I was in college and a band that was essentially a one-hit wonder kind of stuck on me.
Beat Street Breakdown… rrrha!
Urban/dance music isnt artist/album based. I doubt any single electro artist of note released 5 good songs.
Nine Inch Nails, but only instrumentals not from Ghosts:
What if everything around you isn’t quite as it seems
What if all the world you used to know is an elaborate dream
One more from me ;)
Chicane is a British electronic music artist. His work can be described as atmospheric, ambient melodies with shifting moods and tempos.
Chicane (musician) - Wikipedia
Let me update these playlists!
Also, I love that there’s a Better than Ezra playlist. And NiN. I know the hits, and in my mind, I think I know all I need to know about those folks. That’s why I want a 545!
Holy shit. I love that this starts with “I Want You”.
I mean, I kinda love that.
My first two years of college, I went out with the same girl for almost two years. It was the most serious relationship of my life to that point. And then the summer after our second year of school, she started cheating on me with a co-worker at her summer job. And I heard “I Want You” – which, for those of you who aren’t divedivedive, and may not know the song – on a mix-tape, and it is one of the most anguished, sad, angry, and forlorn wails over a lost relationship ever recorded. And I heard that song on a tape a friend made, and bought my first EC album as a result and just sat in my bedroom that entire summer listening to “I Want You” and moping and feeling sorry for myself.
Such a great, emotionally shattering track. Maybe about as real and in your face as anything I’ve ever heard from EC. Can’t wait to dive into the rest of this playlist, since it doesn’t have the “hits” that I know!
I will admit: of all 4AD artists, my knowledge and appreciation is thinnest on the flagship band.
And it isn’t because I don’t like Liz Fraser. I love her on Felt’s “Primitive Painters”. The 120 Minutes “hit”, “Carolyn’s Fingers” is aces. I’ve just never known how to find the on-ramp. Can’t wait to spin this list a couple of times today!
Very much agree. Elvis Costello is a household name, but now I consider myself a fan. Thanks @divedivedive !
I knew who Elvis Costello was, I mean even if you’re not terribly familiar with his music you knew his as an icon right? The kinda silly Buddy Holly looking guy who named himself after The King. The thing is, I only got into Costello by accident, I got into one of those Columbia House ‘buy 15 CDs for 1 penny!’ kind of things, and just looking to round out my selection I picked out a greatest hits CD by Costello. I remember ‘I Want You’ was the last track and it blew me away. As you mentioned, there’s so much hurt and anger in that song, it almost felt like voyeurism listening to it. And I was hooked, started buying up his entire library and I’ve been a fan ever since. I see his show every time he comes near, which until recently has been pretty much annually.
I did kind of just drop the list without explanation, so if you want to jump in and hear without interpretation skip this part. But one thing I was going for with this list was to skip the obvious stuff, no ‘Alison’ or ‘Pump It Up’ though they are of course classics. ‘I Want You’ is in fact the oldest song on the playlist, from 1985’s ‘Blood and Chocolate’, and I moved forward from there. Costello has done some really great recent stuff and I felt like it deserved pointing out.
‘The Other Side of Summer’ did get some airplay as I recall, and I remember a music video with a heavily bearded Costello ranting at the camera. This is a somewhat typically ‘angry’ Costello song, but with a kind of interesting upbeat sound, almost Beach Boys-ish. I always liked the sound of it.
‘London’s Brilliant Parade’ is a slower paced song, may not be to everyone’s taste. I love the wordplay on this song, which is another typical trademark of Costello’s music. This one goes in to show another side of Costello’s library.
I included ‘Bedlam’ as yet another angle - you probably know that Costello is a big fan of country music, did an entire album of covers way back when. ‘The Delivery Man’ is one of my favorite albums of his, has some collaborations with Lucinda Williams, Emmylou Harris, lots of others. It’s hard to choose a favorite song from the album, I very nearly went with ‘The Judgement’ but I felt like we needed something to punch things up a bit here.
Last, ‘My Blue Window’ is kind of a B-side on ‘When I Was Cruel’, not one you’re going to hear much of but I’ve always loved it. It’s a sweet note to a loved one, someone who dragged you out of your shell, out into the sunlight.
Anyway, I could go on and on about Elvis Costello but I’ll try to cut it short (ish) here. Hope you like the songs.
I keep bouncing off this kinda music, which is frustrating, because several elements going on here really call to me – I’d love to hear McPherson snarling through a raspy punk anthem, for instance, and some of those echo-y, crunchy guitar tones in “You Must Have Met Little Caroline?” are very up my alley. And then the boppin’ baseline and ecstatic piano hit and somehow it all just comes off the rails. Which is weird, as I’d dig those elements well enough on, say, a Little Richard track.
In fact, when McPherson slows those down into a soulful, bluesy track with “A Gentle Awakening,” I’m suddenly way more onboard. “Bossy” veers country enough that it almost entirely loses me, while the front half of “Style (is a Losing Game)” comes back around to “Yeah, I could almost do this.” That slightly more emphatic chorus there is good stuff, too – but can we get the pianist to scale it back a notch next time around? ;-)
I can’t say I’m any closer to liking this particular vein of music than I was to start with, but it’s always good to get a guided tour through unfamiliar territory – thanks for the intro!
King Crimson’s always danced around the edges of my musical tastes. I love proggy weird shit and 70s rock in general, and a couple of their songs have obviously bubbled up into the larger cultural consciousness enough that I recognize them easily, but nonetheless, I’ve never made a concerted effort to listen to them. Hell, my gf, way more of an electronica and pop fan, is a bit of a prog nerd on the weekends and got into KC enough to go see them in concert a few years back. So this is a mostly new journey for me!
“Pictures of a City” – love that you’re starting us off jazzy and funky. Not what comes to mind when I try to dredge up what I think KC sounds like, but then there’s that searing rock layered right in, too. And then it just spins off into this atonal breakdown; now there’s how I imagine this band sounding, hah. And just when you thought we were done, nope, here’s that pounding chorus again, revving off into the sunset. “In the Wake of Poseidon” is immediately more contemplative, with those weird ass drum time signatures hiding behind some Moody Bluesian symphonics; I dig it.
“Cirkus” mashes together the jazzy weirdness with some of that synthy/stringsy atmosphere in a thoroughly weird way that feels very on-brand, albeit not exactly easy listening. A little weird-for-the-sake-of-weird with almost Monty Python-esque excess that I dig a lot. I know, weird comparison. I’m tired, leave me be. “The Letters” and a lot of the opening of “Islands” just passed me by; I literally think the volume on this album is just lower on Spotify. Cranking up a few minutes into the latter, it’s winding it’s way around to going somewhere with aggressive patience. This is, in truth, a prog tendency I’ve never really been able to entirely get behind. Eight minutes in, as a trumpet forlornly sojourns in search of a goal and the drummer remembers he’s got an instrument, we build to something . . .! Nope, tricked ya, let’s fall down into silence with weird noises for three minutes instead :). But seriously, it really was lovely when it got going.
That feels like a perfect ending for a King Crimson playlist, hah. Definitely lots of bits I like, and lots of bits that make me roll my eyes a bit, albeit with a deep fondness in the gesture :) – Thanks for the proper introduction to an interesting era of their history!
A bunch of this playlist wasn’t available in the US, frustratingly, and some of the albums aren’t on Spotify, either, so I went around and pieced it together as best as I can. Never heard of this group, but the description sounds like something I could dig into, absolutely. I never dive fully into trip hop, but always tend to like what I skim from the genre’s surface, for instance.
Opening of “What Sound” is lovely. Peaceful, and loving the singer’s tone. Then suddenly comes a beat and an almost faux-guitar sample in a major change of pace. As the synth-strings swoop back in, I’m back onboard, though. Alright, think I’ve got an idea where we might be going. The opening strings on “Bonfire” give me Vitamin C vibes for a sec, but swiftly we’re going somewhere different with that great vocal. Plaintive and warbling, but with obvious power waiting. As sounds layer in, the song builds potently. Good stuff. “Gabriel” also starts off slow and thoughtful. As it builds up, we get almost some rock-like notes here; definitely a 90s alternative vibe, which is a change of pace, but a cool one.
“Nobody Else” clips us forward a decade or more, to Backspace Unwind. Curious to see if I can easily identify any major evolution or changes in sound. Some dubstep-influenced basslines suggest yes :) Still good variance in pace and intensity, and the singer’s voice feels matured, but exquisitely controlled as always. The closing is wonderfully haunting. “Back to Beginning” pulls in some unusual male vocals, but the duet is lovely and layered, with some novel time signatures driving along in the background. Almost proggy, hah. Has a bit of an epic feel that’s super in my wheelhouse.
Overall, definitely meshes well with my preferences in this category of music, and I’ll be adding Lamb to my internal catalogue of trip-hop and adjacent artists to jam to when the mood strikes me, going forward. Thanks for the intro!
Fair points, all of this.
And honestly, it’s why I kind of bounce pretty hard off McPherson’s first solo album. It’s just a little too hidebound to roots rock/rockabilly/Americana conventions.
I think it was his second album, the un-creatively titled Let the Good Times Roll that someone suggested on these forums about 5 years ago. And I played the first song – the title track – honestly not expecting much. Really not expecting anything.
And so that song sounds good. It’s competently rendered. I sort of like it.
But then it comes out of a middle 8 with this line:
“I drift away, underneath auspicious stars”
And holy what? That’s not a line I expected in what I assumed was pickup truck music. So I go do a little reading on McPherson, and it turns out he grew up WAAAY out in the sticks in Oklahoma, but grew up listening to The Pixies and Public Enemy and 4AD bands and old school punk.
And now I’m interested. A dude playing a sort of Americana rock who can name you his favorite Tribe Called Quest songs? OK, that’s something different.
And that’s when I started hearing all kinds of weird awesomeness that McPherson puts into his songs. Like on “You Must Have Met Little Caroline”, it’s a weird little mid-tempo rocker…but then it breaks not once but twice for a descending piano thing that sounds like it’s from the Aquarium movement of Saint-Saenz’s Carnival of the Animals (a classical piece I only know because it shows up in movies and trailers all the time. :)) So that’s what I dig, really; it’s these little weird tidbits that sound almost David Lynchian that sometimes show up in McPherson’s tunes.
I also had forgotten just how jazzy this song feels. My initial reaction as a young teenager hearing this for the first time was that it was kind of a re-write of 21st Century Schizoid Man, but I think if it’s at all influenced by their earlier song, it’s a jazzier rewrite.
Mmmm, Devin Townsend. I’d be lying to myself if I said he wasn’t a top-5 all time favorite for me by this point. The middle chunk of his discography, from Ocean Machine through the end of the Devin Townsend Project era with Transcendence, includes several of my very favorite records, straight up. And the sheer breadth of Townsend’s output is absolutely an element that I adore. As evidenced here, a collection of songs Craig chose to highlight him with that I’d never have put forth myself.
“Lucky Animals” is just gloriously, stupendously weird and revels in its own over-the-top insanity. The lyrics are hot nonsense and the music video equally so, and the operatic soaring vox out of nowhere just feel wildly out of place until you remember – right, yes, Devin Townsend. Of course this batshit insane track deserves his epic stylings! And then we move on to “Juular,” a frenetic circus monkey / industrial ripper driven by a synthed out chorus of chanting pipe organ. And then in comes Dev’s howls, screaming like a demon from the pits, while the circus gives way to frenzied crushing death metal casca–oh, wait, no, the carnival is back, baby! As the track takes its final twisting turn with almost child-choir like melodies streaming along in the background, the entire thing just mounts into a rush of noise and the. . . poof. Next.
“Earth Day” from the Royal Albert Hall live DVD is already off to a great start, because the RAH set is perhaps the greatest live concert recording ever, hampered only by the absence of the incomparable van Giersbergen for the set. The live choir do a damn fine job subbing in here, though. This is a rollicking, almost rockabilly number at heart (I see you, @triggercut), which you’d almost say is off-brand for Townsend until you remember that literally nothing is. And then comes a pounding drum line and ecstatic choir and frenzied howls and somewhere Reverend Horton Heat begin nodding along approvingly. The call-and-response section around 7:30 is just fantastic, and then into a smooth final section. “March of the Poozers” from the same concert is easily the song’s best expression, in all its bombastic, pounding, military march glory. Complete with ballsack/butt alien cosplayers losing their absolute minds onstage. The space-suited choir marching along through the driving chorus again and again is just everything I love about Townsend. Bless this fucking song.
And finally, “Vampira,” almost a straight up rock song with absurd costumes and video production. Gotta love them skeletons! But seriously you’d almost mistake it for a classic rock banger until Devy’s howls come into play, but as always, there’s lots going on to love, including that core, killer riff, simple though it may be. And man, that main vocal melody in the verses is just fab.
Okay, I’ve talked up enough that I’m just gonna drop my favorite three-song sequence from DT’s appearance at the RAH. It’s a noticeably slower, more dramatic journey than anything Craig or I included in our playlists, but I think it’s Live Devin at his absolute pinnacle. Which is pretty amazing, when you consider that this trio came near the end of a 4+ hour concert during which he had a head cold. But the powerful vocals, potent emotions, and crushing guitar are just. . . fucking. . . . everything. Listen to it.
BT, when he was leading the wave of prog house before realising there’s more money in movie scores.
Love this idea. Here’s my first contribution. Satanic pop-metal!
Also @triggercut, challenge accepted on Tool.
This is great! I’m not too familiar so thanks for the Plaid.
Limited time and internet, so can’t do a full write up, but this is a tough call. Though ultimately I think I agree. Retinal Circus is tough though, it has Anneke, but over all Royal Albert has such a strong track list that even a few favorites missing (like War) are not enough to be usurped.
Also your song selection is superb. Bastard very nearly made my cut (Earth Day barely edged it)
I never got around to this talented man, I guess because I don’t listen to much music anymore, but if he has an album with Anneke, that’s all the motivation I need.
For sure; there’s clearly a lot more going on there. I wish I were more of a lyrics guy, cuz I suspect there’s some real gems to dig out. And yeah, those oldschool punk influences, I can feel that. It was definitely an interesting lens into the genre for me :)
If Retinal Circus were 10% more rehearsed and had come two albums later in Devin’s career (I’m a sucker for the last three DTP-era CDs, and RC only captures one of those), it’d be unbeatable. That said, the frenetic insanity of a gigantic projected Steve Vai head word-of-God narrating a modern day Everyman Bildungsromaning his way through his own ascent into adulthood through the power of loosely stitched together Devin Townsend songs, while a troupe of professional circus performers who had no idea what they were supposed to do and had had essentially no time at all to practice pantomiming their ever-bleeding lives out in the background of the whole thing. . . that is a tough combination of things to beat :)
Anneke features on just over half of Devin’s releases from 2009’s Addicted (under the Devin Townsend Project moniker) through 2019’s Empath (back under just Devin Townsend), with regular appearances on DTP’s Epicloud, the Z² double album (DTP’s Sky Blue + Devin’s solo Dark Matters), and DTP’s last album, Transcendence. Her voice pairs so well with his work, it makes my soul cry out in joy.
I loved reading your reactions–thank you! I should have mentioned, that Islands itself ends after about 9 minutes. They included a bit of the orchestra tuning up after a couple minutes of silence. Not exactly the greatest easter egg hidden track…
King Crimson covers a lot of sonic ground in their 50 years. They’ve always had a bit of a jazz/funk influence, but that stretch was the peak. I’ll have something heavier for them next :)