traveling through the depths of my cd collection, i decided the best way to start was to randomly grab 2 cd's, in the thought that i was more likely to grab something i hadn't listened to in a while. and i was right!
Terris - Learning to Let Gowho??????
who is right. okay, i'll admit that i don't think i even listened to this cd when i bought back when i was living in the UK. they released a couple of singles first (which i am sure i'll get to eventually) which were much better than the album ultimately turned out to be (gotta love those UK bands releasing non-album singles...).
basically, Terris were one of the few bands i ever actually bought completely into the music press induced hype, as NME and others basically said they were the best band EVER! and there's a lot to be said for them in a positive light i guess. they do have more than a passing resemblance to the Manic Street Preachers, before they became stadium rock and were making an angry, intense hybrid of the clash and guns and roses. their gravelly voiced singer, gavin goodwin, has a passing resemblance to james dean bradfield vocally, and they certainly have the intensity. on the album though, they filtered their obvious debt to the manics - and other welsh bands, in particularly and kind of unfortunately, the stereophonics (yawn) - through a slightly blatant mix of post american grunge, or "grunge" since the first thing that came to mind when the track "beneath the belt" started was "candlebox??" the album isn't all bad - it starts off nicely, with "white gold way", and even the second track "fabricated lunacy," is nice. mostly, though, i felt i was trudging my way through it on monday morning. worth keeping for a few of the tracks, but not something i would call a favorite. for a band that was hyped for their intensity, at a time when a lot of british rock was being dominated by sensitive rockers like coldplay and twee popsters like belle and sebastian, the album just falls flat. apparently, Terris didn't make it past then hype, and quietly disbanded not long after this album. it would be interesting to see what happened to them, as they definitely had the talent, i just don't think the album was really what the hype led me to want it to be at the time.
rating: 6/10
Japanic - The Social Disease
whee! this was more like it. boy/girl. vocals. no fabricated intensity. angular guitar lines. aaah. this would have been much better to start the morning with...
when did i get this CD? i don't even remember, other than it was - looking at the release date - something i rescued from the college radio station at the change of management (the incoming station manager told me i could take what i wanted, and i wasn't about to defy a direct order, especially since he might sit on me!) but i'm glad i picked it up. again, i probably haven't listened to this since i first grabbed it.
basically, the cd is a bouncy, giddy, call back to early B-52's. all slightly shouty male vocals with slightly droning girl vocals cutting in periodically. there's also a lot of debt to Gang of Four in the songs (which you can hear some samples of here, on their website). as far as i can tell, this was their second album, and they didn't release anything beyond that. which is kind of a shame, as with bands like the yeah yeah yeahs, be your own pet, and some of the bands riding the dance/indie rock craze of the past few years, Japanic could have made a definite mark.
rating: 9/10
DAY 2
No Doubt - the Beacon Street CollectionNot the Reissue, bitches! the original pressing!!
or: the album i told a million mystfied teenagers was actually better than the no doubt album they knew during my brief tenure as a record store employee, even though i'm not sure that's true anymore, and was probably only saying because they annoyed me.
Ahem. guilty pleasure? check. now, at least, though i certainly was more of a fan at a certain point in my life, even being a regular on an aol music message board (where i actually made a friend or 2, one i still maintain semi-regular contact with through livejournal, another who i actually dated for a period of time when she lived in baltimore). i probably bought this not long after it came out, in 95, probably when i also bought Tragic Kingdom. i had heard a few of the songs before - hell, i saw no doubt live in 93 when i was convinced by some people that there was this band that sounded a little like fishbone and madness, both bands i was very into in 8th/9th grade - so i figured owning them wasn't a bad idea. (confession: i didn't own their first, self titled, album for another year or 2, largely because i couldn't find it. i have a more interesting story about no doubt when i get to listening to tragic kindgom). anyway... the fishbone/madness thing definitely holds, probably a little more on the fishbone side (and also a good sized debt to sublime).
honestly, the cd just made me ridiculously nostalgic. it has a definite mid-90's feel - that slightly odd glossy-plasticness that many things up until 1995 seemed to have. total hate 95 - their duet with sublime's brad nowell - probably holds up the best, and is still possibly one of my favorite songs, if only one my favorite songs by no doubt. it's certainly not bad, and serves as a bridge between their quirky, sort of two-toneish debut and their full on ska/punk meets fleetwood mac breakthrough. i definitely bopped my head a bit while listening to this one. as much as i didn't mind what no doubt progressed into - return of saturn kind of bored me and rock steady seemed to serve more as a prelude to gwen stefani's solo albums than a no doubt album - i probably hold this album in a little higher regard than it deserves, as even with the re-release in 97, it still feels kind of like a secret to me.
rating: 7/10
Self - Gizmodgerytoy instruments and circuit bending goodness before that became vogue!
in a perfect world, self would have been beck. even before this album, there was a chance. i forget the name of the single from subliminal plastic motives, but it certainly had the quirky angle that beck rode to stardom on. however, fate didn't work this way, and matt mahaffey never reached the heights of mr hansen.
which is not to say that self is a beck knock off. not even close. even using toy instruments, as he does on this one, there's a much darker tone to his music than beck. darker, and funkier.
i bought this after we got it in at the radio station, loving it pretty much on first listen. geeky, funky, never twee despite it's slightly cute concept. even the cover of the loggins/messina "classic" what a fool believes is given a slightly dark edge. the last song sounds a bit like weezer, which is also not a bad thing, though after the white indie funk/groove of the rest of the album, it's a little jarring. trunk full of amps, which is reprised in a clean version (essentially adding guitar note bends in place of "motherfucker") seriously could have been a huge single had it been given a chance. but there's not a single track on this album i wouldn't listen to over and over again.
rating: 10/10
more to come....
No comments:
Post a Comment