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Mon Jan 29 2024
Ramones
Ramones
5
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Tue Jan 30 2024
Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin
3
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Wed Jan 31 2024
Funeral
Arcade Fire
4
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Thu Feb 01 2024
The Stone Roses
The Stone Roses
4
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Fri Feb 02 2024
The Clash
The Clash
Vital.
5
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Mon Feb 05 2024
Wish You Were Here
Pink Floyd
4
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Tue Feb 06 2024
Kind Of Blue
Miles Davis
5
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Wed Feb 07 2024
Nebraska
Bruce Springsteen
5
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Thu Feb 08 2024
I’m a Lonesome Fugitive
Merle Haggard
2
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Fri Feb 09 2024
Remain In Light
Talking Heads
Indispensable.
5
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Mon Feb 12 2024
The College Dropout
Kanye West
4
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Tue Feb 13 2024
Songs From The Big Chair
Tears For Fears
3
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Wed Feb 14 2024
Shadowland
k.d. lang
3
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Thu Feb 15 2024
Grievous Angel
Gram Parsons
3
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Fri Feb 16 2024
Coles Corner
Richard Hawley
4
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Tue Feb 20 2024
Cross
Justice
3
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Thu Feb 22 2024
Highway 61 Revisited
Bob Dylan
4
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Fri Feb 23 2024
Deja Vu
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
4
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Mon Feb 26 2024
Straight Outta Compton
N.W.A.
3
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Tue Feb 27 2024
Crosby, Stills & Nash
Crosby, Stills & Nash
4
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Wed Feb 28 2024
1989
Taylor Swift
3
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Thu Feb 29 2024
Don't Stand Me Down
Dexys Midnight Runners
3
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Mon Mar 04 2024
Californication
Red Hot Chili Peppers
4
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Tue Mar 05 2024
Dire Straits
Dire Straits
3
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Wed Mar 06 2024
The Genius Of Ray Charles
Ray Charles
4
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Thu Mar 07 2024
Crocodiles
Echo And The Bunnymen
5
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Fri Mar 08 2024
Sail Away
Randy Newman
4
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Tue Mar 12 2024
Station To Station
David Bowie
5
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Wed Mar 13 2024
Vento De Maio
Elis Regina
3
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Thu Mar 14 2024
The Queen Is Dead
The Smiths
4
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Fri Mar 15 2024
Palo Congo
Sabu
4
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Mon Mar 18 2024
Led Zeppelin III
Led Zeppelin
5
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Wed Mar 20 2024
I Against I
Bad Brains
4
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Thu Mar 21 2024
Liege And Lief
Fairport Convention
5
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Fri Mar 22 2024
Meat Puppets II
Meat Puppets
3
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Sat Mar 23 2024
Elephant
The White Stripes
4
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Mon Mar 25 2024
Guitar Town
Steve Earle
2
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Tue Mar 26 2024
Music in Exile
Songhoy Blues
5
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Wed Mar 27 2024
Kimono My House
Sparks
5
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Thu Mar 28 2024
Machine Gun Etiquette
The Damned
4
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Fri Mar 29 2024
Quiet Life
Japan
2
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Sat Mar 30 2024
Birth Of The Cool
Miles Davis
3
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Sun Mar 31 2024
Faust IV
Faust
3
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Mon Apr 01 2024
Leftism
Leftfield
4
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Tue Apr 02 2024
Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
4
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Wed Apr 03 2024
Kick Out The Jams (Live)
MC5
5
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Thu Apr 04 2024
Joan Armatrading
Joan Armatrading
3
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Fri Apr 05 2024
Beyond Skin
Nitin Sawhney
2
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Sat Apr 06 2024
Boston
Boston
1
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Sun Apr 07 2024
Appetite For Destruction
Guns N' Roses
This one speaks to my younger self, and its first tastes of freedom. Back then this hit me like a ton of bricks. I did not speak the language, did not understand the words. But I heard this sound, and was angry and furious and dangerous. It broke a wall in me, and I knew I wanted more. This was one of my first "chosen" records, bought with my own money, and I played constantly. My parents hated it, and I loved that they hated it, because that meant that I now had a life separate from theirs. It was a transgression, that pointed the way towards autonomy, and it was as loud as I was quiet then. I did not need to be angry, because Axl was.
30+ years later the agression, the anger is still here. The band is TIGHT. Stuck together by sweat, attitude and an all-consuming lust for life. And they also constantly sound on the verge of explosion. They seem to be tethering on the edge between just enough rope to hold the songs together and utter chaos. It made me think a lot of the NY Dolls, but on a darker side. It is also an underdog record, in that the characters are misfits and live in the margins of society. Both bands live in a violent world, but where there is a spirit of community in the Dolls music and attitude, there is none of that in AFD. Everything seems to be a zero-sum game, where the narrator of the songs is alone and where outside of sex, drugs and rocking out, there is only fear. And women often lose. This is a violently misogynist record.
AFD is a record made by people who want to matter now. The band plays like tomorrow does not exist - like there is only today, what they want and everything that stands in the way. It is not trying to be pretty, but it is real and it makes no excuses for it.
I cannot say I enjoy it now. The misogyny is a big turn off. But I also can't help looking at it with a sort of tenderness towards my younger self who was trying to find its way and its voice towards adulthood. This record was a stepping stone towards that, and it pointed me towards other music that did show me this sense of community I was longing for.
3
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Mon Apr 08 2024
Bluesbreakers
John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers
Disclaimer - I have always really struggled with blues rock. Especially with Eric Clapton.
In the case of this record, I get it. These are competent musicians.
They love the blues as a musical form. I love it too.
So why is it that I am left completely unmoved by what is happening here?
This feels like a conversation I am not invited in. And I have no desire to engage with it.
2
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Tue Apr 09 2024
Van Halen
Van Halen
I don't understand this. These people are obviously very skilled at their instruments. And I have no doubt that they are sincere in what they are doing.
But. I don't know what they are actually doing.
For me the question being asked here is "What makes music "music"? Is it in the experience of the listener? Is it in the intentions of the player(s)? In the conversation space created between the two? If music is in this in-between space, this is a record in which I cannot enter. And I may actually not want to.
Sounds are created here, they are put together, and I remain utterly unmoved. If anything, I get irritated. My attention has nowhere to hang on, everything shifts so fast. I cannot see one idea I can get interested and curious about.
It feels like being talked at, and I have nothing to say or contribute. It makes me want to be somewhere else, doing something else.
The final straw is their cover of the Kinks. It makes me sad that they somehow had to get roped into that mess.
1
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Wed Apr 10 2024
Shadowland
k.d. lang
I had never seriously listened to KD Lang before this, and I need to reconsider some life choices. This album is a warm cup of tea and a blanket. All warm, soft edges, flowing. It's intimate and comforting. You can feel the intention and the craft behind every voice accent and every instrumentation choice. This record enveloped me.
It is tightly connected to the tradition from which it flowed. There is an obvious reverence and love for these songs: as if KD Lang was inviting us to her house and introducing these songs as her friends, stopping for a bit of conversation with each one, sharing what makes them special without telling us but by showing us what they are made of, what they mean for her, where they come from and where they might be going next. This love from the material never turns into sterile imitation. In that she is supported by a flawless production, completely in the service of the songs.
She is never crushed by the excellence of the songs, but instead shows what is possible when this excellence can free you to find your own voice. In a way this makes this record a wonderful example for how constraints can lead to outstanding creativity. Nothing is superfluous here.
The result is a record that manages the rare feat of feeling lush and humble at the same time. And completely timeless. I will come back here.
5
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Thu Apr 11 2024
Hot Buttered Soul
Isaac Hayes
What i have gotten to know Isaac Hayes for is his voice. Unmistakable, warm, deep, enveloping. But what starts this record and runs throughout is the incredible, soaring power of the music. The voice here is an instrument in the whole: this thing, hypnotic and that comes at you from all over the map. The strings, the funky riffing, and this bass, round and enchanting and almost liquid. And as I walk around the house, head nodding, I am travelling. He does not come in until we are a good 2-3 minutes in, but is already haunting the song, picking his spot.
At the time, it must have been such a tricky piece to pin down. What is this thing he is doing? The year is 1969 and Hayes is doing whatever he pleases with whatever he finds. Four songs, with one topping 18 minutes. These « songs » soar to become soul epics and rewrite the format of whatever soul music was at the time. Whatever this is, it is luscious, spacious and smooth like a warm summer night. And the next minute it is raucous and gritty. And I cannot think of anybody doing anything comparable to this. Funkadelic released their first a year later in 1970, and then Maggot Brain was in a year later. Stevie was not yet working on his 1970s classic albums.
There is yearning here , for an expanded life, an aspiration to freedom, and a bravery that is barely contained. I am tempted to say it is fearless, but I don’t know. Maybe there was fear, and that might be what makes this record special. It cannot be easy to refuse to be contained when you are a black man in 1969. And yet there is a container: that of the soul tradition. Making Walk on By your first song on your first record, only to explode it and send it to the stars the way Hayes is doing here is both deeply loving and incredibly bold. This is a black man taking a song written by two white men for a black singer, completely reappropriating it and turning it into a manifest. This is excellent.
If you see me walking down the street
And I start to cry, each time we meet
Walk on by
Walk on by
Make believe that you don't see the tears
Just let me grieve
In private, 'cause each time I see you, I break down and cry
4
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Fri Apr 12 2024
Harvest
Neil Young
I don't know what to say about this that has not been said before. Neil Young was touched by grace on this. (with the obvious exception of "man needs a maid", what the hell were these lyrics?). 'Words' is the one song of his that always hits me right in the feels, no matter how many I have heard it. And one thing that really got to me this time in ways I had not noticed to this extend before is Ben Keith's pedal steel. Subtle, aching, intentional.
My dad is a huge fan of Young, and this is probably one of the first records I ever heard. To this day, hearing this record reminds me of him, and of the turntable in the living room, or of the many hours we spent on some road on our way somewhere... I can smell the car when I hear this.
Some records are that: a direct line to love and belonging to one another across generations, and to smells, emotions, feelings from a time that has passed and of which I have grown nostalgic without realizing. Today I sometimes join forces with my daughter and my mom to tease him endlessly about his enduring, unextinguishable love for "Nelle Youngue" (pronounced with a heavy french accent), including his more tedious productions of late. But deep down I recognize there something beautiful and precious about sticking with an artist no matter what, because they woke something up in you that cannot be tamed.
This album, for me, encapsulates the best of my dad. He sticks with people. He is grounded and deeply connected to the place he is from (he actually lives less than 5 ks from the house he was born in). He values friendships, and cares for people and for the world. He loves hosting, and to be surrounded. He is a simple man, but also a quite complicated in many ways. And we have had our differences, disagreements, misunderstandings, frustrations at one another over time, but. There was always this deep love for music, and this album which he gifted me in so many ways.
"There's a world you're living in
No one else has your part"
He definitely found his part, and is playing it beautifully.
As for the album, I don't think this is even my favourite one of his, musically speaking (On the Beach might take the crown). But this is definitely the one I carry with me and know the most intimately. How do you even rate this?
4
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Sat Apr 13 2024
Automatic For The People
R.E.M.
I love this record, and this band, unconditionally. This was the first time I bought music that felt deeply personal. I was 14 and had to borrow 59 Francs from my mother at the local supermarket. This record was a slow growth on me, but I kept on listening because it felt special and strange, and I did not understand it, but something about it was enchanting. I have never stopped listening to it since, in fact this is probably the one record I have listened to the most in my life.
I connected with it at a level no one else I knew did back then. My friends did not really seem to understand what I found so special about this record. REM were weird, in a way that felt freeing to me at the time. I felt seen, even though I did not understand the words at the time (I still don't to some extend!). I did not know what it said, but it made me feel something new. And this voice was carrying me. To this day Stipe's voice brings a smile to my face whenever I hear it. He became like an old friend.
The more and the longer I listened over the years , the more layers unfolded. I saw that Stipe's lyrics were beautiful and obscure, and evocative in the way that I aspired to write at the time. I remember cutting up the lyrics of Nightswimming for a stage play in Calgary in the early 2000's at a time where was not confident enough to write in English: another moment where Automatic for the People became an invitation to freedom and creativity and finding a new voice.
The music felt uncomplicated, and yet it was far from simple. Mike Mills' bass is quietly brilliant as always, and he truly shines on this as one of the most expressive back up vocalists of his time. Peter Buck is still expanding his palette from the mostly acoustic instrumentation of Green and Out of Time, slowly bringing more grungy textures. And the string arrangements by JP Jones act as a great container for the intimate, dark yet hopeful atmosphere of the songs.
It is not an easy record. Grief runs through, flowing with the water that is everywhere here. But it holds a very special light. and it always delivers me home, wherever I am.
"The ocean is the rivers goal, a need to leave the water knows.
We're closer now than light years to go."
Indeed we are, sweet friend.
5
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Sun Apr 14 2024
The Velvet Underground
The Velvet Underground
I had never listened to this one from the Velvet Underground. This is a really good record, somewhere between the sneer and agression of their first one and the sunny disenchantment in Loaded. Though John Cale has left at this point and been replaced by Doug Yule, the tension and dissonance he was bringing to the whole is still haunting some of the songs, like with the organ in What goes on. Lou Reed is maturing as a writer really in his own league, but this feels like a transition: where the tension between Cale and Reed was driving the early Velvets' music, the center is visibly moving on this one.
Love the doo-wop accents on Candy Says, a nice wink from Lou Reed to the music he grew up listening to in the 50s. And the nod to early R'n'roll on Beginning to see the light. And I love the closing song, with Moe Tucker singing, bringing to the foreground the child-like innocence and simplicity that drives most of their music, even at its most furious.
Though it does not reach me as viscerally as their first record, this album is a great listen, with some amazing moments: Candy Says and Pale Blue Eyes are easily among the best songs Lou Reed has written. There is a kind of purity that he reaches at these peak moments. These songs feel like quiet creeks that invite reflection (the mirror is a theme in the Velvets music that reappears here and there here): moments of peace in the chaos.
I don't know many bands who can capture this sense that beauty and chaos are merged at the hip, that there cannot be one without the other. The beautiful, the quiet, the still carries the memories of the grit and the filth it emerges from. And the oceans of noise carry the seeds of grace. It is playful and dark, graceful and filthy, honest and sarcastic, full of paradoxes. Just like life, and just like humans.
4
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Mon Apr 15 2024
Pretenders
Pretenders
That is a good example of something I may not have really (like,really!) listened to, if not for this list. I knew the Pretenders were good, but I did not realize how good. I thought this was great.
It carries tons of attitude, it's sexy, it oozes personality. A really fun record, that draws on the energy of punk rock but is also quite sophisticated. I loved the sound of the guitars - the crisp and sharpness, but there are also lots of textured, subtle work. And that voice of Chryssie Hynde, completely unique.
I will come back here.
4
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Tue Apr 16 2024
Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
Wu-Tang Clan
Even though I have been listening to hip hop for most of my life, I still feel like a guest when I listen to it. Maybe it has to do with the fact it is not music I grew up with - I really got into hip hop as a young adult, and so I feel that I never quite know the codes. In a way, listening to hip hop for me carries a sense of displacement, an unfamiliarity that is quite good, because it invites humility and a certain reverence. It's not unlike my experience as an immigrant, in many ways.
When it comes to listening to records like this one, I want to make it justice, and I don't always quite know how because I cannot assume I understand the experiences and stories it carries. As I enter into this one, I also want to forget to some extend how much I know about the cultural significance this particular album has taken over time.
The playfulness and the humor are striking here. The pop culture references are everywhere, the most obvious being the 70s Kung Fu movies that bring the running battle meta-theme for this album. But the record does not stop there, referencing so much black musical excellence in the sampling. RZA's work is stellar - such a brilliant blend of influences. This is a alchemic genius at work.
This crew is tight - the interplay between all MCs brings so much fun and conversational quality in the music. The many different voices and styles, from cerebral to brilliantly chaotic, all draw the picture a complex web of characters. This is music brought together by a community. It has this feel and it makes me want to go back to it, like a good movie.
Definitely a record to listen to before you die, if anything because of its historical significance and how much it has become a turning point of hip hop culture.
4
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Wed Apr 17 2024
Permission to Land
The Darkness
Are we there soon? How long is this going to be?
Faced with a choice to get angry over this whole thing (including cover and band name), or move to something more interesting, I went as far away as I could from this mess.
My flight took me all the way to KD Lang's Hymns of the 49th Parallel. Thanks for the recommendation, friend! That was a way better use of my time.
I definitely did not need to listen to the Darkness.
1
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Thu Apr 18 2024
Tellin’ Stories
The Charlatans
I am not sure why I needed to listen to this. For every uninspired Oasis copycat band with a bored sounding singer, there has to be something more interesting and adventurous elsewhere. I don't know. 1001 records isn't that much when you look in the entire world of music. I had a great day listening to Mulatu Astatke instead of the Charlatans.
1
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Fri Apr 19 2024
Is This It
The Strokes
I have liked this record for a long time. I initially got into it a few years after it was released, thanks to my sister who had a copy laying around that became stapled to my discman (these were the days). To me it's music that is really evocative of a specific time and place - the early 2000 and the whole rock revival after grunge petered out into endless not so great things and after nu-metal took over (in the US) and brit pop started to fade. It seemed that at that time there was much to listen to that had this kind of grit and amateurishness that band like the Strokes, the Libertines or the White Stripes brought over. That was a breath of fresh air for the fan that I was at the time.
This is not particularly original, but it works. It is, in some ways, manufactured too: there is an affected boredom and laziness to Casablancas's vocals and the whole thing seems very intentionally produced to sound somewhat sloppy. But it works. It's got a pretty great bouncy energy about it. I love the bouncy bass, the guitars are pretty sharp (as in cutting and edgy). It manages to sound quite primitive and simple while staying sophisticated. There is also a sense of looming disenchantment and melancholy that is never quite far, like in Alone, Together, or Last Nite that will become more prevalent in their later records and make them, in my view, more interesting.
This record also got me back to listen to the sources of this sound, back to being fascinated by the mix of grit and artsy of 70s NY punk-rock. Come to think of it, this was kind of a bridge towards these ancestors. And it brings quite a lot of charm to this process even as you suspect how manufactured the tears in these tight fitting jeans are.
3
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Sat Apr 20 2024
If You Can Believe Your Eyes & Ears
The Mamas & The Papas
This was ear candy. Amazing voice harmonies in service of a set of songs that brought me right into a time and space that captures imagination: the counterculture 1960s. The songs are far from easy - there is so much complexity and delicate craft in these arrangements. And at the end of the day, though it looks sunny on the outside when you pass by quickly, there is also deep melancholy and disenchantment inside. It made me think of this deep sadness that happens when you realize that as you are experiencing time, it has already passed and that the best is behind before you know it. A sense of grief for what is still here but will be gone soon.
This said, though I can appreciate the atmosphere and the craft involved in these songs, I don't think I will come back here.
3
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Sun Apr 21 2024
Electric Warrior
T. Rex
Well, that was fun. Lots of pretty good ideas and feels here. The backing vocals strategically placed, a nod to the 50s. The use of reverse tapes, the little guitar fills, the subtle hits of horn and strings, the production. And then there is Cosmic Dancer, a gem of a song. There is a fragility in the voice of Marc Bolan that makes these songs different and more interesting than if they were just odes to life and pleasure. It is always sexy, but there is an innocence and something else here, a little restrained and sad. You can sense the tears are not far under all the makeup. He really captured what must have been the atmosphere in 1971, when the joy and the sunniness of the hippie movement collapsed on itself and started to show something much grittier.
3
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Mon Apr 22 2024
Millions Now Living Will Never Die
Tortoise
Cold music you can't touch,
that keeps its distance and
does not invite in
glass everywhere.
there was a series of equations to solve at the source
a puzzle to which the music is a solution
something to look at but not enter
was there a who they had in mind?
made for spaces empty of community.
deserted banks of dry rivers
Where is life?
I will not come back here.
2
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Tue Apr 23 2024
Axis: Bold As Love
Jimi Hendrix
Just the opening track made me smile. That is humour we have not come to know Hendrix for.
It all starts with the blues. But then the trio departs and it quickly gets funky. The drumming gets spicy. The guitar gets fiery. We get to the land of magic.
A sense that this music is both from the world (the blues) and truly not from this world. This is the sound of multiple possible worlds captured at once.
This is great, living, moving music. And yet. They were still learning to shape their power. Incredible, really.
5
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Wed Apr 24 2024
Disintegration
The Cure
The tone is set from the get go with this intro.. This is a record that will take its time. It will be sparse and lush at the same time. The music drips from the ceiling. The voice comes in. The keyboards fall while the guitar ascends.
Pictures of you. The grace. Curtains of sounds, upwards and downwards, through which the voice appears. Wanting to feel, touch and be touched. Looking for a connection. It gets funky in all the right places (lullaby). It’s has humor and night terrors. It opens up the curtains on paradoxes and opposite directions. Up and down. Dry and wet. Low and High. Hard and soft.
The bass sometimes is retreating, at other times driving the whole, like it it drives this stroll on fascination street. Agressive, steady, round. Guitars swirling around this line. The whole thing has warmth to it, but has the cold edges of punk rock in some of the vocals.
Music is full of paradoxes and they are well exposed here.
The end is always near. Bouncy sounds. A voice in a room full of walls, looking for space and finding it. It is a record where containment talks to freedom. There is space and there are constraints.
Water is a theme. Lots of cascading sounds praying for rain. What is the process of disintegration? What does it mean for things to lose integrity? Particles separate, humans move away from each other. Disintegration is what happens when something is moving away from itself. When it stops holding together. The forces that held it let go, and particles drift.
It sure feels like a lot is falling away here: sounds, relationships, people. I seem to constantly hear the sound of water flowing, falling. The ghost of a stream. THis music is wet. Prayers for rain.
Even when songs have a bounce to them, like disintegration - voices are a bit behind in the mix, like trying to stay afloat. An echo responds.
This record invites impressions. The songs hold multitudes - Yearning for connection, falling and yet full of life. It’s a record full of alienation, but there is a surprising light to it that comes through as well. And perhaps that is the first paradox here.
Homesick- its hypnotic bass, cascading piano, all surrounded and enveloped by the ascending guitar. Until the voice comes in. A dramatic, inspired landscape as the backdrop for a voice that is set loose from the song that this guitar is tracing in the sky. This is a dance between the elements. When the piano comes back, the exile is complete.
The record ends with Untitled. As if when all is said and done, when the disintegration is complete, we lose the ability to name things. Time is undone. But for all that has passed and gone, something emerges whole. It is a simple song. Maybe the closest to the idea of a Ritournelle - a spiral motif, that closes the record with a lift.
When all is said, this might be the most beautiful thing Robert Smith has done.
5
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Thu Apr 25 2024
Violator
Depeche Mode
Depeche Mode, over the years, has been pioneering in bringing a degree of drama, seriousness and hunger for meaning in the world of electronic music. These are musicians that obviously take their craft very seriously. Though I will never be mistaken for a fan, I really respect the path they took as writers, and I truly enjoy some of their songs. They know how to create an atmosphere.
I remembered this record as sounding more dated than it actually was. Yes, all the tricks from the 80s are in and it feels very bip bip, but when you listen closely there are a lot more subtle arrangements pieces that make the songs interesting beyond the ones that everybody knows. Personal Jesus, Enjoy the Silence and Policy of Truth are the obvious hits that we all know, but even in these songs I heard things I had not paid attention too before, that give them depth and provide a window into the attention for detail that went into the writing and recording process.
The themes that the record centres are far from easy, but these songs pass the test of time in surprising ways. This is a nocturnal record. Someone stands in the dark in front an open door, in an empty room, wondering if courage is staying behind or crossing the threshold. Wrestling with choices. Dave Gahan is a great singer for this - he really brings this charisma to carry the battle.
I enjoyed my time here and found a new level of respect for them.
3
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Fri Apr 26 2024
Exile In Guyville
Liz Phair
I just lost a whole review of this album. Damn!
I heard somewhere that it was a feminist song by song response to Exile on Main Street. This delivers, big time.
It is a rollercoaster. Going from raw to raunchy to sweet to vulnerable to courageous.
Vulnerageous? always real and honest and authentic.
Liz Phair seems not interested in telling me a pretty story, or being nice, or playing guitar heroically, or finding the smart arrangement, or even singing well. She dips her pen in authenticity and joy and pain and experience, and looks curious about where or how deep she can go while still holding things together. And she ends up telling a beautiful story.
When I first heard her in the 90s, I did not speak the language, at least not fluently enough to understand what the songs were about. But what I did pick up on and resonate with is the vibe, and the broader themes in the songs. Not unlike other grunge and lo-fi bands I was listening to at the time, she made me feel like I too could write songs if I could access that experience. That sense of self-authorship and self-permission still permeates these songs as I listen to them years after, this time understanding what she is talking about.
With this record, Liz Phair opened a space of possibilities and permission for people who did not see themselves in the music that was around, much like she did not see or hear herself in Exile on Main Street. What she did to remedy that is create something beautiful that was truly and apologetically hers. Here was someone standing fully in her own power and fragility, and inviting us in. And so it became possible for others, particularly women, to do the same.
I have a lot of respect and time for this. What a gift to the world!
3
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Sun Apr 28 2024
Emperor Tomato Ketchup
Stereolab
Oh, what a ride. What a wild, kaleidoscopic, pleasurable ride. What a rich, unique, bombastic contribution. I am not even sure what musical landscape it is contributing to. It is one that is full of colors, that is spacious and intimate at the same time. One that can unfold and reveal itself more over time. One I can dance and daydream and feel the melancholy of time.
It is serious music that does not take itself seriously.
Music is love, pleasure, feels, and play, and these people have managed to create something beautiful to bring me along. Definitely worth a 1001 listens.
5
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Mon Apr 29 2024
Modern Kosmology
Jane Weaver
This was quite good, and I wish I could have spend more time with this record. Lots of little sound gems scattered all around, like bread crumbs tracing a path in the forest...
The first songs remind me a bit of Stereolab, and brings in flavours of Krautrock. It might be her voice. The sound landscape is both minimalist and quite rich. Overall the whole thing is very intriguing.
The themes and the sounds echo one another - images of nature, curtains of butterflies and a summery meadow. There is an interesting interplay between the natural, organic feel of the whole, and some elements and themes that have quite an industrial feel to them - like the bass and drum parts in the 1st song, or the synths loops in the 3rd song. It gives off a feel of what would happen if we get to see the 2 worlds (the post-industrial and the natural) as integrated into a new whole.
Her voice is what brings it together. Naive, airy, a bit tenuous at times, like if it was walking an edge between two universes. Riding the beauty flourishing in surprising encounters.
Not necessarily my cup of tea, so I do not know whether I'll come back here often. But I enjoyed my time here.
3
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Tue Apr 30 2024
After The Gold Rush
Neil Young
That is a record I grew up with, was gifted to me, and that I have thoroughly absorbed. Is there a point for me to say more?
It has everything. Storytelling. Social commentary. Some of his best poetry. Nuanced, intentional instrumentation. A look at Mother Nature on the run. A window into a unique mind. A feel for something very old, but also very new. And healing, in many ways. This is comfort music.
I have definitely listened to it more than 1001 times already, and yet it is always a good visit.
5
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Wed May 01 2024
Who Killed...... The Zutons?
The Zutons
This was not memorable. It was not bad, but it did not hook me anywhere, did not inspire me to daydream, or dance, it did not move me or make me think or feel much. Unfortunately I do not care much about the Zutons after today.
They did make an album, that's dedication to the craft and worthy of respect. But does it make it one of the 1001 albums I have to listen to? I do not think so.
2
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Thu May 02 2024
Live / Dead
Grateful Dead
I really enjoyed this. There is a love for music and creating together something on the spot that matters to them, that is quite beautiful. The thing being created is also not about them. Even though they are obviously very gifted musicians, I do not feel like I am not just watching them (or listening to them) do their thing. I am part of it, being taken for a ride in the best way.
The chemistry is palpable, and the songs feel epic without being pretentious. I can freely wander in them, without getting lost.
This album, for me, plays to an old idea of music being something that one participates to, even if the role is to listen. It makes me think of music as a form of ceremony, where listening is a form of action as important as playing.
There is a simplicity to this, even as the songs take on such complex, travelling shapes. In the end, we are here together and that matters.
I will definitely come back here.
4