Get Rec'd Round 2
Reliably Bad, Brave Little Abacus, Waylon Jennings, SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE, Sparklehorse
I had so much fun listening to your recommendations that I decided to review all of them. Please bear in mind that I’m not familiar with many of the artists and musical styles I’m reviewing, and therefore my opinions are often misinformed and don’t matter.
Reliably Bad - Space Girl (2021)
Oh, this is funky right off the bat. That Jamiriqui song with the shifting walls music video is about as much knowledge I have re: funk, which is to say I do not know funk. Although the more I listen, this seems to be more jazz/soul than funk. This ended up being a lot more chilled-out than I expected. If they sold this at Starbucks in 2003 this would have gone gold easily. I wish the rest of the album sounded more like the title track. This isn’t really my thing, but I get the appeal.
Highlight: Space Girl
Brave Little Abacus - Just Got Back From The Discomfort We’re Alright (2010)
How have I never heard this before? What a wild ride.
This is a sloppy mess of an album. The production values are almost non-existent. The vocals range from slightly off-key to ear-splitting. Somehow it works though. This is an incredibly confident and unself-conscious album. Pure emotion. Just throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks.
This feels like the bridge between old-school 90s emo and the 2010s revival. This could fit in with Mineral or SDRE just as well as The Hotelier or Modern Baseball.
And it has never seen a physical release! That’s bananas.
This is making me feel things, man. I better listen to something else.
Update: I ended up making myself a bootleg cassette copy of the album. This is too good.
Highlight: The Blah Blah Blahs
Waylon Jennings - I’ve Always Been Crazy (1978)
I turned this album on immediately after listening to that awful Beyonce country song, which was jarring to say the least. She’s a great musician, but that song is butt and I won’t be convinced otherwise.
Ya’ll are really pushing my boundaries with some of these recommendations. Most country music, especially modern pop country, is like nails on a chalkboard to me. Even the hipster country that seems to be popular right now is tolerable at best.
So Waylon Jennings. Old-school country. “Good” country.
First off, great name. That’s a GREAT country name. I could see listening to this as background music while tearing into a pile of biscuits and gravy in a diner somewhere. I don’t dislike this, so that’s something. Sorry, I don’t have much to say about this one.
Highlight: Don’t You Think This Outlaw Bit’s Done Got Out Of Hand
SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE - Hypnic Jerks (2018)
Some dreamy, trippy indie rock going on here. I enjoy my fair share of fuzzy shoegazed-influenced albums, so it’s surprising I haven’t heard this before. Hypnic Jerks is an appropriate title for this album. So much of this is unstructured. There are some really cool sections that seem to stop and shift directions before they get good. “fell asleep with a vision” starts so promising and then just…stops. It’s a little frustrating. Maybe that was the band’s intention. I don’t know, I usually like this sort of thing, but this one isn’t doing it for me.
Highlight: fell asleep with a vision
Sparklehorse - It’s A Wonderful Life (2001)
I’m a sucker for mellotron. This album has a lot of mellotron. This is a subdued record for the most part, but it avoids being monotonous due to the fantastic songwriting and the occasional musical curveball. “Dog Door,” featuring a badass Tom Waits guest spot, is pretty nuts.
There are some nice melodies on this album. This is just a sparse, relentlessly sad record. It feels very intimate, like he’s singing directly to me. Very much the type of album you need to be in a certain mood for.
Highlight: King of Nails