Pinkwash, "No Real Witness"
I feel like every time Pinkwash comes up, I say something equivalent to "hey, this is neat, I keep forgetting about this!" I wish I could say that I'd grown past that, but no, I do still keep forgetting about this. It's a fun record! But, I can report some growth: I checked to see if they have another record. No, they do not. Still!
Firewater, "The Beat Goes On"
Across a discography that stretches across seven albums ranging from incredible to great, there's one that stands out. Mostly by being kind of superfluous. This is from that record, 2003's Songs We Should Have Written. It's a covers record, and it's not bad, but it just doesn't rise to their original records.
Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell, "Ain't No Mountain High Enough"
And so we return to one of the central problems of Five Songs, which is: how in the hell do I say anything about Motown classics that is in any way illuminating or useful? The answer is simple: I cannot.
Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott, "When I Get Back to Blighty"
Paul Heaton, of course, is one of the leaders of the Housemartins and the Beautiful South, but this is one of his records he put out outside of those bands. What's interesting is that his collaborator here is Jacqui Abbott, who is also in the Beautiful South. It's a bit of an open question here as to what distinguishes this from a Beautiful South record. Is it a new type of music? Not really. The voices are familiar, it's glossy, pleasant pop. The answer, then, is "not much". It's fine? I was hoping maybe it would be a nice spark of creativity to raise Heaton's work from the latter day Beautiful South records being kind of in the doldrums, but no, it's more of the same.
The Du-Rites, "Bite It"
Oh man, good timing! This is two records after that last J-Zone record from yesterday, and J-Zone has fully embraced the funk. Greasy Listening is one of my favorites from his catalog, just a delightful slab of instrumental funk that you can pour directly in your ears and...uh, I'm not sure where this is going. Lost my grip on that one. Anyway, it's funky! It's fun! Listen to the Du-Rites!