Various Artists – Double Dancing (1983)

This is actually two albums in one. Double Dancing 1 and 2. I think I got these from my ex-girlfriend years ago when I had bought a vinyl player. She bought these at a flea market somewhere in Helsinki. I probably would never have bought these kinds of albums myself, but now I'm actually quite pleasantly surprised that I also own these types of mainstream pop compilations. This compilation double album was released in Nordic Countries in 1983, the year I was born. It features the greatest radio hits from that time, but I think their budget hasn't been that high, since there are no massively popular hit songs or artists on the album. Thus, even though the style is very mainstream, today the selection feels a bit alternative in terms of 80s synth pop. I have hardly listened to these albums before, but now is a good time to catch up on what I actually own.

Pixies – Doolittle (1989)

When I was younger, I was constantly told that Pixies was really cool and I really felt like with my music taste, I really should like them. The problem was, I never really got interested in them. I mean, I did like a couple of songs, such as Where Is My Mind? but most songs felt too noisy and it was difficult to get any grasp of the band. This all changed just a few years ago when Pixies was about to come to headline Field Day festival in Hackney. This was an incentive enough for me to revisit their albums and this time, out of nowhere, I finally understood what the band was all about. I have said many times in this blog already how my musical horizons have gotten much wider in recent years and one of the things this means is that I tolerate noise and breaking of melodic patterns a lot more. Pixies has some quite catchy pop songs, but the noise part of it took some getting used to.

Green Day – Dookie (1994)

Green Day's career has had a couple different defining moments depending on how old you are. To my generation, Dookie is the only answer to what's the best thing Green Day ever made. It was huge at the time of its release! Dookie is the band's first major label album and when they moved away from their indie label, many of the old fans abandoned the band calling them sell-outs. Younger generations found Green Day again after American Idiot and to them that's what Green Day is all about. The newer Green Day is more stadium rock than punk rock. To me personally, Dookie is the greatest era in band's history, because that's when their songwriting became mature enough to be interesting, but they still held on to their punk rock attitude. When I was about 12 years old, Green Day was really popular amongst my classmates and we really listened to it all the time.

CSS – Donkey (2008)

There are not many Brazilian band that I'm familiar with. CSS is a short for Cansei de Ser Sexy, which means 'tired of being sexy', which is apparently a quote of something Beyoncé had said. They became popular with their critically acclaimed debut album. I like this second album of theirs a bit more than the first album. Somehow, Donkey has more melodic and more approachable songs and since the genre of the album is not exactly my favourite, these kinds of things matter. Donkey is filled with great catchy indie rock songs with some synth spices. I remember buying it on vinyl from a Helsinki-based record shop when they had a bunch of Sub Pop vinyls on sale for just 10€ each, which was very reasonable for new vinyl records at least at that time. It's been a while while I've listened to this album and I can see my taste has evolved, because now I actually like this a lot more than back then.

The Scaramangas – Don't Follow the Weak (2007)

Before getting into university, I spent one year working in a café in Helsinki city centre. We had a really nice youthful crew in that café and we regularly played our own CDs while working. This led to talking about music a lot. One of the other employees was also in a band. His band was The Scaramangas. At that time, they had only released one EP and I went to their gig when they released their second EP. By the time Don't Follow the Weak was released, I didn't work there anymore and I didn't stay in contact with the guy. I don't think I even noticed they had released an album like this. But then I spotted it in a record shop in Helsinki and I remember it being quite cheap as well, so I bought it without too much thinking, because I had liked their music back then. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this was even better than what I expected.

Oasis – Don't Believe the Truth (2005)

Oasis gets quite a lot of bad rep for their later albums. In some cases it's quite deserved, but I quite like Don't Believe the Truth. It may not be a fantastic album throughout, but there are more than a few decent tracks on it. The sounds are lighter than in the beginning of their career or on their last album that kind of returned to their roots. I've heard many times people compare Oasis to The Beatles. normally, I think, that comparison comes down to things like how they look like, how they sing etc., but on this album, I think there are quite strong musical similarities as well. For one thing, all the band members have contributed to songwriting, which wasn't the case on all of their albums. Noel has usually pretty much written all the songs for their albums. Also, there are nice yet subtle 60s psychedelia influences in many songs on this album, which points to The Beatles.