Reviews by kuvien

I first ran across Lemon Kittens in this kind of joke listening project I was doing, but not only did I like what how that band sounded, I actually enjoy this album, too. So the little project containing a lot of painful music has yielded a couple keepers, like this one. When everyone squeaks gently, the music yielded is excellent. This is one of those brilliant little albums where the artist plays basically everything, delves into the studio trickery tape work, and provides the cover art as well.

Whipping and lynching your slaves while singing praises to the Lord, zombies walking through town, murder and dismemberment, destroying your neighbor and stealing his wife... all the horrors of nightmare folk tales sung with a hi-dee-ho and a shoo wop doo wop. Creepy as hell, and just as powerful. This is the kind of album that shuts you up and forces you to listen in morbid fascination.

Although this is a four-way split recorded by different artists at different times in different locations, I'm interested only in the first part featuring Richard Dawson. Some very good, accessible tunes herein from a guy notorious for his inaccessibility.

Dawson sculpts in music. He hears all possible sounds in their frightening combinations or in their glorious isolation, and he just chips away all the unnecessary music to reveal his own raw vision, inviting his listeners to enter into his conceptual imagery. This recording stands as the last man alive after a planet-wide catastrophe... and guess what? Dawson's still here making music, after "the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there" is still "one more sound: that of Dawson's puny inexhaustible voice", still singing. Except there was no doomsday; people just chose to stop interacting with one another.

Stripped-down, off-kilter avant-folk album, about half the tracks being electric folk instrumentals and the other half being hyper-specific lyrical meditations on the mystery and terror of death (through banditry or war or old-age wasting away or picking apples in a graveyard or being struck down by hands unseen).

A couple excellent moments but mostly just cringe.

This album reminds me of Macbeth's words, how life is "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

So this is what betrayal sounds like. Or perhaps despair that leads to suicide. So much psychic weight in this music. Incredible and fascinating, not as hard to listen to as one might think. Dawson truly gives zero fucks on this album. His voice and playing reflect the nihilism he embraces. Frightening poetry married to discordant guitar music played at acute angles that'll give you nosebleeds. When one creates a living masterpiece through a grueling year-long process only to see it destroyed within a week...yeah, it's pretty hard to see any meaning in that. Anyone want to go on a drinking binge misadventure with the twelve apostles?

A haunting, open album that is full only in its minimal spaces. Meditative, nuanced, and just a touch frightening as it hints at melancholy without actually being so.

A portrait of modern middle England, complete with themes of alienation, divorce in middle age, hatred for immigrants, fear and dread of working and dying in a meaningless job. I hear two strains of music in this album: one is the louder more streamlined sound, and though it's pleasant enough, it's not at all thought-provoking; the other is in the more delicate, introspective moments, and there the music is refreshingly unexpected and experimental, which is fun considering how mundane the subject matter is, taking your daughter to university or seeing a hedgehog drinking from your garden pool.

Imagine being a normal-sized person on the ground when a female giant walks overhead. This is the everywoman album, par excellence, so much so that I'm amazed I've never heard a Redditor mention this. There are two equal forces of nature in the universe: the despair caused by 9/11 and the rise of 21st-century positivity. Bonus points for looking up into the night sky and illogically concluding that you're not important.

The difference between Kimya Dawson and Kris Kristofferson is that Kristofferson had a beer for breakfast, and Dawson had a box of cheap wine. Hug your velvet rabbit and let Kimya sing you a lullaby for your heavy, substance-abused head.

Out of all the Doin' Something With Miles Davis albums, this is probably my favorite because of how beautiful and unexpected the first track is. The piano is just perfect. Paul Chambers on bass, Coltrane on sax, Joe Jones on drums.

Coltrane and Chambers are part of this quintet. The album eases you in with their version of “My Funny Valentine” before hitting you with something more upbeat, kind of like pulling the rug out from under your feet, but instead of falling, you just stumble and make it look like dancing. Side B starts with Davis’ trumpet leading us into something more frantic, with minor chords repeatedly played on piano as a kind of background reminder of an unconscious anxiety.

Damn that's a long and unexpected drum solo on "Salted Peanuts"! I think it overstays its welcome, but whatever. It's the Quintet, and this is a fine offering of earlier Davis jazz. Slippin' into a butter-trumpet dream after that is like a soothing hot bath after work. Side B starts off with some solid bebopping, and it's all good til the end, especially when Chambers solos.

This is the album that got me into more Wayne Shorter stuff. Not sure why. I just remember being impressed that he is co-composer, so I looked up some of his own work. I guess it’s his “Footprints” that impressed me, such a wonderful exploration that’s not as soft as it might at first seem. I dig the progression of this album and the hints of what’s to come for Miles in the 70s. Hancock’s fingers trip and fly on “Dolores”.

Apparently, this was played live in Rome two months after was recorded but five months before its release. Can you imagine sitting there listening to this, getting an exclusive preview of perhaps the greatest jazz album of all time? This legendary quintet (the BB touring group) slays, wading knee-deep in the detritus of their conquest.

Look how the 80s have massacred my boy! Behold Exhibit 42,504: why the 80s suck.

Don't skip the last track. Sometimes the listener needs a "fuck you" to wake him up, and no one fucks with you like Miles Davis. Just bend over and take it. Maybe someday you'll give birth to something cool.

This is quite a veering off. Spanish and Miles Davis are not two things I ever associate together, yet here we are, him going Third Stream, blending jazz with classical music, creating a relaxing atmosphere into which one can easily escape. Sketches of the avant fill every corner of this album. Just follow the will o' the wisp. Davis delves into source music here, too, what with hints of saeta and flamenco, traditional religious praise songs and vocal acoustic Spanish music, respectively.

As an aside, why do I love the sound of the bassoon so much?

This is Davis' beyond-cool take on Gerswhin's Porgy and Bess opera, and oh my are the arrangements smooth and sweet! Not my favorite of the jazz master's albums (I like him more funky or fusion), but is there anything Miles can't do? He talked about this album giving him freedom and space with fewer chords, giving his imagination room to wander.