Emily's Albums A to Z

Listened: Wednesday November 9

I have a secret love of roots reggae. For some reason I can’t help singing along to “Callin’ Rastafariiiiii, many are called but few shall be chosen” and “HalleluJAHHHHHH” when Culture sings with such great harmonies.I see why so many non-Jamaicans become Rastas; it’s so easy to be drawn into any ideology if the music is good. The production values are also quite good, especially for reggae at the time. It’s obvious these guys are decent musicians and care about the sound quality.

I don’t remember where I read about Culture’s classic album Two Sevens Clash being rereleased (probably Spin magazine), but as soon as I heard some samples, I had to have it. I have great memories of listening to Get Ready to Ride the Lion to Zion while driving to Zion National Park; it was a great juxtaposition to see the amazing Utah landscape while hearing reggae music and lion roar samples.

Listened: Wednesday November 9

Similar to Together, I liked Twin Cinema more than I thought I would. It’s so poppy and catchy I was drawn in whether I wanted to be or not. There’s also great 60s inspired guitars on tracks like Jackie Dressed in Cobras. Falling Through Your Clothes could easily be a Shins song. Sing Me Spanish Techno is my favorite track; it’s so pretty and addictive.

However, I find Together to be a stronger album, which is good – they’ve improved with every album, apparently!

Listened: Wednesday November 9

My recent true-love rediscovery of The Stone Roses convinced me that I should buy Turns Into Stone. If I love them so much why don’t I make sure I have all their songs?

I absolutely love the alternate version of Elephant Stone that opens Turns Into Stone. The extended intro, sixties guitar, and weird clashy drum effect (or is he actually hitting a trashcan?) takes it even higher than the better-known version on their debut. Mersey Paradise also rocks my world and One Love sounds to me like it could be on Second Coming.

Since I’ve relatively recently gushed about how much I love The Stone Roses album, I’ll spare you too much more, but I also have to note that most of these songs are clearly not quite as good as the A-sides from the properly released album. Still – they get me singing along to something as ridiculous as “Ring-a-ding-ding, I’m going down” so it can’t be that bad.

Listened: Tuesday November 8

Turn on the Bright Lights is forever linked with Is This It and my early 20s. Both albums were part of the post 9-11 “I Love New York” spirit and music scene. NYC with its refrain “New York cares” and its nostalgic sway encapsulates this well.

I know I made pithy comments in my review of Antics about the Joy Division love Interpol so obviously has, but honestly I think it’s only in some of the singing Paul Banks does. When he gets excitable or excessively monotonic, yes, it’s definitely there. But when he really sings (which admittedly is less often than the former) he sounds more like a normal indie crooner. I wouldn’t say the majority of the music is very Joy Divisiony either; it’s only as Joy Divisiony as any indie rock band is these days, which is a little, since their influence through the last 25 years has been so pervasive in general.

I guess I’ve changed my mind a bit in the last 18 months, or have become a bit less simplistic in my analysis, anyway.

Listened: Tuesday July 19

True Love Waits was my introduction to Chris O’Riley back in the Radiohead heyday (2003ish). Chris does great translations of both older and newer Radiohead songs for piano. I would say his triumph actually is Hold Me To This, due to the fact that that album attacks some of the very difficult latter-day songs very successfully, but True Love Waits both is challenging and familiar, due to its mixture of complex songs (Everything In Its Right Place, Knives Out) and older, more straightforward rock songs (Black Star, Thinking About You). I think I like his version of Black Star as much as the original, and I love the extra flourishes he adds to a song as simple as Thinking About You.

I have great memories of hearing him perform his versions of these songs several times in my early 20s. However, I think I may have ruined True Love Waits recently. At the end of my last job, when I spent many hours documenting my work processes, music helped me concentrate, but it couldn’t have lyrics or it was too distracting for writing. So most of my music was out. I ended up hearing True Love Waits quite a few times by necessity and timing of the project, and therefore it has some less than pleasant connotations now. I hope with time those will fade!

Listened: Tuesday July 19

Ray LaMontagne’s Trouble was probably one of my last listening-station related buys at Tower Records. It was cheap and it was one of those albums I fell in love with after only a minute or so of listening to its first track, Trouble. The music, lyrics, and vocals are immediately gripping; it begged me to buy it.

Jolene makes me gasp for breath every time I hear it. What else can I do after a song starts with “Cocaine flame in my bloodstream”? The further heartbreak simplicity of:

I found myself face down in the ditch
Booze on my hair
Blood on my lips
A picture of you, holding a picture of me
in the pocket of my blue jeans
Still don’t know what love means

Burn is also arresting, with lyrics like “Yes and try to ignore, all this blood on the floor. It’s just this heart on my sleeve that’s a bleeding”.

Ray tiptoes along the right side of the line between overwrought and believably anguished. This album is made for wallowing or remembering what it’s like to wallow, with both sorrow and aching beauty.

Listened: Monday July 18

Trainspotting was one of the important movies of my high school life. It was the first R-rated movie I went to that I didn’t have to be accompanied to or lie about my age to enter (though I didn’t do that very often anyway).

At the time, our “sit around and do nothing” movie was A Clockwork Orange (we were a strange bunch of teenage girls), and Trainspotting owes a debt to it, so its influence on our lives kind of makes sense. It was one of the first movies I remember seeing with a very “short attention span” style – cuts to a new scene were quick and abrupt, but it worked very well. The worst toilet in Scotland, the dead baby, the drug-withdrawal hallucinations of the dead baby, the clean friend Tommy going to pieces and dying of AIDS, I remember it all very clearly, even though I haven’t seen it in many years.

The soundtrack brings many scenes right back – Brian Eno‘s Deep Blue Day immediately takes me into that toilet with Renton. I’m so glad I associate Lust For Life with a Hard Day’s Night-esque opening sequence rather than with cruise ships. When I hear Perfect Day, I have visions of beautiful overdoses running through my head. As a recent convert to the cult of New Order, listening to this album again, I remembered how much I enjoyed Temptation and how much more it means to me now that I have more context. I also love owning a non-album Pulp track, as anything Pulp does anywhere is worth the effort to acquire. And Underworld! This soundtrack was probably my first introduction to the joys of Underworld; that alone is so important.

It’s not overstating things to say both the movie and the soundtrack changed my life.

Listened: Monday July 18

It’s very 90s sounding, but Trailer really takes me back. I don’t remember how I got introduced to Ash back in high school – I think it was because they used to play their early songs on Live 105 – but I’m glad I did.

They’re about the same age I am, so that was pretty cool to hear  people that young on Live 105 at the time, since a lot of the bands they played were elder statemens/women of Modern Rock. I can hear the Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana influences pretty clearly in the guitars, as well as the Clash and the Ramones in the lyrics.

I’m also glad they’re not above having lyrics like “Bang, shang-a-lang”; they make it work.

Listened: Monday July 18

Two Door Cinema Club is another lovely Coachella discovery. They sound a lot like an Irish Phoenix or Futureheads. I appreciate that I can hear the accent yet can also understand most of the lyrics (as much as I love a band like Glasvegas, their accents are quite intelligible sometimes).

Recently they did a show in San Francisco, and unfortunately I missed it, but heard from friends that they are amazing live, which makes sense. I imagine there’s lots of dancing, drinking, and singing!

Listened: Friday July 15

Woody’s brother Glen gave me a couple of New Pornographers albums for Christmas, 2010. Due to the project, I hadn’t really listened to this album at all, and I was sort of wary anyway, since the band is kind of universally known as cool and good in rock music circles. Sometimes my teenage suspicion that “anything a lot of people like is probably not that interesting” comes back. I was super-wrong in this case.

Together is a very catchy and well-crafted explosion of power pop. Plus it’s constructed with one of my favorite rock music things – men and women singing together (see Jefferson Airplane, Fleetwood Mac, Arcade Fire). Every song sounds very skillfully engineered and cohesive. I’m always amazed when the album ends; I just want it to continue!

Give The New Pornographers a try – I feel lame for putting them off for so long!