Reviews by ikejiri

Hunky Dory
For a long time this was possibly my favourite Bowie album, although it has been superseded by others, and as a result I haven’t listened to this for quite a while.

Of course it still is truly excellent. Despite on the surface being one of his most ‘conventional’ albums it really is full of odd little corners and strange/absorbing/literary/facist*/cryptic lyrics, all the while being carried by a cinematic musical momentum, whether folk, orchestral, music hall or guitar led rock. There are some fantastic strings and horns and brilliant arrangements and instrumentation. Also I only just made the connection that the producer, Ken Scott, is the same Ken Scott who was engineer for quite a few Beatles sessions.
*not really, he just mentions Himmler and homo superior a bit.

I won’t necessarily go through song by song, as I genuinely like every one on here, but there are moments throughout that I love. The guitar in the intro of Eight Line Poem for example, or the Dr Who beeps on Andy Warhol and the acoustic guitar line intro. I like the music hall influences too, similar to Macca in that regard. And I’ve always loved the opening stanza of Oh! You Pretty Things. Also I took me a while to appreciate Quicksand, but it really is a superb song. I’ve also never noticed it before but the way he sings ‘still the days seem the same’ at 1.44 in Changes is very very Dylan.

Life on Mars stood out today - not because I’m not aware of what an incredible song it is - but sometimes you hear something you’ve heard a thousand times in a slightly different way. Maybe it’s mood, what you are doing or how receptive your brain is but it just seems different and feels fresh. I suppose that’s the thing that separates the truly great artists (your Bowies, your Youngs, your Tamsin Archers, your Beatles, your Dylans) from the good, that the songs endure and evolve as time passes, you find moments or angles you never noticed before and it feels like a new song.

It’s of course an easy 5. Not just a transformational album in his career but one of the greatest albums ever recorded. If he only ever released this album he would still be regarded as one of the greatest ever.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Beach Boys Today!
I’ve never really delved into the Beach Boys albums pre Pet Sounds, I kind of assumed due to the quantity of them and the duplicated songs on some of them that they would be musically all over the shop - much better to listen to a best of. This album confounded that idea though.

Do You Wanna Dance, I’ve always loved this, it is a brilliantly joyful pop song. It wasn’t till I was reading after that I learned this was a cover. I love the hook at the start of each line being replicated in the chorus though, and the ‘hit’ of music and vocals and harmonies at the chorus is just a fantastic moment. I listened to the original out of curiosity and the BBs version really does lift what is quite a flat song.

Good to my Baby feels a little early Beach Boys by numbers in comparison, as does Be Good to My Little Sister, although the drop in ‘why don’t you love her…’ part elevates it, a really lovely little melodic and harmonic moment.

When I Grow Up to be a Man is really interesting, lyrically and thematically not standard fare for early 65 and you can see how this might have influenced (and been influenced by) John to write even more personally - In My Life followed not long after this.

Help me Rhonda is a greatest hits staple that you can easily overlook, but it’s great, the modulating sound level into the chorus is great, and as you’d expect, brilliant harmonies.

Dance, Dance, Dance is a bit of I Get Around clone, albeit a fun listen, and does feel a bit like the filler I was expecting.

Please Let Me Wonder, however, feels very very different, with a tenderness and maturity standing in stark contrast to Dance, Dance, Dance. This clearly feels like a turning point, noticeably more interesting melodically and musically. The bass is great throughout and all the different instrumental hooks. Superb.

I’m So Young sounds great too, but again I didn’t realise this was a cover until after. It is a nice tune and arrangement but isn’t massively different from the original and is a little bit filler-y.

Kiss me, Baby, really beautiful and tender, similar to Please Let Me Wonder. I love the ‘up and downess’ of it, little peaks and troughs and a gorgeous sounding chorus. Lovely.

She Knows Me Too Well, another beautiful and wistful song, but with a kind of fragile tension to it, a little bit of uncertainty thematically and musically. The jealousy theme also must have resonated with Lennon.

In The Back of My Mind, what a song. Again this must have been hugely influential, with a lovely vocal. It’s really sad and has a loneliness to it, and melodically/harmonically it’s really interesting, a similar skill that the Beatles have in creating a musical feeling that matches or contests the lyrics.

I really do like a lot of their albums post Pet Sounds, there are some absolute gems and a lot of brilliant stuff on Smiley Smile, Holland, Friends, 20/20, Wild Honey etc, but I’ve tended to struggle with Pet Sounds itself, finding it hard to get into, but I wonder if this might help, in the way that Help feeds into Rubber Soul and Rubber Soul into Revolver. I was really surprised how good this was versus my expectations, and that feeling of a change happening as you listen to the 2nd side, a branching out and a maturity.

In terms of a score I think it’s a 4, just due to the unevenness and ‘throwbacknees’ of the 1st side, although the contrast between the surf pop and the introspection is pretty cool. It doesn’t feel as complete in the way Rubber Soul does - and I think we are comparing the Beach Boys to the Beatles here, holding them to a slightly higher standard than other groups of the time - so a 4 it is.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Clound Nine
I do like The Temptations psychedelic soul period, after David Ruffin left. Like everyone I love their earlier ‘classic’ stuff but I was interested to hear this in full as I only know Clould Nine and Run Away Child, Running Wild.

I love the excellent Cloud Nine, a brilliant bit of psychedelic pop soul. Running Away Child, Running Wild is also great, in that similar vein as Cloud Nine, Papa was a Rollin’ Stone, Psychedelic Shack, Ball of Confusion. Quite a simple electric piano riff, great bass and drums and nice guitar accents. Along with Sly and the Family Stone this really laid the groundwork for Funk and the Parliament-Funkadelic albums in the 70s. I think George Clinton worked at Motown so I’m pretty sure would have been around the Temptations and would likely have played on some of their songs.

I’m Not as keen on their version of I Heard it Through the Grapevine, obviously Marvin’s is the definitive version but I don’t think the riff on piano works, and they style in which they’ve done it makes it sound quite lounge.

The second side is almost like a completely different album. I was expecting more 9 minutes psych soul jams, but it’s 7 tracks in the traditional style of the Temptations and Motown. Even if they may not be top tier Motown tracks they are still all superior examples of the type of throwaway pop music Motown seemed to casually toss off at the time. Excellent playing, (particularly bass and particularly bass on I Need Your Lovin’), great vocal group harmonies, sympathetic production make an extremely enjoyable listening experience, especially on my final listen through this rainy Sunday morning. The last 4 tracks from I Need Your Lovin’ to Gonna Keep Trying till I Win your Love I particularly enjoyed. Again even though they aren’t top tier Motown they give you those little dopamine hits of joy in a way not much else can.

Overall it’s kind of tricky to rate as it seems like two psychedelic soul freak outs, a weird demo seeming version of I Heard I Through The Grapevine and then half a record of classic Temptation style tracks. The first side is clearly very influential and Cloud Nine is a truly great track, and then the second side is very enjoyable vocal soul. Three feels a bit low, it’s not quite a 4, but I’ll go 4 for Cloud Nine, the playing and the vocals.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

You’ve Come a Long Way Baby
Oh the warm, warm piss of nostalgia on my face. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the album in its entirety but the singles are so seared into my memory. I can feel the red vinyl covers and the stickiness of the tables, I can smell the disinfectant and beer and I can see the tiny tv up in the corner of the Grey bar when I hear The Rockerfeller Skank. I can see us all standing around, waiting for the pool table and thinking about pizza.

The big singles, Rockefeller Skank, Gangster Tripping, Right Here, Right Now still sound great, brilliant bits of pop music. Kind of Moby and DJ Shadow-esque in the samples they use, with Gangster Tripping even sampling DJ Shadow of course, but with a very pop party music attitude. The fact they still get used in TV, films and adverts 26 years later shows how strong they remain and how little they have dated. And then Praise You is just a genuinely brilliant song, irrespective of genre, and it rightly endures as a pop classic.

Fucking in Heaven is fine but not as strong, the guitar part/sample/interpolation really does date it and it doesn’t really have a strong enough hook for me.
Build it Up, Tear it Down and Kalifornia are fun and stronger musically and have good hooks, but Soul Surfing and You’re Not from Brighton are similar to Fucking in Heaven, fun enough but not at the heights of the other songs. Love Island is a good dance track and Acid 8000 is a fun in a squelchy way. It feels like there are 3 tiers to the album: Great - RHRN, TRS, GT, Praise You; Good but not as good - BIUTID, Kalifornia, Love Island, Acid 800 and fine but a bit fillery - FIH, SS, YNFB.

Obviously the whole genre is based around repetition and groove, but I suppose Fatboy Slims take on it is to put that together with sampling and making it very accessible and poppy, and it works really well for the most part, but some hooks are better than others and you can’t help thinking the album format isn’t the best for this - you kind of want to hear them at a party, in a bar, club, pub at a festival. All places I frequent on the reg these days.

It also suffers from a bit of bloat, each track is long and the whole album at just over an hour feels lengthy. Some judicious editing of tracks or just losing a couple of tracks altogether to get to 45-50 mins would be good.

As an album I’m not sure it really works but then again that’s not the point. But it does have some truly great tracks and within the genre each song has it’s merits, you’d be happy to hear any of them on a night out. It’s one of those albums I’m glad to have a listen to, but ultimately it’s a ‘pick your best songs for a playlist and then probably never listen to again album’.
⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Message
‘Turned stick-up kid, but look what you done did
Got sent up for a eight-year bid
Now your manhood is took and you're a Maytag
Spend the next two years as a undercover fag
Bein' used and abused to serve like hell
Til one day, you was found hung dead in the cell’

Obviously The Message is a classic, not just in early hip hop but in music generally, but I wasn’t expecting much else from this. Not in a bad way, I just assumed that this would be interesting from a historical perspective but would be a mixed bag musically, aside from The Message. Perhaps a lot of filler and turn tabling but not much else.

She’s Fresh is really good though. Not much rapping but musically a great bit of early hip hop party music, quite an 80s RnB sound but with a good beat. It’s Nasty (Genius of Love) is also an excellent bit of early rap. Great use of Tom Tom Club before ODB and Mariah. This is a strong start and much better than I was expecting.

Scorpio is fun too but not as strong as the first two tracks. Quite Afrika Bambaataa in its electro space sounding vocoder. The drum machine sounds I like. It’s a Shame (Mt Airy Groove). I suppose they can’t call it anything else. Nice use of the sample though and some good scratching. I like it.

Dreamin’ - what the fuck is this?! Not expecting this at all. You Are, more what the fuck? What’s happening? This is odd. Not because these two songs are bad, they are fine enough examples of early 80s soul and RnB, although they are perilously close to Sexual Chocolate territory (and if I heard Lonely Island sing them I wouldn’t be surprised), but it seems so strange that they would write and perform such conventionally structured songs. It doesn’t feel like an experiment in versatility and diversity more like we need two more tracks. And the spoken word bit about meeting Stevie is unintentionally very amusing. Maybe they are meant to be joke songs. Not sure. Just feels very strange

The Message, aside from the lines above I always like the bit where he says ‘broke my sacroiliac’. Brilliant song, rightly a classic and a landmark song.

I listened to the original UK release with The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel as the last track, rather than with the extra tracks, which is probably a good thing. TAOGFOTWOS is still a great track and brilliant but of musical history.

I think it’s probably around 3 in terms of the music itself and that it doesn’t really feel like a ‘proper’ album. But as a historically significant musical landmark and as something so influential it’s a surely a 5. I don’t think I can give it a 5 though, and even a 4 feels a touch high. I could argue to myself that The Message and TAOGFOTWOS are worthwhile enough to push it to 4, but 3 feels about right.
⭐️⭐️⭐️

OK Computer
Sweet sweet memories. Fountains Hall. Mmmm.

Despite Radiohead being one of my favourite bands I don’t revisit this all that often. I absolutely love their albums from Kid A onwards, and if I fancy a bit of Radiohead I tend to gravitate to A Moon Shaped Pool, Kid A, In Rainbows or King of Limbs. Those then often lead me on to The Eraser and the Atoms for Peace album. And then there’s The Smile, I love both their albums.

That’s not to denigrate this album at all, as it is, of course, absolutely superb, without a weak track or moment. It’s undoubtedly a classic, and listening today makes me think I really should listen to it more often.

When it came out, it felt like a real leap forward from The Bends (which is also obviously a huge step forward from Pablo Honey), taking that also brilliant album and building out into more experimental and atmospheric sounds and songwriting.

Looking at it now in the wider context of their discography, it also signposted where they were going to go next, with a sense that they had exhausted their interest in the guitar being what the band and songs were based around. Things like Exit Music (For a Film) and Climbing up the Walls, although they have relatively standard instruementation, they have a rhythmic and atmospheric quality that wouldn’t be out of place on Kid A or Amnesiac. Fitter Happier also and The Tourist.

There’s not much point going through song by song, as they are all without exception great, but my highlights are Airbag with its brilliant awkward riff, Let Down with it’s lovely poppy melody, Paranoid Android because its just fucking great. Electioneering and No Surprises also. In fact give me any of these songs. Love em all.

It’s as easy a 5 as Rubber Soul.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Superunkown
Don’t know a great deal about Soundgarden, other than the singer is Chris Cornell and that Black Hole Sun is a great song.

First thing I noticed that this came across as a much better version of Pearl Jam, the guitar playing is a bit looser and funkier behind the heavy distortion.

Then I noticed that it is very samey. Black Hole Sun stands out and rightly endures, Spoonman is also very good. I also liked Half as a change of instrumentation and I also liked Like Suicide and My Wave.

Aside from that I found it hard to distinguish the songs or remember what was what. I think they are good at what they do, and there are some very good guitar moments, but I couldn’t really get into it. Maybe if I was 15 or 16 when this came out in 93 I might have got into it, but it doesn’t quite do it for me in 2024. It’s also very long at 70 minutes, which didn’t help.

I’m finding it hard to muster much for this review, as ultimately I feel pretty neutral about it. Not in a negative way but I’m struggling to find any particular feelings or opinions either way. It’s fine, I neither like nor dislike it, it’s neither my thing nor not my thing. Allowing for that I can see it’s a very good example of this type of album and Black Hole Sun is a banger so I’ll go for a straight down the middle 3.
⭐️⭐️⭐️

Back to Black
Rehab and Back to Black are absolute bangers, modern classics.
You Know I’m No Good, Love is a Losing game and Tears Dry on their Own are also superb tracks. Great lyrics, great songs.
Tears Dry on their Own & Love is a Losing Game are also great.

Me & Mr Jones and Just Friends aren’t as strong for me, the melodies never quite lift off and they do stand out as a little weaker than the rest of the songs on the album.

Wake Up Alone is a real grower, it has all those 50s elements, the doo wop chord sequence, guitar accents and backing vocals.
Some Unholy War. Love the guitar triplets (?), the drum sound and bass driving the song. Very good.
He Can Only Hold Her. Also brilliant, love the horn arrangements and intertwined backing vocals.
Addicted. Brilliant 50s sound, again the brass and backing vocals are superb. Would think this is Ronson, but it’s Remi. Excellent.

It holds together as one thing very well considering it’s half produced by Ronson and half by Salaam Remi. Ronson really is very skilled at recreating certain sounds and eras. It doesn’t always work, occasionally falling into pastiche, but on here he is great. He manages to evoke songs and time periods without nicking wholesale, often landing in that satisfying uncanny valley of familiar and new.

It’s hard to avoid comparisons with Jagged Little Pill as it only came up yesterday (and it is a bit reductive to do so, and I don’t want to be dismissive of Alanis as an angry woman), but Amy’s confessional and honest lyrics are so good, very funny but very real and authentic, with loads of everyday details and observations that really pull you in. There’s anger and sadness but humour and resignation. They are colourful and vivid whereas Alanis’ are a bit flat and one note. Again I don’t want to diminish Alanis’ honesty and directness but Amy is in a different class.

The production, the voice, the 50s/60s aesthetic, the right amount of jazziness, pop, doo wop and early rock ’n’ roll, five truly great songs with only a couple of weaker moments and a short but very sweet 35 mins make this a superb listen. Think I did 5 listens on the bounce the morning and a couple more this afternoon.

It’s probably exactly a 4.5 but surely I must round up to 5, so I will. It’s a modern classic.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Jagged Little Pill
_I’m consumed by the chill of solitary_

At nearly 30 years remove I have developed a bit of a soft spot for You Oughta Know, Hand in my Pocket and Head over Feet. Ironic I’m still not sure about but I was interested to give this a listen to see if there were some more catchy pop rock tunes.

There are two issues though here: her singing and the cheesy production. The overall sound, arrangements, and the guitar in particular, are very bland. I do like a bit of soft rock but this isn’t good, in that it thinks it hard edged but is actually very hammy.
I really believe her sincerity in sharing her emotional tumult, but the humdrum and inoffensive music really pulls the rug from underneath her.
She does have a good voice and it can be very sweet, and I don’t even mind some of her trademark vocal affectations but she over sings fucking everything. Forgiven is the worst of both these worlds, turgid music and 5 minutes of incessant wailing. It’s genuinely hard to listen to. There is some restraint in Mary Jane and as a result the pleasing little melody gets some room to breathe and it’s quite a nice tune.

YOK, HIMP and HOF clearly stand out with All I Really Want too in the same fun pop rock vein and Mary Jane as welcome pared back tune. You Learn and Ironic the best of the rest, which is all pretty ordinary filler drowned in overwrought wailing.

It’s between a 2 and 3, I’ll go 3 for the 3 or 4 songs I do like and also that I appreciate her emotional soul bearing and she seems a good egg all round.
⭐️⭐️⭐️

Psychocandy
I am a fan of this album, but I can see why it might be a bit marmite, they have a template and they work some variation around the edges, occasionally speeding things up, but there’s no doubting the songs are cut from similar cloth.

But I like that cloth a lot. Phil Spector/girl group/bubblegum pop drum foundation, Velvet Underground tempos and drone, Stooges guitar, a slowed down punk noise and sensibility, lots of feedback, some Beach Boys melodies and then some 50s echoey fraternal harmonies. Mix those threads up in a garment gumbo and, to my ears, you have a tasty outfit.

What I also like is that this is one of those albums where you can simultaneously hear both the influences and who they influenced.

Just Like Heaven, have always loved it, a great tune, their best version of their song, but there are other highlights, The Hardest Walk, Cut Dead, Taste of Cindy, Never Understand, Inside Me, My Little Underground, Somethings Wrong, It’s Do Hard. Actually that’s nearly every song. Some Candy Talking is probably their second best song, really very good.

So it comes down to whether you like their template or not. As you can tell I think it’s great, so it’s an easy 4 for me. I’m tempted to go 5, but Rubber Soul’s excellence is casting a bit of a shadow today.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Rubber Soul
Hard to know what to write that we haven’t spoken about or has been written a million times by a million people. So, I’ve been trying to remember when I bought this album and memories of first hearing it.

My parents had the 1987 CD release of Revolver which I pinched off them some time in 94/95. They also had the red and blue albums on vinyl, which I recorded onto cassettes for my walkman and my midi hifi system. Then the Anthology TV show at the end of 1995 sent my Beatle fandom into overdrive and I started to collect their albums. I had the Anthology 1 album when it came out, and I think had that before I had any other albums. I also had a little CD sized book going through all their albums song by song, so I had read about all their songs many many times before hearing them.

I do remember getting Rubber Soul and talking about the song The Word with someone in my French A-Level class. I think it was summer, which would put it around May in 1996 or 1997, most likely from Virgin Records or HMV in Southampton (don't look for them, they're not there anymore). The red album had 6 songs from RS plus We Can Work it Out and Day Tripper and I think I might also have had Anthology 2 before RS, so I think it probably was May 97. I have very strong memories of buying The White Album and Sgt Pepper in HMV in Oxford Street in the summer of 96 in the middle of A-levels, (and reading the booklets and looking at the CDs on the train home, just desperate to be able to hear the songs I’d read about), and I think I would have bought those before Rubber Soul.

25+ years of accrued listening makes it hard to recall listening to it the first time, but I remember loving Think for Yourself and The Word when I got it, I think a lot to do with the bass, and in general the clear advances in sound, production, songs and lyrics from the pre Help era. I also thought about the line George says in Anthology about Rubber Soul and Revolver being part 1 and part 2 of the same album as not ringing true for me, (and although something like If I Needed Someone I could see on Revolver) but they are both very different. I think I remember liking I’m Looking Through You and You Won’t See Me as well. It still feels like a summer album, from buying it in the summer. I loved the cover too, I think 65/66 might be their best look, grown out Beatle cuts and cool jackets and sunglasses. I love the photos from the RS and Revolver recording sessions.

Like all their albums this has bought me so much joy over the years, and one of the beauties of Beatles albums is that you get into different songs and albums at different times. I was listening to RS a lot in February this year as I had a mini obsession with If I Needed Someone, I just kept wanting to hear it.

It’s also tricky to pick out individual songs as I love them all, but there are moments across the whole album that I love and still surprise and delight me, despite how famous, obvious or well know they are. The bass and piano on Drive My Car, the sitar and guitar doubled on Norwegian Wood, the skittish hi hat and fills on You Won’t See Me, vocal harmonies on Nowhere Man, the fuzz bass on Think For Yourself, the bass on The Word, the Gallic touches on Michelle, the jauntiness of What Goes On, the mysteriousness of Girl, the breakdown after ‘You’re not the same!’ on I’m Looking Through you (Ringo plays the Hammond on this!), Ringo’s grandfather clock drumming on In My Life, the upbeat plaintiveness of Wait, the whole of If I Needed Someone. I even like Run for Your Life despite it clearly being the weakest track and feeling like a bit of a throwback to BFS or Help

George’s guitar work is great, as usual serving the songs perfectly with little ostentatiousness, but Ringo’s drumming and Paul’s bass are really the stars (after the quality of the songs of course). There’s a bit of debate, but I’m pretty sure his is when Paul started using the Rickenbacker in the studio and probably when they recorded it directly into the mixing desk. It must be the Ric, as the bass is so much clearer in the mix and it sounds very different than previous albums. I think he’s also talked about the Ric and direct injection allowing him to write more melodic bass lines now that they could be heard and that would track with some absolutely superb lines and playing on here. As with all their albums its also brilliantly sequenced, I don't think the track order could be bettered.

The brilliance of George Martin (and Norman Smith) is also clear on here, if anyone needed any more proof. I know we have had numerous remasters of Beatles records but just listen to nearly any other album by any of their contemporaries in 1965. Kinda Kinks, The Kink Kontroversy, Rolling Stones No. 2, Out of Our Heads, My Generation - all great albums but the difference in production quality and sound is remarkable. I'd be interested if Giles Martin does Rubber Soul as the demix and remix this year. Obviously there were new mixes of the songs on the red album (plus If I Needed Someone) last year so it would make sense to do the rest of the songs too. Plus there must be some good extra stuff in the vault from the sessions.

Of course it’s a 5. Probably still behind Revolver, Sgt Pepper, Abbey Road and the White Album for me but even their 5th best (or 6th or 7th etc) album is better than the best album by nearly any other band or artist.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐️

Woodface
‘There goes God in his sexy pants and his sausage dog’
I’ve always slightly dismissed Crowded House as a bit 90s salesman in a Mondeo driving up and down the M1 tapping his fingers on the wheel to their latest album. However I have read a lot about them as pop classicists heavily influenced by the Beatles, and I do like the craftsmanship and tune of Weather with You, so I was quite looking forward to giving this a go and hoping for a nice jangly, pop-rock album of nice tunes and playing.

First thing that stood out was that this sounded very 90s, very dated production wise. Lots of space, but without sounding very big. I think it sounds a bit cold, there’s not much warmth or intimacy to my ears. It’s got a very 90s adult rock bass sound, a bit 5 sting session player that I really dislike.

I really didn’t like Chocolate Cake, the opening chords annoyed me for some reason although I thought the lyric was very good, very dry.

It’s Only Natural, I like the riff and the verses, the chorus grates on me a bit - feels like a Sunday car journey with your parents. Fall at Your Feet is not bad either, but does have some of the same Sunday energy as It’s Only Natural.

Weather with You - great song, it really does stand out, particularly after the slightly dull Tall Trees. Nice harmonies, great chorus and I like the riff.

Whispers and Moans, I really don’t like the wah wah or the horns. Four Seasons in One Day is a nice song, I do like it but it does suffer from the sound of the album.

There Goes God, Fame Is (the heavier rocking sound is pretty unconvincing) all the way to How Will You Go are pretty unremarkable, making the 2nd half of the album a bit nothingy.

I do love the harmonies and the brothers’ vocal blend, they sound so good together in a way that only siblings do, a bit like the Everly Brothers. Despite that that though I’m not keen on the lead vocal sound.

When they use slightly different instrumentation (eg strings on All I Ask or accordion on As Sure as I am) it tends to feel slightly hollow, maybe it’s the production but it sounds a bit half hearted and at arms length, not adding any layers or texture.

It’s not quite as good as I was hoping, although there are some good tunes on it, a lot of it passed me by. By looking to be tasteful and pop classical it ends up being a bit too inoffensive and hotel lobby. I keep going on about it but I don’t think the sound and production help, and I did find a lot of it pretty bland and forgettable, particularly the 2nd half. The only saving graces are the vocal harmonies, they are uniformly excellent, and some of the lyrics, which are very wry and sardonic.

2 feels too low as it’s not terrible, so a solid middle of the road 3, mainly for the 2 or 3 good songs, the harmonies and some of the lyrics.
⭐⭐⭐️

Mothership Connection
I’m fairly familiar with Mothership Connection although I don’t listen to it that often.

I love the concept of this album, and the whole Parliament/Funkadelic ethos/philosophy/universe.

P. Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up). Great opener, like the spoken word, introduces the brilliant but loopy concept. Love the Rachmaninov style piano in the outro. Mothership Connection (Star Child) carries it on with another banger.

Unfunky UFO, Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication and Handcuffs aren’t perhaps as strong as those first two songs but they are still very good, Unfunky UFO in particular is white overbite dancing good. Shades of Sex & Drugs & Rock’n’Roll in the piano in Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication.

And then Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker). Absolute all time classic banger. Night of the Thumpasorus Peoples is a great title and a nice farty way to round things out, even if the song isn’t as strong as the title.

There’s just the right blend of funk, disco, soul and jazz, the jazzy bits don’t intrude on the songs. The playing is superb. Bootsy Collins bass is so good, a great tone and simultaneously melodic and percussive, and is great in tandem with the drums. Brilliant horns too.

Trying not to compare it to yesterday’s album as it’s just a quirk of the randomness but it’s night and day. This is fun, funny and excellent, yesterday was dull and wanky.

So all in all this is a great listen, three absolute classics with the remainder very good if not quite as great as those three

It’s somewhere between 4 and 5, I’ll go 4.

⭐⭐⭐⭐️

Emergency on Planet Earth
I’ve never listened to a Jamiroquai album. Back in the 90s I really hated them, even though I’d never really listened to their music. I think my 15 year old mind found it difficult to cope with anything that wasn’t white men with guitars playing rock music.

Nowadays I do like Space Cowboy, Cosmic Girl, Virtual Insanity, Deeper Underground and Canned Heat whenever I hear them, but I have never felt compelled to try an album.

If you are going to give them a try I suppose you would start with the first album. But then you’d listen to it and think that’s a mistake.

If you take each musical element in isolation they are all good; skilled bass playing, great drumming and drum patterns, excellent string and horn arrangements. Keys and guitars also good. The didgeridoo is a bit of an affectation but it’s fine. The arrangements are also very nicely layered. But then when you put them together it so much of it becomes the worst kind of Brand New Heavies style acid jazz - boring, tuneless, insipid, dull, tedious, uninspiring. The only one that manages to escape into being a kind of fun danceable tune is Whatever it is, I Just Can’t Stop. And then the lyrics are godawful immature self important nonsense. Cringe, as the kids would say.

Clearly they have a lot of love for the music that inspired them, but in trying to recreate those sounds and instrumentation it comes across as a boring, ersatz, empty, hollow facsimile of 70s soul and jazz.

I think I might prefer the next couple of albums as they seem to lose some of the acid jazz styles and lean more into soul and disco. But I’m unlikely to actually bother.

And I shan’t be listening to this again.

⭐⭐️

Parklife
I don’t listen to this album as much as Blur, 13, Think Tank and The Magic Whip. Although I should because it is a fantastic album.

Girls and Boys is a banger of an opener and because of its ubiquity and familiarity it’s easy to forget what genuinely fantastic bit of pop music it is. The same goes for Parklife.

Never really noticed before but strings at the end of Tracy Jacks are very White Album. Great song.

I kind of forget about End of a Century but what a song, full of great guitar moments. I love the horns, the waltzer organ and it’s a great chorus too.

I’ve never been that keen on Bank Holiday, I like the lyric but not the song, although I was actually quite enjoying it today.
Badhead really is very lovely, a sweet melody and some lovely shimmering guitar and organ. Another great horn arrangement.

I do like the Wurlitzer seaside organ in The Debt Collector and Lot 105 and that it keeps popping up on the album, like a cultural touchstone among the various everyday tales of Britain that form the bulk of the themes of the album.

To the End, yet another lovely tune. For all the Girls and Boys and Bank Holidays there are 3 absolutely beautiful ‘ballads’ on Parklife; Badhead, To the End and This is a Low. This is a Low might actually be their best song, certainly in the top 5 for me Clive.

London Loves - structurally quite straightforward but its insistent bass and guitar are fantastic, a really great song. I’ve not always been keen on Trouble in the Message Centre but again listening today I really enjoyed it.

Clover over Dover - I love this song, the guitar and piano/harpsichord combination is superb and I love the harmonies. A very melancholic lyric too. Magic America and Jubilee are a great one-two before the brilliant conclusiveness of This is a Low

Obviously Blur predate Britpop but It’s interesting how prominent the bass is compared to a lot of the bands and the production style around at the time of Parklife - lots of noise and treble but very little melody or distinction in the bottom end.

Knowing how eclectic and diverse their albums and solo projects were from Blur onwards it’s easy to overlook how unlike Britpop this album is. A bit like Supergrass in that there are more influences than just 60s classic rock. There’s obviously a lot of Kinks and a lot of Beatles (particularly the use of horns and strings) but there’s disco, punk, new wave and a lot of pop.

Listening today I wonder if this might be their most concise and consistent album? Thematically the songs all sit together despite the stylistic variety and it’s an incredibly satisfying listen, brilliantly sequenced and I don’t think there is a weak song, even if Bank Holiday and Trouble in the Message Centre may not be as strong as some of the other tracks.

I liked this back in the 90s but 30 years on I appreciate it even more, it really is a great, great album. Easy, can’t be anything but
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

High Violet
Listen one: I wasn’t in to this much. It’s the same song 11 times. Piano, nice drumming, lots of tom toms. Takes itself quite seriously. Not keen on the singer.
Listen two: I enjoyed it a bit more, I started to notice a few moments that I really liked, although it still felt a bit monotonous.
Listen three: I enjoyed it a bit more. A couple of songs stood out, Conversation 16 and England in particular. I liked the consistent atmosphere across the album.

It’s obviously a record that needs a few listens and is a grower. However I can’t quite shake that feeling of self importance and that they have one way of doing a song. There are lots of lovely little moments throughout but for me that doesn’t quite make up for the repetitiveness in tempo, structure and arrangement. Even the drumming, which stood out on the first listen, started to feel a bit hollow, as if being used to disguise the slightly pedestrian nature of the songs.

So I guess it comes down to how much you like The National song archetype. I can appreciate the craft and skill and there are some great touches throughout, and I definitely liked it the more I listened, but I don’t think I’m quite convinced by it or them and I’m not sure if I will actually dedicate the time for it ti grow on me.

2 feels a bit low for as it’s clearly not a terrible record so I’ll go 3:

⭐⭐⭐️

Electric Music for the Mind and Body
I hunger for your porpoise mouth
The only things I know of CJ&TF is their Woodstock Film appearance and that they were quite a big deal in the SF / Jefferson Airplane / psychedelic scene.

I think because of the name I was expecting more of a basis country rock sound like the Flying Burrito Brothers, but with some far out 60s flourishes.

Flying High is kind of forgettable blues rock, with a very odd and abrupt fade out.
No So Sweet Martha Lorraine with the organ and time signature changes feels more like a psychedelic 60s song, I liked it, the bass was good and it had a bit of groove to it.
Death Sound Blues. As per title. Quite like the rattlesnake death rattle tambourine and percussion, but not that exciting.
Happiness Is a Porpoise Mouth - very psychedelic 60s compilation, not unenjoyable (LITOTES). It would go on a 60s psych playlist.
I liked Section 43, very Doorsy organ, great bass in the opening section, good raga/Indian guitar. Another one for the psych playlist.
Superbird
Sad and Lonely Times is good, a lovely little slice of west coast country rock.
Love slightly generic sounding, but then I guess this probably was the progenitor of this type of 60s music, so can I truly be generic.
Bass Strings. Quite liked this one
The Masked Marauder. Despite repeat listens I can’t recall this song at all
Grace. Fine

Overall it’s fine for what it is, enjoyable enough, decent etc etc, but I find it hard to summon any particular opinions either way. I neither liked or disliked it ultimately. Maybe I preferred it to Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead and I. Ron Butterfly but it’s really a 2.5. I’ll go 3 as I quite like the band name
⭐️⭐️⭐️

Songs From the Big Chair
Simple Minds, Tears for Fears, Simple Minds, Tears for Fears. They have always been pretty interchangeable. Rightly or wrongly thye live in the same big echoey 80s drum pop rock bucket in my mind - I sometimes have to stop and think which band sang Don’t You Forget About Me, Shout, Everybody Wants to Rule the World, Alive & Kicking and Seeds of Love.

Shout and Everybody Wants to Rule the World are rightly ubiquitous, they are both well crafted ‘big’ sounding 80s classics. EWTRTW in particular is great and still sounds good.

The Working Hour also sounds big and 80s but not in a good way. That AO jazzy sax does not sound good and melodically it feels very strained. Mother’s Talk I wasn’t keen on either, the slightly frantic and slightly jazzy synth in combination with the brass and guitar isn’t a particularly pleasant sound.
I Believe feels like a second rate Style Council knock off. I can imagine Sade rejecting this for being too insipid and dull.
Broken perks things up a bit, a bit of drive to it and no overt jazziness, segueing nicely in Head over Heels, which is another bit of classic 80s pop rock. Listen is ok, some of the backing vocals, synth and guitar elements as it builds are quite nice but there’s more of that dull jazziness to it, giving a slight sense of inertia.

Generally I’m a fan of a lot of these types of 80s bands, songs and sounds but aside from Shout, EWTRTW and Head over Heels I didn’t find this very enjoyable at all. There’s too much insipid jazz to it and I struggled with a lot of the melodies too. Maybe Don’t You Forget About Me is actually their best song.
⭐️⭐️

Tigermilk
I like the song The Boy with the Arab Strap but have never given B&S a proper go, I’ve always thought of them as having too much of a studied winsomeness and tweeness.

However I’m wrong to think that - this is great! His voice does take a bit of getting used to but once you get beyond that this really opens up. There’s A LOT of Nick Drake in here, not just vocally but melodically, and some of the arrangements are very Bryter Later. That’s not a bad thing.

There is also a bit more bite than I expected, both in the wryness of the lyrics and also some of the music, like the bass and guitar on You’re Just a Baby and the guitar outro on I Could be Dreaming.

He has a real gift for melody and hooks as well, some lovely folky 60ish tunes and some very catchy instrumental moments. My Wandering Days are Over is a great example of this, a lovely vocal melody and very pretty trumpet and string arrangements. The State I’m In also, a lovely piano line, synth part and those little guitar moments. And the guitar xylophone and piano on I Don’t Love Anyone.

Electronic Renaissance is a bit of a misstep, it’s not wholly convincing although you might argue it kind of works in a wonky homemade way. I also wasn’t as keen on She’s Losing It either, I think that just tipped over into slightly too twee.

Overall though I thoroughly enjoyed this, it’s influences (Nick Drake, Donovan in particular) are clear but it’s all so well constructed, and with the sardonic lyrics it elevates its substantially from mere pastiche. Definitely going to listen to more of their stuff.
⭐⭐⭐⭐️

People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm
‘If you need em I got crazy prophylactics’ 
Strangely I’ve not listened to this album. I love The Low End Theory and I listen to Midnight Marauders and Beats, Rhymes and Life pretty frequently, so it’s odd I haven’t given this a go, especially as it has three of their best know songs, Can I Kick It, I Left My Wallet in El Segundo and Bonita Applebaum.

Those three songs remain excellent. Can I Kick It is ubiquitous but is a great song with a great sample. Push it Along, Luck of Lucien, Youthful Expression and Mr Muhammed also stood out.

This is a very good record though, all the elements that make ATCQ great: excellent use of sampling, great hooks, loose jazzy beats that sound almost live, Q-Tip’s delivery and an overall laid back atmosphere. It sounds great too, with a nice depth to it sonically.

Overall a very very enjoyable 4, might get up to a 5 with more listens.
⭐⭐⭐⭐️