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Went bombin' round youtube and started making a list of songs just for fits and spickle.
Rock kills kid- Paralyzed Foster the People- Pumped up kicks Adelle- Rolling in the deep Sixx AM- this is gonna hurt Rev Theory- Hell yeah The Racontuers- Steady as she goes Seether- Remedy Ugly Kid Joe- I hate everything about you Godsmack- Voodoo The killers- somebody told me Wolfmother- woman Wolfmother- Joker and the thief Danzig- Mother The Cult- Soul Asylum Tantric- breakdown Keane- somewhere only we know
-------------------- Damn you, you kids! Get off my lawn or I'm callin' tha cops!
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I've decided to try to keep track of everything I listen to this year. Here's the CDs I've spun so far today, in no particular order, with commentary:
The Church, "Starfish" - The biggest-selling album by the Australian proto-goths is often criticized for its slick Hollywood production, but I find the sound to be a timeless tonic.
The Cure, "Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me" - Second only to its predecessor, "The Head on the Door" as my favorite album by the English proto-goths. It goes down like ice cream...or just like heaven.
Morrissey, "Kill Uncle" - The Morrissey album that it's always been hip to badmouth, and even my usually contrary self has to partly agree that it's not one of his better ones, although there's only a couple tracks that I find outright bad (I always skip over them, of course.) If the mix weren't so sterile, it would be a better listen. And for what it's worth, his hair never looked better than on this album.
Right now I'm listening to:
Julian Cope, "Saint Julian." Cope's first of two back to back "sell out to the mainstream" albums, and by far the better of the two, although his gift for melodic hooks deserts him on some of the album tracks, and "Planet Ride" sounds like a bad imitation of Peter Gabriel's more commercial stuff. But "Trampolene," "World Shut Your Mouth," "Spacehopper," "Eve's Volcano," and "Shot Down" all rock hard and true.
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Currently listening to another Cope album, "Peggy Suicide," which I hadn't played for a while, because while his 90s albums are arguably the ones where he found his own voice, I now find that I much prefer Cope as a quirky 80s popster than a grumpy 90s hippie. Still, "Peggy Suicide" has some of the best psychedelic music recorded since the 60s.
The Cars, "Heartbeat City" - My Anglophiliac listening tendencies make it only natural that I'd like the Cars, as they had far more left-field influences than most American bands of their generation (Ric Ocasek's vocal stylings owe as much to Roxy Music's Bryan Ferry as they do to Buddy Holly.) That said, "Heartbeat City" is the only one of their albums that I can listen to from beginning to end, and it's tempting to give the credit to super-producer Robert "Mutt" Lange, arguably the greatest producer in rock music from 1979 (AC/DC's "Highway to Hell") to 1987 (Def Leppard's "Hysteria.") It's as 80s slick as 80s slick comes, but sometimes that's a good thing.
The Cars, "Door to Door" - Originally intended as a back to basics album after the painstaking approach of Mutt Lange, there is no small irony that the worst tracks are the ones that sound most like the early Cars albums, and the best are those most in the same vein as "Heartbeat City."
Morrissey, "Your Arsenal" - To my mind, this is Morrissey's masterpiece. Produced by guitar hero Mick Ronson (David Bowie, Ian Hunter, Bob Dylan), the album has a thick, muscular sound that nonetheless gives the songs plenty of room to breathe. And, oh, what songs! Kicking off with the brisk "You're Gonna Need Someone By Your Side," we then stomp along with "Glamorous Glue," where Morrissey laments globalization (in 1992!) The next two tracks are among Morrissey's most controversial -- the softly menacing "We'll Let You Know" refuses to flinch from the insular ugliness of hooligan culture, leading many to believe he was glorifying it; "The National Front Disco" is a bucking stallion of a rocker which again refuses easy answers to the queasy topic it broaches, in this case lost and confused youths who are easily led down the road of right-wing extremism. And just when the album threatens to become oppresively grim, we get a triad of frisky pop songs: "Certain People I Know" (an affectionately bitchy appraisal of Morrissey's circle of friends), "We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful" (a venomously bitchy swipe at Morrissey's rivals), and "You're the One for Me, Fatty" (self-explanatory.) Then, once again, before the album seems like it's going too far in one direction, comes another shift: the acoustic dirge "Seasick, Yet Still Docked", the most "typical" Morrissey song on the album, but a lovely number nonetheless. The album climaxes with the one-two punch of "I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday" (a string-laden ballad featuring an unusually hopeful lyric) and "Tomorrow" (which seamlessly alternates between power chords and a steady chug-chug.) This, to me, is what should have been the future of rock and roll, not the thud and blunder of grunge. Still, I can take comfort in knowing that this album holds up much better than other, better selling and more influential albums of its time.
Morrissey, "Vauxhall and I" - The follow-up to "Your Arsenal", recorded after the death of Ronson and two other members of Morrissey's circle, does a 180-degree stylistic turn towards an ambient softness. The mourning singer wrote some of his best, most clear-eyed lyrics for this album. The only problem I have with it is the uniform sweetness of Steve Lillywhite's production, which works beautifully on the ballads but gums up the rockers with sticky aural caramelization. Still a remarkable album, a favorite of many Morrissey fans, and the singer's own favorite of his solo albums.
Currently playing...
Bob Dylan, "Live 1975" - Documenting the tour known as The Rolling Thunder Revue, on which the lead guitarist was the great Mick Ronson, this double-CD set makes a good case for Dylan as a still-vital writer and performer in the decade immediately following the one with which he is most associated.
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Today's theme has been (allegedly) lesser albums by great artists...
Morrissey, "Southpaw Grammar" - The follow-up to "Vauxhall and I" seems to have started out as a return to rockier territory, but something went awry. What we ended up with was a bunch of rather samey-sounding rock songs bookended by two overlong monstrosities, although at least the first monster, "The Teachers Are Afraid of the Pupils" works as a sort of post-punk update of pomp-rock. "The Boy Racer" and "Reader Meet Author" stand out among the shorter tracks, while the middle track, "The Operation", would be the catchiest thing on the album if it weren't for the gratuitous drum solo and guitar wig-out. A hard album to love, but there's something perversely compelling about it.
Morrissey, "Maladjusted" - I think this one is underrated, and that the problem most people have with the album is that the mellow and/or frivoulous tracks are much better than the ones where Morrissey bares his teeth. Lead single "Alma Matters" has a lovely melody, "Trouble Loves Me" is a beautiful ballad that should have been a single, "Roy's Keen" is a camp delight, and "Papa Jack" is a sort of refinement of the previous album's sound. "Ammunition", "He Cried", and "Wide to Receive" are all pleasant enough. Overall, the album seems to anticipate the relocation to sunshiny, easy-going Los Angeles that Morrissey embarked on soon after its release.
Julian Cope, "My Nation Underground" - This is the one where he pretty much just gave up and tried to be a compliant little pop star. Thankfully, he shook off that malaise and has never looked back. And the album's not uniformly terrible -- the oldies covers are fun, "I'm Not Losing Sleep" is decent, and "Charlotte Anne" (charlatan, get it?) is a standout; even Cope admits, in hindsight, that "Charlotte Anne" was the one song on this album that he got just right.
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It may come as a surprise that I like some of R.E.M.'s albums, even though they were the godfathers of mall-ternative rock. But they did it first, and they did it best.
"Life's Rich Pageant" - As I just don't "get" their first three albums, their fourth is my personal number one. Teaming up R.E.M. with John Melonhead's producer, Don Gehman, must have seemed a recipe for disaster, but the proof is in the pudding. The beautiful "Fall on Me" should have been a much bigger hit than it was, "Flowers of Guatemala," "Swan Swan H", "Cuyahoga," and "Why Don't We Give It Away" are all lovely, and most of the uptempo ones are both fun and thoughful. "Superman" (a cover of a sixties obscurity) and "Underneath the Bunker" are just plain fun.
I don't own the fifth album, "Document," because I think the only decent thing on it is the cover of Wire's "Strange," and otherwise it's a dreary and colorless attempt at a "rawk" album.
"Green" - A nice variety of styles on display on their sixth album and first for a major label, my favorite being the hit single "Stand."
"Out of Time" - Another grab-bag of styles, this one is more uneven than "Green", but it has two of my favorite songs of theirs, "Shiny Happy People" (yes, I like it, and I make no excuses) and "Losing My Religion." The only dud on it is the churlish opener, "Radio Song."
"Automatic for the People" - A masterpiece of contemplative ambience, comparable to Morrissey's "Vauxhall and I" from two years later. Not a bad track on this one, and if "Life's Rich Pageant" is their Saturday night album, then "Automatic for the People" is their Sunday morning album.
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