THE REDSKINS - Neither Washington Nor Moscow (1986)

Review by: Eric Pember
Assigned by: Gus Ootjers

Overall, the album sounds like an evolution of what The Jam or Orange Juice were doing late in their careers. Basically, it’s just blue-eyed soul stuff. This particular effort adds political lyrics to the mix. 

Unfortunately, this shares the same problem as a lot of blue-eyed soul stuff, in that the vocalist is trying way too hard. I could forgive that with The Jam or Orange Juice because the music held up, but the music doesn’t really hold up here. While there’s nothing really wrong with it, there’s nothing really special about it either.

That forces me to pay attention to the vocalist, who sounds pretty unbearable. He honestly sounds like an (admittedly) less annoying Mike Ness to me.

Basically, I can see why someone would like this, but I unfortunately cannot. I’m sorry, Gus.

THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS - Flood (1990)

Review by: Joseph Middleton-Welling
Album assigned by: Eric Pember

This is a record about the small things but the things that are also perversely the most important things in the world-like particles!

First a bit of background, ‘They Might be Giants’ (TMBG), ‘Flood’ is their third album and their first for a major label, it’s also probably their most well known and, full admission, the only album of theirs that I’ve heard all the way through. There were only two guys in TMBG at this point John Linsell and John Flansburgh, and they split most of the instruments between them with a few parts played by session musicians. Notably all the percussion on this album is provided by various drum machines. The sound picture is coloured by various synths and organs which combined with the drum machine, lends some of album the feel of an early Magnetic Fields LP or a less frantic Devo. Not that the album is monochromatic, some songs such as ‘Your Racist Friend’ and the closing track ‘Road Movie to Berlin’ tip the balance more strongly towards guitars. A lot of the tracks feature prominent accordion melodies and this combined with the tight songwriting lends the album a good sense of diversity. Binding together the various musical threads on this album is an atmosphere of DIY experimentation. It doesn’t necessarily feel like a band record, more like, perhaps, a group of intelligent (but emotional) scientists piecing together songs together using diagrams, test tubes and a wide range of slightly archaic instruments.

What stops the album turning into a piece of experimental art musik like Throbbing Gristle or Coil is that musically this album also harks back to simpler forms of American music from the 50’s, 60’s and in some cases even earlier. Songs by Carol King and the various Rogers, Hammersteins and Schopenhauers who seemingly wrote all the songs back in this halcyon era are often brought to mind when listening to many of these tracks. By that I mean the songs have simple and catchy melodies that nevertheless bound to formally conservative structures. Verses, choruses and middle eights are all well in evidence here. TMBG even include a 50's cover ‘Istanbul’ that makes the connection to older forms of music explicit. This combination of high quality songwriting in the 'classic' mould combined with somewhat modernistic and unorthodox arrangements helps create a quirky but overall charming aesthetic that draws you in even as it surprises you. Much of this surprise is conveyed by the lyrics.

Lyrically, the songs on this album address potentially trivial subjects but these themes mask deeper and more essential emotions that come to the fore after repeated listens. ‘Birdhouse in Your Soul’ is both about a night light and sung from the perspective of the object itself. Other songs on the album are about being reincarnated as a bag of groceries and the need to wear prosthetic foreheads. When first listening to this album (at least for me) I didn't pay too much attention to the lyrics but I really enjoyed the melodies and the arrangements. After listening a few times I came to notice the quirky subject matter and I was amused. However the problem with 'funny lyrics' is that they often they are only funny or interesting in the short term and after that rapidly become tedious (Weird Al et. al.). With these lyrics it’s the fact that they're often used as cover to talk about some deeper emotional stuff. For example 'Birdhouse' is really a plea for companionship and 'Dead' is a song about deep regret. Obviously the songs are also funny and quirky but if you scratch through the surface there’s often real emotional resonance buried inside.

Take for instance 'Particle Man', which might be the signature song on this record. On first listen it’s easy to get caught up in the bouncy accordion and child like references to a cast of characters that wouldn't be out of place on a Nickleodeon Cartoon. But have a read of this verse:

Person man, person man

Hit on the head with a frying pan

Lives his life in a garbage can

Person man

Is he depressed or is he a mess?

Does he feel totally worthless?

Who came up with person man?

Degraded man, person man

The song is actually about the vacuity of existence in modern late capitalist society and how it leads an unsatisfyible sense of longing and questioning within people at the bottom of the economic pile. Adorno would be proud.

In conclusion this album will worm its way into your head like a tiny particle and then beat you over the head like an angry triangle.

FRANK OCEAN - Blonde (2016)

Review by: Eric Pember
Assigned by: Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan

 

 

I hadn’t really heard Frank Ocean before now. I did like “Pyramids” because of John Mayer’s David Gilmour-esque guitar solo (which is still his only reason for existing, as far as I’m concerned), but that was about it.

I admit that I’m pretty suspicious of this type of music. It seems very calculated to appeal to those who are too smart for normal Top 40 pop, but at the same time feel distanced from truly experimental music. That also describes me relatively well (I’ve taken to calling myself a “contratarian populist” lately), and thus, I should be able to like this music.

However, I just can’t bring myself to do so. I suspect that part of it is modern production standards. I know that sounds like such a rockist thing to say, and it kinda is, but I can’t get myself not to feel that way. I know that rationally, that’s not true, since I quite like Janelle Monae and Kendrick Lamar. Then again, I’m told that both of them throw back to earlier epochs with their sound, so that’s probably why.

(I’m gonna note right now before I go further that I don’t feel like everything should sound like it did in the 1960s, as much as I like the general sound of the era. It’s just the pop production of this decade that really annoys me, somehow.)

I did start to get used to the production after a few tracks, but that’s when I unveiled another layer. Much of this album sounded like a variant on white guy with acoustic guitar (or as Todd in the Shadows calls it, WGWAG) music. It’s just that, buried underneath modernistic production and the trappings of R&B/soul music, it sounds suave enough to lure in the kind of people who’d usually be repelled by music like this.

Thankfully, after that, yet another layer peeled off and the album suddenly started showing actual potential. “Solo (Reprise)” is written and performed by Andre 3000, which is always a treat. “Pretty Sweet” then manages to build off the momentum that interlude created with some pretty clever atmospherics, which make me want to go back and listen to Channel Orange, because I’ve heard that album is full of that kind of thing.

Unfortunately, immediately after that one more layer peeled off, and the onion was revealed to be rotten from the beginning. "Pretty Sweet" is followed by a potentially-justifiable-but-probably-useless spoken word interlude about Facebook, then it unfortunately returns to the modernistic production and WIGWAG stylizations. So much for the promise the preceding two tracks showed, I guess.

The last layer then peels off, and the album just flatlines in a weird mass of Radiohead-esque emptiness that’s probably supposed to mean something, but doesn’t really add up to anything.

Sorry Star Trek II Wrath of Khan, but I can’t bring myself to like this album, although I could if more of it sounded like “Pretty Sweet”.

RUSH - Moving Pictures (1981)

Review by: Michael Strait
Album assigned by: Eric Pember

 

Aight, there’s a whole shitton of things I’d rather be doing right now than reviewing a fucking Rush album, so let’s get this out of the way.

Rush, as far as I’m concerned, are a corny AOR band pretending to be a corny hard rock band pretending to be a corny prog rock band. I didn’t like them when I was 16, I don’t like them now, and unless something changes drastically in my biochemistry I’m not about to start liking them anytime soon. Geddy Lee’s vocals annoy me, not because they’re too high-pitched or womanly but because they’re way too over-the-top, like Bruce Dickinson or some garbage power metal vocalist; he tries so hard to fill every syllable with emotion that I end up feeling nothing whatsoever except the occasional spike of mild irritation. He’s a skilled bassist, and he’s got a good tone, but he rarely comes up with any actual memorable basslines – most of the time he’s just showing off. Same goes for their drummer, mostly – he certainly knows how to play, but he really doesn’t contribute much; most of the time he’s a forgettable background presence, like most rock drummers. Say – why does everyone worship that guy again?

Their guitarist is good, though, and he’s responsible for some of the best moments on this album. I recall his solos on Signals being strings of horrendous pseudo-metal clichés, which means he must have fallen a long way in one year because his solos on this album are actually mostly great. They’re weird and experimental without being inaccessible, and they have gravitas without being too “epic” or “awesome”; it’s almost like he’s playing in the wrong band, actually, ‘cos these things really wouldn’t sound out of place in actual prog rock songs. His riffs are pretty good, too, especially on “Tom Sawyer” – an overrated song, but still probably the second-best song on the album. If it were a little less complex it’d almost sound like it belongs on Who’s Next, ‘cos its intelligently reserved chorus and meaty guitar tones would fit right in. Alas, the singing is still insufferable, but this is Rush – that comes with the package. “Red Barchetta” is good, too, if you can get past how earnestly corny it is; the melody’s good, the riff’s good, and the unusual structure feels unforced and natural. I’ll even grant that it has some emotional resonance, ‘cos earnestly corny is still earnest, and well-applied earnestness can touch the heartstrings on occasion.

Elsewhere? Well, we’ve got “YYZ”, which is a fun little romp through a bunch of riffs, basslines and silly boogies, and that’s where the good stuff ends. The remaining four tracks – which, together, take up over half the album’s length – are all varying degrees of boring and pointless, and I can scarcely remember anything about any of them. My notes tell me that “Limelight” has a similar riff to the one Paul McCartney used in one of the segments on “Band On The Run”, but I can’t for the life of me remember which one, and the melody is barely there at all. It’s four minutes of unremarkable wallpaper, and the next three are the same, except that one of them goes on for ten minutes instead of four. That’d be “The Camera Eye”, which tries hard to be big and epic and ends up sounding perfectly pleasant and dull, like a walk by an English river on a grey and slightly drizzly day; not bad, but near-enough impossible to focus on and certainly impossible to remember when it’s finished. The next two, meanwhile, are so lacking in musical ideas that my notes become useless. I mean, take a look at what I wrote while listening to the last song: “This song has a bassline. It also has guitar stabs. It has vocals. The vocals have effects!” Fuck’s sake, this music exists only in the most technical sense. It’s dull, it’s boring, it’s bland, and I don’t want to spend any more time on it when I could be exploring so much music that’s so much more worthwhile. I’m out.

P.S. The synths are all bloody godawful too. Did I mention that?

NEKO CASE - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood (2006)

Review by: Eric Pember
Album assigned by: Jonathan Hopkins

I’m sorry, but I don’t really know how to handle this one. I think it sounds nice, and better than a lot of other alt-country I’ve heard (let’s not even get started on mainstream country), but I can’t exactly detail why I think that at this time. Part of me thinks that there’s a subliminal effect from really liking Neko Case’s contributions to the New Pornographers, but I also like what I’ve heard from Calexico (who apparently play on this album), so that’s likely not it.

Trying to compare this to another alt-countryish artist I like (Woven Hand) perhaps provides a hint at why I like this. Like Woven Hand, it tries for a distinct atmosphere, unlike seemingly a lot of country music, both mainstream and alternative. Also like Woven Hand, it is a bit samey-sounding, but ultimately most songs in every genre are samey-sounding if you don’t have much of an aptitude for it.

I’ll get back to this album at some point (along with the subsequent ones from her and albums from Calexico) and see if I can figure out why I like this where most alt-country music kinda doesn’t work for me. 

LIMP BIZKIT - Results May Vary (2003)

Review by: Eric Pember
Album assigned by: Victor Guimarães

I was originally going to do an entire Pitchfork-style (but better, hopefully) review, putting this in a cultural context and dissecting the sound and influences of the record. However, one major obstacle got in the way of that: This album is unexpectedly boring.

 

If you made a playlist of radio rock songs of the era, songs from this album wouldn’t stick out from the rest at all, except in a bad way if the next song played was like The White Stripes or The Strokes or something else that stuck out from the general nu-metal sound of the era.

My general take on this kind of music is usually that it’s kinda interesting for one track, but quickly gets dull. This album is definitely no exception.

Durst hardly even raps for most of the album, except for some generic boast lines on Gimmie the Mic. If he did, the album would at least give me some unintentional amusement. 

Instead, he gives the mic to Snoop Dogg on Red Light-Green Light. Dogg has been involved in a lot of bad music (as well as some good, to be fair) over the years. You would think the combination of two infamous personalities in Durst and Dogg would lead to something interesting, but no, the track is just as boring as the other tracks on the album, only it’s boring rap instead of boring rock.

Mercifully, the album starts to become kinda interesting towards its end. After some more generic boast rap on Phenomenon, Creamer (Radio Is Dead) starts asserting the arrogant Durst we all know and ironically love/unironically loathe, even if the sung vocals are still a bit too generic. 

Head For The Barricade is all rapped vocals and screaming and Durst vowing that he’ll literally physically attack his haters, which is honestly the kind of thing I expected from the whole record before listening to it. If listening to it separately, I would probably just start laughing but in this context I’m relieved to have something to write about after all the generic radio rock I was just forced to sit through.

After that comes the infamous cover of The Who’s Behind Blue Eyes. The song was already pretty pompous in its original version, but Daltrey somehow managed to pull it off. Needless to say, Durst takes the pomp and makes it the entire song, which just makes it sound hilarious. I know I just said I wasn’t ready to laugh, but the Speak-N-Spell in the bridge got me.

Drown is supposed to give a cathartic end to the album, but it unfortunately sums it up: Durst intended to break his personal mold, but by that point he had no idea of how music had evolved outside of his bubble, so he just ended up assimilating himself into the mold of everyone else around him.

PANIC! AT THE DISCO - Pretty. Odd. (2008)

Review by: Ed Luo
Album assigned by: Eric Pember

So I remember people talking about this album when it first came out, and me being the snubby anti-mainstream music listener I was back at the time, refused to give it any light of day, thinking it was going to be inferior to any 1960s music that I had been obsessively been listening to. And now, after some adjustment in attitude and occasional goading and eventual assignment from my SO, I can now say that I can definitely appreciate what Panic! at the Disco, or more precisely then-guitarist Ryan Ross, were going for. In one of the most peculiar genre shifts in recent years, Panic! at the Disco, who were one of the handful of successful emo-pop bands in the mid-2000s, made a near-180° shift to 1960s-influenced pop music, with an aspiration to make music akin to the 1967-era Beatles, complete with orchestral arrangements and psychedelic sonic effects. And I’ll have to admit, it almost works.

Almost. The main sticking point is that bandleader Brendon Urie’s vocals do not fit the music at all. The whiny punkish timbre which was retained from the band’s earlier music just sounds really out-of-place betwixt the strings and horns. Ross, who composed the majority of music, gets to sing lead in parts of “Behind the Sea”, “She Had the World”, and “Mad as Rabbits”, and his voice complements the music much better.

The second point is that the songwriting is just not quite up to par. There are some admittedly nice moments, like the retro-garagey riff on “She’s a Handsome Woman” and the pretty Mellotron-led introduction of “The Piano Knows Something I Don't Know”, but I think my problem is that the melodies are, ironically, not 1960s-esque enough. It feels that despite the baroque/vaudeville stylistics, the musical skeletons are still a little too 2000s pop-punk (although that could be just Urie’s vocals distracting me so much), so it all just kinda cancels out on each other. It’s psychedelic in form, but only partially there in spirit, definitely not on the level of Psonic Psunspot, hell, not even on the level of Congratulations.

Still, I do appreciate Pretty. Odd.’s existence overall and the band’s attempt to go against the grain of their image and try something radically different. Being the obstinate psychedelia/art rock fanatic that I am, I wouldn’t mind to see more out-of-left-field 1960s psych-loving music out there, amidst the 1980s nostalgia that’s been currently going on. Also this review’s probably the longest one I’ve written so far, so thanks for that, Eric :P

P.S. The music video for “Nine in the Afternoon” is possibly worth seeing, if only for the over-the-top (faux-)1960s oddness of it all.

GROVER WASHINGTON JR. - Mister Magic (1975)

Review by: Syd Spence

Album assigned by: Eric Pember

I’ve always loved the idea of jazz fusion. Take the blistering Coltrane style sax solo, slap it over a thick diamond hard funk groove, and you’d be nearing audio perfection. Yet, barring a few Miles Davis albums, I’ve been perennially disappointed by it and I think I’ve figured out why. See most of the Jazz Fusion artists are old bop pros, far from their experimental youth. They reach the ‘70s and go, “the kids are diggin this funk stuff, with its simple rhythms and electric bass. Hey, why don’t we combine smooth jazz melodies with these popular rhythms. Then we will make so much dough we can start buying smack again.” Essentially, a lot of jazz fusion like Herbie Hancock, Weather Report, etc sounds to my ears like proto Kenny G. It’s a little more academic (with it’s weird time signatures), but in the end it’s generally easy listening, and lacking that Coltrane edge. It’s like the Jazz equivalent of AOR, it’s not quite adult contemporary but it’s getting there. 

Anyways, that leaves us to this album, Mr. Magic, which exudes literally all those qualities. Its melodies are smooth, the instrumentation is tight, the arrangements are a little quirky (to a non jazz ear). But the whole thing is so damn safe that it’s just ready made for a some adventurous elevator. 

Case in point, the star of the show, the 12 minute long centerpiece, “Earth Tones.” The track starts with the band creating a tremendous near psychedelic ambience with it’s mix of electric piano, animal sounds and bass noodling. And then horns and drums, bass come in and it sounds great, just thick and awesome, but then your mind focuses on the melody and … it’s just, well it sounds like music used for scene changes in a ‘70s made for tv movie. Then they mess with the time signature and Grover comes in does some jazz soloing business and it sounds great again, and then it’s time for another scene change in The Young and the Restless. And this happens throughout the 12 minutes, cool jazz funkery, periodicly being interupted by that all too friendly melody. And this is the most adventurous and interesting track of the bunch, completely ruined by such a conventional melody. 

The rest of the album varies’ from smooth jazz meets hollywood strings to limp funk tunes. The best of which is probably Black Frost. It’s pretty much a straight funk tune that’s just missing that James Brown spark. It’s not bad, but not really something you need either. 

Overall, I don’t like jazz fusion but if you do, you’d probably love this record. Just go in expecting that cool smooth academic jazz fusion like the Weather Report. Me, I’ll continue fantasizing about John Coltrane joining Parliament. 

THE STRATFORD 4 - The Revolt Against Tired Noises (2002)

Review by: Eric Pember
Album assigned by: Dominic Linde

This album is very much old-school indie rock, in the good way.

While old-school indie rock is generally middle of the road sounding, it nevertheless is at the core of my musical DNA. In fact, it actually is part my DNA more than the kind of indie music that is usually popular these days, despite me being of the age where I should prefer the latter to the former, but that’s a discussion for another time.

Consequently, this was a very pleasing listen for me. I did detect a sort of hooklessness, although that could well remedy itself with additional listens. After all, I didn’t get Yo La Tengo for the first couple of listens either. Regardless, it’s always nice to discover more music of this type.

Apparently, one of the members in this band played with the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, which might explain the hooklessness, because I detected a hooklessness in Howl too. However, this sounds a good deal more sonically interesting than Howl did to me. I’m aware intellectually it’s not THAT much more sonically interesting, but again, this sort of indie rock guitar sound really speaks to me beyond the level of common sense.

I also really dug the last track, since I dig long jams in general, particularly long rock jams.

I’ll definitely revisit this album at some point in the future. For now, I think I’d rather get to some more of this band’s better contemporaries, since I haven’t listened to enough of them yet.

YEZDA URFA - Sacred Baboon (1989)

Review by: Eric Pember

Assigned by: A. A.

This feels like some sort of Frank Zappa-style parody of prog. The vocalist sounds like a less-distinguished Jon Anderson. The songwriting is unstable to the point where the songs feel randomly assembled. There is a heavy use of vibraphones and similar unconventional instruments that have been traditionally beloved by prog. It’s so whacked that it should work just from that alone, and actually kinda does.

However, from what I can tell these guys were completely serious about the music they were making, and from there, you start to notice all the problems. While I honestly quite like Anderson and consider him kinda underrated, this vocalist doesn’t really add any spice at all. The weak songwriting undercuts any emotion they could elicit from the listener. Most of the instruments don’t really add anything to the songs. 

It’s worth a listen just to know how whacked-out prog can get under the right circumstances, but you probably won’t want to come back to this again.

[Note: this album was recorded in 1976]

EDAN - Beauty and the Beat (2005)

Review by: Syd Spence
Album assigned by: Eric Pember

There are many types of disappointing albums. There is the kind that the hype machine has made the album’s reputation grow to monstrous proportions, to the point where anything but the second coming of Pet Sounds would leave you feeling underwhelmed. This is particular popular with the website Pitchfork and their numerous flavors of the month. Then there is the aggravated form of this phenomenon, where it's not just some hipster journal trying to suck your eyeballs for attention, but from the grand whole of western music criticism. This album is the greatest ever says every learned soul in all of the rock ‘n’ roll journals, but you stumble upon it and it just leaves you flat. I've experienced this with many sacred cows like Who's Quadrophenia or Who's Tommy. In fact most of Who's catalogue. Then there is a band who you held in high regard, whose last album really lit a fire in your soul and you are just on pins and needles waiting for that next musical hit. Then they release it and … Oooo boy, is it not as good. Hell, it might even be a good record analyzed by it's mere lonesome but compared to that last masterstroke it might as well be nickleback. Pretty much the totality of the Rolling Stone's post Exile records fit into this category, because lets face it, it's only rock n' roll and not perfection.

And then there is something different, an album that isn't bad at all, nor is it of a lesser quality then it’s predecessor. No, the album is so good, so genius, so phenomenal that it's very existence taints other albums in it's genre. It's not disappointing, it just makes all of its competitors disappoint in comparison. Edan's Beauty and the Beat is one such example of this phenomenon I've listened to a multitude of classic hip hop masterpieces, and yes, many of them were good, but none of them hit that sweet spot that Beauty and the Beat hit. Why? Because this record is exceptional in production, lyrics and form.

One click in any musical encyclopedia will mention that this is a psychedelic hip hop record. That alone makes it unique. Now a multitude of hip hoppers may make the odd trippy song or make an ode to a non alcohol/weed/codeine substance (ex. D-12's Purple Pills), but these were one off tracks and generally the artist got back to the business at hand,whether it be bravado or tales of ghetto living. Beauty and Beat on the other hand, drips lysergia from every pore, especially in regard to its production. 

Edan is an excellent DJ, you can just feel how long he scoured record store crates. searching for obscure samples to use on this record, and boy did he hit a main vein. He pillages the rubble of '60s psychedelia to fill this album with psychedelic nuggets. As a huge fan of 60's psychedelia, I've always been delighted when I find a song that Edan has sampled on this record and so far I've only found two, which are Music Machine's Hey, Joe and Pretty Thing's Wall of Destiny, featured on Making Planets and Murder Mystery respectively. That’s quite an impressive feat considering the amount of obscure psychedelia on my hard drive.

Edan doesn't just let the obscure samples do the majority of the work, like say a NWA's Express Your Self type jam. No, he expertly blends, manipulates, and adds effects to these tracks. There are weird lazer beams, bubbling cauldrons, backmasked orchestras and god knows what else. All painstakingly gathered to inflame your brain's novelty centers.. Every note, every sample, sounds just perfectly placed in it's surreal beauty and it all leads to one mesmerizing whole. Each track progresses into the next making the albums feel less like a mixtape and more like a singular piece, a psychedelic suite of hip hop perfection.

Though the production of this album is phenomenal, this isn't just some DJ Shadow style record, No this is rap music and Edan is a MC as well. Now his flow is not the best, but compared to the epitome of producer turned MC, Kanye West, he's a goddamn Biggie Smalls. His style is that of an urban white kid with an abstract flair, like a streetwise kid that went to art school. It's pretty decent, but I feel his collaborators steal the show on their tracks. For example, on Torture Chamber, Percee P spits a frenetic, terrifying ode to his rap prowess, comparing his rhymes to the heinous murders of famous serial killers. It's fantastic in conveying menace in a psychedelic stream of cruel consciousness, like he's the rap Charles Manson.

Though this record does make use of the typical subject matter of hip hop like Percee P's torturous rap bravado, it tackles something I've not heard in hip hop before. It uses poetry to elucidate the psychedelic experience. It reminds me of this sample off this psytrance track, about the mysterious ancient Indian Drug Soma. The sample states, “Soma is not really a plant. Poetry is not really language. Soma is poetry.” or as Edan puts it. “I use pens like hallucinogenics, so who can pretend my music isn't a beautiful thing.” Let's use the track Murder Mystery as an example of this beautiful thing. In it Edan uses the hazy dark psychedelic Pretty Things sample to rhyme abstractly. A sample of his verse reads,

        Pour the hourglass sand in the rusted tin can

        The looking glass man dressed in robes from Japan

        The chauffeur of the van with the globe in his hand

        The roller coaster lands in the ocean


        Alas, the commotion is matched by the force of the splash

        The source of the blast was a porcelain gat

I have no idea what any of that means but it's sounds magnificent. It's a collection of beautiful surreal imagery, that leads your mind in novel and strange corridors, making you feel like those hallucinogenic pens are beginning to take hold. This abstract imagery is not unheard of in rock (The girl with the kaleidoscope eyes, etc), but I've yet to hear anything like this on a rap record. Well, at least in a psychedelic sense, Ol' Dirty Bastard does seem to convey what I think crack cocaine would be like, but I digress.

The last point I'd like to make is that this album is a brief 39 minutes long, with not a single duff track or lame skit. I can't think of a single one of my other favorite hip hop records that pull off that feat. Biggie's Ready to Die has that lame sex skit. Dr Dre's 2001 has all those songs that aren't The Next Episode and Forgot about Dre. Hell, even albums that have no bad tracks like say Enter the 36 chambers, go on a bit too long. This record is a sweet 39 minutes and frankly always leads you wanting more.

Edan's Beauty and the Beat is disappointing in this regard. Edan has yet to make another LP. Yeah, he made a mix of oldschool hip hop tracks (reimagined Edan style) in 2009, but he's yet to make a proper LP. It's disappointing, cause the things I would do for some more Edan, but perhaps it's for the best. It's better to leave with a bang than make a mediocre sequel. Though, honestly, in these 11 years, I've hungered for some goats head soup. Oh well, I guess i'll just have to endure with whatever hip hop Quadrophenia Kanye's cooked up as of late. Pitchfork said it was great, so I know I won't be disappointed.

BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB - Howl (2005)

ASSIGNED BY THE HOST: Great Overlooked Artists
Review by: Eric Pember

This album is an unusual case to me. The concept is fairly clever, and one I probably would’ve loved had I listened to it when I was a teenager. Now, however, it just kinda sounds bland to me.

I dunno exactly why. I tried to read RateYourMusic reviews to try to figure out what exactly my issue was, and I saw the name “The Black Crowes” thrown around. I find them to be similarly bland, so that might be my issue here. 

Just to be clear, I don’t dislike all throwback roots-rock. I love The Black Keys and The White Stripes, and I’ve intended to listen more to Calexico for a while now. There’s just something about this that doesn’t quite click with me. It might be the oddly sterile sound, which you can say about The Black Crowes but not really any of those other bands (regardless of your overall feelings on them).

It’s not necessarily the case of having nothing to say, because it’s not like Dan Auerbach has anything to say either, but The Black Keys still sound good more often than not. It’s just that the sound is itself personalityless. 

The only track that really works with me is “The Line”, and that’s probably just because I’m a sucker for meaningful sprawl. Even then, it doesn’t quite click with me like The Boo Radleys’ The White Noise Revisited (to name an example of a truly mindblowing ending track) does.

Apparently, this is fairly atypical of the rest of their discography, so I might still need to listen to it. Their other stuff has been compared to Jesus and Mary Chain, so I’d probably like it just for that alone.

GENESIS - A Trick of the Tail (1976)

Review by: Eric Pember
Album assigned by: Ifran Hidayatullah

People tend to assume that Genesis went straight into pop after Peter Gabriel left. That assertion is quite incorrect. In fact, for this album and the next few, most of the songwriting credits still went to Banks and Rutherford.

That would lead to bad results on the next few albums, but worked out well on this one. In fact, one could easily argue that this, not Lamb, was the culmination of Genesis’s steady improvement in quality.

From Genesis To Revelation was pretty great, but they had a pretty tricky time becoming an actual prog band. It could be argued that they only fully managed it on Selling England By The Pound, in fact.

On this album, they do a good job of keeping even the story-based songs like “Squonk” musically interesting in a way that Gabriel-era Genesis often struggled with. The album overall is more low-key than Gabriel-era Genesis, but to its benefit, because it allows them to tighten the songwriting. They were already working on this on Selling England and Lamb Lies, but both of them still suffer from their second halves being fairly aimless. 

“Mad Man Moon” and “Robbery, Assault And Battery” still kinda suffer from the aimlessness, but the rest of the tracks are perfectly composed. In fact, “Los Endos” does what was previously unthinkable for the band and makes a complete instrumental sound sonically interesting.

The only real flaws on the album are the slight aimlessness of those two aforementioned tracks, and the near-complete lack of Steve Hackett on the album (save for some soloing on “Ripples”). However, even Gabriel-era Genesis dramatically underused him, so it’s of no surprise that continues here.

My favourite track on this album is “A Trick of the Tail”, which positioned on the album like it was, almost comes off as a farewell to “Classic Genesis”. By the time they were able to write good songs again, they would already be well within their pop phase. The pop phase, of course, has its own charms, but this is not the place for me to talk about them. 

UNIVERS ZERO - Heatwave (1986)

Review by:Tom Hadrian Kovalevsky
Album assigned by: Eric Pember

Save for the topiary, everything shifts and changes at random within my line of vision. Outside, the heat rises from the ground and makes everything seem almost liquid, as though I am dwelling underwater in a glowing palace of glass and gold. The world stretches and distorts and makes itself into new shapes without my influence and I am caught up in the rhythm of the funeral march once more, stretching eternally, seemingly without end. Ah, to say that it were painless would be to lie and pretend that nothing had happened; to smile and pretend that it was over, the chairs packed away, the curtains drawn, but from here, I can see everything as it becomes due to me. The music draws to an unnatural lilting halt, and somewhere a woman laughs and a glass is dropped, for these are indeed dangerous times.

JELLYFISH - Spilt Milk (1993)

Review by: Eric Pember
Album assigned by: Jonathan Hopkins

I’ve wanted to listen to this album forever, and I’m glad that Jonathan forced me to finally get around to it.

I also listened to Bellybutton so I could have proper context for this review, and I have to say that album was curiously light on hooks, although the arrangements were pretty good. The great “Baby’s Coming Back” was an exception.

That song feels like a model for this album. Brilliant character assassinations (sometimes on the self, sometimes on others) with great hooks and arrangements. Spilt Milk also adds one more thing that isn’t really in “Baby’s Coming Back” or on Bellybutton: some real rocking energy. Thankfully, these guys are smart enough to stay in their own lane and don’t try co-opting grunge in the process. The closest they come to it is “All Is Forgiven”, and even that is leavened with ELO-style harmonies. 

Speaking of ELO, in a lot of ways, this album sounds like ELO would if Jeff Lynne had some taste (which he didn’t, but we love him for it anyway).

If you want to take a listen to one song to figure out if this album is for you, take a listen to “New Mistake”. It’s the best exemplar of everything Spilt Milk does right.

Unfortunately, Jellyfish would release no more albums after this. It is worth thinking about whether they would’ve gotten weirder or tried to become more commercial if they had recorded a third album. Either way, we’ll never know, and maybe that’s for the best.

THE GUESS WHO - Canned Wheat (1969)

Review by: Jaime Vargas Sánchez
Album assigned by: Eric Pember

I had never listened to the Guess Who before, except for “American Woman”, of course; so while I knew they came more or less from the era of “classic rock” I did not know their style. So I was pleasantly surprised when, after the bizarre “out of tune music box” thing that opens the album (and the purpose of which I still struggle to ascertain), my ears were treated to “No Time”, which seems to derive all of their elements from Buffalo Springfield. You know, the kinetic rhythm section, active bass lines, high harmonies, country guitars, even the acid fuzz guitar solos. And that is fine with me. (Researching a bit I learned that this song was re-recorded for the American Woman album and released as a single, so if you have heard it before, it’s probably not the version I’m discussing here).

“Minstrel Boy” deceptively continues with the soft country-rock vibe, but it’s soon clear that the Guess Who are not afraid of variety and inserting some more sophisticated sounds (something the aforementioned Springfield were also fond of, to think of it).

Case in point, the single tracks “Laughing” and “Undun” that follow. “Laughing” is a well-constructed melodic pop song that seems tailor-made to make a splash in AM radio, and “Undun” adds unexpected soft jazz elements in the electric guitar and flute solo, which underpin a veritable vocal tour de force. And this streak concludes with “6 A.M. or Nearer”, which combines bachelor-pad-cocktail-jazz guitar chords in the verses with a Woodstock-ready California style chorus that, again, reminds me of the Buffalos or CSNY.

After this, “Old Joe”, while still in a melodic mold, takes us to a more rootsy, country-soul territory, and the pace then quickens a bit with “Of a Dropping Pin”, an infectious roots-rock number with R&B and gospel elements. Then, the piece de resistance of the album – the 11 minutes of “Key”. This one takes us back to the Woodstock aesthetics, with the rhythm section giving their all throughout (the jam section is mainly percussion-based, and it even has the mandatory drum solo to finish the proceedings) and some very welcome folk elements popping up here and there.

And we conclude with the jazzy ditty “Fair Warning”, with a rather bizarre spoken part that reminds me of something I can’t recall now. Speaking of ditties, many songs are linked by small segue bits – classical piano bits, Travis picking guitars, sitar noodlings, treated piano chords – which I think make them sound like trying too hard to invoke the spirit of the White Album, but that’s a minor complaint.

By the way, I enjoyed immensely Randy Bachman’s guitar solos throughout, but to me the hero of the record is Burton Cummings – not only he sings perfectly throughout, with finesse, flexibility and power, tender in the softest moments, raucous in the more driving points, soulful and controlled, but his keyboard touches are always totally appropriate and memorable and the couple of jazzy flute solos he has in “Undun” and “6 A.M. or Nearer” are highlights as well.

Bottom line: If the only thing you’ve heard from the Guess Who is the (terrific) “American Woman” single (or worse, the cover by Lenny Kravitz!) and you have this mental image of some king of Canadian Grand Funk Railroad, don’t be fooled by that impression, and if you like late 60s rootsy classic rock, don’t hesitate to give a listen to “Canned Wheat”. You’re in for a treat. Thumbs up.

TC MATIC - L’Apache (1982)

Review by: Eric Pember
Album assigned by: Mark Maria Ahsmann

I’m always down for post-punk, so this album was a good recommendation for me. I’m so married to that school of sound that I knew that I’d be keeping this album for my collection after only listening to the first three tracks.

The sound here is reminiscent of Ian Dury, in that they’re a very tight funk-influenced band backing up an eccentric-sounding vocalist. The music is less diverse and inventive than Dury’s, however. Nonetheless, their music still has a certain cleverness to it that makes it attractive to me.

The English language lyrics were unexpected, but are a pleasant surprise. Considering that and the accessible (by the standards of the time) sound, it’s a wonder that these guys didn’t make any waves anywhere outside of Belgium. I fully expect them to become more well-known on an international scale after one of the members dies, like what happened with Soda Stereo (who I still have to listen to in full sometime).

CROSS RECORD - Wabi-Sabi (2016)

Review by: Eric Pember
Album assigned by: Dinar Khayrutdinov

This album is a descendent of the Mazzy Star vibe. If you know that band, you pretty much know what this album sounds like. The record kinda bored me at first, but started gripping itself into me about midway through. I’m not sure how often I’ll come back to this, but it’s worth having in the collection.

ORBITAL - In Sides (1996)

Review by: Charly Saenz
Album assigned by: Eric Pember

This album is pure Electronica, without major risks or surprises but lots of energy and a mission. Mostly instrumental, magnificent bass lines and decorating synths flourish here and there. It kicks off with “The Girl With The Sun In Her Head”, a title that already indicates one of the strong intentions of the album, that is Ecology. Yeah Greenpeace and all. 

“Petrol” with its birds effects is quite clear in its message too, the beat is heavily repeated but the song is slightly shorter. 

The piece that stands out in the album, is “The Box”, a multi-part song, with some welcome subtlety, will gradually grow on you with its pulsating bass and the little details here and there. Engaging electronica.

“Dŵr Budr” works on some effects that evoke water with some ominous sound that slightly grows and turns momentarily into a vocal theme. Another long song with a ritual dance bit in the middle, that becomes something else at about the 7 minute mark, loses a little focus but it’s a highlight in any case.

“Adnans”,  some sort of tale about robotic flower blossoming in terms of sound, has a background melody that should be more prominent. In the second part some ethereal harmonies take over, and were it not for the drone drums it could be a bit of Alan Parsons Project in the wild.

Not much to say about “Out There Somewhere”, a song that is perfect for a Sports Program intro. 

A good electronica album that won’t surely disappoint any fan of the genre.

VENETIAN SNARES - Rossz Csillag Alatt Született (2005)

Review by: Tom Hadrian Kovalevsky
Album assigned by: Eric Pember

On Wednesdays, I walk a blind friend of mine home from school. A few weeks ago, the main road was far too congested for us to take - cars swelling up on the main road, while children of every imaginable side took up the path, swarming around each other, shouting and mewling, throwing non-threatening punches at each other, which would only lead to her getting irritated and bashing at their ankles with her cane; it would have been a terrible idea through and through - so we take a back road instead, which would have still gotten us to the library she lived above, with a mere addition of 5 minutes to the walk. 

As we are about to cross the road, we lock arms, and I ask her if she is familiar with a musician who operates under the name of Venetian Snares. “That’s a kind of blind. Fairly stupid name for an artist, don’t you think?”. Her reply comes out quickly, seething with dislike. “So you have?”

“I suppose. What I have heard; that album with the Hungarian title” - which is obviously Rossz csillag alatt született - “is not very good; not in terms of the other electronic music i’ve heard anyway. It tries too hard to be dark; do you know what the track titles mean?” “What don’t you like about it? I’d say that the sampling is at least terribly beautiful -“

She tramples a few dead leaves on the pavement and accidentally lurches forwards, then laughs in an impossibly self-aware manner. “Nevermind”. It wouldn’t have been the first time it has happened with her; she is constantly laughing about the incident with the shopping trolley, the countless times her friends have gotten too distracted by their surroundings and let her run into metal poles, and so on and so forth. The list goes on without end, and the various scratches and marks and scars she has from these incidents, cropping up in such unexpected places - a small, barely noticeable line on her right arm running up from the thumb, a notch on her forehead, the slight limp she retains from the time she fractured her ankle - are reminiscent of the jarring unexpected elements of the album, cropping up against a pointillistic orchestral canvas, jarring and ugly and marring what could be thought of as a thing of beauty, completely separate from what it’s meant to be-

which is probably the intended effect.

I think again about the human comparison again. The asphalt on the road is sizzling and the cicadas blare their hideous natural rhythm into the air, where it echoes into the sky, around the buildings, rather like a drone; shrill and staccato, almost like breakbeats. My friend curls her hand around the soft plastic tip of her cane anxiously, and asks me rather curtly what I think about what happened to Allison - of course. She’s a well liked girl, always the shining star of parties, gladly delighting and indulging in drugs, sex, teenage excesses, the things we’re both meant and not meant to do during these years, but she has fallen to the most tragic mistake of all; that of human carelessness, having run into a car a few weeks ago.

Allison’s in a hospital bed at this moment most likely, and her skin has probably lost the thick orange tincture it’s gained from spray-tanning; but she’s surrounded by gifts and flowers and the cards of well-wishers, so she’ll be fine, no doubt. I saw it myself. It’s nothing serious, but there’s something mortifying about the closeness to death; she dragged her fingers along the sepulchre’s lips, kissed its calcified forehead — and that is the truth about Rossz csillag alatt született. For that moment of grim realisation in both her eyes and those of the driver; when she looked up, and aware that she had no hope of getting away, still stooped before the car’s head, and upon impact, splayed upon the bonnet - eyes wide open, mouth agape, with strands of artificially blonde hair, running around and into it like rivers into a sea, as she bent further backwards and onto the shining red hulk of the car, somehow sensing in a vapid way that the hours spent on her eyebrows and eyelashes, and the money spent on her nails - she might be a corpse, but by god, no matter what it took, she’d need to be the most attractive one at the morgue, come hell or high water she would be - before resting tragically upon the car’s bonnet with minor yet grave injury - like a martyr, a plastic religious icon. The impact of something conventionally beautiful, coming to a grave and ugly collision with a metallic monolith, relentless and complex. That is what the album is about, the clashing of delicacy and bluntness. That is the connection I share with it. 

It is such an odd bird, I must not let it fly away.

My friend sneezes. We’re at the library.