Reviews by galway_rat

HL: “Ain’t the Devil Happy”, “Come Clean”, “Jungle Music”

Rounding up to a 3 today.

He’s not a misogynist, he says so multiple times

Oh boy, 2 German albums in 2 days.
Guten Morgen! Ich möchte ein Mokka.
Wo ist mein Auto?

Little taken aback by this; it’s super easy to trace this to other albums I adore: obviously David Bowie’s “Heroes”, but also the gentle minimalism of Architecture & Morality & Music for Airports. At the same time, it’s got a swagger level somewhere between the Rolling Stones & the Clash. These things should cancel each other out, but they don’t.
Hypnotic, addictive listen

April 30, 2024

we’re back in the Can Universe with: MOVIES

After Tago Mago & Phaedra, the other German 70s albums this month, my bias- sorry, Vorurteile- expected more sinister, heavy overtures. My mistake, Czukay’s solo outing is cheeky & airy, though I suppose sometimes laden with prog grandeur.
I enjoyed Movies’s approach to what would later be known as plunderphonics, even as it harkens back to the sound collages of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper & the White Album.
At the same time, I might appreciate it for what it represents in musical evolution more than for its songs. Though there are many interesting directions taken, the song lengths are- surprise, surprise- testing, the samples inscrutable or just absurd, and the vocals sometimes *out of pocket*.
Yet I’m having more fun in the 2nd listen, which I didn’t think I needed so soon after the first.
A flawed, messy experiment, and yet I wouldn’t have it any other way. Maybe because it sounds like how my brain feels after 700-800 random albums.

HL: “Persian Love”, “Hollywood Symphony”

April 29, 2024

Took me over 750 tries to get In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida and it's not even the Iron Butterfly version

Also, I’ve heard at least two albums on here that sample “Belgium”, from Leftfield & the Beastie Boys.

Legally speaking, this is CanCon but I don't buy it 🔫 They recorded the album in Canada to get more radio play in this country, a heinous crime that must never be forgotten.
Big Dumb Bongo Band

Good jams though. 🪘 🪘

HL: “Apache", "Last Bongo in Belgium", “Let There Be Drums”, “Bongo Rock”

April 28, 2024

1st Steely Dan where I didn’t recognize at least one song title.
And last on this list ;(

While my favourite of the four would either be Can't Buy Me a Thrill or Pretzel Logic, this has enough going for it to be a worthwhile listen. The smooth segues between genres are a Dan trademark at this point, and there are also the bitter chants of "Lost wages" in "Show Biz Kids", the stellar woodwinds in "Old School", & the blues fakeout of "Bodhisattiva", which starts like a basic 12-bar boogie before slyly modulating to a jazzier progression.
"Your Gold Teeth", on the other hand, is the kind of slick noodling that reminds me I prefer a whole host of genres over jazz fusion. I think that's what kept me from wholeheartedly enjoying Aja

HL: "Bodhisattva", "Boston Rag", "Show Biz Kids", "My Old School", "King of the World"

April 26, 2024

HL: "Dreams", "Staring at the Sun", "Ambulance", "Poppy"

I heard through the grapevine this album was a bit shoegazey. Did not disappoint. Another great offering from a band I didn't know I liked until doing this album-a-day six hundred odd times.

The loop pedal is the unsung hero here. "Ambulance" is a prime example, though I wasn't sure what to make of it at first: the simple doo-wop/soul background sounds eerie & industrial the way it's looped.

Dig the album cover! 🏜️

It’s fun while it lasts, has some common ground with latter-day MGMT.

3.5

HL: “Hail Bop”, “Waveforms”, “Storm”, “Skies Over Cairo”

Me: doesn’t feel like listening to the Dead album yesterday, too long
Generator: Ok, here’s a much longer album for you today.
Me: Ok

Both impressive and slightly disappointing. Impressive in the focus on the South being more nuanced & bittersweet than I expected; disappointing in the racist politicians, drunk driving, & fiery plane crashes all kinda get the same musical treatment, so even after a more uplifting song like “Let There Be Rock” I still kinda felt mired down.

It does have a strong finish, at least, considering it’s like a 22 minute-long “Detroit Rock City” but about Lynyrd Skynyrd’s plane crash. Those final 4 songs arguably have the finest guitar work of the record as well.

In several of the songs there are background vocals, either noise picked up by the mic or ghost vocals from a different take; either way it’s kinda creepy to listen to with headphones.

Finally, I have copy/pasted my favourite lines from the album:

“To the fuckin’ rich man, all the people look the same”

“Ain’t no use thinking about it / You’ll just drive yourself insane”

HL: “Dead, Drunk and Naked”, “The Southern Thing”, “Wallace”, “Moved”, “Life in the Factory”, “Greenville to Baton Rouge”

April 24, 2024

HL: “St. Stephen”, “The Eleven”

Entering my villain era, 2nd two-star this year 👀

For real, I’m not sure why the acid-washed likes of The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter, Oar & Soft Machine’s 3rd get a pass from me and this doesn’t. Maybe my own expectations got in the way, and I was looking for a finale besides a blues dirge & 8 minutes of guitar feedback to make up for the lengthy noodling beforehand.
Maybe in the future I’ll get something out of “Dark Star” to understand why it’s so acclaimed. I can’t bring myself to relisten to the whole thing just yet.

April 25, 2024

April 22, 2024

HL: “And Through the Wire”, “Games Without Frontiers”, “Lead A Normal Life”, “Biko”, “Family Snapshot”, “I Don’t Remember”

Have heard maybe 3 songs from this album before.
I don’t know why I find early new wave/electronica so fascinating! There’s a restless energy it often possesses- OMD, Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream- that strange Byrne/Eno collab- that’s infectious, even if not all of it lands.
“Melt” lies at those crossroads, but at the same time the songs are bristly and direct, unlike the spacey abstractions in the previous examples. In Gabriel’s hands, political fury becomes theatre (“Games”, “Biko”, “Not One of Us”), and the music alternates between abrasive and beautiful, sometimes both, to elevate the message of each song. That first droning note cutting through the spiritual intro to “Biko”- chills!

One of the best albums I've listened to this month

Album #750, and 1st Rufus (except that time he sang with Antony & the Johnsons-- oh look, here she comes now, with a very long track)

Rufus Wainwright’s voice is like Thom Yorke’s, in that a) it’s beautiful and b) idk wot they’re singing half the time without a lyric sheet. It’s like they’re singing backwards.

This is a pretty rich album; a lot to take in.
It’s hardly the first on this list to indulge in classical flourishes, but “Agnus Dei” & “Little Sister” provided some welcome orchestra. If you choose the Canadian Version (which I’m obliged by CanCon law to listen to), you get two French chansons that provide a denouement to “Old Whore’s Diet”. I have no idea why it’s 9 minutes long, but it has a soaring finale that provides a dramatic end to the (main) album.
I understand this is the one that Dimery kept in later editions (Want One is cut), but if the other is anything like this one I’m looking forward to it.

HL: “Art Teacher”, “Hometown Waltz”, “Agnus Dei”, “Memphis Skyline”, “Peach Trees”

April 20, 2024

The circumstances surrounding Makeba’s exile are grave, but this album is like sunshine recorded on tape.
Some easy, breezy pop tunes (“Flea”, the giggly one) along the more traditional S.A. songs. The former aren’t really essential listening, but equally encapsulate the joy of the latter

HL: "The Retreat Song", "The Click Song", "Olilili", “Lakutshn Ilanga”, "Mbube"

Grime might get a bad wrap on this website (also: Skepta, The Streets), but it’s not my favourite thing in the world, either.
It took until “Jus’ a Rascal” for me to admit, y’know, I might be enjoying this erratic, headache-inducing album.
Rascal’s energy is infectious even if his verses kinda blend together after an hour, but I think his production is the real winner here. Yesterday’s Tangerine Dream made me think of video game music, and so does this (albeit a much different game); the bouncy synths in “Sittin’ Here”, “Brand New Day”, “2 Far”, and “Do It” are chock-full of personality.
— Aha, I knew it! in the deluxe version he samples the game Street Fighter 👾

HL: “Sittin’ Here”, “Stop Dat”, “Brand New Day”, “Fix Up, Look Sharp”, “Jus a Rascal”

April 19, 2024

April 18th, 2024

HL: “Mysterious Semblance at the Strand of Nightmares”, title track, “Sequent C”

A challenging listen does not mean bad. In this case, ‘challenging’ means ‘too repetitive for a close listen, too spooky to be in the background’. Yet I’ve now listened to Phaedra twice, and I have their followup Rubycon queued up, so I think I love this. If you wish the “weird part” in a Pink Floyd album (Atom Heart Mother, Meddle, DSOTM) was its own fully-realized album, then you might too

Upon finishing Rubycon, there are very similar vibes but I actually preferred Phaedra’s more sinister overtones. Rubycon was a chiller experience though (or am I just getting more used to Tangerine Dream?)

April 18, 2024

HL: “The Devil Gets His Due”, “I Really Don’t Want to Know”, “Making Plans”, title track

As with some other trad. country albums, I feel like I have to work to engage with it. Not sure why I don’t have that problem with later interpretations of the genre by Parsons, Harris & lang, but that’s the way she goes.
I did enjoy this more the longer it went on though, unlike some that had good starts but snoozy finishes. Maybe the inclusion of some chugga-chugga rock n roll in the 2nd half helped (“Devil”, “Get Whatcha Got”)
Loretta’s voice is great, as is the crisp production that sounds newer than other 60s albums I’ve heard.

3.5

April 17, 2024

HL: “Armenia”, “Tattoo”, “Our Love Was”, “I Can See For Miles”, “Rael”, “I Can’t Reach You”

Another Who album this month? I feel like a lucky duck.
Something The Who Sells Out shares with Tommy, the previous Who I had, is that it’s overambitious and, at times, totally ridiculous. Some tracks (“Silas Stingy”) are ALMOST too silly. But damn if it doesn’t whet my appetite for 60s psychedelia all over again.

New favourite The Who album, possibly.

It’s mildly frustrating that the Apple Music version is 6 hours long, but I did spy a cover of “In the Hall of the Mountain King” that turned out to be enjoyable.

The moment has come (742nd out of 1089)

Actually, my curiosity in the overall worst-rated albums led me to 20 Jazz Funk Greats a while ago. The cover/album title remains one of my favourite musical jokes, the beatific smiles belying the horrors of songs like “Beachy Head”. I wasn't a big fan however, thus I wasn't in a huge rush to listen to D.O.A..

I noticed that while many artists on this list jump between genres and have jarring segues to the next track, TG almost weaponize that feature, giving the end of a track suspense as you wonder what disturbing sounds you’re in for next. On that note: “AB/7A”, maybe the most suspenseful moment on the album as it’s unexpectedly pleasant on the ears.

Something I never considered before starting this challenge is the value of music that *disturbs*. On one hand, it's no surprise Throbbing Gristle is as unpopular as they are on this website. On the other, I've ended up liking a whole swath of albums on this list that are disturbing in some way or another. Neither The Young Gods, nor Skip Spence, nor Suicide nor Nine Inch Nails have easy listens on this list, yet they've also have some quality that made them worth it. Furthermore, recent works outside this list that have inspired me include Leland Kirby's Everywhere at the End of Time (which hits the listener with lengthy passages of unsettling noise), Scott Walker's The Drift*** (which also deals with graphic subject matter), heck even the very industrial Chernobyl: Music from the Original TV Series by Guðnadóttir (partly composed with noise from actual nuclear power plants).

So why was this listen (at least somewhat) worth it? The most abrasive moments IMO come very early on in the album, with the worst offender, funny enough, being their single "United" sped up to a high pitched screech. (If you listen to the original version, it is funny that they'd destroy their own song like that). A reprise of "I.B.M." in the 2nd half might have killed this album for me. It's the quieter moments that made a stronger impression, with "Hometime", "Weeping", and "E-Coli" being dark, ambient moments that got under my skin much more than "IBM" or "Walls of Sound" did. A lot of bands were focused on how synthesizers could effectively substitute for orchestras, choirs or drum tracks, whereas T.G. were instead seemingly using them to transcribe their nightmares.

Maybe this is too many words to spend talking about T.G., but it definitely tickled my imagination more than a lot of albums. I wish the album cover was almost anything else, though

HL: “Hit by a Rock”, “Weeping”, “AB/7A”, "Hometime"

April 15, 2024

***I say inspired, yet I'd probably give that a 2/5 if going by my metric on this website. The palpable horror has diminishing returns after the halfway point

HL: title track, "Sweet Thing", “Cypress Avenue”, “The Way Young Lovers Do”

Beautiful, and another worthy Van entry in this list. Definitely wish I could have heard this a lot earlier in my life, since it’s a kind of album that my appreciation and understanding will likely deepen over time. The kind of freeform folk he has going on here didn’t scratch the same itch that Moondance (1970) did when it showed up here. Nonetheless, I expect it’ll hit harder once the leaves start budding

I mean spring, not pot

April 14, 2024

Side 1: ho-wee, contains the energy of a psychedelic steam engine
Side 2: (“Halleluwah”) notch down in energy, but as it’s a longer composition, Can’s gotta pace themselves. Love that sinister build of synths towards the end.
Side 3: (“Aumgn”) a real fockin’ racket. up to this point the more avant-garde elements have been contained in smaller sections like the backmasking in “Oh Yeah”, whereas here it’s the whole 18 mins. Should have taken the end of “Halleluwah” as a warning
Side 4: ok, it doesn’t fully return to the structure of the first half, but it’s not totally frightening like side 3 is

Tago Mago… If it was just the first half it’d be much easier to rate it 5 stars, but the atonality of the second doesn’t sour the whole experience for me, either. My first impression was that the drop-off in quality from Side 2 to Side 3 was stark, but knowing that the two discs are apples and oranges helps me forgive Can for the confusion I had listening to “Augmn” the 1st time.

(April 12 2024) 2nd album in a row I can't listen to with Apple Music; I see there are about 9000 other albums of his there, so I will share a Wikipedia quote from Chris Nickson, of Global Rhythm: \"trying to make order of Khan's entire discography would be a nightmare.\"

I'll get to Devotional Songs soon, but for now today's substitution is obviously Vampire Weekend (2008), followed by TV on the Radio’s Nine Types of Light (2011). Never really got around to hearing them, but I've often heard it said that Vampire Weekend is the Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan of New York indie rock :p

(April 16 2024) It was there the whole time! Bundled in a release called Love and Devotion, and mistakenly dated 1988. Wot

Ok, those were definitely some songs of devotion. I think my favourite ones were tracks 2 & 4. I might put on the “Love” half later, but no guarantees.
I don’t have my copy of the book right now; curious why this is Khan’s entry into the book out of all his other 9000 releases