Listening Post: The Strokes - First Impressions of Earth

The Strokes - First Impressions of Earth - 2006

THe first strains of "You Only Live Once", the opening track of First Impressions of Earth, The Strokes' 3rd album, is scarily reminiscent of Queen's "I Want to Break Free". And the more it plays, the less like the Strokes it sounds and the more like 70s classic rock. It's tasty and fun and suggests that the band may be ready to stretch. The two of the punch is "Juicebox", whose bassline is a direct rip of Peter Gunn or The Munsters, depending on your favorite black and white 60s theme song preference. After that intro the song just keeps it's driving energy, superb guitar noodling and tautness intact. It's excellent. As is the 3rd track, "Heart in a Cage", filled with tribal drumming and a calliope of guitars, the song is a merry go round ride.
So, why did the album fail so hard? I confess, I didn't listen to it, either, even though I have it. (I think it was obtained during a debauched "12 CDs for a Penny" club experience)
Was it just a backlash or was the album as mediocre as its reputation?
It turns out the backlash was sort of deserved. Where previously The Strokes had given us tight, taut, pop-sleaze, after the opening few tracks it feels like they simultaneously stopped trying and tried to hard. "Razorblade" sounds phoned in and headache inducing and when Casablancas sings "I'm tired of everyone...." on "On The Other Side" I can't help but believe him. The ugliness really shows it's head on "Vision of Division" a sort of Strokes meets Muse meets System of a Down nightmare that makes you wonder, "You guys couldn't find anything to cut on this album????".
There are glimmers of goodness tucked inside the morass of wayward experimentation, like "Electricityscape", which, had it been the lead track (and the album 4 cuts shorter) might have resulted in a better received work. But, as it stands, First Impressions sounds like a band that has not only run out of ideas but is bored with the ideas they do have, those ideas and styles having boxed them into a corner that has their shortcomings stand out like an albino in Africa.

Grade: C-
ASide: You Only Live Once, Juicebox, Heart in a Cage
BlindSide: Electricityscape
DownSide: Vision of Division, 15 Minutes, Fear of Sleep

Listening Post: The Strokes - Room On Fire

The Strokes - Room On Fire - 2003

This is the first album I bought digitally on iTunes. I remember it like it was yesterday. Weird. Dunno what that means, if it means anything. Milestones.....

When The Cars first album came out it was such a masterwork of stripped down 3 chord pop rock that on their follow up all they did was repeat the formula with a slew of good songs in the exact same style and idiom. It worked and Candy-O was a smash.

The Strokes followed up Is This It with a collection of songs that were, if possible, catchier and even more accessible. They made it seem easy, dammit.
There's even a guitar solo from Albert Hammond on "Reptilia" that is scores better than his solo on "Last Night". One after another, the songs on Room on Fire are electric, poppy and recognizable but never out live their welcome. The album clocks in at barely over 30 minutes and each moment is a little piece of pop confection. There's no real surprises here, (well, maybe the neo-soul of "Under Control") but that's fine, what we want from The Strokes is just what they give us: Lo-fi NY pop rock.

Grade: A+
ASide: Reptilia, What Ever Happened, 12:51, The End Has No End, I Can't Win
BlindSide: Automatic Stop, Under Control, The Way It Is

Review number 458

Listening Post: The Strokes - Is This It

The Strokes - Is This It - 2001

Fall, 2001.
It's early morning. Actually, more like 10 am. I'm flipping the dials and come to MTV. I still watch the channel every once in a while but I'm not sure why anymore. Popular music has become a vast wasteland of bubblegum pop, rap and rap/metal fusion. It's not fun for someone like me who was weaned on classic rock and pop. It's rather unnerving and depressing. My own band is barely a year old and we are already outdated. We play rock songs with choruses and verses and bridges and no studio tricks. As few tracks as possible to get the points of the songs across.
When I see something that really catches my attention. It's a scraggly band flopping around to a lo-fi steady beat. It's caustic and catchy and aggressive and fun as hell. It's "Last Night" by The Strokes. I make a quick note of the fact that I went to college with the video's director, turn off the tv, walk up the street to Virgin, buy the album and it's on steady play for the rest of the year.

To say that Is This It is an important album in the annals of rock history is just to acknowledge a truth. The Strokes make britpop possible. The Libertines. Arctic Monkeys. The Vines. The Hives. Jet. Scores of rock BANDS emerge. As quickly as Nirvana wiped away hair metal so did The Strokes kill Limp Bizkit (well, it took a little while, but....)

Taking what they've learned and loved of The Velvet Underground, The Cars The Stooges and so many others, and building on them as blocks, The Strokes' first album is a masterwork of pop and rock. Sure, singer Julian Casablancas's voice is distorted to the point of becoming fuzz, that's the point. He's singing about some scuzzy things, ("Barely Legal"? "Soma"?) these downtowners of his songs. The album is decidedly lo-fi as the instruments are mic'd for the most immediate sound. This is NOT a pro-tools record with dozens of overdubs. There are no more than 11 tracks used on the album...ever.

The result has been called one of the 1000 albums you must hear before you die. I concur. It's as listenable as it is important.

A couple years later a DJ calling himself DJ Hellraiser would mashup the music of "Hard to Explain" with Christina Aquilera's "Genie in a Bottle", proving once and for all that music is music is music and how it's wrapped up really shouldn't matter. But for this moment, ten years ago, boy did it matter.

Grade: A+
ASide: Barely Legal, Last Night, Is This It
BlindSide: Someday, Hard to Explain, The Modern Age

Listening Post: Talking Heads - David Byrne - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

David Byrne & Brian Eno - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today - 2008

My first exposure to this record was through the movie Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (Or Ridiculous things said by ridiculous people in a ridiculous movie). I found the song, "Home" pleasant enough but it reminds me of Beck's "Lost Cause". Both are lovely songs with needless sound effects to distract from the simplicity that they should bathe in. You want very much to like the song, but they are both so over thought that I, at least, find myself angry at them.
Also like Sea Change this is an album of songs. If one was expecting My Life in the Bush of (even more) Ghosts, this is not it. "MY Big Nurse and "One Fine Day" sound like the guitar written compositions they started out as. Something intended for campfire guitar. You expect to see people rocking back and forth under the stars and smiling at each other while canoodling under woven ponchos.
By the third track, "I Feel My Stuff", I find myself totally comfortable with the beat boxes and samples and glicks and chirps. The songs have all been so inviting that the determined weirdness of the piano breaks amidst the shuffling grooves don't bother me as much even as it morphs into a near cacophonic semi-rap. They wash over like soft waves at low tide and the rest is blithely hypnotic.
Marrying Gospel to Experimentalism might seem dicey, but on the title track it comes off as inspiring and saddening. It's a real treat. On previous albums Byrne or Eno or both would just keep on in that direction. Once they grasp on to some motif they tend to not let go. Instead, they turn up the tempo a hair and get us back to the campfire with the horn backed "Life is Long".
Sure, Byrne and Eno can't resist some tribalism as on "Poor Boy", but that's a small price to pay for such an accessible collection.

Everything that Happens....is notable for how Eno and Byrne (Like Radiohead before them) completely embraced the internet and new delivery systems, creating flickr pages and websites that engage the fan, completely eschewing advertising and traditional deliveries. They should be applauded and heralded as leaders. The war for the new music delivery template will be fought on two fronts: Startup bands embracing Facebook and Twitter (Steel Train. fun. Etc) and granddaddies of music who can afford to take these risks. Eno, Byrne, Radiohead, these guys are self-sustaining and can afford to be mavericks and vanguards.
I only wish that people like Bruce Springsteen, who appeal to a broader demographic, would do the same thing. The day of the "label" is over. But music is thriving and as good as it ever was. Not "same". Better.

Grade: A
ASide: Home, Strange Overtones
BlindSide: My Big Nurse, I Feel My Stuff
DownSide: The River

Listening Post: Talking Heads - Naked

Talking Heads - Naked - 1988

Take one part Tom Tom Club's poppines, latter day Heads songcrafting, a little Remain in Light esoteria/polyrhythm dance grooves and swirl it around with soul and you get the last Talking Heads record: Naked.
As opposed to the last two records this was recorded much like Remain in Light, with the band laying down musical beds with guest musicians and then Byrne writing and adding lyrics and melodies later.
The result is a hodgepodge of ideas which sometimes hit (Nothing But Flowers, Blind) and sometimes don't ("The Democratic Circus", what can only be described as a slow jam and near ballad. Two things no one wants from Talking Heads. Some of the time they sound like rewrites of other Heads tunes ("Totally Nude") or they are impenetrable and not very much fun ("Ruby Dear").
"Nothing But Flowers" might be the perfect way for this band to end. The song is about a post-end days world where Byrne is longing for the consumer trappings of the world past. It could be said to be part of a theme. An obvious sequel to "Life During Wartime" and perhaps a companion to "Road to Nowhere". As such, it's one of the best tracks the band has come up with.
The second half of the record shows the band's age. The plodding, dirge-like "The Facts of Life" finds the band struggling to force recharche sounds into previously trod musical territories. It's awful. And it's companioned by another lifeless entry, "Mommy Daddy You and I", a song that tries to be cute in places, but, come on, David Byrne can't pull off cute.
From there on, the album is just one tired motif after another until it finally comes to an end. It's as though the record is just exhausted. Not from overwork but from trying to overthink itself. You've heard it before. Get Remain in Light instead.
Get the single, "Nothing But Flowers" and pass on the rest of it.

Grade: C
ASide: Nothing But Flowers, Blind
BlindSide: Mr. Jones
DownSide: The Facts of Life, Mommy Daddy You and I

Listening Post: Talking Heads - Little Creatures

Talking Heads - Little Creatures - 1985

I was standing on the subway platform, reading the Village Voice, in 1985. There was a review of the new Talking Heads album and the writer, I don't recall who (but it might have been Christgau) wrote about how, for the first time in 6 albums, David Byrne seemed confident enough in his own voice to actually "sing".
The result was the smash hit album, Little Creatures. The one with the big singles on it and the terrific video. You remember it, don't you?

Let's liveblog.

1. And She Was - I hate songs that start with "and". It's a pet peeve. But I love this. This isn't ambient soundscapes. This is a song. With verses and a pre-chorus and a catchy chorus that you want to sing along to. There's a BRIDGE, Goddammit! Terrific.
2. Give Me Back My Name - A haunting piece that reminds me more of something that would show up on REM's Out of Time years later. I think the female vocals would be better with eitehr Excene Cervenka or Kate Pierson. But that's me.
3. Creatures of Love - What is a country song doing on a Talking Heads record? Okay, it's not great and the lyrics are weak, but the pre-chorus and the chorus is fun and its melodious as hell.
By now if you've just tuned in to Talking Heads's catalog you are gonna be in for a shocker if you decide to go back and pick up some of that middle stuff.
4. The Lady Don't Mind - okay, now this is the TH we've come to know. Or at least recognize. That's really misleading, however, because it's the percussion and voodoo guitar that plays over a simple melody. This is vintage TH by arrangement only and when the horns come in, you know it's not the Heads you've known. It's better.
5. Perfect World - Vintage slinky Talking Heads bassline, sweet backbeat, and Byrne's white soul croon. Excellent. Pretty. Perfect.
6. Stay Up Late - Easily one of my favorite Heads tracks of all time. Playful, mischievous, catchy, dark. I love it.
7. Walk it Down - A slowed down "Life During Wartime". Not bad. Not great. The chorus is leaps above the rest of the song.
8. Television Man - uninspired. Inoffensive.
9. Road To Nowhere - Nowhere, indeed. As in, "nowhere in the band's entire catalog of group and solo work was it even slightly suggested they were capable of this. A truly great song, upbeat in sound, kind of harrowing in subject matter. Then again, we are all really on Road to Nowhere, aren't we?

Speaking in Tongues and Little Creatures are two of the best pop/new wave/art rock records of the 80s.

Here's what Christgau said about the album: What the relatively straight and spare approach signifies is that their expansive '80s humanism doesn't necessarily require pluralistic backup or polyrhythmic underpinnings. I don't think I even have the energy to decipher that sentence let alone write it.

Grade: A
ASide: And She Was, Stay Up Late, Road to Nowhere
BlindSide: The Lady Don't Mind, Perfect World

Listening Post: Talking Heads - Sp eak in gi n To ngu es

Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues - 1983

It took a couple years (probably for egos to cool) for Talking Heads to give us some new music. The result was their most audience friendly to date.

One of the things I love about doing these reviews is that it has really allowed me to pull out old records, cassettes, CDs that I haven't given any attention to in ages. If I don't have it, I'm pretty sure I can hear it on Rhapsody or the like (makes me miss LaLa, however....)
I don't think I've listened to my copy of Speaking in Tongues in about 15 years. Maybe more. What I'm really impressed by, in context of these reviews, is how much power Frantz and Weymouth seem to be exhibiting over the proceedings. "Making Flippy Floppy" sounds like a Tom Tom Club song fronted by David Byrne. And that's a pretty big compliment since the weakest thing about TTC was the wispy vocals.
Of course there's the monster track, "Burning Down the House". We all know it. We all saw the video, but I forgot just how aggressive it is. It opens the album with a statement: This is not the ambient Talking Heads you might have gotten used to. These guys are loaded for art-rock bear.
The tribal rhythms continue with "Girlfriend is Better" but it's a sexy track, with a catchy as hell groove. Who knew you could sing along to a Talking Heads song again? It's been ages. The album continues the groovy funkfest with "Slippery People", a song that, if you've heard the Stop Making Sense version, will seem vastly inferior, but is still a dynamite song.
With every successive track it's obvious that the band has come together to do something they had long abandoned since becoming the darlings of the alternative music scene: write songs that people, normal people, can like. they haven't completely forsaken their weirdness. But now it enhances a song like "Slippery People" or "Moon Rocks" instead of being the only thing that matters.
Whereas songs like "Swamp" and "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)" would never be found anywhere on the previous Eno-produced Talking Heads records. In a sense, I kind of feel like Eno was an enabler for Byrne's more esoteric leanings and the lesson of Tom Tom Club brought him back to earth. "Swamp" is more reminiscent of "Psycho Killer" than anything on Remain in Light while the latter is prettier and sweeter than anything in the band's previous catalog.
Speaking in Tongues was a bit hit for a band that no one really thought had it in them. I sure didn't. But I'm glad they made it cause it's fantastic.

Grade: A
ASide: Burning Down the House, Girlfriend is Better, Swamp, This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)
BlindSide: Making Flippy Floppy, Slippery People
DownSide: Moon Rocks

Listening Post: Talking Heads - Tom Tom Club - Tom Tom Club

Tom Tom Club - Tom Tom Club - 1981

Ah, piffle.
It's pretty well known that Tina Weymouth was becoming more and more frustrated with the control over Talking Heads that David Byrne was wielding. As though he was the genius and they were lucky to be there.
So, on the side, while he was making My Life and Catherine Wheel, Tina and her husband, Chris Frantz enlisted some other players as well as her sisters and tossed off a bit of Rhythmic dance fluff.
And it's probably been more sustaining for them than anything they've ever done. I mean, come on, "Genius of Love"? How ubiquitous is THAT song???
What they were successful at, more than anything else, was creating a pop version of the tribal musings of Talking Heads. Like TH lite.
Let's be honest here: "Genius of Love" is one of the catchiest tracks of the 80s. Hands down. Just plain fun. And no one, NO ONE ever said that about Talking Heads before.
While there are some dull parts ("L'Elephant" goes on too long and "As Above, So Below" treads dangerously close to experimentation instead of dancey fun) the entire affair is too cute and short to linger too long.

I think of this album as the anti-Remain in Light. Or the anti-My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. It's sort of a triumph that it's paid such dividends for Frantz/Weymouth. While Byrne and Eno were taking themselves SOOOOO seriously, the "lesser" members of the band outdid them with something that everybody liked, everybody bought and everybody danced to. Byrne is what you SHOULD eat. Tom Tom Club is candy.
And sometimes you gotta have a piece of candy.

Grade: B
ASide: Genius of Love, Wordy Rappinghood
BlindSide: On On On On, Booming and Zooming
DownSide: Lorelei

Listening Post: Talking Heads - David Byrne - The Catherine Wheel

David Byrne - The Catherine Wheel - 1981

Ah, the early 80s. When we would all traipse to BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) to see Philip Glass's The Photographer. Or go to the movies to witness Koyaanisqatsi. You could see Laurie Anderson perform or bowl at the University Lanes and we all had a copy of Big Science.
For a couple years it seemed like art had won. And then it all came crashing down with, I think the advent of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous". And art was sent back to where it belonged: in the poverty strewn lines of the decrepit in the East Village.
But, as I said, there was a moment.
And during that time David Byrne was a leader. Talking Heads were bridging pop with art in a way that The Cars only dreamt of. See, TH wasn't gonna sell out and make POP SONGS. They were going to do it on THEIR terms. Well, on Byrne's terms. When he and Brian Eno came out with My Life in the Bush of Ghosts it seemed like the really knew what the world needed. The world of art, that is. Lord only knows what Julie Taymor would have done when presented with the likes of Byrne. But, Twyla Tharp (long before her involvement with Bully Joel's music) jumped on the David Byrne bandwagon and commissioned him to create music for her.
The result was The Catherine Wheel.
From the very beginning couple of tracks I find myself feeling the same way I did in 1984 when I first heard it: I wish I could have seen what this looked like on stage. This music seems so singularly appropriate for dance (where My Life in the Bush of Ghosts certainly did not).
"His Wife Refused" suggests what Byrne was trying to accomplish with lesser musicians that he had been saddled with. But, now with the likes of Brian Eno, Adrian Belew and, yes, Jerry Harrison, Byrne seems like a fuller artist, a dictator, yes, with a singular elliptical and nervous vision.
The music of The Catherine Wheel never suggests that it should be superior to the images that one can lay over it. It's made to be moved to. But it isn't just a series of beats without purpose. It's a soulful, post-punk, proto-funk, purposeful album.
About halfway through, as the ambient dissolved african tapestry starts to get a wee dull, Byrne comes back in full voice with r&b backing on "Poison". The timing couldn't be better. (And it couldn't sound closer to the pop sound his nemeses would be churning out in Tom Tom Club the same year, though nowhere near as accessible and twice as ominous)
Toward the end, after a more and more intensely building ambient climax, we are treated to the song "What a Day That Was", one of Byrne's best tracks and a high point of the Talking Heads live album, Stop Making Sense. And the equally satisfying, "Big Blue Plymouth".
Byrne took everything he's learned over the years with Talking Heads and Brian Eno and art school and made one helluva great soundtrack.

Grade: A
ASide: His Wife Refused, What a Day That Was
BlindSide: Ade, Two Soldiers, Combat, Big Blue Plymouth

Listening Post: Talking Heads - David Byrne - My Life in the Bush of Ghosts

David Byrne & Brian Eno - My Life in the Bush of Ghosts - 1981

(This review is based on the original vinyl pressing and not the expanded reissue.)

No overview of Eno or Talking Heads would be complete without taking a look at the work they did together in the midst of the Talking Heads career. In a sense, it represents everything Byrne has been trying to accomplish with the heads but was unable to, being dragged down by the albatross that is human beings with, you know, ideas of their own.
The heavy sampling of the record makes it one of the earliest albums to do so with such abandon, creating soundscapes that would become the bread and butter for the likes of Public Enemy and so many others in a couple years. It goes without saying that Byrne wouldn't have been able to complete his masterpiece without the help of Brian Eno who had been turning ambience and sound sculpting to an art form for the previous 5 years before this record was recorded.
What this means is the record is sort of bereft of actual songs. I just mention that because, if you were a Talking Heads fan and you went into this looking for "Life During Wartime" or even "I Zimbra" you're not going to get it. Tracks like "Mea Culpa" sound like they could have just as easily been produced by a young Jean Michel Jarre, if he wasn't so synthesizer obsessed. These are sound pieces with music. Not quite ambient in that they are supposed to flow into the background like "Music for Airports" but more like they are supposed to provide the backing for a high end fashion district shopping experience.
Not a spa, it's too energized for that, demands too much of your participation as a listener, and not a mall, either. But, maybe a high end shop INSIDE that mall. I'm thinking most of "Regiment" as a song I would like playing the next time I'm in Beverly Hills looking for a sports coat. (Which is never)
My Life is probably one of the most important albums of all time inasmuch as it predicated and predicted the explosion of sampling that would come and married that to african rhythms and other third world sounds. Black music could look at My Life as the template for just about everything that was about to come. For that it deserves high marks. I'm not sure when i would ever listen to this record again unless I was painting. Which is something I would like to do someday....
Ultimately, and I know that I am in the minority on this, I find My Life in the Bush of Ghosts supremely unsatisfying. I always have. I get the importance, but I'm not a fan.

Grade: B-
There's really no one better track than the others but...
Aside: The Jezebel Spirit
BlindSide: Mea Culpa, The Carrier
DownSide: A Secret Life

Listening Post: Talking Heads - Remain in Light

Talking Heads - Remain in Light - 1980

David Byrne sounds like a shaman on "Born Under Punches", the opening super-percussive salvo. Only this time I get the real sense that he has, dare I say it, a sense of humor. "Some of you people just missed it!" is a line that just strikes me as funny.
So, I'm reading about Remain in Light and one thing that makes a LOT of sense while listening is that the band, specifically Weymouth and Frantz, were tired of being Byrne's back up band. Which is what they sound like on all the previous records, to me at least. They decided to start working together to create jams, keying off "I Zimbra". And that's very obvious on Remain in Light. "Crosseyed and Painless" has a driving beat and shuffle that makes it ripe for sampling. Talking Heads seem to be even further embracing the burgeoning african music scene, whether, as Wikipedia says, it's because they saw Hip Hop as the future or this was a natural progression from punk/new wave. Some were following Don Letts into Reggae and others were embracing more tribal rhythms. Remain in Light comes out the same year as Adam and the Ants's Kings of the Wild Frontier. I don't think this is an accident. But, Adam's global success is due to his understanding the importance of structure and the Heads refusal to embrace structure. In fact, they seem hell bent on decon-ing the structure whenever possible.
Gosh, just reading about the egos involved here...Eno wanted to be listed as a 5th member of the band. Byrne instructed the designer to credit it as "by David Byrne, Brian Eno & Talking Heads". The arrogance and control freaksim is astounding. Consider: this is a record that is dependent on the interplay between percussion and bass. Without that foundation there is no record. Period.
The lyrics, while they might offer something of interest, are just as often if not more just another instrument. Almost like Byrne and the singers are...speaking in tongues. And yet, there was an attempt to minimize Frantz and Weymouth...
No wonder they created Tom Tom Club.
But, how is the music? Inspired. Take, for instance, "The Great Curve", a masterwork of rhythms, stilleto guitar work (by Adrian Belew), the harmonies, all of them make for one of the best tracks in the band's catalog.
This is also the record with the first bona fide big hit for the band: "Once in a Lifetime". This is the one with the video of Byrne in the big suit. As strange as that video, the song is a slap in the face to consumerism and blind grasping for stature. The mid-life crisis in song. Feels like it. (I can also hear the roots of some of Eno's work with U2 in here) You might find yourself getting annoyed by the end, the polyrhythms never end and each song begins to blend into each other. "The Listening Wind" is a good example of this. But it reminds me instead of the deeper cuts on the Bowie/Eno records of the 70s or even a progression from Eno's Ambient music toward some hybrid animal of base human/programmed fairlight robot. Lose yourself in it. The album's coda "The Overload" could be seen as a sequel of sorts to Bowie's "Warszaw". It's dense, ominous, sad, plodding and funereal. It's unlike anything I've heard from the before or since but that doesn't make it any less powerful. Just...different.

1980 was a great year for music. Adam's Kings. Bruce's The River. Laurie Anderson's O Superman. The Clash's London Calling. And this.
If you only want to hear one Talking Heads record to get a sense of what the band was doing and why they rank so highly in the history of rock if not New Wave and punk, this is the record.

Grade: A+
ASide: Crosseyed and Painless, Once in a Lifetime
BlindSide: Born Under Punches, The Great Curve, The Overload

Listening Post: Talking Heads - Fear of Music

Talking Heads - Fear of Music - Fear of Music

"I Zimbra", a percussion heavy, african-rhythm layered song, opens Remain in Light, and, like the first album, suggests a much more accessible experience for the listener than we've been used to from TH. Oh, it's still more concerned with noise-scapes than being a "song", but it makes you want to tap your feet, at least.
Fear not, experimental music lover, "Mind" follows with production that seems to touch on all the tropes of the era. Spacey synth sounds, minimalist spaces between all the notes, vocal gymnastics instead of...um...singing...Byrne and Eno seem determined to turn Talking Heads into a David Bowie-esque art band. It isn't as though the band is afraid of music, per se. They seem to be allergic to songs. "Paper", the first cut that feels like the album is settling into itself, could have easily fallen off Devo's Are We Not Men? (Another Eno produced record). As it progresses, Fear of Music sounds less like an album of songs you would recommend to a friend than a soundtrack to an intense and paranoid urban warrior living in a post-government takeover world. Which may be the intent. Unless I'm reading into things. But "Cities" plays just like that and the very next song, "Life During Wartime" (my personal favorite Heads song ever) is pretty blatant about that subject matter. Which means that I could be right in my interpretation of intent or I let that song inform the rest of the record for me. Either way...The live version is better, the studio version just...peters out...
From there we're back in paranoia land with "Memories Can't Wait", a pulsating, pummeling onslaught of nervosa led by Mr. Gangly Big Suit himself. As it builds it gets more and more tense and results in being one of the only songs on the album not to fade out, but actually end.
Fear of Music pops up on just about every "Best of" list. Whether its the Best of the 70s or all time. I don't agree. I think critics are falling all over themselves to show that they are smarter than the average Kiss listener. They're not. They're buying into pretension as smarts. They are not the same at all.

Grade: C
ASide: Life During Wartime
BlindSide: Cities
DownSide: Mind

Listening Post: Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings and Food

Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings and Food - 1978

Remember when bands gave a shit what their album covers looked like? Sigh...
The reason for the Talking Heads-rospective is because of Eno. I immersed myself in so much of his work (and come to love his work and his ambient work even more) that it seemed only natural, having looked at the album he produced for Devo and covered U2 in the very first Listening Post, that I should jump in to TH. (Another connection: Jerry Harrison, Guitar and Keys for TH, produced Violent Femmes 3rd album.)
More Songs is an album that I actually never heard. My cousin had it, I think. Some roommate in college had it, too. In 198? NY who DIDN'T own it?
Me.
So, what did Eno do? He's got to deal with Warbling Dave up there and it's not like he can just SHOVE him back in the mix. Instead, what you notice on MSAB&F are the drums and bass. The rhythm section is what this album's about. Byrne's still the bug-eyed demento but the band is more cohesive. They don't just exist to serve him and his words. Eno brings them together and a unit of four.
Just as I start to find all the awkwardness a bit unrewarding, in comes "I'm Not in Love" and I'm reminded that the band is more than just a low-fi groove outfit. Now, it's just as straining as the others but it doesn't seem like it's weird for weirdness sake. There's a real sense of trying to accomplish something here.
But nothing on the record prepares you for "Take Me to the River", the old Al Green song. Listening now, it's obviously a companion piece to "Psycho Killer". Maybe it's sung by a victim of the psycho as he's being dragged to his final resting place in some creek somewhere in the pacific northwest.
Works for me.
The album's closer, "The Big Country" is actually a nice little track. A bit of country confection that, to be honest, I would never have expected from them. Well, it's country, run through the hiccuping taffy machine that is David Byrne.

Sidenote: As I read bios for the band while listening to the music I found a quote where David Byrne refers to himself as "Borderline Asperger's, I guess." So, I'm not that far off.

Grade: B+
ASide: Take Me To The River,
BlindSide: Thank You for Sending Me an Angel, The Good Thing

Listening Post: Talking Heads - Talking Heads: 77

Talking Heads - Talking Heads: 77 - 1977

Not THE Talking Heads. Talking Heads. Important distinction. Like Smashing Pumpkins. Not THE Smashing Pumpkins. "Smashing" could be how they look, right?
Talking Heads is more of a commentary on the takeover of television. These are 2nd generation tv people. Still Boomers, but too young to have been the first teenagers. Able to look at the world with cynicism and the soul of artists.
One of the first CBGB breakthrough bands, TH's first album opens with the bouncy "Uh oh, Love Comes to Town" which belies the tact they will take in the future. A peppy little tune for such a smartly cynical band. If Devo were plastic people embracing technology, Talking Heads were their white soul cousins. Not too surprising that Eno would have something to do with both bands at some point.
If you were drawn in by the pop confection opener you were going to be left scratching your head the rest of the way. The album is chock full of nervous energy, herky rhythms and vocal warbles as Byrne just isn't comfortable singing yet.
The Side One closer, "No Confession" is just trying wayyy too hard to be ambitious and different. Side Two attempts to bring us back to pop but "The Book I Read" feels like a deep track and not a single.
By the time you get to the brilliant "Psycho Killer" you're ready for it. Everything has led you there.
Talking Heads, based in NYC, would sort of become the soundtrack for that city in the 80s. One look at movies of the era like Something Wild and you can't miss it. The steel drum sound, the faux-lypso, the appropriated black music by well-intentioned white people, it's a melting pot. In the late 70s punk was embracing reggae, mainly cause punkers were hanging out in clubs where Don Letts was DJing and they fell in love with what he played. Had they not, would the Clash have turned to Reggae?
Would Talking Heads just be an anomaly? I don't know.
The album opens as it closes, bookended by Heads pop. "Pulled Up" is one of the better tracks on the album, forward thinking, energized, I love it.

I heard :77 for the first time in 1982 just before heading off to college. It sounded dated to me then. It still does now.
To be honest, 77 gets a higher rating as a debut than it would if it was just another album.
I liken it to XTC if they were autistic.

Grade: B+
ASide: Uh Oh Love Comes to Town, Psycho Killer
BlindSide: Who Is It?, Pulled Up

Listening Post: Roxy Music - Avalon

Roxy Music - Avalon - 1982

Just how influential was Avalon? Besides being the crowning achievement of the New Romantic movement that Roxy Music and Bryan Ferry started, it is also the flashpoint for just about every other band of the era that is associated with the movement. The Psychedelic Furs, Echo and the Bunneymen, Simple Minds, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet even Qarterflash and Romeo Void and Yaz, just to name a few. Most of them were already recording already but there's no doubt they all count Roxy as an influence. And this is Roxy Music's salvo of relevance.
The white soul of the title track calls to mind every single John Hughes movie or John Hughes moment you ever lived. It doesn't matter if it was featured in St. Elmo's Fire, or Breakfast Club or About Last Night or She's Having a Baby or not. THIS is the music that, when played, immediately transports you back to a time. The sounds are clean, the spaces between (The title of the second track!) are as important as notes themselves. Never had Ferry and Eno sounded to similar and so disparate. What Eno was investigating with music deconstruction Ferry was incorporating into listenability and pop. Just to prove he can, Ferry dabbles in instrumentals ("India") which lasts about as long as its supposed to, ala Another Green World, and then gives over to the lamentation of "While My Heart is Still Beating".
And that opener! "More Than This". Why isn't THAT played at every wedding???
And with the last, eulogic, "Tara", Roxy Music was over. New Romantics had just begun to hold sway and they would for a few more years before giving over to...a host of other movements. But can you think of a better way to say goodbye?

If you don't have Avalon in your record collection there's no way you can really say you're a fan of the 80s. Or music.

Grade: A+
ASide: Avalon, More Than This
BlindSide: Take a Chance with Me

Listening Post: Brian Eno - Music For Airports (Updated)

Brian Eno - Music for Airports - 1978

And I'm done.
Music for Airports is exactly what it says it is. Music to help with the monotony and anxiety of flying. It's new age to the very core.
I listened to it twice and by that I mean that I can't recall a bit of it. Which is what it's supposed to be, I guess. But, background muzak doesn't interest me in the least.
Which is what this is.

One more thing. Listening to it today, I think Trent Reznor's Oscar for The Social Network soundtrack should probably be shared with Eno. The first track on this album is the obvious precursor to it.

Hard to grade. Technically fine. But, what a waste of my time....

UPDATE: I've not been able to escape M4A since I wrote this review. As it stands right now, it's been pouring in Los Angeles for the entire day. How did I spend the afternoon? Reading and listening to Music For Airports. The baby is sleeping? What music to help keep him calm? Music for Airports. I'm planning a trip in a couple weeks and I can't wait to listen, in the airport, to Music for Airports.

Grade: C
New Grade: A

Listening Post: Brian Eno - Before and After Science

Listening to "No One Receiving", the opening track on Before and After Science, its easy to hear the bridge to Talking Heads. In fact, it's not surprising that Eno would work with them. This album provides the roadmap between that band and XTC and Genesis and proves that New Wave was really just art rock. Quickly leaping into pop with "Back Water", Eno is keeping you guessing, especially if you might have forgotten the first two records for the ambience that followed. Then a left jab of "Kurt's Rejoinder", a bass heavy, almost proto-jazz fusion piece.
The album is all over the place. The electro-tech of "King's Lead Hat" suggests Devo or, a little later, XEX's Group: Xex (one of my favorite records of all time) and, most definitely The Cars' "Shake It Up". While "Here He Comes" might be the loveliest, poppiest and closely resembling Roxy Music track Eno has ever offered.

B&AS is a hodgepodge. A "best of" of unheard music, if you will. Where every track sounds like it could have been something written for a previous Eno album and yet, forward thinking, with one piece of perfection after another. While it does get a little ambient toward the end, it's only because the album is coming to an end of a long journey and you should be tired after such a trip. And ready for bed.

Before and After Science is another great Eno work. And if you wanted to start listening to him I would say start here.

Grade: A+
ASide: No One Receiving, Kurt's Rejoinder, King's Lead Hat
BlindSide: Back Water (The XTC song Partiridge's been trying to write for 40 years.), Here He Comes, Spider & I

Listening Post: Brian Eno - Discreet Music

Brian Eno - Discreet Music - 1975

I will listen to Discreet Music precisely the opposite of the way it was intended. Eno wanted it to be something that blends into the furniture. Not meant to be focused on. So, I've got my noise canceling headphones out and I'm giving it as much attention as I can muster. Which means I'm reading facebook, Twitter and various RSS fed news pieces while I'm doing so. I'll get back to yhou in about 30 minutes when side one is over.
(Makes me want to pull out my old Jean Michel Jarre records....)

Okay. That was 30 minutes wherein I got to read a lot of stuff. It really is exactly what Eno wanted it to be. This is something you can play at the psychiatrist's office or at the spa. Yeah, Spa. That's what the entire first side is. Spa music. Like the world needs that. So, Eno invented New Age. Go figure.

Time for side two.
Three experimental Dadaist concerto variations on Pachelbel's Canon in D. Needless. I mean, I get the experiment. The deconstruction of a well known and simple piece. But it does nothing for me but hurt my ears. If you read about Eno's accident and lying in a hospital bed for weeks then you'll understand why he made this. But I don't want a technical manual to explain an album to me, thanks.

Side A: B
Side B: D
Grade: C

Review Number 442

Listening Post: Brian Eno - Another Green World

Brian Eno - Another Green World - 1975

From the very outset I think I'm in trouble. Everything I don't like about Talking Heads can be found in the first few minutes of the opening track, "Sky Saw". The tribal rhythms mashing up against wailing, minimalist viola. It doesn't last long but it's pretty ugly while it's around. But once I settle in to the album's sensibilities and it's deliberately Dada-ist intentions I find I can relax. At least I know what I'm listening to. I like this better when it's poppified by Penguin Cafe Orchestra, however. (Go Figure: Just read that Eno was exec producer of that album. Wow)
In an attempt to fall over themselves fellating Brian Eno, Pitchfork had this to say about this album: "No one could mistake Another Green World for anything other than a pop album, but at the same time, it is unrecognizable as such."
Um...what? That's sort of...a contradiction, no? It's fairly certain that 9/10 if Pitchfork loves it, I'm a gonna hate it (exceptions, The Hold Stead and the recent Kanye West).
But I don't hate AGW. I just...well...you really gotta be in the mood for this one. If you've ever heard Gary Numan's Dance then you've heard this, cause Numan owes Eno royalties. Also on "Everything Merges with the Night", it is most obviously the influence for Telekon's "Please Push No More". I would wager Radiohead could ship a few pence off to Brian as well.

-Halfway through the first listen-

Nothing clocks in at over 4 minutes and many of the tracks are much shorter, as if Eno knows that he's asking much of you to sit through these experiments and if they go on too long they will crumble. They are each, however, the precise length they need to be.
I want so to hate Another Green World. Instead, it's my favorite Eno record so far.
Extraordinary

Grade: A+
ASide: In Dark Trees, I'll Come Running
BlindSide: St. Elmo's Fire (much better than the movie), Zawinul/Lava

Listening Post: Roxy Music - Country Life

Roxy Music - Country Life - 1974

There's no way I was going to look back at Brian Eno's solo work without taking a good hard look again at one of the most important New Wave records from his old band, Roxy Music. I've never heard the band WITH Brian Eno just with Bryan Ferry so I have no frame of reference. Country Life is considered one of the seminal works of the second British Invasion, right? (it also has the benefit of the greatest album cover a teenager could hope for in 1974 (there it is, again! 1974. Wow, what an amazing year!)

From the outset with "Thrill of It All" there's no way anyone would mistake this for a Brian Eno led band. In fact, I would say that David Bowie's LATER 80s music owes much to this record. As do a number of new romantics. Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, Psychedelic Furs, Culture Club, so many others, this is their template.
For the most part, Country Life is a pretty, well produced, easy pop rock record. It occasionally gets a little treacly like on "out of the Blue" but I think much of that is due to Ferry's unctuous, slippery voice. Only Tony Hadley of Spandau Ballet could out lounge him in the era. One gets the feeling that Ferry would be more comfortable in docksiders without socks and Izod shirts. That doesn't mean the music isn't great, it means that just as the teeth begin to bite in a song, he's there to make sure the rip is clean and that when you die, it's from exsanguination not from the pain of the bite.
The second side of Country life is the more experimental, darker, british side, opening with the almost somnabulant "Bitter-Sweet" and following it the sad harpsichord led "Triptych" and devolving into the libertine "Casanova". It's great that you can choose like this, almost two different albums or eps. I prefer side one, but the Resident/Romeo Void part of me loves the second side.

Grade: A
ASide: Thrill of it All, Prairie Rose
BlindSide: All I Want is You, Bitter-Sweet

Listening Post: Brian Eno - Taking Tiger Mountain

Brian Eno - Taking Tiger Mountain (by Strategy) - 1974

The reason for doing a Listening Post on Eno was predicated on a conversation with someone who asked what I thought about his first four albums, since I had done that career look at Bowie.
I had never heard most of the stuff. My exposure to Eno was through production with Talking Heads, Bowie, U2 and the album Avalon (and one cursory listen to Here Come The Warm Jets).
So, I'm certainly not going to listen to everything Eno has ever done. But since Allmusic and others say that the first 5 albums are terrific, then i will give em a go.

How many times do you think Peter Gabriel listened to Taking Tiger Mountain before he embarked on his solo career? And Adam Ant? Because Eno sounds so much like Stuart Goddard on The fat lady of Limbourg it's sort of scary.

TTM is like Warm Jets part 2 but run through the spigot of minimalism. It's simpler. More accessible. Less obnoxiously and self-consciously artistic. More poppy and fun to listen to. In a way, though, I feel like it's a lesser work. Like Eno is saying "look, I know how to do this.This is simple. Watch how I make you realize that pop is nothing more than an toss off exercise." Then he left turns with "The Great Pretender" and you remember that he has more ideas in his afternoon crap that you will have in a month of nose to the grindstone thinking. It's this song that lays the ease in understanding Eno's interest in Devo and why Are We Not Men sounds the way it does.

Side Two opens with "Third Uncle" and is the most energized and excited I've heard so far. It's my favorite Eno track at this point and here's what's interesting. It's arranged by the bassist. NOT Eno: Brian Turrington. So, what does this say about my feelings toward the great Eno? Not much, I'm afraid.

That said, Taking Tiger Mountain is every bit as good as its predecessor and the fact that it's more listenable keeps it from falling off the rating. But I could see myself getting tired of this real fast. All of this said, if any of Eno's future work sounds anything like the title track, "Taking Tiger Mountain", I'm sure I won't be disapointed.

Grade: A
ASide: Third Uncle, Taking Tiger Mountain
BlindSide: The fat Lady of Limbourg, Put a Straw Under Baby
DownSide: China My China (a song that I'm sure influenced all the wrong parts of Adam and the Ants' Dirk Wears White Sox)

Listening Post: Brian Eno - Here Come the Warm Jets

Brian Eno - Here Come the Warm Jets - 1974

Does Adam Ant owe his entire career to Brian Eno? What about Russell Mael from Sparks? Bowie? I think they all do, in some regard. Surely, without Eno there could be no Kings of the Wild Frontier. Or Gary Numan's Replicas.
I am the first to say that I am NOT versed in Roxy Music or Eno beyond his work as a producer.
What comes to mind, though, and maybe this is why I've had so much trouble with him, is that he seems to approach music in such a literate and constructed manner that I find it very hard to penetrate. It's beautiful, lush and at times resplendent, sure. But, isn't it kind of soulless? I can't imagine the guy who makes this music ever crying. He strikes me as the kind of person who sees art and tells you what it means. Or hears a joke and says, "that's funny" but doesn't laugh.
That's not too dissimilar from the bands that I mentioned up front. You wouldn't call Sparks, Adam Ant, Gary Numan, as confessional. Even though, in their own weird way, they are. Numan is famous now for coming out as a sufferer of Asperger's Syndrome and I think that's maybe what I feel from Eno. I don't know that he would ever be able to let me in. His soundscapes are remarkable, check out the work he did with Bowie in the 70s and Talking Heads in the 80s, but you wouldn't want to play much of it at your wedding. Well, maybe "Heroes".
Okay, all that contrarianism aside, just what do I think of Here Come The Warm Jets? If you like Pink Floyd and Andy Warhol, with a splash of classic British Invasion and maybe a hint of Velvet Undeground, this is the album for you. I'm probably not going to listen to Warm Jets while driving up the California coast, but that's not what Eno wants me to do anyway. Truth is, I don't think he gives a shit what I do. He's doing stuff on this album that The Beatles only alluded to on White Album.
Butting up such beauty as "On Some Faraway Beach" next to the rhythmic Brit-pop chaos of "Blank Frank" is pure genius. Following it with a screed like "Dead Finks Don't Talk" (I don't think Eno and Bryan Ferry got on all that well toward the end) and then the hauntingly elgiac, "Some of them Are Old", Eno comes up with one of the most original and bold pieces of music from the art rock movement. The title track, which codas the album is a wonderful example of melodic beauty and dischordance and probably is the very raison d'etre Beck exists.

I have no doubt that Eno's brilliant. And Bowie was smart to hook up with him. Eno's an innovator and Bowie is a copycat, but I can say this without a shred of doubt: I think Here Come The Warm Jets is a remarkable achievement and a sonic treat and I never want to hear it again.

Grade: A
ASide: Needle in the Camel's Eye, Some of Them Are Old
BlindSide: Baby's On Fire, Cindy Tells Me
DownSide: Driving Me Backwards

Listening Post: The Decemberists - The King is Dead

The Decemberists - The King is Dead - 2011

I haven't really enjoyed The Decemberists for a while. First things first. They may have the best name in the history of their genre. Evocative, literate. Colin Meloy sounds like an impenetrably cold man (my daughter thought he was retarded when she heard him, that's what she said. She was 9) which belies his deep sentiments. Well, they are hidden beneath layers and layers of literacy.
Their earlier theatri-folk albums, Castaways and Cutouts, Picaresque and Her Majesty, were just plain lovely, replete with splendor, irony, meloncholy and grace.
Then they got signed to a big label and they got all pretentious. I couldn't focus while listening to The Crane Wife. I know there are many that love it. I'm not one of them. I've heard it twice and I can't tell you anything about it. Sorry. The Hazards of Love had a similar effect. At once proggy as well as...metallic, it's over blown and self conscious.
So, I was skeptical about any new offerings from the pacific northwest's holdover from the great Neutral Milk Hotel/Olivia Tremor Control era.
I'm glad I didn't hold out. The King is Dead is adorable. Pastoral and sweet, Meloy has ditched the thesaurus and the grandiosity and gone back to what made Her Majesty my favorite of their albums: Songs.
There is a John Prine by way of Nancy Griffith and Paul Simon quality to the absolutely terrific "January Hymn".
Peter Buck's guitar on "Calamity Song" just reminds me why I loved REM and why I am so disappointed by them nowadays.
The combination of Buck, harmonica, Gillian Welch's voice on "Down By The Water" treads dangerously the fine line between "The One I Love" and Late 70s Springsteen. But since nobody is doing that kind of stuff anymore, I'm down with it. It's fantastic.
Gone is the thesaurus. Colin Meloy, once the doctorate candidate to Craig (The Hold Steady) Finn's indie Poet Laureate, has learned that less is more and taken that mantle from Finn who seems to slip more and more with each album.

The King is Dead is a decidedly "American" sounding album. Meloy seems to be courting the heartland, finding joy in State Fairs and intimate venues. Without a doubt, it's my favorite Decemberists album. By far. Maybe because its the best REM album since Automatic for the People.

Grade: A
ASide: Calamity Song, Down by the Water, This is Why We Fight
BlindSide: January Hymn, All Arise!, June Hymn

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Ozzy Osbourne - Scream

Ozzy Osbourne - Scream - 2010

This is, I believe, the 63rd review in this series. I've never tried anything like this. I can't believe I got through it. And thanks to everyone who helped (you know who you are).

We traveled the journey of Heavy Metal by way of the primary architects. Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. And we've come to the end.

At the age of 62, Ozzy Osbourne is the latest, perhaps the last, of these titans of thunder rock to release new material. His album from last year is called Scream. Let's listen.

1. Let it Die - Very different from Ozzy. His voice is hyper processed, singing in his low, almost talk-y register, overdubbed with gutteral screams. I like this side of him. Kevin Churko is back as producer and Gus G., a young Greek guitarist takes over for Zakk Wylde. His sound is more muted, more...Avenged Sevenfold? I'm only aware of them through Guitar Hero/Rock Band. Maybe it's Lamb of God (thanks, allmusic!) This song is murderous. I dig it.
2. Let Me Hear You Scream - I like to listen to metal LOUD. I've got my noise canceling headphones on and I got lost in the drone of the opening track. And then this exploded and really woke me the fuck up. Kind of like Andrew W.K. with purpose. If that's even possible. Makes sense to me.....
3. Soul Sucker - The original title for the album. A mediocre, sludge metal placeholder that picks up the pace and goes for the jugular. That's what a lot this reminds me of, like the kids who adored Painkiller decided to make a giant metal album with Ozzy.
4. Life Won't Wait - A mid-tempo acoustic piece married to metal. A kick drum that is begging to be played on an enormous stage, then the song takes left turns on the bridge and stays relatively unexpected. Alternately pretty and aggro. The melody is pretty great, too. Nice.
5. Digging Me Down - Trippy, psychedelic opening with a neat little acoustic filagree. But you know that's not gonna last...and it doesn't. By minute 2 the guitar triplet stroke attack acts like an auger complimenting the one thing that Ozzy has that Dio and Iommi could never get their hands around. Melody. Ozzy just knows what to do with his voice and how to write a song you kind of want to listen to.
6. Crucify - Typical, "irreverent" doom metal. But it doesn't last that long because it's about to crash into:
7. Fearless - This song, with it's driving devil horn, head bang attack could easily have fit in on Blizzard and Gus does his best to impersonate Randy every once in a while with a finger tap flourish, only to dive back into the mosh pit and crush the eardrums. My favorite song so far.
8. Time - Oooh, what's that? Amidst the pulsating bass and the giant drums? Can it be Beach Boys-style backing "oohs"? Yes. Is this a ready made mid-concert flame raiser? Sure. Every Ozzy album's got one. He knows that you gotta sway every once in a while. But, this song just keeps building, the chorus belies the premise. It's not pretty. It's enormous. Calling to mind the '00 Everclear album, Learning How To Smile.
9. I Want More - More cruch. More licks. More chukka chukka. More worms boring into my skull. Works for me.
10. Latimer's Mercy - The album comes full circle as the down tuning, low register, softening keys, swirl together to give a 62 year old man a sense of relevance and urgency.
11. I Love You All - A coda. An ode to Lennon in spirit. A song of gratitude. Nice to know you appreciate your fans, Oz. Well done.

Obviously, Gus G. and new drummer Tommy Clufetos are loaded for bear, they've got a lot to prove and they're up to the task. Brand Ozzy is smart to put their musical future in the hands of these guys. Ozzy sounds like he could tour in the 21st century metal world and not resort to becoming an oldies act. How he's managed this is grist for some book. My money's on Sharon.
I look forward to more from Ozz.

And with that, the Purple Sabbath journey has come to an end.

Grade: A-
ASide: Let it Die, Let Me Hear You Scream, Fearless
BlindSide: Life Won't Wait, Time

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Heaven and Hell - The Devil You Know

Heaven and Hell - The Devil You Know - 2009

THe opening track, "Atom and Evil" (ugh, are these guys 15?) has the pace of a funeral processional. Almost as if the band is trying to instill depression. It's not fun.
Heaven and Hell are the holy/unholy marriage of Dio and Sabbath. 2 parts Dio (Ronnie and drummer Appice), 2 parts Sab (Iommi, Butler). I'm not sure how this even came to be, but I had to include it, even though it meant I would have to listen to Dio's overblown vocal theatrics and uninspired dungeons and dragons lyrics. I really wish it had opened with the big riffs of "Fear" a much more doomtastic track.
After that, it's one same sounding lurching dark metal track after another.
Dio died before they could record another one. I'm not happy he died. But...
I'm not a fan of H&H.

Grade: C-
ASide:
BlindSide: Fear

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Ozzy Osbourne - Black Rain

Ozzy Osbourne - Black Rain - 2007

"I'm not going away!" Ozzy screams amidst the post-metal industrial backing and siren wail of Zakk Wylde's guitar. He's pretty earnest about it. I believe him. After turning himself into a reality tv clown, rocket-fueling his wife's talk show career and turning his kids into mini-tabloid wrecks, Ozzy comes back as though none of that mattered. Like it never happened.
The dude is 60! And his trademark high-whine wail is sort of missing but the unmistakable voice cuts through the industrial metal sound.
Ozzy will not go peacefully into that good night. He's a brand, as I've said before. And that brand is a huge cash cow. Why stop?
There's some good, crunchy 21st century riff-tastic metal ("I Don't Wanna Stop", Ozzy's first number one!, "Trap Door"), some quasi-industrial pop metal ("Black Rain", "Silver"), half-assed, world conscious ballad ("Lay Your World on Me"), heart felt mega ballad ("Here for You") and on and on. It's a calculated record. It's not totally inspired but it's not shallow and callous. I think Ozzy really loves playing this part and, somehow, he manages to not suck and sound relevant. How does he do that????
He's more cynical than usual, take for instance "The Almighty Dollar", its hard to take him seriously knowing just how filthy rich he is. Or maybe he's really extolling the virtue of it and it just SOUNDS cynical.
This is goth/pop metal constructed in a lab by people who, thankfully, love the genre.

Grade: B+
ASide: I Don't Wanna Stop
BlindSide: Black Rain, Silver
DownSide: The Almighty Dollar

Review #434

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Deep Purple - Rapture of the Deep

Deep Purple - Rapture of the Deep


"The Wrong Man" rocks. Let me just say that for starters. In this latter day version of Purple, it's a great litle groovetastic rocker. Gillan is in great voice, Airey makes you not miss Lord. At all. Whereas the title track sounds wayyyy too much like "Got To Get You Into My Life" in the verses. The chorus is a dank jam track. In fact, that's what this band is now. A dank jam band.
There's nothing to get too excited about on Rapture. But the band doesn't embarrass themselves in the slightest.
There's still the occasional dip into Zevon land with "Clearly Quite Absurd", where Gillan sounds more like Warren than Warren does.
Other than that, it's standard issue Purple.
And with that, the Deep Purple section of this Listening Post is over.

Grade: B-
ASide: The Wrong Man
BlindSide: Back to Back
DownSide: Before Time Began

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Deep Purple - Bananas

Deep Purple - Bananas - 2003

Bye bye, Jon Lord.
So, Lord leaves, Blackmore is gone, who's left? Ian Gillan (who occasionally sounds like Ian Anderson AND Warren Zevon!), drummer Ian Paice. Not much else.
Ex-Sabbath keyboardist Don Airey is here instead and Steve Morse is on guitars.
You know what? It's great. They sound fantastic. You wouldn't know the difference. Well, they are more of a jam band than a metal band, but I'm at the point now where I think Purple accidentally invented metal. I think they just played what they wanted. Blackmore liked harder stuff and he caused the metallic part of the band. Lord and then Airey fit right in the psychedelic trope. Gillan is just a good vocalist, through and through.
This album isn't as hard as Abandon. It's lighter. Funnier at times. More fun at others. Sometimes it rocks ("House of Pain", "Silver Tongue"), sometimes it's heartbreaking ("Haunted", "Walk On"), or it's playful as on the folky-Simon and Garfunkel-esque, "Never a Word". There isn't a clunker in the bunch, with the high point being the multi-structured, sublimely layered, "I've Got Your Number".
The 1-2 punch toward the end of "Bananas" and "Doing it Tonight", one a pure rocker and the other tinged with Reggae, is the most inspired the band has sounded in a while.
I love Bananas. I'm bananas for Bananas

Grade: A
ASide: House of Pain, Haunted, I've Got Your Number, Bananas, Doing it Tonight
BlindSide: Silver Tongue, Walk On

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Ozzy Osbourne - Down to Earth

Ozzy Osbourne - Down to Earth - 2001

I'm going to be extraordinarily kind to Oz right about now. At this point he's the only one standing from the original metal bands.
Sabbath is over.
Dio is a cartoon version of what he THINKS metal is turning into.
Deep Purple is a funk/prog jam band.
By 2001 Metal had given over to a new breed. The days of hippy psych metal gave way to glam which became hair metal and was wiped away by Tool, Korn and math rock.
But Ozzy had one thing the other bands did NOT have: Sharon.
Ozzy comes across as barely functional. But the daughter of his manager who became his manager sure learned a lot at the feet of her father. And thing one was never think you are better or lesser than your audience. Be the band they want you to be.
So, he became the Prince of Fucking Darkness.
He hired great players and good songwriters and excellent producers and made records.
Ozzy's sound hasn't changed much since the last record and he knows where his bread is buttered. One of my favorite tracks in the entire catalog is the opener for this one. "Gets Me Through" is the one where he acknowledges his past, his roots and his gratitude for his fans.
The ballad, "Running Out Of Time" has just enough weirdo Floydian production mixed through a taffy machine of metal and Queen that it becomes a great centerpiece. The other ballad, "Dreamer" shoots a little to hard for the Aerosmith money.
I like Down to Earth. As much as the last one. Maybe even a little more.

Grade: A
ASide: Gets Me Through
BlindSide: Running Out of Time
DownSide: Black Illusion

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Deep Purple - Abandon

Deep Purple - Abandon - 1998

Abandon finds our heroes settling in to their roles as niche filling, core fans satisfying, able codgers. In 1998 did you even know that Deep Purple was still playing, let alone were releasing new music?
Me neither. But I thought they stopped playing in the early 70s.

Abandon rocks a LOT harder than Purpendicular. There's still the occasional prog-rock flourishes, of course, now sounding like a a cross between Rainbow and Jethro Tull, of all things. Well, not on the entire thing, but it's there on "Fingers to the Bone". These guys can play.
Case in point the hard edged, rifftastic, "Seventh Heaven"
Abandon is actually the best the band has put out in a while. You don't need it. No one does. But, if you find yourself itching for some Jon Lord or some...whatever it is Purple is classified as now, you won't be disappointed.

Grade: B
ASIde: Any Fule Know That, '69, Bludsucker
BlindSide: Seventh Heaven, What's Her Name
DownSide:

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Dio - Angry Machines

Dio - Angry Machines - 1996

Dio left Warner Brothers. Or he was dropped. I don't know. I don't really care.

This album seems to double down on the core. These aren't songs, per se, as much as they are exercises in dark, metallic, apocalyptic constructs.
Ho hum. Been here, heard it. ("Sometimes I think I need NEW PARTS FOR MY BRAIN!!!!" - Dio lyric from Institutional Man)
All over this record, Dio seems to have instructed his band to listen to modern metal of the era, perhaps Korn, and try their best to copy it. This results in big, bass heavy almost math metal of "Hunter of the Heart" and the dyslexic backbeats of "Black" and the obnoxious "Stay Out of My Mind", a "song" that, quite literally, sounds like everybody involved was working on something else.
Like Whitesnake, I don't think I need to hear any more of Ronnie James Dio. I get it.

I've listened so you don't have to.

You're welcome

Grade: D-
ASide:
BlindSide:
DownSide:

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Deep Purple - Purpendicular

Deep Purple - Purpendicular - 1996

I like "Vavoom: Ted the Mechanic". It's a groovy, slippery trip-blues jam. For some reason it reminds me of Steely Dan at their most energized.
Jon Lord's understated piano playing on "Loosen My Strings" are a welcome surprise, followed by the horrendous over playing of "Soon Forgotten", which this song soon will be. Ugh, imagine Deep Purple imitating Sparks circa 1975.
Purpendicular bears no relation to any previous Deep Purple album. Gillan doesn't sound like Gillan you know, Lord is toned down, Blackmore is gone and ex-Kansas guitarist Steve Morse has taken over. It's a pleasant enough record but when put side by side with the other pillars of metal, this band might as well be Chicago by now.
Musically, there's some fantastic moments, like "Cascades: I'm Not Your Lover" and the strange Irish/California hybrid rock of "The Aviator". But, if you walked in to a record store and the last thing you knew of Deep Purple was Machine Head or "Smoke on the Water", this would leave you scratching your head.

Grade: B
ASide: Vavoom: Ted the Mechanic
BlindSide: Cascades: I'm not your Lover, The Aviator
DownSide: Soon Forgotten

Listening Post: R.E.M - Collapse Into Now

R.E.M. - Collapse Into Now - 2011

Everything on Collapse Into Now sounds like something else. By that I mean there are melodies that harken back to other melodies in REM's past. I guess this shouldn't be a surprise, after all, songwriters aren't fonts of infinite combinations. The ear and mind's ear hear things a certain way. Then they run ideas through that personal taffy machine and it comes out sounding singularly like that musician. The paradox is: we expect both familiarity and diversity from our musical heroes.
The trouble with this for me as a listener and lover of REM is that I've heard it before and none of the familiarity predates Automatic For the People. Which means that REM is echoing themselves mostly from sounds of their most fallow and least interesting period. Strike that. Their least "exciting" period. In other words, they sound like the Warner Brothers version of REM and decidedly NOT the I.R.S. REM.
But, while "Uberlin" calls to mind "Drive" that doesn't mean the former is bad, it means that I would rather pull up the latter, curl up on the couch and let that brilliant record wash over me. The fact that "Blue" could be a rewrite of "E-Bow the Letter" reminds me that REM's best days are behind them. (Having Patti Smith on both isn't really helping avoid that comparison, guys). I have no idea why it reprises "Discoverer" however.
"Oh My Heart" is lovely but the chord progression is a way too obvious lift from Automatic's "Try Not to Breath" which is a damn shame because that chorus could be so beautiful.
It's that way all through the record. If Accelerate was their 21st century Lifes Rich Pageant, then the experimental side of Collapse Into Now makes this the follow up in spirit to Out of Time, a disjointed album despite it's commercial success.

The album doesn't get cracking until more than halfway through with the horribly titled "Mine Smell Like Honey" (Discoverer is more of an opener than a real rocker, though it's one of the best songs on the record) and it's so uninspired that I find myself wanting to reach for my mouse and click over to the title track from Accelerate, which this sounds like, if watered down.
I do have to admit that "Walk it Back" is one of the loveliest songs the band has put together. And Stipe is in fine, rich, baritone. He seems to be reaching for more Elbow and less Radiohead and I am thankful for that.
The album is a herky jerky disjointed mess. I mean that in a good way. It's familiar, yes, but holy crap, we could have gotten another Reveal or Around the Sun, instead of a band realizing from the last album that the people don't want what's good for them, but we want our band just to be good. The fact that it's got no thematic center, be it the "every instrument except guitar" of A4tP or the moodiness of Around the Sun or the wannabe electro relevance of Up is a boon to this record.
In an era of shuffle play, this album plays just fine on your ipod when you set it to random play REM.

"I cannot tell a lie. It's not all cherry pie. But it's right there waiting for you." - Stipe has written some annoying "don't give up, I believe in you, you've got so much to live for" crap, but that might be one of the worst lyrics ever.

Grade: B
ASide: Discoverer, Uberlin
BlindSide: Walk it Back, Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatte
DownSide: Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando and I

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Ozzy Osbourne - Ozzmosis

Ozzy Osbourne - Ozzmosis - 1995

It's been a few years since No More Tears but that hasn't changed Ozzy's 90s era attack.
Loud. Big guitars. Heavy production. Ozzfest would start the next year, so I guess this is the album that kicked that off.
But, where Tears was a seemingly joyous celebration of ear blasting pop metal, Ozzmosis heads in the other direction. Over processed vocals, meanderingly gothic songwriting, there are times when Ozzy seems to be fighting just to be heard. He should look at the cover of the record and note the name of the band. There are a ton of co-writers on this disc. Lemmy's back on "See You on the Other Side" and Mark Hudson of the Hudson Brothers (and Kate's uncle) helps Ozzy get back in touch with his inner Beatles on "Ghost Behind My Eyes" but even the production and starpower songwriting can't really save this record.
Because of the gloss and Ozzy's resilience, I find myself rooting for the record to succeed but the makers are so steeped in the darkness that overshadowed all metal in the 90s that it's impossible to do so. Look, Ozzy, you are not Tool. Stop trying to be. On "Thunder Underground" he and his cronies take everything that makes Tool great and misses the mark completely. Trading in style for sheer loudness is not making music. It's making ears hurt. I like it when my ears hurt. From good music. Like "See You On The Other Side", Lemmy's contribution, a mid-tempo arena rocker that almost fails due to excess but pulls itself back from the edge to be, well, the best thing on the record.
Ozzmosis just drones on and on and just when you think it's never going to stop being indulgently uninteresting...along comes a song co-written by Steve Vai to show you, you were right. It's never going to stop.
Then, wayyyyy at the end, the very last song, after the interminably long and headache inducing "My Jeckyll Doesn't Hyde" (Ugh, what a title) comes a lovely little piano driven piece called "Old L.A. Tonight". Of course it gets gigantic, it has to, Ozzy's all about excess, but there's good ol' Rick Wakeman on keys to keep it all high minded.
But, there's no way a little piano flourishes can save this piece of dog crap.

Grade: D
ASide:
BlindSide: See You On the Other Side
DownSide: Thunder Underground