Reviews by verlainemorrison96

Village People & Alphaville undergo industrialization, making for an interesting listen but not a very enjoyable one. Tongue-in-cheek nationalism falls on deaf ears, especially when you don’t speak the native language: the German is indeed a barrier for appreciation. Yet, this also loses its edge instrumentally & vocally, that is, it becomes a sonic monotony that either takes itself too seriously or doesn’t take itself seriously enuf, a balance that all great art must strike eventually & which this record doesn’t. I’m more than indifferent to its aesthetic, I think it offers a shitty aesthetic, one that reduces music to a mere concept, which is really to say that it’s boring. ‘Life is life.’ Yep…& bad music is bad music.

Eric Clapton, the racist asshole & generally overrated bloke, is also no sort of rocker at heart. Virtuosic as he probably is, he's languid rather than all that impressive or visionary. The thing is, when his languorous style is on, Clapton is able to make some pretty good music. It's just that he's rarely on top of his game, & his solo output consists mostly of bore after bore. I mean, what's there in the end? I like some of Cream, sure, his work w/ the Bluesbreakers is quite good, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, thanks to Duane Allman, is an absolute classic, & finally, 461 Ocean Boulevard is a nice touch of record, an easy-listening tribute to life as it rolls past us in a blink. That's 'bout it. Don't expect much from Clapton. Then you'll get it.

Captain Beefheart took the blues to the limits w/ Trout Mask Replica, so I'm generally unmoved by those who declare Led Zeppelin to be an inside-out kind of blues - Zeppelin's innovations aren't that far-out. What Zeppelin is in the end is a proof of concept: talent alone can get you really, really far. I mean, is there another band that's essentially a supergroup w/o being one in the technical sense? Plant, Page, Jones, Bonham are all respectively the very best at what they do. I love their first record not only b/c its rawness is palpable, but b/c it generally rejects the medievalisms that complicate the love I have for many of their later releases. This is really just dumb rock 'n' roll, & I say that favorably. +, 'Your Time Is Gonna Come' is an unsung gem.

'Over there sits the chair / Where she'd bring the paper to me.' I get it now - I get why I love this music so much. Tragedy is life's bottomline. We can either ignore this foundation, or we can sing that tragedy w/ clarity & heart, as the great country artists do. George Jones, like Tom T. Hall, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lyne, etc., has an unmatched clarity of desperation that somehow, w/ all those tragic contours, puts me in a reawakened & unwearied mood. I think George Jones is particularly adept at this transparency. E'en more tragic to the core than other masters, he's yet so spirited a vocalizer that he makes me want to live it thru to the end. 'You've got more love in your little finger than all the rest / & there's nothing better one you've had the best.'

'Shirley / Your sexual politics have left me all of a muddle / Shirley / We are joined in the ideological cuddle.' Lovely - really, really lovely. '& marriage is when we admit / Our parents were right.' What separates Billy Bragg from other wits (Costello, McCartney) & leftists (Springsteen, Joe Strummer) of the music industry is that he has the humanity of an elder statesmen who has seen it all & would love nothing more than to have a conversation w/ his grandsons and daughters. In other words, there's a superb maturity here, & yet there's no jadedness & no fatigue, but a whole lotta fun & festivity. I of course love the politics behind the record, & Bragg's tributes to Motown legend Levi Stubbs, but it's more fundamental. I guess I love its loveliness.

An authentically multi-genre album, Rings Around The World matches the joy of The Beach Boys & the absurdism of The Flaming Lips, making for a surprisingly gorgeous work of art. 'Sidewalk serfer girl's searching for a dream / Paraglide from space die your bungee best'; 'Turn all the hate in the world / Into a mocking bird.' I had my reservations going in since I was not too impressed w/ Fuzzy Logic, but this succeeds on several levels, the main ingredient being that it's ne'er, e'er boring, e'en if there are tracks & sounds I'm not too keen on. Released in 2001, Rings Around The World is the final vestige of the optimism that ruled so much of the 90s aesthetic. It is almost too long - almost - but it keeps changing, & so I remain invested.

A Northern Soul, i.e., the one that doesn't have 'Bittersweet Symphony,' is surprisingly strong, given just how much Urban Hymns disappointed. This '95 album can hardly be said to be a part of the whole Britpop craze, & it's for this reason that it works & their next release doesn't. I don't think they are really psychedelic rock, or psychedelic at all, but The Verve, at least on this album, are firmly in that of milieu Spacemen 3 & Spiritualized. ''Cause I don't need no cause / When my feelings fall.' Ashcroft, tho he'll ne'er be a great lyricist, impresses linguistically on this record, but the creativity - the creativity that's missing on Urban Hymns - is all about what's going on at the instrumental level: loosey-goosey coinages meet down-to-earth funk.

'You're killing me & I'm killing you / You can't keep me from what I gotta do.' I went ahead & listened to the original six track 1988 EP, which does pack quite the punch. 23 mins of original grunge that works b/c it's emotional & heavy, especially the nearly 6-min 'Mudride,' which effectively delves into an almost VU-style dissonance, but Mudhoney are lighter, by which I mean they are lighter on their feet, than Nirvana, whose Bleach is a more hard-rock-inspired affair. Even when they're singing of the dirt & the mud, as all grunge acts are liable to do - 'Drag you thru the mud / Drag you thru the mud / Drag you thru the mud' - they do so w/ a dexterity & a freeness that the early Nirvana lacked. What they don't have, tho, is iconicity. Still dope.

The ethos isn't less is more on McCartney, it's that less is indeed less, & it could be that less is a good thing. 'Every night I just wanna go out / Get out of my head.' What I love about this album is that it doesn't boast a show-tuned Paul McCartney, the one too keen on a joke or a witty dig, but a raw & soul-tuned Paul McCartney, simultaneously laid-back & finally ready to crash on thru to the other side. 'Candlesticks, building bricks / Something old & new / Memories for you & me.' Like other slight but ravishing records - The Beach Boys's Wild Honey, Randy Newman's 12 Songs - McCartney is a masterpiece that gives so much of itself that its lo-fi values are only e'er registered after the fact. When you're in it, all that matters is that it's killer.

Boring, derivative, & labored, Penance Soiree is an album that doesn't have it all, & what it does have is forgettable & superfluous. The Icarus Line are essentially a punkier White Stripes, which isn't a bad idea in principle, but they can't pull it off b/c, well, they're a bad band. What's a bad band? A bad band is a band that makes bad music. Could I imagine seeing them live at a sooty, seamy venue in LA? Sure, & I may have a good time in the process. But that doesn't mean they're a good band b/c, well, I wouldn't want to go see them again. Staying power is mysterious but we generally know which groups have it. These windbags clearly don't. There's a nine-min song on this thing, a shitty excuse for a VU epic like 'Heroin.' Stupid.

Here comes the bullshit. Some of it is good bullshit, no doubt, but it is all bullshit in the end, depressive, atmospheric bullshit. 'Unwanted horizons face me instead, / Won't let go.' Beth Gibbons isn't a good poet, but she's also not a very interesting vocalist, a weird amalgam of Yorke & Björk: the droning, the frenzy & fantasizing. But Portishead's failures are not Beth's faults - instrumentally, they're also drama w/o substance or reason. More than most groups, they're a band I wish I could love, but boiling down to a whole lotta symbolism, they miss the mark. On Third, 'The Rip' strikes me as the best tune b/c it tries the least hard. Otherwise, 48 mins of not the absolute pits but something I can live w/o. Too prog for me? Could be this.

'Says she don't do drugs but she does the pill.' No, Bandwagonesque isn't better than Nevermind - for obvious reasons, Spin got that wrong - but that doesn't mean it's not an excellent record. Melody is a motherfucker, & this album proffers melody upon sweet melody, w/o losing itself in saccharinity. Teenage Fanclub have got some edge, sure, but the tracks on this thing are really nothing more than love songs in their barest, most basic form. I think what's most remarkable isn't just how simple the enterprise is, but that the album doesn't exactly jump off the page, & that it doesn't need to in order to impress. From go, the record lets you know what it's about, & that's to let the good times roll. Perhaps I'm just in a good mood, but nearly superb?

The best 'musician' of The Beatles (Lennon being the best spirit, Harrison, the best late-bloomer, Ringo, the best drummer), McCartney made a good - a very good record - w/ Band On The Run that yet didn't convince me 'til 'Let Me Roll It,' ironically the most Lennon-like track on the entire album. I can't refuse his case as a talent & a wit - 'Drink to me, drink to my health / You know I can't drink anymore' - & a master of sound & songwriting, but I also can't deny the fact that I find it hard to love him & his music. It's not a shallow or hollow enterprise, but it's also not deep or feeling business. If I wanted British wit, Paul would be my second go-to, & for that I can be more than appreciative, but he'll always be behind Costello, the best of the form.

A strong case can be made that this is the most beautiful record in the hip-hop pantheon, a concept album that's also & always straightforwardly rap. 'Well, what you know 'bout MC'in'? / (Yo, I know a lot).' If you like crime & storytelling, this got that, if you like boom-bap flows & battle-rap rhymes, it's got that too, & if you require geeked-out & scientific lyrics, GZA is your guy. In other words, it's never 'too smart' - it's never boring, never dull or insipid. 'Labels' goes fucking hard, as gangsta as anything from Ice Cube or Dr. Dre: 'Tommy ain't my motherfuckin' boy / When you fake moves on a nigga you employ.' +, GZA just might have the best laid-back flow this side of Guru & MF Doom. Finally, RZA is simply at his absurd, unmatched peak.

If you don't like this record, not only do you not like great music, you might just not like sound at all. People say, well, it's not going anywhere, but the truth is, The Allman Brothers aren't a jam band - they're a group that goes straight to the heart w/ southern riffs, uplift, & drive, i.e., they're not going anywhere b/c they're still got places to go & they dig taking their time. It is what it is, which is not only one of the two greatest live records of all time (Live/Dead is right there w/ it), but a joyful piece of American history. & if you get at all bored w/ the guitaring, which you shouldn't, get down w/ the drumming since Jai Johanny Johanson is the unsung hero of the thing. +, maybe you should just take it easy w/ the whole going places thing. Chill.

Wilco certainly have a sound, a good sound, a sound that draws from punk, country, & Americana - in this sense, they're continuous w/ the legacy that The Replacements laid down - & they're a band I'm happy exist. Whate'er they lack in invention & fascination, they make up for w/ sincerity, w/ power & w/ pretty songwriting. 'What's the world got in store for you / What's the world got in store for you, now.' In the end, they're one of those bands you say are a 'good band,' & that's pretty much that. 76 mins of Wilco is much tho, & the length of a double album for a second release is asking a lot. It isn't that there's a bad song on this record, but the hour-long Summerteeth has better, more memorable tracks, e.g., 'Via Chicago.' Even so, it's 'good.'

'Stockbroker make a bad investment / When love has come to town.' There have been rhythms like it, of course, but simply put, the Talking Heads put on the map a style & an approach that haven't really been matched since. I think it has something to do w/ the busyness of their sound - the feeling of layer upon layer of innovation happening in realtime. 'I wanna talk / I wanna talk as much as a I want'; 'I want to talk like I read / Before I decided what to do.' I don't think I know of a more loquacious group than the Talking Heads - I guess I never put 2 + 2 together that they're indeed talking heads. Their heads talk, their mouths talk, their instruments talk, Byrne loves to talk, but only about himself. 'Other people's problems / They overwhelm my mind.'

I like this. I like it b/c The Monkees don't pretend to be something they're not. This is indeed pop rock, not novelty rock, b/c, well, what's novelty in the end? A joke? A quirk? A gimmick? I don't hear any of that here, I just hear quality songwriting, sweet melodies, solid harmonies, & a sixties spirit that I can't help but be nostalgic for. No, The Monkees aren't The Mamas & The Papas, they aren't The Lovin' Spoonful, The Rascals, The Sonics, or any of the other less heralded bands of that decade, but they are what they are. How can you not like songs such as 'For Pete's Sake (Closing Time),' or 'Sunny Girlfriend,' or 'No Time.' In a way, they're the American Kinks - I just don't think they're quite as deep. +, I had no idea Del sampled 'Zilch'!

For airports, maybe still, but more like music for yoga moms & untroubled adolescents venting their 'troubles' in a spa on the Asian continent: White Lotus, in other words. That's what ambient has become, tho not what it is, or what it could be. In '78, this probably hit hard & tranquil, authentically in the vein of Philip Glass, tho achieving new modes as well. & I still enjoy its gifts & energy - its eloquent peacefulness - but I struggle to listen to it w/o hearing a precious tonality that's too opulent to be memorable. I mean, it does astonish to the degree that it succeeds in putting me in a calm mood - I'm more at ease having heard it. But Here Come the Warm Jets, Another Green World, Before and After Science, those records make me feel alive.

Van Halen can obviously 'play,' & I'm sure he can 'play' better than a good handful of other pluckers out there, but it's also a truism that 'impressive' music often doesn't impress much of anything. Like, I know that V. Halen changed how people approach rock guitar, but guess what, Van Morrison changed how I approach my life, & that's more important to me. For what it's worth, I like the energy of this record, & I like that the songs are short, but there's a vapidity here that has me tuning out as soon as I tune in, as well as a formulaic, generic quality that simply doesn't do much for me. I said 'vapidity,' which is different from superficiality: I'll take empty calories, not negative calories. Better than I expected, but ZZ Top is my bar band.