Day 0961 - American Idiot

Green Day "American Idiot" (2004) - got it

The story goes that Green Day had recorded an album which was to continue the expansion of their musical palette that had been going on in their previous album "Warning".  The recordings were stolen and the band decided started from scratch.   Realistically they had backups and could have recreated the music.  It was more likely it just wasn't quite up to scratch, but it makes a for better story to say the theft led to reinvention.

The band took the opportunity to try something different; a punk-rock opera.   There does seem to be a lyrical connection, and the album's two medley pieces "Jesus of Surburbia" and "Homecoming" feed into that conceit.   I've never really paid too much attention to that side of things but the album does have a certain cohesion to it, even as it mashes punk rock (the title track and "Saint Jimmy") with an almost 1950s sound on the verses of "Give Me Novocaine" and stadium-sized sound on songs like "We are the Waiting" or ballad "Wake Me When September Ends".

The song that seized me pretty early on was "Boulevard of Broken Dreams"  with it's tremolo-drenched alt-rock balladry. I hate the radio would often play a version where they shave off the instrumental outro, as though it was unworthy because it didn't have a human voice on it (probably just considered too long for the radio) it's one of my favourite parts of the song.   

The album was also seemingly one of the few mainstream releases making any effort to criticise the US invasion of Iraq (the sequel).  Definitely throwing a title like "American Idiot" at a highly patriotic nation like the US was a reasonably punk-rock thing to do.

American Idiot ended up being a shot in the arm for Green Day, setting their direction for the next few years, leading to a live album, a documentary, and even a stage musical. 

Day 0888 - The Contino Sessions

Death in Vegas “The Contino Sessions” (1999)

The band were originally called ‘Dead Elvis’, but as it tunred out this was the name of an existing record label.  They changed their name to the thematically similar ‘Death in Vegas’ and used the Dead Elvis moniker for their first album instead.

The Contino Sessions (named for their recording space) is their second album.  The blurb in the book mentioned DJing and electronica and I’d thought that I’d be getting something very much in that musical arena.   I was quite surprised then to hear the opening track “Dirge” that starts with a sparse guitar line and vocals, then eventually builds to a Shoe-gazey wall of guitar noise.  

There are definitely electronic elements here (electronic beats, loops) but the sound veers between the aforementioned shoegazey sound and triphop, with shoe-gaze/wall-of-guitar band Jesus and Mary Chain’s vocalist Jim Reid featuring on one track “Broken Little Sister”.  Actually, that one sounded a bit familiar to me.

The second track “Soul Auctioneer” features a sinister, subdued groove that would not feel out of place on an early Massive Attack album.   Iggy Pop features spoken word vocals on “Aisha”, meanwhile the track “Aladdin’s Story” is a rare burst of upbeat melody amongst the gloom… though even there, it’s deceptive.  The few lyrics are hardly uplifting “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen/Nobody knows my sorrow”.

Day 0887 - Beyond Skin

Nitin Sawhney "Beyond Skin" (1999)

Another interesting, multi-faceted creative type.  Sawhney studied piano, guitar, sitar and tabla.  He toured with the group the James Taylor Quartet, formed his own band, the Jazztones, then joined forces with Talvin Singh (entry 875) to create the Tihai Trio.

Sawhney joined up with an old university friend Sanjeev Baskhar to write a comedy radio show that eventually became the brilliant tv programme "Goodness Gracious Me".   Sawhney also continued with his music.

The Talvin Singh connection made me expect that this would be another album in the 'Asian Underground' sub-genre, but that's not the case at all.   The first track "Broken Skin" sounds like a pretty straight-ahead bit of soulful pop, albeit with chants in the middle section.   Another track features what sounds like Southern American music.  On the whole it wouldn't be unfair to label the album 'world music', but not in some pigeonholing or dismissive way, more because it feels like whole world is capture here through differing genres, instrumentation and musical ethnicity!

"Serpents" and "the Conference" both feature enjoyably speedy rhythmic vocal and percussion sounds playing off against each other.   "Nadia" would fit broadly into the Asian Underground category.  "Nostalgia" is another somewhat poppy track.

There is a theme running through about nuclear weapons.  Beyond this, in the album liner notes Sawhney stated:
    "I believe in Hindu philosophy.  I am not religious.  I am a pacifist.  I am a British Asian.  My identity     and my history are defined only by myself - beyond politics, beyond nationality, beyond religion and     Beyond Skin."

Day 0808 - Dust

Screaming Trees "Dust" (1996)

Screaming Trees and their dust-throated vocliast Mark Lanegan have always drifted in and out of my orbit.   I first heard the Screaming Tress through their brilliant song "Nearly lost you" from the soundtrack Cameron Crowe's grunge-centric film "Singles".   Even though I loved that song I didn't really think to check out any more of their music.

A few years later a friend was well into the Mark Lanegan band and I listened to a couple of their albums but left it at that again.   Then a few years later, I saw Lanegan perform with the band the Soulsavers and a friend who is very much a Lanegan afficiando helped me discover a lot more of his work (solo, with Belle & Sebastian's Isobel Campbell, with Duke Garwood, Gutter Twins, Twilight Singers...).   Basically, sometimes I'm a slow learner.

Anyway, back to "Dust".   The basic foundation of this album seems to be the Beatles' Revolver and Rubber Soul albums, it has that mix of hard rock with middle-eastern sounds and a wash of psychedelia.   I guess those sounds, mixed with a little more distortion and with Lanegan's gravelly voice somehow manages to sound rock hard, the album is too good to fob off as "just another grunge record".

Great songs with occasional touches of gospel backing vocals that seem to signpost what was to come as far as Lanegan's work with the Soulsavers goes.

Day 0695 - Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge

Mudhoney "Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge" (1991)

I'll be frank - Mudhoney don't really do it for me.  They have a lot of the hallmarks of other bands that I like from this era/movement; the loud guitars, the loud vocals.  It's just that, although there are moments on this album that I enjoyed well enough, none of it really stands out or sticks in my memory after 3 runs through.  There are moments where I think "oh that sounded kind of interesting" but no "oh wow!".

The album title comes from a memory device for teaching students the line notes on the treble clef (EGBDF... the gaps 'FACE' are easier to remember), though usually it's "Every Good Boy Deserves Fruit/Favour.

Day 0269 - Let's Stay Together

Al Green "Let's stay together" (1972) - got it

 
As with Roxy Music, I got into Al Green through a slightly indirect route.  I saw/heard a slightly warped cover of his song "Simply Beautiful" by Mike Patton's band Fantômas.

Loved the song so I checked out a couple of Green's tracks on youtube ended up picking up a 4-pack of Green's classic albums for Hi records.

Green's voice is a thing of beauty.  It moves from a delicate, barely audible falsetto whisper to a raspy bold cry, giving each song exactly what it needs.  Whether it's the soul grooves of 'La la for you' and 'So you're leaving', the laid back RnB of 'What is this feeling?', or the epic, emotive 6 minute reading of "How can you mend a broken heart?" in which you could imagine that Green is actually searching for the broken shards.