Tag: Retro

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Albums

Best albums of 1998: #2 Billy Bragg and Wilco “Mermaid avenue”

After seeing him perform at a Woody Guthrie tribute concert in New York City, Guthrie’s daughter Nora contacted Billy Bragg in 1992 about a project. It seemed Woody Guthrie had left the lyrics for thousands of songs he had written but not recorded and for which, no music had been notated. Nora wanted to bring these songs to life for a new generation. Bragg agreed but not before enlisting the help of American alternative rock band, Wilco. The results were better than anyone could have expected, garnering critical acclaim, record sales, and a Grammy for everyone’s troubles.

I picked up on this album a few years after its release and mostly because I’d been a fan of Billy Bragg for a number of years. I’d heard a few of its songs beforehand but didn’t know then that they were re-creations of those written by Guthrie. Of course, when I first listened to it, I preferred the songs sung by Bragg to the others sung by Jeff Tweedy because I only knew Wilco by name, not their music. However, I have since grown to love all of the songs and appreciate the difference Tweedy’s voice lends to those others.

The sound and instrumentation of “Mermaid avenue” was definitely different from what I was used to with Bragg, which is likely why he wanted Wilco to help: to signal to all that this was not about him. It is old school Americana but with a modern edge, like actors dressing up in old costumes but speaking in modern colloquial. I’m not all that familiar with Woody Guthrie’s music, save for the iconic “This land is your land”, of course, but I have to imagine he would’ve been happy with the results. His daughter definitely was because the success of this album spawned two later volumes, as well as a box set collecting all of the compilations in one set.

It is typically difficult to narrow down my picks for you to three but this one was near impossible so I just took the first three in running order. Enjoy.

“Walt Whitman’s niece”: My first pick here is a song that sounds like a tall tale that might be spun in any bar in the world. “Last night or the night before that, I won’t say which night, a seaman friend of mine, I’ll not say which seaman…” It is a literary conquest sung (and told) by Bragg with the band members of Wilco as house band. You can almost picture Bragg sitting precariously on a stool having at it on his guitar after one too many and the band stomping along with him at the piano and harmonica, shouting along with him at the appropriate parts. It’s unseemly and full of innuendo and lots of good fun. Whitman would’ve been proud.

“California stars”: Jeff Tweedy (of Wilco) sings this next one around the campfire after a hard day’s work in the fields with fellow workers. “I’d like to rest my heavy head tonight on a bed of California stars. I’d like to lay my weary bones tonight on a bed of California stars.” It is a clear but lonely night. The sky is big and full of stars but not the same ones that watch over California, where his beloved lays sleeping and waiting for him. You can feel this longing and dreaming in every strum on the guitar, whine of the pedal steel and peal of fiddle. Tweedy’s voice is perfect here, giving it a completely different than it would’ve had if sung by Bragg. It’ll charm you for sure.

“Way over yonder in the minor key”: This one’s got a feel that reminds me of Huck Finn or The Little Rascals. “Her mama cut a switch from a cherry tree and laid it on the she and me. It stung lots worse than a hive of bees but there ain’t nobody that can sing like me.” Its language is childish, like a skipping game or patty cakes, and suggests a young first love. Billy Bragg leads the tale with Natalie Merchant adding her lovely vocals at the chorus. It’s gentle and melancholic, perhaps a remembering of a time long gone. It’s so beautiful, you’ll want to listen to it over and over again.

Check back next Thursday for album #1. In the meantime, here are the previous albums in this list:

10. Sloan “Navy blues”
9. Cake “Prolonging the magic”
8. Embrace “The good will out”
7. Mojave 3 “Out of tune”
6. Rufus Wainwright “Rufus Wainwright”
5. Manic Street Preachers “This is my truth now tell me yours”
4. Pulp “This is hardcore”
3. Neutral Milk Hotel “In the aeroplane over the sea”

You can also check out my Best Albums page here if you’re interested in my other favourite albums lists.

Categories
Albums

Best albums of 1998: #3 Neutral Milk Hotel “In the aeroplane over the sea”

It was my friend Jez that tried to get me into Neutral Milk Hotel many moons ago, albeit five or six years after the release of this, their seminal album. I had met Jez at my call centre job in the early 2000s and I’m not quite sure how we got to talking about music but it was on this that we had clicked as friends. We were constantly introducing each other to bands. He gave me a copy of “In the aeroplane over the sea” to sample, telling me they sounded like The Decemberists, a band I was just getting into at the time, but for some reason, the album didn’t click with me.

My friend wasn’t wrong in his comparison though, I can totally see where this album influenced Colin Meloy now. In fact, a lot of indie folk bands of the 2000s were influenced by it. However, when Jeff Mangum started the project in the late 80s, the sound was decidedly different. It was a lot noisier and raw and even less put together, if you can believe it. “In the aeroplane over the sea” was the second album released by Neutral Milk Hotel and the first recorded as an actual group. Before that, the ‘band’ was whoever was around at the time to perform with Mangum. This second album is still very lo-fi but it is also an electric mishmash of genres and instruments. It is ugly but beautiful, the lyrics influenced by Mangum’s reflections on Anne Frank.

Adding to the lore of the “In the aeroplane over the sea” is the fact that Jeff Mangum put the band on indefinite hiatus the year following its release after becoming disenchanted with everything. The album did well critically but not commercially right away. However, it picked up steam over the years, people discovering it way too late, has since sold many copies, and has now appeared on multiple best albums of the 90s lists. Mangum reformed the band in 2013 and toured extensively into the spring of 2015 before disappearing back into the night.

I finally the picked up this album again around that time because they were announced to play the folk festival in my city and this time it clicked. Yep, I fell in love with it just in time to see them live. The three picks below are amongst my favourites on the album but they are by no means the only great tracks.

“Ghost”: It is aggressive acoustic strumming and a rumbling and distorted fuzz bass, almost obscuring Jeff Mangum’s stream of consciousness-like lyrics. Indeed, at times, it sounds like he needs to be yelling above the cacaphony. “Ghost, ghost I know you live within me. I feel you as you fly in thunder clouds above the city into one that I love.” The words started out from the thoughts that his apartment was haunted and like many of the songs on the album, reflections of Anne Frank creep through. From there, frantic drums kick in as well as a pocket of duelling horns, none of which sound super proficient or rather, their attention to detail is lacking. Yeah, it’s a shambles. But it’s a wonderful shambles.

“In the aeroplane over the sea”: “And one day we will die and our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea but for now we are young, let us lay in the sun.” The title track of the album is still hinting at the supernatural but has a somewhat happier bent. The acoustic strumming that starts the tune and carries on throughout is of the head swaying type and never fails to bring a smile. You can almost picture Mangum singing this wth his eyes closed in ecstasy. He adds in those same horns we heard in the previous track to the party and for shits and giggles, some singing saw. Seriously. How often do you hear a singing saw in popular music? Right.

“The king of carrot flowers, pt. 1”: “And this is the room one afternoon I knew I could love you. And from above you how I sank into your soul into that secret place where no one dares to go.” The opening track with the seemingly nonsensical name is but part 1 of a two song trilogy (parts 2 and 3 follow on the album’s next track). It’s short at two minutes and not necessarily as frantic as some of the other tracks that follow it. It’s like a warm up for the joy and bliss that’s to come. It is simple and innocent, that aforementioned kitchen sink instrumentation and breathless and almost random lyrics are present here as well, evoking yellowed polaroids and long ago discarded toys and favourite blankets. It is the purity of first love set to an off-kilter accordion and what is better than that?

Check back next Thursday for album #2. In the meantime, here are the previous albums in this list:

10. Sloan “Navy blues”
9. Cake “Prolonging the magic”
8. Embrace “The good will out”
7. Mojave 3 “Out of tune”
6. Rufus Wainwright “Rufus Wainwright”
5. Manic Street Preachers “This is my truth now tell me yours”
4. Pulp “This is hardcore”

You can check out my Best Albums page here if you’re interested in my other favourite albums lists.

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 1991: #4 Big Audio Dynamite II “Rush”

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“If I had my time again
I would do it all the same
And not change a single thing
Even when I was to blame.”

These are words that I know by heart. In fact, I still know all the words to Big Audio Dynamite II’s “Rush”, as do a handful of my friends from high school. Brian, Jeff, Andrew… I don’t know what it was that made us connect with the song and its words. To this day, I’m still not exactly sure what Mick Jones was getting at but it’s a song that will always remind me of OAC, grade 13, my final year of high school, whatever you want to call it. The song soundtracked so many good times that I can’t even begin to list them lest this post grow to epic proportions.

Like many of the songs on this Best tunes of 1991 list, I discovered “Rush” for myself when I recorded the video off MuchMusic’s CityLimits. I watched and rewatched the video so many times that I quickly made the connection between the band’s lead singer and the guitarist of the band in another video recorded around the same time and that I was watching quite a bit of: “London calling” by The Clash. I didn’t know any of this at the time because the alt-rock universe was still very new to me but Mick Jones formed Big Audio Dynamite when he was shown the door by the only band that mattered in the early 1980s. Throughout that decade he recorded and released a handful of albums and singles that were heavily based upon samples, pioneering their use in modern music in the process. He added a ‘II’ at the end of the band name for the 1991 album “The globe” (as well as the lesser known, UK only release “Kool-aid” in 1990) because it was for all intents and purposes, a whole new band, only he remained from the original lineup.

“Yes, yes, delightful, delightful.”

One of the many samples in “Rush” and perhaps the most obvious one is Peter Sellers’ line above and the ensuing monologue on how “not everything’s singing” and on the importance of “rhythm and melody”. This bit leads into an extended bridge with a wicked sampled break beat and the keyboards from “Baba O’Riley”. Incidentally, for quite a while, I thought the song actually ended here with a fade out because the video had cut off here on the MuchMusic broadcast I recorded it from. I only learned of the final verse when I finally purchased a copy of the CD.

As an album, “The globe” sounds a bit dated now but I still love it for all the nostalgia it brings out whenever I listen to it. “Rush”, on the other hand, rises above the nostalgia because it’s also a rocking dance tune. I defy anyone to try to convince me otherwise.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 1991 list, click here.