Apparently, I buy too many records

My wife Helen, like every other woman i've ever lived with, believes that I buy too many records.

Which, as every record-buying man knows, is a ridiculous belief.

I will concede, however, that I do indeed buy a lot of records and that I don't afford them the same amount of listens and attention that I did 20 or 30 years ago.

To this end, I have decided to blog about the records that I buy, in order to help my appreciation of them - and perhaps to show Helen that I don't buy that many records after all.

Because i'm crap with deadlines the blog posts will be sporadic and probably be about a month or 2 behind but that's just the way i am! The posts will not necessarily be actual reviews (most likely comments, at best) and will generally be pretty damn short due to the reasons outlined above. As a writer in a previous existence i have decided not to worry about writing as art in the pieces but, instead, to attempt to convey feeling over semantic (and often grammatic) perfection.

And 'OCRB'? It stands for 'Obsessive Compulsive Record Buying' - a little known mental health affliction that is potentially damaging to the bank account but ultimately life-affirming. It is sad.......but a nice form of sad.

Wednesday 30 March 2011

Iron & Wine: Kiss each other clean (4ad)

Quite a few rabid Iron & Wine fans have shaved off their beards in disgust at all the extra instrumentation on this album and the fact that Sam Beam is actually managing to hold a tune on this one. I can sneer at those fools because I'm only a casual fan but i know exactly how they feel - us obsessional fans hate it when our heroes diversify from the path we expect.them.to.take. I was similarly arsey when tindersticks and lambchop attempted to get funky and, typically, these are the albums by the great mumblers that i rarely played and thus never gave a chance (and still wont!) The only difference to this great culty equation was when swans (© the greatest band in the world, ever) discovered tunes and the ability to turn the volume down - i, and many other obsessives, loved it. Perversely, it was king swan Michael Gira who hated the new direction and after 3 albums of tunes he returned to hitting us over the head again. And made their worse album.

So, what about this album? It's chock full of fabulous tunes, great lyrics, moments of occasional stunning beauty ('Godless brother of beauty' is breathtaking) and the sometimes strange addition of horns that don't always work. In short, it's less country but more upbeat - but still very wry and clever.
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