This is the third album from Sigur Rós. The album was released in 2002. All eight songs on the album were released with out titles. The first half of the album is lighter and more open where as the later half of the album is a bit darker. It has bee written that the album starts and stops with a “click” of distortion. For me that is not specific enough. It is more specifically a click of guitar distortion. I feel that this description is more musical. If it were say, a click of white noise it would be some what if a let down to me. There is also, on the CD, 36 seconds of silence at the end of the fourth track. This is to split up the two halves of the album. There was a single released from this album. Track number one. The name of this song is Vaka. The single was released on both a 3” CD and a 5” CD. The 5” version of the single came with a DVD with a few music videos that the band put together about their thoughts about certain aspects about the state of the world. The videos are very touching. The tracks on the single are listed as Untitled 1, Untitled 9A, Untitled 9B, and Untitled 9C. I thought that it was unique to get extra tracks that were not on the full album that could have been. This is usually the way that a b-side works but to have them labeled as they are brings those tracks closer to the album for me some how. The album as a whole is brilliant. It is very atmospheric, more so than their previous album. It is an album that almost anyone could fall asleep to. I know of one person that seems to do so every night. I can’t seem to fall asleep to any album for more than a month. I need to change the music up every now and again. Then again I haven’t fallen to sleep with an album playing for months now. I find falling asleep with ear phones in annoying and painful at times. I would prefer to have a stereo on in the bedroom if I am going to listen to music there. When I was growing up I use to listen to music through my boombox. I listened to cassette tapes in the 80s. I had a select few tapes that I would listen to every night. I would only get to hear half of an album but I would usually be asleep by the second track. I would have to keep the volume down because my father claimed that he could hear the bass coming through the walls. The speakers in my boom box could not have been larger than 3” in diameter and they were contained in a hard plastic enclosure. They hardly produced any bass at all. I am sure that he was hearing something but it seemed ridiculous with all of his hearing loss over the years that he could hear anything at all. I think he just wanted something else to complain about.
Steely Dan – Aja
This is the sixth album from the band. It was released in 1977. The songs Peg and Deacon Blues were released as singles from the album. Peg is an excellent song with great instrumentation. The guitar solo in particular had seven session guitarist try out before Jay Graydon’s solo was picked to be the best of all seven. He worked on that solo for another six hours before it was deemed good enough to be recorded on the track. Deacon Blues is about a feeling at a specific time for the group. It is also about winners having a great name. The losers then feeling left out give themselves a great name in response. It helps to have a special name sometimes (PurelyHim for example). I also remember hearing the song Black Cow frequently. I am not sure if I heard it on the radio or if my mother had this album. Either way that song stands out to me as a third single even if it was not officially released as a single. This album is quite short but there is also so much tonality and instrumentation on this album that it is just great with out adding more to the album. I do remember that my mother had the Gold greatest hits album from the group and that this album has Black Cow on it. This could be where I got the idea that the song was or should have been a single. I have always loved jazz and rock n’ roll music. This is a great fusion of the two of these genres and is probably why I am so drawn to the music form the group. The group has never been drawn to the heavy driving sound of the hard rock sound. They are just a nice relaxing group that, when you listen to the music, just seems to roll over you like the oceans waves on a nice sunny day. They are going to play at the state fair this year. I would love to go but I don’t think that I will have the money to go this year. They were here last year too but I did not find out until after the state fair was over. It is in an outdoor coliseum too so I would be subject to the weather too. I did find that my father-in-law had a copy of this album on vinyl in a standard format. It spurred me on to find a copy for my self. I found a copy of this album in a gate fold format. I sort of out did my father-in-law that way.
Travis – The Man Who
This is the second album from the band. It was released in 1999 but not in the US until 2000. Waiting To Reach You was the first single from the album and the first track on the album. The song was based on the chord structure for the song Wonderwall by Oasis. It also features the lyric “what’s a Wonderwall anyway?” The second single is called Driftwood. The song has great references to ways to help people. What the song is saying is to get up and do what you dream of but don’t be afraid to make mistakes. You can’t learn with out making mistakes. The next single from the album is called Why Does It Always Rain On Me? For me this song came off as depressing. In a time when I was already depressed I saw things like this song as something that would keep me down. I loved the song, I loved the whole album, but I was depressed and I couldn’t see a way to get out of the depression so I stayed there at the bottom of my created blackness and turmoil and enjoyed every dismal second of that depression. I did not want to kill myself because I liked where I was. I had locked everyone out and loved that dark pit of despair that I was in. Some my think that it was strange but I had my music and I had DVDs of MASH and The Simpsons to keep me company. I think that I lived there for about two years. It was until my now x-wife decided that she wanted a divorce that I decided that I should find a way to get out of the depression that was keeping me down. It did not save my marriage by any means but it saved my life. Moving on to the next single from this album. The fourth single was called Turn. It is a song about learning and passing on that knowledge along to future generations. This is something that mankind has become very good at to some degree. Some things get buried and others are brought forward. I think that we should strive to always bring the truth to bear. All in all this is a great album that can easily be misunderstood. I can’t recommend this album to every one but if you like mellow brit pop this may be the thing for you.
Foo Fighters – One By One
This is the fourth album by the Foo Fighters. It was released in 2002. The album was released in two different cover versions; both are black and white but reversed from each other; i.e. black on white and white on black. The song All My Life was the first single released from the album. The band decided that they wanted a harder or heavier sounding single to be released because of the more middle-of-the-road singles that had been previously released on the last album. This song went through a few changes before it got to what it is now. Dave Grohl said this about the song, “was originally an instrumental and it went through a few different versions. At first it was really dissonant and noisy. The middle section sounded like "Wipe Out" [by The Surfaris]. It was just nuts! We recorded the instrumental and I had no idea how I was gonna sing it. Again, that was another one that our manager said, "That's the song!" And we said, "Really? You think that's the one people will like?” The next single from the album is Times Like These. The song is very good. The song was also re-recorded as an acoustic version. It was aired in this format on the “adult contemporary” stations with fair success. The next song is called Low. This is a song that features heavily distorted guitars but is creative in that the song utilizes heavy left right transitions between two different distorted guitars. This is a great sounding song if not for the simplicity in the left right trade off. The fourth single from the album is Have It All. This song has a guitar riff that I wish that I would have thought of first. I love it. It is two different guitars overlapped and each playing something slightly different from the other. It works beautifully. The song itself is a little bit slowed down from the other singles from the album but still works. I remember one of my friends who were not into the Foo Fighters that found the first single. I was so surprised that he had no idea about the song considering it was from 2002. I also forget that this kid is was and will always be heavy into the Christian music scene. So, things that are common to me will usually be new to him. What really drives me nuts is that I know that the musicians that are a part of these bands are listening to the music that I know and love and are getting their influences from those bands that everyone else is listening to. All music is based on God’s influence; there and back again a musicians tail.
Julie Brown – Goddess In Progress
This is her first release in music. It is an EP released in 1984. Some of the songs on the EP are early works that would be re-recorded for the full album that would follow this EP. The first to songs on the EP were released as singles. The first was I Like’em Big and Stupid. This song was later re-recorded and used in the movie Earth Girls Are Easy. The second song is The Home Coming Queen’s Got A Gun. This song was featured on the Dr. Demento show back in the 80s. The next single from this EP is Cause I’m A Blond. This song was also re-recorded for the movie Earth Girls Are Easy. There is a whole scene in the movie dedicated to this song. The last song on this EP is called Earth Girls Are Easy. You can guess what movie it was used in. I was very excited to find this EP used in one of my favorite used record shops. I picked it up for my wife even though I wanted to hear the songs on them. It is a lot of fun to hear these songs even though I remember the re-recorded versions of them better.
That is all I have for now...
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