Reviews by verlainemorrison96

‘Don’t fight it, we’re gonna feel it tonight.’ Noted for its raw sound, a quality not as prevalent on the singles (tho if ‘A Change is Gonna Come’ is not raw, then what is?), this is one of the great live albums. A soulful romp, it does exactly what a live record should - not only make you feel that you are there but make you wish so much that you were. Cooke’s voice has a bit more rasp here, but no less uncanny control or sweetness, and the music, w/ King Curtis on sax, swings, shakes, and drives. In a deep sense, it’s rock and roll, it’s Chuck and Bo and Little Richard. Yeah…what I would give to have been there. ‘Keep on having that party.’ Remember it.

'Not bad meaning bad, but bad meaning good.' Run-D.M.C. was the first cross-over hip-hop act, not only b/c they collaborated w/ Aerosmith but b/c they were three things at once: hard, as in street, heavy, as in rockin', and cerebral, as in geeky and allusive. Raising Hell is remarkably self-aware, a deliberate admixture of nerdy programs and a tough sensibility. Taking these qualities not as opposing forces but natural allies, D.M.C. essentially defines the genre w/ these two lines: 'I got prescription glasses and my eyes are correct'; 'It's called gangsta hard rock, non-stop hip-hop.' Not many albums begin w/ four certified and infectious classics, but this one does. The rest is just as brilliant, especially 'Perfection' and 'You Be Illin'.'

'Belligerent ghouls run Manchester schools / Spineless bastards all'; 'On the day that your mentality / catches up w/ your biology'; 'Happening in mine, happening in mine.' Only the final song, which is an experimental gem, has anything to do with vegetarianism, but the themes of cruelty and empathy run powerfully thru the entire record. It's not an album that I look forward to returning to, however, even tho Marr is incredible on 'What She Said,' and Morrissey's lyrics are no less impactful. It may be that it's too dark, too despairing in the end, not joyfully cynical. W/ the exception of 'Barbarism Begins at Home,' which vigorously bears witness to the catch-22 of a vicious school system, no track here properly gets me going.

Renowned for its odd time signatures and cool, west-coast grooves, Time Out is one of the most recognizable jazz albums of all time, and its lead single, 'Take Five,' has sold more records than any other jazz song ever. This makes sense, since the album has a songwriting element that most other jazz records don't possess - it boasts memorable hooks and one-two punches that hardly miss. But those 'other' jazz albums, the less singsong ones, are by and large more impressive than this, tho in no way is Brubeck uninteresting or uninspired. I see his influence ranging from jazz's inner circle to instrumental rock/blues like The Allman Brothers. And w/ a record like it, you have to remind yourself that the guy most likely killed elsewhere.

For good and for bad, it's the first of its kind, and someone had to go there. The Beatles went there, and did so w/ flair, wit, humanity, and McCartney-mastered basslines ('Fixing a Whole,' my god). Chic isn't necessarily pretentious, but it's a far cry from Chuck Berry and Little Richard. So something died w/ this one, tho birthed as well was a willingness to authenticate weirdness w/ a thought-out edge and memorable lyrics like: 'She's leaving home after living alone / For so many years.' An influence that is nearly impossible to calculate, heck, 'Lovely Rita' even portends Lil Wayne's 'Mrs. Officer.'

'There's a lullaby for suffering / And a paradox to blame'; 'I'm angry and I'm tired all the time'; 'My lost, my lost was saying found / My don't was saying do.' As a lyricist, Cohen is one of the all-time greats, better than Dylan to a degree b/c he's as profound as he is direct. This record is an outstanding howl to a god that may or may not be listening, a final and sonorous cry. It doesn't matter to me that his cadence hardly changes or that his voice remains in the gutters of despair. It's a record that negotiates the layers of epiphany, dark tho always gentle, not one that flaunts excessive variety, tho the instrumentation provides more than enough soul, beauty, and diversity for it never to get old. 'We were broken then but now we're borderline.'

'It's the joint.' Paul's Boutique is the logical continuation of License to Ill, which sets the standard for witty rhymes and sample-based production. Tho this goes full throttle in the direction of an avant-garde explosion, it's still dedicated to 'all the girls,' and the three white boys are in no mood to be overly serious: 'A strapped shoplifter, a pirate on cassette'; 'Well, me in the corner with a good-lookin' daughter'; 'I love girlies, waxin' and milkin'.' Musically, things culminate most brilliantly on 'High Plains Drifter,' 'The Sounds of Science,' and 'Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun,' all of which contribute to a sonic experience that is equally brash and temperate. No other Hip-hop record is as unorthodox or as hilariously smashing as this.

This is a long album that's framed conceptually and has numerous skits, and yet no part of me believes it should be abridged. 'Consequence is no coincidence,' raps Hill on 'Lost Ones,' and neither is success in vision or in voice. Presumably, this album is about L-O-V-E, but Lauryn Hill cut class and missed the relevant seminars. In that way, w/ an all-over-the-place intellect, Ms. Lauryn raps and sings herself into an education that carries religious themes ('Zion'), rap history ('Hip-hop started out in the heart'), relationship advice ('Baby girl, respect is just a minimum'), and her own regretful sacrifices ('Gave all my power ceased being queen'). She raps as well as she sings, and has a doo-wop soul at bottom. A necessary classic.

Voodoo and Black Messiah are far more realized and inventive than Brown Sugar, but this is classic neo-soul grooviness and sex-positive spunkiness. Raw is the word, but so are honed and rounded b/c D'Angelo not only sings his heart out - he cruises, covering the Smokey classic for track seven, and gets his magic from empowering the beat to go on just a little longer. That is also the foremost scarcity of the record - it has a one-note strike against it, not enuf variety or new positioning. But that's a small price to pay when it's largely a joy to bliss out to. Running imaginations, i.e., Temptations: 'Is it just that you're the finest little thing / That I ever saw, or is my imagination running too far?'

'A dewdrop can exalt us / Like the music of the sun.' Musically, Close To The Edge is decent, approximating Steely Dan at times, tho less jazzy and far less immediate. 'For the crucifixion of her own domain.' Lyrically, it's all pseudo-literary. Even the refrain 'I get up, I get down' - sung w/ what Jon Anderson would like to be soul but is in reality just taciturn geekiness - is supposed to ultimately mean something DEEP but in fact means they read books (Hesse) and thought they were COOL. 'Emotions revealed as the ocean maid.' I'm not sure what they're getting at, but it seems to me that Yes pooh-poohed 'emotions' and went straight for the cerebellum instead. 'Even Siberia goes through the motions.' The fuck?

'But when I awakened I found it not so.' When this record began I found it was not so. As it kept up, I found it was still not so. And as it came to its conclusion I found it was wholly not so. 'To purgatory fire thou com'st at last / And Christ receive thy saule.' Edmund Spenser was ridiculed for his employment of antiquated language in The Faerie Queene. If Spenser is old-school, Pentangle is grotesquely prehistoric. 'I have here a magic horn to deliver.' What's worse, you know exactly the influence an album like this had on subsequent groups stuck in the bullshit of Britishness: Jethro Tull, Deep Purple, Queen, Uriah Heep, Gryphon.

'Hammer my bones on the anvil of daylight.' Something about this record is certainly 'hammering,' since the first thing you notice are the drums: heavy but tasteful and illuminating. Having never heard a Beck album before, I wasn't expecting rhythm to lead the way, but I sure wasn't bitter that it did. It's a record w/o genre tho not exactly w/o focus. A legitimate criticism to extend, however, is along the lines of: what is it all about? where is it all going? It's not competence w/o substance, but w/o vision or intention. But sometimes I feel: who really needs those qualities? I guess what I'm looking for is believability, that sticky thing. What we get is more hammers: 'I prayed heaven today / Would bring its hammer down on me.'

Grace Slick has one of the more unique voices in popular music, but what sets Jefferson Airplane apart is the heaviness of their psychedelia. While The Byrds at times grow thin, this is all about booming soul and textures of freedom: ‘I’m so full of love / I could burst apart / And start to cry.’ Even ‘Comin’ Back to Me,’ the track on which you could most easily call bullshit, evades that evaluation since its poetry, which is authentic, never diminishes the music, which foreshadows acoustic Zeppelin. They may sing of ‘purple pleasure-fields in the sun,’ but you never get the feeling that they’re treading on mushy or imprecise grounds, only that they’re exactly as they should be expressive.

A somewhat neglected group from the Native Tongues, Jungle Brothers epitomize the best of nineties creativity in the hip-hop format. It's party music, in its own way, but it also swaggers a literariness that could be called poetry, but in fact resembles something older in quality: 'Shake your butt but don't break your back / Tap your feet and let your fingers snap'; 'All you read about is slavery / Never 'bout the Black man's bravery.' It's the combination of body-positivity and mental-positivity that makes this album an exemplar release - whether they're rapping about 'Belly Dancin' Dina' and being 'junglistically horny' or how 'the oppressed will be saved from oppression,' their pedagogy is inseparable from the dance floor.

‘and don’t be no drag.’ Opening w/ what could only be called kinky reggae (see Catch a Fire), Bob Marley’s first record w/o Tosh and Bunny is a clear triumph. If he’s not comforting you w/ ‘corn meal porridge,’ he’s a reminder of basic human facts: ‘a hungry mob is an angry mob’; ‘a hungry man is a angry man.’ If Marley is not some sort of prophet, especially for those of us who doubt that kind of thing, he’s still an indispensable artist, a realist who satisfies the old adage: ‘show don’t tell.’ No song here is not worth your time - and quite a few are inevitable classics, e.g., ‘Them Belly Full,’ ‘No Woman, No Cry,’ ‘Rebel Music,’ ‘Natty Dread.’ ‘Talkin’ Blues’ takes first place tho, w/ this unwonted violence: ‘Cause I feel like bombin' a church / Now that you know that the preacher is lyin’.’ If that’s not what I’m talkin’ about, it’s what I should be talkin’ about.

'We can fuck forever but you will never get my soul.' Ten years the senior of the Jon Spenser Blues Explosion, this is the OG coming together of punk and blues music. Not that punk isn't always already indebted to the blues, but The Gun Club is a particular marriage of sentiments. What I love about their record is how much history you hear - Robert Johnson, of course, but also The Velvet Underground, New York Dolls, Suicide, The Modern Lovers, Patti Smith, not to mention early rockers and auras of American culture in general. It even gets poetic: 'In the stillness of the mosquito sunset.' But points are deducted for racial slurs. Tho Pierce was of mixed race, he fails to harness these words effectively or authentically. Still, a revelatory listen.

Bossa nova, especially on this record, is a way of life, something that, like the Girl from Ipanema, passes but is entirely memorable, in fact longingly so. This doesn't pass into oblivion or homogeneity, but only strengthens by virtue of its fleetingness, a transience that somehow sticks around and perpetuates something permanent. That may just be the magic of a 'cool' that's not too cool. Getz/Gilberto successfully negotiate the potential dull and hazy atmosphere prompted by a smooth and superficial experience. It relinquishes smoothness for the sake of easygoingness, superficiality for a momentary suspension of depth. Thing is, it is deep - just not woefully so.

Polyrhythmic, Remain in Light is also poly-lyrical: 'Sharp as a knife / Facts cut a hole in us'; 'The world is near, but it's out of reach'; 'There is water at the bottom of the ocean.' Many albums pontificate, may even sermonize, inspire, and theorize, but I can't think of a record that philosophizes like this one, that prompts abstract reflections on 'facts,' 'the world,' and the ocean's bottommost water. 'Time isn't holding up, time isn't after us.' On More Songs About Buildings and Food, Byrne generates interest in objects and stays at their level for a funky, quirky trip into everydayness. On this, actual ideas are spawned, new notions, maybe a metaphysics even. Yet, the music remains light, danceable, wholly unburdened by the intellect.

Spewing four massively successful singles, and 'Jenny Was a Friend of Mine,' Hot Fuss is Hot Mess at the same time that it's cultural touchstone. Primarily 'Brightside,' tho really the overall texture of the record, is etched in our subconscious whether we like it or not. I don't like it, since Brandon Flowers has got me missing Robert Smith, his voice even more gratingly loud and uninteresting. The lyrics are nowhere in particular, and misspend the potential of the best song: 'I got soul, but I'm not a soldier.' Pop music doesn't have to mean anything, but it shouldn't propose empty signifiers. So for this one, it never started out w/ a kiss, but it sure did end w/ an upset stomach. Really, it should always be on the back burner.

Musgraves exhibits a radio country voice, which I can't say I'm in love w/ or would ever feel the need to return to. The soft, gossamer affect leaves me wanting more, and instead of floating I feel like I'm parachuting thru a dull lecture on something pop. Some of the instrumentation, especially as the record gets going, is effective (strings, synths), and lyrics like these are at least up to snuff: 'Plants that grow and open your mind'; 'Coming thru the melody when the night bird sings'; 'I know my place, and it ain't w/ you.' But excited about this I'm not - too innocuous, too tame, not necessarily sterile, but never massively alive, never turbulent or usefully grungy. Saved by 'Happy & Sad' and 'Velvet Elvis,' Kacey suffices but doesn't floor.