Just had one of those magical music moments while walking home, in the pouring rain, listening to Alt-Ctrl-Sleep. Brilliant. These dudes (actually a dude and dudette, a husband-wife team) are simply amazing; tailor made for my tastes.
That's too bad, cuz their previous album, The Secret Migration, was pretty awesome.Quoting Daniel Davis (view post)
I thought that album had some cool stuff on it. I think they kind of peaked with Deserter's Songs, although my personal favorite is still Boces.
This new one is just really dull - it's not interesting at any level. Of course, first listens at work can be deceiving, so perhaps it will grow on my later.
I saw Sigur Ros last night - it was awesome.
They were definitely channeling some major Floyd on a bunch of songs, especially their keyboardist. There were some moments where I could have sworn I was listening to Rick Wright.
It's pretty amazing the amount of sound they get from only 4 dudes. They played at Benaroya Hall here in Seattle, the venue that the Seattle Philharmonic plays out, and so the acoustics were just perfect.
I highly recommend seeing them live - it's a great experience.
I've only heard one song from Sigur Ros. And I love it. I should really dig into more of their work.
Today I finished listening to The Very Best of Chicago. Its clear that their older stuff is far superior to their later work. In fact the differences between the two are really truly night and day. I think that, judging from what I just heard, that the band really became too cheesy. They were able to sort of rein it in in the beginning, but they became way too damn soft rock. Which isn't cool. But I still like them as a group regardless.
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Everything dies, baby, that's a fact
But maybe everything that dies some day comes back
Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty
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The La's one and only album got released today as a deluxe version. This version includes three different versions of the album, each one recorded by a different producer. This is way awesome, as some of the versions sound drastically different.
This is one of the strongest albums recorded in the 1990s, and it is great to have its legacy and history collected here.
This deluxe La's is incredible. Wow.
John Leckie's version of There She Goes is stunning - it's so thick and rich. I would love to have been given an entire La's album produced by Leckie. His work on the Stone Roses first album is legendary in the world of pop-music production, and I think he would have been a perfect mix for a La's project. Perhaps not this particular album though, as he does tend to over produced a bit, and part of the La's strength was their raw energy.
The Mike Hedges version of the album is great, and at first I thought I was listening to a Leckie production. It's like the La's album we're all acquainted with, but with a slab of reverb lathered on top, with some additional effects and nuance added in. It's a more "studio" sounding album than the one that was officially released, and while it fails to capture that raw, naked sound of the La's it is still a solid recording.
Contrary to the Hedges and Leckie versions is the Gary Crowley version - these recordings are almost too raw, conjuring GBV's boombox recording sessions. They sound more like demos than a proper release, and I am glad the band shifted directions.
The additional bonus tracks - Knock Me Down, I Am the Key, Clean Prophet, and Man I'm Only Human - are fantastic, and while I love being able to hear these as proper recordings, they mainly serve to frustrate me because I can only imagine what another La's album might sound like. Hopefully the rumors are true, and Lee Mavers is indeed working on new material.
Speaking of John Leckie, here is an awesome article from Sound on Sound about the production of the Stone Roses' acidhouse masterpiece, Fools Gold.
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb0...ssictracks.htm
A new Harold Budd album was released today as well. It's Harold Budd with an experimental guitarist named Clive Wright; the album is called A Song For Lost Blossoms, and it is beautiful. Wright reminds me a bit of Robert Fripp with his use of long, echoing sustain and thoughtful note selections. Budd's contribution is, like always, subtle, soothing, and inventive, the man simply knows how to lay down a solid ambient foundation. My only complaint is the included crowd noise at the end of one of the tracks, presumably recorded live. It totally breaks the spell of the album, and I will be editing it out of the track. The title track alone is worth the album price; at over 30-minutes in length, it is an epic journey into a melancholy soundscape of ambient atmosphere and mindfulness.
The Allman Brothers: Live at Filmore West is pretty awesome. The disc features 7 really long and well crafted tracks that they played for a live audience, and plays to their strength of expert and awesome guitar work. Which is presented on many a lengthy and satisfying solo. Their vocals aren't bad either, and are best featured on a 20 some minute extended version of their classic Whippin' Post. Good stuff, although I wish Jessica had been featured as well. That's my favorite track of theirs.
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Everything dies, baby, that's a fact
But maybe everything that dies some day comes back
Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty
And meet me tonight in Atlantic City
The La's album doesn't contain a single bad track. Every tune on this album is, in fact, an example of masterfully conceived pop. It's been years since I last listened to this, and I had forgotten just how amazing this record is. These dudes were definitely working on a higher level than many of their contemporaries; Mavers was channeling some seriously creative energy with these tunes.
Abby Road is a goddamn masterpiece. Wow. I'm completely blown away by how amazing it truly is. Out of the ones I've listened to so far, it might even be better than Sergent Peppers.
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Everything dies, baby, that's a fact
But maybe everything that dies some day comes back
Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty
And meet me tonight in Atlantic City
It's crazy, I've listened to these La's tunes hundreds of times since I first bought the tape in high school, and yet I am hearing subtle nuances and inflections now that I've never noticed before.
This is one of the signs of a masterpiece.
The style is straight out of the 1960s, the production and execution is totally of the 1990s, and yet the entire thing sounds timeless.
The opening three songs are pure genius, rivaling the trilogy of opening songs on U2's The Joshua Tree. In about 8 minutes worth of time, the band unleashes 3 of the greatest pop songs ever recorded: Son of Gun, I Can't Sleep, and Timeless Melody.
I'm digging the heck out of the new Kings of Leon.
I haven't listened to them much at all since I first moved to Seattle. We use to listen to their first album all the time when we closed at Trader Joes.
I don't know if this new album represents a logical progression from their previous albums, but I love where they've ended up.
Just bought the new Deerhoof album today, have yet to listen to it.
Heard it twice so far and was pretty disappointed both times. It's certainly not bad ("Basket Ball Get Your Groove Back" is one of their funniest songs), but definitely not on the same level as Runner's Four or Friend Opportunity.
I bought The Walkmen's new album "You & Me" the other day. I'm liking it a lot. They're the first band I ever saw live in NYC, so I have a soft spot for them. Also, I think like three of them went to my school.
Wishful thinking, perhaps; but that is just another possible definition of the featherless biped.
So after listening to the new Mercury Rev album more, as well as the free album from their website, Strange Attractor, I've decided that I really don't like this new phase the band seems to be entering. It's like their Kid A - it's MR dabbling in techno, but, like Radiohead was, they're just not very good at it, and thus it ends up sounding sub par, especially when compared to other tried and true electronic bands.
They've traded their guitars, bass, and drums, for keyboards and drum machines. As a sometimes electronic musician myself, this in itself is not a problem. The problem is that MR doesn't seem to know how to make their electronic music interesting; there is no texture or dynamics to these songs, it's all sheen and shine, and sonically uninteresting (!). It's all mediocre, and really cheesy sounding.
Kid A was a dull excursion into ambient land, lacking the great rhythms the band was known fore and barely treading in the wake of artists like Brian Eno, Harold Budd, Neu!, Steve Roach, Seefeel, Daniel Lanois, and others created decades before. These new MR albums aren't even that interesting.
Bands like this should focus more on their already proven strengths, or at least wait until they are more proficient and comfortable with a new genre before experimenting with it commercially. The Flaming Lips moved effortlessly into a more electronic territory while still maintaining the things that make them unique. MR, who are really The Flaming Lips Jr., aren't so lucky. They've lost their sound in a sea of electronic shimmer.
Maybe MR will continue down this path and become better at it. Radiohead certainly did with Amnesiac and In Rainbows. However, they are really going to have to sharpen their edge, because they've become very dull and predictable over the course of their post-Deserter's Songs albums. And dull and predictable are two terms that I never thought I would be using to describe the band that gave us Yerself Is Steam, Boces, and See You on the Other Side.
When I first heard the Flips' At War With The Mystics, it was seeming to me that producer Dave Fridmann had a case of ProTools-a-citis. That is, he was getting up to speed on the industry standard ProTools Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) production software and was wanting to throw in every trick he had learned into the Flaming Lips' latest album. Interviews I've read in various electronic music magazines such as the now defunct American version of Future Music have sorta lent credence to that hunch.
Tho I have yet to hear the Mercury Rev's latest (and I'm a big fan of The Secret Migration) I wonder if Fridmann is still in awe of the DAW, wanting to overproduce the crap outa his stuff. Many an artist has fallen into this trap.
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