Reviewing your parents' music collection
I have always had a soft spot for melancholy music, melodies that take on sadness with a flair of dramatic awareness. A minor chord progression that presses on the tear ducts just a little bit, swelling strings and grand pianos that underline existential dread and questioning minds. Add to that a couple of sweltering guitar… Continue reading “What a year, what a day, what a life it is” – Supertramp’s “Crime of the Century” questions fitting in by standing out
How can a white, salt-of-the-earth rock musician from New Jersey, obsessed with the metaphoric potential of car brands, his father's working class heritage and the ideal of rock music as a proletariat/political genre not only have a career spanning 20 albums, but make music that still sounds good to a 20-something arts student living in… Continue reading Chevys, Camaros, and Cadillacs or Meet me at the Lost & Found – Bruce Springsteen’s “Darkness on the Edge of Town”
The music video to Janelle Monáe's 2010 single Cold War presents only a slither of the narrative richness of her debut album The ArchAndroid - and yet, it is a masterpiece that embraces simplicity and emotion to get to the core of this Afrofuturistic, genre-bending concept piece: the road to self-realisation and love is a… Continue reading Dealer’s choice: “The ArchAndroid” by Janelle Monáe
The moog synthesiser is an incredibly interesting instrument: as versatile as the human voice, essential to the rise of prog rock in the 1970s and still a hallmark for synthesiser virtuosity today. What a shame that one of its first popular instrumental compositions has been appropriated by a blue CGI frog that lived only to… Continue reading Music That You Can Moog To – Captain Cool Presents: “28 Big Ones” by Hot Butter
I don't know how to write about Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here. I've been staring at my laptop for more than ten minutes, trying to find the words to describe how I feel about this record. Trying to capture when I first listened to it, how it became the most important record in a… Continue reading Sing me a Song of Hope and Despair or Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here”
The Dad Anthology 