Two way Monologues

Strangely's Bazaar 11 (Ronan)

Strangely’s Bazaar: 11 November 2005-11-11

Strangely’s Bazaar is back and now will be a weekly event – hopefully on a Thursday, but Friday if my usual laziness sets in. As you should know Strangely’s could be anything and usually varies a lot from week to week. However, for the next few weeks (from now until Christmas) I will be recollecting and reminiscing on the past year, and highlight what 2005 will be remembered for in music terms. In 2055 hopefully somebody will look back on that outdated piece of junk, the internet, and come across this article and remember what music used to be like once upon a time. To keep you interested I’m not going to tell you what the rest of the articles deal with, so you’ll have to come back and check every week. Mwahaha!

2005: The Year of…
Part I: The Returning Legend

2005 will be remembered for many things, but one of the main ones is the return of the legend. This year has seen the release of albums by many veteran artists, some of which were a return to form. Probably the most obvious one is Kate Bush. Her Aerial album is her first release in over a decade, and is proof that the old minx never lost it. The album took the last six years to make, and was well worth the wait. It’s full of the usual Bushisms (a term which has come to refer to a different, odder Bush in the time since Kate’s last album). As expected, the album is full of haunting melodies and watery images. She sure does love her water. And it’s great to hear that wonderful one-of-a-kind voice back on the radio. But the best thing about Kate Bush’s return is the B-Side to her ‘King of the Mountain’ single – a cover of ‘Sexual Healing’. The way Bush says it makes it a whole new song.

Another artist who has just released an excellent comeback album is Neil Diamond. Avid readers of the site, and my comments, will know that this was one of my most anticipated albums of the year, and rightly so. Of all the albums Rick Rubin has produced this year, Diamond’s 12 Songs is definitely the best. On the other hand, Weezer’s Make Believe is definitely the worst. Like the albums he produced for the late, great Johnny Cash, Rubin has given Diamond that stripped-down raw sound, and it works perfectly with Diamond’s excellent, and now more mature, voice.

Yet another highly anticipated album was Paul McCartney’s Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, which for many lived up to the hype. It was never going to match the quality of a Beatles’ album, but what albums do these days?? The album is up there with the best solo Beatle’s album in many a year. Well so some people would have you believe anyway. I, me, myself, personally thought the album was disappointing, it’s not a bad album, it’s just that Sir Paul (as he likes to be known these days) is capable of so much better. There’s not one supreme stand out track on the album, that makes you jump and shout (“like a goal jus scored” – a Basement Jaxx reference for those who don’t know).

A true return to form came in the guise of the Rolling Stones’ A Bigger Bang. Many people saw the band as washed-up has-beens who could only make money from extensive touring of the best of their back catalogue. But with their latest LP, everyone’s favourite sexagenarians (that’s people in their sixties for those of you who don’t read the dictionary before going to bed every night. And why don’t you? I always do, that and the Phone Directory are my bed time reading.) The album mixed the Stones of old with the much older, more knowledgeable Stones – I won’t say more mature Stones, because no matter what age there are Jagger and Richards will never be mature! And don’t worry, some of the songs do contain sex references, they haven’t grown out of it yet.

2005 also finally marked the release of Fiona Apple’s Extraordinary Machine. It took long enough anyway. No all we need is for record companies to release other shelved albums. And all it took was a few hundred thousand million billion people (alright a few hundred) to send apples to Sony. The “Free Fiona” campaign was probably one of the funniest and most memorable events in music this year. The campaign put a lot of pressure on Sony, and the album was finally released in September. The original version was produced by the absolute genius that is Jon Brion (he also co-produced Kanye’s disc this year), and featuring drumming from the new ‘drummer that guests with everyone’ (I need a snappier title for that), no not Dave Grohl, he’s the old ‘drummer that guests with everyone’, the man with the best name in hip-hop, ?uestlove. The new version was produced by some dude I never heard of before. It’s still good though. But I prefer the bootleg, so download that instead.

posted by Daysthatareover @ 6:44 PM