Jean-Michel Jarre, Oxygène

A painful product of its time when monstrous carnivorous synthesizers walked the earth, Oxygène proves that Jarre did not understand the idea of trop d'une bonne chose. (He did learn it a bit later in life; witness the much more enjoyable Magnetic Fields/Les Chants Magnétiques.) Ponderous, meandering and utterly devoid of soul or feeling, Jarre drags the listener by the ear through complex yet meaningless soundscapes he is convinced are textured and subtle but mostly come off as monotonous. The technical construction is admittedly skillful, and the layering is evident, but layers can only amplify; they do not constitute substance. There are moments and flashes of brilliance (especially "V") but they're not generally worth the amount of listening required to find them, and the quasi-single ("IV") only avoids the same drudgery of the rest of the album by being ostensibly danceable, at least if your right leg is slightly longer than your left and you've taken a substantial quantity of Xanax. Yet here I sit, symmetric and sober, trying to find a "there" there, trying to find a musical thread to hold onto to carry me through, as the Moogasaurus that once roamed his studio looms behind me moaning and slavering. (Content: pure instrumental.)

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Pink Floyd, Animals

If George Orwell had played bass in an English rock band, he'd probably have written this album instead of Animal Farm, but instead we have Roger Waters ripping him off. Pigs, dogs and sheep all, it's the oligarchs versus the proletariat split into three lengthy tracks that the solid prog rock backing somehow avoids making self-indulgent, plus the two bookends serving as prelude, epilogue and afterthought all at the same time. Waters has never shied from wearing his politics on his sleeve, part of what made his later solo output often dreary, but if the album is merely a thinly disguised excuse to bark at the exploitation of the working class and the scheming of puritanical censors (especially "Pigs: Three Different Ones") it mostly manages to avoid beating people over the head with it. David Gilmour is hauntingly soulful and almost sympathetic to the people's erstwhile oppressors in "Dogs," and the sheep ("Sheep") even triumph over them; only "Pigs" gives Waters a bit too much lyrical leeway, though his grinning delivery and the closest thing this album has to a groove save it from breaking down into reverse moralizing. Less gritty than The Final Cut and less narratively constrained than The Wall, Animals is a uniquely transitional album that manages to be relevant and thought-provoking without being painfully transparent or losing sight of its musical goals. (Content: some stylized violent content and an F-bomb.)

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The Who Sell Out

Although many fans of the Who say their first great album was A Quick One, I disagree; I think their first outstanding album was this one, suffused with humour, commercial snark and a solid collection of great tracks. Pete Townshend has always had trouble with concept albums with a plot as shown by Quadrophenia and Tommy, which musically trapped him within their inflexible libretti and strict narratives which were only coherent in, uh, concept. Not so here where delightful commercials for real products (standout: "Odorono") share airplay with real Radio London jingles and some of Townshend's best output lyrically until Who's next (standouts: "Our Love Was," "Tattoo"). If the concept was just to capture 1960s AM radio on vinyl, then the concept obviously worked, and the relatively light topical constraint allowed the band freedom to explore the musical complexity they had only hinted at in earlier efforts. Plus, something novel: the bonus tracks on the CD reissues don't suck! Without a bad track to be found anywhere, this gem nevertheless misses the five-star mark for two apparently insubstantial but nevertheless significant faults: the tracking, which breaks up songs and jingles mid-verse and really stinks without gapless playback, and the album's cheerful banality which is obviously its salvation but simultaneously its major stylistic blemish. (Content: no concerns.)

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