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.
Part of the art of album creation is understanding how to crest the waves of ups and downs and building sounds and expectations to play with or against, and so on. It’s part of why, if you can avoid it, you tend not to put your two best songs first on an 11 track album where the other nine songs don’t sound like that and are instead quite boring and not dynamic and sound sort of similar in this particular 00s indie way that completely washes over me. I’m curious to hear their better and more famous other album but this one didn’t inspire me with confidence.
Landing on a Damon Albarn-led supergroup you’ve never heard about is one of those nice expectation-resetting things, where you’re not necessarily thinking you’ll hear anything great because supergroups aren’t always a lock but the talent at least gives you a drive to want to dig in. And lo and behold, here we are at the weird dismal circus having a good old time. It’s on a few knives’ edges of being downbeat but interesting, clean but worn down, working out all the members presences, but for the most part it sits pretty well across them all. I also can’t lie and say it didn’t click more for my tastes once I realised how it had a similar musical tone to post-Songs for the Deaf QOTSA in a fair few places, which is an easy sell if I’ve ever had one. Pleasant surprises abound, honestly.
Love a lot of the clear influences that go into this and what Michael Kiwanuka wants to do with his music in following them, just don’t really fuck with the end product that much? It all sort of slips off the mind at a certain point and reminds me more of other contemporary would-be throwback soul artists like Leon Bridges than actually getting into the level it aspires to get to with psychedelic guitars, Stevie Wonder grandeur of sound and Marvin Gaye soulfulness and social conscious. I think it also ends up losing some relisten space because it’s so mellowed and intimate and personal, whether that’s fair or not. Perfect radio 6 bait though, no wonder it beat albums I like much more to the Mercury Prize.
It’s not bad, and I do in fact really fuck with Mr Skin as a track, but the issue is that I listen to this and I’m largely like… wow, it must have been so cool to be a 19 year old in California in 1970 and seeing all these other artists and taking them as influence without particularly embracing them deeply and getting a really good producer to make varied and really crisp imitations for you. The band’s not bad, the songs are largely fine-to-good, but a lot of them leave me wanting to go and listen to the blues rock bands or the psychedelic rock bands or the singer-songwriters doing this stuff better. Hell, they even got me thinking “well, I could go listen to Led Zeppelin for this” and I don’t even fuck that much with Led Zeppelin. I get (some of) the “why” of it being an album you should hear, but yeah, it’s skilled water off a ducks back to me, I can’t grab that thing that makes me care really.
One of the ways in which this project is nice is it can force you to listen to albums you’ve otherwise set aside or put off for one reason or another - like if you’d known someone really annoying who liked Pulp or you’d heard the big song sung boldly and happily by upper-middle class people you didn’t care for. So imagine my surprise when I find out this album is all about being young, over-educated but without opportunities because you come from a shithole in the Midlands (and make no mistake, Sheffield, you’re not the north) and full of cum, and thus this was actually meant for me all along and, in line with the energy of the album, kept from me by the bourgeois types that want to hold onto art and trick you into thinking it’s for them even though they can never truly get it. Cocker’s got a fantastic swagger backed up by a great knack as a songwriter, the band are tapped into a cool version of the Britpop sound that feels like it’s still also in connection with new wave from the synths and so on which keeps it all similarly smart but easy, and it’s all got good energy. I think there’s a part of me that wishes it was bigger and bolder in a holistic sense, but that’s just to wish it was more of a favourite to go with my love of the words and spirit of it.
Speakerboxxx is a fantastic rump-shaker funked-out blast of looking back and looking around for a great sound and Big Boi kills it as a lead on that, and Love Below is a fascinating almost-explosion of ideas from Andre 3000 across a wide breadth of tone and genre and all the rest of it which feels like it’s had tangible inspiration on all sorts of people. The thing is I just don’t know if it’s a strength that they’re together on “one” album - honestly, 40 tracks (I’m not gonna try to count without interludes) would be a lot anyway, 134 and a half minutes would be a lot anyway, but more crucially, an hour of Speakerboxxx jumping straight off the 100m diving board from Last Call and Bowtie into an hour of The Love Below just feels too much. I wouldn’t want either really compressed is the fucked up thing, there’s very little fat you could trim and you surely wouldn’t want to - I think you’d just have to Fuel/Refuel it as a separate pair who are spiritually a double, which would give you more room to breathe on The Love Below especially. And then also maybe I’d be able to purely focus on A Life In The Day without also dying for the pee break at the end.
Great showcase of James Brown’s energy and control as a performer with a squealing crowd in tow, I just wish I was more into the early soul period of his career more to enjoy it. Also, this reminded me of Otis Redding’s Monterrey Pop performance, in that you can see how these soul performers at the top of their game can jam more performance into 20-30 minutes than most could in a full modern gig, and so you end up just wishing there was more of it to soak in. Absolute shame this is the only James Brown on the list though, considering he’s a grandfather of funk and this is so early in his career to not hit at his popularly understood sound, even if this is an important album and a great showcase.
Happy to find out Sam Cooke live puts in the grit and energy I always find a bit lacking in hearing some of his songs recorded - the songs here sound so much punchier and impassioned, and there’s this great energy build between Cooke and this club audience throughout which really works for me. I think putting it across from the James Brown live release of the same time day-after-day helps it as well, because the looseness and the passion comes across really well for me rather than the perfect stage show, especially with this particular soul sound (which now I can begin to hear the influence on reggae particularly). The sound production could probably be better in an ideal world, but it’s a live album from 1963, I’ll take what I can get on that.
Undoubtedly, there’s some part of my love for this which comes round to nostalgia for George Michael and for the general sound this album pushed into pop, I’m sure, but also, you have to give it proper credit and admit that it’s just fantastic pop, carrying an undeniable Prince influence lyrically and sonically while forming its own thing out of the studio (vs Prince’s full band setup at the time). The first four tracks are a killer front side, all sliced well to make singles even when you’re naming a song I Want Your Sex, but the back half also doesn’t disappoint when it’s pushing the sounds a bit further and really giving the subwoofer a taste on one track while doubling back to a Broadway-esque sound by the end. Songwriting is probably arguably a bit of a weak spot, but sometimes a singer sounds great and that’s enough, you’ll let him work out his horndog jealousy on the tape. Ultimately, it’s all got that boldness and range you expect out of a “something to prove” debut, but the art in that is landing the plane somehow, which this absolutely does for me.
Fantastic pop songwriting lifted to another level with expansive and lush new wave influences so you can easily make a 40 minute pop album with just 8 songs and they’re all great and you can pull several singles despite length and they each feel timeless etc. etc. It’s one of those pinnacles of what you could do with the glossy and rich 80s production and two guys (well one guy) with a good voice and ideas. Loved it for a long time, gonna continue to love it, gonna be now returning to accidentally singing it and quoting it a bunch again now.
Very pleasantly surprised with this one, because I saw the genre descriptions and thought “oh no, this is not gonna be my vibe at all” and then lo and behold, it caught my ears like if Kurt Cobain was into country and folk instead of Pixies and alt-rock. Really great texture to voice and instrumentation, there’s a good drive and motion to songs which vary nicely beat to beat (Death to Everyone unsurprisingly my favourite with the distorted band sound), moody lyrics that I don’t hate and come across alright. I guess I’m becoming open to good singer-songwriter stuff and indie folk, they got to me.
Don’t love it as much as Heaven or Las Vegas because that album has more of a sunny inflection and this one feels much more gloomy and grey (more of a typical Scottish day than a Nevada one), but you know the vibes - the soundscapes are incredible, songs vary but blur together beautifully as a piece, it all makes the point it’s wanting to. It’s pop but like a dream, it is what it is, done well.
After we got Spirit before any Doors, I’d been patiently waiting to get a better show of this sound and scene and thank god it’s here. It’s a good thing I’ve spent a while inoculating myself from a lot of Jim Morrison’s poet quirks, so I can mostly just vibe with the Doors’ sound, and what a sound it is here. Heavy in on that LA counterculture blues that they probably did the best, really guitar forward on a lot of these but backed up well across the board. Roadhouse Blues is a killer opener, Peace Frog one of their best tracks. Gets a bit more psychedelic in places, particularly the back half which is also a bit shaggier for me, but they’re still doing it well ultimately - it is the Doors and all that.
Honestly maybe the most damning thing is that I like all three singles when I hear them on their own, like on the radio or in a playlist or something, but I feel worse about them in the general melange of the album. It’s all just in this sort of soft grey post-Britpop melange, quite boring and without much to really hold onto, lyrically or musically or anything elselly. The motherland really let me down with this one being such a hit.
Some of the highest highs of that old psychedelic and blues-y rock of the era for me, especially that closing run, but really all over the album. Some lulls sure, but I think you can reasonably forgive only making good songs in between great ones and experimenting and using all the shagginess you can get from self-funding and producing a double album in the late 60s. Hendrix is a fantastic singer and guitarist (and soundscape maker), Mitchell and Redding do more than enough to keep up rounding out the band (I’ve long thought their talents are slept on because it’s the Hendrix band), and I guess thanks Bobby D for writing Watchtower so someone else could shred it.
Grimy and gay and moody minimalist synth, very much an album of its moment but it’s got its own cool spot there between Depeche Mode and Frankie Goes To Hollywood and all that. I don’t think it fully works for me in how stripped back the sound is a lot of the time or in how shocky and shlocky it can get, but it’s nice to have something prompt me to go listen to the Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go single again.
I think my fundamental problem is I don’t like Marc Bolan as a songwriter or vocalist, and that dislike goes harder than my enjoyment of the rock’n’roll boogie sound the band can get going when they’re doing something upbeat. I started out pretty high and then just brick by brick, especially after Bang A Gong onwards, my enjoyment went out the window and by the end I was just in a sort of permanent sigh and eye roll ready for it to be done. My Bolan tolerance just is not high enough for a full T. Rex album with its slower album tracks and all the rest, even if I can enjoy singles.
My first proper exposure to Nashville Sound country, and it’s a hell of a first one - George Jones has such a beautiful voice for singing all these soft-but-hitting songs of heartbreak and the struggles of love (to hold onto it, to accept it’s gone, to try and find it and keep it in forgiveness), and with all the armaments of a studio backup, the strings and the piano and the backing vocals, it amps it up that step more to really wring the emotion out of it all. Plus, pleasantly, once you hit the second side, they start to show a snappier rocking side to go with it as well as the soft one, leading up to eventually maybe my favourite track, Our Private Life (so obviously by George and Tammy) which does feel like it wouldn’t sit completely out of place in more of an outlaw set at the time with the comedic chops in there. I’m getting hooked on country, dammit.
Cool to go back to that mid-00s Chicago hip hop but with someone that’s punchier and more insightful on the bars than the other big guy of that moment. Some really cool production in here, nice jazz slices as well as the usual fare and nice guest spots to add to the choruses in line with that. 12 minute victory lap / thank you speech outro a hell of a choice too.
Feels like if Funkadelic is the part where you throw every conceivable P-Funk idea and element into the blender, Parliament is the part where it comes out as an incredible yet still pulpy juice. Honed to a sharp edge, the whole ensemble sounds fantastic, Bootsie and Bernie are obviously showing up front and all but still, everything is exactly right for you to nod your head, tap your feet, shake your ass and go off to weird space for 40 minutes. George Clinton groups never take themselves seriously, this one is very unserious too but it’s also the sheer craft behind being so unserious is wild. Also fascinating to listen to this one and have some of the later samples jump out to me so quick, this really was a treasure trove (again, testament to how good and forward-thinking this sounds).
I don’t think the music is that interesting or distinctive or impressive for a 1971 Pop-adjacent album, I don’t like Serge Gainsbourg’s voice at all (probably like Jane Birkin’s even less, especially when she’s being called in to scream and moan into the mic) and if I understood French, I’d probably like the concept and words even less too. Too long even at 28 minutes.
I can see some of the beauty and appeal in this, but it just doesn’t necessarily work for me. Lucinda Williams is bringing together this precise sort of 90s female alt singer-songwriter softness and exposed wobbliness with a raw country sound, and it’s not something I found myself clicking with really. There’s some great tracks in here, some great songwriting, but it felt like it was going long, like a lot of the tracks ended up blending together in tone and writing (I respect naming places often for connecting to the spirit but it becomes a wash as someone external to it all), like I would very wildly on how I felt about the intentionally thrown vocals - just wasn’t in my bag so none of it was coming to me. A shame but I’m glad it works for others nonetheless.
I’ve never particularly been a massive “early Beatles” fan, and I think part of it is that they were probably a more interesting live band than they were a recorded one at least for a few albums, so lo and behold, having to actually sit down and listen to one of those early albums in full didn’t overly wow me. It’s clearly a band on the ups with room to grow, there’s some great performing synchronicity between everyone and you can start to see the bones of what really works, but it is really a pretty simple collection of love songs and they don’t have the material yet to push past it, good as their little beat love songs and covers can be.
I think this one could be a grower for me, but I’m sort of torn between finding some of the ballads quite uninteresting (and part of this is absolutely not being adjusted to enjoying Neil Young’s voice properly because it’s my first time really listening to an album of his), finding some of the rockier tracks perfectly fine additions to the overall sound of the LA counterculture scene which has other bands doing other things I like more, and then moments where I can hear the seeds of a bunch of later alternative music I love in the sort of easy deconstructionist thing Neil Young wants to do with all this fuzzy jamming and pushing songs to 9 or 10 minutes and things. It’s cool for a debut, and it might be cooler if I come back for more over time, but for now, good solid middle.
Edit: listened to it literally once more and bumped it up because, unsurprisingly, I was kinda with it a bit more
I’d seen talk of some of the influence of this, and the scene and lineage it’s coming from, and thought “oh yeah, this could be really cool”. And then lo and behold, it sounds like a group of LA guys making a bad pastiche of country music, with the occasional drops of the psychedelic rock I assume they’re probably better at doing, and lyrics they think are really fresh and cutting but actually seem like they’re miles behind the outlaw country singers and songwriters on the come up. One upside is it gives me so much more respect for Eagles if this is the country rock base they were working off.
Side 1 feels like an interesting deconstruction/evolution of Bowie’s ability to make pop-but-art rock, breaking things down into snappy fragments of thought and consciousness, which is cool but didn’t wow me because it’s sort of still in Bowie’s ever-shifting wheelhouse reputation. Side 2 though, as it fully descends into ambient and krautrock influence to create these beautiful orchestrations and soundscapes, pushing the musical instincts out in a way I’ve not heard from all my years hearing Bowie singles, that’s some absolute magic. Looking forward to hearing more Bowie instrumentals going forward honestly.
Sometimes I’d come up for air and be like “they’re still going?” or “another false finish before we hit the fourth stage of the jam without ending the song?”, but ultimately it’s an album you’re just supposed to swim in so you gotta get past coming up for air and dive back into the pool of extended blues rock improvisation and jamming and soak it in. Band’s great, production’s really clean for a live album, just gotta get 76 minutes of time free to chill.
I don’t really care for Nick Drake’s singing tone, and I think his fragmentary-feeling folk songwriting leaves something to be desired (one might even go so far as to say it’s given more kudos because there’s an impulse to read more into it and praise it more when it’s discovered as posthumously at the end of a young singer’s career). But that acoustic guitar though, stunning sound both in terms of playing and in terms of production, feels rare I’ve heard the instrument sound that good and that’s a huge boon here.
At best it reminded me of Neutral Milk Hotel but worse in almost every single capacity or late era Beatles but worse in almost every single capacity, and at worst, I just desperately wanted the song to finish without me having to hear more outtakes and wails or w/e else. Felt like a waste of 40 minutes honestly.
I think the problem here is it’s just… I too know and enjoy all these influences and I too would rather go and listen to them instead of this album. I don’t think Kravitz has it down to reform them into something all his own or compete straight down the line, and he’s otherwise just extending his tracks and the whole album way too far way too often dragging it down into boredom and a rush of wanting it to end sooner so you can put on Prince.
Testament to how good Otis Redding was as a vocalist that this has as much of the performing power vocally and otherwise that the other live soul albums that have come up, and its testament to the strength of sound here that despite it being largely covers, you’d be hard pressed to not believe it was all originals, as they’re all pulled perfectly into the very distinctive vocal and instrumental sound Redding has (with Booker T and the MGs). Could do with some different ordering maybe for variance of sound across the album but it’s really quibbles by that point.
I’ve sort of always been of the opinion that the Rolling Stones make for a much better singles band than they do an album band, just as a feeling plucked out of the ether, and it’s nice to finally confirm that. Starting with an all-timer song that perfectly functions as an expression of every part of the band, and then nosediving into being boring as all hell for the rest of side A, and then using side B to, brick by brick, build my annoyance at Mick Jagger as a singer and songwriter all the way to it’s grand conclusion. I didn’t need the millionaire from the south of England to sing about wanting a politics-less violent revolution he’d never actually support, I didn’t need the swaggering sexpot to tell me about how he’d bang two 15 year olds, and I really didn’t need him to tell me how he represents the silent majority that don’t want to vote before crescendoing with a beautiful gospel choir to give me relief from his voice for a moment.
Life was just simpler and easier when all I knew was Sympathy for the Devil.
I’m inclined to give it a bit of a bump because California Dreamin’ is an all-timer song and Monday Monday’s a bit of a classic too, but the album does just sort of wash over you for the most part as a collection of similar smooth sunshine pop sounds with no friction or variance. And for as much as the harmonies are beautiful, you’re competing with the likes of Pet Sounds-era Beach Boys and middle-era Beatles so you kind of need something that goes beyond just that, which the Mamas and Papas really don’t have generally here
Heard the tracks on side A a million times, think I’ve only heard the tracks on side B live when they did the run-back tour of this album and I just wanted to see them live. It’s this sort of great hybrid of prog craftsmanship and skill with more pop-leaning melody-making and all those synths and all that which you’d expect and enjoy if you’re on board with Geddy Lee’s voice. Lyrics can be a bit “who knows what’s going on” when you catch them, but you can still catch the vibe enough from the music, which is always the real spirit of Rush to me.
It’s for sure in that British post-punk/new-wave/rock band space as a bunch of other stuff, but it works for me more than some of the others around the same time because I think there’s something to Bernard Sumner’s vocals that really hits in step with the music to my ear (which gets past my eternal issue with The Cure for example) and the instrumental sound also twigging me round to the synthy delights of Pet Shop Boys helps alongside. There’s almost the hints of that Madchester dance scene coming through especially by the last track, but it gets offset by traditional instruments and also just making vibe tracks elsewhere and it’s an interesting mix - feels ahead of the curve for ‘85 and also a great slide of its time and also like it hasn’t missed a day and you could still get stuff that sounded like this and it’d work.
Not really sure what was so pressing about needing to listen to this, it’s very easy-listening 80s pop with a few influences on it that just contribute all the more to it being easy-listening and sort of a forgettable wash. Nothing in here really stands out as particularly great, it just happens to be an ideal low-engagement album for a hot day, like it’d fit perfectly in an evening as background noise to a barbecue.
Hadn’t revisited this for quite a long time, remember being obsessed with it when I was first exposed to it and, lo and behold, I still love it. It feels like this explosion of their simple and punchy blues garage rock sound into a bunch of different paths, absolutely full of playing and fucking around, genuine “oh that’s what we’re doing for this track” surprises as soon as the marimba or w/e else comes out, without feeling quite as unevenly expansive as Icky Thump. I could maybe take or leave White Moon but the rest basically all work or better, so it stays solid gold with me.
At the heart of it, I just find the ways that Crosby, Stills & Nash (& Young) are very much individual singer-songwriters of a similar ilk and sound but not exactly the same and so they’re trying to corral each other together ends up makes the music absolutely sing. The vocal harmonies are gorgeous, the layering of the instrumentation steps that up further, and them each taking turns at writing songs means you get this really nice variety of theme and tone from song to song (plus their cover of Woodstock is also really good too). I’m already really high on it but I think it could still be a grower as I come back round to it more, honestly.
Certainly a development in their instrumental creativity and skill, even if the songs still feel very “for teenagers by teenagers” with all the first person love songs and John’s still very much the big front of the band. Still doesn’t feel like the big jump point for me to when I click with the Beatles, too early and too much potential they’re not quite at yet. They’re getting there though. And the film’s good so that helps too.
Can’t say I have the full experience with tango (or modern classical or jazz) to say I can get everything out of this, but I can say it’s really engaging and sounds so unlike any other Latin jazz or South American music I’ve heard with the particular instrumentations but also how they’re built out in these compositions. Fantastic energy in the performance but also just fascinating music to be performed, often switching between (what I understand to be) traditional tango sounds and altogether different ideas, giving it just enough discordance and grit to sound like it’d be completely out of place in an elevator (as people love to say Latin music would fit there).
Still might sit as my least favourite of the golden run of four Stevie Wonder albums here, but that’s also like asking which child is your favourite - everyone knows you have to have one even if you love them all. Arguably less of the upswing funk here (not none of it and what is here is great, You Haven’t Done Nothin’ might be his best B1 track) and far more of the beautiful soul sound, but it’s also an era when Stevie Wonder is making such incredible rich soul instrumentals alongside the power of his voice and songwriting so it’s hardly a bad thing really - I’d be hard pressed to find someone who could give any reason why They Won’t Go When I Go isn’t bringing them to emotional peaks.
Somewhere at the intersection of late 70s British punk and Cheap Trick’s teen-inclined pop rock, comes this album that feels like it’s getting to a proto-pop punk sound and nicely replaces the anger and looseness of some of their contemporaries with some more hooks and teenage angst and horniness and stuff that actually all kind of clicks. Could arguably do with more songs being developed out and less tiny tracks being on the thing, but hey, you wouldn’t be making proto-pop punk if you didn’t do it that way. Mostly I just can’t be too down on something that sounds so much like a bunch of music I do like.
Not so much that there’s any bad songs, it’s just that the album is too long at a bit over an hour and whether or not I like the sound now as much as I did as a teenager, it does feel like a bit of a wash across so many of the tracks. I think part of the trouble is that, in stripping back to a simpler, more live approach to the music (which was a good choice for the band clearly), you lose the proggy variance through the songs themselves of the earlier thrashier albums. Instead it’s kind of like 5 minute tracks supposedly designed for easier listening and radio play and the like (but I’ll grant them, they absolutely hit it on the initial tracks).
It’s a perfectly solid hair metal album, I can absolutely see why it made an impact and all that. I just don’t rate hair metal so, apart from Photograph and Foolin’ that I knew from before and have misguided attachment to, it isn’t really something that makes an impact on me. Production could do with being more dynamic but I get it, they have to make it sound good on everything so everyone loves it on their radios or w/e, just doesn’t help it make any more impact.
I was born in England in 1994 so needless to say, they’ve kinda been pushing this one on me ever since I had ears. But for all the time I’ve spent listening to it, and then trying not to listen to it, and then listening to it some more, I don’t think it’s ever really lost its particular (and singular, considering how they fell off afterwards) charm. There’s some tracks I love, there’s some tracks I like less than others, there’s times when all the inspirations click and they make great work, there’s times when the wall of sound and Liam singing out of his sinus bugs me. Yet, it’s all in the charm, the undeniable swagger of the thing like a perfect monument of Manchester and Britain in 1995, from saying hello to blowing up like a star in the course of an hour, and taking you on the journey with them.
Just messed up I had to stay indoors listening to it, when it’s a sunny day and I should have been out in my bucket hat with a few cans and the lads talking about the footie.
Arcade Fire are one of those bands who I was tangentially aware of because of their presence in my formative teenage years but that stayed just out of where I was comfortable playing and listening, so it’s kind of nice to come round to this one and go “ah yeah, this is distinctly like a good version of that sound from then”. It’s got that post-punk alternative but make it anthemic kick like Killers or Kings of Leon, but the songs actually feel a bit more in touch with all the sources than the former and more like they deserve the anthemic grandeur than the latter. Undoubtedly a bit long but never bad, and undoubtedly a bit “North Americans sing about their deep desire to escape normal middle class suburban life to be special” but channelled through a Springsteen angle that salvages it into art-school artistry. Hipsters were on it for this one (don’t ask me about some other American alternative bands).
It’s nice enough that it’s inoffensive and fine, but I just don’t overly see what’s so essential about it. I don’t think there’s anything overly compelling here, the fusion of jazz and folk and pop is smooth which is fine but I don’t find it really gives you much to hold onto - it doesn’t speak to me in the way the active and bold fusion of contemporary Blood Sweat and Tears did, for example. I’m also just not overly mystified by Buckley’s vocals or songwriting, I don’t see what so special about them. I know there’s lots more Buckley (Tim) to listen to, so maybe I’ll come round, but I can’t help thinking this is one of those albums that’s held up more by the legend than the work.
It’s quite impressive to have four big culturally-penetrating songs which all sound at least a bit different (very different in the case of Sunday Girl and Heart of Glass), and yet also the other eight songs are also bangers. A perfect slice of pop-leaning early new wave wearing a bunch of different influences on the sleeve while making something distinctly Blondie (I would never have guessed there were covers here), band sounds great, Debbie Harry sounds great of course. Just always nice to have an excuse to pull it out and listen and pass a snappy 40 minutes.
I’m basically only familiar with Aimee Mann through Magnolia, so it’s a limited window of top material paired with a fantastic film, and so I can’t help but be a bit unfazed by this? It’s definitely of its time, in that early 90s “female pop-rock singer-songwriter” sound and vibe, but with Aimee Mann’s particular downbeat songwriting and her laidback vocal stylings, which largely did not sway me. There were two songs that picked up for me (Mr Harris, I Could Hurt You Now) but largely it just sort of came and went - didn’t feel like my cup of tea particularly amongst its contemporaries, and didn’t feel like it stood out enough. I can’t say I wouldn’t try another one of her albums, which means I think this was an odd choice, but also I’m not in a rush to do that because this one was Just Alright.
Raekwon (and Ghost Face) delivers easily on the mic in bars and vocals, but I do think the real magic here is how good RZA’s production for all this is. Every track just has a fantastic base to build off, which it does easily. Now is 70 minutes still a bit of a stretch with this where you’re a bit ready for it to be more varied? Sure, but worse albums have stretched worse than this.
Crazy to think how far we are from 2005 when you could make a beautiful piece of art about your personal trans experience and get critical recognition and awards from it. Anyway, I really like the lush chamber pop feel of the music, I think Anohni’s kinda-operatic vocal style and the lyrics create a sort of overwhelming emotional energy, and there’s a beautiful 6 minute gospel-esque song about understanding the love of your domme through their work. I don’t know how often I’d come back round to listen to it, raw and emotional as it is, but I do really quite fw it.
And so an entire micro-industry of North London jazzy neo-soul singers was born. I’ve never been the biggest fan of Amy Winehouse’s voice - she’s good but it just doesn’t hit my ears right, and I’ve spent more than enough time time hearing it since 2006 to be sure of it - but it fits really nicely in here with the laid back production that keeps some nice movement between different contemporary sounds as well as the jazz-y soul core. It feels of a place and time, good and bad, in a way that she lost working with Marc Ronson. Bold debut for a 20 year old to make, even if it runs too long and the lyrics all skewing heavily to “here’s my troubles with men” in that youthful way both sit as problems for me.
Interesting as an artefact, in large part because it speaks to how big the Minneapolis sound got and the influence it wiggled through culture. Neneh Cherry is kinda doing more rap here, but the beats reminded me of the new jack swing sound so much that it kept it firmly in a lane and a moment rather than something so on the cusp of pop-rap going big. Now the trouble is, I do think a lot of the songs wind up sounding similar, and like they run past their ideas even with that, so starting with your best song and single is a smart choice for a sales pitch but also one that doesn’t succeed in making it feel like a good Album that I’d want to come back to.
I think there’s a latent impulse in basically any talented musician to want to show off, and I don’t think it’s innately a bad thing because it can bring you and the others around you and the audience genuine musical gifts. However, as with any sort of showing off, there’s always the chance that you cross the magically unknowable line of overindulgence - obviously where this line sits is so personal and context dependent as to be something you just know when you hear it, but it does always exist either way.
Anyway, this album is like textbook overindulgence to me. Taking already simple and thin songs (not bad, just an observation) and stretching them way beyond sense, spinning out beyond musicality into showcases that just feel like they’re made for the person doing the playing and no one else (not even other people in the band on stage) and this is all without me getting into some of their tendencies to just make annoying noises repeatedly for whatever reason, much to my additional chagrin. Almost every song here seems like it would be much better in the tighter form of a single recorded album than a double live album, except for Smoke on the Water, which they build on without toppling. It’s just the kind of 70s hard rock and the kind of live album that makes you want to not like either, even if you do like them.
One of those classic albums I had a loose awareness of because I’m always going to”21st century schizoid man” thanks to the sample, but that I didn’t really know anything properly about. Incredibly grand and ambitious and so stuffed with ideas that it’s hard to conjure up every exciting thing by the end, but ultimately, this fusion of classical and psychedelic and jazz and rock and everything else of interest to these guys makes a hell of a whole end product. Definitely something I need to keep coming back to so I can really take it in because I think it’s one of those things designed to reward it.
Absolutely a sibling project to Remain in Light in its worldbeat influence / pilfering over a funky sound followed by a more spaced out sound, but taking the focus way more into pushing the ideas of the sound along into “The Vibe Space” like a Brian Eno album (or hell, like any amount of electronic albums in the last 45 years) rather than into the lyricism of Talking Heads. Bringing the found sounds in as a “vocal” over the top gives you this great feeling of just sort of plugging into a weird radio experience, which I unsurprisingly love, as well as the funk base of a lot of the tracks (especially first side) here. Undeniably experimental, but plenty approachable, it’s kind of the play when you see these two paired up and at this time.
Really like this move to make 70s-ass power pop but with a post-punk strip back to something a bit messier and looser, but of course I would, because every observation going “so this is clearly an influence on 80s alt bands like R.E.M.” is right and I love those bands. I could honestly take or leave some of the vocals and songwriting - Hitchcock’s vocal style isn’t totally my bag and I don’t care that much about the neo-psychedelia absurdity all that much - but small biscuits if the songs sound good.
Hard to hate, but also kind of hard to love. It’s sort of a perfect poptimisation of the soft folk rock of the Laurel Canyon scene for most of the album, well delivered but not much to really hold onto and chew into. But there’s a few tracks where he leans into the blues and he’s got a great sound for it and it’s like a little bit of spice in there for any real flavour at all. Begs the question why not more flavour, but hey, I guess that’s gonna make it less smooth and sellable so.
I’m glad to have finally had the kick to listen to this and all, but it’s not for me ultimately. It feels incredibly familiar to me by weight of its impact but that also means it doesn’t feel as much of a shakeup to me, and then past that, the particular neo-soul r&b/rap fusion left me cold. For me, the fusion suffers in the production sounding quite similar across a lot of tracks which sets you for a lack of variety, which then sits rough with Lauryn Hill singing well but in a limited range and laying similar raps all largely on similar themes across a whopping 75 minute runtime where every track is like 5+ minutes long. I’m just not as “love and the Lord” coded as I need to be, I guess.
As a record in its own right, it’s just a really cool collection of early 70s-as-hell percussion-led funk/funk-rock instrumentals, which is entirely up my street, and with a name and a cover like that, it’s exactly the kind of thing I’d pull out at a vinyl shop on the cheap any day. Within context of its importance, it’s just cool to know the cratedigger spirit is exactly the same after 50 years even if it’s for different purposes, and it’s really interesting to hear the bones of sounds you could (and people have) so easily turn to other things because the bottom of it is so danceable and there’s so much room to build on.
Putting aside the band here who are just sort of playing amped up blues, live or otherwise, that is largely nothing to write home about, the thing that stands out here and why it stands across time is Janis Joplin’s vocals. And the thing is I have never liked Janis Joplin’s vocals, because she generally either sounds like your uncle after 7 pints or like a cross between Marge Simpson and Robert Plant. I don’t find the rawness and lack of control in her voice as an affecting choice, more of an offputting one, so it’s all a wash for me.
Only knew a few of the songs beforehand, but damned if Thin Lizzy can’t carry a proper double albums worth. Great live hard rock energy, Lynott is electric as you’d expect, and they can pull it back down to quite sweet and soft lyricism and balladry as well as rocking hard, in that particular way they had as a proudly Irish band. Real good stuff all round, especially that slide from Cowboy Song into The Boys Are Back in Town.
