What a great album to start with, an absolute classic. The inevitable result of a generation raised on Bob Dylan introduced to LSD and heroin. Basically invented the idea of alt rock. Reed and Nico demand to be listened to above a thick bed of droning looping guitar sounds. A minimal, trippy, heartbreaking, and overall mesmerizing album. You feel like you’re listening to an entirely new sound.
As a huge Bowie fan, it pains me to say that this album just doesn’t do it for me. Bowie has always been able to straddle this fine line between art rock and pop, light and dark, dance music and reflective music. This album is just too much the latter for me and I don’t think Bowie’s vocals are up to the challenge anymore! Of course I can’t be too harsh to the man who legit inspired my sexual awakening may he rest in peace. There are a couple treasures on this album, such as Dirty Boys, Where Are We Now and (You Will) Set the World on Fire.
I have always loved this album. It’s a psychedelic, mind melting, face exploding, operatic journey into the mind of a man far weirder than anyone else in the funk scene, the minister George Clinton himself. Alternating bw funk masterpieces, punk death anthems, and pacifist hippy rock, this album is one of one. There are really only two songs worthy of relistening, the title track and of course Can You Get To That. The rest is a beautifully weird, powerfully performed, soup laced with about 6 tabs of acid and a pound of pcp.
I listened to this album in exactly the way it was meant to be: walking around New York City on a warm afternoon. So that may have influenced me when I say that my goodness this album SLAPS. From top to bottom it is nothing but fun. Fun in the way that only big band can be. And who, but perhaps Frankie or Deano, can croon like Prima?? And those guys couldn’t scat half as well. If I were sending an alien mothership just one album from our species, it very well might be this one.
It was fun listening to this album, the first by the group, which is much more rock n roll, less heartland, than what I had come to expect, more Stones, less Mellencamp. Tho, the latter is undeniably there. Petty’s voice is a little more raw and then on his more popular tracks which gives the album this feeling of edginess that I really liked. While this is a technically impressive album without any real low points, I can’t quite put my finger on why I don’t LOVE it. It simply doesn’t really inspire any awe or make me need to dance. I probably won’t listen again.
Let me start by saying that I love Madonna. I have long argued that she is the only wholly innovative pop star and that all others are just derivative. But this is a bad album. The saving grace is the production, which is excellent and way ahead of its time. But Madonna herself is maybe at her worst. The whole album is essentially spoken word and my god the words that are spoken are terrible. The lyricism is downright terrible, laughably so. And no, bad lyrics don’t become good when you sing them in French. Honorable mention for What It Feels Like To Be a Girl, which is a bop.
