Album Club
 

This is the brainchild of an idea Strummer521 and had. It was originally just going to be him and I sending eachother albums and then discussing it but we figured it would be more interesting if we opened it up to more people to discuss. We've created a kind of tentative syllabus of albums but yeah. Would anyone be interested in about once a week an album being posted (and provided to you if need be) then listening to it and discussing it with him and I?

Perhaps this would serve better as a way to pair people up to do this. Or not. I'm interested anyway.

Yeah, I could get into that when I move to my new house in early-June (that's when I'll FINALLY have wireless).

Count me in.

Yeah, I'll do this no doubt.

Yeah as long as it's a healthy mix of genres i'm in.

I'm in.

Will we each be making our own contribution?

Yeah you can make suggestions.

To jackhammer: we have some indie-rock, dance, rap, folk, ambient, as well as others lined up.

I'm thinking my first choice will be:

MY PENIS IS MADE OF DOG**** - SATAN GETS AN ABORTION

sounds like a cool idea, i'll do it.

Count me in too.

great idea

I want in

Ya, sounds good to me.

Sounds good, i'm in.

Sent out the first album, it's Built to Spill's "Perfect From Now On." It's not too late for anyone to jump in and everyone is welcome to discuss it. I'll post my thoughts on it later today. It doesn't have to be a review or anything just what you think of the album or a response to what someone else thinks, we came up with this to start discussion so yeah.

Perfect, i need to hear some Built to Spill. Ta!

Cool choice, haven't heard BTS for a while but I used to really like them. Will be good to see how this holds up now, and of course to see what you guys think as well ;)

Ooh, I would love to join in too if its not too late

I'm liking Built To Spill so far. Does this sound like their other work because I got the impression that they were much softer. The songs have a very hypnotic feel to them, but they still rock hard. The album gives the impression that it would be good for a a rainy Seattle ay.

Built to Spill generally is much softer, this is them being epic. Rumor has it they recorded it like three times before they were satisfied.

Yeah Built To Spill has always been fairly soft, I'm more of a fan of their "There Is Nothing Wrong With Love" album a tad bit more. I dig the melody and all. Solid album.

More Velvet Waltz than Randy Described Eternity?

Look up their song Car to get a general idea of what they tend to lean towards.

Ah, they sound a lot like Death Cab For Cutie. I've heard them listed as influences.

I'll get to listening to it in the mo'nin.

Ya I don't have time now, I got finals tomorrow :(

I'll listen to after finals.

I have really never been able to get into Perfect From Now On as much as the other BTS stuff. I love Keep It Like a Secret, some truly incredible songwriting and guitar work.

And "Randy Described Eternity" is a good song, but my memories of it have been totally ruined from a BTS show I went to earlier this year. Their encore was a 20+ minute jam of "Randy Described Eternity" that was intolerable. Jesus, it was bad. The rest of the show was horrible to, I lost a lot of respect for BTS after seeing them live :(. Meat Puppets were a great opener though.

Ethan obviously picked it because this is my favorite Built to Spill album :p:. The guitar part at 4:07 in I Would Hurt a Fly is pretty much how I fell in love with them. That hit is just sooo perfect. It gets me excited every single time. Stop the Show the biggest and best oversimplification of what they are. Epic indie pop. And the opening vocals for Made Up Dreams are oh sooo good. Built to Spill covered Free Bird on 9/10/01. Coincidence? I think not.

It's funny, The Built to Spill guys seem be taking their cue from grunge, even though by 1997, grunge had petered out. I think their guitar parts pretty much perpetually recall Dinosaur Jr. But they have a sense of melodic counterpoint that a lot of their forefathers lacked. They tack surprising twists onto the end of vocal and guitar melodies alike that seem to betray an affinity for Elliott Smith. I find myself wishing that the drummer would drink a little less cough syrup (in other words, play like he's in a rock band and not a waltzes only specialty group) though I did dig his loping approximation of the amen breakbeat on "I Would Hurt a Fly." This is an album of complex modern rock grooves at their apex, but it requires careful, multiple listens to tease them out from under the dense layer of familiarity and pop melodies that sit on top of the sound. What's really beautiful and huge is the shifting kaleidoscope of movements through which each song drifts while keeping its core so completely intact and the many snatches of lyrics that are dumb and cliched enough to be wonderfully, perfectly anthemic in a rock context and which peek out of the fog at the best moments for them to show.

I was quite prejudiced against this album at first listen, because I've been bathing my brain in electronic music almost exclusively for the past three or four months. I felt there was nothing interesting you could do with just the old standby of drums and guitars. But this reminds me: it's cliche for a reason, and sometimes a limitation of options like that one forces an artist to push as far as he can within those walls. And the production is so dense that the guitar lines tangle together and force you to use your ears and brain in a very focused way to pick all of them out. It's an assembly of an array of unremarkable elements that come together in just the right way to make something which is, in fact, remarkable.

Well this was quite lovely.
Strummer has a point with the Dinosaur Jr comparison, the main dealio with this are layers to their music, especially on the outro on Velvet Waltz, it soars at the start and then sucks you in like all good psychedelica does. The rocky bit in the middle of I Would Hurt A Fly is another highlight.
I can see why they get likened to Modest Mouse, very similar, but this lot are far more, well, i suppose epic. With a bit more listening i could be more than happy to say they're just as good.

Piss Me Off reminds me that I should note (and reply with my thoughts soon...) they're Modest Mouse's biggest influence next to the Pixies so when you listen to Modest Mouse you hear Built to Spill not the other way around. I'll post my thoughts later today instead of at the end of the week.

Ahhh didn't know they came before MM, soz.

Weirdly enough Built to Spill and Modest Mouse formed around the same time (Built to Spill a year earlier though) so the influence wasn't really pre-Modest Mouse at all which I found interesting.

Yah, Randy Described Eternity and Velvet Waltz along with I Would Hurt A Fly are the definite highlights.

Modest Mouse released their first EP in 94 though, so Built to Spill only had one release on them at that point but Modest Mouse were pretty amateur pre-96 aside from a few songs.

Blue Cadet-3, Do You Connect? all of which later appeared on Sad Sappy Sucker which was going to be their debut but got shelved until 2001.

I don't think its that bad. Sure it sounded more like an experimental and more amateur Guided By Voices album by therein lies the appeal. Four Fingered Fisherman is a good song as are a few others aside from that it's basically for fans only.

yarr, i be joinin ur club

How 'bout that Built To Spill album?

It really annoys me how whenever people discuss 90s indie rock Built to Spill is usually completely left out of the conversation. I mean with There's Nothing Wrong with Love they showed themselves to be pop masters and still able to do some very odd things with it underneath the surface, odd time signatures, weird chords etc. but with this album Built to Spill show straight off how musically ambitious they are, the shortest being under 5 minutes and the longest being just 9 minutes they went completely epic which was pretty opposite of what all that post-pavement weezer/presidents of the USA crap indie bands tended to be doing at the time.

Now I've always been hesitant to listen to this album because I'd seen the words epic thrown around and lots of talk of the guitar work and looking at it was about three times as broad in its scope so I expected some serious overindulgence but I was shocked to find how well it flowed and how they didn't really pompous or bloated to me at all in fact these songs seem to flow together seamlessly and move with the gentle grace of a dancer who is indeed perfect from now on.

I want in. please? i can contribute. i like bands.