ITT: The best of Robert Christgau

Henry's Dream [Mute/Elektra, 1992]

Cave's admirers crow about his literary virtues--a rock musician who's actually published a novel! and scripted a film! about John Henry Abbott, how highbrow! Then they proffer dismal examples like "I am the captain of my pain," or the bordello containing--what an eye the man has--a whalebone corset! (Whalebone is very literary--it hasn't been used in underwear since well before Nick was born.) If this is your idea of great writing, you may be ripe for his cult. Otherwise, forget it--the voice alone definitely won't do the trick. C

>Christgau is Jewish. [4]

He's not; in fact his parents were fundie Christians and his brother is a minister.

Ten [Epic, 1991]

in life, misery loves company. in music, riffs work even better ("Once", "Even Flow") **

Chrisgau is always the funnest commentator in those youtube music documentaries.

Christgau has an intensely limited perception of what music can be, which makes him intensely deficient as a critic, but his writing is sometimes funny in its' ridiculousness. Christgau doesn't even know what singing is.

Exmilitary [Third Worlds download, 2011]

Death-metal hip-hop for El-P fans who secretly wish the Insane Clown Posse wasn't so dumb ("Blood Creepin," "Klink") ***

He's right.

Christgau is fucking shit and anybody who takes his opinions seriously ought to be shot on sight.

Michael Gira once mailed him a bag of cum because he was upset about his review for Filth

I wish this were true

It is apparently

>bum-blistered metal/prog babby

W.A.S.P.

Distinctions Not Cost Effective [1980s]

He who drinks like a fish shall fuck like a fish, and I somehow don't think that's the animal they had in mind.

>Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness [Virgin, 1995]
>"1979"

Night in the Ruts [Columbia, 1979]

The album opens with a promising song about the band's career titled "No Surprize". Then they inch steadily closer to the dull tempos, flash guitar, and stupid cover versions of heavy metal orthodoxy. No surprize. C+

Paranoid [Warner Bros., 1970]

They do take heavy to undreamt-of extremes, and I suppose I could enjoy them as camp, like a horror movie--the title cut is definitely screamworthy. After all, their audience can't take that Lucifer bit seriously, right? Well, depends on what you mean by serious. Personally, I've always suspected that horror movies catharsized stuff I was too rational to care about in the first place. C-

Thousand Roads [Atlantic, 1993]

David Crosby lends a new meaning to the term "survivor", meaning "If you can't kill the motherfucker, at least make sure he doesn't breed", and until MTV got on the revolting "Heroes" video, I'd hoped to never sample this piece of makework for his rich, underemployed friends. Oh, well. The only thing that could render it more self-congratulatory would be a cover of Jefferson Black Hole's "We Built This City". D

kek

One Fierce Beer Coaster [Geffen, 1996]

fighting for their right to show you their underpants

Oh xhristgau wrote this haha for the longest time i thought it was zcaruffi

Dirty Mind [Warner Bros., 1980]

After going gold in 1979 as an utterly uncrossedover falsetto love man, he takes care of the songwriting, transmutes the persona, revs up the guitar, muscles into the vocals, leans down hard on a rock-steady, funk-tinged four-four, and conceptualizes--about sex, mostly. Thus he becomes the first commercially viable artist in a decade to claim the visionary high ground of Lennon and Dylan and Hendrix (and Jim Morrison), whose rebel turf has been ceded to such marginal heroes-by-fiat as Patti Smith and John Rotten-Lydon. Brashly lubricious where the typical love man plays the lead in "He's So Shy," he specializes here in full-fledged fuckbook fantasies--the kid sleeps with his sister and digs it, sleeps with his girlfriend's boyfriend and doesn't, stops a wedding by gamahuching the bride on her way to church. Mick Jagger should fold up his penis and go home. A

Piano Man [Columbia, 1973]

Joel's Cold Spring Harbor was recorded in the vicinity of 38-rpm to fit all the material on--he's one of these eternal teenagers who doesn't know how to shut up. Stubborn little bastard, too--after his bid stiffed, he worked a Los Angeles cocktail lounge soaking up Experience. Here he poses as the Irving Berlin of narcissistic alienation, puffing up and condescending to the fantasies of fans who spend their lives by the stereo feeling sensitive. And just to remind them who's boss, he hits them with a ballad after the manner of Aaron Copland. C

Dazed and Confused [Medicine, 1993]

But it's really great junk. Seventies AOR as hard-rock utopia, with all the El Lay wimp-out, boogie dumb-ass, and metal drudge-trudge surreptitiously excised, enabling the escapist to bask in history without actually encountering any Montrose or Outlaws records. A few of the selections are ringers--unjustly, neither the Sweet's "Fox on the Run" (too pop) nor the Runaways' "Cherry Bomb" (too chick) ever gained much stoner credibility. Most are by major artists (Skynyrd, War, Alice Cooper, ZZ Top) or indisputable legends (Sabbath, Kiss, Deep Purple, Ted Nugent). But only someone who suffered his first nocturnal emission between 1970 and 1975 will be motivated to collect the catalogue it implies. For the rest of humanity, this is an ideal way to enjoy what for all its high volume, guitar excess, and muddled longueurs remained a pop sensibility that harked back to the '50s. Jim Dandy to the rescue indeed. A-

Led Zeppelin II [Atlantic, 1969]

The best of the wah-wah mannerist groups, so dirty they drool on demand. It's true that all the songs sound alike, but nobody ever held that against Little Richard. Then again, Robert Plant isn't Little Richard either. B

Grand Funk [Capitol, 1969]

This group is creating a stir, apparently because they play faster than Iron Butterfly. Which I grant is a step in the right direction. I saw them live in Detroit before I knew any of this. I enjoyed them for 15 minutes, tolerated them for five, and hated them for 40. This LP, their second, isn't as good as that performance. C

honestly the only keeper from that record

Maxinquaye [Island, 1995]
From Soul II Soul to Massive Attack to Tricky is a straight line leading straight down to a bad place you should take a chance and visit. Depressive, constricted, phantasmagoric, industrial, yet warmly beatwise and swathed in a gauzy glow that promises untold creature comforts, these are the audioramas of someone who's signed on to work for the wages of sin and lived to cash the check. Determinedly Lo-NRG, he's a sad sack with attitude, a complicated malcontent whose cynicism can't quash his capacity for euphoria or rebellion. And though he long ago saw through the willed optimism of black-Brit dance music, he's here to tell you that a dystopia with Martine singing in it has some serious rewards. A+

Albert King

Subjects For Further Research [1970s]

I've somehow never been moved by Albert King's wide-beamed take on BB's blues, although I suspect that's not entirely Albert's fault. It's generally agreed however that the man's best work was cut in the 60s for Stax--he spent most of the 70s trying to go pop with predictable results. For an eloquent defense, see the liner notes in 1974's "Montreau Festival".

Robert Christgau of The Village Voice was less enthusiastic and said that the Avalanches deliver "the long-promised new-songs-from-old-songs trick, in which untrackable samples are stitched together until they mesh into compelling music that never existed before. Unfortunately, the music in question is string-section disco."[34]

Monster [mixtape download, 2014]
Released shortly after Honest failed to catapult Atlanta's solidest trap-pop hope into a Jingle Baller and longer after babymama Ciara started saving it for a Christian quarterback, this mixtape doesn't bother with radio-friendly. Far from it. Before it sinks slowly into the generic, it justifies openers claiming "Radical" and "Monster" with a five-track sequence that begins with the club hit "Fuck Up Some Commas," ends with the outrageously catchy "2 Pac," scoops up a fine Lil Wayne 16 along the way, and never tops "Throw Away," a truer love song for Ciara than any hook machine he'd hoped would cross over: "I came home last night to a menage/Got my dick sucked I was thinking about you/I was fucking on a slut and I was thinking about you/When you're fucking another nigga I hope you're thinking about me." Actually painful. Strong like pop so seldom is. Vulnerable like pop so seldom is too. B+

>One of his all time best reviews, and definitely the best DS2 review out there

DS2 (Deluxe Edition) [Epic, 2015]
A hypnotic, slow-motion trap-life tone poem that turns on two tells: "I just fucked your bitch in some Gucci flip-flops" to set the mood and "Best thing I ever did was fall out of love" to rationalize it. Not that the departed Ciara is first cause of Future's beat-steeped lassitude. First cause is he's a junkie, addicted to the liquid scag crack magnates and FruityLoops prodigies mix with carbonated beverages so as to forget their demons--and believe that Future mentions "hell" and "the devil" more than your average syrup sipper. Does his life ever not sound like fun. I'm sure he fucks a lot, as in the echoing Metro Boomin' showpiece "Groupies" or the semiconscious "The Stripper and Percocet Joint." But does he come? Opiates, after all, are notoriously anorgasmic, and while he does once resort to the term "make love," the porn tracks are long on domination and athletic ability and the exception is "Rich Sex," about the special frisson of coitus with your chains on. In another inconsistency--he is large, he fucks up commas--one song does insist, "I'm just enjoying my life." And no doubt many of his poor fans believe him. But I don't. If only our deluded nation took hip-hop seriously, this miserable minor masterpiece would be all the proof we needed that money can't buy happiness. A-

Wild Tales [Atlantic, 1974]

The title's as phony as the rest of the album, aside from the bought-and-paid-for goodies--a guitar hook here, a harmony there, even an occasional song now and then. Particularly enervating is "Oh, Camille" in which Graham lets us know he's morally superior to a doubt-ridden Vietnam vet. C-

Hysteria [Mercury, 1987]

You know about the music and if you don't think you'll like it, you won't--impeccable pop metal of no discernible substance--in short, it's completely irrelevant to everyone but AOR radio programmers and the several million addicts of the genre. From a technocratic standpoint however, it's more interesting. Stuck with over two hours of material over the past four years (how long can 12 songs be?) they've eclectically conceived for hour-long music formats such as CDs instead of vinyl discs, which they outsell now, and audio cassettes, which they outdollar, and chosen to put it all on one album. I find the cassette sound a little dim, as commercial cassettes tend to be, and while I do prefer the depth of the vinyl once I've cranked my stereo up to 6 or 7, the clarity of the CD comes through decisively once the needle approaches the outgroove. I mean, I have trouble perceiving these guys as human beings under ordinary circumstances. Not docked a notch because at least they didn't pad it into a double. C+

Arto Lindsay

Mundo Civilizado [Bar/None, 1997]
Even when he was an enraged and alienated No Wave mutant there was wit and rhythm in his tantrums, and it was only a few years after he unveiled DNA and undermined the Lounge Lizards that this shy, suave, calculating lover boy bowed as a crooner. But even so it's wonderful and normal that he's grown up this far. Laying drum 'n' bass on deep Bahia, boldly and reverentially covering the two premier African-American singers of our era, hocking Brazilian tunes from Caetano Veloso on down, he calmly and erotically bridges English and Portugese, art tourism and manor-born tropicalia, self-conscious sweetness and unkempt literacy. This be lounge-torch jungle-samba: a fragile, lyrical, sly, beatwise, embarrassingly beautiful cross-cultural appropriation that just goes to show how people grow up and settle down even when they don't. A+

New Order

Brotherhood [Qwest, 1986]
I never knew why their definitive electrodisco impressed me more than it moved me, and now I don't know why it has me rocking out of my chair or grinning foolishly as I forage for dinner at the supermarket. The tempos are a touch less stately, the hooks a touch less subliminal. Bernard Albrecht's vocals have taken on so much affect they're humane. And the joke closer softens up a skeptic like me to the pure, physically exalting sensation of the music. A

Pieces of You [Atlantic, 1995]

Worth ignoring while she was merely precious, she must command our brief attention now that she's becoming overvalued as well. With the possible exception of Saint Joan, who at least has some stature, this is the bad folkie joke to end all bad folkie jokes. Between her breathless baby doll sexuality, abiding love of her own voice, and useless ideas about injustice and prejudice, she may yet be the most insufferable artist to ever pick up a hollow body guitar. End of story, I hope. D

Arca

Mutant [Mute, 2015]
Initially, I spun this album to get rid of it--to insure that, as with most unmarked CDs in jewelcases lacking title and slug line, it was safe to stick it where the laser don't shine. Only after I realized how impressed I was by these grooveless, tuneless electronic instrumentals did I make out on the back cover the birthname of my old NYU student Alejandro Ghersi--who as Arca has since become a Yeezus collaborator and Fader cover boy as well as co-producing a Björk album I'll leave to her fanbase. In other words, I really liked this music before I knew I knew its creator. Those who claim it has a structure as opposed to a sequence are probably imagining things. But the tunelessness of the music doesn't always mean it's amelodic and the groovelessness rarely means it stands still. My faves often tie in alien elements--"Umbilical" with its Mbuti chant, "Sinner" with its virtual bellows breathing in and out, "Faggot" with its bells-and-choirboy undergirding and stuttering aggro finale. But tune in anytime during this 20-track hour and chances are you'll hear something you've never heard before--and want to hear it again, to make sure you were right the first time. A-

The Best of Freddie King [Chess, 1974]

Freddie King's renown as the inventor of electric blues guitar is a reward for his shameless Anglophilia (here documented on "Palace of the King"). Forget what Anglophiles say about his recent work, the man's been coasting for years. The R&B sides he cut in the 60s for (of all things) King Records are acute. Here he makes do with a bunch of Leon Russell and Don Nix boogies, the vocals blurred, the guitar all fake-and-roll. C+

Dressed To Kill [Casablanca, 1975]

I feel schizy about this record. It rocks with a brutal, uncompromising force that's very impressive--sort of a slicked-down, tightened-up, heavied-out MC5--and the songwriting is much improved from albums one and two. But the lyrics recall the liberal fantasy of rock concert as Nuremberg rally, equating sex with victimization in a display of male supremacism that glints with humor only at its cruelest--song titles like "Room Service" and "Ladies in Waiting." In this context, the band's refusal to bare the faces that lie beneath the clown makeup becomes ominous, which may be just what they intend, though for the worst of reasons. You know damn well that if they didn't have both eyes on maximum commerciality they'd call themselves Blowjob. B

Foreigner [Atlantic, 1977]

You've heard of Beatlemania? I propose Xenophobia. C-

Load [Elektra, 1996]

The good thing about being old is that I'm neither wired to like metal nor tempted to fake it. Just as I suspected, these Johnny-come-lately-meet-the-new-boss-same-as-the-old-boss-es can no more do grunge than they can double ledger bookkeeping. Grunge simply isn't their meter. So regardless of what riff neatniks think, this is just a metal album with the songs shortened and the tempos slowed, which is good because it condenses their chops, and bad because it also means more singing, which they can't. C+

This is a good review though.

Not Fragile [Mercury, 1975]

The Who, slightly plodding, is rotated here to reveal...Black Sabbath, that's who, without the horseshit necromancy. And I'm loving every stolen riff, if not every original one. B

Yeah he's not wrong. James Hetfield's vocals are still too aggressive and lack the whine needed for a proper grunge record.

Ready To Die [Bad Boy, 1994]

As a white person in an integrated, how do we say it, nabe, I should breathe a sigh of relief that pithy Christopher Wallace seems content to exploit his own people--"I been robbin' motherfuckers since the slave ship," or, if you prefer, "I be beatin' motherfuckers like Ike beat Tina." As a male person, I should be grateful he doesn't want to pimp my kind either. But because I live a lot farther from the edge, these things don't make me feel better at all--I'm outraged when anyone gets robbed, beaten, or pimped, descendants of slaves especially. Hence I'm not inclined to like this motherfucker. But the more I listen the more I do. Wiping the cold out of his eyes at 5:47 a.m. or pulling his gat as the wrong guy comes down the street, he commands more details than any West Coast gangsta except carbetbagging Ice-T. His sex raps are erotic, his jokes are funny, and his music makes the thug life sound scary rather than luxuriously laid back. When he considers suicide, I not only take him at his word, I actively hope he finds another way. A-

War [Island, 1983]

The deadly European virus that's always tainted this band turns out to be their characteristic melodic device, a medieval-sounding unresolved fifth frequently utilized by monks in Hollywood movies. In other respects, however, their hot album is rock and roll indeed. The Edge becomes a tuneful guitarist by the simple expedient of not soloing, and if Bono has too many Gregorian moments his conviction still carries the music. Anyway, I'll take his militant if pacifist Christianity ("The real battle has begun/To claim the victory Jesus won") over most of the secular humanism and Jah love rockers are going in for these days. B+

Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 [Asylum, 1982]

I admit it--this made my A shelves after the Bellamy Brothers softened me up. But that was unjust to the Bellamy Brothers. The Eagles are slimy not smarmy, pulchritudinous not purty, multiplatinum titans not singles artists, pretentious cynics not small-time con men, Topanga Canyon not San Fernando Valley. Sure their tunesmanship, zeitgeistheit, and guitar goodies were fun on the radio. But the next time I weeded my shelves, they were tracked to the reference collection. B-

Bridges to Babylon [Virgin, 1997]

still know how to construct, play, and--sometimes--sing a song ("You Don't Have To Mean It," "Flip the Switch") *

Red [Big Machine, 2012]
So if Stephin Merritt can make a big deal out of 69 love songs, why can't Taylor Swift make a fairly big deal out of 16? His being formally savvy in his pop-polymath way and hers being formally voracious in her pop-bestseller way? Need either deal be autobiographical? One hopes not in both cases, although verisimilitude has its formal aspects for bestsellers. Swift hits the mark less often than Merritt--65 or 70 percent, I'd say. But one could argue that the verisimilitude requirement forces her to aim higher. I like the feisty ones, as I generally do. But "Begin Again" and especially "Stay Stay Stay" stay happy and hit just as hard. That's hard. A-

yeah smashing pumpkins have like 3 good songs

Backstreet Boys [Jive, 1997]

I'm not claiming I would have gotten the message without a 13-year-old I know broadcasting it from her boombox. But keynoted by two guaranteed pop classics, one dance and one heart, this is genius teensploitation. I give half credit to songwriter-svengali Max Martin, who's put in time with Ace of Base. But as someone who still suspects Abba were androids, I award the other half to the Boys, without whose sincere if not soulful simulations of soul and sincerity Martin's slow ones would be as sickening as any other promise that's made to be broken. Together the team manufactures a juicy sexual fantasy for virgins who get nervous when performers grab their dicks and think it's gross when teenage ignoramuses copy the move. They deserve one. After all, it is gross. A-

Follow the Leader [Epic, 1998]

Korn deny they're metal; that's Judas Priest, all four-four pomp and guitar solos. But they nevertheless demonstrate that the essence of metal--an expressive mode it sometimes seems will be with us for as long as ordinary whiteboys fear girls, pity themselves, and are permitted to rage against a world they'll never beat--is self-obliterating volume and self-aggrandizing display. Now calling up death-metal's signature groan to prove only to prove he's authentic, poor not-actually-abused Jonathan Davis raps, recites, scats, and sings dull tunes landscaped with eerie licks, odd bridges, and a hyperactive rhythm section. How much his fans identify with "My Gift to You" ("I kiss your lifeless skin"), "Cameltosis" ("You trick-ass slut"), or the tragic "Seed" ("Do I need this fame?") remains unclear. But I'm parent enough to hope they can find a more fully formed designated someone than a guy whose idea of transgressive art is netcasting soft-core s&m to any teenager with a logon. C

Oneohtrix Point Never

Garden of Delete [Warp, 2015]
With R Plus Seven's Hammond B-3 vibe out of his system, Daniel Lopatin assembles something resembling an emotionally complex reflection on suffering humanity. Purportedly a concept album about a hypergrunge band called Kaoss Edge--no, there is no such thing as "hypergrunge" (so far), but that doesn't stop Kaoss Edge from having a website--it's as coherent as Lopatin wants it to be. Read along with the hyperautotune lyrics of "Sticky Drama" and hear an alt-teen pencil-dick love song transmute into an alt-contrarian death-metal horrorshow; read along with the cute-sounding electro-munchkin lyrics of "Animals" and learn they're about cages and worse. But the music is more playful and frankly interesting than these dark themes suggest--and also more multifacted, virtuosic, and urban than Lopatin's excellent stealth-pastoral Replica. I credit this healthy paradox to the guy's irrepressible sonic imagination. His mind may believe the earth is one big disaster area. But even so he remains a clever, funny dude who enjoys his musique concrete collages too much to set his sights on distant galaxies. A-

Atomizer [Homestead, 1986]

Though they don't want you to know it, these hateful little twerps are sensitive souls--they're moved to make this godawful racket by the godawful pain of the world, which they learn about reading everything from textbooks to bondage mags. This is the brutal guitar machine thousands of lonely adolescent cowards have heard in their heads. Its creators deserve credit for finding each other and making their obsession real. But not for anything else. B+

Endtroducing . . . DJ Shadow [Mo Wax/FFFR, 1996]
Armed with a sampler, a sequencer, and the black plastic he gave up trying to catalogue in 1989, 24-year-old Josh Davis of Davis, California and London, England distills everything he loves about drumbeats, symph-schlock, and oddball Americana into a 63-minute work with a beginning, a middle, and a to-be-continued. Some under a minute, some over nine, the 13 tracks are designed for headphones--Apollonian even if beat-driven, their only vocals spoken-word and comedy samples that accrue a mysterious fascination without ever revealing their relevance to each other or anything else. Except, that is, for the 30-second intro to the six-minute "Building Steam With a Grain of Salt," in which a square, self-taught drummer explains himself as a reassuring crackle attests to his vinyl authenticity down in the mix: "I'd like to just continue to be able to express myself as best as I can. And I feel like I'm a student of the drums. And I'm also a teacher." And then he chuckles nervously. And then Davis loops that chuckle for a second or two, making of it music and chaos and satire and self-mockery and music all at once. A+

Elephant [V2, 2003]

Everybody else's favorite White Stripes album still isn't mine, but I admit I underrated it. This was because I sensed Jack White was the annoying neoprimitivist scold we now know him to be, but hadn't figured out how to process it, which is to ignore his content while giving it up to his formal imagination and command. The game changer here was what we'll call the "Blitzkrieg Bop" effect. When a riff turns into a stadium slam jam the way "Seven Nation Army" has, fools just hate it forever. Me, I lay my offering at the feet of the populist gods and tip my baseball cap to people a lot worse than Jack White. Gary Glitter, most prominently. Hell, Metallica. A-

Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables [I.R.S., 1980]

I do want there to be more punk rock--I do, I do. I do want there to be more left-wing new wave--really. By Americans--I swear it. But not by a would-be out-of-work actor with Tiny Tim vibrato who spent the first half of the '70s concocting "rock cabaret." Admittedly, I'm guessing, but I'm also being kind--it sounds like Jello Biafra discovered the Stooges in 1977. C+

Bridge Over Troubled Water [Columbia, 1970]

Melodic. B

Grizzly Bear

>one of his greatest contemporary pans

Veckatimest [Warp, 2009]
Nomenclature niggle: not "chamber pop." Serving up two kinds of genteel escape, pastoral and aesthetic, this is chamber folk-rock--or, less kindly, folk-prog. From the Beach Boys on down, chamber pop is about tune and hook embellishment. These guys are in it for the atmosphere. There are vaguer lyrics out there, but the reason the band's claque is gaga for the line "We'll swim around like two dories" isn't how evocative the image is (it isn't, which should count for something), but the extra squeeze of choirboy tight-ass Daniel Rossen pretties it up with. Applied to the straightforward "Deep Blue Sea" on Dark Was the Night, their skilled playing remains modest enough, but on this subtler and more pretentious material, the skills predominate, and just in case they don't, let's add a string quartet here and real choirboys there. Plus, they still hum. Less than last time, but a lot. C+

Spirits Having Flown [RSO, 1979]

I admire the perverse riskiness of this music, which neglects disco bounce in favor of demented falsetto abstraction, less love-man than newborn-kitten. And I'm genuinely fond of many small moments of madness here, like the way the three separate multitracked voices echo the phrase "living together." But obsessive ornamentation can't transform a curiosity into inhabitable music, and there's not one song here that equals any on the first side of Saturday Night Fever. B-

Queensryche [EMI America, 1984]

Heavy metal's excuse for existing is its status as the generic expression of a white-male-adolescent underclass, but these five devotees of "the American work ethic" from an affluent Seattle suburb buy none of that--they're into selling. They woodshedded for two years, avoiding the seamy bar circuit in their pursuit of the rock and roll dream, which is of course a big contract. And when they got it they gave two weeks notice on their day jobs like the second-generation managers they are. What EMI paid for was the operatic tenor of Geoff Tate emoting "fantasy" lyrics over hyped-up new-metal tempos, and if you think the brand name panders to sexism and fascism, you're free to set up picket lines for as long as the First Amendment remains in force. D+

Broken Social Scene [Arts & Crafts, 2005]
Indie-rock as borderless utopian collective, kind of like Yo La Tengo with no heads instead of two-plus-one ("Swimmers," "Fire Eye'd Boy"). ***

Core [Atlantic, 1992]

Once you learn to tell them from the Stoned Tempo Pirates, the Stolen Pesto Pinenuts, the Gray-Templed Prelates, Temple of the Dog, Pearl Jam, and Wishbone Ash, you may decide they're a halfway decent hard rock act. Unfortunately, sometime after they've set you up with their best power chords, you figure out the title is "Sex Type Thing" because it's attached to a rape threat. They claim this was intended as a critique, kind of like "Naked Sunday"'s sarcastic handshake with authority. But at best that means they should reconceive their aesthetic strategy--critiquewise, irony has no teeth when the will to sexual power still powers your power chords. And if it's merely the excuse MTV fans have reason to suspect, the whole band should catch AIDS and die. B-

Paul Simon [Columbia, 1972]

I've been saying nasty things about Simon since 1967, but this is the only thing in the universe to make me positively happy in the first two weeks of February 1972. I hope Art Garfunkel is gone for good--he always seemed so vestigial, but it's obvious now that two-part harmony crippled Simon's naturally agile singing and composing. And the words! This is a professional tour of Manhattan for youth culture grads, complete with Bella Abzug, hard rain, and people who steal your chow fong. The self-production is economical and lively, with the guitars of Jerry Hahn and Stefan Grossman and Airto Moreira's percussion especially inspired. William Carlos Williams after the repression: "Peace Like a River." A+

There Must Be A Better World Somewhere [MCA, 1981]

King's seldom been terrible, and when in 1978 he decided to stop trying for AM ballads and disco crossovers and move on up to nightclub funk he started making good albums again. With songs by Doc & Dr. (Pomus and ace sideman John) and a band anchored by the spectacularly unflappable Pretty Purdie, this is the third time in a row he's topped himself. The voice is no longer exquisite and the licks might as well be copyrighted, but King's standard is classic. Of course, it's also predictable--though the material reprises the timeworn truisms (heavy on party blues and perfidious women) with palpable enthusiasm, only "Victim" stands much chance of entering the repertoire. But if this were the first King album you'd ever hear you'd make damn sure it wasn't the last. B+

Vespertine [Elektra, 2001]
I liked this a lot better once I heard how it was entirely about sex, which since it often buries its pulse took a while. Sex, not fucking. I'm nervous so you'd better pet me awhile sex. Lick the backs of my knees sex. OK, where my buttcheeks join my thighs sex. I'm still a little jumpy so you'd better pet me some more sex. How many different ways can we open our mouths together sex. We came 20 minutes ago and have Sunday morning ahead of us sex. Or, if fucking, tantric--the one where you don't move and let vaginal peristalsis do the work (yeah sure). The atmospherics, glitch techno, harps, glockenspiels, and shades of Hilmar Om Hilmarsson float free sometimes, and when she gets all soprano on your ass you could accuse her of spirituality. But with somebody this freaky you could get used to that. English lyrics provided, most of them dirty if you want. A-

Through the Fire [Geffen, 1984]

I know, no point complaining about these grizzled dildos--it's only corporate metal. But shouldn't their merger at least produce a decent name for a law firm? D+

Neutral Milk Hotel

On Avery Island [Merge, 1996] Neither
In the Aeroplane over the Sea [Merge, 1998] Neither

Untrue [Cargo, 2007]
Unlike most New Ambient, Burial's music is emotional, which helps its funk a lot, and eventful, which helps its interest even more. Fifteen years ago, we would have called it trip-hop or, stupidly, illbient (remember that one?). Now it's supposedly dubstep. I wouldn't quite class this with Maxinquaye--melodies and voices could be more distinct with no loss of atmosphere. But Burial--a single, scrupulously anonymous guy (although not so scrupulous that anyone suggests he's a woman)--has a sonic imagination worthy of Mr. Tricky himself. Burbling electronic ticktocks vie with a carillon of bell simulacra, and rarely have vinyl crackle or laser malfunction generated more musicality. The moniker and, apparently, the worldview, are dark, as the kids say. But when the mix is as rich as this, dark goes to a better place. A

Currents [Interscope, 2015]
Swathed in electronics and simulated tenor, possibly the most soothing "alt-rock" record ever--so soothing one can barely feel the heartbreak 'tis said to expiate ("New Person, Same Old Mistakes," "Yes I'm Changing") **

The Runaways [Mercury, 1976]

Don't let misguided feminism, critical convolutions, or the fact that good punk transcends ordinary notions of musicality tempt you. This is Kim Fowley's project, which means that it is tuneless and wooden as well as exploitative. How anyone can hang around El Lay so long without stealing a hook or two defies understanding. Maybe it's just perversity--which would make it the only genuinely perverse thing about the man. C-

Crosby, Stills, and Nash [Atlantic, 1969]

Rated by request, I've written elsewhere that this album is perfect, but that is not necessarily a compliment. Only David Crosby's vocal on "Long Time Gone" saves it from a special castrari award. Pray for Neil Young. B+

Mechanical Animals [Nothing, 1998]

If only the absurd aura of artistic respectability surrounding this arrant self-promoter would teach us that not every icon deserves a think piece, that it's no big deal to have a higher IQ than Ozzy Osbourne, that the Road of Excess leads to the Palace Theater. Instead, his banned-in-Wal-Mart slipcase job will fade into the haze of records people found interesting at the time. Its strategy is to camouflage the feebleness of La Manson's vocal affect by pretending it's deliberate--one more depersonalizing production device with which to flatten willing cerebella whilst confronting humankind's alienation, amorality, and failure to have a good time on Saturday night. Catchiest songs: "The Dope Show" and "I Don't Like the Drugs (But the Drugs Like Me)." Duh. C+

Come In And Burn [DreamWorks, 1997]

Success doesn't suit this drug addict, who will kick caffeine only when they synthesize rage itself. Since I got big yucks out of 1992's spoken-word twofer The Boxed Life, which recalled a lab-assistant job and other homely pursuits, I am entitled to grouse about the grim star diary that is 1997's spoken-word twofer Black Coffee Blues. And while it's no surprise that this thrash-and-churn is his metalest metal ever, it's amazing that Spielberg-Katzenberg-Geffen made Rollins their flagship rocker--for all his corp clout and cult cred, he was off the charts a month after he muscled on. As pathetic as it is for aging Spinal Taps to fabricate melodrama out of an adolescent despair they remember via groupies and fan mail, it's even more pathetic never to feel anything else. C-

Van Halen [Warner Bros., 1978]

Warner wants you to know that this is the biggest bar band in the San Fernando Valley. Bar band is putting it mildly. This music belongs on an aircraft carrier. C+

CSN [Atlantic, 1977]

Wait a second, wasn't this a quartet? D+

Dirt [Columbia, 1992]

A heroin album, take it or leave it--"Junkhead" certainly isn't "ironic" and probably isn't "fictional" either. Crunch crunch crunch, riff riff riff--way harder, louder, and more metallic than Soundgarden ever will be. But the price of this power is that it's also uglier and stupider--the sound of hopeless craving. Sitting here with my "books and degrees" (well, degree), I very much doubt that if I "opened my mind," as resident sickman Layne Staley suggests, I'd be "doing" like him (er, the narrator of the song). I'll wait for my own man, thank you. B

The Best Damn Thing [RCA, 2007]

I don't even care if she's actually punk or not (as if), I just wish she'd act like it. ("Girlfriend", "When You're Gone") **

Building The Perfect Beast [Geffen, 1984]

This one makes you listen--its abrupt shapes and electro/symphonic textures never whisper Eagles remake. So thank cocomposer, multi-instrumentalist, and occasional arranger Danny Kortchmar, whose "You're Not Drinking Enough" (Merle Haggard, call your agent) and "All She Wants to Do Is Dance" (T-Bone Burnett, ditto) are at once the simplest and most effective songs on the record. Then blame the turgid lengths, tough-guy sensitivity, and "women are the only works of art" on the auteur, who still thinks perfect love is when you're crazy and she screams. B

Saved [Columbia, 1980]

After listening to this record, it became clear that the real hero of Slow Train Coming wasn't Jerry Wexler or the former Robert Zimmerman or even Jesus Christ, it was Mark Knopfler. May Bobby never indenture soul sisters again. C+

I Get Wet [Island, 2001]

The music is as simple as it is hard--the Ramones for an era when "Blitzkrieg Bop" plays on the PA system at Shea and professional wrestlers are all on steroids. Beware, this is also a Gary Glitter/Quiet Riot/Kiss record, meaning there's no tempo shifts, expression, or concessions to human fallibility. If all the songs were the same, it would be perfect, but they aren't and it isn't. A-

Bio [Chess, 1973]

Willie Mays was the greatest baseball player who ever lived, but he just can't cut it anymore. He reminds me more of Chuck Berry every time out. D+

Nobody's Daughter [Mercury, 2010]

Lots of people don't like her and I don't either for that matter. And it's also true that the oil spill is just another thing for her to pretend to care about. Thing is, I can use some new punk fury in my life and unless you're a fan of BP Petroleum or Goldman-Sachs, so can you. And who better to deliver it than a 45 year old woman who knows how to throw her weight around better than half the dweens and zit-faces who make up the scene nowadays. B

Stephen Stills II [Atlantic, 1971]

Stills has always come on as the ultimate rich hippie--arrogant, self-pitying, sexist, shallow. Unfortunately, he's never quite fulfilled this artistic potential, but now he's approaching his true level. Flashes of brilliant ease remain--the single, "Marianne," is very nice, especially if you don't listen too hard to the lyrics--but there's also a lot of stuff on order of an all-male chorus with jazzy horns singing "It's disgusting" in perfect tuneful unison, and straight, I swear. Keep it up, SS--it'll be a pleasure to watch you fail. C

On Avery Island [Merge, 1996] :(

In The Aeroplane Over The Sea [Merge, 1998] :(

Underrated

Frampton Comes Alive! [A&M, 1976]

All right, Peter, you've made your point--tour enough and smile enough and the tunes sink in. I'll rate your fucking album--it's been in the top five all year. Now will you please leave? B-

Greatest Hits [Motown, 1978]

One thing you know about a funk band that goes number one with something as sappy as "Three Times a Lady"--they ain't as funky as they used to be. Or maybe they were never really a funk band to begin with--just potential pros who understood funk's entertainment potential the way John Denver understood folk music's. If they perceive any inflammatory potential in rhythm per se, they do what they can to dampen the fire. I love "Brick House," "Machine Gun," and "Slippery When Wet," but they're not even on the same side of this depressing compilation, half of which is devoted to Lionel Richie and his mealy mouth. B-

America Eats Its Young [Westbound, 1972]

Their racial hostility is much preferable to the brotherhood bromides of that other Detroit label, but their taste in white people is suspect: it's one thing to put down those who "picket this and protest that" from their "semi-first-class seat," another to let the Process Church of the Final Judgment provide liner notes on two successive albums. I overlooked it on Maggot Brain because the music was so difficult to resist, but here the strings (told you about their taste in white people), long-windedness (another double-LP that should be a single), and programmatic lyrics ("Miss Lucifer's Love" inspires me to mention that while satanism is a great antinomian metaphor it often leads to murder, rape, etc.) leave me free to exercise my prejudices. Primary exception: "Biological Speculation," a cautionary parable about the laws of nature/the jungle. Secondary exception: "Loose Booty." Remember what Hank Ballard says, you guys: how you gonna get respect if you haven't cut your process yet? C+

Metallica [Elektra, 1991] *bomb*

The Joshua Tree [Island, 1987]

Let it build and ebb and wash and thunder in the background and you'll hear something special--mournful and passionate, stately and involved. Read the lyrics and you won't wince. Tune in Bono's vocals and you'll encounter one of the worst cases of significance ever to afflict a deserving candidate for superstardom. B

Blood Sugar Sex Magik [Warner Bros., 1991]

they've grown up, they've learned to write, they've earned the right to be sex mystiks ("Give It Away", "Breaking The Girl") **

Me Against The World [Interscope, 1995]

Tough-guy sentimentality is an old story in American culture, but self-pity this rank is usually reserved for teen romances and tales of brave avant-gardists callously rejected by the mass media. His I-love-Mom rings true because Mom was no saint, and his respect for old G's seems genuine, probably because they told him how smart he was. But whether the metaphor be dead homies or suicide threat, the subtext of his persecution complex is his self-regard. What's doubly galling is that these are essential hip hop themes--as Ice Cube and B.I.G. have made all too vivid, it is persecution that induces young black men to kill each other and themselves. That such themes should rise to the top of the charts with this witless exponent of famous-for-being-famous is why pop fans decry the mass media. C+

You Light Up My Life [Warner Bros., 1977]

Who cares if the single sells six million? It's only singles, y'know? Trendsetters don't buy singles. Smart people like you and me don't buy singles. But now I read that the _album_ has gone platinum, too. D

In the Court of the Crimson King [Atlantic, 1969]
The plus is because Peter Townshend likes it. This can also be said of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. Beware the forthcoming hype--this is ersatz shit. D+

...Baby One More Time [Jive, 1999]

Madonna next door (". . . Baby One More Time," "Soda Pop"). *

Nellyville [Universal, 2002] *bomb*

spot on

Backless [RSO, 1979]

Whatever Eric isn't anymore--guitar genius, secret auteur, humanitarian, God--he's certainly king of the Tulsa sound, and here he contributes three new sleepy-time classics. All are listed on the cover sticker and none were written by Bob Dylan. One more and this would be creditable. B-