Highly, highly enjoyable. The music is pitched – temporally, stylistically – between Television and Sonic Youth. Chrissie Hynde stands alone. A fantastic record (tragic about half the band, though!).
If globalisation had a soundtrack, this record would – and, I suspect, self-consciously – be it. “Aja”, pronounced “Asia”, features a cast of 60 musicians; surely, though I haven’t checked, among them some of the late-70s finest (not counting the Dans themselves, of course). If I were to hear this album without knowing who it was, I figure I’d have a 1000-1 shot at guessing Steely “Reelin’ in the years” Dan first time. What I would have said, and did, was “is this where vaporwave came from then?” Turns out yes; Aja is a preeminent example of “yacht rock” (buoyant west coast AOR primed for taking out the marina and into the crystalline waters); the stuff later sampled by Saint Pepsi, Luxury Elite, Floral Shoppe. It’s the sort of smooth audio postmodernism that presages the entire 80s: a pastiche of styles – curated, elevated – that, had he been given better taste in pop, Patrick Bateman would’ve swung an axe to. And, yes, four decades later, from yacht rock comes Vaporwave, a genre that for me satirises and romanticises the emergence of global corporate capitalism equally (tapping into/enjoying the same cultural preoccupation as Vice City, San Junipero etc. too). Vaporwave is a hauntology fixated on what might have been (fully automated luxury capitalism) made in a time that isn’t (techno-oligarchies in the ear of 1% leaders). Yet this record, so substantial and beautifully produced, is all flesh and blood. So much so that one wonders if there’s a clue as to where it all went wrong here … or, at least, pause to reflect on wether that kind of wish fulfilment is the subconscious aspiration at the heart of all our revisionist attempts to resurrect the spirit of the proto-global coffeehouse. “Deacon Blues” is a standout track for me, but the whole album draws you in and in and in. Love, love, love.
The glabella, I recently learned, is the part of the face atop the bridge of the nose and between one’s eyebrows. It’s a funny sort of joy, to suddenly discover that something you’ve taken for granted for so long has a name – and thus presumably features, characteristics, nuances and specificities deserving of investigation. Back to “In rock”. I’d only really begrudgingly put the album on; unenthused at the prospect of a full hour of plodding bluesy dad rock (I can’t emphasise enough how shallow the logic of that deeply held conditioning was: I might as well have been calling the band “Smoke on the water” such was the extent of my knowledge of their work.) So, first, “Speed king” – and I’m laughing at the intro guitar which sounds … a bit lame. Up the scale we go, then back down; not exactly Hendricks and not yet Iron Maiden. But then something interesting happens. It starts to, and I pardon my language, fucking slap. Galloping rhythms that the aforementioned Iron Maiden are still a decade from becoming synonymous with; guitar solos that aren’t Hendricks but aren’t yet Maiden but now in a good, exciting way; that drum roll moment in “Child in time”; the totally unexpected funk-out in “Flight of the rat”; “Living wreck” serving moody; ALL THOSE RIFFS (that experiment with chromatic scales in “Into the fire” has no right to work so well, really). Finally it’s “Hard lovin’ man”, which, and I mean this sincerely, exhibits art rock levels of commitment to the bit. A final track that sounds like a band attempting to put its live lightning in a bottle - and succeeding. There are things about this record that I’d say aren’t completely to my taste, but that’s almost not the point here. I learned something new today, something that forces my glabella to crease with embarrassed consternation: Deep Purple fuckin’ rocks.
Still can’t forgive Billy Corgan his voice or lyrics, but a wondrous album all the same.
At first - harder work than I’d hope from a classic album. Perhaps I’ve not the patience, as it’s sounding pedestrian (and perhaps even indulgent). As the record warms up, I begin to hear the artists who must owe Patti and incredible debt: Pat Benatar, Kate Bush, Kathleen Hanna. By the time “Free Money” is done I’m several shades more optimistic about the record.
A lot more American Songbook than I’d have guessed. Hadn’t noticed how similar the end of Maggie May is to “Losing My Religion”. “Mandolin Wind” is a song that transforms at the halfway mark, from dull to wonderful. In a way that serves as metonym - an album that’s half pretty dull, and half absolutely wonderful.
Wonderful record. Hadn’t realised that it was so ignored initially. “…Walter” a standout track for me.
Night Swimming <3
I sit in the global coffeehouse, second hand smoke atop first. Frasier Crane sends me a drink. I resolve to later memorialise him as a neon statue.
Challenging on many levels, and none of them particularly good. Today, I read an article about policy wording for assisted suicide - and found it more interesting than this record.
Ba wi wi wewww, ba wa wa wewwww. Is it possible to listen to this album and not find another layer to love about it? A taste I am grateful for having taken the time to acquire.
Eat the rich! For all the damage that privatisation has done to the U.K. – and continues to do; how lucky am I to have been directly engaging with a deep historical legacy every time I lost three hours to getting back to Brighton from London? – the upside is that in 1986/87 there was plenty of subject matter for socially-conscious pop to contend with. “It’s a sin” is the standout track – and with thanks to the Russel T Davies drama, contains lyrical ideas that still feel as vital and pressing as they must have in the 80s – but bops like “What have I done to deserve this?” (featuring Dusty, of course) and “I want to wake up” are brilliant deeper cuts. The former of which puts me in mind of Jermaine Stewart’s “We don’t have to take our clothes off…”, a hit from the year previous – though “WHIDTDT” was maybe composed even earlier; Dusty took a while to reply apparently. (Side note: I wonder how many influential one-hit wonders are forgotten in a list like this? Feels unlikely that we’ll see Jermaine Stewart, King, etc.) So deeply of its time while so completely timeless, “Actually” is sophisticated pop made by brilliant people. Simple as that.
Full to the brim with afrofuturistic big bops, massive ideas and winning collaborations. Some brilliant pop songs and lovely melodies. Not really my scene, but I love the audacity of it and so appreciate the talent.
Decadeologists, I’m reliably informed, look upon the ‘3s as transitional years. The dawn of a new decade is slow to break – and it takes a year or two for the morning stars of the previous era to fade into blue sky. For that reason, and many more, this feels like a record caught between multiple different states. There are ideas here that the Boos have taken and run with from various giants of genre (MVB, Beatles especially). And then there are ideas – riffs, atmospheres, sound textures and compositional choices – that will be picked up and refined by bands throughout the 90s (by the Manics, Radiohead, Creation’s entire roster, etc.). There are even concepts that, seen in the context of the next record’s contribution to britpop cannon, feel work in progress within The Boo’s own career, too. And so it is that, on this album from the 90s own ‘3, we find our Boos still slightly shoegaze snoozy and just now rousing. While this album will mean more to many than my “a prelude to the 90s proper” allows for – it’s also exactly that. It’ll be a year or so before the stars are fully faded and they yell out “Wake up, it’s a beautiful morning.” What a thing it must be to be able to say you were there first.
I’m in, characters fizz over the membrane. There’s risk here, but no jeopardy: they might notice something’s different, can happen, they’re not total brats; but I’ll be in El Salvador - Dios, Unión, Libertad - by the time they’ve got a handle on the damage. I’m riding higher, every touch magnetic, the thrill in the code adrenaline-sugar-seduction. Underneath the beat of the taps in the deep dark humming between those bleeding pixel greens though, it’s her. Raven-haired, always somewhere else, her. But there’s no place in the interface for her, and she isn’t hiding. I keep looking all the same.
I was surprised by the opening riff of “Cult of personality” – to put immediately in mind of a sort of post-cock rock, sedate Killswitch Engage was not what I was expecting. A ripping solo later and, in spite of my better judgement, I’m ready to throw some horns up and worry about authoritarianism with LC. And then it comes crashing in, for better or worse, my better judgement. The record starts to ask me if I’ve wondered what “Sussudio” would sound like with Iron Maiden stood in front of Phil’s kit – and I just haven’t. I have never wondered. There are a couple more jams in there: “Funny Vibe” is like a less nauseating this-era RHCP, and “Which way to America” moves at precisely the same tempo as my pool’s pump (I was guiding the creepy crawler around by this stage of the album) – fun! But then there’s “What’s your favorite colour?” – sidebar: grammatical inconsistency is sort of Living Colour’s thing; a British-English U in their band name, but not in their song titles; a question mark when asking about colour, but not when asking for directions – a question the band answer in the song … yes, Living Colour, or “Glamour Boys” which sounds suspiciously like the inspiration for “Under the sea” from the Little Mermaid. There’s nothing to dislike here, really. Tight, accomplished musicianship and a well-committed to bit. But dear me must the world have been ready for grunge by the time “Vivid” had finished with it.
Wonderful, visionary work. Everything about this feels so neatly stitched together – a seamless patchwork of lovingly curated influences and perfectly executed ideas. To have harmonised so many disparate impulses – let alone to often breathtaking effect – is something, but to have made it feel so immanent (as in: necessary, essential, teleological) is another. There’s a blueprint for a better world inside here, I wish we lived in it.
Isn’t David clever! Lots of groove, fantastic guitar work and a stone cold classic song (universe level) too. I’m never sure if I like Talking Heads as much as I should, but not to worry: the album enjoys itself whether I’m sticking with it or not. Very good.
It’s THEBOSS. Undeniable hits, but a lot that leaves me cold in between.
Enjoyable! I clicked properly into it toward the end. Toe tappers all, though. The guitars were often surprising, in a good way.
Loved it. A time capsule, and “She’s so strange” was a fab surprise!
Toe-tapping, brilliant stuff. Love the guitars especially. Couple of healthy grooves too. I enjoy how organic it feels.
Really couldn’t get along with it. Songs felt either forced or almost cringe. A difficult third album.
Highly enjoyable. 3.5 but rounding up out of Christmas spirit.
Perfect by the pool, and encourages a deeper exploration into Herbie’s career. I’m not sure this music will ever be the mood for me … but it certainly helps contribute to one.
Today it’s the beginning of summer holidays, and we listened to this in the pool (along with PJ’s Ten). Funky! Reminder to check where it slots in with Parliament and Television, which this record feels poised between. I would listen to it again. I don’t feel like I’ve ever totally connected with Bowie, and this wasn’t the moment either. Let’s see what else is in store … (Dot liked it.)
I may return to this with a five. I might just do it. I’m not sure. It’s grown on me hugely over the past two days. My first meaningful engagement with a PF album and I suppose it came at just the right time. I was far more “up for it” once I’d read the Wikipedia and understood the concept. Musically, I hear the influence this has on some of my favourite albums (Tranquillity Base…) and many, many others besides. Compelling.
Full of iconic songs, this album is a total delight. (Whether or not some of those songs would have so successfully stood the test of time had they not been sung by Dusty… I suspect not.) The perfect soundtrack to Christmas morning in many ways – even the heartbreaks are sunny. I’m landing on four stars because the album itself didn’t have that artistic cohesion that I expect from a five star record (I’m sure that having had Pink Floyd recently has had an influence). Still, bangers.
A bit of fun! I recognise a couple of these as the canonical forms of the songs … and a couple that most certainly are not. It might have registered another half star had it been listened to on Christmas Day (t’was Boxing Day down here in Aus) but I dare say I’ll keep it in mind for next year. The wall of sound and Christmas make for great friends.
Is that you, Foos? I don’t have immediate access to a dorm so I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to totally understand this record, but I do remember being a teenager and suspect I’d have hated this if I was one in the 90s. Thankfully, I’m now in my mid 30s so don’t mind the outwardly anodyne just as long as it isn’t insultingly so. Which this isn’t. 3.5 because I like “Rudderless” and hear points of influence for lots of other bands I like.
Highly, highly enjoyable. The music is pitched – temporally, stylistically – between Television and Sonic Youth. Chrissie Hynde stands alone. A fantastic record (tragic about half the band, though!).
Perfect summertime record – I can imagine it was a total breath of fresh air in the early 80s. The punk influence is nicely weaved in (more than once I felt like I was listening to a slowed down Iron Maiden, oddly). Whole thing feels like a California lost to time. Lovely when paired with a palm tree. 3.5.
First we take Manhattan … THEN WE TAKE BERLIN! Great fun introducing Fleur to that song (I was very pleased with myself for having remembered the track was on this record specifically), but barring a couple of grooves this wasn’t a great record for me. Still, enjoyable enough. 2.75.
Not at all what I’d expected from a band called “Cowboy Junkies” – I hope I never find out why they’re called that, but why are they called that? With one exception (“200 more miles” – a beautiful song that I’ll be revisiting for sure) there wasn’t much here that stuck with me. I guess that’s fine; the album created a pleasant enough atmosphere, and the gentle rumble of the tracks left plenty of space for reflection besides (some inspiration here for Malkmus’s traditional techniques?). I won’t be rushing back to it, but if ever I need an album to prove that restraint can be a genre in itself … here it’ll be. (Really cool that it was recorded around a single mic, and explains the SUDDEN guitar licks somewhat.)
An absent possessive apostrophe on the cover notwithstanding – YES. This is such a great record. “The Beat”; “Lipstick Vogue”; “Big Tears” (and the ones I’ve heard before) … it’s just tune after tune. Musically it feels so in conversation with its influences – punk, reggae, Beatles – while also, somehow, knowingly portentous (is all of pop punk contained in that first song?); perhaps easier to just say ‘a musician who loves music’. The best part of 50 years after it was released, it still sounds so fresh and immediate.
Not for me, I’m afraid.
My eyes glaze over halfway in … but the fiercest numbers are front loaded, and, dare I say, portend awesome things to come. I can’t help but feel like better bands were out doing more interesting things in 1963 – but maybe this record needed to be made so they’d never again be so bloody twee. A 3 by the Beetles standards, so unfair in many ways. But I’m willing to say it: it’s only OK.
Absolutely brilliant. That first three mins of PWARS is 1) what the 70s sounds like in my imagination, and 2) surely lifted by Daniel Striped Tiger for “Slalom”. This record has awoken in me a desire to go deeper on The Tempts and their biography.
Where were they getting all these bass lines from? I’m fond of a few new wave and new wave adjacent groups (Duran Duran, WHAM!, Spandau Ballet, TFF) but hadn’t listened to the Haircuts before – my error. A sprightly, sunshiny record that has most in common with Duran Duran (though contains much less in the way of lascivious undertones – I can’t imagine DD calling a song “Baked Beans”). At times the looser jam feel creates an atmosphere reminiscent of Orange Juice’s jangly navel gazing (“Surprise Me Again”, for example). It’s a shame they only lasted the one album. Highlights: “Love Plus One”; “Lemon Fire Brigade”
I first listened to this album in 2007, or thereabouts – some time in my own “art school” phase (doing cultural studies at uni, as good as the late naughties could offer me really). Alongside Wire’s Pink Flag, this record made an immediate impression, and has stayed on rotation since. (I must have listened to “Return the gift” 1000 times since then.) I tend to use these reviews drawing parallels or trying to chart the provenance of ideas; not that it matters necessarily where something came from or who used the idea next, it’s just fun. In this instance, suffice it to say this record must have inspired 90% of the music I hold dearest in some way or another. For me personally this album inspired something a bit different – a feeling I can’t entirely put words to, but maybe “community” is closest. I’m a happier person for knowing something as exciting as this album exists. I knew I’d get what I asked for.
If globalisation had a soundtrack, this record would – and, I suspect, self-consciously – be it. “Aja”, pronounced “Asia”, features a cast of 60 musicians; surely, though I haven’t checked, among them some of the late-70s finest (not counting the Dans themselves, of course). If I were to hear this album without knowing who it was, I figure I’d have a 1000-1 shot at guessing Steely “Reelin’ in the years” Dan first time. What I would have said, and did, was “is this where vaporwave came from then?” Turns out yes; Aja is a preeminent example of “yacht rock” (buoyant west coast AOR primed for taking out the marina and into the crystalline waters); the stuff later sampled by Saint Pepsi, Luxury Elite, Floral Shoppe. It’s the sort of smooth audio postmodernism that presages the entire 80s: a pastiche of styles – curated, elevated – that, had he been given better taste in pop, Patrick Bateman would’ve swung an axe to. And, yes, four decades later, from yacht rock comes Vaporwave, a genre that for me satirises and romanticises the emergence of global corporate capitalism equally (tapping into/enjoying the same cultural preoccupation as Vice City, San Junipero etc. too). Vaporwave is a hauntology fixated on what might have been (fully automated luxury capitalism) made in a time that isn’t (techno-oligarchies in the ear of 1% leaders). Yet this record, so substantial and beautifully produced, is all flesh and blood. So much so that one wonders if there’s a clue as to where it all went wrong here … or, at least, pause to reflect on wether that kind of wish fulfilment is the subconscious aspiration at the heart of all our revisionist attempts to resurrect the spirit of the proto-global coffeehouse. “Deacon Blues” is a standout track for me, but the whole album draws you in and in and in. Love, love, love.
I only know Supertramp from the hits, so went into this with an open mind. The first two songs inspire much more headbanging than I expected before hitting play; lots of big, chunky power chords in lockstep with the rhythm section. Eventually – and after third track “Hide In Your Shell” (a loud, quiet, loud banger) has all but thrown away the best chorus of the album by adding a theremin – the Pink Floyd via the Monkees schtick collapses in on itself; a high budget piece of regional theatre backed by an eccentric patron (not far from the truth, of course…) or the Dorking Community Players staging The Nightman Cometh.
I had no idea that EBTG were even active in the 80s, let alone churning out the hits. I say “hits”; most of this record is new to me – I’m giving it 3 stars rather than 2 simply because of the enduring brilliance of “I don’t want to talk about it” – and it’s mostly miss. Some real twee stuff, musically and lyrically, to the extent that when they do find a bit of edge (“Tears all over town”, or the lyric “a widow on a honeymoon” in “Shadow on a harvest moon”) it’s sorely appreciated. The drums, the sort so lively in, e.g. WHAM! or Tears for Fears, here drag and distract. The guitar licks don’t, but do need, to stop. Thank god for the richness of Tracey’s voice (as I’m sure Mr Watt c.1988 would agree). The second half of the record marks an improvement - more than a bit of The Smiths about songs like “Lonesome for a place I know – but the record never really recovers from the high heights it drops you from between tracks one and two.
One two CHA CHA CHA. This record got the girls up and dancing – Dorothy treated us with an enigmatic saunter around the room over dinner. A really brilliant record that, and without meaning to sound at all patronising, has touches to it that feel so modern as to be portentous. The title track, in particular, is an astonishing jam. Has a crispness, flow and energy that I’ve felt from Blaxsploitation cinema but never Bollywood (surely my error). Anyway, if J Dilla had it on “Donuts” it wouldn’t be at all surprising. Brilliant songs littered throughout. Bravo.
An album that grew on me as I listened, as much as because I was learning more about its context as I went than because it simply gets better and better (which it does). A stomach flu will prevent me saying much more – but this is an album that sounds like a goodbye. “Riders on the storm” is Universe-level.
It’s 2025. A time for the morally dexterous to make hash out of old beefs. The chameleonic, iconic Snoop finds time in his calendar to play for a pardon. A generous gesture; will it that history doesn’t look upon it as a kindness. There’s fun to be had rolling your shoulders to the big hits. An instrumental would be preferable.
There are at least two of the best songs of the 21st century on this album (“Last nite”, “Someday”) and plenty of honourable mentions (“Hard to explain”, “Trying your luck”). I’m not going to check the chronology – I don’t want the spoilers: I have “Meet me in the toilets” on my bookshelf, waiting to be read – but I have to imagine that this record influenced, in some way, everything I listened to growing up – whether because it wanted to be it, or wanted to be its opposite. And that’s not hyperbole. I remember seeing the grainy video to “Last nite” on GMTV, the becouched co-hosts portentously asking “is this the future of music?” and laughing at the front cover (funny that America was spared the joke) and feeling excited. And I remember being 11 or 12, walking down a rainy street in Retford after school, evening drawing in, hearing a school band trying out a cover (how straightforward songs like “Last Nite” were for kids to play being an overlooked but crucial factor in The Strokes’ then seemingly infinite scalability). I remember hearing that band bringing that song fully to life in their own way and thinking I could probably do that too. So I did.
The first “successful” rock opera is a story of a boy who retreats within himself as the result of trauma. It’s a trope that we’ll see again and again, whether in “The Wall” – where our hero builds a literal wall around himself, substantially achieving the same thing as Tommy does here – or the later biographies of many youthful, rebellious rock and rollers (a genre that’s perhaps always thought of itself as safe harbour for misunderstood or under appreciated artistic genius). Anyway, Tommy. To put it gently, by the time “Fiddle About” had finished its first chorus of “fiddle, fiddle, fiddle, fiddle” you too may want to achieve a dissociative state of semi-torpor. The rock opera, it turns out, walks a fine line. Done well it’s expansive, a rousing appeal to what can be achieved with fairly limited means. Done poorly, as here, it’s almost an indictment on the whole genre – an incoherently rambling, serially uninteresting solipsism that dares to reveal the superficiality of all that pretends to rock. I feel sorry for Tommy, I really do.
At this moment in time, I struggle to wrap much of a frame of reference around this record; I’m afraid to say too much because I just don’t feel qualified. It’s maybe something (a lack of imagination?) that the first thing that springs to mind for me is the New York of Home Alone 2. The big blasts from the big band rushing through my speakers feel as exciting and overawing as the imposingly tall, impossibly alive city must have felt to Kevin McAllister – a figure central to my own childhood who is also, in the there and then of Home Alone’s NY, a lonely witness to so many of the icons of America’s great imperial phase. And that’s really what this record sounds like to me: a glorious echo from the American century. It’s one that remains vital not because America does – far from it, really – but because the brilliant people who contributed to that cultural hegemony are made no less brilliant by America having been brought low. Back to Home Alone, and in the hotel lobby Kevin sprints past a tall man in an expensive coat. The man might be on his way to the roof, spoiling to find a vantage from which to survey the world’s most significant skyline. It’s a skyline men of his appetite typically want to make their own, of course, shoving their overcompensations evermore inelegantly into the clustering mass. In short, synecdoche of a nation. It’s a shame that America hasn’t had someone of Basie’s erudition and skill to lead its own metaphorical band. Getting the best from each other starts with getting the best for each other; America’s century, so spiritedly captured on albums like this, was built on principles like that. Principles now under threat of total dismantling by tall men in expensive coats.
A couple of stone cold classics, monolithic in scale, scope and impact. And then a couple that felt pissed up the wall! Hayooo – I joke. (Best album cover of all time? It’s always resonated with me, even before knowing what’s on this record.) I enjoyed this album as much in a kind of “thank you” sort of way as I did actually and viscerally the music. Certainly, there’s plenty on this record to back Eddie Vedder’s “they left us no new places to explore” sentiments … even if that sentiment only strictly applies to acts with the imagination of Pearl Jam. Thanks for the power chords, the Marshall stacks, and the tunes, Pete. And thanks for the attack, everyone else. But more than anything, thanks for not playing “Fiddle about” again. (Fave song besides the obvious: “My wife”.)
Fleur says she feels cooler every time she listens to The Stooges. As a review, as an idea, as a fact – it’s tough to improve on.
It perhaps goes without saying, but quite a lot will rest on how well you get on with Janis Joplin’s voice. Icon of the counterculture, preternaturally gifted performer and still part of the conversation a lifetime after her tragic death – her voice is as distinctive as her enduring place in culture. While I won’t be hurrying back to this record, trying to argue against the brilliance of some of these songs and renditions is like trying to argue with the wind – or a big crashing wave, perhaps; she had both in the locker – so it’s a 3 from me.
In 2008 I headed into a double-feature: “FlicKeR” was the headline with “Do you love me like I love you (Part 5: Tender Prey)” opening proceedings. I immediately headed over the road to buy “Tender Prey”, Bobby Gillespie’s testimony on “Mercy Seat” more than enough to encourage a purchase. I’ll save my thoughts about Nick Cave’s masterpiece - and how young the interviewees in that film now look, almost 20 years on - for another time, as the film that followed, “FlicKeR” was just as influential to the next years of my life. I responded strongly to Brion Gysin’s ideas, was already enamoured of William Burroughs’ whole vibe, and spent a fair bit of time trying to make my own Dream Machine (having missed an opportunity to see a Dream Machine in person during COVID, I still occasionally check if they’re freely available … be a shame to not try it one day). The documentary featured various musical artists, all pretty cool, talking about their experiences with Gysin’s hypnotic, hallucination machine. Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo was among them, offering his thoughts to camera in a way I’d be reminded of years later standing in Coventry watching The Cribs play “Be safe” – a connection made through time that was pure lightning on both sides. Also on that documentary: Genesis P-Orridge, mid pandrogyne project – so complete a presence, spectacle and aura that I misremembered having seen a Throbbing Gristle documentary distinct from “FlicKeR”. It stuck with me, suffice to say. And then, again, years later, I’m reminded of it. I’m in the Tate Britain at, probably, “Women in revolt” and there’s a whole section given to COUM Transmissions, the precursor to Throbbing Gristle. I remember being humoured by the comments of an offended Tory politician – “desecrators of civilisation” or similar, he’d called them in the 70s. Good on Cosey Fanni Tutti, and good on COUM. Somehow, I again miss the call. I spend a couple of seconds remembering once maybe listening to Throbbing Gristle in 2008, and I move on. And so today, in 2025, I am so grateful for this project. A third invitation to fully engage with Throbbing Gristle is met ecstatically. From the first track, a darkness of beeps - a year earlier in time, but with the feeling of Joy Division’s “Unknown Pleasures” stripped of what joy and pleasure it holds - I am held in place. There’s so much space to move inside music like this, angles to explore, moods to drown in, atmospheres to let crystallise and sit gargoyle-esque atop your central nervous system. “Hamburger Lady” is a standout track; though it’s not album best thought about in that way, really. So soon after the passing of David Lynch - a time that we realise that his work can’t really be taken apart as a filmography; it really demands to be seen as one – I’m pulled into a similar orbit by similarly iconoclastic artists. This is a piece of real, enduring art arriving from within a series of lifetimes that will never be repeated.
We’ve spun this four times now; peeling back the layers there’s a strong, strong argument emerging for it being the most influential of the post-punk records of the late 70s. It still feels the freshest too. The drums tick and roll and batter; the bass wonders, punchdrunk and charismatic; the guitars can’t stay still, maybe they don’t want to be guitars anymore?; the voice somersaults, careens – gymnastically controlled, poised, enjoying itself, solidifying its dimensions while forming them into an archetype. This is a record I hadn’t realised I should say so many thanks to. It’s also perfect for a day that’s too hot to be in a house that’s without aircon – yet still pretty much feels like paradise. Fitful sometimes just fits.
I’m not convinced I’m in the right headspace at this very second to give this record its due – though I’ll also say that it’s 2025, the White House is again living up to its name, and maybe I should be making more of an effort to be in that headspace. (To that extent, maybe I can say that this album continues to do a job alerting the privileged to their position. Fair play to that.) Black Is is a rich and varied assemblage of musical styles, genres and moments. “Wildfires” is one of the defining tracks of the past decade; “Why we cry why we die” bops soulfully, disarmingly; “Black” puts me in mind of J Dilla’s musical eclecticism (while forcing some potentially tragic bobble-headed participation on my part); “Eternal life” is afrofuturism in the key of divinity. The production, the message, the talent and now the legacy. It’s a special record, and I’ll be making time to give it its due.
The glabella, I recently learned, is the part of the face atop the bridge of the nose and between one’s eyebrows. It’s a funny sort of joy, to suddenly discover that something you’ve taken for granted for so long has a name – and thus presumably features, characteristics, nuances and specificities deserving of investigation. Back to “In rock”. I’d only really begrudgingly put the album on; unenthused at the prospect of a full hour of plodding bluesy dad rock (I can’t emphasise enough how shallow the logic of that deeply held conditioning was: I might as well have been calling the band “Smoke on the water” such was the extent of my knowledge of their work.) So, first, “Speed king” – and I’m laughing at the intro guitar which sounds … a bit lame. Up the scale we go, then back down; not exactly Hendricks and not yet Iron Maiden. But then something interesting happens. It starts to, and I pardon my language, fucking slap. Galloping rhythms that the aforementioned Iron Maiden are still a decade from becoming synonymous with; guitar solos that aren’t Hendricks but aren’t yet Maiden but now in a good, exciting way; that drum roll moment in “Child in time”; the totally unexpected funk-out in “Flight of the rat”; “Living wreck” serving moody; ALL THOSE RIFFS (that experiment with chromatic scales in “Into the fire” has no right to work so well, really). Finally it’s “Hard lovin’ man”, which, and I mean this sincerely, exhibits art rock levels of commitment to the bit. A final track that sounds like a band attempting to put its live lightning in a bottle - and succeeding. There are things about this record that I’d say aren’t completely to my taste, but that’s almost not the point here. I learned something new today, something that forces my glabella to crease with embarrassed consternation: Deep Purple fuckin’ rocks.
My first interaction with Nirvana was via a hoody. I was 11 or 12, early into my first year of secondary school and for the first time rubbing up against a subculture with a dress code that wasn’t just “the latest Manchester United kit”. Soon after that I got hold of Nevermind, which was hidden in the bottom of my parents’ wardrobe for a month waiting for Christmas. And then, after Nevermind, it was everything I could get my hands on. The next year or two a frenzy to acquire as much Nirvana – albums, bootlegs, both respectable and entirely unofficial biographies about Kurt, the band, whatever; greeting “You know you’re right” and the journals like a second coming (rather than an invasion of privacy) – as I could carry home from the record fair, the HMV, the shops that stank of incense, wherever. It feels significant to me – and not just because I can still imagine the burning hot shame of being accused, accurately, of wearing a Nirvana hoody without knowing any of their songs; the spotlight that lingers over those preteen and early adolescent years becomes an X-ray in the decades that follow – that Nirvana has always been a puzzle for me. It wasn’t that big a jump in time between working out the identity of the band represented by that cool smiley face thing I liked wearing, to trying to work out why someone who could write songs and lyrics that stuck in my psyche like gravel sticks in the waffle soles of skate shoes would choose to ever stop doing that (“Heavier than Heaven”, another six months later, got me to understand how little a role “choice” played in all of it). A gap of maybe a month between overhauling my identity in reaction to a clothing trend, and reflecting on the real existential jeopardy that might break cover at any moment. “In Utero” sits right in the centre of my Nirvana puzzle. Let alone the fact I didn’t know what a “Radio friendly unit shifter” might be (I suspected something mechanical, which I guess was sort of right) and struggled to fully get across most of the album’s themes, the primordial soup of angst, anger and antipathy from which “Scentless Apprentice”, “Tourettes”, “Rape me”, “Very ape”, “Milk it” and even “Heart shaped box” emerged was a swamp I was willing to get bogged in. As the years rolled on, I found that “In Utero” jagged and caught on my loose threads in a way that Nevermind didn’t. I’d come back to find “Serve the servants” – for me arguably grunge’s greatest song - had clicked, or suddenly with a start realise that “Frances Farmer…” had a story with energy and intensity to match its bombastic middle-8 freak out. I’d listen to “All apologies” bleed into “You know you’re right” on DIY playlists and pretend they’re part of the same breath. I’d discover Leonard Cohen entirely because “Pennyroyal Tea” told me to. Throughout all this – 20 plus years of my life – there sat at either end of “In Utero”’s emotional polarity “Dumb” and “RFUS” – the first a song that lets itself be “just happy” and the other a song that demands to know “what is wrong with me?” Two totally contrasting attitudes to life, incompatible to the point of mutual annihilation – fittingly, completely sonically distinct (vale Steve Albini) from one other too. “Dumb” is dipped oneiric syrup and conjures pastel shades of diaphanous colours; it weighs you down while it lifts you up. “RFUS” is noise as geometry, wave forms crashing atop one another; an exhibition in art punk overseen by a mumbling, desperate, anxious, aggressive, defeated curator. Poles apart in almost every possible sense, then – but here’s where we come back to the puzzle. Because for a thinking, feeling person the idea that the contrasting perspectives of “Dumb” and “RFUS” ought be mutually incompatible will make logical sense, but also won’t ring true in the slightest. We’re all in moments one or the other, sure, but we’re all also often both. 23 years after I first heard “In Utero” I know that. I know that ambivalence is a fact of life; I even suspect that learning to self-regulate might be the whole point of it. Kurt perhaps didn’t, and certainly never had the chance to offer himself that kind of grace. It’s a puzzle, all this.
Songs with steel drums, songs that bounce Songs to dance to in your underpants. Instrumentation sparse around beats that groove Or the lush lake of funk that is “Genius of Love”. Is it a holiday diary, or songs dreamed up in incarceration? For these two, is that two sides of the same equation? Enjoy the trampoline made of sunbeams, retire to a hammock for a bed I loved my time inside the laughing heads.
I’ve never thought of Madonna as an “album artist” … and I still don’t! I joke, I joke – but only sort of. I would seriously suggest that if this record was just the single “Like A Prayer” and then 10 riffs, remixes and reworkings it’d be phenomenal. (It might be that a better album exists simply by chopping everything between “Like A Prayer” and “Act of Contrition” out entirely and then looping it around six times.) Anyway, utterly glorious first track aside* – I’m afraid it doesn’t do much for me. There were better pop records made in the 80s – the high points of this album can’t shake off the shadows of those (how “Oh father” is Tears for Fears without the conviction, for example) – and will be better ones coming in the 90s (the legacy of this record is all over the careers of The Spice Girls, Britney, Christina). “Keep it together” kicks it up to 2.5 but simply too much sloshy bumph to take it any higher. *Very, very fond memories of bopping hard to “Like A Prayer” at Fleur and my wedding. Wonderful moments, big singalongs, heavy swooping dance moves. I’ll hold onto that one forever, thanks, Madge.
It’s fine. “Changes” is “Changes”. “Life on Mars” is a lovely shade of lost-electrons melancholy featuring some tight, bracing, elastic vocals. “Queen Bitch” starts off toe-tapping and ends up dancing on the tables. It’s better than fine, it’s objectively really good. And. Yet. I. Just. Can’t. Make. Myself. Connect. To. It. Fleur says that it’s how I don’t really like Star Wars; she’s totally right that I don’t always click with things that an otherwise overwhelming majority of people do – hot I can’t stress enough that it’s not on purpose*. I’m not trying to be “out there”. Fuck, I wish I got it. But honestly, I joked “Come on Dave, I could be listening to Chat Pile” as we listened to this. And I meant it. I could have been. Chat Pile rules. 2.5. We’ll try again with the next record, Dave love.
Cha-cha-chaiiiin. Can any syllable boast so rich a contribution to music as “cha”? Aretha Franklin has the sort of voice that can give any syllable substance, form and impact – and there are some properly iconic songs on this record, big tug at the heart moments of musical history. Unfortunately, I feel a bit like those songs’ ubiquity distracts a bit from their effect; kind of precession of the simulacra style. It’s not much of a criticism, granted … but if I’m destined to be a link in a chain of fools then on my head be it!
At first I resist this album, almost certainly because I know where it’s taking me. It’s all here, though. The sound of everything happening at once. A crooning voice bowing across fizzing arpeggios; rhythm section, disciplined while encouraging – often to the extent of being doting or parental. In The Smiths you meet pure conceptual perfection; proof of why bands exist and why they should forever. The ultimate charm of this record, for me, resides in a sort of paradox. Why, since what The Smiths is doing here is so, so much greater than the sum of its parts, do I not feel happy about it? We’ve Johnny, busy tinkering at melody’s atomic level while the mononymous one intones another of his jeremiads (“I want the one I can’t have”) – this charming man brittle before his reflection. We’ve the slicked back hair, oily rag smell of “Nowhere fast” – so coyly propulsive with its rockabilly shuffle. And we’ve the weaving bass and funk flourishes of “Barbarism begins at home” – a shot fired back across time to the previous incumbents of Britain’s teenage imaginary (Duran Duran especially). “Well I wonder” and “Meat is murder” offer two poignant counterpoints to the thrill of the album’s three-minute pop songs. (The former being another entry into Johnny Marr’s “d minor hall of fame”; the man just knows how to use that chord, I don’t know what else to say.) It’s a more obviously political record; you have to hand it to the lads that the final minute even works. It probably shouldn’t. I read that “How soon is now?” was added to this record for the US release – and I’d perhaps have liked to hear it kicking off the second side. But, realistically, if this album had gone on forever it wouldn’t have been long enough. For the sake of our sick hearts, we should be grateful that it didn’t. So back to what I was resisting: I’m there. I’m back to putting “I want something I can’t have” on repeat and thinking that if the edge of the universe doesn’t sound like The Smiths – if the force pushing it out into whatever’s beyond isn’t exactly the feeling contained in a record like this – then I’ve read this whole thing totally wrong. I hope not.
It might be that sophisti-pop just isn’t for me. It’s not for nothing that I’d rather listen to almost anything else Paul Wellar has done (“almost” because there’s no way I’ve heard all of it … demonstrably, there’s some skeletons in the closet alongside all those parkas and nicely cut suits). And nor did I love EBTG’s – who appear on Cafe Bleu – early 80s sophisti-pop output either (to the extent I had to chase it with hits from “Amplified Heart” just to resettle myself). It feels like, in Cafe Bleu, Paul Wellar is forcing me to listen to what he learned on his gap year inter-railing around Europe. But also, in a self-reflexively superficial way, it might also be his most punk statement. There’s a ready-made antagonism shot through it; like it wants to be misunderstood, under-appreciated or even disliked – all so that it can turn around and tell you that you just don’t get it. And I don’t, really. There’s plenty of evidence of Wellar’s songwriting chops (“My ever changing moods”; “You’re the best thing”; “Headstart for happiness”) but then there’s also lots to make me cringe (including some of the lyrics in “Headstart…” – syrupy stuff even by the standards of the early 80s). I’m happy for the Modfather that he branched out. And dear me, haven’t we all been invited to think a little deeper while surveying the scene in a Parisian cafe? But I guess there’s a reason Dave didn’t include the Style Council in my musician education. 1.5.
If the 90s is Sega Megadrive and the 80s is nuclear weaponry, then the defining toy of the 70s has to be the yo-yo. Or the space hopper. Or the pogo stick. It’s befitting that a decade so enamoured of things that go up and down should gift us – and pretty much bang in the gravitational middle of itself – “A night at the Opera”. Not that the record’s happy with bouncing up and down just the one axis, of course. It’s quiet-loud at whiplash pace; this way and then that with no warning or, often, return; totally genre-bending (and probably genre inventing); genius and gimmickry (or “effectology” according to one contemporaneous NME review). “Death on two legs” starts us on a high with some devilish guitar work and Mercury giving us full bared teeth bastard-snarl, but from there the quality skips a song each time (the exception being “I’m in love with my car” – which is probably also terrible, but I like because it reminds me of Big Business – into the undeniable classic “You’re my best friend”). While loose enough to get along with a song about auto-vehicular romancing, I will likely never be loose enough to enjoy the genuinely anxiety-inducing taxes of “Seaside Rendezvous” or “‘39”, two songs about which I said, quite sincerely, that I’d like to never hear them again. Not to worry, though – as thanks to their pendulous formula you’re only ever a few minutes away from a stone-cold classic. Hearing Mercury wrestle the spotlight away from May on “The Prophet’s Song” or, of course, “Bohemian Rhapsody” is a true musical treat. In those moments of flight they’re an unbeatable force; ecstatic, elemental. So, while patchy, this is still the album with “Bohemian Rhapsody” on it. And while some songs here might be irritating, they’d have to be capable of launching actual napalm into my ears to detract from the good things Queen’s signature song has done for the world. Silliness is temporary, joy is eternal. 3.5.
The way memory functions is weird – if “Somebody told me” was released six months after Funeral for a Friend’s debut album then why do I remember being a child when listening to the former, but feeling like a grown up listening to the latter? It might be because The Killers – purveyors of absolutely OK, post-punk-ish, synthy-sort-of pop that you’re always happy to hear at weddings, or playing in the background of a pub you’re at for a 50th birthday, you know, adult occasions – are totally and utterly grown-up. They’re Interpol for mums; knowing better than to do something unexpected (might throw your back out!). Safe. And to that end we have a record that starts with back-to-back bangers. Twenty minutes of top ten material that twenty years on has your listener saying “was this our millennial Nevermind?” The thing about 20 minutes though is that’s pretty much as long as it takes to drive to the supermarket and back. And I feel like that’s not an accident. This record was made to be listened to on the way to Tesco. It was made to deliver a feeling that’s a bit like nostalgia – it’s fresh material, but it nods back hard enough to get your Gen Xers suddenly feeling 18 again. How else can a person be expected to get through the weekly shop? The first half is an embarrassment of riches, but it isn’t hyperbole to say – and certainly in the context of epochal hits like “Mr Brightside”, “Somebody told me” and jams as solid as “Jenny was a friend of mine” – that the second half is a bit embarrassing. If memory serves, then The Killers give us a better album with “Sam’s Town”. But then memory is a funny thing.
Capitalism, according to various thinkers concerned with the cultural mode of postmodernism, is fantastic at absorbing its critique. So good that it often goes one better – commodifying the terms of its deconstruction, always-already negating its critics … to the extent that if they’re especially charismatic and/or unlucky, they’re turned into t-shirt designs. In the early 00s, Greenday was smarting. “Warning” had represented a doomy portent only to the band themselves: they were in danger of becoming obsolete. Greenday huddled, began tracking a new record … and then the tapes were stolen. It’s a sliding doors moment, as had they released “Cigarettes…” they might have disappeared forever. Instead they scrapped the project and began working on what would become “American Idiot”. And the rest is history; or, as the angel of history might put it (and in more ways than one), “a bad record.” As the angel sees history piling up before her, destructive winds driving her forever backward, this album can boast a mounting body count of better artists and their ideas. Here there’s melodies lifted from Bryan Adams, Joann Jet; riffs and ornamentation seemingly lifted completely (surely Dillinger Four got an out of court settlement?); and then – not content with having “musically quoted” from The Kinks on the abortively boring “Warning” – there’s the one where our Anglophile magpies return to Blighty to the answer the question of “what would happen if ‘How soon is now’ was also ‘Wonderwall’?” I wouldn’t mind it – in fact I might even enjoy it – if it weren’t for the fact that it feels so nakedly cynical. Everything about this album feels like the result of focus group testing: the “emo” uniform, the accusatory anti-government stuff (“this trended great with the NOFX kids, Bill, just consider it”), the “concept” of a “Jesus of Suburbia” – a figure who might be the target persona of this elaborate marketing action brought to musical life. And then there’s the “punk rock opera” element: songs that blend into one another, a creative choice that feels grafted onto the whole thing late in the piece after someone noticed that everything’s in pretty much the same key. It’s enough to have one wondering whether the “American Idiot” being narrated isn’t actually you, the listener, for ever letting yourself think that this meant anything more to Greenday than revivified album sales numbers. So, while I’ve been trying to keep my cool through this review, I also need to be fair to myself: this felt fucking lame in 2004 and it feels fucking lame now. This is not an album of rebellion, these are not songs of resistance or hope. This is a pastiche of punk, the sound of the end of history. There is no alternative. Suburbia’s soundtrack is the only game in town. For 15-year old Matthew’s sake, here are three albums released in or before 2004 that I loved back then, succeed where American Idiot fails, and actually should be on this list: “Sticks and Stones” by New Found Glory (pop-punk that looks for you, finds you, and stays with you; actual magic); “Casually dressed and deep in conversation” by Funeral for a Friend (the ultimate melding of post-hardcore and emo, unapologetically hi-fi and edifyingly anthemic); “Tell all your friends” by Taking Back Sunday (atmospheric, antagonistic, bratty, brash, brilliant – gigged into shape, never knowingly focus-grouped).
From a seat on the windowsill, a bejumpered Carole gazes back at us – we’ve interrupted her reverie, but that’s ok. She’ll tell us what she’s been thinking about. A problem shared is a problem halved, and this record doesn’t scrimp on problems. Nor does it scrimp on quality; what’s here is perhaps the neatest distillation of Carole King’s genius available. The song craft, the choices, the melodies, ideas and lyrics that ought to have existed forever – and in a way did, in so far as they perfectly capture something common through human history. It’s a melancholy affair, and the whole thing – from the palette of the album art, to the slightly dusty feel of the mix – amounts to a thorough exploration of our collective autumnal soul. That bit we have that’s caught; that enjoyed the light and warmth of all before but feels it, inexorably, cooling. Carole takes us there and keeps us there. Her characters are always somehow doubting something – never whole, and careful not to totally let themselves feel so. They’re either busy configuring themselves around another’s affections or intentions, or basking in the edifying glow (albeit temporarily, cautiously) of an other’s unbroken gaze. It is to our eternal lack, the bit that wants to know for sure, that “Tapestry” is addressed. And for the simple fact that none of us is ever fated to fill it, be glad that we have a friend.