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gerogerigaogaigar · 8 months

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Ok so I did my selection of albums and that post blew up as much as any of my posts do so now everyone I live with wants me to review their favorite albums. Since I'm a benevolent overlord I have acquiesced and so here are ten albums that my husband Felix wants you all to listen to as reviewed by me.

Fire On Fire - The Orchard

I was polite with my choices, but my dear husband decided to open his list with a one off side project by members of Cerberus Shoal. If you don't know the sorta post rock-y sorta folk band Cerberus Shoal then understand that this album is obscure even by the standards of that band's fans. Gone are the post rock tendencies of the parent band and instead the focus is solely on new weird Americana. New weird america is a musical movement that takes American primitivist and psychedelic folk music and mashes it up into something that is inevitably either pretentious garbage or revelatory beauty. This album is the latter. The music plods along with the grace of a broken machine. The music sounds like it is rusting as it moves and the nasally vocals grind along with the hulking monstrosities that are the songs of The Orchard. The music I'm describing may not sound pleasant, but the cacophony comes together in a harmonic cohesion that does for folk music what Charles Ives did for the symphony. There are many more artists that have a similar sound to Fire On Fire, but this album has a uniquely lumbering quality that is not recreated nearly as well by most other artists in the scene.

Sweet Trip - You Will Never Know Why

You Will Never Know Why is a major departure from Sweet Trips usual sound. The glitch elements have been dialed back, although electronic sounds still populate the album, and it is basically a straightforward shoegaze album. It pulls ahead of competitors partly for the incorporation of electronic music but also for excellent vocals that capture a sterile whispiness. Plus the bass which is so bubbly and tends to rise to the top of mixes to add counterpoint melody on top of the dual vocals. As usual for the genre layering is the key to the beautiful sound. The songs will lily along as bright shimmering sounds plink into the mix and fade out only to be replaced by some other noise.

Iron & Wine - The Shepherd's Dog

While I'm still a fan of the first two Iron & Wine albums Shepherds Dog is clearly where he comes into his own as a performer. The instrumentation is punched up a bit with the occasional touch of horn or honky tonk piano to give the album a more dynamic feel. And the style has incorporated a little bit more rock edge as well. Songs like White Tooth Man help balance the album so that slower number like Resurrection Fern can really shine. Lyrically I can't tell you exactly what is going on in any given song. Sam Beam writes in little snapshots of ideas and paint an impression of a feeling rather than tell a story. I get the idea that he is rather scared of Americana though. And there is something about dog metaphors that really makes this man's brain go brrrrr. Overall I think The Shepherd's Dog is the most balanced of all the Iron & Wine albums I've heard. Successfully towing the line between folk rock and art rock.

Sufjan Stevens - Illinois

A legend among pretentious sadboys but always skirting the mainstream is Sufjan Stevens. Although he started out making indie folk his style quickly evolved and on Illinois (or Sufjan Stevens Invites You To: Come On Feel The Illinoise as the album cover says) he hit the first major stride of his career. Illinois features insanely elaborate arrangements that show a wide range of influences from minimalist composers to 70s singer songriters to show tunes. The songs all seem to be exercises in elaborate time signature and rhyme scheme or clever wordplay and in depth metaphor.

Now to address the obvious. This album is ostensibly about the state of Illinois. This is true in the same way that I said Beat The Champ was about wrestling. Some songs reflect heavily on things about the state. John Wayne Gacy Jr. Is a biography of the Illinois born serial killer, They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Ahhhh! is about the abundance of ghost town in the state. Other songs make reference to the state but are a little more vague. Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother!, Casimir Pulaski Day, and The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us! are really just personal stories that Sufjan Stevens has decided to set in Illinois. And the stories vary from very grand high concept things to very intimate and personal. Sometimes so personal that I am dubious of how much he stretches the truth to make these songs. But whether I buy it or not the arrangements are equally grand and intimate so the mood is always well designed.

Röyksopp - Melody A.M.

Some downtempo music is meant to get you up and dancing, some downtempo is trying to evoke complex feeling in the listener. Melody A.M. is aiming for something in between. It lays down tight grooves with bubbly bass lines and drops a variety of melodic sounds overtop with elements of downtempo, trip-hop, house, disco, and ambient music all present. It hits all the points for being a driving at night all contemplative style album, but it pulls back on the moodyness and leaves you with a gentle friendly sound instead. Lullabye melodies floating over house beats. The result is just an immensely pleasant listen. Melody A.M. is effective because it does more than just play on the current trends from when it was released, it pulls bit of electronic music from decades past from Tangerine Dream to Giorgio Moroder to Vangelis there is a lot of the past buried in this record. And the resulting love of slightly corny music makes the album feel so sincere without having to be deeply intellectual.

The Mountain Goats - All Hail West Texas

During the recording of The Coroner's Gambit John Darnielle's trusty Panasonic RX-FT500 boombox shit the bed and he started working with newer technology. All Hail West Texas is the album he recorded after that busted Panasonic miraculously came back to life one day.

To listeners who got into The Mountain Goats through Tallahassee and later the lo fi production might be a little hard to take, but you will learn to love the tape hiss that is a staple of early Mountain Goats recordings. Truly it becomes it's own instrument being the only sound on the album outside of Darnielle's voice and guitar.

But this is Mountain Goats you are here for lyricism. John Darnielle has said that he writes songs of love and redemption for people that would never listen to his music. All Hail West Texas starts right off with one of the best examples of this. The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out Of Denton is so simple and so beautiful, and maybe the most emotionally affecting songs to feature the refrain of "hail Satan!" The album is about outcasts, toxic couples, traumatized kids. According to the cover it is "fourteen songs about seven people, two houses, a motorcycle, and a locked treatment facility for adolescent boys." The cryptic interconnectedness will drive you insane if you try to hard to figure it out so I'm sorry Felix I will not be analyzing the characters and storylines that are supposedly here. That's your job.

DJ Yoda - How To Cut And Paste Country Western Edition

You press play this album. The first thing you hear is backing beat from Fix Up, Look Sharp and then Thank God I'm A Country Boy by John Denver starts playing and then Dolly Parton's Nine To Five and then it transitions into a country version of Rapper's Delight. You are in the unhinged world of DJ Yoda who is trying to prove a point here. The point is that you can make a DJ mix out of anything if you are creative enough.

DJ Yoda is known for his use of humor and this mix is one of the more obvious instances considering that the whole concept is a bit of a joke. He puts a beat over I'll Fly Away and that is funny. He uses a sample of Johnny Cash on sesame Street. He uses a country cover of Gin And Juice. It's weird, but because Yoda is a master DJ he manages to never lose the flow, often transitioning songs by losing the beat and just playing the country music straight before dropping a beat in. He also frequently transitions between different versions of a song like Johnny Cash's Ring Of Fire seamlessly turning into a reggae cover by This Kid Named Miles.

The beauty of DJ mixes is already the way they can recontextualize songs in a way that is interesting. I think it goes without saying that you will have a lot of songs recontextualized for you if you listen to this mix.

Mariya Takeuchi - Variety

There was a time when the internet became really obsessed with the song Plastic Love. This was based partially in the fact that the song is a banger but also that people were sharing the picture sleeve for her Sweetest Music single as a lesbian thirst trap. So the Tumblr City Pop era was short lived but I never forgot.

The first thing you might notice about Variety is that it's very retro. The production is a mix of Phil Spector and Motown Styles. And musically it often follows suit. But the old school rock ballad style is also met with bits of 70s adult contemporary and disco. The result is songs that sound like Ronettes tracks with a Donna Summer bass line as the backbone. Songs that sound like James Taylor started using synths. Takeuchi has a voice that perfectly melds these styles into something cohesive so that the dance music style of Plastic Love can flow into the 60s girl group sound of Honki De Only You (Let's Get Married) without missing a beat.

City Pop may have been a niche phase for westerners with an internet addiction but it was one of the most dominant musical styles of the 70s and 80 in Japan. I had strongly considered this album as a 'should have been on the list' pick. If you listen to this album because of my review and like it do seek out more city pop, the genre is a goldmine that the West has barely scraped the surface of. Hell if you like this album DM me and I will rec you more Japanese pop from the 70s and 80s.

Murder By Death - Who Will Survive, And What Will Be Left Of Them?

With a name like Who Will Survive And What Will Be Left Of Them? by Murder By Death you would probably expect this to be death metal, but nope it's a gothic country rock album. Who Will Survive tells the story of a small Mexican border town that is cursed by the devil. The meat of the album is made up of songs that describe the ways that the townsfolk respond to the curse and their inevitable demise. The theme that runs through the album is mainly how people respond to mortality. Some people try to escape the town like in Pillar Of Salt which tells a sorta Orpheus and Eurydice adjacent tale. Some people think their tough like the narrator of The Desert Is One Fire who scoffs at the people sleeping in the shelters. Others give in to despair like the suicidal narrator of Three Men Hanging.

Along with the individual stories the narrative trickles out details about the nature of the curse. We quickly learn that the dead are rising from their graves as zombies, crops start to fail, the earth becomes unworkable, at least one person either physically or mentally decays as they approach the town border. The horror themed lyricism is backed by country rock music that creates the ominous atmosphere needed with the help of an ever present cello that takes a lot of melodic duty. It's a solidly spooky album that demands multiple listens just to parse out more of the story.

Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi - Rome

Danger Mouse is an interesting figure. Producer and musician interchangeably he can be found both as a featured performer, solo artist or as a producer credit nearly anywhere you look and he runs the gamut from extremely mainstream projects to the highly personal and artsy. Rome is most certainly the latter. On it Danger Mouse works with Italian composer Daniele Luppi to create a pop album inspired by the soundtracks to spaghetti westerns. In addition to Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi additional vocals and songwriting are added by Jack White and Norah Jones. White and Jones are natural fits for the slightly polished slightly lo fi sound of the album which is accomplished by recording on vintage equipment and working with musicians who had actually recorded on spaghetti westerns, notably The Good, The Bad And The Ugly.

While it has a lot of musicians and equipment used to record these classic soundtrack the music itself is a little more in the vein of traditional pop veering in the direction of spaghetti western on the instrumental tracks. This keeps the album from feeling strictly like an imitation and let's it be it's own thing.

#500 album gaiden #fire on fire #sweet trip #iron & wine #sufjan stevens #röyksopp #the mountain goats #DJ yoda #mariya takeuchi #murder by death #danger mouse #daniele luppi

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