The Listening Project - Antics - Interpol

Part 11 - Antics - Interpol (2004, Matador)

This album acts like a window into a different time for me.  Listening to it, inevitably, invariably, calls to mind the gym at EMU.  I can smell the equipment and sweat, I can feel the pull at arms and legs from working out (that's pure memory I assure you, Hypatia's Girl might be angry, but she's also hella outta shape).  That this music is so evocative of that particular place, that particular time is especially weird, because I could only have heard it on the radio or on those godforsaken MTVU channels at the gym. (Part of the memory is that creepy marionette music video).  Maybe I heard it once or twice while actually at the gym, however it is now inextricable from my memory of the gym.  Memory is endlessly weird.

It's kind of weird to listen to an album with such a particular memory, right now, because I'm currently working on some thoughts regarding cycles and spirals of time.  (I was also listening to Antics while driving up to EMU again . . .)

Given that the memory that this album recalls a relatively good memory, it's difficult for me not to like it.  Yes, each song sounds pretty much like every other song.  But that one song isn't half-bad.  (Although how quickly "Slow Hands" gets stuck in my head might be a mark against the whole album)

It's nice to know that I have music that holds memories that would otherwise be utterly unremarkable.

Favorite Track -"Length of Love" Just totally great.
Least Favorite - "Next Evil" didn't grab my attention at all.

next up - Apologies to the Queen Mary - Wolf Parade (2005)

Video killed the Prop 8 arguments

Apparently we won't know if that's true.

I'm really confused about the rhetoric here.  For some background - California had gay marriage for about 30 seconds, during which the Apocalypse happened, dogs and cats lived together, fire and brimstone rained from the skies and children grew up without having repressive gender identities drilled into them from birth.

The Listening Project - And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out - Yo La Tengo

Part 10 - And then nothing turned itself inside-out Yo La Tengo (2000, Matador)

(I know, I know, you're all like, zomg, Hypatia's Girl still has a blog? Weird, totally forgot about that.  Well I was busy, had to go be a mistress of philosophy and drive across PA.  You know, the state that gets in your way when you're trying to get someplace else?)
I'd anticipated not liking this album at all, and so was pleasantly surprised to find that the instinctive dislike for the album was a product in inherited distaste rather than any knowledgeable sort of disagreement.

It's not my favorite by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not a bad little album.  Owing to my suckiness at keeping up this blog I probably have listened to this album 3 times over the course of a couple of months, it goes better with sunshiny days when one is driving to a potentially awkward lunch than it does with the blah, gray barrenness of driving up US23 to restart a part of your life from a different perspective.

The beginning of the album didn't really catch me, a little too quiet and the vocals seemed a little superfluous.  However it really picks up in the middle rocking out some really great tracks (at least ones that fit my driving-up-US23 mood a little better) like "The Last Days of Disco" and the cover "You Can Have It All."  (I'd watch the video, it's kind of amazing) Of course, "rocking out" might be a sort of strong label for this.

Over all, a nice, mellow album, not necessarily something you play to listen attentively to all the way through, but a nice thing to have and pick up threads over the course of an hour or so.

Favorite Track - "The Last Days of Disco."  Just fun.
Least Favorite - "Everyday." It's the opening track and it just did nothing for me.

next up - Antics - Interpol (2004)