JVC XRCD Dire Straits Brothers in Arms. Couldn't believe the improvements over the original Warner Brothers or even the better sounding Vertigo disks.
Album of the Week - Opinion/Samples
Okay - a thread along the lines of "What are You Listening to Lately". Hopefully this won't get out of hand, but - my thoughts are for thread participants to recommend (on a weekly basis) a single album/CD from their stacks, make a few personal comments, and add a link so people can hear some of the album. Keeping it to a once a week basis should let the pleasure extend indefinitely...
To link - add a mark-up tag to an Amazon page that has a "Listen to Samples" selection.
I'm sure everyone here has GREAT musical taste, and probably know quite a few hidden gems/personal treasures that have yet to hit mainstream consciousness ...
Starting out from my collection, I'm going to dust off the jacket and select:
The Blue Nile - Hats
The Blue Nile puts out an album about once every six years, and god knows I wish they were more prolific. Their first two albums - A Walk In the Rain and Hats from the mid-late 80's - are tone poems more than anything. I'd probably describe these two as "Impressionistic rock" or "smoky cabaret rock". It's sort of haunting and uplifting at the same time, with mournful horns - synthesized beats/keyboards - yearning vocals with a Scots burr. And the lyrics are poetry of an everyman ...
Last heard from with 1996's "Peace at Last". A little less atmospheric than the other two - but still great.
Hoping they release at least once more in my lifetime, because they are so damned good. I assume they were bigger in the UK - but are little known over here. Unfortunately "Hats" and "A Walk In The Rain" only appear to be on import labels now, but they are worth forking over the dough for...
To link - add a mark-up tag to an Amazon page that has a "Listen to Samples" selection.
I'm sure everyone here has GREAT musical taste, and probably know quite a few hidden gems/personal treasures that have yet to hit mainstream consciousness ...
Starting out from my collection, I'm going to dust off the jacket and select:
The Blue Nile - Hats
The Blue Nile puts out an album about once every six years, and god knows I wish they were more prolific. Their first two albums - A Walk In the Rain and Hats from the mid-late 80's - are tone poems more than anything. I'd probably describe these two as "Impressionistic rock" or "smoky cabaret rock". It's sort of haunting and uplifting at the same time, with mournful horns - synthesized beats/keyboards - yearning vocals with a Scots burr. And the lyrics are poetry of an everyman ...
Last heard from with 1996's "Peace at Last". A little less atmospheric than the other two - but still great.
Hoping they release at least once more in my lifetime, because they are so damned good. I assume they were bigger in the UK - but are little known over here. Unfortunately "Hats" and "A Walk In The Rain" only appear to be on import labels now, but they are worth forking over the dough for...
- ...
- 48 posts total
Album of the Week, 3rd selection Okay - a more recent release The Wondermints - Mind If We Make Love To You First exposure to this group was from a friend-made mix tape, with the great song "Tracy Hide" on it. Took me five or six years before I bought their self-titled debut. Far too long! The Wondermints might best be known for backing up the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson (they appear on Pet Sounds Live and Brian Wilson live at the Roxy Theater), but I assume he approached them based on comparisons of aforementioned "Tracy Hide" to the gorgeous harmonies of the Beach Boys. Brian Wilson sings back-up on two songs of "Mind If We Make Love to You" ("Ride" and "So Nice"), and you can't help but listen to "So Nice" and hear the Beach Boys influence. Yes - the Wondermints come off as a group that are 20-30 years too late, but their obvious affection for 70's pop is refreshing. Nothing wrong with gorgeous harmonies and sharp melodic hooks by any means. Besides the Beach Boys, another influence that comes to my mind is Todd Rundgren (think "I Saw The Light", "Love Is The Answer") in such songs as "If I Were You". Perhaps the favorite track is the more stripped down sound of "Time Has You" - reminds me of the Allman's "Melissa" more than anything - soaring guitar, with a little orchestration in the backround. Worth the price of admission for this song alone. The sort of track you hit the "back" button on (well - for those of us who are into the digital thing). Not like anything else on the album, but great. Side Note - wow. The interesting thing about listening to music on the internet is that you can actually play two tracks simultaneously - a little disconcerting, but playing "Melissa" and "Time Has You" at the same time cements the comparison for me. About the only semi-lame track on the album is "Something I Knew" - which comes across as a too-lite pop confection. Anyway - if you sometimes wish that they still made 'em like they used to, give The Wondermints a try. Excellent stuff - Other two albums (debut - "Wondermints", and second or third "Bali" are also terrific. Bali has more late 60's/early 70's pyschedlic influences. Hidden Bonus track at the end of Bali is an apparently rejected demo for a Coors Lite jingle (Tap The Rockies ... Coors Lite). Weird snippet. |
Back by popular demand :) - Album 4 from the stacks: Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Concert Program First stumbled across them in college - bought "Broadcasting from Home" because of the cool cover and the salesperson said "they're kind of weird". Admit it - we've all done that at one time or another. Didn't buy any more of them until this "live concert" (not that you'd notice) retrospective that was released in 94/95ish. I think the creative force (Simon Jeffes) has since passsed away. They're not easy to characterize - they'd probably be lumped under "New Age" in your local record store ... but if anything, they're "Old Age". They are mini-orchestral (instrumentation includes cello, clarinet, viola, trombone, oboe, violin, piano, harmonium, cor anglais, string bass, as well as some guitar and piano). An occasional modern touch (the telephone as instrument). No vocals - The music itself is seductive/hypnotic (or totally boring, depending on your POV). PCO seizes on a repetitive, simple melody in most of their songs - and although meandering hither and thither a bit, you can hear the same melodic undercurrents layered throughout. An orchestral rondo of sorts. It's soothing in a - for lack of better words - primal sense. I think we all have an innate sense of pattern and rhythm, and can find it incredibly comforting and soothing. Well - that's the Jungian nerve that PCO hits - a melodic archetype that we all share; being taken back to the collective musical womb, as it were. (okay, so I'm spouting some new age mumbo jumbo myself, but I still wouldn't put the band in the bin with Yanni)... Although the samples are mere 30-second snippets, you can get a sense of what I mean - especially from Air A Danser, Numbers 1-4, Air, and Perpetuum Mobile. Not the sort of music that you pull out every day, but when you're in the mood for a musical "retreat" - for some pastoral melodies in a harried world, PCO may fit the bill. |
In the spirit of Halloween, I'm making this THE THREAD THAT WILL NOT DIE - with my Album 5 selection from the crypt... Epic Soundtracks - Rise Above Do any of you have albums that you listen to rarely, yet when you do, you wonder why you don't pull them out more often? Well - this is one of those albums. From AMG: Epic Soundtracks (real name Kevin Godfrey) was part of a punkish Brit 70's band (Swell Maps) that apparently was influential for Sonic Youth, Pavement, and the Lemonheads among others. In the early 90's, he made a re-appearance as a solo act - Epic Soundtracks - that met with critical (but not commercial) success. Died in '97 (apparent suicide) after releasing a few solo albums. A fitting nomination for Halloween, I suppose. Rise Above, Epic's debut, is amazing in many ways - not the least of which is his voice. That's not to say it's great, but like Tom Waits, or Bob Dylan, or Randy Newman - there are just some people who draw you in with the world-weariness of their tone. Epic is a crooner of sorts, but in a charmingly flat, cigarette-ravaged, Brit-accented way. The music (mainly acoustic) is distinctively English - a la Martin Newell or XTC or other fine purveyors. It's sparsely instrumented - mostly ES on the piano, backed by guitar, drums, cello, violin and a few horns. On the whole, it has a mid-tempo, brooding melancholy that probably comes from standing in the English rain for far too long and drinking far too heavily, punctuated every now and then by a sort of stiff-upper-lip optimism that it'll be alright somehow. Most Brit Pastoral Pop - "Farmer's Daughter" 60's Retrovibe - "Meet Me On the Beach" Best late-night-at-the-bar-sound - "Ruthless", "Sad Song", "She Sleeps Alone/Love Fucks You Up" Music for Doomed Romantics - "I Don't Know", "I Feel Good" |
- 48 posts total