2024 Listening Booth
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There’s a lot of good stuff on Apple. Wrong thread for it, I guess, but …
- Slow Horses
- Lessons in Chemistry
- Home
- My Kind of Country
- Foundation
- Silo
- The Morning Show
- For All Mankind
- Severance
- WeCrashed
- Extrapolations
- Shrinking
- The Super Models
- Liaison
- Shining Girls
And that’s just off the top of my head. -
I was unsure if Hijack was a Nightflyers style rec
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Actually, I should have included Hijack. It was good daft fun.
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Reminder for a less busy time:
*see below* -
Three albums done this morning. No time to write at the moment, but here are the video highlights.
Sleater-Kinney - All Hands on the Bad One
The Dandy Warhols - Rockmaker
Home Counties - Exactly as it Seems
rateyourmusic: https://rateyourmusic.com/~Olimite -
Diluted Dante wrote:3) Chappell Roan - The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess (2023) - 04/01/24
Debut album from someone it looks like has been working on this a fair while. Produced and written with Dan Nigro, who did the same for the next album we'll get to. It's great fun, uptempo pop with the right amount of weird. I love her voice. I think Poprock will like this.
I've gone back to this after some pretty solid rotations of Taylor Swift and Masie Peters, and I think that on reflection, it's her voice that carries it for me. There is an incredible EP in here, filled out to 14 songs that will depend on how enraptured you are by her voice. Spoiler, it's A LOT for me. But on reflection, most of the songs around it are a bit weak.
Red Wine Supernova is still amazing though. -
Catching up from last week:
113. Guy Clark - Truly Handmade Vol.1 (2024)
A collection of demos and unused tracks. He tends to get overshadowed by Townes Van Zandt due to their close friendship and Townes' passing, but good as TVZ was (very good. PleaseUnderstand.jpeg) he wasn't one of the all-timers for me, whereas Guy was. L.A Freeway is up there with the likes of Blues Run The Game as an American singer/songwriter classic imo, and the no-strings version here is majestic. Too many must listens to recommend as a few of my favourites are on here, but Freeway and Lone Star Hotel Cafe were the two I kept repeating here. A craftsman at work.
114. Emily Nenni - Drive & Cry (2024)
I was expecting boots & sass honkytonk country and that's more or less what I got. This was fine but I kept thinking 'she's nowhere near as good as Nikki Lane', so I'll sum up with that. It's also not as raucous or sawdusty as I'd like.
115. Chris Smither - All About the Bones (2024)
Still going strong at 79 and still more than capable of putting out a worthwhile album, as evidenced here. Based on one listen Calm Before the Storm sounded like the best track, which isn't surprising as he does have a knack for covers. Petty's Time to Move on gets a decent version to close the album too, and most of his own compositions are decent. I need to listen to more of his stuff really, I've still only heard four albums (despite the fact that Leave the Light On is brilliant and the title track is one of my favourite songs). -
More to catch up on, before I forget:
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Catching up:
116. Smog - The Doctor Came At Dawn (1996)
I've never been able to click with Bill Callahan in the way that I'd like. I've mentioned this loads but just quickly: whenever I read about his albums it sounds like they're right up my alley, whenever I listen to them I can't seem to move past the 'this is pretty good, maybe I'll love the next track' zone. So I thought I'd try Smog again, as it went pretty well for me last time. Success! I enjoyed this. Dark and sparse ["in a good way"Elf.gif], I could see myself getting properly into this so I'm chalking it up as a win. Invigorating doldrums music.
117. Big Daddy Kane - Looks Like A Job For... (1993)
Wasn't as keen on this as the other BDK albums I've heard. I consulted a couple of online lists just to check that I wasn't picking something too deep into the dodge zone. One had this at 3 and one had it at 4 (of 8 records, according to Tidal). I wasn't really feeling it though, it was OK but I wasn't as into it as I'd hoped. A lot of early 90s hip hop albums chucked a dimmer switch love song in, and 'Very Special' is the clanger here. Did not like.
Good in places and I do like him, this was a long way from essential listening though. Trailblazer or not he's more guilty than most of the era's 'saying quick bursts of words quickly to sound skilled' thing (check out the first half of the track Niggaz Never Learn for examples - it's started to feel like dated delivery for me because it's something even history's worst rappers can do).
Album gains an imaginary point because I found out that his brother (who raps on this) is known as Lil' Daddy Shane.
118. The Kossoy Sisters - Hop on Pretty Girls (2002)
Not as good as The Bowling Green album from 1956 (a bona fide masterpiece, props to Bugul for tuning me into this many years ago) but a welcome album nonetheless. Harmonies aren't as gorgeous and I hate to say it but one of their voices is a bit shot on Belle Star, but that's forgivable ofc - they were in their 60s for this I think (it's hard for a lazy Googler to get a bead on when albums were recorded though, so I've given up). -
119. Kelsey Waldon - There's Always a Song (2024)
Short album half filled with duets that started really well with a nice a capella number followed by a lovely Hello Stranger cover (featuring S.G Goodman), then kinda trod water in the 6.5/10 zone. I might give it another go as I love her voice (and would like to catch her live at some point) but this didn't thrill me on the whole. No bad tracks but not many that made me sit up and take notice.
120. Ghostface Killah - Set the Tone (Guns & Roses) (2024)
Ghostface has put out a few solo records I like in recent(ish) years. Both Twelve Reasons To Die albums were great and going back a quarter of a century Supreme Clientele is still aces. I thought this was a bit jank though, and definitely not cohesive as an album - I was working while listening so wasn't looking at my phone and kept thinking Tidal had moved on to stuff from other records. It's all over the place and has bad mixtape energy imo. There are good tracks but it's close to an hour long and the lows are LOW. The Kanye track is awful and Plan B might be the worst new Hip Hop song I've heard for years. One to forget on the whole.
121. Orville Peck - Stampede: Vol.1 (2024)
Peck's lassoed the bigtime and refuses to let go, but there's a catch for me: he hasn't released a good album since his debut. Sorry not sorry. Good luck to him but this isn't my Orville [insert convoluted joke about wishing he could fly but getting burned]. Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other, a cover of a song from 1981, doesn't hit quite right for me in the modern era. It occupies a weird deadpan/srs topics zone and feels like more of a forward thinking relic than something that works for a contemporary resurrection.
Pony was a legit Lynchian/smooth croon peak Chris Isaak level banger, almost everything since has felt a bit too 'Eurovision Country' for me. He's roped plenty of pals in here and if you want a glossy high energy snapshot of mainstream belt buckle Americana you could do a lot worse. I think this'll be my last rodeo though. -
I want to agree with you, but I actually loved Bronco. I probably play that more often than Pony nowadays. Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I think Daytona Sands might even be Peck’s best song.
(And I can’t get enough of his Born This Way cover. That’s a permanent fixture on our house playlist.)
I haven’t listened to Stampede yet, so no opinion there. -
I like some of Bronco, including Daytona. Wish I was more into him but everything post-Pony is patchy imo, not to mention overly showy. I preferred it when he sometimes sounded like 'Sleepwalk but with lyrics'/red room music.
Dead of Night is still the best of both worlds imo.
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Heard there was some Peck chat going on so just popping in to pretty much agree entirely with Moot - that first album is fantastic and was the most heavily rotated in my list when it came out; pure Lynchian, haunted cowboy stuff. Since then I've basically stopped even checking his new releases as he's gone in a direction that I'm not really digging (although I did like the cover of Cowboys are Secretly... with Willie).
I will say tho that No Glory in the West is pretty good from Show Pony:
Roses are Falling is my favourite tho, I enjoy this live version:
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Saw him back in 2019 (supporting Mac DeMarco who I didn't stick around for), just did all Pony stuff, was fantastic.
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Has he done Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting with Elton? That was on one of my playlists this week.rateyourmusic: https://rateyourmusic.com/~Olimite
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From album 49 (Four Tet - Three+)
50 (Justice - Hyperdrama)
51 (St Vincent - All Born Screaming)
rateyourmusic: https://rateyourmusic.com/~Olimite -
Will update at some point:
122. Adam Carroll - I Walked in Them Shoes (2019)
123. Bella White - Among Other Things (2023)
124. Iron & Wine - Light Verse (2024)
125. Various Artists - Link of Chain: A Songwriters Tribute to Chris Smither (2014)
126. Gillian Welch, David Rawlings - All the Good Times (2020) -
I have nice Friday mornings when I have some time to work in a quiet room, so I’ve been using it the last few weeks to (mostly) get through an album I haven’t listened to yet. Here’s the last 3:
Regina Spektor - Begin to Hope
Really enjoyed this. Was familiar with a couple of tracks. Got a couple more albums to listen to of hers.
Kings of Leon - Can we Please Have Fun
No, we can’t. It’s not bad to be fair, just a bit middling.
The Zutons - The Big Decider
Not wall to wall bangers like their first album, but pretty enjoyable.
Tomorrow will be the new Beth Gibbons.iosGameCentre:T3hDaddy;
XBL: MistaTeaTime -
Those headphones look interesting?Come with g if you want to live... -
Shanling ME700. Bit of an OTT retail therapy purchase last year, but no regrets. They sound great and will hopefully last a good while, they work nicely with the little player.iosGameCentre:T3hDaddy;
XBL: MistaTeaTime -
Oooooh, get you! Very nice Come with g if you want to live...
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Used to love it, could easily go in the 2.0 thread for me this week because I haven't heard it (or even remembered it existed) for ages.
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I tried a few others but that was the one.
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127. Courtney Marie Andrews - Old Flowers (2020)
128. Rapsody - Please Don't Cry (2024)
129. Blitzen Trapper - 100's of 1000's, Millions of Billions (2024)
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