A blog of albums ... old and new .... that are particular favourites of mine but that not everyone has heard. Yes ... there will be the odd popular album appearing on the blog but I am going to try and concentrate on some newer and rather more obscure albums for your listening pleasure
This album, released in early 1996, is one of those albums that seems as fresh now as the day it was released. The two
best known tracks are "Bluetonic" and "Slight Return" but after a few listens, it is
hard not to fall in love with the clever lyrics and the wonderfully melodic
tunes that fill the album.
A breathtaking album, and surely
one of the best of the Britpop era (although the band would have probably been unhappy at being grouped into that category).
You often hear the old saying that pop music is a disposable genre; songs for the moment that you can forget about once the radio stop playing them. This, of course, is arrant nonsense. The Beatles made pop music. The Rolling Stones made pop music. The Who even made pop music. We still listen to them.
For me, there are three albums that are pop classics from start to finish; albums where every track is a gem and, more importantly, every track still sounds as great today as they did when first released. One of those albums is a bit of a cheat, for it is the compilation album Motown Chartbusters Volume 3. The other is "A Hard Day's Night" by .... mmmm ..... remind me!
The third is this!
This lot did not write their own music, although Mike Nesmith does get a part-credit for one track. Hell, they probably didn't even play on the album! It matters not a jot! What counts is the stuff in the grooves, the absolute perfection of every track (even the comedy track at the end), the fact that you can listen to this album anytime, anywhere, and it is guaranteed to put a smile on your face and, probably, get you singing out loud
Couldn't choose which tracks to pick so ... hey ... here's the entire album
(Theme From) The Monkees
Saturday's Child
I Wanna Be Free
Tomorrow's Gonna Be Another Day
Papa Gene's Blues
(very early copies of this album had this track listed as "Papa Jean's Blues. Worth a few bob if you have an album with that spelling)
Thirty odd years ago it shone, and was a near perfect piece of vinyl as you
were likely to find. All this time later, and I listen to this more than any of the supposed classic albums. It still
sounds as fresh and as unique and as ethereal as it did the first time I heard
it.
The reason for that is it's completeness. Not a sound out of place, not a
note too many or too few, and Mick Karn's incredibly fluid bass guitar was an almost-unique sound (only Level 42 and Stanley Clarke were using the bass in a similar way) Every track is a gem, no filler here, and it
also acts as homage to a golden era in electronic music. It stands at a crossroads;
analogue synths were the best they would ever be in terms of sounds and digital
synths were only a year or so away. Many would agree that the sounds an old
Prophet 5 or Oberheim could make after a fair bit of knob twiddling was far more
ear pleasing than even synths available today. Hence why these machines fetch
such good money nowadays.
Pulp had been kicking around since 1981, but for all intents and purposes, their
1994 major-label debut, His 'n' Hers is their de facto debut: the album that
established their musical and lyrical obsessions and, in turn, the album where
the world at large became acquainted with their glassy, tightly wound synth pop
and lead singer Jarvis Cocker's impeccably barbed wit.
It was a sound that was
carefully thought out, pieced together from old glam and post-punk records,
assembled in so it had the immediacy (and hooks) of pop balanced by an artful
obsession with moody, dark textures. It was a sound that perfectly fit the
subject at hand: it was filled with contradictions -- it was sensual yet
intellectual, cheap yet sophisticated, retro yet modern -- with each seeming
paradox giving the music weight instead of weighing it down.
This was Pulp's
shot at the big time and they followed through with a record that so perfectly
captured what they were and what they wanted to be, it retains its immediacy
years later
This is an album that is criminally overlooked for more than one reason.
Rarely has a band made such a significant leap in style and content from first to second album. Listen to the first album and this is like The Beatles releasing "Abbey Road" nine months after "With The Beatles". The cover gives much away ... the band saw this as a weightier, more mature effort than their debut. However, although the songs are undoubtedly more complex, they retain their pop sensibility
But perhaps of more importance is the influence, usually unsung, that this album had on music. Without this album, Joy Division may have been just another punk band. Without this album, we might never have heard "Blue Monday". Without this album, we might never have had a Radiohead
Killer was famously recorded and released in the same year as its predecessor, but it was far from a cheap cash-in on the breakthrough success the band found on Love It To Death. In fact, it seemed that the band still had plenty more ideas in their twisted minds, enough to write and record another classic record in such a short period of time. In short, Alice Cooper's fourth studio album takes everything that made its predecessor so good and takes it one step further. While Love It To Death was more along the lines of a straight-up 70s hard rock album, the band stepped into deeper waters with their songwriting abilities on Killer and took on a variety of influences, including blues, garage rock and even proto-metal. Bob Ezrin, the mastermind behind the band's third album, was back on board twisting the knobs once again. If not to their discoverer, Frank Zappa, it was to Ezrin that the band owed its greatest debt, and this would not be the last winning collaboration either.
Alice Cooper took the theatrical sound they had developed on "Killer" and moved it on a step, producing one of the finest concept albums of the 70s. Not just taking a lead from "West Side Story ... actually borrowing chunks of it .... they fashioned an album on a grand scale. The band still rocked, but their love of show tunes, and sleazy jazz, also comes to the for. Unjustly criticised as a one-trick pony album at the time, over the decades this
has become, rightly, critically acclaimed as one of their best records ever. It
follows the classic 'Killer' template but has a broader musical brush.
"History repeats the old conceits, the glib replies, the same defeats" may possibly be one of the best couplets to start an album ever. Having previously released a country music album "Almost Blue", Costello went back to the album before, "Trust", and developed some of the ideas he had experimented with and produced, for me, his best album. And that is saying something, for Mr Costello has produced some of the finest music of the last 35 years. Jam-packed with classic songs, his lyrical dexterity is plainly in evidence here but The Attractions had never been, and never were, better.
They could easily have called themselves The Black Beatles, or The Black Zombies, such is this band's devotion to the sound of "The British Invasion". They are actually from New Jersey and this is the third (and so far latest) excellent album by them. As far as unabashedly retro albums with no real aspirations towards originality go, Softly Towards the Light is a damn good time. The Black Hollies have been paying close attention to the works of the Beatles, the Kinks, the 13th Floor Elevators, Creation, etc, and suffice to say, that attention has paid off. If you were to try and sneak any song off Softly Towards the Light into an all-mod play list, it’s doubtful anyone would notice the subterfuge. What’s more, you can truly pick any song off this record, and your choice would have no effect on the ruse, so completely homogenous is this album. There are miles of fuzzy guitar and an ostensibly endless supply of psychedelic keys. In case it’s not clear yet, the 60’s worship is thorough and complete.
Blonde on Blonde were spawned in 1967 out of a Welsh blues-rock band called the Cellar Set and took their name from the then-new Bob Dylan album of that title. Though decidedly guitar-based in their sound, the band's music also used psychedelic pop arrangements that gave it an almost orchestral majesty which, when coupled with sitar, lute, harpsichord and other unusual keyboards — as well as a tabla — gave them an appealingly exotic sound. Their live performances were frequently divided, à la Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, into acoustic and electric sets, in order to show off their full range. Unfortunately, this excellent album failed to sell any better than their prior releases, however, and the group broke up in 1972, shortly after its release.
Few periods in music are viewed with the contempt that is held for the early ‘80s. We witnessed the death of disco and punk. New wave suddenly meant A Flock of Seagulls instead of XTC or Talking Heads. Middle of the Road music (MOR) ruled the radio waves with acts such as Olivia Newton-John, Sheena Easton, and Kenny Rogers.
But in 1982, one of the finest albums of all time was released. ABC’s The Lexicon of Love was like disco done right, with one eye on the theatre stage (the album cover states that rather obviously) and another on the dance floor. Trevor Horn made his name producing this record, creating a lush landscape that no one previously considered him capable of doing, based on his work with Yes and the Buggles.
Yes .. the album is shamelessly over the top, but not in a gaudy way (unlike, say, Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Welcome to the Pleasuredome, also produced by Horn). It is a classic example of right place, right time for all concerned. ABC would go on to experiment with rock, house, and Motown with mixed results, to put it mildly. But The Lexicon of Love still holds its own, and still sounds bloody great today
Incidentally, the theatrical aspect of this album went a stage further - the band made a short film - Mantrap - which used the songs from this album to tell the story of a Martin Fry doppelganger form eastern Europe (well, it WAS 1982) who may ... or may not ... replace him. Very hard to come by now but very enjoyable, not least for the theme song ... surprisingly called "Theme from "Mantrap""
The Look Of Love
Date Stamp
Valentine's Day
Poison Arrow
and a bonus track, which is not actually on the album
What happens when you grow up listening to Hank Williams and The Beatles? Well, you start making albums that sit easily in both the country music camp and with mainstream rock / folk fans. Even though you have probably never heard of him, Slaid Cleaves has made many fine albums over the years but, for me, this is his piece de resistance.
He has a talent for drawing pictures with words, of people down on their luck, the lovelorn and the lost, yet presents them in wide screen. You know these people; you've passed them on the street, seen them sitting in bars, it may even be you!. There's the tale of love gone astray down at the "Horseshoe Lounge," the worn-down soul pleading for "One Good Year," and the tale of Sandy Gray, a proud Canadian logger who ends up eating "Breakfast in Hell."
Cleaves may be likened to some of his heroes, but Broke Down shows he stands on his own
Robin Trower never really got the accolades due to him at the time when he was at his peak. It is only now that he is really recognised as one of the true greats of the guitar. Part of this is down to the negative impressions he created in the mind of many. Criticism that he imitated Hendrix is largely unfair – Trower played blues rock with a force and style that he made his own. And even so, he always admitted his debt to Hendrix, though that admission is regarded by some as a heresy rather than adopting the old maxim that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Yet scant mention is ever made of the enormous contribution Trower made to the sound of Procul Harum, his former band
Assisted by former Harum bandmate, Matthew Fisher, as producer and with Beatle's engineer Geoff Emerick also assisting, this is THE finest guitar album of the Seventies
Too Rolling Stoned
Little Bit of Sympathy
In This Place
and, of course, the brilliantly chilling title track
At the outset, I am quite prepared to accept that this band is an acquired taste, but it is a taste I came to love fairly quickly. When sorting this into my collection (for, as a true geek, I categorise all of my albums), I decided after much thought to file it in the section marked "The Decemberists meet The Flaming Lips in a Rumanian tavern" - a little-used category, it has to be said .... indeed, this is the only album in it so far!
This, in itself, is a surprise, as this is the THIRTIETH (yep!) album by the band under this and other guises. Hailing from Seatlle, Washington, Death By Misadventure, is built around the epic song cycle, starting with The Fall of
the Queen Bee. This peculiar assortment of songs takes place in her
colony and includes the ultimate death of The Queen and her court by
decadent misadventure. This is, of course, a fictional work, and any resemblance
to real people living, dead or otherwise, is completely intentional.
As I said, an album you have to live with a while, but one that pays real dividends with repeated listens
