[music, albums] August 30, 2001 at 2:09:00 PM CEST

New Order
Yesterday I bought the new offering by NO which is called Get Ready. After two or three listens I must say that it is probably my favourite album by them. It is somehow softer less dance and drum machine like. The beat is not as hard and loud as during their Ibiza phase in the eighties. Almost like a mature work (Alterswerk we say in German). I have to listen to it again. The music seems subtler than in the past. And there are more than two good songs on it.

As much as I got into Joy Division's albums almost straight away after I listened to them for the first time as little I ever digged New Order's LPs. They are and will always be a singles band. I find Bernard Sumner's non-spectacular voice was quite a backslide after the intense and stark voice of Ian Curtis.

My favourite album with a member of NO (except JD's records of course) would be the first album of Electronic from 1991. A full album of very enjoyable wonderful simple and light tunes. It works from the first to the last track. A chocolate box full of dance pop. One of the few supergroup (Sumner + Marr + Tennant) outputs which is worth the money. Highly underrated by the critics (3/5 stars only) and the public.

NO disappointed me most 1992 at the Bizarre festival on the Lorelei rock (above the Rhine). They finished the evening after a superb performance by Sonic Youth (Thurston Moore played like Hendrix young brother) and seemed like little puppets to me who where dancing in the distance to electronic rhythms made for people from Mars. Absolutely ridiculous.

 
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[music, albums] August 1, 2001 at 2:44:00 PM CEST
Best of 2000 end
#1 Giant Sand: Chore of Enchantment
My favourite album of 2000. Giant Sand has calmed down a bit, the group residing in Tucson, AZ has finally released a chef d'oeuvre. For those of you who do not know them, they are Calexico plus Howe Gelb, who is the enigmatic mastermind. He dedicates their 20th or so album to Rainer Ptacek a guitarist-friend who recently died of a brain tumor.

The music is incredibly pure and powerful. It has still its odd moments and sounds like classical piano music in places. The mood is melancholic but not hopeless. 16 tracks and almost 16 different styles. The music is so diverse but it still holds together. Gelb on piano & guitar, Burns on bass and Convertino on drums are exceptional instrumentalists.

Still strongly in debt to Velvet Underground (this time period of the self-titled third album) and to Neil Young, Gelb realizes some amazing consistent song-writing, e.g. in the opener (Well) Dusted ( for the millenium). You literally can hear the Arizona sandscape, Howe's dry baritone fits beautifully. Another highlight is X-tra Wide with some celestial casio maneuvering. There is not one bad track. No Reply is another favourite, the sound blend with pedal steel, electric bass, farfisa, Howes mellotron strings and an opera tune in the background is phantastic. The album ends with a beautiful slide-guitar solo by Rainer which reminds me very much of Nick Drake.
 
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[music, albums] July 31, 2001 at 2:46:00 PM CEST

Countdown Top ten 2000 almost finished
#2 Yo La Tengo: And then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out (81)
A short review of an album which captivates by its simplicity and slow flow:

This is lullaby music for the late summer nights. Beautiful singing of the nicest indie couple. With this record Georgia and Ira seem to declare each other their eternal love. The mellowest, calmest and most soothing music I know of. Night falls on Hoboken could go on for hours. I preferred the CD to the live performance. Live I prefer when they mix pop tunes with real rockers. Actually this is not their best release but still good enough to be one of the top 3 albums in 2000. My favourites are President Yo La Tengo and Electropura.

Another good site on Yo La Tengo is from their label Matador with a discography annotated by band members, news, tours, a mailing list, loads of live mp3s can be found here.

 
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[music, albums] July 30, 2001 at 2:49:00 PM CEST

Countdown top ten 2000 continued
#3 Aimee Mann: Bachelor No.2 (or, the last remains of the dodo) (87)
Aimee Mann (excellent mailing list) recorded her album in 1999, released it in the US in 2000 and in Germany this year, so I guess it is ok to consider her record a 2000 vintage. And it is. When listening to this record I cannot refrain myself of thinking about Joni Mitchell (Jorn's portal), my favourite female songwriter. Aimee looks like her and writes similar songs from a very female point of view. Very emotional and clever stuff. She looks like an angel with her long blond hair and frail body. The song Susan reminded me so much of Amelia (from the superb Hejira) Joni's beautiful song on an unlucky relation about which she talks to her friend. Vapor trails appear in both songs and Aimee's story is the same: "I had some trouble with the goodbye / I checked my roman candle supply".

I have the impression that I have heard Aimee's voice before. Like her album which is an instant classic. As classic as Hejira. Her voice is like a blend of Karen Carpenter's for the poppier parts and Chrissie Hynde's for the rock element. It is crystal clear and warm at the same time. Bachelor no.2 is a Gesamtkunstwerk (synthesis of the arts) from the slightly green cover with the dodo, the lyric sheet with a small black and white drawing for each song, the lyrics itself, the song melodies and the voice. The melody, voice and lyrics are married like the bouquet, the colour and the taste of a great red wine. It is no coincidence that the stand-out single Red Vines also alludes to the alcoholic grape drink, like Joni Mitchell she would not mind to drink A Case of You. This music is perfect pop and perfect songwriting. And the songs are so varied and there is no weak track at all. The least convincing song is The Fall of the World's Own Optimist which Costello has co-written with her.

The meanings of her songs are like nuts in a nutshell and it is quite difficult to crack them. But when you succeed the nuts inside are bitter and sweet at the same time. I still have not opened most of them. One song I understood because she told us at the concert is Ghost World. It is about the first summer after high school when you still do not know where to go and what to do. A situation she has been in recently (she is 40 now). I guess I am still in that position: "And all that I need now / is someone with the brains / and the know-how / to tell me what I want". Another line from It Takes All Kinds about the disillusionment really touched me: "spreading the word / that you've become / what you hated". In Deathly from the Magnolia soundtrack the dying father says to his lost son: "Now that i've met you / would you object to / never seeing each other again". The last song You Do is a beautiful way to end this phantastic album. The remaining songs which I have not really decrypted up till now are like jam jars in my larder for the next winter.

 
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[music, albums] July 24, 2001 at 2:55:00 PM CEST

Top ten 2000 countdown continued
#4 Montgolfier Brothers: Seventeen Stars
I wrote the original version of this review in German for amazon.de. Let's hope that I won't have any copyright problems with them. It would be ridiculous anyway as they did not pay me.
When I heard Nick Drake for the first time, it was exactly the same as when first listening to this record: afterwards the world was somehow richer, deeper, more beautiful and sadder than before. It was the 100 second title pro celebrity standing around, which can be downloaded from the Poptones website. It tells a small history of a guy waiting for his girl-friend. While waiting he thinks about the reasons why she does not arrive in time: it could be that she confused the day or that all street names changed during the night (these blokes even have a sense of humour) or that she got stuck in a traffic jam. At the end when she arrives her kiss makes him forgive her immediately. The song is only orchestrated with some guitar and bass, the voice is a very pleasant baritone and well articulated with a slight Northern English accent. The Montgolfier Brothers have been compared to Durutti Column, this unsuccessful Factory band in the spirit and at the times of Joy Division. This is probably justified from the musical and geographical standpoint, both bands come from the area of Manchester, but the singing and songwriting of the Montgolfiers is a million times better.
With these songs you can hover in a hot-air balloon away from the terrible reality. The frequently used glockenspiel makes this dream music still more unreal, somehow like a far memory to the innocent days of the childhood. The gentleness, tenderness and ease of the singing and the instrumentation make this music so precious. The melodies are wonderfully melancholic, there is a certain touch of chamber music.
My absolute favourite titles are Even if my mind can't tell you and Une chanson du crépuscule. Every time I listen to the latter song and the sprechgesang begins a shiver runs down my spine, this music is too beautiful for this world. Alan McGee, the ex-boss of Creation and current boss of Poptones has discovered a jewel again. It would not surprise me if the title was inspired by Seventeen Seconds, the chef d'oeuvre of The Cure.

 
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[music, albums] July 23, 2001 at 2:56:00 PM CEST

Top ten 2000 countdown continued
#5 Ryan Adams: Heartbreaker
Ryan Adams, the singer of the now dissolved alt.country band Whiskeytown has released the most astounding songwriter debut of last year. Extremely eclectic but also very personal. The bluesy mood is accentuated by the mouth harp play. It starts with an argument on which album(s) Morrissey's Suedehead can be found. The first song To Be Young (is to be sad, is to be high) (the title names alone are worth the purchase of this record) sounds like an outtake of an early electrified Bob Dylan album like Blonde on Blonde. Adams voice is slightly nasal but lower than Dylan's and he elongates the syllables. The song subtitle I Love a Woman that Rains is like a paraphrase on Rainy Day Women #12 & 35. The atmosphere and intonation of Call Me on Your Way Back Home make me think very much of Tim Hardin's Hang on to a Dream. And there is Shakedown on 9th Street a song Jeffrey Lee Pierce from the Gun Club would have been proud of. The lyrics are phantastic as well, mostly quite romantic and sad but funny at the same time, e.g. in Come Pick Me Up: "Come pick me up / Take me out / Fuck me up / Steal my records / Screw all my friends behind my back / With a smile on your face".

 
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[music, albums] July 19, 2001 at 3:00:00 PM CEST

Let's count down the top ten 2000:

#7 Godspeed You Black Emperor!: Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven! (80)
Music to be listened to on headphones with hardly any lights on. It starts very calm and slowly and builds up to climax in a cacophony of sound. I think Godspeed who are from Quebec have eight members, they play some classical instruments like violins, french horn, but also drums (2) and guitars and are a collective in the sense that no member is privileged. There are no lyrics except recorded statements of people (love the old man remembering Coney Island). The music is almost symphonic and closer to classical than pop music.
posted by Alexander Fritz at 10:00 PM

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	#6 <a href="http://www.tbstars.co.uk/"><b>Trembling Blue Stars</b></a>: <a href="http://www.metacritic.com/music/artists/tremblingbluestars/brokenbywhispers"><b>Broken by Whispers</b></a> (70)<br>Robert Wratten used to be the head of the late 80s/beginning 90s British band <a href="http://www.maths.monash.edu.au/~rjh/fm/"><b>The Field Mice</b></a>. I think they are the most underrated band of the last 10 years. They are something like the missing link between <a href="http://www.compsoc.man.ac.uk/~moz/"><b>The Smiths</b></a> and <b><a href="http://www.belleandsebastian.co.uk/">Belle and Sebastian</a></b>. Melancholic very tuneful pop which only the English are able to create. The Trembling Blue Stars is more or less his solo project. Their third album is their best. Robert seems a little out-of-place still lamenting about an old love story (the female singer of the Field Mice) in his mid-thirties. He is something like the never growing-up adolescent.

 
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[music, albums] July 16, 2001 at 3:09:00 PM CEST

Top Ten 2000 continued #8 Johnny Cash: Solitary Man (American III) (72)
I always hated country music and especially Johnny Cash. With this album Johnny Cash rehabilitates himself. Cash sounds like someone who has survived a short stay in his own coffin. You can hear that he has won a battle against death, his voice is even more masculine than usually (Solitary Man by Neil Diamond). The songs are a good mix of his own and some very good covers. Those include One from U2 (better than the original as Cash lacks the affectations of the false prophet Bono), a very intensive rendering of The Mercy Seat by Nick Cave and one song by Will Oldham who accompanies Cash. The simplicity of this music (you basically listen to an acoustic guitar plus Cash's voice) makes it so strong.

 
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[music, albums] July 12, 2001 at 3:19:00 PM CEST

Top Ten 2000 #10 Neil Young: Silver and Gold
Neil's best effort since Ragged Glory ten years ago. But this time it is Neil's soft side again. If there is a worthy sequel to Harvest it will be Silver and Gold (metascore 65/100) and not this mediocre and kitschy Harvest Moon. Even if the best tune Razor Love is from 1987 Neil is back again with 55 years. There is hardly a bad track, Neil is playing mouth harp like 30 years ago, sometimes the steel guitar brings us quite close to country. The album is very tranquil and serene, a typical later works of someone who has experienced the worst and the best. It is a little bit like Faust II (DE). I can imagine Neil as Philemon and his wife as Baucis sitting in the garden and enjoying the soft sun rays of indian summer.

 
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[music, albums] July 12, 2001 at 3:18:00 PM CEST

Top Ten 2000 #9 Lambchop: Nixon (metascore 72)
The most heart-warming album in 2000. I imagine Kurt Wagner sitting in the middle of his 12 person orchestra (saw them live). Kurt's voice is sometimes slightly annoying (when it is high-pitch) but the instrumental part makes up for it. You can hear that this music comes from people who really love music. It has rich melodies and is sometimes swinging (Grumpus). To be heard in late autumn nights. The title of the album was politically quite anticipatory but it would probably have sold much better would it have been called Dubya.
P.S. Kurt Wagner met Richard Brautigan the author of Trout Fishing in America and So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away (my favourite) just before he died. Brautigan died like Kerouac. Totally drunk all the time, with no friend left.

 
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