Reviews by mitch058

Like so many of the (primarily West) African bands and albums in this collection, I don't have enough of a frame of reference to say much about the quality of the music or the lyrics (although I thought "Taaw" was the best track on the album), but I *will* say that I like it that the project editors chose a pre-superstar-status (and pre-Peter Gabriel/Tracy Chapman/Branford Marsalis/Paul Simon/etc) Youssou N'Dour album. If the "1001 Albums" entry is to be believed (and I don't see why not), this album was for Senegalese audiences and not at all aimed at a world music crowd. But also a seemingly random choice given that he's had over four decades of albums to choose from. Somewhat tangentially, I thought it was interesting too that he was Senegal's Minister of Tourism in 2012-2013 after a failed run for president.

A somewhat strange album, I'll admit, but definitely better and more interesting than the lone Steve Winwood solo album in this collection. The first three tracks pretty much sums up the good, the bad and the ugly of this album, with Dave Mason's campy "You can all join in" followed by a very Winwood-sounding "Pearly queen" (and with Mason largely absent), then somewhat awkwardly mashing both styles/preferences in the syrupy "Don't be sad". The rest of the album consists mainly of (subtle) variations on one of those three directions, with a few genuinely good tracks (mainly "Who knows what tomorrow may bring" and the lyrics to "Feelin' alright" (although Joe Cocker's version is *so* much better)) and more than a few duds (pride of place for the super tacky and creepy "Vagabond virgin" that might have made Jethro Tull proud). I know these guys were revered--and largely still are--in many quarters, but as a non-aficionado I think nonplussed pretty much sums it up for me.

It's always nice to get a complete unknown in today's album selection (with full apologies to those across the pond who revere The Boo Radleys). Although I'm not sure this will become a cult classic for me as it apparently has for many others, I appreciated the larger than expected range in some of the tracks, from fairly straightforward tracks like "Wish I was skinny" (with a decent video) or "Barney (...and me)" (with a decidedly *un*interesting video) to a variety of sonic assaults (like "Leaves and sand", the Beatles-inspired "Thinking of ways", or "Run my way runway"), culminating in their (relatively) big single "Lazarus". I didn't have too many favorites on the too-long album, but I enjoyed "Upon 9th and Fairchild" and "Best lose the fear" more than most. It seems a shame that their label didn't show them much love or attention with this album, but perhaps the executives felt what I did: they're seemingly doing all the right things to have a well-rounded album, but it lacks...something? Maybe it just lacks a soul, although that sounds harsher than I intend (on the other hand, I was particularly disappointed by how vapid a song like "Rodney King" ended up being, and it seemed pretty insulting to name their album after Coltrane's much more famous album, so maybe not *that* harsh).

I always feel distinctly unsuited to the task of rating or appreciating the many forms of jazz that we occasionally come across in this collection, and this album falls very much in this space. But while this doesn't have quite the same accessibility as Brubeck's "Time Out", it's both succinct enough and engaging enough to keep my attention and interest, which I really appreciated. (The last jazz album I had, not too long ago, was Miles Davis' epically too-long and largely impenetrable "Bitches Brew", while this current album is a refreshing contrast in both dimensions.) I particularly enjoyed the contrasts in the instruments, with both drums and saxophone often competing at who can make the most rapid solo snatches (not to mention the extended drum solo in "Part III - Pursuance"), while the bass and piano literally hum along on their own paths that seem to pull the others together. I also enjoyed reading about how many (many) people consider this a very spiritual album; I didn't really hear/feel that aspect, but I suspect that's largely because I don't have much experience listening to jazz. And because so many other people *do* have this experience, and rate this so highly among the jazz album pantheon, I feel compelled to rate this higher than my personal enjoyment would otherwise. Besides, how many albums do you get a chance to hear that have inspired an entire church to enshrine it as their central text (a la Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church in San Francisco)?

It's unfortunate timing for the poor Prunes that I got their lone album right after a Kinks album from the same year. My tolerance for dismal 60s production values is already pretty low (although this is definitely better than the Kinks' "Face to Face"), and then to have a fairly uninspired set of songs (with "Onie" being the nadir, I think), nearly all of which were apparently forced on the band by the producer (who perhaps rightly judged that they lacked songwriting ability and hired a songwriting duo), just makes the comparison between the Electric Prunes and the Kinks even more stark, and not in the Prunes' favor. Their two singles--"I had too much to dream (last night)" and "Get me to the world on time"--are decent enough, and there's something compelling about the ferocity of "Sold to the highest bidder", but I'd have been more impressed if the band had had a hand in the writing; they seem kind of like the lesser cousins to The Monkees, without the stardom or rabid fans, although it's interesting to read that bands like MC5 and The Stooges were partially inspired by the Electric Prunes after buying the apparently widely available secondhand copies of this album after everyone realized that the Prunes weren't actually the next big thing.

The last of the four Kinks albums in this collection for me, but the first chronologically, and only now do I see that the editors chose, somewhat enigmatically, to include four consecutive albums rather than a sampling across their decades of albums (presumably to denote their "classic period"). This album is definitely not as distinctively Kinks-sounding (and "Holiday in Waikiki" sounds so derivative of the Stones' "19th nervous breakdown"), nor as interesting lyrically from the slightly later Kinks albums in this collection, and suffers from fairly poor recording/production quality. In addition to their big single "Sunny afternoon", the best of the lot might be "Dandy" (perhaps it sounds so much like a later Kinks tunes like "Autumn almanac"), "Rainy day in June" (mainly because it's an interesting departure for them), and "Fancy" (for a little psychedelic Kinks), but overall, and with the utmost respect to Ray Davies, this doesn't strike me as an album I particularly needed to hear before I die.

It's interesting to get a quasi-tribute album in this collection, but I'm not complaining, especially since I enjoy both Billy Bragg's and Wilco's music. It's really striking how different the Wilco-only songs are from the Bragg/Wilco collaborations, and that makes the opening combo of "Walt Whitman's niece" and "California stars" a particularly nice contrast. I can't even imagine how either Bragg or (eventually) Tweedy and company figured out which of the (literally) thousand or so lyrics to choose from from Woody Guthrie's estate, but they seemed to have chosen great selections, and that presumably goes with volume 2 as well. It's striking too how much these don't really sound like what I think of Guthrie folk songs, and I'm glad that Guthrie hadn't written any music to accompany the tunes (apparently not his forte), giving both Bragg and Wilco plenty of room to envision a more contemporary sound. My favorites were probably "Way over yonder in the minor key", "At my window sad and lonely" and "The unwelcome guest", in part because all of them sounded like they could have been Bragg- or Wilco-penned songs (unlike, say, "Birds and ships" or "Christ for president"). I'm not entirely sure the entirety is exactly a four-star album, but I really enjoyed the blend of Guthrie, Bragg and Wilco in a worthwhile project.

I'm not sure I've ever heard anything from this album besides their megahit "Live Forever" (that played for what felt like years on the radio) and the slightly less mega single "Supersonic", but it's hard to deny that every single one of the tracks on this album could only have been done by Oasis. It's gotten a bit tedious in the course of this collection to see so many references to Oasis as the supernova Britpop benchmark that countless bands tried and failed to chase, and there's a certain degree of "you had to be there" to explain why this band, and this album in particular, lit up the charts and the hearts of apparently music-starved Brits in the mid-90s. But despite the unfortunate wall of compression that makes it a bit hard to listen to in one go, as a debut album it's probably one of the most impressive ones in this collection. The Gallagher brothers and their henchman deliver on every single track and sound much more experienced than they were.

I don't really understand why exactly they became lightning in a bottle for the UK, but it feels like a contemporary reviewer's description of the Oasis effect (quoted in the Wikipedia article for this album) probably explains it all: "it's like opening your bedroom curtains one morning and discovering that some f—er's built the Taj Mahal in your back garden and then filled it with your favourite flavour of Angel Delight." (Keith Cameron in NME) I think if that sentence and all the references makes sense to you, then you likely also ranked this album five stars and consider one of, if not *the* best albums of all time. (NME readers in 2006 ranked this #1 of all time, followed by "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"....) I feel a bit badly for only giving it three stars, but I know we'll be getting their sophomore effort, so I'm OK with slighting them a bit here (and hoping for better production quality on "(What's the Story) Morning Glory").

The last of the four Miles Davis albums in this collection--both for me and chronologically--and a nice way to hear him out, knowing that he still had another couple of decades of albums and output after this curious discordant experiment. I'm not at all familiar with Davis' large corpus of work, nor really with jazz in general, but I'm impressed with how eclectic and freeform this sounds. It also definitely helped to wear headphones for the experience, and even then I had a hard time discretely hearing all of the simultaneous pianos and drums/percussion on some tracks. The main fault I'd say of this album is how long it is, both temporally and musically. I really enjoyed the beginnings of nearly every track, and also loved at times the utter cacophony of multiple instruments all cascading over each other (plus the occasional whispered directions by Davis at various points), but eventually I lost both focus and interest at some point in each song, usually well before the 10-minute mark. This is probably more of a limitation of my attention span and lack of jazz-oriented appreciation, but it still made this album come in a bit lower than the other Davis compositions. I'm definitely glad for having gotten even more exposure to a towering jazz figure, though.

We've had a few albums by pseudo-/semi-one-hit-wonder bands, and each time it's kind of interesting (for a while, at least) to hear what the rest of the album sounds like apart from their massive hit, in this case of course the infectious and surprisingly enduring Bootsy-boosted "Groove is in the heart" (with a fantastic video to go along with it). Lady Miss Kier and company were smart to front-load the beat-/dance-oriented "Good beat" and "Power of love" to the beginning of the album, but I'm impressed that they managed to keep the grooves going for much of the album, with "What is love?" and "E.S.P" particular highlights. In much the same way as fellow OHWers Stereo MC's "Connected" and Cornershop's "When I Was Born For The 7th Time", the album never really transcends the sense of each song as a variation on a dance floor theme, but they still manage to pack a lot of genuinely positive energy into 45 minutes or so, plus of course that fantastic and outrageous album cover. Deee-liciously Deee-lite-ful, yes?

Although I'm glad to see that we get more than one appearance of Iggy Pop in this collection, I'm also a bit appalled that this is the first of five(!) albums with Iggy Pop (two solo albums, three with The Stooges). That's probably at least three too many albums that could have gone towards other (and more recent) artists, I'd say. But this seems like a decent choice for Iggy Pop--especially if you prefer your Pop served up Bowie-style--especially with the opening one-two punch of "Sister midnight" and then "Nightclubbing", along with the fascinating "Dum dum boys" and "Tiny girls" much later on. It's also nice to see the other side of the Bowie/Pop collaborations, after a bit of an overdose of Bowie albums earlier in the collection, although given how forcefully Bowie inserted himself in every facet of this album, it's hard to know just how much influence Iggy Pop had on his debut solo album (even down to how bland Pop's version of "China girl" is, at least compared to Bowie's version). Given all of that, I would definitely vote this one off the 1001-Albums island in favor of just "Lust for Life", but that doesn't detract from the overall distinctive sound of this album I suppose, and also how strongly this Bowie-directed project diverged from his Stooges phase.

I'm not sure I've heard much of anything from Cowboy Junkies, although I know I *have* heard their excellent cover of "Sweet Jane" before. It's impressive how quickly and successfully they managed to record the album in Toronto's rightfully popular Church of the Holy Trinity (several of the tracks even in one take), and they get a great acoustic/live sound well. My favorites on the album are probably "Blue moon revisited", their cover of "I'm so lonesome I could cry" and "To love is to bury". Overall, a bit *too* laid back for my tastes, I must admit, but Margo Timmins has a great voice, and they chose a great set of session musicians to help round out their sound.

I'm not sure which is weirder: that we have three Queen albums in this collection, or that the project's editors chose all three from about an 18-month span rather than spanning Queen's relatively lengthy two decade career. Regardless, it's definitely a much more iconic Queen album than the other one I've listened to ("Queen II"), assisted infinitely by the mega-hit "Bohemian rhapsody" (not so much by their other single, "You're my best friend"). Even though it doesn't really lend a sense of coherence, I liked it that they took on a huge range of styles across the album, and often don't even really sound like Queen, but not in a bad way; my favorites of these genre adventures are "I'm in love with my car" and "'39" and "Good company" (plus the very Queen-like ultra-harmony "The prophet's song"). If nothing else, this album cemented their status as amazing and gifted entertainers. It's a bit shocking to read how this was their first album free from the truly horrible arrangement with Trident Studios (who basically collected all royalties from their previous albums), but I'm glad they managed to make a blockbuster album to keep the band rolling and finally become solvent (and hilarious that the opener "Death on two legs" was about their manager during their Trident Studio years). I'm a bit torn about three or four stars, but it's a fun album nearly all the way through, and I have such a soft spot for "Bohemian rhapsody" that it feels like four stars simply on the back of that song.

I remember being in college when U2 announced tour dates for this album, and even though I was aware that they were big, it was still shocking to watch the entire five-college phone system crashing for nearly a day as fellow students feverishly swamped Ticketmaster phone lines desperately trying to score tickets. So while this collection probably doesn't need four U2 albums, it's hard to imagine this one being absent, given how it propelled them to the arena-rock stratosphere. I'm pretty sure I've never listened to this album start to finish, even though nearly the entire first half of the album seems familiar (mainly from continuous radio play); I enjoyed several of their not-as-famous tracks like the Springsteen-esque "Running to stand still" and "One tree hill" (an homage to an NZ-native roadie who died while they were composing the album) as well as the very Daniel-Lanois-sounding "Mothers of the disappeared". U2 has never been a favorite of mine, but they did a nice job creating a very solid album, even if I'm not sure I really hear all the American/Irish "roots music" that supposedly helped inform the album's songs; too bad that inspiration didn't extend to their surprisingly uninspired videos to their singles. I also wish the album wasn't marred by the hollow 80s production aesthetic, despite having Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois as producers.

Although I don't really feel like I have nay frame of reference to judge whether this is good/authentic/traditional/inspired/derivative/etc. Raga music, I can definitely see/hear how adding a flute and acoustic guitar to the mix helped pave the way for this album to become a popular and influential Indian music album in the West. I also liked reading that the songs are supposed to form a suite that follows the patterns and life of a Kashmiri shepherd, apparently with each raga corresponding with a different time of day; a pretty active shepherd, it seems. And a more interesting musical experience than the other classical-Indian-music-focused album in this collection, Ravi Shankar's somewhat pedantic "The Sounds of India".

I'm not well versed in jazz, or Hugh Masekela's music and background as a South African exile, so I feel a little too uninformed to say much about this album except that I enjoyed it, even if it felt a bit long in the tooth at times, and I definitely didn't catch most of the pan-Affrican references and tributes. The most interesting tracks for me were the opening "Part of a whole", "The big apple", "Inner crisis" and "Maesha". Also interesting to find out that Masekela contributed a trumpet solo to another album in this collection: the Byrds' "So you want to be a rock 'n' roll star" (from "Younger than Yesterday").

Another fantastic obscurity from this collection, the sort that helps me get enthusiastic again after numerous forgettable albums. Listening to this album, and then reading about the sad, tragic and twisted path that led Skip Spence to make this album after getting institutionalized following an attempt to kill his band members with a fire axe, made me excited/intrigued to hear what his former band Moby Grape might be like, only to discover I'd already listened to their album in the collection, and it was neither all that interesting to me, nor anything as stark and severe as Spence's solo work. I was reminded of a dark and brooding version of Leonard Cohen, or perhaps even a more melodic version of Johnny Cash, on a lot of the more acoustic style tracks like "Cripple creek", the majestic "Weighted down (the prison song)" or "Broken heart"; conversely, I'm not sure there's really any sort of analog to other artists with strange and haunting tracks like "Diana" and "War in peace" or the ending pair of tracks "Grey/Afro" and "This time he has come". I'm also very impressed that he recorded everything in a single week, and played everything on the album himself. It looks like there are a number of tribute albums by really interesting artists paying homage to this strange and unique and sadly obscure album; I hope to liten to at least one of them in the near future.

I'm often impressed by how modern-sounding some of the 70s albums in this collection sound, and this is definitely one of them, even if the lack of (intelligible) vocals on the first half kind of skews it towards earlier art-music more than it would have otherwise. I also liked learning that Neu was composed of former Kraftwerk members, and even if Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger struggled to match their styles--so much so that the first side is Rother's, the second Dinger's--they kept it together enough to produce a fun and interesting album, and even combine their talents on "Isi" and "E. Musik". I think I prefer Rother's ambience-style to Dinger's more rhythm-oriented semi-punk-style, but either way many of the tracks don't sound at all like what I think of as mid-70s music ("Hero" less so in this regard than the others).

The second and last Prodigy album in this collection for me (chronologically the first, though), and while I wasn't sure with "Fat of the Land" whether the collection really needed two of their albums, I'm glad they included this one too. I'm really impressed at the edginess and relentlessly strong beats/rhythms of most tracks, especially in the first half of the album; they might have been big in the rave scene in the UK, but this album hits a lot harder than a lot of their contemporaries. And I also like the seething anger/rage against the UK Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 (most obvious in "Their law" but pushing through many of the songs, and rightly so given the disturbing license of that law to police based purely on lifestyle (sadly not isolated to the UK, or the 90s)), even if Liam Howlett later disavowed any political undercurrent. My favorites were probably "Break & Enter", "Voodoo people" and the very familiar "Poison", but a solid album throughout, and some great samples interspersed as well.

I'm not sure I've ever heard anything from this album aside from the classic "How I could just kill a man" (with its legacy of some excellent covers by later bands), and maybe "Hand on the pump", so it's nice to get a larger sampling of an interesting early 90s group. It feels like they managed to channel and mix the sounds of De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest with harder-edged rap/hip-hop (plus of course some nice Parliament samples in "Psycobetabuckdown"), and it also feels like you can hear their influence on later bands like The Fugees and Fun' Loving Criminals. It may not be the most accomplished album music-wise, but it's fun and refreshingly absent of non-stop braggadocio and violence, and just due to that fact alone makes me torn between three and four stars; the addition of Spanish-lyric songs pushes it into four star territory.