The Album Review Club - Week #144 - (page 1893) - XO - Elliot Smith

BimboBob said:
One bathroom spotless.

I used a well known bath/ shower cleaning spray after emptying the detritus that my significant other half seems to leave lying around on a regular basis. There's a bin. Which is empty apart from one used toothpaste tube, squeezed from the middle. Who squeezes from the middle? I suppose being home all day, everyday, adds to the irritation. The other empty collection of tubes/ potions were doted about.

I've learnt to bring a bin bag with me. It's far easier. Then the spray. I use a different cloth for the shower than I do the bath. Neither of these have been used recently. There's an en-suite you see. It does make you wonder why so many bottles are lying about. Discarded. Most of them half used.

Still, the showerhead is fixed, rainfall, very nice, but the other nozzle stretches far enough to spray the bath. Which I've not learnt to use properly and get myself wet. There's always a small giggle when this happens. Little things.

Sparkling.

I then move onto the mirror/ cabinet. I'm doing this as it's the toilet that I leave to last. No idea why. The cabinet has a small LED light under and a brighter one above. There's really no need for the main bulb with it's outdated cord. It's that bright. I get a warm satisfaction from un-smearing the mirror. It's a big mirror. I finish with a flourish.

I move onto the sink. It's one of those with the cupboard/ toilet built in. Tutting to myself at the plug area. Why do manufacturers make these units so the tap goes straight onto the plug. Still, a regular cleaning programme keeps it all spruce.

And now the toilet. Amazingly, considering it's really only used by me as the seat appears to be too low for the lady of the house, it's got a layer of what looks like dust on the lid. Might have been from when we washed the dog last week. He likes a bath. We have that in common. It's ducked within an inch of it's life.

Next up is the towel rail. It's rather therapeutic to run the cloth between it's tubular construction. The towels get replaced by fresh ones. There's always two on offer. Once again I have no idea why. It's something I've always done.

A tiled floor. I know people who have carpet in their bathroom. That seems foolish to me. Water and carpet don't mix in my mind. I sweep it. Then the mop. In that order. I stand on the landing admiring my work. Gleaming surfaces abound. I could eat my dinner off them. I won't though. As that would be madness.



Hmmmm....it would appear that osmosis has kicked in. I'm supposed to be reviewing The Streets A Grand Don't Come For Free and instead I've prattled on about cleaning a bathroom. I also appear to have written nine songs for an album about the most mundane things possible. All I need to do is add a jaunty backing track to each one, work out the chorus and hey presto...a number one hit. This is fucking easy. Less than a mornings work.

1/10
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Sounds like you do a more thorough job than Mrs D, what’s your hourly rate?
 
RobMCFC said:
The first thing worth mentioning is that I didn’t consider that “Young Mike” was any different to the artist. I still think that this can be a thin excuse to offer up banal fayre, but maybe Mike Skinner is a lyrical genius and he decided to put away his quill for this album?
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Under the circumstances I'm probably not going to suggest you listen to OPM but I do think there is a qualitative difference that leads me to my conclusion about 'young mike'.

RobMCFC said:
In this case, the artist has done nothing to help me understand his character’s predicament. He’s wrapped it up in street language and therefore has lost me as a potential audience member immediately. It's not aimed at people like me, so that's fair enough.
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You might be surprised to know I have great sympathy with that perspective. There's a fair bit of hip-hop where I feel alienated because I am not familiar with the language or the themes and to your point it's (typically) not that the artist is looking to alienate me, it's just that he or she is talking to a different audience of which I am not part of.

Where I am slightly surprised is how differently you and I view the level of 'street language' and distance to our own worlds on on this particular album. I think, being generous to myself, we are roughly the same age; correct me if I'm wrong but I feel sure you've said you are a software engineer and whilst no sane person would let me near their codebase these days it's what I used to be and I'm still involved in the industry. So I suspect a number of our life experiences and the cultural influences we've grown up with are broadly similar and yet I hear almost nothing alienating but you very much do.

Maybe I've just lived in the midlands too long and have become assimilated in some strange fashion; or maybe you were bitten by a Brummie when you were in your pram and have harboured subconscious animosity ever since? Who knows but I find it quite fascinating. I'm going to muse on this in my response to @Black&White&BlueMoon Town 's review which will probably (and mercifully) cover my final thoughts on the album and people's response.
 
Mancitydoogle said:
A GRAND DON’T COME FOR FREE



This is a brave and interesting choice @threespires , whilst I’m not that fond of the genre other thanthe odd bit of Gangsta rap and the odd track by Professor Green and Plan B , which some of this reminds me of.However I do like a concept album especially real life banal storytelling, although totally different musically and content it reminds me of a band I really love ‘Richmond Fontaine’ who’s later albums were basically Willy Vautlins story telling set to music , some in the first person and some not.I get Mike Skinner’s character of ‘young Mike ‘ wether that incudes the music being purposefully amateurish or not I’m not sure ,because in fairness I haven’t listened to any of his other work.

Do I like it , it’s okish,I think Professor Green does better songs musically, and I’m fine with the Profanity there’s far more in Gansta Rap and it’s the language of the streets then and today, plus Pep and Mrs D swear far more than MS does on this .
My main takeaway is that this is an album that I’m glad I’ve listened to the requisite number of times but now I’ve heard the story there’s nothing on here that would make me want or need to hear it again ,other than maybe the odd track like ‘Dry Yours Eyes’ which incidentally I’ve never heard beforeand certainly wouldn’t sing to Mrs D unless I wanted her to swear at me for a change!


5/10
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Some interesting parallels with Plan B in that he's written and brought to fruition a joint film/soundtrack as has Skinner recently. I think it was @LGWIO who mentioned John Cooper Clarke in relation to this pick and I think JCC contributed to one of Plan B's tracks on that film/soundtrack. I was never sure with Plan B if he wanted to be a rapper or a soul-singer but then he seemed to settle on acting, not sure what he's up to these days.

I think the comparison with Professor Green and Plan B is interesting, I think they both drifted into the mainstream in a way that Skinner has either resisted (or failed to achieve?). He's remained stubbornly independent in his own lane and I actually think he has a bit of a punk like mentality.
 
threespires said:
Though Grandmaster Flash was around when I was at school (obviously figuratively not literally before some smartarse makes a funny) the idea of having a crack yourself at rapping hadn't quite yet hit Wythenshawe. Something I'm quite grateful for tbh. I agree this is not rapping in the conventional sense but then there's not much about it that's conventional.

As for your Jan pick there's actually very little music I hate out of hand. If however it's Black Metal then I will be waiting in the tall grass :-)
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80's rock rather than Black metal for me.....however as I TRY and choose something that I think few people know, rather than what I think is a '10' .....the genre may be a big surprise!!.....so I may be safe ;)
 
threespires said:
Under the circumstances I'm probably not going to suggest you listen to OPM but I do think there is a qualitative difference that leads me to my conclusion about 'young mike'.



You might be surprised to know I have great sympathy with that perspective. There's a fair bit of hip-hop where I feel alienated because I am not familiar with the language or the themes and to your point it's (typically) not that the artist is looking to alienate me, it's just that he or she is talking to a different audience of which I am not part of.

Where I am slightly surprised is how differently you and I view the level of 'street language' and distance to our own worlds on on this particular album. I think, being generous to myself, we are roughly the same age; correct me if I'm wrong but I feel sure you've said you are a software engineer and whilst no sane person would let me near their codebase these days it's what I used to be and I'm still involved in the industry. So I suspect a number of our life experiences and the cultural influences we've grown up with are broadly similar and yet I hear almost nothing alienating but you very much do.

Maybe I've just lived in the midlands too long and have become assimilated in some strange fashion; or maybe you were bitten by a Brummie when you were in your pram and have harboured subconscious animosity ever since? Who knows but I find it quite fascinating. I'm going to muse on this in my response to @Black&White&BlueMoon Town 's review which will probably (and mercifully) cover my final thoughts on the album and people's response.
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Yes, I think you are probably right about the commonality in our life experiences. I’m 55, I started as a software engineer in 1990 and have been one ever since.

I’m just very wary (and cynical) of the kind of delivery you hear on this album. Somebody mentioned poets, and you know those sort of regional accent poets the BBC tend to wheel out on big sporting occasions? Or not just poets - when they get somebody like Andrew Cotter to read out some famous passage in his Scottish brogue (I like him as a commentator by the way). Anyway, I think that the BBC think that they will be making our hearts swell with emtotion and that they are doing something that lends the occasion gravitas.

Well, in short, and in the spirit of this week’s artist, I call fucking bullshit. It’s like needing rock music at the cricket when somebody hits a six, or at the tennis in between games. I think I’m off on a rant tangent now, so apologies.

The point that I’m trying to make is that even though people may talk to each other like this on the street, there’s a phoniness to it that doesn’t sit right with me. It’s not necessary. Its just as bad as all those managers who can’t stop themselves with their three-letter acronyms and lose most of their audience along the way.

Some will call it evolution of the language, but I think that people have lost the art of communication, and it’s not something that I celebrate. But there is clearly an audience for this kind of thing, so I think it’s me in the minority.

Hopefully some of that made sense.
 
I have already said a fair bit about this, and how I found myself divided on it, so will go straight into the bad and good.

Musically, it didn't do it for me. Unlike for a few others, it is not a genre thing. I quite like rap, so that didn't bother me at all. Listening to it to analyse it aside, I can't say I would listen to it to enjoy it, bar the odd chuckle here and there. There was no power of beat, or depth of background, or energy in the rap, which would normally be what I like. I get why he delivers as he does, I get why it maybe works for what he has set the album out to be, but as a purely listening activity, it is not for me.

A few weeks ago one of their recent songs with Idles came up, and while I agree it is not as good as the sum of its parts would have you expect, I can actually use that to personally put the finger on exactly what for me is missing here, that idles brought to it in sound.

As for the positives, it is a concept album, it is bold, it is unforgiving and relentless in its follow-through. Almost everything about it seems to dedicate itself to that, a 'laddyssey' of sorts (see what I did there lad-odyssey), and it doesn't look to cover multiple bases or play safe. I will always respect that. It has a structure, a recurring theme, characters, and a setting that you can't help feeling a part of if you open up to it. The lyrics are clever, and witty, a touch poignant. I mentioned before the similarity (in feel, not in sound) of the likes of Scott Hutch and others of that type, and that I liked being prodded to think about. He endears himself in a similar way, more like your pal than some pedestal pop star, and while with SH you could often feel like you just want a collective hug, with Mike you can feel like you are listening to his pub chat. The stories and themes on it haven't really aged either.

It has been an interesting experience, and at times it felt more like reading a prescribed book at shool or looking at a piece of provocative art, than listening to a music album. And the discussions have been interesting.

No idea how to score it, as my usual metrics are out the window here. On the music alone, I'd be pushing it with a 3. But it is not an album of music alone, and there is more than meets the ear. Normally I play it safe with a 5 when something is not for me, but I recognise quality there. Looking at this post just visually there, the 'good' section is a fair bit longer than the 'bad', lets call it a 6. And one more for the experience and discussion involved, because I do think it matters and has contributed to my week as a whole. So a 7 overall, not that it will do anything to peel it off the bottom.
 
RobMCFC said:
And if my previous post came across as unkind, I didn’t mean it to be. It’s nothing personal, just a subject that I feel strongly about.

What I should have said is:

Some people feel that a banana gaffer taped to a wall is art. I don’t.
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Just to be sure, you don't fancy spare ticket next time i go see them ?
 
RobMCFC said:
And if my previous post came across as unkind, I didn’t mean it to be. It’s nothing personal, just a subject that I feel strongly about.

What I should have said is:

Some people feel that a banana gaffer taped to a wall is art. I don’t.
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Was it you that kept nicking them and eating them?
 
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