The Album Review Club - Week #146 - (page 1935) - Ocean Rain - Echo and the Bunnymen

[FogBlueInSanFran]

Shocked at the light weight know nowts on this thread. Genesis foxtrot is one half of a good pastoral pastiche. Red was and still is ground breaking 45 years later. Curt Cobain, Trent Reznor and a multitude of current artists sight it as their influence....
Get a grip guys. Genesis are like the mushroom foam while King Crimson are the steak...

Well . . . it isn’t groundbreaking 45 years later by definition. Does it still sound like it could be made today? Not to me. The biggest issue I have is Providence sucks, period, and no great record can have 1/5th of it suck in my world.

Cobain was deliberately trying to create an obtuse record which would piss off his label with In Utero. Also, Cobain wrote songs, not compositions. But all that said I think the opener is a master stroke and I found Foxtrot a bit fey as well. I scored Red and Foxtrot the same but preferred passages in Foxtrot to entire songs whereas I preferred entire songs on Red. And both bands could use better singers.

 

[Hart of the Matter]

Well . . . it isn’t groundbreaking 45 years later by definition. Does it still sound like it could be made today? Not to me. The biggest issue I have is Providence sucks, period, and no great record can have 1/5th of it suck in my world.

Cobain was deliberately trying to create an obtuse record which would piss off his label with In Utero. Also, Cobain wrote songs, not compositions. But all that said I think the opener is a master stroke and I found Foxtrot a bit fey as well.

I have a actually sat at the end of a house party and listened to Red (amongst other things) with Courtney Love and Julian Cope in a tip of a house in Liverpool in the early eighties!
Curt may well have picked it up from her?
They dug it.

 

[FogBlueInSanFran]

Have to say, before I pop off to bed. I’m really glad Bill nominated King Crimson even though I sounded like I was coming down on the album.
I spent the afternoon going through a load of Crimson that I hadn’t heard in years and it was great.
They really are a one off band that don’t sound like anyone else.
Genesis? No. Definitely not.
Yes? Bruford snd Wetton passed through the ranks but….. No. Not the same thing at all.
I think they are unique and that is the attraction.
Not everything they do will work for you all the time but it is challenging and defies genre if you ask me.

I agree with all this. It’s interesting the focus here has been on early Crimson but personally I think if you took the best tunes from Discipline, Beat and Three of A Perfect Pair (all early 80s) and put them on one record you’d have a prog/new wave near-masterpiece that would have expanded the band’s popularity significantly.

 

[FogBlueInSanFran]

I have a actually sat at the end of a house party and listened to Red (amongst other things) with Courtney Love and Julian Cope in a tip of a house in Liverpool in the early eighties!
Curt may well have picked it up from her?
They dug it.

Were you with Dave Haslam?? ARE you Dave Haslam??

He picked up a lot of things from her. They are both individually fascinating characters. And some of Hole’s stuff is incredible. “Celebrity Skin” is one of my favo(u)rite songs — explodes out of the speaker and she is so defiant and poetic.

 

[mancity2012_eamo]

Were you with Dave Haslam?? ARE you Dave Haslam?

It’s like an episode of Through the Keyhole.

 

[Saddleworth2]

King Crimson
Red
Couple more weeks of this and I'll be well versed in all things Prog rock

Fair play to you @Bill Walker , you've nominated yet another crowd splitter - great pick. :-)

On first listen, I didn't get it at all. I'm pretty open on my struggles with Prog Rock but I couldn't find a common ground or a communion with the music.*

As I mentioned on another post, the drumming is really really good and stands out from the rest of the music to me (although I also think the bass player produces some great sounds and unbelievable depth). BW was right, I imagine he blew through a few speakers trying to force out some of those very very powerful depths.

There are so many elements to each of the songs that I never really get chance to settle on the overall movements of the song (whilst this is listed down as 5 songs, it definitely feels more like 10+ songs that have been reinvented and intertwined).

The overall tone doesn't seem as dark as I was potentially envisaging, they have some heavy elements but they kind of play in an up-tempo tone and beat which kind of keeps it relatively light to a point.

This is also heightened by some of the brass and woodwind instruments utilised throughout the album (some of these I struggle to find place in a band set up).

I am still a little thrown by the lack of overall vocals on the album - do they usually sing more or are they always this instrumental?

I made a couple of notes on one bit to hopefully give you a slight insight as to how I hear it and potentially how my brain ticks;

-------------------------------

One more red Nightmare (approximate timings)

Start through to 2 mins

Why is the drummer occasionally hitting a baking tray?
Why is there a noise resembling a jungle cat?
Shifts on
Don't like the hand clap
What is the guy singing about?

2 mins through to 4 mins

What a great break in the music!!!
Nice arpeggio, lovely sound, nice change of pace
Now don't mind the hand clap - it fits
Don't particularly like sax, but sits alright in this

4 mins through to 5 mins

Why does the original riff now sound so much better (very clever)!?!
It works........
Baking tray is back
Don't like the re-break into handclap again

5 mins through to end of track

The lovely arpeggio has returned!!!!!!!!!
Can still live with the sax

-------------------------------

I have asked this a few times on various artists and albums, do I enjoy these breaks so much because I don't really like the initial song element or is that just a great gift from hindsight. Is the artist that self aware and daring to test us on the bit on bold? Answers on a postcard BlueMooners.

Sooooooooooooo yet again, I have managed to write a fair bit without saying much. I'm plucking at a 5/10 but without too much of a foothold on reason. There are parts that I do enjoy, there are parts that I completely don't understand why they are on the album. This effectively still leaves me distanced from the music.

Is this just the nature of prog rock - fucking hell BlueMooners what have you got me into...................? :-)

* I really did stick with this BW after your post the other day, it's had about 4 full run throughs and a fair amount of shuffles

That’s a good review mate.

 

[Saddleworth2]

It’s like an episode of Through the Keyhole.

Or the fast show…..

 

[Bill Walker]

Cobain was deliberately trying to create an obtuse record which would piss off his label with In Utero. Also, Cobain wrote songs, not compositions. But all that said I think the opener is a master stroke and I found Foxtrot a bit fey as well. I scored Red and Foxtrot the same but preferred passages in Foxtrot to entire songs whereas I preferred entire songs on Red. And both bands could use better singers.

In my 50 years of listening to music Ive never heard any say the before about Gabriel and Wetton.
Personally I think they both fitted that music to a tee.

 

[Bill Walker]

I agree with all this. It’s interesting the focus here has been on early Crimson but personally I think if you took the best tunes from Discipline, Beat and Three of A Perfect Pair (all early 80s) and put them on one record you’d have a prog/new wave near-masterpiece that would have expanded the band’s popularity significantly.

Some great tunes on Power To Believe (2003) album also, bordering on poppy

 

[FogBlueInSanFran]

In my 50 years of listening to music Ive never heard any say the before about Gabriel and Wetton.
Personally I think they both fitted that music to a tee.

Robert Fripp is a genius in many ways, but he also has ego the size of block of flats and wouldn't ever let a singer take over HIS band. As I wrote before, that's why he went through so many of them. The battle between guitarist/lead vocalist has been going on in rock music from time immemorial. For Gabriel I kind of overstated my point -- I've never really had much of an issue with Gabriel's voice, but he's responsible for the lyrical content and, again as I wrote, became a much better artist when he began singing about things that matter to him personally ("Solsbury Hill") and/or should matter to us ("Biko", "Games Without Frontiers") rather than rehashing medieval nursery rhymes or whatever. Again, it's not ALL that bad, but enough to make me cringe.