I'm nowhere, I'm no one, I'm nobody

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

20.05.14 : Lux Prima - Karen O And Danger Mouse (2019)

I'm aware of and like Karen O through her work with Yeah Yeah Yeahs and I'm also aware of Danger Mouse but have tended to find his output slightly more variable - but was certainly interested to see what kind of noise they'd make together.  And yeah, I liked it - although I'm not entirely sure how I'd describe it.  The internet suggests St Vincent as something similar, which I can see - but the internet also suggests Radiohead, which just goes to show you shouldn't believe everything you read on the internet.  I did prefer the first half of the album - it got a bit whiny towards the end, but fortunately rescued it with the beautifully weird "Nox Lumina".

The channel was mostly unaware of this but declared it to be a very fine choice.  It then spent some time debating the merits of Mumford & Sons - imho, not hateful but mystifying popular (i should also state that other opinions are available).  Wikipedia has the following in-depth commentary on the album - "Lux Prima is a collaborative studio album by American singer-songwriter Karen O and Danger Mouse. It was released in March 2019 under BMG Records" - so now you know everything there is to know about it!

"Customers also listened to" a mix of people I've mostly never heard of, with the exception of Warpaint and Jenny Lewis, both of whom I quite like but they're not particularly similar imho.  But (for once) I have agree with the channel that this was a fine choice - I'm glad this particular gap in my musical knowledge was exposed and remedied.

20.05.15 : XX - The XX (2009)

I know a lot of people love this album and I have heard it, but I don't think I ever bothered revisiting it - and I'm not entirely sure why, so I was interested to see if this cleared things up.  And yeah, I think it did - it's a "fine" album which is perfectly bearable but there's nothing there for me to inspire the levels of love that it obviously does for others.  It all seems a bit limp to me to be honest - there are no obvious highlights and I've pretty much forgotten it all 5 minutes after I've finished listening to it.  Hopefully The XX can get over my lack of appreciation!

The channel liked the album, but were a little bit disappointed that the Eurovision album wasn't picked instead (and yes, Daði Freyr would have waltzed off with Eurovision 2019!).  Wikipedia has a surprising amount to say about the album (325 milliPeppers) most of which is pointlessly detailed and of interest to very few people.  The album sales were the very definition of a sleeper hit, starting slowly but only getting to #44 before it was nominated for the Mercury Prize, when it climbed into the top 20, reaching #3 once it won.  One of the critics described its win as "a rare example of the Mercury Prize doing music lovers a service" which is harsh, but funny.  The other sentence which jumped out at me was "songs from the album were covered by a variety of major recording artists, including Shakira, Gorillaz and OMD" - which you'd have to say is quite the mix of artists.

"Customers also listened to" Lykke Li and M83, both of whom I would have to agree make similar noises.  However, I remain mystified as to the popularity of this album - it's dinner party background music at best for me (back in the days when you were allowed dinner parties, anyway).  However, I appreciate I'm in a minority on this one - nothing new there though!

20.05.18 : Two Shoes - The Cat Empire (2005)

OK - so I started badly here by conflating The Cat Empire with Cat Power in my mind and it's fair to say there's not a lot of common ground between the two.  I also have to confess to not being able to find the album on my streaming channel of choice, but I listened to the title track and an assorted selection of The Cat Empire tracks to get a feel for what I might have been missing.  And well, I didn't hate any of it but I struggle to imagine I would ever actively seek it out to listen to it - it would be fine to listen to in a bar somewhere over a few drinks (I believe such things used to be possible), but that's as far as it goes for me, I'm afraid.  Also, it's been quite the round for minimalistic album covers, hasn't it?

The channel had a lot of love for this album, even if it did cause one person to run off screaming.  Wikipedia has a few sentences on the album, but nothing of interest other than noting it got to #1 in Australia - and absolutely nowhere anywhere else.

"Customers also listened to" - who knows for this album, but picking another one of theirs at random came up with a fantastic set of names - Bedouin Soundclash, Molotov Jukebox, Jeremy Loops and Cosmo Jarvis.  All of whom I can, obviously, tell you absolutely nothing about.  The Cat Empire get a "fine" at best from me though - well put together tunes, but not my sort of thing.

Nothing particularly hateful in this round, but an easy win for Karen O and Danger Mouse for me.

20.05.11 - Three fine albums
20.05.19 - Three albums from a three year period