Home / Archive: Albums of the Month
March 2024: Album of the Month
BAND – Eels
ALBUM – Daisies Of The Galaxy
I started listening to the Eels again after a long break of around 10 years, and it feels like yesterday. The combination of idyllic cover art and cheerful music, combined with sometimes melancholic but irresistibly funny lyrics makes this album stand out.
Favorite song – I Like Birds (especially for a bird aficionado like me): “I can’t stand in line at the store / The mean little people are such a bore / But it’s all right if you act like a turd / ‘Cause I like Birds. If you’re small and on a search / I’ve got a feeder for you to perch on.”
Mark Oliver Everett aka “E” easily combines this feelgood tune with the heart-breaking and beautiful “It’s a Motherfucker” on the pain of separation, immediately followed again by “Tiger In My Tank” with its keyboard sound of a children’s song. Apropos keyboards: Absolutely wonderful vintage sounds played on a Hammond B3, a Wurlitzer electric piano and a Mellotron (an electromechanical keyboard instrument from the 50s that is considered as the analogue original of today’s samplers).
Hopefulness persists throughout the rest of the album (A Daisy Through Concrete, Jeannie’s Diary) up until (and including) the final song, Mr. E’s Beautiful Blues, which was forced onto the album by the producers against E’s wish. It’s a beautiful day while I am writing these lines, spring is here, and I look forward to many more reviews to come!
February 2024: Album of the Month
BAND – Johnny Cash
ALBUM – American Recordings
Those of you who were in university like me during the early nineties will remember that Johnny Cash CDs were numerous, cheap and of a really bad quality back then, before Rick Rubin decided to start Cash’s renaissance with the album American Recordings in 1994. It’s hard to imagine that nobody was interested anymore in this singer before this series of albums was released.
Rick Rubin, the producer of such an eclectic group of bands as the Beastie Boys, Slayer, Public Enemy, Nine Inch Nails, Donovan, System of a Down, Lucinda Williams, Sheryl Crow and Justin Timberlake, applied his typical bare bones “in your face” approach to country music, resulting in songs with nothing but Johnny Cash’s voice and guitar, interpreting mostly songs of others artists proposed by Rubin (Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Loudon Wainwright). Counterintuitively, there is even a song written by heavy rocker Glenn Danzig for this album (Thirteen).
Rubin continued to produce Cash until his death and posthumously (Unchained, American III-VI), and the following albums are just as good as the first. My favorites: “Hurt” on American IV (based on the almost unrecognizable but equally incredible hardcore/industrial original by Trent Reznor aka Nine Inch Nails), “Personal Jesus” by Depeche Mode (also on American IV) and “I See a Darkness” by Bonnie Prince Billy (on American III). On the other hand, a few of the recordings are pretty awful in my view (e.g. Bridge over Troubled Water), showing that even a genius like Rick Rubin can have a bad hair day once in a while.
But please make your own opinion and send feedback, musical tastes are entirely subjective as we all know.
January 2024: Album of the Month
BAND – John Coltrane
ALBUM – My Favorite Things
Anyone who listens to a lot of music eventually ends up loving jazz. My appreciation for the modern jazz giants (Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock) started not so long ago, so I haven’t even scratched the surface.
Here’s an LP I recently bought in a Zagreb record store – John Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things” of 1961, recorded with the first group of his own. Coltrane is playing soprano and alto sax (soprano is the one on the cover, alto and tenor sax are the types we typically refer to as saxophones, with the lower end bending back up), while his quartet includes McCoy Tyner (piano), Steve Davis (bass) and Elvin Jones (drums).
The 14-minute title song combines Coltrane’s typical “sheets of sound” (long and fast lines of scales) with exquisite piano playing by McCoy Tyner. Some of you may recognize the melody from the movie “Sound of Music” (with Julie Christie singing in a bed full of kids), the younger crowd from Ariana Grande’s hymn to materialism, “7 things”. I prefer Coltrane’s version.
What really sets apart jazz from rock or classical music is the unexpected, the courage to experiment. No matter how technically advanced a classical musician is, the educated part of the audience will know exactly which notes will be played. Not in jazz: I remember a totally uncompromising concert of Herbie Hancock in the Lucerne KKL, where most of the audience (those with a season card who were probably expecting jazz standards by the 75-year old and his band) walked out after 10-20 minutes.
So I challenge you busy folks to take those 14 minutes from your precious time, sit on your couch with a glass of Single Malt but no other distractions, and dive into the void.
December 2023: Album of the Month
BAND – Steve Gunn
ALBUM – Time Off
6 songs for an album, every one of them more than 5 minutes long – this man knows how to take his time. Apart from its flow and ease, I have chosen Steve Gunn’s album Time Off for its careful use of instruments. Combining a wide range of instruments to create an organic sound is one of the most underestimated skills in contemporaneous music. While most listeners concentrate on those instruments they can hear best (i.e. loud guitars and forced singing), it’s the careful compilation of more temperate instruments that characterizes the true master.
Let’s take the first song on the album as an example: Who noticed the jaw harp/mouth harp in Water Wheel? And what makes up the beauty of the guitar solo? Not only the reverb/hall effect, but also that Steve takes a step back to create an organic flow. Nothing is forced here, nobody has to show off. In the words of another reviewer: “There’s a real sense, listening to these tracks, that everything could be a little simpler if we all stopped trying so hard.” (Amanda Petrusich, Pitchfork).
November 2023: Album of the Month
BAND – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
ALBUM – Push The Sky Away
Those who know me well will be surprised that it took so long to present this band. Nick Cave is the musician I have admired most, not just for his music but for the courage to go all in after the death of his 15-year old son Arthur some time ago. Instead of drawing back into private life, he started his blog “The Red Hand Files”, where anyone can post questions to him. Among the thousands of questions, he has answered more than 260 over the last years, displaying a combination of immense wisdom, sensitivity and humour. With unmatched candour, Nick offers consolation and advice to his fans. It’s the only blog I ever read.
It was not easy to pick an album, but this one truly stands out. Favorite song: Jubilee Street. With the hardly noticeable increase in pace and ecstatic ending, this song has never left my system since I heard it for the first time 10 years ago. Fun fact: The drummer of the Bad Seeds since 1985 (Thomas Wydler) is from Zurich.
If you ever get a chance to see Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds live, drop everything and go! It does not get any better. I know you might not trust me any more after a rather inflationary use of superlatives in the past, but please trust me this time. Nick’s concerts are something else.
October 2023: Album of the Month
BAND – Willard Grant Conspiracy
ALBUM – Paper Covers Stone
Willard Grant Conspiracy was not really a band but a loose group of constantly changing local friends around the Boston musician Robert Fisher. The double album Paper Covers Stone was published in 2009 – an alternative country masterpiece that is in constant rotation on my Thorens TD 160B turntable from the early seventies (more about hardware in one of the next posts). Favorite songs: “Soft Hand” and “Ghost of the Girl in the Well”. A lot of Fisher’s music is based on traditionals, with a layer of musicality I find hypnotizing and liberating despite the devastating lyrics. Moreover, some of the singing (check out the end of Ghost of the Girl in the Well) is out of this world.
In the last post, I was trying to explain what good artists can achieve – there’s a lot more to say. Good artists:
- write their own songs (instead of delegating this to a team of writers and consultants);
- write songs for people of the same age;
- have a music style that is not easy to label;
- have a long career if they survive the early years;
- and are not constantly documenting their own lives but observing the struggle of others.
Robert Fisher passed away in 2017 at the age of 60. I was lucky to see him play live some years before in El Lokal in Zurich. As you can imagine, it was a great concert, and I sometimes miss artists like him.
September 2023: Album of the Month
BAND – Bry Webb
ALBUM – Free Will
This album is so good that it used to be non-available on Spotify. Bry Webb’s last album Free Will was released in 2014, was introduced to me by a wonderful hifi and music freak (who had two of these rare LPs in his collection) and has remained obscure since. It contains the best song about parenthood, Let’s Get Through Today (“Go to the Places Where I Can’t Protect You / I Will Keep Trying to Know What You’re Going Through / The More Fucked Up Things Get The More I Love You; btw the strange instrument in the background is a so-called hurdy-gurdy), and a kind reminder that constantly positive people are a pain in the ass (Positive People). My son Miles performed a cover version of Let’s Get Through Today at his graduation from Jazz School Bern in September 2023; he has it all and it was a killer.
You might be asking yourself by now why all the presented albums are difficult and melancholic: It’s because the best music is based on unanswered love, despair and the loss of close people, the most intense and devastating emotions that one can experience and the most difficult to address. The best musicians have found a way to process these feelings and touch our insides, providing a paradox of comfort and reminding us that life is hard sometimes but we’re not alone. If you want easy listening – go ride an elevator.
August 2023: Album of the Month
BAND – Sun Kil Moon
ALBUM – Among The Leaves
The childhood of Mark Kozalek aka Sun Kil Moon in Ohio (where I also lived for 2 years as a kid) was probably not as carefree as mine. While he is probably best known for a cover album of AC/DC songs stripped to the bone and transformed into melancholic folk tunes (check out the stunning version of Up To My Neck in You), my favorite is the double album Among the Leaves released in 2012. The topics of his songs range from one-night stands with groupies (I Know It’s Pathetic but That Was the Best Night of My Life), the near death (and nearing death) of addict friends (Elaine), the fragility of new relationships (Young Love), the passing away of your trusted guitar restorer (Song for Richard Collopy), bad artists (Not Much Rhymes with Everything’s Awesome at All Times: “I’m an artist it’s all that I’ve got/I know when I see one and baby you’re not”) all the way to the ridiculous life of musicians and the pains of recording music (Track Number 8, my number one). The combination of his classical fingerpicking style, the lyrics and relaxed (some would say resigned) voice are unmatched. On the other hand, it has to be mentioned that Kozelek has a #metoo problem. This should not stop you from listening to his music because artists’ characters can be abstracted from their art in my humble view. After all, most of us probably still listen to Richard Wagner even though he was a rather disgusting anti-Semite.
July 2023: Album of the Month
BAND – Matt Sweeney & Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy
ALBUM – Superwolf
Will Oldham aka Bonnie Prince Billy is a songwriter from Louisville Kentucky who has released around 100 albums, EPs and singles in the last 25 years, has defied Spotify until recently and is one of the great unknown underground heroes. He combines an absolute lack of pathos with endless charisma. I recently tried to describe his style to some friends at a recent conference and failed – listen to the music and decide for yourself. If you can muster the courage for a second or even third listening, he will have you. In 2005, Bonnie Prince Billy wrote and recorded the album Superwolf with his buddy Matt Sweeney. As you might have come to expect by now, the lyrics – combined with precarious music and singing – beat everything. Just listen to the opening lines of My Home Is The Sea (I have often said / That I wanna be dead / In a shark’s mouth), Beast for Thee (Why aren’t you kind to me / You could so easily / Take me in your arms and see / A donkey) or What Are You? (What are you waiting for if not for me? / What are you waiting for? It must be me / To take you over my knee / And spank you mercilessly). And for those who do prefer a little pathos: Watch the video “Bonnie Prince Billy Black Cab Sessions” where he rides the streets of London in a black cab with Angel Olsen (supporting vocals), Emmett Kelley (guitar) and a harmonium player – grande.
June 2023: Album of the Month
BAND – PJ Harvey
ALBUM – Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea
Almost every fan of alternative music has a secret crush on Polly Jean Harvey. The English singer presents a stunning combination of unique voice (changing between angry, husky and sublime), killer music and lyrics that blow you away. To give you a little break after the Velvet Underground, I have chosen her most accessible album – Stories From the City, Stories from the Sea of the year 2000. But don’t relax just yet: It’s only a bright album compared to the previous ones. Quite unusually, the songs just get better and better until the end, culminating in “We Float”, with one of the greatest breaks ever after 2 minutes and 2 seconds. Favourite lyrics: “How can life be so complex when I just wanna sit here and watch you undress” (This Is Love). My most treasured song however is Horses In My Dreams. Apart from the obvious innuendo of the title (the rumour goes that PJ was spending time in NY with the underground actor Vincent Gallo some years after ditching Nick Cave), the relaxed guitar strumming, simple bass line, craving voice and lyrics bring tears to my eyes every time. She goes straight to the heart and stomach. People today don’t realize anymore how difficult it is to create an entire album of great songs. I hope you will appreciate the hard work behind a masterpiece like this one.
May 2023: Album of the Month
BAND – The Velvet Underground
ALBUM – The Velvet Underground & Nico 45th Anniversary
The legend goes that everyone who bought this record when it was released in 1967 went off to start their own band. “Produced” by Andy Warhol (whose only contribution was to force the German singer Nico onto the band), this is possibly the most influential album in rock history (even though it never went beyond No. 171 in the Billboard charts). Punk and grunge would have sounded quite different without it. Lou Reed and his congenial partner John Cale (who joined from the classical avantgarde with a mean viola) created a sound and lyrics nobody was prepared for at the time. While the texts focus on previously unheard topics such as waiting for your drug dealer in the streets of New York City (Waiting For My Man), shooting heroin (Heroin) and S&M (Venus in Furs), the sound is uncompromising, feral and hard to stomach – a punch in the face of the hippie sound dominating counterculture back then. After listening to the album more than 100 times, it continues to amaze me and only gets better – a sign of true quality. Stay tuned.