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.

May 2012 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S. - The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1 (complete)
Beethoven - String Quartets 3 and 4
Telemann - Tafelmusik Volume 3 (complete)

...and that's it.

It's worth pointing out that the Bach is almost 2 hours worth of music. Which helped pass away an afternoon's work in the garden rather nicely, especially as I hadn't listened to it for a few years.  And the Telemann is over an hour.  But generally, this was a period where Classical music generally disappeared from my listening diet.  Partly this was because of the Tori Amos marathon previously mentioned (and indeed plenty of other pop music), partly it was because of other, non-musical circumstances that made me less inclined to make the extra effort involved in programming a few tracks of a CD to get a single Classical work at a time.

... nothing much to say, really. Sorry about that!

May 2012 - Popular Music

Tori Amos

• Little Earthquakes
• Under the Pink
• Boys for Pele
• From the Choirgirl Hotel
• To Venus and Back (studio disc)
• Strange Little Girls
• Scarlet's Walk
• The Beekeeper
• American Doll Posse
• Abnormally Attracted to Sin
• Midwinter Graces
• Night of Hunters

Kate Bush - The Sensual World
Sheryl Crow - C'mon C'mon
The Dissociatives - The Dissociatives
Eurythmics - Be Yourself Tonight
Peter Gabriel - So
george - Unity
Gotye - Making Mirrors
Missy Higgins - On A Clear Night
Wendy Matthews - The Witness Tree
Joni Mitchell - Court and Spark
Joni Mitchell - Wild Things Run Fast
Pearl Jam - Vs
Radiohead - In Rainbows
Something for Kate - Desert Lights
Sting - Mercury Falling
Talk Talk - It's My Life
Thrice - The Alchemy Index: Fire and Air volumes
Washington - I Believe You Liar

Yes, I did.  I went even more Tori-crazy than usual.  All twelve studio albums in one month.

I certainly hadn't tried to do this in the relatively short time that there's been 12 albums.  I almost certainly have done this kind of 'career overview' before, but I'm not at all sure what the album count might have been on the last occasion.  And 12 is just one of those numbers that gives a sense of completeness and order. It just felt like time.

I should also point out that I do "career overviews" for many of my favoured musicians. I suppose that none of the others have been on this scale (for pop music at least).  Taking into account not just the number of albums but the fact that half of them are quite lengthy ones.

Rather than be chronological, I used a random number generator to choose the next album for me. By sheer chance, someone started a new 'rank the albums' thread just after I'd started, so I was also trying to judge the albums at the same time - and definitely doing that on an album basis, rather than counting highly favoured songs.

I might as well report here on the ranking.  At the top was Boys for Pele, then From the Choirgirl Hotel VERY close behind. Next pair were American Doll Posse and Scarlet's Walk, again close to each other.

The next group were virtually inseparable, but in the end I ordered them as follows: Strange Little Girls, Little Earthquakes, Abnormally Attracted to Sin, Night of Hunters and Under the Pink.

Trailing slightly behind was To Venus and Back, then The Beekeeper and lastly Midwinter Graces.

The overwhelming impression, though, was how much satsifaction and enjoyment I got even from the 'lesser' albums.  Or, to break it down further, that's 180 songs and I'd say there's really only one that I consistently don't get much pleasure out of.

What IS it about this woman? As she changes and varies her style, with arguably 4 or 5 distinct 'periods' to her career already, what is it that stays and that attracts me so much?  As best I can tell, it's her sense of musical structure and sonic colour. And it's the combination of that with her desire to change her musical language in some way on each occasion that keeps yielding rewards for me. Twelve different musical worlds to spend time in.  Twelve different palettes.

I can't see me getting tired of it.  Yes, there are periods where I don't listen to her much (for example, after this enormous binge), but each time that I return I continue to find rewards.  So I'll keep returning.


PS And it's worth mentioning that I listened to plenty of other music during the month as well.  I mean, there are another 18 albums on that list!

April 2012 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S.

• Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen (Weeping, Lamenting, Worrying, Fearing)
• Widerstehe doch der Sünde (Resist Sin)
• Gott ist mein König (God is my King)
• Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit (God's time is the very best time)
• Aus der Tiefen rufe ich, Herr, zu dir (Out of the depths, Lord, I cry to you)
• Ach, ich sehe, itzt, da ich zur Hochzeit gehe (Ah! I see now, when I go to the wedding)
• O heiliges Geist- und Wasserbad (O bath of Holy Spirit and water)
• Himmelskönig, sei willkommen (Heaven's King, be welcome)
• Barmherziges Herze der ewigen Liebe (Merciful heart of eternal love)
• Der Herr denket an uns (The Lord has been mindful of us)
• Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut (My heart swims in blood)

Beethoven

• Piano Sonatas 9 and 10
• String quartet from Piano Sonata No. 9
• Horn Sonata
• String Quartets 1 to 3

Haydn - String Quartet in D minor, Op.76/2
Holmboe - Symphony No. 10
Schumann - Dichterliebe
Shostakovich - String Quartet No. 15
Telemann - Tafelmusik Volume 3 (complete)
Vivaldi

• Cello Concertos in C, C minor, D minor and B minor, RV 400, 401, 407 and 424
• Gloria, RV 589 with Ostro picta
• Laudate pueri in C minor, RV 600
• Salve Regina in F, RV 617

That Bach box started getting worked on in earnest. The box is basically chronological, so it dealt with a few very early cantatas before getting to ones composed in Weimar around 1713-1716.  It was a bit of a worry initially that I didn't like the Weimar ones as much as the earliest ones, because there are a lot more "non-early" works!  It did settle down a bit as I went, so hopefully the box will generally be rewarding.

Apart from that... my chronological working through Beethoven continued. Okay, working through by opus number, which isn't the same thing. But it's actually quite interesting to occasionally discover that something was not published until later. I'm deliberately avoiding looking ahead.  April was opuses 14, 17 and some of 18.

There was also my random grab-bag of Vivaldi cello concertos together with a selection of the earlier sacred vocal works. There are some lovely moments in the latter, or should I say movements, because it's often just a couple of movements within these sectional pieces that really end up standing out. I feel like I should almost start taking notes about which movements are the highlights - something I wouldn't normally countenance, but these sorts of vocal works really don't seem that integrated musically. They're integrated by the text.

April 2012 - Popular Music

Tori Amos

• From the Choirgirl Hotel
• To Venus and Back (studio disc)
• Scarlet's Walk
• American Doll Posse
• Night of Hunters
• Scarlet's Hidden Treasures

Melanie C - Northern Star
Crowded House - Temple of Low Men
Gotye - Like Drawing Blood
Gotye - Making Mirrors
Patty Griffin - Flaming Red
Elton John - Tumbleweed Connection
Joni Mitchell - Court and Spark
Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

April was the month that I jumped on the Gotye bandwagon.

Well, that's not strictly true, in the sense that I've had Like Drawing Blood for nearly 3 years.  So April was the month that I jumped on the bandwagon created by the massive success of his single, 'Somebody That I Used to Know' - as manifested by buying the album that it's on.

I'd been meaning to at least investigate the album for quite a while, but it just hadn't happened.  It was the news that he'd reached the number 1 spot in America (a very rare achievement for Australian artists) that finally prompted me to think, "why on earth have I still not listened?"

The first very pleasant surprise was discovering that Gotye has basically put the entire Making Mirrors album up on Youtube.  I'm not sure if I've said it here on this blog, but I'm saying it now: letting people hear your music can gain you sales, not lose them.  Because the second pleasant surprise I got was that the new album is not just good, it's better than its predecessor.  Making Mirrors plays an awful lot like Like Drawing Blood, structurally speaking, but everything is tighter and more secure.  The album has lots of interest and variety but it doesn't meander. To me it basically demonstrates the increased maturity of Gotye's musical judgement while sticking to his essential methods.

And they're very interesting methods.  The 'limited' edition of the album (which as far as I can tell is the only edition you can actually buy in Australian stores at the moment!) includes a DVD which gives a lot of insight into the way he collects and samples sounds and builds songs out of the ones that interest him the most.  It was genuinely worth watching. Whether it's whacking a musical fence and making a bass line from the available notes, sampling tiny fragments of Brazilian and Taiwanese records, or singing an entire song on one note before using technology to shove the notes into the 'correct' positions, this is a man whose techniques are at least as interesting as his results.

March 2012 - Classical Music

Bach, J.S. - Christ lag in Todesbaden (Christ lay in Death's bonds)
Bach, J.S. - Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich (For you, Lord, I long)
Beethoven - Piano Sonatas 5 to 8
Faure - Piano Quintets 1 & 2
Faure - Cello Sonata No. 1
Haydn - 6 String Quartets, Op.76 (the 'Erdődy' quartets)
Holmboe - Symphony No. 9
Vivaldi - Stabat Mater

The data recording kept going, even though the writing didn't.  (Meanwhile, what the heck has Blogger done to the look of the area I compose posts in?! Aargh!)

I didn't get my hands on the new purchase I hinted at in the February Classical post until the very last day of the month.  It was a 10-CD box of Bach cantatas - specifically, the first 10 of the chronological series still being created by Masaaki Susuki and the Bach Collegium Japan.  I had a lovely walk to the post office on a nice sunny day...

Oh, right, the music.  Well, this entry covers a mere two cantatas, but the early signs were good!  It's still strange to me that I'm suddenly listening to a lot more vocal Classical music.  Dealing with the different languages is still something of a challenge, and often it's better if I just switch off and hear it purely as music.  I also re-started on some Vivaldi, wrestled my box set into some vague resemblance of chronological and thematic groups and began with the Stabat Mater (probably the earliest of his vocal works to have survived).

The main 'event' of the month was probably listening to the Haydn Op.76 for the first time in several years.  I cannot recall for certain whether my cassette copies of these were the first classical music I ever bought for myself (around the age of 16 or 17), but if not the first they were very close to it.  And there's still so much to enjoy in there.  They're the last complete set of quartets from the first master of quartet writing.

I also tackled Holmboe's Symphony No. 9 with a vengeance.  It's one of his tougher works, but once I pulled it apart and put it back together, yet again I found it very rewarding and a clear example of the way this composer writes across movements.  The second movement on its own sounds like... well, nothing much. A lot of soft whimperings and scratchings.  But once you've grasped that there's a little melodic fragment in it that's carried over from the first movement, suddenly it's like the music is holding its breath for 4 minutes before unleashing in the third movement.

I know that's all rather brief and not terribly insightful, but I do have some catching up to do...

March 2012 - Popular Music

Tori Amos

• From the Choirgirl Hotel
• Strange Little Girls
• Abnormally Attracted to Sin

Patty Griffin - Living With Ghosts
Patty Griffin - 1000 Kisses
John Mayer - Continuum
John Mayer - Battle Studies
Joni Mitchell - Song to a Seagull
Joni Mitchell - Taming the Tiger
Moloko - Statues
Over the Rhine - Ohio
Radiohead - Kid A
Radiohead - In Rainbows
Simply Red - Picture Book
Something for Kate - Echolalia
Thrice - The Alchemy Index: Water, Air and Earth volumes
Thom Yorke - The Eraser

In the last few months, I appear to have been going through a mix of a Patty Griffin phase with a Radiohead phase. The two have to some extent alternated.  Very different artists, but both very close to the top of the 'popular music' tree for me.

For Radiohead it's the fact that they seem capable of imagining anything and then implementing it. I don't know anyone else who somehow gives me this impression that something sounds exactly the way it does because that's exactly the way they wanted it to sound. No slips between plan and execution.

For Patty Griffin, it's the incredible power of her voice and songwriting to connect in such a human way.  All the hopes and heartaches of the world can almost bypass my ears and hit somewhere much deeper.

I know that's much to say about either of them, but it's enough. Two instances of where I am very, very glad that people have stepped into a recording studio and I get to hear the results from half a world away.