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Post by ganews on Nov 1, 2021 7:29:00 GMT -5
The winner of the November coin flip is The Cardigans, "Gran Turismo". Post your thoughts here! I'm on the phone at the moment but will post a link for YouTube later, or someone else can.
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monodrone
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Post by monodrone on Nov 1, 2021 10:40:30 GMT -5
Hey, I'm someone else!
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Post by Djse (and a Sack of Cats) on Nov 3, 2021 18:15:18 GMT -5
Here's a Spotify link. I'm pretty sure I've never heard anything by this band other than "Lovefool". Scattered thoughts follow. "Paralyzed" is an interesting track. It reminded me a bit of Suzanne Vega's 99.9F era with more dramatic vocals. Solid album opener. Judging from the play count on Spotify I'm guessing "Erase / Rewind" was the single or showed up in some movie. (Google confirmed x2 - 2nd album single, was in Never Been Kissed and The Thirteenth Floor.) Catchy. "Explode" is annoying me because the chorus reminds me of another song but I can't place it immediately...maybe something that showed up when I worked at the pop radio station in the late '90s. Seems like a pretty generic filler song tbh. The hook on "Starter" reminds me of something that got used on a Ghostface Killah remix, but isn't. Interesting production. Next up is "Hanging Around" - this song seems to be screaming for 12" dance remixes. Not a fan of the super-over-processed guitar. This is also at least the 2nd song that just kind of stops abruptly, which works sometimes but not really here. "Higher" is the first track I didn't make it all the way through, skipping in favor of the decidedly more interesting "Marvel Hill". OK, I've heard this hook from "My Favourite Game" at some point. I had to Google it but confirmed it was in one of the Gran Turismo games (duh). Catchy as all get-out - sounds like one of those weird fake electro-saxophone things for the hook. Not a fan of the weird lo-fi synth hook in "Do You Believe". Or the next song. The weird little outro at the end of the album is...a weird little outro, perhaps also begging for 12" remixes. All in all, this is another one of those selections where I am clearly not in the target audience. Catchy at points, but for someone who wasn't already a fan this was a largely forgettable album. [ETA: playing this album in Spotify along with the recent Dinosaur Jr. live album has really messed with my daily mix suggestions.] |
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Rainbow Rosa
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Post by Rainbow Rosa on Nov 5, 2021 19:05:42 GMT -5
This record isn't quite doing it for me, and I'm saying this as someone who enjoys both what limited Cardigans materials I've heard before, and many albums aiming for this sort of trip-hop-pop hybrid sound. It doesn't take much interrogation to figure out why I didn't love the album, really - Nina Persson has a lovely voice, and the boys writing tunes for her are clearly talented fellas, but basically every single song here would be better if the arrangements were completely different.
And I mean completely different: my favorite track here is "Do You Believe," because it is almost literally a Deftones song. Listen to that outro, with Persson's high-pitched moaning over that whirling, distorted guitar "riff" (or a shitty approximation thereof) - pure White Pony shit. Or "My Favorite Game," where I want to strangle that stupid abortive "riff" and let that "Roxannesque" rock-tango vibe come out of hiding. Really, I just want some low-end on this album to contrast with the singing, or any sense of dynamics whatsoever! You can get away with flat if you've got a real powerhouse singer like Beth Gibbons who can resist that flattening, and for whom the self-abnegation is the point. But when you're a pleasant Swede you need something punchier. There's a reason "Lovefool" has endured - or, shit, look at ABBA. Could you imagine ABBA doing trip-hop? Sounds wretched.
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monodrone
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Post by monodrone on Nov 7, 2021 12:04:43 GMT -5
This record isn't quite doing it for me, and I'm saying this as someone who enjoys both what limited Cardigans materials I've heard before, and many albums aiming for this sort of trip-hop-pop hybrid sound. It doesn't take much interrogation to figure out why I didn't love the album, really - Nina Persson has a lovely voice, and the boys writing tunes for her are clearly talented fellas, but basically every single song here would be better if the arrangements were completely different. And I mean completely different: my favorite track here is "Do You Believe," because it is almost literally a Deftones song. Listen to that outro, with Persson's high-pitched moaning over that whirling, distorted guitar "riff" (or a shitty approximation thereof) - pure White Pony shit. Or "My Favorite Game," where I want to strangle that stupid abortive "riff" and let that "Roxannesque" rock-tango vibe come out of hiding. Really, I just want some low-end on this album to contrast with the singing, or any sense of dynamics whatsoever! You can get away with flat if you've got a real powerhouse singer like Beth Gibbons who can resist that flattening, and for whom the self-abnegation is the point. But when you're a pleasant Swede you need something punchier. There's a reason "Lovefool" has endured - or, shit, look at ABBA. Could you imagine ABBA doing trip-hop? Sounds wretched. I'm going to share my thoughts on the album another time but first... You're not alone in thinking that Do You Believe would make a great Deftones song. They thought so too and stuck it on the end of Diamond Eyes as a bonus track. It's better this way. |
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Rainbow Rosa
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Post by Rainbow Rosa on Nov 7, 2021 12:37:04 GMT -5
This record isn't quite doing it for me, and I'm saying this as someone who enjoys both what limited Cardigans materials I've heard before, and many albums aiming for this sort of trip-hop-pop hybrid sound. It doesn't take much interrogation to figure out why I didn't love the album, really - Nina Persson has a lovely voice, and the boys writing tunes for her are clearly talented fellas, but basically every single song here would be better if the arrangements were completely different. And I mean completely different: my favorite track here is "Do You Believe," because it is almost literally a Deftones song. Listen to that outro, with Persson's high-pitched moaning over that whirling, distorted guitar "riff" (or a shitty approximation thereof) - pure White Pony shit. Or "My Favorite Game," where I want to strangle that stupid abortive "riff" and let that "Roxannesque" rock-tango vibe come out of hiding. Really, I just want some low-end on this album to contrast with the singing, or any sense of dynamics whatsoever! You can get away with flat if you've got a real powerhouse singer like Beth Gibbons who can resist that flattening, and for whom the self-abnegation is the point. But when you're a pleasant Swede you need something punchier. There's a reason "Lovefool" has endured - or, shit, look at ABBA. Could you imagine ABBA doing trip-hop? Sounds wretched. I'm going to share my thoughts on the album another time but first... You're not alone in thinking that Do You Believe would make a great Deftones song. They thought so too and stuck it on the end of Diamond Eyes as a bonus track. It's better this way. !!!!! No fucking way!
It's a full circle moment for the Cardigans too, since they apparently started off as a metal band (!) and their earlier records ended with Sabbath covers. |
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Post by Prole Hole on Nov 7, 2021 12:52:25 GMT -5
I believe I mentioned on the voting page just how much I love "My Favourite Game", which is absolutely true, but I always forget how great "Erase/Rewind" is unless I'm actually listening to it. What a completely brilliant song.
Anyway, I kind of agree that there's something about this album that doesn't quite click. The singles are great, there's clearly some thought been put into it, but it just never quite manages to hang together in a way I find entirely convincing. That might just mean they're a great singles band - and there's absolutely no shame in that - but it doesn't really do this album much good. They remind me in a way of another brief 90's mainstay, the Welsh band Catatonia, who managed a handful of fucking great singles but never quite managed to get that to carry over into being good albums or much in the way of longevity.
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Post by pantsgoblin on Nov 8, 2021 12:19:19 GMT -5
The previous commenters have more eloquently made the points I would have. There are many very good 1998 electronic-tinged, female-fronted rock records that aren't this, ones that aren't so beholden to their vocalist and also being kind of dull.
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patbat
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Post by patbat on Nov 8, 2021 14:07:34 GMT -5
I love this band and this album, but as per usual everyone else has said everything else I could say more insightfully than I would have.
I do think it's interesting how far they retreated from the electro-influenced sound of Gran Turismo on their followup album, though:
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Post by ganews on Nov 11, 2021 16:36:02 GMT -5
Well, this record - which I nominated based on a clever band name and 20-year-old memories of the riff from the single - certainly has received a much more thorough analysis here than I expected, so kudos to all of you playing along.
My own notes are less thorough than yours. Most of the record is just okay, nothing to write home about. "Hanging Around" is the best until you get to "My Favourite Game" which I still love every bit of. It wasn't until that point that drum n' riff that I really woke up and started enjoying things, and by that time the album is almost done. Maybe I'm just a sucker for loud-quiet-loud. There certainly are a lot of late-90s production bits to place it.
It wasn't bad, it's just that I guess next time I'll nominate Garbage, from whom I've also never heard an album but who had a lot more singles.
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Post by ganews on Nov 11, 2021 16:37:53 GMT -5
This record isn't quite doing it for me, and I'm saying this as someone who enjoys both what limited Cardigans materials I've heard before, and many albums aiming for this sort of trip-hop-pop hybrid sound. It doesn't take much interrogation to figure out why I didn't love the album, really - Nina Persson has a lovely voice, and the boys writing tunes for her are clearly talented fellas, but basically every single song here would be better if the arrangements were completely different. And I mean completely different: my favorite track here is "Do You Believe," because it is almost literally a Deftones song. Listen to that outro, with Persson's high-pitched moaning over that whirling, distorted guitar "riff" (or a shitty approximation thereof) - pure White Pony shit. Or "My Favorite Game," where I want to strangle that stupid abortive "riff" and let that "Roxannesque" rock-tango vibe come out of hiding. Really, I just want some low-end on this album to contrast with the singing, or any sense of dynamics whatsoever! You can get away with flat if you've got a real powerhouse singer like Beth Gibbons who can resist that flattening, and for whom the self-abnegation is the point. But when you're a pleasant Swede you need something punchier. There's a reason "Lovefool" has endured - or, shit, look at ABBA. Could you imagine ABBA doing trip-hop? Sounds wretched. I'm going to share my thoughts on the album another time but first... You're not alone in thinking that Do You Believe would make a great Deftones song. They thought so too and stuck it on the end of Diamond Eyes as a bonus track. It's better this way. Dang once again monodrone comes through it. |
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