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 0657 - Nick of Time

Bonnie Raitt "Nick of Time" (1989)

To say that Bonnie had had a hard time of it, would be understating things slightly.  Her record company dropped her due to low sales, and (after a two year gap) released the album she'd been working on prior to being dropped, but under a completely different title.  This left Bonnie to promote an album of 2 year old material that she was no longer particularly connected to.
Her romantic relationship ended, she had to disband her backing band as she couldn't afford to pay them, and she fell into a slump of addiction and depression.

After a brief attempt to work with Prince (seems that everyone was doing that in the late 80s/early 90s) Bonnie was put together with Don Was from the group Was (Not Was) of "Walk the Dinosaur" fame.  It ended up being one of those fruitful artist/producer match-ups.  Was matched Raitt's bluesy rock and country-tinged balladry with a little pop sensibility and studio sparkle to create "Nick of Time" and its follow-up "Luck of the Draw", both of which successfully revived Bonnie's career.

Bonnie Raitt is another of those artists where I'd heard her name but had never heard any of her songs... unlike other artists on the list though, her music sounded pretty much exactly as I'd expected it would.

Day 0643 - fROMOHIO

fIREHOSE "fROMOHIO" (1989)

Following the death of their guitarist/singer D. Boon, the band the Minutemen broke up.   Singer/Bassist Mike Watt and drummer George Hurely had considered quitting music altogether, but after Sonic Youth invited Watt to collaborate with them it made him realise he wasn't done with music yet.   

Minutemen fan Ed Crawford tracked down Watt in the mistaken belief that he was auditioning guitarists for a new band.  The move paid off as Crawford's passion and enthusiasm impressed Watt and Hurley, and convinced them to try forming a band with the less road-tested Crawford, thus fIREHOSE was born.

"fROMOHIO" is their third studio album and mixes their sound of post-punk, funk, folky acoustic guitar and restrained but pleasant melody.   A sound not dissimilar from the Minutemen, but maybe more stylistically focussed and with less punk rock.

Day 0523 - She's So Unusual

Cyndi Lauper "She's so Unusual" (1983)

Lauper's band Blue Angel had been signed, flopped, dropped their manager and were then sued by him.  Lauper was forced into bankruptcy.  From there she set about singing in clubs in New York and essentially restarting her career.   She was spotted by a manager who took her on and got her signed to a label as a solo artist.

The resulting 'debut' album is "She's so unusual" which boasted 7 singles including hits like "Time after Time" and "Girls just want to have fun" saw Lauper for a while in close competition with Madonna for the "Queen of Pop" moniker.