Tucson Roots and Americana band Calexico come out of the blue to dominate this week's listening (and a plug for the brilliant gnod music discovery website). An unplanned £1 charity shop purchase of the cover album (Garden Ruin) encouraged a retrospective taking in the celebrated Black Light, Feast of Wire, and Hot Rail albums. Garden Ruin is more mainstream than these earlier albums, sounding more like indie pop than their usual acoustic strumming and brass backed mariachi. At that price it represents a bargain addition to the collection with pleasant songs favourably commented upon by other house members, except for the heavy final track All Systems Red. Lucky Dime remains my personal favourite but I haven't nailed the famous song it reminds me of.
My other choice for the playlist is the atmospheric Mexican flavoured instrumental Minas De Cobre (mines of copper) from Black Light. May I also recommend the recent live performance from the consistently excellent KEXP sessions series - some stripped down songs with insights from the very likeable band leader Joey Burns - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wznHyVvSvMM
I was thinking some more about the Arbouretum album - specifically thinking of other bands they sound like. Nirvana, Black Sabbath, Metallica, and Neil Young come to mind. But that doesn't quite do justice to the dirge and grunge of their wall of sound. Their guitars are even more distorted and the songs are very slow. I looked them up on the fascinating music map website (a way to discover new bands that are supposedly similar to others you like - and films and authors too via gnod.com). The selected band appears at the centre of the screen and other suggestions jostle for position around the centre (the closest being those most similar). It's a great website to play with. Below are the results for Arbouretum and surprisingly to me not many of the bands I was thinking of appear in this "music map", but many new ones to try out (which is the point of the website after all!).
Four Calendar Cafe by The Cocteau Twins is a very polished affair in comparison with last week's Treasure. Along with Heaven or Las Vegas this is one of my favourite albums by the Cocteaus, with catchy multi layered flanged guitar riffs (most evident in Summerhead) and trademark ethereal vocals that send a shiver down my spine. Think of a My Bloody Valentine wall of sound rather than Arbouretum. Hang on, I'm going to try the gnod trick on them too - it should have plenty of white space as there isn't much that sounds like these sonic pioneers.
So here are my six, for this Christmas day, Sunday, 25th December, 2016. Happy holidays and best wishes for a successful 2017.
2. Calexico - Garden Ruin
3. Calexico - Black Light
4. Calexico - Hot Rail
5. Calexico - Feast of Wire
6. Cocteau Twins - Four Calendar Cafe
0 comments:
Post a Comment