Santa Korea Recommends...

[Chicken Run Supreme]

Thank you Korea for taking the time to put your thoughts into this, I will listen to the album in it’s entirety over the next 24 hours but after one listen of the opening two tracks, I have a feeling I’m going to like this a lot.

[The Old Man of Storr]

Ooof. That's a flex. Possibly.

Thank goodness I got an Urban Dictionary for Christmas .

[Chicken Run Supreme]

Be The Cowboy - Mitski

I have to be honest from beneath my 1980’s parapet I’d never heard of Mitski but it was clear to me from the opening two tracks that this was going to be right up my strasse.
Mitski’s voice has an ethereal beauty that lifts even the more melancholic tracks like Old Friend and A Pearl. There’s quite a range of styles on the album and the second song, for instance, Why Didn’t You Stop Me sounds like something that Depeche Mode might have put together and then we have a C&W twang to Lonesome Love but with song a title like that could it have ever been anything different. There were two ‘weaker than the rest’ tracks for me, Remember My Name and A Horse Named Cold Air but that still leaves 12 great tracks of which Nobody and Washing Machine Heart were my favourites. I agree Korea, those last three tracks are a great ending to the album.
This album has alerted me to the talents of Mitski and I’ll be dipping into her earlier and more recent releases. I also noticed that she had an Academy Award nomination for best song for This Is A Life from the award winning film, Everything Everywhere All At Once.

Many thanks again Korea, you have selected a great album and mine eyes have been opened to an artist I’d never even heard of previously. I am a sucker for lush synth tracks and there’s plenty of those on this album.

12/14 tracks liked gives a mathematical score of 86%, I’d say that was bloody good work.



So Korea, for your next candidate I will nominate Junco Partner.

[Korea Hammer]

Nice one CRS, pleased you enjoyed it

[Chicken Run Supreme]

Another thing I enjoyed about Mitski’s album was the track lengths. Last track was the longest at 3.59 and most are about 2 and a half minutes on average. 14 tracks in total.

[Korea Hammer]

Another thing I enjoyed about Mitski’s album was the track lengths. Last track was the longest at 3.59 and most are about 2 and a half minutes on average. 14 tracks in total.

Yes, packed with ideas. She reminds me a little of Bjork, started out with a punky guitar sound but over 7 albums has continually mutated her sound. She puts lots of thought into videos and choreography as well, and was fantastic live too.

[Chicken Run Supreme]

Yes, I nearly put that in my review that there was a Bjork like quality and also I felt there was a wee touch of Cocteau Twins

[Korea Hammer]

I hear all sorts of things. Limbo-era Throwing Muses in the intro to Blue Light, The Fiery Furnaces in Me & My Husband, Alannis Morrisette in Remember My Name, even Taylor Swift.

[Cuenca 'ammer]

So Korea, for your next candidate I will nominate Junco Partner.

edited for brevity..

I reckon he could just submit The Nolan's Greatest Hits !!!

[Korea Hammer]

edited for brevity..

I reckon he could just submit The Nolan's Greatest Hits !!!

[Cuenca 'ammer]

so intrigued by the info about Miski I decided to give her a listen.

at the moment i'm listening to "This Land.." and she sounds, at least on the tracks I have listened to so far, so VERY much like Hope Sandoval... which is no bad thing as I think she's exceptional....

I'll get back to you guys on what I think of her overall.. I have 2 albums to listen to, This Land and Laurel Hell......

but thanks for the info, so far she's on my play list for sure..

Korea 10 Rest of the World minus 3

[Monkeybubbles]

KH is on fire, and he hasn't mentioned Wire.

Korea Hammer 22 : 13 Rest of the World

I have to say, that last one was a genius choice. Very fair play.



I'm In The Mood For Dancing is an absolute belter, btw. The string arrangement is *chef's kiss*. Scores will be adjusted in the light of any disagreement.

[Korea Hammer]

so far, so VERY much like Hope Sandoval... which is no bad thing as I think she's exceptional....

I'll get back to you guys on what I think of her overall.. I have 2 albums to listen to, This Land and Laurel Hell......

but thanks for the info, so far she's on my play list for sure..

I think all of her albums are very different. Laurel Hell was more conventional pop, I'd say, and not my favourite. This Land.. is more understated but gets under your skin after a few listens. My favourites are Be The Cowboy and Puberty 2, the pair that came before those.

[Korea Hammer]

and he hasn't mentioned Wire.

I know this is a joke, but I've actually never heard Wire.

[Monkeybubbles]

I know this is a joke, but I've actually never heard Wire.

I would recommend them. Or not. Maybe. I dunno.

[Korea Hammer]

I would recommend them. Or not. Maybe. I dunno.

I expect I would have loved that whole scene if I'd been a couple of years older, but as it is I've barely listened to any of it, even to this day - Wire, Gang Of Four, Television, Magazine, Pop Group, Au Pairs, even PiL and XTC. Oblivious to it all really. I was more into the goth lineage from punk.

[Kludgehammer]

You've missed some genuine works of genius there - though I'm not sure they would hit the same now, after 40 years of bands influenced by them, as they did then when they were creating something genuinely new. Go4's Entertainment, for example, absolutely created a new sound - there was nothing at all (to the best of my knowledge anyway) that sounded like that before.

That kind of late-punk experimentation phase, when they took the punk ethos and just splintered off in every direction, was an absolute golden age of music for me - Go4, Wire, Au Pairs, Talking Heads, PiL, Joy Division, Banshees etc

[Monkeybubbles]

I expect I would have loved that whole scene if I'd been a couple of years older, but as it is I've barely listened to any of it, even to this day - Wire, Gang Of Four, Television, Magazine, Pop Group, Au Pairs, even PiL and XTC. Oblivious to it all really. I was more into the goth lineage from punk.

Thank you for reminding me that I'm even older than you.

I fear that, out of context, a lot of that stuff may not have aged well. Others have taken the blueprint and pushed it a bit further. At the time, though, for the first time I had a sense that this was MY music, made by people like ME.

On Wire, I think their influence is downplayed a bit. Almost every Indie breakout band of the last thirty or forty years reminds me of this...

[vietnammer]

If it's the 'Wire' I'm thinking of, saw them support The Tubes at Hammersmith 1978. Someone yelled 'No Fun' and they went down like rat poison. The above may not be them though cos that song is longer than 30 seconds.

[Monkeybubbles]

If it's the 'Wire' I'm thinking of, saw them support The Tubes at Hammersmith 1978. Someone yelled 'No Fun' and they went down like rat poison. The above may not be them though cos that song is longer than 30 seconds.

That's them.They started out as a snarky shoutalong band, then evolved into something more interesting. I think the Tubes shows were late '77, around the time of Wire's first album, when they were transitioning away from meat and two veg punk rock. Art school, innit.