One of the smartest records of the 20th century, and one of the tastiest to listen to. For me, it ever so slightly edges out Curtis Mayfield's and Marvin Gaye's socially aware masterpieces b/c it incorporates gravity w/ humor, and connects our psychic lives with upfront realities: 'shady as a lady with a mustache'; 'You're in trouble when you find it's hard for you to smile / A simple song might make it better for a little while'; 'I am everyday people.' You gotta etch out a special place for albums that make you feel good like no other. This is one of those informed blisses; groove-daring answers to our problems. You throw it on and may as well have a great day. Why not? You may also pick up a copy of Das Kapital and scold a landlord. Hell yeah.

'And so, become yourself / Because the past is just a goodbye' ('Teach Your Children'); 'In my mind, I still need a place to go / All my changes were there' ('Helpless); 'They stop by to die because / It's faster than sinking' ('Country Girl'). Moments like these show just how excellent this album can be, but it's mostly a vague excellence, fleeting, not fully realized. The four seem to know what they are doing but not quite where they are going. Emotionally, 'Helpless' has it, I do enjoy the parodic (or is it sincere?) 'Our House,' and the driving 'Carry On' is a superb entry. But I'm not all that proud to wear my 'freak flag' listening to 'Almost Cut My Hair,' and 'Woodstock' isn't nearly Joni's best. A very good record, but in love with it I am not.

From start to finish, this is Dylan's greatest achievement. It's his most literary record b/c it's his most confessional, his most sustained, his most motivated and focused. I guess love will do that to you - will exalt a writer to brass tacks. Featuring a vindictive storyteller getting his get back ('Idiot Wind'), and a nearly nine min interlude about Big Jim and the Jack of Hearts, the album tells it like it is by telling his version of it. As much as I revere 'Blowin' in the Wind,' 'Like a Rolling Stone,' and 'A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall,' I love those records b/c they speak to something culturally or societally universal. Here, Bob jettisons the cultural and societal for the personal - and he may just be a tad deeper b/c of that.

'I wouldn't normally do this kind of thing' - also, I wouldn't normally like this kind of thing. But I do. Because it's more than the sum of its heartstrings - and it has lyrics like 'to free in me / the trust I never dared.' It takes balls to feel good - and the music got those in droves. 'Then, when I was lonely / I thought again / and changed my mind.' That's good. 'Looking for love and getting / nothing that's worth regretting.' And so is that. 'Together.' Why not? Whitman's Calamus, I hear it, read it, happily, finally, all over again.

Production quality is this album's chief statement. How good is it? Listen to "In Dark Trees" and "Everything Merges With The Night," and see for yourself. The whole thing has the simplicity, compactness, and beauty of Pet Sounds, which makes for a rich, complex experience. Somethings are gorgeous, and this is. I'll come running back.

lyrics are beautiful and suggestive, production is tight, orchestration adds rather than detracts, something uplifting here tho we all know the tragedy of the artist.

Some of the instrumentation is inspired, like the drumming at the end of ‘Space Truckin’,’ but quickly gets repetitive. The songwriting is weak, and Ian Gillan’s voice does not do it for me. This defines generic rock music - without soul, try-hard lyrics that get you nowhere, blues riffs without true blues intensity that the likes of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath manage to incorporate into their albums. ‘Lazy’ is the best song here - at least the harmonica has some oomph.

Not often does the idea behind an album or a band affect how much you enjoy the music. It may change your perception/understanding, but not the quality. This is an exception. Once I realized the Ramones were a goofy and violent rewriting of rockabilly, a Buddy Holly in free fall, I could listen freely and enjoy the shit out of them.

It remains a peak of all hip hop, not just the alternative brand. It’s murky and creative and affirmative b/c it is engineered by thinking and is immensely enjoyable to listen to.

Could be an album I like a lot, it’s an album I like some - good voice, bad person. Never felt like it quite got going - the rawest moments don’t endure. It is palpably better than so much pop country, but I don’t feel compelled to return to it. I have to trust this is mostly because the music is ultimately unimpressive and incomplete. ‘Shakedown on 9th Street’ is a believable thing, tho, and the harmonica is there for real. I might return to it…

3.5/5. Underrated. This one has a coherent energy and gives me authentic joy. Have other artists done a better job with this sort of thing? Yes - but it is distinct enough to be an enduring effort.

Sparser and shorter than Bryter Layter, just as poignant and original. I do bemoan who he must have been an influence on - quiet, depressed, and tedious singer-songwriters. But he’s a thing-in-itself. He’s far from boring and wants life as sad as he may have suffered. He wants things to work out. That’s what makes it so sad.

Most people will focus on the lyrics, which makes sense, since they are poetic, oblique, and uniquely literary. Yet they wouldn't function as effectively as they so often do if weren't for the efficient and compelling instrumentation. See 'A Minor Place,' 'I See A Darkness,' 'Death to Everyone,' 'Knockturn,' 'Madeleine-Mary,' 'Today I Was an Evil One.' It's not all sombre piano, but big guitars too. I'm not too down having heard it. Maybe that's b/c 'by dread I'm inspired.' It has sweetness and tenderness, needed components of downcast forms. Possibly he has managed to weaken the attack.

It’s Paul Simon but not the best. This has less to do with the individual songs and more to do with the feel of the album as a whole, which seems a bit scattered. Still some great songs: "Mother and Child Reunion," "Run that Body Down," "Armistice Day," "Peace like a River," "Papa Hobo," "Congratulations." "Me and Julio" is not very good, however, tho it sticks around, and "Paranoid Blues" works as a homage to the American blues but not a fantastic rendition.

The drums stand out, not quite the dynamics of the Pixies, but have power nonetheless. The rest is preachy and hardly vital. Not for me. Is it for anyone? I really can’t tell. ‘Drowning Man,' perhaps, but even this I most likely won't have on rotation.

Honestly, pretty fucking good. It’s overplayed, but I’m happy that I never listened fully when it first came out so I can enjoy it more now. It’s not the songwriting, that’s clear, but I can’t be deaf to the singing. It’s on a level not often heard.

If you find this album too weird, I don’t know what to say. It's ahead of its time in that it manages to brilliantly negotiate languor and energy. ‘Cheree’ is gorgeous while ‘Frankie Teardrop’ predates mucho.

Fantastic - L.A. before its Doors were opened, tho Arthur Miller's voice can be even more rangy and dynamic than Morrison's. It's all and that's everything at once, with flutes too ('Orange Skies,' '¡Que Vida!,’ ‘She Comes in Colors’) and I like that loads. Where'd they hide from me all these years? This one comes in colors.

This album is a four-cornered room, maybe a regiment to be exact, the funk being tight and ordered, tho it’s tapestried with flow too. It’s rich, man, and spatializes itself in its four-angled ghetto, just good enough for moi.

Not remembering this one, I predict, it’s not doing it for me. It’s fine-fine but not enough. ‘Blue and Grey Shirt’ has got something, at least, and, okay, ‘Bad Liquor’ came as a surprise. All the good songs on the backend. It’s the ‘Western Sky’ that I like, and ‘Last Harbor,' too. But not much, honest.

It has bop, but does it have muscle? It may, since the drummer is indeed the MVP (Rolling Stone magazine). It may not, since vocalist Vincent Neff does not have enuff oomff. Production and percussion wise tho, very cool. Check out ‘Firewater,’ Hand of Man,’ ‘WOR’ and ‘Storm.’ The Cairo one, too. Yep.

I've nothing to add. This is a permanent one.

Incredibly nostalgic album for me, and upon listening again, it holds up remarkably well. It's an eerie and uncomfortable foreshadowing of the special brand of opulence and egotism that defines the 2020s, the artist that engineered this album, and several of its featured musicians. Instrumentally and texturally brilliant, but it's the atmospheric and cultural implications the album imparts that give it its uncanny quality. To those who heard it when it first appeared, listen now - it’s even stranger, and far sadder. It has too little innocence.

Production quality is this album's chief statement. How good is it? Listen to "In Dark Trees" and "Everything Merges With The Night," and see for yourself. The whole thing has the simplicity, compactness, and beauty of Pet Sounds, which makes for a rich, complex experience. Somethings are gorgeous, and this is. I'll come running back.

There are ‘smart’ albums you’ll have to be in a heady mood to enjoy (TPAB, Trout Mask Replica) - at the very least they require taking time out of the day to absorb. Then there are albums like this, which are ‘smart’ but don’t in the same way demand an investment. Not the best Talking Heads, but it endures. And what an opener to send it off.

Dusty, surely dusty, her voice is air, gravel, and reality. She does it better than almost everyone. This album, like her, is a book I'll always be reading.

I can’t not like this, so I’ll go ahead and dig it. Reputations aren’t at stake. A great opener, ‘Soda Pop’ is fantastic, the whole thing makes me feel good. Fuck it. The beat goes on…

‘I got another gang story to tell, peep...’ - perhaps like others, I know this from Compton’s Most Wanted and the classic they spawned. This one is soulfully and richly produced. What makes it even better is Hayes’s choice of songs to cover. By the Time I Get to Phoenix - like Bowie doing Wild is the Wind.

Apparently a major influence on Oasis and Britpop, you can hear it, but hear something else too. If this's a revival, it's also a 'hey now, I'm here' sort of thing. And for those seeking a restoration of The Beatles, go back and listen to your Kinks. Yeah, this list is too British, but this is a good find.

'Strangers / Nobody knows we love' (from 'Secrets') is a moving summary of this album's evocation of loneliness. But that triumph doesn't persist. It's not that it's too dark - it's that the darkness is uninteresting and finally w/o the quality of what makes dejected art a buoy for a suffering mind and body. The storytelling is weak, the production feeble. Maybe their other records are more developed, but this stagnates w/ no howl - not for me.

This and Station to Station seem to me to be Bowie's major peaks. This 'hazy cosmic jive' has a lot going for it, but I'd like to think it abides b/c it has the humor and vitality that 'conceptual' projects do not always carry. This never crumbles under its own pretensions - no tedium or inanity here.

This had a much more soulful sound than I expected, and was lighter on its feet than I assumed. The album art and pretentious title didn't excite me, but the instrumentation is often creative and the songs have a sweetness to them. Unfortunately, the lyrics are frequently wanting, and overall there is something unrealized, which other LA groups at the time, like The Doors and Love, didn't suffer from. I'll give it a 4, tho, considering their influence on subsequent artists - again, Americans got there first (sorry Zeppelin...).

This album deserves its critical acclaim, because it's inventive and yielded a new sort of musical experience. Much of it I really enjoy. But I'm not all that convinced by Beth Gibbons's vocals, which sustain a monotony that I find frustrating at times and do not always believe in. And yet, and yet, it so cleverly incorporates Hip Hop (in 1994!) that I'm left unsure what I feel. I guess I kept longing for a spark, and I only got ashes, tho beautiful ones.

This is killing. And Basie plays with so much space, and spacing, so sparse (Midnite Blue) I’m full to the brim with pleasure. Who’s that trumpeter on ‘Duet’? Man, this is good - not quite the last of the big bands (Thad Jones/Mel Lewis, Joe Henderson), but a great selection here - especially for a list so wanting of jazz.

The songs are what they are (and Phil is who he is), but I do love that 'wall of sound' style, especially featured on classics from girl groups like The Ronettes and The Crystals. I'd take Nat King's Christmas album over this - I'm not all that into these jingly Holiday tunes - but this is worth a listen.

Her voice doesn’t merely come from a real place - it takes you there as well, which can’t be said about many ‘real things.’ It wobbles and clouds over, tho it’s also so clear, sound, and solid. Does she push it? Not as much as you may think. So give me Janis. Then I’m good, and in that special way, I can live all over again.

What's cool is this is as much the birth of an idea, an aesthetic, a posture, as it is superb music. Not much to say here - Miles inventing again.

'I wouldn't normally do this kind of thing' - also, I wouldn't normally like this kind of thing. But I do. Because it's more than the sum of its heartstrings - and it has lyrics like 'to free in me / the trust I never dared.' It takes balls to feel good - and the music got those in droves. 'Then, when I was lonely / I thought again / and changed my mind.' That's good. 'Looking for love and getting / nothing that's worth regretting.' And so is that. 'Together.' Why not? Whitman's Calamus, I hear it, read it, happily, finally, all over again.

‘I can’t dance / I guess, I’m just one of the unfortunate few,’ sings Parsons. I guess we’re some of the fortunate many who have discovered this artist. I’m not so sure I care that it’s a fusion of rock and country - big deal - that’s not his (or hers, Emmylou's) genius. It’s that it’s got soul, humor, voice, pluck. And he can sing, just enough, intimately, consistently, quietly. These songs story so much really - for that, it gets my appreciation.

Hard rock/heavy metal seldomly holds my attention for more than, say, thirty seconds, before it falls apart under its pretenses, inanities, tediums. Zeppelin and Sabbath are the formidable exceptions. It must be that the music Bill War, Geezer Butler, and Tony Iommi orchestrate is authentically blues-inspired, regularly funky, always improvisatory. It doesn't even feel particularly 'heavy,' at least no heavier than its progenitors - congrats to them for that. I can listen to Sabbath's enduring riffs often and gratefully.

'No dark sarcasm in the classroom' - that'll stay with me, as will much else. But. This is a sometimes pretentious, not always profound, album with quite a few unpretentious and profound songs. It was conceived ambitiously, so it ought to be judged that way, and I'm not moved by its conceptual frame. It can be puerile, it can be surface, it lacks intellectual stamina. But it has 'The Thin Ice,' 'Mother,' 'Hey You,' 'Comfortably Numb,' and some others ('Goodbye Blue Sky'), that are permanent and real expressions.

'You should hear how we syllogize / You should hear / about how Babel fell and still echoes away.' All of this, and the rest, is very, very good - original, dynamic, not too deep in strange land, and off kilter enuf - but founded on the pleasure principle, I'll not return as often as I do to others. For sure, it's an unforgettable listen, not that demanding, a pleasurable thing in the end. 'Caligari's Mirror' and '(Pa) Ubu Dance Party' prove it's so. Maybe a bit too cool for school. And not as perfect as Marquee Moon.

‘The fairytale was climbing up / A mountain far too steep.’ That's a rare, inspired lyric moment. Musically impressive because lush and adequate but never honest, hardly a big deal. I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt b/c the songs are short and the production is good enough to overcome some of its shortcomings. But not that many of them. 'My Mistakes Were Made For You' is the strongest single - and 'I Don't Like You Anymore' has got punky oomph - but it's all a bit blandish, and the legitimately sexy orchestration ('The Meeting Place') isn’t merited.

I love this album, not because it communicates tension, but b/c nothing feels like it's going to fall apart. This isn't adolescence's final stand, or last day of summer, but a continued expression: 'I wake, I still look, I feel loose.' ‘Still’ is the operative word. Even on 'Made of Stone,' which approaches Tom Verlaine's impressionism, the philosophy is a subdued trust in the process: it's all gonna be okay. And that works for many a night out, or in, or here, or there.

'You made me miss the Slick Rick gig.' This brilliant album (and artist) is a cultural and musical amalgamation you rarely get - a jazz vocalist with r&b perceptiveness laced with footnotes to hip hop. And a voice as seductive and creative as the things she sings about, aspires to. Honest, something special.

'You elevate my soul / I've got no self-control / Been living like a mole now.' That's bad, as is much else here, never quite reaching the heights (and how high are those heights, really?) of 'Beautiful Day.' There appear to be authentic moments of poppy breakthrus, but they persist for even less than a chorus. 'I don't know / which way the wind will blow.' It's difficult to write that and get away with it. U2 doesn't. Their best and most soulful ('In A Little While,' by far) unfortunately can't save this album from itself, which manifests most dreadfully on 'Peace On Earth.'

'Do you really think she'll pull through?' 'And the pain was enough to make / A shy, bald Buddhist reflect / And plan a mass murder.' 'And if you should die / I may feel slightly sad, but I won't cry.' That's Morrissey alright - that's his invention, of which I can't think of a proper imitator/reverential copycat. How'd you do it? I had, for some reason, evaded The Smiths's final album. Shame on me - tho not quite their best, b/c it's not their most definitive, it might be their most consistently colorful and vigorous, even approaching something soulful at times: Morrissey finds his growl ('A Rush and a Push,' 'I Started Something'); I find myself chuffed, snaring this thing that's theirs, that only they've ever done.

'Although our music and our drugs stayed the same.' Sorta how I feel about this one - while I can admire Shaun Ryder's lyrics (at times), and the music has an edge (certainly Stones-influenced, more sixties than you'd initially figure), there's little variety here. If there's a joke, I don't quite get it; if it's about capturing a scene (rave culture), I'm not taken there. And it's weird when I don't know why: 'We're all food, your cake / We're all the food, your weirdo's cream.' I know what to do with impressionism, with the strange and the grotesque, but I don't know what to do with that. Nor do I want to. I do like the more straightforward stuff ('Country Song,' 'Wrote for Luck,' 'Lazyitis') tho - it negotiates The Stones well enough. But mostly, I’m a bit bored, a bit wanting more, or less.

Again, short songs redeem the whole. This is a well-produced album with creative percussiveness, rich, impactful guitars, and a compression to save it from going too far, too dreamy, too heady. The lyrics are the weak point, not difficult or pretentious, but in fact unmemorable, too steady, not wordy enough. But this is a good find, and in the end, I’m down with it. Especially beautiful: 'Onie'; especially tasteful: 'Train for Tomorrow' and 'Luvin''; heavy lifting in LA: 'Try Me on for Size'; not good: 'The Toonerville Trolley.'

His virtuosity aside, I can’t get into this - when it’s quietest, I’m happiest, like at the beginning of ‘Top Jimmy’ or ‘Drop Dead Legs.’ When it’s off, when it’s over, I’m really most pleased. I don’t mind dumb, or even fake, but a dud ‘tis, especially the squandering of ‘Hot for Teacher’ and ‘Girl Gone Bad.’ By the time ‘Jump’ (the best song, by far) starts soloing, there’s nothing left that I can remotely enjoy, it’s all so thin and, like so much hard rock, so soft. If he shreds, well, I can do w/o that verb.

Rush doesn't tell interesting stories, be they fantasy or science fiction, tho Geddy Lee may think he does. This isn't weird, it's boring, and when there is a reprieve of satisfying, even at times superior, instrumentation, you’re reminded of lyrics like: 'I stand atop a spiral stair / An oracle confronts me there.' 'Atop' and its kin are bad for music, unless its The Smiths and the literary is somehow properly negotiated. And when it's more stripped down (e.g. 'Tears'), it's unbearably saccharine, evincing a no-win situation.

If this isn’t excellent, it’s close to it. If it’s the beginnings of heavy metal, it’s early enuf not to be overwrought or to neglect its origins. Unsung heroics: Micky Waller, a put-together of Mitch and Ginger (got the fluidity of the former, uses the toms like the latter). The rendition of Ol’ Man River is more than up to snuff: it’s sincere. And I don’t know much about guitar chops, but Beck sure does seem to live up to the hype. I'll go w/ excellent.

This one starts with two beauties, especially the opening track, which does manage to express the joy and realness of psychedelic experience: 'Oh, how is it that I could come out here / And be still floatin' / And never hit bottom and keep falling through / Just relaxed and paying attention?' That is precise, and superb. But then it drags quite a bit. Tho I admire the austerity of 'I Come and Stand at Every Door,' nothing impresses until the still innovative 'Eight Miles High.' Up next, the speedy and frantic rendition of 'Hey Joe' doesn't do it for me (it's admittedly hard for any to 'do it' after Hendrix), and the rest is good, but not great. When psychedelia snubs melodic variety, it can fall flat - this has that handicap. But it was widely influential and has some greatness in it. For that, I go higher.

All-time voice; not an all-time album. Talent may speak for itself, but so does craft, subtlety, a diversity of sound, and expressive language, all of which this album has only some of the time, and not all that convincingly. But she can sing so damn well that her underachievements are now and then compensated for. She'll go down as an all-time great b/c her vocal abilities are, in fact, incredibly rare, and she has composed some pregnant, memorable songs. On this one: 'I Miss You,' 'River Lea,' 'Love in the Dark,' 'Million Years Ago,' 'Sweetest Devotion.' And yet, the whole gestalt lacks.

Duke's a persuasive composer; there's a preternatural uplift that all of his compositions share, a surety, a swagger, a candid sense of self and others. Nothing breaks down b/c everything's a great run into the center of life and its particularities. This live recording famously attains that sensibility with genius. Quite literally, Duke and Louis (who's unforgivably absent from this list) invented our music. And a special shout-out to Cat Anderson, the best of all muted trumpeters I've heard. Sam Woodyard too on ‘Skin Deep.’

This Morrissey is more sincere than ironic, which is odd tho not necessarily a bad thing. He croons, 'Where the world's ugliest boy / Became what you see / Here I am, the ugliest man,' and I believe him. More often than not, I am in the mood to take things as they are rather than with a grain of salt, but this sincerity fails to hold my attention. Morrissey certainly has his moments here, especially on 'Suedehead,' 'I Don't Mind If You Forget Me,' 'Dial-a-Cliché,' and 'Margaret on the Guillotine,' but for the first time, I'm not all that keen on hearing what he has to say next. Just a bit tired of the pouting and yearning, which is leaned on as a crutch rather than explored and developed. The music, stringy, plucky, and at times acoustically flush, does perdure however, and does vitalize this not-as-effective grumbler.

'Cover my face as the animals die.' Does this mean that Robert Smith has finally gotten over the notion that death and the expiration of flesh can be flippantly sought after? Sure, the whole album commences with 'It doesn't matter if we all die,' but this is far more vital than the gloom-gets-me-nowhere Seventeen Seconds. Perhaps they were so on the verge of falling apart as a band that a will to live implicitly permeated their program. I still struggle to listen to a Cure album all the way thru - it's just not my way of dealing with distress - but this is far from bad. 'My memory in a fire, and someone will listen / At least for a short while.' That has a quiet aspiration in it I admire. And the keeper of the sudden fire: Lol Tolhurst (drummer).

‘All I’ve Got To Do,’ ‘All My Loving,’ ‘Don’t Bother Me,’ Till There Was You,’ ‘Please Mister Postman,’ ‘Hold Me Tight.’ Some great originals, some enduring covers. It’s a copycat league and they copied as emulators and admirers. Do I prefer Chuck’s maiden recording of ‘Roll Over Beethoven’? You bet. Is Smokey’s ‘You Really Got A Hold On Me’ the better one? Uh-huh. Is this still a milestone album and essential listening? I know it is.

This really gets rolling with 'Let the Sad Times Roll On,' tho the title track does hit with humor and joviality, most notably continued on 'Wham Bam,' a hilarious promotion for the rejection of matrimony. In terms of country voices, I prefer the likes of Marty Robbins, Tom T. Hall, Townes Van Zandt, and Blazes Foley, not to say anything of Patsy Cline or Johnny Cash. But even tho I sometimes feel like I'm being slammed with a festivity I'm not exactly invited to be a part of, there are enough wistful songs - 'If You Fall Out of Love With Me,' 'The Band Keeps Playin' On,' 'Streets of Laredo' (an all-time favorite), 'Cryin' Time,' 'A Maiden's Prayer' (instrumental) - to keep this album honest, and to satisfy my penchant for a mournful affect. And in terms of influence (the Bakersfield sound), this is a true topper.

This isn't really metal, and Lemmy doesn't really have a metal voice, more like an explanatory rasp, loud and heavy b/c he wants to talk thru the noise and tell us what's up. Popular among the punks, and self-proclaimed to be nothing more than a rock-n-roll band, Motörhead wore a not-quite-metal aesthetic that isn't exactly news. But it is significant. It even boarders on hardcore sanguinity on 'Live to Win,' venting the noble lines: 'You mustn't shout it out loud / Don't create a scene / Don't indulge in being proud / It only feeds their scheme.' That's excellent and true. (If only other metal acts would listen to this sage and sensible advice, ahem, Marilyn Manson.) What this album lacks is variety, however, and what it unfortunately boasts is the dreadful 'Jailbait.' Mainly tho, it has a palatable and honest aesthetic. I can't say it's entirely my thing, but it sure the hell blows AC/DC out of the water, and I can imagine myself returning to it, if only to feel a bit mucky.

This ain't it. It's so adequate that it's essentially no good. And we already have an excellent country/roots rock act from California (see Creedence). This isn't that mastery, or close to it. 'Most of us are sad / No one let's it show' is about as good as it gets. At least that has a sincerity to boot, not an inauthenticity to bear. But truthfully, this album has no haunting power, and no quiet successes. An all-around blah.

Lyrically, this is a bit conspiratorial and paranoid, all to do with a 'them' one would confront in a Pynchon novel, or a 'we' we don't really know: 'Don't let them see / Don't let them know' (from 'Films'); 'All that we are / Is all that we need to be' (from 'Engineers'). Musically, I get it, but I'm not sure I like it or that it gives me P-L-E-A-S-U-R-E. On principle tho, I can't say it's bad. Some genuine darlings: 'Complex,' 'Tracks.' Numan's voice gets stale, however, and it's all shot thru with a false sense of profundity. 'You are not reg-u-lar' (from 'Conversations'). The problem is this album is reg-u-lar. But not an everyday people kind of regular. That kind, I'm all about.

He rhymes like a rapper: 'Those disco synthesizers / And those daily tranquilizers / Those body building prizes / Those bedroom alibis'; 'We're all going on a summer holiday / Vigilante's coming out to follow me / Heard somebody said they're out to collar me / Anybody wanna swallow me.' He has the courage for half-rhymes, internal rhymes, multisyllabic rhymes, like 'cheek to be' and 'weaken these' ('Little Triggers'), 'silent' and 'hydrant' ('You Belong to Me'), 'cuddle,' 'waddle,' and 'model' ('Chelsea'), and these bangers: 'movements,' 'amusements,' 'choosy,' 'above me,' 'shoes' ('Lip Service'). This is to say nothing of the music, which is authentic pop that tenders a punky dynamism (check out rhythm section on 'Lipstick Vogue'). And the best: 'I wanna bite the hand that feeds me / I wanna bite that hand so badly.' So yeah, I couldn't say enough. This is superb.

Quality Control (2000) is the better release, but this is still a strong record. The production is hard and addictive, the flows and rhymes are effortlessly intricate, especially on 'A Day at the Races,' the harmonized choruses are tasteful, and the partitioning of verses is uniquely lucid. But it also trots out cliché lines like 'My pen drips / As I scribble my thoughts on thin strips of emotion.' It sometimes feels like this album was made for people who never 'got' hip-hop, and needed a record that's blatantly 'conscious' to get over their disapproval of the gangsta genre. But anybody who really understands hip-hop knows there's no De La Soul w/o NWA, no Black Star w/o 8Ball and MJG. Still, this is a classic listen, partly b/c it's great pop, tho Q-tip would resist that dubbing: 'Rap is not pop / if you call that then stop.'

A top-five vocalist of the twentieth century: stably inventive, focused and uncrowded, tho perfectly full, somehow dry w/o drying out, emotive w/o being lachrymose, and a technical mastery that's formidably faultless. She is, simply put, one of only so many crucial artists of her time, and any time.

'Now the preachin' is over / And the lesson's begun'; 'Now the lesson is over / And the killin's begun.' Willie is a pure storyteller, and no moralizer. He lets things be, and like the great painters of precarious minds coming to their ends, he passes no judgement. I'm reminded of Orlando and Don Quijote, Othello and Leontes, and several characters who populate Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska. Structurally, this record is brilliant, no song doing more or less than it needs to: four instrumentals, three tracks less than a minute long, one over five. And his voice, tho high and feeble, carries this album's impressive fire.

'Following charts but the threads would just dissipate / Modern Kosmology let my love resonate.' This album, mainly due to its excellent production, tho also b/c of lyrical moments like that, is an unexpected pleasure. Tho not quite as brilliant as comparable acts such as Julia Holter and Cate Le Bon, this possesses a palpable optimism that I very much enjoy: 'Let's go outside when it doesn't feel right.' It also successfully sustains a Byrd-like psychedelia on tracks like 'Loops in the Secret Society.' She loses me a bit on 'The Architect,' which is neither sonically nor conceptually attained, but wins me back with sweetness on 'The Lightning Back' and 'Valley.' Are the echoey vocals and abstract lyrics entirely irreproachable? No. I can surely do w/o the 'open your eyes' at the end of 'Ravenspoint,' for instance. But I don't want to do w/o: 'there's a rhythm to march to this undisputed mood.'

The best-selling album of all time has most likely become a tough sell to many people, myself included. And yet, its nine songs stick around for good reason. Most ingenious is 'Billie Jean,' which fronts a literacy viz-a-viz creative rhythms and inventive melodies. Even 'Beat It,' which I never loved, is 'funky and strong' enuf to endure. Human nature is real, however, and as much as you'd like to separate the art from the artist, it would seem that appreciation at a distance is the most sustainable approach. But that distance is hard to preserve knowing 'PYT' is out there, a perfect track.

'And so, become yourself / Because the past is just a goodbye' ('Teach Your Children'); 'In my mind, I still need a place to go / All my changes were there' ('Helpless); 'They stop by to die because / It's faster than sinking' ('Country Girl'). Moments like these show just how excellent this album can be, but it's mostly a vague excellence, fleeting, not fully realized. The four seem to know what they are doing but not quite where they are going. Emotionally, 'Helpless' has it, I do enjoy the parodic (or is it sincere?) 'Our House,' and the driving 'Carry On' is a superb entry. But I'm not all that proud to wear my 'freak flag' listening to 'Almost Cut My Hair,' and 'Woodstock' isn't nearly Joni's best. A very good record, but in love with it I am not.

'I'm always a few minutes wrong.' This is indeed a blues explosion, mainly b/c it's an explosion of the uncool. It's not weird, it's not downcast, it's not edgy, it's not at all cool, but it's also not up for debate. The blues can't be itself when it's knowingly chic - it has to have some uncool about it, some awkwardness, some untidiness, some real deal marring and scarring. But, as Albert Murray advocates, the blues is slo dance music, party music, a genre for the clubs and late night believing. Every song on this album doesn't stun, but the whole thing fosters a cool uncool - a mixture of the festive and gawkish - that I admire thoroughly.

When Gaye sings 'Cry cry cry, do you cry about me / Do you every think about the kind of love we had?,' it's so devastatingly beautiful that alone it makes this album an invaluable listen. But it's the raw one-sidedness, the self-serving but somehow generous storytelling, the free-associative honesty and concreteness, having to do not only with flowers, bluebirds, and sparrows but attorneys, child support, and millions of moola, boasting lyrics like 'This is a joke / I need a smoke,' that take this record to a unique place aesthetically. It rambles, but the music doesn't ever tire, and tho you may not be left a fan of Marvin Gaye the person, so deeply rooted is his egoism at times, your appreciation for the singer/writer can only grow. And you gotta relish: 'Let's touch each other / let's feel each other's ass.'

This one 'keeps the customer satisfied.' Any album that proposes 'Bridge Over Troubled Waters,' 'The Boxer,' and 'The Only Living Boy in New York' is a perennial knockout. 'Half of the time we're gone / But we don't know where / And we don't know where.' It's the 'but' and the 'and' that make that a masterful and emotive line. The whole thing exhibits a pensive and cheerful vibe, a simultaneity not easy to attain, but one that's essential to experience. And I love hearing their live cover of the Everly Brothers, the duo's principal influence, at least vocally.

According to Mayfield, yesterday's 'America today' was 'scufflin' times': 'A lot of scars - that kind of scare you to remember.' It's more like collapsin' times in today's 'America today,' but this record remains timeless. Mainly, this is political music that gets going b/c it negotiates the mundane with sweetness and honesty: 'Waking up now in the morning / A little morning sigh / Ready not to get it together.' This is truth music b/c Mayfield is attuned enuf to appreciate that 'Truth is not the whole question.' Musically, this is a funky cry, and a crying funk: 'The way you do it - is to get right to it.' Amen. And even an atheist like me can get down w/ 'Jesus.'

From start to finish, this is Dylan's greatest achievement. It's his most literary record b/c it's his most confessional, his most sustained, his most motivated and focused. I guess love will do that to you - will exalt a writer to brass tacks. Featuring a vindictive storyteller getting his get back ('Idiot Wind'), and a nearly nine min interlude about Big Jim and the Jack of Hearts, the album tells it like it is by telling his version of it. As much as I revere 'Blowin' in the Wind,' 'Like a Rolling Stone,' and 'A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall,' I love those records b/c they speak to something culturally or societally universal. Here, Bob jettisons the cultural and societal for the personal - and he may just be a tad deeper b/c of that.

'I will sit right down / Waiting for the gift of sound and vision.' That's how I think about this album: you can sit right down, waiting for its gift of sound and vision. B/c that's what it is - an aural and visual affair, bravely vibrant, firmly in its own world. I've said before that Ziggy Stardust and Station to Station are his peaks, and I still believe that to be true, but this is Bowie's most interior, self-contained, and self-justified album. In many ways, it's also his most beautiful. It's a true conceptual piece to the extent that the 'concept' is the thing-in-itself. It doesn't allegorize or symbolize, it doesn't create a world for the sake of pointing out the ills of ours. It's a world of its own, plain and simple. And one I'd like to (re)enter whenever I can.

While I admire the production to some degree, Trent Reznor's abrasive whisper has a one-dimensional flow, and his flimsy allusions to Nietzsche ('God is dead / and no one cares') don't even excite this hardened atheist. 'Closer' is a miserable ode to rough animal sex: 'I drink the honey / inside your hive / You are the reason / I stay alive.' His junky and unimaginative philosophizing is incredibly tedious, and tho the instrumental moments can sustain an authentic energy, too much of it sours from Reznor's annoying poetry: 'And nothing comes bleeding out of me / Just like the waterfall I'm drowning in.' In Romanticism, the child is revered. Reznor, however, is only childish. There is a huge difference.

One of the smartest records of the 20th century, and one of the tastiest to listen to. For me, it ever so slightly edges out Curtis Mayfield's and Marvin Gaye's socially aware masterpieces b/c it incorporates gravity w/ humor, and connects our psychic lives with upfront realities: 'shady as a lady with a mustache'; 'You're in trouble when you find it's hard for you to smile / A simple song might make it better for a little while'; 'I am everyday people.' You gotta etch out a special place for albums that make you feel good like no other. This is one of those informed blisses; groove-daring answers to our problems. You throw it on and may as well have a great day. Why not? You may also pick up a copy of Das Kapital and scold a landlord. Hell yeah.

The fact that this pairing 'works' doesn't foment in me a new appreciation for a band I don't know particularly well, or a genre of which I'm honestly suspicious. If anything, the orchestral potentialities of Metallica fortify my aversion to a music I already find to be wearyingly epic and conceptually overwrought. Lyrically, it smacks of a bad interpretation of a verse play by Goethe: 'Drain you off your sanity / Face the thing that should not be.' The instrumentation is 'big,' and I guess therefore symphonic, but Wagner gone electric (or is it the other way around?) is not my jam. For fans of the band, this is most likely a treat, and I don't know their music well enough to really judge the collaboration. As an idea - as a project - it certainly succeeds. It doesn't, however, satisfy or convert. With that, I'll go w/ middling.

Santana's performance at Woodstock is all-time stuff. Their studio albums aren't the stuff of the gods, however, and tho this has classic rock staples, I'm no more convinced by it than I am by the Eagles. To be fair, it's better than the Eagles b/c the percussion - the principal Latin import - does give it a rounded and foxy sensibility. But the songwriting is mediocre, and the instrumentation is mostly thin, with the exception of 'Incident at Neshabur,' an effective nonvocal track, and 'Se a Cabó,' which is short and persuasive. But this one doesn’t crescendo when I’d want it to, tenderize when it ought to, or complicate when it needs to. Suffice to say, there's better out there.

'Though nothing, will keep us together / We could steal time, just for one day.' That has the joyous, fall-up-the-stairs desperation of Marquee Moon, the night so young and carefree it may as well be the end of time. Tho not quite as profound as Low, it's just as complete as the trilogy's first, and is structured the same: vocal dance tracks to start, pensive instrumentals to conclude, with the exception of 'The Secret Life of Arabia.' Where it takes me is vaguer than I'd like, but I'm still moved, I'm still awed by the play-it-cool but make-it-strange aesthetic that defines Bowie's output. You could say it's the best of the trilogy - you wouldn't be wrong. I just prefer Low that little bit more.

'And no religion too.' That's a breakthru in pop and rock's political and cultural messaging. It fits right in, you don't gotta say anything more, and I'm relieved someone had the nerve to say it. The song is therefore rightly iconic, but the rest of the album consists of songs that are good but never great, with the exception of 'How Do You Sleep,' which as a putdown track ranks with Dylan's 'Idiot Wind' and 'Positively 4th Street': 'The sound you make is muzak to my ears / You must've learned something in all those years.' 'I Don't Wanna Be A Soldier Mama' is thundering and grand, but also confirms that Lennon is often a better chanter than lyricist. When the chanting gets into my soul, I'll be there for the picketing. Otherwise, it's a bit truthy for no reason.

This record is effectively laidback but I find myself wishing it was more off to no good than it is. The synth takes away from the treble and the vocals diminish what could otherwise be a powerful and urgent experience. 'Air' and 'Moon' are apt descriptors of an album that is too spaced out, too ungrounded, too up in the air, and too over the moon. The production is certainly inventive, and while I admire the coherence of the project as a whole, its suave sensibility, exacerbated by Beth Hirsch's singing, serener and even more full of it than Beth Gibbons's, is not one I naturally gravitate to. Perhaps that's just it - I don't want to gravitate - I want to be pushed and pulled and then made whole again. With this, I only hover, or is it drift?

'Don't get any big ideas / They're not going to happen.' I'm not sure if this album qualifies as a 'big idea,' but it by all means 'happens.' Explosively subdued and gorgeously produced, this record is like a bargain that keeps on giving: I'll offer Radiohead the benefit of my doubt and they'll exchange that for something that's rich, that's immense, that's really quite special. I shouldn't like it is as much as I do, mainly b/c Yorke teeters dangerously on the pretentious: 'I get eaten by the worms / and weird fishes.' Yet, for all like that, there're also these: 'I am all the days that you choose to ignore'; 'I only stick with you because there are no others'; 'I love you but enough is enough, enough of that stuff.' And yeah, 'Reckoner' is prolific, it's superb.

I caught: 'your wasted space is mine, too.' Ironically, MBV can't be said to waste space, instead filling every second w/ a sonic entirety. It's one that seems to be emptying, however, so minor and drowned out is the reality the album portrays. I'm not sure I'm in love with the aesthetics, but I know that I don't want to stop listening to it, which must count for something. I wish I knew what they were saying, it would be nice if it didn't drone as much as it does, but I also know that if it were any different it would be far less interesting, that it'd hardly be the creative statement that it is. I don't think I would throw this record on any chance I get, my mood normally not inclined to gaze or shoe, but I'm happy enuf to attend when it is on.

'I'm spilling over like a heavy loaded fruit tree'; 'Fig, fruit, flower myself inside out for you'; 'Gonna wash that man right out of my hair.' This one grows on you b/c you start believing it, whatever it is that warrants belief. Not as obscure as Patti Smith, Harvey's also not encumbered by feminist messages or cultural critique, tho they're there and good for her for being involved. Angry, not angsty, she's full of details, stories, and memories, which is more than you can say about a whole lot of artists doing similar things but far less impressively. Musically, the drums are the unsung hero while the strings on 'Plants and Rags' are heavy and sensible. As 'Oh My Lover' started, I didn't think I'd be down. By the end, I very much was.

Not the greatest blues master - that'd be Robert Johnson, Howlin' Wolf, or a live B. B. King for me - but most likely the greatest exponent of the genre: 'I'm a man / I'm a rollin' stone.' We know where the Londoners got it. 1977: amazingly, this is not a throwback or nostalgia trip, but a profound barrage of raw deals and comedy, i.e., the real deal - the blues: 'I be troubled / I be all worried in mind.' A music about the psychologically downtrodden did more to describe our societal malaise than mucho sociology and theories of economic nadirs. Muddy Waters effectively gets that vision across on this album, a perfect entry point into the music that had a baby we named Rock and Roll. Essential for its history, so it is also for its pleasure/urgency.

I found a playlist on YouTube for this album since neither Spotify nor Apple Music streams it. I don’t know enuf to judge it, not merely b/c I don’t speak Arabic but b/c I can’t calculate its influence. Musically, I’m not moved, but I’m not repelled either. In other words, I conclude benightedly that it’s middle of the road.

'And what hits the spot, yeah, like Gatorade?'; 'Please don't defend a silver lining / Around the halo of what is already shining'; 'Maybe you meant no intention.' Hard to describe, sure, but not hard to feel. Lyrically is where this album has every opportunity to break down, but it never does, saved not only by the stunningly balanced instrumentation, but by the words themselves, which are authentically poetic, drifting enuf into outer space for me to want to do the work to ground them, a challenge that pays off in the end. Longstreth can sing all he wants about a 'fluorescent half dome' and I'll trust that there is, indeed, intention behind it. And not that intention is all what matters when the music is sheer pleasure - guilty if anything.

An excellent album for many reasons, but mostly b/c it shows us who Elvis is and who he is not. The 'first rock star,' he was a star but not necessarily a rocker. Prolific as a balladeer and a country western crooner, at least on record, he seems hardly to have a sense of humor, which isn't a failing, but can hardly be considered the appropriate stance of one who rocks, i.e., see Chuck Berry and his ding-a-ling. His business was in being austere. When that's understood, it gives a whole new dimension to tracks like 'I'll Hold You In My Heart,' 'In The Ghetto,' 'Don't Cry Daddy,' 'Kentucky Rain,' and 'Mama Liked The Roses.' I'm not so sure he cared about getting us to shake our asses or to move our hips - I think he just wanted us to listen.

'I'm a world runner.' She means it: 'When you go Rwanda, Congo / Take me on a genocide tour / Take me on a truck to Darfur / Take me where you would go.' I can't think of a better album about moola. Foregrounding war-sponsored capitalism, Maya triumphs as few rappers do: not only is she smarter than most, she avers proudly that she doesn't read, that she just guesses ('The Turn'). Those 'guesses' figure into precise and luminous choruses that catapult M.I.A. from a 'conscious rapper' to our conscious feeler - our very own funky, can-do-no-wrong t'cha: 'I put people on the map that never seen a map.' Inimitable; unstoppable. What she doesn't do is preachify; what she does do is dig and inform. And make bangers.

No who w/o Bjork? Probably loads, tho such a unique and daring artist may not be the progenitor of many - that's fine, even enviable. Anyway, this is a helluva debut, otherworldly but corresponding to ours as well: 'But then we'd have to rush back / To the town's best baker / To get the first bread of the morning.' If that's the soul of provinciality speaking, I'd like to request a bundle of that old world bread. But she's clearly a figure of the future in other words: 'This small town hasn't got room / For my big feelings.' She sings of 'big sensuality' too - I guess big, not love, has got to do with it. It is a bit sappy at times, which wanes ('Like Someone in Love' averages out), but not to the degree that I forget: 'It takes courage to enjoy it.'

It's a truism that period pieces sell a lot of records. This one sold mucho and periodized a piece. The more Gray belts, the more generic the music; the more powerful, the more insignificant. He can sing, but he can't be for real: 'Seems these days I don't feel anything / 'Less it cuts me right to the bone.' This isn't soul-baring, it's barely soulful - and proof that if it's big in England, it may be a big flop elsewhere. To make it worse, the songs are twice the length they ought to be. 'I put my heart in your hand' - and I've given it right back. No thanks!

'Deliver Colonel Sanders down to Davey Jones' locker'; 'I got a girl in the Castle and one in the pagoda / You know I got rhymes like Abe Vigoda' (or is it Phyllis Diller?); 'Now your mom threw away your best porno mag (busted).' The Beasties spend a fair amount of time rapping about 'girlies with the def behinds,' and really girlies of all shapes and sizes, but that doesn't take away from the fact that this album remains sonically fresh and persists as a cultural touchstone that few other records approach. Behind the boasting, rhyming, and stealing is the inception of the hip hop avant-garde, persevered by Kool Keith, MF Doom, etc. Sampling is a form of cultural allusion, and when the lyrics are equally, hilariously allusive, you get something that is truly sui generis. And fun as hell.

I know they get credit for initiating metal - that thematically, there wasn't much like it, and their riffs established something heavier than Zeppelin or Jeff Beck - but I can't help but feel they're magnitudes richer and more pleasurable than most metal, not merely b/c they came first, but b/c they're really another sort of thing entirely. They may sing of Iron Man, electric funerals, and hands of doom, but they can hardly be said to embrace the make believe, so realist is their ethos, whereas much metal as I see it is Halloween w/o recreation. For instance, this isn't fantasy, but portentous: 'Burning globe of obscene fire / Like electric funeral pyre.' And the riffing is an impossibly sustained adventure - so luxurious it's nearly unfair.

As much I appreciate this album for the versatility it displays - Bowie can sustain a basic soul/pop record w/o weirding out all that much - I find it thin if I'm being honest, as well as incoherent: 'Fascination, takes a part of me'; 'Fame bully for you chilly for me / Got to get a rain check on pain.' It's not that he can't be soulful - he certainly can be - it's that if he was going for 'plastic soul,' he got something closer to the real thing, and just didn't quite make the cut. 'Young Americans' has an undeniable chorus, his cover of 'Across the Universe' is capable, and 'Fame' is a justifiable favorite. But I don't know what to do with: 'Can you hear me? / Can you feel me inside? / Show your love, love.' If it's sincere, it's bad; if it's ironic, what's alleged?

'Oh I need something to fly over my grave again'; 'A candy bar, a falling star, or a reading from Doctor Seuss'; 'The movies had that movie thing / But nonsense has a welcome ring.' While I still think Murmur is R.E.M.'s most remarkable statement, I by no means disparage their more pop orientated albums released during the early nineties. But I do think this record is slightly overrated. Even comparing it to the album released just after this one - Monster - I prefer the pop ballad 'Strange Currencies,' one of the all-time R.E.M. singles, to the ubiquitous 'Everybody Hurts.' Tho a band's most lauded album is not necessarily their best, it is self-important to prefer only the deep cuts. Yet, besides 'Nightswimming,' this is ordinary.

'Well god forbid / Something goes wrong / You call / The police'; 'Shit happens, hey, just blow it off, whooo'; 'You must think you're Orson Wells / And this is 1954.' Pharrell really is a genius, and there are a plethora of artists who'd never have come around if weren't for this mishmash of rock, rap, and funk: Anderson .Paak, The Internet, Tyler, to name a few. But the genre is inventive, and influential, while the album leaves me wanting more. There's no song here I'm in love w/ - not even 'Thrasher,' which boasts the get-you-going chorus 'Fuck him up!' Is it lacking perspective to say that I wish this album was 'braver'? It feels like an irrational demand, but it's all I can come up w/ - if not 'braver,' at least less trivial, more bound to realize.

This one is far more than its title track, tho 'Groovin'' is one of the most profound feel-good tracks of all time. The album is all positivity: 'I'm so happy now'; 'I feel a strange, exciting thing about to be'; 'Life could be ecstasy / You and me endlessly.' Even on a song like 'I Don't Love You Anymore,' assertiveness is the name of the game: 'It's like my life had just begun.' Their cover of 'A Place in the Sun,' which more than equals Stevie Wonder's 1966 breakout, maintains the record's sanguinity. Susan Sontag once wrongly criticized Gertrude Stein for being 'all affirmation,' for not being 'where there is an adversary, a problem.' How we explore happiness constitutes an artistic conundrum, a 'problem' if you will. Felix Cavaliere and his fellow New Jerseyites are enthralling explorers of joy: 'You'll never see me complaining / 'Bout love - I'm in all the way.' Same.

This one features proficient lyrics written by other artists: 'And I glow with the greatness of my hate for you' (Nick Cave); 'If sex were an olympic sport / we'd have won the gold' (Neil Hannon); 'St. Mary's prayers, / Houdini's hands, / And a barman who always / Understands' (Tom Waits). It also features the voice of an actress who starred in Cabaret and Chicago, a voice very much suitable for those outlets but uninteresting on a bistro-inspired cover album. It's not that it's pretentious, since she does what she is good at. It's that the theatrics don't offer a reason why - why here, why now, why the passion, why the atmosphere? Her best covers are of Waits, since he favors the performative, but the rest are drab and tiresome.

Has 'easy listening' ever been as soulful, as confrontational, as well-put together, as vibrantly thought-out? The only 'easy' thing about Tapestry is that it deserves infinite replays - otherwise, King is as hard as nails and a good kick in the ass. She's wise, she's aspirational, she's realist, and she's genuinely supportive on 'You've Got a Friend,' which I can only imagine has been the source of many saved lives and healed sorrows. It's also a snap shot of an America of another time: 'But if you wanna live in New York City / Honey, you know I will.' Remember when NYC was synonymous w/ urban decay? Finally, this record gets me back listening to The Shirelles, Smokey, Aretha, even James Taylor, which must be any songwriter's dream effect.

I listened to the original 12 track set from 1987, and came to the conclusion that The Triffids (a triffid, I learned, is the plant from John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids) achieved what U2 never did: make inspired pop music that, perhaps to their own chagrin, is deep down a melange of Christianity. Much of this is religious saccharinity, w/ lyrics negotiating 'one less soul on your fiery list,' 'holy water,' and 'your secret delight in vice.' And yet, David McComb's voice is strong and convincing, I genuinely enjoyed tracks like 'A Trick of the Light' and 'Jerdacuttup Man,' and memorable lyrics like these have something true to offer: 'How can I put it in between words?'; 'I was beating on her like an anvil / Beating her out of original shape'; 'Steal it all.'

In one way, there's nothing truly powerful here. MJ (the band members all have abbreviated names - don't ask me why) sustains a high register and can, in his own manner at least, belt, but he doesn't blow me away, and the blend of rock and techno is competent but not out of this world. In another way, the nine songs that comprise this record are indeed powerful, b/c they get you moving, they are bound by an authentic sweetness, and they exult in some impressive lyrical statements: 'My father waited for hours just to hear me play a note'; 'There's nothing wrong with being fragile in life'; 'Peeling out and high in the reasons you're worth knowing.' Their project exceeds what I'm assuming it had been on paper - & thus, a triumph it is.

You know you've broken thru when the first two lead vocals you hear are not the main guy’s: Jim Gilstrap and Lani Groves speak this masterpiece into existence, and from there 'perfection is perfected,' as Snoop'd put it. Not only does Stevie give us flawlessly produced tracks - songs that have no choice but to occupy our collective unconscious - but he has us thinking about the weirdness of language too, like who the 'it' is in this line: 'Will it say the love you feel for me, will it say?' One of his requests: 'Catch your baby, catch up with my dreams.' We're still 'catching up' w/ Stevie's visions, inner or outer; his genius isn't a superstition, but a mere fact of life. And if his complex melodies 'keep me in a daydream,' there I'll gladly stay.

Five songs into this album, and the record goes from not giving a shit to very much giving one; from the bravado of 'Yeah I hear, I think, I know / Rock don't give a shit, you know' ('Favorite Thing') to the reserved optimism of 'One more night to get it half right' ('We're Comin' Out') to the ahead-of-its-time negotiation of the gender spectrum of 'Mirror image, see no damage' ('Androgynous'). There's authentic wisdom here: 'Your age is the hardest age / Everything drags and drags.' I love the sense that Paul is having a heart-to-heart w/ a young kid going thru it. This one's over in a blink, and by the end, I'm more than satisfied. If it's not quite sublime, it's still perfect, it's still exactly what I'd want out of a record. Bravo to that.

Wayne Coyne's voice is reminiscent of Neil Young's, but otherwise, there's nothing to compare this record to, really. The Flaming Lips are psychedelic pop w/ a handful of scientific realism. I want to like this album more than I do, mostly b/c I admire how it sounds - the production is absorbing and musically I'm at ease here - but the lyrics are ultimately too pretentious to overcome: 'To lose your arm would surely upset your brain'; or this: 'The summertime will make you itch the / mosquito bites'; or: 'Putting all the vegetables away / That you bought at the grocery store.' Besides 'Waitin' for a Superman,' no song here is w/o flaw. I get that they're going for the rapture in the mundane, but these fuckers are in band. They're not Joyce.

'We think we know what we're doing / We don't know a thing.' So sings Lauper on the opening track (the lead single from The Brains' 1980 debut), a song about money troubles of all things, a realism I wasn't necessarily prepared for but in no way rejected. After that, each song contains even more truth bits for us to chew over: 'girls just want to have fun'; 'I love you more than I did when you were mine' (Prince); 'You said, "Go slow," I fall behind.' That's just the first side. Sure, time after time, we've heard that tune, but that doesn't make it any less powerful. And the album in toto is well worth your ear. Lauper rebels by kissing you, and even gets avant-garde w/ a 45 sec cover of Helen Kane's 1920 'He's So Unusual.' A classic.

The thing about the White Stripes is that they're not exactly heavy w/ riff but they are heavy w/ groove. That's a major shoutout to Meg White. I'm not convinced by every song here, but heralded by 'Instinct Blues,' which feels like a reworking of Cole Porter's 'Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love' - now: 'well, the crickets get it, / And the ants get it'; then: 'Birds do it, bees do it / Even educated fleas do it' - this album is a successful amalgam of bookish resolve and bare power: 'The one that you're trusting suspiciously dusting the sill'; 'And the truth, well you know there's no stoppin' it / And the boat you know she's still rockin' it.' And vulnerability on 'As Ugly As I Seem' and 'I'm Lonely (But I Ain't That Lonely Yet).' Doorbells, too, ringing or unrung.

Freddie Mercury is an LGTBQ icon. He's also a remarkable vocalist, and all I've heard indicates that he was a kind, generous, gentle person. But Axl Rose is a prodigious singer too (tho a dick, which makes him easy to hate), and I can't stand Guns N' Roses. I think it must be the structure of their songs that drives me crazy - so often there's a cliché crescendo, or a drop of some sort, that's unjustified and wholly unheroic. No song here besides 'Some Day One Day,' which nurtures an ethical quiet, deserves the size it wears. And far too many forevermores and nevermores: 'It's forevermore that I wait'; 'Ogre battle lives forevermore'; 'Don't send me to the path of nevermore.' I guess it's the British and Tolkien in them. Not for me.

This record is an inventive and imaginative accommodation of 80s pop, and its general aura, given the group's name and the album cover, was something I was prepared for. What I wasn't primed to appreciate was the extent to which its seven songs all deal w/ 'love' in one way or another. 6/7 of the tracks contain love in the lyrics. For an album like this, that seems to me a significance: 'I am in love, I am in love with you'; 'Do I love you? Yes, I love you'; 'I am in love, I am in love with a feeling'; 'The love theme for the wilderness'; 'For the love King, out in the morning air'; 'You are pretending love is worth waiting for.' The final track is an exception, but the thematics have been inculcated by then. A bit sleepy, but mostly wise and peaceful. And 'Stay' is a masterwork: 'Stay, and I will understand you.' That's love.

'We hear you're leavin', that's okay.' That's Donald Fagen's entry point into this record, to whom I'd like to say: 'don't worry, no one is leaving just yet. It's only just begun.' It's a good thing I didn't leave, b/c I'd have neglected a singular album due to my suspicion of its neatness and sterility. But by the time they cover Duke and then pay homage to Bird, I was all the way in. If it ever feels too smooth for school, just remind yourself of what any major dude'd tell you: 'Any minor world that breaks apart falls together again.' Tho they may hide it, for all the best reasons, Steely Dan is always breaking apart and falling together: too weird to be entirely on kilter. 'Won't you turn that bebop down.' I will not. Nor will I quit this rugged tidiness.

You'd have to be a fool not to see that this album is about far more than the legalization of marijuana. Tho Tosh is dead serious in that regard - he does indeed advertise the benefits of the plant, the specifics of which we can for sure doubt - 'good for tuberculosis, even umara composis' - this record is at bottom a profound meditation on colonialism and the mess that sort of domination engenders: 'Mama, mama, dem hold papa / Seh dem charge him fi smoke ganja.' It's about the absurdity of a system based on nominal distinctions of power: 'Them claim say, them claim say / Them are the general.' And it happens to be incredibly enjoyable to listen to - especially when Tosh goofs and frolics, i.e., check out 'Ketchy Shuby.'

Howe Gelb's voice is too glib and casual for this to be an impactful record, and the lyrics are never not pretentious, tho they don't always approach the following prattle: 'It's w/ great human OP8 for a headachy nation.' It's too bad, since a track like 'Temptation of Egg' has authentic groove, and 'Shiver' sustains a driving energy, but I can't deal w/ a title like that, and the latter harbors this drivel: 'The deliver of shiver.' More empty poetry: 'And I would ponder this disease like a peeling onion skin striptease.' Above all, the blues and country should never be whispered. Seeing that Gelb is only intent on whispering, it all collapses into something fiercely boring and has few saving graces. No 'furtiva lagrima' for me - just prominent irritation.

Jorge Ben apparently went electric on this, tho I doubt he generated as much dissent as Dylan when he plugged in during the mid sixties. As for the music, the merging of American funk/jazz with Afro-Brazilian modes works brilliantly well. What seem to be specific allusions to the American scene, but which may be entirely native to Brazilian expression, aggrandize this album to further heights. For instance, the incorporation of cute and drunk yelps (instrument unknown) on many of the songs parallel the ones heard on Herbie's 1973 'Watermelon Man.' Unfortunately, the Spanish and Italian I have can only help me a bit in recognizing what he's talking about lyrically - but as for a sonic experience, it's all excellent.

Like all pop singers, Gaz Coombes reminds us to never lose our heads: 'I'd like to wake up in the middle of a dream w/ you'; 'We wake up, we go out, smoke a fag / Put it out, see our friends'; 'I have a little smoke to pass the time of day.' But he's also a killer, a lover, and a 'strange one.' Unlike other Britpop acts, Supergrass returns to the punk scene of more recent memory rather than sixties rock (Beatles, Stones, Kinks). Unfortunately, they're not as convincing as they could be since Gaz doesn't have a memorable, vital voice. The best tracks here are 'Alright,' the most successful single, as well as 'Time' and 'Sofa (Of My Lethargy).' They're slower, more poignant, less frantic for the sake of fast. B/c otherwise, this bears empty calories.

It's no small success that Cash has me appreciating a Trent Reznor song, but this album is far more than a qualification of my aesthetic preferences. That's b/c American IV is such a powerful and strange cover album, hardly feeling like one in the end. Not only does Cash make other's art his own - he universalizes his selected tracks, and each song seems to be no one's in particular. The democratic choice to disperse a few of his own songs throughout gives the sense that he is merely one of so many conduits thru which art is expressed. The whole world is the writer of poetry in the end, as Emerson reminds us: "For poetry was all written before time was." But this is also Cash qua Cash, the voice being so recognizable, so ineluctable.

Musgraves exhibits a radio country voice, which I can't say I'm in love w/ or would ever feel the need to return to. The soft, gossamer affect leaves me wanting more, and instead of floating I feel like I'm parachuting thru a dull lecture on something pop. Some of the instrumentation, especially as the record gets going, is effective (strings, synths), and lyrics like these are at least up to snuff: 'Plants that grow and open your mind'; 'Coming thru the melody when the night bird sings'; 'I know my place, and it ain't w/ you.' But excited about this I'm not - too innocuous, too tame, not necessarily sterile, but never massively alive, never turbulent or usefully grungy. Saved by 'Happy & Sad' and 'Velvet Elvis,' Kacey suffices but doesn't floor.

Spewing four massively successful singles, and 'Jenny Was a Friend of Mine,' Hot Fuss is Hot Mess at the same time that it's cultural touchstone. Primarily 'Brightside,' tho really the overall texture of the record, is etched in our subconscious whether we like it or not. I don't like it, since Brandon Flowers has got me missing Robert Smith, his voice even more gratingly loud and uninteresting. The lyrics are nowhere in particular, and misspend the potential of the best song: 'I got soul, but I'm not a soldier.' Pop music doesn't have to mean anything, but it shouldn't propose empty signifiers. So for this one, it never started out w/ a kiss, but it sure did end w/ an upset stomach. Really, it should always be on the back burner.

Polyrhythmic, Remain in Light is also poly-lyrical: 'Sharp as a knife / Facts cut a hole in us'; 'The world is near, but it's out of reach'; 'There is water at the bottom of the ocean.' Many albums pontificate, may even sermonize, inspire, and theorize, but I can't think of a record that philosophizes like this one, that prompts abstract reflections on 'facts,' 'the world,' and the ocean's bottommost water. 'Time isn't holding up, time isn't after us.' On More Songs About Buildings and Food, Byrne generates interest in objects and stays at their level for a funky, quirky trip into everydayness. On this, actual ideas are spawned, new notions, maybe a metaphysics even. Yet, the music remains light, danceable, wholly unburdened by the intellect.

Bossa nova, especially on this record, is a way of life, something that, like the Girl from Ipanema, passes but is entirely memorable, in fact longingly so. This doesn't pass into oblivion or homogeneity, but only strengthens by virtue of its fleetingness, a transience that somehow sticks around and perpetuates something permanent. That may just be the magic of a 'cool' that's not too cool. Getz/Gilberto successfully negotiate the potential dull and hazy atmosphere prompted by a smooth and superficial experience. It relinquishes smoothness for the sake of easygoingness, superficiality for a momentary suspension of depth. Thing is, it is deep - just not woefully so.

'We can fuck forever but you will never get my soul.' Ten years the senior of the Jon Spenser Blues Explosion, this is the OG coming together of punk and blues music. Not that punk isn't always already indebted to the blues, but The Gun Club is a particular marriage of sentiments. What I love about their record is how much history you hear - Robert Johnson, of course, but also The Velvet Underground, New York Dolls, Suicide, The Modern Lovers, Patti Smith, not to mention early rockers and auras of American culture in general. It even gets poetic: 'In the stillness of the mosquito sunset.' But points are deducted for racial slurs. Tho Pierce was of mixed race, he fails to harness these words effectively or authentically. Still, a revelatory listen.

‘and don’t be no drag.’ Opening w/ what could only be called kinky reggae (see Catch a Fire), Bob Marley’s first record w/o Tosh and Bunny is a clear triumph. If he’s not comforting you w/ ‘corn meal porridge,’ he’s a reminder of basic human facts: ‘a hungry mob is an angry mob’; ‘a hungry man is a angry man.’ If Marley is not some sort of prophet, especially for those of us who doubt that kind of thing, he’s still an indispensable artist, a realist who satisfies the old adage: ‘show don’t tell.’ No song here is not worth your time - and quite a few are inevitable classics, e.g., ‘Them Belly Full,’ ‘No Woman, No Cry,’ ‘Rebel Music,’ ‘Natty Dread.’ ‘Talkin’ Blues’ takes first place tho, w/ this unwonted violence: ‘Cause I feel like bombin' a church / Now that you know that the preacher is lyin’.’ If that’s not what I’m talkin’ about, it’s what I should be talkin’ about.

A somewhat neglected group from the Native Tongues, Jungle Brothers epitomize the best of nineties creativity in the hip-hop format. It's party music, in its own way, but it also swaggers a literariness that could be called poetry, but in fact resembles something older in quality: 'Shake your butt but don't break your back / Tap your feet and let your fingers snap'; 'All you read about is slavery / Never 'bout the Black man's bravery.' It's the combination of body-positivity and mental-positivity that makes this album an exemplar release - whether they're rapping about 'Belly Dancin' Dina' and being 'junglistically horny' or how 'the oppressed will be saved from oppression,' their pedagogy is inseparable from the dance floor.

Grace Slick has one of the more unique voices in popular music, but what sets Jefferson Airplane apart is the heaviness of their psychedelia. While The Byrds at times grow thin, this is all about booming soul and textures of freedom: ‘I’m so full of love / I could burst apart / And start to cry.’ Even ‘Comin’ Back to Me,’ the track on which you could most easily call bullshit, evades that evaluation since its poetry, which is authentic, never diminishes the music, which foreshadows acoustic Zeppelin. They may sing of ‘purple pleasure-fields in the sun,’ but you never get the feeling that they’re treading on mushy or imprecise grounds, only that they’re exactly as they should be expressive.

'Hammer my bones on the anvil of daylight.' Something about this record is certainly 'hammering,' since the first thing you notice are the drums: heavy but tasteful and illuminating. Having never heard a Beck album before, I wasn't expecting rhythm to lead the way, but I sure wasn't bitter that it did. It's a record w/o genre tho not exactly w/o focus. A legitimate criticism to extend, however, is along the lines of: what is it all about? where is it all going? It's not competence w/o substance, but w/o vision or intention. But sometimes I feel: who really needs those qualities? I guess what I'm looking for is believability, that sticky thing. What we get is more hammers: 'I prayed heaven today / Would bring its hammer down on me.'

'But when I awakened I found it not so.' When this record began I found it was not so. As it kept up, I found it was still not so. And as it came to its conclusion I found it was wholly not so. 'To purgatory fire thou com'st at last / And Christ receive thy saule.' Edmund Spenser was ridiculed for his employment of antiquated language in The Faerie Queene. If Spenser is old-school, Pentangle is grotesquely prehistoric. 'I have here a magic horn to deliver.' What's worse, you know exactly the influence an album like this had on subsequent groups stuck in the bullshit of Britishness: Jethro Tull, Deep Purple, Queen, Uriah Heep, Gryphon.

'A dewdrop can exalt us / Like the music of the sun.' Musically, Close To The Edge is decent, approximating Steely Dan at times, tho less jazzy and far less immediate. 'For the crucifixion of her own domain.' Lyrically, it's all pseudo-literary. Even the refrain 'I get up, I get down' - sung w/ what Jon Anderson would like to be soul but is in reality just taciturn geekiness - is supposed to ultimately mean something DEEP but in fact means they read books (Hesse) and thought they were COOL. 'Emotions revealed as the ocean maid.' I'm not sure what they're getting at, but it seems to me that Yes pooh-poohed 'emotions' and went straight for the cerebellum instead. 'Even Siberia goes through the motions.' The fuck?

Voodoo and Black Messiah are far more realized and inventive than Brown Sugar, but this is classic neo-soul grooviness and sex-positive spunkiness. Raw is the word, but so are honed and rounded b/c D'Angelo not only sings his heart out - he cruises, covering the Smokey classic for track seven, and gets his magic from empowering the beat to go on just a little longer. That is also the foremost scarcity of the record - it has a one-note strike against it, not enuf variety or new positioning. But that's a small price to pay when it's largely a joy to bliss out to. Running imaginations, i.e., Temptations: 'Is it just that you're the finest little thing / That I ever saw, or is my imagination running too far?'

This is a long album that's framed conceptually and has numerous skits, and yet no part of me believes it should be abridged. 'Consequence is no coincidence,' raps Hill on 'Lost Ones,' and neither is success in vision or in voice. Presumably, this album is about L-O-V-E, but Lauryn Hill cut class and missed the relevant seminars. In that way, w/ an all-over-the-place intellect, Ms. Lauryn raps and sings herself into an education that carries religious themes ('Zion'), rap history ('Hip-hop started out in the heart'), relationship advice ('Baby girl, respect is just a minimum'), and her own regretful sacrifices ('Gave all my power ceased being queen'). She raps as well as she sings, and has a doo-wop soul at bottom. A necessary classic.

'It's the joint.' Paul's Boutique is the logical continuation of License to Ill, which sets the standard for witty rhymes and sample-based production. Tho this goes full throttle in the direction of an avant-garde explosion, it's still dedicated to 'all the girls,' and the three white boys are in no mood to be overly serious: 'A strapped shoplifter, a pirate on cassette'; 'Well, me in the corner with a good-lookin' daughter'; 'I love girlies, waxin' and milkin'.' Musically, things culminate most brilliantly on 'High Plains Drifter,' 'The Sounds of Science,' and 'Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun,' all of which contribute to a sonic experience that is equally brash and temperate. No other Hip-hop record is as unorthodox or as hilariously smashing as this.

'There's a lullaby for suffering / And a paradox to blame'; 'I'm angry and I'm tired all the time'; 'My lost, my lost was saying found / My don't was saying do.' As a lyricist, Cohen is one of the all-time greats, better than Dylan to a degree b/c he's as profound as he is direct. This record is an outstanding howl to a god that may or may not be listening, a final and sonorous cry. It doesn't matter to me that his cadence hardly changes or that his voice remains in the gutters of despair. It's a record that negotiates the layers of epiphany, dark tho always gentle, not one that flaunts excessive variety, tho the instrumentation provides more than enough soul, beauty, and diversity for it never to get old. 'We were broken then but now we're borderline.'

For good and for bad, it's the first of its kind, and someone had to go there. The Beatles went there, and did so w/ flair, wit, humanity, and McCartney-mastered basslines ('Fixing a Whole,' my god). Chic isn't necessarily pretentious, but it's a far cry from Chuck Berry and Little Richard. So something died w/ this one, tho birthed as well was a willingness to authenticate weirdness w/ a thought-out edge and memorable lyrics like: 'She's leaving home after living alone / For so many years.' An influence that is nearly impossible to calculate, heck, 'Lovely Rita' even portends Lil Wayne's 'Mrs. Officer.'

Renowned for its odd time signatures and cool, west-coast grooves, Time Out is one of the most recognizable jazz albums of all time, and its lead single, 'Take Five,' has sold more records than any other jazz song ever. This makes sense, since the album has a songwriting element that most other jazz records don't possess - it boasts memorable hooks and one-two punches that hardly miss. But those 'other' jazz albums, the less singsong ones, are by and large more impressive than this, tho in no way is Brubeck uninteresting or uninspired. I see his influence ranging from jazz's inner circle to instrumental rock/blues like The Allman Brothers. And w/ a record like it, you have to remind yourself that the guy most likely killed elsewhere.

'Belligerent ghouls run Manchester schools / Spineless bastards all'; 'On the day that your mentality / catches up w/ your biology'; 'Happening in mine, happening in mine.' Only the final song, which is an experimental gem, has anything to do with vegetarianism, but the themes of cruelty and empathy run powerfully thru the entire record. It's not an album that I look forward to returning to, however, even tho Marr is incredible on 'What She Said,' and Morrissey's lyrics are no less impactful. It may be that it's too dark, too despairing in the end, not joyfully cynical. W/ the exception of 'Barbarism Begins at Home,' which vigorously bears witness to the catch-22 of a vicious school system, no track here properly gets me going.

'Not bad meaning bad, but bad meaning good.' Run-D.M.C. was the first cross-over hip-hop act, not only b/c they collaborated w/ Aerosmith but b/c they were three things at once: hard, as in street, heavy, as in rockin', and cerebral, as in geeky and allusive. Raising Hell is remarkably self-aware, a deliberate admixture of nerdy programs and a tough sensibility. Taking these qualities not as opposing forces but natural allies, D.M.C. essentially defines the genre w/ these two lines: 'I got prescription glasses and my eyes are correct'; 'It's called gangsta hard rock, non-stop hip-hop.' Not many albums begin w/ four certified and infectious classics, but this one does. The rest is just as brilliant, especially 'Perfection' and 'You Be Illin'.'

‘Don’t fight it, we’re gonna feel it tonight.’ Noted for its raw sound, a quality not as prevalent on the singles (tho if ‘A Change is Gonna Come’ is not raw, then what is?), this is one of the great live albums. A soulful romp, it does exactly what a live record should - not only make you feel that you are there but make you wish so much that you were. Cooke’s voice has a bit more rasp here, but no less uncanny control or sweetness, and the music, w/ King Curtis on sax, swings, shakes, and drives. In a deep sense, it’s rock and roll, it’s Chuck and Bo and Little Richard. Yeah…what I would give to have been there. ‘Keep on having that party.’ Remember it.

I know what he's getting at, but Bill Callahan, much like Howe Gelb, is not a a vocalist who endures soulfully or feelingly: too wispy, too quiet, and too deliberately mellow and inoffensive. Nature and the American West are his muses, but he fails to be as expansive or as explosive as the aesthetics inherent to that part of the country. There are certainly some moments of instrumental beauty, like the luscious strings at the end of 'Too Many Birds,' but Callahan's lyrics do not carry out the music's elegance or energy. 'The leafless tree looked like a brain / The birds within were all the thoughts and desires within me.' That's bad. 'It's time to put God away.' As true as that is, it's sung sleepily when it should be harangued w/ gusto and w/ guts.

Long and eclectic but focused and mostly painless, Tusk ought to be far grander and stranger than it is. 'When you build your house, I'll come by.' Lyrically, that's about as impressive as it gets, and while 'What Makes You Think You're The One' and 'I Know I'm Not Wrong' have a great deal of pop oomph, I'm not really feeling any track here - not in the gut nor in the head. Somewhere between the White Album and Exile on Main St., but not nearly as successful as those seminal releases, the record can't seem to make up its mind. Is it from the heart or the brain? While you'd most likely want it to be both, Tusk is not soulful enuf to have me moving unreservedly or clever enuf to have me thinking uninhibitedly. In short, it's immensely boring.

Tho the genre has virtually lost all meaning in the thick of far too many subgenres, 'rock' is the aptest descriptor of this record. Vocally, Eddie Vedder sings w/ a powerful and drawling attack, a register that has now achieved classic status. Musically, it seems every track features a guitar solo, which is at times eventful and justified, others not so much, while the drumming is mostly straightforward and ordinary. I guess what makes it a 'grunge' breakthru is the sensitivity of the lyrics: 'She's been diagnosed by some stupid fuck / And mommy agrees'; 'Clearly I remember pickin' on the boy / Seemed a harmless little fuck.' That 'sensitivity' is mostly believable but at the same time leaves me doubtful and surfeited w/ mawkish honesty.

The wave sounds notwithstanding, tho even those I'm inclined to embrace, there's something unforgivingly real and reliably peaceful w/ this record. It doesn't blow you away, but then again I'm not so sure that it's supposed to - and one way or another, you learn to speak 'bye, bye' into existence, okay w/ quieter steps into spaces larger than yourself. That's until 'Hero' (David Bowie?) comes on and an unexpected jolt of energy provides the backbone of a moving display of confidence and wit: 'And you're just another hero trying to lose your fight.' After that, the music continues to be playful and driving, ethereal only in moments, concluding w/ a cry for true nurturance: '... help me through the night / Help me see the sun / help me to get up.'

'Impresario' of the punk movement, promotor/manager of bands like New York Dolls and Sex Pistols, and register of the 'hip new thing,' McLaren, I gotta give it to him, 'put together' a remarkable album of world music and Hip-hop. For me, 'Double Dutch,' 'Punk it Up,' and 'Jive My Baby' are the standouts. So from an aesthetic point of view, it triumphs. Historically, it's also fascinating to hear what was up in '83. The outtakes from The World's Famous Supreme Team, a Hip-hop radio show active from '79 to '91, are especially immersive. But morally, 'impresario' in my mind is no different from 'poacher' and 'opportunist.' As much as I enjoy a track like 'Soweto,' appropriation w/o credit spawns an ugly, colonial atmosphere. No good.

'And I'm a million different people from one day to the next.' Ashcroft has a bit too much of the Bono affect, - melodramatic, laying into something that doesn't exist - the songs are too long, and the music is often prosaic. 'The Rolling People' boringly channels Oasis. Listen: 'And here we ARE the rolling people' directly lifts Liam Gallagher's characteristic cadence. 'The Drugs Don't Work' is properly earnest but poorly written: 'The drugs don't work they just make you worse.' Obvious much? The best song here is the short 'Neon Wilderness,' but even that can't save the record from being a dispiriting drag. Dreariness is a necessary theme of our best art, but it's not a productive quality. 'We have existence and it's all we share.' Yecch.

'And I pretend to pray.' Whatever the '60s were really about, this captures that sensibility, one that we've all grown accustomed to have nostalgia for, tho many of us were never actually there. One of the great vocal records of all time, w/ Phillips and Elliot leading a sweet and soulful charge, it no less boasts instrumental surreality and a hustling, bustling rhythm. From Spanish Harlem to L.A., you get the sense that the moms and dads may've dug this as much as the rebellious, new-dimension-seeking kids. In other words, the 'in crowd' is what you make it - whether you're dreamin' or you retrospect and wear your influences on your sleeve. However it is, 'I need somebody groovy.' My fill of grooviness is more than satisfied w/ this one.

'I use a word that don't mean nothin', like looptid.' For a goof, they get real on this one, conceptualizing the basic integration of sex and commerce: 'Yeah, one big stupid butt nest / And I'm'a get mine at Gutfest.' Shock G is not quite Lewis Carroll, but unlike other alternative rap outfits at the time (De La, Jungle, Tribe, etc.), he doesn't just know how to affirm w/ off-color rhymes, but he employs nonsense to make a whole lot of sense. 'The Humpty Dance' and 'Doowutchyalike' are funk classics, but the ingenuity of the record clarifies on the second track, which samples Hendrix's 'Who Knows' from Band of Gypsys. Not quite a perfect album, since it's too long and plods in moments, but it's an enduring product: 'it's so real - it is real.'

'Mirror, mirror on the wall / Show me where them bombs will fall.' Unlike a bomb, this record takes its time to hit, tho the drums are powerful, strings provide orchestral bigness, and Win Butler's voice generously reaches out to the listener. Things finally explode on 'Intervention,' w/ this immediate and prescient indignation: 'Been working for the church while your life falls apart / They're singing hallelujah when defeating your heart.' I admire so much Arcade Fire's refusal to let up while at the same time going all out in the beauty department: eruptions fly w/ tranquil eloquence. '(Antichrist Television Blues)' is an awesome echo of Bruce, and while I wish the lyrics were more cogent/coherent thruout, the album is an undeniable success.

'If he dies we'll send a medal to his wife.' Ray Davies effectually carries on the efforts of World War 1 poets like Wilfred Owen and Isaac Rosenberg, while also telling a story of Australian emigration and composing catchy, blues-heavy songs (check out Dave Davies's guitar work on 'Australia'). I have always found it ironic that the British band that in my opinion most aptly aped American music, w/ classics like 'You Really Got Me,' which did more than copy and paste African American artists, but actually presaged punk, came to export more Britishness than any other B Invasion clique. Conceptual after Sgt. Pepper but before The Wall, Arthur succeeds chiefly b/c, tho it's worlds from mine, you get the sense they really lived this thing.