John Hiatt - Slug Line (1979)

Holy shit, was John Hiatt really trying hard to sound like Elvis Costello here? He had to be, there is no way it's a coincidence how much this sounds almost exactly like This Year's Model-era Elvis, right down to the lots of words and excess of att-i-tude. There's even the obligatory reggae song here four tracks in. But I mean, as far as fake Elvis Costello goes, this is pretty good. Stripped-down and punchy new wave arrangements with memorable melodies and snotty vocals. Hiatt's always been a solid craftsman, but it's a bit alarming to hear him struggling to find his musical voice on this album. I wonder if the stylistic change here was him just following his muse or the record company's idea. Either way, it's a good time overall.
https://open.spotify.com/album/5MOm6Cer1iv1VmyJp2ArLz

Popol Vuh - Affenstunde (1970)

Birds chirping kick this thing off and then quickly disappear and then there are underwater sounds and sonar beeps happening and then they combine with reverb-y echo effects so I think Popol Vuh wants the listener to feel like they're in a submarine or something and then the sonar beeps get more urgent and louder and fade in and out and honestly get kind of annoying while at the same time we hear the underwater keyboards rumbling away in the background and then after awhile the beepity boops fade away and we hear feedback-y stuff and what sounds like a Fender Rhodes malfunctioning and then the echoplex or whatever sounds get louder and then we hear more keyboard beepity boops and then a drum circle muscles its way into the foreground with this insistent cowbell and I'm all like "I really hope this drum circle thing doesn't go on for like a half hour or something because it's really going nowhere and I wish all these drums would at least all play to the same tempo or something" and then the drums fade out and we just hear whoosh-y air synth sounds and so we have these spooky abstract synth sounds wheezing in and out of focus and I swear I hear a faint conga drum in the background being randomly hit once in a while and anyway so we're floating on some spooky Moog synth business for a while but it's pretty cool so I'm like all "okay, I'll just chill with this for now and I'm honestly feelin it anyway," not like I'm on drugs or anything, just feeling the vibe, and then we hear a campfire crackling and then the drum circle comes back, but it's okay because the drums are actually following some kind of groove and a Moog is grooving along with it too and it sounds like it's all happening in a secluded cave somewhere and we hear these weird metallic sound effects too and then things get pretty tense with more spooky sounds that sound like a distorted singing saw and then the drums go away again and the heavy organ vibes come creeping in and then these loud drony synthesizers but one of the synths sounds like a pan flute or something and then the drum circle comes back fading in and out but it's all frantic-sounding now and it feels like the drums are fighting back and forth with the synths which are farting out endless streams of all these aimless noodly notes and this all goes on for a nice long time and then it's done and that's the end of the album. There's a bonus track too but it's quite different from the main album and is all choo choo train sounds and synth sprinkles and although the drum circle returns the track's a bit jarring and seriously disrupts the flow, maaaan.
https://open.spotify.com/album/2oCgi9J2jLo4LWHA7sZxZ9