Mojave 3 – Puzzles Like You
Another “catching up” post for today. I talked about Mojave 3 back in April, when all I had was the demos for their new album Puzzles Like You. That record was released earlier this month, and is every bit as good as I had hoped. Like I said then, it’s quite different from most of their prior work, with most of the songs having an upbeat tempo. There are still a few of the slower songs, but on the whole this is much more jangle-pop than it is pure folk-ballads.
All three of the songs I talked about before (Breaking the Ice, Puzzles Like You, and Big Star Baby – links are for the demos) are as good or better in their final form. They’re a bit more polished, but still have more than enough of the organic feel of the lo-fi demos to keep you honest. The one that gains the most is “Big Star Baby” which felt a bit too scratchy the first time around, but now floats effortlessly. I won’t link to the new versions of those songs, since they aren’t substantially different from the demos, and you can probably track ’em down yourself.
Instead, here’s two other great tracks from the album.
Ghost Ship WaitingRunning With You
Both of these follow along the same lines. A quicker tempo, some well-placed synths, keyboards, that jangly guitar, and Neil Halstead’s velvet voice.
Much like the Big Buildings album I talked about yesterday, I haven’t had much time to listen to this one, but I know I’ll spend a lot more time with it, and won’t be at all surprised if it ends up on the year-end list of best albums for 2006. It isn’t stunningly good, but there’s not a bad song, and quite a few very nice ones.
World Cup update: Tunisia did their best to upset Spain, only to see the wheels fall off in the final 20 minutes, and end up losing 3-1. The commentators were international for this game, which was a welcome relief. The comments from the American folks have been pretty bad.
Ukraine came roaring back from getting pummelled by Spain to win 4-0 and restore their goal-differential to even, giving them a solid chance to escape this round. Yesterday, France scored their first goal since winning the whole thing in 1998, but still failed to actually win a game, and Brazil snoozezd their way to a 2-0 victory.
Y’know, none of the teams this year have really looked dominating. Argentina’s 6-0 thumping notwithstanding, none of these teams have looked like cohesive entities, ready to execute plays, play tight defense, and force the other team to run for their lives. England, Brazil, Germany, etc. They’ve all won their games of course, but some of them have been pretty ugly, and it’s been against relatively weak competition. Maybe Brazil will kick it into gear in the next round, but I would say they look eminently beatable, except that no other team has impressed me enough, either.
We’ll see. That’s what makes this all so exciting.