5 albums: 31 January – 6 February 2010.

the SnowtoriousB.I.G. edition of 5 albums for this week; in roughly chronological order:

1) Silkworm: Italian Platinum (Touch & Go, 2002). This album really hit me hard, both at the time and in retrospect. At the time: I was a longtime Silkworm fan, and I remember getting this right when it came out– and listening to it over and over and over again. I don’t think it left my car stereo for weeks. There are some epic, fantastic songs on here (“A Cockfight of Feelings”, “(I Hope U) Don’t Survive”, “The Ram”, etc), and I just could not get enough of it. In retrospect: this is probably the last album I remember just throwing myself into and listening to almost nothing else for days/weeks on end. Writing about music has changed the way I listen to music, and this album somewhat symbolizes that for me. And then, of course, there’s the sad end to the Silkworm story; the Chicago model named Jeanette Sliwinski who got in a fight with her mom and tried to commit suicide by driving 90 mph, running three red lights, and ramming into the back of a car carrying SKWM drummer Michael Dahlquist, the Returnables’ John Glick, and the Dials’/EXO’s Douglas Meis. Such a crappy end to such a great band.

2) Benji Hughes: A Love Extreme (New West, 2008). This album was recommended to me by a friend who compared it to the Magnetic Fields. That was enough to pique my interest, so I picked it up this week. To my ears, it’s a little more Beck than S.Merritt, but that’s hardly a complaint; this album has more than enough of Beck’s genre-jumping and weirdness to make this listener happy. The other great thing about it: I couldn’t make it through from start to finish in one listen; I kept rewinding to listen to a few songs over and over (“Neighbor Down the Hall”, “Waiting For an Invitation”, “Vibe So Hot”, “So Well”, etc). I’m betting that most reviews of this album talked about how “ambitious” it is to release a 2-disc album as a debut– and it certainly is, and he probably would’ve also been fine with a little editing to make this into one disc– but I’m also pretty stoked to hear what he does next.

3) Robyn: Robyn (Konichiwa/Cherrytree, 2005/r:2008). Man, am I ever glad that Robyn crossed paths with The Knife. It took me until now to shake the sound of “Show Me Love” from my head whenever I hear the name ‘Robyn’, and this album is just delightful pop.

4) Glasvegas: Glasvegas (Sony, 2009). Disappointingly average UK indie-rock.

5) The Horse’s Ha: Of the Cathmawr Yards (Hidden Agenda, 2009). I love Janet Beveridge Bean and all her various bands (currently Freakwater and Eleventh Dream Day), and so i expected to love this. Instead, I merely like it.

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  15. […] started writing about music (check how I wrote about Silkworm‘s 2002 album Italian Platinum, here). That 2002-2003 timeframe is when I turned from a music fan into a serious music writer– and […]

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