Collecting a variety of singles that appeared on the Morr-affiliated label of the same name, A Number of Small Things makes for a mixed but overall quite enjoyable collection of songs very much in the Morr vein -- sweet, wistful, often electronic-friendly, and not a little derived from general indie pop and shoegaze aesthetics. Cover versions turn up throughout the collection -- Seavault, a collaboration between isan's Antony Ryan and Slowdive veteran Simon Scott, offer up a few, including Ultra Vivid Scene's "Mercy Seat" (given a sweetly majestic take not far removed from the original) and the Undertones' "Teenage Kicks" -- isan themselves offer up interpretations of Erik Satie's famous Gymnopedie sequence -- while Masha Qrella has her way with a quietly chugging take on Bryan Ferry's "Don't Stop the Dance." Elsewhere, the duo of Markus Acher and Valerie Trebeljahr -- wittily titled John Yoko -- do a version of Smog's "Morning Paper" that in its grace and charm outdoes the original. Various songs are straight-up sparkling and winsome guitar pop of the kind that eventually gave "twee" a fairly bad name -- nothing against the work of acts like Butcher the Bar per se; it's just that they bring nothing new to the field. More energetic efforts come courtesy of Electric President, whose "I'm Not the Lonely Son (I'm the Ghost)" benefits from a crackling shuffle of a rhythm, and B. Fleischman's exquisite electronic construction "Broken Monitors," which somehow manages to call to mind both OMD at their most experimental and Simple Minds at their most instrumentally precise, a triumph that never shouts out loud. Meanwhile, Populous' "Blood Red Bird" does the remarkable in sounding like later-period piano-driven Cocteau Twins musically while not trying to sound like them at all vocally -- points for credit there alone, frankly.
A Number of Small Things: A Collection of Morr Music Singles
Various Artists
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A Number of Small Things: A Collection of Morr Music Singles Review
by Ned Raggett
Track Listing - Disc 1
Sample | Title/Composer | Performer | Time | Stream | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 |
|
Butcher the Bar | 03:19 | ||||
2 |
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Butcher the Bar | 03:04 | ||||
3 |
|
Benni Hemm Hemm | 03:39 | ||||
4 |
|
Benni Hemm Hemm / Jens Lekman | 03:55 | ||||
5 |
|
Seavault | 04:42 | ||||
6 |
|
Seavault | 05:05 | ||||
7 |
|
Seabear | 02:47 | ||||
8 |
|
Seabear | 03:51 | ||||
9 |
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Masha Qrella | 04:33 | ||||
10 |
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Masha Qrella | 04:07 | ||||
11 |
|
Benni Hemm Hemm | 02:23 | ||||
12 |
|
Benni Hemm Hemm | 02:58 | ||||
13 |
|
Electric President | 03:16 | SpotifyAmazon | |||
14 |
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Electric President | 03:50 | SpotifyAmazon | |||
15 |
|
Electric President | 04:06 | ||||
16 |
|
Electric President | 04:06 | ||||
17 |
|
Lali Puna / John Yoko | 04:07 | ||||
18 |
|
Lali Puna / John Yoko | 05:37 |
Track Listing - Disc 2
Sample | Title/Composer | Performer | Time | Stream | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 |
|
Populous | 02:13 | ||||
2 |
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Populous | 02:26 | ||||
3 |
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Populous | 04:25 | ||||
4 |
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B. Fleischmann | 03:54 | ||||
5 |
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B. Fleischmann | 06:15 | ||||
6 |
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ISAN | 02:35 | ||||
7 |
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ISAN | 01:55 | ||||
8 |
|
ISAN | 02:11 | ||||
9 |
|
Styrofoam | 05:56 | ||||
10 |
|
Styrofoam | 04:38 | ||||
11 |
|
Teamforest | 05:34 | ||||
12 |
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Teamforest | 03:27 | ||||
13 |
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Lali Puna | 03:26 | ||||
14 |
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Lali Puna | 04:35 | ||||
15 |
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Other People's Children | 05:57 | ||||
16 |
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Other People's Children | 05:47 | ||||
17 |
|
B. Fleischmann | 06:04 | ||||
18 |
|
B. Fleischmann | 06:13 |