SOUNDTRACK: BUILT TO SPILL-Ancient Melodies of the Future (2001).
After their live album, Built to Spill returned with Ancient Melodies of the Future. For many fans, this album concluded their first trilogy of great records. The album is similar in style to Keep It Like a Secret, but there are some new elements added. Sam Coombs, who supplied keyboards on one song on the previous album is back on this one with prominent keyboards on three tracks (which adds a rather different vibe to the Built to Spill sound).
“Strange” is yet another stellar leadoff track. It’s got an interesting riff with some great lyrics and what evolves into a stupendously catchy chorus. It features Sam Coombs on Rocksichord, which has a rather unique sound.
“The Host” has strings, which is quite a departure. The song is mellow with a simply great vocal line for the verse. “In Your Mind” has an interesting acoustic guitar line with some wild backwards guitar effects over the top. I really like the way the vocal line gets loud and high when he gets to the “in your mind” part.
“Alarmed” slows things down with bigger, louder strings. There’s a lengthy crazy keyboard solo from Sam Coombs
“Trimmed and Burning” gets a little heavier sounding “Happiness” has a slide guitar—a very unusual sound for BTS. The song picks up pretty quickly and rumbles along. “Dont Try” comes in with a much louder fuller guitar sound (Brett Netson contributes guitars to this and 3 other songs).
“You Are” is probably my least favorite BtS song, it doesn’t really do anything. But it’s followed by the up beat and wonderful “Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss” which has really fun guitar solo and is just so catchy.
The disc ends with the acoustic guitar ballad “The Weather.” It builds to a slightly bigger sound by the end of the song, with interesting effects on the guitars.
I tend to overlook this disc somewhat when I think back to my favorite BtS music, but there are some real gems here. It might be a little more mellow and introspective than some of the other discs, but it’s still great.
[READ:June 1, 2015] Flunked
I brought this book home because I thought Sarah would like it. She never got around to reading it, but I decided it might be fun so I read it pretty quickly. Calonita has written a number of YA books but this is her first series for younger readers (so says the blurb at the back, under her strangely unflattering author photo. This is a new series (unclear how many books, but the next one is due out next year).
It’s another book that twists around the ideas of fairy tales (which I like). The premise behind this series is that Cinderella’s stepmother Flora is really, really sorry for what she did to Cinderella (now Princess Ella). And in order to make it up to the land of Enchantasia (nice) she decided to convert her old castle into Fairy Tale Reform School. The school is designed to teach bad kids, villains and delinquents the ways of righteousness. Some teachers include the Big Bad Wolf (Xavier Wolfington), the Sea Witch (Madame Cleo) and the Evil Queen (Professor Harlow). More than five hundred gnomes, trolls, dwarfs, elves, mer-folks and other fairly tale students have been admitted in the past five years and there is much praise for the school. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 