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Post by nathanalbright on Jul 26, 2022 22:53:04 GMT -5
Egg In The Backseat, by Em Beihold
Em Beihold has risen, at least briefly, to the consciousness of pop fans through her top 20 hit "Numb Little Bug," which is a song that I consider to be worthy of honorable mention status for 2022 so far among the building YE Hot 100 list (spoiler alert, perhaps). I have also seen the video for "Too Precious," which is also relatable even if it has been far less popular to date. After coming to the attention of music labels through the viral success of a song called "Groundhog Day," I think, which I am not yet familiar with, Em Beihold struggled with depression even as her professional dreams of making it as an artist were coming true. The title of EP itself suggests a sense of fragility as well as movement, and I am curious to see if the material has any sort of unifying theme besides the singer's winsome quirkiness and the sub-three minute runtime of all of the songs. Let's find out.
The EP begins with "Goo," a song with quirky vocal melodies and delicate instrumentals, which appear very much on brand for the singer, as well as a song that reflects on the singer not being thought of fun enough to be with by her beloved. "Numb Little Bug," the big hit here, follows with its reflective lyrics about fighting for survival against depression and worries about anti-depressants. "Porcelein" again underscores this sense by others that the singer is fragile while she wrestles with this with spoken word covert rapping, plaintive singing and some excellent instrumental production. The title track follows up with some driving singing and instrumentation and some well-sung reflections on a bad romantic experience that is leaving her broken and distracted. "Too Precious" reflects on the singer as a passionate but responsible homebody who is thought of as being too boring for the people that she is around. "12345" is the next song on the album, and it reflects the singer's depression and anxiety and her struggle against its effects. "Spiderman" is a sweet, wistful song where the singer reflects on someone who would be a good lover, but where she reflects on her safe distance of communicating through screens while avoiding intimacy in person.
This EP tends to reflect on both the fragility of relationships as well as of the singer herself. The EP is cohesive, united by a cute but melancholy instrumentation as well as the singer's quirky singing and personality. The emotional range of this EP is admittedly a bit narrow, ruminating on depression and anxiety and on sehnsucht (longing, yearning), but if you happen to be someone who this material relates to and appeals to, this narrowness of range is focus rather than a lack of creativity or originality. As someone who can relate all to well to the emotional palette of the singer, this EP is definitely a strong one. It is hard to know if anything else here is destined to be a hit--12345 and Spiderman seem like obvious follow-up singles--but this is an EP that definitely has a target audience to be aiming at, namely anxious and conscientious romanticists who feel sincerely and passionately but awkwardly and often unsuccessfully. If this sounds like you, consider Em Beihold one of your tribe.
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Post by nathanalbright on Aug 3, 2022 20:26:57 GMT -5
Heart To Heart, by Reba McEntire
Released in 1981, Heart To Heart was the fourth studio album, apparently, for country singer Reba McEntire. My own relationship with Reba McEntire's career as a musician has been a rather straightforward one so far. I have respected her as an artist but not gone out of my way to listen to any of her albums nor can I remember offhand many of her songs by name, even though I am sure I grew up listening to quite a few of them. I was invited to rankdown a couple of her albums from the 1980s, and that gives me the chance to actually become more acquainted not only with Reba's singles but also her deeper album tracks. Is it a worthwhile experience? Let's see.
The album begins with "Indelibly Blue," a lovely but sad song about being reminded of a past relationship with somewhat ghostly instrumentation. "Ease The Fever" calls upon a beloved person to give her the chance to ease the fever of love and erase his pain, with some interesting backing vocals. "There Ain't No Love" is a sweet attempt to see one's current relationship as being the only one for the narrator, with no replacement, based on affection and communication and encouragement. "How Does It Feel To Be Free" returns to a sadder and more melancholy tone where the narrator questions a former partner about how it is like for him for them to be apart in an austere piano ballad. "Only You (And You Alone)" offers a cover that combines McEntire's appealing voice with some gentle strings and more of that somewhat ghostly instrumentation we saw earlier. "Today All Over Again" reflects on the downside of somewhat obsessive love where the relationship has ended, where he has obviously let go and she hasn't. "Gonna Love Ya (Tell The Cows Come Home" offers a creative and gentle take on being committed to love someone forever, and is a nice change of pace from the more languid tone of some of the previous songs. "Who?" offers an upbeat discussion from the narrator about who is able to love her partner like she can, where the music is somewhat at odds with the lyrics. "Small Two-Bedroom Starter" tells a narrative of a little house and its complicated ownership history given the lives of the people who live in it and its combination of intricate narrative detail and the melancholy pull of stories of dashed hopes. "Love By Love" closes the album with a positive look at the uplifting power of love on the life of someone who is loved.
Despite the fact that this album is a collection of ten rather similar songs about love and relationships, my feelings towards this album are somewhat complicated. On the one hand, the album itself is clearly a collection of songs, probably written by Nashville professional songwriters, without a thought of connecting the songs together as part of a coherent narrative. This cannot really be blamed on the singer, who provides a convincing and lived in feel to the songs she is given, whether they celebrate love, seek defiantly to hold onto it, or long for its return in gloomy and somewhat obsessive ways. The songs themselves vary mainly by being happy or sad, or through the little touches of instrumentation and production that distinguish the songs from each other. Still, even if this album is a bit less than the sum of its achingly beautiful parts, this is an album that deserves to be a lot better known than it is. At least a couple of the songs show some genuinely worthwhile creativity despite the limited thematic range of the material as a whole.
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Post by nathanalbright on Aug 4, 2022 16:20:49 GMT -5
What Am I Gonna Do About You, by Reba McEntire
Having generally enjoyed the first album chosen for the rankdown for Reba McEntire, the second selection chosen for the rankdown skips ahead in time from 1981 to 1986, and the album that served as a follow-up to a successful album that contained two #1 country singles. Three singles were released from What Am I Gonna Do About You, two of which hit #1 on the country charts (the title track and third single "One Promise Too Late") while the other one peaked out at #4 ("Let The Music Lift You Up") which was enough success to keep Reba's momentum as a major country star going despite releasing a new album every year, which seems to be a punishing pace. Does this music resonate as much with me as the previous album did? Let's see.
The album begins with "Why Not Tonight," which shows Reba taking the lead in communicating her interest to a beau who seems a bit reluctant, without being too pushy about it. "What Am I Gonna Do About You" is a somewhat melancholy ballad about the slow recovery from a breakup where one is trying to face up to lingering feelings for an ex. "Lookin' For A New Love Story" has beautiful strings and a desire to find the sort of fairy tale romance that one has been looking for for a long time. "Take Me Back" is an upbeat song about looking for a second chance to find some love and excitement with someone. "My Mind Is On You" is a midtempo song about a dilemma of a woman who is being pursued by a lot of people, while she wonders how she is going to communicate her own interest in her ex. "Let The Music Lift You Up" is a lively song about the way that music can lift people up despite the distances between them. "I Heard Her Cryin'" is a touching song about how a child's crying prompts a squabbling couple to recognize the harmful effects of their arguments on their beloved daughter. "No Such Thing" offers lovely instrumentation and a message of lasting love and devotion from the narrator to her man. "One Promise Too Late" tells a story of a woman determined to be faithful to her vows even if she finds another man very attractive, wondering why he wasn't faster on the ball when she was available. The album closes with "Till It Snows In Mexico," which again points to the total faithfulness of the narrator for her beloved, using some creative imagery.
By and large, this album follows the previous album I listened to from Reba McEntire whose range tends to focus on love and relationships. Even so, there is definitely some added breadth here as the singer tends to look beyond the two people in the couple themselves to the larger context of their relationships--including the way that dysfunctional relationships affect children, how it is that just because someone is attached does not mean that other people around are not trying to inveigle their way into a woman's heart, and how it is that communication through music can bridge long distances, a notable thought in the mid-1980's before the rise of technologies to bridge the distance that we take for granted today. The end result is an album that is pleasing to listen to in terms of its production and also somewhat sobering for its reflection on the larger implications of relationships and choices and commitment.
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Post by nathanalbright on Aug 12, 2022 19:56:45 GMT -5
Just The Same, by Terri Clark
It is perhaps unsurprising that given the fact that I have listened to few albums by country artists that I know relatively well, that I approached this rankdown of Terri Clark's "Just The Same" album being largely unfamiliar with her work. Though Clark has had a notable and long-lasting career as a country artist with a strong base in her native Canada and also considerable success in the United States (especially in the second half of the 1990s), she is less familiar as an album artist. This can be demonstrated by the Spotify stats for this album, which show that aside from the first two songs on the album which have more than a million plays, and the third song having 100,000 plays, the rest of the album sits at 50,000 plays to as little as under 25,000 plays. This indicates an artist known more as a singles artist than as an album artist, and it is worth pondering if this reputation is a fair one. Is Terri Clark an artist that can be appreciated just from the few singles she releases from each album, or are her albums as a whole worth checking out? Let's see.
The album begins with "Emotional Girl," with its fiddles and Clark's twangy voice, an album that expresses Clark's passionate heart and a warning to a would-be partner about this fact. "Poor, Poor Pitiful Me" is an excellent cover and was a worthy hit from this album. "Just The Same" serves as a moving ballad with some excellent guitar work about the complications of love and Clark's refusal to judge people on their money or past. "Something In The Water" offers a funny, but rather unhappy, reflection on a pattern of experience of moving on that the narrator shares with numerous other women. "Neon Flame" gives an inventive and creative way of describing an ex-partner in a way that seeks to allay the concerns of one's current partner. "Any Woman" gives a melancholy reflection on the process of healing and recovery for a woman who's been hurt by a man in a past relationship. "Twang Thang" addresses Clark's fondness for country as a gatekeeping exercise, which sort of indirectly addresses her strong twang approach in her own singing. "You Do Or You Don't" pushes a reluctant lover to face up to whether or not he actually loves her, with some excellent instrumentation. "Keeper Of The Flame" is a melancholy ballad about being with a workaholic partner who does not leave enough time for love and intimacy. "Not What I Wanted To Hear" is a driving song about the tension between needing to know the truth and not wanting to hear it because it is pleasant at the same time. "Hold Your Horses" speaks about the singer's independent nature and her unwillingness to be pushed into marriage that seems to undercut some of the other songs on this album.
This album is a collection of songs that are individually enjoyable to listen to but are a bit of a chore to listen to together, especially given Clark's sometimes shrill voice and not entirely pleasant attitude. If Clark can be praised for occasionally moving beyond relationship drama in this album (not to say that there isn't plenty of that as well, though), when she does so she does not always do so very well, as when she engages in some country gatekeeping in "Twang Thang." A couple of times, in "Any Woman" and "Something In The Water," she gets pretty close to misandry in terms of examining problems with a man not in the individual but in the collective, which may please those who enjoy girl power but are less than pleasing to me, given my zero tolerance policy for misandry. Overall, each of these songs individually offers some pleasure to listen to, whether in the songwriting or the production and instrumentation, but the album as a whole is less than the sum of its parts, even if some of its parts deserve to be a lot better known.
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Post by nathanalbright on Aug 24, 2022 1:18:56 GMT -5
Shiver, by Jamie O'Neal
As someone who is not very familiar with Australian country music, it has only been recently since I was made familiar with the body of work of this singer at all. In looking a bit at her life history, it is all the more remarkable that she was able to carve out a place in country music despite a lot of factors going against her--including beginning her mainstream country career in the United States when she was already in her 30s, although the album cover certainly plays her up as being youthful more so than she really was. This particular album has five singles which I have heard and generally like, and so I thought it would be worthwhile to listen to the entire album and see if it is worthwhile to the same extent that the hit singles on this album were. If Jamie O'Neal is definitely someone whose history as a short-lived hitmaker has largely been forgotten by many mainstream country music fans, there are at least five good songs here.
The album begins with "When I Think About Angels," a lovely song that manages to combine humorous thoughts about love as well as heaven, with some excellent instrumentation. "There Is No Arizona," the big hit here, has some excellent production, but it is not a song I like as much as many other people do because of its tone and mood. "Where We Belong" provides a gorgeous adult contemporary ballad of the kind that was being sung by other country artists of her time, but it's still lovely even if it's not necessarily very original. "No More Protecting My Heart" has upbeat musical production with its mood of optimism towards a relationship, which has the tone of pop music rather than country, and seems like an opportunity for a crossover hit that wasn't taken. "She Hasn't Heard It Yet," offers a somewhat minimalistic guitar ballad with some excellent picking to go along with a message of a relationship that is full of problems but most of all with a struggle to communicate. "You Rescued Me" gives a lovely if not necessarily very original ballad about how a loved one rescued her from lonely wandering. The title track, "Shiver," offers a very basic track of rapturous love. "The Only Thing Wrong" offers a smooth jazz song with a hint of moodiness and minor key dissatisfaction about loneliness, a relatable song with some excellent production. "I'm Still Waiting" is another moody and somewhat basic song about waiting for a partner to come back. "I'm Not Going To Do Anything Without You" is a love ballad that sounds pleasant enough but has basic instrumentation and not very much chemistry between the singers. "Sanctuary" offers some mid-tempo adult contemporary production about finding a refuge with a lover that sounds like it could have been a Peter Cetera album track instrumental, in the best way, even if the chorus is a bit crowded. "Frantic" offers a slice of manic Celtic-pop that sounds like what the Corrs would be if Andrea were a country singer instead of an Irish pop princess. "To Be With You" offers a passionate song that contains some lovely strings and Spanish guitar to add that sense of passion and offers a strong close to a strong album.
In listening to this album I was struck by how that my fondness for the songs on this album depended largely on the production that was behind the songs, except in those cases where I was irritated by the lyrics or the lack of chemistry in the songs. Generally speaking, varied production Jamie O'Neal is a lot more enjoyable to me than basic country ballad Jamie O'Neal. Seven of the thirteen songs here feature strong production elements, and those are not surprisingly my favorite tracks on the album, while three of the singles were boring country ballads with minimalistic instrumentation that even if they became hits, don't really showcase her strongest suit, and that is to sing songs about ordinary life, seeking a refuge in love from the problems of life, and the ups and downs of love to instrumentation that ranges from pop to country. This album offers a lot more pop music than one would expect, and paradoxically this is what makes this album a surprising pleasure for me.
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Post by nathanalbright on Aug 24, 2022 16:43:47 GMT -5
Outlandos D'Amour, by the Police
The Police is a group that is sufficiently well-loved and with a surprisingly enough small discography that reviewing their body of work is by no means a particularly difficult task. If at the start their nervous energy allowed them to be thought of as far more punk than they were, their debut album started them off on a fast-paced path to immense worldwide fame that that overwhelmed the group, divided as it was by an increasingly productive and probably also domineering Sting, whose solo ambitions led to the destruction of the group in the mid-1980's. For a handful of years, though, the group put out albums at a rapid pace that managed to show considerable growth and left behind some classic songs. How did they begin? Let's find out.
"Next To You" begins the album with a high-energy relatable song about wanting to be next to one's beloved, with some bluesy vocals by Sting. "So Lonely" provides a vivid picture of insecurity and pretense that mixes a slow verse with a fast and somewhat repetitive chorus that is filled with nervous longing. "Roxanne," a song about a frustrated, doomed love for a prostitute, was the first big hit that the Police had, greatly helping their efforts for stardom. "Hole In My Life" is filled with more nervous and anxious energy in looking at the problems that come from loneliness and isolation, treating it like a disease. "Peanuts" provides another nervous look at relationships gone wrong and the breakdown of communication. "Can't Stand Losing You" is another song about nervous insecurity and the despair that results from romantic troubles. "Truth Hits Everybody" is another pop-punkish song about the insecurity of life that fits in well with the general tenor of the album as a whole. "Born In The 50's" provides a perspective of young people growing up in the midst of the paranoia of the Cold War, a theme that would be explored later by Sting in his solo work. "Be My Girl - Sally" is filled with honest directness but also a hint of immaturity in its repetitiveness, though it has an interesting and complex construction including spoken word material that discusses a sex toy as a partner. "Masoko Tanga" is a lengthy close to the album with what appears to be nonsense lyrics that ends up being an experiment relating to hypnotism and paraphysics.
If this is not the album that Sting or the other members of the Police would likely feel proud about it, it certainly marks a strong and interesting beginning for the group. Though the Police were viewed as punk poseurs during their career, this album feels more like a groundbreaking work in pop punk that would later be mimicked in many respects by later acts like Green Day, filled with nervous energy and a sense of hopelessness and insecurity about life and love that is demonstrated by the album's material. Not too much interest in psychoanalysis is necessary to figure out that the material here is indicative of trouble, a lack of maturity, a difficulty in communication and mutual respect, and a dark view of women as sex objects--"Be My Girl - Sally" taking the ultimate step of viewing the narrator's woman as a literal object and not even a person. It is hard to know to what extent the Police were exploring their own insecurities and immaturity or pandering to a young male British audience in the late 1970's, but whether the album was autobiographical or mere pandering, it is a troubling but thought-provoking work at the same time.
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Post by nathanalbright on Aug 26, 2022 1:13:01 GMT -5
Regatta De Blanc, by The Police
Only one year after recording and releasing their debut album, the Police came out with a second album that consolidated their success. If anything, the album's success was even greater, as it had two hits in Message In A Bottle and Walking On The Moon as well as a beloved album track that Sting would later use as the title of his first solo live album (Bring On The Night). As someone who has not taken a listen to the back catalog of the Police though, it is fair to wonder in a world where artists routinely wait two or even as many as five years to follow up an album whether or not the one year between the first and second albums is enough to show the sort of progress one would want. While it is remarkable that the Police were as good as they were to start out with, they were clearly singing songs with a great deal of emotional immaturity. Did matters improve with their second album? Let's find out.
"Message In A Bottle" begins the album with a moving reflection of loneliness and isolation that is so infectious and catchy that it remains enjoyable more than 40 years after it was released and became a hit. The title track follows with inspired instrumentation and somewhat nonsense vocal sounds that nevertheless sounds energetic. "It's Alright For You" follows with a somewhat repetitive hook that seeks to describe what sort of portrayal is alright for the woman the band is talking about. "Bring On The Night" has immensely intricate instrumental work with its lyrics of dissatisfaction and a desire for closure. "Deathwish" follows with more nervous but virtuosic instrumentation and lyrics that examine a careless approach to life and death. "Walking On The Moon" combines the themes of nighttime and social isolation that the album has been full of, and it was an unexpected hit. "On Any Other Day" tells the story of an oppressed man who has reached the end of his tether, the sort of material that seems to have inspired future pop punk acts. "The Bed's Too Big Without You" expresses regret at a past relationship that has ended and the narrator's inability to cope with the loneliness and isolation. "Contact" provides a poignant discussion of communication between people as a means of dealing with isolation with some ominous music. "Does Everyone Stare" is a deceptively simple song that seeks to find some sort of insight into staring and wondering how other people behave. "No Time This Time" closes the album with more nervous energy, something one finds a lot of in the band's early work.
If Regatta De Blanc certainly includes some filler and is not quite the sort of epic production that the Police would be later capable of, it certainly marks progress for the group. If their debut marked them as a band with promise, if immature and unpolished, this album shows that in terms of instrumentation the band had made some serious advances, even if the lyrics were not as poetic as would later be the case. Still, if this album has a lot of songs with repetitive choruses, the production is excellent and the music is stellar here, and there are some worthy finds in this album that have stood the test of time beyond the obvious hit singles. And if there are a couple of songs here that still seem to pander to aimless young men and their anxieties, there is some emotional depth and insight coming on songs like "The Bed's Too Big Without You" and "Does Everyone Stare," and overall this album is just as thought provoking as the last album, demonstrating that the Police were consolidating their promising beginning.
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Post by nathanalbright on Aug 29, 2022 18:26:12 GMT -5
Zenyatta Mondatta, by the Police
After the considerable success of the first two albums of the Police, we might expect that the following album would largely follow suit, and in general that is exactly what happened. Boosted by having a couple of hits on each of their first albums, and having shown considerable growth in their technical abilities, aside from the fact that the lyrics were still a bit weaker than one would like, the band continued to push for growth, and so it was that commercially speaking and artistically speaking their third album has an even better reputation than their first two. Looking back on the album after some 40 years, though, does the album still hold up? Does it show the advancement one would hope from a band that was clearly coming into its own? Two songs from this album, one of them quite full of nonsense lyrics, remain well remembered, but what kind of deep cuts can be found? Let's find out.
The album begins with its biggest and most beloved song, the dark and highly topical "Don't Stand So Close To Me," with its problematic lyrics and ominous groove. "Driven To Tears" contains introspective lyrics about a troubled relationship and a look at the outside world with excellent music. "When The World Is Running Down, You Make The Best Of What's Still Around" provides a long title that expresses its ethics of coping rather than resisting the decline of the world. "Canary In A Coal Mine" is a rather humorous and upbeat song that hides a rather serious criticism of those who are oversensitive to anything going on wrong around them. "Voices In My Head" follows this with a great groove and some lyrics that are pushed back considerably in the mix. "Bombs Away" has upbeat music but rather dark lyrics about South Indian military and political matters. "De Do Do Do De Da Da Da" has a nonsense hook but the details of the lyrics are eloquent in the discussion of the coercive nature of logic and reasoning. "Behind My Camel" provides an ominous and Middle Eastern-sounding instrumental that befits a group that includes the son of a CIA great. "Man In A Suitcase" is an upbeat but rather serious reflection of the troubles of living on the road that includes some spoken word segments. "Shadows In The Rain" examines mental health and distorts the lyrics to provide some tone painting for the lyrics. "The Other Way Of Stopping" then closes the album with an interesting instrumental.
This album marks a consolidation of the Police's improved musical chops that the second album did, while also adding some considerable increases in lyrical skill and complexity (even if the album does have two instrumentals). One of the most intriguing aspects of the album is how it is that the Police chooses to tackle serious objects in a way that puts Sting in a somewhat unsympathetic light--as a former teacher and a current songwriter, his comments about the coercion in unequal relationships and the coercive way that wordsmiths like poets, priests, and politicians use communication to attain power cut against him as much as anyone else he could be singing about. If the album speaks eloquently concerning mental illness and the stress and strain in living in the crazy world we do, it is less about rebelling against that craziness than finding a way to cope with it, whether through self-examination or humor or some other mechanism. In the apparent nonsense that one finds, there is a great deal of sense of the most practical kind.
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Post by nathanalbright on Aug 30, 2022 16:50:37 GMT -5
Ghost In The Machine, by The Police
After three successful albums, the Police were one of the most important rock acts in the world, having demonstrated increasing skill in making thoughtful music that combined various elements, originally coming from more of a pop punk background (much to the annoyance of punk purists) and then adding different elements including a high degree of world music influence. By the time of their fourth album, the Police were highly interested in cementing their reputation as serious but also immensely popular musicians. The result of their efforts was an album with three massive hits, which continued their upward trend of sales in the United States (and elsewhere) and another song that ended up helping to inspire a movie later on ("Demolition Man"), for which Sting later re-recorded the titular song. But, even if this was a successful album as far as sales are concerned, does it hold up more than 40 years after its creation on a musical level? Let's see.
The album beings with "Spirits In The Material World," whose intricate musical palette introduces the theme of the interaction of the spirit and material that the album's title promises, a worthy and successful song. "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" is a bit more catchy and slight, but even here there is the hint of "magic" and the relationship of the immaterial to the material world, even in love in relationships. "Invisible Sun" looks at the grim nature of the external world and posits an invisible sun that provides spiritual energy and hope to that dark world, another stellar song that demonstrates the album's thematic unity. "Hungry For You" shows Sting demonstrating a knowledge of French in an upbeat song that is one of the band's notable experiments. "Demolition Man" is upbeat and frantic and also deeply ominous, where someone's plan goes disastrously wrong when dealing with a spectacularly awkward person. "Too Much Information" looks at the common problem of having too much going in one's head. "Re-Humanize Yourself" looks at the flip side of needing to become more human and less of a machine in an every more technology-filled world. "One World (Not Three)" points to the unity of the world and its people in the face of categories that seek to divide humanity based on political affiliation. "Omegaman" has ominous music and lyrics that explore the line between sanity and madness, seemingly related to a concern about the state of the world and the narrator's life. "Secret Journey" is another song relating to the sad state of the world and the desire to find some sort of insight in esoteric or spiritual matters. "Darkness" closes the album with a groovy instrumental and some lovely riffs set to lyrics related to a dark emotional state.
If Zenyatta Mondatta was a demonstration of the maturation of The Police from their somewhat immature pop punk roots, Ghost In The Machine shows the listener what the next decades of Sting's career would be as a musician both in the Police and then, not too long in the future, as a solo artist. There is thoughtful musing about love and relationships, accessible songs with surprising depth, as well as deep interests in matters of spirituality as well as the sorry state of the world and the political mess that we find ourselves in. As is the case with the previous album and its musing on communication and its difficulties, this is an album whose concerns and anxiety about technology and the spirit in man are highly relevant, and if the songs are clearly of their time, the matters they wrestle with are no less relevant now than in the early 1980s. Sting has been able to mine this vein of thoughtful social commentary set to accessible music with commercial success for decades now, and it's easy to see why this album was both a success in its time as well as something worth revisiting even now.
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Post by nathanalbright on Aug 31, 2022 23:13:32 GMT -5
Synchronicity, by The Police
After four successful albums, the last one even more successful than the first three, The Police were, for a short time, the biggest rock band in the entire world. As might be imagined, this proved to be a massive catastrophe. The making of the fifth studio album by The Police proved to be an immensely difficult challenge for the band, torn apart by internal conflict, as the immensely creative and productive Sting dominated the songwriting and muscled aside his increasingly frustrated bandmates, who could not match his concepts (as trite as they found the exploration of Jungian psychology) nor his songwriting pace. Meanwhile, Sting himself was troubled by the breakdown of his marriage, possibly as a result of his affair with a close friend of his estranged wife's. The resulting personal and professional turmoil obviously took a tool on the band itself, but did it ruin the music? After all, this is an album that has some immensely beloved classics that have remained vital in the music world, including "Every Breath You Take," "King Of Pain," and "Wrapped Around Your Finger," which sit back to back to back towards the end of the album, as if daring the casual listener to see the best of what the album had to offer after a much less distinguished first half. But is it worth waiting for?
The album opens with "Synchronicity I," which features a nervous but upbeat instrumental introduction before lyrics introduce the lyrical themes of the album and the interplay between the nightmare of the world and the dream of love and connection. "Walking In Your Footsteps" features an austere instrumental that is simultaneously a bit experimental in its sounds, and lyrics that focus on the connection between the present and the past, with ominous implications concerning human beings being as doomed as dinosaurs were. "O My God" borrows previous lyrics and explores the problem of turning the other cheek to provide a much darker view of the relationship explored in "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic," suggesting that the magic of love had turned awfully dark, with discordant saxophones to set the mood. "Mother" provides a bit of levity with a song that continues in the theme of love gone wrong, but instead ending up with the sort of cringeworthy track about the narrator's mother that would have better fit in on the band's first two albums. "Miss Gradenko" is a short song that explores what looks to be a relationship, but by no means one that appears to be entirely pleasant. "Synchronicity II," which was a considerable hit on its own terms, features gorgeous instruments and more lyrical explorations of the album's themes of connection as well as darkness with nods to other songs in the album. "Every Breath You Take" follows with its ominous grove and lyrics about obsessive love told from the point of view of a stalker, which somehow became the biggest hit of the Police's whole career. "King Of Pain" follows with gloomy but gorgeous music and somewhat self-pitying lyrics about suffering and isolation springing from the collapse of his marriage. "Wrapped Around Your Finger," another dark but gorgeous song, features a scenario straight out of the Sorcerer's Apprentice or Faust but was a surprising and well-deserved hit. "Tea In The Sahara" features atmospheric music with reflection on what appears to be another artistic reference to mental illness, travel, and exploitation. "Murder By Numbers" explores the state of mind needed to commit a murder with jazzy lyrics, closing the album with a song that reflects the darkness as well as the finality of this particular album in the Police's career.
Few albums better fit the mood of their makers to the extent of Synchronicity. Even as Sting sought to find connection with creation and other people, the turmoil of his band and marriage breaking up under the stress caused by his own behavior impressed itself deeply onto an album that is simultaneously beautiful as well as immensely troubled. Hardly any of the songs are light-hearted and upbeat, and the funniest song, "Mother," is such only accidentally. In this album the band turns in on itself, with the album ending with clapping in a song about murder even as the band was self-destructing. If Sting would find his footing easily enough in an immensely successful solo career that would continue on the path blazed by the Police over the following decades, the Police as a whole would have a long hiatus before uniting again in live tours, aside from the periodic live or compilation albums that would drop after that. It is unclear if the Police knew that this album was as deeply ironic as it ended up being, but from can be read about the way that they responded to the album and the breakup of the band, it is clear that there was little love lost between Sting and his bandmates and that despite the group's success, Sting's obvious leadership rankled on his bandmates. It is easy to long for connection and unity, and hard to achieve it.
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Post by nathanalbright on Sept 4, 2022 13:44:48 GMT -5
Flexible Strategies, by the Police
If you are like most relatively casual fans of the Police, you will know that the band broke up after the creation of the Synchronicity album and that although they have released several live albums and compilations and even gone on a reunion tour, that they have never gone back into the studio to try to continue the band's career. One may find, though, looking on streaming services, that they have an album titled Flexible Strategies that was released in 2018, and may wonder what sort of beast this project happens to be. Though there is no wikipedia page as I write this for this particular cd, it was a disk in the box set that the Police released that year for B-sides and rarities, and so this particular album represents the Police's attempt to provide a complete discography and it is put separate because the album's tracks--or most of them at least--had not appeared in streaming services that focus on the Police's albums and not on their singles. Are these rarities and b-sides worthwhile, though? Let's find out.
The collection begins with "Dead End Job," which is a pop-punk experimental track with pretty basic but relevant personal lyrics that express the desires of the band members to avoid dead end jobs and be able to have career success as musicians. "Landlord" is a punkish dismissal of the landlord, an expression of lower class resentment which is pretty common. "Visions Of The Night" is a rather critical look at a nightmarish misunderstanding of who is to inherit the earth. "Friends" is a comic spoken-word track apparently about cannibalism. "A Sermon" is a somewhat presumptuous song about making it from a band that was still in the process of making it. "Shambelle" is a lengthy and somewhat basic but no less enjoyable instrumental track for that. "Flexible Strategies" is a basic instrumental track that was tossed off rather quickly in the studio, but it has an interesting jazzy feel to it. "Low Life" is a surprisingly laid-back ode to the violence of the darker side of town. "Murder By Numbers" is a dark and spare song about murder, and was a standout album track on "Synchronicity." "Truth Hits Everybody (remix)" is apparently a Sting demo that slows down a track from "Outlandos D'Amour" about what appears to be a sort of mental break when facing a painful truth. "Someone To Talk To" is a somewhat melancholy song about seeking to someone to communicate with in the face of difficulties in relationships with some sax overdubs. "Once Upon A Daydream" is a nightmarish account of a doomed relationship between two young people.
As is often the case when one listens to b-sides, there is a reason why these songs were the b-sides and not the hits. None of these songs, for example, stand up to the very best of the work of the Police. Yet the tracks in general are at least of the level of the album tracks of the early period of the Police, in that if they are not absolutely essential they are generally enjoyable enough. None of the tracks here is a disgrace, or as cringeworthy as "Mother," for example. Two of the songs, after all, appeared as album tracks for the band and it is little surprise that they are among the standouts here. The best songs here seem to be clustered towards the end, but everything after "Low Life" is probably something that any Police fan would really enjoy listening to when in the mood for obscure Police songs and the early songs in the album are at least interesting enough to listen to once to see what the collection is like as a whole.
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Post by nathanalbright on Sept 6, 2022 20:35:39 GMT -5
Living The Dream (Deluxe), by Haliey Whitters
Occasionally I am invited to do a rankdown of an artist that I have never heard of, though admittedly this is rarely the case. Most of the time when I listen to music I have some sort of basic familiarity with an artist, though perhaps not more than the name of a song or something of that nature. In this case, though, I was invited to rankdown (and thus to review) an album that I had never heard of, by an artist that I had never heard of, who until recently had never even released her first official single. What this means is that this particular record is something that never had the chance to become a widespread hit, never had the chance to become known, and may yet become so in the future if the artist happens to get bigger in the future. There can be a certain enjoyment in listening to an act before they are well known, in discovering them fairly early in the process of their artistic maturation. Is such a thing worthwhile here? If so, let us find out, and find out why a comparative no-name artist had a deluxe debut album.
"Ten Year Town" begins this album with a gentle and melancholy acoustic song that indicates the frustration of a long, slow process to becoming a big star. "The Days" is a look at the past, as well as about the relentless push of time and the longing to make that count. "Red Wine And Blue" tells a melancholy story of a rootless relationship and the author's reflectiveness about her own folly and problem drinking. "Dream, Girl" is a melancholy but hopeful mid-tempo song encouraging a woman (maybe herself) not to give up on life because of the frustrations of life and relationships. "Loose Strings" gives a weary and honest portrayal about a doomed relationship between two people. "Heartland" provides another realistic look at how one has to treat your heart in the search for one's dreams and their fulfillment. "Janice At The Hotel Bar" is a melancholy story song, about a curious but lonely woman with some nuanced views on life and behavior. "Happy People," a song that had originally been written for Little Big Town, offers a reflective view of the destructive things that are not done by happy people. "The Devil Always Made Me Think Twice" is a bluesy song about self-destruction and obvious mistakes. "All The Cool Girls" looks at the indecisiveness and falsity of much coolness and contrasting it with genuine confidence. "The Faker" is a glacially-paced examination of a fake person and a pattern of foolish choices in relationships. The title track follows with a modest discussion of the singer's dreams that sounds a lot like Maren Morris. "Fillin' My Cup" (f/Little Big Town) gives a nuanced view of life and its complications with metaphor of drinking, perhaps predictably. "Glad To Be Here" (f/Brent Cobb) provides an example of hard-won optimism and gratitude that is refreshing in a world of negativity. "How To Break A Heart" (f/Lori McKenna & Hillary Lindsey) gives a discussion of how to break heart that obviously speaks from painful personal experience. "How Far Can It Go?" (f/Trisha Yearwood) tells a story of two young and driven people about to embark on a life together in a long-distance relationship from the point of view of a sympathetic outsider. "The Ride" (f/Jordan Davis) is another philosophical look at life and what is it that makes something worthwhile.
Individually, this is an album that is more than the sum of its parts. Just about any song off of this album would sound perfectly enjoyable on country radio, and some of them seem like obvious should-be hits," from "Dream, Girl" to "Heartland" to "How Far Can It Go?" Yet when the album is taken as a whole, there is a certain consistent mood to this album that rubs this listener at least a little bit the wrong way. Despite the fact that songwriting here is sharp and the production occasionally brilliant, there is an overall feeling on this album that life is out of our hands and that we aren't really responsible for what happens, and this desire to escape responsibility is often portrayed by reflecting on cool girls and men in general on this album who the singer-songwriter happens to be with as imposters so often that it seems and feels like projection. The author wants to make an album that is full of reflections on life that feel real but there is something missing in most of the album that just hits the wrong way after an hour of listening. It is a shame that the singer appears able to be optimistic about love and relationships only when she is not talking about herself, but an undercurrent of misandry keeps this album from being as good as it could have been, and that is a great shame.
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Post by nathanalbright on Sept 7, 2022 23:54:10 GMT -5
Ride The Lightning, by Metallica
During the year after the release of their debut album, Metallica was busy acquiring more musical skill thanks to some skilled instruction and also garnering a significant amount of attention for their musical ambition, which eventually led them to be signed to Elektra Records. Some band turmoil, including the departure of Dave Mustaine (who would later have a famous feud with the band he was forced to leave), was perhaps somewhat inevitable at this point, but Ride The Lightning is even to this day regarded as one of the most commercially and artistically successful metal albums ever made, even nearly 40 years after it was recorded and released. Does it stand up to the tastes of someone who is at best only a slight or mild fan of the genre? Let's see.
The album begins with "Fight Fire With Fire" which begins with a lovely acoustic guitar part before transitioning into a heavy thrash metal track with suitably aggressive lyrics. The title track follows, with more aggressive instrumental parts and lyrics that reflect a dystopian view of living a dangerous and potentially violent life. "For Whom The Bell Tolls" is, as might be imagined from the title, a reflection of mortality and the relentless passage of time, much different in sound but not so different in focus from the later Bee Gees song of the same title, which is also a classic. "Fade To Black" has another strong acoustic guitar intro, moving into a moving series of vocals about the struggle to find the will to live. "Trapped Under Ice" has more thrash metal music with some considerable musical skill along with lyrics that portray a certain appropriate level of horror at the titular concept along with a shredding solo. "Escape" has the same kind of music as most of the songs on the album and lyrics that seek an escape from an unpleasant emotional situation, something that is not too uncommon in life or in rock music. "Creeping Death" seems to point back to historical horrors, while the album ends with a pulsating rock track in "The Call Of Cthulu" that points to more contemporary Lovecraftian horrors.
By and large, this album is precisely what one would expect. It shows some progress in musical virtuosity from the debut while also showing a coherent and high-concept album that deals with themes of horror, death, and the struggle to survive despite the horrors of life and one's own perhaps overactive imagination. As someone who is fond of melodic music, for me the most interesting parts of this album are the songs where Metallica explore with complex song structures and also with acoustic and melodic elements that demonstrate a fondness for a broad array of guitar sounds. This is an album that consolidates the greatness of their debut album and also hints at some of the future directions that they would take as a band that remain worthwhile and enjoyable, and the progress demonstrated by all of the members of the band is something to enjoy and appreciate as well.
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Post by nathanalbright on Sept 9, 2022 16:53:04 GMT -5
Different Man, by Kane Brown
Thus far I have been largely familiar with the successful career of Kane Brown as a singles artist, and it must be admitted that he has turned in some excellent singles that demonstrate he is not only successful as a country act but also has some pop ambitions with some of his material, which has ended up on the Year-End Billboard lists several times. The first two successful singles from this album--which at seventeen songs and nearly an hour of material, is a pretty sprawling one--show Kane Brown as being interested in shoring up his country support with the searing and sadly all-too-relatable "One Mississippi," one of my favorite hit songs of the year so far, and the cheery if a bit cheesy "Like I Love Country Music," which received a quick push to #1 and looks to be a contender for the bottom ten of the Year End list for the Billboard Hot 100 as a whole along with the previous single. Does the album as a whole hold up though? Let's see.
"Bury Me In Georgia" opens with bells, fiddles, and a swaggering attitude that points to Kane Brown's examination of wanting to be buried where his roots are, in North Georgia just south of the state line, a rather sobering reflection on mortality. "Different Man," with Blake Shelton, reflects on the difference between feeling called to be a musician rather than being a blue collar, and what sort of differences are entailed in making that choice. "Like I Love Country Music" shifts the tone with a happier song that still manages to reflect in its own way on the state of country music and Kane's feelings about it. "Go Around" opens with a lovely fiddle solo and lyrics about problem drinking and a hesitant relationship where the girl has a lot of baggage. "Grand" has some moody trap production and lyrics that reflect gloomily on the showbiz life and the relationship one has with one's fans and one's close friends and family as well as drinking. "See You Like I Do" offers upbeat boyfriend country about seeing a woman as beautiful who struggles to see the beauty in herself. "Thank God," featuring Katelyn Brown, shows Kane Brown appreciating his partner for her love and forgiving attitude towards him, and seems like an obvious potential future single. "Leave You Alone" provides a beautiful (on another obvious potential boyfriend country single) reflection on lasting love that seems destined to be a prom or wedding song. "Riot" brings back the swagger and the threat of violence and a muscular rock guitar solo that the album began with. "One Mississippi" then follows with a reflection of an on-again, off-again relationship full of problem drinking and unfortunate behavior, with an undercurrent of deep melancholy. "Drunk Or Dreaming" offers a vibey confusion about the difference between hoping for the start of a loving relationship at a bar or the fuzzy thinking that results from drinking too much. "Losing You" offers a moving ballad about the narrator's fear of losing his partner, despite not being afraid of a lot of other things. "Whiskey Sour" offers a gloomy story song about what could have been a marriage relationship that ends in disaster and in, perhaps predictably, more problem drinking. "Pop's Last Name" shows Kane Brown reflecting on the life lessons taught by his father and his gratitude for his father's legacy. "Devil Don't Even Bother" opens with a fiddle and a tale about a brutal maneater who delights in causing heartbreak. "Nothing I'd Change" then reflects on the joys of fatherhood and contentment in love and family. The album then closes with "Dear Georgia," an ode to his background and travels that points to his continued appreciation for his home.
This album is a remarkable one, opening and closing with reflections on the singer's home state of Georgia and filled with mostly serious songs about problem drinking and a consistent metatextual tendency that these songs have in reflecting about the way that life can be described by country songs as well as having the artist reflect on the complexities of his life as a musician. The album is not only complex--in its portrayal of women, in the various styles of music explored--but it also makes that complexity part of the way that the album is constructed and part of the overall theme. How is Kane Brown a different man? He appears not only interested in showing the tension that exists between artists being honest about their lives and feelings and their populist goals in appealing to blue collar listeners, but also the tension between the different artistic choices a contemporary country musician has to make who sits at the intersection of neo-traditional country music, popular appeal with a hint of trap rap, and boyfriend country, showing the authenticity of an artist's feelings and the strain that results from the complexity of contemporary life. A cohesive tone of gratitude and reflectiveness fills the album, and it shows Kane Brown to be a complex man, but a relatable one all the same.
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Post by nathanalbright on Sept 16, 2022 0:48:01 GMT -5
I Need You, LeAnn Rimes
After waiting some time after the initial start of the career retrospective for LeAnn Rimes, the rankdown has now come to this particular album, which was initially released for contractual obligations on LeAnn Rimes' initial radio contract but soon thereafter came to be recognized by the artist. It is not too surprising that this collection won the support of LeAnn Rimes despite not beginning well--the album contains two soundtrack songs that were quite popular and not yet present on any of the artist's studio albums as well as the title track, which also became a sizable hit. There are, unfortunately, at least a few cases in the music world where a label releases songs from an artist with whom they are having an estranged relationship where some of those songs, at least, become standout tracks for the artist. Such was the case, for example, with Badfinger's Ass, an unfortunately titled album that nonetheless had the surpassingly beautiful "Apple Of My Eye" on the track list, and this album appears to belong to that list of worthy contractual obligation albums as well. How good is it aside from its hits? Let's find out.
"Light The Fire Within" begins the album with a stirring children's choir and an inspirational song that sounds like something that could have been on a Final Fantasy soundtrack in the best way. "I Need You" carries on that expansive mood with a passionate ode to romantic love that was a deserved hit. "But I Do Love You" has a combination between acoustic and electronic elements with gorgeous lyrics about the narrator's love for a person even if there is a lot she doesn't love about his absence. "You Are" combines vulnerable lyrics with somewhat artificial music that cuts against the tone of the lyrics, but which fits the dance pop that the singer was performing a lot at the time. "Soon" is a song that puts on a brave face about the narrator getting over an ex-partner soon, given adult contemporary production that certainly fits the mood well. "Can't Fight The Moonlight" is a rousing dance pop song that was a deserved hit from "Coyote Ugly" and remains one of LeAnn Rimes' signature songs two decades later. "Love Must Be Telling Me Something" is a twangy song that sounds like it would fit in well on country radio even now about the trouble that the narrator feels from her feelings about someone she is falling in love with. "Written In The Stars," a duet with Elton John from Tim Rice's Aida, fits in here as a surprising and lovely pop hit about doomed love that was, until 2021, Elton John's most recent top 40 hit. "One Of These Days" is another song about getting over an ex-partner, but one that is less optimistic and more heartfelt than "Soon" is, and another song that seems like it was tailor-made for country radio. "I Believe In You" offers another adult contemporary love ballad about one's belief in a loved one, with swelling swings and generally effective production. "Together, Forever, Always" offers a lovely country ballad in a waltz format that again, like a few tracks on this album, seems like obvious radio fodder. This is followed by a lovely radio remix for "Can't Fight The Moonlight," as well as remixes for "But I Do Love You," "Soon," and "I Need You," three of which are among the strongest songs on this set.
If there is one coherent theme of this album, it is the fact that all of the songs are all either radio hits or they seem to aspire to be in one genre of another. As was the case with many other pop-country efforts during this particular period in the early oughts, female pop-country acts in particular appeared to be spread a little thin in their efforts to appeal separately to the widely disparate elements of their fanbase. So it is that this song includes soundtrack pop (Can't Fight The Moonlight, Written In The Stars), aspirational sporting theme songs (Light The Fire Within), pop (I Need You, But I Do Love You, You Are), adult contemporary (Soon, I Believe In You), as well as country (Love Must Be Telling Me Something, One Of These Days, Together, Forever, Always). If you happen to like all of these different genres, as I do, this album is an enjoyable one throughout, but if you are more narrow in your genre interests, hopefully there are at least a few songs you like.
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Post by nathanalbright on Sept 20, 2022 1:51:32 GMT -5
Every Breath You Take: The Classics, by the Police
This album was, perhaps not surprisingly, the first album of the Police I was ever familiar with in detail. Long before I ever even thought to listen to more of the deep cuts of the Police--which are pretty worthwhile to check out, as the band was mostly excellent from its beginning--this was the album that informed me of what the classics of the Police happened to be. This is admittedly a bit of a mixed blessing. On the one hand, the twelve core songs in this collection from the five studio albums of the group are definitely classics. Every single one of those songs is powerful and worthwhile, even if not all of them were big hits on the charts. On the other hand, though, this album does include two rather inessential remixes of earlier hits that were released as singles in the UK and tends to shortchange the later albums by only including twelve songs from the five studio albums. If all of the songs on this album are classics, in other words, this album does not exhaust all of the classics that the Police released, by any means.
The album begins with "Roxanne," the first hit from the band from their first album, introducing the punky energy of the group. "I Can't Stand Losing You" provides a stunning example of immaturity and vulnerability and one of the group's many dark love songs. After this comes two tracks from the band's second studio album. First among these is "Message In A Bottle," which is intensely relatable in its exploration of solitude and communication. Second is "Walking On The Moon," which also, not surprisingly, deals with the subject of isolation. The material of the band's breakthrough third album begins with "Don't Stand So Close To Me," a song so chilling in its nature that it cries out as some sort of tale that Sting observed or experienced. "De Do Do Do De Da Da Da" is simultaneously nonsense and eloquent about the power of communication in the best and most paradoxical way. The fourth album is represented by three songs, first the exuberant "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic," which is bittersweet for all of its energy about the fear that comes with love. "Invisible Sun" continues the interest in the spiritual themes of the first single in its hope for an immaterial reality that gives life hope and meaning in the face of life's difficulties. "Spirits In The Material World" continues the message of reflecting on the spiritual nature of humanity in light of its place within the material world, a surprisingly popular mediation in the early 1980s, it must be admitted. The final studio album of the Police is represented by three of the four biggest singles of the era, starting with the #1 smash "Every Breath You Take," a dark tale of obsession mistakenly thought of as a love song. After this comes the mournful and moving "King Of Pain," an expression of Sting's grief over his failing marriage. Third comes "Wrapped Around Your Finger," another dark but literate tale of obsession. The collection is then closed out by remixes of "Don't Stand So Close To Me" and "Message In A Bottle" that were released in 1986 as "new" singles for the collection because the group had no new material to provide.
As far as greatest hits collections go, this is a good one. As is sometimes the case, the only thing that would have made this collection better is more material. The obvious omission here is Synchronicity II, a song that is a classic in its own right, a thematically important song in the final album of The Police, and a top 20 hit besides. It might have been thought that the material was already skewed to the latter albums of the group and so a fourth song from the Synchronicity album would make the material out of proportion, but this is an unfortunate omission all the same. At least it can be said that all of the classics on here are genuine classics, and the album leaves the wise listener wanting more, and hopefully investigating the studio albums of the group to fill in the missing pieces and decide what other songs should be considered as classics as well. The concern with this album, as with all compilations that purport to be essential, is that the listener may be led to believe that these materials exhaust the essential material of the group, which would be incorrect as far as the Police are concerned, whatever may be said for lesser acts.
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Post by nathanalbright on Sept 20, 2022 17:54:05 GMT -5
The Very Best Of Sting And The Police, by Sting and the Police
Some fifteen years or so after the first (and previously reviewed) best-of compilation and less than a decade after the first best-of compilation for Sting (to be reviewed), the music label for Sting and the Police thought it would be a good idea to have a single-disk best-of compilation that included the careers of both Sting and the Police. It is unclear what exactly motivated this, aside perhaps from a desire to grab some cash on a new generation of music listeners and perhaps as a way of encouraging the Police to tour again (which would happen several years later). At the time this album was released, Sting was more than fifteen years into a successful solo career and had recently had immense success with the Brand New Day album (which is featured here in two tracks), but as both the Police and Sting's career had received adequate one-disk compilations already, it is unclear what shrinking those two compilations into a single disk combined compilation would accomplish, not least because it would be unable to live up to its claim of being the very best of both the Police or of Sting's solo career.
The compilation begins with "Message In A Bottle," an obvious classic Police track that remains one of their best-appreciated works. This is followed by "Can't Stand Losing You," from Police's debut album, a fairly obscure song by the standards of this collection. "Englishman In New York," a hit from Sting's solo career, has a jazzy feel that blends well with the punky energy of the early Police songs before it. "Every Breath You Take," the biggest hit the Police ever had, follows this. "Seven Days," a lovely album track that explores a troubled relationship and rivalry in a poetic fashion, is an obscure Sting solo track that then follows, with more hints of "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic," the second song at least that does so in the body of work of Sting and the Police. "Walking On The Moon," an early and beautiful Police song, follows this to continue the mix between solo and group tracks. "Fields Of Gold," a beautiful acoustic Sting solo track, follows after this. After this is "Fragile," another beautiful Sting solo track that had been a key element to Sting's response to 9/11, and thus quite appropriate to the time this compilation was released. "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic," a well-known and successful Police track that has already been hinted at in this compilation, comes after this. After this comes "De Do Do Do De Da Da Da," another well-known Police track. This is in turn followed by "If You Love Somebody, Set Them Free," an early Sting solo track written in response to the misunderstanding of the message of "Every Breath You Take." "Brand New Day," a relatively recent Sting solo hit, follows this. "Desert Rose," a recent hit single of Sting from the Brand New Day album, follows right on hand, giving another relatively new song for fans to appreciate. "If I Ever Lose My Faith In You," another notable and successful Sting solo track comes next. "When We Dance," a single from the first Sting compilation, is included here, a somewhat obscure but also lovely song. The album then ends with a set of Police songs, starting with the disturbing "Don't Stand So Close To Me," the early hit "Roxanne," and the obscure early song "So Lonely," one of the best relative discoveries to be found.
This is certainly not a bad album to listen to, but does it provide something of worth that one would not otherwise have from a compilation of either the Police or Sting's own solo career? There are only four songs that one gets on the eighteen songs of this album that are not already found in Every Breath You Take: The Classics for Police or Sting's own previous compilation of greatest hits that had been released in the mid 1990's. Of them, So Lonely is the only Police track, and Seven Days the only Sting song that had not appeared on Brand New Day. And, it must be admitted, there are a lot of great songs included on those two previous compilations that are not to be found here: Invisible Sun, King of Pain, Spirits In The Material World, Wrapped Around Your Finger, Russians, All This Time, and many others. Basically, this compilation is a bit on the inessential side, although the new songs are certainly worthwhile and the album does demonstrate that Sting's solo career as well as the Police conversed with each other and were part of a coherent whole. I am not sure that this collection is necessary to prove that point, but it certainly does.
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Post by nathanalbright on Sept 22, 2022 0:59:19 GMT -5
Whatever We Wanna, by LeAnn Rimes
One of the advantages of doing retrospectives of an artist's entire discography is that one finds albums like this one, which regardless of their musical quality ask fascinating questions about what an artist and a label was trying to accomplish. In 2006, while the singles from her return to form country album "This Woman" were still charting and the album was still selling well, LeAnn Rimes was already recording a pop-rock album "Whatever We Wanna," which was released a mere year and a half after "This Woman." Even more oddly, while this album was released and promoted overseas, it was not until 2021 when this album was released in the United States in a deluxe edition that added remixes to three of the album's songs, all the more mysterious because the album has never been promoted and LeAnn Rimes herself lacks any sort of mainstream pop success in the present day, mostly contenting herself with releasing Christian-themed music that aims at the faithful and not the pop charts. Why was this album made at all, and having been made, why did its release in the United States wait so long that all of the commercial value of the album was lost? We may never know the answers to questions like these, but how is the music, at any rate? That we can determine, at least.
The album opens with "Satisfied," which offers some self-reflection about the singer's inability to be satisfied set to a driving beat for a song that should have been a hit. "And It Feels Like" provides melancholy lyrics and a tense and anxious instrumental production. "For The First Time" provides a gorgeous power ballad about finding love, one that would seem to welcome a larger audience than it has yet received. "Save Myself" is a spare ballad combined with the quirky pop production of the time and a message of not wanting to save oneself but rather live and love and dare to risk. "A Little More Time" offers a heartfelt ode to her efforts to appear strong and overcome her anxiety and worry. "Rumor 'Bout A Revolution" provides a gorgeous reflection of dissatisfaction but also honesty about the state of affairs that if it is not exactly revolutionary, is at least an enjoyable mid-tempo message song. "Destructive" follows this with a self-fulfilling prophecy about the self-destructive attitude the singer had that would soon wreck her married life and career as a pop artist. "Strong" offers a gorgeous but reflective discussion of the strength needed to overcome the suffering and pain of life. "Whatever We Wanna" offers a celebration of the artist's ability to do whatever crazy thing she wanted to do with her partner. "Everybody's Someone," a duet with Bryan McFadden, offers a beautiful universalistic ballad of love and belonging. "Headphones" offers a beautiful and quirky song of love and devotion that expresses the strength of Rimes' attraction to the song's subject. "Long Night" offers a mid-tempo nervously energetic song about the desire to find an escape from life's pressures through love. "This Life" offers a melodramatic love ballad that expresses the singer's commitment to her twisted and complicated life and the love that came with it. "Break Me Down" encourages the singer's partner to break her down if he chooses and expresses her willingness to seek a whirlwind romance. "Some People" shows the singer reflecting on the luckiness of her loving relationship. The album then ends with three remixes, two of them, "Strong," and "And It Feels" like playing up the dance remix angle and the other one, "Headphones," more of a dance radio remix.
Having listened to this album, it is not an exaggeration to say that this is my favorite LeAnn Rimes album that I have listened to so far and I am only sad that it is by far her most obscure album from her peak period of creativity. It is hard not to listen to this album and not see this as a more pleasing and melodic continuation of where Rimes was at in her "Twisted Angel" period. To the extent that Rimes was singing autobiographically--which seems likely--it appears that she felt herself under a great deal of pressure and sought an escape from that pressure in a heedless rush into self-destructive affairs and even self-medication (pills and alcohol are at least referred to in the album's lyrics). Yet whatever insight listeners may have gained into where LeAnn Rimes was at even as she enjoyed a career renaissance in the mid 2000s was kneecapped by the fact that the album was not released for fifteen years and remains largely unexplored even now. This is an album whose production indicates that it was meant for mass market appeal, and here's hoping it reaches an appreciative audience, albeit belatedly, as it's an album that would benefit richly from 2000s nostalgia.
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Post by nathanalbright on Sept 23, 2022 2:15:42 GMT -5
Aerial, by Kate Bush
No one would ever accuse Kate Bush of being a prolific artist. That said, she has always aimed at quality over quantity, and if her artistic production has waned over the course of her career, an album by the artist or even a song, even a song that is already relatively familiar, is something that many people celebrate. And so it is with Aerial, an album that came out a dozen years after he previous album (and was remastered in 2018 with some changes, including a change in male vocals). During the time off the artist did not lose her artistic ambition--this album is a double album at 80 minutes in length--but she did raise her son and take a step back from what was already an increasingly infrequent career as an artist. If Kate Bush still had art she wanted to make, it was clear that she was not at this point in her life ambitious about topping the charts. Does the album stand up compared to her earlier work? Let's see.
"King Of The Mountain" begins the album with a gorgeous and somewhat austere track that takes a while to kick in with more instrumentation and a sound like being on top of a lonely mountain. "Pi" offers a gentle character study of a gentle but somewhat troubled man before moving into an exploration of the transcendental number itself. "Bertie" offer a gorgeous love song that sounds like it could come from a 16th century madrigal or something equally historical in nature. "Mrs. Bartolozzi" provides another intriguing character study about someone, in this case what seems to be a story about washing machine and swimming. "How To Be Invisible" sounds ghostly and continues an examination of lonely and obscure people, continuing an apparent theme that this album has established so far. "Joanni" offers intriguing production and another story song about a woman who sounds like Joan of Arc dealing with raging medieval battle. "A Coral Room" ends disc one with a spare piano ballad about a mysterious town poetically described and connected to the narrator's mother and her little brown jug. "Prelude" offers a brief bit of spoken word from a small child set to lovely but spare piano playing. This blends into a "Prologue" that shows the same gentle and spare piano and sweet strings playing behind an optimistic Kate Bush singing in hope. "An Architect's Dream" offers drums and a subtle bassline and another character study about an artist's creativity, which is continued by "The Painter's Link," which follows the same theme. "Sunset" provides a comparatively lively song about the concern of death and endings, cutting against the dreams of immortality that have filled most of the album. "Aerial Tal" offers a short interlude with a chirping bird. "Somewhere In Between" offers the beauty of going on a high hill, calling back to the album's opening but with more gentle music and a less harsh and lonely wind and a focus on the beauty that one sees and experiences. "Nocturn" provides a dreamlike song about a dreamlike state of solitude that like much of this album builds up gradually from a very spare beginning. "Aerial" then closes the album with a return to the seashore with nervous and anxious instrumentation behind a song that expresses the narrator's desire to be on the roof and sees a return of the chirping bird we met earlier.
This album is certainly a concept album with a high degree of internal cohesion. One might almost say that it has almost too much cohesion in the way that the songs blend together and many of them start extremely austerely before picking up as they go along, adding tempo and more instrumentation. There is a sense of purposeful repetition here, not only in that the lyrics of the songs frequently are repeated over and over again, but song titles are repeated here in some fashion, and the album as a whole deals with a certain consistent set of themes. Most of these themes--like the relationship between men and women, between isolation and communication, between memory and life on the one hand and death on the other hand, are themes that have continued throughout Bush's body of work. There are a lot of beautiful moments on this album, but it is an album that really lacks not only any obvious single, but in a great deal of variety between the songs. If the artist had made one track lasting for more than an hour, she could have hardly made it blend together any better than she does here. Whether or not this album suits the listener depends on whether they like albums that are ambitious in scope but austere and somewhat severe in their execution, with the negative spaces carrying much of the burden of the meaning of the material.
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Post by nathanalbright on Oct 12, 2022 23:56:21 GMT -5
Mama's Big Ones, by Cass Elliott
Cass Elliott remains known today, to the extent that she is known, for fat jokes and speculation about the cause of her death--which was a heart attack during her early 30's. And it is somewhat melancholy to note that this particular album certainly plays with the whole fat joke element of her career, with the album referring to various important songs, most of them somewhat front-loaded on the album, as being "big ones," the album released the year of the artist's death. If Cass Elliott's solo songs are not welll-remembered and if she was by no means a great songwriter, she was a surprisingly prolific artist given her short life, with five albums of material with the Mamas & the Papas as well as at least six albums of solo material, a remarkable pace of material. But is this album, released in 1973, the year of the artist's untimely death, any good? Let's see.
The album begins with "It's Getting Better," a beautiful song about how love improves with time. What follows is "Dream A Little Dream Of Me," which is the second time at least that this song has appeared on a Cass Elliott album, not even including its appearance in a nearly identical form in the fourth album from The Mamas & The Papas. "Make Your Own Kind Of Music" is a passionate ode to self-expression even if no one else appreciates it. "Words Of Love," with its old-fashioned music, points to the need for action to replace mere words of love when it comes to demonstrating one's love. "New World Coming" gives a voice to the age's optimism about a good new day that was supposed to be coming, a mood that would not long last, which could also be considered a millennial song. "Move In A Little Closer, Baby," features lovely backup vocals as well as a pleasant message expressing a desire for intimacy. "One Way Ticket" expresses the often misguided belief that anywhere is better than where one happens to be. "The Good Times Are Coming" expresses a sense of hard-won optimism in the face of life's difficulties. "Easy Come, Easy Go" is a song that straddles the line between optimism in a better future and a great deal of criticism over a bad relationship in the past, expressing that one wasn't hurt as much as one thought by it. "Don't Let The Good Life Pass You By" takes an ironic sort of look at what the good life means, with a sense of realistic happiness. "Ain't Nobody Else Like You" provides a sentimental and gorgeous love song. The album ends with "A Song That Never Comes," with a sense of worldly-wise sadness.
If this album is not unified by any consistent tone or any obvious concept apart from the songs apparently being big ones, the songs are all connected in having beautiful vocal parts sung by Cass Elliott as well as gorgeous instrumental parts that sound a bit old-fashioned but in the best way. Some of these songs were truly big ones--"Dream A Little Dream Of Me" hit #12 on the Billboard Hot 100, was Cass Eliott's biggest solo hit, and remains her only song to be streamed more than 100 million times on Spotify, where I listened to the album myself, although some of the other songs here, mostly towards the beginning, also remain somewhat popular songs of hers comparatively speaking. This album is certainly an enjoyable one to listen to if you are splitting the difference between optimism and a sense of weariness about the state of love or the world. That is a pretty relatable emotional terrain, and Cass Eliott's voice is always pleasant to listen to, so that makes this album well worth checking out if you want to get into her discography.
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Post by nathanalbright on Oct 21, 2022 23:37:16 GMT -5
Midnights, by Taylor Swift
It has been some time since I could consider myself even modestly a fan of Taylor Swift, and as is sometimes the case I am not sure exactly how it happened nor was I aware of it happening until it was already well into the process of happening. As is the case with a great many artists, Swift's career has had a varied trajectory, beginning in pop-country, leaning heavily into pop, and then moving into folk-pop. This album finds her at a bit of a crossroads, musically speaking, as her last albums attempted to eschew the image that she had established throughout her career of writing intensely and overly personal songs about her boy/man troubles. This album seems, at least going into it, to be going back into extremely and perhaps uncomfortably personal territory with it being a concept album about thirteen sleepless nights. Though I have heard some mixed comments on the album, I have tried to avoid critical essays on the project so as to listen to the material with as open a mind as possible, given that over Swift's career I have moved rather strongly from fondness for her perspective to immense irritation with her personal and musical choices. So, what do I think of the material? Let's see.
The album begins with "Lavender Haze," which finds Taylor Swift intoxicated with a budding relationship and overburdened with her hostility to expectations and scrutiny. "Maroon" follows with a somewhat oppressive musical palette that explores a dysfunctional sleepless night filled with romantic melodrama. "Anti-Hero," the first single from the album, follows with a somewhat self-indulgent reflection on her problems and her negative view of herself, where she tries to seize the low ground to make someone feel bad for calling her a narcissist when she calls herself it first. "Snow On The Beach" (featuring Lana Del Rey) is a lovely song about the intoxicating and manic joy of infatuation where Swift hopes against hope that it will work out better this time. "You're On Your Own, Kid," features more insecurity and self-absorbed musing about a crush or relationship gone wrong set to an EDM beat that reminds one of early pop TS. "Midnight" features some weird pitch-shifted vocals for the chorus and more self-absorbed musings about a doomed relationship with a guy who wanted a different kind of life than Swift could handle. "Question...?" features Swift with a side boy making bad choices and against irritating questions while she was drinking and talking about landmine subjects while thinking that she is asking innocent questions. "Vigilante S***" features Swift in her bad blood mode going off on revenge mode to an austere and nearly tuneless beat. "Bejeweled" features Swift in a vengeful and spiteful mood in a dysfunctional relationship threatening to go out to the club to cheat on a partner she is dissatisfied with. "Labyrinth" features another sleepless night spent pining over some boy and her own trust issues and the anxiety that falling in love brings her with music that could be on a late-era Panic! At The Disco album filler track. "Karma" is an upbeat song that shows Swift in a delusional mood thinking that karma is close to her because she lives a clean and good life as opposed to someone else, leaving one to wonder why she had a sleepless night gloating against a supposed rival or hater. "Sweet Nothing" has rather nursery rhyme lyrics and a reflection on the relationship between Swift's desire and longing for love and the outside pressure of her political and career interests. "Mastermind" closes the album with more lovestruck musings about how Swift thinks of herself as having masterminded a relationship with someone.
This album is the sort of disaster that makes me want to find comparables and explain the sense of dread the album gives me and the concern it leaves me to have for Swift or for anyone unfortunate enough to be in her orbit. This album is what you get when you take Adele's 30 and make all the songs half as long with cheap early 2010's EDM production but a similar lack of emotional growth and maturity over the career arc. This is an album that almost dares the listener to engage in psychoanalysis, directly mentioning melancholia and depression and narcissism and being less open about mania while making the listener wonder if John Mayer's "Paper Doll" was truly an accurate portrayal of Swift's psyche and making one feel bad for being so hard on him about it. Among the many problems with this album is that the concept shows Swift being self-aware about her problems without having done any of the self-care that allows for moral and emotional maturity. Similarly, the basic and simple production of the album puts attention on lyrics that tend to alienate rather than charm the listener. This album only works with an audience that wants to reassure Swift and tell her she's not as bad as she says she is, rather than one who thinks she may indeed be a good deal worse than she is willing to admit.
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Post by nathanalbright on Nov 7, 2022 14:56:45 GMT -5
Points On The Curve, by Wang Chung
Although they are best remembered for their smash hit "Everybody Have Fun Tonight," so much so that the band has often been labeled (incorrectly) as a one-hit wonder, in reality the band had four albums in the 1980s that all spawned at least one song on the Hot 100, and that hot streak started right from the gate when the first song from this album became a moderate hit. "Dance Hall Days" seems like a quirky enough hit, one that was not intentionally made to be hooky and a smash, but a song that captures a certain vibe, one that reflects nostalgia and itself seems to have spurred a certain amount of nostalgia later on. If this is the only track going into the album that I am familiar with, it offers a good start to see if Points On The Curve offers a concept album of sorts or merely a (hopefully) enjoyable listen. Does this album have the ambition to aim for something greater than a collection of pop-rock songs or not? Let's find out.
The album begins with the aforementioned hit, "Dance Hall Days," with its driving beat and relaxed lyrics that express an enjoyment of love and dancing. It's an easy song to appreciate and pretty relatable, even if some of the lyrics are a bit darker than one would expect. "Wait," a song with a rather nervous musical background, later appeared on the group's second album, "To Live And Die In L.A.," and has a spare musical production while its lyrics talk about waiting for people and being impatient about it. "True Love" gives comforting lyrics about the power of love, but in a disturbing, almost industrial sort of beat that undercuts whatever romanticism it might provide. "The Waves" has an inviting instrumental sound, with lyrics that reflect a sense of anxiety and ennui about life, including a call back to the previous song. "Look At Me Now" has a brave sound to go with its lyrical shift between seeking to disguise the self but also demand attention. "Don't Let Go" is the second most popular song on this album on Spotify, and provides a nervous song about devotion and persistence in love, making it a pretty relatable song. "Even If You Dream" reflects an ambivalent sense of wanting to be close to someone even if they are dreaming about someone else, with the same sort of angular production that the album as a whole has. "Don't Be My Enemy" is a bit repetitive but its sentiment is easy enough to understand and provides an ominous sort of warning about how relationships can go sour. "Devoted Friends" focuses again on the complications of relationships and the contrary pulls of desiring to be happy for friends while feeling sad for oneself, because of the way that romantic love shifts a friendship to different terrain. "Talk It Out" ends the album with a boldly generous offer to be a sounding board for someone to communicate with in the recognition of the difficultes of life.
Points On The Curve shows Wang Chung at the very beginning of their career. It is fortunate that "Dance Hall Days" was so accessible as to hit the charts and give the band some early momentum, because the rest of the album is made up of rather reflective and often melancholy songs with austere 80s production that deal with the subjects of love and relationships. This is not necessarily groundbreaking material, and Wang Chung would become far more ambitious about their song material in later albums, but even at their beginning they offered a complex emotional approach to subjects of widespread interest. If this album's production is particularly dated and features a sometimes jarring mix of synthetic sounds and industrial beats and more organic instrumentation, to say nothing of the group's thoughtful lyrics, this is still a solid debut that is worth checking out if you like where Wang Chung ended up.
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Post by nathanalbright on Dec 17, 2022 1:13:57 GMT -5
When Christmas Comes Around...., by Kelly Clarkson
For the record, I review this album upon request as someone who does not happen to celebrate Christmas. I have discussed my thoughts about the season on numerous occasions and do not wish to do so here today, but suffice it to say that not celebrating Christmas might appear to be a big handicap in reviewing music related to the festival. One would think that, except that the vast majority of Christmas songs are not really about the day itself or its meaning (which would probably be better, honestly, as a religious person), but are about love and relationships, and that is what one finds when one looks at the songlist for this album too, an album that blends Clarkson's take on seasonal classics that are well-known by other versions and also includes some original songs of her own, as well as some interesting duet partners who provide something of interest besides Clarkson's own voice. This album is the artist's second and most recent foray into holiday music and it was released in 2021, or last year as I listen to it. Is it any good? Let's find out.
The album begins with "Merry Christmas Baby," which looks at a dysfunctional and broken relationship with the empty rituals kept without feeling, which somehow makes Kelly Clarkson look worse than her estranged partner. "It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas" is at least a clean if inessential cover of a popular standard and doesn't overstay its welcome being under two minutes. "Christmas Isn't Canceled (Just You)" manages to make Clarkson appear like a Meghan Trainor celebrating cancel culture and being generally obnoxious, if at least tuneful. The next song, a mournful sadgirl piano ballad, "Merry Christmas (To The One I Used To Know), wants so much to pull tears of sympathy from listeners, but coming as it does after multiple snarky and bitter breakup anthems, does not seem like anything but a brazen attempt at emotional manipulation. "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree" is a competent, well-produced cover of a familiar standard. "Glow" offers another change of tone, a flirtatious country-rock tune with Chris Singleton, that sounds lovely and is well-produced. If more of the album was like this it would be far more enjoyable. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the next song is a flirtatious and spare production of "Santa Baby," which is flirtatious, even if one cannot believe that Clarkson has been good from earlier songs on this album. Santa, Can't You Hear Me, featuring Ariana Grande, is well-produced, but features pretty nonexistent chemistry between the singers, and is pretty inessential. "Last Christmas" finds Kelly Clarkson giving a lounge interpretation of an 80's classic that sounds like something one would hear at an average hotel bar by a slightly above average singer. "Jingle Bell Rock" is at least more lively, if nothing more than a competent cover version. "Blessed" is a spare and minimalistic and somewhat melancholy reflection that seeks to combine a feeling of being blessed with a recognition of the narrator's sadness that claims virtues (like forgiveness) that the singer does not appear to be blessed with in abundance. "Christmas Come Early" is another melancholy song that shows Clarkson reflecting on her own sadness and the gloomy mood she finds around her, while also being filled with the chattering voices of children and adult contemporary production. "Under The Mistletoe," with Brett Eldredge, returns to a generally pleasant flirtatious mood about reflecting upon the love one wants during the season, and is an obvious high point here. "All I Want For Christmas Is You" is a somewhat mournful song and not the Mariah Carey cover one would expect here, expressing Clarkson's yearning for love with an excellent guitar solo. The album ends with "Christmas Eve," with a mood of anticipation that is not entirely earned by the album that came before it.
This album is a classic collection of songs that is less than the sum of its parts. Most of the songs are enjoyable enough to listen to if one does not think too much about them, but this is an album that would have been bettered by two things. First, it would benefit from being without its worst three songs: Christmas Isn't Canceled (Just You), Merry Christmas Baby, and the unfortunate cover of Last Christmas. Losing these three songs would be a major case of addition by subtraction, as their absence would allow the more poignant and touching aspects of the album, which is a fair bit of the material, to actually be believable instead of cynical attempts to manipulate sentimental audience members. If one heard most of the songs on this album individually, they would generally be enjoyable enough to listen to if one was stuck working in retail during the holiday season. As a set together, though, the album tends to veer wildly by tone. Most effective are either the flirtatious and upbeat numbers or the mournful and poignant ones, but neither of these moods fits easily with the other, and both of these moods are undercut by the snarkiness the album unfortunately begins with that tends to undercut my own emotional response to the album as a whole.
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Post by nathanalbright on Jan 11, 2023 1:53:32 GMT -5
Journey, by Journey
In the period from the late 1970's to the mid-1980's, Journey was among the most successful bands on the planet, with a pleasing arena rock sound that led to massive album sales and numerous hit singles that have remained staples of radio rock in the decades since their peak. The band continues to perform live to adoring crowds and their songs remain vitally important as a touchstone of the rock music of the band's peak era. But not all bands, even world famous bands, start out being well known, and in the case of Journey, their beginnings remain wrapped in all kinds of obscurity. In beginning a career retrospective of a band which has long remained among my favorites, I am aware that I am listening to songs that I have never heard before and have never even heard of, since the songs lack any kind of deliberate attempts to remember this forgotten era of the band. When Journey began, were they any good, and are there songs that are worth appreciating even if this particular period of the band's music has been largely forgotten if it was ever even known in the first place?
"Of A Lifetime" begins the self-titled debut album with a nearly seven-minute song that begins with a gorgeous long instrumental section before some reflective lyrics that remind one of the Pink Floyd music of the era, by no means a bad reminder. "In The Morning Day" combines some confident swaggering lyrics about love with a complex instrumental suite of music and a moderate runtime at under four and a half minutes. "Kohoutek" then offers a lengthy instrumental jam of more than six and a half minutes that demonstrates the band's prog rock ambitions and instrumental chops. "To Play Some Music" offers the enjoyment of music to the listener in a form that is very reminiscent of its time. "Topaz" provides a meditative melodic guitar solo that would not have been out of place on a Santana album before transitioning into another complex and lengthy instrumental at more than six minutes. "In My Lonely Feeling / Conversations" continues the album's exploration of jazzy art rock with more reflective lyrics about the narrator's desire to be the master of his soul. "Mystery Mountain" closes the album with more gorgeous instrumentals and somewhat sparse lyrics that reflect a sense of mystery and fantasy that help out with the album's prog rock focus.
I'm not sure what I expected from the debut album by Journey, but this definitely was not it. Compared to Journey's peak period of popularity, the most obvious difference is that peak Journey released songs full of hooks and the emotive singing of Steve Perry, who would not join the group until they were working on their fourth album. If the singing on this album is undistinguished compared to Steve Perry--one of the greatest rock vocalists of all time--the music is certainly stellar, and I cannot help but feel as if there is a missing market for this sort of music. Millions of lonely and isolated teenage boys of the mid 1970's could have listened to this album had they only known about it, and played air guitar to their heart's content to the extended jams on this accomplished debut. There is nothing on this album that would make an obvious single on AM radio, but surely there was room on FM radio for at least some of this album given the sort of longform progressive rock that managed to find an appreciative audience. How did this album fall through the cracks?
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Post by nathanalbright on Jan 19, 2023 15:52:17 GMT -5
Look Into The Future, by Journey
Only one year after their debut, Journey recorded eight songs for their follow-up album. It is unclear if the band itself was aiming for pop success, but at least in terms of the runtime of the songs, at least half of the songs--all in the first half of the album--clocked in at around 3 to 4 minutes apiece and were thus theoretically possible releases to radio at the time, while the band's longer songs were concentrated at the back of the album. We know, retrospectively, that the album was not successful, and that it remains so, with no song having even been streamed 300,000 times on Spotify worldwide, showing an immense lack of interest in the general public in this album at the time and today. Is this obscurity deserved though? Does this album deserve to be forgotten or is it an album that would be enjoyed by the right audience if only that audience was familiar with the work? Let's find out.
"On A Saturday Nite" begins the album with a bit of hard-rock drive in service a tune that seeks to provide a comforting look at a life full of struggles and loneliness. The song sounds like something Kiss would have been recording with success at the same time. "It's All Too Much" changes gears with a song that is a complaint about the difficulties of coping with a particularly desirable partner, combined with some beautiful rock instrumentation. "Anyway" has somewhat basic lyrics about a relationship that is combined with gorgeous rock instrumentation and excellent production that makes good use of negative spaces besides the usual virtuosic solos. "She Makes Me (Feel Alright)" clocks in at just over 3 minutes, the shortest song here, and it provides pretty basic praise to a lover who makes one feel good, combined with the usual stellar instrumentation. "You're On Your Own" begins with a beautiful progressive rock instrumental solo before some rather repetitive and basic lyrics that deal with a dysfunctional relationship with an indecisive lover who is cast to the streets. "Look Into The Future" is more than eight minutes long, and is a languid and reflective song full of thoughtful and pensive lyrics about the narrator's uncertainty about the future combined with commitment to returning home to a distant lover. "Midnight Dreamer" begins with some basic singing and is then followed by a prog rock instrumental solo that then blends into a gorgeous guitar solo. "I'm Gonna Leave You" closes the album with a gorgeous blues rock instrumental combined with more basic lyrics sung about a dysfunctional relationship.
In listening to this album, it is pretty clear why it has never been a popular one. The instrumentals are excellent throughout, but the album is held back by its basic singing. The lead singer is no Robert Plant--much less a Steve Perry--but the fans of this particular material were already listening to their Led Zeppelin albums over and over again and were not at all interested in listening to a band that was at least a reasonable facsimile of what they were already enjoying. Journey suffered during this time because their lead singer was content to sing basic blues rock over some stellar instrumentation and the singing and lyrics were holding the group back from success they easily enjoyed later on once they had a compelling lead singer who was able to give them an original identity. That is all that the band lacks, and that makes this album's title particularly and painfully ironic. In making this album, the band was looking at the present to Led Zeppelin and made an album like the largely forgotten blues rock albums of Fleetwood Mac, and like that band, it would take a change in lead singers to send them to mainstream success.
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Post by nathanalbright on Jan 21, 2023 1:39:25 GMT -5
Master Of Puppets, by Metallica
By the time they were beginning work on their third album, Metallica had moved from the minor leagues to a larger label, and their earlier albums had slowly grown into popular albums that demonstrated that there were a lot of people listening to and appreciating their music. As is natural with such a career trajectory, Metallica demonstrated considerable ambition in their third album, showing at least with regards to the production of the album that a bit more time and lessons from their previous efforts were paying off in more polished songwriting and recording. The band had not necessarily learned in other aspects of their lives, riding high off of their rising career and acquiring a reputation for hard living and chaotic behavior with regards to their concert performances. At any rate, though, this was an album that both sold immensely well and also became an important cultural album, such that it has attracted the attention of music historians as well as the Library of Congress. So how does it sound to me? Let's see.
"Battery" begins the album with some classy Spanish guitar instrumentation that moves into a powerful hard rock intro, and a potent thrash rock song that discusses the evil use of technology and the narrator's attempts to avoid being part of the problem himself. This is followed by the eight-minute epic title track, which recently found itself having some chart success as a single, with its scorching hostility towards those who misrule society through fear and control, which is certainly relevant in the current age, before the song transitions into a more melodic hard rock song. "The Thing That Should Not Be" continues the album's themes of hostility against the corrupt and evil powers that should not be with a strong concern about the insanity that results from their evil. "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)" continues the theme of insanity with its expression of a desire to be left alone, with excellent lyrics and instrumentation, and expressing the struggle to attain sound mental health. "Disposable Heroes" reflects a cynicism about those who are viewed as heroes in preserving a corrupt government and social system, looking at how their lives are thrown away to accomplish the plans of wicked leaders. "Leper Messiah" reflects a certain amount of disdain and hostility towards a false messiah, but it is not exactly clear what the narrator is really talking about even if religious deception is clearly a big part of the song's intended message. "Orion" has a lengthy but beautiful instrumental opening that about four minutes in transitions to a section that is heavily distorted and a bit unsettling, but that becomes a beautiful and melodic hard rock instrumental. "Damage Inc," somehow the only song on here with an explicit lyrics warning, begins slowly before moving into a thrash second intro, and some harsh lyrics that seems to be blaming the victims of corporate exploitation, for some reason.
Given the immediate cultural impact of this album, it is clear that Metallica released an album that resonated with the general public. Indeed, this album is more relevant today than it was even in 1986, with our corrupt political elite, the very open way that they deliberately plan for the death of many millions of people and seek the depopulation of much of the globe, the disposability of soldiers in the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, from the scourge of drug addiction and powerlessness and incompetent and tyrannical authority that misrules contemporary society, and the catastrophic damage this has had on the mental health of ordinary people. There is no doubt that this album speaks to a genuinely evil aspect of society that exists here and now, but there is doubt as to whether Metallica themselves recognize this work as having contemporary relevance and in their being the best sort of people to speak out against the evils decried in this album. Indeed, the band's own chaotic behavior would indicate that they do not have a righteous position from which to stand and speak out against the evil of others, especially evident in the critical attitude several songs on this album have about chaotic evil tendencies that the band was certainly not immune from.
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Post by nathanalbright on Feb 2, 2023 3:37:42 GMT -5
Rockin' With The Rhythm, by the Judds
As the second full album I have listened to by the Judds, I have to say that the 1980s are a strange era of country music. Despite growing up in the country, this was an album I never heard of before ranking it down and I have not ever heard any of the songs on it, although one of them was apparently a signature song of the group's. Consolidating the success of their debut album, this album went platinum, thus demonstrating that within the world of country music they were a successful album act, even though country acts in the 1980s seldom broke through to the mainstream charts and nothing on the album was viewed as remotely crossover material, which was probably for the best for their credibility and popularity within the country music scene. But all of this is rather peripheral to the main point of listening to any music, namely whether the material is good. Let's find out.
"Have Mercy" begins with the album with what could easily have been a love-lorn song about a lover done wrong by her unfaithful partner, one which also offers a meta-commentary on country songs about cheating and misery, but this song is upbeat, which is probably for the better. "Grandpa (Tell Me About The Good Old Days)" is a gorgeous ode to nostalgia, which is a reminder that even if we might think of the 1980's as a nostalgic time in our own horrific age, at the time people like the Judds thought of still earlier eras as the good old days, which only demonstrates how much worse we have things now. "Working In The Coal Mine" is a cover of a classic, and it is played upbeat, but without really getting to the core of the song's caution about the vanity of extractive industries like coal mining, very relevant in the 1980's, it must be admitted. "If I Were You" shows the Judds singing a melancholy love song that hits the spot for me as a love ballad about someone who is not smart enough to do what is best for him in matters of the heart. "Rockin' With The Rhythm Of The Rain" offers an upbeat, midtempo round between the two singers that offers some excellent instrumentation to go along with the complex vocals. "Tears For You" offers more excellent harmonies and a midtempo approach to what could have been a maudlin song in the hands of less skillful artists. "Cry Myself To Sleep" continues this trend, offering a somewhat fierce look at the sadness that comes from a broken relationship, rather than wallowing in misery and sadness. "River Roll On" offers a sensible look at the aftermath of a relationship, with a determination to live on and find better days like a river keeps rolling on to the sea. "I Wish She Wouldn't Treat You That Way" offers a nuanced perspective of the relationship of two people where the singer stands as the narrator who is in love with someone with someone already in a relationship with someone who is loyal and passionate but not respectful and honoring towards him, giving a complicated picture tinted by envy and longing. "Dreamchaster" then ends the album with a mood of longing and a sense of sadness about the way that one can follow one's dreams without having them realized.
Overall, this is an album that manages to have an effective blend of melancholy relationship drama and a certain amount of self-awareness along with genuine longing and a resolution not to be derailed by the difficulties of love and relationships. Most of the songs either take material that could have been trying to draw out the tears and put a resolute or angry or upbeat spin on it, or take material that others would view in a purely positive light and put a more melancholy and reflective spin on it. As a result, this album feels like a bit of a concept album, beginning at the moment of crisis in a relationship, going through its aftermath and the emotional effects of it on the singer, and the singer's longing in its closing, leading to a satisfying listening experience overall. This is an album that is full of enjoyable songs--the weakest here being the cover of "Working in The Coal Mine"--but the album as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
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Post by nathanalbright on Feb 14, 2023 2:59:59 GMT -5
Sometimes, by Jamie O'Neal
Jamie O'Neal was, at least for a little while, a moderately popular country singer with hits like "There Is No Arizona" and "When I Think About Angels." But if her music was certainly decent, she didn't catch on for long in the American country scene, and a long gap existed, where there were cancelled albums and label difficulties and all the usual fates of artists who do not sell well and have problems having their albums released by labels reluctant about spending money on promotion to try to gain back what has already been sunk in advances and recording costs. So it was that by 2020, two decades after she had been a fresh-faced young country singer seeking to make a mark, that she returned with the aptly titled "Sometimes," in which the singer provides eight new songs (perhaps evidence of a bit of writer's block, or perhaps the inability of an artist not selling well to get the best songs written for her by others), along with four re-recordings of earlier and more popular songs to make it more appealing of a prospect to release for a label looking to at least break even. Is it any good? Let's take a listen.
The album begins with "Wreck Me," a song where Jamie invites her lover to wreck her, in a song that tries to make cliches about tearing down walls and damages and threats sound sweet and romantic, with at least enjoyable production even if the lyrics are a bit basic. "There Is No Arizona 2.0," with Lauren Alaina follows, and it's pretty inessential, fairly similar to the original, which is a song I already think of as being a bit overrated and not really the right attitude. "Closer To Closure" is well-produced, but has the same sort of misandry that makes me a bit lukewarm to her work in general, painting herself as being full of righteous anger in a break-up situation that is probably more even than this song reveals. "Somebody's Sometimes," featuring John Paul White, is yet another song where Jamie bemoans an unreliable lover, seeking to portray the situation as one that justifies her righteous anger and bitterness and disappointment, making this a frustratingly one-night aspect to an album. "Somebody's Hero 2.0," featuring Aliyah Good, is another inessential remake, but is a lovely enough song that is better than the average one here at least. "Spin The Bottle" is a driving song that presents a familiar, but not particularly unwelcome, piece of cautionary advice about problem drinking that is certainly a standout among the new songs here. "Jealousy" then follows, with another song that seeks to put a positive spin on the narrator's own character flaws, trying to blame them on a green-eyed monster instead of owning up to her own issues, though at least here she recognizes that she pushes people away, rather than assuming them to be worthless, so that is an improvement. "Trying To Find Atlantis 2.0," featuring Sara Evans, contains more complaining about the difficulty of finding a good man, which is far harder when one is a bad woman, as appears to be the problem here. Given the monotonous tone of this album, generally with its hostility to men, it is hard to find much enjoyment in old songs that go over the same ground even less originally than the new songs in many cases. "Sometimes It's Too Late" finds the singer in a regretful mood about a relationship that has ended, but where things went wrong but where they went too far to be fixed. This is a relatable mood, but an inevitable one given the unearned bitterness expressed so often elsewhere in this album. There is sowing and there is reaping, and this song is what one reaps after sowing the wrong sentiments. "Prettiest Wreck" is pretty much in line with the general dysfunction that one finds on this album, but by showing some self-awareness about the singer's own problems and viewing it with humor, it is at least enjoyable to listen to. "When I Think About Angels 2.0," featuring Martina McBride, is another unnecessary cover, but at least it's a good song that cuts against the dominant mood of the album, and that makes it welcome here. The last song of the album, "The World Goes On," puts the album and its tempests in a teapot into a wise perspective, that whatever one's own personal or professional drama, the world continues to go on regardless, and one need not feel despair even if things are not going well.
This album has the feel of a long-delayed project that simply lacked inspiration. It is unclear where this lack of inspiration came from, and I do not wish to speculate, but given that the album contains two new songs out of eight that involve "wreck" and contains four re-recorded previous, it is clear that writing this album was a chore. Unfortunately, listening to this album is a chore as well, especially given the way that the album tries to balance songs that heap undeserved abuse on men and other songs that bemoan their absence and the alienating and jealous tendencies of the singer that drive men away. Like a great many disappointing and frustrating albums from contemporary women, though, it does not appear as if the self-awareness of the singer registers as a need to change one's behavior to avoid the same dysfunctional patterns repeating themselves over and over again. There is reluctant recognition but no change, no growth, just spinning one's wheels literally singing the same exact songs over and over again. What a waste.
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Post by nathanalbright on Feb 21, 2023 1:12:42 GMT -5
Classic, by Terri Clark
One of the aspects of musicians, and artists in general, is that they enjoy giving credit to those who have inspired them. When it comes to musicians, at a certain point in their career there is often a desire to release a covers album as a way of providing some sort of praise to artists and songs that have been an inspiration, and usually that comes towards the tail end of or after an artist's commercial success. So it is with this album, released in 2012 and containing eleven songs, some of them solo tracks and some of them duets with other artists. As might be expected from a covers album, many of these songs are likely to be somewhat familiar to listeners, while other songs are a bit more obscure. The relative familiarity of songs can be a bit of a double-edged sword, as familiar songs are likely to resonate more, but it is harder to come up with an original and satisfying take on them, while unfamiliar songs are less familiar but also less likely to be burdened with a definitive version that someone is going to like more. The larger question with this album, as with any other album one listens to, is whether the album is any good. Let's see.
The album begins with "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels," and Terri Clark's version is extremely old fashioned and reverential to the original, beginning with the original before Clark's voice kicks in and the volume increases. "Love Is A Rose" is covered, as one might expect, in a gorgeous and traditional manner, and is also a pleasant listen for those who like love songs of this type. "How Blue," a duet with Reba McEntire, gives a rather downbeat look at a broken relationship that nevertheless features some wonderful harmonies between the two singers set to pretty traditional instrumentation and production. "Don't Come Home A Drinking (With Lovin' On Your Mind)" is precisely the sort of song that one would expect from a proud woman, namely a refusal to make drunken love with a ne'er-do-well partner who is simply not reliable and present in her life. "Gentle On My Mind" follows, a rather austere performance driven by some excellent guitars that focuses the attention of the listener on the lyrics of this familiar but gorgeous song. "Golden Ring," featuring Dierks Bentley, is a gorgeous song that reveals a sensible and appropriate attitude to love and marriage and the golden ring that is symbolic of the bond of marriage between husband and wife, ending with a bit of a downbeat portrayal of a divorce. "Two More Bottles Of Wine," the most popular song from this album, is an ode to problem drinking in the aftermath of a breakup where one is isolated from those who care about one's well-being, and has an upbeat sort of production that belies the song's content. "Leavin' On Your Mind," featuring noted one-hit wonder (in the US) Jann Arden, is a departure from most of the album, being a bit more of a jazzy lounge rendition, but that is possibly due to the desire to make the song more in Arden's wheelhouse. "Swinging Doors" is a song about living at a bar and ironically inviting a former lover to come and visit her there as she loses her mind in drinking and heartache. "Delta Dawn," featuring Tanya Tucker, is a gorgeously produced cover of a familiar hit, showing the sort of reverential production that is common to most of this album. The album ends with "I'm Movin' On," featuring Dean Brody, a song about the restless moving on that happens in the aftermath of broken relationships, especially when people make a habit of loving and leaving, a rather downbeat song that is surprisingly even in its portrayal of its duet participants.
Overall, this is a good album, especially if you like the attention focused on Clark's voice and the way she interprets these classics. The production here is strongly traditional, and the instrumentation is solid throughout. There is an undertone of misandry that sometimes comes through in the songs, which is perhaps natural given that Terri Clark spends so much of this album singing about relationships gone bad, and her perspective naturally puts her in opposition to her narrative former partners. Fortunately, there is enough variety here, and at least one duet partner who is able to match her attitude that makes it more balanced than this sort album could otherwise be. By and large, this album features covers that hew pretty close to the originals, with modern production. That happens to be exactly how I like it, and if you feel the same way, this is a worthwhile album to check out from an underrated artist.
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Post by nathanalbright on Feb 22, 2023 1:11:39 GMT -5
Raising The Bar, by Terri Clark
We have previously seen Terri Clark's attitude to classics, a reverential attitude for the great songs that inspired her and encouraged her as an artist. When we look at late-career Terri Clark, though, such as her 2018 album "Raising The Bar," what kind of picture do we have of her and her craft when it comes to original songs, not least original songs that are not very popular and might struggle to have much of an audience were it not for generous laws encourage Canadian content to be played on their radio stations. The title of this album provides an obvious tension between two possibilities of meaning. One of them implies that the singer is raising the bar, that is, raising the level of country music performance through her art, something that many of her fans would be likely to approve of. The other possible reference, though, is a more humble one, and that is as a humorous reference to the problem drinking that has long been associated with country music and that remains and important aspect of popular songs in the genre to this day. Which of these meanings applies to this album? Let's find out.
"Givin' Up Givin' A Damn" opens up the album with a gorgeously produced and spirited ode to heartbreak and the ways that people cope with it through music and driving and reflection. This is a strong start to the album and is unsurprisingly the most popular song here. "Cowboys In This Town" is an upbeat song in praise of the cowboys who drink and carouse, even if the town is in the middle of nowhere. "Weddings, Funerals, And Empty Hotel Bars" is a gloomy and reflective song about people who only return home for family events and find themselves lingering in empty hotel bars to cope with bad memories and traumas from the past. "Young As We Are Tonight" is a call to live the life you have to life, because we are only getting older so we might as well appreciate and enjoy what we are experiencing. "Half A Bottle Down" is a surprisingly upbeat song about the gloomy way that people self-medicate to deal with life's problems and trials, trying to avoid going too far while numbing their pain. "Bloody Mary Morning" is a story song about a Sunday morning where the narrator's gloomy spirits lead to problem drinking instead of going to church, adding to this album's focus on problem drinking. Unsurprisingly, this vibe is continued in the next song, "Watered Down Whisky," which looks at someone who stays a bit longer than expected after sparking with someone at a bar on Tuesday. "As Long As There's A Bar," the fourth song in this album in a row that deals with problem drinking (!), and fifth so far overall, provides a ballad in honor of the way that bars make some people feel better, regardless of what problems or celebrations there are in one's life. "Right Where You Left Me" is a reflective song about the aftermath of a doomed relationship and looking back on the good times, a touching song remarkably without rancor. "You Can Have This Town" is a melancholy, reflective song on a past relationship that colors the narrator's enjoyment of the place where she lives, constantly reminded of the former relationship. "The One That Got Away," (featuring Drake White) features a creative turn on the concept by wishing that a current partner that one had fallen out of love was someone that got away rather than being unhappily around. "The Encore" is a song about strangers finding togetherness in the enjoyment of music, and the narrator's own reflection on the life of a musician. "Better Than I Was" offers a reflective and meditative closing to the album, showing how the narrator is learning and growing and improving from her mistakes, offering hope that there will be progress in her life.
As one might have hoped, this particular album ended up meeting both of the possible meanings of raising the bar that I pondered as I was about to listen to the album. There are two overarching themes to the album, neither of them remotely unique to this album, namely the ubiquity of problem drinking within country music and the lamenting of broken relationships. (It should not be a surprise that the two phenomena feed into each other, as people self-medicate their broken hearts with problem drinking, and this drinking also often leads to dysfunctional relationships.) Since this album does not do anything particularly new--at best it offers pleasing variations on long-familiar themes--raising the bar does not consist in ploughing new ground but rather in doing what is often done very well. This is an easy album to appreciate so long as one is able to handle the way that Clark strings together numerous songs about the main themes rather than alternating them of breaking up the large chunks of songs. For me, at least, this album is at its strongest in the beginning and the end, but the whole album is definitely enjoyable.
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