just not my thing i think! haven't really listened to blues for 10-odd years, and when i did i preferred it more acoustic, muddier (lol), deeper. this would be a killer kind of thing to see live but i don't get much out of sitting down and listening to it
as someone who came to metal through Deafheaven, Converge, and Holy Roar Records (remember them?) rather than the Big 4, this was such a fun first listen. the metal of 1986 feels more fluid, exploratory - it feels like this would be a thrash record with some serious qualifications these days, given the prog and goth and doom of it all. the open-road, shark-like velocity of tracks like Battery aren't dulled at all by the fact that chunks of Welcome Home just sound like the Cure - instead, they're colored by it, anger sharpening the pathos, pathos guiding the anger.
in 2026, it's easy to hear this as a record made of its building blocks - speed and politics from punk, song structures from prog, soloing from classic rock, atmosphere from goth - but it's just So Fucking Fun to hear these guys putting those things together in at-the-time revolutionary ways. found this really illuminating and weirdly grounding as a piece of genre history - a feeling that is, in part, the point of a project like this - on top of being a good fucking time
had never really found My Bowie Record - a song here and there, sure, a few listens through Ziggy and Low after he died 10 years ago, but i've never been a proper fan. this thing, though, is just wonderful - title track obviously great but its precedent jam, Joe the Lion, an uptempo freakout about suicidal depression, is even more my speed. all of side a calls to mind the same face of the Walker Brothers' Nite Flights, another gated-drum and funky-bassline chronicle of life under fascism (although Scott and company allow themselves to get a little more pointedly political). unlike side b of that record though, which is Some Bullshit, the second half of "Heroes" is analog-synth brutalist-chic goodness, gorgeous crunchy greyscale ambient, the perfect soundtrack to finding a cold and ugly place very beautiful.
and then there's the last track, which is, in tribute perhaps to Nite Flights, also some bullshit. down a star for that one, Dave
just really annoying, man. and i like the title track! that's not even the one i mean! that song is smarmy coming specifically from Lennon but is, as a sentiment, pretty affecting to me. but so much of the rest of this is shitty, bland blues-rock with horribly whiny lyrics. no clue what anyone gets out of the inside-baseball of How Do You Sleep? or Lennon breaking into his angry rock 'n' roll guy voice to deliver some of the dumbest lyrics he's ever written on Gimme Some Truth. the final two cuts are my favorites here - sweet, vulnerable, genuine - and even those have a line each that make me want to take this guy's lunch money. whatever, man, was always more into George anyway
he was twenty! it's hard to believe, but at the same time, it's so, so obvious. it is incredibly 20-years-old to be this direct, this naked. for all of your memories, real or invented - dead friends, gunfights, birthdays, nights spent doing genuinely nothing - to push up against each other, jockeying for significance in your young mind. when you're from someplace where much of the world tells you your life doesn't matter, it makes sense that, defiantly, every moment would start to burn a little hotter in your mind's eye
what isn't very 20-years-old at all is just How Fucking Good this record is. it is just really explosively good. you could pick this thing apart, select a few lines that are throwaway or silly or repetitive, but Illmatic is an act of portraiture, and works best when viewed whole. you see the entire young man - one who sometimes lives dangerously, sometimes frivolously, sometimes reflectively, like we all do one way or another. that's not to say that the record doesn't work at the micro level at all. it does, fabulously, especially when Nas is in present-tense reportage mode. there are moments that feel like being grabbed by the scruff of the neck and being plunged into the ice-bath of a life that is almost certainly harder and more violent than yours. that second-by-second retelling of a stickup on N.Y. State of Mind, which reveals in one quick line that the whole story Nas has been so high he hasn't realized or cared that the building he's robbing is full of children? insane, terrifying storytelling.
the production, too, gives you these little moments all the time. the "aren't i hot shit" beat switch on Halftime, that mournful, melting sax solo closing out Life's a Bitch, the blurred, staticky chorus of ghosts on Memory Lane. wonderful stuff, always so considered
back to the age thing - there's a lyric i can't find now where Nas alludes to being a quarter of the way through his life. it really cracks this thing open for me - the gravity with which he treats the little things, the mental effort put into the rhyme schemes for bars about smoking weed or meeting girls. his childhood and adolescence were a significant chunk of his life! if you look at CDC data for life expectancy for Black men born in the 70s in the US, he would more accurately have been looking at a third of his years gone by. from that perspective, man....what a shame it would've been to not make this record. to be that age, and that fucking good, and not think the petty crimes, young loves, joint hits, friends gone (to the grave or the state) are worth writing about. what a damning, thoughtful, generous thing to do, bringing these things so vividly to life
biased, imperfect reviewer that i am, i think my impression of this record as whole is being colored by the presence of Arabian Knights, which is a monstrous song. that's not to say that religious fundamentalist communities can't be incredibly misogynistic, but jesus. we've seen, over and over again, since October of 2023 and many times before, where this dehumanization of Arab men gets us. it's a hell much worse than any foretold on this album
the thing though is that this is a quite cool record, punchy and theatrical - i especially like Into the Light, which has a nice bit of Cocteau Twins to it, and Night Shift. i recently played in a band with a friend who loves Siouxsie, and now that i listen to her, it's cool to hear how much of this is in our music
i know the actual review is slight, which might seem a bit bad-faith, but a lot of these post-punk/goth records will probably be similar like-not-love things for me. it's a sound i never have trouble with, but it's never a favorite either
front-to-back perfect pop music! endlessly catchy, brilliantly sung, wry and tuneful and very wise. i've loved this record for a year or two now and can't go a week without getting a song from it stuck in my head. "it's too 80s" "bad production" genuine skill issue you need to get more earnest now!!!!!
not opposed to disco in the Disco Sucks sense, but more in the sense that there are wires in my brain crossed a certain way as to make me enjoy grooves that are slower, more spacious, deeper. the rhythm section in these more uptempo songs is too quick, it glides along too cleanly along to really dig into anything
a lot of this is context, of course - my kitchen with a glass of wine is the best way i'm willing to approximate a dancefloor on a sunday evening, but it's not the same. i'm sure Le Freak (burying the lede here - not a favorite!) goes nuts when you've mixed its plastic buoyancy with the sweat and skin of a crowd of beautiful people, and those Rodgers guitar licks are great absolutely anywhere
pretty unreservedly in love with Savoir Faire (talk about slow, spacious, deep) and I Want Your Love, which uses the devotional aspects of gospel to make something hot and tense and desperate. otherwise, this is a respect-more-than-like situation, stunning musicianship without many songs i'd reach for day to day
i don't think many people would describe The Smiths' music as angry. they're stereotypically too po-faced, dour, depressed for anything that resembles a fire in the belly. but if not angry, then what the hell is this record? it's far from the histrionics found on occasion on their debut, but its social-issue songs weren't quite as sardonic and conceptual as they'd grow up to be - instead they're straightforward, plainspoken, very bitter and very very angry.
as such, i think of this as the prickliest Smiths record, the one that lines up the least with a certain superficial perception of the band. there aren't really any great pop songs here, in the same way that the other three records have sprinkled on and the compilations contain in droves; What She Said is probably the strongest hook, and that song's dense, muscular swirl is fairly opposed to the breeziness of many Smiths hits. those highwire Johnny Marr guitar parts are here, but they're too slippery or too far down in the mix to stick in the head. bassist Andy Rourke gets what used to be Marr's spot, and fills the record with post-punk spikiness and muscular funk that aren't sprightly or pretty in the way the band often was
these instrumental qualities do little to temper the record's sadness. this is a Smiths album, so we have to talk about sadness. it's here on Meat is Murder, and it's real. it's not particularly romantic, and it's certainly not cut with humor, completely upending the line so many defenders like to pull out - "you know, Morrissey's actually really funny!" and yeah, he normally is, but here he's telling us that jokes can be cruel, barbed, acidic coming out of the wrong mouth. he's recounting what might be a young girl's last words. he's gasping, dying, but somehow still alive, making the final stand of all he is - which admittedly, is actually pretty funny to say before continuing to live for at least 40 more years and being a huge weird bitch the whole time, but he certainly isn't joking when he sings it.
on a lot of this record, as pointed out above, Morrissey's too angry to be funny OR sad, and despite what he'd claim on track 2 of his next record, it's a very righteous anger. it's on behalf of the defenseless, the innocent the small and frail: apart from the slaughterhouse-bound elephant in the room, he's angry on behalf of children. The Headmaster Ritual is just a beast of a way to begin a record, indicting the power and corruption rampant in English schools - corporal punishment is the oft-touted subject of the song, which isn't wrong, but its real, chilling bite comes from the sex of it all. Morrissey's always had a way with the sinister, more coercive side of sexual desire, and i think missing it in this song - "he grabs me and devours, kicks me in the showers" "the military two-step down the nape of my neck" - is to misread the severity of what he's protesting. things are no better at home, further down the tracklist, where the abuse is more narrowly physical but no less rampant, no more avoidable
the final track is infamous, and look, i'm not putting it on for fun. i don't listen to it at all outside of this tracklist, but i think it's a natural extension of the callousness and brutality laid out in the preceding songs. from Headmaster to Barbarism to Meat is Murder, there's a clear line - how can our schools be civilized if our houses aren't, how can our houses be civilized if they gather around the meat of a slaughtered animal every night. it's the root of this brutality for Morrissey, which.........i don't know, man. i eat meat, but i get it. people like to close their ears to this one because Morrissey's annoying, but he's backed up by both highfalutin philosophers and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so it's not like he's the only crank in the world like this. i think this gets under people's skin more than they like to say.
anyways! that's The Smiths' second record, a couple fun rockabilly tracks surrounded by these brutally sad, very empathetic songs. if anyone's read this far, you'll have gleaned they're a very important band to me. i really relished the opportunity to return to this record, which was a bit too frosty for me to love during my high-school obsession phase. as an adult living in a world that often seems alienated and callous, i found its opposition to cruelty, violence, austerity, and close-mindedness to be incredibly moving. it seems required on this site to bring up what an asshole you think Morrissey is when writing Smiths reviews, and yeah, of course, but it's just horribly sad to me how someone writing such empathetic music could turn out that way. who knows, man, at least he gave us these songs
like if the make-a-wish foundation covered adult tracheotomy patients
nice little mood piece with a few very pretty songs, but kind of a silly inclusion on this list, even next to other records by the same band
i'm passingly familiar with music from Mali, so expected the ripping guitar work, which is great! like desert-blues breakout Tinariwen, this is just a little bit too shiny to really scratch the itch for me, but that doesn't diminish how talented the players are. doubt i'll be back to the album but man, these guys must absolutely smoke live
feels very dated in its conception of what's cool, what's edgy, what's rock and roll. honestly totally fine with the material here, besides some scattershot annoyance at the degree to which Jack White is Doing A Voice, but any media landscape that sees this as new, exciting, essential feels very far away. very sturdy collection of songs that will hopefully continue to inspire 12-year-olds to dig into guitar music, good for the background otherwise
i was fucking around on my acoustic a few days ago, and wrote the bones of a little song. hammering on and off the low e, a few more plaintive notes on the higher strings, a couple fingerpicked embellishments, but always a return to the warm, plumbing bass notes. it was gentle, it was propulsive, it was lovely, it was...
Which Will. i'd just been fucking playing Nick Drake's Which Will, a perfect little song which has definitely been written and recorded before. but i think the fact that, for just a second, i thought i might've come up with the thing is a testament to the universality, the deep, old, essential nature of the best songs here. drake's guitar work isn't flashy or complicated, but it's nuanced and beautiful. every strum feels like he's digging a little deeper into the music, plumbing another depth.
the vocals have a similar quality - hushed but purposeful, earthy, far older than any 26-year-old should sound. i've heard drake's lyrics described as cryptic or insular, and maybe i'll give you the latter, but lyrics like the aforementioned Which Will and Place To Be are incredibly plain, burnished and writerly but very clear. those two songs, in particular, are very genuinely perfect. dusty little jewels.
as the rating reflects, i have to admit i'm not totally in love with every song on the record - even on something so short and spare, a few bits feel inessential. but i've always had a strange relationship with this one, where i know the first few songs hugely well but don't usually sit through the full thing, so with my increased familiarity, i could easily see this being a 5. for now, i'm off to learn his songs properly, and maybe stumble through one of my own, so communicative of the power of one voice and one guitar is this wonderful record
the first time an album on this list has cultivated, for me, that most special of all effects: it has invited me to listen more deeply. it's coy, and strange, and quiet, in a way that draws me completely into it. i have the urge to untie it and pick it apart
i've known the title track for years, and it's stunning - there's a plainspoken decisiveness to all its lyrics that i find heartbreaking and warming at once. the rest of the record operates in a stranger mood, one that's hard to pin down, often drawn towards death, evil, misanthropy, but really funny and horny about the whole thing. even the lighter tracks are cryptic - especially Knockturne, a gnarled, imagistic take on the love song, sung very quietly and with a lot of sweetness
felt totally beguiled by this record, and very sure of the many charms it will take longer than 24 hours to reveal to me. wonderful stuff!
