Is this the greatest country rock album of all time? Quite possibly. It has to be up there at the very least. The songs are majestic. The type of songs that make me feel like I can take on the entire world. No matter what. And I need that kind of music in my life. Songs that make me want to shirk off the shackles of my self destructive ways and once more reach for something bigger than myself. Plus, the guitar on this just destroys me and the lyrics are second to none.
The only problem with this album, and it's a big one, is that it peters out towards the end on those last two songs. Although I'm coming around to even them. But those first six tracks? Totally essential, mind-blowing stuff that fires me up like little else.
Grade: A. Cosmic Country Rock at it's best. Since it's a tad inconsistent at the end, it's not ever going to get top billing. But these are my fighting songs right now so I'm going to slide it into the number two pole at least for now.
Essential
1. Donovan - Wear Your Love Like Heaven
2. Gene Clark - No Other
3. Grizzly Bear - Yellow House
4. Beach House - Thank Your Lucky Stars
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For Fans Only
aa. Bert Jansch - Jack Orion - although it's growing on me.
ps. If anyone knows some other mellow country or country rock recs. I'd love to get some. Thanks!
Real Estate fill the vast void left by the disbandment of Galaxie 500. Their songs are like long lost friends or perhaps more apt a faded, thread bear sweater that becomes more comfortable with age. They have an unapologetically preppy & collegiate vibe to them that reeks of lazy summers spent at the shore while other kids are pulling in minimum wage. And I'm fine with that. They live a slackers life from being overprivileged and their music politely hums that they do not have a care in the world. Theirs is the life that I want to live.
This is their debut. And already their signature sound is firmly in place and sounds well lived in. The album is not perfect as there is some filler most noticeably Let's Rock The Beach, but it's a very impressive & confident debut. A fantastic jangle pop album that has weathered their huge rise in popularity quite well.
Grade: A-. These kids know how to test. It's not nearly as good as their subsequent albums, but it's pretty vital & a very welcome part of their discog.
Highly Recommended
1. Donovan - Wear Your Love Like Heaven
2. Gene Clark - No Other
3. Grizzly Bear - Yellow House
4. Beach House - Thank Your Lucky Stars
5. Real Estate - Real Estate
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For Fans Only
aa. Bert Jansch - Jack Orion - although it's growing on me.
Well this came out of nowhere! It's simple, but alluring piano passages combined with found sounds that is magically and movingly transportive. It’s like stepping into a wardrobe and emerging in a land of unicorns and butterflies ( can you tell I have two girls! lol). The countryside of Totoro essentially springs to life. And you find yourself sunning on a field of buttercups or whatever as warm, peaceful church bells echo in the distance. An overwhelming sense of calmness enters your bones and you believe that magic is not just possible but real. But it’s not overly pretty or overdone. It’s all very tasteful and not a bit new agey.
It has two distinct sides with side a being incredibly playful and joyful and side b being more on the somber side of things as the day comes to an end.
Grade: A+. I’ve only been at this a short time , but it is definitely the most unique and alluring ambient album I’ve ever heard. And it immediately shoots to the top of my little chart.
Essential 1. Virginia Astley - From Gardens Where We Feel Secure
2. Donovan - Wear Your Love Like Heaven
3. Gene Clark - No Other
4. Grizzly Bear - Yellow House
5. Beach House - Thank Your Lucky Stars
Highly Recommended
6. Real Estate - Real Estate
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For Fans Only
aa. Bert Jansch - Jack Orion - although it's growing on me.
If anyone knows some similar albums, I’d love some recs like this!!!
Well, this is pretty much exactly how I'd expect a "mellow" ambient rec from Tap to sound like. It's extremely interesting head music sounding somewhat like the ambient offspring of the Residents & Cluster with even a few chromosomes from Chrome sprinkled in there just to keep you guessing. It crackles & pops with all sorts of interesting electronica sounds. It’s not exactly what I would call a warm (or even mellow lol) record which is sort of what I'm craving these days, but it quickly won me over after a few spins.
Not that I had too many doubts. The first track, Into, stole my heart instantaneously. It has to be the greatest ( and perhaps only lol) homage to The Cure's under appreciated (but completely amazing) soundtrack Carnage Visors. So they had me. There was no way I wasn't going to like this. And with a few spins under my belt now, I can highly recommend it to all the ambient adventurous out there. I will definitely be coming back to it.
Grade: B+.
Essential
1. Virginia Astley - From Gardens Where We Feel Secure
2. Donovan - Wear Your Love Like Heaven
3. Gene Clark - No Other
4. Grizzly Bear - Yellow House
5. Beach House - Thank Your Lucky Stars
Highly Recommended
6. Real Estate - Real Estate
7. Woo - It's Cosy Inside
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For Fans Only
aa. Bert Jansch - Jack Orion - although it's growing on me
edit: Thanks for the rec, Tap!!!
Last edited by Repo on 03/27/2017 03:32; edited 1 time in total
Will Oldham should really have changed his moniker again for this one. Because he's all grown up. This is no longer Will channeling a Bonnie "Prince" Billie to sing about the darkest recesses of his soul. This is just Will. Producing some of the best mature country & indie rock songs about love and hurt out there. These songs stand on their own without any of that drama and theater that our boy Will is sort of known for. And the harmonies with Dawn McCarthy are simply dead on. In a lot of ways this may be the best album of Oldham's career. It’s certainly more consistent than his better known work I See A Darkness.
Grade: A. Super solid mature country/indie rock album that holds up well to multiple replays. These are timeless songs that are perhaps the best of Will’s impeccable & prolific career. I like this even more than No Other so this moves all the way up to number three.
Essential
1. Virginia Astley - From Gardens Where We Feel Secure
2. Donovan - Wear Your Love Like Heaven
3. Bonnie "Prince" Billie - The Letting Go
4. Gene Clark - No Other
5. Grizzly Bear - Yellow House
6. Beach House - Thank Your Lucky Stars
Highly Recommended
A. Real Estate - Real Estate
B. Woo - It's Cosy Inside
///
For Fans Only
aa. Bert Jansch - Jack Orion - although it's growing on me
It took me a long time to warm up to this one. Maybe it was the soft jazz of the opening track. Maybe it was the operatic vocals on the second track. Maybe it was the marimbas. But in general it felt a tad too precious. Like they were trying to create the most new-agey sounding album of the 70s, and I was going to chalk it up as second tier ambient in the Eno vein. Which surprised me since I absolutely love the DARK ambient of Harold Budd’s work in the 80s on Abandoned Cities and The Pearl. So I kept listening. Kept waiting for something to click. And it did. Maybe my heart chakra or some other new age vestige in my body opened up but I began to embrace its warm spirituality and the smooth jazz of Marion Brown’s saxophone. At any rate, I now find it a lovely and even transcendent album at times that really helps me find peace on the some of the sleepless nights I’ve had over the past week. It’s a great record to meditate to, and I’m actually looking forward to using this as a bridge stone to other spiritual and uplifting works.
Grade: A-. A work that may actually change my view of overtly new agey and spiritual music - that’s saying something. Please send recs of other great spiritual works my way! It’s still not totally my thing, and I much prefer Budd’s later works The Pearl and Abandoned Cities, but I’ve definitely turned a 180 on this album which is pretty impressive.
Thanks, Afterhours for the uplifting rec!!!
Essential
1. Virginia Astley - From Gardens Where We Feel Secure
2. Donovan - Wear Your Love Like Heaven
3. Bonnie "Prince" Billie - The Letting Go
4. Gene Clark - No Other
5. Grizzly Bear - Yellow House
6. Beach House - Thank Your Lucky Stars
Highly Recommended
A. Real Estate - Real Estate
B. Harold Budd - Pavillion of Dreams
C. Woo - It's Cosy Inside
Again, I would love to get some more spiritually (but mellow) uplifting recs before I backslide into my nihilistic ways. lol
Growing up ain’t easy. Not even for rich college kids. And it seems our boys have had their hearts handed to them once or twice since their shimmering debut. There is a haze of melancholy that hangs over this album. Plus, the crisp pace and immediacy of the debut is traded in for a more lazy, nonchalant sound as the songs take a decidedly more leisurely approach to their destination. They've expanded their sound a bit too it seems and started dosing on a steady diet of kiwi rock which fits in well with their other jangle pop influences. Besides the songs being a bit more consistent on this one, both albums are excellent and complement each other nicely.
Grade: A. As Space Dementia recently pointed out, this is quite a different album from their debut. More spacious, pensive and considerably slowed down from the preppy, assured jangle pop of their debut. I can’t really decide which one I like best as they are both excellent and I’d even say essential modern jangle pop. I’m going to flip a coin and put this one slightly ahead of the debut, but I now consider their debut an essential Real Estate album since it does have such a different sound.
Essential
1. Virginia Astley - From Gardens Where We Feel Secure
2. Donovan - Wear Your Love Like Heaven
3. Bonnie "Prince" Billie - The Letting Go
4. Gene Clark - No Other
5. Grizzly Bear - Yellow House
6. Real Estate - Days
7. Beach House - Thank Your Lucky Stars
8. Harold Budd - Pavillion of Dreams
9. Real Estate - Real Estate
Would love to get your thoughts, Space-Dementia if you read this. Thanks for the insight!
7. A Bucolic Day in the English Countryside
It’s like stepping into a wardrobe and emerging in a land of unicorns and butterflies...The countryside of Totoro essentially springs to life. And you find yourself sunning on a field of buttercups or whatever as warm, peaceful church bells echo in the distance. An overwhelming sense of calmness enters your bones and you believe that magic is not just possible but real....
I close my eyes, music flowing and my body is like that wardrobe...I stepped into it many years ago but somehow I learnt how to emerge in that land of unicorns and butterflies
this music is a reminder
there is something more
piano and bells
piano and birds
surrounding stillness
sweet fragrance of the flowers floating in these songs
Well this came out of nowhere! It's simple, but alluring piano passages combined with found sounds that is magically and movingly transportive. It’s like stepping into a wardrobe and emerging in a land of unicorns and butterflies ( can you tell I have two girls! lol). The countryside of Totoro essentially springs to life. And you find yourself sunning on a field of buttercups or whatever as warm, peaceful church bells echo in the distance. An overwhelming sense of calmness enters your bones and you believe that magic is not just possible but real.
Tilly - thank you from the bottom of my heart for this. A wonderful write-up and (given I'm just about to finish my second listen) a simply gorgeous record which I'd never heard or heard of before you (and then Pa) waxed lyrical about it. Given my job takes me all over the English countryside (and I'm a child of nature at heart - totally inherited from my late mother) it's albums like this that instantly put me knee-deep in a Cambridgeshire cornfield or a Somerset orchard without leaving the confines of my suburban sprawl. It's an England of picture-postcards - church bells, sheep, owls, rabbits hopping around merrily down country lanes, Kentish hop fields, a Cornish fishing village, deer running free on Dartmoor - but at the same time allows the listener to remove themselves from reality and fantasise about lying down among a field of daisies in the middle of nowhere and watching the sun slowly set and dusk falling. It's truly breath-taking, and in fact so beautiful I've come very close to shedding tears whilst listening to it (and writing this). Now if I could only find a copy of my own to spin.
It kind of reminds me in parts of the instrumental junctions between Independent Television For Schools and Colleges in the 70s and 80s - you might like this compilation:
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