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!