/ General

Some Music Notes

I’ve only heard one song from Jim White’s album Drill a Hole in the Substrate and Tell Me What You See. But it is a phenomenal song. Aimee Mann sings back up and you can find the song here.

I’ve also recently bought two albums: Marianne Faithfull’s Before the Poison and Badly Drawn Boy’s Fed the Fish. Faithfull’s album (with music by Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, Damon Albarn, and Jon Brion and Lyrics by Harvey, Albarn and Failthfull) is a moody, spellbinding album that doesn’t quite have the power that I expected. The opening tracks, “The Mystery of Love” and “My Friends Have” (music and lyrics by Harvey) are solid and sound very much like PJ Harvey songs. These are followed by “Crazy Love” (lyrics: Faithfull, music: Cave), is slow, sweet. Cave’s music is simple, dominated by piano but supported wonderfully with violin and a touch of guitar. “Last Song” (music & lyrics: Albarn) is a bit overproduced for my taste, though the guitar and cello(?) are arranged quite beautifully. “No Child of Mine” brings us back to another PJ Harvey composition. This one is a bit more introspective, with acoustic guitars and Faithfull’s voice in a kind of call and response structure. While it is fine, the song feels a little empty to me, the lyics have an abstract quality that don’t seem to connect to the visceral, stab you in the guts. feeling that both women can instill in the listener.

More to come . . . but must do some homework.

On this day..