Why I love January
Believe it or not, for several months of the year few new recordings are released. From Nov 1st thru Christmas it is compilation, holiday music and box set season. As most artists wish to spend the holidays at home and not on the road, it makes little sense to release a record that will require a lot of promotional activity. Hence, only mega selling acts, like Bruno Mars, will release new albums during the holiday season. So, for music lovers it – we have an early winter freeze. Likewise, music sales fall off considerably during the summer, and there are few new releases between June and September – a summer drought: touring bands will have released their product in the Spring. The Autumn is often the source of slim new music pickings, as the year begins to wind down.
So, January is always a good month; February is better; and March and April are the peak release months. By June 1st you can safely construct your top 10 list of the year and include 7 titles. So, last week I made (what turned out to be my final trip) for HMV and picked up a few new releases.
[awayland] from Villagers topped my list – a beautifully presented package that included some postcards. The album has not grabbed me yet (6/10 music, 8/10 packaging, 2/5 for loudness and compression] but it is growing. I also bought Everything Everything’s Arc (5/10 music, 7/10 packaging, 3/5 loudness) – not yet growing. Christopher Owens, who was in Girls, has released a wonderful recording – Lysandre (7/10 music, 4/10 packaging, 1/5 loudness) and this is growing rapidly: I particularly enjoyed the flute, sax and xylophone. Similarly, I am enjoying Snowgoose – Harmony Springs (8/10 music) – downloaded from Deezer. Dutch Uncles’ – Out of Touch In The Wild came beautifully presented, is impressively proggy art rock, but not really hitting the mark (music 5/10, packaging 7/10, loudness 2/5).
From Pitchfork: Dutch Uncles stick to a rigidly pointillist, exacting scheme of glassy, Reichian xylophone and marimba, Talk Talk-y guitar ticks, and choppy Stravinsky-inspired string sections, for a prismatic take on herky-jerky pop that approaches complex situations like a beguiling data visualization.
Interesting that the NME slagged off the sax in Christopher Owens’ album as a sound “not heard since 1986” – I must blog about the disappearance of the saxophone from popular music. Rolling Stone “he nails a Seventies-singer-songwriter sound oozing treacle and sincerity, all folk guitar, flutes, supper-club saxes and vintage keyboards. It fits the concept: a loosely autobiographical musician-in-love song cycle.” LA Times: “the record, which was allegedly written in one fevered day, skips off into Bill Withers acoustic ambience, Belle & Sebastian-style twee-pop and occasional nods to acid-casualty classic rock.”
audioexchange 