I think the only issue with Postcards is that it’s very hard to remember which tracks you like thanks to the tracklisting. Postcard # 14 is particularly good, for example. Otherwise it’s a huge body of work to fall into for a few hours.
1 Like
I’ve spent a lot of time this week listening to Postcards, there’s some really good stuff in there. It’s unwieldy, 52 tracks, numbers for titles, not something for easy consumption in one sitting. Jens deserves a lot of kudos for sticking with it, with this and his Ghostwriting project (something I didn’t know about and haven’t got around to listening to yet) he put out 60 odd songs in 2015. I’m not sure what I’ve heard that I could compare it to. Magnetic Fields and Pumpkins I guess, both have done similar large scale song dumps but they were ultimately commercial endeavours with a product in mind whereas this seems to have been more an exercise to challenge how he does things.
I guess all the blatant samples made a proper release of the whole thing a none starter anyway, really reminds me of his very early stuff at times. As with Avalanches I love the MOR sources he draws from, there’s magic in those recordings but there’s some really interesting sampling outside of that world too, like the bells ringing from Bremen Cathedral on the gorgeous, peaceful Postcard 30 and him using the last few seconds of this Suzanne Ciani recording from Letterman as a basis for Postcard 7. I only knew of her through reading The Wire, this was great to find
I was really struck by the consistency across it, there’s only a couple out of the bunch I didn’t like at all, as songs they are fairly fully formed things, I was expecting it to be scrappier, but it would have been nice to hear some of them worked on a bit more. This this one could have slotted onto a regular Jens album nicely just as it is, has a lovely sadness and that Kortedala lushness
Probably my favourite on the whole album this, uses the same Francis Bebey sample Arcade Fire put in Everything Now, it grows into something quite sweet and warm
Postcard 19 stood out both for it’s very direct chorus and the verse’s melodic similarity to Summer of 69, it’s very sugary but I like the track it became
3 Likes