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21.8.02
Posted by tim at 22:45
It's hard to know what to say on a site that can be seen by everyone, but may be seen by no one. My nearest and dearest and people I wouldn't know from spit and everyone in between.
Bought the Whitlams' TORCH THE MOON the other day - have been playing it reasonably constantly since. A great lyrics album - things that made me actually laugh out loud, and things that are spooky they remind me so much of things I've experienced. It's really easy to slip into that whole cryptic thing when you're writing lyrics, but with the Whitlams the words are as straightforward as a book, and they can communicate just as strongly as the author does in a novel, which is pretty damn impressive given the constraints of fitting words to a 3-4 minute song. The music's pretty awesome, too - really groovy, laid back beach music as well as the usual beautiful romantic stuff. It's a real summer album, come to think of it, with the cover art and everything, it's funny hearing it in the middle of a Melbourne winter. One of the standout tracks music-wise is OUT THE BACK, which features a string arrangement that was done by the composer Phillip (Philip?) Glass, apparently. It's a very coooool piece of music - the strings are all sliding and Gershwin-like. You can tell it's done by a real "composer" composer, rather than a songwriter. I mean, songwriters do amazing things, and there are musical things on Smashing Pumpkins albums which have effects on my ears and head the like of which I have never received from "classical" music, but on the level of harmonies and knowing how to achieve very specific effects harmonically, you can pick music that has come from someone who makes their living crafting sounds out of the dots on the paper.
Just checked - it's not Phillip Glass, it's Peter Sculthorpe - could have been really embarassing if it was actually, like Tex Perkins or someone, my whole theory would be out the window. Hey by the way, Scott, in BETTER JUDGEMENT, you wrote that "this must be the point..." line, didn't you? I seem to remember it was like one of those things where you sang the melody and you just spontaneously formed words to fit it. Maybe not, I may well be going mad. It's happened before.
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