Skip to main content

The Forgotten Arm and Cold Roses

En route to my afternoon shift yesterday, I picked up Ryan Adams' new double-CD, Cold Roses, and Aimee Mann's The Forgotten Arm. As a fan of both artists, it may sound strange that I actually sampled a few tracks online before I bought them. Huh? Am I a fickle fan?

No, I just don't like wasting my money on weak and wimpy crap. Both Adams and Mann have released strong records before, but I just wanted to make sure I would like the new ones too. Well, I really like what I've heard after a few spins and I want to keep on listening.

This morning was perfect for listening to Cold Roses: the weather was cold, rainy and just gray, but I've been feeling really consistently well for a solid week now. The album is more in the vein of Heartbreaker (spare, country-ish rock) but luckily, this record isn't "Spot my influence on this track!" like Heartbreaker is. I don't have a standout favorite just yet, but I may have one (or two or three) soon enough.

On my way home last night I listened to the Forgotten Arm and I'm really impressed. This record is more upbeat than Mann's last two records. The songs are little faster than what we've heard from Mann before and there is a sense of urgency to them. As always, Mann's well-crafted pop with sparse instrumentation is in full effect. Hearing "That's How I Knew This Story Would Break My Heart" makes me want to pull out my Jersey Girl DVD (the song is played during Gertie's funeral). "Goodbye Caroline" and "I Can't Get My Head Around It" are some of my early standout tracks.

Rainy skies with a high in the lower 60s is forecasted today. I'm not sure which record I should listen to again. Maybe I should listen to Songs for Silverman again . . .

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Catherine Wheel

Originally posted: Tuesday, August 29th, 2006 Despite managing to release five proper albums, Catherine Wheel was one of those bands that always seemed to slip past the mainstream rock crowd. Yes, they got some nice airplay in their day, but people seem to have forgotten about them. You may hear “Black Metallic” or “Waydown” on a “classic alternative” show on Sirius or XM or maybe even on terrestrial radio, but that’s about it. For me, they were one of most consistent rock bands of the ’90s, meandering through shoegazer, hard rock, space rock and pop rock, all while eluding mainstream pigeonholing. Led by the smooth, warm pipes of vocalist/guitarist Rob Dickinson (cousin of Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson), Catherine Wheel featured Brian Futter on lead guitar, Dave Hawes on bass and Neil Sims on drums. They weren’t a pretty-boy guitar band, but they weren’t a scuzzy bunch of ragamuffins either. Though the band hailed from England, Catherine Wheel found itself more welcome on American air
4 comments
Read more

Best of 2021

  Last year, my attention span was not wide enough to listen to a lot of LPs from start to finish. Too much went on in 2020 to focus on 10-15 albums, so I went with only a couple to spotlight. Well, 2021 was a little better, as I have a list of top four records, and a lot of individual tracks.  (I made a lengthy Spotify playlist ) So, without further ado, here’s my list of favorites of the year: Albums Deafheaven, Infinite Granite (listen) Hands down, my favorite album of the year. I was not sure where Deafheaven would go after another record that brought My Bloody Valentine and death metal fans together, but they beautifully rebooted their sound on Infinite Granite. The divisive goblin vocals are vastly pared-down here, as are the blast beats. Sounding more inspired by Slowdive, the band has discovered a new sonic palette that I hope they explore more of in the future. It’s a welcome revelation. I still love their older material, but this has renewed my love of what these guys do.  J
Post a Comment
Read more

Hello, Control

I'm still a big fan of iTunes . I haven't tried Napster , Urge or eMusic as I've been perfectly happy with Apple's program ever since I downloaded it two years ago. However, an annoying new feature has come up with its latest version, 7.0. Whenever you pull up your music library, a sidebar taking up 3/4ths of the screen appears plugging the iTunes Music Store. Why is this an annoyance? Well, first and foremost, since you can't close the sidebar, you can't escape it. I believe a music library is a private collection, a spot away from the music store. So what's the need for constant advertisements and plugs? To provide a better visual, let me describe what I see whenever I pull up a song in my iTunes library. When I listen to "This is a Fire Door Never Leave Open" by the Weakerthans, I see a graphic for Left and Leaving , the album that it comes from (and available in the iTunes Music Store), along with a list of the Weakerthans' other albums,
3 comments
Read more