Queen, A Night At The Opera

Not so much revolution as incredible evolution, A Night At The Opera was just a more sophisticated incarnation of the quirkier style first introduced on Sheer Heart Attack — but that doesn't take away from it any. Impossible to categorize and captivating in its variety, "Opera" starts off with one of their most vitriolic rockers ("Death on Two Legs") and immediately veers into bubbly vaudeville with "Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon," setting the refreshingly dichotomous and almost satirical feel of the album as riff and rollick alternate all the way to the climax in "Bohemian Rhapsody." Along the way we touch silly gems like "I'm In Love With My Car" and "Seaside Rendezvous," heartfelt offerings like "You're My Best Friend" and "Love of My Life," and even a cerebral slow thinker with "'39." If the album has a sour note anywhere, it's "The Prophet's Song," a heavyhanded 8-minute bender that recalls their early and now understandably less popular quasi-prog days by badly overstaying its welcome; skip that, you lose nothing. Slickly produced and artfully programmed, there's nothing quite like this masterwork in breadth of style or peak of quality, and there's no surprise as to its critical and commercial longevity. God Save the Queen. (Content: harsh language and content in the opening track.)

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Erasure, Wonderland

If Vince Clarke's work on Erasure's debut album sounds like a Depeche Mode continuance, it's no accident, and if Andy Bell's vocals sound like Alison Moyet, it's no sin. Clarke could always craft a compelling hook and their first outing adroitly demonstrates this ability even if the resulting product is no more than the sum of its parts. Indeed, nothing here is ever less than serviceable, and who can resist "L'Amour" and "Who Needs Love Like That?" (and the prescient "March On Down the Line" in which Bell repeatedly sings he's coming out this time to an audience that clearly only took him literally then), but the duo leaves too many opportunities for greatness or at least gravitas on the table they too easily spurn for going with what they know. Only Bell's "Cry So Easy" tried for distinctiveness with a moving emotive capacity the pair did not yet fully manifest, chastising an unseen partner for desiring the sort of guileless childlike affection he can't provide as a grown man. Fortunately their skills did not go wasted, as the wonderful The Innocents would demonstrate just two years later. (Content: no concerns.)

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Al Stewart, Year of the Cat

When Al Stewart is at the top of his game, there is no finer folk musician, and that's really saying something; he is the rare folkist that can transcend what too often is jangly guitars and affected primitivism with his lyrical sparkle, lusher instrumentation and, yes, occasionally, a beat. After Modern Times, probably the best album I believe the man has ever made thanks to Alan Parsons' unerringly rich production, you would expect the followup (also produced by Parsons) to be even better, to achieve even greater heights of musical artistry, to touch your soul in a way only truly great music can, and tragically, sadly, you would be wrong. I think I might be too hard on this album because I know what Stewart is capable of, and Stewart can still achieve it, at least out of the gate: the first track "Lord Grenville" continues the same rich style, and "On The Border" is breathless, entrancing, toe-tapping and far too short. But after that his overdeveloped historical fetishism becomes too overt, the same problem he manifested in his earlier works, and while the music is competent much of the rest of the album ends up sounding too stylistically similar. Indeed, most of the tracks rely purely on their thematic content to carry them through and fail to distinguish themselves musically, for which I blame Parsons, who knows better. Fortunately, the end pulls it out with the album's luxurious and haunting title track, "Year of the Cat," its wistful woman of mystery as lyrically strong as anything Stewart has written and as musically outstanding — ironically starting as a proto-elegy to the tragic comedian Tony Hancock who was poorly known to American audiences and thus proving my point about reducing his overreliance on historical storytelling. Sadly, similar complaints figure into his next album, Time Passages, even though I adore its title track as well. The reissue adds three additional tracks which frankly are only of collectors' interest. (Content: one track with mild sensual themes.)

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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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