Christopher Cross - "Christopher Cross" (1979)

Rating: 4
Verdict: Blue Bin

I read enough about music that I sort of knew what to expect from this album, even though I don't think I'd heard any songs from it besides "Sailing." Quiet soft-rock with pianos, strings and horns that apparently dominated the radio in 1979 and won five Grammies (I will resist the obligatory potshot at the Grammies since I'm sure my target audience shares my opinion on them). Unsurprisingly, Cross has faded into obscurity given that there is little of lasting musical value here.

Still, this record does boast a 4.5 star rating on allmusic.com so probably deserves a dismissal that is longer than one paragraph. Thus, I'll give it two! Stephen Thomas Erlewine writes that this "was a hell of a record -- it just was a hell of a soft rock record, something that doesn't carry a lot of weight among most audiences." His general point is the album is consistent, well-crafted, and has strength beyond the singles. And at some level, I don't think he's incorrect. The songs do have hooks, are mostly memorable, and there's no particular drop in quality to be found. But they're also so limp and languid that there's just no way I can imagine myself feeling emotional stimulation from this music. My reward to Mr. Cross for his craftsmanship is giving this record a 4 out of 10 instead of a 1 or a 2, and I have a strong feeling that his later albums would be in that range for me, considering this is supposed to be his best. But it's still a no doubt blue bin record.

James Taylor - "Sweet Baby James" (1969)

Rating: 6

Verdict: Keeper

I have long professed to hate James Taylor, but I am well conditioned to the idea that nearly every musical artist looks bad if you let them keep recording long enough. In the case of Taylor, a fairly mediocre singer/songwriter in the scheme of things, but one who has released a long series of albums, it should be no surprise that most of them are bad, at least if my blue bin is any indication. My point is that despite having tried several Taylor albums and having liked none of them, it's not completely fair to judge an artist by their dregs rather than their prime. Because of this, I was willing to give Sweet Baby James a listen as it is commonly regarded as the best JT album. If I didn't like this one, then I could probably safely conclude that Taylor never made a good album.

Well, this record is proof that he did make a good album, and against my better judgment, I am somewhat impressed by this record. I still don't care for his bland voice ('easygoing' being the word that people that like him use), but this is the only James Taylor album I've heard where he wasn't content to simply strum on his guitar and sing the first melody that came to mind for the lyrics he wrote. Yes, there are actual points of musical interest here. He was never a revolutionary in this regard, being firmly grounded in folk, country and blues (mostly folk), but it's quite refreshing to hear him play acoustic guitar parts that are actually interesting to hear on their own rather than simply acting as accompaniment. He switches style and tempo enough that there's diversity as well and best of all, genuine care put into developing his melodies. Witness the jazzy, off-hand end of "Fire and Rain" - the later Taylor would have deemed the chorus good enough and probably omitted the descending hook in the verses too ("I just can't remember who to send it to").

Now I didn't love this album, and part of my reflexive disdain for Taylor stems from those who try to elevate him to the position of an all-time great. For example, this album ranked 103rd on Rolling Stone's Top 500 albums of all time. It might make my top 500 by default as of this writing (I doubt the number of albums I have heard is significantly larger than that) but I seriously doubt it would come anywhere near it if I had heard all the albums that Rolling Stone presumably considered. Instead, Sweet Baby James completes my understanding of Taylor's ultimate importance - at least, to my own imaginary musical pantheon. At one time, he was capable of making nice music so he can't be completely dismissed. But if this is the best he could offer, then it's not surprising that I don't like much else by him. 

Rating: 7/10

The Smashing Pumpkins - "MACHINA/The Machines of God"

Rating: 6

You may know it as the notorious album that precipitated the Smashing Pumpkins' breakup. But is MACHINA/The Machines of God as terrible as its title would indicate? Perhaps I have my head so far up Billy Corgan's bald ass that I can't tell what good music is anymore, but I say no. But mediocre, most definitely!

For although Corgan's songwriting declined as we entered our third millennium, it hadn't completely gone to shit either. However, this album is filled with bad artistic decisions. Let's take a quick run-through of the decision-making of Mr. Corgan:

Wrote a set of spiritual, soaring mid-tempo ballads? Make sure that every song is produced with a deafening, buzzing wall of sound that makes Phil Spector want to kill again.

Need a lead single? Re-write "Zero" from Mellon Collie, give it a meaningless title ("The Everlasting Gaze") and make sure to include an a cappella section where you sing the line "But underneath the wheels lie the skulls of every cog" with a hard G so that everyone wonders if they just heard you scream 'skulls of every cock'.*

Find yourself with 25-30 minutes of top-notch material and no more? Make the album 73 minutes long and then release a companion album called MACHINA II with 90 minutes of OUTTAKES from the recording sessions.

Shit, I've almost convinced myself that I shouldn't give this album three stars which is what I'm going to do at the end of this review. But despite the flaws, I do think there is 25-30 minutes of top-notch material here, which is enough for a borderline positive rating. The stretch from "Stand Inside Your Love" through "This Time" is good enough that I can almost forgive the stretch of bad songs from the needlessly 10-minute "Glass and the Ghost Children" (solid at 3 minutes, bad at 10), through the tedious "Blue Skings Bring Tears." I wouldn't say there's a great album buried here, but there is a good album at 10 or 11 songs, especially with sparser production. And what pushes me over into positive territory is that "Stand Inside Your Love" is a truly great single, the one vestige of classic Pumpkins.

So if you're a Pumpkins fan, you should still listen to this album. If you aren't, don't. And no, there is no fucking way I am ever going to listen to MACHINA II.

Rating: *** out of *****

* There is one other example of this that I can think of in the annals of rock: Manfred Mann's "Blinded by the Light" where the singer clearly sings "Wrapped up like a douche" when the line is "Wrapped up like a deuce." I'm not sure I can say why, but both songs make my skin crawl.

The Smashing Pumpkins - "Pisces Iscariot" (1994)

Rating: 8

Sure, he brought it on himself, but I find it a shame that Billy Corgan is mostly known as a crackpot, or worse, the bald guy with the shitty voice. I don't think he is (or was) quite a genius, but perhaps the Smashing Pumpkins' relatively disappointing fade-out post Mellon Collie shouldn't have been such a surprise. Consider the lengths of their first three albums:

Gish: 45:45

Siamese Dream: 62:17

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness: 121:39

Then throw in this album, an excellent 57-minute collection of B-sides and outtakes and you've got over 4 hours and 45 minutes of quality Pumpkins, or seven normal-length vinyl records. So where a non-fan might see the lukewarm reception to their fourth and fifth albums (and subsequent breakup) and think they were some flash in the pan, they were really just victims of hanging around too long and letting Corgan make an ass of himself in the media one too many times. His prime may have been relatively short, but he wrote 10 or 15 years worth of music for some bands in four years.

Oh yeah, Pisces Iscariot. It has the best reputation of the various compilations of the band's unreleased tracks (yes, there are several) but I was a bit skeptical that they really had another full album's worth of good material considering it only draws on the recording sessions for two albums (Gish and Siamese Dream). And yet, I find this better than Gish and their third-best 'album' overall. It has a surprisingly good flow for a compilation, alternating between typical Pumpkins rockers and lighter, more evocative material. Corgan not only doesn't embarrass himself covering "Landslide," he does almost as good a job as Fleetwood Mac!

What I find particularly refreshing is that it largely lacks the epic ambitions of their first three studio albums and instead most of the tracks clock in between 2.5 and 4 minutes. Though this ambition is what made the group great at their best, it could be their downfall as well, so the result is that Pisces Iscariot is much more consistent, if lacking the stunning high points of Siamese Dream or Mellon Collie. 

That said, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that there is one major exception here to the previous paragraph - the 11-minute "Starla" which definitely qualifies as a stunning high point in my book. As this album demonstrates quite well, there are two major components to the group's sound: loud, distorted alternative rock meets heavy metal and lush, dreamy soft pop. I find they are at their most compelling when they combine the two in the same song, and "Starla" is a great example of this. Beginning with a quiet arpeggiated opening, they bring in a gruff riff, slowly building the song to a crescendo before dropping to a quiet fadeout five minutes in, seemingly the end of the song. Not so! Instead, Corgan comes to the fore with nearly six minutes of Hendrix-esque guitar soloing as he scrapes every bit of unearthly noise he can get out of his instrument. It's ridiculous and should be terrible, and yet somehow, it's the best thing here. And that is the essence of the Smashing Pumpkins.

The Clarke/Duke Project - "II" (1983)

Rating: 4

Verdict: Blue Bin

Although I have still been making my way through my album collection and merrily blue-binning records, it has come to my attention that I haven't actually been reviewing them. So I'm back to review the Clarke/Duke  Project!

I actually own three records by Stanley Clarke, who for those who don't know (I didn't), is best known for his bass playing on his own solo fusion records in the 70s as well as those of various jazz supergroups. The other two records I own, Journey to Love and School Days, I rather enjoyed and showcased a surprising level of diversity and inventiveness on Clarke's part in addition to the expected hyperactive bass playing (also worthwhile). And yet, prior to listening to this record, released just seven years after School Days, I looked up the allmusic.com rating and saw a 1.5 star rating. I doubted the veracity of such a low mark but really shouldn't have.

Indeed, Clarke was a victim of the same mass loss of taste in the 1980s that affected so many other musicians who released excellent music in the 60s and 70s. Having released several seminal jazz albums, he performed some inscrutable calculus that led him to the conclusion that the next way to proceed as an artist was to release albums of poorly sung dance-pop backed by drum machines and synthesizers. There are occasional glimpses on this record of Clarke's stupendous bass playing as well as a jazz-informed sense of melody. But I believe that these aspects may well make this particular album worse instead of better since they obscure whatever hooks there may well be. I will admit that the record isn't totally abysmal, but what it is is pointless and a disappointment compared to what came before. Blue bin!

Bob Dylan - "New Morning" (1970)

Rating: 8

Although it is my opinion that Dylan would never again reach the astounding heights of Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde (and that includes Blood on the Tracks, which although it would probably make my purely hypothetical Hall of Fame Album Pyramid, wouldn't make the Pantheon), my recent listening to his immediate post-Blonde oeuvre certainly hasn't been unrewarding. Although I agree with the critical masses that his infamous Self-Portrait was a misfire, I also don't think it deserves infamy. Yet he released several good to great albums during this stretch, including John Wesley Harding, Nashville Skyline, and New Morning, released just four months after Self-Portrait. My main criticism of him during this stretch is not that he lost his genius, but that his genius was unfocused, manifesting itself on a handful of songs per album only. This is somewhat the case on New Morning, but there is enough strong material to recommend it.

On this album, Bob largely ditches the guitar and focuses primarily on rambling piano ballads. Being Dylan, his piano-playing is unpolished, his vocals are abrasive at times, and especially due to the short length (35 minutes), it isn't hard to imagine it being knocked off in four months. Yet he is also more direct and heartfelt on this album than he had really ever been until this point, and he conveys a genuine warmth and sweetness. Although this is nowhere near as momentous a record as his earlier stuff and has too much filler for me to call it a masterpiece (witness the awful beatnik spoken-word "When Dogs Run Free"), the best songs here are also spiritually akin in that Dylan's humanity shines through like almost no other rock songwriter can manage.

For example, I was already familiar with the opening track "If Not For You," as covered by George Harrison on All Things Must Pass. After hearing Harrison's glorious Phil Spector-ized version with its wall of acoustic guitars, the much more low-key Dylan version with its significantly dinkier organ part and ramshackle feel passed me by on the first listen. And yet now, I am overwhelmed by the homely charm of the Dylan rendition and although the Harrison version is hard to beat, it's much closer than I ever would have thought.

The other major highlight for me is "Sign On the Window" which has the closing verse:

Built me a cabin in Utah

Marry me a wife, catch a rainbow trout

Have a bunch of kids who call me Pa

That must be what it's all about

Out of context, these lyrics seem almost embarrassingly naive. But in the context of the rest of the lyrics. ("Sign on a porch says, 'Three's a crowd'"), the tone is much more wistful. And in the context of the music, when you hear his rueful vocals in conjunction with his piano, it's deeply moving. Although Dylan is about the lyrics first and foremost (contrary to what the contrarians will have you believe), the way he sings the lyrics is just as important as how they are written down on paper, which is what nearly all the singer-songwriters who followed in his footsteps forgot. Keeper!

Crystal Gayle - "We Must Believe In Magic" (1977)

Rating: 5

I own two records by Crystal Gayle, who I had never heard of prior to that fateful day when I bought four boxes of records for $70. Apparently she was a somewhat popular country singer in the late 70s and early 80s but has faded into obscurity today, being most notable for being the younger singer of Loretta Lynn and having recorded a soundtrack album with Tom Waits. Both of these facts give her some credibility in my eyes, and although I am not exactly a country buff, I did find the pure country songs on We Must Believe in Magic to be tolerable. Gayle has a nice, though not exceptional voice and she's preferable to most modern country for sure.

The problem with this record is that the notion of trying to have a crossover hit had already seeped its way into Nashville, and several tracks here are misguided attempts to blend the horn section and rhythm of a disco song with the steel guitars of a country song (well, it was 1977). The main offenders are the disco-country cover of Cole Porter's "It's All Right with Me" (as awful as it sounds) and the closing title track, a synthesizer-led adult contemporary ballad that really isn't country at all and featuring lyrics about Alpha Centauri, ensuring that it would be dated by 1978.

So apart from the efforts to be modern, the country songs here are decent. But I'm not a country buff, so those songs aren't enough for me to rate this as a good album. They're decent, but they're not George Jones. Blue bin!

Mr. Mister - "Welcome to the Real World" (1985)

Rating: 3

Mr. Mister was a group of L.A. session musicians who formed in the early 80s to put their own spin on the pop-rock style of bands like Toto and Chicago (that sentence should tell you all you need to know about this band, but I shall proceed nonetheless). Indeed, lead singer Richard Page was offered the opportunity to lead both those groups, but declined and was rewarded with two #1 hits in "Kyrie" and "Broken Wings." Commercially, Mr. Mister was briefly very successful before fading into oblivion. Artistically, not so much.

I listened to the first three tracks on the first side and heard nothing but flat stadium rock with dopey keyboards and sludgy power chords in place of riffs. So I was prepared to turn the record off before even making it to the end of side one but then noticed that the three major hits on the album (the two aforementioned, plus top 10 single "Is It Love") were all aligned in a row on the second side. I'm not sure if Mr. Mister thought that would give them some credibility or perhaps force listeners to pay attention to their faceless music of the first side, but either way, definitely not a good move. Sometimes you just have to admit your limitations and front-load the album because that's all anyone wants to hear anyways.

Of course, it's not like those hits were particularly good, which I strongly suspect to be correlated with Mr. Mister's subsequent decline. "Kyrie" has the catchiest chorus on the record but said chorus is indistinguishable from Toto's "Africa." "Broken Wings" is the only song here that I recognized ("take... these broken wings") and I would call it the worst song on the album if I had actually listened to every song on the album. It's a prototypical power ballad, and like many 80s power ballads of ill repute, the group seemed to think that playing the entire song at a dragging tempo and having Page offer up somber platitudes is the same thing as writing a heart-wrenching love song. It isn't. 

So while allmusic.com may give this album four stars by default for being the Mr. Mister album with the most hits, that just makes me terrified to imagine what their other albums might be like. Blue bin!

Blue Bin Singles

As I tend to be an album-oriented person, I have found myself neglecting the small pile of singles that I acquired as part of my record collection. Though there are some worthy singles to be found in it (i.e, The Beatles' "Real Love"), there is also, of course, much to be jeered at and scorned. This post is about those unlucky singles that fall into the latter category.

The Young Moderns - "Body Won't Obey/(she's a) Disposable Girl"


The Young Moderns supplant whatever random jazz artist last held the title for Most Obscure Musical Act in my collection. My customary search on allmusic.com turned up no results for the group whatsoever. I then located this very single on rateyourmusic.com, with exactly one rating on its page and no other works by the Young Moderns listed. For this apparently hip, youthful group that featured both a male and female Jamie (as I inferred from the back of the single cover), this single was their one chance to make it big. And with the results sounding like the Sex Pistols if Yoko Ono were their lead singer, they failed.

Billy Ocean - "When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going"


Robotic R&B dance-pop lacking the charm of Ocean's most famous single "Get Out of my Dreams (And Into My Car)." The most entertaining thing about this single for me is that the B-side is an instrumental version of the A-side, as if anyone would ever want to hear five minutes of a three-note electronic bass line played over a drum machine.

Dion - "Abraham, Martin & John/From Both Sides Now"


From the crooner most famous for "The Wanderer," this single found Dion attempting to recast himself as a sensitive folk-rock performer. On the A-side, Dion contemplates the assassinations of Lincoln, King and Kennedy but has nothing interesting or meaningful to say ("But it seems the good they die young/I just looked around and he's gone") nor despite laying on strings and organ, is the song anything but boring.

R.J.'s Latest Arrival - "Shackles"


Dating back to 1983, this was, for all I know, this was a pioneering rap single. Unfortunately, this R.J. or perhaps his latest arrival had yet to pioneer quality in rap. Once again, the B-side is an instrumental so you get to hear a lot of scratched turntables if you're into that kind of thing.

Art & Dotty Todd - "Chanson D'Amour"/Johnny Crawford - "Cindy's Birthday"


Pre-Beatles pap. To make a Bayesian inference, the odds of me enjoying a song by the performers Art and Dotty Todd are close to zero.

J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers - "Last Kiss/Hey Little Girl"


Hey, it's that song Pearl Jam covered in the 1990s! But there can only be one great early 60s song about the death of a teenager and that song is "Leader of the Pack." Okay, I like this song too, but it's not the original version, and this obscure cover isn't particularly noteworthy.

Mike Cross - "Rock 'n' Rye" (1980)

Rating: 4

This album is definitely one of the most obscure records in my collection, having obtained exactly one rating on rateyourmusic.com (and zero reviews). Even allmusic.com didn't review this album, though Mike Cross does at least have his own biography. Because of this, I know that he went to UNC-Chapel Hill, thus joining James Taylor in the annals of mediocre musicians hailing from the town where I currently live. Oops, did I spoil the surprise?

Although I had the impression from the album cover of the other Mike Cross album I own (yes, I have two) that this would be some sort of Irish folk album, it is in fact mostly straight-up country, with some occasional electric guitar and fiddle thrown in. It is at least 'old-school' country, i.e., not just an insular ode to the redneck lifestyle like modern country, but with lyrical subject matter mostly about broken hearts and getting drunk. I am not particularly inclined towards even this kind of music, but much like with blues, the songs are all pretty much the same, so it is safe to say that a country record succeeds largely on the passion and sincerity of the singer. And although Cross seems to be a genial fellow, his slow songs aren't wracked and anguished enough for my liking, and his fast songs not funny enough. I'm not going to pop a boner for just any country record made before 1990, so there's only one judgment I can give Rock 'n' Rye: blue bin!

James Taylor - "Gorilla" (1975)

Rating: 4

Frankly, I can't stand James Taylor, Chapel Hill lineage or no. To quote allmusic.com, "when people use the term 'singer/songwriter' in praise or in criticism, they're thinking of James Taylor." Indeed Taylor is who I associate with the term "singer-singwriter" and I absolutely mean it in criticism the majority of the time. Gorilla is a fairly lightweight album, exploring more poppy acoustic arrangements, so isn't exactly like the man's most famous (or infamous) work, but does share the same critical flaw that there isn't a single memorable melody to be found on the record. Perhaps I exaggerate, but this record does nothing to correct my impression that behind Taylor's warm, smooth vocals and pleasant guitar playing, there isn't much interesting musically here. Lyrically, there are some interesting moments, but this isn't exactly supposed to be a 'deep' album anyways, not that it would impress me much more if it were. Someday I'll listen to Sweet Baby James and decide once and for all if there is anything in James Taylor's discography I would enjoy, but if there is, it certainly isn't here. Blue bin!

Stanley Turrentine - "Have You Ever Seen The Rain" (1975)

Rating: 4

Basically the same thing as his 1974 release Pieces of Dreams. Slightly better due to two tracks ("T's Dream," "Tommy's Tune") which are much closer to classic jazz than the orchestrated pap that makes up the rest of the album, but there's still the matter of the orchestrated pap that makes up the rest of the album. On the other hand, his token pop/rock cover is less inspired this time around since jazz CCR makes significantly less sense than jazz Stevie Wonder. But on the third (?) hand, this one has a pretty sweet album cover. Obviously I don't have much else to say besides the obvious: blue bin!

Stanley Turrentine - "Pieces of Dreams" (1974)

Rating: 4

For some reason, I own three records by tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine. In the early days of this blog, I reviewed his 1976 release Everybody Come On Out and (barely) decided it was worth keeping. Today, I feel not quite so sympathetic and am reconsidering my verdict on his other record as well. If I were more of a jazz connoisseur, I suspect I would be grievously offended by Turrentine's 70s schtick. The reason is that the music is heavily orchestrated, with saxophone solos played over the strings in a warm, inoffensive tone, never straying too far from the main melody. In other words, easy listening, dentist's office jazz. 

I am not a jazz connoisseur, so it's hard for me to feel too outraged by this material. But I still found it to be, on the whole, boring. I'm sure it would work fine as the soundtrack to a TV show or as faintly heard background music riding in an elevator, but as active listening material, it failed to engage me. The only potential point of interest for me is that there is a version of Stevie Wonder's "Evil" on the second side, but when all Turrentine does is play the vocal melody on saxophone, it's hard to see the point. Sure, the chord changes are still cool, but Stevie's version is far more interesting. Blue bin!

Eddie Money - "Playing for Keeps" (1980) & "Can't Hold Back" (1986)

       

Rating: 2 and 4

I didn't think I had anything interesting to say about one Eddie Money album, so why not review two at once! Even better for this sort of premise, allmusic.com gave 1980's Playing for Keeps 2 stars but gave 1986's Can't Hold Back 4.5 stars, which potentially makes for an interesting compare and contrast exercise. Was Money really that much more successful with his 1986 effort than his 1980 effort? And if so, why?

Wait for it.

Wait for it.

No, of course not. Both albums suck. 

Okay, Can't Hold Back is definitely better. On Playing for Keeps, Money attempts to cast himself as a straight-up classic rocker, but his music lacks any of the elements that make good classic rock successful, and winds up boring and faceless. Eddie's voice is like Rod Stewart's without the rasp. In other words, it's not really much like anything at all. 

On Can't Hold Back, Mr. Money (or perhaps his production team) conceded that he was really in this for radio success, added keyboards and horns, more melodic choruses, and the result was his most famous single ("Take Me Home Tonight") as well as renewed commercial success. I could almost be convinced that this is a good album, because I can't deny that the songs have hooks, and it's surprisingly consistent. And then Money's lifeless vocals remind me that there is really no reason to listen to even Can't Hold Back, presumably his best, more than once. Blue bin for all! 

Steve Perry - "Street Talk" (1984)

Rating: 4

I will admit, this is one of those times where there was probably a close to zero chance that I would vote to keep this record. Although I enjoy "Don't Stop Believin" as much as any frat brother, it's because it's so cheesy, stupid, and over-the-top that it's fun to sing along to, and certainly not because I identify with the pathos of Journey, who is really just a worse version of Kansas. If lead singer Steve Perry had any latent songwriting talent, he probably would have displayed it prior to going solo.

And as I expected, Street Talk is a pretty mediocre album. Still, it did at least provide me with an "oh yeah, that song" moment with the first track, "Oh Sherrie" (click the link, I guarantee you'll have one too), which I do take a certain pleasure in. To Perry's credit, this is mostly straightforward arena rock and lacks the progressive inclinations of Journey, thus ensuring that it avoids being totally reprehensible. Not to Perry's credit is that the songwriting is boring, the musicianship weak, and even the tracks that have decent hooks ("Oh Sherrie," "Foolish Heart") are nothing more than polished, sterile craftsmanship. He can hit some impressive notes and has a quintessential mid-80s rock voice, but I'm not really sure those attributes are even good things in this context. Blue bin!

Olivier Messiaen - "Quartet for the End of Time" (1941)

Rating: 9

Note: The above album cover is not actually the performance I own of this piece.

Although my working knowledge of classical music is scant and pathetic, I do know enough that I had at least been meaning to listen to my Quartet for the End of Time LP for several years now. In terms of backstory, it's hard to beat, since much of it was composed by Olivier Messiaen while he was a prisoner of war during World War II. Even better yet (from my perspective), the themes deal with no less than the Apocalypse and the music is a paean to angels coming down from Heaven. I may not be religious myself, but I do have a fondness for music inspired by religion, assuming it is infused with a proper awe and majesty (which classical music usually is).

Still, I had listened to part of the record once, but as background music, and expected something more immediately majestic and stirring, where it in fact does awhile to get going. But with a full listen, I really found myself drawn in by the power of the piece. In particular, I was struck by the fifth movement, (which closes the first side on my record) a slow, seven-minute cello solo backed by piano, and if at first it seemed somewhat sparse, the richness of the theme slowly gives way to a state of bliss. And to have it followed up by a wild dissonant piece hearkening the six trumpets of the Apocalypse is something that I just don't ever find in my usual sphere of pop and rock music.

It will definitely take me more listens to appreciate everything that Messiaen is doing here, especially due to my lack of experience with modern classical. But although I'm afraid to stake out a final position yet (above rating is a guess), I have a strong feeling that this shit is really good. Like, fucking great. So needless to say, keeper!

Spirit - "Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus" (1970)

Rating: 8

Judging by the album cover, this one looked like a bust. Or I suppose it would have, if I hadn't already known this to be a fairly acclaimed record. And indeed, Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus is just as trippy as the title and the album cover would imply, but it is also a potent brew. I am not quite sure how to describe the sound, which is at least one sign of a good record, or at least a unique one. There are elements of jazz, folk, and hard rock, but with spacey guitars and processed vocals. Maybe it's a stretch, but in places, it reminded me of Animal Collective, though I suppose Spirit is slightly more restrained. That's another sign of a good record, though, for although the vibe of the record is dated, the sound is quite modern. Overall, I was very impressed, although I think they sometimes go overboard in trying to be weird and psychedelic, so I wouldn't quite call it a lost masterpiece. But a very good record? Hell yes! Keeper!

Bruce Hornsby and the Range - "The Way It Is" (1986)

Rating: 7

Bruce Hornsby is Springsteen without the aggression, or perhaps Dire Straits without the grit. So if my first reaction to hearing these gentle, smoothly produced, mid-tempo guitar rockers was to throw up in my mouth a little bit, can I really be blamed? And although Hornsby's synthesizer playing is more of an added texture to the songs than the primary focus, its existence at all instantly dates the record to right around 1986. But somehow, as the album kept going, I had the sudden epiphany that every single song had a driving melody and tuneful chorus. This record, in fact, has the opposite problem from my last review. In this case, the production and general vibe turn me off, but after sitting down and giving it a full, focused listen, I can't help but appreciate the craftsmanship and more importantly, the consistency. It'd still be easy to say that the aforementioned flaws immediately sink it, but I'm a fan of nuance in my ratings, so while The Way It Is is certainly no masterpiece, it is a perfectly fine album. Keeper!

Paul Carrack - "Suburban Voodoo" (1982)

Rating: 5

According to allmusic.com, Paul Carrack was "pop music's ultimate journeyman," with "his finest work coming at the expense of his own identity." Shockingly, these traits make for a thoroughly mediocre solo album. Produced by Nick Lowe, Suburban Voodoo sounds pretty much exactly like Lowe's own Labour of Lust, with elements of Squeeze thrown in (who Carrack also sang for). Carrack's vocal style is ostensibly soulful, but fails to convey really much of anything.

Still, I do use the word mediocre in the literal sense, and nothing here struck me as being bad necessarily. The production is good enough that it all sounds perfectly pleasant and there are some catchy guitar riffs and choruses to be found here and there. If I had been listening to it as background music, I might even have convinced myself that this record was a keeper. But outside of the first track "Letter of Love," no song really held my interest from beginning to end. For that reason, although I found it much preferable to 1987's One Good Reason (which proved that without Lowe's production, Carrack quickly moves from mediocre to bad), Suburban Voodoo fails my most fundamental criterion, which is whether I ever see myself wanting to listen to it again. Blue bin!

Pat Boone - "Sings Irving Berlin" (1957)

Rating: 7

I will admit that my knowledge of pre-rock era standards is low, so I really couldn't say whether Pat Boone's covers of Irving Berlin are good, bad, or mediocre versions. I enjoyed the record, and allmusic.com gave it 4.5 stars, so perhaps that should be enough to content me. The melodic phrasing is typical of singers of this time and although I find the style to be a bit dated in the wake of the much more emotional and personal singing of the rock era, it does have a subtle charm that grew on me throughout the course of the album. One benefit of covering the repertoire of a well-known songwriter is that you can filter out the dregs and indeed, this album is blindingly consistent. All this is to say, I liked the record, and although I probably wouldn't feel any need to own two albums of Irving Berlin covers, Mr. Boone currently has no other competition in my collection ensuring that he will avoid the blue bin.