By the time you read this, Twila Price and I should each have our hot little hands on the new Oysterband release DEEP DARK OCEAN. So I thought I'd start an item where we can babble about the new stuff, and the old stuff...12 responses total.
Ooooie, burning! Well, it's a very different disc from the last several, being much quieter in tone, and with nothing traditional on it at all. It's also more ... pensive? The imagery is less jagged but still very powerful. I've only listened once, so I'll have to give it more time to sink in. EArly favorite songs -- "Sail on By", <Milford Haven>(possibly THE favorite), and "No Reason to Cry". Oh, it looks like "Little Brother" is a song about someone with autism, which I;ll have to share with a work friend, since her nephew has been diagnosed with such. Interesting that they cover such a subject. It seems more personal than their last several -- it's still got political prtest, mind you, but not ANGRY LOUD protest...
I had sort of thought this item might go somewhere, but alas. I've been put off by the VH1-friendly attitude of the new album, and I don't even think polygon has bought a copy of it yet. So in the meantime I'll migrate a discussion here from item #60, "NP #2"... ------- #264 of 286: by Ken Josenhans (krj) on Sun, Nov 2, 1997 (02:57): Oyster Band, LIBERTY HALL. Though the band now disowns it, this remains a brilliant electric folk recording, the first of four late-80s albums which represent the peak of the Oysters' work. I need to do something with that Oyster Band album I started when their newest, mostly-pop album came out. #265 of 286: by Gratuitous Saxon Violins (orinoco) on Sun, Nov 2, 1997 (17:04): Why do they 'disown' it, Ken?
Well? "Why _do_ they disown it, Ken?"
The Oysters now like to pretend that their history begins in 1986, when they added a drummer. My belief is that their earlier, folkier work no longer contributes to their income -- the albums are on their own label, and they have been gently laid to rest along with the LP format. Some of the photos on the early albums would certainly damage their current image as an alternative (*ahem*) celtic folkpunk band. It has to be somewhat frustrating for them; the Levellers had big breakthroughs in Britain, and their friends Chumbawamba now have a big pop hit. Early Oyster Band LPs are priced at $40-$80 in the collectors' market.
I'm not really ready to write a proper review, but I did want to mention the Oysters' new fan club recording, "Alive and Acoustic." Like the title says, it's a live recording derived from some all-acoustic shows the band did last fall. So far I'm enjoying it more than any of the most recent Oysterband albums; the acoustic arrangements get back to showing off John Jones' exceptional voice.
Listening to "Alive and Acoustic" as I type. Mmmmmmm. I like it a lot. Yes, John Jones does have a voice that melts along your ear drums, which gets lost in the more rowdy albums -- though I am thinking about a co- worker's comment that they sound like REM. REM?! Ah, the first reel set, definitely not REM territory. I like this quite a bit, although I haven't had any quibbles with their newer albums -- I seem to like *anything* the Oysterband does.
Haven't heard much out of Oysterland lately. I think the e-mail list might have burped up some news about a new album for early 1999. I went through a recent period of obsession with their 1992 album DESERTERS, which I didn't particularly care for on its original release. The band was winding down their folk influences here, and in many ways it's striking me as a fairly straightforward 1980s pop album. I have a customized version of DESERTERS which I patched together by dropping the songs "Elena's Shoes" and "Fiddle and the Gun", inserting instead the folkier tracks from the "Granite Years" EP which was issued in Germany. I don't know why those tracks -- trad "Curragh of Kilder" and "Star of the County Down," and an excellent original, "Hangman's Cry" -- did not make the album, unless it was part of the band's continuing struggle to escape the folk pigeonhole.
This sad little item may pick up again. I snapped up Tower's only copy of the new Oysterband release HERE I STAND last night, and I think Twila has a copy of the British edition heading her way.
So have you listened yet? My copy should be here soon, I jhop.
I played about half of the new Oysterband album on the drive home tonight. I really don't want to say much until I've played it three or four times.
Thanks to Ken, I've been listening to LIBERTY HALL for several days now. Over the past three or four listens, I have become especially enchanted by the sound. Now, I must play the album at least twice a day, or else I am forever humming "Euston Station." :-) Not really being up-to-par with anything besides HERE I STAND (which I like a lot; I always make sure to put it in the car when taking a roadtrip --- excellent driving music!) and FREEDOM AND RAIN up to this point, this earlier album was a little confusing to my ear. The instrumentation seemed rather sparse and dated, and the overall mood of the songs struck me as dark and more low-key. A couple of the songs --- "Bonnie Susie Cleland" & "Cropper Lads" --- forced me to give the album another chance, and then another.... Now, I just can't hear it enough, and I think I'm hooked.
LIBERTY HALL struck me as incredibly dark, lyrically, when I first heard it, especially in comparison to the preceeding "normal" album LIE BACK AND THINK OF ENGLAND, which has a considerable quantity of cheerful or humorous material in it; that tone is only reached on LIBERTY HALL with the drinking song at the end of the album. (Between LIE BACK and LIBERTY HALL came an album of instrumental dance tunes, which I didn't consider a "normal" album.) LIBERTY HALL began the arc of four great albums the Oysters produced at the end of the 1980s; the rest of the sequence were STEP OUTSIDE, WIDE BLUE YONDER and RIDE. Now, 12 years past the end of that string, it's clear they'll never match it.
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