October 2012 - Popular Music

Tori Amos

• The Beekeeper
• Garlands (from The Beekeeper DVD)
• Gold Dust

Bryan Duncan - Mercy
Eskimo Joe - A Song Is A City
Patty Griffin - 1000 Kisses
Patty Griffin - Children Running Through
Missy Higgins - The Sound of White
Joni Mitchell - The Hissing of Summer Lawns
Tears for Fears - Raoul and the Kings of Spain

I finally completed the Joni Mitchell marathon, finishing with probably my favourite album.  I don't think it had the same impact as the equivalent Tori Amos listening exercise, simply because it was so much more spread out.  However, as well as listening to Hissing I did go back and listen to all the songs again, on shuffle, over the course of several days.

It certainly was interesting to hear the major shifts in Mitchell's voice, as well as the changes in style.  Another surprise was that some songs that I'm not very fond of seemed to work better when taken out of their usual album context.  One that particularly struck me was 'Lead Balloon' from Taming the Tiger, which frankly I usually think of as going down like a lead balloon.  For whatever reason, when it came on late in the shuffle I quite enjoyed it.

Bryan Duncan's Mercy has long been one of my favourite albums, and pretty close to my number one choice from the Christian contemporary music scene.  It's just that, until now, I've never owned a copy of it.  I can't even recall what brought it to mind during October, but after many years of thinking "I really ought to get that on CD", I snapped, logged onto eBay, and bought the first good-looking copy I found.

And it didn't let my memories down.  As far as I can gather, it was the biggest success of Bryan Duncan's career (the internet isn't so great at researching slightly obscure artists that were mostly operating in earlier decades), and as much as anything I think that's down to the darkness of the album.  Now, before anyone rushes out thinking they're going to get something seriously gloomy, I am talking in relative terms.  Duncan's music is naturally bright, sometimes even jokey.  But Mercy is the album where there's an added edge to the music, and to the subject matter. There are at least two songs that are about people having faced the tragedy of death - the tender 'You Don't Leave Me Lonely', and the utterly blazing 'Faithful to You' which is one of those rare songs that has such power that I can feel the need to play it several times in a row.  Like right now...

 And even the lighter moments on this album are mature and measured.  I certainly find it to be a satisfying listen, and I expect it will appear in the lists on this blog fairly regularly from now on.

June 2012 - Popular Music

Gotye - Making Mirrors
Joni Mitchell

• Blue
• Chalk Mark In A Rain Storm
• Taming the Tiger

Tears for Fears - The Seeds of Love

Technically, I was still going through the massive Tori Amos listening extravaganza in the first part of the month. But it wasn't in the form of albums, and for the purposes of this blog the relatively rare times that I engage in constructing short-term playlists or in pressing the 'shuffle' button don't count.  What's the point? How can anyone relate to the random results my particular iPhone created at a particular time?

After that, having done one career overview I decided to start on another using the same method, this time with Joni Mitchell. I haven't been going at the same pace, but it's pretty remarkable to jump from Taming the Tiger, released in 1998, back to Blue from 1971!

The latter is a fabulous album, one of Mitchell's best in my personal opinion.  Whereas something like Taming the Tiger is a real mix, with some great songs and some that really don't create any kind of response in me at all, or make me wince at how heavy-handed they are.  It's not simply a case of "old Joni is good and new Joni is bad", as my preferred albums are scattered throughout her career.  I expect that to hold up as I continue listening to all 17 studio albums.

It's interesting to note that because those albums are generally shorter than Tori Amos', it's Tori that has now released just a fraction more album music, in terms of both number of songs and in total timing.  But it's a very close run 'contest'.

And I do think they have a lot in common. Particularly in the sense of exploratory range, and that's really why I decided to do the same kind of career overview with Joni.  There's her early "folk" work, then the "jazz" phase, then after she well and truly went jazz in collaborating with Charles Mingus there's an abrupt shift to something more "pop" in the 80s followed by what I suppose is, ahem, slightly more "adult contemporary".  That one artist can navigate her way through all of that, especially with the quite radical changes in the tone and range of her voice, is a testament to her musical instincts.