Jamwise #23

Featuring: D'Angelo, The Magnetic Fields, The Raincoats, Brian Eno, X-Ray Spex

This week I did lots of jamming and not a lot of writing, so enjoy the music! There were some good new finds for me this week, as well as the long-anticipated redemption of Brian Eno, who I failed to properly appreciate the last time around.

69 Love Songs - The Magnetic Fields

At first glance, I’m not entirely certain if this is a joke or not. The first song, “Absolutely Cuckoo,” might be the clue I need, but I’ve got 3 hours and 68 more songs to go before I know for sure. 

Fortunately, I did some research on this one early into the journey (66 songs left). The album was a songwriting project conceived by Stephen Merritt, who challenged himself to write 100 songs across varying genres, eventually settling on the more manageable and appropriate number of 69. This project sounds insane to me, and I absolutely love it. What a blast that must have been - sitting around NYC bars writing song after song to put into your magnum opus songwriting album. I was initially worried about my stamina to listen to this whole thing, but after reading about the background of the album’s concept, I’m determined and excited to see it through. 

Ok, that was exhausting. There were good songs but it was a mistake to listen to them all back to back. I needed an intermission. It’s an achievement, no doubt, but I think my future listens will be curated to just my favorites.

Jams:

• “All My Little Words”

• “Parades Go By”

The Raincoats - The Raincoats

Rolling Stone loves punk, huh? I wonder if that’s my imagination from not listening to a lot of punk in the past, or if it’s really over represented in the list. I might have to study that a little bit when I get through the entire list. 

It might be too early in the morning as I listen to this album, but idk it sounds like slightly weirder prototypical British punk pop to me. I bet this album is divisive depending if you grew up in the world when this came out vs any time after that. It feels like one of those albums that gets credit for originality when in reality it’s just an oddball version of something better. Even the cover of “Lola” was just kind of a halfhearted, out of tune, off-beat version of the original. That sums up this album for me, unfortunately. 

Brown Sugar - D’Angelo

This album is for when you’re on a hot date with a doctor. Or what an astronaut listens to in the bathtub surrounded by candles to unwind after returning from a successful mission. 

Ok maybe I’m exaggerating, but this album gave “smart soul” with a mix of smooth vocals and complex beats, almost jazzy sometimes, relative to other smooth R&B I’ve heard. I get the feeling D’Angelo could have succeeded in other genres with his musicality and obvious mastery of the groove. And as this is debut, and it’s the only D’Angelo I’ve ever heard to this point, don’t ruin the surprise if he does go into other genres in his later releases - I wanna be surprised!

Jams

• “Brown Sugar”

• “Shit, Damn, Motherfucker”

Here Come The Warm Jets - Brian Eno

My chance at Brian Eno redemption! Time to find out if I’m a cultured music-savvy human or still the same old tone deaf Zeppelin-bro of two months ago. 

It feels like I picked the wrong album to be my first foray into Eno’s library in Another Green World. I kind of found that album to be noisy nonsense, but it’s clearly an evolution from some previous point in his career, and I didn’t know anything about that previous state of Eno to judge the later work. I still think it’s weird to judge an album based so heavily on other albums, but it’s still true that context is important to understanding an artist’s intent. 

This album is much more Roxy Music than whatever happened in Another Green World, and that’s much more up my alley. I enjoyed most of it and I’m glad to be back onboard with such a hugely influential artist. As I said before, it was me, not him. 

Jams

• “Cindy Tells Me”

• “Blank Frank”

Germfree Adolescents - X-Ray Spex

As the kids today say, this shit goes hard. Sometimes punk music can sound forced to me, like the musicians are just competing to sound the most punk. But with this album it feels like there’s no barrier between the band’s minds and the final track. It sounds free and open, not effortless but also definitely not forced. 

Also I think it’s a damn shame that the saxophone wasn’t more prevalent in punk rock. It somehow sounds both kinda silly, but also angry at the same time. Like a goose, disenchanted with society, honking its rage at us. 

Jams

• “Art-I-Ficial”

• “I Am A Poseur”