Most-read articles in 2014

Here are the most-read articles on Sacred Cowpats in 2014:

10. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Abattoir Blues

http://sacredcowpats.blogspot.ie/2014/03/album-review-nick-cave-and-bad-seeds.html

One half of Cave and co's 2004 set of albums, reviewed for your delectation

8. Juliana Hatfield - Only Everything

http://sacredcowpats.blogspot.ie/2014/08/album-review-juliana-hatfield-only.html

Hatfield's underrated follow-up to Become What You Are jointly with...

8. The Lemonheads - Car Button Cloth

http://sacredcowpats.blogspot.ie/2014/06/album-review-lemonheads-car-button-cloth.html

This Lemonheads album is a bit all over the shop, but when it works... (a bit like the band really)

7. Mark Eitzel - 60 Watt Silver Lining

http://sacredcowpats.blogspot.ie/2014/07/album-review-mark-eitzel-60-watt-silver.html

Eitzel does smooth, wine bar jazz.  You know it couldn't last.

6. Leonard Cohen - I'm Your Man

http://sacredcowpats.blogspot.ie/2014/07/album-review-leonard-cohen-im-your-man.html

An oldie but a goodie.  The album too.

5. Top albums of 2014

http://sacredcowpats.blogspot.ie/2014/12/top-10-albums-of-2014.html

One of the many broken-hearted lists of the year.

4. The Jesus and Mary Chain - The Power of Negative Thinking

http://sacredcowpats.blogspot.ie/2014/04/album-review-jesus-and-mary-chain-power.html

More Jesus and Mary Chain B-sides than any normal person could possibly deal with.

3. Tom Waits - Swordfishtrombones

http://sacredcowpats.blogspot.ie/2014/08/album-review-tom-waits.html

Inscrutable, uncategorisable Tom Waits

2. The Durutti Column - Short Stories For Pauline

http://sacredcowpats.blogspot.ie/2014/05/album-review-durutti-column-short.html

Exquisite guitar goodness from Vini Reilly.

1. A Winged Victory for the Sullen - Atomos VII

http://www.meg.ie/a-winged-victory-for-the-sullen-atomos-vii-ep/

Transcendent EP teaser for the full album.

Album Review: Tom Waits - Swordfishtrombones

For those used to Tom Waits' seventies albums 1983's Swordfishtrombones must be quite jarring.  Supposedly the beginning of 'difficult' Waits, in truth this album has its accessible moments.  Not the opener, Underground though.  It's a kind of growly, stumpy march, and it's followed up by the bone-rattling blues of Shore Leave.  Half spoken, half sung, it's a creepy song with some chilling Vietnam era imagery ("I shopped at the corner on cold chow mein and shot billiards with a midget").

Dave the Butcher is one of several instrumentals, this one with a warped fairground feel, while Just Another Sucker On The Vine's horns conjure up the last day of the carnival.  Closing track Rainbirds uses a glass harmonica with piano and bass to perform one of the prettier pieces of music here.

Johnsburg, Illnois and In The Neighbourhood will be comfortable territory for anybody used to Waits' barfly ballads.  16 Shells From A 30.6 and Down, Down, Down are down and dirty growly blues.  Town With No Cheer opens curiously, with bagpipes before Waits' paints a bleak picture.  Swordfishtrombone itself is a kind of slinky blues, in the vein of Shore Leave. It wouldn't be a Tom Waits album without an emotional wallop, and he delivers here on Soldier's Things, a mainly piano-based lament of the returned hero selling off his mementos - "and everything's a dollar in this box".

Overall the effect is of an album musically all over the place, the disparate songs linked by a loose Vietnam war connection.

Album Review: Sparklehorse – It’s A Wonderful Life

Sparklehorse’s third album, released in 2001 has a more homogenous feel than previous albums, with fewer of the sudden, jarring noisier tracks.  In fact there is only one track that jars, and it arrives late into the album.  Dog Door features of all people Tom Waits on guest vocals.  The combination of Mark Linkous and Waits should work, on paper anyhow.  In reality it just doesn’t work, coming across as mere pastiche, Waits using an affected falsetto (yes, really) on the track.

But the rest of the album works very well indeed.  The title track sets the tone with Linkous’ creepy, whispered vocals, distant bells and scratchy, muffled instrumentation.  Again this track is a little atypical as the rest of the album is more lush.  Tracks such as Gold Day (which has a ring of Eels about it), the Van Morrison-esque Sea of Teeth, and More Yellow Birds are wonderfully drowsy drift to them.  Darker fare such as Apple Bed (featuring a highly effective backing vocal from Nina Persson of the Cardigans) and piano ballad Eyepennies (featuring PJ Harvey) works equally well.

It’s not all sleepiness, Piano Fire is more uptempo while King of Nails stomps and struts, full of confidence.  Penultimate track Comfort Me returns the album to a ‘normal’, countrified keel.  A wonderful life, indeed.