Zee, Identity

A side-project of Pink Floyd's Richard Wright after his unceremonious departure from the band, this odd collabouration between Wright (atypically not on lead vocals) and Fashion's Dave Harris dates badly to modern ears; its dismal reputation may be somewhat inflated by legend, but only somewhat. Wright's synthesizers are omnipresent, often cloying and even tiresome, there are too many ümläüts on the back, and Harris' vocal range on the album is as unimpressive as his lyrics. That doesn't mean there aren't good tracks: "Confusion" is a competent opener, "Private Person" has its moments, and I rather enjoyed "Strange Rhythm" because of its bizarrely fascinating samples, world music beat and Harris' Bowie-style vocals. On the other hand, there's "Voices," which is dopey and dissonant, "Cuts Like A Diamond" doesn't and closer "Seems We Were Dreaming" is limp, repetitive and almost lazy in its sparing arrangement. There's not enough Wright to please Floyd fans, there's not enough Fàshiön fans to care, and while interesting as a collector's curiosity it's no surprise this modern reexamination of this strange album shows it has not improved with time. The CD reissue adds one B-side in its 7" and 12" forms and the single cuts of "Confusion," which I suppose is better than the shoveled-on rough mixes many such reissues do. However, the liner notes are dense and interesting despite the typos and the less-than-pro layout, and Fairlight fans (because there's an awful lot of Fairlight on this album) will enjoy the 2-page musician's perspective on that iconic device. (Content: no concerns.)

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Macintosh Plus, Floral Shoppe

I like interesting musical experiments, and I like the Mac Plus (the first Mac I ever used), and overall I like this. To be sure, vapo(u)rwave is a partially acquired taste; the stuttery starts and recordskippy bits, for example, may be a deliberate design aesthetic but they mostly just make an otherwise ethereal experience choppy (particularly "Geography," which is frankly obnoxious). On the other hand, the spread-out-like-peanut-butterrrrr super slow sample jams (Diana Ross! ... Pages?!) underlie this album's biggest winners all sedate, sumptuous and even just a little bit satirical in their deliberate excesses. I could have "Lisa Frank 420" on loop all day with Diana's slowlooped purr floating in the air, or better still this album's best jam, the pleasingly and atypically more conventional "Chill Diving With Ecco," which despite its seemingly deliberate repetitiveness never seems to grow old (see also "Te"). Like most derivative styles, this one from chillwave, the format steals too much from its ancestors to truly stand alone and this exemplar of the form seems to have its best moments when it frankly rips them off, but that doesn't mean it's not enjoyable. The cassette reissue (!) slightly changes the playlist as do the various digital releases, not better, just different, all of which can be found online at various locations including the Internet Archive. (Content: no concerns.)

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DeVotchKa, How It Ends

A quirky landmark in gypsy punk, this unusual album from a unique band is easily unlike anything you've ever heard before, and that's not just for having more accordion music than a Weird Al-themed bar mitzvah. The band is at its best when it's at its most pensive; witness the heartrent wistful moans of Nick Urata on "Dearly Departed" and the almost jangle-pop "Too Tired," along with the beguiling instrumental "Charlotte Mittnacht." Their stunt styles are less solid, though: I rather like the crazed Romany klezmer feel of "Lunnaya Pogonka" but it gets a little old on "Such A Lovely Thing," and I don't care for their mariachi moments in "We're Leaving" and "The Enemy Guns" (complete with white guy Spanish) really much at all. (Not to mention the odd "Viens Avec Moi" which defies categorization in a bad way.) Still, the album wins points for fearless creativity and general listenability, though the star of this variegated pageant is undeniably the beautiful title track's soulful meditation upon futility, recapitulated to great effect in the closing "Reprise." Given that, I'd have to say it ends well. (Content: no concerns.)

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Albin de la Simone

An interesting album from a new and talented Frenchman, this début nevertheless suffers the same sort of identity crisis many first such albums do. There are many jazzy, fluffy moments that make you feel like you're walking about the Seine on a sunny day, including the charming intro ("Ils cueillent des jonquilles" [They pick daffodils]) and the folksy, off-kilter "Ton pommier," but there are also mildly obnoxious europop moments ("avant tout, I want you", the second track, even), slink ("Elle aine," with guest Feist singing her other Canadian language), pensive impressionism ("Délice"), even a bit of baroque rock ("Tu es là"). I wasn't too enamoured of some of the derivative pieces on the second half (the dull "Cigare" and the aimless "Les piranhas" in particular), but while he may be stylistically tres confus at times there is one brilliant track that manages to tie it all together, the seventh and best ("Quand j'aurai du temps" [When I have time]), springy, zesty, complex and far too short. (My second favourite, "Amour, amitié" [Love, friendship], the album's brooding vibrato-laden closer.) As unfocused as it is there's a lot here to like, and even if his style never settles the skill in this unusual yet appealing first effort is still reward enough. (Content: couldn't find a problem, but my French is terrible.)

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REM, Lifes Rich Pageant

Upon purchasing this CD in high school I noticed that the jewel case spines were upside down and carefully detached them and taped them right side up back into position. It did not dawn on me that this might have been a deliberate artistic quirk on the bands part, like the general eschewing of apostrophes, the completely disordered track listing and the number R which comes after 3 and before 5; to this day the jewel case in my office is still like that. This is only one of the many artistic novelties of the album but the biggest was to discard generally the moody air of the troubled Fables of the Reconstruction for a lighter, more eighties-rock flair while keeping their political sensibilities intact. Indeed, lead track "Begin the Begin" reminds the listener the goal is still revolution(ary): their ecological message, soon to be developed further on Green, shines through in "Cuyahoga" replete with burning river references, the dangerous death squads of central America become the poisonous Amanita among the blooms of the populace in the Murmur-esque "The Flowers of Guatemala," and "Hyena" mixes the riff from "These Days" with a fable on the posturing of warlords and the album's most quotable lyric ("the only thing to fear is fearlessness"). Michael Stipe can still get himself tied up in his own intertexual references (witness "Just a Touch" and "Swan Swan H"), but even these are worthy listens, and the exuberant "What If We Give It Away?" and especially "I Believe" (with charismatic rattlesnake church reference) are a welcome return to classic form. The album highlight, though, is the second of two secret tracks (theres another artistic quirk), the band's cover of The Clique's "Superman," whose driving beat, surf rock harmonies and relentlessly bravado lyrics made it and keep it one of the high points in 1980's college pop. One of the last of their IRS releases, the band was poised for a new feel and a wider audience moving to Warner Brothers, but this album fortunately avoids the stylistic instability other lesser bands have suffered during those transitions and greatly to its credit. Later IRS reissues add several of the horrid crappy covers and B-sides from Dead Letter Office (q.v.), and the 25th anniversary version adds the so-called Athens Demos, early versions of Lifes tracks no one was asking for (plus a couple different crappy tracks). But then I suppose you don't have to buy Dead Letter Office to find out how bad they are, so they might be doing us a favour. (Content: no concerns.)

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Johnny Cash, American IV: The Man Comes Around

Listening to the flaps and slaps of his lips stickied by illness and his lispy voice quavered by years, Cash's final album may be eclipsed by his storied discography but not by its raw emotion in this simple, acoustic production. The covers dominate the track list, but not generally to its detriment, especially his sombre tones of regret in Sting's "I Hung My Head" and his words only for June as he sings, earthily and unvarnished, of the "First Time Ever I Saw Your Face." Plus, no one can bring the hoarse truculence of Tex Ritter to a modern audience ("Sam Hall") better than Johnny. (Then again, there's his schlocky version of Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus," more amusing for its novelty than its actual skill, though I think Cash got the joke more than Martin Gore did.) The album's flaws are not small in number, especially the poor arrangement of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and the warbly off-key deviations in Lennon-McCartney's "In My Life" and others, and "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" is a strange choice tonally (as is his duet with Nick Cave); stranger still is that two stronger tracks from the original double LP ("Wichita Lineman" and "Big Iron") are completely missing from the current single-LP pressings and CD releases, apparently never to return. Fortunately, one song was not cut: none captures the wonder of this album more than "Hurt," the Trent Reznor track that despite the same lyrics, even the same music, turns a despairing, venomous flirtation with darkness into something upbeat, even hopeful, carried by resonant chords, stark guitar and that defiant voice. No sinner and no saint, and let alone the same person, captured the fumbling, faltering journey to God better than this self-described "biggest sinner of them all" and I can think of very few performers who ended great careers on terms as magnificent as this death mask of music. In songs like the traditional "Danny Boy" and "Streets of Laredo," and the album's sunny, hopeful conclusion in "We'll Meet Again," we know he faced his end with peace knowing the Man in Black will be washed white as snow. Godspeed. (Content: drug references on "Hurt," adult themes on "First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.")

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Syd Barrett, The Madcap Laughs

There must be some term, somewhere, to refer to the contemptible yet commonplace vicarious pleasure derived from observing someone's descent into madness. Indeed, Syd Barrett's slipping grip was long the stuff of prog rock folklore and this album unfailingly captures every oozing pustule of it. The songs veer from childish ("Terrapin") to compositionally disorganized ("No Good Trying", "Here I Go", "Feel") to monotonous ("Long Gone", "Late Night") to lyrically meandering ("Dark Globe," "She Took a Long Cold Look"), though honestly much of this album fits well into any or all of those dubious categories. A few gems stand out, such as "Love You" for its tinkling whimsy (until it tangles up at the end), the Hendrixy "No Man's Land" and shades of "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" in the bafflingly short James Joyce-penned "Golden Hair," and "Octopus" at least seems to start and end on something you can get your arms around, but even these feel like unpolished stones waiting for the producer's final pass rather than finished tracks. Not that the production could have done much with them: Barrett, through both his naturally difficult personality and his worsening psychological state, managed to get both Pete Jenner and Malcolm Jones to the point they wouldn't work with him further, and only former Pink Floyd bandmates Roger Waters and David Gilmour could coax out any level of consistency. No, the real fault lies with EMI, who thought they could make a few quid off this sort of musical road fatality; listen to him almost disintegrate on tape in the interval between "Feel" and "If It's In You." These songs are the evidence of a tragic man plummeting away from reality and I just can't endorse a cynical gawk at another human being's uncomprehending downward spiral. The later reissues add various works-in-progress as bonus tracks; you would be forgiven for finding them as inscrutable as the originals. (Content: no concerns.)

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The Beatles, Revolver

Revolver comes in second on my best Beatles album list, second only to the exalted perfection that is Abbey Road (q.v.), more tight and focused than the White Album and less full of itself than Sgt. Pepper. Despite that, though, it is adventurous and varied, and while it is not as rarefied or polished as Abbey Road that in and of itself makes it rather more interesting. Besides old throwbackish favourites like "Taxman," "I Want To Tell You" and "Got To Get You Into My Life," it also includes the technologically dazzling (and stylistically sudden) "Tomorrow Never Knows" as well as "I'm Only Sleeping," mixing backwards tracks and Indian-inspired guitars into primal and otherworldly harmony; George Martin's indispensable light touch production shines through on the strings on "Eleanor Rigby" and the Byrds-esque "She Said She Said" but for me most poignantly on the tragic "For No One," reminding me of crushes dashed and bygone days, and if "Love You To" is a little heavy on the tabla and "And Your Bird Can Sing" a little light on sophistication, there's no sin in being merely just good. While some of these tracks (notoriously "Yellow Submarine") might get overplayed a bit on your local oldies station, consider it a compliment paid to a particularly innovative and transformational album from a band that's had quite a few of them. In these overproduced times a little imperfection goes a long way. (Content: mild adult themes on "Love You To.")

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Maroon 5, Songs About Jane

I don't know if it's good counseling advice to turn a prolonged breakup into an entire album, and some of its more emotional moments are probably more creepy than frontman Adam Levine intended (especially the otherwise pleasant "She Will Be Loved," with guys hanging out in the rain looking for girls with broken smiles), but regardless of where it came from, dwelling on his tragic muse probably wasn't a good choice musically. Lead-ins "Harder to Breathe" and "This Love" deserve their considerable airplay, and the U2-esque "Must Get Out" mercifully rescues a sagging middle, but the gas runs out in their tank awfully early: "Tangled"'s relatively unoriginal cadences are dull and the lyrics are the usual self-flagellating regret, "The Sun" is a snoozer (plus "seven miles from the sun" seems a fit metaphor for simply flaming out), and both "Secret" and "Through With You" come off as moody, inane and unfocused. Similarly, the stylistic shifts you see with new bands are sometimes more jarring than interesting, such as the otherwise competent "Sunday Morning," whose "all I need" chorus feels a little too R&B even against this album's anti-grittiness. "Sweetest Goodbye"'s slower tempo and meatier licks close the album well, but really only by echoing the beginning at three-quarters' speed. There isn't enough fun here to recommend it, and while its singles are solid alternative pop on their own they just don't support the rest of the album. I mean, really: wouldn't you expect a lot of low points from an album written about what was then his lowest point of all? (Content: no concerns.)

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The Best of the Specials

The Specials are special because over their brief existence they didn't really know what they wanted to be: are they ska? Are they soul? Are they reggae? Do they care? Not particularly, and that generally worked for a brief period until the band said a collective "sod it" after four years, three albums and lots of dry cleaning bills for their two-tone suits. (Ignoring, of course, the chaotic period of the Special AKA culminating in In The Studio, and the various later and only tangentially related reincarnations.) This CD/DVD collection is superior to their other compilations because it tries to take a good cross-section of their albums as well as their better known singles, so the completists will enjoy it particularly, though their best work wasn't ever released on any LP at the time ("Gangsters" and "Ghost Town" especially). In fact, with only three albums to choose from, maybe four if you count the live EP Too Much Too Young (solely represented here by the title track's infamous ode to contraception), this disc ends up regurgitating a fair bit of them and even includes their weaker moments (for me, the nadir is "Racist Friend," which shows cancel culture was just as much a thing in Thatcherian England). Jerry Dammers is no Paul Weller or even Joe Strummer, and his unsophisticated lyrical acumen undercuts his message (especially exemplified by "Doesn't Make It Alright" and "War Crimes," and to a lesser extent "Nelson Mandela" though you can't hate that beat), but the band's dogged willingness to adopt just about any musical style they thought they could jam to means pretty much everyone's going to find at least part of their collective works entertaining. Look out for my second favourite Specials track "What I Like Most About You Is Your Girlfriend" and the most inexplicable music video ever made to accompany it, which you can experience on the DVD in all of Dammers' leering gaptoothed extraterrestrial glory. I don't review DVDs here, but this one is noteworthy not only for featuring live footage ("On Video") but also that and several other music videos ("On Film") including several tracks that don't appear on the CD at all. American fans, do note the second disc is PAL; it's a good thing Blu-ray saved us from television standards with oppressive digital rights management instead. (Content: some adult themes.)

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The Beach Boys, Surf's Up

Much as the Santa Monica surf can be, Surf's Up is an incredibly uneven album from a band itself not noted for consistency, but at its peaks it is without peer. A sudden left turn into the nascent ecological consciousness of the early 1970s, the album's best moments are when it mixes innovative, richly layered musicmaking with subtle message and lyric symbolism. This is certainly not the case for the cloddish "Don't Go Near the Water," a terrible way to start the album, and "Student Demonstration Time," a counterculture grind that reeks of desperate irrelevance; nor does "Lookin' At Tomorrow (A Welfare Song)" wear well with its hackneyed social message or the uninspired "Take A Load Off Your Feet," and it should not be considered a coincidence that none of these, save the last, had any involvement from Brian Wilson. Conversely, the final three were primarily or entirely his work, including "A Day in the Life of a Tree," the album's most intriguing track: its lyrics are transparent and almost laughably amateurish, penned by new manager Jack Rieley, but his quavery, faltering delivery against Wilson's stark and subdued arrangement makes it unexpectedly captivating. This goes double for "Til I Die"'s poetic symmetry and wall-of-sound shifting harmonies as well as the introspective title and final track, moody and circuitous but resignedly earnest, a metaphorical elegy for their surf rock days. I would be remiss, of course, not to mention the album's technical masterpiece "Feel Flows" with its sophisticated layer effect and a remarkable reverse echo double-tracked vocal from Carl Wilson, and the first (and only worthwhile) incarnation of "Disney Girls (1957)" later to be butchered by lesser covers and even Bruce Johnston himself. There is so much to like on this album that the low points are almost forgivable; although its vain attempts to invoke contemporary themes occasionally come off as forced, from time to time it still amazes me with its rarefied creativity and deep sincerity even if it can't manage to do so consistently. The 2000 CD reissue pairs this as a double album with the inexplicably less beloved Sunflower, a rare album for the band with its generally more uniform quality, but as such simultaneously lacking the inspired genius of Surf's Up's more outstanding moments — though, to be sure, the lugubriousness of its lesser ones as well. (Content: no concerns.)

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Charanjit Singh, Synthesizing: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat

This rather obscure record is worth tracking down not only for its unusual subject matter but also because it's immensely listenable and incredibly ahead of its time. A true acid house outing years before that was actually a thing, Singh took ten exemplars of Indian classical music (roughly one raga each of the ten thaats) and with Roland synthesizers under his fingers fashioned an unlikely Eurodisco merger that nevertheless rapidly transcends those disjointed origins. The tracks can sometimes sound similar to the uncultured ear, and the individual arrangements are at times less innovative than the overall concept, but the revved-up and rapid-fire beats never sa(a)g and the trilling, expansive arpeggios never falter. No one track stands out over any other but this is probably exactly the effect Singh intended. Although potentially tedious to the non-classicist, both devotees of world music and denizens of trip will find many things here they'll like in what was, in its day, an unjustifiably underappreciated gem. (Content: no concerns.)

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