Improved in translation.

Just for the record i want to say how much i adore Julia Stone's voice.

A lot.

I'm not going to bang on about it because I know her warbling lilting voice isn't for everyone but if you're already not a fan, and read her name in the first sentence and then you kept reading, well then quite frankly you deserve what you get. I honestly do believe she could sing the yellow pages and make it sound beautiful - obviously she might struggle with the ads for earth moving equipment and sewage disposal but, you know.

Together with brother Angus they make indie folk as good as anything that's coming out of the UK right now, and they've been doing it since the "Chocolates and Cigarettes" EP in 2006. Now veterans with two full albums under their belts "A Book Like This" in 2007 and the just released "Down the Way". Personally, the songs of Angus & Julia Stone i like the best are the ones where Julia sings, nothing against Angus, i just think she has a husk to her voice that makes it stand out in an ocean of wannabees. And as lovely their brand of beautiful melodic folk pop is, the song of theirs i like most isn't actually theirs anyway.

"Tubthumping" was a huge hit in 1997 for the English band Chumbawamba. Not that the world needed another drunk blokes song, but If ever there was an anthem for going out and getting rat-arsed, here it is. Whenever i hear it i just think of a pub in north London full of largered-up English football fans on a total bender after watching England give Germany a well deserved thrashing. Which to be fair, is reason enough to go on a bender - two world wars and one world cup, do dah, do dah and all that.

However i digress, Angus and Julia have managed to take this most English of pub anthems and don't so much folk it up as sex it up. For serious.

The song is stripped down to its basics and rebuilt using different parts, kind of pimping Chumbawumba, but in a nice way. The use of the trumpet along with Julia's smokey distinctive vocal work almost as a duet, backed by a simple guitar strum and drum beat the song is a lot more about the lyric than the original ever was. The song grows and transforms slowly from what is almost a simple jazz/blues number into a bit of a racket, before dropping into an offer that no right minded Danny Boy could possibly refuse.

Sadly it's a song you won't find on any of their albums though, you'll have to get yourself TripleJ's "Like A Version" Volume 3 or just listen to it here.

Which of course you should.

davey