Day 58: Pelican City – Rhode Island

Context, context. I listened to this all day thinking not much of it, but a last-second Wikipedia search left me quite surprised. Pelican City struck me as a typical DJ-based trip-hop act circa the year 2000. The beats are great, and the songs themselves are cinematic and inspired, but it didn’t sound like anything that would stick with me or have much of an impact. Well, turns out Pelican City is the name now-famous DJ Dangermouse used to release his work under. Now I’m not much of a fan of Dangermouse productions in general, but this album had me content.

It plays like alchemy, mixing weathered samples with live instruments and seeing what it turns into. “Chestnut Park” is a good example, the song’s dry beat straining to be heard through a severe compressor as a keyboard and a saxophone canoodle over it. You can feel rain pouring down around you as you listen. Much of the album continues in that vein: plodding, sleepy music, a soundtrack to overcast days and sterling silver skies. Even on “The Beach“, with its seagulls squabbling in the background and its lapping waves, I imagine windbreaker weather. My biggest complaint about this album is, in that sense, one of its strengths, as it keeps that hands-in-pockets mood effortlessly throughout. It reminds me of Seattle weather. There’s an effect that seems more pronounced here, during rainy days, where the world goes vividly monochrome, and everything seems to have the color leached from it. The whole world takes on the asphalt-grey of the sky above it and the effect is more pronounced by the layer of wetness on every possible surface. It’s actually rather lovely. And so is this album: beads of rain tracing visible lines like scratchy old photographs, pebbling the surface of the sky-grey creeks running in the gutters.

Day 1: Belleruche – Turntable Soul Music

For some reason, when I think of record hiss in music, I think of Portishead. Instantly. Even though almost any music that’s been built on two turntables (with or without microphone) has had that telltale fuzz burbling under it to some degree, something about the way Portishead used it, especially on the fantastic Dummy, made it sound like a raging fire quietly consuming a film noir jazz lounge while the band played on. It suited the tone of the music perfectly.

Let me just say that already, one measly day into this thing, I miss music terribly. It has clearly been somewhat of a pacifier for me for as long as I can recall. Walking around at work, I kept humming guitar melodies from, say, a Radiohead song, and really hearing the song in my head. A prisoner of war might languish in a muddy cell, whispering memorized passages of the bible to the cockroaches to keep sane. Similarly, I can tell that in the next year I am going to get much, much better at conjuring songs in my head, as I find myself wanting so badly to hear them but being unable to.

However, maybe it will be the opposite — maybe this musical binge will shock my system and jar all those infectious tunes loose from my brain’s grooves. Maybe I’ll come away with a whole new set of earworms. I imagined listening to my favorites after a year of not being allowed to burrow into them would make the experience of listening to them thoroughly incredible. Maybe it’ll be just the opposite, as I grow fond of songs I might never have of my own will and scrub my tired palate clean. Maybe I will no longer give half a shit about the records I now hold as dear as lovers.

Being deprived of my favorite escape will be difficult for every single day of this project. Which is why today’s selection, Turntable Soul Music, was such a gracious introduction. It feels equally inspired in parts by Portishead’s crate-dug trip-hop — the aforementioned record hiss being as comforting a sound as there is — and by the vamping, smoke-breathing songstresses of the Jazz era. It manages to combine elements of some of my favorite music. I got diagnosed with musical diabetes and this album was a package of sugar-free Oreos — tantalizingly close to a beloved thing.

I enjoyed the album the first couple of times through, but after six listens it got rather tiresome. The album detours from its high points of pre-coital, swayable Jazz and into some uninspired straightforward blues songs that fail to jibe with the Regina Spektor-esque character in the singer’s voice, and overall they only wear out the welcome earned by the livelier tracks. Uunfortunately, the album really fails to make an impact overall. Every track sounds similar and it doesn’t really go anywhere.

If you uncheck some boxes in iTunes this would be a perfectly useful album to toss in your rotation for a cocktail party, or for petting heavies on a threadbare couch. As it stands, though, it’s hard to recommend.

I keep wanting to listen to Reflection, the track with the most prominent record noise. I am becoming naggingly curious about why I like this sound so much. Coincidentally I hate that sound on actual records. I have a decent turntable and amp and headphones and it seems like the more money I spend on my setup, the more irritating record noise gets. It distracts so badly from the music sometimes. On this one GY!BE record I have there is a pop on one spot on one side that hits every time it passes, leaving this booming metronomic snap in the sound that of course is not in time with the music. It’s like a drummer getting sick of the song the band is playing and trying to get them to just play an entirely different one. Super distracting. However, you take something smoky and sultry like Belleruche or Portishead, and the record noise underscores the music, giving it a pleasant murmur to float along on.

Other note: For some reason, every time I listen to Bump, I find myself expecting the chorus to be the chorus from Alice in Chains’ Rain When I Die, and it’s really startling that it isn’t every single time. Does anyone else hear this?

I also wonder if there’s something to how similar record noise sounds to a fireplace or a campfire. Perhaps there’s some vestigial feeling of safety inherent in the song of fire. What do you think about record noise, deliberate or no?