Manitoba / Caribou - Stop Breaking My Heart
Chemical Brothers - We Are The Night
Bob Marley - Catch A Fire
Laura Marling - I Speak Because I Can
Blue States - Man Mountain
King Tubby - Declaration of Dub
A couple of entries in the box this month are from some more charity shop pickups. Honestly, as a CD collector, there is no better way to spread your collection with many outlets letting their CDs go for as little as 99p.
Man Mountain is the 2002 follow up to Andy Dragazis' (trading as Blue States) brilliant 2000 debut Nothing Changes Under The Sun which had the Bamyasi work over in Log #106. Man Mountain maintains his signature lush keys and ear for an excellent melody, and adds vocals on a number of tracks courtesy of New Young Pony Club vocalist Tahita Bulmer. Initial hearings suggest it's a little more easy listening.
It's another great album cover too, perhaps from the same photo-shoot as Nothing Changes?
The giant twin arrows are actually situated on the iconic Route 66 in Arizona (now by passed by the new Interstate 40) between the towns of Flagstaff and Winslow. They signified an old trading post (diner, fuel station and gift shop) which is long abandonned.
Next bargain was the King Tubby Declaration of Dub. This is a compilation of dub remixes of King Tubby 70s tracks. It's as you'd expect. Simple instrumental music including some covers, with the bass maxed up to speaker bursting volumes. It's the sort of music that you hear occasionally from a passing car which rattles your living room windows. Most the tracks sound the same and it's hard to play too many back to back.
At the risk of starting to repeat myself (I have a limited CD collection despite the frequent charity shop visits and some albums, but only the best, inevitably come around again):
Caribou - Log #109
Bob Marley - Log #2
Laura Marling - Log #35
Just time for one more lukewarm review this week. I watched the Chemical Brothers Glasto set on TV and thought it was fantastic. But... was it more the visuals than the music? My suspicions deepened on hearing their We Are The Night album which is a relatively dull beats by numbers affair, without any visuals of course.
Some bands are great on record but don't make for an exciting live experience, some do the opposite. Is this a "by band" phenomenon, or is it a wider "by genre" characteristic? For instance I've said before I'm not sure a lot of prog rock ever sounds great live, but I love the records. Whereas I love a good live rock out to heavy metal or a dance to some banging DJ beats but don't play those sorts of albums at home so much.