| 9th
February, 2005
|
ALBUMS
WORTH LISTENING TO: (top to bottom) Jars of Clay's
'Who we are instead', Delirious' 'World Service',
and Audio Adrenaline's 'Worldwide'.
|
JUSTIN
MICHAEL
2004 was
a year that I fell in love with ‘the album’ again.
Sure, there are always great songs, but often you buy the
album only to find it just dissipates into a misguided melange
of production slush. Somehow the songs disappear in the guitar
solos or the self-indulgent lyric. All too often track two
is the only song worth listening to and the album just becomes
a liability in your six stacker.
Last year though, I found at least three albums that made
me avoid the skip function, or indeed, the artist’s
worst fear, the eject button.
Jars of Clay released Who we are instead in late
2003, backed it up with a killer gig in March ‘04, added
my favourite song Show you love to the latest Adam
Sandler cinematic effort Spanglish and reminded us
all that great song-writing is as much a gift as it is a craft
that only great artists chose to continually develop.
Delirous did the Hillsong thing in mid ’03 and followed
up in ’04 with a live album with Hillsong and the album
World Service. It was classic Delirious and it was
beautiful. With Grace Like a River, and Rain
Down as the opening cuts, how could they go wrong? Then
to throw the aptly titled, lush epic Majesty at track
four, you just know you’ll keep listening, if not repeating
the same tracks over and over.
Lastly, the proof that the live gig is always the reason we
keep listening, Australia just saw Audio Adrenaline for the
first time in, by my calculation, at least five years. Our
ears were alerted to their amazing album of late ’03
that saw five singles released through ’04. The brilliant
Worldwide. It’s rock, it’s classy, rootsy
and real and if you haven’t heard Leaving 99
or Ocean Floor then your iPod needs an update.
There is only one thing that beats the personal fulfillment
of ‘discovering’ a great album. That’s the
buzz of the live show. So, go buy a ticket to the next gig,
grab the album, learn the songs and then see how you go explaining
to your friends that your taste in music is much better than
theirs, cause “man, if only they’d seen the gig!”
Justin
Michael can be heard weekday mornings on Geelong-based radio
station 96.3 Rhema FM - www.rhemafm.org.au.
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