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Post by pacinoyes on Oct 22, 2020 9:56:36 GMT
The Resonars - Disappear ........... 8/10 on Bandcamp (physical release in 2021) State of the Art, Garage-Pop reproduction that sounds like it was cut in 1966. The best record this guy - Matt Rendon - has cut as far as I can tell and he's been around forever too........this one sounds like he took all his favorite 60s records and re-wrote them. This is so well done that Rendon - who plays almost all instruments with some minor help - is almost showing off. theresonars1.bandcamp.com/album/disappear
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Post by pacinoyes on Oct 23, 2020 10:23:34 GMT
The Misfits - Beware EP (1980) - 7.5+/10
The Misfits occupy a strange place - especially in Punk and especially at Halloween. They worked "horror punk" - especially early - the way no one else could: scary movies were their whole reason for existing at all and they existed best, like a horror movie when you couldn't see the concept (and when they were very short too).
Ridiculous catchy songs about murder (and worse, loving murder), with singing that was like a demented crooner risen from the grave and before they got covered (and legitimized, which ruined the horror vibe they had) by Metallica and idolized by kids in Misfits T-shirts.
Never was a band meant to be a "cult" band more than them - and the earliest songs - sloppily played with almost no professionalism and appropriately scuzzy production - work as low budget horror where the bigger budget remakes kind of suck like a movie remake would.
The "Beware" EP has 4 of their very best atrocities/songs We Are 138, Bullet, Horror Business and Last Caress and all are cut from the same template as The Ramones classic "You Should Never Have Opened That Door"......which it's almost ridiculous that they never thought to cover.
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Post by pacinoyes on Oct 24, 2020 10:08:47 GMT
Ramones - Leave Home (1977) - 11/10 To understand the genius of the original Ramones first 3 records - 3 albums that are as essential to the fabric of American pop culture as cheeseburgers and petty theft - is to get what makes any Art have a subtext. The Ramones didn't appear "smart" but it's awfully tough to be that clever if you're "really" dumb - that IS their whole subtext. It is almost impossible to pick "the best" of their first 3 - and a cynic would say "That's because they made the same exact record 3 times" but to those cynics I'd say it's hard to appear any dumber when you think you're being clever He met her at the Burger King, fell in love by the soda machine....
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Post by pacinoyes on Oct 25, 2020 10:24:36 GMT
Graham Parker (and The Figgs) - The Last Rock and Roll Tour - 7.5/10
Good live album which covers some great songs from his uneven later years with The Figgs who make the songs less dad-rock and more driving/punky and some 70s/80s classics woven into the set too.
The version of "Soul on Ice" here pops like it didn't really on his shaky 3rd album - and sounds like he discovers how much he liked it looking back on it...........and he does 2 covers that sort of sum him up his whole career Prince's "Cream" and Chuck Berry's "Around and Around".
He's got a ton of live releases, mostly all are worth hearing........and this is the most representative of him.
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Post by pacinoyes on Oct 26, 2020 10:27:44 GMT
Liz Phair - Exile in Guyville (1993) - ~9/10There is no Rock artist I can think of (ever) - who can make the unpleasant claim Liz Phair could - an artist with an all-timer - a single "great" album to me without having, any other proper album that I'd even consider remotely good, decent- or um "phair". But Exile in Guyville is a record that's so special it goes far beyond its creator anyway - a record with several memorable songs - but that doesn't depend on its songs. There are a lot on here too 18 (!) - it's a long record that doesn't feel long (55 minutes in reality)...........with unique nuances and weirdness ("Dance of the Seven Veils" for one) but coherent and poppy too.....a record whose "feel" is more important than anything, but that never feels like it's striving or straining to evoke that feel. This album is still shocking lyrically - for a Rock female especially - but that hasn't dated in any way (looking at you Hole and Alanis Morrissette which haven't held up remotely close to this, at all).
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Post by pacinoyes on Oct 27, 2020 10:09:35 GMT
Television - Marquee Moon (1977) - ~9+/10
Here's the thing.....I don't think the second side of this classic record is close to side 1......but side 1 is as perfect an album side as you will ever hear .........and side 2 is only a let down compared to that Godlike side 1 anyway.
Everyone talks about the guitars and they're obviously amazing but the drumming of Billy Ficca never gets mentioned nearly enough and he's unlike any of his peers either.
Did ya feel low? Nah...
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Post by pacinoyes on Oct 28, 2020 9:56:18 GMT
Joy Division - Closer (1980) 10/10
I talked once about how scary this record is - how if you play it sometimes it can be so overtly sad/hopeless that it almost seems like a put on - that then somehow goes beyond that into something even scarier than you first thought.
When The Eternal and Decades happen ......2 songs as frightening as any in Rock music history (perfect for Halloween!) you feel chemically altered - like going out into a bracing cold that changes you physically. There are a few albums or bands with little precedent in Rock - well Closer not only has few (Rock) influences.......it's is like Van Morrison's Astral Weeks where it is not even "Rock" itself in how it then uses those, so it becomes a sort of "new" precedent.
It is also, almost outside of Rock's parameters in presentation to the audience - there's nothing hedonistic, joyful or liberating about it - it doesn't connect you to a community, it methodically removes you from one.
When you first hear Closer - a much more difficult album than their (equally great) debut - you can not be sure how you feel about it because there is no context. Eventually, the only way to appreciate it is to turn yourself over to it entirely......... meet it on its own terrifying, harrowing, and uncompromising terms.
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Post by pacinoyes on Oct 29, 2020 10:28:17 GMT
These Foolish Things (1973) Bryan Ferry ~ 7.5 maybe a little higher/10Fnck David Bowie.......I say that sometimes......but Bryan Ferry could have and probably did say that a whole lot. Bowie's doppelganger who rivaled him (or surpassed him) at least on the first 2 Roxy Music albums imo and unlike Marc Bolan (who surpassed both of them on Electric Warrior/The Slider & assorted singles) - he arguably kept it up too throughout the decade. This album - like Bowie's "Pinups" is all covers......beat Bowie into record stores by a week (!)......is by any objective standard better - both in songs chosen and in performance - and more revealing about the artist too.......and sold less. Um, which really just gets us back to Fnck David Bowie.....
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Post by pacinoyes on Oct 30, 2020 9:35:41 GMT
Pavement Brighten The Corners (1997) - 8.5/10I'd probably lose some of my (unfnckwithably stellar) Indie credibility by saying this but this record beats the fnck out of the very uneven Wowee Zowee which preceded it and a couple stellar moments aside suggested slipping after their first 2 full length classics. It actually evokes another all-timer Rocket to Russia in its title (ie Bright "In" The Corners=Rock "It" To Russia, get it?) and in how it presents the band as something that could reach a mass audience (they didn't really though)......if you never "got" them before you could now. Not a bad track on this, several of their best songs including Embassy Row.......2 great Spiral Stairs songs ( Date With Ikea, Passat Dream) and some of Stephen Malkmus' best wordplay - exceedingly witty and funny "if my soul has a shape, well it is an ellipse....... and this slap is a gift" This is the album the good, contemporary Pavement-"like" bands of their era (Archers of Loaf etc.) couldn't have really have made.....
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Post by pacinoyes on Oct 31, 2020 11:19:12 GMT
The Exploding Hearts Shattered (2006 release) - 8 /10
Everybody should know this bands single legitimate album Guitar Romantic (2003) is one of the best "1 and done" records ever (Sex Pistols, La's, Heartbreakers, Modern Lovers, Rockpile etc).
But like most great bands they had something else too .......this collection of outtakes, B sides, singles, covers add what is in effect and additional EP of material onto their debut.............and it is stupendous at its best (the creepy af Your Shadow, for one) and shows just how completely they worked this sound.
To pad this out they add some disposable/interesting alternative takes/mixes from the album but if you just look at what's "new" here, you realize that if they had lived they could have been THE band of the 2000s - and the 2000s were the last peak Rock period has (arguably) and had The Strokes, Libertines, Spoon and White Stripes etc.....
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 1, 2020 10:33:26 GMT
T.Rex - The Slider (1972) - 9++/10 My favorite T. Rex record because it's half fun and half crushingly sad like a lot of the best Rock and Roll that followed in its path and like you know.........life. It's tough to rate but while it's undoubtedly an awesome record - the "hard to rate" part is because it sounds so specific to its era in 2020 and with what came after it (Punk) it can sound fey or conceptual by comparison.......but that also makes it timeless, otherworldly and eerie too. Lyrics seem like gibberish - and are often dismissed as such - but they aren't random either: Rather they are a way to link the past with the future and it creates an odd dyanmic where the songs that ring sadder hit that much harder. It's specific to Marc Bolan and his type of "poetry" - an odd mishmash of words/sounds/text/and odd self-references. (like the self-shout out "Bolan likes to Rock" in the spellbinding, hypnotic closer "Main Man").
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 2, 2020 10:47:56 GMT
The Only Ones - The Peel Sessions Album (1977-1980) 9++/10
The reason people don't always "get" The Only Ones is because they have no real signature studio album - their first 2 are marvelous but not in a definitive kind of way, they have lots of cool compilations but those are not singular ones like say Singles Going Steady etc.
But their Peel Sessions functions as a "greatest hits live in studio" in a way - which makes them more powerful and improves the weak production of their hit or miss 3rd album whose songs are fantastic here. It was for the longest time THE definitive Only Ones release and still is, even in the download era.
Peter Perrett - in his wordy element on these songs - gets to show off non-album tracks like "Prisoners" (one of his very best) and "Oh No" and you see how good the band was too - especially John Perry who is his Johnny Marr - weaving ornate guitar parts around Perrett's complex lyrics to underline them.
"Prisoners" has one of Perrett's typically fantastic sociopathic openings "I remember your face distorted with anger, I was out of place as I filled the room with laughter" - that from a guy who has a bunch of those kind of lines and a bunch of those songs show up here too in full venom/definitive versions (Oh Lucinda, Why Don't You Kill Yourself?").
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Post by Joaquim on Nov 2, 2020 14:51:14 GMT
The Only Ones - The Peel Sessions Album (1977-1980) 9++/10The reason people don't always "get" The Only Ones is because they have no real signature studio album - their first 2 are marvelous but not in a definitive kind of way, they have lots of cool compilations but those are not singular ones like say Singles Going Steady etc. But their Peel Sessions functions as a "greatest hits live in studio" in a way - which makes them more powerful and improves the weak production of their hit or miss 3rd album whose songs are fantastic here. It was for the longest time THE definitive Only Ones release and still is, even in the download era. Peter Perrett - in his wordy element on these songs - gets to show off non-album tracks like "Prisoners" (one of his very best) and "Oh No" and you see how good the band was too - especially John Perry who is his Johnny Marr - weaving ornate guitar parts around Perrett's complex lyrics to underline them. "Prisoners" has one of Perrett's typically fantastic sociopathic openings "I remember your face distorted with anger, I was out of place as I filled the room with laughter" - that from a guy who has a bunch of those kind of lines and a bunch of those songs show up here too in full venom/definitive versions (Oh Lucinda, Why Don't You Kill Yourself?"). Not on spotify either!
I still haven't recovered from Remains being removed. Prisoners was one of my favs on it
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 3, 2020 11:15:28 GMT
Alice Cooper - Greatest Hits - ~ 8/10
One of the best "greatest hits" from a band (and Alice Cooper, was once a band) that isn't worth really owning in any other way - this cops 10 (of 12 songs here) tracks from their best period Killer/Love It To Death/Billion Dollar Babies/School's Out
The band never really worked completely on full length albums (and not even when Alice himself went "solo" for the hit or miss "Welcome To My Nightmare" which followed this). Not only wasn't he that good of a songwriter - he had a tin ear for other peoples songs too.
But what he had was a pretty fine band (especially Glen Buxton on guitar), a couple of classic songs and the fact that he came from Detroit which alone gave him a discernible, Pre-Punk swagger and attitude that worked best in short doses - usually in the singles.
This could have been better with 2 great songs added to it - "Long Way To Go" and "You Drive Me Nervous" - and 2 obvious duds - "Hello Hooray" and "Teenage Lament '74" dropped - those 2 tracks show the band at their worst.
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 5, 2020 13:41:14 GMT
The Modern Lovers - The Modern Lovers (1976) 11/10Not merely the greatest album that was never "finished" but rather recordings that were taken away from the band and released a few years later - wildly ahead of their time - it also predates several things later in Rock. First, a lyrical point of view at odds with the music - lyrics that sing about liking the "Old World" (and WANTING to get old in "Dignified and Old").....about being drug free/"straight" (I'm Straight) and just wanting a girlfriend (corny as in the sweet "Girlfriend"!) while also being a sort of mean spirited sociopath - the way he laughs during "Hospital" or the sarcastic putdown of "Pablo Picasso" the music implied something else all nervous and cool danger. It made their lead singer/genius/provocateur Jonathan Richman utterly unique and the direct precursor of Elvis Costello (and Weezer too actually) - for one thing his voice alone was unlike any in Rock - even his idol Lou Reed. There were impossible to assess in the context of their early 70s peers too - in the liner notes of this album, you can read how they felt during their existence - nobody thought they were good ...... " EVERYbody hated us" - not just the popular kids but the cult fans of the Velvet Underground/Stooges/MC5 too. What's more (pre) Punk than that?
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 6, 2020 10:57:09 GMT
Dead Kennedys - Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables (1980) - ~8.0/10The criticisms applied to this band mostly come into play later maybe - first that the singer can't sing (sort of a Dr. Demento version of Johnny Rotten) and the band's schtick was overworked that undercut their best moments. But early on they were pretty dazzling - skewering both political parties before it was fashionable btw and having a jarring lyrical slant "Turn the oven on, it smells like Dachau" being one of their most lacerating bad taste lyrics. They also had a no BS musical approach weaving lots of styles, especially surf music, in a way that made them seem current and retro. Right down to its classic album cover and one of the very few Rock albums ever to mix politics with Rock along with Gang of Four, The Clash and The Minutemen in a way that seemed righteous rather than tiresome. The two best tracks on this album California Uber Alles and Holiday in Cambodia (both in excruciating bad taste again!) were protest songs against the Progressive Left....which might be something to keep in mind these days too (the band have many against the Right on this record also, don't you worry about that )
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 7, 2020 9:41:36 GMT
Sweet Baby - It's A Girl (1989) - around a 9 /10 I guess........it'ssorta perfect in its way actuallyOne of 1989's best albums and now totally obscure (if I find anyone who has this album, we're pretty much pals ), this record is one of those odd ones that didn't really influence ANYBODY either....the sound of the band is so conceptual - a new wave rave up of 1964 era Beatles/Dave Clark Five - with all songs about girls (Dr. Frank Portman was their first drummer!) - that it appears a mere novelty. But it is also a total blast and zips by too - 13 songs in under 26 minutes. It isn't that deep exactly but it's tight af, and if you consider it Power Pop it's one of the best Power Pop records of its era too. Their biggest song ....... "She's From Salinas" .......still jumps out of the speakers 30+ years later......
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 8, 2020 10:24:59 GMT
The Libertines - The Libertines (2004) - 9.5/10
No band since The Clash - the band they most evoke - referenced themselves as much as The Libertines - to the point of near parody. They have, basically made 3 albums about who they are, who they want to be and the gulf between desire and reality.
Their 2nd album (second classic) - starts with a "state of things" RIGHT NOW song "Can't Stand Me Now" and ends with a glimpse into the(ir) abyss "What Became Of The Likely Lads?" before the hidden closer - "France" the wistful, what could have been song briefly echoing around empty stadiums/drug flats......... like a ghost.
All this usually signals a band on decline, but it plays thrillingly - less exciting than their debut (one of the few Rock album "10s" of this century imo) and less knowing than their (10 years later) reunion album. This is them completely up to the moment and in the moment.....it is right down to its album cover - beautiful, sad, inevitable.....daring you to look.......or to look away.
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 9, 2020 10:59:33 GMT
Nirvana - Hormoaning EP (1992) - 8/10
There were, to me, 3 distinct versions of Nirvana over a mere 3 albums:
The first, pre-Dave Grohl - was a sludgy, simple and occasionally inspired band (Blew, About A Girl).......the 3rd was a dour, punishing, occasionally even more inspired band (Serve the Servants, Dumb, All Apologies)......but the 2nd - where Grohl first comes in - was the band who harnessed both of those with such power and punch that they um, you know changed Rock and Roll (for the last time, probably too).
Hormoaning is the addendum to Nevermind - which by any standard is one of the best albums of its era and Hormoaning presents the band as somehow both amateurishly fun - including 4 ace covers (!) - and gut punch direct with 2 Cobain originals........which are well pretty fantastic.
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 10, 2020 10:01:06 GMT
The Velvet Underground - White Light/White Heat (1968) - 8.5+/10
The 2nd Velvet Underground record is like a darker (really), less beautiful and panoramic record than their debut. There is no song as optimistic as "I'll Be Your Mirror" - and no comfort of a feminine voice - the removal of Nico..... makes the sound like walls are closing in and that females as a whole are rather sinister now - much more than alluring and defined than Femme Fatale (here the females are overtly oblivious/casually cruel "The Gift" or they are surgical "ideals" - procedures where a male is "destroyed" by seeking to become female ("Lady Godiva's Operation").
Two songs about dope ......2 modern horror tales.....2 songs about (imminent? failed?) sex on dope .....the sound is harsh, abrasive, black as the album cover, removed from life in a lot of ways. At 3:00 AM it is the record that is either perfect.......or perfectly wrong of evoking anything "normal" or "stable" or "safe".
Rock and roll is in a lot of ways a big lie - the best has to suggest a danger while in reality it isn't really ......but White Light/White Heat sounds literally like danger.......in 1968 when NOTHING sounded like this you can literally believe it spawned seizures.......suicidal despair ......or murderous thoughts.
...........and then my mind split open......
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Post by Joaquim on Nov 10, 2020 15:19:10 GMT
I’ll take it over their first album any day of the week tbh
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 11, 2020 10:56:52 GMT
Elvis Costello & The Attractions - Trust (1981) 8/10
The first 4 Costello albums - the best run a Rock artist ever had to start a career (3 with the Attractions) were masterpieces of restraint: My Aim Is True, This Years Model, Armed Forces and Get Happy!! were all comprised of short songs, tight arrangements and no filler or throwaways.
This is album #5 - and the 5th with Godhead Nick Lowe producing and it's the same way .........for the first half. The 2nd side of this record not only dips - it dips with stuff that would have been B-sides on any of his first 4.....and arrangements that would echo fine but overrated (to me) later records like Imperial Bedroom (1982) too in their ornate and "non-Rock" compositions.
But that first side is still one of 1981's very best - in a wildly transitional year in Pop music - even if Costello's record can't really match the new records from newer artists (X, Mission of Burma, etc.). The actual playing on Trust by the Attractions - maybe the best UK band of this entire era (which is really saying something) is even better than the songs this time out too.
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 12, 2020 11:06:11 GMT
Van Morrison - Astral Weeks (1968) 10/10One of my favorite jokes is that whenever you hear a Rock album called "beautiful" or "gorgeous" - be highly amused/skeptical. Rock is gorgeous about as often as I am subtle but there is no album those often misused words apply to more than Astral Weeks. Morrison was 22 when he wrote most of this , just 23 when he recorded it - more like was possessed by it rather than he simply created it. There was nothing to suggest this music in his history or in Rock's prior (except "T.B. Sheets" ("tuberculosis sheets" that is, a masterpiece song the previous year): long songs, complex lyrical themes ("Cyprus Avenue" alone is, still, shocking/disturbing) rambling, free form not propulsive like Rock at all - but also outside the formal expressiveness of genres it's often lumped in with (it has nothing in common with traditional Folk Rock, it evokes the Blues without a single identifiable Blues trope etc.). He never made "this" again really (though he made many special records), and no one else did either .....it's a singular, spiritual album and one that no matter how much music you've heard still might not prepare you for it.
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 13, 2020 10:43:45 GMT
Guided By Voices - Human Amusements At Hourly Rates - ~9/10
There's 2 kinds of compilation albums - 1 that makes you curious about the band.........and 1 that defines the band.......this one is both. It doesn't include everything special they've ever done (or "he's" ever done, ruler Robert Pollard) but it is so dense and typical of them it feels comprehensive of a long era.
Unlike this bands peak (94-95 Bee Thousand/Alien Lanes) it is also more or less filler free while evoking the bands scattershot albums themselves. At 32 "tracks" - calling all "songs" is a bit of a stretch - it has much of the best American Rock of its era - especially in the 90s where aside from a (very) few bands were pretty dire - especially the later 90s.
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 17, 2020 10:57:07 GMT
Lucy and The Rats - Got Lucky (2020) - ~8/10 - What is it about 2nd albums in 2020 - 4 of my top 6 - ExBats, Fontaines DC, Speedways and this one are 2nd albums and this is a slight but notable improvement on their 2018 debut.
"Lucy" is Lucy Ellis also known as Lucy Spazzy from the mostly dull Australian punk band of the same name but much more winning here in her mix of garage-pop, surf, and 60s radio - relocated to London and fronting her own outfit. She can't really write that interesting songs (or lyrics) but this is by far her strongest batch and she performs them so winningly and sweetly (and tough) you can let this whole record play out and it feels nostalgic and warm and right.
This is the closest to The Reflectors (also top 6, from a debut for them) I can think of - where it's more about the performance and execution of a specific style than anything else.
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