Random Music Talk CXXIV: Axver's All Out of Ideas

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Hoping that Interpol's latest album grows on me a little bit - it comes across as very confident, but almost too easily to the point it's quite pedestrian and unremarkable.

Listening back to the self-titled album, one that I always enjoyed on a personal level. The songs were extremely forced, but I actually really like it when Interpol endeavour to capture a particular mood in a song. Where there feels like an endgame that they are writing towards and they achieve it (for better or worse)
 
What does everyone have on their Depeche Mode Rushmore?

I’d go with Blasphemous Rumours, Policy of Truth, Stripped, and Clean.
 
Never Let Me Down Again, Everything Counts, Enjoy The Silence, Blasphemous Rumours
 
Enjoy the Silence (especially live), Never Let Me Down Again, In Your Room (single version), Stripped
 
In Homogenic, I hear a lot of music that represents antecedents for Radiohead and Bat for Lashes.


I remember an interview where Thom said Unravel was the most beautiful song he had ever heard, and that Homogenic was a direct influence on Kid A.


Good call on Bat for Lashes, too. The Cure + Bjork = Bat for Lashes.
 
I mean I read that Bjork, after Sugarcubes split up, said she'd had it with rock and was inspired by Eno and Kate Bush, so the lineage makes sense.

It's the strings that remind me a lot of Radiohead however, specifically AMSP. I wonder if they were listening to it at the time.

Music's power blows me away sometimes. I just put on Drowning Man for a playlist I'm trying to make and was instantly transported to my bedroom, at the age of 15 or so, after Scouts on Wednesday night, listening to War for the first time. Pretty amazing.
 
Sugarcubes were an underrated band IMO. Solid late 80s/early 90s alternative rock with some nice influences.
 
I almost included the album version in mine, also considered Condemnation before going with I Feel You.

Didn't realize how different the single was, much more "rock" and organic. Good stuff.

I've seen them live in 2010 and they played it in an arrangement combining the two versions. Very good stuff.
 
I almost included the album version in mine, also considered Condemnation before going with I Feel You.

Didn't realize how different the single was, much more "rock" and organic. Good stuff.


Condemnation is the best track from that album IMO.
 
It's the strings that remind me a lot of Radiohead however, specifically AMSP. I wonder if they were listening to it at the time.


I can hear that as well - similar with Vespertine, which really shares a vibe with Moon Shaped Pool. I think the big thing about Homogenic and Kid A is the electronic texture with all those skittering beats under the surface. Very icy yet emotive.
 
Off the top of my head, it's probably

Everything Counts(either the extended version from the end of the album or the live version that was on 101/Singles 86-98)

A Question Of Lust

Enjoy The Silence

One Caress(haven't seen this get a mention yet, but it's my favorite from SOFAD)
 
One Caress is another one I considered to represent SOFAD. The number of standout tracks on that album is pretty ridiculous.

Condemnation is the best track from that album IMO.

I love the gospel vibes on that song and on Get Right With Me. Then you have the raw guitar on I Feel You, the strings on One Caress; they really opened up their sound wider on this album than on any other. I understand why Violator gets held up by many as their peak, but it's a little too insular and narrow by comparison IMO.
 
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SOFAD has always been my favorite Depeche Mode album, for all the reasons said above. I’d also call out “Judas” with the excellent uilleann pipes and Martin Gore’s great vocals.

Out of this week’s releases, I’m loving Anna Calvi’s new album. Her voice and guitar playing is excellent. Really strong songs.
 
Album of the week for me is the kickass new Idles record Joy As an Act of Resistance:



The mask
Of masculinity
Is a mask
A mask that's wearing me

I'm a real boy
Boy, and I cry
I like myself
And I want to try
This is why you never see your father cry
This is why you never see your father cry
This is why you never see your father
 
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Music's power blows me away sometimes. I just put on Drowning Man for a playlist I'm trying to make and was instantly transported to my bedroom, at the age of 15 or so, after Scouts on Wednesday night, listening to War for the first time. Pretty amazing.

It's crazy just how many songs now make me think of very specific people, places, events - the exact street I was walking along, the time of day, the season, all that stuff.
 
A man attacking toxic masculinity in an aggro punk rock context is pretty damn fresh in 2018.
 
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It's crazy just how many songs now make me think of very specific people, places, events - the exact street I was walking along, the time of day, the season, all that stuff.



Oh yeah. The Scientist - I’m like 10 years old in a car en route from Boston to Salem, Massachusetts. For some crazy reason my parents were okay with me, a 10 year old, flying with his dog on a Delta Airlines project airline called Song (short lived, airline was folded back into Delta). So it’s me, my sister, my brother-in-law to be, and my dog. And we had just stopped in a convenience store and picked up Snickers Cruncher ice cream (never understood why Snickers stopped producing Snickers Cruncher, but that ice cream is easily the best convenience store ice cream not from Ben & Jerry’s I’ve ever had).

I could go on long winded responses like this for tons of songs.
 
Let's keep going!

Eye by Madvillain takes me to the Werribee train, pulling into Southern Cross from North Melbourne, on a weekday morning.
 
both heartland by U2 and the rain song by led zeppelin take me right back to 18 year old dave, on shrooms for the first time sitting in his bed in the middle of nowhere in a moonlit desert (aka my bedroom in my parents' basement) staring up at the stars and seeing constellations that look like cats.
 
Scatterbrain and A Wolf at the Door - riding a bus at night during fall in Madison, Wisconsin. Plaintive songs for a plaintive setting.
 
I was listening to Flyying Colours' debut EP the other day and I was immediately back on a specific tree-lined street in Northcote in April 2015, around about 10:45am on a pleasant sunny autumnal morning walking to a tram, getting pumped about seeing them live for the first time at the end of that month (which was, incidentally, the show where I discovered absolute legends Hideous Towns). A random, seemingly inconsequential memory, totally bound up with those five tracks.
 
Somewhere Over the Rainbow by Judy Garland. Masturbating while crying on the bleachers behind my high school after a urinary accident forced me to leave Junior Prom in embarrassment and shame.
 
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