Reviews by applaud01

Kind of the answer to the burning question, "What would Tslking Heads have sounded like if Brian Eno hadn't played them a Fela Kuti album?"

Original post punk pop-rock and nothing wrong with that.

Starts from the point where Bowie's Low, Talking Heads Fear of Music and The Velvet Underground and Nico intersect and then gets morose about it.

As strange as it is poetic, it's a memorable, if not entirely pleasant experience.

Absolutely heartbreaking.

Her voice was always described as "distinctive" and was a smoky, throaty sound without the sheer beauty of Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughan, but with a virtuosic improvisational skill and control.

By this stage, at the very end of her too short life, the absolute control of her voice was still there, but years of chain smoking, alcohol and heroin had stolen much of her upper register and power.

To anyone used to the recordings she made in the 1940s , the first few notes of her singing here will be a shock. She sounds hoarse and gravelly, even while the grace notes and improvisational flourishes are still there.

Of course, she's past her prime and the voice is a kind of a ruin. But this is, quite literally, the sound of someone dying. A year later she was diagnosed with cirrhosis and six months after that she was dead at 44. On her very last album she had a nurse with her to prop her so she didn't fall from the recording stool.

It's almost impossible to give this a star rating. Is it a great, or even good, recording? Is it even an enjoyable experience? Probably not. But I don't think you can rate this in that way.

The sheer emotion of hearing a great artist, at the end of her life, having suffered abuse and racism for all of it, still giving all she has, makes this overwhelming.

5 stars for the Lady still singing.

The run of albums the Stones produced from Beggar's Banquet to Exile on Main Street forms their Imperial Phase - when their claim to be "The Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World" was not just indisputable, it was self-evident.

Slap bang in the middle of it comes Sticky Fingers. The riffs are ear worms, waiting to attack. The playing is razor sharp. The cover art is appropriately sleazy. The guitar solos - particularly Mick Taylor's on Can't You Hear Me Knocking - are masterful. The songs are all brilliant.

Well, almost all the songs. I fear we need to talk about the racist, misogynistic, sadistic celebration of slavery that is "Brown Sugar". Musically it's a glorious thing. But if ever the lyrics WERE appropriate (and that's doubtful) time has not been kind. Even the Stones have decided to stop performing it.

So this would have been 5 stars, but pro slavery, misogyny means it loses a star. And that's being generous.

Big stupid album that's skin deep all the way to the bone.

Just how shallow is it all?

They fill the album with sexual innuendo and songs about little girls creeping down alleys and lock up your daughters coz 42yo Tyler's in town and then come out with a song about Child Sexual Abuse that's, I guess, meant to show their deeply socially conscious credentials.

Their message seems to be; The only thing that can stop a bad man with an erection is a good girl with a gun.

A ridiculous album. (Not in a good way)

Okay, a confessions. I listened to the 10 songs that were on the original release. The other 5 or 6 dozen I skipped.

I made a note when listening to the first few tracks "If the Hollies did punk" and it did seem to be some sort of missing link between 60s British Invasion pop and the later Britpop.

Probably R.E.M. had a listen as well.

But then we hit "I've Got the Hots" and it went sideways into Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd whimsy - even to the point of a Psychedelia instrumental. And the less said about "Old Pervert" the better.

I saw them described as "quirky" and "unique", which probably true, but the 10 songs on the original album.gave me no reason to go on to the expanded edition.

It's not like Metallica are renowned for subtlety, restraint and a shy, retiring nature. But this thing is the length of two Mahler Symphonies. "Yessongs" and "Welcome Back My Friends To the Show That Never Ends" - both frequently cited as prime examples of prog rock excess and self-indulgence - were both shorter.

When you've out-indulgenced Emerson Lake & Palmer then maybe consider your life choices.

I don't doubt that if you were there on the night this changed your life.

But at this distance, taking already maximalist metal and adding orchestral backing that sounds as if it's trying to be the next James Bond soundtrack seems like a recipe for musical heartburn.

Can't deny that the Orchestra plays its socks off and Metallica seem to be taking it all very seriously - although, when do they not? - and giving it plenty, but you know, enough is as good as a feast.

By the 11th album you're supposed to be doing "An Isley Christmas" or "The Isley Brothers Sing the Music of Pat Boone". You're certainly not meant to be going this hard!

Great guitar and harmony vocals in some very funky tracks. Their cover of "Listen to the Music" is clearly superior to the original and the guitar solo on, of all things, Seals and Crofts "Summer Breeze" will melt your face off.

There were two go to session piano players in London: Nicky Hopkins and Steve Winwood.

Winwood played with everyone from Howling Wolf to Hendrix to Paul Weller.
He was in two hit making groups; Spencer Davis and Traffic, as well as two "Super Groups": Blind Faith and Ginger Baker's Air Force. (Three Super Groups if you count the band Townsend put together to support Clapton in his come back Rainbow Concert.)

So what happened here?

As a solo artist he proves to be a sort of less interesting Phil Collins, just as Collins is a less interesting Peter Gabriel.

The first song - While You See a Chance - is perfectly fine, but after that it just becomes a dull soup of synths, keyboards and assorted instruments.

Winwood plays and sings every note and you have to give credit for the virtuosity. But it's a pretty dull affair.

Probably the greatest pop album ever recorded by people not called John, Paul, George or Ringo.

Of course it comes with a built in mythology. The break ups! The cocaine! The time they spent! Again, only The Beatles with The White Album and Let it Be can compete.

The studio production and the performances are as close to perfect as these things get. The harmonies are stunning. When John McVie and Mick Fleetwood lock in their rhythm section is peerless.

To be picky, you wonder if the glossy sheen of the production isn't making a few of the songs seem better than they really are.

And people who find Lindsey Buckingham's voice a bit annoying might just have a point.

But this is the 70s served up on a beautiful silver platter.

Okay, so rap definitely is my blindspot.

Listened, went "yep", moved on.

Well let's say at the start that from the Wiki article he sounds like a pretty despicable person and when Papa Wemba is sitting right there, is this actually an album I need to hear?

Musically fine when it does the Afro-funk, but there are several tracks where it seems to aim at Afro-yacht Rock - more Charles Aznavour than Fela Kuti - and do we need that?

I had never heard of The XX. From the name I somehow got the impression of something all doom and gloom and maybe metal.

Completely wrong. It was light, bright, poppy stuff that sounded enjoyable. The two voices thing was a nice surprise and the playing was pretty good.

Having said that, after listening to it, I am having trouble remembering anything specific about it.

So, light bright poppy stuff that went in one ear and straight out the other.

I mean, it's okay, but I'm fairly sure I heard all this back in the days of Ultravox and The Cocteau Twins.

Probably doesn't quite escape the charge of being "Amy Winehouse for nice people", but there's no denying the power of her voice, the perìfection of the production and the quality of the songs.

On the surface it's full of pretty songs, but there's real anger and strength in them lurking under the surface, the sound of a woman in pain taking back her independence.

Sure, at times (Set Fire to the Rain) it goes into melodrama. And perhaps the polish of the sound could have been grittier to match the content. She never reaches Etta James or Sarah Vaughan levels of power for instance.

And 11 songs about broken relationships is maybe going on a bit, particularly when it gets a bit mopey towards the end.

But it has to be said that Rolling in the Deep makes a brilliant single, Rumour Has It and Someone Like You are astonishing songs and this whole album is a hell of a thing for a 21 year old to produce.

If ever there was a "not for everyone" warning needed, it would be for this.

By this stage of Waits Career he was doing exactly whatever he wanted to do. Coming on like a Gospel preacher, sideshow Carney, shouting about Tony Franciosa dating his ma, singing something as delicate as "Who are you" or howling that the Earth died or whispering about a man who can kill with a guitar stringg

The instrumentation is heavy on percussion- or at least, things being hit - and the instruments are banjos, Salvation Army brass and lap steel guitars. When someone does play a regular guitar it doesn't sound the way it should.

"I don't want to be a little Boy Scout," he sings. There's no chance of that. Exactly what he is, other than just Tom Waits, is a bit hard to describe. But we're blessed to have him.

Well let's get the obvious out of the way. He is UK Kanye. Not Kid Rock, Kid Britpop.

And miserable? Sad, morose, self loathing. Is there any reason why people would want to listen to this level of depressing?

Here in Australia The Smiths and Morrisey didn't make a huge impression as far as I know. "How Soon is Now?" and "This Charming Man" were hipster fare, buy they were essentially niche. Too British, too introvert. Too miserable.

Sure, the playing on this is impeccable. The musicians are top notch and giving it plenty.

But the songs - the lyrics - are the sort of thing a self absorbed 16 year old might produce in order to come third at his school's Slam Poetry Competition. They thud out of the speakers like lead and just sit there, with a level off triteness and inconsequentiality that's extraordinary. Just appallingly badly written.

And then there's Bengali in Platforms. As someone said in another review: "Fuck that Racist Shit!"

It was bad anyway and the racism is the curdled cream on top.

Miles Davis's Bitches Brew, In a Silent Way and Jack Johnson are like the Dead Sea Scrolls of Jazz Fusion music. They're foundation documents, but they were kind of overlooked at the time.

And they need a bit of work to get into. If you listen to an album like On the Corner, as brilliant as it is, you'll think "What is this?" on first listen.

Head Hunters manages the trick of being just as funky, just as jazzy, just as experimental as Miles Davis, (well, nearly as) while also being immediately appealing.

From the first notes, that skipping bass riff, it just tickles the ears and makes you feel good.

All four tracks have room to stretch out and try things. The blown bottles on Watermelon Man, the stop start nature of Sly, the slow build of Vein Melter, the synthy goodness of Chameleon. The way the whole album uses the clavinet.

The playing is virtuosic. Hancock, of course, can do no wrong, but the other players are superb.

This probably sold more copies than allbfour of Davis's fusion records put together and essentially took the ideas on those records and presented them in a palatable and brilliant way. A classic.

Proof, if proof was needed, that not everything recorded in 1967 is a classic worth remembering. Here we have an album that even the band thought was disappointing.

Rushed into the studio to cash in on the moderate success of their two singles, they had their own songs sidelined and were given a set of songs by commercial songwriters and, inexplicably, a cover of a 1932 show tune.

It seems to be a story of a band thinking they were important artists and the label seeing them as the songwriters vehicle.

The album is all over the shop. There's some Psychedelia, a protest song, some soft, chart friendly love songs, a couple of novelty hits and the one song the band did write pretty much convinces you that they were better off with the label's writers.

Probably the best things on the record are the two singles and Try Me On For Size, which is musically fine, although, to be honest, the lyrics are of the 60s, creepy, just-a-bit-rapey variety that passed for manly, tough guy that the girls can't pass up in 67.

So its a bit of a label cash on a sort of successful band, with the singles, some future singles and a bit of filler. To be clear, for every Revolver, or Blonde on Blonde, there were probably 50 albums made like this. The question remains, of course, why is it on this list? I pause for a reply.

Ideal for those who wish Joni Mitchell's jazz period albums like "Don Juan's Restless Daughter" and "Mingus" sounded a bit more like George Benson or Boz Scaggs.

Jazz Rock polished to the point of smooth sterility, it's an audiophile wet dream.

Magnificent playing from the very best session players, lush harmonies, but we're a very long way away from "Ricky Don't Lose That Number" or "Reelin' in the Years" and not necessarily the better for it.