the_record_on_my_turntable raze the aladdin sessions (lester young) from leonard feather's liner_notes: "'prez got that tone, so different from coleman hawkins', because that's the way he wanted everything in life,' a former lester young sideman told me many years ago. 'i got him a pair of shoes once, and one day i came in and found them in the wash basket. then i realized they were hard-soled shoes, and he would always wear moccasins or slippers. it had to be soft and gentle or prez wanted no part of it.'" 241125 ... raze music from big pink (the band) the band lost a good chunk of their soul when richard manuel's songwriting voice slipped away. that voice was never stronger than it is right here. "in a station" and "lonesome suzie" are almost too beautiful for words. and i always have to stop myself from moving the needle back to the beginning of "tears of rage" so i can hear it again. few album openers hit so hard. 241129 ... raze don juan's reckless daughter (joni mitchell) the critics have always said this one of joni's worst albums. the critics are fucking morons. 241204 ... raze swordfishtrombones (tom_waits) this wasn't my first tom_waits album. that was "heart_attack and vine". but i think it was my second or third. i grew up in the eighties, so i have a higher tolerance than most for the period's sometimes unwise production touches. still, one of the wonderful things about albums like this and "rain dogs" is that they sound like they were recorded yesterday. while other producers were busy sticking a million microphones in front of a drum kit until it sounded like nothing and turning the reverb up to eleven, mr. waits here was dragging a metal chair across the studio floor, barking into a megaphone, and bashing a dresser drawer with a two-by-four. human noises don't date. as time goes by, they just put on weight. 241208 ... raze show some emotion (joan armatrading) i don't really know what to say about this one other than, "holy shit, this is some good stuff." killer bookends, too. 241217 ... raze tramp (sharon_van_etten) not my favourite thing sharon's done. that's always going to be "epic". but i like this a lot more now than i did when it was new to me. she's got a way of weaving vocal melodies that stop me in my tracks. it needs to be said: this is not a great-sounding record. i don't think it's a bad pressing. i think whoever cut the lathe was working with the digital master used to make the cd, which is never a good idea. what was already compressed to death as a spinning piece of plastic sounds almost absurdly congested in this format. the music is good enough to survive that indignity. but it sure would have been nice if they'd left some dynamics intact. 241221 ... raze the walking (jane_siberry) there's never been anyone else like jane_siberry. she builds songscapes that are at once cinematic in scope and as emotionally unguarded as one hand holding another. for my money, this is her finest hour, though "bound by the beauty" gives it some stiff competition, and there are great chunks of "when_i_was_a_boy" and "maria" i wouldn't want to be without. 241229 ... raze elite hotel (emmylou harris) i swear i could listen to emmylou sing junk_mail and it wouldn't be wasted_time. 250102 ... raze smile (laura nyro) this isn't quite as idiosyncratic as the likes of "new_york tendaberry" and "christmas and the beads of sweat", but i don't think laura was capable of making music that wasn't gorgeous and arresting. 250106 ... raze a wizard, a true star (todd rundgren) twenty-three years ago, gord called to tell me he found this album in josh's record collection and gave it a spin, not knowing anything about it. "are you sure you didn't record this and just not tell anybody?" he said. "because it sounds just like you." it was one of the best compliments eighteen-year-old me ever got. 250110 ... raze pirates (rickie lee jones) if laura nyro has a soul sister, it's gotta be rickie lee. in a contemporaneous review for rolling stone, stephen holden called this album "a cloudburst in the desert of eighties formula pop music and recycled heavy-metal rock" and noted "the bravura way it weaves autobiography and personal myth into a flexible musical setting that conjures a lifetime's worth of character and incident". sometimes the critics *do* get it right. and "skeletons" will never not wreck me. 250124 ... raze mark hollis (mark_hollis) half a lifetime ago, i packed some pot in a tobacco pipe, smoked until the night felt a little more forgiving, and listened to mark hollis' only solo record while a storm raged outside. in the middle of what passed for a turbulent passage in "watershed", the wind whipped the thin arm of a tree against my bedroom window. in shadow, it looked like the evergreen was flailing at the glass, trying to get inside. something about that felt almost too perfect to be real. i wrote in a book i filled for someone who would never read the words i wanted them to have: "this is music that knows the world." few artists have wielded silence with more power or consideration than mark did, treating it as an instrument in its own right. all the hushed beauty makes those moments when things get loud that much more striking and meaningful. 250128 ... raze beauty and the beat (the go-go's) the sort of thing that gives pop-punk a good name. as great as the hits are, it's the deep_cuts i dig the most. belinda carlisle might have been the face of the go-go's, but jane wiedlin was the band's hook-laden heart. 250204 ... raze indelibly_stamped (supertramp) i think roger hodgson is one of the great unsung guitarists in popular music. he always serves the song, never sacrificing melody or soul for meaningless fretboard fireworks. the solo he chips in at the end of "crime of the century" is a good example. it's nothing flashy. just a few notes. but their emotional impact is immense. this is pre-"crime", pre-fame 'tramp. i've always liked the cut of its jib. (homer says, "what's a jib?") 250205 ... raze moon_pix (cat_power) the cat_power album i love most. always has been. always will be. even if the supposed audiophile pressing makes "he turns down" sound like it's being sung through a fan. 250209 ... raze either_or (elliott_smith) my favourite elliott smith album changes all the time. some days it's "xo". some days it's "from_a_basement_on_the_hill". some days it's the self-titled one. today it's this. 250213 ... raze 50_words_for_snow (kate_bush) i've loved kate for almost as long as i've been alive. i have every album she's made, in more than one format. "50_words_for_snow" is one i've somehow never spent much time with, though i bought it the day it was released. it's winter_music par excellence, and so much more. "snowflake" is just ... beautiful beyond words. knowing it's her son singing with her adds yet another layer of emotional depth. 250224 ... raze loveless (my bloody valentine) kevin shields might be the architect of my bloody valentine's vastly influential sound, but bilinda butcher's voice has always been an irreplaceable element of the sonic tapestry. it's impossible to imagine a song like "only shallow" or "to here knows when" working without her. i've always thought she sounded a little like a very sleepy kate_bush. and that's a good thing. (i would have thrown on "isn't_anything", but alas, i don't have that one on vinyl.) 250228 ... raze it's too late to stop now (van morrison) there are great live albums, and then there's this powderkeg. you can almost hear the sweat hit the stage. the only real mark against it is the way "into_the_mystic" is taken at too fast a tempo and made a little shoutier than it wants to be. other than that, i have no complaints. 250304 ... warmthofrelease ^It's Too Late to Stop Now is incredible. So nice I own it twice, both the cd and the vinyl, one of the few albums I doubled up on. Personally I like that live Mystic, great keyboard work. I think Caravan from this one doesn't live up to the Last Waltz version, and I had to learn to like this Cypress Ave compared to the album version, there's an aspect of "you had to be there" in that performance. But there are so many great moments here, Listen to the Lion in particular feels like an entire spiritual awakening. Such a beautiful intimate moment for Van the man to have exposed himself so completely in front of a crowd. One of the absolute best live albums of the entire 1970s and that's really saying something. 250304 ... raze (in all honesty, i think i might just be partial to the original studio cut for emotional reasons. "heart over head" has kind of been the guiding principle of my life ... with all the disastrous results you'd expect. ha!) 250304 ... raze waltz for debby (bill_evans trio) if i could only listen to one person play piano for the rest of my life, i think my choice would be bill_evans. everything he recorded is worth hearing, but there's something extra special about the work he did with paul motian and scott lafaro. it almost feels like they knew how little time they had together (scott was killed in a car accident ten days after the village vanguard live date this album is drawn from). though bill went on to make more great music in the trio setting, nothing else carries quite the same emotional current this stuff does. 250312 ... raze a_walk_across_the_rooftops (the blue nile) most pundits would have you believe "hats" is the crown jewel in the blue nile's slim but stunning catalogue of recorded work. great as it is, i think it's missing a bit of the sense of urgency and wide-eyed wonder that runs through "rooftops". the band didn't know if they would get the chance to make another album, so they put everything they had into their first fully formed artistic statement. they would never do anything quite this daring or eccentric again in terms of sonics. it must be one of the most organic and least dated-sounding "synth pop" albums on the planet, though that description doesn't begin to do justice to what's under the hood. then there's paul buchanan's voice — a remarkably expressive instrument that humanizes everything it touches. i think a lot of love songs and their singers are full of shit. when paul sings about being in love with a person, or a feeling, or a wild, wild sky, i believe him. 250316 ... raze anthology (the temptations) there are thirty-seven tracks spread across the six sides of this compilation, with nary a dud in the bunch. deathless as the likes of "my girl" and "ain't too proud to beg" are, i'm partial to the stuff that comes from the "psychedelic soul" period. i could hear "papa was a rollin' stone" a million times and never tire of it. 250327 ... raze l.a. woman (the doors) it might not be the best doors album ever made ("strange days" would probably get my vote), but this is almost always the first one i reach for when i'm in the mood for jim morrison and co., due in no small part to the memories_embedded_in_objects. i also just dig the bluesy atmosphere, and the way fragments of some guide vocals can still be heard at the bottom of the mix like little whispers in the dark. 250403 what's it to you? who go blather from