Day 166: The Avalanches - Since I Met You
Happy Friday to all, and a happy Valentine’s Day weekend to all of those who celebrate. I have plans so I get to be all smug, but solidarity with all my solo curmudgeons who think it’s a corporate scam – I’m still with you in spirit. Today I thought I might go for an album where I had one song from it knocking around my playlists for years, but I’ve never actually listened to the whole thing. It’s days like this when I really love this project, I get to tie up all these musical loose ends.
Album cover courtesy of XL Recordings
Today’s album is Since I Met You by an Australian electronic music group called the Avalanches. They were formed in Melbourne in 1997 from the ashes of a noise punk group called Alarm 115 – the band fell apart when one of the members got deported, so the remaining members decided to form a new project called the Avalanches. Before settling on that name, they did trial a few tragic ones: Swinging Monkey Cocks, Quentin's Brittle Bones, and Whoops Downs Syndrome. I’m sure we’re all glad that they went back to the drawing board.
Since I Met You was the group’s debut studio LP, and it was released in November, 2000. It was originally meant to be released in February that year, but clearing all the samples that they used took more time than they expected. One of the members, Robbie Chater, estimates that they used up to 3,500 samples on the album.
It almost seems to be an homage to music that came before it, but it’s still completely fresh. It’s one of those records that you’d happily put on in almost any situation, but mostly it’s a pretty solid choice for a social setting. The group say they ended up making a party record almost by accident:
We just wanted to make a great pop record. We love lots of kind of sad music as well. So that side of our personalities came through. I mean, for us the initial plan of the record was to make a kind of sad adventure. It turned out, everybody's like, "It's a party record," but that just happened despite our intentions.
I can’t think of many bands or artists that I’d compare it to even today. Maybe the most obvious contemporary would be DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing....., which I reviewed on day 125, but even that’s not a dead ringer. That lack of things that you could directly compare it to is no mean feat from an album that’s almost 26 years old. There’s this mix of heady plinky-plonky euphoria to it with an element of something that’s a bit more thoughtful than that, which makes for interesting listening.
The strangeness of it pulls you in, and then it gives you something else you didn’t expect, like a very prominent Boney M sample. You never really know what’s coming next. It’s fun to listen to, it’s like the album equivalent of a good hang. Since I Met You gets a nice, cool 9/10.