Day 0845 - Dig Me Out

Sleater-Kinney "Dig Me Out" (1997)

Though I was aware of the name Sleater-Kinney, they really came on my radar via singer/guitarist Carrie Brownstein's show "Portlandia" with fellow punk-turned-comedian Fred Armisen.

Sleater-Kinney (named for a road in Lacey Washington) formed in the mid-90s and quickly went from a side project for Brownstein and other singer-guitarist (no bass in the band) Corin Tucker to being their main gig.

The band were recognised as being part of the 'riot grrrl' movement, the underground feminist rock movement of the 90s.   The music is mostly raucous punky rock with attitude-laden vocals and duelling guitar parts over propulsive drums.

Short n sweet album, my only real criticism would be that there's not a lot of variety.  Even ballady track "Buy her candy" has a little rock attitude to it.  Leaves me wishing that they'd maybe turn off the distortion pedal for even just one song.

 

Day 0591 - Sign o' the Times

Prince "Sign o' the Times " (1987)

 
Prince had been working on a double album with the Revolution "Dream Factory", and a solo album that he'd planned to release under the feminine pseudonym 'Camille'.  He ended up disbanding the Revolution and scrapping the Camille album.  Combining the material from these projects with some new songs he planned a triple album "Crystal Ball".   This was vetoed by the record company who baulked at releasing that much material simultaneously, and Prince was left to cherry-pick tracks for a single album.

You'd think that choosing from such a large pool of songs this would be a 'home run' of an album.  Instead, I feel as though the songs being drawn from 3 disparate projects over a number of years led to a bit of a lack of cohesion across the material.

There are plenty of good moments here, and Prince explores every genre that he'd investigated up till that point (and then some), but as a whole it just doesn't quite hit the spot for me the way that '1999' or 'Purple Rain' did.

Day 0468 - Closer

Joy Division "Closer" (1980)

The sonic experimentation of 'unknown pleasures' is set aside in favour of laying the songs bare (other than some well placed reverb). The music remains fairly mechanical and cold but with increasing use of synthesizers, possibly hinting that the New Order direction would have still happened had Curtis survived.

Ian Curtis' lyrics are grim and funereal. He had said to one of his bandmates that he felt the lyrics were essentially writing themselves and that he felt like a weird feeling of claustrophobia and being pulled into a whirlpool and drowning. He was dead before the album was released, which makes the crypt/tomb album cover a rather prescient choice.