Log #155 - From Celluloid to Wax - Discovering New Music Through Django Unchained

Beirut The Flying Club Cup

Jim Croce Photographs and Memories

Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Anthony Hamilton Ain't Nobody Worryin' 

John Legend Once Again

Tangerine Dream Cyclone

Miserabilist - a person who appears to enjoy being depressed, especially a performer of or listener to gloomy music.

[That's the definition from the Collins English Dictionary]

As a genre of music miserabilist is perhaps undeveloped and lists of artists so described are not forthcoming. However I'd wager the term is made for American Alt-Country outfit Wilco. 

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, their fourth album from 2001, kicks off with one of the worst songs I've heard from them... I Am Trying to Break Your Heart has a nursery rhyme like melody which singer Jeff Tweedy can barely raise any energy to sing. It's so down tempo and uninspiring. 

I want to hold you in the Bible-black predawn
You're quite a quiet domino, bury me now
Take off your Band-Aid because I don't believe in touchdowns
What was I thinking when I said hello?

What was he thinking? What is he on about?

Luckily the album actually improves after this depressing false start and second track Kamera is a little more uplifting, albeit the lyrics aren't... 

Phone my family
Tell 'em I'm lost on the sidewalk
And no, it's not okay

Or maybe I spoke to soon - the third track is back to depression again and I sort of lost the will to live after that.

Hang on, the fourth track is quite jolly.

Oh, I don't know, maybe it's Wilco at their schizophrenic best. I guess I conclude it's not an easy listen and just could be one of those classic slow burners (I do doubt this having had it in my collection for well over a decade).

OMG, I've just googled "Wilco Albums Ranked" and it comes out on top. Jeez, what am I missing? And the usually reliable Pitchfork gave it 10/10! Really? That's a score that should be reserved for the likes of Astral Weeks or Blood On The Tracks. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot should be docked two points for I Am Trying To Break Your Heart alone. 

I've said this many times on this blog: It's the singing that counts for so much and while I'm on the subject of being underwhelmed by the Wilco singing I move on to a new band for me, Beirut...

Unfortunately they would appear to be another group (Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, Vampire Weekend, Arcade Fire, even, say it softly, Radiohead) where the vocals provide a barrier to my enjoyment.

I say "they" but Beirut is actually American musician Zack Condon's solo vehicle. Condon plays trumpet and ukulele (yes). Other musicians lend hands on accordions, trombones, violins and pianos. The result is described as a sort of indie/world/old-time/gypsy/busking music centred on European folk influences - Condon's first album had an Eastern European flavour, this one French. 

It's an ambitious project but doesn't quite hit that unique sweet spot Tom Waits has made his own. I was on the verge of confining the CD to the "back to the charity shop" bin but it could be a grower if I can tune into Condon's wobbly voice. Worth another week in the player I'd say.

No such issues with the vocal talent on the rest of the selection this week (I even include perennial favourite Cyclone in here - Tangerine Dream's only vocal based album as far as I'm aware): Three more artists new to me which I picked up after watching Quentin Tarrantino's Django Unchained film. The film and the soundtrack is excellent (better than his most recent much hyped Once Upon A Time In Hollywood film).

Now granted I could have just bought the soundtrack album but I like to hear the artists in their proper individual contexts so I alighted upon this selection from Jim Croce, Anthony Hamilton and John Legend. 

The Jim Croce album is a "best of" compilation which includes I Got A Name from the film. It's a great song rendered perfectly in the film where the two horsemen heroes ride across wide open winter Western savannas. On first hearing I thought it was Glen Campbell - it's got that Wichita Lineman type vibe:

[parental advisory exists on the clips below]

Photographs and Memories includes 14 tracks from Croce's last three albums (he made five in all between 1966 and his tragic air-crash death in 1973). Most are gentle acoustic guitar numbers, some with Nashville strings. There are a few upbeat country rock and bluesy songs too that remind me of Gram Parsons. 

Apart from I Got A Name the other track that I've heard before is I'll Have to Say I Love You in a Song.

Unfortunately the two songs I was looking for most from Anthony Hamilton and John Legend don't appear on any of their individual albums: respectively Freedom (also featuring a singer, Elayna Boynton, who unaccountably doesn't appear to have any albums out at all despite a great voice): 

and Who Did That To You?:  

Both Hamilton and Legend albums are excellent smooth soul if you like that sort of thing, with the bass and drums (and hand claps) high in the mix. So far the albums have existed for me as easy listening background music and I haven't really alighted upon any tracks that approach the brilliance of the two film soundtracks above (admittedly the vivid film associations count for a fair bit). I hope there are some otherwise the albums will become a minor footnote in my listening history, and I'll just have to get the Django soundtrack after all. Tarrantino certainly knows his music.

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Log #51 - Golden American Boy

What of Ryan Adams? This album is lengthy! In old money it's definitely a double. 17 tracks clocking up a total of 75 minutes. Is it a great double album, or filler? It's hard to tell. And that's part of the problem. It's almost too much to take in. I think perhaps two albums would have been better. It's like he's tried to cram everything in all in one go, from mournful ballads to full on rockers. Having said that some of this stuff is great (from the rockers like Tina Toledo's Street Walkin' Blues, to the epics like Nobody's Girl, via the ballads like Sylvia Plath) and if, just if, it had been released in 1971 we might be talking about another Exile on Main Street. But in 2001, that year forever now associated with the terrible events of 9/11, is it just more american country rock fodder? By the way, is there still anyone left who confuses Ryan with Bryan, or isn't aware yet that they are two different people?

1. Ryan Adams - Gold
2. St Germain - Tourist
3. Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
4. Jethro Tull - Songs from The Wood
5. Josh T Pearson - Last of the Country Gentlemen
6. Neil Young - On the Beach

St Germain sound like computer jazz. Are they real musicians? Probably. The music's fun and good but the fact I can't tell if this is a DJ production or a band leaves something to be desired in the authenticity and soul stakes.

The first track on the Wilco makes you want to slit your wrists. This literally effortless vocal delivery makes me want to shout: "For god's sake just cheer up man!" To be fair to singer and leader Jeff Tweedy things do pick up a bit after the opener but it's fairly pedestrian strumming over gentle brushed back beats for quite a while before you hear the first electric guitar riff.

The Songs from the Wood sounds quite dated and a bit twee now. Jethro Tull were obviously great musicians and wrote some clever stuff but found themselves adrift in a wilderness of their own making between rock and prog. Great cover though. This and Heavy Horses makes me think of all the good things about being a country gent (or urban hipster) - tweeds, waistcoats, caps, tractors, woods, heavy horses and English countryside... oh and beards of course, of the 70s variety. I wonder how contrived it was. Actually with Ian Anderson I think it was genuine - I know he liked to retreat to his salmon farm in Scotland from time to time.

Jethro Tull's country gent period

Talking of The Last of the Country Gentlemen what the hell is this Josh T. Pearson? I can't decide if it's genius or terrible. It sounds like he can barely play guitar - is it even tuned? But not to worry, Josh seems to have such style and charm that he somehow manages to pull it off despite this apparent shortcoming. It's certainly unusual and strangely addictive. Let's face it, no one needs another "normal" acoustic strumming busker. I saw him live somewhere at a festival and have to say he was mesmerising standing stationery centre stage under one overhead light with his messiah like look (and act?). It was a memorable appearance and I was telling everyone about it for weeks afterwards. Must be a genius then after all. Nice bloke too, stayed behind for hours signing autographs and spending time with each fan.

Josh T Pearson

On The Beach is just a classic. Superb. Brilliant. One of Young's best. End of.

The middle one from Young's so called "Ditch" Trilogy

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Log #3 - Who's That Girl?

A few new entries in the box this week. First a word on a great young band I saw in Brighton last night. Sam Jordan and the Dead Buoys (nautical spelling deliberate after a clash with a US band of the same name). I told them afterwards they sounded like Bear's Den which they took as a compliment, hence the new entry in the player. Both bands specialise in beautiful sensitive acoustic melodies and gorgeous vocal harmonies, the right side of the Mumfords.

1. Bear's Den - Islands
2. Various - Trojan Dub 3 CD Box Set - CD no. 1
3. Matthew E. White - Fresh Blood
4. Kings of Convenience - Riot on an Empty Street
5. Wilco - Being There
6. Afro Celt Sound System - Anatomic (vol. 5)

Matthew E. White I first heard on seeing his stunning Rock and Roll is Cold video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co4krl2xge0

The Wilco album I once saw in one of those Top 50 lists. It sounds a bit dated now, and the vocal delivery is rather relentlessly depressing. I think the later Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is probably the better album. But its a double CD with alot of material so probably requires some more listening.

Cover art this week is from the lovely Kings of Convenience album. I have always been fascinated by album cover art - how a design captures an imaginary world or a grainy photo a moment in time. I love the retro feel of this cover with the brown shades, the turntable, the intellectual chess playing boys and the beautiful bookish girl with the mysterious glance. The boys are band members Erlend Øye (left) and Eirik Glambek Bøe (right). But who is that girl? Is she a model, or a real person, or possibly the guest singer Feist?

So I googled "who is the girl on the cover of riot on an empty street" and would you believe it google knew!

The following article by Clarissa Oon is reproduced from the band's website via my google search http://www.kingsofconvenience.org/strait.html :

Boe's Liv Tyler-lookalike girlfriend is on the cover of Riot On An Empty Street, the recent sophomore major-label release from him and bandmate Erlend Oye [I look forward to spinning a Whitest Boy Alive CD I've just ordered - Oye's side project - hopefully in issue #4 if it arrives in time].

Boe gazes at the camera, looking slightly grim as she and geeky bespectacled Oye eye each other suggestively. She was also with them on the cover of their 2001 breakthrough album Quiet Is The New Loud, says 28-year-old Boe, whose stubbled good looks remind one of a younger Viggo Mortensen. Speaking via a temperamental mobile-phone connection from Palermo, Italy, where the duo is playing a gig, Boe says his medical student girlfriend - whose name he mumbles and is lost in waves of static - was initially not meant to be in the picture. Recalling the day they shot the Quiet album cover four years ago back home in Bergen, Norway, psychology student and part-time musician Boe said he and Oye had been driving around getting lots of photos taken.

For the last picture of the day, we said to my girlfriend: 'Come on, you be in the picture with us to remember this day.' 

The shot ended up on the album cover 'because it reminded us of a series of paintings by Norwegian painter Munch, with one person in the foreground and a couple in the background, called Jealousy'.

The reference to Edvard Munch's paintings tells you two things about the Kings of Convenience, whose pensive acoustic harmonies and intelligently laconic lyrics earned them the label 'the thinking girl's boyband' from a Guardian reviewer: One is that Boe, who reads psychoanalyst Carl Jung's writings for work and semiotician Umberto Eco's essays for fun, thinks really deep thoughts. The other, that he and his songwriting band mate - who have been compared to a hip, latter-day version of 1960s troubadours Simon & Garfunkel - lead separate and somewhat competitive lives.

Friends of 12 years who played together in a now-defunct rock band Skog (Norwegian for 'forest'), they called themselves Kings of Convenience as a shorthand for 'the convenience of two people playing guitars together, instead of all the hassle travelling around with a big band'.

They have lived in different countries for the past six years: Boe in their rainy coastal hometown of Bergen, and Oye as a deejay in Berlin. The latter released his solo dance album Unrest early last year. Suggest that it might be more convenient for the two to live in the same country, and Boe explains, in his low gentle voice that 'my life choice and his life choice are different'.

The band is not the reason we live in different countries. The band still exists in spite of the fact that we live in different countries.

Recorded early this year over a six-month period in Bergen, with periodic visits from Oye, Riot has a more evolved sound than its predecessor album, with a few whimsical, dancy tracks amid slow, autumnal numbers. Boe says they take turns to sing lead, and argue a lot. 'We each think each one's voice is better,' he adds, followed by a rustle like a smile at the other end of the line. Still, they are committed to writing songs together, frequently exchanging ideas over the phone.

'Maybe every second month, I'll go to Berlin, or he comes to Norway.'

Sounds like a long-distance relationship. 'Exactly.'

Album of the Week: A toss up between Riot and Islands

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