Jordana / Classical Notions of Happiness

OK. OK. Front loading the positives: it is a good title, a good look, a few pleasant tunes, an occasionally interesting lyric (mostly the more awkward ones..."What about your mom? How about your cat?"  - a sense of an individual at work albeit one at war with the temptation of acceptance and fashion and success. Which is a shame. On the whole it mostly sinks with little resistance into a bog of cliche. Jordana might find a way out but now it is merely OK. OK? 

M Takara & Carla Borega / Linha D'Agua

When sleeve notes do you no favours (jeez they have "a near telekinetic understanding"). This has got some moments when it gets more untethered and goes-a-searchin, like on the final track but again it is another album long on atmos and intros that lacks pretty much anything else and or much that would bring me back for a second helping. I guess it might lure people who haven't yet heard Can or The Boredoms do it better, deeper, longer. 

 

Anthony Shadduck Quartet / Double Quartet

This kind of hangs where you want it to hang for a while. Then falls away into nearly nothingy jazz tootling. Perfect coffee shop muzak. Sadly pointless.

Yves De May / Local Subjectivity

Heard this again after a few years. At certain moments in the day, it is still really nice even though it troubles me how easy it would be to play in the coffee shop on the corner (this is quite a common and useful check I run through my critical head), Go away bad thought. It is fine. 

  

Miaux / Black Space, White Cloud

And after the neg vibes purge, here are some simple goodies. Love the back story and atmos on this but that would not be enough on its own. So, yeah, very simple pleasures but let us take them where we can get them, eh?

The Girlpope Lesson

This might let something or other leak out and I SOOO want to avoid this being another music-is-the-soundtrack-to-my-life blog (where the life is clearly the MAIN feature and fuck I have done that!) but I saw Girlpope a bunch back east a long time ago and their name was good and they had lots of energy and even a few tunes you could recall and even sing along to. Then what happens? Must have been some of their earliest shows. I noticed later how they popped up in all kinds of silly settings supporting bigger bands, trying to make it, desperately, desperately, desperately trying to make a job out of joy. And I only pick them out now because they stand for a billion provincial bands. Harmless, cute, capable of a few moments of diversion for kids who don't get to see that much or who just need something to hop around to when they are making out or getting wasted. It is a service of a kind. And then this. A title that Ween or Weezer might like (I don't know, I smiled). Cover design left to your buddy...oh dear. Then the music...must have fallen for some of it myself cos I didn't think so badly of em once....of course it is derivative and everything sounds like take number four...and it is anaemic and strained...but it also sounds so depserately, desperately, desperately desperate...like your fave pet dog running around the yard trying to prove she is ok when you are about to take her to the...V E T S. Is it important to investigate these feelings? I said this time I will do the uncomfortable stuff and say what I HATE (that is easy in a way)...but the H U G E   F  A  T  middle of ordinary is where the real pain is. 

Jay T Yamamoto / Lo-Fi

I like what this label Cassette Art Classics does. I am really glad it exists. I occasionally listen to the stuff they drop and generally listen. When I do, it is just once in BGM mode while doing something else. I admire people who can attend to it properly and attend to its preservation...I think. I guess they are all boys-men doing this and buying this. Jay T Yamamoto is the right side of alright, the pick of the releases I've heard so far on CAC. It is easy to process and file away and I am not sure it contains a single surprise if you know this terrain but there are cool things along the way and it is pretty eventful. Side B when the dogs and high choirs come in is the best bit. I wonder if I am the only person in the world to review it. I will come back to CAC for more and won't know why exactly but the covers and the world they are part of are worth a look. 

Backlog

I am going to go through stuff that was sent to my old blog - some of which I've reviewed elsewhere - people were still sending me links for months after I stopped posting. Lots of good and bad to share and quite a bit that has not been covered much in other places especially things from the MOUNTAINS dropped thru Bandcamp.    

Sweet Whirl / Something I Do

Another thing pushed my way - I am toooooooo passive that way sometimes - with conviction and enthusiasm. I could see why it would fill a hole. It is sympathetic and stretchy and pliable enough to sound like its sentiments extend to YOU...yes YOU...and I think it is quite sincere...but until the final refrain "loving you is just something I do"  - which is direct and unfussy and I like the way it leans on the vernacular without breaking it - but its effect is lost because the only good bit is put back to the end of a laboured song that is flattened by its over produced under production (you know the way) and weary of-the-moment (that moment now being five years long) Lana-lite vocals. I told her, "Has potential though" - and this time I wasn't lying!!

Zach Phillips / Bezoar

I am so behind with stuff. Luckily I always put things that look interesting to one side knowing I will get back to them eventually sometimes I even drop reviews in comments and other places. This is an example of that. Pretty darn shocked to see this dropped in DECEMBER 2019!! Anyway I am here now and even getting to a second listen - Zach Phillips' songs and arrangements always reward a few listens - it lives up to the highest Zach standards. Small, modest, slightly derailed pop music with a dressing of Mayo Thompson phrasing.   

Other Lives / For Their Love

This could have been difficult for the old me. See my friend LOVES this band and insisted I listen to their "acclaimed" new album. And I did. To the end. Sadly....tt sounds like what it is: a lot of time, money and effort (God hear that effort) being thrown at very thin excuses of songs. I don't know how but it manages to sound smug and apologetic at the same time. I told my friend that rich people make lousy records because they don't need to find cheap creative solutions....y'know, they can just bring in a choir or a brass section or hire someone to fix the mix...she came back with a very clever retort that I am not going to reveal until I find a clever answer.

Ohmme / Fantasize Your Ghost

Makes me a little sad to find something this digestable, this unremarkable on a label like Joyful Noise. Like a lot of modern records it lacks a degree of madness and vulgarity and the will to avoid some easy tropes of the age or offset them with some politely positioned experiments. It is not bad but not bad is not good enough. I want them to be better. I want them to try harder to be better. It feel like things came to them too easily. Plenty will like it but plenty like a lot of things. 

New seeds

This morning I was driving and thinking but not thinking and my mind went up and down the freeway and at one point I was trying to remember how this sounded and then trying to remember to remind myself to play it once I got home and I actually remembered and impressed myself in the process.

Too small a thought? Maybe. But these are my pages now.

Here we go AGAIN

OK. Here we go again.
I am able to do many things.
Maybe I can even sustain a blog for a bit longer than the last time.

I will start positively with a few random favorites but THIS TIME I will not walk away from writing negative or ho-hum reviews. I felt pressure before to like everything bands sent me or tried hard to find something positive in them. I know I am older. Maybe I am a bit wiser. We'll see. Go easy if you find me.