The Kinks - Arthur, or the decline and fall of the British Empire

Slowly but surely the lenster is catching up. you might notice a few empty posts in the previous months but that is purely because that particular album is still being digested and as you know i like to be thorough in my listening before bringing you my perfectly formed flowing prose. There's a few themes that have been forming over the past few months, the latest being concept albums. but i'm also attempting to make my way through the catalogues of some of the greats of music history, bowie, dylan, the beatles etc. if you have any more ideas of either albums i should be listening to or a range/style of music to look at drop me a line. if anyone is still reading, i thank you and i welcome your suggestions, comments and abuse.

The Kinks - The Village Green Preservation Society

the Knife - Silent Shout

what a surpise album. this came from nowhere and blew me away. The Knife have been around for a long time but i'd never really recognised that some of the music of theirs that i had heard actually belonged to them. if that makes any sense. what i am saying is that i'd heard knife songs, but the association was not there. This album from 2006 starts off with the cracking title track Silent Shout ( and the worlds scariest film clip ) and the delivers a bunch more electronic gems ranging from the dancy Like a Pen and Neverland to the ambient, blade runner esque The Captain, the intensity of Forest Families and the downright strange Na Na Na and Still light It's not for everyone but its a quirky spacious sound that more recent acts such as crystal castles have tried to emulate with limites success.

Marianne Faithful - Strange Weather

Muse - The Resistance

Pearl Jam - Backspacer

As a big pearl jam fan its always with trepidation that i approach a new album. I mean they didn't put a foot wrong up until 1998's Yield but since then its been a bit of a downward spiral. I mean there is good things to be said for the early naughties releases binaural and riot act but 2006's self titled album was just abysmal and hopes that this new release would be any better were low. perhaps though that is what has helped shaped my opinion of backspacer . coming in with such low expectations this album has surprised in the true fact that at first listen as much as i wanted to hate it i couldn't. i found myself enjoying these songs, from single 'the fixer' to the album closer 'the end.
there are elements of past albums here, while not hitting the originality of early albums ten and verses or the grittiness vitalogy, there are songs reminiscent of their experimentations on 1996's No code and the follow up Yield. the best songs are undoubtably those written by lead singer eddie vedder and guitarist mike mcready. the others while not weak still smack of 'filler' material.
the question remains should a band who have obviously peaked still continue to write music that is never going to come close to matching their best (eg. rolling stones, U2 ) this is not pearl jams best work. this is not even close but it is still enjoyable. the highlights, as mentioned before are the vedder tracks, Unthought known, speed of sound and the end.

The Pretty Things - S.F. Sorrow

A Silver Mt Zion - He has left us alone...

This will destroy you - Young mountain

Yes, Yes, Yes. I guess i have a music type and this instrumental, post rock, ambient, experimental style is close to being my favourite. This will destroy you join a growing list of bands that succeed in producing this amazing powerful style of music. If the playbook was written by Mogwai and Godspeed you black emperor then it has been well read by TWDY and used to make a great album. And even if the plays seem simple enough; You've got an opening riff, add a juxtaposing harmony, build it up to a crescendo, unleash all hell, bring it back to the start. it's a real talent to do it well and create something that people will listen to. I mean when it gets to "11" it better be good otherwise its just a wall of offensive noise. That noise had better have come from somewhere and be there for a reason. Cant wait for more from these guys. listen to quiet at their myspace for an idea of what i'm talking about.

The Who - The Who Sell out

Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion

The Pixies - Surfer Rosa

Grizzly Bear - Yellow House

Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs (3)

Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs (2)

Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs (1)

Johnny Greenwood - There will be blood

Grand National - A drink & a quick decision

Ghosts - World is outside

Genesis - The Lamb lies down on broadway

Friendly Fires - Friendly Fires

Four Tet - Rounds

Listening to Four Tet reminds me of two things. One, the audio galaxy days, and two the tedious tape loop projects we had to do back at uni. Four Tet was one of the first "artists" to provide 'legal' content on audio galaxy that didn't actually suck massive amounts. Most of the other legal stuff was uploaded by garage bands and/or mental patients and was excrutiatingly painful to listen to. When AG went the way of Napster and removed all their copyrighted material the only decent thing that remained was four tet. It's all instrumental electronica using a technique called tape looping. for those unfamiliar this involves stringing sections of pre-recorded audio tape together and playing them repetitively and/or in reverse at different speeds and pitches to create a beat or musical pattern. One of our first tasks in music 101 at uni was to create a song using this technique. And boy wasn't that fun. cutting tiny strips of magnetic tape and sticking them together in order to create 90 seconds of some of the worst "music" you've ever heard. I'm pretty sure mine ended up sounding like a cross between a kitten being hacked to death by a blind samurai and a giant redwood being fed into a victor lawn mower while the vienna boys choir sung the halleluiah chorus with a mouth full of yoghurt and marbles. Of course nowadays computers allow us to create similar sounds electronically so students of the future may not get the pleasure of learning this technique. Brian Eno would be spinning in his grave...wait..what do you mean he's not dead.
listen to this off second album Pause And for a modern example of tape looping look no further than radioheads like spinning plates

Placebo - Black Market Music

I'm a huge fan of Placebo's second album Without you i'm nothing I reckon it would sneak into my top 100 all time. Brian Molko has the sort of voice that you either like or loathe. there is no in between. it's certainly unique, and its special whinyness adds to the urgency and desperation of most of Placebo's songs. Molko seems to be protagonist in most of his lyrics and his subjects are love, loss, life, death and drugs not necessarily in that order. This is the "big hit" album with 3 singles "taste in men", "slave to the wage", "special k" and concert favourites "passive aggressive" and "black-eyed". But i still thinks it lacks the intensity and passion of the previous lesser embraced release.

Van Halen - 5150

It's hard not to smile/laugh when you listen to Van Halen. they are so ridiculously cheesy that's it's impossible not to get caught up in that head nodding feeling. I mean just listening to Sammy Hagar's opening "wooooaaaaaaah" on the album's opener Good Enough is enough to shake your head in amazement that this music was once 'cool'. Of course this was Hagar's first album with Van Halen after taking over from the irrepressible David Lee Roth. And he takes on the role well managing to start 7 of the 10 songs with a "wooaahh", "yeaaaaahh" or an "aaaaarhhhhh". Of course band founder, the modest Eddie Van Halen is still there making his guitar sing, or vomit, it's hard to tell some times. His Guitar skills are unquestionable, his use of distortion and delay and pedals, matched with his signature airy synth sounds of the keyboards. Amazing. There are some chestnut tracks, the Wide World of Sports friendly Dreams, The AC/DC meets Rolling stones Best of Both Worlds, and the power ballard love walks in and my persobal favourite and karaoke special Why can't this be love? Why can't everything just be as fun as a Van Halen album.

Pearl Jam - Ten (Redux)

When is a re-release of an album not a cynical ploy by music companies in order to make more money on a previously massive album whose sales have gradually fallen off but may be revived if the public are given the right nudge. such as "New tracks" or "new re-mixes" or "green cover instead of a red one". Is it ok when an artist dies to re-release their works? i mean it's really a public service making the artist's work available to the masses in shiny gold packing with the words "limited edition" and "special once only release". ( well you assume the artist cant die twice ) what about an anniversary of the release of an album? forty years is a long time, maybe people have forgotten the beatles existed? better re-release their albums so the public know that their music is still around. can you imagine if the didn't - customer: excuse me i'm after the beatles abbey road - shop owner: sorry sir that album is over forty years old. There is actually no more copies in existence and they burnt all the music and lyrics so no one can ever make those songs again. Have you heard Nickleback? I suppose twenty years is a long time two, although here's the kicker, this album was not released twenty years ago. The anniversary is 2011, but the record company is getting early. apparently they are starting now so that all pearl jam albums can be re-released by 2011, the 20 year anniversary of the band. Quite brilliant really. We need money now so lets get started on the whole 20 year anniversary so we can spread it out of the next 2 years. As for the album, is it different? well yes, the remix does make the album sound better. advances in engineering mean that an album recorded today has the benefit of 20 years of audio processing technology. but it was brilliant to begin with. the new mix has cleaned up some of the rough edges of the album. It sounds polished. which is the sound of today. the sound of 1991 was raw original Ten which shouldn't be tampered with. Eddie Vedder would be rolling in his grave....what...he's not...oh..

Norah Jones - Feels like home

My wife calls norah jones, borah jones. she's quite clever. but then again her attention span for music is about 2 minutes long. Generally she'll put a cd on in the car and bop along to the first verse and chorus of a song before calling out "boring" or "next" and skipping to the next track. She'll find this one equally as enjoyable for about 120 seconds before the enthusiasm will fade and we'll skip right on to the next track. when we reach the end of the cd we'll most likely go back to the least boring of the tracks and listen to that one again. needless to say i have to make a lot of CD's for her to keep her interested and me sane. So norah jones wouldn't make it past the 5 second mark if ever a song of hers dared to be on while my wife was in control of the cd player. My feelings are that she has an amazing voice, picks some great song writing partners and has surrounded herself with quality musicians. This album has more of a country feel than her debut and features writing credits for Adam Levy, Townes Van Sandt and Tom Waits amongst others as well as a duet with Dolly Parton. The best songs are the simplest, the ear candy of Sunrise, the bluesy be here to love me and the meandering the prettiest thing

The Meat Puppets - No strings attached

The Lemonheads - Lick

We all know about 90's Lemonheads. Evan Dando and a revolving door of band members had commercial success with songs such as "into your arms", "if i could talk i'd tell you" and of course their cover of "Mrs Robinson" which to this day is played regularly on at least 3 of sydney's 5 main radio stations. This is early lemonheads, punky, grungy late eighties lemonheads. Sounding like a cross between the Ramones, The Cure and early Nirvana. This is as far away from "Mrs Robinson" as you can imagine. A hastly put together album that actually screams "band problems" from the outset. There are two bands making this album, the one led by lead singer Evan Dando, and the one led my lead guitarist and singer Ben Deily. In fact it can't really be called an album so much as a collection of each artists songs, with the other reluctantly playing along. Deily left the band straight after this album was release, and Evan Dando went on to annoy the shit out of many more band mates over the next two decades.

Julian Plenti - Julian Plenti is...Skyscraper

For those of you not in the know Julian Plenti is a pseudonym of Paul Banks of Interpol fame. If you don't know who interpol is then the rest of what i'm going to say wont make much sense. I'm not going to analyse the whole 'side project' angle of this album to conclude whether it is paul banks who makes interpol or interpol who makes paul banks. Many will disagree but i think the first four songs off this album could be drawn straight from an interpol album. Only if you run, Fun that we have, skyscraper, and games for days all share similarities with that interpol sound. having said that i think only games for days is in the same class as an interpol song. The album fades a bit in the middle for mine but is salvaged by the most unique song on the album Fly as you might near the end. Don't get me wrong this album is son much better than most of the offal out there but when you're dealing with the lead singer of one of the best bands in the world your expectations are high. It's still on high rotation on my playlist.