The Music Box.
Entries about the music I like.
Bartika Eam Rai – Bimbaakash
Not all sadness is the same dad, he was trying to explain to his ageing father. Pa had spent much of the mid-seventies damming one of India’s major rivers with other ‘sons and daughters of the newly independent nation’. Come rain, come sleet, they bored through terrain, mixed concrete, fixed slabs, built barricades against portented landslides.
The Weather Station – Ignorance
Much of the album serves as a great example of how exceptional lyrics, when supplemented by able instrumentation, elevate good music to very good or even great music. You can sing about emotions without being mawkish. You can speak about fundamental issues without being pessimistic. You can address wrongs without being angry. After all, what goes around, comes around.
Frightened Rabbit – The Midnight Organ Fight
Musically, Frightened Rabbit's The Midnight Organ Fight is purely about simple, unobtrusive, but catchy vocal and melodic hooks. What makes it stand out in the fairly competitive playing field that is heartbreak indie is its sincere lyricism, delivered with unvarnished authenticity by Scott Hutchison (RIP). a perfect breakup album. A classic of modern Scottish music.
Ichiko Aoba — Windswept Adan
When I last wrote about an Ichiko Aoba album this year, I said it was my favourite album of the year. I’ve since then said that about Klô Pelgag’s Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Douleurs and thought that about Yaeji’s What We Drew 우리가 그려왔. But as things stand, it might just be Windswept Adan that takes the cake. This is a beautiful piece of art: one that I believe everybody must experience at least once.
The Tallest Man on Earth — Shallow Grave
In 2008, a Swedish singer-songwriter, Kristian Matsson, released an earthy Dylanesque album, Shallow Grave, under his stage name, the Tallest Man on Earth. It’s a compendium of ten three-minute guitar folk songs that are unique in their simplicity: one man, one acoustic guitar.
Vashti Bunyan — Just Another Diamond Day
Around the time of its release, huff-and-puff chest-thumping big boys supposedly dismissed Vashti Bunyan’s 1970 acoustic-guitar-and-little-else folk album as childish in its wide-eyed pastorality. See while most seventies folk music from the UK did deal with themes of nature, Just Another Diamond Day did so without grand metaphor or metaphysical sulking, setting it apart from what was perhaps considered more serious music. Of course, since the album is near peerless in its beauty, its influence has since grown and grown.
Ichiko Aoba — "gift" at Sogetsu Hall (Live)
This is an enchantingly beautiful acoustic folk performance by the Japanese artist, recorded live in a concert hall in Tokyo. What’s remarkable is its simplicity: one woman playing an acoustic guitar and singing.