Como Esta?

Well, we’re off on our hols this week, making what is for us a rather adventurous trip to Lisbon. I’m really looking forward to seeing the old buildings and riding the trams up and down the famous hills. I’m also hoping to see some traditional fado music, which on first hearing sounds like a bit of a hard listen; but I’m hoping that being there will make all the difference (a bit like Misterlee, really. Actually, not at all like Misterlee…).

As the whole premise of this Blog is that I’m going to feature only bands that I might conceivably go and see live, I’ve also been trying to bone up a little on Portuguese pop, in the hope that I might catch something hot when I’m out there. A long shot, I know, but I have come across a couple of quite interesting bands, namely x-wife and Bar, both of whom are worth a listen, x-wife being a bit more post-punk and Bar more on the poppy side of the spectrum.

Dead Combo

But the band I’m really keen on, after coming across their Myspace page is called Dead Combo, who are actually from Lisbon, and play a really enjoyable mixture of spaghetti western-style themes and Tom Waits-type of off-kilter jazz numbers. There are only the two of them, although sometimes it sounds more, To Trips, who plays guitars (I like the plural) and Pedro V Goncalves, who plays guitars (ditto), double bass, melodica and (rather wonderfully) kazoo. There are accents involved in those names, but I can’t get Blogger to co-operate with them…

You can buy their albums from Emusic (of course) and from the web page, which is also quite an entertaining read, especially the biographies. It says of To, for example:

“You might be able to see him wandering the streets of Lisbon, always with his broken guitar, playing in corners and dark alleys.”

I can hardly wait!

If you like a bit of quirky twang, I heartily recommend Dead Combo…

Angel Fuck

Electrica Cadente

(Apologies, these are direct links to the Myspace downloads, not very reliable, I know, but Savefile is not working at the moment...)