Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Something to sing about

Not quite sure why I picked that title, except that it's the track playing in iTunes at the moment ...

The library's expanded a fair bit over the past couple of months. Some old, some new, some rediscovered and some given a second chance.

The old are Rita Coolidge, Barbra Streisand and Elkie Brooks where I've acquired a few "greatest tracks" type albums. All 3 of them have amazing voices, they're from a musical era which demanded its stars could sing and not just dance. Autotune hadn't been invented when these ladies were singing their hearts out. Of the 3, my pick has been Barbra Streisand as the choice of tracks is consistently outstanding when it doesn't break through into stunning. The Rita Coolidge album is good but not as brilliant while the Elkie Brooks collection is very patchy. It's a shame, there's the excellent voice and the well written songs but something goes horribly wrong in the middle. Bit like when Kate Bush tried to sing Candle In The Wind and somehow ended up butchering it.

That's the trouble with cover versions, you'd think a great singer would combine with magical lyrics to make something unforgettable but you end up with something horrific instead. I'd pick out an example but I don't think I want to go there in case it sticks in my head and makes me go ~wibble~ at work tomorrow.

Rediscovered :

Just listening to the Once More With Feeling soundtrack from Buffy. It's the actors and actresses singing so it's rather different to commercial manufactured pop. It's a hell of a lot better. There's so much feeling put into the singing that you can't help but sing along.

Ok - maybe behind locked doors where noone can hear you try to sing along (I'm a wuss like that) but you know what I mean :-) Under Your Spell is most definitely the highlight there and I think I'm going to take a little interlude to watch the vid on Youtube ... Oh - forget any disparaging remarks about the singing quality - Amber Benson could easily beat any X Factor wannabe.

Something new :

Evanescence's self titled 3rd album appeared ... This is an ok album. It's not as good as their first two but still hangs together as an album. There's just no stand out tracks like My Immortal or Hello. (And my brain just triggered a memory of a bad cover - Katherine Jenkins should have left Bring Me To Life well alone)

Something old (but not stale) : Meatloaf's Rock N Roll Hero is always good for a listen. This kinda goes in the 2nd chance box but I'm saving that for later ... Everyone will know what follows the words "On a hot summer night ..."

Something given a 2nd chance : I have to thank our Klingon Spirited RCA for this one. I'd written off Snow Patrol's Fallen Empires as a) More of the same and b) Pretty bad. That's what random youtubing can do ... But our RCA had me listening to Fallen Empires in the car ... and guess what appeared in the library not all that long after :-). No stand out tracks on this one again but that doesn't make it a bad album.

Past & Present :

I'd been missing a Cardigans album ... To be honest, half the tracks on Emmerdale I'd already got with their Life album. So I'd been missing 7 tracks that were easily worth the price of a cheap album. That's Past, as the Cardigans split up a few years ago. Lead singer, Nina Persson, went to a new band called A Camp which makes Present with the appearance of the Colonia album in the library.

Future ? Not got that yet. But I'm looking keenly at it in the hope it becomes available over here for a respectable price. The temptation is coming from getting Edie Brickell's Volcano album which is more excellence from a criminally underrated artist. Hey - why future if I've got the album ? Cos I've not got the next album yet ... There's a self titled Edie Brickell album which doesn't seem to be too available over here, I can't get it on iTunes and it would be £12.30 from Amazon. I don't like paying that for movies, let alone cd's.

Weird - the magical music box of Hannah Peel is a must check out. He says going off to Youtube to find Tainted Love to sing along to (which has actually turned into being an album track Don't Kiss The Broken One).

The Wall Of Text alarm just went off so I'll just summarise the others ... Cults, White Stripes and The Rasmus are worth checking out if you've missed them. Kaiser Chiefs Employment was ok but not up to the hype. Dirty Vegas (Days Go By acoustic is a stop n listen), Diamonds And Pearls and a whole heap of random classical has turned up too.

It's definitely enough music to keep me busy for a while :-) The library is up to 5202 tracks taking up 27 GB of my laptop now and I'd need to have the laptop playing for 14 consecutive days to listen to it all.

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:26 am

    Elkie Brooks can rise above singers like , Coolidge and Streisand. Her ability to sing all types of music is excellent. The other two cannot sing Rock or Jazz as well as Brooks.

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  2. That's quite an eclectic collection :)

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  3. Hi Anon - I guess where the Elkie collection falls down is that there's possibly too many tracks in it. The not-so-good ones get in there as well as the great ones. And there's some outstanding tracks in there :-)

    BK - lots of variation in what I listen to helps me avoid getting bored with what I have :-)

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