Overall some very nice afro-inspired jazz tunes. Very interesting to hear that Fela Kuti’s sound is what would eventually inspire afrobeat. I feel like jazz is the kinda music that best encapsulates the spirit of
human connection, based on its emphasis on improvisation and live collaboration, it’s use of polyrhythms to illustrate conversations between the instruments. A lot of these elements come from African music which also influences the music of my family’s home country, so I’m grateful I’ve received this encouragement to finally check it out and honor these roots.
Fav tracks: Let’s Start, Ye Ye De Smell
The record drew me in first because of its energy and power, but after the first couple tracks, it started to go a bit stale. I realized that what bothered me the most was that a bunch of these tracks don’t really have enough of a diverse set of ideas to justify their length, so after a while they started to melt together into WWE 2K character select music with a Power Rangers guitar solo thrown in (even if I know the music from those two are cheap imitations of Metallica). Every song has its golden moments for me, but “Orion” really blew me away from start to end. I wish more of the album was as adventurous as that song. It’s a solid record, though, and I’m happy that I checked it out in the end.
Fav tracks: Master of Puppets, Welcome Home (Sanitarium), Orion
A solid collection of 90’s grunge tunes. On my side quest to get some background info on the band, I found out that this was Blur’s official departure from making mainstream-aimed pop-rock, and that really comes across in the sorta rebellious and carefree sound of the record, and how the songs jump from style to style while maintaining a roughness around the edges. The album sorta reached a lull for me around the midpoint, but the songs really pick up steam in the final stretch. I will say though that the lead singer’s voice isn’t always easy on the ears, though I guess people don’t really go to slacker rock or grunge for immaculate vocals anyway lol.
Fav tracks: Beetlebum, Country Sad Ballad Man, Strange News from Another Star, Movin’ On
It feels odd for me to call a political album plain, especially considering how it’s been many years since its original release and I have no way of truly knowing how this record fit in the musical landscape of its time, but it’s the main impression I got from this. Chapman is an effective storyteller and though I can recognize the power in her direct songwriting, a lot of the messages and sentiments she communicates through these songs have unfortunately become cliches with time. It’s of no fault of her own, though, but to me, all of the history that happened after this album’s release has only rendered these stories far too familiar in a demoralizing way. It didn’t help that a few of these songs aren’t really musically interesting to me, which I’m sure was meant to draw more attention to her lyricism, but to me, it only served to dull the power in her statements. It was a pleasant and relatable listen, but unfortunately it didn’t do much else for me.
Fav tracks: Talkin’ Bout a Revolution, Fast Car, For My Lover, For You
Some charming and aggressively 60’s American bluesy rock-n-roll tunes on this one. It’s light, fun, and simple and there’s not much else to it. It’s so simple in fact that I think about half of the songs on this one share the same classic honky tonk rock-n-roll chord progression. This is the kind of instrumental record that’s begging to be sampled in some lo-fi hip hop single. I found it funny how I recognized the melody in the title track from the soundtrack of that Hill Climb mobile game lol.
Fav tracks: Green Onions, I Got a Woman, Stranger on the Shore
I only got until “Under the Bridge” because I was sure that I had heard everything the album had to offer at that point and I wasn’t really willing to sit through more songs, and especially an eight-minute track called “Sir Psycho Sexy.” I think I got the gist after a solid run of corny sex jams and half-baked political statements. I’m also not entirely sold on the “funk rock” thing the band seems to be going for. It sounded like they were trying so hard to be sexy and cool that it unfortunately just boiled over into weird and slightly creepy at times. It also didn’t help that I felt the lead singer’s voice sounded a bit obnoxious and forced. It had the quality of a caricature. I saw the charm in it for the first couple songs, but it wore off fairly quickly. The instrumentation is pretty nice at times, though, so good on the rest of the band.
Fav tracks: The Power of Equality, Breaking the Girl, The Righteous & the Wicked, Under the Bridge
I dunno how to feel about this. This album squanders a lot of its own potential for me, usually by throwing a wrench in some otherwise solid songs. I was there at the start: the campy stadium rock production, the bombastic raspy vocals, the theatrics and the showiness of it all — I was getting into it until “Gutter Cat.” That really left a sour taste in my mouth that never really left. The first half features some classically sexist catcalling lyrics made leagues creepier by the nasally raspy delivery and then the second half is frankly a huge disrespect to West Side Story and Sondheim. Woof. It didn’t help that the following full-length track, “Blue Turk,” which features the singer at what I’m sure is his regular voice since the rasp appears only occasionally when he forces it out, is a nice and groovy song. It left me wondering what the point of the rasp was in the first place since he sounds nicer when he’s singing like, well, himself. It seemed to me, then, that he was just trying too hard to be idiosyncratic, and that issue follows the album to the very end. It tries to do camp well, but it falls short.
Fav tracks: Luney Tune, Blue Turk, Public Animal #9
This is a really well-made album. The track list flows effortlessly from mood to mood, and they all work together to create a vivid and warm atmosphere. The guitar pyrotechnics are well-placed and work to great emotional effect. The vocals feel natural, dynamic, expressive, and at home with the instrumentals. The lyrics are interesting and emotional. It’s the full package. I had a blast listening to this. It’s a keeper for sure.
Fav tracks: Hummer, Disarm, Soma, Geek U.S.A., Mayonaise, Silverfuck, Luna
This album is lyrically dense. It’s almost aggressively poetic in how I felt it demanded me to pay attention to the details packed into these songs, and yet, try as I might, I couldn’t keep up. I could instantly see that the stories this album tells and the pictures this album paints are rich, vivid, and layered with meaning, and yet after the songs ended, I was left with only vague impressions. This is the kind of album I would rather read as a collection of poems than listen to — I can properly sink my teeth into it that way. The instrumentation in several of these songs doesn’t offer much to elevate these lyrics, and even though Cohen’s velvety voice is pleasing to the ear, I’d still rather hear him read these lyrics than sing them so I could pay more attention to his storytelling. The album begins to soar around the midpoint, though, where the lyrics and the instrumentals seem to be working in harmony, and it left me wondering why the rest wasn’t like those songs. The orchestral flourishes, background vocals, and subtle electronic touches do a lot to add to the bittersweet atmosphere on the best tracks, so why weren’t they applied to the rest?
Fav tracks: Suzanne, Sisters of Mercy, “So Long, Marianne,” Stories of the Street
This was a weird listen. It’s a solid curation of African or Afro-inspired music with some hip hop radio interludes mixed in, and there’s not much else to it. After the first couple songs, I was left wondering how this was McLaren’s album and not a playlist or a DJ set. I did a little googling and found out that McLaren actually just threw all these samples together, slapped his vocals on top, and didn’t credit anyone. I don’t have much experience with the African genres presented here, and I’m hoping to with this 1001 albums project, but if that “Merengue” track is anything to go by, this album is disrespectful. Holy hell. The merengue sample in that song is washed out with reverb, the instrumentals are mixed and panned weirdly, and occasionally there’s some creepy synth strings added to it. And his vocals. Oh lord. They’re disgusting. The lyrics are cheesy at best, but his melodramatic gringo Spanish delivery just makes it outright gross. So I’ll go out on a limb here and assume that this treatment is consistent across all the Afro genres presented here, especially considering how his “rapping” on “Buffalo Gals” also kinda unnerved me. It’s a shame considering how apparently this album is what introduced a lot of Westerners to these genres. Trust me, it’s not this bad. I wish I knew what the original songs were though. They sound very nice.
Fav tracks: The sampled songs in Buffalo Gals, Punk It Up, and Song for Chango
