Listen to an album you've never heard by an artist you never listen to and then tell us about it!

yep that one is great

i owe this thread for helping me get over my jane siberry fear. i'm listening to her last album Ulysses' Purse from 2016 and its lovely! not typical. dreamy. in some ways she reminds me of a lost Mcgarrigle sister. my favorite Mcgarrigle Sisters album is Matapedia and i can only imagine that Jane Siberry is a fan of it as well. i like the meandering qualities of these songs. not stream-of-consciousness exactly but conversational while still poetic. she isn't all about rhyme which i appreciate. i think i'm going to go backwards and listen to her Three Queens Trilogy next. Three albums from 2008/2009/2011.

Ulysses' Purse was revamped and re-released as an album called Angels Bend Closer which I only heard last year. My main complaint was that she hires a small army of musicians who she somehow manages to make vanish behind walls of synth pads. I didn't think much of the "conversational" lyrics either.
I would recommend her debut though that might strike some listeners as standard 1981 art-folk.

the walking will change your life scott. or it won't!

someone should listen to one of those 70s Dory Previn records on here. talk about unloved art pop. i can't give those records away and they're cool!

okay i don't know if i can handle the trilogy. its a lot and a lot of spoken word so i am skipping those and the xian song cycle and the xmas stuff and going all the way back to the album Teenager from 1996 which so far seems about right for me.

I thought I would maybe do Astral Weeks for this, since I've never listened to a Van Morrison album and it has Richard Davis and Connie Kay on it. But I bailed halfway into the first song, just wasn't feeling the vibe (despite the great bass playing) but will take a shot some other time.

I have tried and failed with Astral Weeks on a number of occasions now.

yeah you have to sink into it. its a beauty if you are in the right frame of mind.

Moondance is the (mega-normie, I know) Van album I was into as a youth... I never go into any of his others.

i can get not being into his voice though. and it hits you straight out the gate on the title track. i honestly believe - and i know i'm gonna sound like a big chill guy here - that that album is a...work of art. in the same way that What's Going On is a work of art. like, as much as any painting or poem is a work of art. and he was, what, 22 or 23 when he made Astral Weeks? that's insane to me. I could barely get out of bed when I was 22.

Wow, Van Morrison is, and always has been, an insufferable douchebag, but Astral Weeks is, to me, an unquestionable classic. Very interesting.

Honestly I'd never really heard them. They're not so much of a UK thing so they were hardly turning up on the radio. Anyway this was completely tedious, I was skipping through to the next track by side 2. People who haven't heard The Band think they sound like this, and are pleasantly surprised to find they don't. This is why I always avoided drugs. Maybe it's not a good album to start with? Therefore I moved on to...

Aoxomoxoa
Not much better, this band is not for me I now realise. Too much dum-diddle-dum-dum-diddle-dum-dum. And the 8-minute droney vocal thing would have worked better in the hands of Yoko Ono. No doubt I should be listening to Dick's Pick's Vol. 137 or whatever instead, but you know what I think I'll pass.

― continue without dissembling (Matt #2), Sunday, March 31, 2024 12:28 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

If I were going to try to get someone to Give The Dead A Chance with an album, I'd probably give them either American Beauty, Europe 72 (live comp but official album), or maybe Blues for Allah. Or maybe Wake of the Flood. But I get it. I hated the Dead for years and I'm still pretty hot and cold on them.

American Beauty is precisely the one that was "completely tedious" though!

I'm so glad you're digging the Siberry, scott. Debut through Maria is basically unimpeachable, lots of moments of brilliance on subsequent releases.

El Guincho also did a lot of the production work on the imo excellent Sampha album from last year

xp wrong, iirc the post referred to Workingman's Dead, which to be fair is the weaker of the two

i agree that dory previn is due for a critical overhaul. she's as clever lyrically as nilsson or zevon. coldwater canyon is a slam jam.

I've never heard her!

Since live Dead seems a better bet I will possibly flick through Europe 72 (not listening to all 2 hours of it) and report back. Don't expect anything much different though!

I could not get into those Previn records at all, but I definitely know fans

One of Andre Previn's . . . five wives lol

xxp Matt just jam "Truckin" from Europe '72, I played it just the other day and it's really an ur-Dead template imho, if it doesn't work for you then they are prob not for you

American Beauty is precisely the one that was "completely tedious" though!

― The Prime of the Ancient Minister (Tom D.), Thursday, April 4, 2024 3:28 PM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

no, workingman's

Morning Dew from '72 - I feel like that would move anyone

(xp) Ah, you're right, my mistake.

I have never listened to Grayfolded, despite knowing about it forever, should I?

"I'm so glad you're digging the Siberry, scott"

we put on a vinyl copy of Bound By The Beauty in the store today and it sounded awesome. "Everything Reminds Me Of My Dog"!

i've given up on trying to get people to like the Dead. it will either happen or it won't. i totally get people being turned off though. they can sound lethargic to people in a way that just screams boredom. but if you hear one of those great songs like "stella blue" in the right mood...they can be so lovely to hear. they can sound very unexciting to people who first hear them. its weird. they can not hit you and then...something changes. it happens to diehard haters. my pal ilxor tarfumes is one example.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKsWDyvWaL4

xxp OMG YES

Grayfolded rules, all Oswald rules

https://i0.wp.com/collector.schothans.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/IMG_001-10.jpg?fit=680%2C302&ssl=1

xp I mean I'm a big fan of Plunderphonics, I revisit it pretty frequently, and regularly see the dude around town and with CCMC etc. etc. etc. I feel like I've done the guy a disservice by not listening to it

it's one of his finest works imo, lol local connections noted, I thought abt that after I posted

Xpost I listened to the first disc of the essential Django Reinhardt. Lovely music. The guitar and violin are of course technically masterful, inventive and fun. But it kinda washed over me like it was upbeat ambient. I had hard time hearing them as individual tunes and recalling the melody lines. It is not really a complaint though. I enjoyed the music and will keep listening.

they always pick the same stuff for the reinhardt compilations, I should do a selection with some of the more off-piste stuff for you

i thought about maybe doing this with drake and five seconds later thought: yeah, i'm not listening to a drake album.

Yesterday I got three albums (bought two, downloaded a third from someplace else) by the Leaders, a jazz group from the late 80s with Lester Bowie on trumpet, Arthur Blythe on alto sax, Chico Freeman on tenor sax, Kirk Lightsey on piano, Cecil McBee on bass, and Famoudou Don Moye on drums. I listened to the third album, Unforeseen Blessings, first, and it's great. Much more straightahead than you'd expect from that lineup, though there are some short, somewhat avant-ish interludes (solo pieces by Lightsey and Moye, and a Blythe/Moye duo) punctuating the compositions. Good stuff.

currently spinning The Everly Brothers' Roots LP, it's... OK? I was expecting more overt psych moves.

I quite like some Weather Report but I've studiously avoided solo Jaco for reasons (mostly fretless bass related). Well, I listened to (most of) *Word of Mouth* and it's bonkers. It has an insane line-up (Herbie, Shorter, DeJohnette, Toots Thielemans etc) but I wasn't expecting third-stream big band fusion.

First track is kind of ugly and has lots of Jaco wibble. Track two made me think of Gil Evans in places, which is never a bad thing. It's the closing track that I liked the most. I'm not mad on the soprano sax, but Shorter is fire here. There are lots of steel drums and some quality handclaps towards the end.

I can see why Jim O'Rourke loves it: there are passages that big Jim nods to on Bad Timing and Eureka.

I love his s/t album

Listened to Deacon Blue's Raintown after Trevor Horn included it in an old Baker's Dozen column on Quietus. Surprised that WXRT didn't pick this up at the time. Could see the band playing Park West to a reasonably well-groomed late 80s Lincoln Park crowd. (update: Confirmed before posted) But then again, the songs aren't all that catchy, are they? I see this band inspires a fair amount of hate. Pleasant enough to my ears, though. Doesn't seem worth getting worked up over either way. Makes me want to listen to Prefab Sprout, which is fine.

I listened to Drukqs yesterday. I found it holds together really well for a supposedly overlong sprawling release (even if it is a little long), it has vision and variations, the gymnopédies tracks are genuinely good, there's a techno urge that is more palpable than in say Autechre, and for all its frenzy it coalesces into a placating whole.

Today they were playing pan-genre Latin covers of Kraftwerk while I was eating my lunch. I Shazam'd! It is Señor Coconut, the alias of a German guy who got into cha-cha and cumbia and made... an album of Kraftwerk covers, in 1999. This was the period when I was at my most musically omnivorous, so I'm surprised I hadn't heard it before-- I was listening to Louis Philippe and Darla compilations and shit so this should've been on my radar? I vaguely recall reading an article (prob in Vice magazine) wherein they shit on Señor Coconut and called it corny. It is corny! But hearing unfamiliar versions of Kraftwerk songs realllllly made me appreciate the brilliance of the musical material... usually I'm just lost in the production and the sounds of it. "The Robots" is an amazing song, every component part is so wonderful. Anyway. In 1999 this might've been considered some corny genre experiment but it was super-great to hear it in 2024, just driving home the classic nature of all these Kraftwerk tracks

yeah, i really wish i had picked up that album on cd when i had the chance.
was always in the racks of my local Fopp.
but i could not reconcile the fact that it was by the same fella behind some of my fave FAX releases as Atom Heart.
oh, and it was before i fell hard for library/corny grooves.

I'm going to pull that album out and listen to it right now!

Today I read this interview with drummer/composer Andrya Ambro in my friend's newsletter. I'd never heard of her, so I pulled up her most recent album, No More Blue Skies, released under the name Gold Dime, on Tidal. It's really good! Postpunk-ish arty vocals and angry guitars and synths, some really interesting rhythmic stuff going on, plus a few free jazz sax solos. It's on Bandcamp.

that senor Coconut record is an absolute blast!

His YMO covers album is pretty good too and he did 'Smoke On The Water', 'Riders On The Storm' and some other rock classics at some point. One trick pony but a consistently fun trick.

if you like that you may wanna check out this collection of steel drum Kraftwerk covers, it's really fun as well

https://www.discogs.com/master/1609899-Ebony-Steel-Band-Pan-Machine

lol i bought that Señor Coconut album in 1999 and sometimes i can still hear it in my head even when Kraftwerk is playing

I only got into Senor Coconut when Villalobos released this in 2006, I believe? That was the year I joined ILX, I think that was when this happened?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE_Im78tXH4