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 - 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.

May 2011 - Popular Music

Tori Amos

• Boys for Pele
• To Venus and Back (studio disc - 'venus orbiting')
• Strange Little Girls
• American Doll Posse
• Audience bootleg - Canberra 16 September 2007

Blur - The Best of
Toni Childs - House of Hope
Melanie C - Northern Star
Sheryl Crow - The Globe Sessions
dc Talk - Jesus Freak
Gomez - In Our Gun
Patty Griffin - Impossible Dream
Jennifer Knapp - The Way I Am
Lifehouse - No Name Face
Wendy Matthews - Ghosts
John Mayer - Continuum
Joni Mitchell - The Hissing of Summer Lawns
Joni Mitchell - Don Juan's Reckless Daughter
Pearl Jam - No Code
Radiohead - The King of Limbs
Something for Kate - The Official Fiction
Sting - Brand New Day
Talk Talk - The Colour of Spring
Talk Talk - Spirit of Eden
Thrice - The Alchemy Index

Almost exactly 20 years ago, someone passed on to me the idea that you have a real library when there are books in it that you've never read.

Arguably I'm trying to negate that idea with this whole concept of keeping track of what I've listened to and ferreting out over time the albums that are hiding away.  But I would certainly subscribe to a couple of related ideas: you have a real music library when there are things in it that you haven't heard for so long that they can feel fresh.  And also, you have a real music library when you can find something to tap into a specific mood when you need to.

Both of those ideas were nicely demonstrated when I listened to The Official Fiction towards the end of the month.  Of the four Something for Kate albums I own, I would usually rate it as my least favourite.  As a result I hadn't listened to it for quite some time - looking at the list of track names before I played it, I found that only about half of them, maybe less, triggered a specific musical recollection.  To use a visual metaphor, the album is very brightly lit - it's full of major keys, and strings, and harmonies in thirds.  It's lit to the point where the shadows are washed out by overexposure.  My recollection of the album as a whole was that the sense of melody becomes a bit too much.

But last weekend, I was in a mood where it was exactly the right thing.  I had an 'aha' moment when I finally identified it as the one CD out of the hundreds in my house that would hit the right emotional spot, because of the unique combination of SFK's trademark earnestness and intensity with this album's particular 'brightness'.  I played The Official Fiction quite a lot over the course of a few days.

Another demonstration of the richness of a large library was No Code, which I bought in February 2010 but hadn't really got to know.  Pearl Jam are a good example of how I respond to some artists, where I know I like them but want them to make me fall in love, and they never quite do.  Actually, in Pearl Jam's case they did manage it once, with Vs.  Ever since then I've dipped into other albums in the hope of them achieving something similar.

So, when I bought No Code second-hand, listened to it once or twice and wasn't blown away, my initial reaction was to mentally sigh just a little and file it away with the other reasonably satisfying Pearl Jam albums that usually get passed over in favour of Vs.  But picking it up again this month with more focus, I started to like it quite a lot.  Where Vs thrilled me with its tightness (especially 'Animal', which is the song that turned me into a fan and which I still think is one of the most brilliant sub-3 minute songs I've ever heard), No Code is a much looser and relaxed affair.  It twists and turns in unexpected directions, and I enjoyed myself once I let the odd excursions wash over me with a sense of adventure.

Finally, another album I pulled out for the first time in at least a couple of years, maybe several more, was Jennifer Knapp's The Way I Am.  When this album came out in 2001 I was still in the closet and Jennifer was one of the rising stars of the contemporay Christian music scene.  Now I'm listening to it, and I'm out as a gay man and Jennifer is persona non grata to most of that scene because she's told the world that she's a lesbian and has been in a relationship since 2002.  It's hard not to listen and wonder how much of her struggle is present in the album - especially the title track.  It's also hard not to relate because her story has so many parallels with my own.

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.