Funeral to Finish

  I'm going to have to ask my fellow Gen X white males to close their clunky Windows laptops and go outside, it's beautiful day.  Come back tomorrow.  It'll be better that way. Are they gone?  OK, yeesh.  This album was famously released online with a pay-what-you-want model and, like most of the people who downloaded it, I would pay roughly zero dollars.  There are a few songs that seem like they have an idea - or at least a guitar ides - like "Bodysnatchers," but then there are some songs that sound like the band never bothered to finish them, like "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi."  The vocals on a lot of the songs sound like Thom Yorke is just fucking around and looking for a melody.   And it's so cold!  It's freezing.  It sounds so sparse and open and empty.  Radiohead gets knocked a lot for being depressing and this doesn't help.  It sounds like looking out of a frosty window at a bleak snowscape.  Radiohead also gets knoc...

  To hear an artist at the absolute peak of their talents is a magical thing, and Aretha Franklin just did it over and over and over again.  This was her, incredibly, nineteenth  album, recorded when she was just 29 years old.  When I was 29 I was still trying to figure out how to do laundry and Aretha had already had like 4 full recording careers. The title track, a Nina Simone cover (or, I guess, a complete owning of the Simone song by Franklin) is a perfect example.  Franklin toys with the melody, swatting it around a bit, just plaing with it, before exploding later as the song builds up.  The dynamics of her voice are, of course, otherworldy, but there's also the amount of emotion she can covey in that powerful instrument.  I honestly thought I would put this on and be like "oh yeah, Aretha Franklin, she's great," but I really had no idea.   And it's not just a showcase for her to go wild vocally (like some artists I could name, *cough*Ma...

  I did not like this album at all. 111 albums into this project, I have come across a lot of stuff that is not in my wheelhouse and that I would never have listened to under normal conditions.  So far, it's been the case that I can at least find something to appreciate, even if it's not my thing.  Like I would never have listened to Britney Spears' Blackout  in a million years but even though it's totally not my thing, I kind of enjoyed it! Not with this one.  Mea culpas first: I don't really care for this style of R&B, the slickly-produced, Autotuned, drum machined, "why can't we get back together" lyriced, vocal acrobatic featuring stuff.  I guess I get it, but I really, really don't like it.  So that made this one a tough listen.  The whole album is like that.  It's bad.  There isn't really a hooky chorus or melody line that you'd catch yourself humming.  It just goes on and on with the same stuff and the stuff is not good. ...

  I know this album was formative for many of my indie rock coming-of-age-in-the-80's peers but I was always more of a Doolittle  person.  Nevertheless, upon relisten, this album is still hard as fuck and interesting as ever.  The first thing that hits you is the HUGE, booming drum sounds that underlie, or maybe overlie, every song.  Does it sound like they were recorded in a huge industrial bathroom in a factory?  They were.  There are the screeching buzzsaw guitars and Black Francis' yelping wail, which sounds like it was recorded from the bottom of a well, or maybe a prison cell.  You all know "Gigantic" and "Where Is My Mind?" but the real sound of this album is exemplified by "Oh My Golly!" There's a lot going on here.  When they recorded this, the band really didn't know much about music, and freed of the constraints of expectations, they could just go fucking wild and do whatever popped into their heads.  Steve Albini, Legendary P...

  Kelis' debut album, one of those records that I had heretofore never heard a single track from, and another pleasant surprise!  I guess I wasn't really sure what to expect, but this is really a fascinating pastiche of R&B, hip-hop, jazz, and DJ beats.  Produced by the Neptunes - Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo - who would go on to an incredible career that's still going on, so you know it's going to sound good. I guess the money song on this album was "Caught Out There," a breakup anthem for all time, with Kelis screaming "I HATE YOU SO MUCH RIGHT NOW" over a smooth beat.  It's hard to describe, but it works.  "Good Stuff" was also a big hit, and it's easy to see why; it's got a great head-nodding beat and a jazzy, easy vocal.  Guest vocal by Pusha T, good as always.  My favorite, though, is "Ghetto Children," which is, as its name implies, a call of support for kids left behind by society and an indictment of th...

  This isn't just a collection of songs featuring an insanely talented singer and an incredibly influential guitarist, it's a tour through the history of rock.  You start off with the familiar girl-group sounds of something like "I'm Jealous" and "I Idolize You" and go through a set of covers of some of the most important songs ever ("Come Together" and "Honky Tonk Women") and end up with some of Tina's own compositions, which shows she's just as capable of Ike, who terrorized and dominated her for years until karma finally came around.  Tina ended up a superstar with a career renaissance and Ike died mostly a broken man. There are all kinds of fascinating things about this album, but the trhroughline is Tina's incredible voice, that go from a soft croon to a shriek of power and anguish, sometimes within seconds.  Just drop into "I'm Jealous" to see what I'm talking about. I mentioned the covers, and the ...

  Since I started doing this, we've hit a couple of landmarks: first album I actually owned , first album that was a Very Important Album in my life , and now the first album that contains a song my almost-8-year-old daughter likes, namely "Shake It Off." It may seem hard to believe now, but Taylor Swift started as a country music star, and it was this album where she finally and totally severed her ties with country in favor of the shimmery, glossy pop this record exemplifies.  Obviously, Max Martin was the co-producer because when you want shimmery pop, you want Max Martin !  And besides "Shake It Off," there are a bunch of super catchy songs on this album, like "Blank Space" and "Bad Blood." A lot of people like "Welcome to New York," the album opener, which is obviously about Taylor's own move from Nashville to NYC and very obvious reinvention of herself.  The song itself contains all the tropes about moving to the big city ...

  So, say you're Diana Ross and you've already produced some of the most iconic music in the history of modern recordings by the time you're 25 years old.  How do you follow that up?  I don't know, because you're not Diana Ross, but Diana Ross is and she got together with Nile Rodgers, who we've seen here before and will again (and again and again), and put together this disco classic.  Now, this was released straight into the teeth of the disco backlash of the early 80's so you might think it would have a hard go of it but NOPE it sold a million copies straight out of the gate and produced two songs I can almost guarantee you know every beat to, "I'm Coming Out" and "Upside Down."  Not a bad day at the office. I don't love disco but this is fine.  I mean, I'm not going to put it on in the car while I'm driving around or anything but I always enjoy checking out Nile Rodgers' production, which can best be described as ...

  Man, what a sound.  What's really amazing is that this album was recorded over the course of 10+ years and sounds so cohesive and unified in its sound, like it was all laid down in a continuous recording session.  But wait, it gets better - the liner notes say "No digital 'plug-ins' of any kind were used in this recording. All of the recording, processing, effects, and mixing was done in the analog domain using tape and mostly vintage equipment."  I'm sure I wrecked the whole thing by listening to it over the Internet but there is definitely a warmth and a presence that you don't get from digital recordings, or maybe I'm just kidding myself. The backstory to this album is kind of incredible, especially if, like me, you weren't that familiar with D'Angelo when this album appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, one day in 2014.  D'Angelo had a couple of huge albums then grew uncomfortable with his sex symbol image, descended into substance abus...

  Oh my God, this is so embarrassing but until yesterday I had no idea the opening song on this album, "I Saw the Light," was a Todd Rundgren song.  In fact - and this is where it gets embarrassing - I thought it was a woman singing, like maybe Anne Murray or someone like that.  I mean, it is very easy listening, but sorry Todd!  My bad! I was never really into Rundgren, so listening to this double album was an adventure.  It's kind of all over the place.  There's a lot of what might be called "soft rock," like the aforementioned album opener and "You Left Me Sore" and "Hello It's Me," which MUST be (I haven't checked) a Yacht Rock mainstay.  It sounds like mediocre grass and leaded gasoline.  There's also a Big Star-style power pop song ("Couldn't I Just Tell You") and I would like more of that instead of silliness like "Piss Aaron." Rundgren famously self-recorded this, aided by weed and Ritalin (whic...

  Even though you may not know it's called this, you're no doubt familiar with the concepts of primacy and recency as they apply to memory.  The basic and uncontroversial idea is that you tend to remember best the first thing you heard and the last thing you heard.  So you remember the first episode of a series and the last one you saw, but not so much the middle 23.  In music, this means the Beatles and Chuck Berry get a lot of attention, along with the latest things like Harry Styles and Billie Eilish.  I strongly suspect that in future iterations of this list, this album will either fall dramatically or disappear. Which is not to say that I didn't like it because I surprised myself and did!  It's a haunting, dark, moody collection that sounds like a young woman deep in her feelings singing to herself in her bedroom and that's pretty much what it actually is.  It was literally recorded in her fellow teen brother's bedroom in their house in Highland P...

  When I first started listening to this glorious, clattering mess of an album, my first reaction was what the fuck , followed by is this for real ?  It is not what you would call an immediately accessible album; it's discordant and messy and abrasive but it's also immediate and urgent in a way you rarely hear. The Raincoats have become a cult classic, I guess, due to Kurt Cobain championing them and getting Geffen to reissue their albums.  The story is that Kurt was so enamored of them he tracked down Ana da Silva working in an antiques shop in London to get a new copy of this record.  They subsequently did some reunions and played some shows and were going to open for Nirvana on tour but that got kind of sidetracked by Kurt Cobain committing suicide. You can hear the DNA from this show up in so much later stuff, like the Riot Grrrl bands to postrock acts like Deerhoof.  I think this album is really a shining example of a band that didn't really know the formal...

  Some albums just get released and some come accompanied by an extensive backstory and a legend and this is one of the latter.  Originally conceived as the follow-up to Pet Sounds and then abandoned when Brian Wilson literally lost his mind, Beach Boys fans spent decades speculating about this album and piecing together hypothetical versions of it using bootleg demos and unreleased tracks.  Can you imagine? Finally in 2004, Wilson and his touring band went into the studio and recorded this album from scratch, based on the original music and lyrics that had been written for the album back in the 60's, and released it to near-universal acclaim.  Even the hipsters loved it , I think because then you could admit you liked the Beach Boys without looking like a dork. I am sad to report that this will have to be one of those respect-but don't-like albums for me.  I appreciate the meticulous artistry that went into every song, but I don't like any of the songs all tha...

  I'm not ashamed to say that one of my first childhood crushes was on Belinda Carlisle, specifically the Belinda Carlisle in the video for "Our Lips Are Sealed." Sigh.  Now, my friend Stephen is famous for saying, whenever a song he sort of tangentially likes comes on, "This is totally a top 20 (or 50 or 25 or 10) song of all time," but "Our Lips Are Sealed" really is a Top something song of all time.  Years ago someone pointed out to me that it's probably one of the biggest songs ever that doesn't have a chorus and I guess that's technically true but WHO CARES IT'S SO GREAT. ("White Rabbit," previously covered in this space , also a great song with no chorus.) This album is hooky and fun and just screams early 80's Los Angeles New Wave so hard that you can practically smell the Mickeys and clove cigarettes.  Besides OLAS there's also "We Got the Beat" which of course you know but don't sleep on "T...

  Definitely not the best-known Blondie album, I was mostly surprised by how retro it sounds.  It's almost a blend of girl group 60's sound with whatever New Wave was at the time.  This is captured perfectly on the first song, "X Offender," which has a spoken word intro that reminds you of the Shangri-Las' "Leader of the Pack" and then features what I think of as classic New Wave keyboards.  Listen: You can just hear Debbie Harry getting her footing all the way through this record.  She's already incredibly self-assured, but sometimes she's circling around the music and it hasn't quite all melded yet.  The band is already tight as hell.  They're obviously going to go on to bigger things. AND THAT'S THE FIRST 100!  Only 400 more to go.  The first 100 took, if you're wondering, about four and a half months.  If I keep going at the current pace, we should be done in about 18 and a half months, or sometime around September of 2022.  ...

  I feel really awful about this but I didn't like it!  Let's unpack for a second.  First, not liking something is fine, right?  Maybe I'm just not that musically sophisticated to appreciate whatever genre this is, and it is worlds apart from what I usually listen to, for sure.  There are only two songs for a total of 24 minutes and they're more like jazz than actual "songs" and I don't know, it's just not my thing! The second thing to unpack is why do I feel awful about it?  Why would I feel bad about not liking something?  Okay, hand to God, I don't feel that awful, but I do feel sort of provincial and small-minded in not being able to get out of my comfort zone and really make an effort with what just might be the 402nd best album ever made.   I think there are two things going on.  First, this album is obviously beloved to a lot of people who know a lot about music so I don't want to appear dumb by saying DURRRRRRR I NO LIKE because ...

  Just for sheer dizzying wordplay, it's hard to beat this album, one of the few Pitchfork 10's (along with Kid A, Illmatic, Live Through This, The Stone Roses s/t, and other classics), and absolutely deserving.  It's actually a holy shit moment if you haven't heard it through before.  I mean, just listen to this: Scientific, my hand kissed it Robotic, let's think optimistic You probably missed it, watch me Dolly Dick it Scotty Wotty copped it to me, big microphone hippie Hit Poughkeepsie, crispy chicken, verbs, throw up a stone, Richie Chop the O, sprinkle a little snow inside a Optimo Swing the John McEnroe, rap rock'n'roll Ty-D-Bol, gung-ho pro, Starsky with the gumsole Hit the rum slow, parole kids, live Rapunzel But Ton' Stizzy really high, the vivid laser eye guy Jump in the Harley ride, Clarks, I freak a lemon pie I'm bout it, bout it, Lord forgive me, Ms. Sally shouted Tracey got shot in the face, my house was overcrowded You fake cats done ...

  "Is this KOIT?" my wife asked me when she walked into the kitchen where I was listening to this silky-smooth collection of jazzy R&B, and, indeed, this does sound like the kind of thing you'd hear in an optometrist's waiting room or piped into a mid-sized insurance company office.  I had two main takeaways from this; first, wow, what a voice!  Baker has such a powerful instrument.  Of course she can belt it, like on "Sweet Love," a song I guarantee you know, even if you don't know you know it.  But she can also modulate it, and give a song a quiet and introspective read when required, like on "You Bring Me Joy." My second takeaway is that it really sounds dated now.  The 80's production here is like the Ur-80's production, with the sax and the compressed Roland Jazz Chorus guitar sound and the whole nine.  You hear it and you immediately picture Don Johnson in a pastel t-shirt and a different pastel color blazer.  Some records are...

  Everyone I know loves this collection, and what's not to love?  There's a ton of great proto-garage-rock here, the songs that really created the genre.  I can't imagine that bands like Thee Oh Sees and the Black Lips and the Vines weren't influenced by stuff on here.  There's the well-known - like "Dirty Water" and "Psychotic Reaction" - and the less well-known, but all the songs are pretty fucking great. But here's what blew my mind: this collection, which purports to contain "artyfacts," came out in 1972 .  1972!  And the songs on it are from 1964 to 1968!  So the long-forgotten artifacts were four to eight years old when this came out!  That would be like if I released a "Nuggets" today that had songs by Spoon and Panda Bear and Run the Jewels.  Not exactly dusty relics of a forgotten time!  I always thought this came out in, like, the 80s or something.  Wild. You might think you know "Tobacco Road," but the...

  Here is my reaction, in chronological order, to 69 Love Songs by Magnetic Fields: Songs 1-15: This is cool! Really inventive.  Love "I Don't Want to Get Over You," which I've had in playlists for years.  Not surprised to learn that "The Book of Love" is a popular wedding song; it's lovely. Songs 16-40: OK, wow, lot of genres here.  "Sweet-Lovin' Man" has a great hook, nice vocal melody, sung by Claudia Gonson, kinda alt-country vibe I guess?  "Papa Was a Rodeo" is interesting, but I'm not sure I'm completely taken with Stephin Merritt's basso profundo croak.  "Long-Forgotten Fairytale" is a straight-up 80's synth-pop.   Songs 41-51: A lot of the songs are starting to sound the same now.  WOW, hold up, "Acoustic Guitar," which is played on, and about, an acoustic guitar (and also a girl who's gone) is absolutely lovely, plus it rhymes "mother of pearl" with "girl."  Wha...

  In 1995, Neil Young collaborated with Pearl Jam on a record called Mirror Ball.  They also played some shows together, including a June 24, 1995 show at the Polo Fields in Golden Gate Park.  I was there!  It was billed as strictly a Pearl Jam show, and Neil was supposed to be a surprise guest.  HOWEVER, after seven songs, Eddie Vedder announced that he was "sick" and left .  Neil Young came out and played with Pearl Jam for like 2 hours.  The rumor going around at the time was that Eddie was dope sick but c'mon, like you can't score heroin in San Francisco?  I can walk outside my office and score dope.  There's no way a famous touring band couldn't.  (Humorously, I just realized Neil Young was younger at that show than I am now, egads.) Anyway, one of the songs I distinctly remember was like a 20-minute endless jam version of "Down by the River," one of the songs on this album.  Here it's in a convenient 9-minute version, which is...

  I'm really not much of a metalhead at all but you know what?  I enjoyed listening to this album!  Of course, it's a classic, and I'm sure in 1980 it was outside the realm of civilized society but it's pretty tame now.  The title track is, of course, an all-time metal classic and as far as I can tell is just a straight-up song about gambling.  It doesn't seem like a metaphor for life or anything.  It's literally about getting an ace of spades when you're playing cards. Other songs are, uh, more problematic.  I'm not sure "Jailbait" would go over too well today: Teenage baby, you're a sweet young thing Still tied to Mama's apron strings I don't even dare to ask your age It's enough to know you're here backstage You're jailbait, and I just can't wait Jailbait baby come on Yeah, it was a different time or whatever I guess. And then there are the straight-up goofs like "(We Are) The Road Crew," which Lemmy sup...