Up too early again, so I felt like spinning something low key to avoid waking my wife. I decided on one of my Environments albums that I haven't listened to yet. I've been very curious about Environments 11 since I bought it, though I imagined I would go in order, and so have a few to get through.
But na, I'm too curious. I mean look at that album cover. What were they thinking? I imagine that they probably running out of ideas and/or money by album #11, so they hired some seedy marketing guy to come in and sexy up their brand. Hilarious!
As for the content... I tried starting properly on Side A with "Alpine Blizzard", but had to stop it after about a minute. Turns out that I don't find ghostly, howling wind to be very low key and comforting. Quite the opposite, actually. So Side B's "Country Thunderstorm" it is. For whatever reason, I DO find the sound of thunder calming. Maybe it's nostalgia. It's doing the trick right now.
I will say though that "Country Thunderstorm" is not very novel. I haven't listened to the entire series yet, but I'm pretty sure that that thunderstorms have featured in two or more past albums. Maybe I'm being unfair. I mean, how original can you really get with this concept, especially by the 11th album? They tried something "new" with "Alpine Blizzard" and failed, so "Country Thunderstorm" is the safe choice that saves the album.
Not to disrespect the Environment series. I think it's brilliant as a whole, and I love digging into them again after all these years. But Environments 11? Not so great. But hey, it was cheap and I got a laugh at the sexy cover. Win win!
