Reviews by verlainemorrison96

'I'll pick up you hand and / Slowly blow your little mind.' As if Revolver were orchestrated by Simon and Garfunkel but roundly corrupted by Pentangle, Donovan's Sunshine Superman is 60s thru and thru, the best of it (the title track, 'Ferris Wheel,' 'Season of the Witch') and the worst ('Legend of a Girl Child Linda,' 'Three King Fishers,' 'Guinevere'). I admire the innovative employment of non-Western instruments, but too much aspires to British revivalism w/ empty talk of princesses, magic, and Arthurian pastiche. As a vocalist, he's mostly understated tho unexpectedly theatrical at times, especially at the jazzy conclusion to 'Bert's Blues.' It's a classic of its era, but hardly a timeless statement. +, my guy looks like Kristen Stewart.

Remembered as the first 'rock opera,' S.F. Sorrow is the transition from The Kinks to Pink Floyd. Rock-n-roll gets caught up w/ the conceptual, refusing to 'roll' off the tongue anymore: 'Your sonnets of life / They are filling the place / High windows inside me / Look down on your face.' A mouthful, to say the least. They aren't necessarily too British, thankfully, but they are skittish: an excitable rush of half-baked ideas, lyrical programs they were all too eager to utter. Mostly, prog made rock a slog, but what saves this album from itself are the song structures and the instrumentation. Better than Tommy b/c it features sweeter vocals and more soulful riffs, it's still a pretentious barrage. The best tracks: 'Trust' and 'Loneliest Person.'

On Graceland, world music, by which I mean the various styles indigenous to South Africa, is distilled into Simonian wit and punctuated by imagery only a New Yorker would know. It's hard to tell what exactly Simon sings about - where biographical criticism applies and where it doesn't - but at his best here, Simon recruits the fecund uplift of African music in order to explore themes of loss and solitude: 'And my traveling companions are ghosts and empty sockets / I'm looking at ghosts and empties'; 'She was physically forgotten / Then slipped into my pocket / With my car keys.' Tho it includes absolute classics, Graceland does miss at times, w/ 'Homeless' bearing obvious saccharinity, but mostly, it's an essential, beautiful listen.

'All I've got is a photograph / I wanna touch you.' They probably know that they're dumb, but this is such an unimaginative venture into rock vapidity that any semblance of self-awareness salvages nada. When it's theatrical, as it is on 'Too Late For Love' and 'Die Hard The Hunter,' it's as superfluous as Queen; when it's straight-up rock, it's emptier than AC/DC. 'Is anybody out there, anybody there? / Does anybody wonder, anybody care?' I don't care, for one. It starts off on the wrong foot, since rock music that's about rock music seldom hits, unless it's rock-n-roll in its earliest incarnations. Joe Elliott can hold a note, but not my attention. Rick Allen, who had yet to lose his arm, can pound but can't drum. Stagefright: wish they had some.

'Some get stoned, / Some get strange, / But sooner or later / It all gets real.' Neil Young has always gotten real, but this record is indeed on the beach, a lighthearted fantasy, too winsome in spirit to be somber in truth, tho w/ a half buried car and overcast skies. It's hard to place Young, he's such a genre-bending artist, tho at the same time almost impossibly traditional: that's what makes it magic, I guess. 'All the bush league batters / Are left to die on the diamond.' I hesitate to call it Americana, that'd be to attribute symbolism to his lyrics, which isn't fitted. Like Hopper and Sinatra, he's a master of American solitude, but he's more mystical, and a lighter spirit. 'I need a crowd of people / But I can't face them day to day.' Gently straight.

A repetitive tho not exactly redundant electronic record, You've Come A Long Way, Baby goes a long way in realizing a 'big beat' album abounding in small touches and lasting flourishes. Clearly, Fatboy Slim doesn't take himself seriously, but he does his art. I'm no expert in electronic, sample-based music, but this feels like something between DJ Shadow and Daft Punk: it has the studio-atmosphere of the former, the club-atmosphere of the latter. Not every track is worth your time, particularly the irritating 'In Heaven,' but at his best, Slim spawns an imaginative aura that demands our attention - and our bodies. The four or five masterstrokes are not only addictively upbeat and golden, they're in my head whilst in my toes.

'I feel so alone / Gonna end up a big ol' pile of them bones.' Sincerity does not certify aesthetic pleasure, or aesthetic success, but Layne Staley is so reliably upfront and naked in his truth that he does engender a palpable experience, even if, sonically, it's not my sort of heavy: 'Look at me now, a man who won't let himself be.' Like Jane's Addiction before them, Alice in Chains returns to Zeppelin, but w/ the same shortage of a bluesy register. It's more than just loud, but the persistence of melodies that aren't exactly melodic is tiresome, as is Staley's low-register howl, which is only slightly more soulful than Eddie Vedder's monotone. Oscar Wilde said that all bad poetry is sincere. This is sincere, and tho it's not bad, it's not great either.

The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady is a steamroller of a record, a steamy soundtrack to some sort of excessive yet controlled bash, a cosmopolitan assembly, a rooftop brawl. A fearsome lot is going on on this album, but the main point is understood: the center couldn't hold, but the collapse has a beauty, a logic of its own. Mingus put together one of the greatest albums of all time w/ this four-piece masterpiece, and I do not tire of listening to it. Strangely too, it fits more moods than you'd initially think: there's quiet in it, there's stillness, there's a supported contemplativeness, particularly at the outset of the third movement. The ever-fertile touch is Jay Berliner's Spanish guitar work. America's composer after Duke and Monk is Mingus.

Besides 'That Lady' being one of the greatest funk soul records of all time, an improbably rugged yet smooth package of spirit, w/ perhaps one of the more underrated guitar solos in popular music history, this album is a true classic of 70s soul. It's peculiar too. Ronald Isley doesn't have the most recognizable voice, he's not a luminous talent in the way Smokey Robinson or Stevie Wonder are, but together w/ his brothers, he brews a stunningly memorable sound. I think it has something to do w/ the fact that they are nearly sans genre, somehow and somewhere between soul, funk, gospel, and, most evocatively, 'rock.' W/o the Isley Bros, you'd'n't have p-funk or g-funk, but you'd also be w/o arena rock: up-close-and-impersonal magic.

It's difficult to write about The Beatles in general, but a particular challenge to say something new about Abbey Road, which may very well be their finest moment: their clearest, most wide-awake record, a conclusion but no less a beginning, their best produced and their least self-conscious. It almost feels as if the band could finally relax, perhaps knowing that it was all coming to an end, but also b/c they went thru the necessary labor pains involved in creating Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's, and The White Album, brilliant works of art but notably self-aware. It has two of the great Beatles songs, the Harrison-masterstrokes, it has Ringo's most memorable and inventive drumming, Paul's maturest songwriting, and Lennon as a soulful backdrop.

Mega-talented but ultimately unrealized, the Chili Peppers are all over the place but posses very little range. I'd normally enjoy an effective amalgam of genres, in this case funk, hip-hop, punk, and grunge, but this doesn't blend as much as it fails to make up its mind. That's probably why it's so long: at 73 minutes, Blood Sugar Sex Magik either meanders or lingers on the cheesiest aspect of a particular genre. Here's corny hip-hop lyricism: 'My lily-white ass is tickled pink / When I listen to the music that makes me think.' And here's tacky rock lyricism: 'My face will never show / What is not real.' It's tediously disappointing b/c there's a whole lotta talent behind the schmaltz and stupidity. +, Mos Def's 'Brooklyn' > 'Under the Bridge.'

This is a remarkably rich collection of jazz and country standards, entirely different from an Ella Fitzgerald cover album, which emphasizes her genius and improvisatory skill, closer in kind to Rod Stewart's The Great American Songbook volumes, tho a thousand times better. In reality, this is a mere cover album, but it possesses something grand, something transcendent, not just a sum greater than its parts, but parts that are greater than their parts, etc. It could be that, w/o Willie's songwriting on display, you're reminded just how quietly superb a singer he is. It could also be that well-arranged covers are souvenirs of an artist's love for music and its history. Whatever it is, Stardust is a touching, often jaunty record, & one for keeps.

'I wanna be dehydrated in a consumer society'; 'Sensationalism for the feed'; 'Scrub away, scrub away, scrub away.' Not only are Poly Styrene and the rest of 'em convincingly anti-capitalist, not only are they true punks w/ saxophonic suavity, not only do they foreshadow riot grrrl, not only does Poly exist somewhere between Patti Smith and David Johansen, tho in some ways, she outclasses both, as punks, X-Ray Spex understood the assignment: The Sex Pistols merely completed it. Their societal anxieties are well-founded, indeed are ahead of their time, but their songs never lag under the weight of didacticism. It's more prescient than a whole lot out there, but it's also far more fun, quirky, variegated, inventive, raucous.

Blonde on Blonde is Dylan's brilliant transition from the electrified folk rock of Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited to the personalized imagery of the '74 Blood on the Tracks. 'But Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues / You can tell by the way she smiles' feels like something out of 'Desolation Row,' whereas 'An' I told you, as you clawed out my eyes / That I never really meant to do you any harm' is as subjective and specific as something off of Blood on the Tracks. Dylan learns how to place the 'I' in his allusive landscapes in ways that are often as blurry as the portrait of the artist serving as the album cover. Unable to ignore love and indignation any longer, he spawns the essential double album. Sad-eyed ladies, etc.

'A nice place to play / And no place to fall'; 'Oh, oh Diana / I am in pain / This is my heart beat'; 'If he could be free / He wouldn't have stripes on him, like jail.' This little record, tho at 22 tracks and over an hour long, is one of the great give-everything-at-once-I'm-about-to-fall-apart albums of all time, rivaled only by Big Star's Third/Sister Lovers. Utterly gorgeous and intensely heartbreaking, Oar is a feral collection of psychedelic and country-inspired virtuosity + sincerity. Like The Velvet Underground, but unlike The Beatles, Spence makes the strange thoroughly personal. Unlike most anything else, Oar harmonizes the desperate and the lighthearted: 'I found a lot of life that day / W/ her grandfather in the bowery'; 'So what.'

Melody A.M. is tolerable when it's permeated by hip-hop vigor rather than narcotics. 'Eple,' boasting a piano loop that approximates Premier's 'Mass Appeal,' and 'Röyksopp's Night Out,' featuring some tasteful scratching and funky guitar loops, are passable, while the rest is either slippery languor or tacky buoyancy. Atmosphere is the downfall of could-be-great bands like Portishead, but Röyksopp isn't just reliant on mood, they try to make up for it w/ vocal performances that are mawkish and uninteresting, e.g., 'Remind Me.' By the end, I'm irritatingly relaxed b/c I'm exasperatingly indifferent to the sounds I'm hearing: I find myself not even caring to say who cares. Don't say no to drugs, kids, but say no to this lousy ambiance.

'My life is made of patterns / That can scarcely be controlled.' This record is defined by control, particularly the impossibly gorgeous arrangement of 'Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme,' a traditional English ballad the duo makes very much their own. In many ways, this album feels like a draft of their subsequent masterpieces, tho I don't know if Simon was ever funnier than he is on the Dylan parody 'A Simple Desultory Philippic' or if Art ever sang more beautifully than he does on 'For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her.' Simon's lyrics are evocative and probing: 'Are you looking for a way to chuck it all?'; 'Can analysis be worthwhile? / Is the theater really dead?' Somewhat mushy at times, but it's still an impressively elegant release.

'Come on, kid / Keep your head up and sigh / You don't need to understand / The reasons why oh why oh why oh why oh.' Tho it starts off slow and a bit purple, Halcyon Digest clarifies via simple, unfeigned emotiveness. Cox sings w/ just enuf power and art to keep things soulfully afloat, avoiding the all too common flatness of indie rock. The songwriting is tight, a mix of short tracks that keep things honest and long ones that give you time to ruminate and explore. Lyrically, there's a gorgeous integrity, like: 'It could be the death of me / Knowing that my friends / Will not remember me.' In the end, however, it suffers from what all indie rock suffers from: softness; intensities that stem from problems that ain't problems. But very good 'tis.

Quicksilver Messenger Service's ode to rock-n-roll, i.e., Bo Diddley, is one of the great (live) guitar records of all time, rivaling The Allman Brothers' At Fillmore East. The six-movement suite of Diddley's 'Who Do You Love' affirms the improvisational potential of rock music, but it also testifies to its meat-and-potato edge. Extending a 2:18 classic to 25:22 is risky business, and could easily devolve into messy self-indulgence, but this never does, fortified by an unwavering commitment to Bo's rhythmic signature. This is continued on 'Mona,' another Diddley staple, while the final three tracks are a gorgeous tumble into what Emily Dickinson dubbed 'the letting go.' For music this austere, there's also uplift and relief. Happy trails, indeed.

Revivals don't always showcase creativity, especially revivals of revivals, since that's what The Zutons are: a horn-heavy revival of The La's who were reviving The Beatles, etc. It's not just the Liverpool connection, tho that's apparent. It's the pop outlook, the refusal to be conceptual tho not opposed to storytelling, a deepness that's not deep but merely for fun. In other words, The Zutons manage a creative revival, I'm happy to say. Dave McCabe's vocals are slightly tinged w/ pseudo-soul, but he's a pleasurable reminder of Alex Chilton w/ The Boxtops, the instrumentation variegates, the songwriting even echoes Lead Belly. 'Oh where will you sleep tonight.' It's not the greatest thing ever, but I'll take them over the Arctic Monkeys.