MY 10 FAVORITE ALBUMS: Luke Seymoup

Following the momentum of their debut single “Mosquitoes” in December, Luke Seymoup and his band have delivered their next offering in the form of “Doing Dishes”. This is a Springsteen-influenced punk song that won’t disappoint.
This track has been a live staple for the band since it’s inception in 2014 and provides a taste of the band’s forthcoming debut album due out later this year. The song was recorded by Danny Brickwell (Miyazaki!) and mastered by John Naclerio at Nada Mastering (Bayside, Armor For Sleep, Brand New).
I spoke to Luke about the records he feels influcned by:

Alkaline Trio – Goddamnit!
“Alkaline Trio have been my favourite band since I was about 14 or 15 years old. The first record of theirs I picked up was From Here To Infirmary after I heard “Armageddon” off a friend’s iPod in the back row of Year 9 English class. I didn’t pick up Goddamnit! until the Redux edition came out in 2008. I had my favourite local record store, Fist2Face (R.I.P) order it in for me and that was it. This was the record I’d been searching for my whole life. Catchy melodies, fast tempos, dark/angsty lyrics and Matt Skiba’s idiosynchratic style of writing guitar riffs that I would spend the rest of my teen years trying to imitate (to varying levels of success).”

Against Me! – Reinventing Axl Rose
“I never had a high school job. As a teenager, I made pocket money by giving my mother an hour long saxophone lesson once a week after school for about 3 years. When I finished school and started applying for real jobs, I didn’t have very much success because I had no experience. I begged the aforementioned record store, Fist2Face, to let me do a week’s “work experience” there. To which they agreed. My payment at the end of the week was a $50 voucher for the store. I picked up this album and a copy of Neon Creeps by O Pioneers. This is the record that stuck with me for good. Laura Grace delivers every lyric on this album like it’s the most important thing that’s ever been said. If you want to hear what real passion sounds like, listen to this record. Against Me! have a lot of records now and I would list a lot of them among my favourites ever but this is that one that had the biggest impact on me as a musician.”

Bruce Springsteen – Born To Run
“What can you say about Springsteen that hasn’t been said so many times before? I didn’t discover his music until I was older because my parents didn’t think he was any good. I got to hear a lot of Nightwish and Within Temptation at home instead… but driving home on my L plates one night at the age of 18, the title track from this album came on Gold FM and the second I heard Clarence Clemons launch into that saxophone solo, I was hooked. I picked a copy of this album up the next day from a local JB Hi-Fi bargain bin, I listened to it on repeat for a week straight. When it comes to lyrics, Bruce Springsteen can’t be beat. I’ve never heard another songwriter who can paint a picture with words the same way that the Boss can. Having listened to mostly Punk rock my whole life, I’d never heard a record with arrangements like this before. Like Glockenspiel? Born To Run has you covered. Like Keyboards? “Backstreets” was TWO. I’ve lost count of the number of times that my keyboard player, Brendan, and I have been arranging a song and asked each other What Would Bruce Do?”

Tom Waits – Rain Dogs
“I’ve owned this album for a long time. I fell in love with this album the instant I heard it. I have vivid memories of typing the “influences” section of various band pages on Myspace; rattling off a long stream of mid-00’s Emo acts (My Chemical Romance, Hawthorne Heights, Taking Back Sunday and so forth) with Tom Waits’ name plonked awkwardly in the middle. I had a lot of very confused friends asking me if I was joking when I wrote it. I had my brother leave the room we shared whenever I put this record on…. but I’ve always understood you, Tom. We have a bond. This record sounds as weird as I feel most of the time. The variety of the songs on it covers just about everything I could want to listen to in one 54 minute session. What a classic.”

Wu-Tang Clan – Enter The Wu-Tang Clan (36 Chambers)
“For a long time, the name Wu-Tang to me was just a primary school clothing brand or a Dave Chappelle sketch that I didn’t quite understand. I don’t remember when, how or why I came to own this record but I would have been in my late teens/early 20’s. I listened to hip-hop before I ever owned a punk record but when I hit 13, all the people I didn’t like at school started rapping so I stopped listening to it. This is the album that brought me back into the fold. There are 9 different, distinct voices on this album; some show up once or twice (Masta Killa/U-God) and some are all over it (Ghostface) but every verse on “36 Chambers” matters. While on later albums, their styles have all evolved to the point where it doesn’t quite mesh anymore, here it sounds like they’re all working towards the same goal. The Wu use words to paint pictures that incorporate life stories, martial arts movies and strange superhero personas. It all comes together to make a record that plays more like a film than an album. One that drags me in from start to finish whenever I hear it.”

The Distillers – Coral Fang
“If I could choose to change my voice to sound like any other singer, it would be Brody Dalle. Coral Fang is the last album The Distillers made and, had they continued beyond here, I don’t know if they could have ever topped it. This is what pure anger sounds like. Dalle’s lyrics are dark and emotional, the music is loud, fast paced and aggressive and the record captures every aspect of it perfectly. When Brody sings the lyric “it’s warm and humid on Swanston Street and the air is filled with electricity”, I feel a buzz because it shows that she’s taken that little piece of Melbourne in her and gone out to leave her mark on the world. That’s the dream, isn’t it?”

In general, it is a sexually incapability of gaining firm erections enough for healthy and enjoyable cialis 50mg marital life. Herbal treatment is the best women sex enhancement treatment and it involves the placement of sildenafil samples various thin needles inside the skin at certain strategic locations. The way Kamagra 100mg tablets normalize sexual health- This is one of the most powerful jellies ever created and used for the treatment of genital’s care, so it should be taken very check acquisition de viagra carefully as per the advice of registered medical practitioner only. There could be several reasons for online cialis djpaulkom.tv hampered blood supply to the penile region.

Crowded House – Crowded House
“People always tell this story about someone asking Paul McCartney what it’s like to be the best songwriter in the word and him saying “I don’t know, ask Neil Finn”. I’ve never seen any proof that it’s true but, if it’s not, it should be. This is the catchiest album ever made… and then they followed it up with three more that are nearly as good. Any song off this record could have been a single and that’s a goal that every songwriter should aspire to. Neil Finn’s voice is perfectly smooth, the band is constantly on point (watch any live video of them playing these songs and prepare to be blown away) and the arrangements are padded out with additional keyboards and horns that make the whole thing sound huge. This is a pop album done right. So very right.”

My Chemical Romance – Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge
“I don’t think I’ve ever obsessed over an album in the same way that I obsessed over this one in 2007. I listened to it every day. Every! Single! Day! Without missing one! For an entire year! I wish I could stick to anything with that kind of consistency now. I’m still, to this day, discovering new things I’ve never heard before in it. Vocal harmonies, guitar riffs, drum fills. This album is a work of perfect planning and construction. A master painting that I’ve gazed at time and time again in the hope that it will reveal its secrets to me. My Chemical Romance are a band of regular people that managed to take it all the way to the top of the world by putting every ounce of themselves into writing this album and all their determination into making it work. The amount of people I know who are still dismissing this as a “stupid emo album” don’t ever know what they’re missing. In 30 years time, this album deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Born to Run, Nevermind and Sgt. Pepper’s.”

Prince & The Revolution – Purple Rain
“I found a vinyl copy of this album on the side of the road in 2008. I didn’t listen to it. I never heard this album until we bought the CD version as a birthday present for my older sister several years later. She already owned it so she let me keep it. I put it in the CD player the next day and was taken on a musical adventure that there was no turning back from. Prince can do it all; an emotional ballad, a funky dance tune, a fist-pumping rock and roll song… and he nails it EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. There isn’t a bad song on this record. I didn’t even see the movie until a year ago, the record stands so well on it’s own that it wasn’t necessary. Where other soundtrack albums can tend to sound disjointed or lacking in good material, this one delivers the goods at every turn. Losing Prince last year was a tragedy but nothing will ever take his songs way from us. Rest In Purple, Prince Rogers Nelson.”

The Streets – A Grand Don’t Come For Free
“This was a difficult record to get to love. I picked it up from a Cash Converters store for $3 on a drive to the beach in 2012. I didn’t get it. Off-key singing, strange beats, vocals that sounded more like talking than rapping. I definitely didn’t think I liked it at first but I kept going back to give it another go. For some reason, this is an album that I only listen to in the car. Going on a long drive alone one night and listening to the album’s narrative all the way through changed it for me. Something clicked. Mike Skinner is the voice of all slackers, anyone who’s ever had big plans they never followed through with or anyone who thought it would be better to watch cartoons all day instead of heading into University. He has his own voice, people have tried to imitate it and all have failed miserably. Similar to “Enter The Wu-Tang”, this album is a film but, instead of an over-the-top martial arts film, it’s a low-budget drama/comedy where nobody seems to come out on top in the end. Still, on “Empty Cans” when Skinner delivers his “there it was in all it’s glory – my thousand quid”, I can’t help but get goosebumps every, single time.”

FOLLOW LUKE AND LISTEN TO HIS MUSIC BELOW:


FACEBOOK

INSTAGRAM
BANDCAMP
SPOTIFY
ITUNES