Funeral to Finish

  Partial list of references in the lyrics of this album: Rin Tin Tin Fernando Valenzuela Vinny Testaverde Midnight Run Marion Barry, drug use of Liz Claiborne (same song as Marion Barry, even) Home Depot En Vogue, TLC, and Toni Braxton Denzel Washington Laverne and Shirley I bring this up just to note that the depth and breadth of the lyrics on this album is amazing.  Both Q-Tip and Phife are at the top of their game, maybe even more so than on Low End Theory, although there will certainly be people who disagree with that.  Just a small sample from "Award Tour," maybe my favorite song on the album: People give your ears so I be sublime It's enjoyable to know you and your concubines Niggas, take off your coats, ladies act like gems Sit down, Indian style, as we recite these hymns See, lyrically I'm Mario Andretti on the MOMO Ludicrously speedy, or infectious with the slow-mo Heard me in the eighties, J.B.'s on "The Promo" In my never-ending quest to get...

  I really disliked this record!  I mean, out of 500 albums, there are going to be a few that I really don't like, but I've been generally surprised at how few that turned out that way.  This, however, is one of them. I'm not even sure why!  In its perfect 10 review , Pitchfork called it "a strange, captivating mix of impulses, with seesawing drones exploding into lush, neo-classical passages."  I guess that's true!  It's definitely strange. Let's take an example.  The 8th song, "Alarm Call," starts out sounding vaguely trip-hoppy (in fact, the whole album nods at trip-hop), and then Bjork's powerful voice comes in, singing a detached, flowy melody.  It's not really a coherent melody in the way I think of as a melody; if pressed, I would never be able to recreate it.  Maybe that's why this album was so hard for me - she ignores all the conventions of song structure and melody and coherence that I'm comfortable with.  That'...

  Thought experiment: Where would this album be today if the title track hadn't famously been used in a Volkswagen Cabriolet ad in 1999? (Sample YouTube comment: "This introduced my young self to Nick Drake. I'm eternally grateful.")  We can say that U.S. sales of this album went from 6,000 a year to about 74,000 in 2000.  I'm surprised it sold 6,000 copies a year before this!  Every day, 16 people in the US were buying this album even before the ad.  I imagine they were all boring their friends by going on and on about how great it is. It is great!  It's just... a mood, as the kids say today.  Prior to this, Drake had recorded two more conventionally orchestrated records, neither one of which did particularly well.  Recorded over two nights in 1971, this album is just Drake and his exquisite guitar playing, except for a single piano overdub in the title track.  It sounds like loneliness and introspection and also a coming to terms.  Yes...

  Since Kanye West is now a full-time provocateur/professional hypebeast/full-time public figure, it's almost quaint to think that the big hoopla when this album came out was whether this or 50 Cent's album was going to sell more.  Kanye won, and rightly so.  Let's try to put KANYE the industry aside momentarily and take a minute to recognize that this is a very, very good album. Never afraid to take his samples from anywhere, this album has a whole song ("Champion") based on a sample of Steely Dan's "Kid Charlemagne."  The next song, "Stronger," is based on Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger."  Through the whole thing, there's an undeniable nod to indie rock, in that the melodies are as important as the raps themselves.  But some of those raps are great.  From "Flashing Lights": Feelin' like Katrina with no FEMA Like Martin with no Gina Like a flight with no visa First class with the seat back, I ...

  You may think of Cat Stevens as a lovable little garden gnome, playing his ballads of love and frolic with a vole playing a lute made from half a walnut shell, but this shit is kinda dark .  Did everybody already know how bleak some of this album is?  I mean, surely you know "Wild World," a breakup song ("And it's breakin' my heart you're leavin'/Baby, I'm grievin'") in which he basically tells the chick who dumped him how much she's gonna get fucked over without him, but it gets way worse.  Check out this verse from "Sad Lisa," as if the title didn't give you a heads up: She sits in a corner by the door There must be more I can tell her If she really wants me to help her I'll do what I can to show her the way And maybe one day I will free her Though I know no one can see her Lisa Lisa, sad Lisa Lisa Sounds like what Lisa needs is an SSRI, Cat Stevens, not your bummer tunes. I don't know what to say about this reco...

  If you're having a problem with cocaine (and it's the mid-70's and you live in LA and you're famous) and you need to clean up, David Bowie has the plan for you: move to France with Iggy Pop and record an album.  Sounds counterintuitive, but hey, worked for him!  Although this album is known as the first in the "Berlin trilogy," it was mostly recorded at the Château d'Hérouville in France, which is coincidentally where I like to record my albums too.  Bowie was such a fucking monster that he wrote all the music for Iggy's The Idiot and recorded that first, then went ahead and pumped this out.  This was his 11th album!  And it came out in 1977! Bowie was of course one of the most eccentric and sui generis musicians of modern music, but this is weird even by his standards.  The first song, "Speed of Life," is an instrumental which is kind of a shame, really, because I can just imagine an awesome Bowie vocal on it.  A lot of the songs seem lik...

  I knew this day would come and I would have to do it.  I have tried to prepare myself emotionally, spiritually, and physically.  I tried picturing myself as a 72-year-old man who hasn't listened to anything released after 1979 and who calls P.F. Changs "ethnic food."  I tried watching only reruns of Mannix and Hart to Hart for a month.  Nothing worked. I still had to choke down an entire Eagles album.  There was no getting around it. Here's the good news: I can't really say I hated it because it's too bland and inoffensive to hate.  It's like hating soda water.  OK, fine, but what's the point.  The bad news?  What isn't boring is mostly terrible, more on which below. (One thing I found really odd, as a sidenote - typically albums by white legacy rock bands have fallen on the Rolling Stone list as it's grown more inclusive and circumspect, but, against all odds, this album climbed from number 368 in the 2012 edition to 207 now.  D...