Why do memories glow the way real moments don't?

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's Top 50 Albums of 2021

#40 : Chemtrails Over the Country Club - Lana Del Ray



Who is Lana Del Rey really? The question that has animated her decade-long career has sometimes riled her, but the first of two albums she released this year turns introspective to consider the matter. Was she happiest as a 19-year-old waitress listening to Kings of Leon, as she sings in stunning falsetto on White Dress? Is she most herself as a sister, a lover, a star, an adopted Californian – or embracing her wanderlust and escaping all that? The myth and melodrama, at least, remain unchanged on a Lana album made with an unusually light touch.


I wasn't impressed with Lana when she first appeared on the scene - I didn't understand all the fuss, so pretty much avoided her until I was made to listen to Norman Fucking Rockwell as part of last year's "best of" exercise and I found it surprisingly enjoyable.  So I was looking forward to this.  And, on first listen, I thought it was "fine" - it felt more like the stuff that I ignored back at the beginning where she's being all sultry and mysterious.  There's no doubting she's got a nice voice so it's always listenable - but if I'd not caught NFR last year, then I think I would have been more dismissive of this.


Wikipedia has a surprising amount on the album (183 milliPeppers) and basically it says that most people liked it, although it features a surprising amount of Lana talking about herself in the third person for no obvious reason.  It got to #1 in the UK, but only #2 in the US (although it did get to #1 in the physical album sales chart and apparently shifted a lot of vinyl copies as well).


"Customers also listened to" a load of women I've never heard of, wearing very weird outfits.  And FKA Twigs, who I have heard of, also wearing a very weird outfit.  I think I could grow to like this, but I'd be more likely to revisit NFR, I suspect.  And if suffers in comparison with some of albums in the strong run from various ladies immediately coming up...


#39 : Flowers for Vases/Descansos - Hayley Williams



With pop-punk surging this year, Paramore’s influence may never have been stronger – but the band’s flag bearer continued to burrow away from incandescent rock into stranger, subtler sounds. Williams’ second solo album in two years observed the dying days of her marriage, and how the reliability of sadness became its own sort of safe harbour. That strange sense of comforting desolation hums through in acoustic guitar and ghostly piano, although Williams’ innate way with a vocal hook provides the defiant life force.


I'm aware of Paramore and they always feel like the sort of thing I'll like - until I actually listen to them and I don't really see what the fuss is all about.  I'm always up for a "strange sense of comforting desolation" though, so was interested to see what this was all about.  And yeah, I really quite liked it - she's got a much better voice than I was previously aware of and imho uses it better than Lana did on the previous album.  The accompanying instruments make some interesting noises - the whole effect is quite Fleetwood Mac-ish in places (but cooler).  And the lyrics feel like they're infused with meaning and quite wistful, but I'll have to be honest and say I didn't give them quite the attention they probably deserved.


Wikipedia has a few sentences on the album, but not a lot of interest except for this "On January 29, she started sending gifts to fans, including body parts of a doll with the note "Plant Me"" - that would creep me out big time.  The critics liked it, but the public didn't exactly go wild on it - possibly it's not Paramoresque enough for their fans and people like me ignore it because they don't see the fuss about Paramore.  


"Customers also listened to" Aly & AJ (who we'll be seeing pretty soon), PVRIS and St Vincent - some fine ladies there.  I liked this though and was pleased to be introduced to it, because I would have avoided it otherwise.


#42/41 - Two good examples of "that sort of thing"
#38/37 - The strong run from the ladies continues

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I saw your mum - she forgot that I existed

Image
Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 22/12/23 :  Stick Season - Noah Kahan Well, this week surprises us on a couple of fronts.  Firstly, and probably the least expected, this is possibly the album I've heard most this year - because obviously I'm a massive Noah fan. Well, it might not surprise you to hear it's not me but my delightful daughter - but you might be surprised to hear just how much my youngest absolutely LOVES Noah, particularly given his folkiness.  She's got tickets to see him next year and (excluding festivals) they're the most expensive gig tickets I've ever bought.  But despite having heard the album loads, I've never actually listened to it, so I'm interested to see what I make of it on a one-on-one basis. You know what - the headline is that, having actually listened to it I can report that, at least in places, I liked this way more than I previously did.  I listened to it over headphones for the first time and t
Read more

She's got a wicked way of acting like St. Anthony

Image
I've done The Guardian's list of the top 50 albums of the year for the last three years and (mostly) enjoyed it, so here we go again with this year's list .  Last year I'd previously met ten of the list - it will be interesting to see whether that is repeated this year.   #50 : Crazymad, For Me - CMAT Coming off halfway between Jenny Lewis and Self Esteem, Dublin’s CMAT sets life’s greatest embarrassments to ritzy country showstoppers – the musical equivalent of piling your beehive high to distract from your tear-reddened eyes. On her second album, she tots up the price she has paid for her bad boyfriends, self-subjugation and knowing avoidance of less-than-romantic realities, always with mordant humour rather than self-pity: “I’m just some stewardess who feeds your pets / And does your dishes and pays your rent,” she sings on the delicate, harmony-heavy Such a Miranda. For all that she has lost in these songs – pride, love, literal cash – her perspective remains a firm
Read more

Croopied in the reames, shepherd gurrel weaves

Image
Continuing my trip down The Guardian's   top 50 albums of 2023 #30 : The Age Of Pleasure - Janelle Monáe Monáe’s last album, 2018’s Dirty Computer, saw the high-concept pop star returning to earth after several albums of space-age fantasia, showing a softer, fallible side for the rest time. Its songs were still divided into three categories – Reckoning, Celebration and Reclamation – indicating an artist who hadn’t quite let go of the structural safety rails. But on The Age of Pleasure, Monáe is resolutely grounded in pursuit of a new kind of body high. To the decadently rendered diasporic sounds of reggae, dancehall and Afrobeats, she hymns pleasure and desire, connecting (as did Jessie Ware also did this year) sex as self-empowerment and celebrating the kaleidoscopic nature of identity. Or, as she puts it on Phenomenal: “I’m lookin’ at a thousand versions of myself / And we’re all fine as fuck.” I have experienced a couple of Janelle albums and I found them somewhat inaccessible -
Read more