Category Archives: Great albums

Great albums, Great Bands, Music Calendar

September 14: Arcade Fire released Funeral in 2004

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funeral

September 14: Arcade Fire released Funeral in 2004

Funeral is the debut full-length album by Arcade Fire, released on September 14, 2004 in North America. It was given its title because several band members had recently lost members of their families: Régine Chassagne’s grandmother died in June 2003, Win and William Butler’s grandfather (swing musician Alvino Rey) in February 2004, and Richard Reed Parry’s aunt in April 2004.

“These are songs that pump blood back into the heart as fast and furiously as it’s draining from the sleeve on which it beats, and by the time Chassagne dissects her love of riding “In the Backseat” with the radio on, despite her desperate fear of driving, Funeral’s singular thread is finally revealed; love does conquer all, especially love for the cathartic power of music.”
– James Christopher Monger (Allmusic)

Arcade Fire – Rebellion (Lies)(Rock en Sine, 2007):

The album produced five singles. The most successful, “Rebellion (Lies)”, peaked at #19 on the UK Singles Chart. The album was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2005 for Best Alternative Music Album. It received wide critical acclaim and topped many year-end and decade-end lists. According to the website Metacritic, the album had the second most appearances on end-of-decade Top 10 lists. In the updated version of Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, it was ranked at #151.

Arcade Fire – No Cars Go (Glastonbury,2007):

“Even in its darkest moments, Funeral exudes an empowering positivity. Slow-burning ballad “Crown of Love” is an expression of lovesick guilt that perpetually crescendos until the track unexpectedly explodes into a dance section, still soaked in the melodrama of weeping strings; the song’s psychological despair gives way to a purely physical catharsis.”
– David More (Pitchfork)

 

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Bruce Springsteen, Great albums, Music Calendar

September 11: Bruce Springsteen released The Wild the Innocent and the E-street Shuffle in 1973

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wild

September 11: Bruce Springsteen released The Wild the Innocent and the E-street Shuffle in 1973

“…Springsteen is obviously a considerable new talent.”
– Ken Emerson (January 1974, Rolling Stone Magazine)

Great Bruce Springsteen album!

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Great albums, Music Calendar, Randy Newman, Singer Songwriter

September 10: Randy Newman released Good Old Boys in 1974

Randy_Newman-Good_Old_Boys-Frontal

September 10: Randy Newman released Good Old Boys in 1974

“To me, someone who writes really good songs is Randy Newman. There’s a lot of people who write good songs. As songs. Now Randy might not go out on stage and knock you out, or knock your socks off. And he’s not going to get people thrilled in the front row. He ain’t gonna do that. But he’s gonna write a better song than most people who can do it.

You know, he’s got that down to an art. Now Randy knows music. He knows music But it doesn’t get any better than “Louisiana” or “Cross Charleston Bay” [“Sail Away”]. It doesn’t get any better than that. It’s like a classically heroic anthem theme. He did it. There’s quite a few people who did it. Not that many people in Randy’s class.”

– Bob Dylan (1991)

Good Old Boys is the fifth album by Randy Newman, released 10 September 1974 on Reprise Records. It peaked at #36 on the Billboard 200, Newman’s first album to obtain major commercial success. The premiere live performance of the album took place on October 5, 1974, at the Symphony Hall in Atlanta, Georgia, with guest Ry Cooder and Newman conducting the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

This is one of the best records about “The South” that has ever been made. Randy Newman is cruel but, oh, so witty.

Mark Demming (Allmusic.com):
“ The album’s scabrous opening cut, “Rednecks,” is guaranteed to offend practically anyone with its tale of a slow-witted, willfully (and proudly) ignorant Southerner obsessed with “keeping the n—–s down.” “A Wedding in Cherokee County” is more polite but hardly less mean-spirited, in which an impotent hick marries a circus freak; if the song’s melody and arrangement weren’t so skillful, it would be hard to imagine anyone bothering with this musical geek show.
…
Good Old Boys is one of Newman’s finest albums; it’s also one of his most provocative and infuriating, and that’s probably just the way he wanted it. “

Rednecks:

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Great albums, Music Calendar, Tom Waits

September 8: Bone Machine by Tom Waits was released in 1992

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Bone Machine 1

September 8: Bone Machine by Tom Waits was released in 1992

“it ain’t no sin, to take off your skin and dance around in your bones”
~Tom Waits

From Wikipedia:

Released September 8, 1992
Recorded Prairie Sun Recording, Cotati, California
Genre Rock, experimental rock, blues rock
Length 53:30
Label Island
Producer Tom Waits

Bone Machine is a critically acclaimed and award-winning album by Tom Waits, released in 1992 on Island Records. It won a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album, and features guest appearances by Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo, Primus’ Les Claypool, and The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards.

Bone Machine marked a return to studio material for Waits, coming a full five years after his previous studio album, Franks Wild Years (1987). The album is often noted for its dark lyrical themes of death and murder, and for its rough, stripped-down, percussion-heavy blues rock style.

Tom Waits

Recording & production:

Bone Machine was recorded and produced entirely at the Prairie Sun Recording studios in Cotati, California in a room of Studio C known as “the Waits Room,” in the old cement hatchery rooms of the cellar of the buildings.

Mark “Mooka” Rennick, Prairie Sun studio chief said:

[Waits] gravitated toward these “echo” rooms and created the Bone Machine aural landscape. […] What we like about Tom is that he is a musicologist. And he has a tremendous ear. His talent is a national treasure.

Waits said of the bare-bones studio, “I found a great room to work in, it’s just a cement floor and a hot water heater. Okay, we’ll do it here. It’s got some good echo.” References to the recording environment and process were made in the field-recorded interview segments made for the promotional CD release, Bone Machine: The Operator’s Manual, which threaded together full studio tracks and conversation for a pre-recorded radio show format.

Artwork:

The cover photo, which consists of a blurred black-and-white, close-up image of Waits in a leather skullcap with horns and protective goggles, was taken by Jesse Dylan, the son of Bob Dylan. He wears this same outfit in the video for “Goin’ Out West” and “I Don’t Wanna Grow up”.

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Great albums, Ryan Adams

September 5: Ryan Adams released Heartbreaker in 2000

ryan adams heartbreaker

September 5: Ryan Adams released Heartbreaker in 2000

“On Heartbreaker, I had to sing those songs. I drank the way I did those songs. I ate the way I did those songs. I communicated the way I did those songs”
~Ryan Adams – Spin Dec 2003

“I don’t know if Heartbreaker was influential as a record so much as the idea of it. There weren’t a lot of people out there doing that kind of thing. That’s all. But it was a terrible price to pay because I’ve never lived it down. I don’t regard that record as great art. I’m not even sure I put the right songs on the record. There are a lot of tracks that didn’t make it which with hindsight should have been on there.”
~Ryan Adams – Uncut Jan 2004

 

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