Music Roundup 1
A few words on my first Music of the Week.
Transformer
The obvious entry point, from my perspective, is Perfect Day, having owned the Trainspotting soundtrack in 1997. Looking into it a bit more, apparently Reed has denied multiple times that it has anything to do with heroin, and is just a song about having a pleasant day doing nice things. So I’ll take it at face value. It also seems to be the only song where he’s obviously, actually singing, instead of just mostly talking. Which brings me to the other song I’d actually heard before, Walk on the Wild Side. Love the bass, I wonder if it were released now would he be a Snowflake Internet hero for being sex positive and trans-accepting, or loudly cancelled for using the phrase “coloured girls”.
The rest of it was pretty good too, the opener Vicious has that thin guitar sound and metronome drumming that gives the impression of being put together on a shoestring. If I hadn’t known that Reed was sexually ambiguous, listening to Make Up would have made that point very strongly. I hadn’t really known in advance that it was tipping a little into glam rock (with David Bowie pulling the strings in the background) but it’s not fully there, with a few jokier tracks like New York Telephone Conversation and Goodnight Ladies.
Interested to see if I drift back to it over time.
MAGDALENE
Took a little while to get into it, but I’m now fully into it. To go a little negative at the beginning, none of the lyrical content is too hard to parse, there’ a lot about being in a relationship and breaking up while famous, and then being sad about it. And, I guess this is mainly my fault, but every arsehole who idles outside my house has droning autotune vocals coming out of their car, so I now instinctively shudder at the sound of it. Sorry, holy terrain, Twigs’ bits are still pretty good.
That’s it though, the whole thing is a perfect balance between quiet, solo piano and soaring intense vocals over a background of growing intensity. The one-two of mary magdalene and fallen alien is absolutely killer, and the latter’s composition is almost a microcosm of the album itself.