A view from the hill

While the doors at plattentests.de are still open for voting on the best music of 2007, I'm going to be away for the rest of the year, so I'm going to post my favourites now.

Best records of 2007:

Just as with their first albums, "Towards the bright light" and "The back room", it's hard to ignore the impulse to compare Interpols new record "Our love to admire" to the new album "An end has a start" by The Editors. While I did reviews of the first two albums for plattentests.de (here and here), I haven't reviewed the new ones there, so I'm gonna take a step at an informed comparison here, generalizing a little and also taking into account the slew of other bands that people tend to ignore.

Auch dieses Jahr findet bei plattentests.de der Jahrespoll der besten Alben, Songs, etc. statt.
Und wie jedes Jahr gibt es auch wieder fette Pakete mit CDs zu gewinnen. Alles weitere findet ihr dann dort.

Well, I'm sure Isaac Brock wasn't too happy about his injury. Yesterday I heard that because of his injury the Modest Mouse concert in Frankfurt in June had to be cancelled, which would have taken place during my holiday. Instead, the concert now took place yesterday at the Batschkapp, and I was even able to get a card via eBay. Yes! The concert went quite well, although the Batschkapp was completely sold out. The warm-up band was pretty bad, but Modest Mouse hit the roof, although they were aiming for ... you know. What I learned during the show was that I like the songs from "Good news ..." more than the ones from "We were dead ...". This is of course an over-generalization, e.g. "Dashboard" is certainly among the best songs of MM, but overall the songs from "Good news ..." have more variation and also more life in them. But, hey, I felt almost like the protagnoist from How soon is never?, seeing Johnny Marr. Now I only have to find out from which LP that song is that they played after "Float on". Update: Some good soul from the forum on plattentests.de said it was "Tiny cities made of ashes" from "The Moon& Antarctica" and indeed, I recognized it was. However, played live, it sounded quite differently, much more powerful. And something else I forgot to mention: after the Trail of Dead in 2005, this was the second concert which featured two drummers and just as with ToD, this had a terrific effect on the sound.

Well, this post was due since quite some time now, so I'll stop babbling and go for the latest additions to my CD archive (yes, I'm an old fashioned user of those tiny discs).

First of all, I did a review of The Mission "God is a bullet", currently to be found at plattentests.de. It's nice in it's old fashioned guitar-oriented wave, but also not to convincing. Perhaps I've just become too bored with this old stuff. (5)

The Queers new album "Munki brain" also landed on my shelf for a review, but at the time there were to many better other records. We're also not exactly a punk store, so that explains the omission. The record is what you would expect from a number umpteeemth album, and I'm sure every surf punk is going to have a great time with it. Me, I'm not a surf punk, and these days only rarely a listener to punk. (5)

The nicest addition as of late is from Modest Mouse with "We were dead before the ship even sank". It provides so much niceness and comfort that you'll feel as floating around, only to trash you to the ground a mere split second later. Any fan of indie rock will probably know that legendary Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr has become a member of the band, which hasn't exactly hurt the sound. The compactness of the songs is sometimes just stunning and mostly brillantly instrumented. I do have some complaints about the drums though, but nethertheless a fantastic record. (9)

I have my share of problems with The Arcade Fire and "Neon bile" is no exception. There are a lot of good tunes on the album, but sometimes it's just too pathetic. (6)

I'm more and more bored by indie dance pop, like e.g. made by Maximo Park, whose new album I've only dipped into but refrained from buying. But I couldn't resist to buy "Ten new messages" by The Rakes for no particular good reason. Indie dance pop, all the same, though sometimes a little bit rougher, i.e. more like The Dogs. (6)

Finally, there is "Myth takes" by !!!: Just like their last record, this is dance music made for the indie discos or maybe just the other way round. Again, there are some fantastic songs on it (Heart of hearts, for instance) but then again, I may be just too old to learn to dance to this disco sound. (7)

In the category "Yesterday", I finally have "13 Songs" by Fugazi, so I can now assign a name to those songs I knew it would know. Brilliant punk rock and a must buy for anybody. (9)

No, I didn't stop listening to music, I just forgot blogging about it. But, hey, I remembered today.

In BaWü gibt es seit einiger Zeit die glorreiche Idee, dass die Schüler, die im sog. Rheingraben in der Nähe (30km) zu Frankreich wohnen, ab dem nächstem Schuljahr an den Gymnasien in den fünften Klassen mit Französisch statt mit Englisch beginnen. Während die Idee auf den ersten Blick ja ganz vernünftig klingt (es ist durchaus hilfreich, wenn man die Sprache seines Nachbarn versteht), bringt sie auf den zweiten Blick eine Menge Probleme. Eine Webseite der Jungen Union (!) www.region-fuer-englisch.de listet einige davon auf (Danke, Kris). Am heftigsten sind m.E. nach folgende zwei Punkte: 1) Der Wechsel von Realschule auf das Gymnasium wird damit fast unmöglich gemacht. 2) Bei einem Umzug aus dem Rheingraben in eine andere Region hat man augenblicklich eine miese Note in Englisch. Und das, obwohl gleichzeitig überall mehr Durchlässigkeit zwischen den Schulsystemen und auch Flexibilität bzgl. der eigenen Lebenssituation gefordert wird. Liebe Politiker, wenn ihr schon das Verständnis zwischen den Ländern fördern wollt, solltet Ihr dafür nicht das Verständnis zwischen den Schülern im eigenen Land vergessen.

The readers's poll on plattentests.de is over. "Good evening, Germany. And here are the results of the German (readers) jury." "Sorry, could you repeat that?" "Yes, here are the results of the German (editorial staff) jury." "Thank you, Germany!"

Here's what I voted:

Yesterday, I voted for Tool as the best live band, although I hadn't seen them yet, as the concert was tonight. Well, they didn't let me down, they easily did win the price as the best live band this year [1]. The concert hall, Mannheim's Maimarkthalle, was a particular disappointment. Or in fact it wasn't, it was just the horrible surrounding I've expected it to be.

The warm-up band, Mastodon, was also a nightmare. Usually, I don't care about bad warm-up bands, but this time the sound was so loud you couldn't ignore them. The loudness was really a problem. Sometimes I felt it was just too loud although I brought and used a pack of ear protectors. Apart from that, Tool were great, especially the light show was the best what I've seen so far.

[1] It was only the fourth concert for me this year. Tomte has been great, Til Brönner (my first Jazz concert ever) was very nice, too, and The Horror The Horror, this years' best newcomer in my opinion, played a nice concert, too (although they had to fight a rather tiny location, Freiburg's Jos Fritz cafe and its ridiculous time table). But Tool was way more exciting.

Jahrespoll auf plattentests.de. Lauft los und versucht Euch ein Paket CDs zu sichern.

Wow, it's been quite some time since my last records review. Not too bad, there's not that much new stuff on my desk. I'll give a quick tour.

In between days, a sleigh of new records has arrived on my desk. A whole bunch of others isn't even worth mentioning.

First of all, The Twilight Singers "Powder burns" was already reviewed on plattentests.de. I really like it, although I still have
problems with the ever continuing intensity of Dulli's latest records. (7)

The new Tool, "10000 days", was a must buy. Like all their albums, that's not the kind of music you would like to play to your radio loving girl friend. It's also a dangerous record to get drunk to. (8)

A girl's record by comparison is "A feaver you can't sweat out" by Panic! at the disco, which comes across like a mix of Jimmy eat world with Franz Ferdinand. Light and nice. (7)

Finally, a not so new record. Refused, "The shape of punk to come" already done 1998. It's hardcore. No, make that Jazz. Err, electronics. Whatever, but the hardcore tag is rather sticky. What a brilliant record. If you happen to like At the drive-in, you'll also love this one. (9)

We won't publish a review of Viva L'American Death Ray Music on Plattentests.de, but it'll feature a review of The Organ'Grab that gun' instead (update should happen either today or tomorrow).

Viva L'American Death Ray Music have produced a very nice album, somewhere between Velvet Underground style (the singer sounds much like Lou Reed) and the Strokes, perhaps, although there are some punky dribbles all over the record. What hindered a review was mainly that the record is quite short (about 30 minutes) with eight songs and two songs are just alternative takes of other ones. Nice one to figure out anyway (6).

I have a whole slew of new records on my desk, some for review for Plattentests.de, some bought on my own. I'll use the same range of ratings as for Plattentests, i.e. between 1-10.


One of those records, 'Uninvited, like the clouds' by The Church will get a longer German review on Plattentests.de this night, so I won't go into details on this one. (5)

A week later, you will find a review for the new record from Viva L'American Death Ray Music at the same place. (6)


Until then though let me go through a quick review of what has also arrived:

The Alarm have a new record. Keep away unless you want a trip back to the days in the 80s when Simple Minds and U2 were terrorizing the ether. (3)

Mogwai have a new album 'Mr. Beast' that doesn't hold what it promises. There are some nice heavy rock opera songs on it, but it can become quite boring and annoying at the same time. (5)

Motorpsycho indeed may have made their best record since 'Trust us' but it still is nowhere near that one or 'Angels and Daemons at play' or 'Blissard'. (6)

'Meds' by Placebo, in contrast, is their best album since 'Without you I'm nothing', lots of high energy songs as well as some nice slow ones, even some experimental ones, which you won't hear on the radio, of course. (7)


Finally, I bought last years album from Dogs which is somewhere between Les Savy Fav and Franz Ferdinand, so that's quite nice disco-indie-rock music. (7)