Day 0871 - Celebrity Skin

Hole "Celebrity Skin" (1998)

After finishing touring their "Live Through This" album, Hole took time out to pursue various individual projects (most notably Courtney Love's excellent performance in the film "the People Vs Larry Flint" with Woody Harrelson).  They regrouped and started working on new music but were having trouble finding their groove.

They decamped to LA and enlisted the help of Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan as an executive producer.  Corgan ended up co-writing the music for a number of the songs.  Meanwhile, Love decided to base her lyrics around the theme of California, both the ideal and the reality (a vein mined by Mr Bungle and the Red Hot Chili Peppers around the same time).  Even then the sessions were not without their problems, with producer Michael Beinhorn bullying drummer Patty Schemel and convincing Love to go with a session drummer instead, leading to Schemel quitting the band.

The music, collaborators and theme saw them move further away from their initial noisy, punky beginnings to a kind of washed out, hungover version of sunny California pop.  They still have some raging moments such as on the title track and "Playing Your Song".   Corgan's gift for melodic, catchy rock is noticeable on the title track and single "Malibu", but guitarist Eric Erlandson acquits himself nicely with melodic-yet-raw tracks like "Northern Star" and "Heaven Tonight".

Love makes the whole thing her own, ably supported by new bass player Melissa Auf der Maur's strong backing vocals.

Day 0842 - Vanishing Point

Primal Scream "Vanishing Point" (1997)

I really enjoyed Primal Scream's "Screamadelica" album where they combined rock sounds, dance sounds, and the in between 'baggy' sound.   As much as I enjoy musical variety, I felt that some of the electronic tracks didn't really sit along the more guitar-based songs, possibly it's because it was a fairly new direction for the band and they hadn't quite worked out how to properly integrate everything.   Colour me pleased then that this album still mixes its sounds but seems to have found more of a balance across the album.

The album is named after a film of the same name that the band loved.   They felt that the film's score was a bit too much like hippy music for a film about speed-jacked cross-country car antics and sought to reimagine this at least for the track "Kowalski" (the main character).  

The album also manages to work in the trip-hoppy jazz of "Get Duffy", the rock sound of "Medication", the Krautrock of "Stuka", a slightly dance-infused cover of Motörhead's eponymous track, and the 60s-spy-music-evolving-into jazzy-trip-hop-voyage of penultimate track "Trainspotting".  

Excellent album, liking what I'm hearing and should probably check out at least the album between "Screamadelica" and "Vanishing Point" some time.

Day 0738 - Exile in Guyville

Liz Phair "Exile in Guyville" (1993)

Phair started off with a collection of demos under the moniker 'Girly Sounds'.  After asking acquaintances who the 'coolest indie label' in town was, she approached the co-president of Matador Records.  As luck would have it, he had just been reading a review of her demo and asked her to send in a tape.   The tapes met with a good deal of enthusiasm and Phair was signed up.

The music is largely stripped down guitar and vocal.  It's melodic alt-rock with a little rawness to it, though this is interrupted somewhat by the almost perfect pop-rock song "Never Said" and the dreamy piano of "Canary" with Phair's slightly snarling vocals over the top.

She doesn't tread lightly lyrically, with songs such as "Divorce" and "Fuck and run" or "dance of the seven veils" in which she states "I'm a real c*nt in spring".  

Day 0706 - Bandwagonesque

Teenage Fanclub "Bandwagonesque"

The third album by the Scottish band, and an album that managed to beat out Nirvana's "Nevermind" as Spin Magazine's "album of the year". 

The album starts off promisingly enough, "The Concept" runs through noisy pop into some divine Beach Boys-esque harmonies and then a pleasant instrumental outro.   That song is followed by the noisy dervish of "Satan" which opens with a frenzy of noise that segues into a bit of rock.

From there on though, it falls into a pretty samey sound across the rest of the album.  It's not a bad sound (think the Byrds, or early-era Beatles pop songs and vocal harmonies but with washy distorted guitar), but after the variety of the first couple of tracks the rest of the album felt like a bit of a cool off.

Day 0405 - Third/Sister Lovers

Big Star "Third/Sister Lovers" (1978)

 
I listened to Big Star's album "Number one star" earlier in this list, and I have to say that this is a different kettle of fish altogether. Whereas that was an interesting upbeat pop-rock record with some nice vocal arrangements, this is a stripped down, gloomy AF dirge of an album (with occasional moments of lightness)... and I've gotta say; I prefer this.

The music kind of reminds me a bit of 'the Dunedin sound' in NZ, which was a similarly downbeat, stripped back, droney garage pop/rock... almost shoegazer stuff but without quite as much of the washy guitar usually associated with that genre.

I really dig it. Unfortunately the band broke up around this time.  Oddly, the album was recorded in 1974 but didn't manage to get released until a few years later. A while later, REM and a few others cited them as an influence, and they were inevitably received a bit more attention.

Day 0386 - Suicide

Suicide "Suicide" (1977)

I'd been keen to check these guys out ever since I saw/heard them referenced in Don Letts' excellent documentary "Punk Attitude".

Suicide are another band that took the punk attitude and abrasiveness but avoided falling into a generic 'punk' sound. The duo combined a confrontational name, a dose of nihilism and an approach that eschewed the basic ingredients of rock (even punk rock) by having no guitar player or drummer!

Using a primitive drum machine and a distorted organ the band delivers a set that is part punk rock, part avant rock with beat poetry overlaid, part drone... I could imagine these guys having been fans of the Velvet Underground's first couple of albums.