Reviews by verlainemorrison96

'This ain't the best you've ever / Hear coming from a female MC.' Right she is, since the best female emceeing shines from Lauryn or Missy, objectively, but w/ Roxanne and Lyte, Latifah effectively started the whole thing: Salt-N-Pepa is an ancienter form, something like the Whodini of female hip-hop. In many ways, Dana is the most original of the three. Mostly rhyming about dope rhyming - dopely I grant - she's also backed by superior production, supported by Native-Tongue features (De La, Monie Love), and has an ear for a compelling alloy of genres. As she puts it: 'Hip-hop house, hip-hop jazz, w/ a little pizazz.' I concede that after an hour, the old-school sound is no longer as exciting as it is dated, but this is a classic with a capital C.

'I'll be the roundabout / The words will make you out and out.' What can only described as a letdown for the nonbeliever, Fragile goes from being an innovative pop-prog record to a schooled but meaningless play of chops in less than two mins. B/c even the hit single, which I admit does get into your head, and for that reason is a semi-success, is too long and too uninteresting to save this record from itself. 'Did we really count to one hundred?' That’s how it feels listening to this ersatz mind-fest: counting aimlessly, never doing the dirty work to yoke thinking w/ feeling. Moments of beauty exist on the acoustic instrumental 'Mood for a Day,' but by then it's too deep in faux intellectualism.

'Our little group has always been / And always will until the end.' This little group certainly impresses now like they've 'always been,' it being virtually impossible to imagine popular music w/o Nirvana's influence. Perfecting the gesture of the slacker sensitive type - the one who cares so much he can't care anymore, not b/c he's cynical but only b/c he's too floored by emotion to catch his breath - Kurt Cobain is indeed a stalwart conveyer of existential alienation: 'I'm so excited, I can't wait to meet you there / And I don't care / I'm so horny, that's okay, my will is good.' Remarkable too is just how slow many of the tempos are, w/ the exception of punkier tracks like 'Territorial Pissings.' At least it feels slow, turning chaos into tragedy.

Kicking things off w/ a Stones-grooved banger, Primal Scream is euphoria and only exhilaration, be it in the mode of rock, soul, house, or something that's a primal emulsion of the three. This isn't psychedelia but straight-up MDMA-inspired lucidity, the kind of light Dante experiences upon entrance into The Empyrean: 'I've glimpsed, I have tasted / Fantastical places / My soul's an oasis / Higher than the sun.' That kind of experience more than warrants artistic expression, and Screamadelica is one of the best records to elide a qualifying negativity for the sake of basing an adventure that's authentically blissed-out. Even 'Damaged' is an ode to the good times in its own way. Several tracks are too long, but those who've rolled will get it.

If progressive soul were a thing, mixed w/ jazz fusion and jazz-rock, I guess Blood, Sweat, & Tears would be the exponent of that genre. I don't really like progressive anything, unless it's politics (and even then that reeks of a neoliberal formulation), but this is honestly better than I expected. Unlike the other prog slogs, BS&T at least give the impression that they're having fun: the others, that they're completing a chore of intellectual drudgery. Loosed is even sweet sagacity (shout out to Laura Nyro): 'All I ask of living is to have no chains on me / And all I ask of dying is to go naturally.' It can't be that good tho, since, in the end, it's too pretentious and long-winded, it's not that original, and I'd actually never choose to listen to it. Okayish.

'Genius' doesn't only get thrown around too much, it's too often employed to describe an artist's style - their way w/ words and music - a lazy attempt to get at the quiddity of a figure. But w/ Stevie Wonder, it's more than appropriate to observe that, yes, the man is a genius: for some reason, it works to characterize his musical program. At one point, 'genius' referred to an individual's quintessence rather than mere cognitive capacity. W/ this in mind, we can take heed of Stevie's adage: 'Everybody's got a thing / But some don't know how to handle it.' On Innervisions, the third of his 'classic period,' genius manifests as a brave embrace and a final transcendence of platitude: the ability to say what's on his mind in a cocktail of complexity.

A stunning document and a bountiful assemblage of Afro-Cuban traditions, Buena Vista Social Club has become a standard - perhaps the classic - of world music. This ought to make any consumer hesitate since white-only determinations of what's essential to other cultures seldom hit. But w/ this particular recording, it feels wrong to politicize: the songs and the musicianship are simply too good to take up what may or may not be valid ethical points. And while no one should consider themselves some sort of expert in the danzón having heard it, they can still be moved by its luxurious rhythms, the clarity and vigor of the piano parts, the way the trumpet punctuates the scene, and just how haunting the whole thing is.

Yes, it's that good b/c it's that funny, that visceral, that necessary, and that iconic. Wit is not wont to make you get up and do something, but the well-known equilibrium Morrissey and Marr strike, one between the cataclysmic and the blithe, not only establishes a will to live but an anti-capitalist drive to dismember the status quo. Lyrically, Morrissey is at his absolute best, letting the loners know it's more than okay to hanker for company, even or especially if it's a confounding thing to desire: 'And when you want to live / How do you start? / Where'd you go? / Who do you need to know?' There isn't a bad track on this relatively short release, but of course there are the highlights, and they're even better in the fold of an entire album. Superb.

It's a testament to Lee Hooker's status and uniquely poised vocal style that he can be backed by tacky production and yet sound as raw as he does on this blues-pop crossover. Anyway, this one really gets going w/ the Bonnie Raitt duet: the opening track features a particularly thin Santana, even for his very svelte standards. The rest is more than serviceable tho, boasting blues that's...well...bluesy. B/c ultimately, the only way to judge this record is to say that it's somehow both a blues album and an album in possession of a bluesy feel: the real thing and not quite there. It essentially grows into the former tho, concluding w/ a trio of solo tracks that are as good as any in the canon of blues music, even if the final twain border on something else.

A Tribe Called Quest weren't unprecedented - they weren't unlike anything you'd heard before - but they were a perfection of a certain approach not to be achieved again. That's not a dig at the formula-makers such as De La and the Jungle Bros or those who followed suit like Digable Planets or The Pharcyde. Rather, it's an acknowledgement that, unlike those other classics, Tribe is the most synonymous w/ a philosophy and a sound from which they never really deviated. Tho this is their debut, and in fact not their greatest record (but crucial), it possesses a maturity and confidence unusual for a premiere. In this sense, they were never experimental, only commanding. From Q-Tip: 'This ain't trial and error, more like tribin' era.'

Rightly lauded as one of if not the best Neil Young album, After The Gold Rush is a superb work of art. More than Dylan or Cohen, Young is, for all intents and purposes, a possessed artist: his lyrics seem to come out of nowhere and he has melodies to boot. 'Is it hard to make arrangements w/ yourself / When you're old enuf to repay / But young enuf to sell?' I'm not sure what that means, but I know it means something b/c I feel it and I'm pretty sure he feels me. He's like the Thelonious Monk of folk-rock: nearly child-like in his simplicity, he's yet rudimentarily complex - deliciously from the heart w/o being mawkishly earnest. A rocker too - I mean some pretty heavy stuff, guitars that don't wail but thunder and hit hard. A real one-off.

Like Joy Division and The Cure, The Associates are post-punk Gothic. The difference is that Billy Mackenzie is more of a classic vocalist than either Ian Curtis or Robert Smith, evoking the likes of Frank Sinatra, Johnny Mathis, Johnny Hartman, and Jackie Wilson. That is, he's simply more talented than those two other depressive blokes. Even lyrically, tho much is free-associative, a lot suggests something out of the 40s and 50s: 'Death is no dream for in death I'm caressing you / W/ the last breath of my soul I'll be blessing you.' As an artist like Freddie Mercury documents, talent alone isn't enuf for the creation of endurable art, but it's hard to ignore just how virtuosic Billy is. +, the music, tho at times irksomely grumpy, is magnetic.

Famously dark and ironic, tho seldom understood by its biggest apostles, Born In The U.S.A. explores American folklore from a place of resignation. Following the stripped-down bleakness of Nebraska, the Boss decided to be just as bleak, and in many ways, just as bare, albeit w/ production that at least offers a semblance of the upbeat. But even that's not entirely true - tracks like 'Downbound Train' and 'I'm On Fire' are thoroughly minor-key anthems. Indeed, one of the major themes of the record is boredom, or as the modernists would have it, ennui: go ahead and check out the lyrics to 'I'm Goin' Down,' 'Glory Days,' 'Dancing In The Dark.' But in the special way Beckett never leaves you bereft, Bruce roars 'no surrender' and means it.

Objectively, this is a bad album. Whoever he was w/ Take That - and I don't care enuf to find it out - Robbie W isn't much to write home about on Life Thru A Lens. He makes the whole Britpop thing more generic than it had already been, opting for a sound that's got little to no attitude, even on the Oasis ('Live Forever') reprisal 'Old Before I Die': 'I hope I'm old before I die / I hope I live to relive the days gone by.' It airs dreadful tracks like 'Angels,' 'One Of God's Better People,' and 'Killing Me.' The better ones would still never find their way on rotation, not out of a sense of guilt, but simply b/c extant is more outstanding music. For some reason tho, I find it difficult to hate this record. He seems to be smiling thru the whole thing. For that, ☺️.

B/c he resists being completely forgettable, somehow he manages to be energetically memorable. He isn't folksy like Bruce Springsteen, hard like the emergent punks, literary like Dylan or Neil Young, or virtuosic like his fellow Floridian Duane Allman. His invaluable feature is that he's steeped in the history of rock-n-roll rather than rock culture, ironically the reason why he's gotten so much airplay on classic rock stations, arenas responsible for the the outrage that is 'rock' music. The debut is a mere flash of a record, partly b/c it doesn't contain a track exceeding four mins, but partly - or is it mostly? - b/c it's a damn good listen. 'American Girl' is an American classic and even foments exceptionalism in this American negativist. A good one.

'If I could just leave my body for the night / Then we could be dancing.' B/c of the assumptions I had - that Animal Collective could only be enjoyed by all white cross country teams in the Northeast - it took some time for this record to grow on me, tho only about three mins into the opening track. Their most obvious pop-music analogy is The Beach Boys, and specifically Brain Wilson: the psychedelic silliness, the wholesomeness, the harmony. Contemporary affinities are w/ Fleet Foxes and The Flaming Lips, but they achieve something few other groups do: a brand new whiteness. For the length of an entire album, their novelty dwindles, but I have no plans to be insincere. I readily concede, and celebrate, that much of this is gorgeous.

Worse than the Red Hot Chili Peppers goofing off aimlessly and sexually is RHCP not goofing off: tame, sincere, and melodic. Kiedis still can't rap but it turns out he can't sing or write pop songs either - neither the heartfelt variety nor the kind that deals ironically w/ the cultural zeitgeist. The crew merely wanted to have fun before, which they never could do particularly well, but now they're intent on being for real and in touch w/ their feelings, which is foul, especially on the title track w/ the dumb '-tion' rhymes. My least favorite: 'Born and raised by those who / Praise control of population / Well, everybody's been there / And I don't mean on vacation.' When the dust settles, RHCP will be remembered as e'en more than wasted talent.

'It's that love's in need of love today / Don't delay, send yours right away.' This record confirms that the 'key of life' is 'love.' Just as Joyce's Ulysses is the greatest novel to explore the various manifestations of love (uttered: 'love loves to love love'), Stevie's essential double album is, for my money, the best of all to browse the many incarnations of love: sexual love, familial love, self-love, faith & love, love for community, love for humanity, love for music ('Sir Duke'). At an hour and forty-four mins, it's not only not too long - it could be even lengthier. The genius displayed here is startling infinite. And a divulgence: Stevie Wonder is a witty and quotable lyricist: 'Since one ain't good enuf for you / Then do yourself see how you do.' Lovely, no?

'The kids want to be so hard / But in my dreams we're still screaming / And running thru the yard.' As if Americana got hold of The Beatles, Arcade Fire is a Canadian cry for their lost-souled neighbors across the border. This is to say that the best I can do in appreciation of this band is to underscore their brilliant pop sensibilities, their simple song structures, in-the-world lyricism rather than political messaging, and vocal interpretations that are always achievements of discharge. 'I feel like I've been living in / A city w/ no children in it / A garden left for ruin by a / billionaire inside of a private prison.' In other words, the great and undervalued comp for this Montreal group can only be Neil Young, that other Canadian healer and hitmaker.

'Oh, the water / Let it run all over me / And it stoned me to my soul / Stoned me like Jelly Roll.' Altho Astral Weeks will always be the album for me, not only in Van's catalogue but perhaps of all time, Moondance is where his romanticism is somehow fulfilled in the vernacular of hits and catchiness. He isn't an occultist like Yeats; he's a nature-worshipper like Wordsworth, a mouthpiece for the sublime merge of self and non-self: 'Hark now, hear the sailors cry / Smell the sea and feel the sky / Let you soul and spirit fly / Into the mystic.' It's also and unavoidably black music, soul music for the gospeller of the 'Brand New Day' and 'Glad Tidings.' This record is on the short list of the greatest, and let me stress, happiest ever. 'Lalalala,' etc.