Pretty Goes with Pretty

My Listening Year: Best Discoveries of 2007 (Blind Spot Edition)

2007 was a great year for new releases, but even better for all the blind spots I filled in. I unintentionally had a very 70s year—seventeen out of my twenty-eight blind spot purchases were released in that decade. That's a good thing. Talk about blind spots: as a whole, I think the 70s were one of the least represented decades in my collection until this year.

Elvis Costello, Imperial Bedroom [mp3: "Human Hands"]
Hands down the biggest surprise of the year for me. I'd already made my mind up about Costello—I like him, but I don't like him like him. So when I picked up Imperial Bedroom and This Year's Model, it was really a matter of "eh, why not?" I was so ambivalent about it that I didn't even listen to Imperial Bedroom right away. Good thing I finally did, as the album turned out to be among my most-listened-to albums of the year. Like I said about Armchair Apocrypha last week, this is one of those wonderful albums where every song, at one point or another, is your favorite song. For the first time I consider myself a fan of Costello's, and will likely pick up more of his albums in the near future (starting with those from the same era as Bedroom.)

Big Star, #1 Record [mp3: "The India Song"]
As with Costello, I had no real expectations for Big Star, and picked up #1 Record/Radio City on a lark. Based on Third/Sister Lover, I thought I'd already made up my mind. I'm so thankful I gave these guys another chance! I've been listening to #1 Record pretty obsessively since getting it a couple months ago. My sense is that this might be the only Alex Chilton album I really need, however. The other Big Star albums, to my ears, descend in quality (Radio City is pretty good, not great, and Third/Sister Lover is unfocused). Somebody help me out—does his solo material change tack?

The Byrds, The Notorious Byrd Brothers [mp3: "Wasn't Born to Follow"]
Going into 2007, I knew it was going to be a year for the Byrds.  And it was: I picked up three Byrds albums total, in addition to the three I already owned. They were all great, each in their own way, but The Notorious Byrd Brothers sets itself apart in my eyes. For all the accolades Sweetheart of the Rodeo gets, Notorious is a far more interesting fusion of country and rock because it is more subtle. Gram Parsons's contributions to Sweetheart are fine, but they're also totally transparent, in that they simply are country and bluegrass, sharing album space with McGuinn's folk-rock tunes. Notorious is, from beginning to end, a Byrds album which has integrated the lapsteel and largely set the twelve-string acoustic aside. Crosby's excellent harmonies are still there, and neither Parsons nor Dylan's fingerprints are anywhere to be seen. It's not the perfect Byrds album (in fact, I don't think there is one), but it's the most interesting. It's still the Byrds, but you can hear, quite obviously, that the band was growing artistically. Sadly, it was the swan song for the original lineup, so there's no telling where the group would have gone if they'd stuck it out.

Joni Mitchell, Court & Spark [mp3: "Free Man in Paris"] and Blue [mp3:  "Carey"]
If anything, my Byrds fascination has grown to a near untenable obsession with their entire scene. in addition to steadily tracking down all of their albums, I've begun delving into the Laurel Canyon scene of the 60s and 70s. That's brought me to Buffalo Springfield and Joni Mitchell so far, with a long list of others I want to pick up. Mitchell in particular has turned out to be a terrific discovery for me (actually it was my brilliant wife who picked up Court & Spark).  I didn't fall immediately in love with this album, or with Mitchell in general. The first half was immediately engaging, but it sort of fell off after the midway point. Mitchell, left by herself, has some tics that were/are repellant to me, particulalry on first listen. Mostly it's the way her voice jumps into the upper register almost at random, or the way she seems to squeeze as many syllables into her lyrics as she damn well pleases, meter be damned. It's offputting. Nevertheless I liked enough of Court & Spark to give another album a chance. So I bought Blue. On first listens I was disappointed to find that this was a sparser album, none of the full-band treatment as on "Help Me" or "Free Man in Paris." But as time goes by I'm finding Blue to be the stronger album, and I'm coming around on all of Mitchell's quirks. There's still something kind of antagonistic in my listening relationship with Mitchell, but that's precisely what keeps me coming back to her.

My Listening Hours: The Rest of July–September

Blonde Redhead, 23
Without trying, every single Blonde Redhead album has come into my possession at one point or another. I’ve managed to follow and assess their career with each release, though I haven’t truly felt compelled to do so since somewhere around their fourth album. That’s not to say I don’t like them, however—just ambivalent. At any rate, Blonde Redhead have been continually refining their sound with each subsequent album, shaving off their ragged edges long ago in favor of something more atmospheric and moody. 23 picks up where Misery of a Butterfly left off, getting even more atmospheric and moody. The album is good but not perfect. It’s biggest fault is its sequencing—three similar-sounding Kazu Makino-fronted songs lead off the album before Amedeo Pace’s voice finally makes an appearance. The interplay between the two voices is a major part of what makes Blonde Redhead so enjoyable to listen to; when one overtakes the other, the album suffers. Not to mention, Pace’s songs are the better songs this time around.  Aside from sequencing, Blonde Redhead have by now refined their sound so much that it’s become predictable: propulsive drums, minor-key arpeggios, blurry soundscapes filling in the white space. All that really sets one song apart from the other is who’s singing (best is when they both sing, as on "Publisher"). Ultimately the band has settled into a sound that has become inessential unless you’re their biggest fan, blind to their imperfections, or you’re a casual fan looking to be sated by one Blonde Redhead and one album only.

Elvis Costello, This Year’s Model
Picking up from yesterday’s post on Imperial Bedroom… once I went back to This Year’s Model after falling in love with the later album, it seemed, well, obviously good. Whatever it was about Costello that I was having trouble getting past had all but evaporated. Suddenly every track here was better; nothing was blending together as it had before. Everything from “No Action” to "Night Rally" was rocking my socks off. The only reason the album finds itself in with “the rest” is that, frankly, when I put this album on a part of me wonders why I’m not listening to the other album.

Buffalo Springfield, s/t
My Byrds obsession is spiraling out of control. Keeping up with the many lineups of the band, who came from where and went on to do what, requires some serious research. Mostly that’s been done by wasting countless hours on wikipedia and searching old threads at I Love Music. Now the universe of Southern California bands from the 60s and 70s has opened up to me. Previously I’d never really associated Neil Young, Emmylou Harris, Joni Mitchell, et al. with any one location or era. Hence a number of the albums being outlined in this post all come from a certain time and place: thus we come to Buffalo Springfield’s first album. It’s good but not essential. Their biggest hit, “For What it’s Worth,” leads off the album and feels completely separate from the rest of the record. Its production values are different, its lyrics more direct, and everything about it feels more sophisticated than the other ten tracks. The rest of the album feels like solid but run-of-the-mill 60s rock. It is kinda fun, though, to hear lil’ Neil Young singing utterly straightforward 60s pop tunes. His "Out of My Mind" is the highlight of the album.

Emmylou Harris, Elite Hotel
I bought this the same day I bought Sweetheart of the Rodeo, and that may have been this album’s downfall for me. That’s not to say I don’t like it, but my tolerance for the lap-steel was tested between the two albums. It was simply too much of the same instrument, played the same way and used to the same effect, in the span of one period of time spent listening to albums. I began unfairly comparing the two albums, and as far as my personal tastes go, when I’m forced to compare something to the Byrds, it’s an easy bet where I’m going to place my affection.

All that is to say that this album did not ultimately take up a great deal of my listening hours. The association with the Byrds album will fade in time, and I’ll begin to hear this album in its own context. My impressions thus far: it flips back and forth between yearning ballads and bluegrass stompers, with not a lot of nuance in between. I find that I like both categories (including her cover of “Here, There, and Everywhere,” and the raucous fun of "Feelin' Single, Seein' Double"), but no one song has fully embraced me.

Joni Mitchell, Blue
If you’d have asked me six months ago what I thought of Joni Mitchell, I’d have told you I could take or leave her, more likely leave her. But my wife became enamored with her and picked up Court and Spark. I was blindsided! I liked it way more than I expected to, and I went on about it in the last MLH roundup. Then a few weeks ago, wandering Amoeba all by my lonesome, ostensibly to buy the New Pornographers album, by golly I found myself leafing through the Mitchell bins and there was Blue, supposedly her best album, used for $7. I couldn’t pass it up.

I like the album but it hasn’t grabbed me the way Court and Spark did. It has a lot of the same elements as that album, minus one thing—all those great harmonies (though I do like "This Flight Tonight"—that little production hiccup partway through is wonderful). Blue feels much more like a “solo” album—it’s mostly just Joni and her guitar. Whereas my favorite tracks from C&S were those that had more of a full band sound. (Anyone reading this a Joni fan? Is there an album by Mitchell that picks up where “Help Me” and “Free Man in Paris” left off?)

Pavement, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
Crooked Rain has had a weird effect on me. This album came out when I was in high school; I’ve had a casual familiarity with it in the last fifteen years from its airplay on Alternative Nation and the love my college roommate showered on all of Pavement’s albums (early stuff more than this one, though). Yet I can’t say I’ve ever spent alone-time with it, which for me is essential if I ever want to claim that I’ve “heard” a record. All that said, when I listen to Crooked Rain, I immediately become nostalgic for high school. I think of off-campus lunches, classmates with colored sunglasses and doc martins, driving my crappy 1976 Toyota Celica to my local Tower Records. Yet Crooked Rain was the soundtrack to none of that. Somehow it has insinuated itself into my memories, as if I bought it the same day I picked up Automatic for the People or the first Weezer album. That’s not to say I have negative associations with that era of my life, but I’m finding it difficult to simply enjoy this album on its own merits. All of my mental associations—fuck dude, I went to a renaissance fair in Tulare one weekend in 1994; why am I thinking about that?—are destroying my honest experience of this album.

Iron & Wine, Our Endless Numbered Days
I bought Sam Beam’s first album, The Creek Drank the Cradle, when it was first released. I liked it but felt sated—I felt no real need to continue following his work.  Then the mp3s for his new album, The Shepherd’s Dog, started floating around and I thought they were fantastic—particularly “The Boy with the Coin.” In anticipation of that album, I went for this one. It’s pleasant. I put it on when I want something mellow and nice and... pleasant. I can’t say it knocks me out. Part of that might be because this album, unlike most albums by most artists, takes a long time—half the record—to really get good. Beginning with "Each Coming Night," Our Endless Numbered Days is pretty outstanding. But there are seven tracks prior to that that float right by. There’s enough to keep me coming back to the album, though I’m not moved by it. That said, I can still hear growth from the first album to the second, and I remain optimistic about the third.

Iggy Pop, Lust for Life
Lust for Life has the opposite problem of Our Endless Numbered Days; that is, it's got an outstanding first half and then loses the plot at the midpoint. Each song here is really a vamp on one idea, so their success hinges on whether that idea is sustainable for more than a minute or two. You already know which songs do it well—they're the ones that have been used for Cialis commercials. But somewhere around the last few minutes of "Here Comes Success," the vamping gets tiresome. The last three tracks on this album are bluesy jams, each with nice moments here or there, but all ultimately lacking the inspiration of the first half of the record.

Velvet Underground, Loaded
Loaded is probably the spottiest of the Velvet Underground's four albums, though it does contain one of my favorite VU songs, "I Found a Reason." Personally, my favorite VU songs are the more somber ones; Loaded has its share, but it also has some questionable rockers ("Head Held High," in particular). There's some great stuff here, but when I'm in the mood for the Velvets—my Velvets—I'll probably choose their third, self-titled album over this one.