|
Post by nathanalbright on Oct 27, 2020 13:49:17 GMT -5
Hey can you do a track by track review of Dangerous Woman by Ariana Grande. Thanks Cmon it's been almost two months I haven't forgotten.
|
|
|
Post by nathanalbright on Nov 1, 2020 23:32:42 GMT -5
Feeling Strangely Fine, by Semisonic
In retrospect, it seems somewhat odd that this album is the only hit album in the United States that Semisonic ever had. Unsurprisingly, this was the first album I ever became familiar with of the band, thanks to my fondness for the big single that came off of this album, the airplay smash "Closing Time" with its faux-deep reflection on the similarity between drunks staggering home at the eponymous time when bars close and unborn children clinging to the womb before their painful entry into the world. The album as a whole stands up, and it is telling that other songs, most notably "Secret Smile" and "Singing In My Sleep" were particularly well-liked in other parts of the world as well as on rock and alternative radio. Semisonic comes off in this album as being a mix between nerdy alternative rockers and deeply romantic power pop musicians with just enough post-grunge muscle to drive these songs, and that was enough to give the band one hit and one hit album, and enough to make those of us for whom the blend of post-grunge, power pop, and nerdy alt-rock hit all the right buttons lifelong fans of the group. If their mass appeal was limited, their core appeal was great, and this album is as good a place as any to figure out why. Here is a track-by-track review:
Closing Time: This album begins on its most accessible note, a driving track with a prominent and simple piano melody that shows lead singer Dan Wilson musing on fatherhood given the troubled birth of his daughter and making a memorable contribution to famous lines that "every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."
Singing In My Sleep: By the time that this song was released, mixtapes and cassettes were certainly on their way out, but this song reflects the band's nerdiness and their close bond with those who created mixtapes (like yours truly) even during the late 90's, and the song was unsurprisingly a minor hit on alternative radio because it resonated with like minds.
Never You Mind: A rolicking song that details a humorous account of bickering couples, it is unclear if this particular song is autobiographical, but it does reference a particularly infamous episode of the original series of Star Trek and so the song demonstrates the interest of the group in romantic drama as well as nerd culture.
Secret Smile: A hit song in the UK and other countries (including Mexico), this particular song is slower and definitely on the romantic side, with the gentle melody and the warm sentiments of the song a testament to the power of love and appreciation in keeping relationships strong.
DND: This is another song that expresses the power and longings of romantic love, with the song consisting of the longings of the singer that the Do Not Disturb sign on the hotel room would allow the lead singer and (presumably) his wife to be left alone for some romantic bliss. One wonders exactly who was bothering the narrator, but it is possible that the song reflects irritation with the burdens of fame even as those burdens had barely started for the group, a la "Dance Monkey."
Completely Pleased: This song is perhaps one of the weaker tracks on the album, certainly so in my opinion, although it too falls into the band's tendency to write songs about love and longing. In this song the narrator expresses his desire to please his woman, punning cum and completely pleased (similar to Lit's "Miserable"), and while the sentiment of the song can certainly not be faulted and is quite praiseworthy, the execution of this song is a bit cringy.
This Will Be My Year: If the song is filled with more than a few zodiac references and other silliness in the lyrics, this Jacob Slichter-penned song also provided the band with a great many references to the level of success the album had and expresses careerist optimism for a group that was about to find its greatest level of success. In that light, it makes for a rather sly inside joke that makes for a strong album track for the loyal fans.
All Worked Out: This song inspired the title of the album, and it is a powerful and somewhat dark track about a woman who has her relationship with a man worked out, where she is driving the relationship to its culmination while the man involved feels strangely fine but not necessarily involved in the working out of her plans.
California: This particular song is an ode to California, and while it's not my favorite song on the album, the fact that Wilson would later move to California from his native Minnesota suggests a strong fondness for the life that the area would have to offer. And it likely made the song more popular in California as well, so that couldn't hurt.
She Spreads Her Wings: This track is the only number from John Munson, who sings lead on the album as well, and it fits in with the overall vibe here of dealing with love and relationships, and if Munson's singing is a bit weak the song itself has some drive and is thought-provoking in its look at a woman.
Gone To The Movies: A fitting close to the album, this is a downbeat album closer about a woman who has left, and the song has enough ambiguity in it that it manages to suggest the tension of the loss of someone to the showbiz life, the discouragement of white knight tendencies on the part of the listening audience, and a demonstration of the whine of Wilson to good effect.
Overall, this is a solid album, and if I feel more critically about some of the songs in the album than I did when I first listened to it, this is a solid album overall that certainly showcases the band in a balance between the post-grunge sound that dominated the late 90's and early 2000's on rock radio and the band's own power pop sensibilities that put them more in league with Ben Folds Five. The larger public seems to have been aware before too long of those power pop interests and unsurprisingly the band had limited long-term success except among devotees of romantic power pop, which includes this reviewer. Popular at the time it was released, this album stands the test of time as well.
|
|
|
Post by nathanalbright on Nov 5, 2020 3:44:15 GMT -5
One Night At First Avenue, by Semisonic
This album is, at least as far as I know, the only live album ever recorded and released by Semisonic over the course of their career. It tells the listener more or less what one would expect to see, in that it shows Semisonic dealing in a warm manner with an appreciative hometown crowd during the latter part of their active period in the early 2000's. The setlist focuses on "Great Divide," the first album the band recorded, but contains material from all of the releases up to that time, including their Best of compilation that was released just as they were about to be dropped from MCA after the failure of "All About Chemistry." If there is an overall approach to the live performance that is obvious, it is that Dan Wilson's voice comes off as being rather thin and even more whiny than in studio and that the band as a whole is grittier than their power pop production live. This is, in other words, the sort of rock album that they wanted to be thought of by the rock crowd and not the more ambivalent power pop/alternative band they were in the studio. A track-by-track review follows:
Sculpture Garden: An early ode to love written by drummer Jacob Slichter, this song is the only one that came from the "Pleasure EP" that was not included on any other works by the band. It is a strong point from that initial EP, though, and makes for an effective opener to showcase the band's interest in love songs and pretensions at high culture.
F.N.T.: One of the early singles from "Great Divide," this song showcases the band in their post-grunge mode, with another ode to love and devotion to someone who is a fascinating new thing but will still be worthy of love and devotion when she is no longer new, a noble sentiment that is easy to appreciate.
Never You Mind: One of the songs off of "Feeling Strangely Fine," this song is an energetic number and makes for an effective live performance, showing the band in a mood to show off their soundtrack pop numbers for a hometown crowd that almost certainly knows most of these numbers well.
In Another Life: This song is one of the more obscure deep cuts from "Great Divide," and it makes for a pleasant listening experience. If it's not an amazing song it's certainly a good one and a touching one and makes for a nice change of pace for the concert.
Down In Flames: Continuing the theme of showcasing songs from "Great Divide" comes the first single and music video from that album, a rousing number that expresses a good deal of dissatisfaction at the course of life and relationships, which is a common enough theme but one done well here. One True Love: One of the highlights of "All About Chemistry," this song really should have been an AC or Hot AC single for the group instead of "Act Naturally." At any rate, the band deals well with the absence of co-writer and duet partner Carole King and the track is handled with an odd but interesting rhythm as well as excellent backup singing.
If I Run: Another strong track from "Great Divide," this particular song is an upbeat number with a lot of nice instrumentation that is handled well by the band and is obviously a familiar song to the audience as well, which is all the better because it's a good song and an enjoyable one to listen to.
Chemistry: The lead single from "All About Chemistry" and first song from that album, this song finds Dan Wilson in the mood to encourage the audience in a bit of a singalong, as well as encouraging a bit of riffing on the part of the band concerning the instrumental tracks, making this song a bit of a jam session for the group, in a good way.
Delicious: This song, another one coming from "Great Divide" as well as the second Friends soundtrack,, shows the group in a familiar mood of expressing appreciation for the love and sensuality that comes from having a loving partner. It's easy enough to see why this track, which fits along with such numbers as "Completely Pleased" or "Sunshine And Chocolates" from later albums, would be a popular one with the female fans of the group.
Closing Time: This song, the big hit of the group of of "Feeling Strangely Fine", is played well, and it is obvious that this song pretty much has to be played any time the band has a concert because it is the one song that even the casual fans of the group will know well. It is telling that this song is held towards the end so as to build up anticipation, though, but is not saved for the encore.
Secret Smile: Another one of the singles from "Feeling Strangely Fine," this song is another relatively slow number as one can see the band mixing in faster and slower numbers to keep the crowd's energy from getting too hyped too early. Again, we see a song that was quite a poppy number in the studio sound far more grungy live.
Over My Head: This song, a soundtrack song that was included on their "Best of" collection and on some international versions of "All About Chemistry," is definitely a strong one, and the band does it well, even if it was likely one of the more obscure numbers to the audience that was listening to it.
Singing In My Sleep: The second hit single from "Feeling Strangely Fine," this song is such an obvious testament to the band's nerdiness and their fondness for mixtapes and the aspects of musical culture of the 1990's that it is an obvious way to close the main set to an appreciative hometown audience. Giving the audience an obvious hit is a solid way to go, and the song ends up with some appreciative cheers.
Great Divide: The cheers, of course, lead the band to do one more song for an encore, and they choose the title track of "Great Divide," a beautiful song that is performed in an upbeat fashion to close the concert as well as the album on a high note, and is testament to the way that the band kept their repertoire going throughout their entire career rather than dropping early albums that came before their mainstream success.
Overall this album is what one would expect from a Semisonic live performance. If the performance isn't nearly as polished and there aren't nearly as many instrumental touches that make the albums so wonderful for fans of their pop sound, this is an album for the rock crowds and it's one that appears to have been greatly appreciated by the audience in Minneapolis, at any rate.
|
|
|
Post by nathanalbright on Nov 5, 2020 20:20:35 GMT -5
Great Divide, by Semisonic
In many ways "Great Divide" is an appropriate name for the debut album for Semisonic, as it finds them straddling several great divides in the search for success as power pop musicians who had deliberately aimed after a post-grunge sound that would appeal in the post-Seattle world. Yet the band did not only aim for music that would appeal to post-grunge audiences but also were clearly showing themselves to be not far from Toad The Wet Sprocket or other power pop artists at the time who had a much softer side, and that comes through. And the great divide is not only a matter of sonic textures, but also a great deal of ambivalence in terms of their attitude towards love (with some songs being down on love and others being even cloyingly romantic), and their attitude towards success. The end result is a solid album that is easy to enjoy and has a lot of great songs, but one which leaves the listener unsure of exactly where the band is trying to go and what they are trying to accomplish, especially given the gulf between the album's singles and its quieter moments. A track-by-track review follows:
F.N.T.: The second single off of this album, this song was a minor hit in alternative and mainstream rock and it is a solid song, certainly an excellent piece of soundtrack song and one with a noble sentiment about loving and appreciating someone whether they are new or not, showing off the band's romantic side.
If I Run: This song is a surprisingly jaunty song about the relief that comes from thinking that one's heavy burdens will be loosed at death, but not wanting to leave someone behind. This is a song that can be interpreted a variety of ways, including viewing one's love towards someone as a pull away from self-destruction, or something akin to the darkness of their later song "Surprise," but this is a standout track even with its ambiguous lyrics.
Delicious: It is little surprise that this song, which bears a strong resemblance to the more romantic material from acts like Toad The Wet Sprocket, made it onto a Friends soundtrack and onto the show. It is definitely a song that has a positive perspective about love and romance.
Down In Flames: The first single off of the album, this song is unusual in being the hardest this album hits, and its music video was banned as being too controversial to play, all of which suggests that those who liked this song would have been a bit puzzled by the rest of what the band had to offer, given the darker and more menacing tone of this song compared with the rest of what the band had to offer.
Across The Great Divide: This upbeat and happy song is the titlish track of the album and one that reflects the divide in the album itself. This is one of the more upbeat songs in the album, but it marks the division between the more upbeat and commercial songs of the album with the more reflective and downbeat songs on the album, and it is unlikely that the sequencing was accidental in this regard.
Temptation: One of the songs co-written between Wilson and drummer Slichter, this song is a moody and downtempo song about temptation, where the narrator is clearly going out of his way to court temptation, even if it tells him what he shouldn't do, which he should probably know already and be able to avoid.
The Prize: One of the two songs on this album taken from the Pleasure EP, this song reflects a considerable amount of ambivalence about the band's interest in success, and it shows the band hesitant and unsure about the prize that they are seeking and whether it is they want celebrity and all that comes with it. At least that's how I read it, although it could always be about love and relationships like so many of the band's songs.
No One Else: This song is a very slow and melancholy song that reflects upon the way that no one else can make the narrator cry like the subject of the song can, although knowing what a mensch the singer is not, this seems hard to believe as he strikes me as someone who would cry pretty easily, despite his protestations (see also "Never You Mind").
Brand New Baby: This song, the second song taken from the Pleasure EP for this album, is a classic of the genre of trying to pretend to be happy when someone has just broken your heart by cheating on you with someone else. It's not like this is a new sentiment, but Semisonic does it just about as you would expect and it's a compelling number.
Falling: This song is another part of the down on love set that comes at this part of the album, and it shows the narrator expressing some irritation that someone keeps telling him that they don't like him but are so concerned about falling, expressing sentiments that bother the singer. The song itself is a fitting one for those who have been stuck in the blob dealing with flirtatious friendships.
In Another Life: The only song on this album sung by bassist John Munson, and it expresses irritation (again) about the sentiments of a young woman, saying that maybe he won't be around waiting for her in another life when she will finally be interested in and available for him, which is a nice way of dealing with the reincarnation problem.
I'll Feel For You: The last song of the album, this number is a touching and romantic song that expresses the narrator's commitment to feel what his partner cannot, and it is a touching reminder of the love and devotion that happens between people in a relationship, and a loving and positive way to end an album that has been split and divided in its approach to love and relationships.
|
|
|
Post by nathanalbright on Nov 16, 2020 19:58:05 GMT -5
Pleasure E.P., by Semisonic
This EP marks the beginning of Semisonic's music career, and it is certainly a very interesting document of a band just starting out and exploring a variety of elements within their sound. There are really seven tracks to this as well as a bit of noodling that adds to the personality of the record without adding a lot of content. This particular EP comes from the band's first recording sessions at Elektra that were aborted and that led to the band being dropped. And before going to MCA, the group released the material that they had recorded so far, and what it turns out to be is an enjoyable look at a band trying to find its place in the music scene of the mid-1990's. I had listened to this EP before, but listening to it again I see that even the lesser tracks here have considerable value and appeal, even if there are clearly three songs that are better than the rest, and two of them ended up being added to the band's debut full length LP Great Divide, entirely unsurprisingly so. Yet the tracks that were not quite up to that level still show a band learning its way and beginning in a strong fashion that is certainly worth checking out if you like Semisonic's more famous material. Here is a track-by-rack review:
The Prize: The first song on the first recording by Semisonic already reveals the band's fundamental ambivalence about show business and the pop culture that they were in. Despite wanting popular success, the band knew from the start that there was a great deal of phoniness in the whole process, and the band itself, especially lead singer/songwriter Dan Wilson, would find himself considered among those twelve master geniuses a year, it's all so...ironically humorous.
Brand New Baby: This is the sort of song that most bands would be embarrassed to sing and perform, but not Semisonic, who try their hand with the 90's tone of irony in singing a song about seeing one's partner chicken her way out of a relationship and then step out with a brand new baby, all while the singer tries to pass himself off as happy for her and not devastated and in no need of her pity.
In The Veins: This is not as strong as the first two numbers, but as a song it has an ominous feel to it that really has the visceral quality of a harder 90's alternative sound than the band ultimately delivered on. This is a track that deserves attention, not least because its vocals and processing point the way to how some post-grunge acts would sound, following in Semisonic's wake.
Wishing Well: One of the more surprising songs on the EP, this song expresses the question of what has someone become, falling down a wishing well. This is yet another song that expresses the fear that seeking fame and one's dreams of popular success will change someone beyond recognition. I don't think that happened to Semisonic, but it has certainly happened to other groups.
Star: This song is a lovely song, right along the lines of love and relationship music that one has come to expect from the group. And it should come as little surprise that this song's reflections on love should find the singer/narrator saying that he would love to be a satellite revolving around the star that is his partner. That is precisely as one would expect it coming from Dan Wilson.
Sculpture Garden: This is the third strongest track on the EP, and it's a shame this song hasn't gotten more exposure (check it out on the band's live album, though). The song expresses the longing of the group to make love with a partner in the midst of the sculpture garden, where aesthetic and romantic pleasure can be combined in a place that doesn't feel as noisy or crowded as the rest of the city.
The Gift: This is a song that expresses the question of whether the person who gave the narrator a certain gift--presumably of a romantic and intimate nature--would have given it again knowing what was known afterwards. This is a song that expresses both the characteristic concerns of the group with intimacy and also the ambivalence about love and relationships that Semisonic explores.
Overall, this is a strong debut and gives a hint of the promise that would be fulfilled in later Semisonic efforts, while also showing at least some roads ("In The Vein") that the band would not travel further down later.
|
|
|
Post by nathanalbright on Nov 18, 2020 22:45:57 GMT -5
The Best Of Semisonic, by Semisonic
This album is, to date, the only best-of collection of Semisonic, and it checks off most of the boxes one would want in such a collection. It includes selections from all of the albums that had been released up to the point of the compilation (not including any live tracks or anything from the 2020 EP "You're Not Alone"), and it makes what are often very obvious choices. If one complaint could be made of the collection, it is that it could have included other songs, and been larger and thus even better because it would have more Semisonic in it. For example, including "Sculpture Garden" from the Pleasure EP, "Delicious" from Great Divide, "Made To Last" from Feeling Strangely Fine, and any number of songs from Chemistry like "I Wish," "Suprise," "One True Love," or "She's Got My Number" would have made this a better album, as would another soundtrack piece like "For The Love Of The Game." If there is room for a future Semisonic compilation, it is in providing more obscure material from the music of the band, but for the moment, in reviewing the album that is rather than that which we might prefer, it is exactly the sort of compilation that one would expect. Here is a track-by-track review:
Closing Time: This is the obvious opener, the biggest (some would say only) hit of the group, the song that broke them into the mainstream, and the one song of theirs that is likely to be remembered by casual fans. It is a gorgeous song full of thoughtful and reflective lyrics and the band's power pop style in its most accessible fashion.
The Prize: At this point, the compilation goes to the Pleasure EP and includes the first of two songs from that collection that were later included on the Great Divide album. This song has a pleasing approach, ending in a chaotic fashion that is impressive, and which demonstrates from the beginning that Semisonic had an ambivalent attitude towards the trappings of fame and celebrity.
Brand New Baby: The second of two songs from the Pleasure EP that were later included on Great Divide, this song is a 90's track laced with heavy degrees of irony showing the narrator trying not to sound too broken up about his partner stepping out on him with someone after saying she needed a break in their relationship while acknowledging how much it hurts at the same time.
F.N.T.: Short for Fascinating New Thing, this song, a moderate rock hit from Great Divide, expresses the band's romantic longings and the expression of the hope that a would-be partner who is fascinating for being new will remain fascinating when she is not new, a sentiment that is easy to endorse and expressed in a winningly quirky way.
If I Run: This song is one of the more striking in the band's body of work, a song that expresses a longing and a desire to escape from the tensions and pressures of life (see also "Surprise" from Chemistry and "The Prize," for example), but where the narrator finds himself tethered to life through his love of someone he doesn't want to leave behind, which is either a noble sentiment about the power of love in making one more happy to live or a disturbing sentiment, depending on one's attitude.
Across The Great Divide: Another upbeat power pop number, this almost title track of the debut Semisonic LP expresses the optimism of the band as well as a realistic sense of their being unknown, and it is an easy enough song to sing along with and cheer on, perhaps relating to the complicated label history that went into the recording and release of the album.
Singing In My Sleep: The follow-up to Closing Time, this was a moderate rock hit, and expresses a great deal of the nerdiness as well as the romanticism of the group as a whole, with its discussion of falling in love over a well-crafted mixtape (something that was a bit of a nerdy activity by the late 90's) as well as its reference to Romeo and Juliet, and it is a beautiful and romantic song.
Never You Mind: This is yet another song that expresses the nerdiness of Semisonic as well as their interest in romantic themes, as it looks at an ill-suited couple that drives each other crazy and yet finds themselves together anyway. Most notably, the song contains a discussion of an infamous and terrible episode from the original Star Trek series in its expression of the misguided relationship, fitting but nerdy.
Secret Smile: This song, an independent hit that did particularly well in the UK and Mexico, among other countries, is another song that demonstrates the romanticist approach of Semisonic as a whole, providing a praise of a secret smile that the narrator's partner has only for him. The song praises a partner for the good that they do in the narrator's life, a sentiment easy to relate to.
Chemistry: The first single and almost title track to the band's third album, this is a song that again deals with the favorite theme of love and relationships, perhaps unsurprisingly in a way that reflects on the disastrous experiments that people experience in the course of trying to find love. The song was a moderate international hit and a moderate rock hit, but it sadly failed to cross over, presaging the general commercial failure of the album itself.
Act Naturally: This song, a failed attempt at a Hot AC single, is another song that deals with romanticism in a way that frames the narrator as being a bit of a simp, which Dan Wilson's whiny lyrics and the general nature of the music assists in building up that sort of impression. The song was not a hit at all, and is not even among the stronger or more notable tracks of the "All About Chemistry" album as a whole, alas.
Over My Head: An energetic and upbeat song that was an attempt at a soundtrack for the film "Summer Catch," this song references Moby Dick and similarly mixes thought-provoking lyrics and nerdy references with an upbeat power pop song, demonstrating a great deal of continuity over the course of Semisonic's career up to that point.
Overall, this is an album that hits most of the high points of the album, only weak when it comes to providing only two songs from "All About Chemistry," but that album has few fans, alas, to complain about the slight, but otherwise provides a representative sample of great songs from a great band.
|
|
|
Post by nathanalbright on Nov 20, 2020 16:22:27 GMT -5
Re-Covered, by Dan Wilson
In the 1970's, there was a large amount of albums that were made by songwriters like Laura Nyro and Carole Bayer Sager and others which were pillaged for material by those who (generally rightly) believed that they could sing the songs better than the original writer, while simultaneously bringing the writer to greater critical renown for being able to help others have a better career as a musician. In this particular case, Dan Wilson has spent most of his career apart from Semisonic in trying to become a singer-songwriter (to generally little notice) and also in becoming a songwriter for hire for a lot of artists, to considerably greater notice, including multiple Grammy wins as a songwriter (both songs included here). What this album seeks to do is show a songwriter for hire recovering his songs (hence the title) and burnishing his own reputation as a songwriter while also trying to demonstrate how he can perform his own material in cover versions.
This album consists almost entirely of sparse acoustic settings of material, sometimes as piano ballads and most of the time as acoustic guitar-driven songs, sometimes with strings added. Doing a song-by-song review seems redundant because the production of the songs is so predominant and the vocals by Dan Wilson so whining that the stripped down nature of this particular production serves to bring out what is the least enjoyable about Dan Wilson's music, namely the voice of Dan Wilson and his ordinary skills at the piano and acoustic guitar. As someone who is a big fan of Semisonic, this album demonstrates a lot of what is missing in Dan Wilson as a solo artists, in terms of fun and an upbeat approach, although it must be admitted that what makes this album at least tolerable to listen to is the songs. Dan Wilson brings some interesting and thoughtful material to the table, and if he has a lot to be desired as a solo act--Semisonic really plays to his strong suit as an able collaborator--he can bring the songs. In one way, this serves to the detriment of the original artists, in that so many of these songs appear to have been crafted as personal statements for the artists who originally performed them but end up being the work of a competent songwriter for hire, which undercuts the personal credibility of the songs even as it demonstrates Wilson's skill as a writer. An error on the dust jacket that switches the order of songs 9 and 10 demonstrates that the graphic design of this album also lacks some credibility.
And these songs, it should be admitted, are quite a diverse group. Wilson's career as a songwriter appears to have embedded him within the intersection of adult contemporary and country music where the importance of outside songwriters is still immense. There are some really touching and beautiful songs here--album closer "Closing Time" reminds us of the strength of the composition in this piano ballad cover, "Borrowed" gives a touching look at an adulterous relationship co-written by LeAnn Rimes and Darrell Brown, and one of the more lively songs on the album is not surprisingly a standout track in "Never Meant To Love You," a song that deserves to be much better known. The fact that Wilson shows off songs written with John Legend ("You And I"), Josh Groban ("If I Walk Away"), Taylor Swift ("Treacherous"), and Chris Stapleton ("When The Stars Come Out") demonstrate that he is a studio pro when it comes to writing, even if his voice is more than a little thin. Interestingly enough, some of the least notable covers here are of the most obvious songs, The Dixie Chicks' "Not Ready to Make Nice," and Adele's "Someone Like You," both songs that helped give him credibility as a writer but, in the latter case especially, remind us that a torch ballad without a belting voice is not nearly as appealing.
|
|
|
Post by nathanalbright on Nov 24, 2020 1:13:23 GMT -5
The Very Best Of Dan Fogelberg, by Dan Fogelberg
This cd makes a decisive moment in the history of Dan Fogelberg as an artist, and that is when his best of compilations and the recognition of his greatness as an artist started expanding far beyond small retrospectives of ten songs or so apiece to full cds and later even multiple cds, a demonstration that Fogelberg was an artist of far greater importance than the norm. It is interesting that this is the album that would do it, because I was a bit concerned that I would not like this album as much as I did when I listened to it, since I only knew about half a dozen songs on it or so when I started listening to it. This concern ended up not being a problem, because this ended up being the best kind of album, namely the sort of compilation that makes one a lot more familiar with the work of an artist and makes one listen to a lot more of the back catalog of the artist. Far from being a sign that this artist only had a few worthwhile songs, this album demonstrated that there was a lot more material that was worth appreciating than met the eye for casual fans, and that is something that was a pleasure to listen to, and that may inspire future listening pleasure to a great deal more of the singer-songwriter's catalog of songs.
This particular collection is a generally chronological collection and it is a blend of the most notable hits that Fogelberg had and the best of his major label songs that were not big singles. The collection begins with the obscure "Nether Lands," a gentle enough number, before moving into the gorgeous "Part Of The Plan," which sounds like it could have been on a Crosby, Stills, and Nash album, and which was predictably Fogelberg's first hits. From this point in the album to track #11, the collection moves from hit to hit across Fogelberg's music of the late 70's and early 80's, including "Heart Hotels," the gorgeous and tender "Longer," the reflective "Hard To Say," with its complete production and instrumentation that shows of Fogelberg's skill as a producer, the gorgeous and melancholy ode to the singer's father in "Leader Of The Band," the awkward and touching "Same Old Lang Syne," the romantic waltz "Run For The Roses," the questioning "Make Love Stay," the arena rock frustration of "Missing You," and the amazing "Language Of Love." This stretch of songs is well worth the price of the collection as a whole, and from here we get the ballad of troubled love "Believe In Me," the evocative "Lonely In Love," the bittersweet "She Don't Look Back," the gorgeous "Rhythm Of The Rain," a cover which I heard frequently as a child on adult contemporary stations, the cod reggae of "Magic Every Moment," and the touching "A Love Like This," with nary a weak spot in the entire collection.
There are a few aspects of this album that strike this listener as particularly impressive. One of them is the fact that the album has seventeen songs across two decades of a major label career with not a single bum track to be found. Fogelberg's music shows an immense diversity from spare love ballads like "Nether Lands" and "Believe In Me" to arena rock to Caribbean-inspired songs and so on, and yet what shines through in all of the songs is touching and vulnerable and honest songwriting, winning charisma, a great voice, and solid instrumentation and production choices that show Fogelberg was always more than a white guy with an acoustic guitar. This music shows the full range of what adult contemporary can provide the listener, and it deserves to be enjoyed by fans of Fogelberg's work as well as fans of the adult contemporary genre as a whole. What is perhaps even more striking about this album is that it could have included still more songs, but it proves its case that a long compilation is required to even begin to do the artist justice, and this lesson was heeded in future retrospectives for the singer which continued to demonstrate that longer and longer collections were required to capture the flavor of his work with any hope of conveying its full range and greatness to the listener.
|
|
|
Post by nathanalbright on Mar 22, 2021 18:27:22 GMT -5
Greatest Hits, by Dan Fogelberg
If you're asking me, this particular compilation was released a little early in Fogelberg's career. This particular compilation, which includes previously unreleased songs in "Missing You" and "Make Love Stay" was released after the massive success of the singer-songwriter's magnum opus "The Innocent Age," and it tells of a period of personal difficulty and struggle that would lead to albums like Exile later in the artist's career. There is something of a prophetic air to this album, in that even though the album was immensely successful, going triple platinum, and even though its song choice is stellar--the songs are all solid here--Dan Fogelberg experienced a commercial decline after this album. Even the new songs themselves have a prophetic aspect about them, in that the two new songs are somewhat prophetic about the personal struggles that the singer would face in his personal life, with "Missing You," discussing the difficulties of being alone on the road and missing one's spouse, and "Make Love Stay" asking the plaintive question of how one could make love stay, something that Fogelberg never seemed to completely solve, alas.
This song fulfills one of the essential aspects of a Greatest Hits album and that is to contain the artist's hits up to that time, and all of the songs here qualify as hits. The order of the songs is changed, so this retrospective does not go beginning to end as some do, even so there is a rough placement of songs from the beginning of Fogelberg's career first with most of the big hits from The Innocent Age towards the end, with the new and more unfamiliar songs in the middle of the collection. So it is that we begin with Fogelberg's first hit, "Part Of The Plan," and then move to a set of three songs that contains two songs from the middle of the time period included here in "Heart Hotels" and "Longer" along with one of the hits from his most recent album in "Hard To Say." After this comes the two new songs as well as a somewhat lesser known but still wonderful top 40 hit in the next segment of the album, with "Missing You" and "Make Love Stay" being separated by "The Power Of Gold," which came from one of the singer's duet albums with Tim Weisberg. The album is then closed by three songs that were massive hits from "The Innocent Age," specifically the lasting hits "Leader Of The Band," "Run For The Roses," and "Same Old Lang Syne."
Overall, this album is somewhat disappointing only it that it contains just about every big hit of the artist on the Billboard Hot 100 and thus may give casual listeners the understanding that there was little more to the artist than these songs. Still, every song on here is a hit, and a great many of them remain worthwhile songs as part of the singer-songwriter canon of the 1970's and early 1980's. If later compilations are preferable to me, it is mainly because they include more songs than this one does. With only ten songs there is simply not much room at all for hidden gems, and the retrospective came early enough in the singer's career that it misses another decade of great songs that were successful on the Adult Contemporary chart (if not the Billboard Hot 100), but those are issues that later compilations would solve. A fan should consider this album to be half or less of the essential songs of Dan Fogelberg, and something that ought to whet the appetite for even more martial from the artist.
|
|
|
Post by nathanalbright on Mar 25, 2021 2:16:40 GMT -5
A Grand Don't Come For Free, by the Streets
I must admit that I am not that familiar with British hip-hop, but an acquaintance of mine told me about one of his favorite albums from the decade of the 2000's, an album that did not really cross over to the United States but sold extremely well in the UK. Without knowing anything about the group except that someone I know liked it, I gave it a listen and found the eleven-track album to be immensely interesting and also surprisingly relatable (more on that shortly), and if the album is not my favorite of an entire decade, it certainly is a great album and one that deserves a lot of attention. I get the feeling that this album is one of those cases where if you know you know, and I did not know before and now I do, and I can understand why the cognoscenti of music in the UK would see this album as a major touchstone in the hip-hop music of the nation, a moment where a challenge was laid down to other similar artists to be that real and that epic about a life that a great many ordinary Brits, and ordinary people who are not Brits, can easily relate to. I can see myself coming back to this album, as it hits hard, and its ending is deeply satisfying from an ethical point of view as well, which is not something that can be said for every classic hip hop album in existence.
This album contains 11 songs that tell a connected story of a British working-class man who deals with a host of complications that result from losing a thousand pounds. This story, which sounds cinematic in scope, involves a man who thinks he has lost a thousand quid and has a broken tv, finds himself in a relationship with a girl whose body language suggest she might be into him (which she is), tries to earn money by gambling on sports and finds himself fortunate not to lose even more money than he already owed, has a bad night where a bad trip makes him paranoid and jittery, moves in with his girl and smokes a lot while watching tv at her house, gets kicked out of her house for drinking and smoking and not doing something productive, tries to get a rebound relationship with a pretty but not very moral girl, blames himself for his struggles and expresses a desire to get back with his girlfriend, tries to figure out who stole his money while realizing that his girlfriend was with another one of his friends, and then keeps a stiff upper lip about it while trying to dry his tears, and then comes to a resolution, one of which provides insight to his bad choice in friends and some self-awareness about personal responsibility.
This album, even though it is written from the point of view of a British working-class guy, is really relatable even outside of that circle. In listening to this album I found I could very easily relate to its material. The production on here is simply superb. I saw a quote from Pitchfork that compared the music to film score, and that combined with the epic storytelling does give this album a cinematic feel. This is a true concept album in the best way, where the artist has given great thought to an overall narrative, with elements that keep on re-appearing over and over again. The Streets manages to combine both deeply personal detail as well as material that is relatable to a huge audience, which is a difficult balance to strike. The singer's attempts to avoid personal responsibility, his desire for easy ways out of his problems, including his debts, his lack of motivation, and his longing for love and for others to look out for him, end in self-realization about the fact that others have tough lives that they wrestle with so he has to take responsibility for himself. This is the sort of album I wish more hip-hop albums would be like, with the struggling over debt, over a lack of ambition, over the negative consequences of seeking easy solutions to money problems and easy women to provide sexual intimacy or the use of drugs and alcohol to self-medicate one's problems, rather than seeing empty flexing from people who haven't made it yet who brag about stealing your girl. Here, the protagonist loses the girl, but finds something else, namely an insight and a realization about himself and his life that allow him to make some positive changes.
|
|
|
Post by nathanalbright on Mar 27, 2021 3:09:34 GMT -5
High Maintenance, by Miranda Cosgrove
This ep is five songs long and it is both the sort of music that I enjoy greatly but one that is less and less comfortable the more one thinks about it. For example, there is a quote from Miranda Cosgrove in the promotion of this EP that says that she had been working with Dr. Luke for a while and then he introduced her to Rivers Cuomo, who helped write and co-sing the title track to this EP. The two have decent chemistry, but Cosgrove was still a teenager when making this album and Rivers Cuomo was about 40, making their romantic chemistry a bit suspect. Again, this is musical material that is pretty familiar to anyone who liked pop music at the time, but it is music that actively discourages one from thinking too much about it because the more one thinks about it, the worse one feels for liking it and pondering what it means. Here is a track-by-track review:
Dancing Crazy: Aggressively co-written by Avril Lavinge, this song and its music video appear to have been the inspiration for "Friday," released a few years later. It was a minor hit on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #100, and it shows Cosgrove singing a lot like Avril Lavinge, showing she studied the demo hard at least. I think it's a cute song, but it's not the sort of song that encourages one to think about the sort of fun that a girl has when she doesn't know where she's at and just goes along with the flow.
High Maintenance (f/Rivers Cuomo): This song is fun and enjoyable on a surface level, as it features Cosgrove playing the role of a fun girl who enjoys making Rivers Cuomo's life more difficult, but again, Rivers was more than twice Miranda's age, making it uncomfortable when she coos about knowing some games that they could play. I can see why she had fun making this song, but it feels uncomfortable to ponder the sort of relationship that is being portrayed by the song, and the singers' obvious chemistry only makes it more uncomfortable.
The Face of Love: This song is a mix between the dance pop that predominates on this EP, which was pretty popular at the time, and a Hot AC approach that shows Cosgrove becoming more and more convinced that the guy she is with is the one, based on what she sees and what she hears. Again, as a pop song about love this is pleasant enough, but the more one thinks about it the more one thinks that this is likely not going to end well.
Kiss You Up: This song is my favorite on the EP, and it is also (not coincidentally), the one that is the most close to Adult Contemporary that this album provides. Rare among the songs on this EP, it is a song that sounds better the more one thinks about it, as Cosgrove resolves to be loving and affectionate and encouraging with a partner, a sentiment that I think is likely one that strikes home for the artist given the music she has released, although this song is certainly the exact sort of music I would want someone to be singing to me.
Sayonara: This song is a return to the dance pop that predominates here, and sounds like the lost b-side of Avril Lavinge's "Hello Kitty" in terms of its lyrics and like a lost Nicki Minaj song with its beeping "pound the alarm-type" production. Fortunately Cosgrove can sing well and it is catchy enough, but those beeps and alarms can get pretty annoying, and they reminded me about some of the less pleasant aspects of the production of that era.
All in all this is an enjoyable collection that demonstrates Cosgrove's attempt to maneuver her way into young adulthood by singing songs about love and devotion as well as being young, wild, and free. If you're a fan of the pop music of the early 2010's dance scene there is a lot to enjoy here, and Cosgrove has lots of charisma in her singing. This is material, though, that one would do well not to think too much about.
|
|
|
Post by nathanalbright on Apr 1, 2021 5:14:52 GMT -5
Sparks Fly, by Miranda Cosgrove
This album is something that fits Cosgrove's musical career in general in that it is better if you don't think too hard about it. Although this is by no means as good as the following EP "High Maintenance," a lot of the same elements present there are present here, with the focus on love and relationships, the dodgy connections with songwriters and producers ranging from Dr. Luke to Rodney Jenkins to Kip Winger to Max Martin to Chantal Kreviazuk and Avril Lavinge (some of whom are repeats that Cosgrove had or would work with again). And this material is not bad material, although it is in most cases not the most distinguished work by the various mostly famous songwriters involved. If Cosgrove is an appealing singer throughout, and clearly gives her all, there is a lot here that could have used a bit more editing, especially the song titles, which are deeply uninspired for the most part. I must admit that this album is not and was not aimed at me as a listener, but it would have been nice to see a bit more effort. Most puzzling here is what this album does not include--Cosgrove's biggest hit, "About You Now," which would have added a ninth track to an album that could have used another hit and another worthwhile song to listen to.
This mini-album has eight tracks, and of them only "Kissin' U" managed to crack the charts and become a minor hit. It is the easy single here and it not surprisingly is the first song, co-written by Dr. Luke and pure wish-fulfillment songwriting at a high level. Other than that, there are only a couple of standout tracks, such as "Bam," which is an upbeat song about infatuation that masquerades as love, something that the singer's core audience can likely identify with all too well. "Shakespeare" works well as a song that has Cosgrove urging a partner to slow down on the intimacy until she knows the answers to various questions that are important to her that would show common interests like Shakespeare and kissing in the rain. "Hey You" offers encouragement to someone who thinks badly of themselves but makes things better for others. But after that there is definitely a drop-off to most of the tracks, which are pleasant and hooky filler, but definitely filler. "Disgusting," is sung in an upbeat fashion but features lyrics that are more than a bit unpleasant, talking about the singer's "walk of shame." Similarly, "There Will Be Tears," is an upbeat approach at a revenge fantasy over a broken relationship, "Oh Oh" is another revenge fantasy about making a guy miss her by being impossibly attractive to others, while "Daydream" features ambiguous lyrics about the narrator's fantasizing about someone who appears not to be all that good of a guy in reality.
As a listener, the predominant tone of this album and its content inspires in me as a listener the strong urge to polish a weapon. The only question is who the weapon needs to be polished for. On the one hand, the album portrays at least a few different ways that the narrator sings of guys who have done her wrong in one way or another, whether they pretend that they are not looking for a relationship until they find it with someone else, try to push too fast, or engage in unpleasant or even abusive behavior. A young woman should not feel it necessary to sing how it is "disgusting" how much she feels attracted to someone, or how ashamed it makes her. Yet these songs were written and produced by older and definitely more worldly wise and experienced songwriters, who clearly knew what they were doing in trying to portray this material as relatable to its intended audience of young people. And then there is the whole unseemly matter of the people involved in producing this album, which makes it deeply unsettling to listen to, and to realize that even its most appealing aspects come with the far darker realization of what this album and indeed the industry of teen actresses turned singer is wrapped up in.
|
|
|
Post by nathanalbright on Apr 18, 2021 14:49:27 GMT -5
iCarly: Music From And Inspired by the Hit TV Show, by Various Artists
As far as a sound track album is concerned, this album has a lot to commend itself for. It features a blend of songs that are from the most conspicuously talented member of the cast, hit singles, and more obscure numbers, all of them framed with dialogue spoken in character by the four lead actors of the iCarly series written by showrunner Dan Schneider. While the skits themselves are generally short and full of bickering, which is not necessarily to my personal tastes, the conception of this soundtrack album is certainly worthwhile. It would be worthwhile to see this album's approach in soundtracks be more popular in that there is a clear link between the characters of the show, acting in character, and the songs that are chosen for the soundtrack. And in particular I have to enjoy the way that this album ends in a rather meta way by having the characters explicitly talk about going back to the beginning, with the resulting encouragement to listen to this album on repeat. While that is not necessarily the most obvious of responses to the album, there is still a lot to appreciate about the way that this album was put together. Quite a few soundtracks have no obvious relationship between the music and the film or show and this album definitely manages to avoid that issue.
This particular soundtrack is divided into 29 tracks, fourteen of which are songs and fifteen of which are skits that are self-aware, at least at points, about this being part of an album. The skits themselves deserve to be talked about separately, and as is the case with most such cases the skits are generally inconsequential, though not entirely so. The songs themselves are highly interesting. Four of the songs are from Miranda Cosgrove herself, with standouts in the show's theme song "Leave It All To Me," featuring Drake Bell, "Stay My Baby," and her most successful single, "About You Now," co-written and produced by Dr. Luke. A later song, "Headphones On," is a self-aware reference to her in-character older brother viewing headphones as both cool and archaic, I say as I listen on my headphones. A second group of songs are hit songs that are recorded in Nickelodeon mixes that change the lyrics to be less suggestive, including Sean Kingston's "Beautiful Girls," which talks about being "in denial" rather than "suicidal" at the end of a relationship, Good Charlotte's, "I Don't Want To Be In Love," and Avril Lavinge's "Girlfriend," featuring Lil Mama. The rest of the songs are generally good if more obscure, including Leon Thomas III's "I Like That Girl," Natasha Bedingfield's "Freckles," The Naked Brothers Band's "Face In The Hall," a cover of "Let's Hear It For The Boy," by The Stunners, Boys Like Girls' "Thunder," Menduo's "Move," and "I'm Grown," from Tiffany Evans featuring Bow Wow.
The skits of this album (as well as the tracks by the show's lead actress) are the most obvious connection between the show and the listening experience. Some of these skits deserve high praise. For example, the last skit which urges the listener to re-listen to the album is pretty inspired. Similarly, the show is wise enough to give character Freddie the last word in insight on what boys like, namely girls, before a song by the band Boys Like Girls, which is similarly an inspired conceit. Other skits are very clearly connected to the show itself, including the discussion of headphones from the character of Carly's older brother before a song about headphones by Miranda Cosgrove and the discussion about how it is that the show begins with a countdown from Freddie before the opening song of the iCarly theme. Likewise, there is a reference to the fact that everyone hated Freddie's first season girlfriend before the track "Girlfriend" conveys the same feelings in a less emotionally mature manner than Carly managed to do. Not all of the skits are good ones, though, and a few of them are quite uncomfortable, with one of the skits referring to Sam's second toe, which I suppose is here because of Dan Schneider's foot fetish, and another skit about building a bra that makes Freddie painfully and awkwardly uncomfortable and that fits into the show's frequent tendency to make young actresses act in provocatively mature ways, which is a lamentably frequent aspect of contemporary youth culture.
|
|
|
Post by nathanalbright on Jun 25, 2021 0:23:50 GMT -5
Cmon it's been almost two months I haven't forgotten. Just to update on this, I have ordered both Dangerous Woman and Sour for reviews, so when they arrive I expect to have them both reviewed before too long.
|
|
|
Post by nathanalbright on Aug 5, 2021 23:36:20 GMT -5
Sour (Explicit), by Olivia Rodrigo
Since Target refused to send me the album like I ordered and sent another album instead, I decided not to wait on this but rather review it based on the album as it appears on Spotify. In listening to this album I have an advantage of sorts in that I have heard most of the album already by streaming tracks individually, and I happen to enjoy most of what I have heard. Although I am not nor have I ever been someone in the singer's position, and it has been a long time since I was young, the emotional mood of this album, with its blend between frustration and anger and deep sadness is certainly a mood that resonates with me. This album is teen melodrama in all the best ways, and whether or not it is a good thing that I can totally understand and appreciate this level of emotional maturity, this album is certainly one that appears to have resonated with a wide audience, and I can certainly understand how that takes place.
Sour begins strongly, with plenty of enjoyable songs. Brutal is a song about dissatisfied youth that certainly strikes a nerve. After that comes Traitor, a gorgeous and aching ballad about the complications and betrayals of emotional cheating within relationships, and then the devastating Driver's License, about the sadness of missing what you would have enjoyed to do with a loved one. 1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back reminds me, painfully, of my own tendency to overanalyze dysfunctional relationships with others. Deja Vu points out the pretense of people rehearsing to do a better job in the next relationship in a painful but relatable way. Good 4 U is a powerful and fierce kiss-off to a former lover that is also painfully and angrily relatable. After this comes a melancholy track about wanting to be enough for one's partner. Happier talks about the selfish desire to better than an ex's future partners. Jealousy, Jealousy talks about the hazards of comparing oneself to others, which apparently afflicts a great many people who look far better than I do. Favorite Crime talks about the complicity we feel in the relationships we are in, especially where, as is the case with the singer, it is possible that crime is not merely a metaphor. Hope You're Okay then closes the album in a reflective storytelling way about children who survived abuse from their parents.
Ultimately, at least in my opinion, this is a strong album from beginning to finish. The obvious singles fill up a bit more than half of the album, which speaks highly for its hit potential, and the album ends with more reflective and thoughtful material. The album as a whole is a blend between melancholy piano ballads and more upbeat and pointed tracks that take from the rock and emo music of the past and repackage it for contemporary youth who might not have been familiar with previous acts like Paramore. Even as a listener who knows the history that this album reflects, this is an appealing album that I can definitely relate to and appreciate. I suspect that is the case for a great many other people as well.
|
|
|
Post by nathanalbright on Aug 18, 2021 20:46:36 GMT -5
High Civilization, by the Bee Gees
It is strange that it took me this long to discover the greatness of the album High Civilization. To be sure, this album's greatness is not obvious nor has it ever been particularly popular, either when it was selling very few copies in 1991 when it was released to general puzzlement nor in the streaming age where it remains a very obscure and little-known album. Yet this album is a great album nonetheless, and it is well worth exploring why that is the case. How is it that an album could be this good and yet be so totally unknown, despite being from a group that had a lot of prior success and would have some success later on as well with a comeback starting in the mid-90's and continuing on until the death of Maurice Gibb in the early 2000's put an end to the group as an active concern.
Among the more obvious deterrent factors to this album is the length of its songs. Only one of the songs on the entire album is less than 4 minutes, and that was the only single from the album and the only song from this era of the Bee Gees that remains somewhat well-known, the moving but also ambivalent "Secret Love," which gives a great deal of fondness for a clandestine relationship about which the careful listener should probably have a lot more questions. Beyond that, there are no obvious single choices--probably why no other singles were cut to help support a project that clearly was not selling well--because most of the tracks are well over five minutes here. This is a dark album--songs like "Human Sacrifice," "The Only Love," "Evolution," "Ghost Train," and "When He's Gone," a sizable part of this album--are melancholy and often gloomy and reflective songs about love. Still some of these songs are surprisingly upbeat, from "Dimensions," which has a jaunty tone about the many sides to a complicated woman, to "Party With No Name," which offers its own surprising take on a predatory sort of love.
It seems strange that an album with the title of High Civilization would be full of such odd and quirky and eccentric--and even savage--meditations on love. It is quite possible that in this the Bee Gees were ahead of the curve when it came to having a well-developed sense of irony. Be that as it may, this is an album that deserves attention. If you are a fan of the Brothers Gibb, as I am, this album is a neglected and obscure era in their body of work that deserves far more attention than it receives. Whether a single edit on one or two of the songs here could have turned this album's fate around, as it is clear that "Secret Love" was not enough to make this album accessible to the masses of the early 1990's who were enjoying similarly lengthy projects from such artists as Bryan Adams, whose songs were in the same length as these ones is too late to answer at this point, but it is certainly an interesting thought experiment nonetheless. For those who do pay attention to this album, the mix between period instrumentation and production and surprisingly pointed lyrics about love and relationships make this a distinctly unusual pleasure in the body of work of the Bee Gees as a whole.
|
|
|
Post by nathanalbright on Aug 31, 2021 23:45:19 GMT -5
Solar Power, by Lorde
This is an album I feel obligated to review out of necessity, as a critic of how Lorde has composed herself in this album era. Not being the sort of person to judge someone without having heard their case, rarely have I looked forward to an album to review less, except for those albums that others have sought to force upon me (more on that later, I suppose). Lorde is three albums into her career, and this album marks a serious turn in her art from music that relates to large groups of people to music that relates only to those people like herself. And while I certainly could relate strongly to both of her first two albums, this album leaves me without an obvious personal hook. I know people who can probably relate to this album and its vibes, but this is an album for me that can be appreciated only for its music and lyrics, and without the additional relatability that her first two albums had, this album falls noticeably but lamentably short.
What sorts of songs do we get here? The Path opens with an honest self-examination where Lorde questions her own ability to provide answers. After that we get the title track, a pleasant enough and slight enough slice of life of a privileged hippie seeking freedom in isolation from the world going to seed outside. This is followed by California, which feels representative of the life of leftist and somewhat elite young women like Lorde's friends (and probably Lorde herself). After that comes the downbeat Stoned At The Nail Salon, and its gloomy musings on popularity. Fallen Fruit has a surprising (and probably unrecognized) almost biblical feel about the singer's unhappiness. Secrets From A Girl (Who's Seen It All) comes off as being, like Taylor Swift's 22, a know-it-all effort from someone who does not in fact know it all. The Man With The Axe is more relationship unhappiness, framed from an unpleasant generational perspective. Dominoes comes with a look at the druggie nature of popular cultural figures, something that is less interesting to outsiders than it might seen. Big Star also reflects a world-weary perspective on the loss of fun and excitement life has provided for Lorde. This is followed by the brief messianic ode in Leader Of A New Regime that seeks for political solutions to the author's dissatisfaction. Mood Rings then hits the mood of privileged crystal-gazing young women once again. The album then ends with the lengthy navel-gazing Oceanic Feeling and more gloomy musing about generational relations.
In order to properly evaluable an album like this, it is important to know where it is coming from. This album comes from a world-weary young woman who is sick of the popular appeal she got from her debut album and is simultaneously mocking but also representing a particular sort of privileged existence as as young woman who relaxes by being stoned at a nail salon, seeks a solar powered commune in Antarctica where only good vibes are allowed and where people much like herself celebrate various new age gurus and the power of crystals and commune with penguins. This is the lyrical content that one finds, and the music is stripped and bare bones in a way that recalls her debut album, but in a way that speaks of emptiness and self-satisfaction and not the daring simplicity that it seemed to present before. Perhaps with time this album will be viewed charitably as a step that Lorde needed to take to be authentic to her own experience as a young woman who became famous too soon in as toxic a culture and in an age as evil as our own. But for the moment, this album feels like an immense disappointment and is being harshly judged accordingly.
|
|
|
Post by nathanalbright on Sept 3, 2021 1:20:33 GMT -5
I Still Have Faith In You/Don't Shut Me Down, by ABBA
Today, somewhat unexpectedly to me, at least, I found myself among the first people who was aware of a new ABBA single release with the two tracks "I Still Have Faith In You" and "Don't Shut Me Down" as a double-A sided single. While it is not my intent here to give a great deal of spoilers as to the songs' contents, both songs are highly meta songs that reflect on the state of ABBA at present, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the generally high quality of both songs is something that appears to have inspired the group to carry on in recording a full album that is scheduled to be released this November. Off of these two songs, I must admit I am pretty hyped for the project as a whole.
"I Still Have Faith In You" is the first track, and it is a ballad that sounds like a well-earned victory lap as lead singer Frida reflects on the bittersweet song that the group shares, its union that has endured decades, and the way that their story has survived the decades to this day. It is precisely the sort of note one would want to strike as a "we're back" sort of moment to fans who have taken an in interest in the group's music in the last few decades as ABBA went from perhaps a bit overexposed to cool again through the success of their compilation ABBA Gold (and More ABBA Gold, let us not forget) as well as the Mamma Mia series. Your fondness for this track will depend on the way you like hearing classic ABBA singing a new song with soaring instrumentals.
"Don't Shut Me Down" has a less obvious but no less profound meta statement, given that the band has an upcoming tour with the ABBAtars that were introduced in the music video to "I Still Have Faith In You." Given the band's understandable decision to present a public face of their music being not the aged members of the group but rather avatars showing the band at their peak in the late 1970's using technology to present a more youthful image that is in keeping with the group's original music rather than their current appearance. This use of avatars also encouraged them, apparently, to think about the avatars as having their own feelings and having been rebooted and reborn and finding things much the same as they were when they were last around, a telling reference to the desire of ABBA to pick up where they left off after 40 years apart. At least from this biased reviewers perspective, one wonders what took them so long. It is a miracle they are all still alive and still interested in music and what it has to offer, and they still have something new and worthwhile to provide, so I like what is here and look forward to their full album, which I intend to listen to when it comes out.
|
|
|
Post by nathanalbright on Sept 5, 2021 13:20:41 GMT -5
ABBA, by ABBA
In listening to the first new music by ABBA in some time yesterday, I thought it would be worthwhile to see if ABBA could meet the 5 album rule, where one tests bands to see whether or not they have five straight albums that can be considered 8/10 or not. I have started this test of some of the other bands that I like--it is a hard standard to meet, and some bands come close but not quite according to the standards of various people. In thinking about it, though, I realized that while I was familiar with a great many ABBA songs, I did not know ABBA's album work as a whole, and thought it would be worthwhile to test whether or not ABBA could conceivably meet the 5 album rule, starting at random with their self-titled album from 1975 which came towards the earlier part of their career.
In calculating whether the album meets an 8/10 test, it is worthwhile to consider a few factors. What songs were/are most popular for this album, and do they hold up well as enjoyable and worthwhile songs. Are there any songs on the album that aren't as popular but are still worthy of more attention and more appreciation? What is the general level of enjoyment for even the album filler that remains after the first two categories? Is it at least enjoyable enough, or are there any bad songs that sink one's enjoyment of the album as a whole, or a lot of filler that is of pretty poor quality overall? How does ABBA fare under this test?
As it happens, this album is pretty much right along the line of what I would expect an 8/10 album. Three of the songs from this album stand out as being particularly popular: "Mamma Mia," "SOS," and "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do." All three of these songs hold up pretty well, even if "SOS" is my favorite of the lot. There are certainly some lesser known songs here that deserve to be better recognized. "I've Been Waiting For You," is a favorite ABBA song of their deep cuts, and "Man In The Middle" and the gorgeous instrumental "Intermezzo No. 1" are both excellent songs as well that deserve to be better appreciated as well. This can also be said of the medley of folk songs that closes the album, which is well done but quite a departure from what one would expect of ABBA. With the top two categories of songs, we have more than half of the album which is either worthwhile hits or standout album cuts, and the rest of the album is made up of pleasant album tracks like "Hey, Hey Helen," "Tropical Loveland," "Rock Me," "Bang-A-Boomerang," "So Long," and "Crazy World." If these songs are not stellar, they are enjoyable enough material to listen to, and make this album a solid 4/5 or 8/10 as a whole, and one that is far more stylistically diverse than most people would expect going into it.
|
|
|
Post by nathanalbright on Sept 5, 2021 14:49:47 GMT -5
ABBA: The Album, by ABBA
While it seems that ABBA has almost as many self-titled albums as Wheezer, I'm not aware of anyone calling their albums by their color names at least. In continuing our tour of ABBA studio albums to see if they can achieve the illustrious 5 album rule of all-time greats with five straight albums of 8/10 or more, we come to 1977's ABBA: The Album, a rather short offering with only ten tracks, one of which is a remix of Thank You For The Music, meaning that there are only nine different songs here altogether. On the positive side, that means that this album lacks bloat, and that is definitely a quality that speaks in its favor. ABBA albums in general are known for being short and to the point, and this album certainly fits that bill, even if album opener Eagle--written about both the bald eagle and the 70's band the Eagles, ends up being almost 6 minutes in length.
In terms of its contents, ABBA begins with Eagle, the aforementioned lengthy track, and then follows this with Take A Chance On Me, the best remembered track from this album. After this comes an ode to romantic love in One Man, One Woman, the tense The Name Of The Name, and the moving Move On. A rolicking rock track follows in Hole In Your Soul--an ode to rock and roll, after which comes the reflective and appreciative Thank You For The Music, and then another reflective song about love and wondering about the future in I Wonder (Departure). After these reflective songs comes the tense and anxious I"m A Marionette. The album then ends with the old-fashioned Doris Day Mix of Thank You For The Music, which sounds like it should be in, well, a Doris Day movie, so consider that a mission accomplished.
In evaluating this album, this is not only an album that lacks any songs worth skipping, but in fact does not have any songs that are less than 8/10 on it, at least in my opinion. This album is what is generally meant by all killer, no filler, as even the album tracks are very good to exceptionally so. So let us evaluate this album knowing that it goes beyond 4/5 to a well earned 4.5 or 5/5. Three tracks on this album have been well-remembered in "Take A Chance On Me," "The Name Of The Game," and "Thank You For The Music." All of these songs hold up well as classic great ABBA songs. Among the remaining songs, "Eagle," is a beautiful ode to eagles, "Move On" is my favorite ABBA song as a reflective ode to the urge of people to, well, move on, that resonates so strongly with me, and "One Man, One Woman" is a beautiful paean to marriage and romantic love. But it's not as if any of the songs are short of very good to great, while the Doris Day mix of "Thank You For The Music" demonstrates ABBA's ability not only to master the music of their own day but also earlier styles, as seems to be common among the band's album closers in general. So if you're keeping track, this is two albums of ABBA that meet to exceed the 5 album rule of all-time great acts.
|
|
|
Post by nathanalbright on Sept 7, 2021 0:44:04 GMT -5
Waterloo, by ABBA
This album, created in the aftermath of ABBA's win with the title track in Eurovision, marked the international breakthrough of the group. As we have done previously with two other ABBA albums, we are looking at this album as part of the overall discography of ABBA to see if ABBA can qualify for the five-album rule of consistent all-time greats. Compared to the other albums we have looked at before, this album has fewer songs that are familiar to the world as a whole. We are also noting that this album ends with three songs that were included as deluxe editions that were not present in the album when it was first released, the English version of "Ring, Ring," which was from their first album, and the Swedish version of the two biggest hits of the album, which will be evaluated in due course but will not play a huge role in determining the score of this album, since I do not know Swedish, after all.
The contents of this album are as follows. The album begins, sensibly enough, with Waterloo, the biggest hit off of the album and the international crossover for the group. After that comes Sitting In The Palmtree, a pleasant love song. This is followed by the novelty rock song King Kong Song, which is a meta song in part about writing a song about a pop culture phenomenon, and enjoyable. After that comes Hasta Manana, a melancholy and reflective song about lasting devotion despite a broken relationship. My Mama Said is one of the early examples of the ominous songs about the relationship between parents and children that one finds in ABBA's body of work, with an excellent bassline to boot. Dance (While The Music Still Goes On) is an early example of the use of dance and music as a way of overcoming relationship difficulties that harkens back to the pop music of the 50's and early 60's. Honey, Honey is an upbeat love song that is the second song on this album that is generally well-known. Watch Out is a revelation, a rock song that sounds like something out of Jefferson Airplane more than one would expect from ABBA. What About Livingstone is an amusing and upbeat song that covers a serious historical question about the worth of Livingstone's journeys through Africa. Gonna Sing You My Love Song is, strikingly, a song from the "other woman" seeking to provide enjoyment and contentment for a lover, expressing longings for eternal love. Suzy Hang-Around is one of those songs about young friendship that seems rather cruel but also honest. The three closing tracks add worthwhile bonus material that seems especially focused on introducing Americans fans to an early song they would not have otherwise known that was their first classic ("Ring Ring") as well as serving their Swedish fans with local versions of two more classics.
This album does exactly what a breakthrough album is supposed to do. Even seen in light of a larger body of work this album is still striking, in that it helped establish patterns and lanes that the group continues to follow to this day. Let us, as is our custom, divide this album into three categories and then provide an over all judgment of the album. Only two songs on this album have remained consistently well-known, and both of them are on the happier and more upbeat side of ABBA's emotional palette in "Waterloo" and "Honey, Honey." Both songs are still enjoyed to this day and have held up well. This album has a large number of songs that are not nearly so well known but are revelations in the way that they established some of the more complex elements that ABBA would later hone to even greater standards of excellence. This second tier of songs that deserves to better known includes "Hasta Manana," "My Mama Said," "Dance (While The Music Still Goes On)," and "Gonna Sing You My Love Song," all of which mine the complexity of love in families and between couples (even couples involved in a triangle). Even those songs that mark lanes that were not followed to the same extent are still great stylistic explorations, from the easygoing "Sitting In The Palmtree" to the bitterly sardonic "Suzy Hang-Around" to the novelty "King Kong Song" and the rocking "Watch Out," as well as the most emblematic song in the entire album, "What About Livingstone," which reminds the listener that this is a group that is thought of as being rather shallow and upbeat but is far deeper and far more insightful than it is given credit for, something that the song itself explicitly brings to the attention of the listener. This stellar breakthrough album is a 4.5/5.
|
|
|
Post by nathanalbright on Sept 8, 2021 0:13:36 GMT -5
Arrival, by ABBA
Continuing our tour of the ABBA discography to place ABBA's body of work as a whole compared to the all-time greats, we come to Arrival, an album that marks a high point of commercial appeal for the group, and containing their best-known song, "Dancing Queen," which is admittedly not my favorite ABBA song but one which I can recognize as being a less silly and superficial song than it is assumed to be. And that is something that can be said about ABBA as a whole, and this album certainly shows a depth that is not always recognized, which makes it well worth knowing as a whole and not merely for its high points or best-remembered songs, of which there are four out of the twelve songs here.
This album begins with When I Kissed The Teacher, a somewhat nostalgic look at what is certainly a problematic relationship between a teacher (possibly a high school student) and a teacher, which is framed more triumphantly than was done by peers like the Police, but no less problematically, which is ultimately not a bad thing. After that comes ABBA's lone #1 in the United States, Dancing Queen, a song about a beautiful teenager having the time of her young life. My Love, My Life offers a melodramatic but beautiful song about a broken relationship, something that is the subject of many ABBA songs. Dum Dum Diddle has a silly title but it reflects the fate of someone who is only happy when playing their violin while also reflecting the narrator's romantic longing. Knowing Me, Knowing You is a classic song about the aftermath of a breakup and the sad realization that communication has broken down. Money, Money, Money is a cynical song about the desire to make it in a rich man's world. That's Me is another song that is surprisingly dark about the narrator expressing that she is not the marrying kind of woman, while describing herself in ways that ought to concern the listener. Why Did It Have To Me reflects on the somewhat absurd reasons why people are brought together out of loneliness and feel awkward when the other person catches feelings. Tiger is a somewhat dark song that shows the threatening and predatory nature of the city with characteristically upbeat production. Arrival is a gorgeous instrumental track that demonstrates ABBA's strength even without vocals. Fernando is a gorgeous nostalgic song about young love in the dramatic time of the Mexican Revolution. The album closes with Happy Hawaii, a humorous song about traveling to Hawaii set to almost the same music as "Why Does It Have To Be Me," and an original demo that had been replaced, making this an interesting experiment of sorts to see how it was that ABBA improved on their original ideas.
In judging this album and its quality I am going to take this song as an eleven track album and consider "Happy Hawaii" as an interesting but not entirely successful experiment at hula rock. Out of the 11 tracks in the original release, four of the song have been well-remembered, "Dancing Queen," "Knowing Me, Knowing You," "Money, Money, Money," and "Fernando." While Dancing Queen is my least favorite of all of their hits, these four songs definitely provide a wide range of ABBA's excellence and all have held up pretty strongly since the 1970's as worthwhile songs. Beyond that, this album offers some stronger tracks among the more obscure tracks, with the yearning "Dum Dum Diddle," the rather strikingly dark but honest "Why Did It Have To Be Me?," and the beautiful instrumental Arrival. The rest of the track are at least pleasant album tracks, making this album a solid 4 to 4.5/5, depending on how one feels about "Happy Hawaii" and whether it reflects poorly on "Why Did It Have To Be Me?" or not. With this the group is on track with four straight albums at 4/5 or better.
|
|
|
Post by nathanalbright on Sept 10, 2021 18:53:02 GMT -5
Night Time, My Time, by Sky Ferreira
While I was doing a rankdown of underrated songs, Spotify played another song by this artist in addition to the one that was on the rankdown and I figured it would be worthwhile to review the only studio album from an artist who seems to be well-beloved by those who know about her but largely unfamiliar to most audiences. This artist is what could be termed a cult artist, who has never achieved mass appeal but has a massive amount of popularity with those who are fond of her as an artist. I have long been puzzled by this disconnect personally, as her name comes up often as someone who deserves more popularity than she has.
This album begins with Boys, a song about someone who gives the narrator faith in boys again after a period of disillusionment. This is followed by It Ain't Your Right, which looks at the negotiation between people who want to be with each other but not to consider themselves obligated to the other. 24 Hours has a driving beat and reflects on the relentless passing of time and her devotion to a partner. Nobody Asked Me (If I Was Okay) has another driving beat and deals with the failures of reciprocity in communication, and has an ominous feeling about it. I Blame Myself is a chilling song about the parasocial nature of fame and abuse and its repercussions to the present day that is definitely relatable in an unpleasant way. Omanko is an urgent song that seems to reflect an obsession with Japanese culture. You're Not The One, the most popular song from this album, is gorgeous and a somewhat unexpected ode about someone not being the one. Heavy Metal Heart reflects on the way that love helps one's hearts, with another driving beat. Kristine reflects on the unmourned fate of tormented young millionaires. I Will revels in the singer's unpredictability. Love In Stereo reflects on the singer's love for someone who just wants to be a friend. Night Time, My Time has an ominous feeling to it, almost like a soundtrack song about a vampire.
It is admittedly hard to reconcile the critical favor of this album with its popular obscurity. As a listener with little prior familiarity to the album, this album strikes me as a 4/5 or a 4.5/5 album, with the production generally solid and the album generally good and occasionally superb, as in the standout tracks like Boys, 24 Hours, I Blame Myself, and You're Not The One. What a critic hears as a middle finger to a corrupt music industry seems to alienate the people who bring an album to the masses--those famously corrupt record labels and radio stations and the like. This is an album that you will likely appreciate if you see Sky as singing what you feel concerning the frustrations of life and love and the worthless coin of the attention economy. If you think she is singing to you, you will probably feel less fond of it.
|
|
|
Post by nathanalbright on Sept 18, 2021 0:17:26 GMT -5
Love Songs, by Dan Fogelberg
I was looking at the discography of Dan Fogelberg while listening to the Very Best of Dan Fogelberg and saw that I already had listened to and liked nine of the ten songs that appear on this album on my Spotify and figured I would listen to the last song on the album that I had not already evaluated. In listening to this song and in reflecting to the rest of the songs on the album that I had listened to in the course of listening to the other compilation, I was struck by the fact that although Dan Fogelberg had a great many popular hit songs relating to love included on this disk (and others), those songs dealt with love in a variety of styles, perspectives, and even types of love, all of which makes this album a good deal more varied than one would expect from the title alone.
This album is relatively short by the standard of a compilation for Dan Fogelberg, given that the Very Best of Dan Fogelberg includes seventeen songs on one disk and nine of the ten songs that appear here. Yet the ten songs included here, if they are by no means a complete look at the singer's career, even with regards to love songs, are certainly a representative sample of the complexity of Fogelberg's approach to the subject of love. Heart Hotels, Hard To Say, and Lonely In Love all sound different in terms of their styles, but all present a rather melancholy to doubtful look at the stability of love. Make Love Stay reflects the singer's desire to undo the mistakes of the past, while Seeing You Again reflects on the desire to recover a past relationship and Same Auld Lang Syne points out the awkwardness that often springs from seeing an old lover with whom the flame has died, even if a certain fondness remains. Similarly, A Love Like This and Longer reflect, with different styles, the appreciation the singer has for a love that the author wants to last for a lifetime and beyond. The other two songs expand the palette of love to include the love of a son for his father and their shared love of music in Leader Of The Band, and a love for a thoroughbred horse being bred to race in the bluegrass of Kentucky in Run For The Roses.
In the eyes of Dan Fogelberg, or the person who made this compilation, love is truly a complicated thing. And it should be noted that these songs do not by any means exhaust the complex attitudes that the singer had towards love expressed in his reflective and beautiful and often varied music. Yet before I fill this review with a long list of songs that I wish had been included to make it even more complete as a perspective of the singer-songwriter's view of love, one reviews the albums that are and not those that could or perhaps should be. As far as love songs go, Dan Fogelberg has a lot of good ones, and ten of them appear on this album. There are more complete compilations if you like these songs, but you can certainly spend your time in worse ways than listening to these songs.
|
|
|
Post by nathanalbright on Sept 23, 2021 2:39:51 GMT -5
Still Waters, by the Bee Gees
I have to admit upon listening to this album that I do not like this album quite as much as the two proceeding studio albums High Civilization and Size Isn't Everything, but there is no doubt that this album was much more successful on the pop charts and it is not hard to figure out why. This album is considerably less eccentric and more of an adult contemporary album than those two albums, which for me is a bit of a negative when compared to those two. That said, both of those albums are among my favorite albums all time, and if this album does not rise to that level it is still a very good album, with every song being at least a 4/5, many of them romantic ballads that are enjoyable to listen to if not necessarily relevant to my own existence, and a few songs that are a bit more quirky and thus more enjoyable for me personally.
This album is a pretty normal sized one at twelve songs. The album appears not to have been constructed in a way that is too front-loaded, for although album opener Alone is the obvious standout here, there are still strong songs quite further down, with popular ballad I Could Not Love You More as the third song, title track Still Waters (Run Deep), a minor hit of its own right, fourth, and Irresistible Force seventh and Closer Than Close eighth. This is an album without obvious weaknesses, although there are a lot of songs here that deal with romantic devotion like I Surrender, My Lover's Prayer, With My Eyes Closed, I Will, and Miracles Happen. That is not to say that there are not more unusual songs, as the album closes with the intriguing Smoke And Mirrors that offers a bit of a change. But this is an album that takes the Bee Gees love of ballads and makes those ballads a larger percentage of the album than usual. If you like that, this is an album that you, like millions of Americans, will enjoy.
In listening to this album, I was struck by the way that the Bee Gees were so skilled at making albums that showed different facets of their artistic muse in ways that could very easily confuse many people who were not used to their protean muse. Their music after Spirits Having Flown in general appears to be greatly misunderstood, and their desires to be played on American pop stations lasted long after radio had no interest in playing most of their songs, to the detriment of their two great albums from the early 1990's that I enjoy so much. Even so, this turn to Adult Contemporary marked an uptick in the success of the group that would last until the death of Maurice ended the group as a going concern. It is by no means a bad album, or even a mediocre album, but it is not representative of the album though it does show off the group's beautiful balladry, and at times ("Alone" and "I Could Not Love You More") this leads to songs that stand with their very strongest, and that is no left-handed compliment.
|
|
|
Post by nathanalbright on Sept 28, 2021 1:54:23 GMT -5
Joy, by Apollo 100
I listened to this album on Spotify because it was the only studio album by the group--a short-lived studio group famous for its one hit, the title track of this album. It is remarkable just how unpopular this group is on Spotify--their only hit (which hit the top ten) has only about 160,000 streams, and some of their songs from this album have been played less than 3,000 times when I played it. This is remarkably low, and quite unjustly so, as this is an album that is easy to enjoy. Having been familiar with a few of the songs already, and seeing that the album was short at 11 songs and under 30 minutes, this was an easy decision to play and review.
As far as the album goes, there is a bit more than one would expect if one comes into the album knowing only Joy (taken from Jesu, Joy Of Man's Desiring). Six of the eleven songs have titles that come from classical music [1], and the other five refer to jazz and pop music. While all of the songs are instrumentals, and all of them except for Air on G are shorter than three minutes, the variety of musical style and instrumentation is welcome. If none of these songs other than the title track is an obvious hit, the songs in general are quite good, and some of them, like Libido and Reach For The Sky deserve far more play than they receive. Overall, this is an album of instrumentals that you can listen to without having to worry about skipping material, and that make site a solid 4/5 choice for me as an album I can recommend without reservation.
[1] One of the songs on the Spotify songlist appears to be in error. The last song on this album is labeled as Classical Wind, a reference to the song Classical Gas but a different song with the same title that is also in the group's discography actually is a version of Classical Gas, while the Classical Wind mislabeled here is a different and unrelated recording. Since only about 2500 plays of this album exist on Spotify, though, it hasn't been a huge priority for them to fix, since it is possible no one has yet brought it to their attention.
|
|
|
Post by nathanalbright on Sept 28, 2021 1:54:59 GMT -5
One, by the Bee Gees
This album is one of the few post-disco albums by the Bee Gees that were popular, and that was largely based on the strength of the top ten hit One, which was somewhat of a surprising hit. Unfortunately, nothing else from this album really caught on, and that is a shame, because as is often the case for the Bee Gees, there is a lot more here under the surface. As is the case with the best Bee Gees albums of the post-disco era, this album is at its best with darker songs, and there are plenty of songs here that muse on the darker side of love. This album was supposed to be the place where all four Brothers Gibb worked together for the first time ever openly, but the death of Andy and the feeling of sadness and melancholy that resulted appears to have left its effect on this album and its sense of frustrated longing, and not only of a romantic nature.
As far as the songs on this album go, this album has some standouts and most of them are concentrated at the beginning. One, the big hit, begins the album, with an expression that two people should be together, eventually. After that comes the brooding Ordinary Lives, where the brothers express their sadness that they could not live ordinary lives. Then comes Bodyguard, which is a beautiful love ballad that was a minor hit as the second single from the album. It’s My Neighborhood shows the Bee Gees being territorial about a relationship gone wrong. Tears reflects on the frustrated hopes of a relationship that went awry. Tokyo Nights shows a nostalgic desire to go back to Tokyo, another excellent track here, while Flesh And Blood is a somewhat dark reflection of a tough posture by the group. Wish You Were Here is a lovely track and House Of Shame reflects on the shameful nature of promiscuous sexuality that belongs in the secret love theme of ominous romance. Will You Ever Let Me muses on whether a partner will ever let the narrator in, a common concern by the group, and the album ends with the excellent You Win Again, which already appeared on the neglected ESP.
With this album, the Bee Gees have their fourth straight album that is at least 4/5 in their post-disco period that I have reviewed. There isn’t a song here that is less than a 4/5 and there are some real excellent tunes here. I would consider this a pretty strong 4.5/5 and an album that you definitely need to check out if you like songs that have a somewhat brooding undercurrent behind the themes of romantic and other types of love that the Bee Gees have long specialized in. As is often the case in the post-disco Bee Gees period, this is an album that deserves to be far better remembered than it is, with “One,” “Ordinary Lives,” “Tokyo Nights,” “Flesh And Blood,” and “You Win Again” ranking among their best all-time work in my opinion, which is a tall order considering the group’s body of work as a whole.
|
|
|
Post by nathanalbright on Oct 5, 2021 1:43:46 GMT -5
Rhino Hi-Five: Andrew Gold (EP), by Andrew Gold
This song is part of a series of five-song EPs released by Rhino Records that seek to introduce listeners (or re-introduce them) to artists that are somewhat obscure by providing a short best-of collection of five songs. Andrew Gold seems like a good artist for this particular sort of project, because he didn't have that many hits as an artist--only two or three songs of his have been remembered relatively well--and because listening to these five songs will give the listener a fair chance to ponder whether or not they want to listen to a longer album of his given the general obscurity of his work. I became familiar with the artist's work when I was young (my mother had a rather savage review of his two most familiar songs, both of them in this collection) and one of his songs was the theme song to Golden Girls.
This particular collection is made up of three songs that were at least moderate hits and two more obscure songs that provide some deeper cuts that reflect his general quality of work. After listening to this EP, the listener will have a decent idea of whether or not they like Andrew Gold's best material and whether the two deep cuts are appealing, thus making it worthwhile to check out his full-length albums. The first song, "Thank You For Being A Friend," is the most enduring song of the artist, and the aforementioned theme to Golden Girls, a materialistic ode to friendship. After that comes "Lonely Boy," a moody track about an idiotic boy who thought that being the only son meant that he was his parents' only child, feeling a bit resentful about having to cater to a favored younger sister who ends up having a son just like him to punish her, I suppose. "Never Let Her Slip Away" is a song about the narrator's love for a recent relationship he started just before going on tour that he hopes will last forever. "That's Why I Love You" is a basic song that shows the narrator explaining why he loves his partner in the most trite and cliched of ways. Finally, "Hang My Picture Straight" shows the narrator being strangely petulant and angry towards someone he views as a future ex-lover who he wants to pine after him by being reminded of him by his picture after he is gone.
This is not exactly a bad collection of songs, but it is hard not to damn the artist and his music with faint praise. All of these songs are well-produced and have beautiful piano and other instrumental parts. These are songs that sound good if you don't think too much about them. But if you do pay attention to the lyrics, these songs are pretty meat-headed at best. If Andrew Gold was a decent writer and performer of music, he was not a particularly skilled lyricist and these songs are testament to the fact that he was not nearly as gifted as many of his peers among the singer-songwriters of the 70's. Listening to this artist, especially for the vibe, is by no means a waste of time, but if you are actively looking for good music, it seems hard to justify listening to this EP or much of any other music by the artist when there are so many other much better artists in this lane like Dan Fogelberg or Cat Stevens or Elton John or Billy Joel, to name a few artists in the same general line of talented piano men who combined musical chops with far better and far more insightful and thoughtful lyrics.
|
|
|
Post by nathanalbright on Oct 11, 2021 19:50:05 GMT -5
This Is Where I Came In, by the Bee Gees
I have been gradually making my way through the Bee Gees discography one album at a time to see if they manage not only to have five 4/5 albums in a row but five such album streaks in all three eras of their career. This album is the last studio album of the Bee Gees, and although the Bee Gees did not expect to go out on this note--one imagines they expected a lot more time to make more music, but there are at least a few notes in this album that make it all the more poignant as a sending off point. Although this album only had one single (the title track) and it sold modestly, it is still an album worth examining if one wants to see where the Bee Gees ended up. This is an unexpected and somewhat abrupt end, but this album also serves as a capstone of what the Bee Gees had been as a band, and so with that said, let us explore the last studio album of a classic group.
This album has twelve songs and is a bit less than hour, averaging a bit more than 4 minutes per song. The album begins with the title track, an ominous folk-rock (!) number that hints at spiritual themes and that gives a recap of the career of the band, expressing a sense of danger and menace about their experiences in the music industry. She Keeps On Coming expresses a less than perfect relationship--not unlike that the brothers Gibb had--but one where there is persistence in seeking intimacy and love on the part of the woman. Sacred Trust reflects a confidence in one's love that results from the security of being loved so sincerely. Wedding Day then provides a beautiful ballad (one that should have been an AC smash hit) dedicated to the love of marriage. This is followed by Man In The Middle, with the lead vocals by Maurice discussing his place in the middle between two driven and ambitious brothers who had their own master plans for how their music should end up, another standout track. Deja Vu provides another song that expresses the joy of love, in another song that should have been a hit. Technicolor Dreams is a Beatlesesque song about lasting love that sounds a lost track from Sergeant Pepper. Walking On Air follows with an ominous but beautiful song about the hope for a love to finally take place with gorgeous vocal harmonies. This track is then followed by the sparse Loose Talk Costs Lives, which almost sounds like a lounge rock classic. Embrace then follows as another gorgeous should-have-been Adult Contemporary hit about love and affection. The Extra Mile, with its gorgeous trumpets and valedictory lyrics, serves as a victory lap of sorts that would have served as the perfect tour or album closer, but then after that Voice In The Wilderness ends the album in a post-grunge note of dissatisfaction about the group not wanting to cry out like a voice in the wilderness, unheard.
A substantial number of the songs on this album are real standouts--the title track, Wedding Day, Man In The Middle, Deja Vu, Technicolor Dreams, Walking On Air, Embrace, and the Extra Mile are all songs that belong in the large list of great Bee Gees songs, and Voice In The Wilderness demonstrates, as always, that the Bee Gees were able to master every style they tried their hand to, as had been the case for decades. If this album is not very well known, it deserves to be a lot better known and appreciated. Without question this album is above a 4/5, and along with High Civilization and Size Isn't Everything, this is an album where not only is every song good, but a large percentage of the album is all-time-great. This is an album that is not only good on its own terms but as an unexpected closing for the music career of an all-time-great musical group, it serves to provide a fitting close to a stellar career, with music that reflects the group's rich history, themes of multifaceted love, as well as a demonstration that the band never allowed themselves to become stale or out of date.
|
|
|
Post by nathanalbright on Oct 13, 2021 2:59:44 GMT -5
Rhino Hi-Five: Edwin McCain
Previously in the Rhino Hi-Five series we explored the disappointing singer-songwriter Andrew Gold and found his lyricism wanting [1]. Here we turn our attention to a vastly better singer-songwriter in South Carolina eponymous rock band Edwin McCain (named after its lead member, sensibly enough). In listening to this EP I have a strong advantage in that I am vastly more familiar with the catalog of Edwin McCain than I was of Andrew Gold's, and also that I appreciate McCain's work a lot more. Here, in this collection, we find that it is not McCain's music that must be found wanting but the restrictive nature of the five-song EP. There are so many good songs that Edwin McCain has that a selection of five is going to miss whole categories of music that he made, and this album contains three songs from Edwin McCain's mainstream debut, Honor Among Thieves, and one song each from the more popular second and third major label releases of Edwin McCain that hit the top 40 of the pop charts.
This EP has five songs. The first song is Edwin McCain's signature song, "I'll Be," which remains his biggest hit, from McCain's second major label release Misguided Roses. After that comes "I Could Not Ask For More," a soundtrack song that also appeared on McCain's third major label release "Messenger," a gorgeous Diane Warren-penned song. The last three songs on the EP come from "Honor Among Thieves." First among that closing set is "Solitude," a downbeat song about a young man struggling with the repercussions of being institutionalized and how it affects his relationship with his parents. "3 AM" follows with another acoustic number, this one about the bittersweet clarity of insomnia. "America Street" closes the set with a rousing sax-driven populist anthem about main street social issues (including homelessness).
The end result is an album that is strangely front-loaded in Edwin McCain's career, since only three albums from a much larger body of work. It is again rather pointless to complain about the album that one would have preferred, but if as a listener you find this EP to be a good one, be aware that McCain has a vastly larger and more diverse body of work than one finds here, but this EP does provide five songs worth listening to among dozens of excellent tracks by this notable singer-songwriter. Ideally, these may be the first five Edwin McCain songs one listens to but should not be the last. There is far more complex and beautiful music that the band has made over the course of their long career than what is shown here.
|
|