"Once I was happy in happy extremes..."

It seems as though I've read about Aztec Camera for years. In fact, one of my more vivid Aztec Camera associations is reading in my BMG Music monthly brochure about a new AC album, which, based on timing—it was around 1990, and I was about 13—must have been Stray.

Needless to say, the artisans at BMG weren't quite able to convince me to try out Roddy Frame's 90s semi-comeback album. After all, I was probably on the self-selected Hard Rock regimen, & then at the time, I probably stuck with Living Color, or EMF. Or something.

But so anyway, just last week I downloaded an Aztec Camera track. The track was "We Could Send Letters," and I listened to it for the first time yesterday afternoon, & it just fit, somehow.

& so this weekend I headed down to Amoeba and bought High Land, Hard Rain, the first Aztec Camera album. [1]

Anyway, for anyone else who's new to Aztec Camera, the (really short version of the) story: AC is largely just Roddy Frame, from Scotland, and High Land, Hard Rain, released in 1983 (when Roddy was just 19!), is an incredible set of songs about (what else?) love & loss. The obvious musical reference points are The Orange Juice & Elvis Costello, but there's also something much more pastoral about Aztec Camera, sort of an XTC-ish [2] English countryside vibe.

& the tracks on High Land, Hard Rain contain some of the loveliest acoustic guitar playing I've heard in a long time, particularly in e.g. "We Could Send Letters" & "Lost Outside the Tunnel."

I've only had it for about a day now, but I'm already realizing that it's one of those albums that you listen to both sad & happy, happy knowing that you'll love it forever, & it will never grow old, but sad both because you've missed it for 27 years of your life, & but also because it's just a sad, heartbroken sort of an album.

Listen to "Pillar to Post", from High Land, Hard Rain

[1] Also purchased this weekend:

• Spoon, Girls Can Tell


• Destroyer, Streethawk: A Seduction


• Cat Power, The Greatest (more)


• Mick Harvey, One Man's Treasure

[2] BTW, speaking of XTC, did anyone see the Chicago auditions for "American Idol"? That first guy, that guy who sang something I can't remember, but then launched into a ridiculously aggressive version of "Making Plans for Nigel"—that just had me dying. He was all like, "Nigel, Nigel, Nigel!".

Comments

[Harold Check]

High Land, Hard Rain is the Media Nugget that I was so perpetually convinced I'd already done, that I never actually did it. Maybe because I namechecked them once in an Old 97's review, or maybe because I'm just senile. The only other AC track you need worry about, beyond this album, is the de rigeur cover of Van Halen's "Jump," which appeared on a self-titled 10" EP and can be had on CD, bundled with Knife. I saw AC at Gaston Hall in DC a whiles ago with this kooky band called the Sugarcubes. Good times.