line at codebreakin_hotmail.com or on twitter:
