pier_paolo_farina

Hello to you and thank you Roberto. Also listen to "The Scattering." His masterpieces are "Reach For The Sky" and "Brag" (the latter just piano and voice, with a suicidal melancholy).

I find this album delightful, a true consolation to the almost nothing that contemporary popular music offers to enthusiasts. I haven't liked a Mitchell album this much since Dog Eat Dog. She continues to be from another planet, and her sixty-year-old voice, after millions of cigarettes and all the beautiful and ugly experiences of nearly a lifetime, has become more sparse and breathy, yet extremely sexy. She no longer ranges up and down for three and a half octaves, sounding like a bell as she did when she was young; she stands there, with an astonishing class, a bit aloof but, in her own way, passionate and moving, describing free and personal melodies, opening both her heart and ours. The best, once again.

I appreciate the TFF like you do, but I have different ideas about this work. Your (well-shared, as I read) disappointment makes you exaggerate a bit: at forty (the same age as Smith and Orzabal in this decade), Lennon had died shortly after releasing another modest album, and McCartney was continuing as always with rather mundane material, completely inferior to "Everybody...". The only fault of this work, in my opinion, is that it slavishly retraces, fifteen years later, the opulence and pandering of their greatest success "The Seeds Of Love," only with less electronics and more real instruments, given the times.
There remains an extraordinary songwriting ability, with two or three precious melodies, the excellent arrangements (pop, of course), and the magnificent, sonorous voice of Orzabal: that's not insignificant. Naturally, "Raoul...", "Lunatic," and "Big Chair" are unreachable.
In short, there's nothing new or surprising in this album, but it has good quality, beautiful songs (not all, about half...), great craftsmanship, attention, meticulousness. Try (try) to listen to it better, to place it in its "adult" context.

Songwriting and class, you’re right. My second favorites in the field (eighties + pop + talent). First, Tears For Fears. Not all of their albums are successful, so it’s better to listen to them before buying, in my opinion. Must-have IMHO with your eyes closed: Steve McQueen, Jordan The Comeback, The Gunman & Other Stories. Paddy has an unfriendly face but sings wonderfully and composes excellently. Thanks for the recommendation.

My favorite, on the other hand, is Deguello: great tracks, new sounds, a big effort to personalize itself, and also to win people over a bit.

@Supersoul: my favorite of the Beggars is actually the second one, Waters Of Change. The first one is very tender... it’s the one you want to listen to again the most for its bohemian aura, of complete artistic freedom without commercial intentions... but in it, there are long stretches of non-original music, as well as rough and forced vocal parts. And the sonic evolution in Waters Of Change is so evident, and welcoming, with its warm and soft sounds, also Nordic and evocative.

I apologize Polkatulk, It Ain't Easy is actually by the country singer-songwriter Ron Davies, not the Kinks. Hi Don.

Psycopomps: the meowing you hear throughout the record is Nick Turner's heavily processed saxophone with a wah-wah pedal, one of the essential "spatial" elements of this group of cosmic stoners. Another contraption with the same goals of "cosmic dispersion" was Dik Mik's infernal Audio Generator (which in the band "played" nothing else; it was there for that). It was a little box with two knobs, one to continuously vary the pitch of the sound, the other to adjust its repetition frequency. Lemmy writes in his autobiography that at every concert there was someone particularly sensitive to the subsonic frequencies of the generator blasted at a volume that could blow out the woofers, who would shit themselves, and on the opposite end there was someone else who, unable to stand the ultrasound created when Dik Mik turned the knob completely the other way, would start throwing up.

Records like this mom doesn't make anymore.