AlbumLove recommendations thread: July 2023
Choose one album
that you love
that you think deserves more love
Tell us what it is, and why.
Additional Details
What is this?
It's a new post series I'm trying out! Each month people can use the AlbumLove thread to post an album they love and explore those posted by others.
I'm planning to put up a new AlbumLove thread on the first of each month for a few months to see how these go as a trial run. If people like it we can keep it going — if they don’t it’ll fizzle out and I’ll stop.
Why AlbumLove?
In this day and age, algorithmic recommendations for music are easy to come by, and it's trivial to seek out new music that interests you by searching online. AlbumLove offers an opportunity to sift through music loved by others, including those who might have divergent tastes from you. Think of this as an opportunity to listen outside of your comfort zone, with music that you know someone else adores, from a small pool of thoughtful hand-selected options.
What do I post?
Any album that you love and that you feel deserves more appreciation. There are no restrictions on genre, year, or anything else, and nothing is “too popular” or “too niche”. If you think it needs more love — for whatever reason — then it’s welcome in AlbumLove.
Name the artist and the album, and then, most importantly, share what you love about the album. It could be the music itself, but it could also be your associations with it -- maybe the album reminds you of someone you love, or you saw the band live and got a new appreciation for the studio songs.
Also, commenting on others' recommendations is encouraged! If you love something that someone else shared, let them know!
Do I have to listen to what everyone else posts?
Nope. You don't have to listen to anything if you don't want to. This is about creating a menu of options that people can explore as they wish.
Can I post more than one album in a month?
Nope. Limit one! This helps us be more selective about what we choose, as well as preventing the threads from getting flooded with too many contributions to keep track of.
Why albums and not songs/artists?
I like albums. :)
Seriously though, I feel like it's a very different thing to like an album as a whole versus a few songs or just an artist's general vibe. I like the idea of quantizing music for appreciation in the same way we might do with books or movies.
What about EPs?
Fair game!
I don't know of this counts as an album because I only ever had the DVD version in 5.1 DTS surround sound, and found it to be the best Album ever mixed for surround systems.
I'm talking about the Jean Michel Jarre live in Beijing concert with a Chinese orchestra in the forbidden city on the Tianmen square from 2004.
It's just fantastic and everyone that still has a surround system should get the original DVD and give it a go.
Here's the YouTube rip for what it's worth. It's still fantastic, the orchestraaand the classical Chinese instruments brings his music to a new level, even if you usually are not a fan of his music.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=eb0xJz7PTI4
Edit: Replaced the link with a better quality version
John McLaughlin - Extrapolation (1969)
One of jazz guitarist John McLaughlin's early works, before he cut his teeth with fusion on Miles Davis's Bitches Brew and went on to form Mahavishnu Orchestra (with a high-flying, virtuoso style that would define much of his career from that point forward). In contrast, Extrapolation is relatively laid back, at times even meditative. Looser and less harmonically dense than other post-bop, it conjures images of rainy days in London, the nooks and hidden places of that city.
This is the album that apparently got my dad into jazz, as he was fan of Mahavishnu as a logical extension of other bombastic, hard psych/prog/blues rock a la Led Zeppelin. Apparently he saw Extrapolation in a record store and bought it based on McLaughlin's reputation, sight unseen - on first listen, he could only think 'what is this rubbish, John?'. But a few days later, and after a joint, he recalls all of the sudden 'getting' it.
In any case, it's a damn good album. It's over 50 years old now and holds up pretty well.
This is a tangent, but here's a long article about how McLaughlin's nephew Tony Grey became a bass player. (I read it recently because he played bass for Hiromi.)
Casualties of Cool - Casualties of Cool
One of my favorite "late night" albums that for some reason I think of as a futuristic space trucker album. A great mashup of blues, country and ambient/experimental with some absolutely hypnotic vocals from Ché Aimee Dorval and Devin Townsend.
I'd say my favorite track would have to be The Code, but they're all great, and all flow into each other so it's a perfect album to listen to all the way through.
Yazoo - Upstairs at Eric's.
This, from 1982, was the first album from the short-lived collaboration between Alison Moyet and Vince Clark. She went on to a huge solo career, and he went on to form Erasure.
It got lots of critical acclaim, and they were pretty big in the UK, but they didn't seem to crack the US, and I don't hear Yazoo in those zeitgeisty 80s influenced films or tv shows.
I love this because the album, listened to as an album, gives me an immersive feeling of being in this weird world that's not quite here.
I'd be really interested to know what younger people think about this 40 year old album.
Stranger Fruit by Zeal and Ardor - 2018, Industrial/Black Metal, Soul, Gospel, Folk
I still get goosebumps every time I return to this album. Zeal and Ardor was born from 4chan of all places. Vocalist and guitarist Manuel Gagneux asked 4chan for genres of music to blend together. One suggestion was "black metal" while another was unsurprisingly "n***er music". Manuel ignored the hate and instead turned this into "satanic slave songs". Side note for non-metalheads: "black metal" is an actual metal subgenre and has no connection to black people.
Two of my favorite tracks are Row Row and You Ain't Coming Back. The lyrics on these two are especially emotional and hit hard.
Easy choice for me.
I'm not going to describe it for you other than to say it's in the 'awesome' genre, and it compares favorably to Rush. If this were on the radio, it would have been during that brief time in the 60s/70s when prog was in vogue. It's a time machine on wax. I think fans of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard will fall head over heels for this one. This is a must-listen best of 2021 pick for me.
Phideaux - Doomsday Afternoon (2007)
A favorite album from a favorite modern prog group, Doomsday Afternoon manages to scratch that niche prog concept album itch while still being accessible enough to recommend to people (as long as they don't mind the songs being on the lengthier side).
I love the rich variety across and within each song, the lyrics and themes of environmental disaster paint an intriguing image, and I feel like I get something new out of each listen.
Big flowing orchestral sounds combined with synths and electric guitar create a melodically rich soundscape that I just can't get enough of.
Both the predecessor Great Leap and especially the successor Infernal are also fantastic. I'm very excited to see what comes next from Phideaux.
Matana Roberts - Coin Coin Chapter One: Gens de couleur libres
Country: USA
Release Year: 2011
Genres: Avant-Garde Jazz, Spiritual Jazz (with touches of Free Jazz, Spoken Word, Jazz Poetry, Spirituals, Modern Creative)
Featured Instruments: alto saxophone, baritone saxophone, bass, bass trumpet, cello, clarinet, doudouk, drums, female vocals, musical saw, organ, piano, prepared guitar, spoken word, tenor saxophone, trumpet, vibraphone, violin
My response to the music: This album starts as a paradox, namely as a beautiful cacophony, and the vocals, strong yet broken, rise perfectly out of this sonic storm. Then the violins soar, evoking more familiar emotions and granting the much-needed respite from the opening tempest. There follows a powerful a cappella rendition of a slave auction, with all its attendant sexual callousness (the upright bass lead-in is perfect, providing the backbone to the auction bidding chant breakdown). The music swirls on into mournful violins, the sound of a lonely buoy bell, and eerie voices singing in...not-English, giving a strong sense of bondage in a foreign land and the mourning that would come with such an uprooting. This calm doesn't last long, though, for the narrative descends into frightening vocal territory with harrowing cries and groans. The rhythm and phrasing become more tribal in feel. We find out why she cries when she tells the story of her having to buy her own children out of bondage. This avant-garde spiritual jazz is also conscious jazz taking a brutally honest look at history.
The Japanese House - In the End It Always Does (2023)
This album just feels like a maturation and realization of what Amber wants to explore and sound like as The Japanese House. There are familiar sounds and themes from past albums, but it feels more lived in this time around. Just an easy, nice, chill album to listen to from somebody who seems to be finally settling into their groove and being more comfortable than ever in what they can do.
From Star to Stardust by Phuture Noize.
It's an electronic music album (hardstyle to be more exact), it has a lot of bass but also a lot of melody and it turns out it's just the right amount of both for me.
Most of you will hate it, but if you can, I encourage you to give it a listen from start to finish, or at least listen to the title track (From Star to Stardust) and The Stars Are Tumbling Out of The Sky.
Berlin (1973) by Lou Reed
Spotify
YouTube
I have a major bias here—Lou Reed is my favorite songwriter of all time. When I listened to The Velvet Underground & Nico for the first time as a teenager, it absolutely changed the way I consumed and appreciated music. The Velvet Underground, with their viola and S&M, were unlike anything I had heard before—but I immediately recognized them as a group taking rock 'n' roll to its logical conclusion. Lou Reed, to me, was a 20th-century rock Baudelaire or Rimbaud, mapping out the limits of human experience in a post-modern age, drinking the poison and keeping its quintessence, pushing the subject matter of popular music in a genuinely exciting and literary way.
This brings me to July's AlbumLove recommendation: 1973's Berlin. Berlin is, to my mind, Lou Reed's magnum opus—the apotheosis of his elegaic travels through New York City's underbelly, a genuine cry of despair from an artist in crisis, and a masterpiece rock opera that could just as easily be written either broadly for a rock audience or personally to Reed's exhausted psychoanalyst.
Berlin was Lou Reed's follow-up to 1972's Transformer, a widely-acclaimed glam-pop record made famous by its hit single, Walk on the Wild Side; much of the rock world was horrified, in contrast, at the dark and depressive tone of Berlin. (RCA had promoted Berlin, hilariously, as "the Sgt. Pepper of the Seventies") Reed's own record label took him to court, claiming in a lawsuit that Lou was sabotaging his own market appeal.
The commercial and critical failure of Berlin at the time of release was a massive setback for Lou Reed, who was utterly rejected as an artist by audiences and his label; this rejection would result in Reed's Metal Machine Music in 1975, when Reed standoffishly released an unsellable album to finish up his recording contract (thus doing the very thing RCA had previously litigated him over). One might argue that Lou Reed was castrated at the height of his artistic powers, and his career never really recovered from it.
Berlin, the album, is an expansion of Lou's earlier song of the same name. The characters in this song are further developed, and the album reads as a narrative centered around two lovers, Jim and Caroline, as their relationship burns up and their lives fall apart around them. This is an abuse-heavy, drug-fuelled narrative that serves to describe a highly toxic relationship in a very straightforward, often stomach-turning way. Caroline, in particular, shines as an incredibly powerful and complex character, a victim of intimate partner violence struggling to navigate a traumatic life stuck with an abuser that she can't fully escape.
Trigger warning: Berlin vividly describes scenes of domestic violence, drug abuse, and suicide. This is a bleak album.
1. Berlin
In Berlin, by the wall,
You were five-foot, ten-inches tall
It was very nice
Candlelight and Dubonnet on ice
The album opens with a snippet of the aforementioned song, Berlin, serving as prologue and setting the scene for the album—a glimpse of two lovers in the city of Berlin, enjoying a lovely date together at a charming European café.
2. Lady Day
... and I said no, no, no
Oh, Lady Day
Lady Day is a song about Caroline from Jim's perspective. Lou Reed evokes the tragic figure of Billie Holliday as he describes Caroline insecurely wandering the streets until she happens upon a bar, wherein she desperately seeks the validation missing from her life by performing as a singer on the stage. Jim is jealous and resents this about Caroline, pleading with her in the chorus to stop.
3. Men of Good Fortune
Men of good fortune
Often cause empires to fall
While men of poor beginnings
Often can't do anything at all
Lou Reed takes a step back here to continue painting the landscape of Berlin—wealth inequality is not just an economic reality, but a personal one that ruins peoples' lives before they even get a chance. Lou tends to avoid these kinds of on-the-nose political statements, so this song is something of a treat in that he discusses economic factors very explicitly here. His other scattered attempts at sociopolitical songwriting are fairly clumsy, but Men of Good Fortune shows that he can do this really well when he locates the subject with his own voice.
4. Caroline Says I
Just like poison in a vial
Hey, she was often very vile
But, of course, I thought I could take it all
Caroline Says I is an excellent example of Lou's observational brilliance at work. We know from decades of psychological observation, particularly in Couples and Family Therapy, that abusive partners will often justify their behavior as a response to the perceived "crimes" or abuses of their victim. Lou Reed nails that perfectly here. In Caroline Says I, Jim is providing his distorted perspective as he describes Caroline's cruelty and slights. Nonetheless, Jim, the long-suffering "hero", declares that "still, she is my Germanic queen". Jim is trying to gaslight us and control the narrative.
5. How Do You Think It Feels
How do you think it feels
To feel like a wolf and foxy
How do you think it feels
To always make love by proxy
This song could be coming from Jim, Caroline, Lou Reed, or any combination of narrators. Jim and Caroline are deep in the throes of methamphetamine addiction, Caroline is prostituting herself to support their habit ("If only I had some change—come here, baby"), and the song wheels around to address the listener directly: "How do you think it feels, when you're speeding and lonely?" Lou challenges us to check our moralizing instinct at the door, and show some compassion for two sick, dysfunctional people.
6. Oh, Jim
And when you're filled up to here with hate
Don't you know you gotta get it straight
Filled up to here with hate
Beat her black and blue and get it straight
Jim's insecurities, paranoia, and aggression towards Caroline coalesce into hatred as Jim unleashes explosive violence on his partner. Jim has become full of resentment towards Caroline and all of her "two-bit friends", finding himself completely isolated and lashing out abusively in a desperate attempt at maintaining control in their relationship. In the aftermath, Caroline resorts to a shocked chastisement and plea: "Oh Jim, how could you treat me this way?"
7. Caroline Says II
Caroline says
As she gets up from the floor
"You can hit me all you want to,
but I don't love you anymore"
Caroline Says II is the peak of the Berlin narrative: Caroline has gathered herself together after suffering a life-altering act of intimate partner violence, puts on her makeup to hide the bruises, and leaves Jim. To my sensibilities, this is an incredibly powerful song about survival. Caroline is deeply troubled and injured by Jim's abuse, but she knows "life is meant to be more than this" so she puts on a stoic face to get herself out of a dangerous situation. Yet we know she's still deeply traumatized when, at the end, "she put her fist through the window pane".
8. The Kids
They're taking her children away
Because they said she was not a good mother
Time has passed since Caroline has left Jim, but the aftershocks of drug addiction and abuse continue to rip Caroline's life apart. Jim takes a mostly-impersonal tone as he learns that the state has seized custody of Caroline's children. Jim feels validated in his jealousy as he's certain that she lost the kids "because she was making it with sisters and brothers", smugly recounting Caroline's sexual activities as a prostitute, and hypocritically blaming Caroline's problems on her drug dependency. Jim never stops to consider his own contribution to Caroline's post-traumatic stress and, indeed, even admits selfishly that he is "much happier this way". This is a truly haunting song that still gives me goosebumps after hundreds of listens.
9. The Bed
And this is the room where she took the razor
And cut her wrists that strange and fateful night
And I said oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, what a feeling
Caroline's children have been taken away, and she's descended further into misery and depression. It seems that Caroline and Jim got back together since then. Caroline committed suicide and now Jim is reflecting coldly on their bedroom as he stands alone in their home. Though Jim rues that "I never would have started if I'd known that it would end this way", he admits that the "funny thing" is "I'm not at all sad that it stopped this way". Jim secretly relishes his final victory over Caroline, as her suicide means that she belongs to him forever. He just can't bring himself to actually grieve the death of Caroline.
10. Sad Song
Staring at my picture book
She looks like Mary, Queen of Scots
She seemed very regal to me
Just goes to show how wrong you can be
More time has passed, and Jim is reflecting on the relationship he had with Caroline. He has learned nothing. Like in Lady Day, Jim's gaslighting is in full effect again as he assures himself that he tried his best to love a difficult, cruel person. Jim reveals himself with the "comforting" thought that "somebody else would have broken both of her arms". In the end, Jim has won control of the narrative and, presumably, will go on to terrorize future partners. Sad song, indeed.
Marcy Playground - Leaving Wonderland in a Fit of Rage
Many of you probably remember the hit song Sex and Candy by Marcy Playground back in 1998. Well, they kept making music, and it's super good! Wonderland is their 4th album and is my absolute favorite. To me is is almost perfect. They are also amazing live, and actually on tour right now.
If you like alt rock, give them a chance.