Wow And Flutter

Long and short pieces on music you should listen to; audio gear; and pop culture.

Category: Sight Unseen

Sight Unseen™ – David Byrne, Grown Backwards

April 3, 2019 /

I’ve loved the Talking Heads from the(ir) very beginning.  Their entire career arc – until it came to a crashing halt with Naked – was one of joy, exploration, funk, noise, and flat-out weirdness.  It says something about how the world has finally caught up with them, that when you do your weekly shopping at Market Basket and hear “Take Me To The River”, it just sounds like the jam that it is rather than the eyeballs-open-oh-my-god-what-is-that-coming-out-of-the-speakers effect it had on everyone in 1978.  Although: when I hear “I Zimbra” or “The Great Curve” in the Produce section, THEN the world will have fully caught up.

Of course I’ve been engaged in David Byrne’s post-Heads work, although given how musically promiscuous he’s been over the past almost 30 years with solo work and collaborations, it’s a bit of a task to keep up.  I’ve liked selected singles of his like “My Fair Lady” (released in 2004 as part of a Wired magazine collection produced under Creative Commons) and his track “Who” with St. Vincent, what’s and of course his two collaborations with Brian Eno, especially 2008’s Everything That Happens Will Happen Today.

[Nonesuch Records]

Nonesuch released Byrne’s 2004 disc Grown Backwards on March 15th on vinyl for the first time (hard to remember the “no vinyl” days, I know.)  The quality, inside and out, is typical for Nonesuch’s recent vinyl re-releases (including the spectacular 180g remaster of Nashville by Bill Frisell.)  Although this is the lighter 140g vinyl, the pressing quality is great, and Greg Calbi’s mastering is likewise. 

Grown Backwards is, on the one hand, a typical Byrne outing, running the gamut from songs like the opener “Glass Concrete & Stone” (now one of my new favorites) to “Glad”, with its Talking Heads-like cute/quirky/insightful lyrics (“I’m glad I’ve got skin, I’m glad I’ve got eyes/I’m glad I got hips, I’m glad I’ve got thighs/I’m glad I’m allowed to say the things I feel”)  The tunefulness of the original material is on par with the same year’s “My Fair Lady.”  And, strings!  Lots of them.  So, the album’s a keeper just based on those.

What really clinched the deal for me were the two songs lifted from the opera canon.  Yes.  Opera.  Byrne’s voice has always been an almost-operatic sweet tenor, just “off” enough in places to make to make it sound more like a natural yawp, but the rest of the time quite sweet (rather like one-time Talking Heads guitarist Adrian Belew (his voice is all-the-time great.))   “Au fond du temple saint”, from an 1863 Bizet opera, and Verdi’s “Un di felice, eterea” are the standouts on this record.  “Au fond du temple saint” is a duet with Rufus Wainwright(!) and is, hands down, the best track on this record.  The twin voices complement each other – in parts where Byrne’s seems to falter, Wainwright’s soars.  And vice versa.  There aren’t a lot of «««««-rated tracks on my iPod, but: welcome to the club, “Au fond du temple saint.”

The nice thing about Sight Unseen records is that they often (not always!) surprise you.  Grown Backwards turned out to be a satisfying confirmation of David Byrne’s creativity.  Get yo’self a copy.

New feature! Sight Unseen™: Giorgio Moroder, Midnight Express soundtrack

March 7, 2019 /

Sight Unseen™ is a new feature here at WNF, where I write about a disc that I’ve taken in to my collection without knowing or heard anything about it, other than thinking that there may be good music in those grooves.

My most recent vinyl haul (from The Listening Room in Chestertown, MD) included Kurt Vile’s most recent release, Bottle It In (read my review here), and this gem from 1978.  It’s the soundtrack to the Alan Parker film Midnight Express, that late-70’s nugget that brought the phrase “Turkish Prison” into the wider vernacular.  To be honest, I’d never heard this record, even though it was ubiquitous in the years since its release (even I can miss stuff.  Yes, it is true.)

Recently, I’ve been digging back into Jean Michel Jarre’s groundbreaking 70’s works Oxygene and Equinoxe, and Moroder’s similarly important music in the same time parallels what Jarre was doing, but with a solid dance beat.  Moroder’s influence was everywhere then – see his work with Blondie, or with Donna Summer – straight through to the present, where no less than Daft Punk genuflected before him on Random Access Memories. 

As I walked into the shop that day, this very album was on the turntable  – the opening track, “Chase” was playing, and I just said, “take it off.  I need that.”  This music has aged very well, in contradistinction to its contemporaries.  One thing I appreciate about Moroder’s work is that the human element is always present.  No matter how cold the electronics may seem (e.g., I Feel Love) there is always a warmth that manages to work its way to the surface.  This ain’t Kraftwerk (and I love Kraftwerk, don’t flame me.) 

Review: Kurt Vile, Bottle It In

March 4, 2019 /

I am a massive fan of Courtney Barnett.  She showed up on my radar NOT when her 2015 album Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, was released, but instead when she appeared on the 2016 finale of Saturday Night Live, performing “Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go to the Party” and “Pedestrian at Best.”  Her performing style is completely without artifice – she tears it up, but you always know she’s having as much fun as you are.  Her songs are literate, funny and often moving, the best ones almost stream of consciousness, like “Dead Fox”, and “Depreston”.  “Elevator Operator” is firmly planted in my long run playlist, and will never leave my iPod. 


<Milk! Records>

Anyway.  After Sometimes I Sit And Think, I waited – like everyone else – for a followup, and was more than “partially” rewarded the following year with the album she did with Kurt Vile (yes folks, not just a clever nom de plume) Lotta Sea Lice.  The two had jammed together and decided to record a collaborative album, which turned out to be greater than the sum of its parts.  These kinds of pair ups can often be just the two artists dividing things up – five tracks for you, five tracks for me – but these guys melded their styles so well you’d have been forgiven for thinking that they were not bandmates of, say, twenty years or so.  Every track is charming, especially Vile’s Over Everything. 

Barnett returned last year with her excellent Tell Me How You Really Feel,  and recently it was Vile’s turn.  Bottle It In treads the same turf as Sea Lice (n.b. that’s good!), but it’s a little more electric in nature.  Supporting players like Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon add extra feel and texture to the songs, and Vile unspools a filthy guitar solo on “Check Baby” (containing the all-world lyric “rub my belly with a stick of hot butter”.)  You’ll like this. 


<Matador Records>

[A word about sound quality: it’s excellent.  I got the 180g split-color vinyl pressing; Matador Records is definitely sourcing from a good pressing plant, as my copy was clean and free from surface noise.]

“Good music is good no matter what kind of music it is.”  – Miles Davis

 

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