Pretty Goes with Pretty

2011: Blind Spots

Among the 62 albums I acquired in 2011, many were old albums I'm only now catching up on. Some stuck with me better than others. Here are my (unranked) favorite new-to-me albums of the year.

Harmonia: Musik von Harmonia and Cluster: Zuckerzeit
2011 was kind of a Clustery year for me. I acquired Zuckerzeit as well as an earlier Kluster album (terrible), two solo albums from Hans Joachim Roedelius (both not bad), and Harmonia's debut (Harmonia is Cluster + Neu's Michael Rother). Of them all, Musik von Harmonia and Zuckerzeit are far and away the best. Musik von Harmonia starts with the excellent "Watussi"—one of the group's best tracks and perhaps the clearest krautrock progenitor to modern techno outside of Kraftwerk. Overall that record is a seamless integration of the sounds of the two groups its members hailed from—"Sonneschein" and "Dino" contain the steady, train-like rhythms of Neu! while much of the rest of the record is immersed in the more meditative electronics Roedelius and Dieter Moebius traffic in with their main gig. Zuckerzeit was released the same year as Musik von Harmonia (1974), and I guess it shows: I bought both records on the same day and have found myself playing them back to back ever since.

• Harmonia: Watussi
• Cluster: Caramba

Talk Talk: Laughing Stock
Talk Talk's last two albums (this, and before it, Spirit of Eden) are so perfectly realized that it's hard for me to find a way of even articulating what's so great about them. Both were reissued this year, along with Mark Hollis's one and only solo album (at the top of my to-buy list right now). I like Spirit of Eden just a hair more, but I think it has more to do with hearing it first—the two albums are of a piece. Both are spacious, emotive, tightly wound yet sounding loose and easy at the same time. No single song excels apart from the records as wholes—they are just ripples in a larger, perfectly evocative sea of music.

• Talk Talk: Ascension Day

Harry Belafonte: Calypso
In sharp contrast to all the moody ambient I listened to this year, one of my very favorite acquisitions of 2011 was Harry Belafonte's debut album from 1956. "Day-O" is the recognizable hit, and perhaps therefore the least compelling song on the record due to its oversaturation of the last 65 years. It's really all about the rest of the record—folky numbers that, for the most part, lack the boisterousnous you might associate with Belafonte due to a song like "Jump in the Line" (not on this album). The songs are all jams, in any case, including the ones that have a socially conscious undertone. I return to this album over and over, the same way I do my Les Paul or Doris Day greatest hits, Elis & Tom, or anything by Harry Nilsson—not because it shares anything specific in common with those albums, but because it is a pure joy to listen to.

• Harry Belafonte: Dolly Dawn

Caetano Veloso and Gal Costa: Domingo
Recorded before the tropicalia movement really took off, Domingo is a straightforward bossa nova album much more in line with Antonio Carlos Jobim and Elis Regina's Elis & Tom than with the more adventurous material Veloso and Costa would tackle just a year or so later. I give you that preamble so I can follow up with this: who cares? Domingo is a lovely album, perfect for quiet evenings and early mornings. No single song rises above or falls below the others—it's a consistently pleasurable 30 minutes of wonderful bossa nova.

• Caetano Veloso and Gal Costa: Coracão Vagabundo

Dillard & Clark: Through the Morning, Through the Night
A couple of years ago I picked up Dillard & Clark's 1968 debut, The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark, and it has stood up as one of my favorite albums ever since. Their one and only follow-up is quite good, though perhaps not quite as good as the first. The band feels less focused—maybe it's all the covers, or the addition of Doug Dillard's girlfriend, Donna Washburn, who takes lead vocals on a fine cover of "Rocky Top." Regardless, Gene Clark's songcraft, overlaid by Dillard's bluegrass wizardry, shines through.

• Dillard & Clark: Through the Morning, Through the Night

Brian Eno: Ambient 1: Music for Airports
After finally getting into Brian Eno a few years ago and realizing I'd discovered an artist who I knew would have rewarding record after rewarding record, I made the decision to take it slow going deeper into his discography (and to try, more or less, to take it chronologically). Thus I've spent the last few years digging on his earlier rock albums (for what it's worth: Here Come the Warm Jets > Another Green World > Before and After Science >> Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy). Just this month I finally bought my first ambient Eno album. Guess what: it's awesome. One more thing: I'm such an idiot for waiting until my 30s to get into Brian Eno.

• Brian Eno: 2/1

Cat Stevens: Tea for the Tillerman
I wrestled with whether or not to count this as "new to me," since much of it was already familiar. Oh well—it's a great record. I talked more about it here.

• Cat Stevens: Into White

My Listening Hours: April

A little bit late, but here's a quick rundown of every new-to-me album I picked up in April, in the order I acquired them.

Low: Drums and Guns
Continuing the rehabilitation of my opinion of Low's output of the last ten years, I've come to the realization that, in fact, the band has never made a bad album. My bad for ever assuming that they had. Unfortunately when Drums and Guns originally came out the only songs I heard from it were "Pretty People," "Breaker," and "Hatchet"; I didn't particularly like the first and third of those tracks, and the video for the second kinda annoyed me. Since I'd already (mistakenly!) written them off after The Great Destroyer, it was easy to pass this over. Forgive me for my errors! Though it's not my favorite album by Low, it's still quite good, and it stands apart from the rest of their output for its anger and dread. It's final third in particular is really magical.

 

Rene Hell: The Terminal Symphony
Hell is another entrant in the quickly filling "nu-kosmiche" genre of Krautrock-influenced synth/ambient (see also Oneohtrixpoint Never, Emeralds, and Arp, among others). The Terminal Symphony is Hell's second full length and is quite good. Like Arp's The Soft Wave (my favorite album of last year), it does a good job of mixing textures, melodies, and dynamics, making something that is easy to get lost in but providing enough hooks to climb your way out.

• Rene Hell: Lighthouse Marvel

Cluster: Zuckerzeit
Harmonia: Musik von Harmonia
Speaking of, here are the two biggest culprits inspiring the wave of acts like Rene Hell et al. I own and love other albums by both of these groups (well, technically it's the same group in both cases—Harmonia is just Cluster+Michael Rother), and have been meaning to get these albums for at least a year. After watching the excellent BBC documentary about Krautrock, I was inspired to download both posthaste. I've been listening to both ever since, often one after the other, to the point that I don't totally know where one ends and the other begins. They're both excellent.

• Cluster: Caramba
• Harmonia: Sonnenschein

Caetano Veloso & Gal Costa: Domingo
I had no idea this record even existed until I happened across a link to it earlier this month. Apparently the album was made prior to either Veloso or Costa's solo debuts; it's basically a samba record not too far off from the sound of, say, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Elis Regina's Tom & Elis (one of my favorite records of all time). This isn't as good as that, but then again that's a pretty high bar. This is still quite nice.

• Caetano Veloso & Gal Costa: Coração Vagabundo

Low: C'mon
I promise everything I said about Low above is true, but nevertheless—like I said yesterday—C'mon is their best album in ten years, and is so far in the running for my favorite album of the year.

 

Music Diary: Sunday

7:00 am: Driving to Pasadena for the Rose Bowl flea market, we listen to our favorite radio show, Chuck Cecil's The Swingin' Years—a show that has been on the air in one place or another for the last fifty-five years. Anyone who lives in L.A. and isn't listening to this show every Saturday and Sunday morning (on 88.1), you're missing out.

   

8:52am: Sitting at the Rose Bowl food court feeding Coop yogurt while my brilliant wife scopes more booths,  there's a DJ playing smooth soul jams.

9:30 am: Driving home. I put on Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam. We make it two songs before agreeing that it's too harsh for our moods right now, so we pull out Clinging to a Scheme again—an album that has become a go-to for long drives and other forms of downtime. We're home by track 7 or so.

•  Animal Collective: Unsolved Mysteries

11:00 am: Once again listening to all the country music I downloaded in the last week. I'm slowly rating every song and condensing the playlist down to my very favorites, which while eventually be part of a bigger playlist on the blog toward the end of the month.

1:30 pm: Hanging at the house with family, I put on the Top Rated playlist and treat it like a radio. Here's what it played:

• The Zombies: I Want You Back
• Elvis Costello: Oliver's Army
• U.S. Maple: Go to Braises
• Talking Heads: First Week/Last Week…Carefree
• Don Ho: The Windward Side
• Busy Signals: Birds on High
• The Walker Brothers: Make it Easy On Yourself
• Nina Simone: Spring is Here 

2:10 pm: We pause it and go on a family trip to the bookstore, then the park. At the bookstore, swear to god, they're playing the John Williams score to Star Wars.

4:23 pm: Back at home, unease:

• Beach House: Heart of Chamber
• Tammy Wynette: Stand By Your Man
• Dungen: Panda
• Fleet Foxes: Oliver James
• Merle Haggard: Sing a Sad Song
• The Pernice Brothers: Chicken Wire
• Belle & Sebastian: For the Price of a Cup of Tea

4:50 pm: My wife leaves to go attend a reading. I'm pointed via Twitter to the bandcamp page for a person/group/entity called Pye Corner Audio, who have a new album called Black Mill Tapes vol. 2. At first I think it's some old, obscure thing—a peer of Raymond Scott or some such—that's been newly unearthed; but the more the record goes on the more apparent it is that this is something made in 2011. Not that it matters, it's pretty good. 

5:55 pm: Via tumblr, someone has provided a link to a 1967 album by Gal Costa and Caetano Veloso, which predates both their solo debuts and is basically a samba record, a la my favorite Elis & Tom. It's pretty great. Coop and I listen to it while he has a little post-bath playtime/wind-down.

• Caetano Veloso & Gal Costa: Um Dia

6:53 pm: Coop asleep and wife not yet home, I put on Zuckerzeit. While I'm listening I make a new playlist that gathers all the krautrock in my collection that skews electronic. I sort it by year so I can perhaps trace the evolution of the sound. Doing so, however, only underlines what's still missing from my collection (earlier Cluster albums, to start; and post-Autobahn Kraftwerk).

7:45 pm: I'm about to start in on Musik von Harmonia—though I probably shouldn't keep playing these two albums back-to-back; I'll never be able to remember which is which—but when my wife returns I switch it to the Caetano & Gal album, because I know she'll dig it. We listen to it as we make dinner, then settle in for some Amazing Race. Happy Sunday.

Music Diary: Friday

7:00 am: My morning playlist was determined by all the people I follow on tumblr. Ever since I learned how to press play once to let all the mp3s on my dashboard play, I've been doing this a lot more. So, this is what tumblr was into as of 7:00 am this morning—quite poppy!

• Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen: Kentucky Hills of Tennessee
• Joni Mitchell: California
• The Ramones: My Back Pages
• The Shins: Australia
• Jimmy Eat World: The Middle
• Britney Spears: Toxic
• The Last Poets: Uncle Sam's Lament
• Kylie Minogue: Can't Get You Out of My Head
• Beastie Boys: So Watcha Want (Soul Assassin Remix)
• Grinderman: Palaces of Montezuma (Barry Adamson Remix)

7:34 am: I switch to Andrew Bird, Noble Beast—an album that has become a standby, play-it-anytime sort of album. 

• Andrew Bird: Oh No

8:40 am: Zuckerzeit for the morning commute…

9:20 am: …which, in my office, segues seamlessly into Musik  von Harmonia… which segues seamlessly into Rene Hell. By lunchtime by day picks up so that I once again don't return to any music until I'm home from work in the evening. 

6:00 pm: While I'm feeding Cooper dinner I can hear sound whispering out of my computer; I check it out and see that it's set at its lowest possible volume. In fact it never stopped playing after I'd turned on Noble Beast in the morning. Here we are 10 1/2 hours later and we're still squarely in the "A"s. In fact we're still in the "An"s—the last two tracks of Antonio Carlos Jobim and Elis Regina's Elis & Tom. Apparently it took all day to get through a couple more Andrew Bird albums, the Andrews Sisters, almost the entire Animal Collective discography, and the Antlers. I turn the volume up and let Elis & Tom finish out (it's one of my all-time favorites, after all), and it moves on to April March, Paris in April. We get through about two-thirds of the album before turning it off to veg out to some TiVo'd American Idol. That's it for music. We're zoned after a long week with late nights for both of us.

• Antonio Carlos Jobim & Elis Regina: Chovendo Na Roseira
• April March: Chick Habit

 

My Listening Hours: Missed Connections

Usually I follow up "the rest" with a brief rundown of "the worst"—albums I picked up that I wound up actively disliking. Happily for me, that didn't really happen in the last three months. That said, there were plenty of albums that I just didn't connect with. Maybe it's their fault, maybe it's mine. Maybe they're actually mediocre; maybe I just need to hear them in another mindset, some other month or year. I'd still recommend most or all of these albums, with reservations and/or personal caveats that may not apply to you.

David Bowie: Low
For whatever reason, I seem only to connect with Low—supposedly Bowie's apex—on an intellectual level. It's certainly a daring record, thanks to the Eno-aided second, instrumental half. But I'm just not connecting. The first, more "pop" side, has a couple of high points (most notably "Sound and Vision"—a song no Of Montreal fan should hear, lest their illusions be shattered), but there are just as many tracks that are kinda ho-hum. The instrumental half, too, has its peaks, though I don't think it ever rises above Eno's best work. Low isn't a bad record—actually, it's a good record!—but it fell flat in the face of the expectations I'd built up for it.

• David Bowie: Sound and Vision

Emitt Rhodes: s/t
I stumbled across Emitt Rhodes with no prior awareness of him whatsoever. The album was recorded in 1970, apparently in Rhodes' own garage with Rhodes playing every single instrument and backing vocal. The blog I picked the record up from claimed the result was something as transcendent as Oddessey and Oracle or Pet Sounds, which it clearly isn't. Rather, Rhodes sounds like Paul McCartney's star pupil. The pop craft at work here is near-flawless, though I think the record lacks that intangible quality that takes it to the next level. I can't hear any soul behind Rhodes' lyrics or in his delivery. When he sings "live til you die," I kind of want to slap him. It gives you a renewed appreciation for how much feeling McCartney could eke out of a platitude. But! At his best, as on the opener, "With My Face on the Floor," Rhodes' songs can sound like perfect little McCartney b-sides, which I mean as a compliment. 

• Emitt Rhodes: With My Face on the Floor

Karen Dalton: In My Own Time
Karen Dalton, on the other hand, has the opposite problem from Rhodes. On her second album, 1971's In My Own Time, Dalton's voice is nearly all ache and emotion—to the point that it often overwhelms the song itself. Like Rhodes, Dalton is able to hit a few unquestionable home runs, but her album becomes a bit tedious by the end.

• Karen Dalton: Something on Your Mind

Josh Ritter: The Animal Years
I picked up The Animal Years at the same time as The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter, and for that reason this album might have suffered a little. It's a slower, less fun—almost turgid—record compared to its followup. There are no real low points, and a number of high points—the first four songs are solid pop songs, and the epic "Thin Blue Flame" shows an ambition not seen on the later record. But somewhere around the midpoint the whole thing starts to feel, not exactly boring, but inessential. Still, when Ritter is at his best he can really knock it out.

• Josh Ritter: Wolves

The National: Alligator and Boxer
The National are one of those bands that I just never dove for. I've had a handful of mp3s for a few years, and I like them, but I always had the sneaking suspicion that they were... boring. Hearing both Alligator and Boxer, that sense is somehow dispelled and reinforced at the same time. On the one hand—especially with Boxer—each time I put it on I get the sense that everything is about to click. I hear something new, lock in on a lyric I hadn't heard before, pick up on some musical detail (by the way, the drummer for the National? Secret weapon). But by album's end I invariably feel deadened by Matt Berringer's insistence on using the same four notes for every single melody. I think it didn't help, too, that I got these albums at the exact same time (in fact, through the generosity of a friend, I got everything by the National at once—these two plus Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers, Cherry Tree, and Virginia, the latter two I still haven't even listened to yet). The National strikes me as a group you need to take slow, song by song, over the course of many focused listenings for many days or weeks or even months. I haven't given them that kind of attention. Each time I listen to Boxer, or a song from either album pops up on shuffle, I think this will be the week that I give it that attention. But it hasn't happened yet.

• The National: Secret Meeting (from Alligator)
• The National: Mistaken for Strangers (from Boxer)

Jorge Ben: África Brasil
I've got a song by Jorge Ben, "Pais Tropical," that is absolutely one of my favorite songs ever. It's like Os Mutantes, only better than just about anything Os Mutantes did. But I didn't have an album by Ben. I'd heard this was one of his classics, so when I saw it a couple months ago I snapped it up. For what it is—tropicalia with an afrofunk edge—it's good. But it's not what I wanted. This album comes from 1976, about seven or eight years later, I think, than the era of Ben I'd most like to investigate. 

• Jorge Ben: Camisa 10 da Gávea

Amon Düül II: Phallus Dei
My previous review of this record pretty much said it all. Phallus Dei has its moments, but most the time the band finds a way to irritate in the middle of what might otherwise be a great track. Yeti, the only other album I've heard by them, tempers the irritating moments better than here (though it doesn't eradicate them).

• Amon Düül II: Luzifers Ghilom

Grizzly Bear: Yellow House
Grizzly Bear is one of those bands I feel I'm supposed to love. People I know whose tastes run similar to mine flip for this band, and this album in particular. But I just can't feel it. I've had a handful of songs by the band for a long time—I like them, don't love them. But I was told they were an "album band," so when their discography showed up on eMusic I finally took the plunge. Nothing has really changed: I still think they're okay but not game-changing. I'm curious to hear the new album when it comes out, to see where they go next—so I'm told, it might be a direction I'll like more.

• Grizzly Bear: Knife