Chicken Bones, John Grant (2010) or where we learn that music still has the power to move

Well, it's been a while. I'm fairly busy. I genuinely am. I have a job that whilst I love it, demands a lot. An awful lot, and the time to sit down an listen to albums whilst perusing the lyric sheets are long gone. And despite suggesting I would never buy into iTunes I did, and music has become a bit more anonymous to me. I've lost the pleasure of living an album for a time (weeks in the case of some, years, or even decades), I've even stopped reading the music press religiously (I'd always read Music Press, Kerrang, Melody Maker and eventually the old man magazines- Uncut, Mojo). I still listened to music, mainly whilst thinking about 900 other things on the way to work, but not in the way I used to. People I know think I'm obsessive about music, which I probably am- but not like I used to be but as a birthday gift my colleagues presented me with an iTunes voucher. I bought a lot of songs, predominantly stuff I used to own on vinyl (Pavement's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain) but I chanced my arm on the new album by John Grant (Grant was the lead singer of the Czars, a power pop band I liked about 10 years ago). Slouching off to work, 5 30 in the morning as always I started to listen. I was caught, caught in a way I haven't been for ages. The first track I listened to, "I wanna go to Marz" was amazing, elegiac pop music. Song Writing for adults. I was already wrapped up by the time I got to Chicken Bones, a fantastic funky rant of a song. "Some Days Just Chicken Bones/You Better Fuck off Now/Better Leave me alone" goes the chorus, how could you not love that?

I did love it, and I listened to it over and over again, just like I did when I first heard Metallica "Metallica" or Jeff Buckley's "Grace" or Oasis "Definitely Maybe"- and those albums spoke to me at various points of my life. The mad rush of the teens, the confusing first steps into adult relationships or the realisation that you're at a point in your life where you're old enough to understand but young enough to know the whole world is waiting. John Grant does the same, his album Queen of Denmark is about that point when you know you;ve made some mistakes and had some triumphs and you're sure enough of yourself to not panic, not worry but get on with it and occasionally tell the world to piss off too. I think the album is great, I'm not sure I'll be living it in decades but I'll certainly remember the kick start it had on me. I've started to immerse myself again, not the press any more- books "The Rest is Noise" about 20th Century compositional music and the teeming chaotic world of music that comes with it, and new albums by Anna Calvi, The Decembrists. My life has changed, and I won't be able to lock myself away listening to an album over and over again- but some days as I sit on the train, I can transport myself again

Further Reading

Alex Ross "The Rest is Noise"