bruce springsteen

Least and Most: Tunnel of Love

/ Tony / 5 Comments

While he’s never pulled a Landing On Water style curveball, it’s not as though Springsteen has ever really repeated an album formula since he broke through. From the success of Born To Run he dialled the production down for the leaner, meaner Darkness… while Nebraska‘s stark, acoustic desperation was an equally far cry from the sprawl of The River. Following Born In The USA‘s success with a similar stadium-pleasing muscle-bound punch would have been an easy call and the ’80s were full of similar ‘dial it up a notch for more dosh’ examples. Bruce, however, was ready to move on and look inward instead.

Tunnel of Love is one of Springsteen’s finest albums. Where he’d undoubtedly written about men and women before, this time the voice felt real and the vocabulary didn’t feel borrowed. Just as Springsteen himself got off the road and started to look at his own married life and the issues he was dealing with, he took his characters out of their cars and sat them at the table to take a long hard look at each other. As genuine and nuanced a set of songs as he’d ever release with a gorgeous sound and production.

So is there a least favourite lurking among yet another stellar collection of songs? Yup…

Least: I Ain’t Got You

I guess this is here to say ‘this isn’t another ‘rock’ album’ but ‘I Ain’t Got You’ is an odd choice for Springsteen. By all accounts it lead to the second of Springsteen’s three fights* with Steven Van Zandt when he played it for him. As SVZ put it, when Bruce played it to him: “People depend on your empathy!” I said. “It’s what you do best. They don’t want advice from Liberace or empathy from Nelson Fucking Rockefeller! You shouldn’t be writing shit like this!” While it wouldn’t be the last time Bruce wrote in this style (see Better Days’ ‘a life of leisure and a pirate’s treasure’) it’s more jarring thanks to it’s almost entire lack of musical accompaniment.

Most: One Step Up

This one’s easy for me. ‘One Step Up’ is not only an album highlight but one of my favourite Springsteen songs. A pensive ballad with haunting production that’s got just the right amount of that late-’80s vibe and a simple but effective melody that ticks away throughout that’s possibly the most on-the-nose reference to a marriage breakdown as the album would contain: ‘another fight and I slam the door on another battle in our dirty little war.’ It represents not only a break with the past – Springsteen played every instrument on the track himself with Patti Scialfa adding vocal harmonies – but a clear indication as to where his song writing would move him next, only he’d never quite the balance as perfect as this.

*For those keeping score: Fight 1 was over creative and decision making input around the sessions for Born In The USA which led to SVZ’s departure. The third was down to Springsteen’s induction into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame without the E Street Band.

Least and Most: Born In The USA

/ Tony / 6 Comments

“Sometimes records dictate their own personalities and you just have to let them be…. I finally stopped doing my hesitation shuffle, took the best of what I had and signed off on what would be the biggest album of my career”

Work on what would become Born In The USA began in early 1982. The years of sessions would yield close to 80 songs – including those that became Nebraska – would see the departure of Steven Van Zandt and an album that went through multiple versions before the forces that be put an end to the inertia that Springsteen seemed stuck in and his most grab-bag collection of songs was released to kick off BOSS MANIATM with Rambo Bruce rocking a head band or bandana and flexing his way across a stadium stage near you for a year and a half.

I’ve written about those multiple versions, those ‘what could have been‘ albums already. But here we’re talking about two songs from the album we did get. An album that’s a real curate’s egg. king at how this was the last of Springsteen’s albums where there were whole multiple albums of outtakes, you get the feeling that this is the point at which he was starting to get lost in his search and could’ve ended up carrying on to Chinese Democracy lengths if he wasn’t careful. Which certainly explains the reserve with which he’s come to view the album too.

Thing is, each of these songs work. This is still peak-period Springsteen so none of these songs are ‘bad’ in the traditional sense (don’t worry Human Touch is only a few years away) but the album lacks the consistency / sense of cohesion that previously embodied his work. As such, and not so surprising given that seven of its twelve tracks were released as singles, it feels like a compilation rather than an album.

Least: Cover Me

I feel like I’m in a minority with this one given that it was a hit single and all but there’s something about it that just means I don’t take it in as much as the rest of the album. Maybe it’s because it wasn’t written as his own song. It was intended for Donna Summer. While ‘Hungry Heart’ was initially meant for The Ramones it felt like a Springsteen song meant to be given away rather than writing specifically for someone else’s voice. As such the feel of the song in amongst the rest of the album doesn’t gel for me.

I will say, though, that in many respects, this song is a noteworthy one. Just as the message of ‘Born In the USA’ become overlooked some flag-waving Republicans (oh, those were the days, right America? How bad does Reagan seem now?),Springsteen’s singing a song written for and from the female voice without any alteration to lyric is a wonderful thing – here’s Springsteen with his stocky frame now bedecked with muscles calling for a lover to ‘wrap your arms around me, cover me’ and protect him a rough world that’s only getting rougher.

It’s the directness of those lyrics that make it tough for me to call it ‘Least’ but it’s the sound of it that I can’t quite vibe with. He struggled trying to find a way to get it right live on that Born In The USA tour too… it wasn’t a regular set list staple until Arthur Baker’s remix gave him a way in by slowing it and making it a little ominous and brooding. The live versions are now pretty fucking great, but we can’t count those here so let’s move along…

Most: Downbound Train

Only on an album where the majority of songs were released as singles could a song this strong be considered a ‘deep cut,’ but ‘Downbound Train’ feels like a piece of over-looked gold in amidst a sea of chest-thumping stadium pleasers. “Now I work down at the car wash, where all it ever does is rain” might be one of my favourite Springsteen lyrics but this song is fucking stuffed with them, all evocative… what about the whole fucking verse:

“There in the clearing, beyond the highway
In the moonlight, our wedding house shone
I rushed through the yard, I burst through the front door
My head pounding hard, up the stairs I climbed
The room was dark, our bed was empty
Then I heard that long whistle whine
And I dropped to my knees, hung my head and cried”

‘Downbound Train’ is one of those first clutch of songs that came from Springsteen’s home recordings that included Nebraska‘s songs and tracks like ‘Born in the USA’ and ‘Johnny Bye Bye’ that he put to tape in 1982 and appeared on almost every potential track list for release between then and the final album. In less than a decade since the thesaurus-groping first two albums he’d distilled his songwriting down to the point where he could render a full story of broken hopes, marriage and lives with much clearer precision.

Pain, hope, desperation… it’s all there in a tune containing some of his most aching lyrics put to a great driving (or train-like chugging) melody with just the right amount of that ’80s synth. To me, this is the biggest indicator on the album of where we’d find New Jersey’s finest on his next outing.

Least and Most: Nebraska

/ Tony / 7 Comments

How many artists can manage to create a five-star album when they weren’t actively trying to make an album in the first place?

I’m not going to reiterate the story behind Springsteen’s Nebraska. Aside from the fact that there’s already a film of the period in the works – honestly though; ‘man makes austere collection of songs on home four-track as guide for band, carries it around in pocket for so long it nearly gets absorbed by his denim before putting them out as is’ feels as thrillingly entertaining as watching Timothee Chalamet trying not to look like he knows what instragram is for long enough to finish singing ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ – it’s been told many a time.

My connection to Nebraska goes back to 1999, hearing ‘State Trooper’ played over the end credits of a Sopranos episode and – streaming services that mug off artists not being a thing yet – went out and picked up both my second and third (having picked up Greatest Hits in ’95) Springsteen albums in one hit as it came as double-cd combo with Darkness… Talk about an auspicious intro.

This, then, is the hardest one of these for me. There’s not a single song on Nebraska I don’t enjoy. These are ten songs that feel perfectly placed and without an ounce of fat on the whole joint. If I were to be picky, very, very, very picky – which is what I’d have to be to even think like this – I’d say that, possibly..

Least: Used Cars

But only because compared to everything else the lyrics sound a little slight. But then that’s not necessarily a bad thing because Springsteen was ‘high’ on Flannery O’Connor’s work and her ability to write pure narrative including from a child’s perspective and the songs simple yet pure dream of a greater life typified by the feeling that a lottery win would mean – of all things – the ability not to drive a used car is pitch perfect especially as it follows up ‘State Trooper.’ So this isn’t so much Least more like a Least (barely) but still fucking great….

Which leaves the trick of identifying the other end of the spectrum but for me that’s relatively straight forward…

Most: State Trooper

It has to be, for me: it’s the one that sent me spiralling deeper into Springsteen’s catalogue and still captivates me. That pulsating guitar line that emulates the monotonous, repetitive sound of the road.. the pleading ‘Please don’t stop me, PLEASE don’t stop me’… it’s perfect.

Least and Most: The River

/ Tony / 6 Comments

In theory this is where it gets easier. For while Springsteen was still churning work of unyielding quality some of those tracks, in retrospect, probably should have been left in the vault. Doesn’t necessarily mean that choosing a ‘most’ is going to be easier but singling those ‘meh’ tracks out gets simpler

The River, released – just before I was – in October 1980, was Springsteen’s double album statement of purpose. We’re deep into Bruce’s era of stockpiling songs here and between the end of 1979 and May 1980 when recording sessions began and ended across two different phases, close to 60 songs were recorded to a finished state. As the studio time began to clock up an antsy Steven Van Zandt already wanted out, he was convinced to stay put by being made part of the production team that already included Springsteen and Jon Landau. SVZ’s imprint is clear on many of the shorter, punchier tunes but The River is a sprawling beast of an album that for many years became the best one-stop-shop for all things Sprinsgsteen. It’s why he couldn’t let it go – despite a couple of finished, mixed versions going to the label – as a single album:

“It wasn’t big enough. It wasn’t sprawling enough. It didn’t include enough. I’d gotten to the point where I wanted to include everything that I did, from the party material to my character studies, and I didn’t think I could do that successfully on one album at that time. I didn’t take it back with the intention of making two…. I just took it back with the intention of making it better.”

So, twenty songs. Are they all gold? Of course not. Hell, this is the first of many instances where archival releases would beg the questions ‘how did X make the cut over this?’ With that in mind…

Least: Crush On You

“Ooh, ooh, I gotta crush on you, Ooh, ooh, I gotta crush on you, Ooh, ooh, I gotta crush on you tonight”… I mean, it sounds naff enough once, let alone when it’s repeated ad nauseum after just the second verse. Verses so slight they feel like they were put together with fridge magnets. No amount of SVZ styled garage-band-rave-up sound can save this – even Springsteen has called it the stupidest song he’d ever recorded and would sarcastically refer to it as ‘a masterpiece’ in 2009. It becomes even more questionable when you weight it up against the aforementioned tracks consigned to archival releases like ‘Take ‘Em as They Come,’ ‘Roulette’ or ‘Where The Bands Are.’

Most: The River

This is very tricky. I love ‘Point Blank’, ‘Stolen Car’, ‘Wreck On The Highway’…. ‘Two Hearts’ is an underrated slab of brilliance and ‘Out In The Street’ and ‘Hungry Heart’ are undisputed fucking gems. But the second that harmonica hits or Bruce utters ‘I come from down in the valley’ you know where you are. It’s a PIVOTAL song in his back catalogue and while he still felt he needed four or five songs in the same style to make an epic album, Van Zandt was right when he said you only need ‘The River’ and you’ve got an amazing album.

Least and Most: Darkness on the Edge of Town

/ Tony / 19 Comments

Have I mentioned that some of these are gonna be harder than others? That few artists have as impressive a streak of great albums as Springsteen? Good. Because I’ve now reached my favourite Springsteen album. One of my favourite albums of all time: Darkness on the Edge of Town.

This is the first of many Springsteen albums where – after legal wranglings stopped him going into the studio for a bit – the man they call Boss began writing more tunes than anyone could possibly fit onto one album as he racked up studio time searching for the right songs and final album. It meant that three years separate it from his breakthrough and that it would, looking back, become his first left-turn from what was expected in a move he’d repeat throughout his career. Who knows: had he gone back into the studio with Jon Landau when he first wanted to – his manager Mike Appel wanted to take advantage of Born To Run‘s success with a live album instead – we might just have got Born To Run 2: The Road Worrier. The songs on Darkness.. instead drew their inspiration from characters by Johns Steinbeck and Ford, the music lost the ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ production in favour of something leaner, rawer and tinged with attitude of the nascent punk scene somehow married to Springsteen’s interest in country too. These weren’t ‘losers’ anymore, they were working class heroes living tough lives against a tough sound in which The E Street Band provide the power to give them an edge.

The result is damn-near unimpeachable. This one, though, is an easy choice for me:

Least: Factory

To me ‘Factory’ sucks the air out the album just as it’s gotten going on Side B with ‘The Promised Land’. I get it; it’s the counter to ‘Adam Raised A Cain’ in as much it’s his exploring the mundane daily toll of his father’s working life but it lacks the urgency, the punch and visceral nature of both the album’s other songs and those others he would write dealing with the same matter. The music doesn’t work for me – it didn’t work when used as ‘Come On (Let’s Go Out Tonight)’ and makes Springsteen’s invite to party (at the flipping factory of all renowned swinging hotspots) as inviting as a cold-water enema.

Most: Racing In The Street

Hell, it might just be one of Springsteen’s best ever songs. I’ve still got a love for the ’78 version too but the original has always hit hardest. One of the first songs he started writing for Darkness.. it didn’t need to evolve so much as refine until the solo piano song ‘Dying in the Street’ until it became the epic call back to Born To Run‘s dreamers who now lived only to hit the strip. Who knows when or how he hit upon the line – “Some guys they just give up living and start dying little by little, piece by piece” – that pins the song down and grounds it but it makes it one of the best he’s put to tape.

Least and Most: Born to Run

/ Tony / 9 Comments

All the redemption I can offer, girl, is beneath this dirty hood…

I want to know if love is wild, girl I want to know if love is real…

Man there’s an opera out on the Turnpike, there’s a ballet being fought out in the alley…

It’s chapter three. In which our hero gives the E Street a shuffle, welcomes back an old confidante and gains a new one to boot, sharpens his street poetry to make it more universal, plucks his characters from their boardwalk hideouts and puts them into something chrome wheeled and fuel injected so they can bust out of Asbury Park en route to becoming rock and roll future. That’s right; it’s the Catalina fucking wine mixer Born To Run.

Once again – and certainly for the next few posts – I’ve placed myself in a tricky spot: citing a track that I find my least preferred on an album that’s easily one of Springsteen’s finest and no doubt a favourite album of many. Born To Run has become one of those albums – you know: an instantly recognisable cover that’s been parodied countless times, one that’s stuffed full of killer songs and tracks that delight night after night after night after night… one that routinely tops magazine ‘best of this or that’ polls etc.

Does it even have a track that I don’t love as much as the others? Well, perhaps not but that’s not really what we’re looking at here but there is one song that I certainly listen to and recall less than others and that means that..

Least: Night

AGAIN – this isn’t a slight of ‘Night’ but I can’t recall much about it even now after having run through the album again yesterday. It’s a great tune and on any other album wouldn’t be here – hell even Bruce’s least memorable cuts are better than many artists’ highs… but it has the misfortune of being a three minute blast of good stuff in between two fucking great cuts; ‘Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out’ and ‘Backstreets’. It’s like the definition of a filler slot, it would have to be a really remarkable track to stand its own there and it’s to the song’s credit that it’s still bloody good… but there’s nothing stand-out about it for me. That’s all.

Picking a ‘most’ from Born To Run is almost as challenging to be honest. I mean, there’s ‘Thunder Road’ which is one of his finest, there’s the title track itself and the the previously mentioned ‘Backstreets’… but there’s nothing really like..

Most: Jungleland

It’s beyond compare, really. It’s like everything great on this album was building up to the magnificent epic that straddles nearly ten minutes of pure delight at the end and manages to encompass everything great that Springsteen had hinted at in his music to come and would for decades yet to arrive. The street poetry is there, the surging hope for better tomorrows, the ridiculously moving saxophone break, the builds and release and powering along, and the fact that, somehow, he manages to make the whole thing still feel like an anthem to be blasted to a stadium full of fans giving as much passion as they can ‘tonight…. in… JungleLAND’.

Fuck yes.

Least and Most: The Wild, The Innocent & the E Street Shuffle

/ Tony / 7 Comments

Might as well tackle the bull by the horns, as they say. Though who in their right mind would want to tackle a bull at all, let alone by the pointy end. Probably the same person who’s trying to find a ‘least’ track on a pretty-much faultless album. I reckon this is more one for Tom Cruise and his IMF team than it is for me. I don’t grin “like an idiot every fifteen minutes” though.

Put simply The Wild, The Innocent & the E Street Shuffle is the beginning of Springsteen’s unimpeachable run of albums. It delivers on a promise that wasn’t all too apparent on his debut released just eight months prior. After plenty of shows with the fledgling E Street Band and with keyboard player David Sancious as his first musical lieutenant, the songs on The Wild.. add strains of jazz and other styles to Springsteen’s street-life scenes and boardwalk characters and while the lyrics still feel like he’s falling through the pages of a thesaurus, they’re getting ever tighter and more evocative. The run of ‘Incident on 57th Street’, ‘Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)’ and ‘New York City Serenade’ mean that Side B is easily the greatest second half of any album out there alone.

Given the sheer brilliance of these early albums, while I hope it’s not needed, I’ll add a caveat to this that I’d rather take these songs other plenty of others and that ‘least’ is meant only in a relative sense. Now, with that being said I’m also fully aware that I’m probably committing an act of Bossphemy when I say…

Least: The E Street Shuffle

That’s definitely the sound of ‘boo’s not ‘Bruuuuce’ I hear right now, I’m sure. Again: I fucking LOVE this album. But there’s something about the opener in comparison to everything that follows that feels a little, well; lesser. It feels a little like Bruce is trying too hard to get that live show stopper song into the mix that he’d perfect with ‘Tenth Avenue Freeze Out’ and ‘Out In The Streets’.

Lyrically…. it’s a jumble. While just one song later we’ve got pure evocation with “the fireworks are hailin’ over Little Eden tonight, forcin’ a light into all those stoned-out faces left stranded on this Fourth of July” on ‘The E Street Shuffle’ we’ve got a ‘man-child’ giving double shots to ‘little girls’ and some dude called Power 13 and his girl Little Angel? Again, this is only a relative ‘least’ because I’m comparing it to the utter ‘provoke a gold-rush and mass migration to the west’ level of quality the rest of the album has both lyrically and musically.

There, that’s the hardest ‘least’ I’ve faced while putting this together. I need a lie down. But before I do…

Most: New York City Serenade

I’m not one to reinvent the wheel or work too hard – or hard at all – when I don’t have to. As such I’m going to borrow from my Least to Most take on The Wild The Innocent.. and say “there’s a few, a small few songs that I’ll listen to where the opening bar is so immediately ‘right’, so ‘spot on’ and tuned to me that it affects me to the core. It’s like an instant high. ‘New York City Serenade’ is one of those. That hammer of the piano strings, the cascade of notes that follows. Sometimes you’ll hear an intro that’s perfect and you’ll think ‘ok, how’s this gonna get marred?’ because not everything that follows can be as good. With ‘New York City Serenade’ everything works beautifully, the arrangement is so perfectly put together that every element just flows into the next in a way that makes it seem like effortless poetry. There’s not a single bum note or misstep in the entire song. Bruce Springsteen was 23 when he wrote and arranged ‘New York City Serenade.’ When I was 23 I though it was a good idea to call a band ‘Wookie Cushion’”.

This isn’t just my favourite song on this album, it’s one of my favourite songs of all time.

What are you thinking? Should I be strung up for suggesting ‘The E Street Shuffle’ is lesser than ‘Wild Billy’s Circus Story?’

Least and Most: Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J

/ Tony / 3 Comments

Am I really kicking off a new series? Is it another Springsteen-focused run? You betcha.

This shouldn’t be as time consuming to write or read as previous though. The idea is a pretty simple one: Bruce has twenty studio albums – discounting archival boxsets and karaoke soul cover albums – and having recently spent time running through the lot of ’em I’m gonna be picking two tracks from each, the most and least played / loved / enjoyable from my perspective. Granted, with so many five star albums in the mix it’ll be easier with some than others but that’s part of the ‘game’, right?

Spending time with Springsteen’s catalogue again recently I’ve noticed how my appreciation of certain albums has changed over the years and his 1973 debut Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. is one of those that’s grown in my appreciation.

Adding an unbridled sense of exuberance to Dylan style thesaurus-wrestlers with exaggerated imagery and street scenes, Springsteen’s debut sets folk-based tunes to an electric band backing. This phase of Springsteen’s career was short-lived. The coffee-shop folkie mode he’d shifted to after Steel Mill seemed to have run its course even with Bruce for as soon as he’d signed as a solo artist he assembled a band again to cut his first album – which was also the first and only time he wrote complete lyrics before the music.

It’s pretty hard to identify lesser tracks from Springsteens early albums (early as he’s now into his sixth decade of releasing them) but ….

Least: The Angel

‘The Angel’ is such a slight, seemingly ineffective song that you’d pretty much forget it after hearing the album. It’s only been performed live twice. Ever.

Meanwhile there’s a wealth of great songs on here that stand up to constant repeating. Whether it’s the radio ‘hits’ – ‘Spirit In The Night’ and ‘Blinded By The Light’ – that he was sent to write after handing in an album that Columbia felt lacked any or the familiar ‘Growin’ Up’ and ‘For You’, these early nuggets are as golden as they get. For me, though, there’s one that stands head and shoulders above the rest…

Most: Lost In The Flood

It’s epic. It’s ridiculously well-written and arranged for a dude of 23 and has remained a fan favourite and crowd pleaser since. There was talk that Steven Van Zandt had a hand in creating some of the song’s sounds (particularly the explosion through the amp at kick-off) but he’s on record as denying that and there’s no mention in either Springsteen or SVZ’s* auto-bios. It’s one of those brooding, sparse story songs that Springsteen would smash out of the park throughout his career. Is is it his first Vietnam song? I think so… correct me if I’m wrong. Hell, I even had a ‘Bronx’s best apostle’ t-shirt for years my adoration of this song is so strong. It sits right in the middle of the running order but, to me, this is a key puzzle piece on the road to Born To Run and Darkness – it’s an underdog saga with just a small glimpse of hope.

To paraphrase El Duderino, though, this is just, like, my opinion, man. Let me know if you think I’m miles off.

*Reading Unrequited Infatuations it would seem Van Zandt was completely off Springsteen’s radar between his signing with and releasing his first two albums for Columbia as he wasn’t part of the band you get the impression he was having a little bit of a sulk about it.

Midweek Spinnage

/ Tony / 3 Comments

Been a while… again. Without further mumbling, it feels like a good ‘get over the mid-week slump’ exercise to share half a dozen of those things that’ve been getting into my ears this last week or so.

Wilco – Either Way

I’ve been slowly but shortly putting together and whittling down a list of what I would consider to be 100 albums that are essential to me – in a way revisiting a list I put together some sixteen years ago. I haven’t mentioned them much here, if it all, but Wilco are a wonderful band and their Sky Blue Sky is definitely on that list. It’s easily their finest album and I love this tune especially.

Gary Clark Jr – Bright Lights

Listening to the iPod on shuffle in the car can often mean a few tracks get skipped but whenever a tune from Gary Clark Jr’s Live comes on I’ll end up turning shuffle off and lining up the full album. I’ve been spending more time with his studio discography lately and his 2011 Bright Lights EP is a favourite and this is a hell of an earworm.

Larkin Poe – Preachin’ Blues

Across the summer, the park behind my house hosts a number of festivals and concerts. This weekend past was the ‘Maid in Stone’ festival which veered towards the hard rock / metal crowd. On our usual evening walk on Sunday, the cub and I were lucky enough to get there just as Larkin Poe kicked off their set and so sat under a tree a few yards from the stage – while not within the festival grounds – and got to enjoy a solid slab of the great stuff.

The National – Fake Empire

I added Boxer to the vinyl shelves this weekend (in a nice yellow hue) and hearing this made me harken back to a time that – while not all that long ago – seems like a lifetime ago in terms of political news from a former colony.

Bruce Springsteen – Rockaway the Days

This year marks the fortieth anniversary of Springsteen’s monster Born In The USA. Understandably, given how he’s since shared his dissatisfaction with the grab-bag nature of it, if not sadly, we’re not getting anything to celebrate the milestone beyond a coloured version of the record with a few extra photos in the liner. No The Promise or Ties That Bind revisit. Which is a shame for, as I’ve already covered in a three-parter, there were multiple versions of the album and a bounty of songs that were recorded and discarded before the final album emerged. While getting those out into the air wouldn’t necessarily cause a reevaluation of the album, it would certainly be great to get them all collected into one place and show that the scale of Springsteen’s vision at the time went far beyond the twelve tracks that kickstarted his Rambo era of stadium domination.

Pearl Jam – Wishing Well

They may have cancelled their London show at the last minute but I’m still spinning Pearl Jam on any day ending in ‘y’. This cover – from 2015’s Christmas single – has cropped up a few times lately and is still worth a listen.

Wooo! You got a date Wednesday, baby! Midweek spins

/ Tony / 2 Comments

The will is there, the time isn’t always there for getting back into this after a summer lay-off… but lobbing up a quick ‘I’ve been listening to this sort of thing’ list isn’t a bad way to get into it, I guess.

It’s been a surprisingly music-heavy time lately helped by needing (thanks to throwing my back into a ridiculous shape) to work from home a bit more meant the turntable got more action than usual. Though that does mean less of my listening went to ‘new’ music rather than newer stuff from the familiar like the new albums from Slowdive (a clear march on album of the year) or Explosions in the Sky (absolutely brilliant).

Slightly off topic but I’ve also been enjoying the Wes Anderson helmed takes on some Roald Dahl short stories that have been added to Netflix lately. As a fan of both film maker and writer it’s been great to sit down as a family (my wife and I are about halfway through ‘Asteroid City’ and waiting for it to really take off…) but more surprised to see the credits for each of them cite Maidstone Studios (about a mile or so from our place) as a location for filming. While a lot’s been filmed there over the years (it used to be the location for Jools Holland’s Hootenany) it’s a surreal idea to think Wes Anderson was working away that close to home.

Getting back to the listening…. I don’t think I even made it all the way through the new song from U2, ‘Atomic City’. What a lot of shite. I wouldn’t say that they’ve done much of note for some time but someone clearly bypassed all elements of quality control there in the rush to cash-in even more from their no doubt minimum wage gig at the Sphere. No doubt Rolling Stone will praise it as record of the year… Anyway here’s a quick heads up on what I have been listening to….

Bleach Lab – All Night

Bleach Lab’s newly released debut Lost in a Rush of Emptiness is a wonderful thing, another gorgeous slab in what seems to be a resurgence of etherial, shoegaze fuelled dreampop.

Cocteau Twins – Heaven or Las Vegas

Speaking of etherial shoegaze lushness… I’m fast playing catch-up with Cocteau Twins and their Heaven of Las Vegas album has been getting a lot of spinnage lately.

Motörhead – Emergency

It can’t always be ‘Ace of Spades.’

Bruce Springsteen – Burnin’ Train

I’m toying with the notion of updating my ranking of Springsteen’s albums given he’s released two studio albums since then. A recent free-trial of Apple TV meant I was able to watch the Letter To You feature which was a lot of fun – the somewhat overly hokey voice-over narrative aside – and much more of an insight into the E Street Band’s recording approach than ‘Blood Brothers’ proved especially when it came to Stevie Van Zandt’s role in terms of arrangements and increased solo playing as on this cut. I really must get hold of SVZ’s book….

The War On Drugs – Change

What to do when you discover a new record shop has opened in your town after years of no alternative to HMV? Well… you go in and browse and if you find I Don’t Live Here Anymore on vinyl for a tenner less than you’ve seen it anywhere else you buy it, take it home and spin that sumptuous album because no matter how many times you hear it it’s still fucking great.

Mitski – Heaven

One of those names I kept hearing / reading but never followed up on until I heard ‘Heaven’ on the radio a couple of weeks back and have been hypnotised ever since.