Reviews by applaud01

So you're a British lad from Lancashire.

You form a band.

You name it after an Anerican First Nation.

Your band plays black American funk based largely on Stevie Wonder, Earth Wing & Fire and Motown.

Your band includes an Australian Aboriginal instrument and you have it played by a Jamaican musician.

You dress for the stage in First Nation feathered head dresses

You're kind of a poster boy for cultural colonialism.

It's all very slick and polished, but when it's really easy to listen to Talking Book and Head Hunters and George Clinton and Marvin and Tammy then you have to ask "Why?"

There's a half way decent 35 minute album hiding in here somewhere, but this didn't need to be nearly an hour and a half long.

Excellent playing, although it doesnt quite get away from the idea that P-Funk did it first, but some of the songs are pretty ordinary and whoever told Keidis that he could write lyrics needs to reconsider their life choices. Most of them are at the level of "Baa Baa Motherfuckin' Black Sheep."

I'm thinking the Greatest Hits compilation might fill my Chili Pepper needs

A Jewish Doctor's son from New York who ran away with the rodeo to be a cowboy, Ramblin' Jack seems to have known everyone, from Woody Guthrie and Reverend Gary Davis to Dylan and Arlo Guthrie. A number of the songs he sings were also sung by Lead Belly (who was also fond of a spoken, explanatory introduction, particularly on the Smithsonian recordings)

His influence on the early Dylan is obvious.

His simple, traditional songs are presented with that spoken intro and some tasty acoustic guitar.

It's sort of simple, old fashioned goodness set squarely in an Americana, roots tradition.

Like a prototype Tom Waits, Dr John performs a bizarre ritual.

Too strange to be totally successful, but you'll probably remember it.

If your view of Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders is based on the big ballad hits - Brass in Pocket, Hymn to Her, I go to Sleep, I'll Stand Beside You - then the punk energy of the beginning and the first five songs of this album is going to come as a shock.

All snarling vocals and furious guitars with tricky rhythms and time signatures

It runs out of steam towards the end, but it's a great first half.

Intensely personal and politically charged, O'Connor raises the confessional to the sublime

Of course, Nothing Compares 2 U is the standout, but Black Boys on Mopeds, Emperors New Clothes, the amazing I am Stretched on Your Grave and Jump on the River all come close to equalling it.

You Cause as Much Sorrow, written, apparently, about her late mother and The Last Day of Our Acquaintance, about the end of her marriage are jaw dropping in their frankness.

The final song, the title track, is achingly beautiful, like a modern folk song sung a capella. Absolute master work. And she was, what, 23 when she made it?

From the first track, which sounds like a Tin Machine tribute act, you realise that this is Morrissey trying something different.

The second track, a sort of Jean Genie derivative, makes you suspect that what he's trying is to be Bowie.

A few songs in and you understand that he might be trying something different and Glam, but what he's not trying to be is good.

They're not the Messiah

They're just a very average band.

Immediate 5 stars with the caveat that this is not really a collection to sit down and swallow in one bite. But listen to it in short snatches and you get the greatest voice of the 20th Century singing some of the greatest songs of the 20th Century in arrangements by the incomparable Nelson Riddle.

If I'm being completely honest I prefer the Cole Porter set, because I like Cole Porter. But there's nothing to criticise here. Even Ira Gershwin said he hadn't realised how good the songs were until he heard Ella sing them. And yes, the "Best of" selection does make more sense.

But what a box of treasure!

A splash of Led Zeppelin, a dash of Hendrix, a soupçon of Steppenwolf, quite a bit of Cream and behold: Deep Purple Mk2.

It's all bit excessive and a little ridiculous. Their previous album, after all, was the complete nonsense of a Concerto for Rock Group and Orchestra.

Everything is slightly too loud, slightly too fast, slightly too dramatic.

It has everything going for it except good taste. Lots of fun, if you don't take it seriously.

Not the worst thing ever, but it has an air of being The Bits Moby Rejected.

Some of it would grace any dentist's waiting room.

A last trip to the well for Ziggy and the Spiders from Mars.

The biggest difference in the sound is Mike Garson's angular, splintered jazz piano.

There are great songs here. Watch That Man is as good an opener as anything ever written. Cracked Actor is a vicious slab of curdled rock. Jean Genie is a retro wonder. Drive In Saturday and Panic in Detroit are outstanding.

The title track, (with its eyebrow raising "1913 - 1938 - 197?") sounds almost Steely Dan until Garson launches into an astonishing piano solo that stops the show. It's an amazing thing.

But did we really need the overwritten Berlin Cabaret of "Time"? And a burlesque show Stones Cover?

It doesn't have the strong through concept of Ziggy Stardust to hold it all together and you get the feeling that maybe Bowie is looking for something new to try.

For anyone else this would be a 5 tar album. But for Bowie it's not his absolute best.

So let's get the story straight.

In 1985 three lads, with the band name Napalm Death, head into a studio and record a bunch of hardcore punk tracks.

These don't get released.

A year later the three lads have argued, got bored, joined other bands and by now, all that's left of the Napalm Death that recorded those tracks is the name and the drummer.

With three new lads added they head back into the studio. But this Napalm Death is no longer interested in Hardcore Punk and instead record Grindcore Metal. But they don't record enough to fill an album, so the tracks recorded the previous year are added, to produce an album of 28 songs, with a runtime of 33 minutes. (The shortest song on the album lasts 1 second)

The result is an album where the A-side and the B-side are essentially two different works - you know, exactly like Kate Bush did in Hounds of Love.

It's actually really difficult to rate this.

Everything is at maximum all the time. The vocals are at maximum screaming to the point off just being a sound like the Muppet's Animal after a few drinks. (DICTION, PLEASE! As my old singing teacher would say.)

The guitars are so distorted that it's difficult to tell whether they were intended to sound this way or were just really badly recorded or recorded on faulty equipment. Whatever happened they become a wash of feedback and distorted noise.

Everything is at maximum volume at maximum speed for maximum impact.

So let's be honest, is it any good?

Well, no. It's badly recorded, possibly badly performed and sounds like a relentless assault on the ears.

By any normal standards it's a 1 star album.

But being good probably isn't the aim here. It's MEANT to be relentless assault on the ears. And on that level it succeeds brilliantly. It's either meant to sound the way it does or it was a happy accident that they liked so much the first time that they did it again a year later.

It's probably not an album you're going to reach for often (if ever again) but it certainly is worth experiencing.

At times it's as if Tangerine Dream were the backing band for the Beach Boys.

Sort of "non-songs" with layer after layer of synths and samples behind some quite lush vocal harmonies.

The result is a dense sound that teeters on the edge of chaos.

Needs a bit of work to listen to, but certainly rewarding.

Simply Red are one of those bands that just gets overlooked. You forget that at one point in the 80s they were everywhere.

You remember "Holding Back the Years" and think they were a bit One Hit Wonder and it comes as a surprise just how many hits they had.

Money's Too Tight to Mention; Open up the Red Box; If You Don't Know me By Now... all huge. And some - like Stars - that I'd forgotten even existed and then heard it and thought "Was that them as well?"

I don't think it's possible to deny that Hucknell has a beautiful voice. But some of the choices they make on this album are pretty questionable.

Covering a Fear of Music era Talking Heads song? As a soul ballad? It just doesn't work.

Other songs (Come to my Aid fir example) start out sounding like soul love songs and then veer into a political stance that seems simplistic at best.

Some songs, like Sad Old Red, are just nor very good.

Where it does all comer together, like on Holding Back the Years, it's very fine, but too often you get something like Money's Too Tight to Mention, a cover of the far superior Valentine Brothers song.

The whole thing is dripping in tinny 80s synth sounds, hoping you'll think they're the brass section, or drum machines that sound a lot like... well... drum machines.

So it's mixture of a great voice, weird choices and dodgy production. Hardly essential.

All Directions. There's probably an argument for suggesting that their follow up album be called "Pick a Lane". To say that this veers wildly is probably an understatement.

From the angry, racially confrontational, white flight sneer of "Run Charlie Run" at one extreme to the perfectly and sweetly sung "First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" is quite the range. You can't record "Run Charlie Run" and "I Ain't Got Nothing" (I don't care about politics, I just care about love) and claim to have a cohesive vision.

But who cares about cohesion, when you record "Papa Was a Rolling Stone"?What an amazing 12 minutes it is. And if nothing else on the album is quite as good, what of it?

Takes The Beatles, The Kinks, The Who and The Hollies (and even a touch of Pink Floyd, when the fly from UmmaGumma makes a cameo) and filters them all through the anger of Thatcherite Britain.

Very much a product of its time and place, but still, extremely good for what it is.

Coming directly out of the Black Lives Matter movement, this is minimalist R&B tinged with Gospel and trip hop.

The songs are more like Chants, with simple, repetitive lyrics that are deeply black-centric.

As an expression of the Black experience of systemic racism and inequity it's probably up there with the great songs that came out of the 60s civil rights movement.

At tthe same time it's affirming about the positives of being black.

It's like a stash of Molotov cocktails wrapped up in the chilliest music.

One of the best - if not the best - album of the 1980s. Also probably Kate Bush's best album.

The first half has Track after track of beautiful songs that will also either get you up to dance or have you in some trance state.

The second half is more experimental, with spoken word, choirs, eastern European singers, ambient sounds.

Everyone knows about Running Up That Hill and how Stranger Things brought it back to everyone's attention. But The Big Sky is even better. And Jig of Life - all traditional Irish music and a lyric about the older version of a woman coming back to visit her younger self - is astonishing.

This is intelligent, beautifully crafted, and a masterwork.

Probably the best of its type. Outstanding Musicianship and virtuoso playing.

Perhaps better listened to in sections as hearing it in one sitting does get a bit relentlessly samey over the course of an hour. And, now that you mention it, an hour does seem to test its welcome.

And it is let down a little by the lyrics, which are of the Satanic-Cthulu-Insane-Overwrought-Melodrama style.

However, it could probably be bottled as a testosterone booster.