A CD retrospective - School's Out

If an authority figure in my life hadn't illegally taped someone else's Alice Cooper vinyl I might not have spent large parts of my childhood listening to them.

School's Out by Alice Cooper

Despite the song being the most well known (with possibly the exception of Poison) and despite being classic rock gold - the album that shares the same name is really very different from the raw 'I've stabbed the amp with a knife' style of early rock you'd expect if you'd just heard the title track.
It's somewhat orchestral, sometimes jazzy, and sometimes as musically theatrical as you can get (the final track is entirely instrumental and belongs in West Side Story).
The jazz/cabaret bass in Blue Turk is entertainment all by itself, and musically pretty far from Schools Out.  Alma Mater perfectly captures the feelings of relief and sadness I got from leaving school.
My favourite track is Public Animal #9, not least because the title seems confusing - I mean, why #9?...It has a punchy beat to kick it off, a piano starts the melody before some nice guitar licks get things moving properly. There's also a very catchy choral "Hey-hey-hey" that punctuates each line of the verse.

A CD retrospective - Through the windowpane

I got extremely bored this evening, and as it's still January I couldn't alleviate my boredom with alcohol.  So I decided to listen to another album and write about it.

Through the windowpane by Guillemots

I was on a flight from London Gatwick to Orlando a few months after this album came out.  It was one of the albums available in full during the flight.  One of my friends spent the entire 8 hour flight listening to it on a loop.  I listened to it once but wasn't really as receptive as I could have been - I don't think I was in the mood for it.
I was familiar with one song, Trains to Brazil.  It's a song I always associate with my friends, and is the sort of thing we can shout/sing at any opportunity - the first few lines at least.

During a spell of unemployment in 2008 I picked the album up and I was far more appreciative of it.  There's an unusual path the album seems to take, sometimes it's bouncing, energetic, sometimes the vocals are thick with despair - it's a bit of a ride.  The 5th track on the album "come away with me" feels a lot like a trippy interlude and seems to carry with it a change in style for the rest of the album.
The highlight of the album for me is the last track, São Paulo.  It's over 11 minutes and has a brilliant orchestral weight behind it and some clever arrangement - there are strings, brass, wind and percussion all swaying in the mix.
The reason it's my highlight is the finale, the whole album swells and calms throughout - and São Paulo is when everything just gets too much, it's a last attack - it fizzes up to a near cacophony and then dies away brilliantly.

A CD retrospective - Everything Must Go

Since Christmas I've been umm'ing and ahh'ing about buying myself something nice.  I looked at laptops, tablets (not the medicinal kind), acoustic guitars and stereos.  As you should have been able to tell by the title of this blog I decided to buy a new stereo.

A new CD player and some nice-ish speakers.

I did my research, carefully considered my budget and decided to purchase a Denon DM39 and a pair of Tannoy Mercury speakers from Richer Sounds (whose customer service is exemplary).

I carefully considered the best locations for my speakers, rearranged my desk and in anticipation of my purchase chose the first album I'd listen to on it.  Turns out I decided to listen to my first CD album.
Then I decided why not go through my CD collection (it's only small, maybe 100 albums in total) and write a bit about each one, I'm sure my feelings about some of them are quite different now.

So, first up.

Everything Must Go by The Manic Street Preachers

I'm going to have a hard time not being biased about this album, it's got such a weight of nostalgia associated with it.
The Manics were the first band I saw live (during their tour following this release) and I spent many, many hours in a cocoon of childhood with Mr K playing Amstrad CPC 464 or Spectrum whilst listening to it.

I always forget how many albums The Manics have released and I've got my favourites, but Everything Must Go is without a doubt their best.  According to the many documentaries I've seen about it - JDB learnt to sing properly for the album (it shows), and said the recording experience was idyllic.  High praise for producer Mike Hedges, and I've nothing but high praise for the album - even without my nostalgia tinted view I think it's flawless.

Even my 17 year old copy has been given new life by my new Hi-Fi.
Or at least it had been until I got 18 seconds into No Surface All Feeling when I had to take the CD out and give it a good wipe with my sleeve.

The whole album is pretty stand-out, but my stand-out tracks are:
A Design for Life
Enola/Alone
Further Away.