A real life emotional teenager
Continuing my trip up Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time...
#434 : Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain - Pavement (1994)
After the indie-rock slacker kings’ dazzling debut, Slanted and Enchanted, nobody knew what Pavement would try next for an encore. But Crooked Rain turned out to be their sunniest, most tuneful music — a concept album about turning 28, full of pastoral beauty and wiseass melody, with echoes of Creedence and Hendrix, maybe even the Dead. Stephen Malkmus’ breathy vocals and bittersweet guitar ripples in “Gold Soundz,” “Silence Kid,” and “Range Life” capture the moment of feeling stranded halfway to adulthood, so drunk in the August sun.
I'd heard of Pavement, the "beloved and influential" indie-rockers but can't say I was familiar with anything they'd done and wasn't overly sure what to expect from this, but I was expecting to like it. And I kinda liked the songs, with their somewhat meandering tunes and nice jangly guitars, but I wasn't so convinced by Stephen Malkmus' "breathy vocals" - one man's "breathy" is another man's "tuneless". Having said that, my closest frame of reference would probably be The Lemonheads who I really liked at the time and I seem to recall Evan Dando having similar disregard for the notes in front of him from time to time - so maybe I'm just old and boring these days.
Wikipedia gives me the following snippet "It was a UK Top 20 hit upon release, although it was not so successful in the US charts" which surprises me - it feels much more of a US sound to me. The page for the band is interesting and obviously holds them in high regard, but I'm much more interested in why they fired their first drummer - "During the Slanted & Enchanted tour, Gary Young's eccentric behavior increased, and he would stage incidents such as handing out cabbage and mashed potatoes to fans at the door of the venue, doing handstands, drunkenly falling off his drum stool, and running around the venue while the rest of the band was playing". You don't get given cabbage and mashed potatoes often enough at gigs these days, I find.
Part of me is intrigued enough to investigate Pavement a bit more, but I'm a little concerned by Rolling Stone's assertion this is their most tuneful album. "Customers also listened to" a load of people I've never heard of - I assume the sound will be similar but won't be investigating. So, all in all, an interesting diversion but I'm afraid I'm not entirely sure what all the fuss was about.
#433 : Sound Of Silver - LCD Soundsystem (2007)
James Murphy had proven his kung fu as the most badass electro-punk producer in clubland. But not even fierce fans dreamed he’d make a masterpiece like Sound of Silver. Every track sounded like a different band’s greatest hit, from the political punk goof “North American Scum” to the synth-pop breakup lament “Someone Great.” The song for the ages was “All My Friends,” huge, sweeping, ferociously emotional, with disco keyboards and rock guitars pulsing as Murphy looked back on a youth of killer parties and silent mornings.
I'd heard this album back in the day and remembered enjoying it - and I enjoyed it again when I came back to it. What I'm not entirely able to do is explain why - again, a lot of this album is long and repetitive and whilst it's not quite beepy, it certainly features "electronic sounds" (whatever they are). I think my best description of it would be "dance music you can't dance to" - and I totally agree with Rolling Stone that "All My Friends" is the stand-out track, but "Sound Of Silver" ain't too shabby either in my opinion.
"Customers also listened to" Animal Collective and Hot Chip - and I can definitely see that. Hot Chip are definitely the UK version of LCD Soundsystem - everything is just dialled back a bit compared with their very American cousins (and this is not intended as a slight on either side!). Wikipedia goes into great depth regarding the critical love out there for this album, but it's interesting that this love didn't really translate into huge sales - I'd say this album has influenced a lot of acts that followed along afterwards though and it was a pleasure to catch up with it again.
#432 : Confessions - Usher (2004)
Usher was already a star in 2004, a sly singer and slick dancer whose R&B hits found a home with pop fans. But Confessions, which is one of the last 10-million-plus sellers ever made, turned him into an unstoppable juggernaut. Usher worked with a murderers’ row of R&B and hip-hop talent, from Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis to Jermaine Dupri to Just Blaze; the album moves easily from club wreckers like the Lil Jon- and Ludacris-assisted smash “Yeah!” to forgive-me-for-cheating ballads to love-you-forever duets.
This kind of stuff lives in another cultural blindspot for me - I'm aware of this kind of thing, but have no interest in any of it and blithely dismiss it as "sounding all the same". So would being forced to listen it change my mind? What do you think?!?
Meh, it's OK. The tracks are all put together well, but it's like Barry White played at 45rpm (look it up in a museum, kids) but rather than singing about the lovin', he's singing about the cheatin' - I lost count of how many kids he had with other women during this album. And there are way to many "woahs" and "yeahs" on there. Having said all that, "Yeah!" is (as Radio 1 would put it) a "BANGA!" - I hate it, but even I can't help but love it.
So, did the public agree with me? Of course they didn't - this is the second best selling album of the 2000s and it shifted gazillions of copies (over 10m in the US and 1.5m over here) and was BLOODY EVERYWHERE at the time (except in my house). The Wikipedia entry for the album alone is an impressive body of work, but I just couldn't be bothered reading it - sorry, Mr Usher but there are still some pockets of resistance holding out against you and I'm proud to be one of them.
So I suspect it won't surprise you to hear that I judge Sound Of Silver to be the winner.
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