Lou Reed, Transformer

The problem with this album is it's not nearly as hip as it thinks it is and far more transgressive than it had a right to be. Now, in these permissive times, an album with direct references to transgender life, drug use and oral sex might seem de rigueur, but it wasn't in 1972, and it better be damn good music to justify dropping those kinds of pearl clutchers. Sometimes it is: the production, by glam man David Bowie himself, is far more than you would expect from Reed's roots in the underground music scene, and when it fires on all cylinders you get sly trilling rockers like "Vicious," a strong leadoff track you can imagine being played for attitude at Warhol revivals everywhere, and my personal favourite, "Perfect Day," simply arranged, simply written, richly played. But Reed's maddeningly laconic and almost tuneless delivery sinks most of the rest of the tracks no matter how good. The production and Bowie's own vocal backing largely rescues "Satellite of Love" (even if the space-race-relationship lyrics defy rational analysis), and the infamous "Walk on the Wild Side," exposing every blemished inch of flesh of its underbelly like a hooker past their prime, plays to his vocal style and throws enough musical curveballs to keep it interesting even if RCA had to cut it to get it on the radio. You can contrast that against the irritating "Make Up," though, a tale of drag queens that just drags, the flat "Wagon Wheel" and the inexplicable "New York Telephone Conversation" in which Reed drags his vocal cords like fingernails across the blackboard of your ears to an oblivious piano background. The man can sing, truly, and he does in "Perfect Day" particularly but also in "Andy's Chest" where he seems to forget he's supposed to be detachedly cool and belts it out a bit in the bridge, but I got really fed up with him holding back vocally when thematically he does anything but. (Thought question: why on earth does everyone think "Perfect Day" is about heroin? If it really was, don't you think he would have sung that? I mean, he was willing to sing about everything else.) I couldn't stand to listen to "Goodnight Ladies" one more time while writing this, he's almost off-key. The bottom line is you only get to be successfully outrageous in an album if you have the musical chops to match and if you actually use them. You can't expect people to put up with the rest of it if you deliver it all like a stoned tomcat. As proof, the CD reissue includes two acoustic demos (of "Hangin' 'Round" and "Perfect Day") stripped of the Bowie sugar and Mick Ronson arrangements, leaving you only with his unvarnished voice and a suffering guitar. Ye gods. (Content: adult themes.)

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The Stranglers, Rattus Norvegicus

When the band bills itself as a bunch of violent murderers, you're in for something ... different. Fast, frenetic and unapologetically unrefined, the overall feeling of this surprisingly complex proto-punk album is one of barely contained chaos. This works for it and sometimes against: the wacked-out keyboards in the lead track "Sometimes" feel like a thoroughbred champing at the reins, just one neurologic misfire away from galloping off a cliff, and the driving line in "Ugly" gives way to a mishmashed dissonant bridge that leaves you right back where you started. On the other hand, when it tightens up you have amazing stuff like the deserving if over-parenthesized single "(Get A) Grip (On Yourself)," its energetically interwoven instrumental lines ruined only by a bafflingly cacophonous conclusion, and the almost progressive rock (oh, the sacrilege!) stylings of the odd yet slyly compelling multi-part suite "Down in the Sewer" ("lots of diseasezzzzzzzzz"), bringing the album to a raucous climactic end. Their tongue is a bit too much in their cheek for the lecherous "Peaches" and the arguably misogynistic "Princess of the Streets," though to be fair, to call it simply a smear on women is to miss the joke entirely, but the sound is unmistakable, the high points are incredible, and even the low points are interesting. You'll never hear another album quite like it and while it's decidedly not for everybody, that's certainly worth three stars. The CD reissue adds the unremarkable but listenable "Choosey Susie" (allegedly the same girl as the Princess), the early prototype "Go Buddy Joe" which leavens the relatively straight rock and roll with a taste of their later style, and the noodly live jam "Peasant in the Big Sh*tty" whose infamously jittery 9/4 time signature is only part of why it makes you queasy to listen to. The first and last were apparently included with initial pressings, and the second backed the "Peaches" single; they're not incompetent, but there's good reason they're not on the main album. (Content: innuendo and adult references, some profanity.)

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Europe, The Final Countdown

No one ever accused hair metal of having artistic pretense, and then there's this. To be sure, no one can hate on the absolutely gonzo synthoid hot mess that is the title track; its place of honour in the glam pantheon was guaranteed from the beginning by Joey Tempest's iconic Roland riff and the insistent guitars as long as you don't listen too closely to the lyrics. But, other than a minor local maximum with the competent ballad "Carrie" which I remember liking on FM back in the day, the rest of the album goes downhill from there. It's not that the tracks are ineptly played or badly produced, it's just that they're bad: they all sound the same, the music doesn't have any hot hooks (maybe the guitar solo in "On The Loose," maybe), the lyrics are moronic and the overall feeling is one of self-cannibalization (e.g., the wan retread of "The Final Countdown" in "Love Chaser," nearly exactly the same song, thus making it the second best track on the album because it's also the last one). The absolute low point is probably "Cherokee," where a bunch of white guys lecture other white guys on cultural genocide. Buy the single of the title track for your next 80's party and save yourself from the rest — it's too late for me, kids. The CD reissue makes it worse with three flat live recordings sounding as if they'd been recorded off the gum on the bottom of the mixing board. (Content: no concerns.)

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The Who, Who's next

This was the new bang, the big one. No tarted-up noodling around with R&B, no residual mod trappings (though see Quadrophenia): a fresh, penetrating sound for a tumultuous new decade. My colleague Michael remembers how his mind was blown the first time he threw it on the turntable. Was this the same band that did "Tommy" and "Magic Bus"? Where did this come from? Where could he get more? There is no bad song on this album, none. The order and the lineup could use a little work, evidence of the internal turmoil from the aborted Lifehouse that yielded this glorious vinyl salvage yard, and "Behind Blue Eyes"' harsh arrangement doesn't really correct its unfocused thematic vacuousness, but balance that against the exuberant "Baba O'Riley" with its sparkling, almost mathematically precise synthesizer line, the deeply emotive "The Song Is Over" and "Getting In Tune," Entwistle's cartoonish kneeslapper "My Wife" and, last but hardly least, the cynical and irrepressibly energetic "Won't Get Fooled Again," devastating as a critique of demagoguery, incomparable as an artifact of rock. Even the lesser-known tracks sparkle, including my particular favourite, the simple yet irresistable "Going Mobile," its unerring musical capture of the freedom of the road something everyone should play on any roadtrip anywhere. This was Townshend's high point, his musical peak, unmatched at any other point in his writing career ironically by preventing him from bloating it further into what he thought prog should be. Art thrives on limit and this album proves it. You can blame this album, in fact, for why the band's later works never eclipsed it, not least because it's so good, but more importantly because its success ensured he would be given more artistic freedom than he could be trusted with and for that their later 1970s output suffers greatly by comparison. The CD reissues add various unreleased tracks, most notably the intriguing works-in-progress "Pure and Easy," "Too Much of Anything" and "I Don't Even Know Myself," but also several tedious live tracks which the 2003 release turns into an entire second disc. I like a Who concert as much as anyone but I'll buy a ticket, thanks. (Content: no concerns, though some reissues have sexually provocative inside artwork.)

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Cake, Fashion Nugget

Something of a debut, and something of the fashion, even though it's actually their second record and noticeably, almost obtusely, sui generis. I like the determined horns, the stripped down but clean guitars and the snide delivery of frontman John McCrea; any album that leads off with a reedy organ and a throwaway Sinatra reference at least earns their audience with sheer oddity. In similar fashion, "The Distance," the album's stand-out single, combines brass, bass and almost beatboxy vocals together into a throwback sound that makes you swear you're right at the racetrack with them. Impressively, the music is matched at intervals by lyrics at least as well constructed (such as "Open Book" and particularly the acerbic "Friend Is a Four-Letter Word"), and the sometimes surprising mix of genres wins points for originality. Unfortunately this otherwise promising album also has a number of significant deficiencies, such as a questionable overreliance on covers (including their infamous F-bomb in the otherwise clever retread of "I Will Survive," provoking Gloria Gaynor's everlasting disdain), useless or inscrutable filler like "Race Car Ya-Yas" and "Daria," and the obnoxious "Nugget" which features profanity without a purpose and attitude without a clue. But the country influence is skillful and unique ("She'll Come Back To Me," the Willie Nelson smirker "Sad Songs and Waltzes") and when the style works it's refreshing, proving that alternative bands don't have to be grungy to be interesting. (Content: F-bombs on "I Will Survive" and "Nugget," sexual themes on "Italian Leather Sofa.")

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George Harrison, All Things Must Pass

I find it a truism that double albums infrequently justify their length, triple albums even less so. I've written that in less diplomatic terms on less distinguished outings, but this is George Harrison, and the thoughtful Beatle does deserve a thoughtful listen. Less a true triple album than a double with some odds and sods (which Geo. termed "Apple Jams"), it's as if Harrison, freed of the songwriting tyranny of Lennon-McCartney, just let out every jam line and melody he'd trapped inside himself from the last decade. For a change, however, this is not necessarily to say that the quality is overshadowed by the quantity, with Phil Spector returning as producer (Let It Be) and his Wall of Sound to make every track, even the lesser ones, meaty and memorable. The first record is super-strong, with the heavy but irresistable "Wah-Wah," syrupy but endearing airport chant "My Sweet Lord" (Hare Krishna never sounded so good), the rollicky "What Is Life" with full Spector brass and that famously grabby guitar hook, and the pensive musings of "Run of the Mill" and the plaintive, luxurious 7-minute "Isn't It A Pity." Even the lesser entries aren't bad: "I'll Have You Any Time," "Let It Down" and "Behind That Locked Door" don't do much for me but certainly don't make me think my time was wasted. This is not nearly the case by the time we get to the second record, though. "Beware of Darkness" is a strong start but the obnoxiously folksy "Apple Scruffs" feels like a session castoff from some lesser effort, and it certainly doesn't set up the glorious depths of "Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp" that follows it. It happens again with the weak, embarrassingly trite "I Dig Love" kicking the legs out from the wistful title track that precedes it and the "Wah-Wah" of the second disc, the grim and insistent "Art of Dying," that follows. The stripped-down and foreshortened "version two" of "Isn't It A Pity" feels like a ripoff, and "Hear Me Lord" is a cloying and unsatisfactory conclusion. This fall-off leads very neatly into the third record, the Apple Jam, which is pure instrumental and pure tedium, lots of noodling in various genres that doesn't seem to have a point (though "Thanks for the Pepperoni" and "Out of the Blue" are at least compelling, at least for a little while, until the repetitiousness dooms them like the others). That sort of useless musical tack-on would ordinarily be an argument for three stars, but there's so much incredible musical and compositional talent on the first disc and even at times on the second that the appeal of this otherwise overwrought album cannot be denied. Another double album truism I have is that making some of them half as long would make them twice as good. In this case, though, I'm not sure that assertion holds: there are certainly tracks I can do without, and the entire third disc is a near total throwaway, but even cutting out all that you'd still be left with a darn good double album that few will surpass in its production quality or stylistic variety. All things do indeed pass as he says, even truisms. The various CD reissues add the beguiling "I Live For You," a perennial bootleg that really should have been included on the original pressings, three alternate mixes ("Beware of Darkness," "Let It Down" and "What Is Life") that even as historical artifacts don't contribute much, and the disgustingly overproduced 2000 remix of "My Sweet Lord" done for the 2001 remaster. However, I like the faux gatefold and the mini-sleeves of the 2014 version, and it's definitely never sounded so good. (Content: no concerns.)

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The Best of Sparks: Music That You Can Dance To

What were they thinking? How could America's favourite phony Los Angelino Brits squeeze out something this awful? It all starts with Curb Records' bizarrely misleading title, to which the Mael brothers hold blameless, but the title becomes increasingly inappropriate in that it is hardly their best work nor previously released material and it's only barely danceable merely at intervals (see also Pink Floyd's similarly unadvisedly-named A Collection of Great Dance Songs). The title track leads off well enough, and you can actually wiggle your hips to it a bit, but every other track just fragments into a terminal surfeit of dated New Wave overdrive. Even most of their former lyrical wit is missing with the possibility of "Change," here in its initial underdeveloped form which the band revised into a far greater track on Plagarism, and the minor hit "Modesty Plays," a reworked version of the theme song they did for a failed ABC pilot of Modesty Blaise. Low points include most of the album but particularly "Shopping Mall of Love," an ill-conceived attempt to recover that lost literary verve, and the flat and tedious "Let's Get Funky" which is anything but. The beats don't make sense, the slap bass is inescapable, the synthesizers are even more excessive than usual, and I've heard better orchestral hits out of my toy Casio. "Everybody say yeah! Say yeah!" sings a desperate Russ Mael on "Fingertips," but I'd just say "nah" and look to another of their albums. Any of them but this. (Content: mild adult themes.)

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The Best of The Free Design

A delightful yet inexplicably obscure late '60s band that had a remarkable brief resurrection in 2000, to call them merely "sunshine pop" would probably be unkind and certainly unsatisfactory. Entirely a family affair for eight core albums between 1967 and 1972, this exceptional collection of their brightest and most beautiful outings hits almost all the high points of their surprisingly large discography. Don't write off the band's airy ambience as insubstantial; even for lyrically uncomplicated songs like "Kites Are Fun" and "Bubbles," the soul-soothing feeling of gentle innocence can penetrate the heart of even the most cynical listener, while solid and mature pieces like "Never Tell The World," "Love Me," "Tomorrow Is The First Day of the Rest of My Life" (a song that went endlessly through my head on my wedding day) and — the album's peak — "Butterflies Are Free" inspire delight and melancholy in equal measure with their complex harmonies, moving lyrics and impeccable production. An unerring musical talent on par with Brian Wilson at his best, but far more consistent, this album is nevertheless not for everyone: listeners desiring a harder edge in particular from their music will find this indefatigably smooth album exasperating, the flower and rainbow stylings don't always age well, and the track selection is also occasionally suspect with lesser works such as "Love You," "Daniel Dolphin" and the flatly meandering "Love Does Not Die" maintaining the same level of quality but failing to reach the emotive value of the other, more superior tracks. Their inadequacy is merely by comparison, however, throwing the witty words of the band's frustration in "2002 A Hit Song" into sharp relief: "We’ve done it all right and sealed it with a kiss/There’s just one fact that we can’t quite shirk/We did all this last time, and it did not work!" Unfortunately it still didn't work in the real 2002, and the saddest thing about their lovely music gems is that no one seems to remember their brilliance. (Content: no concerns.)

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Led Zeppelin, Coda

Not even Led Zeppelin can make an album of castoffs work. I'm inclined to cut this one some slack as its very existence is due to the band's unwillingness to continue compromised after John Bonham's untimely death, and for that I salute their integrity, but there's a reason they never used these songs: they're just not very good. Whether it's because they were basically soundchecks elevated to track status ("We're Gonna Groove," "I Can't Quit You Baby"), session castoffs ("Poor Tom," "Wearing and Tearing") or jams without a home ("Bonzo's Montreux"), almost none of these tracks really get off the ground and nearly all suffer technical or compositional flaws of some sort. After all, that's why they weren't ever used before, right? The best ones are probably the leftovers from In Through The Out Door ("Wearing and Tearing," "Darlene" and to a lesser extent "Ozone Baby") because they're the most developed and the most technically polished, but other than the interesting percussion solos of "Bonzo's Montreux" the rest of the album is predictable and predictably forgettable. Throughout Coda I had the distinct feeling that the good stuff was right around the corner, that we were just a bridge away from something marvelous, but nothing ever gelled or shook loose. Sadly, that feeling of unmet expectation is not a good note to end on even though it was the only one they were willing to play. (Content: adult themes on "Poor Tom" and "Darlene.")

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Pink Floyd, Relics

Pink Floyd has never done well in compilation form (as proof, see particularly A Collection of Great Dance Songs but also Works) except for their earlier, less conceptually rigourous outings, which is probably why this one succeeds where other such accumulations fail. A strange throwback album from 1971 when EMI was concerned about their apparent lack of studio output, the label collected a few A-sides and B-sides here and there and a couple odds and sods from some of the previous albums and even threw in the unreleased "Biding My Time," a rare studio version from the live favourite "The Man and the Journey" which was never otherwise properly recorded. Even the album art was a motley bunch, officially a Nick Mason doodle of some Rube Goldbergian contraption, but my LP and cassette have a bizarre four-eyed and double-tongued bottle opener which was used States-side. The problem is not the actual songs, which are solid in and of themselves: for example, leading off with "Arnold Layne," their first big single about a cross-dressing underwear thief (!); then later the gauzy, breezy psychedelia of "See Emily Play," their other big early single; and sandwiched between them, three meditative B-sides ranging from the baroque lyricism of "Julia Dream" to the menacing shrieking terror of "Careful With That Axe, Eugene" (the original version, later remade for film at least twice). No, the real problem is what EMI left out. I rather like "Remember A Day," but there were better tracks on A Saucerful of Secrets, and no one was desperately asking for cuts from More to round out the second half to replace the A-sides they didn't include like "Point Me At The Sky," "Apples and Oranges" or "It Would Be So Nice" -- all of which are only represented by those aforementioned B-sides. For that matter, "Remember A Day" was itself another B-side b/w, er, a/w "Let There Be More Light," from the same album and also omitted, and I'm not sure what the space-jam instrumental "Interstellar Overdrive" or endearingly daffy "Bike" (both from Piper At The Gates of Dawn) are doing here at all. Still, "Biding My Time"'s studio incarnation is excellent, with its jazzy jam middle intact, and it pretty much redeems the second side all by itself. Overall it's a strange album from a strange time, and by no means a complete portrait of their early work, but because it's so weird it's certainly worth a spin. The CD reissue reverts to the original mono (instead of Duophonic) mixes for "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play," flattening them to my ears even though the inclusion is arguably more authentic, and actually has a photograph of Mason's contraption fully built in miniature which I am told now sits on his desk. (Content: mildly adult themes in "Arnold Layne," implied violence in "Careful With That Axe.")

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Aerosmith, Toys In The Attic

I don't think the now more (they could hardly have been less) mature and, at least comparatively, refined incarnation of Aerosmith would agree, but ... they really need to get back on drugs. Because those drugs brought us this, even finer than Rocks (oh, the irony), more developed than Walk The Line, and, well, better than just about every other album they've done, stoned or sober. Of course, the drugs are what made the later '70s albums worse, because they always do, but at least for a time the cocaine made incredible magic. There's the breezy nonsense of "Walk This Way," still unequaled after all these years despite Run-DMC's iconic hiphop refurb; snarky, raunchy blues in the thinly disguised double entendre "Big Ten Inch Record," a surprisingly weighty yet brisk ballad on child abuse in "Uncle Salty" and even some soulful, if admittedly silly, moments in "You See Me Crying," my favourite guilty pleasure on the whole album for its syrupy hokiness. Plus, yes, plenty of heavy cut-it-with-a-razor-blade rock, running all the way from the title track to "Adam's Apple" to concert favourites like "Sweet Emotion" and "Round and Round," with the blase "No More No More" being the only weak cut in an album of sheer, unadulterated, white clouds of bliss. I hope it's obvious how fully in my cheek my tongue is saying this, but look at what a couple well-placed lines will do for your creative output. If being drugged out would have prevented them from releasing Just Push Play, I say bring back the mirrors. The CD reissue adds "Dream On" as a bonus track, a tremendous mitzvah, because then you don't need to buy that other unmentionable album just to get their first great single. It was the grass that was responsible for the rest of that dreck, you see. (Content: adult themes, a couple mild expletives.)

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Funkadelic, America Eats Its Young

An interesting but deeply flawed double outing from the P-Funk collective's early days, with its acid and funk roots plainly exposed. The album is certainly at least as literate as its predecessors while boasting substantially higher production values; the best example of this would probably be the second track, "If You Don't Like The Effects, Don't Produce The Cause," which is part enjoyable groove, part black Greek chorus condemning inaction and hypocrisy towards collective social advancement. If that was the tone for what I can only imagine Geo. Clinton considered a unifying concept, and the album stuck to that, I think the effect would probably have been much better (or at least coherent). But, presumably for commercial appeal, he also throws in the obliquely explicit (and not so obliquely: "I Call My Baby Pussycat" wasn't its original name), the sophomoric (the high-concept "Loose Booty," though the backbeat is good) and the obnoxiously saccharine ("We Hurt Too," y'know, ladies), and ends up sullying the overall unity. Bright spots, besides the second track, are an extremely competent Hendrix impersonation ("Philmore"), the Motowny and philosophically complex "Biological Speculation" ("y'all see my point?"), and a silly interpolation of "Jesus Loves Me" in "A Joyful Process," though this otherwise entertaining piece further gives the impression he doesn't actually take his central message seriously (whatever it is). Don't just take my word for it: the CD reissue, in bold capital letters on page three of the liner notes, calls it "disparate, sprawling and in no ways unified." And indeed listening to the title track, sort of a juxtaposition of "Maggot Brain" (complete with stentorian musings) and the slinky stylings of a porno flick, while the ending female obbligato moans, grunts and gasps as if more young were being made for consumption I couldn't make sense of what he was communicating or why I should care. And neither, apparently, did he. The CD reissue adds the 45rpm mono singles of "Loose Booty" and "A Joyful Process," which being two of the better tracks, are not improved by their abridgment. (Content: adult themes, sexual and drug references.)

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The Clash, Combat Rock

Their finest hour. The one where longtime fans accused them of selling out, and new, yet to be indocrinated fans, said, "who?" An unjustified assessment on both counts, because make no mistake: their bleeding hearts are just as proudly fixed on their torn T-shirts as ever in their long corpus of works (this is, after all, the band that brought you the questionably excessive Sandinista!), as evidenced by the unerring, unvarnished demands for social justice from the very first track ("Know Your Rights" even) and the sick, provocative confrontation of postmodern British and American racism in "Straight To Hell." ("Lemme tell ya 'bout your blood, bamboo kid," whitesplains a venomous Joe Strummer to his putative half-breed offspring. "It ain't Coca-Cola, it's rice.") No, you don't need to share in their brand of aggressive progressivism to enjoy classics like "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" (though Spanish helps) and "Rock the Casbah," or for something a little less overplayed, the bleakly funky "Atom Tan." Every such A-side is a jam in this truly triumphant return to chaotic form. But even the minor moments shine, such as a musical example of Poe's law in the darkly satirical "Red Angel Dragnet," the rappin'-trappin's of beat icon Allen Ginsberg's monotone behind "Ghetto Defendant" and my personal favourite, the sparkling violent menace of "Death Is a Star," a critique of the public appetite mixing lounge lizard sensibilities with mass murder. Something for everyone. (Content: stylized violence, mature themes, some harsh epithets.)

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Depeche Mode, Spirit

I have to confess I don't understand this album. I know why they made it, and it's at least somewhat listenable, to the extent that it sounds a bit like their earlier output and puts on the same post-New Wave artistic pretenses. (And I'm favourably disposed to their earlier output, mind you. Violator was excellent, one of the best albums in my vault, and "Somebody" was the song that I swooned to my high-school crush over.) But like so many comeback attempts it feels more like a band vainly trying to remember how they played, and they spend too much time on technique than music. Dave Gahan mercifully still has his vocal chops (contrast with, e.g., Roger Daltrey), and the group gets it together in a few places like the insistent and refreshingly creepy "So Much Love," plus the more typically styled "No More (This Is The Last Time)," with enough get-up-and-go to carry the second half until its sudden flatten-out at the end. But there are too many low points along the way like the wan and crufty "Scum" with its obnoxious distortion and insipid beat, "Eternal" in which we lower our standards for love and passion, and the end's strangely appropriate "Fail." It's slickly produced by half with the possible exception of the weak cover art and that smudged logo, but by the end I felt like nothing ever really shook loose, and nothing really stood out. "We have not evolved," sings Dave solemnly in the first track. "We're going backwards." And I certainly concur this album didn't move them forwards. (Content: a couple F-bombs.)

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REM, Dead Letter Office/Chronic Town

This rare bifurcated rating is because this "album" is, bluntly, a scam. I have to hand it to IRS for the brilliance of taking a steaming turd compilation album of steaming turds and combining it with a decent, if short and relatively inexpert, EP to simultaneously simplify their catalogue and use castoff tracks to pad it to LP length and charge more for it. So let's do the good stuff first: Chronic Town is a nice little album, unpretentious but solid, the prototype of their mumbly pre-Green janglepop in five generally tight tracks. Being an EP there isn't much of it, of course, and that's not to say there isn't room for improvement; for example, I prefer the more soulful Hib-Tone version of "Gardening At Night" (as found on Eponymous, a far better collection than this one) and the overall pacing is a little uneven (pro tip: go "Wolves, Lower," "Gardening At Night," "Carnival of Sorts," "1,000,000" and "Stumble," and then thank me later), but this album has enough quality moments and enough historical interest to be worth owning even by only the casual REM interest. That brings us to the rotgut. It's not (just) that the remaining tracks are bad, it's that they're (also) horribly underdeveloped. Some of them might even be decent if polished. They didn't polish them. The loony Pylon cover they lead off with ("Crazy") sets the tone: it's listenable, even vaguely danceable if you're stoned, but it's like it gave them permission to proudly produce three more execrable defilements, two of Velvet Underground and even a (gurgle) Aerosmith track. Of the rest some are variations on each other ("Ages Of You," probably the only other decent track, versus "Burning Down"), some are trial balloons they apparently just gave up on ("Wind Out," which somehow lives down to its name, "Burning Hell" with the kind of slightly perturbed harmonics suggesting they tuned up on barbituates, and "Rotary Ten") and some are absolutely inexplicable ("Voice of Harold," which uses the already inscrutable "Seven Chinese Brothers" as a backing as Michael Stipe sings — I kid you not — the liner notes of a schlocky gospel album to the melody). The prize bomb is "Walters Theme/King of the Road," which combines an actual drunken recording session, a local barbeque ad and the completely innocent and undeserving Roger Miller standard into an unmitigated auditory war crime. How do we know all this? Because Peter Buck apologizes for it in the liner notes. Yes. The band knew it was that bad, IRS knew it was that bad, and I still bought the album anyway because I lost my old cassette tape and this is the only way you can get Chronic Town on CD. So bravo, IRS. It's brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. I hope you burn in hell. (Content: I think there's a couple muffled curses in there. Please don't make me listen to this again to find out.)

Chronic Town: 🌟🌟🌟
Dead Letter Office: 🌟

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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