Blue Öyster Cult, Fire of Unknown Origin

There's a good reason this is the BÖC album everyone remembers, and that's because it's easily some of their most consistent output on one record. Calling it heavy metal is a bit of stretch, ironically given "Veteran of the Psychic Wars" prominence in the actual Heavy Metal movie (for which "Vengeance (The Pact)" was also intended), but there is solid and listenable hard rock to be had in general, particularly those two and (heh) "Heavy Metal" itself. This doesn't mean this album is perfect, though: "Burnin' For You" is a Cult classic, but its pop single tendencies sound out of place with the other tracks, and on the second half "After Dark" is boring drivel and I've still got no idea what to do thematically with "Joan Crawford" (though I've always liked the piano intro). Those latter two oddballs are fortunately quickly forgotten with my favourite track as closer, "Don't Turn Your Back," a fascinating feast of menacing lyrics, disquieting harmonies and unsettlingly cheery syncopation. If there is truly a central theme to this stylistically varied album, it would be indeed that undercurrent of menace and looming disaster as forces beyond our control assemble against us, and yet we shoulder on, knowing we have no choice. Such forces, in the disinterested cosmos this album paints, descend upon us from somewhere we will never truly know or understand. And this album does capture that feeling of hopeless struggle, however unevenly. (Content: no concerns.)

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Parliament, Motor Booty Affair

This was a hard one to snub, but even as a long time P-Funker I just can't bring myself to like it. There's some legitimately funky tracks on this, the third and final album of Parliament's late 1970s peak, but it just as notably portrays the decline of a band no longer able to flourish under George Clinton's contemporary thematic and (more relevantly) management excesses. The singles off this disc are uninspired and derivative, especially the perplexingly beloved "Aqua Boogie," a cynical retread of the core groove from last album's "Flash Light" backed with an extended acid jazz coda and a cameo from Sir Nose d'Voidoffunk. Worse, by this point Clinton's idea of high art had devolved into 12-year-old mentality pictures of ample female backends in various suggestive poses in the album title (literally putting the Booty in Motor Booty, doncherknow), a flimsy attempt at a concept album by literally submerging it such that several of the vocalists sound like they were gargling in the bathroom, and one of the stupidest metaphors for the male organ in the otherwise entertaining "Mr. Wiggles." And "Rumpofsteelskin"? Really? High points come from the album's lesser known tracks, particularly "One of Those Funky Things" and "Liquid Sunshine," both solid grooves with good beats performed competently, and to a lesser extent the album's title track, which mercifully doesn't dwell on its rapidly annoying "Howard Codsell" monologue. Unfortunately, he then sells it short by closing with the unoriginal "Deep" whose nine minutes of phoned-in riffs could have come from any number of bands around that time and boasts the lyrical complexity of a kindergarten textbook. Despite the first track's insistence, this most certainly is your "average 50-yard dash of funk" by a self-described "slithering idiot"; Clinton could have, and has, done better than this, and you'd do better to look for his brighter spots instead. (Content: relentless use of 'funk' as a euphemism; puerile references and imagery.)

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FFS

FFS, it's FFS. I'm not sure if that sentiment was what Franz Ferdinand and Sparks had in mind with the name of their alleged supergroup, but may I say that my statement was meant in the greatest regard? Sparks fans like me will be elated that this album is on balance more S than FF (though for the same reason I don't mind saying FF fans are in for a treat as well), but the amazing thing is that the whole really is incontrovertibly better than the sum of the parts. Russ Mael and Alex Kapranos braid nearly perfectly as united vocalists, and while every song obviously sports pencil-stached Ron Mael's surrealistic stamp, it's a blend of Ferdinand's more modern sensibilities with Sparks' studious musical syncretism that truly works. Plus, as one would expect from a Sparks production, the subject matter runs the gamut all the way from crafty references to the Norks ("Dictator's Son") to police brutality ("Police Encounters") to erotomania ("Johnny Delusional," the lead track that immediately lets you know you're in for something great) to nerd supremacy ("The Man Without A Tan") to Japanese girls with Hello Kitty Uzis ("Soo Desu Ne"). Most everything is listenable and quite a bit is uncontrollably danceable -- look for some or all of these tracks in a knowing DJ's setlist near you. Low points are brief and relative, with "Things I Won't Get" being probably the song I got the least, and "Little Guy From The Suburbs"' hollowly manufactured drama comes off as disagreeably hipsterish instead of playfully witty. But who can hate on an album that by contrast features such deathless prose as "I gave up blow and Adderall for you" ("Call Girl"), or the rude, zany and shout-it-from-the-rafters closer "P*ss Off"? On the penultimate track, Kapranomael croon in dueling intentionally vapid librettos that collabourations don't work, they don't work, they don't work, but if you have the right set of minds and the right range of creative lunacy, they sure can, they sure do. The deluxe edition adds four additional tracks that are almost as good as the rest, including the somber yet lyrically stark "A Violent Death." (Content: infectious rudeness, mild drug and sexual references.)

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Cat Stevens, Catch Bull At Four

For an aggressive anti-anti-traditionalist like Steven Cat Yusuf, the only solution after going a bit pop friendly in Teaser And The Firecat is to go right in the other direction. The inscrutability starts with the title, and the tracks might smack to the modern ear as a prototype for the late 1970s Jethro Tull; there's echoes of the future Heavy Horses in "Silent Sunlight," and we should all be grateful Ian Anderson mostly avoided reprising the tediously syrupy "The Boy With A Moon & Star On His Head." But there are still treasures to be found: when Stevens mixes in just enough bottom and savour to make the backing just substantial enough, you get wonderfully sophisticated textures of delicacy juxtaposed against growly grit ("Angelsea", "Sitting"); when he restrains his prolix lyricism to the abstract and elevated, we exult to the wistful elegy of "Sweet Scarlet" and "Ruins." Unfortunately, he can't avoid overdoing the former or the latter, as in the grotesquely overwrought "O Caritas" (in Latin!), or the sublimely ridiculous "18th Avenue" manufacturing painfully bogus pathos from an airport ride. Ah, but the song indeed does carry on, and through the imperfect window of his soul at least some light has shone, even if we don't always understand what the light is reflecting upon. (Content: adult themes in one track.)

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Steely Dan, Pretzel Logic

Maybe there's some twisted logic to a pretzel after all. The street vendor on the cover, misspelled sign and all, solidly represents the slice of urban life and desperation that the surprisingly muted (for a change) Fagen & Becker capture in these eleven breathy, meaty cuts. They may have been recorded in Los Angeles, as culturally distant from the madding Northeast as Honolulu, but every word is East Coast and every cadence is Gotham and they form a nearly perfect musical snapshot of the mid 1970s. Fackerbegen are at their best when they're at their most relaxed ("Rikki Don't Lose That Number", "Any Major Dude Will Tell You"; as a result, "Through With Buzz" is wonderful and way, way too short) but even the verging-on-pop fluff is fun ("Barrytown," almost proto-Billy Joel) and there's even a superb Duke Ellington instrumental cover in the middle. They break down where they get folksy, though -- "With A Gun" feels like Al Stewart without the lyrical intensity -- and with the possible exception of "Charlie Freak" the last four tracks leave me cold and uninspired, even the title track. They're bizarre and static, devoid of the instantly understandable characterizations you could feel earlier on. They lack the twist and heartfelt verve that made the first half of the album great, that formed its unseen yet strongly felt internal ... logic. There it is. A twisted logic. Pretzel logic. If only they'd realized it the whole way through. The reissue, wisely, insists that the track list is just fine by itself and I've always respected Fabegencker for that. It's rare in this business. (Content: no issues.)

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Pink Floyd, The Endless River

When Richard Wright died in 2008, the introspective and unique musical fabric of the group personified (see, for example, his work during the band's early days such as on Saucerful of Secrets and Atom Heart Mother), the eulogies of his bandmates and ex-bandmate poured forth as if the heart and soul of the band had passed on and that would be the end of Pink Floyd. Of course, unreleased performances and session recordings have ways of raising the departed, and on modern equipment even noodling and idle jams can gain full flesh after the fact. I'm not sure if another album was needed after 1994's The Division Bell, particularly given the David Gilmour-led incarnation's tendency to unfocused auditory textures and vapid lyrics, but I'm pretty sure it's not this one. It's competent, there's no doubt; we would have expected no less from the inveterate musical aesthete he is, notable in its technical excellence and scrupulous internal consistency. However, it's also in some ways an unimaginative summary document of every Floyd album that's gone before, popped into a computer given orders to incorporate this material from this session and that to make it appropriately "Floydian," which is why you hear bits of "Run Like Hell" in "Allons-y (1)" and snatches of "The Grand Vizier's Garden Party" in "Skins" (snicker) and "Terminal Frost" in "Anisina" (a particularly nice piece, I must admit, especially with those crazy wind instruments howling along on their separate melodic threads) and "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" throughout almost all of the lead tracks on the various "sides." In fact, the whole album is a great big "Wish You Were Here" for Wright just as the original was for Syd Barrett, but compared to its spiritual ancestor it suffers for being derivative and forced, and long on elegy and short on meat. Wright's solo credited works are slight, being limited to two short tracks remarkable only for their painful brevity and one being named "Autumn '68" (see Atom Heart Mother again), and if the songwriting credits are to be believed he barely features on half the tracks at all. Given his limited output, then, why constrain the entire album to merely post-production odds and ends? The especial low point is an obvious castoff from the "Bell" sessions recycling Stephen Hawking's electronic oration ("Talkin' Hawkin'", egad); he may literally have phoned that in. Gilmour closes the album on its sole vocal track (the decent "Louder Than Words"), a sort of gentle ballad that could have at least broken up the monotony of what preceded it if he'd only written one or two more. Currently, he's on record as saying this will be the final Pink Floyd album but as a long-time fan of the band I kind of doubt it and I certainly hope against it. This is not the note I'd go out on, nor do I believe Richard Wright would have wanted to either. The deluxe box adds a few more tracks on Blu-ray, including some additional Wright compositions, but is mostly intended as a video source; the high fidelity and additional material still don't counter the main album's fundamental imbalances. (Content: a single mild expletive.)

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Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde

Ron Morris, this is for you, the album you blared like a Pinoy badass out the CD player at all hours; it was pretty funny then, to say nothing of infectiously phat, but food service makes you punchy and just about anything with a beat would have sufficed. Nowadays, I'd have to say I've got some reservations, starting with the cover, not something I'd probably have out when my mother's visiting; let's say I've never seen a rollercoaster with a dentata, and "Oh Sh*t" just goes down from there with the kind of scatological situations that'd make Eddie Murphy blush back in the day. When you have to be over the top to try for funny, you're trying way too hard, but fortunately if you stick with it it's still as fun as I remember overall. J-Swift's production may have been pharmacologically enhanced, but that doesn't mean he wasn't dead on, and it's refreshing to have a hip-hop album infested with a relaxed chaotic insanity that doesn't succumb to cheap gangsta thrills. "Ya Mama" manages to be hilarious without being overly foul, showing they can really be as funny as they wanna be, "Officer" is a great antidote to the excesses of NWA pretenders while still getting their point across about the crime of DWB, "Pack The Pipe"'s subtle smoking snark is amazingly cleverly played and "Passin' Me By" shows what they were musically capable of when they decide to grow up (they didn't). Only the skits get a little dumb at times, and "Return of the B-Boy" sounds like they were phoning it in, the only other low points on an amusing yet influential outing. The best track in my average white opinion is the well-constructed "4 Better Or 4 Worse," complete with Chronic callback and a startling crank call with a very credible female victim; though this one goes off the rails like many the others, Fatlip does have the presence of mind to admit that "Okay, I think we've gone a little overboard." Yeah, maybe. But I'm still enjoying the ride anyway. (Content: pervasive drug and sexual references, profanity.)

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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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Led Zeppelin, Presence

Robert Plant observed in subsequent interviews that Presence was essentially the band's cri de coeur in a time of great turmoil. Being laid up in a roach-infested Greek hospital thousands of miles from your family would certainly qualify, but the band turned that strain into sharpness, which to me is a great relief after the excesses of Physical Graffiti. The production is high quality, but stripped down to an unadorned guitar, base and drums trio that yields an almost desperate, hungry feel to the music I'm sure Jimmy Page intended. "Achilles Last Stand" [sic]'s insistent cadence and tumultuous guitars always struck me as the deepest groans of a helpless giant drowning in circumstance, the perfect way to lead off, but it sort of goes downhill from there. Some of the Graffiti-esque Pommie blues keep popping up, unbidden and unwelcome, in tracks like "For Your Life" and (ugh) "Candy Store Rock," complete with its tedious B-side "Royal Orleans," though the former at least redeems itself by dropping the slavering sweet pretense in the second half. These detract from the raw impact not only of "Achilles" but also the other stand-out tracks, the mournful trudgery of "Tea For One" and the punch of "Nobody's Fault But Mine," where you feel the resignation in Plant's voice but the Bonham/Jones rhythm tells you he'll live. And maybe that's the album's message: the invulnerable British hard rock group made mortal, grappling with a maelstrom they'd never had to face, doing their best to make a stand of their own just as the legends did. (Content: drug references.)

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