Reviews by tipula

With the first song I knew I was going to give this a 5. I love the chill music he’s chosen in the background, and the rapping is spectacular. And fast! I’ve been working on my French and despite that: je suis désolée, mais je ne comprends rien. But that doesn’t matter because this album is purely sonically wonderful.

Aha, so “Bawitdaba” is the name of that incredibly annoying song from back in the 90s, got it.

Yeah so I’m piling on with another 1-star review for Kid Rock here: this was every bit as unpleasant as I suspected it would be. Well ok, “Cowboy”’s fusion of country and rap was interesting, but the nu-metal “I’m such a badass” vibe of the rest of it was pretty irritating. (OK, almost the whole thing: I skipped “Black Chick, White Guy” after reading the description of that song in the wikipedia article; decided that was quite enough, wtf.)

Well here’s a record that I adored back when I was a super duper Yes-obsessive teen with Yes t-shirts and posters and whatnot everywhere. But bam! one day I realized I had overdone it and couldn’t stand another minute. So I quit listening to *Tales from Topographic Oceans* all the time and haven’t gone near any of it since.

I love complicated music like this, so this is a fun listen. The lyrics are gibberish, though. I mean, I listen to a lot of music with gibberish lyrics, so that shouldn’t be a problem - it’s just that Jon Anderson is so *sincere* about it, which might be what finally put me off this band.

But when he takes a break from singing and the rest of the band lets loose, it’s great.

I bought this record the day it came out in 1975 and still listen to it from time to time.

The two halves of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” are of course what makes this album - the first part with that immediately recognizable blues riff, then the second with that guitar again but darker, stranger, and more insistent with the bass thrumming in the background and then the keyboards at the end making it seem like something being played in a church.

But the rest of it is essential as well, the title track being one of those songs where the lyrics really hit me emotionally. I remember a day a decade or two ago when I found myself starting to cry in one of the tunnels under Waterloo Station as a busker started playing that song.

A comment about the cover: I saw that documentary about the Hipgnosis firm that did this cover, and the guy who’s on fire was actually on fire when they did that shoot. I had always assumed that it was some sort of photo processing trick that achieved that, but nope.

Love how the opening track starts with delicate strings but then shifts into something speedy and reminiscent of King Gizzard. (I recognize that this comparison should be the other way around, but I’m not really into metal, so hey, doing my best here.)

The music is more varied than some metal, which sometimes strikes me as just a solid wall of impressive but uninteresting speediness. And the singing style is distinctive: short, declarative statements coming from a deranged leader standing at the mouth of a cave at the top of a mountain beset by lightning bolts and dark, threatening clouds. OK hang on, I’ve taken this imagery a little too far here.

I don’t know whether I’d go back to this anytime soon, but I liked a lot of it. It has more going for it for me than a lot of more recent metal, with all the growling screaming vocals.

1950s orchestral-type arrangements aren’t for me, so some of this was a slog. But the sax and Charles’ singing and piano on many of these tracks managed to wake me back up again.

The opening song is telling me that this is another one of those 90s indie bands that would nice to experience as a single song in a radio set or as a live set at a bar. It’s got some tracks I could get behind, like “Streets of Kenny,” which had a lot of energy to it, but then you’ve got things like “Re-instated,” which sounded like 70’s lite rock and caused me to suffer a bit.

This might be one of those albums that will improve on a second listen when I can familiarize myself with the lyrics a bit more, since it seems like there’s something there, but for now I’ll say that it was a pleasant 90s indie album, but if someone asked me about it I’d probably have to refer back to this review.

"My whole fucking life is a wreck - we’re desperate! Get used to it!" That line feels very appropriate for the (waves hands around at everything) right now. Which is probably a lot of why I’ve started listening to music like this all the time in recent years. But when this record first came out, I thought it sounded too much like country music or early rock ’n roll, and I didn’t like it at all. I’ve thought for a while that I should go back in time to tell pretentious little 20-something me that she’s being an idiot about X.

So: this is a fantastic record. I love Exene Cervenka’s voice, which somehow manages to be both deadpan and exciting at the same time. The vocal harmonies (anti-harmonies?) are so interesting and work so well with the speedy rockabilly-ish music.

I love traditional Indian music, so of course I'm enjoying this. I love the way the instruments interweave and shift between fast and slow passages, and the layers of rhythm that are provided by the tabla and dulcimer-like santoor. Although there's a guitar on it, it isn't there to water this down with European music ideas; I might be wrong here, but it seems like the guitar is occupying the same position as a sitar might on some of these pieces.

(You know, now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure that I have a copy of this record; the whole thing sounded familiar. I really need to dig back into my "world music" stuff.)

Predictable music, stupid lyrics; now I remember why I don't like Guns n Roses.

Wow, there are so many radio hits on this record - “Living for the City,” “Higher Ground,” “Don’t You Worry Bout a Thing,” and I’m bopping and singing along. The keyboards and bass are great, he has a wonderful voice, and of course the messages in his songs are powerful. I liked the unfamiliar songs too, though maybe not quite as much. But it’s definitely a good record.

I’ve got a friend in England who loves Stevie Wonder and sees him whenever he tours - and he’s touring yet again this year, which is amazing.

I found it instructive to listen to this right after yesterday’s Deep Purple album. Doing that made it feel like I was watching proto-metal and proto-punk evolving out of rock right before my eyes.

It goes without saying that I like this a lot better; it’s more chaotic, less predictable. It feels honest and a little out of control, which contrasts nicely with the smoother stuff that was happening at that time in the early 70s. You of course can’t replicate Iggy Pop’s singing, which sounds dangerous and exciting, and the guitar is raw and forceful. It’s a great great record that feels like a live performance.

Opens with guitar guitar GUITAR, then we get serious with the church-y organ, and then we start yelling and playing our guitar again, and then we yell some more with some predictable quasi-blues lyrics about rock and roll or girls or whatever, and now - back to the keyboards! And - guitar and SQUEALING YELLING! Woo! That was exhausting.

I liked the speedy “Flight of the Rat” best, I think. For the rest of it, however, it was ok, but there are so many more interesting albums to listen to instead. These songs are all very competently performed proto-metal, and I can see the album’s relevance and why it would go into the book. But I’m really hoping that three Deep Purple albums are enough at this point.

I know him from Pentangle, but have never heard his solo stuff before so this is all new to me. I generally am not a fan of solo guitar strumming folk music, but if that’s a given, I like UK-type folk music better than American folk music, so this gets a point for that.

Love the guitar on these songs, particularly the instrumental ones - it contains occasional notes that feel a little “off,” which I like. I can’t just spontaneously describe this method of guitar-playing in technical terms, but enjoyed what the wikipedia article on Jansch had of it. Reminds me of the playing of current guitarist Gwenifer Raymond, though she’s said to play in an American Primitive style.

I had this record long ago, but it’s one of the things that I abandoned when I got older. But ok, I remember these songs. Many of them are a little syrupy for me now, but the tunes were all instantly memorable.

Lyrics on a couple of the songs got my attention: “Where do the children play” has an interesting tune and seems rather contemporary, with what seems like its critique of the modern technology of 1970 that applies even more now. “But I Might Die Tonight,” feels like it should be contemporary, since I’d rather live than work, but these days so many people I know are looking for work that it feels wrong somehow. “On the Road to Find Out” is nice - I like the drumming in the background, though I wish it were miked a little louder. He gets a little religious at the end, but that’s ok. I like the “baa, baa, baa” chorus bits.

Some of them I didn’t want to listen to. “Wild World” was always a skip track when I had the record when I was 14 years old, and it still gets on my nerves. And “Father and Son” hit me emotionally from the first note, so I shut it off; I guess that means it's a good song, but I didn't want to get all emotional about it.

This record really got my attention, with the varied, sparse instrumentation, Dr. John’s odd vocals, and the echoey, ritualistic-sounding backing vocals. There are some bird call noises here and there that were produced in such a way that it sounded like one of the birds was in the room with me. I turned around to see, like what the heck.

I didn’t know anything by Dr John except for the radio hits, which were fun but nowhere as interesting as this - another very pleasant surprise. It reminds me a little of Captain Beefheart, only of course it’s much more normal. Well, for some values of "normal."

Why have I always thought that bossa nova was boring? This is great, a very pleasant surprise. I’m not sure if I’m enjoying this bossa nova more than usual because this particular album has a lot of jazz improvisation weaving through the tunes, or because I’ve just never listened to this genre closely enough until now. It’s probably a bit of both, though I’m leaning to the former because I know I’ve heard a couple of these songs before and much prefer the versions on here.

Finally: oh neat, it was recorded here in DC at All Souls Unitarian Church, an important venue in the history of both the civil rights movement and DC hardcore punk.

"Cisco Kid" is a song I always liked when I heard it on the radio back in the day, so hearing that funky vaguely Latin beat song first put me in a good mood to hear the rest of this record. I was worried that “City, Country, City” was getting a little too smooth jazzy for me, but then the sax, keyboards, and percussion stepped outside of those bounds to great effect. (I’d love to know what they were thinking when they wrote “Beetles in the Bog” - it’s a weird little song, but I thoroughly enjoyed it as a person who likes both insects and bogs.)

There’s a lot of interesting space-jazz-blues-funk on this record - glad I got to hear it, since all I knew before this was “Cisco Kid.”

This album has some nice moments - they don’t take themselves too seriously, I mean they sing about their sneakers. And I love the interplay of their voices.

Of course everyone knows their cover of “Walk This Way,” and I like this version better than the original. “You Be Illin’” also caught my attention with the guitar and bass happening in the background there. I guess I like the rock/rap crossover tunes best on here.

Finally - you know, the Beastie Boys sound so much like these guys. And I now see that the Beasties opened for Run-D.M.C. when they were touring on this record, so that makes sense. That must have been great fun.

Cry to Me is a song I only knew because IDLES covered it. Look at that, it’s actually from the early 60s.

This is not music that I usually listen to, but it’s well done. He’s got a good voice, with a great girl group type chorus in the background. I like these kind of songs with the syncopation of the guy’s singing with the music and the chorus interweaving. It’s kinda blues, kinda proto-James-Brown.

I’m enjoying the backing music, but there are no credits on the wiki, so I can’t tell who did it - I guess there was a session band? The Spanish-y guitar on “Won’t You Give Him (One More Chance) is interesting, for example, and the piano on “Beautiful Brown Eyes.”