Reviews by ikejiri

Destroyer
Detroit Rock City and Beth are good, and although it’s clearly very competent the rest of it is pretty much the same song 8 times, and that song unfortunately does wear thin, there’s only so many times you can enjoy the rather imbecilic lyrics, the heavy tom-toms and similar sounding guitar riffs, even if the whole sticks to a welcomely brief 35 minutes.

It’s not awful, but I’m pretty sure I won’t remember anything about this in a week’s time and I can’t really think I’ll listen again.
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Playlist submission: Detroit Rock City

Selling England by the Pound
I remember giving this a try a few years ago and not particularly vibing with it. That feeling was similar on the first go, but it definitely grew on me with repeat listens and I found it much more satisfying than the Yes or ELP albums we’ve had.

The pomposity and conceit of Dancing With the Moonlit Knight is still a little off putting (over the last 60 years or why do so many bands want to ruminate from their unique perspective of how they are the only ones who can see England is being ‘lost/sold/swallowed by America’), although musically there are some nice musical passages especially the guitar around 3 minutes, and although the Who-esque synth/keyboard part is great, and it's a good song, the ‘I’m Breaking the Legs of the Bastard that Got Me Framed’ accent and spoken word parts in Battle of Epping Forest are more than a little bit cringey.

Aside from that, though, it jumps around with a fair degree of eccentric, scattershot charm. I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe) balances whimsy and psychedelic Beatles inflections in a very pleasing way, a very nice track. Firth of Fifth has some lovely piano and flutes, and is really fun once the keyboard/synth part kicks in. Not sure why I don’t find this as off putting as Dancing With the Moonlit Knight, as it shares some commonalities, perhaps I just prefer it melodically and harmonically. More Fool Me has a very 70s soft rock feel, a bit of Boston, a bit of Frampton, but with a folkier dynamic, a great track. After the Ordeal is another folky track, the piano and synth behind the acoustic as it builds into a vaguely Queen-esque lead guitar part (also tonally the guitar sounds a little like the Top Gun theme). The Cinema Show I really liked, the first section’s mysticalness building into an almost Radiohead-esque musical crescendo.

I don’t get the same degree of satisfaction as I do from Gabriel’s solo records, and there is still a slight edge of po-facedness to some of it that dampens it a little, but it's right on the edge of 3 and 4. It’s pretty dense in a good way, though, and I definitely liked it the more I listened, so I think I’ll tip over to 4.
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Playlist submission: More Fool Me

Crossing the Red Sea with The Adverts
Never heard any Adverts songs, I’m aware of them as one of those names you hear, but I thought they were a bit more early-80s post punk rather than just as or just after the punk wave crested.

Outside of The Clash and a few others a lot of punk bands and albums, both US and UK, feel very samey with similar rhythms, guitar thrashings and sneering vocals, and while this does suffer from some of that in places, it also has some very catchy power-pop/punk-pop tunes; One Chord Wonders, Bored Teenagers, On the Roof, Bombsite Boy and Safety in Numbers. On Wheels is also an interesting departure from the rest of the sound on the album, feeling much more in the Wire/Magazine vein with a great snaking bass line and some great tom toms. Gary Gilmore’s Eyes, not on the original album, is also another very enjoyable pop-punk track.

It seems to me to be a cut above many of other contemporaneous punk albums with a handful of genuinely good, catchy tracks and a nice sense of punkish urgency and earnestness. Think that makes it a solid-high 3.
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Playlist submission: On the Roof

Maggot Brain
Love this album, from the superb cover to the sci-fi, distorted, acid-spacey 10 minute long guitar solo title track to the fantastic, country-folk tinged singalong of Can You Get to That, to the funk-pop of Hit It and Quit It, to the distorted drums and call for harmony of You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks, the funk-rock strut of Super Stupid, the loping groove of Back in Our Minds, and the final over the top acid casualty fart-jam of Wars of Armageddon.

And it’s another one where you can hear who it influenced, particularly Primal Scream and for better or worse Red Hot Chilli Peppers, although neither of those manage to hit the same, loose and tight groove and playing, particularly Bernie Worrell’s superb keyboards and Tiki Fullwood’s drumming.

37 minutes of superb acid-blues-funk-rock-pop, simple 5 for me.
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Playlist submission: Can You Get to That

Club Classics Vol. One
Part dated, part ahead of its time, part still fresh sounding.

The rapping/spoken word bits, both lyrically and stylistically fall into the dated camp (Feeling Free, Dance, Jazzie’s Groove), but the excellent mix of house, hip-hop, jazz, disco and soul signposted a lot of great music (MA, Portishead, Tricky etc) that came after, and the two big songs, Keep on Movin’ and Back to Life still sound superb.

Alongside those two tracks, Holdin’ On and African Dance with their African influences are great tracks, as is Feel Free with more excellent Chic-esque strings and an excellent, soulful vocal. Happiness is a soulful, dubby track with a nice house piano line and Jazzie’s Groove’s use of samples with a great bassline.

I enjoyed this, more than I was expecting. Keep on Movin, Feel Free and Back to Life are excellent and there are some very good album tracks too. And despite some things that do date it, it’s a very good album, edging to a 4.
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Playlist submission: Back to Life

Konnichiwa
I know very little grime uk Hip Hop outside Dizzee Rascal and Stormzy, so I was interested to give this a listen. There are some great boom bap-ish beats and excellent dancey, synthy hooks, and I really like his delivery, where Britishisms and British cultural references abound. Fam.

Lyrically I’m not sure I’m totally on the right wavelength with all of it, but for all the confrontational stuff there’s a lot about family, fame, relationships with a degree of sadness, and some great wry little lines in things like the excellent That’s Not Me, Man and Text Me Back, and he has a great, sharp delivery.

Like a lot of hip hop albums, I don’t understand the point of the skits and spoken word bits, they’re hard to listen to and the disrupt the flow and feel of otherwise great tracks like Corn on the Curb and Crime Riddim’

Hook and beat wise, I love the string/synth riff on It Ain’t Safe and the gurgling squiggles on That’s Not Me. The bassy Numbers is great and there’s another great synth part on Man

I’ve listened to this a lot, I was happy to let it go round and round as it got better with each listen, so much so I think it just nudges into a 4
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Playlist submission: That’s Not Me

Haunted Dancehall
This was decent to work to, and it definitely got better over the last half, but I struggled a bit to engage and find much that was particularly memorable.

Compared to some of the 90s electronic music on here it felt like there were fewer interesting ideas, and I wasn’t keen on the production and overall sound. Orbital, Leftfield and something like Tricky give their music with a hypnotic sense, whereas this felt far more stolid, the dubby bits not really working in adding any atmosphere and the beats felt a bit tinny, with a slightly cold and removed sheen to it.

As I say it did pick up in the 2nd half, with some slightly more interesting atmospherics and moods. I really liked Tow Truck though, with a bit of Portishead’s cinematic feel with the guitars, drums and reverb. Theme was also decent, the bass giving it a bit of warmth and life and I liked Chapel Street Market, a nice bit of Eno-esque spaciness and noises that reminded me of some of the Tomorrow Never Knows tape loops.

Ultimately I think neither liked nor disliked it, there are a couple of songs for a playlist but I’m very unlikely to come back to it in full as I think there are other albums in this style I prefer, so I’ll go 2.
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Playlist submission: Tow Truck

Eli And The Thirteenth Confession
Again one of those cult albums I’ve heard a lot about but have never listened to. I think my expectations were probably a bit high, I really liked about half of it, but I was more ambivalent about the other.

You can see the influence she had, particularly on something like Tapestry, which shares some vocal mannerisms and a similar overall vibe, and there are also notes of Joni Mitchell throughout.

Luckie is one of the songs along with Lu, Sweet Blindness, Lonely Women, December’s Boudoir that I wasn’t that into. There are some nice moments and passages and some great playing, but too often the soul inflections drift into a musical cabaret/show tune/rag time vibe that I’m not as keen on

Poverty Train, Eli’s Comin’, Timer, Stoned Soul Picnic, Emmie, Once it Was Alright and The Confession I thought were great though, hitting a nice furrow of soul, bluesiness and jazzy inflections with some great melodies and choruses, avoiding too much of the showtuney-ness

I’m glad this came up, although I wasn’t totally into it, I can see why people might love it, she has a distinctive voice and point of view for the time, and her influence is clear. I’d stick it on again, but not sure how often so I’ll go for a solid 3.
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Playlist submission: Eli’s Comin’

A Wizzard, A True Star
I gave Something/Anything? a 5, I thought it was great, a brilliant set of 70s power-pop soft rock.

I’m perhaps a little more on the ambivalent side with this one. There are some great 70s soft rock songs, scattered between and sometimes in the middle of all the other stuff going on; International Feel, parts of Tic Tic Tic, Le Feel Internacionale, the excellent Sometimes I Don’t Know What to Feel and then particularly right at the back end with the run of I Don’t Want to Tie You Down, Is It My Name, Just One Victory, and on the one hand I admire the kitchen sink abandon and idiosyncrasy of it, Rundgren making it all on his own and attempting to create his musical vision of a psychedelic experience happening in his mind, but it does drift a little too often into a Yes-Queen-ELP-10cc-Supertramp cul-de-sac of whimsy and wackiness with the succession of short tracks on side 1. And I don’t think the soul medley on side 2 works particularly well either.

That’s not to say it’s not worthwhile or entertaining, and I did find myself enjoying it and getting to grips with it more on repeat listens, maybe as I was able to appreciate the contrast of the snippets of fully formed, conventional pop-rock against the frantic psychedelic miasma* surrounding them.

Although sonically it’s very different from Duck Stab, I have a similar feeling of appreciation for its existence - if you are going to throw a few things at the wall you may as well throw a lot of things at the wall - and although it might be a bit too scattergun and schizophrenic to be a truly great, coherent listen. Although I also think if you took away all the whimsy and made it more focused it might lose much of its distinctive charm.

All told I think it lands as a high 3, I’ll be keen to revisit at some point in the future where it might push a bit higher.
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Playlist submission: Sometimes I Don’t Know What to Feel
*I actually wrote this last week before I read Dan’s Royksop review, I’m not copying, it’s synergy.

Music from the Penguin Cafe
I had no idea of what to expect from this, the only thing I knew ahead of it was that Eno was involved in its production and release. That may have pre-disposed me to liking it, which, predictably, I did.

It’s a great combination of oddness and convention, the melding of pop and classical instrumentation isn’t completely novel, but the orchestral elements are superb, moving from pretty and delicate to foreboding and unsettling with an excellent strangeness and grace.
It’s great how the cellos and strings work with the electric piano on Penguin Cafe single, recalling some of Macca/George Martin’s tea-room orchestra arrangements on the White Album, and the rest of the Zopf suite is lovely, the electric piano nicely prominent and the strings recalling more White Album and also some of Nick Drake’s string arrangements on something like Surface Tension (and Chartered Flight has a similarity to Horn also). I like how different classical elements, baroque, far eastern, string quartet, chamber music for eg, slide into each other, particularly on hose Zopf Tracks, the run from Surface Tension to Giles Farnaby’s Dream is great, before the Radiophonic Workshop spaciness of Pigtail closes out that side.

The Sound of Someone You Love Who’s Going Away and It Doesn’t Matter is really lovely, it slightly recalls Nico, but it’s a beautiful, melancholic tune on piano and guitar, with a slightly unsettling section, and the violin and cello are superb.

I thought this was fantastic from start to finish, really easy to enjoy and slightly unusual and singular, kind of childlike and naive in places, off kilter and out of place in others but also sweetly melodic and harmonic throughout, and another album I doubt I would have listened to without the list. 5. Love the cover too.
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Playlist submission:The Sound of Someone You Love Who’s Going Away and It Doesn’t Matter

Fire of Love
With the first track it felt like the punk and American roots amalgam was a bit overstated, it’s pretty straightforward but pretty good early 80s post-punk power-pop. The rootsy bluesy punkness did start to reveal itself after that though.

Obviously Preaching the Blues is a Robert Johnson song, but it has a nice rockabilly feel to it, with some nice guitars and a nice energy, and Promise Me with its fiddle and slide guitars is very good too. She’s Like Heroin To Me is another good combination of power-pop punk-stomp and country-blues guitars. Black Train, despite some questionable lyrics, is a good bit of rockabilly thrash and I like Cool Drink of Water is another nice punk-blues arrangement of an older blues song. Ghost on the Highway and Jack on Fire I liked as well. There’s definitely an influence on the White Stripes, and it echoes some of The Clash’s rockabilly from London Calling a couple of years prior, and it reminds me a little of the Violent Femmes and The Replacements, although without the latter’s stronger songwriting skills.

Overall it’s a fun album, with a nice point of difference from many of their contemporaries, the slide guitars, fiddles, country twang with a bit of garagey punky thrash is a nice combination. Rhythmically though it does have a tendency to stay in the standard punk drumming lane, missing a bit of swing and groove that I think would make the songs pop a little better.

Still, I’m sure I’ll listen again. I don’t think it quite gets into the 4s, it doesn’t quite have enough standout songs for that , so it’s a solid 3.
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Playlist submission: Promise Me

Venus Luxure No.1 Baby
From sublime and fascinating yesterday with Scott 4, to dreary and uninspiring with this. I’m sure it's someone’s cup of tea somewhere, but it’s really not mine at all.

The band are certainly tight, and there are some occasional interesting moments flickering among the staid one note indie post hardcore monotony, the looped string/keyboard on Go Be Delighted is nice and the restrained drumming and bass on on Get Down are good and the little piano riff on Billy’s One Stop is nice, but nothing can really make up for the fact that, ultimately, every single song is boring and the whole thing just feels utterly pointless and very tedious, with out any sense of dynamism or melodic variation to add any light and shade to all the one dimensional flatness.

While it may not be truly horrific it is dull, and subsequently irritating, and there is no reason to ever even think about listening to this again.
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Playlist submission: Go Be Delighted

Scott 4
Looking back I seem to have found Scott 2 annoying and interesting in equal measure, the baroque-cabaret-uncle vibes getting a bit much, and the whole thing not being as good as I was expecting it to be.

This, however, I really liked from start to finish. It has some of the same elements as Scott 2, but seemingly done with a slightly looser, more stripped back feel and more obvious rock-country-folk-soundtrack influences, evident with the Morricone-esque opener, the superbly dramatic The Seventh Seal. The orchestral arrangements and strings are excellent throughout actually, as are the guitars and some of the bass playing is particularly stellar. The melodies all seem easier than Scott 2 as well, way less strained and affected, much more satisfying and memorable as a result, and allowing his fantastic voice to come to the fore.

The World’s Strongest Man is excellent with a Jimmy Webb feel to it both musically and thematically, touching on loneliness and isolation. Angels of Ashes has a lovely flow against the bass and swelling strings, and Hero of the War is a great bit of uptempo catchiness. The Old Man’s Back again is fantastic, the stand out, with further Morricone vibes plus superb bass and a great lyric. Duchess is also excellent, with a nice little bluesy hint to it. I love the backing vocals and guitars on Get Behind Me, great chorus and more excellent bass. I really like the weeping guitar on Rhymes of Goodbye too, and it’s another great melody. On Your Own Again and Boy Child, while not as immediate, are very nice bits of folky baroqueness, adding a slight melancholic shade between the ‘bigger’ songs.

Along with Scott 2 this is one of those cult albums that I had never heard. While Scott 2 was vaguely underwhelming this I found truly whelming, and I can see why it’s so highly regarded, it’s a fantastic album, blending orchestral pop, John Barry and Ennio Morricone soundtracks, folk, country, blues with opaque and wide-rangingly introspective lyrics, into a fascinating and enjoyable listen, kind of familiar but also slightly and brilliantly off kilter and odd. Started off as a 4, but I just kept wanting to listen to it, so I think it just pushes into a 5
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Playlist submission: The Old Man’s Back Again

I Against I
I’ve only heard of Bad Brains through the Beastie Boys. I know they are a hardcore band, so I wasn't expecting a great deal.

And despite it being more funk rock with punk/hardcore elements, I was right not to expect much as it's a pretty unremarkable album, with nothing much interesting happening either melodically, vocally, lyrically or musically.

Not woeful, and not as forcefully dull as Afghan Whigs but I cannot foresee any reason to ever listen to this again.
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Playlist submission: She’s Calling You

War
Sunday Bloody Sunday and New Year’s Day are clearly great tracks, Larry Mullen’s drumming and the Irish Folk acoustic guitar and fiddles of Sunday Bloody Sunday underscore the sadness of the theme of the song, while New Year’s Day is a very evocative and atmospheric pre mega fame U2 song.

Whether it’s due to being far less familiar with the rest of tracks or whether they just aren’t as good, nothing particularly stood out or was particularly memorable, apart from the closing Surrender and ‘40’, the former escaping the shackles of the scratchy rather generic post punk on the rest of the album with a nice bit of melody and muscularity and the latter foreshadowing some of their later arms aloft crow pleasing stadium songs.

Ultimately I think this lands as a solid 3, Sunday Bloody Sunday and New Year’s Day are great tracks, Surrender and ‘40’ are very good and the rest, while in no means bad, just don’t stick long in the memory in comparison. Perhaps indicative of them looking to leave their more angular post punk behind and find the pop rock bearings that would take them to mega-stardom.
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Playlist submission: New Year’s Day

Sunday at the Village Vanguard
Lovely stuff. While I’ve enjoyed a lot of the horn led Jazz recently, this piano trio sort of thing is what I thought I might like when we started the list, and so it is.

There are a few taking the bassline for a walk and keeping the cymbals splashy moments, but whereas previously they would have chafed, now I find them increasingly pleasant, and the interplay between the three instruments really is quite incredible, the lead swapping between bass and piano, and some excellent drumming peeking out from between the gaps.

It may not be as frenzied or as experimental as some other albums we’ve had, it also steers clear of the hotel lobby jazz inflection we sometimes get. To my ears there’s an unpretentious (for Jazz) sensibility to it, there’s plenty of skill and virtuosity of course, but in a tasteful and thoughtful way. The piano of My Man’s Gone Now winds its way through the song beautifully and expressively and it is a superb piece of music. Solar is a nice counterpoint, uptempo and more overtly jazzy but with some incredible piano runs and superb bass. Jade Visions is lovely too, a lovely, melancholic mellowness to it, especially as it was written by the bassist, who died shortly after this was recorded.

I liked this from the off and it got better with each listen, and similar to some of the dance albums like Leftfield or Orbital it works both in the background and as a more immersive listen, picking out little bass and piano runs and getting lost in the feel of it. I think it's a high 4, as there is a little bit of uniformity of sound and style at the start of side 2, but it’s something I’m looking forward to coming back to, to fill a laid back jazz hole that Bitches Brew doesn’t. Nice.
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Playlist submission: My Man’s Gone Now

Here are the Sonics
It struck me coming off the back of The Residents that The Witch is not a million miles away from some of the tracks on Duck Stab, just with more conventional rock instrumentation setting the discordant, slightly unsettling tone.

Anyhow, similar to Monks, there is a tangible sense of energy and fervor to the playing, carrying them through some rather erratic production and sound quality, but this is probably the most consistent of the 60s garage rock albums on the list, even if many of the covers are probably better performed elsewhere.

The 4 original songs, although clearly influenced by the types of songs they cover, are a lot of fun, particularly The Witch, Psycho and Strychnine. The stand out track, though, is obviously Have Love Will Travel, you can see why it’s been in a few adverts, a great tune delivered with absolute conviction. Dirty Robber, Night Time is the Right Time are also good, and Walking the Dog with it’s very early Stones vibes is decent too.

It’s a fun album, one of the best in the genre, but despite that, its historical context and influence it probably doesn’t have a huge amount of relistenability, so it lands as a mid-high 3.
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Playlist submission: Have Love Will Travel

Duck Stab
On first listen I felt this was too deliberately daft, but there was some strange charm to it that made me look forward to listening again, and I started to enjoy and admire it.

I think it just manages to stay on the right side of studied, performative eccentricity, as its intentional oddness seems, to me, to have a point to it - in creating a disquieting, creepy atmosphere with ominous bass, discordant synth and primitive, eerie childlike melodies it make it a strangely compelling album, evoking an odd half awake, half dreaming state.

It’s not an easy listen, and not exactly the album to work to when you are trying to put a budget together, but amongst the atonality and strangeness there are some extremely effective passages and moods. The bass does great work on tracks like Sinister Exaggerator, Blue Rosebuds, Laughing Song (which reminds me very much of the score from Beverly Hills Cop II), Elvis and His Boss, Semolina, and Weight-LIfting Lulu, shifting between dubby atmospheres, rhythmic pulsing and more conventional melodic playing. Some of the synth lines and motifs are great too, Sinister Exaggerator, Bach is Dead, Lizard Lady, Birthday Boy, Krafty Cheese and The Electrocutioner, and it’s all augmented by some nice guitar parts here and there.

Coming after the sterile musical dead-endness of Afghan Whigs I really appreciate that this is so unique and singular, and its off beat appeal definitely grew with every listen, and I wanted to keep giving it one more go.

It’s on the border of 3 and 4, it’s a fascinatingly odd album that I really liked, and despite feeling like I’ll only come back to it when I’m in the right mood, I’ll be a bit generous and tip over to 4.
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Playlist submission: Laughing Song

Gentlemen
This isn’t completely awful, but it is utterly boring, a tiresome, self important voice singing bad lyrics over tedious, mediocre 90s alt rock. Nothing stood out, or seemed notable in any positive way, the sense of dullness is just too powerful, and there is no reason to ever listen again.

And that really is all I can muster.
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Playlist submission: Brother Woodrow/Closing Prayer as thankfully it’s an instrumental.

Gris Gris
I’m pretty familiar with this, I love Dr John’s New Orleans R’n’B-psychedelic-folk-funk-soul, and the late night Louisiana Bayou atmospheres with a great foreboding swampiness, and this is a very enjoyable album, even if it it’s doesn’t always maintain the heights of the first few tracks and the superlative Walk on Guilded Splinters.

Gris Gris Gumbo Ya Ya is a fantastic, superbly atmospheric with the harmonica riff and the loping, grooving bass line and general sense of eeriness. Danse Kalinda, expands on that eeriness, taking tribal rhythms and percussion and vocal chanting to make another superbly atmospheric track. Mama Roux is more conventionally R’n’B, grooving along on a charmingly breezy organ part.

I get Death of a Clown from the opening to Danse Fambeaux and moments of Another Day in Paradise towards the back end as it also recalls the first two tracks. The spooky nighttime ritualistic vibes return in Croker Courtbullion, the nursery rhyme melody evoking a great sense of disquiet. It gets a bit Minnie the Moocher on Jump Sturdy, a direct nod to New Orleans R’n’B, which I like even if I’m not totally a fan of it.

I Walk on Guilded Splinters is the obvious standout, a truly fantastic song, and one that has inspired some excellent cover versions. Paul Weller’s most obviously, but Cher has an excellent version and there’s a super one by Johnny Jenkins, with Duan Allman, which was sampled for Go Let It Out.

While I’m not sure everything lands totally I love that this is not really like many other albums, all the varying influences and histories of New Orleans and Louisiana all put together in a brilliantly creepy serpentine melange (if only there was a culturally relevant word for this), evoking ghostly musical sounds heard from the other side of the bayou, with lamplights glimpsed between the trees and mists, as the percussion gets louder….

For the overall atmosphere and uniqueness and for two stellar tracks in Gris Gris and Guilded Splinters I think I’ll just tip this from a high 4 to a 5.
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Playlist submission: I Walk on Guilded Splinters