Oh!

I really have no idea what Kim deal is going on about for the majority of ‘Pod’.  And to be honest, I don’t care, it’s too catchy to let it bother me.  As much as I like lyrics that mean something, I can quite happily sing along to something that is complete gobbledegook as long as the words are phonetically nice sounding and as long as they paint a nice picture.  And on the Breeders’ debut, they are.  Recorded in 1989 and released the following year (that’s 1990 to you, hairdressers) it really is one of the poppiest folk-ish albums you’ll hear.  I say folk-ish because personally, I think it sounds quite folky.  Yeah, there are plenty of loud indie-rock moments, but the feel of it, most of the instrumentation, and the melodies all remind me of folky stuff.  You might disagree, but this is me writing this, not you.  So there.  Anyway, there isn’t really a duff track on this, and not even a non-poppy song, from the glorious opening track, er… ‘Glorious’, to the barely audable ‘Metal Man’.  And you even get a Beatles cover thrown in for good measure.

Recorded initially as a side-project for both Pixies’ Kim Deal and Throwing Muses’ Tanya Donnelly, the album features the first line-up of the Breeders – Deal, Donnelly, Josephine Wiggs (Perfect Disaster) and Britt Walford (Slint) with Carrie Bradley (Ed’s Redeeming Qualities).  With Steve Albini on recording duties, it pretty much sounds ‘as is’, and in my opinion is better than both Pixies’ and Muses’ respective albums that year.

I first heard of the Breeders from a live version of Iris, so maybe that songs a good place to start if you want to check them out.  Or if you want something more straight-ahead poppiness, try ‘Fortunately Gone’, its absolutely gorgeous.

Additionally, I used to have some pre-Pod Breeders demos, which included most of the songs from Pod with a few extras: Silver (which was originally recorded by Pixies’ for Doolittle), Drivin’ on 9 (which would be re-recorded for Last Splash), and You Always Hang Around (which was an absolutely amazing song which would eventually be rewritten and re-recorded as Divine Hammer for Last Splash).  As well as these, there were two songs that didn’t appear on anything: Rave On and Overcome.  Both of these were really quite good – Rave On being a broody but poppy instrumental, and Overcome being another off-kilter pop song, along the lines of Only in 3’s or Limehouse.  According to a tracklist I’ve seen for the Breeders’ upcoming album ‘Mountain Battles’, two songs on it are called Bang On and Overglazed.  I really hope these are the same songs with altered titles.  I doubt it, but it’d be nice.

Anyway, enough rambling, bye!

Pluck all Your Silly Strings and Bend all Your Notes for Me

It was quite difficult deciding which album to talk about first on here, but in the end, I decided to go for the album I had originally thought about discussing.  If you can call me just rambling on for no apparent reason about albums I like, ‘discussing’.  I imagine many people who might come across this blog will already know it, but I just fancy writing about why I like an album.

Anyway, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, by Neutral Milk Hotel, is relatively new to me, and I got into it in a bit of a daft way.  It came out in early 1998 on Merge, and would be NMH’s second and last album. 

I was first introduced to the album in late 2004 or early 2005, when I was lent a copy of it along with a few other albums.  I didn’t really listen to it that much and just didn’t really get into it.  Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t dislike it, I just didn’t listen to it properly to form an opinion on it.  I quite liked the cover art though.

Fast forward to early 2007, when I was doing a bit of shopping, I spotted one of those 33 1/3 books on the album, at a very cheap price.  Being a bit money-happy, I decided to buy the book.  So I started reading the book and eventually got a copy (ooooh!) of the album.  After reading about the stories behind the songs and what they were about, as well as getting a few glimpses as to what the lyrics were (at this point, I didn’t have a physical copy of the album), I eventually ‘got it’.  I remember thinking that this was absolutely fucking brilliant.

What the album does brilliantly is that it creates it’s own little world, evoking images of circuses, war-torn Europe, and to some extent, I end up picturing the perfect 1950’s suburbia for some reason.  As different as all of these things are, in the world of ‘In the Aeroplane Over the Sea’, they all seem to fit and don’t seem out of place with each other at all.  The music and lyrics just seem to suit each other perfectly also.  I can’t imagine the words “How I would push my fingers through your mouth to make those muscles move / That made your voice so smooth and sweet” or “Your father made fetuses with flesh licking ladies while you and your mother were asleep in the trailer park / Thunderous sparks from the dark of the stadiums” going alongside any other music, it just fits together perfectly, even though the majority of the music is really upbeat and catchy.

I can think of plenty more things to say why I love this album, but I think I’ll stop here, just after I’ve already lost everyone!