Jethro Tull, Thick As A Brick

If this were a prog rock concert, the high-quality production would be well worth the price of admission and I might even stay seated for the whole thing. But this is a take-home album, for goodness sake, and in the manner of a passive-aggressive orthodontist Ian Anderson is going to make you sit through all of it whether you want to or not. Only the limitations of the LP yielded the band's solitary concession to split it in half. As musings on life and childhood and art, the lyrics are creative enough (as is that famous tabloid gatefold); as a self-indulgent satire of the worst excesses of the concept album, the idea is certainly clever. But a good idea doesn't necessarily make 43 minutes of it worth continuously sitting through, even when the execution's solid. As proof, the 25th anniversary reissue includes a 1978 live performance ... that's less than twelve. (Content: mild adult themes.)

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Mike + the Mechanics, Living Years

I couldn't bear to listen to this album anymore when my father was diagnosed with metastatic cancer, but when COVID-19 finally killed him in whatever wave this benighted country is on now I decided it was time to dust it off again. To be sure, my relationship with my dad was evidently better than Mike Rutherford's in the title track, though I'd have liked a few more living years to tell him I loved him too. Still, other than that and the single "Nobody's Perfect," this record still comes off on balance to me as too slickly hollow. Much like the singer's smashed avo worldview in "Seeing is Believing" or the airbrushed Horatio Alger type of "Poor Boy Down" or even the unsubtle anti-war anthems of "Blame" and "Why Me?", it's all so machined and polished down that everything gets melted together and the whole thing feels unreal (the simplistic lyrics and 1980s-heavy synthorock don't help). The first two tracks brought tears to my eyes and "Beautiful Day" is largely a solid cut from the album's remaining morass, but overall writing this review turned out to be more therapeutic than the record itself. I just wish I could hug you one more time, Dad. I really do. (Content: no concerns.)

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Muse, Absolution

I had to check the disc to make sure I was hearing Matt Bellamy sing and not Thom Yorke, but I was, and I meant that in a good way. One of the better prog outings so far during this turn-of-the-21st renaissance, at their finest ("Apocalypse Please," "Blackout," the classical piano of "Butterflies and Hurricanes" and the paranoiac closer "Ruled By Secrecy") the vocals, rafter-high harmonies and effervescent, atmospheric orchestration (even an explicit entracte and interlude) are everything a revanchist rock mannerist would desire — with a Storm Thorgerson cover to boot. They didn't forget the rockers either ("The Small Print") nor the softer moments ("Endlessly"). The fifth star falls off for some intermittent stylistic issues; headliner single "Stockholm Syndrome" doesn't know if it wants to be symphonic or slamming and "Falling Away With You" and "Hysteria" have too much grit and not enough texture. But an album that flirts this much with religion and theology even as it includes the "Thoughts of a Dying Atheist" ("it scares the hell out of me/and the end is all I see") clearly aspires to greater thematic depths than most other pop. On that level, it succeeds handsomely. (Content: no concerns.)

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Meco, Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk

The first half: an inspired and wacky disco rework of the Star Wars theme, complete with cantina bridge and character themes, enjoyable on repeat for hours on end. The second: a flaccid, underdeveloped jazz fugue that screams contractual obligation — the descriptor "galactic" solely applies in the sense that whatever planet it sounded good on wasn't this one. Fortunately for the album 2.5 stars rounded up is three, but look for it at an EP price because that's really what you're getting. Like most novelty acts, lightning only struck once here. (Content: pure instrumental.)

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Lil Nas X, Montero

Mostly a gritty Auto-Tune mess exploiting the same tired riff; there's no genre-busting this time. Dollar signs and fronting was so last decade, and this man is no gangsta. And just because he's not heteronormative doesn't mean he's not a chauvinist (notably ugly moments: the title track, "Scoop," "Dolla Sign Slime"). But when he slows down and stops the preening, he can be contemplative, even complex: "Lost in the Citadel," "Tales of Dominica" in particular, and I dug the sweetly yodelly falsetto of "Void" but also his candid self-reflections in "Sun Goes Down." Clearly he has talent. Why doesn't he use it? (Content: F-, S- and N-bombs, adult themes.)

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REM, Green

The zenith of REM's discography is this scattershot, eclectic collection of vignettes and jangle where the cover doesn't even match the title. The best part is that they learned from their mistakes on Document: the politics persist, but more subtly, Scott Litt's production is richer and higher quality, and a solid balance of radio-friendly ("Pop Song '89," "Stand" and "Orange Crush") and cerebral ("World Leader Pretend," "Hairshirt" and particularly the heart-rending "The Wrong Child") songs make the album eminently listenable in pieces or end-to-end. 1988-me played the cassette single of "Stand" non-stop, and when I finally bought the full tape it turned me into an REM fan for life. Their later work is where they started to believe their hype, and their worthy earlier works were too often too insular, but this one was their Goldilocks — and that title might even match. The 25th anniversary disc adds another one of those live CDs which is a full example of their then-current setlist but mostly makes you want to buy the originals. (Content: no concerns.)

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Def Leppard, Pyromania

This album didn't create hair metal (it's not even clear High 'n' Dry did that), but between the ballads and banging it sure made it work. Tossing their heavy metal roots in the bin, they channeled their inner Dokken and turned out an album that you'll dig every track on even if none of it burns, er, breaks any new ground. Choice moments: the as-you-see-it "Rock Rock (Till You Drop)," some actual albeit actually cheesy pathos in "Photograph" and power anthem "Foolin'." Oh, and don't forget Mutt Lange's mock German count-in to "Rock of Ages," the most relevant contribution a producer has ever made to any album. The 2009 reissue adds a 1983 show live set-list, though other than their cover of CCR's "Travelin' Band" die hard Leppardists won't find a lot there that's new. (Content: mild adult themes.)

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Anthrax, Persistence of Time

I'm not sure if the title is an accidental observation on the album's length, but too much of it ends up being an unstable long-form slog that doesn't quite capture the energy of their earlier releases. The shiftier time signatures make it harder to get into instead of drawing you in, and the barer production doesn't showcase their strengths. There are solid cuts: "In My World" has a punchy punk lead-in and great galloping drums, "Intro To Reality" is superb prog metal with almost Queen-like guitars (leading into the paranoia-fueled "Belly Of The Beast" and its grimly literate grind) and closer "Discharge" finally pulls its finger out around two-minutes-thirty. Plus, of course, there's their wonderful headbanger cover of Joe Jackson's "Not The Time," a raucous improvement on the original and probably the high point of the disc. That said, though, most of the tracks just don't reward you enough for sitting through them, and the tracks that are good are mostly too short (or maybe that's why). This album doesn't know what it wants to be and sadly its identity crisis isn't interesting enough to make it worth it. (Content: violent imagery, F-bombs on "Discharge.")

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The Ink Spots' Greatest Hits

All but forgotten pioneers of Black music, Bill Kenny and his compatriots were singing R&B in the 1930s and '40s before it was even called that, enlivened by their instrumental skill and signature "talking bass" vocal bridges. Now that the semi-official 1979 compilation If I Didn't Care is all but out of print, intermittent retreads like this somewhat wanting 2012 UK Fabulous release are the easiest way for modern audiences to hear these distant trailblazers croon. Compared to most of the reissues, this album has an incomplete cross-section of their hit singles but includes enough of the hits like "If I Didn't Care," "The Gypsy" and "Java Jive" to please while also throwing in less-well-known versions, covers and B-sides. (Most notable: their version of "You Always Hurt The One You Love," which sounds nothing like Spike Jones' inspired style pastiche; he even added a Hoppy Jones mimic to do the spoken word.) The selection was no doubt budgetary, and the programming sells the band a little short by making them sound more samey than they were, but it's tracks you won't get many other places and a clear stylistic evolution is obvious from the 18 tracks as a whole. What this band needs most is a remaster: the poor quality of their early recordings can be forgiven because of the technology of the time, but this groundbreaking initial incarnation (other, less accomplished, versions followed) deserves better than to disappear into obscurity on the back of bad audio. Unfortunately, however, by remaining the remit of budget outings and special products like this one, and with no one to carry their torch, they still won't get the respect they ought to for as long as they get packaged like this. That's why you should listen to them. (Content: no concerns.)

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Depeche Mode, Violator

A veritable oil slick of a disc, black and sleek and smooth on the surface but with iridescent flows and transitions that really grab on to you. It's a little, uh, unrefined in parts and the first couple tracks ("World in My Eyes," "Sweetest Perfection") are thematically banal, but the melodies cover its rougher moments and set up the finer ones to come, especially "Enjoy the Silence," the ominous "Policy of Truth" and "Blue Dress," admittedly a little pervy, but featuring a lovely emotive bridge to the final track. And hey, dig the Floyd "One of These Days" callback in "Clean," and "Personal Jesus" gets points for being conceptually memorable even if the erratic beat isn't exactly a religious experience. A landmark for the twilight of new wave, this album is where they most lived up to their talent. The 2006 reissue adds four bonus tracks on the DVD companion disc, though the two remixes that follow them feel more perfunctory than innovative. (Content: Adult themes in "World in My Eyes" and "Blue Dress.")

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The Killers, Pressure Machine

The barbed wire on the cover makes it plain: there's no fun to be had here. Frankly, quarantine pop as a whole has turned out to be a real collective downer at exactly the time we don't need to be any more depressed, and this album, like a vinyl Eeyore, just wallows in it. We're a long way from Hot Fuss when the headliner track is a gay teen circling suicide ("Terrible Thing"), or songs of the family black sheep ("Cody"), or domestic violence and adultery ("Desperate Things"). It's not all grim ("Sleepwalker" is reflective without being overwrought) and it's not all molasses (the crazed Cure vibe of "In the Car Outside" has a beguilingly unbalanced appeal), but it feels to me like Brandon Flowers wanted to rip the scabs off his hometown and record the bleeding and the bruises, right down to the spoken word interludes, and turned in the disc as such. As catharsis or social commentary, it's understandable. Heck, I've spent some time in the purgatories of eastern Utah myself, so I get it. But this album is too parochial, too ponderous, and dare I say it, too preachy. Records like this are where keeping it real goes wrong. (Content: F- and S-bombs in "In the Car Outside.")

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Ohio Players, Gold

The best of their work for a general audience, not least of which for being one of their few album covers you can actually show in public (that is, if your mother's fairly open minded, or if she previously appeared in Playboy). Most of the big hits made it — one glaring exception to be noted — like "Love Rollercoaster," "Skin Tight" and "Fire," but there are also two decent new tracks ("Feel The Beat (Everybody Disco)" and the disordered but earnest "Only A Child Can Love") and a couple excellent album cuts, notably "Far East Mississippi," which fully captures the sweat and seamy menace after dark of the 1970s Deep South like no other song. Plus, by being a mid-career compilation, they managed to avoid including the crap the band churned out after it. The funk is fabulous and the beat is solid, but it loses a fifth star for two omissions: "O-H-I-O," from Angel immediately following, so we'll partially forgive that, but I can't abide them failing to add "Funky Worm." ("Jive Turkey," which is included, is zippy but no comparison.) After all, if they really did to Ester Cordet what rumour says they did, surely that reputation would have induced Westbound sniveling in fear to negotiate its inclusion. (Content: mild adult themes.)

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