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08-28-2011, 03:29 PM
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#13 (permalink) |
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silky smooth
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Pangaea
Posts: 4,079
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 47. Pere Ubu - The Modern Dance Genre: Experimental Rock Side one "Non-Alignment Pact" – 3:18 "The Modern Dance" – 3:28 "Laughing" – 4:35 "Street Waves" – 3:04 "Chinese Radiation" – 3:27 Side two "Life Stinks" (Peter Laughner) – 1:52 "Real World" – 3:59 "Over My Head" – 3:48 "Sentimental Journey" – 6:05 "Humor Me" – 2:44 You know you have an interesting band when one of the band members' is labelled specifically as a synthesist. According to Google Chrome, that's not even a word. I often recommend this album to my friends, but rarely is it me simply asking or telling them to listen to it, it's usually more like a challenge. I dare you to give this record a spin. Tell me what you think of it, and tell others what you think of it. Tell your friends, your family, your boss, and give them the same challenge as well. I don't give this challenge because this record is particularly difficult to listen to like things like Can or Captain Beefheart are. I consider this album a challenge on a different level...a surreal, grotesque level. Give this track a listen and try to tell me otherwise: I don't know what genre to classify this record as. How the hell do you classify Sentimental Journey? Glass breaking? A slew of bizarre sounds? Is this progressive? I don't think so, because I at least see prog as a genre that's at least sensical to a certain degree, and the instruments are distinguishable to an extent. I especially don't know what this album is about. I've tried to take a few guesses in my lifetime, but lyrically this record is nonsensical. The tracks invoke a strange sense of humor and a strange sense of madness at the same time, to the point where it can even drive you mad as well. This is incredible musical maturity for 1978, to say the least. I'm not sure if anyone put out something that invokes pure insanity as perfectly before this underrated record was released. That, my friends, is my conclusion towards the meaning of this record. Insanity, but at the same time, heartbreak. This is a rare record that invokes numerous emotions within me that I can't put into meaningful words. When I try to talk about this album, my words and descriptions become jumbled nonsense. The album is upbeat, pure rock, but also decrepit madness. The modern dance. Down to the bus into the town our poor boy can't get around Eight fifty-five down at the show she leaves early He'll never know Cuz our poor boy believes in chance he'll never get the modern dance Under the door there's an eye on the place He watches for the shadows race Watch real close Look real fast He's in touch It'll never last Cuz our poor boy believes in chance he'll never get the modern dance |
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08-28-2011, 05:12 PM
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#15 (permalink) | |
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silky smooth
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Pangaea
Posts: 4,079
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08-29-2011, 10:23 AM
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#16 (permalink) |
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silky smooth
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Pangaea
Posts: 4,079
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 46. Jethro Tull - A Passion Play Genre: Progressive Rock "A Passion Play (Part 1)" - 23:04 "A Passion Play (Part 2)" - 22:00 A Passion Play. Jethro Tull. How do you even begin to talk about these guys? I've written about them a lot in my day, and have even submitted my reviews of some of their albums to some websites, so I consider myself fairly knowledgeable with how they operate. They are funny, yet devilishly brilliant. This record reminds me a little of Gentle Giant in a way, but this still holds the unmistakable Jethro Tull sound. Like most other Tull albums, this one is a concept album. In particular, it is a concept album that is basically just one song (the track listing says two songs, but they pretty much blend together). However, the subject matter in here in this song is quite dark, dealing with things such as life, death, and the afterlife. And quite frankly, I find it brilliant. While so many of the rock bands of the seventies were "just a little touch of make up, just a little touch of bull, just a three chord trick embedded in your platform soul" (as Ian Anderson put it on "Crazed Institution") Tull were doing things that were in another space and time. And while not everything worked, they were never dull. A Passion Play has stood the test of time. Like a great piece of art, you can return to it endless times and discover something new. It is all at once pathetically shallow and profoundly deep, toe tappingly musical and irritatingly dischordant, it threatens to soar into brilliance, only to dwindle into nothingness, it is beautiful and clumsy, elegant and gawkish. It is music with a sense of humour. Like the comedy masters of the time who would never advertise a punch line, Tull keep you guessing. You never get what you expect. After all, familiarity breeds contempt. I'll just leave you with this picture: 
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08-30-2011, 10:23 AM
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#17 (permalink) |
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silky smooth
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Pangaea
Posts: 4,079
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 45. The Antlers - Hospice Genre: Indie "Prologue" - 2:35 "Kettering" - 5:10 "Sylvia" - 5:27 "Atrophy" - 7:40 "Bear" - 3:54 "Thirteen" - 3:11 "Two" - 5:56 "Shiva" - 3:45 "Wake" - 8:44 "Epilogue" - 5:25 I had a girlfriend who died once. She was killed by a drunk driver. While this album does not talk about a girl being killed by a drunk driver, it does explain a death. In vivid detail. It's very difficult for me to talk about this album, so instead of doing a write-up, I'm just going to copy and paste a collage of lyrics. All I can say is that this album is utter perfection. When she was younger, she had nightmares. She had scissor-pain and phantom limbs, and things that kept her nervous through that twelve-year interim. When she fell crossing that street (south of Houston, old Manhattan-land), those nightmares fell from building tops and took her by the hand. She was brought into those rooms with sliding curtains and shining children’s heads. One of them, that boy, was not as lucky as she then. (Years later, he would return to her at night, just when she thought she might have fallen asleep. As she would later describe to me, his face would be up against hers, and she’d be too terrified to speak.) Now, I won’t pretend I understand, because I can’t, and know I never will. But something makes her sting, and something makes her want to kill. It made her crawl under that house, and stick her head under the stove… well, my point in all of this is that it’s all connected in these complicated nightmares that we wove. --- There’s a bear inside your stomach, a cub’s been kicking from within. He’s loud, though without vocal cords, we’ll put an end to him. We’ll make all the right appointments, no one ever has to know, and then tomorrow I’ll turn twenty-one, we’ll script another show. We’ll play charades up in the Chelsea, drink champagne (although you shouldn’t be), We’ll be blind and dumb until we fall asleep. None of our friends will come, they dodge our calls, and they have for quite awhile now. It’s not a shock, you don’t seem to mind, and I just can’t see how. “We’re too old.” “We’re not old at all.” “Just too old.” “We’re not old at all.” There’s a bear inside your stomach, a cub’s been kicking you for weeks, and if this isn’t all a dream, well then we’ll cut him from beneath. Well we’re not scared of making caves, or finding food for him to eat. We’re terrified of one another, terrified of what that means. But we’ll make only quick decisions, and you’ll just keep me in the waiting room, and all the while I’ll know we’re ****ed, and not getting un-****ed soon. When we get home we’re bigger strangers than we’ve ever been before. You sit in front of snowy television, suitcase on the floor. --- You had a new dream, it was more like a nightmare. You were just a little kid, and they cut your hair, then they stuck you in machines, you came so close to dying. They should have listened, they thought that you were lying. Daddy was an *******, he ****ed you up, built the gears in your head, now he greases them up. And no one paid attention when you just stopped eating. “Eighty-seven pounds!” and this all bears repeating. There’s two people living in one small room, from your two half-families tearing at you, two ways to tell the story (no one worries), two silver rings on our fingers in a hurry, two people talking inside your brain, two people believing that I’m the one to blame, two different voices coming out of your mouth, while I’m too cold to care and too sick to shout. --- Suddenly every machine stopped at once, and the monitors beeped the last time. Hundreds of thousands of hospital beds, and all of them empty but mine. Well, I was lying down with my feet in the air, completely unable to move. The bed was misshaped, and awkward and tall, and clearly intended for you. --- In a nightmare, I am falling from the ceiling into bed beside you. You’re asleep, I’m screaming, shoving you to try to wake you up. And like before, you’ve got no interest in the life you live when you’re awake. Your dreams still follow story-lines, like fictions you would make. So I lie down against your back, until we’re both back in the hospital. But now it’s not a cancer ward, we’re sleeping in the morgue. Men and women in blue and white, they are singing all around you, with heavy shovels holding earth. You’re being buried to your neck. In that hospital bed, being buried quite alive now. I’m trying to dig you out but all you want is to be buried there together. You’re screaming, and cursing, and angry, and hurting me, and then smiling, and crying, apologizing. I’ve woken up, I’m in our bed, but there’s no breathing body there beside me. Someone must have taken you while I was stuck asleep. But I know better as my eyes adjust. You’ve been gone for quite awhile now, and I don’t work there in the hospital (they had to let me go.) When I try to move my arms sometimes, they weigh too much to lift. I think you buried me awake (my one and only parting gift.) But you return to me at night, just when I think I may have fallen asleep. Your face is up against mine, and I’m too terrified to speak. You’re screaming, and cursing, and angry, and hurting me, and then smiling, and crying, apologizing. --- And thus ends Hospice. |
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08-31-2011, 12:50 AM
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#19 (permalink) | ||
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Live by the Sword
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Posts: 9,075
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seriously underrated
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08-31-2011, 06:44 AM
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#20 (permalink) |
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Let it drip
Join Date: Nov 2004
Posts: 5,430
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The Antlers are one of those bands that have just never clicked with me. I've given Hospice several listens, and also dedicated some time to Burst Apart, but I'm always left with a distinct feeling of 'meh'. Perhaps it's because I haven't experienced the feelings that really allow you to connect with the prevalent themes. Very sorry to hear about your girlfriend, must have been awful.
Props for Pere Ubu, great album, though Dub Housing pips it for me. Last edited by Sneer; 08-31-2011 at 06:58 AM. |
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