Archive of 2020-01-01 00:00:00

The one hundred eighty-sixth album: #186 Neil Young - After The Gold Rush

While Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's folk rock went for the more energetic, faster folk rock, Neil Young's album goes to the gentler country rock, not quite producing ballads but creating something simpler, perhaps at times sadder ("Only Love Can Break Your Heart" shows that) as well. There are comparative rockers, like "Southern Man", but even then those would be gentler songs for other bands. Lyrically, the songs are richer, with the aforementioned Southern Man commenting on racism, while After the Gold Rush tells a fairly vivid story. It's nothing fancy, but the album just works so well.


The one hundred eighty-fifth album: #185 Black Sabbath - Paranoid

I'm covering another Black Sabbath album pretty shortly after the first, with the band, it seems, already moving more into heavy metal. There are some absolute masterpieces in here that cover that, with Paranoid feeling like an immediate classic that gets followed by a quieter, simpler Planet Caravan that feels as trippy, just not as loud. I'm not sure the lyrics always extend that well - Iron Man isn't a literary masterpiece - but the music does enough to evoke a feeling that the lyrics feel easy to overlook in those place. This is probably where heavy metal comes out better - not as a single song, where its isolation makes it stand out, but in an album where it has time to build and relax. There's a good flow to the album, with some great moments in the song that sound better in context.


The eighty-fifth book: #129 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

The eighty-sixth book: #142 Alice Through the Looking-Glass - Lewis Carroll

After a few more books in order, I got a Lewis Carroll in to break up my Austens. I'm grouping the two Alice stories together as they are both fairly short and feel linked enough. They're technically the story of Alice as she explores these weird places, but its main focus is that it shows us these bizarre vignettes, situations with outlandish fantasy characters (most of which you know by now) that Alice travels between. Some carry from one to the other, but there's very little throughline to Adventures in Wonderland. Through the Looking-Glass has Alice travel to the other side of a chess board, but aside from the Queens' occasional appearances, each square is its own story and place.

That's not a criticism, it's a view into one man's imagination, clearly inspired by the people and toys around him as he was telling these stories. I don't know the exact inspirations behind them, but it feels like he put in jokes into short stories that he collected and built a single story out of, with some crossover characters and references at the end. It's a bit more structured in Through the Looking-Glass, but seeing these different situations is the most appealing. It occasionally makes you think, but at the same time, there's not much point to trying to find too much meaning in it - and here, that's just fine.


The seventy-sixth classical recording: #715 Marcel Dupre - Symphonie-Passion

A purely organ-based piece is always going to sound a bit more ominous, and the way this piece leads off, with almost discordant, dark notes played almost at random, adds to this unsettling feeling. Part of this remains, but at the same time it provides a contrast to the second movement, the nativity, which has a lighter melody through it as well. Knowing the basic subject, the four movements become easier to pick out and place, with a natural progression that stays ominous while conveying their meaning - it's there to impress for the most part, although the resurrection itself starts telling even more of a story, with its slow, gentler start, staying sombre but not necessarily as imposing. It's a piece that goes from unsettling to affecting in half an hour, one that needs to grow on you but was effective for me once it does.


The one hundred eighty-fourth album: #184 Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Deja Vu

After I enjoyed Stephen Stills' self titled album, his next collaboration is one I'm looking forward to listening to here. The album gives more of that, some powerful rock songs that are more personal and impactful - louder, but not a screaming match. It's impactful, helped by the great performances of the band, the harmonies sounding beautiful and the whole album feeling perfected in all places. Whether it's the simple Our House or agonizing Almost Cut My Hair, there's craft that's gone into each of them and I can see how they might have reached the 800 hours in the studio needed to really make this work.


The eighty-fourth book: Mansfield Park - Jane Austen

I'll be honest, Mansfield Park was my least favourite of the Austen novels so far. Her first two books were great reads, with strong female protagonists (for their time) who worked to make their own destiny. I wouldn't say it was filled with action, but they drive it. On the other hand, Fanny Price is more passive, put into a position in life and accepting the virtuous, good path. It feels like a callback to earlier epistolary novels and their female characters who have everything happen to them.

It reads a bit as a morality, with Fanny Price inside it but mostly acting as an observer and mouthpiece as the protagonist with the right morals, but I didn't find much in there that actually endeared me to her and everything going on around her fell flat because she was so passive - I was waiting for that to switch, but it simply never happened.


The one hundred twenty-seventh TV show: #882 Winners & Losers

I'm struggling to figure out how I feel about this show, and it's the different sides that feel so frustrating. There's a premise here that sounds good - four losers in school come back for their reunion and decide to share a lottery ticket. That ticket wins eight million dollars that they split (with some drama here, as always) as it transforms their life. They're now winners, at least supposedly, but are they really?

It's a decent premise, but while not quite abandoned, the changes I'd expect in their lives - how do other people treat them, for example, or what happens if they spend too much and still need to watch their finances - don't really materialize. Yeah, they can buy their own place and don't have to go for a promotion at work, but mostly it plays out like a soap where none of the characters end up worrying about money. If they just didn't mention it, it would be like any other soap story.

With that, some of the characters don't stay as compelling. Francis is an amazing character, played perfectly, and Sophie's arc in the first few episodes makes her a lot more likeable. On the other hand, Jenny is well played and likeable, but the story feels quite cliche. It just never really connected in a way that became interesting.

The whole thing never quite delivers on its premise and sadly it goes in a direction that doesn't work for me. There are bits that I'd love to see more of - Francis especially - but on the whole it doesn't feel worth going on with how little actually changes.


The four hundred and ninety-third song: Ambition - Subway Sect

Ambition makes for a decent punk song, with the British punk sound, the hard guitars and synthesizers and driving melody. It feels like quite a standard punk song, fun but not something that really jumps out specifically.

The four hundred and ninety-fourth song: Hong Kong Garden - Siouxsie & The Banshees

Another (post) punk that materialized from fans around the Sex Pistols, Siouxsie and the Banshees create a song that feels a bit weird now as it uses a lot of Chinese influences in a now insensitive way. On the other hand, the spirit is there and the song feels a bit more crafted than other punk songs, with more of a build up and follow up.

The four hundred and ninety-fifth song: Being Boiled - The Human League

Electronic music is still incredibly experimental at this stage and the beeps and bloops with lyrics over them feel like a video game sound track, creating an odd experience that make it unsurprising that early audiences didn't take to it. It's thin and odd, not bad, but such a mental shift that it's hard to immediately take it in.

The four hundred and ninety-sixth song: Rock Lobster - The B52’s

With new wave come more bizarre songs and Rock Lobster, describing a party of sea animals. It's bizarre and eclectic, the sounds accompanying the story telling adding to the bizarre feeling while the melody helps make you smile. It's bizarre but entertaining and just keeps putting me in a good mood. It's a lovely surprise to get here.

The four hundred and ninety-seventh song: Roxanne - The Police

Roxanne moves to quite a different place and the reggae-influenced vocal stylings add a lot of emotion to the song's dour music and setting. There's a lot of desperation in the song in the naivety of the singer as it goes on. This is a classic, with a theme that seems to have endured, and it remains that way here, with a weird way of showing emotion that I might not otherwise have seen.

The four hundred and ninety-eighth song: Another Girl, Another Planet - The Only Ones

While I'm not sure I agree with the idea that this is the greatest rock song ever recorded, there is something good about this track that works well. It's got a good chorus, the lyrics aren't complex but work really well and the improvised, longer interludes works quite nicely here to set the tone.

The four hundred and ninety-ninth song: Germ Free Adolescents - X-Ray Spex

In a section of the list filled with new wave and punk rock, this feels slow, though not quiet. There's a fairly mellow beat underlying the similarly relaxed lyrics. Her voice is great, but feels a bit odd and out of place. There's something in the song that drags you along, but it doesn't necessarily give you any other feelings. It's odd, lovely to listen to, but frankly a bit bizarre.

The five hundredth song: Runnin’ with the Devil - Van Halen

The other side of this is that we get pushed towards hard rock, with Van Halen giving it a good showing. They sound good here, with an energetic performance that comes with the required screams and loudness, but playing and modulating it so it doesn't always come at you and the different elements get their break throughout. It's a good, powerful song that really works to give a big finish to 1978.


The one hundred eighty-third album: John Lennon - Plastic Ono Band

John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band is the first post-Beatles album by a former member on the list, although both George Harrison and Paul McCartney released in the same year and probably before this - a victim of the book's ordering. It is an interesting point of view - John Lennon always felt like the more introspective writer of the McCartney-Lennon duo and it shows through here, with songs that all feel personal on some level, from his childhood, reflections on Beatles fame and reflecting on the changes in society. While the album still drifts into avant garde rock, tracks like Working Class Hero hit the spot far more and these folk tracks and influences help make this album feel like one that's more personal.

That doesn't mean that's all, and Well Well Well is a longer, hard rock track that gets more aggressive, but on the whole the album is calmer, contemplative, not as experimental, but more of a journey through John Lennon's feeling. It's an album of growth, that might not hit you as personally as much as others might, but works as a good statement.


The one hundred eighty-second album: #182 Stephen Stills - Stephen Stills

I think the albums of the various variations of super groups Stephen Stills have been in have generally been fairly good, the type of folk rock that tends to connect. Stephen Stills' self-titled album starts Love The One You're With hits the right spot straight away, an up tempo folk rock song that connects immediately and works to set up a good album. It's a positive enough message that suits the music.

The happier feel of the music continues - avoiding the maudlin sound folk tends to get, without the anger from hard rock, the other genre this is based on, and it's an encouraging, exciting album that really works for me. It's thoughtful, but not miserable, and that's what makes this a lovely album.