Amph What Album Did You Just Hear?

It's so good. Really stark, really grim, almost entirely focused on protest songs. I really love Freewheelin' (the first half is downright astounding, but the second half is fairly forgettable), but I think Times They Are A-Changin' is his first true masterpiece.

 

Neurosis - Times of Grace

 

Sleep - Dopesmoker

 

Bigger Than Me (2017) – Le’Andria Johnson

Bigger Than Me is a breezy, light-hearted gospel album that clocks in at right around forty minutes and is close to a pure pleasure. Johnson has the kind of soaring voice that this kind of music requires and the music backing is funky and soulful, a more modern, urban style than some black gospel. The one track that goes full old school gospel, Change is Now, is the worst track on the record, a track featuring only Johnson and a painfully loud, overly intrusive organ. The other nine songs are all very good in my opinion. Standouts include Come Through, a melancholy prayer for strength; I Will Go, a quiet, beautiful dedication to purpose; & Holy Spirit, a cooking funk track with a groove to die for. And, with a thirty-nine minute running time, there’s no opportunity to get tired or for the album to become repetitive. What a phenomenal, funky, good-time for the soul. 4 stars.

tl;dr – short running time, great songs and a funky groove make this a gospel album that should win over even the cynics. 4 stars.

 

Melbourne made. In fact, the demos were recorded around the corner where I used to go to school while one of the songs were inspired by the street i which my old school is located AND Neil even sent his sons to that same school.

 

The Melvins - Houdini

 

Mekong Delta - Wanderer on the Edge of Time

 

Wow, this is a long one. But worth talking about. Very, very much so.



Girly-Sound to Guyville (2018) – Liz Phair

In 1993, Liz Phair would make a massive splash in the world of music with her official debut, Exile in Guyville. More on that later. For the moment, let me talk about what came before and led to Phair getting the shot at making Guyville. In 1991, Phair recorded three cassette tape demos, though she didn’t really consider them as such. The first, Yo Yo Buddy Yup Yup Word to Ya Muthuh, was originally given to just a single person, one of Phair’s close friends who had requested a tape of some of her songs that he liked. But he duplicated and started to pass the tape around and by the time the year was out, Phair had two more demos in circulation, GIRLSGIRLSGIRLS & Sooty. These demos achieved a kind of cult status, as these kinds of things sometimes do. In the era of the internet, they’ve been available, but they’ve never seen an official release until now.

In conjunction with the twenty-fifth anniversary (!!!) of Exile in Guyville’s original release comes this absolutely fabulous box set of three CDs. It includes a remaster of Guyville, of course, on CD one. On CDs two & three, are the three demos, cleaned up, but still with enough tape hiss and weird echoes that you won’t forget how roughly these were recorded. Despite the way the CDs in the set are sequenced, I recommend going chronologically and starting with CD two; listen through the demos first and then move on to Guyville. I think that’s the most interesting, enlightening way to approach this material.

Anyway, the shortest possible version of a review for these demos is that they remain fantastic. Taking all three of the demos together, it’s a sprawling set of nearly forty songs. A couple of the demos remain elusive. For instance, a raunchy track titled **** or Die isn’t here because it’s entirely structured around a filthy rewrite of Johnny Cash’s I Walk the Line and, unsurprisingly, they weren’t able to get the rights to release it officially. The missing tracks are available online if you’re a completist and want to know what exactly it is that Phair keeps a close watch on in her version of Cash’s iconic tune; it’s not her heart, I’ll just say that.

But the sheer sprawl of these recordings is breathtaking; both CDs are packed with close to eighty minutes of music and it’s kind of astounding to realize that Phair recorded all of these songs in less than a year. You can see some development over the demos, but they’re really sharp from the word go. The very first demo features Divorce Song & Johnny Sunshine, a couple of very sophisticated tunes that she would go on to re-record, as she did with quite a few of these songs, and put on her debut. But the raunchy, deadpan wit everyone fell for on Guyville is already in place on songs like Money or the closing song of the first demo, In Love W/Yself, a truly charming and funny exploration of a relationship on the rocks, as a lot of Phair’s songs are. The first demo is really the only one that has a couple of bad stretches. Elvis Song, Miss Lucy & Dead Shark add up to a three song dead patch right in the middle of the demo, but the bulk of it is still quite good.

It’s with the second demo, GIRLSGIRLSGIRLS, that we really see her become a true genius. On the first album, there were only three songs over four minutes long. GIRLSGIRLSGIRLS has five songs that are over SIX with one bumping right up against eight. What’s deepened here is Phair’s lyricism, which is sprawling and beautiful, Dylan-esque sometimes. The album opens with Hello Sailor, one of Phair’s bitterest songs and moves quickly into **** & Run, perhaps her most famous tune. GIRLSGIRLSGIRLS was re-recorded for Guyville and on that record it’s under two-and-a-half minutes; here it’s a rambling seven minutes, packed with dense verses that were cut from the album version. This goes to something I wanted very much to say which is that a lot of times releases like this claim that they’re going to be revelatory by revealing process and sometimes they are. But this one is much more than that. I don’t even want to say that you listen to these demos and think, “Wow, I would really love to hear this song done ‘right’ on a proper album.” These demos hold up. Many of these songs were re-recorded by Phair for her professional albums and, in many cases, the versions here are . . . well, better. They’re raw and in somewhat poor quality and mostly feature just Phair and her guitar, but if you stood up and said that GIRLSGIRLSGIRLS is actually just a better album on its face, just purely taken as it is, poor quality and all, than Guyville I wouldn’t call you an idiot. And if you it said about just about any Phair album other than Guyville, I’d probably agree. Even when the songs aren’t better in this form, they’re just as good and it’s a testament to Phair’s incredible talent as a performer than they don’t feel in the least incomplete. For instance, whereas every Phair fan, and a lot of people who aren’t fans, are familiar with Never Said, one of the more straight-ahead rock tunes from Guyville. It’s immaculately produced and one of the fullest sounding songs on the record. Here it’s present in a slightly longer version called Clean featuring just Phair and her guitar and some tape-hiss. This version isn’t better, but it’s just as valid as a piece of art.

Finally, on Sooty, Phair really starts to expand what I guess you’d call her production values. It still sounds on the cheap, obviously, but Phair’s using vocal looping here in a way that allows her to harmonize and seeing various lines. Her version of Flower here is structured exactly the same as the one on Guyville, building new lines on top of old lines in interesting ways. The version of Whip Smart here is phenomenal in its use of vocal tracking to create an unbeatable hook. Most astounding of all is Bomb; Phair used elements of this song for the track Stratford-on-Guy on Guyville, but this version is longer and features, not one, but two, incredibly catchy hooks that revolve around Phair laying down a vocal and then singing different lines over the top of it. This one is barely even recognizable as the same song for most of its running time and it’s kind of made it hard to even listen to Stratford-on-Guy because it feels incomplete and kind of dull after this wonderful version. Other highlights on this one include Slave, maybe the saddest song Phair’s ever written, a near apocalyptic descent into grief and loneliness. And then there’s the delightfully adorable album closer Chopsticks, which unfolds a story of a missed connection over a piano rendition of the classic Chopsticks piece.

Anyway, I’ve gone on at great length about these three albums, so I’m going to actually defer talking about Exile in Guyville for a separate review, which it totally deserves. But this box set is really worth it just for the demos. Some people have been griping about the poor presentation; it does just come in a double jewel-box with a rather small insert, but what do you buy these for anyway? I buy them for the music and it’s the cheaper presentation that probably allows this astoundingly great set of music to price at just a bit over thirty dollars, which is one of the most stupidly great bargains you’ll encounter this year in art. These demos are nothing short of breathtaking and not just because they show you Phair’s process or serve as interesting trivia. They’re brilliant on the level of purely great albums. These three demos aren’t just historical artifacts or collectors’ items for Phair completists. They’re legit some of the best stuff she’s ever done. Getting an official release of them, cleaned up to the degree they can be, is a gift from the universe, one you do not want to miss. This box set stands up. I don’t know that these albums can really count as 2018 records since they’ve been circulating illegally for almost thirty years, but this is the first official release, so maybe they do. And GIRLSGIRLSGIRLS & Sooty in particular are truly stunning. These lo-fi bedroom recordings from twenty-seven years ago . . . they may be the best “new” albums of 2018. 4 stars.

tl;dr – official release of legendary demos reveals Phair as an artist from the jump; they may be “only” demos, but they’re some of the best stuff she’s ever done. 4 stars.

 

Ekuka - Ekuka Moriss Sirikiti (2018).



Finally answering the immortal question "What exactly is Spotify supposed to recommend to a hipster ***hole who likes Moondog and afrobeat?" Ekuka is a selection of some raw-ass street performance tapes and radio recordings from Uganda and, um, maybe my favorite album so far this year? There's an essential sparseness to the sound that interacts terrifically with the shoddy production values to create an atmosphere akin to a long lost recording, like you stumbled upon a cassette at a North African swap meet and it turned out to be a total jam. The beat is steady and the vocal work is impressively dynamic, suiting the market atmosphere in which you would've heard these songs "in the real world," so to speak (The actual market noises sometimes picked up on said recordings doesn't hurt, of course).

Apparently (and I'm going solely off a second-hand description from an outsider music label's bandcamp page, we are in hellishly deep), each of these songs is a small moral lesson, as is typical of street music in the region. So... um... this is basically the most rocking PSA ever, up to and including actual government sponsored PSAs. I guess it'd be like if that guy downtown with the combination trumpet and tap-dance routine was getting a small commission to talk to you for a moment about avoiding drugs.

... Wait, am I grooving to the fringe equivalent of someone frying an egg as a metaphor? Ah well.

 

Exile in Guyville (1993) – Liz Phair

When Exile in Guyville came out in 1993, it was a boulder in a still pond, all the more shocking because Phair herself seemed essentially oblivious to the huge impact she was about to have. While Phair might have thought she was making a stripped down, kind of punky rock album, she discovered that she’d somehow created a touchstone for a generation of musicians. With these kind of cultural phenomenon artworks, the question is always the same: separated from the shock and awe, does it still have something to say? Exile certainly does. The things that separated it from the pack kind of still do. The album’s breathless pace, eighteen songs in under an hour, is still compelling and there’s not a single wasted note. After hearing some of the demos for these songs, you’ll realize that the only mistake on the album is perhaps in the ruthless editing done to the material in order to squeeze so many songs in. But taken as they are, the songs are fantastic, the lyrics sharp, reflective, self-deprecating, bitter and yearning by turns. Phair’s affectless delivery underlines the cleverness of the lyrics, but if you listen closely you’ll catch the emotion that she’s purposely underselling. The album goes from straight-ahead rockers, like the blissful Never Said, to the weird atmospheres of something like Flower to the punky energy of Help Me Mary or 6’1. Whatever she does here, Phair pulls it off perfectly. It is a polished album, polished in its rawness, if that makes any sense, but it’s lack of pretention is refreshing. Phair continues to say that it is, in some mysterious way, a response to Exile on Main Street, but that’s silly enough to forgive. What it isn’t pretentious about is being profound or meaningful; it simply is those things because it is, but it refuses to make a big deal about itself. You’ll catch the brilliance of Exile in Guyville or you won’t; it doesn’t give a **** and that’s refreshing. It’s what it is, which is exciting and bracing and damn near perfect; blink and you’ll miss it though – we’re so used to art proclaiming its own greatness than when art doesn’t bother beating you over the head, we tend to assume it’s not worth noticing. But twenty-five years on, Exile is still a trip, a taut, bracing hour in the company of the coolest girl in the world, musing on the faults and failures of just about everything and everyone. Take a seat on the pavement; Phair is the busker on the corner, holding court. You wanna keep walking? Go ahead. I’ll be listening. 4 stars.

tl;dr – twenty-five years later, Phair’s bracing debut retains its power to surprise, move and challenge. 4 stars.

 

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Stadium Arcadium

 

i gave this a spin. it's emblematic of paul's dueling desires to do something traditional and at the same time something contemporary that have pretty much defined his career since "tug of war", and like most of his output since then the results are decidedly mixed. i tend to prefer the tracks where he's trying something different to ones where he falls into old habits or seems cynically trying just to crack the charts. "i don't know", "back in brazil", and "hunt you down/naked/c-link" were highlights for me.

 

Yeah, i've given this one around three or four spins since i've posted.

Although it has grown on me in areas, it's an album where no matter what he does, Paul seems to show his age.

It's still very listenable and it's certainly not without its standout tracks. But, the last truly classic McCartney album for me was 2008's Electric Arguments because he seemed to manage "modern" quite well given the collaboration with Martin Glover.

The only "negative" I have to say about Egypt Station is:

1. Stop trying to write Give Peace A Chance - in this case, People Want Peace. It's been done before and better.

2. Stop trying to write medley/epic tracks. He doesn't know how to transition given the lack of flow between styles.

Overall, still great and certainly stronger than New.

 

Clutch - Book of Bad Decisions. This is their twelfth studio album (just came out a little over a week ago), and so far it sounds like they've really delivered yet again.

 

Great fin at the Funn house:

 

Red Hot Chili Peppers - The Getaway

 

Jubilation, Vol. 2 (More Black Gospel) (1992) – Various Artists

This is the follow up to the first volume of Rhino Records’ look at the black gospel of the thirties, forties & fifties (predominately). The series was intended to spotlight various genres of gospel music, but with volume two, they obviously knew what they were doing. Because after listening to an hour of soulful, passionate, raw black gospel, what’s the next thing you want to hear? That’s right: MORE Black Gospel. With volume three of the series, they switched to Country Gospel; on volume four . . . wait, there wasn’t a volume four. Clearly, volume three should have been dedicated to EVEN More Black Gospel. Anyway, reviewing this is kind of silly because, like volume one, it’s exactly what it says it is and it’s awesome. Highlights include Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers on a rousing Jesus I’ll Never Forget and Mahalia Jackson’s rousing version of How I Got Over. On Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child, The Harmonizing Four do exactly that and the bass singer legit kicks in the subwoofer. The Nightingales’ Burying Ground is an explosion of pure soul with the rawest lead vocal on the album. The Christland Singers take doo-wop to church with Sell Out to the Master. The Swan Silvertones start out fast and keep getting faster on a frenzied song called My Rock. The Five Blind Boys of Alabama contribute a riff on the Lord’s Prayer called Our Father that is about as far from the sleepy choral renditions you’ve probably heard of the Lord’s Prayer. And the Staples Singers show up with their iconic Uncloudy Day with a husky Mavis Staples vocal and Pop Staples’ watery, distorted guitar providing a haunting backdrop. Anyway, what else is there to say. With only a couple of exceptions, the music here is absolutely first rate. I called Volume 1 essential listening; Volume 2 is nothing less than its predecessor. Keep the praises flowing. 4 stars.

tl;dr – fantastic compilation is just as good as the first volume; almost every song is first rate and the passion and soul can’t be denied. 4 stars.

 

This is a German progressive metal album from 1990 that I find myself honestly baffled never received any attention at all, even in continental Europe. This whole album has a little over 50 minutes of material on it and virtually every single track is a compositional powerhouse. Structured and varied riffing, impeccable vocal melodies, excellent bass playing that weaves in and out of the guitarwork, some of the best leads I've heard laid down on a metal album for this time and some fantastic drumming.

This is some Rust in Peace-tier stuff and yet another superb album from arguably one of the genre's greatest years.

@MotivateR5D4 @Ramza @Ender Sai @Rogue1-and-a-half Check this out.

 

Thirty-five minutes of music....from an archive that is said to have literally thousands.

 

Rage Against the Machine - Evil Empire

 

Simon Rattle conducting Shostakovich's Symphony no.10 on the EMI label. Excellent but still not quite up their with Karajan's Deutsche Grammophon interpretation

 

Camelot Original Cast Recording