More disc slippage from the local library.
Bjork “Post”: I like the idea of listening to Bjork more than I like actually listening to Bjork. In this, she is like Laurie Anderson. I can take both of them in small doses but find that it soon becomes hard work. (Which is not to deny that “O Superman” is a cornerstone of the repertoire.)
Various Artists “The Best Ever Disco Album”: it can’t be the best one ever, because “I Feel Love” fades out around the four minute mark, just as it really starts to head off into the stratosphere, and “We Are Family” seems to have acquired a suspiciously 1980s-sounding introductory section which I don’t recall being there the last time I heard it. But as someone else’s guess at what I would consider “best ever” it’s actually quite close.
Various Artists: “The Love Handle Lounge”: hands up who remembers the Loungecore craze, those heady days when we all took off for the nearest second hand record stores and op shops to buy any Martin Denny records we could find before Bruce Milne got his grubby hands on them and put them up on the wall at Au Go Go for $60 a piece. But even if it only served to rescue Esquivel! from obscurity it was a force for good. This tawdry compilation, however, is really scraping the shavings off the floor. The name “Rod McKeun” appears all too frequently on this CD, inauspiciously appearing as "producer" as well as writing or co-writing about half of the songs. My personal favourite of the cocktail-set CDs was, and still is, “Shaken, Not Stirred”, which as well as being consistently good has the Rykodisc seal of quality.
Ry Cooder & V M Bhatt “A Meeting By The River”: it’s easy to dismiss Cooder as a kind of self-promoting, thinking man’s Eric Clapton, or a white-shoed Bill Laswell, or something. And he is probably not averse to wearing his hair in a ponytail. But I try to remember that he is also responsible for the “Paris, Texas” soundtrack (which his own playing here sometimes echoes), and for producing one of the great modern recordings, Jon Hassell’s “Fascinoma” (which appeared on the same label as this). “A Meeting By The River” is a very listenable set of four longish instrumentals. File under “World Music”, sure, but don’t let that get in the way of your enjoyment of it. After all, it’s just a label.
Roxy Music “Avalon”: (sigh).
New Order “Get Ready”: this was never going to change anybody’s life. But gee, wasn’t it good to have them back.
The Chemical Brothers “Surrender”: yeah, okay, but I really think the moment has passed. Nevertheless no record featuring Hope Sandoval can be dismissed out of hand.
Various Artists “The Ice Storm” (soundtrack): how could such a wonderful film have such a patchy soundtrack? Everything from some long early-70s numbers by the likes of Zappa, Free and Traffic to Antonio Carlos Jobim, “Montego Bay”, “Too Late To Turn Back Now” and some Bowie song that I can’t place but that I assume must be fairly recent because it was co-written by Reeves Gabrels. I’d see the film again before I gave this a second listen.
