JANDEK - Ready for House (1978)

Review by: Jaime Vargas Sánchez
Album assigned by: Andreas Georgi (who’s going to pay for this)

I quickly sampled the album and my first impression is that just thinking that I have to listen to 43 minutes of this makes me wanna curl up in a corner and weep.

It’s off key vocals without power nor color, backed by some amateurish banging at some zither like instrument. Ah no, it’s apparently a guitar. When you can’t identify an instrument that plays solo it means that whoever is playing it is SO UNSKILLED that cannot even make it sound like itself.

Okay, I cannot stand this. I don’t like it. Nobody does. Everybody who says they like it are lying and being pretentious. This is an offense on humanity. MAKE IT STOP. MAKE. IT. STOP.

Oh, wait a moment.

I realised I’m not forced to do this.

I can make it stop myself.

Done.

FUCK.

YOU.

DADDY YANKEE - Mundial (2010)

Review by: Nina A.
Album assigned by: Jaime Vargas Sánchez

I keep trying to get Spotify to play this record but all I hear is the playlist to which Fanta runs its brand promotion tied to the world cup series on a beach party. See, this reggaeton thing was for some reason as hugely popular as europop (another genre that revolves hugely around aggressively beating you over the head with simplistic repetitive beats and annoying vocal hooks for the duration of the song) but really the only context I see for a music like that nowadays is to mindlessly blast it through the speakers of the bungee jumping machine at the beach under the hot summer sun. It is not even fit to be the background music they play between the X-factor auditions! Like who listens to this stuff? How did it end up in the charts? Can anyone even relate emotionally to this? I know I stopped paying attention after the first track because this repetitive plateau of high after high after high all at the same volume and intensity, it cannot captivate your attention, let alone move your soul. Furthermore, you have read, I presume, how songwriting committees have evaluated that radio-friendly songs nowadays have to hit a new high every 6 seconds in order to keep the attention of the ever station-switching listener in his car. Yeah, but how can you top high after high after high, if you never relax the tension? Tension and relaxation until an eventual resolution, that's the secret to a great many awesome songs in the pop canon!!

No, that was actually my first listen impression and it is totally not fair to the record. In fact, even on my first listen I noticed the attitude in the opening track “El Mejor De Todos Los Tiempos” and recognised its relative uniqueness in the bailando & vuvuzela context, and after a second listen I can confirm that the first two tracks here are actually legitimately cool. Most of the following tracks on the record are also not without their merits — even occasionally triggering my nostalgia for the times most simple that have long since passed (even if this record did actually come out as late as 2010) and making me admire the Spanish language and the Latin beats that really have their own logic and effect on the body and mind. That said, there are still some tracks (“La Despedida” to quote one) that can only fall under the generic bailando noise category. There is even the obligatory FIFA song (“Grito Mundial”, not eventually used for the 2010 World Cup series for reasons explained properly in Wikipedia) - I mean, the album is called Mundial... But after a thorough and dedicated listen I end up wondering if Daddy Yankee isn’t kinda my daddy now because this record certainly has a lot to recommend it… yeah...

GREEN DAY - American Idiot (2004)

Review by: Jaime Vargas Sánchez
Album assigned by: Graham Warnken

My only memories of Green Day were when they were on the radio a lot around the release of “Dookie”, so for me they were always this young pop-punk band, so when I read in the press that they were doing a conceptual rock opera thing I was thinking “Huh? Are they the right band to do this? Wouldn’t it be boring? Pop punk only has so much diversity and when you go for a concept album you need musical diversity”.

Or course I was not being aware that 10 years had passed since “Dookie”, and another 12 have passed since they released “American Idiot” to the day in which I’m listening to it for the first time.

First of all, I will not comment on the plot and the concept, for one simple reason: I would need to pay attention to the lyrics, and that would be something for a time when I can focus enough on them.

I don’t know if in the time span between Dookie and American Idiot they had already transcended their old sound, but in this record they sound quite more diverse than simply punky pop (although “St. Jimmy” – actually the second half of “Are We The Waiting / St. Jimmy”; a lot of tracks come in pairs – is totally classic punk). But the energy is there, oh boy is it there. The guitars jump at you with classic rock abandon, the drums are precise yet lively and the bass holds the ground as it’s supposed to do. Check the title track for an example – it’s exhilarating.

Green Day asserted that they had done their homework and studied classic rock operas and it shows. They said their main inspiration was “Quadrophenia” and I can agree – but if anything, it sounds like Quad if Quad had been done by the Who of 1965 rather than the Who of 1973. But that’s not the only discernible influence; take the second track and arguably the tour de force of the album, “Jesus of Suburbia”, a nine minute monster in several parts. Not only there are very strong hints of Ziggy Stardust here and there, but the third section (“I don’t care”) is so much in the same rhythm as the “I have to know” part of “Gethsemane” from Jesus Christ Superstar – and it’s so totally appropriate in a meta level – that it cannot be accidental.

Diversity is also a mark of the “paired” tracks: the “Are we the waiting” section of that track I mentioned above has nothing to do with the “St. Jimmy” section; “Give me Novocaine / She’s a rebel” repeats the trick: the first part is funky and acoustic, the second is punk pop at its most direct; “Holiday / Boulevard of Broken Dreams” sounds like the reggaeified Clash in its first part (excellent!), and like Oasis in the second (damn!). “Wake me up when September ends” is the expected acoustic/power ballad, and its placement in the album makes it the equivalent of the typical Broadway “11 o’clock song” (clever!). Then “Homecoming” tries to repeat the trick of “Jesus of Suburbia” (it’s even a little longer) but not quite succeeding as much, although having the two guys not named Billie Joe contribute (and sing) a section is a welcome idea (in addition to a possible nod at “Tommy”).

In short, even taking the concept out of the equation, the album is an enjoyable romp and its opening stretch is certainly good; I’d nominate the entire sequence of “American Idiot”, “Jesus of Suburbia” and “Holiday” (a pity about the “Boulevard” part – sorry guys but Oasis????) as the best part of the album. Thumbs totally up.

JEAN MICHEL JARRE - Équinoxe (1978)

Review by: Ed Luo

Album assigned by: Jaime Vargas Sánchez

The second of French composer Jean Michel Jarre’s string of progressive electronic albums that gained him mainstream success in the late 1970s, after 1976’s Oxygène. I really liked Oxygène when I first listened to it a couple months back, and Équinoxe is a fine follow-up to that. The composition throughout stays at a moderately uptempo pace, with the dynamics and different themes shifting consistently so it doesn’t become too monotonous while still keeping you in a trance.

And then it ends with a bit of what sounds like street organ music, which is a hoot.

Anyways, if you’re a fan of other progressive electronic composers like Vangelis, Klaus Schulze and the like, listening to Équinoxe (and Oxygène) is well worth your time.

VARIOUS ARTISTS (Compiled by DAVID TOOP) - Ocean of Sound (1996)

ASSIGNED BY THE HOST: Great Compilation Albums
Review by: Jaime Vargas Sánchez

Something sounds while you walk by. It will keep sounding even when you are not there, and your mind will have been attracted to something else.

Or maybe not. Maybe your mind is still remembering and playing with what you heard earlier.

In the classical music paradigm, a musical piece was something that developed in time. It went to places. It changed, evolved, and in the apex of the symphonic language’s growth in the 19th century, even direct repetition was frowned upon, because it made no sense to embark on a journey to get back where one started. It was an object, and a narrative, the soundtrack of an era where progress was king and the end of knowledge was theorized to be near.

David Toop’s book “Ocean of Sound”, for which this compilation servers as a soundtrack of sorts, deals with the opposite of that. The lazy description would be that it deals with ambient music and similar, but actually it talks about a kind of music that transcends genres; a music that seems to be in a sort of stasis. And so we find here ambient, yes, but also classical music, jazz (free and fusion), musique concrète,treated field recordings (many by Toop himself), rock, electronica… and well known names such as Les Baxter, Holger Czukay, Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis (both at their most electric), My Bloody Valentine, Harold Budd, John Cage, and of course Brian Eno.

The best thing about this compilation is the sequencing. Every track flows seamlessly into the next (so much that in some cases an element that wasn’t there before, such as a vocal, prompted me to see that, yes, it was another track, and on a more attentive listening it was apparent that actually the entire instrumentation was different yet I had not noticed). As minimalist music gives way to recordings of chimes, as boat horns and wildlife get juxtaposed with experimental jazz, we understand how time works here. We are not witnessing a journey. We are taking a walk. Our surroundings change – but not with any sense of inevitability. The music is not the same as a minute ago, but in the same way that it changed like this, it could have changed any other way, and yet there’s not a lack of cohesion.

A good summation could be the Ornette Coleman track included. It’s not directed anywhere per se. But even if we could say it’s directionless, it’s not aimless. It’s beautiful music that simply “is”. But if you are preparing yourself to be awash in a sea of rhythmic fluidity and aural massage, the tracklist is subversive since the start, as the album begins with King Tubby’s dub reggae – by no means a kind of music lacking in pulse – and settles for a while in a groove provided by Herbie Hancock first and Aphex Twin later before moving to stiller places just when you thought you were in the coolest club ever. Notice however how the stasis Toop mentioned is still there – all three songs sound like they are moving but in reality they are not actually going anywhere.

The inclusion of Debussy’s “Prélude a l’après-midi d’un faune” is a given since Toop sees him as the genesis of 20th century music, and it’s interesting that in the company of the other tracks, this composition, which at its time was revolutionary in that it seemed to paint a still picture – none of the “telling a story” pretensions of Lisztian tone poems – sounds like having a lot of movement in comparison. It works a bit less with the included Velvet Underground song, which I think has too much of a traditional dynamic to fit. In that regard I think the My Bloody Valentine selection works much better. It’s also curious to hear the well-known “Fire” theme from the Beach Boys’ “Smile” here – actually in its Smiley Smile “Fall Breaks and Back to Winter” guise, no doubt because it was the only official version of it at the time of the compilation – and noticing how well it works.

By now I think it’s clear that I like the album. That I recommend the album. Maybe you did not make an impression from my words. It’s all right – just go listen to it if you can. After all, to paraphrase Brian Eno’s manifesto, much of this music can be as ignorable as it is interesting. As background noise I far prefer it to TV. But do listen.

Summing up will make me sound like I was getting somewhere, which defeats the entire philosophy of the sonic ocean.

So I just keep on walking.

THE SMITHS - Meat Is Murder (1985)

Review by: Michael Strait
Album assigned by: Jaime Vargas Sánchez

I’ve nothing revolutionary to say about The Smiths. Have they ever made a bad album? Probably not. Have they ever even made an album that was anything less than great? Well, I don’t think so. Is this, nonetheless, probably their weakest? Yeah, I guess. “Meat Is Murder” is a bad song, after all, and that’s a rare thing to find on a Smiths album. I’ve no problem with Morrissey preaching his vegetarian beliefs – I’m no vegetarian myself, but if you believe you’re saving lives I think you’re entitled to act like it – but the song is just kinda dreary; it’s got a piano playing a fairly hackneyed, generic little line and some really corny bleating sheep samples here and there, and Morrissey’s really not making much sense. “Death for no reason is murder”? U wot, m8? Murder is the premeditated and unlawful taking of another life – “death for no reason” encompasses anything from manslaughter to death by misadventure. You sure you wanna go through with this line of reasoning, Moz? Was Princess Diana murdered, too? Ah, wait, don’t answer that…

Ehm, anyway, now that I’ve got the bad stuff out of the way I can focus on the cool shit. Firstly, Marr’s being his usual self on this album, which means his guitar not only sounds like it’s glowing but makes everything else on the album sound sorta like it’s glowing as well. He’s really good at weaving notes around all the other members of the band, placing them like candles in just the right places for maximum light coverage. He does it especially well on the penultimate track here, “Barbarism Begins At Home”, in which he and bassist Andy Rourke (their secret weapon) combine their powers to make this really nice interlocking groove that’s powerful enough to carry the song for near-on 7 minutes without changing or getting boring. Throw in some classic Morrissey social miserablism (this time it’s about the dangers of overzealous parental discipline) and you’ve got yerself a classic Smiths song.

There’s a bunch of those in here, actually. My favourite is probably “Nowhere Fast”, which contains one of the classic Morrissey verses (“and when I’m lying in my bed/ I think about life and I think about death/ and neither one particularly ap-peeeaaals to meeeee” – I mean, I know I can relate to that, I dunno about y’all) and a main riff that’s probably the clearest shoutout they ever did to the 60s pop they loved so much. It’s really catchy, really energetic and pretty much instantly memorable, and the same goes for “What She Said”, in which Marr’s guitar slides and falls about like an aeroplane caught in turbulence while Joyce’s drums hit that sweet spot between careful precision and rollicking intensity. I also really like “Rusholme Ruffians”, mostly for that awesome role-swap between Marr and Rourke; Marr’s acoustic on that song spends its time playing a fairly understated rhythm while Rourke’s bass takes up lead melodic duties, and Morrissey has some of his very best self-deprecating, society-deprecating humour here – what’s not to love?

On that front, there’s also “The Headmaster Ritual”, which has one of Marr’s most very gorgeous guitar lines backing up Morrissey as he rips apart his old school. “Belligerent ghouls run Manchester schools/ spineless bastards all…” damn, Morrissey, you couldn’t possibly be bitter, could ya? I’m not gonna lie and say I can relate (I was a veritable teacher’s pet in school) but what’s important is that Morrissey makes me understand his bitterness perfectly, as if he’s baring his soul to me over a few drinks and with a few more exquisite metaphors than usual. Then there’s “I Want The One I Can’t Have”, which is an indispensable part of British rock’s longstanding tradition of class commentary. “A double bed/ and a stalwart lover for sure/ these are the riches of the poor”... it’s subtler than, say, “Shangri-La” or “Common People”, but no less effective for that.

There’s a couple nice slower moments, too. “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore” and “Well I Wonder” are both acoustic ballads, though naturally they hardly sound like yer average acoustic ballad. Part of this is down to the production – the acoustic guitar on this album sounds weirdly thin and anemic, which would normally be a criticism but somehow isn’t here – but it’s also got a lot to do with The Smiths’ songwriting chops. The former has some lovely breaks in which Marr is allowed to lay down some gorgeous slices of guitar texture, and both of ‘em have these really pretty extended codas in which Morrissey retreats from the forefront and lets the instrumentation breathe. Relaxing, pleasant stuff, but there’s also enough going on to hold one’s interest if one is paying attention.

Man, I’m sorry for being so boring – I’ve nary a bad thing to say about this record. But hey, what can I say? It’s earned my praise. The Smiths were an almost frighteningly good band, and this, except for the title track, is them at their best – because they were almost never not at their best. Just get their whole discography and be done with it. 

DVA - Nipomo (2014)

Review by: Jaime Vargas Sánchez
Album assigned by: Avery Campbell

DVA are a Czech duo which play some sort of bizarre electronically-enhanced psychedelic jazz-folk with avant-garde touches, or so it seems to me. The constituent parts of said duo are credited only as “He” and “She”, where “He” plays guitar, drums and percussion and does the looping and sampling, “She” sings and plays reed instruments plus toy piano and music box, and both play melodica and balaphon.

The vocal style is based mainly on the multitracking of several tracks of the girl’s voice. She has a pretty if not especially powerful voice, but she’s not afraid to do weird things to it. At times she reminds me of Kate Bush or Björk. Yeah, clichéd, but it’s not like I’m an expert on strange voices. In many cases they alter the speed of her vocals for maximum effect. Ah, and she sings in a language, or several languages of their own invention. In fact the concept of the band seems to be one of imaginary worlds, because in their Bandcamp page they tag themselves as “pop from non-existing radios”.

Now, the music. I get some sort of 60s vibe from it, or rather several sorts of 60s vibes. Many of the songs have backings that sound like pop/jazzy bossa nova, with the saxes, acoustic guitar and percussions providing the adequate let’s-sip-a-vermouth-in-Capri, stroll-down-Marseille-in-sunglasses feel. “Mulatu” and “Zoppe” are the main exponents of this style, although both are faster and more frantic than my description there might suggest.

On another different vibe, “Nipomo” is based in murky, echoey, slightly bluesy electric guitars that evoke a different part of the 60s, the psychedelic hippie days this time, and the combination of this guitar, the unrelenting acoustic picking and the urgent vocal witchy melody, manages to have a driving rhythm despite the minimal percussion. Add to this the ghostly passages played by “She” on the bass clarinet, an instrument with a particular expression, as any fan of “Bitches Brew” knows, and it all adds up to one of the highlights of the album.

“Nunki” and “Javornicek”, meanwhile, owe more to electronica, with their soothing melodies (well, “Nunki” is soothing until the singer starts doing the crazy pixie things, at least, but it compensates with some soft sounding pads) over intrincate loops of percussion and samples. Especially “Javornicek” where the loops have an almost musique concrete quality and the bass reed instruments sound like the accompaniment to a free jazz tune. But it turns out that, for a 2 minute song, “Javornicek” has two parts, at the mid point the looped percussion disappears and guitar, ukulele and handclapts take the lead, while the vocal finishes with a folk-like chant.

“Meteor” is the folky ballad of the set. The arpeggiated guitar over sampled extravaganzas makes it sound a bit like “Animal Collective lite”, but other than the vibe and the nice but not groundbreaking melody it has little else to discuss. “Vespering” is its moodier (but at the same time livelier) counterpart, with the intro based on the toy instruments and the sung part having a certain uplifting quality which serves as a suitable conclusion.

There are a couple of songs which combine several elements of those aforementioned prototypes. “Durango” is a very satisfying song which combines the intrincacy of the loops of “Javornicek” at the beginning with the acoustic touch of “Meteor” and the vocal harmonies of “Zoppe” with one of the sunnier melodies of the album and a bona fide hook in the bVI-bVII-I progression in the guitar. “Vampira” begins being the slightly unhinged cousin of the bossa nova tracks, where the rhythm is more driving, the horns are jazzier, the guitar arpeggios are sicker, and the singer goes all ghostly on us. Soon the rhythm gets more subdued while still hip-shaking, and interestingly, while the bass line stays with the same Soul Sacrifice-style pattern throughout, the feel is different in what we could call the chorus, where the guitar plays some insistent R&B chords. Besides, this is the longest track (still at only 4 minutes plus change) so you have time to appreciate all its turns.

Finally there are two tracks that exemplify the good and bad sides of this album.

On the good side: “Surfi”. The beginning is a thing of beauty. It starts with sea waves and what sounds like a ping pong match. Soon the ping pong balls multiply and their bounces start overlapping and transforming in a rhythmic pattern which cannot be described as anything else than as African drums, this becomes the backing to scat multitracked and harmonized vocals. Without changing these, the backing is suddenly replaced by another of those light jazz bossa guitars under which the different layers of percussion, horns and sound effects come and go without giving the listener time to get bored.

On the bad side: “No Survi”. It’s the only track without vocals, and the problem with it is that its several background loops never fully coalesce. Everything seems to be fighting everything else, and in particular, the bass line, which sounds not bad by itself, manages to clash rhythmically with everything. You’d think that with several things all at odds with one another the bass line would have an opportunity to lock in with something. Well, amazingly it never does.

In summary, an interesting album, worth hearing when in the mood for something experimental yet easy on the ears. Wouldn’t mind hearing it again in a few days.

PAU RIBA - Dioptria (1970)

Review by: Andreas Georgi
Album assigned by: Jaime Vargas Sánchez

This one is a bit difficult to review. I honestly had never heard of this album, Pau Riba, or anything in its genre. I have mixed opinions of it, but it’s not without its charms and interesting points. The first thing that stands out obviously is that it’s sung entirely in Catalan (or is it Mallorqui?). I do speak Spanish, and that helps me understand at least a bit of the song titles and the lyrics, though honestly not enough for me to get a true sense of their meaning. The language barrier is not a problem - I listen to stuff sung in various African and Asian languages which I don’t understand at all! I like the sound of Catalan being sung, which is a nice distinguishing feature. What I am lacking completely, of course, is the lyrical, cultural, and musical context for this music. It was released in 1970 and sounds very much like a product of its time (good and bad). On some of the tracks I get the impression that the vocals are delivered in an ironic, tongue-in-cheek out of tune fashion, but I don’t know what that’s about.

The music itself is basically folky psychedelic rock. I said it was a product of its time, but quite honestly I think even by 1970 standards the rock stuff sounds somewhat dated and clichéd sounding. The slower stuff is much better and more distinctive, and seems to draw on sources beyond just Anglophone rock and folk, which I would be interested to explore. “Noia de Porcelana” is one the songs that comes to mind as a highlight, though it’s hard to write in more detail about individual tracks. Overall it was an interesting listen. There’s a big world of music beyond your comfort zone – go explore it.

This review is also posted on Amazon here.

DON CABALLERO - For Respect (1993)

Review by: Jaime Vargas Sánchez
Album assigned by: Alex Alex

The little information I’ve looked up about this band says they’re a “math rock” band. I don’t know what this is actually supposed to mean; to me this sounds like progressive rock à la King Crimson post-Red. Now, my main knowledge of prog is in the “symphonic” subgenre (Genesis, early KC, Camel, etc.) so I don’t know how derivative this is, but it was a pleasant surprise.

The language is rock; there are not any classical or jazz affectations (maybe this is why they call it math rock instead of prog?). The emphasis here is in the interplay between the instruments which are tightly locked, and particularly the drummer has chops to spare; the bass has a rather metallic sound, bright and responsive, while the guitar acts as the glue that holds it all together.

Now, the weak point of this is in the composition. Arrangement-wise, the pieces are excellent (it doesn’t matter than most are very short, because they kind of blend together as mini-movements of something bigger), but I hear no discernible themes or melodies. The guitar mainly plays rhythm and arpeggios, and while I don’t imply that every album should feature guitar hero pyrotechnics, this lacks foreground to go over the impressive background. Many times this sounds like the backing to a non-existent frontman, or like they recorded the foundation tracks and then forgot to go into the studio the next day to complete the album.

Bottom line: Good chops, high excitement, a bit of a lack of substance. I wouldn’t mind listening to this again, besides, it’s less than 40 minutes, like the good old 12″ LPs. Thumbs up.

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.

BURNING - Madrid (1978)

Review by: Alejandro Muñoz G
Album assigned by: Jaime Vargas Sánchez

“En La Elipa nací y Ventas es mi reino, y para tu papá, nena, soy como un mal sueño.”

From the streets of La Elipa in post-francoist Spain came Burning, delivering ‘good old rock and roll’ to the madrileño public with their debut album. Lyrically, the album ranges from common rock and roll rebellion (“Sábado noche con mi chica voy a salir, cogeré el coche díselo a papa…”) to more local references (“Tendrás que sentir las caricias de Madrid sobre tu piel”) and slang (“voy hacerte un coco y chulearte la piba por el morro”).

Musically, we find piano driven rock and roll in ‘Rock’n’roll Mama’, a power ballad in ‘Lujuria’, and even an attempt at a multi-section epic in the closing track. There’s also some hints of glam rock here and there. However, for most of the songs, the main musical influence is clear, too clear: The Rolling Stones. Swap the singer for a Mick Jagger impersonator in some of these songs and you would easily end up with a Rolling Stones tribute band. All right, I’m probably exaggerating a bit, but not too much. In tracks like ‘Madrid’ or ‘Mientelas’ they channel the Stones’ sound and attitude in a very close way, at least instrumentally. In ‘Hey Nena’ they even imitate the background vocal “woo woo’s” of ‘Sympathy for the Devil’.

That’s not to say this band just copies and does not deserve your attention. Burning’s debut may not be innovative, but it succeeds at its purpose. This band is really good at what they’re doing. They avoid the artificiality and dullness of sound of which many late 70’s, 80’s and 90’s attempts of recreating classic rock and roll and rhythm and blues suffer. These songs are fun and spirited and the album is completely enjoyable. The album is pretty consistent but if I’ll have to choose a highlight it would probably be the opening track with its catchy chorus: “Ah no, sin vivir en Madrid no lo entenderás”. I’ve never lived in Madrid and I may not fully understand what this men are singing about; but I believe their message is getting through pretty well anyway (and if it's not, nevermind. This is good rock music).

THE SOFT BOYS - Underwater Moonlight (1980)

Review by: A. A.
Album assigned by: Jaime Vargas Sánchez

The Soft Boys' Underwater Moonlight is a jangly post-punk record inspired in equal parts by The Byrds-style folk rock and whimsical psychedelia. Before listening to this album, I had the most passing familiarity with Robyn Hitchcock's solo work, whom I consider, succinctly put, a character.

The album, considered today an influence on the neo-psychedelia movement, has poppish stylings but the punk attitude is certainly not lost. The lyrics are drenched in surreal, sardonic imagery and mostly a biting take on the concept of love from the point of view of misfits who can't get any. Like on "Insanely Jealous", where Hitchcock sings:

The night is black and thick

I wander past your window

And I catch a cigarette thrown from a jewel encrusted hand

It comes on pretty quick

Exactly like a crocodile

In search of a mirage across the undulating sand

But I'm insanely jealous of you

Yeah, I'm insanely jealous of you

I don't know why the people want to meet

When all they know is that they'll breed like rabbits in the end

Cause ordinary people on the street

They never know

But if they can't be rabbits they'll be friends

Other tracks of interest are the ebullient "Positive Vibrations" (which throws in sitars for an interesting effect), the garage-rocky "Old Pervert", and the title track "Underwater Moonlight" with a jamming coda that in parts reminds me of The Cure's "Killing An Arab".

It is a relatively short album and, for the verdict, one I do not find awe-inspiringly meritorious, but certainly interesting, and maybe one to put occasionally on when I'm reading The Chants of Maldoror and need an extra dose of caustic surrealism.

EELS - Eels: Royal Albert Hall (2015)

Review by: Jaime Vargas Sánchez
Album assigned by: Roland Bruynesteyn

Oh, great, a piano intro. And then a version of “When you wish upon a star”.  And a piano ballad. I’m already regretting putting the album on, since I had a bad night yesterday and I’m about to fall asleep. Why do alt-rock ensembles have this tendency to do boring sets when they want to seem important? I still remember a Smashing Pumpkins show I attended in 2001 – well I digress and I’d like to suppress that memory. Besides, Eels switched gears already. From piano ballad to country rock ballad. Yeah, not going to get whiplash any time soon.

Mr. Everett is addressing the audience. He’s focusing on how a lot of legends have played in the RAH. And about how he’s not allowed to play the pipe organ, so you know he will, besides, for all the talk about how only experienced people should play it, it seems everybody and his mother has played it. His speech took longer than any of the songs, of which he just started another. Look, Mr. E, are you trying to lull me to sleep or what? At this point I’d rather listen to a version of the Macarena rather than to another heartfelt ballad (well, I suppose it’s heartfelt, since your deadpan delivery doesn’t allow me to discern it). Great, another one, and called “My timing’s off” – you don’t say. Somebody should teach this guy something about pacing. Because “A line in the dirt”, while boring and clichéd, has a nice chorus melody, but after the onslaught of ballads this one feels as “oh Christ please not one more”.  

There are more.

He says “It’s over”. Thank God. Not that the pace picks up a lot, but at least the songs have a bit of a lilt now. Well, the last song from the first CD, “Fresh Feeling”, is a dance number. Nice.

Let’s change CDs.

Hey, uptempo! I had forgotten what that was. “I like birds” has a bit of a late 50s / early 60s vibe, which is always welcome. More ballads. Mr. E could have a nice career in Broadway. More classic pop vibe. And some very well crafted melodies along the way – more in the instrumental parts than in the vocal melodies.

There is one song called “I like the way this is going”. I don’t. Especially since two songs later comes “Last stop: this town” which is basically the same song or at least the same guitar arpeggio. BTW, Mr. E, stop reminding me every 15 minutes that you are in the Royal Albert Hall. The RAH has been used for pop concerts for quite a long time now. In these days, that you play at the RAH just means that you are not big enough to fill the O2 or Wembley.

And he just butchered “Can’t Help Falling In Love”.

See? He’s at the organ.

Doing nothing of importance.

Roland, you owe me two hours of my life back.

A YEAR IN MUSIC: ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK / BERLINER PHILARMONIKER / RAFAEL KUBELIK - Symphony No 9 "Aus Der Neuen Welt” (“From The New World”) (1974)

A YEAR IN MUSIC: 1974
Review by: Jaime Vargas Sánchez

1974 is “supposed” to be a low year in music according to the Rolling Stone Established School of Thought, but there are dozens of albums that are personal favorites of mine (War Child, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Red, It’s Too Late To Stop Now, Rejuvenation, Eduardo Bort, Señora Azul, It’s Only Rock’n’Roll…). But the most important album for me would be Rafael Kubelik’s recording of Dvorak’s Symphony nº 9, since this was the first symphonic recording I enjoyed all the way through when I was 12 years old or so. (Although I’m more familiar with Ferenc Fricsay’s recording, also in Deutsche Grammophon).

The first movement is has two main themes, the epic horns theme and the slow, American folk influenced lyrical theme, and both had a long lasting influence in the scores of classic Hollywood (and beyond - there’s a strange oboe passage that always reminds me of “Revolution 9”), and the intermediate melody that connects both is no slouch either. Nice find of Dvorak to base the development on the second theme but making it sound as epic as the first.

The second movement is probably the best known, the one based in a spiritual melody, which is one of the heights of 19th century melodicism, but I’m also very fond of the opening, those majestic crescendo chords that again sound like coming from an epic movie (I think this guy and Holst were the most pilfered by Hollywood). There’s another melody that after being introduced is developed in a marching, processional arrangement that is one of my favourite moments from the work.

The scherzo is very good; Dvorak said part of the inspiration came from Amerindian and folk songs but I also see a strong influence from the scherzo of Beethoven’s Ninth (but being that this is Dvorak’s Ninth it might be deliberate).Finally the last movement is to me the most disjointed (although its main melody is the first I knew from this work, since Miguel Ríos adapted it into a song way back in the 70s) but ends climaxing suitably in a brass pandemonium.

To sum up, one of the cornerstones of the symphonic repertoire and deservedly so. Like with Tchaikovsky, the melodic invention surpasses the structural craft, but the melodies are catchy and unforgettable.

A YEAR IN MUSIC: HÉROES DEL SILENCIO - Senderos de Traición (1990)

A YEAR IN MUSIC: 1990
Review by: Jaime Vargas Sánchez

When we were proposed this “A year in music” thing, I decided that the best way for me (especially for music from when I was alive) was to relate the albums to my personal history, since that gives me a sense of perspective. In that respect, 1990 is a very particular year. It was the year I finished high school and started college, with an awesome summer in between, and as such I always am surprised when I look at lists of albums from 1990 because they seem to cover a larger timespan than one year - because albums from early 1990 are remembered as “happening” to a totally different person than albums from late 1990.

But I don’t want to make this too personal, because then I’d have to select as “most important” Led Zeppelin’s Remasters (the 2-CD summary of their box set), which was only second to the Rolling Stones’ show in Barcelona in shaping my future listening self (no, I didn’t attend, I saw it on TV). So, from an overall perspective I’d say the album of 1990 in my immediate surroundings was “Senderos de Traición” by Héroes del Silencio (a band which is mainly known by 3 groups of people: a) Spanish-speaking audiences, b) Germans - if the contemporary accounts of their success there are accurate - and c) players of Guitar Hero 3). But really, in late 1990 and especially 1991 the hits from this album were EVERYWHERE, and the guys were bona fide stars. I personally didn’t like them, but I don’t know whether that was due to my recent allegiance to classic rock (“everything after 1979 is shit”) which today seems to me like the faith of the converse (yes, in the 80s I liked Italo disco and I’m not ashamed anymore), or to my dislike to what I perceived as unfounded arrogance. In fact I didn’t reconcile with the Héroes until I read some refreshingly self-deprecating comments by singer Enrique Bunbury after they had already disbanded.

Or maybe it was because they didn’t play guitar hero solos. Listening to it today, although the album historically fit into the “return to rock” aesthetic of the early 90s, sonically it’s still got some of the 80’s earmarks. Not the most plastic elements of that - Phil Manzanera’s production is organic enough - but the guitars have those clean-sound-with-reverb-echo-and-chorus/flanger earmarks of the Smiths / U2 / Simple Minds persuasion. Guitarist Juan Valdivia plays few solos, and those he plays are usually built around the chord changes instead of indulging in blues rock cliches, and prefers to devise arpeggio patterns. Singer Enrique Bunbury harmonizes with himself here and there, which together with his powerful and affected voice made him sound larger than life (that he seemed to pattern some of his on-stage demeanor after Jim Morrison in an era in which people were more or less rediscovering the Doors also helped), and the songs were a bit of a mix of hard rock attitude, goth rock sounds and pop sensibilities. Maybe a good comparison could be the then-contemporary The Cult. So, overall, an album that I remember as being in the environment rather than belonging to MY personal history, but which I can recommend today without hesitation.

DUKE ELLINGTON & JOHN COLTRANE - Duke Ellington & John Coltrane (1963)

Review by: Andreas Georgi
Album assigned by: Jaime Vargas Sánchez

Let’s start by saying this album is great. All-too-often highly touted collaborations fail to meet the expectations. This is not the case here. Coltrane and Ellington are both very deserved in the “master” category, obviously. At the time Coltrane was reaching the peak of his career, which was sadly cut short. At this stage, dating roughly to the “Africa Sessions” & “Crescent” album sessions, Coltrane was still very much on this side of tonality, but he was already pushing the boundaries with extended techniques and freer structures, which would culminate with “A Love Supreme” before his jump into free jazz and atonality.

Ellington’s importance to jazz music can hardly be over-stated. His contribution to the repertoire and to the musical language and depth of the music are enormous. To be sure this album finds Ellington in the later years of his career, long after he made his most crucial contributions. Nevertheless, Ellington was an explorer throughout his career, who repeatedly absorbed new developments into his own style, as is also evidenced on the crucial trio session, “Money Jungle” with Max Roach and Charles Mingus, also from 1962. This album also brings home Ellington’s hugely important contributions as a pianist.

All but one of the tracks are written or co-written by Ellington (or his writing partner Billy Strayhorn), with one Coltrane composition. The album opens with a delicate version of “In a Sentimental Mood”, before switching into a higher gear with the original “Take the Coltrane” and on “Stevie”, where Coltrane fully dives into his own aggressive & progressive style, and Ellington is right there with him. “My Little Brown Book”, a Billy Strayhorn masterpiece, is another highlight of the album, but it’s all great.

Ten points, five stars, thumbs up, whatever you like!

THE RESIDENTS - Not Available (1978)

Review by: Jaime Vargas Sánchez
Album assigned by: Franco Micale

First, I absolutely won’t comment about the extra-musical aspects, the theory of obscurity, or whatever, as I think it’s probably a put-on.

How to describe it? Hmm, what about this? Imagine Mike Oldfield had gone totally insane right before the first recording session of “Ommadawn” and that might be a nice start. Minimalist synth phrases intermingle with weird voices, tribal-like beats are cut short by Steve Reich-esque signature changes…

The Mike Oldfield comment is not casual, as the ending section of Part One has a repetitive keyboard riff that appears throughout the album serving as a “main theme” of sorts, and it does remind me a bit of “Tubular Bells”. That part had begun with something that I can only describe as “electronic Moros y Cristianos music”, because it reminds me of the kind of music brass bands play in Eastern Spain the festivities that remember the Muslim vs Christian battles in medieval Spain. Which usually resemble Hollywood music like Lawrence of Arabia more than actual Moorish music but you get my drift. Part Two begins with a sax that is treated in the studio to sound like a folk instrument from Hell, segueing into a deranged deconstruction of a piano ballad and then some music that would be great as the soundtrack for a German expressionist film. When you thought that Part Three was going to be almost entirely devoid of interest they manage to set spooky music to an habanera rhythm. The beginning of Part Four sounds to me like a lo-fi version of Air’s “Moon Safari” which again seems to be spliced into a weird Latin-tinged thing. And the album continues with those wild juxtapositions.

In short, here’s an album that I find definitely interesting and might return to, although it does not “resonate” with me, which I don’t think was its purpose anyway. If you find yourself deeply moved by it, I don’t know what that says about you, honestly :)

By the way there’s an aspect of the album that brought me memories of my childhood: my grandpa had a Farfisa Matador-R organ from the 70s and some of the tones - and definitely the rhythm box sounds - remind me of it. A lot.

RADIO FUTURA - El directo de Radio Futura (1989)

Review by: Michael Strait
Album assigned by: Jaime Vargas Sánchez

Track 1: Assured, powerful bassline. Great riff comes in over the top. Pretty good drumming. Vocals give the impression the lyricist has something to say – pity I can’t understand him. Vocalist is, in fact, a very characterful-sounding bloke, with lots of passion and a machismo that doesn’t sound insecure or forced. This is a well-written song that flows smoothly and naturally. Crowd seems into it, too. Little popping rhythm guitar helps the groove. Avoids sounding plaintive or overly epic.

Track 2: Laid-back and refined track. Stabbing guitars as vocalist sings his way into a million women’s panties. Keyboards present here, not doing much but fleshing out the sound a little – and occasionally sounding a tad dated, but not too much. This song sounds like an expensive glassy apartment overlooking a sunset-lit sea in a warm but not too tropical zone.

Track 3: Pretty good lead guitar is in control of its ego enough to let some soft, understated keyboards resolve its riff. This song says it’s gonna last 6 minutes – I’ve no real problem with that. Actual pianos are involved this time. I like the way the guitar and bass in this part keep missing each other – one of them plays, then the other one plays, in succession rather than together, until eventually they find each other and fall into sync. This band know the proper things about songwriting, they do – the little extra touches that make the songs hold up under scrutiny. Descending piano riff occupies most of the outro as the guitarist plays a tasteful solo. I like this album.

Track 4: The biggest riff so far. Turns into speedin’ rocker with playful lead guitars and the lead singer sings something about spaghetti. The piano here is a major part of the rhythm, alongside the slyly aggressive guitar. Piano gets to embark on a pretty pedestrian solo in the second half of the track. The vocalist continues to display excellent character, being an unpredictable soul who will drop all melody and just shout at exactly the right times.

Track 5: This one sounds a bit more reflective, though not regretful. Very quiet guitar solo comes at an unexpected time in the first third of the track – see what I mean? This song is thinking back quietly on pleasant times. Tiny little chiming piano provides the lead riff here – very basic, but cute. Guitar takes over in the pre-chorus for a few little flourishes.

Track 6: Guitar, bass and piano begin a riff – only bass and piano finish it. This guitarist sticks admirably true to the punk philosophy of minimalism. Can clearly play, though. Are those some slide guitars I hear here? Possibly. The vocalist goes into his higher ranges for the chorus here. There’s a lovely swaying bass riff in the prechorus, with guitars that pop in such a way as to make me wonder if Foals listened to this band a lot when they were young – wouldn’t that be an unexpected area of influence? What does “li lo li lo li lo li” etc. mean anyway – when I was young I used to listen to Gypsy Kings and they had a song that went just like that. Oh hey – a harmonica! A lil bit of ol’ school rock n roll to close out the track.

Track 7: Here’s a question: if this new wave band could so consistently come up with good riffs, what gives all those bullshit modern pop-metal bands the idea that they can get away without ‘em? Ah, never mind. I’m sorta running out of things to say here, anyway – the songs are uniformly well-written, well-played and effortlessly cool, sounding like they’d breeze past you on the street and steal yo girl without a glance, like a passing planetary body might steal a few of your smaller natural satellites. Admittedly, though, the bridge in this song has some dated-sounding drums – they’re not even machines, either, which makes me wonder how they treated them back then.

Track 8: Ah, this one is very much a rhythmic groove piece. The keyboard stabs in the verses kinda sound reggaeish, but unlike most cases of a rock band pillaging reggae for cultural cred it doesn’t suck or obnoxiously jut out. Shit, dawg, I don’t even HAVE a girlfriend and I’m pretty sure this guy’s still fucked her. A bit of synthesised horn here – just the briefest flourish, but it does a lot more than you’d expect based on its limited time. This band knew how to get the most out of the least, which is possibly the ability I respect most in a pop songwriter. The drummer’s playing some pretty good fills here, too.

Track 9: Aight, this one ain’t bad, but it kinda sounds like them on autopilot. I do quite like the reverby guitar sweeps here though, and the drummer’s subtly putting on what might be his best performance yet. Still, ain’t much to say about it at all. I’ll take this opportunity to point out something I like about this band – every time there’s an instrumental break, they get quieter. Most bands get louder, thanks to obnoxious soloing and other shit, but not these guys.

Track 10: The second song in a row with “Negra” in the title. Should I be suspicious, boyos? More reggaeish piano rhythm stuff. This one’s a slower tempo than the last one of those, though. The synth voice hasn’t aged well, but everything else has. I wonder if the same can be said of the lead singer – has he kept his voice or lost it with age? I can feel his stage presence coming through my speakers and I can’t even see him. I haven’t devoted enough attention to the fact that this is a live album yet – being at this gig (or these gigs? May have been multiple stitched together) must have felt like a privilege. The guitar is making sounds like a thing falling out of the sky, and it’s cool. This song is nearly 8 minutes, and we’ll see if it justifies its length. Ah, he’s playing with the crowd – the best reason one could have for becoming a rockstar is to do stuff like that. Dude does like to roll those Rs, doesn’t he? And that guitar solo sure does know exactly which spaces in the song need filling. Oh, there are two – yes, I suppose I should have mentioned that there are two guitarists in this band, and it sounds like they’re duelling here in a rare and earned moment of indulgence. It’s how the song closes. I ain’t got no problem with that.

Track 11: Final song! If that track from before was reflective, this one is speculative – in that expensive house from the other track from before I mentioned earlier, but as the sun rises rather than sets. Other than that, though, there isn’t much happening in this track – but I guess there doesn’t really need to be. It’s as nice a closer as any, though a bit of a weird way to end a live show – surely you want to drive the crowd crazy with some banger in such a situation? Ah well, never mind. Crowd cheers as the venue’s outro music comes in and that’s the end of it. Wish I had the time to put this into proper review format, but too much uni work – this’ll have to do.

Rating: I liked it.

PARLIAMENT - Funkentelechy Vs. the Placebo Syndrome (1977)

Review by: Jaime Vargas Sánchez
Album assigned by: Ali Ghoneim

Boys and girls, it’s yet again George Clinton armed with a set of grooves. Put the record on and see if you can resist the whole 8 and a half minutes of “Bop Gun (Endangered Species)” without at least bobbing your head. That was difficult, wasn’t it? It probably didn’t help that “Bop Gun” is not simply a groove (which it is), but is filled to the brim with nice touches and the most perfect combination of tightness and freedom. The guitar riff is unrelenting but excellent. Bernie Worrell’s keyboards are funky as hell but as limber and flowing as the best jazz (and his unexpected folk synth melody in the only break that the groove has is a wonderful surprise). This mixture of a totally “in the pocket” rhythmic feel and a free-flowing attitude are the defining traits of all the tracks, and they help to avoid the record degenerating into either flatlining banality with a beat or indulgent anything-goes anarchy.

The twin title tracks, “Funkentelechy” and “The Placebo Syndrome” are quite different from each other, not only because they are the longest and the shortest tracks respectively. “Funkentelechy” is a pure funk groove – an excellent one. No more but definitely not less. “The Placebo Syndrome” is a melodic song with incredibly heartfelt synth lines, mellow horn charts, a vocal tour-de-force and a rhythm section adamant on showing how you can turn a potential ballad into funk heaven. “Sir Nose D Voidoffunk” is another monster groove but in this case the mood is more oppressive and menacing, but with lots of humor (the horns are having a good time with the multiple quotes of Looney Tunes music). “Wizard of Finance” is an old-school R&B ballad where the vocals are hilarious and impressive at the same time and the interactions among the musicians are as tight-knitted as a good woolen jumper.

And then there’s the hit, “Flash Light”, which has dancefloor written all over it. The scratchy guitars, the singalong “da da da dee” refrain, Worrell showing the world how well he’s read the Stevie Wonder’s Book Of Cool Keyboard Bass Lines – it’s an ass-shaking masterpiece.

It’s well-known that Funkadelic and Parliament were basically the same band with two different recording contracts (a time-honored trick; what do you do when your band signs an exclusive recording contract as “Duke Ellington And His Orchestra?” Well, record for other people as “The Jungle Band” or “The Harlem Footwarmers”, of course!), but Clinton also liked to somewhat differentiate the output of both bands, Funkadelic being the more rock-oriented, psychedelic band and Parliament being the more dance-oriented, commercial band. This has had the effect that Funkadelic has always generated more praise than Parliament from rock critics.

I have expressed in the past the feeling that the current obsession of every outlet with “Best Of All Time” lists has created the phenomenon that some bands seem to only have one record, a situation that grows worse in time, since from one generation to another the situation evolves from everybody namedropping the same record to everybody listening to the same record. Parliament are a clear example of this, as here we have an album that went platinum in its day and nowadays you never hear about, because everybody is busy praising the also great “Mothership Connection” (and Funkadelic’s “One Nation Under A Groove”, which, while awesome, was also the point where Funkadelic started being undistinguishable from Parliament). Correct this mistake and listen to this good, if not revolutionary, collection. To paraphrase Mick Jagger, “It’s only R&B and Funk… but I LIKE it”.

JADE WARRIOR - Last Autumn's Dream (1972)

Review by: Jaime Vargas Sánchez
Album assigned by: Steve Andrew Robey

Let me be honest. When I was told which album I had to write about, I knew nothing about it. I somehow assumed it was an album from the 21st century, since these young whippersnappers from the group seem to have an undue admiration for these most dire years in musical history, and that’s including the centuries when the most interesting albums would have been called “The Greatest Horn Calls From Mesopotamia”. With that misconception in mind, when I listened to it I thought this was a modern band trying to faithfully imitate the 1970s.

So imagine when I looked for info and found that it was an actual album from 1972!

But after that bit sank in I found that my initial impression had not been altered. Yes, I stand by my word; this music is pleasant but incredibly derivative. About half of the tracks are cut in the mold of starry-eyed art rock with prog soundscapes (prototype: “A Winter’s Tale”), and the other half are acid rock a la Hendrix / Grateful Dead (prototype: “Joanne”). The guitar playing guy is good, that cannot be denied. The flute also adds to the palette but it seems always to be mixed as if the player was in another room.

Here and then pop up some motives that display some Japanese influence (mainly in the percussion, as the guitar inevitably ends up playing the usual psychedelic modal noodlings). That again that was kind of a schtick of the band from what I gather. The most blatant attempt in this vein might be “Lady of the Lake”, even if the guitars pay evident tribute to both Mick Taylor (“Moonlight Mile”) and Jimi Hendrix (“One Rainy Wish”), and its segue into the repetitive (in a good way) “Borne Under The Solar Wind”. There are also some good uses of the 12-string guitar and jazz-rock vampings in “May Queen”, probably the quintessential song of the album since it seems to be the one where more of the album’s earmarks coalesce (even if compositionally it’s quite simple).

And just when you had the impression of being listening to a very cohesive album… there comes “The Demon Trucker”. What the hell is this? A mix of glam and Southern Rock with flutes and bongos? I find it dumb, uninteresting, annoying, and at odds with the rest of the album.

Frankly I don’t get why Dave Thompson from the All Music Guide raves so much about that song.

So, to sum up: nice album, which I don’t mind when it’s on, but in my mind there is no reason to go searching for it. Time is a great filter, and the most remembered musical products of the 70s are their classic peaks and their most populist appealing hits. For an eclectic like me, these middling not-hit-but-not-great albums are best left for specialists and people who remember the times and might have a connection with them. Me, not belonging to either group, when I want to hear derivative music I prefer to see a show in a club or a bar. At least I’m supporting the local scene that way.

But don’t let that comment turn you away from the album if you can’t get enough of the British 70s art rock. It might just be what you were looking for, and I can’t deny that the melody of “Borne Under The Solar Wind” is running circles around my head right now.