Day 0994 - D

White Denim "D" (2011)

Originally a 4-piece group called Parque Touch.  Once one of their members left, the group solidified into a trio for a couple of lo-fi psychedelic rock albums.   They then recruited a new fourth member before moving into a professional studio to record "D".

The mix of psychedelia, melody and decent recording techniques is delightful.   "Burnished" with its distorted, fiddly playing around with time signatures reminds me favourably of Soundgarden.  It then segues seamlessly into the fusiony fretboard pyrotechnics of "Back on the Farm".

The pace is pulled back then for "Street Joy" which is spacey and melodic.  Elsewhere "River to Consider" has a busy 'world music' percussion and jazz flute.   It's not all trippy melodic and psychedelic rock though.   "Is and Is and Is" er... is a solid rock track with Ian Curtis-esque vocals.   The album closes on a relaxed note with "Keys" which has kind of a laid-back Lou Reed "Transformer" vibe to it.

I don't quite rate this as an "I must rush out and buy this one" album, but definitely above average and I enjoyed it well enough.

Day 0980 - Fleet Foxes

Fleet Foxes "Fleet Foxes" (2008) - got it

I first heard Fleet Foxes probably over a decade ago.  The video for their song "Mykonos" got plenty of play late at night on our local music channel when I'd be watching TV after my evening/night shifts.   For some reason (possibly shift-related grumpiness) at the time I wanted to dislike it, but it stuck with me.   It stuck with me to the point that years later, out of the blue I found myself youtubing some of their songs and then picking up their debut album (with bonus "Sun God" EP) on vinyl.

The band were eventually signed to Sub-Pop (a label previously much more associated with the Seattle grunge movement) but not before they'd had to scrape together the money to make recordings themselves, with sessions taking places in houses/apartments of the band and their producer.

The album opens with glorious a cappella vocal harmonies on "White Winter Hymnal". Vocal harmonies go on to a recurrent feature throughout the album.  The band has a lovely lush, yet organic sound, largely built from acoustic instruments and the aforementioned vocals.   Their sound mixes indie-pop with folk, often an almost pastoral 'ye olde' folk.

The lush sound gets pared back on songs like "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song" and "Oliver James" which offer Robin Peckold's high, clear voice time to really shine. His voice gives songs "He Doesn't Know Why" and "Your Protector" a sound that could be (not unfavourably) compared to the Shins.

It's an impressive debut, somehow feeling simultaneously old, contemporary and timeless all at once.

Day 0971 - Sounds of Silver

 LCD Soundsystem “Sounds of Silver” (2007)

I'd been introduced to LCD Soundsystem via their track "Daft Punk is Playing at My House".   They're one of those bands where I've enjoyed everything I've heard from them but for some reason have never made an effort to investigate any more of it.   I was hoping they'd pop up on the list to force my lazy, disorganised arse into listening to them.

The late-70s influence is all over this,  “Get Innocuous” feels like an update of Bowie’s Young Americans album, while “Time to Get Away” is like mid-era Talking Heads.   Actually TH is a definite presence here with the danceable rock and skittish intellectual vocal approach.

“Someone Great” is a bed of swelling synths with a perky lead line, all topped with Murphy’s repetitive melodic vocal on top.  Comes across kind of like if Kraftwerk’s music making robots found a little more humanity... and lethargy.

Much of the rest of the album occasionally touches on the above influences but falls more into a sort of indie rock sound with a few electronic conceits included.
The album ends well with “New York I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down” which starts out as a delicate piano piece sounding not unlike Lou Reed's 'Perfect Day'.   It eventually builds to an excellent crazed rock freak-out and then backs off again for the denouement.

Day 0939 - The Coral

The Coral "The Coral" (2002)

What the what?!

Another situation where I was familiar with the name but for some reason assumed this band was one of the indie rock groups making the scene at the time; far from it! This album mixes a punky raucousness with melodic sensibility.  Musical control with wild abandon.  The whole thing is smothered in vocal harmonies which is something that (if you're keeping track) I love.

"Goodbye" has jazzy fusiony vamps.  "Shadows Fall" has a Specials-esque bit of moody two-tone with folky vocals that suddenly launch into a burst of hot jazz and plays out with a cool ping-pong vocal thing.  "I Remember When" moves between slow morose alt-rock and bursts into an explosive almost punky rock for the chorus and rounds out on a sort of klezmer section.

It's a definite "all sounds considered" approach that wraps in rock, folk, jazz, balladry, reggae, sea shanty, indie rock.  Music for the sake of music, and I love it!

Day 0894 - S&M

Metallica "S&M" (1999) - got it

Arranger and film composer Michael Kamen met Metallica at the Grammy awards in the early 90s.  Having put together an orchestral arrangement for an acoustic version of the band's hit "Nothing Else Matters" he had approached them about doing more with an orchestra.   Nothing came of it, until a few years later when the band themselves revisited the idea with Kamen.

These "band mixed with orchestra" things are always a bit hit and miss and that's the case here too.   Some of the arrangements are a bit busy and distract from the already dense arrangements, or they go completely the opposite way and are too slow with lots of legato that doesn't match or effectively counterpoint the faster source material.  

Some of the more successful tracks are from the Black Album and Load/ReLoad because they have a more stripped down sound which gives the orchestra a lot more room to inhabit.   There's the big brassy power put behind the opening bass riff of "Devil's Dance", or the appropriately Middle-Eastern flavoured strings giving "Wherever I may Roam" an extra epic dimension... almost like "Kashmir" via Metallica.

The two new songs "No Leaf Clover" and "-Human" see the band continuing in the more melodic stripped-down vibe they'd explored on their previous few albums.   That sound wouldn't last though.

This was the last album to feature bassist Jason Newsted and the band started to move to recapture their old 1980s sound and their old fans with a return to their thrashy roots.

At the time this album was released I was going through a bit of a Metallica obsession and willingly, aurally-inhaled this new offering.   With other music having since taken me away from them, I couldn't say that I listen to this album with any regularity.  I revisit their albums on a regular basis, but I don't feel like this one necessarily adds anything to their oeuvre other than offering an interesting sidestep.

Day 0837 - Blur

Blur “Blur” (1997) – got it

Blur’s self-titled album was a dramatic sea change for the band.  After three albums of perky, clean, cheeky Britpop, containing plenty of piano and occasional brass bands; they suddenly emerged with this murky, often downbeat, sparser, lo-fi rock album.

The band’s previous album “the Great Escape” had been relatively successful commercially and critically (and it’s the first one really got me into them).  But, with the highly publicised ‘battle of Britpop’ between Blur and Oasis and the success of the latter’s “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory” album Blur faced backlash, being seen as inauthentic middle-class pop, next to ‘working class heroes’ Oasis.

Guitarist Graham Coxon was also feeling increasingly creatively restrained within the band, to the extent that he wrote a letter to singer Damon Albarn urging that they make music that “scares people again”.   Albarn talked to producer Stephen Street about going for a more stripped down sound and the band took a more collaborative approach, jamming together instead of just working on Albarn's compositions.

Right from the off it's a different sound.  Opening track "Beetlebum" starts with muted, struck guitar strings giving way into an almost monotone fuzzy guitar line with Albarn's slow drawl creeping in over top; the overall effect owing more to American indie rock than to the British music hall.   The second track, the imaginatively titled "Song 2" was something they'd thrown together with Coxon and drummer Dave Rowntree playing drum kits at opposite ends of studio from each other and Albarn riffing lyrics over the top.  The short rocker ended up becoming a hit for the band.

Most of the rest of the record continues with its scungey alt-rock vibe on tracks like "Death of a party", "Movin' on", the Coxon penned and sung "You're so great" and epic closer "Essex Dogs".    Elsewhere, tracks like "MOR" and "Chinese Bombs" bring a rocking velocity to contrast the more lethargic numbers.   "On your own" flirts with electronic beats, and mixes that with guitar noises and singalong choruses.

The album doesn't completely depart from previous offerings.  As with the previous three albums there is an instrumental track, but instead of being a jaunty brass or piano piece, it's the moody "Theme from Retro", all organs and indistinct vocal samples.   The song that bears the most resemblance to their previous Britpop work (bouncy rhythm and string backing) is, funnily enough, the track titled "Look Inside America".

It's funny in a way: Oasis spent so much time trying to be the Beatles by copying that band's various sounds, whereas Blur ended up being more like the Beatles through their constant reinvention and deconstruction of their own sound.

Day 0826 - Everything Must Go

Manic Street Preachers "Everything Must Go" (1996)

Following the disappearance of guitarist Richey Edwards the band relocated themselves to France with producer Mike Hedges to work on the follow-up to "The Holy Bible" (see day 777).

The sound of the previous album was dark, angsty and brittle.   "Everything Must Go" instead brings energy and a cathartic, at times almost euphoric sound.

This album features single "A Design for life" which was my introduction to the band back in the 90s sometime.   I'm not a hardcore MSP fan by any stretch of the imagination, I have a greatest hits album, and that's it.   Having said that I frequently hear sounds from them that I enjoy, and definitely the two albums on this list so far are full of 'good bits'.

Day 0791 - Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

The Smashing Pumpkins "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" (1995) - got it

 

This is another of those albums that I did not really need to listen to for the list (but did anyway) because it is imprinted firmly on my brain.    This was one of the first albums that was 'mine' as opposed to listening to my parents' or siblings' music.   I used to sit and listen to this album (all 2+ hours/28 tracks of it) at LEAST once a day.  Not doing anything else (except maybe making up music videos in my mind) just listening to the music.  Some days I wish I had the luxury of and concentration for doing that now.

It had been decided before the songs had even been written that the Mellon Collie would be a double-album.   Corgan stated they'd almost had enough songs to make the previous album "Siamese Dream" a double album too, which probably explains the full-length b-sides album "Pisces Iscariot" that was released between the two studio albums.

What could easily have been a giant overindulgent mess ends up being quite a cohesive musical journey (remembering that this is wound so deep into my synapses that I can't be entirely unbiased towards it).

While the vibe is largely angst, loneliness and nihilism, there is also joy and fear and love and the whole spectrum of human emotion.  The music has range too, with a delicate piano opening track seguing into "Tonight Tonight" with its interesting mix of prominent strings with a melodic alt-pop track (also the first Pumpkins song that I ever heard).   I won't got track by  track through the album, but suffice to say it has punishing riffs (Tales of a Scorched Earth, Bodies), subtle melodic tracks (Galapagos, Stumbleine), ventures into prog (Porcelina of the Vast Ocean), dabbles with electronic elements (1979, Beautiful) and a dozen other genres.   The whole thing is divided into two disks "Dawn to Dusk" and "Twilight to Starlight" and the final track "Farewell and Goodnight" features all four band members taking turns on the vocals to wish the viewer sweet dreams, again letting you feel like you've taken a musical journey. 

I think an important part of the success of this album is that Billy and the band were just creatively on fire at this point (or maybe it's just that this is when their songwriting most aligned with my own personal tastes).   All 28 songs from the album are enjoyable, most of the 25-30 B-sides associated with the album are really good, even the unreleased demos I've heard from this period are mostly decent.   Nowadays I'm lucky if a new Pumpkins song sticks with me past the first listen.

Day 0777 - The Holy Bible

Manic Street Preachers "The Holy Bible" (1994)

Possibly the darkest MSP album, and the last featuring guitarist Richey Edwards who disappeared suddenly during the promotion for the album.  To this day it's not known what happened to him or where he went.

In addition to the situation with Edwards, vocalist/lyricist/guitarist James Dean Bradfield was suffering depression, alcohol abuse, self-harm and anorexia.  This is not the sing-along preachiness of latter stage MSP, this is some grinding, grim and angsty rock.   The guitar riffs are distorted and angular, my favourite being "the Intense Humming of Evil" which sounds like a mix of NIN, TOOL and Radiohead.

The album did not sell well initially, though it was critically vaunted.   The band were probably just a bit ahead of their time, with gloom and angst... which would be fairly marketable over the next few years.   I personally thought it was a great slice of rock.

Day 0771 - Parklife

Blur “Parklife” (1994) – got it

Blur were feeling reinvigorated following the release of their second album “Modern Life is Rubbish”.  It hadn’t broken records with its sale figures, but was critically well received and the band felt they were on the right track.  As soon as they’d finished that record, singer Damon Albarn started writing a large number of songs and the band worked at demoing them.  They got back in the studio with producer Stephen Street as soon as they could, and most of the album was recorded fairly quickly.

Aside from the opening track “Girls and Boys” which has a bit of a European dance/disco vibe to it, and one or two of the more grand tracks like “To the End”, this album is British through and through.  In fact even "Girls and Boys starts" with a line about “following the herd to Greece on holiday”, sounding like the start of episode of “Boozed up Brits Abroad”.   

The Britishness continues with the “oi oi oi” punky rock of “Bank Holiday”, the brass band waltz of instrumental “the Debt Collector” (as well as brassy bass embellishments on the title track and rocking "Jubilee"), the pastoral harpsicord of “Clover over Dover” and of course Albarn’s almost aggressively cockney/mockney accent pushing into the songs.  Even bassist Alex James' composition "Far Out" sounds like it would be at home in a 1960s Pink Floyd club gig in swinging London.

It's a brilliant album (if maybe a track or so too long).  They do copy Modern Life a bit with the overall sound and having a couple of fun instrumental 'interludes', but with "Girls and Boys" and the loungey stylings of "To the end" they were definitely forging new ground.

Day 0746 - Modern Life is Rubbish

 Blur “Modern Life is Rubbish” (1993) – got it

 

Blur had released their debut album “Leisure” which aligned itself stylistically with the ‘baggy’ scene, the musical movement mixing rock and dance rhythms.  The album fared well enough but things quickly went downhill.  The band came to be seen as bandwagon jumpers, they had an ill-received tour of the USA and found themselves owing quite a large sum of money, all while rival band Suede’s star was in ascension.

On the US tour, singer Damon Albarn had found himself missing the UK and listening to the pastoral, almost kitsch pop of the Kinks and formulating a bold change of direction for the next Blur album.  They all cut their hair and geared up in doc marten boots, narrow jeans and polo shirts to pose for photos under the label “British Image 1”.  The music followed suite with a more resolutely British bent to it.  Whether it was the brass band in “Sunday Sunday”, the London-centric lyrics of lead single “For Tomorrow” or Albarn's distinctive accent (labelled 'mockney' by his detractors) throughout.

It’s essentially the ‘classic’ Blur sound of upbeat pop songs with cheeky raucous vocals, lashings of backing vocals and embellished with brass bands and strings.  The clean pop doing battle with guitarist Graham Coxon’s love of noisy lo-fi indie rock and fuzzed-out distorted guitars.

But before you can get ideas about this album being all about Albarn and Coxon, the jagged bassline for “Colin Zeal” starts, with the drums and guitar coming in to create polyrythms against it, until it all congeals into the propulsive pop-rock chorus.

The band explore a range of sounds with "Miss America" being an interesting experiment in minimalism and atmosphere, that vaguely hints at Coxon's future work for "the End of the F**king World".  "Oily Water" almost bears a resemblance to what was going on in American indie-rock and "Advert" sounds like a blueprint for the faster tracks on their next two albums.

A lot of fans feel that “Modern Life…” is the best Blur album, others feel they perfected their sound with the next album “Parklife”.  My own heart lies with their murky, morose self-titled album, but I also like the fact that they don’t just settle on one sound and seem to be eternally questing for the next thing.

Day 0736 - Siamese Dream

Smashing Pumpkins "Siamese Dream" (1993) - got it

I had an odd introduction to the Pumpkins.  My brother showed me the music video for "Tonight Tonight" and (being a Beatles fan who didn't really like "heavy" music) when I heard the string-backed alt-rock with a slightly nasally vocal I liked what I heard and was making connections in my mind to Lennon.   As we lived in a small town with no music store, I ordered the Pumpkins' first two albums "Gish" and "Siamese Dream" on cassette through a mail order catalogue.   That ended up being a slightly wrong (yet so right) move as neither album had "Tonight Tonight" and both were packed with loud swirls of distorted guitar.

Having shelled out the pocket money to get them, I pushed ahead listening to them, and pretty quickly they started to get under my skin.

Reading up on it, following the punishing tour schedule for psychedelic sludgey riff-fest Gish, the band started working on Siamese Dream.  Billy Corgan was driven in his vision to combine the heaviness of Black Sabbath, the psychedelia of Pink Floyd and the musicianship of Led Zeppelin. 

Arguably he succeed.  The music is a noisy wave of guitar woven over hummable melodies and overlaid with some wailing lead guitar parts.   The album has a bit of variety between the noisy guitar-cyclone of "Silverf*ck" to the aptly named ballad "Sweet Sweet" with its clean, chiming guitars.   There is a vaguely cinematic feel to a lot of the songs, whether it's the guitar-heavy "Geek USA", the melodic closer "Luna" or the slow build of "Soma".   Yet across its different tracks and different styles, the album (and this is true of Gish too) has its own internal logic, so that the songs sound like they belong together.

There has been some debate as to how much of the album featured guitarist James Iha and bassist D'arcy with some rumours putting it that Billy recorded everything himself, but drummer Jimmy Chamberlain is certainly present.   The punishing drums of Chamberlain have the musicality of jazz with the force and heaviness of metal and are a defining feature of the Pumpkins' sound.  Chamberlain's issues with narcotics started to interfere with the recording, with him occasionally vanishing during the recording process.  He was pushed towards rehab, though would continue to suffer addiction for a few more years.

Day 0709 - Selected Ambient Works 85-92

Aphex Twin "Selected Ambient Works 85-92" (1992)

Richard D James AKA Aphex Twin had, by this point, moved to London, started a record label with Grant Wilson-Claridge, and released a few EPs.   However, this compilation actually constitutes his first full-length long-playing release. 

James was born in 1971, meaning that some of these tracks were written/recorded when he was only 13 or 14 years old.   By all accounts he seems to have been an audio experimenter from a young age, tweaking, rebuilding, and otherwise fiddling with synthesizers and computers.

The tracks are (aside from a sample of the Willy Wonka "we are the music makers...." quote) entirely instrumental.  The bleeps and bloops, sparse beats and bass lines with synthy shadings are well ahead of their time, even without taking into account James' young age when making them.... "start as you mean to go on" as they say.

Day 0707 - Metallica

Metallica "Metallica (AKA The Black Album)" (1992) - got it

Metallica’s greatest album, or “the one where they sold out” depending on where you hang your hat.

Metallica had started off playing sweaty, dirty punk-metal, a genre that came to be known as ‘thrash’.  The intensity of punk, but the heaviness and musicianship of metal.   The band had been evolving on each album, with arrangements becoming more and more intricate and harmonically interesting, with many different riffs, time changes and the songs building in length.  This all came to a head with “…and Justice For All” where the songs were generally all around the 7-10 minute mark with a multitude of riffs.  The band found the songs hard going while playing them live, and even started to notice some of the fans in the audience noticeably losing interest during the duration.

Enter “Metallica (the Black Album)”, the band enlisted producer Bob Rock, impressed with his work on Motley Crue’s Dr Feelgood album with it’s crunchy-yet-polished sound.  With Rock’s help, the band simplified their songs, basing them around one or two riffs, (instead of 15!)  The band slowed most of their songs down, using more of a ‘groove-metal’ approach, fusing heaviness with a greater degree of melody and atmosphere than had maybe been present before.

While some felt Rock’s production sound was too polished, I feel it adds a bit of much needed bottom-end to ‘tallica’s sound.  Jason Newsted’s bass is audible after being MIA on “…and Justice”.   He doesn’t have the nimble-fingered virtuosity of previous bassist Cliff Burton, but his solid, chunky sound suits the groove of the new music nicely.

There are still some speedy riffs that wouldn't be out of place on their 80s albums.  Songs like “Holier than thou”, “Through the Never” race along at a rate of knots.  Elsewhere, songs such as “Wherever I may roam” and “Sad but true” have a slower, more epic bent.

The album was a massive success, going multi-platinum and (to date) spending more than 500 weeks in the billboard 200.  With the polished sound, simpler songs, music videos, and the occasional (gasp!) ballad - the beautifully simplistic “Nothing Else Matters” – this album would also cause one of the biggest divides between Metallica fans until the next album where they (Gasp!  Again) cut their hair.

Day 0625 - …and Justice For All

Metallica “…and Justice For All” (1988) – got it

This is another album that I could expound on without listening to it.  But I will listen to it for completism, and because…. METALLICA!  Accordingly, I'll warn you that this is lengthy...

Metallica had started out playing their punky thrash on “Kill em All” and had slowly been adding layers of melodic and harmonic sophistication to their speedy thrash, reaching their peak with the album "Master of Puppets".  On the tour for that album, the band’s tour bus crashed, tragically killing bass-player Cliff Burton and leaving a fissure in the band that would take years to properly heal.  Rather than take time off to process this tragedy, the band quickly recruited a new bassist Jason Newsted, recorded an EP and hit the road again, before eventually decamping to record "...and Justice".

The band ended up taking out a lot of their unresolved issues on Newsted, with the bassist being mercilessly hazed for a long time, being given nicknames such as ‘Jason Newkid’ and ‘Carole’ (due to his supposed likeness to Carole King).  Another result of Cliff's death was a shift in the power-balance of the band.  Metallica had been becoming increasingly democratic, with all members contributing songs and arrangement ideas.  “…and Justice” saw the power swing back largely to singer/guitarist James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich.  Newsted only contributed to the writing of one song on the album, "Blackened" and his bass was famously almost non-existent in the final mix of the album.  It was suggested that this was further hazing from the band, who felt that Newsted’s playing was not up to scratch compared to their fallen comrade.

The album is an odd duck, but it really is its own thing.  With speedy thrash riffs mixing with occasionally dramatic vocals (and in the case of "Frayed Ends of Sanity" with a chant nicked from the Wizard of Oz).  The lack of bass is partially compensated by some low-chugging guitars and the resulting sound is odd but distinctive.  Hetfield was moving away from his throat scraping, trebly screams and into his now trademark, deep gravelly growl.  Lead guitarist Kirk Hammett is a star here, funnelling melodic themes, spitfire runs of notes and various scrapes, squeals and other sounds through his own virtuoso style to elevate each of the songs.

The songs could be seen as overblown in places, but I view them as being akin to a weird 'metal' take on classical music, particularly on instrumental track "To live is to die" which lays out its themes and then builds on them beautifully and brutally over its nearly 10 minute duration.

I do love this album, as it is one of those formative (high school) musical discoveries for me.  But, having heard one or two versions of this album where Jason Newsted’s basslines are added back into the mix (thanks to their inclusion on the Guitar Hero video game), the album certainly would not have suffered from having that extra bit of bottom-end.

Ultimately, the band tired of the complexity and length of the songs and started dropping them from live sets when they noticed some of their fans likewise losing interest.  The band ended up moving to a more commercial and compositionally compact approach for their follow-up (1991’s “Metallica” AKA “the Black Album”).

Day 0568 - Master of Puppets

Metallica "Master of Puppets" (1986) - got it

I actually got into Metallica through their later (90s) material, particularly the two LOAD albums, so I tend to go back and forth on what I find to be their best work/era.

This is most likely their definitive musical statement though.  The band had been steadily developing and refining their sound over the preceding two albums.  This album follows the pattern of most of their 80s albums: first track has a mellow intro that crashes into a speedy thrash riff, the second track is a monster title-track, track 4 is the ballad/mellow song, and the last two tracks are an instrumental and a hard-n-fast thrash track.

The band is firing on all cylinders for this album, with all 4 members contributing to the songwriting and arrangement, and all taking time to solo or showcase their chops.  Even the oft-mocked drumming of Lars Ulrich is tight and effective here.

The songs move between straight-ahead, fast thrash, to more complex, densely harmonic (almost classical) arrangements in songs like the title track, and the instrumental "Orion", this latter largely composed by Cliff Burton and featuring some stellar bass soloing from him.

Burton died in a bus accident while touring for this album.  The band would seek a more uniform sound in their follow-up "...and Justice For All".  They would simplify their sound for their 90s albums, then meander for a while before finding their way back to attempt to recreate their 80s masterpieces... but with mixed results.  While their 90s albums were successful and enjoyable, they don't reach the same heights of collaboration, and ambition as Master of Puppets.

Day 0556 - Rum, Sodomy & the Lash

The Pogues "Rum, Sodomy & the Lash" (1985)

Produced by Elvis Costello and titled with a quote attributed to Winston Churchill (said to be his take on naval tradition), this album is like shot of whiskey snorted straight to the brain.

Costello avoided studio polish, stating that it was his job to just get out of the way and capture them in all of their "dilapidated glory".  The result is a blistering mix of celtic folk, punk energy, and MacGowan's 'gutter hymns'.  This is a brilliant album, it has heart, it has spit and snarl, it has misery, humour.  You couldn't ask for a better album for drinking, dancing and just straight-up listening.

Day 0477 - The Pretenders

The Pretenders "The Pretenders" (1980)

Another of the many bands that I had heard of and really wanted to check out.  This list has made for a good motivation to get on with it.

According to what I've read, Chrissie Hynde was working as a writer for NME magazine in the UK and hanging out with Clash and Sex Pistols, even working in Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood's SEX shop in London. A few of the punkers in the area didn't think much of Hynde and her musical aspirations. It was Lemmy from Motörhead who pushed her to put her money where her mouth was and get the band going.

Some great punky stuff in here mixed with some more pop moments and even a Police-esque new-wave reggae groove to "Private Life". Hynde's voice ties it all nicely together; alternately wailing, snarling or cooing. I recognised the track 'brass in pocket'.

Interestingly Madonna listed Hynde as one of the people who really inspired her to go and make music.

Day 0429 - Street Life

Crusaders "Street Life" (1979)

 
Another album featuring a dose of light funk.  Though, that is just one side to their sound, which is more of a jazzy smooth pop-fusion kind of thing. The band used to be called 'the Jazz Crusaders', and though they dropped 'jazz' from their name, the sound stayed very firmly in the music.

These songs sound like they'd work just fine in either a disco/dance club or in a smokey jazz lounge. The pop flavour does dull the jazz edge a little, but it's still spicy enough.