Cocteau Twins – Blue Bell Knoll (1988)
I had already been listening to Cocteau Twins for 6 years when they became my favorite band in 1997; having brought all their albums along on a study trip through Europe and listening to them repeatedly with headphones, something finally sunk in, hit home, and brought me to a brand new level of enjoyment of their music. Since then, Blue Bell Knoll (actually the first one of theirs I ever bought) has been my favorite Cocteau album, and what I hear in it now well represents what it has meant to enjoy the music of Cocteau Twins more than any music I have ever listened to.

The crystalline purity of the melodies, the majestic sweep of the rhythms, the ravishing guitar textures, and inscrutable remove yet passion of the vocals add together to form a complete musical product that, when heard in full force, is sheerly awesome to behold. There are many, many Cocteau Twins songs which just send me into raptures; about, oh, seven of them are here amongst the ten tracks and 35 minutes of Blue Bell Knoll. With that much back-to-back exquisiteness going on, I am almost afraid to listen to this record. In fact, I probably don't put it on that much because of some overawed caution on my part that listening to it will somehow ruin it. But when I do, I'm reminded that however many gushing words one can squeeze out onto page to endeavor to somehow represent what their music and the experience of it is like (with all awareness of the irony embodied in writing just that!), there is simply no substitute for actually listening to Cocteau Twins.

Some people complain about this record and that the layers of guitar effects that Robin Guthrie uses (even for a Cocteau Twins record) make for a somehow "muddy" sound. Although the sonic signature of Blue Bell Knoll, particularly in the guitars, is characterized by a sort of gauzy, metallic sheen, I don't find it at all objectionable (and I'm enough of an audiophile that poor sound quality in a recording is enough to ruin it for me); I think it contributes to the atmosphere and vibe of the music. Added to the heavily-processed guitars, there are some additional, unique elements that help color the sound of this record: some marimba ("For Phoebe Still a Baby," "Ella Megalast Burls Forever"), piano ("Cico Buff"), and harpsichord (the title song).

The subtle hues of moods that the songs represent make for a very complete experience, too. There's the building tension of the opening title track with its strangely ominous harpsichord loops, tight bassline, and vaguely foreboding vocals, that explodes in a scintillating breakdown with a driving beat, spiraling into a feedback-drenched ending. And that's just the first three minutes of the album. Soon after there's the clear, brightly ecstatic elevation of "Carolyn's Fingers," and the lullaby-like, gentle touch of "For Phoebe Still a Baby." Some actual words seem to be discernible in that one: "This small angel...", "This pale angel...". It's the cooing of a mother's love, but from a world that completely lacks any possibility of such an expression being syrupy or overdone. "The Itchy Glowbo Blow" (come on, aren't you getting curious about this music just from the song titles?) thunderously peals through its strides as if to say "Welcome to Wonderland, where have you been all this time?" Then the song hits its bridge, and the whole album reaches just about its apex, I think. I am totally gone at that point. I've noticed that for most "pop"-structured music, I tend to prefer the verses over the chorus, but that pattern is distinctly reversed for Cocteau Twins songs (and often the bridges are even better!). I think that says something about how uniquely their music gets to me.

Slowdive – Souvlaki (1993)
Slowdive are, for me, the band that most defines, and are the best representative of, the genre "shoegazer." The name "shoegazer" was originally a derogatory term (like "impressionism" for that French school of late-19th-century painters, interestingly) coined by some snotty British music journalist to apply to a crop of bands such as Ride, Lush, and My Bloody Valentine, that appeared in the early 90's and whose sound was defined by dense layers of guitar textures and that tended to effect a distinctly introverted stage presence. Actually, most people are not familiar with the term or the music: you certainly won't hear any "shoegaze" on hit radio.

While in the main, shoegaze music tended to be melodic as well as loud and textured, part of what set Slowdive apart is how much more both sweetly melodic and densely layered their music was compared with their contemporaries. They hit their stride with Souvlaki, their second full-length LP, and made the most sonically ravishing and unforgettable album of their ilk. An important part of their sound and unique charm is the male/female unison vocals of singers/guitarists Neil Nalstead and Rachel Goswell, which sounds like it could have been lifted from some sixties folk/pop outfit, only... it's not. It fits in beautifully with the expanses of sound and color wash that fill out this music, though. It all soars and lifts magnificently. There's a good dynamic range between the songs, too, from the yearning, searching "Alison," delicate reverbed-guitar picking of "Here She Comes Now," overwhelming wall-of-sound tsunami of "Souvlaki Space Station," and haunting, faraway, acoustic "Dagger"; the album never gets samey or washed-out as is the distinct danger with this kind of music. Fully-realized and a complete and satisfying experience, Slowdive's Souvlaki is a real treasure.

Red House Painters – Red House Painters (1993)
Red House Painters have a beautifully consistent aesthetic about them which is what attracted me to them in the first place; something revolving around their name, the rustic scenes depicted on their sepia-tinted album covers, and the simple yet epic resonance of their music. Their first release, Down Colorful Hill, is what many consider their masterwork, and while superb, it seems to me more like a diamond in the rough, presaging what was to follow. This, the first of their two 1993 self-titled LPs (also known respectively as 'the rollercoaster one' and 'the bridge one,' after their cover photos) is what I consider their definitive product. In fact, the two together could be considered a single definitive opus; a two-volume triple-album. But if you had to pick one, it would be this.

"Funhouse" is a song I would hold up as a template of the archetypal RHP style, with its painstakingly slow, martial, 6/8 drumbeat (do you have any idea how hard it is to play that slow?! ), patiently chiming guitars with each note like a carefully chosen word, and a spiraling, almost frenetic climax. Other standouts on this double-album are as numerous as they are excellent. There is obviously a lot of deep pain behind these songs, but it is expressed so beautifully that it keeps the pathos, however dark, from descending into irredeemable despair. Their music has a gorgeous kind of expansive melancholy to it, like gazing out to sea at dusk on the central or northern California coast. When listening to this I get almost overwhelmed with its sheer emotive power and purity. I am in complete awe of these people, for having this wonderful kind of artistic vision and the wherewithal to pull it off so magnificently.

Yo La Tengo – And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out (2000)
Boy, do I love, love, love this album. It has such a healthy darn glow to it. By now, the collective musical interplay of Ira, Georgia, and James is at such a height of intuitive fluidity, they seem to create a warm space for the sound to breathe in, as they weave the songs together with just the right amount of love and attention. A lot of the time the melodies seem to be almost implied. Maybe it's the subtlety that draws me in time and again back to this album.

To kick it off, the gentle retrospective love song "Our Way to Fall" is sandwiched by the mesmerizing drones of "Everyday" and "Saturday." The next several songs form the album's core, starting off with the wonderfully lilting tambourine-and-organ based "Let's Save Tony Orlando's House" (apparently an obscure Simpsons reference), and anchored by the seemingly fifties-influenced ballads "The Crying of Lot G" and "Tears Are in Your Eyes". "The Last Days of Disco" takes a basic but indelible guitar-and-vocal melody, surrounds it with huge, quiet waves of subdued feedback and organ, and underpins it with Georgia's mesmerizing polyrhythmic drumming. It's absolutely chill-inducing: one of my favorite songs ever. Then there's the obligatory obscure-but-brilliant cover: the tongue-in-cheek, mutated disco of "You Can Have It All." Interestingly, it is not until the ninth track that that other extreme that Yo La Tengo also dominates so wholeheartedly shows up in the form of "Cherry Chapstick," with its ringing, scintillating guitars and peals of feedback, being the lone exception to the album's overall tone of quiet and delicacy. I think I must have read in an interview or something the reason for this song's particular place in the album's sequence: "any earlier, people would have been expecting another one, any later and it would have sounded tacked-on."

Then we're back into the original program with "From Black to Blue," whose dumb-simple melody coyly attempts to hide the layers of sonic subtlety beneath it. "Madeline"'s brisk rhythms, reverbed guitar, and fuzz bass seem to suggest a dedicatory elegy from a fictional past. The instrumental "Tired Hippo" entrances with its insistent syncopated rhythms, mysterious organ, and faux-60's-spy-movie guitar lines. The closer, "Night Falls on Hoboken" is absolutely to die for. A frail, impossibly delicate, tear-inducing ballad, it gently ambles through a couple of verses and choruses before devolving into quiet acoustic feedback, organ drone, and a subdued drum solo, 17 minutes all told, but it seems like all of half that; its graceful slide is like the gradual embrace of dusk itself. When it all wraps up, look at the cover art. Isn't it perfect?

It's all very subtle and dark, this sumptuous feast of tone colors and rhythm, so not everybody will "get" it. But it is a wonderful album, and one that I can get absolutely lost in from beginning to end.

lovesliescrushing – glissceule (2002)
"Textural" may be the one word that would best describe the music of lovesliescrushing; "abstract" also fits well, and those two together should well clue one in as to what this outfit is about. But as it's like nothing you've ever heard before, you would just have to listen to ever know. Almost entirely eschewing percussion, the sonic stylings of lovesliescrushing consist of just the heavily-effected guitar of Scott Cortez and the angelic-gossamer vocals of Melissa Arpin-Henry. Not for the unadventurous, their music takes as its basis the lush guitar textures of the "shoegazer" sound, but expanding on them to create soundscapes that can be spacey, orchestral, noisy, choppy, or any combination thereof. The result is an incredibly distinctive sound, with which they make music that is astonishingly well-realized and uniquely beautiful. With all the emphasis on texture, one might expect a formless ambience akin to Windy & Carl, but their pieces that are, in fact, full-blown songs (and not the shorter sound-experiments and such that they do regularly foray into), are actually quite meticulously arranged and have recognizable structures, from the familiar A-B-A-B-C-B pattern to others more creative and particular for whatever effect they are trying to accomplish in a particular song.

Glissceule, lovesliescrushing's third album, languished for some years on the hard drive of the inscrutable Scott Cortez while he waited to obtain the digital editing software he needed to get some of the particular "glitch-bliss" effects he wanted. Fortunately, it did not suffer the same fate as My Bloody Valentine's perennially-promised followup to 1991's Loveless, but was actually released in early 2002. It is sequenced in a similar pattern to its predecessors, 1994's bloweyelashwish and 1996's Xuvetyn; the first half of the album consisting of full-length songs interspersed with 30–60-second experimental interludes that serve a kind of palate-clearing purpose, the rest consisting of the remaining full-length songs in amongst sort of "tone poems" of intermediate length. Part of the uniqueness in this particular album is in the digital editing effects, which Scott terms "glitch-bliss." This took some getting used to at first, but does fit in interestingly with the overall textural program, and isn't overused. I'll quote the review of one Jason Morehead of online music rag Opuszine, who describes the effect thus: "...glitch-like movements that sometimes sweep across songs like wind across a flag, snapping and contorting them before billowing out again." Well put. Xuvetyn had the difference between bloweyelashwish of having a more relaxed vibe, more "chill," while that first album was quite noisy and sometimes involved deafening peals of feedback amidst its ringing strains. Glissceule continues the trend of increased "chillness," and it is a most welcome trend, as some of the most transcendently lovely lovesliescrushing moments tend to be those of glacial stillness and billowy lushness. Some find this CD to be simply evanescent and well-nigh intangible, but that's not quite the effect it has for me. The gorgeous textures (sorry, I've consulted my thesaurus, but there's just no other word for it) and structural complexities really draw me in and cause me to listen, ever-closer and further into its depths.

The opener "gloscien,"* a towering, 9-minute opus magnum of velvety luster and barely-moving ambience, kicks things off in appropriately spacey fashion. As I read someone else write, it sounds like "an orchestra warming up in a concert hall the size of a small city." Halfway through, it shifts in tone, with backwards-tracked guitars gently rolling through like pulsating lights (as a note in passing, I've always found lovesliescrushing's music to be quite visual, so such descriptions always come to mind when I think about how a certain song of theirs sounds). There are moments on this album where, when I'm listening to it on my headphones, I stop whatever I'm doing and get simply wide-eyed because I can hardly believe what I'm hearing. This stuff is that amazing, and that beautiful. "gloscien" has such moments, as does "eishglinl." You know that part in the movie Fellowship of the Ring where they're in Lothlorien, and being brought before Galadriel in all her radiance? "Eishglinl" sounds nothing so much as a soundtrack for just such a moment; I find its ethereality and faintly melancholic tone distinctively Elvish. The chorus and bridge have just those perfect rubs between notes that send shivers down one's spine, and leaves me in awe of its majesty. "Suischre," towards the end, is my favorite part of this incredible album. For its first half, what can only be described as the sound of an approximately 80-string guitar goes through repetitions of a simple series of major-seventh chords that roll by just like ocean waves; halfway through, some pedal gets pressed (an effect, also used on the similarly-structured "Suhr," for which the name "avalanche guitar" immediately came to mind when I first heard it) and it turns into a snowstorm of guitar sound, with an intensely beautiful climactic chord progression. I get drowned in it every time. The 77-minute masterpiece of lovesliescrushing sonic ecstacy that is glissceule was certainly worth the wait. To actually own such a thing and be able to put it on and have all its breathtaking glory wash over my ears any time I please... well, it's as much of an "I can die happy now" thing as anything could be.

*One manifestation of the increased abstraction involved here is the song titles: all are gibberish (contrasted from those of previous albums), and I've noticed something interesting about them: each title can be formed out of the letters in "lovesliescrushing."

Paik – The Orson Fader (2002)
By the time of this, their third album, the Detroit "space-rock" trio Paik is so well in-command of their craft that everything they unleash to the world is almost frightening in its awesome power and majesty. By the time of their second album, 2001's Corridors, Paik discovered their ability to blend kick-ass drumbeats, leisurely but authoritative pacing, maximum power from one guitar, and driving basslines in sympathy with the other two instruments, to absolutely stunning effect. On Orson Fader, Paik have got that act down cold, plus another thing going here: full-on album crafting.

The Orson Fader's 12 tracks consist of 7 or so full-length (which means 5–8-minute) songs woven together by shorter textural interludes. Everything segues into the next thing, and the result is an incredibly cohesive whole. Their sound has also somewhat modulated, where the bass, less chordal now, is now often more integrated into what the guitar is doing, so that the two form a more-or-less continuous spectrum of sound, from the guitar's midrange on down to the dropped-D string of the bass. The drummer has also now incorporated a booming tympani into his set, which plays a big part in the overall sound, and gives his already-compelling drumbeats even more texture and dimension.

The spacious sonic journey of this album begins with the relatively short "Detroit," an overdriven, dirgey intro number that seems to set the scene in the band's own physical surroundings, that industrial Motor City. Then with "Tall Winds," they take as simple a riff as possible, firmly establish it with repetition and inversion, and do their trademark thing with it: embellish it with added volume and depth, and relentlessly push it into the stratosphere. Once already into orbit, one is greeted with "Purple," whose climax comes with an almost overwhelming power, transporting the listener out of orbit and into interplanetary space. As it segues into "Black Car," with its absolutely scorching guitar feedback-symphony, you now feel as though you are diving into the sun. Then as it devolves into a slow rhythmic figure that sounds like a vehicle chugging along on its last legs, it finally sputters and dies, and the remnants of its electrical system send out sparks and flames with its "Low Battery Transmission." Those first five tracks seem to be kind of Part I of the album, and things get going again with the twin sci-fi anthems "Ghost Ship" and "Star 80." More delectable spaciness of that nature continues, and is concluded with "Killing Windmills," whose circular bass figure recalls Corridors' "The Longest Day," and whose plangent guitar sound forms the basis for the closing short piece "Red Current."

For overall effect and craftsmanship alone, this record makes it into my list of very, very, favorites. But Paik's magnificent sonic depth and visceral punch is all here in spades, too; it's a primal, in-the-bones kind of effect that precedes formal analysis, and is as pleasurable a kick in the gut as I can imagine.

Continue to page 2

Last updated: Thursday, October 28, 2004; 10:57 am CDT