AAW: Woodface - Crowded House

(Originally posted 07 January 2022)

This was a wild week outside of this album. Classes started (On a Wednesday??) for this semester, so my whole deal is just getting shaken up. Listening to “Chocolate Cake” a few times a day really added a weird vibe- In fact, that’s my main gripe with the album. That song hovers between your standard fun pop-culture pokes fun at American consumerism and celebrity and just being obnoxious. It’s a fine song, it’s a good time, but starting the album with it made me find it really repetitive and eventually grating. I guess that’s down to the way I’ve been listening to the album though. I’ll put it on from the beginning while I’m getting ready, because that’s a nice way to start my day and I can really pay attention. Then, sometimes I’ll pick it back up from the middle when I’m doing schoolwork or some other business, like folding laundry. I expect this to be standard across albums I listen to for this blog though, so I’ll need to adjust as I go so as not to go insane. 

Overall, this is a pretty solid album! It feels cohesive, so nothing feels super out of place, without being monotonous. While the first track can get kind of old, nothing ever really dips below a 5/10, at least not noticeably. Generally a joy to listen to, but as with… a lot of 90s content, the politics of some tracks (Chocolate Cake, Italian Plastic specifically) can be muddy unless you’re willing to do deeper analysis than I am. These folks are really focused on fame- Chocolate Cake, Fame Is, and arguably Weather With You all explore aspects of Fame in 90s America. There Goes God is a fun romp in blasphemy that I particularly enjoy, but this album’s top pick is going to be Weather With You, also the most played song on the album on Spotify. It’s poetic but catchy and memorable, and I don’t know what the hell it means but I will always take the weather with me, thank you very much! This whole album is lyrically meaningful without being overbearing, and it’s generally light without being overbearing (With the exception, perhaps, of Chocolate Cake.)

I’m overall impressed with the musicality of this album. Whispers and Moans gets kind of funky with a heavy bassline and a wah’d guitar, but Four Seasons In One Day, the song that brought me to the album, goes slower and if you listen closely, there are layers of detail to be found. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what instruments I’m hearing- there’s something like a harpsichord, but with a dynamic range? I think it’s a great listen. Again, There Goes God flows beautifully and is just a gorgeous song with the lyric “But there goes God / In his sexy pants and his sausage dog”. I cannot recommend that particular song enough, I think. Fame Is features some choral work and some really subtle organ, and All I Ask features strings and sort of casual classical guitar that works out really nicely with a bassline and slow-moving vocals. Italian Plastic is genuinely so fun to listen to that I have been avoiding trying to figure out if it is a joke about consumerism or objectifying women (Or both, running theory). The guitar lines have gorgeous tone and play really well with the lyrical structure, and the bassline is really compelling- and they’ve used chimes to not only musical but thematic effect. I am so into that. 

Rounding out the album is How Will You Go/I’m Still Here - Medley, which does something that I really like- It really can’t exist on its own as a single. It seems like they wrote and produced it with the sole intention of having it at the end of the album, tying everything together and saying goodbye. It’s beautiful, uses really understated electric organ, and fades out…  With another minute and a half left on the track? There’s a long enough silence to forget you were listening to an album before, and then I’m Still Here kicks in: “I’m still here / I won’t go away,” a raucous jaunt that never really ends, it just fades out.

I feel like this album was made really deliberately. There’s a lot here that I’m just supremely unqualified to inspect, that I can’t write out in my lifetime, but there’s so much going on with this album that I imagine someone could happily write a book about it without ever going into its cultural/historical context, just like I haven’t here. I have done exactly zero research into this group, and I probably never will, but I would not be surprised if this album exists in a broader context of their work and public reception- there are hints here of maybe some scandal or deeper story that exists outside of the scope of what I can do here. Maybe you should look into it!

Overall, Woodface is a great album to listen to… fewer than this many times in a week. I suspect this will be true of many albums to come, but I mean it here. Definitely give this one a shot!

Next week’s album: Silk Degrees, by Boz Scaggs. Another pick from my “Consider For…” playlist, from a track I found while obsessively listening to versions of Georgia On My Mind- the song I found here is just called Georgia, and it’s a fun time itself.

This is probably a pretty bad album review. I’ve never done this before, and while listening this week, I struggled to figure out what I wanted to talk about and focus on, and so I’ll ask you not to expect a lot of continuity in format between this post and the next few- I want to be trying out new things with this, and that means a lot of them just might not be very good.