A second visit to the Lion enclosure brings us another fine selection of songs.
“Gold Lion” is the first single by American indie rock band YeahYeah Yeah’s from their second album, Show Your Bones. Distinct in the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ discography, it features acoustic guitar and a more slowed-down pace in contrast to earlier works like “Bang!” and “Date With The Night”. It was released on March 20, 2006, and became the band’s second major hit after 2004’s “Maps”. “Gold Lion” was named after the two Gold Lion awards won by the Adidas commercial Hello Tomorrow at the 2005 Cannes Advertising Festival Karen O had contributed vocals to ad’s song composed by Sam Spiegel, brother of Karen’s then-boyfriend Spike Jonze who had directed the ad.
“Digital Lion” is a track by James Blake from his second album Overgrown which was released in 2013. ‘Digital Lion’ (a title that’s a dig at those blogs?) shows Blake’s not afraid to mix the different styles of music he’s been experimenting with since his student days. A collaboration with Brian Eno, it’s inspired in parts by their joint favourite gospel record, ‘Peace Be Still’. And it starts slow – real slow – with Blake singing “digital lion” over and over. There’s a moment’s lull where all you hear is a crackle, before a beat throbs, effects patter in and out and the vocals are looped over a deep “hmmmm hmmmm hmmmm”. Towards the end it really gets going as drumbeats scatter and Blake sings the title again like he’s having the best time in a club. Yes, he still looks sad in his pictures, but James Blake isn’t just mewing any more.
“Hey Lion” is a track by Sofi Tukker taken from their EP Soft Animals. Sofi Tukker is a musical duo based in Florida consisting of Sophie Hawley-Weld and Tucker Halpern. They released an EP, Soft Animals in July 2016. The EP includes “Drinkee”, “Matadora”, “Awoo”, “Déjà Vu Affair”, “Moon Tattoo”, and “Hey Lion”. The title comes from a Mary Oliver poem (“You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”).
“Joe the Lion” is a song written by David Bowie in 1977 for the album “Heroes”. It was produced by Bowie and Tony Visconti and features lead guitar by Robert Fripp. Like the album as a whole, the song demonstrates the influence of German Krautrock. The track is in part a tribute to performance artist Chris Burden, who was famous for having himself crucified to a Volkswagen in 1974 (“Nail me to my car and I’ll tell you who you are”) and for having an assistant shoot him in the arm at an art gallery in 1971 (“Guess you’ll buy a gun / You’ll buy it secondhand”). “Joe the Lion” has also been seen as reflecting Bowie’s struggle to overcome the emotional numbness that appeared to permeate his previous album Low (“You get up and sleep”).
“Last Lion of Albion” is a track written by Neko Case, Paul Rigby, and Jeff Galegher and taken from ‘Hell-On‘ her seventh studio album by American singer-songwriter Neko Case, released by record label Anti- in June 2018. It was largely recorded in Stockholm, and Case co-produced six of the album’s twelve tracks with Bjorn Yttling of Peter, Bjorn and John. The album was recorded during a tumultuous period in Case’s life. Already dealing with serious problems caused by obsessed stalkers, her farmhouse residence in Vermont was destroyed in a fire while she was in Sweden working on the album, leaving her homeless.
