Monday, October 15, 2007

old music

Most of the music I've gotten with the store credit from my big unloading (net decrease so far: 140 cds!) was originally released prior to 2007.

From 2006, two albums that would have placed very highly on my list of last year's favorite music:

Broadcast - The Future Crayon
Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood

While we're here, these are four more from 2006. I got them earlier this year, before the big unloading; three of them might have rated highly on last year's list, one of them unquestionably would have:

Circle - Miljard
Grizzly Bear - Yellow House
Juana Molina - Son (this is a gorgeous album; I cannot praise it highly enough)
Pere Ubu - Why I Hate Women (extremely ill-titled, but dark, menacing music; see comments here for some discussion and related links)

The rest has been reissues and older stuff:

Boredoms - Super Roots 5 & Super Roots 6 (I was really looking forward to these being available at affordable prices--back in the day, I paid a lot for Super Roots 7 & Super Roots 8, not to mention Rebore Vol. 0 and Seadrum/House of Sun--but having listened to these two once each, I'm not sure I really needed them all that much. These may come to qualify as relapses from the overall attitude governing the grand reduction in the amount of music I own.)

The Byrds - Fifth Dimension & The Notorious Byrd Brothers (I blame this guy)

Ted Leo & the Pharmacists - Hearts of Oak (excellent indie rock)

Dolly Parton - My Tennessee Mountain Home (this was mostly for Aimée, but I like it too; released in 1973, it was already Dolly's 23rd album!)

Pere Ubu - Cloudland (finally! also, I was inspired by the comments here to listen to its follow-up Worlds In Collision several times over the weekend, and Scraps was right: it's a good one)

Max Roach - Percussion Bitter Sweet (I've been meaning to get more of Roach's music; this one has Eric Dolphy on it. I just got it yesterday, and haven't yet listened to it)

Stephen Stills - Manassas (I may have mentioned this one)

Young Marble Giants - Colossal Youth & Collected Works (affordable 3-cd set of, I believe, all of the band's music; so far, I've only listened to Colossal Youth, from 1980, and Simon Reynolds is right: it's pretty much perfect)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I actually picked up Fifth Dimension just this weekend myself. Previously I had about half of it as downloads.

You're welcome! I'll be curious to know what you think of them once you've digested them. I've got major Byrds posts developing in my mind...

That Neko album has grown on me in the last year. I liked it when I bought it in 06, though didn't think it was GREAT. Now it's one of those albums that I still don't actually put on all that often, but when I think about it, I think "you know, that's a really good album."

Scraps said...

I guess I'd better give Broadcast another try.


Colossal Youth is one of my permanent ten favorite albums ever. It is one of the very short list of albums -- I think Double Nickels on the Dime, Chairs Missing, and Mingus Ah Um are the others -- that forever changed the way I listened to music.

Anonymous said...

I've been urging people to listen to Juana Molina to the point of annoyance (so I'm told).

And going back one post, almost all Smog is good Smog.