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Given the approaching end of year, I thought I'd be spending November catching up on records I missed earlier in the year, for maximal list-making capabilities. Not so, for whatever reason. I'm just as tuned out as ever, apparently. Only picked up two new-to-me albums this month. Sort of an odd pairing for a blog post, but so be it.
Oneohtrix Point Never: Replica
I spent most of November listening to this album over and over, trying to love it more than I did. Only in the last week or so have I finally been able to admit to myself that, despite the brilliance of Daniel Lopatin's last album as Oneohtrix Point Never, Replica just doesn't do it for me. It's quite different from Returnal—there are more beats, more chopped up sounds, less spacious ambient tracks—and that's okay. I don't mind that it's different, I just want it to be better. Or, I want to connect with it on a more substantive level and I've just been incapable of doing so. In that way it reminds me of albums by the Books (only less humorous); it's odd and screwy and a little IDM-ish and, importantly, interesting... but not compelling. It's just good, not great.
Cat Stevens: Tea for the Tillerman
Technically it's only half-new to me, but the half that is new is just as good as the half I've known for twenty-plus years. More thoughts.
Hank Snow: The Hank Snow Hit Collection
Gene Clark: Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers
Neko Case: Middle Cyclone
Vince Guaraldi Trio: A Charlie Brown Christmas
Eleanor Friedberger: Last Summer
Feist: Metals
Thanksgiving is over. You better believe that means Christmas time is here.
Feist: Metals (2), Let It Die, and The Reminder
Junip: Fields
Panda Bear: Tomboy
The Everly Brothers: Best of the Everly Brothers
Moon Duo: Mazes
Tom T. Hall: Country Songs for Children
Hank Snow: The Hank Snow Hit Collection
Can it be that only a week ago I saw Feist in concert? It feels ages ago. Anyway, it was a terrific show and only made any "adult contemporary" references to this new album more obnoxious. It was a big, epic-feeling show with lots of peaks and valleys, supported by a terrific backing band and a trio of fantastic backup singers, who apparently go by the name Mountain Man when not singing with Feist. Probably my favorite live show of the year.
Despite calling myself a huge Cat Stevens fan—his songs have been a part of my life since I was a child—I own very few actual Cat Stevens full-length albums. Rather, I grew up with two greatest hits albums, and sometime in my twenties acquired a third greatest hits album that had a bunch more songs.
Why don't I own any outright albums? It goes back to my first record store job, back when I was 19 years old and a sophomore in college. I was able to check out used albums from the store's stock for a few days at a time, so I sampled a few Stevens albums—I think it was Mona Bone Jackson and Numbers. My instant reaction at the time was that, aside from the excellent songs I already knew, the rest of his songs were hokey and unintentionally silly. There ended my engagement with his full-lengths.
Tea for the Tillerman is one of his most acclaimed albums, and I wonder if the reason I didn't sample that album those many years ago was simply because it wasn't an option to me at the time. Because here I am sixteen years later, more or less hearing it for the first time. Guess what? It's fantastic.
I say "more or less" because, of the eleven tracks here, I know six of them backwards and forwards. "Where Do the Children Play," "Wild World," "Hard Headed Woman," and more—I've known these songs forever and they rank among my favorites of Stevens'. Nevertheless, Tea for the Tillerman still surprised me in a couple ways—not least was that all the songs I didn't already know are also really terrific.
Hearing the familiar songs within the context of this album also made me hear them in a new way. One of my favorite things about the various greatest hits albums I own is that they are so uplifiting. The content of Stevens' songs are often concerned with searching for spiritual salvation, and are optimistic more often than they aren't. I also can't help but identify with his songs in a kind of childlike way—these were the soundtrack to my toddlerhood, so I hear a song like "Wild World" as if it's a nursery rhyme and not the creepy kiss-off that it actually is. (I'd always read it as a kind of father-to-daughter narrative until I grew up a little and realized it was a breakup song between an older man and a young woman.) There are some downer songs on the greatest hits albums, of course—"Trouble" being the most obvious and most heartbreakingly lovely—but overall the records feel really positive.
Tea for the Tillerman is a different animal. The hits that came from this album—i.e., a full half of this album—are decidedly on the sad side of Stevens' coin. "Where Do the Children Play" aligns modern life with a corruption of innocence; "Miles from Nowhere" is about being lost (its more optimistic flipside, "On the Road to Find Out," comes a few tracks later); and titles like "Sad Lisa" and "But I Might Die Tonight" ought to give you further indication that this is not Stevens' sunniest release. It is a truly beautiful album, however—one need only hear "Into White" to know that.
The Delmore Brothers: Greatest Hits
Cat Stevens: Tea for the Tillerman (2)
Eleanor Friedberger: Last Summer
Animal Collective: Sung Tongs
Beach House: Teen Dream
Cass McCombs: Humor Risk
Feist: Metals
Oneohtrix Point Never: Replica (2)
Tom T. Hall: Country Songs for Children
War on Drugs: Slave Ambient
North Highlands: Wild One
The new Cass McCombs is, in my eyes, a rebound from the dour Wit's End, released earlier this year. Anyone who calls this McCombs' "upbeat" album, however, is speaking in extremely relative terms. There is nothing on here that is better than "County Line," from Wit's End, nor do I think it's overall better than Catacombs, but it's still a pretty good album.
Belle and Sebastian: If You're Feeling Sinister and The Life Pursuit
Brian Eno: Here Come the Warm Jets, Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), Before and After Science, and Another Green World
Fugazi: Red Medicine
Oneohtrix Point Never: Replica (4) and Returnal
Feist: Metals
The Beach Boys: Smile Sessions
Cass McCombs: Humor Risk
Nick Drake: Five Leaves Left
Tom T. Hall: Country Songs for Children
Due to some busy times offline I neglected this blog for the last week or so, hence "last week's soundtrack," posted six days late.
I'm finally getting into the habit of using Spotify, using it to listen to a Nick Drake album I had on CD a long time ago but lost sometime in the days before I imported every last thing into iTunes, as well as sampling the new Beach Boys and Cass McCombs releases, not to mention the go-to kids soundtrack in these parts, Tom T. Hall's Country Songs for Children. (If you want to follow me there, search scottpgwp.) Thus far I can bear the commercial interruptions, my mediafire-induced guilt has dropped considerably, and my ballooning hard drive is less burdened.
After a dry summer, my acquisitive streak seems to have returned, both for old and new records. Here's a rundown, in the order I picked things up.
Motion Sickness of Time Travel: Luminaries & Syntastry
This has been a fantastic year for the ambient/nü-kosmiche genre—I count albums by Tim Hecker, Rene Hell, and Mountains all among my favorites of 2011 so far. That means the bar is pretty high for the genre right now. Which is bad news for Motion Sickness of Time Travel (aka Rachel Evans). I find Luminaries & Synatry to be a fine record—good for writing or reading and the like—but it rarely grips me as a work of art, as the best of the year often do.
Roedelius: Durch die Wüste and Selbsportrait I
Hearing the Roedelius Schneider track last month reminded me that my journey through the old Harmonia/Cluster universe is far from over. Among other albums long on my to-buy list have been some of Roedelius' early solo albums. Through some degree of happenstance, these are the two I picked up. (Did I miss a better option? Please advise!) Durch die Wüste, his first solo release, starts with an unexpected (and not terrific) rock vamp before the rest of the record settles into the more identifiable relaxed synths-and-piano compositions. Between the two albums I picked up, I prefer Selbsportrait I, his third solo album and first in his acclaimed Selbsportrait series. It feels a little closer to the sounds of Cluster, though with fewer beats. (Actually, it reminds me more of Raymond Scott than Cluster—which is sort of what Cluster would sound like if they didn't have any beats. So, go figure.)
Mates of State: Mountaintops
I predicted I would stop listening to this soon after buying it, and I was right. Though that doesn't mean it's a bad album. Review.
Feist: Metals
Her best album. Review.
Joe Byrd & The Field Hippies: The American Metaphysical Circus
After a track by the United States of America came up on shuffle earlier this month, I went on a "whatever happened to" Google search and ran across this, USA leader Joe Byrd's return following the original band's break up. It's clearly meant as a sequel of sorts, given that the album title is identical to the opening track on the USA's one and only album. No other USA members appear among the dozen or so Field Hippies, a cast of L.A.-based musicians and singers, but Byrd is clearly going for the same sound—an eclectic mix of psychedliea and avant electronics, with equal doses humor and haze. Unfortunately the album just comes off as second rate. As similar as it is, it just falls flat compared to USA's spark. It's not a bad album, but it's just okay—and a disappointment compared to Byrd's earlier masterpiece.