Thursday is Gorges

A day of musical gorging and otherwise languishing indoors...aside from the like ten $2-4 purchases I made over the weekend (many listed on the all-but-movie updated sidebar, damn I just can't watch films for pleasure these days, I must be broken), I've decided to track down a few albums I've missed lately. So now I'll provide completely lazy and inarticulate blurbs about my first impressions to prepare me for a career in freelance music writing!

Ghostface - Fishscale
I have the same reaction to this as every Ghostface album I've ever heard. I don't get it and don't care to listen again (I probably will, though), but I can imagine someone else quite enjoying it. Ghostface seems to have about as much personality as a rapper as Lucy Woodward has as a Shanks project.

BWO - Halcyon Days
Oh man, it's about time. I've been hunting for this goddamn album for weeks. Pretty awesome throughout, the stuff that sounds the most like the four singles from Prototype stuck at the end hits immediately but the album overall is pretty solid..."Temple of Love" and its decent semi-clone "Juggernaut" are both highlights, "Chariots of Fire" is a favorite, don't register most of the ballads yet but they aren't bad, which is good. (Actually, listening again, the overall standard on this album is surprisingly high, no missteps/filler really standing out. The best song might be "Marrakech," have to listen a few more times.)

Toy-Box - Fantastic
This has got to be one of the most coveted teenpop objects ever, still goes for an average price of $50-60. I like that I only have a dubbed cassette of it w/ new age + whale call music on the B-side (after some Nena and Kim Wilde singles). It might be one of my favorite albums ever. It is relentlessly stupid, which means it's a very smart album -- it's hard to be this consistently STUPID. But is "E.T." the best or second-best song featuring E.T. ever (the other contender being that ridiculous Michael Jackson song)?

Ashley Parker Angel - Soundtrack to Your Life
I'm liking it OK so far, I'll update at the end of this post when I finish the whole thing. The Matrix single "Soundtrack to Your Life" (which I hadn't heard in its entirety) is sooooooooo bad. SO VERY BAD. Dedicated to Ashley's son, LYRIC. This is why teenagers need to stop having sex immediately. Surprisingly eclectic, there's a "She's Leaving Home"-sounding ballad, some darker low-key electronic stuff, all of it given some direction with Ashley's voice, which is probably the most solid male singing voice I've heard this year. But yikes, the final ballad slog is pretty awful.

Arctic Monkeys - I Refuse to Type the Name of Their Album in Its Entirety Even Though This Is Longer
Wow, I really like this album!

Robyn - Robyn Is Here
Not all that notable overall, but I never really paid attention to the big singles, both of which were produced by Max Martin and Denniz Pop. This alters my understanding of the Pop/Martin trajectory a little, I made a pretty direct link between Ace of Base and Backstreet Boys/Britney, but Robyn is an interesting detour or phase or whatever she is between BSB's first two albums and the first Britney album. The singles actually sound like they belong after Britney, they seem subtler, a toning down of the explosive energy in the Britney singles.

Danielson - Ships
Sounds like it was more fun to record than it is to listen to. Part of a trend toward what I'd call "practice room pop," the kind of stuff my friends and I come up with when we're fucking around in music school practice rooms.

Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere
Bleah. It took me a bit to really enjoy "Crazy" after being initially underwhelmed (the trick for me was unexpected replay, one reason I like that it's been such a successful UK #1). But I can't imagine listening to the album much. A waste of Cee-Lo's voice and more fuel for my Danger Mouse ambivalence. Gnarls Barkley is practice room pop at heart.

I may or may not chime back in when I finish getting this thing labeled "unreleased Britney 2006," hope I'm not getting virus'd... EDIT: Haha, this is where I realize that the Britney B-sides/rarities collection I've been looking for all day has been labeled "unreleased Britney 2006" and is in a file format my computer doesn't recognize. Oh, internet.