Emily's Albums A to Z

Listened: Friday September 3

If you love the early Beatles, Live At The BBC will fulfill all your harmonic needs. I appreciate that this album lets you into what the Beatles must have sounded like on the Reeperbahn – American rock and roll, loud and rough, but adeptly played (assuming they weren’t inebriated).

They cover all the important rock writers from the 50s and early 60s, but I wish they had done more Buddy Holly. Crying, Waiting, Hoping is a standout. On a related note, I wish George had simply done more singing on these songs too. The few he leads are great, impressive considering he was just a baby at the time.

Paul knocks it out of the park with The Honeymoon Song and John’s treatment of Phil Spector’s To Know Her is To Love Her is another favorite. Wonder if it would have blown their minds to know that they’d be working with Phil later on Let It Be?

Listened: Thursday September 2

I love that Moz has released a live album, but unless you can see him whipping the mic cord around and interacting with the audience, it’s just not quite the same! So much of his performance badassery is physical movement and flirting with the audience.

His stage presence is what I imagine Frank Sinatra’s to have been. Very professional, but at the same time much more interactive than “cool” bands usually are. Many bands don’t seem comfortable enough to relax and accept being a professional musician. They want to project an image that they’re just normal people who happen to be singing or they’re too insecure about being cool enough that they spend their time being aloof. With Morrissey, there is none of that. He knows he’s a goddamn singer, in the best way.

I’m glad he did a cover of Redondo Beach – it’s so appropriate for his style I didn’t realize at first it was a cover; I thought it was a b-side I didn’t know about.

I remember back in 2002 before Morrissey’s modern comeback a friend and I kind of randomly decided to go see him in Fresno and then in Berkeley. To this day, the Fresno show was the most surprising show I have ever been to. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t what I got. I knew his singles from the radio, but I didn’t realize how crazy his shows can be, what with the stage crashers trying to get a piece of him. Also, it was one of the more diverse crowds I have ever been in, especially odd in a place like Fresno. There were straight people, gay people, old people, young people, goths, punks, nondescripts, white, black, Asian, Latino (the cult of Morrissey is writ large amongst Latinos)… everyone was there.

I’ve seen him quite a few times since, but nothing has matched those memorable first shows. Morrissey is the man, and I wish I had known that sooner.

Listened: Thursday September 2

Bob is a welcome breath of fresh air after Lifted.

Despite being really fond of the original versions of Bob’s songs, all the jazzed up versions on Live 1975 are fun in a different way. It Ain’t Me, Babe, I Shall Be Released, and Just Like a Woman in particular are transformed very positively. This is my first exposure to the songs from the Desire album, which I don’t own. I particularly love One More Cup of Coffee and Romance in Durango.

Like the audience member who shouts his appreciation during the show, I also love the violin player (who supposedly was discovered for the tour just walking down the street with her violin case). Joan and Bob do a better job singing together than in the early days, though to be honest, still not excellently.

I have fond memories of drunkenly singing along loudly to this album in Woody’s car as he was driving us home from a party. I usually don’t sing loudly in front of other people, but he was either lucky enough or unfortunate enough to witness it!

Listened: Thursday September 2

Because I love I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning so much, I’m loathe to say it, but Lifted made me want to kill myself. The first few tracks especially. It’s just too depressing for listening at a job that doesn’t uplift me. Listening to it twice through was like self-torture.

Sorry, Conor (and all the hipsters out there who now will consider me a “normal”).

Listened Thursday September 2

There are some earworms on The Life Pursuit (Funny Little Frog, For The Price Of A Cup Of Tea) but B&S’s heyday has passed, I think. Nice melodies and the occasional odd lyric show up here, but the spark is gone.

Listened: Thursday September 2

Supergrass is in a rare category for the more modern bands in my collection: I don’t own all their albums in chronological order. I own I Should Coco and I own Life on Other Planets. I skipped In It For The Money and Supergrass.

The change from I Should Coco to Life on Other Planets is astounding. The ‘grarse are no longer bratty and precocious, but what one might call glam. It feels like they’ve become Bowie or T-Rex. Not that it’s a bad thing, merely jarring. Perhaps that’s the natural evolution of things – pop punk to something more grand. Ask Green Day.

Listened: Thursday September 2

I get the impression that all those people who fell in love with White Ladder didn’t buy any of Mr. Gray’s later albums. They’re missing out.

The later records have more “real” instrumentation instead of the drum machines (all those copies of White Ladder he sold allow him to hire real musicians he couldn’t afford before, presumably). So the music sounds less ghetto, but is also not quite as endearing, since it loses some of its uniqueness in the process.

I love the sad undertone to all the songs on Life In Slow Motion; poignant, but never depressing. Also, I enjoy how he writes songs that could be addressing a lover, friend, parent, or child (see Ain’t No Love); one can hear the message in any number of ways upon repeated listens.

Listened: Thursday September 2

In some ways, Let It Be is pioneering album in the “skits” style (a style, as I noted before, of which I am not generally a fan). No matter, the Beatles can get away with it. Two of Us is an underrated song, and one of my favorites.

I haven’t heard the “naked” version, so I don’t know any better than to like all the Phil Spector production layered on these recordings. Once I get used to how something sounds, it’s hard to get me to think it sounds better some other unfamiliar way, but I guess I should check it out for the sake of comparison. In general I like the Wall of Sound style, though.

Listened: Wednesday September 1

I think I’ve found my antidote to Belle & Sebastian not being as up to snuff as they used to be. Thy name is Camera Obscura.

Let’s Get Out Of This Country is a new acquisition, so I haven’t absorbed it much yet, but the good ingredients are all here: beautiful instrumentation, Scots, clever lyrics, cooing female vocals.

Listened: Wednesday September 1

John Lennon was a major part of the soundtrack of my high school and college years. Basically the time when I thought I was a hippie (though I really wasn’t, if you get right down to it). I own all of his solo albums on vinyl, but Lennon Legend captures the “best of” pretty well.

I love the way his solo catalog so perfectly encompasses the Seventies. Still kind of Beatles-esque at the beginning, but very disco flavored at the end. My favorite song of John’s solo period is Instant Karma, though I hate the quality of the vocals. They’re so badly recorded. A close second is Jealous Guy – the piano is great and I really believe it: he didn’t mean to hurt you.