Kraftwerk, Trans Europe Express

Musical minimalism is too often used as a substitute for substance, and the first listen through I was ready to slap two stars on and be done with it, which would have been an injustice. TEE is not a perfect album, but it's a beguiling one that rewards the listener who invests in deeper study as well as realizing probably the best concept album idea they'd ever had. Having shed most of their krautrock roots by this point, TEE is the gateway to their late 1970s symphosynthotrilogy, and given their later output is probably the peak. "Europe Endless" was what finally won me over on the second listen, not only melodic and subtle and adding just enough sweetening on the theme and variations to avoid sounding repetitious, but also aspirational and hopeful — the continent enduring, the cultures mixing, forming the album's central symbolism around the now-defunct Express which might be a nice theme song to play when the EU Parliament starts getting uppity. I also found I enjoyed the refreshing wit of "Showroom Dummies," sitting around "exposing ourselves," offering some additional lyrical dimensions for a change that escaped me on a superficial scan. While the title track has some interesting quasi-musique concrète ideas (the train track motif especially) but ultimately overstays its welcome, overall TEE avoids sounding as dehumanized as some of its contemporary Eurosynth albums do because it has two things they don't: vocals, and a refreshing imperfection. If the music is formless and abstract, it sounds alien. If the music is programmed into a sequencer and unleashed on demand, it sounds robotic. The little flubs, the changes in tempo and the wavering voices all remind us there are real people singing, real people performing and real people playing, uniting themselves both body and soul in a grand idealist vision of what they hoped Europe could be. (Content: naïve European nationalism.)

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Sonic Youth, Goo

You would be foolish to expect a "normal" or "conventional" album out of Sonic Youth: they'd hate themselves for selling out, and then they'd turn around and hate you for making them. Yet if there were an album that the unwashed tragically unhip masses could grok, nay, just tolerate listening to, it would be this one. I'm not an excessive fan of atonality, even the non-gratuitous kind with the express purpose of expanding musical minds, but you can leaven dissonance with a solid groove and wisely they give you some. The gluggy production quality kind of works for them, kind of against; the muddiness gives the emotionally insightful "Tunic (Song for Karen)" a hazy retrospective quality that fits its historical subject matter, and it helps Thurston Moore's strident vocals stand out from the muck on the truly excellent "Disappearer," but on "Cinderella's Big Score" and "Dirty Boots" the vocals sink into the mire and the dynamics into the mud. That's a shame, because the best part of "Goo" is the earnest snark: when Kim Gordon asks Chuck D ("Kool Thing") if he's going to liberate "us girls from the male, white, corporate oppression" (and he replies, reflexively, "Tell it like it is! Word up!"), you know she really means it, and she knows he really doesn't. They still can't resist lapses into the inscrutable; just drop "Mote" and "Scooter + Jinx" completely off the track list, thank you, and "Mildred Pierce" is just as undeveloped as its history would imply, but you can't fault them for being true to themselves and I just want them to know we can still be friends. (Content: F-bombs, some sexual references.)

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The Alan Parsons Project, Eve

If you looked at the cover, where women in Victorian veils and merciful shadows obscure their half-ulcerated faces, you might condemn this album as misogynistic on its very face (which I suppose would be true in a literal sense). Songs like "You Lie Down With Dogs" only complete the initial impression; a cynical interpretation might find the song's fleas a metaphor for other venereal arthropods, and then David Paton piles on as he'd rather be a man "'cuz a man don't crawl like you do," while "You Won't Be There" and "Winding Me Up" repeatedly decry the feminine manipulation of the fragile male ego. However, a careful listening demonstrates just about every line on side 1 was truly subtle satire, evidenced by the sharp contrast with the second side (led by the album's low point, "Damned If I Do") as it morphs into a portrait of the courageous ("Don't Hold Back"), virtuous ("If I Could Change Your Mind", with the wonderful Leslie Duncan on lead vocals), and, I guess, mysterious ("Secret Garden"). The album's chief problem is that the concept is far more adventurous than the music: in almost every artistic dimension this album is absolutely typical of APP's formulaic 1970s output, with a couple semi-heavy tracks, a couple meditative tracks, a couple instrumentals and a saccharine closer. That doesn't make it bad, but it does take the punch out of what could have been an interesting musical commentary on the state of human relationships and gender, leaving only the syphilitic sores on the front cover as a conversation piece. The reissue adds the usual tiresome early mixes and demos, but does have one noteworthy gem, the lovely "Elsie's Theme" from The Sicilian Defence, their infamous contractual obligation album that "never was." (Content: mild innuendo.)

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U2, Zooropa

Zoo TV, the inspiration for Zooropa, was supposed to be an exploration of sensory overload and I am relieved to report that the actual album is nothing of the sort (well, maybe the ghastly album art is, but not the music itself). True, stylistically it picks up where the highly experimental Achtung Baby left off, but it develops it and makes it more refined rather than just wallowing in it. Part of that is no doubt the expertise of Brian Eno and Flood, but part of it is also an increased understanding of how to merge their past with the future: they may have thrown it in for laughs, but the classic vocals of Johnny Cash on the final track backed by a marvelously artificial bogus cowboy riff pretty much represents the album in miniature. "Stay" and "Some Days Are Better Than Others" could have come off an earlier work, but with a little sweetening and stylistic assimilation they slot right in. They also add new tricks to their audio repertoire such as drowning The Edge's vocals in the drony mix of "Numb" to impressive effect, and while Bono's falsetto will never reach Russell Mael's it's a fun little counterpoint on that and "Lemon." Good bands mature, but great bands evolve. (Content: no concerns.)

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The Manhattan Transfer, Brasil

The Transfer's, uh, transfer of Brazilian rhythms wallpapered with their own special brand of lyrics ("We always save some art nouveau / for special patrons") makes for one of the most unique albums of 1987. The synthesizers haven't aged so well, but the music is peppy, the vocals are always outstanding, and impressively even the political pieces are even-handed and earnest (especially "The Jungle Pioneer," which could have been an environmentalist bludgeoning but instead is a fair analysis of ecology versus economic progress, though "Metropolis"' assault on crumbling urbanization lays it on a little thick). Besides "The Jungle Pioneer," my personal favourite for its sophistication, other great gems are "Soul Food To Go," its saucy, simmery lead-off track, and the gently lyrical "Agua." Including the original Brazilian Portuguese song titles is a nice touch, one of many on this 80's jazz classic. (Content: no concerns.)

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Def Leppard, Hysteria

Rick Allen wasn't going to let a little thing like losing an arm stop him from smacking skins, even though the skins were MIDI and the crash was digital, and the band wasn't going to let a little thing like going through two producers stop them from making another hit album. So let this review document what happens when you'll make sure you'll get what you want at any cost. Mutt Lange built a classic hair-metal album with every track a potential single, every song a "Thriller" in miniature, and incredibly he largely pulled it off. At no time is the music, at least, ever less than good, and some of them are in fact remarkable in their musical staying power ("Don't Shoot Shotgun" and the wickedly wacky "Excitable" are still favourites of mine years later, "Hysteria" remains one of the best glam anthems ever recorded and the audio clips of Ronald Reagan in "Gods of War" echo presciently in these terrorist times). Here's where it loses its fifth star: the appalling sound quality. I may be a dweeb audiophile, but Allen's 8-bit low-sample-rate synth-o-drums were just the beginning; when Lange starts layering the sound becomes murky and tinny, and even Bob Ludwig's mastering mojo can't rescue recordings with the dynamic range of a toaster on Top Brown. The strongest tracks are those he didn't muck around with much and the limitations of early 1980s multi-generational recording really kick the legs out from under the first three tracks or so, especially "Animal," a double tragedy because of how painstaking its recording process was. In the end, they got their hit album, and Rick mostly got his drums back, but there was a price to pay to make it possible; compare with Pyromania. Ten years later, in a proper digital studio, we might be arguing about their use of Auto-Tune instead. (Content: mild innuendo.)

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Phish, Billy Breathes

I bought this CD off the rack in Penang, Malaysia (for RM39.90, if you must know), with the "diimpot oleh Warner Music Sdn Bhd, KL" sticker still on the jewel case to this day; I'd already cut my teeth on the intricate insanity of Junta and the breathless frantic energy of Picture of Nectar, and as I sweated buckets in the equatorial humidity of that June I figured our ichthyoid jam band would be just the distraction I needed. The difference here is the production, by the great Steve Lillywhite, and the result is something a little less off in left field, a little more controlled, which makes the moments when they go off the leash jarring instead of charming: the tightness of "Free" and the mature, melodic undulations of the title track clang against the unsettling imprecision of "Taste," the drop-off-a-cliff ending of "Train Song" and the noodly meander of "Talk." And I could probably do without the last three tracks entirely, even "Prince Caspian." Fortunately, "Character Zer0" and "Theme From The Bottom" still hearken back to the energy of Nectar in the in-between moments, "Bliss" is an undiscovered delectable void of harmonious dissonance, and "Waste" is as tender and earnest as any lyrics they've written. Ostensibly, Lillywhite wanted this to be Phish's great "stoner album" (apparently except for all the other ones), and while my solicitor advises I can't attest to that I can say that his production largely made genuine order out of what had previously been serendipitous chaos. And that got me through a lot of endless, sweaty nights in Asia. (Content: no concerns.)

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Talking Heads: 77

After "Love → Building On Fire" bounced onto the singles charts we expected great things from Talking Heads' first full effort, and the first half of "77" uncompromisingly fails to achieve them. David Byrne, if you're as smart as the lead track alleges you are, then where did you come up with such patent gibblegabble like "love is simple as 1-2-3"? Did you crib notes off the Jackson 5? By "No Compassion" I'm ready to break the disc into pieces except the local shop won't take fragments on trade-in. And then, just after that nadir, just when I've started thinking about how stupid this album is sounding and how they fooled us all, then the good stuff starts. "The Book I Read" is still a little lyrically imbecilic, but I'll give him points for humour (if this was meant for a real author, then I'd love to see the restraining order) and the band for some actual musical feeling and complexity. When he talks about the laws in this country that are his favourites and the civil servants that are his loved ones ("Don't Worry About The Government") this right-wing capitalist bastard wonders if he's really serious, but if it's snark it's witty and if it's earnestness it's certainly original. And then there's "Psycho Killer," which teaches all of us the finer points of being a homicidal maniac au français. The two stars isn't (just) because half the songs are bad; it's because this should have been an EP, and given what they've demonstrated they're capable of they have no excuse. The reissue adds "Love → Building On Fire," which, being programmed onto the second half, means you can go right on skipping the first. (Content: no concerns.)

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Daft Punk, Discovery

They may be incredibly reticent about public appearances and live out their concert existences in ventilated robot helmets, but it's the weird ones that come up with the cool stuff. I love all of the disparate pieces they pull together on their one and only truly great album, the party music ("Crescendolls"), the technofunk ("Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger"), the smooth introspection ("Nightvision," "Veridis Quo"), the caressing romance ("Digital Love," "Something About Us"). Inexplicably this was allegedly also the soundtrack to their bespoke anime outing, but that's just them being weird again. Just misses five stars for not being everyone's cup of tea, though even the disco detractors will find their body grooving in spite of themselves. Fresh, funky and fabulous, if this is the French answer to Kraftwerk, the Frogs are ahead of the game. (Content: no concerns.)

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Faith No More, The Real Thing

Eclectic, fresh and sharp, running the gamut from hip hop to headbang with some prog and jazz sandwiched inbetween. The best decision the band ever made was ditching Chuck Mosley for Mike Patton, because his delivery and his lyrics glue what could have been a very disjointed effort into a cohesive blend of related styles. It helps that none of them are antipodal. Isn't every raspy headbanger, shouting out rapidfire lyrics to an insistent beat assault, just a stone's throw from rap? Isn't every prog anthem just a guitar amplifier setting away from metal? The genius here was recognizing what they all have in common, which is why the jump from "From Out of Nowhere" to the trend-setting "Epic" to the basher "Surprise! You're Dead!" and the gritty progger "Zombie Eaters" (what a hateful child!) never seems forced or sudden. And if they end on the jazzy "Edge of the World," well, it's just because they can. Heck, let's throw in a Black Sabbath cover too, because with an album this infectious, even a retread still sounds like The Real Thing. (Content: violence, innuendo.)

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REM, Up

It may be too much to say that bands who lose drummers lose their souls, but they certainly lose something. The Who was never the same after Keith Moon died, even with the very able and terminally underappreciated Kenney Jones filling in for two albums (three if you count his collabouration on the 1975 Tommy movie soundtrack retrofit); how much worse, then, when REM filled in for Bill Berry with session mercenaries and drum machines? I have conflicting feelings about this album, and I know the band definitely did while they were making it. It has some of my favourite REM tracks, including the incomparably rich "At My Most Beautiful" and "Daysleeper," and the unexpected pleasures of "Why Not Smile" and "Parakeet." But these are the slow tracks, with no beat by definition; by contrast, the supersynthetic lead-off "Airportman" is one of their worst efforts, aimless and monotonous, setting up the album for failure. "Lotus" comes off like Lenny Kravitz on Thorazine. "Suspicion"'s rhythm section sounds like my old Casiotone, and not in a nostalgic way, and on, and on, and on. The musical direction Berry's departure forced them into was not a total loss because it did gradually evolve (Reveal in particular), but they proved replacement was impossible, only succession. (Content: mild innuendo.)

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Supertramp, Breakfast in America

My best friend had this album on eight-track, and it was a revelation; prior to that time we'd never even heard of them. Who was this band who named themselves after the itinerant homeless, and more to the point, where had they been all our lives? There's not a clinker anywhere, not a bad song to be found. We listened enraptured from start to finish, with "Gone Hollywood"'s incisive commentary on fickle stardom, "Logical Song"'s indictment of conformity and "Breakfast in America" deconstructing the social implications of what's on the menu. And permit me to wax lyrical on "The Long Way Home" — rapturous wistfulness over choices not taken and roads not explored becoming more and more relevant the older I get. No band ever fused pop and prog rock so artfully as this album did, and no collection of songs came off so vibrant, alive and intellectually stimulating. Our later explorations demonstrated that while they'd had some great albums before, they'd never reached this peak. And sadly, they never would again. (Content: no concerns.)

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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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REM, New Adventures in Hi-Fi

I consider this to be REM's "insta-album:" readymade, popped out fully-formed in soundchecks between tour dates, sort of the Marcel Duchamp of albums minus the urinals, moustachioed Mona Lisas and artistic pretense. This yields a curious dichotomy: the best tracks, the most inventive and interesting tracks, are the studio tracks, like "How the West Was Won and Where It Got Us" (which also is my personal nomination for Best Titular Swipe at White America), "New Test Leper" (gospel music that literally rejects the gospel, but agrees with some of what Jesus said), and the soulful "Be Mine." But the rocking tracks, the gritty grindouts, then stand in stark contrast with their flat and mushy production and their studiously recycled chords and beat. Heck, "Wake Up Bomb" and "Bittersweet Me" could practically be two parts of the same song. In the word of instant art, Marcel Duchamp's idea of spontaneity was being outrageous and offensive, but after years of original musical concepts REM's apparently is just being loud. Like every old hand band put up on a stage and told to play on the spot, they play what they know. And that's not really all that adventurous. (Content: some F-bombs.)

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Buggles, The Age of Plastic

Trevor Horn has always been an expert at making us think he was more innovative than he actually was, and this is truly a compliment, because this is the way hits are made (the canonical example is 90125, a rather slight effort from his time with Yes that turned out to be a mega-hit in spite of itself). So here we have the album, with the song, that launched the MTV age, and if the actual songs themselves are rather average otherwise that's only to be expected. While the title track and of course "Video Killed The Radio Star" are creative, fascinating and off-beat, the rest of them are schmaltz and phony drama, ginned-up sentiment writ large slickly produced and exceptionally mixed: "Elstree" is cute and light, and the subject is unorthodox, but the music and the production are strictly by the book; tracks like "Clean, Clean" have an interesting story but it's hard to sit still to digest it. But I get the joke, because Mr. Horn always meant the album to come out that way — in his own words, a "mechanised rhythm section, a band where you’re never old-fashioned, where you don’t have to emote." And so it is: it's fun, and it's certainly not old fashioned, but it's exactly as plastic as he meant it to be. The best that can be said about this album, besides the fact it kept future veejays safely employed somewhere they couldn't hurt anyone, is that it led to Adventures in Modern Recording, an expansion of the same style and a superior effort in every respect that is of course nearly impossible to find anymore. (Content: no concerns.)

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Joy Division, Unknown Pleasures

With all the cheer and polish of a dungeon latrine (it may have even been recorded in one), post-punk's grimmest, most Gothic act released its first major work. Uncomfortable and intentionally unprofessional, Ian Curtis' baritone notes clang and trip over themselves as Martin Hannett's stark and murky production adds reverberating toilet flushes and lo-fi telephone wires to the gloom. Really, it only adds to the mythos. I don't think the band set out to define themselves as the barbiturate to punk rock's Benzedrine, at least not initially, and it's as much the production as Curtis' internal demons that set the tone, but they learned quickly that the formula worked; standout tracks like "Disorder," "New Dawn Fades" and "Shadowplay" reveal the depths of the band's souls, the impossibly black tar of their emotions bubbling in slow motion, the pasty white fleshless hands of broken spirits reaching up to pull you down with them. And yes, at times, a sort of joy: the sincerity and raw authenticity makes even this album's average tracks seem meaningful, though those dark times are where the joy fades. (Content: intense emotional themes.)

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The Doors, The Soft Parade

Jim Morrison loved to sing the blues, and darn it, he'll sing the blues even if the blues are not provided him to sing. That's the chief issue with The Soft Parade, which I enjoy for its oddity, but furrow my brow over that same incongruity: it's really a proto-art rock album disguised as psychedelia, and yet there he is, still belting out the boogie. When the orchestral arrangements mesh and the vocals' roughness sharpens, this is the band's best work ("Touch Me" and "Wishful Sinful"), but quite a lot of it noodles aimlessly ("Shaman's Blues," "Wild Child") and I still have no idea what the heck to do with the title track. Still, when it works, it works, and I think the change in style might have been an important direction for the band had they worked out the glitches, but with their return to form in Morrison Hotel it's clear the band thought that particular depth had been overly plumbed. The reissue adds one worthwhile B-side, one less worthwhile unreleased jam and several tedious outtakes. (Content: no concerns.)

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Pink Floyd, Atom Heart Mother

This is the album every Floydian loves to hate. This is the album the band members themselves disowned. But every scorned object of derision has its apologists, and if there's not yet an Atom Heart Mother fan club, then let it begin with me. This was the album in high school that my contemporary Gary described as having "that wacky breakfast song." This was the album I listened to incessantly on vinyl in the university basement while pretending to study. No one, not even your humble jerk critic, will disagree that the title track is a luxuriant exercise in the most pompous sort of art rock; I will even concede that the linking vocal tracks between the two primary instrumental suites are wan and uninspired. But no one else ever made this kind of crap sound good. A true classical composition with a full orchestra, drum beat, guitars and Farfisa organ you could listen to. Actual movements and themes, by G-d, not some atonal meandering tarted-up acid trip. Mannerism for Music! And finishing it up with the most melodic roadie's breakfast you've ever listened to, gulps of tea and crunches of corn flakes and an infinite number of flaring matches opposing a gentle, aspirational three-parter that elevates his banal morning rites into the heavens. Every time I listen to this album I discover some new musical detail I've missed, some little tidbit that makes it all the more rich. The most galling part is that the remaining members of Pink Floyd know exactly what they're missing out on, and they reject it still. (Content: no concerns.)

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Tangerine Dream, Rubycon

Another ostensible masterwork of the 1970s synthesizer craze, I have always had the sense that there was a greater picture here, that the album's palpable formalism was artfully obscuring some greater musical basis my ears and soul were yet to discover. Technically, it is daring and rich, and I suppose with appropriate chemical support one might dig it in the abstract. But this album, every bit the foamy river of myth its name descends from, has one flaw, and it's a big one: its appalling tracking. If the group could have made it a single 35 minute composition, pinning you to your chair, forcing themselves upon your auditory canals, chaining you to the hi-fi so that you couldn't get away, they would have; only the realities of the LP caused them to relent, if only a little. Seventeen indivisible minutes a side of music so experimental it would weird out Philip Glass is not an album to be enjoyed — it is an album to be endured. (Content: pure instrumental.)

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Fleetwood Mac, Tango In The Night

"Little Lies" was the first Fleetwood Mac song I ever remember listening to on the radio, despite the fact that everyone cited Lindsey Buckingham's earlier works as their better. I paid it no mind; Tango In The Night may not fully manifest the verve of, say, Rumours, and the 80s pop stylings have not aged so well, but as the last album from the band's classic lineup I can think of worse notes to end on. My biggest quibble is that it was made for singles and relies on their tried and true formula, and indeed six of its twelve tracks were singles, so by being purpose-built for airplay there's nothing especially experimental or revelatory to be found. But this incarnation, anyway, of Fleetwood Mac knew its audience and delivered uncompromisingly, and in addition to the 45's the album does have some unexpected pleasures such as the wistful longings of "When I See You Again" and the synthetic Eastern twang of "Mystified." You may have heard it all before, and I suspect the way most people will hear the album today is still in those cuts and singles, but I won't lie if I tell you I like hearing the tracks again together all the more. Not even a little. (Content: no concerns.)

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