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10-17-2008, 06:01 PM | #45 (permalink) |
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Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: CA
Posts: 3,503
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21
Neutral Milk Hotel - On Avery Island
1996 This album should be owned on vinyl. Not just because that makes it the ultimate hipster status symbol, which it does, but because it is obviously meant to be listened to on vinyl. When you listen to a digital version it sounds like you're listening to vinyl, except you get those infuriating breaks between the songs. This album is so warm, it feels like an old friend. It begs you to melt into it. Someone complained to me about the last track, which is a fuzzy, noisy dronescape, and I honestly did not know what they were talking about. I had to go back and listen to it and realize that it does end like that. By the time I get to the end of this album it has moved into a back corner of my mind and I don't even really notice it on a conscious level. That, for me, is the sign of a very good album. Tago Mago does the same thing, the first half is so mesmerizing that I'm usually too blissed out to notice the second half. But really, this is an album album. There is a unity here that never threatens to get monotonous. Each song flows into the next. Each song is beautiful. It's difficult to differentiate between acoustic and synthesized instruments because they all swarm together in a lo-fi haze. It sounds like a stoned day at the carnival. Everything sounds delicate and self-enclosed; this is the sort of album that will make you forget the outside world exists at all. The lyrics are simultaneously personal and universal, with a vocal delivery that borders on melancholy but always goes for hope over despair. The music itself is equally wonderful. A dreamy medley of all sorts of folk music drifting together, mournfully inspired trumpet playing, acoustic guitar picking, supported by washes of analogue synth and a propelling drum/bass section. The lo-fi aesthetic literally ties it all together, with each voice bleeding color into the others. The album picks up and slows down, but there is never a dull moment. Lose yourself in it. |
10-17-2008, 10:17 PM | #49 (permalink) |
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Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: CA
Posts: 3,503
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yeah it's more touching but it's kinda like the town bicycle, you know everybody's been touchin her. makes it slightly devalued to me. i mean, i've heard my mom sing in the aeroplane over the sea. i've heard a couple of those songs sung more often by other people than by NMH. sure that might be conceited but it's a lot easier to feel a personal connection to a song if it's, you know, personal.
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10-19-2008, 07:49 AM | #50 (permalink) |
dontcareaboutyou
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: North Carolina
Posts: 5,188
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Deerhunter-Microcastle
This is a hard album to describe but I guess a good place to start is that I like it. It's very familiar, very different from itself throughout the album and I can't really make a good comparison maybe Panda Bear/Animal Collective is the closest but that feels like a stretch. It's one of those that feel best when listened all the way through. The Raincoats-Self Titled This is one hundred percent pure fun and kind of cute. Violent Femmes-Self Titled When I was like 5 Blister in the Sun would play on the radio all the time and I really liked it. Radio play slowed a bit as I got older and I must have been twelve and hadn't heard it in a while, found it on my parents (mostly horrible) cd shelf and stole it from them. It was instant love, of course. Who can resist something so sing-songy and fun?
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