The Album Review Club - Week #147 - (page 1942) - Blonde On Blonde - Bob Dylan

[cyan]

and I've worked out where Glory Box is taking me - it's not a sample - but it is the same chord progression, (I think) and a similar feel - Youssou N'Dour/Neneh Cherry "Seven Seconds. " Which is also from 1994 - so I was taking something in that year!

 

[mrbelfry]

Meantime I’ve tried many times to get into Portishead given the rapturous words many have spilt on Dummy over the years and I will dutifully try again but honestly folks I am hungering for a record with some zip and energy and humo(u)r and at this rate I’m about ready to shove some Chappell Roan down all of your gullets when it’s my turn and call it a day.

I think British people tend to enjoy being downbeat and low-key miserable. Leaving a City game after thumping someone 6 nil you'll often hear people saying it was crap - not because we believe it (and we say it with a certain irony) but because we are more comfortable expressing that than elation or joy

 

[mrbelfry]

Fantastic review. At one level I can't disagree about the squalor, desolation and menace. But for me it's so beautifully put together it transcends those things, it's got an operatic quality in the sense that everyone has died of TB by the final act but they were all such aurally beautiful deaths that you forget the misery!

As ever it's interesting that you, me and @GoatersLeftShin and doubtless others hear the music seemingly the same way but it then invokes these very different feelings and memories.

I think that space between what an artist intends and what the consumer consumes is fascinating. What's being said isn't always what's being heard. So then whats the truth about a piece of art - what is said or what is heard? What about a piece that is intentionally ambiguous?

 

[RobMCFC]

I've never knowingly listened to Portishead - although I know the name and I've heard of Beth Gibbons. The early 90's feel like a Music free zone - it was all about work and children until I had a 6 year old that discovered Spice Girls, Bewitched and Steps - so those are my 90's music references!

So I have had a first listen to Portishead - Mysterons was too depressing first thing in the morning - so I hit pause and left it ...


... until the afternoon, when I had some work that could cope with background music and hit play again.

Sour Times is gorgeous - I listened instead of working!

Strangers is interesting - like the switch from annoying drum machine to lonely string (ukelele?) and then back to full band

It Could be Sweet - very Sade ish, and I like Sade - but Portishead take it in different directions and the backing going off into minor chords is well worked.

Wandering Star - well it's not Lee Marvin is it? Nice melody with lots of interesting noises off. Need to have a look at the lyrics

It's a Fire (Wiki says this was not in UK vinyl release - so are you including it?) Actually I don't know if I would - lovely Hammond organ backing, but not a lot to it on my listens so far

Numb - not to be confused with U2 and Linkin Park - lots of interesting backing noises and a song that like the other two deals with some dark places - again need to look closer at lyrics. Love the sudden end - needs more silence after it, as that is where the song seems to take us.

although it also takes us into Roads - which maintains the mood at the beginning and then the music lifts - even if the vocals are still in place of confusion. Love the way it takes us through to the string arrangements whilst that wahwah instrument (can't work out what it is) provides rhythm.

Pedestal - almost instant switch off music - I can see how it follows Numb and Roads - but not really sure it adds much.

Biscuit - repeat of pedestal. having said that - they didn't particularly annoy me as I worked, in fact I hardly noticed them - it was just background. But neither are songs I would listen to as stand alone.

Glory Box - lovely. Love the bass intro and the quiet strings. (I know I should know what they are sampling - but can't work it out) The vocal gives space for lots of voice moods - it has that classic soulful jazzy feel (Sade again) but there are lots of other musical references that draw you in whilst that bass just keeps it all steady. and I've just spotted that it samples Isaac Hayes - that makes sense!

So all in all - two listens (and Mysterons was better second time around when I was tuned in to the style) and a bit of jumping around to check bits out and very nice. I can also see why it stood out in that dark place that @threespires describes. There are songs there like Sour Times and Glory Box that I'm surprised aren't more recognisable to me - I may not have been paying attention until 1996, but there are often songs that I hear and know I should know who that is.

Anyway, thanks for the listen.

Nice track-by-track analysis. I certainly had the same feeling as you for more than one of those.

As you've put all that effort in, feel free to contribute a score out of 10.

 

[Black&White&BlueMoon Town]

You piqued my interest with your comments about Sugar (who I have never heard anything by) - any warning about noise levels is always a good start :)
First impressions are very good, thanks for the tip.

Yeah, I'm with Foggy on this which is why I listed the album in my 1994 list first. Given I don't have the backstory on if Bob or his bands had been discussed here, I didn't know where that mention was going to take things. Suffice to say I'm a bit amazed you haven't heard Bob Mould/Hüsker Dü/Sugar before, and given what I know on your musical tastes, I think you may have just hit a "sweet spot" with Sugar. ;-)

 

[threespires]

I think that space between what an artist intends and what the consumer consumes is fascinating. What's being said isn't always what's being heard. So then whats the truth about a piece of art - what is said or what is heard? What about a piece that is intentionally ambiguous?

Definitely a fascinating thing across all the arts. From an old interview...

Success thus arrived more or less overnight. Portishead’s response was to recoil in horror. Gibbons sang because she felt isolated from and unmoored by the world and wanted to communicate with others with similar experiences. Now she found herself the poster child for upwardly mobile angst. The breaking point was when Portishead were repurposed as aural wallpaper for the BBC’s aspirational Gen X drama This Life (thanks to the show’s music supervisor, Ricky Gervais).

“Half the reason you write… is that you’re feeling misunderstood and frustrated with life in general,” Gibbons protested. “Then it’s sort of successful and you think you’ve communicated with people, but then you realise you haven’t communicated with them at all – you’ve turned the whole thing into a product, so then you’re even more lonely than when you started.”

I was definitely adrift when I first heard this and it cut through, so in that sense she was successful; but as to how connected I was to what she specifically wanted to say, who knows?

 

[RobMCFC]

Just to add to the Sugar/Bob Mould discussion - they/he haven't been nominated, but I remember giving Copper Blue a listen when Foggy mentioned it on here and quite enjoying it. So that's at least 4 or 5 people who would probably enjoy discussing it. I think he's sounding us out because he's afraid of a low points score :)

 

[Black&White&BlueMoon Town]

Just to add to the Sugar/Bob Mould discussion - they/he haven't been nominated, but I remember giving Copper Blue a listen when Foggy mentioned it on here and quite enjoying it. So that's at least 4 or 5 people who would probably enjoy discussing it. I think he's sounding us out because he's afraid of a low points score :)

If I didn't know better, I'd have thought his "woe is my pick, so think I'll pass" set up is downright British of him. ;-)

 

[FogBlueInSanFran]

Buonasera Foggy, why wouldn't you even consider Husker Du/BM? They've popped up in conversation before and I'm sure I've seen favourable comments. Got to admit your first sentence got my hackles up as I thought it was a bit too dismissive of the thread.

Anway, as for this pick I was hoping to convince you that, whilst granted there's not any chuckles in there, there is great beauty which paradoxically creates a hopefulness entirely at odds with the subject matter. But it doesn't sound like you're in the mood for that conversation, so maybe another day! Sounds like you might have richer pickings from our cheeky chappie interloper next week.

Yeah, you go listen to "Plans I Make" or side 2 of Zen Arcade and tell me what the reaction here would be.

After The Blue Nile, Radiohead, this, Black Sabbath all in less than two months I'm just getting a little tired of slow tempos.

 

[FogBlueInSanFran]

Just to add to the Sugar/Bob Mould discussion - they/he haven't been nominated, but I remember giving Copper Blue a listen when Foggy mentioned it on here and quite enjoying it. So that's at least 4 or 5 people who would probably enjoy discussing it. I think he's sounding us out because he's afraid of a low points score :)

No I am just getting frustrated with a lack of BPMs. One thing I have done is try to change up my pick if we get a lot of similar records in short order which is why I delayed the Screaming Blue Messiahs awhile after a number of blues/rock records connected.

I'm kind of not kidding about Chappell Roan -- I think she's the voice of a new generation and I love her record and you all would absolutely detest it but at least we'd turn the temperature up in here.