R2OK!

Cherskiy

Well, I haven’t done one of these reviews recently, but since I’ve finished overtime for the month (a whopping 94 extra hours in August!) I figured I needed a break and some quality listening material. What better to sit down for an hour in front of the keyboard and extol the virtues of Bob’s most recent playlist? In the end, I only got to listen to the middle hour, but I’m pleased I did.

Katy Lied is a band produced by Nigel Stonier (aka Mr Thea Gilmore), so the values on “Late Arrival” (from the album of the same name) are rather good. Katy Lied is a duo consisting of guitarist Dan Britton and drummer Paul Burgess – who met in a guitar shop and come up with a good if rather radio-friendly sound – and it’s therefore not surprising to learn that this track ended up on the R2 playlist in mid-August. The album itself is released on Monday and I suspect that they’ll feature again with successive tracks from the CD.
“Chicago x 12” was taken from Rogue Wave’s new album “Asleep At Heaven’s Gate”. Never heard of this Californian outfit before but it’s a pleasant enough track, with vocals (if not style) that echo The Decemberists in certain ways – but they’re probably better compared with The Shins, another of Bob’s favourites. This song seemed to creep up on me a bit after a fairly lacklustre start, but I don’t think it’ll break out of the niche shows on R2. The Morse Code at the end was a little strange, though….

Aimee Mann is one of my favourite artists, so it was extremely pleasing to learn she was Bob’s guest last weekend. I spent my only free day this month (!) down in North Yorkshire attending Eilen Jewell’s gig at The Band Room so couldn’t hear the programme straight away, but managed to catch it a couple of hours before Bob’s next show! I don’t think there’s any middle ground with Aimee – either you get her or you don’t. She’s on record as saying she’ll write fifteen songs for a new album then discard the five happiest – what you end up getting is a wry yet downbeat look at life, with quirky but thoughtful lyrics and interesting if not immediately catchy arrangements. She’s produced a “concept” album which wasn’t that successful (“The Forgotten Arm”) but her earlier works (“Lost In Space” and “Bachelor No.2”) are well worth obtaining, whilst she also contributed the soundtrack to the movie “Magnolia” (yet this still didn’t propel her to fame across in the UK). The later exposed her to a whole new audience and the discipline of writing a soundtrack made her question what people might want from her music.
For various reasons I haven’t kept up with her material since “The Forgotten Arm”, so was interested to hear some of the track on her recent album “@#%&*! Smilers” (yes, that’s the title, and Bob just called it “Smilers”!). “Freeway” was the first track she played during the acoustic set and we were immediately plunged into classic Aimee – her rich, deep vocals sliding over minimal acoustic guitar. Sparse yet fulfilling – no sense of being short-changed here. This is the first track on what is her seventh studio album – as Aimee says, some “duh duh duh curse words” before the “Smilers”. She says it’s a collection of short stories without an underlying theme – the title refers to the people who come up to her and say “why aren’t you smiling, why don’t you write happier songs?” So, she’s finally referring to the thing that most fans like about her – that she’s not typically a traditional happy-clappy artist – “if you’re happy, what are you going to write about?” “Thirty One Today” seemed to be a wry reflection on her past (she’s over 40) – “I thought my life would be different by now, I thought my life would be better by now”. This sort of material takes me back to her “Bachelor No.2” days where every song was a detailed, almost vicious commentary – good to see she’s not sold out in favour of more commercial-sensitive stuff. “Phoenix” was her last live song – rhyming with “Kleenex” of course (!), she charted how someone leaves you for good, all the while with almost a rueful, bittersweet grin. “You love me like a dollar bill” was another of her classic, memorable lines.

Bob then played “Borrowing Time” from Aimee’s album, which she says harks back to when she was asked to contribute a song to the movie “Shrek 3” – after she found out that “twenty other people” had also been asked to write songs for the same scene, it took the wind out of her sails. She was then asked to speed it up and after that, to change other bits, to the point where she hoped it wouldn’t be picked – and it wasn’t. Aimee then totally re-hashed “Borrowing Time” to the track heard tonight – and it sounds as though it came straight off her “Lost In Space” album, a slightly more upbeat yet ultimately down-played song that’s oddly reminiscent of Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger” in places (particularly towards the end when the horns kick in).

Aimee's touring the UK later this year - no dates as yet but I'll have to get along to the nearest venue - I can't pass up the opportunity of seeing her live.

Sorry for the truncated review - hopefully better once I return from Orkney in a few weeks time....
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Author: “To the Ends of the Earth: A Snapshot of Aviation in North-Eastern Siberia, Summer 1992”
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