I am so hopelessly overwhelmed by depression today that I can only think/work in little dribs and drabs, so it seems as good a time as any to make a list I’ve been meaning to make for a while: the Don’t Forget list. We’re heading into that part of the year when best-of lists will be on my mind, and there are some records that I’m afraid I’m going to forget to include. Most of them will be in the “honorable mention” category rather than the actual top ten, but I still don’t want to forget them. So far, the list includes:
1. Bloc Party, “Silent Alarm.” Not exceptional, but good solid indie Britrock that is relatively free of pretention and bombast, unlike a lot of the indie stuff that seems to be so popular these days. (Can you say “Arcade Fire”? I knew you could.)
2. British Sea Power, “Open Season.” A likely low-top-tenner, so I probably won’t forget it; it just came out so early in the year that I’m afraid it will slip my mind. Ironically, BSP may be eclipsed by their cousins Brakes (Brakes’ lead guy used to be in BSP), whose record has much of the same oddball charm combined with echoes of Echo and the Bunnymen and their musical cousins…although I’m listening to “Open Season” right now and thinking that it’s really a great album that may deserve to rank higher than Brakes after all. Hm.
3. Chatham County Line, “Route 23.” (I need to quit thinking that this record is named “Dear 23,” which is an old Posies record. Chatham County Line do not sound like the Posies, to say the least.) I’m generally a little dubious about rock bands who decide to start playing sort-of-bluegrass; I’m not a bluegrass purist by any stretch of the imagination, I just usually find that rock bands can’t pull off the transformation very well. But Chatham County Line aren’t actually a bluegrass band, really, and they have no trouble throwing bluegrass elements into their sound, which I’d describe as Americana if I didn’t loathe that ill-defined, kiss-of-death term so much. They are not yet a great band, in my snooty opinion (IMSO?), but they’re getting there, and though I haven’t spent a whole ton of time listening to the whole record, I’m always glad when songs from it come up on the iPod. The singer’s voice isn’t necessarily the type that usually appeals to me, but as it turns out, I like it a lot. Good songwriting, too.
4. The Wrights, “Down This Road.” The Wrights should be getting played on country radio, and despite the fact that the husband half of the duo is Alan Jackson’s nephew, they’re not. I liked this record a lot when I first got it; haven’t beeen drawn to listen to it a whole lot since then, but it will be somewhere on my list.
There are more records to be added to this list, and there’s a corollary list, Records I Need to Spend More Time With, but this brief start will do for now. I’ll add more as they pop into my head.