20. Lanie Lane – Oh Well, That’s What You Get Falling In Love With A Cowboy
This was released in some places last year, but is listed on Wikipedia as 2012 so I’ll claim it as one of this year’s best. Lanie’s Australian, but this is America as a Wild West theme park, as curated by David Lynch.
Have you ever listened to an album for the first time and just stared in disbelief for several minutes afterwards? It’s not like you hated it, but it just baffled you so much that you were completely unable to assemble any kind of opinion on it whatsoever: precisely what the f*** just assaulted my ears?
Amusingly mistitled ‘Decline and Fail’ at Amazon, Decline and Fall was the eagerly-awaited (at least by me) follow up to A History of Madness after nearly a decade of absence. Although they’ve always been on the quirky side, Thinking Plague used to be generally quite accessible. While I wouldn’t rule out suddenly deciding that Decline and Fall is my favourite album of 2013, right now it sounds an awful lot like the band-members turned up at the studio and just all started playing the first thing that came into their heads without reference to any kind of musical sense. The made-up-on-the-spot feel to the lyrics doesn’t help, either.
Youtube comment: “a fan for the last 10 years, i can say this : it requires a few listenings, but it gets better each time ! after a difficult start with it, i wonder if this may not be their best recording yet...” Continue reading
I’ve been procrastinating for months on what to say about this, because frankly I don’t have a clue. Deciding that now I’ve run out of excuses and really need to review it, I’m faced with the daunting thought that I still have absolutely no f***ing idea what to say about it. That’s not because it is in any way lacking (quite the opposite!) but because I have no frame of reference – it’s just not similar enough to anything else to possibly describe it. It’s like trying to review colours. Continue reading
Reinspired 