Emily's Albums A to Z

Listened: Friday March 4

Underworld always keep it fresh. They can have a 16 minute long song like Juanita/Kiteless/To Dream Of Love and I’m never bored at any of the experiments they do over that 16 minute period. And even though the lyrics are a little obtuse, the robotic voice chanting “your sun. fly. your window shattered in the wind. your coca cola sign rattling. resonator.” is so fun to sing and dance along with.

This album is 15 years old (holy crap) but Underworld never sounds retro to me.

Listened: Friday March 4

Second Coming was one of the first CDs I ever owned. I might not have even bought it; I might have stolen it from my brother. I was a little on the young side to remember their self-titled first record contemporaneously (though I love it now), so I didn’t really understand how excited people were that Second Coming came out after so many long years (5). I also got this album when I was so innocent that I don’t think I processed until now that it’s called “Second Coming” (which I always read as “This is our second album and we like religious themes”) and there’s a penis illustration on the cover right next to the word “Coming”. Har har!

The two Stone Roses albums are very different, but both have their merits. Tears could be a lost Led Zeppelin song. Second Coming is at once balladeering and funky and has righteous lyrics that are fun to sing along to (“I’m going to break right into heaven”, “love spreads her arms and waits there for the nails”, “all through the night I watch the sky”, “I’ve seen the future in the tracks of your tears”). It’s truly a classic of 90s Britpop, in a wholly different way than The Stone Roses album.

Listened: Friday March 4

Jack White’s gimmick of having an internet-wide, 24-hour, vinyl listening party for the Sea of Cowards release totally worked on me.

I had been turned off by his other non-White Stripes project, the Raconteurs, so when he came out with yet another project, The Dead Weather, I missed their first album Horehound completely. But the second I tuned in to the video of the Sea of Cowards record playing in the Third Man offices, I was hooked. I watched for hours as disembodied hands, some male and some female, flipped the record after each side ended. For some reason hearing the songs and watching it go round and round was a million times more interesting than a regular digital listening party. Even as a vinyl fan, this surprised me.

The music itself is also great. Alison and Jack scream so well together; the sexual tension is palpable. The guitars are steeped in sexy sounds too.  Some of my favorite lyrics ever are “Check your lips at the door woman, shake your hips like battleships, all the white girls trip when I sing in Sunday service.” Apparently, I need to check out Horehound!

Listened: Friday March 4

Screamadelica is one of those albums I bought because it was referenced so often in the 90s as a must-have classic British album. And it is.

It’s also one of the more obviously drug-soaked albums that I own, even more so than some of the albums from the 60s or 70s (though it might be said that back in the day the references simply could not be made as bluntly or as frequently without attracting too much attention from the wrong people). The subject matter is clear just from the song titles like Don’t Fight It Feel It, Higher Than The Sun, Inner Flight, Loaded, and I’m Comin’ Down.

The sound of Screamadelica is also nothing like any other albums I own; it’s the 60s, Britpop, house music, and soul mashed into one beautiful mud pie.

Unfortunately, some years after their peak I saw them open for another band (I don’t recall whom) and they were total crap. It was a mess and they didn’t seem into it at all. I’m sorry I was too young during their heyday; maybe they were better. Or not, if they were too rolled out of their minds!

Listened: Wednesday March 2

I only bought Saturdays = Youth because it was a cheap download and the couple of song snippets I heard I liked. Despite hearing that, I don’t think I quite grasped M83’s sound until I listened all the way through.

Basically they are a band who is very into OMD and other synthy, dreamy Eighties bands, as well as shoegaze. Despite how wrong that could go, it goes totally right. Songs like Kim & Jessie, Graveyard Girl, and Highway Of Endless Dreams are somewhat referential, yet are super catchy and stay with you. The eighties fetishism trend of the last several years can get very shallow and uninteresting, but this album is not that.

Listened: Wednesday March 2

Until I heard The Sash My Father Wore and Other Stories, I didn’t know a lot of the lyrics to Born in the USA. Ballboy’s cover of it let me in on lyrics I missed before. It’s a good song! And as everyone knows, it’s not actually very pro-America (someone should have told Ronald Reagan).

The album’s title track has a classic ballboy awesome-refrain of “You’re a big, fat,  bigoted arsehole” and Kiss Me, Hold Me and Eat Me is also a fabulously amusing song about two cannibals-in-love being afraid to kiss for fear they will eat each other (don’t worry – spoiler alert – it turns out OK).

Musically, Sash is pretty mellow (lots of acoustic guitar and cello) and not as rocking as other ballboy albums, but I still love it!

Listened: Friday February 11

A Rush of Blood To The Head is one of those albums I couldn’t wait to hear. After Parachutes, which was clearly great, but also clearly only the start of something big, I wanted to know what was next.

Obviously more experimental than Parachutes, Coldplay take more chances sonically (Politik, Whisper, Clocks) while still giving the fans of beautiful ballads their treats (In My Place, The Scientist, Green Eyes). The evolution kind of reminds me of Radiohead, albeit cuddlier (or wimpier depending upon your opinion).

Listened: Friday February 11

I saw Run Lola Run when I was in college. I remember going to downtown Berkeley several times to see it repeatedly. Part of the infectiousness of the film is rooted in the music, so it only made sense I’d pick up the soundtrack. I wouldn’t say the music is super-high-quality dance music on its own, but as a soundtrack and as a reminder of the film it works very well.

Listened: Friday February 4

Before the project I hadn’t listened to Run Come Save Me very much. It was the first CD I wanted to hear from a British rapper to see what the difference might be, but unlike Dizzee Rascal, I never got around to hearing it. It’s OK, Dizzee is better; I’m glad he was my first UK rapper.

I really enjoy this album however. The raps are very melodic and understandable, which I always appreciate. The beats and samples are cool too. I had never heard Chali 2na before (he guests on one of the songs) and his raps are awesomely infectious.

I’m not sure I’ll choose to listen to this much on my own, but I’m glad I heard it. Props.

Listened: Friday February

I’ve been waiting a long time to review Rumours. This album is one of my favorite albums ever – all those people in Rolling Stone saying how good it was all those years were right.

I bought it on vinyl during college and a tape dub of it lived in my car for years. It’s my soundtrack to mischief. Many times I’ve been driving to some big event or night out and have been singing along to it at the top of my lungs and car-dancing to it. It breathes with the feeling of late 70s excesses gone too far and the broken relationships it was born in – a perfect motivator to go out and drink and forget your troubles. It also immediately conveys the unstoppable creativity that must have been involved to bring people together who were having such problems with each other and still somehow put out such a fabulous product.

It’s a very undated album to my ears; it doesn’t telegraph “70s” in its sound. For a while I couldn’t hear Don’t Stop without thinking of Bill Clinton since that’s when I first heard it (it was one of his campaign songs) but I’ve come around to it now. I now own the Deluxe Edition (the album project convinced me I should own it on CD), which has a few extra tracks.  I was initially suspicious of the inclusion of Silver Springs in the proper album, but it fits in perfectly. I love the other Stevie songs on the bonus disc too (Think About It and Planets Of The Universe) – it seems like this was a very productive period for her, before she went off the rails.