I must confess that my musical consumption has begun a major migration away from the album towards the mp3 playlist. I find myself checking each day's new freebies and folding them into long playlists (I try to get to 10 hours - a full day's listening - before I start a new one) that specifically avoid album cuts. I am now on my 12th such playlist, and their rate of creation is accelerating with time. Eventually, if I get enough freebies from an album that I like, I buy it. It sorta makes album reviewing a bit phony since I don't buy a ton of stuff totally unheard anymore. Even so, I am gonna try keeping up with reviews, at least for now. There are still plenty of reissues to cover, and even though I tend to buy albums only after liking a few cuts from them first, a whole album is a distinct entity worthy of its own time I guess. At the end of the day, this ends up being a good problem to have in that it really is a function of having too much to listen to at any one time. Contrary to what I have sensed is the end of the line for "the revival" indie rock in particular is still very fruitful and the reissue pipeline has been excellent too. The summer has been quite good to my ears.
I am also considering putting very severe limits on what I go out and buy and to force myself to go back and reconnect with all the stuff I picked up within the last year only to cherry-pick for different mix discs and playlists. This is something that also has picked up of late in that I have made more mix discs as groups new to me 3-4 years ago have put more albums out. Rather than cart them all with me, I make 80 minute "best of" discs for the auto, and then never go back to the originals. I filled my iPlod many times over and have to prune to add new, so that basically ends up edited the same way. I am willing to be my initial read on what to save and what to chuck will have changed by now, necessitating a long re-connect with the most recent years' stuff.
Whether I can really avoid temptation with the new stuff coming out remains to be seen. It is worth a shot though. We shall see; for now, here is some from the most recent batch.
Spectrum - War Sucks: I can't act surprised to find that another Spectrum release involves the same few chords, pedal effects, and themes as most of the other ones, so I will simply say this will fit into the catalog right smack in the middle. I will confess to finding the war sound effects on the title cut to be most musical to my ear. If I had to guess I would guess they are the "Stalin Organ" from WWII, and while I know their sound was use to create terror (like the Stuka siren, or the Screaming Mimi - the Nazi rip-off of the Stalin Organ), I find the sound most interesting. I suppose it is because I am not being bombarded by the business end of the organ, but instead listening to them within a nice bit of audio collage designed to make them sound musical. A nice touch. I suppose the Laurie Anderson cover is good too, but I don't know the original to know the difference from. Sigh. Nice enough. (C+)
Major Lazer - Guns Don't Kill People Lazers Do: Hold The Line is a candidate for my 2009 song of the year. Whether or not it passes as good Dancehall, I couldn't say. If anything, I think it might have too much of an alt-Brooklyn underpinning to do as well in the islands as it might on MTV2. Finding a way to merge a massive Dick Dale-surf guitar riff onto the barebones dancehall frame is a masterstroke. That you also have the horses and Santigold at full throttle PLUS Mr. Lexx's rap simply means one has to invoke the slaughter rule and force one's self to eventually allow the songs afterward to also be heard. Nothing that follows Hold The Line touches it, and in fact, some of the stuff on here is utterly disposable (if not downright embarrassing.) Even so, there are 2 or 3 other ditties worth a listen, making it just necessary-enough to get the album rather than just a single or a download. Think of it as a dancehall version of the first Gnarls Barkley album - irresistable lead single, a few ok cuts, and lots of dreck. The good is so excellent that the bad is forgiven, and the rest is sufficiently entertaining to not feel like a sucker for buying it. Oh - you also get stickers of the characters of the video in the first pressing, which for me, is worth it. (B-)
El Perro Del Mar - Love Is Not Pop: I have a big soft spot for ELDM. I think Sarah is a hottie, but even if she looked like me, I woulda liked her stuff. It is a little mopey, but I think it all is done with a wink at some level, and so I never have taken it as being completely on the level. Whether it is or isn't, there is a beauty to the arrangements and simplicity to the songs she builds that I find very easy on the ear. I am one of the few who doesn't think her second album, From The Valley To The Stars, was a failure or step back or sophomore phlop. It is different than the first one, it isn't as good as the first one, but she did an amazing thing in showing how well she can adapt the basic materials she works with to an expanded scope of songs and subjects. Instead of making another violin-chorus, 50s-pop, Jens Lekman album, she moved ahead and borrowed from more soulful language of 60s pop and even dabbled in some small & solemn, hymn-like arrangements. That this new EP is positioned as a quickie release to cleanse the palate for those unhappy with the previous disc is unfortunate, but ultimately, it has nothing to do with the music itself. Again, I find myself very much enjoying her songs and aesthetic, and again, I find myself pleasantly surprised with just how pliable they seem in her hands. There is a cold, synth feel to some of this, which is unmistakable as a complete and total antithesis of the very warm, Dionne Warwick vibe of FTVTTS. She need not work so hard in my opinion, but either way, it just plain works to my ears. So far, I wouldn't say there is that one song on here that I keep going back to over and over, but (perhaps a function of length), I I find myself listening to all of this EP more often than I go for the first two end-to-end. This hasn't been released domestically yet, and it may turn out that the version that comes out in the US is different than the one I have, so I hesitate to put the final word down about this, however, unless she totally guts it and goes somewhere else with it, I can't imagine not liking it. It is a little more girly and emo than I normally go for, but to me, EPDM makes what I think of as the 21st Century "bedroom album" of the type most attributed to Brian Wilson back in the day. She isn't Brian Wilson as a songwriter, but modern tech allows her to create big, sweeping arrangements on a laptop if she wants to, and she seems to know how to do so with sufficient restraint to make these albums impactful without being too fatiguing. They can be warm and small or cold and grand, or cold and small and warm and grand, and they can do so by fairly quick turns. Maybe it is just me, but to be able to have control over that - and get better at it, if anything - means she didn't just get lucky with the blogosphere first time out. She's the real thing. Having seen her pull off acoustic arrangements of her first album at a show, I am convinced she has lots more to offer and my hope is that this this ends the first phase of her development. It hints at real talent. If she had that one massive song to tack on here for the domestic release, I think I wouldn't need to work to hard to make that case to a wide audience. (B-)
Franz Ferdinand - Blood: I don't consider myself a big FF fan. I have their first two, and between them, I probably really, really dig a handful of songs (one of which - Van Tango -was a sorta funky throwaway b-side tacked on a special edition of the first one.) They are just ok in my book. I don't actually have their new album, the one this release is a "dub" version of, but of all the stuff of theirs I have, I think this is my favorite actual album. It isn't good dub in the King Tubby, Prince Far-I, Scientist sense (I don't consider the electronica stuff that is labeled dub to actually be dub.) I knew going into it that this wasn't gonna be good dub, and I didn't really know or care about the songs; however, I am totally a fan of the dub aesthetic, and generally totally dig its application outside of genre. The Castanet's dub version of their last album, for example, remains one of my most-listened to albums from 2008. The Clash did some awesome dub stuff on their singles. Even GenX's dub stuff has its moments. I just dig it and will try any such material once. As dub or as rock, this disc isn't a breakthrough by any means, and I am not sure who the intended audience was, but as a disc to have on for a drive or at work or while reading, it really hits the spot. There is a white-boy groove to it that I like, and focusing on the backbone of the songs does much to show off their ability to put real songs together. I know I did it the wrong way, but giving into my little predilection for the application of dub to white boy rock got me to try a new release from a band I kinda gave up on. Now I find myself wanting to give the actual album behind this release a try. Ugh. (B-)
J Spaceman & Sun City Girls - Mister Lonely Soundtrack: Growing up in Chicago when I did meant watching the Polish Prince, Bobby Vinton, on New Year's Eve polka-thons more often than not. Then, as an aspiring radio "personality", I did my time working an oldies station, and again, Bobby Vinton's path and my path intersected again quite often. In between, there were many years in which my mom put ol' 45s of his on repeat, playing them literally over and over and over. I still hear him crooning "There, I've said it again!!!" in that big, sweeping resolution phrase in my head at odd times. When I heard a totally awesome instrumental string arrangement of Mister Lonely, I had no idea who did it or why, but I wanted it. That it was on a soundtrack that also included many cuts by a former member of the Spacemen 3 meant I was going to purchase the disc the first time I found a reasonably priced copy. As it turns out, there really isn't much else on it I care about beside that one cut I already had. You need to either have liked the film, be a completist for one of the artists on it, or a dork like me to get a jolt out of this album. Otherwise, I just don't see what demands you listen to, let alone own, it. (C-)
DeerTick - Flag Day: It TOTALLY crushes me to diss this album, but I have to. I loved the first one War Horse and listened to it a ton for a good year after it was out. Dude's voice was perfect for an alt. country solo artist doin' weary, but warm, stuff about Nevada, Baltimore, Diamond Rings, and such. That he threw in some mild pro-Christian stuff here and there without filtering every nuance through it, made it all the more attractive to me (I like this about Belle & Sebastian too - but I digress...) When I saw that a follow-up would not be long in coming, I was super super excited. I needed this album to be good because there hasn't been a good, white-boy alt.country bluesy thing out in awhile as good as I know dude to capable of. Turns out, he added a band, let them write a lot of the material, decided to make everything sound like a bad ? & The Mysterians out-take and lose every nuance on his voice but the grit, and then force that way beyond its plausibility and use. I hope I am wrong and that my ear is just missing it, but I am pretty sure I am right and that this really isn't very good. It is a huge waste and a huge bummer. I liked the last one so much I will gladly check out what comes next, but if he pulls another dud out, I have to let it go and just be glad I got the one nice disc I already had. (D+)
Black Tambourine - Complete Recordings: When Nirvana's Nevermind hit, tons of other stuff that was going on found no oxygen left in the room for them, and to be honest, Nirvana made one of the greatest rock albums ever and totally deserved everyone's attention. That era was right around the last time I consumed popular/alt-popular music "as intended", which is to say, as the young person usually referred to as the "target market". After the grunge arc returned to earth, I left college, wasn't tuned into current music like I had been, and found my tastes begin their great diversion off into reggae and (eventually) jazz. While grunge and that whole scene was in full swing, there were lots of other ideas and sounds out there, but like many, I totally missed them. We are now far enough away from that era that lots of bands crowded out by Nirvana are getting a second (or belated first, in my case) look, and here and there, I am finding some gems. Black Tambourine is certainly one of the better ones. I can't say I find it terribly original, but indeed, since it is so close to stuff that I was otherwise interested in, I am not sure how it is I totally missed them. Sounding somewhere between Psychocandy-era J&M Chain and an amalgamation of classic Creation Records (first House Of Love album), Ride, Lush, & Medicine, they totally should have been on my radar. Since that sound has now had its rebirth and is approaching its re-exhaustion, this disc totally fits in with lots of the other stuff I've had on, and in that context especially, the uniqueness of the harmony and arrangements help to clarify why they were better than all the me-too late-shoegaze, fake-o 4AD stuff that was out by then. A nice find. (B)
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