Album of the Month

Alright, I admit I've been a little late updating this feature from the last posting, which was done right at the end of June. But I just haven't been passionately struck of late by many of the new albums I've purchased or have sampled via the library. To be truthful, I was really banking on the new Royksopp album to win the AotM slot hands down with their latest release, The Understanding. I didn't think too much of it after my first few spinnings, but I wondered if I was trying to compare it too closely to their debut--Melody A.M--a chilled electronica classic. This one just didn't seem to have the focus of the debut, but the more I listened to it, the more I accepted it for what it was--a disparate collection of Norge-inflected house dance music (with melancholy, chundering percussion) and more ambient pieces that were well done but lacked distinction. Still, I consider the album's first single, "Only This Moment," to be one of the songs of the year.

But by the end of the month, I had found an album that had grabbed my inner jukebox--but one that will completely erase any cred I may have built up (though I doubt there's much of a build-up). It all started during the playback of my LPs at my new office, when I got all misty-eyed listening to Best of Bread. IT so happens that visiting celebrity artist Ward Sutton had downloaded my Japanese copy of the album to his Powerbook, and it had become his soundtrack to the rest of his West Coast book tour (for Sutton Imppact). We were emailing about it and he wondered if Bread produced any decent albums, or were just a hits-based band (a la America, whose albums are rather unlistenable save for the hits). Being Curious Ags (dubbed so once by Mr. Sutton), I checked out samples from the iTumes music store and read some reviews at the All Music Guide and decided on downloading On the Waters from iTunes. And I'm quite happy I did. It's a wonderful slice of early 70s CSNY-inspired California folk rock, full of hope and naievty and yearning for love--as well as a typical song about life on the road that tries to be as grandly orchestrated and realized as Led Zep's "Stairway to Heaven" (doesn't reach those heights, but it's easily the album's standout track). Certainly not as soft-rock as the included hit "Make It With You" would have you think, it's got some good Neil Young-ish fretwork throughout. And it can get a little silly (as on "Blue Satin Pillow," a grinding "rock"-wannabe ode to getting it on that wouldn't feel out of place in an Austin Powers movie), but it put a smile on my face rather than a cringe. Ward, I declare it's safe to go in the waters.