never really heard boston before (i thought they did hooked on a feeling but it was just similar titles). i assumed they were prog-rock (especially after seeing an 8 minute song called foreplay), which i really didnt't like.
but it was surprisingly poppy and doesn't sound dated at all. vibes i get are those early 1960s songs that john and paul had to dust off to fill out let it be, so the layers, harmonies, instrumentation were a lot more complex than the words they were singing. the most dated-sounding thing about how overproduced it sounds. i want to hear a boston... naked sort of thing, which would probably sound close to the who.
more than a feeling is a gem, long time/rock and roll band/smokin/hiitch a ride is like abbey road medley-lite. something about you feels incoherent.
(first post - so format going forward is par1 - expectations/pre-notions, par2 - thoughts, par3 - hi-/low-lights)
really only heard q-tip from chappelle's mark twain ceremony, but ive heard some tribe called quest and my sense is that this is gonna be jazzy-conscious-dense-roots-like.
i guess i was right for the most part, but the sounds are much richer than that. the instrumentation is so fun and layered and light, the words are dense pero magaan sa tenga. it's so uppy and jammy, like it wants to remind me that in the trap-infested soundscape of today's hiphop, you can make a great record that doesnt grate on your eardrums.
"wont trade" is so narratively rich, "gettin up" is perfect everywhere except the chorus, and if norah jones says "life is better" i'll believe her. "manwomanboogie" shoulda been an instrumental.
i might be getting spoiled getting two good easy-listen albums in a row. not looking forward to the captain beefheart portion of the proceedings.
everyone knows american pie, and i guess near everyone knows vincent. outside of that, i know nothing else. didnt even know there was no a in mclean.
if you played some of these other songs to me blind, i would have guessed james taylor and i'd wonder when james taylor forgot how to write good lyrics. this album is really carried by having one of the all time greatest songs leading off.
the best songs here are the ones with a strong sense of narrative: the two famous ones, "sister fatima" and "the grave", because don mclean's talents aside from one of the cleanest voices in folk is storytelling. the rest just bleed into one another, almost indistinguishable. i guess "till tomorrow" is charming if those violins are taken away.
no preconceived notions whatsoever.
sounds like john prine if you take away his world weariness, but also if john prine made me sleep. soooo boring. the words are sophomoric, which is undnerstandabe if you know that he was 22 when this came out. around a fourth is instrumental so i guess it's good that the arrangements are clean.
i tried really hard to like it, but it just bores me so. no tracks stand out, all just seem to bleed into the next one.
tangled up in blue might be the greatest novel ever sung
simple twist of fate is such a contrast between the lazy instrumentation and the punchy life-in-four-minute words
very rare that dylan's voice is perfect, but it's perfect for the wounded desperation in you're a big girl now
idiot wind is tangled up in blue's equal. blue's narrative propelled by the tensions of time and anticipation, wind's by vitriol for self and circumstance
you're gonna make me lonesome when you go is a masterclass in brevity. could be a john cooper clarke poem
meet me in the morning was a waste of a backing track
lily rosemary and the jack of hearts is such a yarn
if you see her say hello is youre a big girl part 2, but less refined, more wistful
shelter from the storm speaks to me so much because i love the metaphor of love as tempest and calm at the same time
buckets of rain is more epigram laundry list than coherent song but still nice
some say punk isnt about the words, well here's a proof by contradiction that it really is. you know how guys like max martin or mattman and robin have lyrics that are just a little bit off? imagine those kinds of words transplanted onto punk themes on a replacement-level punk record. that's how you get "aka idiot".
the hives certainly have the sound and feel of those turn of the century voidoid revivalists, and the guitar work fits the energy, but there's no richard hell charm. it ends up sounding like plastic punk. they try to to do something like blank generation on "automatic schmuck" and "supply and demand" but dont really say much, least of all something resembling the critique that the best of neo-punk has.
i reallly should enjoy this more but i plainly dont. the best thing they do is raw energy and the album really only picks up on raw energy tracks like "untutored youth" and "hate to say i told you so".
to be fair, there are moments of sonic experimentation in "outsmarted" "mad man" and "here we go again" but they really add little. it's parody punk with some good guitar bits. maybe it's better live, but im not racing to replay it.
the cover prejudices me to expect big queer energy from here. opening with "so young" tells me that the queer energy comes in a david bowie flavor. why isn't "moving" more of a bi anthem?
"she's not dead" is such an efficient narrative delivery device. "pantomime horse" too, if more self-indulgent. really, a lot of these songs would make for great stories if they could have figured out a different way to end besides doing a line over and over again. or just snip those parts out entirely. how much better would "breakdown" be if it was just 4 mins?
the guitar work in "animal nitrate" is amazing. double for "the drowners" and "metal mickey". apparently these three were the singles out of this. why didn't they do this for every song? "animal lover" could have been a single too.
im wondering why this album is called the harbinger of britpop. the sounds are bowie/smiths photocopies, far far away from parklife.
