Funeral to Finish

  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 Park.  I ha

  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 strictures,

  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 that much and s

  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