Day 0957 - Penance Soiree

The Icarus Line "Penance Soiree"

The album's cover with its streams of red running from the face of a wild-haired mosher kind of hints at the possible aggression of the music within.

At first it sounds quite blunt and aggressive, but as you go on a lot of it sounds akin to some of the 70s garage rock revivalists like the Datsuns, or a wilder version of Jet which is not necessarily my favourite genre.   I could kind of see them inspiring a band like Royal Blood in places.

"Spike Island" and "Kiss Like Lizards"  bear some resemblance the heavier moments of grunge bands like Stone Temple Pilots or Alice in Chains.  "Big Sleep" has a nice slow, moody lead-in that then becomes less interesting as it kicks into more of the same 'raw rock'.   "Meatmaker" has a mix of industrial beats and vocal effects that make it seem like a pleasingly ugly mix of Butthole Surfers and Ministry.

Not my favourite album on here so far but it had its moments.

Day 0623 - Isn't Anything

My Bloody Valentine "Isn't Anything" (1988)

The band had produced a few EPs, had some line-up changes and then buckled down to produce this, their first full-length album.

The description in the book sounded really interesting.  It said that they would pile effects on the guitars, and then take the clean guitar signal out of the mix, leaving only the guitar-shaped outline of the effects.   It has its moments, but the overall effect is just of a slightly more aurally interesting take on the shoegazer sound.  Perfectly listenable, but not something I would specifically seek to revisit.

Day 0561 - Low-life

New Order "Low-Life" (1985)

Following the death of singer Ian Curtis, Joy Division reformatted themselves into New Order (with the addition of keyboardist Gillian Gilbert).   The band's sound was a bit more synthy, and maybe more pop than the post-punk neuroses of Joy Division. 

It's hard to know if they would have still eventually evolved in this direction had Curtis lived.  Whatever the case, this is an enjoyable, largely synth pop-rock album, but there are moments of harsher and less compromising sounds, including the moody synth epic "Elegia".

Day 0515 - The Violent Femmes

The Violent Femmes "The Violent Femmes" (1982)

The band were discovered while busking.  That stripped-down 'playing on the street' sound remained relatively untouched by studio gloss on this album.  Sticking largely to Victor DLorenzo's minimal drum kit, Brian Ritchie's upright bass and Gordon Gano's guitar and vaguely strung out vocals, the Femmes' sound came pretty fully-formed.

There seems like a pretty straight line between the Velvet Underground and the Femmes, though the Femmes seem potentially a bit lighter.  Less heroin and BDSM, and more run-of-the-mill sexual desperation.

The album would go on to sell over a million copies but never troubled the charts too much in the process, as it took them a gradual 4 years to amass those numbers.