glorycloud's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- the abandonments of the elect the abandonments of the elect I got out of work at 1:30 PM today and came home to a cold empty house. Carol just got home from the hospital. I am stiff and sore. I am also extremely tired. I did not sleep soundly last night. I woke up at 3:30 AM and could not fall back to sleep. I did fall asleep but soon it was time to get up and go to work. I am out of it today. I suppose I will close to feel like crap. I am cold and need to find someplace warm. Mojave 3 Biography Mojave 3 are Neil Halstead, Rachel Goswell, Ian McCutcheon, Alan Forrester & Simon Rowe. They are regularly joined by Melvin Duffy. Last year, Neil Halstead released his first solo album : Sleeping On Roads. Critics and fans alike lavished praise on it, and Neil toured around the world for a year after it was released, visiting Europe and Australia, and taking in America no fewer than three times. Every Mojave 3 album has sold more than its predecessor, and Sleeping On Roads continued the upward curve; no doubt, fans will be equally enthusiastic to learn that Rachel Goswell has taken up the solo baton. She spent much of the first half of 2003 recording her own solo record, which is scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2004. But this burst of solo ambitions being realized doesn't mean that the partnership between Neil and Rachel - which takes in three albums with Slowdive and three more with Mojave 3 - is at an end. Proof positive comes in the form of Spoon And Rafter, Mojave's fourth long-player, which will be released in September. It wasn't a straightforward record to make - solo commitments, busy schedules and the need for various members of the band to shuttle between London and the band's recently-completed recording studio in Cornwall meant that work happened in fits and starts, as and when people were available. Songs were recorded, left, revisited, reworked - often dramatically - and, in some cases, discarded altogether. But although it took over a year to finish, it also opened up a new, more reflective way for the band to work - small wonder, then, that Spoon And Rafter is the most complex and musically ambitious record of Mojave 3's career. It's was certainly more fun than going into a studio in London every day for two weeks, says Neil, and what's weird is that, as soon as we started to compile the record, we noticed that it still had a cohesive feel to it. And almost every song - completely unintentionally - says something about broken hearts. Indeed - and one of the great things about Mojave 3 has always been their ability to make heartbreaking, bittersweet music. They're a band of paradoxes - their joyous moments come with an undertow of sadness, they rock just when you're expecting introspection, they combine total simplicity with sonic ambition - and yet Spoon And Rafter manages to bring these differing elements together in wonderful, wide screen harmony. The opening, epic Bluebird Of Happiness weighs in at nine and a half minutes, but although it sprawls, it's never cloying, even after a hundred listens. It's followed by the up tempo and almost uplifting Starlite #1 and Billoddity, which confirm the complexity of the arrangements on the new record : acoustic guitars, analog synths and pedal steel arrive in warm affirmative layers. Other highlights include the multifaceted Battle Of The Broken Hearts, the wistfully jaunty Tinker's Blues and the aching, fragile She's All Up Above. By the time the mournful country-tinged closer Between The Bars has faded to silence, two things are clear. First, Spoon And Rafter is the best record Mojave 3 have made. And second, it's time to hit play and start again [listening to Mojave 3 "Spoon and Rafter"] 4:06 p.m. - 2003-09-25 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||
|
||||||