Give me a reason to love you

Continuing my trip up Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time...

#133 : Hejira - Joni Mitchell (1976)  

After redefining the possibilities of singer-songwriter music in the early 1970s, Mitchell set herself an even more ambitious challenge with Hejira, her ultimate jazz-folk statement. Setting her restless-soul visions to slippery instrumentals with help from bassist Jaco Pastorius, she weighed the costs of dedicating her life to fearless self-expression where others might have settled for mere happiness (“Amelia,” “Song for Sharon”). Getting to the point where she could make an album this singularly brilliant might have been a lonely enterprise, but it was worth it for the rest of us.

Our second visit with Ms Mitchell on this list - last time I admired rather than loved the album, but wasn't scared off from listening to more of her stuff.  Which was lucky, because here we are.  And again, it's a case of admiration rather than adulation - they are nice enough songs which are played and sung well, but I can't remember any of them.  I certainly didn't get Rolling Stone's impression that a tortured soul was undergoing a journey of discovery - for me it felt more like a very talented and intelligent individual sat down with her guitar and just sang and played what she was feeling at the time, then packed up and went home for her tea (which I imagined to be healthy and vegetarian - I can't imagine Joni stopping off at Maccy D's for a burger and fries).

Wikipedia has the most random selection of facts about her life around the time of recording this album, including these about the time she did a solo drive from Maine to California "She traveled without a driver's licence and stayed behind truckers, relying on their habit of signalling when the police were ahead of them; consequently, she only drove in daylight hours" and "During some of her solo journeys, Mitchell donned a red wig, sunglasses, and told the varying strangers she met that her name was either Charlene Latimer or Joan Black".  Of course she did.  The album was well received critically, but not so much commercially - but Joni likes it, with it being one of her personal favourites.  Her Wikipedia entry is lengthy and isn't the best written one I've seen so far, being more of a collection of random facts than most.  She's had an interesting life though and is still hanging in there, although apparently not in the best of health.

"Customers also listened to" Rickie Lee Jones, Joan Armatrading and Laura Nyro - all worth checking out if you like that sort of thing.  But it appears I need to move on and try some different Joni in order for me to find the album that converts me into a proper fan - the good news is that I've still got two more opportunities on this list (and I'm quite hopeful they'll do the trick)

#132 : 40 Greatest Hits - Hank Williams (1978)  

“I’m a rolling stone, all alone and lost,” Hank Williams sang in “Lost Highway,” “for a life of sin I have paid the cost.” When he died on New Year’s Day 1953 at age 29, in the back seat of a Cadillac while en route to a gig in Canton, Ohio, Williams was the biggest star in country music, a charismatic songwriter and performer equally at home with lovesick ballads like “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” and long-gone-daddy romps such as “You’re Gonna Change (Or I’m Gonna Leave).” Williams left his stamp on the decades of country and rock & roll that followed him, from the rockabilly of Elvis Presley to Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” to the lovesick ballads of Beck and Jason Isbell’s mordant depictions of life.

Now - I'm not sure but I have a suspicion that this might be a greatest hits album, although I don't know why I'd think that.  To be fair, he died in 1953 and they didn't really do albums in those days (although apparently 6 were released in the two years following his death!) so I'm more generously minded towards this greatest hits album than I would be to others.  Or I would be, if I didn't find that every bleeding song sounded exactly the same - and it's very much not a sound I like.  Sorry Hank!

The Wikipeda entry might just as well say "This is an album of his hits and there are 40 of them" for all the use it is.  His entry is surprisingly long for someone who died at the age of 29, but he started performing in his early teens and seems to have squeezed quite a lot into the the intervening years.  Whilst being drunk for most of them, it appears - it seems there wasn't a job he wasn't fired from for persistent drunkenness.  As a fellow performer put it "You've got a million-dollar talent, son - but a ten-cent brain".

"Customers also listened to" Earl Scruggs and Merle Haggard, including the fantastically titled album I Think I'll Just Stay Here And Drink.  But even the title wouldn't be enough to make listen to it - this style of music just isn't my cup of tea, I'm afraid.

#131 : Dummy - Portishead (1994)  

It’s difficult to sustain, over an entire album, something as vague as ambiance, but Portishead did it on their debut. Along with fellow Bristol, England, innovators Massive Attack, they headed up the trendy mid-Nineties trip-hop movement. Long after the genre petered out, their debut remains immersive and haunting, built on skittering break beats, jazzy samples, spare arrangements, and discomforting pauses. But it’s singer Beth Gibbon’s brooding, pop-cabaret vocals that make it feel classic, hinting at real pain below trip-hop’s stoned exterior. The result was cinematic enough to recall John Barry’s lustrous scores for James Bond films.

I have a confession to make - the first time I heard this album, I didn't like it.  Yeah, I know - it's mad, isn't it?!?  What was I thinking?!?  I've learned my lesson now though and was very happy to listen to it again - it's a very atmospheric album with some very good yet strange noises on it.  "Sour Times", "Roads" and "Glory Box" are probably my favourite tracks, but they all work well together as an album - if you like Massive Attack and, for some strange reason, aren't aware of this album then you should definitely check it out.

Wikipedia has remarkably little to say about the album other than noting Neneh Cherry's involvement behind the scenes (it feels like she was personally managing trip-hop at the time) and the fact that everybody loved it.  They didn't even manage to find any negative reviews to reference, which is an extremely rare occurrence.  It also managed to get to #2 in the UK album charts which is a pretty impressive achievement for a debut album from a not exactly typical genre.  The band's entry is somewhat sparse, being mainly a list of their albums - but I did learn that they've covered Abba's "SOS".  And it sounds exactly like you'd expect it to, which is not a bad thing at all.

"Customers also listened to" Massive Attack (no-one was expecting that!), Tricky (ditto), Air, Morcheeba, Zero 7, Groove Armada - the list of albums I own from that period goes on and on!  And this album is up there with the best of them - very enjoyable indeed.

So I wonder who won this round then?  Even if I was to allow Hank's album for consideration, it would still finish last by a long way and Joni's album would finish a long way behind Portishead's fine effort.  Not a close contest.

#136-134 - three very different bands
#130-128 - three big albums from three big bands