Music Roundup 2
Murmur
So I may be a little out of step here. After listening to Murmer a bunch of times, I searched around and found Stereogum saying it rival(s) any debut album in rock ‘n’ roll history, and Pitchfork dropping a perfect 10. As far as I’m concerned, this album is… fine? Maybe it suffers from R.E.M. having been around at the invention of this kind of smart indie rock thing, but that’s the genre I’ve been listening to for most of my life (including later, better R.E.M. albums) so this doesn’t stand out the way it maybe did in the ’80s.
Highlights for me, Radio Free Europe is great, and probably my favourite track is Moral Kiosk, which is amazing in every aspect from thundering drums to backing vocals. We Walk is also a very fun little arpeggio number, but it comes after a few tracks that never really separated themselves in my mind, similarly to the batch just after the strong opening. Also pretty good is Catapult, even though I’m close to declaring a genre of song that involves shouting the title, without any clear indication of why that’s the title or what it has to do with anything else.
Stipe sounds weirdly like Kurt Cobain at times (and yes, I know this was first), particularly on Laughing. The album also begs for a stronger closer than West of the Fields, which is, in keeping with my overall feeling on this, fine.
Norman Fucking Rockwell!
Here, I did not know what to expect, and to some extent feel like I’ve only just gotten past the surface. There’s a lot going on here. And I think I love it. I think the point where I realise I really like an album is when I have about four of its tracks playing in my head simultaneously at any given time, and I keep coming back to it and skipping around to try and silence whatever part of my brain has that song-shaped gap.
If I had to pick out the main four that have lived in my brain for the last week, it would be these:
Mariners Apartment Complex. Before I start, this really, really strongly reminds me of another song that I can’t place and it’s driving me a bit nuts. I guess it reminds me of a really good song. Lovely mix of strings and guitar, subtle drops to speaking from singing, with neat, clever lyrics, they mistook my kindness for weakness, you're lost at sea, then I'll command your boat to me again. Makes me think of Joanna Newsom lyrically.
How to Disappear is perilously close to the title of a Radiohead song, and maybe I could see them doing this musically if not lyrically. Love the moment of But I love that man like nobody can/He moves mountains and pounds them to ground again as the bells come in.
Man, four is actually hard to pick, but I’m going with Bartender for the gorgeous piano. There’s actually a subject matter overlap here with FKA Twigs from last week, about having a relationship in public with loads of people watching, they don't yet know what car I drive/I'm just tryna keep my love alive.
Then the closer, hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have - but i have it. Maybe not in the top four songs that I love the most, but the title refrain has probably swirled around my head the most. Plus, I've been tearing around in my fucking nightgown/24/7 Sylvia Plath.
I think the four that have stuck in my head the most have been the quieter, more piano-driven tracks, but there’s also the nine-and-a-half-minute Venice Bitch, which is also awesome and has enough space for fuzzy instrumentals. And a cover of Sublime’s Doin' Time, which is illegally catchy, and for that reason is probably the only one I actively skip on the record, to get to the meatier stuff.
This I will be back to.