Dancing about architecture There were three propositions concerning the first album I should write about. In the order of entry: Patti Smith, Califone and David Bowie. Me myself I actually wanted to start with the Thin White Rope. All three suggested albums are extremely difficult to review. The Patti Smith anthology is about 160 minutes long and I have only listened to the first disc with the classic "hits". The Califone disc I have not yet gotten into completely. I need some more time for those two. In the meantime I even received another CD: Lucky 7 by Reverend Horton Heat. It was the bonus for subscribing to the German Rolling Stone. I start with David Bowie's Low then: Probably the most complex of the lot. I have never been a fan of David Bowie, the only albums I got from him are from the nineties and certainly not his most accomplished. Low is the first album of the so-called Berlin trilogy which is regarded by many as his creative climax. Philip Glass the composer of pleasant-sounding minimal music even did an orchestral version of it some time ago, an honour only very few pop records receive from the "classical" (in German I would have said "E-Musik" for earnest music) camp. I can't really do justice to Low as it is an album so full of ideas and depth that I will probably revise and enlarge my review in the future when I hopefully will have digged a little deeper. For example right now it is absolutely impossible for me to rate it. I can't say that I hate it but I can't say neither that I love it nor that it leaves me cold. It is a rather difficult listen that is for sure. And it will probably grow on me. Low was released in 1977 and stands somehow very apart from its time. There is hardly a trace of glamrock which Bowie helped defining in the first half of the seventies. And there is absolutely no sign of punkrock which had just started. What can be heard in Low is the very strong influence of Brian Eno's sound sculpting later known as ambient. Eno collaborated as composer, played most of the synthesizers and according to the liner notes sang (does anyone know on which song?). The eleven tracks of the record can be split into two parts. The first six songs are comparatively (!) conventional rock music with Bowie singing (except on the brilliant sparkling instrumental opener "Speed of Life"). With "A New Career in a New Town" the second part starts. The listener is now drawn into ambient soundscapes with a first culmination in the next song "Warszawa" from where Ian Curtis and bandmates got the name of the first incarnation of Joy Division. It is a weird piece of music co-written by Eno. The first four minutes are dominated by a calm slightly vibrating brooding synthesizer sound. Out of nowhere unintelligible vocals join in which hint to world music as for example Peter Gabriel's later soundtrack Passion. The next track "Art Decade" is characterised by long sustained notes and strange underwater noises. The last two tracks have an almost mystic feel to them. "Weeping Wall" with xylophone and a humming choir at the end sounds very spacy. The last song "Subterraneans" is the most orchestral one. It is later on accentuated by baritone (?) saxophone play and has Bowie singing seemingly disjointed words. It finishes on a brighter tone with an open end. Almost like a jazz improvisation. I much prefer the second half of the record to the first as I have always found David Bowie's voice slightly irritating. That part is also much more experimental and avant-garde than the first. The 38+ minutes of Low don't contain any filler and don't sound dated at all today. That probably is a sign that this is a milestone in pop music. Sorry for these incoherent incomplete (hardly anything on the first half of the record which has challenging lyrics) ramblings. I should probably have started with a simpler record like UB40 for example.

I listened to three tracks from the forthcoming Breeders album Title TK on the 4AD site. The single Off You which came out today is amazingly calm. Kim Deal almost covers Nick Drake terrain here. A beautiful slow gloomy guitar ballad. Son of Three rocks harder and sounds more like the 1993 Breeders but without having the punch, the hooks and the freshness. Forced to Drive starts slow and does not really gain momentum. A little bit of a bore. Altogether the 2002 Breeders sound very weary and Kim Deal sings as if she were on sleeping pills. The album will be released May 20th.

Neil Young: Are You Passionate? Neil Young's new album is coming out in Germany April 8th but you can already listen to it here at the buzztone site (via stevie nixed). You can skip the first song. With my slow connection at home I only had the time to listen to five more songs. The second is ok but not great, the third one rubbish again, number four is a nice bluesy ballad, number five is "Let's Roll", the famous 9/11 tribute song on the flight which crashed near Philadelphia. The last song I listened to was the title song which is noodling into no man's land. I hope the title of the record is not meant in the way that you have to be passionate to buy this Neil Young album. I have got most of them. Obviously I really did not appreciate someone who wrote on the ILM thread Neil not so Young that the lyrics of "Cortez the Killer", which is one of my favourite rock songs of all-time were dumb. I'd say they are naive which was quite normal in those utopian times in between the hippies and the punks. Though as Ned pointed out in the thread the starting line "He came dancing across the water" is probably one of the most powerful beginnings of a song in pop history.

Lambchop - Is a Woman From Nixon to Is a Woman Lambchop have covered about the same distance as the Buddha who was born a prince and became a beggar. The richness of the lush orchestral tone with wind and string section gives way to a stripped down piano and guitar dominated sound with hardly any drums above which Kurt Wagner's raspy tenor thrones. Though the number of participating band members has shrunk by one half compared to Nixon the texture of the music has become even more dense. Is a Woman proves that less can be more. The bass replaces the drums as rhythm section in most tracks. We are much closer to jazz than to alt.country here. It is all very open and relaxed. But the sound stays warm and intimate. The sustained keyboard play adds an ambient atmospheric component. Wagner does not sing in his slightly irritating falsetto anymore. The album has an amazing soothing flow, the first three tracks constitute about the most perfect start of any album I know. Track number 8 is the only weak song. Though I would have wished the album a stronger closer than the title song which turns halfway into a reggae very similar to No Woman, No Cry. Nevertheless this record is a miracle. So simple yet so profound. A perfect soundtrack for a winter night at the open fire. The first truly great record of the new millenium¹. I am really very curious how Lambchop's next album will be. They already have attained a very high degree of maturity on Is a Woman. ¹ On second thoughts maybe the second after last year's Amnesiac by Radiohead.

Kings of Convenience: "Quiet Is the New Loud" in 102 beats When I‘m down and I put on this record, the dark clouds obscuring my mind are immediately blown away. I see the clear blue sky. A tender voice whispers lyrics of unrequited love and is accompanied by two acoustic guitars: „Every night she kisses someone new – never you.“ Kings of Convenience are two Norwegians looking like teenagers who made an album in the spirit of Nick Drake. The beautiful tunes are wistful and light at the same time. This is perfect music to fall asleep to or to wake up to. Equally soothing and refreshing. On the border of dream and reality.

Why does suddenly everybody (#1, #2) love the new New Order album? I don't get it. I've said before that it is my favourite of theirs. It is the most varied and consistent record in their career. In a way it is the most "Joy Division" like. What really annoys me is when people say they love the music but find the lyrics dull. New Order's music has never been about lyrics. That was always the big difference between them and Joy Division. Joy Division had a songwriter, New Order is Joy Division without the songwriter, so what do you expect? Shallow lyrics which go with the melodies have been one of their trademarks.

P.S. I have to agree 100% to what Barney sings in Crystal: "I don't know what to say, you don't care anyway"

Lou Reed: Magic & Loss So I found my personal favourite album about AIDS. It is not really about AIDS but it is about seeing your friends die from it. Magic & Loss is one of the few successful concept albums I know. It is quite fatalistic and cynic in places but what I like the most is the humour which is appropriate to the subject as it is very dark. It is gallows humour. In Goodbye Mass Lou sits on the hard chair in the church and feels very uncomfortable. He does not like death masses and thinks that his deceased friend would not have liked his own death mass either: You would have made it easier you'd say 'tomorrow I'm smoke'" (to be extended)

Listening to: Howe - Down Home. Howe Gelb, frontman and mastermind of Giant Sand on his own. This cd only available from his excellent site features tracks which did not make it onto his last official release Confluence ('cept the piano solo album Lull which was released a couple of days ago). Laid back and relaxed it is desert (island) music again. Mainly guitar plus Gelb's appealing baritone with some piano/keyboard interludes. It starts very calm and stripped down and gets more jazzy and bluesy later on. The last song "Blue Marble Girl" features his charming little daughter babbling (she is on most of his last albums). Review in Comes with a Smile. Howe Gelb is definitely one of the most underestimated and unrecognized rock musicians around.

Check Michael Goldberg's Insiderone daily report (archive link) today on Velvet Underground's Quine Tapes with before unreleased live material from the late 60s. Another must purchase.

Life on a String In hindsight the title of Laurie Anderson's new album which was recorded before 911 sounds like a premonition of things to come. Mankind's life hangs by a thread now. At the same time "Life on a String" offers a way out of our current dilemma: music. Music is a means used in psychotherapy. Aggressiveness can be reduced by music in two ways. The patient can listen to soothing music like baroque or he can make music himself. Drumming for example can channel an abundance of energy.

Looking at the recent events unfortunately reveals that the two parties involved have replaced music by lethal unlistenable loud noise. Music is a way of communication. There is a perfomer and an audience. The audience listens to the performing artist. The communication between the two parties fighting each other is however interrupted. The terrible noise of the collapsing WTC towers was not a sound anyone could have listened to. It killed the people who did not seal their ears. It disconnected the line of communication. The only possible answer to this could only be a counter-attack in deadly noise production. There was no target on the other side which would have generated a similar deafening noise if it would have been destroyed. Therefore the answer was clear. The response to the apocalyptic blast could only be a long-term noise inflicted to the aggressor or who is thought of as the aggressor. Bombing a country without targets does only produce much less impressive noises than the tumbling down of the WTC. In order to stay on par with the attackers the bombing has to go on for a long while so that the accumulated continuous tone of aircrafts dropping bombs can come closer to the original crash noise. It can never reach it though. Just imagine George W. Bush, bin Laden, Tony Blair and the Taliban leader playing together in a band. It may sound naive but I think it would be a more promising way out of our current dilemma than killing each other with eyes and ears closed.

There are two lyric excerpts from Laurie's album which make me wonder if she is a reincarnation of Nostradamus (metafilter thread).

In the song Statue of Liberty she sings "Freedom is a scary thing. Not many people really want it." This line has become so frighteningly true by now that she changed it in her last concerts to: "Freedom is a scary thing. So precious, so easy to lose." Which is true as well but somehow less poignant and more general.

The second foreboding less known excerpt which really gives me the chills is from One Beautiful Evening: "Oh beauty in all its forms. Funny how hatred can also be a beautiful thing. When it's as sharp as a knife. As hard as a diamond. Perfect."

Though "Funny" does not fit as adjective here. But I see the sharp knife / hard diamond (a metamorphosis of hatred) when the (first) airplane hit the WTC. And somehow the picture was beautiful and perfect in its incredible horror.

My latest CD purchases Friday I received the following cds:

• Barbara Morgenstern: Fjorden
• Fink: Fink
• Kings of Convenience: The Quiet Is the New Loud
• Jeff Beck: You Had it Coming
• Joy Division: Heart and Soul (4 cd box)
• Alex Chilton: Like Flies on Sherbert / Live in London
• House of Love: 1986-88

Barbara Morgenstern is ok but in the second half the electronic music gets a little bit boring. Her German lyrics are oddly romantic and quite good. Fink is a German group from Hamburg musically quite close to Calexico. The harrmonium is wonderful. The mouth harp reminds me of Neil Young. And the pedal steel adds some country flair. There is also some folk rock influence reflected in the violin, banjo and some very sad lyrics. Not to forget a beautiful lyrical trumpet in one track. All songs are quite different but the album has a wonderful flow. There is a dog participating and overall their music is very relaxed and slightly melancholic. My favourite German release this year up till now. Kings of Convenience is a Norwegian duo following the paths of Nick Drake. Adolescent singer/songwriter music with acoustic guitars and very sparse but beautiful lyrics. When listening to this I want to be 18 years young again. An instant classic. The ambiance and the melodies are grand cru. Jeff Beck I did not have in my collection before (except some old Yardbirds lps). His new album is amazingly varied. Starting with hard rock guitar and finishing with very smooth ballad type stuff. The second last track has got birds singing in it which Beck tries to imitate on his guitar. Awesome. Joy Division are probably my favourite rock group. I already had all cds they ever released (except the first under the name of Warsaw). Dark and powerful. The soundtrack to my youth which I only discovered ten years later. Five hours of which not one minute is superfluous. Alex Chilton is an old favourite of mine. He represents the music from the Southern states. Coming from Memphis he sounds like Presley at times but makes me think of Jeffrey Lee Pierce of the Gun Club as well. A tortured soul. Rockn' roll at its best. House of Love is probably the most underestimated band of all times the late eighties (together with The Field Mice). They were the undiscovered Beatles of the late eighties their time. Melodies I could swim in.