The Who: By Numbers

The Who By Numbers

Best song: Slip Kid

Worst song: Squeeze Box

Overall grade: 5

From what I understand, the general consensus surrounding this album has worsened over the years. It was originally released to great acclaim (although considering how huge The Who were around the time, people may have just not wanted to rock the boat) but since then most people have expressed a distaste for its more introspective and self-conscious style.

But I heard most of the Who albums before I had any idea what other people thoughts of them. And while, in some cases (see: ‘Face Dances’) I later discovered that my opinion was basically identical to everyone else’s, with ‘By Numbers’ I was quite shocked by all the criticism, because I’d always really liked the album.

Thing is, Pete Townshend had tried three times to make a perfect rock opera, and with ‘Quadrophenia’ he’d basically succeeded. He was hardly going to go back into the studio and make another one, knowing that it could never live up to the standard he’d set himself. Clearly, his only option was to make an album so completely different that people would never compare it to its predecessor.

Yet here I am, comparing them. ‘Quadrophenia’ was a wonderful story, but it’s only here that I feel like I’m getting to know Pete Townshend as a person. ‘Imagine a Man’, ‘However Much I Booze’ and particularly ‘How Many Friends’ are painfully intimate and confessional: ‘How many friends have I really got/That love me, that want me, that'll take me as I am?’ The rest of the band are constantly giving these highly personal compositions the respect they deserve, even when, like on ‘However Much I Booze’, the uptempo music doesn’t seem to quite fit with the mood of the song. But maybe that’s just to give Pete’s vocal performance (one of his best; move over, Daltrey) even more gravity.

It’s not all doom and gloom. Those who call the album ‘Pete Townshend’s suicide note’ obviously have copies that omit side two’s ‘Blue Red & Grey’, a stunning ballad about enjoying all parts of life rather than always waiting for one thing in particular. It doesn’t really have any traditional rock instruments, it’s just ukulele (and a few horns) which again makes it sound different to the rest of the album, but the gentle, quiet instrument is perfect – it puts the focus on the lyrics and complements the simplicity of the message perfectly.

My pick for best track here is the opener ‘Slip Kid’, a great demonstration of Townshend’s talent for combining an infectious melody with a serious message and something a bit unconventional thrown in there too. It really plays out like ‘here’s the same band that made ‘My Generation’, only with 10 years more experience’. It’s very dynamic and guest Nicky Hopkins plays a neat bit of piano, playing off Keith Moon in a great, idiosyncratic way. It has the same feel of a classic that ‘Baba O’Riley’ and ‘Love Reign O’er Me’ do, but, perhaps unfairly, never got the same recognition.

Still, I guess hating on this album is justified if you’re only talking about ‘Squeeze Box’, a song with an incredibly annoying and generic melody that’s far too immature for someone who’s just turned 30. It really disrupts the flow of the album with its cringey, over-sexualised lyrics and the repulsive ‘in and out and in and out’ part. Disappointing, because without this I'd be able to play on one of the album's lyrics and say 'I like every minute of this record'.

Good news to counteract that terrible song is that Entwhistle hasn’t been forgotten. He gets a word in edgeways with side two opener ‘Success Story’, and in true Pink Floyd style, it’s a sarcastic criticism of the music business that shows off his talent and versatility as a musician and contrasts the quieter acoustic numbers on the album with some glam rock and space rock influences. Lastly, final track 'In A Hand Or A Face', while nowhere near as climactic as some closers they've done, is definitely work noting for its distinctive riff and almost gospel-like chorus.

 Personally, I’d be the first to mention this album in a conversation about ‘overlooked gems’ or whatever, and I’d really encourage anyone who’s dismissed it before to have another listen – it’s obvious that it can be easily overshadowed by the massive scale (both commercially and musically) of their previous efforts, but, though it’s making a very different statement, it’s one that’s just as valid – and enjoyable.

King Crimson: Discipline

Discipline

Best song: Indiscipline

Worst song: I like them all, but Frame By Frame?

Overall grade: 6

Ah, King Crimson. I’m going to miss reviewing them. A band so inconsistent that they can’t even be consistent in their inconsistency… this album is almost as good as the last one! Of course, it’s allowed, because this came after a seven-year hiatus during which the band was broken up “for good” and during which Robert Fripp was doing solo stuff (which incidentally, is also pretty good) and, unsurprisingly, there’s been another lineup change. Tony Levin has replaced John Wetton on bass and the wonderful Adrian Belew has joined us to play guitar and sing (aren’t we lucky?!)

Seriously, two thirds of the ‘Red’ trio might still be around, but 80s King Crimson is a mile away from that album. There’s still a focus on instrumental work and experimenting, but it’s very much of its time, taking influence from a bunch of other bands who were relatively new at the time, most notably the Talking Heads but also

Songs. There are seven. (I’m not great with sentences today, it seems.) The first one is called ‘Elephant Talk’, and I love it, which is quite strange, because I find Belew’s vocal performance really disturbing – he sounds like he’s out of his mind. The lyrics are great, and it’s not often you can say that about this band. Some electronic backbeats keep you on your toes and it’s all topped off with a guitar sound that’s never been recreated – it’s uncategorisable.

‘Frame By Frame’ is when Levin comes to the fore with some really interesting basswork, but I can’t always hear it so well because Belew is mixed so high. It’s stylistically pretty similar to the opener but a bit more soundscapey and a bit less mind-boggling. ‘Matte Kudasai’ is a bit more slow-tempoed than the two preceding it. It’s got some great sound effects, like the guitars that sound like angry bird cries that pop up occasionally, and it’s surprisingly melodic and emotional, filling the place of the ballad that Crimson like to throw in occasionally to shake things up. A better version can be found in amongst the bonus tracks, that has an interesting guitar part from Fripp worked into it.

Then comes ‘Indiscipline’, and it’s just flat-out crazy, it’s… put it this way, you used to be able to look up the Wikipedia page for ‘Indiscipline’, and there were at least twenty different genres listed for the song, including psychedelic metal, which I’d never even heard of. And all twenty of those genres seemed to fit the song. It’s such a freak-out, with amazingly chaotic and out-of-control instrumental sections interspersed with robotic vocal parts that are almost too… well, disciplined. ‘I repeat myself when under stress’, Belew intones, several times in a row, and it’s pure genius. If you’ve got five minutes to spare and you’re only going to listen to one song from this album, this is definitely the one.

Course, nothing on side two could come close to that. They try, though. Like ‘Thela Hun Ginjeet’ – this is a polyrhythmic song, meaning it is played in two different time signatures simultaneously. (One of my friends told me I didn’t use enough technical terms in my reviews, so that one’s for her.) It’s such a cool effect. However, this is probably the furthest removed from Crimson in their previous incarnations, focusing mostly on the beat and the new short, clipped style. (Is this prog-techno?) In other news, this is the last vocal track on the album, which is a bit of a disappointment. Belew’s my second favourite Crimson vocalist after Lake, and for this material specifically, he probably is the best guy for the job.

In contrast, ‘The Sheltering Sky’, the first of two instrumentals that close the album, is closest to old Crimson – not even 1974-era, but going right back to their roots with ‘In the Court’. It’s probably a bit more easy-listening than anything else here, although it does have just as much substance if you pay attention – some real virtuoso playing and a few world music influences here and there. And the title track lives up to its name by displaying how well and how effortlessly the new band members have fit together, and is a great example of them playing off each other really well.

Overall, the best word I can find to describe this album is paranoid. All these crazy rhythms, they don’t want to stay still for too long, even the notes don’t, so they’re always jumping around and forever looking over their shoulders to check nothing’s coming to get them. There’s so much life in this record – like one day it’s going to jump out of your CD player and become something more than a flat disc.

Whether intentional or not, this was the perfect album for the band to make at the time – it was progressive and just plain weird enough to keep their long-time fans excited and yet relevant and cutting-edge enough to bring them to a whole new audience. On their next two albums, they tried to achieve this balance again, but found themselves focusing more on current trends than their own legacy, and this album remains as the only surviving studio document of the fusion of the two styles.

 (I should have done The Who today but I’m doing this instead, in celebration of the fact that KING CRIMSON ARE REFORMING! I could not be more excited about this and I’m just really hoping I get the chance to see them. The Who tomorrow.)

Locusts, Roaches & Ants: The WRC Compilation

Locusts, Roaches & Ants: The WRC Compilation

Best song: probably The Drapes, but there’s a handful of greats that are pretty much equal

Worst song: I feel bad doing this on a compilation… but, Fun Festival

Overall grade: 5

I don’t normally review compilations, but I’ll make an exception for this one, because I know (or at least know of) all these artists in another capacity. Specifically, they all are or were members of the Web Reviewing Community, a group of people who all ran music review websites much like this one (but generally better) mostly in the early 2000s. At some point, somebody noticed that as well as writing about music, a lot of these reviewers also liked to make music, and out of that came the bright idea to put some of these songs onto a compilation album and share it with everyone in the community. Thirteen different reviewers got involved, and this is the end product.

Credit where credit’s due: Chris Willie Williams from the Disclaimer Music Review Archive is the guy who put all these songs together and still offers this as a free download if you ask him very nicely, and Steve Knowlton of Steve and Dennis and Abe’s Record Reviews is the guy who did title and cover art.

‘Ritalin Rock’ (The Other Leading Brand) – From the title, I expected this to sound like a pretty straightforward rock song, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. It’s percussion-heavy, which keeps the whole thing feeling focused and driven, and seems to have a purposeful bootleg quality to it. Over the top, there’s a lot of spoken vocal samples which somehow manage to be catchy, repeated and layered on top of each other to create something really compelling.

‘Saskatchewan’ (Steve Knowlton and the Knowl-Tones) – In a prime example of good positioning, this song is a lot more melodic, and chilled vs. the anger of the last one. It’s very pretty, dreamy and nostalgic with some interesting jazz influences and has a cool relaxed guitar solo at the end. I like it, but it’s a bit too consistent in its tempo to reach greatness.

‘Dead in 41’ (Willie Simpson) – This is very folk-rock singer-songwriter, and Simpson has the Dylan-esque voice down to a T. This is the song that most makes me wish the album came with a lyric booklet, since I can’t quite work out all of them, but the ones I can hear sound really good, kind of a World War 2 theme going on there. One of those things you start singing along to, and then you realise you’re singing about shooting a Nazi between the eyes. Great tune.

‘Hell’ (Disclaimer) – this icy, dark, rhythmic, no-nonsense first couple of minutes recalls… but then the chorus swells and is smoother, more content even as it’s talking about going to hell. These two approaches are juxtaposed against each other throughout the song. Oh, and it’s a brilliant song, did I mention? Very skilful songwriting – taking pop and distorting it to give it an edge. I can imagine myself recommending this song to someone who wasn’t familiar with the WRC.

‘Walk Me Home’ (Mike Kozak) – A slowly developing instrumental, but as the longest track on the album at almost seven minutes, it’s able to take its time somewhat. I’m very impressed with the fact that all the instruments are played by one guy, and for the most part it’s very well structured too, with the same symphonic theme carrying us through all the way, coupled with the odd moment of dissonant anarchy that prevent it from becoming too…

‘Gamle Klassiker’ (Joel Larsson and Adam Johansson) – A brief interlude in the overall context of the album, it seems like an odd choice for the pair to include, because it has the feel of a novelty song. I don’t know if that’s in the non-English lyrics or the delivery or the lack of any real instrumentation, but I’m not a huge fan of this.

‘Heterosapiens’ – If you want an example of a successful joke song, look no further. This track manages to successfully parody a bunch of aspects of 70s hard rock by making it all just a tiny bit too ridiculous, and its purpose is obvious here, but the beauty of it is that in a compilation of ‘fantasy rock songs’ it probably wouldn’t stick out as being the one imposter. Right up there with clever parodies and highly enjoyable for anyone who knows a little of music history.

Mark Prindle’s three long-titled songs – Mark Prindle, the sneaky fellow, managed to combine three of his songs into one high energy track that’s no longer than anything else on here. You could actually jog to the fast-paced but steady ‘Jogging Is The Bestest’ and its riffs are really entertaining. ‘A Guy Who Said My Web Site Is Overrated (Why Does Everybody Hate Me So Much?)’ displays some of the classic humour that makes his site so unique, and ‘My Songs Would Be Significantly Less Sucky If I Bothered To Save Up For More Powerful Recording Equipment’ might just be my favourite – my brain can’t even keep up with the tempo it’s played at but it’s just so much fun!

‘The Drapes’ (Daniel Fjall) – a depressing and strangely captivating tale of a pathetic man who’s lost his girlfriend and now sits at home not doing anything with his life. Even the whispered vocals add to this; it’s almost like it’s been so long since he’s sung anything that he’s forgotten how (in a good way) This is one of the songs that feels the most professional and also stays with me the most. People would wave their lighters to this at a concert, at one with the pain and moodiness of the narrator, and I always come away from the song thinking a bit more about life.

‘Fun Festival’ (Poly Lite Plus) – A space-rock style instrumental that doesn’t feel as though it’s really a very fun place to be. I think this could be something if it was worked on, and would probably also be better in the context of an album of similar stuff, but here it feels a bit clunky and random.

‘Tantric New Romantic’ (The Hector Collectors) – Catchy, short but still feels like a full song. This synth-pop song wins by having nothing more than a great hook, lots of random and cute rhymes in its lyrics, and a singer with a great accent. It’s hardly meant to be taken seriously, but I honestly can’t get enough of it, the humour not getting old after quite a few listens.

‘The Open Window’ (Physical Illusion) – Home-made art rock such as this is automatically at a disadvantage compared to other stuff in the genre, considering Nick Karn probably doesn’t have access to the same range of instruments and studio effects as well-established bands, but this doesn’t show here. It might not be my absolute favourite song here, but this mini-epic is definitely the one that most inspires me to get more from the same artist, since it’s great but also hints at so much more.

‘Mercury’s Star’ – I love this as a closer. It’s an unhurried and beautiful ballad that feels very comfortable in its own skin, helped by the fact that it’s probably the best produced song here. I honestly don’t think any other song could effectively follow this one, the guitar is so gorgeous. It ends with a sample of ‘Everybody Hurts’ and another song that I recognise but can’t place. Its skilful summation of this compilation always leaves me wanting more.

Overall, I think it was Chris Willie Williams who said it best of all, in the liner notes: ‘the unqualified love of rock music is evident in each track here’. The songs display a definite knowledge of what works in music and what elements make up a good song, and I think that’s why there aren’t any huge failures here. Maybe the most important skill you need to make music is to know music.

[REQUEST] Cloud Cult: Light Chasers

 Light Chasers

Best song: The Arrival: There’s So Much Energy In Us

Worst song: The Departure: Today We Give Ourselves To The Fire

Overall grade: 5

I’d hazard a guess that Cloud Cult are a band you have not heard of. (Unless you requested this review, of course.) They’re very independent, and it’s completely through choice – although they’ve had some very highly regarded albums and several offers from major record labels, they’ve made the decision to remain out of the spotlight, in order to focus on such things as helping the environment (this is the same reason they never tour outside of the US.)

The album as a whole skips in a carefree way between dream pop, indie rock and something slightly experimental. Legend has it (well, Wikipedia) that some of their previous albums focused more on the experimental aspect, meaning they basically managed to sell out while remaining completely underground – something of an achievement. I believe this is also technically a concept album, but that’s pretty much restricted to the story, as I don’t hear anything in the music that ties any of the songs together, although some of the transitions are well done.

But taken as individuals, a lot of the songs are pretty fantastic. The opening is spacey, ethereal and subtly majestic, bringing to mind a funeral procession for a highly respected public figure. The moment when the drums come in is a bit clumsy and unexpected, but I’m over it by the time the violins join the proceedings and add an orchestral feel.

The vocals are good, if a little unconventional. Maybe this song would have been on the next Neutral Milk Hotel album if they’d stuck around. But my favourite part of this song is the dark, tribal instrumental section that occupies the last minute or so.

So we had a good start, but sadly ‘Today We Give Ourselves To The Fire’ doesn’t match up. The not quite in unison voices are really grating and although I think it’s trying to be inspirational with its rising melodies and hand claps, but I don’t feel inspired at all. It’s an unwelcome distraction between the opener and ‘You’ll Be Bright’, which has a funky hand-drawn music video that you should watch. It’s the prototypical indie rock song, starting with minimal backing and high mixed vocals before transitioning into something harder with more balance between these elements. If you like that kind of thing, this is a good one.

‘You Were Born’ sounds, on first listen, like a  very pretty but not very exciting acoustic song, but reveals itself to be a little different on subsequent listens. For example, the piano is doing some pretty clever fiddly stuff in the background, and the violin solo in the middle turns out to be a winner. It’s nothing like its weird followup ‘The Exploding People’ which is distorted and detached. It feels like I’m running for my life away from… something. Still has a great hook though in ‘one by one the people they explode…’

I LOVE the chaos that rules over the opening to ‘Room Full Of People In My Head’, and some of the lyrics are pretty clever too: ‘Part of me is the hangman looking for a scapegoat’. It becomes less schizophrenic after the initial blow but it’s still notable for being the hardest rocking track (is there such a genre as indie metal?)

‘Running With The Wolves’ could just as easily have been a Soft Bulletin-era Flaming Lips song, and it has that same protective layer of production that wraps up the song and kind of separates it from the outside world. ‘Responsible’ has a lot of weight to it, and seems to be the moment of the story where the main character, whoever he/she is, finally grows up and realises they can’t keep running away from their mistakes, so I guess it’s a transition piece, but musically it doesn’t do anything that can’t be found on the early songs – I much prefer the claustrophobic, enclosed ‘The Guessing Game’.

At the end, highlights include the intimate whisper of ‘Dawn’… forget it. That’s a good song and all, but closer ‘There’s So Much Energy In Us’, which overshadows everything within a three song radius. Here, the pretentious titles and false builds found elsewhere come to a head in the purge of negativity that feels like a ritual song, a call to do good things. And the title line really is sung with an impressive amount of energy. It’s the kind of song that just climbs higher and higher and never seems to stop, reaching up as far as the sun.

So in a sense, there is a path you can follow through this album, but it’s not one of musical themes, it’s one of emotional themes. At the start, things are more relaxed and content, but they pick up the pace into fear and restlessness, and then slowly seem to come round to acceptance and then to something that’s almost like rejoicing. I also don’t think it’s too hard to broadly categorise each track into ‘dream’ or ‘nightmare’, so maybe it’s about the contrast between those two things as well.

I think I might work backwards with this band, just to be contrary. I am interested to hear their earlier stuff and see their raw and experimental side take a turn in the limelight. Hopefully, that won’t cause them to lose their moments of odd beauty that are what attracts me to this record.

[REQUEST] Daft Punk: Random Access Memories

Random Access Memories

Best song: Within

Worst song: Touch

Overall grade: 3

Daft Punk are not a punk band, but I’m not going to comment on the first half of their name.

For anyone who doesn’t know what Daft Punk sound like, they’re not really known for music that’s actually made by humans. Most of their output consists of computer-programmed, machine-generated beats, thumps and wubs. For this reason, and others which I will discuss later in my review, I’ve been known to call them ‘Kraftwerk for boring people’. This new album is generally considered to tone down these elements a lot more and include a lot of actual people, but sometimes I can’t see that, and at other times I can see it, but don’t really think it’s a good thing.

I don’t have anything against electronic music, but while listening to this I find myself craving those rare bursts of real instrumentation, whether good – like that all too brief electric guitar solo that appears on ‘Instant Crush’ – or bad – like absolutely everything on ‘Touch’, because at least they make me feel something. My feelings towards the first three songs are identical. Variously, they blend electronica and house with funk, disco, dubstep, and techno, and each time a song begins I think to myself, ‘Hey, this is pretty interesting!’ This lasts for an average of twenty seconds before I start to get bored, and after maybe a minute, I realise that the interesting parts are just going to be dragged out and repeated to eternity. It’s not soothing or atmospheric enough to be background music but it’s far too repetitive to be actually entertaining. On the third track, ‘Giorgio by Moroder’, we’re also treated to a length monologue by famous producer Giorgio Moroder himself on his life, and that’s something that definitely does not hold up to repeated listens. But at least he pronounces ‘Moog’ right.

There is one song that I feel like I can freely compliment. ‘Within’ is based around a melody played on a real piano that’s actually quite beautiful and the weirdly hypnotic vocals play around with pitch in an interesting way. The lonely confusion of the song’s narrator is demonstrated well by the understated juxtaposition of the robotic and the human. I don’t know how they managed it, but the pair should be very proud of this one: it’s genuinely touching. It may be sung by a guy who wears a helmet whenever he goes out into a public place, but it makes me believe that he actually feels something inside, and I don’t get that anywhere else on the record.

The band were relatively unknown (compared to now) before they had a massive hit single, ‘Get Lucky’, which was played on every radio station, at every party, and in every shop over the summer. The first time this happened, I heard the song. The second time, I recognised it, and realised that it wasn’t a welcome reprise. As I tend to tune out songs I don’t like, it took a while before I realised just how huge it had become… but the song really had been stalking us all for several months now. Imagine my horror when I was commissioned to write this and discovered that the album version was not the four minute radio edit, but six full minutes (the extra two just consist of the line ‘We’re up all night to get lucky’ on repeat). On a similar note, second single ‘Lose Yourself To Dance’ follows the same sort of pattern, and sounds like what would happen if Primal Scream sold out and tried to score a Top 10 hit. I blame Pharrell Williams for the unpleasantly sexualised direction these two songs take – he’s a credited songwriter on both, but no other tracks.

I’m very confused by ‘Touch’. It’s so ridiculously dramatic that it may or may not be intended as a joke. If it is one, I don’t find it very funny. It tries to do many things, like create a creepy atmosphere at the beginning, move into a more serious, personal, evocative middle and then have a big, sweeping climax to close, complete with angelic female choir. Now, that’s a fair enough framework for an ‘epic’ song to follow, but each element is turned up to eleven in its extremity, and the overall effect causes the song to be almost physically repulsive. The lyrics are awful, too, and often pretty hard to ignore.

I could make a similar criticism about the opening to ‘Beyond’. Remember how in some of my prog reviews I argue that being overblown or bombastic isn’t necessarily a bad quality in music? Well, it certainly can be a bad quality, and this is a prime example. Nothing in the rest of the song justifies the over the top approach of the beginning, making it a pretty big letdown. In fact, I’d argue that this is the three-quarter mark slump, an old trap that Daft Punk have let themselves fall into. I mean, I can’t even work out where ‘Beyond’ ends and ‘Motherboard’ begins, and ‘Fragments of Time’ is another one that just doesn’t stay with me, returning to my point that some of this stuff doesn’t make me feel anything except empty.

‘Doin’ it Right’ picks things up a little bit towards the end. It’s probably the only track where vocals are the primary instrument, and it features a surprising guest musician in Panda Bear (of Animal Collective – I love them!) who delivers a characteristically bizarre and schizophrenic performance, and I actually like the way this works, set against the rhythmic and consistent beats of our helmet-clad band. Then, we close things off (finally – this is one CD, but it’s the length of a double album) with ‘Contact’, a space rock themed instrumental that actually goes somewhere for once and isn’t bad per se, but doesn’t need to be so long – the last minute and a half, for a start, are completely unnecessary.

I’m actually pretty glad I’ve listened to this album all the way through. As one of these things that delights all three of a mainstream audience, serious music fans and professional rock critics, it was a pretty big gap in my knowledge for a few months. That said, I’ve yet to understand all the fuss.

The title’s weird, too. There’s nothing random about this music. It’s perfectly scripted, every time interval precise to the nearest millisecond, and the only thing shinier than their production is their helmets. But in most cases, it’s all show. No matter how beautiful it is on the outside, when there’s no life beneath the surface, I can’t like this album.

Yes: Tormato

Tormato

Best song: On the Silent Wings of Freedom

Worst song: Arriving UFO

Overall grade: 3

It had to end somewhere. The idea of having six outstanding albums in a row is an unfathomable dream for most bands (King Crimson, lookin’ at you) but Yes managed it, made it look effortless even. Yet on their seventh attempt they crashed and burned spectacularly, resulting in a bigger mess than a tomato thrown at a wall with great force. Which, incidentally, isn’t a completely random simile – it’s a true story, as when Rick Wakeman first caught sight of the cover art for this album, he hated it so much that he did indeed throw a tomato at it. That’s a pretty standard response for me when I don’t like something, too.

My two main problems with this album are 1) bad songs, and 2) the band don’t seem like a proper unit here. They’re all playing, a lot of the time, but with very little awareness of what everyone else is playing, which gives a lot of the songs a jumbled and messy feel, as though they’ve been thrown together. It’s a million miles away from the elaborate symphonies they conducted on ‘Close To The Edge’.

I’m pretty tired and I don’t want to waste too many words on this third-rate album, but I’ll throw out a quick description of some of these songs. I’m completely indifferent to ‘Future Times/Rejoice’. The sound quality is absolutely terrible (as it is on most of the album) causing me to spend the first couple of minutes just thinking about that, during which time nothing in the song has managed to grab me. The rest of the song continues to amble by, its watered-down-Yes too bland to provoke a reaction.

‘Madrigal’ and ‘Release Release’ are the two most disappointing things on here – not the worst, just the most disappointing, because they display the band’s sad first few stabs at a commercial hit. ‘Madrigal’ is a kind of ‘Wondrous Stories’ rewrite, but seriously inferior, while ‘Release Release’ rocks much harder, but it’s as though the band were so focused on that aspect that they forgot to make it do anything else.

In actual fact, neither of these ended up being a hit, but they had some vague commercial success with one of the other tracks, ‘Don’t Kill the Whale’. Though Yes doing a protest song is a bit unexpected, it’s actually pretty good, although it’s better if you don’t think too much about the lyrics. A lot of songs here are quite simple and as such, not great showcases for the band’s playing, but the same can’t be said for Wakeman and especially Howe here, where they both get a chance to cut loose and solo a bit.

Second side; ‘Arriving UFO’ is pretty painful, with the group going embarrassingly sci-fi and taking the phrase ‘nerd music’ to a new level. Kind of like ‘The Ancient’ on ‘Tales from Topographic Oceans’, it’s Yes trying to play a more experimental, sound-effect-laden piece, and totally failing – there’s no musical progression in this song or anything to make it more than a medley of themes.

Luckily, things finally start picking up towards the end with the Anderson solo song ‘Circus of Heaven’, which is fun and innocent and seems to reflect his personality really well, and the Squire solo song ‘Onwards’ which is unexpectedly a straight-up love song, and even more unexpectedly, pulled off with ease and grace. It would probably be really pretty if the sound quality didn’t suck so much.

We close with the only song that I can be really positive about; ‘On the Silent Wings of Freedom’. It’s about half the length of ‘Awaken’ on the previous album and also about half as good, but there are worse things than half as good as ‘Awaken’. The whole band are involved and all of their parts work (it feels for the first time like they can hear each other play) and I can tell that if I didn’t know many Yes songs, I’d absolutely love this. As it stands, it feels just a touch formulaic, as if the group have developed a pattern to their epics. Still I enjoy it; it’s jazzy and enigmatic, and Squire’s bass playing is a particular highlight.

To be honest, the odds of a prog band releasing a good album in 1978 were not good, and to their credit they didn’t fail as spectacularly as ELP did with ‘Love Beach’. That said, if an album is so bad that it makes you throw a tomato at it, it should make you think twice about whether you really want it to be released.

Ramones: It's Alive

It’s Alive

Best song: you’ll never see this one coming will you… Blitzkrieg Bop!

Worst song: one of the covers; maybe California Sun

Overall grade: 6 (at this point I can’t imagine ever giving a live album a 7, to be honest)

Well, if I’m not very much mistaken, this is my first review of a live album! Wait, no, I did ‘Ummagumma’, which is half live and half studio… so this is my first time looking at just a live album. And I can’t really think of a better one to start with: ‘It’s Alive’ is easily in my top five live albums of all time, as well as being my favourite Ramones album, because it’s as close as you can buy to the absolute essence of the Ramones, smothered as it is in accelerated riffs, random bursts of aggression and a fuzzy home-grown feel. Course, it would be far better to actually see them in concert, and if that were still possible, you can bet that I’d be there the moment ticket sales opened. Sadly, this album is the closest thing I’m ever going to have.

Most live albums work because they show a different side of the band to the studio albums. Not the case here. ‘It’s Alive’ is amazing because it amplifies every aspect of the Ramones listening experience into a barrage of great sounds that attacks you non-stop for twenty-eight songs and fifty-three minutes. The first aspect it takes to extremes is (as you might have worked out if you can do quick maths) song lengths. In direct contrast to most live albums, these songs are actually even shorter than their studio counterparts, and are basically all sped up to make room for as many songs as is humanly possible. That’s fine. Even after only three albums (this was recorded before ‘Road to Ruin’, though it was released afterwards) they already had more than enough great songs to justify this approach.

Brief interlude: four concerts were recorded and considered for a live album, and the reason this one won out over the others was because the front ten rows of seats were thrown at the stage after the concert was over. That’s clearly how you judge the success of a concert.

Other features of the band highlighted by this album include their sheer energy – a lot of these songs flow directly into one another with barely a pause for applause, and they manage to keep this up for the entire set without it noticing in their performance whatsoever – and their complete lack of taking themselves seriously; see the way Joey growls the title of each song before they start playing it, and before ‘Here Today Gone Tomorrow’ he even claims that it’s “for all you lonely hearts out there”. That line gets me every time.

While the setlist generally sticks to my favourites, there are of course a handful of songs that I didn’t love quite so much in their original incarnations. Without exception, though, I prefer the versions included here. The fact that the songs themselves are a bit unnecessary is cancelled out by the way the group put just as much effort into them as they do the fan favourites – it’s incredible to me how they can be so hardworking in each of their live performances and perform as many times per year as they did and still manage to reach the high standard that they did.

The big hits aren’t all collected at the tail end of the album, they’re nicely spread throughout it, meaning that even someone who doesn’t know the band’s entire output could still find something they knew every few minutes. And nothing is a significant drop in quality from its original! If I had to pick a song that doesn’t work quite as well on here… it might actually be ‘Surfin’ Bird’, because its infuriating catchiness doesn’t have quite the same effect sandwiched between so many other super-catchy songs. On the other hand, absolute highlights (aside from the obvious) are ‘Sheena Is A Punk Rocker’, ‘Cretin Hop’, ‘Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment’ and the impossibly fast ‘We’re A Happy Family’, all of which already set themselves some pretty high standards, but only manage to improve on them in this context.

I love this album because it’s so unashamedly hedonistic and because it manages to achieve the same heights as most objectively “serious” albums just by being a head-spinningly good time. By 1979, disco was in the mainstream, post-punk and New Wave were the new musical movements, most punk bands (including the Ramones themselves) were embracing other styles of music into their work, and this was one of the last true documents of the original punk era – but what  a high for the genre to end on.

Roger Waters The Wall Live

Roger Waters The Wall Live

Date: 14 September 2013

Location: Wembley Stadium, London

Support: n/a

Special guests: Nope. David Gilmour did not appear. I’m sure it would have been well publicised by now if he had.

In my experience, how surreal a concert experience is is directly proportional to the length of time between booking it and actually going. Probably something to do with spending such a long time waiting for it to happen that it doesn’t feel like it ever actually will. Anyway, I booked this last November, the day tickets went on sale, so the entire night was pretty surreal.

It was by far the biggest concert I’ve ever been to, with around 70,000 people filling most of the stadium, and although I could have had a better view had I been standing, I probably couldn’t have done much better with the seats – they were a good balance between not being too sideways-on and not being too far away from the action, and although there was a camera tower that obscured a small part of the right side of the wall, I could see almost everything. When I arrived, it was still light outside, and around two thirds of the wall was already built, with just the middle section still to be filled in. This happened throughout the whole first act, and was very cleverly done – I’d rarely notice a stage hand actually putting a brick in place, I’d just see that the gap was slightly smaller than before.

Most of the setlist will probably come as no surprise to anyone who’s ever heard the Wall album, but there were a couple of extra additions in the first half. Inserted between ‘Brick 2’ and ‘Mother’ was a new song, ‘The Ballad of Jean-Charles de Menezes’ which Roger only wrote a couple of years ago. It was pretty short, and I think it did stand out as being noticeably different from the other songs – someone who didn’t know the music could probably tell it was the odd one out. That said, I liked it, and it was nice to have a personal moment of just Roger on his acoustic guitar rather than the huge production that was everything else. Later on, we had ‘What Shall We Do Now’, an outtake from the original Wall sessions which I think is more than good enough to be on the album, and fits in well with the hard rock style that characterises side two. The other outtake they included was ‘The Last Few Bricks’ which was nothing more than an excuse to complete the wall-building (except for one brick) and which doesn’t add anything, since it mostly reprises other songs.

Musically, everything was played pretty identically to the album – right down to having the exact same guitar tone as David Gilmour uses. So most of what you’re getting by seeing the live show is the multimedia experience – and now the tour’s been going for four years, this has been choreographed to perfection, with everything happening in exactly the right place at exactly the right moment. Things started off with a literal bang as a brightly coloured firework display went off during ‘In the Flesh’, which, if you thought it was a good opener on the album… here it was just unbelievable. The band needed no warming up but launched straight into one of the most passionate, high energy live performances I’ve ever seen.

Some of the most important visuals were all the large scale props. At the beginning of ‘The Thin Ice’, an aeroplane whizzed down a wire over the audience towards the stage, where it promptly explodes. Much later, during ‘In the Flesh’ and ‘Run Like Hell’, the famous Floyd inflatable pig made an appearance, painted black with the crossed hammer logos and some of the relevant slogans, like ‘Trust us’. It later descended onto part of the standing audience, who attacked it, and what wouldn’t I have given for the chance to catch the pig? Gerald Scarfe’s famous puppets also got their time on stage: huge, flashing-eyed versions of the mother, schoolmaster and wife crawled menacingly around the stage during their songs, and at the end of ‘Stop’, the Pink puppet himself, sat ontop of the wall, plummeted to the ground accompanied by a scream. As well as all this, more Scarfe animations got their turn to be projected onto the wall, coming to prominence in ‘Empty Spaces’, ‘Waiting for the Worms’ and ‘The Trial’.

Not everything was focused on the story, though. The giant projection wall allowed for some of the more general themes of the album to be expanded on more, and there was a much stronger focus on the anti-war side of things, as well as references to other things Roger’s spoken out against, including religion, consumerism, the government and the idea of a Big Brother-type society. I thought the way the images relating to these themes were worked in with scenes from the plot and original footage from the 1980 Wall tour was really clever.

As for the songs themselves, highlights for me included all parts of ‘Another Brick’, ‘Goodbye Blue Sky’, still one of the most moving songs ever – although possibly lightened slightly by the fact that when we heard the child’s voice; ‘Look mummy! There’s an aeroplane up in the sky’, someone a few rows behind me called ‘There is!’ and pointed to where, high above the open air stadium, an aeroplane was coincidentally flying overhead. I loved the very end of Act 1 where Roger sang ‘Goodbye Cruel World’ and placed the last brick himself, and even better was ‘Hey You’, possibly my favourite song of the night, where everyone on stage reappeared reinvigorated and ready to give the second half everything they had.

‘Comfortably Numb’ was never going to be as good as it could have been with Gilmour – and I was still holding out a tiny bit of hope for his appearance right up to that point – but it was still excellently performed, and perfectly staged, with just the one light shining on the guitarist on top of the darkened wall until he’d finished his solo, at which point Roger punched one of the bricks and it exploded in a cascade of colours. As expected, ‘Run Like Hell’ was a great one for getting the crowd going, but its followup ‘Waiting For The Worms’ was a more unexpected highlight, since that’s never been a particular favourite of mine. And lastly, the final minutes where the whole band played ‘Outside the Wall’ amongst the ruined bricks was an immensely satisfying denoument.

There are pros and cons to both small and large concerts, but this one I really think could only work with a huge number of people, partly because of the size of the production but also partly because of the connection between everyone who was there: in moments like when everyone was chanting “Tear down the wall!” the audience completely became one, and at times, it really did feel like we were all banging our hearts against some mad bugger’s wall.

Pink Floyd: The Wall

The Wall

Best song: Comfortably Numb

Worst song: Stop

Overall grade: 6

To some people, The Wall is one of the greatest rock operas ever written, able to connect with millions of people on every level. To others, it’s pseudo-intellectual teenage angst that can’t be taken seriously. However, to me, it’s just the album with the second most minimalistic cover art ever, after the Beatles’ ‘White Album’.

I’m not really going to claim that the cover art is the best thing about this album (although I do weirdly like it a lot) because this album and I have a lot of history together. It all started on the bus into school one Thursday a rather long time ago now. I had been instructed that I should ‘try listening to Pink Floyd’ and, upon asking where I should begin, was directed towards side three of The Wall. Because my journey didn’t have time for the full album. So I listened to the first five songs of that section, quite enjoying them but also thinking ‘Won’t it be nice when this has finished and I can listen to Mayday Parade?’ And then Comfortably Numb came on.

I truly believe that song changed my life the first time I heard it – as far as music goes, at the very least. See, there’s a whole debate that goes on about whether or not Pink Floyd classify as prog rock (if you’re not involved, I advise staying well away) and a point that doesn’t get mentioned enough is that they are very much a gateway drug. That song opened my eyes to a lot of new ideas, particularly the fact that an instrumental section can be just as important, if not more so, than a vocal section.

After the song was over, I played it again. Then I went home and I played the whole thing, over and over. Then I picked up ‘Wish You Were Here’ and ‘Dark Side’. Then I started on the hard drugs and began listening to Genesis.

So that’s my story; onto the album itself. Its creation has become legend – the tale of Roger Waters spitting on a fan during a concert has been told time and time again, and the alienation he felt from his audience and his desire to be separate led him to concoct the idea of a literal wall between himself and them. So he wrote this album, telling of a rock star named Pink Floyd (of all things) who turns all his problems into bricks in his wall to isolate himself from the world. I can see what people are saying when they call it ‘teenage angst’, but isn’t that kind of the point? That this Pink guy never really grew up because he just refused to face the world but stayed trapped inside himself… someone like that can’t be expected to think in a mature way.

This album is split across two LPs, the first about Pink building up his wall through childhood and his early career, and the second, his descent into madness behind the wall, and each contain a mixture of ‘focus’ tracks that are full songs with a proper structure, and ‘linking’ tracks which serve mostly to move on the story but are still a good listen for the most part. (Not filler – where would this album be without them?) I could probably find something to say about all of them, but I’ll try to keep it to essentials.

The first side opens with ‘In the Flesh’, which shows the direction Waters is taking the music on this album – in that there’s not always too much of it, since this is more lyrical – and introduces a guitar riff that gets repeated throughout the record. Waters’ idiosyncratic vocals are probably my favourite thing about this darkly overblown opener. In this section we also have the band’s only number one single (Christmas number one, in fact) ‘Another Brick in the Wall, pt. 2’ and while I think it’s a raucous, danceable classic, and one of the few examples of disco having some kind of substance, I actually prefer its ‘Part 1’ counterpart, the quietly introspective moment where Pink thinks about his father. Still, that’s not even the side highlight: that would be ‘Mother’, which is hauntingly real and very depressing as we are told ‘Mother’s gonna make all of your nightmares come true… ooh, mother’s gonna help you build the wall.’

Opening the next side is the incredibly poignant Blitz-themed song ‘Goodbye Blue Sky’ and though it’s short, it’s probably the most memorable part of the side. Then the pace is picked up for the next trio of songs, of which ‘Young Lust’ is notable as the only song other than the huge hits to be co-written by Gilmour, and ‘One Of My Turns’ is notable just for being great – Waters is really convincing in his performance as the madman Pink. It segues right into ‘Don’t Leave Me Now’ after he’s come back to his senses and is trying to apologise to his wife, begging her to stay, and the juxtaposition of these songs highlights the schizophrenia of the album.

Although most of it didn’t grab me as much straight away, I’ve come to love the whole of side three. It basically all takes place in Pink’s hotel room after he’s finished the wall, and as such it has a very claustrophobic feel, ever present except for the release during the magical choruses of ‘Comfortably Numb’. ‘Hey You’ is a great builder and something of an anthem, ‘Is There Anybody Out There’ is a cool, scared, atmospheric piece which comes right before ‘Nobody Home’, which basically describes Pink’s incredibly mundane life alone inside his wall, and has absolutely amazing lyrics to convey the hopelessness of his situation and how listless he feels. I won’t try to actually describe ‘Comfortably Numb’: it never fails to give me that involuntary shiver that a really good song elicits, and I’m not arrogant enough to think I know the words to describe that.

Side four is probably the weakest side overall, as it’s where the tunes start to get less memorable as the most important thing is tying up the plot. Also, quite a few of the songs are reprises of some sort - 'The Show Must Go On' sounds very similar to 'Mother'. But we do get a much more self-assured reprise of ‘In the Flesh’ (no question mark) and the best hard rocker the Floyd ever did, the epic ‘Run Like Hell’ with the awesome guitar riff which became their concert encore for many years. Second last song ‘The Trial’ gets a lot of hate for its Broadway style composition owing to the caricatures of the characters as each speaks their thoughts on Pink, but I personally think it’s a great ending to the saga, really showing how ridiculous Pink’s whole outlook on life is and how disturbed he’s become. It’s over the top grandiosity also presents a neat contrast to the stripped down acoustic closer ‘Outside the Wall’, where the wall is torn down, Pink is reunited with the outside world and the themes of the album are expanded to relate to a more general situation.

(By the way, is anyone getting a serious sense of déjà vu in that this is yet another Floyd review? I know I am. It feels like I haven’t covered Yes for ages. Must get to that soon.)

Radiohead: In Rainbows

In Rainbows

Best song: Videotape

Worst song: House of Cards

Overall grade: 6

The year is 2007 and the music industry sucks, which is really nothing new, and Radiohead are the band who decide to do something about it, eliminating anyone who comes between artist and listener and offering this album direct, for a price of whatever the listener thinks it’s worth. The only flaw I see in this system is that, as far as I’m aware, you couldn’t hear the album before pledging your price – so how do you know what it’s worth? Still, it’s a novel idea, if a slightly ironic one, as in contrast to the unconventional method of release, this is actually their most mainstream-oriented release since ‘The Bends’.

It’s true, for a lot of bands I’d mean that as an insult, but here I think it’s more than justified. It’s like they’re no longer trying to push any boundaries, which they were consciously trying to do before, and instead just writing whatever they feel like. It works so, so well. This is not just the sound of a band who think they’ve written a really good set of songs, this is a band who genuinely love playing the songs they’ve got, and it shows. It uses a lot of tricks and effects which are pretty recognisable Radiohead, like Thom Yorke’s ascending vocals, disjointed rhythms, wobbliness, random moments of stark emotion, and other little trademarks. They’re just used a little differently – these songs are more immediately listenable, more comfortable in their own skin, and to everyone’s surprise, a lot warmer. Who knew that this band would turn out to be just as good at creating a warm, welcoming atmosphere as they are a cold, uninviting one.  

’15 Step’ is jolty and awkward; a dance that’s not quite in time. Right from the beginning it sounds tight and motivated, showing a group that’s really committed and has more than gotten over the confusion that characterised ‘Hail to the Thief’. Of course, they’ve had albums with this strong sense of purpose before, but those have been concept albums – this is a set of jigsaw puzzle pieces, none of which are part of the same picture, but which fit together perfectly regardless.

That and ‘Bodysnatchers’ are both in the jumpy stop-start-stop-start vein as the last album, but ‘Nude’ marks the first big change. Things quieten down and take a turn for the far more personal, Thom’s soothing vocals right at the top of the mix, and it calms me, almost creating a dreamlike state.

As well as looking to the past, the album nods to the future. ‘Weird Fishes/Arpeggi’ is basically just a lot of really cool messing about on a guitar, and looking back with the perspective of ‘The King of Limbs’, it seems to be something of a blueprint for that album.

Those who are stoically opposed to the band’s previous efforts will probably feel the same way about this one, but anyone who’s always found them just a little too experimental and out there might find something to love. A case in point would be ‘All I Need’, which is basically your standard, day-to-day love song. When did Radiohead start doing them?! Wait, no, it’s alright – the lyrics do get pretty dark near the end. ‘I only stick with you because there are no others…’ kind of ruins the sweetness of the ‘you are all I need’ chorus, and that’s definitely the whole point.

‘House of Cards’ was a really successful song that picked up a whole bunch of Grammys, but I don’t like it as much as the others. It’s not bad by any means – this whole album is on a fairly consistent level – but it’s a bit fixed in one place and doesn’t get much of an emotional reaction from me, although the atmospheric backing is quite lovely.

As is customary for Radiohead, the closer just blows me away, leaving me feeling thoughtful and a little lost after the album’s finished. It’s a real tearjerker, its stripped back piano and vocals arrangement almost uncomfortably close, especially coming after the busy, groovy ‘Jigsaw Falling Into Place’. ‘Videotape’ is just such a great example of creating everything from nothing, though, because that piano melody is so simple, but the song doesn’t feel like it’s missing a thing.

I don’t know if anyone can confirm this, but I seem to recall reading something about a lyric sheet for this album being ‘hidden’ somewhere inside the box of the original pressing of… I think it was ‘OK Computer’? If so, that’s fascinating, that they had the lyrics written so many years ago (although not the music I’d guess, as it seems to fit more into this part of their career) and always knew they were going to make this album.

Overall, this is nothing more than a set of really beautiful and sad songs that worm their way into my heart and just refuse to leave. Dissecting these songs, their individual components rarely stand out, but the overall effect is magnificent. In fact, this album has come to form a kind of triumvirate with ‘OK Computer’ and ‘Kid A’ of Radiohead albums I’ll probably never get tired of. If the ‘pay what you want’ idea was still going right now, I think it would be worth a whole lot. 

Pink Floyd: Animals

Animals

Best song: Difficult choice, but I’ll pick Sheep.

Worst song: Not applicable.

Overall grade: 7

Round of applause, everyone, please. Pink Floyd become the first band on this website to achieve the great honour of having not one but two albums with a top grade of 7, something which won’t happen a lot, but here I just can’t help myself. This is also the first album I’ve reviewed that I refused to pick a worst song for, but we’ll get to that.

Somewhere between touring the ‘Wish You Were Here’ album and building Britannia Row studios, Roger Waters, now in full-on concept mode, came up with the idea for writing an album based around George Orwell’s novel ‘Animal Farm’. Then, he took a pair of songs that he’d worked on in sessions for the previous album, then known as ‘You Gotta Be Crazy’ and ‘Raving & Drooling’ and reworked them to fit the concept, turning them into what we now know as ‘Dogs’ and ‘Sheep’, so I guess it’s not really a surprise that this album sounds in some ways musically similar to ‘Wish You Were Here’. In other ways it doesn’t, though. Whereas on that album it felt like he was complaining and feeling sorry for himself from a distance, here he’s been influenced by the punk scene that’s just started to appear in the UK, and he’s angry and wants something to be done about these issues he’s writing about.

The opening and closing track to the album is ‘Pigs on the Wing’ (same melody each time, slightly different lyrics) and it adds both nothing and everything. I’d be shocked if it was anyone’s favourite track (either part) since it’s just basic acoustic guitar strumming and Roger singing a little love ditty to his girlfriend, but at the same time it’s what really takes the album to the next level for me. Without it, you’d just have three songs that use animal metaphors for types of people; with it you get a complete concept, and also a ray of hope in the otherwise-downbeat world of the album. It also adds a personal side, making the record feel like it’s about one guy’s experiences with all these types of people and the eventual realisation that no matter how much things might suck, he has this girl he loves to help him through, which is really quite touching.

The rest of side one is entirely taken up by ‘Dogs’. I’m just going to repeat what’s always said about this song and point out that it’s undoubtedly one if David Gilmour’s best vocal parts, ever – one of the first times where his hard-rock voice is really convincing, and he definitely shows us the ruthlessness of the ‘dogs’ he describes: I love when he sings the ‘you’ll get the chance to STICK THE KNIFE IN!’ line. Gilmour also plays slow, calculated solos which enhance the feeling of paranoia while drums march ominously in the background. I mean, it’s actually a fairly simple song if you think about it - but it’s damn good at hiding that fact. I don’t know what I respect more; a band with amazing technical proficiency, or a band that actually doesn’t play that well but makes it so you barely notice.

‘Pigs (Three Different Ones)’ follows, and it begins with that weird, spacey, piano melody, before a relaxing guitar part comes in, and gradually, the melody changes and a few more effects and instruments come in until SUDDENLY, it’s no longer mellow and gentle, it’s a full on foot-tapping funk song that completely denounces the old saying ‘you can’t dance to Pink Floyd’ even while it’s completely trashing various people in power (the identity of two of them remains unknown; the third is Mary Whitehouse, a name which doesn’t mean a whole lot to someone born in 1996.) Well, you can’t dance to the middle section so much, since it’s full of all kinds of weird sounds and guitars fed through machines to actually sound like pigs, but it’s still all really clever.

The easiest way of picking a best song on this album is to pull a name out of a hat, but maybe I’d put ‘Sheep’ twice in the hat to give it a better chance. After a quiet opening, the song becomes quiet chaotic, with a panicked vocal and a mess of instruments falling over each other, perfectly conveying the fear of the sheep; the loyal followers. (So, to recap: one slow and deliberate song, one fast and upbeat one, and one all-out crazy one. Great contrasting but complementary styles.) The echo of the ‘dragged down by a stone’ line and the chilling recital of the Lord’s prayer are inspired additions to an already perfect song. The darkness is lifted by a rousing electric guitar riff, also the song’s best hook, that begins a couple of minutes towards the end, as the sheep rise up to take on the dogs, proving that Roger Waters wasn’t always relentlessly cynical.

Then we have the reprise of ‘Pigs on the Wing’ to round things off in that simple but impossible to dislike way it does, and I hate it, but only because it means the album is coming to an end. I love it really. ‘And any fool knows a dog needs a home… a shelter from pigs on the wing’. It’s quite essential to bring things round full circle and tie everything together, and that’s why I absolutely can’t select a worst song for this album, because without any one song, it simply could not be a 7-rated album, or work as a cohesive piece at all.

Roger Waters, speculation says, is on the last leg of his massive Wall tour (which I am going to see in six days, hooray!) so as soon as that’s all over, I’ll begin thinking of ways to persuade him to take the entirety of this album out on tour. Maybe he can perform it at Battersea Power Station (as featured on the stunning cover) before they perform the criminal act they’re planning of turning it into an apartment complex.

King Crimson: Red

Red

Best song: Starless

Worst song: Providence

Overall grade: 6

Some people say King Crimson should have stopped here; should have gone out in a blaze of glory with this unrivalled masterpiece instead of degenerating into the relentless dissonant guitar jammings that defined their 90s work. Now, the existence of ‘Discipline’ means I will never share that view, but I can understand it. Crimson had achieved the impossible and had created a second record on the same level as ‘In the Court’, and they were quite plainly never going to do it a third time – plus, the idea that these two records could start and end their career was certainly a compelling one.

This record actually follows the same pattern as ‘In the Court’, interestingly. It has three great songs on the first side, followed by a pretty awful one at the start of side two, and then the best song of all to close. And if it wasn’t for that one terrible mess, I’d have no problem giving this album the top grade of 7. But ‘Court’ only achieved that because of its status as probably one of the top ten most influential albums of all time, and ‘Red’ doesn’t quite have that same legacy, so a 6 it remains.

The music here is the combination of everything this band have done, ever: it’s got the freshness of the debut and the feeling that it’s like nothing that had ever been heard before, it’s the amazing songwriting and heavy style of ‘Lark’s Tongues’ and the confidence and technical proficiency of ‘Starless & Bible Black’.

The title track opens the record and acts as a kind of instrumental overture, summing up the overall feel of the album: dark and eerie, not in an atmospheric way but in how tight and relentless it all is.  Track two, ‘Fallen Angel’ creates another parallel with the debut in being lighter in contrast and more lyrically/vocally based (no Greg Lake though, sadly) although don’t listen to it hoping for anything like ‘I Talk To The Wind’, because this one slowly descends into anarchy for its dissonant middle section, before coming up to the surface again as a brief respite in the next verse, before ducking back under for its big finish, which is angry and determined at the same time.

If you’re still not sold on my insistence that Bill Bruford is the best ever rock drummer, final proof comes in the form of ‘One More Red Nightmare’. Its purposefulness and precision sends a shiver down my spine. But my favourite part is actually the wacky guitar solo that starts about three minutes in, perfectly capturing the surreal terror of a nightmare.

‘Providence’ is a waste of vinyl space, plain and simple. ‘Moonchild’ on their first album at least had the redeeming quality that it began as a proper song for the first three minutes, but this one skips that part and heads straight for the aimless ambling around section. The only thing it has which improves on that other song is that this one is slightly shorter. People who like ‘Moonchild’: all this is your fault. I hope you’re happy with yourself.

But I promise you that as soon as it’s over you’ll have forgotten all about it, because it launches right into the culmination of Crimson’s career so far, ‘Starless’, a breathtakingly energetic and virtuosic piece of music that puts every second of its twelve minutes to good use. Officially, the band had been reduced to a kind of warped power trio by this point, but here they make use of lots of extra musicians (and a lot of overdubs) to create the dense texture that characterises this piece. It’s obvious that Fripp intended the piece to be a summary of his career thus far, its jazzy sections giving a nod to ‘Lizard’ and its heavy use of Mellotron a throwback to ‘In the Court’/’In the Wake’, even while it goes further than they ever have before in its dramatic mood changes and constant messing with your mind. I have no problem calling this one of the best, most well-arranged songs I’ve ever heard.

This is absolutely essential listening for everyone. You might not be quite the same afterwards, but it’ll be worth it.

Ocean Colour Scene: Moseley Shoals

Moseley Shoals

Best song: Policemen & Pirates

Worst song: You’ve Got It Bad

Overall grade: 5

Ocean Colour Scene were an English band that began in the nineties, and they were too late for Madchester and too rocky for Britpop, which, if you take this album as your focus point, is more than a little unfair. I mean, the group weren’t necessarily full of new musical ideas, but how many new musical ideas WERE there in 1996? Anyway, what these four guys lacked in originality, they made up for in diversity, because there’s a whole range of different influences on this album.  Yes, you have the obvious Beatles and Stones, but there’s also some more unexpected bands you can hear echoes of, like Television and the 3-minute single side of psychedelia. And despite the fact that most of the songs follow a predictable quiet verse/loud chorus pattern, the odd instrumental section makes it quirky and adds something refreshingly different.

Most people who are familiar with this album know it for its singles, of which there are four. The most notable are ‘The Riverboat Song’ and ‘The Day We Caught The Train’. If Ocean Colour Scene are a pop-rock band, then the first one is definitely the rock and the first one the pop, and both are great, although of the studio versions I slightly prefer ‘Riverboat Song’. ‘The Day We Caught The Train’ was clearly written to be performed live, but luckily some of the magic manages to carry through into this studio version. It’s all about the chorus – the verses basically just exist in anticipation of the big moment – but it is a glorious chorus; one that’s sure to make you feel good about pretty much everything.

‘The Circle’ was another, and though it was possibly a less obvious choice of single (owing to its fairly long instrumental ending which happens to be the best part) on the album it continues the trend of being really good. The electric guitars stand out, bright and tangy (yes, that’s the word I meant to use: they remind me of the musical equivalent of a citrus fruit, surprisingly but not unpleasantly strong). But the final single, ‘You’ve Got It Bad’, is equal parts boring and dull, probably the only faster song where the band’s knack for catchiness doesn’t see them through.

For similar reasons, I would also consider skipping ‘Lining Your Pockets’, since the melody really doesn’t grab me and the band have no energy in the quiet, ballady parts.

The obvious choice would be to put one of the two opening tracks as best song, but truthfully a lot of the later album cuts are crazily underrated. Let’s start with ‘Fleeting Mind’, a far superior ballad to ‘Pockets’, and the start of the more serious middle section of the record. The backing music is interesting in its own right here, not just acting as a backdrop for the vocals as it does in some places. The best part is where Simon sings ‘That’s not hard to forget…’, a line that tugs at the heartstrings and possibly also the vocal chords.

‘One For The Road’ is actually a really sad story, with a strong message about being careful while drinking and partying, but it never gets preachy, mostly down to the swinging ‘get up and dance; get up and smile’ chorus that lets go a bit more than the slightly over the top melancholy of the first couple of lines. ‘It’s My Shadow’ is another one that mixes prettieness and direct emotion with its building chorus and anthemic hook, to great effect. But even these don’t come close to the unquestionable highlight that is ‘Policemen & Pirates’. Nobody from OCS has ever been referred to as a lyrical genius, but the curious, metaphorical lyrics here always make me stop and think: ‘The house caught on fire in the winter/The bosses lay slain/And each of the workers decided to tenfold their pay’. Musically, it expertly fuses rock and soul and juxtapositions a smooth vocal melody with jumpy intermittent percussion and has a really cool guitar riff at the beginning.

At almost eight minutes long, it’ll come as no surprise that the prog influence is felt most on the closer ‘Get Back’. It makes for an outstanding finish – a mostly instrumental piece with a very involved performance from everyone. They took a risk putting this on their album, both stylistically and with their fanbase, but it was definitely worth it – stretching their abilities and incorporating a wider range of instruments while remaining accessible.

This isn’t your typical mainstream pop rock album, but it isn’t alt rock either, and perhaps their lack of identification with any scene or label is why OCS were never crazily successful, despite their ties with Blur. It could also be to do with the fact that they peaked with this album and then moved into a more dad rock style, always staying listenable but nowhere near as engaging. Still, labels are unnecessary – anyone with an ear for melody who doesn’t need things to be too complicated is sure to find something to enjoy on this album.

Pink Floyd: Wish You Were Here

Wish You Were Here

Best song: Shine On You Crazy Diamond, part 1

Worst song: Welcome To The Machine

Overall grade: 5

Coming a full two and a half years after ‘Dark Side’, this marks the longest gap between two Pink Floyd albums so far, and they spent much of this lost time banging on tin cans. That’s not any kind of metaphor – no, they decided to resurrect an old project, ‘Household Objects’, which comprised music played on anything except for actual musical instruments. Now, nothing has ever been released (officially or otherwise) from these sessions, but it could be interesting, no? After all, all instruments have to be made by someone, from something, and all the band were essentially doing is cutting out the manufacturer and doing it themselves. Really just a step on from when they started getting involved in the production. However, that idea never really got off the ground, and so Roger Waters began to write some more songs to be played on more conventional instruments: six in all; and four would appear on this record with two being saved for the next one.

Which brings me to the big question: how can an album with five songs (since one is in two parts) which are all great, get the same or lower grade than an album which has serious weaknesses? Well – something I mention fairly often is songs that work in the context of an album, but not individually. Here, I see it as the other way round. Taken on their own, each of these songs are awesome, but if you put them together, they don’t quite work as a complete piece. The difference in style between ‘Crazy Diamond, pt. 1’ and ‘Welcome To The Machine’ is jarring and although the segue between ‘Have A Cigar’ and the title track is clever, where it becomes staticky, unclear radio music for a while, the two songs require a very different mindset and I can never get used to them next to each other. So, although I often play all these songs, it’s very rare for me to play them together as a set.

The three shorter tracks are very much overshadowed by the massive ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’, which is both the longest song Floyd ever did (it just hits the 26 minute mark) and the one with the most parts (there are nine, count ‘em!) Parts 1-5 open the record and the slightly less essential Parts 6-9 close it, although these ones I do put together, since parts 1-9 in their entirety are actually a great experience that surprisingly few people have tried. Though I don’t enjoy the whole composition as much as ‘Echoes’, it’s probably a more sophisticated piece. As in most of this album, Rick Wright dominates, which is nice, and he’s very subtle and atmospheric, giving everything time to breathe and develop, with perfectly-timed solos by him and Gilmour appearing all over the place. The expertly constructed piece shows the mark of a band with experience at writing these epics, but who are certainly not complacent, and it feels lonely and isolated throughout, before ending on a few bars of the melody of ‘See Emily Play’, their 1967 top 10 single, which feels both familiar and out of place – an appropriately worrying ending to the song and album.

The title track is what all of Roger’s acoustic numbers from ‘More’, plus ‘If’, ‘Grantchester Meadows and ‘Pillow of Winds’, have been leading up to – the ultimate in heartrending and pure beauty, both musical and lyrical… it’s one of those songs that I can’t imagine myself ever not wanting to listen to. ‘Running over the same old ground; what have we found? The same old fears’ gets me every time.

But the two tracks before it are the very different ones… ‘Welcome To The Machine’ is a very good song that never quite seemed to justify its seven and a half minutes to me, but at five or so it wold be excellent. It’s very cold, harsh and mechanical, shutting people out with Wright’s keyboards giving it a very tense feel, and it is weird. I could believe it was recorded inside the machine it talks about. ‘Have a Cigar’ is different again, Roy Harper’s guest vocals combining the sarcasm of Roger’s and Dave’s ability to stay in tune, and he seems to have the confidence neither of them have. The rhythmic feel really suits the song and the attempt at a more straightforward rock style almost foreshadows the direction the band would take for some of the post-Waters era, interestingly, although the guitar solo doesn’t nearly match up to the one on ‘Wish You Were Here’.

In all seriousness, though, I’ve often heard it said that ‘The Final Cut’ is the most depressing Pink Floyd album, but I think I could make a strong case for this one. Though musically they’d survived, I can’t even imagine how they felt about the loss and breakdown of their early bandmate Syd Barrett, and hearing their thoughtful and sometimes harrowing playing on these songs shows how much it affected them – even without considering the story, now music folklore, of Syd himself turning up in the studio while they were recording ‘Shine On’ and asking when he needed to start playing.

Course, he later called the song ‘a bit old’. Like that’s ever going to be the case.

The Who: Quadrophenia

Quadrophenia

Best song: Love Reign O’er Me

Worst song: I’m One

Overall grade: 7

Everyone does stupid things sometimes. A stupid thing I once did (a long time ago, before I was a big Who fan) is bought the album ‘Quadrophenia’ having never listened to it before, putting it into my computer to play, taking the sound off mute and listening to the whole of disc one, all the while thinking ‘What’s up with this? The music has potential but either the sound quality is dreadful or it’s drenched in so many sound effects that you can’t hear what’s going on!’ Then I took the disc out and the sound effects continued and I realised that they were coming from somewhere else on my computer entirely.

But Pete Townshend did not do a stupid thing by making this album, because when I got to listen to this without any volcano noises in the background, I found that it is not only the best thing the Who ever put to tape, but it is a crowning – and pioneering – achievement in the rock opera form as a whole. (All the other rock operas I think are amazing were released after this one.)

In essence, this is the story of Jimmy Cooper, an adolescent boy struggling with trying to survive alone in the world, having just left home, and also fit in with the other Mods of the day. Partly because of his identity crisis and partly because of his drug problem, he feels like his personality has split into four (hence ‘Quad’) which mirror the personalities of the four band members. It’s actually quite a clever story and not all that difficult to follow, but just in case, the basic plot is written out in a great first-person narrative in the liner notes.

This album flows together incredibly well, not in that the songs have smooth transitions, but more in that you’re constantly reminded that you’re listening to a part of a whole. This is mostly down to the four themes, also known as the title lines of ‘Helpless Dancer’, ‘Is It Me’, ‘Bell Boy’ and ‘Love Reign O’er Me’, which are played throughout the album at appropriate moments, so cleverly that they feel like part of the song they’re imposing upon, to symbolise which personality Jimmy is associating with at that moment. They’re all first introduced in opener ‘I Am The Sea’, which foreshadows the whole record and adds symmetry (it both starts and ends at sea.) Each themeis also expanded into a full song at some point (although sadly not one on each side) giving further insight into each area of his character.

So, this gimmicky stuff is all well and good, but what of people who don’t care about those things and just want to hear great tunes? Well, this album is actually perfect for that too. In fact, the only song I’m not sold on is ‘I’m One’, and even then, it has a great beginning which contrasts the previous song, and it’s only towards the end that it descends into bland, generic hard rock. Aside from that, these songs are either great, really great or classic.

Side one includes ‘The Real Me’, one of Entwhistle’s most stunning bass parts – this would still be amazing if it was JUST the bass and nothing else, seriously. But that and the rough, growly vocals give the song its raw quality which contrasts the clean feel of the final song. Another connection between the beginning and end of the album is that the second and second last real songs are both instrumentals, further developing the four themes and allowing Pete to play around with his synths and be a bit experimental. They’re clearly different songs, yet similar enough that I can’t help see them as a pair.

Another high point is ‘The Punk And The Godfather’, which has some sections driven by a heavy bass and others by a pretty acoustic guitar, reflecting the confused mental state of the protagonist. Daltrey’s vocals are expressive and amazing, as everywhere here, and I really believe that he is Jimmy. ‘The Dirty Jobs’ has a classic moment in its ‘I’m being pushed down…’ line, and it reallys trikes me how Pete has been writing about exactly the same subject matter – difficulties of everyday life while you’re young – ever since ‘My Generation’, but he’s become so much more sophisticated as a songwriter that you can hardly tell they’re related.

‘Helpless Dancer’ has a gorgeous opening and ‘Is It In My Head’ is poppier with Beatlesque vocals, but by ‘I’ve Had Enough’, the final song on the first LP, our main character seems to have given up. The hopeless atmosphere and more understated song (compared with the others at least) again highlights the triumphant final song, which is in fact quoted a couple of times here.

Moving onto disc two, we have more songs which I feel honoured to have constant access too, like ‘5.15’ which begins by sounding quite melancholy in its downbeat reference to ‘Cut My Hair’ from earlier, before exploding with heavy backing music, call and response vocals and lyrics full of imagery and symbolism. ‘Sea & Sand’ is a delight too, showcasing Pete’s innate ability for transitioning from hard and rocking to quiet and sentimental and back again without making it feel clunky. ‘Bell Boy’ has a great marching beat which I really get into, but then it occasionally stops for a short time, which might seem annoying at first but which is actually a great way of showing the crazy, unpredictable nature of this personality.

By side four and the national anthem-style opening of ‘Doctor Jimmy’, you can definitely tell we’re reaching the end, but everything continues to build until we reach the peak with ‘Love Reign O’er Me’. From the first three piano chords of that song you can tell that something special is going to happen – they have such gravity. Roger gives his vocals a soaring, epic feel and although I’ve never seen the Quadrophenia film, I can just imagine Jimmy standing on his rock, arms raised to the heavens, singing this song. The epic guitar part provides a huge release and a suitably overblown finish to this album; one that has rarely been matched in its impact.

If ‘Tommy’ proved that a bunch of songs could be strung together to tell an epic story, then ‘Quadrophenia’ proved that that could be done without compromising the music at all. It’s a truly special album that takes basic hard rock and adds progressive elements and a pinch of Broadway-style theatrics to create an album that is totally deserving of its place in what was (subjectively of course) the best ever year for music.

My Everest: Cut & Crop

Cut & Crop b/w Playing Us Like Chess

Location: http://myeverest.bigcartel.com/product/cut-crop and http://myeverestband.bandcamp.com/

Release status: A-side available on iTunes, B-side on Bandcamp, both on CD

Overall feelings: Positive

My Everest took nearly a year to record anything following up their debut EP, but as they’re juggling the band with their college and university careers, I think it’s acceptable. Anyway, I’d much rather a band took long breaks between high quality releases than came out with rushed, mediocre material every couple of months, and judging by this single, My Everest fall firmly into the first category: it’s as least as good as anything on ‘Filthy Little Secrets’.

The A-side, ‘Cut & Crop’, is set apart from their earlier songs by its more mature feel and its crossing of genre boundaries. The songs on the first EP conformed to all expectations of the poppier side of pop punk, but here a more rocking influence is felt, with the guitars stepping up to duel with the vocals rather than being content to take a back seat. It doesn’t ever lose its sense of fun, though, or its target audience – lines like ‘My treatment for you is double denim’ are sure to bring a smile to any teenage girl’s face, and I defy anyone to not nod their head to the chorus. There’s possibly a little too much treatment on the vocals but otherwise the production is excellent; the rhymes in the bridge are clever; and I love all the fake-out endings that appear towards the end of the song.

‘Playing Us Like Chess’ is the B-side, and musically it’s a little less interesting (except for the great guitar solo part that plays between the second and third verses) but lyrically I prefer it, and if you’re someone who likes their songs to have a good story behind them, then this is definitely what I’d recommend. This tale of the rise and fall of a girl who treats her friends as disposable is brought to life with lines like ‘I’ll buy her a one way ticket out of this town’, and it sort of reminds me of an angry Taylor Swift on speed. The full-bodied sound and high-energy performance from all members mean this could easily be a double A-side, since although ‘Cut & Crop’ probably wins it overall for its more unique feel, I do flip-flop on which song I prefer.

If a band can go from ‘Obsession’ to ‘Cut & Crop’ in a year, all while making regular detours into the world of catchy, danceable pop, then they’re definitely worth paying attention to. If the trend continues, then whatever they come up with next is sure to completely blow me away… but I’ll wait patiently.

Pink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon

Dark Side of the Moon

Best song: Us & Them

Worst song: you don’t mess with Dark Side by taking songs out. but, Speak To Me

Overall grade: 6

I’m not sure why I’m even reviewing this. I mean, it’s such a sidenote within the Floyd discography, and a really obscure one at that, that I doubt anyone would really notice if I were to just miss it out. But hey, in the interests of completism, I might share a few words about this rarity.

OK, all jokes aside, this record is a pretty big deal. It’s sold around 45 million copies and that’s not counting all the people who download it, listen to it on Youtube or the radio or borrow it from a friend. It’s estimated that one in five British households own a copy. It’s just celebrated its 40^th anniversary with a bunch of celebrations like a new website dedicated to it and its own radio play. It seems to have some kind of secret formula, that it later lent to Fleetwood Mac about four years later but that has rarely been seen since, that gives it mainstream commercial appeal without compromising its actual artistic merit.

I’m sure I have very little new wisdom or insights to impart about Dark Side: much like those millions of others, I think it’s pretty great, although I don’t think it’s the greatest thing Pink Floyd ever did. I mean, I love ‘Echoes’ and live ‘Interstellar Overdrive’, and sometimes I find this album a little bit too safe, with its conventional melodies and instrumentation. On the other hand, it is a masterpiece in the way it effortlessly flows from one song to the next, becoming almost one complete song along the lines of Tull’s Thick as a Brick. For that reason it’s very difficult to pick a worst song, because there are a handful of interlinking sections that you’d never put on a mix tape, but that the album just wouldn’t work in the same way without. The first of these (and most obvious example) is ‘Speak to Me’, essentially a sound collage of all the sound effects used on the album: heartbeats, ticking clocks, cash registers, manic laughs, and the candid human voices talking about madness and violence. (It wasn’t really written by Nick Mason – his songwriting credit was a gife from Roger Waters. Waters gives gifts?) And yeah, it’s just all these sounds randomly arranged, but it gives the album a real continuity when each of these sounds comes up again later and they feel more familiar, like they’re meant to be there.

Quick rundown of the rest of the songs: ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’ and ‘Us & Them’ are the two sections I most look forward to. Everyone talks about Clare Torry’s vocals on ‘Great Gig’ and they are truly breathtaking, but they wouldn’t be so effective if it wasn’t for Rick Wright’s beautiful piano. For a while it was entitled ‘Religion Section’ and I don’t know if they were trying to musically give people a religious experience or just represent one, but some people are that strongly affected by it. Wright also shines on ‘Us & Them’, where he plays a part that’s more complicated than it seems on first listen. Lyrically, Roger’s in his safe territory of anti-war slogans, and his confidence and passion show through. Plus, Dick Parry’s saxophone solo is just brilliant.

Some of the other songs are more radio-friendly (possibly down to them not having saxophone solos?) such as the mournful but lush ballad ‘Breathe’, which is the first vocal track, and is also reprised slightly later on, another moment that makes the album flow well. ‘Time’ is more of a midtempo tune with swooshing guitars and thought-provoking lyrics, and ‘Money’ provides some much-needed speed and energy to the record with its funk and blues influences and its cash registers rhythmically chiming away in 7/4 time, which is not as cool as 13/8 time, which is the most awesome time signature, but is still fairly cool.

‘On the Run’ must have been really ahead of its time when it was released, its synth sounds never heard before, but it hasn’t aged as well as most of the record. Personally, I actually really like the retro-video-game sound of it and the constant loops, but a lot of people don’t and I can see why. ‘Any Colour You Like’ is an instrumental bridge that divides side two in half and prepares you for ‘Brain Damage’, which is dark and ominous in its verses, but still manages to have massively hooky arena-sized choruses, and segues nicely into ‘Eclipse’, the day to its night, if you will, which builds up steadily and ends on the triumphant and cathartic cry of ‘everything under the sun is in tune, but the sun is eclipsed by the moon!’

So, the reason why this album has sold 45 million copies and counting? It’s got something for everyone. You can appreciate it whether you’re young or old, whether you’ve heard thousands of albums or just listen to the radio in the car, whether you prefer your songs to be conventional or totally deconstructed. ‘Dark Side’ plays with a lot of different musical styles while never embracing any of them enough to shut out people who aren’t fans. It’s welcoming and accessible, requiring no previous knowledge of the band’s music and history to enjoy, but knowing those things can only add to your enjoyment. And it feels like a journey. In the same way that people like films because they feel connected to the story and want to stay with the characters to the end, so too do people feel an affinity with this album, whether they know why or not, and want to be a part of it for its duration. But maybe this widespread appeal is also its biggest flaw. Maybe in providing something for everyone, it can never be completely perfect for anyone – the album that’s everyone’s second place but nobody’s first.