Alphabet Soup Week 49: Artists Filed Under Y

This week sees us coming back to the actual alphabet. No more workarounds (well, at least for a couple more weeks anyway).

Welcome to the week 49 installment of Alphabet Soup! We’ve arrived at the letter Y and, for another couple weeks at least, we can dispense with any workarounds as this letter provides an ample universe of both artists and tracks from which to compile some tasty playlists.

I’m writing this post on a train from Vienna to Prague, a journey that’ll take a little over four hours. This is our fourth and final European city as Tina and I wrap up the sightseeing portion of the six month “intermission” between our retirement in June and our relocation from Bermuda to the UK in January to begin the next act of our lives. Next weekend we’ll be heading back home to Bermuda to spend a couple weeks relaxing and communing with family and friends. I’m very much looking forward to being in one place for so long as we haven’t spent more than a week in the same place since the end of June.

Over this past week I’ve begun drafting my Album of the Year posts it’s been another amazing year for music, a year in which I’ve probably listened to more than 250 albums at least a couple times. While I’ve managed to come up with a decent AOTY list, I’m nowhere near as organized as I normally am - no spreadsheets, no notes, no obsessive tracking and ranking throughout the year - so I can guarantee there will be artists and albums worthy of inclusion that have either been missed completely or not given enough time to marinate. But such is life. I’m hoping to publish the first of 3-4 posts in the coming week, so keep an eye out for those in your inbox!

As the year slowly winds down, I’m finding myself quite tired. While the hiking and traveling has been incredible, I’m a little worn out from all the traveling and discombobulated from the transient nature of our lives over the last six months. Tina and I are both very much looking forward to our upcoming relocation, to finding a new home, and beginning to reintroduce some structure into our lives. We both find comfort and a contented joy in routine and will be happy to welcome that back into our lives.

While I’ve loved putting together the Alphabet Soup series this year, I’m also ready for it to be over. While it has, at times, felt like a bit of a chore, it’s also been a labor of love and has brought me the joy of reconnecting with music from an incredibly important period of my life. I’ve revisited so many wonderful artists and albums, from old favorites to forgotten gems to albums I never even knew I had until I found them on my spreadsheet of digitized CDs. The massive running playlist I’ve compiled, which can be found here, is one that I’m sure I’ll be sticking on shuffle on a regular basis.

This week’s playlist, drawn from the pool of Y Artists, is my favorite in quite some time. Not only have I had the playlist itself on regular rotation, I’ve also spent significant time with each of the individual albums. Hopefully there’s a little something for everyone here this week. Please feel free to drop a comment to let me know your thoughts. Are any of your favorites on here? Anything you love? Or hate? What tracks from Y Artists would be on your playlist?

Happy listening!

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ALPHABET SOUP WEEK 49: Artists Filed Under Y

This week’s selections:

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ARTIST: Yann Tiersen

TRACK: "Comptine d'un autre été : L'Après-midi" from Amélie OST (2001)

Although you wouldn't know it from the artists and tracks that have appeared on Alphabet Soup this year, I'm a huge fan of instrumental music. Because this a fairly recent development, I didn't own a huge amount of instrumental music on CD. One album that I did physically own was the soundtrack to the wonderful 2001 film Amélie from the French composer and musician Yann Tiersen. The film is absolutely lovely and if you haven't seen it, I'd highly recommend it. Tiersen was tabbed for the film by director Jean-Pierre Jeunet who bought his entire catalogue and commissioned him to compose music for the film. The album sold over a million units in France and won the César Award (French equivalent to the Academy Awards) for Best Original Music.

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ARTIST: Youssou N'Dour (feat Neneh Cherry)

TRACK: "7 Seconds" from World Moods (1998)

I was very close to including this track on last week's playlist in which I was using tracks beginning with numbers in place of the letter X. As I started to write the blurb I realized that I could hold off and include it in this weeks playlist. Youssou N'Dour is a Senegalese singer, songwriter and musician, an artist about whom my knowledge is woefully inadequate. He's been described by Rolling Stone as perhaps the most famous singer alive in Senegal and much of Africa. The first time I became aware of N'Dour was when he provided background vocals for Peter Gabriel's 1986 single In Your Eyes. This track, 7 Seconds, featuring Neneh Cherry, was the lead single for N'Dour's seventh studio album The Guide (Wommat), which became his most successful album commercially.

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ARTIST: Yonderboi

TRACK: "Pabadam" from Shallow and Profound (2000)

Yonderboi is the stage name for the Hungarian composer, music producer and visual artist László Fogarasi Jr. I first discovered his music in 2000 with his debut album Shallow and Profound which found its way into my CD collection along with his 2005 follow-up Splendid Isolation. Yonderboi managed to pull his debut album together on a budget of $300 and two days of studio time to record the acoustic instruments after which he recorded everything else at home and mixed the album on his PC. The track Pabadam, featuring vocals by Hungarian singer Edina Kutzora, gained a following after influential DJ Gilles Peterson played the track on his BBC Radio 1 program Worldwide. It's not clear whether Yonderboi is still active; his last album was 2013's Passive Control.

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As you make your way through this week’s playlist, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Do any of these tracks really stand out for you? What do you like? What don’t you like?

Please click the button below to leave a comment.

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ARTIST: Yo La Tengo

TRACK: "Autumn Sweater" from I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One (1997)

I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One is the only album by the American indie rock band Yo La Tengo that I ever physically owned. I remember buying the album on spec, having never heard any of the music, solely because something about the album cover spoke to me. Although it was a good purchase and I thoroughly enjoyed the album, I never went back to explore any of the seven earlier albums they'd released since forming in 1984. The band has since released an additional nine albums and, despite dipping in and out of that body of work over the years, their 1997 album stands as a high water mark for me and I've not heard anything that approaches the quality of that release.

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ARTIST: Young the Giant

TRACK: "Cough Syrup" from Young the Giant (2011)

For many years I thought Young the Giant was a Swedish singer, but I found out this week that they're a band hailing from Irvine, CA. I spent a fair bit of time on Wednesday racking my brain as to how and why I could possibly have thought they were Swedish and it finally came to me: I'd managed to confuse them with The Tallest Man on Earth (tallest man? giant? you get the confusion right?) who found his way into my CD library in the early 2010s. Young The Giant has released a total of five studio albums, including their 2011 self-titled debut album on which Cough Syrup appears. The song, which was originally composed by the band when they were named The Jakes, was the second single released from the album and made it to number three on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart.

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ARTIST: Yeti Lane

TRACK: "Warning Sensations" from The Echo Show (2012)

The French indie band Yeti Live that comprises Ben Pleng and Charlie Boyer have released three albums since forming in Paris in 2008. Warning Sensations is drawn from their critically acclaimed second album, 2012's The Echo Show, the only album of theirs I ever owned. To be honest, it's not an album I recall listening to much but I gave it a spin as I compiled this week's playlist and found it to be a rather uneven listen. Warning Sensations is by far my favorite track and is perhaps the most accessible track from the album.

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ARTIST: The Yardbirds

TRACK: "Heart Full of Soul" from Ultimate! (2001)

Heart Full of Soul, from the Yardbirds third album, 1965's Having a Rave Up with The Yardbirds, was the first single released by the band following Eric Clapton's departure. Outside of some of their bigger hits I've never been a huge fan of the band, so I’m not sure how their 2001 compilation Ultimate! found its way into my collection. This song is often cited as one of the first significant uses of the fuzzbox. Originally the distinctive riff was intended for a sitar but there were issues. Initially the sitar player couldn't manage the song's time signature, but even when he did the sound wasn't up front enough and didn’t cut through into the mix. Beck developed the guitar part in place of the sitar using a prototype fuzzbox he'd borrowed from Jimmy Page and an instantly recognizable riff was born. The single saw success on both sides of the Atlantic, peaking at number 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 and at number 2 on the UK Singles chart.

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ARTIST: Yes

TRACK: "Owner of a Lonely Heart" from Essential '80s 1980-1984 (1998)

Moving from a 1960's classic to a mainstay of many a 1980's compilation with Yes's Owner of a Lonely Heart. This may well be the only track of theirs that I'm actually familiar with as I've never been able to get into prog rock, Yes is one of a handful of bands that immediately come to mind when I think of prog, along with Rush (of course), King Crimson, and early Genesis. When the song was released in 1983 as the lead single from their eleventh studio album, it was a massive success, topping the Billboard Hot 100 and making the top 20 in over a dozen countries. Given what a huge mainstream hit Owner of a Lonely Heart was, I wondered how Yes fans viewed the song within the context of the band's entire body of work. Earlier this year Prog magazine did exactly that, polling their readers on the Yes catalog, with their 50,000 readers ranking the song as the band's 13th best. Scrolling through the tracks with a higher ranking, I didn't recognize a single one, though it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that I've heard one or more of them.

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ARTIST: Yeah Yeah Yeahs

TRACK: "Gold Lion" from Show Your Bones (2006)

I was surprised and excited in 2022 when the American indie rock band Yeah Yeah Yeahs released an album, their first in almost a decade. That album, Cool It Down, ranked in my top 20 that year and provided a wonderful opportunity to enjoy Karen O's unique and otherworldly vocals for the first time since her 2019 collaboration with Danger Mouse on Lux Prima, another AOTY for me. YYY's are one of those bands that I'd kinda forgotten about until that 2022 release and this week's playlist was a great opportunity to go back and enjoy some of their earlier work. Gold Lion was the lead single from 2006's Show Your Bones, the band's second studio album. The song, which is a little more laid back relative to some of their earlier work, became the band's second major success, peaking at number 88 on the Billboard Hot 100 and reaching number 18 on the UK Singles chart.

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ARTIST: Yazoo

TRACK: "Don't Go" from Relax! The Ultimate 80s Mix (1998)

From one fantastic vocalist to another, we wrap up this week's playlist with the magic that is Alison Moyet's voice. Along with ex-Depeche Mode keyboard player Vince Clarke, Moyet employed her powerful and bluesy contralto vocals on two Yazoo albums in the early 80s. The band was formed when Clarke responded to an ad that Moyet had placed in a British music magazine. Sadly the pair would split after only two albums with Clarke going on to form Erasure and Moyet embarking on a solo career. Don't Go, the second single from the duo's debut album Upstairs at Eric's, peaked at number 2 on the UK Singles chart, the band's second top five single. The track was a global success, attaining top ten status in more than a dozen countries.

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Vienna Christmas Markets

Despite visiting some decent Christmas markets in Stockholm and Copenhagen, nothing prepared me for the magic that was Vienna. We visited about ten markets over a few nights, had some amazing food, and saw some incredible festive displays. Here are a few photos, from the Rathausplatz and Stephansplatz markets:

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Here’s the link to the running playlist which is updated on a weekly basis as each new installment is published:

ALPHABET SOUP RUNNING PLAYLIST

Tracks missing from the Spotify playlist:

• Allegory by Murray Attaway (Week 02)

• Face Me and Smile by The Lover Speaks (Week 12)

• From Your Mouth by God Lives Underwater (Week 13)

• This Can’t Go On! by The Lover Speaks (Week 23)

• Two for the Show by Trooper (Week 40)

• Twenty One by Marry Me Jane (Week 40)

• Slow by 13 Engines (Week 47)

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Thank you for reading Joy in the Journey, I appreciate you being here! If there’s someone in your life you think may enjoy this post, feel free to share it.