There’s a lot of doom and gloom in the news about the US economy. The company for which I work actually told Wall Street it was going to dial down its expectations for the first quarter of 2008, and our stock price took a hit for it. (My options are, as usual, underwater.) It doesn’t help that this morning, I read an article stating the unemployment rate is rising faster than economists predicted.
So this first quarter is kind of sucking for American corporations.
But this site does not deal with matters of economy. It deals with matters of music, and the first quarter of 2008 has turned out to be quite fertile. I’m usually not impressed with the first quarter releases of any year, but this time, even albums I don’t absolutely adore are still really, really good.
The 2008 Q1 release schedule in Japan has been particularly notable.
hey willpower’s debut, Dance EP, was one of my favorite eMusic downloads of 2007. Imperial Teen guitarist Will Schwartz and musical partner Tomo channel a sincere love for radio pop into four songs devoid of hipster irony. These guys really do love their Rhianna.
P.D.A. was released in the UK in 2006, but it saw a stateside release in 2008. All four tracks of Dance EP appear on the album, which is handy since the EP itself doesn’t seem to be available in stores any more.
P.D.A. is perhaps the first album in a long time to make me smile.
Really — I tried to get into 69 Love Songs. I was impressed as everyone else that one guy would try write, record and essentially perform three hours of love songs, pared down from the original 100 planned.
At the very least, such an effort ought to be commended. Stephin Merritt wasn’t trying to go for some three-disc prog rock concept album — he just wanted to write 69 love songs.
Reviewers at the time thought the entire set was just pristine, but over time, I’ve found otherwise. I no longer have the albums in my collection because I only ever found about 23 of them very likable.
And thus established my relationship with the Magnetic Fields — a band upon whom I like to check from time to time, but one whose work I don’t actually whip myself into a frenzy to follow. Merritt comes up with some really clever ideas, such as writing songs where all the titles begin with the letter "I". But sometimes, the follow-through is less compelling than the concept, as was the case with said album i, the band’s first for Nonesuch.
Distortion promised an album "more Jesus and Mary Chain than the Jesus and Mary Chain". I’ve had only scant exposure to the Jesus and Mary Chain, so I don’t know how well Merritt keeps his promise. This time, I’m inclined to think the Magnetic Fields deliver the goods.
I thought the fits of coughing on Sunday were because I smoked my way through a pack of cigarettes over the four nights of the SXSW music festival. I can usually make a pack last a month. I thought the coughing would subside by the next day, but it didn’t.
In fact, I didn’t sleep a wink on Sunday night, and come Monday morning, I was running a fever of 100.5. I’ve missed this entire week of work because I got knocked out by the flu.
The only thing I’ve managed to do all week is watch reruns of Law and Order and Star Trek Voyager on cable. I’ve actually managed to stay away from the computer, which is kind of refreshing. Still, it would be nice to feel like something other than total crap.
Fish and visitors stink after three days. I’ve had this flu for five. It can go away now, please.
I usually have anywhere from 30 to 48 hours of music on my "audition" playlist at any time. I call it my "audition" playlist because, well, I’m auditioning albums on which I’m going to comment. When I go on a writing binge and get that list below 30 hours, I feel a sense of accomplishment.
Before my last "playlist refill", I had managed to get it down to 22 hours. It’s back up to 34 right now. Once I’m done with this entry, I hope to have it back under 30.
I went on a writing binge this past weekend, knowing I’d be getting a new influx of listening material. I used up this month’s eMusic quota, and the last few weeks have been bountiful (for me, at least) in the retail sector.
I am, however, disappointed that the US release of Kylie Minogue’s X was bumped without much prior warning. It was supposed to hit stores on Feb. 12, 2008. It didn’t. An unconfirmed report on Wikipedia says the release was pushed back to March 2008. I’m skeptical — a release pushed back by a month usually has a more specific date. That vagueness makes me think it’s pushed back even further.
Well, Amazon has an import version for a reasonable price anyway, so there’s no onus for me to wait. Till then, I’ll be occupied with all the following stuff.
Yorico’s second album, second VERSE, came at an inopportune time. I was enamored of SLOTH LOVE CHUNKS and VOLA & THE ORIENTAL MACHINE back in 2006, and while I recognized second VERSE was a good album, I couldn’t give it sufficient playback time to get a real feel for it.
Before the release of Yorico’s third album Negau in January 2008, I went back to second VERSE to see whether Yorico was an artist in whom I could really invest. I’m sorry for not having paid second VERSE my undivided attention, because this album is so far her loudest and most ambitious.
It was apparent with the departure of Onitsuka Chihiro from EMI Japan’s roster that Yorico was brought in to fill the void. Her piano-driven songs didn’t rely so much on the Carole King influence as Onitsuka, but on the surface, they seemed complimentary enough. There was also a hint of a rocker in Yorico, a trait that informs but doesn’t quite drive EMI’s other major source of income, Utada Hikaru.
second VERSE, however, establishes Yorico as an artist apart from Onitsuka or Utada. The balladry that dominated her debut Cocoon gave way to a mostly boisterous album full of rock songs geared for the anime theme song set — melodic enough to hook a viewer but hard enough to mask its pop underpinnings.
Something about Ari Gold’s second album, Space Under Sun, rubbed me the wrong way. His self-titled debut felt raw, the proverbial diamond in the rough, but the slick follow-up didn’t quite live up to the promise of that debut.
Before the release of Gold’s third album, Transport Systems, I went back to Space Under Sun to figure out why it didn’t appeal to me. I found the answer in two consecutive tracks at the midpoint of the album — "Bashert" and "He’s On My Team".
The former is a sickly sweet ballad too plainspoken to be very poetic, and the latter is stagey novelty song too limited by its antics to even be funny. The rest of the album, however, actually sounded all right.
Gimmicks backfire if they’re not handled carefully, and Gold’s weakness are tracks that mishandles the gimmick. Transport Systems nearly skirts that peril — "nearly" because a cover of Human League’s "Human" embellishes the original with additional (read: unnecessary) material.
Dude — "Human" was a great song to begin with. It needs no addition. Would you paint a beret on the Mona Lisa? Gold salvages the alleged cover by singing the song’s chorus as is, but if he stuck to the original, he would have had a great encore.
Thankfully, it’s the only misstep on a focused, ambitious album, perhaps Gold’s best to date.
Before reality shows became the staple of the summer television season, reruns were the modus operandi of the networks. NBC at one time attempted to lure viewers to watch previously aired shows with the slogan, "It’s new to you."
The sentiment is something that’s driven my exploration of catalog releases. If I haven’t listened to it, it’s new to me. That’s my cop out for not contributing to the hype machine. It gets tiring trying to get the scoop on what’s next.
For the time being, I’m content to live in the past.
In the past, I’ve made noises about wanting to cover more classical music on this site. Well, the only way to do that is to listen to more of it, which I’ve been doing since last year.
Certainly, reading Alex Ross’ The Rest Is Noise was a big push, but there have been other stimuli leading up to that point. The only music blogs I really follow are classical sites, such as ArtsJournal, NewMusicBox, aworks and The Standing Room. I’ve got no fluxblog, Stereogum or Brooklyn Vegan in my RSS reader. And Pitchfork? I’m no masochist.
I’ve also gotten chummy with Russell McCollough, the classical buyer at Waterloo Records. He’s steered me to a number of titles over the past year.
There’s a lot of doom and gloom in arts coverage about the dwindling audience for classical music, and it spurs me to give the genre some room among the indie bands, Japanese bands and ’80s catalog about which I write. At the very least, I hope to generate some name recognition among the readers who wouldn’t normally seek out this kind of music.
Music from the last century — and this one — get more hard drive space over the standard repertoire, the classical "war horses", as they’re called. I don’t have much more to add about Beethoven or Bach, and I usually exit in case of Berlioz. But I think there’s some overlap between indie rock and modern classical music that musicians in either camp don’t seem to recognize as much as they could.