Today’s Random Album of the Day is Antiquities from Ewan MacColl. This was a double CD back in the day. Anyhow Ewan MacColl is a folk singer probably best known (at least to me) for his working class, pro-labor music,
This kind of folk music is as much an acquired taste as the noise rock I listen to. I like it more for the message than the music. If I were just rating the message it’d be a 10. But the music drags it down haha.
Rating: 8.3
Favorite Track(s): So many songs but I’ll go with Manchester Rambler mostly thanks to Casey Neill introducing it to me many years ago.
Keep or Trash: Keep. I like a good protest folk song and this has its place in my collection.
Unfortunately this album I could not find streaming. However it should be on Apple Music or Amazon Music. Also his bandcamp page is here.
Today’s Random Album of the Day is the Ass Rhymes Double Ought Road Gang EP from Two Dollar Guitar. Two Dollar Guitar is tagged as Slowcore (cool), Post-Rock (cool), and Country Rock (oh fuck…).
It’s not terrible. I just don’t love country rock usually. This isn’t bad though and it’s actually decent.
In the end, this album annoys me because there are like 6 songs but only 2 tracks on my copy. So the songs are joined together into single 15 minute tracks. That annoys me.
Rating: 7.5
Favorite Track(s): I can’t really say due to how the songs are merged together.
Keep or Trash: Trash. It was ok but I don’t like the mashup of the songs into two tracks and the album wasn’t good enough to get past that.
Happy Fall! Today’s Random Album of the Day is the Danelectro EP from Yo La Tengo. I’m a huge Yo La Tengo fan going back to 1990. Yo La Tengo is Indie Rock but they do wander into other genres and this one gets the Folktronica and Post-Rock tags too.
The bulk of this EP is chill, sweet melodies. This EP also does represent a bit of what I love about Yo La Tengo where it shifts into melodious weirdness. It sort of does this very gradually with peak weirdness hitting on the last song.
Still, overall not my favorite Yo La Tengo. It’s enjoyable but not my most favored of their stuff. For one it is all instrumental with lots of sampling which is not my favorite thing. I also like where they ebb and flow between chill and totally not chill. And this EP is mostly on the chill end of things – so I miss that bouncing around bit. Also less guitar and Ira’s guitar is just great.
Rating: 8.8
Favorite Track(s): “Danelectro 3” opens it up with melodious and sweet. And very chill. Followed by the even more chill “Danelectro 2”. We get a little sampling on “Danelectro 1 (Q-Unique remix)”. But remains chill. “Danelectro 3 (Kit Clayton remix)” gets a bit intense – in a good way. Still chill overall. Finally we get the weirdness on “Danelectro 2” which I most like.
Keep or Trash: Keep. Even if not my favorite Yo La Tengo – it remains to be Yo La Tengo and the completionist in me must have it.
Today’s Random Album of the Day is Out of Time from R.E.M.. Well it’s R.E.M. so its Alternative Rock or Jangle Pop even.
I am either weird or I have this thing with R.E.M. where I love the obvious songs but the rest kind of bores me. So I find them good but not great I guess. But I like Document a lot so maybe it’s just later R.E.M. that is more hit or miss with me from song to song. Or maybe it is the kind of music that grows on you the more you listen and I don’t listen enough.
Rating: 8.0
Favorite Track(s): “Losing My Religion” is great. “Shiny Happy People” is good. “Belong” and “Half a World Away” are ok. “Me in Honey” I like.
Keep or Trash: Keep but honestly it’s not an obvious keep for me. But there are a couple songs I really like so worth keeping.
Today’s Random Album of the Day is Language of Threat EP from EULA. EULA falls somewhere between Indie Rock and Post Punk or Art Punk. This album in particular leans more towards the Post/Art Punk.
I really, really like this band. Why have I bot been listening to this more? They have a good amount of aggression mixed with melodic vocals – and often not melodic vocals. There are some great guitar riffs. And just overall enjoyableness.
Rating: 9.6
Favorite Track(s): “Housewolf” really is great. Great changes in tempo. Fantastic appropriate aggression at times. Interesting song structure. Things really flow into “Above the Weather” which is just a great song! “Fight Tiff” has a nice leaning angularity to it.
Today’s Random Album of the Day is the Hype EP from Sigrid. She is a Norwegian pop artist and I have a weakness for Nordic pop. Therefore I own this.
I objectively think this is ok pop. I have a weird relationship with pop which I mostly dislike. But then I have weaknesses. Anyhow, I like this enough to probably keep it. Definitely one of my guilty pleasures.
Rating: 8.5
Favorite Track(s): Probably Borderline. Maybe The Hype.
Today’s Random Album of the Day is a compilation called Some Women featuring 54 songs performed by 39 artists. It is 2.5 hours long. So putting this album together was quite the undertaking!
The premise is interesting. All of the songs are composed based on a column written by a journalist for Portsmouth, NH’s The Wire newspaper. The columns are collected into a book here. That is all I know about it but for some reason why is it that compilations are often structured wrong so that they don’t flag as compilations or they don’t list the artists correctly. I had to copy the artist information into the artist tags for all 54 songs.
It’s hard to pick a favorite song. With 54 songs I’d need to listen multiple times and I don’t have time for that today. So I’ll just say this album is really quite good. Lots of good songs. Really impressive how they turned the columns into songs – and good songs. It’s almost entirely Folk (maybe Indie Folk) for what it’s worth. But good Folk. Good Indie Folk. With a scattering of non-folk. In fact some of the best songs are the non-folk stuff.
The sound quality is excellent. I think it’s impressive to get 54 songs together with good sound quality into a compilation project like this. I can’t imagine the logistics of it all. Just having to communicate with 39 different artists is a lot of work. But compiling their work, stitching it together, etc.. is all a major project.
Of course with 54 songs, you’re bound to have a couple of dud songs. And you do. But very few considering how many songs there are and how many different artists.
Rating: 9.8. High for concept well done!
Favorite Track(s): Maybe Luella. So many good ones though.
Today’s Random Album of the Day is WHNZ:57:WAMAWA from Keijo. This is a Free Folk artist from Ukraine. They self tag as experimental and Forest Folk for what it’s worth. It definitely has psychedelic influences.
I’m impressed with the sort of ambient psychedelic sounds they create. It’s all very melodious given its experimental nature. This is good music and it’s all very good. It flows as an album in a very effective way. I’m a bit unclear if this is a live album or what but it works as a conceptual album either way.
With all that said, it does get a bit old after a while. I think that it can feel a bit repetitive. So while consistent, some vocals are something would help provide variety. There are vocals on the last track which helped a little. Though they weren’t striking vocals. In any case, overall good album.
Rating: 8.8
Favorite Track(s): “To a Nest to Rest” is really cool. “All Alone” also cool. Very melodious. “With the Blue of the Time” is very bluesy.
Today’s Random Album of the Day is Hyacinths and Thistles from The Kyle Sowashes. This is considered Indie Pop – maybe Chamber Pop. To put it most succinctly I’ll quote Wikipedia: “The 6ths was a band created by Stephin Merritt, also the primary songwriter and instrumentalist behind the Magnetic Fields, the Gothic Archies, and Future Bible Heroes.”
There are definitely some interesting things going on here. I can see why they are listed as Chamber Pop. On “Oahu” though the little sparkly sound at the end goes on for way too long. And I mean WAY too long. Then my favorite song followed by a pretty song and then a weird one. As my wife said, “These guys are all over the map, wow!” And they really are. It’s sort of a strange album. I’d say this almost has an experimental edge to it. It could be considered Art Pop.
Rating: 7.7. Although it has some bangers, overall I felt this album was more okay than great.
Favorite Track(s): “You You You You You” is a long time favorite of mine…
Today’s Random Album of the Day is Somebody from The Kyle Sowashes. They are basically Indie Rock though RYM lists them as Alternative Rock. The distinction is a fine one anyhow.
Ive been partial to them since I saw them live in Pittsburgh many years ago. They were good live and I bought a couple of albums. I think their sound most likely translates better live than on recording. But the recording is solid enough. But that describes it. It’s not top tier for me.
Their sound is clean. Sometimes almost garage rock but not quite. Very much Indie Rock to me.
Rating: 8.4
Favorite Track(s): “Bloomington, IN” works for me. It’s a bit garage rock. There is a line about the time in Bloomington that makes me laugh because parts of Indiana use Daylight Savings Time and so don’t or at least it used to be that way. Anyhow it was always confusing. “Out Behind the Sun” is solid enough. They deserve credit for making a song about “cholesterol”. “Sheen’s Down” rocks but apparently not about Martin Sheen. Overall I feel it’s a good album.
Keep or Trash: Keep. Solid enough.
I could not find the full album streaming but here is a sampling from the album…
