This semester I'm in Mr. Hunt's seminar, Albums Worth Hearing. It's really great, and we listen to tons of diverse stuff. There was one French experimental album, one punk-feminist album, all sorts of really great stuff. My favorite so far, though is Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone. It's the only album released by a Canadian band called The Unicorns.
It is fantastic.
The idea is that the album goes along parallel to life. It is at times silly, at times poignant, at times dark, and always catchy. Mr. Hunt's albums are the only 'obscure' things I listen to, but this album is incredible. There is something about just sitting down and listening to it, though, because you're able to focus on the arc of the album and really focus on each song, the lyrics and the different musical elements.
My favorite songs are "Tuff Luff" and "I Was Born (A Unicorn)." I'm not sure what it is about the word "unicorn" that makes me automatically inclined to like something - probably some kind of nostalgia from a Barbie movie I used to watch. This album is really something to listen to because as much as I enjoyed just listening to it the first time, I've heard it about twenty times now and I still hear something new every time.
This is a link for "Tuff Luff" but it's soooo much better in context!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHz3klah2t8
I'm not one hundred percent sure you were trying to bring this sort of thing up in your post since it was focused on the individual beauty the one album, but it made me think of something I've thought about a bit lately. That is, the difference between appreciating an album for it's overall composition and congruity, versus appreciation of an album for the composition of the individual tracks within it.
ReplyDeleteI think that in recent times, there have been many many many artists who have very skillfully done both. But can an album of mediocre songs be considered great because it comes together so well as a whole? I'm not sure.