5 posts tagged “public image ltd”
Okely dokely, time for the all important 'best albums of 2007' list. As per last year, this'll cover the albums that did things to me during 2007, not just albums that were released in 2007. I'll also post my favourite track from each to share the goodness.
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| 1. Public Image Ltd. - Metal Box These top few albums have all been listened to excessively, and it's hard to put one above the other, but for taking me to new places, the top spot has to go to PiL. I was obsessed with remaining outside my comfort zone while I let this one wash over and through me. I've yet to find anyone who will listen to it with me though... Read my original post |
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| 2. Silverchair - Young Modern So extremely impressed with this album at first, I even credited the 'Chair with heralding a new artistic movement (see my outrageous claims at the link below). This album was such a bold and cutting-edge artistic statement from a band that sell millions of albums and have their songs heavily featured on commercial radio. The thing is, the songs from Young Modern were still featured on commercial radio whilst being artistic masterpieces at the same time. That's no small feat and will be difficult to repeat. Read my original post |
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| 3. Radiohead - In Rainbows So consistently amazing, and so challenging at the same time, will they ever disappoint? Last.fm tells me I've listened to tracks off 'In Rainbows' more than any other album, and even though I've only been scrobbling since June, I'm guessing it would still stand for the whole of 2007. And fuck, the discbox is really nice... PS, I tried about 8 times to upload any track off this album and get the artwork to appear, but no luck. Vox has fully shat me trying to upload all these tracks, I tried 2-3 times for at least 4 of these files :-| |
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| 4. Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning Obsessed, impressed and thoroughly absorbed with both 'I'm Wide Awake...' and 'Cassadaga', I overplayed both of them to the point that I didn't want to listen to either of them for months. I've put them back on a few times in the last couple of weeks, and though all that initial buzz is gone, I really love them again. Probably my lyrical highlight of 2007 with amazing lines like "If you swear that there's no truth and who cares / why do you say it like you're right?" and the gorgeous "You were born inside a raindrop / I watched you falling to your death". Read my original post |
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| 5. Sex pistols - Never Mind The Bollocks I surprised myself with how much I've embraced this album. I always assumed it would be shit for the sake of being shit, musically inept and just arrogant and annoying. The songs are really deserving of all the praise they're given, it turns out, quite apart from all the attention they got for their attitude and bass player. Thanks to Lester Bangs for changing my mind. |
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| 6. The Call - The Walls Came Down Never heard of 'em before a guy at work put me onto them. I thought I might be politely listening to and returning his CD, but it turned into a new favourite. And helped me conquer my fear of 80s music at the same time. Mainly, though, I'm just a sucker for those political question-the-establishment type lyrics. Read my original post |
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| 7. Angus & Julia Stone - Chocolates & Cigarettes So serene, so laid back and paints such amazing mental pictures, this one has kinda crept along and remained a constant favourite for far longer than I thought it would. Sparse to the point of being desolate, mellow to the point of being boring but instead becoming just the opposite (huh?), this EP (and all their other stuff) really speaks to me. My wife digs it too, so it's kinda our thing. |
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| 8. The Fauves - Nervous Flashlights Hard to pick which album gets the gong, because this obsession was about all their albums being listened to on shuffle for months. They are so clever, so insightful, so funny, so lazy and so Australian. Who else could write a song called 'Australian Gigolo' with lines like "The Joy of Sex is a valuable text / hey baby baby put that down I don't want you to know what's coming next." I just love Andy Cox's brain, but could never get all sycophantic and tell him, because as he sings on this album, "When you see me on the street / you know I am not approachable / if I'm someone you'd like to meet / I don't want to talk to you ... / I am not approachable / you know I think I'm better than you" Read my original post and listen to the other tracks I've uploaded |
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| 9. NIN - Year Zero Impressed with the cool political concept behind the album from reading reviews and interviews, I took it upon myself to get into the album. Never a fan of the industrial sound before, it took a bit of doing, but now I'm into a bunch of their albums and their (his) stuff is right up my alley. I hear they're gonna make a movie out of this album, kinda like 'The Wall'. I have a feeng it will be a masterpiece. Read my original post |
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| 10. Black Sabbath - Heaven & Hell I'd never given the Dio years the time of day before because I'm such a massive fan of the Ozzy stuff that I thought it was near blasphemous. All the hype around the 'Heaven & Hell' reunion (aka a Dio-fronted Black Sabbath unable to use that name thanks to Sharon Osbourne) made me want to give it a go though. What I found were a bunch of albums that stood on their own and could wear the Sabbath moniker with pride, especially their first one that gave them their new officially sanctioned band name, 'Heaven & Hell'. |
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| 11. The Waifs - Up All Night My obsession with the Waifs was actually spawned from an mp3eme this year. I was struggling for a song that had great harmonica playing in it, remembered one of the couple of Waifs songs that I knew and loved, and then subsequently went mental over their 'Up All Night' album. Their new one, 'Sun, Dirt, Water', was released this year, and it's fantastic too. Read my original post |
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| 12. Clare Bowditch - What Was Left I was completely taken by the beauty of this album back at the start of the year, with songs that take you through a range of emotions, and leave you affected in some way after it's all over, sometimes feeling a bit uneasy or slightly down. It's good to get an emotional response to music, it's what it's all about. Read my original post |
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| 13. The Shins - Wincing The Night Away This album was one of the first that I loved in 2007, and was the subject of one of my earliest posts. It's become my favourite Shins album, and it also posesses some of the best cover art of the year. A real progression for them and challenging/rewarding for the listener too. Read my original post |
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| 14. Agalloch - The Mantle A friend who still keeps a finger on my waning \metal/ pulse recommended this album to me because he thought I'd dig the atmospheric, epic nature of the songs. I've fully embraced it, and love to put it on and get taken away to another world, a world painted by changing guitar melodies and tempos and great use of the Zeppelin patented 'light and shade'. |
Other noteworthy obsessions to round out the top 25:
15. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - BRMC
16. I Heart Hiroshima - Tuff Teef (Read my original post)
17. Liam Finn - I'll Be Lightning (Read my original post)
18. Gotye - Like Drawing Blood
19. Ramones - Rocket To Russia
20. The Cult - Electric (Read my original post)
21. Richie & The Creeps (Read my original post)
22. Kings Of Leon - Because The Times (Read my original post)
23. Richard Hell & The Voidoids - Blank Generation
24. Sarah Blasko - What the Sea Wants, The Sea Will Have (Read my original post)
25. Beasts Of Bourbon - Little Animals
Not much to say this week, as I've really been listening to more of the same. The only new entry that hasn't appeared in recent times is Bob Geldof, whose 'Sex, Age & Death' album is one I was obsessed with last year.
I haven't written about The Pink Fits before -- the guitarist is Lenny Curley from one of my favourite bands of all time, Tumbleweed (see previous post). Fast, short, punky songs with buried vocals. Very much the headspace I'm in at the moment, and unfortunately, completely unknown.
I'm watching the Ramones doco 'End of the Century' bit by bit on my PDA each morning on the bus, so it's safe to assume the Ramones will be there next week too. I love music docos, and this one is totally engaging.
And my PiL obsession continues...
Top Artists this Week (see more)
18 Nov 2007 – 25 Nov 2007
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Public Image Ltd. |
72
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 2 |
2 |
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Nine Inch Nails |
36
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 1 |
3 |
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Radiohead |
30
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7 |
4 |
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Angus & Julia Stone |
28
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2 |
5 |
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Black Rebel Motorcycle Club |
24
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| 6 |
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Ramones |
18
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1 |
7 |
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Sex Pistols |
12
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| – | 7 | The Pink Fits |
12
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| 9 |
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Bob Geldof |
10
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10 |
9 |
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The Cult |
10
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I've been listening to Public Image Ltd's 'Metal Box' for weeks now -- last.fm shows that I've listened to somewhere in the order of 200 tracks from this one album (the most of any album since I started scrobbling), which equates to a lot of rotations. I've been holding off writing about it, though, because I still feel that I don't really know the album properly. After all those listens I am still discovering things each time and still trying to understand it track by track. The latter seems to be a losing battle so far, as individual tracks largely refuse to stand on their own and drag themselves kicking and screaming (literally) back into the whole. It's tuneless, the lyrics are hard to understand and it's abrasive. At first I didn't know if I liked it, but felt absolutely compelled to put it on again and again. Now I love it but I don't really know why. I think I'm writing this to try to understand why.
Firstly, I guess the time is right. I have found an appreciation for snotty punk rock (as opposed to punk before it was punk like the Stooges and MC5 which I already liked) thanks to reading the works of Lester Bangs. This got me into the Sex Pistols et al. The Lydon connection got me to give it a go, but so did a new found appreciation for post-punk stuff such as Joy Division and The Call. Previously the 80s sound would've put me way off, but I think I've tackled my phobia to some degree.
Loving Radiohead anew has had an influence because I'm in that avant garde space required for true Radiohead appreciation. I also hear strong PiL influence in Radiohead, whether real or coincidental. And Thom Yorke looks a bit like John Lydon.
But at the heart of it is a fascination for an album unlike anything I've ever heard before. Perhaps I just can't let it beat me and expose me as the middle-of-the-road cock-rock lover I once was or indeed less of a self proclaimed connoisseur of fine music than I aspire to be.
I feel the importance of this album but I wonder why it has never been recognised as such or imitated by others. Even weird good stuff usually makes it onto top album lists in one way or another. I think that 'Metal Box' is perhaps out of its time. Not ahead of its time, because we're just shy of 30 years on and music has moved elsewhere (as has the industry), but out of its time in the sense that there was a moment where music was at a point that allowed this album to be created, but because this path was followed by PiL alone and everyone else went another way, there was no place for this amazing creation. It was squeezed out by subsequent events and left behind forever, without many realising that what was created was a possible future that would take music to strange new levels. Or perhaps it's precisely because people got a vision of this stark apocalyptic musical landscape that they chose to avoid it at all costs.
Whatever it all means for the past and present and future of music there remains this one statement to be overlooked for all time by 99% of people on planet earth, and possibly with good reason. I present to you (with much appreciated prodding from Cams) a couple of my favourite (perhaps) or the most headfucking (more likely) tracks on 'Metal Box'. It took me perhaps ten listens to decide I loved it all, but I hope that what you hear here makes you feel like you want more, regardless of whether you like it or not.
Man, I'm completely obsessed with Public Image Ltd. I bought a second album of theirs the other day, 'Flowers of Romance' from 1981, and it's even stranger than 'Metal Box'. Can't say I'm totally into it yet, but it's so intriguing that I keep putting it on. I'm still thoroughly intrigued by 'Metal Box' and I've been listening to it over and over for weeks now. There's so much to it, so many layers, and so much weirdness. That's gotta be the mark of a good album.
I found a great review of the album which kinda says what I want to say. Here's a bit:
Metal Box is an album as impenetrable as the case in which it comes... a fifty-minute swirling bombardment of Kraut-rock rhythms, dissonant keyboards, jagged guitars and Lydon's bitter lyrics and screaming vocals.
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This is dark music, as bleak as albums like Tilt, OK Computer, Regeneration, Blood on the Tracks and The Final Cut... although it has a sound that is unlike any of those albums, or indeed, anything else you've ever heard.
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Metal Box remains a testament to the band when they were at their utmost creative peak... and, in my opinion, is one of the most original and remarkable albums ever produced.
Looking forward to slowly appreciating 'Flowers of Romance' as much as I do 'Metal Box'.
Radiohead are still up there due to 'In Rainbows', loving BRMC's first album at the moment, and am getting into NIN's 'Pretty Hate Machine' for the first time. Richard Hell & The Voidoids finally clicked properly with me, and my wife and I busted out the Chisel for some Aussie anthems.
Yay for tunes.
Top Artists this Week (see more)
11 Nov 2007 – 18 Nov 2007
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2 |
1 |
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Public Image Ltd. |
107
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1 |
2 |
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Radiohead |
79
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3 |
3 |
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Black Rebel Motorcycle Club |
40
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20 |
4 |
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Nine Inch Nails |
38
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30 |
5 |
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Richard Hell and the Voidoids |
37
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4 |
6 |
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Sex Pistols |
33
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| 7 | The Pink Fits |
27
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9 |
8 |
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Cold Chisel |
24
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6 |
8 |
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Megadeth |
24
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5 |
10 |
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Angus & Julia Stone |
15
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Been a few moons since I last put my weekly Last.fm stuff up, but I think I'd like to look back at it one day to know what I was listening to at a certain time, so for no one's benefit but my own, I present last week's listening habits.
'In Rainbows' is doing things to me. It took some listening to get into all the songs, and to start to differentiate some of the mellower ones, but man, it's good. I paid $90+ for my copy of it, but that's because I pre-ordered the 'discbox' version which is apparently coming in December. It has an extra disc on top of what you can download, so that should be fantastic.
Magically, bizarrely, my wife and I suddenly got into Missy Higgins' new album. Every time we put it on before, we found ourselves saying "stop boring us Missy" and skipping tracks. But suddenly the first single, 'Steer', sounds like her best song ever, when before it sounded like a pale imitation of 'Scar'. Funny how these things can just click one day.
I'm really taken with the Sex Pistols and PiL, too. PiL is a tough nut to crack, but so worthwhile. Unlike anything I've heard before, so strange, great dub basslines, weird lyrics, no real choruses. But completely engaging. I keep wanting to put it back on, even before I knew if I was really enjoying it. Thanks to Lester Bangs for the tip.
Top Artists this Week (see more)
28 Oct 2007 – 4 Nov 2007
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1 |
1 |
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Radiohead |
105
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19 |
2 |
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Angus & Julia Stone |
64
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| 3 |
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Missy Higgins |
40
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7 |
4 |
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Sex Pistols |
31
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| 5 |
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Martha Wainwright |
26
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| 6 |
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Silverchair |
22
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| 7 |
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The Shins |
21
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6 |
7 |
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Black Sabbath |
21
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5 |
9 |
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The Clash |
19
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7 |
10 |
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Public Image Ltd. |
18
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