Stuff I Listened To Last Week – 26 April 2010

Every time I listen to a record, I leave it next to the stereo. On Monday, before I go back to work, I re-file them all. Below are the contents of this week's pile.

With the Beatles
My dad picked this one thinking it was their first, because the cover has the same photo as the U.S.-only Meet the Beatles.

Bob Dlyan – Desire
Overcome by a raging desire to listen to "Hurricane", soundtrack to one of the finest uses of pop music in cinema history: the slow-motion, entering-the-pool-hall scene in Dazed and Confused. The rest of the album's OK but a little overrated, I think because it followed Blood On the Tracks, and there was still a strong residual "Dylan is back!" feeling in the air when it came out. Other killer track: "One More Cup Of Coffee".

Eluvium – Life Through Bombardment
Listened to almost the entire seven-LP set Saturday evening while brewing up a batch of chocolate oatmeal stout. Missed it by the last side of record seven.

Incidentally, I think the Grammys are stupid and I generally look down on anyone who complains about not winning/getting nominated for one, but in this case I took exception. How does this set not get nominated for Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package? Because they can't afford to send out a bunch of free ones, that's how. And probably because it's vinyl only. Still, highway robbery, man.

Envy – Insomniac Doze
Finally watched the Transfovista DVD in its entirety. Pretty exhausting.

Isis – Panopticon
Odd though this may sound, one of my favourite records for reading a book. Can't really explain why.

M83 – Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts

Mono – You Are There
Mono's a frustrating act, because I like their sound, but you really don't need more than one of their albums, two tops. I have like five or so. Totally unnecessary. And yet they've got a new one out and I kind of want it. It's a triple live set with an orchestra. Hard to resist.

Willie Nelson – Country Willie

Joanna Newsom – Have One On Me
Completely impenetrable. I've started listening to it a half dozen times, finished it maybe once, still can't get a handle on it. Sprawling. Absolutely the least background album I've heard in a long time. Demands attention. Demands work.

R.E.M. – Up

The Rolling Stones Now!, Out Of Our Heads, December's Children (And Everybody's)
I've really been into these early Stones records lately. Remarkable hit-to-miss ratio.

Space Needle – Voyager

Zola Jesus – The Spoils
She's got a new EP just out and it's mind-bendingly awesome. Go buy it and tell all your friendss that you're way more neo-goth than they are. Seriously, it's fantastic.

Radioactive Goldfish – "L.S.D. Is the Bomb"

I think one of my favourite things that happens while digging through the bins of a used record store is when I come across some weird-looking record I've never heard of that's just too cool to pass up. This is one such record.

I found this one upstairs at Louisiana Music Factory in downtown New Orleans a couple weeks ago. It was five bucks and I mean, come on, man, like you coulda put that one back? A cursory attempt at research turned up little information on the perpetrators, whose name, incidentally, appears nowhere on the packaging other than the record label itself. Their music appears to have made scant lasting impression. Easy come, easy go.

I found the record in the hiphop section, so I assumed it would be hiphop. Then again, I also found a Hall & Oates record in the same section, so I wasn't that surprised when it turned out to be an old-school rave track. Really, with that title, could it be anything else? The song is basically a bunch of repetitive synth bleeps over your basic house beat, pretty cool but nothing to write home (or blog...) about. Still, the vocal sample's a killer find. It's sounds like some anti-drug PSA, and is taken from a larger rant about the danger of drugs. The speaker seems to be insisting that LSD is the worst drug of all, as destructive as a nuclear bomb. According to the notes posted with the video on YouTube, the sample is from an old episode of Dragnet. Poor Joe Friday; little did he know that "da bomb" would someday become street slang for "good". Now he's stuck in an endless loop, unwittingly recommending psychedelic drug use for all eternity.

Still, hard to argue with the sentiment being conveyed, whether Friday intended it or not: LSD is the bomb.

Buy it... on vinyl.

From my deck to you: Radioactive Goldfish – "L.S.D. Is the Bomb"

The Roches

I have a very vague memory of this song, from what age I have no idea. I'm at my grandparents' house on the Cape, I think. It's probably a holiday, because most of my mother's family is there. My aunt K— and another aunt, either D— or S—, are singing this song a capella.

This doesn't happen a lot; we weren't one of those musical families that sits around singing songs at every gathering. In fact, I can't remember this happening any other time.

In my memory their voices are beautiful, the harmonies perfectly practiced and delivered . I can still hear the closing lines, and could recall them years later effortlessly. The song is sad, but my aunts are having fun with it, with each other.

Because of that, this is one of those records I used to pick up and mull over every time I would see it in a bin somewhere, but I never took the plunge until this past weekend, when I found it in Northampton's own Dynamite Records for the irresistable price of $2. As a result, I had never actually heard the original version of the song until this week. I suppose I could have found it online, but it never occurred to me to do so.

As it turns out the record was produced by none other than Robert Fripp (and features Tony Levin on bass, no less!), but apart from the occasional brief and busy guitar solo, he basically stays out of the way and lets the three Roche sisters' unadorned voices carry each other. Multiple acoustic guitars blend into a somewhat formless backdrop on most tracks, this one being the blurriest.

It's a terrific song, and the refrain melody sounds just as I remembered it. The singers are top-notch, their voices technically spot-on every note. But even though I only heard it once many years ago, and even though it probably wasn't quite as crisply executed as I recall, I think I prefer my aunts' version. Memory is a funny thing.

Buy it (scroll down)... on vinyl.

From my deck to you: The Roches – "The Married Men"

NOTE: Pardon the crappy recording, by the way. I tried to clean up the record as best I could, but you get what you pay for, and this one was two bucks.

Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band - Mirror Man

I participated in my annual fantasy baseball draft yesterday and did it online, partly because I didn't feel like dragging my butt to Queens, partly because I wanted to go to this later that night. I've been playing fantasy sports for about ten years now, and it was the first time I drafted alone, rather than at a draft party of some sort. This meant that (a) I could focus more on those crucial mid-round picks, and (b) I could choose my soundtrack rather than spend the day at the mercy of P—'s iPod (which, in the interest of fairness, I should note is generally chock full of excellent selections; this year he bragged of rare Weird Al bootlegs). Not wanting to waste valuable last-minute research time looking through the shelves, I just grabbed something off the haven't-listened-to-it-yet pile and threw it on.

I scored this copy of Mirror Man a couple months ago at The Sound Garden in Baltimore when I stopped there on my way to a Glasvegas show in DC. I've never been a huge Beefheart fan, but his records are usually twenty bucks or more, so I figured seeing one for ten, and with an early recording date at that, made it worth picking up. Why I put off listening to it for so long I have no idea.

I proceeded to spend the next five hours of the draft basically just listening to side one of Mirror Man over and over. That's not entirely true; I flipped it over and listened to side two a few times, but it was mostly just side one all day. Needless to say, it's awesome.

Don Van Vliet intended the second Captain Beefheart album as a double, but the label just put out one record of it, prompting the disillusioned Van Vliet to retire from music for a second (but by no means final) time. He was lured back by high school chum Frank Zappa, who had just been granted his own label by Reprise and promised Van Vliet complete control, which inspired Van Vliet to write and record Trout Mask Replica. A few years later, his original label released the remaining songs from the truncated second album as Mirror Man. So it follows Trout Mask in the catalogue, but the recordings predate it.

It's far less difficult than the notoriously challenging Trout Mask, but of course, accessibility is in the ear of the beholder. The record opens with the Magic Band (v2.0, I think) vamping on a one-chord blues riff for just under twenty minutes, while the Captain yammers away and occasionally unleashes the odd harmonica solo. Given the quality of the recordings, one can sort of sympathise with his label. That distortion on the harmonica track in the intro? Part of the record (don't worry, it clears up). That bit where the left channel drops out for a second at around four and a half minutes? Again, not a transfer error on my part.

I can't figure out when this edition of the record comes from. It's on Buddah Records, the original label, and bears the original catalogue number. But it's in perfect condition, and must be a reissue of some sort. The cover is printed on thin white cardboard, whereas I think just about every album from the era has the cover art pasted over thicker brown cardboard. On the other hand, the notes on the back still have the original typo listing the recording date as 1965 (it's from 1967); why wouldn't that have been corrected on later editions? Authenticity? Laziness?

No matter, really. It's a great record and I've got a pristine copy of it. The file will take forever to download because it's eighteen and a half minutes long, but believe me, it's worth the wait.

Buy it... on vinyl.

NOTE: Supposedly Rhino is putting out a deluxe double LP of the expanded version this year, but I don't know when.

From my deck to you: Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band - "Tarotplane"

The Wedding Present – "Falling"

I picked up Hit Parade 1 on the same trip I picked up Seamonsters, so that makes a natural pairing. Here's the story:

In 1992, the Wedding Present released a new 7" every month, with a new song on the a-side and a cover on the flip. Seems outrageously prolific, but if you think about it, that's one twelve-song album in a year, plus a twelve-song covers LP to boot. Not unreasonable. Incidentally, all of the singles charted, so they wound up tying Elvis Presley's Guinness record for most chart singles in one year. Go Weddoes!

The individual singles no fetch ridiculous collector prices on the open market, but the band were thoughtful enough to issue the whole shebang as a pair of standalone albums, one for each half of the year. HP1 includes the contents of January through June's singles, the a-sides on side one, the b-sides on side two.

The a-sides are decent enough, but to be perfectly frank, the Weddoes weren't really the ideal band to undertake a project like this; David Gedge's hit-to-miss ratio as a songwriter just isn't high enough. The covers, on the other hand, are a delight, and full of neat surprises. The best one is a cover of Julee Cruise's "Falling", best known as the theme song to David Lynch's short-lived surrealist TV drama Twin Peaks. The bad does a fine job of distilling a rather elaborate instrumental arrangement down to parts for two guitars and a bass, and the big kick-in at the end, while rather predictable, is thrilling nonetheless. The fact the Gedge has no business singing a song like this only adds to the charm of his gruff vocals.

Buy it... on vinyl.

From my deck to you: The Wedding Present – "Falling"

NOTE: I guess I should like to the 7", since HP1 is really a comp, but it's what I've got. If you wanna search for the single, it's number for in the series.

I'm outta town right now, so I won't have a chance to tape new songs, so no posts next week. Back next Monday.

The Wedding Present – Seamonsters

OK, before you read any further, scroll down and play the track. See if you can guess who produced it. Should take you about five seconds, ten, tops.

The Wedding Present first worked with Steve Albini in 1990, when they re-recorded the opening track from 1989's Bizarro for a single/EP release. So pleased were they with the results on Brassneck that they decided to work with him again for the next full-length.

Which wound up being great timing, because shortly thereafter guitarist Pete Solowka left the band to play Ukrainian folk versions of Smiths songs full-time (seriously!). Solowka was responsible for the hyperspeed strumming that defined the band's early sound (cf. "Kennedy" from Monday's post), and without him the band were just a middle-of-the-road BritIndie guitar act. Albini's pummelling treble schtick gave the band a new sonic identity, and they give themselves over to it fully on Seamonsters.

I picked up a copy just recently, but I'd listened to it many years ago. The track "Suck" always stuck with me for some reason. I think it's the way the lead guitar comes in after such a spare start in the rhythm section. I like David Gedge's voice in here as well. He clearly has no business being a pop singer, but here he really uses his ragged vocal qualities to fine effect, imbuing the lyrics with a bleak sense of hopelessness. Not a very happy song, but quite an effective one.

Buy it... on vinyl.

From my deck to you: The Wedding Present – "Suck"