Stegzy's Music Project

A commentary on Stegzy's album collection

Aug 13

Altar Songs 1998-2021 – Sugarplum Fairies [#677]

by stegzy

Another victim of digital music proliferation and the great music heist of 2000. Los Angeles band Sugarplum Fairies’ final effort, SPF21 Altar Songs 1998-2021, released before Benny and Sylvia went their separate ways. Like a sad public divorce – the passion is there but the spark…just doing the motions.

The band was my most favourite discovery from Peoplesound – Sugarplum Fairies – sadly disbanding in 2021 but reforming later sans Ben Bohm – Silvia continued but the sound had changed, as to be expected. I’m not entirely sure what Altar Songs is supposed to be. There are remixes and reproductions of old classic songs and songs I’m not entirely familiar with but Apple Music classifies it as a compilation album so I’ll go with that.

Sure the compilation gives a good scope of what the band’s original sound was like and the direction they were heading but as an entry point, I’d still go for Flake which was their first album, especially if it’s dreamy college folk you’re after with songs about unhealthy relationships with college English professors and drug addiction.

It pains me to listen to this album knowing how they once were. They were just getting airtime, songs were appearing in soundtracks for TV shows and occasionally little mentions of them would appear across web media. All very very sad.

Available on Apple Music/Itunes – https://music.apple.com/gb/album/altar-songs-1998-2021/1696617516

2021 Alternative Rock Folk Noir Peoplesound Starfish Records Sugarplum Fairies

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May 17

Afflatus – The Polyphonic Spree[#671]

by stegzy

So something bollocks happened between the last entry and this one. I had been mooching about on my PC exploring a box of old hard drives I had come across which contained quite a lot of music that had, for what ever reason known only to Apple Music, removed itself from my Apple Music Library. I copied some of what I found into my iTunes – album by album – before I got bored and tried to move several at once.

Bad mistake.

In doing so, iTunes decided to rejig my library, import folders from my usual drives that I had excluded and retag around about 100 albums to be under the tags VARIOUS ARTISTS and the album GOTHIC EROTICA .

Great.

I rage quit and did not dare look at my PC’s iTunes library again for several months until such time as I had completely forgotten what I’d done, logged back in and knackered up my library even more.

Even then it took me the best part of a year to get back to some normality. In the process of re-tagging well over 1000 tracks I started to notice I had albums I had no idea that I had – moreover albums I’d never even heard of before. One such album was Afflatus by The Polyphonic Spree

Afflatus was released in 2021 which kind of indicates to me that this isn’t one I’d downloaded back in the grand old days of YoHoHoery. I can only assume that Apple Music added it out of generosity – something I’ve noticed has happened a fair bit since the great Tagging Disaster of 2025. Never the less, the album is in the library so it must be included in the music project.

The album comprises of 10 tracks – all slightly jollified Spreesque cover versions of songs such as the Bee Gee’s Could It Be Magic and Rush’s Spirit of Radio. I’m not certain if it’s because the moment of cheesy tambourine clapping uplifting music has passed, much in the same way that long haired hippy “we’re all entering a new spiritual age” 1960s music did by the 1980s or if its just a terrible album – but Afflatus really does set the cringe glands on edge.

I don’t know, to me it just feels like the band lost a little “something” after Fragile Army but I can’t really put my finger – or ear – on it.


You can buy/listen to the album on:

2021 Good Records Recordings Plastic pop Polyphonic Spree Psychedelic

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