|
Just so I can stave off getting off my arse and doing something constructive a little longer...
Artist: Slayer Tuneage: Seasons In the Abyss Gather round kids - it's time for some self-indulgent back story! I've been hoarding music for about half my life as I type this, perhaps even a little longer, and I can say that I'm in the third phase of it. That phase, ladies and gents, boys and girls, is noticing that there are craploads of free albums you can get hold of if you know where to find them, and taking advantage of that before the long arm of the law finds a way stopping you from doing so. The phase I went through before that came about just after I got my first job, when I just blew as much of my hard-earned as poss on buying CDs as opposed to waiting for Christmas, birthdays, pocket money or whatever to get them. I doubt I'll get into a fourth phase anytime soon, unless someone pioneers a kind of technology that can drip-feed you music or whatever. And the first phase came before I was old enough to get a job. That phase was using Kazaa to get individual songs I liked the sound of - p2p networks in other words. Still makes me smile that perfectly web-savvy people around my age still use p2p networks believing that they're the sole way to get hold of new music for free. This was one of the many songs I downloaded way back when, having seen (I believe) on MTV2. I listen to pretty much no metal of any kind these days, but this song is just so badass you can't not like it really. Certainly one of the best openings to a song ever. Although admittedly my attention does wonder from about 2:15 onwards, this song still rules all the same. Artist: Johnny Cash Tuneage: When the Man Comes Around And behind curtain number 2 is a song I'm sure a lot of you have heard before. If not, watch the Dawn Of the Dead remake fer crissakes :p: For me, this song goes to show that if you want a song to be dark, fairly creepy and pretty badass, you don't necessarily need to resort to a load of tape-loops, synths, heavy guitars, orchestration and all that. This 'ere tune ticks all the right boxes like that for me, and all it is is Cash basically singing the Book Of Revelations with just his guitar and a very distant-sounding organ. It's just pure awesome, and reason enough to get yourself into Cash's American series. I'll tell you what else is awesome, and that's the first 4 Silent Hill games, hence the video. Enjoy! Here's something that'll test your patience as a musiclover; David Sylvian, Arve Henriksen & Jan Bang - Thermal Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I give you Arve Henriksen! Henriksen was actually one of the first names I thought of to review back when I (re)started this thread. For some reason I never got round to reviewing the album of his that I have, so I should probably fix that sometime soon. Who is he you ask? He's a Norweigan trumpeter who has a very distinct, flute-like sound to his playing as his kinda claim to fame. He's one of the leading lights of Scandinavian nu-jazz, and an example of a very rich yet so overlooked area of modern music. And, as you can see, he's worked with David Sylvian many times before, particularly on his more ambient-leaning pieces like the above. I won't lie, it all depends how much patience you have for ambient music - it'll either be boring, pretentious drivel or one of the most amazing things you've ever heard. I think it's obvious which category I fall into :p: |
Still loving every bit of your journal.
I am surprised of your idea of "Musicals". Many are exactly the way you described, unfortunately, but I do think there are some pretty awesome ones (My top 4 Musicals: Singing in the Rain - Rocky Horror Picture Show - Victor/Victoria - Mary Poppins). Anyway.... Great write-ups all the way (even during your massive hangovers). Cheers. P.S: Natalie Imbruglia IS awesome! |
Cheers :thumb: It's good to know I'm not just talking to a wall here after all!
And, to be honest I was exaggerating slightly when I said that's the case for every musical out there. Musical theatre still gets on my pecs in the main, but there are some good ones, like those that you mentioned. The Blues Brothers is one of my favourite films of all time, and for some reason I've always had a lot of time for Guys and Dolls, which is strange as it's those early-ish Hollywood musicals which irritate me the most. Can't beat a bit of Gilbert and Sullivan either, who I guess you could technically say wrote musicals in the modern sense. Back when my Dad actually had two pennies to rub together, he'd take the family to the opera house as often as he could to go and watch some of their operettas. Call me Captain Obvious, but HMS Pinafore was always my favourite - I just love how it opened, like so; Ah, nostalgia! I'm gonna work on a couple more albums to talk crap about before the month's out by the way, so keep one eye on this thread eh. |
In hindsight, I apologise for the length of thisw post. Good luck getting through it :thumb:
Manic Street Preachers This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours 1998 http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_JkmcvXFBtv...c+street01.jpg genre: soft-rock, pop-rock 1. The Everlasting - 6:08 2. If You Tolerate This, Your Children Will Be Next - 4:50 3. You Stole the Sun From My Heart - 4:20 4. Ready For Drowning - 4:32 5. Tsunami - 3:51 6. My Little Empire - 4:09 7. I'm Not Working - 5:51 8. You're Tender and You're Tired - 4:37 9. Born a Girl - 4:12 10. Be Natural - 5:12 11. Black Dog On My Shoulder - 4:48 12. Nobody Loved You - 4:44 13. S.Y.M.M. - 5:57 I used to be a huge fan of these guys, and by used to I mean I was around the time Lifeblood came out. I loved that album, how abrasive it was in its own way and the like, and as such the Manics were definitely among the bands I respected the most when I first started buying a whole lotta CDs, and thus listening to a lot more music than your average Joe would. At that point (around 2003, 2004 or something similar), I was of course a huge Lifeblood acolyte, bought and played my copy of their controversial best of compilation Forever Delayed to death, and...well, ranked in descending order of preference are the albums I had at the time; The Holy Bible > Everything Must Go > Lifeblood >>> Generation Terrorists > Gold Against the Soul >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Know Your Enemy So, here I am using the phrase 'used to' more than an enraged Star Wars fanboy who's just seen the prequels for the first time. Why? Something quite simple yet earth-shatteringly significant happend - in 2007, Send Away the Tigers came out and, perhaps pivotally, that god-awful song about your love alone not being enough got unleashed with it. Besides the title track, I just hated that album beyond belief. All the steps forward that the Manics made with Lifeblood were completely retraced and replaced with a patronising album of rock anthems and ballads. I had (and still have) officially lost almost all respect I once had for the Bradfield/Wire/Moore trio, to the point that barring the odd, nostalgic re-run of the top 3 on that list I provided above, I'm pretty much totally indifferent to them. I haven't even bothered getting the two albums they've released since but, judging by the songs I've heard on the radio or youtube, Journal For Plague Lovers sounds like an improvement on Send Away the Tigers, but still hardly worth the effort. Postcards From a Young Man on the other hand sounds like total and utter shit, and is noteworthy in that it achieved the unimaginable feat of being a Manics album I hate more than Send Away the Tigers. To say that I couldn't care less about their next album-in-the-making, 70 Songs Of Hatred and Failure, would be an understatement of possibly libellous proportions. Anyway, enough talk about the discography. This is, after all, meant to be an album review. As the eagle-eyed among you may have noticed about the above list, one album is missing from it. This one! This is not only because ranking it there would render the rest of this little note quite, quite pointless, but also because I never had the album during the years between Lifeblood and Send Away the Tigers. The reason is simple and a wee bit bland, that being that I just didn't get round to buying it all those years ago. Basically, if you're my age and older, you'll remember a time before building up a music collection basically became a form of trainspotting when you bought an album because it had some kind of emotional weight invested in it for you, and because you had genuine expectations from it other than to add to your artist count on LastFM. Beyond the scabby, malware-ridden p2p networks, there was practically no other way to get hold of this stuff other than to buy it, really. Not that I'm complaining or anything - the way the world of music-collecting is now, it saves me money that I can now spend on booze, hard drugs, hookers and high-stake games of poker. Anyway, what was I on about?...oh yeah, my point is that back in those days if I went about hunting down a discography (as I often did), I'd think the band were something properly special. Often, as in this case, I'd get distracted by something like that Distillers song I'd seen on MTV2 that morning and buy their album instead of plugging the last gap in the Manics' discography here, and I'd just forget about it altogether. I could probably type up something more entertaining if I tore Send Away the Tigers a new arsehole, got hold of Postcards Of a Young Man as one more reason not to get their next album, or fawning over the Holy Bible or Everything Must Go. Truthfully though, I haven't had this album for so long and, consequently, haven't listened to it an awful lot, so I think now's as good a time as any to give this album a real go. Also, this album has something of a reputation that gets ahead of it. Basically, it's a bit of a curate's egg, inasmuch as it divides listeners right down the middle - you either love it or hate it. One thing's for sure, though, and that's that this signals the point in the Manics' discography where they went off at the pop end. Ok, it's true that the preceding Everything Must Go was the most commercial album they'd released to date, but it also had plenty of the loudness, rock-outs and fire in the belly that their earlier albums before Richey Edwards' disappearance had done. Here is where anything resembling the brasher, punkier Manics sound of yesteryear was completely stripped away in favour of something much softer, more melodic and all-round commercial. Basically, I remember being about 10 years old when this album came out. I was at a friend's house one day, and I saw that said friend's Mum had a copy of this album. That's the kind of demographic this album was lapped up by (and how! This album sold by the crapload back in the day). Not only have I heard this album being called one of the Manics' worst, and the beginning of the end according to the Richey fans, but I've also seen it hailed as their best by the odd dissenting voice. I'm sure there's some nutjob out there who thinks the Crazy Frog has everything that Bob Dylan didn't, but any album that people call one of their favourites of all time has to be worth at least a bit of my attention. So how does it hold up? Well, first of all, let me just say that I love this album's title. It just has such a romantic kind of energy to it, and it certainly did what a good album title should do when I first came across it, and that was to make me wonder what the music beneath it must be like. That's the thing with the Manics, isn't it? No matter what they do, they can always come up with great titles for their songs and albums. Maybe it's just me :p: Anyway, while we're on the subject of judging this book by its cover, I'll also say that the sleeve art photo is just pure shite. They look like fucking Westlife, or some other rubbish aimed at people's parents or ill-educated kids (when it comes to music). The music itself though? I've put off talking about it for as long as possible, so I may as well say that I didn't expect much from this album as I came to it, and not much is exactly what I got. Like the grand majority of pop albums, it suffers from having singles which are far, far superior to the rest of the album. The opening trio of songs is all you really need from this album. The Everlasting is an absolutely gorgeous, string-laden ballad, and a show of how great the rest of this album should have been. If You Tolerate This really strikes a chord with me and, apart from being the Manics' biggest hit, is just another really great song. You Stole the Sun From My Heart on the other hand, while the chorus is a tad lame, is by large a wonderfully-memorable, finely-tuned and intricate pop song. Apart from those three, not to mention the above average Tsunami and You're Tender and You're Tired, this album is just so goddamn boring. It's awash in synthesizers and strings, but just does everything that the aforementioned first three songs did right and gets them all completely and totally wrong. It's very creditable that James, Nicky and Sean really want to move on from the Richey years and the sound connected with them, but it's like they're just making that move way before they were really ready to here. This album could've done with either being released as an EP, or just being combined with the better moments from Know Your Enemy to make an infinitely better album. As such, if you've been thinking about getting hold of this, you should probably give it a go for yourself, as it does leave a wildly different make on people who listen to it. As for me, I'm somewhere near the middle... http://i55.tinypic.com/eiwqck.jpg Aaaaaaand as David Sylvian Month draws to a close, I give you this; Orpheus This here's one more highlight of the (deservedly) highly regarded Secrets Of the Beehive, which itself is where I started with Sylvian and quite clearly where you should too ;) Seriously though, if you're wondering where to start, start there. Even if it is way too short an album, it's definitely the most accessible in the man's back catalogue. There's also the curious figure of this song, which itself boasts one of my favourite ever bridges from about 2:10-2:45, to the extent that that melodic figure would have made a brilliant song had it been stretched out over the right length itself. Everything that's good about David Sylvian can be heard in this song. Basically, if you can't hack this, then he's just not for you. |
^ Well, if you managed to get through all that, good on ya!
So, a new day, a new month, and it's a month I'll be dedicating to another favourite David, thus rendering this February as being... ...simply because, no matter how long I find myself shut in my room, staring at this monitor and hanging around every so often on message boards, I can never run out of things to say about this guy. Put simply, along with Nick Cave and Elvis Costello, I would never have been inspired to take my life on the course it's now on. Regardless of the haters, his body of work is so important to me. And let's kick this month off then... Never Get Old On one or several of those many occasions when my Bowie fanboyism spills over onto my posts on other forums here, I think I've said before that Bowie's last album to date, 2003's Reailty, is far from my favourite of his. Barring a couple of truly great songs, the rest of the album's always veered perilously between decent enough and average for me. Along with another track from it called She'll Drive the Big Car, the above song is the definite highlight of what I think is a fairly poor album. I just love the funky vibe to this track, the melody, a pretty damn cool chorus etc - going into it too far would be a bit much, but I'll just say that this is simply and all-round great pop-rocker. It touches a level of quality for me that most of the rest of the album around wishes it could. Unfortunately, contrary to the title of the song, it seems that Davey B here has, finally, got old if you will. Outside of his starring role in Chris Nolan's the Prestige, he's done nothing of note for almost 7 years now, and it certainly looks like that'll be the case permanently. Still, I've got my eyes open for the increasingly unlikely news of a new album that'd quite simply make my year if it ever came around. Anyway, some more songs I like; Artist: Superman Lovers Tuneage: Starlight Here lies a song I remember well from my pre-havinganythinglikeatasteinmusicatall days, which I'm sure I could bore you with an anecdote about me riding the taxi home from school, playing Pokemon Blue on the Gameboy Colour and the works to put it into a bit of personal context, but I'm sure that'll do just fine :p: I will say though that for six years I took that taxi across Surrey to get to school as the driver would never fail to leave to the radio on, thus inadvertently becoming quite a musical influence on my good self. The Superman Lovers here were one of those who had their one-hit wonder when the final embers of dance musics domination of the UK charts were finally starting to extinguish about a decade or so ago. This is, of course, one of the much, much better songs to have emerged from that era that got virtually endless radio play, the royalties of which are probably still just about supporting the coke habits of this song's writers and performers. I just love that constant, repetitive percussive beat that could only belong to one kind of pop music, and the whole funky vibe there is to this thing. It's a song I still love to this day then. Artist: Akira Yamaoka Tuneage: Room Of Angel And here I am, continuing along the strand of Silent Hill fanboyism that started a handful of posts back. The reason I do this is not simply because the first few games of that franchise still stand as my favourite survival horror games ever, or the superb Sinner's Reward comic book mini-series, but also because of Akira Yamaoka's soundtracks. He has this way of being able to create something that sounds as noisy, industrial and all round creepy as possible (reminding me a lot of Scott Walker's latter-day releases). He also has this knack for creating more conventional and complete-sounding songs - some with vocals, some not - that just ooze a kind of soul and emotion that's at once warm yet haunting as all hell. This song belongs to the latter category. Just listen to it and be merry I suppose :p: Silent Hill 4 was far from the best game of the series, but I've got a sneaky feeling that this is the best song Yamaoka ever composed for the said series. Enjoy! |
So then, if anyone's been particularly waiting for another album post here, sorry to disappoint! While I haven't exactly been busy, I've had my mind on other things really. In fact, I haven't really listened to a lot of music outside the comfort zone of my old favourite since last week, and these two songs I'm gonna flag up here will testify...
Artist: The Desert Rose Band Tuneage: No-one Else Let me just say that, broadly speaking, I love country music. It boasts what seems to me like such a laid-back, chilled kinda vibe that's completely unqiue to a great country song and seeing as laid-back is my middle name, I find myself listening to a lot of this stuff. Just so you don't confuse me with someone who can be in the same room as a Billy Ray Cyrus, Toby Keith or Eddy Raven song, I'll just say that it's all the offshoots of outlaw country like Townes Van Zandt and Krist Kristofferson, not to mention the country rock of the Flying Burrito Brothers that I find myself listening to the most. True to me FBB-loving form (well, the Gram era anyway), I'm a huge fan of what I like to think of as country rock's own version of the Travelling Wilburys - the Desert Rose Band. Consisting of legends such as Herb Pedersen, John Jorgenson, Tom Brumley and, of course, that king among men himself Chris Hillman, the band released some five albums, of which only one's really anything spectacular. The self-titled debut is an excellent album, and is followed by a mixed bag of a followup which goes by the name of Running. From there, it's predominantly album after album of mediocre, formulaic songs, broken up by the odd killer track. This song here is that kinda track. From the band's fourth album True Love (largely as ill-conceived and unimaginative as that its title), this is one of only three, at a push four great songs to be found. Whereas the Desert Rose Band's debut was an album I must have listened to hundreds of times when I'd first got hold of it end-to-end, I only ever get back to True Love for those three songs, including this. Sure, it's a syrupy, corny little lovesong, but it's the cheesiness of the whole thing that really strikes a chord with me. Plus, there's a really sweet melody to it which Chris Hillman's voice really does a lot of good. The guitar solos are just awesome too. Artist: Elvis Costello Tuneage: Still Ah, Elvis Costello! I can claim to be as musically diverse, knowledgeable, sexy and all-round amazing as I am, but even I have one artist whose listens outweigh even the likes of Bowie and Sylvian since...well...ever. I could explain what I love about him, but I've already spent a few years, a whole thread and a lot of ProPlusses doing so here, so I won't bother getting into it :p: Anyway, this song...well, I'll just talk about this album first. It's worth mentioning that North (the album this song's from) is quite possibly the one album in my music library I find myself rethinking my opinion of the most. Sometimes I think it's boring as all hell, others I think I never really give it enough of a chance, and then just revert back to the whole boring as all hell line of thinking again. I think it's because it's a side of Costello I'll probably never get used to, that being the romantic, at once regretful and happy lover that these lyrics paint the picture of. Whatever my opinion of the album around it, this song's always gonna be one of my favourite lovesongs ever. As un-sophisticated and red-raw as this lyric is, as such I don't think I've ever come across another song which describes that blissfully happy feeling of waking up next to someone you really love as perfectly as this song does. I absolutely love the minimalist orchestration that sees the song to its end as well. Life On Mars? [live, Paris '99] Life On Mars... I could just leave this little note at that, but I'll go on a tad longer. Funnily enough, highly regarded as it is, Life On Mars is another piece of music I find myself reappraising quite a lot. Sometimes I think it's epic arrangement really does it all the good it deserves, others I think it's studio version is just far too overcooked, what with those guitar solos and everything. I kinda drift from one way of looking at this song to another (primarily the former to be honest) but one thing about this song's for sure with me - this piano-only live version is far and away the best version of it that I've heard. The bootleg that this performance is from is absolutely wonderful too, even if it was a gig to support one of my least favourite Bowie albums. Anyway, I'll get another album review in here as soon as poss. Stay tuned! |
Just so anyone who's interested knows (which, at this point, is looking like barely a handful of people), I'm getting a bit bored of doing written reviews by now, so I'm gonna be shaking up the format for this like nobody's business within the next few months. Keep an eye on this thread eh.
|
It's a sadder more despairing version of Life on Mars. I felt this from the start (and interesting it is) but he particularly emphasises this in the vocal when the chorus comes in the second time, maybe a bit too much though.
For me Costello's best album is his first. |
It's quite a version isn't it. I guess another possible negative about the live version of Life On Mars there is that the pianist Mike Garson is really whacking those keys like he's chopping wood, unlike the more blissful, subtle touches of Rick Wakeman on the Hunky Dory studio cut. I can't say I prefer either version myself, although Mick Ronson's guitar on the studio version does get on my pecs from time to time.
As for Costello, his first album's always gonna be the one you can just whack on any time and really get swept off your feet by the simplicity of the whole thing. I've said it a few times (if memory serves me right) around these boards that I prefer when Costello'd found his feet and started to take in more influences than, y'know, Buddy Holly to his sound. As such, in my eyes he's an example of a musician with a fantastic taste in music (even if he does like fucking Greenday and Panic At the Disco, but who doesn't like the odd dud eh) really using it well to make some truly great music. Anyway, rant over :D Quote:
|
What I'm saying about that Life on Mars is I wish he held back his vocal a bit more when he goes through the chorus a second time, maybe he goes a bit too over the top for me there. It certainly sounds more tragic than ecstatic in the chorus like on the studio recording, that's ok but towards the end it might seem too melodramatic for me.
What I like about Costello's first album is it feels quite consistent in quality. Obviously he did other good songs elsewhere too. |
Quote:
Seeing as my schedule's cleared up a wee bit recently, I think I'm gonna try and get three more album posts in here over the next week for a lack of anything better to do. In the mean time, it's about time I threw some more videos at you... Artist: The Corrs Tuneage: Breathless As much of a dull hipster with delusions of grandeur I'll always be, there'll forever be a part of me that has a soft spot for music that's totally at odds with my outlook on what predominantly makes good music into good music, the kind of person I am, the amount of sugar I take with my tea, which way I look first when I cross the road...you get the picture. I can't claim to know a lot of people here personally, let alone in that big, scary-arse world out there, but I'm sure it's the same for everyone. All that's just a fancy pants way of saying that we all have guilty pleasures, and the Corrs are one of mine...to an extent. There are a lot of absolutely woeful songs that they've been responsible for, and it's not stretching the truth when I say that I think most of them sound like shyt. Where the Corrs shine for me though is when they play live. Beneath the glossy veneer of over-zealous studio production and execution methods, at least a few Corrs songs are just really good, catchy and upbeat pop songs with a Celtic twist to make things more interesting. It's why their Unplugged live CD is the only one of their's I actually listen and enjoy...for the most part. I mean, don't get me wrong - there is some ghastly, mushy corn on there too. But it's songs like Breathless here which, when stripped down to their bear bones, are just really fun pop songs being performed by a very talented bunch of musicians who are clearly truly enjoying what they're doing. Not to mention the fact that Andrea Corr is hot to the nth degree as well. Ready for a mood shift? You know you are! Artist: Third Eye Foundation Tuneage: Corpses As Bedmates Ah, Third Eye Foundation! To be honest, great as this album is and all, I didn't really sign up for something that sounded like this when I first got hold of it. There I was, listening to the pounding basslines of Cyantific and London Elektricity one night before heading out to town to some place that'd play shit music all night where I'd proceed to tell myself that I'd be having a good time. I thought it'd be a good idea to get hold of some more drum 'n' bass. It was at that point when I started looking to the mighty RYM's top albums lists that I remembered how cool that LTJ Bukem album I once listened to was. Atmospheric d'n'b was what I'd seen called. So I had a look. I guess in my blind, blissful naivety of being two weeks younger than I am now, I didn't really cotton on to the fact that there can in fact be more than one kind of atmosphere. What LTJ Bukem reminded me of, and therefore what I was expecting from the Third Eye Foundation, was a kinda delicate electronic music which fell somewhere in a middle-ground between downtempo trip-hop and liquid funk. What I got instead was an album that may well have provided me with a soundtrack to my nightmares for the forseeable future. Not in a bad sense, of course. The album this is off is far, far from poor, and well deserving of its reverence among RYM's users. I can't really think of much more to say about it, but if you're up for a pretty creepy thrill-ride of an album, give this a few spins. It'll do you a world of good :thumb: |
Quote:
Yeah Andrea Corr was seriously hot material back in the day. She still is! Her slightly gothic image and smoldering eyes always got me. |
Quote:
I don't know if I could muster the courage to listen to an actual Corrs studio album. I think the unplugged gig's good enough for me. I mean, I love the acoustic versions of So Young and Radio for instance, but almost had a panic attack when I tried to listen to the versions of them they released as singles. Anyway, before I get on with what I feel I should post here, here's another song that's been on my mind lately; Artist: Iggy Pop Tuneage: Isolation I believe I've stated my love for Iggy Pop's divisive Blah Blah Blah album of 1986. I probably won't go on too long about this one, as you can no doubt see my opinion of it every 5th post of mine around here. This is just a fantastic pop song though, and it's everything that's good about that dated, 80s pop/Trevor Horn style. Overdone as you may think the synthy backdrop, echoey drumbeat and overall production are, everytime I get round to this song on one of my daily random music binges from the bowels of my collection, I can never listen to this less than...oh, I dunno...15 times. Now that I think about it, it's really just that chorus that does it for me. Iggy's sorrowful croon, his buddy David Bowie's fractured 'i...so...laaaaay-shun!' backing vocal, the sax that underpins it - B-E-A-utiful! I won't pretend that Blah Blah Blah's a truly great album or anything, but it's certainly very overlooked. So then, I thought I might as well let anyone who's particularly interested know what they can expect in the coming 2 and a half weeks from this thread. Maybe if I actually have it in writing here, I'll actually stick to my word :p: In this next week, I'll be going over these albums; Bitter:Sweet - The Mating Game (2006) Kris Kristofferson - This Old Road (2006) And in the fortnight after that; Loretta Lynn - Van Lear Rose (2004) µ-Ziq - Lunatic Harness (1997) Prince - The Gold Experience (1995) ^ Maybe not in that order exactly, but either way I know what I'll be doing this week. There might be the odd deviation from the format in between, but that's basically the plan. Watch this space! |
So, now for one of those deviations from the format I was a-talkin' about...
3 Reasons Why You Should Listen To David Bowie's 90s Material In addition to endlessly long posts about albums you couldn't give a monkeys about, or showing off a bunch of different individual tunes I'm quite the fan of, I'll be doing this kinda thing. These are basically going to be three closely-related albums, be they in the same discography, from the same musical scene, subgenre or whatever, all having a very brief eye cast over them by yours truly. I'm gonna try and keep these coming from my own personal 'why can't everyone else have the same opinion as me' folder...stuff I think is pretty underrated in general, then. There'll be plenty more of these in future, don't worry :p: And here we are, starting in Obvious Territory with 90s Bowie. If you're not in the know, allow me - by the time the 90s were in full swing, Bowie was just beginning his efforts to emerge from a pretty dark time in his career, that being the constant ridicule he'd been subjected to from about the mid-80s to the early 90s. He'd well and truly imploded artistically by not only releasing an...an...an adequate album (Tonight), and not only taken his credibility behind a toolshed and beaten it half to death with a baseball bat (Never Let Me Down), but he followed all that up by forming the loud, noisy and allegedly pretty crappy Tin Machine (I actually think they have their moments myself). After flapping about at rock bottom for almost a decade then, a new Bowie was ready to emerge and show himself to the world. And that didn't really start so well to be honest with you. 1993's Black Tie White Noise - Bowie's first solo album of the 90s - had two of my favourite songs on it (the cover of Nite Flights and Jump, They Say if you must know), but other than that was only really half-good. It was a definite improvement on all four of his preceding albums, but far from a classic. It did though signal the true second coming of Bowie, and pointed the way forward for one easily his best successive trio of albums since the Station To Station-Low-'Heroes' one of the 70s. Now, here's why... The Buddha Of Suburbia OST 1993 http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_-jhUEMBijG...OfSuburbia.jpg It all started rather inconspicuously with what was until its re-release only a few years ago something of a hidden treasure of Bowie's discography. This was the soundtrack to the excellent Hanif Kureishi's the Buddha Of Suburbia...although in essence it was a soundtrack in name only. True, the title track can be heard in full, and you can hear snippets of the rest of this album here and there, but otherwise this was no TV soundtrack - it was a full-length studio album by Bowie almost full of new and exclusive songs. The fact that for some bizarre reason it was marketed as a soundtrack album meant that the music industry pretty much regurgitated it on sight, like a hot bombay mix when you've had one too many at your local. Anyway, musically this album is just beautiful, and asking me to describe it as some lame-arse record company genre label would be like asking Joe Rogan to accurately describe his last DMT trip. That's not to call this album trippy or psychedelic or whatever - to be perfectly blunt, it's not. I could be a lazy bastard and call it alternative rock, and I'm sure I'd put it in that section if I worked in HMV or something, but there's a lot more to this album than that. There are two amazing new age (yes, I said it - new age!) instrumentals, there's a full-blown jazz instrumental...besides that you can tell that this was a rock album recorded by three guys (Bowie, Erdal Kizilcay and Mike Garson) recording all the instruments themselves, and...just listen to it yourself. If it weren't for the lame duck final track (and it's about as lame as ducks get really), this would definitely be in my top tier of favourite Bowie albums. Highly, highly recommended. 1.Outside 1995 http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_K29Qn1XDFH...tsidebowie.jpg And then there's its followup - the mighty, mighty Outside! Without being too much of a randy fanboy about it, this album is just fantastic. You could hear a progression from Black Tie White Noise to the Buddha Of Suburbia, and just like that you can hear the artistic progression from the Buddha Of Suburbia to Outside here. While the more ambient and even new age portions of the preceding album are basically totally done away with the same, no doubt jam-oriented approach to writing and recording songs in the studio is opted for, as opposed to David Bowie demoing them in his living room and talking about them over coffee and donuts with the session musicians. Given that there's a very, very loose narrative to the songs here about a sadistic cult of outsider artists murdering a teenage girl for art's sake, a much darker twist is given to the overall sound. The jazz influences are used a lot more here and there's a very metallic, industrial rhythmic method that underpins most of the songs here. Did I mention there's quite a lot of funky bass too? What we've got at the end of the day is another one of Bowie's most criminally underrated albums...coming to it as a newbie you'll probably think of it in one of these two ways. 1. Holy crap, this is the best thing I've heard all week! I'm going to go give my Simple Plan CDs to the pub down the road for use as ashtrays and spend this weekend locked in my room with this album, a jar of raw coffee and a pair of headphones. 2. What is this pretentious bullshit (which I guess makes it kinda fitting for a thread by a fella called Bulldog)?! Is David Bowie seriously trying to sound like a 70 year-old man for this spoken word track?! Again, just listen to it, as it's awesome and has plenty of Bowie's better songs on it. Another album that without it's flaw (being a tad overlong and having those bloody stupid segue tracks in this case) would be one of the man's very best. It's as scary as it is catchy, as lively as it is pensive...and so on. Earthling 1997 http://www.spirit-of-rock.com/les%20.../Earthling.jpg Here's an album which, to be honest, isn't quite as good as I once thought it was. Don't get me wrong; it's still a very, very good album, and is again very underrated. I would say that it's the weakest of this little trilogy though. Regarding the sound, often the combination of sounds that Outside threw at us would end up sounding a tad like big beat electronica or even jungle music (tracks like I'm Deranged and We Prick You, especially), and this album is basically fully-fledged...big beat electronica and jungle! Well, to be fair only three of these songs sound at all like jungle/d'n'b, and labelling it as such would be unfair to an album which is essentially the David Bowie sound of old being re-wired with a type of contemporary pop motor for the day. Again, it's home to some of my favourite Bowie songs ever, but overall it's just not quite as good as the two albums that preceded it. I don't what it is...maybe it's that Union Jacket on the sleeve art that reminds me too much of Geri Halliwell, or that a version of one of its songs was on the soundtrack to that steaming pile of shit known as Showgirls. Either way, it stands as a good Bowie album but not an essential. It is though a necessary part of this trilogy, and definitely worth having. Much more commercial than the two albums before it, but at the same time a lot better than the MOR twaddle called Hours that was just around the corner. |
Hey guys. If anyone particularly wanted to see what I had to say about Bitter:Sweet and Kris Kristofferson by now, your luck's out! I've had an awful lot of non-interwebz stuff catch up with me and raise a bit of a ruckus lately, so haven't really had the time or mental energy to write anything fitting about them for this thread. From Monday onwards things are definitely gonna clear up though, and since it's been far too long since I last stuck an album post in this 'ere thread, you can expect something like that around about then.
In the mean time, here's a random video to make up for lost time; And now for a couple of epic choonz... Artist: Midnight Oil Tuneage: Read About It Another one of those artists I may as well flag up with every 5th post here - they're just that immense. If you missed it, I got most of the overblown fanboy worshipping over and done with here...I think. I don't really read back on the posts I make here y'see :p: Whatever it was I said, I'm pretty sure I didn't call that Oils album my favourite - that'd be between this and two or three others beside it. I'm sure I also said way back when that along with fellow Sydney...ers the Celibate Rifles, the Oils here were far and away the most consistently decent band to emerge from the Australian punk/garage scene of the late 70s. I'd probably ranks these guys above the former though - as generally good as their albums are, the Rifles basically sound the same on each one. The Oils had a way of shaking up the formula a bit, basically. Anyway, this one's from the magnificent 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 album of 1983, and it's one where you can sense a kinda bridge between the band's loud, punk-centric roots and the more commercially-aimed pop stylings of, say, Diesel and Dust. This here was the song that brought 10-1 to my attention and, subsequently, was responsible for my getting reacquainted with them about 5-odd years after first hearing Beds Are Burning and casting it off with a resounding meh. Not only home to one of the most typically student-lefty lyrics I've ever heard, but also one of the best riffs too. Artist: Graham Coxon Tuneage: Bittersweet Bundle Of Misery Here's another one that takes me waaaaaay back. I'll just get a bit more comfy in my rocking chair, wait for my mug of cocoa to cool down a bit before I get right down to the real nitty-gritty... I remember hearing this in...what was it, 2004? 2005? Whenever it came out. Anyway, I was still smarting from a) Blur's splitting up and b) the notion that a miserable piece of junk that sounded so clanky and robotic it might as well not have been recorded by warm-blooded mammals (Think Tank) was to be the last album that Blur would release. It was the sad end of an era for me. Being the spunky, red-blooded 90s kid that I am, Blur and Oasis were basically my musical education as I grew up...barring the kinda stuff I'd here my parents listening to, but that's a different story for a different time. Anyway, there was this song here that made its way onto the airwaves back when I was only just forming what would become my current musical taste and, needless to say, I remember just falling in love with this thing. Although you could say it's a pretty damn cynical song about a character being pissed off with his high maintenance girlfriend, this song just seemed to me to ooze the kind of joy and colour that I loved in the Blur sound of old, and was missing from the awful Think Tank and their half-good self-titled album (13 was the only album where that sound worked for me, but again, different story, different time). And so I hunted down the album this song belonged to - Happiness In Magazines. Although it was met with the kind of universal praise every Christopher Nolan film seems to get these days, I didn't really like it so much when I first heard it. It was good, yeah, but songs like People Of Earth and Freaking Out just annoyed me. Bear in mind though that that was 6 or 7 years ago, and that I haven't listened to this album since. In fact, I was only reminded about it when a flatmate had this very song on the go while we were playing FIFA 2011 (which I totally beat him at by the way:p:). And...yeah, that's it I guess. Check back for mor albumness later in the coming week, as all that's definitely in the pipeline. |
Bitter:Sweet The Mating Game 2006 http://images.wikia.com/lyricwiki/im...ating_Game.png genre: trip-hop,downtempo,nu jazz 1. Don't Forget To Breathe - 3:14 2. The Mating Game - 3:24 3. Overdue - 3:34 4. Heaven - 3:48 5. Bittersweet Faith - 4:19 6. Moving Forward - 3:36 7. Moody - 2:39 8. Dirty Laundry - 3:20 9. Our Remains - 3:34 10. Salty Air - 3:02 11. Take 2 Blue - 2:40 Usually, I like to think of something vaguely personal to relate to an album I choose to prattle on about for however long in this thread - whatever anyone reading it may think, it's definitely got a funny old way of making things a bit more interesting from this end of the equation. Otherwise it boils down to something like, I dunno; x = 2 good songs + 5 mediocre songs - 4 piles of crap x = alright, I guess And that'd end up being just as dull to me as it is to you, if not more so. Therein lies my problem with announcing that I'd be talking about this one in this thread - as Bitter:Sweet are an artist I don't know a lot about and haven't been listening to for that long, there's not really much of a personal spin I can put on things. Still, I guess I'll do this thing anyway. Might end up being a shorter album post than usual though. Anyway, about these guys...all I've really been able to gather about them are a couple of names behind the moniker, the fact that they're from LA, some RYM genre tags and my kinda liking this album. Bitter:Sweet is basically the name of a Thievery Corporation-esque dynamic duo of modern trip-hop and downtempo electronica. Again, it's two figures behind every instrument and a very slick production sound, in this case being the ultra-cool uncle you never had by the name of Kiran Shahani, and the steamy redhead chick on vocals by the name of Shana Halligan. So, yes, it's another rag-tag bunch who peddle a downtempo vibe and are fronted by the soft, breathy vocals of a pretty hot vocalist. I've already compared them to Thievery Corporation and, really, there is more than a slight echo of the sublime work of Rob Garza and Eric Hilton over both the albums that Bitter:Sweet have been responsible for (this being the debut). Same cool, laid-back beats and atmospherics with a touch of neo-psychedlia about them, same night-listening 101 stuff. Now, I hope you're ready for a bit of a curve-ball, because I've my arm raised and I'm poised to throw one right atchya. This album is far from being the bland, unoriginal tripe that the paragraph above this one in particular might have led you to believe. Yes, you can hear a lot of the work of other artists in this album and their next and yes, it lacks the quirky originality of someone like Lamb. But seriously though, are we gonna start counting a lack of originality against artists now, because if we are I'm gonna have to delete about three quarters of all the music I've ever heard, go have a shower and spend hours washing the unclean off me. I don't ask for ball-breaking originality from the music I listen to really - as long as there's some element to the music that keeps me hooked, some sense of character that makes an artist stand out from the crowd in its own unique way. And as for that sense of character, I didn't add that nu jazz tag to the genre disclaimer for no reason. While it's true that it's a breezy, effortlessly cool and calm vibe that flows through most this record, a) that's not really such a bad thing and b) it's not the whole picture either. Despite the overall mood of the album, there's a very nicely-implemented jazzy swing that pervades other sections of it, particularly on the title track, what with that samba-like burst of colour that certainly seems to come out of it for me. Also, I don't know if you noticed, but this album is sexy as hell. Another artist this album sounds like something of an echo of is Mike Patton's Lovage project, which is just fine by me as I've been looking for quite a while for similar-sounding music to it. In fact, I think I've found a good way to sum this one up - imagine Lovage crossed over with Thievery Corporation, only minus the dub reggae vibes of the latter. That's what you've got here. As a work of trip-hop/downtempo then, it's far from bland and actually pretty damn catchy in places. Never does this album stray below the bar set for it by its influences, and it's even home to one of my new favourite songs in the shape of the opening track Don't Forget To Breathe. It flows perfectly well from beginning to end, with not a single note out of place, but on the other hand it's a bit too short really. I'd definitely recommend this to any trip-hop acolytes on the boards, not to mention their good-but-not-quite-as-good-as-this followup album. I'd give you the low-down of which tracks are better than others, but I guess I'll leave that bit to you :p: Here's what I think of it; http://i52.tinypic.com/2dt7lg3.jpg |
I agree with you on your comments on Bitter:Sweet. Their music is spotty but on a few occasions they hit the mark. Their best songs are the ones that sound like themes from old 60's movie soundtracks. Bitter:Sweet also has a lot of competition from other bands who also do that sort of music.
Another group, the Postmarks were good enough at 60s themed soundtrack music to have one their songs considered as the opening theme for the 2006 Bond movie, Casino Royale. I managed to find a copy of the alternative opening credits for Casino Royale shot with the Postmarks' song No One Said This Would Be Easy . Unfortunately the movie's producers selected Chris Connell's You Know My Name as the opening track for Casino Royale, even though the Postmark's song is better. The digital animation on the Postmark's alternate version of the Casino Royale opening theme is fantastic. |
Yeah, I think I'm gonna knock down Bitter:Sweet's rating by a star. Still a good album that I'd recommend getting, but I'm gonna try to be as sparing as possible with the 4+ ratings for this thread. Plus, as you say, their songs are generally pretty good even when they sound a lot like Thievery Corporation, but that they hit the heights when they produce that tracks that give off a good, swinging kinda vibe.
Cheers for flagging up the Postmarks as well - much as I loved Casino Royale, I've not heard of them before. Definitely sounds like it'll be my kinda thing all the same though. I'll check them out. And, while I'm still around, here's a song that's been on my mind all day; Artist: New Order Tuneage: Ceremony As some of you reading this may know, New Order's back catalogue basically means the world to me. After all, back when my voice was just starting to get deeper and blotches of acne started popping up on my skin, New Order were one of the bands I listened to regularly, and they're one of literally a handful of artists I loved when I was 12 or 13 years of age that I still listen to just as much to this day. It was on a strange kinda whim that I first started listening to them. I vaguely remember talking to my history teacher in high school of all people about this awesome new song I'd heard called 60 Miles An Hour by a band called New Order. He told me to listen to Blue Monday, which I downloaded from the virtual sewer of the p2p file sharing networks and did so that very night. I had two reactions to it; 1) wasn't this synth motif on that American Express advert with Alan Shearer in it? and 2) awww hell yeah! New Order's compilation of singles, b-sides and remixes by the name of Substance was the next port of call, of which this is the opening track. I'll admit that I never did like this song as much as, say, Temptation, Bizarre Love Triangle or True Faith until a few years down the line when I started listening to Joy Division, and thus got a taste for this kinda song. After all, this is one of two songs on New Order's debut which has a posthumous songwriting credit to Ian Curtis on it. These days (teehee) I think is pretty much the perfect piece of music. True, Bernard Sumner's far from the best singer on Earth and a terrible lyricist too, but his guitar and deadpan vocal delivery really make this track into something else, along with that beautiful, typically melodic Peter Hook bassline and that robotic drumbeat from Stephen 'the beast' Morris. Basically, this song is one of many reasons why New Order were, to me at least, Manchester's greatest gift to music. And, yeah, there'll be another album post coming up soon...hopefully tomorrow... |
Kris Kristofferson This Old Road 2006 http://img.sharedmp3.net/files/pics/...7/img_1_pr.jpg genre: Americana, contemporary folk 1. This Old Road - 3:58 2. Pilgrim's Progress - 2:13 3. The Last Thing To Do - 2:58 4. Wild American - 2:25 5. In the News - 3:28 6. The Burden Of Freedom - 3:23 7. Chase the Feeling - 4:03 8. Holy Creation - 4:35 9. The Show Goes On - 3:17 10. Thank You For a Life - 3:41 11. Final Attraction - 2:56 Well, this album should be slightly easier to talk about than the Bitter:Sweet one I just covered, as there's actually something of a vague, personal connection between me and Mr Kristofferson here. There are three things Mr Kristofferson here did to stand out for me before I ever actually got hold of any of his albums and thus made any conscious effort to listen to his music. In order of appearance if you will; 1) I thought he was pretty badass in the first two (and therefore the good) Blade movies. 2) He did ok in the leading role of Heaven's Gate, lighting up a movie that was otherwise so dull I might as well have listened to Ingrid Michaelson for 4 hours. Thirdly, there's a little song called April 5th which I just happen to love. It was 2 or 3 years ago that I started making an effort to hunt down Elvis Costello rarities and show them off in the Costello thread here in a bid to be that little bit more pretentious (which more often than not I'd just never get round to and make do with uploading some random bootleg and inexplicably call it 'the best live recording ever'). As I sifted through piles of interview recordings, 5 second-long demos and MP3s of Nick Lowe farting into a can, I saw this little April 5th ditty, written and recorded by the trio of Elvis Costello, Rosanne Cash and Kris Kristofferson. At its full length it remains unreleased to this day since its recording on 2007 or 2008 (I forgot which one exactly), as the only version available is a 130 second excerpt downloadable from an nytimes.conm article. There's a live version recorded on Costello's Sundance Channel talkshow, but if truth be told it doesn't match what I saw as the sheer beauty of the studio version I've heard. Put simply, I'd give anything to see the Costello/Cash/Kristofferson trio record a full-length album together. So then, back to reality...here lies the first album of new, original material from Kristofferson after an 11 year silence following the ok a Moment In Forever...almost anyway (there are a couple of re-recorded songs on this, but otherwise we're walking up New Song Street here). And...actually I should probably just say it now and get it done with - if you don't like country music of any sort, you probably shouldn't be reading this post. There are several reasons you should probably listen to this album though. First of all, you might just be a bit curious about Americana in general and wondering which angle you want to approach it from. If you happen to be clinically insane and not like Sweetheart Of the Rodeo, Our Mother the Mountain or the Gilded Palace Of Sin, this here's a great place to get started as it shows off the diversity of Americana nicely, what with how it lacks any steel guitar (so if every one of those twangs feels like someone clawing one of your teeth out with their bare hands, this'll do for you nicely). There's a lot more in common with good old-fashioned folk music here, as most of this album is the sound of Kristofferson with his acoustic guitar, a harmonica and the odd mandolin track to back him up. That leads me nicely onto my second reason you should listen to this, as it's the storytelling side of Americana at its finest, being a deeply introspective and fairly autobiographical album. It's about as far from pretentious as you can get though, being a very easygoing listening experience - at points you just feel like you're sat in a smoky bar with an endless supply of whiskey coming your way as one of the old-timers provides the musical entertainment for the night. Third is that it's Kris Kristofferson for god's sake - what's not to like :p: While it's far from the Townes Van Zandt-esque sounds of his earliest work, it's definitely an absolutely golden album and one I've probably listened to about 50 times in the last 5 or 6 months since I've had it. http://i54.tinypic.com/30kqetw.jpg |
Thanks for posting Ceremony which is the last song written by Joy Division & the first song recorded by New Order. The first time I heard the song was New Order playing it live at a club in Boston called the Underground. It was supposed to be Joy Division's first American tour. Ian Curtis died on the eve of that tour but Bernard Sumner held the band together.
My ticket for the show actually said "Joy Division" on the face & I remember the doorman was offering refunds to ticket holders who had come to see Joy Division with Ian Curtis. A few folks took the refunds but I'm glad I didn't. It is still the most memorable rock show I ever attended. No one who came to the show even knew of Ian Curtis' death because it wasn't reported in the American press. In May of 1980 the band was completely unknown in America even to most of the music press. I bought Unknown Pleasures as an UK import album because Joy Division wasn't even signed to an American label. The Underground was basically an old laundromat with a capacity for only about 100 people. There was no dressing room & the band was congregating at the bar before the show. Bernard was telling the story of how the band had nearly all of it's equipment stolen the previous evening in New York. He said they showed up in Boston having to rent or borrow all of their equipment for the show. I felt sorry for the band, having to face the loss of all of their equipment even as they were still grieving the loss of their singer. As things stood at the time of that Boston gig, the band's future as New Order was uncertain. Sumner said the band members were only committed to completing the original Joy Division tour itinerary & upon returning to England, they would decide the longterm future of New Order as a band. I'm glad they decided to carry on. At that Boston gig, less than a month after Curtis' suicide, New Order played a basic set list of Joy Division songs from Unknown Pleasures & Closer. The sole exception was Ceremony a song that the band was just completing when Curtis died. A few months after their American tour, New Order released Ceremony as their debut single. Bernard did a great job of singing all of Curtis' vocals. The Underground didn't have a stage and the performers were all at floor level and I was standing face to face with Sumner about 4 feet from the band during the entire show. To the handful of people that attended the show, it was something they would talk about for a long, long time afterwards. It's 31 years later and I still remember the show like it was last night. |
^ It's reasons like that that I sometimes wish I was older!
I've heard about how the remnants of Joy Division finished the last tour as Joy Division, and I'm really glad they carried on, otherwise some of the best music I've ever heard would never have been made. Of course we'll never know for sure, but I agree that had Curtis lived longer albums like Lowlife and Brotherhood, and of course Movement (which is basically a given) would've been recorded, but I find it hard to believe that others like Technique and Republic (two of my favourite albums of all time) would've seen the light of day. As I say though, who knows! With the exception of their swansong Waiting For the Siren's Call, I think there's a pretty consistent level of quality that runs through New Order's discography too. It's a shame that they went out on such a bad album, and it broke my heart to admit that how awful it was when I first got hold of it (being quite the NO fan back then, more so than I am now). I did absolutely love Get Ready though, and songs like this one here just go to show that even when they were old, wrinkly and banging out what should've been a pretty boring album, they were inexplicably good at their jobs. ^ I mean, it was far from one of their best albums, but not only is that song one of their absolute finest, but it's still just a really consistent album, and one of my favourite summertime albums for sure. |
Sorry to take this back a bit, but... I dunno how much you actually like/care about that Bitter:Sweet album or other music like that, but Kiran Shahani was in another band called Supreme Beings of Leisure. You may have heard of them as I believe they were fairly popular about 10 years ago, but if not their debut self titled album is fantastic in the same vein as Bitter:Sweet. Supreme Beings is a bit more upbeat at times, moving into more house territory possibly? But still very chill theme song type music, I definitely like it more than Bitter:Sweet. As a heads up the band split in half after that debut and I don't remember anything remarkable from any of their later work, I'm assuming that's because it's not as good.
Also good call on Postmarks Gavin, I've always found them to be a band I turn to a lot when I want chill music because I have a bit of an obsession with twee and they do a fantastic job of combining the two. It's been far too long, in fact, since I gave them a listen. |
Yeah, I've got their debut. It's pretty good stuff, and better than the old Bitter:Sweet album a few posts back. I wouldn't call it excellent or anything, but they're decent trip-hop albums and worth the fuss of finding...while all this stuff is free anyway. Like the Mating Game, it's doesn't particularly stand out much on its own but it's worth a shot on its own merits...if that makes sense. I might not have got that across in the album post as I changed the rating after I actually finished the thing.
And on that note, there's more of all that on the way in the coming days. Maybe even later tonight if I'm not doing anything else... |
So, seeing as I haven't actually bothering thinking about anything of much substance for this thread after all, here are a couple more random(ish) tunes I've been listening to a lot of lately...
Artist: David Bowie Tuneage: Your Turn To Drive You know what I think my problem is, and that's that I don't talk about this guy enough :p: So, yeah, I'm a colossal Bowie fan. I guess it goes to show that no matter how much one's taste in music can evolve over the space of about a decade (i.e. since I first bought Low and started listening to him), there are some parts of it that'll remain totally untouched by the fickle nature of anyone's listening habits. In this case, the Bowie-centric portion of my music collection's just been so invaluable to me down the years that I don't think I'll ever grow out of it. This here's the one in particular I've been getting a load of lately, and that's one of the rarer songs in the man's back-catalogue. Re-recorded in something like the year 2000 or 2001 from an old, unused demo of Bowie's from the 60s, this song was offered as a free download to any lucky soul who ordered his Reality album a few years later from HMV's website. For years then, along with a similarly-rare song called Fun, it was kinda like the holy grail for me. Like that one bottle of pink champagne that's been sitting on the supermarket shelf for years and keeps you going back to it, looking at it for a bit and saying to yourself 'one day, when I've got my hands on some hardcore dough-ra-mi, I'm gonna buy that bottle, pour it over a pyramid of about 25 glasses and chug them all one-by-one at my own sezy party'... Erm, anyway, this song's worth that kinda fuss. It's just got this really, effortlessly cool and laid-back funky vibe to it. And it's about the only Bowie song I can think of that has a trumpet in it (from the mighty Cuong Vu, no less), so go figure. Artist: Yann Tiersen Tuneage: La Rupture And then there's Yann! Man, if I had 20p for every time I've banged on about how amazing this guy is to random friends, or chicks at some bar downtown who keep nervously looking over their shoulder for their mates a few times before making a quick beeline for the door, I'd probably be about 20p richer...maybe even 10p (I once referred to him as Mr Tiersen to a beleaguered mate this one time...do I get money for that?). The weirdest thing is, that I didn't get into this guy via the Amelie soundtrack (which he composed and recorded) either. I thought it was an ok film by the way...maybe I just wasn't in the frame of mind for it, but I kept finding myself wanting to yell 'JUST FUCKING TALK TO THE GUY!!! sheesh' all the time. It's up for a re-watch then. There are very few musical experiences I can think of like a Yann Tiersen album, in any case. First of all, each of the ones I have (a good 4 or 5 of them by now) are of a brain-meltingly consistent quality (even if I do have a slight preference for his instrumental stuff over the vocalised), and secondly it all just sounds so alien to me...stylistically I mean. I'm sure there's plenty of other music just like this out there, but for me it's all about making an impact if you want me to rate an artist highly and, Yann Tiersen, you've got that in buckets! I may even go over one of his albums here in future. I guess we'll see. If I can work around the uni work I've got left to do, expect another album to rear its head in this post very soon... |
Bet you were expecting one of these eh;
Quote:
Murder City Devils Empty Bottles, Broken Hearts 1998 http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0...V65930515_.jpg genre: garage rock, punk-rock 1. I Want a Lot Now (So Come On) - 3:27 2. Dancin' Shoes - 2:26 3. 18 Wheels - 3:21 4. Left Hand Right Hand - 2:28 5. Ready For More - 3:49 6. Cradle To the Grave - 4:16 7. Dear Hearts - 3:20 8. Hey Sailor - 2:05 9. Johnny Thunders - 2:12 10. Stars In Their Eyes - 3:26 11. Another Round On You - 2:36 12. Every Shitty Thing - 3:59 So this one's me kinda going out on a whim, as I've only been listening to this album obsessively for the last 2 or 3 days straight. This might end up being a much shorter post than some of what I've alredy put in this thread but, hey, why would I let that stop me! Before I finally got hold of this album the other day, I'd only had two things linking me to this bunch of lovable Seattle-bred ragamuffins. 1) That I'd been familiar with and loved the song Dancin' Shoes for about a decade before now, and 2) an album of theirs called In Name and Blood which the awesometacular LoathesomePete hooked me up with (where the fuck are you lad?!). Suffice to say, these guys and a genuine appreciation of what they've given to music had been on my radar with a degree of inevitability for quite some time, like the borderline drinking problems that the first couple of years of university education bring with them, the popping of one's cherry, watching the Exorcist for the first time or any such ultimately inevitable stuff. What do they sound like then? Imagine a version of the Strokes where the guitars are turned up to 11 and Julian Casablancas yells at you instead of mumbling over the whole of Is This It. Don't get me wrong, I do kinda like the Strokes (nowhere near as much as I once did though - bollocks to getting the new album for a start). What I'm trying to say is that Murder City Devils are of the same garage rock ilk but just much louder, more raw, much less of an emphasis on melody, and just outright manly - listen to this album and the sheer testosterone of it, and you'll find you've grown stubble after the first listen. I guess they don't really sound anything like the Strokes then :p: How does it all hold up then? I fucking love it - that's how it holds up. I love the production values, and the fact that the guitar just cuts through each track like a scythe. I love Spencer Moody's guttural and bombastic vocal style that really works to give this album its own sense of edge and character. I love the way the rhythm section gives everything such a lively atmosphere that makes it pretty much impossible to sit still during a listen-through. I love the fact that the first three songs are three of my favourite garage rockers ever. All in all, it's such a consistently enjoyable album, and definitely in the top tier of garage rock in my opinion. Needless to say, their other stuff's well worth checking out too. As for this one, I don't hesitate to give it the following rating; http://i55.tinypic.com/2ajp9hi.jpg |
It's a beautiful day, I'm soon to go on a 15-mile cycle ride to make something like the most of it, but for now I thought I'd actually try talking about something other than a film I've seen lately or a new album I've just got (just like the old days!). Whether or not anyone's reading this or actually gives a fuck is, of course, secondary!
So then, what's been on my mind lately... Artist: The Beautiful South Tuneage: A Little Time Not that this has been on my mind for any good reason, in case you were wondering. I just think it's neat. Basically, it's like this; I've been scrubbing floors, cleaning ovens, washing dishes and generally being an entire kitchen's-worth of people's bitch for most of the summer, and as such my time for really sticking my neck out and looking for interesting new sounds was quite severely cut down. I'm between jobs now, so things have been different this last 2 or 3 weeks, but still... Point is though that I've basically been relying on the old favourites to supply me with my musical diet lately...with the exception of the Beautiful South here. As if by sheer coincidence, it was something like the week that I got my summer job that I started getting into these guys, before I found out that my boss-to-be was a massive fan himself. Two things; a) he was a cunt of the first degree b) that said, I couldn't quite agree with him on the matter anyway, regardless of his cuntishness The thing with the Beautiful South for me is that they're one of many pop artists that suffer from having singles that are far better than most of their albums, the exceptions to this rule being Blue Is the Colour. What you can't take away from them though in any case is the fact that they had a real knack for lyrics, as I'm sure this juicy little slice of tuneage will testify, this being probably one of my favourite breakup songs ever. Not only is it a perfectly decent little song musically speaking, ticking that 'yeah, I can listen to this' box, but performing this as a duet was a stroke of genius. It's like a divorce in the medium of song and dance - t'riffic, even. Anyway, that's all I've really got to say now. Got things to do - t'ra! |
Well call me an average-looking lower-middle class white English male - has it really been this long since I last talked about an album here?!
As I can't be bothered to dig up the right thread in General Music, and I've got enough time on my hands, I'm gonna give this a go again... Death In Vegas Scorpio Rising 2002 http://cdn.pitchfork.com/media/2235-scorpio-rising.jpg genre: big beat, electronic 1. Leather - 3:30 2. Girls - 4:30 3. Hands Around My Throat - 5:08 4. 23 Lies - 3:49 5. Scorpio Rising - 5:37 6. Killing Smile - 4:49 7. Natja - 3:50 8. So You Say You Lost Your Baby - 3:01 9. Driving Horses - 5:11 10. Help Yourself - 10:31 I remember a time when I was 14/15 years old. Grass was greener, christmas was whiter, global warming wasn't noticeably warm yet, Oasis v Blur was genuinely the clash of the best bands in the world, Highlander was the best movie of all time, and I first heard the title track from this old nugget of an album. So moved was I that I thought it'd be worth a weekend's pocket money to get the single on CD. For any of you younger whippersnappers out there, a CD was like a smallish, round plastic MP3 that, when bunched together with others of its ilk, would make you look hip and knowledgeable to your mates ;) That was a good 9 years ago now. I got hold of the single, practically wore out my copy of it and I think it was 7 or 8 years later that I finally decided to go for the album it shared a title with. I'm the same way with practically any book I pick up - I'll get it, read it as enthusiastically as some enthusiastic guy for about a week before getting distracted by something or someone, putting it down and not getting back to it for about 6 months or whatever. This album, then...it's hard to describe the overall sound without resorting to the copout that shall forever be known as 'alternative', so it'd be better to say that it sounds a bit like Primal Scream's XTRMNTR were it recorded by some of the biggest names of the day in mainstream rock with one eye on the benefits of a good chart position. It's awash in synthetic studio trickery, but doesn't sacrifice its emphasis on guitar-work much if at all and has the slightest dash of psychedelia and a touch of shoegaze textures to it. Add to this a few catchy hooks, shake well and you've got Scorpio Rising. It's a kinda big beat/psychedelic album, basically. It's really not a very bad one by any stretch either. As a unit it does suffer slightly from Let's Dance Syndrome, as in the first half of the album is very impressive while the second is a bit of a letdown. And it is the first half exactly that makes up the consistently-good portion of this one. You've got noisy, feedback-heavy Spiritualized-esque tracks like the opening salvo of Leather and Girls, the ever-welcome 'so catchy this should be illegal' bracket with the title track Hands Around My Throat, and the breathy, spacey vocals and 60s-style guitar of 23 Lies are a whole lotta awesome too. The rest of it isn't exactly bad, but the jarring transition (or lack thereof) between the title track and Killing Smile is, well, jarring. It's a soft, folk-rocker that's as out of place and misguided as that sex scene in Super. The same goes for the hard-rocking, Paul Weller-fronted So You Say You Lost Your Baby. Diving Horses saves the second half of this album from being completely 'meh', but the damage has already been done. When all's said and done though, I'd recommend it. It's one you should definitely try and get for free before Protect-IP and SOPA take a strangehold on all things internet anyway. http://i52.tinypic.com/2dt7lg3.jpg Death In Vegas - Hands Around My Throat - YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJu6vG64C2M&ob=av2e |
I've got time to kill so, even if I am the only person who particularly cares, it's time I updated this again. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I give you...
Lords Of Acid Farstucker 2001 http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...PL._SS500_.jpg genre: industrial, electronic, big beat 1. Scrood Bi U - 4:42 2. Treatise On the Practical Methods Whereby One Can Worship the Lords - 3:45 3. I Sit On Acid - 2:36 4. Rover Take Over - 3:37 5. Pain & Pleasure Concerto - 1:44 6. Slave To Love - 3:23 7. Sex Bomb - 3:34 8. Take Off - 1:04 9. Stripper - 3:36 10. Lover Boy / Lover Girl - 3:21 11. Surfin' Muncheez - 1:36 12. Get Up, Get High - 4:08 13. Dark Lover Rising - 1:31 14. Kiss Eternal - 4:28 15. Lick My Chakra - 1:23 16. Glad I'm Not God - 3:34 17. A Ride With Satan's Little Helpers - 1:32 18. Feed My Hungry Soul - 4:20 19. I Like It - 2:55 As I'm sure a lot of Alcoholics Anonymous speeches begin, I was listening to 2 Many DJs one day, thinking how much I'd rather be living in the city again than the dull, smelly countryside where the most excitement in one's day comes from walking to the shops to pick up a copy of the Independent every morning, when I chanced across the Lords Of Acid remix tucked away near the end of As Heard On Radio Soulwax. Frankly, it's a fucking great album (and if you don't think it's fucking great yourself...well, you should), but this remix caught my attention having gone through the customary routine of listening to the Destiny's Child/Dolly Parton mashups for the seventy-fifth time that day. More often than not, I'll hear something by or read something about an artist somewhere before then looking them up on you-to-the-tube, and then deciding whether or not it's worth getting hold of any of their material. Yes, it'd seem that even the limitless possibilities and avenues for exploration that the internet offers soon turn into tooth-grindingly monotonous routine as much as anything else. Anyway, the first song I came across was an immaculately-titled little ditty called I Sit On Acid - the very same tune that Soulwax remixed, incidentally. I was instantly impressed...not only is there this great song that sounds like it could fit into the Mortal Kombat soundtrack quite snugly (a soundtrack that I love), is also has one hell of a catchy beat to it, and features the line 'I wanna sit on your face' repeated over and over. It was like love at first sight :p: So much so that I may well have to revise my long-held opinion that Lovage's Music To Make Love To Your Old Lady By is there sexiest album of all time. Hell, this album is basically the sound of not only sex in musical form but the kind of leather-bound, twisted S&M shit that you've only heard about but never actually been moved to try out yourself. With its scatterings of hard-rock riffs, danceable electronic beats, rough vocal stylings and all-round sleaziness, it just sounds like the musical incarnation of getting your groove on with someone who's an absolute volcano in the sack. And before I come off as too weird, I'll have you know that this is what one of their lead singers looks like. Weird sexual fetishes, musical implications and my own twisted mind aside, is this album actually any good? Well, not to be too blunt or anything, of course it bloody is :p: Besides the album-closing I Like It which sucks hard (now that I mention it, I Like It by the Rezillos was the far and away the weakest song on their own album...hmmm...), it varies from the kinds of industrial riffs and high tempos that slap you in the face to the slower, more sensual moments. There are enough stylistic variations throughout and interesting little moments in each track to really hold your interest throughout the length of what is a really long album. I loved it anyway. http://i54.tinypic.com/30kqetw.jpg Lords Of Acid - I Sit On Acid - YouTube Lords Of Acid - Lover Boy Lover Girl - YouTube |
Quote:
|
As I can't be bothered to spend literally a whole ten minutes talking about an album, here are a few tunes that have been keeping me company through all this crappy winter weather.
Starting with; Artist: Norah Jones Tuneage: Lonestar No, not this Lonestar, but rather a Lonestar that's had a constant stay on the CD racks of wine bars and upmarket cafes up and down the UK. At first glance, I once thought of Norah Jones as just some boring warbler who didn't really sound all that different from someone you'd pay a tenner on the door to go and see play at a club near your own gaffe. In fact, that's what I thought for a good number of years until I watched the ok My Blueberry Nights, thought 'hey, this chick can act!', and just got hold of an album or two out of sheer curiosity. An album or two soon became an album or six, as I disocvered that Ms Jones is actually a lot more stlistically diverse and interesting than you'd imagine, veering from vocal jazz to Emmylou Harris-like country rock, or even to a more wholesome sound that's a lot more PJ Harvey than Diana Krall. Alright, I haven't exactly picked the example to show off her stylistic range, as this is one of her earliest recordings, but ever since a rather bawdy kind of weekend that leaves you aghast at how much money you spent during the course of its nights, I've been feeling kinda mellow. And speaking of Lonestar, in honor of the unfathomable brilliance that is Spaceballs; Anyway, before I go and listen to Not Too Late for the umpteenth time... Artist: The Commitments Tuneage: Mustang Sally As I type this, I'm still in the process of twiddling my thumbs, waiting for my month's payslip to come in (due any day now) so that I can order the Commitments/the Van on DVD as an xmas pressie for my little sister. Both aren't exactly amazing films, but the former in particular boasts a good story that doesn't take itself too seriously, and dare I say it features musical performances that actually rival the Blues Brothers for sheer awesomeness. This rendition of Mustang Sally is all that in microcosm - like an on-screen projection of how you dream of being able to pull off a tune during a karaoke night at your local...and don't pretend you've never thought about it either :p: Quote:
|
...for a few days. And one of the last things I posted about in this journal was Norah Jones? Ewww... So here's what's happening. I'm on a sabbatical of sorts from my regular, boring paid job until Sunday. In that time, I intend to work on various things of my own, which I think it'd far easier for me to motivate myself towards if I came here for a while and started typing up any old rubbish, putting a few pictures and videos in it, pressing 'submit reply' and calling it a review...of sorts. I'm really beyond caring how underwhelming the response to this is by now, so I'm just gonna press on and finish my time on MB with a few well-toned posts here for old time's sake. So, starting tomorrow then...stay tuned! |
So, I've decided to come back and drone away in this journal again. There are various reasons that I left for as long as I did, which I doubt anyone really cares about, so I won't go into. But, I'm back, I suppose. Might not be for very long, and I'll probably just be a recluse in this thread, but expect to see something new in this thread sometime soon.
So, yeah, stay tuned and stuff... |
Hey, welcome back Bulldog! I'll include your return in the update for the journals thread later tonight! :thumb::beer:
|
Quote:
*clears throat* |
Quote:
|
According to this my last post here was some 10 months ago. Truthfully the end of me as a regular poster here came long before that, as in when I de-modded myself as I kidded myself that I had better things to do than hang around here. The reason I gave for doing that was that I needed time to study but, let me level with you my lovelies; all the 4 years I spent in higher education were easy. I think it the only hard part of it was having to drag myself to 1-on-1 dissertation tutorials and go through the whole 'this is good, but go do kit properly and come see me again next week' routine over and over for a ****ing year. Incidentally, my final mark was actually way worse than my projected ones at the start of the third year, not that I'm bitter or anything, but I digress...
Whether or not anyone's actually wondering just what the hell's happened to me lately or not is elementary. I'm fully prepared for the fact that no-one may post in this thread again besides me, and I'm cool with that...I always have been, really. I'm just bored and I'm procrastinating (I currently have about 3 different scripts and an article I have to get done that I'm diligently ignoring right now), I've got something to say and in the absence of any mates, pets, parents or whatever I'm gonna tell someone dammit. Or at least I would if life hadn't been largely pretty boring for about 2 or 3 years for me by now. Been in and out of jobs, in and out of relationships to the degree that it'd be funny how unlucky I've been in romance if it wasn't happening to me...on the plus side though, in telling people I can cook to sound cool I've actually gone and developed quite the repertoire in Italian food, so if anyone wants tips on that roast cauliflower dish of those balsamic chocolate truffles they want done, I guess you now know who to turn to. Basically, the reason I'm saying all this is not because I'm self-obsessed or anything (Well, alright, that's probably got something to do with it...I mean, christ, why did I come here and start a thread like this in the first place if I wasn't?), but to put you in context of where I was in life when this happened; January 6th started out just like any other day for me. I got up, didn't eat breakfast (an appetite in the morning is something I still lack, even though I haven't touched a cigarette for 2 years now), went to work, spent the whole day boring my arse off and taking all sorts of crap off my then-girlfriend, and then I got home to be greeted by my brother. He asked me casually if I'd heard about David Bowie. I thought he was joking. I mean, I remember mentioning the guy at least once a day when I posted here regularly, but I played along and said no. John then left me to YouTube him and find out what exactly was happening for myself. I'm glad he did, as otherwise I'd have been spared one of the most pleasant surprises of my life. I mean, I'd been following David Bowie for 11 or 12 years before this, and endured a whole decade of studio silence from him, punctuated only by unfunny sitcom appearances (Extras), boring 5-second film cameos (August) and the occasional worthwhile stunt (the Prestige). I literally thought this day would never come; the day that I'd hear a completely new David Bowie song, and yet here it was...like, happening and stuff. Not only that but the song was actually pretty damn good too. It made me think, y'know, maybe you really should never say never, no matter how bleak things look. Maybe there really is always hope, no matter how faint, for the most unlikely of events. Life is full of surprises, and it's always those surprises which are the most worthwhile things that'll happen to you. As for the album the Next Day, yeah, it's alright; it's a good David Bowie album, what more would I want? Far as I see it, the man's innovated and changed enough over 50 years in the music industry, so I'm just thankful there's a new album out there, and possibly a new one after that if producer Tony Visconti is to be believed. Oh, and as for me and being here and stuff, I really can't see myself getting back to posting like I used to if even posting much at all, as truthfully the kinda stuff I've posted here before simply isn't really on my mind that much anymore. I guess time will tell. Either way, hope that those of you I see still post here that I actually remember have been doing alright yourselves. Laters. |
Bulldog is back! Bulldog is back! :tramp:
A lot of people's day just got a whole lot better! I don't know you personally, but I've definitely enjoyed your writing and if you check the "Spill your guts" thread you'll find a lot of people mourning your loss from here, so welcome back and we hope to hear a lot more from you in the future. :clap: |
Ah, screw it, it's time I got this going again. New review up tomorrow guys, sorry for all the umming and erring...watch this space.
|
Quote:
One thing that's got me back here is that I now basically do what I did in this journal for my local paper's website now, so old habits are indeed dying very hard :p: Anyway, time to make up for lost time... Kasey Chambers The Captain 2000 http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/510CrC7F30L.jpg 1. Cry Like a Baby - 3:58 2. The Captain - 4:31 3. This Flower - 2:47 4. You Got the Car - 4:03 5. These Pines - 3:59 6. Don't Talk Back - 4:45 7. Southern Kind of Life - 3:59 8. Mr Baylis - 3:41 9. The Hard Way - 2:52 10. Last Hard Bible - 2:20 11. Don't G0 - 2:58 12. We're All Gonna Die Someday - 2:08 If albums were pets, 'the Captain' by Kasey Chambers would be a seven-month old chihuahua called Buster that I picked up with a girlfriend one summer's weekend in Great Yarmouth – almost illegally adorable and very well-loved, but has a long way to go to replace the grumpy house cat. Because like getting a chihuahua puppy is a conscious effort to swallow your pride as the owner of some XY chromosomes and score brownie points off your girl, me getting hold of 'the Captain' here was part of a conscious effort get into all this country music stuff I'd heard about, and I'm starting to think that this analogy is falling apart, so I'll quit while I'm ahead so to speak. The point is that to me country music was, to about this point, something I'd only heard about in Ringo Starr songs, misleading Elvis Costello cover albums and a few of my favourite Rolling Stones songs. It was certainly nothing that I'd consciously tried to get into any relatively modern form of as, let's face it, there's a knee-jerk reaction among us English towards country music. Often that knee-jerk reaction finds us thinking of line-dancing to Dolly Parton and 'Achey Breaky Heart', never actually wiping away the dust of a bad reputation to see just how colourful and dynamic the genre can actually be. It's a sense of colour and depth that actually stretches all the way to the other side of the Pacific Ocean in Australia. Yes, some very authentically American-sounding country rock gets peddled in Australia. Typical of our Australian buddies to get overshadowed musically by the USA and/or the UK in some form or another but different story, different time I suppose. It would certainly explain why a woman as immensely talented as Kasey Chambers here has passed relatively unnoticed by the American and British music markets. Born in Mount Gambier, South Australia, Ms Chambers can be safely counted with other leading lights in modern alternate country rock such as Allison Moorer, Tift Merrit and Shannon McNally et al. As indeed is her husband Shane Nicholson, as the more bat-eared among anyone reading this little note would know from listening to their collaborative 'Rattlin' Bones' album but, again, different story, different time. It's time for me to stop rambling like my drainpipe jeans are cutting off the circulation to the part of my brain that tells me to follow the actual title of an article I write, and actually tell you what I think of this album. I like it. I like it a lot. I like it as much as Buster the seven-month old chihuahua. It shows that there's certainly a lot more to love about this girl than just 'Not Pretty Enough', her platinum-selling single that would come from her follow-up to her debut album here; the similarly likeable 'Barricades and Brick Walls'. And that's quite a thing to say about an album as infectiously catchy and generally upbeat as 'the Captain'. I'm not sure who among any of you will agree, but too often is it the case that when you buy an album based on how hard the singles you heard bowled you over, you're often left bitterly disappointed when you discover that those were far and away the best songs on the album. Not the case with 'the Captain' at all, although it must be said that the infectiously catchy and beautifully upbeat 'Cry Like a Baby', the pensive title track and the majestic 'Don't Talk Back' are tremendous songs in their own right. These three songs alone are an ice-cold beer on your front porch in the sunshine – the perfect atmosphere for a good country song. Beyond those there's just about the sweetest lovesong ever ('This Flower'), Emmylou Harris-style folk rock ('These Pines'), unmistakeably 70s-throwback country rock ('the Hard Way;) and so much more to choose from here. Classic isn't the word for an album that's only just over a decade old (or is it...yikes, I'm getting old!), but this album is everything that it should be. It's colourful, it's lyrically spellbinding, it's catchy as any LMFAO tune you could think...it's country music, musical marmite – you'll either listen to it more times than you eat breakfast in the morning, or it'll leave you seeking salvation in a hard-cover bible. Either way, you've got to try it out, just to see what all the publicity is about. It's a damn shame though that her last internationally-released album 'Little Bird; was a tooth-grinding descent into cookie-cutter mediocrity but, again, different story, different time. |
Welcome back man! It's great to see you! :)
|
| All times are GMT -6. The time now is 08:34 AM. |
© 2003-2024 Advameg, Inc.