Posted by Libra on 9/24/2009, 4:26 pm
75.71.160.202
I've been thinking the last couple of days on how it's really rare that I get obsessed with music anymore, especially compared with how I did when, say, writing from MJA. Maybe it's growing up or gaining a social life or getting high or getting laid, but using music as my primary force of catharsis has sort of passed.
This started when I tried to skitsch out a top 100 list, and realised I was, for the most part, making the same list I had four or five years ago. I've been around searching for something good -- I went through the pitchfork tricks -- Arcade Fire, Interpol, Animal Collective, LCD Soundsystem, Franz Ferdinand, Fleet Foxes and so on, and they're all great (except AC, who are original, respectable, but still obnoxiously novel -- Person Pitch is really friggin' good, though), but I still usually don't get much out of them except a passing phase (except Turn on the Bright Lights -- it kind of compensates overlistening/outgrowing The Smiths and Joy Division). A lot of them are kind of one-out deals: like Funeral is a great album, almost an event I might say, but that very fact kind of killed them, since Neon Bible is way too self-conscious for my tastes. And Antics (which made me kind of look at TotBL in the first place) plays like a parody of their first album.
Like I've always loved James' Laid, so after years I finally spun another disc of theirs, Seven, which I supposed to be close to as good, and I guess it's a compotent collection of songs, but nothing I haven't seen before. (Which reminds me, I got Beck's Sea Change, which is excellent as well.)
This year was a big phase with Talk Talk. I listened to Laughing Stock a long time ago, didn't really get into it, but dug After the Flood. Then I caught a YT video of Such a Shame, and got curious to track the band's transformation. The Colour of Spring and Spirit of Eden are about the closest I got to obsessions this year. Got Mark Hollis solo, but haven't digested it, though it sounds fantastic on first glance.
Picked up several more Six Organs of Admittance albums after digging on Dark Noontide for years, but aside from The Sun Awakens (which might be better) there's only a handful of tracks in the course of the other albums I really dig.
I got pretty excited for Third, and I still think it's on the shortlist for best albums of the decade, but it ain't Dummy, and without the incredible anticipation wouldn't have been as exhilerating.
I also picked up a couple of 'classics' I'd overstepped back in the day, like Modern Lovers and Shoot out the Lights, and they're fine, sure, great albums, but I seldom listen to them after getting fully acquainted. Same with Ween, who are kind of fun, but only Chocolate and Cheese and The Mollusk really work for me as enduring albums.
My wife is reading Anna Karenina, which I tackled years ago, but I took a glimpse at the introduction, and one like really stuck out to me (paraphrasing): Tolstoy is a primary writer; he writes Anna Karenina as though it were the first book ever written, whereas most contemporary writers are secondary writers, that is, they are either trying very hard to sound like someone else, or trying very hard not to sound like someone else.
This kind of seems the state of music, and I think has been for a long time. I've gotten a lot more into singer-songwriterish kind of thing beause its people who have no pretension of innovation or lack of innovation, but really just sound like themselves: it's a more honest approach to music.
I'm kind of excited for Shpongle's new album, and I've got a handful of discs on my computer I'm looking forward to hearing, and I know there's still a few holes in my 'golden age' listening. And I still wake up with songs in my head, still rock out to old and new favourites.
Anyway, I don't know who knows my knowledge or tastes how well on this board, but I challenge someone to recommend an album that causes that sort of excitement.
And not the Flaming Lips.
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