Yothu Yindi, Tribal Voice

Australia's most famous indigenous rock act hit political paydirt with this notable album, though its limited success outside its home country was solely summed up by the dubious artistic achievement of appearing in the soundtrack for Encino Man. That isn't to say it's not an important album, and the cultural context alone makes it worth a listen, but questionable licensing choices like that don't advance its sociopolitical aims any and it's one that doesn't translate well the further you get from down under (I'm not just talking about the native Yolngu lyrics, either). An Australian ear will hear a cry for Aboriginal rights and social justice in songs like "Treaty" and "Tribal Voice;" an American ear will hear late 1980s rock with some local colo(u)r thrown in. An Australian ear will hear nostalgia for harmony with nature in "My Kind of Life" while an American ear will hear Crocodile Dundee with a reggae backing. I'm fortunate to have one ear of each, but it helps if your wife grew up in that era in New South Wales to fall back on for meaning because I certainly didn't. Don't mistake my ambivalence over its lasting cultural relevance for disdain: there's solid, even heavy, rock in tracks like "Gapirri" and "Mainstream," the nativist trappings of didgeridoo and bullroarer don't really overstay their welcome or come across as overly gratuitous, and there are some really impressively skillful moments scattered throughout such as the bubbling, trilling guitar intro of "Dharpa." Frankly I admire the (what's the Yolngu word for chutzpah?) of a band that unapologetically jams traditional songs sung in their native language, in their traditional style, between more contemporary pieces and dares you to do something about it. That's not enough, however: the problem with most albums made as political statements, even good ones, is that they are more important for what they stand for than what they sound like. Without understanding the reasons why it exists you're merely left with a competent album punctuated by musical novelty, not the fist of equality its creators intended. The CD issue includes the more famous radio mix of "Treaty," not necessarily better, just different, as well as an additional bonus radio track. (Content: no concerns.)

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Frank Zappa, Francesco Zappa

No relation, apparently. Now, mind you, classical music (even the synthetic variety) is not the normal brief of this reviewer, but I salute this rather unusual entry in the Zappa canon on three levels: first, it's delightfully obscure, second, it's delightfully different, and three, it's delightful. It is exactly as it bills itself, a digital performance ("his first digital recording in over 200 years," proclaims the album cover) of some of the notable or at least easily obtainable works of this lesser known Baroque-era Italian composer, no less and no more. The Synclavier's relatively limited tonal oeuvre does wear out its welcome a bit too quickly despite Zappa's light touch and short tracks, and frankly (hah) you could have just as easily said Wendy Carlos did this and no one would notice, but it did clearly satisfy his dual artistic goals of advancing the formalism of pop music while simultaneously giving big ripping middle fingers to the pop music industry. And hey, that's worth something. (Content: pure instrumental.)

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Parliament, Funkentelechy Vs. The Placebo Syndrome

Of Parliament's sometimes uneven output, an inevitable symptom of one band trying to maintain two identities, there are bright spots in the discography and this may well be one of their brightest. If Funkadelic's political aspirations made it the heavyhanded conscience of the P-Funk collective, Parliament's party atmosphere made it the funky soul, and right around 1977 or so was just about when the two personalities' artistic expressions were at their most individualized and distinct. Is it any coincidence, then, that this album was recorded right around that time? More developed and musically accomplished than The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein and far more intelligent (and much less puerile) than Motor Booty Affair, this is some of their best work as the end of the disco funk era came in view. We start getting funky with "Bop Gun (Endangered Species)" and point it right at "Sir Nose D'Voidoffunk" complete with bizarrely twisted nursery rhymes and even a Warner Bros. cartoon sting backed by a blissfully luxuriant full funk band. The standout track is "Funkentelechy," a clever subversion of psychobabble and corporate sloganism ("You might as well pay attention," intones George Clinton, "you can't afford free speech") backed by over ten minutes of beat and bass and bounce. Even the minor tracks are excellent, including the beguiling "Placebo Syndrome" and the amusing if slightly out of place "Wizard of Finance" in which the vocalist describes his love for his lady in terms of diversified financial instruments. Other than the ridiculous cover art, though, the only unforgiveable thing about this album — and boy is it a whopper ("have it your way!") — is closing with the cheap-out 5'46" album mix of "Flash Light" instead of the almost 11 minute 12" single. A classic P-Funk groove, its quality is best appreciated in its quantity, requiring modern completists to buy the Tear The Roof Off 2-disc retrospective to enjoy it in the expanded runtime it deserves. (Content: oblique drug references, "funk" as thinly-veiled alternative expletive.)

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Bastille, Bad Blood

There are mercifully a very few albums that try so very hard, are so well constructed, are so incredibly artful in their intention, but yet for whatever severe flaw they have you can only bear to listen to them once. And here's one of them. I enjoy the art and the nuance, which by and large avoid descent into pretense thanks to the (generally) textured lyrics and slick production. Quite possibly the literary peak is "Things We Lost In The Fire;" you really do feel the despair and loss, not least from Dan Smith's earnest vocals, but also from the literate and deliberately subtle wordplay. Another standout is "Icarus," blending the hubris and self-disregard of the Greek myth with modern ungroundedness' appetite for self-destruction, and "Oblivion," its refrain echoing from time outside of time: "Are you going to age with grace? Are you going to leave a path to trace?" I ought to love this album for not dumbing its themes down, and some tracks I do, like the deservedly popular single "Pompeii" — just close your eyes and pretend as the world ends around you — and the exuberant "Weight of Living, Pt II" with its sympathy for the great burden of just existing over rollicking arpeggios and an infectious beat. But that last part is the fatal flaw: this album just exhausted the merde out of me. The pacing is almost untenable. Even its more sedate moments are merciless, veering between irregular contemplation and unexpected percussive assaults, while the rest is relentless beats per minute. How can I enjoy the pleasures of the album's thematic complexities between track after track that won't let me breathe? Worse, the three bonus tracks don't add anything but more of the same abuse, though at least they're new (sadly "Weight of Living, Pt I" is not a patch on its follow-on, however). Eventually it got to the point where I felt there was something wrong with me to find this album so arduous and so terribly draining that I dreaded another run-through to write this review, that I really needed to be on amphetamines or something to truly plumb its depths. And by golly, no matter how incredible its literary value, that is not a compliment. (Content: no concerns.)

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Vampire Weekend, Contra

If the revolution will not be televised, will it at least be recorded? And if it will be recorded, could it be set to something more meaningful than a largely homogeneous though admittedly peppy mass-market beat? Could I not at least question the revolution for, on the one hand, an apparent unwavering commitment to thematic interpersonal transgressiveness and conflict, whilst obscuring it beneath trivial synthobeats and sampled drums? If I said I enjoyed "White Sky" for its faultless Paul Simon impression, which I swear is more positive than it sounds because I adored The Rhythm of the Saints and that track is the "Proof" of this album, does my accusation of derivation mean I oppose the new social order? If I said I like almost every track except the artlessly garbled "California English" (where the Auto-Tune is ironic but the tape speed is obnoxious), but mostly for their unvaried inoffensiveness, does this taint my ideological purity? Except for the wistful murmurs of intimacy despoiled in "I Think Ur A Contra," is my shame that even as I play the rest, nodding my head to the beat as I type, that this album's vain attempts at depth do not envelop me? Turning to the jewel case as I write, is that enigmatic starkened vision of loveliness upon the cover coming to pierce my loyalties? Will she know my secret regret? Will she be the firing squad that ends me?

Do you think I'm a contra?

(Content: adult themes on "Diplomat's Son.")

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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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