The five hundred and fifty-third album: #553 The Mekons - Fear and Whiskey
It's interesting how much country is included in this punk album, considering how it's felt the edgier rock genres moved away from it. There's a decent sound to it, but it feels like it doesn't quite fit - there's not as much conviction to the songs as I'd expect even if that's felt. As a combination, the two genres are a bit too much at odds for me to properly enjoy them.
The five hundred and fifty-second album: #552 Prefab Sprout - Steve McQueen
Musically, there's just a lot of well performed new wave to this album. It's quite a big production, there's a bit of punk still lingering in the background and the occasional effect that you can only pull off on an album and wouldn't work as well on stage. The main vocals aren't exceptional, but that allows for a larger focus on the lyrics, which poetically create a story that stays quite engaging with more depth than others. It works really well here.
The five hundred fifty-sixth song: In the Air Tonight - Phil Collins
There's a sadness and longing in the lyrics of this song that plays well with the unsettling musical choices in it - rather than a plain ballad, it applies a lot of effects on the vocals, creating an echo and what feel like shifts in location that become quite powerful as the track plays on. It means the appearance of the heavy drum track is underscored as much, really strengthening the sound of the lyrics in the mix.
The five hundred fifty-seventh song: Edge of Seventeen - Stevie Nicks
For a song about death and loss, there's a remarkable amount of energy in the lyrics, a feeling of being at peace with it even as the sadness is present in the lyrics as well. It's esoteric, allegorical and a nice amount of slightly off that works really well.
The five hundred fifty-eighth song: Via con me - Paolo Conte
Via Con Me is a track that I feel I should recognise, but I feel it's mostly from the use in a commercial somewhere than anything deeper. I've always like the sound of it though, the dark, gravelly Italian lyrics contrasted with some English lyrics that feel slightly off, a fake impression that doesn't really matter. The bridge adds to that, as well as the almost mumbled Italian lyrics contrasting with the English ones - a track that stays intriguing somehow.
The five hundred fifty-ninth song: Under Pressure - Queen & David Bowie
And then a song that I know well enough. It makes complete sense that Queen and David Bowie would work so well together, both from a similar glam rock perspective, and vocally Freddie Mercury and David Bowie support each other so well that it supports the message, an ethereal sound with something darker and more grounding. It still remains an incredibly powerful song.
The five hundred sixtieth song: Our Lips Are Sealed - Go-Go’s
Here we've got a strong, pretty good new wave song, While I don't want to reduce it just to gender, there's a different sound from the all-female band, a lightness a lot of bands going for an androgynous sound fail to entirely reach. It's very poppy, in one of those ways that feels nicely accessible.
The five hundred sixty-first song: Genius of Love - Tom Tom Club
Genius of Love feels defined for me by its oddness, an electronic, beeping track with some strange, distorted lyrics and some odd choice in their vocals. It's a song that doesn't give you much to hold on to, as every time I thought I'd settled in, the track changed it up again and gave me something odd. It's an experience for sure, one that's good but doesn't quite give you all you need to hold on to.
The five hundred sixty-second song: Ghosts - Japan
Ghosts is an apt title for the ethereal, distant nature of the track. While I found their listed album faded into the background, ambient more often than not, the unsettling nature of Ghosts keeps you on your toes far more as the track remains less accessible and more distant, the bells and other sounds feeling like they belong to a ghost story. The tension is present through the track, which is a miraculous sound in its own right.
The five hundred sixty-third song: Tainted Love - Soft Cell
Sometimes it really requires a specific artist's flair to elevate a song, and Tainted Love feels like it wouldn't work without Soft Cell's synth music and specific vocals - a little bit staccato to make it that much more unsettled and, I suppose, tainted. It's just incredibly strong and good to listen to.
The five hundred and fifty-first album: #551 Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms
Brothers in Arms is, for the most part, a nice and accessible pop rock album. It's mostly fast, quite upbeat, with some catchy lyrics and some good hooks. Some tracks deviate from that a bit - Your Latest Trick is far jazzier, for example - but there's a formula here that works quite well and is pretty straight forward. The more atmospheric pieces like Ride Across The River are as strong, a nice and gentle scenic piece, but the core pop rock is where the album stays strongest even when the experiments work well.
The one hundred and eleventh comic: #189 Gomer Goof
For me, Gomer Goof - or Guust Flater as I know it, or Gaston in the original language - is a childhood throwback for me. I loved the tales of the inept office worker/inventor and I read each of the albums I could find in the library. Even without knowing the office, it hit all the beats - decent gags, good interplay between who's on top, with our protagonist and nemesis/friend both coming out on top and there being some really nice moments in there. Reading it now, there's even some nice story build up through the gag strips - nothing too big, but it does feel like a consistent world it builds on. A lot of the comedy is unforced, coming from the established characters, who don't quite reach caricature level. It's actually pretty well balanced to read and while there's enough of a reset, Gomer Goof's laziness and inventions are nuanced enough that they don't come out of nowhere. It's a comic that still works quite well reading it many years later, and I enjoyed going back and reading some again.
The one hundred and ninth comic: #30 Barney Google & Snuffy Smith
The early comics list, as a result of the development of the medium, is dominated by newspaper strips. Barney Google is one of those that survived for over a century, although it shifted what it was about in a way that made it almost unfamiliar. The original are (by now) overdone gags based around Barney Google, with a lot of relationship jokes at first but evolving away from that. Snuffy Smith came in years later, but started to dominate the strip, as it became more of a yokel story set in the boonies, with the original character barely showing up. The hillbilly humour is even further removed from what I care for, and it feels like such a relic looking at it now, without moving much after the earlier larger shifts.
The one hundred and tenth comic: #347 Hagar the Horrible
In contrast, Hagar the Horrible comes in from a similiar angle, especially Barney Google's earlier city life, The daily gag strips aren't the best - again, there are a lot of known jokes, with the setting making it a bit more interesting as a contrast to the modern world. It's the longer stories that are more interesting, which there have been a few of from what I can tell. There's a lot of room for references, bu tthe longer format really helps set up the additional context for the humour.
The five hundred and fiftieth album: #550 Tears For Fears - Songs from the Big Chair
That this album features both Shout and Everybody Wants To Rule the Earth says it all - anthemmy songs with a clear chorus and some memorable lines. It's catchy, but with an ominous undertone at times that feels like it reflects the state of the world at that time, with its cold war allusions. It's still got a lot of variety, with some good ballads, but on the whole it's the energy that makes it work so well.
The five hundred and fourty-ninth album: #549 A-ha - Hunting High and Low
I can't say how good of a pick-up song Take On Me is - there's a flowing energy to the track that is enough to wake you up without being too much. The tracks that follow move towards being a bit gentler - Hunting High and Low a lot closer to a ballad - but the synth pop backing works well in all of the tracks even if it is't as captive as the first track and its chorus, with The Sun Always Shines on T.V. being one of the bigger highlights later in the album for me. Lyrically, it's the slower, more ballad-like songs that are more interesting, but on the whole it's all simple enough to understand - especially with the Scandinavian songwriting slant.
The two hundredth classical recording: #658 Charles Ives - Symphony no. 4
There is a grandioseness in the set up of this symphony, which requires a massive orchestra with two conductors to play at its chaotic peaks. It starts off strong and majestic, a chorus providing the final structure to a big opening, but with its second movement, comedy, descends into a multitude of sounds whose chaos at times feels more like a cacophony than a focused sound. The worst of it doesn't stay for too long, eventually slowly reducing into a violin solo until that, too, gets overwhelmed by a pile of sound. The third movement becomes significantly more peaceful than that, the fugue producing a contemplative piece that rests the complexities it has in a clearer, less overwhelming presentation. This carries through to the imposing finale that takes its time but retains its full force of impact, until its slow and subtle winding down. It's a strong, impactful piece that feels good.
The one hundred and seventeenth book: #89 The Lion of Flanders - Hendrik Conscience
I was obviously able to read this in its near original version, with Flemish just updated to fix some spelling but otherwise pretty much readable. It feels outdated that way and was trickier to get into just from that - similar to the English language titles from a century or two earlier. The specific history is quite interesting, even if it feels some of it is manufactured. The courtly intrigues that lead up to it aren't always as interesting, but the action of the final fight is quite exciting and on the whole the story pans out quite interesting, especially having some context but not as much as to recognise everything.