5 albums Revisited
Posted: Fri May 09, 2003 5:07 pm
I picked up five CDs today, so this is pretty easy for me. What are the last five things you listened to?
Arab Strap - Monday at the Hug & Pint - Fifth album from Scottish mopers continues their trend of every album being better than the one before (except Philophobia, their second, I don't rate it very highly). Predictable lyrical content - lots of songs about going to discos on Ecstasy, fighting with girlfriends, being washed out and drunk, shitting oneself, watching television, etc. Musically the songs are much more driving and diverse, with electric guitars on several songs, strings, etc. A good starting point for new listeners, probably their most "accessible" album since their debut The Week Never Starts Round Here. Great cover which pokes fun/pays homage to Belle and Sebastian's album covers. I still can't figure out if B&S and Arab Strap are friends or enemies; the B&S song "The Boy With the Arab Strap" seems to be pretty anti, but both bands contributed to The Reindeer Section, so who knows?
Sloan - Pretty Together - Fifth album from the most popular band in Canada, or at least they were at one point. It continues the trend they started on Navy Blues, the album prior, of incorporating raw 70s rock sound into their incredibly precise pop soundscape. A couple songs actually sound like Black Sabbath crossed with AC/DC - no surprise, since many Canadian indie-rock bands have an odd AC/DC obsession. After all, didn't they proclaim on Navy Blues that "we're still cool, and Angus rules"? A great, great rock album that answers the unasked question "What if the Beatles and the Who were Canadian liberal arts majors?"
The Flaming Lips - The Day They Shot the Hole in the Jesus Egg - This is a 2-disc reissue of In a Priest Driven Ambulance, their fourth album, originally released in 1990. Rock critics often say that said album is their first "great" record. From the point of view of rock critics, I suppose that's true - in many ways you could say it's their first "serious effort" that hinted at the genius behind the garage-LSD-Butthole Surfers-meet-Pink Floyd wackiness of their first three (which have all also been reissued in one 3-disc set). Lots of rarities and b-sides and a retail price of $19 make it very much worth picking up, especially considering the remastered sound quality. In some ways it's a slightly boring album - because it's so straight-ahead rock compared to everything else they've done - but the sheer sentimental twang of shit like "Five Stop Mother Superior Rain" and "There You Are" makes up for it.
Sixteen Horsepower - Sackcloth and Ashes - I'm pretty sure this is their first album. At any rate, it's pure doomed gothic Death Country, driving guitars, Biblical references, whiskey, etc. One of the most tragically ignored bands I can think of. If you like local heroes Blackgrass, it's a darn safe bet you'd like the band that pretty much did it first (well, arguably, the Violent Femmes' "Country Death Song" is the first pop culture evidence of this sound, but that's just one song).
Stereolab - Mars Audiac Quintet - When you get right down to it and look back, Stereolab were never quite as good as anyone seemed to think. However, this album and the one before it - Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements - are beautiful things, mostly because both feature driving and loud guitars rather than the beep-and-boop elevator music they settled into somewhere after Emperor Tomato Ketchup. Sure, they borrowed so shamelessly from Neu that it ought to be criminal, but when it sounds this good, it doesn't matter too much.
Arab Strap - Monday at the Hug & Pint - Fifth album from Scottish mopers continues their trend of every album being better than the one before (except Philophobia, their second, I don't rate it very highly). Predictable lyrical content - lots of songs about going to discos on Ecstasy, fighting with girlfriends, being washed out and drunk, shitting oneself, watching television, etc. Musically the songs are much more driving and diverse, with electric guitars on several songs, strings, etc. A good starting point for new listeners, probably their most "accessible" album since their debut The Week Never Starts Round Here. Great cover which pokes fun/pays homage to Belle and Sebastian's album covers. I still can't figure out if B&S and Arab Strap are friends or enemies; the B&S song "The Boy With the Arab Strap" seems to be pretty anti, but both bands contributed to The Reindeer Section, so who knows?
Sloan - Pretty Together - Fifth album from the most popular band in Canada, or at least they were at one point. It continues the trend they started on Navy Blues, the album prior, of incorporating raw 70s rock sound into their incredibly precise pop soundscape. A couple songs actually sound like Black Sabbath crossed with AC/DC - no surprise, since many Canadian indie-rock bands have an odd AC/DC obsession. After all, didn't they proclaim on Navy Blues that "we're still cool, and Angus rules"? A great, great rock album that answers the unasked question "What if the Beatles and the Who were Canadian liberal arts majors?"
The Flaming Lips - The Day They Shot the Hole in the Jesus Egg - This is a 2-disc reissue of In a Priest Driven Ambulance, their fourth album, originally released in 1990. Rock critics often say that said album is their first "great" record. From the point of view of rock critics, I suppose that's true - in many ways you could say it's their first "serious effort" that hinted at the genius behind the garage-LSD-Butthole Surfers-meet-Pink Floyd wackiness of their first three (which have all also been reissued in one 3-disc set). Lots of rarities and b-sides and a retail price of $19 make it very much worth picking up, especially considering the remastered sound quality. In some ways it's a slightly boring album - because it's so straight-ahead rock compared to everything else they've done - but the sheer sentimental twang of shit like "Five Stop Mother Superior Rain" and "There You Are" makes up for it.
Sixteen Horsepower - Sackcloth and Ashes - I'm pretty sure this is their first album. At any rate, it's pure doomed gothic Death Country, driving guitars, Biblical references, whiskey, etc. One of the most tragically ignored bands I can think of. If you like local heroes Blackgrass, it's a darn safe bet you'd like the band that pretty much did it first (well, arguably, the Violent Femmes' "Country Death Song" is the first pop culture evidence of this sound, but that's just one song).
Stereolab - Mars Audiac Quintet - When you get right down to it and look back, Stereolab were never quite as good as anyone seemed to think. However, this album and the one before it - Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements - are beautiful things, mostly because both feature driving and loud guitars rather than the beep-and-boop elevator music they settled into somewhere after Emperor Tomato Ketchup. Sure, they borrowed so shamelessly from Neu that it ought to be criminal, but when it sounds this good, it doesn't matter too much.
I bet I haven't heard them in 10 years.
