classick albums: Odessey & Oracle

"A sweet vibration seemed to fill the air"Recorded at Abbey Road in the Summer of '67, Odessey & Oracle was produced during the height of the psychedelic movement in London, and The Zombies were smack dab in the middle of it. As you can probably tell the album cover (above), The Zombies were riding a wave of psychotropics, which when filtered through their novice Brit Invasion crops, conjured a hazy dream world, thick with cloud 9 eccentricities and the stoney sheen of a magically sunny day in the Summer of '67.

Odessey & Oracle opens with the skeletal "A Rose for Emily", which moves from a minimalist piano composition into a soaring breeze of harmonic wonder and back down, before drifting softly into "Maybe After He's Gone," a bass heavy British Invasion jam with thumping jazz drums and carefully constructed "la-la" harmonies wrapped underneath Colin Blunstone's breathy vocals. In a bizarre bit of ancestry, the off kilter clicks of a typewriter during the breakdown in "Maybe After He's Gone" play like an unlikely great-grandfather to the rhythmless glitch tech of IDM.

A bit stoney from the beginning, a feeling of chemical imbalance comes alive on "Hung Up On A Dream",where orchestral sweeps envelope the dreamy song, whose ambiguous lyrics straddle the line between a child's mystical dream and a young man's transcendental trip.

A sweet confusion filled my mind/ Until I woke up only finding everything was just a dream/ A dream unusual of its kind/ That gave me peace and blew my mind/ And now I'm hung up on a dream

The glow only grows from there with "Changes", a loopy flute laden cut with 4 part harmonies swelling in unison over simple hand percussion and extremely minimal piano parts. Like the Beach Boys, The Zombies used harmonies as vehicle for psychedelic experimentation, using layer upon layer of effected vocal to form an ethereal feeling of drifting through space and time, as if everything were a dream.

On the other side of the psyche coin is the rumbling, squeezebox fueled "Butcher's Tale (Western Front 1914)", which would sound fitting on the Incredible String Band's The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter. Propelled by a fully overdriven organ and lyrics like "My hands won't stop shaking/ My arms won't stop shaking/ My mind won't stop shaking/I want to go home", "Butcher's Tale" is the quintessential bad trip song, in a totally good way. I don't think I have to mention how lovely uber classics like "Time of the Season", "This Will Be Our Year" and "I Want Her (She Wants Me)" are. Y'all already know that.

Unfortunately, by the time the album was released, The Zombies had disbanded. Odessey & Oracle was their last work, their definitive artistic statement, an undeniable masterpiece. While Brian Wilson and Pet Sounds continue to get all the critical nods for influencing the psyche popsters of the moment (Panda Bear, Miracle Fortress, Of Montreal, etc), The Zombies have clearly left a similar influence on Generation X/Y, especially on Panda Bear, who thanks them in the liner notes of Person Pitch (His loopy harmonies are much more comparable to the songs on Odessey & Oracle than the highly orchestrated choral arrangements of Pet Sounds & Holland). Now only if someone from Continuum would do 33 1/3 book on The Zombies master work.

The Zombies- A Rose for Emily
The Zombies- Changes
The Zombies- Hung Up on a Dream

classick albums: Ladies & Gentleman We Are Floating In Space

"Sometimes Have My Breakfast Right Off of A Mirror"

When Spiritualized released Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space in 1997 it came packaged like prescription medication. This came as no surprise to long time fans of J. Spaceman (aka Jason Pierce) who founded Spiritualized after his group the Spacemen 3 disbanded. Founded on the idea that they would "take drugs to make music to take drugs to," Spiritualized mesmerized audiences with a reverberated blend of hypno-psych music that still feels druggier than any existing chemical cocktail.

It has been widely rumored that J. Spaceman wrote the record after the disillusionment of his relationship with girlfriend, and Spiritualized bass player, Kate Radley, who had secretly married Richard Ashcroft of the Verve. While Spaceman has denied this, it's hard to believe as much of the album is steeped in disenchanted heart break and self destruction. The liner notes read like medication, covering active ingredients, recommended dose, possible side effects and answers to questions like "What should I do if symptoms persist? (ans: try alternative medicines 'Laze Guided Melodies' and 'Pure Phase' available without a prescription)" and "What is Spiritualized used for? (ans: Spiritualized is used to treat the heart and soul.)"

Musically Ladies and Gentleman... is 70 minutes of reverberated guitar drones, massive horn swells, epic orchestrations and ethereal madness. An ominous voice welcomes you, announcing that, yes, "Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space," as if you had just woke up on a psychedelic voyage to the Moon. The next part of your journey arrives in the form of Spaceman's aching vocal, "All I Want In Life Is A Little Bit of Love to Take the Pain Away/ Getting Strong Today/ I Try and Step Each Day" before backing vocals whisper lines from the Elvis' "Only Fools Rush In" ("Wise men say/ Only fools rush in/ Only fools rush in/ But I, I cant help/ I cant help falling/ Falling in love with you").

The strung out orchestrations of "Broken Heart" feels like what I imagine it must be like to float in the celestial darkness, while the 8 minute "I Think I'm In Love" blends harmonica shivers with trembling bass and the druggiest lyrics this side of Surrealistic Pillow ("Cool cos I'm wired and I'm out of my mind/Warms the dope running down my spine... Free as the warmth in the air that I breathe/ Even freer than dmt... Love in the middle of the afternoon/ Just me, my spike in my arm and my spoon").

Side effects of Ladies and Gentlemen We are Floating in Space include, but are not limited to "delirium, a sense of intoxication, visual and auditory hallucinations, euphoria, fever, cold sweats, slurred speach, numbness of the extremities, lack of coordination, stupor, memory loss, bloodshot eyes, mental detachment, paranoid psychosis, temporary paralysis, jerky eye movement, imbalance, sense of well being, purposeless movement, lethargy, dizziness, visual disturbances, palpitations, disorientation, confusion, personality change, arrhythmia and changes in sexual desire," all of which can be experienced in the albums 17 minute opus "Cop Shoot Cop."

While there is an overwhelming amount of paraphernalia makes it's way into Ladies and Gentleman... it's most striking feature is its universal sense of heart broken self-destruction, of which J. Spaceman is seasoned veteran. Luckily for his own heart he got help, chronicled on Let it Come Down and Amazing Grace.

Spiritualized- Ladies and Gentlemen we Are Floating In Outer Space
Spiritualized- All of My Thoughts
Spiritualized- Home of the Brave

"Broken Heart" Live on the Jools Holland Show

classick albums: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

"Soft Silly Music is Meaningful, Magical"

Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane over the Sea is the epitome of a grower record. Overtime, In the Aeroplane over the Sea grows from a sordid collection of darted highlights into a symphonic collage of distorted, neo-psychadelic folk gems. I've heard alot of people say that In the Aeroplane Over the Sea just doesn't "do it" for them. They like "King of Carrot Flowers Pt. 1" and can sing every beautifully aching word of "Two Headed Boy" but complain that the record is neither consistent nor "genius" enough to live up to the nostalgic hype it's garnered in the 9 years since its original release. I will contend this opinion for as long as I live.

While seemingly difficult at first, In the Aeroplane... becomes increasingly more personable with repeated listens. This familiarity helps make the fuzziest tape loops and brashest drum fills seem like dancing Care Bear accents designed to transform plaintive folk songs into heart-breakingly optimistic, orchestral collages. Jeff Magnum, who started recording under the name Neutral Milk Hotel as a teenager, conceptually based In the Aeroplane... on a series of recurring dreams he had about a Jewish family living in the midst of World War II, using The Diary of Ann Frank as allegory for the innate beauty ingrained in both life and death. The title track features a simple acoustic guitar rhythm behind wallowing funeral horns, an operatic singing saw and Magnum's fragile voice belting a lyrically surrealistic vision of a utopian life & death ("And one day we will die/ and our ashes will fly/ from the Aeroplane over the sea/ But for now we are young/ let us lay in the sun/ and count every beautiful thing that we see"). If that doesn't hit ya in the heart, than you'd probably be better off buying a condo in Boca and taking up Mahjong.

One of the most mesmerizing and, ultimately, signature aspects of the Neutral Milk Hotel sound was their remarkable use of instrumentation, both unique and plentiful. In the Aeroplane... contains each of the following instruments: guitar, vocals, organ, floortom, bowed fuzz bass, tapes, shortwave radio, drums, trombone, flugelhorn, trumpet, euphonium, Wandering Genie, singing saw, banjo, accordion, white noise, home organ, air organ, fuzz bass, one-note piano, zanzithiphone, saxophone and Ulleann Pipes.

Ulleann Pipes? Zanzithiphone?! Wandering Genie??!!

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is a complex concerto of literary bedroom pop, which ultimately leaves the listener thinking one thing: Are life and death equally beautiful in their own right? Is it life, or the release from the cycle that we are searching for? A white kid from Ruston, Louisiana's impressions on the Hindu concept of Samsara? Possibly. No doubt Jeff poses these questions throughout the record, on "Oh, Comely" and "Ghost" and especially the closer, "Two Headed Boy Pt. 2", where Magnum sings "And when we break we will wait for our miracle/ God is a place where some holy spectacle lies/And when we break we will wait for our miracle/God is a place you will wait for the rest of your life". Whoa. Well, who knows if he's right, but I'll listen to Mr. Magnum ruminate on the subject, over blarring flugelhorns and hypnotizing singing saws, any day.

If you'd like to delve into the immense history surrounding this seminal recording, pick up a copy of Kim Cooper's phenomenal book, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, part of Continuum's re-dick-u-los "33 1/3" series. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED for long-time fans and newbs, it contains first hand interviews with members of NMH, Robert Schneider (of Apples in Stereo, producer of Aeroplane) and many others who were hanging around the band during those enlightened, often unsettling months in '96/'97. One classick story recounts a day Jeff and Jeremy spent in San Francisco at a vintage penny arcade warehouse/graveyard and saw a girl who looked identical to Ann Frank. Creepy. The book is also completist's look inside the Ruston-Athens-Denver posse that formed the Elephant 6 Collective and proceeded to make mid-ninties indie rock all the more wunderstruck. I could've spent the rest of the summer writing this post and delving into the history of the Elephant 6 crew, but instead I'll leave you with a few of my favorite tracks and some quality links for more information.

Neutral Milk Hotel- In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
Neutral Milk Hotel- Holland, 1945


**Links**
Neutral Milk Hotel Official Site
Elephant 6 Collective
MERGE Records NMH Site, Purchase all things NMH
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea Wiki
Neutral Milk Hotel Fan Site
Pitchfork Review of In the Aeroplane... 10.0

Classick Albums: The Coast Is Never Clear

"What will you do when your suntan is faded and the summers gone?"

Released in 2001, Beulah's's The Coast is Never Clear is a testament to sunny, beach friendly indie pop. Miles Kurosky and Co. created an album that explored an interesting, Brian Wilson-esque juxtaposition: warm, friendly harmonies and bright, sunny arrangements fused with meloncholy lyrics and hushed nostalgia for golden summer sunsets and sheets covered in sand. Lyrically the record documents the lonely, yet surprisingly hopeful, period Miles went through after a breaking up with a girlfriend.

But Beulah's references are much more than Surfer Girl refrains and Wilson family la-la's: in "Popular Mechanics for Lovers," Kurosky sings "I heard he wrote you a song/but so what/ some guy wrote 69/ and one just ain't enough," a shout out to Stephen Merritt of the Magnetic Fields who released their album 69 Love Songs, (containing 69 love songs of course) a few years earlier. Likewise, "A Good Man is Easy To Kill" is a variation on Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find". Musically The Coast is Never Clear sounds, smells and feels like a California sunset; "Woodie" station wagon, six pack of PBR, sunscreen, wet trunks, silhouettes on the shore, all through Blue Blockers' tangerine hue. A perfect record for early mornings when you can't sleep, mellow afternoons by the pool and other lackadaisical summer activities. Download a few tracks below and peep the video for "Gene Autry"


Beulah- What Will You Do When Your Suntan Fades?
Beulah- Popular Mechanics for Lovers

"When I Get to California I'm Gonna Write My Name in the Sand"

Classick Albums: Far Away Trains Passing By

"Ambient Shoegaze Electronica"

Berlin-based producer Ulrich Schnauss burst onto the electronic music scene in 2001 with the release of his dreamy debut album "Far Away Trains Passing By." Featuring focused yet glitchy beats interwoven with warm, lush tones, Schnauss' music on this disc walks the line between chilly isolation and jubilant triumph, a result of his seemingly effortless use of melody and production techniques. This album features a plethora of sweeping major chord progressions, but Schnauss somehow manages to make them sound unpretentious and peaceful when taken in the grander context of the entire song. This is refreshingly ambient electronic music infused with memorable melodies and catchy beats, and is best suited for a quiet evening with a pair of headphones or a late night drive on an empty highway. Check out the opening track below.

Also, be sure to look for Schnauss' third album "Goodbye" to be released on Domino Records July 10.

Ulrich Schnauss - Knuddelmaus