Lou Reed, Metal Machine Music

Four equally divided amorphous portions of noise and feedback that are so interchangeable the extra quad mix channels were allegedly the same tape tracked in reverse. In this sense the locked groove of the original LP seems perfectly logical. What's really crazy is the damn thing is perversely listenable, at least at low volume in the background where it becomes part of the ambience. I don't know if I got the joke, and I'm quite sure RCA didn't, but somewhere Philip Glass is laughing. (Content: um.)

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Alan Parsons, A Valid Path

I have misgivings about even writing this review because I actually attended the tour for this album when they were in Los Angeles (at the Canyon Club in Agoura Hills, if you must know), and Alan Parsons himself signed the Eye In The Sky CD in my office. Frankly, it's because this album's not that great. Parsons never seemed to get over his time with Pink Floyd and this solo effort feels like his level best to ape the post-Waters sound right down to the Storm Thorgerson cover and David Gilmour on the lead track; it's probably no coincidence that it's the best one, too ("Return To Tunguska"). There's no problem with the production and there's no issue with the technology as those have always been his strength. Instead, the original songs are generally dull and derivative (especially the P.J. Olsson-fronted songs, "More Lost Without You" in particular, but also "You Can Run"), the revolving door of featured artists don't seem to translate into any variety, and the unoriginal songs ("Mammagamma '04" and a retread of the two lead tracks from "Tales of Mystery and Imagination") would be better served as bonus tracks on a reissue than on this separate album. And then there's the stunt casting: as John Cleese! murmurs irritatedly at the end of "Chomolungma" (probably the only other notable song on the album), "How much longer is this going on?" At least it was better in person! (Content: no concerns.)

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Snowy White, Goldtop

Shed a tear for the session musician whose voice is not their own, but while he deservedly kept great company his output in his own right frankly disappoints. Although White's skill is considerable as a guitarist it's less so as a songsmith, meaning the most compelling part of this compilation is not the solo work which represents the majority of the running time. While "Highway to the Sun" is competent enough, "The Time Has Come" and "Love, Pain And Sorrow" are slow and maddeningly flat, and his almost cookie-cutter blues tracks (both solo and as Snowy White's Blues Agency) largely lack any special hook or style; likewise, of his brief time with Thin Lizzy, only "Renegade" really cooks while "Memory Pain" is just as dull as the rest. The remaining small number of tracks are remarkably variable in their breadth as well as in their quality: a Richard Wright instrumental selection ("Drop In From The Top"), one of the weaker pieces from the interesting but commercially stillborne Wet Dream, two underdeveloped rehearsal (!) Peter Green tracks, two live Al Stewart pieces ("Dark and Rolling Sea," "Carol") both undermined by flaccid production, and the sole gem, the previously 8-track-only extended "Pigs On The Wing" (from Pink Floyd's Animals) with White's clarion guitar bridge between the halves unheard on any other format. It's quite a curio for fans, but you'll pay a price to get it, and there's little else to recommend the rest of what's here. (Content: no concerns.)

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Aerosmith, Done With Mirrors

This was supposed to be their comeback album, proving they could be clean and still rock, and yet it still sounds like they're smoking something. And it's not the good stuff. The flat, unoriginal and uncompelling riffs are matched inexpertly by similarly flat production and the dynamic range of a nursing home after the medication gets handed out. Standout tracks for the wrong reasons include the asymmetric beat in "Let The Music Do The Talking" which I think they believed would be innovative but just comes off as annoying, Steven Tyler's limp and anaemic delivery on "The Reason A Dog" something or other, and "The Hop" which just drags and drags and drags. This otherwise dumpster fire of an album is saved from complete failure only by the name of the track "My Fist Your Face" which makes an entertaining epithet for bar mitzvahs, church services and music critics. The CD and tape versions add the final track "Darkness" which has some rather interesting harmonic contrasts and an almost progressive rock throwback feel, a bafflingly high quality contrast against the overwhelming mediocrity of the rest of the album, and single-handedly prevents my first poop rating ever. (Content: mild profanity.)

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Europe, The Final Countdown

No one ever accused hair metal of having artistic pretense, and then there's this. To be sure, no one can hate on the absolutely gonzo synthoid hot mess that is the title track; its place of honour in the glam pantheon was guaranteed from the beginning by Joey Tempest's iconic Roland riff and the insistent guitars as long as you don't listen too closely to the lyrics. But, other than a minor local maximum with the competent ballad "Carrie" which I remember liking on FM back in the day, the rest of the album goes downhill from there. It's not that the tracks are ineptly played or badly produced, it's just that they're bad: they all sound the same, the music doesn't have any hot hooks (maybe the guitar solo in "On The Loose," maybe), the lyrics are moronic and the overall feeling is one of self-cannibalization (e.g., the wan retread of "The Final Countdown" in "Love Chaser," nearly exactly the same song, thus making it the second best track on the album because it's also the last one). The absolute low point is probably "Cherokee," where a bunch of white guys lecture other white guys on cultural genocide. Buy the single of the title track for your next 80's party and save yourself from the rest — it's too late for me, kids. The CD reissue makes it worse with three flat live recordings sounding as if they'd been recorded off the gum on the bottom of the mixing board. (Content: no concerns.)

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The Best of Sparks: Music That You Can Dance To

What were they thinking? How could America's favourite phony Los Angelino Brits squeeze out something this awful? It all starts with Curb Records' bizarrely misleading title, to which the Mael brothers hold blameless, but the title becomes increasingly inappropriate in that it is hardly their best work nor previously released material and it's only barely danceable merely at intervals (see also Pink Floyd's similarly unadvisedly-named A Collection of Great Dance Songs). The title track leads off well enough, and you can actually wiggle your hips to it a bit, but every other track just fragments into a terminal surfeit of dated New Wave overdrive. Even most of their former lyrical wit is missing with the possibility of "Change," here in its initial underdeveloped form which the band revised into a far greater track on Plagarism, and the minor hit "Modesty Plays," a reworked version of the theme song they did for a failed ABC pilot of Modesty Blaise. Low points include most of the album but particularly "Shopping Mall of Love," an ill-conceived attempt to recover that lost literary verve, and the flat and tedious "Let's Get Funky" which is anything but. The beats don't make sense, the slap bass is inescapable, the synthesizers are even more excessive than usual, and I've heard better orchestral hits out of my toy Casio. "Everybody say yeah! Say yeah!" sings a desperate Russ Mael on "Fingertips," but I'd just say "nah" and look to another of their albums. Any of them but this. (Content: mild adult themes.)

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REM, Dead Letter Office/Chronic Town

This rare bifurcated rating is because this "album" is, bluntly, a scam. I have to hand it to IRS for the brilliance of taking a steaming turd compilation album of steaming turds and combining it with a decent, if short and relatively inexpert, EP to simultaneously simplify their catalogue and use castoff tracks to pad it to LP length and charge more for it. So let's do the good stuff first: Chronic Town is a nice little album, unpretentious but solid, the prototype of their mumbly pre-Green janglepop in five generally tight tracks. Being an EP there isn't much of it, of course, and that's not to say there isn't room for improvement; for example, I prefer the more soulful Hib-Tone version of "Gardening At Night" (as found on Eponymous, a far better collection than this one) and the overall pacing is a little uneven (pro tip: go "Wolves, Lower," "Gardening At Night," "Carnival of Sorts," "1,000,000" and "Stumble," and then thank me later), but this album has enough quality moments and enough historical interest to be worth owning even by only the casual REM interest. That brings us to the rotgut. It's not (just) that the remaining tracks are bad, it's that they're (also) horribly underdeveloped. Some of them might even be decent if polished. They didn't polish them. The loony Pylon cover they lead off with ("Crazy") sets the tone: it's listenable, even vaguely danceable if you're stoned, but it's like it gave them permission to proudly produce three more execrable defilements, two of Velvet Underground and even a (gurgle) Aerosmith track. Of the rest some are variations on each other ("Ages Of You," probably the only other decent track, versus "Burning Down"), some are trial balloons they apparently just gave up on ("Wind Out," which somehow lives down to its name, "Burning Hell" with the kind of slightly perturbed harmonics suggesting they tuned up on barbituates, and "Rotary Ten") and some are absolutely inexplicable ("Voice of Harold," which uses the already inscrutable "Seven Chinese Brothers" as a backing as Michael Stipe sings — I kid you not — the liner notes of a schlocky gospel album to the melody). The prize bomb is "Walters Theme/King of the Road," which combines an actual drunken recording session, a local barbeque ad and the completely innocent and undeserving Roger Miller standard into an unmitigated auditory war crime. How do we know all this? Because Peter Buck apologizes for it in the liner notes. Yes. The band knew it was that bad, IRS knew it was that bad, and I still bought the album anyway because I lost my old cassette tape and this is the only way you can get Chronic Town on CD. So bravo, IRS. It's brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. I hope you burn in hell. (Content: I think there's a couple muffled curses in there. Please don't make me listen to this again to find out.)

Chronic Town: 🌟🌟🌟
Dead Letter Office: 🌟

The Alan Parsons Project, Gaudi

Near the end of Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson (r.i.p.)'s partnership the creative wheels were obviously falling off, which led to such unbearable dreck as Stereotomy (and I like APP — imagine the response of someone not already favourably disposed to them). The album after that, then, when they were well on their way on their downward spiral, must truly be hideous and unfortunately it is. First, the idea: a album about an architect? Most listeners won't get past the interminable first track which starts off as a museum docent tour and turns into an reject Andrew Lloyd Webber overture, and if you do, you then get to sit through another Lenny Zakatek "rocker" that sounds like everything else they'd churned out on the last several albums. And, oh my goodness, "Money Talks" — I hear Roger Waters took Parsons' name off Dark Side Of The Moon for ripping them off so inexpertly. There are exactly two highlights, the not-bad quasi-new-wave-hangover "Standing On Higher Ground," though this is a relative judgment, and "Inside Looking Out" which really deserves to be on a better album. The reissue takes the CD to new lows with seven, count 'em, seven, rough mixes and early versions of those songs you already suffered through, but worse because now the production is bad too! No Alan Parsons Project album should ever get one star, and in that sense, they've outdone themselves: that eccentricity you've noticed in Earth's orbit is in fact Antoni Gaudi spinning in his grave. (Content: no concerns.)

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