Five Star Songs: Sisters Of Mercy- This Corrosion

Seriously....go see the movie The World's End. It may not be the best movie of the year but is sure is the most fun. It might also be proved to be the best soundtracked film of the year and if you are fan of British music from the late eighties and early nineties this is a must see movie. I think I counted at least fifteen songs throughout the film plus a couple more over the end credits, including tracks from The Soup Dragons, Teenage Fanclub, Suede, The Sundays and The Housemartins, plus major scenes revolving around Primal Scream and the Sisters of Mercy.

The lead character in the film named Gary King -played by Simon Pegg - is a forty year old slacker who wants to relive his early years by gathering up his old friends and going on a pub crawl bender. The first scene in the movie revolves around Primal Scream's "Loaded" which is a track that starts off with the sampled lines "Just what is it you want to do. We wanna be free. We wanna be free to do what we wanna do. And we wanna get loaded. And we wanna have a good time." that is taken from the Peter Fonda film The Wild Angels. This happens to be the King's philosophy in life and plays a another part in a scene later in the film.

The character Gary King is also a big Sisters of Mercy fan and sports the band's T-shirt throughout the film. Although, Pegg's character is proven to be pathetic for being a forty year old man who never grew up, his style of wearing goth clothes still made him look pretty cool.  The one Sisters of Mercy song in the movie is "This Corrosion" and it doesn't appear to the end credits.

You can read a great interview with the movie's director, Edgar Wright, regarding the soundtrack at Indie Wire.

Goth Girls: New Music From Anna Calvi, Zola Jesus, & Chelsea Wolfe

Why not include all of these talented women together in one post.....

The goth pop singer-songwriter trend seems to be in vogue within the indie world these days. Within the next few weeks we can look forward to dark icy releases from Anna Calvi, Zola Jesus and Chelsea Wolfe and that is on top of the excellent LP's that have come out in the last year from Bat for Lashes, Rachel Zeffira and Austra. Listen to three new songs from these artists below:

Anna Calvi- Eliza

From the album One Breath which will be out October 8th in the UK via Domino and hopefully sometime in the fall in North America.





Zola Jesus- Fall Back

Zola Jesus' new LP, Versions is out today. The LP is mostly classical rearrangements of Zola Jesus songs by JG Thirlwell but there is one original piece on the album titled "Fall Back".





Chelsea Wolfe- The Waves Have Come

"The Waves Have Come" is the third single from Chelsea' Wolfe's much anticipated new album Pain is Beauty. The record will be out September 3rd via Sargent House.

Five Star Songs: Bauhaus- Terror Couple Kill Colonel

This little gem came up on my iPod the other day.....

 "Terror Couple Kill Colonel" is unmistakably goth and is the third single released from the dark UK band Bauhaus. The song was inspired from the Red Army terrorist group that used to operate across Europe and were responsible for the murders of both prominent and innocent people.

New Music: Chelsea Wolfe- We Hit a Wall

Chelsea Wolfe is quickly becoming my new female singer obsession. ( one of umpteen crushes I have had on female musicians over the years).

Wolfe is supposedly going in a new electronic direction on her new album, Pain is Beauty, and the first single, "The Warden", was indicative of that. However, on her latest track, "We Hit a Wall", Wolfe has gone back to her roots with the creation of a dark beauty of a song that features gloomy guitars, tribal rhythms and downcast lyrics. Listen to the tormenting song below:

Pain is Beauty is out September 3rd via Sargent House.

Five Star Songs: David Bowie- Cat People (Putting Out Fire)

Still can't believe David Bowie released a brand new song this week. If you haven't heard his comeback track, Where Are We Now, where have you been??? Check it out here.

Once I digested the news of Bowie's surprise return, I reminisced over the last 25 years of his discography and realized he hasn't made any classic albums in that time span. The LP's he has made during the late eighties, nineties and the aughts have been just so so. My two favourite recent albums by Bowie are probably the industrial tinged Earthling with the great song I'm Afraid of Americans and his last album the art rock sounding Reality.

Before that, his last great album-and probably his best selling LP- was the 1983 pop masterpiece Let's Dance. The title track was a number 1 hit in both the U.S. and the U.K. and the album also produced the smash hits Modern Love and the re-worked China Girl which was first written for Iggy Pop. Also on the album was the song Cat People (Putting Out the Fire) which was released as a single, with the production of Giorgio Moroder, a couple of years earlier and re-recorded for the album.

The song might be more familiar nowadays for being featured in Quentin Tarantino's movie Inglorious Basterds. This is probably one of the best uses of a song in a movie. The track plays while the main female protagonist in the film, Shoshanna, is preparing to burn down a theatre which will trap all of the Nazi elite, including Hitler, in the fire. Some people criticize that the song is misplaced and that a pop song from the eighties should not be in a historical drama. Besides the similar theme of the song's lyrics to this part of the film, in a roundabout way the track fits perfectly with the scene in the movie. Bowie originally recorded the goth rock influenced Cat People for the movie with the same name in 1982-which was a re-make of the 1942 classic horror movie. In just so happens that Inglorious Basterds takes place in the same time period. Anyhow... watch the original music video for the song below:

New Band- Night Sins

With all of the sunny electro pop I've been posting lately it is time to do something on the opposite side of the 80's influenced synth pop spectrum and feature some goth music.

Night Sins describe themselves on their Facebook page as "Members of Salvation, Mother of Mercy, and Nothing take on coffin bound groans that creep through the corridors of one's mind like a half-recalled glimpse into the beyond. Christian Death/Bauhaus/Samhain possession with haunting vocals that hearken the ghost of Peter Steele." All I can think of when I read  this statement, and when I hear their new single Spectral Bliss, are Peter Murphy and The Sisters of Mercy. Listen for yourself below:

Night Sins are working on their new LP, New Grave, which will be available this fall via Avant! Records.

Download: Night Sins- Spectral Bliss