Matt and Andrew's CD a Day project

If you buy Supergrass' greatest hits in America, you get a bonus, 11-track live CD recorded in London sometime earlier this year. It's mostly the same tracks as the greatest hits, except live. I will say I appreciated "Caught by the Fuzz" more as an acoustic number, but the rest was pretty inessential.

My roommate Sam had a copy of Supergrass' second album when we were sophomores in college, and used to listen to it a lot. I always thought they were the most Brit of the Britpop bands; they had a song called "Richard III," for Chrissakes! But this hits compilation proves they were also the most retro of the Britpop bands. This album could have been released in 1971 as a greatest hits album, and most people would have been none the wiser.
There are certainly some good songs on here, but it's obvious that Supergrass are running out of ideas. Most of the tracks are from their first album 10 years ago, followed by a dwindling number from each successive album. Ah, well; it's happened to better than you lot, lads.

I like Feeder. And this single wasn't half-bad, either.

As I've said, REM are my favorite band, but Better than Ezra are firmly in second place. I've seen them somewhere between 10 and 15 times (I lost count), everywhere from an arena to a tiny, hole-in-the-wall club when they performed under the secret name of Manwich.
It's probably sacreligious to say so, but to me, Better than Ezra are the sound of New Orleans. So this live album was right up my alley, and it doesn't disappoint. They get in all the hits, from "Good" to "At the Stars," and throw in some of the better album tracks, like "Live Again." The only mild complaint I have is the two bonus studio tracks tacked on the album at the end. "Cold Year" is a little too "retro-90s" for my tastes, and "Stall" sounds a bit too much like Cake.

This is probably the weirdest CD I'll do all month, maybe all year. Flogging Molly combine traditional Irish folk music with oi-style punk-rock. And you know what? It's pretty good, the first seven or eight songs, especially "Factory Girls," which features Lucinda Williams. But then I started to get bored. And 15 tracks is waaay too many.

Embrace have had an interesting career. They started out as a second-generation Britpop bands, ripping off the pompous bits from Oasis and the sweeping, anthemic bits from the Verve, and then combining them into big, sweeping, anthemic, pompous ballads that were huge in the UK (and completely ignored in the U.S.) "I Wouldn't Want to Happen to You" was from their second album, in 2000, and comes with a great cover of "3 is a Magic Number" (that's right, the Schoolhouse Rock song, kids). "Make It Last" is from the third album in 2001 that was not very successful and comes with a cool, Blair Witch-style video.
See, after most people stopped caring, Embrace kept a tiny, devoted fanbase by doing these unannounced guerrila-style gigs in places like forests and parking lots on short notice. Then Chris from Coldplay wrote them a song, it went to No. 1 in Britain, and now they're on the comeback trail.

How to do a good single: record a really-good new song, and instead of sticking it on your next album in 18 months or whatever, slap it on your single, complete with a video for the song. That's what A did on the "Starbucks" single. Not only do you get "Starbucks," which should have been a hit in America, but you get a new song called "Coming Around," which is very, very good. Top form.
Another good idea is the kick-a$$ cover. Like on the Doves' single for "Caught by the River," they re-write "Werewolves of London," the early '80s hit, as "Hit the Ground Running." Top drawer, chaps.

I've mentioned on several occasions the fact that I really like Feeder, so getting these two singles for $1 each, with two b-sides apiece and the videos for both singles, was a pretty cool deal.
The singles were on the Echo Park album, which I've done previously, so I won't mention them much. The b-sides are pretty good. The videos are worth the $1 alone, especially "Seven Days in the Sun," which features a Kate Beckinsale look-alike frolicking on the beaches of Spain. Nice stuff.

Happened to be in Austin today, and you know what that means: I raided the $1 discount British singles bin.
These two bands offer a good contrast in how & how not to release a good CD single. Athlete, who are sort of a Beck-wannabe band from London that have some undeserved critical hype behind them, offer up the single, a halfway decent b-side, and then a crappy remix of the single. Not cool, not even for only a buck.
Shed Seven, on the other hand, give you the single, two original b-sides that are almost as good as the single, and then a cover of David Bowie's "Jean Genie." Now that's bang for your buck!
Yet Athlete got nominated for the Mercury Music Prize, and Shed Seven have broken up. I guess this proves that the single no longer matters.

Neil Hannon is back, and he's ditched the rest of the band and the Radiohead producer. So this new album again sounds like the soundtrack to a Broadway show never written, only better.
My favorite part? The song "The Happy Goth," where he informs us that "her skin is white as the snows of Hoth."
Empire Strikes Back references on orchestral-pop albums are cool, kids, no matter what Tiger Beat magazine tells you.

Snuck over to Best Buy first thing this morning to get the new REM disc; it's sort of a ritual with me to get it on opening day, ever since Automatic for the People. I spent about five minutes dithering over whether or not to buy the special edition, which has 14 fold-out posters with cool art prints on one side and the song lyrics on the other. But it was $30, so I just went with the regular version.
First impression: not so good, because when I unwrapped the plastic, a poster FELL OUT of the digipak. Instead of liner notes, they have a poster, which isn't fastened to the CD case at all. It's just loose. So I figure mine will be lost here in a week or so.
How's the album? A little disappointing. Michael Stipe told the British press about six months ago that it was going to be "howling and raw," or something like that. Instead, it's soft, slow, polished, and precise, just like UP and Reveal were. And there's still not much in the way of percussion going on, even though the new drummer is Bill Rieflin, who used to be in Ministry. Ministry! Electro-industrial thrash-metal! Now that's got some good drums on it! Use 'em!
Apparently this is the pattern for the new, three-piece REM: soft, slow, adult-alternative album. Then, in-between albums, give 'em some rock, like with "Great Beyond" and "Bad Day." Then again, "Great Beyond" was a re-write of "Man on the Moon" and "Bad Day" was a re-write of "it's the end of the world as we know it," complete with the same chords. So maybe they're out of rock ideas.
There are some good tunes on here. "Aftermath" is supposed to be the second single, and hopefully it'll be a hit, and I also like "the ascent of man," "Wanderlust," and "Electron Blue." Then there's songs that are just clunkers, like "High Speed Train," "Make it All Okay," and "Final Straw." The thing is 13 tracks, which is a little longer than your average REM album, and some of these could have been left off.
One review I read said the whole thing sounds like a Michael Stipe solo album, and in some ways, that's true. You can't hear a lot of classic Pete Buck guitar, and Mike Mills' background vocals are mostly absent again, just like the last couple of albums.
Sadly, this album sounds exactly like what you would expect an album to sound like that was made in the Bahamas by three dudes with an $80 million record contract. There's no urgency whatsoever. REM are still my favorite band, but like the late, great producer Bruce Dickinson, I gotta have more cowbell.

Or something like that.

Disc 2 of the greatest hits makes up for some of the things missing from Disc 1: You get alternate versions of "Drive," "Pop Song '89" and "Turn You Inside-Out." But out of 15 tracks, only five of them are actual songs that aren't available on other albums, and of those five, one is an instrumental and one is a bizarre excursion into techno that is laughably bad. And do we need TWO demos of Reveal songs? There is a very nice acoustic "The One I Love," though, and that almost makes up for it.

After the commercial disappointments of UP and Reveal in the U.S., Warner Bros., (who had, after all, signed REM to the largest record contract of any rock band in history back in '96, $80 MILLION) pushed for a greatest hits. And the band obliged, combining it with a huge world tour in '03. I got the deluxe two-disc edition, with awkward packaging.
How does it stack up as a greatest hits? There's way too much stuff off Automatic for the People, only one track each from Out of Time and Monster (c'mon, "Shiny Happy People" was a worldwide Top 10 hit. It's not on here?!?), and a few too many tracks from the last two albums. Nobody really thinks "All the Way to Reno" is one of REM's greatest hits, do they? Also, "All the Right Friends," which was an old early-'80s tune recorded for the Vanilla Sky soundtrack, is on here, inexplicably. The two new songs, "Bad Day," and "Animal," are good, and hint at a more rock direction for the new album. That's what I'm hoping for, anyway.

"The Great Beyond" teased REM fans that their next album would be a little more up-tempo, but alas, such was not to be. Instead, Reveal was almost as drum-less as UP had been, though it was a little happier. The album has the feel of the car ride home after a nice day at the beach. Which is great, but doesn't exactly rock, you know? And once you get past "Imitation of Life" and "The Lifting" (my two favorite songs on here, by the way), the songs are slo-o-ow. Slower 'n molasses on a cold day, to use a Southern metaphor.

After UP came out, REM did a tour in the summer of '99 (I saw them in St. Louis, and it was an excellent show) where they teased fans with a new song called "Great Beyond." That song, as it turns out, was written for the soundtrack to Man on the Moon, the Jim Carrey movie about Andy Kaufman. The movie sucked balls, but I enjoyed the soundtrack, probably because in addition to "Great Beyond," REM did several instrumental tracks and a weird duet with Carrey as Kaufman (and Tony Clifton). Plus, you get the theme from "Taxi" AND Exile's "Kiss You All Over." And who doesn't need at least one copy of those songs on CD?

September 1: The Kicks - Hello Hong Kong
September 2: Lucky Boys Confusion - Commitment
September 3: Go Kart Go - Flying
September 4: Chronic Future - Lines in My Face
September 5: Steriogram - Schmack
September 6: Longpigs - The Sun is Often Out
September 7: Six by Seven - The Way I Feel Today
September 8: Ingram Hill - June's Picture Show
September 9: The Divine Comedy - Regeneration
September 10: Various Artists - Future Soundtrack for America
September 11: Various Artists - Rock Against Bush, Vol. 2
September 12: Our Lady Peace - Spiritual Machines
September 13: Guster - Lost and Gone Forever
September 14: Sloan - Pretty Together
September 15: Bowling for Soup - A Hangover You Don't Deserve
September 16: OKGo - (self-titled)
September 17: REM - Chronic Town
September 18: REM - Reckoning
September 19: REM - Fables of the Reconstruction
September 20: REM - Life's Rich Pageant
September 21: REM - Document
September 22: REM - Eponymous
September 23: Green Day - American Idiot
September 24: REM - Out of Time
September 25: REM - Monster
September 26: REM - New Adventures in Hi-Fi
September 27: REM - In the Attic: Alternative Recordings 1985-1989
September 28: REM - Losing My Religion / Near Wild Heaven
September 29: REM - UP
September 30: REM - Daysleeper / At My Most Beautiful

Best album: REM - Fables of the Reconstruction
Worst album: Chronic Future - Lines in My Face
Biggest disappointment: the fact that I've lost my copy of Green.

Well, I can report that Matt is planning to update this thing at some point. He promised. But I forge ahead; October sees a lot of albums I'm looking forward to, including the new REM, Jimmy Eat World, and a live Better than Ezra album. Let's talk at 10.

I decided to do these two UP-era singles to close out September. "Daysleeper" is pretty essential, with a bad instrumental and an alternate version of an UP track as the b-sides. "At My Most Beautiful," though, features my favorite REM b-side ever, a cover of "Passenger" by Iggy Pop featuring Jools Holland of Squeeze on piano, plus a live version of "Country Feedback" with the Verve's old steel guitar player guesting. Very cool.

On the Monster tour, Bill Berry suffered an anuerysm on stage, then took several months to recover. So it wasn't really a huge surprise when he quit the band as they were in the stages of recording the follow-up to New Adventures in Hi-Fi. Whatever songs were being worked on got tossed out the window (hopefully they'll show up on a box set or something someday), and the remaining three members, with new producer Pat McCarthy, recorded UP. And it sounds like... a band without a drummer. Joey Waronker from Beck's band came in and played a little, but some songs have just drum machines or no drums at all.
There's some good stuff on here, like "Hope," "Daysleeper," and "Walk Unafraid," but there's also a lot of unfocused mishmash, like "Sad Professor."
The album struck an odd chord with me, though, as it came out about a month into my year abroad studying in Manchester, England. To feel lost and adrift in a foreign country, then hear an album by your favorite band that feels lost and adrift itself is strangely comforting.

I like to collect REM CD singles, mostly for the B-sides, partially because you can usually get them for a buck or so in used-CD shops nowadays. Anyways, before I went to "new REM," I figured I'd get these two Out of Time-era singles out of the way. You get one not-very-good instrumental b-side, and four live tracks across the formats. One is a strange cover of "Tom's Diner" that's a duet with Billy Bragg, two are acoustic versions of songs from Out of Time, and then there's a version of "After Hours," an old swing standard. Again, nothing essential.

A few years ago, to celebrate their 100th anniversary, EMI Records cleaned out the vaults and put out a bunch of rarities discs. By this point, EMI had acquired the entire IRS catalog, and so had the rights to REM's '80s output. Problem was, IRS had already put out an REM B-sides album. So EMI put this out, which is sort of C-sides. Most of them are available on the European reissues of the IRS albums. I think the only two that are exclusive to this album are the radio edit of "Can't Get There from Here" and a live medley of "Time After Time" and "South Central Rain" with Peter Gabriel's "Red Rain," taken from Dutch radio on the Document tour. Pretty inessential, but it made a nice stopgap between New Adventures and Up for the huge fan like me.