Day 0993 - 21

Adele "21" (2011)

Ah, that old inspirational goldmine - the relationship breakup.  

Adele had wanted to create something a bit more upbeat and contemporary to follow up her debut "19".   Her first sessions weren't incredibly productive.  To add salt to the wound, she played her first track, the gospel "Take it All" to her boyfriend (it was written during a difficult period in their relationship) which contributed to the couple breaking up.   Adele threw herself into her music.

The album was recorded with a range of producers both in the UK and US, but the various tracks are held together as a cohesive album thanks to Adele's powerful, adept voice. Whether it's the piano ballad "Someone Like You", the stomp of "Rolling in the Deep" and the Northern Soul of "I'll be Waiting", Adele makes them her own.  

 

Don't have too much more to say about this one.  As much as it hangs together well, the singles clearly stand out above than the other tracks for me. I guess that's not entirely unusual for a pop album.

Day 0988 - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Kanye West "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" (2010)

Kanye shut himself away following a few high profile bits of bad publicity, including his decision to crash the stage during the Video Music Awards to interrupt Taylor Swift as she went to accept an award for best music video.   West cited overwork and stress on his erratic behaviour, though it has since become clear that he has some reasonably serious, legitimate mental health issues.

This album is almost an insight into what is going on in his head, a huge busy mix of sounds tinged with paranoia, narcissism and brilliance.   I've always taken a passing interest in Kanye's music, yet weirdly (given its renown) I've never checked this one out.   It is actually a brilliant album.  Varied, unconventional, and fairly honest.

The first few tracks move between a vaguely churchy/gospel feel, which kind of signposted where Kanye was going to go next, and the synth-and-beat sound his previous album "808s and Heartbreak".    "Devil in a New Dress" displays a bit of old-school Kanye with the pitch-shifted soul vocal backing track, but from there there are big pulsing beats that brings the later West track "Black Skinhead" to mind.   Pitch-dropped vocals provide a vaguely nightmarish, unhinged sound.

The album is a solid block of music, with far less of the skits and interludes that usually populate hip-hop albums (including previous West outings).   Kanye had assembled teams of producers and performers and more or less lived in the studio, having 3 different studios going at once so he could work on whichever track he felt inspired to attack that day.  He also ran his ideas past his collaborators on a regular basis to refine and change the tracks.   Q-Tip described the approach as 'music by committee', but that Kanye was able to use parts of everyone's input while still doing his own thing.

Day 0954 - College Dropout

Kanye West “College Dropout” (2004)

Remember those days when Kanye wasn’t a Kardashian side-piece and a walking conversation-starter around the danger of not managing mental health issues.  When we hadn’t even had the “whoa that was a bit crazy” moment of him interrupting Taylor Swift at the VMAs.

Before all of that, and before Kanye even known as a rapper, he was a producer who was building a reputation for himself.  He specialised in a sound where he manipulated old soul samples and arranged beats behind them.  

West struggled to be taken seriously as a rapper and had a potential major label deal shot down before it could even happen.   He was eventually signed to Roc-a-Fella Records and set about recording his debut.

The production sounds good.  From the beats and gospel choir of “Jesus Walks” to the seamless blending of an RnB/soul vocal with West’s raps in "All Falls Down".  I can understand the reticence about signing West for his lyrics though.  He grew up the son of an English professor who, for a time relocated to China to teach there, taking Kanye with her. She helped pay for his first recording efforts.  Not the standard gangsta/street résumé often associated with the genre.  

To my mind, that life could still have thrown up some interesting stories/lyrics but instead Kanye often seems to rap about expensive possessions, lash out at those he perceives as having wronged him, and even falling back on the old standard ‘braggadocio’ track (“Breathe in, Breathe out”).

If anything, I found the most interesting, endearing and honest track to be the album-closer “Last Call” where Kanye spends 12+ minutes geeking out about his process, his history, recounting (sometimes in excruciating detail) his path to getting signed and making his record and generally just talking in a direct and honest way.   It's almost like an unannotated twitter feed.

Day 0853 - Butterfly

Mariah Carey "Butterfly" (1997)

For album number 6, Mariah dialled back her usual vocal acrobatics and explored some other genres outside of her pop ballad sound with the help of a bevvy of collaborators, including Puff Daddy, Missy Elliott and Q-Tip.   Those names don't diminish Mariah's own role in her creative path though.  She had been slowly pulling away from the influence of her controlling husband, Sony Music executive Tommy Mottola (who she broke up with around this time) to take a few creative risks and court the hip-hop/RnB market a bit more.

There is still straight ahead-diva pop like the choir-backed title track, but there's also the RnB of "The Roof (back in time)" and "Baby Doll", the collaboration with the brilliant Bone Thugs-n-Harmony "Breakdown" and even a stonking rendition of "The Beautiful Ones" from Prince's "Purple Rain" album.

Mariah's not an artist that I spent a lot of time investigating in the 90s, and this is still not my favourite style of music, but this is a strong album, and obviously she has an incredible voice.

Day 0782 - MTV Unplugged in New York

Nirvana "MTV Unplugged in New York" (1994) - got it

 
The write-up in the book seems to express surprise at the idea that acoustic grunge could work... which is odd as Pearl Jam had already done a session for MTV's (at the time) popular unplugged segment a couple of years earlier.

Regardless, Nirvana were approached to do an unplugged show.  Their show was unconventional in that the band weren't just trotting out their hits on acoustic guitar.  In amongst a selection of Nirvana tracks were covers of songs by the Vaselines, David Bowie and 3 songs by the Meat Puppets.  Two members of the Meat Puppets joined the band on stage to play and Mark Lanegan was invited but declined, which lends credence to the suggestion that Kurt wanted to use Nirvana's celebrity to help gain exposure for his friends and artists he enjoyed.

The set closes with a bleeding-throated rendition of bluesman Lead Belly's take on the traditional track "Where did you sleep last night".   That seems an appropriate choice because the acoustic approach to Nirvana's sound mixed with Krist Novoselic's heavy bass gives everything a kind of heavy, rootsy blues sound.

Perhaps Kurt's voice had always been this raw, ragged (yet strong) and emotive, but recast without loud distorted guitars to hide behind, it is quite striking.

While the posthumous track "You know you're right" suggested that they probably would have continued with their loud-quiet-loud approach to songwriting, it's great that this album exists and it's nice to think that it could have led to a new direction for the band.

Day 0747 - Tuesday Night Music Club

Sheryl Crow "Tuesday Night Music Club" (1993)

Sheryl Crow is another of those who seems to have been a lifelong lover of music.  Her parents both played musical instruments, she studied composition and then made a living mixing teaching work, singing with bands at night, and recording advertising jingles.  Crow also toured with Michael Jackson in the 80s and provided backing vocals on his "Bad" tour.   After that she started singing backing for other artists and laid down a few songs of her own for film and TV.

Crow tried to record an album with Police and Split Enz producer Hugh Padgham, but neither she or the record company were happy with the result and it was shelved.

Crow started a relationship with musician Kevin Gilbert and the two of them were involved with a loose group of musicians and songwriters that called themselves the Tuesday Night Music Group.  The group worked extensively on this album and Crow and her record company were much happy with this mix of country, blues, balladry, and even pop (in the shape of the almost out-of-place hit single "All I wanna do").  

Great collection of songs.  I recognised "Strong Enough" though I think that was through a cover.  Pretty sure I've heard "the na-na song" too.

Day 0742 - In Utero

 Nirvana “In Utero” (1993) – got it

 

In my teens I was moving from mostly listening to my parents’ music, to getting into louder, heavier stuff.  There were a few albums (on cassette back then) from my brother’s collection that were starting to inform that transition.  Amongst these were the Nirvana albums “Nevermind” and “In Utero”.

With “In Utero” Nirvana were in the unenviable position of trying to follow up an album that had been a huge smash-hit, had reignited mainstream interest in punk and had helped helm the grunge movement… so, no pressure.

The band looked to kick back against the polished sound of “Nevermind” by hiring ‘punk’ producer Steve Albini.  Albini had worked with the Pixies, of whom Kurt Cobain was a fan, so that probably fed into the decision.  

The band had told Albini that they wanted to make a raw and uncompromising album, and he obliged, but it seems as though, once the record company heard the rough mixes, the compromises started.  Albini refused the band's request to remix the album, leading to several tracks being given a polishing remix by R.E.M’s regular producer Scott Lit.

You can kind of hear the difference between the two approaches.  Single “Heart Shaped Box” has a clean drum sound and clear vocals, whereas something like noisy opener “Serve the Servants” still has its roomy, noisy ambience favoured by Albini.  The raw, heartfelt "All apologies" sounds like the best of both worlds, with clean melodic, string-backed verses and raucous, 'recorded-in-someone's-bathroom' distorted choruses.

All in all, I feel like the mix and compromise makes the album more interesting than uneven.   More interesting than either another completely polished, ‘clean’ sounding Nevermind-esque recording, or a completely dirty, punky Albini-style record.

In true 1990s rock style, the album closes with a period of silence followed by the then-popular secret hidden track.

Day 0581 - Guitar Town

Steve Earle "Guitar Town" (1986)

Another album being given the "birth of alternative-country" badge.  The book outlines Earle's country credentials by pointing out that he was a rebel who ran away from school, struggled with addiction and was married 7 times (including twice to the same woman)... that's enough material for 10 country albums right there.  Certainly he also addressed the nature of addiction when guesting on the tv series 'The Wire' as an addicts-anonymous facilitator and former addict.

I'm not sure that the album earns its alt-country credentials.  To my ears it sounds like a pretty straightforward country album, but then maybe compared to what had come before it, it was a bit of a minor left-hand turn.  There is a little touch of 'rock' going on in places. 

Not a bad album, mind, just not as interesting or good (in my mind) as something like Nanci Griffith's "Last of the True Believers" or the Mekons' "Fear and Whiskey".

Day 0511 - Nebraska

Bruce Springsteen "Nebraska"  (1982) - got it

Springsteen originally recorded the demos for this album at home on his 4-track.  He took the demos into the studio to record them with his E-Street Band.  But, once the tracks were down, Bruce and his team decided that the rootsy, stripped-down melancholy of the original demos was the sound that the songs needed and elected to just release Springsteen's demos.  The record company were less certain, but eventually allowed it.

The album remains (justifiably) critically acclaimed.  It is a morose and intimate portrait of struggling small town America.  Bruce moved to more radio-and-stadium-friendly fare for his next album "Born in the USA", but this one certainly adds an extra dimension to his oeuvre.

Day 0496 - The Lexicon of Love

ABC "The Lexicon of Love" (1982) - got it

 


ABC formed in Sheffield, initially under the name Vice Versa.  By the time they'd teamed up with producer Trevor Horn for this album, they'd developed a mix of post-punk and funk.  Horn had toured with Yes and acted as producer for a string of glossy pop hits.

The two parties opened each other up to their respective musical worlds with the band introducing Horn to bands like Defunkt, and Horn introducing the band to the possibilities of the studio, telling them "if you want a pizza; I'll get you a pizza.  If you want a string section; I'll get you a string section".  The band built many of the songs using sequencers and drum machines and then went back and replaced those tracks with their own playing, leading to tight, almost mechanised grooves.

A polished, new-wave funk masterpiece.  The bonus jazz reworking of single "Poison Arrow" is brilliant and shows how strong the song is, regardless of genre/arrangement.