All the world in one grain of sand

Continuing my trip up #album-of-the-day...

20.04.27 : Wooden Heart - Listener (2010)

Another album and artist I've never heard of - and I must admit the Wikipedia description of them being a "spoken word rock band" didn't exactly encourage me.  But hey, what's the worst than can happen?  Hmmm - OK, that.  Well, I quite like the album cover, a lot of the songs have very interesting titles ("Most Roads Lead To Home", "Falling In Love With Glaciers", "Failing Is Not Just For Failures") and it's a pleasantly compact 42 minutes.  But - I'd have to say it was a very, very long 42 minutes.  I actually didn't mind the music (and even liked some of it), but his voice was just intensely annoying - a lot of the time it reminded me of Stan from the Eminem track (in the less happy "I hope you can't sleep and you dream about it - and when you dream I hope you can't sleep and you scream about it" bit).  Sorry, I'm perfectly happy for you to like it, but there's absolutely nothing that would compel me to ever listen to this again.  

The channel was quiet about the album - most of the comments were positive, although some other people might have mentioned his vocal style (but slightly more tactfully than me).  Wikipedia notes the existence of the band, but has absolutely nothing to say about the album - and the internet as a whole is pretty quiet on the matter as well.  "Customers also listened to" a load of people I've never heard of, but I'd have to say La Dispute, Wolfies Just Fine, "Right Away, Great Captain" and Margot And The Nuclear So-And-So's are all fine names for artists.  But as this album has shown us, fine names are unfortunately not necessarily indicators of fine contents.  Which is a shame.

20.04.28 : Black Cherry - Goldfrapp (2003)

I bought this back in the day and still have it somewhere, but can't claim it's been on constant rotation over the past 18 years.  I remember not minding it, but being somewhat thrown by their change in style - particularly since I quite liked the previous album (Felt Mountain).  Revisiting it, I think it's stood the test of time reasonably well - it's got some reasonably interesting beepy noises on it, although "Train" confused me somewhat by including a sound which was remarkably similar to my phone alarm going off.  "Crystalline Green", "Black Cherry" and "Strict Machine" are my favourite tracks - I'm a big fan of two word "<adjective> <noun>" song titles (and yes, I admit the first one only just qualifies).  One thing that did strike me is that I wasn't always entirely convinced the album knew what it wanted to be - but having listened to a few Goldfrapp tracks over the years, I can't help but feel that's true of the band in general.

The channel mostly liked this one, but what they REALLY liked were Minidiscs.  Oh yes, they liked them a lot and I must admit to having loved them as well having owned both a portable player and a hi-fi separate!  Wikipedia notes that the album was generally well received with most people noticing the minor change of style from ambient to synth-pop - those critics really earn their cash, eh?!?  Although, as is usually the case, it's the critics that don't like it that supply the more amusing quotes, with one describing it as "a soundtrack to excruciatingly banal seduction".  The album was reasonably successful commercially though, shifting 500,000 units globally.  It also includes the bizarre sentence "Goldfrapp chose to record in a studio in a bohemian area of Bath, England, because they needed a place to place their equipment and start working" - I'm not sure this entirely explains the choice of Bath.

"Customers also listened to" Roisin Murphy, Ladytron, Lady Hawke and Martina Topley-Bird - all of whom I'm quite partial too and would probably listen to before I listened to Goldfrapp. I didn't mind this album though - it's got some interesting sounds on it.

20.04.28 : Power Ballads - London Elektricity (2005)

Well, I know I'm a great/terrible person for judging an album by its cover, but I looked at this and all I came up with was "huh?".  And having listened to it, I've not greatly moved forwards - it's squarely in the drum & bass category, which isn't really my thing and I certainly don't need 65 minutes of it.  But, it's enlivened in places by some strange cross-fertliisation - in my listening notes I jotted down "disco" and "Pearl & Dean".  And who's not going to love some "drum & bass disco Pearl & Dean"?!?  Well, probably quite a few people, if I'm being entirely honest.

The channel was quiet but positive on this one - and we had our first new joiner in ages!  Wikipedia is similarly tight-lipped - all it has to say is "Power Ballads is the third studio album by London Elektricity, released in October 2005 through Hospital Records. It features vocals by Liane Carroll and MC Wrec".  All of which got me very confused because I thought I recognised the name Liane Carroll and it took me quite some time to work out I was thinking of Diahann Carroll who used to appear in Dynasty back in the day and was apparently the first African-American woman to win a Tony award - a mere 25 years after the awards started.  All of which is completely irrelevant for this album, obviously - what were you expecting!?!

"Customers also listened to" a load of people I've never ever heard of - I'd guess they might possibly be drum & bass.  Either that or Pearl & Dean.  I didn't hate this, but I wouldn't seek it out to listen to, I'm afraid.

Whilst I didn't mind Power Ballads in small doses, a whole album was a bit too much, as opposed to Listener, where a whole song was a bit too much - so Goldfrapp waltz off with the round with minimal effort.

20.04.22 - Not a lot in common with these three
20.04.30 - Three relatively laid back albums