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.
By happenstance I heard a nice little run of songs on shuffle that led me to this idea. Enjoy the mix: 35 minutes of circling rythms at varying speeds and degrees of complexity.
Usually around the three-month mark of the year I do my quarterly listening report. Well, I totally missed that one this time around. Been busy, as you might suspect. I do hope to do some kind of roundup, maybe not as detailed as usual.
Meanwhile I've been a whole lot less interested in what I'm listening to and a whole lot more interested in what Cooper's listening to. He's three months old, as of Thursday. So perhaps we ought to do a different kind of quarterly report.
As best I can tell, Coop's favorite song of ALL TIME is the theme to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. He gets immeasurable pleasure when I sing it to him, and lately has tried his hand at singing along. He's got the words right; all he lacks is rhythm and tunefulness.
For a while there Coop's fussier moments were alleviated by my singing the Lovin' Spoonful's "Rain on the Roof" or the Everly Brothers' "Bye Bye Love." Lately though one of us, I'm not sure who, has grown tired of those songs.
Coop's latest favorite—rivaling the Morricone—is Simon & Garfunkel's "The Boxer." We discovered this when some moaner on American Idol took it upon himself to butcher the song into a kind of tortured Nickleballad. Still, the Idol version did enough to put the song in our heads and we started singing it to Cooper. He seems to especially like it when we simulate the booming drums in between all the "Lie-la-lie"s.
We've got an unspoken rule—actually we've spoken this rule a couple of times—that we don't really want to subject ourselves to actual children's music until we absolutely must. And yet we both skirt that rule in strangely contrarian ways. My wife likes to sing "Surfin' Bird," which is stupidly hypnotic and ever repeating and usually hilarious. I like to sing "Witch Doctor" ("Ooh-eee, ooh-ah-ah, ting-tang, walla-walla bing bang"). Somehow these songs are more palatable than Old McDonald.
Then there are all the fragments of songs and stray lines that seem to crop up with some frequency. When he has gas I like get all Fugee and say "How many farts do we rip on the daily?". When he's got a particularly dirty diaper my Baha Wife inevitably asks "Who let the poops out? Coop, Coop, Coop." When he's being kind of a punk I tell him he's getting "buddy buddy buddy all up in my face."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.