Reviews by verlainemorrison96

'I will sit right down / Waiting for the gift of sound and vision.' That's how I think about this album: you can sit right down, waiting for its gift of sound and vision. B/c that's what it is - an aural and visual affair, bravely vibrant, firmly in its own world. I've said before that Ziggy Stardust and Station to Station are his peaks, and I still believe that to be true, but this is Bowie's most interior, self-contained, and self-justified album. In many ways, it's also his most beautiful. It's a true conceptual piece to the extent that the 'concept' is the thing-in-itself. It doesn't allegorize or symbolize, it doesn't create a world for the sake of pointing out the ills of ours. It's a world of its own, plain and simple. And one I'd like to (re)enter whenever I can.

From start to finish, this is Dylan's greatest achievement. It's his most literary record b/c it's his most confessional, his most sustained, his most motivated and focused. I guess love will do that to you - will exalt a writer to brass tacks. Featuring a vindictive storyteller getting his get back ('Idiot Wind'), and a nearly nine min interlude about Big Jim and the Jack of Hearts, the album tells it like it is by telling his version of it. As much as I revere 'Blowin' in the Wind,' 'Like a Rolling Stone,' and 'A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall,' I love those records b/c they speak to something culturally or societally universal. Here, Bob jettisons the cultural and societal for the personal - and he may just be a tad deeper b/c of that.

According to Mayfield, yesterday's 'America today' was 'scufflin' times': 'A lot of scars - that kind of scare you to remember.' It's more like collapsin' times in today's 'America today,' but this record remains timeless. Mainly, this is political music that gets going b/c it negotiates the mundane with sweetness and honesty: 'Waking up now in the morning / A little morning sigh / Ready not to get it together.' This is truth music b/c Mayfield is attuned enuf to appreciate that 'Truth is not the whole question.' Musically, this is a funky cry, and a crying funk: 'The way you do it - is to get right to it.' Amen. And even an atheist like me can get down w/ 'Jesus.'

This one 'keeps the customer satisfied.' Any album that proposes 'Bridge Over Troubled Waters,' 'The Boxer,' and 'The Only Living Boy in New York' is a perennial knockout. 'Half of the time we're gone / But we don't know where / And we don't know where.' It's the 'but' and the 'and' that make that a masterful and emotive line. The whole thing exhibits a pensive and cheerful vibe, a simultaneity not easy to attain, but one that's essential to experience. And I love hearing their live cover of the Everly Brothers, the duo's principal influence, at least vocally.

When Gaye sings 'Cry cry cry, do you cry about me / Do you every think about the kind of love we had?,' it's so devastatingly beautiful that alone it makes this album an invaluable listen. But it's the raw one-sidedness, the self-serving but somehow generous storytelling, the free-associative honesty and concreteness, having to do not only with flowers, bluebirds, and sparrows but attorneys, child support, and millions of moola, boasting lyrics like 'This is a joke / I need a smoke,' that take this record to a unique place aesthetically. It rambles, but the music doesn't ever tire, and tho you may not be left a fan of Marvin Gaye the person, so deeply rooted is his egoism at times, your appreciation for the singer/writer can only grow. And you gotta relish: 'Let's touch each other / let's feel each other's ass.'

'I'm always a few minutes wrong.' This is indeed a blues explosion, mainly b/c it's an explosion of the uncool. It's not weird, it's not downcast, it's not edgy, it's not at all cool, but it's also not up for debate. The blues can't be itself when it's knowingly chic - it has to have some uncool about it, some awkwardness, some untidiness, some real deal marring and scarring. But, as Albert Murray advocates, the blues is also dance music, party music, a genre for the clubs and late night believing. Every song on this album doesn't stun, but the whole thing fosters a cool uncool - a mixture of the festive and gawkish - that I admire thoroughly.

'And so, become yourself / Because the past is just a goodbye' ('Teach Your Children'); 'In my mind, I still need a place to go / All my changes were there' ('Helpless); 'They stop by to die because / It's faster than sinking' ('Country Girl'). Moments like these show just how excellent this album can be, but it's mostly a vague excellence, fleeting, not fully realized. The four seem to know what they are doing but not quite where they are going. Emotionally, 'Helpless' has it, I do enjoy the parodic (or is it sincere?) 'Our House,' and the driving 'Carry On' is a superb entry. But I'm not all that proud to wear my 'freak flag' listening to 'Almost Cut My Hair,' and 'Woodstock' isn't nearly Joni's best. A very good record, but in love with it I am not.

The best-selling album of all time has most likely become a tough sell to many people, myself included. And yet, its nine songs stick around for good reason. Most ingenious is 'Billie Jean,' which fronts a literacy viz-a-viz creative rhythms and inventive melodies. Even 'Beat It,' which I never loved, is 'funky and strong' enuf to endure. Human nature is real, however, and as much as you'd like to separate the art from the artist, it would seem that appreciation at a distance is the most sustainable approach. But that distance is hard to preserve knowing 'PYT' is out there, a perfect track.

'Following charts but the threads would just dissipate / Modern Kosmology let my love resonate.' This album, mainly due to its excellent production, tho also b/c of lyrical moments like that, is an unexpected pleasure. Tho not quite as brilliant as comparable acts such as Julia Holter and Cate Le Bon, this possesses a palpable optimism that I very much enjoy: 'Let's go outside when it doesn't feel right.' It also successfully sustains a Byrd-like psychedelia on tracks like 'Loops in the Secret Society.' She loses me a bit on 'The Architect,' which is neither sonically nor conceptually attained, but wins me back with sweetness on 'The Lightning Back' and 'Valley.' Are the echoey vocals and abstract lyrics entirely irreproachable? No. I can surely do w/o the 'open your eyes' at the end of 'Ravenspoint,' for instance. But I don't want to do w/o: 'there's a rhythm to march to this undisputed mood.'

'Now the preachin' is over / And the lesson's begun'; 'Now the lesson is over / And the killin's begun.' Willie is a pure storyteller, and no moralizer. He lets things be, and like the great painters of precarious minds coming to their ends, he passes no judgement. I'm reminded of Orlando and Don Quijote, Othello and Leontes, and several characters who populate Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska. Structurally, this record is brilliant, no song doing more or less than it needs to: four instrumentals, three tracks less than a minute long, one over five. And his voice, tho high and feeble, carries this album's impressive fire.

A top-five vocalist of the twentieth century: stably inventive, focused and uncrowded, tho perfectly full, somehow dry w/o drying out, emotive w/o being lachrymose, and a technical mastery that's formidably faultless. She is, simply put, one of only so many crucial artists of her time, and any time.

Quality Control (2000) is the better release, but this is still a strong record. The production is hard and addictive, the flows and rhymes are effortlessly intricate, especially on 'A Day at the Races,' the harmonized choruses are tasteful, and the partitioning of verses is uniquely lucid. But it also trots out cliché lines like 'My pen drips / As I scribble my thoughts on thin strips of emotion.' It sometimes feels like this album was made for people who never 'got' hip-hop, and needed a record that's blatantly 'conscious' to get over their disapproval of the gangsta genre. But anybody who really understands hip-hop knows there's no De La Soul w/o NWA, no Black Star w/o 8Ball and MJG. Still, this is a classic listen, partly b/c it's great pop, tho Q-tip would resist that dubbing: 'Rap is not pop / if you call that then stop.'

He rhymes like a rapper: 'Those disco synthesizers / And those daily tranquilizers / Those body building prizes / Those bedroom alibis'; 'We're all going on a summer holiday / Vigilante's coming out to follow me / Heard somebody said they're out to collar me / Anybody wanna swallow me.' He has the courage for half-rhymes, internal rhymes, multisyllabic rhymes, like 'cheek to be' and 'weaken these' ('Little Triggers'), 'silent' and 'hydrant' ('You Belong to Me'), 'cuddle,' 'waddle,' and 'model' ('Chelsea'), and these bangers: 'movements,' 'amusements,' 'choosy,' 'above me,' 'shoes' ('Lip Service'). This is to say nothing of the music, which is authentic pop that tenders a punky dynamism (check out rhythm section on 'Lipstick Vogue'). And the best: 'I wanna bite the hand that feeds me / I wanna bite that hand so badly.' So yeah, I couldn't say enough. This is superb.

Lyrically, this is a bit conspiratorial and paranoid, all to do with a 'them' one would confront in a Pynchon novel, or a 'we' we don't really know: 'Don't let them see / Don't let them know' (from 'Films'); 'All that we are / Is all that we need to be' (from 'Engineers'). Musically, I get it, but I'm not sure I like it or that it gives me P-L-E-A-S-U-R-E. On principle tho, I can't say it's bad. Some genuine darlings: 'Complex,' 'Tracks.' Numan's voice gets stale, however, and it's all shot thru with a false sense of profundity. 'You are not reg-u-lar' (from 'Conversations'). The problem is this album is reg-u-lar. But not an everyday people kind of regular. That kind, I'm all about.

This ain't it. It's so adequate that it's essentially no good. And we already have an excellent country/roots rock act from California (see Creedence). This isn't that mastery, or close to it. 'Most of us are sad / No one let's it show' is about as good as it gets. At least that has a sincerity to boot, not an inauthenticity to bear. But truthfully, this album has no haunting power, and no quiet successes. An all-around blah.

This isn't really metal, and Lemmy doesn't really have a metal voice, more like an explanatory rasp, loud and heavy b/c he wants to talk thru the noise and tell us what's up. Popular among the punks, and self-proclaimed to be nothing more than a rock-n-roll band, Motörhead wore a not-quite-metal aesthetic that isn't exactly news. But it is significant. It even borders on hardcore sanguinity on 'Live to Win,' venting the noble lines: 'You mustn't shout it out loud / Don't create a scene / Don't indulge in being proud / It only feeds their scheme.' That's excellent and true. (If only other metal acts would listen to this sage and sensible advice, ahem, Marilyn Manson.) What this album lacks is variety, however, and what it unfortunately boasts is the dreadful 'Jailbait.' Mainly tho, it has a palatable and honest aesthetic. I can't say it's entirely my thing, but it sure the hell blows AC/DC out of the water, and I can imagine myself returning to it, if only to feel a bit mucky.

This really gets rolling with 'Let the Sad Times Roll On,' tho the title track does hit with humor and joviality, most notably continued on 'Wham Bam,' a hilarious promotion for the rejection of matrimony. In terms of country voices, I prefer the likes of Marty Robbins, Tom T. Hall, Townes Van Zandt, and Blazes Foley, not to say anything of Patsy Cline or Johnny Cash. But even tho I sometimes feel like I'm being slammed with a festivity I'm not exactly invited to be a part of, there are enough wistful songs - 'If You Fall Out of Love With Me,' 'The Band Keeps Playin' On,' 'Streets of Laredo' (an all-time favorite), 'Cryin' Time,' 'A Maiden's Prayer' (instrumental) - to keep this album honest, and to satisfy my penchant for a mournful affect. And in terms of influence (the Bakersfield sound), this is a true topper.

‘All I’ve Got To Do,’ ‘All My Loving,’ ‘Don’t Bother Me,’ ‘Till There Was You,’ ‘Please Mister Postman,’ ‘Hold Me Tight.’ Some great originals, some enduring covers. It’s a copycat league and they copied as emulators and admirers. Do I prefer Chuck’s maiden recording of ‘Roll Over Beethoven’? You bet. Is Smokey’s ‘You Really Got A Hold On Me’ the better one? Uh-huh. Is this still a milestone album and essential listening? I know it is.

'Cover my face as the animals die.' Does this mean that Robert Smith has finally gotten over the notion that death and the expiration of flesh can be flippantly sought after? Sure, the whole album commences with 'It doesn't matter if we all die,' but this is far more vital than the gloom-gets-me-nowhere Seventeen Seconds. Perhaps they were so on the verge of falling apart as a band that a will to live implicitly permeated their program. I still struggle to listen to a Cure album all the way thru - it's just not my way of dealing with distress - but this is far from bad. 'My memory in a fire, and someone will listen / At least for a short while.' That has a quiet aspiration in it I admire. And the keeper of the sudden fire: Lol Tolhurst (drummer).

This Morrissey is more sincere than ironic, which is odd tho not necessarily a bad thing. He croons, 'Where the world's ugliest boy / Became what you see / Here I am, the ugliest man,' and I believe him. More often than not, I am in the mood to take things as they are rather than with a grain of salt, but this sincerity fails to hold my attention. Morrissey certainly has his moments here, especially on 'Suedehead,' 'I Don't Mind If You Forget Me,' 'Dial-a-Cliché,' and 'Margaret on the Guillotine,' but for the first time, I'm not all that keen on hearing what he has to say next. Just a bit tired of the pouting and yearning, which is leaned on as a crutch rather than explored and developed. The music, stringy, plucky, and at times acoustically flush, does perdure however, and does vitalize this not-as-effective grumbler.