February is Music Writer Exercise Month #MWE • Page 67

The production on What's Going On is truly a thing of beauty. The blend between band and orchestra is perfect. The arrangements are flawless. There's a natural warmth in the sound of it despite layers and layers of musicians. And the whole thing manages to just sound so cohesive. Beautiful, beautiful record.

 

The first time I heard “Comfortable” I flipped out. I don’t buy many hip hop records on vinyl but that A-side run is incredible. Not a dud until “Phone Home”.

 

turns out even a minor Radiohead album is fantastic

 

i didn’t know that album was filled with live takes but explains why it’s always been my fav of theres

 

2Pac - Me Against the World

I like this one even more than It Was Written, but that's a bet I would have made at the beginning of this. It’s similarly raw and honest, but somehow even more so, with a touch of sentimentality and even beauty to it. The best way I can explain it is that Nas' album sounded real and this one sounds autobiographical. Maybe they both are both (or neither).

“Dear Mama” is every bit as beautiful as some of the other songs I've fallen in love with so far. In addition to being an extremely talented lyricist, Tupac has the added bonus of actually having an alright voice, as well, which gives the album a nice change of pace because he's actually got some real melodies throughout it. He's also very much aware of his situation and those around him as well. He's rapping about many of the same things as Nas and Dre, but he's also letting the youth know that, "hey, you don't have to be a gangster. You can go out and make something of yourself beyond dealing drugs or killing each other" ("Young N***z").

There's also a lot of love on this album. There's love for his mother ("Dear Mama") and there's love and respect for the artists who came before him. Is there anything better than the sheer excitement and joy in his voice at the end of "Old School"? The whole album is fantastic, but the run from "Dear Mama" through the end is essentially perfect. Stealing someone's girl has never sounded better than it does on "Can U Get Away" (except maybe in Serendipity, the greatest guilty pleasure rom com of all time). The only misstep for me is the repetitive Scarface quote in "Death Around the Corner," which is borderline unbearable in an otherwise great song.

Great album. Easy to see why he's still considered one of the best to ever do it to this day.

 

Primal Scream - Screamadelica

I'm certain I will have listened to this in full before, but not for a long time. I know the big singles anyway.

I always forget they're a Scottish band, as this feels like the defining sound of Madchester music to me, that blend of rave and house culture and music, meeting the tail end of 80s indie rock. It's a blast to listen to, full of energy and great production from Andrew Weatherall, adding samples and making it feel like you're listening to a DJ remix your favourite band.

The bits of gospel that come through here feel even more glorious and transcendent because of that. Really feels like it captures that 1am vibe in a club, where everything is on the up, and the morning feels a lifetime away.

 

Andrew Weatherall is great (as is Keith Tenniswood for that matter) and a great loss

 

THIS ALBUM.

 

That's the one album I still have to hear from them too. Will try to listen today

 

Brian Eno - Ambient 1: Music for Airports

Several years ago, my wife and I went to an aquarium with our daughter and I stood in front of the jellyfish tank with my face nearly pressed against the glass as the lights slowly cycled through a rainbow of colors and the jellyfish moved up and down in the tank. There was very faint ambient music playing in that dark room while I did this and before I knew it, more than 30 minutes had passed and I hadn't moved. My wife and daughter had long since moved on to another exhibit. That was really the first time I'd ever listened to ambient music, but ever since then I've searched for something that can make me get lost like that.

I don't often find it, but great ambient music, for me, is something that I can put on and do absolutely nothing with and just…be with it. It's also great for focusing on what I need to do at work and for just calming down in general, I've found. None of this is specific to Brian Eno's album, but it applies to it nonetheless.

I don't have much to say about it other than that I enjoyed it. I subbed this in for another album on my list because I was super stressed at work, very anxious, couldn't calm down and couldn't focus on what I needed to do, so I searched for "must hear ambient music," found this to be on multiple lists and hit play. I took about 5-10 minutes to just sit with "1/1" and calm down which worked super well and then I went to work on the project I had to do for work; also a smashing success, so overall a win-win scenario and I'll likely come back to it in the future.

I'm going to try to post another one of these later and then 2 on Monday since I know I won't get to post over the weekend.

 

I thought it would be more of a "rough draft" version of what they did on later albums, once they had a little more clout and budget and experience. But nope, it's just another fully-formed, great-sounding album very much in the vein of the next two. I was very impressed.

 

Jim O'Rourke - Eureka
There's some pretty brilliant stuff on this and then some meandering bullshit

 

(Tomorrow's album)

The Doors - Strange Days

This is another band I've struggled to get into over the years. I grew up with some people who loved them, but I've never understood it. Picked this album based on the bizarre cover and it's more of the same. Just not for me. I think I'm just not into Morrison's voice.

"Moonlight Drive" and "People Are Strange" were the songs I probably liked the most, and there are bits of "When the Music's Over" that I enjoyed a lot, but as a whole I'm just uninterested in most of it. I read that the producer thought this was better than anything The Beatles ever released which is wild to me.

If anyone has a Doors album they would recommend that is far and away their best, I'd be willing to give them another shot

 

I've never really been a fan of anything I've heard that people class as ambient, but I loooooooved Music for Airports. There's something just instinctively, primally beautiful about it.

 

Playing catch-up today.

 

Air - Moon Safari.

90s French dance music that ISN’T Daft Punk.

It’s slightly more ambient and “background music” than I was perhaps expecting, layers of sound, as opposed to big loud songs.
Creates a nice atmosphere throughout, and the songs flow well from one to another, which is always nice.

 

Guys I'm in love

 

Catching up from missing this on the weekend with Blowout Comb by Digable Planets, a three piece hip hop group, influenced a lot by jazz in the beatmaking, a bit like Tribe or De La Soul.

The beats they're rapping over are quite sparse, drums and keys with a bit of bass, and occasionally some brass, but for the most part they're kept pretty simple, a basis for the three of them to shine. I didn't catch too much of the lyrical content, which is pretty normal for a first listen for me, but I can see they're highly regarded in this world.

I liked how the three vocalists all had their own personalities and styles, so even on a first listen, i can easily distinguish between them, and they work really well as a group.

 

Tom Petty - Southern Accents

I’m not sure what I was expecting from this, but this isn’t it. That’s not to say it’s bad, though.

I’ve never listened to much Petty outside of the hits, but the way he tries new styles throughout is commendable even if they don’t always work. “Rebels,” “Southern Accents,” and "Make It Better (Forget About Me)" are probably my favorite tracks. There’s only a couple songs I’m not crazy about (and even some of those are growing on me 4 listens in). The last two tracks are cool too. "The Best of Everything" is the better of the two, but “Mary’s New Car” is a fun little ear worm.

(Going to try to get at least another album up later today, so that I'm caught up, but I have a 3 hour meeting in the afternoon and will probably be off due to snow tomorrow, so we'll see how it goes)