Feist and M Ward: Sometimes Always

Footage has come out of Canadian singer Feist singing a Jesus and Mary chain number during her tour with support act M Ward.

The song was originally released in 1994 as a duet with Hope Sandoval from Mazzy Star and featured on their Stoned and Dethroned album.

It was a UK top 30 single, and to these ears at least sounds like it evolved from the same bluesy americana swamp that spawned the post-Screamadelica sound Primal Scream would adopt for their Give Out But Don't Give Up album that came out the same year.

Primal Scream, a band formed around former Mary Chain drummer Bobby Gillespie, went on to enjoy the commercial success that always eluded the Mary Chain.

M Ward was the support act for Feist's tour, Ward with a career that has seen him play as a well-established solo artist, as well as playing guitar with Bright Eyes and as half of the duo act She and Him with actress Zooey Deschanel. More significantly for this blog, he played guitar on Alain Bashung's Bleu Pétrole album.

Feist's debut album came out in 1999, the tour supporting her most recent release Metals. While she's enjoyed a hugely successful career, her best known song is probably 1234, which was adopted as the soundtrack for Apple's iPod Nano in 2007.

Feist releases a split single with rockers Mastodon as part of Record Store Day 2012 this weekend, Feist recording a version of Black Tongue and Mastodon covering Feist's A Commotion.

The Jesus and Mary Chain have, meanwhile, confirmed a date at a festival in China in May.

Alain Bashung: Le Dimanche à Tchernobyl

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.

It is worth remembering the sacrifice of those who gave their lives and their health bringing one of Europe's biggest disasters under control and also preventing an almost unimaginable worse disaster.

It is estimated by some that the disaster had a total death toll of just under one million lives, but had the liquidators not prevented a further nuclear explosion at the plant, much of Ukraine and Belarus would have been destroyed and Europe rendered a radioactive exclusion zone like the one in place in Ukraine and Belarus surrounding the plant.

The nuclear cloud came across western Europe, and stopped at the French border, before resuming its progress in the UK. The fact that France heavily depends on nuclear power might have had something to do with the French government's position.

The track is from Alain Bashung's 2002 album L'Imprudence, an album viewed by most critics as his darkest work, and also among his finest.