All My CDs, pt 37: The Memory of Trees

The Memory of Trees - Enya

A few years ago I was at a yard sale, and while I was getting some other items I noticed a box of CDs marked as $.50 each. Enya's The Memory of Trees was the only one I thought worth getting, and since fifty cents would hardly set me back, I just added it to my pile. I don't remember ever putting it on until now, though.

I don't listen to Enya very often, although I've owned a few of her albums over the years (I only own one right now.) I realized, while listening to The Memory of Trees, that it's for much the same reason that I don't often listen to soundtracks. Ambient music, though pleasant, doesn't attract enough of my attention to stay on my mind and therefore in my player once the novelty has worn off. If music has meaningful lyrics, or a catchy tune, or awe-inspiring grandeur of sound, I am liable occasionally to be "in the mood" for it... rather than the music being little more than a mood itself.

I cannot deny the value of this album as a mood-enhancer. The calmness it exudes makes it perfect for situations like massages or bubble baths. It is less effective at motivating chores, workouts or other more active endeavors. If I listen while driving, I drive ten below the limit. And when people impatiently drive over the yellow lines to pass me, I don't even flinch from my fugue of inner calm.

But although Enya's music is mostly of that ambient, nearly soporific type, a few of her songs have enough of a tune and notable lyrics to stay in my head longer than their own run time. Orinoco Flow and Only Time are examples,  but they are not on this album. Instead there's --, which isn't as catchy as either, but attempts to be. I think its stilted rhyming puts me off a little, as well as its overfocus on lyrics when Enya's voice has a tendency to be indistinct (a strength rather than a weakness for the more ambient tracks). The instrumental -- is more to my liking, with a cheerful, bubbly sound probably achieved electronically.

I needed some low-stress albums like Driving Blind and this one, because I'll be ending my first shelf of CDs with a few by Evanescence. After that, there will be a short break before I begin the second shelf.

Next: Fallen

All My CDs, pt. 36: Driving Blind

Driving Blind - Driving Blind

This is perhaps the second or third album among several that I picked up nearly at random and bought, with no knowledge about the band or any idea of what the music would sound like. I was in my early teens at the time, prone to fits of drama, and new to this adventurous method of discovery, so my expectations exceeded reality from time to time. I was a little disappointed to find that this bland-looking cover contained an album of equally bland-sounding easy-listening-type songs.

But fortune rewards the patient. When teenage-me finished the first nine lackluster tracks, at the end I found what I’d been waiting for: a hidden gem. The final track, Cover Your Eyes, is a piece of musical wisdom that has stuck with me ever since.

I’m grass
you’ve tread on
I’ve known bending, but still I’ve grown
it’s a long ride
to the witness grounds
all the baggage seems to weigh us down
but I surrender is the hardest sign
when neither owns a flag

The message is simple: it’s better to bend, to surrender, than to remain steadfast and perpetuate needless conflict. The stubborn suffer for the smallest of petty principles, but those who remain flexible and know when to give in may find the way much easier for themselves.

Now, I say that this song has stuck with me, but that doesn’t mean I always remember and put into practice its advice. I’ve found myself in countless conflicts I could have easily ended by making some small concession, but something inside me - stubbornness, anger, selfishness, or a vain hope that I might very soon win - has kept me trying to have my way. The most important lessons in life are often the most difficult to fully internalize. One day, I hope this one sinks in to the point where I really can bend, like grass, with the wind.

Next: The Memory of Trees

All My CDs, pt. 35: Magnicifent

Magnicifent - Driftless Pony Club

A pattern I have is that I buy one album, and if I like it, I buy another by the same artist. Mostly, it ends there; either I am disappointed by the second one and not inclined to try another, or I am satisfied with only two. Sometimes I encounter a musician that captivates me such that I go about collecting their entire discography, but it seems that many of the artists in my collection are represented in only two disks.

Driftless Pony Club is among those bands. But when I first listened to Magnicifent (not a misspelling, but the album's actual title), I was not disappointed. I think it's a vast improvement over Buckminster, which was fairly good in its own right. Between the making of one and the other, I think DPC honed their craft and became more adventurous, as the songs here are more varied and interesting to listen to, as well as more emotionally evocative.

Although the overall mood is cheerful, a few songs are not. 18 Years Later describes a desolate and despairing mission to Mars, and since my first science fiction short story was along similar lines, this one hits as close to home as it could for someone who's never ventured more than a thousand miles from home. All Quiet isn’t quite as morbid, but is nonetheless quite dark.

But most of the songs are more optimistic. YR MNHTN, besides being one of the most instrumentally interesting songs, espouses a very positive attitude toward music itself: “Other people’s lives are failures, baby / but all of our mistakes are art / keep the record going, keep the music going / every song’s a brand new start.” This refrain proves to be delightfully catchy as well as meaningful.

Another of my favorites is Bedrolls Across America, which I love because it seems to be a love song from the members of the band to each other: “I’d sleep in a van with you if it meant we could do what we always meant to do.” It describes the beautiful feeling of not only being with people you care about, but achieving with them a mutually-held dream - such as becoming a rock band and going on tour. The song never fails to give me warm fuzzy feelings and hopes for a positive future. Fountain City gives me similar feelings, although I have more trouble parsing the lyrics to tell you exactly why. It’s a remarkably upbeat song.

I’d definitely recommend this album over Buckminster, although I do like them both. I may even someday break my two-disk pattern to buy more albums by this band, if they’re equally fun to listen to.

Next: Driving Blind

All My CDs, pt. 34: Buckminster

Buckminster - Driftless Pony Club

In the current popcultural landscape, creators and creations in different media are often interconnected, with a band creating music devoted to a show or book series, an author promoting his favorite musicians, or comics centered on critique and appreciation for video games. In the case of Driftless Pony Club, I would never have heard of them if not for vocalist/guitarist Craig Benzine's mostly-unrelated (to anything) vlog. While watching his vlog of the band's tour I caught ear of some of the songs, and liked what I heard.

It’s taken me over a year to get a handle on what I like about Driftless Pony Club. Their music is pretty, but unpretentious, and occasionally shows some rough edges but still shines in other areas. They employ the conventional rock configuration of lead and backup vocals, guitars, bass, drums, and keyboard, with few other instruments appearing. I’m not sure how much of my enjoyment of the music is derived from my knowledge of its members from their appearances on Craig Benzine’s vlog and other videos he’s made (watching a vlog for an extended period can often begin to feel like friendship). Regardless, I do enjoy their music.

Buckminster in particular is an example of a concept album I was too ignorant to recognize at first. The songs' lyrics contain numerous references to the life, work, and philosophy of Buckminster Fuller. I had heard of him, but only as the namesake of "buckyballs" and designer of geodesic domes. Since then my knowledge has expanded to include a few quotes and biographical errata, but I have neglected to familiarize myself more fully with him and his life. I have little doubt that once I have, I will suddenly understand more of the lyrics on this album.

It's fair to mention another contributor to my general lack of understanding. The vocal tracks are often not balanced with the instrumental ones such that the words are easy to hear, and the CD's liner notes do not include song lyrics. I am not complaining per se. One aspect is a musical aesthetic choice, the other a visual one, and neither is objectively wrong. Nevertheless, it does make the intellectual meanings of the songs rather obscure.

Personally, I’m not sure if more attention on the vocals would actually help Driftless Pony Club’s musical quality, since voice isn’t where the band gets their beauty. In my opinion, that beauty lies wherever the catchiest melodic refrain is - whether it’s in the vocals, a guitar riff, or wherever. Those moments are relatively understated, but worth watching out for.

Next: Magnicifent

All My CDs, pt 33: Born to Die

Born to Die - Lana Del Rey

I bought this album a few years ago because two songs showed up on my Pandora station, and I thought they were pretty rad. I had never heard of Lana Del Rey before, probably because I live a very sheltered life of listening to classical radio and watching no television except for Doctor Who. (The motive for this self-insulation is onefold: I hate ads.) Later, I learned that there is a bit of a controversy about whether Lana Del Rey counts as a real person and therefore worthy of any respect or attention as a musician. I have no thoughts of my own on the subject, but if you’re craving such discussion I refer you to this video and this article.

I'm not sure what originally attracted me to Lana Del Rey. Perhaps it was the generous use of stringed accompaniment combined with fascinatingly versatile vocals (deep and disaffected one moment, high and girlish the next). The lyrics may have played a role as well. They present an almost charicaturistic picture of the crassest and most problematic version of girlhood and femininity: conflating performance and appearance with sexuality, sexuality with love, and all three with wealth and luxury, all wrapped up in a mindset that one's well-being depends entirely on a man. But the sadness that permeates even the happiest-seeming lyrics belies the truth that this is all the twisted fantasy of a deeply damaged soul: “Carmen, Carmen doesn't have a problem / Lyin' to herself 'cause her liquor's top-shelf"”

The whole album could be interpreted as a brutal take-down of pop culture's destructive objectification of women, so sickeningly pervasive that girls grow up thinking of themselves as mere objects whose lives are meaningless and miserable if they are not appealing to men in a very superficial way. This sort of outlook makes it excruciatingly important to obtain and maintain male affection and love, even at the expense of personal health and other relationships.

The "nothing is more important than pleasing my man" attitude pervades every song on the album. Video Games's sweet refrain goes "It's you, it's you, it's all for you / everything I do." Dark Paradise illustrates the devastation that occurs when such an all-consuming relationship ends. One song, This Is What Makes Us Girls, explicitly links the problematic values system to gender: "This is what makes us girls / we don't stick together 'cause we put love first." The same song somewhat self-consciously underlines some of the tragic consequences, but fatalistically fails to recognize that it is not inevitable, that girls can follow another path, one where self-worth is not tied to sexual objectification.

Contrasting and complimenting the dark and gender-dystopian lyrics, the instrumentation is sumptuously orchestral, with bowed stringed instruments accompanying the sultry vocal strains. The combination of music and tragic words makes each song, at least for me, deeply saddening. I have at times found myself switching to another CD to avoid flinging myself into a melancholic funk just before a work shift or important dinner. It is certainly not music I would play all the time, but I could not imagine removing it from my collection. It's just too interesting.

Next: Buckminster

All My CDs, pt 32: All One

All One - Krishna Das

Several years after falling in love with the album Pilgrim Heart, I decided to see if the same artist had any other interesting albums, and on that basis I bought All One. I did not think much about the title, assuming it to be a reference to the monism of Hindu philosophy - the belief that all beings are one being, all different identities of the same all-encompassing divine spirit. This belief encourages compassion and nonviolence, since it’s hard to be cruel or uncaring to a fellow being when you believe that he is you, and that his pain is yours as well.

 When I first put it on, my impression of the first track that it was a bit slow-moving and monotonous, even compared to the repetitiveness I had appreciated in Pilgrim Heart. I found myself advancing to the next track before hearing all eighteen minutes of the first, and found it similarly boring. I took the CD out and don’t remember picking it back up again until now.

When I started listening this time, I committed to listening to the whole thing nonjudgmentally, even at the risk of some boredom. My reward was something of a revelation. Yes, the first track is even more repetitive and less variable than Pilgrim Heart. And yes, all the other tracks are just like it. In fact, the entire fifty-three minutes is all one song. The moment I realized that, I found myself murmering “I see what you did there.”

The song consists of four lines known as the Mahamantra, or “great mantra”:

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna
Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama
Rama Rama Hare Hare

Even within the lines of the mantra there is simply a repetition of names of God, nothing more intricate than that. The music alternates between a very slow melody with minimal accompaniment and a more upbeat segment with more instruments and more energy. The instruments themselves are a combination of Eastern and Western, modern and traditional, including flutes and guitars and violins and mixed percussion, played in a variety of styles. The whole thing has a very improvised, spontaneous feel to it, and I cannot now think of any of it as boring.

And nor is the worldview that all beings are one being, that all things are expression of one divine love. Hinduism believes in oneness, but is also a massively polytheistic faith - the one contains many, varied and exciting and infinitely complex. Just as our world contains billions of unique and interesting people and hundreds of unique and beautiful cultures, but we all share one world and a common identity as human beings.

Peace.

Next: Born to Die

All My CDs, pt 31: Pilgrim Heart

Pilgrim Heart - Krishna Das

I've been told on multiple occasions that the music I like is repetitive. I shrugged off such disparagement until Pandora Radio, an algorithm which selects music based on the qualities of songs I already like, identified "repetitive phrasing" as one of those qualities. Apparently, I do like repetitive music. And I love this album.

I hesitate to describe Pilgrim Heart as "Hindu chanting with folk percussion accompaniment", even though that's what it is. All but a few of the tracks consist of a few Sanskrit devotional lines sung over and over with little or no variation, sometimes for several minutes at a stretch. The occasional melodic or instrumental liberties do little to interrupt the flow. Yet in the very repetitiveness there is a channel for trancelike, mystical experience, and it is entirely by design. This is one of the traditional means of worship in Hinduism, which boasts one of the oldest and most robust traditions of mysticism in the world.

There are two copies of this CD on my shelf, and neither is home-burned. It happens that I borrowed the first copy when I was a child, and loved it so much that I was reluctant to return it; eventually I forgot even who I borrowed it from, but felt bad about the accidental theft and bought another copy to restore some sense of balance. (If you're the owner of the first CD and know who you are, feel free to come forward and claim it.)

When I first began listening to it, this album and its explanatory liner notes were my first detailed introduction to Hinduism. Although I never adopted it completely (even continually-trendy hatha yoga never held my attention long), Hinduism's polytheistic monism was influential to my developing spirituality. To this day, meditation and music remain my two central means of experiencing spiritual oneness, and the trance-inducing music on this album perfectly combine the two.

Then, as now, my favorite track was the first, Namah Shivaya. Consisting of six Sanskrit lines sung repeatedly over seven minutes, it is typical of the rest of the album. But there is a subtle complexity in the interaction of voices with the mixed percussion, and with a gradually-increasing presence of electric guitar playing under it all like the flow of water visible beneath the slats of a bridge. Unexpected vocal harmonies appear like a gust of sudden wind, propelling the music forward joyfully. When I play the track through from beginning to end, and give myself over to the experience, I find myself leaning closer to god.

Next: All One

All My CDs, pt 30: Doctor Who vol. 4

Doctor Who, Original Television Series Soundtrack Vol. 4 - Murray Gold

I’ve been watching Doctor Who for a few years, and my enthusiasm for the series varies. At one point the background music of a certain episode was so ear-catching that I was moved to buy the soundtrack for that season. But I don’t often go for soundtrack music for my casual listening, so after the first few months in my car stereo it mostly languished on my shelf.

I do enjoy listening to it, though. But come to think of it, none of the soundtracks I own get very much attention from me. I think this is because listening to a soundtrack by itself is a little like eating a condiment by itself; it’s all flavor and very little substance. When I do listen to soundtracks I find I enjoy them most in the car, where there is some movement for the music to enhance by making it feel like an action scene.

But as soundtracks go, this is a good one. As in the show itself, there is a broad (very broad) range of moods and themes tracing their way through the music, as well as a lot of different kinds of sounds coming from different kinds of instruments. Most is, of course, orchestral, but there are also more modern or electronic sounds going on such as electric guitar and synthesized percussion. Voices appear as well, mostly invoking a nonverbal “choir of angels” effect or faux-foreign-language chanting; I can’t say I’m too fond of those parts but I can’t deny they are pleasant to hear.

A couple tracks stand out to me as especially evocative. “Life Among the Distant Stars” expresses perfect loneliness, even if it’s a bit cliche in execution. “The Source” is even more stirring, as is “The Greatest Story Never Told.” “A Pressing Need to Save the World” is one of the best action-sequence soundtracks I’ve ever heard, and I seem to remember it was part of that track that originally drew me toward buying the album. But above all, the penultimate track “Song of Freedom” is the one that more than anything stands alone as a beautiful piece of music.

If you’re into Doctor Who and/or soundtracks, I’d go so far as to recommend this one.

Next: Pilgrim Heart

All My CDs, pt. 29: God Shuffled His Feet

God Shuffled His Feet - Crash Test Dummies

After I’d had Jingle All The Way for some time, and knowing that Crash Test Dummies had a few other albums out, I decided to check one out. I listened to it a few times when I first got it, and once in a while since, but it was still mostly unfamiliar to me when I put it on to prepare for this review. I took a good week of listening to only this album before beginning to write about it.

My first and largest impression is that the songs are generally catchy, upbeat and fun to listen to. It’s also not hard to notice a certain cerebral humor in the lyrics. But the lead singer’s deep bass voice isn’t always easy to understand, so I rely on the liner notes to actually follow along with the songs’ meanings. Once I do, I am usually surprised at how dark, sinister, or cynical the lyrics turn out to be compared with the overall mood of the music.

Afternoons & Coffeespoons, for instance, is one of the catchiest tunes of the lot. When you sit down and read through the lyrics, it tells a tail of failing health and the looming specter of old age. Medical imagery also appears in Here I Stand Before Me, which is similarly cheerful-sounding, but describes the uneasy, disembodied feeling the narrator gets from looking at his own x-ray - an experience so disturbing as to inspire nightmares.

Others seem at first glance like they might have some deeper meaning, but after reading the lyrics I find not much of interest there. Maybe this is by design. The title track, God Shuffled His Feet, tells a fanciful anecdote of God having a picnic with his created people. The people take eager advantage of this audience with a deity, and ask what they think are profound questions. God responds with a decidedly unprofound (or else inscrutably cryptic) story. God shuffles his feet, the people clear their throats. There just isn’t much communication going on.

The song I find most musically beautiful is Two Knights and Maidens, and also holds the honor of most covertly disturbing in imagery. I fell in love with the compelling and haunting melody, but only caught a few of the words until reading them. There I was confronted with a story of young men sexually propositioning some women, who dispose of their unwelcome suitors by drugging them, then watching while the stupefied men are attacked by tigers. No morals, no commentary, just a straightforward telling of events.

I’m not quite clear about what you just spoke -
was that a parable, or a very subtle joke?

I’m not sure if I want to know.

Next: Doctor Who, Vol. 4

All My CDs, pt 28: Jingle All The Way

Hey, shouldn’t you wait a few months and do this one in December?

No. I’m doing it now. So shut up.

Jingle All The Way - Crash Test Dummies

This is another album I have NPR to thank for. I forgot the exact context, but one December during a Christmas-themed show a song came on that I immediately knew I had to acquire somehow. I listened for the name of the band, did some googling, and soon had the Crash Test Dummies’ Jingle All The Way in my CD player. To this day it remains my favorite Christmas album - even though my own father made a Christmas album that I am genetically obligated to like more, and even though Christmas music (or at least Christmas pop music) is a source of rage for at least one sixth of each year.

What makes this different from most Christmas pop music is its deliberate divergence from and simultaneous honoring of tradition and convention. Little-known carols are given the attention they have long been denied and thus seem new, while the played-out, cliche-ridden ones are given an extra spark or stylistic twist that almost amounts to affectionate parody.

The latter is especially apparent in the two most commonly-played songs. The version of White Christmas on this album is the only version I will tolerate, and in fact enjoy, and it is only because of Brad Roberts’ droll, almost sarcastic delivery of the vocals. And Jingle Bells is nearly unrecognizable as the bland and cheery ditty we all know and are pretty tired of by now (it is this song that was played on the radio and persuaded me to buy the album). Both songs really must be heard to be believed.

Other songs are religious rather than secular, and are played straight or with a more subtle breakage from cliche. Good King Wenceslas, which is somewhat known but rarely sung in my experience, has an imaginatively theatrical aspect befitting the story it tells. And two other songs, which I had never heard before and I doubt many of us have, are treated the most beautifully: In the Bleak Midwinter and The Huron Carol. The latter deserves some extra explanation.

The Huron Carol was written by a Jesuit missionary wanting to tell the story of Jesus’s birth in words that the Huron Indians would understand. So he described Jesus as being born in a bark lodge, visited by hunters and foreign chiefs bringing gifts of fur. Think what you will of the resulting song - I know some might consider it cultural misappropriation, or a relic of European imperialism - but I think it is the single most beautiful song on this album, and its history makes it all the more interesting. I see it as an acknowledgement of the cultural diversity of our world, and perhaps an attempt to reconcile it with the globalization and homogenization we may have to expect in modern times. Either way, it’s worth listening to.

Next: God Shuffled His Feet

All My CDs, pt 27: Armed Forces

Armed Forces - Elvis Costello & The Attractions

After I had known and loved The Juliet Letters for several years, it finally occurred to me to find out what Elvis Costello had done otherwise. One of his songs, Big Boys, had appeared on Pandora, so it seemed as good a place as any to start. So I got the album that song is on, Armed Forces.

I had read that Costello was described as “punk”, but honestly I can’t see any resemblance between his music and the punk I am familiar with. Then again, I never have been very clear on what punk is supposed to be (or not be), and genre distinctions in general can get pretty fuzzy sometimes. An impression I got from this album is that parts of it would make a good soundtrack for an action movie - Goon Squad in particular feels somewhat “James Bondish,” as I described it to a friend. But from listening to the lyrics, it’s possible that an action-movie aesthetic was invoked on purpose in order to comment on or even parody some of the values and attitudes associated.

For instance, the song I have found myself enjoying the most on this listen-through (and singing to myself in quiet moments) is Oliver’s Army, which has a definite anti-military agenda. Even so, if I am driving with the windows down, I tend to spin the volume down during the end of the second verse. I can’t count on random passersby being aware that Costello is using the n-word satirically.

Aside from that, what I really like best is two covers that appear toward the end of the track listing. What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love and Understanding is a refreshingly unironic social commentary. His rendition of My Funny Valentine (which appears as a bonus track on my extended-edition copy) is, as far as I’m concerned, the definitive version of the song (I never did care for jazz standards).

I know just from casual listening that Costello’s original songs are cleverly lyricized, and deserve a good critical reading when I have the headspace for it, but have never gotten around to seriously dissecting all the words. Even now that I am committed to listening critically in order to make a review, I find myself focusing more on the music than the words. When I do listen to the words, I find myself following them only as long as the song itself is playing, and then moving on to the next one without really retaining any intellectual understanding. Maybe I need to take a break from this project. Someday.

Next: Jingle All The Way

All My CDs, pt 26: The Juliet Letters

The Juliet Letters - Elvis Costello & The Brodsky Quartet

Of the albums in my collection, this has one of the longest histories, tying together multiple generations of my family. Sometime during my early adolescence, my older brother dug it out of my father’s music collection and started playing it; we both quickly fell in love and before long, I had taken the initiative to buy a copy of it for my own personal collection. Since it comes endorsed by both members of my family whom I believe to have better taste than I, there is a significant confidence behind my claim that this is one of the best albums I own.

In my review of Mood Swings by the Brodsky Quartet, I wrote of the unique and amazing genre of music that is created from a certain combination of strings with vocals. Although Mood Swings is an excellent example of such music, the Juliet Letters - the Quartet’s first collaborative creation with Elvis Costello - is really the original and most ideal example, at least for me. When I first discovered Pandora Radio - which suggests new music based on traits of songs or artists you already love - the my first and favorite station was built around the music of The Juliet Letters.

As suggested by the title, each song on the album is loosely in the form of a letter, although some are not clearly written in that way. Although inspired by the appearance in Verona of letters written directly to the fictional Juliet Capulet, only a few even mention Juliet and only one is addressed to her (Romeo’s Seance). I sometimes get the impression that a few token references to Juliet serve mostly to justify the title and call back the original inspiration, such references never feel forced or out of place; instead they serve to reinforce a mood of intense emotion and dark circumstance.

And indeed, all these songs are very dark and intensely emotional; even the cheery-sounding Romeo’s Seance cannot escape the literal specter of death hanging over its general hopefulness. I Almost Had A Weakness is humorous, but disdainful. Swine is energetically furious. Damnation’s Cellar may seem happy, but ends on a definite dark note. And those are perhaps the happiest-sounding songs of the bunch. The rest are varying levels of bittersweet or tragic, with small bright points usually overshadowed by dangerous implications. I suspect there is something about letter-writing that provokes rumination, reminiscence, and catharsis; it is a chance to speak at length without the silencing fear of immediate response. Confidences and confessions not readily spoken of in person can be brought up more freely in a letter.

So it is natural that such an emotionally wrought form of writing be accompanied by the equally emotionally expressive instruments of violin, viola, and cello, and indeed the voices of these instruments become like characters themselves of equal stature to Costello’s vocals. They are no mere accompaniment, but equal partners in telling the stories of these anonymous letter-writers. They show off their amazing abilities in songs like I Thought I’d Write to Juliet, which ends with an instrumental passage unmatched in its portrayal of peril - befitting the story of a soldier writing letters to her favorite author. Swine begins with an equally stunning display which I could listen to over and over again.

There are a few songs I don’t like on the album, but even they do not spoil the enjoyment of the album as a whole. In Why, Costello’s baritone voice seems more out-of-place singing the words of a small child than in the songs where he sings from the perspective of a woman. And Dear Sweet Filthy World has, for me, the disingenuous feeling of a suicide note written by one who has never been suicidal. Even these songs have grown on me over the years.

So this is another album that I will encourage everyone to try out, regardless of what sort of music you enjoy. Whatever genre you try to assign it, it will fail to fit nicely within those boundaries and continue to stand very happily on its own. If you can, listen to the whole thing from start to finish. Each song tells its own story, but they are meant to be told together, in sequence.

With warmest regards,

Next: Armed Forces

All My CDs, pt 25: Forerunner

Forerunner - The Cottars

I bought this album after the song Byker Hill showed up on my Pandora station, full of strong, enthusiastic vocals and percussive string accompaniment. Turned out The Cottars were a group of talented and well-trained teenagers from the very Celtic community of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. I’ve always been fond of Celtic music in general, but to this day, Forerunner has been the only Celtic music I have liked well enough to buy.

Most of us have some idea of what Celtic music sounds like, and many of the tracks - especially the instrumental ones - are along those expected lines, so I won’t describe them too exhaustively except to say that they’re fun to dance to (or at least, to pretend to dance to, since I have little skill at dancing). The Honeysuckle Medley is my favorite of those instrumentals, and was my phone’s ringtone for a while in 2010. I’m not sure what it is about that track that brings me such pleasure, but certainly part of the appeal is that it sounds like it was very fun to play.

Byker Hill, Pat Works On The Railway, and Home by Bearna are traditional folk songs equally fun to listen to, and like many folk songs their words tell interesting (if sometimes quaint) stories. In these songs I find it difficult not to get caught up in these young singers’ enthusiastic delivery. Other songs on the album are of a more contemporary style, not quite folk and not quite pop, such as Hold On and Atlantic Blue. In contrast to the traditional songs, these are mostly sad, solemn songs with depressing subject matter. If you’re prone to fits of crying at tragic stories, be sure to brace yourself before listening to Georgia Lee.

One thing that makes me sad is that none of the songs on this album are originals; they are all either traditional tunes or covers. Maybe that’s one of the drawbacks of being a young and prodigiously talented artist: your skill and exuberance are the envy of the elders, but you lack the experience and wisdom to innovate effectively. When everything is new to you, it is difficult to figure out what new things the world wants. But what do I know? I’m 26 and still figuring out how to write music reviews.

Next: The Juliet Letters.

All My CDs, pt 24: Initiation

Initiation - Course of Empire

After I had known and loved Telepathic Last Words for a few years, I had a hankering to expand my collection once more and decided to seek out more music by that band. So I ordered a copy of their earlier album, Initiation, with high hopes it would be just as good. Once I had the CD in my player, however, I only played the first few seconds of the first song before turning it off, putting it back in its case, and putting it on a shelf. I didn’t even put it with my other CDs. I just set it aside, with no intention of putting it back on.

My reasons are simple, and a bit shameful: those first few seconds were just too loud and harsh on my ears. While Telepathic Last Words begins quietly, with a meandering mixture of sounds slowly building up to the start of the first song, Initiation begins cold with a loud, repetitive, heavily distorted electric guitar riff. It wasn’t that I couldn’t handle that at all - I like heavy metal - but it wasn’t what I was expecting at that moment, and those who sow expectations are bound to reap disappointment.

I don’t know exactly how long it was before I gave it a second try - months, maybe even a year. When I finally forced myself to listen past those first few seconds, I was able to learn to love something new. I can’t claim to like this album as much as Telepathic Last Words, but that’s a hard act to follow anyway, and Initiation is very good in its own right. I did it a disservice by dismissing it so easily at first.

Really, Initiation’s only shortcomings stem from comparing it unfavorably with Telepathic Last Words. It is not as complex, but is by no means simple either. Its lyrics are not as fascinating, but neither are they boring or trite. And the two albums share a lot of their good qualities, such as their exquisite use of percussion. Both achieve a lot of musical beauty using an instrumental style known for being “ugly” or difficult to listen to.

I can easily name my favorite songs on the album as Minions and Infested. The latter has one of the best intros of any song I’ve encountered, with a slow building up of tension in the form of clattering drumsticks. The final “bonus” track is a remix of Infested which I consider to be one of the best remixes of anything I have ever heard, as well as one of the best uses of sampled music.

Until next time, prepare for some stylistic whiplash.

Next: Forerunner

All My CDs, pt 23: Telepathic Last Words

Telepathic Last Words - Course of Empire

Early in my teens - when I had a few CDs but didn’t yet feel like I had “enough” - I was browsing the “heavy metal" section of a local record shop (now closed) and noticed a cheap one by a band I’d never heard of before. The cover art looked cool and nothing else was tempting, so I bought the CD and took it home. This was the first time I’d ever do this, but not the last.

The album was Telepathic Last Words by Course of Empire, and since then has remained one of my favorite albums. I cannot overstate my extreme good fortune that on the one day I decided to take a chance on something completely unknown, it turned out to be this good. To this day, more than a decade later, I am noticing new things to appreciate about both the music and the lyrics.

When I first bought the album it was shelved under “heavy metal,” and Wikipedia describes Course of Empire as “alternative/post-punk,” but I can’t say either label sits very well with me. So, like Rattlin’ Bones a few reviews ago, I’d encourage people to listen to it regardless of their genre preferences. It might surprise you. For those who shy away from metal’s often-screechy vocals, rest assured that the lead singer of this band never screams. He sings. Keep in mind, though, that there is loud, heavily-distorted guitar. But also less-distorted, easier-on-the-ears bits as well. It’s a mixture.

The music is heavy on percussion, which is understandable considering the band has more than the typical amount of drummers. In many songs, it seems that the drums are at the center of  the instrumental landscape, with guitars and even vocals serving merely as a decorative flourish accentuating a steady, yet intricate, beat. Some portions, such as the last few minutes of the song 59 Minutes, consist of nothing but percussion.  I’ve always been especially fond of drums, so I’m happy.

The lyrics are mainly very dark, vaguely social-commentary-ish, and full of poetry. They don’t always make sense. When they do make sense, I think they’re nonspecific enough to inspire a range of intellectual responses. I’ve never gotten a sense from one of their songs that it was about any specific thing.

When listening to this album, I find it difficult sometimes to remember what song I’m listening to without checking, but not because they all sound alike. They do not sound alike. Nor is it a concept album, with some thematic common thread connecting the songs together. But they do go together, in a way I’ve never quite been able to explain, to an extent that I have never been able to think of it as a collection of individual songs. Some of the songs do come close to being individuals, such as Respect, the penultimate track. But its deeply creepy, distorted instrumentation and disturbing lyrics simply have more impact when you’ve already listened to the eleven tracks coming before it. I’ve never gotten just one of the songs stuck in my head; if I’m thinking of one, I’m thinking of the whole album. They just go together.

Listen to it late at night. Listen to it in headphones while staring at your bedroom ceiling, like a teenager. Listen to it while under the influence. Listen to it over and over for half your life. You’ll never feel a thing / I’m swimming on your brain / I’m pulsing through your veins...

Next: Initiation

All My CDs, pt 22: Still Got Legs

Still Got Legs - Chameleon Circuit

Chameleon Circuit is a British band whose music is inspired by and mostly about the TV series Doctor Who. But don’t think that this means it’s inaccessible or unenjoyable by those who don’t know or like the show. Not that you necessarily would like it regardless of your familiarity with the show, or that understanding the references doesn’t provide a large part of its enjoyability for some, but... you know. Just like you don’t have to be religious to enjoy hymns, you don’t have to be a Doctor Who fan to like this. But it helps.

This is the group’s second album, and refers to events and characters from season 5 (a.k.a. Matt Smith’s first season) and the end of season 4 (a.k.a. David Tennant's last season), as well as stand-alone specials that occur between them. This review will not contain spoilers for the show, but the lyrics of the songs do, so be warned.

The sound of the album contains elements of punk rock and light metal, and ranges from spookily distorted to jangly and cheerful, from wholly synthesized to stripped-down acoustic. The tunes are mostly original, but often refer in varying degrees to themes and melodies from the soundtrack of the show, providing musical as well as lyrical connections for the attentive listener.

Individual songs are mostly first-person explorations of characters and situations, and are very well-written and expressively sung. Most of them are pretty glum, such as Everything Is Ending and Mr. Pond. But a few, such as Still Not Ginger and Teenage Rebel, are much more cheery. Teenage Rebel, in particular, is my favorite track, an excellent running song, and in my opinion the least explicitly Doctor Who-related - in other words, it could easily be interpreted as being relatable by many different listeners for many different reasons. Its fast-paced punky sound is infectiously upbeat, and its words are optimistic and self-confident: “I won’t ever stop / ‘cause I know what’s right / get in my way, I will burst into light / I’ll keep dying and living and changing my ways / but I was a teenage rebel and that stayed the same.”

One song, Big Bang Two, breaks the first-person pattern in favor of a blow-by-blow synopsis of season 5‘s finale from the perspective of a flabbergasted viewer. Since this song is all about how confusing the series can be even for longtime fans, it may also be accessible to non-fans who are equally bemused by the whole thing. But, like I said... spoilers.

I find this album pretty fun to listen to. I’ve been taught to be wary of metamedia (for lack of a better term) - art that builds upon or refers to some other art. It’s sometimes regarded as derivitive, unimaginitive, or even as plagiaristic. But I definitely have a few such items in my collection, and I’m not about to be ashamed of that. Let’s just say: this is a good album. It’s definitely worth checking out if you’re a fan of Doctor Who, and possibly worth checking out regardless.

Next: Telepathic Last Words

All My CDs, pt 21 - Rattlin' Bones

Rattlin’ Bones - Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson

There’s a lot of variability in my music collection. Some of it is popular, some obscure. Some is vouched-for by those with genuine Good Taste, and some is scorned by those very ears. When I describe music as good, it is often with the disclaimer that this is only my opinion, sometimes shared by few. In the case of this album - the collaborative product of Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson - I can say with confidence that it is, objectively, one of the best albums I own. Listen to it.

I mean that even if you, as a rule, shun country music. This album is unmistakably country, but old-school country, and from where I stand seems to have more in common with folk rock than a lot of modern country music. It also has a lot of good stuff that transcendes genre distinctions and is just all-around good. Regardless of your preferred genres, listen.

As the title might suggest, the mood of the album is dark, but is contains enough contrasting lightness to accentuate that darkness. The lighter songs are down-to-earth and homey, and describe love, family, and home in simple and comforting terms. Sweetest Waste of Time and Once in a While are love songs that are satisfied with very little, being content with just brief, fleeting happiness. The House That Never Was reminds us that family trumps material wealth any day.

On the side of darkness, there are frequent references to Hell, the devil, and other elements of Christian mythology, and those images are used to great effect to describe the despondancy and despair that often permiates life. Monkey on a Wire is ominously catchy, and The Devil’s Inside My Head rings especially true to me as a sufferer of mental illness. I enjoy singing along with it at the top of my voice on the highway.

The album opens with the title track, Rattlin’ Bones, which has such intensely hellish and otherworldly imagery that it is almost a nightmare all on its own. When you listen to it, compare it with Your Day Will Come, near the end of the album. The two songs have much in common musically, although the similarities are masked by different vocal melodies. But the lyrical and instrumental themes are almost identical, to the point where I consider them to be versions of the same song - looking at the same subject from different angles.

Throughout the album are exciting instrumentation (guitars, banjos, fiddles) and beautiful vocal harmonies. Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson, along with the other musicians they brought together for this album, work very well together. I found out, while checking some facts online, that while I wasn’t paying attention they have produced another collaborative album, Wreck and Ruin. I am committed to not getting any new CDs until I am finished with this review projec, but I am sorely tempted to check this one out. It will have to wait, though. About a hundred more remain.

Next: Still Got Legs

All My CDs, pt 20: Carnival

Carnival - Kasey Chambers

Open up the sky, all gather ‘round
Praise the lord and take a look at what I found
I’ve got a love that’s as big as a raging storm
I got walls coming down that I don’t need no more
I got a sign on the door that says ‘lonely don’t live here anymore’

Carnival is the last Kasey Chambers solo album in my collection, and my personal favorite. It’s also, as far as I can tell, the happiest of her albums, with more songs about contentment and appreciation than about heartbreak and sorrow. Even ostensibly sad songs, such as Surrender or Hard Road, sound more sweet than bitter to me. When I heard the album for the first time, I remember wondering at the shift in mood. One line from the song Dangerous seems to encapsulate the shift in my mind: “We are dangerous no more.” It seems that, one way or another, healing has taken place. If that’s just a projection of my own feelings in reaction to the song, perhaps it means that I have healed somewhat since I first started listening.

Among the happy songs on the album is Sign on the Door, quoted above, which jubilantly celebrates the wonder of newfound love. You Make Me Sing is another good love song, and both follow Chambers’s usual pattern of hyperbolic admiration of the beloved, as well as mixing dark and light imagery. In Light Up a Candle, Chambers sets aside her long standing habit of songs about hopeless devotion, and sings about not being especially passionate one way or another. The narrator in this song is open to love, but not falling for it yet; this is refreshingly, although I rarely feel that way myself.

I Got You Now echoes some of the sentiments in the song Barricades & Brickwalls, which I described as a stalker song, but somehow does not bother me as much. Perhaps because I interpret it as being an expression of consensual, reciprocal sexual feeling, rather than an unwelcome invasion. It’s not an easy line to draw, I know; behavior that would be considered abusive if unwelcome can be a thrilling expression of love if it is consensual. And love, even in the best of times, is not always “wholesome.”

In the tradition of songs like We Didn’t Start the Fire by Billy Joel and It’s The End of the World As We Know It by R.E.M., Nothing At All contains verses full of rapidly-delivered, disjointed imagery alongside a slower, catchier chorus. Like many of Chambers’s earlier songs it has sad words and a happy sound, but in this case the juxtaposition doesn’t seem jarring or unsuited. It may be my favorite track.

Shortly after releasing Carnival, Kasey Chambers collaborated on an album with her then-husband Shane Nicholson. This will be the subject of my next review.

Next: Rattlin’ Bones

All My CDs, pt 19: Wayward Angel

Wayward Angel - Kasey Chambers

It’s interesting what details the mind will find itself focused on when tasked with comparing two similar things. When I think of what sets this album apart from others by Kasey Chambers, I think about its use of banjo (credited to Rod McCormack in the liner notes). Even though it only appears a few times, and never very centrally, the banjo’s presence does stand out to me.Normally associated in my culture with rustic or even uncivilized elements, here the banjo provides an ethereally beautiful sound for songs with a spiritual mood, in particular the title track, Wayward Angel.

The album opens with Pony, which uses old-west imagery to paint a child’s idyll of what adulthood is like: When I grow up I wanna pony / I’m gonna ride her from dusk ‘til dawn. It goes on to imagine adulthood as a mixture of old west imagery and romanticised gender stereotypes, and aptly captures the simplistic attitude children often have toward their view of the future: that once there are no grown-ups to tell them “no,” they will have what they want.. and then be happy. But Pony is not a blindly idealistic song. There is a darkness in the delivery that seems very self-aware, even sarcastic.

The songs that immediately follow, Hollywood and Stronger, drive a cruel wedge of disillusionment between fantasy and reality. Hollywood wistfully bemoans the discrepency between real life and the movies. This is not Hollywood / There is no camera in my room / This is not Hollywood / Flowers grow before they bloom. And of all the innumerated differences between movie-life and real-life, the biggest is that in movies, all the romances have happy endings: If I was in a movie I would never have let you get away. Stronger goes one further and deconstructs the very expectations set up in Pony. It realizes that even when one is older, wiser, stronger, braver, et cetera... well, things still don’t necessarily work out.

Other songs follow this trend of fantasy and disillusionment, but some are made of unbridled, unrelenting optimism and wonder. Mother describes genuine gratitude, and Like a River and Follow You Home describe equally devoted and admiring love. Paper Aeroplane, the only song in Kasey Chambers’s repertoir (that I can think of) with piano accompaniment, describes in understandably heartbreaking terms the kind of love many of us seek above all: the kind that lasts until and even survives after death.

More than the previous albums, this one seems a mixed bag of themes, styles, and moods. That makes it hard to make a suitable conclusion statement to encompass the whole thing.

Next: Carnival

All My CDs, pt 18: The Captain

The Captain - Kasey Chambers

It may not be obvious to the casual observer, but I’m actually very fond of travel. For a while in my late teens I was actually more at home in a Greyhound bus station than in my own house, taking solo expeditions to visit relatives before I had my driver’s license. Once I was driving, I relished the chance to spend hours on the highway with only some handwritten directions and an unhealthy amount of caffeinated drinks. One of the highlights of my young adulthood involved the post-midnight decision to join two friends on a twenty-four-hour round-trip to Philadelphia in search of specialized materials for a wedding dress.

 Nowadays my work schedule and other responsibilities tend to keep me relatively homebound, but the wanderlust is starting to settle in and I’ve been taking daytrips to places like Canton and Ravenna, where dwell folks whose only flaw is that they didn’t have the good sense to live in the Cleveland area.

Without a doubt, the best album I’ve encountered to accompany these days spent in transit is The Captain by Kasey Chambers. There is something about folk rock and country that lends itself especially to long highway drives, but it also helps that The Captain actually contains two songs explicitly about travel (Don’t Talk Back and Mr. Baylis) and two about homesickness (These Pines and Southern Kind of Life). A few others contain more oblique references to travel, such as Last Hard Bible and You Got the Car. Lastly, We’re All Gonna Die Someday wraps up the album with the kind of “life’s short, act recklessly” sentiment that often accompanies youthful journeying. I’m not sure if these common threads qualify The Captain as a concept album, but it’s close enough for me.

Compared to Barricades & Brickwalls, which I reviewed last time, The Captain is much more upbeat, but sad songs are still one of Chambers’s strong suits. This is especially evident in Don’t Go, which I must have cried along with at least once each time I’ve been dumped. You Got the Car sounds like the same narrator after a year’s worth of bitterness has still failed to heal those wounds. Other songs will fool you; Cry Like A Baby sounds like the title of a sad country song but is actually rather optimistic, and describes the persistence of childlike enthusiasm. Like Barricades & Brickwalls, I find this album to be especially useful for cheering an unhappy soul.

It is quite impossible to choose a favorite song on this album, because I love several for very different reasons. With some effort, I have chosen two that you should check out even if you’re not usually into country: Don’t Talk Back, as the best travel song I’ve ever encountered, and We’re All Gonna Die Someday, for anyone who has ever said “YOLO” or “Carpe Diem” or “F it all.”

Next: Wayward Angel

All My CDs, pt 17: Barricades & Brickwalls

Country music? Seriously?

Seriously.

Barricades & Brickwalls - Kasey Chambers

My mother likes listening to NPR like... all the time. She turns it on in several parts of the house so she can wander from room to room, then forgets to turn them all off when leaving home. For this reason I tend not to like NPR; I associate it with irritatedly searching for the neglected radio to turn it off. However, I can’t have avoided overhearing some interesting things on my quest for a little quiet. One day when I was fourteen I found myself listening to an interview with Kasey Chambers, who was promoting her new album, Barricades & Brickwalls.

During the interview they played “Not Pretty Enough”, and I liked it. As a teenager with low self-esteem, it seemed to describe my insecurities exactly: “Am I not pretty enough? / Is my heart too broken? / Do I cry too much? / Am I too outspoken?”  Unlike a lot of “self-esteem songs” that show up on the pop charts, it doesn’t attempt to answer these nagging questions or end on a confidence-boosting platitude; it simply bemoans the sense of disappointment and failure that comes from not feeling quite good enough, not quite worthy of love. In a way, that helps. It’s like getting permission to be sad sometimes.

Kasey Chambers’s voice has a plaintive quality that makes it sound like she is literally crying while singing, and that makes her sad songs especially poignant. And this album is filled to the brim with sad songs. A few, such as “A Little Bit Lonesome” and “Still Feeling Blue”, follow a time-honored Country music tradition of sad songs that sound happy, complete with twangy guitar and lilting fiddle accompanying Chambers’s vocals. “On a Bad Day” follows a similar pattern, but the incongruence of moods is made less jarring because it describes a depressed person attempting to banish the blues - and then admitting that sometimes, on a bad day, they simply can’t be gotten rid of. I can definitely identify with that.

But for the Country-averse (which I usually am), don’t be too alarmed; a lot of her songs have fewer of those elements and sound more folk-rocky. “A Million Tears” and “Falling Into You” are two of my favorites; both are slow and mellow with atmospheric guitar accompaniment. “A Million Tears” is, as you might have guessed, a sad song, and the lyrics describe the feeling of having endured so much grief and sorrow that even a moment’s small comfort can mean the world. “Falling Into You” is similar, but is also a love song, describing a love that lessens all that sorrow.

One thing bothers me that did not when I was younger: the first song and title track, Barricades & Brickwalls, is unmistakably a stalker song. It describes a determination to own the object of one's desires even against that person's explicit wishes and efforts to fight back. That makes it a bit harder for me to listen to, especially with consent being such a big source of misunderstanding and conflict in our culture these days. I look forward to a time when such imagery is no longer considered "romantic".

In listening to this album for the past several days to review it, I’ve remembered something I had forgotten. I have suffered from clinical depression of varying degrees of severity for most of my life, which may account for the prevalence of sad music in my collection. But Kasey Chambers seems to have found a quick route to my heart through songs that tap into that depression, and in so doing has succeeded in soothing it in a way that other music has not. If I listen to her music when I am sad, I often become happy. For that I am grateful, and will try to keep that in mind for future days when the weight of emotions seems too heavy to lift.

I’ll be reviewing several more Kasey Chambers albums, and I can’t lie; I’m looking forward to listening to nothing else for the next few weeks.

Next: The Captain

All My CDs, pt 16: Bound to Go

Bound to Go - Andrew Calhoun & Campground

Folk music is music that’s more fun to sing than to just listen to. It was the first kind of music: made not by a performer for a silent, receptive audience, but by a group collaborating to create an experience that would tie them together as a community and make life that much more bearable during times of hardship. During the times in my life when I’ve attended religious services, I always named singing as my favorite aspect of worship, and cannot imagine a communal spiritual experience without some collective music-making involved.

I sometimes fear that this kind of music is dying, as more people think of songs as something that creative writers and skilled performers produce for a consuming majority rather than something all people can participate in on some level. But I think enough non-professionals are making music - whether by performing live on street corners or remixing popular tunes on the internet - that the folk song as a cultural institution isn’t quite dead yet.

Bound to Go is a collection of spirituals and folk music of black Americans from the time of slavery and after. Many are clearly work songs, sung to stave off the fatigue and pain of being forced to labor under unhappy conditions (“Them ol’ black gnats, they so bad / they bites and stings and drives me mad”). Others are more sublime, sweetly describing heaven and the coming of a more perfect future (“Weep like a willow, moan like a dove / if you wanna go to heaven, gotta go by love”). Like any piece of art from another time or culture - or even contemporary art - some background knowledge of history helps to understand the context. But the songs are enjoyable even without such knowledge, because the feelings they express are universal.

Albums like this one are important for preserving the songs from cultures and subcultures of the past, but the songs really come alive when you take the time to learn them and sing them, especially in groups. For this reason, I have found more enjoyment from singing along to these songs than from just sitting back and listening to them. They are not difficult, even for people with very little musical ability or training. A few of the tracks on the album - such as Run Mary Run or Blow Your Trumpet Gabriel - that are produced and arranged such that they are enjoyable as much as a passively-received performance as they are fun to sing. The trumpet solo that concludes the last track, Tree of Life, is especially appreciable.  But most of them are short, simple, and minimally arranged.

So, if you choose to listen to this album, my advice is this: Sing along. Learn the tunes. Sing them when you’re working or bored or suffering or celebrating. Encourage others to sing with you. I don’t care if you actually believe in Satan or Jesus or heaven or hell, or whether you feel any personal connection to black American culture and history; these are damn good songs and should be remembered.

Next: Barricades & Brickwalls

All My CDs, pt 15: Prolonging the Magic

Prolonging the Magic - Cake

 In my review of Cake’s album Comfort Eagle, I described their singer’s voice as “emotionless, almost mechanical.” For reasons beyond my knowledge, that is not true of the songs on this album. I would attribute the difference to an overall change in the band’s style over time, but from what I know of other music by them, that is not the case. For whatever reason, this album feels more relaxed, less precisely-arranged, and more emotionally expressive than other music by the same band. The subtle shift in style strikes me as appropriate given the songs, which tend more toward personal, relationship-driven subjects than in Comfort Eagle.

I bought this album less than a year ago, and haven’t had a lot of opportunity to listen to it until now. It was another impulse purchase from the dollar rack, although I’d been considering purchasing it for a number of years because of the song Sheep Go to Heaven (Goats Go to Hell). I’m a bit of a sucker for things that involve goats (on a related note, my favorite wine). Besides being goat-related, this song also contributes to a loose theme that seems to connect several of the songs: references to religion and mythology. The narrator prefers a life of fun sin (“I just want to play on my panpipes / I just want to drink me some wine / As soon as you’re born you start dying / so you may as well have a good time”) to one of responsibility, even if it means he’ll “go to Hell.” This casual acceptance of damnation is echoed in Satan is my Motor, and a more fatalistic reference to the theme appears in Hem of your Garment, which may be a biblical allusion.

Amid all these casual references to evil, the darkest song on the album (in my opinion) is You Turn the Screws, which I find myself listening to over and over. Unlike the fun-loving, relaxed persona described in Sheep Go to Heaven, the subject of You Turn the Screws is cold, calculating, and cruel - and worse, he assumes everyone else is like him.

Other songs are lighter, but still contain a curious mixture of darker elements. Alpha Beta Parking Lot describes a pretty sunset scene, but then contains the lines “Standing in the Alpha Beta parking lot / watching you leave me / not quite believing.” Let Me Go and Bound for Mexico are similarly bittersweet.

Although Comfort Eagle (the song) remains my favorite song by Cake, I think Prolonging the Magic might be my favorite Cake album.

Next: Bound to Go

All My CDs, pt 14: Comfort Eagle

Comfort Eagle - Cake

Today is tomorrow, and tomorrow today
and yesterday is weaving in and out

When I was in high school, online flash animation was in its golden age. I can’t claim to have been at the cutting edge of any cultural movement, but I did enjoy watching flash cartoons, and Drew Mokris (a.k.a. drewmo) produced some of my favorites. One of them was a music video for the song Comfort Eagle by Cake. It wasn’t funny (except in the sense of being visually absurd, which is typical of many music videos), but it was very well-made, and I loved the music. Soon, I decided to buy the album.

My impression, both when I first got the album and while listening to it now, is that the title track exists on a plane far above the rest. The rest of the songs are entertaining and well-made. Comfort Eagle is a work of transcendant art. The one time I shared it with my father - a musician himself and a bit of a music snob - he made a similar observation, calling the song “the hit among the dance songs.” He saw in it a scathing satire of the music industry. I see in it similar commentaries about commercialism and pop culture in general, a world that cynically commoditizes spiritual experience.  Its sound is darker than the other songs, and incorporates a broader variety of instruments but stops just shy of being overwhelmingly overproduced. The lead singer’s peculiar style of singing - emotionless, almost mechanical - contrasts with the pseudo-spiritual lyrics and pseudo-new-age instrumentation to underscore the themes of unscrupulous power co-opting the soul for its own soulless purposes.  “We are building a religion. We are making a brand / We’re the only ones to turn to when your castles turn to sand.”

Please don’t conclude that Comfort Eagle is the only good song on the album. I also enjoyed Comissioning a Symphony in C, Shadow Stabbing, and the instrumental Arco Arena. I like how the lyrics, even at their most coherent, don’t stick to common or conventional subject matter. That said, if not for Comfort Eagle, I don’t think I’d have liked this album enough to buy it and keep it around for this long. In a way, that might be a good thing. It means that my music collection broadens even my already-diverse listening habits.

Next: Prolonging the Magic

All My CDs, pt 13: Moodswings

Moodswings - Brodsky Quartet

I’m not especially familiar with the work of the Brodsky Quartet except for their collaborations with singer-songwriters; when they do, I believe what they create is a genre of music separate from and greater than what a good singer-songwriter and a good string quartet can each achieve on their own. In this album, they worked with a variety of vocalists and writers. Roughly half the songs were with established artists from wildly divergent genres, from Bjork to Sting, and in others they collaborate with students and teachers in several schools in what I’m sure was a tremendous learning experience for all involved.

The title of this album comes from the first track, a beautiful and exciting arrangement of “My Mood Swings” by Elvis Costello, but it may also refer to the vast array of  styles represented in the songs that follow. Some sound like jazz standards, others like avant-garde art songs, others like classed-up rock. In some, such as Dumptruck or I’ve Seen It All, the lyrics seem to take center stage and the music provides flourish. In others, such as Shallow Footsteps or the wordless Gotham Lullaby, the vocals are treated more like a fifth instrument than a deliverer of words.  And somehow all this diversity is achieved within the confines of a string quartet accompanying a single voice for each song.

There are so many songs here that I would love to name as my favorite, not just on the album but out of all songs. I’ve never been more grateful that polyamory in musical taste is an accepted lifestyle choice. Shallow Footsteps taught me that even I can enjoy an operatic style of singing. I Never Went Away is that so-common but so-appreciated thing, the love song that speaks to current experiences. Gotham Lullaby came on late last night when I was driving on the highway straight toward the most beautiful moon I’ve ever seen. And then there's Daedalus.

Daedalus makes me feel so many emotions at once it’s overwhelming. In addition to being the longest song on the album (and I’ve always liked long songs), Daedalus begins with doubt (“is this the life you would have wished for? / Is this the life you would have killed for?”) and progresses to hope (“Can you still find him? / Will you still find him?”) and to fear (“He is fallen / fallen to the sea.”) These emotions repeat and mix together like the voices of a fugue, finding kinship in one another as well as contrast. If I absolutely had to chose a favorite, it would be this one.

And yet... there is always a rub. Among all these wonderful songs there is one that I just can’t stand. Venus Flytrap is not just annoying in the way it’s sung, but its lyrics are malicious and even downright misogynistic. The message of it seems to be along the lines of “How dare a woman be attractive to me and not also nice?” I have forced myself to listen to it a few times so that I could fairly review the entire album, but I have been unable to find anything redeeming about the song.

I have considered deleting Venus Flytrap from my electronic backups of the album, that I can listen to the rest of the songs without being reminded of their misfit sibling, but that seems dishonest to me. I think of a good album as being like a good friend, and good friends often have flaws that must be accepted. The point is that the album is great as a whole, and I love it very much.

Next: Comfort Eagle

All My CDs, pt 12: Homogenic

Note that a few of the words in this review are supposed to have special characters used in Icelandic, but not in English. If someone wants to show me where those special characters are hidden in Blogger's editing tools, I'm all ears.

Homogenic- Bjork

“I thought I could organize freedom. How Scandinavian of me!”

In the late 00s I was introduced to Bjork’s music in the form of a few collaborations with the Brodsky Quartet that appeared on my Pandora station. I remember being surprised at how normal those songs sounded, considering how weird Bjork was reputed to be (see the above gif). A few years later I got the album Homogenic, played it regularly for a few months and then suddenly lost interest. It has languished on my shelf since.

Although the songs that I originally enjoyed on Pandora were mainly accoustic, this album (and most of the music I’ve heard of hers) is very techno. A few of the songs are almost trance-like, with mystical lyrics and an etherial sound - especially All is Full of Love, which would not be out of place playing softly in the background at a yoga studio. Pluto is equally etherial, but rather than soothing, its sound is agitating; not all that is new age is peaceful.

Others are similarly mystical, such as Joga and Alarm Call. Alarm Call is my favorite; it has a cheerfulness tinged with anger that’s quite infectious (“I’m no f***ing Buddhist, but this is Enlightenment”). Joga was my favorite when I first bought the album, because of its explicitly emotional lyrics (“All that no-one sees you see what’s inside of me/ every nerve that hurts you heal deep inside of me”) and the pretty string accompaniment. I enjoy it very much still. Others that I enjoyed back then, such as Bachelorette and Unravel, have since lost their appeal, although I have to admit their lyrics are very creatively written.

I almost feel that I encountered this music at too late a time in my life to enjoy it completely. When I was young and my mind less firmly attached to the mundane world of grocery lists and insurance policies and worrying about getting parking tickets, I was much more into techno music with spiritually-inclined vocals. I am not as prone to mystical trances as I was in my teens, but perhaps it’s time I give mind-altering another try. When I do, I will reach for Homogenic and feel the universal love.

Next: Moodswings

All My CDs, pt 11: Recording a Tape the Colour of the Light

Recording a Tape the Colour of the Light - Bell Orchestre

Once in a while, I pick up an album at near-random from a rack, one that I’ve never heard or heard of, and just buy it. I find that I’ve had better than even odds of actually enjoying the music. That was the case with this one.

I should say that I have absolutely no knowledge of this album’s origins beyond my having found it in the dollar rack of my local record store. I don’t know the names or biographies of any of the group members, or what genre they identify themselves as (if any), or even their nationality. No voices appear on the album, so I can’t even get clues based on the gender or language of the vocals. All I know is that these people do beautifully discordant things with orchestral instruments.

The music is all instrumental and mostly uses accoustic, orchestral instruments, including a significant but not overwhelming amount of brass. In fact, I suspect the name of the group refers to the “bell” or flared end of a brass instrument, although a few of the other type of bell are also heard in The Bells Play the Band and Recording a Tape (Typewriter Duet). A few less conventional sounds are used as instruments, such as the typewriter in the aforementioned Duet, and the muffled traffic noises in Recording a Tunnel (The Invisible Bells).

The music itself also appears to be an uneven mix of the ordinary and the unexpected, but slanted toward a more comfortable, “safe” sound. It has just enough experimental flare to be fresh and not boring, without being so out-there as to challenge my learned sense of aesthetics. Few of the songs have much in the way of a melody, but are more atmospheric, and make very good background music. Salvator Amato briefly contains a melody that stuck in my mind and that I would describe as catchy, but few of the others do. And that’s okay, because they’re still beautiful.

I found the overall mood to be optimistic but pensive, and at a few times dramatic, as in Throw It on a Fire, which is my favorite track. It’s the fastest-paced of all the songs, and features stringed instruments used as percussion; this is an easy way for a song to gain my affection. All in all, this is a good album and I’ll make a mental note to put it on when I want pretty but relatively undistracting background music.

Next: Homogenic

All My CDs, pt 10: Beauty and the Beast

Long ago, in an era of ancient history known as “the nineties,” I was a child. And at some point during that mythic time, Disney released an animated feature film about a geek girl and a boy with mood problems.

Beauty and the Beast (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) - Alan Menken, Howard Ashman

I haven’t listened to this CD since I picked it up on impulse from the dollar rack last year. I remember the movie fondly both from childhood and the few occasions in adulthood that I’ve seen it again, but this is the first time I’ve paid attention specifically to the music by itself.

Say what you will about Disney, but it has certainly perfected the art of the children’s animated musical film, and Beaty and the Beast’s soundtrack shows it. It has many good songs that each are enjoyable on their own, but also are woven together with each other and with the instrumental passages in a way that can be deeply appreciable if you’re paying attention. Listening to the soundtrack by itself gave me an opportunity to notice details that the movie might have distracted me from.

One thing I like about a good musical is themes that repeat and vary, so that the use of a specific melody can signal a connection between two or more scenes - if only because it expresses a certain character’s style. The music can thus do a fair job of telling the story even without all the action and dialogue from the movie.  I enjoy delving into the instrumental portions of the soundtrack searching for musical references to various songs.

The songs themselves are well-written and fun to listen to. I found that they were simply too interesting to leave playing in the background while I did other things; it’s best to listen to them with an undistracted mind. Gaston, which explicitly and savagely lambastes conventional notions of masculinity, is especially hilarious, although it may have inadvertently subverted its own agenda by glorifying the arrogant, misogynistic behaviors it sets out to ridicule.

Another aspect of musicals that bemuses and amuses me is how they portray inherently chaotic and disordered events as perfectly synchronized and choreographed. The Mob Song is a classic example, where a whole village wracked with panic and incited to irrational violence is nevertheless capable of singing complex lyrics in unison and harmony. I listen to it over and over again, especially while driving, because it’s simply exciting. Be sure to look up the lyrics, because there are some clever gems hidden in the rapid delivery.

Perhaps next time I’m shopping for music, I’ll keep an eye out for other children’s classics. I wouldn’t mind adding the soundtracks for Mulan or Frozen to my collection as well.

Next: Recording a Tape the Colour of the Light

All My CDs, pt 9: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Beatles

The Beatles is one of my favorite bands of all time, and from what I understand I’m not alone. You’d be hard-pressed to think of a group as skilled, as versatile, as innovative, as inspired, or as influential over as broad a period of history. So it’s especially incredible that apart from the Yellow Submarine disk I reviewed last time, this is the only album I own by the Beatles. I may have to change that at my next opportunity.

I haven’t been able to find any thoughts or impressions that apply to the album as a whole, so I’ll just write some thoughts on each of the songs.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band - The title track doesn’t seem to do much except introduce the album. It paints an interesting image, like the front cover, that mixes modern and old-fashioned aesthetic elements and is just fun to listen to. The same applies to the reprise later in the album.

With A Little Help From My Friends - Songs about friendship are hard to come by in pop, with romantic love being the much more popular subject. This is a classic example, and it’s hard not to enjoy it. It simply rings true.

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds - The poet in me is enamored with the imagery and the creative use of unconventional modifiers in this song. An interesting note: for my whole life, I thought that one of the phrases used to describe Lucy was “the girl so incredibly high.” This morning, when listening, I suddenly realized that part of the song describes flowers “that grow so incredibly high.” Misheard lyrics. They’re a fact of life.

Getting Better: This song is more complex than it seems at first glance. I thought it particularly admirable that the narrator doesn’t simply describe life “getting better all the time,” but links the improvements in his life to changes in his own behavior, and his past troubles to harmful attitudes and deeds. It’s the kind of personal responsibility that isn’t easy to find these days.

Fixing a Hole: I’ve had this song stuck in my head more this week than any other, and would name it as my current favorite track on the album. I didn’t listen to it much before, but I very much dig it now. It puts me in the frame of mind to clean my apartment top to bottom, then sit somewhere with my feet up and watch people who are in a greater hurry than I am.

She’s Leaving Home: I’m not fond of this one. The lyrics strike me as passive-aggressive.

Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!: Someone told me that this one was copied almost verbatim from an actual ad for the show it describes, which makes it a classic example of found art. I like how perfectly the instrumentation accompanies the lyrics.

Within You Without You - While it’s pleasant to listen to, I’m not really prepared to have coherent thoughts about this one. It seems to actively discourage logical thought, so perhaps that’s for the best.

When I’m Sixty-Four - This has always been a favorite, and as someone who always has at least one eye on the long-term future, it’s nice to see a pop song that acknowledges that life (and love) shouldn't end in one’s late twenties.

Lovely Rita - It’s also nice to see a narrative that admires a young lady for her less conventionally feminine characteristics.

Good Morning Good Morning - The sound of a crowing rooster makes an appropriate, even obvious addition to this song. The addition of more farm animal sounds following it is not hard to understand. The elephants and lions, however, are just silly. And silly is good.

A Day in the Life: The best thing about it is the instrumental crescendo that serves as a bridge between the first and second parts. You’ll know it when you hear it.

“Now we know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.”

Next: Beauty and the Beast.

All My CDs, pt 8: Yellow Submarine

This album was technically mis-shelved and belongs much later in the alphabet, since I generally shelve soundtracks by the title of the movie rather than the name of the artist. But I promised I’d review my CDs in the order they’re currently shelved, so here it is.

Yellow Submarine - The Beatles (soundtrack)

If you’ve never seen the all-ages animated film Yellow Submarine, and you like the Beatles, do yourself a favor and check it out. Like the live-action Beatles movies, it’s weird, it’s fun, and the music is beautiful. Unlike the live-action movies, it’s one of the most visually interesting movies I’ve ever seen, since the animation incorporates a broad variety of styles and techniques to create an artful and psychadelic experience to match the bizarre and clever writing. It was one of my favorite movies as a child, and remains stimulating and enjoyable well into adulthood. (It also has bonus footage after the credits, despite being made a good few decades before that was cool.)

That said, I must say I’m a bit disappointed in the soundtrack album. Roughly half the Beatles songs that were in the movie don’t appear in the album, including some personal favorites like Nowhere Man, Eleanor Rigby, and When I’m 64. On the other hand, some great songs did make the cut, like All You Need is Love, It’s All Too Much, and Yellow Submarine. And the second half of the album contains tracks from the original score of the movie, so it’s well worth listening to despite the conspicuous omissions.

The original score is composed by George Martin, whose name really should appear alongside The Beatles on the front cover. Unlike a lot of film scores, this is not mere background music, barely noticeable except as an auditory mood-enhancer. The movie itself was made partially as a vehicle for the music, and that goes for the score as well as the Beatles songs that were its main focus, so the score had to be able to stand on its own as good music.

These tracks are full of wonder and whimsy and humor, just like the movie, and I can’t not think of my favorite scenes while listening to them. I have watched the movie so many times that the scenes simply play out in my mind’s eye while I hear the music. This might say something for the music’s illustrative powers and its impactfulness, especially when paired with the powerful imagery of the movie. Then again, it may say more about my inadequacy as an unbiased listener. Either way, I enjoyed listening.

Next: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

All My CDs, pt 7: Not Accepted Anywhere

I’m reviewing all my CDs. Yes, all of them.

Not Accepted Anywhere - The Automatic

One day in the late 00s I was looking at videos related to a favorite British sci-fi comedy series, Red Dwarf. One of them was simply a fan-made montage of scenes from the show set to a catchy punk song, "Monster" by The Automatic (called The Automatic Automatic in the US, for reasons I don’t find interesting). The video itself wasn’t all that great, but I found myself watching it over and over just because I liked the song. Finally I decided to buy the album it was on. This is one reason that non-commercial creative use of copyrighted material isn’t necessarily harmful to artists; in at least some circumstances, it can provide a benefit as free advertising. But this is not a political blog (except when it is), so I am digressing.

Not Accepted Anywhere consists entirely of songs as catchy and enjoyable as "Monster." There are no exceptions. It’s fun music to listen to, and interesting enough that I can’t see myself getting bored of it all that easily. It has the high energy of other punk music I’ve enjoyed, and the anti-establishment lyrics that have become almost establishment at this point, but it isn’t overwhelmingly angry. If I listen to it casually, as background noise, it’s content to sit at the back of my awareness cheerfully enhancing my mood. But if I listen more actively, it gladly comes forward and shows me what it can do.

Almost every song has at least one moment of vocal harmony that I would describe as truly beautiful, such as the final a-capella chorus of “Monster”. The instrumentation is so textured as to have an almost physical presence, taking up three dimensions of space in the mind.

The lyrics are well-written and original, but don’t really take center stage; when they do, they don’t stand out as anything more than vaguely poetic. A few exceptions exist, as songs like “Lost at Home” and “By My Side” strike me as having a point, but not being too anxious to get to it. Of all the songs, “By My Side” comes closest to striking a personal cord with me, as the words hint at some experiences I can identify with. Otherwise, they don’t really resonate emotionally.

I’ve enjoyed spending the past few days with this album, but all things must end.

Next: Yellow Submarine

All My CDs, pt 6: The Suburbs

Maybe it’s time I stopped trying desperately to write unique intros to these reviews.

The Suburbs - The Arcade Fire

If I got Funeral under un-hipsterish circumstances, The Suburbs was no different. I’d considered checking it out after it was recommended by a favorite webcomic artist, and then I heard that it had won a Grammy for “album of the year,” taking by surprise all the music fans who had never heard of The Arcade Fire. That’s when I bought it. At first I was a bit unimpressed with The Suburbs, which struck me as far less passionate and interesting than Funeral. It’s true than the overall sonic and thematic tone is a bit less textured, but after repeated listening I came to realize that it was still very good.

In some ways, the more subtle and low-contrast quality makes it more deeply appreciable and contributes to its underlying messages as a concept album.  After all, the suburbs themselves are less differentiated, more homogenous, and less exuberant than either the city or the countryside. Moreover, the instrumentation in The Suburbs also skews more electronic and synthesized than Funeral, perhaps reflecting the artificial nature of the suburban sprawl the lyrics constantly allude to. But when you listen to the music, it speaks of a genuine soulfulness that exists even in the midst of such artificiality, and that is the driving force behind the album’s quiet power.

I’ve lived most of my life in a city known for being more urban than its size would suggest. When I bought The Suburbs, I was living in a more stereotypically suburban town, complete with blocks of boxlike houses, abundant strip malls, and a complete dearth of coffeeshops or poetry slams. I had never felt more out of place, trapped in a pseudo-community where I felt no kinship with my neighbors and no attachment to the land. I thought that the suburbs had no culture because I did not share in their culture. I was wrong.

It’s common to assume that a suburban life is necessarily less soulful, less artful, than an urban one (with its vibrant and hot-blooded diversity) or a rural one (with its closeness to nature and tradition). It’s also common to make similar assumptions about modern living, dependence on technology, social media, and other “mindless” pop-cultural phenomena. There is often doubt about whether the youngest cultural movements of the world even qualify as “culture”. People debate such questions as whether lolcats are art - or dismiss such debates as beneath their consideration entirely.

I’m a member of a generation currently coming of age, a generation who were children in the 90s, adolescents in the early 21st century, and uniquely familiar with both technological abundance and economic decline. We are citizens of a world that is growing and dying at the same time - where “dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains.” The lyrics and music found in The Suburbs speaks to me of that world and specifically my generation, more so than most other music I’ve heard. If for no other reason (and there are other reasons), this will remain a very special album to me.

It occurs to me I haven't mentioned any specific songs here. It's true that the album's overall consistency makes it difficult to pick favorites, but a few stand out to me anyway: Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains), Ready to Start, City With No Children, and Rococo, to name a few. I don't really dislike any of them.

Next: Not Accepted Anywhere

All My CDs, pt 5: Funeral

I’ve been looking forward to this one since two or three CDs ago. I like it so much I took a whole week to write this review.

Funeral - The Arcade Fire

I realize that being a fan of The Arcade Fire makes me look like a hipster, but if that bothers you then rest assured that I came across this album in one of the most un-hipsterish ways possible. I first heard Wake Up in a trailer for a major motion picture. When I bought the soundtrack to that film and played it for friends, they invariably asked if that song from the trailer was on it; disappointingly, it was not, and so I bought this album. This was in fall of 2009, all of five years after the album was first released. I truly arrived late to this party, as did apparently much of the rest of the world.

“We’re just a million little gods causing rainstorms...”

Funeral is full of unlikely wonder and discordant beauty. The Arcade Fire’s musical style comes across as undisciplined and immoderate, as if a roomful of exuberant and talented children were let loose in a recording studio, but at least a few of them had the wisdom of decades to inform the subtlety and depth of the lyrics and mood. They make an art form of using too many instruments, sometimes yoking together odd combinations of sounds that traditionally belong to separate genres. The vocalists (of which there are a few) are passionate but lack the refined, "pure" sound of classically trained singers, but that sort of thing is popular nowadays. The results are surprising and, I think, delightful. This is music that doesn’t see a need to follow the rules, and this might make it hard on the ears of some listeners. I am not one of those listeners.

Without hesitation I can say that Wake Up is my favorite song on the album. I dare you to listen to that song without getting its chorus of “Aah-aah-aah”s stuck in your head. Its bittersweet mixture of moods makes you feel like your heart is breaking and healing at the same time, like a tree that continues to grow even as some of its limbs wither and its trunk is gradually hollowed by rot. One can suffer even while feeling triumphant, and vice versa. The lyrics allude to themes of childhood and growing up and the pains associated with both, but are careful not to directly say anything specific, so you’re free to imagine they’re speaking about whatever memories fill your heart at the moment.

Crown of Love is another good one, and is clearly in the top ten of my favorite break-up songs of all time, alongside Tori Amos’s Baker Baker. Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) has a fast pace and jaunty-but-dark aesthetic that makes for good dancing or workout music. Rebellion (Lies) is also catchy, but don’t pay too much attention to the lyrics if you’re prone to insomnia and in a particularly suggestible frame of mind.

Overall this is one of my favorite albums, and I’m sorry to have to put it back on the shelf. I have a lot of reviews left to get through.

Next: The Suburbs.

All My CDs, pt 4: Amplified

Yes I'm still doing this.

Amplified: A Decade of Reinventing the Cello - Apocalyptica

I have heard rumors that of all musical instruments, cello is measurably most similar to the human voice, and I’m inclined to believe it. As you will see later in this series of reviews, I have a real soft spot in my heart for stringed instruments, especially when paired effectively with voice.The sound of stringed instruments, and cello in particular, inspires an instinctual recognition and empathy that makes for especially emotive music. This may account for part of Apocalyptica’s success: their incorporation of the most emotionally expressive instrument into one of the most emotionally charged genres. However, I think in at least one respect their reliance on cello’s vocal qualities may have counted against them.

Amplified is a two-disk album, and disk one contains several instrumental covers of highly recognizable songs (such as Enter Sandman and Nothing Else Matters), with cello in place of the vocal part. This makes sense given their style, but while cello does invoke a reaction similar to that of a human voice, it’s still not a voice, and thus is a step below vocals in terms of emotional expressiveness. This counts double in a genre known for having vocalists not just singing, but growling and even screaming - making sounds simply not replicable or imitable by conventional instrumentation.

The result is a taming effect on these instrumental covers, and a loss of some of their original impact. These songs are pleasurable to listen to, but I suspect a large part of that pleasure is due to their recognizability as popular songs. Still, a large part is also due to the band’s genuine ability as musicians, so I wouldn’t discount the covers entirely.

Disk one also features a truly stunning rendition of Grieg’s Hall of the Mountain King, which has practically screamed out for a heavy-metal cover ever since it was first composed. The rest are originals, and boy are they awesome.

Disk two is much shorter, and seems to contain original songs retrofitted with lyrics and vocals. I think for the most part these songs were better as instrumentals, but that’s me. I prefer the first disk, which I feel has better music and a lot more of it.

Wikipedia claims that Amplified isn’t an album so much as a “best of” compilation, and I’m satisfied that what I’ve got here is some of Apocalyptica’s best work. While I listened to the album Worlds Collide rarely, I hardly listened to this collection at all since I first got it (and I can’t even remember when that was). Shame on me. It’s a good one, and deserves respect and hours of listening.

Next: Funeral

All My CDs, pt 3: Worlds Collide

I’m listening to and reviewing every CD in my collection. Three down, countless to go.

Worlds Collide - Apocalyptica

You may recognize Apocalyptica as “that metal band with the cellos.” I remember learning of them many years ago when my brother, whose tastes have always been a bit more pretentious than mine, shared their visually stunning video for Path. Apparently I enjoyed their music enough to buy two of their albums, but have not listened to them very much, and cannot remember the circumstances under which I acquired this one.

In Worlds Collide, the typically instrumental Apocalyptica joins forces with various vocalists for four out of eleven tracks; the rest are in their usual metal-plus-cello instrumental style. Having been drawn to Apocalyptica because of this specific style, I am a little underwhelmed by the tracks with vocals added, which strike me as lyrically unimaginative. I don't think they would have been worth buying on their own, unless I had heard them for the first time as a teenager.

The exception is Helden, a song sung in German by Rammstein’s Till Lindemann. I enjoy it a lot, and it stands out as one of the better songs on the album as a whole. Perhaps this is because music sung in a language the listener does not personally understand is sometimes treated by the brain as a sort of hybrid between instrumentals and lyrical songs, combining aspects of both. Or perhaps I just like Rammstein.

The instrumental tracks I find appealing in a primal, nonintellectual way, much different from the way I enjoy my favorite lyrical musicians. Their mixture of acoustic and electric elements makes them sufficiently metal to satisfy my need to bang my head, but sufficiently melodic to avoid overwhelming the part of me that desires a gentler approach. I imagine they’d be good background for a workout, for heavy chores, or for sex. I know for a fact they make an excellent accompaniment for windows-down summertime highway driving.

This album may not have made it onto my most-played list, but perhaps it deserves more attention than I’ve been able to give it over the years. With my brain often overstimulated by a lifestyle centered mostly on verbal interactions, it might be healthy to enjoy good instrumental music more often, and not just what shows up on the local classical music station.

My favorite song on this album is Peace, marking the third time in a row that my favorite track has been the last on the album. Coincidence?

Next time: Amplified.