Reviews by verlainemorrison96

'And it's ever present everywhere / And it's ever present everywhere.' So sings Van the Man on 'Warm Love,' one of the essentials from Hard Nose. When belted on this live recording it yet obtains new significance: 'ever present' is precisely how I'd describe this album. Morrison, tho always in some sort of flow state or rambling and scatting mindfulness, is particularly 'in the moment' here. While you'd want any live experience to be about the occasion, many live records do not manage to capture that here-and-now quality, but this one does brilliantly. Not only does Van sing w/ a 'it's too late to stop now' sensibility, but the backing musicians (e.g., the trumpet on 'I Believe to My Soul') achieve a verve not even Van attains in the studio.

This has about four genres acting out together to create something that is enduringly original: rock, blues, soul, pop. The soul factor is particularly unexpected, but Rundgren's vocals, somewhere between Neil Young and Stevie Wonder, catapult a track like 'Sweeter Memories' from a pop hit into the sphere of unmistakable soulfulness. The Wonder connection is deeper than that, since this guy is clearly real moved by melodies and the making of weird warbles that nonetheless get stuck in your head. Exemplifying this is 'The Night the Carousel Burned Down,' w/ its unorthodox structure and surreal subject matter: 'The pipes steamed and shrieked out a blazing goodbye.' Completely bizarre but light and undemanding, Something/Anything? is one of one.

Like the Ramones a decade later, The Velvet Underground had an uncanny understanding of rock-n-roll, so that while they are experimental, at times utterly off-kilter, they are never inaccessible, not even on 'The Gift,' which features John Cale's recitation of an eight minute short story written by Lou Reed. That story happens to be deliciously suspenseful and surprising effective as literature, w/ an ending worthy of an American master such as Flannery O'Connor: 'which split slightly and caused little rhythmic arcs of red to pulsate in the gentle morning sun.' W/ that said, I find it hard to love this record as much as I love their first, which as an artistic statement rivals almost anything. It gives me a great deal of pleasure, but not all-out affection.

When temptations get funky, it's as much a matter of grooving the afterlife of a nightcap as it is calling out the hypocrisies of our social reality. That is, it's about getting real, real, real: 'I watch you go to church on Sunday / But you forget all you learned on Monday'; 'Talkin' about saving souls and all the time leechin'.' It's funky b/c it's no piece of cake to admit as much, let alone sing it w/ urgency and a fire liable to blaze up the entire network that oppresses in the name of god's eternal love. But it's also sweet as can be, especially on 'Love Woke Me Up This Morning' and their exquisite cover of 'The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.' Maybe it's a reckless take, but can you find me a more perfect record? Better, perhaps. But not as seamless.

'Rael Imperial Aerosol Kid.' Rael apparently means 'God's friend' or 'to be exalted,' but only a friend of the pretentious and extremely boring could manufacture a record like this. The storytelling is tacky and uninteresting while the music matches the lyrics by being an utterly soulless + orchestral mess. 'But I know it's me that's hitting out / And I'm, I'm not full of shit.' Allow me to violently dissent, for this is nothing if not full of it, and finally manifests one of its neologisms: 'Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging.' That's right. So lifeless death'd be more substantial, this album certainly doesn't have 'It,' that universal thing that Rael ultimately becomes one w/. I struggle to know what contextual nightmare could've prompted this drivel.

Bookended by two of the greatest blues-rock hits of all time, Let it Bleed boasts seven other tracks that ain't bad either. In fact, they're really, really good. 'She blew my nose and then she blew my mind'; 'They got earphone heads, they got dirty necks / They're so 20th century'; 'And there will always be a space in my parking lot / When you need a little coke and sympathy.' Mos Def notably opined: 'You may dig on the Rolling Stones / But they ain't come up w/ that shit on they own.' Right as he is, the Stones never claimed to be the origin. Underrated: they're as raunchy as they are prophetically dark and relentlessly in the muck. And a major shoutout to Merry Clayton (20 Feet from Stardom), who is clearly a genius.

It may be that this is the great Stones album, even more than Exile. Mick is at his most historical on 'Sympathy,' his most amusing on 'Dear Doctor,' his blusiest on 'Parachute Woman,' and timeliest on 'Street Fighting Man.' It's more upfront and immediate than about anything else you'll hear b/c, while it takes no short cuts, it never drags and, taking no prisoners, it frees you from all that's not in your face and epiphanic. Released after their try-hard (tho not awful) 'Their Satanic Majesties Request,' Beggars Banquets sees the group rediscovering who they were all along, messengers of sensuality that may fade but inspiration that never does: 'I'll kill the king, I'll rail at all his servants'; 'Let's drink to the two thousand million.' That's what I need.

Notable is the fact that this record is about the music itself: 'Desafinado' (Out of Tune), 'Samba Dees Days,' 'Samba Triste' (Sad Samba), 'Samba De Uma Nota So' (One Note Samba), samba being the Afro-Brazilian rhythms that comprise their music. Otherwise, it's about a duck ('O Pato'), luxury ('E Luxo So'), and one of the 26 states of Brazil ('Bahia'). Albums that are known for popularizing a foreign music are less than comfortably a quality export of that music, but Getz, here with Charlie Byrd, appears to have a clean record in this regard, and the musicianship, especially Keter Betts on double bass, is masterful enuf, and the rhythms infectious enuf, to have me coming back. Well done, white guys.

I wasn't expecting S & G to be quite as experimental as they can be on this record, but here they are quoting 'The Sound of Silence' on the second track and creating an audio collage of old home conversations on 'Voices of Old People.' Instrumentally too, this is far more than strumming a guitar. But the star of the show is Simon, who is simultaneously at his most playful and his most heartfelt, producing a stunning meditation on old age thruout: 'There's no times at all / Just the New York Times'; 'How terribly strange to be seventy'; 'Orangutans are skeptical / Of changes in their cages.' Mixed into the whole thing is the perennial 'Mrs. Robinson.' When encountered here, it's an iconic blast.

'Oh, I won't take you anywhere / I'll take you anywhere you wanna go.' Carl and Pete, the frontmen of The Libertines, may not be 'shy,' and they're all about - how should I put it? - 'liberty,' w/ a punky answer to life's problems, but they're also melodic as hell. They opine w/ 'arbeit macht frei,' German for 'work makes you free,' but that does not mean they can't at the same time revel in the vocal greenness of: 'Shoop shoop, shoop de-lang-a-lang.' Where that effective naiveté comes from - 'You won't need money / (You won't need money)' - I don't know, but I'm fully on board. Points off for lack of variety, but unlike the Arctic Monkeys, who never actually sing, The Libertines attack things w/ strength and obliquely, since melody matters.

'If he dies we'll send a medal to his wife.' Ray Davies effectually carries on the efforts of World War 1 poets like Wilfred Owen and Isaac Rosenberg, while also telling a story of Australian emigration and composing catchy, blues-heavy songs (check out Dave Davies's guitar work on 'Australia'). I have always found it ironic that the British band that in my opinion most aptly aped American music, w/ classics like 'You Really Got Me,' which did more than copy and paste African American artists, but actually presaged punk, came to export more Britishness than any other B Invasion clique. Conceptual after Sgt. Pepper but before The Wall, Arthur succeeds chiefly b/c, tho it's worlds from mine, you get the sense they really lived this thing.

'Mirror, mirror on the wall / Show me where them bombs will fall.' Unlike a bomb, this record takes its time to hit, tho the drums are powerful, strings provide orchestral bigness, and Win Butler's voice generously reaches out to the listener. Things finally explode on 'Intervention,' w/ this immediate and prescient indignation: 'Been working for the church while your life falls apart / They're singing hallelujah when defeating your heart.' I admire so much Arcade Fire's refusal to let up while at the same time going all out in the beauty department: eruptions fly w/ tranquil eloquence. '(Antichrist Television Blues)' is an awesome echo of Bruce, and while I wish the lyrics were more cogent/coherent thruout, the album is an undeniable success.

'I use a word that don't mean nothin', like looptid.' For a goof, they get real on this one, conceptualizing the basic integration of sex and commerce: 'Yeah, one big stupid butt nest / And I'm'a get mine at Gutfest.' Shock G is not quite Lewis Carroll, but unlike other alternative rap outfits at the time (De La, Jungle, Tribe, etc.), he doesn't just know how to affirm w/ off-color rhymes, but he employs nonsense to make a whole lot of sense. 'The Humpty Dance' and 'Doowutchyalike' are funk classics, but the ingenuity of the record clarifies on the second track, which samples Hendrix's 'Who Knows' from Band of Gypsys. Not quite a perfect album, since it's too long and plods in moments, but it's an enduring product: 'it's so real - it is real.'

'And I pretend to pray.' Whatever the '60s were really about, this captures that sensibility, one that we've all grown accustomed to have nostalgia for, tho many of us were never actually there. One of the great vocal records of all time, w/ Phillips and Elliot leading a sweet and soulful charge, it no less boasts instrumental surreality and a hustling, bustling rhythm. From Spanish Harlem to L.A., you get the sense that the moms and dads may've dug this as much as the rebellious, new-dimension-seeking kids. In other words, the 'in crowd' is what you make it - whether you're dreamin' or you retrospect and wear your influences on your sleeve. However it is, 'I need somebody groovy.' My fill of grooviness is more than satisfied w/ this one.

'And I'm a million different people from one day to the next.' Ashcroft has a bit too much of the Bono affect, - melodramatic, laying into something that doesn't exist - the songs are too long, and the music is often prosaic. 'The Rolling People' boringly channels Oasis. Listen: 'And here we ARE the rolling people' directly lifts Liam Gallagher's characteristic cadence. 'The Drugs Don't Work' is properly earnest but poorly written: 'The drugs don't work they just make you worse.' Obvious much? The best song here is the short 'Neon Wilderness,' but even that can't save the record from being a dispiriting drag. Dreariness is a necessary theme of our best art, but it's not a productive quality. 'We have existence and it's all we share.' Yecch.

'Impresario' of the punk movement, promotor/manager of bands like New York Dolls and Sex Pistols, and register of the 'hip new thing,' McLaren, I gotta give it to him, 'put together' a remarkable album of world music and Hip-hop. For me, 'Double Dutch,' 'Punk it Up,' and 'Jive My Baby' are the standouts. So from an aesthetic point of view, it triumphs. Historically, it's also fascinating to hear what was up in '83. The outtakes from The World's Famous Supreme Team, a Hip-hop radio show active from '79 to '91, are especially immersive. But morally, 'impresario' in my mind is no different from 'poacher' and 'opportunist.' As much as I enjoy a track like 'Soweto,' appropriation w/o credit spawns an ugly, colonial atmosphere. No good.

The wave sounds notwithstanding, tho even those I'm inclined to embrace, there's something unforgivingly real and reliably peaceful w/ this record. It doesn't blow you away, but then again I'm not so sure that it's supposed to - and one way or another, you learn to speak 'bye, bye' into existence, okay w/ quieter steps into spaces larger than yourself. That's until 'Hero' (David Bowie?) comes on and an unexpected jolt of energy provides the backbone of a moving display of confidence and wit: 'And you're just another hero trying to lose your fight.' After that, the music continues to be playful and driving, ethereal only in moments, concluding w/ a cry for true nurturance: '... help me through the night / Help me see the sun / help me to get up.'

Tho the genre has virtually lost all meaning in the thick of far too many subgenres, 'rock' is the aptest descriptor of this record. Vocally, Eddie Vedder sings w/ a powerful and drawling attack, a register that has now achieved classic status. Musically, it seems every track features a guitar solo, which is at times eventful and justified, others not so much, while the drumming is mostly straightforward and ordinary. I guess what makes it a 'grunge' breakthru is the sensitivity of the lyrics: 'She's been diagnosed by some stupid fuck / And mommy agrees'; 'Clearly I remember pickin' on the boy / Seemed a harmless little fuck.' That 'sensitivity' is mostly believable but at the same time leaves me doubtful and surfeited w/ mawkish honesty.

Long and eclectic but focused and mostly painless, Tusk ought to be far grander and stranger than it is. 'When you build your house, I'll come by.' Lyrically, that's about as impressive as it gets, and while 'What Makes You Think You're The One' and 'I Know I'm Not Wrong' have a great deal of pop oomph, I'm not really feeling any track here - not in the gut nor in the head. Somewhere between the White Album and Exile on Main St., but not nearly as successful as those seminal releases, the record can't seem to make up its mind. Is it from the heart or the brain? While you'd most likely want it to be both, Tusk is not soulful enuf to have me moving unreservedly or clever enuf to have me thinking uninhibitedly. In short, it's immensely boring.

I know what he's getting at, but Bill Callahan, much like Howe Gelb, is not a a vocalist who endures soulfully or feelingly: too wispy, too quiet, and too deliberately mellow and inoffensive. Nature and the American West are his muses, but he fails to be as expansive or as explosive as the aesthetics inherent to that part of the country. There are certainly some moments of instrumental beauty, like the luscious strings at the end of 'Too Many Birds,' but Callahan's lyrics do not carry out the music's elegance or energy. 'The leafless tree looked like a brain / The birds within were all the thoughts and desires within me.' That's bad. 'It's time to put God away.' As true as that is, it's sung sleepily when it should be harangued w/ gusto and w/ guts.