Reviews by ikejiri

We’re Only In It For The Money
I looked back on what I wrote for Freak Out! And I think I feel largely the same about this, even if my patience for Frank Zappa has maybe worn a little thinner since then. I get the feeling he resented the hippies becoming a part of mainstream culture, not out of ideology, but because he wanted to be the popular outsider, so he just took the piss instead. On the one hand I like that idea of satirising hippies and ’straights’ pretensions and phoniness equally, but on the other his relentless cynicism is can be a bit tiring, particularly on the first side of this, where that joke is rather one note.

That’s not to say it’s not funny in parts though, Who Needs The Peace Corps and Flower Punk are probably the most successful plays on the concept and there are some other great lines and amusing punchlines and images scattered throughout, and his dryly sardonic descriptions of violence I guess were kind of prescient for what happened in the rest of 1968 in the US. I also like the multiple ‘I’m Jimmy Carl Black, the Indian of the Group’

Musically I think it's a bit more interesting than what I can remember of Freak Out, although musical excellence isn’t the point obviously, particularly on the more skit like tracks. There are passable, deliberate approximations of Beach Boys, Jimi Hendrix, Vaudeville and Acid Rock/Blues bands, and there are some nice musical passages and playing elsewhere; Concentration Moon’s bass and organ are pretty good, and Mom & Dad’s fuggish atmosphere is nicely delivered by the bass, organ and drums, The Idiot Bastard’s Son’s Doors-esque organ is very good and the riff on Lonely Little Girl is great.

I suppose the question is what criteria to use to rate this. Of course on a pure musical level there isn’t a great deal of interest, so I guess it comes down to the tolerance/appeal of the surrealism, cynicism, contrariness and iconoclasm, and the ambition and intent to do something different and poke at things. Rather like Freak Out I do like that intention and that someone is out there doing this kind of stuff, and I think that appreciation just about outweighs some of the tiresome aspects. I gave Freak Out a 3 and I’ll give this the same.
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Playlist submission: Who Needs the Peace Corps

Paul’s Boutique
It already feels like a big step forward from Licensed to Ill just from the organ sample on To All The Girls, a bit of instrumentation and a sense of musical influences beyond the frat boy party rap of the first album. Shake Your Rump then kicks in, initially a little like something from Licensed to Ill, but then pulls the rug with a cavalcade of samples as the track careens brilliantly all over the place, all with their customary sense of humour.

Things continue in that vein; meticulously layered tracks based around brilliantly eclectic samples, all tied together with fun, excitement and just an overall sense of sonic inventiveness. It’s worth going track by track through Who Sampled, as the list is incredible, Macca and Dylan on Johnny Ryall, Superfly, Bernard Hermann and Jaws on Egg Man, Eagles, The Band, Star Wars on High Plains Drifter, and of course 5 different Beatles songs on The Sounds of Science….I mean I could go on.

Lyrically it’s also a major step forward from Licensed to Ill, they still have the same sense of humour, but the scope is much wider, full of stories and characters and it has a real sense of New York.

I don’t think there are any particularly weak songs, but the run from To All the Girls to The Sounds of Science is particularly superb, barely putting a foot wrong with great stories, great samples, beats and grooves. It hardly lets up after that though, Hey Ladies is excellent, I love the the heavier Mississipi Queen sample on Barrel of a Gun and the Jackson 5 sample on Car Thief gives it a great funky atmosphere. Shadrach is great too, a brilliantly diverse set of samples all adding up to a brilliantly percussive track. And then B-Boy Bouillabaisse is a musical and production tour de force in sampling, like a mini concert.

Things that were very innovative and influential at the time can often sound dated, but this doesn’t at all, 35 years later it still sounds fresh and exciting and is just a great album. Maybe because sampling at this scale became prohibitively expensive not long after this was never imitated or diluted to death, so it remains along with 3 Feet High and Rising as the apogee of this type of thing.

Anyhow t’s rightly a classic and a seminal album, nothing but a 5.
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Playlist submission: Could be a few, but Sounds of Science for the Beatlesness.

Haut de gamme / Koweït, rive gauche
Bit of a character by the looks of things from his Wikipedia page, and by character I mean he looks like a bit of a wrong’un.

I’m not at all familiar with Soukous music apart from perhaps hearing the name once or twice, so I don’t really have a frame of reference for this, but from reading about it looks like it’s a good representation of it, and he’s one of the most popular African musicians of all time.

It’s a thoroughly enjoyable album though, apart from the odd occasion when some 80s/early 90s production and sounds creep in, like the very dated piano on Desespoir, the start of Elixir and the synths on Porte-monnaie, and an hour is also quite a long runtime for the 9 songs.

Despesoir also carries more than a hint of I Know What I Know in the bass, although that may be a common motif in African music (although I would presume) DRC Congo and South Africa have different musical cultures. And after the danceable upbeatness of the first two tracks I really like the slower pace of Koweit, Rive Gauche, and the slightly more low key Qui Cherche Trouve. Elixir, Porte-monnaie are very good, Dit Jeannot is excellent and Conte de Fees and Obrigado are decent enough.

Even if I don’t think I actually know enough about this type of music to distinguish what is actually good, this coming up is what’s great about doing the list, I’d never have found this on my own - it’s great to find things in styles and genres outside my normal stuff and outside of the UK/US. I’d definitely listen again and will try some more Soukous music too, so for those reasons I’ll tip it into a 4.
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Playlist submission: Koweit, Rive Gauche.

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme
I can’t recall listening to this before, or at least not properly, I’ve always tended towards Bookends and Bridge Over Troubled Water, but I should really have given this more attention, as it’s quirkily great, with some excellent songs on it outside those all time classics in Scarborough Fair, Howard Bound, 59th Bridge Street Song and For Emily.

Scarborough Fair is so familiar I find it easy to not really listen, but those harmonies and the harpsichord really are so fantastically well done. Patterns is an interesting one, a great song and probably emblematic, from what I’ve read, of the songwriting difficulties that Simon had at the time - not in the song itself but the theme of resigned futility and lack of will. Love the bass, and it feels like the guitar break is about to turn into the middle bit of Stonehenge. Cloudy feels like a classic S&G album track, not the most showy perhaps but a lovely melody with and rhythmic accents.

‘All my words come back to me in shades of mediocrity’ - always loved that line. I like the sequencing with The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine’s glib satire after the heartfelt and sad Homeward Bound, and it’s one of those Paul Simon songs like Me and Julio, Keep the Customer Satisfied and Baby Driver that seem to be an attempt to write a rock n roll song, but turn out to be a excellently quirky halfway between folk and rock n roll. ‘Dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep’, another great, evocative line.

The Dangling Conversation is a lovely tune, augmented nicely by harp and strings, the lyric may be a bit heavy handed, but it’s another one of those great sad but not despairing S&G songs, again on the themes of futility. Flowers Never Bend, goes back to the themes on Patterns, more melancholy balancing hopefulness and hopelessness. More excellent sequencing of earnest with amusing with the next song. A Simple Desultory Philippic may be based around the single joke of a Dylan pastiche, but luckily Simon is good at these sorts of wryly amusing lyrics and I like the organ part - again seems like when Simon attempts to write a rock song it comes out slightly odd, but in a good way. I love For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her, one of my favourites, Art’s vocal is superb and the melody is so satisfying as it builds to the I Love You conclusion - the only thing is that it feels like it could be longer, but maybe it’s brevity is one reason it’s so great.

I don’t think I’ve ever really listened properly to the lyrics of A Poem on the Underground Wall, but it’s a great story with some excellent imagery, and I wonder what the 4 letter word was? 7 O’Clock News/Silent Night is the sort of thing that could be heavy handedly sanctimonious, but I find it genuinely affecting, Art’s sweetly earnest and delicate vocal highlights the despair of the headlines. Maybe it’s the 60 year’s remove that makes it work as a period piece but I do like it.

It maybe not be quite at the level of Bookends or Bridge Over Troubled Water, but most artists would kill for one album containing Scarborough Fair, Howard Bound, 59th Bridge Street Song and For Emily, as well as the excellent Patterns and Flowers Never Bend, and there is only a limited number of S&G albums, so I think it’s hard not to give it a cherished 5.
☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️
Playlist submission: For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her

The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter
Your wish is not granted unless it's a fish.
Your wish is not granted unless it's a dish.
A fish on a dish is that what you wish.

One of those albums/bands that I always feel I should have listened to by now, but I never have.

It’s a fun, bizarrely engaging listen, particularly the first time around. Each song begins and sounds like it was written and sung by a group of buck toothed, brought up in isolation, hippie fuckwits given some instruments as part of a societal reintegration therapy program. However each song somehow manages to burrow its way into your brain about halfway through, the peculiarity percolating and revealing some amusing, beguiling and memorable if quite odd music; the Indian restaurant vibe and tempo changes of Koeeoaddi There and the wartime Music Hall radio broadcast feel of The Minotaur’s Song, with added creepiness and a deceptively catchy melody. Witches Hat has a real Wickerman atmosphere, with parts of the song being charmingly melodic and other parts charmingly amateurish. A Very Cellular Song is excellent, very infectious and beneath the oddness as quite ordered structure, building from an organ into hand claps and some great harmony singing. It could be Dylan parping about on the mouth organ on Mercy I Cry City, but the harpsichord and drone of Waltz of the New Moon is uncomfortably appealing, the guitar is really very nice, as it plays out into a nicely hypnotic ending. I like how The Water Song’s paganistic lyrics and mediaeval atmosphere lead into an almost Shinto incantation with something that sounds a bit like a Shamisen. Three is a Green Crown feels atonally odd, but kind of opens out towards its crescendo, becoming more and more Indian sounding. Love the percussion sounds in Swift As The Wind, sounds like me trying to carry too much up the stairs and dropping it all. Just needs a for fucks sake. Nightfall has a real hopefully downbeat delicacy to the melody and lyric, an interestingly affecting song.

I can totally understand why this would divide opinion, it's striking how it can sound bad and good simultaneously, which is quite the trick to pull off. But maybe it’s the contrast between the sense of innocent outsiderism and deliberately obtuse instrumentation and experimental song structures (or the contrast of good and bad) that I find so interesting. It’s definitely not a straightforward listen, its a real grower, and I found it more charming each time, picking out little moments and motifs and a sense of humour I have no idea is intentional or not.

Feels like it's kind of in its own weird little category, so kind of hard to rate, but I’ll go for curiously distinctive 4.
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Playlist submission: A Very Cellular Song

Shadowland
Wasn’t quite expecting this. I only know and dislike Constant Craving so I assumed that this would be more of that kind of dullness.

But this is actually a perfectly decent and listenable jazz inflected country pop album. The playing is nice, the songs are well chosen and her voice is very good, deeply toned and jazzy. There’s nothing particularly exciting or remarkable, but there’s nothing bad either, and it’s all over in 35 minutes. I suppose the main black mark would be that it does feel rather inessential, sometimes that can be annoying, but it seems fine for this.

I’d probably not choose to listen again, but if I did put it on I wouldn’t mind it. I suppose that makes it the definition of a 3.
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Playlist submission: Honky Tonk Angels’ Medley

First Issue
Mixed feelings on Lydon, but I guess that’s kind of the point, he is an insufferable dickhead, but capable of producing some great music, some great ideas and some excellently pithy and provocative lines, among all the obvious contrarian and artless posturing.

Obviously Sex Pistols had a big musical and cultural impact, but PiL are definitely a more interesting if more challenging listen. I’m not familiar with everything they have done, but I do like the bits I know. I do find myself attracted to their spiky conceptual auto didactic art school experimental ethos and I bought the re-issue of Metal Box on CD, mainly as the packaging is great, but it's a great listen, and I also like the album ‘album’, which has the brilliant ‘Rise’ on it.

I love the cover on this album, the pastiche of the cover of a lifestyle magazine, with his neat hair and suit, poking at his image as the face of Sex Pistols/punk. I know the song Public Image, however I don’t think I’ve actually listened to this album in full before, or if I have I can’t remember it. Track 1 and 3 are a great indication of their approach - superb, prominent bass, abrasive guitar and hit and miss sloganeering. Annalisa is probably the first track that feels like a traditional song, it definitely has echoes of Sex Pistols, with its familiar sneering vocal, but with the bass, drums and wiry guitars it sounds much more modern and far more interesting. And then Public Image is a fantastic bit of agitated post punk, a superb track with its swirling and scratchy guitar and fantastic bass line.

Love the Can/Neu style drums on Low Life and the bass as ever is excellen Attack is perhaps a little underpar, it doesn’t have the immediacy or sense of excitement or new ground that the other songs do. Fodderstompf is great though, superb dubby bass, minimal guitar, sprinkling of synth and some more nonsense from Lydon.

This was released only one year after Never Mind the Bollocks, but it sounds worlds apart, like something from the future (of the early 80s), with its abrasive and wiry guitars, dubby bass and rhythmically interesting drums. You can really hear how influential this was; on where guitar music was going in the years after punk, as a conceptual art punk project, and then down the years on lots of great bands

Conceptually I love it, I find it fascinating and musically I find it pretty addictive. Interesting albums don’t always intersect with good, but this one does. There’s some great ideas and some great music on here, feeling both futuristic and boundary pushing, but with a feeling that it could only be made at the end of the 70s in the immediate aftermath of punk. I love a MOR crafted pop album as much as anyone, but I also love this. You know what, I’m giving it 5.
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Playlist submission: Public Image

Coat of Many Colours
27 minutes of sweetly voiced country pop excellence. Although she doesn’t stray too far from traditional country structures on all 10 songs she has a brilliant way of subtly playing with the form, bringing in elements from other genres to gently add some colour and variation here and there - it really showcases all of Dolly’s skills as a songwriter, arranger and singer.

Coat of Many Colours exemplifies that, a sweet sweet melody and a genuinely moving lyric, a story told with warm hearted succinctness and directness. Travelling Man is a great uptempo country rocker, with that slightly bluesy opening riff and tom tom pattern giving it an unexpected little frisson of spikiness. Great harmonies and lap steel on My Blue Tears, all done and dusted in 2 minutes. If I Lose My Mind is pretty conventional, but the sad sweetness of the words is complemented by the weeping lap steel. The Mystery of the Mystery starts off conventionally too, but the organ that picks up the middle verses is great, giving a swimmy uncertainty that matches the questioning lyric.

I love the proper country structure, title and lyric of She Never Met a Man, the chorus melody doing that country thing of resolving just ‘so’. That bass on Early Morning Breeze is fantastic, again kind of playing with the genre a little by being in the foreground and carrying the song musically. Again a lovely lyric and melody too. That break and ‘bluuueee’ in The Way I See you is special, and the few bars of piano before the final verse and the outro is so tastefully appropriate. The gospel backing vocals on Here I Am are another great example of her subtly adding different colours and tones. Another great melody on Another Place To Live, a really catchy chorus with that marching drum pattern underneath and more great bass. Excellent uptempo way to end things.

I don’t think this can be anything but a 5 - a gem of a country album but also just a sublime set of melodies and lyrics in its own right, performed brilliantly with such warmth and personality, with no fat or filler. Fantastic.
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Playlist submission: Early Morning Breeze

Get Behind Me Satan
I listened to White Blood Cells and Elephant a shit ton, and although I still bought this and Icky Thump, my interest had dwindled by then and I didn’t ever really get into either of those albums, aside from Blue Orchid and My Doorbell on here.

Love the riff on Blue Orchid though, very White Stripes but it also sounds a little different from Elephant, a little more shiny and robotic perhaps, in the way Elephant sounded a little different and more polished after White Blood Cells (which sounded different from De Stijl etc etc). My Doorbell is great of course as well, I love the melody matching the piano.

I guess I wasn’t that into the album back in 2005 due to not really liking stuff like The Nurse, but I quite like its non-typical WS calypso marimba riff and slightly idiosyncratic and creepy feel. In fact that behind closed doors old-timey spookiness permeates the whole album, maybe it’s the focus on piano throughout, with the contrasting tropical sounding marimba accenting the ominous feel in an off kilter way, that gives it a nicely unusual feel.

In fact I like a lot of the songs on here, particularly the first half, from Blue Orchid to White Moon. Forever for Her is superb, a lovely ballad with a very delicate melody, nicely picked out by the marimba and augmented by Meg’s cymbal thrash. And White Moon is also excellent, the mournful piano really does have some spooky moonlight atmospherics.

There are perhaps a couple of tracks in the second half that don’t work as well for me, Instinct Blues and Red Rain are a little too close to a bit of aimless thrash and a kind of unnecessary throwback to their first album or two, although the slide is pretty nice on Red Rain. It really picks up though with the vaguely familiar but great As Ugly As I Seem and the fantastic piano led country-blues of I’m Lonely.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this and appreciated it far more than I did 20 years ago, it’s a nice little side step from WBC and Elephant, exploring different sounds and structures while expanding on the country and country blues elements they’ve always had and adding a bit more Appalachian spookiness. Perhaps a bit uneven and a track or two too long, but it’s a simple and enjoyable 4 from me.
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Playlist submission: Forever for Her

I Am A Bird Now
I think he is a bird now?

I remember all the hype around this when it won the Mercury Prize, and I remember buying it but never really getting into it apart from liking For Today I Am A Boy.

Interesting listening again, there are some lovely passages, some moments when the piano, melody and vibrato all come together to create something pretty magical, but it too often seems to pass me by, and I find myself struggling to stay engaged.

However it, or at least parts of it, did grow with repeat listens, particularly in the second half. Hope There’s Someone’s crescendoing intimacy is rather lovely, the strings and flute on My Lady’s Story are great. For Today I Am a Boy I still really like, You Are My Sister’s insistent, winning rhythmic momentum revealed itself and I didn’t for one actually mind Rufus Wainwright on What Can I Do. Fistful of Love’s guitar horns and guitar (and Lou Reed) provide a very welcome contrast to the piano and strings elsewhere and is a great track.

Despite finding much more in its little corners and moments than I have done previously I’m still not entirely sure about it. While I really like his emotional openness and perspective on his identity, his aspirations and that he has crafted a singular, unique album, I still find myself zoning out, struggling to really connect musically with some of it, it feeling longer than it’s relatively brief 35 minutes. Maybe I need more time with it, but for today a high 3 feels fair, with room to come back and try again.
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Playlist submission: Fistful of Love

Bayou Country
Love me a bit of Creedence, but that’s just, like, my opinion, man.

Born on the Bayou is superb, a swampy, swirling groove, relatively straightforward but part rock n roll, part country, part southern soul, all with JFs distinctive voice, and lyrics that mention trains and chooglin - all a distillation of what makes CCR great. Bootleg has that great acoustic rhythm guitar with the propulsive drums, working with the chugging electric guitar, again relatively straightforward but a great groove. Graveyard Train doesn’t start too promisingly, a rather generic late 60s blues rock riff, but it settles into the pocket and stretches the groove out. At 8 minutes perhaps a bit long, but still an enjoyable hypnotic jam.

Not as keen on Good Golly Miss Molly, although it's a decent enough version and is pretty brief. Penthouse Pauper pulls the same trick as Graveyard Train, the late 60s blues rock mutating into something more fluid and atmospheric. Proud Mary is of course an absolute classic, more trains and itinerant characters, but a great catchy hook. Keep on Chooglin is a superior type of Graveyard Train, great riff and rhythm, hypnotic in its swampy bluesiness and a great closer.

An extremely listenable bluesy swampy rock album, by a great band. It maybe a little uneven in places and with only 7 songs they all really need to be great to be a 5, so I’ll settle on a straightforward high 4.
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Playlist submission: Proud Mary

D
I love this album, a bit of a step change from their previous albums, which have a lot of the same elements, but push the looser experimental jazz psychedelia jams, rather than the more crafted songs on here.

I love how they manage to balance that looseness with the rock, jazz, soul, prog, country, americana, garage and psychedelic influences with the idea of that craft, keeping a sense of fun and on the edge of breaking downness with some pretty tight structures. It’s their first album with two guitarists, which you can hear in the trading of licks and riffs, but it never feels self indulgent or showy, and it’s all anchored by the great, muscular and tight rhythm section.

It’s Him! and Burnished are a great opening pair, kind of setting the template, great drums, dual guitars and warm, seemingly laid back melodies. Love At The Farms crescendoing guitar workout. Street Joy is a nice slower tempo track after the rhythmically driven first 3 songs and is a welcome little breather before the duelling guitars return on Anvil Everything. Love the flute on River to Consider, has a real Magical Mystery Tour psychedelia to it. Drug is superb, along with Bess Street probably the catchiest tune. Love the guitar tone and the driving drums and bass on both. The acoustic rhythm on Bess Street is great, kind of US indie-folk, but with a 70s bluesy rock edge. Love the vocal stretch out on Is and Is and Is and love the baroque string arrangement with the country clip clop of Keys, with a really very sweet vocal melody, and a nicely subdued way to end the album.

It always feels to me, if I had any musical ability at all, that they would be a fun band to play in, although I understand James Petralli, who is essentially the band, isn’t that easy to work with, which you can gauge by the fact the lineup changes pretty frequently. The next album is the last one with this drummer, and it’s only the bass player who has stayed alongside Petralli throughout.

Obviously a 5, great album, great band.
🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍
Playlist submission: Drug

The ‘Chirping’ Crickets
One of those albums where you feel you need to balance the historical importance with the actual music. The historical impact is of course massive, without Buddy Holly you could argue that the Beatles and Stones wouldn’t have been the bands we know, or the idea of the band as a self contained writing and performing entity might not have occurred until much later.

Musically though this is good. Obviously it does sound very 50s, but there is a lot more to it than that, elements and ideas that feel pretty modern, and not just because you know they influenced the big 60s bands. Along with in the Wee Small Hours album this is probably the best pre-60s album we’ve had, and although it’s still not quite an album in the way we understand it, it feels like a coherent collection of songs in a way that many others don’t.

Oh, Boy! and Not Fade Away are a great opening pair, and the quality remains through the rest of the first side, some great drumming on You’ve Got Love, excellent slapback echo on It’s Too Late and the guitar is great on Tell Me How.

That’ll Be the Day is of course excellent, a great melody and the rhythm of the words in the chorus with the drums is excellent, and the slowed down drum punctuated ‘when you make me cry’ at the back end is superb. Again the quality remains to the end, An Empty Cup has a great melody, Last Night has an excellent vocal and Rock Me Baby has a great Ray Charles-esque groove and sounds like a lost 50s gem.

So balancing the influence and the quality of the songs, I think it’s hard to not give this 5. It’s 28 minutes of, for the time, cutting edge, template setting rock n roll music, that’s still a great listen and with echoes you can hear through popular music history.
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Playlist submission: That’ll Be the Day

Street Signs
I think I’ve heard of Ozomatli, but only because they did some stuff with Cut Chemist, but had no real idea of what kind of music they make.

Obviously it's a YT listen, which makes it a bit of an annoying experience with ads after every song, and not all the songs are available, so it’s kind of a difficult one to rate. However I did enjoy the general vibe, and mix of Hip Hop, Rock, Salsa, Middle Eastern strings etc. Generally I’m not a fan of Salsa but I like it on here - I think the fact that they stuffed so much from many genres into every song in a clearly joyful way it all kind of works.

I’m a bit of a sucker for Middle Eastern strings, so I really enjoyed Believe, It sounds quite 90s rather then mid 200s in its production but it's a fun opener. Who’s To Blame is excellent, love 2na’s appearance and the middle eastern riff on what sounds like a melodica, with the more Indian sounding percussion. Bit of a gem.

Saturday Night is good too, the dip dive bit and the trumpet punctuating the rhythm. Ya Viene el Sol is nice too. Props to Beatle Bob.

Hard to give it a rating when you can’t really listen properly or fully. What I did hear I liked a lot, an energetic fusion album filled with loads of great bits and influences. I’d definitely listen again, but it’s such a shame it’s not on streaming. I’ll go a high 3.
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Playlist submission: Who’s to Blame

Sheer Heart Attack
I’ve always struggled with Queen, I periodically try but they just never click for me. I don’t mind them in small doses, and I like many of their big songs, myself drifting off when listening to them for any period of time, a bit like when you read a book that's hard going and realise you can’t recall the last 3 pages you’ve read.

Maybe it’s the vaudevillian musical theatre aspect that I don’t like, but then there are other bands doing similar stuff that I do like, and generally I do appreciate a bit of kitchen sink over the topness. I think part of it is that I’m not that keen on Freddie’s voice, even though I know it’s technically very good, and that I find it hard to connect with their melodic style, but overall I get a sense of prissiness and fussiness from their music, particularly May’s guitar. Again I know it’s technically great but I really struggle to connect with it.

Because of all that I didn’t find much of this particularly memorable or engaging. Killer Queen is obviously a very good song, and I quite liked Flick of the Wrist, Misfire and She Makes Me. Stone Cold Crazy and Bring back that Leroy Brown are not very good though.

I can appreciate though that this must have sounded pretty different and exciting when it came out, but I think it and Queen are just not for me. Boring is perhaps too strong a word, I think it’s more that it’s just uninspiring and unengaging. 2 may be to harsh, but I can’t really imagine listening again.
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Playlist submission: Killer Queen

Eagles
Well, I'm a-standin' on a corner in Winslow, Arizona / Such a fine sight to see / It's a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford / Slowin' down to take a look at me.
Easily one of the most evocative lyrics in all American rock music, such simple but brilliant imagery - I’m right there on that dusty American street corner.

I’m a big fan of The Eagles, although I’ve always tended to prefer the cowboy cosplay of Desperado over this of their early albums. And there's probably a reason their Greatest Hits records have sold in such gargantuan numbers compared to most of their albums, as outside of Hotel California they never quite nailed it I don’t think.

I think this one suffers a little from front loading the album with the two best songs, and it feels like it never quite recaptures the momentum after the superlative Take it Easy and the chugging atmospheric brilliance of Witchy Woman.

The difference between those two and Chug All Night is stark, it’s prosaic country rock lacks any of the things that make them great, and it all just feels banal and insipid. Most of Us Are Sad is ok, but seems like a forerunner of songs like this they would do later that are actually really good. Some lovely harmonies and backing vocals though. Nightingale is good though, perhaps a bit throwaway but a very pleasant bit of laid back West Coast country rock.

You can hear Gene Clark in Train Leaves Here This Morning, I don’t think there’s anyone that can write non mainstream delicately bruised and melancholy country ballads they way he can. Really lovely track. Take the Devil is similar to Most of Us Are Sad, in that it has the building blocks of some of their great songs, but it hasn’t been pieced together the way some of their later songs would be. Earlybird is again similar, I like a lot of the elements, the banjo, the backing vocals and harmonies, but it doesn’t seem to come together as a whole.

Peaceful Easy Feeling though is of course another of their Greatest Hits and an excellent song, the laid back rhythm, the slide, the acoustic, the harmonies all serving the feel and idea of the song. Tryin’ is the kind of straight ahead rocker that they don’t always do that well, but its decent, if a little unconvincing.

It’s definitely uneven, a bit like LA Woman, buts it’s never a tough listen, and although its probably a 3, the presence of Take It Easy, Witchy Woman, Train Leaves Here This Morning and Peaceful Easy Feeling just tip it over to 4.

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Playlist submission: Take It Easy

L.A. Woman
I’ve never really given the Doors albums a proper listen. Not sure why as I really like them. I probably have listened to this one more than any of their others though, but I’m not really that familiar with it.

Bold strategy to open with Bag it Up by Geri Halliwell. But each to their own. In reality it's a great little blues rock groove, with those great keyboard touches and augmentations you’d expect from Manzarek. Love Her Madly is obviously a classic bit of 60s pop, but the evenness of the album does reveal itself with Been Down So Long, one of a few vaguely aimless blues-jazz jams with some shouty Morrison on top. Cars Hiss by My Window is brighter, but still feels a little rudderless, although some of the guitar is soulfully sweet.

L.A. Woman though is superb, probably my favourite Doors song, the rhythm, the organ, the groove, the hot late night seediness. Fantastic track.

His voice on L’America is great and it’s angularity before dipping into some classic West Coast sunshine melody before heading back into a sinister mood is pleasingly off beat and odd in a great way. Hyacinth House really is very lovely. If you are a Doors fan I presume this is pretty well known, but for me it's a bit of an overlooked gem, a great atmosphere and some excellent drumming.
I wasn’t keen on Crawling King Snake on the first listen, but I really liked it on the 2nd and 3rd listen - the presence of a real bassist is great, and it’s menacing groove is superbly played. A cut above the other bluesy stuff on here. Similarly I liked The WASP more on repeated listens, even if the musical/organ breakdowns feel a bit cheesy and overall it’s not one of the stronger tracks. And then of course the excellent and trippy Riders on the Storm, a great bit of 60s bluesy psychedelia. Krieger really shines with his reverby licks.

Despite some unevenness, the highs of The Changeling, Love Her Madly, LA Woman, Hyacinth House and Riders on the Storm, and their skill as musicians make it a cut above, and lands it as an easy 4.
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Playlist submission: L.A. Woman

1989
After enjoying Evermore I wanted to check out a few more of her albums but knew some were on here, so was waiting for them to come up. I’m glad this one did.

Welcome to New York is a top drawer opener, that little synth motif is excellent and the whole thing’s atmospheric stompy catchiness is fantastic. Banger. Blank Space has that undeniable Max Martin feel to it, but is an above average electro-pop song.

Style is what I call a Banger-Grower, a Grower-Banger, a Grow-Bang, a Granger, Bower. Anyway, a brilliant bit of modern synthpop. Out of the Woods is also superb, that spacey echoey feel, with a killer chorus and some nicely pitched woahs. All You Had To Do Was Stay has a hint of Call Me Maybe, and while not at the level of some of the other songs on here, it’s still a decent track.

Shake it Off, rightly a modern pop classic, taking the Hey Mickey drums and bolting on an unstoppable chorus and a great horn part. Superb bit of pop music. Same goes for Bad Blood, an undeniably good track.

I Wish You Would is also a bit of a low key banger, another great catchy, hooky track. It’s all good. Nice change of pace on Wildest Dreams, you can imagine this being a rather turgid piano ballad in other hands, but its catchiness and atmospheric production elevates it.

How You Get The Girl feels like a mid 200os throwback, maybe not the strongest track, but a fun bit of catchy throwaway pop. This Love is a very nice ballad, you can kind of tell it predates the Max Martin production, and although it’s nice to break up the synth pop it feels vaguely out of place. Another bulletproof chorus on I Know Places, and the synth bass and guitar on the second verse is excellent. Christ she can write some catchy hooks. Love love the dreamy atmosphere on Clean with its soulful feel and typically idiosyncratic Imogen Heap production and sound. Great great track

It's very hard not to enjoy this, it's a brilliantly well written, well made, well constructed and well thought out electronic pop album, designed to be expansive, fun and catchy, but with the added bonus of her own songwriting nouse and her skill as a lyricist, giving it an sense of substance and autheticity. I presume that songwriting skill and her background in country makes her version of 80s influenced synth pop much better, more interesting and much more durable than a lot of her contemporaries, that skill helping to give the songs a different edge and grounding.

Reading back I’ve used banger a lot, there are at least 5 top drawer tracks, Welcome to New York, Style, Out of the Woods, Shake it Off, Bad Blood and Clean, and the rest are all well above average bits of pop music. For what it is, what it tries to do and for how much I enjoyed it I’ll ride high on the giddiness and give it the full 5.
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Playlist submission: Welcome to New York

Truth and Soul
Never heard of Fishbone before and on the basis of this I am unlikely to want to hear of them again.

It’s not entirely terrible, although it definitely has more than enough very low points, like the cover of Freddie’s Dead, the irritating Ma and Pa and the dreadfully unsexy Bonin’ in the Backyard, but it doesn’t really have much to raise it above a middling sense of pointlessness. Pouring Rain is a fine enough lower tempo song, Slow Bus Movin’ is relatively interesting and atmospheric, and Ghetto Soundwave’s use of the Low Rider horn riff isn’t awful, even if the song itself is pretty Level-42.

Skilled musicians making a funked up hybrid of Hair Metal, RHCP and Ska isn’t, I’ve found out, a sound I’m particularly fond of, and the whole thing has a pervasive sense of forced exuberance that makes me feel a little sad. I’m not going to go 1, as that feels too harsh on something that clearly isn’t actually objectionable, so a 2 it is. It exists, I listened to it, and I don’t have to again
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Playlist submission: Slow Bus Movin’

Heaux Tales
I quite enjoyed the songs on this, for the most part they are pretty good examples of modern RnB, with some lovely stacked backing vocals and harmonies, like on Put it Down as well as some really nice instrumental/production touches and flourishes, like the guitar on Lost One, and the throbbing synth bass on Pick Up Your Feelings, a great track. I do also ike Anderson .Paak and H.E.R. so I enjoyed those appearances. Some tracks though feel a little harmonically flat, like On It, which never really gets past that generic r&b feel.

I found the spoken word ‘tales’ quite interesting too. It would be easy to say it’s not made with me in mind, and clearly the world they are describing is so far from my lived experience, but I actually found it quite thought-provoking to be exposed to these ideas of womanhood/feminism/feminity/sex etc. Despite the upfrontness it didn’t seem particularly celebratory or particularly damning, or didn’t seem to shy away from the ups and downs in the attitudes to sex and relationships. Even if it is very sex focused and I initially thought it was rather reductive it did make me think about my reactions to it, which I liked.

Musically it’s decent if rather slight, and thematically it’s pretty interesting, and overall I’m glad to have listened to it. Whether I’d listen again I’m not sure, but I’d definitely playlist Pick Up Your Feelings and Lost One. Due to it being slightly atypical for this list and for making me think more about my feelings towards it, I’ll go 3
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Playlist submission: Pick up Your Feelings