Rap as a genre is maybe the hardest for me to hear with fresh ears. This feels like the pre-Renaissance wing of the museum, except maybe the Renaissance wasn't a 100% great idea in this timeline. All the pre-Chronic jazz-inflected rap feels like a vein that maybe wasn't completely mined before everyone moved on. "The Pros" goes for dub but just feels sluggish after the first five tracks, which is maybe a sign that the first five tracks bring a great energy. Energy changes in the back half but it all mostly works. I didn't expect to think the album was too short, but that's the sign of something good - "Inside Out" is a powerful closer. I guess what I'm saying is maybe don't skip straight to the Caravaggios.

As I write this, a significant portion of the planet is attempting to decipher social media messages from the "leadership" (scare quotes intentional) of Israel, Iran, and the United States to try and determine whether we're going to have World War III or not. Alongside that endeavor are various attempts to propagate, detect, and/or guard against misinformation, scams, bullshit, slop, and flat-out stupidity of various kinds, any of which could conceivably push humanity materially further towards midnight on the doomsday clock. Mistrust is a reflex at this point. The trenches dug within our hearts, indeed. (I got bad news for the refugee being sung about on track 6 - the war may be slightly colder here in America but it isn't any less warlike.) Everybody who thinks Bono & Co. are just such damn pretentious blowhards for making rock music about the Big Issues of Life needs to explain why, when the Big Issues of Life are really weighing down, a 1983 album from the damn pretentious blowhards is a better and more honest listen than pretty much anything else out there. There are, after all, no atheists in foxholes, whether those foxholes be literal or spiritual or both.

I have this constant feeling of being one or two music theory classes away from really understanding jazz. That said, as someone who doesn't Get It but is trying to, this is a vibrant and affirming set. The opener "Part of a Whole" and "Inner Crisis" are standouts but there aren't really any low points.

The first things that jump out to me are the abrupt dynamic changes; beyond just feeling quite foreign to me as an inhabitant of the post-Loudness Wars apocalyptic landscape, they reveal a deep insecurity that cuts through this entire collection - Stevens might be a Nice Guy but he still seems to feel like he has to get loud to be heard. (He's *not* shouting, don't accuse him of shouting.) And what does he have to get loud-but-not-too-loud about? The usual shit, mostly - rejection from girls, fake friends in the music industry, the requirement to fulfill his contractual obligations. Behind the veneer of Nice Guy-ness he's downright venomous - I hope the subject of "Wild World" feels like she dodged a bullet. No wonder John Belushi smashed this guy's guitar in *Animal House*. All that said, there's genuine talent on display here, which is part of what makes Stevens frustrating. I guess it's anthropologically interesting to hear the Sensitive Guitar Asshole template used by everyone from John Mayer to Billy Corgan being formed in real time. As a recovering Sensitive Guitar Asshole myself, I guess I should be more sympathetic - but my ongoing recovery is probably part of why I'm not.

What can I say about this album that hasn't already been said, other than the "oh hell yes" I uncontrollably uttered when it popped up as today's selection? Everything that is good and vibrant about the American country music tradition is present here - empathy, longing, tragedy, murder, dirty jokes, gallows humor, family ties, faithless and faithful women and men, poorly behaved dogs, the erasure of the boundary between the speaker and the hearer. Most of all honesty, real as the beads of sweat dripping down the side of Cash's face on the album cover. There but for the grace of God goes he.

I suppose it's a sign of the art form's evolution that rappers, like their prog-rock brethren before them, could come up with a half-baked, interminably horny concept for their concept album and wrap a bunch of ponderous, overlong songs around it. If only they understood anything about what would actually be sexy - better rhymes, for one. To take just one example: the song with all the moaning in the background also contains an extended discussion of the technical aspects of soundproofing the room where you're doing the deed. We are not aroused.

One of the dirty little secrets of punk rock is that it's better when it steers clear of out-and-out nihilism in favor of pure raw desire - eros rather than thanatos. There's a reason Joey Ramone's favorite word was "wanna." And these guys wanna, whether it's ripping off Bowie's "China Girl" to end a song about people enjoying the Thin White Duke's favorite pharmaceutical or trying, over and over without much success, to get with that vain girl at the party who's bad news in a good way. All along there are great lines ("All the weekend rockstars are in the toilet /Practicing their lines," from the aforementioned coke song) to go with the tunes and the musicianship. (the closer "A Certain Romance" is downright beautiful.) The fake San Francisco call-out is telling - if you're gonna be a Northern Beat then this is the way to do it. Bonus points awarded for looking past Roxanne to see the dark satanic mill keeping her on the street at night.

I don't know what metaphor to use here: death's-head moth pushing out of its chrysalis? Swamp monster rising from the mud(dy production)? Rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouching towards Bethlehem to be born? All of the above? You can hear they're not quite there yet (Bruce Dickinson won't arrive for a couple more albums) but you can tell where they're going and that the trip will be exciting.

The question of England, In All Its Englishness, was the subject of so much late-Sixties, early- to mid-Seventies British rock music - from the Kinks to Pink Floyd to Paul McCartney's post-Beatles work - that it's sort of odd to realize that Queen, known to most as the foot-stomp stadium-shout lads, were working in that same tradition. It's even odder to realize they might have done it better than any of the others, McCartney very much included. I know you're not supposed to try and remake Sgt. Pepper but they may have pulled it off here; witness the time changes on "Sweet Lady" (shades of Pepper's "Good Morning Good Morning"), Brian May's McCartneyesque vocals on "'39," the George Harrison-influenced guitar solos throughout the album. And "Bohemian Rhapsody," of course, a reminder that the Beatles were themselves trying to create pocket symphonies - and never made one quite as symphonic as this.

The Duality of Mick: on one hand, he's lazy, amoral, and unabashedly scummy. (The lyrics of "Stray Cat Blues" have probably been read aloud in a deposition at some point.) On the other hand, when he gives a shit he's downright inspiring ("Sympathy for the Devil," "Jigsaw Puzzle," "Street Fighting Man"). And how come "Salt of the Earth" hasn't been on a gazillion ads at this point? I mean, I know why - enough talk about the Brotherhood of Man and people might get the idea you actually believe in something.

"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever." --This Is Spinal Tap

Mix one part peak Cocteau Twins, two parts early New Order (insouciance toward singing on pitch: it's not just for Bernard Sumner anymore!), one part Robert Smith at his navel-gaziest, one part Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game" (repurposed here for "Infinity," the standout track that imagines what happened after those two impossibly attractive people finally had to leave the beach and go back to the allegedly real world), one part Millennial post-everythingness. Bake while lying on the floor in your mate's flat for 38 minutes or until just kinda done with life. It's not that they're afraid of desire, it's that they don't quite know *how* to desire anything, not really. I see why it resonated - and why it still resonates.

"I want to tell you something you've known all along," she sings on the opener, and then she proceeds to do exactly that, running through power pop that feels both fresh and timeless in a way that's both relentless careerist (Disco! From a punk-adjacent band! The horror!) and quietly revolutionary by virtue of it coming from her voice. I'd call it the sound of the hunter getting captured by the game except that it collapses the categories of "hunter" and "game" so thoroughly.

It's sort of fascinating to listen to an artist who seems so focused on himself and his own thoughts, to the point of not necessarily caring who does or doesn't overhear what he's doing. (Contrast with someone like John Denver, who hits on a lot of the same nature/transcendence themes but seems to put a lot more effort into welcoming the audience.) At first I wanted to dismiss Morrison as a self-serious wanker, and he might still be. But this album sounds so damn good that I was seduced despite myself. There's a reason your mom warned you about boys with guitars.

Listen, if you don't find this riveting then I'm certainly not going to argue with you - Kevin Shields is an acquired taste and plenty of people don't acquire it and that's fine. But, speaking as a *Loveless* devotee for multiple decades, I could spend the rest of forever listening to Shields look for himself in the wreckage of his former self. Whether it's the haunting rhythmic figures on "she found now," or picking up right where *Loveless* left off on "who sees you," or using the church organ as an instrument of anticipation rather than bombast on "is this and yes," or the erstwhile Britpop throughout (I hear *13*-era Blur in there, which is a very good thing), Shields (and his bandmates!) are never less than intriguing. I don't know if I can adequately explain why this album matters so much. It feels like the indie-kid equivalent of Syd Barrett turning up for the *Wish You Were Here* sessions as if nothing had happened, only this time, rather than being a husk of himself he's actually ready to play. Standout track is "in another way," which scans like Shields' "The Private Psychedelic Reel" - all groovy and slinky before it mutates into something just plain gorgeous around the 2-minute mark.

Apropos for an album on which the title track has been appropriated for Tarantino's famous "hangout movie," this is hangout music; it's generally pleasant and it's reasonably evocative and it's totally fine if nothing much sticks in your memory afterwards.