Randy Newman is like an iron fist in a velvet glove. Underneath all that chirpy vaudeville tunefulness is a deep sadness about the world and nostalgia for how it might have been. He applies his wistful, emotional voice to slavery, the threat of nuclear war, religion and fame.
There are two versions of Elastica here. There’s straightforward late 70s style punk and there’s post grunge.
I don’t get why people call this art rock or compare them to the Stranglers. This is punk with pop sensibilities. Even calling it Britpop only makes sense retrospectively because you can hear what we’d now call a Blur-ish sound on it. But they have much more punk attitude than Blur or most of the Britpop bands. Most of the album is short, angry songs with blazing guitars and sledgehammer drums. The track Connection is the hooky song everyone knows. The slower songs like Hold Me Now have a more pop feel but the attitude is straight up punk. I was raised on punk so I like it to that extent. I’ve only given it three stars because what they’re doing here has basically been done; there’s nothing much original here really.
Lauper’s unique voice has an affecting mix of raw punk edge and emotional vulnerability and it gives her the ability to make a song almost anything she wants it to be. Girls Just Wanna Have Fun becomes a song of feminist empowerment; When You Were Mine addresses the continuum of human sexuality in a way which sounds unbelievably modern for 1983; and of course Time After Time is a haunting classic which she makes her own.
Is it a pop record? Certainly. But she understands that pop is powerful when it’s well crafted - it can deliver a payload of meaning right where it’s needed and this album does exactly that.
Pleasing fact: The musicians are mostly from Philadelphia band The Hooters.
Often touted as the ultimate American new wave/pop crossover, in reality The Cars are much more pop and less new wave than, for example, the CBGBs bands like Blondie or Talking Heads who hit it big about the same time. In reality they’re straight ahead rockers and any connection with new wave is oblique at best. It sounds a bit overproduced in retrospect and the occasional weak tracks really are weak. What they are very good at is knocking out bona fide hits. Best Friend’s Girl in particular is a top notch bit of chart-ready songwriting.
When Michael was happy he made wonderful beat-driven, positive music without the studied, tortuous pretension of his later output. He just did his thing, and he did it to a world-changing standard. Free from the shackles of Berry Gordy or the rest of the Jackson clan, he’s free to express himself and on Off The Wall he lets loose.
It’s peak disco pretty much all the way through. The cover of Paul McCartney’s Girlfriend is a welcome diversion of style. Tom Bahler’s She’s Out Of My Life adds a Broadway tinged feel and adds a level of emotional depth otherwise in short supply. I Can’t Help It, the Stevie Wonder contribution has his characteristic jazzy/gospel chords and rhythmic complexity.
Songwriting contributions from Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder are bound to help but Jackson is no mean writer himself by this point, albeit not yet a very stylistically or lyrically diverse one. Having Quincy Jones producing doesn’t exactly hamper an artist either.
Highlight: I Can’t Help It.
Hands down the most overrated band of the 60s. Strip away the hyperbole and hormonal sweat surrounding Jim Morrison and you soon spot the emperor has no clothes. Dull.
This is one of the four golden Stones albums (Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street) which are hard to separate so that they are almost a single work. They’ve outgrown Brian Jones’ conception of a blues band with a gift for kooky pop songs and become the full-throated sex, drugs and rock and roll band they were to remain, by and large, for the rest of time.
Despite the famously dissolute recording process, during which Keef held court in his French chateau and occasionally deigned to make music, the whole thing holds together. Even Mick Taylor’s smart but slightly over-clean style couldn’t stop this humdinger of an album hitting the mark. Unzip it and get it on!
I first bought this album when it came out and I thought it was mostly boring. 45 years’ distance has not improved my opinion of it. This album has a kind of black metal meets post punk thing going on and you can see how many bands subsequently have been influenced by it; Nirvana, My Bloody Valentine etc etc would all acknowledge a debt. Non of that makes it an intrinsically listenable album.
This is a good album but nowhere near as good as the critics say it is. The sonic landscape is reliably in shoegaze, dream pop neo-psychedelia territory but it doesn’t do any of it well enough to justify the extraordinary levels of hype which surround this album. It’s big on atmosphere but very low on bandwidth and virtually devoid of melody. Good but frankly not *that* good.
In many ways this is a classic first album, in that it sounds like the sum total of all their influences; Lynyrd Skynyrd country rock, Stones blues, Lou Reed sleaze, all with an indie twist. That said, there’s plenty of variety and originality all round - neither mere copyists nor one trick ponies these. A great debut with a strong indication of more to come.
With an excess of success under their belts Mott the Hoople bring out a near-concept album about rock n roll excess. The trademark Stones influenced loose sleaze is there, with Ian Hunter’s Dylan tribute vocal style. There’s also an audible influence of glam on this record, again a product of Hunter’s knowingly suggestive delivery. Like so many records of this era, there’s more than a touch of nostalgia for simpler times, not to say a dose of darkness, as if the young dudes have come awake the morning after and noticed they are in a nightmare. By the way, you’ve got to love Hunter for the track title, ‘I wish I was your mother’!
Two things combine in Garbage to make something unique - Shirley Manson’s semi-improvised lyrics and compelling personality-led performance, and Butch Vig and Steve Marker’s background in production and creative remixes for other artists. It’s a match made somewhere pretty close to heaven, if not quite in it. The eclecticism for which Garbage are justly famous might have made for a disjointed album but sonically it hangs together very coherently. My reservation is that it feels like they’re playing at the dark side; their natural home is cheery, cheesy pop and the apparent edginess is performance rather than conviction. I think this is the result of having a pair of producers on board who have a very strong view of what makes a record sell, which also explains the moments of rather clever-clever production gimmickry which litter this record. That said, you have to say it’s a very competent pop record.
She has made folktronica, this particular fusion of folk and electronica, all her own, though this particular record leans much more into to a pop folk sensibility. Her voice has strong shades of an English folk version of Joni Mitchell. So Much More feels like a tribute, which I mean as a compliment because it’s still totally Beth Orton. There’s a beautifully understated intimacy to the lyrics, kitchen sink poetry, though there’s nothing homespun about the production which is competent and occasionally rich without being obtrusive. Stars Seem To Weep is the track here which justifies the folktronica label. Credit for the ultimate songwriters’ lyric on Love Like Laughter: ‘Some of the worst wrongs get righted on three chords.’ How true!
The scale of the Beatles influence is very notable and I have to say it’s just as well they were known for the Dylan cover because their own compositions are not especially memorable in their own right. At this point the blend of folk with British Invasion sounds is mostly the latter.
The other surprising thing for a modern listener is the inaccuracy of so much of the playing on this album. It’s amazing, even by the standards of the day, how many fluffed notes and just mediocre playing made it through the editing process, if there was one. No wonder The Wrecking Crew were wheeled in to make Mr Tambourine Man work. The cover of We’ll Meet Again is comically bad.
The choice of the Rickenbacker 12 string adds that distinctive and famous Byrds jangle and the harmonies are good enough. Overall this sounds like an optimist demo tape and I can only assume they got signed on the strength of their take on Mr Tambourine Man.
So the theory is that you can mix metal and hip hop without it sounding crap. Turns out the theory’s wrong. If I could have given this no stars I would have.
Pleasing, positive West Coast blues psych rock. 8:05 makes a pleasant change of pace from the throw-everything-at-the-wall philosophy of the rest of the album. Come In The Morning is a good soul style jam and they sound pretty tight on it. Skip Spence had an amazing voice, such a shame we got to hear so little of it. In places the band’s enthusiasm triumphs over their art but it’s a fun, upbeat listen and kind of a one-off.
Annoying fact: Most of the tracks are missing and streaming servers, a rights issue I guess. Had to listen on YouTube.
Broadcaster and John Peel collaborator John Walters once said he wanted to review a Yes album with the single word No. I feel pretty much the same. This right here is exactly where music went right off the rails in the early 1970s. You know what to expect and it delivers. Tight and musically competent but pretentious, though heaven knows the worst was yet to come. Most disturbingly you can hear in places where the execrable Rush got their sound from.
Recorded in a day and mixed the day after, The Fall begin as they intend to continue, by not meeting any expectations whatever. It is punk/new wave in its homemade, lo-fi three-chord ethos and it’s angry but the difference is the poetic reach of Mark E Smith’s lyrics. There’s no anthemic sing along chorus a la Love Song; this is uncompromisingly spiky. Smith very consciously channels Johnny Lydon at times. Best track: Probably Music Scene.
Fun, if obvious, fact: it’s not a live album, despite the title.
Dull mainstream 80s synth pop from a glorified boy band. A waste of 37 minutes I’ll never get back.
What makes this album great? It’s a question still worth asking nearly half a century after its release, because it’s claim to greatness is by no means undisputed. It’s not the hype, not the brilliant guerrilla marketing by Malcolm McClaren, not the attempts by numerous broadcasters and record shops to kill it off with bans and by refusing to name it.
It is a great sound. The sledgehammer impact of Steve Jones’ solid slabs of guitar John Lydon’s unique snarky snarling delivery. The way it captured the mood in a Britain which felt almost irredeemably smug and settled at the same time as it was declining and crumbling. It was like nothing else, before or since, though it’s subsequent influence has been profound.
It won’t make you comfortable - it’s not intended to. But the raw power of it, as an artefact, as a musical event and as a statement of intent, are undeniable. An essential listen.
This is peak r&b Aretha, her third Atlantic soul album after her run of relatively unsuccessful Columbia jazz standards records. She’s really hit her stride now. Like so many soul singers before her, a train in the Pentecostal church proves an amazing academy in improvisation and melisma with spirit.
Along with Aretha Now later the same year it’s a contender for her best album. She makes the Carole King/Gerry Goffin/Jerry Wexler song Natural Woman sound like it was written for her. There are a couple of songs on here she co-wrote and they’re very good. She was already on top form by this point in her career; now that she’s found her genre, she’s unstoppable. Lady Soul indeed!
An album about loss and disillusionment and a critique of the music business (which by this point has made them millionaires). It is as prog rock tends to be; ponderous, self-indulgent and self-importantly sententious. It is also beautiful in its way and very much of its time, in terms of the soundscape. It has the trademark atmospheric sound effects, overlong solos and some creative chord work from Rick Wright (always my favourite band member). It’s two shortest tracks, the title track and Have A Cigar with Roy Harper singing lead are the best tracks.
As always with Floyd in this period I wonder what they thought would happen if they ever broke above their walking pace slow rock tempo. At least 50% of Nick Mason’s career is spent playing the same beat at the same speed! I also wish Rick Wright had played more piano and less plastic sounding synth. Overall the creative concepts are, well, creative, but they do sound a bit tired and lacking in energy and and commitment.
This is a massive album in every sense and one of the most important albums of my lifetime (I’m 61). It’s prescient in that although it belongs to the era before everything started falling apart, it prefigures post-millennial alienation and pessimism. It’s not prog; it’s not tortuously self-important or self-indulgent enough for that. The tempo changes and odd time signatures are used judiciously, off-kilter music for an off-kilter world. You need this album, especially if you don’t think you do.
Despite their forward looking reputation as pioneers of social media marketing this is good old fashioned pumped-up melodic punk, riffs and laden with attitude. It’s British working class culture set to music, much more so than the ponderous and repetitious band Oasis became. You can hear the Sheffield accent on Riot Van, which is pleasing. A top notch debut.
The effect is poppy grunge, with Courtney Love’s cutting lyrics slightly undermined by the major key upbeat mess of the music. In the end you just have to decide how much she really means it and how much this is a knowing pop product and the truth is I honestly don’t know. Musically I found it underwhelming, formulaic and derivative.
The album that catapulted the Swedish popsters from modest international success to worldwide superstardom. Andersson and Ulvaeus seem to have an almost supernatural gift for plucking perfectly formed pop songs out of the ether. Money, Money, Money and Knowing Me, Knowing You are both on here alongside their massive, almost defining hit Dancing Queen. This album is mercifully free of the plodding tracks which feature on a number of ABBA albums, rooted in the Swedish folk music they were raised on. Fernando, a hugely successful single, has often been added to subsequent releases but was an original inclusion only in Australia and New Zealand. The best deep track here is Tiger.
There are hints of really good here but the whole thing is unconvincing. She doesn’t convince me that she’s really behind the ideas and musically it’s rather pedestrian. I can believe she means the lyrics she writes and that they relate deeply to her works and experience but I she just doesn’t deliver them convincingly.
This is an odd album. Lyrically it’s deeply personal but musically it’s rather disconnected, like an atmospheric sound track album, and in all honesty once the novelty of the concept has worn off it’s a bit underwhelming. I think this album exemplifies the principle that it’s easy to overthink creativity, to have so many influences and ideas, to seek so hard for the outré, that whatever wood you once had gets lost in the trees. There’s just too much going on here sonically without anything quite landing. She tried to top Homogenic and that proved too much, for now.
This record has a lo-fi garage rock feel with oodles of energy, but it’s much more smart and knowing. This band knows how to tell stories. Lyrically the album is located firmly in teen relational angst territory. Kapranos’ voice has character and the songs have creative and often arrestingly original structure. In places I’m put in mind of Sparks though this band strike me as ambitious enough to reach beyond the art rock confines which that comparison implies. The singles are clear hits.
The Australian duo of Robbie Chater and Darren Seltzmann belong in the genre ludicrously named plunderphonics (Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative, a referential and self-conscious practice which interrogates notions of originality and identity, so you know). Basically like an artist making collage from cut up bits of magazines.
I’m kind of sorry I know this because this album has a reasonable degree of artistic coherence even if the listener has no knowledge as to the source of the sounds. My problem with it as a listen is the problem I have with all edm which is the highly quantised, inhuman repetition. For me art is all about the human imperfections, the cracks where the light gets in.
This record was recorded quickly and, in the most positive way, it sounds like it. It’s Iggy sounding like his proto punk self, sometimes dark as in Passenger, sometimes brimming with the defiant energy of the survivor beyond the odds as on Lust for Life.
It’s more an authentic Iggy Pop record than The Idiot, which was arguably as much Bowie’s project as his. You can hear his musical character and lyrical personality coming across with the kind of raw immediacy that made The Stooges such an important band in punk history. Add the way that Pop is so much more coherent and present than he was on the Stooge albums and you’ve got probably the best work of his career.
It’s more an authentic Iggy Pop record than The Idiot, which was arguably as much Bowie’s project as his. You can hear his musical character and lyrical personality coming across with the kind of raw immediacy that made The Stooges such an important band in punk history. Add the way that Pop is so much more coherent and present than he was on the Stooge albums and you’ve got probably the best work of his career.
Being honest, I like this Goldfrapp album because it’s not much like a Goldfrapp album. The duo of Allison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory, known for electronica, strip it back and go acoustic on this dreamy, whimsical, lush and very beautiful album. There’s more than a hint of Kate Bush in Goldfrapp’s voice. The choice to make a record like this, in defiance of expectations, is brave and they have the skill and creativity to pull it off.
It would be hard for this album to match the hype, because the hype was off the scale. It’s good but only in places.
Suede are at their best in introspective, difficult teenage mode than in cocky confident mode; Tracks like She’s Not Dead and Pantomime Horse confirm that misery makes for better songwriting than happiness. These are tracks where Anderson channels Morrissey. Bernard Butler ploughs his own much more overdriven furrow than Johnny Marr ever did with The Smiths. The track Breakdown sounds early Bowie, though otherwise I can’t see the much vaunted connection. Glam I can see clearly but Bowie was generally less direct and obvious than this.
The real difficulty for me is that I don’t like Brett Anderson’s vocal delivery. It’s too stylised and unnatural. He’s a much better lyricist than singer.
I’d say the deep tracks on this album are better than the big singles which heralded it’s release. My top track is the closer The Next Life which I found genuinely emotional. So all in all, a good album, but not quite a great album.
This album is sonically so different from their debut Psychocandy it must have come as a shock to fans and critics alike. Having lost their drummer, who went off to Primal Scream full time, they replaced him with an 808, leaving just the Reid brothers and Douglas ‘2-Strings’ Hart. They decide to shuffle off the hype and let their songs do the talking.
Bad idea. What this album reveals more than anything else is that the Reid brothers are pretty mediocre songwriters. On the first album the whole thing was wrapped in an original and highly entertaining package, part Joy Division, part Ramones. Take that away and it’s just third division teen angst predictability.
This is an album of two halves, the first being an acoustic set to keep the die-folkies happy. The second, which famously didn’t please them, is electric. The moment Keith Butler speaks for them by shouting ‘traitor!’ is sadly not recorded here. In retrospect I’m with Keith. You’ve got to be a pretty diehard Dylan fan to love side two; it’s wantonly ramshackle, even by Bob’s not particularly high standards. Side one works better.
Fun note: the reason ‘Royal Albert Hall’ is in inverted commas in the title is that none of this album was recorded there; it’s all from the Manchester Free Trade Hall.
The Boatman’s Call is stark, both in being stripped down musically and in stripping bare Cave’s response to a world which can produce both the wonder of love and the deceit of the human heart. The battle between love and cynicism is not resolved - Nick Cave is not by and large a resolver, rather he poses questions and invites you to live with the the tension and paradox at the heart of life. Sweetly disturbing, an album that leaves you nowhere to hide emotionally, but does not in the end get lost in cynicism. Sure, people ain’t no good, but there’s still love.
If you like glossy 70s power pop to the accompaniment of screaming girls you’ll love this. I don’t.
This was an important album for Robbie Williams, his first and best chance took define himself as more than the boy band background that made him famous. The sound overall identifies this as belonging till the Britpop era. Lyrically, he shows a lot of vulnerability and introspection. Angels is if course the standout. You can hear the desire to kick back against the media driven fame machine. It works, and for musical snobs, try to forget that Williams was in a boy band and just listen to, for example, the title track for the brilliant bit of pop songwriting that it is.
Henry’s Dream is one of those albums which embody the phrase flawed masterpiece. Cave might have been reacting to the way his previous album, The Good Son, was received. Perhaps he was told one too many times that he’d mellowed, and he wasn’t ready to mellow. If Good Son was his happy place, with it’s chilled, stripped back lyricism, this is - different. I keep being put in mind of Johnny Cash if you can imagine him at his lowest ebb, raging drunk and angry but still seeing twisted visions of heaven and hell. Musically it toys with country music and gospel but twists both to its own lyrically dark but oddly compelling place.
She has a unique contralto and the strong accent gives it a strangely bohemian quality, while the sparse arrangement, courtesy of various stalwarts of the Velvet Underground and Andy Warhol entourage gives the whole a chamber pop feel. Band mates and in one case Bob Dylan supply songs which are well suited to her. Apparently she hated the result, wanting more of a solid band feel than the quasi folk atmosphere producer Tom Wilson opted for. I think she was probably right. She seems emotionally quite apart from the accompaniment, as if she wasn’t in the same city let alone the same room. The arrangements and song selection create rather a monotonous effect tonally.
Virtuoso bass player Stephen Lee Bruner, aka Thundercat offers a particular kind of psychedelic jazz funk soul fusion with a lot of playful and arty elements to it. Amid the profusion of styles and influences it would be easy to miss the baroque humour, both lyrical and musical. Well worth a listen.
This is where Radiohead get out from under the long shadow of Creep and prove they’re than a grunge/shoegaze crossover band. They get their escape and more. It’s not that they’ve abandoned guitar focused rock entirely, just that they do so much more than that. Thom Yorker’s lyrics are truly inventive, by turns vulnerable and cynical. From now on this band is impossible to dismiss but a true force to be reckoned with.
Possibly the first proper Stones album, in that it consists entirely of Jagger/Richards originals. Less positively this record belongs to the period of experimentation with psychedelic and baroque pop, which became a bit of a dead end for them. Brian Jones would mutter about Appalachian dulcimers at press conferences. Lady Jane is the peak example. Mind you, he was a mean marimba player. It’s also the nadir of Stones misogyny (hearing Jagger, of all people, singing about female vanity is the death of irony). Biographers assert that the enigmatic and fiercely intelligent Anita Pallenberg was a huge influence on the band at this time and gave them much of their energy and confidence. Under My Thumb is, I’m sorry to say, the best track on the album, musically at least, and became a live favourite for years.
“I’m something that you’ll never understand.” So sings the purple maestro on I Would Die 4 U. It’s a pretty good summary of an artist who is notoriously hard to summarise. It’s characteristic of Prince that he defies categorisation. He has an unsettling gift for combining unexpected elements. There’s something musically inventive on every track which go far beyond whatever genre he’s toying with at that particular moment. His vocal delivery is unique, one minute rock screaming then a tightly controlled soul falsettos. Tight disco stylings compete with extended, almost proggy instrumental passages. There’s even a bit of Beatlesque backwards tape fun, though he makes it his own thing. The opening of the title track is justly celebrated.
Fun facts: Darling Nikki is the song which Tipper Gore heard her daughter listening to which led ultimately to Parental Advisory stickers. Of course the VPs missus didn’t entirely get this song; it’s about the emptiness of paying for sex, not a celebration of it. The trash can percussion and heavily distorted guitar play well with the vaudeville vocal delivery.
I Would Die 4 U, Baby I’m A Star and Purple Rain we’re recorded live.
There’s a real sense both of the energy in the room and also of Sam Cooke’s ability to communicate with an audience, to create a sense of connection. The band are red hot and there’s a lot of improvisation and ’question and answer’ type conversation between Sam and the band, and between performers and crowd. You’re also struck by Sam Cooke’s voice, instantly recognisable but smokier than the records demonstrate; he has an earthy, sexy vibe which the studio works never quite captures.
The Stones has a run of golden albums in the late 60s/early 70s (Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street) and this is the apogee, for my money the best Rolling Stones album of all time.
In a couple of ways, it’s The Stones White Album (no wait, bear with me). Whiles Loot off tracks originate from the Sticky Fingers sessions, much of them recording process (if you can call it a process) happened in a very disparate way, with all sorts of odd combinations of people in the studio at the same time. It was also a double album, the band’s first. Recorded using the famous Stones mobile parked outside party central at Nellcôte and some makeshift setups in the house, the result sounds like what it is.
Where it differs from The White Album it’s that, rather than being a record of a band approaching disintegration, it’s a record of a band revelling in their sound at its peak of perfection. That it has any coherence at all is in large measure thanks to Jagger, who took the tapes to LA and recruited an impressive roster of industry professionals to add key overdubs.
This is a strangely beautiful album; at the same time both recognisable and familiar in soundscape, and unexpected and often challenging, in lyrical terms and also harmonically.
This is (forgivably, on this occasion) a concept album of sorts. The first half speaks to the struggles of a neighbourhood under stress and makes lots of reference to relationships with parents: Family members are referred to, one way of another, on virtually every track.
This is a very mature sounding album for a debut. If I have a reservation it’s a very slight one, about the production, which is suitably grandiose and theatrical but at times a trifle overcrowded.
Fun fact: the recording and mixing of this album was entirely analogue.
Less fun fact: the album’s title, and much of the subject matter, was inspired by family bereavements experienced by band members at the time.
If you didn’t know it about one of the most over-biographied musicians of all time, this was a man in the middle of uncompleted and much needed therapy. Despite, or perhaps because of, the pain which lies behind it, it’s probably his best album. It’s less pretentious and hypocritical than the overrated Imagine, less syrupy than Double Fantasy and not weighed down with the mindless, repetitive anthemic style which dogs so much of his writing. The best track is probably Working Class Hero.
There’s a charmingly homemade quality to this album which, despite the punk feel of much of the material ends up feeling more homely than angry. The lyrics, which are often thoughtful and vulnerable, create the same atmosphere. There’s a relaxed approach to harmony and production which gives the whole a chilled feel, but they can also be genuinely inventive. It’s heavily influenced by punk and the contemporary obsession, grunge, but it’s altogether less self-obsessed and intense than most of what bore those labels in the reality 90s. The lack of pretension in the way it’s presented means the skill of the songwriting kind of creeps up on you.
I honest to God don’t know which I hate more, this album for itself or this album for what it represents in music history.
It’s the horrifically perfect culmination of everything that went wrong with music in the 70s. Often claimed as parody, the reality is so overblown and ridiculous you feel like a baroque banqueting hall has just collapsed on your head. The gushing critics often miss how much of this album is lightweight filler material. Trad jazz pastiches and the like don’t really constitute musical progress, they constitute musical novelty at most. I honestly don’t mind if I never have to hear Bohemian fucking Rhapsody ever again. One star only because the system won’t let me give none.
Christgau in Village Voice memorably described Supertramp as ’Queen without the preen’, which is cute but not quite right. Supertramp have much more respect for the values of a good straightforward pop rock song, and are only proggy in that they can actually play their instruments. There’s not too much of the baroque or excessive on this album, it’s mostly just classic early seventies pop rock. It was the decision to turn their back decidedly on prog in favour of pop for this very album which saved the band from obscurity. Good pop song writing, musical ability and some decent originality in arrangements combine to make this album more than just a throwaway pop release but an album which combines commercial appeal with genuine creativity.
This was an unexpected offering from the Canadian alt rockers. The sound of the recording space, a Toronto church which gives the album its name, is like an extra band member in its own right and gives this recorded-live-with-one-mic album a rather haunting quality. The whole was not overdubbed or remixed before release. The compelling oddness of the sound and the recording method should not distract from the quality of the performances. You really do feel as if your in a hall watching a very good band rehearse. The whole feels more like folk revivalism than anything else but it’s so skilfully done that it transcends that label.
This remarkable album has a long gestation, reaching right back to 1967 when with Bob Dylan and The Band he experienced musical equality and recognition of his worth and talent for perhaps the first time. By common consent the best Beatles solo album, it contrives to be both varied and thematically consistent. Harrison’s new enthusiasm, slide guitar, makes a very worthwhile debut. In keeping with the twin themes of a man liberated and a man on a spiritual journey, a number of songs overlooked for inclusion on Beatles albums surface here and many focus on the search for spiritual enlightenment.
The album is a record of enjoyable sessions for the vast and stories collection of musicians who gathered in Abbey Road Studio One and became part of Phil Spector’s vast production ambition. Backing was often recorded live. Spector’s departure part way through recording due to ‘I’ll health’ ( a euphemism for a fondness for cherry brandy) gave Harrison a chance of prove he was no slouch at production either.
This really is a monster of an album, huge in scope and ambition and somehow warm and intimate at the same time. Hands down the best Beatles solo album.
The formula of pop appeal in a country rock package is here on the band’s debut. It was the (at first reluctant) producer Glyn Johns who spotted that the thing that cemented the band’s sound and gave them cohesion, despite the tug-o-war between country and rock within the band was the vocal harmonies, so he encouraged the band to forward the blend of voices.
The whole thing is very simple and that’s part of the secret to their success. Though later associated with darker themes, much of the Eagles’ appeal is very evident here; their essential optimism, the feel good feel, something much needed as the 60s dream ended and the uncertain future of the 70s loomed. The Eagles said it’ll be alright and anxious America gratefully tuned in.
Fun fact: oddly for such a quintessentially American record it was recorded in London at Olympic studios.
There’s no doubting the visceral outpouring of anger, vitality and sexuality on this album lyrically. Even the professional critics can’t fail to spot it, which is why it tends to be what they talk about, so no need for me to. What gets discussed much less is the music as music. Here’s why: It’s danceable synth pop, always hooky, often retro and if you like that kind of thing you like the album and if you don’t you don’t. The two stars are for the lyrics.
Rain Dogs might be as near to accessible as Tom Waits gets, which is to say, not very. It sits in the middle of an acclaimed trilogy, between swordfishtrombones and Franks Wild Years.
We’re in the sleazy underbelly again, Waits’ natural home, rubbing shoulders with the human flotsam in a thousand corners of New York. Musically he makes raids on many genres mangled them all nearly beyond recognition.
The opener Singapore is a kind of demented sea shanty, complete with wind and rain atmospherics on the outro. Time is a stripped back early hours highlight. Extra credit must be given for the line, “All the donuts have names that sound like prostitutes,” on the spoken 9th and Hennepin. Downtown Train is a great track though in many ways it’s the most conventional in the album; it could almost be a Springsteen song.
This is core Waits. Here’s the long form lyrics listing oddly named characters doing incomprehensible and often unspeakable things with or to each other under the influence of oceans of bourbon. You won’t come away whistling tunes, though you might begin to feel that you’ve led a rather sheltered life. “I’ve seen it all”, he intones, and listening to this album it’s hard to doubt it.
Fun fact: this album features Keith Richards on several tracks, most audibly on the folk tinged Blind Love, my favourite track in the album. Chris Spedding guests on the opener.
My overall verdict in this album is that the lovely, often profound and moving lyrics deserve a better accompaniment. Musically this album is at times anodyne to an extent that seems almost calculated. Whoever decided on a drum machine for so many tracks made a bad error. In fact the drum machine is a neat metaphor for the whole thing. It sounds so tightly controlled to at there’s no room for anything really inventive or unexpected. This is the album The Go-Betweens made after moving from London back to Sidney and it sounds as if the sun bleached all the sonic character out of them. They needed the grit.
The loose concept behind this album is giving voice to a string of characters form the Southern US. Often sympathetic it’s also a critique of the racism and prejudice of the South and an equally trenchant critique of the hypocrisy of the response in the north. Everyone gets a swipe from Newman, the whole being wrapped in his trademark cosy-sounding piano, band and strings arrangements. He’s determined to give a voice to the little man, whatever he thinks of what the little man has to say. It’s a compelling though a far from easy listen. An underrated songwriter at the height of his powers.
If all you know of Culture Club is Karma Chameleon, prepare to be surprised. Despite its upbeat subject matter, Boy George sounds oddly subdued on the title track and lead single. It’s mostly peak 80s with prominent synths, flanged fretless bass and gated snare. Stylistically it’s mostly mainstream blue eyed soul.
What rescues it from being just that is the deep tracks. That’s The Way is a disturbing song lyrically but beautifully arranged, and greatly aided by Helen Terry’s astonishingly powerful voice. Black Money is another good track. Boy George is at his most interesting when he’s writing something other than love songs, though of course that’s what paid the bills. Victims is probably the standout example of his ability to write striking songs and is one of my favourite singles of the 80s.
Fun jibe: the album cover is laugh out loud funny. Boy George looks like a sulky teenager who’s just been told they can’t go out ‘looking like that,’ and is about slam the door behind her. I presume he’s meant to look deep and thoughtful or maybe smouldering. If so, they missed by a country mile. Hilarious and impossible not to see once you’ve seen it.
There’s an awful lot going on here and it takes time, several listens, to unpack it all. The sweepingly ambitious atmosphere belies the lyrics which give the sense of a man wondering what the world is becoming and what his place might be within it. The production veers between incredibly lush orchestral treatments to stripped down numbers, and often a highly effective mixture of both. It’s the interplay of light and shade, weight and lightness, as much as anything that makes this album work.
Dinner At Eight has been justly lauded (including by David Bowie no less) as one of the great father and son songs, heartbreaking, angry, pleading and defiant all at once. Harvester is an odd conception of a love song but poignantly beautiful.
Fun facts: the father with whom Rufus ’interacts’ is Loudon Wainright (also III).
Here comes the intellectual department of CBGBs with a quirky debut collection. At this stage the keynote is eccentricity and thoughtful simplicity, without the cloying pretentiousness which marred much of their later output.
That said there’s no lack of ambition either lyrically or musically, where amidst the lo-fi feel I detect something of Tom Verlaine’s Television. Psycho Killer was the breakthrough single and a live favourite. It’s off kilter dynamic is perfectly judged. Don’t Worry About The Government is a great number. I’ve always been fond of the song Pulled Up, but then I was in a band that covered it, so…
This is the album whose gross overestimation by critics gave Iain Anderson his monstrous ego and inability to accurately assess his own output. Did we need a concept album about a predatory pedophile? Clearly not. Is there any redeeming feature to this album? Not really. Writing deliberately ugly lyrics and setting them to deliberately ugly music is not offset by virtuosity; if anything it makes it harder to forgive. It’s not that disturbing stories and subjects are off limits. It’s that they deserve to be treated seriously and this album is uptime trivial. One star because I’m not able to give it none.
At this point The Kinks still occasionally sound like a Beatles knock-off though less and less so as their British pastoral quality and their taste for observational quirkiness begins to find expression. The period fascination with harpsichords gets expressed, as does the 12-string thing. Rainy Day In June is a decent attempt at something darker though Ray Davies’ songwriting is not well suited to grandeur. Sunny Afternoon is a highly memorable song but not enough to redeem an otherwise rather lightweight album.
Fun fact: What is a party line? If you’re too young to know what a party line is, you’ve missed either a great irritation or a treat for people watchers and nosy neighbours everywhere . A shared landline such that you could find a conversation already in progress whenever you lifted the receiver, it could go either way. For a songwriter who focussed on people watching vignettes is a perfect gift.
The Warhols move on from the garage rock sound of their first offering to something more atmospheric and distinctly neo-psychedelic and more removed from the then all-conquering grunge scene. What distinguishes them from others in that and related scenes like shoegaze is that they can effortlessly combine atmosphere with solid structure and harmony - in other words, Courtney Taylor-Taylor can write songs. You have to love a lyric like, “…never thought you’d get addicted just to be cooler in an obvious way/I could say, shouldn’t you have got a couple piercings and decided maybe that you were gay”… from Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth.
You know a band have hit the big time when an album that sells 4 million and is certified double platinum is regarded as a commercial failure. The legend is that they went off the rails after Rumours and just couldn’t reproduce another super hit album. They didn’t fall off the rails; they - by which I mean Lindsay Buckingham - drove off the rails in a headlong assault on glossy mainstream normality, partly because the rise of punk had got under his skin. However Buckingham, Nicks and McVie, the three songwriters, are chalk, cheese and whatever the third one is. Stevie Nicks song and the big single from the album, Sara, is Rumours redux, mainstream 70s Mac, and Christine McVie’s two songs sound like Christine McVie.
Ultimately Buckingham was right not to just record Rumours 2. He was never going to make the band relevant to punk fans, that was always a fantasy, and what you end up with is something like three solo albums moulded together. Buckingham should probably have got this out of his system with a solo project. All that said, he’s the only one of the three who demonstrates real breadth and variety and his songs, whilst not so easy to listen today, have purpose and integrity.
Fun fact: band founder Peter Green guests on Brown Eyes.
Eye Watering Fact: this album took 10 months to make and cost more than a million dollars, equivalent to about 3½ million now and far more than Rumours.
It’s often said that this album is impossible to evaluate, such is it’s status in rock history. Of course this is not true; at the end of the day it’s just a record and you listen to it like you do any other. The biggest disservice to it is probably done by those things over hype it beyond reason. Drop the hype and listen honestly and it’s still an amazing record. Part of the achievement is leavening the prog excess with some decent pop songwriting (Money and Time are pop songs, despite the production and the odd freaky time signature). Is it perfect? No, mainly because of what are unquestionably filler tracks, On The Run and Any Colour You Like. Is it good? Yes, very. The trick is not too overanalyse it, and certainly to ditch they hype which doesn’t help the album and which it can’t live up to anyway. Just enjoy the accessible pop moments and immerse yourself in the soundscape; think of it as a sound sauna with great production.
I wish this record had been around when I was 17. I don’t need it at this stage in my life in the way I would have done then. Smith is the taproot of the bedroom recorded, hyper authentic singer/songwriter wave still in progress. That said it’s more straightforward pop than his previous output. Ultimately this album works best played alone in your room after a very bad day. In any other context it’s honestly pretty lightweight. Bottom line: it’s either for you or it’s not and if it’s not it probably won’t impact much. If it is it will land like a thunderbolt. There isn’t much in between.
The two singles released from this album, Cybele’s Reverie and Metronomic Underground, which are also the openers are to me the least interesting tracks on the album, both archetypal mid ‘90s drone. Once you get past them, things perk up a lot. This isn’t exactly lo-fi but there is a charming and often joyful naïveté about much of this album which make it hard not to like. There is still that experimental rock feel of Stereolab, exactly what their name suggests, sonic magpies picking up whatever strikes them as interesting from the whole world of music and seeing what they can make of it.
The previous album, Kid A was nearly released as a double album. This is the result of the band reworking some material originally defined for that release, but it’s much more than an outtakes record. There’s a much more diverse sound, drawing on jazz, both modern cool and trad, avant garde classical music and absolute abstraction, even down to the lyrics which often have a William Burroughs cut up feel to them. There’s a cluster of songs in the middle of the album which come close-ish to conventional guitar-centric rock. Knives Out wouldn’t be out of place on OK Computer. Don’t panic, hipsters, abnormal service is resumed as the album closes. Whatever else you want to say about Radiohead, they don’t lack artistic courage.
This is Ziggy redux but with a new, darker persona as he heads to America where he is subsumed by sleaze in the underbelly of the city. Weirder and therefore a million times better than Ziggy Stardust this is Bowie deep diving into his ambiguous relationship with fame and with the idea of America.
Don’t believe the hype. This album often gets cited for mixing genres. You have to search pretty hard to find evidence of this. There are a couple of track on side two, like She’s Calling You which have a somewhat glossy of the period dance pop sound but otherwise it’s straightforwardly hardcore rock album with little musical range.
Fun fact: the vocal track to Sacred Love was recorded over the phone from gaol where the lead singer was doing time for distributing weed.
I use this album as a litmus test. When I come across those ‘100 greatest albums’ type lists, I look to see which Bowie album they rate highest. If it’s this, and it often is, I look elsewhere. I don’t believe that any discerning listener could hear Young Americans or Low or Station to Station and seriously say that this is a better album.
It’s a marketing and commercial triumph, for sure. But strip all that away and you’re left with a ragbag of overblown rock clichés loosely assembled around a frankly dreadful idea; a rock star chosen by aliens to announce the end of the world. I mean, even if you like concept albums and rock operas, and I distrust both deeply, this particular concept is a stinker. It’s not quite his worst album (we haven’t got to Diamond Dogs yet), but it’s a contender for sure. If this was the only record on your turntable, five years would seem like a very long time.
If you’d never heard this album before you’d have no trouble guessing which decade it’s from. You’d also have no trouble spotting the money track Wood Beez. He abandoned Rough Trade Records and his political principles in search of a hit, and you can tell that’s what this is about. He threw every then fashionable production trick at the wall, absolutely all of them; this sounds like the soundtrack to a parody film about the ’80s.
‘Like’ a prayer. Like, not actual, that’s the key. There’s nothing authentic here as there never is with Madonna. She’s pure hype, nothing but presentation all the way down. It becomes even more depressingly cynical when she pretends that there’s some genuine revelation or attempt at artistry. I’m not buying.
Monotonous and self-absorbed. You do not need to listen to this before you die.
The epitome of the phrase flawed masterpiece, this album sees the Boys getting serious about the issues. The relatively sparse vocal layering (by Beach Boys’ standards) of Carl Wilson’s production lets the songs breathe. When Brian pops up at the end with the title track, you kind of think, ‘Oh Brian, I wondered where you’d got to’.
Fans expecting a reprise of the country stylings of Tumbleweed Connection were in for a shock. Madman is almost an issues album - addressing mental health, the desolation of First Nation America, poverty and crime. The result is a very thoughtful, intimate album. There are plenty of reminders of how good a piano player Elton John is and how inventive his songwriting is. Tiny Dancer is the standout but it’s not typical of the album which is less about the toe tappers and the ear worms than about lyrical and musical creativity. An extra star, earned mainly by Bernie Taupin, for writing songs that are actually about something.
This is probably the most coherent offering from this notoriously eclectic band and also the only one of the three studio albums they were actually happy with. It dates from the era when they where favourite support act for Radiohead and you can hear why that worked so well.
This record is at the same time somewhat interesting and somewhat underwhelming, exactly what you would expect from a band who never really worked out what their sound was.
It’s hard it overstate how good this album is. It’s such a confident debut from a band who have every right to confidence in their instrumental skill, their shimmering harmonies and above all their songwriting. They are folky but they so far transcend that label I’m almost reluctant to apply it, but I will, both because it’s true and because I don’t think that they as a band would want to repudiate the label. They take folky and they make it something deep, otherworldly, almost I want to say transcendent and all somehow without becoming pompous or tendentious about it. It’s just very, very good.
This is Black Francis after the (temporary) split of the Pixies. It’s so tempting to keep spotting influences (MC5, Stooges etc etc) and miss that this record is a thing unto itself. It’s got attitude, of course, but it’s got great inventiveness and even playfulness. It might be an embarrassment to punk purism but there’s no denying that the man can write a catchy tune. The presence of Pixies co-conspirator Joey Santiago on guitar is a huge help too. Great record.
The combination of dance music and whimsy is under explored so it’s nice to hear it on Fox Base Alpha. They clearly like a 60s reference or two and at the same time they love the club music which is swirling around them in 1991. This kind of unusual combination of influences needs some confidence to pull it off and Saint Etienne clearly believe in what they’re doing. As a result this album manages to be odd, experimental, approachable, fascinating and endearing all at the same time. A major achievement.
I’m so glad I got to hear this album, which otherwise would not have been on my radar. It sounds like a crossover of jazz and folk styles but however you classify it there’s no denying the emotional power of her voice; she can wring every ounce of emotion from every word of a lyric.
Hearing this made me go to her back catalog and I heard Elis & Tom. Now that’s a record you must hear before you die!
Widely regarded as country music’s first concept album (which it isn’t) it is certainly odd. There’s a rather rambling spoken word intro before Ray gets into a kind of smoky crooner vibe for the first song, as if he and his honky tonk band somehow wound up in the city, fell in with some jazz musicians and ended up in the Nighthawks diner at midnight. After that it relapses back into safe country territory like they found a residency at a country music club in the city and are trying to raise their fare home.
Price has a good voice and, for what it is this album is OK but it’s not nearly as musically adventurous as that opening leads you to expect.
The birth of this record was difficult, to put it mildly, partly because of the character of Kevin Shields, who is either a once-in-a-generation creative genius or a self-indulgent divo, depending who you ask. I don’t think this album is anywhere near as groundbreaking as its hagiographers claim. The guitar had been used as an ambient noise creator for years before this record came out. The lit critic Clive James, a master of the polite insult said of abstraction in poetry that it ’…widens the scope within which incompetence can fail to declare itself.’ The same is true of abstraction in music. One person’s creative chaos is another person’s self-indulgent mess. I’m in the second camp.
Apparently this is one of the few soundtrack albums to financially outperform the film which inspired it. It didn’t hurt that the singles Superfly and Freddie’s Dead were such huge hits. It’s also, along Marvin Gaye’s album What’s Going On an example of that relative rarity, a soul concept album. Mayfield always sung his consciousness and here he firmly links drug addiction to urban poverty and has no truck with glamourising the pusher. This could easily have been all about the music or all about the viewpoint but neither dominate; rather the soul feel fells like it’s the only way the package could have been delivered. Perfect early 70s funk soul.
The cover photo, with Dennis staring straight down the camera lens, speaks to a life lived hard. This album has had nearly as difficult a life as it’s creator, taking a while to gain critical acceptance and going out of print for long stretches. Pacific Ocean Blue is definitely not a BB record; there’s a darker, more dislocated feel with some real harmonic inventiveness and intriguing song structures. Wilson’s lifestyle has left his voice freighted with a Joe Cocker-esque smokiness which lends authenticity to the bar fly lyrics about lost love, longing for home and looking for answers at the bottom of the glass. There are some huge forces here but the more intimate moments are the winners here. You and I is a great song. All in all, an underrated classic which deserves to be rediscovered.
The difficult gestation of this album is belied by the straightforward clarity of the production and the simplicity of the arrangements. William’s distinctive vocal style gives some character to what would otherwise be a fairly standard 90s alt country album. The themes of heartbreak and going home are familiar enough but she sings them likes she’s been to all the places she name-checks, which she likely has, and there’s a hard edged reality to her portrayal of the rural south.
If you’re wondering what hippies did after hippy died, the answer is they did this kind of thing. It’s mostly tuneful, often very hooky synth pop with a kind of faux low fi vibe. The generally meaningless lyrics sound like they might have come from a prompt card or cut up process in Eno/Bowie style. If you know what ‘Black gold in claw foot tubs unchanging’ means then I guess you’ve found your people. I think this is what Marc Bolan would have done if he’d been born in the 80s, or maybe what Bowie’s 1969 album would have sounded like with different technology. Listen to the intro to Pieces of What and you’ll get my point. Charming without any dangerous depths.
Fun fact: the recording features a light controlled synthesiser called a Thingamagoop.
I can’t help feeling the arrangements and the backing band are the heroes here. Drake’s voice is fey but ultimately unsatisfying and he’s not a stellar songwriter when you strip away the razzmatazz and the posthumous legend. Folk-ish easy listening at best.
It’s not strictly a 1971 recording as the album was planned for release the year before, but Drake and his record company rowed over the artwork, delaying release of this 1970 album just into 1971.
Pleasing trivia: Drake’s parents contributed to renovation of the pipe organ in the church next to his burial place. One organ stop is named The Nick Drake Stop. There’s an annual memorial concert, where the organist plays versions of his songs on the organ.
The monochrome picture on the cover gives a clue to the territory we’re in; roots Americana and a decent dose of nostalgia. Overall the album is an American elegy, though for what version of America it’s hard to tell; odd given that most of The Band were Canadian. King Harvest is the only track that suggests any musical versatility or any real musical energy if it comes to that.
The money track, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down still makes me uncomfortable. Sure, it’s not a glorification of the Confederate cause and it’s primarily about poverty and social class (the protagonist is no pharaoh) but nostalgia is a powerful weapon in a political cause and this one has had a long afterlife. In any case, it’s not as good a song as many seem to think it is.
Overall this album left me feeling mainly indifference. It’s just not that special and very overhyped.
This style came to be called folk punk which is a decent enough categorisation. the vocal delivery has punk attitude and there’s folkiness in the acoustic instrumentation. On the other hand there’s a level of artistry and variety to many of the arrangements and a level of skill to the playing (the bass player’s a demon!) which was uncommon in 1970s/80s punk. Folk/new wave might be a better description. The truth is they are sui generis. Odd therefore but very good.
This album shows that, besides being extremely adept within all the clichés of seventies folk rock, the Thompsons are very capable songwriters whose voices work very well together. He can write pop songs as well as the next person but he does so without abandoning his signature sound. He’s also a very good lyricist, poetic without being pretentious or obscure. He also resists the temptation to show off his very great instrumental skills, so that the songs really shine. Given that this is not a genre I generally warm to, I really enjoyed listening to this record.
Magazines are one of those bands where all the elements are there fully formed from the start. The artiness, the considerable technical abilities and the distinct musical personalities of the four are all on display. Whilst they certainly develop and grow in their craft over the following years, this is a confident debut. They have a plan and they’re going to put it into practice. You can hear influence besides punk; Berlin era Bowie stalks the tracks and Roxie Music have something to answer for. Sonically it’s very early 80s, attitudinally it’s new wave, overall it’s not quite like anything else.
Nothing of Gabriel’s art rock output to this point, Genesis or solo, could have prepared the world for this. His passion for tribal rhythms is still evident, but he dives healing into period perfect synths, gated snare and mix prominent fretless bass. The distinctive elements are the unmistakable voice and the skilful arrangements. Sledgehammer and Don’t Give Up with Kate Bush and Big Time were the major selling singles and honestly they are the standout tracks. Gabriel is clearly at odds with the excess culture of the 80s and his political voice trades places lyrically with songs about people feeling emotionally trapped in small places. Overall, it’s creditable and in retrospect too deeply of its time to be timeless. Good rather than great.
There’s nothing more effective than an iron first of political satire wrapped in a velvet glove of pitch perfect pop and that’s exactly what Tennant and Lowe serve up here. The astonishing song It’s A Sin towers over this album and it is an amazing achievement in its own right. LGBTQ+ issues and poverty and excess, defining issues then as now, thread through the album lyrically and are treated seriously and subtly. Overall a remarkable achievement well deserving of its iconic status.
Roxy’s second album is even edgier and less approachable than the first, but it does feel as if the band members have discovered where they sit in the Roxiverse. Ferry and Eno shape the sound but they don’t dominate to the same extent as on the first album. The opening track and single Do The Strand is about the nearest to a regular pop track on here.
No sound is more redolent of peak 1980s for me than the sound of Sade singing Smooth Operator. Everything about it, The sound, the theme, the attitude, it bleeds that celebration of excess for which the decade is partly known. The other big singles, Your Love Is King and Hang On To Your Love both have quite an old school soul feel. The rest of the album shows a decent versatility in songwriting and there’s a great sonic consistency, credit in part to the production, which is certainly glossy but then that suits the songs and the mood, the late night smoky bar vibe. I’ve a fondness for the last two tracks, I Will Be Your Friend and the unexpected anti war themed Why Can’t We Live Together, for the unexpected thematic departure from the rest of the album, though I’m not quite sure they are quite competent enough as songwriter to sustain deeper themes. A confident debut, which turns out on re listening to be more than a period piece - just.
This album is not in a genre I’m at all familiar with, but I’m so glad I got to hear it. In fact, it’s not really one genre at all, there’s a lot off variety in the songs, both musically and emotionally. The sound is often intensely atmospheric and the musicianship is exceptional. The other thing I love is the variety in the arrangements and the structure of the songs. The songs often take unexpected harmonic and rhythmic directions. All in all a real gem.
Note: I’m reviewing the original six-track EP here not the rerelease album with the singles on it.
This band are often credited with the invention of grunge, though that honour might properly belong to the predecessor band Green River. The success, especially in the UK and the deep influence of this album made Nirvana possible. The band didn’t go on to enjoy commercial success to match the critical adulation. For a fan of 70s punk it’s more nostalgic than progressive.
Fun fact: the Big Muff of the title is the name of a guitar effects pedal.
Separate Ocean from all the Odd Future hype and you’ve got something genre-bending and quite distinctive. He’d scored a hit in 2011 with Nostalgia, Ultra which was landed out of nowhere. He sounds as if he’s creating spontaneously into the mic at times, which works quite well. He deals will a wide variety of themes musically and the addition of odd sound effects and ambient noise here and there, as in the opening track, whilst far from original, is an interesting counterpoint to the lyrical themes. Nothing on this album is accidental or casual, despite the laid back delivery, it’s all very carefully thought out. The odd thing is the stretch to combine crossover appeal to the mainstream and at the same time be boundary pushing and avant-garde. It mostly works but sometimes the two personalities don’t quite play well together.
Lucky you if you’re getting to hear this album for the first time. I wish I could again. By the time you get through listening to this record you feel like you need a priest or a therapist. It album made Cohen’s reputation, as a songwriter and specifically a depressing songwriter, but listen carefully and you find it’s not depression so much as depth and complexity. The reputation for miserablism is more an artefact of the delivery, the lived-in low baritone voice and the minimalist arrangements rather than the subject matter. Alongside Joni Mitchell’s Blue this is one of the great ‘bleed into the mic’ albums of all time and it kind of makes you wonder what was in the water in 1971.
If Bowie’s more famous vision of the city was techno-dystopian anomie Reed’s sounds more like an extended hangover from Weimar era Berlin. It’s a rock opera but don’t let that put you off, you don’t need to know that to appreciate this album for its honesty and ambition.
Lyrically the songs are agonisingly real about addiction and personal disintegration and it’s a brave departure from Transformer, but there’s something about Reed’s songwriting which doesn’t quite clinched the deal, despite the good ideas. What he is great at is atmosphere and this album has it by the bucket load and he has the courage to address issues few rock artists touch. But be warned, the atmosphere in question is utterly desolate.
It sounds to me as if there are two distinct characters vying for dominance on this album. One wants to trade in rich, warm harmonisation verging on Floyd-esque in places and even Beatles influenced cuteness; the other wants to be a grungy garage band.
In case your wondering what the opening to In The Jungle reminds you of, it’s Don’t Fear the Reaper but then it lets loose into punkier territory, making the song a microcosm of the whole album. Who wins, Jekyll or Hyde? It’s probably a draw and, like the book, the two personalities never quite learn to play nicely.
With the production a little less refined than Nevermind Nirvana come blazing out of this record with all their trademarks, including the now cliché of grunge, there acoustic intros and verses building to the distortion laden choruses. It’s also full of Cobain’s trademark lacerating self-disclosure. Probably the best of their three albums.
This is the most commercially successful album from the Icelandic post rockers and has all the elements that made them such a commercial hit. The sound is dreamy and spacious and full of invention. The sonic atmospherics of post rock can easily become cold, over intellectualised and acetic. Sigur Rós have a gift for reaching the emotions with their music and this album somehow hits the heart without the listener ever quite knowing why. A strange and beautiful achievement.
This album is based on the concept - not unique but well done in this case- of talking tracks recorded live and finishing them off on the studio. As you might expect this created a very immediate feel, a kind of intimacy even on the numbers with the band.
The album has a plaintive and nostalgic feel, and lyrically there is lots of regret, though his voice tends to have that feel anyway. What is remarkable is the simplicity of Young’s writing. He seldom reaches beyond four or five chords and four four rhythm; lyrically he shows interwoven rhyme in nearly every song. But the simplicity makes for an effective vehicle for his ideas, from the First Nation American experience to gun violence. The disturbing song Sedan Delivery, about a young drug mule, shows that Young was not entirely immune from the influence of punk, quite apart from the reference to Johnny Rotten in the opener.
All this leaves you with a slightly disoriented feeling, like the Neil Young of the acoustic solo numbers, the rural nostalgic, is occasionally transmuted into this drug addled urban lunatic who sings about the underbelly of the city. Disorientation is not necessarily a bad thing, especially when disorientation and dislocation are the point of the songs. The album is cleverly topped and trailed by two very different versions of the same song, The first is Hey, Hey, My, My (Out of the Blue) which gets an acoustic treatment, the closer is Hey, Hey, My, My (Into of the Black) with the full band and bucket loads of distortion. The journey from blue to black and from acoustic to electric is the shape of the album, the blue side and the black side. Heard together they give a renewed sense of Neil Young’s range, ambition and seriousness, as a songwriter and as a performer.
Another astounding testament to Nick Cave’s creativity and to his depth of spirit. The central conceit, that this is really two different albums which happened to be released on the same day is not sustainable on the evidence. Lyre is perhaps marginally more laid back but I suspect this is more to do with tracking than with any essential distinction of purpose between the two record; it’s a double album.
Musically it’s rocky and the band create an impressively hook-laden and solid sound. They use the end of chorus drop out to good effect. The gospel choir is a great addition, a layer between singer and band which gives the whole a sonic breath. Lyrically there are what are ostensibly love songs, though this being Nick Cave these are poetic, surprising and allusive. There’s a gothic darkness too many of the songs but, this being Cave, a decent dose of hope too.
This highly influential album sounds like punk meets art installation. There’s a lot of musique concrète style found-sound and abstract atmospherics which sometimes seems at odds with the punk ethos which otherwise pervades this record. The lyrics evoke the love songs of the last couple on earth, living in the debris of a collapsed civilisation. It’s bleak, as proper punk was meant to be.
It’s instrumentally assured and lyrically clever which was always problematic for the punk pioneers, for whom unpracticed immediacy was a hallmark of authenticity and a large part of the charm. They do have an admirable indifference to pop appeal - there are no ear worms here. More a historical artefact than a must hear album in its own right.
This is an album born under difficult circumstances. Robert Smith was struggling with depression, not least about turning 30, founder member Lol Tolhurst was struggling with alcohol and the whole band seemed to struggle with their popularity as a pop band. Smith wanted to recover The Cure’s gothic roots and this album is the result.
Despite the struggles the scale of the band’s ambition is on full display here, beginning with the sweeping instrumental opener. The usual Cure sonic elements are present, with the addition of atmospheric synth pads. Despite the overall depressing themes the album has its sweeter moments. Lovesong is actually a love song - surprise. The feeling of disintegration increases as the album progresses, but don’t be put off by the goth gloom billing; whilst this is by no means an upbeat album neither is it entirely a gloomfest. There’s some honest to goodness creative and even accessible pop here.
A good live album from an artist at the top of his game. Van the Man is said to be an inconsistent live artist so it’s good to hear him at his best. If I have a criticism it’s that it’s a bit light on atmospherics, not Van and the band, just the production is a bit restrained, with very little crowd noise by my standards, but the key thing is the live performer and for that this is an excellent album.
Two things might immediately surprise the modern listener and both are about passion. The first is the passion in Jaques Brel, the sheer energy; it’s remarkable that he gave so much emotion in such range to all his songs across the performance and then again presumably night after night. The other passion is that of his audience. Clearly the Beatles version wasn’t the only mania on offer in 1964.
Brel’s own compositions almost define the French chanson, stylistically and thematically. There’s lots of regret for love lost, remembering of live drunk to the lees. There’s also lots of humour. The clarity of the recordings is technically impressive for the period, though you will notice that Brel frequently drives the meters into the red till they clip, not an unpleasing effect given the emotional delivery style. His voice is very forward in the mix giving the whole a very immediate feel, along with the way tracks apparently run straight into each other without intervening silences. All in all, a record of a performer at the peak of his powers, Bravo, Jaques!
I really get what Kevin Roland is trying to do but I’m not convinced they really pull it off. The whole concept of channeling what we call northern soul in the UK is a good one and when it’s done well it’s incredibly exciting. It’s not that I mind the lo fi diy punk ethos per se; it’s just not the soul authenticity it pretends to be (those Stax backing musicians were known for being tight as a drum) but it has a charm if it’s own. The glaring problem is that Rowland’s vocal delivery is UNBELIEVABLY annoying, mannered and try-hard distinctive and it gets in the way of the songs. It was a common problem in the late 70s and early 80s but this is a particularly egregious example. I want to like this album but I just can’t get past the voice.
Another album you absolutely do not need to hear before you die. This sounds like someone whose just got out of a time machine from 1995 and still thinks this is what the cool kids are doing. Tons of guitar distortion and sweary screaming into the mic are not intrinsically interesting or original things to do though it must be very tempting to do those things instead of having genuinely creative ideas.
This album is the sort of thing that gets liked for what it represents; take that out and listen to it as music and what’s left is heavy on attitude and very light on substance.
