Album Reviews

Kid Creole & The Coconuts “Tropical Gangsters/Wise Guy” (1982)

Coming out of the same NYC/Ze Records school that fostered the likes of Tom Tom Club, James Chance, and Was (Not Was), Kid Creole managed to stand out in a scene with no shortage of eccentrics, jokers, and flat-out freaks. One glance at the album covers confirms that no two words could have better summed up the entire ethos of this bizarre ensemble better than Tropical Gangsters, the UK title of the Coconuts third album. Kid Creole was an ex-English teacher who put his Masters degree into the service of a theatrical, but light-hearted take on the post-disco-funk explosion that was setting NYC clubs on fire in the early-’80’s. Creole’s former career bled through into the highly conceptual narratives that pre-occuppied his songs and albums, and Tropical Gangsters is no exception. The loose theme of the album revolves around the group being shipwrecked on an island of outcasts and their “gruesome ordeal”, as they are forced to play “RACE MUSIC” to broker their escape. Being of Latin descent, the Kid and his half-brother and bandmate never demurred from their background, often winkingly embracing it in the music and image of the band. Their sense of humor naturally extended into the songs themselves – “Annie, I’m Not Your Daddy” employs the female Coconuts in a dialogue wherein our hero must settle a question of paternity the only way a tropical gangster knows how – with brutal frankness – “See if I was in your blood/Then you wouldn’t be so ugly”. Tropical Gangsters takes the coconut and runs with it from here, with seven more hilarious tales of island-life scandal and intrigue that duly threaten to grind the dance floor to dust while they’re at it. KC had made good albums before this, but this was where the songs and the groove finally came together to create the perfect tropical storm. —Jonathan

John Foxx “Metamatic” (1980)

With every listen, Metamatic takes me into this whole other world, a deserted Metropolis where daylight never comes and the only sound you hear is the menacing “click-click drone” of human-hunting cyborgs. John’s eerie man-machine vocal,combined with bizarre, doomy lyrics provoke an entertaining kind of dread in me, then there’s the music… while the clanking beats and deathly-cold synthesizers show their age, the way they fit with the vocals and lyrics, astounds my senses to the point where its hard for me to hear these tunes as just the work of a creative young man, its more like each song has a life of its own, beyond the confines of its creators imaginings. A difficult sensation to explain, but a very powerful one that places Metamatic among my most played and highly regarded records.

“No One Driving”,“030”, “A New Kind of Man” and the completely surreal “Tidal Wave” (Should I laugh or be very scared?) are a vital part of an extremely weird set of songs that would provide the ideal soundtrack to a mind-bending Sci-Fi/Horror fest. —Misfit

Ace Frehley “Ace Frehley” (1978)

Ace was always the coolest member of KISS, his couldn’t care less attitude contrasting with poutin’ Paul and the demon, and his meat and potatoes guitar style featuring a wide, spaced out vibrato, was central to the KISS sound. It’s no shock that of the four ’78 solo albums, Ace’s is always the favorite, and I’d go as far to say it stacks up against any of the original KISS studio sides. The key is Ace’s lack of ambition, Ace Frehley being a straight-ahead hard rock record with few deviations. “Rip It Out” drops the hammer as the deliriously wasted “Ozone,” scatterbrained “Wiped-Out” and snortin’ slammer “Snowblind” draw you into Ace’s chemically-addled world. Ace manages to mix things up as well, his cover of the Russ Ballard penned glam-stomp “New York Groove” turning into a hit, “What’s on Your Mind?” being a hidden power pop gem, and the album closes with the cool chill-out instrumental, “Fractured Mirror.” –Ben

Genesis “A Trick of the Tail” (1976)

If Genesis is, at best, a guilty pleasure (and I’m not necessarily implying they are), what to make of post-Peter-Gabriel-Genesis? And if they’re not a guilty pleasure (and I’m not fully prepared to say they aren’t), but rather, with Gabriel at the helm, the Most Wonderfulest Group on God’s Grey Earth—what happens to the listener who says A Trick of the Tail is probably nearly almost just about as good as Selling England by the Pound? Shall he be drawn and quartered?

With more emphasis on rhythm, due to less cluttered production and willful eccentricity, the group seems to hit their stride as a (relatively) straightforward rock outfit following the departure of resident eccentric Peter Gabriel. The emergence of Phil’s drums are just the refreshing advance that was needed after all that murky “orchestration;” but the orchestration on this album’s predecessor leaves a lot to be desired on this weird crossover, an album that mines territory similar to Lamb’s predecessor, Selling England by the Pound, but lacks the structural inventiveness and the skewed cinematic sense the group had captured on the latter and the aforementioned follow-up, an unwieldy but frequently incredible record.

For those who entirely discount post-Gabriel Genesis, much of this (and its successor, for that matter) are pretty solid. Arguably not up to the standard of anything that came before, but, trading in some of the “drama” for a stronger attack and a little much-needed directness, this stuff is pretty, and mostly pretty compelling. Phil Collins haters be damned! –Will

Curtis Mayfield “Curtis/Live” (1971)

For better or worse, Curtis Mayfield is destined to forever be identified with Superfly. Never having been much of blaxploitation film buff, or funk disciple, I’d more or less shelved him under “important, but not for me”. Then one day – one misbegotten, hungover Sunday of yore, a friend unassumingly dropped the needle on Curtis/Live and blew what was left of my delicate mind. In the moment, the sounds emanating forth felt like a godsend – the only thing that could have possibly soothed my shattered and disheveled mind. This was music beamed down from the cosmos, painstakingly prepared by benevolent hands. This may sound like a lot of hyperbole, but I’ve kept myself honest, revisiting the record months and years after the point of impact, and the results remain the same: this record is a stone-cold masterpiece.

Curtis/Live gets across everything a live album should, but rarely does. For starters, Curtis had the savvy to assemble a batch of musicians who knew how to set up a vibe and dig their heels into it. The band is supernaturally in tune with each other, letting the songs expand and contract with an unhurried precision that intuitively follows Curtis’ restrained, yet highly emotional delivery. Many of his best known songs make appearances here; “I Plan to Stay A Believer,” “If There’s A Hell Below (We’re All Gonna Go), and “Superfly” all get makeovers, and are the better for it. Stripped of the flowery arrangements and porno-funkisms that could de-tooth his studio recordings, these songs are allowed to breathe and inhabit the loose-limbed bodies they deserve. The meditative readings almost border on the devotional, conjuring the same spirits as Sun Ra’s Arkestra at it’s peak, or the hazy and haunted spirituals of Rastafarian nyabinghi music. Thankfully, the recording quality matches the performances, with a room sound so stunningly balanced and alive you can almost hear a guitar pick drop onstage. The definitive Curtis effort, and a must-hear for anyone interested in music, or feeling, period. — Jonathan Treneff

Be-Bop Deluxe “Axe Victim” (1974)

As mentioned in all other assessments of this album, the influence of Ziggy Stardust permeates Axe Victim from Bill’s Bowiesque mullet down to the freeze-dried production, self-mythologizing content and plasticized space-age musical character of the songs. However, beneath it’s glam-bandwagoning lies an imaginative album that’s easy to enjoy if you’re able to lower the blinders to it’s Ziggy impersonations, while guitar hero worshipers will find in Nelson’s hyperactive cascades of fuzz an idol worthy of praise. Highlighted in the “Rock & Roll Suicide” inspired urban wasteland of “Adventures in a Yorkshire Landscape,” the axe-victimizing epic “Jets at Dawn,” anthemic “Jet Silver and the Dolls of Venus,” and shadowy orchestrated closer “Darkness,” Nelson and his Be Boppers turn in a set of over-literate but oddly engaging tracks whose charms are probably easier to appreciate given three decades of glam dormancy. Inevitably, Nelson would call an audible and leave Axe Victim a curious footnote to his prolific career, but it’s a forgotten son worth getting reacquainted with. —Ben

Terry Riley “Shri Camel” (1980)

The one feature that usually sets Terry Riley’s music apart from all the electronic minimalists and new age hucksters that followed in his path is just intonation, a method of tuning instruments in which the frequency of notes are related by ratios of small whole numbers. The end result is a harmonic sound different from modern (post 18th century) western harmony that instead leans toward a sound more similar to ancient music from around the world, particularly Asia. Its this just intonation that gives Riley’s music a natural grit that raises it above overly pretty new age homogeneity and makes it part of the natural world of wind whistling through the branches and small life setting a field a buzz with minute interconnecting noises.

Shri Camel is similar to other well-known Riley masterpieces, such as Rainbow in Curved Air, in that the major sound component is Riley’s interweaving electronic keyboard lines treated with slightly psychedelic production. The difference with Camel is a more stately classical Asiatic sound that is accented with a more severe just intonation than usual and a slower unfolding of events that mimics classic Chinese and Korean court music. The end result is one of the finest compositions in Riley’s career and one of the most beautiful albums I own. —JS

Shoes “Black Vinyl Shoes” (1978)

My pick for the fizziest power pop album ever made. The home-recorded guitar buzz even gives the cozy impression of a warm and constant carbon dioxide “fffffffff” across these fifteen catchy melodies. The group recorded it themselves as a demo—then they just released it as is—and each track is pure melody adorned only with the barest, ghostly living room production. It’s a uniquely spectral record, a little hook-filled cry in the night. Everyone notices its odd sound. Today, roughly 275,000 homemade albums come out each year, but in 1978 there wasn’t much else that sounded like this. Today, it feels timeless. It’s also consistently good. I can’t pick favorite songs off this any more than I can pick which M&M was the best out of the bag, but I’ve thrown “Fatal” onto a few mixes due its great percussion. —Jason

Tim Buckley “Happy Sad“ (1969)

Rather than conforming to just one of the emotions listed in its deceptively simple title, ‘Happy Sad’ works as a fusion of the two, finding a glorious middle ground that is utterly joyous in its unrivalled melancholy. Perhaps looking back now with knowledge of Tim’s passing adds a certain poignancy to these songs and their emotional content, but surely one completely ignorant of the artist’s history would have a hard time denying ‘Happy Sad’s otherworldly beauty. ‘Gypsy Woman’ may seem an abrupt change from the mood and mellow style of the other material, but even if it does seem more at home on ‘Greetings from L.A.’, the adventurous spirit and folk-jazz textures fit perfectly here. One of Tim Buckley’s finest albums, which says volumes for it’s place in the annals of musical history.—Christian

Prefab Sprout “Two Wheels Good” (1985)

Some records just need a proper context. Older (and clearly wiser) friends tried to sell me on Prefab for years, but I would need to process The Style Council, ’80’s Roxy Music, and the Pet Shop Boys before being in a place where I could appreciate the genius of Two Wheels Good. It’s not that the music here specifically recalls any of the aforementioned groups so much as it gives a context for understanding certain production choices of the era, and the overall less modest aesthetic and ambition emblematic of the mid-’80’s. High-gloss or not, the best Prefab stuff stands-up to any of the premier UK indie acts of the day. Opening track “Faron Young” sounds like a snappier version of something the early Smiths would have attempted, and lead singer/mastermind Paddy McALoon’s lyrics have a self-absorbed sting and way with wordplay that outwit Morrissey. Although this record did contain the minor hit “When Love Breaks Down,” it may have been this same intelligence that ultimately thwarted their wider success. For a pop album, most of the songs are ambitiously complex in their construction, with eccentric arrangements and forward-thinking production flourishes (courtesy of Thomas Dolby) that consistently decline to make the safe choice. Of course, these touches are what make the album a classic, unique in it’s era, and any other. —Jonathan Treneff

The Sea and Cake (1994)

A somehow overlooked album from the Thrill Jockey label/scene in Chicago, The Sea And Cake’s debut is the most organic and straight-forward of their albums. That’s not to say it isn’t unique–on the contrary, it is a light, upbeat mixture of indie rock, jazz, funk, and post-punk (via Talk Talk, Tortoise, Slint, etc). Each of the bands releases found them breaking new ground, and this one is no exception. Sam Prekop’s semi-falsetto vocals were a far stretch from the dull and monotonous grunge and post-grunge scenes that were dominating the airwaves in 1994. It’s really a shame that this talented band has never got their due. —Phil

Dio “Holy Diver” (1983)

Holy Diver is nothing less than a shatteringly powerful solo debut for Ronnie James Dio. He took the success he had achieved with Rainbow and Black Sabbath, and through this album transformed himself into a Heavy Metal God and Legend. He also pilfered Sabbath’s excellent Drummer Vinnie Appice for the crack Metal band he put together for this album, which also included the virtuosic Guitarist Vivian Campbell. Holy Diver is a truly excellent and powerful heavy metal album full of finely crafted, very heavy songs, snarling Guitars, heavy Drums and Dio’s utterly awesome singing. The title track is a masterpiece. Rainbow In The Dark is one of the greatest Heavy Metal songs of all time. And Stand Up And Shout is an incredible Metal anthem Holy Diver is a true landmark among Metal albums from the 1980s and of all time. Five perfect stars. —Karl