On the playlist, or disruption

I spent most of December listening to the titles on the last On the playlist round-up because I was summoned to Honolulu for a family emergency. In short, my dad passed away.

It’s a saga I detail over at VexVox, but I pretty much flew out to Hawaiʻi at a moment’s notice, bringing only my most recent purchases. I wasn’t really in the frame of mind to shop for music — not that it stopped me from heading to Book-Off at Shirokiya in Ala Moana — so growth of the backlog was somewhat mitigated.

In fact, only two of these titles are actual physical purchases.

  • Emmylou Harris, Roses in the Snow For some reason, I wanted to start my exploration of Harris’ bluegrass period with the second of two albums. I’m sure Blue Kentucky Girl is somewhere in my future.
  • Hajime Chitose, Occident That cover of "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" is kind of painful to hear, but most of these tracks were previously released as coupling tracks on singles.
  • KIMONOS, Kimonos There’s a lot of talk over on the Keikaku.net forums about this album being one of the best of the year. It’s certainly better than some of the 2010 titles I’ve heard, but I’m still non-committal about ranking it in the year-end favorite.
  • Lisa Stansfield, Affection I’m just a sucker for the drum sound from this era.
  • Meredith Monk, Facing North I’ve been meaning to expand on my Meredith Monk collection, having owned Book of Days for so many years.
  • Sasagawa Miwa, miwaGLITTER I’ve never heard so many rock guitars on a Sasagawa Miwa album before. Just wish she had the kind of budget to afford better mixing and mastering.
  • Steve Reich, Music for 18 Musicians Really, ECM? Would it kill you to cut this one MP3 file into different movements? Nonesuch thought so.
  • The Smiths, Strangeways, Here We Come Part of me is glad I was not a Smiths fan back in the late ’80s because I would have taken Morrissey to heart far too seriously.
  • Toni Childs, House of Hope At the time, I favored this album over Childs’ debut, Union, but the opinion has since flip-flopped.
  • Utada Hikaru, SINGLES COLLECTION VOL. 2 I just skip ahead to the ULTRA BLUE tracks, then let the CD wind back to the start. I do like that PlanitB remix of "Beautiful World".