Split down the middle between the good stuff, self-written and produced, and the anonymous R&B producer songs. On the good stuff, this is contemporary pop with heart (a little too much gratuitous, and unconvincing, swearing, and she's kinda let down by her annoying diction). Shame she didn’t do the whole album that way.
With song titles like ‘The body burned away’, ‘Not just a ghost’s heart’ and ‘Incantation’, this wears its intentions on its sleeve. It’s a disembodied haunted house populated by Civil War ghosts. The grooves are skeletal, and there’s rattling of bones all over these songs. It’s quite a mood, and I know Jason Molina made some great music in the 2000s, which tempts me to give it a higher ranking than it really deserves. But the truth is, like Josh Rouse and a couple of others who appear in this list, Molina had some growing to do still. Once you settle into the ghost house, you can’t help but think ‘This guy’s gonna be really good, once he learns how to write songs’.
Edit: I can't believe Molina was still alive when I wrote this, and now isn't. R.I.P.
At its best: Incantation248. Luomo: Vocalcity
To me, more than anything, it sounds like the most abstract couple of seconds on one of those amazingly abstract long jams on Prince’s ‘1999’, looped to infinity. It’s an idea I have a lot of sympathy for in theory. In practice, while I can appreciate this and it’s definitely listenable, I just don’t seem to have the feel for it. This is ever mutating, but the changes are mostly inside the same continuing beat, at the end we’re still at the start. Nothing’s won and nothing’s gained (with notable exception of my out and out favorite, ‘Tessio’). At least, that’s my experience. I guess it wasn’t to be, maybe next time.
At its best: Tessio, She-center247. Cure: Bloodflowers
Smith’s melodic talent shines fairly brightly on the first track ‘Out of this world’, but after that it gets pretty hard going. The more than 11 minutes of ‘Watching me fall’ strain for epic impact, but the lack of any dynamics is surely a mistake. Thereafter there are stretches of interest, but it doesn’t add up to all that much, much drama about little that makes me sit up and take notice. A missed opportunity.
At its best: Out of this world246. Dan Hicks & the Hot licks: Beatin’the heat
Who doesn’t like Dan Hicks? Going by the special guests on this record (Bette Midler, Elvis Costello, Rickie Lee Jones, Tom Waits, Brian Setzer), he’s a swell guy. On the other hand, his kind of zany hippy humor doesn’t age well, and 2000 is 33 years after its zenith, and 2000 is 13 years ago, so, you can do the math. I want to like this stuff (I like zany humor – Lovin Spoonful, NRBQ…), but even I cringe at ‘I’ve got a capo on my brain’ and ‘He don’t care’ (cause he’s stoned, he’s a ‘dead-on stoner’). This record’s lacks the warmth of heart at it center, I’m sorry to say, and without the humor rings hollow.
245. Add N to (X): Add insult to injury
Add N to (X) know what a gimmick is. And I’m not just talking about the fact that my copy of the cd is a ‘Very special limited edition includes free stickers’. The whole set-up, band uses only analog keyboards, is gimmick enough. And have you seen their clothes?
Anyway, for some reason there seem to be two versions of the band, each of which recorded about half of this album. The two bands only seem to share one member, and it’s not the woman who is so prominently displayed in their promotion. I don’t have a problem with it, the two bands sound identical anyway, but it’s a headscratcher.
The music, you ask? Well, it’s improvised, mostly instrumental, punkish riff rock on synthesizers. It has a quirky charm, but these people are not compositional masters in waiting. Fun though.
At its best: MDMH, The regent is dead244. Microphones: It was hot, we stayed in the water
Phil Evrum’s Microphones was always a band skittering on the edge between their lack of any discernible skill (in writing, playing, singing, arranging and recording – I bet his hair looked awful too, though I’ve never seen it) and the implausible ‘wide screen’ and epic ambitions they set out to record.
I was previously familiar with the follow-up, ‘The glow pt 2’ (a record-length extrapolation of this album’s 10 minute centerpiece ‘The Glow’), where somehow, contrary to all logical expectations, the mess of noise, fragments of out of tune nursery rhyme overbearingly earnest acoustic folk songs, weird off-balance mixes and collage-like sense of sequencing, melded together in something at least memorably different, and at its best weirdly endearing. Not enough for the almost ‘Aeroplane over the sea’–level devotion the record receives in extremely indie circles (it is better than ‘Aeroplane’ at least, but that says very little), but somehow – I’ve held it in my hands during many a cull and it’s always survived.
Not so this earlier album though, here a mess is just a mess. It’s not encouraging when after five spins the most memorable songs on the record are the one called ‘Drums’ (4 minutes of drums) and the one called ‘Organs’ (4 minutes of an organ chord). Hum.
At its best: The glow243. Slumber party: Slumber party
It’s unfortunate that since the ‘80s the influence of the Velvet Underground has been felt primarily in uninterested chord strumming, sing-songy vocal lines and badly produced boring bands. I’m pretty sure most of these people would’ve been insufferable Greenwich Village folkies in the ‘60s, and there’s something wrong with that picture. But don’t worry, even if you listen you won’t remember any of it in the morning.
At its best: Sooner or later, Strawberry sunday (both good songs, I do remember)242. Bettie serveert: Private suit
Bettie serveert always struggled to follow up their great debut. And so it is here. Never bad, and it’s always a pleasure to hear Carol sing, but the songs just aren’t that memorable.
At its best: Unsound, Mariachi souls, Auf wiedersehen241. Noonday underground: Self-assembly
Soundscaper looking for a songwriter. Nice sounds and all (in a trebly Northern Soul meets Swinging London, meets soundtrack composer IN HIS DREAMS sort of way – no, really, he’s alright, but he’s no…), but really, you need a little more than that. Maybe he found that when he started working with Paul Weller. Maybe. Only the future will tell.
At its best: Hello, Marvellous, We saw the midnight
