I'm staring at the asphalt wondering what's buried underneath

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

20.05.28 : Give Up - The Postal Service (2003)

I think I listened to this back in the day, but have completely forgotten anything about it, so was interested to revisit it.  And the immediate musical touchpoint for me was The Lightning Seeds - and I quite like The Lightning Seeds, so I was happy enough with what I was hearing.  For those of you that are too young to remember The Lightning Seeds, I'll say a lot of it also sounds like Owl City who did that fireflies song.  It all goes surprisingly drum and bass at the end though on "Natural Anthem" - I've no real idea what that was all about.  I like the album cover as well - very atmospheric.

I do feel the need to comment on the deluxe version of the album available on streaming service - why do you think I'm going to want another HOUR of random tracks, remixes, live versions and cover versions by other people as the only version available?  Give me the original with its blissfully short 45 minutes of perfectly acceptable tracks - or I will be grumpy!

The channel is pretty quiet on the matter - one "enjoying this" and one "so far so good" and that was it.  Wikipedia, on the other hand, has a surprising amount to say about the album (252 milliPeppers) - and, joy of joys, it has a "Controversy" section (I always enjoy them!).  But before we get to that, it tells me that Jenny Lewis was involved in the album and I've loved her ever since I saw Rilo Kiley (a very under-rated band) playing a very wet early morning slot on the Other Stage at Glasto in 2004, which sadly feels like only yesterday.  The album was received well enough critically, but was a bit of a slow burner commercially - finally charting in the US 13 months after it was released (by which time all groups members had moved on to other things) and being declared platinum (for a million sales) 10 years after its release.  It's never bothered the charts in the UK, which surprises me - it sounds like something that would have gone down well here at the time.

But, enough about all that - what about the controversy?!?  Well - there's two of them!  Firstly (and this seems quite bizarre) "the United States Postal Service (USPS) served the band with a cease and desist letter citing tarnishing and dilution of their trademark".  "Well Hank, I was going to send a letter today, but I've decided I won't because I don't like their latest album".  Even more bizarre was the resolution whereby the band had to promote the USPS and played at their annual convention - which must have resulted in some very confused posties.  The other "controversy" seems pretty reasonable to me - they got pissed off at Apple ripping off one of their music videos.  Apparently some Seattle-based bod saw it and approached the directors to remake it as an advert, and no-one thought they needed to tell the band about it.  However, this resulted in Apple promoting the actual song, so it's fair to say it turned out OK for them.

"Customers also listened to" a cool selection of bands including Silversun Pickups who coincidentally are another under-rated (imho) band I discovered at Glastonbury.  I liked The Postal Service though and will make an effort to revisit on a reasonably infrequent basis.

20.05.29 : Out Of Touch In The Wild - Dutch Uncles (2013)

A band I knew absolutely nothing about - and I couldn't even make an amusingly wrong guess as to what they'd sound like from the name.  It's actually not all that wildly different from the previous offering - but with added strings and xylophones.  I'll leave it up to you to decide whether this is a good or a bad thing - they don't go all drum and bass on the last track though.  I also heard a bit of Kate Bush fandom in there as well - I didn't mind it, but for some reason it didn't quite hit the spot at first listen and it feels unlikely I'll be back.   Very arty track titles though - "Phaedra", "Zug Zwang", "Flexxin", "Nometo" - all of them really!  The album cover is quite arty as well - I like it .

The channel was exceptionally quiet on this one - nothing until the nominator gently nudged people and was rewarded with a whole-hearted "it was OK".  I'm sure that's exactly what they were looking for.  In a similar vein, it's a one paragraph wonder from Wikipedia - "Out of Touch in the Wild is the third studio album by English indie rock band Dutch Uncles. It was recorded over a two-week period in January 2012".

"Customers also listened to" a particularly bizarre mix including The BBC Radiophonic Workshop - I suspect there's a reason, but I can't be bothered investigating.  Part of me feels I should try this one again, but I'm a bit busy at the minute and I have a very short memory.  Dutch who??

20.06.01 : The Presidents Of The United States Of America - The Presidents Of The United States Of America (1995)

I think I'd heard some of their stuff, but couldn't recall it - but for some strange reason I was expecting something pretty American.  Having looked at the track listing though, I saw they recorded "Lump" which I did remember, so I wasn't going in quite as blind as I might otherwise have done.  But I wasn't prepared for the opening track "Kitty" to start with the lyrics "meow, meow, meow, meow" - they were going to have go some to rescue this one from that.  Fortunately, they did somewhat - I also knew and liked "Peaches" from back in the day, so that was a pleasant reminder of more innocent times when I had more hair.  But overall, whilst it's quite a "hooky" sound, I found a whole album's worth of it to be a bit of a drag.  

The lyrical content isn't always great e.g. "Dune Buggy" mostly consists of him repeating the phase "little blue dune buggy" repeatedly and the suspicion is that a lot of times they just wrote about whatever they could see - "ooh look, a cat/buggy/peaches/lump - let's write a song about that".  And there's NEVER any excuse for covering MC5 (although tbh it is preferable to the original).  And musically, for me, it feels like they took bits from Nirvana, Green Day and RHCP, whilst managing to avoid the bits that make those groups stand out (at times, at least!).  

The channel had a couple of compliments to pay the album and then picked up on my theme of "why are there all these extra tracks?" - but rather than just being grumpy about it, they discussed it sensibly and offered very plausible reasons.  I don't know, some people are just far too level-headed about these things - they'll never achieve anything, I tell you.  Wikipedia has a bit on the album, but very little of interest except that the critical reception was good, but the commercial reception was tremendous for a debut album - it got to #6 in the US and sold over 3 million, which is a few in anyone's book. 

"Customers also listened to" Beck, Weezer, Cake, Blur, Lit - had the fans used all their words liking this artist so had to pick short other ones?  Or are they actually pagan rock bands in disguise?  Either way, I've stuck "Peaches" on my general playlist to remind of those days but will leave it at that, I'm afraid.

Well, that was quite a long write-up, wasn't it - mostly The Postal Service's fault with all their controversy!  And partly to compensate them for their troubles, but mostly because it was the album I liked the most, I declare them the winner of the round.

20.05.22 - Three I won't be rushing back to
20.06.01 - Two albums I actually know and like!