Doolittle - Pixies. As great as Surfer Rosa. Maybe better. But who cares, get both of them. It's a little more Americanish (as opposed to the Spanish vibe of Surfer Rosa), and has a cleaner sound thanks to Gil Norton (also produced The Colour and the Shape, and almost Is This It, according to Wikipedia). Most of the subject manner deals with Biblical stories and the ocean ("Wave of Mutilation," "Monkey Gone To Heaven"). But the song are classic Pixies. It starts off with "Debaser," which I don't feel the need to rave about again, cause we've already established how awesome it is. "Tame" is seriously a great example of loud quiet loud dynamics. There's a lot of screaming (TAAAAMEEEEEE) and jagged guitars (or maybe those are keyboards?). And then is "Wave Of Mutilation," possibly the best song on the disc. The lyrics are kinda depressing, but sung with an almost hopeful, ironic tone. "I Bleed" is kind of a solo for Joey Santiago. There's Black Francis's deadpan vocals, Kim's high harmony, and Joey playing weird garbled notes that sound pretty cool and only occasionally play something that resembles a melody. So it's pretty cool. I also already talked about "Here Comes Your Man," and it really does stand out as pop, compared to the violent contorted songs earlier on Doolittle. The band apparently didn't even want to put the song on Doolittle at first, which kind of brings to mind that Weezer didn't want "Buddy Holly" on the Blue Album either. Look how that turned out. The funny thing about the Pixies are that while most of their music is strictly 80s indie, they pull off these small 30 second interludes that have this anthematic quality. Like "Dead," which is mostly a shuffley thing with mixed down low rantings from Francis, but has these 2 parts that are really really cool. You'll know when you hear it. "Monkey Gone To Heaven" is also one of the greatest songs on Doolittle, but it's not as accessible. It even took me around 5 or 6 listens to get into it. It has a big open reverb sounding production, and almost no singing, just musings. But there's the one lyric that goes "If man is five, then the devil is six." And later there's "If then devil is six, then GOD IS SEVEN." Which probably means something important. But if you explain something to someone, it sort of loses something in translation. Y'know? Okay then. I really like the combination of the two songs that come next. "Mr. Grieves" is really fun to listen to, and reminds me of Captain Hook for some reason. Francis keeps repeating that "it's alllllllright" and laughing. And then he says "I believe in Mr. Grieves," which must have some connection to the Bible somehow. "Crackity Jones" comes right after, and it's only a minute and a half long. But like other punky stuff like "Territorial Pissings" and "Hayday," it leaves a lasting impact. The next song is called "La La Love You" and you can pretty much tell it's a joke by the title. But it kinda is and isn't at the same time (it's a love song, obvi). Well David Lovering sings this one, and while it's fun, it's not really one of those songs that you would play over and over again because it totally blew you away (or maybe it is, what do I know?). "No. 13 Baby" is a really well-rounded song, and while it's not as extreme as some of the other songs, it's very solid, and the second half of the song's a pretty awesome solo that actually fades out. "There Goes My Gun" is pretty unnoteworthy, although it does have a pirate-sounding verse, and a nice chorus. And if you tie this song title together with another one, it would be "Here Comes Your Man, There Goes My Gun." I amuse myself. "Hey" is a masterpiece. Don't try to persuade me otherwise. I don't like a lot of bands, but when I do, I REALLY do. And you can bet that the Pixies are one of them for sure. "Silver" (no, not "Sliver." Wonder where Kurt got that from?) is really sparce and unlike most songs with Francis/Kim harmonies, it sounds more ominous than anything else. The album kinda comes full circle with "Gouge Away," which is kinda about eyes like "Debaser." It's a pretty typical Pixies song, with bass, drums, vocals in the verse and everything in the chorus. So it's a pretty cool ending to one of most important rock albums of the 1980s. Disclaimer; I've only had this record for about a week. Of course I'm going to talk about it like it's the best thing since three day weekends. And there are no paragraph breaks in this on purpose. If you're not going to read the whole thing, so be it.
(What's The Story) Morning Glory? - Oasis. Well it's not bad. It's worth the $1.95 I bought it for. "Hello" is my favorite. Way cool chorus. "Wonderwall" is "Wonderwall." That's it. The song Green Day supposedly ripped off for "BOBD." Yes, they do have the same chord progression. Are they that similar? Not really. "Don't Look Back In Anger is also pretty good. I guess. Liam could've sang it better. Maybe. But the CD is mastered atrociously. It's really loud, has tons of clipping and one of the first places where the loudness war started... This link is pretty informative. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RecordOfLoudnessWar When most records are remastered, all the engineers sometimes do is turn up the volume, cause if something's louder, it should sound better, right? WRONG. Most records these days are victims of the Loudness War, and even though I don't really qualify as an audiophile, I still think most CDs these days sound horrible. At first I thought it just might be cause most of it is recorded on digital tracks instead of tape, but it's probably because everybody's trying to make their records louder so it's more "modern."
Mag Earwhig! - Guided By Voices. Or rather, Sunfish Holy Breakfast by Guided By Voices in a Mag Earwhig CD case. I'm still pretty disappointed.
Stereo / Mono - Paul Westerberg. Double record of his for around 4 dollars. It's much better than most of his other records (but it's still not comparable to stuff like Let it Be or Tim). The stereo side is made up of calming songs, while Mono is more upbeat, rockier tunes. And Stereo's songs are all in stereo, and Mono's songs are all in mono. Obvi.
The Grand Hour - Guided By Voices. It's a 9 and a half minute EP with mostly minute to minute and a half fragments that barely qualify as songs. And the song quality is so low quality it sounds like it was recorded on a 4-track. Which it actually was. And it sounds great. Better than the Morning Glory one in my opinion. And the songs are pretty great too. There's "Shocker In Gloomtown," (soooo cool) and even this little song called "Bee Thousand" (also the title of their most famous album) which although has a pretty stupid "wabba wabba" part, has this insanely awesome other part that totally drives the song on it's own.
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