July 2012 - Popular Music

Tori Amos - Strange Little Girls
Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine
Fiona Apple - The Idler Wheel...
Joni Mitchell

• Song to a Seagull
• Blue
• For the Roses
• Hejira
• Don Juan's Reckless Daughter
• Wild Things Run Fast
• Night Ride Home
• Shine

Radiohead - OK Computer
Sixpence None the Richer - Sixpence None the Richer
Sting - The Soul Cages
Sting - Live In Berlin (DVD version)
Washington - I Believe You Liar
Rachael Yamagata - Happenstance

A tale of two albums... neither of them by Joni Mitchell despite the preponderance of her works in the list above.

Washington is, as far as I can tell, Megan Washington - and by that I mean that she appears to be operating as a solo artist, not as the lead person in a band like Bon Jovi or Van Halen.

Megan Washington has a beautiful, beautiful voice. My first encounter with it was, I think, also the first encounter for many people, when she appeared on the much beloved quiz show Spicks and Specks singing completely inappropriate lyrics in a little game called 'Substitute'. But singing them oh so well.

Part of the reason I think this helped her career is that her music shot up the iTunes charts the very next day.

I bought Washington's first full-length album, I Believe You Liar, a couple of months ago (at the same time as Gotye's Making Mirrors).  And I didn't really take much time to listen to it then.  I took a bit more time in July to sit down with the album properly.

And I'm disappointed. There's no other way to say it. It's not terrible by any means.  But THAT VOICE is most noticeable by its absence.

This is because much of the album aims for a 60s, Phil Spector Wall of Sound aesthetic. The production is thick, with Washington's voice multitracked. Even when the music is quieter, she's still multitracked more often than not. It's bright, it's fairly poppy, and it totally fails to show off her biggest musical asset.  Most of her singing comes across as merely pleasant, instead of utterly magnetic. The lyrics are nothing special, either, and fail to elevate the material.

Only the closing title track really allows me to hear the same thing I heard in that television show several years ago.

I haven't lost hope. I also bought the following Insomnia EP at the same time (which includes material that has been released on a revamped international version of I Believe You Liar) and, while I have yet to open it, it actually sounded like the better release from what I sampled before purchase.

Contrast my reaction to Liar with my reaction to, to give it the full title, The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do. The new album from Fiona Apple was something I picked up this month for a number of reasons, including excellent reviews and a very cheap price for a recent release.

And where Washington disappointed me, Apple thrilled me.  Here is an album that absolutely showcases a vocalist using her instrument - and it really is treated as an instrument.  The accompanying music is sometimes little more than punctuation while Apple coos, growls and everything in between. The most frequent combination of sounds is percussion, piano and voice, and this album demonstrates pretty effectively that you don't need any more than that to create powerful music.

And yes, even though I'm generally much more about the music than the words, Apple's songwriting is also more interesting lyrically.  Her wordplay may not be to everyone's taste, but there are all sorts of surprises thrown in, rather than picking the obvious way of saying something.  I can't think of a much better way of saying how a lover makes you feel than Apple's statement, in one of the happier songs, that "he makes my heart a cinemascope screen showing a dancing bird of paradise".

All of those reviews on Metacritic making this one of the best-reviewed albums of the year are, in my humble opinion, right.  Not that I hear many albums in the year they're released.  But this is certainly right up there in terms of albums I've heard any time recently.

June 2012 - Classical Music

Beethoven - String Quartets 1 to 6
Haydn - String Quartet in E flat, Op.76/6

Again, this list isn't exactly a lot to look at! But it did mean I finally listened to all of Beethoven's Opus 18 string quartets, as I had been planning to do for three months in a row.

And in fact the one that I hadn't listened to for the longest period, No.6, turned out to be one of my favourites. I really must try to remember that in future. But they're all enjoyable works.  Full of Beethoven's energy, and at a stage in the 'early' phase of his career where you can really hear the increasing confidence.  I can well believe that publishing a group of 6 quartets was a conscious effort to put himself on the same terms as previous masters like Haydn and Mozart.  At the very least, publishing things in a group of 6 was a long-established practice at this point for producing a complete, satisfying set and displaying a range of moods.

In a sense, Beethoven is still learning what he can do.  But he is picking up the lessons very rapidly, and it won't be long before he is really pushing the boundaries of music.

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.