I have some albums that I never, ever play but would be perfectly happy to have on in the background at a dinner party. I guess it’s the difference between active and passive listening.
I feel that way about this 2003 comeback album by Al Green. I feel that way about all of Al Green’s music, to be honest. He has a legendary voice, the songs are soulful and classy, but they don’t command my full attention.
This blog often finds new ways to make me feel old.
I remember buying Joan Osborne’s debut album, Relish, when it came out and loving its slow-jam dirty folk music vibe. Songs such as ‘St. Teresa’ and ‘Pensacola’ are among my favorites of the 90s.
Then it pops up as a Random Weekend selection today and I realize that this album came out 20 years ago. 20 years!
Of all the great albums in my music collection, Randy Newman’s 12 Songs is one of the most unassuming.
The album has no grand vision. It is simply, as the title suggests, a collection of 12 songs. The instrumentation is pretty bare-bones. Several of these songs had been recorded previously by other artists (today’s SOTD, for example, was released as a Fats Domino track before Newman offered up his own version).
2009’s Relapse is Eminem’s second-worst album, but it has its moments. ‘Beautiful,’ on the whole, is one of them.
Much of this album is bogged down by silly accents and cartoonish violence even more cartoonish than the violence on Eminem’s best albums. But a few tracks aim for something deeper.
Elliott Smith’s New Moon was released posthumously in 2007 and contains outtakes and discarded tracks from the recording sessions of his second and third albums.
Given that those records, Elliott Smith and Either/Or are two of his finest, this is a solid collection, all the more effective for being released after his suicide.
Meet Me In Montauk 