Albums of the Week for 2/12/24

Kidney Stone Edition

Feb 12, 2024

Eventful week! I don’t mean to bore you, but early on Thursday morning I woke up with the worst pain in my back I’ve ever had. It passed after about 15 minutes and made me think it was just some weird strain I had caused while sleeping. Then I woke up again and needed to yelp, cry, vomit and panic. I knew it was a kidney stone almost immediately, and after talking to the 24-hour advice nurse on the phone, trying to be quiet not to wake my toddler and seeing my wife never having seen me in real, true pain, it was decided I should take a trip to the ER. Now, we live in a small town and the nearest ER is about 40 minutes away. And we have a toddler and it was 3am. Anyway, long story short, I was able to get there, pass it with minimal intervention but it was a horrible, horrible experience.

It was almost exactly 10 years after my first one, which was much different!

Anyway, gross. In better news, the day after I was able to finally get at tattoo in tribute to my son. It is so great, and I will post it someday.

Work picked up, I got enrolled in two big online certification classes and some other things. I did finish reading High Bias by Marc Masters and it was delightful! I’ve been in a cassette mood and hope to incorporate them and more physical media in general in the near future. I planned on writing a review about the book this past week, but things got away from me. David Pike of Popmatters had a nice look at the book and another recent release about the same medium this week, though.

Anyway, I loved all of the records from this past week, like truly loved. Let’s get on with it.

Thoughts on Albums of the Week from 2/5:

Jellyfish - Spilt Milk

This is one of those instances where I am genuinely annoyed I hadn’t heard this record before. I have seen the album cover and seen mutuals praise it for near-25 years and for whatever reason, I just never delved in. What a mistake. There has probably been a million things written about this album by writers much better than me, but I was pretty blown away. It’s guitar-pop in the truest sense and listening to it, you can connect the dots to the influences it comes from and the influence that it left. Though they are often compared to bands like the Beach Boys, I think they are a bit more straight-forward on the whole, though they do the similar vocal harmonies from time to time. It does ROCK more often than not, bringing to mind bands like Queen, Squeeze and others. The fact that this record came out as Grunge was the dominant and omnipresent sound in rock music is even crazier. Listening to it now, you can draw straight lines to bands like The Shins, Of Montreal, Fountains of Wayne, Marvelous 3 and many more. I’ve listened to it 3 times this week and have zero doubt that were I to have known this album as a teenager, this would be one of my favorite albums of all time. Who knows - it may still get there.

Wyatt Ellis - Happy Valley

I had listened to this record like half a dozen times in two days before choosing it as album of the week last week and I believe I said this in the last post - but right now, this is my album of the year. It’s shocking that this a record attributed to a 14-year old kid, but it’s so great. Now, granted, each track has a well-regarded bluegrass veteran on it, so it is truly hard to tell how much of the instrumental greatness of this record rests on Wyatt’s soldiers, but I’m not too bothered about that when the music contained is more or less a perfectly executed version of my single favorite sound. I’m a huge nerd for instrumental string music, bluegrass/newgrass, etc. I like it when it jams but I don’t necessarily want it to be fusion-y. I want well played, melodic, sometimes ripping traditional stuff and that is what we get here. It just so absurdly pleasant to listen to. I know not everyone that reads this is going to vibe with music like this, but it might be my number 1 draft pick if I could only listen to one genre. It’s going to be crazy to see what Wyatt can do in the coming years of what promises to be a long, long career.

MC5 - High Time

I love the MC5. I’ve listened to Kick Out the Jams like a thousand times, had Back in the USA on cd and at some point had a bootleg dvd copy I paid way too much for of the “mythical” movie “MC5: A True Testimonial” and yet I never listened to this album. I don’t know why, it literally doesn’t make sense. They have hardly any releases, and yet I just…never got around to this? I for sure had it on mp3 for a decade or more and it probably sounded like shit, but now that I’ve listened to it a few times, I think I can say it’s the best MC5 record. It’s not as raucous or as much of a STATEMENT as the first two records, but despite the fact that band is falling apart, it is their strongest set of songs. This is MC5 if they went the way of Thin Lizzy, groovier than ever and able to change pace here and there. It rips, it rocks. I love it. RIP Wayne Kramer, “Poison” from this record absolutely kicks as.

Albums of the Week for 2/12/24:

Album #1 - This Week in History