Recently-Acquired Vinyl LP of the Day #8: 'Throwing Muses'

Following-on from yesterday’s entry & its idiosyncratic nature, it seems appropriate today to feature Throwing Muses’ eponymously-titled debut album, previously-owned & purchased originally on vinyl shortly after its release, on one of those rare hunches of buying something without having heard the band’s sound at all, being inspired to do so by a music paper review (something florid from, probably, the Melody Maker, quite possibly written by Chris Roberts, including a line that ran something like “a thousand tiny seahorses swimming past your window”) & the fact the record was released by 4AD, then very much the label-de-jour featuring as it did a number of then-favourite artistes.

At the time, it proved to be an astonishing listening experience, never having quite heard the like of before, often going to some very dark places, yet electrifyingly, with such curious song-structures & such a range of vocal ‘techniques’, from soft cooing to screaming (& ‘Vicky’s Box’ in particular can still send a shiver down the spine), and it remains a uniquely powerful piece of work, imperfect in the best way, again best heard via the physicality of vinyl, thus rendering it another essential purchase when opportunity presented itself.

A Not-So-Still Life...

Today the opposite of tomato is fruit & nut Toblerone (mmm)


graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm
original source: 'The Times' 10/03/08

Another image used as source material because of its obviously ‘photographic’ appearance, the capturing of a frozen micro-moment yet suggestive of action & movement courtesy of the blurred elements of the composition. Again, the drawn transcription relates, in formal terms at least, to the blurring technique utilised by Gerhard Richter, &, of course, the process of drawing & the temporal investment involved contrasts with the split-second creation of the original photographic image, although both drawing & running share a physically active dimension & sense of being-in-the-world.

By way of a sort-of coincidence relating to this image, the current reading & research matter includes the most handsome volume, ‘The Not-So-Still Life’, a survey of a century (i.e. the 20th) of Californian painting & sculpture based on the genre of the still life & its development over the course of that time. Fascinating stuff, both in the featured artists’ engagement with contemporaneous developments elsewhere in the (art) world & their deviations from such, lavishly & beautifully illustrated with many a fine example of work. I came across the book during a visit to the workplace by a bookseller, we chose it for our own resources from amongst the selection on offer, & then, suitably impressed & enthused to do so, I managed to track down a copy for my personal library via Amazon for a mere £3, absolute irresistible bargain! A while back I discovered a wonderful resource for cataloguing one’s books online, Librarything, which also has an active community aspect: well worth investigating for any bibliophile.



Soundtrack:


Sparklehorse ‘Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot’
Belle & Sebastian ‘If You’re Feeling Sinister’
Sigur Ros ‘Takk’
Throwing Muses ‘In a Doghouse’
Lambchop ‘What Another man Spills’

Dug out the Sparklehorse for a listen after surprisingly encountering a snippet of one of its tracks during the course of a TV programme, this particular album being the first in a wonderful trinity of such also including ‘Good Morning Spider’ & ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’: I’m a great admirer of Mark Linkous’s aesthetic & the unique sound he creates, the inclusion of all manner of instruments he uses to layer his songs with such engaging textures, & of course the range of the songs themselves, from full-on, wig-flipping rockouts to irresistible melodic pop tunes (my first encounter with his ouevre was in fact ‘Sick of Goodbyes’, one such example) to the most gentle, fragile & vulnerable melancholic (almost more so than anyone) ballads, all suffused with a unique poetry & vision: a true artist, a painter of wonderful sound pictures.

For whatever whim - perhaps the idiosyncrasies of Sparklehorse - something drew my thoughts back to the first Throwing Muses releases, the eponymous debut album & the subsequent ‘Chains Changed’ EP, eventually discovered as existing as the ‘In a Doghouse’ collection: still sounding as astonishing & electrifying now as upon first hearing 20 years ago (more than!), music & an energy coming as close to escaping description as it’s possible to imagine, a truly incredible sound & experience, the sheer visceral quality, the thrill of which I always felt they somehow never managed to recapture…thoroughly recommended.

Must write upon the magnificence of Lambchop, another one-off in terms of their aesthetic, sometime too…