Anxiety said:

I think I already mentioned this on the Saint Etienne thread earlier this month, but I had 'Lipslide' for the longest time as a burned CD given to me by a friend. It was only recently that I bought an official copy (along with every other St. Etienne album still in print) when I realized what I had been missing out on. 'Lipslide' is pure pop bliss. In a retro-British-60's sorta way obviously.

Anxiety said:

gday

sextonseven said:

i thought it was kinda fluffy and lame at first, except for 'ready or not' anyway, but i came to really like it the more i reminded myself not to expect a saint etienne album and just groove on sarah's voice.

speak2amy said:

btw amy, i tried looking for that cd in hmv and they only had one cd (not the first one) which was an import for £22 !

i'm going to hunt it down.

TheFrogSpawn said:

wowzers! Im in Australia, ordered mine from Amazon.


* waits for freebies for giving Amazon a plug


... think I might be waiting an awful long time though

My top three this week:
- Caroline Herring - Twilight
- Grant mcLennan - Horsebreaker Star
- King's X - Faith, Hope, love

Emacipation Of Mimi

Anxiety said:

I can understand 'fluffy and lame'. "Aussie Soap Girl" fills that description all by itself. But when you throw Sarah's vocals over it, everything is right in the world.

I've only played 'Kelly's Locker' once. I need more listens to really bond wth it.

mainly the Venus still.Orbiting!

With a little of this!



Even tough I always skip "I'm so stupid"...I hate that song

and a bit of Kylie when she was a impossible princess



and 4 the purple records...



I listened again 2 my cdr copie of this album that i can't find nowhere in my country

the del-fuegos - 1rst album
24 gone - the spin
the blasters - collection
prince - gold experience
elvis costello - the delivery man
the true believers - hard road
parliament - the mothership connection
jah wobble and the invaders of the heart - rising above belam

GangstaFam said:

Have u listened 2 Towa Tei's new song with Kylie Minogue?...It's awesome!

1. The Return Of The Hellecasters - GREAT guitar-slamming real country music, not the fake stuff you see in the mainstream these days.
2. A bootleg of live KISS rarities.
3. Prince cd of the week - Gold, don't know why but if seems to fit me this week, kind of an uneven album as a whole but there are significant bright spots.
WHY IS THE DAMN TEXT SO SMALL ON MY SCREEN, I CAN BARELY SEE THIS STUFF!

Anxiety said:

The sad fact is that if I hadn't stumbled across a reasonably priced julian cope complilation a few weeks back which conveniently reminded me of how much I absolutely, completely adored that album at one time in my life, that record will still be collecting dust on my shelf. I can't believe I've neglected it for so long.


Anxiety, you're a High Llama's follower, right?
I bought Van Dyke Park's Song Cycle today, and i'm giving it a third listen right now. It's like the most extreme production elements of pet sounds or strawberry fields with traces of bluegrass and other forms of americana thrown in. It's pretty obvious that Sean O'Hagan spent a fair bit of time with this album - parts of Hawaii and Gideon Gaye sound like they were taken straight from some of the instrumental passages on this record.

damosuzuki said:

i was looking for van dyke park CDs this week, as a matter of fact!

there's one that kinda looks like the same cover art as high llamas' 'gideon gaye'...is that the song cycle recording? i'd really like to hear his stuff...after hearing 'smile' and taking note of the song he did with laurie anderson on 'life on a string' and discovering he did the opening music for 'pee-wee's playhouse', i'm intrigued.

damosuzuki said:

i love Safesurfer

Heavily played this week my me:

50 Cent- The Massacre
The Game - Documentary
Usher - Confessions

Riverpoet31 said:

I LOVE this album - in fact I mentioned in on the 'great unheard albums' thread on this site (if you're interested...http://www.prince.org/msg/8/142288).

I think it's one of the strongest albums I've ever heard - I love the Go-betweens, but song for song, I'd have to say this is better than any album that band ever released.

Anxiety said:

Actually, now that I'm expending a little brain power on this, I've come to the realization that it must have been you that planted the idea of buying this album in my head.

Some time back someone started a thread on this site about the high llamas (I think it was about the ending instrumental passage of 'literature is fluff' being the most beautiful one minute and ten seconds in the history of recorded music or something like that), and the conversation turned to how song cycle's cover resembled Gideon Gaye's. That likely was you (?) - you're the only person I can specifically recall ever mentioning the llamas on this site (things like that stick in my head for some reason).

Anyway, I've had song cycle penciled into my list of potential purchases ever since.

I think you'd probably enjoy this album - the songs seem a little fractured (quick changes in tempo and melody) and the arrangements slightly too busy at first, but already I'm starting to adjust to the oddness of it all, and I can hear some pretty great music here.

damosuzuki, i agree Horsebreaker Star by Grant Mc Lennan is in my altime top 10 of records, i like it more then the work of the Go-betweens because of the rootsy / semi-acoustic sound of it, and because of Syd Straws georgeous background vocals..

There is lot of music on this cd that is on the level / sounding like REM during Out of Time and Crowded House during Woodface, those two records sold millions. A shame Mc Lennans record only did get recognition by some music critizens, its a masterpiece, in my opinion.

Some other gems i listened to this week:
- Big Star (#1 record / radio city: a cd-reissue combining the two first albums of this powerpop-pioneers)
- Van Morrison - Common Sense (not one of his 'easy-listening' releases, but Haunts of ancient peace is ghostly and meditative, when the 15 minutes of Summertime in England are endearing, i especially dig Van Morrison declaiming "it just is!" over and over near the end of the song... splendid!)
- The Posies - Frosting on a beaster - not all tracks all great, but solar sister, flavor of the month and Definite door, are really delicious powerpop-cuts)
- And: right now listening to some 'e-muled' tracks on my PC: rare tracks by REM, Lyle Lovett, Matthew Sweet and Yousou n'dour (I love the net for giving us music )

Riverpoet31 said:

It is genuinely sad that he couldn't find an audience for this record, because it truly deserved to be heard. There's nothing difficult or obtuse about that album. Anybody could love it - it's loaded to the gills with quality songs that are played and sung perfectly.

I definitely think Neil Finn/Crowded House is a pretty fitting comparison - there's the same sort of emphasis on song craftsmanship. I'm less comfortable with your REM comparison, though I guess there are some surface similarities - they both have songs that could loosely fall under the banner of acoustic folk-pop.

dancerella said:

Yup! Can't stop playing this damn CD. "I salt n'pepper my mango!"

And I'm really warming up to Martha Wainwright.

New Order is pretty good. Very classic New Order style, but I'm not sure yet whether that's a good thing. The title track is beeeeeyutiful.

Sleater-Kinney's "Woods": Verdict is still out. Initial reaction is not great. The songs are GREAT, much less frantic than earlier stuff, which might win over some new fans, except: The production is HORRIBLE, too distorted. It's like they want to be the Stooges or MC5 or some other shit that no one acutally listens to!

damosuzuki said:

Second (or third?) that. You've made me wanna go dig through my tape box now!
[Edited 5/1/05 16:49pm]

MendesCity said:

No one really listens to Sleater-Kinney either, except for about 500 rock critics who march in step with Robert Christgau!

Edit - I have nothing against Sleater-Kinney, other than the fact I don't enjoy their music too much and generally feel critics give them a little more credit than they deserve.
[Edited 5/1/05 16:52pm]

damosuzuki said:

i think sleater-kinney is kinda oaty, myself. i'm sure they're very intelligent people who write thought-provoking songs and play their instruments quite well and have a passionate commitment to their band, but that doesn't necessarily make 'em interesting to me. but god bless 'em anyway.

Anxiety said:

Well, you're both being very level-headed so I can't argue too much. I can see why people don't like 'em. My BF, who's from Olympia, came to a ton of their shows with me, until one time he was like, "I really don't like their music. I don't care if they come from my hometown." Someone once described her voice as an unholy bleat, which is pretty funny and true.

But "One Beat" and "Dig Me Out" are amazing to me. It's that passion thing, as you said. That and the fact that they don't sound like any other band before or since. And that Janet Weiss is the most underrated drummer ever.
[Edited 5/1/05 17:01pm]

MendesCity said:

Glad to hear it, and I'm happy to discover that this album has made an impact with a few people around here. I've been a big Go-Betweens fan for years, but I never really paid attention to either Forster's or McLennan's solo records. I stumbled across this album in a second hand shop a few months back and bought it with no real expectations, and wound up being completely blind-sided by its excellence.

MendesCity said:

I'm not even sure what Anxiety means by 'oaty', but it sounds about right.

I've only heard Dig Me Out and Call the Doctor (I think??? I'm blanking on that second album title...). I definitely had an issue with her vocal style - generally I have difficulties with any vocalist who wails at the top of his/her range constantly. I did find some of the songs to be quite strong - One More Hour in particular is a track I can vividly recall to this day, even though it's been years since I've actually heard the song, which says something I suppose - but they overall they didn't strike me as being THAT unique. I thought they sounded a lot like Entertainment era Gang of Four with a little more distortion.

However, I do appreciate that this is a band that many people who take music quite seriously have taken to heart, so I ought to have been a little more respectful...
[Edited 5/1/05 17:21pm]

damosuzuki said:

well, by 'oaty', i mean that there's more jangle than melody, more subtext than concept, and lots of stuff that floats around in the music that could be illustrated than implied...that's probably not much help in defining what i mean, and i know it's a purely subjective thing to throw out there, but usually when i hear a band that sounds earnest and bland and more into the integrity of its mission than they are into making what i consider to be a decent effort to be colorful or engaging, the word i usually use for that is "oaty". like eating a handful of oats.