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Post by nathanalbright on Jun 19, 2020 15:01:53 GMT -5
Truly Madly Deeply: The Best Of Savage Garden, by Savage Garden
Someday there will be a good documentary on this late and lamented Australian duo and we will find out the story of why it is that they flamed out so spectacularly after creating two successful and gorgeous albums of synth-pop that combined sold more than ten million copies in the United States and many copies around the world. I do not know of such a documentary yet, though, so in the meantime like many people who enjoyed the music of this group there remain the two albums they put out and compilations like this one which seek to provide listeners with music that they may be unfamiliar with combined with music that is appreciated. This particular album is seventeen tracks long, and the first ten tracks are likely to be familiar with most of the people who buy the album, being mostly singles from the two albums the group put out in the late 90's and early 2000's before breaking up. Given the fact that the audience is likely to be familiar with most of the content here, is it a worthwhile album to listen to anyway? Let's find out.
This album can be divided into three sections. The first section is made up of ten songs that were mostly released as singles by Savage Garden from their two albums. These tracks are, as one would expect, quite good. While not every excellent song from the first two albums are included, most of the best of the band can be found here, including #1 hits "Truly, Madly, Deeply" and "I Knew I Loved You," other hits that I like far more like "I Want You," "Affirmation," "To The Moon And Back," "Hold Me," "Crash And Burn," and "The Animal Song" as well as "Santa Monica" and "Break Me, Shake Me," which are excellent album cuts. Most fans of this band will know and enjoy these songs from the outset and they set the tone for expectations for the rest of the songs. After these familiar songs come two loosies from Darren Hayes, "So Beautiful" and "California." The first is a sappy love ballad that I didn't really enjoy but "California" has some more nuance and the sort of instrumentation I enjoy as well as some genuinely poignant lyrics about being together alone with someone. After this come five songs that were b-sides on singles by the group. These songs are definitely lesser material compared to the band's material and don't really rise above the level of album filler, but as Savage Garden album filler that is still pretty good. Of the five, "I'll Bet He Was Cool" epically misunderstands Jesus Christ and His mission on earth and "Fire Inside The Man" is a really touching tribute to the importance of women in the lives of Darren Hayes, and the rest are repetitive but at least melodic and tuneful.
Overall, then, this collection is a bit of a mixed bag. Since we are apparently not going to get a Savage Garden reunion given the fact that one of the members of the duo has entirely retired from the music industry and is apparently not even on speaking terms with the other, we have to take what we can get. And what we have here is a reminder of the duo's excellence in music and the fact that they could have made so much great music if they had been able to work together. The band also had good judgment on what songs were fit for albums and what songs could be b-sides on their singles. This album is a worthy addition to one's collection if you want to hear a couple of decent to good Darren Hayes songs and some obscure tracks from a group that you like. Non-fans of the group may wonder what the fuss is all about but if you liked the band's material this is certainly well worth listening to.
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Post by nathanalbright on Jun 22, 2020 20:56:34 GMT -5
Haydn: Symphonies #44, 45, & 49
I must admit that while I listen to a fair amount of classical music that occasionally I find myself listening to music from labels or at least imprints that are unfamiliar to me, and such is the case with Apex, which has combined three symphonies of Haydn that were written and first performed in a period close to each other where Haydn worked for low wages in the obscurity of the Hungarian estate and palace of the Prince of Esterhazy. According to the trilingual liner notes in English, German, and French, many of Haydn's friends and admirers sought for him to find more remunerative work composing for other sponsors or the general public at large but at least while the incumbent prince was a sponsor of music Haydn was content to create in some obscurity where he had a good degree of loyalty to the household and its orchestra and where he had the creative freedom to work. One can certainly think of these particular symphonies as creative ones, and as a violist who has played one of these symphonies in concert I can say that they are well-suited to a small but reasonably accomplished chamber orchestra if I may humbebrag about my own abilities and those of my fellow musicians at SPC's Community Orchestra with whom I performed.
This particular disk is made up of three albums. Like all of Haydn's symphonies, they are high classical symphonies with four movements, although there is some experimentation in the four movements involved. Symphony 44 is in E minor, and it is called the "Funeral Symphony" because it was apparently stated that this was to be played at Haydn's funeral. It happens to be the symphony of his I played personally and it is beautiful if melancholy. IT begins with an Allegro con brio, is followed by a Menuette (canon) trio, then by a long adagio and finally a short and fast presto Finale. The second of the symphonies included in this set is in F# minor and is called "The Farewell" in part because it was written as a way of protesting the separation of the musicians from their families during a long performance season. It begins with an allergo Assai, is followed by a lengthy Adagio, is followed by a Menuet allegretto - trio which ends with a violin duet after all the other musicians leave, and then is ended by a lengthy Finale: Presto. The third of the symphonies is in F minor and is called "The Passion," beginning with a lengthy Adagio, then followed by an Allegro di molto, after which there is a Menuet-trio and a short Finale: Presto.
By and large all of these symphonies demonstrate the harmony between passion and design that marks the High Classical and Haydn's work in particular. There are certainly hints of the sort of emotional use of instruments that would be later carried further by Beethoven and then the Romantics, but that emotional resonance is kept within a harmony with reason in a way that the time understood and appreciated. Yet despite the fact that Haydn definitely kept to the style that was dominant during his time, he was certainly very willing to vary the order of the four movement types within the classical symphony form as well as write in different keys and vary the length and the instrumentation to make a point or to fulfill his artistic ambitions. Whether or not the listener is always able to distinguish the point of the artist involved and what subtle changes are wrought as the author flexibly uses the symphony form as a handmaiden to his creative efforts, this flexibility demonstrates that however restrictive we may find forms, they represent all the same a means by which creativity can be exercised and developed within constraints.
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Post by nathanalbright on Jun 24, 2020 17:15:18 GMT -5
Haydn: Symphonies #82 & 84, by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra
It is interesting to note that in the cosmopolitan world of the eighteenth century a talented and prolific composer like Haydn can be a patriotic Austrian composer--so patriotic he wrote hymns for his emperor--work as an underpaid composer at an obscure Hungarian estate, and have his work praised all over the rest of Europe to the point where he had fan clubs in France and was able to travel to England and compose some of his greatest late symphonies there. That said, these particular symphonies show Haydn in experimental mode and demonstrate that his loyalty to his chamber orchestra and the freedom that he had to make tweaks within the formula for classical symphonies, allowing him to maintain the sort of balance he enjoyed while also showing great deal of creativity as well in pieces that are still enjoyed. It is a bit of a shame that this particular disk only includes two of his symphonies as one could always enjoy more Haydn. No one ever had to deal with too much Haydn music to listen to that was unpleasant or irritating, at least, so the more the merrier as far as I am concerned.
Although this is not as much Haydn as one would like, these are still excellent symphonies. The first included in the set is Symphony #82 in C major "The Bear," and it is marked by a first movement in vivace that lasts almost 8 minutes and is very lively and upbeat, followed by a slightly slower Allegretto that is about the same length, then a Menuetto - Trio that is almost five minutes long and closed by a Finale in Vivace Assai that is about five and a half minutes long. After this there is Symphony #84 in E-flat major, beginning with a Largo - Allegro that is just over seven minutes long, followed by an Andante that is about seven minutes long, a Menuetto - Trio of about four minutes of material and then a gorgeous finale in Vivace that is about five and a half minutes long. The cd includes the label's usual trilingual liner notes in English, French, and German, and if there is any problem with the material it is that it is hard to hear the loud parts as loud as one would want. Overall this is a pretty soft cd, but it has some excellent music that is easy to enjoy.
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Post by nathanalbright on Jun 25, 2020 14:35:09 GMT -5
The High Road, by JoJo
This album was the second album by R&B singer JoJo, and the album hers that I feel the most hyped about going into it because I absolutely loved the two singles from this album, "Too Little Too Late" and its less-famous but still amazing follow-up "How To Touch A Girl." Upon listening to this album I found that in many ways there is a general pattern to her songs that has remained consistent over her entire career, which has lasted almost twenty years but which has only included four studio albums, one of which was released earlier this year as I write this (2020) and the other two of which were at the beginning of her career. There is a certain consistency that one gets with JoJo's music, and that is soulful singing, songs that are mostly about love and relationships and their ups and downs that present JoJo as having been hurt by bad relationships and longing for intimacy but at the same time hesitant about trusting the man or men in her life. This appears to be a lasting problem because the same problems that JoJo was singing about as a very young woman in 2003 and 2006 in her first two albums are the same problems she returns to over and over again in 2020.
This album is twelve tracks long and about 46 minutes in length if you got the version I did, which is the standard version without any bonus tracks. As might be expected for a young singer, most of these tracks are produced and written by others. Scott Storch helps write and produce on album opener "This Time" and it's as grating as one would expect for the sort of production that would be on a b-level Destiny's Child song. That said, a few of the songs here are amazing. "Too Little, Too Late" and the JoJo co-write "How To Touch A Girl" are still amazing after all this time. "Anything" features an inspired sample from Toto's "Africa" that works really well here. "Let It Rain" and "Gold Ol" are wonderful pieces that express JoJo's desire for intimacy in a relationship in a convincing way. "Note To God" offers up a prayer to God for His help in our society dealing with its hatred and divisions with a great deal of sincerity, written by Diane Warren, who also writes "Exceptional," a lovely slower number. Overall this album has a balance of somewhat jarring upbeat songs and more lush and gorgeous slower ballads, both of which highlight JoJo's singing abilities well.
Overall, this album made me feel somewhat sad for several reasons. For one, it demonstrates that JoJo's approach to music hasn't changed much over the course of almost two decades in the music industry--sing soulful songs about the uncertainties of love and relationships to production that is clearly of its time and hope that the result catches on with the general public. JoJo's singing throughout here is excellent, but the mid-2000's production is highly dated on some of the songs and quite jarring on at least some of the numbers like "This Time" and "Like That." In fact, it is a bit sad that JoJo's range in material has actually shrunk since this album, since the end of the album is a moving "Note To God" that could be sung about the problems we have had this year and is a plea for understanding and compassion and harmony, all things that are in dire short supply at present. This is an album that, with updated production, could still be played today, and there is a melancholy edge to some of the material as well, especially as the album closes, that reflects a certain melancholy about JoJo's career, and about the world in which her music exists in even now.
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Post by nathanalbright on Jun 28, 2020 17:33:26 GMT -5
40/40, by the Carpenters
Richard Carpenter, for the 40th anniversary of his brother/sister duo, made a 2 cd 40-track retrospective as a way of providing another way to provide the beloved music of the group to fans in a way that would demonstrate the legacy of their songs over the course of time. If you, like me, are fond of examining the origins of Soccermomlandia, this collection is a very important one as it helps to provide a sense of context to how and why Soccermomlandia was formed and how it relates to some of the genres nearby and continues to provide templates for how artists are to appeal to a large and (mostly) female audience. Interestingly enough, both members of the Carpenters had a lot to do with that. Karen Carpenter's emotive singing provide the emotional resonance that has been immensely appealing to the group's intended audience and Richard's production and A&R work has demonstrated the sort of material that works best to the Adult Contemporary market, which has combined to provide a great deal of insight that later groups, with far less ambition than the Carpenters, have used for their own profit as the genre continues going strong to this day.
What domain did the Carpenters establish for Soccermomlandia as shown in this retrospective. It is no surprise that a vast majority of these songs are clearly in Adult Contemporary, frequently in songs that were written by others and performed by professional studio musicians. That said, the Carpenters deserve a great deal of credit for ambition and for range in their material that includes disco instrumentation ("Love Is Surrender"), has at least an implicit opening for Christian AC ("Top Of The World" with its references to creation), contains some serious experimental artpop ("Calling All Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft"), includes some genuine country (like "Sweet Sweet Smile" and the instrumentation to "These Good Old Dreams"), and even some rock or rock-adjacent songs (like "Only Yesterday" and "Goodbye To Love"). If you don't rock harder than the Carpenters, you don't deserve to consider yourself a rock band, and on a few songs at least, the Carpenters rocked pretty hard. The wide range of the music of the Carpenters suggests at least a few of the ways that they were able to set a territory for other artists to appreciate, which even included covers of rock ("Reason To Believe" and "Ticket To Ride") and R&B ("Please Mr. Postman) songs. There are even some songs here that are children's music ("Bless The Beasts And Children" and "Sing") for the children of Soccermomlandia.
One of the most intriguing aspects of the Carpenters' discography is the way that it shows a great deal of tonal inconsistency that mirrors the problems of Soccermomlandia given the breakdown of marriage and the family that marked the establishment of Adult Contemporary as a genre as a replacement for the somewhat complacent Easy Listening music that had existed before. These songs veer from songs that show the dependency and vulnerability and longing of soccer moms ("I Need To Be In Love," "Superstar," "I Believe You," and "Touch Me When We're Dancing," later covered by Alabama for the country charts) to songs that demonstrate pessimism about love and relationships ("All You Get From Love Is A Love Song," "Goodbye To Love," "Your Baby Doesn't Love You Anymore," "Where Do I Go From Here?"). At times the tension between the meaning of the song and the composition of the band is uncomfortable, as in "We've Only Just Begun." The result is music that shows the longing for something that is lasting but the inability to find it because of a critical lack of trust and lack of firm moral basis for the romantic love that serves as the inspiration for so many of these songs.
It is striking, though, that while a great many of these songs are about romantic love, that the Carpenters show an interest in areas beyond this. Karen Carpenter shows a great deal of emotional depth that includes a high degree of depression and despair ("Goodbye To Love," "Rainy Days And Mondays," "I Won't Last A Day Without You") as well as happier and more optimistic fare. Later adult contemporary bands would not tend to show an interest in alien-human communication, for the most part, and only some artists (like Peter Cetera) would make music for the children of soccer moms as well as the soccer moms themselves. Overall, this album does a good job at showing the range of Soccermomlandia as well as the tensions that were present within the land from its beginning in desiring music that was up-to-date with the latest production techniques and that showed the romantic longings and frustrations of its audience that sought for lasting love but that was deeply pessimistic and emotionally distraught as a result of the increasing instability and decline of morality within society at large. And while the Carpenters may have been nostalgic, they were by no means traditionalists, and it shows.
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Post by nathanalbright on Jun 30, 2020 16:35:51 GMT -5
Best Beethoven 50, by various artists It is sometimes fascinating to ponder best of and greatest hits compilations for classical artists [1], and this three-disk compilation provides an interesting picture of what Warner Classic believes is the best material of Ludwig von Beethoven's oeuvre. I have to say that listening to this material, the people choosing the songs did a good job. Between these three disks of material that is close to four hours of classical music overall, someone who was taking a survey course in classical music and wanted to get a feel for Beethoven without listening to his music in its entirety would get a sense of what it is like. To be sure, had this collection been cut to only a single disk, it would have featured a lot more cases for people to argue about what was not included, but as it is the selection is ample and broad to include a great many of Beethoven's works, some of which are in their entirety ad some of which are not. I would have liked more, but many people will be satisfied by this album as it is since it is already a pretty substantial collection of songs. This particular collection is divided into three cds, each of about 80 minutes or so in length. The first two albums contain fifteen tracks apiece, and the last album 20 smaller numbers. The first cd includes material from Symphony #1 (1), #2 (2), #3 (3-4), #4 (5), #5 (6), #6 (7), #7 (9-11), #8 (12-13), as well as the Ode to Joy from Symphony #9 (15). In addition to these there are also selections from the Egmont Overture (8) and the Turkish March (14). The second disk then includes selections from the Violin Concerto (1-2), Piano Concerto's #1 (3) and #2 (4), the Violin Romance #1 (5), the Triple Concerto (6), the Piano Concerto #4 (7) and #5 (8-10). There are also elections from the Piano Sonata #8 'Pathetique' (11-12), the Moonlight Sonata (13), Fur Elise (14), and the Piano Sonata #17 'Tempest' (15). The third disk then contains the 'Waldstein' Piano Sonata #21 (1), the 'Hammerklavier' Piano Sonata #29 (2), a couple of selections from the Diabelli Variations (3-4), selections from the 'Spring" Violin Sonata #5 (5-6), the 'Kruetzer' Violin Sonata #9 (7-8), the Cello Sonata #3 (9), the String Quartet Op. 18 #4 (10), the Serenade for Flute, Violin, & Viola (11), the 'Razumovsky' String Quartet Op. 59 #1 (12), the 'Archduke' Piano Trio #7 (13), Ich Liebe Dich (14), some Irish folk songs (15), a selection from the Missa Solemnis (16), and a few selections from the Fidelio (17-20). Overall the songs are played by a diverse group of musicians with a high degree of skill and are mixed very well also. One thing this album does demonstrate when it comes to concert music is that there is a substantial difference in selecting the best songs of most pop artists and doing so for those artists for whom works have a higher degree of ambition and cohesion. The fact that the author can only include small selections of Beethoven's nine symphonies, for example, means that the listener loses the whole scope of such works (the same is true for Fidelio). For those artists whose ambitions include thematically organized larger works, there is something lost in selecting excerpts from that and something to be gained by appreciating the longer works in their entirety. Even so, this compilation is easy to enjoy and the playing (and occasional singing) is of a high level. If you want something pleasant to listen to in the car and do not want too demanding of an experience in terms of appreciating classical music and want the good stuff with no "filler," this album will certainly do the trick. It is a classical best of that is easy to recommend and contains a lot of vitally important songs within the classical repertoire, and that is always something to appreciate. [1] See, for example: edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016/11/26/album-review-mozarts-greatest-hits/edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017/01/04/album-review-greatest-hits-of-the-flute/
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Post by nathanalbright on Jul 1, 2020 18:05:08 GMT -5
The Best Of Styx: The Millennium Collection, by Styx
As is the case with many legacy rock & roll acts who first became big in the 1970's or 1980's, Styx has a lot of best of compilations, and I chose to listen to three of them as a way of determining what they had to say about Styx's body of work. This particular collection is a glossy one that comes from A&M and provides 11 songs from the group from the period between 1976 and 1990. This was the peak commercial period of the group and so it makes sense that it would contain quite a few enjoyable songs. And I have to say, at least as a listener, that this album was an enjoyable one to listen to even if it is more than a bit short, and I can also say that it at least tries to balance the material included between Dennis DeYoung and Tommy Shaw as songwriters and singers, and that is something that can be appreciated. If this disk does not include everything that I would want to hear from the group (more on that later), it does at least include music that fans of the group will be very likely to appreciate and that casuals will be able to enjoy as well.
This particular cd includes 11 songs from the Styx albums Equinox, Crystal Ball, THe Grand Illusion, Pieces Of Eight, Cornerstone, Paradise Theatre, Kilroy Was Here, and Edge Of The Century. Included are all but one of the top tens that the band had during this period. Of the songs included, ten of them hit the top 40 and one of the songs, "Boat On The River," from 1980's Cornerstone, missed the Hot 100 altogether, although it had been released as a single. It is an okay song, certainly enjoyable. Included are "Too Much Time On My Hands," "Come Sail Away," "Blue Collar Man (Long Nights)," "Lorelei," "Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man)," "Mr. Roboto," "The Best Of Times," "Mademoiselle," "Babe," and "Show Me The Way." The quality of the recordings is excellent and the songs included are top notch as well, dealing mostly with one of two concerns--love and personal relationships, or a blue-collar political worldview that has a high degree of fondness for the common person trying to make a living and with an ambivalent view towards society and government as a whole. The combination of the artistic ambition and deeply interesting themes helps make this an enjoyable compilation.
Of course, in looking at a collection like this what is not present is sometimes as important as what is. The cd does not include Lady or any of the songs, in fact, that were included in the Best of collection that was released in 1977 by Wooden Nickel, the band's previous label. Even among the songs that the band did release on A&M, though, this album could have been more complete. I would have preferred the addition of "Renegade" and "Sing For The Day" from Pieces of Eight, "Why Me" from Cornerstone, "Nothing Ever Goes As Planned" from Paridise Theatre, "Don't Let It End," from Kilroy Was Here, "Music Time" from Caught In The Act, and "Love At First Sight" from Edge Of The Century. This would have made for a somewhat longer album of about an hour in length, but it would have been a more complete selection of the band's biggest hits and that is always appealing to me personally. Even so, what is included is certainly great work that is easy to sing along to and enjoy so what is included is well worth appreciating and this makes for an acceptable one-disk retrospective even if one wishes there was more.
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Post by nathanalbright on Jul 1, 2020 18:17:27 GMT -5
Best Of Styx, by Styx
It sometimes happens, as is the case here, where a band toils in relative obscurity for some years, building up their craft and developing themselves, in a minor label with minimal popular success and then breaks out into the mainstream after having joined a music label that is better able to promote their work. That is the case here, as Styx began their career in the early 1970's with four albums released by the Wooden Nickel Records label between 1972 and 1974. Of these songs, three of them managed to hit the Hot 100 and only one of them "Lady," became a hit, reaching #6 in 1975 and spurring the album it was on, Styx II, to gold. The rest of the songs that the band recorded for the label were fairly obscure, though, and after the band had broken to much higher success in the late 1970's, their old label decided to capitalize on their success by releasing a best of compilation of their earlier material. So, is it worth enjoying and listening to even if the songs are highly obscure? Would a casual Styx fan appreciate this material, the first best of collection that had been made for the group? Let's see.
The material included here is made up of eleven songs from the first four studio albums that Styx made. It begins with "You Need Love" and "Lady," the two singles from the band's second eponymous album. After that come such obscure numbers as "I'm Gonna Make You Feel It," "What Has Come Between Us," "Southern Woman," "Rock & Roll Feeling," "Winner Take All," "Best Thing," another minor Hot 100 charting release from the band's debut album, "Witch Wolf," "The Grove Of Eglantine," and "Man Of Miracles," the title track from the band's fourth album and last Wooden Nickel studio release. By and large, these songs are tuneful but obscure. Many of them deal with themes of love and relationships, familiar material for the group overall. If you like a group that sounds like the Doobie Brothers as Southern rockers, that is what Styx sounds like in these opening songs, which have a lot of bluesy elements to them and show the band working out their instrumental chops. If some of the lyrics are a bit basic and repetitive, some of the songs, especially "The Grove Of Eglantine," show some progressive ambition in songwriting material that would serve the band well in later efforts.
Overall, this compilation is exactly what you want to see from a group of relatively young musicians learning their craft. Other than "Lady," most casual fans of Styx will not recognize any of these songs and it would probably take a pretty dedicated fan to be familiar with these album tracks and minor hits. Even so, this is a compilation worth being familiar with, because it reminds us that Styx didn't come upon the mid and late 70's and early 80's fully armed with amazing musical skills and sharp songwriting. These songs were all from the period before Tommy Shaw's entrance into the band, and he appears to have added a certain political angle to the group's material that would provide some pointed hits. Still, the themes of love and relationships and the growing progressive rock elements make this an appealing album of a group developing into proficient musicians and songwriters and Dennis DeYoung and James Young, among other songwriters, have some solid work here to be proud of. Not everyone can say that their early works created in obscurity have something worth remembering but that is definitely the case here. It is simply a shame that most of these songs are just not better known.
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Post by nathanalbright on Jul 5, 2020 19:56:32 GMT -5
Classics: Volume 15, by Styx
As someone who is by no means unfamiliar with the music of Styx and especially their greatest hits compilations, this particular cd is a compilation that the band’s second label, A&M Records, put together for the label’s 25th anniversary as a way of celebrating the group and its music while the band was going through a hiatus during the 1980’s. The end result is a compilation for a band that has hardly needed more compilations, but one that not only includes the hits that the band had with the label but also some lesser known tracks that are also of interest to many listeners of the group. In fact, while one can recognize the familiar core of big hits that the band had here, it is the extra tracks and slightly deeper cuts that mark this compilation as being such a worthwhile one. Making it slightly longer than the usual length of Styx retrospectives gives the chance to hear a bit more depth than one otherwise would and that is something that this listener at least enjoys and appreciates to a high degree. And if you are a fan of Styx it is easy to like this cd a lot as well and so I can give it a warm recommendation.
This particular disk is fourteen tracks long, 70 minutes in length, and it contains a mix of hits and deep cuts that is rare in a retrospective with such obvious label monetary interests. We begin with Babe, the only #1 Styx has had. After that we have a couple of other familiar hits, “Blue Collar Man (Long Nights)” and “Come Sail Away,” which demonstrate the blue-collar as well as the piano ballad sides of the band extremely well. After “Crystal Ball,” which is an enjoyable song from the mid 70’s, we get “Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man),” another familiar hit. This is followed by “Light Up,” a generally enjoyable tune, and then the familiar “Mr. Roboto.” This is then followed by “Renegade,” a classic Styx song that is sometimes left off of their retrospectives, and the Paradise Theatre standout “The Best Of Times,” which hits really hard in these times. “Don’t Let It End,” an impressive hit, is followed by the moving “The Grand Illusion,” which promises that all of us are the same once you strip away the superficial qualities of life. Then there is the powerful “Suite Madame Blue,” after which the album closes with the popular “Too Much Time On My Hands” as well as “Miss America.”
Overall, it is clear to see that Styx has a core group of hits that any worthwhile compilation will include as well as a much larger group of great songs that could be included but are not necessarily included. The strength of this collection is in the fact that it includes most of the songs that one would consider to be big hits from the band’s A&M years at the time—it does not include “Show Me The Way” because those come from the early 1990’s comeback—as well as some wonderful album cuts. If you look at the songs that this album includes that other compilations don’t, getting “Don’t Let It End” and “Sweet Madame Blue” in particular is a major gain that makes this album the best of the Styx compilations I have heard so far. I think I may very well listen to more Styx compilations as they become available, but at least for the moment, this is the compilation of the three that I would rank most highly so far at least and that is not something I say lightly. Albums like this demonstrate that Styx’s musical as well as commercial relevance and excellence were both highly valued by A&M and that it is a shame that not everyone has been able to recognize it.
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Post by nathanalbright on Jul 9, 2020 17:15:49 GMT -5
26 Of Your Favorite G&S Classics, by Gilbert & Sullivan
I have somewhat ambivalent feelings about best of compilations that deal with classical music. Like many people I am fond of Gilbert & Sullivan, at least those works of the duo that I happen to be familiar with. There are usually songs with a high degree of light-hearted humor at British navalism and imperialism as well as gentle pokes at authority and somewhat melodramatic treatments of love and relationship. In my enjoyment of this sort of art and music I appreciate that I am a part of the audience, albeit temporally distinct, that the two were aiming at pretty squarely. I consider the musical to be an opera-adjacent art that involves elements of music as well as theater and that frequently plays to historically significant themes as well. At any rate, listening to a cd like this reminds me that the compilation is made up by breaking up a coherent body of work to create a selection that simply wants to encourage you to listen to more material or, when circumstances permit, to go watch these musicals live or on film, so as to get the full picture and not a very inadequate sample of it.
This particular work is made up of twenty-six tracks that are taken from seven Gilbert & Sullivan works. The first five works come from Pirates of Penzance, and they include: Oh, better far to live and die (1), Poor wandering one (2), I am the very model of a British major general (3), When a felon's not engaged in his employment (4), and With cat-like tread (5). After that there are four selections from HMS Pinafore, including: I am the monarch of the sea (6), When I was a lad I served a term (7), Never mind the why and wherefore (8), and Oh joy, oh rapture unforseen (9). This is followed by four tracks from The Mikado, including: A wand'ring minstrel I (10), Behold the Lord High Executioner (11), Three little maids from school (12), and A more humane Mikado (13). The second half of the disk begins with three songs from Iolanthe: When Britain really ruled the waves (14), If you go in (15), and If we're weak enough to tarry (16). This is followed by five songs from The Gondoliers: In enterprise of martial kind (17), When a merry maiden marries (18), Then one of us will be a queen (19), Take a pair of sparkling eyes (20), and Dance a cachucha, fandango, bolero (21). After this comes three tracks from Patience: When I first put this uniform on (22), A magnet hung in a hardware shop (23), and So go to him and say to him (24). Finally, the last two songs come from The Yoeman Of The Guard: When a maiden loves she sits and sighs (25) and I have a song to sing, Oi (26). Altogether the collection is just over 73 minutes long.
Overall, this selection does demonstrate that Gilbert & Sullivan kept up their general approach to music throughout their entire career. If the disc itself is somewhat frontloaded to their best known works, such that those listeners who listen to the first half year the material that is likely to be familiar with them and then after that hear material that they are likely not to know at all, there are some generally consistent themes that are covered in these excerpts. There are quite a few songs that muse on love and marriage, a few that wrestle with the way that one obtains and holds on to power institutionally as well as some pro-imperial reflections that have a high degree of nostalgia even in the 19th century regarding British naval power as well as the pride of being in uniform. This is the sort of collection that reminds the listener of the enduring values of the middle classes to seek professional jobs, a high degree of respect, and success in love and relationships and enough money to live reasonably well. It is little surprise that musicals aimed at the middle class should be broadly favorable to middle class interests or that middle class people later on should still find such things enjoyable. There are many mysteries in the world, but the continuing appeal of Gilbert & Sullivan is not one of them.
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Post by nathanalbright on Jul 10, 2020 17:26:26 GMT -5
Album Review: Peer Gynt Admittedly, it must be stated at the outset that this is not the most accessible opera for most listeners. The opera itself, with words by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen and with music by Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg, is in German and the liner notes, which include a fair bit of the lyrics to various songs, are translated into Norwegian. As neither Norwegian nor German happens to be a language that I know well I was limited to recognizing the cognates and remembering the plot of the opera based on my own reading of Ibsen's play [1]. For me, at least, the second act of this opera is the most memorable and it was the part I was most familiar with because the trolls are pretty memorable (and Peer Gynt isn't particularly wise in his dealings with them) and because the only part of this opera's music I am all that familiar with is "In The Hall Of The Mountain King," which is part of this opera. Aside from that piece of music, it is likely that none of the lyrics and none of the rest of this opera is going to be familiar, and that's not such a bad thing. This particular opera is 2 cds long. The first cd covers the first three acts of the play, totaling about 55 minutes or so of material. The second cd then covers the longer last two acts of the opera that are more than an hour in length combined. By and large the cast is skilled. The material is sung in Norwegian, spoken in German, and the musical parts are performed by the Orchestra of the Swiss Romandy from Geneva. Dietrich Henschel does a great job both singing and speaking for Peer Gynt, which is an immensely challenging task given the large amount of complexity this particular opera has in terms of its material as well as its far-flung story. The other parts tend to be splot, so that only three people total are involved in speaking parts, with a single woman, Susanne Lothar, handling all the women's parts (including the troll princess), and Thomas Anzenhofer handling all of the male parts aside from the lead. There are a few more singers, at least, who provide more balance to the material. Overall, I have to say that even if this opera is not the easiest to understand it has some strong material. Is this an opera worth enjoying? I found it enjoyable to listen to despite not being able to understand it well. One of the joys that can be found with music is appreciating music that is outside of one's comfort zone and experience, and that is certainly something that can happen here. This is an opera that features a lot of explaining, some dialogue, and a good amount of singing. The mood overall seems to be a mixture of celebrating the trollish aspect of Norwegian culture while also providing a compelling story for those who can understand it or are already familiar with it. The combination of Ibsen's words and Grieg's music makes for a powerful opera, one that might well be the highest achievement of Norwegian opera, even if the opera itself as listened to here and performed by a variety of vocal and instrumental talent is mostly based in the German-speaking world. Hearing this in Norwegian would likely have been an even better experience as far as the nationalistic goals of the composer and playwright were concerned but it would make the play even less accessible to a mainstream European audience. [1] See, for example: edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2019/03/22/book-review-peer-gynt/edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2019/03/22/the-troll-in-me-and-the-troll-in-you/
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Post by nathanalbright on Jul 12, 2020 22:04:43 GMT -5
Ashes & Fire, by Ryan Adams
It is perhaps a bit unusual for someone to want to review albums by an artist after they have been canceled but that is the case for me. Upon hearing that Ryan Adams was in the news because he made a vague apology for some sort of wrongdoing to previous partners and was clean and sober, I thought it would be interesting to see if his body of work indicated the sort of self-destructive behaviors and tendencies towards relationship drama that would indicate that his problems were of longstanding nature. And sure enough, this album, the first of his I have listened to all the way through, not only provides some gorgeous and aching and longing music that deals with aging and responsibility and relationships, but also demonstrates the sorts of struggles that Ryan Adams is still dealing with nearly a decade after this album was released. Moreover, the album makes it clear that Ryan Adams really should be better regarded by the country music industry as this music is definitely country-adjacent if not country, but as his popularity has suffered it is unlikely that a great many people are seeking out this album despite its charms.
This album has eleven songs and is familiar to me only because "Chains Of Love" is a song that I have heard and enjoyed elsewhere. That song is at the midpoint of this song, which seems strange as it is one of the few songs that seems well-suited to radio play. This album as a whole is slow and somber and reflective and the best songs in it are when the pace quickens a bit and where Norah Jones plays her piano and where she and Mandy Moore do backup singing. For the most part, this album is filled with slow-tempo songs that call out for salvation ("Save Me") and "Kindness," reflect struggles with communication ("I Love You But I Don't Know What To Say"), promise a partner a safe place to be open ("Come Home"), reflect upon aging ("Lucky Now"), or look upon the aftermath of past mistakes ("Ashes And Fire"). A fair number of the songs reflect a discussion of creation as it relates to life and relationships, like "Dirty Rain," "Rocks," and "Invisible Riverside." Only two singles were released from this album, "Lucky Now," and it hit #38 on the rock charts and #1 on the AAA charts, with "Chains Of Love" as a good follow-up single that ended up reaching #15 on the AAA charts.
Overall, this is a somber and reflective album that appears to indicate a turning point in Adams' career. If Adams has never been an artist whose wild abandon has been obvious or whose popularity was massive, this album marks a decision to carry on in the face of health problems that reflect aging (I too can identify with the hearing loss and tinnitis that the artist has suffered from for years) and focus on making "mature" music for an Adult Alternative audience. Of course, this has been his core audience from the beginning, so it is not as drastic a change as it might have been for an act who had done a better job at crossing over into mainstream popularity anyway. By and large, this album gives a sense of Ryan Adams as reflective and perhaps believing that he had done a better job of growing up and overcoming his struggles than was the case, given the way that he seems to revolve around the same problems over and over again in his music, which is a problem that Adams' has with many other artists and does not detract from my own modest enjoyment of his music.
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Post by nathanalbright on Jul 15, 2020 16:49:53 GMT -5
100 Hits: The Best 70's Album, by various artists
Spoiler alert: This album is not the best 70's album ever. That's not to say that this is a bad album, but there are 5 cds and 100 total songs on here and this album has no songs by Fleetwood Mac, none by the Beatles together or solo, none by the Eagles, none by ABBA, and none by Rod Stewart. It has two songs by Boney M but neither of them is their only American hit, "Rivers Of Babylon." That said, even though it is easy to think of songs that this collection should have had but didn't, it is more fair to judge this collection by the songs it does have. Is it a good collection? Yes. It is definitely uneven but some of these disks are strong and full of enjoyable songs. The approach of the collection as a whole appears to mix familiar songs that have a high degree of widespread appeal with lesser known songs that the listener may appreciate finding out about that have not received as much attention in the past, and in general that approach works well here, except for the first disk which is by far the weakest one here. If you can get through the disco opening to this collection, it gets much better after that.
Each of the five disks in this collection has a rough theme. The first disk is made up of disco music in general, and among these songs only the Village People's YMCA, and MFSB's TSOP (The Sound Of Philadelphia) are likely to be well-known. Although I found this to be the weakest disc in the collection, there were still some good songs here, like First Choice's "Armed And Extremely Dangerous," which needs to be made into a movie, Tina Charles' "Dance Little Lady," and an early track by Dan Hartman, "This Is It." The second album features some strong rock and singer-songwriter contributions including Toto's "Hold The Line," Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear The Reaper," Boston's "More Than A Feeling," Kansas' "Carry On Wayward Son," The Guess Who's "American Woman," and Santana's "Oye Como Va" as its first six songs. After that Meat Loaf has "Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad," we have Ian Hunter's "Once Bitten, Twice Shy," and a closing duo of Harry Nilsson's "Coconut" and Lou Reed's "Perfect Day."
The third album in this collection then gives us a selection of R&B that includes a few strong songs like the Isley Brothers' "Summer Breeze, Pt 1," The Three Degrees' "Woman In Love," Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine," Billy Paul's Me And Mrs. Jones," Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes' "If You Don't Know Me By Now," Earth, Wind, & Fire's "After The Love Has Gone," Heatwave's "Always And Forever," Hall & Oates' "Sara Smile," and the Manhattan's "Kiss And Say Goodbye." The fourth disk is a bit less famous in terms of its songs but still includes standouts like Linda Lewis' "It's In His Kiss," Tony Orlando & Dawn's "Knock Three Times," Guys' 'N' Dolls' "You Don't Have To Say You Love Me," Lynn Anderson's "Rose Garden," Sweet Dreams' "Honey Honey," John Travolta's "Greased Lightning," and David Essex's "Rock On." Finally, the fifth disc includes some country songs and country-adjacent tunes like Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You," Tammy Wynette's "Stand By Your Man," Charlie Rich's "The Most Beautiful Girl In The World, " Johnny Nash's "I Can See Clearly Now," John Denver's "Annie's Song," Art Garfunkel's "I Only Have Eyes For You," Dionne Warwicke's "I'll Never Love This Way Again," and Barry Manilow's "Could It Be Magic," among others.
Overall, this collection does a good job at showing the characteristic concerns of the 70's in a reasonably broad way, and as is the case in many periods of time, especially over the past few decades, the drama of love and relationships fills these songs. There are songs about people worried about their obligations and fretting over having to end things with their side pieces. There are people who glory in their devotion to people who just don't care about them in return. There is coy flirtation at parties and dances with the hope of a relationship building out of it. There are reflections of the ups and downs in relationships as well as the nostalgic look back at the past love that was enjoyed even where it is not present. I had a melancholy feeling listening to this material even if many of the songs were written with upbeat dance beats, because the sadness of the fraying of family and marriage that is at the basis of society was all too readily apparent here and fake happiness just cannot disguise the sort of sorrow that this collection shows.
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Post by nathanalbright on Jul 16, 2020 18:05:36 GMT -5
Amplified Heart, by Everything But The Girl
I first became familiar with this album in the spring of 1997 when I bought a cassette of the album while visiting Gatlinburg for an orchestra trip. The album struck me as being an emotive and powerful one that had a lot of songs that appealed to me as a teenager beyond the big hit from the album, "Missing." Listening to it more than 20 years later, the album hits even harder, as an adult I can certainly relate to the material and see myself in the kind of place where the duo does as well. While I can't say I'm familiar with the overall career arc of British sophistipop duo Everything But The Girl, it is clear that Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt had by the mid 90's settled into a comfortable and very excellent pattern of making music as these songs are generally pretty spare acoustic numbers with lots of space for Tracey Thorn's passionate and evocative singing and some solid beatwork that shows them at the cutting edge of bringing EDM into mainstream popularity. Those who like music that deals with troubled minds and troubled relationships and the longing for love in a fallen and imperfect world set to sparse instrumentation with occasional jazzy edges will find much to appreciate here. I know I do.
The album as a whole is a short one at only ten songs. Almost all of the songs are pretty similar in terms of their thematic material and approach. This is a coherent album that deals with relationship drama involved in what looks like a breakup or the period just after the breakup where two partners obviously love each other but struggle to deal with the drama that their relationship involves. This is obviously a relatable scenario and was when I was a teenager and remains so. None of the songs are bad, and a few of the songs on here are real standouts. Both of the band members have songs where their contrasting singing styles over the fantastic musical production by Watt works wonders--Thorn typically singing in a passionate and emotive way, especially on "I Don't Understand Anything," the ominous "Missing," and "Get Me." Watt works well singing on "25th December" and in duets on "Walking To You" and "We Walk The Same Line." Overall this is a powerful album that really gets the reader to feel the struggle of loving imperfect people in a broken world.
What is perhaps most striking about this gem of an album is that it was not made with any apparent intention of being a hit. "Missing" is the sixth song on the album, and the album is not front-loaded with its potential singles. Instead it presents a rollercoaster of pleasant album songs and more powerful potential singles one after another, ending with a jazzy post-breakup note in "Disenchanted." Nothing about the early part of the rollout of this album suggested a hit either, as neither of the first two singles hit the top 40 in the UK or the Hot 100 in the USA (where EGTG had never crossed over up to this time). But a dance remix of a song that already had some solid and ominous musical elements made the album a hit, and looking back it seems remarkable that this tasteful and emotionally resonant album was what put the group into the mainstream for both the UK and the US and gave the group a career on the US dance charts that lasted for two additional studio albums before the group took an extended hiatus to raise a family together. This is an album to cheer on, and to use to inspire reflective moments in dark times where the drama of life and relationships proves to be a challenge to handle.
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Post by nathanalbright on Jul 17, 2020 17:14:08 GMT -5
Walking Wounded, by Everything But The Girl
One of the consequences of the sudden success of the dance remix of "Missing" was that when English sophisti-pop duo Everything But The Girl came together to create their follow-up album was that it leaned heavily on the techno and what would later become edm music that had brought them their sudden and unexpected popularity. The result is an album that is very clear in its combination of the passionate and evocative singing of Tracey Thorn as well as the hard and cold dance beats of Ben Watt. The result is a bit fascinating. If I do not like this album as much as I like Amplified Heart, I certainly respect it and appreciate where it is coming from. This is not music to dance to as much as it is the music of one's nightmares of a city life where a couple in a post-breakup situation wonder if they can reunite and make things work again. As the duo is close-lipped about their personal life it is unclear if this album reflects their own personal experiences, but whether it does or not the album is certainly powerful and deeply challenging to the listener about wrestling with being wrong and wanting a second chance that one only appreciates now that it is gone and may be gone forever.
For all of its power, this album is not really all that long in terms of its material. Only 11 songs are included, and two of them are dance remixes of singles from the album tacked on at the end, making only 9 actual songs to tell the story of someone admitting that they were wrong and seeking to return to a relationship that has ended. This point is hammered home over and over again in most of the material here in a way that is not particularly subtle. "Before Today" discusses the realization that one is wrong and expresses the desire to do something about it. "Wrong" then follows and discusses the appeal that is made to return to a past that may have been closed off. "Single" wonders if the narrator and the former partner are better off single or not. "The Heart Remains A Child" bemoans the emotional immaturity that people can have long after they have become adults. "Walking Wounded" discusses the way that people live through their lives in the aftermath of broken relationships as walking wounded. "Flipside" ponders the changes that people have made in the past and the question of whether there will be future changes in the aftermath of present hurts. "Big Deal" is a cynical look at the desire that people have for insight from therapy, again in the aftermath of failed relationships, and the question of whether one's inner child will like the person who finds him or her. "Mirrorball" reflects on the formation of relationship patterns in one's youth that carry on to adulthood and how the repercussions of choices echo on. Finally, before the two remixes of "Wrong" and "Walking Wounded" comes "Good Cop Bad Cop," another song that dwells on the wrongness of living in regret and only seeing what isn't in one's life.
If this album did not spur any hit singles in the United States ("Wrong" was a minor hit on the Billboard Hot 100 but failed to reach the top 40), it certainly continued their late-career renaissance on the dance charts and in the UK. There is a lot to appreciate about this album and it is certainly a good one, but I get the feeling I would like the album a lot more if it wasn't so on-the-nose about the unhappiness of failing to move on and the hopes and fears that one has about admitting one's fault in a past relationship and seeking another chance. It is hard to avoid the feeling that this album is a deeply autobiographical one for the group and that it marked the reunion of the two on a personal level that later led them to marry and, after one more studio album, go on a lengthy hiatus to raise a family. That said, the group has always been coy about the personal meanings of this album, although its relentless insistence on a very small emotional range of regret and somewhat obsessive rumination on the past and gloomy desire to escape an unpleasant present makes it the sort of album that is best enjoyed in particular moods or by people who can relate to the material and its approach.
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Post by nathanalbright on Jul 17, 2020 17:35:47 GMT -5
The Best Of Everything But The Girl, by Everything But The Girl
Best of albums have different approaches based on when they happen to appear within the career of the act in which they serve as a retrospective. Some are greatest hits albums that are a bit premature that miss some of the biggest hits because they are released too early in a group's career. Still others are post-career retrospectives that frequently go over the same ground that others have. This album is a third kind, which is a "catching up with [insert band name here]," the sort of retrospective that introduces an audience to a group that has a somewhat lengthy history of music that is worth paying attention to but which has broken through after some time. If Depeche Mode's version was the most popular sort of retrospective of this type, this album itself serves as a fitting example of a way that a label seeks to introduce the back catalog of an act that has suddenly increased its profile as a result of a big hit to an audience that is hoped to be appreciative of such efforts. Since this album went platinum in the UK, it can be judged as a success under those standards at least.
In terms of its content, this album is made up of fifteen tracks whose structure is fascinating. The retrospective opens with the hit, the Todd Terry Remix of "Missing," whose success legitimated the retrospective in the first place and marks the point of entry for the listener. After that comes a Todd Terry remix of "Driving," a somewhat repetitive but enjoyable enough song that is meant as the single from this particular album (a different and better remix of the same song is included as the thirteenth song of the album). After that comes a couple of songs that show the dated production of the late 80's and early 90's but whose reflection on the past demonstrates the consistent concern of EBTG with these matters in "Old Friends" and "One Place." A trio of excellent covers comes next with "I Don't Want To Talk About It," "Love Is Strange," and "The Only Living Boy In New York" that show the duo as being fit interpreters of the songs of others. After that comes a series of songs that deal with love and relationships that goes back all the way to the early 80's and that is again filled with good songs, including "Apron Strings," a chilling song about frustrated maternal longings, "When All's Well," "Another Bridge," "and "Each And Every One." After that comes another song from the successful Amplified Heart album, "Rollercoaster," before another "Driving" remix (noted earlier) and two duets between Tracey Thorn and Massive Attack ("Better Things" and "Protection") close out the tracklist.
One of the intriguing aspects of this particular album is the way that it introduces the listener to the back catalog of the group in a way that puts the dance songs at the beginning and end of the album and then the group's acoustic music in the middle. Ben Watt's progress as a producer is apparent here, as his work on later album Walking Wounded would demonstrate the way that he had internalized the EDM done by great skill by Massive Attack shown here. Admittedly, it is possible to have some quibbles, as there are numerous songs that could have been chosen for this retrospective that were not that were easily the best of Everything But The Girl--"I Didn't Know I Was Looking For Love," any number of songs from Amplified Heart like "Troubled Mind," "I Don't Understand Anything" "25th December" and "We Walk The Same Line," among them, and another duo between Massive Attack and Tracey Thorn in "Hunter Gets Captured By The Game" from the Batman Forever soundtrack. Still, this is a good album and it does its job of introducing listeners to songs that they may not know having only heard of the group because of the smash success of "Missing."
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Post by nathanalbright on Jul 22, 2020 1:39:09 GMT -5
29, by Ryan Adams
In listening to the music of Ryan Adams, it becomes evident very quickly that there is very little change or development in the material that he records. To be sure, the songs are different from one album to another. Some albums emphasize different aspects of the moods of melancholy, and focus on different aspects of the self-destructive and alcoholic and violent tendencies the singer has been prone to show, but all the same the material in Ryan Adams' body of work has a very narrow emotional range and that means that someone who is one of the artists fans has some degree of confidence of knowing the general sort of songs that will appear from one album to the next. Ryan Adams is no Beck, after all, not one to drastically change his approach from one album to the next. Instead all of the albums I have heard from him are Americana, country-adjacent, filled with tales of drinking and gloominess and concerns about failed relationships and the threat of prison or early death or a life lived with a deep degree of sorrow and self-loathing. And that is precisely the sort of material we find here on this album.
This particular album is only nine songs, but many of those songs are very long and as a result the album is pretty long overall, surprisingly so in fact. The album opens with "29," a song that discusses drinking and violence and perhaps some thoughts about what it means to grow up a bit and perhaps not mature as quickly as one would hope. This is followed by "Strawberry Wine," a very lengthy ode to the effects of alcoholism through various perspectives. After that comes "Nightbirds," a song that again deals with the emptiness in side that sprang apparently from childhood. "Blue Sky Blues" shows that even blue skies are the cause for suffering for the truly melancholy soul. "Carolina Rain" is a lengthy epic story of a screwed up man who marries a woman to get closer to another woman and deals with the death of children and violence. "Starlite Diner" is another song that deals with drugs and friends and the nighttime. "The Sadness" deals with broken people in broken relationships. "Elizabeth, You Were Born To Play That Part" deals with more co-dependent relationships and personal misery. And the album ends with "Voices," which also deals with the theme of madness and not being able to come to terms with one's own mental health.
It seems baffling to me that Ryan Adams as an artist would be cancelled. For one, as an artist he has never been all that popular. None of his albums have even sold a million copies. He has had a small degree of consistent support within the AAA genre making melancholy music about violent and self-destructive alcoholics, presumably speaking from his own personal experience. No one who listens to this album or looks at the lyrics (which are included in the liner notes) will fail to recognize the essential elements of his music and approach, and just about any album of his you listen to (and this is the second of third I have tried myself) will give you the same sort of raw material to come to the conclusion that Ryan Adams was a talented artist of limited emotional range who covered the same ground of gin-soaked reflections and remorse and co-dependency over and over and over again. It would be futile to expect anything different, because the same cycle of drunkenness punctuated by attempts to sober up, have been present within his career for the better part of two decades now. Why should we expect anything different from him now?
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Post by nathanalbright on Jul 22, 2020 2:15:26 GMT -5
Gold, by Ryan Adams
In the early 2000's, Ryan Adams achieved a breakthrough in his second album, "Gold," which at sixteen songs long (one of them nearly ten minutes in length) showed a high degree of productivity from the former Whiskytown frontman. The album achieved a bit of a breakthrough in popularity because its opening track, "New York, New York," was viewed as a post-9/11 anthem of resilience. And this album is certainly an appropriate introduction into the music of Ryan Adams and into his approach. And as one might expect, the album has all of the hallmarks that one would think of from someone for whom melancholy soaked with alcohol is his natural emotional range. And even though this album was a breakthrough and contains quite a few really great songs, the album is also full of a lot of red flags that listeners should have been aware of. This album reveals to the hundreds of thousands of people who bought and listened to this album that Ryan Adams was both aware of his self-destructive tendencies but that he tended to be somewhat cynical and opportunistic in preying on women with low self-esteem who could be counted on to put up with his nonsense, which was probably behavior someone should have called him on a lot earlier.
Given this album's size, it is impressive just how many songs and how many different elements of alcoholic self-loathing and predation can fit on an album. But Ryan Adams tapped into a deep vein here and the songs just keep coming and coming. The album begins with an ode to New York in "New York, New York" expressing the singer's love for the city and his own state of frustration with his life. Songs like "Firecracker" and "Answering Bell" show the singer in a mood of not wanting to commit to relationships and looking for sex without the strings of obligation, a bad tendency when it comes to intimacy. A couple of songs, "La Cienega Just Smiled" and "Goodnight, Hollywood Blvd," show a love of Los Angeles to go along with the singer's love of New York City. And in between there are songs that reveal the singer's feelings about love and relationships in ways that should have bothered more people. "Sylvia Plath" expresses the singer's desire for a lover like Sylvia Plath whose self-destructive tendencies would mirror his own. "Nobody Girl," a song that goes on for nearly ten minutes, expresses the author's thoughts about a girl who is viewed as being nobody important to others and thus a likely target for his own dubious charms. "When The Stars Go Blue" is a gorgeous but melancholy mid-album song that was later covered by The Corrs and Bono (showing their good taste in music), while "Gonna Make You Love Me" states the author's conviction that his bad habits like drinking and drugs are only going to make a woman love him more.
In listening to the music of Ryan Adams, it is very clear that he did not feel it necessary to disguise his drinking and his view of love and relationships. Like many people, he shows some self-awareness and a struggle between hope and longing on the one hand and cynicism and abusive tendencies on the other. Those who listen to this particular album probably need to ask themselves what is it about this album that appeals. Adams is a talented songwriter and musician and the album has some strong production and there are certainly some good tunes here. But there are also a lot of very dark elements to be seen, showing that very early in his career Adams had a good idea of what kind of person he was and a disinclination of hiding or disguising it, trusting the reader to view his desire for exploiting insecure women with a high degree of tolerance. And for a long time the listening public was willing to do so, until one day for some reason they were not. It is hard to understand why these shifts take place given that the singer has shown us all who he was from the start.
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Post by nathanalbright on Jul 27, 2020 2:02:39 GMT -5
Messiah Complete (Vocal Music), by Handel
It almost seems superfluous to review the content of such an album of this. This album is a two-cd version of Handel's Messiah that bills itself as complete and that provides a very enjoyable listen. Like many people, my appreciation for this particular piece of music comes both from having sung a great deal of the songs as well as having heard them. And if you have that sort of experience this is definitely something that you will appreciate. The voices are in good form and the instrument playing is great and that is certainly exactly what one would both expect and want from a collection like this one. If I have one criticism about the piece, it is not in the playing or singing itself, which is certainly very good, but rather in the mixing of the cd. The soft sections of this album are extremely soft, to the point where I had to put the sound level up to about 25 (the usual level is about ten) in order to hear. Part of that problem seems to be due to the fact that this recording is made with only four main voices, and there are definitely some parts of the recording where it would have been better to have some stronger microphones there.
This particular album is divided into three parts and two cds, and the book contains not only the two discs but liner notes that give a fair amount of information about the songs in question, including the voices in the part as well as the text that is repeated by them over and over again. It is interesting to note what is not included in the liner notes, though, and that is a list of the titles of the songs (most of which have been given titles by the opening lines of the songs, or the Hallelujah Chorus, which is pretty similar in that regard). Max Emanuel Cencic is the soprano, giving a male soprano that many people might find to be somewhat unusual. Charles Humphries serves as a fairly high-voiced countertenor. Ivan Sharpe is the tenor, and Robert Torday is the bass. I am not familiar with any of the names but they all sing well even if somewhat softly at times as noted above. In addition to this there are vocals by the Vienna Boys' Choir, which does as great job on the choruses, and music is provided as well by some players from the Academy of London conducted by Peter Marshik, who again do a good job.
It has always been interesting to me that the Messiah should be the best known oratorio in existence, even though it is extremely atypical for the genre in that it lacks a story. A great many people are unfamiliar with the larger body of oratorios that exists and so it does not seem strange that this particular one is so full of interesting meditations on the Savior as a child and as a sacrificial savior and as Lord and King. These are, to be sure, not bad things at all to ponder, and it makes Messiah one of the more religious oratorios that one can find (although it must be admitted that many oratorios have religious content--Handel himself wrote other religious ones, if not nearly as famous as the Messiah), and it is interesting that the piece was originally viewed as problematic by religious people in England because it was thought improper that secular music composed by a not particularly religious composer like Handel would be played in churches. At this point, the song is viewed as being Christian and so Handel's own morality or lack thereof is not viewed as being a problem at all.
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Post by nathanalbright on Jul 30, 2020 20:59:07 GMT -5
100 Hits: The Best Eighties Album, by various artists
As this is my second collection from this particular series, it was easier to appreciate what this series brought to the table. It is all too easy in a compilation to quibble about what songs were included and what songs were neglected. As was the case with the seventies, there are a great many artists who were very popular in the eighties whose work is completely neglected--there are no Michael Jackson songs here (though there is one from the Jackson 5), no solo Beatles or solo Eagles work here (though one of the Rolling Stones has a solo track). Likewise, there are plenty of songs here that were not a hit under any definition, and somehow the obscure Altered Images got two songs in this collection despite not having any songs hit the Hot 100 at all, with the same being the case for Five Star who had a few minor hits but nothing that even hit the top 40. In retrospect, this particular collection does a better job at showing the eighties from the point of view of the UK charts, and while that is not my own perspective it does make for very interesting comparisons between the two music scenes and that is worthwhile.
This compilation of 80's tracks is five cds long with 20 songs on each album. There is a mix of familiar songs with songs that will be more unfamiliar to American listeners. None of the albums show a particular theme, although there is a marked tendency to pick relatively obscure songs from well-known acts. So alongside songs like Belinda Carlise's "Heaven Is A Place On Earth," which begins the compilation, we have Meatloaf and Cher with a powerful duet on "Dead Ringer For Love." We get "New Song" and "What Is Love?" from Howard Jones as well as "Pretty In Pink" from The Psychadelic Furs, and even "The Time Warp 2" from Damian. A lot of post-disco ends up here, from KC & The Sunshine Band's "Give It Up," and we even get an almost-instrumental that reminds one fondly of Axel F in Herbie Hancock's "Rockit." If you like Adam Ant, Alexander O'Neal, Kim Wilde, and Dolly Parton (here with "Islands In The Stream" and the excellent "9 To 5"), you will find a lot to enjoy here in the mix of big hits and more obscure numbers that may not have stood the test of time as well as others.
For the American listener, and I will assume that most of my readers will fit this bill, an album like this is good for reminding one of some of the biggest hits of the eighties that were successful on both sides of the Atlantic as well as providing plenty of quirky songs that one does not know and that one may not ever seek out. I do not think for example, that many of these songs are ones I would deliberately seek out but a few of them were certainly enjoyable listen to. Among the oddball and quirky songs, for example, that I had not heard, Donna Summer's post-disco work with "Dinner With Gerswhin" was an excellent one, and Nick Heyward's "Blue Hat For A Blue Day" was quite nice as well, and Paul Young's Love Of The Common People is one that I will have to seek out a lot more. It is clear that silly and kitchy music and dance music is a lot more popular on the UK side of the charts than in the United States, but if this tracklist is not what what I would have made, it is easy to enjoy nonetheless. And given the modest price of the five discs, it does not take much to find enough to justify its place in a collection.
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ChicaCherry콜라
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Post by ChicaCherry콜라 on Aug 28, 2020 15:09:40 GMT -5
Truly Madly Deeply: The Best Of Savage Garden, by Savage Garden Someday there will be a good documentary on this late and lamented Australian duo and we will find out the story of why it is that they flamed out so spectacularly after creating two successful and gorgeous albums of synth-pop that combined sold more than ten million copies in the United States and many copies around the world. I do not know of such a documentary yet, though A little late to the party but a documentary does (partially) exist. "Too Close For Comfort" is a tour film by Darren Hayes where he briefly discusses the split, the reasoning, all that. It's out of print, but an amazing film for all the hardcore Darren/SG fans out there. Daniel Jones wanted out of the band, out of the spotlight, out of everything that wasn't just producing. He was going to leave mid-album while they were making Affirmation, their second studio album. Darren begged him to finish the album and the tour with the trade off that he would do all of the publicity and promoting while Daniel essentially took a vacation. There was a lot of bad blood between them during this time, as when news broke that the band had ended, Daniel pretended it was the first he'd heard of it, as he assumed they weren't telling people yet and it was all speculation on the reporters part. The story goes that Darren told a reporter about the split thinking the reporter would hold off writing the article until a later date. He didn't, obviously, and with no communication between Darren and Daniel the whole thing looked like Darren's fault. The world blamed him and of course with the record company pushing his solo career immediately after the split, it looked dodgy. The sped up solo career thing was simply to preserve his career and keep him relevant. He's said in the past that had it been up to him, they'd have remained a band forever, he didn't want the solo career. He's grateful NOW, but at the time it was the last thing he wanted. Daniel also bailed on this album. There was communication in the beginning that Savage Garden, both Daniel and Darren, would produce 2 new songs together for it. Daniel dropped communication midway through this process leaving Darren yet again looking like the egomaniac when in reality he was forced to throw his solo work onto this album per his contract with the record company. He chose his most "Savage Garden" sounding songs in an effort to appeal to fans who were hoping to hear new music. The two are fine now, but they were never really friends and this whole situation goes to show that. They made wonderful business partners and produced incredible sound together as a band, but that's as far as that went. There will never be a reunion. Darren loves Savage Garden, he still sings the songs, still performs them live, but the band is done and will not be reuniting. Hope that clears things up!
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Post by nathanalbright on Aug 31, 2020 12:54:03 GMT -5
Truly Madly Deeply: The Best Of Savage Garden, by Savage Garden Someday there will be a good documentary on this late and lamented Australian duo and we will find out the story of why it is that they flamed out so spectacularly after creating two successful and gorgeous albums of synth-pop that combined sold more than ten million copies in the United States and many copies around the world. I do not know of such a documentary yet, though A little late to the party but a documentary does (partially) exist. "Too Close For Comfort" is a tour film by Darren Hayes where he briefly discusses the split, the reasoning, all that. It's out of print, but an amazing film for all the hardcore Darren/SG fans out there. Daniel Jones wanted out of the band, out of the spotlight, out of everything that wasn't just producing. He was going to leave mid-album while they were making Affirmation, their second studio album. Darren begged him to finish the album and the tour with the trade off that he would do all of the publicity and promoting while Daniel essentially took a vacation. There was a lot of bad blood between them during this time, as when news broke that the band had ended, Daniel pretended it was the first he'd heard of it, as he assumed they weren't telling people yet and it was all speculation on the reporters part. The story goes that Darren told a reporter about the split thinking the reporter would hold off writing the article until a later date. He didn't, obviously, and with no communication between Darren and Daniel the whole thing looked like Darren's fault. The world blamed him and of course with the record company pushing his solo career immediately after the split, it looked dodgy. The sped up solo career thing was simply to preserve his career and keep him relevant. He's said in the past that had it been up to him, they'd have remained a band forever, he didn't want the solo career. He's grateful NOW, but at the time it was the last thing he wanted. Daniel also bailed on this album. There was communication in the beginning that Savage Garden, both Daniel and Darren, would produce 2 new songs together for it. Daniel dropped communication midway through this process leaving Darren yet again looking like the egomaniac when in reality he was forced to throw his solo work onto this album per his contract with the record company. He chose his most "Savage Garden" sounding songs in an effort to appeal to fans who were hoping to hear new music. The two are fine now, but they were never really friends and this whole situation goes to show that. They made wonderful business partners and produced incredible sound together as a band, but that's as far as that went. There will never be a reunion. Darren loves Savage Garden, he still sings the songs, still performs them live, but the band is done and will not be reuniting. Hope that clears things up! Thanks for your comments. My understanding of things had been that Daniel really soured on the music industry and that he and Darren really weren't close enough to make things worthwhile and that they barely ended up making the second album. While your understanding is certainly more detailed, it sounds like my understanding was pretty accurate as well. I haven't thought of Darren Hayes as an egomaniac, but I definitely prefer the SG material to his own, and it's good that they made good music when they were together. Since Daniel Jones is doing real estate last I heard, it's not going to be a going concern again, I agree.
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M5
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Post by M5 on Sept 3, 2020 13:57:40 GMT -5
Hey can you do a track by track review of Dangerous Woman by Ariana Grande. Thanks
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Post by nathanalbright on Sept 16, 2020 22:56:51 GMT -5
Hey can you do a track by track review of Dangerous Woman by Ariana Grande. Thanks I've never listened to that full album. I'm sure it would be amusing though. I've got a couple of Jude Cole albums next on my list to review when I'm done with a giant audiobook I've been working on.
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Post by nathanalbright on Oct 13, 2020 18:48:05 GMT -5
A View From 3rd Street, by Jude Cole
It is a shame that Jude Cole is such an obscure musician that this album, rather than being the start of a glorious period of success for someone whose skills obviously merited it, it marks the only period of any commercial success that he had for an album that is still underrated even though it had multiple top ten hits. This is an album that appeared during a brief window in which there was a demand for a male pop-rock musician who sang about the darker side of love and relationships with slick and well-produced songs, as the 1990's would be dominated by adult alternative and grunge and alternative, and this album and artist simply were unable to fit in with that particular crowd. Still, even if this album is not exactly well-known, it is certainly an album that deserves to be, and it is without a question the best-known album that Jude Cole ever made, so if you're looking for an accessible entry into one of the most fascinating could-have-been stories of pop music in the early 1990's, this album is a very solid choice, without a bad song to be found.
Indeed, it bears mentioning that this album is full of excellent songs that, altogether, present a somewhat melancholy look at love and relationships but one where the lyrics, music, and production combine to create a gorgeous creation. The album begins with "Hallowed Ground," which has a driving pop-rock sound as it demonstrates the singer-songwriter's desire to make home a hallowed ground with a loved one, a rare positive note on a generally downbeat album. After that comes "Baby, It's Tonight," a song whose music sounds upbeat and positive even if the lyrical sentiments about seeking a fling with a trusted friend in order to avoid loneliness has some darker implications. Not surprisingly, this song was the biggest hit that Jude Cole would ever have. After this comes "House Full Of Reasons," a gorgeous and aching song about a troubled relationship marked by a lot of anger and destructiveness that was deserved to be a bigger hit than it was, having not even hit the top 40. "Get Me Through The Night," is another driving song about striving to avoid loneliness, while "Time For Letting Go," another top 40 hit that was later covered by Billy Ray Cyrus as a country hit, expresses the melancholy feeling of the end of a relationship. The rest of the album continues in a similar vein, with "Stranger To Myself" exploring the way that bad relationships make us feel estranged from ourselves, "This Time It's Us," looking at the end of a relationship in a context of a great many other failed relationship that the singer has seen, "Heart Of Blues" being a bluesy song about the bad way the relationship he is in has made him feel, "Compared To Nothing," looking at the way that solitude and isolation appear far worse than even an imperfect relationship, and "Prove Me Wrong" being a fierce call to a would-be partner to prove his pessimism and cynicism wrong, a difficult challenge to be sure.
Overall, this album has a strong sense of the problems of love and relationships in early 1990's America. Quite a few albums I like from around this time have the same kind of vibe (see also Peter Cetera's "World Falling Down," which similarly masks downbeat reflections on love and relationships in AOR production), and it is certainly an approach that I can really appreciate. Given the strength of this album and its production by David Tyson (The Arrows, Amanda Marshall, Tina Arena, Alannah Myles, and also Peter Cetera's World Falling Down album), it is not surprising that even if Jude Cole did not become a household name as an artist, he has always found a successful career as a songwriter and producer, because he brought the songs in this, his second album, in a way that has been recognized by a great many people then or now, if not enough to make this album truly popular. If you like albums that bring solid musical and lyrical touches with a perspective that is down on love, you won't be down on this album at all.
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Post by nathanalbright on Oct 14, 2020 18:03:02 GMT -5
I Don't Know Why I Act This Way, by Jude Cole
I don't want to say this is a bad album, because any album by Jude Cole is going to have good music, solid production, and thought-provoking lyrics. This is, however, a very mystifying album. In listening to this album, I was frequently struck not only by the usual downbeat style and approach of Jude Cole, which one either appreciates or doesn't, and I do, but also by the extremely unpleasant nature of some of the material that he was singing about. There is a time when artists give their audience not what they want, but what they think they need, or they sing out of where they are instead of out where they think their audience is, and that is definitely the case in this album. As a result, in listening to the album, with a few rare exceptions of songs that sound like they could have been hits in a better world, this is an album whose lack of appeal is easy enough to understand even if the songs themselves are not exactly bad in a technical sense. In listening to this album, I wondered who would want to listen to this album, who approved this album, and why this album is the way it is. I have some guesses, but the answers aren't very good ones.
This album is a relatively short one at just over 40 minutes and ten songs, but it packs a punch with some deeply unsettling songs. The album begins with "Speed Of Life," a gorgeous song about the ups and downs of life that is one of the high points of this album and certainly was a potential single. This is followed by the surprisingly bitter "Believe In You," which ponders lawsuits from Philip Morris over appearing in a song that no one from the company likely heard as it deals with cynicism. "Move If You're Goin" is another somewhat off-putting track, but one that sounds interesting at least. "Lowlife," shows the singer asking for answers from God because he feels low on life, which is evident. The next two songs are the darkest and most unpleasant of the album, with "Joe" providing an unsympathetic picture of a hypocrite who goes to church on Sundays and beats his wife, ponders suicide, and is going through an affair with one of his song's teachers, all while not knowing why he acts this way. After that, "Sheila Don't Remember" looking at a situation where the narrator hopes that Sheila doesn't remember what he has done to her, which could be anything ranging from a relationship gone bad to something truly dark like rape or abuse. From here, the author reflects upon his losses in "Take The Reins," comments that he is a long way from home in the driving and relatively upbeat "Madison," another single-worthy track, and then looks at the relationship drama of life in "Hole At The Top Of The World," before ending with a track in "Heaven's Last Attempt" that leads the listener to ponder the sad state of the singer, who would not release an album for five years after Island dropped him when this album failed to sell.
Overall, this album is by far the weakest of the three major label studio albums that Jude Cole released in the 1990's. A View From Third Street is a pop-rock masterpiece and Start The Car is an excellent follow-up that capitalizes on the promise with some grittier music and lyrics. But I Don't Know Why I Ask This Way makes the listener ask that about the singer-songwriter, and that is never a good idea. It would appear, at least to me, that Jude Cole took his label change very hard and was in a meditative mood to reflect upon his lack of success, and that frustration and lack of confidence is in full view here. In many ways this album reminds me of Edwin McCain's Scream And Whisper in being an album full of deep sadness and bitterness and that is a great shame because it alienates the listener from the material. Is the singer merely bemoaning his own fate about being rejected despite his talent and hard work? Is the singer trying to take out his feelings of frustration with life and a lack of pop success on those few people who are listening to it? Are people like the audience the targets of the singer's miserabilist discussions of people living ugly and unsuccessful lives? It is no wonder why audiences fled from this album, even if a few of the songs are still great.
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Post by nathanalbright on Oct 23, 2020 16:56:44 GMT -5
Start The Car, by Jude Cole
Start The Car is a somewhat mystifying album. It's by no means a bad album. It is, in fact, a great album, full of strong tracks that fit a heartland rock approach that is at least country-adjacent, and full of Cole's usual melancholy and reflective songs about love and relationships and the search for respect and the better life that he feels is his due as a talented singer/songwriter. But it's a mystifying album all the same, on at least several levels. A well-polished product with some stellar playing by noted studio musicians like Cole himself as well as such names as Jeff and Steve Porcaro (of Toto fame), David Paich, and Lenny Castro, this album was released in the second half of 1992 to a music-buying public that seemed to want lots of grunge and alternative and not this. The mystifying choices do not only include the fact that this is an album released out of season, as it were, not gritty enough to hang with the Southern rock of the Crowes and certainly nowhere near grunge, but the fact that it includes an intro track as the middle track of the album, and is not sequenced in a way that would draw the most attention to its most melodic songs, including "It Comes Around," which is all the way at track #9. It's a shame that no one was willing to ask him what he was trying to accomplish this, as it is not pop enough for pop and not grungy enough for 90's rock.
As an album, this one has more guitars and mandolin and less keyboards in the mix than his previous album, but otherwise covers much of the same territory. In addition to relationship issues, there are songs that express Cole's growing dissatisfaction with his success as a singer/songwriter, in songs like "Start The Car," where he sings a relatively upbeat song about wanting to leave town, or "Just Another Night," where he talks about how he enjoys a quiet night without fighting with his girl while pondering how it is that people think he is a bigtime artist, or "It Comes Around," which expresses his hope in success, or "A Place In The Line," where he wonders when that time of success will come in life and love. Interspersed around these meditations on show business and life come such songs as "Open Road," another traveling song, or "Tell The Truth," which urges a partner to speak her mind or break up, because Jude Cole isn't going to be reading anyone's mind--it is unsurprisingly one of the standout tracks here and an obvious single. "Right There Now" and "First Your Money (Then Your Clothes)," are slower tracks that deal with reflection about failed relationships, a familiar lane for Cole and his audience.
Ultimately, this is an album that, like the music career of Jude Cole, has largely slipped through the cracks. Three songs from the album were released as singles, but none of them was particularly successful. The title track and the moving and hooky "Tell The Truth" were barely top 40 hits and the moving "Worlds Apart" hit the lower ranks of the chart, but overall this was not an album that had even the modest success of its successor. Given the fact that this album appeals to people like me who enjoy rootsy rock with melancholy material and a well-polished sound, and not to radio programmers or wide audiences, it is little surprise that the album tanked and Cole was dropped from Reprise records afterwards. He would continue to release music through the 90's, but his next two albums also failed to resonate with audiences and he would then continue his involvement in the music industry as a session player, songwriter, and producer for other acts to some success to the present day. Still, this is an album that might have been something, if enough people had heard it. But they didn't.
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Post by nathanalbright on Oct 26, 2020 18:22:42 GMT -5
You're Not Alone (EP), by Semisonic
It has been nearly 20 years since Semisonic last came out with new music, the late and not nearly popular enough All About Chemistry. In listening to this EP, Semisonic sounds like they picked up right where they left off, making exactly the sort of new music that one would want to hear from them in 2020. If you're a fan of Semisonic in 2020, this is the sort of music you wanted and that you now have available to you. Apparently for a long time singer/songwriter Dan Wilson just was unable to think of music that was suited to Semisonic until he started writing some material for a possible collaboration with Liam Gallagher that he realized the material would work for Semisonic, and it does. The five songs included here are not exactly nostalgic, for the most part, but they do sound as if the power pop trio picked up right where they left off, sounding fresh and invigorated with the yearning that one would expect from the group. While, in listening to this album, I didn't hear another "Closing Time," there are at least a couple of songs that would be right at home on contemporary alternative or AAA radio that deserve a fair hearing and a lot of appreciation. Let's hope that we don't have to wait another nineteen years before we get more new music from Semisonic; it's been too long, guys.
Here is a track-by-track review:
You're Not Alone: This driving song, featuring some excellent guitar and drum work and some singing that soars into falsetto from Wilson, provides a worldly wise but realistically optimistic approach to dark times. Although the group and I have quite different political worldviews, the song's recognition that the world is wrong and there isn't much that individual people can do about it can apply regardless of where you stand on particular political matters, as everyone can agree that the world is screwed up right now.
All It Would Take: This driving, anthemic song is one of the standouts on this EP, as Wilson ponders about his optimism and his belief that the world inside and around him could change with very modest aims. This is the sort of empowerment anthem of optimism and hope that 2020 was looking for and needs.
Basement Tapes: The most obvious nostalgic song here, this particular number finds Wilson musing upon his youth and the fact that he hasn't entirely moved on from the past, reflecting on his Minnesota roots and the sort of mixtapes that fascinated him from the days of "Singing In My Sleep," if not before. Moving on is overrated anyway.
Don't Make Up Your Mind: Another standout track from this EP, this song could also very easily be a hit single with its telling discussion of a relationship going wrong where the author yearns for a face-to-face discussion that might prevent things from going awry in the ambiguity of e-mails and other remote conversations. This is a song that is surprisingly timely in light of communication struggles and the social isolation most of us are experiencing right now.
Lightning: This is a somewhat nostalgic track that reflects the romantic yearning with a good degree of humor that we have come to expect in Semisonic releases, and it is something that would have worked very well in All About Chemistry or a soundtrack at about that time. It's an enjoyable track nowadays too, of course.
Overall this is a solid EP. It's a shame we didn't get enough songs for a full album but this definitely whets the appetite for more Semisonic material, and let's hope that Dan Wilson doesn't have more writer's block about songs that would fit for the group. It's a pity that this wasn't released on a major label and that there won't be a push for any of these songs to chart or get played on the radio, but if you are a fan of Semisonic's material and want to hear a natural progression of their sound to the present day, this is well worth the wait.
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M5
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Post by M5 on Oct 26, 2020 18:47:18 GMT -5
Hey can you do a track by track review of Dangerous Woman by Ariana Grande. Thanks Cmon it's been almost two months
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Post by nathanalbright on Oct 27, 2020 13:48:43 GMT -5
All About Chemistry, by Semisonic
One of my quirks as a music listener is my consistent fondness for music that is released as a follow-up to popular success where there is a lot of attention paid to beautiful details thanks to the higher budget that follows success but which doesn't resonate as much with the general public. And "All About Chemistry" falls into that group, a reflective and meditative album relating to songs about love that straddles the line between Adult Alternative, power pop, and Hot Adult Contemporary in a way that is appealing to a listener like myself and has been since the album was released but which didn't even manage to crack the top 100 of the Billboard album charts. It is a shame that this album's lack of commercial success meant that it was the last new music we got from the band for nearly two decades, but the failure of this album was serious. Semisonic was dropped by their label, Dan Wilson started writing solo material and became a popular songwriter for artists like Adele and the Dixie Chicks, and that was that. This album is a really good one and deserved a far better fate. Although power pop is typically music that fans modestly like and critics hate, critics liked this album more than mainstream audiences and that is definitely the case for me as well.
Here is a track-by-track review:
Chemistry: A sunny power pop song, the upbeat nature of this song hides the rather reflective tone of experimentation in love and the damage done by failed relationships. The adventurous and daring music video gives a better appreciation of what this song is about, and it sets the tone for the yearning and dissatisfaction of the album as a whole.
Bed: This is one of those songs that sounds pathetic and is meant to. Dan Wilson's begging for sex from a friend and his whining that without sex he's going to go insane is precisely what this song was aiming at. I'm not sure it's a good target to be aiming at, but it accomplishes what it set out to do.
Act Naturally: This is an interesting and moody song, released to Hot AC and not successful there sadly, that points to the way that people try to hide their troubles and act as if everything is alright. Although the song is addressed to the narrator's partner, there is a knowing sense of irony that perhaps it is his inability to hide things that is the real issue.
She's Got My Number: This song is full of weird beeps and fuzz and is one of the standout tracks for me. Like quite a few songs on this album this is about a man trying to deal with an unreliable woman that he is infatuated with and who he has not always treated as honorably as he should, demonstrative of the way that our relationships shape us in many ways.
Follow: This is one of the more optimistic songs here, and one can definitely believe Dan Wilson that he would like to believe in an everlasting love even if he is somewhat cynical about its reality. That sentiment is what marks this album as romanticist rather than romantic, and this song is a pleasant and beautiful ode to the optimism of love and relationships even with less than ideal history.
Sunshine & Chocolate: This is sort of a "nice guy fantasy" sort of song, where the narrator sings about a fling he had where the sex was good, everyone wished each other well, and where the fling was short and/or intermittent but where there wasn't a great deal of regret on any side. It seems like a fantasy, though, and not like the real thing, like how musicians wished their relationships with groupies would work.
Who's Stopping You?: This is the only track on the album sung by John Munson, and it's a fierce examination of the tendency we have of being our own worst enemies but blaming our struggles on other people, as if we would do any better on our own. The cynicism here matches the rest of the album and its exploration of self-destructive tendencies in relationships and gives a lot of food for thought.
I Wish: This song is pure yearning post-Beatles power pop with lyrics that are filled with dissatisfaction and even despair, and where there is a lengthy and gorgeous instrumental passage with a driving guitar that ends the song. If this song is too long to be a single it is also one of the obvious standout tracks on the album, blending the softer approach of Semisonic on this project with obvious rock ambition.
One True Love: This song is a duet between Semisonic and Carole King and co-written by Wilson and King, and it is another song that is filled with yearning. I can't help but thinking that this song should have been a smash hit on AC, with its touching harmonies and wistful tone. This is a real missed opportunity here.
Get A Grip: An ode to masturbation that was a moderate hit in the UK, this song is a bit transparent about the way that those who lack someone else to love engage in fantasy and self-love. The song is a bit on-the-nose, and certainly the weakest track in the album, but it at least fits the broad range of the subject material of the album, and was apparently put on the album because of label pressure.
Surprise: One of the standout tracks on this album for me, this song features some stellar guitar work and moody lyrics that seem to hint at the possibility of a murder-suicide in the future. This is a dark song, and the combination between its dark lyrics and gorgeous music is probably what draws me to it so much, even though it would not likely be as much of a surprise as the narrator thinks it is.
El Matador: The only track here written by Semisonic drummer and noted author Jacob Slichter, this song is a reflective and nostalgic look at the narrator's love of surfing and the feeling that youth is passing. That sense of running out of time is a good way to close out the album, because the whole album has the feel of looking back on the fun of youth and bravely facing the uncertainty of middle age that the song brings to light in such a poignant way.
In retrospect, it is disappointing but not surprising that the more meditative and romanticist longings of Semisonic expressed in this work failed to resonate with mass audiences even if it was very appealing to the band's core audience. If "El Matador" can be seen as reflective of the band's thoughts at the time, the appeal to "please don't go away, stay awhile, stay awhile," could have been a frustrated and ultimately unsuccessful appeal to fans not to abandon them because of their choice to make a more reflective and meditative album about love and relationships and isolation and rejection. And those fans who did stay with them and have stayed with them through the band's long hiatus got music that is well worth remembering and appreciating even if it never appealed to mass audiences.
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