No great surprises in revisiting this one that I bought at release, it is all of this particular sound that they did better than the many also-rans (who also seem to be on this list 🤷) but I’ve never totally gotten on with Turner’s vocals and it feels like they waste a lot of time on simple garage rock stuff for the footie stands before occasionally showing the band are talented in little spurts and then going back to the grindstone. Viva la indie or w/e.
Starts fantastic for the first three tracks, fantastic fusion of funk and Latin music and psychedelic rock and a bunch of other stuff, genuine treat for the ears and with some good snappiness in the energy and pace despite the track lengths. But then, the energy starts to waver in the back half and the song lengths start to feel a bit more present, and I don’t know, just loses me a bit in there. I can get down with a long blues-y tune or a long political ballad at the right time, but the songs don’t necessarily develop enough through the course of that length to keep me tuned in (whereas City, Country, City keeps that jamming turn-taking you need). Would happily come back for more War though.
Funny place to start with Radiohead, no doubt, especially with the first track being familiar to me from the Twilight credits. That said, and putting past the ever-complicated question of if I like Thom Yorke’s voice or it just fits as an additional instrument in the music, I can see more of what the fuss is about here and I can easily imagine the world where I had ended up catching this as a teenager and becoming the annoying sort of Radiohead superfan that put me off listening to the band for so long. Fascinating soundscape-y tunes with a nice drone and this understated sense of play while also trying to sound depressing as fuck which sort of balances out the energy once you get past the higher push of the first two tracks - like being lulled into a safe space that still feels like it could catch you out on a point at any time. If I knew what any of the words were, I’m sure they’d be fine too, but just taking the vocals as part of the soundscape still works plenty well too.
Obviously the child of Sly and Jimi but also a build-up of a decade of finding that particular Clinton P-Funk sound and bringing it to its big anarchic, jammy, grooved-to-hell-and-back form, in turn clearly inspiring so much more down the line (lot of stuff which sounds like the backbone of later rnb and rap naturally). Long tracks that stay entertaining, so many funny vocal sections (I’m more than childish enough to enjoy the things that come through in Promentalshitbackwashpsychosis Enema Squad) and an all round richness of instrumentation as it bounces from genre to genre (Who Says A Funk Band Can’t Rock obviously a main album high of this, but the bonus tracks, especially the live version of Maggot Brain, are wild on guitar). I’m sure if you don’t like funk it’s more to wash over you, but then again - who doesn’t like funk?
As I hoped, listening to a singular EWF album makes a great difference in the feeling of how smooth their music can be. Here, there’s great flow between softer ballads (fantastic vocal showcases especially on Reasons) and harder funkier tracks (Happy Feelin’ absolutely has the sauce on that baseline, Africano also goes hard) in the right way to keep you attuned to the movement, which I was missing on their Greatest Hits - it’s one thing to make great tunes, it’s another to make a great album. It’s definitely still all on the more soulful disco side of funk compared to some of the other stuff I’ve been listening to recently from War and Funkadelic, but no one does it quite as well as EWF y’know.
Ah, the album that changed pop music (semi-joking). I think it’s notable that it sits at this sound intersection of Taylor shifting to pop fully, with the experienced Max Martin and the fresh Jack Antonoff, which allows it to take in a whole bunch of other contemporary pop sounds (you would be hard pressed to not hear at least Robyn and Lana Del Rey merged in here, at minimum) and compress them into a new strain of hooky but writerly synth-pop sound that feels so distinctly Taylor in its own right (and is so big that many artists still owe something to being in its wake). But the key thing is that on this album at least, that strain works pretty much song after song, beat for beat and self-reflection bar for bar. The singles obviously stand as highlights (five singles certainly helps it highlight a lot) but also most of these could have been singles still for how bankably good they are. It’s not making it into my pop pantheon because I think it lacks that extra unique Thing and the lyrical sentiments and the written character of Taylor Swift don’t click for me like that, but revisiting has been a nice reminder that, yes, there was a good reason why I paid to listen to this and didn’t complain about it.
Funkadelic asked “can a funk band make rock music” in their genre-busting, but Blood Sweat and Tears asked “can a jazz band make rock, blues, soul, proto-funk, proto-prog, big band pop etc. etc.” - needless to say, somehow in all of that fusion of all these ingredients I like, there’s a sort of cohesion in here, or at least enough of one for me to fall in love with it, and it keeps an accessibility despite the experiment of it all. If you’re listening out, it’s easy to sort of pull at different songs to go “oh And When I Die sounds a bit like the Vegas Elvis arrangements, You’ve Made Me So Very Happy starts sounding kinda Otis Redding, Blues Part 2 does literally have Sunshine of Your Love for a minute” but hey, that’s fusion for you, if I didn’t like that I wouldn’t like Steely Dan either. No wonder I happily listened to it twice this afternoon.
I was initially thinking the old school boom bap sound was going to throw me off this album because the tracks were running together too much and I was really lacking something standout and different, but thankfully, the middle third or so starts to break it up with What’s Golden and Thin Line probably being what hit more for me there. The big trouble though, aside from a lot of it sounding similar to me outside of the peaks, is the album is just too long and feels spread thin for it - shortening it up, putting more into the tracks, get some more variance, it’d be bumped up. All in all though, it’s fairly good rap, it’s just not my cut as a child of the 00s sounds tbh.
Immigres and Pitche Mi fantastic works, Taaw and Badou “merely” really good. Truly the only great problems with this album are it goes by too quickly and I don’t speak Wolof, neither of which are really Youssou N’Dour’s fault. I love this dense percussion-driven and guitar and sax supported soul-y sound so I should definitely look into more N’Dour and mbalax generally probably? Also no wonder everyone with an ear to African artists wanted to get this guy on their pop albums.
