Jerk Music Critic: Sparks, Kimono My House

It's the American invasion: the faux-Anglos from that bastion of Britaindom, Los Angeles. That's only the beginning, because what they've wrought, besides a great long-playing Memorex ad that shatters glass at twenty paces, is an amazing, enjoyable, innovative infusion of humour, art and intelligence into glam rock. It doesn't hurt that Russ Mael's rafter-raising vocals make the songs instantly identifiable, but the knowing lyrics, unpredictable styles and thoroughly original subject matter make it fun. They took a cowboy cliché, for crying out loud, complete with gunshots and a charging guitar line, and made it into a metaphor for serial relationships ("This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us"). Albert Einstein's formative years from his parents' perspective are dissected in "Talent is An Asset." The globe becomes the distance between a man and woman who can't meet in the middle on "Equator." Get the picture, gaijin? The production values are strong, even if the sound is occasionally a little muddy, and the consistency of Ron Mael's songsmanship and the occasionally danceable rhythms are head and shoulders above their uneven earlier works. Two reissues exist; the original reissue adds two great B-sides, "Barbecutie" (guffaw and kneeslaps) and "Lost And Found," while the second adds a live version of "Amateur Hour" from a later incarnation of the band which is admittedly inferior. Never mind that. Enjoy these wackjobs' first truly great album no matter where you find it, because you won't find any other album that simultaneously achieves its goals for art, intelligence, quality and humour anywhere else in the world. (Content: innuendo, sexual themes.)

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Express Yourself

The Jerk Music Critic is a collection of amateur music reviews I wrote largely non-professionally between the 1990s and today. Some of these reviews are contemporary and some are retrospective, and a few are rather dated, but all are intended to be free-standing and permanent records of my completely worthless musical opinion. They are presented in no particular order and "new" reviews that occur may actually be simply prior ones I've only now transcribed. Older reviews have been edited to hopefully remove inaccuracies later revealed, as well as add brief content advisories (see "Smash the PMRC") and, where reissues exist with different tracks, brief commentaries on these later additions (the actual star review was not altered).

If you're looking for a specific artist, or just interested to see what I really liked (or really didn't), "When I Break Down" indexes reviews by artist and by number of stars awarded (see "Star Chart" for an explanation).

As we move deeper into the Internet music age where the album format might seem hopelessly antiquated, there is still some artistic value in the LP to those artists who still take advantage of it, and some of these recordings can only be properly appreciated in that context. I hope you enjoy these reviews and recommendations, and don't take them too seriously. — Cameron Kaiser

Star Chart

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An instant classic. Substantially advances/d the state of the art, either technologically, stylistically, or (preferentially) both, and is outstanding music besides. Buy it.

🌟🌟🌟🌟
A excellent album. Nearly every song is a gem; nearly every piece is a winner. Falls short of 5 stars for want of that certain special something, but the difference is in impact, not in musical quality. Buy it.

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Solid. Mostly good songs with a few clinkers. Salvageable with a good playlist. Buy it cheap.

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Mixed. Some good songs stand out, but not enough to make it listenable as a whole. Buy the good songs on iTunes.

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Bad. One or two tracks of even decent quality. Buy the good songs cheap on iTunes.

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How did this get released?

Smash the PMRC

I don't advocate for censorship or unnuanced black and white stickers, but I do advocate for parents being able to raise kids in the way they see fit, which might include introducing albums of controversial yet artistic merit at a point in their child's life when they can better appreciate it. The content summaries are intended to be a very general guide, reflective of only my own personal sensibilities and mine alone, and do not substitute in any way for a parent actually sitting down and listening to the album themselves. If you excessively rely on my content advisories, then I'm the one raising your kid, and you really don't want that.