Meaningful title to follow

More listening based waffle :-

Nirvana - ‘In Utero’

Like everyone who passed through the age of fifteen in the last ten or fifteen years, I went through a Nirvana phase in my early to mid teens, so it’s kinda hard to separate the music from the teenage mindset it reminds me of. Though to be fair, at that age I wasn’t actually all that into the ‘noisy stuff’, much as I might have acted otherwise, tending to prefer the acoustic or more melodic end of the spectrum. Plus I only owned the Greatest Hits, a fairly pointless disc for a band that only recorded two great records and yet it still managed to throughly miss both a large number of great tracks and, more importantly, the point. Still, now that I do like the ‘noisy stuff’, well more than I did anyway, ‘In Utero’ stands out as astonishing approachable and tuneful for a record famed for it volume and abrasive tone. Cobain may not be a demi-god, or that much better than some of his contemporaries, but he was sure as hell onto some seriously impressive shit.

Sun Kil Moon - ‘April’

I got into Sun Kil Moon/Mark Kozelek/Red House Painters/Multiple Names for the same bloke with the same instrumentation through his album of Modest Mouse covers ‘Tiny Cities’, which was interesting and actually worth listening to as an album, unusually for a covers record. Anyway, seems he tends towards John Darnielle levels of prolificism, so finding a starting point is tough. Also, with both of his records I’ve tried so far, this one and ‘Ocean Beach’, I tend to get stuck on the first track and miss out on the rest of the album. Not because they’re bad, quite the opposite, they start with two of the most astonishingly beautiful pieces of music that I’ve ever heard, in the case of ‘April’ the nine minute plus ‘Lost Verses’ which could be the most comforting and touching song I’ve heard well.... ever, actually. Rest of the album isn’t too shabby either.

Gender neutral

Listened to in the past few hours :-

The Thermals - ‘Fuckin’ A’, most of ‘Now We Can See’ and a bit of ‘The Body, The Blood, The Machine’.

Usually saying that a band is remarkably similar from record to record would be a bad thing. When that band sound like this though, I really couldn’t be less bothered. Bracing is the best word I can think of though it doesn’t really do it justice.

Sleater-Kinney - ‘The Woods’

That is what guitars are supposed to sound like. Catchy, energetic and atmospheric. Bitchin’, basically.*

The Pixies - ‘Surfer Rosa’

It’s all been said before really, except that it’s taken me longer than I expected to get into this and it’s still the only one of their records I listen to often. Something about them confuses me, not too sure what it is.

Absolutely nothing by The Hold Steady. I should be ashamed.


I just finished reading QED, not the Feynman book but the Peter Parnell play about Feynman that originally starred Alan Alda. Not a huge amount of new info but structured very nicely, I’d have loved to have seen the original production. If you have no idea what the hell I’m on about, buy yourself a copy of ‘Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman!’ by the titular Richard Feynman, well worth... well anything you’re likely to be charged for it anyway.

*Aren’t you proud of me, I managed to comment on Sleater-Kinney without mentioning they’re not actually guys, which everyone in rock music is apparently legally required to be. I will buy a sandwich for anyone who reviews their next album and at no point mentions their gender and doesn’t seem like they’re avoiding it to make a point.

The Hold Steady, Pavement and avoiding introductions

Long winded ‘Hello, look at me, I’m going to end world hunger through the medium of mild indignation’ introductory posts fall somewhere between boring and ‘kill me, kill me now’, depending on a number of factors I have yet to identify, and as much as I enjoy inflicting pain on... well basically everyone, I’ll skip straight to talking bollocks about nothing in particular.

‘The Hold Steady’ are slowly destroying my ability to listen to anything other than ‘The Hold Steady’. This would be a lot more annoying if they weren’t so utterly fantastic, but there are whole months of listening-based pleasure in either of their first two albums so I could really be a lot more upset than I am. Some of the densest, funniest and most affecting lyrics you'll hear this side of anyone other than 'The Mountain Goats' over a band dripping charm and energy channeling 'The Replacements' and 'The E Street Band', it's a bit like a perpetual grin in a bottle really.

Their third and fourth albums could kick the stuffing out most other bands best material too, but they don’t have the thematic cohesion and narrative structure of ‘Almost Killed Me’ or ‘Separation Sunday’, and while the songs seem more fully formed and have interesting new developments like better production values and actual choruses on the majority of songs, they just seem to be missing whatever it is that makes me listen to ‘Knuckles’ on loop for hours at a time. It probably also has to do with Craig Finn, their shouty, sing-speaker of a frontman, toning down the obscure allusions somewhat and sounding less like he’s about to keel over from alcoholic poisoning. Whatever it is, I very much doubt I’ll stop listening to the early records, or Finn and Kubler’s work in 'Lifter Puller', any time soon. In fact, I can literally only think of one bad thing to say about anything they’ve done, a simple ‘nice idea but er.... no’ to the harpsichord on ‘One for the Cutters’.

Listening to ‘Pavement’s’ ‘Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain’ at the moment though. Still not quite sure I get it just yet, almost there though. May talk about it more when I do. Cracking guitar work.