Bat for Lashes - Two Suns
Kate Bush - The Dreaming
Missy Higgins - The Sound of White
Radiohead - Amnesiac
Sting - Mercury Falling
Washington - There There
Rachael Yamagata - Chesapeake
Chesapeake is Rachael Yamagata sounding relatively bright and happy.
Apparently, this is something she has semi-apologised for, promising fans that her next album will go back to being dark and miserable. First of all I worry about any fans that complained about her music not sounding tortured enough, but hey, she wouldn't be the first artist to get that reaction. But she really shouldn't have apologised in any shape or form.
It's not actually that happy anyway. The lyrics still have plenty of angst in them, with failed or flawed relationships making regular appearances. The main difference is that the music has a bit of energy and bounce to it.
It also, as a consequence, has variety. Yamagata's previous album Elephants...Teeth Sinking Into Heart has some fine music, but it is also seriously flawed due to the lack of variation. As much as anything this is due to her failure to wrestle Elephants into a single album, as she instead delivered 2 discs with contrasting musical styles. But the longer, ballad-laden disc needed an injection of energy from its companion.
And so Chesapeake is actually a vast improvement as a listening experience. I can't by any means say I've come to grips with the album yet, as I only had a relatively brief period of listening to it in March before having to lay it aside, but all the early impressions were favourable. As an overall album, it might well be Yamagata's best yet.
Showing posts with label Rachael Yamagata. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rachael Yamagata. Show all posts
Wednesday, 13 May 2015
Monday, 4 July 2011
June 2011 - Popular Music
Tori Amos
The Badloves - Get On Board
Kate Bush - Never For Ever
Kate Bush - Hounds of Love
Tracy Chapman - Collection
Paula Cole - This Fire
The Corrs - Forgiven, Not Forgotten
Crowded House - Together Alone
Gomez - Split the Difference
Gotye - Like Drawing Blood
Sophie B. Hawkins - Whaler
Billy Joel - River of Dreams
Maroon 5 - Songs About Jane
Roisin Murphy - Ruby Blue
Beth Orton - Central Reservation
Pearl Jam - No Code
Pearl Jam - Binaural
Something for Kate - Desert Lights
Rachael Yamagata - Elephants... Teeth Sinking Into Heart
Various thoughts for this blog have zipped through my head at some point, here are the ones that stuck:
Billy Joel's River of Dreams was a second-hand purchase during the month. Many years ago I was relying on a cassette copy of this album, I think made from my sister's legitimate CD version. I hadn't listened to that copy for a long time, but I decided it was time to reacquaint myself with the album, and this time to do it the right way. I think the music has survived the passage of time pretty well. In particular, the album makes a fine transition from the more aggressive and bitter sounds on side one to the gentler side two.
It's also quite fascinating to hear the song 'Famous Last Words' after all this time. When it came out, everyone wondered whether it was Joel's way of saying he wouldn't make any more albums, and whether he'd stick to that. 18 years later, and he's been true to his word. Having run out of things he wanted to write music about, he stopped. Good on him.
The Pearl Jam exploration continues with a return to Binaural. I remember being excited by this one when I first listened to samples in a shop, something like a decade ago. However, it turns out to be a rather patchy affair. The biggest flaw is the production - rather ironically for an album with a name highlighting the special recording techniques used, the sound is often quite muddy and sucks the life out of many of the songs. 'Sleight of Hand' in particular drowns in a sea of murk.
I was inclined to blame new producer Tchad Blake, but then Wikipedia claimed that the band was actually dissatisfied with Blake's work and wanted the mixes to sound 'heavier', and so brought in their old producer. Judging from the final results, this was not a terribly smart move!
Rachael Yamagata is a wonderful artist that one of my American friends introduced me around 6-7 years ago. I just wish to God that she hadn't followed the exasperating trend of splitting her quieter and louder songs onto two separate discs. It makes no sense to me, musically, to reduce contrast in this way. Contrast means interest. It means the ear is attracted by something new. Music is fundamentally an art of judging the right balance between repetition and variation, and removing one of the options for variation tends to upset the balance.
I do listen to Elephants...Teeth Sinking Into Heart with the songs in the presented order, but this is one of those extremely rare examples where I've also created my own shuffled version with the faster songs interspersed through the work. In terms of pacing, the result arguably plays quite a lot like Yamagata's first album Happenstance, and that's certainly not a bad result in my book.
- Little Earthquakes
- From the Choirgirl Hotel
- Abnormally Attracted to Sin
- Audience bootlegs - San Diego 20 November 2001 (2nd show), Paris 27 November 2001, Amsterdam 28 November 2001, Brussels 1 December 2001 (plus someone's attempt at faking a recording of Hamburg 29 November 2001...)
The Badloves - Get On Board
Kate Bush - Never For Ever
Kate Bush - Hounds of Love
Tracy Chapman - Collection
Paula Cole - This Fire
The Corrs - Forgiven, Not Forgotten
Crowded House - Together Alone
Gomez - Split the Difference
Gotye - Like Drawing Blood
Sophie B. Hawkins - Whaler
Billy Joel - River of Dreams
Maroon 5 - Songs About Jane
Roisin Murphy - Ruby Blue
Beth Orton - Central Reservation
Pearl Jam - No Code
Pearl Jam - Binaural
Something for Kate - Desert Lights
Rachael Yamagata - Elephants... Teeth Sinking Into Heart
Various thoughts for this blog have zipped through my head at some point, here are the ones that stuck:
Billy Joel's River of Dreams was a second-hand purchase during the month. Many years ago I was relying on a cassette copy of this album, I think made from my sister's legitimate CD version. I hadn't listened to that copy for a long time, but I decided it was time to reacquaint myself with the album, and this time to do it the right way. I think the music has survived the passage of time pretty well. In particular, the album makes a fine transition from the more aggressive and bitter sounds on side one to the gentler side two.
It's also quite fascinating to hear the song 'Famous Last Words' after all this time. When it came out, everyone wondered whether it was Joel's way of saying he wouldn't make any more albums, and whether he'd stick to that. 18 years later, and he's been true to his word. Having run out of things he wanted to write music about, he stopped. Good on him.
The Pearl Jam exploration continues with a return to Binaural. I remember being excited by this one when I first listened to samples in a shop, something like a decade ago. However, it turns out to be a rather patchy affair. The biggest flaw is the production - rather ironically for an album with a name highlighting the special recording techniques used, the sound is often quite muddy and sucks the life out of many of the songs. 'Sleight of Hand' in particular drowns in a sea of murk.
I was inclined to blame new producer Tchad Blake, but then Wikipedia claimed that the band was actually dissatisfied with Blake's work and wanted the mixes to sound 'heavier', and so brought in their old producer. Judging from the final results, this was not a terribly smart move!
Rachael Yamagata is a wonderful artist that one of my American friends introduced me around 6-7 years ago. I just wish to God that she hadn't followed the exasperating trend of splitting her quieter and louder songs onto two separate discs. It makes no sense to me, musically, to reduce contrast in this way. Contrast means interest. It means the ear is attracted by something new. Music is fundamentally an art of judging the right balance between repetition and variation, and removing one of the options for variation tends to upset the balance.
I do listen to Elephants...Teeth Sinking Into Heart with the songs in the presented order, but this is one of those extremely rare examples where I've also created my own shuffled version with the faster songs interspersed through the work. In terms of pacing, the result arguably plays quite a lot like Yamagata's first album Happenstance, and that's certainly not a bad result in my book.
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