Lunes 24 Sep 2007, 3:29
Bought some new CDs last week, so it's time for capsule reviews!
Mogwai: Happy Songs for Happy People — Considering how much I like post-rock, I don't have many albums of it. This album joins Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven and Yanqui U.X.O. in my slowly growing collection. Mogwai's style is closer to the Godspeed You! Black Emperor side of post-rock than, say, the Sigur Ros side, but this album isn't built around long crescendos the way Godspeed's tends to be. In fact, most of the tracks are about "radio length". They also sound more polished, production-wise. And, fortunately, they also don't throw in a bunch of aimless low-fi spoken word samples, which I consider the major flaw in Skinny Fists. I still consider GY!BE superior, but I may revise that as I familiarize myself with this album.Sufjan Stevens: The Avalanche — This is almost a guilt buy. I have most of Illinois in mp3 form, but don't own the album. I was about to buy it, but then I saw this, and the draw of new stuff was too strong. I'll still buy it eventually. Anyway. This is a collection of stuff that didn't make it onto Illinois, including a few different versions of Chicago. It's pleasant, and if you liked Illinois you'll most likely enjoy this, but nothing really stands out like some of the Illinois tracks. I think it was a good purchase, and it may grow on me more with time, but I don't know if I'll ever catch myself humming along to it.Lou Harrison/New Zealand Symphony Orchestra: Suite for Violin with Orchestra — I was actually looking for a recording of Ligeti's Atmospheres and Requiem, and didn't want to leave Amoeba Records' classical section empty-handed. I'd heard a lot of good things about Harrison, so I picked this up. SO glad I did. The title piece in particular is absolutely gorgeous. I'm reminded a bit of Hovhaness, and just a touch of Bartók (it must be the violin). This is going to get played a lot. Why'd it take me so long to look into him? Since Last.FM sucks at identifying classical albums, this is on Koch International Classics.Sleepytime Gorilla Museum: In Glorious Times — Like The Avalanche, this was almost a guilt buy. I have a lot of tracks from their two previous records in mp3, but neither of the albums themselves. But instead, I picked up the latest. I am weak. SGM is not. Strong stuff. Dark, dissonant, complex, misanthropic, and weird. This album is not quite as aggressive as Of Natural History—nothing here grabs you by the throat and throttles you like FC: The Freedom Club or Bring Back the Apocalypse—but it still rocks pretty hard. It leans a little more towards melancholy than angry, but not by much.Link Wray: Rumble! The Best of Link Wray — Yeah, it's a hits compilation. Shut up. I'd liked what I'd heard of Wray before this. The collection is pretty much what I expected. Good, solid, fuzzed-out proto-rockabilly guitar instrumentals. Except for a couple of songs that show that Wray, like Dick Dale (and, much later, Joe Satriani) is best when he shuts the hell up and lets his guitar do the talking (on the other hand, the voice overs to his great version of the old Batman Theme are a riot. "Should I start the nuclear power to the Batmobile?" "Right again, Robin!"). This will go well with my Dick Dale best of, and with my Los Straitjackets and Man...or Astroman? albums.The Bad Plus: Prog — I love the whole idea of The Bad Plus. It used to be that jazz musicians regularly improvised over the popular songs of the day. The audience could tell what the musicians were doing because they knew the tunes. Nowadays jazz musicians still play over those tunes, now called "standards", but with a few exceptions people today just aren't familiar with the originals, so to know what's going on you basically already have to be into jazz. The Bad Plus goes back to the original idea and improvises over more recent popular music (as well as their own original pieces). The results are surprisingly good. Sometimes they're easily recognizable (Tears For Fears' Everybody Wants To Rule The World, Rush's Tom Sawyer), and sometimes you have to really listen for it to make the connection (Bowie's Life On Mars). The originals are strong too. It's a fun idea, well executed.Györgi Ligeti: Requiem/Aventures/Nouvelles Aventures — This is half of what I was looking for. I was reading an old liveblog by Flah of Atmòspheres and Requiem, which made them sound pretty interesting. I have to say I was disappointed. Maybe my hopes were set too high, but Requiem didn't do much for me. Aventures and Nouvelles Aventures actually annoyed me. They're the worst kind of modern-classical wankery, with a chorus doing things like laughing on cue. A complete nothing, like the most aimless and self-indulgent of Berio. Maybe Requiem will grow on me, but I doubt the other two pieces ever will. It's on Wergo, if you want help avoiding it.Mastodon: Blood Mountain — I've enjoyed the Mastodon I've heard. And it was only $10, so what the hell. Good fun metal of indeterminate subgenre (seriously, why do so many metalheads get hung up on this stuff?). The only thing I can really say against it is that, since I was doing other stuff while it was playing, I couldn't really tell where one track ended and another began. There's a sameness to it. But at least it's the same good stuff. Further listening may make it more distinct.Behold... the Arctopus: Nano-Nucleonic Cyborg Summoning — Now this is a total guilt buy. I already have all of the studio tracks here on mp3. But they're great tracks. Wild, intense experimental metal. Depending on your degree of exposure to modern dissonance as well as high-energy metal, this can either be totally unlistenable chaos or brilliance. I lean towards the latter. Plus, they have great song titles (You Will Be Reincarnated As An Imperial Attack Spaceturtle should win some sort of award).
