Monday 24 April 2017

Popular Music - February 2017

Tori Amos - The Beekeeper
Toni Childs - House of Hope
Christine and the Queens - Christine and the Queens
Counting Crows - Recovering the Satellites
Sheryl Crow - The Globe Sessions
Peter Gabriel - Us
Gorillaz - Demon Days
Agnes Obel - Aventine
Megan Washington - There There

The popular music list is shrinking again... But it does include several albums that I apparently hadn't listened to in full for quite a long time.

And I kind of know why. Peter Gabriel's Us has never quite worked for me, though over time I've enjoyed it more. Some songs are excellent, but others are a bit dull, and I think the major problem is the flat production. You don't really notice the importance of production until you encounter a recording where it's a bit faulty.

Recovering the Satellites is sort of just... there. I actually quite like it when listening to it, but to date it hasn't made a strong impression (and I've owned it a fairly long time). I just don't remember the songs afterwards.

Demon Days on the other hand does make quite an impression. I guess it's just not the sort of music I want to listen to all that frequently. The first half is astonishingly good, with a series of songs cleverly sequenced so that the energy level keeps increasing. The second half falls away quite badly in comparison, although it does have a huge highlight in "Dare".



 

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