![[Quruli - WORLD'S END SUPERNOVA]](https://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/2022301928WSAE_f.jpg)
I catalog my music purchases on Collectorz and Discogs, but they don’t give me a sense of change over time. So I’m noting them here weekly as well.
Tags: abba, hajime chitose, lianne la havas, prince, purchase log, quruli
It’s nice to see international artists make their catalogs available through streaming services. I don’t think I’ve had to go to the Evil Sharing Networks for active Japanese artists in a while. I haven’t really followed LOVE PSYCHEDELICO lately, but at least now, I can listen to this new album on release day.
The singles released ahead of this album seem to indicate Björk has gone back to the kind of beats she was making on Volta. I’m digging this low winds sound.
I like the frankness of this album title.
OK, I admit I got into this band because of the skeletons commercial for Kia. I’m ignoring the singles and waiting for release day to listen to the new material. I’m still enjoying the previous album, life’s a beach, way too much right now.
The last time Robin Holcomb recorded a singer-songwriter album was 20 years ago with her final Nonesuch album, The Big Time. This new album is just her and a piano.
I can’t say I got into Royal Wood’s previous album, but the singles he’s released ahead of this album sound vastly different from what he’s done before. He’s gotten into beats and synths but in a way that enhances folk singer croon.
Luke Evans had some interesting song choices on his debut album. This follow-up doesn’t have many songs I immediately recognize, but given that he covers R.E.M., Donny Hathaway, Simon and Garfunkel and a traditional song in Welsh, he makes another set of bold choices. This album also contains two new songs Evans co-wrote.
Really, Use Your Illusion II is the album worth exploring, but I’m willing to throw in Use Your Illusion I out of due diligence.
Any interest I had in Whiskeytown is all about Caitlin Cary and not one whit about Ryan Adams.
I’m no acolyte of Beyoncé by any stretch of the imagination, but the queerness of this album is unmistakable.
A loss of momentum on the heels of the highly successful The Wedding Album fated this album to obscurity. At the time, I thought the brilliance of this album would win out and prove the ambivalent mainstream audience wrong. I’m not so sure anymore. This album is so fiercely original that it may have been greeted with hostility than with a collective meh. A quarter century later, we get to revisit this album.
How much did I not get into AKFG’s previous album Hometown? I didn’t bother to snap up the vinyl pressing before it went out of print. Planet Folks is not as good as World World World or Landmark, but I like it enough to place a preorder for this vinyl release.
In addition to CD reissues back in August, three albums from Duran Duran’s third decade get vinyl reissues under the RSD Essentials series. I’m sorry to see Pop Trash not included in this set. It’s better than Astronaut and Red Carpet Massacre but still not really the band’s best. To be honest, any album in this set other than All You Need Is Now is really stretching the “essentials” descriptor.
The original vinyl release of FUTURE PAST had fewer tracks than the CD, so this reissue includes additional tracks and the non-album single “Five Years”, which is a David Bowie cover.
To confuse matters, Japan has it’s own commercial holiday to celebrate vinyl called Record Day, which is not to be confused with Record Store Day Japan, the spring event with its own set of domestic reissues. Unlike RSD, Record Day doesn’t restrict availability to brick and mortar stores. The main event happens Nov. 3, with a spillover day on Dec. 3. I’m skipping the BONNIE PINK reissues, but I’ve already pre-ordered UA, Hajime Chitose and Quruli.
Tags: asian kung-fu generation, beyonce, bjork, darren hayes, duran duran, easy life, guns n' roses, hajime chitose, looking ahead, love psychedelico, quruli, robin holcomb, royal wood, ua
![[Fugazi - The Argument]](https://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/FugaziTheArgument2001185734_f-300x300.jpg)
A decade ago, I wrote a series of entries ranking my favorite albums from 1985 to 2004. My collection has expanded greatly since then, particularly in the last five years. So I wanted to see what has changed in 10 years.
As I mentioned in the original entry for the 2001 list, 75 percent of the year was actually really decent, especially where music was concerned. The Favorite 10 from that year remains unchanged.
Other favorites from the year:
Like 2002 and 2003, the extended list for 2001 overruns with quality stuff, and I’ve only added to it.
I got Gillian Welch’s Hell Among the Yearlings as part of a gift bag from a Waterloo Records holiday party. I didn’t get around to listening to it till about 15 years later, and I had to play catch-up.
I’ve known about Low for years, but I didn’t hear them till MONO shared a bill with them in concert.
The annual Friends of the Library Book Sale hooked me up with Fugazi’s End Hits for $1, so I sought out The Argument to round out my collection. I vaguely remember the news of Fugazi’s hiatus upsetting my Waterloo coworkers. I hadn’t yet jumped on the bandwagon.
Tags: aco, bloodthirsty butchers, cocco, death cab for cutie, ex-girl, favorite edition, fra-foa, fugazi, gillian welch, guided by voices, hajime chitose, kicell, low, missy elliott, mono, onitsuka chihiro, quruli, res, rewind, rufus wainwright, semisonic, shea seger, sigur ros, soulsberry, the brilliant green, the shins, utada hikaru
![[Quruli - THE WORLD IS MINE]](https://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/QuruliTheWorldIsMine-300x265.jpg)
A decade ago, I wrote a series of entries ranking my favorite albums from 1985 to 2004. My collection has expanded greatly since then, particularly in the last five years. So I wanted to see what has changed in 10 years.
If you want an explanation for the length of this list, see 2002: An important year in music for the 2000s. This 2002 list has gone through a few ranking changes and added even more titles.
Other favorites from the year:
I picked up Original Pirate Material for $1 at Lifelong Thrift Shop, and now I understand why it was all over the place in 2002. I couldn’t open a music magazine without seeing Mike Skinner mentioned in it. I’m pretty sure the sample of Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 sealed my admiration for the album.
THE WORLD IS MINE is something of a mea culpa. At the time of its release, I recognized the album as being Quruli’s most complex, but I just couldn’t get into it. I probably felt that it didn’t go far enough if it was going to be ambitious.
Well, the joke’s on me. I listened to it again before its reissue on vinyl, and I really dug it, much more than Antenna, which I praised effusively at the time. So it knocked Minako’s one and only album off the Favorite 10. UA also had to make room for the Streets.
The extended list includes albums I originally dismissed: Murray Street by Sonic Youth and One Beat by Sleater-Kinney.
I remember stocking Nappy Roots during my shifts at Waterloo Records and wondering what the big deal was. A $1 copy from Lifelong Thrift Shop 16 years later educated me. I probably wouldn’t have been exposed to Nappy Roots, The Decemberists or ISIS without having worked at Waterloo.
Tags: and you will know us by the trail of dead, bugy craxone, caitlyn cary, damien jurado, favorite edition, hajime chitose, hatakeyama miyuki, hem, isis, joan jeanrenaud, kronos quartet, kylie minogue, minako, missy elliott, n.e.r.d., nappy roots, number girl, patty griffin, pedro the lion, queens of the stone age, quruli, rewind, shiratori maika, sleater-kinney, sonic youth, the back horn, the books, the decemberists, the flaming lips, the hives, the roots, the streets, the white stripes, ua, wilco, zoobombs
![[U2 - The Joshua Tree (30th Anniversary Edition)]](https://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/u2-the-joshua-tree-300x300.jpg)
It seems all the bands in which I’m interested all decided to release their albums in May and June. To date, I have a total of four 2017 releases since the start of the year. Putting together the Favorite Edition Half Year is going to be tricky.
I can’t figure out why I’m looking forward this late-coming follow-up to Relationship of Command, an album I like but can’t listen to very often. And I wasn’t enough of a fan to follow either Mars Volta or Sparta.
I find it interesting that Café Tacvba is releasing this album through CD Baby. That means they’ve gone completely independent.
Tempting as these complete boxed sets may be, my current Midnight Oil collection occupies quite a bit of shelf space. Also, the import markup makes these sets fiscally untenable. Hey Sony, fans outside of Australia might be interested in some of these releases.
It’s a visual album about a man going into outer space to find the woman of his dreams. I would be interested to see how Café Tacvba would tackle the same plot.
Anyone who has Grindr or Scruff installed on his phone would probably check out a band called PWR BTTM.
The weirdest album I acquired in 1986. The b-sides are terrific.
If the orchestral work Kishida released last year as a digital single is any indication, don’t expect a musical metamorphosis on the level of C. Kip Winger.
His first album of original music.
It’s been a while. I had wondered if another 10 years would pass before another Cody Chesnutt album would arrive.
I already have the 20th Anniversary edition, so really, I just want the white cover with the color photo.
For a while there, I thought Kronos had moved on from Nonesuch, given the number of albums the ensemble has released on other labels. This collaborative album with Sam Amidon, Natalie Merchant, Rhiannon Giddens and Olivia Chaney is the first Kronos has released on Nonesuch since 2012, not counting various anthologies.
I’m not sure what draws me to this cast recording — the fact it’s based on Amelie or the fact it was written by a member of Hem.
Well, somebody had to update Gustav Mahler’s The Planets …
Jonny Pierce goes full Roland Orzabal ca. 1993, becoming the sole member of his band The Drums.
I would be OK with Jason Isbell and Sturgill Simpson releasing albums on alternating years.
I would like to get Redneck Wonderland, Breathe and Head Injuries on vinyl. I could do without Capricornia, Earth and Sun and Moon and Place Without a Postcard. Maybe separate releases down the line? Outside Australia, even??
Harris’ shows at the Ryman gave the venue new life, and she returns for the venue’s 125th anniversary. So of course a reissue (on vinyl!) is in order.
I’m disappointed rock bands haven’t turned “Free Your Mind” into a crossover classic.
A Day Without Rain is Enya’s weakest album, and Amaratine went a long way to rectify it. That won’t stop me from getting both of them.
Tags: at the drive-in, bryce dessner, cafe tacuba, cody chesnutt, emmylou harris, en vogue, enya, hem, james mcalister, jason isbell, juanes, kronos quartet, looking ahead, midnight oil, nico muhly, pwr bttm, quruli, sam amidon, sufjan stevens, the art of noise, the drums, u2
![[Renée Fleming - Distant Light]](https://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/renee-fleming-distant-light-300x300.jpg)
It’s probably way too early to start anticipating 2017 first quarter releases, but I’ve already placed a few orders for next month.
I lost track of the Flaming Lips right around 2009’s Embryonic. I don’t even think I checked out The Terror, which would have been an appropriate title for 2016.
As probably the only indie rock fan who genuinely liked Dark Hope, I’m totally on board with Renée Fleming performing Björk. I’m hoping she uses her alto range.
Nonesuch has already started posting excerpts from this album, and I keep wondering when someone is going to make a jukebox musical out of Stephin Merritt songs. I don’t think Merritt is necessarily the best interpreter of his songs, but since other singers haven’t yet taken up his music, it’s not a hypothesis I can prove.
For Quruli’s 20th anniversary, HMV is reissuing the band’s albums on vinyl. I’ve already placed orders for TEAM ROCK and THE WORLD IS MINE. At the time, I gave Antenna a good review, but I’ve changed my mind since then. Zukan and Sayonara Stranger are also important titles to own, but they’re not priorities for me personally.
This reissue has been delayed multiple times since May 2016. What?
I’m still skeptical about this reissue, since it too has bounced around the release schedule for nearly a year now.
Tags: duran duran, looking ahead, quruli, renee fleming, the flaming lips, the killers, the magnetic fields