Rest your head, here's a lullaby - a melody for heavy eyes
Continuing my trip up #album-of-the-day...
20.06.26 : Ben Folds Five - Ben Folds Five (1995)
What? Narj managed to avoid picking Laura Marling AGAIN?!? I can only assume Evil Robot Narj was somehow involved - but for those of you that have had the pleasure of her acquaintance, you'll know that even Evil Robot Narj is still going to be a very nice person indeed. Much nicer than me anyway, particularly after I've been made to listen to a Ben Folds Five album - it's just not my kind of thing. I consider it to be the bastard son of Mika and the less interesting bits of various other groups (and let's face it, anything that invokes the spirit of Mika is obviously going to be annoying). I guess "Underground" is a well constructed song, but it's still more than a bit annoying - particularly the chorus with all those falsetto "wooohs". So it's not for me, thank you. And I can only hope Evil Robot Narj can forgive me (but I've checked and next time we get Good Robot Narj picking Laura Marling, so I reckon I'll get away with it)
The channel totally agreed with ERN that this was great - so maybe I'm wrong? No, I refuse to countenance such nonsense! Wikipedia doesn't have an awful lot to say about the album other than surprising me by telling me that the album failed to chart in either the UK or the US which resulted in me checking out how "Underground" did because I remember hearing it A LOT - and it only got to #37. They had slightly more success with later albums before "amicably" disbanding in 2000. Wikipedia also tells me there were only 3 of them - what's that all about?
"Customers also listened to" Ben Folds (whoever he is), Jellyfish and Fountains of Wayne - both of whom I'm vaguely familiar with, but don't feel the need to investigate further. Overall, I know this has its fans but it's safe to say I'm not one of them.
20.06.29 : The Silver Scream (Final Cut) - Ice Nine Kills (2018)
I'd never heard of Ice Nine Kills, but one look at the album cover was enough to tell me what we were going to get here. It's not really my sort of thing and I really don't like that low screaming thing that bands of this ilk like - but apart from that, I found this surprisingly enjoyable, which wasn't the expected outcome at all. It takes itself just seriously enough, there's an adequate amount of melody in there to keep me engaged and it's played pretty skilfully - I particularly liked "The American Nightmare" and "A Grave Mistake", and "Love Bites" also worked well with some female vocals involved to reduce the somewhat high levels of testosterone elsewhere. I'm not 100% convinced by the "Thriller" cover - I'd suggest it's "interesting" rather than "actually any good".
A lot of it feels like they're auditioning to write the soundtrack for a horror film but, to be honest, I feel their presence would improve a lot of horror films, so I'm perfectly happy for them to give it a crack. Overall, I don't think there's a huge chance of me revisiting the whole album, but I've added a couple of tracks onto my general playlist and obviously there is no higher accolade in the history of music. Probably.
The channel gave it a couple of thumbs up and one "not my kind of thing, but I liked "A Grave Mistake"" which feels very familiar! There was also some concern as to "but what does their name actually mean?" which is a valid point, but you don't want to be heading down that path. Wikipedia tells me that every track is actually inspired by a different horror movie - I obviously picked up some of the references but wasn't aware it was quite so pervasive. It also tells me that it got to #29 in the US - which seems like a good effort by the lads.
"Customers also listened to" Crown The Empire, Escape The Fate, Motionless In White and Famous Last Words - it seems like three word band names attract a certain genre of music. But generally, I was expecting I'd be saying how much I hated this - but for some strange reason, that's not the case at all.
20.06.30 : No Brain, No Pain - SPQR (2020)
Never heard of the band or album, so going in blind. And it appears part of the reason I've not heard of the album is that it's a 4 track EP - which feels like a very apologetic choice to me ("Look, I'm sorry you have to listen to this but I told Brian I'd pick them and there's only 16 minutes of it, OK?"). So I was going in somewhat intrigued. And well, it's OK - a bit art-school band for my liking, but nothing hateful. And I'm still not sure why you wouldn't pick one of their albums - unless they're soooo art school they don't do albums ("WE DON'T DO DUVETS!" - which will mean absolutely nothing to you unless you are of a certain age).
The channel also mentioned it was short and demanded a second EP, which was duly provided (but I never listened to it, because I'm like that). But the channel was generally much keener on it than I was and it even managed to entice someone to join. WIkipedia has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to say about the band or the EP, so that's saved me some time as well :-)
"Customers also listened to" - "no similar recommendations", which is a very rare occurrence indeed so we're obviously in a very rarely visited section of Amazon Music. I thought it was fine, but nothing more than that for me, I'm afraid.
Wow - am I really going to give this round to Ice Nine Kills? Yeah, it seems like I am - I never saw that one coming.
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