0.5.0 - Gotta get through January, gotta get through (Week 5 Wrapup)
Talking about rates of consumption, everyone loves stats, so here's January's. Over the course of the month I listened to 153 unique albums and 1925 songs, across 28 very-loosely-defined genres, for a total of 5 days, 3 hours and 12 minutes of continuous music listening. I've discovered new music I've recommended successfully to others, made a list of albums to return to, and revisited some old favourites.
Unexpectedly, the response when I've told people this is what I'm doing has been strangely positive; I know several others who've told me that they've made a point of trying to listen to more albums, having been trapped in the same playlist cycle which the streaming algorithms wrap around us to save us from dangerous new ideas and sounds. From friends, to colleagues, to Catherine's personal trainer, people have been interested, cheered me on, made recommendations, and told me they were going to listen to more whole albums. That's a nice feeling, especially because I still think this is an insane vanity project used mainly to give me something to deflect from the anxiety this historical moment brings out in me regularly.
So, with eight Linkin Park albums and seven mashup albums already covered, what else was I listening to this week?
Fuzzybrain immediately made me smile and think "oh, this might be great" when False Direction started the album - a mellow kind of indie synthpop which reminded me of MGMT but with a healthy dose of positivity instead of cynicism. It's possible my subsequent reaction, that the rest of the album also just kinda sounded like that also - to the point where I didn't really distinguish between the tracks in a meaningful way - is related to a single surface level listening, and there's potential there to grow into something I enjoy more, but it did not immediately excite me.
Heartbeat Highway and A Different Arrangement both did; Cannons live in the Chvrches/The xx camp of electro-pop-rock (I really hate myself for these comparative reductive descriptions but without a point of reference, most of my thoughts would be "it went chang-a-chang-a-changa and the drums went dum-dum-DUMdum in a pleasing manner", so it is what it is) but there's a wonderful blend of 80's synths, Garbage-sounding jagged guitar riffs and clear melodic vocals on all of these tracks. I played this in the car for Catherine and I knew it would be a hit with her, and it was. As a sidenote, Heartbeat Highway ends with a track called Dancing In The Moonlight which I am going to devote myselt to promoting until it becomes the song everyone associates with that title, and not the awful Toploader song of the same name.
If Heartbeat Highway was a slam dunk recommendation for Catherine (which I also enjoyed), A Different Arrangement might have been written to tap specifically into my dopamine receptors. Listening back to tracks while I write this, I want to just go through this whole album again. The idea that someone was out here making synthwave music that sounds like Joy Division and The Cure, filled with moody vocals, bass guitar and prominent drum machines, and I was not aware of it for more than a decade fills me with sorrow for the time lost. I am really, dearly into this album and it's got a gold star next to it for repeated revisitations when time permits.
Sometimes you have a good idea for a collection of albums to listen to, and then world events derail that somewhat, and you end up doing it a week later and that's fine because it's your stupid project and who is going to lambast me for this, the 20 people reading this blog? Unlikely.
So, while it was Blue Monday nearly two weeks ago now, my plan to listen to a bunch of albums with Monday songs on was a solid enough concept for me to do it this week instead. Finding which New Order album even features Blue Monday on the track list was a struggle. It seems it was a single-only release, but I was sure I had it on an album somewhere, and some investigation revealed that the UK printing of Power Corruption and Lies (no oxford comma, so I assume the power has been corrupted and also there are lies) included Blue Monday on the track list, so I listened to the entire album on Spotify, then listened to Blue Monday and counted it as one album. Obviously, Blue Monday is a classic, but in case it wasn't clear from the above, I've got a huge appetite for dark electro music and New Order are amongst the reasons why. There's nothing on the album quite as iconic as the track everyone knows, but it's full of malevolent energy (in a good way). Ultraviolence is the hidden gem deep cut on this album.
So, other Monday songs. Garfield, myself, and The Boomtown Rats all do not like them, but only one of us has immortalised that in song. I Don't Like Mondays is about a school shooting in America in 1979, and thank goodness that problem has been solved in the 45 years since that happened. In all honesty, I don't think I have heard more than one other song by The Boomtown Rats (Rat Trap, for those that care) before this week, and I honestly have no real concept of how successful or famous they were outside of Bob Geldoff being one of the organisers behind Live Aid. Much like my feelings on Roxy Music, The Fine Art of Surfacing is an album of deliberate, stylised art-rock and like Roxy Music, it left me feeling like this might be an acquired taste which I had not yet acquired.
Different Light is another album I owned on cassette; Manic Monday and Walk Like An Egyptian kind of made The Bangles seem like some kind of novelty pop act like The Weathergirls, but that is, I am sure, more to do with the insidious nature of music marketing and the Eighties than a comment on their musical and lyric chops, because this is another rock power ballad classic much like Heart. I've tried to play some Bangles songs on drums and they are surprisingly complex and fast as hell; Susanna Hoffs has one of the great female power ballad voices. Disregard the contributions of The Bangles to great music at your peril.
Thanks to years of exposure to my parents musical tastes, where our record player at home was in use far more frequently than our TV for a lot of my youth, Monday Monday by The Mamas & The Papas was the first song with Monday in the title that came to mind; If You Can Believe Your Eyes & Ears also features karaoke staple California Dreamin', and arch social commentary The "In" Crowd, as well as a plethora of songs which speak to an optimistic world of inclusivity and peace. The past here really feels like another country.
Back in the late 90's an early 2000s, Marilyn Manson entered the pop culture zeitgeist, and brought with him some long, flowing coat-tails which bands like Orgy were all too happy to ride. I included this because, without intention, I ended up seeing Orgy live at Reading Festival 2000 (I think, it might have been 99 or 01, they all kind of bleed together for me and I am too lazy to google lineups); the only thing of note about their show was their cover of Blue Monday, which coincidentally, is the only thing of note about Candyass also. Music is a vast pool of experience and I am sure someone, somewhere lists Orgy as their favourite band but I can't fathom any reason that would be true. I'm pretty sure Orgy isn't the favourite band of any of the members of Orgy, apart from in the way it paid their bills.
I don't have much to say about Jaydiohead or The Notorious xx which I didn't cover in my mashups post earlier this week, apart from they are both excellent additional examples of the form if you are looking for more recommendations.
Mouth Sounds (and the rest of Neil Cicierega's catalogue Mouth Moods, Mouth Silence and Mouth Dreams) operate alongside the idea of the mashup album, but really I can't go into details as to what these are or recommend them in the same way as I do the others. But if you find yourself in an unusual mood and with an hour to kill, maybe listen to it here.
When I polled my friends for music recommendations, I was expecting from my friend Liam a list of interesting experimental Japanese music, some electronic and jazz stuff I hadn't heard of, and some modern indie I might have missed. I was not expecting Bruce Hornsby's The Way It Is to appear on his list, but fortunately for me it did, because it gave me an excuse to listen to it. What Liam didn't know is that this album is extremely well known to me, being another constituent of my classic mid-Eighties cassette collection, and I know the album front to back. If you are not familiar, and you only know the title track from 2Pac's Changes, the album as a whole is another perfect encapsulation of Americana Blues and canny songwriting. Springsteen and Neil Young exist as the exemplars of this form, and the 80's elements of this maybe keep it from getting the flowers it deserves, but I think it belongs to be in the conversation with it's 70s counterparts. Mandolin Rain exists as the standout track outside of the title, but the whole thing is great.
With that debut under their belt, surely the two following Bruce Hornsby albums could keep up the momentum, correct? In a word, not really. I hadn't heard Tales from the Southside or A Night On The Town before this week, and there's nothing bad or offensive here, but it feels like 100% of the good ideas might have been used up on the debut; Tales from the Southside keeps the bluesy piano arrangements, but the songs are less catchy and less punchy; following their debut, the pressure to recreate must have been hard to ignore, but there was less gas in the tank this time around. By '88 A Night On The Town had given up hope, sailing closer instead to a kind of late 80's easy listening, Kenny Rodgers kind of sound, the ghosts of the American prairie abandoned for the suits and shoulderpads of the city; the new Americana, if you will.
Sometimes, when I want to practice my drums, I just put on Rock Band 3 and just play random songs off my playlist on Pro mode just to keep my hand ine. That was Saturday morning for me, and as I played Lazy Eye, I thought about bands I had only initially encountered through playing the Rock Band series of games. I think Silversun Pickups must have been bigger in the US than they were over here; I certainly had no idea who they were until Lazy Eye appeared on the Rock Band 3 soundtrack; like a lot of music, repetition built familiarity and understanding, and I was compelled to find Carnavas off the internet and listen to it. I still think its a good Indie Rock record, but not one I have strong feelings about outside of that; I can't think what else I was doing at the time, but the album never stayed with me the same way others have. The drums on Lazy Eye are incredibly fun to play though, if that means anything to you.
I liked Portions for Foxes as soon as I heard it, and I made a far more concerted effort to listen to More Adventurous than I did Carnavas; what I didn't know until years later was that Jenny Lewis, lead vocalist for Rilo Kiley, I was already very familiar with as one half of the vocal duo that made by The Postal Service who's album Give Up is one of my favourite albums of all time. I wasn't much into reading about bands at the time I guess. I was late to the Rilo Kiley train (I think the album had been out for five years before I heard anything from it), and as if often the case, they broke up soon after I started listening to them, so I never really moved on from this album. However, if you want well crafted, heartfelt indie rock songs with driving energy, give this one a try.
In my head Modest Mouse exist as a band who's music should only ever be played through the open door of a college shared dorm room. Their shambolic energy inextricably links them with a certain era of college radio and its an experience I don't relate to; as such I view them and their music with a certain degree of suspicion. I've got an unsettled relationship with this kind of lo-fi indie rock, and my time spent listening to it made me think more philosophically about how your appreciation for music is inevitably coloured by the life circumstances surrounding your introduction to it. For millions of people, I am sure this album is the soundtrack to some of their most memorable and formative experiences; hearing it while cooking dinner in our kitchen, without that context, did not make me any more fond of it.
Finally, New Moon Daughter; this was another recommendation, this time from my sister-in-law, though I put it on because I needed something to listen to with Catherine that I knew she would like. I first heard Cassandra Wilson when Catherine played me her cover of Last Train To Clarksville and gang, I do not care for it. I have very strict standards and criteria for people putting cover versions on their albums, and this album is fully half cover versions of some pretty heavy-hitting songs as well. She's got a lovely voice and performative tone, and the original songs on here suit me just fine; but applying a dreamy jazz vocal to Strange Fruit or Harvest Moon just feels almost profane. I am certain I would vastly prefer a different Cassandra Wilson album, one without cover versions.
So, that's January done. Every album at least touched on in prose. Only 28 days in February, so that promises to be at least 3-4% easier!
*Sidenote, the wonderful people at This One Goes To 11 just started their eighth season a week or so ago with two great episodes, please go seek them out and listen to them; they exist as one of the two podcasts I am keeping remotely current with while I spend all my other media consumption minutes listening to new music.
