Isabelle Antena - Mediterranean Songs
There is not much Mediterranean in Isabelle Antena’s 1997 album, despite the title, and yet there is no reason to complain. Warm-voiced, sophisticated Antena manages to mix jazzy, tropical rhythms with electronic arrangements, breezy orchestra and polyphonic backing choirs. The result is a strangely retro-futuristic sound, that’s a lot more “21st century” than what we get in the 21st century proper; it’s no surprise Isabelle Antena made a bigger splash in Japan and the Far East than she did here where I sit.
The 11 songs on the record offer a choice of sensual tunes that yet remain somewhat aloof, in a style that sounds like an update of 50s noir nightclub singers. Beautifully produced, and sun in both English and French, Mediterranean Songs is the sort of record that will make us look incredibly elegant and savvy when played at the right moment, and it’s a perfect introduction to Isabelle Antena’s production.
You can listen to it on Spotify, and will be able to thank me later.
https://open.spotify.com/album/1MDQjojSQJNuTv4Fl8znaZ
#isabelleantena #nujazz #electropop #lounge
Al Stewart - The Year of the Cat
In this series I review the records I listen as I listen to them, and Al Stewart’s seventh album, The Year of the Cat, was bound to come up sooner or later, because I listen frequently to this record, and it carries a lot of baggage with me. I still remember distinctly a summer in which the title song seemed to be playing everywhere - on the radio, in jukeboxes, everywhere. It was 1976.
Produced by Alan Parsons and recorded with a lineup of excellent British session musicians, The Year of the Cat shows Stewart at his best - writing stories, taking inspiration from history, books, films, and setting these stories to beautiful music.
Personal baggage, I said. I could start with the cat-obsessed woman on the cover, but as we go through the songs we get Elizabethan navigators, tickling my passion for Elizabethan history; then we move on the border with Hemingway and smugglers and partisans and the winds of Africa - the song was the chief inspiration of my Corsair stories. Amy Johnson and biplanes are up next, and connect with my passion for the lives of adventurous women. I will not get in any detail about the person that Sand in Your Shoes brings back to my mind, and will touch passingly on the Zen of If it doesn’t come naturally leave it. By the time the first bars of The Year of the Cat pour through my earphones, I’ve come full circle, with references to film noir, Bogart and Peter Lorre, exotic locales, Chinese astrology and a mysterious woman. I wrote a story, based on this song, back when I was in high school, to impress the girl that Sand in My Shoes always calls back to my memory. It was not a very good story, but there’s shards of it in everything that I write. And this is the takeaway: Al Stewart is a writer’s songwriter, and this is his masterpiece. You can listen to it on Spotify. Do it.
https://open.spotify.com/album/2qRVGjXrKt3rg5MsunltX9
#alstewart #yearofthecat #alanparsons #classicrock #folkrock
The Divine Comedy - Casanova
Ten songs about sex and one about death, this is essentially what you get when you listen to Casanova, the breakthrough album from Neil Hannon’s The Divine Comedy, released in 1996.
But it’s a lot better than that.
The perfectly crafted tunes are easy on the ear and yet musically intricate and complex enough to go beyond the “Britpop” label that the press applied to the record. The production is fantastic, and the record sounds like a million dollars, the band and Hannon’s vocals backed by an orchestra.
The songs reference a variety of historical, literary and film sources, from the obvious (”Becoming More like Alfie”), to the subtle (is Holly Golightly’s ghost haunting ”A Woman of the World”?) to the obscure (the opener “Something for the Weekend” seems to steal a leaf from “Cold Comfort Farm”, and if you don’t know the novel or the movie, you should check them out), painting a landscape of sexual escapades and variously encounters with the fair sex on the part of the titular patron saint of philanderers. And as tongue-in-cheek situations parade on our player, Neil Hannon slips in not only a variety of musical inventions, but a series of penetrating (pun, obviously, unintended) social observations.
And in this choice resides the true genius of Hannon, that writes great songs and sings them with a distinctive voice but most importantly has understood how Casanova could be the archetype of the turn-of-the-century thirty-something European male. For what other reason, otherwise, would I be convinced that at least four (more probably six) of the songs on this record talk about things that actually happened to me?
Because we are all Casanova at least once in our lives - usually in the worst moment possible.
Truly a record for the ages - and appearing in a few “to listen before you die” lists - Casanova can be found on Spotify, doing his thing - as Casanova would. And you can listen to it.
https://open.spotify.com/album/0txgYRjymfL0U28aTEK6Qk
#thedivinecomedy #neilhannon #britpop #orchestralpop #conceptalbum #casanova
10cc - The Original Soundtrack
The proof of what happens when you get four brilliant musicians and singers/songwriters in a studio of their own with no one to check what they are doing, 10cc were so strange that music reviewers were not sure how to classify them: a novelty act (with songs like “Donna”), a cynical lampooning of pop music (The worst band in the world”), genius (”Baron Samedi”) or madness (“Rubber bullets”). They were described as “art rock”, because there was no other category flexible enough to accommodate them.
Godley, Cream, Gouldman and Stewart did not seem to care.
Labelled “a studio band”, 10cc would produce a string of complex, intelligent and beautifully crafted records throughout a decade, even surviving with a certain aplomb a dramatic split half the way along.
Their third album, The Original Soundtrack (1975), is considered by many the highest point of their incredibly consistent production: a selection of short “song movies” that starts with the mini-rock-opera “One Night in Paris”, that would go on to inspire “Bohemian Rhapsody”, and with such highlights as “I’m Not in Love” (the only love song an intelligent person will ever need), “The Second Sitting for the Last Supper”, all the way down to “The Film of My Love”.
Technically impeccable, musically diverse and filled with humor and intelligence, The Original Soundtrack has to be listened to be believed.
And you can listen to it on Spotify - you won’t need to literally consume a tape like I did on my old walkman.
https://open.spotify.com/album/1CMgmJjMFskwwmK8h8j1Oj
#10cc #artrock
6 luglio 2019 alle 9:44 PM
Ammetto, mi sono perso il crowdfunding, posso comprarlo da qualche parte?
6 luglio 2019 alle 10:09 PM
I due manuali in inglese sono disponibili in digitale e in cartaceo tramite DriveThruRPG e sul sito di SpaceOrange42 (già GG Studio).
L’edizione italiana è in preparazione (ho sentito ieri il correttore di bozze per alcune minuzie), ma non ho idea se sarà disponibile a coloro che non hanno sottoscritto il crowdfunding.