iTunes Music Store is dangerous if it's a late Friday night and you've had a few drinks. "Oh - that looks neat, I'll get the whole album!" Next thing you know you've purchased everything Metric has ever released and some 80s Hair Metal that you vaguely remembered liking at a High School dance.
Actually, the latest adventure was pretty good. I'm still trying to figure out if Metric is really good or really bad - at least it's not obvious.
There wasn't any Hair Metal this time (although the Auf der Mar track is heading in that direction), but some things that I really like.
Brendan Benson - The Alternative To Love - heard this one day at the Green Room and thought it was some lost Beatles album. Perfectly crafted pop.
Funkadelic - Maggot Brain - the title is a little extreme, but this turns out to be a classic. Heard the title track once very late at night in 1994 while hanging out with friends at College and listening to the radio - I went 'what the hell was that awesome guitar solo?' and I didn't really believe the DJ when he said it was Funkadelic. Well, almost exactly 12 years later, I googled a bit and found the album and downloaded it off of iTunes. The solo is really good - it's even more fun to play the backing arpeggio into GarageBand, turn up the distortion, echo, and reverb, and play my own! It's not as good, obviously, but the chord progression has such tasty potential.
The album closes with a tripped-out funky sound collage, which sounds like Funkadelic heard "Revolution #9" and thought "Needs more cowbell!"
Decomposure - Who's Side Are You On? - This sounds like the inside of my head! Cheerful pop with wild electronic backing - the atonal stuttering of the samples provides the main motif for the song. Entirely produced and recorded by some 22-year-old in an apartment in Saskatchewan.
The Pogues - Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash - Just so great. Nothing more to say. Playing this back-to-back with some Tom Waits and drink a lot of gin might qualify for the Aristotalean concept of 'Katharsis'.
Oh yeah - and Auf der Mar and Martha Wainwright and, um, Metric.