Log #169 - The Other Side Of God's Favorite Customer

As I come to the end of the year and thoughts turn towards my year end review there are two or three albums in this list this week that will probably make the short list for Album Of The Year. They are the Tord Gustavsen, the Father John Misty, and the KLF.

KLF Chill Out

Father John Misty God's Favorite Customer

Simon and Garfunkel Bridge Over Troubled Water

Bill Laswell Imaginary Cuba

Tord Gustavsen The Other Side

Ketil Bjornstad and David Darling Epigraphs

Taking each in turn we have The Tord Gustavsen Trio's The Other Side which is a simply beautiful album of wistful chilled jazz piano. Gustavsen takes a minimalist approach yet the melodies are Debussyesque. Themes repeat and return throughout the album's 12 tracks, something I did not notice before I had fully absorbed the album several times.

I don't know where this sort of music sits in the jazz pantheon (jazz experts may consider it easy listening or light weight?) but I know I love it and find it much more satisfying than the often too frantic classical solo piano (see Log #166 ) or even the minimalist chamber piano of Bjornstad and Darling's Epigraphs album. It's effortless flow is closer to Keith Jarrett's Koln Concert and Philip Glass's Solo Piano album.

Father John Misty's God's Favourite Customer (English spelling there) album could also be considered slightly on the light weight side but the sheer brilliance of the melodic songs pulls it through. Father John Misty is a cross between Elton John and John Grant.

I can't decide if KLF's Chillout has nothing going on or a helluva lot. Whatever, it remains a fascinating and atmospheric listen - one where you hear more the more you listen. Save for a jumpy number towards the end, the album is essentially a concept piece played out over one continuous 45 minutes of ambient sound effects and samples.

One timeless classic and a pretty nondescript non event make up the numbers this week and we have our 6.

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Log #152 - Experiments In Surround Sound

I'm reading a 33 1/3 book on The Flaming Lips. It's about their album Zaireeka. Now this is interesting for several reasons. For one I did not know the Flaming Lips had been around for so long (since the early 80s); I first heard of them around the time of Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots and the accompanying hit single Do You Realise?? but that was 2002, their 10th album, and leader Wayne Coyne was already over 40 by then.

The other reason is Zaireeka itself sounds like a very left field art rock statement which I would not have given the Flaming Lips credit for believing they were a fairly average middle of the road sort of indie band (notwithstanding their amazing live shows). I had heard they had done something a bit experimental more recently, after their commercial breakthrough with Yoshimi, and had assumed this must be the Zaireeka album on picking up the book, but no, that was 1997 (before commercial success had really reached the band so not an album you could really say was a career suicide). A quick scan through post 2002 albums does not readily reveal which one I was thinking about but it could have been Embryonic or The Terror? [It's Embryonic, Ed.]

Full Lips Discography:

Hear It Is (1986)

Oh My Gawd!!! (1987)

Telepathic Surgery (1989)

In a Priest Driven Ambulance (1990)

Hit to Death in the Future Head (1992)

Transmissions from the Satellite Heart (1993)

Clouds Taste Metallic (1995)

Zaireeka (1997)

The Soft Bulletin (1999)

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002)

At War with the Mystics (2006)

Embryonic (2009)

The Terror (2013)

Oczy Mlody (2017)

King's Mouth (2019)

So what about Zaireeka? Well I haven't heard it and as you will read shortly I'm not likely to either. Infamously given a rating of 0.0 by Pitchfork (the follow up Soft Bulletin scored 10.0 from the same reviewer!) the album comes on 4 CDs each containing a quarter of the whole! Wtf? The concept was that four friends would have listening parties where they would each bring their CD player and play one of their CDs in synchronicity with the other 3 thus hearing the whole as it was intended. As it was rare for different players to run at exactly the same speed or even for the operators to start the process at exactly the right moment interesting phasing and echo effects would ensue, and no two "performances" would be exactly the same. It sounds similar to some avant garde experiments going on in the minimalist classical world by composers like Cage, Reich and Riley.

The zero Pitchfork review (since deleted although there is an archive link below) was based on the impracticality of the concept rather than the music. In fact the reviewer had not actually heard the 4 parts in unison admitting he'd "never know because I don't have the proper amount of stereo equipment" concluding that the product was "completely useless".

   
Later Pitchfork published a more favourable response from the 33 1/3 author Mark Richardson that praised the album for being...transient, variable and social.

The 33 1/3 book is honest. It says The Flaming Lips weren't very good and Wayne Coyne has a weak voice that could not even hold a tune for the first few albums.  

Coyne's voice can be good when he finds the right setting, but can also seem frail and thin, and on early records he almost never sang in tune.

Mark Richardson

This isn't news to me as they've always struck me as a high profile band without much substance, relying hugely on their original stage performances which involve amazing props, animal costumes, confetti guns, lazers, blow up balls and balloons (the arena carnage the morning after a headlining gig at Green Man Festival back in 2010 was something to see). 

The Flaming Lips @Green Man Festival, Wales, 2010

Fair enough, they started out like many high school bands without any pretensions and band members picked from friends and family dependent on whether they possessed any equipment (let alone if they could play it at all). Coyne kept his regular job in a restaurant for many years after the The Flaming Lips' formation. 

We will need you and your car, and your tape deck, and your co-operation for about 2 hours.

But in 1996 the ever creative Coyne decided to try something different. The band convened a series of interactive concerts or events dubbed parking-lot and boom-box experiments. Concert goers or "volunteers" would convene at a space and "lend" the band their car or boom-box cassette decks and would orchestrate the simultaneous mass playing of pre-recorded tapes to provide an immersive surround sound experience.

It sounds like a recipe for chaos and understandably concert flyers would warn: "we are sceptical about the entertainment value," but herein was the genesis of the Zaireeka idea. 

At roughly the same time as Zaireeka the band recorded the more conventional The Soft Bulletin album which (as the only Flaming Lips album I own) does gain a place in the magazine this week.

Although it was already their 9th album it represented a leap forward in quality to what had come before and for many fans was their masterpiece. 

There are some epic string drenched songs with multiple parts / some pleasant acoustic guitar fronted sing-a-longs / interesting electronic effects / thumping drums perhaps veering off into out of context funky drummer territory in places / and some fluttery synths which match Coyne's fluttery voice. 

It's an ambitious project and does sound a bit like everyone is playing different tunes sometimes and... that voice: High, weak and reedy but without the emotion of Neil Young. It's hard to hear past it actually and I do wonder what sort of band they may have been with a better singer. It's a wonder they've survived so long and Wayne Coyne is such a confident front man. Granted the instrumentation is excellent, the lyrics are good, and the melodies lovely (especially on regular set opener Race For The Prize, Waitin' For a Superman, What Is The Light? and Suddenly Everything Has Changed), but can Coyne carry them..?

... sometimes, but his singing sounds so much on the edge of breaking down most the time especially on the high notes it makes for an uneasy listen. A difficult song like A Spoonful Weighs A Ton is an example - such a vocal performance on X-factor would ensue an early red buzzer. I wonder whether he has ever considered just singing in a lower register like Lou Reed, Nick Cave, or the Geddy Lee of latter years?

No surprise then that some of the instrumentals are the most pleasing tracks with The Observer for example worthy of Kid A era Radiohead.

Having said that he's the maverick leader, the songwriter, the creative genius, so notwithstanding these shortcomings, The Flaming Lips would not exist without him.

John Martyn Glorious Fool

Flaming Lips The Soft Bulletin

The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

The Jayhawks Smile
Tord Gustavsen Trio The Other Side

Emeralds Does It Look Like I'm Here

The 0.0 review in Pitchfork
Mark Richardson's Response
The 10.0 review in Pitchfork

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Log #151 - Glorious Pepper

John Martyn Glorious Fool

Truckstop Honeymoon Big Things And Little Things

The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Harmonia Deluxe
Tord Gustavsen Trio The Other Side

The Black Keys El Camino

Still enjoying the John Martyn album - it's one of his best actually. Possibly his last great album but considering it's his 11th studio album that represents a remarkable longevity of critical success.

Some of the slower drawn out tracks like Hearts and Keys and Please Fall In Love With Me recall the epic Small Hours from One World.

Ever revered by contemporaries that enjoyed greater commercial success, guests include fans Eric Clapton and Phil Collins.

I continue a Beatles retrospective with Sgt. Pepper. You can't really argue against this being their best album, and possibly the best album by anyone ever. The songs are magnificent and furthermore the sum is even greater than the considerable parts (the album being almost a concept with tracks running into each other, bookended by versions of the title track, plus the grand finale A Day In The Life which I think is The Beatles' greatest song)...

... when I was young my favourite album for ages was ELO's Out Of The Blue and when my father used to overhear me playing that album he'd always tell me that there was something on there that was exactly the same as on Sgt. Pepper - it took me a while to realise what he meant - at first I thought it was Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite! - but eventually I realised he meant the coda to Mr Blue Sky being very similar to the "woke up, dragged a comb across my head" section of A Day In The Life - of course ELO were huge Beatles copyists and many of their songs were similar.

Everything they did in their previous 7 albums led to this. The follow ups Magical Mystery Tour, The White Album, Abbey Road and Let It Be, each represented incremental retreats from this peak.

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Log #150 - From Barroom To Stadium - The Black Keys Go Large

I've come late to the Black Keys. Shame actually as this album sounds tremendous - heavy, exciting and melodic. Even my house mates love it. Of course they compare with other 2 bit bands, The White Stripes and Royal Blood for instance, but I think I prefer this; I love the grungy dirty bluesy emphasis and Dan Auerbach's distorted vocals. They seem to have translated well from barroom to stadium without selling out (can the same be said for Kings Of Leon for instance?).

John Martyn Glorious Fool

Truckstop Honeymoon Big Things And Little Things

The Beatles Rubber Soul

The Beatles Abbey Road
Tord Gustavsen Trio The Other Side

The Black Keys El Camino

The Tord Gustavsen album is gorgeous. Previously featured here it will remain one that I return to often. His playing is spare and spacey verging upon classical at many points through The Other Side. I will check out some of his earlier recordings and hope he turns up at Love Supreme one year.

I'm going through a John Martyn retrospective. Log #142 examined Martyn's first 6 albums. I've decided to extend this examination and revisit all of them. Glorious Fool is a "mid-period" Martyn album. I say mid period but, as is the case with all artists who started in the late 60s or early 70s, 1981 (when this came out) is actually chronologically still relatively early period of course, but thematically artists seem to go through a series of eras musically and these eras were stacked up closer to each other in the "olden days". So for young John he went through relatively short eras of folk, folk/acid, trip hop, jazz, and then a long period in the wilderness from the 80s onwards which you'd have to describe as easy listening. I'd say this was his last great album from his heyday before the decline set in. Anyway as I say a retrospective is on its way and there are some latter period surprises.

Finally a word on The Truckstop Honeymoon who are Americana/bluegrass duo Mike and Katie West. They've been knocking around for years and occasionally rock up at my local to play a set here in Brighton. If you ever get a chance to see them live go for it as they put on a blinding show and are hilarious entertainers to boot (think The Handsome Family on speed). Such a live experience rarely translates to a recording of course but their musicianship and songwriting skills are such that the albums don't suffer in comparison. Always on the money with politics and the current climate check out Got No Use (for a Gun) from their latest album:

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Log #139 - Gentle Nighthawks

This week I take in an early and oft overlooked album from Tom Waits - his 1975 outing Nighthawks At The Diner - an atmospheric whole greater than the sum of its insignificant parts. Eccentric English prog rockers Gentle Giant are given short shrift with their most famous album Octopus. 

~~~

The Alan Parsons Project Tales Of Mystery And Imagination
Tom Waits Nighthawks At The Diner
Fennesz Endless Summer

Tord Gustavsen Trio The Other Side

Emilie Simon Vegetal

Gentle Giant Octopus

~~~

Oh, what can I say? It’s a shame to write off a whole band’s career in a short paragraph but I’m afraid it’s gonna happen here. 

I was made aware of Gentle Giant through some positive reviews on a Facebook forum I follow. I was also aware that one or two of their album covers were Roger Dean designs - most famously the Octopus one below which is the subject of this brief review - the album, their 4th, indeed entitled Octopus.

The music is incredibly busy, taking in elements of Genesis, Traffic, ELP, Atomic Rooster (lots of piano) and Yes. It's a real prog rock soup with all sorts of vegetables thrown in but they aren't liquidised very well and, despite the obvious instrumental chops of the band, it's all a bit of an unpalatable stew.

In fact the group's stated mission statement was to:

Expand the frontiers of contemporary popular music at the risk of becoming very unpopular.

Perhaps this is why, in their decade of existence (1970-80), they never achieved the fame, fortune and admiration bestowed on many of their contemporaries.

I'm not a massive Tom Waits aficionado but feel that (like a lot of artists) he had a 70s phase, and an everything afterwards phase (not that I'm aware of much that he has done since the 80s). When he started out he sang conventional ballads and love songs - some of the tracks on the early albums like The Heart Of Saturday Night are beautiful. Even the singing was tuneful.

Then something happened around the turn of that decade. Waits went industrial. His music became dominated by clanking rhythms and gravelly barking vocals. The main album I was aware of that demonstrated this new sound was Swordfishtrombones. Actually this makes perfect sense. Waits had changed labels, his initial label Asylum dropping him for "failing to move beyond cult status". Swordfishtrombones was released in 1983 - his first album for the new label Island and his 7th overall.

This album was doing the rounds when I was a Uni student. There was even a track on the jukebox at our main drinking hole, the Red Cow in Exeter. How many jukeboxes have Tom Waits on them? Not many but this was no ordinary jukebox, and the Red Cow was certainly no ordinary pub (sadly no longer there). The track was the drunken sing-a-long In The Neighbourhood and would be aired nightly.

As a fan of hard rock Tom Waits remained a bit of a mystery to me (I was much more acquainted with the AC/DC numbers on said jukebox). But eventually I got the album, and followed it closely with Frank's Wild Years, Raindogs, Small Change, The Heart Of Saturday Night, Foreign Affairs, Big Time, One From The Heart and my favourite, Blue Valentine, which I think perfectly bridged the two types of Tom Waits.

Note not much from the late 80s on. This is an oversight on my part yet to be rectified - as indicated by the ranking below (Waits' output is so consistent it is hard to find a consensus for such a list - maybe one for me to tackle in the future?).

https://www.ranker.com/list/best-tom-waits-albums-list/reference

Also interesting to note that Waits lags behind other celebrated singer-songwriters (Young, Dylan, Morrison etc) in my overall frequency rankings with just the 5 to date.

Tom Waits tops my bucket list of artists I want to see live.

To be fair the gravel vocals came first and were already in place before the industrial clanking which coincided more with the powerful barking delivery which has remained in place ever since those 80s albums. When Waits recorded Nighthawks At The Diner it was only his 3rd album and he was only 26 although his voice sounds like a weary old man of 62 who has seen it all.

The album is set up like a live recording made in a seedy jazz basement. Actually it was set up, literally. The recording was made in a LA studio in front of a small audience of select guests, friends and record executives. Backed by seasoned jazz session musicians Waits slurs his way through a series of down tempo cabaret numbers interspersed with spoken asides, banter and his trademark humour, playing the role of the barfly troubadour to the max.

As the album goes, and the songs within, it's certainly not his best work, and doesn't reach the heights of the similarly jazzily improvised Astral Weeks. But despite its contrived origin, it does have a tremendous smoke filled atmosphere you could cut with a knife, and reminds me why the tour shy Tom Waits tops my bucket list of artists I want to see live. There is very little chance of this happening unfortunately.

Edward Hopper's famous 1942 depiction

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Log #138 - The Other Sides Of Jazz

A couple of new jazz albums in the player this week. Quite different.

Firstly Kamasi Washington who seems to be a bit of a poster boy for the "new jazz revival". His latest album Heaven and Earth is of epic proportions, as was his previous release, the appropriately entitled The Epic. In fact it topped many "best of" lists for 2018. For me, I've tried to get into it, but so far I've been left slightly cold by the myriad of different tones which include samba beats, stage show numbers, soul, gospel, vocals and, most disturbingly, 80s style electronica. Kamasi seems a big personality and this is big music. I must try harder.

Much more my tea at the moment is a beautiful album from Norwegian pianist Tord Gustavsen which I discovered by chance after overhearing the track Re-Melt at a Brighton Festival Open House (I stood transfixed by the speaker unable to move until it was over). Fittingly from the ECM label The Other Side is Gustaven's eighth album.

The Alan Parsons Project Tales Of Mystery And Imagination
Tom Waits Nighthawks At The Diner
Fennesz Endless Summer

Tord Gustavsen Trio The Other Side

Emilie Simon Vegetal

Kamasi Washington Heaven And Earth

In contrast to the Washington album this is gentle minimalist jazz all about the subtle ebbs and flows and the space in between. Gustavsen explains:

There is this idea in the title of the way the trio plays as being the other side of virtuosity, a kind of paradoxical virtuosity where you don’t play all the notes you can but merely the notes that are really needed. It’s about subordinating your ego to the flow of the music – and that takes a kind of ‘radical listening’ – listen more than you play. That’s a passion the three of us share.

Indeed the trio display admirable restraint through twelve modestly lengthed tracks of sparse beauty. The piano playing is melodic and recalls the Debussy preludes - the classical influences are confirmed with three arrangements of Bach pieces. The piano leads but is backed by perfect double bass and drum accompaniment. 

Although potentially verging on the Keith Jarrett type easy listening stylings the album's sheer beauty, perfectly encapsulated in the lilting opening track The Tunnel (below), overcomes any accusations of "imperceptibility" as levelled at The Cinematic Orchestra last week.

Easily my album of the week, I've pretty much had this little gem on repeat play all weekend.

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