Things coming back from my past, month spent mostly on revisiting music that I liked a lot when my taste was forming. Still usually confortable stuff, not a lot of things though – not a great month overall.
Martina Topley-Bird – Phoenix (2008)
After dissolving collaboration with Tricky Martina had similar fate as other singers from genre – failed on their own. The Blue God is bit different than her previous. More on side of synthpop, opening track is charming. There are some strings too, like on closing track of Quixotic and it has similar feel.
PJ Harvey – The Letter (2004)
Most of 90s chick singer-songwriters fell of hard. Some are literally caricatures of themselves and went insane (notably Bjork and Tori Amos, both are perfect example of this), but PJ Harvey is still going strong. Maybe because she wasn’t pandering to specific type of audience and holds up music wise. Uh Uh Her is kind of back to basics album of hers, but not many songs are really memorable, though The Letter is. (Didn’t noticed how sexual lyrics are actually for a while.) Loving it.
Hooverphonic – Nr 9 (1996)
Before constant vocalist changes and moving into more pop direction, Hooverphonic really did stand out from most of (usually) boring trip-hop acts that started grow like mushrooms after success of Massive Attack and Portishead. Dreamy vocals, ambience and sometimes guitar fuzz. Feels like a film score a bit, I think.
Saint Etienne – Sylvie (1998)
Cloying (but pleasant) indie synth-pop song hiding sort of nasty or too sweet and cute lyrics under danceable beat and sythesized strings, but Saint Etienne does it very well.
Jimi Tenor – Year of Apocalypse (1999)
I remember to listening to this album again back in March, but I couldn’t get past 4th track but after giving it a proper listen I liked it. This track could be a great closer. A funky, deep-electro house tune (before it got fashionable again in 00s).
Seefeel – More Like Space (1993)
Seefeel was one of bands that were in my backlog for a longer while and funnily I got to leave this EP on loop on a while after I was ABX-ing some clean AAC transcodes, bad ones and loseless. Ambient shoegaze-y stuff.
New Order – Vicious Streak (2001)
Some people say you grow out from listening some stuff, sometimes it’s true. I can’t really touch pre-Technique New Order now, but it was a favourite of mine few years ago. Band important to formation of my taste, like Everything But The Girl, but I don’t really come back to it. Most of their stuff sounds really dated for me now, but Get Ready is still fresh. More of alternative rock with some electronic undertones works really well for them and this was a really good comeback record. Favourite song of it, but it was hard to choose one.