Jim O'Rourke - Eureka (1999)

Jim O'Rourke is one of the indie rock legends, but if you haven't heard of him before - this is somebody that will make you regret your life. Not only was he a fifth member of Sonic Youth for a couple of years, he also mixed or produced albums for Faust, Stereolab, Wilco, Smog, Joanna Newsom, Fennesz, Nurse With Wound, Merzbow and Flying Saucer Attack, to name just a few. In the meantime, he won a grammy for Wilco's A Ghost Is Born, scored Werner Herzog's movies and taught iCarly how not to sing. He now lives in Tokio and is pals with with japanese artist Mimiyo Tomozawa, whose work appears on the covers of many O'Rourke albums, including brilliant, brilliant Eureka.

Although Tomozawa could still teach Joan Cornellà one or two things, I am definitely passing on finding connections between whatever-is-happening on the cover and the content of the album. And forget the bunny, because the music on Eureka is excellent: O'Rourke experiments with different musical styles, mixes simple guitar-based melodies with orchestral anthems, and elements that theoretically shouldn't go together somehow fit into place. Instrumentals, covers, own compositions - there is no real narrative here, yet everything seems smooth and coherent. This is also the first album where he introduced the vocals, and the witty, ironic lyrics are one of the highlights of the record.

Eureka is a homage to several artists - Nicolas Roeg, after whose movie it was named, Ivor Cutler and Burt Bacharach, whose songs O'Rourke covered, and Chris Burden, whose performance pieces gave the name to some tracks on the album. And although art-driven and experimental, Eureka is still a pop record - a damn good one.
The funny thing is, O'Rourke has said several times that he doesn't like this album. Well, but I do. I really, really do.

Listen to Eureka on grooveshark.

Talking Heads - Stop Making Sense (1984)

This is the best concert that I have never been to. And this month, it celebrates its 30th anniversary.

Talking Heads were one of these bands that proudly embraced their weird side. They looked preppy and nerdy, their songs were artsy, disturbing and intellectual, their vocalist danced like an epilepsy sufferer. When asked about music they create, David Byrne responded: "It's not music you would use to get a girl into bed. If anything, you're going to frighten her off."  That may be true, but nevertheless, by incorporating post-punk, funk and world music to their records, Talking Heads made some of the best music of the decade and turned being uncool into the new cool.

Stop Making Sense was released in 1984, two tears after the iconic live album The Name of the Band Is Talking Heads. This time, the band decided to go a step further and make a concert movie with an intention of showing it at cinemas across the US. The effect is no less than extraordinary: what we receive is a fantastic compilation of Talking Heads songs, played by a live band expanded to nine members in a cinematic ambience. No special effects, no colorful lights, just pure energy and joy that comes from performing the music. Jonathan Demme, the director of the movie, recalls: “In early 1983, Gary Goetzman and I went to see my favorite band, the Talking Heads, at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. The show was like seeing a movie just waiting to be filmed. (...) David [Byrne] really saw this movie in his own head long before we came and pitched him on letting us shoot it.” To capture the essence of the band, Demme decided on long camera shots and avoiding the audience footage. Everything else – lighting, the staging, the choreography, the song line-up – was ready before the shooting even began, and when it finally did, Byrne put on his big suit and started the party.

If anything can make you psychically prepared for Stop Making Sense, it must be the interview that Byrne did with himself – or rather various versions of himself – to promote the movie:

'What do the words of your songs mean to you? I mean, You don’t write love songs, do you?'

'Um... I try to write about small things: paper, animals, a house... love is kind of big. I have written a love song, though. In this film, I sing it to a lamp.' *

There is nothing more I could possibly add.
Begin here.

* The song that he is talking about is "This Must Be the Place", the highlight of this concert, and probably one of the best songs ever created. The audience cried, I cried, some guy was so inspired that he made a movie of the same title and made Sean Pean cry, too. 

Sun Kil Moon - Benji (2014)

Not only I listened to Benji several dozen of times, I also gave equally many attempts to start this note  - yes, this is how much I care. But I guess I owe something to an album I've played obsessively on repeat for weeks.

I first heard of Sun Kil Moon’s Mark Kozelek when I was in high school. Back then, he sang hauntingly beautiful, sad songs in the band Red House Painters, and because I was sad too, I spent a lot of my evenings listening to Down Colorful Hill and Rollercoaster. Kozelek’s lyrics has always been very introspective, and certain mix of loneliness, confusion and melancholy they represented made them easy to relate to. But“Things get heavier as you get older”, explains K. in the interview for Pitchfork. “At 47, I can’t write from the perspective of a 25-year-old anymore. My life has just changed too much, and my environment around me.”

The way Benji is narrated is exactly what strikes me the most. Most of Kozelek’s songs used to be covered in metaphors; here, instead, everything is much denser, heavier, and given straight away. Benji starts with the track about death of Carissa, singer’s cousin, and the deaths and sadness continue throughout the whole album. Each song is a story, starting from growing up in Ohio to mass shootings, fatal accidents of relatives and serial killers seen on TV. In fact, with lyrics written in a stream-of-consciousness form, Benji is an one hour long collection of memories, and although it is almost impossible to understand every single reference, Kozelek’s simple, repetition-based melodies are excellent even without knowing the context.

Not everything in here is perfect, though: some tracks are lengthy, some moments too meticulous. But, to be honest, I don’t know if I can say that I enjoy this album the way I usually enjoy albums. What I am sure of, though, is that Benji was not made for the kind of pleasure that comes from plainly enjoying the music; there is another concept in here that puts the extremely vivid, honest lyrics on the first place. At some point I found myself to wander from his memories to my own ones, and while catharsis is too much of a word, the ability to absorb me in complete melancholy is what makes Benji extraordinary - and is precisely what pushed me to listen to it over and over again.

Listen to Benji on grooveshark.

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