Yellow Magic Orchestra, Solid State Survivor

Anticipating Kraftwerk's Computer World by years were those wacky guys in YMO who embraced the technomusicological possibilities of early electronic synthesis early and often, and Solid State Survivor is by far the best work they've ever done. Unlike many albums trying to push the boundaries of musical styles, YMO doesn't forget (at least on this album) to ground it in what came before. "Technopolis," its vocals growled and shouted through a speech synthesizer, maintains some of the funkiest funky funk this side of Funkadelic while making its cuts minty fresh and ultra groovy. "Rydeen," which I remember from computer games and arcades, is even better in its original form, a deliciously sugary pop track that blends galloping horses and thumping beats over its ringing, sparkly melody. Other standouts include "Behind The Mask," recently resurrected as a long-unreleased Michael Jackson cover with its vocoder vocals adding spice to the R&B backing, and a truly insane cover of "Day Tripper" whose breathless Engrish vocals and electroboopy backing bring the Beatles classic into the wacky computer age. It won't be everyone's cup of tea, but the solid grooves and innovative stylings make this an outstanding fusion of future and past at the dawning of an incredible new era. (Content: no concerns.)

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Art Garfunkel, Breakaway

I cut my musical teeth on a set of Simon and Garfunkel albums my parents bought for me, and after Bridge Over Troubled Waters spelled their official end it seemed to me that Art Garfunkel sort of faded away then, down the memory hole as one of those trivia questions that comes up in party games. On one of my trips along the Sierras years ago I picked up a copy of "Breakaway," the first Art Garfunkel solo album I'd ever listened to, in a record store as something to hum along with in the car. And like Paul Simon went onto his own kind of solo greatness, at least for a glimmer (plus-minus its follow-on, Watermark) the duo were even better apart than they ever had been together. Garfunkel was not a songsmith, and wisely sings other people's material, but his earnest, clear voice makes up for it: you could easily dismiss songs like his stunning redo of "I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever)" as the most obvious sort of cheap schmaltz if it weren't him singing it. Driving through the endless high desert, miles from nowhere, his shining voice brought back ex-girlfriends ("Looking For The Right One") and promises of someone to come home to one day ("99 Miles From LA"), of endless love lost and regained, of knowingness and emptiness all the same as he looks at the camera somehow together and separate from the wine, women and cigarettes on the cover. If there are two low spots, they are "Disney Girls," which only the Beach Boys original did well, and only once, and peculiarly "My Little Town," whose grimness contrasted okay on Paul Simon's solo outing but not here as the naïve heartache of the other tracks clashes with its depressive cynicism (and a marvel of inter-label cooperation that Columbia and Warner Bros could sell us the same song twice). Every time I listen to this album, I am in the backwaters again, miles of road ahead, miles of road behind, a voice ringing out through the ages to remind me that the next time I love, it will be forever. (Content: no concerns.)

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Kraftwerk, Computer World

I think I like the idea of Computer World more than I like the music in it. Trans Europe Express worked well because it had a grand theme layered on top, and if the music was a little impenetrable at times the subject matter managed to transcend that overall because of its overarching human element. By contrast that isn't at all the case here, because a technologically driven theme layered on top of a technologically driven album doesn't add anything to the experience. Hasn't every Kraftwerk album after they shed their krautrock trappings been, at its most essential level, a computer album? You can see loops and constructs and control flow in the rhythm lines, feel the CPU registers tick with every beat, which makes a song about "Numbers" (with what sounds like a Speak and Spell sharing lead vocals) just seem like a song endlessly repeating digits, like someone typed 10 A=A+1:PRINT A:GOTO 10 into their Commodore 64 and ran it. But in German, verstehst du. Their strongest track is probably the title track, which leads to their awkward overreliance on its comparatively sumptuous theme later on, and "Computer Love" has a nice texture to it (and probably, at least at intervals, the most original lyrics, "I call this number / for a data date"), but their improved production techniques remove the slight and charming imperfections in their earlier works leaving a result that is of simultaneously higher quality and lower emotive value. If that's what they intended, they succeeded, but they ended up losing their soul in the process. On "Home Computer" they sing about our home computers bringing us into the future, but the computer world I remember from the 1980s was a lot more fun than this album is. (Content: no concerns.)

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Head East, Flat As A Pancake

Two words went through my head while listening to this: "hippie Rush." Start with the lead track, "Never Been Any Reason," which got enough airplay to pique A&M's A&R; Roger Boyd's deft and swoopy Moog sounds like Geddy Lee, and later on John Schlitt easily threatens Lee's vocal range particularly in "Love Me Tonight" and "Fly By Night Lady" ("Fly By Night," you say? not a coincidence, I say) -- come to think of it, "City of Gold" could even be a less-weird "Xanadu" in miniature with a better beat. The ever-present Woodstocky undercurrent gets overt in the almost mismatched final tracks "Ticket Back To Georgia" and "Brother Jacob," so jarring they might have come from another band entirely, but if you ever wondered what Rush might have put out in the mid-1970s if it hadn't succumbed to Neil Peart's terminal art rock navel-gazing this album is the closest you'll come. Fortunately, pancake flat or not, this enjoyable album stands very well on its own, thank you: the synthesizer adds accent, but wisely doesn't try to take over the music, and every track (even the last two) is solidly produced, well-paced and musically rich. No one's relying on any one riff for too long, the solos are skillful and there's enough shifting rhythms and harmony to keep a careful listener delightfully occupied. Schlitt later found Jesus and stored up greater treasures in heaven with Petra, but this album is an interesting counterpoint to his later output and probably this otherwise obscure band's best outing overall. (Content: mild innuendo.)

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The Dead Milkmen, Beelzebubba

Never mind the Sex Pistols, here's the Dead Milkmen, determined to out-Rotten John Lydon and out-Clash Joe Strummer, but you would be wrong to be dismissive. The band's earlier efforts were admittedly uneven, some high points here and there, but finally on this one they actually bring together decent production values, consistent jams and some amusingly offensive, truly inspired songwriting. Do you find other punk bands bland? How about one that grinningly dives into fraternity excess ("Brat in the Frat"), domestic violence ("RC's Mom"), homophobia ("Stuart," probably the album's satiric peak, with such deathless lyrics as "Have you looked at the soil around any large US city with a big underground homosexual population? Des Moines, Iowa, perfect example!"), prostitution ("Sri Lanka Sex Hotel"), suicide ("Bleach Boys"), income inequality ("Everybody's Got Nice Stuff But Me," laying the groundwork for the 99% in 1988), public broadcasting telethons ("Born to Love Volcanoes"), armed rebellion ("Ringo Buys A Rifle") and death ("Life Is Sh*t"). This kind of commitment to controversy makes the album's popular single "Punk Rock Girl" seem unforgivably anodyne by comparison, when really it's merely the lighter track among heavier ones, leavened with a heavy dollop of smirky snark and unapologetic shock value. Heck, they namecheck Bob Crane in "Life is Sh*t," for crying out loud, the final track, which amazingly manages to be both incredibly poignant and callously insensitive all at the same time. This album is not for everyone; take "RC's Mom" as a for-instance, as the horns and the bass boogie and Rodney Anonymous howls, "Gonna beat my wife! Gonna hit her with a 2-by-4!" If that made you stutter and fume, you should find something else. Meanwhile, the rest of us will be finding out what the queers are doing to the soil. (Content: stylized violence, explicit language, sexual and drug themes, incredibly amusing bad taste.)

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Pink Floyd, A Collection Of Great Dance Songs

This ill-conceived compilation gets its two stars entirely from the amusingly facetious title and another inspired Hipgnosis album cover with the dancers guyed to the ground so tautly their tango is frozen for all eternity. Otherwise, the album itself is nearly completely forgettable. If Pink Floyd made singles (that didn't suck), this kind of shovel instant-The-Nice-Price album might work, but instead it's an exercise in "sounded like a good idea at the time" and "let's get another dollar from the punters" by hacking out, like a rusty machete to an orchid, ragged slices from their grander albums that lack the context and structure essential to their proper appreciation. "Sheep," by itself, is just Roger Waters screaming about a hapless flock of Merinos, not obviously an exhortation to the fearful proletariat to rise up, and why was "Another Brick In The Wall (Part II)" a single when, without the harrowing childhood of young Pink to draw on, the song can only be interpreted as a blunt smear against intellectualism? In fairness, this is not totally true for the other tracks, per se, but they suffer for different reasons: "One of These Days'" snarling brutality is naked without contrasting against the other intriguing tracks on the underappreciated Meddle, and "Money" becomes a victim of an interlabel dispute where Capitol would permit Columbia to use the original recording of "One of These Days" but not "Money," meaning its reincarnation as an underwhelming David Gilmour solo track (see also About Face), though Dick Parry's saxophone is expertly recreated. Only "Wish You Were Here" can truly stand alone, and the edited "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" is much more cohesive, ironically by taking segments off four of the seven sprawling original parts. Worth it to Floyd completists like myself if only for that last, but at least the band recognized the obvious with the title, because on this collection these songs lose their greatness in isolation and you really can't dance to them. (Content: S-bomb, stylized violence.)

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Foghat, Fool For The City

I wish this album were as original as the cover, with skinbanger Roger Earl in the middle of a New York street calmly fishing in a manhole to the great perplexity of passers-by. And in fairness Foghat has never really aspired towards advancing the art of music; they have only aspired to giving you solid rock'n'roll with a side helping of blues, and that is that. This lesser but still important calling, to be sure, is clearly evident here -- especially "Save Your Loving (For Me)," which has as obvious a boogie bassline as anything they ever belted out in Detroit (never mind that Foghat are Brits) -- but it also means an album that, overall, is great in the background as generic rock but does not reward the close listener further. The canonical example might be "Terraplane Blues," so derivatively bluesy it has to throw a bit of arena rock veneer on to avoid terminal stylistic cliché, but even the toe-tapping boogie numbers suffer, especially "My Babe," which is one (admittedly slick) riff over and over burdened by lyrics of the same literary value as a Bazooka Joe comic. "Slow Ride," the showcase single, is so overplayed by classic rock stations these days that it undercuts its ability to save the rest of the album. Fortunately, the title track and the unpredictably bouncy "Drive Me Home" (sort of Elton John meets REO Speedwagon) make up for it as the other brighter spots in an album that's best described as competent. You won't go wrong with this album at your next party playing quietly away on loop in the corner of the room. And, damning with faint praise as that may be, I guess that's worth aspiring to as well. (Content: mild innuendo.)

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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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The Alan Parsons Project, Pyramid

Pyramid is really the first time where Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson learned how to make a pop-friendly album; I Robot and Tales of Mystery and Imagination were interesting to the right fan but completely incomprehensible to everyone else. Unfortunately, their application of this skill is incomplete on this concept album that's apparently completely without a concept. While I enjoy the well-developed introspective pieces, especially the couplet of "What Goes Up..." with the almost religious overtones of "The Eagle Will Rise Again," as well as the closing "Shadow Of A Lonely Man" where guest vocalist John Miles wisely pulls his punches for a beautifully understated effect, the three instrumental tracks are as inscrutable as they were on "I Robot," and "One More River" and "Can't Take It With You" are not only boring to listen to but sport the clichéd lyrical intelligence of a second-string political speechwriter. The high point is the sparkling "Pyramania," which starts with the obvious pun and adds a witty commentary on the foolishness of trendy beliefs and faddish fascinations (with pyramid power), but only serves to throw the album's deficiencies into sharp relief. Overall, best treated as a transitional album with some high points worth picking up on a compilation instead. The reissue adds the usual tiresome and underdeveloped early mix versions. (Content: no concerns.)

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Earth Wind & Fire, All 'N All

Slap a UFO on that publicity photograph and you've got Mothership Connection -- and heck, when I saw those pyramids I thought immediately of Parliament's hilariously overwrought "Prelude" from Dr Funkenstein -- but Maurice White continues to provide R&B of uncompromising quality even while studiously adopting Geo. Clinton's syncretic showmanship. This is funky without being stupid ("Serpentine Fire," "Magic Mind"). This is thoughtful without being superficial ("Be Ever Wonderful"). This is sensual without being phony ("Love's Holiday," "I'll Write A Song For You"). Every hook and groove is skillful and fast, the horns dance, the bass gets down and bouncy. The downside is the instrumentals; the little interludes are well-crafted, but they drag me out of the exultant place the vocals take me and disturb the album's flow like rocks in a great honey river, and "Runnin'"'s otherwise competent performance succumbs in spots to overly gratuitous experimentalism. These are, however, only small quibbles against the greatness of a true soul music landmark fusing R&B and samba into something greater than the sum of its parts, just as the album name might imply. The reissue adds three tracks, including a beguiling demo version of "Love's Holiday" that's actually good for something, but the original mix of "Runnin'" adds little and it's rare that I find a live version I like better than the album (and that goes double for "Brazilian Rhyme"). (Content: mild sensuality.)

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Steely Dan, Katy Lied

Being the glittering cosmopolitan and erudite jerk that I am, I foolishly believed that Fagenbecker might have been trying to make a German pun or something with the title ("Katy Lied" = "Katy Song," get it? nein? well, ich kann dich nicht riechen, so there), but I suppose I expect too much from a band that continues to bill itself as an exceptionally durable object of the bedroom. (In the reissue liner notes, instead of a studious retrospective study of its production or interesting notes about the tour, Beckerfagen instead leads off with a complaint about the propensity of the backup singers to boink the roadies instead of them. So there.) In spite of all their frustrated lechery, "Katy Lied" at least begins in top jazz-rock fusion form, starting off strong with the hep and rhythmic "Black Friday" and then the layered smooth contrast of "Bad Sneakers." Around about "Daddy Don't Live In That New York City No More," though, the jazz starts to interfere with the rock, making compulsively produced but somewhat inaccessible tracks like "Doctor Wu" (on which Katy does not tell the truth), and then sneaking in more furtive R-rated references with "Everyone's Gone To The Movies," but you know, those movies, wink wink nudge nudge, so ready to make their unseen companion come of age that I could swear the jacket got slobbered on in the studio. I'm also not sure what to do with an album that not only has a song about gold teeth, but continues it from a song two albums prior. "Chain Lightning"'s dead-on blues and the pensive "Any World" somewhat rescue the second half, but it ends on the baffling "Throw Back The Little Ones," another exercise in wondering what socially unacceptable subtext Fabeckgener is sneaking in ("throw back the little ones"? "pan fry the big ones"? "gently squeeze them"??), made more disordered by their suspect choices of time signature and the Zappa-esque bridge. I'm not sure if I just have too large a stick in my butt to really enjoy this album, and if so isn't the band name a terrible coincidence, but must their work always make me weather the conflict of the puerile and the sophisticated when I listen to it? (Content: drug and sexual references.)

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Aerosmith

While the Aerosmith of the 1980s competed with incredible sources of musical depth and innovation such as, you know, hair metal, the Aerosmith of the 1970s existed between prog, blues and art rock, and sometimes incorporated all three. I wish it were so on their debut album, but it's only a glimmer of the greatness that came to them later. Steven Tyler admitted he was deliberately underplaying his singing and it shows, worsened by uninspired production and drab dynamics which do them no favours; some of these half-baked tracks still show up in their live sets such as "One Way Street," which is seven minutes of trying to find the "skip" button. But there are two tracks in particular that tell us this band is capable of more, and those are "Mama Kin" (the Guns N Roses cover is good, but the original is better), which mixes bluesy rock with a good riff and a fun sax solo, and of course the classic ballad "Dream On," full of echo, verve and splendour on which it appears all of their production budget was blown based on the other tracks. Worth picking up for fans, but the casual interest will want to wait until Toys In The Attic, against which all Aerosmith and hard rock albums in general are measured. (Content: S-bomb, some drug references.)

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