Chorus.fm Record of the Week Club • Page 19

Excited to spin Faye Wong today!

 

Love that Dreams is on this and her album Sky, but in different languages.

really good album. 90’s as hell haha

 

This is so goddamn pleasant

 

Pleasant is the perfect description. Relaxing, lush instrumentals, and her voice is really soothing (obviously I have no idea what any of the lyrics are).

 

That "Dreams" cover is great, but I love the originals even more

 

I smiled when a second Cocteau Twins cover came on.

Very nice album. I'll have to relisten tomorrow to remember which songs stood out.

 

I’m glad that people are enjoying it! Dreams has been a song that’s meant a lot to me on a personal level for a while now, every time I hear it, I end up listening to it multiple times.

I've enjoyed finding music that I wouldn’t have previously been exposed to, through my partner’s musical / cultural upbringing.

 

Bump

 

cc: @Matt Chylak

 

Hey I haven’t really been participating so I feel kind of bad picking a record. Thanks though!

 

@troyplaysbass you’re up

 

For my pick, I’m going with Impossible Sum by Maxwell Stern. This album came out in the fall of 2020 and was a source of comfort for me through the darkest months of the pandemic, like a warm hoodie I could put on whenever I was feeling particularly alone and anxious. I had been a fan of Max’s work in Signals Midwest for a long time, but this is a different mode for him, pulling in more folk and indie influences and featuring guest appearances from the likes of Laura Stevenson and Mike “Slo-Mo” Brenner. It’s certainly my most played album of the last five or so years (maybe even longer) and is pretty firmly cemented in my top ten albums of all time at this point. It’s also one of the only albums that I think truly earns the “for fans of The Weakerthans” designation.

Also, it’s not a “pandemic album,” if that’s something you’re worried about. It was recorded in 2019, although I think a couple of the B-sides came together in lockdown (specifically “Tying Airplanes To the Ground” and “See It From One Side” — both of which are absolutely worth seeking out if you like the album).

 

Pretty sure I played a show with Signals Midwest way back in the day, but don't remember what they sound like and never heard of this. excited to check it out

 

I can respect it and especially what it means to you while also saying it’s not at all for me so yeah just not my thing but I’m glad it was there when you needed it

 

It is not my turn (and I promise I will catch up when I’m back at work next week) but tomorrow is a perfect day to listen to Mark Hollis’s self titled album, if you want an extra listen!

 

Also Astral Weeks and Goodness! Great “Easter” records

 

digging this Maxwell Stern record. His voice is very familiar and I can't place it

he kind of sounds like Jeff Rosenstock

 

I must get better at writing a post when I listen to these rather than procrastinating and forgetting.

Anyway...Impossible Sum. Warm, appealing, disarming even. Lyricism is always important with this style and straight away it has that particularly American notion of home, of pondering on where home is and, consequently, how far away from it you are, which as an Englishman on this small island of ours doesn't translate in quite the same way. Music is essentially about recollection of a feeling, and we've all been away from home, but I realised while listening and reading the lyrics that I've never entirely connected with that theme in American songwriting.

Obviously one key through-line of the record is in the corruption of screentime on the purity of experience: the "awful little screen in a bedroom, peering in on other people's highlight reels" in Water Tower; the regrets of "what I've missed when I've been buried in a screen" in Light Later Lately; elsewhere, Shiny Things is clearly about paying attention to the world around you, and there are even the lines from Pull The Stars Down: "So put on your good shoes and silence your phone now. Brave the trains and meet me across town."

My major problem with this initially was that I found his expression of the alternative quite drearily sentimental: all streetlights and melancholy and longing to meet that particular someone across town or when I get back home. I initially found that honeysweet and dull. And that's essentially what I was going to say, until I suddenly realised that those same ideas of home and distance and isolation actually make that longing a grounded and genuine one, not drearily sentimental. I started to see how his ability to evoke pictures and places could connect, certainly during the winter months of a pandemic when all of those themes would feel particularly pertinent, and how his relaxed cocktail of melancholy longing and twilight optimism would be so appealing.

So, it's not an album that excites me -- I do wish there was more wit in the lyrics to offset it all -- but I can clearly see how it echoes something to you, @troyplaysbass, and I found it interesting and worthwhile to engage with that. I'll check out that new song of his later.

 

@Kistler you’re up

 

Forgot to post about the Maxwell Stern album after I listened to it a few days ago.

Definitely an easy listen. Not really something I seek out on my own, but it was enjoyable for the most part

 

I've listened to the Maxwell Stern album a few times over the week I really dig it. Haven't checked out any of his other stuff yet

 

I’m bored at work, where’s the next album

 

Hey y'all sorry, yesterday turned into a fuckin' odyssey of trying to return a cat to its home lol.

My pick is Caroline Smith's Half About Being A Woman. It's a neo-soul/pop record from Minneapolis-based artist Caroline Smith (who now makes music under Your Smith) from 2013 about growing into your own skin and young womanhood in general. I was introduced to this record by one my nearest and dearest friends shortly after I moved to Chicago and became the soundtrack to my first couple years here (including some very fond show memories). It's well-produced, catchy, and covers a whole lot of emotional ground in a pretty tight package. Standout tracks for me are "Bloodstyle" [1], "Magazine" [2] (which did have its own little dance moves at live shows), "Half About Being A Woman" [4], "Kind of Man" [7], and closing track "Child of Moving On" [9].

Apple Music:

Spotify:

TIDAL if you're a sicko like me: TIDAL

 

hell yeah

 

One of those show memories because it's fun: my friend Elliot (the aforementioned friend who introduced me to her) and I went to see Caroline & co at City Winery in 2014. Elliot bought shots for the whole band but felt weird about asking to have a record signed even though he wanted his record signed. I was like "I'll do it" and went over and asked for Caroline to sign it to him. When she asked "oh with two t's?" I fumbled the fucking bag because my brain gets scrambled when talking to people I admire and said "oh uh yeah" so Elliot has had a copy of this record with his name spelled wrong on it for about ten years now.