How do you start a music thread? You "in the know" Londoners have no excuse for letting a pleb like me kick this one off....
You know, I'm very much in love with this album at the moment. Not a word of a lie. It's on a fairly embarassingly constant rotation at the moment and I can't really see that changing in the near future. Everybody I know who's heard it loves it deeply too.
I like the Bride lots, and have done for a while. I'd say I was as much of a fan as I could be, having only heard five songs and never having seen them live (Oh, Barbegig hear my prayer), it's great to finally get my hands on an album and hear a proper presentation of who they are.
I really can't pick out a standout track at the moment because it's a very complete album. Not just a collection of songs, it most definitely starts somewhere, ends somewhere and leads you confidently through a lot of beautiful ground in between.
Isabelline is still a freewheeling, whirligig of joy. If it was actually a person, it would probably be doing this.
By contrast, Zero One, Zero One is a undulating, fragile treat where Mono's voice sounds like she might fade away into the sadness mire if she wasn't BACKED RIGHT THE FUCK UP BY A GAGGLE OF TOTALLY AWESOME NOISESMITHS. Or something. Please tell me this was recorded on the first of January.
Mother Hackney is just Mother Hackney. It makes me want to live there, even if it also makes it sound shitter than shit. This song is the type of song gigs were retroactively invented for.
If I have two criticisms about the album, Isabelline is actually one. It's still a bloody stonker, but I think it worked slightly better as the under-produced, over-driven single. The extra care and attention on the arrangement robs it of a little bit of its spontenaity, IMO.
The other criticism is that the whole thing's just too short. However, since this means that less time will have passed before I get to listen to it again, I'm not going to hold this one against it. |
