Record Reconstructor

Dashboard! Eventually I am going to run out of stupid gimmicks to group albums together for listening purposes, but it won't be this week.  This one came together pretty organically (again, planning things ahead of time is antithetical to my process) and originated with a flat tyre on Catherine's bike.  Where she works is only a ten minute drive from our front door, and because we maintain a single car household, if for some reason or another I need the car, she occasionally enjoys cycling to work which is about 30 or so minutes of clean air and exercise.  This week was one of those weeks, and her outbound journey was uninterrupted, but I did get a call from her later that evening when it became apparent her tyre had burst and she couldn't cycle home.  As a result, I also had to drive her in the next morning, and sometimes I just need to snap-pick something to listen to in the car without thinking too hard about it.  We had gone through a period of listening to ...

  Dashboard!  I get it, naming things is hard.  Names are important, they have power and weight and meaning.  You can stop people mid-flow talking about an idea or a film or a character or a song when you say "OK, but what's it called?", and the shutters go down behind their eyes/the creative process freezes in place like it was encased in ice.  And that's just one person.  Now imagine you need to find a name that two, or three, or five, or eight, (or thirty nine if you are The Polyphonic Spree) people all agree is good and appropriate and most of all, cool and memorable. Why then does the eponymous / self-titled album irritate me the way that it does?  Is it worse when it's the first album in a band's catalogue, or if it comes several releases into a discography?  Is there ever a good reason to release a self-titled album?  These are all questions I've spent the day thinking about while listening to a selection of self-titled albums, and whi...