Reviews by callimar

Through this project, I’ve learned that it’s sometimes hard to tell whether an album is truly influential or just generic—especially when it comes to eras I don’t remember. Technically, it’s the editor’s job to make that call. But after 250 albums, I can say that he’s only done a limited job of it.
Let’s move on to today’s candidate: Blondie with “Parallel Lines.” This is exactly how I imagine late ’70s pop-rock—somewhere in the no-man’s-land between traditional dance music, NDW, and New Wave. Kind of nice, but way too tame for my taste.
The best part of the version linked on Spotify are the live recordings, which actually don’t belong to “Parallel Lines.”
Yes, “Parallel Lines” probably has to be on a list like this, but I find it mediocre.

K.D. Lang’s “Ingénue” shows that singer-songwriters can create great music with simple means, as long as a few essential ingredients are in place. For example:
* Catchy song ideas
* Arrangements with a good mix of familiar and fresh ideas
* An experienced voice with plenty of depth
* Professional production
The result is usually still not an album I absolutely have to have, but at least one I enjoy listening to. This is actually off-topic, but: Why doesn’t everyone do at least this much? Back to the topic: This is the minimum I expect for an album to make it onto this list—that earns it 3 stars.
It gets better, for example, with a song I recognize immediately. So I’m giving a 4th star for the last song on this album, “Constant Craving.” It gets even better, for example, with a dynamic start to the album—well, you can’t always have everything.

Having already reviewed "Scott 4", I was braced for the worst when "Scott 2" came up. I will never be a Scott Walker fan but I have to admit that the album's only single "Jackie" isn't half bad. The rest is (at best) very mediocre chamber pop - standard oldies. Nice-ish but no, not for me.
At least, this is not as hilarious as "Scott 4".

We’ve covered Steely Dan before—way back at the very beginning, when I first got credit for a review.
True—“Countdown to Ecstasy” was actually pretty cool—though not so much that I would have expected another Steely Dan album. In fact, their debut, “Can't Buy A Thrill,” can't really hold a candle to it. In comparison, it lacks both drive and spark—which probably makes Steely Dan the only band whose second album is better than their debut in terms of creativity and inspiration.
As I see it, there are two more Steely Dan albums to come. I’m not sure if I should be looking forward to them (since the later recordings might be even better) or if that’s bad news (since “Can’t Buy A Thrill” doesn’t really whet the appetite for more). Well, okay, the latter is an exaggeration—“Can’t Buy A Thrill” is actually really good to listen to. For me, that’s 3.5 stars.

I wasn't familiar with the name Richard Hawley, but several songs on “Coles Corner” sounded familiar to me.
I don't have much to say about the content; this album doesn't strike me as particularly noteworthy. I think it's fine for an album to include a few slow tracks. But ballads that take up the whole album? I don't really need that.
Sure, the songs are all fine and the production is thoroughly professional. You can certainly do it that way, but on a list of the best albums of all time, I actually expect something that’s somehow special.

I wasn’t familiar with Blue Cheer, but the name is quite fitting, since they play very loud blues.
The first thing that strikes me on “Vincebus Eruptum” is the massive guitar sound—they must have cranked the fuzz pedal all the way up. We’d handle that differently today, but back in 1968, proper distortion wasn’t really available yet.
The second thing that jumps out at me is the guitarist’s wide vibrato and the singer’s belting crunch—so they clearly didn’t shy away from physical effort to get the sound as fat as possible. I almost wrote “heavy” there, but that would lead down the proto-metal path, and honestly, I don’t really see that—the six songs are simply too unmistakably blues in structure for that.
I like blues and I like loud music—for my taste, “Vincebus Eruptum” is a pretty good album.

Yes, the class of '91 again!
Seriously, I was really looking forward to getting another album from September 1991—the month that turned the music world upside down. Of course, the Red Hot Chili Peppers had been around before, but with “Blood Sugar Sex Magik”, they brought a whole lot of funk and a dash of rap into the rock/metal mainstream. Of that year’s crop, the Chili Peppers were probably the most accessible, and “Give It Away”—as well as, of course, “Under The Bridge”—became the soundtrack of 1991 and 1992.
RHCP were, of course, known for their eccentric stage presence and Flea’s virtuoso bass playing; but back then, I had missed the virtuosity of the other musicians and the massive Hendrix vibes in the Peppers’ sound.
Unlike their contemporaries (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, ... you name it), the Chili Peppers remained a defining force in music throughout the 90s, operating outside the mainstream—which was, after all, quite disappointing in that decade.
A truly significant milestone in rock history!

Based on my first listen, Crosby, Stills and Nash’s self-titled debut album features the same song 14 times. It’s not that bad, but a little variety would have done this record a world of good. This makes it nearly impossible to single out individual tracks—the differences are simply too subtle. Instead, “Crosby, Stills and Nash” has turned out to be quite stylish easy listening. It’s fine as background music for driving, but a bit one-dimensional for focused listening.

The 1995 demo “Alien Lanes” by Guided By Voices is a product of an era when amateurism was art. It contains a few nice song ideas—good enough to be developed into a proper album. Robert Pollard manages to record decent vocal tracks without professional production—so he can do it when he wants to. It remains to be seen whether the rest of the band can’t or won’t—in any case, their recorded tracks are unusable.
I would recommend that Robert Pollard record the finished songs on an acoustic guitar and send them to a producer. I don’t understand what this stuff is doing here—I actually thought this was a place where albums worth listening to were featured.

Yesterday “Back in Black,” today “Highway to Hell”—OK, challenge accepted.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that AC/DC with Bon Scott and AC/DC with Brian Johnson were two different bands. But the differences are certainly striking when you compare them side by side—besides the obviously different vocals, especially in terms of songwriting. “Highway to Hell” is much more deeply rooted in the blues and thus presents a significantly more authentic and raw version of AC/DC than “Back in Black” did a year later. Naturally, this makes the songs tend to be a bit less catchy—apart from the title track, of course—and they really don’t unfold until the second listen.
Overall, “Highway to Hell” ranks in my top 2 or 3 AC/DC albums—naturally behind “Back in Black” and perhaps also behind “The Razor's Edge.” Still, a legendary record!

“Back in Black” is undoubtedly AC/DC’s most iconic album, a breathtaking masterpiece and still the second-best-selling album of all time. Unlike the number-one album on this list (“Thriller”—which I reviewed earlier this week), this is less due to the production (though that’s good too) and more to the incisive songwriting, the pure rock ’n’ roll power, and a unique virtuosity. I mean, technically speaking, any halfway-decent guitarist could have written the riffs for “You Shook Me All Night Long,” “Shoot to Thrill,” “Hell’s Bells,” or “Back in Black”—but it was the Young brothers who did. On top of that, this band plays as precisely as humanly possible—and that’s why anyone with even a passing interest in music recognizes the riffs immediately.
Some say that AC/DC’s albums are merely a pale imitation of their concerts. However, it was only with this album that they began touring for years on end—so perhaps this reputation also stems from the fact that “Back in Black” is simply larger than life and continues to define the AC/DC sound to this day.

The Young Gods are an early industrial band from Switzerland. Their album “L'Eau Rouge” offers, aside from the language (I’ll get back to that in a moment), a whole range of experiments, many of which work surprisingly well once you’ve listened to them a few times.
For one thing, the sound is extremely dense for 1989, yet it sounds largely natural, even though no real instruments are involved aside from the drums. For another, the vocals aren’t typical of the ’80s at all; instead, Franz Treichler impresses with a powerful baritone voice featuring slight growling elements.
The 80s drum sound, on the other hand, doesn’t fit the music at all in my opinion. Also, personally, I could do without the shooting gallery organ interludes (“La fille de la morte,” “Charlotte”).
Then there’s the matter of the language. In fact, French wasn’t uncommon in experimental music in Europe at the time. I still remember a concert by the band Forguette Mi Note just a few years later—they were considered the hottest thing among musicians and, with acoustic instruments, sounded very similar to this album.
While none of this has become standard, I interpret it as The Young Gods standing here as representatives of the European avant-garde of the late ’80s—and that is indeed something worth exploring.

After weeks of getting rather challenging albums, this is off to a great start!
According to my information, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” is still the best-selling album of all time, and in terms of production details, it’s certainly the best of its era. A good example of this is the bassline in “Billie Jean,” which isn’t just a bassline, but also includes three synth tracks that don’t play exactly the same thing. I also find it telling that Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones are said to have spent weeks thinking about the right guitarists for “Beat It”—I mean, who else comes to mind besides Eddie Van Halen and Steve Lukather? Nothing was left to chance—guest appearances by Paul McCartney and Jackson’s sisters Janet and LaToya also ensure that.
According to Wikipedia, Michael Jackson deliberately wanted to deliver an “all-killer” album, and I think he succeeded.
Finally: for the first time, I’m giving 5 stars on two consecutive days!

Over the past few weeks, I’ve often been dissatisfied with the specific album selections for legendary acts (i.e., those that simply have to have multiple albums on this list). When it comes to the Rolling Stones, however, Robert Dimery got everything right in my opinion. “Beggar's Banquet” is also completely justified here, and it’s one of those Stones albums that I could listen to all day long. As I wrote last time: in the era from “Beggar's Banquet” to “Exile on Main St.,” everything the Stones played was simply gold.

I’ve always had somewhat mixed feelings about Prince: on the one hand, I admire his skill on various instruments and his arranging ideas; on the other hand, for my taste, he’s written very few truly good songs.
“1999” is no exception here; after the title track and “Little Red Corvette,” there isn’t much else that’s catchy. The best parts here are the numerous instrumental interludes. Perhaps it would have been more convincing as a purely instrumental album?
As I write this, “International Lover” is playing, which I actually find quite good. For me, that’s what tips the scales for 4 stars right now.

With the Ramones, I’ve always wondered who or what they were actually parodying—maybe themselves in the end?
Their debut, however, is iconic, and in my view, that’s really only due to the cover art and the first two songs, “Blitzkrieg Bop” (whose lyrics I still don’t fully grasp) and “Beat on the Brat.” After that, it’s more of the same: the simplest, yet catchiest, absolutely flawlessly performed, and impeccably produced punk rock.
Still, I’m not sure how to rate it. On the one hand, it’s certainly a classic. On the other hand, I don’t feel the need to listen to it again right away. 4/5

Pink Floyd without David Gilmour, playing beat music—that sounds nice enough, but not exactly amazing.
“The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” basically lives up to that expectation. You have to imagine The Beatles during their drug-fueled phases, but with even more LSD—and, of course, more virtuosic instrumental skills. The first two songs, “Astronomy Domine” and “Lucifer Sam,” are still quite nice; the only single, “Flaming,” already sounds like a parody, and after that, the material becomes difficult to follow at times.
As a glimpse into the British music scene in the late ’60s, this is highly interesting. As an album on its own, I’d classify it more as “nice to know” than “must have.”

Just a few days ago, The Residents showed me just how bad art rock can be. Today, Yes demonstrate the other end of the spectrum, and you could really say that the whole world lies between “Duck Stab” and “Fragile.”
The latter starts with “Roundabout”—perhaps the quintessential Yes song.
I find the album’s concept—linking just four “real” songs with short instrumentals—very compelling, by the way. Of course, “Roundabout,” “South Side of the Sky,” “Long Distance Runaround,” and “Heart of the Sunrise” are what most listeners remember, but the other tracks connect them with such virtuosity and dramatic tension that is rarely achievable in a song-by-song format (Abraxas would be the counterexample). And although a different musician takes center stage each time, everything sounds like it comes from a single mold. In this respect, Yes are even playing in a higher league than the Beatles at this point, who simply failed to pull off this feat on their similarly conceived White Album. In my opinion, this is due to the great virtuosity of truly every Yes member—something very few bands can offer.

I have to admit that the labels “hip hop” and “electro” really put me off these days—there’s so much trash listed under those categories...
Fortunately, there are exceptions, and Afrika Bambaataa & Soulsonic Force are somewhat among them. The singles compiled on Planet Rock are still too monotonous for my taste, but the beats are OK, the synth tracks show a certain musicality and are even good in parts, and the rappers have a lively yet laid-back vibe (and don’t just try to cram as many words as possible into the shortest amount of time) . Of course, that’s far too little for a must-hear album, but it’s enough to land it in the “nice-to-know” category.

I wasn’t familiar with Khaled, and his album “Kenza” was a nice change of pace from the other albums on this list. I didn’t delve too deeply into the cultural context because it didn’t seem necessary to me—to me, it’s just pop with a few North African influences.
A well-produced pop album with a few unusual elements—after the rather disappointing past few weeks, that’s enough to earn it 3 stars.