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Listening Post
I've been listening to several new albums lately and sadly most have sounded poor on first listening. I'm hoping that repeat plays will reveal their charms. Certainly that partially happened with the new Shack album this morning. Some songs still sound like they need a more distinctive melody to hold the interest but the likes of Soldier Man and Meant To Be are sounding better especially the bit in Meant To Be where it goes all Forever Changes with strings and horns. It does seems a bit obvious for Shack to be referencing Love again though.

Jeff Buckley's Live At Sin-e should have the motto 'why make a song 3 minutes when it can last 10?' scratched into the run out groove, if CD's had such a thing. In small doses this may be palatable and admittedly some of it is lovely but this scratched away some of the Buckley mystique for me. Grace is a great album, it's beautiful, impassioned and it rocks but most importantly is has focus, something Buckley's live performances clearly didn't have, at least at this stage. Some may see this freeform approach as a virtue and I may grow to love this album but on one listen I only found that Buckley didn't have as amazing a voice as I had thought with a lacking of clarity in tone which undermined the vocal gymnastics which he frequently attempts.

The Webb Brothers new self titled record is also sorely lacking so far, compared with Maroon, their last record. They've added another brother, Justin, to the band but my initial feeling is that they've lost the Everly style two part harmonies that sounded so great on Maroon. I'll have to go back and listen to that again though to confirm whether it really was such a big feature of the band. Again though, similar to Shack, I find it lacking in melodic hooks although repeat plays may bring these out. I don't feel so bad about it that it doesn't deserve a chance to improve.

Four Tet's Pause isn't disappointing me though. I had got and loved Rounds, and having read the review on Allmusic I thought I would give Pause a go, and it's great. It's instrumental and could almost be described as electronica but to be honest it isn't as simple as that. It's cut together from samples but the mix of instrumentation from trumpets, piano, acoustic guitar, skittering percussion and various string instruments from around the world all laid over beats turn this into something more. Whatever it is, it's beautiful.

Coming home this evening I was pleased to find the new Tim Christensen album waiting for me. I ordered it from Denmark on Tuesday night and it's here already. Well done CD-Skiven! Of course having listened to it this evening I'm disappointed after the greatness of Secrets On Parade. A few memorable tracks on first listen but again future listens, I hope, will reveal more.

This all seems rather negative about almost everything I've got recently. However, I'm interested to see if my opinion changes, and I suppose that having put my first thoughts down here I'll be able to look back and see what I thought. Anyway, often the records you end up loving are not the ones that grab you fast but rather the ones that reveal their charms slowly over time. 22:55

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This is where I amusingly change a Johnny Cash song title to mention ostriches
From an article in the Guardian (here) about Johnny Cash.

Witness the time when, at the end of the 1980s, he got so mad at a belligerent ostrich in the exotic animal park he used to have behind The House of Cash (his former museum, now office) that he took it on in a fight and ended up with his stomach and chest ripped open and five ribs mashed

Oh, to have seen that! Wonder what the ostrich did to make him mad? 21:22

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Ear Candy
New iPod top 10 to the right.

Bill Withers - Lonely Town, Lonely Street
This is the live version, a bonus track on Still Bill and I think it also appear on Live At Carnegie Hall. He's got a great voice and on this record proves you can be funky even with a pretty small band. Crystal clear recording for a live track.

N*E*R*D - Run To The Sun
Producers of the moment The Neptunes own band and this is the version from the original album before they re-recorded it with live instruments and it's great. Lovely how the iPod sometimes randomly segues such complimentary tracks back to back.

Cody ChesnuTT - Serve This Royalty
Another appropriate segue from the sprawling mixed bag 'The Headphone Masterpiece'. It is a bit long but I have a thing for overly ambitious eclectic sprawling double albums. Even one recorded on shit equipment in someone's bedroom.

The Everly Brothers - Yves
I just recently realised, having flicked through their 'Definitive Collection', how many great songs these guys recorded. Amazing. I haven't heard this one before but from the title you can gather it has a bit of French influence. Not a classic but not bad at all.

Todd Rundgren - Believe In Me
What an amazing talent and unrecognised, I think, by the wider world. This is from one of his earliest albums Runt and is one of his beautiful ballads with great harmonies. Only two minutes long.

The Walker Brothers - Fat Mama Kick
Okay. Haven't listened to 'Nite Flights' really yet but this is a Scott Walker song and he's off somewhere completely different from where he was headed on Scott 1-4. You can hear the seeds of the tracks on Tilt but let's not go there.

Cody ChesnuTT - She's Still Here
The iPod not being as random as I would like here. Listen to that tape hiss, nice organ though.

The Montgolfier Brothers - In Walks A Ghost
From another album I haven't heard yet.

Creedence Clearwater Revival - Run Through The Jungle
Thought I would check these guys out as they get so much respect from certain quarters. They've yet to really click with me though certainly some of the songs are pretty good. What appears to be most impressive is the number of albums they released in such few years. Their whole reputation rests on 2 or 3 years of work.

Guided By Voices - Awful Bliss
Must listen to this album properly (Bee Thousand). Prolific doesn't even begin to describe Robert Pollard. This is a fine 50 seconds of acoustic strumming. 22:31

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Music For Films
I've never really seen the point in film soundtrack albums as a genre to sit around and listen to. I can just about understand if you've seen the film and the soundtrack then evokes particular memories but to come to them cold is an unfulfilling experience.

I can also understand that particular pieces can be worthwhile listening to as any instrumental music can be but over a whole album, no. Most true soundtrack albums (as in the actual score rather than music from and inspired by)are made up of short pieces of varying length and by their nature are not written to work as standalone pieces divorced from their pictures, so what's the attraction?

This is off the back of purchasing the soundtrack to the Roman Coppola film 'CQ'. I've never seen the film but the soundtrack was written and recorded by a French band called Mellow whose first album I enjoyed and I was intrigued to hear what they would do with a soundtrack and certainly it's all very pleasant with a laid back 60's vibe that's all very groovy and fine for dipping into but for sitting down and listening to as a whole album it's never going to work. (Note to self: must beat this sentence for length and lack of punctuation sometime in the future)

As an aside, if you're looking for an album of 'music from and inspired by' that's actually worthwhile rather than a mere marketing exercise then pick up the soundtrack to Natural Born Killers. It was put together by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and is way better than the mess of a film that inspired it. 21:52

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