Hung up

Dear Nora - Mountain Rock (2004) ***

Nominated by: Alex

Music club: MNAC

MNAC playlist addition:  You Are A Bear (For A New Friend)

I'm trying to resist the obvious impulse to retitle the band as Flaming Nora. It's not without merits, but suffice to say I struggled to play this album three times without skipping ahead. It seems a very long album as well which also made it tricky to navigate. 'Seems', because many of the tracks are under a minute. Maybe they are draft sketches? Whatever the purpose, they flit by quickly without embedding themselves deeply in my consciousness, but that also paradoxically stretches the album out so there are 17 songs.

Dear Nora is really Katy Davidson and the band is her plus others in various guises/formations. She's the main musician/vocalist on this album.

The subject matter seems to be fairly bleak throughout (I don't know the back story) and the music (anti-folk) is deliberately (?)/ suitably austere and discordant at times which suits the purpose but I may have mentioned before that 'I'm a daaay person'. I prefer feel good moods rather than being confronted by negativity so this all added to the challenge of replaying Mountain Rock.

She gets a bonus point for the hilarious album title. This is not monolithic heavy metal by any means! I also like the way some songs are short and to the point like You Are a Bear. She doesn't faff around until Love Song to My Friends.

All up - I wouldn't buy a physical copy of it and I probably will not have a repeat listen, but as with all of our AOT fortnight albums, I'm glad I heard it/ was introduced to it because I never would have listened to it otherwise. So, thanks, Alex!