When was the last time I looked ahead to new releases? April? You mean to say I have not previewed upcoming releases in eight months?
I guess I ought to fix that, but the first quarter of any year is going to be slow, and 2010 is so far shaping up to be no exception. There’s not much to report.
It took a few albums, but Shiina Ringo eventually distinguished her early solo work from her latter-day efforts with Tokyo Jihen. 2007’s Goraku even found her abdicating songwriting duties to her bandmates.
So when Shiina announced the release of her first new original solo album in six years, it was plausible to think the border between Ringo-chan and Tokyo Jihen would be maintained.
The pre-release single "Ariamaru Tomi," a tender rock ballad, hinted as much. It was a shock, then, when Sanmon Gossip turned out to be … a Tokyo Jihen album.
I’m hesitant to call the Favorite Edition 2009 list because I haven’t really listened to very many new releases, and the numbers bear that out. According to the Music Collector database I use to keep track of my music purchases, 2009 saw a huge drop in new release consumption.
The number of titles I consumed from 2008, spanning three formats (CDs, downloads and paid streams), was 76. In 2009, that number is 46, a 30 percent drop.
Those numbers are bit deceptive, because three of those 2008 titles weren’t discovered till 2009. Still, 46 titles is paltry next to 76 in 2008, 86 in 2007, 71 in 2006 and 67 in 2005. Also, some of the stream and CD titles are duplicates — when I like a stream well enough, I’ll buy the CD.
Most of that shift in purchasing habits can be attributed to saving for my Japan trip, but my changing preference for catalog titles didn’t help either.
So 2009 is getting the short shrift. Perhaps later I can revise history, should the new releases of this year become catalog discoveries of coming years. I doubt it.
Back when I worked at Waterloo Records, I would stock Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane, Over the Sea and think, "This album looks really precious."
The ornate cover art struck me as indier-than-thou, and the mouthy title all but screamed pretension — and that may very well be the case.
In an attempt to burn through some eMusic credits, I downloaded the album in late 2008, and I haven’t stopped playing it since. I loaded it into my iPod, and I’ve not deleted it. It’s still in my CD wallet, and I always cycle out newer acquisitions with older ones.
Sometimes I’m skeptical of near unanimous critical praise. In this instance, I was wrong.
(Holidailies Ed. note: "On the playlist" is a repeating column that gives brief reviews of what has been in rotation on my media player.)
In all honesty, everything I bought in Japan was something I previewed through the Evil Sharing Networks. I wanted to make sure if I were going to live with an album during my daily commutes, it would be something worth 3,000 or so yen.
In the months preceding the trip itself, I pretty much stopped buying CDs. Waterloo Records even had their pre-holiday season storewide sale, and the only thing I bought was a Kate Bush album. I have, however, been milking my eMusic quotas for all their worth.
My friends Jette and chip organize this online event called Holidailies, in which participants vow to update their blogs and journals everyday for the month of December (rather, from Dec. 7-Jan. 6.)
I’ve participated in Holidailes before, but not with Musicwhore.org. Given the dearth of content on this site in the last six months, I figure I may as well try to put myself in a position to produce.
I’m skeptical.
I’ve returned from Japan, but I’m still in Hawaiʻi. So I’m pretty much still on vacation. But what would a trip be without pictures?
Most of the photos are from Kyoto, because that’s where my brother and I stayed, taking day trips to Tokyo, Hiroshima and Osaka.
I’ve got a lot of things happening personally that’s pretty much knocked the wind out of maintaining this site.
I’m biding my time till November, when I finally travel to Japan with my brother. I’ll be gone for most of that month. I’m working on some cover albums — yes, plural — for Eponymous 4, and when I’m in that headspace, it’s hard to get out of it.
I’m not listening to anything new at the moment. Shiina Ringo’s Sanmon Gossip is the last new release I bought. Everything else I’m consuming right now is catalog. (I may finally be warming up to Hüsker Dü.)
I’m also in the beginning stages of a relocation. I’ve already made the decision to move, but now it’s just a matter of the actual work — combing through job listings, saving up money. I would hope to move before the next 70 days of triple-digit heat that is now the norm for Austin summers, but I don’t get the impression the overall economy would be so accommodating.
With all that going on, updating this site has unfortunately become a low priority.
Oh, but I hope after the trip I have lots and lots of stuff to say.
Some artists can get away with recording the same album over and over again. Antony Hegerty’s distinctive voice almost requires the most minimal of accompaniment.
So it’s no surprise The Crying Light contains more of the same sparse orchestral arrangements employed on previous albums. A full band pops up once, but for the most part, it’s Hegerty, a piano and a few other instruments to punctuate the open spaces.
That makes it all too easy to compare The Crying Light with the critically-lauded I Am a Bird Now, and personally, it’s not looking good for the former.
Hegerty can write a poignant piece of music like anyone’s business, but the kind of focus that served I Am a Bird Now so well is missing here. The album is just a bit too dour.
It does have its moments. The title track is a wonderful showcase for Hegerty’s unsettling vibrato. "Epilepsy Is Dancing" is an evocative title, but the song itself is sweetly lilting. "Aeon" eschews the piano for guitars, with Hegerty digging deep into his inner gospel singer.
The rest of the album revels a bit too much in transparency, pushing less to be less, not more. Hegerty has a compelling voice, but the compelling music that usually goes along with it isn’t quite there on The Crying Light.
When … And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead made its more prog rock influences known on 2005’s Worlds Apart, listeners familiar with the band’s output were left wondering, “Hah?”
This foray into seemingly unfamiliar territory made sense, given the tight construction of the band’s previous albums, but it was hard not to miss the bombast of Source Code & Tags and Madonna. Thankfully, The Century of Self brings everything together.
The loud crush of guitars propel such tracks as "Isis Unveiled", "Far Pavillions" and "Halcyon Days", but they veer into tangents that don’t feel needless.
All the album’s tracks blend seamlessly, returning to the solid architecture that anchored the band’s early work. Festival Thyme, the four-track EP that previewed the album, didn’t capture the depth and breadth the album. The EP’s tracks — including "The Bells of Creation" and "Inland Sea" — make more sense in the context of the album.
Pianist Clay Morris adds a new dimension to … Trail of Dead’s sound, providing a velvet glove to the iron fist that is the guitar work of Conrad Keely and Jason Reese. The band, on the whole, sound more fiery than ever, the album recorded live to tape (or hard drive?) than meticulously multitracked.
The Century of Self brings … Trail of Dead back closer to its roots while taking the best bits of the recent past. The band has always experimented with its sound, but this time, they sound complete.