Albums that make me feel warm inside #2
This is the second part of an article series. The first part can be found here.
Throughout your life there are certain albums and musicians that really strike you as different, special, otherworldly even. They mold and shape you and at the most extreme they might make you reconsider your whole way of life. The albums I’m featuring in this series of articles are the ones that did something like that to me, or at least the most prominent ones.
Being a non-religious person, these albums are probably the closest thing to a religion in my life. Some believe in God, some believe in Buddha, some even believe L. Ron Hubbard. I Believe in Professor Pez.
Shugo Tokumaru – Exit
Shugo Tokumaru is a pop genius. The kind of genius who can’t be from any other place than Japan. The music he makes is the quirkiest of pop with layers and layers of strings, strange instruments and homemade percussion. There’s a guitar and shugo’s voice in the very center and lots of weird things around it; several melodicas, an accordian, ukulele and lots and lots of other fun sounding and weird instruments. It all goes together to create an extremely unique, impressive and catchy sound. This guy knows what he’s doing.
Apparently, he recorded the whole of this album in his appartment in Tokyo, playing all the instruments himself. I was lucky enough to catch his first live show in Norway ever and there he had four friends helping him. He can play it all himself, but he needs four other people to play it live and even then I think he’s cut it down a bit. The album sounds really great technically, but what impresses me the most is how he’s able to compose all these intricate, layered melodies all by himself. The man’s a genius. I say no more.
Beirut – The Flying Club Cup
Another genius can be found in Zach Condon, the brains behind the band Beirut. He composes music that manages to capture a sort of essence of balkan folk music with a brass orchestra, accordions, ukuleles and the whole package. The Flying Club Cup is Beirut’s second full-length album and remains the clearly most solid work they’ve released so far.
There’s something magic about the sound, really is. So magical that I found it worth waiting several hours for them out in the rain at Øya this summer. I ended up soaking wet, dead tired and with a pair of completely ruined shoes, due to all the mud and rain. Call me a desperate fanboy, but I regret nothing whatsoever.
Half-Handed Cloud – Halos & Lassos
Here’s where the ingress of this whole article might seem a bit weird. It’s sort of hard not noticing or mentioning how much of a Christian message Half-Handed Cloud brings. Even the name is related to an occurrence in the bible. Half-Handed Cloud is the one-man project of John Ringhofer, who is quite an interesting character. He lives rent-free in Berkeley, California in exchange for his services as a custodian in a church, is a vegetarian and still uses the ancient CD Walkman.
His music features beautiful pop melodies with guitar, keyboards and lots of tiny quirky sounding instruments. I think he’s also one of the very few who puts those crappy drum samples on Casio keyboards to good use. He creates some of the catchiest pop melodies I’ve heard. I think I listened to (and sung along to) his music for maybe weeks before I even realized that the lyrics were very christian, something that might sound kind of unbelievable, considering how many times he mentions the lord and heaven and everything. He has a very characteristic voice and the whole sound he has is very mesmerizing, which might explain why I didn’t give the lyrics much thought at first. I still continue to sing along though. I realize that if this was the kind of music they sang in the church, then I’d definitely go there every sunday.
Professor Pez – Let Us Follow The Evil Balloon
Professor Pez might just be the ultimate lo-fi indie pop band. And the lyrics are so beautifully naïve and childish. Some might think it’s a bit too much, but I think it’s what really makes Professor Pez special. Especially on Let Us Follow The Evil Balloon, which is their debut album, the lyrics are bound to make you nostalgic, circling around spending all your money on records, dreams of getting a new bicycle, evil people waiting for you at the airport, dancing around the livingroom and so on. The lyrics are really naïve, yet they manage to capture these childhood concepts so perfectly.
Take the second track, “Stealing Sneakers” for instance. It’s about stealing the crazy janitor’s blue Nike sneakers, and it starts up with a few lines that capture such a brilliant picture of it. “We will be skinned alive if we don’t run/ Yes we should’ve brought a gun/ Come on move, there is no time/ We’d done it like we’d last forever more and now it seems our death is sure/ The janitor is chasing us by car.” I think that sums up what’s great about this album, really.
Danielson – Ships
Danielson is awesome. I want to just stop there and tell you to listen to this album, but I guess I’ll have to elaborate a bit.
Danielson is one of those family bands, you know, a bunch of siblings playing music together. They’re also Christian and do their live performances in matching uniforms. Now you’re probably sure you know exactly how they sound; no, you don’t. Although they’re Christian and the lyrics are a lot about faith and everything, it’s not something you can just drop in the “Christian music” categorization.
The band is lead by the older brother, Daniel, and no, not Daniel Danielson, they’re all named Smith. The band has also grown to include some friends of theirs and Daniel’s Norwegian wife, Elin. On Ships, there’s also contributions from musicians like Deerhoof, Sufjan Stevens, Why?, Serena Maneesh, and Half-handed Cloud.
What really makes the whole sound of the band, I think, is the combination of Daniel’s squeaky vocals, the epic, gospel-like peaks of the songs and the playful melodies. Listen to Danielson. It’s awesome, trust me.