Taylor Swift, evermore

The companion album to this year's quarantine surprise Folklore, it improves, though not nearly enough, on the unsympathetic pontifications and the tortoise pace that made its precedessor tedious. But, to be sure, there are nevertheless improvements: leadoff "willow" is pop without being overly sweet, and while the production remains flawless, the throwback semi-country style is better developed this time (especially "champagne problems" and "cowboy like me"). I also appreciate her more mature consideration of the human existence (e.g., the nuanced "happiness" and the small-town slice "'tis the damn season") that does a better job lyrically in getting you to see the world through her eyes, though I gently argue some of us do need a little "closure." On the other hand, what didn't improve from its precedessor is the molasses feel like a tape on half speed, leaving you to wonder when the fun bits start, and too much of the track list is just too slow. Overall the album is still overly navel-gazey and there remain many irritating moments where her emotional state fails to translate musically, but while it may be a companion album in name, for my money it manages to eclipse the previous one even though that wasn't much of a bar to exceed. Despite not being enough for a third star, the iterative changes in this one do make it the relatively superior release, and you don't need to buy the prior album to appreciate the finer moments this one has. By the way, please invest in a SHIFT key. Thank you. (Content: some harsh language and adult themes. A separate clean version is available; I reviewed the original.)

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Paul Simon

Did Lewis need Clark, or Gracie need George, or Abbott Costello? Because Simon still needed Garfunkel, and if his first solo album aimed to dispel that impression, it fails. The style evolves but Paul lacks Art's vocal range, and Roy Halee's flat production still assumes his presence to fill the aural gap. Plus, what Simon's music really lacks here is a hook. He can find it when he wants to ("Mother and Child Reunion," "Duncan," "Me and Julio Down By The Schoolyard") but others drown in a morass of their own meanderings ("Armistice Day," "Papa Hobo," "Congratulations") and some otherwise promising songs ("Run That Body Down," "Peace Like A River") simply fall short for one stylistic deficiency or another; it's not that I mind the musings, mind you, but they really ought to go somewhere rather than die off into the runout groove. Everyone is permitted their transition and it fortunately didn't take him long, but that doesn't mean I'm going to give this overall muddled effort a pass. The 2004 reissue adds demos of "Me And Julio," "Duncan" and an unreleased version of "Paranoid Blues;" the former is as uninteresting as such demos usually are, but the "Duncan" demo is a rather different song and the evolution of "Paranoid Blues" adds at least some variety. (Content: adult themes on "Duncan.")

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Modest Mouse, The Moon & Antarctica

If all the Moon and Antarctica have in common is being lifeless and difficult for humans to inhabit, then that's this album too. The low points begin early with "3rd Planet," a grimy disheveled mess obsessed with "f*cking people over" (possibly the listeners), but later on also the atonal, cacophanous "Tiny Cities Made of Ashes" and the interminable "The Stars are Projectors." There are flashes of talent: I liked the introspective "The Cold Part," though mostly for the musing harmonies and overdubs and not much else, the solemn if moronic "Gravity Rides Everything" with its Radiohead-style distortion, and the clever "Paper Thin Walls" which might have sprung fully formed from the head of David Byrne. A couple tracks like "Dark Center of the Universe" and "A Different City" even get up enough verve to groove to. Still, Isaac Brock's snarly navel-gazing is as tedious as the affected clang association lyrics, and the quality of the production doesn't generally match its erratic composition. The band nevertheless thinks more of it than it deserves, as evidenced by the 2004 reissue/remaster with four tracks as reworked for BBC Radio 1; though actually longer than the originals, they're tighter, and potentially proof this band's got something more to offer after all. (Content: F- and S-bombs, violent imagery on "Wild Packs of Family Dogs.")

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CKY, Infiltrate•Destroy•Rebuild

There are certainly some very worthy tracks on this hybrid punk/post-grunge outing, and its professional production avoids being overpolished, but where they succeed in technique they don't really measure up in style or variety. "Flesh into Gear" and to a lesser extent "Escape from Hellview" are hard-hitting and (especially the shifty beat of "Flesh") musically sophisticated, and there's a great post-headbanger's vibe to "Sporadic Movement;" likewise, the album's solitary ballad "Close Yet Far," itself no shrinking violet, manages a level of mature soulfulness through its well-layered harmonies. But the rest of the album suffers a drudgerous samey-sounding feel, not improved by the generic grunge lyrics, and the more pop-ish "Frenetic Amnesic" and "Plastic Plan" almost have an unwelcome boy band influence that surely won't sit well with many fans. Its best moments dodge becoming another alternative album cliché, but unfortunately not by much. (Content: some violent imagery.)

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38 Special, Tour de Force

Band name and title notwithstanding, a middling outing that never leaves the chamber. With shades of REO Speedwagon, though they do it better, the album's formulaic hooks and tired rhythm guitar make for a flaccid attempt at arena rock that can't even get out of your garage. The first three tracks indeed are nearly indistinguishable and closer "Undercover Lover" is just dorky; while "Long Distance Affair" has some nice licks, the lyrics are lunkheaded, and only the power ballad "Only The Lonely Ones" has enough powder to fire. It's not all bad: when they stick closer to their Southern rock roots there's "Twentieth Century Fox" (not to be confused with the unrelated Doors track), and the folksy, entertaining "I Oughta Let Go" has a solid refrain, git-up guitar and saucy vocals. Unfortunately, that's not sufficient to rescue the record, and while I know their fans will shoot me, this album's caliber just isn't big enough. (Content: mild adult themes on "Undercover Lover.")

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Taylor Swift, Folklore

She certainly surprised us all with this one, that's for sure. Unannounced and unheralded, somewhere in the depths of lockdown (though as if anyone over a certain income level actually obeys), she still managed to lay down 16 tracks and almost 64 minutes of music and of a very different sort than what she's wrought recently, too. Stylistically there's a little less grit and a little more earth, largely callbacks to her earlier country works ("Betty" particularly), and to her credit her voice is the star more than any of the arrangements are, even the well-placed contrast of Bon Iver's Justin Vernon's vocal guest turn in "Exile." But the production (largely by Aaron Dessner of The National), while technically superior, is languid and often disappointingly insubstantial, leaving too many same sounding songs stuck in neutral. The singles off the album ("The 1," "Cardigan" and later this month "Betty") do have an appealing style and are even vaguely headbobbers, though I thought "Mirrorball" was stronger, but they're probably the singles because frankly they're the exceptions. Similarly, the writing has problems of its own: I give her props for some solid topicality — "Epiphany"'s COVID-19 overtones by far, the song most deserving of the "quarantine album" sobriquet — but a lot of the wordplay is simple (the rhymes verge on childish sometimes) and her timing sometimes gets caught by the meter ("Peace"). Beyond that, however, what I found to be this album's greatest fault was how hard it is to personally identify with. Now, verily, I am not a 30-something girl from Pennsylvania richer than Croesus with a record contract, so perhaps I'm judging this a little harshly. But while I get the sadness for "The 1" who got away, Scott Borchetta is clearly a pig ("Mad Woman") and I certainly intuit what it's like to say goodbye separated by plastic, I was also young but I wasn't that dumb ("Cardigan"), I don't particularly care about the "Invisible String" of love between her and Lord Masham, and I've never had so many relationships apparently go so wrong nor wish to dwell on them so deeply ("August" and "This is Me Trying," among others). If the songs at least had some unique musical hook or stylistic flourish that would be something, but they haven't, so we don't. Take "The Last Great American Dynasty" as the best and worst example: this is, at least for the first two-thirds or so, a remarkable historical meditation on Rebekah Harkness and the strange tragedies of her life, an Al Stewart-like outing with some of the best writing on the album, and then it turns out it was only relevant to Swift because she bought her house ($17 mil). Now it comes off like another rich girl trying to make us care about her purchase, but unless you're in her tax bracket we end up caring less about Rebekah Harkness because of that revelation which is now, for better or worse, the lasting impression of the song. It took some effort to finish this album amidst so many heartrent pieces that for all their pathos felt ultimately so meaningless, and for music that aspires to be as universal as the title implies, I came away with the distinct impression these songs meant far more to her than they do to me. In these days of plague that may make them great catharsis and possibly even enjoyable in small bites, but they are not enough for what they are, and after listening to sixteen of them together I must gently question their basis for an album. Physical releases add a seventeenth track; although I certainly admire her industriousness, I'm not sure I'd call "The Lakes" worth the additional price for most of the same reasons. (Content: S- and F-bombs, some adult themes.)

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Tim Buckley, Greetings From L.A.

In the bistro queue in regional New South Wales, upon hearing my audibly American accent amongst a sea of Aussies, my friendly, rotund and unavoidable neighbour in line exclaimed that his favourite record — which he apparently plays regularly to this day — was this one. As a resident of the greater City of the Angels, I promised him I'd give it a spin. The album art is promisingly snarky enough, with a postcard of the suffocating smog I remember as a kid and Buckley in stamps on the back in a gas mask (the postcard, written to Herb Cohen and Mo Ostin, no less, also doubles as the track listing and was even removable in the earliest pressing), and Buckley's delivery here has all the sensuously hazy Jim Morrison depth of those L.A. days but a much more flexible range. Unfortunately, it's the actual songs that are the problem. There's some decent rock ("Night Hawkin'" in particular) and a fair bit of competent acid jazz, and as no prude I appreciate the submerged eroticism inherent in those styles, but Buckley is just far too horny to listen to. Between encouraging infidelity ("Move With Me") or foot fetishes ("Devil Eyes") or even prostitution and, gulp, a little whippin' ("Make It Right"), there's nothing this man wouldn't have indulged in; the excessive "Get On Top" is probably the most egregious of these, and with that title it doesn't take much imagination to figure out why. "Sweet Surrender" shows he was perfectly capable of cooking with the lid on, and his mournful bluesy elegy to a lover who left ("Hong Kong Bar") is maturely earthy without being dirty, but the rest of this smouldering pay-by-the-hour motel room comes across as way too much and way too strong. My wife and I had a nice dinner, and I had a nice chat, but as pleasant a chap as he was I don't think we have much overlap in music. (Content: sexual references and adult themes.)

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Nick Mason's Fictitious Sports

I put this album firmly in the camp of "just go with it." There is no explaining nor comprehending the title, the oddly low-effort Hipgnosis album art or the sometimes jarring juxtaposition of styles (primarily Soft Machine-style Canterbury rock, and Robert Wyatt himself even sings the majority, though jazz and prog get thrown in too just for startle effect). "Can't Get My Motor To Start" is an oddly fascinating way to begin, but like the protagonist car it takes far too long to get moving, and tracks like "Do Ya?" are just messy as well as perplexing. Likewise, "Wervin'" is best described as a recording studio DUI, though I like the musical impressions of panicked horns and headlights; "I Was Wrong" has a compelling beat, and the slower minor-keyed moments in "I'm a Mineralist" and "Hot River" are meaty and satisfying, but they're no less odd and there just aren't enough of them in this album's relatively short running time for a filling meal. The best way to experience these confabulatory competitions is with Mason's new mini-box set Unattended Baggage containing this, Profiles and his soundtrack from White of the Eye, complete with the pseudo-LP packaging presently in fashion for compact discs. None of the others are particularly strong albums on their own either, but like Fictitious Sports they have their moments, and at least you won't be paying much for any one of them as an item. (Content: mild adult themes on "Hot River" and "I'm a Mineralist.")

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Pet Shop Boys, Introspective

I think I'm a pretty introspective dude personally but no amount of introspection can bring me to understand this album. Less a record than an effort-free splatter of 12"-style mixes, the production is as good as usual but the music itself varies from average to bizarre and the sometimes grotesquely lengthened tracks invariably outlast their welcome. While the Trevor Horn-produced "Left To My Own Devices" is decent enough (except for the meh whatever chorus) and the medley "Always On My Mind/In My House" makes for an amusing cover as far as it goes, the other four of the six tracks are wan, uninspired and beneath this duo's otherwise sizeable talent. Besides the dopey faux Latin beat of "Domino Dancing" the deepest pothole they dug is probably the pathetic "I Want A Dog" ("a chihuahua," Neil Tennant clarifies), which in its over six minutes apparently intended to be cute and affected but largely comes off as whiny. And that's simply the biggest fault of this album: no matter the name it's not pensive or thought-provoking, it's just pouty. The rerelease with Further Listening adds a few demos and a few new unreleased tracks; they're much more listenable if for no other reason than being shorter. (Content: no concerns.)

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The Art of Noise, The Seduction of Claude Debussy

I was a starving med student in a tiny studio apartment living off financial aid and contract work when this album came out in 1999, but I was too big of an AoN fan to miss their first release in literally a decade, and I scraped together my pennies to get in line for the deluxe 3-disc pre-order complete with (and this was quite a novel idea back then) a custom burned-to-order CD-R with unreleased tracks. By now the group had metastasized to Lol Creme (10cc) as well as Trevor Horn, Anne Dudley and Paul Morley, "playing themselves" in the liner notes, and incredibly a full narration by no less than actor John Hurt. A concept album for the 1990s, the album attempted to merge Debussy compositions (and I do like Debussy) with AoN's usual inscrutable synthopop hijinx, but the end product comes off overproduced and overwrought, and like all concepts that try to do too much the album ends up offering far too little. The quality isn't at issue: with Trevor Horn in the producer's chair, the album couldn't help but ooze quality to spare. But production quality isn't everything, and the feel of the album suggests that they treated commercial success as a given (Ron Howard as NARRATOR: It wasn't.) and concluded they could do as they pleased. The hoity-toity narration, competently delivered as it is, is part of that problem, but so are the unrelated aria interludes (e.g., "On Being Blue" and "Born on a Sunday"), the irritating rap on top of an otherwise solid technogroove ("Metaforce," complete with KLF-style AoN callouts), and, well, tracks that are just plain irritating (the fatally repetitive "Metaphor on the Floor"). Do I think I wasted this fragment of my student loans I'm still paying back? Well, not so much, because there are still some remarkable moments like the lead-in "Il Pleure (At the Turn of the Century)" and "The Holy Egoism of Genius," plus the ambient audio seafoam of "Out of this World (Version 138)." These are legitimately good, though only one track truly feels the most like classic AoN and the most like it achieves the album's premise, that being "Rapt: In the Evening Air" with its melody line and slinky strutting bass (and Rakim's rap here isn't nearly as obnoxious). As proof I submit the best two tracks, the "Moments in Love"-inspired "Approximate Mood Swing No. 2" and "Pause," beautifully layered arrangements both, but overall far more Debussy than Noise. (I admit the last one I listen to as little as possible now because of an inseparable association with loneliness and isolation. After all, it was lean times back then, and it turns out living alone in a school full of high achievers is more isolating than you might think.) For an album this anxiously awaited it turned out to be a really mixed bag, neither meeting the standard for a comeback nor an artistic achievement, thus explaining why other than various compilations and reissues there's not been a lot of Noise nor Art since then. It's a shame because with a little more restraint and a little less hubris, the high points prove they might have really done something special with it. On the second disc of the deluxe issue are four equally irksome remixes of "Metaforce" that fail to improve on its fundamental problems; it would have been more interesting (and a better value) to include Reduction, the companion limited edition album of outtakes. Because I was a poor student, remember, I could only afford the 5-track version of the custom CD (I selected "An Extra Pulse of Beauty" as the title and cover art), which included various early takes and B-sides. If you were rich or silly, I think you could buy all 12, though I was and am neither; I'd call the ones I selected interesting, but in retrospect I could have done without the "live in studio" version of Beat Box ("One Made Earlier") even though the 12-inch version of "Closer (To The Edit)" I chose was almost Blue-Best Of quality. (Content: no concerns.)

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Diana Ross, Diana

A lot of folks adore this album but on this side of the fence I argue there's just not enough to like. Yes, you have the hits like "Upside Down" (and deservedly so), but even the retconned-gay anthem "I'm Coming Out" takes a little too long to get cooking and "Have Fun (Again)" has a quirky hook but gets stale fast. Likewise, her anthropomorphic "My Old Piano" is essentially the reworked beat from "Upside Down" with less going for it and the slow moments such as "Friend To Friend" and "Now That You're Gone" seem more like perfunctory drama queen anthems than heartfelt appeals to one's soul. The album redeems itself somewhat with the sizzly "Give Up" in the closer slot, but one wonders if that title fits this outing a little too well: Lady Di can hit you in the gut when she wants to but except for brief flashes of brilliance this slick album just doesn't stick. Ross fans will want to find the 2003 deluxe 2-CD set, but don't expect anything special from the alternate takes on the first disc — the collector's interest is actually the second one with a number of rare 12-inch mixes from other albums otherwise unreleased on any modern format. (Content: no concerns.)

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Bernie Sanders, We Shall Overcome

Sorry, Bernie bros: stick a fork in him, he's done for 2020. But we would be remiss to close what may be his last presidential campaign without this odd musical footnote in politics, his 1987 album. In these hyperpolarized times it may be impossible to review this album without a political slant — if you love Bernie, you'll love this album no matter how bad it is, and likewise you'll hate it if you despise him — but let's take it on ear value and see how far we get. If you came to hear him sing, you'll be sadly disappointed because on this album at least, he doesn't. But he pulls no punches; like a socialist northeastern Rod McKuen, he turns his speeches into veritable beat poetry over five spirituals and anthems, berating "The Banks of Marble" and American jingoism asking "Where Have All The Flowers Gone" while reminding us that this land was made for you and me, with "thirty Vermont artists" faithfully playing the choir as he roars from his fiery secular pulpit. I have no quibbles with the polished production (if a bit maudlin) but this album has a specific purpose: it's a call for revolution, and that is its trump (ahem) card while simultaneously its biggest fault. This is red carbon-neutral Impossible Burger meat to be played at rallies and speeches, not relaxing after fattening up the wallets of the man or partying in the shadow of the one-percent. It may be unfair to say it's bad pop when it never really aspired to be, but that's the only non-partisan yardstick I've got. While it's the most fascinating political artifact I've ever encountered to date, as the recording equivalent of an anti-MAGA hat it just isn't good music. The CD reissue omits the "conversation with Bernie Sanders" on the original cassette's B-side which musically doesn't change anything. (Content: as stated.)

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Zee, Identity

A side-project of Pink Floyd's Richard Wright after his unceremonious departure from the band, this odd collabouration between Wright (atypically not on lead vocals) and Fashion's Dave Harris dates badly to modern ears; its dismal reputation may be somewhat inflated by legend, but only somewhat. Wright's synthesizers are omnipresent, often cloying and even tiresome, there are too many ümläüts on the back, and Harris' vocal range on the album is as unimpressive as his lyrics. That doesn't mean there aren't good tracks: "Confusion" is a competent opener, "Private Person" has its moments, and I rather enjoyed "Strange Rhythm" because of its bizarrely fascinating samples, world music beat and Harris' Bowie-style vocals. On the other hand, there's "Voices," which is dopey and dissonant, "Cuts Like A Diamond" doesn't and closer "Seems We Were Dreaming" is limp, repetitive and almost lazy in its sparing arrangement. There's not enough Wright to please Floyd fans, there's not enough Fàshiön fans to care, and while interesting as a collector's curiosity it's no surprise this modern reexamination of this strange album shows it has not improved with time. The CD reissue adds one B-side in its 7" and 12" forms and the single cuts of "Confusion," which I suppose is better than the shoveled-on rough mixes many such reissues do. However, the liner notes are dense and interesting despite the typos and the less-than-pro layout, and Fairlight fans (because there's an awful lot of Fairlight on this album) will enjoy the 2-page musician's perspective on that iconic device. (Content: no concerns.)

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Syd Barrett, The Madcap Laughs

There must be some term, somewhere, to refer to the contemptible yet commonplace vicarious pleasure derived from observing someone's descent into madness. Indeed, Syd Barrett's slipping grip was long the stuff of prog rock folklore and this album unfailingly captures every oozing pustule of it. The songs veer from childish ("Terrapin") to compositionally disorganized ("No Good Trying", "Here I Go", "Feel") to monotonous ("Long Gone", "Late Night") to lyrically meandering ("Dark Globe," "She Took a Long Cold Look"), though honestly much of this album fits well into any or all of those dubious categories. A few gems stand out, such as "Love You" for its tinkling whimsy (until it tangles up at the end), the Hendrixy "No Man's Land" and shades of "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" in the bafflingly short James Joyce-penned "Golden Hair," and "Octopus" at least seems to start and end on something you can get your arms around, but even these feel like unpolished stones waiting for the producer's final pass rather than finished tracks. Not that the production could have done much with them: Barrett, through both his naturally difficult personality and his worsening psychological state, managed to get both Pete Jenner and Malcolm Jones to the point they wouldn't work with him further, and only former Pink Floyd bandmates Roger Waters and David Gilmour could coax out any level of consistency. No, the real fault lies with EMI, who thought they could make a few quid off this sort of musical road fatality; listen to him almost disintegrate on tape in the interval between "Feel" and "If It's In You." These songs are the evidence of a tragic man plummeting away from reality and I just can't endorse a cynical gawk at another human being's uncomprehending downward spiral. The later reissues add various works-in-progress as bonus tracks; you would be forgiven for finding them as inscrutable as the originals. (Content: no concerns.)

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Maroon 5, Songs About Jane

I don't know if it's good counseling advice to turn a prolonged breakup into an entire album, and some of its more emotional moments are probably more creepy than frontman Adam Levine intended (especially the otherwise pleasant "She Will Be Loved," with guys hanging out in the rain looking for girls with broken smiles), but regardless of where it came from, dwelling on his tragic muse probably wasn't a good choice musically. Lead-ins "Harder to Breathe" and "This Love" deserve their considerable airplay, and the U2-esque "Must Get Out" mercifully rescues a sagging middle, but the gas runs out in their tank awfully early: "Tangled"'s relatively unoriginal cadences are dull and the lyrics are the usual self-flagellating regret, "The Sun" is a snoozer (plus "seven miles from the sun" seems a fit metaphor for simply flaming out), and both "Secret" and "Through With You" come off as moody, inane and unfocused. Similarly, the stylistic shifts you see with new bands are sometimes more jarring than interesting, such as the otherwise competent "Sunday Morning," whose "all I need" chorus feels a little too R&B even against this album's anti-grittiness. "Sweetest Goodbye"'s slower tempo and meatier licks close the album well, but really only by echoing the beginning at three-quarters' speed. There isn't enough fun here to recommend it, and while its singles are solid alternative pop on their own they just don't support the rest of the album. I mean, really: wouldn't you expect a lot of low points from an album written about what was then his lowest point of all? (Content: no concerns.)

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Supertramp

Supertramp's artistic peak was incontrovertibly the late 1970s (see Crime of the Century and particularly Breakfast In America). The year of their debut self-titled album was 1970, however, and it wasn't part of it. I picked this up as a special item in Singapore and as a fan of the band I tried very hard to like it, but this aimless album is overwrought hippie drudgery, clearly an obvious overindulgence at the permissive hands of their Dutch sugar daddy. The bookending two-part "Surely" is blunt, honest and forthright despite a poor recording, and the willowy frailty of "Aubade/And I Am Not Like Other Birds of Prey" and "Shadow Song" hinted at what they were actually capable of, but other than flashes of a groove in "Words Unspoken" the rest of the album (especially the amorphous 12-minute "Try Again") is dreary, slow and sometimes even utterly artless. I'm told that for reasons of superstition the band recorded in the studio at unsociable hours; I can well believe it from the quality of the product. It took the failure of this album, the even less accomplished Indelibly Stamped (complete with topless cover) and the departure of their patron to get the band's collective head screwed on straight, but this album does have that same disastrous appeal to fans as road accidents and muggings to rubberneckers, so I guess there's that. (Content: no concerns.)

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Truancy: The Very Best of Pete Townshend

The latest and least accomplished (or awaited) of Pete Townshend's solo career compilations, this disc makes the minimum out of relatively mediocre material. No one was asking for a new retread of previously released cuts, and most of what is on this album is exactly what you've heard before, namely a few commercial hits (notably an unjustifiably truncated "Let My Love Open The Door"), Who reject tracks ("Pure And Easy," though this obesely overproduced version is inferior to the session castoff on the extended Who's next re-releases), and a surfeit of the inexplicable that he really, really wants to be meaningful. Highlights of that last include the openly homoerotic "Rough Boys" that would be playful if it weren't so obvious, the appealing if overly cute by half "Sheraton Gibson," several listenable cuts from the adventurous but impenetrable All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes (in particular the dissonant yet lyric "The Sea Refuses No River"), and the surprisingly strong "English Boy" with Daltryesque vocals that could have come off a Who revival album from a parallel universe. The lowlights overwhelm them, though, in particular the lacklustre and uninspired ("Let's See Action," "My Baby Gives It Away," "Face the Face"), the cloyingly overnostalgic ("You Came Back," though it has its charms and twists), the incomprehensible ("Keep Me Turning") and the execrably pointless — as embodied by "A Heart To Hang On To," its warmed-over lyrics worsened by smarmy lukewarm rock. We end on an even lower note with two unreleased tracks ("Guantanamo" and "How Can I Help You") that, complete with their phlegmy old-rocker vocals, frankly should have stayed that way. Much like Roger Waters' career arc towards the end of and then post-Pink Floyd, Townshend's fatally overwrought artistic aspirations could not be contained by the Who, and during his solo outings could not be contained by anything. Despite praiseworthy studio effort we're left with a corpus of works that by their sheer level of autoindulgence mostly only appeal to their creator. Townshend's inveterately inscrutable songsmithing was certainly nowhere near as acrid as Waters' output, and that is a blessed relief, but as this limp collection demonstrates it was also no less tedious. (Content: some adult themes.)

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Black Sabbath

More notorious for its reputation than the actual music, and more influential for what it inspired than what it actually is. The band has always maintained their Satanistic trappings were a commercial hook and not a lifestyle, and I believe them, because there was probably a lot of weirdness in 1969 and why not capture those dark souls' dollars with some dramatic imagery, howling guitars and doomy sound effects? Throw in that bleak unsettling cover with the enigmatic woman in black and theoretically you're ready to rock eternal agony. Well, not quite: Tomy Iommi's guitars are skillful and the Geezer Butler bass is appropriately heavy, but Ozzy hadn't quite achieved the vocal prowess of later albums and the sparser metal feel gets monotonous in these long-form tracks. The self-titled first track on their self-titled first album is genuinely creepy and not for listeners of delicate constitution, but the rest of it feels a lot like Led Zeppelin's pasty white Antichrist love-child with Jethro Tull (no doubt the result of Iommi's brief professional association with Ian Anderson), bluesy jams and harmonica (!) intact, and just as noodly as such a description would imply. "Wicked World" gets points for relative brevity, but the interminably titled and interminably recorded third and fifth tracks just go on and on. Much metal followed the pattern this album established and the genre can trace itself back to this very record, but the album itself is a dreary slog and even the cultists would find it boring. (Content: occult themes.)

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Angels and Airwaves, Love / Love Part II

I'm not sure how to catalogue this, since it was not originally issued as a double album (indeed, both parts were released a year apart), but they're clearly intended retrospectively to be: the box set contains both discs with the same art and unified packaging, and frontman/Blink-182 alumnus Tom DeLonge treats them both as part of the same whole, first and foremost a soundtrack for the vanity Love movie project but also a unified stand-alone work in its own right. So that's how I'm going to write this review, as a double album in two halves. And the first half isn't too bad. It's a far more mature sound, as to be expected from his own personal musical evolution, but also an impressively prog-styled one with surprisingly strong degrees of formalism. There's the first track ("El Ducit Mundum Per Luce"), obviously intended as overture, the main theme ("The Flight of Apollo," textured and post-punk all at once), and then a descending array of variations upon that theme through to the closer ("Some Origins of Fire") with the finale alternating between sweeping sections both fast and slow in such precise cadence you can practically see the credits roll in your mind's eye. The rigid thematic structure of the first disc is both good and bad; it's bad in that the dependence on the core ambient feel makes few of the tracks truly stand out, and the couple of tracks that were thrown in presumably to stand out ("Epic Holiday" in particular) seem forced, but it's good in that the internal consistency of the music remains whole. That brings us to the second half. A year later, there are some mild subtle differences in his voice and the mix, but the overall structure is almost a carbon copy ("Saturday Love" serving as overture, "Surrender" as main theme) with melodic callbacks to the first disc (particularly noticeable in "Anxiety" and "The Revelator"). More so than the first, the second disc particularly feels as if the band wanted it to be more "soundtracky," its irregularity driven by an apparent dependency on some lost video track only the musicians are watching. This dooms "Moon as My Witness," for example, which might have been something with a couple more verses, and "Inertia," with its rapid swerves and stylistic swoops suggesting every jump cut and wipe the CD doesn't let you see. In the plus column "Behold A Pale Horse" certainly gets some points for its apocalyptic imagery and "All That We Are" is a moving conclusion, but you hear very little musically in the second part that you didn't hear in some prototyped form in the first (and lyrically it adds even less). "Love" in its final multipartite realization isn't irredeemable but its sprawling sound just isn't anywhere near as great or innovative as the band thinks it is, as is the case with nearly every double album ever released. The deluxe set includes the Love movie, a slight but intriguing indie sci-fi effort that delighted me as a big fan of Moon but will likely bore those not greatly inclined towards emotional pontification in space. If you're not interested in such things you lose little by just buying the first disc by itself, which makes me wonder if I should have reviewed it that way too. (Content: some profanity.)

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Lou Reed, Transformer

The problem with this album is it's not nearly as hip as it thinks it is and far more transgressive than it had a right to be. Now, in these permissive times, an album with direct references to transgender life, drug use and oral sex might seem de rigueur, but it wasn't in 1972, and it better be damn good music to justify dropping those kinds of pearl clutchers. Sometimes it is: the production, by glam man David Bowie himself, is far more than you would expect from Reed's roots in the underground music scene, and when it fires on all cylinders you get sly trilling rockers like "Vicious," a strong leadoff track you can imagine being played for attitude at Warhol revivals everywhere, and my personal favourite, "Perfect Day," simply arranged, simply written, richly played. But Reed's maddeningly laconic and almost tuneless delivery sinks most of the rest of the tracks no matter how good. The production and Bowie's own vocal backing largely rescues "Satellite of Love" (even if the space-race-relationship lyrics defy rational analysis), and the infamous "Walk on the Wild Side," exposing every blemished inch of flesh of its underbelly like a hooker past their prime, plays to his vocal style and throws enough musical curveballs to keep it interesting even if RCA had to cut it to get it on the radio. You can contrast that against the irritating "Make Up," though, a tale of drag queens that just drags, the flat "Wagon Wheel" and the inexplicable "New York Telephone Conversation" in which Reed drags his vocal cords like fingernails across the blackboard of your ears to an oblivious piano background. The man can sing, truly, and he does in "Perfect Day" particularly but also in "Andy's Chest" where he seems to forget he's supposed to be detachedly cool and belts it out a bit in the bridge, but I got really fed up with him holding back vocally when thematically he does anything but. (Thought question: why on earth does everyone think "Perfect Day" is about heroin? If it really was, don't you think he would have sung that? I mean, he was willing to sing about everything else.) I couldn't stand to listen to "Goodnight Ladies" one more time while writing this, he's almost off-key. The bottom line is you only get to be successfully outrageous in an album if you have the musical chops to match and if you actually use them. You can't expect people to put up with the rest of it if you deliver it all like a stoned tomcat. As proof, the CD reissue includes two acoustic demos (of "Hangin' 'Round" and "Perfect Day") stripped of the Bowie sugar and Mick Ronson arrangements, leaving you only with his unvarnished voice and a suffering guitar. Ye gods. (Content: adult themes.)

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