David Bowie, ★ (Blackstar)

What album would you write knowing it would be your last? That, posthumously, you could rest in the grave, the recording done, your sensibilities preserved and your artistic vision unfettered? Every musician should hope God grants them a last word on their own terms, and David Bowie got one: no compromises, no concessions to the pop charts, an eccentric, eclectic self-elegy shipped under the noses of a public unaware he was even ill. And, two days after its release, we have this album yet we have not him. Eternity suffuses the unfiltered emotions in the lyrics, from a man saved from his own execution by another ("★") to Lazarus in heaven against us collective Divëses below ("Lazarus"), even as he reassures Sue — or maybe us — that the clinic called and the X-ray's fine ("Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime)"). Was he telling us all along he was "dying to[o]" ("Dollar Days")? Was he trying to? Every style he wanted he played: there's Nadsat and Polari ("Girl Loves Me"), earthy baroque ("'Tis A Pity She Was A Whore") and symphonic pop along with classic Bowie at the end with "Dollar Days" and the album's heartfelt closer "I Can't Give Everything Away" — a presumably deliberate irony as he gave us this very treasure to remember him by, its brilliance and unyielding intransigence even extending to the unreadable black on black of the liner notes. Everything about this masterpiece is sumptuous and unsullied, daring you to take him as he was and rewarding you with its sophistication when you do. Even a jerk music critic like me can't pierce the grave with my sharp wit nor effusive praise, but for an album as incredible as this one, let this summary be my attempt to try. (Content: sexual themes in "'Tis A Pity She Was A Whore," F-bombs in "Girl Loves Me," mild language in "Lazarus" and "Dollar Days.")

★★★★★

Sixpence None The Richer

This is not actually their début but one might accurately call it their crossing-over. Originating as a slight act in the Christian alternative scene, this outwardly secular third album expands their oeuvre and enlivens their style without compromising their perspective. While This Beautiful Mess was somewhat moody and overly prone to navel-gazing, Matt Slocum's songwriting has both matured and lightened to leaven the pensiveness with better beats and a little pop yet preserve the signature lyrical heft so sweetly delivered by lead Leigh Nash. Whether a meditation on emotion's fragility ("I Won't Stay Long") or just a gentle plea for romantic affirmation ("Can't Catch You"), her breathy nightingale vocals serve as the band's soul while the richer production by Steve Taylor yields a stronger body. The spiritual themes have not been abandoned ("Anything," "Moving On"), yet they ground the album without smothering it just as much as the sugary moments like "Kiss Me" don't trivialize it. It's not perfect — the Pablo Neruda-derived "Puedo Escribir" is fatally pretentious, one jarring note in a great symphony — but the fact they stay true to themselves throughout only makes this earnest, appealing album more delightful. The reissue adds "There She Goes," another airy single in the vein of "Kiss Me" and no less charming. (Content: no concerns.)

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Pearl Jam, Vitalogy

Bands that believe their own hype believe they can play what they want and this makes for interesting musical studies: sometimes you get the Beatles, and sometimes you get this. Now, for a band to have sufficient hype they have to be sufficiently good, and therefore rarely are such high-on-hype albums bad. Vitalogy generally exemplifies this principle but it's largely because of the songs that aren't so strange; the alternative ballads like "Better Man" and "Nothingman" play the best because they're not so off the wall, and there's some good bluesy rock in "Whipping," "Corduroy" and (in spite of the cheesily transparent metaphor) "Spin The Black Circle." However, their self-granted libertinitude in the studio doesn't prevent a couple by the numbers tracks ("Not For You") yet aides and abets the creation of various other musical deformities ("Pry, To" plus the sped-up musings of the mentally ill in "Hey Foxymophandlemama, That's Me" and the abusive accordions and flyswatters (!) of "Bugs"). It also birthed the impressive yet baffling deluxe nonsense of the packaging, the CD in a tightfitting sleeve and the booklet a simultaneous satire and shrine of a billion early medical condemnations of self-abuse. That's a good description of this album: they clearly enjoyed themselves while doing it, but it's not something all of us would like to observe for 55 minutes. The reissue adds three uninteresting alternate takes. (Content: adult themes and some mild-moderate language.)

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Tim Buckley, Greetings From L.A.

In the bistro queue in regional New South Wales, upon hearing my audibly American accent amongst a sea of Aussies, my friendly, rotund and unavoidable neighbour in line exclaimed that his favourite record — which he apparently plays regularly to this day — was this one. As a resident of the greater City of the Angels, I promised him I'd give it a spin. The album art is promisingly snarky enough, with a postcard of the suffocating smog I remember as a kid and Buckley in stamps on the back in a gas mask (the postcard, written to Herb Cohen and Mo Ostin, no less, also doubles as the track listing and was even removable in the earliest pressing), and Buckley's delivery here has all the sensuously hazy Jim Morrison depth of those L.A. days but a much more flexible range. Unfortunately, it's the actual songs that are the problem. There's some decent rock ("Night Hawkin'" in particular) and a fair bit of competent acid jazz, and as no prude I appreciate the submerged eroticism inherent in those styles, but Buckley is just far too horny to listen to. Between encouraging infidelity ("Move With Me") or foot fetishes ("Devil Eyes") or even prostitution and, gulp, a little whippin' ("Make It Right"), there's nothing this man wouldn't have indulged in; the excessive "Get On Top" is probably the most egregious of these, and with that title it doesn't take much imagination to figure out why. "Sweet Surrender" shows he was perfectly capable of cooking with the lid on, and his mournful bluesy elegy to a lover who left ("Hong Kong Bar") is maturely earthy without being dirty, but the rest of this smouldering pay-by-the-hour motel room comes across as way too much and way too strong. My wife and I had a nice dinner, and I had a nice chat, but as pleasant a chap as he was I don't think we have much overlap in music. (Content: sexual references and adult themes.)

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Beastie Boys, Licensed To Ill

The album's barely disguised misogynist tendencies (and not so disguised, see "Girls") wear pretty bad in these enlightened times — for that matter, so has Russell Simmons — and the overall feel of a second-rate frat party before the cops roll up permeates almost all of the first half. But what this record profoundly lacks in tact and social graces it makes up for with some truly original, genre-straddling hip hop: there's "Fight For Your Right" and "No Sleep Till Brooklyn," one more punk than rap and the other the reverse but darn good at both, the famous reversed 808 beat with a reversed revolutionary tale in "Paul Revere" and of course the party favourite "Brass Monkey" with all of its deep bass, howling horns and shallow alcoholic storyline. The production is hungry and minimal and the samples fast, furious and uncompensated, but the beat don't stop and neither does the boisterous attitude (like lead-in "Rhymin & Stealin" and "Slow and Low"). Kurtis Blow they weren't, but if you like your hip-hop raw, raucous and Jewish, it's time to get ill. (Content: sexual and drug references.)

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Nick Mason's Fictitious Sports

I put this album firmly in the camp of "just go with it." There is no explaining nor comprehending the title, the oddly low-effort Hipgnosis album art or the sometimes jarring juxtaposition of styles (primarily Soft Machine-style Canterbury rock, and Robert Wyatt himself even sings the majority, though jazz and prog get thrown in too just for startle effect). "Can't Get My Motor To Start" is an oddly fascinating way to begin, but like the protagonist car it takes far too long to get moving, and tracks like "Do Ya?" are just messy as well as perplexing. Likewise, "Wervin'" is best described as a recording studio DUI, though I like the musical impressions of panicked horns and headlights; "I Was Wrong" has a compelling beat, and the slower minor-keyed moments in "I'm a Mineralist" and "Hot River" are meaty and satisfying, but they're no less odd and there just aren't enough of them in this album's relatively short running time for a filling meal. The best way to experience these confabulatory competitions is with Mason's new mini-box set Unattended Baggage containing this, Profiles and his soundtrack from White of the Eye, complete with the pseudo-LP packaging presently in fashion for compact discs. None of the others are particularly strong albums on their own either, but like Fictitious Sports they have their moments, and at least you won't be paying much for any one of them as an item. (Content: mild adult themes on "Hot River" and "I'm a Mineralist.")

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Paul Simon, Stranger to Stranger

I know of at least three Paul Simons, one of them semi-personally, but this was the first one I ever heard the voice of and decades later his pipes still sound largely the way I remember. Roy Halee is back to helm and this can sometimes be a recipe for disaster when late-career musicians aren't reined in by late-career producers, but the album starts out well enough with the menacingly wry throwback shuffle of "The Werewolf" and its jazzy jam "Wristband." I also enjoyed the instrumental interludes as a change of pace ("In the Garden of Edie," though, really?), and "Proof of Love" has some of his strongest and most enjoyably complex soundwork yet. Simon's usually more trenchant personality sketches fail him here, however, in that the music isn't compelling and the people aren't sympathetic ("Street Angel" on one hand, but particularly "In A Parade" with its namedrops of antipsychotic medication and the atypically profane "Cool Papa Bell"); similarly, the title track feels almost like he couldn't get the words out fast enough, vainly chasing the pro forma beat with his syllables as the session band plays on obliviously. Fortunately, a spark of the old Simon shows in the ethereal conclusion of "Insomniac's Lullaby," sleeping soon unto death, perfectly capturing those disquieting moments of meditation on the void to come and the hope to be after. Despite the title, he doesn't feel like a stranger to me with that same voice playing in my head since my younger days, and even as one-trick ponies go — and this album still is that — I'm glad he's still crazy after all these years. The deluxe edition adds a couple cast-off tracks which are interesting but short and not on the main album for various good reasons, and his self-cover duet of "New York Is My Home" with Dion is sluggish and uninspired, but the live versions of "Duncan" and "Wristband" (recorded from A Prairie Home Companion) are remarkably compelling and fresh especially to someone like me who usually doesn't consider live tracks to be bonuses. (Content: F-bombs on "Cool Papa Bell" and adult themes on "Duncan.")

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Cake, Comfort Eagle

It's a fair cop to say this album is more of the same, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but the innovation of Fashion Nugget isn't nearly as innovative the second time around (the perplexing Prolonging the Magic notwithstanding). There's still snark and satire ("Commissioning a Symphony in C") and odd name dropping ("Meanwhile, Rick James ..." though I like the beat), but they take a backseat to the character studies ("Opera Singer," probably one of the album's most inspired moments, or "Shadow Stabbing") and lyrics which on balance manage to be more thought-provoking than simply perfunctory. Unfortunately, the stylistic variety isn't nearly as sophisticated; the arrangements skew more conventional alternative, and somewhat to its detriment, though John McCrea's vocals still cut effectively through the occasional moments of ennui. Indeed, the standout jam ("Short Skirt/Long Jacket") is really just a bowdlerized "Frank Sinatra," with the same vocal rap but rhythm guitar instead of organ, and his voice isn't enough to save the title track which throws a lot of catchphrases around in a bid for relevance but ends up being aggressive nonsense ("Dude!"). Likewise, the closer "World of Two" almost achieves the stark acidity of "Friend is A Four Letter Word" but its interesting chord choices don't benefit much from the more-of-the-same-style production. I'll give them a pass on this record and suggest at the parent-teacher conference that they're bright and they'd get better grades if they just sat down and did the work. (Content: no concerns.)

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Pet Shop Boys, Introspective

I think I'm a pretty introspective dude personally but no amount of introspection can bring me to understand this album. Less a record than an effort-free splatter of 12"-style mixes, the production is as good as usual but the music itself varies from average to bizarre and the sometimes grotesquely lengthened tracks invariably outlast their welcome. While the Trevor Horn-produced "Left To My Own Devices" is decent enough (except for the meh whatever chorus) and the medley "Always On My Mind/In My House" makes for an amusing cover as far as it goes, the other four of the six tracks are wan, uninspired and beneath this duo's otherwise sizeable talent. Besides the dopey faux Latin beat of "Domino Dancing" the deepest pothole they dug is probably the pathetic "I Want A Dog" ("a chihuahua," Neil Tennant clarifies), which in its over six minutes apparently intended to be cute and affected but largely comes off as whiny. And that's simply the biggest fault of this album: no matter the name it's not pensive or thought-provoking, it's just pouty. The rerelease with Further Listening adds a few demos and a few new unreleased tracks; they're much more listenable if for no other reason than being shorter. (Content: no concerns.)

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The Art of Noise, The Seduction of Claude Debussy

I was a starving med student in a tiny studio apartment living off financial aid and contract work when this album came out in 1999, but I was too big of an AoN fan to miss their first release in literally a decade, and I scraped together my pennies to get in line for the deluxe 3-disc pre-order complete with (and this was quite a novel idea back then) a custom burned-to-order CD-R with unreleased tracks. By now the group had metastasized to Lol Creme (10cc) as well as Trevor Horn, Anne Dudley and Paul Morley, "playing themselves" in the liner notes, and incredibly a full narration by no less than actor John Hurt. A concept album for the 1990s, the album attempted to merge Debussy compositions (and I do like Debussy) with AoN's usual inscrutable synthopop hijinx, but the end product comes off overproduced and overwrought, and like all concepts that try to do too much the album ends up offering far too little. The quality isn't at issue: with Trevor Horn in the producer's chair, the album couldn't help but ooze quality to spare. But production quality isn't everything, and the feel of the album suggests that they treated commercial success as a given (Ron Howard as NARRATOR: It wasn't.) and concluded they could do as they pleased. The hoity-toity narration, competently delivered as it is, is part of that problem, but so are the unrelated aria interludes (e.g., "On Being Blue" and "Born on a Sunday"), the irritating rap on top of an otherwise solid technogroove ("Metaforce," complete with KLF-style AoN callouts), and, well, tracks that are just plain irritating (the fatally repetitive "Metaphor on the Floor"). Do I think I wasted this fragment of my student loans I'm still paying back? Well, not so much, because there are still some remarkable moments like the lead-in "Il Pleure (At the Turn of the Century)" and "The Holy Egoism of Genius," plus the ambient audio seafoam of "Out of this World (Version 138)." These are legitimately good, though only one track truly feels the most like classic AoN and the most like it achieves the album's premise, that being "Rapt: In the Evening Air" with its melody line and slinky strutting bass (and Rakim's rap here isn't nearly as obnoxious). As proof I submit the best two tracks, the "Moments in Love"-inspired "Approximate Mood Swing No. 2" and "Pause," beautifully layered arrangements both, but overall far more Debussy than Noise. (I admit the last one I listen to as little as possible now because of an inseparable association with loneliness and isolation. After all, it was lean times back then, and it turns out living alone in a school full of high achievers is more isolating than you might think.) For an album this anxiously awaited it turned out to be a really mixed bag, neither meeting the standard for a comeback nor an artistic achievement, thus explaining why other than various compilations and reissues there's not been a lot of Noise nor Art since then. It's a shame because with a little more restraint and a little less hubris, the high points prove they might have really done something special with it. On the second disc of the deluxe issue are four equally irksome remixes of "Metaforce" that fail to improve on its fundamental problems; it would have been more interesting (and a better value) to include Reduction, the companion limited edition album of outtakes. Because I was a poor student, remember, I could only afford the 5-track version of the custom CD (I selected "An Extra Pulse of Beauty" as the title and cover art), which included various early takes and B-sides. If you were rich or silly, I think you could buy all 12, though I was and am neither; I'd call the ones I selected interesting, but in retrospect I could have done without the "live in studio" version of Beat Box ("One Made Earlier") even though the 12-inch version of "Closer (To The Edit)" I chose was almost Blue-Best Of quality. (Content: no concerns.)

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T. Rex, The Slider

Fuzz and haze rule the album and the sound, and that's a-okay with Marc Bolan, because he sliiiides. I mean, it's even on the cover, where the gauzy photograph (allegedly by Ringo Starr, though accounts differ) looked like Bolan stuck a cooking pot on his head until you glance at the back of the gatefold. There are no great lyrics here, because that's not what T. Rex does, and a lot of the music and the melodies are best described as trivial; similarly, the harder moments ("Chariot Choogle," "Buick Mackane" and, well, "Rock On") rock well enough but ultimately come off as slyly sexualized nonsense. Rather, it's those fuzzy, hazy moments that are the best parts of the album: the gentle backing of "Mystic Lady" and the famous title track ("I ain't never never kissed a car before") to start with, but also the languid, floaty "Spaceball Ricochet," the acid blues of "Rabbit Fighter" and the incomprehensibly compelling glam anthem "Ballrooms of Mars." "Metal Guru" is a great lead-off, though "Telegram Sam" gets all the airplay, and while it's good too it's still a recycled riff from "Get It On (Bang A Gong)" which is probably why. It's the slower, smoother moments that reward the listener, and the improved production values compared to Electric Warrior are at least as important. Glam isn't for everyone, but this album is for everyone who likes glam, because for all their faults this was the band that defined it and this is probably the best work they ever did. There are about a billion reissues of this by now: the early Marc on Wax version has the most unreleased new material, and is recommended to T. Rex fans, while the 40th anniversary version pays only lip service to a few and fills up the rest with the usual underwhelming studio outtakes and live performances. (Content: sexual references, adult themes.)

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Electric Light Orchestra (The), (No Answer)

The stench of amateurism is all over this album, from the infamous snafu with its title (even the U.S.-domestic Epic CD release still perpetuates the ambiguity) to indecision over the use of the definite article, and that extends to the music, featuring such tracks as a baroquely muddled tone poem on the largest battle ever fought on the British Islands ("The Battle of Marston Moor (July 2nd 1644)") and a jazzy guitar bit that's as good as it is because it rips off "Classical Gas" nearly completely ("First Movement (Jumping Biz)"). You can't even blame this on the usual irregularities one sees with débuts because all three players were the final line-up of The Move, by then almost seven years old. And yet. While there's a lot that's pompous ("Manhattan Rumble (49th Street Massacre)") and a lot that's nutty ("Look At Me Now"), and enough parenthesised subtitles to give a typesetter a stroke (ahem), there are also some earnest moments ("Whisper In The Night" and "Nellie Takes Her Bow"), some undeniable charm and even some genuine genius. Not just "10538 Overture" — though it's an outstanding serving of orchestral prog and unquestionably the best track of the first half — but also the rich "Queen Of The Hours" and most of all the plaintive "Mr. Radio," a delightfully mournful treat that became the obvious template for all of Jeff Lynne's future work. This album is not a classic, but some of it is, so some of it will do. The Epic CD reissue adds the usual undeveloped in-progress tracks of little listening value and the Harvest 40th anniversary reissue doubles down on the same for no discernible difference. (Content: no concerns.)

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