Albums, August 2008

Albums, August 2008

I haven't seen many movies during the last two weeks because of such activities as moving into a new place and beginning my sophomore year in college. Fortunately, my co-op's house manager has a fantastic CD collection, and I have ripped many of his albums, which I'll list here.

Album Highlight
The Who - Live At Leeds

This album is fantastic. All of the band members are at the top of their game, and the excellent recording gives each of the instruments equal presence. There is a wonderful liveliness that makes the album sound both epic and intimate; it is probably my favorite live album.

Song Highlight
The Stranglers - "Golden Brown"

While I was driving with some friends, we heard this song on the radio. One passenger summed up my thoughts in that moment, "This song is fucking incredible." This is a very basic song - about drug abuse, of course - that primarily relies on a harpsichord and some synthesizers, and whose beauty stems from its very simplicity.

1) The Beastie Boys - Licensed To Ill
This album is O.K. The six songs I have listened to are fun, but they all sound the same - it's a surprisingly boring album.

2) Beck - Odelay
This is the first time I have listened to Beck, and I like the album quite a bit. It's definitely a promising indication of how I'll enjoy the rest of his work.

3) The Band - The Band
I really like The Band.

4) Radiohead - Hail To The Thief
This is probably the least impressive Radiohead album. It merely sounds like a collection of sounds, some of which are interesting, some of which don't really work. There is a disappointing lack of focus here, a quality that I began to notice with their previous album, Amnesiac.

5) Pink Floyd - Meddle
I've listened to half of it, and I think it's good. The wonderfully creepy song "One Of These Days" and the 24-minute, heavily atmospheric song "Echoes" are the highlights.

6) Lynyrd Skynyrd - (Pronounced 'Leh-'Nérd 'Skin-'Nérd)
I've only listened to "Free Bird," which is a fantastic rock song.

7) Gorillaz - Demon Days
I really like this album. It sounds scary, beautiful, and "cool," and all of the songs flow together well. Thank you, Danger Mouse.

8) Deep Purple - Machine Head
I've listened to "Highway Star," "Pictures Of Home," "Smoke On The Water," and "Space Truckin'." All of those are fantastic songs. I look forward to listening to the rest of the album.

9) The Clash - London Calling
I still need to listen to the entire album, but the songs "London Calling" and "Train In Vain" are excellent.

10) Coldplay - A Rush Of Blood To The Head
Color me unimpressed with Coldplay. The band members aren't great musicians and the lyrics are incessantly whiny. Their songs are trite, but they can be admittedly catchy. "Clocks" and "A Rush Of Blood To The Head" are the highlights.

11) The Verve - Urban Hymns
This album starts off on a climatic note, with the ever-ubiquitous anthem "Bittersweet Symphony." It's a good, rousing song, but the rest of the album has a more dour tone, like that of a person recovering from a wild and overlong party. It is an interesting, alternative take on such rise-and-fall albums as Pink Floyd's The Wall. Urban Hymns seems to begin with the band at its best, and then focuses on the dreary aftermath; it is a portrait of a band picking up the pieces and starting over. This means that there are no truly memorable songs after "Bittersweet Symphony" - the album strives to create a tragic atmosphere, and that's exactly what it accomplishes.

12) U2 - War
I still need to give this a listen, though I have already heard "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "New Years' Day" on their album The Best of 1980-1990. The cover art, which features a stark, black-and-white photograph of a glaring boy, is striking.

13) Steely Dan - Aja
I still need to give this a listen, but I have heard the song "Peg" before.

14) Coldplay - Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends
I am still not impressed with Coldplay. To give them credit, they try to reach out into more adventurous territory - the production sounds richer and more engaging than that of A Rush Of Blood To The Head. Nonetheless, the new, "risky" Coldplay still sounds incredibly generic to me. The band members simply are not great musicians. The album's highlight: "Viva La Vida."

15) The Shins - Wincing The Night Away
This is a very good album. The lyrics are great, the production sounds great, plus the band is from Portland, which is pretty cool.

16) Jethro Tull - Aqualung
I still need to give this a listen, but I really like Jethro Tull.

17) Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures
Despite its flaws, the film "Control" got me interested in the British band Joy Division. Ian Curtis, as the band's lyricist and singer, gives each of the songs a somber tone; they are primarily concerned with lost love. And yet they are all memorable and contain a surprising amount of energy. This album's highlight is the song "Disorder," which kicks off with a great bass line and guitar riff that some songs today try to mimic.