Blog

Album Of The Day: Candycoatedwaterdrops by Plumb

Album Art of Plumb's Candycoatedwaterdrops album - A photo of a dark-haired woman with a fitted tee and a leather jacket has four men behind her on the sides, half looking at the camera and half looking in other directions. They photo is black-and-white with the white parts being a gold-grey hue. Printed above the middle of the photo, to the left of the woman, is the band name in big, white letters. To the right of that, the album title in much smaller letter, with the letters 'coated' in a light blue.

Released 26 years ago yesterday, this is the second album from the band Plumb. In the late 1990s, Plumb was an alternative rock band and Tiffany Arbuckle was the lead singer and face of the band. This album, Candycoatedwaterdrops, is a bit more pop than their first album, and even gets a bit country at the end. Still, this album's sound is mostly rock with a good amount of electronic programming and it is Arbuckle's powerful vocals that anchors the music. Lyrically, Plumb talks about some darker topics with songs like "Phobic", "Damaged" and "Drugstore Jesus", but still weaves in the message of God's love and grace that was expected of most Christian rock. The whole album is good, but the first 3 tracks are some of the best songs ever released by Plumb, in my opinion. Tiffany Arbuckle has performed as a solo artist under the name Plumb for nearly 25 years now, and her sound has often been more subdued or pop/dance and much less rock in those years.

Release Year: 1999
Listen on Apple Music
Listen on Spotify

Categories: 
Album Of The Day
Music

Album Of The Day: In The Morning by Carolyn Arends

Album Art of Carolyn Arends's In The Morning EP - A black-and-white photo of a white woman standing against a wooden railing and holding an acoustic guitar in some sort of small, rustic chapel with wooden walls and a small, simple glass window. She has blond hair down past her shoulders and is looking off to her left, while she has her hands on the guitar like she might start playing any moment. In the bottom left, printed in white is the artist's name and then the album title in gold below it.

Carolyn Arends is a Canadian-based singer-songwriter who has been making music for 30 years or more. This, her latest release, is an EP of hymns. Some of the tracks are beautiful, acoustic takes on classic hymns like "Holy, Holy, Holy" and "All Hail The Power Of Jesus' Name", while others are less well-known but not less beautiful. Arends also pens "To Whom Shall We Go" and invites some other Canadian musician friends to join her on this EP. It's a solid set of songs with a folk/acoustic vibe that leads the listener to worship and prayer.

Release Year: 2021
Listen on Apple Music
Listen on Spotify
Buy on Bandcamp

Categories: 
Album Of The Day
Music

Album Of The Day: Look Up Child by Lauren Daigle

Album Art of Lauren Daigle's Look Up Child album - On a mottled gray background, a black and white photo of a woman from the shoulders up looking to the right an slightly up. The photo is mostly a profile angle, with just a bit of her left eyelash showing behind her nose. Her hair is up inside a cloth that is wrapped around the top and back of her head, covering most of her ears as well. What is visible from her ear has a long earring hanging from it, and her hair covering also has some braided strings hanging from it. At the very top, on the left in a gray-black is the artist name in small print, and on the top right is the album title.

This album made New Orleans-based pop singer Lauren Daigle a star, and it's a very beautiful album. Some complain that she sounds a lot like Adele, and there's certainly many similarities in their vocal style and musical genre. Daigle's songs are mostly slow-to-mid-tempo ballads and her backing musicians are hitting all the right notes. But Lauren Daigle's songs bring more of a reggae and Gospel feel to the music than you would find on an Adele album, for sure. Lyrically, much of the album is Ms. Daigle talking about her personal struggles with life, faith and religion. And the album closes with the hymn "Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus" with a reggae beat. I find this album full of very memorable, inspiring songs and it's a joy to listen to even if it doesn't rock.

Release Year: 2018
Listen on Apple Music
Listen on Spotify

Categories: 
Album Of The Day
Music

Album Of The Day: Mercury by The Prayer Chain

Album Art of They Prayer Chain's Mercury album - On the bottom quarter of the area, an image of a blue/silver nature, maybe of some shiny rocks over water or just water in glass. On the top three quarters, the top half of some sort of blue-green sphere inside some orange fluid, with some large orange bubbles right next to the sphere, and smaller clear bubbles inside the orange fluid. The two images are separated by a thick black line, and on that is listed the band's name in bright blue script-like font with a thin white and then a black border. Below the band's name is the album title in a smaller font and a golden orange color. Behind that, over the top of the two photos, are red scribbles or maybe red paint strokes.

Growing up as the oldest of five kids, my parents were very busy, and didn't spend much time at home listening to music. Music listening became a past-time of mine in 1997 or 1998 in earnest, so I'm still only now catching up on what I missed for the decades before. So, for example, today is the first time I've ever listened to alternative rock band The Prayer Chain, who were most active in the early to mid '90s. Released on this day 30 years ago, I believe, this is their final studio album before the band members went on to other separate projects. It's definitely my kind of album, with 10 tracks totaling 57 minutes, so some of these are long, meandering jams. There's squealing guitars and the vocals are so deeply mixed into the music that it's really hard to hear what they're singing. But it's a great underground vibe from that era and fun to hear for the first time today.

Release Year: 1995
Listen on Apple Music
Listen on Spotify

Categories: 
Album Of The Day
Music

Album Of The Day: Nashville Skyline by Bob Dylan

Album Art of Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline album - A photo of a young white man with a short beard and mustache in a black coat wearing a black hat, and he's holding his hand just below the hat like he's about to tip his hat. He has a noticeable smile and is photographed from below, looking down at the camera while holding his guitar in his left hand in front of him. Behind him can only be seen the blue sky, bluer towards the top and more white near the bottom. In the top right, by the neck of the guitar, the bare branches of a tall tree can be seen.

Released 56 years ago yesterday, Nashville Skyline is Bob Dylan's 9th studio album. Recorded less than 4 years after he shocked the attendees of the Newport Folk Festival with his rock music, he recorded this album in Nashville with a much more subdued, country-influenced sound. For a few years around this time, Bob Dylan stopped smoking and on this album his voice has a much more smooth, crooner feel to it. The most well-known and best songs on this album are a re-recording of Dylan's hit "Girl From The North Country" with Johnny Cash and "Lay, Lady, Lay". And the "Nashville Skyline Rag" is a rollickin' instrumental song too. It's a short album, but it's a fun set of songs from the songwriter featuring great musicians mixing country, bluegrass and even a bit of rock.

Release Year: 1969
Listen on Apple Music
Listen on Spotify

Categories: 
Album Of The Day
Music

Album Of The Day: Home by Josh Garrels

Album Art of Josh Garrels's Home album - On a white background, there are four drawings set into light brown squares. The top left has a crude drawing of a structure's corners with of various sizes, a garden growing inside of it in just black pencil. The top right is a picture of a house of a white color with many small lines that are windows on the closest side, that is surrounded by tall, thin trees on three sides. The bottom left is a very similar-looking white house with a roof and many windows on two sides, but this one is for some reason floating in a drawing of a bathtub with the tap running. The bottom right is a large, white building with no visible windows that has a rooftop garden on one half of the roof, and a more traditional angled roof on the other half. Over this last white house is written the artist's name in black, hand-written small print and underneath that in much bigger print the album title.

Released on this day 10 years ago, this is the 7th album from independent folk/pop/rock artist Josh Garrels. I remember I was a bit disappointed when it first came out, as it was less epic and exciting as his preceding album, Love & War & The Sea In Between, still my favorite album of his. But after giving Home a few more good listens, I appreciate it much more for the shorter and more succinct masterpiece it is. The musicians create beautiful soundscapes and Garrels's treble vocals mostly float above the instruments. I think my favorite song is the rock-heavy "The Arrow", but all the songs are a great lyrical exploration of the place we live and family, on life shared with others. Another beautiful song is "Heaven's Knife", which doesn't sound like a love song to his wife by the title, but that what it is. It's a beautiful album that reminds us of the most important things to us: home.

Release Year: 2015
Listen on Apple Music
Listen on Spotify
Buy from Josh Garrels directly

Categories: 
Album Of The Day
Music

Album Of The Day: Cutting Edge by delirious?

Album Art of delirious?'s Cutting Edge album - The top and bottom and most of the background is white. Interlaced into the background are pictures of a scissors and a shaver in verital lines, somewhat blended into the white at the top. In the top middle, there's also a small photo of a scissors. There's print that says the album title in black, and then white slightly below and over it. In the top right of the middle section, there's an orange oval with the band name in them, except the 's' is replaced with a '5'. In the middle is a blue rectangle with the letters 'd:' cut out. And a small photo of 5 white men lit by light bulbs in front and behind, with a mirror behind them.

In the early 1990s, a worship band started leading youth-oriented prayer meetings on the small cities of England's southern coast. They were known as "Cutting Edge" and they wrote, recorded and released four EPs on cassette, creatively titled 1, 2, 3 and Fore. When I heard these songs in 1998, they were packaged into this two-CD, 25-song compilation of all four EPs. By that time, the band was known as delirious? and the compilation album was called Cutting Edge. Throughout this album, lead vocalist Martin Smith wrote and passionately sang about a relationship with God in a way to that was much more personal and compelling than most of the old hymns and hippie folk songs that their parents were singing in church. Over the last 30 years as the English-speaking world came to know this album, songs like "I Could Sing Of Your Love Forever" and "Shout To The North" became songs commonly sung in churches with modern worship music. And songs like "Did You Feel The Mountains Tremble?" and "Obsession" showed that while they were definitely a worship band, they also had a rock band creativity and drive to go beyond what a church worship band might normally do. The band delirious? went on to create 7 more studio albums combining pop, rock and worship genres, get played the UK Top 40 pop radio, and tour around the world before saying farewell to their fans in 2009. And I've been enjoying these songs for nearly 27 years now.

Release Year: 1993-1995
Listen on Apple Music
Listen on Spotify

The original UK CD releases looked much like the original cassette covers:
Album Art of delirious?'s Cutting Edge 1 and 2 album - The left half is a bright yellow, with a very light scissors icon just a shade whiter in the background. There's a black circle in the top left that has the band name in it, and a black '1' in the bottom left corner. On the right half it's a somewhat pinkish-purple color, with a black '2' on the top right. Vertically in the middle it says 'cutting' from the top to bottom in white, with 'edge' just to the left of it bigger in gray. In smaller print, the song titles are printed on both the left and right side.
Album Art of delirious?'s Cutting Edge 3 and Fore album - The left half is an orange color, with some blocks of dark blue on the edges. There's a black circle in on the left that has the band name in it, and the words 'Three' written in white in a scripty font above that. Down the middle, in a dark blue box, it has 'Cutting Edge' in a font that looks like it's printed by a labeler machine. On the right, the color is mostly a light aqua blue with white spheres in it, plus a bunch more dark blue boxes. In the dark blue area there's a photo of a golf ball with a much smaller tee and flag photo towards the top. The golf ball has lines encircling it like it's a nucleus of an atom. At the bottom in a serif font in gray it says 'fore'.

Categories: 
Album Of The Day
Music

Album Of The Day: Hinterland by Held By Trees

Album Art of Held By Trees's Hinterland album - In the thick white border around the artwork, it has printed at the top in a small, black print the band's name and at the bottom the album name, both centered horizontally. In the middle is a square piece of artwork that is mostly off-white in the top and bottom. In the middle vertically, it's maybe some sort of abstract landscape, with largely gold colors on the right side especially in the lower vertical section, and bits of red, black and purple everywhere. Some thin, dark lines can be seen as well amidst the painted colors that look like they're on a textured canvas.

I'd not heard of "post-rock" as a genre before, but apparently bands I've enjoyed for years like Sigur Rós and Explosions In The Sky are post-rock bands. It seems to me like it's a genre that incorporates elements of rock, but also a lot of various other styles in mostly instrumental works. Held By Trees has been only been around for 4-5 years, but some of the musicians on their albums have done post-rock from nearly its inception working with the band Talk Talk and Mark Hollis. Released just yesterday, Hinterland is the latest release of this English band and provides 40 minutes of instrumental musical exploration. I've only started listening to their albums and EPs in the last few months, but I'm really enjoying the beautiful music they are making. Looks like it's not yet on streaming, but you can listen and buy on Bandcamp.

Release Year: 2025
Listen/Buy on Bandcamp

Categories: 
Album Of The Day
Music

Album Of The Day: Cosmic Supreme by John Mark McMillan

About 15 years ago, I heard about a singer-songwriter from North Carolina named John Mark McMillan. He was then known for making his unique brand of "modern worship"—a more contemporary style of music designed for church instead of traditional hymns. But I never thought McMillan was doing that primarily; most of his songs were a lot more artistic and personal than most music written for congregations to sing together. Over the last 10+ years, John Mark McMillan still had religious themes in his lyrics, but the songs were not what would be called "worship". But with Cosmic Supreme, released today, John Mark McMillan is returning to make more worship-oriented music. It still sounds very similar musically to his recent albums—what I might call soft rock or I saw listed as "alternative folk" recently—but more of the lyrics are written directly in praise and worship to God. It's beautiful musical poetry about the creator of the universe, and I really like it. Time will tell if churches decide to sing some of these songs together, but this album has some impeccable production that your church service will probably not have and is a great listen.

Release Year: 2025
Listen on Apple Music
Listen on Spotify

Categories: 
Album Of The Day
Music

Album Of The Day: Terraform: The People by Propaganda & DJ Mal-Ski

The People EP - A photo of about 50 Africans posing for a photo on a sandy bit of land with large rocks and the mostly cloudy sky with a golden brown hue added to it. In the midst of the sky, it has a Propaganda text with a pen and brush crossed behind it to be a sort of logo. Below that, it says 'The People' in large letters, then 'Terraform' in much smaller letters, and the 'Food For the Hungry' logo and word mark below that, all printed in white.

"We are the culture." Amen to that! Released 4 years ago yesterday, this is the first of his four Terraform EPs. Rapper Propaganda (with the help of DJ Mal-Ski) focuses on the world's people and how we have to work together and live together on this release. In "We Were Only 10", for example, he draws parallels between gang culture in his childhood growing up in the Los Angeles area and terrorists for kids growing up in the Middle East. Other songs on this celebrate the culture in more of a positive light, including a number of references to Propaganda's African heritage as well as his life in LA. This whole EP is quality rap celebrating that there is more that unites us as humans than divides us. It makes me think, and it's a good celebration of the many places we come from and what we can learn from each other.

Release Year: 2021
Listen on Apple Music
Listen on Spotify

Categories: 
Album Of The Day
Music

Pages

Browse the blog by category or date