Tag: 2010s

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Tunes

Best tunes of 2011: #24 Lykke Li “Love out of lust”

<< #25    |    #23 >>

Lykke Li is the stage name (one based on a derivative of her birth name) of Swedish singer/songwriter Li Lykke Timotej Zachrisson. She released her critically acclaimed debut album, “Youth novels”, at 22 years of age, and followed it up with “Wounded rhymes” three years later, an album most have agreed was an improvement on the debut. I really liked both of her first two albums, loving both the quirky and the macabre feel of the tunes, music that traverses a taut tightrope, just this side of pop. With each successive album afterwards, however, it sounds to me like she has fallen victim to the lure of the mighty pop dollar and I’ve liked each of them less to a greater degree.

Her sophomore release, though, was a delight. She went to California to record it, admitting, herself, that she wanted to escape the dreariness of Stockholm winters and find some sunshine. Also, there were journeys to the desert in search of the ghostly channels of her heroes in Jim Morrison and Joni Mitchell. It’s not at all Haight Ashbury or Laurel Canyon, though, still very much keeping to the blueprint of the debut, a percussive and atmospheric canvas for her to paint her childlike, haunting vocals upon.

“Love out of lust” was actually not one of the three singles released off the album but I cannot understand for the life of me why it wasn’t. It’s so freaking beautiful and it’s damned catchy. Lykke Li is pleading her case for love while the world shimmers around her, tribal drummers beating upon large bass toms and gigantic brass gongs and pixies whisper and flit, posing as synthesizers and samples. It is a song for slow dancing in the ephemera.

“We will live longer than I will
We will be better than I was
We can cross rivers with our will
We can do better than I can
So dance while you can
Dance ’cause you must.”

Indeed. Dance because you must.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2011 list, click here.

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: Spiritualized “And nothing hurt”

(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)

Artist: Spiritualized
Album Title: And nothing hurt
Year released: 2018
Details: standard black, embossed morse code on cover

The skinny: Many of you know by now that I’m a pretty big Spiritualized fan, my favourite of their albums still being 1997’s “Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space“. So I was pretty eager to get to listen to this latest, the eighth for the outfit, ever since I heard this album was a sort of return to 1997 form. I’m currently on the third spin through and I’m just letting it wash over me. It definitely sounds better on my turntable than on my iPod and it’s definitely Spiritualized. Perhaps I’ll have a more concrete opinion after a few more spins…

Standout track: “I’m your man”

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 2011: #25 Lanterns on the Lake “Lungs quicken”

<< #26    |    #24 >>

Sometimes the way we classify and typify bands and sounds and try to put names to certain styles or movements really turns me off. Words like “Emo” and “Screamo“ and “Nugaze” and “Chillwave” and “Folktronica” just make me shake my head. I get it. And these terms often do aptly describe the music they are meant to represent. However, if I had heard the term “Folktronica”, for instance, in reference to Lanterns on the Lake before listening to their debut album, “Gracious tide, take me home”, I might never have picked it up.

As it stands right now, I don’t actually remember at all how I came across them. In 2011, I was listening to everything that was being released, an exercise in futile mass consumption that was initiated by a fledgling blog. I all of a sudden felt that I had to have my finger even more fully pressed down hard on the pulse of music, everything new and hip. It was futile because there’s just too much out there and I was forced to decide whether I liked something in fewer samples, one or two go arounds, rather than five or six. I was also discovering bands in bunches, which meant I wasn’t always getting the time I wanted with each album before I was on to the next. I’ve been trying to remedy this in the last couple of years, since putting that old blog to bed and starting afresh, to go back to spend more time with albums that did stick out amongst the rest and give them their due. “Gracious tide, take me home” is one of these and I’ve so been looking forward to spending more time with it to write this post.

Lanterns on the Lake are a five-piece from Newcastle-on-Tyne that has released three studio albums in total, a live album, and a handful of EPs since their formation in 2007. They recently toured in support of one of my very favourite bands, James, and by all accounts, they got on quite well. Listening to both bands, this doesn’t surprise me in the least. Like James, Lanterns on the Lake doesn’t just write music, as much as build it. Their sound is very atmospheric and big and beautiful.

“Lungs quicken”, the album opener, is a prime of example of what I speak. It’s washes of synths, a subdued electronic beat and the hint of strings. Lead vocalist Hazel Wilde lightly touches her brush to the canvas, breathy and whispery, a tinkling of keys. It makes you think that their name is perfect. Candles in paper lanterns, hundreds of them, maybe thousands, just visible in the mist out on the grey lake. And then the wind whips up, the music builds in volume and gusto, and the lanterns jostle on the waves, crashing and splashing but not going out. At five and a half minutes, “Lungs quicken” does just that, light breathing becomes breathless and just when you think you have to give up, it ends, leaving you wanting to start all over again.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2011 list, click here.