Funeral to Finish

  I started this project during a tumultuous time in American history.  The first post was about a week and a half before what might have been the Most Consequential Election of Our Lives, and I've dutifully more or less ignored politics, sticking to sports, as it were, as a madman threatened the foundations of our democracy and a mob stormed our capitol building.  (That day, the record was Alice Coltrane's "Journey in Satchidanada," which I will now never be able to listen to without remembering rioters bashing the windows of the capitol in with flagpoles holding American flags.)  But today was the inauguration of Joe Biden, a pleasant and thoughtful man, as anti-Trump as it gets, and so it seems fitting that today's album is the work of a singular African-American poet while another one took the stage. Just beautiful.  Now, Tupac Shakur's language was certainly, um, more earthy than Ms. Gorman's, and his concerns were more quotidian than her lofty poetr

  This album will always be indelibly connected to the UK rave-and-ecstasy scene of the early '90s, but let me blow your mind with a theory I just came up with whilst listening to this album yesterday for the first time in since the early '90s: not only is this a document of that scene, it also mimics an ecstasy trip itself . Bear with me.  So it starts with the sunny and blithely optimistic "Movin' On Up," the come-up, as it were, before moving into the real meat of the album, the hardcore part of the trip.  The next two songs, "Slip Inside This House" and "Don't Fight It, Feel It," are both trippy dance tracks of exactly the type you'd associate with a severe MDMA dance event.  Then after that you'll need some water and a rest so "Higher Than the Sun" (wink wink) and "Inner Flight" playing in the chill room.  You get back to dancing with the gently vibey but still danceable "Come Together" and "L

  I never really took a side in the Britpop Wars of the mid-90's, mostly because I had no idea they were going on.  My wife grew up in Ireland and there it wasn't just a background thing, it was a Hot War, and you were either with Oasis or Blur.  My wife, and her crowd, were Blur People.  That's what one of her friends literally said, out loud, to her.  "We're Blur people."  I like a lot of Oasis songs and a lot of Blur songs so I guess I'm neutral.  I'm the Switzerland of Britpop Wars. This album was one of the most important shots of the Britpop Wars.  I guess it was like the Battle of Hastings, with Blur barging in and announcing their presence right off the bat with "Girls and Boys" a song about everyone having sex with everyone else that I distinctly remember hearing at a Britpop-themed New Years Eve party in maybe 2003 or 2004.  Can you imagine, a Britpop-themed New Years Eve party at a club in San Francisco?  What a world. There are so

  Good God, this is a jam.  You can literally feel the heat and the sweat from the crowd on every song.  It all purports to be a live album, but it turns out the first two sides, including the incredible, 10-minute "Get Up" and the second side's "Give It Up or Turnit a Loose," were recorded in studio and then crowd sounds were added.  No matter, because James Brown and his band in studio rock harder than 95% of bands live. The second disc was recorded in Brown's hometown, Augusta, Georgia, at the Bell Auditorium.  Feast your eyes on this beauty.  This is what venues used to look like. I urge you to listen to this album, not only because the band (including Bootsy Collins on bass and, on the live tracks, Maceo Parker on sax, and other legends) is incredibly tight and punchy, but also because you really have to appreciate the artistry of James Brown using his voice not only as a vehicle to deliver a song but also as an instrument of the band as well, just as v

  Oh my god what a relief.  After two straight bleepy bloopy overcompressed Autotuned vocals albums, this arrives like a pure and clean breath of fresh air.  It's just Loretta and an incredible studio band and the Jordanaires singing backup.  11 fantastic songs in a tight 29:43.  What a gorgeous album. Of course, you all know "Coal Miner's Daughter," written by Lynn, about her upbringing in rural Kentucky.  I bet if you asked 100 people at random to name a country music song, maybe 50% would name this song.  (The fact that it was the title of Lynn's autobiography and a movie of the same name probably doesn't hurt.)  That's followed by a fantastic cover of Conway Twitty's "Hello Darlin'," which has been covered tons of times, of course, including by George Jones.  Lynn brings her own reading of the song, and to my mind does it just as much justice as Twitty's. There are some SONGWRITERS represented here.  The third song, "Less of

  What were you doing in 2007?  I moved in with my girlfriend, soon to be wife, and got a dog.  All that domestic stuff!  It was a very nice year for me.  Britney Spears was not having that great a year.  Remember that scene of her shaving her head in front of thousands of popping flashbulbs?  2007.  Filed for divorce?  Temporarily lost custody of her kids?  All in 2007. Somehow, during all this, she managed to put out what until yesterday I did not know was " the best and most influential album of her career ," and even " one of the most influential albums of the last decade for the way it suffused hip hop, pop, R&B and EDM ."  What I did find out, as soon as I put it on, is that this album is the Good Horny rejoinder to yesterday's Dark Horny .  Britney is out here and she wants to get it! Ooh, ooh baby Touch me and I come alive I can feel you on my lips I can feel you deep inside Ooh, ooh baby In your arms, I finally breathe Wrap me up in all your love Th

  Who knew that a whole album about doing blow and having sex could be so fucking DARK? Those are both typical rock star activities, and by the time this came out Abel Tesfaye was already a star, but unlike his predecessors like Jerry Lee Lewis or David Lee Roth or anyone else with three names, the rewards of stardom aren't making him happy, they're making him very sad. So there's songs like "In the Night" which is an unquestionable electro-pop jam and you're bopping your head up and down until you start listening to the lyrics and then you're like "wait....what?" because it's becoming clear this is a song about a sexual abuse survivor who becomes a stripper. In the night she hears him calling In the night she's dancin' to relieve the pain She'll never walk away I don't think you understand In the night when she comes crawlin' Dollar bills and tears keep fallin' down her face She'll never walk away I don't thin