Summer 2020 Album Diary: "Either/Or," Elliott Smith (1997)

"Either/Or" is enjoyable enough as music, but it's impossible to separate the album from the circumstances of the artist who created it.

For anyone unfamiliar with Elliott Smith, he died in 2003 from two stab wounds to the chest, and it doesn't appear to have ever been fully determined whether it was suicide or homicide.  His life had not been an easy one.

A lot of the album is reminiscent of some of Sufjan Stevens' work, but after a couple of listens I'm not sure it's anywhere as musically interesting.  The standout track is "Cupids Trick," which takes the same general approach but adds a dash of mystery to the proceedings (not to mention some additional instrumentation).

Summer 2020 Album Diary: "The Belle Album," Al Green (1977)

When Greil Marcus reviewed The Belle Album for Rolling Stone in late 1977, he wrote "...we may someday look back on The Belle Album as Al Green's best..."  After more than half a decade of hit singles (and outstanding albums) that one could rightly call "legendary" without engaging in hyperbole, that was a heady claim to make.  There were no hit singles from this one, and I honestly don't recall ever having heard any of the album's songs over the course of the 40+ years since its release.

The shocks I felt when listening to the album for the first time were all happy ones.  At first, it felt a little disorienting to hear synthesizer and clavinet on an Al Green record - this was the first album he recorded without longtime producer Willie Mitchell at the helm, and the first without the fantastic crew of Memphis musicians (Al Jackson Jr., Wayne Jackson, several others) who came to represent the "Al Green sound."  And then, lo and behold, there's Al Green himself playing a quite mean acoustic guitar!

And when the album's fourth song, "Georgia Boy," rolled around I realized that it was simply foolish to have waited so long to dive into this one.  This certainly fits my definition of a great album.  Whether it's his best, as Marcus speculated might be the case in 1977, is a question worth contemplating.

Summer of 2020 Album Diary: Pacific Ocean Blue, Dennis Wilson (1977)

The point of this project is to write, at least a little bit, about a notable album from the past that I've never listened to all the way through, until setting up a Spotify account.

Kicking off the series is Dennis Wilson's "Pacific Ocean Blue," released in the late summer of 1977.  It was the summer of Star Wars.  I was working six days a week at McDonald's, getting ready to begin my senior year of high school.  My musical tastes were beginning to expand a bit, mostly with the help of the Rolling Stone Records review section.  1977 was the year I bought my first albums by Talking Heads, Blondie, Ramones and Elvis Costello, but my purchases that year also included Hotel California, Rumours, Aja, and admittedly more than a few albums that are probably best categorized as "forgettable."

I almost bought this one. It received an excellent review in RS by Billy Altman, who called it "a wonderful and truly touching album."  Because I remember this sort of thing, I do remember picking it up in the record store, and perusing the packaging, and mulling it over.  For whatever reason, I never ended up walking out of the store with it.

Listening to it now is a bittersweet experience, because we know how his story ended - Brian would end up being the tortured Wilson brother with a happy ending, not Dennis.  But this is excellent work; you can really hear the promise behind Wilson's songs.  You can hear the influence of The Beach Boys, but this is not a Beach Boys record.  His gravelly voice has a lot of depth, and on songs like "Pacific Ocean Blues," "River Song," and "Rainbows," you can hear both artistic and commercial potential.  You can definitely hear why the album has gained supporters in the decades since its original release.

Albums of the Half Year: 2020

Here we are in July, which seems impossible.  There are times when I can't believe we're coming up on four months since the shutdown began; other times it feels as if the time has flown by.  My hair is the longest it's been in my entire life.  We celebrated my 60th birthday in April, but needless to say the big party we were planning never quite got off the ground.  If it's possible to have a daily out-of-body experience, that's what the first six months of 2020 felt like.

That feeling could be applied to the year in music as well.  The year that is now half over has seen the biggest change in my music listening habits since the mid-1980s, when the vinyl record bins in music stores began to make way for the CD racks.  I'd already started buying a lot fewer CDs in the months leading up to 2020, for the simple reason that most of the record stores (yeah, I still call them that) in Sacramento have closed up shop.  With the exception of a handful of CDs I bought in the Fall, most of my purchases were MP3 purchases, which went straight into the hard drive and the iPod.

In February, at the urging of my sons, I finally made the leap to the streaming world, and signed up for a premium Spotify account.  The floodgates opened, and haven't closed since.  Accustomed to physical media that can be held onto, it's been strange.  On the one hand, I haven't bought a single CD since the year began.  On the other hand, I've listened to more music in the past six months than, quite possibly, any other time in my entire life.  There are times when the sheer volume of availability is overwhelming - what should be listened to today?  An old Joni Mitchell or Beach Boys album that I've never heard all the way through, or the new releases by Run the Jewels or Bob Dylan?  Or maybe the incredible quarantine playlist from Questlove, which then just sends me down another deep rabbit hole?  But if you're going to have a problem, then I suppose this is a good one to have.

By my count, I've listened, at least once, to 45 newly released albums all the way through.  Quite a few of those are records that demand greater attention, and may very well end up in a year-end Top Ten.  But for now, I've selected twelve albums that stand above the rest.  When, God willing, we look back on this time from a space of normalcy, these are the ones that I'll remember for speaking to the moment.

In alphabetical order:

Honeymoon, Beach Bunny.  Sounding like the GoGos filtered through "Rocket to Russia," this has been my go-to album when a respite from the real world was most needed.  The hook-to-minute ratio is off the charts.

how i'm feeling now, Charli XCX.  Recorded entirely in quarantine, revealing once again that with this artist, there is a lot to be found under the surface.

The Unraveling, Drive-By Truckers.  When I wrote about this album in February, I called it their bravest yet.  Little did I know how prescient it would be.  

Rough and Rowdy Ways, Bob Dylan.  His first album of original tunes since 2012, and worth the wait.  He gave us a taste in the early spring with the almost 17-minute "Murder Most Foul," a musical chameleon - it can be anything you want it to be (sort of like Dylan himself).  The rest of the album doesn't quite stand up to that lofty standard, and it will take me a while to fully figure it out, but for now I'm comfortable saying that it's somewhere between "very good" and "epic."

Walking Proof, Lilly Hiatt.  Trinity Lane, her last, was outstanding - but Walking Proof is a quantum leap above anything she's ever done.  The entire record is instilled with a sense of confidence on every song - it's probably my #1 album of the year, so far.

Reunions, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit.  He and his band just keep getting better and better.  And without question, the absolute funniest musical artist to be found on Twitter.

World on the Ground, Sarah Jarosz.  It's hard for me to describe what it is that I find so appealing about this record - there's something about the music that just feels filled with mystery.  

Future Nostalgia, Dua Lipa.  It may be going too far to call this one of the best dance records since Madonna's debut, but then again, it may not be.

Bad Luck, Sylvia Rose Novak.  Country punk?  Outlaw country?  Americana rock?  Call it what you will, but it's a great album.  

Folk 'n Roll Vol. 1, J.S. Ondara.  Armed with a great backstory, Ondara has written the diary of the first two months of the quarantine, right up until May 25.  Here's hoping that Vol. 2 deals with the aftermath of that dark day.

RTJ4, Run the Jewels. Quoting Robert Christgau here, who gave the album an A+: "Who knows whether this would feel so right absent a historical moment when trying to distinguish rage slavery from righteous anger is a waste of emotional wisdom?  With trap on its opiated treadmill, the gangsta sonics that power El-P and Killer Mike's inchoate aggressiveness will feel tonic to anyone with both an appetite for music and a political pulse."

Color Theory, Soccer Mommy.  An emotional maelstrom, from the very first chords.

And what the heck, here's a few Honorable Mentions that could find their way closer to the top before this dumpster fire of a year is over: Punisher, Phoebe Bridgers; Danzig Sings Elvis; Fetch the Bolt Cutters, Fiona Apple; Saint Cloud, Waxahatchee; Women in Music Part III, HAIM; Chromatica, Lady Gaga; Invisible People, Chicano Batman; Never Will, Ashley McBride; Homegrown, Neil Young; Lamentations, American Aquarium; Gigaton, Pearl Jam; Open Book, Kalie Shorr; Saturn Return, The Secret Sisters; We Still Go to Rodeos; Whitney Rose; Your Life is a Record; Brandy Clark; Alphabetland, X.

Happy Summer, everyone.  Here's hoping the great sounds continue.