Reviews by verlainemorrison96

'That's the American dream nigga / Well ain't it?' It's no small thing that on this naught-to-the-hoes record the first verse we hear is from The Lady of Rage, but you'd have to be ear-plugged not to be disturbed by the sexism flaunted here. Thang is, that's the point. Commended for its depiction of 'reality,' Doggystyle is real to the extent that it's fantasy, a paradoxically sobering dosage of a gin-soaked, chronic-fogged gangsta party: 'Stay full of that gin and juice and have a ball'; 'Some of you don't know about the G thang baby / It's the smooth gangsta shit that be drivin' ya crazy.' Leave the horrors of the dark side to Ice-T and KRS-One. This is the horror of the American Dream manifest. And it happens to be fearfully well-produced.

Green's voice is a miracle of tension: hesitating but explosive, terrified but audacious, quiet but at full throttle. Every word is annunciated w/ power as well as timidity, shattering its vicinity b/c it took everything to overcome his shyness, meekness, apprehensiveness: 'It's like burnin' fire, oh shut up in my bones.' This is displayed most magnificently on the six-minute + 'How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,' a sensational incarnation of fear and focus, a mournful but muscular will to live. I love the strings and horns, the drums are tight and palpable, but it's Green's vocals that have become something of a mythical achievement in the canon of soul music. Only Otis likewise knew the magic of holding back in order to find one's grit and fortitude.

'Expectations only mean / You really think you know / What's coming next, and you don't.' Every punk-indie band's favorite outfit, Hüsker Dü doesn't only foreshadow, they alchemize. Just by being who they are, they verify that punk can be poetic, that indie can be hardcore, that what we call alt-rock doesn't exist w/o the whole CBGB thing. That alchemy, the coinage of indie out of hardcore punk, can be illustrated: 'Familiar places that we turn into gardens.' At times, you'd be sure Michael Stipe was the lead vocalist, but Bob Mould isn't to be confused w/ anyone else. The lyrics are hardly obscure, the music is fast but melodic, the vision is to embolden: 'There's nothing wrong w/ having aspirations / Nothing wrong w/ walking tall.'

'Are we gonna let de-elevator bring us down?' The greatest musician in popular music, at least post-1970, is at his obvious peak on Purple Rain, a nine-track record that feels more like a greatest hits compilation than a soundtrack. Prince's vocals and guitar playing are more rock-centric than on either 1999 or Sign o' the Times, but it's no less locatable in the 1980s. He's still sex-before-all-else, but he's not cumbersomely horny: 'I met her in a hotel lobby / Masturbating with a magazine.' It'd be inaccurate to say that this record achieves its grandeur in the mode of vulnerability, Prince being too aloof to achieve genius thru confession. It's therapy as climax: we all know how it's gonna end, but it hits w/ the same power every time.

Right off the bat, Morrissey takes on American politics, British identity, and Jesus. Tho he's never one to shy away from big topics, having battled the Queen and railed against eating meat since the very beginning, he had always done so w/ wit and descriptiveness. But besides the excellent 'First of the Gang to Die,' and the agonizing 'Let Me Kiss You,' this record is too vague, too lugubrious: 'Here you'll find, despair and I / Calling to you with what's left of my heart.' Morrissey, despite popular belief, doesn't feel all that bad for himself, but here he's aimlessly self-involved: 'This world, I am afraid / Is designed for crashing bores / I'm not one.' Part of me wants him to get to the point, the other less pronounced: it's overcooked; half-baked.

'Exit light / Enter night.' Except that this night has little of the color or the confusion that makes night an exciting, unpredictable part of our lives. I've seen interviews w/ Metallica, and James Hetfield in particular always struck me as a kindhearted individual, but Metallica's formulas don't do it for me. While I find myself nodding my head occasionally, their riffs are heavy but they aren't bluesy, i.e., they don't approach Sabbath's soulful metal. Kirk is clearly a gifted guitarist, but his solos are perfunctory, and Ulrich's a dense and uninteresting drummer. Most damningly, Hetfield is a corny lyricist, no matter how sincere: 'Never free, never me / So I dub thee unforgiven.' I do, however, appreciate the nod to West Side Story on 'Don't Tread on Me.'

On Movies, Holger krafts a cinematic mood short of a cinematic event. In the end, that's a good thing, since high concept would turn this record, a treasure of funk/jazz/rock, into ersatz unbelievability. Boasting four tracks, Movies is aptly plural. It's a remarkably eclectic amalgam of sounds and ideas: the very German 'Cool in the Pool,' the John McLaughlin meets Pink Floyd 'Oh Lord, Give Us More Money,' the pukka 'Persian Love,' the synth-energized 'Hollywood Symphony.' It's a soundtrack, but to nothing whole. Its sampling of movie snippets foreshadows hip-hop production à la MF Doom, and tho it's a bit slow at times, and a bit cool in a nonessential way, I not only commend Holger's creativity, I think it's a damn good album.

This record proves that tho bad values aren't made better in the name of 'reality,' they also don't necessarily detract from an album's greatness. Tho N.W.A. was branded the 'world's most dangerous group' when they first hit the scene, 'street knowledge' is only part of their equation. If you were unaware, they may school you to the tragedy of police brutality, but more importantly, Dre, Cube, Ren, and E are informants of America's ugly and universal gangsterism: 'Gangsta, gangsta, that's what they yellin' is a national outcry. Aesthetically, what else is there to say? Cube's continuity w/ Chuck D, Ren's underrated flow, Eazy-E's admixture of criminality and comedy, Dre's fluid, variable production: a deep and ubiquitous influence.

P-Orridge is v horrible, and Throbbing Gristle's excursion into violence and disturbance, particularly on the harrowing 'Hamburger Lady,' is not exactly experimental music w/o reason but it is a trial in horror w/o uplift. I prefer the electronic minimalism of a band like Suicide, and if I were looking for a noisy affair, give me the free jazz of Archie Shepp and Cecil Taylor, the discordant blues of Captain Beefheart, or the heavy lyricism of rappers like Danny Brown or JPEGMafia. So while I can appreciate the influence that a record like this has had on industrial music, that's where it ends for me. I cannot get down w/ a record this disdainful of human life and this intent on sampling snatches of uneasy conversations. It's pretentious, and ugly too.

'Well, you don't need to look so pleased.' Morrissey has always had guts, but on Your Arsenal, backed by a heavy guitar and drum sound, he doesn't only speak truth to power, he has fun w/ oomph and potency. 'London is dead,' and five more times of that obituary, compounded w/ 'We are the last truly British people you will ever know' and 'England for the English,' yields an unsettling ideology, but the irony isn't lost on me, irrespective of the artist's more recent political takes. My favorite track is 'Certain People I Know,' which borders on a country hit, 'You're the One for Me, Fatty' is authentically sweet, and 'Seasick, yet Still Docked' is absolutely gorgeous, equal to if not better than 'I Know It's Over.' An excellent record, raw 'n' all.

Reigniting the fuse of blues rock, Songhoy Blues demonstrates precisely what's wrong with the label 'world music.' W/ 'world' meaning native to any locale other than the Western colonial powers, the rest of the world, even if they have little to do w/ each other, gets lumped together, while the West remains out in front. So, tho it's true that Songhoy Blues' features guitar work that resembles John Lee Hooker and Lead Belly - Garba Toure, a member of the band, fessed up, 'Besides, we love electric guitars too much' - Music in Exile isn't merely a blues rock record that happens to come out of Timbuktu. It's Malian too, it's music in exile but home music as well. Special tracks: 'Al Hassidi Terei,' 'Wayei,' 'Petit Merier,' 'Mali.'

'I could try to be big in the eyes of the world.' Brian Wilson didn't need to try to be big in our eyes, having put together what can only be judged to be a perfect record. I know people cite it as perhaps the most influential 'pop' album of all time, but this seems to me besides the point. W/ a record this monumental, labels such as 'pop' surely fall flat. It's hard to put into words what's achieved in less than forty minutes, but it has something to do w/ manifesting a confident warmth enhanced by a sweet and all-too-human solemnity: 'Sometimes I feel very sad.' Paul McCartney famously said that when he first heard Pet Sounds, it made him cry. When you cry when you aren't sure why, it's not only cathartic, it sensitizes you to crying again, if that's how it oughta be.

Kate Bush isn't Joycean, tho she lifts from Ulysses directly. She's Bjork before the Icelander broke thru, and if she were to mirror a literary figure, she'd be some amalgam of WB Yeats and Sylvia Plath (not to mention the obvious Emily Bronte, but that's a debut resemblance). True to its title, this record transcribes the items of a sensual world, but there's something so beautifully, explosively, taciturn about it that it's less about the inevitability of sexuality than its precarious potentials. These lines don't have me hot and bothered: 'Reaching out for mama'; 'It couldn't be you, it's a picture of Hitler'; 'I turn to my computer like a friend.' Vocally, she's as wild as ever, the music is 80s pop meets Orient(alism), Big Boi is still a fan, and so am I.

When it was first released, for some reason the Tennesseans' fourth album found more critical acclaim in the UK than in America. I guess that's not exactly a surprise, since Kings of Leon harbor a sound that an American deems pseudo-national whereas British yearning for some USA flavor would extract some genuineness: 'The reds and the whites and abused / The crucified USA.' But Caleb Followill is a talented soul-barer, even if he isn't all that interesting, and the band does know how to put together pop-rock singles. The best tracks are 'Manhattan' and 'I Want You,' the song I hate to like is 'Use Somebody,' while the worst are 'Sex on Fire' and '17.' If you want stellar southern rock tho, go dig some Alabama Shakes. 2.5/5.

Nilsson's genius lies somewhere betwixt Joni Mitchell and Carole King: he has the the poetic sense of the former and the soulful pop instincts of the latter. But what sets him apart from the pack, his being that of the singer-songwriter, is an unvarnished optimism, even at his darkest: 'Driving along you can see all the people / Who seem to have nothing to say to each other.' That's like an inversion of King's 'You've Got a Friend,' but it's also an inversion of the inversion, since he sings it w/ such buoyancy that you're left feeling: perhaps it's better this way. Vocally, he's simply extraordinary, possessing a soul voice, a rock voice, a pop voice, a blues voice, and his own voice, all at once. I've always known he was good, but not this good.

If Radiohead were to go pop, I guess you'd get Coldplay, which isn't exactly putting Chris martin and co. on a pedestal. Radiohead isn't flawless, tho they have their moments, and Coldplay is a diluted take on Thom Yorke's vagaries and philosophical pretensions. But they aren't merely that: 'The Scientist' is a pop rock classic, 'Clocks' is another worthy single, 'Green Eyes' is a gem, and 'Warning Sign' is sappy but convincing. Still, the songs are too long, Martin's voice is effective but not an all-time stunner, and the lyrics are neither saved by wit nor enhanced by sincerity: 'Am I a part of the cure? / Or am I part of the disease? Singing / You are'; 'I am nothing / In the dark'; 'Come back and look for me, look for me / When I am lost.' nah.

'Somewhere there is some place / That one million eyes can't see.' I would have liked The Breakfast Club group to give me more of a buffet, but this succeeds as some sort of timeless period piece: it's about as 80s as you can get, and for this reason, endures thru the decades. Lyrically, it's vague and lugubrious, the quintessential 80s backbeat charms but also irritates, and nothing tells me that it's held together by authentic ingenuity. But, call it a guilty pleasure, or else an instance of guilt being somehow pleasurable: the energy is true to form and not something I'd promptly refuse. Besides, it has moments of truths and beauty: 'We were only young in the whirlpool of warning.' I'm left wanting to squeeze what I can from life. For that: dig.

'It's not the side effects of the cocaine / I'm thinking that it must be love.' Bowie's tightest and most valiant effort, Station to Station is a record that is so addictively confident, dexterously funky, and sweetly theatric that I'm both stunned by its audacity and consoled by its control. We may never know how it was made, since Bowie was so coked up during the recording that he had little to no memory of the studio sessions. What I do know is that Dennis Davis (drums) is an utter genius, w/o whom tracks like 'Golden Years' and 'Stay' would be merely proficient, not the constituents of an all-time release. Concluding w/ 'Wild is the Wind' may've been his homage to Nina, but it no less resumes the brilliance of Mathis, that other queer icon.

'I'm on the floor like, "Holy shit!"' One of the premier storytellers in hip-hop, joining the ranks of Slick Rick, B.I.G., and Andre 3000, Ghostface is also a genius of free association. That's an impossible balancing act: how can you be at once committed to narrative structure and free to wander off in ways often hilariously allusive? My favorite instance: 'Liar, liar, pants on fire, you burnin' up like David Koresh.' I guess that's what you get w/ an artist this addicted to details, especially when he's giving directions to the heart ('fucking pervert!'). Lacking production from RZA, the record is set straight w/ the likes of Just Blaze, MF Doom, J Dilla, Pete Rock, and Cool & Dre. Simply put, perhaps the greatest album by one of our real originals.

'There's a joy in letting go, / Free to find a love apart.' For low-fi, slacker rock, Sebadoh is shockingly attuned to the deadweight of violence: 'Shot glass hits the wall / Tiny victory.' There's rage here, tho channeled in a way I haven't really heard before: it's not the Pistols, it's not hardcore, it's not industrial, and it's certainly not metal. Each track is uncomfortable to listen to, and tho I greatly admire the artistry that sustains this record, it honestly unloads a great deal of heaviness I'm not prepared to confront. They're not like the Pixies, who employ violence to explore philosophical themes; this is claustrophobic upset, tho paired w/ an egalitarian ethos: 'I won't hold back, so why should you?' So. I won't hold back. But now I'm afraid.