The other day on the way back from Costco we’d heard her single “Retributions of an Awful Life” from her 2023 EP A Comforting Notion and it occurred to me that she’s definitely someone I should listen to more often. Why? Because she somehow manages to capture what goth and post-punk sounded like in the late 80s and early 90s — a good ten years before she was born, mind you — and embraced that sound fully. Sometimes she sounds like mid-80s Siouxsie & the Banshees, and sometimes she sounds like early Garbage. And sometimes she sounds like Liliput. It’s all a wild mix of that cold and dark post-punk that I still gravitate to all these years later.
Hey, remember when I did Blogging the Beatles way back in the day? Where I went through the entire official discography and geeked out on one of my all-time favorite bands? (If not, find the tag for it at the bottom of my blog and give it a read!)
So lately I’ve been going through my mp3 library doing a bit of clean-up and reorganizing, and I landed on my Depeche Mode collection, and it dawned on me: I really loved this band back inthe day. Like, they got me through a lot of emotional crap during my teen years, inspired a lot of my creativity, and if they’re ever on the radio I will most definitely be singing along. They’re also the band I’ve seen live the most.
And it dawned on me: maybe I should do another Blogging the… for this band! Going through those early albums and singles, I suddenly remembered all these deep cuts and multiple remixes and realized that I really have not given them the love I once did, not in a long time. While this version won’t be as musically nerdy as the Beatles one was, it will most likely be a lot more emotional and personal.
So I’ve begun the process of revising A Division of Souls for its tenth anniversary edition later this year, and I’ve been listening to my Songs from the Eden Cycle mixtapes during these sessions, and it suddenly occurs to me:
I am sorely tempted to add that ‘Director’s Cut’ ending that I’d come up with soon after I self-published it that takes place immediately after Poe leaves Christine’s building. At the time I felt it was extraneous, but in retrospect it actually provides a stronger tie with the opening scenes of Book 2, The Persistence of Memories. [Am I thinking of ‘remastering’ that one as well as The Balance of Light? Yes I am!] I’d of course need to change it from its screenplay format to prose, but that shouldn’t be too much of a problem.
I wasn’t planning on revisiting the mixtapes and the albums and playlists while working on it all, but now that I’m doing it, why the hell not? It’s an incredibly long list that not only includes music from the 1996-2000 HMV/Phoenix Effect era and the 2000-2005 Yankee Candle/Trilogy years, but the 1993-1995 Boston/True Faith years and the 2010-2015 Spare Oom/self-pub era as well. There’s a lot to revisit. Some of my all-time favorite albums have deep connections with the Mendaihu Universe.
I’m kind of playing this out to ensure that newer music gets a decent amount of play here as well, especially since I’m doing this as a lead-in to working on MU4 and perhaps other stories in that universe. I’ve been wanting to return to it for a few years now, and considering I’m nearly done with Theadia, I feel I’m finally ready for it.
My first college semester over, and what did I have to show for it? I mean, aside from being a moody bastard that felt completely out of place no mater where they were? Well, my grades weren’t the best but they weren’t terrible. I was squeaking by hovering around a B- verging into C+ territory, primarily due to my inability to study correctly (and my moods interrupting said studying now and again). Surprising no one, I fell back into the terrible habit of handing in late homework and winging the tests as I could. Did I talk to someone about it while I was there? I don’t really remember, honestly. I remember going to some office where we talked about grades, but I think that was nearer the end of my freshman year.
Yeah, I know. I’m making it sound like I probably could have had some therapy, and in retrospect it probably would have helped, but at the time I was too stuck in the mindset of ‘I can’t afford that so I may as well work through it’ to even think about it. [That, by the way, would end up being my health rule of thumb the entire time I was in Boston.] I looked for those ways, and often found them in my writing — the poems and lyrics — and teaching myself to play guitar and bass properly.
Come December, I was ready for that winter break. Some time off to take T out for a date or two, and hang with the Vanishing Misfits gang who’d also returned for their breaks. Back during Thanksgiving break the Flying Bohemians had their last jam session at Nate’s house (it would also be our last session with him), and despite all the confusion and frustration all of us felt, we realized that we were also growing up and getting better at what we liked doing.
That was the eye-opener for me: I may not have been the best academically, but my writing and my music was improving by leaps and bounds. And perhaps I was even figuring myself out in a social way as well. Maybe things weren’t all bad after all…?
Electronic, “Getting Away with It” single, released 4 December 1989. Bernard Sumner from New Order? Johnny Marr from the Smiths? Neil Tennant from the Pet Shop Boys? Anne Dudley from The Art of Noise? Hot damn, this sounded like a flipping amazing supergroup!! Even though this side project would be primarily Sumner and Marr’s, this was one hell of a great debut single, and it still gets play today.
The Rave-Ups, Hamlet Meets John Doe EP, released 5 December 1989. This countrified alt-rock band dropped a sneak peek of their new album that would drop in January, and the single “Respectfully King of Rain” got a ton of airplay on WFNX.
Indio, Big Harvest, released 7 December 1989. This is one of those ‘oh, THAT song!’ one-hit wonders, but what a hit it is! Even Eddie Vedder covered it (for the soundtrack to 2007’s Into the Wild). The album kind of feels like the last gasp of that late 80s polished lite rock, but what Indio did with it made it a tight and enjoyable album.
Bill Pritchard, Three Months, Three Weeks and Two Days, released 11 December 1989. Pritchard is a great songwriter that somehow never made it in the US and barely did in his native UK, and yet France and other European countries loved the hell out of him. He might come across as a bit cynical and jaded, but his melodies and clever wordplay were exactly what I was looking for to take that empty spot that Morrissey seemed to be vacating. Come to think of it, this album is very much kind of a proto-Belle and Sebastian in that it’s full of songs about dim hope, slim chances and autumnal romances. For an album that got almost zero airplay (WFNX played “Tommy and Co” very infrequently), this became one of my most-played tapes at the time. A sort of 180 from Pretty Hate Machine!
*
…and that was it for the new releases for that month for me, but of course this also meant that I had some time to focus on what I needed to put on the latest volume of my year-end mixtapes! And this was going to be an interesting mix at that. It ended up being a crossover of sorts, between the indie sounds of college radio and WAMH and the modern-rock sheen of commercial radio and WFNX. It bounced all over the place, and I think I’d finally learned how to make a proper extended mixtape series at this point, so it all worked out well. Here’s a few songs that popped up on Does Truth Dance Does Truth Sing: The Singles 1989, which I’d made on New Year’s Eve.
Ultra Vivid Scene, “Mercy Seat” from Ultra Vivid Scene, released 31 October 1988
Robyn Hitchcock, “Swirling” from Queen Elvis, released 1 March 1989.
fIREHOSE, “Time with You” from fROMOHIO, released 1 March 1989
The Cure, “Fascination Street” from Disintegration, released 2 May 1989.
Clan of Xymox, “Imagination” from Twist of Shadows, released 10 April 1989.
Bob Mould, “Wishing Well” from Workbook, released 2 May 1989.
The Wonder Stuff, “A Wish Away” from The Eight Legged Groove Machine, released 15 August 1988.
Public Image Ltd, “Warrior” from 9, released 30 May 1989.
Martin L Gore, “Gone” from counterfeit ep, released 12 June 1989.
I’ve been looking forward to this rerelease for a good couple of months now. It’s one of my favorite albums of 1987, and it’s a solid record from start to finish. It’s a soundtrack of my later teen years, in between the bouts of listening to college radio and the waning months of listening to pop radio.
Prince’s Sign o’ the Times intrigues me because it’s the end result of three different music projects. It’s the aborted next album with the Revolution, Dream Factory. It’s a solo project of androgynous sped-up vocals, Camille. and it’s a collection of both plus more, built into a three-disc behemoth called Crystal Ball. It features the best of all three, and decades later, the deluxe reissue (which drops tomorrow) features nearly everything else that was left off.
The three projects are quite different in their own ways… Dream Factory kind of picks up where Parade and Around the World in a Day left off, improving on his stellar mid-80s songwriting and the band’s tight and often improvisational sound. Camille on the other hand veers towards his uninhibited Sexy Prince character (which would surface less over the years but when it did, such as on The Black Album, it didn’t hold back). Crystal Ball ended up being sort of his White Album, a sprawling mass of past and present ideas and egos.
Some of what got left off of the final version of Sign o’ the Times eventually popped up on b-sides, soundtracks or future albums; the eventual official version of Crystal Ball, released in early 1998, would feature some of the outtakes as well. Prince being Prince, however, his recording regimen was so prolific that there was still so much left in his legendary vault. I’ve heard some of the rarities via bootlegs — a fantastic Revolution-backed version of “Strange Relationship” is a must-hear, for instance – and it’ll be great to hear them with a clear remastering.
I’ll do a recap of the reissue once I’ve given it a good listen! Stay tuned!
[Posted originally at Dreamwidth, my personal blog. Reposting it here (with slight editing) as an update.]
Yes, folks! I’m still here among the living. I’ve been spending all this time focusing on finishing off In My Blue World (which I’m FINALLY going to drop in March! Wooohoo!) and preparing myself for the revision work for Diwa & Kaffi (yes, I’ve decided that’s going to be the title until further notice). I’ve also been enjoying the extended semi-hiatus from the internets, focusing more on offline projects and personal things. It’s been long delayed and much needed.
I’ve been tempted more than a few times to return to the blogging schedule that I’ve held over the last couple of years, but I’m holding off. As much as I truly enjoyed it, it would often drain me. I ended up repeating myself on more than a few occasions, often without realizing. Some days I’d have all kinds of things to talk about, but other days (especially near the end there) I was really straining to come up with semi-original content.
But I also wanted to move on. I’ve been blogging about writing and music for years now, some years more consistently than others, and after a great personal banner year of music collecting and novel writing, I felt it was time for me to shift my focus. It’s like when I talk about the Yankee Candle/Belfry years: I absolutely loved the schedule that afforded me the time to relax as well as improve my writing, but that could only last for so long. I may be a creature of habit and want to stick with that sort of thing for years at a time, I’m also a creature of wanting to shake things up. I also happen to love the idea of starting a completely new lifestyle, whatever it may be. I get to a point where I realize I’ve gone as far as I can with what I’m doing, and I need to move on. There’s varying reasons for that — I’ve exhausted my interest, I’ve moved on, my tastes have changed/shifted, and so on. Sometimes it’s a deeply personal thing that will change my life, sometimes it’s just an ephemeral thing.
(Speaking of which, I could go on about how hard it is to shift to that new lifestyle while attempting to shed old habits, ideas and so on, but I’ll save that for another entry.)
I’m still a music-collecting geek and a writer, and I highly doubt those two things will be changing any time soon. But what I’ve realized over the past month and a half is that I still have a long way to go if I want to make the changes I do want to make. Sliding back into old habits and schedules will not help me, as again — I can be quite the creature of habit. I’m going out of my way NOT to return to things like that, as it’s the only way I’ll be able to get to where I DO need to be.
That said, Walk in Silence is going to remain on hiatus for just a little while longer, while I get my writing and personal priorities taken care of, and while I decide what I’m going to do with it. In the meantime, I’ll be making more steady (and more personal) appearances at my Dreamwidth account. Thanks again for hanging around for so long!
So yeah, I’ve been busy. Day Job has been testing my patience the last few weeks but otherwise it’s same old same old. I’m on the hopefully last go-round of revision for In My Blue World and am planning for a March release for that. Then it’s into first-level revision for the Apartment Complex story.
In other news, I’ve bought myself a Gretsch Electromatic (thank you, Tall Toad Music!) and I am absolutely in love with this thing. It fits quite nicely in my hands and plays just wonderfully. I’ve been recording lo-fi demos on my phone for my Drunken Owl project, which I’m hoping to expand on soon.
Other than that? Not too much to report. January had some really cool music releases, and perhaps in a few days I’ll do a quick rundown of it all. But yeah, I’m treating this hiatus as a much-welcomed vacation from the internets. I’m still floating around on Twitter now and again, and I’ve been having some personal conversations with friends, but other than that, I don’t have any huge project plans on the boards. Even my whiteboard schedule is still blank!
So…not sure when this hiatus will end, but I promise I’ll try to be back soon enough. Thanks for waiting!
Summertime in 2018 seemed to go by in a blur for me somehow…I know I was ridiculously busy with the writing of both In My Blue World and the Apartment Complex story, not to mention dealing with consistent Day Job drama. What kept me sane, as always, was the music. It was around this time that I’d decided to change my listening habits (I’d been listening to Indie617 and occasionally SiriusXM up to that point) but found myself drawn to KEXP out of Seattle. That station provided me with a hell of a lot of new bands I’d never heard otherwise, and I’m happier for it.
Erasure, World Be Live, released 6 July. I can only describe this live record as ‘fabulous’, partly because the tunes are fantastic, and Andy Bell’s between-song commentary is absolutely hilarious.
Cowboy Junkies, All That Reckoning, released 13 July. A powerful record about facing that which you fear.
Tanukichan, Sundays, released 13 July. Not quite indie rock, not quite dreampop, but contains the best parts of both. A lovely relaxing album.
Gaika, Basic Volume, released 27 July. Trippy dancehall rap from Brixton with a mood that channels the murkiness of Tricky.
ShadowParty, ShadowParty, released 27 July. A fun, poppy alt-rock album from a sort-of supergroup containing members of New Order’s touring band.
El Ten Eleven, Banker’s Hill, released 10 August. I seem to be drawn to these indietronic-duo-with-a-sampler-footpedal bands, but I’m not complaining. Thanks to KEXP for pointing me in their direction!
Prince, Anthology: 1995-2010, released 17 August. I’d stopped listening to him sometime around Diamonds and Pearls, so I missed out on quite a lot. This collection surprised the hell out of me and made me appreciate his later work.
Mitski, Be the Cowboy, released 17 August. I’m a late follower of her work but this was a great starting off point for me.
Death Cab for Cutie, Thank You for Today, released 17 August. “Gold Rush” is quite the earworm for me.
Nothing, Dance On the Blacktop, released 24 August. Loud and crunchy, but quiet and tender as well. An interesting detour from their last album, but I love it.
Interpol, Marauder, released 24 August. They seem to have returned to the darker, louder post-punk that made Turn On the Bright Lights such a great album.
tunng, Songs You Make at Night, released 24 August. Late follower to this band as well, but I’m glad I found them. Quiet, delicate, and very quirky.
Paul McCartney, Egypt Station, released 7 September. How does this man keep writing such amazing records??
Eric Bachmann, No Recover, released 7 September. A lovely and tender album. This got heavy rotation during my writing sessions.
Chai, Pink, released 7 September. J-Punk with the energy of Shonen Knife and the goofiness of Puffy AmiYumi.
Bob Moses, Battle Lines, released 14 September. “Heaven Only Knows” is definitely in my Top 5 favorite tunes of the year. The whole album is simply amazing.
Failure, The Furthest Thing EP, released 14 September. Third of three EPs released, with the full album dropping a few months later.
Metric, Art of Doubt, released 21 September. A return to their rockier sound, though their synth layers are still front and center.
The Joy Formidable, Aaarth, released 28 September. Noisy, wild, and sultry. Listen to this loud.
Dave Grohl, Play EP, released 28 September. Sure, you could write this off as a twenty-minute long prog rock experiment, but Dave really is an amazing multi-instrumentalist.
Walk In Silence 