November 2010
31 posts
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Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest (2010)
And here I was worried about getting to review this one before 2010 was over, and last weekend Deerhunter’s main man Bradford Cox uploaded four discs worth of unreleased demos on his blog under his Atlas Sound moniker. On the other hand, for reasons not yet clear, Sony Music went and deleted three of the four files for supposed piracy reasons, even though most of the tracks were Cox...
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Hot Chip - One Life Stand (2010)
On 2008’s Made in the Dark, Hot Chip consolidated their strengths with another brace of witty, undeniably propulsive dancefloor singles, but enough quiet yearning to make them essentially Pet Shop Boys 2.0. Having displayed these two sides, it was probably inevitable that one would dominate the next album. And now we know, it’s the balladic side. Writers/frontmen Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard are...
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Four Tet - There Is Love In You (2010)
This one came out right at the end of January, but it took me several months to get around to it, and even then I’m really only appreciating it now. Electronic music isn’t easy for me to write about, especially when it’s mostly instrumental, but I enjoy this disc immensely. For one thing, each track is different, sometimes built off engaging vocal samples, sometimes circular...
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The Arcade Fire - The Suburbs (2010)
For an album by a respected, popular band—an album I would put on my list of Best of 2010—I don’t have a lot to say about it. I like it. At the same time, I can appreciate all the criticisms. Yes, the music is grandiose and the lyrics pretentious and overwrought. Yes, suburban sprawl is a dubious idea to hang a concept album on. Yes, the lyrics are on-the-nose and whiny. On the other hand, we...
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Massive Attack - Heligoland (2010)
I’m a fortysomething guy; I’ve liked Massive Attack for a long time. Prior to that, I liked electronic acts like Depeche Mode, OMD, New Order. I know about fallow periods and declines and retrenchments and regurgitations. To me, Massive Attack peaked with Mezzanine; for others it may have been Protection. It doesn’t really matter. I’m not really expecting them to reinvent themselves; one just...
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LCD Soundsystem - London Sessions (2010)
Call it fourth quarter holiday product. Call it contract fulfillment. Call it what you will, but James Murphy and his LCD Soundsystem live band come off what was my personal favorite album of the year, This Is Happening, to spend some time in London to do a live-in-the-studio version of their current touring set.
Now, although they are a dance rock band, with the albums wonders of programming...
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Laetitia Sadier - The Trip (2010)
As beloved band Stereolab announced their hiatus, lead singer Laetitia Sadier came forth with her first solo album. It’s not your usual “wants a bigger piece of the pie” breakup effort, but rather a more intimate collection of songs, much of it seemingly inspired by the death (“the trip” of all trips) of Sadier’s younger sister. “Statues Can Bend” sounds like an Angelo Badalamenti demo, the reverb...
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David Bowie - Space Oddity (40th Anniversary 2009...
I probably should go to his self-titled debut (also called Love You Til Tuesday) or the Deram Anthology (comprising that album and everything else Bowie did for his first label) as the beginnings of my journey through Bowie’s music. And maybe I will at some point, but that era, containing a lot of music hall and loungey material, seems to have been mainly a creative and commercial dead end...
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The Killers (1946)
I’d been looking forward to watching this film noir for some time, and had long ago read the Hemingway short story that inspired it. I guess I wasn’t in the right mood or something, because I found it pretty disappointing, despite generally fine performances from Ava Gardner, Edmond O’Brien and Sam Levene, a fine score by Miklos Rosza, and great cinematography. What let me down...
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Eno
Kudos to @fuckyeahroxymusic for linking to that BBC4 Eno documentary, which looks to be only a year old. One of my big takeaways from it is that it dispelled any notions of Eno as this sort of chilly, avant garde technocrat. I mean, his music should kind of do that, anyway, as there’s some humor and whimsy in some of it, but it was a little surprising to find how much he enjoys gospel music....
Watchfuckyeahroxymusic:
Brian Eno - Another Green World (BBC Documentary ) PART 3
Watchfuckyeahroxymusic:
Brian Eno - Another Green World (BBC Documentary ) PART 2
Watchfuckyeahroxymusic:
Brian Eno - Another Green World (BBC Documentary ) PART 1
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Stereolab - Not Music (2010)
Stereolab recently announced an indefinite hiatus, and with singer Laetitia Sadier already releasing her own solo album, it seems that the cheekily-titled Not Music could be their swan song. It’s unclear whether they knew this when they recorded their previous album, Chemical Chords, but as these tracks date from the same 2008 sessions, one shouldn’t expect a big grand finale blowout.
If one likes...
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Goldfrapp - Head First (2010)
I admit it; it took me this long (almost eight months) for this album to grab me. Not that I’ve been making serious attempts to engage it; it’s just that it was like a lot of discs one plays once or twice and sets aside for something more palatable.
A big part of this is undoubtedly that the prior disc, Seventh Tree, was my first Goldfrapp album, and that one was the acoustic...
2010 Winding Down
The Cars review notwithstanding, I’m feeling like I really need to go back and review some of the new discs from this year that meant something to me or were notable (and of course, some were even just released today). And the same goes for comics this year as well. So for the rest of the year, I’m going to shift some of my attention away from this ’70s-’80s Punk/New Wave...
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The Cars - The Cars (1978)(Remastered)
The Cars were a band I appreciated, even liked, but never loved. I only ever bought their smash album Heartbeat City because of their MTV ubiquity and because there were just certain records one had to have during the ‘80s to not be a total freak (Thriller, Born in the U.S.A. and Synchronicity were three others). But to me, The Cars were a cooler band from a period just before I was listening to...
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OMD - History of Modern (2010)
OMD’s a band I’ve liked since about 1985. Although I’d heard the singles “Tesla Girls” and “Locomotion” from their previous album, Junk Culture, it was the even-more-commercially-minded Stephen Hague production, Crush, that was my first purchase, and it hooked me. I then went backwards into their chillier and/or weirder stuff, and share with many the...
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It Might Get Loud (2009)
Not sure why I didn’t see this sooner, as I like The Edge, Jack White and Jimmy Page. I guess I thought they were different enough that getting them together on a documentary might not work. But after I saw it, I’m not sure who else could have worked as well.
The film is ostensibly about the electric guitar, but explored through the very different personal journeys of these three...
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The Black Keys - iTunes Session (2010)
Most iTunes sessions I’ve heard are inessential. I think some bands use them as a way to make money off what’s essentially a brief concert rehearsal. These aren’t Peel Sessions here, though sometimes bands will offer Cat Power had a great iTunes session a few years back, offering up a few exclusive covers and an acoustic take on one of her own songs.
The Black Keys’...
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Diplo Presents Dubstep: Blow Your Head
I’ve always listened to electronic dance music without ever paying a whole lot of attention to genres and movements within it. Reading up on dubstep for this review, I find I have a light dusting of it, mostly through remixes of more commercial/mainstream artists or dubstep artists on which those artists guest star. I knew of Diplo as a popular mixer, tastemaker and the nattily attired guy in a...
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Bryan Ferry - Olympia (2010)
Bryan Ferry doesn’t particularly have anything to prove. Like many artists, he found his style fairly early and has just been refining it, turning the same soil over. Olympia is never bad and frequently very nice, though it’s got its dead spots.
“You Can Dance” works a seductive groove (does anyone else write about the mambo in their pop songs anymore??) that seems...
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Wire - Pink Flag (1977)
Pink Flag is one of the more fascinating albums of the UK punk era, an art school version of punk that contrasted the instantly traditional clipped shouting in exaggerated “oiks” style British accents against abstract subject matter and an economy and minimalism that made other punk tracks almost sound pandering for commercial success. Many of the songs don’t go much more than a minute, some even...
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XTC - White Music (1978)
Though arriving in 1978 England, XTC’s debut album owes little to the rebellious punk scene than similar song pacing and energy. XTC would fall more in line with the subsequent New Wave sound, with crisper drums, less distorted guitar and choruses with lots of “oo-ee-oo’s” and “whoa-o-whoa’s.” White Music is all suburban teen sexual angst and feelings of detachment filtered through technological...
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X-Ray Spex - Germ Free Adolescents (1978)
In doing some research on the UK punk scene of the late ’70s, I came across this band, of whom I’d never heard. That’s probably due to their only recording one studio album during the era (they came back in 1996). This expanded edition of their debut contains most of their output, with the two-disc anthology Let’s Submerge gathering up all this material and a few more demos...
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The Stranglers - Rattus Norvegicus (1977)
The Stranglers got a lot of stick in the UK punk era for not being, well, punk enough. And yeah, on this first album, they only get up to punk velocity on “London Lady,” which turns the city into a woman in order to heap scorn on her. “Plastic’s real when you’re real sick” is a good refrain, though. But the other songs fall more into the “pub rock” subgenre, which is indeed where the (Guildford)...
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The Sex Pistols - Never Mind the Bollocks (Here's...
As an ’80s teenager in suburban Illinois, I grew up without much interest in hearing the Sex Pistols. My first exposure to them was a Mad magazine parody (I think drawn by George Woodbridge) that had a reporter follow Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious (whatever their Mad spoof names were) vomiting, sticking pins in their faces and saying stupid things. I knew the album cover was cool and they...
What & Why
Just a quick post for the half-dozen reading this blog. For whatever reason, I have been on a kick lately of trying to both fill in the gaps in my musical knowledge as well as revisit some of the records I grew up with. Specific to both aims, I’m mainly interested in looking at the UK punk era of 1977 through the UK and US New Wave and Post-Punk scenes. Expect reviews of The Sex Pistols,...
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The Jam - This Is the Modern World (1977)
The Jam released their second album about six months after the first, so it’s not surprising to find this one suffers from the dreaded sophomore slump. “London Traffic” is an unintentional parody of punk, a double-time complaint about the subject in the title that has no deeper point or the slightest bit of wit. One pictures Paul Weller heading to the studio, in need of material,...
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The Black Keys - Brothers (2010)
As we’re getting near the end of 2010, I guess I’d better run down some of the other CDs I dug this year..
I remember a couple years ago when The Black Keys’ previous album, Attack & Release, came out. Kings of Leon’s breakout, Only by the Night, also came out that year, and I tried to turn some friends onto both bands, but really only had success with the Kings....
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Neil Diamond - Dreams (2010)
Neil Diamond has had a quiet comeback since 2005. Although he can’t be blamed for the PC-damaging anti-piracy software loaded with 12 Songs, his first album produced by Rick Rubin, he can’t help being the old-time showbiz cornball. His follow-up, Home Before Dark, was equally acclaimed but despite its stripped-down arrangements, somewhat more overblown, with many songs surpassing the six minute...
