May 2021 - Vinyl Spins Challenge Thread

Day 3 Spring

Björk "Utopia"

In an interview published in March 2016, Björk linkened the writing to "paradise" as opposed to Vulnicura being "hell... like divorce". In a statement, Björk explained, "Utopia is so much about birdsong and sonically (sic) the mutation between synth/bird , bird/flute , flute/synth ... so i got very excited when i found these handmade wooden flutes imitating precisely particular birds. We decided to have synths that have a lot of air sounds in them and flutes that sound synthy."

She said the melodies were composed while out walking in the Icelandic wilderness, and once she had completed the melodies, she wrote the flute arrangements, later superimposing melodies.

The result is an album full of birds singing and flutes that always remind me of spring, the season of hope, with everything blooming and awakening.

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Day 3: Celebrate Spring

Alabaster dePlume - To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol 1(2020, International Anthem)

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I listened to this album a lot last spring, which obviously was a very different feeling spring here in the US. It was meditative and calming, a necessary and welcomed warm musical hug.

You can practically smell the cover, and this spring the music hits very different. It sounds more like like hope and new growth; flowers emerging from a cold haze and intermingling with each other for what feels like he first time.

(Lego easter bunny for added thematic charm)
 
Day 3: Celebrate Spring

S. Carey - Hundred Acres

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Really felt the spring vibes off this one from the first time I heard my wife play it. I generally like my mellower music more on the brooding side of things, which has a much more winter feel. This, however, has a pleasant almost hopeful atmosphere while not yet feeling fully free of winter introspection. And the vinyl itself is a very spring-y green.
 
Day 2: Difficult Second Album

Blur - Modern Life Is Rubbish

@gaporter scooped me! I was totally going to pick The Bends! Serves me right for not spinning yesterday! I think that she’ll approve of this pick too though!

So blur’s debut album was kinda just ok. It was very much of its time and place and that sorta late stage shoegaze/pop sound didn’t really suit them. It did however have two really fun singles (She’s So High/There’s No Other Way) that garnered interest and pointed towards better things to come.

That interest led to an early tour of the US. This tour has broken so many aspiring U.K. artists. The country is so big and budgets mean that it’s bus travel and so it’s an endless loop of months of bus/local radio/small venue. It almost broke blur, they arrived back in Britain utterly disillusioned and hating the grunge sound and scene that was dominating everywhere they’d just been.

What didn’t break them made them same strong. The reaction was to focus closer to home and led to their “British trio” of albums beginning with this one. It’s an absolutely fantastic album, still my favourite blur album and contains some of their best songs (For Tomorrow/Advert/Star Shaped and in particular two of my very favourites Blue Jeans and Chemical World).

 
Day 3: Celebrate Spring - This is the May Day bank holiday over here. Before the socialists made it a Labour day it was our traditional date to have festivals celebrating spring. Play an album that fills you with the joy, beauty and fresh hope that spring encapsulates.

Kacey Musgraves - Golden Hour

This album is just incredibly uplifting and positive feeling. Even the songs with sad lyrical themes feel uplifting and positive musically.

 
Day 3: Celebrate Spring

This is the May Day bank holiday over here. Before the socialists made it a Labour day it was our traditional date to have festivals celebrating spring. Play an album that fills you with the joy, beauty and fresh hope that spring encapsulates.

Spring gives me some new energy.

Four Tet - New Energy

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Day 3: Celebrate Spring

The Polyphonic Spree - The Fragile Army

I adore this band, their music makes me so happy! Whenever it begins to turn to spring and the sun is out and has got his hat on, I am to be found playing their debut album on repeat. I don’t have it in vinyl because it is in desperate need of repress and is expensive on the secondary market, same for the follow up, but this third album from them is still pretty damn good!

 
Day 3: Celebrate Spring

Talk Talk - Colour of Spring
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The title says it all. A wonderful album from start to finish. While Spirit of Eden and Laugh Stock are perfection, this album is a masterclass in working within the set parameters of song structures. For me it has a beautiful sense of rebirth to it. I was familiar with “It’s My Life” and was captivated by the “Life's What You Make It” video the first time I saw it. This is the copy I bought in 1986.
 
Day 2 - Difficult Second Album

After a somewhat dopey debut album, everything changed for Bowie here and set off a string of 13 straight classic LPs (omitting the covers LP Pin Ups). It was pretty clear things were different from the first track on this one...

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Day 3: Celebrate spring

Iron & Wine - Ghost on Ghost

I am very prone to associating albums with particular seasons or months, usually just the time of year that they came out or when I first heard them. This underrated Iron & Wine album has kind of a polished pop sheen to it and is perfect for the month of May when there's usually less rain and the trees and flowers are beginning to bloom.

The year this album came out, 2013, two of my best friends and I road-tripped to Richmond, Virginia, where my sister and her husband live, to see the band outdoors at a botanical garden. We left the afternoon before, drove all through the night, and arrived early morning. It rained all day, which we slept through, and right when we arrived at the beautiful garden it started to clear up, and the sun came out and dried the grassy hill in front of the stage where we sat. One of my favourite concert experiences for sure.

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Day 3: Celebrate Spring

"Boy, I was ready, Boy, I was ready for spring
Its beauty changes, Changes everything"

Jim James breaks down Spring (Among the Living) on this Song Exploder podcast. The genesis fits right in with today's theme of rebirth and joy. Plus that album cover of Yosemite and Half Dome!

My Morning Jacket ~ The Waterfall

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songexploder.net

Episode 36: My Morning Jacket

"Spring (Among the Living)"DOWNLOAD: iTUNES · MP3Jim James is the lead singer of the Grammy-nominated band My Morning Jacket. Since starting in 1998, they’ve put out six a
songexploder.net songexploder.net
 
Day 3: Celebrate Spring

Beach House - 7

Spring is a time of rebirth, and in some ways this album is a sonic rebirth for the band, taking their sound in some new directions, some of them darker (or at least less dreamy) than before... which is why it is fitting that the album opens with the song "Dark Spring."

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Day 03: Celebrate Spring

This is the May Day bank holiday over here. Before the socialists made it a Labour day it was our traditional date to have festivals celebrating spring. Play an album that fills you with the joy, beauty and fresh hope that spring encapsulates.

Roy Ayers Ubiquity - Everbody Loves Sunshine
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Being a Midwest transplant in the Pacific Northwest I enjoy analyzing the regional differences between the two areas (WTF is “Fry Sauce” and why does everyone dip their jojo’s in it... also, WTF is a jojo?). One of the more interesting and fun differences is the way people out here absolutely LOVE a sunny day and for good reason, as one might expect for a region known for its rainfall, the warmth of the sun is in short supply for large chunks of the year but on those times when the sun peaks through its like...well, Portlandia’s opening sketch pretty much nailed it...

All this to say with Spring comes a much welcome uptick in Sunbreaks and outdoor fun; which we have to enjoy before the fire season starts mid-July and we lose the sun again, this time to an smokey ashy hellacious haze until the gloomy rains of Autumn return...Anyways, here’s Roy Ayers kickin’ it on Soul Train...
 
Day 03: Celebrate Spring

The Comet is Coming - Trust in the Lifeforce of Deep Mystery

The album's title and some of the songs' names (Because the end is really the beginning, Birth of creation, Summon the fire, The universe wakes up) make me think of the rebirth that Spring represents.

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