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.

April 2011 - Popular Music

Right, time for the next exciting instalment!

Tori Amos

• Under the Pink
• Boys for Pele
• Scarlet's Walk
• Abnormally Attracted to Sin
• Audience bootlegs - Phoenix 19 November 2001, San Diego 20 November 2001 (1st show)

The Badloves - Get On Board
Boom Crash Opera - Boom Crash Opera
Kate Bush - Lionheart
Kate Bush - The Sensual World
Toni Childs - House of Hope
City on a Hill (project) - Sing Alleluia
Frou Frou - Details
Patty Griffin - Downtown Church
Incubus - Make Yourself
Elton John - Madman Across the Water
Nik Kershaw - The Works
Nik Kershaw - To be Frank
Joni Mitchell - Night Ride Home
Moloko - I Am Not A Doctor
Roisin Murphy - Overpowered
Powderfinger - Vulture Street
Radiohead - The King of Limbs
Seal - Seal [1991]
Seal - Human Being
Something for Kate - Beautiful Sharks
Sting - The Dream of the Blue Turtles
Thrice - The Alchemy Index (complete)

So much music (considerably more than last month), and so little space in which to discuss it...

Abnormally Attracted to Sin officially becomes the first album to make multiple appearances, although it's by no means the first album I listened to more than once.

I've already noticed this blog affecting my listening in ways I didn't intend.  Suddenly I find myself thinking 'oh, I can't listen to that, I listened to it last month'.  Well, why the hell not?  It's as if I think people will be bored or roll their eyes if the list has repetitions.  Whereas I seem perfectly happy to listen to something multiple times within a month, because 'no-one will know'.

The new Radiohead album happened to be an April 1 purchase.  Yes, I waited for it to come out on CD, I'm quaint like that.  I don't know exactly how many times I listened to the album, but it was in fairly high rotation the first couple of weeks as I got to know it.  The very first listen didn't give me a favourable impression, particularly for the first 3 tracks, but then that frequently happens.  Music that's complex and interesting enough to sustain my interest in the long term is often too complex to be grasped the first time around.  The opening track in particular is something that takes some unpicking.

House of Hope was the very first CD I ever owned.  In fact, I got it for Christmas before I even had a CD player, as it was known I was getting the player for my birthday.  I still find it a satisfying album, nearly 20 years later.  Age has not wearied it.  I still have the CD player as well, although it's beginning to detiorate a bit and the cassette unit is shot to pieces.

No Australian acts last month, but I seem to have made up for it this time around with a healthy dose of Australian rock.  The Badloves (okay, they're not so rock), Boom Crash Opera, Powderfinger and Something for Kate all got some airplay.

Of those, SFK would definitely be my personal favourite.  Why they haven't had more success is beyond me.  Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Paul Dempsey's lyrics frequently involve sentences that go for 3 or 4 lines, and that kind of stream-of-consciousness isn't something that fits with the easy, disposable qualities that radio requires.