it has, thus far, been a particularly quiet year for buying "new" vibes, look you see. perhaps i am mistaken, and i certainly am not going to do something so foolish or so strenuous as check, but these could, half the way in, be the first such ones i have purchased this year. quite a few compilations procured, for sure, and things off of Poundland to play as i go to verk, yet let us not forget the many Bowie released they actually let people buy. but, newly recorded and released music, i am not so sure.
rather than faff on with "online" orders and rely on the vagaries of Royal Mail doing what they are (very well) paid to do, yes, i went back to my love, my passion for the acquisition of vibes. it was but a train ride away to get to HMV and buy these tunes.
for clarity, then, and not that the greater good and glory of Commodore 64 mode isn't so, the two new albums, released on the first anointed Friday of this June (2021), were or are All The Colours Of You off of James, and Dreamers Are Waiting off of Crowded House, with the latter apparently now back together as a band, kind of. but, more of that later.
my purpose, or intention was, in truth, just to secure a purchase of the James album. it was only the day before i set off for such that i became aware of the Crowded House one even existing, let alone being released on the same day. considering that one cannot really go too far wrong with Neil Finn, bar the odd mishap here and there (rare), i undertook to purchase it, too. which, as illustrated above, i did.
quite unexpectedly it was so that i could have purchased double of the new music released what i did. others that i considered, as advertised in the window, were Hi off of Texas, and Something Something Something off of Olivia Something; her what does that Drivers Licence or whatever song. both sound really good and i have been enjoying them on Radio 2, which is why i did not purchase. alas, for some unusual reason Radio 2 tend to play songs to death, so i knew purchasing either of them would result in me getting a disc unlikely to be played too often, purely due to over familiarity. same with that Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande (sp) one, Rain. i really love the song, but due to Radio 2 i have heard it probably as many times as i would reasonably wish to in one lifetime, so purchasing the disc seemed to be just an act of bourgeois folly.
how was it being back in HMV? not so bad, actually. yes, they remain fighting death, with music being continuously marginalised as they "diverse". no, i do not wish to purchase "blind merch" boxes, nor sweets, thanks. yes, i am, in a way that is as acute as it is obtuse, the last of a dying breed, one that prefers to actually buy music in a physical form. how long this lasts, i shall know not.
but baffling, it was, that HMV was closed down under the most recent of "lockdown" thing, as we wage the invisible war against the new plague. who, exactly, decided or determined that music was not an essential thing? if this world is now so completely f****d up that music is not considered essential to life, then bring forth this plague, finish me off, wipe me out and let me be done, thanks.
right, after all that i suppose now would be as appropriate a time as any to have a look (or listen, if you will) to these two (2) records. starting with the one that i was most keen on.
an honest appraisal is that James are a band that i always liked, but not devoutly so. this was right up to, say, 5 or so years ago, when they released Girl At The End Of The World, an album i regularly play to this day and the more i hear it the more i am convinced it is one of the greatest records of all time. which sets one hell of a marker for whatever they did after that. fell short, mostly, with the one after that and before this, Living In Extraordinary Times, but go full tilt back on really good with this All The Colours Of You album. pretty much at all times.
just how to describe this record. usually, or normally, i really don't like comparisons, but here it seems unavoidable. welcome to what is an informed, 21st century, Madchester sensibilities Automatic For The People. kind of. the REM magnum opus took a breathtaking, never likely to be equalled introspective look at the sense of loss, be it death, distance or fading memories. here, it's rather James tackles the fate of the world as we have it now from the opposite stream, with personal experiences of all that is going on exploding (with some very catchy music) into a more outward, universal sense.
it would be wrong to say "oh, James has done a coronavirus album". other things in the world are certainly touched on, and yes, for it does appear to remain trendy and relevant, further comments on Donald Trump are made. he's gone now, forgotten as soon as everyone stops mentioning him you would think, but no not evidently just yet. rather, then, the sense i walked away from this album was of it in some way trying to cut through the distortion of modern life. let me leave it at that, actually, rather than try to embellish or elaborate. hear the album, maybe you hear it as i did, maybe not.
much like Girl At The End Of The World and any truly great album i am unable to select one or two tracks as highlights. this is so beautifully put together it flows just all as one record experience. how albums are really meant to be. i am not sure this record shall be played quite so often as Girl At The End Of The World, but it will get played a few times.
so, on to Crowded House, then. expectations were high for listening to this one, based purely on the price. if it was £1 more than the James album, well then best it be at least £1 better. the answer to that is, of course, yes, no and maybe.
overall, i think the tacit, as in unspoken, thing that everyone is thinking about a new Crowded House album is phew, praise be, Neil Finn got out alive. from where? let us not forget he was enlisted, or drafted, into Fleetwood Mac. which meant he would have had to endure trial by Stevie Nicks. and by that of course i mean [TEXT REMOVED ON LEGAL ADVICE]. tempting, yes, but also scary. just look at the pictures of post trial by Stevie Nicks people, such as Lindsey Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood and Tom Petty in particular. there is a scar there, of sorts.
from what i can gather, the bulk (majority) of this Crowded House album was recorded post-trial by Stevie Nicks, pre-coronavirus stuff. a calm between storms, if you will. which is actually pretty much the perfect description of any good (and there hasn't really been many bad) Crowded House album. here we go with a dozen perfectly honed homages to the delights of breezy, whimsical and peaceful coming together moments of melody and harmony. it is the comfort zone of a Crowded House album, but that is no disparaging thing, for it sounds of itself. no, it does not stand out like i would argue the two masterpieces from the band do (Temple Of Low Men and Woodface), but stand on its own it does.
does Dreamers Are Waiting come across as an album which HMV measured and found to be £1 better than the James one? this depends on how you would care to measure such. it has twelve tracks to the James rather round eleven, but the overall running length is shorter, say five minutes or so. let me tell you something, i would have paid more for a version of the Crowded House album which did not have the hideous, disturbing "artsy" portrait pics of each of the (current) band featured. i am not putting a pic of it here, and it makes a mockery of my claim that physical format music is always better, so it does.
to make the predictable comment, yes, Neil Finn has been turning out tunes like this almost every year for north of forty years now. it is a quite remarkable gift that he has. sure, no massive "blockbuster" tunes here, but then the world no longer wishes for or wants such. perhaps Dreamers Are Waiting is the kind of record that you would reasonably expect to hear gently in the background of some posh wine bar or gentrified gin lounge (or whatever they are). assume that is bad at your own loss.
i doubt anyone anywhere sees these two records as being in competition with each other. but, since we are here, of the two, it is the James one that is likely to get played more frequently, although not nearly as frequently as Girl At The End Of The World. indeed i will play the Crowded House one a few times, but not nearly as much as, say, Split Enz get on the stereo. two satisfactory releases, then.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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