November 2013 - Popular Music

Tori Amos - Gold Dust
Paula Cole - This Fire
Wendy Matthews - Ghosts
Over the Rhine - Ohio
Radiohead - In Rainbows
Rachael Yamagata - Happenstance 

I wasn't listening to pop music a lot during the month, and when I was I was tending to go for tried and true classics.

In one case, Gold Dust,  it wasn't a classic album but a selection of classic songs. Which I was pleased to discover I enjoyed quite a lot. I hadn't listened to the album for quite a while, since the initial period of listening when it was first released.

All the other albums were basically things that I could be confident of enjoying. I wasn't in a very exploratory mood (at least, not in popular music).  I'm still conscious of the fact that I haven't completely catalogued my pop collection in the period since I started keeping records (now getting towards 3 years), much less listened to everything that's in there. And so there's a large untapped reservoir to tackle... when I feel more inclined to tackle it.

It's also perhaps worth mentioning, not for the first time, that for pop music I generally only keep track of albums.  Or more accurately, complete discs.

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Which means that the above list doesn't reflect a song I became completely obsessed with during the month: Katy Perry's 'Wide Awake'.

And Glee's 'Wide Awake'. Yes, the show did it to me again. As far as I know I had never heard the song before its Glee appearance. But unlike previous times, I didn't end up deciding either that Glee didn't really live up to the original OR that Glee had rescued a beautiful song from overproduction.  No, this time, I became completely obsessed with two distinct versions of the same song.

And bought them both.

...I had no idea how much longer it was possible to extend an obsession with a song if one has two different versions to switch between.

Now, on the whole, I don't really like Katy Perry all that much.  The occasional song attracts some admiration.  Bizarrely, I had read this Katy Perry review a short while before hearing 'Wide Awake', which mentions the song as one of her finest. Given that much of the review fits my thoughts about Perry more generally (including mentioning 'Hot n Cold' as another of one her strong moments), I perhaps should have paid more attention. But it didn't occur to me to hunt out this song I'd never heard because... well, because it was a Katy Perry song and I don't spend a lot of time hunting out Katy Perry songs.

Instead, the song found me. And lodged in my brain. And tapped into surprising emotions - mostly to do with a previous relationship which ended some time ago, but which I was reevaluating more recently in the light of subsequent behaviour.

This little pop song, in some ways ridiculously simple in its construction (4 chords going around and around and never hitting a proper resolution) first struck me for its beautiful sound, and stayed with me as much for its lyrics. It gave my feelings voice. And I played it again and again, declaring that I was over the relationship while secretly knowing that was a lie, and hoping that sheer repetition would turn it into the truth. And marvelling at how the song could bear both interpretations.

Well played, manufactured pop industry. Well played.

October 2013 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S.

• Nun ist das Heil und die Kraft (Now is come salvation and strength)
• Du sollt Gott, deinen Herren, lieben (You shall love the Lord your God)
• Bringet dem Herrn Ehre seines Namens (Give to the Lord the glory due to his name)
• French Suite No.6

Barber

• Hermit Songs
• Melodies Passageres
• Souvenirs (solo piano version, 2 movements only)

Beethoven - Piano Sonata No.30
Bridge

• Phantasm
• Rebus
• Todessehnsucht (string orchestra version)
• A Royal Night of Variety

Delibes - Coppelia
Dvorak - Cello Concerto
Faure - La chanson d'Eve
Faure - Barcarolle No.8
Haydn - Piano Trio No.30
Hindemith - Kammermusik Nos. 2 and 3
Janacek - Glagolitic Mass
Liszt - From the Cradle to the Grave
Mahler - Piano Quartet movement
Mozart - Symphony No.39
Mozart - Piano Sonata No.16
Poulenc

• Sextet
• Elegie for horn and piano
• Improvisation No.15

Rachmaninov - Piano Concerto No.2
Ravel - Sonatine
Ravel - Miroirs
Scarlatti, D. - Keyboard sonatas - K.1, 27, 283, 284, 443
Schubert - Piano Sonata in E, D.157 (unfinished)
Schumann - Kreisleriana
Schumann - Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood)
Vivaldi

• Beatus vir in B flat
• Laudate pueri in C minor
• Laudate pueri in A

I'm continuing to revisit the Vivaldi sacred music that I originally bought in 2011, with a more systematic approach. The C minor version of Laudate pueri (Psalm 113 or 112, depending on which denomination's Bible you're using), was a particular highlight. That's mostly thanks to the singing of Susan Gritton on the version that I have, which is incredibly beautiful, particularly in a couple of the slow movements.

Someone has put the whole performance on Youtube. I've only put the second half in here, partly because it happens to start with one of the movements that I find especially magical - it's just over 2 minutes of utter bliss. If you want to hear the whole thing, I'm sure you can manage it!

Some excellent Samuel Barber works were on the October listening schedule. Melodies passageres (which I think are his only songs not in English) was improved from all my previous listens simply because this time I had access to a translation!  But I like the Hermit Songs even better. They are in turns visionary and humorous.

But the things I probably listened to most enthusiastically, and several times over, were the Ravel piano works.  In my chronological revisiting of Ravel, I've reached works that really mark him, for me, as one of the great composers for piano. Sonatine is a piece of great clarity and beauty, showing Ravel's liking for combining old and new styles.  Miroirs is... well, it's a masterpiece.  Five wonderful pieces full of atmosphere, character and amazing harmonies. He turns a piano into fluttering moths, bird calls, a rolling ocean, a Spanish guitar, and tolling bells - and it all works.

October 2013 - Popular Music

Tori Amos

• The Beekeeper
• American Doll Posse
• Audience bootlegs - Seattle 17 July 1996 (early show), Seattle 26 July 2003, Seattle 22 April 2005, Seattle 5 December 2007

Bat for Lashes - The Haunted Man
David Bowie - Aladdin Sane
Brooke Fraser - What to do with Daylight
Garbage - Garbage
Gomez - How We Operate
Gotye - Making Mirrors
Jars of Clay - The Long Fall Back to Earth
k d lang - Invincible Summer
Wendy Matthews - Lily
John Mayer - Born and Raised
Moloko - Statues
Simply Red - Picture Book
Sons of Korah - Shelter
Tears for Fears - The Seeds of Love
Thom Yorke - The Eraser

I have a weirdly schizophrenic view of this month's list.  On the one hand I have a certain sense of listening to the same old things - even though in some cases the statistics tell me it's quite a while since the last full listen to the same album.  I think that's partly because I'm conscious at the moment of how much of my pop music collection still hasn't been catalogued properly, which is arguably preventing me from being more deliberate in getting to some of the more hidden corners of the collection.

On the other hand, there are a couple of things on here that feel like I'm being reunited with old friends.  I hadn't listened to Invincible Summer for a tremendously long time simply because I didn't have it in my possession. I lent it to a family member and the loan became rather long-term.  It's easily my favourite of the several k d lang albums that I know. It has a lovely warmth to it (pun intended), and just feels like a nicely consistent record in terms of tone and quality - although the opening track, 'The Consequences of Falling', has its own peculiar ability to get stuck in my head.

The opening track of Shelter has that ability to, thanks almost entirely to one small section of the song.  It's actually a little amazing to me that Sons of Korah have been out of listening circulation for me for as long as this.  They are an Australian Christian band whose work consists entirely of sung versions of Biblical psalms.  That might sound extremely limiting, but what's superb about them is their sensitivity to the words of each text.  Songs change mood and tempo in a way that frequently feels very organic.

Shelter is, by their own description, a particularly melancholic and introspective album. I'm a couple of albums behind now, but of the ones I have it's also one of the ones I respond to the most (the other being the much brighter Redemption Songs).  The first track, 'Contend', their version of Psalm 35, is a pretty good indication of much of the mood of this particular album, but also encapsulates the band's overall sound quite well.

And then, 2 minutes in, is the utterly glorious moment where the music opens up...

[For some mysterious reason, Blogger and Youtube absolutely refuse to let me link to the full, 5-minute version of the song. So here's a version that's missing about the last 2 minutes.]

And then, there's Picture Book.  Which I have managed to listen to occasionally in the last couple of years, but haven't talked about here.  Opinions vary wildly on the quality of Simply Red, and for my own part I think they did a lot of not especially inspired things.  But when I got to know this first album properly, quite some years after its release, I was thoroughly impressed by its quality.

I already knew quite a few songs because there were some big hits - none bigger than 'Holding Back the Years' - but there really isn't a single weak track on the whole album. There's some great jazz-oriented tracks, a couple of excellent fast ones, a couple of very nicely done covers that you wouldn't necessarily know are covers, long songs, short songs... everything contributes to keeping it interesting.  It's definitely one of my favourite albums from the 1980s, and when I first tried to do my own 'official' top 10 albums list it scored an entry.  It would still rank pretty highly now, over a decade later.

September 2013 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S.

• Ich hatter viel Bekümmernis (I had many afflictions) - 1723 version
• Es ist nichts Gesundes an meinem Leibe (There is no health in my body)
• Schauet doch und sehet, ob irgend ein Schmerz sei (Behold and see, if there is any sorrow)
• Sehet, welch eine Liebe hat uns der Vater erzeiget (Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us)
• Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele I (Praise the Lord, O my soul, No.1)
• Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben (Heart and mouth and deed and life)

Barber

• Medea's Meditation and Dance of Vengeance
• Excursions
• Nuvoletta

Beethoven - Piano Sonatas 28 and 29
Beethoven - Cello Sonatas 4 and 5 
Brahms - Horn Trio
Bridge

• Enter Spring
• Oration
• Phantasm 

Dvorak

• Symphony No.9
• Cypresses for string quartet
• Songs my Mother Taught Me (transcribed for violin)

Faure

• Piano Quintet No.1
• Barcarolle No.7
• Impromptu No.4
• Le don silencieux
• Chanson
• Vocalise-etude 

Janacek - Říkadla (Nursery Rhymes) - choral version
Janacek - Suite for string orchestra
Liszt - Faust Symphony
Liszt - Anees de Pelerinage, Third Year
Mozart - Piano Sonata No.15
Poulenc

• Sonata for 2 pianos
• Sonata for piano, 4 hands
• Violin Sonata  

Rachmaninov

• Symphony No.1
• Suites 1 and 2 for 2 pianos
• Prelude in C sharp minor for piano

Ravel

• String Quartet
• Jeux d'eau
• Pavane pour une infante defunte (original piano version and orchestral version)

Schumann - Carnaval
Schumann - Symphonic Etudes
Vivaldi - Ascende laeta (Gladly climb) with Dixit Dominus, RV 595


My approach of listening to some composers chronologically seemed to be hitting some very rewarding moments in several cases this month.

Of all the magical things that Faure composed, his first piano quintet is one that holds an extremely special place for me.  It sometimes seems to be regarded as a difficult work - difficult for the composer, who took many years to complete it, and difficult for the listener because of it's somewhat withdrawn and reticent nature.  But it's exactly that reticence that makes me adore it.  This is not the music of big, grand tunes, but something inhabiting a deep inner world.

Beethoven is heading that way, too, as my listening reached the works that seem to be generally regarded as marking the start of his late style.  There's certainly a lot of inner depth here, although piano sonata no.29, the 'Hammerklavier' has its showy side too.

And then there's Bridge.  All three works I listened to this month are considered to be pretty major works from Bridge's later, more modern period.  Oration, which is essentially a cello concerto, is often considered the pick of the bunch, but while I did enjoy it I responded to it less than the other two.  I found Phantasm, essentially a piano concerto, to be particularly appealing.  It seems I may have a thing for single-movement piano and orchestra works from this period, as I've realised that Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini and Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand are nearly contemporaneous.  Rhapsody in Blue isn't that far off in chronology either.

I haven't been listening to Poulenc chronologically, but I'm continuing to notice a trend of appreciating some of the later works, and the Sonata for 2 pianos is probably the first larger-scale work I've listened to from that period, and also one of the best yet.  I'm definitely intending to explore this composer's later years more extensively once I've finished with the current set.

Elsewhere, from composers where I'm not focused on late works, Barber delivered a very nice surprise with the Excursions for piano.  I'm sure I've listened to these before, but probably in the midst of a lot of other pieces without the same sense of focus.  This time I thoroughly enjoyed the work, and was particularly taken with the second piece, 'in slow blues tempo'.

Hope you are too.

September 2013 - Popular Music

Tori Amos

• Little Earthquakes
• Talula (UK single, part 2)
• Garlands (from The Beekeeper DVD)
• Audience bootlegs - Seattle 6 May 1992, Seattle 29 August 1992, Seattle 20 March 1994, Seattle 17 July 1996 (late show), Seattle 3 May 1998, Seattle 11 September 1998, Seattle 7 October 1999, Seattle 9 November 2001, Seattle 10 December 2002, Seattle 8 September 2005, Seattle 10 July 2009

Kate Bush - Aerial
Something for Kate - Leave Your Soul to Science

I honestly didn't realise until I consulted the spreadsheet just how little pop music I'd listened to during the month, with one glaring exception.  I knew about the 'exception' of course, I just hadn't realised it was exceptional.

I had barely touched live Tori Amos recordings for over a year and a half. So why the sudden explosion in activity? The main trigger, I think (and this is a sign of how my brain works) is that my collection became relatively organised again.  In the first half of 2012 I suffered a computer crash, and while I don't think anything was lost in the process, things did become rather messy and it has taken until now to sort out the Tori Amos bootlegs to my satisfaction - not just the way they were before, but organised in a better system that should make it much easier to find a home for stray material.

The other trigger, arguably, was having travelled earlier this year. This at least partly explains my inclination to go back to an idea I'd had before - choose a city and listen to recordings from there - and actually implement it.  The other explanation for that tactic is that I think it will provide a more varied listening experience.  Last time that I was working through these recordings, I was following a particular tour (first 1999, then 2001).  While that is quite an enlightening approach, enabling me to hear how songs evolved over the course of a tour, it also risks becoming monotonous even with Tori's great skill at varying the setlist from night to night.  With my new approach, some songs do still turn up quite frequently but they are more likely to be in different guises.  Sure, I've heard Precious Things 9 times in 11 shows, but there would have been at least 5 quite distinct versions of the song within that list.

The choice of Seattle as my first destination was influenced by a few factors. I quite like the city, it has a reputation of being a city that Tori likes and where she gives some memorable performances, and it's a regular stop on her tours without the number of shows there over the years being completely overwhelming (unlike, say, New York).  When I started researching for recordings I didn't already possess, it was pleasantly surprising to find how many Seattle shows are available - by my count, 15 out of 18 shows over the years are in the vaults, most of them in complete form.

To me that seems a pretty remarkable testament to the dedication of fans to sharing and remembering the concert experience. I don't know how it compares to other performers, but I'd like to think it's a pretty good hit rate.

However, the other thing I'm aware of is that even with a performer who has a dedicated, obsessive fan base, the hit rate per tour is showing signs of decreasing.  People are abandoning the full concert bootleg in favour of displaying individual songs on Youtube. I can understand this trend, even while I personally am disheartened by it.  We live in the age of the playlist. My commitment to enjoying the architecture of a larger listening experience is becoming peculiar.  People aren't interested in following the course of an hour-long album unshuffled, never mind a 2-hour concert.

August 2013 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S.

• Christus, der ist mein Leben (Christ, who is my life)
• Erforsche mich, Gott, und erfahre mein Herz (Search me, God, and know my heart)
• Warum betrübst du dich, mein Herz (Why are you downcast, my soul)
• Keyboard Partitas 1 to 6
• Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue

Barber - Second Essay for Orchestra
Barber - 2 Songs, Op.18
Beethoven - Symphonies 7 and 8
Beethoven - String Quartet No.11, 'Quartetto Serioso' 
Bridge

• There Is A Willow Grows Aslant a Brook
• Sir Roger de Coverley (A Christmas Dance) - full orchestra version and strings version
• 2 Songs of Rabindranath Tagore  (orchestral versions)
• Vignettes de Danse
• 2 Intermezzi from 'Threads'
• 2 Entr'actes (Rosemary, Canzonetta)

Dvorak

• String Quartet No.4
• String quartet movement in F major
• 2 Waltzes for string quartet (arranged by Dvorak from piano pieces) 

Faure

• Songs, opuses 76, 83, 85 and 87
• Melisande's Song (from incidental music for Pelleas and Melisande)
• Papillon for cello and piano
• Sicilienne for cello and piano
• 8 short pieces for piano
• Impromptu 'No. 6' for piano (transcription of impromptu for harp)

Heller - 30 Progressive Etudes, Op.46
Janacek

• Sinfonietta
• Taras Bulba
• Lachian Dances
• Pohadka (Fairy Tale, for cello and piano)
• Presto for cello and piano 

Liszt

• Orpheus
• Heroide Funebre
• Die Ideale
• Two Episodes from Lenau's 'Faust' 

Minkus/Delibes - La Source (The Spring)
Mozart

• Symphony No.38, 'Prague'
• Piano Sonata No.14
• Fantasia in C minor 

Poulenc

• Suite Francaise (piano version)
• Francaise
• Promenades
• Improvisations 13 and 14
• Piece Breve on the name of Albert Roussel
• Bourree for the Pavillion of Auvergne
• Feuillets d'album (Album leaves)
• Capriccio for 2 pianos
• Elegie for 2 pianos
• L'Embarquement pour Cythere for 2 pianos

Rachmaninov - Piano Concerto No.1
Ravel - Menuet Antique
Schumann - Papillons (Butterflies)
Schumann - Davidsbundlertanze (Dances of the League of David)
Vivaldi - Filiae maestae Jerusalem (Mournful daughters of Jerusalem)
Vivaldi - Non in pratis aut in hortis (Neither in meadows nor in gardens)

That's a pretty long list! Although many of the works are quite short.

I suddenly realised during the month that I had abandoned Mozart some 18 months ago, leaving him hanging mid-chronology. I suspect this was mostly due to shifting my focus to other composers when I bought new CDs, but it may have also had to do with the Sonata and Fantasia in C minor, works with which I'm relatively unfamiliar.  And that, in turn, is mostly because I simply don't like the Fantasia very much. I still don't, but it turns out that I quite like the sonata on its own. From now on I'll be more likely to ignore the traditional pairing of the 2 works.

The Bach cantatas are back. I acquired another 10 CDs worth, which still, amazingly enough, means that I have less than half of the total.

Just when I start thinking that this might be overkill and my fetish for complete sets might be unwise in this instance, there's some magical little bit of music that makes me think it's worthwhile exploring all this Bach.  Christus, der ist mein Leben (BWV 95 in the standard Bach catalogue) has this amazing tenor aria in it that I found myself listening to repeatedly - in fact I've just put it on again while writing this. I would post a link if I could find a version that I enjoy as much as the one that I have, which is by Masaaki Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan.

My listening to the orchestral works of Frank Bridge has recently reached the 'late' works, and There Is A Willow Grows Aslant A Brook is a piece full of eerie magic. The title is a line from Hamlet, the beginning of the description of Ophelia's drowning, and the music fits this imagery wonderfully well. Special mention for atmosphere must also go to Janacek's Pohadka, which I found completely enchanting from the very beginning.

Liszt, too, managed to engage me a couple of times this month. Heroide Funebre (somewhat difficult to translate - one version I've seen suggested something like 'funeral letter to a hero') is one of the more moody symphonic poems, and so is rescued from Liszt's tendency for blustering. But even more successful were the Two Episodes from Lenau's 'Faust'.  The second piece is much better known on its own as the first Mephisto Waltz, but I found both of them to be quite satisfying and Liszt explicitly wanted them treated as a pair.

The two Vivaldi works I listened to are both introductory works for a Miserere, a psalm setting used for Good Friday, but the Miserere itself is lost.  Both of the introductions are, not surprisingly, also quite moody!

August 2013 - Popular Music

Tori Amos - Boys for Pele
Tori Amos - Abnormally Attracted to Sin
Missy Higgins - The Ol' Razzle Dazzle
Jars of Clay - The Long Fall Back to Earth
John Mayer - Born and Raised
Pearl Jam - Vs
Seal - Human Being

 It's taken me a long time to get around to listening to The Long Fall Back to Earth.  It is yet another of the CDs that I bought in the latter part of last year in a huge binge, knowing that it might take some time to work through them all.  And in this case it had to at least wait until I had absorbed an earlier Jars of Clay release, Redemption Songs.

On first listen I had thought that my reaction to The Long Fall Back to Earth might be similar, one of mild disappointment at the level of inspiration.  That would make several Jars of Clay albums in a row that hadn't been overly impressive, and to be honest during some of that first listen I was beginning to wonder if it was time to 'let go' of the band and just accept that I was no longer going to find their new work all that satisfying.

But then I started hearing things that I responded to. Partly it was that some tracks in the second half of the album made a better impression, but then as I listened to the whole album a second, third, fourth time, I enjoyed more of the songs throughout the record.

I think part of my difficulty was that this is very much a 'pop' record, perhaps the most pop one of Jars of Clay's career. They've never exactly been far from the mainstream anyway, but here they are supplying songs that are unashamedly in the pop mould, and borrowing particularly heavily from the 1980s. A song like 'Heaven' (actually one of the more rock-oriented tracks) could have been planted by a time traveller into a radio broadcast circa 1984 and few people would have noticed.

And on that basis a lot of the songs work. Yes, in some ways their lyrical ideas are simpler and less subtle than in what I would consider the best of the band's songs, without the beautiful turns of phrase, but only a few of the songs veer into sounding trite.

There's enough here to make me continue to be interested in the band's 'future' work - they released a new album last week, so I'm still a couple behind. In truth I'm not sure I've ever felt they are a band that delivers albums without weak points (other than their 3rd album, If I Left the Zoo), but so long as the strong tracks outweigh the poor I'll probably keep listening.  And make one hell of a 'best of' mix for myself at some point.

July 2013 - Classical Music

Dvorak - String Quartets 7 to 14

After a couple of false starts, I finally realised my intention of listening to all of Dvorak's 'mature' quartets.

Except deciding just where the maturity begins isn't really any easy task. I've seen all sorts of opinions about which works are the ones worth listening to.  The last 3 are universally listed, but those were all written in the 1890s.  It's less obvious to decide where to place a boundary between quartets 5 (1873), 6 (also 1873), 7 (1874), 8 (1876), 9 (1877), 10 (1878/9) and 11 (1881).

I decided to start with number 7 for a couple of reasons. One was that number 6 is a work that Dvorak felt the need to revise but never finished revising. So it was something he himself was somewhat dissatisfied with. Another reason is that number 7 was the first to be published, and also (a few years later) the first to be performed at a public concert.  So this is where people were sufficiently impressed to become interested in Dvorak as a composer.

I have a vague plan for sometime in the future to work through these quartets backwards rather than forwards, and see at which point I start feeling that the level of engagement has dropped.  Because it's fairly clear to me that Dvorak's earliest quartets, while having a lot of nice tunes, really show him struggling to know what to do with those tunes.  The music tends to ramble on without clear contours or contrast.

But all the works I listened to in July had a fair amount of reward. I'm not entirely sure I could identify one as a personal favourite yet... possibly number 10? Recollection is already a little tricky.

I'm more sure that number 12, the 'American' quartet, is not my favourite. I don't dislike it, but I don't think it's typical Dvorak and I think it's one of those pieces where the popularity derives at least partly from a memorable gimmick (not unlike Shostakovich's 'autobiographical' 8th string quartet, which is one of my least favourite in that composers' quartet series). I wouldn't say it's not worth listening to by any means, but I think it's a shame that it has become so popular as to overshadow the other works.

July 2013 - Popular Music

Tori Amos - From the Choirgirl Hotel
Tori Amos - Abnormally Attracted to Sin
Fiona Apple - The Idler Wheel...
Bryan Duncan - Mercy
Nik Kershaw - To Be Frank
Mark Lizotte - Soul Lost Companion 
Something for Kate - Leave Your Soul To Science

I've written once before about From the Choirgirl Hotel, here.  Basically I want to expand on what I said then, because the power of this album still amazes me in a way very few other albums do.

I said last time that I was often drawn to listen to Choirgirl when I'm in a dark, angsty mood. This is still true. But it's not merely that. It's that when I'm in a dark, angsty mood, quite frequently this is the only thing in my entire collection I can find that provides the kind of catharsis I'm looking for.

I don't know if other people ever go trawling through their music trying to find something to match their mood, and spend a while thinking "nope, that's not it... nope... nope...think, think, what are you hearing in your head? What does it feel like?".  It's certainly something that I do from time to time, having a moment when I feel the desire for something really specific.  To me this is one of the reasons for having a large music collection, to cover as many different nuances of mood as possible.

Time and again, Choirgirl can be relied upon to be the best possible album for a particular kind of angst-ridden mood.  Nothing else I own possesses the same kind of power and drama.  No-one else sings to me - no scrap that, sings for me - about trying to hold back glaciers, about balloons not staying up in a perfectly windy sky, about boys who can't be men, about screaming at cathedrals, about just feeling that there's something wrong and not knowing how to fix it.  Song after song hits these kinds of marks with pounding beats and soaring melodies. It's intoxicating.

I know it's not healthy to be in that kind of place for long periods. But it's certainly easier to bear that kind of place when you can give it a fantastic soundtrack, and for me at least, being able to find an articulation of the mood is the kind of therapy that can help me move on.

And 54 minutes of music is a lot cheaper and more readily accessible than a counselling appointment of the same length.

June 2013 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S. - Keyboard Partitas 1 to 3
Dvorak - String Quartets 7 and 8

There's not really much to say here, other than there were 2 sets of classical works I decided to take with me on my travels, and at first I didn't get terribly far with listening to them.

Travel can be very exciting and adventurous, but fundamentally it's a disruption of your normal routines.  And I kept finding that I wasn't in the mood for listening to much music.  Anytime I took my headphones thinking that I might listen to some music while I was walking around, it didn't happen.  My normal habit of listening to music at night was almost entirely abandoned, and if I did listen it would only be when I was really tired and I would fall asleep before the end.

Eventually I worked out that the best time to listen was when I was travelling between cities, on a plane or train or bus, and had little else to do except perhaps stare out a window.

Even then I was quite liable to fall asleep, particular on a bus or train. A bit of gentle rocking motion and I would soon be nodding off.

So really, the story of the month was not listening to music. I got very stuck on the second Partita, and I lost count of how many times I started listening to Dvorak's 7th quartet but didn't reach the end.  This isn't really a reflection on the music, it's a reflection on the circumstances.

June 2013 - Popular Music

Tori Amos - Scarlet's Walk
Tori Amos - Past the Mission single, Parts 1 and 2
Bat for Lashes - The Haunted Man
Marc Cohn - The Rainy Season
Gomez - How We Operate
Radiohead - In Rainbows

I was travelling throughout the month of June.  I wasn't necessarily going to mention that on this blog, but it's an important piece of context for what I decided to write about.

One of the things I occasionally do while travelling is wander into music shops. Not generally with that much intention of buying anything (especially not when the luggage is already excessively full...), but I find the exploration to be a nice little diversion or time-filler on days when I don't have a set plan.

I don't know if anyone else does this, but I tend to 'test' the quality of a music shop by looking for certain things. Favourite things, ever so slightly obscure things. Does this shop have a good range, or is it a generic store full of the same CDs as every other big brand store? Is there some depth here?

It probably comes as no surprise that one of the most frequent tests is looking for Tori Amos material.  This clearly isn't because I have much need to buy more Tori Amos. I have most of what I really want, and indeed a fairly large proportion of everything she's released.

Imagine my astonishment, then, when I walked into a music store in Toronto called Sunrise Records and not only found a couple of albums on LP, but one of the few CD singles I hadn't acquired yet.  In the second-hand section they had Past the Mission.

It originally came as two separate parts. Record companies are always trying to make more money out of you, of course.  The gimmick was that one part had space for both CDs, but the second slot had a cardboard placeholder instead of the actual CD - which you had to buy the second part to get.  Sure enough, the copy in the shop had both CDs.

Apart from the studio version of the song, there are a total of 7 live performances taken from Tori's 1994 tour.  At the time of release, the performances were about 2 months old at most and the tour was still going. So it's a nice little time capsule.

There was no way I was passing it up. I think it was only about 10 dollars as well.  So congratulations, Sunrise Records.  You are officially the most impressive music store I've encountered in a while.

You shouldn't have such sticky labels on your products, though. I hate that, and I'm sure the corner of the CD's original cardboard packaging suffered damage as I tried to get one of the stickers off. Ironically the sticker said 'quality guaranteed'.

May 2013 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S. - French Suite No.6
Beethoven - Piano Sonata No.27 (2 versions)
Bridge

• Lament
• Two Poems for Orchestra after Richard Jeffries
• Two Old English Songs
• Thy Hand In Mine
• Mantle of Blue
• Blow Out, You Bugles
• A Prayer

Dvorak - String Quartets 7 and 10
Faure

• Nocturnes 6 and 7
• Barcarolles 5 and 6
• Valse-Caprice No.4
• Theme and Variations for piano
• Sérénade du Bourgeois gentilhomme
• Pleurs d'or (Tears of Gold)
• 2 Songs, Op.76

Holmboe - String Quartets 2, 4, 9, 12 and 17
Janacek - Concertino
Liszt - Hunnenschlacht (Battle of the Huns)
Poulenc

• 5 Impromptus
• Napoli
• Badinage

Most of these Bridge pieces were short, the exception being A Prayer which is his only work for choir and orchestra.  I don't, from this distance, recall any of these works grabbing my attention the way that his Dance Poem did, but neither did I dislike any of them. There's a consistent level of enjoyment from these pieces.

My Faure chronology took me into some of the music that made me fall in love with this composer in the first place, the piano pieces he wrote in the 1890s.  The fifth Barcarolle is an astonishing piece - even more astonishing once you try to learn to play it, as I have, and realise just how fiendishly complex it is.  In some sections the harmony changes constantly, in others the melody keeps changing octave/register (at times between every note) and creates an intricate ballet between the pianist's two hands that a listener should hear as one seamless flow. It's strange and it's beautiful.

(This isn't the recording I have, but it's not dissimilar in approach.)

And then there's the sixth and seventh Nocturnes, perhaps the greatest works in his piano output. The 7th is a piece I know how to play, and indeed it's one of my very favourite things to play. In the past I've often listened to them together, but in reverse order, with the darker, struggling 7th finding a peaceful resolution before the 6th takes its beautiful, dream-like flight.

They make a lovely pair, but they also represent what is, at least in the piano music, something of a turning point. In early Faure, the melodies soar easily. In late Faure, the melodies often don't soar at all, but instead crawl doggedly upwards.  Here in the middle it feels like the music is just beginning to forget how to take flight. And the results are some wonderfully complex music.

May 2013 - Popular Music

...And there are no entries.

Which doesn't mean I didn't listen to any popular music whatsoever. I did. It was just very fragmentary, and didn't consist of whole albums. The works that generate entries on this list.

I can report, for example, that my occasional total obsession with the Tori Amos B-side 'Honey' resurfaced.  That opening (and recurring) bass line is one of the most persistent ear-worms that I know. It can lodge in my head for days at a time.

And then there's this song from Glee...

Yes, I have, gradually, become a Gleek. The show is awfully hit-and-miss, but sometimes the 'hits' send shivers up my spine.

And it's also true that usually when I go and compare a Glee version to the original, I can see in hindsight how the Glee version has become too smooth and sugary and is lacking a little life underneath the surface.  But THIS time, when I went to listen to the original again, I concluded that Glee had unearthed an incredibly beautiful and clever melody and rescued it from the excessive production that had originally drowned it.

The song, by the way, is called "Let Me Love You (Until You Learn To Love Yourself)". The original version is by Ne-Yo.

The reason I keep returning to this song over and over is that melody, specifically in the verses. It's ingenious. It's a syncopated rhythm that is so simple, and yet so effective in the way that it steps up and down, avoiding the beat most of the time. It's exactly the kind of construction of music from the smallest building blocks that delights me.

April 2013 - Classical Music

[Note: I wrote much of this post several months ago, but then haven't been in a position to finish it until now. The normal levels of patchy service will now be resumed.] 
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Bach, J.S. - French Suite No.4
Beethoven - Mass in C major
Dvorak - String Quartet No.7
Faure - La bonne chanson
Haydn - Symphony No.99
Holmboe

• String Quartets 1 to 20
• Symphony No.5
• Chamber Symphonies 1 and 3
• Violin Sonata No.2 

Janacek - Capriccio, 'Defiance'
Liszt - Festklänge (Festival Sounds)
Poulenc

• Three Pastorales
• Valse-Improvisation on the name of Bach
• Melancolie

Well, it happened again.  I went completely and utterly Holmboe-crazy.

It might only take a few lines in the above list, but the focus of that craziness was the complete series of numbered string quartets.  No sooner had I listened to the last 4 works (which form a sort of a group) that I impulsively decided I wanted to listen to all of them, in chronological order, to get a better grasp of the music.

So I did. Over most of the month of April.

No sooner had I finished this that I decided I wanted to listen to all 20 of them again, this time not in chronological order, to further develop my sense of the individual works.  I polished off a dozen of them in about 36 hours, before slowing down and listening to the rest a few days later.

At the start of this Holmboe frenzy I was also listening to a few other works, and along the way the 3rd chamber symphony marked the point where I had finally listened to all of the Holmboe discs I bought last year (having expanded my total collection from 6 discs - the symphonies - to 17).  I already have my eye on about half a dozen more.

Those quartets are quite a body of work. They span 36 years of creative output, and that's starting from when Holmboe was already 40 years old! I won't pretend to love them all equally, but I didn't get tired of listening.

Favourites? Well no.11, subtitled ''Rustico", is probably top of the list and it's about the only quartet that could really be called happy.  I've also got an instinctive soft spot for no.2 and no.7.

I listened to a Haydn symphony after I heard that the conductor Sir Colin Davis had died, because it's his set of the 'London' symphonies that introduced me to that music and also it's the only set of Davis recordings I own. I now know that he's considered to have left a greater legacy with some other recordings, but I'm pretty happy just from having that one slice of lovely, warm-hearted music-making from him.

April 2013 - Popular Music

Bat for Lashes - The Haunted Man
Gomez -  How We Operate
Jars of Clay - Redemption Songs
Roisin Murphy - Ruby Blue

Not a lot of pop music listening this month (the reason for which will be apparent when I complete the post on classical music).  Two of the four albums are 'new'.  Gomez' album was another one of the pop albums I bought last year and put aside (like the Jars of Clay one).  The Bat for Lashes was a genuinely new purchase of an album that only came out last year - the one on the Christmas and birthday shopping list that I didn't receive for Christmas or my birthday, so eventually went out and bought myself.

How We Operate was in fact the first Gomez album I ever heard - or rather some portions of it were the first bits of Gomez music that I heard.  I had come across the name of the band before, but it was a podcast, of all things, that made me more curious in 2006. "Of all things" because the total number of podcasts I've ever listened to can probably still be measured in single digits.

The podcast was from Bob Lefsetz, a person in the American music industry who it seems is somewhat polemical.  The reason I was even listening to any episodes of his podcast had to do with Tori Amos (how surprising), but somehow he got my attention talking about and praising this band that, in his view, had not really played by the usual record company rules. It is perhaps worth noting that How We Operate was their first album after being dropped by a major label.

But I didn't buy the album. The reason I didn't buy it was because a very short time later I was browsing through the local second-hand CD store (which is now, 7 years later, entirely lacking in CDs) and came across a 3-disc set of Gomez' previous three albums.  Issued by their former record company. Nothing guarantees the release of your old material in a cheaper format than leaving the record company. Just ask Radiohead.

I of course took the opportunity to acquire 3 albums from a band I had become interested in at around $20 rather than buy 1 album for that price or more.  But it took a long, long time to really delve into those albums.  The roots of the band are perhaps in blues, but Gomez' music is not entirely straightforward.  More than anything else it is eclectic.  With several singers and songwriters, and also it seems to me an innate musical curiosity, some of their songs can initially sound like they were put together by a slightly mad bird that picked up shiny things in the area.

But the great success of the band is that it works.  The changes of pace and of texture are not, in the end, something totally random.  There is coherent structure behind the aural surprises.  It just took me a while to really grasp this.  Multiply that experience by 3 albums, and the cheap box I found lasted me a long time.

It wasn't until 2011 that I went back and bought Gomez' first album Bring It On, which brought them critical acclaim but which to me (as I've previously mentioned in this blog) lacks some of the controlled skill of the following albums.  And now, finally, I am back at album number 5.  The band itself has progressed to album number 7 in the meantime.

How We Operate is clearly mellower than what went before it.  Reactions to this appear to have varied enormously.  Those that want a band to stay young and brash and vibrant forevermore seem to have moaned that Gomez had started to 'lose it' by now.  I suffer no such desire. I'm not even sure I suffered that kind of desire back when I was a teenager.  Perhaps this is what a classical music education does to you. You realise that music doesn't have to be young and hip and fresh to be good.

I think that How We Operate is good. Frankly it's a bit too early to tell. The whole point with Gomez is that it takes a long time to peel back the layers, and I don't think I'm nearly familiar enough with the album yet to work out how it will stand up to the other albums in the long term.  But I suspect I will enjoy finding out.

So why am I writing this enormous long post about an album I'm not prepared to comment on much?

Because I only listened to 4 pop albums this month. That's why...

...and also, because I've lived with the idea of this album, sitting quietly in the back of my head, for almost 7 years. That's quite a while to be mentally in future possession of an album before finally acquiring and listening to it.  Actually hearing it is a significant marker in my musical journey.

March 2013 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S. - French Suite No.2
Barber - Violin Concerto
Beethoven - Piano Sonata No.26
Beethoven - Sextet for Horns and String Quartet
Bridge

• The Sea
• Dance Poem
• Summer
• The Pageant of London
• Where she lies asleep
• Love went a-riding

Chopin

• Impromptu No.1
• Berceuse
• Waltzes, opuses 69 and 70 (published posthumously)

Dvorak - String Quartets 3 and 13
Faure

• La bonne chanson
• Cinq mélodies 'de Venise'
• Valse-caprice No.3
• Shylock suite (piano version)
• En prière

Holmboe

• String Quartets 15, 17, 18, 19 and 20
• Quartetto Sereno (completed by Nørgård)
• Haiduc (Marauders)
• Reminiscences for solo violin

Janacek - Mládi (Youth)
Liszt - Les Preludes
Messiaen - Quartet for the End of Time
Poulenc

• Villageoises
• Presto in B flat
• Two intermezzi
• Intermezzo in A flat

 I think the investment in the music of Frank Bridge is beginning to pay off.

Not that I haven't 'quite liked' the earlier works.  But as I've moved through the orchestral music chronologically, I've now hit a piece that truly satisfied me.  That piece was the Dance Poem.  Hopefully there will be more works that I appreciate to the same extent as I continue, ever so slowly, to explore this repertoire.

Conversely, I'm beginning to give up on Liszt a little bit. There's a lot of incident in these symphonic poems, but it's not often that I feel like all those incidents add up to some genuine, structural drama. I've no doubt that I will go back and try all of these works again at some point, but out of all the purchases I made in the 2nd half of last year, the Liszt symphonic poems are probably the ones least likely to make me feel like I want to have a second listen soon after the first.

Well, except for the early Dvorak quartets.  The later ones are very good. The first few are a bit like the Liszt - lots of nice tunes, but not a lot else.

The work I probably spent the most time listening to this month was Faure's La bonne chanson, and here I'm still puzzled.  Here is one of my very favourite composers, here is what is considered one of his great masterpieces... and I didn't really respond to it all that well.  Is it me? The performance? The fact that the song cycle is insanely complex and I just haven't grasped it all yet?

I did try. I tried a lot. I listened to the songs separately and as a complete cycle. I did it reading the words (knowing little French) and putting the booklet aside to focus on the music.  And while I admired a great deal, I never really fell in love with it.

Which is damned odd. This is Faure we're talking about. I obsess over his music at times.  And I enjoyed the Five Venetian Melodies quite a lot - same composer, same poet, written only a year or two earlier.  I also know that within the few years after La bonne chanson, Faure wrote the 3 piano pieces that convinced me of his genius in the first place.

The difference in my attitude is instructive. With Dvorak (and to a lesser extent Bridge), I put my weak response down to Dvorak's relative immaturity.  With Liszt, I put another work on the pile of Liszt mediocrities.  But with Faure, I'm determined to get to the bottom of the mystery of why he hasn't made me ecstatic.

March 2013 - Popular Music

Tori Amos - To Venus and Back (studio disc)
Tori Amos - audience bootleg, Dallas 29 September 1999 
Kate Bush - Lionheart
Marc Cohn - The Rainy Season
Counting Crows - August and Everything After
Gavin DeGraw - Chariot
Bryan Duncan - Mercy
Peter Gabriel - So
Genesis - We Can't Dance
Gotye - Making Mirrors
Incubus - Make Yourself
Jars of Clay - Redemption Songs
Jars of Clay - Good Monsters
Billy Joel - River of Dreams
Radiohead - In Rainbows
Something for Kate - Echolalia
Something for Kate - Leave Your Soul to Science
Talk Talk - The Colour of Spring

The new entry in here was Redemption Songs.  A not entirely new purchase - one of several pop albums that I bought around about the same time as the classical music avalanche I keep referring to, and put aside for later. Plus, of course, it was released in 2005 so I am performing my frequent trick of buying albums most people have stopped talking about.

There is, or perhaps was (as I'm not really up on the last several years) an interesting trend in Christian contemporary music that really blurs the boundaries between participatory, worship-style music you'd find in a church setting and performance-style music you'd expect an audience to hear in concert or buy on CD.  I say 'trend' partly because there did seem to be a distinct wave of bands releasing worship-style music, at a time a few years back when I was listening to Christian radio enough to notice. (My loss of touch with Christian radio is at least partly a function of my loss of touch with radio generally.)

Redemption Songs is definitely part of that 'trend'.  It generally consists of old words - probably old hymns although I'm not completely certain in some cases whether these were hymns or only poems - set to newer music. Or in the case of some old hymns (definitely this time), some new music has been added to the old.  The liner notes refer to the band's hope of carving out 'a new tradition of church music'.  It's a particularly Christian take on doing a musical crossover.

(There is some cheating involved in the concept here. Based on the credits, there are at least a couple of songs where the music hasn't been updated.)

It's an interesting idea. To my ears, however, most of this doesn't sound terribly 'new' at all. It sounds old. The words sound like the words of another generation, and the music does nothing to bring it forward.

The funny thing is, though, that not only do about a third of the tracks succeed in having a more modern sensibility, the successes are generally the songs that Jars of Clay themselves provided all the music for (and conversely, the Jars of Clay-composed songs are generally successful).  If the album is not an especially great listen, it isn't because the idea behind it was bad, it's because the idea wasn't pushed hard enough and worked on more.

Or maybe that's just my ears.  Maybe they wanted it to sound 'old'.  Maybe the target audience wasn't the Christian contemporary music fan base, but the more traditional American churchgoers that eye CCM as some kind of bad compromise with the devil (seriously, some of the things you can read about it on the internet are... not complimentary).  Maybe for some people this was one of the few favoured 'pop' albums that they could tolerate.

Then again, they did release one of the self-composed, modern sounding songs as the single.

February 2013 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S.- Ärgre dich, o Seele, nicht (Do not vex yourself, my soul)
Beethoven - Piano Sonatas 24 and 25
Dvorak - String Quartet No.13
Holmboe - String Quartet No.11, 'Rustico'
Janacek

• Violin Sonata
• Romance for violin and piano
• Dumka for violin and piano

Poulenc

• Suite pour piano
• Theme varie
• Improvisations 11 and 12

For anyone who bothers to follow this blog closely (ie, myself), the most notable thing here is the completion of my Bach cantata box.  In fits and starts, it took me almost 11 months to listen to 34 new works.  Of course I may have been slowed down by the avalanche of other new works I purchased despite having 10 new discs of Bach to listen to!

The amazing thing, though, is how many more of these cantatas Bach wrote.  This chronological survey has only taken me into the first couple of months of the peak period, where for several years he was producing a new work most weeks.

I am already seeing if I can find the next box in the series.  It's hard to come by so I may have to buy the discs separately.

Elsewhere, Beethoven continues to prove himself consistently as I sporadically work through his chronology (or at least his opus numbers).  These piano sonatas reminded me that he isn't given enough credit for being a lyrical composer, or a light-hearted one.  Yes, he can be incredibly dramatic and part of the reason for his reputation is that he created music with an astonishing muscularity, but that's not the only quality his music possesses.  The piano sonata (no.24) in F sharp major has an exceptionally lovely first movement that sings and caresses rather than confronts.

February 2013 - Popular Music

Tori Amos - Little Earthquakes
Tori Amos - Under the Pink
Missy Higgins - The Ol' Razzle Dazzle
John Mayer - Born and Raised
Something for Kate

• Beautiful Sharks
• Echolalia
• The Official Fiction
• Desert Lights
• Leave Your Soul to Science
• Shotgun Karaoke EP

Thrice - The Alchemy Index

As can be seen, I went completely nuts for Something for Kate during February.

The reason was the ongoing transformation in my reaction to the new album, Leave Your Soul to Science.  In my entry for January I consciously stopped at the end of January in terms of my reaction, because (being rather tardy in my blogging... as I am again now) I was well aware that over the first couple of weeks of February I had completely fallen in love with the album and scarcely listened to anything else... except other Something for Kate albums.  And then I just shuffled them all together into a giant celebration-of-SFK playlist.

I simply could get enough of the soaring, intense melodies and Paul Dempsey's glorious voice.

Different songs on Leave Your Soul came forward at different points, as some took longer to appreciate than others. Although, even on an album that's quite strong throughout, tracks 2 through 6 represent a golden patch.  Five songs that are as diverse representations of this band as you're likely to get, but on different days in February each one of them became something that would get completely stuck in my head or have me pressing repeat or have me just living and breathing every moment of the music as I listened, feeling transported.

The fact that music can do that is, well, wonderful. Uplifting. Just like this...

January 2013 - Classical Music

Nada.

Not a thing.

I don't believe that's happened since I started the blog, although it's entirely possible it's happened before. I certainly go through periods of not listening to classical music.  But this was a major dry patch which lasted for at least 6 or 7 weeks.

And I wasn't happy about it.  Yes, part of it was during a holiday, and I knew full well that I wouldn't be listening to classical music in that period as I didn't take any on my iPhone, and thought it unlikely I would be in the right mood.  But then I came back, and I still just couldn't get 'settled'.  There was something of a vicious circle between not being in the right calm mental space for classical music, and being in an agitated mental space partly because I wasn't listening to classical music.

For the record, I finally broke the drought a couple of weeks into February by listening to 5 minutes of Janacek.

January 2013 - Popular Music

Missy Higgins - The Ol' Razzle Dazzle

Maroon 5 - Holiday Gift

John Mayer - Heavier Things

John Mayer - Born and Raised

Ed Sheeran - Holiday Gift

Something for Kate - Leave Your Soul to Science

The xx - The xxmas single

iTunes was in a giving mood over Christmas with 'The 12 days of iTunes', so during January I dutifully listened to the music freebies.  The Maroon 5 one was fairly pathetic. Of the other 2 artists, who were both little more than names to me, the offering from The xx was reasonable and the Ed Sheeran one (3 live tracks) was rather good.  If these things are essentially advertising to get people interested in an artist's work, than Ed's campaign has succeeded. 

Apart from that, it's not so much that I didn't listen to a lot of music (although there was a holiday during which listening was minimal), it's more that when I did listen it was largely to the same things a lot.  The continuation of post-Christmas Missy Higgins and John Mayer was eventually terminated very late in the month by Something for Kate's 'new' album, which came out in the second half of 2012.

The first 3 days of listening to Leave Your Soul to Science were a gradual process, moving from "oh, that sounds a bit different to normal SFK..." to "I think I like this" to "I'm falling in love with this".  I mean, there's probably some element of that with most albums, but it's particularly the case when an artist has shifted their sound, and Something for Kate have definitely done that.  Although in some ways this is not so much a shift as a broadening. There's a wider range of sounds and styles than ever before.

Some of my initial unease was probably generated by the very first track, 'Star-Crossed Citizens', which completely threw me on the first several listens.  Just who thought up those pulsing guitars in the chorus, I don't know, but it sounds very odd... until you finally notice the beautiful melody that's floating over the top of that noise.

There's plenty of other oddities as well. 'The Kids Will Get The Money' sounds like it's a bit repetitive and not going anywhere... and then your perception shifts and you realise that being a broad soundscape is the whole point.  Some songs seem too straightforward and then all of a sudden they aren't. Others seem too breezily tuneful and then after enough listens you find you're addicted to the turns of the melody.

That's all I'm going to say about it for the moment, because that was the impression from the first few days of listening, in January.

December 2012 - Classical Music

Beethoven - Piano Sonata No.24
Bridge - Five Entr'actes from 'The Two Hunchbacks'
Bridge - Coronation March
Dvorak - String Quartet No.9
Faure - Dolly
Faure (arranger) - Il est né, le divin enfant
Liszt - Dante Symphony

And that was it. Oh dear.

Look, December is a funny month. As already mentioned in this month's pop entries, there's Christmas preparations, not to mention pre-Christmas parties. And... well, looking at what I listened to in December 2011, I'm about to look stupid for saying this, but this time around I just wasn't in the mood for the exploration of new serious music. Mentally, I had switched off from this kind of thing.

I don't even really remember much about what I did listen to, to be honest. Not even something has large as the Dante Symphony.  Essentially it was 2 of Liszt's mildly interesting symphonic poems strung together.  Oh dear, should I be saying such things?

I think the Dvorak was nice...

Year in Review

Only 324 different recordings listened to this year, compared to last year's 438.  That's rather surprising to me.  Both the pop and classical numbers are down.  Did I actually listen to less music? That honestly seems unlikely! Did I spend more time listening to the same things repeatedly?  In the case of the classical music I find that plausible because of how much new music I bought, but then I bought lots of new music the previous year as well.

Yes, okay, this year I bought even more - but more importantly perhaps more of it was tougher or more challenging music.  As much as I adore Holmboe, most of his pieces take multiple listens to digest.  With Bach's cantatas I was unearthing an entire new genre, and the mere fact that both my Bach and Faure purchases were vocal meant I had to find time to sit down and read as I listened.  My German is from years ago in high school and my French is almost non-existent.

I'm generally pretty happy with the results, though.  I'm not sure how many personal favourites I've unearthed, but the gambles I made with new music have tended to pay off.

I just have to keep going until I get through it all at least once...

December 2012 - Popular Music

Tori Amos

• Boys for Pele
• from the choirgirl hotel
• Abnormally Attracted to Sin

Kate Bush - Never for Ever
Crowded House - Temple of Low Men
Electric Light Orchestra - The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra
Gomez - In Our Gun
Gomez - Split the Difference
Missy Higgins - The Ol' Razzle Dazzle
Elton John - Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy
John Mayer - Born and Raised
Moloko - Do You Like My Tight Sweater?
Pearl Jam - Backspacer

December isn't the easiest month for sitting around and listening to music.  Okay, it doesn't have to be "sitting around", but it does have to be a mental space where I can spend time in one place or on one task for the length of time an album lasts.  December tends to have a lot of rushing around - getting ready for Christmas, trying to plan holidays (sometimes), and trying to get things done at work when people said it would be done 'this year' and they suddenly realise that the year is almost over.

The most notable listening would have been in the week after Christmas. Not only the time and space for it with a week off, but 2 new albums as presents, both of which I'd had my eye on since they were released mid-year.

One was Missy Higgins' first album for several years.  I also think in some ways it may be her best. What's striking about The Ol' Razzle Dazzle is how melodic and 'catchy' it is.  There's something deeply ironic about opening an album with a smooth-sounding song about having writer's block, but that's exactly what 'Set Me On Fire' is. Mind you, the lyrics do say it was the lyrics that were the trouble, not the melody.  There are plenty of other songs with tunes that stick in the brain. The more I listened to this record in the period after Christmas, the more I enjoyed it.

I haven't listened to John Mayer's Born and Raised as much, but it also seems to be a pretty solid album. It has a very relaxed feel to it. Everything from the artwork to the lyrics makes it clear what kind of album you're supposed to be listening to, and while I won't claim to be any kind of expert on Americana it seems to tick all the right boxes.

Perhaps it's relative weakness is that 'ticking boxes' is often all that it does. Quite a lot of the songs seem quite safe in a way. However, you then hit something like 'Walt Grace's Submarine Test, January 1967' which is utterly magical and, as a piece of storytelling, completely unlike anything else Mayer has done.  As he himself seems to recognise in an interview I watched.

Year in Review

Only 116 albums listened to this year, down from 134 last year in the space of the 10 months I kept records for. I'm not sure if that means I listened to less pop music, or listened to the same things more often.  Certainly, things like my dedicated Tori Amos and Joni Mitchell sessions would have lessened the variety.  I haven't yet looked at the classical statistics, but I do suspect that there were periods of the year where I was very classically focused - if only to churn through the massive number of purchases.

New pop albums are comparatively sparse in comparison. New Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, the aforementioned Missy Higgins and John Mayer Christmas presents, Sting's Live in Berlin (still haven't tried the CD version of that yet!) newish Gotye and Washington, very old David Bowie, newly purchased but already familiar Bryan Duncan and Beth Orton.

There are actually several more purchases that I haven't even listened to yet.  Which I plan to soon, although I've also become reminded recently of a couple of things I purchased years ago and haven't unwrapped. It does happen, and sometimes it's nice to just put something aside for that day when I'm in mood for new music and I'm not in the mood to actually wade through completely unknown artists.

November 2012 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S.

• Herr, gehe nicht ins Gericht mit deinem Knecht (Lord, do not enter into judgement with your servant)
• Ihr Menschen, rühmet Gottes Liebe (You people, glorify God's love)
• Siehe zu, daß deine Gottesfurcht nicht Heuchelei sei (Make sure that your fear of God is not hypocrisy)

Barber - First Essay for Orchestra
Barber - Songs, opus 13
Beethoven

• Symphonies 5 and 6
• Cello Sonata No.3
• Violin Concerto (2nd movement)
• Ah! perfido
• Variations on 'Maedchen oder Weibchen' for cello and piano

Bridge

• Isabella
• Dance Rhapsody
• Suite for Strings

Dvorak - String Quartets 2 and 6
Dvorak - Allegro appassionato for string quartet
Faure - Songs, opuses 46 and 51
Faure / Messager - Souvenirs de Bayreuth
Holmboe

• String Quartets 6 and 9
• Violin Sonata No.3
• Svaerm (Swarm), string quartet version
• Ballata
• Quartetto, op.90

Janacek - String Quartets 1 and 2
Janacek - Violin Sonata
Liszt - Mazeppa
Liszt - Hamlet
Poulenc

• 3 Pieces for piano
• Nocturnes
• Humoresque

Vivaldi

• Gloria, RV 589 with introduction Ostro picta
• Gloria, RV 588 with introduction Jubilate, o amoeni chori
• Credo in E minor

Almost the same list of composers as the previous month, as I continued to plow my way through the recent purchases.  But that makes it sound like a chore. It isn't, and in fact if it starts feeling that way I stop for a while and switch to something else (often in the pop music world).

Holmboe continues to fascinate and delight. With my raft of different recordings, I deliberately chose this month to listen to a group of works that are quite close together chronologically - the third violin sonata is opus 89, the quartet for flute, violin, viola and cello is opus 90, and string quartet no.9 is opus 92.  They do have different moods to a certain extent, although I confess that over a month later I can't clearly remember the details.  My vague memory is that it was actually the Ballata, or ballad, for piano quartet that was the most distinctive piece from this list.

Janacek continues to bring a lot of rewards, and I'm definitely glad about making that particular purchase even though I'm only about 1.5 discs through a 5-disc set.

And then there's Faure... I only listened to 2 sets of songs this month, but that included Clair de lune (Moonlight), considered one of the great songs not only of Faure but of French composers generally.  And I think it lives up to is reputation. The match between poetry (by Verlaine) and musical style is a really good one, and it doesn't surprise me that Faure continued to use Verlaine's poetry quite a bit in the years after this.

Which is not to say that the other songs around this period are bad. Far from it. I rather like Les presents (The Gifts), Moonlight's far less famous stablemate, and Spleen (another Verlaine poem) with its pattern of raindrops made an impression on me, and Au cimetiere (At the Cemetery) has plenty of power (I always do go for the really dark ones...).  But even in that company, Claire de lune does stand out as something pretty special.

Frankly, if you don't have the words in front of you/speak fluent French, it's not quite the same. And the picture of wolves is completely wrong for a song about courtiers dancing - unless it's a commentary on the intrigues of court? Unlikely. But what the heck.

November 2012 - Popular Music

Tori Amos

• Boys for Pele
• Midwinter Graces
• Night of Hunters
• Gold Dust

Fiona Apple – The Idler Wheel…

Sheryl Crow – The Globe Sessions

Bryan Duncan – Mercy

Gomez – Liquid Skin

Gomez – In Our Gun

Gotye – Making Mirrors

Patty Griffin – Flaming Red

Ray LaMontagne – Til the Sun Turns Black

Joni Mitchell – Dog Eat Dog

Nichole Nordeman – Woven & Spun

Radiohead – Kid A

Radiohead – The King of Limbs

Something for Kate – The Official Fiction

Tears for Fears – The Seeds of Love

Rachael Yamagata – Elephants… Teeth Sinking Into Heart


Production of this post was delayed due to technical difficulties. And now that I've copied November's list across, I've been struggling with getting the formatting to its normal state and I still don't think it's quite right...

...which is a way of delaying for a few lines the realisation that I'm not entirely sure what to say about this particular collection of music that I listened to.

One thought is that The King of Limbs still hasn't grabbed me the way that a Radiohead album should, or normally does.  It seems rather insubstantial. And that's not simply a function of length, although it's easier for a brief 8-track album to feel insubstantial than a sprawling 20-track one. It's also a result of several of those tracks not yet convincing me that they live up to the usual standards of Radiohead.

Having completed my Joni odyssey, I promptly went back and listened to Dog Eat Dog again. One of the main reasons for that was my enjoyment the first time around. Despite it's poor reputation, it seems to me to be a fairly good album. It's certainly not a happy one, lyrically, which I suspect is one of the reasons it's disliked.  But while it is somewhat heavy-handed, it actually comes across as far less miserable than the more recent album Shine - and yes, I do realise that's a comparison that no-one in the 1980s was in a position to make.

And rounding out the commentary on albums that are either underappreciated by me or underappreciated by others is Patty Griffin's Flaming Red.  A music blogger that I highly respected really disliked this album, Patty's second, for being so unlike her debut. While I understand where he was coming from, and agree there are some missteps that 'aren't really Patty', hindsight has shown that Patty does sometimes like to head into rock territory, and some of the noisiest songs on Flaming Red are among the best. The wild squall of the title track doesn't sound so out of place now as it did when I first heard it, and neither does the sleazy sound of 'Wiggley Fingers'.  But it's the longest song, 'Mary', that is also one of the most quintessential Patty Griffin songs in her catalogue.  This is what she brings so often, the aching gap between heavenly aspirations and earthbound realities, but this time the lyrics make it explicit.

Hope you like it.