The Hall of Fantastically Fine Things

Introduction A bit of a long gap since the last review, caused by involvement in other projects such as the Cinerama Cup , setting up a new podcast called Steve's Mix Tapes , and, y'know, Christmas and all that... Anyway, if you've been following the blog, you'll know that I'm getting towards the end of the albums that I've listened to properly thus far. (And if you haven't, all is explained in the introduction .) However, unlike Let's Go Eat The Factory and Class Clown Spots A UFO , The Bears For Lunch was one that - despite my limited experience with it - did contain a fairly wide range of songs that had stuck with me. The Album Thunderously belligerent I appreciate that I'm in danger of becoming a bit of a stuck record with this, but GBV have thus far tended to begin their albums with cracking opening tracks. ' King Arthur The Red' is thunderously belligerent, the muscular riff underpinned by fluid soloing. And we're back in 'im...

      Introduction Interestingly, my review of Let's Go Eat The Factory provoked the most divisive comments that I've seen so far. Not particularly regarding my review itself, but opinion seemed very polarised about the 'reunion' albums. 'All reunion records belong at the very bottom of the rankings,' commented Matthew M Leclaire on the Facebook group. On the other hand, Rob Shepherd averred that, 'For me, the 6 album run that starts here is absolute perfection.' I am - for now - keeping myself distant from the context of the band's history, so I'm not fully cogniscent of the reasons for these strong views. My approach is, as Matt Harnish noted, to '[go] in  with no expectations whatsoever and just listen.' As noted in the previous post, we're rapidly approaching the end of the LPs that I've had on rotation; as a result, this was another that I didn't know that well before settling down to give it a focused listen... The Alb...

     Introduction We are edging ever closer to the albums that I haven't, as yet, listened to. But we still have four to go, so this is still one that has been part my evolving whole-album / sequences of LPs rotations. However, as it's close to the end of where I've got up to, it's not one that I've listened to extensively before doing this post. I have made a point of not doing any research as to the context of any of these releases. For now, I am focusing on listening to them with a 'pure' focus-on-the-music-only approach. That said, I can't help but notice that - after seventeen years of at least an album every two years - there's an eight year gap between  Let's Go Eat the Factory and  Half Smiles Of The Decomposed . I'm sure there's a bit of a story there... The Album Unthinkable / undrinkable What's immediately apparent is that  Let's Go Eat the Factory is a significant departure from the sound of (most of) the late 90s - e...

    Introduction As I spent the first half of this year almost exclusively listening to whole GBV albums (or chronological sequences of them) on a loop, this was one of those that, l ike  Earthquake Glue , seemed at least reasonably strong without actually leaping out at me. One of the joys of doing this blog is taking a deep dive and seeing how each LP stacks up against the others... The Album A wash of warm, gentle chords Yet again (for the fifth time in a row), the album commences with a cracker. ' Everybody Thinks I'm A Raincloud (When I'm Not Looking)' is a driven piece of carefully controlled riffing overlaid with an uplifting melody. There's a bit of philosophical introspection (' I crept from a soft dimension / w here one of my souls was lighter'), but overall there's an optimistic, forward-looking tone to the lyric (' every change of tomorrow...  hungry to fix it... a miracle cure for my sorrow') that's perfectly in tune with the inv...

   Introduction As I've mentioned several times previously, my listening habits re GBV have, over the last few months, involved listening to both individual albums and sequential 'chunks' of the back catalogue (as far as English Little League ). Doing this, some albums (including, inevitably, Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes ) immediately stood out as strong pieces of work. Others ( Vampire On Titus springs to mind) took a little work to get into.  Earthquake Glue  was not one of those that immediately leapt out at me. However, although it isn't perhaps absolutely top drawer, it's been a very rewarding experience to have it on heavy rotation over the last couple of weeks. The Album You can ride on my shoulders As has been the case with the last three albums (as well as several others), Earthquake Glue  hits the ground running with a strong opener. 'My Kind of Soldier' has a driving yet calm intensity, the vocal floating languidly over a bed of urgent strummi...