Author: Nathaniel FitzGerald

Record #812: Aphex Twin – Selected Ambient Works 85-92 (1992)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Years ago, I purchased Selected Ambient Works, Vol 2. My attempts at listening to the monstrous triple-disc collection of untitled tracks proved fruitless. I eventually sold it, and when I transferred the blog from Tumblr to a standalone site, the original post didn’t even make it over.

As it turns out, I thought I was buying this one. 

I had always meant to fix that in the back of my mind, but never got around to it. But when my podcast cohost brought this album up in a conversation about avant-garde and experimental music, I decided to correct my error.

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Record #811: Autechre – Tri Repetae (1995)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Last week, while recording an episode on experimental music for my new podcast (oh yeah, I have a podcast now), I remarked that part of what makes Radiohead great is that they take the harsh weirdness of far more inaccessible bands and mold it into pop structures. “Radiohead would be the first ones to tell you, ‘just listen to Autechre,'” I said, and then I realized two things.

One: I didn’t know how to pronounce Autechre.

Two: I had never listened to them.

I promptly sought to correct that, and within half an hour of listening to their pioneering opus Tri Repetae, I ordered a copy. And now, I’m not sure which is harder to believe: that this record came out in 1995, or that humans had anything to do with its creation.

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Record #810: Drive Like Jehu – Drive Like Jehu (1991)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

1991 has been called “The Year that Punk Broke.” The success of Nirvana’s Nevermind led record companies to make a mad dash to sign all the noisy, abrasive, energetic bands they could find, leading to some absolutely bizarre major label deals for bands like Melvins, Smashing Pumpkins, and Jawbox. DIY stalwarts Fugazi purportedly turned down multiple million-dollar deals.

One of the noisier bands to land one of those deals was Drive Like Jehu, whose sprawling math-rock/post-hardcore masterpiece Yank Crime was somehow released on Interscope.

But Interscope wouldn’t have been interested had it not been for the success of their self-titled debut, which lacks none of the fury or ambition of its follow-up.

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Record #808: Can – Tago Mago (1971)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Few musical movements are as weird, wonderful, and influential as Krautrock, a collection of West German bands in the 1970s that pushed the boundaries of what music could actually do to its extremes. The movement had an incredible influence on post punk, progressive rock, new age, shoegaze, and the birth of post rock. The shape of modern, electronic leaning pop music can be traced back to Krautrock, specifically the synthpop pioneers Kraftwerk.

But perhaps no band in Krautrock was more influential than Cologne’s Can, whose sprawling jazz-and-funk jams, improvised vocals, psychedelic exploration, tape editing techniques, and ambient experimentation went on to define Krautrock and influence everyone from David Bowie to Radiohead to Joy Division to the Flaming Lips to Kanye West.

Among their monstrous catalog (they recorded ten albums between 1969 and 1979), most fans and critics agree that the pinnacle of their career was the trilogy of records featuring vocalist Damo Suzuki, which includes the criminally underrated Future Days, the seminal Ege Bamyasi, and this, the eldritch, immense Tago Mago.

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Record #807: Binding Spell – English Basement (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Last year, I started writing for a music site called Tuned Up. While combing through submissions for review, every once in a while I’ll strike pure gold.

One of the heftier nuggets recently was English Basement, a piece of psych-rock tinged post-punk from Binding Spell. While this year has seen absolutely no shortage of albums written in and about quarantine (my own band is going to have our own coming out one of these days), bandleader Roger Poulin brings a uniquely personal perspective set to a soundtrack of wobbly basslines, dancy rhythms, and stabby guitars.

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Record #806: Amy Winehouse – Back to Black (2006)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

In the summer of 2008, three of my best friends from college interned together at their church. Meanwhile, I was interning at a church in a city about 45 minutes away. Throughout the internship, two of them tortured the third, Josh, by singing the hook to “Rehab,” drawing scoffs every time.

The following semester, Josh and I were roommates, and I had drawn much delight from buying records that would annoy or confound him. His look of disgust as he asked, “what is this?” was almost as rewarding as the music itself.

One day, hoping to keep the prank going, I bought a vinyl copy of Winehouse’s Back to Black. To my dismay, he joyfully sang along with every word of the track that tormented him.

I sold the record a few months later, but not before it got its hooks in me. In the years since, I have wrestled with the choice to purchase another copy over and over. This copy in particular was in the “Buy it Later” section of my Amazon cart for months before I accidentally bought it alongside a bottle of conditioner.

Accident or not, I’m glad to have it back.

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Record #805: Cursive – Burst and Bloom (2001)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

In my perception, Cursive has had two distinctive characteristics. The first is Tim Kasher’s conceptual and self-referential lyrics, which really came to their own on Cursive’s Domestica. The second is the presence of a cellist, which marked The Ugly Organ and their two reunion albums.

In that perspective, this is the first release in their chronology that really sounds like Cursive to me before my recent deep dive into their discography.

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Record #804: Cursive – Domestica (2000)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

On paper, it shouldn’t have worked. An emo concept album about a failing relationship loosely based on the singer’s own divorce doesn’t exactly sound like a formula for a hit record.

Lucky for all of us though, Cursive’s Domestica manages to avoid all of the self-indulgence and clunky storytelling that too many concept albums fail to avoid. Instead, it shows a huge leap forward in both Tim Kasher’s songwriting and the band’s musicianship, leading to an undisputed emo masterpiece.

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Record #803: Cursive – The Storms of Early Summer: Semantics of Song (1998)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

After their Crank! Records debut Such Blinding Stars for Starving Eyes, Omaha natives Cursive joined up with the then-burgeoning Omaha record label Saddle Creek. In a few years time, Saddle Creek would become a staple of the underground emo-ish scene, enlisting such bands as Rilo Kiley, The Faint, and Bright Eyes to their roster.

Now, when people talk about Saddle Creek, Cursive is always one of the first bands mentioned. But on their second album, released just five years after the founding of the label, Cursive was still building their legend alongside their new label. And while it might not be remembered as one of their best works, The Storms of Early Summer: Semantics of Song is an important chapter in their mythology.

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