September 2011 - Popular Music

Tori Amos

• From the Choirgirl Hotel
• To Venus and Back (studio disc)
• Scarlet's Walk
• The Beekeeper
• Night of Hunters
• Audience bootleg - Helsinki, 28 September 2011

Kate Bush - The Dreaming
Kate Bush - Aerial
Eskimo Joe - A Song Is A City
Peter Gabriel - So
Patty Griffin - 1000 Kisses
Janet Jackson - Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814
Sting - The Soul Cages
Talk Talk - It's My Life
Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Hey! This thing wasn't supposed to get this far out of date again! I drafted the list and never came back to writing something about what was on the list.

The list is short.  This is not simply because a new Tori Amos album dominated my listening... yes, yes, okay, I did listen to it quite a bit at times, but the list is also short because the pop/classical pendulum swung very much in the classical direction, for reasons that will be explained further once the classical post for September is up.  The fact that Tori's new album is itself very much in the classical direction only helped push the pendulum in that direction.

I did find time during the month to listen my 'official' favourite album of all time.  And no, it's not the Janet Jackson - which is something I hadn't listened to for ages and decided to load onto the iPhone for precisely the kind of reasons this blog exists, exploring the music collection.  The official number one is Sting's The Soul Cages.

This doesn't mean, by any stretch of the imagination, that I listen to it frequently.  It doesn't even mean that every time I listen to it I adore the experience.  It's part of the nature of music, in my view, that connection with any particular piece of music depends in part upon your emotional state when you listen to it, and while I'd like to think I'm not too bad at assessing what kind of music will 'work' for me at a particular time, there are no guarantees.

No, the number one slot was awarded, whenever it was I sat down and tried to create a ranking (far too long ago, a full revision is required rather than the occasional patching that tries to stuff extra albums into the list), because this was the album that, on the occasions when it DID connect, seemed to be most capable of providing a rich, immersive, complete experience.  Where the balance between songs contributing to the whole and songs providing their own individual areas of contrast seemed to work.  Where the sonic detail made every moment worth listening to ('Q Sound' is not just a gimmick, the album truly does sound exceptional on good equipment).

And frankly, I suspect the fact that an album with 9 tracks managed to have 2 tracks that I found totally overwhelming to the point of being physically affected was a major point in its favour.  Even having 1 track fitting that description is rare, I don't think any other has ever qualified for 2 spots on the list.  Not that there's an official list for that criterion.

Of course, thematically it's an utterly miserable album that's almost always either about water or death or both.  But hey, I respond to that kind of thing - at least, I do at times which is precisely why I don't listen to the album ALL the time.  If you don't ever respond to that kind of thing then I guess you wouldn't like it.  But if dark and moody is your thing and you've never heard The Soul Cages, I heartily recommend it.

Oh, and why am I talking about an album that came out 20 years ago (eek! I just realised this, it really IS 20 years ago now, and about 18 since I first heard it), instead of contributing to the avalanche of opinions about Night of Hunters?  Well, because I don't know just what I think about it yet. Not completely. I definitely do like it, a lot. But I'm still getting to know it and it also seems quite rich and immersive.  Anyway, most of what I think of it really developed in October, so talking about it in November about the September post would be cheating, wouldn't it? ;-)

PS Yes, I really did get to listen to a recording of a Tori Amos concert within a couple of days of the concert occurring.  From thousands of miles/kilometres away.  Ain't technology wonderful?

August 2011 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S. - Brandenburg Concerto No.4
Chopin - Barcarolle
Holmboe - Symphony No.5
Schubert - Piano Sonata in B flat, D.960
Simpson - Symphony No.10

Hmm. Well, this is where the difficult nature of August (remember the month of August??) shows itself.  Classical music listening disappeared for most of it.  Partly this was because of a couple of trips away and the relative difficulty of loading Classical works onto the iPhone properly - no I don't want to listen to a whole album in one go, etc etc.

Partly it was just because my stress levels never seemed to let me get back into the right kind of headspace.  It's interesting that I went for a bit of Robert Simpson.  His music is not exactly what you'd call restful.  Frequently very angular and above all it's quite dynamic, with a sense of propulsion.

That's probably true of the Holmboe symphony I went for, which I think is one of his most accessible and has a lot of rhythmic drive. Holmboe's 5th actually manages to remind me of Beethoven's 5th in some ways.  Which might make sense if somewhere in the history of the universe, someone reads this blog who's actually heard both...

August 2011 - Popular Music

Tori Amos

• Under the Pink
• Boys for Pele
• To Venus and Back (studio disc)
• Strange Little Girls
• Scarlet's Walk
• The Beekeeper
• Abnormally Attracted To Sin
• Midwinter Graces
• Scarlet's Hidden Treasures

Fiona Apple - When the Pawn...
Jimmy Barnes - Flesh and Wood
Kate Bush - Never for Ever
Kate Bush - The Red Shoes
Tim Corley - Anywhere But Here
The Dissociatives - The Dissociatives
David Gray - A New Day At Midnight
Patty Griffin - Impossible Dream
Missy Higgins - The Sound of White
Billy Joel - An Innocent Man
Billy Joel - River of Dreams
Nik Kershaw - Radio Musicola
Wendy Matthews - Lily
Wendy Matthews - Beautiful View
Joni Mitchell - For the Roses
Joni Mitchell - Shine
Moloko - Statues
Van Morrison - The Best of Van Morrison
Beth Orton - Daybreaker
Over the Rhine - Ohio
Pearl Jam - Backspacer
Pink - Greatest Hits... So Far!
Radiohead - The King of Limbs
Tears for Fears - The Seeds of Love
Thrice - The Alchemy Index
Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Wow. Did I really listen to all that?!

Okay yes, there is an enormous Tori Amos binge going on there. I basically had a phase of getting ready for her new album (Out Now!) by doing an overview of her previous body of work.  I'm insticintively a 'body of work' kind of person.  I didn't quite finish as you can see. I ran out of steam at some point, I can't recall whether it was because of a feeling of Tori overdose or because the stresses I was under just made me feel I couldn't really concentrate properly on what I was hearing.

Apart from that, and despite the stresses, I seem to have listened to a HECK of a lot over the month.  I know that several albums were covered in two car trips, but there's plenty of other exploration all over my library.  Which is good to see, that's what it's there for.  It'll be scary to find out just how many CDs I have once I finish the catalogue, it's up to a couple of hundred entries for pop and I'm nowhere near finished yet.

David Gray was one of those cases of unearthing something virtually unlistened to. I remember being terribly disappointed with A New Day At Midnight when I bought it.  Turns out it's fairly enjoyable light music for a car trip - it still doesn't seem to have anything that comes close to rivalling the highs of White Ladder, but it's certainly not a total waste of shelf space.

Beth Orton's Daybreaker is an album that truly fascinates and puzzles me.  Despite a fair amount of listening, it still doesn't feel very integrated to me.  It starts off with 4 of the most truly wonderful sonic landscapes I know. They just somehow have the right combination of detail and sweep to resonate with me personally.  And then... Beth pulls the rug out from under me.  Suddenly the album veers off into a more electronic title track, followed by folk, then country, before gradually heading back in an arc to where it started, getting there for the 10th and final track. There's nothing in the excursions that I dislike (the title track is probably my least favourite but it's still reasonable), but it just lacks something in either the production decisions or the song order to glue it all together into a single artistic vision.

And that's what I really look for in an album.  It's the combination of the individual songs, and even the touches within songs, with the big picture to make a satisfying whole.  Every song sounding the same is no good, and neither is every song sounding completely different. Despite what modern listening practice would have you believe, an album is not just a playlist slapped together by the singer which a listener can then change at their whim into their own playlist - or at least, that's not what an album should be in my view.  It's a multi-movement work, in just the same way that classical composers frequently created multi-movement works.  An album is the highest level structure in an system of sonic organisation that goes down to songs, then verse and choruses and bridges, write down to details in a single bar.

Well, the great ones are, anyway.

July 2011 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S. - Brandenburg Concertos 1 to 3
Beethoven

• Septet
• Symphony No.4
• Cello Sonata No.3
• Piano Sonata No.28

Brahms

• Piano Quartet No.3
• Clarinet Trio
• Clarinet Quintet

Chopin - 4 Mazurkas, Op.24
Faure

• Cantique de Jean Racine
• Ballade for piano
• Mazurka
• Nocturnes 5 and 6
• Valse-caprices 2 and 4
• Barcarolle No.2
• Piano Quartet No.2
• Impromptu No.6 (piano transcription of harp piece)
• Piano Quintet No.1
• 9 Preludes
• Cello Sonata No.1

Gorecki - Symphony No.3
Handel - Keyboard Suites, HWV 436 to 441
Haydn - Piano trios, Hob XV: 24 to 26 (set of 3 dedicated to Rebecca Schroeter)
Messiaen - Quartet for the End of Time
Ravel

• Gaspard de la nuit
• Valses nobles et sentimentales
• Prelude for piano
• Piano Trio
• La Valse

Schubert

• Piano Sonata in E, D.459 ('5 Piano pieces')
• String Quartets 12 and 15
• Moments Musicaux

Schumann - Piano Trios 1 and 2
Shostakovich - String Quartet No.5
Strauss, R. - Death and Transfiguration

Beethoven, Brahms, Faure, Ravel, Schubert.  There is such an amazing history of music out there (and this is just the Western, European tradition), it seems a shame that people often only get to know the work that emerges in their own lifetime.  Although there's enough of that to keep a person fully occupied, and so much of it is good.

Faure seems to be the one, though, that can fascinate me the most. Not because I understand all his music immediately.  In fact, it's probably because his music is so elusive that it exerts such a pull. As you can see, when I start exploring his work I find it hard to stop! And yet I hadn't listened to anything for several months before that.  I wouldn't be at all surprised if I spend the rest of my life having little Faure episodes.

Ravel is right up there for me as well, which is interesting because he was Faure's pupil - though everything I've read suggests that Faure was not the kind of teacher who forced his students to write in his own voice instead of their own.

I'm just glad I live at a point where it's possible to jump in space and time and hear their work. I don't have to be in early 20th century Paris to be one of the lucky ones.  And yes, for some composers I can't hear their own interpretations in live performances, but I'm still in such a fortunate position, to be able to dip in and out of musical history like this.

This month I also listened to Gorecki's 3rd symphony, in the recording that was, against all expectations, a bona fide hit in 1992 (15 years after the music actually premiered).  For a classical recording - not a 'light' classical or 'crossover', but a standard classical-style work - to sell over a million copies is just not something that usually happens.  And who knows why it did. Some combination of the music and the zeitgeist just clicked.  But it's powerful and beautiful music, and the world is better for having it.

July 2011 - Popular Music

Okay, so August was kind of a rough month...

Not so rough that I didn't listen to music or keep notes of what it was, but I didn't really have much opportunity to sit down and reflect on the music. So if you'd care to cast your mind all the way back to July...

Tori Amos

• Under the Pink
• The Beekeeper
• American Doll Posse
• Abnormally Attracted To Sin
• Spark part 2 single (Spark/Do It Again/Cooling)
• A Piano: Disc A - Little Earthquakes Extended

Elvis Costello - Extreme Honey
Sheryl Crow - The Globe Sessions
Garbage - Garbage
Gomez - Bring It On
Gomez - Split the Difference
Sarah Harmer - All Of Our Names
Natalie Imbruglia - Left of the Middle
Jars of Clay - If I Left the Zoo
Level 42 - Running in the Family
Wendy Matthews - Ghosts
Joni Mitchell

• Clouds
• Blue
• Dog Eat Dog
• Turbulent Indigo

Moloko - Things to Make and Do
Over the Rhine - Ohio
Pearl Jam - Binaural
Pearl Jam - Backspacer
Plumb - Chaotic Resolve
Radiohead - Hail to the Thief
Radiohead - King of Limbs
Seal - Human Being
Seal - Seal IV
Something for Kate - The Official Fiction
Talk Talk - The Colour of Spring

Gosh. Is it really over a month since I listened to some of these?

I suppose the most notable thing is that I was making purchases. Natalie Imbruglia was a second-hand purchase the month before (same time as Billy Joel), which is really just a fairly light piece of pop listening but it's still enjoyable.  Gomez' first album Bring It On was a new purchase as I get so much out of the 3 I already owned. It's funny what different ordering does to your perception: I know that their debut was when they got lots of attention and the Mercury Prize, but so far I mostly hear an enjoyable band that hasn't got the sophistication of later releases or the amazing command of their resources. It's like they've bought a very fancy new car but are driving it a bit cautiously while they make sure it's all in working order.

Another new purchase was Pearl Jam's Backspacer, continuing the little PJ excursion I seem to be on. I will probably end up with all their albums now, but it's more interesting jumping around in order. I was certainly impressed with their latest. This is Pearl Jam being relatively relaxed and comfortable and, dare I say it, ever so slightly pop.

There was a nice little Joni Mitchell binge, much of it on one weekend. That's the first time since I started this that someone other than Tori has managed more than 2 entries in a month. Not enough to end Tori's dominance though (and, um, I think it gets worse in August...). I even pulled out a single this time. I listen to singles quite rarely, but I decided they deserve a database entry as much as the longer players.

This month also proved again the benefits of going back to listen to things with fresh ears. I can't remember the last time I listened to Chaotic Resolve. It always ranked as one of the more disappointing purchases I'd made.  The best tracks were the ones I already knew, and the best of all was actually a bonus - a remix of a song from a previous album.  Listening to it again, probably for the first time in a couple of years at least, I got more out of it. It's still not a classic, and I doubt I'll ever regard it as one - the music is too square, the lyrics too awkwardly obvious - but I did get enjoyment out of it and that's really the main thing. Not every album can be my favourite album ever or an intense listening experience.

And again, there was more proof of the idea that a large library of music means you can find the right thing at the right moment.  I've never had great love for Seal IV. It's sat there on the shelf, and every now and then I've looked it and asked why it couldn't be more like it's older brother Human Being.  July was the month that I discovered that, when you've spent a couple of days hearing just how shockingly horrible one human being can be by calmly massacring a teenage summer camp, an album that is as light and silvery as its cover and full of touches of hope might just be the best solution you can come up with.

June 2011 - Classical Music

Barber - Summer Music
Beethoven

• Horn Sonata
• String Quartets 6 and 11 ('quartetto serioso')
• Symphony No.7

Chopin

• Rondo in E flat, Op.16
• Impromptu No.2
• Two Nocturnes, Op.37 and Two Nocturnes, Op.55
• Polonaise in A flat, Op.53
• Scherzo No.4
• Piano Sonata No.3
• Three Mazurkas, Op.59

Handel - Keyboard Suites, HWV 436 to 439
Haydn - Symphonies 99, 101 ('Clock') and 100 ('Military')
Haydn - Piano trios, Hob XV: 24 to 26 (set of 3 dedicated to Rebecca Schroeter)
Mozart - Symphony no.31 ('Paris')
Mozart - Piano Sonata No.8 in A minor
Rachmaninov

• Piano Concerto No.1
• Suite No.1 for 2 pianos
• Etudes-tableaux (complete)

Schubert - Piano sonata in F minor, D.625 (unfinished)
Shostakovich - String Quartets 3, 8, 10 and 13

I honestly was surprised by how much classical music I listened to this month. I suppose the occasional 'theme night' can add up, especially as most of these works aren't anywhere near as long as pop music albums.  Still, many of them are 15 to 30 minutes long.

One of the things that struck me during the month was how difficult it is to accurately identify a particular work.  I keep resorting to different strategies.  Where possible I use the simplest numbering system - quartet no.3, sonata no.4 and so on - but this breaks down quite frequently (something that tends to upset my basic desire for an ordered universe).

Handel was the main difficulty this month.  My compact disc blithely told me I was listening to keyboard suites 9 through 12, but it turns out this is the numbering in one particular edition of the works - and not even the first edition.  In the 'HWV' catalogue, I happened to listen to four consecutive numbers but they appear there in the order 10, 11, 12, 9 relative to my CD's approach.

Part of the problem is that Handel may well have had nothing at all to do with the publication of these pieces.  He published his first 8 suites in response to pirate copies, and so the order is well established, but after that things get very muddy. There are things that were originally published as 'suites' that aren't (and so sometimes get counted and sometimes don't), and 2 of the suites I listened to this month were originally published with bits missing out of them.

Better systems than that one still show signs of disorder and can be misleading.  I came across a fairly minor case this month in my Haydn excursion, as it's now well established that Haydn's symphony no.101 premiered several weeks before his symphony no.100 - both, like no.99, in the 1794 concert season in London.  The numbering of some his earlier symphonies is much more random compared to the dates of composition, but at least there is only one numbering system in use for them.  For the piano trios there appear to be two radically different numbering systems still competing with one another.

I also keep having to decide whether to pay attention to the nicknames that various pieces have picked up.  I've basically decided to acknowledge the ones that are official (such as the 'Military' symphony, which was labelled as such in the concert program at its premiere, and Beethoven's 'serioso' quartet), are intrinsic to the music (the 'Clock' symphony, which sounds so much like a clock ticking that the nickname appeared more or less immediately and has just as much meaning now as it did two centuries ago), or genuinely meaningful in some other way (Mozart's 'Paris' symphony, written in that city and for that city - although it begs the question why the A minor piano sonata isn't similarly known as the 'Paris' sonata).

The other thing that struck me several times this month was birdsong.  No, I'm not going crazy. Several times this month, birds were quite audible in the background of classical recordings in the quieter moments. I think this is something apparent in the age of headphones that the recording engineers back in the 1970s or early 1980s simply didn't think listeners would ever notice.  It's also a consequence of where classical works tend to be recorded - in halls or churches rather than in recording studios expressly built for the purpose.

The 'Military' symphony also contains a few audible examples of the conductor's slightly tuneless humming. Whether Sir Colin Davis only found one particular symphony that gave him the urge to hum, or whether they just placed the microphones differently that time around, I've no idea.  While I have his recordings of all 12 of Haydn's London symphonies, they were recorded over the space of a 6-year period so there are all sorts of possible reasons why I've only noticed him in one work.

So there you have it - disordered catalogues, birdsong and noisy conductors.  Oh yes, and I'm sure I did pay attention to the actual music from time to time...

June 2011 - Popular Music

Tori Amos

• 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...)

Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine
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.