Day 0998 - Django Django

Django Django “Django Django” (2012)

The group produced a single each year from 2009-2011 but took their time on releasing this, their debut full-length.

I was kind of interested in this one, having not even heard of this band, but with the book describing them as incorporating a multitude of styles in quite a cohesive way.  I also found it interesting (though not sure if this would directly influence their music) that the members hailed from Scotland, Ireland and Yorkshire in England.

From the opening intro track the mix of styles is born out with sounds like Morricone but with synthesizers and weightier percussion and then picks up some some 80s new-wavey flavoured vocals and synths with clean guitars.   It moves through ping-pong vocals and propulsive guitars in "Default" to a laidback 60s vibe of the bass, drums and acoustic guitar.

“Zumm Zumm” mixes folky vocal harmonies with jaunty fuzzy dance bass and almost 'world music' beats.

“Life is a Beach” almost has a kind of cheesy 60s beach movie sound to it but with 60s folk vocal harmonies and reasonably subtle melodic hints of middle-eastern and classical music.
"Skies Over Cairo" with its chanty Middle-Eastern-to-a-beat almost sounds like a poppier take on Mr Bungle's "Desert Search For Techno Allah" (high praise from a Bungle fan).   I feel like the Bungle guys would also appreciate album closer "Silver Rays" with its 60s surf-style production and Brian Wilson via the 80s sound that seems like a sunnier take on the sound of Mini Mansions.

My feel on it is that they've drawn from the previous 5 decades of music but with the lion's share of the sound coming from the 60s with 00s technology making it more contemporary.   I'd definitely be keen to check out more from these guys.

Day 0978 - All Hope is Gone

Slipknot "All Hope is Gone" (2008)

I’m kind of surprised to see more than one Slipknot album on this list (their self-titled debut was day 885).  More surprising is that the second selection is not their excellent third album “Vol.3: The Subliminal Verses”.  With that album they expanded their sound to include some more melodic tracks and different musical ideas, while presenting a cohesive sound that utilised all members.   Lots of memorable music there.

Apparently “All Hope is Gone” sold better, so maybe that’s why it’s here.   It opens (as many of the Slipknot albums do) with a creepy ambient track that’s not really a song as such.  The first couple of songs passed me by without really making much of an impact.

For my tastes, the album doesn’t really get going till you reach single “Psychosocial” which has a nice pulsing chug of an intro/verse and a catchy melodic chorus that keeps the momentum going.   This is followed by the melodically interesting “Dead Memories” and the crazy drum intro of thrasher “Vendetta”.   Elsewhere, “Gehenna” is a creepy horror movie piece that moves into melodic almost grungey territory in places.

After a couple more metal tracks they drop in "Snuff" which, with its emotive melodic vocal, acoustic guitar and dramatic production brings singer Corey Taylor's other band Stonesour to mind.   

 

The album closes out with the title track that is pretty unrelenting with speedy percussion, yelled vocals and speedy metal guitar.   

As suggested, I prefer "Vol.3" but this one has enough to recommend it.

Day 0798 - Alien Lanes

Guided by Voices "Alien Lanes" (1995)

Packing 28 tracks in barely more than 40 minutes, this is GBV's eighth full-length album, and their first for Matador records.   The band were given a sizeable advance, yet reverted to type and mostly patched the album together from home recordings and bits.

The songs don't really overstay their welcome, with most being either less than a minute, or at most, less than two minutes.   Many of the songs seem to fade out abruptly at the end, like the band had suddenly grown bored of them and pulled the plug.

The sound is a lo-fi noisy, jangly pop-rock with bursts of punkiness.   Kind of like a mix of Velvet Underground and the Violent Femmes (maybe a touch of John Frusciante's early solo work).   

Enjoyable sounds, though I find it hard to really lock into it with everything being so brief in an almost accidental way.

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 0636 - The Real Thing

Faith No More "The Real Thing" (1989) - got it

Anyone who knows me well, knows that I am a big fan of Mike Patton and of Faith No More, so I have listened to this album more times than I can remember... but as usual, for completism I listened to it again today.

It is slightly disappointing to me that this is the only FNM or Patton album in the 1001 albums, especially considering the breadth of Patton's oeuvre, and the fact that FNM's somewhat weirder "Angel Dust" album has been cited as an influence by many bands, named as album of the year by a few magazines, and was even cited as "the most influential album of all time" by Kerang magazine.   That's not to take anything away from TRT, I'm just saying that it makes me wonder what other great albums from other artists might have been omitted from the list because they weren't quite as commercially successful.

FNM had parted company with vocalist Chuck Mosley after 2 albums, due to his volatile personality, limited vocal ability and his various addictions.  They recruited fresh-faced 20 year old Mike Patton from the eclectic band Mr Bungle.  Patton came with a multi-octave vocal range, and a demented, yet somewhat literary approach to his lyric-writing.

The first two albums with Mosely had been a mix of funky post-punk, new wavey synths, metal riffs, rap, punky vocals, and pop hooks (largely thanks to keyboardist Roddy Bottum).  "The Real Thing" seemed to be a case of the band looking to redefine themselves after Mosely's departure by narrowing their focus.  The album still has its pop hooks in songs such as "Falling to Pieces" or "Underwater Love", but the album had much more of a funk/metal focus, via the collision of Bill Gould's percussive funky bass, Mike Bordin's tribal beats, and Jim Martin's chugging metal guitar riffs.

The album goes into propulsive pop-metal territory with opener "From out of nowhere", and straight-ahead metal with "Surprise! You're dead" and "The morning after".    Most of the other songs mix things up a bit more, with the title track features an almost dub-reggae drum beat interspersed with rock explosions, and "Zombie Eaters" starts with a series of very pretty acoustic guitar parts.  "Woodpecker from Mars" is a 'middle-eastern-meets-metal' instrumental track that shows that FNM could have easily been a force to be reckoned with without Patton or Mosely (or Courtney Love, who was their vocalist at some early shows).

"Epic" was the big hit from the album, with its combination of metal, funk and rap unfortunately inspiring the nu-metal craze that would follow.   The album ends with a further venture into metal territory in the shape of a cover of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" and then the musical left turn of sleazy loungey jazz-pop track "Edge of the World".

This is probably my least favourite album that FNM did with Patton, but it's still one hell of an album.

Day 0604 - Scum

Napalm Death "Scum" (1987) - got it

Napalm Death, one of the progenitors of grindcore and producers of maybe the shortest song in the history of recoded music - "You suffer" clocks in at barely more than 1 second.

The band took punishing blast-beats, growling, barely-intelligible Cookie-Monster style vocals combined with some intense guitar riffs to produce an album that is nothing short of an aural onslaught.

The two halves of the album are also produced by almost completely different bands, with only drummer (and sometimes vocalist) Mick Harris playing on the entire album.  Guitarist Justin Broadrick had left partway through recording to help create industrial metal band Godflesh. 

Day 0601 - Darklands

The Jesus and Mary Chain "Darklands" (1987)

With "Darklands" J&MC move from a fuzzed-out 'shoegazer' sound, to something that almost sounds like "upbeat Joy Division".  Their drummer had left to become the lead singer of Primal Scream, so the band opted to replace him with a drum machine.  As a result of this, and I guess their general songwriting style, their songs have zero groove.  It's not necessarily a bad thing, it just means that their songs drift along like a dreamy wave heading serenely for shore, rather than like choppy surf.

I feel as though their previous album "Psychocandy" was the one that the band is better known for.  But I prefer the rolling, pulsing drone pop of "Darklands" over the fuzzy cloud of "Psychocandy".  I listened to this one 2 or 3 times and would happily spin it again.

Day 0594 - Floodland

Sisters of Mercy "Floodland" (1987)

The Sisters bring Gothic glower... and a choir.

After their first album, a couple of members left the band.  Remaining member Andrew Eldritch then enlisted the help of Patricia Morrison (from the Gun Club) on bass and vocals, producer Jim Steinman (of Meatloaf fame) and a drum machine called Doktor Avalanche.  Together they created a relatively cold, brooding, but surprisingly 'to the point' goth-rock album.

Day 0560 - Psychocandy

The Jesus and Mary Chain "Psychocandy" (1985)

Much like the Smiths a couple of posts ago, I knew the Jesus and Mary Chain by name more than by their music.  As with the Smiths I'd dipped my toe a few years back but didn't really respond to what I found.

On revisiting the Smiths this time, I didn't mind them too much (more for Marr than Morrisey), but with the J&MC, I haven't really changed my mind on them.  They seek to mix the pop of 50s-60s girl groups and the abrasive wall of sound/noise of the Velvet Underground.  That could have been great, but, to my tastes, it feels like they took the weaker parts of those two sounds to create something that on the whole, falls a little flat.

Day 0473 - UB40 "Signing off" (1980)

UB40 "Signing off" (1980)

 
I was most familiar with UB40 as purveyors of slightly twee reggae covers of Elvis and Neil Diamond songs; but this is actually a strong, moody reggae offering.

The band came from a working class background in Birmingham and funnelled discontent around their grim reality (the high unemployment figures, the rise of Margaret Thatcher's government, and the increasing popularity of the racist party the National Front) into lyrics that ranged from downbeat to scathing.

The music also ranged from lengthy atmospheric reggae jams, to deep rocksteady grooves and all with Ali Campbell's strong, heartfelt vocals.

At 66 minutes long, it was probably a little too much UB40 for my tastes, but then reggae has never been a genre that could hold my attention for too long a time.

Day 0407 - Public Image: First Issue

Public Image Ltd. "Public Image: First Issue" (1978)

 
I didn't realise that the Sex Pistols had imploded quite so quickly. John Lydon (nee Rotten) formed PiL shortly afterwards and moved on from his punk background to communicate his nihilistic, destructive street poetry via new idioms.

I seem to remember enjoying Metal Box and one or two other PIL tracks, but this one didn't really appeal to me. It sounds as though John didn't really know what he wanted to do at this stage and was just lashing out lyrically and casting about musically... which is an approach that can be interesting when done well, but on this occasion it just didn't really hold my attention.

Day 0390 - Bat out of Hell

Meatloaf "Bat out of Hell" (1977)

Take a larger-than-life (not a fat-joke) actor with an operatic rock voice.  Take Jim Steinman, a composer of theatrical rock, frequently epic in style.  Put them in a studio with Todd Rundgren in the control room, and you have an album that stayed in the UK album chart on and off for 10 years!


The duo had started work on the album's songs some time earlier based on pieces that Steinman had written for a course.  They were touring together National Lampoons and took a few of the songs to develop on.





Meatloaf belts out Steinman's tracks with passion, wild abandon and (in places) a little tenderness.
I don't have much more to say except: great album!