#447: Japan - Quiet Life (1979)

Zack: I’ve been spending some time each morning teaching myself a different statistical software language than the one I have typically used. It is a continuously frustrating process. I have spent 5-10 minutes starting at lines of code, trying to figure out why they won’t work, with error messages talking about misplaced parentheses, only to find out that the sole problem was a missing comma. I could be using that time to listen to albums, but I’ve been worried that I need to pay a little too much attention to what I’m doing (I tried putting on the TV while I work and I either would pay 0 attention to whatever was on or I would pay too much attention and get nothing done) and that my frustration would unfairly bleed over to my impression of the music. But when I saw that the next album was some '80s new wave bullshit, I figured it was probably safe to give it a shot. The music typically doesn’t require too much attention, since it’s mostly dumb, and a lot of this genre is so cloyingly upbeat that maybe it would dull my simmering frustration. Quiet Life didn’t really do much on the latter point, but it did hit that sweet spot of attention that I frequently praise albums for accomplishing. It was there in the background, but it was subtle. Just what I needed for that particular task. I didn’t really like the album, but at least it didn’t get in the way.

Favorite Tracks: Despair; Alien; Quiet Life

Emily: I 100% picked this album because the band is called Japan, and I thought I'd get to talk about some Japanese influences and tie in my vacation to Tokyo from earlier this year. Alas, those ideas went out the window as soon as I started listening to the album. Turns out the band called itself Japan as a place filler before their first show, and they never got around to changing it. So there's really nothing Japanese about Japan. I did like their take on new wave/synth-pop, though. It's not quite as shiny and bouncy as many of their contemporaries, which works to their benefit. Quiet Life is more contemplative than your average new wave album, making it a pleasant companion for my late-afternoon internet browsing but not necessarily something I would return to again.

Favorite Tracks: Fall in Love with Me; Alien; Quiet Life

#446: Suede - Dog Man Star (1994)

Zack: I don’t really have much to say about this album, so I’m mostly just going to list facts and random thoughts. Suede are a 90s Britpop band. They were considered part of the “Big 4” Britpop bands, along with Oasis, Blur, and Pulp. Those four bands have 9 combined albums on the list, with Blur at 3 and everyone else with 2 each. We’ve now reviewed one albums by each, and none have really stood out. Of those four bands, Suede is the only one that I had never heard of before. So I think that makes Blur the Kevin Durant of this Big 4, Oasis the Steph Curry, Suede the Klay Thompson, and Pulp the Draymond Green. I just came up with that comparison on the fly and with very little thought, but I am not prepared to defend it with my life. Next time I see Emily’s friend Matt, I’m going to ask him his thoughts on the band Suede because I already am sure he has very strong opinions on this matter. Anyway, considering how often I have bemoaned the gross overrepresentation of Britpop on the list and considering I’d never even heard of the band, I found this album to be not terrible. It was kind of a fun listen, which is good enough to make it one of the least egregious Britpop album inclusions. So I guess I’m going to have to hammer Pulp whenever we get around back around to them to even things out a bit.

Favorite Tracks: The Asphalt World; The Wild Ones; This Hollywood Life

Emily: Once again, I don't understand why the creators of this list love mid-'90s Britpop so much. I had never heard of Suede before today, but apparently they were important enough to merit two albums on this list. Dog Man Star, the first Suede album we've tackled, was fine. A bit too long, but melodious and varied enough to hold my attention for the almost hour-long runtime. I sincerely doubt that this album will stick in mind, though, much past the time I hit "Publish" on this post. Perhaps I'll come back to this review when we encounter the next Suede album in a few hundred entries, but until then, Dog Man Star will be but a wisp in my memory.

Favorite Tracks: Still Life; The Wild Ones; New Generation

#445: Neu! - Neu! '75 (1975)

Zack: We’ve come across krautrock before: first by Holger Czukay and second by the band Faust, although you might want to include Kraftwerk in that list as well. With the half-exception of Kraftwerk which I remember thinking was okay, none of those times left a particularly positive memory. I went back and reread what I’d written about Faust and Czukay, and one thing I had noted was that krautrock’s main defining feature is that it pays almost no dues to the universal elements of US/UK music. Certain rules of the game were developed by the folk artists, delta blues players, and early jazz musicians that inform how just about every modern musician – from metalheads to hip-hop artists to country singers to indie bands – performs their craft. A lot of krautrock is built around different rules entirely, so it sounds kind of jarring and uncomfortable. But Neu! was the first band where it kind of made sense. The album is split, with the first half being dedicated to the more ambient-based elements of krautrock and the second half being more rock-oriented. Doing so highlights both the similarities and differences, while showing how the two styles really complement each other. Comparing and contrasting the two allows the listener to see how rock tends to prioritize repetition and attention-grabbing, while krautrock focuses more on building rich and evolving soundscapes. And while I preferred the rock half more, having them both there heightened my appreciation for both.

Favorite Tracks: Hero; Seeland; After Eight

Emily: Wikipedia describes Neu! '75 as "a split record, subtly melodic in the first half and boldly unconventional in the second." Respectfully, I must disagree with this internet-curated description. While the first three tracks of the album combines subtle melodies with hypnotic krautrock sensibilities, the latter three tracks are bold in their rhythms but rooted in rock music. I didn't find the result unconventional, but rather took the then-conventional sounds of rock & roll and psychedelic rock and infused them krautrock ambiance. Unconventional or not, these three songs take krautrock a few steps further than what we've encountered before, merging the German genre with familiar ideas to great, enjoyable effect.

Favorite Tracks: Hero; Seeland; After Eight

#444: Miles Davis - Kind of Blue (1959)

Emily: There is a certain melancholy in Kind of Blue that's not quite as present in Birth of the Cool, the other Miles Davis album we've listened to for this list and one that I've listened to many times over. It got me thinking about my days listening to Miles Davis in the museum gift shop. I know I've written about that experience several times here, but today it's at the forefront of my mind. The reason we had the Birth of the Cool CD in the gift shop, along with John Coltrane, Rodrigo y Gabriela, and a few other jazz and instrumental staples, was because a coworker burned these CDs specifically for the shop so we could have something new to listen to while we spent hours organizing the toy section and dusting glass sculptures. I learned a few days ago that this coworker passed away last week, unexpectedly and far too soon. I hadn't spoken to him in a few years, since the last time I volunteered for a museum event before I moved away from Philadelphia. But seeing that news spurred several memories - waiting for tour groups outside on spring days, the time he insisted that we walked together to the El after a meeting in an unfamiliar neighborhood, and, of course, the music that he shared with all of us in the gift shop. The creativity and emotion of Miles Davis was a perfect fit to remember him by.
Favorite Tracks: So What; Flamenco Sketches; Freddie Freeloader

Zack: And the nostalgia tour continues! We last listened to Miles Davis winter break of sophomore year, so probably January 2011. And Birth of the Cool has remained my favorite jazz album this entire time (2^nd place: Kamasi Washington’s The Epic; 3^rd place; John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme). Being really forced to listen to jazz is one of the elements of this endeavor I’m most happy about. I think I always wanted to listen to more jazz. But it can be very intimidating. The Wikipedia page for Kind of Blue talks a lot about music theory and tonality and modality and I think if I had tried to discover it on my own I would have backed away in a panic. Now, I know that I don’t care about any of that stuff. I just know that Kind of Blue was really great to listen to. The songs were longer than Birth of the Cool, but I think they did a better job of conveying emotions and ideas. The songs on Kind of Blue carried a lot of weight. And I look forward to reexperiencing that weightiness every time I need something subtle in the background while I edit or code.

Favorite Tracks: Blue in Green; Flamenco Sketches; So What