Reviews by applaud01

Full of influences folk, jazz, country-rock, r&b, blues gospel ssand probably anything else that Van thought of.

When it's good it's perfect, but there a couple of songs that don't quite measure up. So you have an album where Into the Mystic and Crazy Love sit alongside These Dreams of You and Everyone.

But when it's good - wow!

Nico had the slightest, most delicate and fragile of talents and her finest moments were I'll be Your Mirror, Femme Fatale and All Tomorrow's Parties on the Velvet Underground's debut.

But this largely ignored and forgotten work, her first solo album, comes close to those three icy masterpieces.

Her singing voice is, at best, strangely withdrawn and more or less tuneful. Still, as the song goes, "It doesn't matter if you sing out of tune/So long as you're German"

The orchestration on the songs - acoustic guitar, strings, occasionally an organ or a flute - just add to the Gothic decadence of it all.

With John Cale & Lou Reed there are moments of real beauty and, let's face it, outright weirdness.

You get the impression that she might not quite understand all of the lyrics she's singing, although Cale's and Reed's lyrics are not exactly transparent.

There's only one genuine stinker here though: Eulogy for Lenny Bruce. Morbid and dull, I'm afraid. And Tim Hardin, who wrote it, is not John Cale.

But that dull track aside, this is endlessly fascinating and more than a little bizarre. Like that's a bad thing!

Slinky guitar riffs in a Groove, often with singing and all of it looping and loping along.

It often slips into a Glass / Reich style minimalism. Other tracks seem to be built from the same raw materials blues guitar.

Beautiful playing of great music.

So Close.

The replacement of Trevor Rabin by Steve Howe meant the band took a giant leap forward in technical prowess and composition. They moved from the cover song and the 3½ minute pop song into the complex world of prog rock.

Howe's guitar is a wonder, Squire's bass is like a growling animal, Bruford's drumming is nimble - although his Kimf Crimson stint is where he would really shine - but the thing the album shows though is how much Wakeman was needed to launch them into the legend I saturated my ears with in my wasted youth.

The songs themselves are very fine examples of prog rock, but would become monsters when Wakeman joined and took them on tour.

If Close to the Edge and Roundabout are the great Prog Classics then this is like a first draft. Very fine as a starting place, but oh they places they would go.

Look, I'm sure there are people who think this is a masterpiece, but I'm too old, too white, too Australian, too smoke free to actually understand any of this.

I'm giving it a three, because I don't know if it's good, bad or indifferent.

In the first line of the first song Cave sings, "I don't believe in a interventionist God" and we're off! Off on a tour where Nick gives us a chance to admire his cleverness almost as much as he does.

The songs are each as deeply miserable and dark as each other. Somewhere Morrisey is saying, "You just need to cheer up dude!"

It's the ideal soundtrack album for the sad and lonely - ABBA for the depressed.

Gifted with a facility for gorgeous melody and partnered with a man capable of writing brilliant lyrics Elton John seems to have everything he needs to create his masterpiece, except the taste to know when enough is enough.

The album starts with 11 minutes of sub Vangelis pomposity that wears out its welcome fairly quickly. Less is more.

Benny and the Jets goes on long after making its point.

And I know that you're not supposed to say this, but if the filler like Danny Bailey or Sweet Painted Lady got cut and a few songs were judiciously trimmed, then this could have been a single album.

Grey Seal is musically gorgeous,but I defy anyone to say what it's actually about.
The album sort of performs a magic trick off having the great material so very good that the lesser stuff ("Roy Rogers" for example) just vanishes before your eyes.

Of course it's a great album. But it's not half uneven.

The first four songs and Heart of Glass are pure pop ecstasy and the others are pretty much okay - if they didn't have the hits to contend with they'd be perfectly fine.

Blonde, of course, were CBGB alumni, but their love of 60s pop meant they were a sort of Punk Archies. (That's hardly a negative.)

Fade Away and Radiate even heads into some sort of Punk/Prog hybrid, with a guest appearance by the Crimson King of Prog, Robert Fripp.

The best known song is,of course, Heart of Glass, which might have started as a smart arse disco parody, but became a disco classicc instead.

Bratty, snotty nosed and unruly, but very satisfying.

Having been to the limit on Zooropa and Pop they come back and apply what they found to their earlier work.

The first four tracks here are absolute bangers. Mullen and Clayton are the rhythm section of your dreams and lay down the foundations for The Edge to, well, be The Edge.

But once the ballads hit the thing gets a lot more variable. They are some great moments, but some clunkers as well. (Can we say "Peace on Earth" kids?)

New York sounds a bit like its mostly introduction while the big moments disappear as soon as they start.

I'm going to suggest that Bono maybe wasn't putting all his effort into some of the lyrics.

But it's not a bad way to spend an hour

Quintessential essence of 60s.

There is probably a straight line from this to Blur singing "Common People".

It's either a satire of "Things aren't what they were before the war" Britain, or it actually IS saying "Things aren't what they were before the War".

Either way it's full of Music Hall and Mrs Mills and Knees Up Mother Brown and good old fashioned times.

It's probably important and influential, but not being British, it's a bit hard to care.

A good front man - Robert Plant, Souxsie Sue, David Byrne - can hold a band together.

Morrissey just holds his band back.

The rhythm section is tight, the guitar is consistently interesting and inventive, but over the top of it all wafts Morrissey, whining away at his inept, self indulgent, self flagellating lyrics.

"Frankly, Mr Shankly, I didn't know you wrote such bloody awful poetry," he sings and pots and kettles everywhere stop calling each other black, appalled at his audacity.

He claims to have Wilde in his side, but I'm waiting to hear what Wilde has to say.

Better than Morrisey's solo work, but that's a low bar.

Springsteen confronts a nation's demons and his own, armed with only a guitar and a harmonica.

He goes to look for America and finds serial killers, dead dogs on the side of the road, petty criminals, empty houses and disappointment.

Hardly a likeable, fun album, but certainly an immensely powerful, chilling reverie. Incredibly impressive, even if it's hard to enjoy.

The Rolling Stones comparisons are all very well, but they're more like a photocopy of a photocopy of a Stones Tribute act.

It's old fashioned foot stompin' good time music.

They take a song like Have You Seen My Baby - which Randy Newman sang on his 12 Songs album with a sort of defeated resignation and turn it into a rollicking barn stormer.

On Evil Hearted Ada they simply channel Elvis's great Mystery Train, only not as well.

Their rewrite of Robert Johnson's mean spirited 32-20 Blues brightens it up and turns down the nastiness, not to its benefit.

Sure it's a good time, but it's no Exile on Main Street.

I'd say it was Dad Rock, but given Tyler's record as a Dad... perhaps not.

Aerosmith seen to have heard the Stones sing Bitch and Rip This Joint and said "Well we can do that."

The big song here is Walk This Way, but, be honest, the performance you want is with Run-DMC.

Guns and Roses, Def Leppard, Metallica and others have all taken the Stones based template set by Aerosmith and, to be frank, they've done a better job of it.

Two or three songs on here - Tiny Dancer, Holiday Inn, Madman Across the Water - are about as good as songs get.

Perhaps not a great song, but definitely worth mentioning, is All the Nasties, a song about "what would I do, and how would they react, if I told them about my secret" which, in hindsight, is about as open as Elton got back then about his sexuality.

Elton's melodies and singing are very strong and Buckmasters arrangements are pretty stunning.

The weak link in the chain for this, remarkably, is the usually solid Bernie Taupin, who let's his Americana thing run away with him and also indulges a tendency towards over writing.

Goodbye, Levon and Rotten Peaches are prime examples - all symbolism and cowboys and self importance.

Levon, however, is rescued by the brilliance of the music and the arrangement.

And the less said about the cosplay of Indian Sunset the better.

The whole "guitar/drum duo" things means that The White Stripes is the obvious reference point. It's tempting to suggest "White Stripes without the originality", but that might be selling them a bit short.

It's a solid album with several big hits. If you were around in 2010 then you'll probably listen and think "Oh, that song! I haven't thought about it in years!"

Which is kind of the way it is: enjoyable, competent, but not particularly distinctive.

Unlike anything else.

Hell, it's so eclectic that it's barely like itself.

Brian Eno's idiosyncrasies with the synth and tapes are the obvious standout, but Manzanera's guitar (his work on Chance Meeting is amazing) and Mackay's saxophone and (of all things) oboe deserve more than a mention.

And, of course, Brian Ferry is doing his "Dirk Bogarde impersonates Snagglepuss singing lounge music" act.

It's all faintly decadent and a bit unhealthy and curdled.

But an album that can include the chaos of Remake/Remodel; the cool nostalgia of 2HB; and the "What the Hell is that?" of The Bob has got something to confuse everyone.

Like a less restrained Ziggy Stardust, or a camp Pink Floyd, it's an indispensable album for anyone trying to understand glam, art-rock and even punk.

Undeniable virtuoso playing, but you wonder if they end up with more sizzle than sausage.

There's a bit of "sound and fury, signifying nothing" going on.

The vocals have the quality of a squeezed testicle and the "More radio friendly" songs can sound a bit "The Police play the Hits of Pink Floyd"

If you're looking for jaw dropping playing then look no further. If you're looking for depth then jog on.

Generic 60s blues Psychedelia with one song that's well known because Joe Cocker dddidd a better version and another song about under-age sex.

Can we just agree that any album with a song about an under age groupie automatically makes it one star?

Tried listening and it put me to sleep. What I remember hearing seemed inoffensive.