Album Reviews

Gong “Flying Teapot” (1973)

Radio Gnome Invisible Part 1: Flying Teapot Is one of the first albums I ever owned. I think it may be the first but I’m not sure when I got ‘Mickey’s Disney Disco Album’. When I was about three my parents split up. My mother went to live with her pot-smoking, bi-sexual, bohemian German friend. I loved the cover of this album so much that the aforementioned mental German let me keep it. I grew up in a house where the love of music was almost compulsary. You had a choice. Either you learned to love music or you went insane because music was always being played. Not one for being left out I would request that I got to choose the music that was played. Naturally I would choose one of my own albums. At the age of four that was a limited choice. More often than not I chose Gong.

The fact that this album is such a mentalist freak out of pyschedelic-jazz-funk explains a lot about my taste in music now. This album is brimming with ideas. Some are crazier than others and some are so funky that it’s hard to believe that Gong are essentially a Franco-British prog outfit.

I can remember the beginning of the title track of the album terrifying me. It’s strange that at such a tender age we can interpret mood from music. I used to have to get my mother to skip the intro so that the partying could start. From about 2:30 that track is doing hard work to make you dance. I’m surprised nobody has ever sampled it. As well as being exceptionally funky this track (as the whole album is, really) is bat-shit crazy. The main vocal refrain seems to be “have a cup of tea, have another one, have a cup of tea”. Not what you expect as a funky accompaniment. Even more strange is that it fits right in.

Don’t let me fool you though. This is not a Jamiroquai album. There are moments that JK would gladly pilfer into more Ferrari purchase and blonde women but they are surrounded by large swathes of proggish wig-out. These surreal sections will certainly not be to everybody’s taste. If you like funk and early Pink Floyd you’ll be fine but if you don’t I’d steer well clear of this unless you are a sonic crusader of the more adventurous kind.

You can practically hear the LSD dripping off of every not and beat on this album. More importantly (and much less clichéd) is that you can hear the sounds enjoyment and vital experimentation bristling and crackling all through this album. It’s quite wonderful. —geekandspell

The Jam “Sound Affects” (1980)

Weller and company return to the muscular, yet polished, mod-fed pop of All Mod Cons, while continuing to stretch lyrically and intellectually on Sound Effects. As on All Mod Cons, Weller explores elements of his life and environment, but two years further along his lyrics take a more abstract and poetic approach. Brilliant songs like “Man in the Corner Shop” meditate on class envy through a linked series of vignettes, while “That’s Entertainment” brings the world’s ills to the foreground with its scathing sarcasm.

Musically the band is as sharp as they got. The energy of their earliest works is channeled in a way that makes the rage simmer just on the edge of boiling, rather than exploding. The result is a more fervent and sustained backing for Weller’s singing. Think of Revolver-era Beatles minus the psychedelic excess and plus the introspection of their White Album lyrics.

While other Jam LPs hit brilliant peaks here and there, “Sound Affects” sustains their genius from start to finish. —Hyperbolium

Neu! “Neu!” (1972)

Rock as ambience, stripped of song but retaining the simplicity of a good hook, Neu! marks the meeting point of acid-dazed psychedelic improv and post-classical minimalist composition. “Hallogallo” and “Negativland” are this album’s supreme achievements: the former synonymous with the now oft-used rhythmic term motorik, the latter combining this metronomic minimalism with a jarring musique concrete that incorporates industrial noise, transforming the group’s dreamlike drone into something more tonally consistent with a nightmare and anticipating everything from Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures to Scott Walker’s Tilt. In between these two highlights is the cymbal-drone experiment of “Sonderangebot,” the hazy, beautiful ballad-like “Weissensee” (which in a way anticipates the minimal, atmospheric post-punk of albums such as Seventeen Seconds by the Cure), and “Im Gluck,” whose studio-simulated rippling water is both restive and unsettling. The closing track, “Lieber Honig,” is an odd shift in tone that introduces fragile vocals and arguably constitutes the one misstep—though that depends on your mood. And mood is the crucial element to appreciating this album to its fullest. The group’s use of the studio to create a unique space in which to listen is what is most impressive about Neu! The spatial organization of the instruments gives breathing room in which the attention is allowed to drift from one part to another, actively constructing the sound of the whole and making for a different listening experience each time.

Obviously one of those proverbial albums that sold next to nothing but inspired those who heard it to make their own records, this also bears influence throughout the music since, its unique spell cast over just about everything good that followed it. —Will

The Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 1 (1988)

Very few “supergroups” live up to the lofty title accorded them. So it’s no surprise that one of the most beloved  high-profile collaborations in rock history was met with some skepticism shortly after its largely unannounced arrival almost a quarter of a century ago. Counting among its motley crew a Rock ‘n Roll Legend, a Beatle, a Spokesman of A Generation, and a ’70s and ’80s AOR icon (oh yeah, and also the guy from ELO), the very existence of The Traveling Wilburys seemed too good to be true. Yet the Wiburys’ debut defies all odds and exceeds all expectations for the simple fact that it doesn’t try to do either. Sure, one can admire the great playing and fine craftsmanship in every song, but at the end of the day Vol. 1 is just a bunch of goofballs–albeit monumentally talented ones–hanging out in the studio, smoking joints, playing music, and having a good time. The fact that this translates so well into catchy, ultra-durable, and sometimes even emotionally potent pop is the album’s most miraculous achievement.

Even after two decades, “Handle with Care” remains Vol. 1’s most popular track, and for good reason; despite its purported dashed-off, round-robin-style composition in George Harrison’s kitchen the night before it was recorded, it’s a surprisingly deep piece of songwriting. Given more gravity by Harrison’s lead vocals and the rest of the gang’s call and response choruses, it’s perhaps the most honest and accurate aging rock star confessional ever committed to tape.  Tom Petty’s presence  is mostly relegated to the background (which would not be the case on the Wiburys’ inferior, Roy Orbison-less follow-up, Vol. 3) but his turn on  “Last Night” provides the record’s quirkiest moment. But it’s Dylan who contributes the lion’s share of humor to an album already brimming with it. Has Aerosmith ever written a song more laden with outrageous innuendo than “Dirty World”? And even Weird Al would be hard-pressed to come up with a more devastating Bruce Springsteen  parody than “Tweeter and the Monkey Man”. From a career standpoint, the timing of Orbison’s sudden death just a few weeks after Vol. 1’s release could not have been worse, but his majestic crooning on “Not Alone Anymore” ensured that he’d at least leave this mortal coil on a high note. Even Jeff Lynn, a performer and producer not always known for his minimalism or restraint, contributes an uncharacteristically stripped-down rocker, “Rattled”; moreover, his bandmates help him keep his glitzier production flourishes in check, allowing Vol 1—some dated synths and occasionally intrusive horns aside–to still sound like the same homespun and unpretentious masterpiece that it did back in 1988.

So the next time you’re scratching your head, figuring out what you want to listen to because you think you are sick of everything you own, give this oldie-but-goody a whirl. Dust off the battered CD (the one in the case with the broken hinges) and crank it up, or… dig the cassette out of the box in the attic (you know the one) and pop it in the still-functioning boom box in the garage, or… if you were lucky enough to pick this up on vinyl during its first (and only) pressing, slap it on the turntable, lower the needle, bathe yourself in the charm and bonhomie of this unrepeatable musical moment in time, and be reminded of a fact you have long forgotten: You love this record! – Richard P

Gang of Four “Entertainment!” (1979)

It’s hard to recognize the importance of music like this in an era when Marketing is considered a legitimate university degree. So we have to have a little historical imagination to look back to a time when political possibilities weren’t limited to corporate tyranny, mindless technocrats, and buzzwords worthy of Nazism. Yes, kids, politics used to be funky, and music even sometimes had brains.

If you don’t agree with their politics and you like their music, you just don’t know it yet that you agree with their politics. You’ll either come around or you’ll stop listening to Entertainment! Further to that point: you don’t have to be a Marxist to acknowledge the falseness of commercial culture and the “globalized” post-modern neurotic subject. So you don’t have to worry about being called a Red. Which if you’re worried about it, you aren’t ever gonna get the message, anyway.

Though I suppose the lazy-fair types are always gonna think that economics is a science when it’s under critique and a board game when it’s not, and that art’s a form of entertainment, subject to market competition just like antidepressants and military contracts. Which is why Marketing is such a goshdarnit important substitute for Marx in today’s active lifestyles. —Will

Rush “Rush” (1974)

Rush’s debut is a ’74 Camaro, black, with purple and white racing stripes, 8-track blaring, one guy in a Sabbath t-shirt, the other dressed like Robert Plant in The Song Remains the Same … and not a girl in sight.

An album that carries a lot of nostalgic weight among rockheaded people like myself — the band still play a couple of these tracks on tour — this sums up the mid-70s rock and roll like few other albums, an innocent time when the guitar riff was king. Rush-haters might even find a lot to like about this roughshod bit of Zeppelinesque riffage. Certainly Alex Lifeson’s guitar tosses off riffs and solos that are preternaturally awesome. But Geddy’s knack for a lyric hook is evident as well. And even if they do sound like a cover band (mostly playing cuts from Led Zeppelin II and III), they’re a killer one, and this is one of the most energetic releases of ’74, and, speaking as a Rush fan, this one nearly 40 years on is freighted with a bit of melancholy, making it one of my favorites from the period. —Will

Neil Young “Trans” (1982)

It’s a shame the fanbases of Kraftwerk and Neil Young don’t overlap enough for this to be respected as I think it should. Sure, any canon-digging muso will have the best albums of Young and Kraftwerk in their collections, but why can’t we all agree this hybrid of the two aesthetics is actually really good? I don’t know, and I doubt I will any time soon. I’ve been listening to this album for a decade, and never skip a track. Maybe it doesn’t get the spins that After the Gold Rush and Tonight’s the Night do, but I can tell you right now I’d listen to this (and about fifteen other Young lps) before subjecting myself to Harvest again. Not to mention, the use of synths and vocoders isn’t as pervasive as the haters would have you believe, most of the songs are written in the normal Shakey style, with “Like an Inca” sounding as it’d have fit on almost any of his late 70s lps. The synth pop stuff is actually really good too, “Hold on to Your Love” is one of the very finest tunes the guy ever wrote. Honest.

This is one of Neil’s best albums for me, and I gladly recommend it, vocoders and all. —Cletus

Dave Brubeck “All The Things We Are” (1975)

We give you Dave Brubeck’s album “All The Things We Are”. Featuring Lee Konitz. And Anthony Braxton. Honestly, I didn’t make this one up. On paper, Braxton and Brubeck sound like the unlikeliest combination. Dave Brubeck, kingpin of college jazz in the 50’s and “Take Five” hitmaker; Anthony Braxton, mad scientist of the jazz avant-garde whose compositions look like a crash course in organic chemistry on the written page, and who most record companies (see his problematic relationship with Arista) don’t know how to handle. At least, that’s what the ayatollahs of jazz cliché would like to reduce them to. But things are never that simple. Both artists would appear to fly in the face of the “Jazz, delicious hot, disgusting cold” brigade (that expression courtesy of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, who I believe lifted it from a music critic whose name I can’t, and don’t wish to, remember), because they know that even tricky time signatures and unfettered abstraction can lead to beguiling results and warm the adventurous heart.

Anthony Braxton had frequently declared himself a staunch admirer of Brubeck and of an unsung giant of modern music called Jimmy Giuffre. This may bring fits of apoplexy to Stanley Crouch, Wynton Marsalis and their followers, but it only seemed logical that the two finally connect. And you know what? It works. Of course, the presence of Roy Haynes on drums hardly makes matter worse. Brubeck duetting with Lee Konitz might seem like a less surprising combination, but is nonetheless just as effective. —Patrick

Lizzy Mercier Descloux “Press Color” (1979)

Ah, what it must have been like to hear this in 1979. Avant garde pop with funk basslines and frenzied start-stop percussive overtones; a chanteuse that is menacing as often as she is playful (no wonder she was heralded by Patti Smith), this was one of the best first listens I’ve had of an album as of late.

It was recorded over a mere week and a half and consequentially, sounds compact, tense and nervous. There are no lyrical themes whatsoever – the wonderfully odd “Jim on the move” just consists of Lizzy mumbling the title over and over again, the morbid ‘Tumour’ accentuates Lizzy’s love for the minimal and experimental, one that’s exemplified in her later work – the more colourful, worldbeat influenced Mambo Nassau. Also present is the immaculate ‘Mission Impossible’ theme, and a stunning reworking of Arthur Brown’s “Fire” that should throw any preconceived notions of no-wave you have right out of the window.

Don’t get me wrong, the sound of the record is rooted in no-wave, but this defies categorization for the most part; it combines Lizzy’s art-funk leanings and combines it with a cinematic punk aesthetic that ends up being entirely her own. And no, this is not a a covers record – Lizzy’s own songs (most notably the club flavoured ‘Wawa’, the bass propelled “Aya Mood” and the infectious groove of ‘Torso Corso’) hold their own with anything else on the album.

All in all, this is one of the finest albums of the late 70’s NY underground scene. It is pop music striving to be progressive and radical; and succeeding. I was completely enamoured on the first few listens and only expect this to get better with time. Should appeal to all fans of Talking Heads, Blondie and ESG, though Lizzy sounds very little like any of them. —Rashed

Mick Ronson “Slaughter on 10th Avenue” (1974)

Slaughter on 10th Avenue isn’t the kind of solo effort you’d expect from [David Bowie’s] lead guitarist striking out on his own for the first time; rather, it attempts to present Ronson as a viable pop star in his own right, instead of merely giving him a forum to lay down impressive guitar solos. This is evident from the first song, a cover of Elvis Presley’s “Love Me Tender,” which starts out reverentially enough, but soon converts this gentle (or sappy depending on your taste) chestnut into an over-the-top Glam-Rock power ballad, complete with Ronson’s histrionic Bowie-esque vocals and dramatic Ziggy-style guitar work. It really should be a mess, but the song is so lovingly executed and sumptuously recorded that it simply works, and works well. Things get even more interesting on the Bowie & Ronson penned “Growing Up and I’m Fine,” which listeners will either love or hate depending on their tolerance for (or love of) Glam-Rock excess. A fey take-off on Springsteen, it’s the kind of song Bowie excelled at on albums such as Aladdin Sane, and though Ronson does a credible job on vocals, it’s impossible not to wonder what Bowie might have done with the song; nonetheless, it’s a great, glittery three-minute ride. And then there is “Music Is Lethal,” another Bowie-penned tune that starts out sounding a little like “The Port of Amsterdam,” but soon develops into a full-fledged Jacques Brel meets Scott Walker meets Bowie Glam-opera.

Overall, the production on Slaughter on 10th Avenue is consistently gorgeous and Ronno’s guitar-work is spectacular (as usual), and while this is indeed a strange album that ultimately pales in comparison to the Bowie albums it, in many ways, tries to mimic, it still manages to feel like an essential document of a brief but inspired moment when pop hooks and high art could be taken in a single dose. —LaLuna

Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express “A Better Land” (1971)

It is a hallmark of a truly gifted artist to have even unknown works be of extremely high quality, as this exquisite album is. A perfect marriage of jazz, pop and rock, A Better Land never falters for an instant. It is a beautiful work, from beginning to end. Not one note is extraneous, or out of place. My favorite cut is “On Thinking It Over”, with its clever and sensitive use of the open-sounding suspended chords in the chorus. Auger’s vocals are touching and appropriate, with effective use of doubling. And what a gorgeous piano solo! “Marai’s Wedding” is bright & lively, delivered with a deft musical touch. “Women Of The Seasons” is gently hypnotic, and “Tomorrow City” is a melodically catchy, yet uncertain vision of the future.

The messages are ever-resonant. The musicianship is superb–The basslines are catchy & memorable as they run counterpoint to the vocal melodies. All the guitar work is snappy and resonant. Auger’s playing is melodic and expressive, and there is an undeniable chemistry between the musicians. This is an album with a good and gentle heart, even in the uptempo numbers, and that heart really shines through.

If I should ever run into Brian Auger, I will probably make a damn fool of myself gushing out my praise of this little-known masterpiece. I hope he’d understand. This album just does it for me. Always did. Always will. Give it a shot. It’s worthy. —D Lockman

Dire Straits “Making Movies” (1980)

Although it produced no hit singles, “Making Movies” is beyond question Dire Straits’ masterpiece. Mark Knopfler’s ripping guitar forms the backdrop for seven beautiful, haunting, fiercely personal cuts. Every song perfectly captures a deep human emotion, from the bitter heartache of “Romeo And Juliet” to the angry defiance of “Solid Rock” to the steamy lustfulness of “Expresso Love”. There are no weak songs, though the bouncy and playful “Les Boys”, which ends the album, seems a bit out of place compared to the six deadly earnest songs that precede it.

Yes, the album owes a heavy debt of gratitude to Springsteen, with many cuts building on the Boss’s signature guitar/organ/piano framework. But, Knopfler’s vocal delivery and deft guitar work, plus the band’s sparser and cleaner arrangements, never allow you to forget that you’re listening to Dire Straits.

One tip: this album must be heard in its entirety to be fully appreciated. It will take you on a rollercoaster ride of emotion, something that no greatest hits album can ever duplicate.