Reviews by ikejiri

Will the Circle Be Unbroken
This is a great little discovery. I’d not heard of The Nitty Gritty Band or this album before, but I really enjoyed it. Even though it feels more like a historical record of great music and musicians, so that songs and voices aren’t lost, rather than an actual LP _record_ [1]. Although the number of times Lost Highway has come up on albums on the list that song certainly isn't in any danger.

It feels a little akin to Lomax’s field recordings, but perhaps less folk-blues and more country-folk, particularly with the Appalachian music, and there’s a great verve and atmosphere across the whole thing, the pre-song chatter feeling genuine and giving the whole thing a sense of very appealing intimacy. I don’t know if this was an inspiration or influence on the soundtrack for Brother Where Art Thou, but there are a few songs on here that are on that soundtrack.

It is obviously pretty long, and I can see how two hours of rinky tinky banjo and fiddle might get a bit much, but for me the two hours passed extremely pleasantly - the quality of playing can’t be faulted, there are numerous excellent songs; Keep on the Sunny Side, Dark as a Dungeon, Tennessee Stud, Wreck on the Highway, I Saw the Light, Orange Blossom Special, Lost Highway, Honky Tonk Blues, Will the Circle Be Unbroken and the delicate instrumental cover of Both Sides Now. And overall it has an unpretentious, straightforward charm to it, easily passing into the 4s.
⭕⭕⭕⭕
Playlist submission: Keep on the Sunny Side
[1] wordplay

Under Construction
‘Bill Gates and Donald Trump got better shit to do’
That's aged well.

I liked Supa Dupa Fly a lot, I like Missy and Timbaland in tandem, and I feel similarly about this. The spoken word bit aside the bendy synth line and percussion of Go To The Floor is excellent. Bring the Pain is a superb song, and although this version isn't my favourite, it’s still great, and Work It is a banger, a great rhythm and a flipside viewpoint on gender tropes.

Back in the Day is also a banger, the clav and percussion giving it a 70s feel to match the nostalgic lyric, with Jay Z’s great guest appearance. Nothing out There for Me is a catchy tune, despite a slightly OTT vocal from Beyonce. Slide is excellent, a slight hint at a North African sound with the hook, and a great groove. I really like Play that Beat’s string driven treatise on beating up your partner’s ex girlfriends. Ain’t That Funny is a great bit of Missy/Timbaland, an excellent sound with a shiny, 2000s-futuristic synth hook.

There are a couple of tracks I’m not as keen on, particularly, Pussycat and the Lonely Island-esque Can You Hear Me, although the stacked vocals sound excellent on this.

All round it's a great early-mid 2000s hip hop album. I love Timbaland’s sound, but on here it also feels like there are some softer edges among the usual bendy synths and skittering snares. Although Lauryn Hill gets more critical praise, perhaps as she is more perceived as being more serious, Missy is probably a better rapper, and although she's not as good a singer, she’s great at little hooks and earworms, and in partnership with Timbaland she’s got a great overall sound. Similar to Supa Dupa Fly I’ll put this in the low 4s.
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Playlist submission: Work It

Henry’s Dream
I’ve found this the least engaging of the Nick Cave albums on the list. It starts off brilliantly with Papa Won’t Leave You Henry, and ends strongly with John Finn’s Wife and Jack the Ripper but it definitely tails off in the middle, a lot of the songs passing me by, and unlike their other albums it hasn’t really grown much on me on repeat listens.

It still has a decent base level as it is a Nick Cave album, but I feel a bit ambivalent about it really. I’ll go 3 as I might try again in future
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Playlist submission: Papa Won’t Leave You Henry

Searching for the Young Soul Rebels
As much as I like Don’t Stand Me Down this is my favourite Dexy’s album, a brilliant example of their early combination of joyous Brummified soul music with an exuberant, intense punk spirit.

Burn it Down (formerly Dance Stance) kicks off with radio static and snippets of Deep Purple, Sex Pistols and The Specials before hitting a great motown soul groove and Kevin Rowland's distinctive strained, impassioned wailing, listing numerous Irish playwrights, a nice reference to late 70s early 80s anit-Irish sentiments. Tell Me When the Light Turns Green carries on the Staxian/Motown/Northern Soul groove with a great horn line, as does the instrumental The Teams That Meet in Caffs, before the slow burning, jazzy Just Looking. Geno is of course an absolute corker, a superb horn riff and a brilliant, loping, swinging bass line.

Seven Days is great, I always liked playing the original when I used to ‘dj’, but I love the slight workingman’s club feel of their version, it feels like you are hearing it in a pub somewhere in the late 70s. I Couldn’t Help It If I Tried, returns to the slowed down soul of Just Looking, with some excellent bass playing. Thankfully Living in Yorkshire It Doesn’t Apply is a great song title and another upbeat Northern Soul style track with a great ooh ooh chorus. Love Pt 1 is the kind of spoken word Kevin Rowland track that is a bit marmite, but I kind of like its oddness before the excellent There, There My Dear, another great horn driven track.

Listening now has reminded me what a great album this is, it has a few rough edges, but there are some great tracks and it has a soulful punkish singularity to it, and a matching aesthetic that I love, so it's a five for me.
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Playlist submission: Geno

The Sun Goes Down and the World Goes Dancing

Django Django
I was very enamoured with Default when it came out, and I remember liking this album at the time, but it has completely dropped off my radar in subsequent years.

Hail Bop is a banger, starting off with a kind of 80s action movie synth line, like some of the incidental music from Beverly Hills Cop, before moving into synthy art-pop. Default remains excellent, a great stomping bit of electro-pop-rock, and Firewater nicely combines a dusty cowboy country feel with electronic rhythms. That combination of more organic electric/acoustic guitars with synths and layered electric rhythms is a recurring feature and is what makes it an interesting album, and I like how it feels as though in many cases it’s built from the rhythm up, with guitars and keys adding hooks and melody, with the vocals augmenting it, occasionally providing melody, like on Hand of Man, but more often adding more rhythm with a pleasing air of flattened detachment.

I like the womp womp on Waveforms and the Hot Chip-esque feel to Zumm Zumm, nice little quirky song. The percussion on Love’s Dart is interesting, a kind of pulsing clippity clop, and it has a feel of Kid A era Radiohead, but with less impenetrable vocals. Wor’s twangy rockabilly-surf guitar and tom-tom heavy drums are great, the twangy guitar reappearing on another great track, Life’s a Beach, with its churchly organ breakdown. I’m in two minds about Skies over Cairo, the north African melody feels a little generic, but I really like the galloping percussion. Silver Rays ends things on a great synth pop note, with more great percussion and a nice synth line.

It’s a very high 4. There are a couple of dips, but it’s a great album, I love the rhythms, guitars, synths and vocals, and it’s been really fun listening after forgetting all about it.
☄️☄️☄️☄️
Playlist submission: Could be Hail Bop, Firewater or Life’s a Beach, but I’ll go with Default

Darkness on the Edge of Town
I generally prefer either sombre, dusty Bruce a la Nebraska and The Ghost of Tom Joad or bombastic 80s Bruce to his mid 70s period, even though of course there are great songs in that period, including a few on this album.

Badlands is up there for me as one of his best songs for me, a great rollicking tune and an excellent opener. Adam Raised a Cain has a nice moody feel, a slight Station to Station feel to the guitar. The Promised Land is great as well, and the final run of Streets of Fire, Prove it All Night and Darkness On the Edge of Town is excellent, hitting that signature strain of strained, anthemic, gritty passion combined with the stories of hardship and perseverance, culminating in the excellent Title Track. Despite the singalong and ebullient nature of some of the music, the themes of the album tend to the small and the sad, everyday people up against the vicitudes of life, with not much chance at escape or happiness.

But there are also a couple of songs that I’m not as keen on and, to use an appropriate car metaphor, stall things a little. Something in the Night and Racing in the Street as slowed down piano ballads have a dirge-like quality, the melody being a bit hard work. I like Candy’s Room and Factory, but they probably sit at the level between those two songs and the others.

It’s not my favourite of his, and I had been erring between 3 and 4. But there are some great songs on here, and although the air of despondency isn’t initially that appealing it is a very good album, so I’ll go 4.
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Playlist submission: Badlands

Rain Dogs
I’m not sure if I have listened to this before, I think I might be getting it mixed up with Swordfishtrombones, although I’ve definitely heard Downtown Train.

Anyhow, of the TW albums we’ve had on the list and the ones I’d heard previously this is probably my favourite. It’s almost satirical in its level’s of Tom Waitness, tales of sailors, pirates, sad people, urban degradation, dwarves and people losing legs etc, but atmospherically it captures an odd, intimate, late night in a bar vibe in a way the confected Nighthawks at the Diner didn’t.

It gets off to a great start with Singapore and Clap Hands, the latter reminding me of the music from the subterranean levels in Super Mario World. Jockey Full Of Bourbon is more conventional, but also has a kind of swaying discomfort to it, while Tango Till They’re Sore is more conventionally Tom Waits with its New Orleans jazz feel. Some of the guitar on Big Black Mariah is distinctively Keith and its a great bluesy track. Hang Down Your Head is less idiosyncratic and more direct, a great forlorn careworn track, the pump organ giving a nice bit of softness against the jaggedness of his voice. Time ends the first side on a great note, a lovely track.

I’m not as keen on the start of the second side, I don’t find the instrumental Midtown and Spoken Words 9th and Hennepin that compelling, but Gun Street Girl is excellent, some clanging and some back porch bluesy guitar make a great combination. Keith’s second appearance on Union Square is a Tom Wait’s version of Chuck Berry, followed by the country-esque Blind Love, which puts me in mind of Odelay. Downtown Train alongside Hang Your Head is a more conventionally structured song, with a more direct melody and it's a great song. Anywhere I Lay My Head has possibly his most exaggerated vocal, but it's a pleasingly odd track, moving from funereal to bar room stomp, and definitely feels like an influence on Radiohead’s Life in a Glasshouse.

It’s not perfect, it does feel like a few tracks too many, with a couple of lulls, but it is a great album, and I’ll go for a high 4.
🌧️🐕‍🦺🐕‍🦺🐕‍🦺
Playlist submission: Gun Street Girl

Tommy
There’s much to like about The Who up to this point, but this is where they really take off, the difference in concept, sound, execution and coherence compared to The Who Sell Out 18 months earlier is very noticeable.

Storywise you do need the liner notes, or explanations from Townshend, in addition to listening to it to get the whole story, even though it’s not actually that complicated. But understanding the whole narrative and its context in the late 60s search for spiritual enlightenment as well as Townshend’s own childhood trauma makes it much more compelling.

Musically it is fantastic, an actual rock opera in the sense of rock music played in the format of an opera or long form piece of music, with elements and themes recurring, notably the See Me, Feel Me, Pinball Wizard and Listening to You motifs, and as laid out in the excellent Overture.

There are great songs throughout, most obviously Pinball Wizard, but I’ve always loved the run of Overture, 1921, Amazing Journey and Sparks as well as Acid Queen, Sensation and I’m Free, but it definitely works best as the whole thing, dipping into country, rock and music hall silliness.

It's also noticeable how much seems to be based around the acoustic guitar and that despite the opera they opted for some relatively restrained horn embellishments rather than it being saturated by strings or too many instruments, perhaps as a reaction to the era of psychedelic overload and to give it an earthy solidness. It also sounds much, much better than their previous albums, the tinniness has gone, replaced by a much richer, fuller sound, even if the music is less frenetic.

I hadn’t listened to this for a while, it’s been great re-visiting it and remembering what a great album it is. 5.
🧙🧙🧙🧙🧙
Playlist submission: Overture

Mr Tambourine Man
The Byrds are undoubtedly a great band, and of course are a hugely influential reference point, but do they have a truly great album? I really like 5th Dimension and you could easily argue Sweetheart of the Rodeo is their best album, although it's not necessarily representative of the ‘classic’ Byrdsian sound. But I’m not sure from this until SOTR that they released a coherently excellent album.

That’s not to say this isn’t a great listen, even if it is a little patchy, with a couple of song choices like Don’t Doubt Yourself, Babe and We’ll Meet Again not adding a great deal. However their mesmerising template of jangly, countrified, warmly harmonised folk rock is sweetly laid out over its fair share of classics, Mr Tambourine Man, I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better, The Bells of Rhymney, All I Really Want to Do and Chimes of Freedom, and I can only imagine how fresh and exciting this would have sounded in 1965. As well as those there are a couple great supporting songs in Here Without You and I Knew I’d Want You, Gene Clark showing what a good songwriter he is.

Jim/Roger McGuinn’s lead guitar is of course fantastic, but Chris Hillman’s bass is excellent too, bouncing along nicely and he gets a great tone on Spanish Harlem Incident and Here Without You. I also never noticed until today that the intro to The Bells of Rhymney must have been a huge influence on If I Needed Someone.

In the end, I think it’s a 4 for me. It’s a great album of course, but I don’t think it’s transcendently excellent compared to their peers and in the context of their outsized influence and the greatness of so many of the songs in their oeuvre.
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Playlist submission: I love I’ll Feel A Whole Lot Better, but it has to be Mr Tambourine Man

Listen Without Prejudice Vol 1.
The duality of George Michael - a writer of songs like the classic Freedom, the slow burning Praying for Time, the ‘co-write’ of Waiting for That Day, early Wings-esque Heal the Pain and Something to Save with the very George Martin cello strings, but also a writer of some of the dullest, most pointless dirges like They Won’t Go When I Go (made all the poorer for following the effervescent Freedom) and Mothers Pride, or the soulless wine bar jazz of Cowboys and Angels or the uninspiring ‘funky’ adult dance-pop panpipe nonsense of Soul Free.

It’s interesting that aside from Freedom those more enjoyable songs are all built around mid tempo acoustic strumming. Not a sound I’d normally associate with him, but there is something about that acoustic sound that suits his voice, the introspective lyrics and the overall thoughtful, mature feel to it all.

But there’s no getting away from the fact that it is punctuated by those other songs, which unfortunately colour the album for me - and rather than give a sophisticated adult sheen, they serve more to dull it with their colourlessness

All told though I think that lands it at a 3 - when it’s good it's very good, but when it’s bad it drags things down, and you can’t help feeling that that in trying for a more sincere tone and to be taken seriously he has eschewed many of the things that make him great, in particular hooks and melodies, leaving a slightly soporific taste in the mouth.
👂👂👂
Playlist submission: Freedom ‘90.

Eternally Yours
Never heard of the Saints, looking at the cover and year I assumed that they were a US punk band. But it turns out they are an _Aussie_ punk band.

And it turns out that although they are a punk band, they are a more interesting proposition than that. Like The Mekons incorporating country into punk they incorporate a bit of soul into punk, and it works well, the horns on Know Your Product and Orstralia, the organ on No, Your Product, the harmonica on Run Down. They also explore some moody acousticy post punk 80s pop-miserablism, rather akin to REM, Echo and the Bunnymen or the Cure; Memories Are Made of This and A Minor Aversion are excellent and Untitled is great too.

The more standard punk fayre of things like Lost and Found, Private Affair (although I like the sardonic lyric on this one), This Perfect Day and I’m Misunderstood, despite perhaps being a little less interesting than the others, are still fun, with some good punky choruses, hooks and nice guitar playing. I also like the robo-babble on International Robots and the humorous lyric.

On first listen I thought three, but I liked it more each time, and in particular Memories Are Made of This and A Minor Aversion I thought were great so I’ll tip it into a 4.
😇😇😇😇
Playlist submission: Memories Are Made of This

Pieces of the Sky
I bought this on CD about 20 years ago off the back of hearing Bluebird Wine, which I still absolutely love. But I remember being a little underwhelmed by the rest of it, I thought it would be more along the lines of Bluebird Wine, and I don’t think I was open to it being more of a wistful, mournful collection of country ballads.

Listening now, it's of course great, although it does have a slight feeling of one pacedness about it, despite If I Could Only Win Your Love, The Bottle Let Me down to some extent, and Bluebird Wine and Queen of the Silver Dollar’s more ebullient tempos. But if you are going to listen to a string of down-tempo and weepy country songs then you can’t really get better than Emmylou and her sensational voice. Too Far Gone, Before Believing are really lovely and Boulder to Birmingham is absolutely superb, a beautiful song and vocal. I like her version of Coat of Many Colors, although I don’t think you can beat Dolly’s original, as the lyric is so personal to her. The cover of For No One is interesting too - I like the idea of slowing it down and turning it into a longing, keening country torch song, but it doesn’t quite work, I think the resigned tone of the lyrics work better with the baroque pop jauntiness of the original, and in losing that contrast it also loses some of the melody.

The playing is fantastic, there’s lovely piano but Ben Keith’s pedal steel is noticeably fantastic, the weeping sounds echoing the sadness of many of the lyrics.

Not quite sure it’s a 5, but its an excellent album, and I’ll go with a high 4.
🌫️🌫️🌫️🌫️
Playlist submission: Boulder to Birmingham

Want One
I had this when it came out and I think I convinced myself I liked it then, and I tried hard with Want Two, and gave it a three, but after listening twice through I realise that I actually hate this album.

I started off thinking this wasn’t without merit, appreciating the size and lushness of the sound as well as the excellent guest list, but that it just wasn’t for me, but that feeling hardened and metastasized into genuine annoyance.

His melodic style is not to my taste, and I’m not a fan of his voice, but those two things in combination are a super charged kind of awful; flat, lacking personality, jarring against the grandiosity of the music and creating an atmosphere of tedious, droning, moaning, solipsistic self-importance.

It felt like I had been listening for about 2 hours but I had only got to track 8, and it was a relief when it finally finished, but that was soon replaced with a sense of dread at having to listen again. It did not improve on second listen, and I ultimately came to the conclusion that this album is some bullshit Emperor’s New Clothes wankfest. Want One = 1.
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Murder Ballads
This has a cartoonish malevolency that is extremely enjoyable. Obviously there is a degree of seriousness to an album of songs about death and murder, but running through that is a darkly comic tone, not played for laughs exactly, more that humour is the other side of the coin to the morbidity. And there’s many very catchy la la la las.

It takes a few listens to warm up. Despite some excellent piano and spooky backing vocals Song of Joy is quite a slow burn, but it starts hitting its straps in the brilliantly filthy Stagger Lee, and then taking off with Polly Jean on Henry Lee, their gloomy, gothic voices are fantastic in tandem. Lovely Creature has that great galloping rhythm and catchy la la las, evoking the Wild West.

Where the Wild Roses Grow is superb, Kylie doesn’t have the strongest voice, but it is distinctive and characterful, and her hushed, delicate tones work perfectly here, and it’s hard not to think this is an old, old folk song in the vein of Long Black Veil or the House Carpenter. The Curse of Millhaven, with its swirling organ and violin, brings a circus like vaudevillian feel, with a frantic, creepy edge, whereas The Kindness of Strangers' more mellow music hides another murder drenched lyric. I love the twangy, 50s ghost town vibes of Crow Jane, a great evocation of mood and menace. Having recently listened to Highway 61, O’Malley’s Bar has a Dylan-esque feel in its length and the free-ranging narrative of the verses, even if Dylan doesn’t normally mention his dick and murdering loads of people, the pulsing, portentous groove is superb, tracking the protagonist as he works his way around the bar. And then of course it ends on the ironic joke of Dylan’s Death is Not the End, a great cover.

This is right on the border of 4 and 5, it’s a great album, every track consistent with the overall theme, with a pretty unique sensibility, and there aren’t really any weak moments, so I think it probably has to be a 5.
⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️
Playlist submission: O’Malley’s Bar

Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D'Aarby
This is definitely a bit of a mixed bag, he’s got a great voice of course, capable of both soulful tenderness and soulful grittiness, but the song quality is a bit patchy and it loses its way a bit in the middle.

Sign my Name is a great late 80s soulful pop song, and the retro soul of the excellent If You Let Me Stay (love the organ) and the quirky synth of the great Wishing Well are very enjoyable. If You All Get to Heaven also has a nice drama to it. As Yet Untitled’s solemn acapella is great as well.

Those more upbeat retro-soul-pop-driven tracks do seem to work better, when it is more funk driven, like I’ll Never Turn My Back on You, and when he goes OTT with the James Brownisms on Dance Little Sister, or gets a bit overwrought on the cover of Who’s Loving You it feels less successful. And in between it’s mainly pleasant if largely generic late 80s soul - Seven More Days, Let’s Go Forward and Rain are nice enough, but hard to recall.

Granted the piano can often sound uber 80s, particularly on I’ll Never Turn My Back, but I think the 80s-ness of the production, particularly the songs Martyn Ware is involved with, is actually a plus point here, especially on Wishing Well and If You Let Me Stay, the latter fitting right alongside Aretha & George and Annie Lennox & Al Green in that nice little genre of 80sified retro soul.

Although I enjoyed the good tracks I’m not sure there’s enough to come back to, so I’ll go a high 2.
📉📉
Playlist submission: If You Let Me Stay

Highway 61 Revisited
It’s mad that this was released 4 just months after Bringing It All Back Home, and was recorded in about 6 or 7 days, and although it does sometimes merge with that album in my mind (I often get mixed up about which songs are on which album), it's equally fantastic of course.

While BIABH had a side of more acoustic numbers, apart from Desolation Row this album eschews that for a kind of amped up, bluesed up 50s rock and roll with a spiky, abrasive, amphetamine intensity, particularly on the first side, the tempo only letting up for the easy feel of It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry until it gets to the doom laden and acidically brilliant Ballad of a Thin Man. I’ve always loved the ‘tax deductible charity organisations’ line.

The two sides' openers share a similar subject matter, but whereas on Like A Rolling Stones the distaste has calcified into disdain, on Queen Jane Approximately he still maintains a sense of compassion, echoed in the slightly softer melody and sound. There’s not much to say about Like a Rolling Stone, other than I tend to zone out when it comes on as I’ve heard it so often, but occasionally I zone in, and listening closely I’m reminded what an incredible dsong it truly is.

I’ve always loved the siren sound and the weird wobble on the vocals in the title track. On the surface it has all the hallmarks of a Dylan lyric, with shoe strings and biblical sacrifices, but it all ties together with the solution being escaping somewhere else. Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues has an echo of It Takes a Lot to Laugh, and I love the loping feel, especially the piano and the picaresque lyrics, another song around travel and moving around and escape. But Desolation Row is the high point for me, perhaps a cousin of It’s Alright Ma and Mr Tambourine Man, and one of my favourite Dylan songs. It never feels like 11 minutes, the kind of cowboy-country feel keeping musical momentum as the disparate images move in and out of focus, it really is a stunning song.

I might marginally prefer Blonde on Blonde or Blood on the Tracks, but it's a brilliant album both musically for its bluesy rock n roll charge and its lyrical imagery. 5.
🛣️🛣️🛣️🛣️🛣️
Playlist submission: Desolation Row

Blue
Whatever you think of them, Fly By II is a great tun…oh wait, wrong album.

I have two memories I associate with this album; buying it at one of those CD fairs in Dunelm and it having one of those yellow exclamation mark stickers, and Simon le Bon performatively saying California was one of his favourite songs on the Jo Whiley Show episode 2.3 broadcast on channel 4 on Wednesday 28th of September 1998, alongside Mel B and Shaznay Lewis. He is right though, it is a _fantastic_ song.

They don’t have a great deal to do with the actual music, which is of course stellar from start to end, and as great as some of her subsequent albums are, this is my no1 of hers, and its possibly the peak of the laurel canyon confessional singer songwriter genre.

I love the simple and pared back arrangements, with only a few songs accented by drums or bass or additional guitars, giving an hushed, personal feel to the intimacy of the songs, both melodically and lyrically, and it’s pretty much a perfect, not an extraneous song or moment - it's delicate, upbeat, sad, wondering, wandering, hopeful and resigned all at once.

The dulcimer and piano of All I Want is such a lovely sound, an upbeat tempo with a sad lyric, followed by the superb My Old Man, the piano shifting around hopefully and then mournfully into the ‘and when he’s gone’ part. Little Green is a beautiful song, one I’ve always liked, but that has really emerged as my favourite listening now, particularly understanding its origin and significance, and the move into the chorus is just fantastic. It needs the skippier and brighter Carey to balance the heartbreak, with its peripatetic tale of cave dwelling hippies. Blue is another beautiful song, mournful and sad to close side 1.

California is a fantastic combination of dulcimer, voice and guitar and pedal steel, similar to All I Want, but with a fantastic lyric of longing for the creative freedom California represents. This Flight Tonight carries on the theme of travel and longing, although this time not wanting to go home. There’s probably a reason River doesn’t make onto that many Christmas song playlists, but its interpolation of Jingle Bells and mournful tone strikes a chord with the sadness that sometimes appears at Christmas. A Case of You is yet another great song, and another great combination of her dulcimer and James Taylor’s guitar, and the whole thing ends on a disillusioned and poignant note with The Last Time I Saw Richard, although the tone is sad it seems that her life without him is far better than the depiction of Richard’s.

Beautiful album. 5.
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Playlist submission: Little Green

Suicide
Minimalistic pulsing synths and drums, oddly enunciated vocals, 50s rock’n’roll influences, atmospheric moodiness? Yes please!

I’d not heard of this, and I assumed it was more in the style of thrashy US punk, but it's way, way more interesting than that, a kind of nihilistic, brilliant mash up of Gene Vincent, Kraftwerk and Velvet Underground, feeling well ahead of its time for 1977. I feel its remiss of me not to have heard of it, reading about how influential it has been - Radiohead, New Order, Depeche Mode, Human League, Soft Cell, LCD Soundsystem and loads of others, and you can certainly hear the mood of Bruce’s State Trooper.

Ghost Rider is a superb opener, the relentless pulse is great, carrying on with the nagging Rocket USA, with the farfisa giving an oxymoronic homeliness against the foreboding, reminding me a bit of Public Service Broadcasting. Cheree has a feel of If I Gave You a Party.

Johnny is another great track, the 50s bassline against the drum machine and the drawled vocals an excellent combination. Girl shows their knack for a minimal instrumental hook with the bass and the organ riff, and is another great song. Frankie Teardrop is obviously the centrepiece at 10 minutes long, and definitely has a kinship with State Trooper, and is an epic, slowly, drawn out bit of droning dissonance, a spookily excellent song. Che has an element of Low/Eno to it in its more ambient synth style, and throws in a nicely discordant final not

I was thinking a 4, but I gave Per Ubu a 5, and this feels just as influential an interesting, and it is a fantastic album, so 5.

As a side note, of the last 5 albums we’ve had from 1977 I’ve given four 5s and one 4s - The Idiot, Exodus, The Stranger, this and Peter Gabriel with the 4. Looking back through the list, 1977 might be the strongest year for albums

☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️
Playlist submission: Ghost Rider

Mama Said Knock You Out
The title track is genuinely great, but he is a rather pedestrian rapper, and not in a laid back tempos and drawling delivery way. On The Boomin’ System it feels like he’s trudging monotonously through lyrical mud, indicative of the general feeling of characterlessness across the whole album.

Along with his delivery the beats and samples all feel a bit lacklustre and it all just feels uninspiring, particularly when you look at what else was going on elsewhere in Hip-Hop; 3 Feet High and Rising and Done by the Forces of Nature the year before, People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm and Fear of a Black Planet the same year, Step in the Arena the year after, EPMD releasing albums in the same period. In comparison, and even though he namechecks some of those people, this all feels rather generic and stuck in 1986, while everyone else has moved on.

Although Mama Said Knock You Out is really the only track with noticeable energy and dynamism, there are a couple of good tracks - Mr Good Bar, aside from the Dennis reynolds-esque ‘I sure wouldn’t rape you’, Milky Cereal, and the nice jazziness of 6 Minutes of Pleasure. But that’s slim pickings in an album over 60 minutes long.

It’s not worthy of 1 star, but I can’t imagine listening again. 2.
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Playlist submission: Mama Said Knock You Out