Reviews by ikejiri

The Atomic Mr Basie
Nice cover.

Interesting one this. I think had I listened to this back at the start of the year I would have really struggled with it, but now there’s quite a bit I do like and can appreciate, but I would also still say that I’m not yet a fan of the more frenetic dancier Big Band numbers. Luckily on here they are counterpointed by some slightly more lower tempo tracks

The Kid from Red Bank is a case in point - the slightly fraught tempo, piercing horns and rinky dink piano isn’t really my cup of tea - but I can see the skill and I can admire the energy. With something like this you can almost feel the breath of Rock’N’Roll on its shoulder.

Duet is a bit more palatable, at a nicer tempo and the horns seem to be used more melodically rather than rhythmically and forcefully as on the opening track. After Supper is even better, you can still hear the Big Band-ness but it’s so gracefully performed, the piano is great and the horns have a restrained and tasteful feel.

Pure 1950s black and white US sitcom theme music feel to Flight of the Foo Birds. And pure 1950s US chat show theme music feel to Double-O, despite the great piano intro. Teddy the Toad is good though, kind of similar to Duet, and very nicely arranged. Whirly-Bird would be my favourite of the uptempo dance numbers, there’s a real punch to the drums and the horns.

Midnight Blue is probably my stand out, it feels more cinematic and widescreen than some of the others and despite sounding jazzy, the arrangement seems more like a mid 60s pop song - replace the horns with a guitar and it would sound pretty cool.

Splanky has a nice sophisticated feel, again the horn arrangement has a nice restraint and the piano is great. Fantail doesn’t quite do it for me, not sure why, but it probably just falls too close to the franticness of the first track. Li’l Darlin is rather lovely though, a real softness and delicateness to it, definitely one of the standout tracks.

I rather enjoyed this, although I think that's more enjoying it for a late 50s jazz album, rather than as an album in its own right, but I certainly wouldn't be averse to hearing it again. I’m not into it enough to go 4, so it lands as a solid mid to high 3.
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Playlist submission: Midnight Blue

Modern Life is Rubbish
I’ve never really been that keen on this album, and consequently I haven’t listened to it for a long time. Despite there being some great tracks and a lot of hints at where they would go I think always felt that there weren’t enough good songs and that it didn't feel like a coherent album.

That’s why doing this is good, as listening today I’ve vastly reconsidered that opinion. While it may not be as great as Parklife or pretty much all their albums from Blur onwards it's still very good, with a lot of those little Blur things and moments that make them so interesting and so great.

For Tomorrow is excellent of course, great bass and I love the strings, sounding a little like the seaside organ that we hear a lot of on Parklife. Great bass on Advert and I love the little guitar hook. More great bass on Colin Zeal and some excellent Coxon guitar too. I know Alex James is a great bassist but it's easy to forget how good he is - I suppose his persona can make you feel like he's along for a laugh but he has so many great bass lines and really is so integral to their sound.

Pressure on Julian has a nice edgy feel to it, again great bass, but is a little forgettable. Star Shaped is great of course, strong Parklife/Great Escape Vibes, love the ‘I’ve been making plans’ bit. Blue Jeans is great, one of the delicate melodies and vocals, but with the organ and accordion giving it some seaside colour.

Chemical World is great, and I don’t dislike the Intermission section, I just wish they were separate songs. Love the Horns on Sunday Sunday, very George Martin. It sounds quite Parklife and also sounds a little Supergrass-y too. Oily Water is fine, another good melody but maybe not the most memorable track. Miss America is great in that woozy way and Villa Rosie has such a great melody and the guitar is just so good. Coping and Turn it Up are both very good tracks, but I think the length of the album is working against them at this point. A lot of bands would kill for songs like these but they are a bit lost at the back end of this. Resigned is great though, the sad eyed wistfulness is very affecting and is a nice tonal counterpoint to Copinga and Turn it Up.

Loads of the ingredients that make Blur great, but the bass on this is particularly good, in a way I’ve never previously appreciated. It is a bit long though and does suffer from a few too many tracks but it is a great album. Not top tier Blur but close, a high 4.
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Playlist submission: Won’t overthink it, For Tomorrow

Peggy Suicide
I love World Shut Your Mouth, but despite liking it, it has never made me want to delve into Julian Cope’s discography. I always get crusty Glasto canal boat vibes, and I don’t want another Levellers on my hands.

However I enjoyed this, particularly on repeat listens. I’d definitely question whether it needs to be 18 songs and an hour and fifteen minutes but I found myself liking the slightly idiosyncratic and trippy folky, baggy, new wave-ness of it. I can hear a bit of Velvet Underground, Inspiral Carpets, Can, Echo & the Bunnymen, early Verve, The Clash, Happy Mondays in it, all good stuff.

Pristine’s folky intro is very nice and I like the build into a slightly psychedelic guitar and organ track. Double Vegetation is a good too, I like the triplets on the acoustic in the back half.

East Easy Rider is great, a nice groove going on with a great vocal. Promised Land has a slightly haunting feel, which I also like. Hanging Out and Hung Up On the Line is a fine punky thrash, but the riff definitely elevates it.

Safesurfer’s guitar pyrotechnics may not be fully successful, but it's a great song with a pretty progressive message for 1991. Lovely groove on If You Loved Me At All, and a great song.

Drive She Said is ok, really reminds me of something, but not one of the stronger tracks. Soldier Blue has a great hypnotic feel, but I prefer the instrumental parts to the verses with the guitar underneath. You…is also just ok, these three songs being a bit of a dip before picking back up with Not Raving But Drowning with it’s great spacey groove.

Head is another great little track, the organ and bass working nicely together. Leperskin is another nice groove, despite the first few bars sounding like the What’s Mr Chips Doing music from Catchphrase. Apostolic Hag is a great insult too.

Not entirely convinced by the calypso of Beautiful Love but I did find myself starting to enjoy it, as there is a bit of joyful carefreeness to it. Not sure there’s a great deal going for Western Front 1992 CE. Can feel quite a lot of Can influence on Hung Up & Hanging Out to Dry, love the drum pattern and the snare sound. I like a lot of The American Lite, but not the spoken word parts so much, they’re bit poetry slam. Quite catchy though. Las Vegas Basement doesn’t start promisingly but it settles down into a sweetly bit darkly melancholic tune with a pleasing, gentle vocal. Great track.

A bit of a surprise overall how much I liked this. Despite there being a couple of possibly redundant songs I really enjoyed its vibes. It's a real grower, and definitely something I will come back to. 4.
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Playlist submission: Las Vegas Basement

Green
Despite listening to it all, I'm not as familiar with the full REM back catalogue as I really should be, so I’m not quite sure where Green quite sits in their overall story. Listening yesterday and today, and despite having some very well known songs, it feels like this might be a bit of a transitional album? I can hear echoes of both their more alternative sound and their massive commercial 90s sound, but perhaps without enough of the consistently great songs that make up their ‘big’ albums.

Pop Song 89 is a great bit of catchy pop, and sounded particularly good after Sepultura yesterday. Great melody and hook. Get Up is ok, the ‘rock’ guitar sounds a little unconvincing but the harmonies are nice.

You Are Everything is excellent, one of those very affecting REM mandolin songs, and the accordion adds some lovely touches of colour and tone. Stand, of course, is a brilliant song. It has that great REM thing of a slightly unusual vocal rhythm whilst being insanely catchy. Great stuff.

World Leader Pretend is fantastic, feels like a bit of a lost classic, I love the piano line and the snare drum. The Wrong Child doesn’t quite work for me, nowhere near as strong as You Are Everything, which shares a similar sound.

Orange crush - I have always loved the riff (so catchy!) and bass on this, one of my favourite REM songs. I really like the swampier sound and bass groove on Turn You Inside Out, the slightly rougher edge and less overtly pop melody is a nice counterpoint. Hairshirt is fine, the keyboard in the back of the mix is great though. I Remember California has really grown on me, even I’m not quite convinced by it for some reason. I like the vocal melody and lyrics, but musically I’m not sure about it, particularly the bass and drums. And Untitled is very nice, the organ is great and it has a very pleasant atmosphere of amiable wistfulness.

Not sure what I’m scoring this against, their whole career or as an album in its own right. Probably a bit of both. As a standalone album there are some absolute bangers, but mixed in with some fine, if forgettable tracks. And in the context of what followed it doesn't quite have the majesty or weight of say Automatic for the People or New Adventures in Hi-Fi. I think that adds up to a 4 - still a great album but not in the top bracket
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Playlist submission: Orange Crush

Now I Got Worry
Never really jived with JSBX although on paper there should be a lot I like. I get what they are going for with the edgy and frenetic garage rock/soul/rnb, but the wiriness does make it feel rather disjointed and it doesn’t work consistently enough to make it a truly satisfying listen.

It does grow on you and there are some definite highlights, Wail, Fuck Shit Up and Love All of Me are good and the one-two of Chicken Dog and Rocketship is great. I love Rufus Thomas and having a ‘proper’ singer pulls Chicken Dog together brilliantly, the riff and groove working in unison well. Can’t Stop has a nice rhythmic propulsion and Eyeballin is good too. I like the RL Got Soul riff as well.

I like the drummer and the guitars have some great moments, and I know his vocal style is their sound, but sometimes I wish he’d go somewhere other than the Elvis impersonation or the distorted scream. When he does sing more conventionally, as on Rocketship, it’s good.

I think you have to acknowledge that they have influenced quite a few indie rock bands after them, but there are bands that do this kind of bluesy garage rock better, like the Black Keys and White Denim, who I presume were very much influenced by JSBX, but who manage to harness everything with a bit more care and craft.

Really it's an album of moments and intent and attitude rather than a fully successful artistic statement. Two feels too low, and it at least tries to be interesting, so I’ll go 3.
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Playlist submission: Chicken Dog

Arise
What’s there to say? This isn’t my cup of tea, and even if it was my cup of tea it would have gone cold and have off milk in it.

There really is nothing to redeem it, the lyrics are drivel, it sounds crap and thin, the songs are all the same, it’s not even confrontationally aggressive, it sounds so by the numbers it doesn't even have any shocking power.

Drivel, absolute drivel.
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Playlist submission: Who gives a shit really, but Desperate Cry as it has some synth in it

25
I’ve always quite liked Hello, and it is a very good song, the melodramatic and over the top bombast works well, with an interesting melody and some great piano. The lyrical conceit though. ‘Wanna meet up and go over everything that went wrong in our relationship 10 years ago in great detail?’ ‘Nah, you’re alright thanks’

The majority of the rest of it is nowhere near as successful as Hello. Many don’t feel like songs, just half formed ideas that rely on her vocal power to bludgeon them into something resembling a song, if you don’t listen too carefully. And again there’s not a great deal to convince me that she is a particularly great vocalist, or at least not anywhere near the reputation she has. Obviously she has an extremely powerful voice, but it lacks any subtlety or shade, and consequently doesn’t have a great deal of emotional weight, just brutal x factor cruise ship power.

Thematically, of course, it’s very repetitive, which would be fine if the lyrics weren’t so limited and banal, at the level of Moon/June, with absolutely no insight into why this person was so special and so great that she just can’t stop singing about him. It just feels like instagram platitudinal emptiness and it’s particularly bad on When We Were Young (although the bass is nice on that song) and Remedy. River Lea attempts to evoke images of childhood and nostalgia, but it’s so heavy handed in it’s lumpen banality it sounds almost partridge-esque. Also, that something that’s in the water? It’s probably chemical waste.

Musically River Lea and Sweetest Devotion are the strongest songs along with Hello, mainly as they steer clear of the awful piano dirges that make up the rest of the tracks, like Million Years, which is truly bad.

So overall it’s pretty drab, Hello, River Lea and Sweetest Devotion aside, with very little of interest or character, either melodically, musically or lyrically. Tempted to go 1, but it’s not really the shittiest of the shittiest, it’s just insipidly and unambitiously boring
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Playlist submission: Hello

Close to the Edge
“Sad preacher nailed upon the coloured door of time
Insane teacher be there reminded of the rhyme
There'll be no mutant enemy we shall certify
Political ends as sad remains will die
Reach out as forward tastes begin to enter you
Oooh, ooh’

I mean what can you say about this album? It’s Yes, it’s 18 minute songs consisting of multiple parts, there's lots of technical skill, there's blues and folk influences, the lyrics are shit, the singer enunciates all the syllables at equal length and it’s all a bit lumpen. So it’s exactly what it is - if you are into them and Prog then I imagine this is great. If you aren’t that into them then this all feels a bit pointless.

The Close to the Edge Suite - not a great deal to pick out, the guitar intro is immediately aggravating and I don’t think the reggae inspired beat works particularly well. Although I do quite like the bass sound, there is the odd good guitar run here and there and some of the backing vocals are decent.

There is probably a great folk inspired song in And You and I, but it gets lost in the rather unnecessary musical changes. This is also probably the worst track for lyrics and vocal style. His voice isn’t particularly interesting and the vocal/melodic style isn’t great either. Similarly there is a decent blues/funk rocker in Siberian Khatru, but, again, the musical changes don’t add to it, they rather dilute the nucleus of something good in that riff and bassline.

I think Prog is the genre I’ve struggled most with so far with the list, especially as I feel like I’m now starting to appreciate Jazz (even if I’m not yet fully embracing it). I hadn’t listened to a great deal of Prog before, despite some attempts, so I was looking forward to giving things like this a proper go, but I’m finding it hard going. Not because, I think, I’m struggling with the musical density and difficulty of it, more that I’m struggling with it philosophically. Everything, both musically and lyrically seems to be done for the sake of being complicated or fantastical, with very little sense of either depth or fun, emotional weight or joy, or that it comes from a genuinely different perspective or from actual musical bonkersness or eccentricity - purposefully writing stupid lyrics and overcomplicating songs seems to be the only principle, rather than actually making genuinely interesting music.

I gave the previous Yes album 3, as I think it had better songs and ideas and I probably had more of a sense of innocent open mindedness back at album no 82, but this is certainly a 2. It can’t be a 1, as I think, despite the above, there are some decent moments and I can appreciate that if you are a fan then this is good, but it really doesn’t work particularly well musically or emotionally for me.
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Playlist submission: Siberian Khatru

Remedy
I have not thought of Basement Jaxx for a long time. A long time. They were of course really big at the end of the 90s and although I’m by no means a connoisseur of electronic music I never really got into them in the same way as I did with bands like the Chemical Brothers or Daft Punk or even people like Bentley Rhythm Ace or Apollo 440.

Rendez-Vu I remember well and is a great bit of, I presume, balearic influenced house music, the spanish guitars giving a nice soft edge. Yo Yo carries on the vocoder vocals but I like the disco/funk bass and the slightly spare groove is great. Jump’n’Shout is a fun bit of ragga house, the synth bass is nice. I really U Can’t Stop Me, the slightly broken rhythm pattern and vague garage feel is pretty cool, again great bass. 4 bangers to start.

Never been that keen on Red Alert. Although I can appreciate it’s catchiness, I think it’s the mannerisms of the vocalist that I'm not sure about. Always Be There is fine, if a bit forgettable, it feels like its straining for catchiness but not quite getting there. Same Old Show is good, sampling On My Radio and making a very good slightly dubby house track. Bingo Bango is a bingo banger - always liked this one and is great bit of hook laden house.

Stop 4 Love is a nice change of style, a kind of necessary break from some of the four on the floor house, a nice bit of atmospheric electronica. Don’t Give Up is decent, I like the flattened EQ in the more intense sections, but definitely feeling the length of the album now. Being With U I can take or leave, there are some nice little keyboard bits but is a bit underwhelming.

I like the disco and funk influence particularly the bass and the overall good time party music vibe, however there is no getting away that it starts to feel a bit samey over the course of the hour, but then I suppose if you are not into guitar based music you could say the same about a lot of albums I like. Having said that they do seem to have front loaded the first half with their better tracks, there is certainly a bit of filler towards the end.

Also I do think rhythmic/tempo repetitiveness can start to get a bit samey more quickly than melodic or harmonic repetitiveness, and obviously dance, big beat, house all have broadly similar tempos, so unless its a DJ a mix an hour of sequential dance tracks can drag a bit (as they don’t necessarily lend themselves to the idea of the ‘traditional’ album), even if taken individually many of the tracks are good.

Anyway the first half is a great listen and there are some excellent tracks, more than most dance albums have, and also moments throughout, although I’m more likely to pick tracks for a playlist than listen to in its entirety again. Tricky to rate, somewhere between 3 and 4. It’s probably a 3 as an album, but a 4 for them being great at what they do and for making at least 3 or 4 bona fide pop house bangers. I’ll go 4.
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Playlist submission: U Can’t Stop Me

Back to Mystery City
Do you think the recording of the acoustic guitars in the intro to Strange Boys is supposed to sound so wobbly? I guess it might make you think you are about to listen to a vaguely pastoral album based around Blackbird. But by looking at the cover you clearly aren’t in for that sort of thing.

Indeed you’re actually in for some occasionally pleasingly schizophrenic and stupid but ultimately not particularly good and quite badly recorded Finnish rock. Is it a joke or are they serious? I can’t really work it out if the dumbness is real or deliberate but I am significantly reminded of Anvil.

Malibu Beach Nightmare was apparently originally a calypso. I wonder what that was like if they thought this was a better way to do it? Among the rest of it I quite like the looming (synth?) bass on Tooting Bec Wreck, Sailing Down the Tears is quite a decent pop rock song, as is Ice Cream Summer, and I don’t mind the New York Dolls influenced 60s-sih garage punk of Back to Mystery City at all.

So overall it’s as completely terrible as it might suggest, but apart from some fun dumbness on a couple of tracks it’s not particularly great either. Probably a high 2, not enough to get into the 3s but not totally abject either.
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Playlist submission: Back to Mystery City

Kind of Blue
I’ve tried and failed with Jazz so often, thinking or hoping I’ll like it, and it very rarely connects, including when I’ve tried this album before. However, and maybe as a consequence of doing this list, I feel like I’m becoming more amenable to it. Or it’s that this album is actually so good it transcends the genre and is ultimately just great music.

I also think it’s easy to forget that there are good and bad examples of the types of music I love, and why should Jazz be any different. There must be good and bad, and as with any type of music you are not into a bad album can feel representative of the whole. But like my cock Jazz is not a monolith.

I don’t know enough about modal jazz and hard bop and all that stuff to comment on the technical expertise and theory of this, but it sounds great to me, in a way that hitherto a lot of Jazz hasn’t. From those opening piano notes on So What to the warm fade out of Flamenco Sketches I didn’t find myself getting agitated or annoyed at all. While the drums and double bass plot out the standard jazz tempos the trumpet had a moving and rather lovely mellifluousness to it; it might jump around a bit, but I never got the stereotypical feelings of pointless parping and dissonance I normally get. I suppose that’s why he’s so highly regarded, he is a fantastic trumpeter (trumpeteer? Trumpetsman? trumpetthem?). And not just the trumpet but also the sax is also great, again I suppose because Cannonball Adderly and John Coltrane are superbly skilled saxpeople. The piano, particularly on the Bill Evans tracks, is absolutely fantastic too, with a lovely lightness to it.

It’s hard to really pick out individual tracks as there are only 5 and they all move about musically within the songs while also having the sense of being a musical suite across the whole album. But there are some great moments, the piano on So What, the trumpet right at the end of Freddie Freeload from around 8.54, the melancholy lament of the intro to Blue in Green and it’s overall 3am feeling, the slightly more uptempo smokiness of All Blue and the slightly impressionistic piano on Flamenco Sketches is amazing

I can completely see why this has such popularity and critical respect. Like any great musician, the gaps between what he plays makes this great, and the way he can conjure feelings and moods is fantastic. I can see how something like Astral Weeks was so influenced by this, as well as countless other musicians, and not just jazz and jazz adjacent ones, I know a lot of guitarists love this album and also I think Radiohead are big fans (although that be more to do with Bitches Brew)

I may be succumbing to the critical hype but I’ll give this 5, I listened to it a couple of times yesterday afternoon and have listened non-stop since about 8.30 this morning, it’s been great to work to. I don’t think I’m a jazz convert by any means, but this is just a great album.
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Playlist submission: Flamenco Sketches

Darklands
Less dark and oppressive than Psychocandy, there is a palpable lightness to the music on here, and whilst keeping to the same general template, there are some great little pop hooks and moments - the slowed down bubblegum surf pop melodies that were under the gloom of Psychocandy show themselves here, emerging without the dark and claustrophobic tone and mix of that album. There are still some punk riffs and still some of the same atmosphere, but there is definitely less shade and dark corners.

There are some great little guitar hooks and moments, combining some overdrive with jangly pop and drones, which, as a consequence of the lighter feel, are more apparent than on Psychocandy.

There do seem to be a lot of lifts from other songs, which I don’t particularly mind, Darklands pretty much lifts the melody from Love Vigilantes by New Order for the riff and the Oooh Ooohs on Nine Million Rainy Days are quite Sympathy for the Devil. I could also hear a touch of Sweet Dreams on Cherry Came Too.

But that doesn’t really matter too much as they conjure up some very good songs, Darklands, Happy When it Rain, Nine Million Rainy Days, April Skies and it is nice and succinct at about 35 minutes. Even if some of the songs aren’t quite as good, they all work with the atmosphere and sound of the album.

Like Psychocandy this does depend on whether you like their template and formula, and like Psychocandy, I am a fan. Although the template is similar, this does have that different end result, less moody and less aurally confrontational, subsequently it's a nice complement and partner to Psychocandy. I gave that 4 and I’ll do the same with this.
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Playlist submission: Nine Million Rainy Days

Brian Wilson Presents Smile
I remember buying this when it came out and there was quite a bit of excitement, although I don’t think I listened to it a great deal then.

Kind of an odd one, and tricky to separate the context from the actual music, although I’m not sure its worthwhile to do that - the context of finishing the album he never finished and that caused him to have a mental breakdown is the album and is the music.

Listening today I thought it might sound dated to 2004, but it has aged really well (apart from a drum fill on Wind Chimes), it sounds lovely, with a lot of warmth and depth, and his voice sounds also great, the age and the years in it suit the themes of childhood nostalgia and fantasy in the songs and add an extra layer of being sung 40 years after they were written and first sung.

I think the three suites work well, suiting the recurring motifs and musical references as well as the themes, and going through it song by song misses the point, although the songs already recorded by the Beach Boys do stand out: Heroes and Villains, Cabin Essence, Surf’s Up, Vega-Tables. The version of Good Vibrations is fine, but does lack the charm and freshness of the original recording.

The music of the Beach Boys, and it’s uniqueness is probably a separate conversation, but I really enjoyed this, both for what it is musically in its own right, but also for the context and history - I really like the palpable sense of catharsis turning into joy as he re-visits and tries to finish the album that was in his head in 1967, and there’s no doubt of his skill as an arranger and pop orchestrator. It may not hit the heights of the Beach Boys but its a solid 4 for me.
🙃🙃🙃🙃
Playlist submission: Heroes and Villains

Electric Warrior
I had this on CD, inspired by Paul’s admiration for them, but I can’t have listened to this in about 20 years.

I’m glad it came up, as it has reminded me of what a great album this is: infectious, fun and joyous with endearingly silly lyrics which occasionally dance with genuine profundity.

Mambo Sun and Cosmic Dancer are a banging opening pair, illustrating the two principal styles of song on the album; glammed up rock’n’roll grooves and spacey acoustic driven ballads. I love the string parts on Cosmic Dancer, quite George Martin in the cello and spare arrangement, and, of course, it’s just a great track overall. Jeepster, Monolith and Lean Woman blues finish off the first side brilliantly. Jeepster is obviously a classic, but I love Monolith’s hand claps and backing vocals, and Lean Woman Blues downtempo rock’n’roll blues is just great, with just the right lightness of touch to avoid it being a bog standard 70s blues dirge.

Get It On, still sounds fresh and immediate 50 years on, just a banger. Planet Queen, what a track. I remember loving this back in the days of CDs, but I’d kind of forgotten about it. Superb.Love the mournful brass in Girl, and the engagingly daft lyrics, another great track. Love the little echoes of Get It On in The Motivator and the last 30 seconds are great, almost like morse code. Life’s a Gas and Rip Off round things off superbly, Life’s A Gas slightly downcast lyrics giving a nice bit of sobriety to the album before the scuzzy rock n roll of Rip Off.

It’s such a smartly written, constructed and produced album, the spaciousness and echoey sound giving it a real deftness, allowing room for the grooves to breathe and for Bolan’s hip shaking boogie guitar to snake around the songs.

It’s an easy 5 - a great, fun and playful album of supremely efficient pop rock perfection.
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Playlist submission: Planet Queen

Chicago Transit Authority
I do like a fair bit of Chicago’s early music, 25 or 6 to 4 off the next album is an absolute classic, but they did tend to make very long albums with very long songs, and sometimes the jazz horns and prog blues of it all can get a bit much, and this is no exception. It does feel like a long hour and 20 minutes and a lot of the songs can feel very long, because, well, nearly all of them are very long.

Having said that, there are good songs and some great moments on here amongst the noodling and the parping. And also one of the cringiest bits of musical stupidity in Free Form Guitar, nearly 7 minutes of utter pointlessness.

Introduction is a microcosm of the album - great groove, a jazzy feel, pretty busy and goes on a bit too long. The actual meat of the song in Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is is very enjoyable, but I’m not sure the broken jazz piano intro really adds a great deal to the whole song.

Having a horn section as part of the band is a great USP, but I think that sometimes leads to an over-application of horn parts, which in turn leads to a lot of busy-ness from the other instruments, competing to be heard. Beginnings is a bit like this, it’s a great bluesy country track, possibly my favourite on the album, but it would benefit from a simpler arrangement, definitely a case of addition by subtraction.

Questions 67 and 68 is a nice bit of jazz rock pop, the piano sounding a bit like Come and Get It, giving it a nice added rhythmic dynamism. Really like the groove of Listen, a great track with a nice bass riff. Poem 58, for what is basically a guitar jam, is very listenable, with a decent groove, the two different parts complementing each other well.

We shan’t talk about Free Form Guitar.

South California Purples is a decent blues groove with great sounding bass, and the cover of I’m a Man is also goof, the jazzy proggyness suiting the song’s repeating organ groove very well. Prologue, Someday and Liberation I guess are meant to be taken as a suite. Liberation is actually great, one of the times when the throw the kitchen sink approach works over the course of it’s 15 minutes.

Overall it’s a bit of a mixed bag. What they do they do very well, and there’s a great deal of skill involved, but their tendency for competing instrumental prominence makes it feel like a slightly overwrought and busy listening experience - in some instances a less is more approach would benefit the album without diluting what they excel at. Don’t think it makes it into the 4s, so a solid 3 feels about right.
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Playlist submission: Listen

The Visitors
I’ve been wanting to listen to some ABBA albums for a while, but I knew there were 2 on the list, so I was waiting for one to come up. I’m glad it did.

The title track, what a post-disco pop banger - absolutely fantastic, not sure why I’ve never heard it before. Went to No 1 in Costa Rica, and who am I to argue with that. I’ve been a bit obsessed with this song today.

I’m not always that keen on some of the Spanish elements of ABBA’s music, and Head over Heels, combined with some non-specific central euro sounds, has some of that Spanish feel, but it actually is great with that killer chorus, great track. When All is Said and Done is one of those ABBA songs I’m only vaguely familiar with, but again it’s a great track, I love the synth in particular.

Soldiers is a great tune, fantastic harmonies. I Let the Music Speak veers too close to musical theatre to me. I know that is a big part of their music, but this is one of the occasions when its too much and is probably the only real misstep on the album.

One Of Us, again some of that Spanish sound, but it’s an undeniably great bit of pop music. It’s a bit nuts how many great choruses they can write that use Anni-Frid and Agnetha’s voices so well.

Two For the Price of One - basically the bit in the middle of a Venn diagram of Video Killed the Radio Star, Everywhere by Fleetwood Mac, Escape (The Pina Colada Song) and an Oompa Loompa band. I didn’t think I needed that but I love it. I’ve never been that keen on the verses of Slipping Through My Fingers, but it is rescued by an absolutely superb chorus; those minor chords in the middle are great. Like An Angel Passing Through My Room is a nice oddity, perhaps not their strongest melody but I love the spare arrangement and sad sentiments.

This was great, and got better with each listen. It may not have many of their top tier well known pop classics, but there is some absolutely fantastic music on here and cranking it up on my headphones it sounded fantastic, the warmth of the sound is remarkable considering how synth based it is, and there are some brilliant little music hooks and motifs in pretty much every song, speaking to their skill as melodicists and their sense of craftsmanship. Thematically it’s pretty interesting too, with the cold war allusions, as well as references to their interpersonal dynamics, and an overall slightly downcast feel. There’s always an underlying sadness to ABBA’s music, it's one of the things that makes them great, but on here it feels like a more mature reserved sadness, rather than the more immediate melancholy of say Knowing Me, Knowing You.

It’s a 5 from me - I thoroughly enjoyed it and didn’t really want to stop
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Playlist submission: The Visitors

American Gothic
I have heard of this, one of those classic lost albums that come up on lists frequently, but I’ve never actually listened.

The first track didn’t make me hopeful though, the vaudevillian theatricality really not to my taste. Love’s Enough on the other hand is actually rather lovely, a tender and affecting piano ballad. Then Ballad of the Ship of State goes back to the musical theatre of the first song and it’s not good at all.

One Night Stand then goes back to the style of Love’s Enough and it feels like a genuine 70s singer songwriter lost classic, with a charming melancholic melody. Starting to see a pattern with Oh California! I think someone should revoke his access to a horn section on the theatre numbers, its quite irritating. Another Friday Night, another pleasant ballad after another vaguely irritating musical number.

Family Band feels like a secondary school music teacher leading the cast through one of the songs he’s written for the school musical. A bit more listenable than some of the others but still not great. Midnight Carousel

Waiting for the Moving Van is another of the very pleasant singer songwriter style ballads, the section with the oboe is particularly nice. More Mr G vibes with Blues for Mr Whitecloud.

Montana is the whole album writ large (or small, whichever is right), some lovely melancholic moments combined with some hand fisted musical theatre.

I get a lot of Neil Diamond and a lot of Harry Nilsson, but without being as good or as interesting as either. So a bit of an oddity, some really great stuff, but a lot of really not very good stuff too, and I can see why it never found an audience. I guess there is a market for the musical songs but I can see there would be a market for the ballads also, but it falls between the two stools and is a bit of a frustrating listen as a result. 2
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Playlist submission: One Night Stand

Sign ‘☮️’ the Times
It took me a while to get into Prince, I think was put off by a lot of his 90s output in comparison to the Britpop I loved, and I didn’t really understand what an incredible artist he was and all the great music he made until I met Clair - she loves his early stuff and it was her playing the song Controversy a lot that really got me into him. This is probably his last really good album, ending a pretty incredible run of 5 or 6 albums from Dirty Mind onwards. I’ve really come to appreciate his single mindedness and willingness to try tons of stuff, sometimes all at once. He has that similar facility for music that McCartney has, although coming from a funk and soul angle rather than a rock and pop one, and perhaps without Macca’s degree of melodic and harmonic skill.

The title track is absolutely superb, one of my favourite Prince songs. The sparse synthesisers and drum machine arrangement against the overall downbeat mood creates a nice tension, and I love the keyboard riff. It kicks off a great run of songs, the catchy pop of Play in the Sunshine, the rhythmically driven Housequake and It, the delicateness of Dorothy Parker, the AOR pop of Starfish and Coffee, the pulsing spacey funk of Hot Thing and the slightly hypnotic scythe riff off Forever in My Life. The only misstep for me is Slow Love, a foreshadowing of some of the vaguley flat records he did in the 90s.

Even before I got into Prince I always liked U Got the Look, a classic bit of 80s pop, with added Sheena Easton 80s ness. If I Was Your Girlfriend just about treads the right side of that same line as Slow Love, and is definitely a grower. Strange Relationship I’m not a fan of, one of a few dips on the second disc. I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man is great though, along with U Got the Look one of the highlights of this disc, a super bit of 80s soft rock pop. The first half of The Cross is superb, I love the melody and the guitar, but then the 2nd half’s rock out doesn’t quite convince, maybe due to the dominance of the echoey drums in the mix. It’s Gonna Be a Beautiful Night I strongly dislike, it’s a real nadir, the woah-e-oo refrain is really annoying and the whole song has an ersatz quality that is really dislikable. Adore brings things back though, a great bit of crooning 80s RnB, I love the organ and the sitar touches.

Despite some fantastic music on here, I don’t think it quite works as a double album. There's an obvious dip on the second disc, and the 3 or 4 cullable songs are of significantly lower quality than the rest. As a single album it would be a 5, but it is too long, and the presence of It’s Gonna Be a Beautiful Night alone is worth a star deduction in its own right. I’ll settle on a high 4.
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Playlist submission: Sign ‘☮️’ the Times

Jack Takes the Floor
This is definitely an interesting document of a moment in time and of an interesting character in the story of Bob Dylan. Obviously Elliot has value as a performer in his own right, and is more than just a stepping stone in Dylan’s career, but looking at this from 2024 you can see Elliott was the template for early Dylan - Dylan loved Woody Guthrie but based himself on Eliott who based himself on Woody Guthrie.

I suppose the difference between Dylan and Elliott is that Dylan’s sense of opportunism, ambition and purpose, combined with his own skill, charisma and unique internal Dylan filter makes his Woody phase much more interesting and enduring. Dylan’s first album is incredibly reminiscent of this - similar songs, pre song talking and style - and despite that not being his best album, it is captivating in a way Jack Takes the Floor isn’t. Maybe that’s because we know the totality of Dylan’s career, but I also think you can detect a kind of ambivalence in this album in comparison. Elliott seems happy to get these songs down and sing them, but it doesn’t feel like it has any forward momentum. That’s not a criticism at all, I just think it's pretty interesting.

Anyhow, put Dylan aside, this is a nice collection of bluegrass, country and blues inflected folk, with the nice easy charm of his voice and his stories. Even if all the songs end up sounding quite similar his guitar playing is easy on the ear, and the moments when he lets loose with his voice gives things a nice raspy power and sense of conviction. Equally the moments when he sings in and understated way, as on Cocaine, have a nice affecting feel.

Kind of a tricky one to rate, it’s a very pleasant listen without ever really soaring, but it’s also an historically interesting record, both in terms of Dylan, but also the US folk movement and UK-US musical exchange pre Beatles. Musically it’s a 3, contextually a 4, so I’ll stick with a high 3
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Playlist Submission: Cocaine

Ritual de lo Habitual
Been Caught Stealing is the only Jane’s Addiction song I know, and it’s a great track. Other than that I don’t know much about them apart from Dave Navarro being the guitarist and the singer’s clunky pun name.

Red Hot Chili Peppers I suppose are the obvious comparison, especially with the Navarro Connection, even if they aren’t completely analogous, but I did find this much more enjoyable than I generally find RHCP. Farrell is similarly not a great vocalist although in a slightly less annoying way, despite a huge preponderance of ‘Whooahs’ and ‘Yeahs’, and their tendency for slower, more drone like songs among the funk rock makes them a slightly more interesting proposition. Things Like Obvious, Three Days and Then She Did sound a little like pre Urban Hymns Verve, a more spacey vibe than hard rock or funk rock.

Been Caught Stealing is the stand out for me, but the run from that song to Then She Did is good, with much more groove and feeling than the first half. Of Course is a bit of a stinker though - big DurkaDurkastan vibes.

I enjoyed this, there’s some good stuff happening between the harder rock moments, and when they go for the lower tempo grooves it works pretty well, and is a lot more listenable than a lot of other early 90s US rock bands. A solid 3 - wouldn’t be averse to listening again, but I may not necessarily seek it out
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Playlist submission: Been Caught Stealing