Reviews by dohej

Disco funk fun to get any party started. There's a sheen of glossy cheese lacquered thick over this album, but underneath is an amazing bass performance and probably the best right hand in guitar history. Nile Rodgers really maxes out that compressed single-coil strat sound. The ballads are dire though.

Simultaneously in four eras at once, this album has a retro 50s/60s doowop digested through punk thing, a mid 70s disco thing that puts the beat first and insists that rock should be fun to dance to, all of the elements of the 80s new wave thing, all of which would be canonized in a billion 90s teen movies. There are so many currents running through this (power pop hooks and harmonies, arena rock guitars and huge drums, post-punk scenester cool that's somehow not just affectation, synth pop instrumentation, even some heartland rock organs and earnestness) but they're all synthesized in a coherent purposive whole. Amazing fun top to bottom that peaks with Heart of Glass, one of the coolest songs on the 70s.

Mariana Trench level grooves from start to finish, the funk dial is pushed dangerously into the red. Fela looked at the Africa 70's 3 congo players, shekere, and Tony Allen on drums and said fuck it, more percussion! Ginger Baker going from Eric Clapton to Fela Kuti has to be music's biggest ever upgrade. The bass performance is incredible, the horns are blasting pure fire, Fela's organ parts rip, and the call and response singing generates even more energy. You could power a megacity off this album, and it's not even one of his best.

Emo nu metal, from, wait, what? 2008?! I'd give you the self titled and/or Iowa as massive genre defining albums, but this one? This band really cashed in on the last gasps of the CD buying era huh? The CD era means it's way too long, both individual tracks and all together. It's the signature combo of relentless double bass pedal drum blasts, heavy riffs with maybe a bit more groove than you'd expect, and alternating screaming vocals to build up the tension and pop punk style melodic anthemic emotional moments to release. Theres some surprising Soundgarden sounding stuff (Gehenna) that's pretty derivative but not too bad. Overall, the guitars are pretty fun: down tuned and chugging, they throw in some 80s shredding and pinch harmonics for a treat. They know what they're doing and it's only like 12° off from the hard punk/metalcore music from the late Clinton /early Bush era that I did really love, but something about this band has just always sucked. Maybe it's the fatal association with being MTV clowns trying to be hardcore on the Sprite© Mainstage® brought to you by Kia™.

Favorites: Dead Memories, Gehenna

Sometimes it really isn't that complicated. All it takes to make a beloved rock album is a few chords, loud amps, some undeniable hooks, a taught gristly bundle of pure charisma, and David Bowie behind the boards. This is always cited as a favorite album by every 80s/90s alt rock indie post punk band, I guess because it had a stripped down 'raw power's compared to the bloated radio rock of the late 70s, but retained an essential musicality that the increasingly derivative punk scene didn't always bother with.

The classic D&B sound: deep bass grooves combined with rapid fire drum machine programming, synth parts for texture and mood, then diva-style vocal singing/samples strung across the top to give it a center. Was this album making or just mainstreaming this template? Despite the kind of spasmy herky jerky feel of the rhythms, it does work incredibly well as a tune everything else out and focus on some bullshit kind of functional music, though it adds a layer of ambient stress to the focus. Not sure it needed to be two hours long though, JFC!

It's called Timeless, but it is incredibly of its moment. Interesting that this era of Jungle, Drum & Bass, House and electronica in general had a much more widespread presence in UK pop than in the US, where it seemed relegated to clubs rather than radio...or maybe it just passed my suburban existence by...

The title track is an early entry in the canon of tedious boomer rock self mythologizing. The rest is like a hippy Billy Joel, or a best a saccharine Nick Drake with the dark pathos replaced by bland sentimentality. It's mostly gentle and inert acoustic guitar/piano open mic night crooning and insipid lyrics. The slightly more fleshed out arrangements like on Winterwood (with a shuffling snare, a bit of melodic bass, and some pretty electric piano parts) give it a bit more liveliness.

The end of the millenium was a pretty bleak era for music, and 1999 in particular may be one of the worst years for albums - it was the year Blink 182, Santana and Limp Bizkit ruled the radio. This album speaks to the level of extreme exhaustion in pop rock as a genre. Pretty forgettable stuff - another band that sounds like a tribute act to Oasis's worst tendencies. Despite their best efforts, no amount of orchestral swells and acoustic strumming and affirmative choruses will conjure an emotion from these bland bloated songs. If they made an Almost Famous style movie for Britpop, these would be the b-sides off the fake band's singles. It's not that it's unpleasant, it's that it's barely anything at all.

Beats from a deranged music box, verses from an insanely talented group of young rappers pushing each other higher and higher. Funny and dark, real and yet full of fantasy world making conjuring the Wu Tang kung fu mythology. RZA's beat making and overall production is lo fi genius: he builds a slow deep and spacious groove with simple bass and piano hooks, spooky atmospheric sounds, a bit of DJ scratching and bare bones drum machine parts..Their hugely effective platforms inviting the lyricists to fill in the room with one virtuosic performance after another.

Turn the hardcore dial up to 11 and keep going. Noisy brutal and short. Probably the only appropriate aesthetic response to the nightmare global political economy consolidating itself in the late 80s: the real grindcore was going on in SE Asian export processing zones. Some really good chugging riffs, some blasted to hell beats, some ghoulish screaming. Not your sunny Sunday morning coffee and toast music, but when your in the mood to rage, it's hard to think of anything going harder than this. Plus, I heard Ian Napalm and the rest of the fellas are big into orienteering.

Proggy pop combined with big dumb 70s rock, so: big synthy riffs and spaceship tones. Having the electric piano at the forefront makes for a kind of showtune feel. Like a copy of the more annoying side of David Bowie. All the maximalist tendencies but little of the creative energy, and done on the cheap. They sound like a filler band on one of those compilations they used to advertise on TV like "ALL THE RADIO HITS OF THE 70s YOU KNOW AND LOVE!!!! (except for the good ones)"

Dark and brooding, furious and horny, desperately nihilist but oddly life affirming in its pure heavy catharsis. NIN combines the moody goth synth sounds of Depeche Mode with the relentless intensity of Big Black. This is like a prototype for Nu-Metal, minus the rapping: the grooves that turn into riffs, the confessional verses that turn into tortured screaming choruses, the fusion of metal and electronica. Reznor's efforts to explore mood and texture are a huge success, this is an album you can see when you close your eyes: rust, char, ooze, scratches scrawl and scar...you know, goth shit.

Surely no accident to get this on May 2nd, 30 years from the day of Nelson Mandela's election in South Africa's first democratic election after the end of apartheid. Paradoxically, because of breaking the cultural boycott with Paul Simon, LBM became the sound of South Africa's freedom struggle in the Western imaginary in the late 1980s. They also became one of the first big groups in the emergent 'world music' genre - bringing a touch of exotic flavor to western record collections. Rooted in traditional Zulu harmony and genre, refracted through gospel choir traditions, the album sounds incredible: it's a recording that captures the depth, subtlety, range, and expressive capacity of the voice and a set of virtuosic performances that manifest the power of collectivity, collaboration and intradependence. I think this is the element of this music that made it rise to its occasion and endure since - the peaceful power and collectively rooted strength that's the foundation of harmony and that provides the platform for individual soloists and melodies to shine.

Bright and jangly melodic pop that lacks the force of their best work, but replaces it with a funny observational approach to song writing and richer arrangements. Is this just little England nostalgia though? It's self aware and parodic, but not entirely kidding about yearning to live in the Hot Fuzz town and win the flower prize...Requires a few listens to sink in.

Laid back rock from the high desert, Calexico has a ecclectic relation to genre, incorporating accordian waltzes, mariachi choruses, atmospheric post-rock psychadelia, jazz drumming and horns, emo melodies, dub melodica, trip hop ambience, some cumbia rhythms, folksy alt-country acoustic and high-lonesome slide guitars to create a sound that encapsulates the borderlands. It coheres perflectly into a spacious cinematic album that winds its way slowly around, settling into the songs gently, quickening the pulse with new instrumental layers, and calming back down with its whispered lullaby vocals. Without being a concept album, it takes you on a journey, like driving through the sprawling outskirts of South Western city, cruising through the strip malls feeling a saturday afternoon evolve into saturday night evolve, catching snippets of what's playing out the car windows, the weddings and bbqs and parties, the bars filling up and spilling out - there's a bit of filler in the in-between moments, but they're taking you to the next place.

Much more of an early 60s classic "Oneders"-style rock and roll / soul / doo wop than I really realized. Their blues efforts (please please please, i'm a man) are way less compelling than their pure power pop stuff. The emphasis in all of these very tightly constructed songs is on the harmonies and the big bright pop melodies. But they bring a chaotic high energy rhythm section and overdriven guitar loudness that goes harder than the songs really allow, and so the band erupts from the confines of that early 60s pop rock and roll mould.

Favorites: The Good's Gone, La La La Lies, Kids are Alright, Legal Matter, I Don't Mind

What? Why? This thing with including late era work from significant artists of the 70s/80s is so silly. XTC have some great albums, but this is not one of them. Trying to get beyond what I hoped this would be, to hear it for what it is... Heavily orchestrated, fussily composed verging into prog, an indulgent tribute to the most over indulgent bits of the Beatles. It's lush and somber, very adult (there's a song about having a shed), but that, as usual, mostly means boring (there's a song about having a shed).

Those mop top lads from merseyside have only bloody gone and done it again!

Extremely my shit. Mesmerizing bass and organs and some trance inducing drumming set a deep groove as a platform for the guitar, electric piano, and especially MD's trumpet to go off. It settles into some quite contemplative dawn moods with a shimmering vibrato sound and sunrise soloing, then heats back up for some spikey intense jamming. Music dorks in the 60s were really afraid of electricity and it was very stupid.

Very elusive album that I can't quite put my finger on. At times I loose focus, at times it demands full attention. For good and bad its a lot like Bowie - the rockier guitar stuff isn't that interesting, kind of generic blues rock with some powerful sax. The synthier kookier stuff (like Ladytron) is more original and interesting, with cool textures and less predictable structures. The bass is doing a lot of work in both, melodic and leading. I still don't get why they're so hyped and influential - I guess because of what Eno went to do? And you had to be there to get excited by the Ferry glam side of it? But yeah, left feeling like I don't get it and it just passed me by.