Stand Up Stand Up

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/25/StandUpStandUpEPbyHanson.jpg/200px-StandUpStandUpEPbyHanson.jpg

First things first. I ripped this album off youtube because I am not really a fan of paying three times the cost of an ep for postage. So my feelgood purchase will have to wait until a) they get off their arses and distribute in Australia or b) there is something else I want from the site that makes the shipping worth it.

Second things second. When I psyched myself up to listen to this album, my emotions were a mix of dread and resignation. I love Hanson, but I am solidly accustomed to…

Alternate tracklisting for Hanson's third studio album Underneath, released 2004.

Because Underneath was faced with such opposition from their label, they recorded a hella lot of tracks which were rejected. I maintain that they are rotten at choosing their best songs to go on their albums, so I propose a new tracklist from songs I think were from then as well as those that ended up on it anyway. Here goes:

1. Breaktown
2. Misery
3. Penny & Me
4. Dancin' in the Wind
5. Lost Without Each Other
6. My Own Sweet Time
7. Strong Enough To…

Underneath by Hanson
http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/h/hanson/album-underneath.jpg

Isaac: Tay, are you wearing those white pants again my Goddd.
Zac: FIGJAM
Tay: I am looking Solemn because this album is about Serious Issues and Maturity.

Underneath is a pretty good album, indeed. More stripped down than Middle of Nowhere and This Time Around, more guitar-based, I think, with mellow vibes and those characteristic three part harmonies.

Strong Enough To Break
If you take these lyrics:

I don’t feel myself today
Just a figure in a big monopoly game

Oh, nothing ever seems to change
We just play like broken records in a deaf man’s…

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2a/Indiscreet_-_Sparks.jpg

Indiscreet is a trickier proposition for a review than Kimono My House or Propaganda have been. As I have said previously, KMH pretty much knocked me out of my seat the first time I heard it, and I think was gushing into this journal by the third track, something I honestly do very little of at all. I listened to nothing else that evening. As far as immediacy goes, I know of no better album. Propaganda took a little longer, but the ingredients were really very similar, so I knew what to expect and, for the most part, got…

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6a/Odessey_and_Oracle.jpg

Odessey & Oracle
Odessey and Oracle

The Zombies have a sound like none other I have heard. It's piano-driven pop, of the sort I have been led to believe is called baroque pop. It's more frequently beautiful than it is "catchy", it has lyrics which aren't simplistic and don't come second to the music but rather meld perfectly with it. It tends towards the retrospective, introspective, melancholy. It fits neatly into my headspace most of the time.

I liked harmony before, but I think the Zombies really taught me to appreciate it. I don't know enough about music to…

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c8/Propaganda_-_Sparks.jpg

The songs are Bigger. The lyrics are Stronger. The vocals are Heavenly. Welcome to Propaganda, Sparks's follow-up to Kimono My House (reviewed here). Released in the same year and I guess recorded at the same time, it's slightly surprising that I find it so easy now to acclaim Propaganda as the superior album. But I can respond to each immense track from Kimono with an equal-or-greater from Propaganda and have tracks to spare. Propaganda wins out for consistency, and for I don't know what else. It just does.

I am also starting to think that there is…

I have been listening to rather a lot of Sparks recently. Even a brief glimpse at my charts will show that this is an understatement. I got into them from last.fm with Falling In Love With Myself Again, and consequently honestly believed that Kimono My House was the greatest album I would ever hear. Even when I'd fallen for Propaganda even harder, there was still, in the back of my mind, the certainty that nothing that came later could be better. If my recent forays into different musics and bands have taught me anything, it's that the light of…

These are kind of in order. I tried to not put them in order, but I think they ended up in order (at least today's order) anyway.

1.
No one is ever going to be better than Roy Orbison. This is fact as well as my opinion. Technically, he's :o. Emotionally, he's :o. In every way, that man is the best. And it's a rare singer that sounds exactly the same live as he does in studio. And barely even opens his mouth :|

My Showcase:
Too Soon To Know
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=4hPOL_xE3C8

In Dreams
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=zbxsmcT7GOk

Crying (live)
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=sE9AwR0awVQ

I could…

I think I've promised the world one last Big Star review. I did #1 Record and I did Radio City, so now it's time for Third/Sister Lovers, also tagged as Third / Sister Lovers, Third - Sister Lovers and simply Third. The sister lovers part comes about because I think at that point Chilton and Stephens were dating sisters.

I should probably mention that in going to this album in iTunes, I immediately got distracted and started listening instead to songs from Radio City. Damn, but that album's good.

So, Third starts off with Kizza…

This journal is cross-posted from my old account

I was trying to decide whether to do a journal about my Rubber Soul/Revolver ponderings, Low/Heathen ponderings or maybe funny music and its merits, since I've recently gotten into Flight of the Conchords and The Mighty Boosh, watching the TV shows and listening to the radio series of each. Stupidly, I decided to do this while listening for the first time to a band I'd heard one song of on last.fm radio a while ago. Called Sparks.

I'd heard Falling in Love With Myself Again on…