Reading their wiki page, I saw that front man Scott McCloud had been listening to the Fall and Velvet Underground prior to writing this album, and then it all clicked into place. My favourite track is the up-tempo “Let Me Come Back” which is something of a banger.
Good stuff.
One note of caution though - I saw references in forum posts to front man HR having made homophobic remarks about AIDS during the late 80s. There’s nothing about it on the Wikipedia page and I couldn’t hear anything like that in the lyrics on this album but usual caveats apply.
After a few of these tracks, it feels like she got bored with the politics and declared “Got the point? Let’s dance!” before kicking into some more uptempo dance tracks and smoochy ballads. The music is mostly that 80s over-compressed bass with random stabs that gets very wearing after a while and hasn’t aged well. It did make me want to listen to the Reynolds Girls though.
On the whole, a bit better than I expected and at least she seems to be the non-problematic Jackson unlike certain others we could mention.
Wardrobe-malfunction-tastic!
Not surprisingly, Elvis grew increasingly unhappy with this arrangement and after his legendary 68 comeback special, wanted to record a new LP in Memphis with a change of musical direction. After some wrangling over publishing rights and contracts, he finally got into the studio and recorded a set of songs with styles ranging from Memphis Soul to country and blues, with a touch of gospel.
This album is a great showcase for Elvis at his vocal crooning best, even if some of the songs are on the mawkish side. This re-release includes some non album singles including the great Suspicious Minds but offset by the atrocious Don’t Cry Daddy.
Ghetto-tastic!
The bad is the bait and switch with this album posing as a live recording. Only one of the tracks was actually live (at least on the original release) with the rest featuring recorded audience noises played in. To be fair, the recording does have a raw, live feel that captures the energy of a top notch rock band, but it feels a little bit of a cheat all the same.
The ugly is the cover art by Robert Crumb, which features crude racist and sexist stereotypes of the worst sort. Apparently Crumb claimed later that he was satirizing those attitudes and that his audience would have understood the context, but it really leaves a sour taste even after all this time.
The final tragedy is that just two years after this record, Joplin joined the pantheon of dead rock stars, dying from a heroin overdose at the age of just 27. What a waste.
It wasn’t the cosmic psychedelic space jam that I was expecting. It was … ok. Mellow blues and cosy Americana with a hint of country. It struck me listening to this album this morning that the music is really quite incidental to the experience of tripping out in a field in the California sunshine with a genuine community of like minded friends, before packing up the microbus and driving a couple of hundred miles to the next gig.
This album won’t knock your socks off, but it’s not trying to. It’s the perfect expression of the hippie ethos of tuning in, turning on and dropping out, and I wish there was more of it in the world today.
There was a lot that I enjoyed about this, particularly the ambitious scope of the music which reminded me in places of the minimalist operas of composers like Steve Reich and Phillip Glass, crossed with the breezy jazz of Vince Guaraldi and even a nod to the Cure’s “Close To Me” on the title track “Come on! Feel the Illinoise” (which was a lost opportunity to cover Slade).
What I didn’t like was a piece about the serial killer John Wayne Gacy dressing up as a clown to murder people. Seriously, this should have come with a content warning. This one track was enough to almost put me off listening to the rest of the album. Seriously, skip this one or don’t say I didn’t warn you.
The rest of the lyrics are a lot more interesting with what sound like autobiographical insights into Steven’s life and beliefs, and they are quite moving in an obtuse way. I think I’d like to read a commentary about what he’s alluding to on some of these.
This would have been five stars, but minus one for Killer Klowns and minus another one for giving up after two states. Lazy, lazy Sufjan Stevens.
Cloudy with a chance of showers-tastic!
The results are somewhat uneven, with digressions into jazz, country and a guest appearance from Hugh Masekela playing trumpet. There is even in a bizarre bit of space rock where they imagine one of their songs being broadcast to a distant quasar and being overheard by some surprisingly chatty aliens. By far the best song is a cover of “My Back Pages” by Bob Dylan which also inspired the album title.
Anyhoo, this album is a wildly ambitious debut that mostly lands. Mostly. Drum ‘n’ bass is something of an acquired musical taste, with a lot of similarities with the complex mathematical patterns of Steve Reich or the manic high energy drumming of hard bop jazz. Goldie (with production by Rob Playford) also layers in some lush electronica and vocals from Diane Charlemagne and Lorna Harris.
The overall effect ranges from hypnotic to being overwhelming in places, but always intriguing.
It took a song or two to get its hooks into me, but lines like “A kitten from Great Britain sleeps behind the drapes” and the idea of moving to Nashville to make a living out of writing sad songs and getting paid by the tear are strong images. I think this is the sort of album that will really repay repeated listens.
Finally, just to be on the safe side, I checked their Wikipedia page and front man David Berman is actually Jewish, so the band name is ok after all. Phew!
Mazel-tastic!
The lyrics don’t need to be super clever or original but there must be one absolute ear-worm of a hit single that would go down perfectly on a wet afternoon at Glastonbury when everyone is hung over and covered in mud. I want a guaranteed two stars or maybe three if I’m being charitable for some of the interesting twiddly bits in the background.
1001Albums: Have I got an album for you!
The rest of the album has songs musing about Madonna’s mother and father, and one about the importance of her siblings, showing her to have maybe reached a settled place in her life. Musically, it’s pure pop with touches of soul and gospel, but it doesn’t quite reach the heights of her 90’s reinvention with Ray of Light.
I would have given this four stars, but I’d forgotten just how toe-curlingly awful the final track Act of Contrition was. What was she thinking?
Madge-tastic!
In the case of Hüsker Dü they went from a hardcore early 80s punk band into something a bit more nuanced with a run of critically acclaimed and thoroughly enjoyable albums. By this album though, Bob Mould had had enough of drummer Grant Hart’s drug use leading to them writing songs separately for this double album and there’s a feeling of tying up loose ends, knowing that the end was near.
The final result is perfectly fine, but it feels padded out and it’s just not the best Hüsker Dü album, making this an odd choice. Listen to Candy Apple Grey and then move on to Bob Mould’s next project Sugar, but put this one in the pile for completists and historical interest.
What they got was a blistering live set from virtuoso musicians playing at the top of their game as if they were being paid by the note. The downside is that the songs are dragged out in quite a self indulgent way - just seven songs on a seventy minute double album, with the closing Space Truckin’ filling 20 minutes on side 4.
One for the fans and completists I think.
Top marks also for the song Cool as Kim Deal which I can relate too. I’m something of a Johnny come lately Pixies fan since starting listening to this list and it’s nice to hear that the Dandies are too.
A bigger problem is that the version of Tutti Frutti on this album doesn’t have any of the in-your-face energy and attitude of Little Richard’s original. Adding it all up, you are getting less than half an hour of cover songs that are not quite as good as the originals, but they just happened to catch the zeitgeist and open the door for rock and roll to reach the predominantly white mainstream audience.
Blue-suede-shoes-tastic!
They are most entertaining post-punk/garage rock sung and played with considerable enthusiasm. Nothing revolutionary, but they sound like a lot of fun and looking up clips on YouTube shows that they are indeed an excellent live band - not quite main stage headliners but there’s nothing wrong with that.
There is a lot of wistful longing and introspection here, as he muses on ideas of growing and changing from childhood to adulthood, his relationship with his father, and the state of the world obsessed with materialism at the expense of everything else. It’s easy to see the roots of his spiritual journey here that lead him to Islam and changing his name to Yusef Islam.
He ended leaving music for some time and was caught up in some controversies (that seem to be down to wilful misquoting out of context by tabloids), but it seems that he has returned to his music in recent years, emphasising the peaceful and moderate side of his faith.
There is one very inadvisable use of the N word, but front man and writer Jeffrey Pierce was mixed race so we can probably let that one slide, as well as waiving the usual caveats about white people playing the blues. There was enough here to keep me listening and also wanting to explore some more of their albums - Patricia Morrison was part of the band later on, as a bass player pre Sisters of Mercy.
Cowpunk-tastic!
