Rock

Make no mistake, as evidenced by its budget price tag, this is an irresistible slab of 70’s soft rock that kicks off a trio of unjustly forgotten, gold-standard releases from Lake. With the distinctive vocals of James Hopkins Harrison, Lake offers a set of tracks that elevate you to a higher plane through their massive wall of vocals and lush instrumental backing, featuring dual-keyboards and the rock-solid riffs of guitarist Alex Conti. Highlighted by the blazing opener, “On The Run,” morning after kiss-off “Sorry To Say,” insistent and dramatic “Key to the Rhyme,” and dancefloor transcendence of “Chasing Colours,” the album culminates in the moody 10 minute soft-rock saga “Between the Lines.” Lake shines throughout as a neglected gem, found amongst many a dusty record rack across America. Take the plunge! —Ben

Surprisingly good FM rock in league with prime Supertramp with a lead vocalist reminiscent of that band’s singer, Roger Hodgson. A guilty pleasure worth every one of the ninety-nine pennies you will most likely throw down for this overlooked pop-prog gem. It’s followup, “Lake II” is equally good. —David

Gotz ‘dem ol’ mean woman blues again, brother? Sometimes when the fairer sex brings you down into a pit of despair and world-is-crashing helplessness, you gotta put down that never-ending bottle of Jameson and saunter into the studio with your best dudes and pulverize that anguish into something worthwhile. This is Declan Patrick at his most vitriolic, spewing venom and catharsis, ripping apart low-down, no-good rotten women while his uncharacteristically raw sounding, yet always reliable Attractions whip up a frenzy. the record is admittedly top-heavy, but what a fucking tremendous Side A, from the vindictive, organ-fueled anthem “I Hope You’re Happy Now” to the drunken 3 a.m. sad-sack ballad “Home is Anywhere You Hang Your Head.” But it’s all foothills to the Mt. Everest of Costello’s career: the caustic, languishing, incomparable “I Want You.” this one track, with its slow build-up and quietly intense vocals, captures all the contradicting feelings of anger, disgust, disillusionment, and futility, and the searing, unrelenting pain that comes with that horrible, carnal knowledge: yep, it happened, and yep, it was THAT asshole. And the most horrifying part: it ends not in murder or heartbreak like other paeans to adultery, but in begrudging and hopeless acceptance. Perhaps because “I Want You” raises the bar so exponentially high, what follows pales in comparison and is almost entirely forgettable, though “Poor Napoleon” has one hell of an addictive chorus. to me, an idiosyncratic artist with a long career is always the most compelling at his or her meanest and nastiest, and this record – at least the first half, anyway – exposes all the darkness stirring underneath that bespectacled veneer. —S Paul Brown

I bought my first Beatles record (Help!) at age nine, barely tall enough to see over the cashier’s counter at Record Town, a now long-defunct shopping mall record store in the western Massachusetts town where I grew up. Nearly 30 years later, I plunked down $250+ for the remastered stereo box set shortly after the Beatles’ catalog overhaul in the fall of 2009. In between those two milestones, my Fab Four fandom has been constant, obsessive, and undying, yet my album preferences have been inexplicably capricious. But one area where I’ve never wavered concerns an album, little discussed, that the band put out at the tail end of 1964. It is called Beatles for Sale.

A cursory glance at the cover and a light listen to the record don’t immediately reveal its brilliance. This is early Beatles, for sure. Cover songs abound, representing almost half of the album’s material. (They would significantly tone down this practice on their next album, Help!, and completely abandon it for good by the time of Rubber Soul.) But a closer listen to the album’s opener, “No Reply”, informs us that we are venturing into new territory. A beautiful study in contrasts between thundering drums and wistful acoustic guitars with hints of bossa nova, the song denotes a sound that’s more accomplished, more sophisticated, than anything that has come before. As an added bonus, we have only one overplayed track, “Eight Days a Week”. These days, I can barely listen to this song whenever it comes on the radio, but here, as a part of  larger musical statement, it never gets old.

Though Beatles for Sale is in all aspects a group effort, it’s Lennon who provides its show-stoppers. His interpretation of Chuck Berry’s “Rock and Roll Music”, like his earlier renderings of “Twist and Shout” and “Money”, continues to establish him as howler without peer; it easily blows the original out of the water. With songs like “I’m a Loser” and “I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party”, he begins to lay the template for the confessional songwriting that he would explore much more deeply later, but seldom while rocking this hard. But for my money, my favorite Lennon moment on Beatles for Sale is “Mr. Moonlight”. Some fans and critics think this is one of of the worst Beatles tracks ever, but I love it! Lennon’s crazed gospel preacher vocals launch it into the stratosphere. The chorus is almost dirge-like, and the loungey organ solo only adds to its weirdness. In some ways, it’s more out there than anything on Revolver or Sgt. Pepper’s; they’d certainly never record anything like it again. Though McCartney also gets in a good rocker with his cover of Little Richard’s “Kansas City”, his overall contribution is a bit more understated than Lennon’s. Still, it’s no less important. He really only takes lead vocals on a couple of songs, but “I’ll Follow the Sun” is one of his early masterpieces, one that hints at the A-list tunesmithing that people would soon take for granted. The album’s unsung hero, however, is George Harrison. Though relegated as usual to his one token spotlight moment (a cover of Carl Perkins’ “Everbody’s Trying to Be My Baby”), his fingerprints are all over everything. Often accused by “serious” musicians of being a mediocre guitarist, here he proves all of these Philistines wrong. Effortlessly shifting between elegant country picking and precision power-chording, what his playing lacks in technical prowess is more than made up for with vibrant and highly evocative tones; in fact, a large part of Beatles for Sale’s success can be attributed to its Big Guitar sound. Then there’s Ringo. His noble back-beat carries the music through no matter what the situation demands. There’s not much more to be said about that, except that he’s just always awesome.

This was the record that UK punters got. In the states, much of this material was spread out among a pair of shorter Capitol Records releases (Beatles ‘65 and Beatles VI), a double-dipping practice that the label found lucrative but which drove the Beatles themselves crazy.  Arguments could be made for all versions, certainly. But the fact is, this is how John, Paul, George, and Ringo wanted you to hear these songs. They were probably right; it all just seems to hold together better here.

We all know what happened next. The Beatles would discover marijuana, Dylan, and eventually LSD. They would take their music to hitherto unimagined artistic heights and become a four-headed spokesman of a generation. But I ask you this: As a stripped-down and no-nonsense rock and roll band, did the Beatles ever kick this much ass? I think not. —Richard P

O Nico! Demure melancholic, wanton femme fatale! Warbling siren of ennui and hopelessness! With the defeatist longing of an Old World aristocrat, the deadpan sexuality of a courtesan, and the glazed-eyed fragility of a junkie, Christa Päffgen cultivated an impressive cult of personality. She gallivanted around an abandoned castle in La Dolce Vita, fraternized with the scenesters and freaks at the Factory, and briefly fronted the Velvet Underground. She didn’t conform to any presubscribed roles for female musicians; she wasn’t an earth mother, a self-righteous folkie, or a wide-eyed innocent teen temptress. If anything, she was an ur-goth, an artist plagued by darkness and haunted by her insecurities. Chelsea Girl, her debut as a solo artist, is Nico at her most vulnerable and sad. With her inimitable near-baritone, baroque orchestral accompaniment, and help from talented songwriters (mainly former bandmates Lou Reed and John Cale, and also a pre-California Jackson Browne), she inhabits emotions rarely explored in pop music: heartbreaking, immobilizing indecisiveness in the soaring “the fairest of the seasons,” world-weary detachment in “these days,” and seasonal affective despair in “winter song.” The most explicitly experimental track – “it was a pleasure thing” – is a Celtic death ritual with Nico moaning ethereal high notes over a din of feedback and lacerating guitar. Dylan’s “I’ll Keep it With Mine” – one of the few tracks with no minor chords – serves as a rousing counterpoint to the dour misery mire that surrounds it. Though Nico would later delve into more abstract territory, this record captures all the tragic, twisted beauty that defined one of pop’s most compelling figures. —S Paul Brown