Music Vacancy.

Is that a guy in an ancient Greek robe in the background?

Album: Use Your Illusion (a.k.a the first one)
Artist: Guns N’ Roses

Summed up in one word: Guitar
Would I recommend to others: Not really, I’ll assume everyone else in the world has listened to this album before me.
Animal it reminded me of: An iguana.
Situation this album definitely ISN’T suited for: A sea captain’s jig after finding some sweet gold booty.

I was at JB Hi-fi looking for a new album to give a try. I came across the classics like AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses and Iron Maiden. It might shock you but apart from AC/DC, 2DayFM don’t really play much of that sort of music. It’s also music which I’ve always wanted to try out but never really gotten around to. I love AC/DC but have never been able to get their music off iTunes. I gather they want people to buy a whole album, rather than dismembering it by pulling out certain parts and only buying bits. Though you can restrict it so people can only buy whole albums on iTunes too… I guess AC/DC also like producing physical CDs.

Anyway, back on topic. I’m not doing AC/DC right now, so most of that rant and this one here are irrelevant. I decided to go with Guns N’ Roses. Apart from “Sweet Child of Mine” I’d never really heard other songs of theirs before. There was a recommendation for one certain album in a hand written note stuck near the album in true JB Hi-Fi style. It explained that “Use Your Illusion I” had a range of different styles of rock on it. I figured this was as good a choice as any. I had high hopes and dam was I disappointed.

Well to be honest, it wasn’t THAT bad. I loved the guitar and backing music, I just wasn’t a fan of the lead singer’s singing at times. Occasionally when he sung at a slower pace it was okay but when he started to get excited and yell, I found it a bit unpleasant. The yelling might have been because the album is supposedly in the genre of both heavy metal and rock (according to Wikipedia, insert your Wikipedia accuracy joke here). It is the first album I’ve written about that I’ve had to put into two categories and the first album I’ve ever heard of which had it’s own sequel? It was even preplanned to include an ‘I’ on the album cover and everything.

I read on Wikipedia afterwards that there is more than one lead singer. So maybe I just found one of the singers unpleasant. This is definitely one of the first albums I’ve written about which had its own Wikipedia entry with plenty of info. I could get used to this.

“Bad Obsession” had harmonicas and really reminded me of the Blues Brothers very briefly before the lead singer started and that reminising disappeared. The imagery in my mind turned as Brother Jake and Elwood suddenly were replaced with skinny long haired older rockers. Rockers with no suits and ties but more chains, fire, no sleeved shirts, they were wearing a similar amount of black though. Kind of like Ozzy Osbourne but without the whole biting of bird/bat heads. I did enjoy the song though.

Quite a few of the songs reminded me of Jack Black. I love Jack Black despite the fact he seems to play the same character with the same mannerisms movie after movie. I’m a big Tenacious D fan (loved the movie) and enjoyed “Be Kind Rewind”. I gather the singing Mr Black had a lot of inspiration from Guns N’ Roses. The song “Back Off Bitch” has a point where they yell “back off” and it totally sounded like one part in “School of Rock” where Jack Black sings the same words “back off” over and over. Guess it was a music reference I never understood until now. Obviously due to my common uneducated music mind and all. Maybe I’m like the Savage in “Brave New World”, slowly discovering musical civilization. I sure hope my musical self doesn’t end up like the Savage in “Brave New World” though. That would suck.

The guitar in “Live and Let Die” really had this big American event feel. Like the sort of music they’d have before a big Rocky fight. Or a wrestling match. It was the style of up tempo music which gets the public pumped up for violence. I wonder if any boxer/wrestler has thought to use that in their intro. The words “Live and Let Die” probably do match the boxer mentality right?

The end of “November Rain” at about 6.50 minutes in briefly reminded me of news telecast music (or the sort of music they’d have in those “look at our experienced newsreader” style ads). It was only for about 15 seconds before it moved into deep satanic sounding vocals instead. Talk about a crazy ride.

With a mix of Jack Black, fighting music, news telecasts and Blues Brothers morphing into older skinnier rockers (rock musicans, not rocking chair enthusiasts) – this musical savage had plenty to reflect on that’s for sure.

Thanks to whoever that was that wrote the note near the album at JB Hi-Fi for their suggestion. You don’t have to have music store note writing credentials to suggest some music for me to try out. I’m looking for different music which is totally away from the mainstream music on the radio (preferably not the classics like Guns N’ Roses either but something totally different). Send me a tweet @thatpatrickguy or an email.

I honestly don't know what to say about this cover.

Album: Music for Spaceships
Artist: man@mouse

Summed up in one word: Insane
Would I recommend to others: Not really
Animal it reminded me of: An android mouse wearing a helmet like Judge Dredd.
Situation this album definitely ISN’T suited for: Elevator music. Especially the first two songs. That would really annoy the crap out of me.

The first song “Mercury” definitely confused me. It was like when you have two YouTube videos playing in different tabs on your browser without noticing it at first. I honestly stopped the music when I started listening to it expecting to find something else was playing in the background.

It didn’t get any better, the second song just sounded like lots of noise and notes being played all at once. It reminded me of sitting in music class at school, when everyone was first practising their own pieces on different old casio keyboards. To be honest, it annoyed the crap out of me. Eventually the noise stopped and it was just relaxing drums which was nice. Then when music started again, at first it reminded like the background music to one of those 90s point and click adventure games “Out of Order”. Then near the end I had vague reminders of the music in “Jones in the Fast Lane” but only very briefly (didn’t stop me embedding a YouTube clip which plays all the various music from the game next to this paragraph).

The album kept reminding me of different things throughout. That in itself reminded me of a sound clip my lecturer got us to listen to in my psychology unit at university. It was some sort of mixture of noise with no actual words and was played to us over and over for a minute or so. While listening he got us all to write down what we heard. Everyone heard different things in the noise. I don’t remember the lesson in all of this but this music reminded me of that moment. Other things the album reminded me of:

• Tron
• My old dial up modem
• Duke Nukem
• Nascar/Formula One racing
• Robocop
• Various 90s computer games I couldn’t remember the names of
• Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
• Old horror movie music
• Traditional Indian music
• The sound of music when there’s something wrong with your player and it starts to play really really fast
• A small airplane
• The sound of those old motorcycle games in 2D where you had to jump various obstacles

It definitely does have a space feel to it though, so it’s true to its album name and song titles. Definitely was very different to anything I’d heard before. No other album I’d heard before came even close to this in similarity really. Maybe this album is amazing to electro fans. What I definitely learnt from this experience is that I am not one of those fans – electro is not my style of music at all.

If you’re interested in listening to his music, I listened to it here at SoundCloud – http://soundcloud.com/manatmouse/sets/music-for-spaceships.

Thanks to man@mouse for his suggestion! If you have a suggestion, no matter what it is and who you are, send me a tweet @thatpatrickguy or an email.

Does this gloominess remind anyone else of London?

Album: The Narrative
Artist: The Narrative

Summed up in one word: Uh… Narrative?
Would I recommend to others: Yep.
Animal it reminded me of: The female singer’s voice was peaceful so i’ll say a peaceful butterfly. No idea about the songs with the male singer. He kinda reminded me of Simple Plan but they aren’t animals…
Situation this album definitely ISN’T suited for: Every single torture scene in the book 1984.

Conveniently, when I finally came around to trying out this band, they’d released a new album pretty much on the same day. Great timing.

Most albums seem to start with an okay song. One which isn’t amazing but isn’t too lousy either. Like a nice middle ground. They don’t show all their cards straight away but they don’t just place down a 2 either (say we’re talking poker here and not some game where 2 is actually a high card). It felt to me like The Narrative didn’t really decide to follow this rule and played their best card first. “Fade”.

I found that already after only listening to “Fade” once, it was already stuck in my head. I loved the lyrics and loved the singer who I thought was quite good. I loved this lyric – “We probably shouldn’t think, cuz thinking leads to questioning and circles you right back to the start”. I’ll avoid a whole philosophical discussion but I thought that was a really interesting thought. Probably shouldn’t think about it. Also, in case you’re wondering, SongMeanings.net and LyricsMania.com both said that cause should be spelt “cuz” so I’ve left the lyric like that.

I wasn’t sure what genre this was, though if you read this blog regularly (I’ll continue to convince myself there’s at least one person who does…) you’ll know my skills in detecting genre aren’t brilliant. According to Suzie (the awesome female singer who suggested I listen to them over Twitter), their music is indie pop. iTunes says that it’s pop. More importantly, when the word iTunes is at the start of a sentence, should it get a capital letter? Why does Apple have to mess around with grammar and name their products with a lower case letter at the start?

One thing which stood out at the start of the album is that they alternate between two main singers. Some songs have a girl singing while others have a guy. I thought the girl had a great voice and really brought me into every song but I didn’t really find the guy drawing me into the song like she did. I mean, he wasn’t an awful singer, so I’m not sure what it was.

The idea of having the main singer alternate was a pretty cool idea though. It ended up feeling like I was listening to two different bands… the feel of each song seemed to change with the singer. Definitely liked the girl better. Sorry dude singer, if you ever actually read this – you can make it up to me and regain some awesomeness points by attempting a cover of a Tenacious D song. Actually, it would be really interesting to see The Narrative do a Tenacious D cover… maybe every band should be required to do a Tenacious D cover before releasing an album. I think that’s a new rule I’ll put into place if I’m ever in a position of power. I think The Narrative could pull off Wonderboy.

Thanks to Suzie for her suggestion! If you have a suggestion, no matter who you are, tweet at me @thatpatrickguy or contact me on that email thing. Or send me a singing telegram.

There are interesting drawings in the album booklet too!

Album: The Out of Money Experience
Artist: The Optimen

Summed up in one word: Wow
Would I recommend to others: Absolutely, definitely, without a doubt.
Animal it reminded me of: Some sort of multi-animal hybrid wearing bandannas and lots of bling.
Situation this album definitely ISN’T suited for: The very first aristocratic weddings in renaissance Italy in which ballet first originated.

This musical experiment with The Optimen started out promising, I loved the CD cover and it definitely had my hopes up. The CD packaging was quite damaged and fell apart when I tried to open it but I tried not to take that as a bad omen. The CD still worked which was a good start. I’d listened to these guys briefly on their MySpace when they were first suggested to me but then months went by before I finally listened to them properly. By this point, I’d forgotten all about them.

I’m not much of a rap or hip hop fan. I’m pretty sure the closest music to rap I have on my iPod is Jay Z when he collaborated with Linkin Park years ago. I’ve probably got a few hip hop songs on my iPod without realising it though. When I put The Optimen into my laptop and begun to listen to it I had no idea what genre it was. At first it sounded like rap but a quick Google search revealed that it was in fact hip hop. Made a lot more sense. It was definitely more entertaining than rap. If anything comes from this whole music blog experiment, I’ll definitely know a lot more about varying genres of music by the end…

The song “Always” just blew my mind – everything in the song just comes together so amazingly… it never got boring and didn’t just have some guy talking with a lame beat behind him like rap (at this point I still was expecting this to be rap music). This had brilliant backing music and really was enjoyable to listen to.

“80s Babies” was pretty fun. Near the start there was a brief set of old Atari arcade sounds. Unlike the reggae version of “Let it be” from the last album I tried out these sounds were on purpose and made sense this time! Yay. It was great fun reliving those 80s days which I never got to live to begin with. I totally got the VHS reference and do like those old arcade games (yay Space Invaders), so I guess that’s good enough.

“Interlude 1″ was entertaining. It’s only 31 seconds so I can’t really say much without ruining it. It was fun though. They should change the sign.

To be honest, I was so blown away by the quality of the music that I really struggled to actually hear much of what they were saying. Most of the meaning of each song was totally lost on me. My senses were just overrun by so many varying sounds that everything was overwhelming really. Good overwhelming though. Every song kinda merged together despite being different… it was an amazing experience where every song on the album really fit together perfectly. I was definitely caught by surprise! The only thing that disappointed me about this album is that I couldn’t think of any other clips to put in here that it reminded me of…

Last weekend I commented to my brother that I didn’t like rap music (after hearing the new Eminem and Rhianna collaboration on the radio). I had a feeling I’d end up finding music which proved that statement wrong. Good thing this wasn’t rap music in the end otherwise I’d have proved myself wrong way too soon. I was worried for a second.

Thanks to Will yet again for his awesome suggestion! If you have a suggestion, no matter who you are, tweet at me @thatpatrickguy or contact me on that email thing.

Surely multicoloured crossings are against some sort of road regulation.

Album: Here Comes The Sun: A Reggae Tribute To The Beatles
Artist: Various Artists

Summed up in one word: Strange
Would I recommend to others: It was hard not to see the entertainment value in this from the moment it was suggested to me.
Animal it reminded me of: A phyllobius glaucus with a Rastafarian hat and dreadlocks (well, to be honest, any animal with those really).
Situation this album definitely ISN’T suited for: The final fight scene in any Rocky movie. Especially their cover of “Hey Jude” (see it embedded near the bottom of the review).

When I think of the Beatles, the first thing which came into my mind was Yellow Submarine (which sadly wasn’t covered on this album…). I honestly haven’t followed their music much after being raised in the 90s world of Hanson and S Club 7. Rather than just sitting back and getting acquainted with their original classics first, I began my Beatles journey through reggae Beatles covers and then returned to YouTube to hear the originals.

I was totally expecting music like Peter Andre’s “Mysterious Girl” (yes, that’s right, I’ve found another reason to embed that into one of my reviews and we’re only up to album number four!). Sadly it wasn’t as enjoyable as the Andre. Maybe it was the lack of cheesy 90s pop music lyrics? Maybe reggae and muscle man Pete are an unstoppable combination that will forever force all other reggae into obscurity? Or maybe I just haven’t listened to enough actual reggae music.

The whole album had a really laid back feel to it, which I’m guessing is what reggae is like. I wouldn’t know. I didn’t mind the music but I hoped that there would be a faster paced song with a nice reggae beat to it somewhere on the album. None of the songs really did that for me really. Scarily enough I found myself turning back to “La Bibliotheque” from the last album I looked at… I think that song really had the sort of beat and feel to it that every album needs in at least one song! Maybe reggae doesn’t really do that.

The most interesting yet strange find of this album was “Let it be”. I’ve no idea why or what value it brought to the song but it had some sort of alien death ray/space invaders arcade sound at the start, middle and end of the song? I’m still confused about it… Unless reggae has alien/80s arcade game influences I was unaware of, it made no sense. I found it entertaining though. At least I DID… the first few times I heard it. It’s in the preview on iTunes if you want to hear it. I couldn’t find it on YouTube…

One of my favourite parts of the song “Imagine” is the piano riff. In the reggae cover it was disappointingly quiet. I loved the Glee version in comparison, which really brought the piano riff out nicely (yes, I watch Glee, I see your judgemental eyes staring at these words… I like it ok?). I love the song “Imagine” and think it’s a brilliant song. I wish Glee hadn’t removed the first verse from their cover of it.

I grew up with the song “Come Together” when I was younger but grew up with Michael Jackson’s version. I actually thought it was his song until this album… a clear indication of how poor my knowledge on this sort of music is. I listened to the John Lennon version after this and preferred Michael Jackson’s version over both the original and the reggae cover. MJ just had the strong beat and awesome guitar which I thought was great. I’ve included both the original and the MJ version for anyone who can’t be bothered Googling it themselves

The start of the “She Loves You” cover reminded me of Grand Theft Auto radio in Vice City for some reason. Do they have a song which goes “Yeah yeah yeah” on one of the stations? Maybe I played that game a bit too much during high school.

The start of the “Hey Jude” cover reminded me of the Blues Brothers “Shake Your Tail Feather”. Yes, that song was embedded in my review of Paul Greene’s album… I’ll have to put a rule for my next review forcing me not to refer to the same songs in comparisons.

Maybe i’m some reggae amateur who is complaining about covers which have perfectly matched the sound and feel of reggae with Beatles’ classics. I probably am. I do vow to find an original reggae album to rectify the situation in future. Rectify.

Thanks to my fellow beer loving friend Tom for his awesome suggestion! If you have a suggestion, tweet at me @thatpatrickguy or contact me via the email machine.

Nice album cover!

Album: The Silent Song
Artist: Stagehands

Summed up in one word: Mixed
Would I recommend to others: Sure.
Animal it reminded me of: A slightly more rock focused version of Michigan J. Frog from the Looney Tunes.
Situation this album definitely ISN’T suited for: A parliamentary sitting in a dictatorship regime like Cuba or North Korea. I think they’d disagree with a lot of the morals of the album.

Ok. Broadway Rock. It was perfect for opening up my eyes and facial expressions to a new style of music. What I mean by that is I found my face in a confused/disgruntled/annoyed contortion every now and then while listening to this album on the bus. Let’s just say Broadway Rock didn’t seem to be my thing.

That isn’t to say the musicians weren’t talented, they definitely could sing and play! The whole musical format just wasn’t working for me. “Na na na, na na nothing’s wrong” was one of the lyrics for example. Also, who rhymes “so low” with “solo”? Surely that’s cheating.

Well, to be honest, it wasn’t all bad. I liked the first song a bit (the instrumental was enjoyable). “Sailor man sailor man” in which the protagonist talks to a sailor (I enjoyed imagining him as a bearded pirate) was very entertaining. I was walking to catch my morning bus at the time and had a crazy urge to dance a jig.

“Ashley/Searching/La Bibliotheque” was the song i’d heard on their MySpace when they first suggested I give them a try over Twitter. Hearing it again, my thoughts were easily summed up in one word – awesome. The start reminded me of Glee for some reason, other parts reminded me of the Asian music in racing video games (loved it) and it had a guy who sounded a bit like the dude from the B52s in “Love Shack”. So far so good already right?

That’s not all… it had DISCO! SYNTHESISER! It did remind me at first of the “Amazing Horse” song probably because of the disco beat in the background (see the YouTube video to the right – warning though… it’s insane, weird, random, hilarious, “dirty”, rude, not for children and strangely addictive). I think this song will actually stay on my iPod (“Ashley/Searching/La Bibliotheque”… not Amazing Horse… though maybe I should download that on iTunes too).

Does anyone else think that the guy who sounds a little like the guy from the B52s in “Love Shack” looks like a younger version of Andy Lee from Hamish and Andy?

To be honest though, after watching and listening to “La Bibliotheque” many times… It sounds nothing like “Amazing Horse”. At all. Couldn’t bring myself to remove it from the post though.

I probably should explain the story or something of the musical too but you can download it for free and find out yourself instead.

To conclude, “Sailor man sailor man” and especially “La Bibliotheque” brought me crazy joy and happiness. Even some of the other songs grew on me after a while… the styles vary across the album too which was good to see. I’d love to see this band live. I think it would be brilliant. After listening to “La Bibliotheque” at least eight times now, I think I might actually like these guys now.

Thanks to Stagehands for the suggestion! I am wondering if you’ve put some sort of mind manipulation in your music to make me like it after a while. It was mind blowing how much my perception changed after a few days… To everyone else – feel free to suggest any sort of music you think will blow my mind or sanity.

He really should use a coaster next time.

Album: Everywhere is Home
Artist: Paul Greene

Summed up in one word: Relaxed
Would I recommend to others: If they are into relaxed acoustic music they should definitely give it a go.
Animal it reminded me of: Some sort of medium sized dog wandering Australian suburbia on its own.
Situation this album definitely ISN’T suited for: Any WWE wrestling match.

This album started well. Within the song “Ease Up” he mentions having a cold beer within 33 seconds. He had my attention.

According to iTunes, this album is in the genre of “Folk”. I can’t say I listen to much folk, so I’ve no idea what it’s supposed to sound like. I was definitely expecting more harmonica and banjo.

It definitely seemed like a good travel CD. Any kind of laid back road trip where everyone is just chilling out would be perfect for this album. Or maybe it would be good as backing music to someone’s childhood. I imagined some of the songs (like “Never Too Big to Fall”) playing behind 80′s video of some young kids running around in a happy reminiscent of the old days style montage.

While Mr Greene is very laid back throughout his songs, he does have a quick temper which subsides just as quickly. Twice in the album he throws in a bit of swearing, once in frustration with the GST (Australian tax) and once in frustration at a girl not listening to him. So he’s not totally Mr Chilled, he’s totally got some passion when it comes to taxes and women paying attention.

The song “Everybody Got a Little Love” had a bit of a Blues Brothers feel at times and even had a bit of a Bee Gees whine near the end. Despite the Bee Gees whine, I do love the Blues Brothers and the overall style of this song is one of my favourites on the album for sure.

While the song ‘My My’ wasn’t really my favourite song, somehow it got stuck in my head against my will. Repeating words in the chorus must have done it…

Honestly though, while the album isn’t really my sort of thing I did enjoy the guitar and the soothing nature of some of the songs. The guy definitely has talent and the songs were well written. Definitely seemed to be the sort of down to earth Aussie guy you’d have a beer with

After a bit of wild searching on YouTube, I couldn’t find any of his songs from this album. He does have a song up on Last.fm though.

Thanks to Will for a whole heap of suggestions! If you have a suggestion, whether you’re just some random visitor to my blog, a friend, some record company guy with a crazy different or interesting artist, someone making their own music, whoever – send me your suggestions!

Just look at how he gazes into the camera!

Album: Lei, gli amici e tutto il resto
Artist: Nek

Summed up in one word: Huh?
Would I recommend to others: Sure why not.
Animal it reminded me of: Chilled out Doberman wearing sunglasses while relaxing in the sun.
Situation this album definitely ISN’T suited for: The Boston Tea Party of 1773

I began my musical exploration with an album I could barely understand. Despite years of primary school, high school and one semester at uni studying Italian, my grasp of almost everything this man said was next to nothing.

While reminding me of my complete failure to become fluent at another language by the age of 21, I assumed Nek was also singing words which delve right into the hearts of women everywhere. He was probably showing he has those feelings and emotions all girls dream of. Maybe he’s the Italian equivalent of Peter “Mysterious Girl I want to get close to you” Andre or some one man version of the Backstreet Boys.

One would assume that the fact his name is a misspelling of both a key part of both the human body and a guitar would completely take away any hope of sexual appeal. Apparently not.

To be serious though, I did enjoy his music despite not understanding much. “Laura non c’è” definitely got stuck in my head. Understanding what “Laura non c’è” meant might have helped (well, I translated it to Laura’s not here, which I think was right). I did find an English version but then doubted it was a direct translation (I felt like a conspiracy theorist making wild accusations).

There was also the song “Sei Grande” (while the two songs mentioned are the first two songs on the album I promise I listened to more than that). “Sei grande” in my mind translated to “you’re big/large”. Surely only a foreign language could turn something like that into a romantic statement. It could probably mean “you’re great” according to the Italian dictionary but that’s just no fun.

In “Dimmi Cos’è”, I could have sworn he did a slight Michael Jackson styled “ow!”. It was a good song though! “Di Più” sounded like a country song in the instrumental intro but luckily (or unluckily?) went back into Italian pop mode as soon as Nek started singing. It did end with harmonicas though, confusing but awesome. Who doesn’t love harmonicas?

To be honest, most of the upbeat songs which I enjoyed seemed to be at the start of the album. I’m not a huge fan of many slow songs it seems (there are exceptions… Maybe it’s harder to make a unique slow song which doesn’t sound like the rest?).

I did learn what it must be for people overseas listening to English music while barely understanding it. Much of the time the songs stuck in my head either had gibberish words replacing the words I didn’t know, or I started making up English sentences about anything to fill the gap. Fun fun.

Thanks to both Amy and Antonio for suggesting Nek! If you have an album you’d like to suggest, let me know!