Day 0991 - Halcyon Digest

Deerhunter “Halcyon Digest” (2010)

The band were originally formed by vocalist Bradford Cox and Moses Achuleta.   Cox let someone else choose the band name as he figured the band was a short-term ‘art project’ and went on to state that he disliked the name.

The group’s bass player died in an accident and this added to the difficulties of making their first album, which was given the confrontational title "Turn it up Faggot".   The band were convinced after this to carry on recording albums and this is their fifth.   Lyrically it deals with people rewriting their memories to present the picture of their life they want to remember.

To me lots of this sounds like what I might expect it to sound like if John Lennon were alive and put in charge of a modern indie-rock band.   The gentle, stripped down "Sailing" in particular is very Lennon-esque both in the compositional style and the dreamy yet slightly cutting cadence of the singer's voice.    Lennon's love of sonic experimentation is also shared by the band with the opening track "Earthquake" is a swirl of psychedelic guitar parts over a looped percussion track that seems to mix drums with a hint of other non-musical sounds.

The drum beats are often fairly repetitive and straightforward almost like loops, though on songs like “Desire Lines” and “He Would Have Laughed” the loops are sometimes repeating over 4 bars rather than one or two, so pleasingly more engaging than they necessarily need to be.

The songs often use walls of trippy sounds, but there are some more quite nice simple tracks amongst that, like the aforementioned "Sailing" and "Basement Scene".   "Helicopter" again goes over a treated beat building simple quite folky guitar parts which swell to meet the choruses.

There are a couple of rockier tracks leading up to the finish, including "Fountain Stairs" which almost has a touch of the Dunedin Sound to it.    The last track "He Would Have Laughed" has a groove to it that's somehow busy and laidback at the same time.   Feels like Lennon mixed with a bit of Animal Collective.

Day 0973 - Kala

M.I.A. "Kala" (2007)

Funnily enough I watched the doco/film about Mathangi Arulpragasam (M.I.A.) a week or so after I listened to and wrote this one up - which would have saved me a bit of reading time, but just digging around a bit and yeah she's had an interesting life.   She grew up in Sri Lanka during the civil war, surrounded by violence.   When she and her family moved to the UK she found herself surrounded instead by racism.

Arulpragasam actually started her artistic career as a visual artist.   She was becoming a respected artist in her own right when Elastica took her on board to do artwork for one of their albums.   She went on tour with them to do some filming, and the tour opener artist Peaches encouraged her to make music.   Elastica singer Justine Frischmann provided her a sequencer/drum-machine and Arulpragasam started putting together some demos, adopting the stage name M.I.A.

Frischmann's manager helped her secure a record contract and M.I.A. released her first album.   That was my first introduction to her, with the videos for "Bucky Done Gun" and "Sunshowers" getting a bit of play here in NZ.   BDG in particular wasn't really like anything I'd heard with its beats, minimal arrangements, stabs of horn and raps.

"Kala" mostly follows in this vein, mostly focussing on beats without too many instruments arranged over the top of it.  Just there to underline M.I.A.'s vocals.  There are samples of South Asian music and (just to mix things up) the Clash, with that band's "Straight to Hell" being used to create the brilliant "Paper Planes".   "Bird Flu" is all sorts of percussion wonderfulness, "Jimmy" is a bit more electro-pop.   

Great album, though I would say I was less impressed by the artist behind the art after watching the film. 😕

Day 0952 - Abattoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheus

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds "Abattoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheus" (2004) - got it

 

I'm a big Nick Cave fan, but releasing a double album as a follow-up to the uncharacteristically lacklustre "Nocturama" did not seem like the best idea.   But, this seems to be a case of something I've talked about before, where artists can creatively fire up for a period of time (and should probably mine that vein while they can) but then fizzle out in others.   Nick Cave was definitely on fire here.

The first disc (Abattoir) is all power, opening with the crash of high power gospel rocker "Get Ready For Love" which I've always felt is about people missing out on everyday miracles because they're too busy waiting for 'a sign'.   The disc proceeds through grinding twisted blues rock in "Hiding Away", upbeat melodic rocking songs with "There She Goes My Beautiful World.   It is surprisingly short on fat ending on the uplifting "Let the Bells Ring" and then "Fable of the Brown Ape" that feels like it would fit nicely on 'Let Love Rule' next to a track like "Red Right Hand".

The second disc (Lyre) starts on a more sedate note with the unrelenting murder-folk of the title track.   A lighter folk informs the love songs "Breathless" and "Babe You Turn Me On" which features the gently murmured line "I put one hand on your round ripe heart, and the other down your panties".  Putting that line in a love song just seems to nicely sum up Cave's mix of the intimate/yearning and naughty/perverse.   "Supernaturally" is nicely propulsive piano-centred track and adds a little variety against the first few quieter tracks.   

This disc feels like maybe it could have lost a track and still been pretty good, but maybe the mellower sound was just less gripping than the bump and grind of Abattoir.   It starts and ends well at least.

This was the band's first album without guitarist Blixa Bargeld.  It would be unfair to lay the success of this album and the inadequacies of the previous release totally at Bargeld's door, but possibly removing one cook helped improve the broth?

Day 0910 - The Hour of Bewilderbeest

Badly Drawn Boy "The Hour of Bewilderbeest" (2000)

Badly Drawn Boy (nee Damon Gough) is someone I was mainly familiar with due to his work on the "About a Boy" soundtrack and the fact that he seems to always be wearing a beanie.  I had no real feel for him or his music at all.

Gough released a string of EPs before producing this debut full-length.   The 18-track album was said to be a loose concept album describing the lifespan of a relationship.

Ambitious project as far as the narrative idea, the mix of styles (technically he's indie folk-pop but there are elements of funk, baroque pop and rock, amongst others) and as far as the amount of music on the album.   

Can't say it really won me over.  It's one of those albums where none of the music is really unpleasant.  Quite the opposite, each track was nice enough.  The problem is that none of it really stuck with me.   As each track finished it was gone from my head and I felt no real connection to the music.   With over an hour of it  (and I  played it through a couple of times) it made for a cumbersome listening experience.

Day 0874 - Moon Safari

 Air “Moon Safari” (1998) – got it

Another French electro-pop group.  Air is duo Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel, and this is their first full-length album, following an initial EP release.

The sound is kind of like a mix of 50s east coast (smooth) jazz and 70s/80s analogue synthesizers.  This is perfectly laid out on album opener “La Femme D’argent” which features extended keyboard and bass vamps over a looped beat and sound effects.   As if it didn’t sound laid back enough, they overdub the sound of gentle rain to really ram home the point.

Single “Sexy Boy” kicks in next all squelchy bass, washy synth sounds, and catchy vocal melodies.   “Kelly Watch the Stars” is a favourite of mine, as is "Remember" which moves from reflective, relaxed melody, robot vocals to an almost sci-fi b-movie sound.

A relaxing and musically enjoyable album that hits extra sweet spots for me as I bought it when I was living in Leeds in the UK, so it kind of takes me back there a bit.

Day 0766 - Vauxhall and I

Morrissey "Vauxhall and I" (1994)

Morrissey's fourth album... this is another of those points where I have scratch my head at the selections on the list.   I don't really hear anything musically in this album that hasn't already been covered in Morrissey's other entries in the list so far.  There are far more musically interesting albums out there from other artists that could have been selected in place of this.

The album is pretty much Morrissey doing his thing.   It's a bit mellower than "Your Arsenal" and the lyrics seem to very much be driven by the deaths of people around Morrissey at the time, including legendary guitarist Mick Ronson (who'd produced Morrissey's previous album), his manager, and a director of some of his music videos.   With a song called "Hold onto your friends", and the line 'tell all of my friends/I don't have too many' in the song "Now my heart is full" it seemed that Mos was ruminating on mortality in general and the shrinking of one's social circle with age.   Worthy subjects, but still not really enough that the album needed to be in this list.

Day 0750 - Debut

 Björk "Debut" (1993) 

 

Björk is another musical 'lifer'.   She studied piano, released her first (self-titled) album at the age of 11, played in fusion bands, punk bands and achieved a degree of fame fronting the band Sugarcubes.  Even around those bands though she was recording with various other musicians in a variety of styles.

Björk moved to London to really get her solo career going.  She teamed up with producer Nellee Hooper (Massive Attack, Soul II Soul) and, grooving on the club culture, produced this album of largely dance/triphop-based tracks.  You couldn't really pigeonhole it to that one area though, with jazzy horn sections, sweet pop and weird 'Björky' idiosyncrasies.   

All across the album,  Björk's voice is on full display.  Ranging from whispered child-like melody to full-throated ecstatic yell-singing.   Bjork is a true original, to the extent that I've found myself referring to some artists as "like a French Björk" (Camille) or "like a less 'out there' Björk" (Emiliana Torrini).   She is pretty much her own genre.

The album was well received, and as a cherry on top, it was the beginning of Björk's visual creative partnership with Michel Gondry, whose quirky music videos were the perfect match for Björk's music.

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 0578 - Graceland

Paul Simon "Graceland" (1986)

Described by the book as Paul Simon's midlife crisis - which seems somehow appropriate as, when I was growing up it was that album that everyone's middle-aged parents seemed to own.  My own parents had the concert on VHS.

PS had briefly reunited with Art Garfunkel, only for it to end acrimoniously.  His marriage had likewise ended, and his previous solo album had flopped.  A depressed PS found himself listening to bootleg recordings of South African township music.  Inspired by the sounds, he and his producer visited South Africa to record with musicians there, this despite a cultural boycott against South Africa due to the existence of Apartheid

PS stated that on previous albums he'd written the songs then brought them into the studio to teach them to his band, but for this album he tried to work the other way: jam out ideas with his musicians and then write a song around them.  The public were ready to slate the album for its perceived breach of the cultural boycott, but instead it became one of the biggest releases of the year and certainly of Paul Simon's career.

I enjoyed this a lot... it is possible that I am middle-aged now.

Day 0531 - Colour By Numbers

Culture Club "Colour By Numbers" (1983)

CC built on the success of their debut album "Kissing to be Clever" with another hit.  This album leads off with "Karma Chameleon" which would go on to be the band's signature song.

It'd be easy enough to just classify them as "80s pop", but they're actually a ridiculously diverse band for the time, with the reggae vibe of the previous album's hit "do you really want to hurt me" to the mix of RnB, pop, and even full-headed soul on show here.

Day 0375 - Hard Again

Muddy Waters "Hard Again" (1977) - got it

Muddy let's everyone know how hard he is... thanks Mud'

Muddy had recently parted company with Chess Records after some 28 years and set out to prove that he still had it: spoiler: he did!

I find that the blues... I can take em or leave em. My issue with them is much the same as my problems with reggae, that there is some good material, but that over the runtime of an album it all starts to sound a bit 'samey'.  I belive that part of the draw with the blues is the stories, but as I don't spend much time listening to lyrics, that doesn't elevate the material at all for me.

With that all said, this album is at another level. Hard is in fact one of the better adjectives to describe these tracks, and the arrangements are pretty straightforward.  The vocals are unadorned and passionate, and this music rocks!  There are some tracks here that would give Hendrix a run for his money as far as rocking, deep-grooving blues go.

This is an album that I actually picked up as a result of listening to it for this list.