(6) Good Old Boys by Randy Newman defeats (11) Emitt Rhodes by Emitt Rhodes. However, it doesn't matter because Miss America steals its place in the next round!
(11) Long Journey by Michael Hurley defeats (6) Miss America by Mary Margaret O'Hara. But it, in the end, didn't matter.
(6) Fox Confessor Brings The Flood by Neko Case defeats (11) The Poet Game by Greg Brown. It was super close and maybe Greg Brown will get in at some point if another match gives me 2 albums I'm not loving.
(6) World Winding Down by Agitated Radio Pilot defeats (11) Walking by Jane Siberry.
Can y'all believe 48 of 64 albums are already listened to???
If you have any anything to say leave below in text form.
Otherwise, I will be listening to these albums over the next little bit. I listen fast. But maybe I won't this time. Either way, feel free to listen along with me if ya wanna. _________________ -Ryan
Relistened to some 2021 albums and also indulged in a couple brand new listens to albums from the current year. To mixed (but mostly great) results. The Hospital Bracelet album is excellent and I recommend it highly. Its pop punk and midwest emo greatness. I also recommend the excellent new cacola album. Its gorgeous and impressed even neophyte, tyro, noob, pleb, me. Its a breakbeat and drum and bass album apparently per RYM.
Now that I have gotten some outside of this genre exposure I am ready to jump back into some classic singer songwriter albums with you.
Just listening to Paul Simon after listening to Time Fades Away late last night/early this morning. So far I like the Simon album but jesus christ every single thing I love about music is present in that Neil Young album, so I have a feeling this won't be a close or hard decision at all tbh. _________________ -Ryan
This album is so good. I love it. I adore it. How have I never listened priorly? It was there on youtube and other places to stream. No excuse that it wasn't on apple music. I am ashamed that I just discovered it.
Explaining my love will be tough and I don't believe in doing hard things. So I'll just say this is a raw, emotional, intimate, at times loud and intense album that takes me to all the places I want to be lead. Its quiet tracks breathe and bleed and flow straight into my veins. I think the fact that the recordings are somewhat unclean makes the presentation all the better. Like, I love On The Beach and I like Tonight's The Night, but of those 3 classics regarded as a trilogy, this is the best. At least this is the best first impression of the 3. This album also gives me more context to the other 2 albums recorded in this era and so now I need to go and listen to all 3 back to back to back over and over and over and just inject this era on Neil Young directly into my earveins.
The rocking parts are filthy and adventurous (fuck I use that word too much). They can be heard as just straight forward blues rock bangers. But I think I hear some real confused passion in every tortured amplified note and mangled chord.
On first listen I'm giving this a 5/5 without much doubt. Maybe on future listens I'll temper the passion. For now it is the 3rd album in this tournament to grab me and smack me around and be my daddy to this degree (joining Ned Collette's Old Chestnut and Beverly Glenn-Copeland's self titled in that tier.)
In comparison this was a snooze. This album features much more sophisticated arrangements, probably more lyrical turns of phrase, more majestic melodies, etc. But the heart and the passion is so thoroughly lacking (again, in comparison) that I was underwhelmed.
The hits, the songs featured on my ancient best of CD that I wore out in my teens, are great. "Mother and Child Reunion" and "Me and Julio Down by The School Yard" that is. The rest of the album features some really great songs that just don't hit like those 2 - namely, the bluesy "Peace Like A River" and the slightly mournful "Run That Body Down".
In a vacuum this is a good album, if a bit toothless and unfocused. Not looking at the near out-of-body experience which was the album I heard just before it, this is a 3 to 3.2/5 album. And that is the score I gave it. But my first reaction was to say "This is lame, play more neil Young!" and slap a 2 or 2.5 on this soft pop crap. I talked myself off that bridge so to speak and I recognize that actually this is a nice collection of pop songs featuring virtuoso lyricism (is such a thing real?).
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You know who won. And It moves onto the next round. Lord have mercy on the next well-constructed pop rock album it runs up against. _________________ -Ryan
I had a whole contrived thing written up (in my mind) where I spent time comparing this album to Loveless. And then I had an idea of how this was like a progressive country Something/Anything?. I then scrapped those ideas and started thinking of maybe writing about and analyzing how this album is an older, better, country All Hail West Texas. And, yep, that was scrapped too. Somewhere along the line while listening to this astoundingly great and long and singular album I decided to hold off on all the ambitious shit and just say a few words about the album in my usual boring way. So That's what I'll do. Here goes.
This album is 83 minutes and 21 tracks. The style is broadly Progressive Country, with major elements of traditional country, outlaw country, folk, country rock at times, some nods to bluegrass and old school pre-war blues, and various other genres which kinda make it a heavily country-slanted Americana album. The songs... how do I say this without sounding hyperbolic?...well, they are just absolutely fantastic. Like absolutely brilliant. Terry Allen imbues even the most otherwise forgettable song with a wit and a charm that makes even the "lesser" songs shine. The vocals are so damn simple yet so full of personality and a unique rhythm. The lyrics are world class, absurd, observational, detail-heavy, slices of life. He was on such a roll here in 1979 its kinda mind-boggling.
The music is assured and great. If you love country or even just kinda like some country, I think you will like the instrumentals here. The musicians take country and, well, prog it up. Thus the genre. So, the tired country tropes aren't here. The DNA and the spirit of the genre is there at all times but the music takes country in 20 new interesting directions here. And I just love it. 4.5/5. This was on my singer/songwriter chart already but I was so damn fuzzy on what was good about this album I decided to add this album to the bracket to guarantee a re-appraisal. What I discovered was despite remembering it was really REALLY good, I was vastly UNDERSELLING it. This is a culmination, a zenith of all the great strides country made in the previous decade, purified and then expanded further and then mastered and then released. That was what I was going to get at with my Loveless comparison. Like with Loveless in shoegaze, this album set such a high bar for Progressive Country that it has yet to be topped (as far as I know) in the 41 years since. Goddamn it, Hyperbole, my old friend.
This was also good. I like The Go-Betweens, I like Forster's vocal style, I like his pop-sense, I like his lyrics and the way they go about romantic yearnings and lovesick themes in a distinct and fresh way. This album's production was somewhat thin and watery, and that works for the most part, but at times I felt it was missing a certain directness or clarity I guess.
Overall, I liked it. As I did some work today I listened to 4 albums. That was some hours ago. And, although I was paying close attention to the music, my recollections on the ins-and-outs of the songs and flow of the tracks is a slight bit fuzzy. Still, it was good and I gave it a 3.5/5. Wish I had more to say, but alas, I do not.
I'll review these slightly differently. Instead of separating them quite so distinctly, I'll roll my thoughts on them both together.
For Bill Callahan/Smog, it was a question of when I would fall under his spell not so much if. What I mean is with every one of his albums I have at first been initially bored. Without fail, even on Knock Knock, an album high on the chart, it took me a couple listens to get it. For this album I kinda knew what to expect and as a result I melded with the flow of the album faster and by track 2 I was already a fan.
His music is so unique. On its face it is just so. damn. bland. His vocals are so incredibly unexpressive. Again, this is how it seems on first listen. But I notice with his voice and his phrasing, there is a humanity and honesty which is remarkable. On this album I even was reminded of one of the best vocalists of all time (in my opinion) Mississippi John Hurt. Something in the way Callahan just feels like a friend and something about the warmth of his words, his rhythm and his voice made me feel a very similar sense of familiarity.
The music is also deceptively rich. For example in the song "Drinking At The Dam" there was a moment, a sublime moment, in that song when I just became deeply invested and moved by the track. I remember I liked the track a lot, I was texting someone while listening. But then something clicked and it became next level perfecto. It took me a little bit to really process what changed. It was the choir voices, the back up singers, ever so lightly backing up the song that did it. But this musical shift was so subtly done, so effortlessly and delicately added I almost didn't notice. Its hard to describe, but I had a little realization that that is the strangth of this man's best music. He is so deft in his subtle additions and sounds, each one being essential and never supernumerary, that I almost can't describe WHY the songs work so well. He's a freakin' magician.
And the lyrics are great. Love them.
As for Suzanne Vega, like I mentioned earlier pages back, I was so set on finally delving into her music that initially in the first draft of this silly tournament, I had 4 of her albums. No other artist has more than 2. Her catalogue was just full of intriguing albums that seemed right up my alley. And she was pretty to boot.
So when I listened to Solitude Standing earlier on, I was only then being introduced to Vega in LP form. It was really solid. I remember having some quibbles about the somewhat clunky and dated production. But I also remember being impressed by her voice and her songwriting.
With this album, her highest avg rated per RYM, I think she has taken what made her great in that mid 80s early career landmark and strengthened it. And as for the production quibbles, they are different. They don't drip with that 80s vibe, now they drip (not as much drippage relatively speaking) with that early 90s sound. I happen to like the early 90s pop rock sound more, so its not as big a detriment.
But the songs here are all so nicely developed. They are mostly pop rock, lite fare. But done right. Her lyrics are still top notch, and her voice is still sweet yet sour goodness. The songs seem to consistently feature some detail or 2 that is so unabashedly, i don't know, showy? Flamboyant? Playful? Not sure the word, but the songs just consistently have some bright melodic twinkling thing that catches my ear and pulls me through the whole song. They're quite good.
So, as for my choice. Its tough! Smog got a higher grade in my book (4/5 compared to Vega's 3.7ish) but they are so close that I am a bit stymied here trying to choose. I think Vega's album (I keep calling it "Vega's album" instead of by its title because - and don't laugh at me - I can't find how to put the little circle thingie next to the 99.9.) is one that I need more time with to really fully get. There are more songs and they are shorter. Smog made the songs longer and develop slower so I had more time to contemplate the significance of the words and sounds. And, in the end, I just really am a little more interested in delving more deeply into Vega's best than I am in delving (at this time) into a great Smog album that I consider slightly less than Knock Knock. So....
VEGA SQUEAKS BY SMOG AND ADVANCES TO THE NEXT ROUND!!! _________________ -Ryan
Well, this was interesting. Weird, eccentric, oft-times genius and mind-blowing. But if I'm being honest most of the album was spent trying to regain my bearings on what was happening or saying woah...wtf is that" in either a confused or impressed way. The songs themselves never hit me emotionally. The subject matter of the songs I didn't quite understand. Maybe something to do with mundane daily life in the modern western world? Idk.
If you like really innovative and unique folk mixed with art rock stuff, this will be up your alley (and probably already is cuz its a pretty popular album). But Outside of a certain emotion of feeling cool and, dare I say, intellectual, I didn't get much out of this. Probably will revisit it at some point after I revisit his previous album Peasant. Seems like the kind of artist that once it clicks with me I will be telling everyone to listen asap. 3/5
plus not cool he jinxed an entire year. i just hope he doesn't release an album this year called 2022.
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On the opposite end of the relative emotional impact spectrum is this album...
I can't quite wrap my head around what made this album such a revelation. I mean, haven't I heard half a dozen very similar sounding albums? The way she sings, the way she plays guitar, the way she shrouds all her words in tortured language and cracked melodies, all these things seem familiar. Indeed about a minute in to this album I was thinking that maybe my intuition about this album was off. (I had been pretty sure I was gonna like it a lot).
Nope. Intuition was spot-on here. This album is so heartbreaking. Its so sad. I mean I've heard a lot of sad and deeply emotional albums including several in the last few weeks, but this hit differently. I found myself legit getting teary-eyed by track 4. A little later, about 1 minute into the song "Something" I noticed I just wanted to hug her and tell her she is loved and I was getting a bit more watery in the eye-region. Then something happened, and Julien hit me with some of the saddest and most heartbreaking singing/screaming of all time halfway through "Something", and in that moment I literally sobbed! wtf is this cathartic magic!??
Don't get me wrong, he songs themselves are GOOD, well crafted, they sound pretty and impactful as songs even without taking into account her voice and delivery and the words she is communicating. The songs in the hands of one of the dozens of similar artists I've heard over the last decade would have gained a 3 or 3.25 from me. Good stuff.
But add the bone-deep, raw, honest pain Julien Baker delivers the songs with, and you have what I consider a modern classic. I love this album so so much. Other albums in this group of 64 have been maybe better, some have been almost as emotional but also more sophisticated and inventive musically (looking at you, Old Chestnut), some of these albums have been more breathe-taking and surprising stylistically and technically such as Beverly Glenn Copeland or Ys - but NONE have been nearly so damn achingly powerful and cathartic. This gets a 4.5/5 and will be added to the chart (which is a big deal now that I have been revisiting and listening to so many classics. Its become harder and harder for me to justify moving albums into that top 100.)
oh and .... Julien Baker quite soundly wins this match and destroys me in the process! _________________ -Ryan
the next batch of albums and half a batch of Matches will be this here. These cover all the 8 seeds vs 9 seeds. Oh and this is the last batch of this round! Wow.
and I am completely unfamiliar with either of these albums or artists, so I'm excited.
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If you have any anything to say leave below in text form.
Otherwise, I will be listening to these albums over the next little bit. I listen fast. But maybe I won't this time. Either way, feel free to listen along with me if ya wanna. _________________ -Ryan
so, update, Honky Tonk Man is not easily avalable to listen to. This pisses me off a little. I thought i'd seen it on youtube. but nah. That would have been the PERFECT 1-on-1 battle stylistically. oh well.
So I am looking at what album I am most intrigued to revisit or first-time listen to fill in for that Steve Young album. I am, as I type, listening to the very obscure but quite refreshing 1969 gem My Family by one-album-wonder Dan Casamajor. But not really wanting to talk about that album again, I already reviewed it in 2017 and posted it on the album's page. I started revisiting Marjory Razorblade and its good and all but its so long and familiar enough to me already I kinda want to find something else.
Other options are looking at the most revered songwriter that somehow isn't mentioned on my chart of 175 songwriters.
Can you guess what artist and what legendary album that is?
..... go ahead and take a guess....
....
Okay, Its Scott Walker. Specifically Scott 4. I remember listening to this and his other early albums years ago (again, in 2017 when i did the last singer/songwriter bonanza) and I remember actually kinda liking it but being relatively unmoved. Still, my attention sticks on that album because its not even close. There is no one remotely as widely revered as him that is unmentioned. The next singer/songwriter designated album/artist that is not mentioned is 2 pages later on the RYM chart, and that is Jim O'Rourke.
Still, another option is to sub in one of these 9 albums I have noted as potential subs from 1968-1975:
1969 by Julie Driscoll (1971)
Red Hash by Gary Higgins (1973)
Between The Lines by Janis Ian (1975)
Willis Alan Ramsay self titled (1972)
Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money… by James Talley (1975)
Way Out West by Mary McCaslin (1973)
Valley Hi by Ian Matthews (1973)
Rainbow Race by Pete Seeger (1971)
You Don't Mess Around With Jim by Jim Croce (1972)
Okay, I'm leaning Scott 4 revisit will be what I do for this round. Although that Janis Ian album is calling my name I can hear it! ... hmm... let me think on it.
If any of you have a suggestion between what is mentioned above or a rec of your own and you can get that comment in before my next dump truck of album reviews, i'd love to hear it. _________________ -Ryan
Okay, I decided to shake it all the way up. And I am going to a random album from a different era to listen to and make it face off against Guy Clark. That album is
"Pack up all your dishes
Make note of all good wishes
Say goodbye to the landlord for me
That son of a bitch has always bored me
Throw out them LA papers
And that moldy box of vanilla wafers
Adios to all this concrete
Gonna get me some dirt road back street
"If I can just get off of this LA freeway
Without getting killed or caught
I'd be down that road in a cloud of smoke
To some land that I ain't bought bought bought" - Guy Clark, "LA Freeway"
So starts one of the greatest songs ever written. I honestly believe this song is essential, top-top-shelf quality. I'd put this next to the greatest songs ever written. Lyrically its just amazing, but also the music and the perfect harmonized chorus to end all choruses, the pedal steel, the whole sun-drenched vibe of this masterpiece is overwhelming. The song always seemed like a companion piece to "Return of the Grievous Angel" by Gram for some reason. Probably doesn't make sense to anyone else, but in my mind they are buddies.
Anyway, so that is LA Freeway, how is the rest of the album? It's also really solid. Although in my opinion it never really approaches the heights of track 2.
Guy Clark is one of those songwriters' songwriters, like Townes Van Zandt or Kris Kristofferson, someone who just had it. He has a razor sharp eye for detail and nuance in the words he writes. His voice is fine, if just serviceable, the music is a rich outlaw/prog country platter of all the good sounds to convey the stories and observations of Guy.
Side Bar: I always thought Guy Clark was a dick. Not sure why. Maybe it was from watching his interview snippets in the TVZ documentary "Be Here To Love Me". For some reason I came away from that film thinking Guy was just a douchebag. Anyway, that has always had a subtle, almost unconscious, influence on how I view his music. I can't say I have fully shaken this prejudice, but this revisit has done a lot to make me see him differently, see him as an artist not as a dude who was a bit mean or snobby in a movie. okay, end of Sidebar.
The other standouts on this album are "Desperados Waiting For A Train" ("So we just closed our eyes and dreamed us up a kitchen/And sang another verse to that old song"),"She Ain't Going Nowhere" ("And the wind had it's way with her hair/And the blues have a way with her smile") and "Let Him Roll" ("So he says 'Son,' he always called me son/He said, 'Life for you has just begun'/And he told me a story that I heard before/How he fell in love with a Dallas whore.").
Sadly, I have to admit that despite all the brilliant lyrics, and the good music, this album has yet to strike me as a classic. I thinks its a very very good country singer/songwriter album. Never ascends to TVZ, Terry Allen, or Willie Nelson levels - outside of LA Freeway of course - and as a result, despite this being a good album in a vacuum, I do feel slightly underwhelmed. 3.2-3.5/5.
I swear every time i hear this album and as track 2 ends I think to myself "Is this a top 20 album in the making?!? How has this not become an all-time mercurycore essential?!" and each time I end up coming to the same conclusion as I did above. Truth be told I have heard this album 6 maybe 7 times at least and this was just the latest attempt to see if it would fully click. Sadly, it didn't. Damn. Well at least I have a song I can and will include on almost every playlist I make going forward - even a playlist of Jazz Funk Classics will probably have LA Freeway shoehorned into it.
There were points on this album where I was really amazed by how unique it was. There were also perhaps more points when I was bored or annoyed by the theatricality of it. I guess I expected some degree of theatrics based off its genre (although I've never heard an Amanda Palmer nor Dresden Dolls album, so the general sound and style was relatively new to me.) She is a good lyricist and some of the slow and some of the fast songs are really excellently arranged. And the sadder slower songs were really quite gorgeous on the whole. The intense piano wild parts really annoyed me after a while. All in all, this is a mixed bag. 2.5/5.
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So, I guess Old No. 1 wins. well, okay. I guess we shall see how my appreciation grows on my upcoming 8th listen and maybe.... wait, sorry, one moment, I'm getting an update from my superior in my ear...(really? seriously? i mean this better be true cuz i'm announcing it now... okay. yes sir. sorry i got testy with ya.) NEWS ALERT FROM ON HIGH! Because neither of these albums particularly impressed me, previous near-winner Greg Brown and his album The Poet's Game has been re-called to the tournament bubble and will continue his quest to be the unlikely winner of this singer/songwriter tournament! _________________ -Ryan
This album was so much more rewarding and interesting than I expected. For some reason I had this enduring idea that RLJ was somehow corny or plastic and a tier below the singer/songwriters of the prvious generation. I think based off this album, I was totally wrong. The vocals are sublime, the arrangements are excellent and not nearly so safe and standard as I expected and there were legit long extended jazz jams in this muthafudger! THAT caught me off guard.
But even before her and her band go and explore some other musical territory, the first few songs are all sweet, melodic, mysterious, and just really strong. It was a solid as hell album and I liked and borderline loved it! 3.75/5
Now with this guy I also had very prejudiced opinions. They were more set in stone and biased than even my general meh-ness with RLJ. I just always thought of this guy's music (and for some reason I throw James Taylor in the same boat) as bland, lowest common denominator garbage that was riding the coattails of the true geniuses of the genre that came up with him (Joni, Neil, and before him Dylan). I thought he just brilliantly marketed the music more broadly by shifting the deeper existential and political questions of the greats' music to broader and shallower subjects of love lost and shit like that.
Well, I think I am corrected. I mean there is some of that broadening and not deepening of lyrics here. But much more prominently I heard that he was a brilliant writer of good folk rock pop songs. The songs all were good. It was wild. And some of the subjects were actually quite dark and dirty and unvarnished.
I had no idea this was going to be live. Was it all live recorded? I can't remember. But I do know I liked how the crowd noise morphed the energy of the music. Some of the best albums are live albums, I just never give em enough credit.
Anyway, like I said I don't have much to say about these 2 albums. Basically I enjoyed this one as well. The songcraft may have been a tier above even the tracks on Pirates. But that RLJ album is so much more exciting and vibrant musically and her lyrics are every bit as fascinating - nay they are more fascinating to me than Browne's. So Jackson Browne's album gets a 3.5.
Rickie Lee Jones' Pirates steals the show and wins this match!!!! _________________ -Ryan
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Mercury
