May Playlist: Blood on the Front Row

I'm off to fabulous Barcelona today for the Primavera Sound festival, so this month's musical digest is going up slightly earlier than usual. There will be no new blog posts while I'm away, although I may fire off the odd update from Spain over on Twitter (I'm @TheAlbumWall).

Anyhow, here to tide you over in my absence are ten of the songs that have run barges through my ear canals over the past few weeks:

1. From Nails to Thumbtacks - The Baseball Project

(from 3rd)
My first blog post of May 2015 compared wrestling with baseball, and 3rd with The Mountain Goats' more recent album about professional wrestling. Wrestling emerged victorious from that comparison, at least in the grit stakes, but this true story of superstar-turned-carjacker Lenny Dykstra demonstrates that America's pastime does have some fairly gritty stories of its own.

Review: Kind of Blah by Frog

Here are some lyrical excerpts from the songs that make up Frog's Kind of Blah:

"Bar moans with calzones and verses from the Rolling Stones" - Wish Upon a Bar

"All dogs go to Heaven, all songs end in quiet refrains, smart moms buy generic, say it tastes the same" - All Dogs Go to Heaven

"Judy Garland hit the bathroom floor of her cold apartment 'bove a Chelsea store and all the drag queens and all the whores couldn't get poor Judy back up off of her laurels" - Judy Garland

Fuckin' poetry, no? If I had written those lines, I would want to make damn sure that everybody could hear them, that my genius was plain to all who listened.

This is ESKA

From what I've read, most reviews of ESKA's self-titled first album can be summed up thusly:

Did you know that ESKA has been a well-regarded session musician for quite a few years? It's true! But now she's stepping into the limelight and finding her own voice - and what a voice it is!

Many debut albums have been named after the artist responsible (Franz Ferdinand, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and The Magic Numbers, to name just three), but while it usually seems like a slightly lazy decision - made in lieu of any ideas for a proper title - it does make a lot of sense in the case of ESKA. The album is an announcement to the world that the musician is ready to be seen as an artist, to sing her own life instead of assisting with someone else's ideas.

The Long Farewell

Has this ever happened to you?

You buy the latest CD from one of your favourite bands. You take it home, peel off the cellophane, and pop it into your computer to rip this new acquisition to iTunes/Windows Media Player/whatever.

After a moment, your PC recognises the fact that you've given it an album to chew on, and up pops the 'Rip CD' screen, which looks something like this:

And that's when you spot something unusual in the 'Time' column. Most of the songs on this album are between two and five minutes long - pretty standard stuff - but the last song clocks in at just under a quarter of an hour.

Neil Hannon...a Horse Fancier?

I purchased The Divine Comedy's A Short Album About Love back in August 2013, and from practically my first listen, I suspected that the entire thing was conceived as a love letter to Neil Hannon's favourite horse. Just listen to If I Were You (I'd Be Through With Me), the album's penultimate track:

"You see, if I were you, I'd end my days

In a field of stupid sheep, just grazing

The grass so succulent and sweet

If I were you I'd be through with me"

Yes, it seems to me that the man who sang My Lovely Horse may not have done so entirely without seriousness. If the lyrics above aren't evidence enough, witness this excerpt from a 1997 Observer article:

"It’s no wonder he ends Casanova with a song called The Dogs and the Horses, a paean to the only animals capable of dopey, unconditional love. 'The most meaningful relationships I've ever had were with these animals,' he said, half-jokingly."