Not an entry per se but I decided to gather together my fav albums from each year 1955-2015
1955: In The Wee Small Hours
1956: Songs For Swingin' Lovers
1957: The "Chirping Crickets"
1958: Moanin'
1959: Kind Of Blue
1960: Ella In Berlin
1961: My Favourite Things
1962: Live At The Village Vanguard
1963: The Black Saint & Sinner Lady
1964: Out Of Time!
1965: A Love Supreme
1966: Pet Sounds
1967: The Velvet Underground & Nico
1968: Astral Weeks
1969: Karma
1970: Curtis
1971: Blue
1972: Pink Moon
1973: The Dark Side Of The Moon
1974: Court And Spark
1975: Blood On The Tracks
1976: Station to Station
1977: Rumours
1978: Darkness On The Edge Of Town
1979: Entertainment!
1980: Colossal Youth
1981: Fire Of Love
1982: You Can't Hide Your Love Forever
1983: Over The Edge
1984: The Smiths
1985: The Hounds Of Love
1986: The Queen Is Dead
1987: Sign O' The Times
1988: Isn't Anything
1989: The Stone Roses
1990: Reading Writing & Arithmetic
1991: Loveless
1992: Down Colorful Hill
1993: Enter The Wu-Tang
1994: Illmatic
1995: Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...
1996: Endtroducing
1997: OK Computer
1998: Car Wheels On A Gravel Road
1999: American Football
2000: Since I Left You
2001: Is This It
2002: Tallahassee
2003: Fever To Tell
2004: Funeral
2005: Late Registration
2006: Ys
2007: Night Falls Over Kortedala
2008: Third
2009: Hospice
2010: MBDTF
2011: Yuck
2012: Good Kid MAAD City
2013: A Vessel For My Ineptitude
2014: LP1
2015: To Pimp A Butterfly _________________
Lately I've been going through my library to weed out albums that, in retrospect, aren't that great. I couldn't be arsed writing about them, but I can about this!
The infamous Royal Albert Hall concert of "Judas!" fame. The first half, an acoustic set, is pleasant enough. Nothing to get particularly excited about, just straightforward performances of some 65-66 stuff. It's the second half where things really take off. Dylan and The Band are EXPLOSIVE here. "Tell Me (Momma)" is only available here, and its an incredibly fun electric blues. Pretty much every song from Blonde On Blonde and Highway 61 they perform here, they best the studio versions, giving them extra grit and energy. I love that they include Baby Let Me Follow You Down, one of the highlights of his underrated debut. They take a pretty folk number and turn it into a damn anthem. The highlight is the closing tracks, Ballad Of A Thin Man (which sounds downright venomous!) and, of course, Like A Rolling Stone, in which the band wring everything they possibly can, like a verbal middle finger to all the luddites in the crowd.
The first half I can do without, but the second half? Definitely keeping it around.
Gold Rush is a solid collection of tunes. Strikes a nice balance between the two sides of Neil, his harder-edged rock side and his softer, acoustic side. Southern Man is of course amazing, full of bile and venom from the edged solo to whatever effect he's using on his voice (It gives it such grit and hate!), and Don't Let It Bring You Down and When You Dance are both also great. Other big highlight of the album is the title track, a splendid number about... idk, the environment or something? Rest of the tracks are alright (preferred Only Love Can Break Your Heart when Saint Etienne did it) apart from Oh Lonesome Me which is just kinda dour.
Generally any track where Mick tries to sound like a black bluesman will be embarassing and awful. Also its really weird to make a propulsive rock song about slave rape. Otherwise good.
Next two albums from top 100 are Physical Graffiti and Agaetis Byrjun. Listening to the latter now and its very pretty.
In terms of actual life things I've mostly just been sleeping erratically and working. Spent the weekend with SuedeSwede on a hastily planned, expensive, long but fun trip to Nottingham, and then the two of us went to see Carly in London. She was amazing, and when she did the last two songs (Call Me Maybe and I Really Like You) I went pure mad for it. It was all great fun and I really wish we didn't have to wait probably a few months to meet again. _________________
Not an entry per se but I decided to gather together my fav albums from each year 1955-2015
1955: In The Wee Small Hours
1956: Songs For Swingin' Lovers
1957: The "Chirping Crickets"
1958: Moanin'
1959: Kind Of Blue
1960: Ella In Berlin
1961: My Favourite Things
1962: Live At The Village Vanguard
1963: The Black Saint & Sinner Lady
1964: Out Of Time!
1965: A Love Supreme
1966: Pet Sounds
1967: The Velvet Underground & Nico
1968: Astral Weeks
1969: Karma
1970: Curtis
1971: Blue
1972: Pink Moon
1973: The Dark Side Of The Moon
1974: Court And Spark
1975: Blood On The Tracks
1976: Station to Station
1977: Rumours
1978: Darkness On The Edge Of Town
1979: Entertainment!
1980: Colossal Youth
1981: Fire Of Love
1982: You Can't Hide Your Love Forever
1983: Over The Edge
1984: The Smiths
1985: The Hounds Of Love
1986: The Queen Is Dead
1987: Sign O' The Times
1988: Isn't Anything
1989: The Stone Roses
1990: Reading Writing & Arithmetic
1991: Loveless
1992: Down Colorful Hill
1993: Enter The Wu-Tang
1994: Illmatic
1995: Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...
1996: Endtroducing
1997: OK Computer
1998: Car Wheels On A Gravel Road
1999: American Football
2000: Since I Left You
2001: Is This It
2002: Tallahassee
2003: Fever To Tell
2004: Funeral
2005: Late Registration
2006: Ys
2007: Night Falls Over Kortedala
2008: Third
2009: Hospice
2010: MBDTF
2011: Yuck
2012: Good Kid MAAD City
2013: A Vessel For My Ineptitude
2014: LP1
2015: To Pimp A Butterfly
this makes me squeal with excitement for what is to come!
A collection of everything Billie recorded with Commodore, who did a number of sessions with her after Columbia refused to release her recording of Strange Fruit. This recording opens affairs and, well, you don't need me to tell you how masterful it is. But I must say, it feels out of place here - to start a collection of light, breezy jazz tunes with something so powerful and dark leads to a strange dynamic. This is solid, though there's little on here as strong as Billie's Columbia work (with the exception of the classic I'll Be Seeing You, a longing, wistful beauty of a tune). There's a few re-recordings of songs she did with Columbia, and in every case they pale in comparison. Overall, though these are largely unremarkable songs, Billie's talent shines through.
I can't quite remember my problems with this one, but I wasn't very impressed. That said, upon hearing Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) I was sad cos I knew I'd never be able to write something so perfect.
I'm stupid as shit so I don't know what to say about this but I will say it was very good and I was proper confused about why I recognised parts from it until I realised that parts of it are used for when you finish a game of HOI3.
Recced by SuedeSwede (You better get on that Darkness now) at first I thought this was just a lot of noisy wailing but It's pretty powerful stuff. What I liked about Burn Your Fire For No Witness was the raw emotional expression she conveyed in her singing, and this albums full of that. Also one of the tracks sounds like the intro to Heartbeat
What do you get when you combine one of the finest songwriters and Jazz musician (not to mention his extremely accomplished band) and one of the most accomplished jazz singers ever? WHAT DO YOU THINK???
Album suffers a bit from its length but honestly, there's no way this album couldn't succeed. The accompaniment is impeccable as you'd expect, and Ella - extremely talented and inventive - is working with a fine collection of songs here. This is like musical comfort food. Rich, and greatly enjoyable, 3 hours may be a bit much but I can't imagine why someone would dislike this.
75/100
I've also been looking through my ratings, and realised I've given a third of everything I've ever listened to (aka WAY TOO MANY GODDAMN ALBUMS) scores of 85/100 and above. So I went through a few.
Carpenters - Close to You - There is some truly corny shit on here, as well as some rather dull fare. That said, I still recommend the closer "Another Song", a pop song that brings in jazz, medieval classical elements and even quotes Handel. 70/100
Rhye - Woman - Too languid in places, maintains a chilled atmosphere throughout but this just makes it rather tepid. 55/100
MO - No Mythologies To Follow - I got 4 songs in and was pretty tired and bored and the prospect of listening to more of this horrified me beyond belief so yeah.
This is very long (3 and a half hours!) and since I don't speak German I can't follow the story, so all I have is the music and uh... I'm not sure if this is really for me.
Outside of all this I've mostly been listening to a lot of love songs, cos of a certain someone, they know who they are
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