Rainy Day Music, The Jayhawks

Rainy Day Music, The Jayhawks, 2003, :50

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

This is the most boring alt-country album I have ever heard.  I nearly fell asleep listening to this in the car.  I like muscular music.  This music is a brain and nervous system lying on a cold dissecting table.  I nearly spasmed my own muscles cringing from the nerveless, watery songs "Will I See You In Heaven" and "You Look So Young."  Favorite tracks: I guess "Save It For a Rainy Day," and "Fools On Parade," which was not included on the original album (doubtless because they never got around to taking out all the catchiness and power from the song) but is on Spotify as a bonus track.

When I Pretend To Fall, Long Winters

When I Pretend To Fall, Long Winters, 2003, :48

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

This is a regular indie album, played by a bunch of guys who play indie music.  A couple of the songs seem to be about a woman who left him a year ago and is now getting married, maybe?  I didn't find it engaging or interesting.  The lyrics are delivered with self-importance but are rather juvenile, and heavy on the choruses.  The most popular song on the album, "Cinnamon," is nice but marred by that reliance on the "chorus ad nauseam" approach.  Favorite tracks: "Scared Straight," "Blue Diamonds."

Nocturama, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

Currently doing one album for each year, 1960-2020. Today: 2003. 

Nocturama, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, 2003, :56

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

So this is the "bad" Nick Cave album, the one excoriated as a bomb, with critics carping that Nick Cave is at this point in time a contented middle-aged father of three with nothing to bemoan or be gothic about, and the Bad Seeds sounding more like the Wallflowers than the unpredictable band they are.  Now I went into this album not knowing any of that.  I wasn't prepared for the worst, best, or anything in between.  So to me it sounds like... a Nick Cave album.  It's true that the lyrical content leans a lot more toward the love song than the murder ballad, but so what?  Rather than assuming Cave had lost his "edge," I just assume he's being moved by a new muse.  Griping that Nick Cave isn't being as spooooky as you want is like complaining that bands that get discovered by more than five people are "selling out."  It's just such a childish kneejerk reaction.  Favorite tracks: "Still In Love," "There Is a Town," the fourteen-minute rager "Babe, I'm On Fire."

These Are the Vistas, The Bad Plus

It’s Jazzurday! Wherein I listen to a jazz album, like a grown-up.

These Are the Vistas, The Bad Plus, 2003, :52

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Drums, bass, piano. That's all this jazz trio needs to make a lot of noise. They describe themselves as democratic, but to me the piano seems the driving force, the skeleton of the sound, and the drum the muscle. A hip modern jazz band that blends rock and theater into free-form, very tight-knit jazz. On this album, they do shambling reconstructions of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and "Heart of Glass" (piano keeping it grounded, the rhythm going wild).  Favorite tracks: "Smells Like Teen Sprit," "Flim" (an Aphex Twin song, apparently).