Some of my favourite albums I started off hating. That was definitely the case for Ok Computer, and something similar happened with Rock Action.
For this bizarre lapse of judgement I have only my angsty teenage quest to find the ultimate in distorted rock cool, which drove me to read the Pitchfork review of same album and take it to heart in a way that not even the purist snobs who wrote it intended.
To spare you the torture of the article itself, I will summarise: to this impressionable young music snob it promised (post?)ROCK ACTION! It used to a lot of adjectives! My eyes scanned across, picking up superlatives and adding my own fervid interpretation: this album would blow my head off with rock awesomeness!
And so I bought it. Eagerly slammed it into the cd player. Awaited ROCK ACTION.
And was hit with disappointment. What was this shit? Slow, steady melancholic synth waves? Some guy singing in a vocoder?!
I
skipped
tracks.
Into gentle wistful melodies and a singer softly intoning 'Ghosts in a photograph...'. The next track was in Welsh. What was wrong with this album? Where's the rock?! I threw it in a pile in disgust. Made a few more attempts. Halfheartedly. This was not what I was after at all. I had been duped by those indie snobs!
I lent it to Bina.
Months passed.
How an album you gave a few listens to and gave up on can suddenly grow on you, without you listening to it again, I don't know. It didn't happen with anything else I discarded in disgust. Not in this way. Melodies and lyrics, verses and choruses would drift through my head, half-remembered and fragmentary, breaking apart on closer attention - the best bits were missing. I knew they were.
I had made a mistake. I needed it back. My mind would disintegrate from the torment if I didn't.
When I got it back last year, I kissed it and apologised. It was plastic and couldn't forgive. Or do anything really. But I put it on again, sat back and fell into great songs; melancholic, regretful, droning, tense, triumphant, some with words and others mute. Whole again.
This review had nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes. Ha!
4 comments:
Mandy, I think I love you.
Will you marry me?
No! You're all mine Daniel, and don't you ever forget that!
And I'm not sure that that's ever happened to me. It sounds like something that might have, but I just can't remember. Maybe with something like The Smiths' Meat Is Murder, or The White Stripes' De Stijl. But certainly not to the same extent.
Dogs bark and he knows their breed,
And knows where they went last night.
Knows their masters too.
Oh baby, hold me tight!
Off Topic: but love ya Strocchi work.
Post a Comment