Funeral to Finish

  I am again in that uncomfortable place where I feel like I don't know enough about a genre to have a really well-informed take on this album, other than to say I thought it was ok?  It had its moments, but never really grabbed me, and I'll probably never go back to it?  Let's focus on the positive, as my Mom most definitely never used to say. The first song that grabbed my attention as I was listening was "Got 'Til It's Gone," which samples so heavily from Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi" - specifically the "Don't it always seem to go/That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone" part - that Joni gets a performance credit, along with Q-Tip and Janet.  It's an interesting song that feels almost, or maybe entirely, trip-hop, which I was not expecting.  It's totally a trip-hop drum pattern, at least.  "Rope Burn" is a little trip-hoppy as well, and is pretty explicitly sexual, as the title might ...

The List is gonna do what the List is gonna do but I have to say I'm genuinely shocked to find the Stone Roses debut album just chilling down here in the low 300's like it's a middlingly-important record your best friend's brother loves and not an album that has repeatedly been voted the Greatest Album of All Time (or in the Top 10) by British people.  In 2003, NME readers judged it to be the Best Album Ever ; by 2013, it was only #7 .  STILL!  That is a huge difference across the Atlantic.  Even on this side, it's a Pitchfork 10 .  So what gives? First off, it's a very good album.  There are a lot of good, poppy songs dressed up in the Madchester swirly guitars and matched with Ian Brown's nasally, disaffected vocals.  This album has been retconned as some kind of fusion of rock and rave electronica but I don't think that's really true.  It's more like what the Beatles might have become with thicker production and worse singing.  The only r...

  Fuck yeah!  This album fucking rocks.  Arriving in April 1980 (when Christopher Cross' "Ride Like the Wind" was #2 on the Billboard Hot 100, right after "Call Me" by Blondie which, admittedly, still kicks ass), this record heralded a new dawn of American punk.  Produced by Ray Manzarek, former keyboardist for the Doors.  Maybe that's why there's a cover of "Soul Kitchen" which is about as similar to the original as a Hot Pocket is to Beef Wellington.   Perhaps you know "Johny Hit and Run Pauline," a  catchy song "about a guy who takes an imaginary drug that allows him to have sex once an hour for 24 hours."  The title track, about a racist woman who leaves LA because of its diversity, drops the n-word and became notorious for doing so.  But really, there are no bad songs on this classic album.  ("Sex and Drugs in High Society" is my favorite, though.) TOTALLY (OR MOSTLY) UNRELATED CONTENT: Last night we watched...

  Recency bias!  That's why the greatest album of all time was judged by NME readers to be The Smiths' 1986 album The Queen Is Dead when their list was published in 1988, but by 2003 it was the Stone Roses' self-titled debut.  I suspect recency bias is at work here, too, since this 2019 album is certainly worth listening to but is in no way the 321st best album of all time. This is a Jack Antonoff-produced joint and man can't you tell.  Jack has this particular way of working with attractive white women and making albums that sound ethereal and cold and lonely.  He did it with  Taylor Swift and Lana, both of them multiple times.  I'm not saying they all sound exactly the same but my God they sure live in the same neighborhood.  He could probably take me into the studio and my record would sound like Lorde on a methadone bender. Anyway, this album.  I don't know, it's fine.  Like I said, it's very cold and very sparse and there are a lot...

  By 1968, Elvis was mostly washed up.  After he got out of the Army in 1960, at the direction of manager/Svengali Col. Tom Parker, he embarked on a series of movies and accompanying soundtracks that became increasingly unsuccessful and cringeworthy as the decade dragged on.  Just imagine, the King of Rock & Roll reduced to singing crap like "No Room to Rumba in a Sports Car" and "Rock-A-Hula Baby." Parker must have known that the golden goose was about to  croak and arranged a TV special, called simply "Elvis," that aired in December 1968.  Now known as the "Elvis Comeback Special," it was a sensation.  Elvis looked and sang great, hearkening back to the rock days of the 50's that made him an icon.  If you haven't seen it, it's worth watching at least some of it.  It's great, no joke.  Here's a sample: Following the success of the Comeback Special, Elvis wanted to record a new album.  He didn't go to his usual studios...

  Hey look it's the Talk About Sandinista Without Using the Word "Sprawling" Challenge! OK, I'll try.  How do you follow up London Calling, one of the greatest albums in rock history (which, I haven't checked, but I'm sure will be in the top 20 or so on this list, I mean it better be )?  You smoke a ton of weed and your only instruction to the engineer is "just keep the tape rolling no matter what happens, mate."  That's how you end up with this three-disc mess of an album(s), just a sprawling - FUCK - ongoing melange of reggae, rockabilly, folk, jazz, maybe disco?  Whatever it is, it's certainly not punk, which is to say that the Clash were first known as a "punk" band but this album should disabuse anyone of that thought. So yeah, there's a lot going on here.  And no, it's not all great.  But I tend to agree with this article that you could make a fantastic single album out of it .  This guy suggests some of the followin...

  A safe respite for Volvo SUV dads who think Foo Fighters is "hard rock," this album sounds like if you put a mediocre Radiohead album into one of those rock tumblers to smooth off all the edges and get a shiny, flat, featureless stone.   Sometimes you need that though!  I mean, there are some moments on here.  "Clocks" has that instantly recognizable din-dun-dun din-dun-dun piano riff that repeats and builds and I guess it has an emotional center that can pull you in.  "In My Place" was a monster hit, again built on a memorable riff, this time on guitar, but it really sounds like that song on a movie soundtrack when the couple has broken up and the girl is looking through a rain-streaked window and the guy is out with his friends but pauses and looks meaningfully into middle distance because HE'S THINKING ABOUT HER. A lot of the songs sound very similar.  To some, that's a "cohesive sound."  To others, that's "a lot of these so...