Reviews by applaud01

It seems a bit unfair that one man has this much talent.

There's a concert video of him performing songs from this album and it shows him hitting the stage and working the crowd like a mix of James Brown, Jimi Hendrix and Cab Calloway. It's amazing to watch.

There are songs here that are as good as anything Michael Jackson ever did and the album probably should be mentioned in the same breath as Innervisions or Songs in the Key of Life as peak R&B.

It might be suggested that some of the songs go on a bit long, but when the grooves are this tight - and no-one could hit a Groove like Prince - who's complaining?

Spirituality, politics, sex, relationships, more sex - it's all here and it's all good.

Masterpiece.

Listened to the EP on Youtube.

On paper - four young punks discover distortion and play really loud - this should be better than it is in reality.

Because in reality you come up against the fact that they're no Nirvana. The vocals are a bit weak and the guitar is a bit one trick pony.

Fine, but a bit meh

Of course this is absolutely expert pop music.

Just on a simply musical level this is going to score high.

The One Two punch of Bad and The Way You Make Me Feel is an industrial strength opener and Speed Demon isn't far behind.

But Liberian Girl, with its Swahili intro and "I'm in love with an African woman" theme sets a bit odd coming from someone who seems to have paid a lot of money to look like a white man.

And asking the Man in in the Mirror to change his ways seems uncomfortably confessional, given what would come out later about what exactly "his ways" were.

I Can't Stop Loving You is another of Michael's long line of soppy, middle of the road, oh so sensitive love songs. First "Ben" now this.

Dirty Diana hasn't aged well at all. It's another one of those songs about band groupies and aren't they always a great idea?

Smooth Criminal seems to be a chance to get down and Boogie to the story of a woman being murdered. Fun times.

And this was kind of the beginning of the end. From here on the weirdness only increased and the stories just got stranger until he was more a punchline than a star.

Famously, Creedence released three albums in a single year. This is the first of them and you can't help but think that they were holding back the best for later, because this album doesn't scream "overflowing with exciting new ideas".

For a start it has seven songs spread over 30 minutes. And since 15 of those 30 minuted are taken up with what are essentially 2 jams, it's not promising.

And a cover version of Good Golly Miss Molly doesn't make it seem like you've got so many songs you don't know where to begin.

A couple of the other songs seem a bit like filler. Penthouse Pauper is competent blues, but not much more than that.

Okay it's got Proud Mary and Born on the Bayou, but after that it gets a bit thin.

It's an enjoyable listen and never less than that, but there are certainly other CCR albums you'd reach for first.

Once upon a time there was a band called Faces. They were, as Rod Stewart, their lead singer said, "fond of a drink" and were noted for ragged and affably sloppy performances that were nothing if not a good time.

When Stewart began to record solo albums he managed to bring the band along with him, so, for example, this album has appearances from all the members of Faces and Ronnie Wood , the Faces guitarist, is co-writer of several tracks on it.

Whereas a Faces album is the band with Rod as their singer, this album is Rod with the Faces members as his band.

This is Stewart before he went disco, and polished and sappy. Here he's a bit folk, a bit country, a lot rock and roll and a lot genuinely emotional.

Listen to Only a Hobo or Jo's Lament and we're hearing something much deeper than "Hot Legs" or "Tonight's the Night".

Then, as a last, trick, he takes a lesser known Little Richard song - You're my girl (I don't wanna discuss it) - and with Ronnie Wood cooks up a funk driven riff that could lifted from a much heavier band.

A genuinely decent and enjoyable listen

Aside from the Beatles, it's difficult to think of a band that had a run of albums like Pink Floyd did from Dark Side of the Moon to The Wall. Maybe the Stones from Beggar's Banquet to Exile on Main Street.

Each of these albums - Dark Side; this one; Animals; and The Wall - are solid, absolute, stone cold classics and whichever you prefer the other three are equally as good.

This is a meditation on Syd Barrett, on the Music industry and about being creative artists when you're getting demands for hits.

Dark Side of the Moon had propelled Floyd to a level.that few, if any bands, ever reach. There was certainly a push for them to produce Dark Side 2 ( More Dark, More Moony)

The band resisted and produced this completely different album.

Two long tracks instead of the pop radio friendly numbers on DSOTM, a guest vocalist, some of the most poetic lyrics they ever wrote.

Of course it's 5.stars and maybe an extra invisible star for resisting the temptation to just repeat the successful pattern.

I know there are many who worship at the shrine, but the Smiths have never done anything for me.

Sure the Musicianship is fine, and Johnny Marr's guitar playing is never less than interesting. But over the top of this you have old misery guts himself. His Loneliness The Mope, Morrisey.

His lyrics seem, at first sight, a bit ropey, but on closer inspection fail to live up to that level. His singing is mannered at best and his personality so overbearing that everything else is just background

If it doers ir for you then go your hardest, but I think there are things I enjoy more.

PS: Morrisey is a dick

The first album was all dreamy harmonies and beautiful tunes.

Then along comes Neil Young and puts some grit and grunge in.

You know lots of these tunes already. It can get a bit summer of love and love is the answer, but that grit does its job.

And Helpless really is one of the best songs ever written.

It's Otis Redding. Its Booker T and the MGs. It's Soul Music. It's a 5. No notes.

However...

Even better than this is the Monteray Festival set, where he sings 5 songs and tears the Roof of in 20 minutes. People talk about Hendrix at Monteray, but Otis was just as good.

I was unaware of this artist. But reading his Wikipedia page showed an enormously talented performer, composer, writer and thinker working across multiple genres and highly successful I'm all of them.

The album arrives dripping with significance: a concept album about the Shadow of the Nuclear Bomb.

And yet, for all that, it hits the ear sounding like a watered down Massive Attack, without an ounce of their richness and complexity.

It promises big, but it's really a bit generic and dull.

Big dumb fun thats like a party in your pocket.

It's hardly deep and it's sloppy, but it bangs so hard.

If you're not having a good time with this then I feel sorry for you.

I enjoyed this more than I thought I would.

Clever use of electronics with a touch of subcontinental beats.

It's Abbey Road, isn't it, so 5 stars immediately.

Whether you think it's their greatest work or not will depend a bit on how you respond to Maxwell and his Hammer and that funny Octopus.

But in other places (the whole of the second half) they ascend to a level of pop perfection that few, if any, have ever reached.

An awe inspiring piece of work.

The last time I came across The Divine Comedy they were backing Ute Lemper on an album that was so overcooked as to be just unpleasant.

And so here they are again with a sound that seems like a Broadway show tune that didn't know when to say "enough".

That melodrama is at the service of songs that display all the wit and profundity of a toothpaste jingle.

All that meat and no potatoes.

The band is tight, playing the sort of retro 60s punkish, sub-Buzzcocks thing that was the style at the time.

The singers has a voice that is... well... distinctive, although, to be fair, in '78 so did everyone else, so having a distinctive voice was pretty indistinctive.

The songs seem to be written by that slightly scruffy, intense kid you were all a bit scared of at school, who was always scribbling in a notebook he wouldn't let anyone else see. It's all "running from the beast" and "there's only one way out and you know it" and "if I don't say anything you'll know it's the truth." So profound.

But they did produce "Another Girl, Another Planet", three minutes of magnificent pop perfection that sticks out from the rest of the album like the sheer fluke it seems to be. Without that song this would be a generous 2 stars. With it, it's a solid 3.

Well, let's start with the blindingly obvious. This is the one with Smoke on the Water. It sits on the record like Godzilla on Tokyo. You can't take your eyes off it and it crushes everything else.

The music on this is pretty damn good. Lord's organ solos go all classical at the drop of a powdered wig, Blackmore's guitar is Ray gun smart. The bass and drum section nail it to the floor and Gillan's voice is, well, distinctive.

The lyrics are serviceable at best. I don't think anyone listens to Space Trucking for the poetry.

It's a lot off fun without being particularly deep.

A solid slab of Funk.

So take the worst histrionic excesses of a coked up David Bowie and mix it with some New Wave, post punk synth noise and you might get something like this.

Only, not as bad.

Michael Jackson before the weirdness happened - or at least became public.

The most valuable players here are Quincy Jones and his team of arrangers who provided the lushest, grooviest backing tracks for Jackson to yelp, uh huh, wooo and falsetto over.

The first half of the album is a solid wall of disco goodness, one banger after another, but once Paul McCartney's Wings era influence appears (with a song from the weak London Town album of all places) the thing goes to hell.

She's Out of My Life follows, sounding like it's arrived straight down the middle of the road from a Broadway show.

I Can't Help It (Or I Can't 'Elp It) is a fine Stevie Wonder song and sounds, well, more Wonder than Jackson.

It's The Falling in Love might have a great arrangement and a Jackson vocal, but it's gussied up generic disco.

The thing pulls itself together for Burn the Disco Out to send the crowds away happy.

So, brilliant enough in parts, but it drags in the second half.

I'll give it a 4 on the understanding that I've rounded up.

A hell of a thing.

Everyone knows 7 Nation Army, but it was the intro to the next track, Black Math, that grabbed me by the throat.

Solid, back to basics, rock and roll that's good for the ears and the soul.