The four hundred and thirty-eighth album: #438 The Undertones - The Undertones
The Undertones' debut album comes in, brings half an hour of punk and goes again. It leaves you with a strong impression, mixing a still strong message with the upbeat party punk that I've appreciated more but doesn't always get as political. It's poppy, but with that punk background lurking along underneath the whole time.
The four hundred and thirty-seventh album: #437 Chic - Risque
I have to admit that I find Risque to be a lot more accessible than I thought it would be - while the disco tracks are still a bit too long sometimes, they have enough variety in them that they stay enjoyable throughout. There's a build and a progression in the tracks, perhaps without as much of a story, but it feels much better constructed than the endless repetition of most funk albums. Disco is improving.
The one hundred and fifty-fourth classical recording: #722 George Enescu - Violin Sonata no. 3
There's a real sadness to this sonata. Scored for violin and piano, it feels like it has these two instruments both do their own thing, harmoniously but not meeting, creating a distance by design. The violin's slow music sounds torturous at times, with the piano providing more comfort in this piece. It's not that disconcerting - certainly no Ravel - but it's a piece that keeps you on your toes a lot more.
The one hundred and eighty-fifth TV show: #605 Bob & Rose
We gave up on this show after less than two episodes... It was off putting in so many places. While Russell T. Davies' previous Queer As Folk worked as a way of representation and to show the follies of the gay clubbing lifestyle of the late nineties, his attempt to write a straight romance fails on several levels. The characters are unlikeable - the women, from Rose to her mother to his best friend Holly - manipulative and looking to get their way (in the end Rose is a stalker), the men pushovers and all gay men promiscuous. Add to that a lot of rants about Bob not being gay the right way and it all started to feel a bit much. While I'm sure the story of a gay man ending up in a straight relationship and still feeling gay might be true, it feels like it skips over a lot of nuance and considering the timeframe it was written in, potentially dangerous because it's just about meeting the right woman. I might get why this may have been a safe option at the time, but it feels like a very clumsy attempt at writing a love story that I couldn't bear to continue, simply as a bizarre misstep.
The one hundred and fourth book: #080 The Last of the Mohicans - James Fenimore Cooper
I started feeling a bit apprehensive when I started reading The Last of the Mohicans - a white American writer writing about a native American who's the last of his tribe is awkward enough without knowing too much of what's coming. The titular last of the Mohicans (a situation were there were no pureblood women left) feels like he remains a cypher, a noble savage without much insight that I felt I could get. Instead, it becomes about how much the British colonists and the tribes they're allied with have to go up against the French and their allies, and in particular how their Mohican helper gets them through. As an adventure novel, the political elements are ignored and having read more about this (especially on a recent trip to Canada) it's clear it skips over a lot without enough introspection. It stays surface level, and where it doesn't it's on the characters I don't care about, in particular the white frontiersman who... yeah, it's as old fashioned as you'd expect. I never really got to a point where I found much to enjoy in the entirety of the book, unfortunately, and I'm happy to leave it where it is.
The four hundred and thirty-sixth album: #436 Joy Division - Unknown Pleasure
I don't think the dark, depressed sound is a surprise to anyone hearing about Joy Division anymore, but Unknown Pleasure, their first album on the list, heavily leans into it. It's dark and droning, with lyrics that feed into that, down to referencing seizures. It's not pretty and it really hits you when listening to a full album, the effects of all of it becoming draining after a while. It's good, well done, but it's also an exhausting album.
The four hundred and thirty-fifth album: #435 Talking Heads - Fear of Music
I don't think there was a track on Fear of Music that I connected with as I think I did before. There is a variety of experiments here that relies on a core Talking Heads sound, but it wasn't until Animal's closing that I felt there was anything really notable about them, but even so it didn't have much impact - other than a few tracks feeling a bit too uncomfortable to listen to.
The four hundred and thirty-fourth album: #434 The Fall - Live at the Witch Trials
After talking about music genres evolving last time, this time we get a return to classic punk with its shouted almost incoherent lyrics and simple riffs. The Fall's sound is never too complex but it tends to move its way through a larger variety than most, with the biggest issue being its vocals - the spoken/shouty sound feels overdone and gets tedious to listen to after a while, in my mind giving the lyrics less weight than they could have.
The four hundred and thirty-third album: #433 The Police - Reggatta de Blanc
It feels like the end of the seventies has another explosion in music styles as happened a decade earlier after the Beatles split. Post-punk, the rise of new wave has just started and The Police goes for a reggae rock fusion that works for the most part - it creates a unique sound that identifies the band for me and the known tracks like Message in a Bottle is really good, but I don't think I enjoy a full album of the same as there are diminishing returns to the sound for me - No Time This Time makes for a good closer by avoiding it in favour of a more punk-focused end of the album.
The four hundred and thirty-second album: #431 The B-52s - The B-52s
With The B-52s, the band delivers a fun, danceable new wave album. Though focused on the over the top Rock Lobster, a lot of others are a lot simpler and lacking some of that power, dragging the energy down a bit. It's where the differences in the vocals stand out - they vary a bit much to fully work, with Schneider's unusual vocals throwing me off. It still lends the album its own sound and works with them, even if it feels uneven.