There are flashes of late Fugazi, TNT era Tortoise, Modest Mouse fury, My Bloody Valentine guitar wash, horn section slow jams a la Anathallo, Radiohead-esque effect pedal jams, and Arcade Fire’s indie stomp–sometimes in the same song. It’s a wild ride, and well worth it.
As I have mentioned before, despite all of my fascination with krautrock, shoegaze, post rock, electronica, folk, and the like, my musical center has never strayed far from emo.
Something about the sheer devastatingly self-immolating of it has always struck something in me.
Eric Clapton has said that towards the its existence, Cream’s live shows became competitions to see who could outdo one another. For all of the excitement and electricity on display here, the three egos are audibly firing on all cylinders.
It’s not rare for a record company to release a compilation after one of their best selling groups break up. What is rare is for a record company to release a compilation featuring no singles, which is exactly what happened here.
Cream followed up their 1967 masterpiece with this double album, which featured a disc of live recordings, and, strangely, zero Clapton compositions. But what it lacks in Clapton, it makes up for in scope. Continue reading
I’ve purchased, received, and installed my new phono cartridge, and I can now listen to records without the very real possibility of damaging them.
And, the first record onto the platter is Cream’s 1967 sophomore release, Disreali Gears, a masterful work of psychedelic blues that dominated rock and roll in the late 60s (see also: The Doors, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Pink Floyd, Steppenwolf, etc). There’s a whole mess of classic tracks on this record, including the still-ubiquitous Sunshine of Your Love, as well as mournful rocker World of Pain, bluesy opener Strange Brew, and psychedelic epic Tales of Brave Ulysses. Also of note is the ultra-psych SWLABR, an acronym for “She Walks Like a Bearded Rainbow” (this was 1967, remember). There’s also the blues traditionalism of Take It Back, and the psych-humorist pieces Blue Condition and A Mother’s Lament which close each side.
Then, I heard “Violet Hill” on the radio. This wasn’t the Coldplay I had known. This was bombastic and loud and violent.
I loved it.
So I listened to the album online, and finding it filled with brilliant textures (“Life in Technicolor”), carefully crafted guitar lines (“Strawberry Swing”), catchy melodies (“Lost!”), and Paul McCartney-style song cycles (“Death And All of His Friends”), I grabbed that fistful of cash and rushed out to the record store.
Yesterday, my wife bought this for me after finding it at a resell shop for 25 cents and remembering me mentioning their name. I mention this because my wife is rad, even if the album, APP’s first flop, is decidedly not so rad, especially in the shadows of the towering prog monoliths that made up the better parts of the Project’s discography.
Wherein Cocteau Twins find success across the pond. Blue Bell Knoll was the first of the group’s records to be given an American release, and the album itself sounds like a band stepping up their game to prove themselves to a wider audience.
Somewhere between Treasure and Victorialand, the Cocteau Twins’ drummer quit.
Rather than hire a session guy or put an ad out in the paper, they decided to make their record without one. Continue reading