December Madness: Xntry and Monkey and Tori albums

[koganbot]

As poll preparation I'm stuffing albums into my craw; part one of a million:

Posted this on Rolling Country today:

Both P&J and Idolator have Dec. 21 deadlines, don't know if I'll hear a copy of LeAnn Rimes' Family by then; she's done one of my country singles of the year; having heard 30-second clips of the album, I'll possibly put it in my Top 20 but not my Top 10. It could make my Nashville Scene Country Music Critics Poll; but I've got 'til Jan 3 on that one.

Listened to the Bettye LaVette while doing the dishes and there's something too in-one-ear-and-out-the-other for me about that kind of soul, unless there's a strong hook. I'll try again. Nothing else in last weekend's listening is country as such (not even in the way that I insist that Miley Cyrus's "See You Again" is country as such), but Paula Cole's Courage starts with a strong country drone guitar and a gospelly prayer that could easily be on any contemporary country singer's album. Is an excellent song, "Comin' Down." Well, musically; the words tend towards the abstract and platitudinous, but are fairly effective nonetheless. ("Lord make me an instrument to sing away the pain/This rushin' river comin' down." Seems to me that some guy from Assisi said it more eloquently.) The album's basically adult contemporary, with jazz leanings, where it's generally at its worst, but it does well when it's singer-songwriter rock; a good one called "14" ("My heart is a POW tangled in my chest/I don't know how to communicate in a cardiac arrest": That's bad poetry, but the sort of bad poetry I feel warmly towards, even if I could imagine someone like Xgau standing in the background and sneering at me for tolerating it).

Vanessa Carlton isn't country at all (unless your idea of country is Suzanne Vega), she's piano-lessons-and-lace poetry, but "Spring Street," the best track on her Villains and Thieves, has lyrics on a subject that's a current country obsession (Montgomery Gentry, for instance): kids leaving their parents and coming to understand how it is that their parents feel. Vanessa is as goopy about it as you'd expect ("I moved out of the city to start a family of my own/And when I look into my daughter's eyes I don't feel so alone/And as I walk her down to Spring Street and she holds onto my hand/Mother, you knew my eyes would be wet with tears and now I understand"), but this is a warm, gorgeous song, better singing than on recent Avril or Mandy or Michelle records. (Still trying to make sense of the fact that Carlton is on Irv Gotti's label. Ja Rule doesn't guest on any of these tracks.)

Tori Amos American Doll Posse, also not a country record, though as you've no doubt read she embodies five different personas on it: Fashion Girl and Preppy Girl and Country Girl and Glamour Girl and Boho Girl. Er, wait, that's Girl Authority. The roles Tori plays... um, I haven't figured them out, actually, though in one of the poses on the cover she's holding a rooster and looks more frightened than it does. Booklet has the lyrics in tiny colored type on a gray-green background and I can't make them out even with reading glasses and a magnifying glass. The music is clogged and ripe and arty no matter what role she's playing; I'm not really telling 'em apart, but when she goes to ring shouts and two-steps (e.g., "Big Wheel" and "Body and Soul"), she gets her whole overfilled Toriness swinging nicely.

Posted this on poptimists:

Alex Turner is one of the few indie singers whose singing I like; he's pushy but finds his way to quick melodicism 'cause of the way his voice quavers higher or lower at the end of each line. But I just borrowed Arctic Monkeys Favourite Worst Nightmare from the library and listening to it is a TERRIBLE experience. Nonetheless, it's interestingly terrible in that the sound is all wrong. The bass and drum are just jabbing at you like a neurotic digging his fingers into your palms. This has a beat like a stick, not a beat that moves, simply one that cuffs you around the ears. Cuffs and palms, but nothing for the feet, nothing to do with dance, no rockin' in its rock. So what there is of melody stands on its own, while the band fires staple guns at our heads and throws bombs at our stomachs. If I weren't swamping myself with year-end catch-up I'd listen a lot to try to get into it, just to make sense of it. The record is strange enough that I might achieve something by liking it. Did the album actually sell well? Did it come near to the first album's sales? I'd be flabbergasted if it did.

Comments

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Anyway, I think my work is mostly done re: ballots. If it was a top 20 or top 30 I'd have to go back to a load of albums, or conscientiously catch up on ones I missed, but it's only 10. Most of those places are filled anyway, and I can't imagine anything gatecrashing the ones on the cusp this late in the year. Perennial problem of where to place the albums where I obsess over half the tracks and ignore the other half hasn't resolved itself though.