0.6.0 - Won the Superbowl and Nas the only one congratulate me (Week 6 Wrapup)
Let's just crack on, shall we?
God, I'm such a nerd. Sometimes I just need a little inspiration for where to go inside my mental band rolodex and start picking stuff to listen to, and this occurred to me last week when I listened to Silversun Pickup's Carnavas. Well, this week started with me not being sure where to start with my regular album listening, so I pulled this idea back out and proceeded to listen to a bunch of Metal bands.
Goldfrapp was the easy starter; I saw Alison Goldfrapp perform at one of my summer music festivals between 1997-2003, but I can't remember which one; it was almost certainly before the success of Black Cherry (her first album, Felt Mountain came out in 2000 so that lines up with my fragmented rememberances), but Black Cherry was the first album of hers I owned. I had a tradition of seeing bands I had never heard of at festivals and then subsequently buying their albums, and I almost certainly saw this in a new releases rack at Martins, the music shop in Chesterfield before the big HMV came to town. This album, and Goldfrapp's music in general, has always struck me as a kind of pop version of the sultry kink that Garbage also bring to their tunes, and it's a compelling listen. Go listen to Strict Machine for a taster, but the whole album is great.
Silversun Pickups make a second appearance in two weeks, but primarily because the only other Silver bands I could think of were Silverchair and Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, neither of which I felt compelled to listen to. Everything I thought about Carnavas can be applied to Swoon too.
Yes, I knew this meant listening to Nickelback eventually; They get a lot of hate but this album is fine; their reputation is far more due to oversaturation and Chad Kroeger's weird vocal tone. If they had released Silver Side Up only, they wouldn't be the internet shorthand for bad music they have become. I still like How You Remind Me, come at me The Internet.
Iron Maiden pipped Iron & Wine to this spot by virtue of never having ruined one of my favourite The Postal Service songs, though I was disappointed to be including an actual Metal band in my list of Metal bands. I'll probably cover Iron Maiden more in depth at some time in the future, but Fear Of The Dark is the album of theirs I remember listening to the most, in my bedroom at my parents house when I should have been doing homework. I'll be back for you in the future, Iron Maiden.
I first heard Lead Belly because Kurt Cobain mentioned him in the Unplugged at MTV album where he tries to get the head of Geffen records to buy him his guitar. Like Robert Johnson, Lead Belly is another of the cornerstones of the Blues and black traditional music which became modern rock and roll two decades later. The recordings are scratchy and distorted and free of any kind of production, but the power of his playing and the soul of his singing and still clearly evident. Rock Island Line is one for music historians, but it's a tough recommend for the casual listener.
I admit I cheated and googled bands with Tin in their name because all I could think off the top of my head was Tin Machine, the David Bowie project. I thought that was the name of a Bowie album until a quick check corrected my flawed recollection, but by that time I'd already fallen into a 90's nostalgia pit by remembering that Tin Tin Out existed, and Here's Where The Story Ends emerging from the recesses of my memory, instructing me to listen to it. Always isn't great, but it is unnecessarily long if that's what you are into. It's a pretty representative of middle of the road 90's UK dance-pop music, except it also has a cover of Sandie Shaw's Always Something There To Remind Me on there to really up the stakes. Their hit song was a hit for a reason though, and was good for a hit of nostalgia dopamine at least.
Mercury Rev were another obvious pull, and where I ran out of useful metals I could conjure up, because I wasn't going to Google to see if there was a band called Tungsten or Sodium just to keep the train going. Deserter's Songs is a critically acclaimed album, NME album of the year, and is linked to one of my favourite albums The Soft Bulletin by The Flaming Lips; why then does this album leave me cold? This isn't my fist attempt to listen to and fall in love with this album - I've tried several times, assuming it's some failing in me, but like previous attempts, I spent my time listening to it struggling to understand what others are hearing that I am not. I'm going to chalk this one up to all art being subjective, and move on.
I'll talk about The Magnetic Fields (a tenuous but respectable link to round out my metal band octology I thought) more next week when I commit to listening to all 165 minutes of 69 Love Songs for Valentine's Day, but I heard a song from this album, Get Lost, while listening to legendary British Radio DJ John Peel's late night radio hour. There's a generation of UK based music enthusiasts of a certain age who, like me, probably credit a number of their band discoveries to Peel's encyclopaedic knowledge of music and his canny ability to spot a rising star and showcase them to an eager audience ready to hear their next musical obsession. I like this album a lot, and it doesn't get the coverage of its larger and more notorious sibling album, but its still well worth your time. I like Save A Secret For The Moon and All The Umbrellas in London if you want a taster.
Eight down, twenty-two to go.
Another round of recommendations from a friend here, though my plan to do these in manageable chunks of three albums went out of the window a little. The six degrees of separation process by which I met Jenny and her husband is too convoluted and boring for this blog, but we've come to know each other better over the years since we first met, and Jenny's love of music and relentless enthusiasm for saying yes to new things is a constant delight. She jumped to the front of the recommendations queue this week by fortuitously sending me a whatsapp album recommendation at the very moment I was looking for something to put on. I listened to that, and several others throughout the week - for each of these it was my first time hearing all of them, so just some flying first impressions on them all.
Jenny had seen The Golden Dregs as a support act this week, and messaged me that I should listen to On Grace & Dignity, so I obliged. Clearly inspired by Leonard Cohen and Nick Cave (fine inspirations to have), they produce interesting, introspective indie folk music with a gravelly bass tone. Liked it, will go back to it.
When I was putting the cover art collage together, I realised We Are Scientist's Huffy was the only one of these seven albums I couldn't bring any thoughts I had at the time back to mind. It's possible I was concentrating more on other things, but it's also possible it just didn't leave a mark. I played 20 seconds of a few tracks to remind myself as I write this, and I think that's probably it. One of the things I am learning doing this is that there's a wide pool of bands who operate in very similar musical styles, and if you like that, the band you heard first will be the one you love. I don't dislike it, and would happily listen to it, but it did not grab me meaningfully.
Sea Power (no longer British) are a band that feel like I should have got into long ago. I love their music for Disco Elysium, the video game RPG/sad Communism simulator, and I've been aware of them operating on the fringes of music I'd be into, but I never made the choice to seek them out until now. I think they do very interesting things inside the Indie Rock music space and I came away from Do You Like Rock Music interested to listen to more of their stuff. Jenny also put Man of Aran on my recommendations list, and when I get round to doing a block of movie soundtracks, that will get the nod then for sure.
As soon as I put A/B on, a big old smile broke out on my face. Sometimes all you want to get you through the day is some good old school Blues Rock, and KALEO deliver on that promise with gusto. My expectations were subverted when we reached track eight, Vor i Vaglaskogi and it became apparent that the band who I assumed were from somewhere in Alabama were singing in Icelandic. I liked this so much I played it in the car for Catherine while we were driving around - sometimes you don't need to reinvent music, just deliver it in its purest form, and this was that.
Shotgun Wedding exists as a companion piece to the KALEO record; Dirty Deep make guitar twang blues in concentrated form, the espresso to KALEO's Blues Latte. Again, it's doing exactly what you expect - nothing here will surprise or challenge you - they aren't even Icelandic - but if you like some swampy blues and some pedal steel guitar, this is the concentrated distillation of your requirements in a compact 42 minutes.
I don't mean to harp on this every time, but this self titled album by the band Dirtwire is stylised as DIRTWIRE everywhere you look, but you can see in the album cover art above its clearly all lower case so, like, what are we doing here? Grammar niggles aside, I ended up putting this into my loose "Instrumental/Soundtrack" genre, but I've decided as I write this to move them instead to be the first Post-Rock album I listen to, something I'll come back to with more intensity when I spend some time listening to Explosions In The Sky/Red Sparowes/Pelican/65daysofstatic some time in the future. When I am in the right mood, I'm a huge fan of post-rocks ability to evoke a certain mood or vibe through interesting instrumentals, and this does exactly that. This is the soundtrack to the post-apocalyptic midwest wilderness movie or game that has yet to be made.
Finally, Callum Easter and his Here Or Nowhere album; Bob Dylan has a lot to answer for, and no doubt every generation spawns a selection of musically off-kilter folk storytellers trying some interesting things with melody and structure, and Callum Easter feels like one of those. It's possible it's just the recency of having seen A Complete Unknown and listened to two of the best Dylan albums are doing him no favours here, but Callum Easter's arms are too short to box with God, and he wasn't (to me) flattered by comparison to his inspiration. Sorry Jenny.
Overall a pretty good hit rate for Jenny's recommendations. She sent me another one literally 24 hours ago as well. She might well just fuel this 1000 album thing herself at this rate.
So, what was going to be my full post this week on Kendrick Lamar, due to play in just a few hours time his headline Superbowl Half-Time Show, now ends up being a few paragraphs. Maybe that is for the best, because I'm probably the least qualified person to talk about Kendrick apart from the in the context of my relationship to his music. It's not news that a connection to Rap isn't part of my cultural heritage. But for as long as I have thought about my relationship to music, and how I connect to other people through music, you'd hear the same response from time to time - "Oh, I like a little bit of everything really, except Rap and Country". It became like a cliche, and really meant "I like what's in the top 40 and what my parents listened to and like 2 other bands". If you don't think you like Rap music, I think that's a you problem, not a Rap problem.
If you didn't grow up in it, yes, Rap can be music that comes with homework. You might need to train your ear, start to internalise some slang terms you hadn't heard before, you might need to watch some videos breaking down the significance of what you are hearing. Your reward for doing so is some of the most intelligent, incisive, brilliant writing in all of music; the ability to access through music experiences beyond your own, and some of the funniest, and most raw and savage takedowns ever authored by anyone. If you want somewhere to start on that journey, there are a few Youtube folks I really enjoy; Knox Hill does great breakdowns of Rap culture; F D Signifier exists as my online cultural sensitivity barometer as well as proving excellent long form insight into rap culure. For as much as everyone enjoyed the Jenny Nicholson Disney Star Wars Hotel epic longform video from last year (and for the record, I love Jenny Nicholson also), Signifier's video on the incredible Drake/Kendrick beef from last summer should have been required watching. It's three and a half hours well worth spending.
OK, I've wasted two paragraphs already not talking about the actual artist. Enough. There are millions of people more qualified than me to talk about who is the greatest rapper of all time, obviously. Personally, in terms of active, living, performing right now, for me Kendrick Lamar rides head and shoulders above all the others, and it's not close. I found Kendrick in the stupidest way; We were going on holiday to California, and I wanted a playlist of West Coast tunes, so I did what I do and went scouring the internet for inspiration once all the ones I could think of off the top of my head were already in a playlist. Somewhere, someone recommended The Recipe, which is a B-side/bonus track off good kid m.A.A.d city, and I duly added it and listened to it, and it stuck with me. I'd somehow missed Swimming Pools (drank) blowing up the year before, but I got caught up and when we got back from L.A., I listened to good kid m.A.A.d city and the just released To Pimp A Butterfly on heavy rotation.
I've loved listening to all the Kendrick albums, and the narrative arc of each examines different aspects of black American experience; good kid tells the story of growing up smart in a world of trouble and the compromised choices you make; To Pimp A Butterfly represents a celebration and interrogation of black culture in America; it aspires to a vision of a better life and the challenges that can be overcome to get there. DAMN. sits in contrast, a growl of frustration at the inaction and regression of society around him; both inside and outside of rap culture. Mr Morale & The Big Steppers points the lens back at Kendrick himself, and his own relationship and the challenges he's faced in his own life, both as a husband and a father; finally, after taking a victory lap dunking Drake into the center of the earth with Euphoria / Meet The Grahams / 6:16 in LA / Not Like Us, Kendrick out of nowhere last year dropped GNX, and album about what it means to be the biggest thing in Rap, and what Kendrick sees happening inside the Rap world itself. The man is a lyrical genius, and his music deserves respect alongside the poetry of Maya Angelou and Alan Ginsberg.
One final thought. Right now, tonight, Kendrick is going to have the eyes of most of America, and probably the world on him, in a stadium where a fake tanned fascist is going to be in attendance as President; and someone decided this was a good place to give Kendrick Lamar a hot mic. I wonder if anyone will come to regret that in the morning.
Jut a four piece grab bag here with no real theme.
Like Deserter's Songs, I know I am supposed to enjoy In An Aeroplane Over The Sea, and like the Mercury Rev album, I have tried multiple times to engage with it. In this case, I put it on while we were sorting out our utility room which had a lot of clutter in it, which I am pretty sure was not the intention of Neutral Milk Hotel when they recorded it. Maybe next time it will click.
I listened to The Kick Inside while playing Downton Abbey/Pride & Prejudice board game Obsession with my friend Darren on Monday night. True story, I put this on because I forgot that Running Up That Hill was on Hounds of Love and not this album. I really love early Kate Bush stuff but I don't have much more to say about this than that.
See This Through And Leave is another album that I remember listening to on repeat in the dark times I described in my Asleep In The Back post, and I feel a similar kind of way about it. Cooper Temple Clause were much more the soundtrack to my anger/frustration side of my depression, but it felt appropriate to listen to it. Cooper Temple Clause are a band I appreciate a lot because they put out two albums I really love (their second album, Kick Up The Fire, And Let The Flames Break Loose I like even more than this one), then splintered, put out a third album no-one really listened to, and broke up, leaving a catalogue of great music behind instead of puttering away into increasing irrelevance.
The Veronicas is a weird one. Catherine started working with a personal trainer last year to help her with some running fitness and to do some freewieghts training. Her trainer loves to put music on to motivate her during hard sets, and Catherine was exposed to Untouched, a song I'd never heard before though I understand it had a kind of one-hit-wonderishness about it. Since then it's appeared on her running playlist and our pre-Tennis match psyche-up playlist, so I thought we should listen to the album. This album comes before the album with Untouched on it, and The Secret Life Of... is a fine pop rock record in its own right. However, it also includes a cover of Tracy Bonham's Mother Mother (a song I learned about from an interview on a music podcast where people thought Tracy Bonham was going to be the next Alanis Morrissette off the strength of it) that commits the heinous sin of being almost indistinguishable from the original, to the point where I though Spotify had shuffled us onto something else by mistake when it came on. Put covers on your albums if you must, but you have to do something different with it to make it your own. You can't just take a song that was top of the charts nine years ago, perform it basically the same, and put it on your album The Veronicas. That is bad karma.
Final stretch folks, we can do it.
So on Saturday Catherine and I went to the fine city of Nottingham to go have lunch in the Number 12 Restaurant there. As a lifelong vegetarian, but a lover of food, Catherine get's eternally frustrated at the limited and uninspired options restaurants often expect vegetarians to accept, though that has been getting better. Having a nice restaurant where she could order everything on the menu was a real treat for her. The meal was great, would recommend if you are in the area. So, I thought I'd listen to some bands from Nottingham to celebrate/
Pitchshifter exist in the rare category of Bands Whose Lead Singers Have Stagedived Onto Me. I saw them at Sheffield institution/nightclub Corporation, promoting this album, which they had self released having just been dropped from their label. I always thought of Pitchshifter as punk-adjacent, but listening back, Deviant is solidly in the very specifically 90s/2000s Alternative Rock mould. They put on a good show, complained a lot about being dropped from their label and promoting the show themselves, and Mark Clayden gamely stagedove into a crowd who probably only outnumbered the band 10-to-1. Weird obsolete technology footnote, I owned a cassette single of Hidden Agenda/As Seen On TV from this album. This hasn't aged very well, and is aimed pretty squarely at disaffected teenagers; it worked on me then, less so now.
If my thoughts on Pitchshifter went one way, they moved the other way for Stereo M.C.s Connected. I knew the title track, and it was lumped in my head to that weird confluence of the kind of Madchester scene and electro-dance music in the early 90's, mixed with early hip-hop. This lived in a box in my head with Black Grape and EMF and other bands of that ilk. It is still very much that, but listening to the whole album gave me a greater respect for what Stereo M.C.s were doing; songs about racism, social equality, police brutality and resistance to oppression all live on this album; fighting the fight we are facing right now, but three decades ago. The eletro-funk-soul hip hop thing isn't quite to my musical taste still, but I respect the message.
London Grammar are the band who's name I saw when I googled "famous bands from Nottingham" that I had heard of, but never actually heard nor knew anyone who had listened to them or recommended them. I don't even know where I might have heard of them to recognise their name, and that was reason enough to include their first album in this trio. Initial thoughts - it's very pleasant, does some interesting things with synths, the vocal style is very nice and the lead vocalist has a good voice which reminds me a little of Tracy Thorn from Everything But The Girl. If You Wait didn't immediately thrill me, but there was enough there to make me want to go back and give it a more considered listen. It was very long though, 17 songs and an hour and a quarter for a debut album, there has to be some tracks there that could be B-sides.
OK, lets wrap up Inhaler in one go if we can, because I'm running out of time before I need to get in the car, and I still need to read though and proofread out 70% of the mistakes, leaving just enough to make it look like I don't proofread anything I do but I'm not a total moron.
I've mentioned before that Catherine is a big fan of U2. Somewhere I learned that Inhaler are a band which feature, on lead vocals, Bono's son, Elijah Hewson. So I found the debut album at the time, and played it for her in a "does this vocalist sound like anyone to you?" quiz way. She didn't get it, but natural curiosity made us both come back to it a few times, enough so that some of the songs got some traction with both of us. At the time, I was also mentally recovering from the fact that COVID had meant that we'd not seen any live music for over 18 months, which had broken a streak of seeing at least one live gig every year since I was 15. It's possible I overcompensated, because we ended up seeing I think 30 different bands in 2023, and Inhaler at Rock City was one of them.
After It Won't Always Be Like This had kind of made us think "OK, there's enough there that this is worth keeping in rotation", Cuts and Bruises came out a couple of weeks before our upcoming gig and showed that the gimmick of "what if Bono's son had a band but unlike his Dad, he had nothing important or interesting to sing about" had peaked almost immediately. By complete coincidence, their third album, Open Wide had come out on Friday so it made sense to go through all 3 today while I was doing chores of various kinds. I'm here to report that a third attempt at making a kind of jangly rock album with a vocalist who kinda sounds more and more like Bono but still with no edge (literal or figurative) behind him leaves Inhaler definitely falling below the Dalton Line of musical acts that you might care about. They're four relatively pretty musical boys though, so I am sure my casual dismissal of their music would be causing outrage were any of them reading this. My anonymity is my protection.
There, all 30 albums covered. Lets try and have a more normal one next week perhaps.
