Reviews by tipula

You’d think that someone who counts Wyatt project Matching Mole’s “Little Red Record” as one of their favorite albums of all time would have heard this one by now, but what can I say.

So of course I enjoyed this - it features a group of musicians I love, with a feeling that wavers between jazz, rock, and experimental on its songs. I can feel Eno’s influence on some of this, but that doesn’t dominate Wyatt’s input, with his usual quirky, delicate singing and interesting, honest lyrics. I will listen to “A Sunday in Madrid” (and the rest of this album) over and over. Absolutely wonderful.

So I know the Arctic Monkeys are a popular British rock band from 20-some years ago, but until now had never managed to hear them enough to form an opinion.
While the first song on this album didn’t quite grab me, it started growing on me several tracks in. What I could catch of the lyrics on lots of these songs were good, reflecting a kind of gritty, sometimes grim kind of partying atmosphere, which felt honest. And the more punk-infused tracks were fun (“You Probably Couldn’t See…,” e.g.). So overall, I liked this. I’d say fave tracks were “Riot Van” and “Perhaps Vampires…,” especially with the crazy drumming at the end of the latter song. The long song titles were particularly amusing. I’ll listen to this again.

Another album on the project that I went in not expecting much from, but ended up enjoying.

A flawless collection of solid live blues tunes with a great band. There’s a spareness to it that I appreciate - while I like fancy guitar solos and strings and all that on other records, that is not required or even appreciated here. It’s just perfect as it is.

If you asked me to say one word when I think of the band Everything But the Girl, I’d probably say “Boring.” So, I came to this record like “prove to me that I should like something by Everything But the Girl.”

And ok: I do think the trip-hoppiness of this particular album makes it marginally more interesting than what I remember about their other stuff. But it still sounds like bland background music to me, lacking what I like about bands like Massive Attack where there’s an interesting tension in the music. I guess the title track here approaches that for me (particularly listening to it while watching that interesting b&w video of the people with the empty picture frames), but unfortunately on the whole this album hasn’t changed my opinion of the band much.

I’ll start this off by saying that I like the song “Cinnamon Girl.” I like the rhyme of “saxes” and “relaxes,” and the continuing almost-thrashy guitar. I also have to say that there’s a duck called a Cinnamon Teal, so whenever one comes to my attention I sing to myself “I wanna live with a Cinnamon Teal, I could be happy the rest of my life with a Cinnamon Teal.” So that’s a thing about that song.

“Down by the River” is a classic song - I love all the threatening guitar sounds that come in for that long break after the first set of vocals. Definitely merits its 9-minute length. I was thinking of a 3 for this album after "Round & Round," but then was reminded of what I like about Neil Young while listening to this song. I’ve just never been sure about this plot - what’s the timeline here, regarding the person sending him over the rainbow vs shooting his baby dead. But who cares, great guitar solo.

“Running Dry” sounds like “In the Pines,” doesn’t it. I like the strings that come in, and then go out at the end; it’s a poignant folk tune. I’d never heard this track before and I really like it.

Quibbles: I've never been a fan of the title track; I think it would be greatly improved if he got rid of all the la la la las. “Round & Round” is a little too smooth and goes on too long. He says it won’t be long, but it is long. And while “Cowgirl in the Sand” has some wonderful guitar solos, the lyrics have always gotten on my nerves.

So, tl:dr: there's some lovely guitar work on this album, which offsets a few annoying bits.

I thought I would enjoy this because I’m familiar with some of the stuff he’s done as Smog, and this was indeed a lovely little record. I like how he speak-sings a lot of the material, and how his voice isn’t exactly pretty or in tune with the music; there’s something almost atonal about it than I enjoyed. And the lyrics bear multiple listens; the meaning is not immediately obvious (I've already listened to it twice, and need to listen to it again). I also thought the arrangements were varied and interesting. Cool record.

I’d started this off with an off-topic rave about their earlier album “Ralf und Florian,” which if you could find a copy easily would be my contribution to the user list. But that’s beside the point, because what I’m listening to here is “The Man Machine,” which came out 5 years later and is also pretty fun, with Kraftwerk’s usual simple melodies and layered electronic effects. I’ve always liked the tracks from this album that you hear more often on the radio, especially “Neon Lights,” which is well worth being nearly 9 minutes long with the way the melody keeps repeating again and again at the end. This whole thing is fun; German electronic weirdness for the win.

Favorite lyric: “Oh baby, my hair’s on end about you”

I came into this thinking “well this might be a struggle,” having not heard it in a very long while and remembering all the sad stories about Syd Barrett. What I thought I’d remembered from hearing this in the 70s was that it was like some of the songs on the early Pink Floyd records that I used to skip in order to listen to stuff like “Astronomy Domine” over and over. But this seems more spare, with odd little lyrics and weirder, occasionally arrhythmic arrangements. At times it feels like a stripped-down Neutral Milk Hotel. I didn’t come into this expecting to give it a 5, but here we are; I really enjoyed it.

I know Blur as a band with a couple of good songs, but hadn’t heard this whole record before. I’m really enjoying it, for its sense of chaos, the fuzzy guitars, the vocals that don’t seem to take themselves seriously, the interesting beeping here and there. This is more interesting than I thought it was going to be based on what I remember of Blur from 90’s radio. (And in context with the rest of the album, I now see that “Song 2” was intended as a bit of a joke, so I have some more appreciation for it. It was a little annoying at the time.)

This is a nice chill country rock-sounding kind of thing. The guitar is very good.

I have heard “Sultans of Swing” about 45 million times, and the rest of it nearly that much, so I qualify for having heard this one at some point before my inevitable demise.

Hoo boy blast from the past. I used to listen to this record a lot in the mid-70s, but at some point moved on and forgot all about Tangerine Dream. It’s fun to hear this now, though it seems to lack something - I guess I’m come to prefer weirder electronica with random noises and samples here and there like Boards of Canada. This seems more predictable, like the planetarium soundtracks and movie spaceship sequences that we’ve now heard many times since this came out. Despite all that, I’m enjoying "Phaedra" after all this time.

AC/DC is a band I've managed to mostly avoid until now. It's not terrible - the band is solid. But it's not very interesting. I guess AC/DC isn’t there to be interesting, it’s there to make you headbang and say WOOO FUCK YEAH ROCK N ROLL.

High 2 stars; I'll give 'em a 3 for effort

Ah yes, the album with “Lovefool” on it. I like to hear that song from time to time on the radio.

Otherwise, meh? I think what I don’t appreciate about the Cardigans is that her voice is very sweet-sounding and breathy, and while I like other bands with vocalists like that (Cranes, etc), here the rest of it isn’t edgy enough to compensate for that. And the lyrics unfortunately aren’t all that interesting either. This is a perfectly reasonable pop album, but not really for me.

Some of these are familiar from the radio at the time, like “Helpless,” to the point where I was humming tunelessly along with it. I think I also heard Mould cover some of these tracks in a recent live session on KEXP radio. It didn’t completely grab me, though (either in the 90s or that recent live session).

This is reasonable early 90s alterna-radio stuff. It’s good for what it is, and only suffers from my lack of enthusiasm for power pop. I liked “Changes,” with the weird droney stuff happening at the end. “The Slim” sounded a whole lot like REM, which is always a good thing, and “Slick” had a nice ending. Best was “A Good Idea,” which had interesting lyrics and some compelling repetition. I’m going to listen to those tracks again sometime.

Ah, yes, Cee-Lo Green, that “Fuck You” song person. But it isn’t on this album; guess I’m going to have to go find it on YouTube. But anyway: this isn’t a profound album, but it’s a lot of fun. I think the musicians were enjoying themselves when they were recording this. Lots of fun beats - it never dragged, made for a fun record to listen to this afternoon.

So I guess here’s where I tell my huge-Radiohead-fan origin story.

I had a cassette of Pablo Honey back when it came out, but except for “Creep,” I didn’t think much of it. So I got rid of it and pretty much forgot about Radiohead until much later, when I was reading a humorous book* that mentioned "Radiohead dirges.” "Dirges" made the band sound interesting to me, and I started thinking that maybe something had changed since the days when I considered them a mid-tier 90s commercial alternative radio band. So I went and got a copy of OK Computer.

And here we are. I love this record so much that I’m actually having some trouble writing about it objectively. I can say that every song is interesting and meaningful to me in a different way, and some have changed in meaning and become relevant in a different way as I’ve gotten older. And the musicianship — well you know, I don’t have to tell you. I mean these people not only have interesting musical ideas, they also express them in remarkably precise ways. The entire thing is solid; the least interesting track on here would be the one big song for any other band.

*The book is ”Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry,” by Leann Shapton

This is marvelous. There are two songs on here that I recognize:e first, “Stir it Up,” of course, since Johnny Nash’s cover was all over the US airwaves in the 70s. And then there’s “No More Trouble,” which I remember maybe from one of the later live albums. And wow: these versions are so much more interesting: so spare, with the tight bass, drums, and guitar in the forefront along with the vocals. I like them much more than the versions I was originally familiar with.

It’s an obviously influential album; for a moment there I started singing “Bankrobber” over “Baby We’ve Got a Date,” since it sounds like the Clash took that tune directly from the beginning of this. I’ve always had an appreciation for reggae, but this album that’s less familiar (to me, at least), is making me “get” it a little more.

A lot of these songs are so college-stoner coded now that it’s almost annoying; that seems pretty unfair to Marley, who surely didn’t intend that to be what people think of when they hear this music. It’s an album with solid percussion, great backing vocals, and some strong lyrics here and there. It’s very chilled-out, of course, but pretty mesmerizing when heard as a whole album.

This is another great late 70’s album; I’m singing along with the title track here. I love jagged but melodic stuff like this, and Iggy Pop’s voice. I can hear David Bowie’s influence on a lot of these tracks, and of course the late 70s is my favorite period of Bowie’s work.
Favorite: “The Passenger,” which actually is something I first knew as a cover done by Siouxsie and the Banshees. But eventually I realized that I like this original version even more.

Oh hey I have a copy of this record on iTunes, which I got quite a while ago. I can’t remember the last time I listened to the whole thing at once, though. I usually just enjoy hearing the odd track when it pops up on shuffle.

This was a fun listen today, with lots of frenetic, buzzy electronica. It caused me to be in violation of District of Columbia speed limits for most of it. I will blame Dimery if I get a ticket.