My listening Hours: The Rest of July–September

So we come to "the rest." These are albums that aren't bad; in fact many of them are quite good. They just, for whatever reason, didn't force their way into that part of my brain that compelled me play them over and over and over. Nevertheless I still recommend everything here. Sometimes the albums in this category are slow burners, either melting into a bunch of my playlists or just consistently sneaking their way into rotation.

The Flatlanders, More a Legend Than a Band
Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, 100 Days, 100 Nights
Perfect example of albums that I don't really crave in full but am still ingesting song by song through playlists and shuffles: the Flatlanders and Sharon Jones. Back in July I placed both in the "best" category; I haven't changed my feeling on the quality of the albums, but I will admit that their sameness makes me less inclined to keep putting them on. Each album contains maybe four songs that are really, utterly fantastic, and a lot of other songs that are good, solid, but less identifiable.

• The Flatlanders, Keeper of the Mountain
• Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, When the Other Foot Drops, Uncle

R.E.M., Reckoning
Neil Young, Rust Never Sleeps
Likewise, here are two records that are great, but I find myself listening to them more when I just put on my "Everything by R.E.M." or "Everything by Neil Young" mixes. Until July, Reckoning had the distinction of being the only R.E.M. album I'd yet to hear in full, from beginning to end, despite knowing most of the songs from isolated circumstances and despite R.E.M. being among my favorite bands of all time. I have to admit that I had assumptions about how I'd feel about the record, based in part on how I felt about Murmur and Fables of the Reconstruction; that is, I'm less of a fan of the early stuff, mostly due to how it's produced and how willfully muddled the records are. (That's not to say I don't like it... I just have a pretty firm personal perspective on the band.)

Rust Never Sleeps also boasts/suffers from intentionally poor production: it was recorded as a live album, with the audience subsequently pulled out of the mix. Additionally, the first half of the record is Neil and his acoustic guitar, and the second half Neil and Crazy Horse rocking out. The first half fares a lot better; not only are the songs better, but they handle the production limitations better too. The rockers just aren't that enjoyable to listen to, especially in comparison with the clarity of the epic jams of Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, which I can't help but compare it to since I bought that one fairly recently too.

• R.E.M., (Don't Go Back to) Rockville
• Neil Young, Pocahontas

Amon Düül II, Yeti
Neu!, s/t
Like I said on Monday, I'm having a krautrock moment. And I think I'm especially having a krautrock moment because Amon Düül II was so unlike what I expected. There's nothing "motorik" about them; I don't think it would even occur to me to put them in the same genre as Neu! or Can if I were taking the Pepsi Challenge. While not entirely without structure, Yeti is very freeform, and not really influenced by minimalism at all, in the way those other bands are. It's much closer in spirit to psychedelia than what I previously understood krautrock to be. And that's a good thing: it makes me want to seek out more of their records, to hear a few more Can records which I've never gotten to, to finally pick up some Faust (which I just did, yesterday), La Dusseldorf, Harmonia, Cluster, and others. That's not to say that Yeti is a perfect album, though. At nearly seventy minutes, it loses all focus in the last third, mostly due to the eighteen-minute title track, an improvised jam with occasional howling vocals. Like any improvised exercise by any band with aspirations toward the epic, the song flits between genius and tedium. More reined-in songs, like "Eye Shaking King," are wonderful, though.

Neu!, meanwhile, are the other end of the spectrum. Crisp, spacious, repetitive. I bought Neu! 75 a few months ago—and I liked it—but I like this more. I long had an impression of what Neu! was supposed to sound like, and Neu! 75 wasn't really it; this is. Neu! 2 is on my immediate horizon.

• Amon Düül II, Eye Shaking King
• Neu!, Weissensee

Okkervil River, Black Sheep Boy
By now, I've exhausted myself as far as writing about Okkervil River goes. Newsflash: I like this band. Double-newsflash: I like the slow songs less than the fast songs. News analysis: The ratio of slow songs to fast songs on Black Sheep Boy (and the Appendix) is lower than on the later two albums, therefore I enjoy this one somewhat less. That said, "Black" may be the best song the band has ever done. Top two or three, at least.

• Okkervil River, Black

Spoon, Girls Can Tell
Girls Can Tell was one of two Spoon albums I'd yet to pick up (the other is the recent Telephono reissue). I've heard others describe this as the acme of the band's output. It's a great record, but either it hasn't sunk in enough with me or I've just heard too many other Spoon albums prior to this one for it to feel revelatory. Me, I'll take Kill the Moonlight and Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga before this one. Of course, when you're talking Spoon, "better" and "worse" is all a matter of degree. These guys are like peanut butter to me—I'll take 'em any way you wanna give 'em to me; I know they'll be good.

• Spoon, The Fitted Shirt

Air France, On Trade Winds
Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood, Nancy & Lee
Both of these albums, while good, pretty much slipped right past me. I devoted very little time to listening to them, though when I did put them on I enjoyed them. Hey, you pick up the equivalent of a new album every three days, some of those albums are going to get lost in the shuffle. On Trade Winds is just four songs, adding up to less than half an hour; every time I put it on it was over before I started paying attention. I had a few songs from Nancy & Lee via Nancy's greatest hits album and a few stray downloads; from those I was expecting something a little darker—"Some Velvet Morning," for instance, is so creepy good—but a lot of the record is kinda goofy. That's not a bad thing, just not what I was expecting. I think the fact that it didn't match up to what I was expecting explains at least in part why I was less inclined to put it on. It is a good album, though, for what it is.

• Air France, Beach Party
• Nancy & Lee, Some Velvet Morning

Later today: the disappointments.

Comments

[Richard]

I have to admit that I don't understand your points about REM & Neil Young. I didn't understand the previous REM post, either. I don't hear "muddled" production on the early REM records, or production problems on Rust Never Sleeps. The latter sounds much more immediate than Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, which I like, but which has always sounded a bit stiff to me. As for REM, in my view, the songs are better on Murmur and Reckoning than the later stuff, certainly Document or Green, both of which also sound stiff to me, production and performance-wise. The relative obscurity in the lyrics certainly has no bearing on this sense.

Dunno, not that it matters much, we simply differ, but effectively I have almost no idea what you're talking about with respect to these artists (both of whom I have spent a lot of time listening to). Weird!

[Richard]

re: krautrock... yeah, it's weird that it's seen as a genre... the main bands involved have nothing in common!

As for Neu!--I was really surprised by them. Since, like you, Stereolab was how I got interested them, before the reissues, I expected a certain type of sound (and I was coming from the Transient Noise Bursts period of Stereolab). Only one or two of the tracks on Neu!2 have ever really met my pre-conceived notion (by the way, because of budgetary issues they were having--I think--half of that album is simply speeded up or slowed down versions of other tracks on the album). Anyway, I still haven't been able to warm to the first album. 75 is my favorite of the three...

You referred to a lack of interest in Faust earlier... which records have you heard? I think the second album, So Far, is my favorite, plus I like Faust IV. I need to spend more time with The Faust Tapes. Oh, I see you mentioned them here.. which one did you pick up? which Can albums do you know? (I love Can.)

[scott pgwp]

Well, what can I say: I know a lot of people will disagree with me on the R.E.M. thing; many people really hold the early albums as the band's high point. I like the records, but I do feel the band improved beyond them in a variety of ways. The production on Rust Never Sleeps isn't exactly bad so much as... weird. But compare the sound of Neil's guitar on the acoustic tracks to, say, anything on Harvest. It's so much warmer on the latter record.

Neu! 2 is the one I've yet to hear, though I'll probably pick it up very soon. I feel compelled to complete the set this year. As for Faust - it wasn't so much that I was uninterested them; I held their albums in my hands countless times, only to put them down in favor of something else. Going on nothing more than their album covers, I always got a bit of a goth vibe which scared me off. At any rate, I just picked up Faust and Faust So Far earlier this week. I've yet to spend a lot of time with them but I am liking So Far... so far.