Listened: Tuesday June 8
I was introduced to Elf Power by my friend Audrey back in college. They are a huge collective of hippie musicians who play dreamy folk music. Creatures was another album I had bought and was sitting around for a while, not really being listened to. However, I will probably listen to it more now – it’s reasonably high energy for hippie/folk music, and therefore good for working.
Listened: Tuesday June 8
I acquired Court and Spark on vinyl in college, when I was collecting lots of cheap classic records. I listened to it once or twice and taped it on side B of a tape that had Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours on side A. I listened to side A repeatedly for many years and never heard side B. Until one day I let it run. I was totally blown away by this album like I had never been years before when I first heard it. Maybe I needed to get more life experience to really hear it for what it is.
I’m not surprised that Joni Mitchell is a painter – her songs are just like paintings to me. People’s Parties and Just Like This Train tell you all the details of a setting to help construct the scene in your mind. Free Man in Paris takes you somewhere else when you’re stuck to your desk – since it’s about the joy of going traveling and not being stuck to your desk.
In terms of sheer pleasure generated, this record was one of the best finds of my vinyl diving days.
Listened: Monday June 7
I am a huge Pulp fan, but I don’t own many of their pre-His & Hers albums. Oddly enough, they tend to be really pricey, even used, maybe because of their rarity in this country. Countdown is a collection of the best songs from those years.
Pulp used to be a lot weirder in the earlier years, believe it or not, and Jarvis Cocker also sang in a lower register. Some of the much older songs are very creepy and almost gothic in nature and subject matter – dogs, stalkers, the mark of the devil, suffocation…the seeds of the later classic Pulp storytelling prowess and ironic humor are there, but they haven’t come together quite like the more modern albums yet.
I do love a lot of these songs though, especially the simpler romantic ones like My Lighthouse, Don’t You Know, and Wishful Thinking. This album never ceases to get me singing along.
Listened: Monday June 7
After Core, I can’t tell you how welcome the opening strains of Ramble Tamble were to my ears. Cosmo’s saved me from my Core funk and got me back into a productive work mode. More importantly, it got me back into thinking that the project was actually a good idea!
Cosmo’s has so many of my favorite CCR songs: Lookin’ Out My Back Door, Up Around The Bend, Who’ll Stop The Rain, I Heard It Through The Grapevine, Long As I Can See The Light. The musicianship on this album is really top notch too, with a lot of good grooves and long jams.
Listened: Monday June 7
Um, I used to like this crap? That is what I was thinking through much of Core. This is the first album of the project that has elicited a violent reaction. About two songs from the end I was wanting it to be over, really badly.
I hadn’t listened to this for many years, and I knew I wasn’t a huge fan back in the day anyway, but I wasn’t expecting to realize how much I think it sucks now. How times change.
Unfortunate that I also included Purple in the project, but thankfully it will be a while before I have to hear it.
Listened: Friday June 4
The Coral is another album I got in the used section for very cheap. I had once heard it was good, so I bought it. I hadn’t ever actually listened to it all the way through until now.
I didn’t hate it, but it seemed very referential, like they were wanting really badly to have been alive when there were real hippies about. The singer sounds like a cross between the Zombies and Jim Morrison and musically they are pretty heavy handed with the Doors-like organ.
Listened: Friday June 4
Contra is one of those rare albums that hits you upside the head the first time you hear it. Vampire Weekend did that to me with their first album, and to have it happen a second time is unheard of.
The head-smack starts from the opening line: “In December drinking horchata, I’d look psychotic in a balaclava.” I have had this line haunt me obsessively in my sleep, and I have no clue why. But it won’t leave once it gets in there!
All the African-rhythms-by-way-of-Paul-Simon are still here (plus bonus Vocoder and M.I.A. sample this time). Some of the yelps and vocalizations are so weird that you ask yourself why you like them, but you like them anyway.
What’s more, the nutso intellectual references are also still here; on the last album it was the Oxford Comma, now they are namechecking FONTS – 96 point Futura to be exact.
Even the album art is in on the same action – again, some ultra-modern but simultaneously ultra-retro photo.
I did not expect to be struck by ear-crack twice… but I was, I really was.
Listened: Friday June 4
Sufjan Stevens has taken on a huge project: doing an album for each state in the union. He started with Michigan – his home state – and Illinois is his second album in the project.
There are songs on this album about John Wayne Gacy, Abraham Lincoln, the Cubs, and there are many recognizable Illinois place names mentioned. All this sounds pretty boring on paper, like a history lesson, but the songs are really beautiful and the lyrics can hit you just like any other lyrics, and aren’t like a lecture.
I admire him for taking on such a ginormous project – I somehow doubt he will finish in his lifetime!
Listened: Friday June 4
Come On is an EP Elf Power released of cover songs, none of which I’m all that familiar with in their original versions. I don’t think I’ve listened to this album much in the past (it was one of those things I bought because it was a collector’s album), but I enjoyed it. Some of the recording quality isn’t very good though – super muddy in parts, and not in a good way.
Listened: Friday June 4
Kanye West seems like an asshole in real life. And he might very well be, but his records are damn funny, as well as affecting. Whether college is a worthwhile life choice is a big theme on College Dropout which is a decision many different kinds of people have considered.
When I heard All Falls Down on the radio I loved the wordplay: “Couldn’t afford a car so she named her daughter Alexus”.
The self analysis: “Always said if I rapped I’d say somethin’ significant, But now I’m rappin’ ’bout money, hoes, and rims again”
The poignant: “As kids we used to laugh, Who knew that life would move this fast?, Who knew I’d have to look at you through a glass? And look, if you tell me you ain’t did it, you ain’t did it And if you did, then that’s family business.”
But it always comes back around to a quip: “Now even though I went to college and dropped out of school quick, I always had a Ph.D.: a Pretty Huge Dick”
Also, his production is so much more appealing than most rap records. I can respect the layers of samples that come together so well on this album. They’re not there to slam you into submission, they’re there to catch your attention with their uniqueness.
Emily's Albums A to Z 