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I made some mistakes while selecting the album list. That’s fine, mistakes happen. Two of the mistakes boil down to, “but I’ve already written about this one!” Ha ha, too late, I made a big sampler mix late last year and everything. I’m committed.

Here’s the first of those mistakes. I’m standing by the selection because first time around, I was unkind to a perfectly cromulent record. This time, maybe, I can do justice to the thing.

What is it?

Astronaut is the late-2004 studio record released by Duran Duran, who were busy trying not to fall off the pop-culture radar entirely.

How does it sound?

Mix up for the sampler:

Why this pick?

It’s the last album by the band that I actually like. Duran Duran are very, very hit-or-miss for me, which is weird because their sound didn’t change much over the first couple decades. Rio and Notorious? Great! Seven and the Ragged Tiger and The Wedding Album (yes that’s not its real name but whatever, everyone calls it that)? Meh. Liberty and Red Carpet Massacre? No thank you. I couldn’t tell you why one record works and another doesn’t, not in this instance.

Astronaut is almost on the “meh” part of the spectrum, and upon first listen that was my overall impression. Now, though, I really love a half dozen of the songs and am okay with most of the rest. Only a couple of the tracks still put me off.

So here we are. It’s a good record. Don’t trust what 2004’s version of Karel had to say about it! (I’m not linking that post. You can search for it if you want.) He was kind of a self-absorbed jerk with delusions that his opinions mattered!

…Hmm. Maybe things haven’t changed terribly much, eh?

Which songs are the highlights?

“(Reach Up For The) Sunrise,” the lead single and first track on the album, is a fully competent radio-friendly piece of work and holds up just fine, fourteen years later.

The real standouts, though, show up once the first couple of songs are out of the way. “What Happens Tomorrow” is marvelous in the same way that “Come Undone” was on The Wedding Album, “Nice” may not be terribly deep but it is outstandingly upbeat, “Taste The Summer” is almost good enough to make me think fondly upon my least-favorite of the seasons, and “Finest Hour” is surprisingly uplifting.

Along the way we also get “Want You More” and the title track “Astronaut,” both solid bits of pop songcraft.

Which songs don’t work so well?

I still don’t like “Bedroom Toys” or “Still Breathing” very much. Some things didn’t change from 2004 to now, I suppose.

“One Of Those Days” needed an overhaul; there’s a germ of a good song in there somewhere that should’ve had the chance to come to fruition.

Which album did you almost pick in favor of this one?

Had I been thinking clearly enough I’d have remembered I’d written about Astronaut already. Twice. Okay, the second time it was only a couple of paragraphs, but the point stands. I goofed up.

My obvious choice should’ve been Notorious. I love that record to bits. There’s not a song on there that I can’t enjoy on some level. I will play it through and not skip a thing. It contains several of my all-time favorite DD tunes, such as “Skin Trade,” “Winter Marches On,” and “Proposition.”

Maybe, if I revisit this album-write-up idea later, I’ll rectify this egregious oversight.

Any final thoughts?

I received this album from the radio station outfit I used to work for. It was the big promotional package and everything. I gave it away to a friend (after ripping it to my library) because my first impression was so underwhelming.

I… kind of wish I hadn’t done that. D’oh.

The version of “(Reach Up For The) Sunrise” they released as a promo is a better mix than what’s on the album. So of course I don’t have a copy of that either! Go, me!

Oh, hey! We’re past the halfway mark on this year’s project. I haven’t missed a deadline in a year and a half so far. Let’s hear it for six more months of reliable content production!

Yes, I could’ve placed this self-titled release up against a couple of the others. I decided against that in favor of honoring the anniversary of its release.

What is it?

Toy Matinee is a one-off masterwork of pop music released this week, twenty-eight years ago. In its original form it’s only nine songs long, barely past three quarters of an hour.

How does it sound?

I hope that someone saves a seat for me on the sampler mix:

Why this pick?

For all that Kevin Gilbert’s talents are displayed quite well on his later solo records, I get the feeling that he was best suited to a collaborative effort. Which, of course, makes me sad for the might-have-been outcome if he’d auditioned for and gotten the Genesis gig after Phil Collins left, but… c’est la vie.

And what a collaborative effort this is! It’s catchy, it’s clever, it’s poignant, it’s everything you want from an early ’90s pop album. There’s hardly a dull thud to be heard.

(…sorry about that, Gilbert fans. That pun was unintentional.)

High school best friend Steve and I came across the band due to a little side blurb in an issue of Tower Records’ magazine at the time of the album’s release. The two main songwriters were quoted as having influences that added up to most of the core of our individual music libraries. We had to check this album out!

I’m so glad we happened upon that magazine article. Too bad I threw out the stack of magazines years ago…

Which songs are the highlights?

The lead track, one of only two songs to receive much in the way of radio airplay, is “Last Plane Out” and it’s a great advertisement for the record as a whole. “The Toy Matinee” is rather somber for a title track but that’s fine because it’s gorgeous anyway. Seriously, it’s a go-to rainy-day bit of mood music. If you sample the album online (beyond the above 30-second mix), please check out these two songs first and foremost.

And then there’s the song which is presumably about Madonna, “Queen of Misery,” which largely exists because nearly all of the band’s members worked on one of her records. (I didn’t know about that until years and years later.) All of this is firmly in the pop-rock vein, nothing more and nothing less. Still, it’s all superbly crafted stuff.

Along and between those standouts we get the appropriately absurd tribute to the painter Salvador Dali, “Turn It On Salvador,” and the almost anthemic “Remember My Name.” Closing out the original album tracklist there’s “We Always Come Home,” an odd but endearing slice of aw-shucks down-home life-goes-on.

Which songs don’t work so well?

Okay, “The Ballad of Jenny Ledge” is kinda meh. It’s not bad, it’s just not particularly memorable or compelling either. Kind of a foam packing peanut of a song, a state made worse by it being the longest of the songs on offer.

On the flipside, “There Was A Little Boy” is musically compelling and well-written, but the lyrical subject matter is a bit off-putting. “How can you expect a child to understand the sickness of the world / his eyes are blind,” indeed. Your mileage will almost certainly vary.

Which album did you almost pick in favor of this one?

It was a coin-toss between this and Thud, Kevin Gilbert’s first solo album. (Hence the pun apology, above.) I decided that Toy Matinee is a better intro to Gilbert than the solo record.

Any final thoughts?

If you do pick up the album, get an edition which includes the bonus tracks. Most of them are just early/reworked versions of songs already on the record but it’s all worth it to get the short, sweet, melancholy “Blank Page.”

I really, really wish that if we hadn’t gotten a Gilbert-fronted Genesis at least we could’ve had a second Toy Matinee release. Sigh.

That’s right, I’m picking an album from the highly-regarded woman who composes anime soundtracks who isn’t Yoko Kanno. Sorry, Cowboy Bebop fans.

What is it?

Fiction is a 2003 album from Yuki Kajiura, whose initial claim to fame was being involved in the Noir and .hack soundtracks, generally speaking.

How does it sound?

Take me back to the mix where the sampler was born:

Why this pick?

This isn’t a “best of” since a lot of the tracks are originals and the rest have been reworked and/or re-recorded for this release. It’s close enough for our purposes, though, and as a jumping-on point for appreciating her work this is a nearly ideal Yuki Kajiura release. It helps that it’s readily available in the USA without having to finagle a copy via CDJapan or something like that. (Though you want the 14-track version originally limited to Japan, because you miss out on “Red Rose” otherwise.)

To suggest that this is just a collection of stuff from anime & game soundtracks is a disservice, though. Fiction is a helluva collection of gorgeous songs, never mind where they came from originally. Absolutely gorgeous.

Which songs are the highlights?

The album kicks off with a rendition of “Key of the Twilight” from the .hack franchise, and there are few better songs ever to arise from the world of anime. A few songs later we get the title track, “Fiction,” which is an outstanding original piece for this album. A few songs after that comes the high-energy instrumental, “Red Rose.”

Along the way we get “Cynical World,” a fine rendition of Noir‘s “Canta Per Me,” and the grand delight that is “Vanity.”

Oh, and just to drive home how marvelous Noir was musically, there’s a great take on “Salva Nos” toward the end of the album as well.

Which songs don’t work so well?

The album starts to run out of top-tier material after the midpoint, with pieces like “Awaking” (despite having the same melodic line as a .hack song she’d done earlier) and “Winter” and “Lullaby” (an oddly-rendered torch song, more or less) not coming together quite as well as the earlier stuff.

Which album did you almost pick in favor of this one?

It might’ve been obvious to go with the .hack//SIGN or Noir soundtracks. Too obvious, in fact. I’d probably have picked the Mai-HiME soundtrack instead.

Any final thoughts?

In the process of writing this entry I discovered that Fiction II came out a few years ago. Well hello there, new addition to the wishlist…