I just discovered that Aimee Mann performed on Morning Becomes Eclectic recently. 40+ minutes. Most of the new songs are less compelling than the ones from Bachelor No. 2. The Forgotten Arm is nice and I think I prefer it to the rather disappointing slick Lost in Space but still it's all a bit samey. Too many ballads. The thrill seems to be gone a little.

Die Tamilin, die gerade bedient, spricht mit einem schwarzen Gast deutsch. Er möchte eine scharfe Soße zu seinem Essen. Wie mich das berührt, wenn zwei Ausländer miteinander in einer Fremdsprache kommunizieren, die meine Muttersprache ist. Wenn nur alle, die diese Sprache als Muttersprache sprechen, gelegentlich mal so schön lächeln würden wie die Tamilin. Dann würde ich mich in meinem Vaterland vielleicht sogar einmal heimisch fühlen. Wobei ich wahrscheinlich kaum besser bin als die meisten meiner Landsleute. Immer diese banalen Sprichwörter, die aber fast immer wahr sind. Wie man in den Wald hineinruft, so schallt es zurück...

This was an extremely difficult choice as in 2000 there were at least eight great albums which could have been on the top spot. The Go-Betweens charming reunion album The Friends of Rachel Worth, The Montgolfier Brothers intimate debut Seventeen Stars which has the most spell-binding songs, Johnny Cash's second last Solitary Man with a cover of Nick Cave's Mercy Seat that sends the chills down my spine, Lambchop's lush and soulful Nixon, Giant Sand's most accessible Chore of Enchantment which is a moving tribute to Howe Gelb's short-lived friend, the inspired National guitar player Rainer Ptacek, Godspeed's atmospheric and dynamic postrock apex Lift Your Skinny Fists... (the poll winner) and finally Yo La Tengo's mellow nightscape album And then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out.

Aimee Mann leads the pack as she released the most consistent and subtle album with her breakthrough Bachelor No. 2. When I listened to this CD for the first time I had this feeling that I had heard the music beforehand. The tunes are so classic, her voice is so perfect, this is an album which had slumbered in the subconsciousness of mankind. It's hard to explain. Like a platonic idea.

I said this before, Aimee Mann on this album sounds like I would have liked Joni Mitchell to have sounded in 2000. And she even looks like her! Her songs are sad and lyrically challenging. The melodies are simpler and more immediate than Joni's but they are still profound (whatever that means). Another parallel I found was the charismatic stage presence. On the live at St. Ann's Warehouse DVD (Larry Coryell's son Julian is doing some phantastic guitar wahwah work on there) from last year her in between song banter totally captivates me. She is a natural born performer. I more or less started weblogging with a post on a concert of hers in 2001 where she was rather shy and I am very much looking forward to see her again in Frankfurt in the Café Royal on July, 5th.

I think it is her voice that overwhelms me most. It is slightly nasal but crystally clear at the same time. Totally classy. She was raised in England, maybe this is the reason her intonation is so glistening. Blends are so much more fascinating than pure things. But of course her voice preserves a purity as well. God how was I disappointed when she said in an interview on the aforementioned DVD that one of the two covers she has played was Coldplay's The Scientist. What a rubbish song. What a rubbish band. I mean she comes close to kitsch sometimes but she never trespasses the border to nullity. Like Neil Young on Harvest she is always on the good side of sentimentality. Whereas that band with that singer without a voice who writes meaningless generic lyrics only produces zeroness. There is a natural law of bullshit here. The more succesful that band will become the more empty their music will be. The public will get exactly what they want. Strike out.

Back to Aimee. Why do I have the feeling that I have to defend her? To defend her mainstreamishness, the easiness of her music. It's this weird old prejudice of mine that pop music can't be any good. It doesn't help that the record companies didn't care for her. Her charm does not lie in the fact that she said a big f*ck u to those short-sighted dollar-oriented molochs. She goes her own way. She does her own thing. And on Bachelor No. 2 she succeeds. Most of the time at least. It's a record which should be savoured. An album which is prone to be killed by overplay. But if you listen to it once in a while it guards its charms. That's what worked for me in the last couple of years at least.

The teaser is Susan. A song which reminds me of Joni Mitchell's Amelia somehow. It's more upbeat though.

Here is the overview of the series 40 years, 40 albums of which part XXX was this post.

Yat-Kha, a band from Tuva in South Siberia covering Love Will Tear Us Apart over at the WFMU blog. Brilliantly weird.

On his third solo album Brian Eno abducts the listener into a slower, a softer, a warmer, a better world. Fourteen miniatures are leading us to a magical place beyond space and time.

In January 1975 Brian Eno had had his road accident. He had been hit by a taxi and had to spent some time immobilised in hospital. This is when his brain took off and he probably created the most original music of his lifetime, a record oscillating between tuneful pop and floating ambient. Or floating pop and tuneful ambient.

After the lively avant pop of Here Come the Warm Jets which sounds like a Roxy Music record with Eno as the leader and the eccentric concept album Taking Tiger Mountain Eno changed direction. From fifth gear straight into reverse gear. This is also illustrated by his choice of musicians. Whereas on the frst two solo records basically the whole Roxy Music outfit minus Bryan Ferry was present, on Another Green World Roxy Music has left the building and several pieces are performed by different supergroups consisting of King Crimson's band leader Robert Fripp, Velvet Underground's ex-#2 John Cale, the Genesis drummer Phil Collins and Roxy Music's ex-#2, Mister Eno himself.

Another Green World comprises five songs and nine instrumentals. This ratio gets smoothed when you look at the playing times of the pieces: about 18 minutes with Eno singing and 23 minutes without his voice. But still the listener gets the feeling that the instrumental tracks are filling the gaps (in a perfect way) in between the songs. Eno's inoffensive, almost asexual, calm voice resonates for a long time. He sounds like an enlightened alien who has dropped from another star to show us that there is more to the world than we imagine.

In the first song, Sky Saw, Eno lays down his approach to lyrics:

There may be some meaning in them but it is unconscious. Eno uses the words to make the music sound better not to say something. Let's just believe him. As not listening to the lyrics does not take away the spell of the music.

I know my review should start now but I don't know any words which could do this album justice. Just listen to the first song with the great bass play by Percy Jones and Paul Rudolph and John Cale treating his viola badly near the end and buy the CD if you don't have it yet.

Here is the overview of the series 40 years, 40 albums of which part XXIX was this post.

Here Come the Warm Jets, the song, is stuck in my mind. And I still can't make the connection to the woman on the card of 8 of clubs in the crouch on the back cover. Though I have tried so hard.

60s: The Beatles 70s: Roxy Music 80s: The Smiths 90s: My Bloody Valentine

They are all British but most of my favourite albums are American. It's weird. Maybe the British have more stamina ('cept that Shields guy who is Irish anyway). Not to forget originality, of course.