Sunday 9 June 2013

The Listening Club - 9th June 2013

Howdy folks!

Hope you're all doing fine - I'm taking a relatively quiet Sunday for a change, a week of decent weather has meant a good few evenings quaffing, and yesterday was spent in the company of most of the Netherland's rockabillies, hells angels and teddy boys and girls at Cruise Inn's annual D-Day festival. So a day off to recharge and do a little housekeeping seems in order, I reckon...

Also it's time to announce the next LC Vortex, which will happen in two week's time, on Sunday 23rd June (as close to the Summer Solstice as we can manage) - The theme this time, as suggested ages ago by @pamac66, in keeping with it being festival season and all, is live recordings - I'm tempted to offer up the chance to pick videos, the better to enhance the experience, but that places us at the mercy of YouTube, and makes more admin for me... let's discuss it tonight and reach a consensus, m'kay?

Last week @eastvanhalen continued what seems to be a Summer trend of wrong-footing the listeners by putting her power-pop preferences to one side and reaching back for Duke Ellington's "Money Jungle" session with Charles Mingus and Max Roach. A finer set of jazz hands you'd be hard pushed to shake, I'd say. Many thanks to her for the selection, and for spinning the frisb over to @NeilPBardhan for this week's choice...

"I've been mulling this as a Listening Club option since I heard what I felt was a similar album chosen by one of you LCers in 2012, an album that I always point to when non-clubmembers ask what I've discovered via LC. Then another, stranger,  selection about 2 months back reminded me of it again in the most oblique of ways. So for my sophomore selection, here's an album from 2006.

I don't know a ton about the band or their work beyond this album. I got this album from a young woman I knew who said they were local to her university in the Eastern US, and they had quite a following in that city. It's a city I've never been to, but it all just makes sense that a bunch of guys from that place at this time sound like they do. Nearly every track feels like a confluence of several genres (I don't dare name them all!). This may make the album too all-over-the-place for some listeners. That said, I think it's clear that these guys have some production talents and a sense of fun.  Some songs have clever lyrics; others, more heartfelt ones. Parts are manic, while some are laidback. 

When the opening track (that is, #2) gets moving, I always envision an amphitheater of early 20-somethings pogoing in place, a cloud of smoke or two hovering overhead.  Maybe it's because of the emotional attachment I have to hearing this album the first time, or maybe it's just foolish (are those the same thing?), but there's a part of me that fears that trying to listen to any of their other albums won't have the same feeling that this one does: cold beers (whatever's cheap & local to ya, cheers!) on a back porch, late on an August evening with some close friends."

Well, it's a June evening, but here's hoping it has the same effect! Direct download is here, Mixcloud stream (which may well reveal the track titles) is here.

Search #listeningclub to see what's going on, and follow@listeningclub for the admin.

Hope to see you tonight at 8pm BST/EST (GMT+1)!

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