Lockdown listening

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We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank by Modest Mouse

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O, You Sinners by Eliza Rickman

This was a new one on me, and I really liked it. According to her Wikipedia entry, Eliza Rickman is best known for her use of unusual instruments and her antique Victorian dresses. I can't comment on the dresses, but I didn't find the instrumentation that unusual. As a fan of Amanda Palmer, I'm well used to the sound of the toy piano.

What is striking about Eliza Rickman though is the beauty and clarity of her voice. That, coupled with the arrangements, made these songs quite beautiful in places. I especially liked the use of double-tracking of her voice - after all, if you have a talent, use it as much as you can.

The songs themselves are good - nothing particularly stands out for me, but there's nothing wrong with them either.

So, overall, a good album, but it didn't set my soul on fire. (Although the Nick Cave cover at the end of the album was a nice surprise.)

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Black Tie White Noise by David Bowie

Some people said this was a return to form by David Bowie, especially since he teamed up again with Nile Rodgers who had produced Let's Dance. However, for me it's a more of a miss than a hit. Bowie was never particularly good when he was trying to capture the zeitgeist: he was much better at driving the zeitgeist, and Black Tie White Noise smacks too much of him having cast around with what's popular with "the kidz" and then trying to Bowie-fy it.

Don't get me wrong, it's not a disaster (that honour belongs to Never Let Me Down), and there are some interesting moments on this album. Jump They Say is the most Bowie of all the tracks on this album, especially with its lyrical references to outsiders and mental illness. Musically, though, it sounds too much like he and Nile Rodgers have tried to make a 90s dance track - and they were really both too old for that nonsense by then.

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Nocturama by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

So many people have panned this album. Most of the negative reviews refer to a certain laziness, as if NCATBS were simply dusting off some old, rejected, songs and churning them out in order to get an album out.

And, to be fair to the reviewers, it's nowhere near the Bad Seeds' best efforts. But it's not completely terrible. (I'm not sure any Bad Seeds album could be completely terrible.) Of the tracks on here, Dead Man In My Bed is probably the best for me, although I have a sneaking admiration for Babe, I'm On Fire, just because of the playing on it. But Rock of Gibraltar is horrible. It's almost like someone said "I bet you can find 16 rhymes for Gibraltar" and Nick Cave went "Watch me". Yuck.

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Their Satanic Majesties' Second Request...n Massacre

I have absolutely no idea what to say about this album. I listened to it; there was some Indian-infused stuff; there was some fairly average indie-type stuff. And then it finished, leaving me with pretty much nothing.

[callagkm]

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The Head On The Door by The Cure

This is my favourite Cure album. Perhaps not quite as critically-acclaimed as Disintegration, but a great album from start to finish.