{"id":9282,"date":"2010-06-10T16:17:04","date_gmt":"2010-06-10T20:17:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/?p=9282"},"modified":"2010-06-10T16:17:04","modified_gmt":"2010-06-10T20:17:04","slug":"listening-to-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/?p=9282","title":{"rendered":"Listening To..."},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><b>Bad Company - Bad Company<\/b>. No really. \"But, cleek,\" you protest, \"haven't you already heard all those songs a hundred thousand times on classic rock radio? Why pay to hear them again?\" Because, dear reader, I like them. I've always loved Paul Rogers' voice, and that unucluttered simple no-nonsense vibe of theirs. And, now that I can hear it when I want to hear it, instead of having to wait 20 minutes between plays on my local 70's rock station, I'm struck by the <i>sound<\/i> of the recording; it sounds like the record was recorded quickly, simply and without much in the way of post-production. It sounds like they're playing live in a small room, at a moderate volume, with the guitar turned a touch too low. That's awesome to me. Makes it seem much more like listening to a <i>recording of a band<\/i>, as opposed to a song-based rock-flavored music product (now with 10% live content!). And the difference between the intimate, unassuming sound of this and something like Boston's first record, where there are 15 guitar tracks and constant screaming, squealing, thundering, swooshing, etc.... whew. Night and day. Plus, every time \"Ready For Love\" comes on, I get to sing \"Weddy Puh Nuhhhb! <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=9wo1-sI7MOQ\">Oh baby<\/a>, I'm weddy puh nub.\"<br \/>\nFive raquos: &raquo;&raquo;&raquo;&raquo;&raquo;<\/p>\n<li><b>Broken Social Scene - Forgiveness Rock Record<\/b>. I like BSS, but I can barely tell one song from another. Aside from a few exceptions, their songs all kind of run together into a big pool of pure BSS. The songs on this album are distinguished somewhat by having been produced by John McEntire (drummer and producer for Sea And Cake, Tortoise, etc.) so there's a little of that tight, compressed, somewhat electronic vibe that his bands all share. But it's only a touch. This is still unmistakably a BSS record; most of the songs follow the BSS formula: big and dense and loud, where bits of slowly-moving melody (usually buried in noise) alternate with catchy melodies played loudly and clearly. They do it so well, though. It's hard for me to not like it.<br \/>\nFour raquos: &raquo;&raquo;&raquo;&raquo;<\/p>\n<li><b>Nirvana - Live At Reading<\/b>. Damn, this is a loud one. And frantic and sloppy and <i>grungy<\/i>! Makes me bummed I never bothered seeing them when they were around.<br \/>\nThree raquos: &raquo;&raquo;&raquo;<\/p>\n<li><b>Frightened Rabbit - Winter Of Mixed Drinks<\/b>. Scottish indie-rock! Reminds me a lot of another Scottish band, We Were Promised Jetpacks, and not just because of the singer's accent! But, I think I like this one better. It's got a lot of that swelling-swelling-swelling-to-a-grand-anthem thing that bands seem to love these days. Thankfully, it also has some nice melodies to support that swelling. It's a bit overproduced, IMO, though. There's a lot of unnecessary strings and dinky little sounds here and there, and the arrangements are definitely <i>stadium-ready<\/i>. I think I'd much prefer hearing the band just <i>play<\/i>, rather than hearing the market-tested handiwork of someone trying to hit all the summer-music festival checkboxes:\n<pre>\n[x] - First song starts slow and builds to thunderous climax\n[x] - Lots of wordless chants for the crowd to ohhh-ohhh-ohhh along to.\n[x] - Strategically-placed quiet-loud bits so we can show off the lighting rig.\n[x] - Banks of slow repetitive sections for maximum flag waving\n<\/pre>\n<p>Still, not bad.<br \/>\nA weak three raquos: &raquo;&raquo;&raquo;\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bad Company - Bad Company. No really. \"But, cleek,\" you protest, \"haven't you already heard all those songs a hundred thousand times on classic rock radio? Why pay to hear them again?\" Because, dear reader, I like them. I've always loved Paul Rogers' voice, and that unucluttered simple no-nonsense vibe of theirs. And, now that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-listening-to"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9282\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}