Reviews by verlainemorrison96

It's no small success that Cash has me appreciating a Trent Reznor song, but this album is far more than a qualification of my aesthetic preferences. That's b/c American IV is such a powerful and strange cover album, hardly feeling like one in the end. Not only does Cash make other's art his own - he universalizes his selected tracks, and each song seems to be no one's in particular. The democratic choice to disperse a few of his own songs throughout gives the sense that he is merely one of so many conduits thru which art is expressed. The whole world is the writer of poetry in the end, as Emerson reminds us: "For poetry was all written before time was." But this is also Cash qua Cash, the voice being so recognizable, so ineluctable.

Like all pop singers, Gaz Coombes reminds us to never lose our heads: 'I'd like to wake up in the middle of a dream w/ you'; 'We wake up, we go out, smoke a fag / Put it out, see our friends'; 'I have a little smoke to pass the time of day.' But he's also a killer, a lover, and a 'strange one.' Unlike other Britpop acts, Supergrass returns to the punk scene of more recent memory rather than sixties rock (Beatles, Stones, Kinks). Unfortunately, they're not as convincing as they could be since Gaz doesn't have a memorable, vital voice. The best tracks here are 'Alright,' the most successful single, as well as 'Time' and 'Sofa (Of My Lethargy).' They're slower, more poignant, less frantic for the sake of fast. B/c otherwise, this bears empty calories.

Jorge Ben apparently went electric on this, tho I doubt he generated as much dissent as Dylan when he plugged in during the mid sixties. As for the music, the merging of American funk/jazz with Afro-Brazilian modes works brilliantly well. What seem to be specific allusions to the American scene, but which may be entirely native to Brazilian expression, aggrandize this album to further heights. For instance, the incorporation of cute and drunk yelps (instrument unknown) on many of the songs parallel the ones heard on Herbie's 1973 'Watermelon Man.' Unfortunately, the Spanish and Italian I have can only help me a bit in recognizing what he's talking about lyrically - but as for a sonic experience, it's all excellent.

Howe Gelb's voice is too glib and casual for this to be an impactful record, and the lyrics are never not pretentious, tho they don't always approach the following prattle: 'It's w/ great human OP8 for a headachy nation.' It's too bad, since a track like 'Temptation of Egg' has authentic groove, and 'Shiver' sustains a driving energy, but I can't deal w/ a title like that, and the latter harbors this drivel: 'The deliver of shiver.' More empty poetry: 'And I would ponder this disease like a peeling onion skin striptease.' Above all, the blues and country should never be whispered. Seeing that Gelb is only intent on whispering, it all collapses into something fiercely boring and has few saving graces. No 'furtiva lagrima' for me - just prominent irritation.

You'd have to be a fool not to see that this album is about far more than the legalization of marijuana. Tho Tosh is dead serious in that regard - he does indeed advertise the benefits of the plant, the specifics of which we can for sure doubt - 'good for tuberculosis, even umara composis' - this record is at bottom a profound meditation on colonialism and the mess that sort of domination engenders: 'Mama, mama, dem hold papa / Seh dem charge him fi smoke ganja.' It's about the absurdity of a system based on nominal distinctions of power: 'Them claim say, them claim say / Them are the general.' And it happens to be incredibly enjoyable to listen to - especially when Tosh goofs and frolics, i.e., check out 'Ketchy Shuby.'

'We hear you're leavin', that's okay.' That's Donald Fagen's entry point into this record, to whom I'd like to say: 'don't worry, no one is leaving just yet. It's only just begun.' It's a good thing I didn't leave, b/c I'd have neglected a singular album due to my suspicion of its neatness and sterility. But by the time they cover Duke and then pay homage to Bird, I was all the way in. If it ever feels too smooth for school, just remind yourself of what any major dude'd tell you: 'Any minor world that breaks apart falls together again.' Tho they may hide it, for all the best reasons, Steely Dan is always breaking apart and falling together: too weird to be entirely on kilter. 'Won't you turn that bebop down.' I will not. Nor will I quit this rugged tidiness.

This record is an inventive and imaginative accommodation of 80s pop, and its general aura, given the group's name and the album cover, was something I was prepared for. What I wasn't primed to appreciate was the extent to which its seven songs all deal w/ 'love' in one way or another. 6/7 of the tracks contain love in the lyrics. For an album like this, that seems to me a significance: 'I am in love, I am in love with you'; 'Do I love you? Yes, I love you'; 'I am in love, I am in love with a feeling'; 'The love theme for the wilderness'; 'For the love King, out in the morning air'; 'You are pretending love is worth waiting for.' The final track is an exception, but the thematics have been inculcated by then. A bit sleepy, but mostly wise and peaceful. And 'Stay' is a masterwork: 'Stay, and I will understand you.' That's love.

Freddie Mercury is an LGTBQ icon. He's also a remarkable vocalist, and all I've heard indicates that he was a kind, generous, gentle person. But Axl Rose is a prodigious singer too (tho a dick, which makes him easy to hate), and I can't stand Guns N' Roses. I think it must be the structure of their songs that drives me crazy - so often there's a cliché crescendo, or a drop of some sort, that's unjustified and wholly unheroic. No song here besides 'Some Day One Day,' which nurtures an ethical quiet, deserves the size it wears. And far too many forevermores and nevermores: 'It's forevermore that I wait'; 'Ogre battle lives forevermore'; 'Don't send me to the path of nevermore.' I guess it's the British and Tolkien in them. Not for me.

The thing about the White Stripes is that they're not exactly heavy w/ riff but they are heavy w/ groove. That's a major shoutout to Meg White. I'm not convinced by every song here, but heralded by 'Instinct Blues,' which feels like a reworking of Cole Porter's 'Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love' - now: 'well, the crickets get it, / And the ants get it'; then: 'Birds do it, bees do it / Even educated fleas do it' - this album is a successful amalgam of bookish resolve and bare power: 'The one that you're trusting suspiciously dusting the sill'; 'And the truth, well you know there's no stoppin' it / And the boat you know she's still rockin' it.' And vulnerability on 'As Ugly As I Seem' and 'I'm Lonely (But I Ain't That Lonely Yet).' Doorbells, too, ringing or unrung.

'We think we know what we're doing / We don't know a thing.' So sings Lauper on the opening track (the lead single from The Brains' 1980 debut), a song about money troubles of all things, a realism I wasn't necessarily prepared for but in no way rejected. After that, each song contains even more truth bits for us to chew over: 'girls just want to have fun'; 'I love you more than I did when you were mine' (Prince); 'You said, "Go slow," I fall behind.' That's just the first side. Sure, time after time, we've heard that tune, but that doesn't make it any less powerful. And the album in toto is well worth your ear. Lauper rebels by kissing you, and even gets avant-garde w/ a 45 sec cover of Helen Kane's 1920 'He's So Unusual.' A classic.

Wayne Coyne's voice is reminiscent of Neil Young's, but otherwise, there's nothing to compare this record to, really. The Flaming Lips are psychedelic pop w/ a handful of scientific realism. I want to like this album more than I do, mostly b/c I admire how it sounds - the production is absorbing and musically I'm at ease here - but the lyrics are ultimately too pretentious to overcome: 'To lose your arm would surely upset your brain'; or this: 'The summertime will make you itch the / mosquito bites'; or: 'Putting all the vegetables away / That you bought at the grocery store.' Besides 'Waitin' for a Superman,' no song here is w/o flaw. I get that they're going for the rapture in the mundane, but these fuckers are in band. They're not Joyce.

Five songs into this album, and the record goes from not giving a shit to very much giving one; from the bravado of 'Yeah I hear, I think, I know / Rock don't give a shit, you know' ('Favorite Thing') to the reserved optimism of 'One more night to get it half right' ('We're Comin' Out') to the ahead-of-its-time negotiation of the gender spectrum of 'Mirror image, see no damage' ('Androgynous'). There's authentic wisdom here: 'Your age is the hardest age / Everything drags and drags.' I love the sense that Paul is having a heart-to-heart w/ a young kid going thru it. This one's over in a blink, and by the end, I'm more than satisfied. If it's not quite sublime, it's still perfect, it's still exactly what I'd want out of a record. Bravo to that.

You know you've broken thru when the first two lead vocals you hear are not the main guy’s: Jim Gilstrap and Lani Groves speak this masterpiece into existence, and from there 'perfection is perfected,' as Snoop'd put it. Not only does Stevie give us flawlessly produced tracks - songs that have no choice but to occupy our collective unconscious - but he has us thinking about the weirdness of language too, like who the 'it' is in this line: 'Will it say the love you feel for me, will it say?' One of his requests: 'Catch your baby, catch up with my dreams.' We're still 'catching up' w/ Stevie's visions, inner or outer; his genius isn't a superstition, but a mere fact of life. And if his complex melodies 'keep me in a daydream,' there I'll gladly stay.

In one way, there's nothing truly powerful here. MJ (the band members all have abbreviated names - don't ask me why) sustains a high register and can, in his own manner at least, belt, but he doesn't blow me away, and the blend of rock and techno is competent but not out of this world. In another way, the nine songs that comprise this record are indeed powerful, b/c they get you moving, they are bound by an authentic sweetness, and they exult in some impressive lyrical statements: 'My father waited for hours just to hear me play a note'; 'There's nothing wrong with being fragile in life'; 'Peeling out and high in the reasons you're worth knowing.' Their project exceeds what I'm assuming it had been on paper - & thus, it has success.

I listened to the original 12 track set from 1987, and came to the conclusion that The Triffids (a triffid, I learned, is the plant from John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids) achieved what U2 never did: make inspired pop music that, perhaps to their own chagrin, is deep down a melange of Christianity. Much of this is religious saccharinity, w/ lyrics negotiating 'one less soul on your fiery list,' 'holy water,' and 'your secret delight in vice.' And yet, David McComb's voice is strong and convincing, I genuinely enjoyed tracks like 'A Trick of the Light' and 'Jerdacuttup Man,' and memorable lyrics like these have something true to offer: 'How can I put it in between words?'; 'I was beating on her like an anvil / Beating her out of original shape'; 'Steal it all.'

Has 'easy listening' ever been as soulful, as confrontational, as well-put together, as vibrantly thought-out? The only 'easy' thing about Tapestry is that it deserves infinite replays - otherwise, King is as hard as nails and a good kick in the ass. She's wise, she's aspirational, she's realist, and she's genuinely supportive on 'You've Got a Friend,' which I can only imagine has been the source of many saved lives and healed sorrows. It's also a snap shot of an America of another time: 'But if you wanna live in New York City / Honey, you know I will.' Remember when NYC was synonymous w/ urban decay? Finally, this record gets me back listening to The Shirelles, Smokey, Aretha, even James Taylor, which must be any songwriter's dream effect.

This one features proficient lyrics written by other artists: 'And I glow with the greatness of my hate for you' (Nick Cave); 'If sex were an olympic sport / we'd have won the gold' (Neil Hannon); 'St. Mary's prayers, / Houdini's hands, / And a barman who always / Understands' (Tom Waits). It also features the voice of an actress who starred in Cabaret and Chicago, a voice very much suitable for those outlets but uninteresting on a bistro-inspired cover album. It's not that it's pretentious, since she does what she is good at. It's that the theatrics don't offer a reason why - why here, why now, why the passion, why the atmosphere? Her best covers are of Waits, since he favors the performative, but the rest are drab and tiresome.

This one is far more than its title track, tho 'Groovin'' is one of the most profound feel-good tracks of all time. The album is all positivity: 'I'm so happy now'; 'I feel a strange, exciting thing about to be'; 'Life could be ecstasy / You and me endlessly.' Even on a song like 'I Don't Love You Anymore,' assertiveness is the name of the game: 'It's like my life had just begun.' Their cover of 'A Place in the Sun,' which more than equals Stevie Wonder's 1966 breakout, maintains the record's sanguinity. Susan Sontag once wrongly criticized Gertrude Stein for being 'all affirmation,' for not being 'where there is an adversary, a problem.' How we explore happiness constitutes an artistic conundrum, a 'problem' if you will. Felix Cavaliere and his fellow New Jerseyites are enthralling explorers of joy: 'You'll never see me complaining / 'Bout love - I'm in all the way.' Same.

'Well god forbid / Something goes wrong / You call / The police'; 'Shit happens, hey, just blow it off, whooo'; 'You must think you're Orson Wells / And this is 1954.' Pharrell really is a genius, and there are a plethora of artists who'd never have come around if weren't for this mishmash of rock, rap, and funk: Anderson .Paak, The Internet, Tyler, to name a few. But the genre is inventive, and influential, while the album leaves me wanting more. There's no song here I'm in love w/ - not even 'Thrasher,' which boasts the get-you-going chorus 'Fuck him up!' Is it lacking perspective to say that I wish this album was 'braver'? It feels like an irrational demand, but it's all I can come up w/ - if not 'braver,' at least less trivial, more bound to realize.

'Oh I need something to fly over my grave again'; 'A candy bar, a falling star, or a reading from Doctor Seuss'; 'The movies had that movie thing / But nonsense has a welcome ring.' While I still think Murmur is R.E.M.'s most remarkable statement, I by no means disparage their more pop orientated albums released during the early nineties. But I do think this record is slightly overrated. Even comparing it to the album released just after this one - Monster - I prefer the pop ballad 'Strange Currencies,' one of the all-time R.E.M. singles, to the ubiquitous 'Everybody Hurts.' Tho a band's most lauded album is not necessarily their best, it is self-important to prefer only the deep cuts. Yet, besides 'Nightswimming,' this is ordinary.