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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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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