Birth of the Cool
Miles Davis
As you may have gathered from my constant moaning about it, jazz has never really been my thing. These bebop straits leading up to 1960 are a challenge then, but so far the journey has surprised me, and that Thelonious Monk album has been played a couple of times since I blogged.
And then there’s Miles Davis. I’ve actually enjoyed some of his stuff before (such as the later ‘Kind of Blue’), and I once nicked the title of this album for a playlist I did for some unimpressed girl back in sixth form. But I’d never listened to this one before.
It’s more imaginative, more lively than ‘ Kind of Blue’, and it’s good to hear Davis being creative. By the time you’re into Side B (or at least the Spotify equivalent), it’s got its hooks into you.
And then, right at the end, there’s “Darn that Dream”. Not a bad track in itself, but when the crooning vocals kick in you’re jolted from the tone poem hypnosis into something quite different.
Imagine “Blitzkrieg Bop” slipped in the middle of a Portishead album and you get the idea. Shame really.
Oh, and love the cover.
Track listing
- Move 2:32
- Jeru 3:10
- Moon Dreams 3:17
- Venus de Milo 3:10
- Budo 2:32
- Deception 2:45
- Godchild 3:07
- Boplicity 2:59
- Rocker 3:03
- Israel 2:15
- Rouge 3:13
11 tracks, total running time 32:03. Track data from MusicBrainz.