June 24, 2008

Reviews

06/24/08

Dennis Wilson—Pacific Ocean Blue (Remastered)

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds—Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! Nick Cave is one of those artists where the quality of the releases has been so consistently high, it's necessary to buy pretty much anything he and the band put out. We particularly love his lyrics—at this point, Nick Cave is probably one of the few songwriters in rock who has lyrics that can truly be referred to as "literary." Each of his albums adds a few more classic tracks to his already impressive oeuvre, and this one is no different. Also, how could you not buy a record that punctuates itself with no less than three exclamation points?!!!

Dennis Wilson—Pacific Ocean Blue (Remastered) Dennis Wilson, as the youngest of the Wilson brothers in the Beach Boys, distinguished himself early on in the group by being probably the least talented (he couldn't play the drums, but to his credit he was the only member of the band who could surf). Somehow by the mid-'70s, when everyone else in the band had pretty much gone off the deep end, he managed to release one of the lesser-known gems of the whole introspective singer-songwriter movement. Up until now this record was a well-guarded secret of obsessive record collectors and Beach Boys fanatics, but all that should change with this newly remastered edition. Fair warning—this album walks a fine line between cheesy and brilliant (but that could be said about most of the Beach Boys output over the years).

Gas—Nah und Fern So, what you have here is a 4-disc box set, collecting all four albums from Cologne's Gas (aka Wolfgang Voigt). As one of the founders of the Kompakt label, Voigt is responsible for a lot of the popularity of minimal house music in Europe. His own music is a brand of ambient soundscapes that are underscored by the quiet thud of a bass drum. It's the sound of a dance party happening three miles away and underwater, but it's one of the most blissful sounds we've ever heard.

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