0.9.0 - All my mornings are Mondays, stuck in an endless February (Week 9 Wrapup)
The good news, from both my perspective and yours, is that I already covered 18 different albums in my two blog posts from last week, which means gone are the days of having to wrap up twenty different albums in one post, so this one should be relatively brief and to the point.
Look at this, just seven albums to cover!
Another week, another music legend passes away and I go back and listen to their album. This time, Roberta Flack's Killing Me Softly. This is one of my mother's favourite records, and as such, another childhood staple for me. It's classic motown soul, Roberta Flack's voice has vulnerability and emotion coursing through it, and the title track is an all time great. Weirdly, my strongest memory attached to this album is the level of genuine seething outrage I remember from my Mum when we saw The Fugees doing their version on Top of the Pops. There's something primal when a song which exists as a core part of your being is subjected to a cover version you feel somehow detracts from the original. I recognise the instinct all too well - I like the Scissor Sisters generally, but their cover of Comfortably Numb is an abomination - but this was the first time I'd seen music, modern music, make my mother outraged by it. For the record, I have no problem with the Fugees version, but I prefer the original.
It's not much of a reason, or an anecdote, but I was talking to Catherine recently about St Vincent for ...some reason? I think she might have been on a TV talk show, god knows how we ended up on this topic, but I had a moment of doubt that this was the same person who's debut album I listened to nearly 20 years ago, to the point where I had to google whether it was or if I was going mad. There's no reason both can't be true, but I listened to Marry Me back in 2007 because it got some attention from the music press and remembered enjoying it. I've really not dipped much into her more modern stuff, so picked Daddy's Home pretty much at random and liked it without really engaging with it. I wasn't distracted or bored, and I could give you a sense of what the music was like, but there wasn't an a-ha moment that turned me into a rabid fan of this album. It's desperately unfair, because I think all albums (mostly) deserve the chance to bed in with you before you make a snap judgment, but this felt like a B+ in the moment; the room for improvement I am certain just comes from me giving it better and more repeated attention.
The wonderful folks at This One Goes To 11 covered some Chappell Roan this week, and since I am trying to keep current with them, I took the opportunity to listen to it while driving around on Saturday in the rare spring sunshine. if you're unfamiliar with who she is, I'd recommend typing her name into Google and retreating to a safe distance as your phone melts into a puddle of a zillion Chappell Roan takes; I've listened to this album a whole lot last year - I take slight pride in being like six weeks ahead of the curve on her; back in the days when I was on Twitter, I'd curated a good list of people who provided music tastes, and The Rise And Fall of a Midwestern Princess was on an end of year list for 2023 and I got round to listening to it towards the end of January of 2024. By the summer, this album and Chappell were everywhere and really the only flaw in this album is that Good Luck, Babe! isn't on the tracklist.
Because Lottie recommended Garbage to me as part of my listening this week, part way through listening to Version 2.0 I remembered also how much I like Elastica as a debut album, so when I was cooking on Saturday night, I put this on. This is an album which I feel is completely overshadowed by how ubiquitous Connection is. If you don't know it by name/band, you'll recognise it from the first couple of seconds of listening - that is, unless you are listening on Spotify where you will be very confused.
That's right, for some reason their most iconic song, when you play this album on mobile, gets replaced by a lyricless cover from Party Tyme: Rock Male Hits 15 Backing Versions which seems to be someone attempting to get the world record for least number of correct statements in an album title. I honestly thought I was going mad. "Is there, like, an album version with an extended intro?" I asked myself. I worried if somehow my speakers were broken. The correct Elastica version does exist on Spotify, it's just somehow not part of album listing for what I am sure is good and normal reasons.
Elastica made great pop punk music which got incorrectly lumped in with Britpop when it really wasn't, and then Connection made everyone think they were a one hit wonder, not helped by this really being the only Elastica record. But it's great, super high energy and exists as a British incarnation of the Riot Girl music of the 90s, Stutter and Vaseline and All-Nighter are all great, and if you will indulge me for a second, go listen to Car Song, and then go listen to Top Man by Blur which came out the following year. Is it just me, or is that not a blatant rip off?
We know Damon Albarn isn't above stealing things, as he infamously engineered the breakup of Elastica's Justine Frischmann and Suede's Brett Anderson so he could date her instead (and steal her music apparently). So out of solidarity, I listened to Suede, another album which Britpop swallowed despite being trying to fit an eight dimensional quantum solid into a round hole. There were never many male vocalists or songwriters I thought of as sensual and dangerous, but Brett Anderson is those things, and the first three Suede albums made me feel a lot of confusingly ambiguous feelings when I listened to them. The fact that Bernard Butler is (I believe) 16 or 17 years old when he playing guitar on this record still blows my mind. If you've never dabbled with Suede's music, the first two tracks on this album are the thesis statement of the band - find something to hook you in there, and this, Dog Man Star and Coming Up are a trilogy of mid-90's drug addled guitar based depravity for you to dive into.
I don't know why, but Tears for Fears felt like a band that was dated when I was listening to Nirvana in 1992; this, their seminal album, had come out only seven years earlier. I blame the era of watching MTV and seeing the video for Sowing The Seeds Of Love a bunch at what I guess must have been age 11 or 12; come 1992, I was 16 and knew everything. Nowadays Shout is one of my Karaoke go-to's, just because it's a sing along jam, but my respect for Tears for Fears has matured as I've got older myself; This album is great, and I'll probably listen to The Seeds Of Love next week when I have a spare minute. Songs From The Big Chair is full of great synth-rock songs which have stood the test of time far better than a lot of their eighties companions, and I really enjoyed listening to it over breakfast this morning.
This last one is a puzzler. I listened to The Music of Tori And The Muses this afternoon with growing confusion and wonder. I love Tori Amos, but her recent releases have been very variable in the level of which they have held my interest. She loves making music, and I don't blame her for that at all, but I feel like she's an artist in need of an editor - between Gold Dust, Unrepentant Geraldines, Native Invader, and Ocean to Ocean, it feels like there is like one and half great Tori Amos albums in there, scattered amongst the rest. So when I found out, quite by accident, that she'd surprised-released a new album on Friday, and it is also the soundtrack to a children's book she'd written, I was skeptical. But honestly, I really like it - obviously, I've only heard it once, maybe it loses its charm on repeated listens, but I found the entire experience uplifting, interesting, experimental, and with some wonderful musicianship (there's some great drum parts in there I caught myself trying to play in midair while I was making scrambled eggs) that made the entire experience a delight. Catherine hasn't heard more than a snippet of it yet, so I'll get to give it another go around with her, and see if the magic is still there, but for right now, it's my favourite Tori Amos album in the last twelve years, which is not where I expected to be when I got up this morning.
Right, I am out of time and need to go make pizza before we watch Severance tonight and go out and play board games. Thank you, 15 or so people, for continuing to read this blog. Your presence is keeping me motivated, and that's quite the gift. Have a good week.
