Masters Tournament

A ton of older, respected bands offered up new material in '09.

Here's a few of them:

YLT - Popular Songs. Some good moments, but not the mindblower we usually get from them. (Though an average YLT is still better than...etc.)

Dinosaur Jr. - Farm . Not as good as the last one but good for fans.

Sonic Youth - The Eternal. Given the catalog, I can just as easily live without this one.

Decemberists - Hazards of Love. Average outing but their performance is ultra-pro: they have becoming an amazing live band.

...and You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead - The Century of Self. A couple lesser tracks but mainly wonderful passages. A grower, one of their best.

Rancid - Let the Dominoes Fall. Not nearly as good as the last couple but lyrics have matured. They might have to disband or write a quick follow-up y'think?

Morrisey - Years of Refusal. Above average musically (for the moz), fantastic lyrically.

Meat Puppets - Sewn Together. Improvement from last one. Fans will consume and enjoy, newcomers will ignore. Too bad for them; some great sections

Art Brut - Art Brut vs. Satan. Oops (not really an older band). Their best production on what's ostensibly a comedy/riff album with not one hummable, catchy riff (which they need, to propel). They're approaching The Fall - not a good direction for 'em. Worth playing once, or just read the lyrics.

Neil Young - Fork in the Road. One of his conceptual throwaways. A Couple OK tracks.

Mountain Goats - The Life of the World to Come. Good. Mining the Torah and the xtian bible may be a standard for pop music, but never exactly like this. Theoretically this guy should have run out of steam 5 albums ago.

BTS - There is No Enemy. Greatish and a grower.

Green Day - 21st Century Breakdown. The lead single was cloying; there are a couple OK tracks (as far as slick, mainstream rock goes). But, egads, some people actually try to classify this as "punk rock". I can't think of how you could further form punk rock in a rock band. This is, blatantly, a Broadway musical.

NOFX - Coaster/Frisbee - Fat Mike with another bunch of witty, assembled phrases backed by mathed-up power-pop and polished quirk-punk. Punchier production than usual with a good concept and great packaging.

Bob Mould - Life & Times. Latter day Bob isn't Sugar (there's a band name in there somewhere), but his sincerity just about puts it over. Straightforward solo-Bob with vox mixed high. Pick: MM 17

Church - 23. Meh, not as engaging as the last few. Great show (@ the Gothic) though (but what was up with all the dudes in Rush Ts?).

Mission of Burma - The Sound of the Speed of Light. Bands come back and write new stuff only the faithful trudge through more than once but this band's making some of the the best music of their two career halves. This isn't Obliterati, so get that first then this one.

Polvo - In Prism. Reunion album. Not the mathjazz/old-school-emo/skronk/psychprog outfit they once were, this has discernible melodies, focus, protools. Surprisingly, most of it works. Maybe best approached by forgetting that puzzling old Polvo album you used to have somewhere in your racks.

Flaming Lips - Embryonic. Interesting. Not actually embryonic but challenging and weird.

Manic Street Preachers - Journal for Plague Lovers. I don't get it. But then, I never did. Way too mainstream for me.

Propaghandi - Supporting Caste. They were better before their lowbrow metal regression but this will please fans of the Bill Stevenson Descendents/All production sound.

David Kilgour - Falling Debris. Unsung, consistently good hero.

Carbon Silicon - The Carbon Bubble. More power-grooves from Mick Jones and Tony James. Half are keepers.

Robyn Hitchcock - Goodnight Oslo. Probably not Ole Tarantula quality but good late-period Robyn.

Clean - Mister Pop. Claim: classic, clandestine Clean. In the dreamlife, you need a rubber soul.

Lemonheads - Varshons. Meh. Props, though, for covering GG Allin (though the selections are supposedly Gibby's).

Echo & the Bunnymen - The Fountain. Average outing. You know where you fit.

Simple Minds - Graffiti Soul. It's great they're creating but to this day I only liked one album. Oh well.

Eels - Hombre Lobo. Good content; one of his best, perhaps.

Jello Biafra & the Guantanamo School - Audacity of Hype. Well, you know what this sounds like, don't you? Given that, it's got some fun, albeit over-the-topical, stuff. Pick: Strength Through Shopping.

Tom Waits - Glitter and Doom. Entertaining listen; definitely spin it once if yr at all a Waits fan.

British Sea Power - Man of Aran. {yawns...stretches...looks at host} Oh, did I fall asleep and miss something? ...cough...



Post Edited (01-16-10 03:00)

Eels had a new album, how'd I miss that? (scurries off to find it...)

I also recommend the PBS documentary E did about his father, mad scientist Hugh Everett. Music and science doc of the year.

Paganizer is back! Our prayers are answered! And he brought his A game!

You missed U2 - No Line on the Horizon and Depeche Mode - Sounds of the Universe, neither of which are perfect but the best parts of both are way more vital than anyone could reasonably expect from bands their age.

Sparks - The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman A musical commissioned by Swedish radio. Unheard by me as of yet. Looking for feedback from anyone who has heard it.

REM - Live at the Olympic "We finally released an album that almost everyone likes for the first time in over a decade! Quick! Let's release it again as a live version!" A pretty damn good live album, no doubt, but yet one more indication that the band just doesn't get it anymore. Somebody needs to drag Peter Buck's ass out of Seattle, since the band's fortunes began trending downward at around the same time he moved out there.

If British Sea Power and Art Brut can be considered old timers, then Super Furry Animals definitely are, too, and Dark Days/Light Years was typical Welsh greatness.

Tweedy and Farrar both released albums in 09. The world is not poorer for having either album in it but not appreciably better, either. Farrar is the bigger loser of the two, though, because with the previous couple of Son Volt albums the momentum was beginning to swing back his way in the pointless battle of reputations in which people who feel the need to declare Tweedy the genius of the millennium usually feel the need to kick Farrar in the process. With Wilco (The Album), Tweedy finally managed to release an album that even the Onion AV Club and the guys on Sound Opinions couldn't bring themselves to declare the greatest thing ever, but Farrar chose an unfortunate time to scale back from the ambition of Okemah and The Search with the decent but frankly pretty uninteresting American Central Dust, which managed to make the equally uninteresting Wilco (The Album) sound like a dynamo by comparison.

Farrar also released that album with Ben Gibbard. Anyone heard it?

Farrar's American Central Dust producer Joe Henry did much better for himself with Blood From Stars.

Elvis Costello released Secret, Profane and Sugarcane. I took a nap.

Bruce Springsteen followed up the decent Magic with the dreadful Working on a Dream.

Dolores O'Riordan has scaled back the juvenile self-righteous lecturing that soured every Cranberries release since the debut album, and her No Baggage was all the better for it. It's not an album that anyone actually needs to own by any stretch of the imagination, but if someone were to hand you a copy you wouldn't need to immediately throw it out the window or anything.

Robert Pollard continued releasing 42,000 songs a year, with generally 39,000 of them being keepers.

Rosanne Cash, who admirably spent most of her career avoiding trading on her father's name, has become less reticent to do so since his death, but at least didn't entitle The List something like Buy this Record or you'll hurt my Daddy in Heaven. Actually quite good, and if she's become less careful about invoking her pa's memory, she's still light years more tasteful about it than Bocephus or Natalie Cole.

Hope Sandoval drowsily lifted her head from her pillow and cooed out her first album in nearly a decade. Through the Devil Softly is predictably somnambulant, but that's why we love her.

Stuart Murdoch put Belle and Sebastian on the back burner and launched his God Help the Girl project. Eh, whatever. It's okay, I guess, but the 30 second previews on iTunes seemed to be much more enjoyable than the songs actually turned out to be.

I just discovered in the new issue of The Big Takeover that Cy Curnin from the Fixx is three albums into a solo career. Who knew? Who cared? Actually, I'd be interested to hear it just because.

Prefab Sprout is back. I've not heard the new album yet because I'm unwilling to pay a hefty import price, but I'm declaring it a masterpiece anyway because I've missed McAloon for way too long.

Cornershop likewise is back with an album I've yet to hear. Handcream for a Generation was so lousy that I've been hesitant to even try to track down the new one, but it's been getting positive notices.

Robin Guthrie and John Foxx collaborated on Mirrorball. I'd had high hopes for it, but it turns out to be pretty much ambient soundscapes combining Foxx's neo-Gregorian chant ambient work with Guthrie's guitar flourishes. It's not bad at all and is a nice, dreamlike album, but it's not what I'd hoped for when I saw they were working together - it wasn't an unexpected course, but I'd been hoping for something combining their more song oriented work.

Los Lobos released another fun kids' record, this one all Disney songs.

Sam Phillips launched her subscription service - $52 gets you an EP every two months for the next year, concluding with a full length album. So far, the first EP was a pretty good one consisting mostly of re-recordings of some of her earlier stuff with a string quartet and the second one was a pretty good Christmas EP, with the suddenly ubiquitous Joe Henry in tow.

Bob Dylan - Christmas Is in the Heart Ho Ho Holy crap, what the hell was that supposed to be?

PS - I join Nosepail in celebrating the return of the prodigal Pagan, and hope he decides to stick around this time.



Post Edited (01-01-10 06:09)

Dylan also released the solid Together Through Life in 2009 - though that's clearly the slightest of his recent stuff.

If anybody gets the chance to see Roseanne Cash live, they should - her voice does amazing, haunting things live. Last time I saw her she closed with a really creepy version of "Ode to Billie Joe". Goosebump inducing stuff.

Of records mentioned so far, the only ones I'd stick up for were the Art Brut and Oasis - though the Oasis one was late 2008. I thought that had a bunch of good tracks - "Bag it Up" and "Falling Down" especially. The Art Brut I thought was as good as their 2nd record - liked it alot, though I do miss the hooks of the debut.



Post Edited (01-01-10 08:48)

Hope Art Brut is giving out tubes of Brut at their concerts.

From the olden days of "underground music" Van Der Graaf Generator issued an excellent second album of new material since their reformation, Trisector, and toured the (Eastern) US for essentially the first time ever (they had previously played a half-dozen shows in Canada and exactly one in the US in 1976).

Magma continues, touring and releasing a Japan-only live CD of older material and the first actual complete studio recording of Ëmëhntëtt-Ré, although parts of that composition go back to the 1970s and have dribbled out here and there on other records over the years. They have at least another 40 minutes of new, unrecorded material they're working out in current concerts.

The TP pages on these two are way out of date, I could provide some updates if no one there is conversant.

I quite liked the effort from Tinted Windows in 2009. They didn't reinvent the wheel, but it was still a very solid effort.

And while I didn't love the comeback from Simple Minds, it was pretty respectable. I just wish they'd toured the US as promised.

happy new year mates,
speakin a old timers, dont it just leave ya spitless when some hippie (my co worker/pal Mike; born cir '55) says that the clash wasn't punk because 'they could actually play their instruments'

then i wonders outloud 2meself, like some things hippies may indeed NEVER CHANGE!



Post Edited (01-02-10 18:46)

I just checked out the previews for Cy Curnin's current album on iTunes, and while it wasn't enough to tempt me to buy it (hell, I never even bought Fixx albums when they were around, so I don't really know why I was curious about this) it didn't sound half bad - sounded like he's angling to be the poor man's Leonard Cohen or something.

Gotta give Cy Curnin props for his work here:

[www.youtube.com]

Curnin and The Fixx guitarist Jamie West-Oram contributed to Private Dancer, but that is still one wacky cameo appearance.

Not relevant to this thread at all (except the last comment), but I love Albini's comments on Private Dancer:

Quote

'Do you ever get a song stuck in your head? It happens to most people. Some little ditty or the memorable part of a hit song or a carpet company jingle, you try to go to sleep and there it is, doot-doot-doo-ing away in the back of your mind. Super annoying.

Have you also noticed how the song "Private Dancer" by Tina Turner never ever gets stuck in your head, no matter how many times you've been forced to hear it? That's because "Private Dancer" is so formless and hideous that there isn't even enough of a tune there to get stuck.

"Private Dancer" is the absolute zenith of the art of 80s schlock. There's a sort of synthetic rhythm, and some schmeer of digital drama provided by the Yamaha DX7 keyboard, but no actual music. On top of it all, a creaking, tuneless yowl of a vocal, rattling up from the guts of a parchment-skinned old woman trying to sexy at you. Hideous.

So, "Private Dancer" makes the perfect palate-cleanser. Whenever you have a song stuck in your head, force yourself to mentally trudge through the song "Private Dancer," at least as much as you can remember. It also helps to imagine the video of a once-stunning, now-cartoonish Tina Turner, the last of the pain pills and red wine finally down her throat, heaving her clattering bones around the soundstage trying to sexy.

Run that through there for twenty seconds, and it's better than Drano. It clears-out whatever was stuck and leaves on its own, leaving no trace behind.'

Not a huge fan of the song, but I believe it is better than 99% of the stuff he has written and 75% of the stuff he has recorded.

When I said "written" I meant musically. That little snippet was actually well put.

hmmmm... I have never heard a single Turner (ike or Tina) song that held the least interest for me, but enjoy Shellac and love Big Black. Let's agree to disagree on that one. But it is a pretty "formless" song.

I see Grant Hart got back in the flow as well with Hot Wax.

I've been wading through a hundred new titles the last few months so I haven't checked it out but I think it streams on his MySpace for those interested. Do people still like to contrast against Mould's latest? Unfair but probably inescapable.

[www.myspace.com]