0.4.0 - Gonna try, with a little help (Week 3 Wrapup)
All hope is not lost though. The two things my near five decades have taught me are a decent talent for self-reflection (thank you, years of therapy), and an appreciation for all those people I have met in my life who have these incredible talents for me to bear witness to. I'm pretty good at meeting and getting to know interesting and talented people That's what I'm good at.
So this week, I took advantage of those people; I've talked before about the pressure of soliciting album recommendations, but I gave everyone the brief - recommend me some albums, I'm trying to hit a thousand and sometimes (as you'll see below), I need some inspiration. And, as expected, they delivered, with variety and without hesitation. At the time of writing, I have had twelve of the fourteen people I asked respond in the last twenty-four hours; those responses have included 101 album recommendations, with zero duplicates, and in each case I learned something new and interesting about them and their music tastes. So, with 10% of my decision making outsourced to my nearest and dearest, expect some interesting musical journeys in the next few weeks. In the meantime, here's what I listened to this week which I haven't already covered:-
I really thought twice about burning Superunknown here, because I really want to do a Soundgarden discography post at some point and it feels incomplete not including their most successful and popular record, but it also is the emblematic album for me of that period where all we did every weekend was turn up at each others houses and play card games (mostly Vampire:The Eternal Struggle, a game based on the Vampire The Masquerade RPG, we were very cool kids) until two in the morning. I love Chris Cornell's voice, and he's the platonic ideal of who I would love to sing like; Black Hole Sun was a crossover hit from a band which always seemed to be doing something other than what the 'grunge' categorisation seemed to embody. I kinda hate the fact that Spoonman is on here, as it feels like that's the other Soundgarden single people know and it's weird and goofy, and nothing like the mournful, grinding rock dirges (in a good way!) this album contains. The back half especially is full of underappreciated classics, and Limo Wreck, The Day I Tried To Live, 4th of July, and Like Suicide trade places in my heart for the best deep album cut from this record.
In 1994 I saw Pulp Fiction in cinemas and, as these things can do when you are in your early twenties, being a Tarantino guy became my thing. When I heard Scooby Snacks start with a Pulp Fiction quote, and sprinkle Reservoir Dogs quotes throughout, I was already sold. Honestly, this is a great, incredibly fun tongue-in-cheek funk hip-hop album and I was always surprised they weren't more successful. Come Find Yourself is the height of their power, and difficult second album 100% Colombian didn't have a radio friendly catchy song to keep them in the public eye. I still bought it though. If you've not heard this and you want some chill vibes, seek this out.
Talking of now-sadly-deceased troubled grunge vocalists, Scott Weiland and Stone Temple Pilots are another band which made me wish I could sing their songs like they do. In our group of friends, people generally brought bands to our attention, and they disseminated amongst us to greater or lesser degrees; Hado bought Chilli Peppers and Tori Amos; I first heard Nine Inch Nails at Chris's house, and Dave brought me Aphex Twin and Squarepusher. STP were my band, and Core the album that I played repeatedly on tape around my friends until they liked, or at least tolerated, it. It's not their best work, and their sound would refine and change as their career advanced in between bouts of rehab, but it holds a dear place in my heart for being the album that I 'discovered' on my own.
American Idiot has been, I think, correctly acknowledged as something of a modern classic (as modern as albums released twenty years ago can be). I liked Green Day from the Dookie and Nimrod days, and the idea of them releasing a Rock Opera/Protest Anthem about their views on American politics and society seemed absurd. Coming next, Sum-41 release their double album epic poem about the subversion of media and the electoral system through the courts.
Radiohead are another band I didn't want to listen to piecemeal when there's so much value in doing their whole discography and wrapping up my feelings on them as a whole, but as above, the moment called for it so Hail To The Thief became my first Radiohead album for 2025. As my tastes have evolved, so has my appreciation for their albums. Early Rich was very The Bends/OK Computer focused, but secretly, I think the run of albums which features Kid A/Amnesiac/Hail To The Thief is their best. I particularly love There There, which you can find a video of me playing drums over with the light up glowsticks I got given by Jenny & Stu for Christmas one year here.
Seminal? Classic? Like most rap albums, there's a degree of looking the other way/it was a different time/divorcing art from artist going on when I listen to Fear Of A Black Planet, but undoubtedly this album changed my feelings on what Rap was. Fight The Power?. I guess so.
No-one has made their political opinions clearer, and had them so blatantly ignored by right wing frat bros than Rage Against The Machine. This album is anger-at-injustice made manifest in musical form; I remember listening to this and Play More Music by Consolidated as my first awakening to music being about something. The whole album is undeniable, everyone should listen to it once. Just make sure you try to pay attention to the lyrics as well as the sick guitar riffs and banging drums.
I heard Shemekia Copeland's Uncivil War as part of the great Pandemic Listening Project after the last time this little democratic whoopsydaisy was heading towards the rear view mirror. Blues is a hard music to put on record; it feels like it belongs in smoky bars, being enjoyed with a glass of whiskey, but this is blues for listening to when the weight of the world is pressing on you. Give God The Blues is my favourite, but the album exists as a whole piece of work, and I can't imagine listening to just one or two tracks off it.
I mentioned before in my rant about Self-titled albums, I love end of year lists because they help me circle back to albums I might have missed from the previous year or two and see how they grab me. I've put that off for a few weeks this year while I listened to other things, but all of these came from someone's list of great albums. I hadn't heard of any of these bands before I listened to them for the first time this week.
In Lieu Of Flowers was a great start, modern British alternative rock, slightly Sam Fender-meets-Maxiimo Park, slice of life rock songs which I immediately clicked with, and recommended to a friend as well. I know nothing about them, but when Alone At St Luke's started with the lyrics 'The graffiti on the wall says 'Fuck The Tories'' I was already on board. This album got the gold star on the spreadsheet for me to come back to it later.
Allison Russell's The Returner was another immediate hit, and another album I recommended to a (different) friend. A dose of gospel-tinged blues, it reminded me immediately of Uncivil War, but slightly gentler, and more hopeful. It has some lovely blues guitar and her voice matches it perfectly. Listen to the title track, and if you feel it, the vibes for the rest of the album are the same.
They can't all be winners, ladies and gents, and art is subjective, which means while Heavy Metal by Cameron Winter might by your cup of tea, but it did not sit right with me, despite me giving it the whole album to win me over. The whole thing felt painfully like the "we have <x> at home" meme, where here you replace x with 'later period experimental Sufjan Stevens'.
I listened to Pillow Queens in reverse-release order; Name Your Sorrow was on a friends top 10 list from last year, and I could immediately see why; a group of young, gay, Irish women writing about being gay in Catholic Ireland with an alternative rock style that hearkened back to Elastica and Lush and carried through to other modern groups like Wolf Alice and Wet Leg. I liked Name Your Sorrow so much, I pivoted from new music to listen to the rest of their stuff, and I can confirm that In Waiting and Leave The Light On maintained the same high quality of song writing and performance throughout. I considered listening to Julien Baker's Turn Out The Lights and Interpol's Turn On The Bright Lights just because the dichotomy amused me, but time and good sense got the better of me.
This one got away from me a litte, I'll admit. So, I have a Reba McEntire album on my list of "best albums of the 90s I've not heard" which I refer to from time to time. That, in turn, reminded me that I do know and love the song Fancy which is on Rumo(u)r Has It, which is not the album I was supposed to listen to. I heard Fancy because it's referenced in a question on the podcast My Brother, My Brother and Me, which is what I listen to to fall asleep to to stop the brain gremlins playing a greatest hits collection of all my fears and regrets every night. I didn't know song they were referencing (this also is how I got into Haim later on), made a point to seek it out and it a great modern country song back when they weren't about trucks and how much you love the flag and the troops. This album is none of those things, and women in country got a very raw deal once the Bush years started rolling, and I promise Reba I will get to For My Broken Heart at another point.
That led me to think about The Chicks, formerly The Dixie Chicks, and their rejection by country music because, you know, the not being willing to uncritically support the troops and the flag and such. I actually listened to Taking The Long Way, their last album before the name change last year, when I realised I knew of it, but had never heard it. You can see why they were the queens of country music before their moral stance got them blackballed from country radio, When your response to that is to release a Grammy award winning record, it makes me appreciate how living well really can be the best kind of revenge.
Guess who else is a country music group who changed their name? If you guessed Lady A(ntebellum) good work looking at the image above. I knew precisely one song by them, and until recently I didn't know it was by them, I just knew it as the catchy song that keeps getting used at emotional moments in TV shows. That song was Need You Now, and did you know its the highest selling country music song of all time? That blew my mind, it beat Taylor Swift's Love Story and several others I thought were guaranteed. This album is also multi-award winning, but I don't know if its the cynic in me, but I kinda feel like you get everything you need from Need You Now from the title track, and you can safely move on.
I was firmly in Women in Country mode at that point, so Queen Of Me was next. Not maybe the conventional choice, this being her most recent album, but Catherine and I went to see her for this tour as a Christmas present from 2023 (I also got her the book "Its Not Rocket Science", a Brad Pitt calendar, a LEGO car, and an Elvis CD - to complete the collection, she was not impressed*). I bought this album to get the presale code for the tickets so its probably the album of hers I know the best, as weird as that sounds, and it's insanely catchy. Go listen to Giddy Up! and tell me I am wrong.
I know, I'm exhausted too.
Finally, I played ANOTHER Malifaux game this weekend, and once more I asked Matt to curate some albums for us to listen to. As per my previous post, as the game went on, my attention was fixed elsewhere, so apologies for less-than-thorough notes here.
A Seat At The Table was fascinating - Solange (sister of Beyonce) shares her sibling's vocal distinctiveness, but delivers it to a different musical style; this is Beyonce-meets-Sade, a kind of smooth jazz funk which suits her very well. Another one for the revisitation checklist.
Like with Reba McEntire, I have another Laura Marling album queued up to listen to as part of my checklist of albums on best of lists, this time her 2020 album Song For Our Daughter; from what I heard of this, released a decade before, I have a lot to look forward to.
I wasn't familiar with The Mouse And The Mask, though I shouldn't be surprised there are more MF Doom collaboration albums out there (we will cover Madvillainy at some point). The fact I'm not surprised that MF Doom verses over Danger Mouse beats and samples from saturday morning cartoon network shows works incredibly well says it all really. If you like hip-hip, go listen to this.
Here's my notes on Reachin' (A New Reputation Of Time And Space).
- I wish I'd included albums with Parentheticals in my Album Titling Power Rankings, they'd be number 1.5, I love a good parenthetical (or other punctuation) in my album titles if employed correctly.
- This sounds great but I'm not really paying attention enough.
Matt told me that Ash Wednesday was amongst the saddest records he had heard, a melancholic reflection on both being the child of Anthony Perkins (which has it's own challenges) and losing his mother in the attack on the World Trade Center. I'm sure it is, but probably best not appreciated while trying to make your shadow demon try and find a way to eat the spy Matt has been using to set fire to my scheme markers. A revisit is owed.
We were totally in the final, complex moments of the game when Matt played me Courting the Squall; my reaction as both the album and the game ended was to say "I thought that was Guy Garvey!". I love Elbow, and Asleep In The Back hold a place near and dear to my heart, but the only thing I can confirm is that I was present and it played from beginning to end. Sorry Guy, I'll do right by you some day.
That was the week. In a time of weird uncertainty, reach out to your friends for support, even if it's just to have them help you distract yourself with some kind of meaningless project.
*this is a true story. I got her the tickets and the build up presents and she opened them and said "what did you get me these for?" However, after the concert she admitted I was right, she was wrong, and I am King of Gift Giving for all time.
