Friday Night Jukebox – Chapel Hill, Remastered!
Walking home today, I stopped into my local music shop on a lark. There’s a particular album from a particular band that I’ve been looking for. I had it, years ago, on cassette – it was probably the last cassette I ever bought – but it is long since lost. I don’t know why I decided to look for it today. No one ever has it; it’s not even on iTunes.
Well, it turns out that the band – likely the greatest band of all time – have started re-releasing their albums, remastered and with a lot of bonus material. I am speaking, of course, of Archers of Loaf.
And today, I was re-united with All the Nations Airports.
This is ‘Form and File’:
Archers Of Loaf - Live Spring 1997, Davidson College - 04- Form and File
And this is the single from that album, ‘Scenic Pastures’:
Archers of Loaf - Scenic Pastures
Consider this an open thread.
You musta posted this late Jonathan, you knew I’d have to comment on this.
I always say that the pre-9/11 rock album that most presciently sounds like a post-9/11 album has got to be All the Nations’ Airports. And it came out in ’96!
Full of paranoia, assassinations on Christmas, terrorists in airports, bombing runs, and chumming for unidentified sea monsters as metaphors for hidden dangers of which society is unaware.
http://youtu.be/K1Wyr1UmMFY
It’s amazing how well it has held up.
This is the album of theirs I always try to start people with – they never made a bad one, but it’s far and away their most musically-varied; they never before or after covered the range they do on this one (the shimmering “Acromegaly”, the silent-film-soundtrack-sounding “Bombs Away”), and it’s mostly far less jaggedly noisy than the rest (though “Attack of the Killer Bees” might still try some ppl’s patience).
“Scenic Pastures” is the track that best showed that they fell somewhere on a continuum between gnarly Sonic Youth and pastoral (heh) REM (not just the music, but I always like when lyricists do that repetition-infinite regression thing of “X…and also, X again” – Stipe used to do it a lot, and here it’s “Why don’t you want me to know/Why”.
“Form and File” is one of my favorites of theirs too – it’s strange you posted that one, it doesn’t seem like one of their better-known numbers. It’s a cyclical (pun intended) nagging mobius loop of a song.
It’s somehow appropriate the YouTube video goes to static for a few seconds near the beginning 🙂
GO LOAF!Report
And I should have realized I’d screw up the apostrophe in the title. Oh well.
How’s the second disc? Worthwhile?Report
I haven’t listened to the second disc yet. I’ve been wanting to pick this up (again) for so long, that I’ve just been listening to the main album. I’ll let you know when I do.
That’s interesting about the the pre-9/11 post-9/11 split. I was reading in the liner notes that much of the album (and the artwork) was linked to the feeling of air travel when you’re not yet lifting off, you’re not rushing for a plane, you’re not worried about turbulence or landing or anything – just a perfect little calm moment before rush/stress/anxiety returns. This kind of jibes with that, I think.
And beyond just the paranoia and despair, there’s a sad acceptance of it all. There’s no real anger or aggression or heartbreaking lament. It’s just resignation.
Form and File is probably my favourite song on the disc… no, it’s definitely my favourite song on the disc. I love the spoken word track that runs underneath, as well as the dual lyric lines – which they do a lot (Wrong, Backwash, etc.). It’s a device I absolutely love.Report
Bachmann had some of the most interesting vocal phrasing in rock…the precise staccato rhythms of his singing, like somehow the words themselves are throwing counterpunches against the rest of the noise. “Harnessed in Slums” just kills in that respect.
Speaking of dueling lyric melody/lines, I have posted this over at MD before, but this kills me:
http://youtu.be/Rk2EUdgK0Ao?t=3m
(If the start marker doesn’t work in that link, the song I am referring to starts at the 3-minute mark).
Either one of those songs could be the saddest you ever heard, but to have the two of them weaving in and out of each other…man.Report
Love this album. One of my all time favorites.Report
I never thought I’d be intimidated by an assertive Lego man.
But here we are.Report