Introduction:

The «Two Cents» Page.

For those who have no need of lengthy reviews, here's just one or two quick thoughts and summaries on all the artists I have covered. Do not forget, though, that even Britney Spears cannot be fully described in two sentences, so these should by no means be taken for final and definitive judgements. Build or burn at your own risk.

Note: ☺ Smileys indicate artists well worth getting acquainted with; ○ blank circles are for okay ones who may have reasons to own fan bases but do not rise beyond "decent"; ☻ anti-smileys are just what they are — artists who are only here because of public notoriety and (perhaps) limited historical significance, but they can also be great fodder to make fun of. I'm sure they don't mind — they're supposed to be cool, understanding people in any case.

1920-1960

☺Carl Perkins: The man behind ʽBlue Suede Shoesʼ and ʽHoney Don'tʼ needs little introduction... or does he? Although he is always listed in every list of great early rockers, he'd also always kept a low profile, and his lack of «flash» has always made him lurk somewhere in the background, way behind the huge shoulders of Elvis. But this also makes him a personal favorite for those music lovers who despise «flash», and prefer quiet, subtle charisma instead. Anyway, no collection is complete without a set of great Carl Perkins guitar licks — the man was perhaps the perfect epitome of «rock'n'roll as country-western's naughty kid» — and there might even be a reason to look into Carl's career beyond the obligatory mid-1950s hits: yes, it's been spotty, but not without its hidden charms, such as, e. g., On Top from 1969, where he actually tried to modernize his style with surprisingly fun results.

○ Champion Jack Dupree: Jury still out.

☺Charley Patton: A figure of almost as legendary status as Robert Johnson, but a little less familiar to the general public because, unlike Johnson, Patton has not been nearly as influential on the American and British electric blues and blues-rock scene — at least, not as immediately influential, what with his more archaic and «wild» style of Delta blues guitar playing, and his deep growling vocals being harder to authentically imitate and all. Additionally, most of his recordings suffer from really terrible sound quality. But don't let that stop you from listening: few pre-war artists have the kind of power to really transport you into the depths of the Delta that Patton has. There's just something about that voice... anyway, before I slip into any politically incorrect clichés, just remember that nobody's blues collection is ever complete without the complete (quite minuscule, actually, compared to gazillions of identical recordings by much lesser artists from the same period) output of Charley Patton on the shelf.

1960-1965

○ Carla Thomas: The daughter of Rufus «The Dog» Thomas, she had a pleasant personality, a nice voice, and a bit of songwriting talent, but probably wouldn't have made it far enough without father's protection anyway. Although the industry went as far as to dub her «The Queen Of Soul» at one time (that was before Aretha's arrival), most of her recordings were soft, easy-going, not particularly outstanding R&B pieces — the only exception being ʽGee Whizʼ, an early «teen R&B» ballad that captured the public with its starry-eyed attitude. She never could properly replicate its success, though, and spent most of the Sixties struggling to stay afloat, before finally giving up and sinking in the early Seventies. But she was nice. Possible starting point: No single album can be recommended (let alone the fact that most of them are out of print) — just grab any compilation that has ʽGee Whizʼ, and maybe also ʽB-A-B-Yʼ, on it, and you're all set.

○ Cher: The consummate «give-the-people-what-they-want» entertainer, Cher has always been quite a colorful and intriguing personage even outside of the «Sonny and Cher» combo, from the moment she first established her femme-fatale solo presence in 1965 and all the way into the 21st century, where she remains as a gay rights icon, an obligatory ingredient of the «cockroaches and...» folklore, and a loyal supplier of whatever form of crappy mass-marketed pop music is the most en vogue at the present moment. The thing that really makes it fun to explore her career, though, are her serious artistic inclinations that flash through the veil of pop glitz every once in a while — no matter how corny her public image may look at any given time, she is neither dumb nor untalented, and her legacy contains enough material to fill at least a solid 2-CD compilation that would proudly hold its own next to the best mainstream pop songwriters of the Sixties, Seventies and... well, not the Eighties, but you get my drift. Unfortunately, it was always more important for Cher to be a «celebrity» and a «fashion icon» first, and a serious artist second — so that whenever the second entered into conflict with the first, she knew which aspect to sacrifice without a moment's hesitation. This is why her career is such an odd see-saw of commercial and critical flops and successes — and the relation between her hit records and artistic peaks is far from straightforward. Ever since her re-emergence in the Eighties as the big-haired fishnet queen of generic glam-pop and her conversion to equally generic techno-pop in the Nineties, embarrassments have ousted out successes at a ratio of 99:1, but it didn't always used to be like that, and the most disrespectful thing one can do to Cher is forever remember her for ʽBelieveʼ and ʽIf I Could Hold Back Timeʼ. Possible starting point: 3614 Jackson Highway (1969) is often singled out as a particularly decent record, with a strong rocking / funky sound to it, so this is probably the one that a beginner should first go for in order to form a positive impression; proceed from there with caution in both sides of the chronostream, bracing yourself for widely varying proportions of wheat and chaff.

1965-1970

☻Cactus: This band, formed out of the ashes of Vanilla Fudge and masterminded by the titanic rhythm section of Tim Bogart and Carmine Appice, is pretty much the spiritual predecessor of KISS — except that in their utmost reverence for the second S («stupid») they were known to slightly neglect the first S («simple»), and their brand of sludgy, cumbersome heavy rock can very easily get boring, which, in turn, leads to all their stupidity becoming irritating rather than a guilty pleasure. With no decent songwriting, no serious clues about how to overcome the limitations of 12-bar blues genericity, and a lead vocalist forever locked in the solitary state of «drunk and bawling», most of their studio records consist of one or two fun tracks (usually when they introduce speed into the formula) and heaps of forgettable throwaways. They were quite a kick-ass live band, though, adding lots of extra cheap thrills and musical kerosene when facing a demanding audience. Possible starting point: Fully Unleashed: The Live Gigs (2004) is seriously the only Cactus album worth hearing or owning — it has all their best songs on it, performed with extra energy, and if pure, undiluted brawn is what you're after, then their only competitor from the early Seventies is Slade.

☺Cake, The: A short lived girl group from the Summer of Love era, they only lasted for a couple of years that took them all the way from New York to California, but left behind a rather curious legacy — a mix of Motown, Atlantic, psychedelic, and baroque pop elements that ranged from generically obsolete (for 1967) to bizarrely innovative and, occasionally, quite emotionally haunting. With more-than-decent production values, excellent singing voices, and serious songwriting talent (most of their best material was self-penned rather than covered), there is absolutely no telling where this could have ended, had they stuck together — unfortunately, lack of promotion and image problems (it is unlikely that they were superficially perceived as anything other than a curious relic from an already bygone era) crashed the band almost as soon as it took off. Possible starting point: A Slice Of Cake (1968), their second album, fully concentrates on original songwriting and is therefore preferable to the self-titled debut. However, that hardly matters, since both are short enough to fit on one CD, and this is exactly how you are most expected to encounter them (a 2007 compilation under the title of More Of Cake Please).

☺Can: Along with Kraftwerk, Can are probably the most recognizable name on the «Krautrock» scene of the 1970s — and, unlike Kraftwerk, Can may actually be qualified as «rock» without reservations. Both bands started out as alumni of the experimental music scene (Stockhausen, etc.), but where Kraftwerk expanded from this into the music of the future (electronica), Can preferred to merge avantgardism with more «earthly» directions — blues-rock, R&B, and funk, making themselves more easily accessible for fans of guitar-based psychedelic jamming. Few bands in the 1970s could excel in groove-based (rather than free-form) jamming better than Can, but the best thing about the band is that it practiced the «quality check» principle — spontaneity and flight of imagination was valued above everything else, but only the truly inspired bits made it onto the mastertapes, with Holger Czukay splitting and splicing the material in post-production with the utmost craftsmanship. The band's unique approach to «carefully ordered improvisation» and, of course, their unmatched technical skills (all four core members were killer musicians) made them into true giants of the underground music scene — too far out there to achieve big commercial success even at the height of the popularity of progressive rock in the early 1970s, but an undying legend all the same, whose influence is pretty much unmeasurable and whose critical reputation only continues to grow decades after the end. Possible starting point: If you are afraid of too much sonic pressure at once, Soundtracks (1970) is the perfect introduction to the classic Can sound — you get to know both of their early vocalists with each one's individual style of crazy, and you get short catchy «odd-pop» songs and lengthy mind-blowing jams organically integrated with each other. But if you are not afraid of anything, stick to the general critical recommendation of Tago Mago (1971), which is like this band's equivalent of the Missa Solemnis — a multi-part ritual for communication with... the other side.

○ Canned Heat: Self-proclaimed «kings of the boogie», these guys symbolized three things in the late Sixties: (a) the cosmic triumph of John Lee Hooker-type music, when gritty one-chord blues vamps are enhanced with rock'n'roll headbanging; (b) the absoluteness of the ideals of brotherly/motherly peace, love, and understanding; (c) the easiness of slipping from pot to hard drugs, which eventually caused the death of several of the band's key members. With some real talent to burn and a couple of really enjoyable albums behind their belt, they, however, were unable to overcome their B-level status, and after the death of their one most talented member, Alan Wilson, in 1970, began a long and painful process of degeneration, only to re-emerge twenty years later as a get-their-shit-together, competent, but still not very bright retro-blues-rock outfit that simply refuses to go away, no matter what they're offered. Watch Woodstock — their filmed appearance there captures just about everything there is about this band, all three aspects (well, the hard drug thing is only hinted at, but you can sort of see it coming), and if it intrigues you, proceed from there. Possible starting point: Boogie With Canned Heat (1968) probably captures them at their absolute best; the rest of the catalog should rather be compressed into a representative compilation.

☺Captain Beefheart: The epitome — nay, indeed, the acme — of «weird» in popular music, Captain Beefheart is less of a captain and more of a litmus test on the audience. Are you just old plain basic, or are you acidic enough to get carried away and bewildered by the Captain's tireless efforts at reformulating and subverting the rules of music, poetry, and artistry? He may have been a genius, presaging the music of the future in a post-World War III world of superhuman survivors, or an obnoxious madman, irritating our beauty-wired brains for no excusable reason — but one thing is for certain: he was like nobody else, and he did things — and worked very hard for them, too — that nobody else did. I am not going to ever pretend that I «like» the creative evolution of Beefheart, but I am bewildered by it, and that may be enough. Possible starting point: Unless you are already a seasoned pro in many things, don't listen to conventional wisdom and start your Beefheart experience with Safe As Milk (1967) — his first album, already much less safe than milk, actually, but still giving you a perfect balance between avantgarde craziness and more conventional blues-rock and psychedelic pop. A good second choice would be to skip a decade and go for Shiny Beast (1979) — the Captain's «comeback» after a muddled period, and also a good example of balance. Only then will you be properly equipped to tackle Trout Mask Replica in all its alternate-universe glory.

☺Caravan: Jury still out.

1970-1976

☺Camel: Maybe the quintessential «second generation progressive rock» band in all of Britain, Camel pretty much epitomized the genre's evolution around 1973-76: intelligent, inobtrusive, relatively unpretentious, rather quiet and reserved music, equally steeped in blues, folk, and jazz (but not a lot of true symphonic influence). Andy Latimer, the band's heart and soul (although in those early years, keyboardist Pete Bardens played almost as big a role), is a cool blues guitarist with some real juicy tones at his disposal (somewhat derivative of David Gilmour, but much more than just a copycat) and songwriting talent to burn; most of it, unfortunately, had been burnt in less than a decade (1973-1981), after which the band was largely reduced to Latimer solo and turned into a tasteful, but boring New-Age-adult-contemporary-synth-prog. (The last two albums were a pretty decent comeback, though). Anyway, Camel are perfect when you're in that quiet brooding mood — solitary late evenings with the rest of the world completely shut out is a perfect setting for Latimer and company to transport you to an ideal fantasy world of noble loners, unfortunate idealists and that one perfect romance that never comes to be. Possible starting point: The Snow Goose (1975) is typically considered the band's early, completely instrumental, conceptual masterpiece, but I've always been slightly more partial to Nude (1981).

○ Candi Staton: She could have been just one more completely forgettable person from the R&B / soul / funk circuit of the early 1970s, but several circumstances make Candi Staton a figure worth remembering. First, she had a strong and complex personality, being endowed with a strong voice, some songwriting talent, and the ability to go from style to style without completely sacrificing personality (which, unfortunately, still did not help her in the disco debauchery of the late 1970s). Second, she had six husbands, all or most of which seem to have seriously abused her, and this pain — as well as a strong hope that one day it will finally be alright — permeates a lot of her output, even when other people wrote her songs for her. Third, some of these husbands, as well as occasional non-husbands, happened to be talented musical people, like Clarence Carter or Dave Crawford, supplying her with good material (including her biggest hit and probably best known song, ʽYoung Hearts Run Freeʼ). Fourth, in the Eighties she abandoned pop completely for the gospel scene — only to embark on a musically successful comeback in the 21st century, with a fully convincing retro sound, which sort of makes her the female counterpart of Al Green. All in all, it's been quite a long, strange trip for Candi, and she's well worth getting to know for any serious fan of classic R&B. Possible starting point: I'm Just A Prisoner (1970), her official debut, is unquestionably her finest hour (the fire, the energy, the full support of Muscle Shoals); the rest of her large catalog is quite spotty.

○ Captain Beyond: A «quasi-super-group», formed in the early 1970s by outcasts from and remnants of various B-level psychedelic conglomerations from the end of the previous decade (Mark I Deep Purple, Iron Butterfly, Johnny Winter's original band, etc.), these guys did not last very long, but still managed to secure themselves a few square inches of burial ground in the pantheon. Theirs was a pretty decent merger of contemporary heavy rock with contemporary progressive influences, all the while retaining the old idealistic hippie spirit, and everything about it was decent — modestly strong songwriting, good musicianship, and a lead singer (Rod Evans) who could sound passionate and serious without succumbing to the inflated pomp that often goes hand in hand with such seriousness. Unfortunately, they arrived on the scene a little too late to capture a special niche for themselves, and their noble, but suicidal refusal to go in the direction of commercial pop pretty much sealed their fate in a few years. Possible starting point: Captain Beyond (1972) is the obvious place to go first — the second album would not rock so hard, and the third «reunion» album from 1977 suffers from the replacement of Evans by a much more pompously awful singer, although it still has a few nice moments.

☺Carole King: You shouldn't even begin to try searching for unexpected psychological depths in Carole King's output — she has always been America's #1 "Keep It Simple, Sentimental" female songwriter, and unpretentiously proud of it. Carole's main asset, apart from, of course, the undeniable melodic gift, is her disarming charisma — few performers succeed in creating such a warm, soothing, trustworthy, believable atmosphere just by cozying down at the piano and singing simple words that do not even pretend to ascend the lower rungs of «rock poetry». Unfortunately, this asset, while extremely helpful at the start of her solo career, eventually turned into a seemingly self-sufficient quality, as King's gift for inventive and catchy melodicity waned over the years and her soft-rock arrangements steadily declined into generic pablum; eventually, she just morphed into that «nice lady around the corner» whose happy smile and conventional life advice every day you treat with the same attention as a piece of furniture. But if you want the ultimate in happy smiles and life advices, nothing still beats those few years in the early 1970s when her pop instincts were still intact, and fertilized the soft-rock singer-songwriting agenda like nothing else could — James Taylor may have been a good friend and all, but he was all in black and white next to Carole's rainbow of colors. Possible starting point: Needless to insist that one should start anywhere else other than the classic Tapestry (1971), but there are some fairly strong records on both chronological sides of it. The important thing is to stop after 1982, since all Carole King albums after that suffer from horrible arrangements and production, and the songwriting is grandmotherly mediocre at best.

1976-1989

○ Cabaret Voltaire: Led by grim Sheffield kids Stephan Mallinder and Richard H. Kirk, these guys began as radical avantgarde experimentators, busily constructing one corner of the industrial scene next to Throbbing Gristle; then, placing themselves somewhere at the meeting point between «radical avantgarde» and «intelligent mainstream», they unleashed a never-ending series of albums that wove industrial, electronic, and minimalist threads into rhythmic patterns, so that young people all over the planet could happily dance their way to the end of the world. The music sometimes compromised with pop values, but never embraced them properly, the same way that dozens of other New Wave-era groups could stake their claim to fame and fortune — on the other hand, the «danceability» of the music could also alienate «serious» crowds, so the Cabaret Voltaire fanbase was always limited. Over two decades of work, they gradually made the transition from a more guitar-based, dreary, cavernous sound to fully electronic textures in the realms of house and techno music, sometimes sounding one step ahead of their competition and sometimes one step behind, but almost never embarrassing themselves (except for some missteps in the late Eighties when the music became «too happy» for its own good). Nevertheless, this is definitely one band I'd rather prefer to quietly «respect» than actively «enjoy». Possible starting point: This one is a real stumper — they have so many albums out of the same comparable quality. The first of those that made more than just an average impression on me was 2x45 (1982), so this is the one I'd probably go along with, but it's so much a matter of taste (if not random luck) that... well, pretty much anything up to Micro-Phonies (1984) represents the «classic» period, and pretty much any of their 1990s albums is in the IDM camp, if you really need guidelines.

☺Camper Van Beethoven: Once a special brand of underground-college-rock heroes of the eccentric Eighties, Camper Van Beethoven have somehow managed to survive (or, more accurately, to resurrect) into the 21st century as one of the smartest (way too smart to have ever enjoyed much commercial success, despite much of their music written in a totally accessible manner) «meta-pop» bands of the last few generations. Where they once used to rethink all the musical genres in the world as ska (or polka, whichever you prefer), they have since applied a nonchalant, irreverent attitude to everything in existence, but without forgetting that it never works without a little bit of soul. From neo-country-western to psychedelic hard rock to a full re-recording of Fleetwood Mac's Tusk, they've been here and they've been there and they have made their mark on everything; a must-know for everyone who likes his pop with a good touch of irony, intellectualism, and musical verve. Possible starting point: Aw hell, just start from the beginning, woncha? Telephone Free Landslide Victory (1985) is a half-visionary, half-jokey classic if there ever was one.

○ Candlemass: Jury still out.

○ Carcass: The Foul Four of Liverpool, these guys took extreme metal to new heights when, inspired by the success of Napalm Death, they invented a new variety of grindcore — the morgue variety, painting verbal and visual portraits of utter grossness to go along with the brutal minimalistic riffage, insane tempos, laconic running length, and growling vocals. Although many others followed in their footsteps, trying with verve to upstage their progenitors (and at the same time cloning them so much that many of them even began with the same letter, like Cadaver or Cannibal Corpse), Carcass still managed to remain ahead of the pack — largely because they would significantly shift their image from album to album, until, by the mid-Nineties, they'd almost come close to turning into a «classic rock» band, at which point they thought it wise to stop and just disbanded, leaving behind a relatively small legacy that is worth exploring from top to bottom, unless you happen to be pathologically afraid of words like putrefaction and uterogestation. Possible starting point: This depends on how well you are pre-adapted to this kind of music — Heartwork (1993) is more sparing in terms of melodicity, and does not revolve entirely around cadaverous matters, but for the strong-hearted, the band's debut Reek Of Putrefaction (1988) should be the obvious point of entry, since they would never be more extreme than on this arch-dirty collection of 22 brief bursts of insane macabre energy.

☺Cars, The: Probably the best example of the missing link between «classic» and «modern» pop/rock, at their best these Bostonian guys were more than just a talented pop band with a knack for vocal and instrumental hooks — there's an air of melancholy and world-weariness that permeates most of their career and makes even the most upbeat of their songs soak in a happy/sad, psychologically non-trivial atmosphere. If anything, their main problem was that the first album came out too perfect to allow them to continue a steady journey upwards: pretty much their entire agenda was uncovered in about thirty minutes, and no matter how hard they tried (either by darkening the atmosphere on Panorama, or going synth-pop almost all the way on Heartbeat City), they never really evolved beyond the respectably tasteful, but small niche that they carved out for themselves from the very beginning. Possible starting point: The Cars (1978) unarguably remains their highest point — it's like a greatest hits package all by itself —the rest of the band's catalog deserves further study depending on how much you like the first album.

☺Cheap Trick: These guys from Rockford, Illinois have always suffered from a case of split personality: they wanted to be The Beatles and The Rolling Stones at the same time, combining beautiful pop hooks with nasty attitudes and a dirty guitar sound. As a result of that, they became one of the quintessential «power pop» bands of all time — with vocalist Robin Zander responsible for the good looks and guitarist Ricky Nielsen providing most of the cool hooks, for several years in the late 1970s they provided America and the world with some of the finest, snappiest, smartest guitar-based pop music imaginable. Refusing to fit in with the New Wave standards of the time, they found it hard to deal with the Eighties, quickly plunging in a world of embarrassments along with their older colleagues from the Sixties — eventually recovering enough of a sense of taste to endure into the Nineties and the Noughties with a badly bruised, but breathing reputation; that said, their glory period of 1977–79 will obviously never be repeated if they live to be 99. Possible starting point: In Color (1977) is their catchiest and most ass-kicking collection, and Heaven Tonight (1978) is probably the smartest and darkest one, so it's really impossible to choose between either. And, of course, At Budokan (1979) is often hailed as one of the greatest live albums of all time — although that one might be more of a special phenomenon for its time rather than a lasting testament of the power of rock'n'roll.

1989-1998

○ Cardiacs: One of the craziest, if not the craziest band to appear on British soil in the 1980s — and that is not necessarily a compliment. Specially to describe Tim Smith's music, the critical establishment had to come up with the term «pronk» — «progressive punk» — and the same establishment used to actively put it down for committing atrocious sacrileges against the classic sacred values of punk. In reality, Cardiacs were «mashers»: they would take just about anything urbanistic (pop, blues rock, punk, ska, symphonic rock, etc.), chop it up, mix the ingredients in the most unusual combinations and release the results as convoluted artistic statements that seem like perfect illustrations for the statement «art is what you make of it». In their defense, they truly sound like nobody else (particularly in the Eighties), and the sheer complexity and unpredictability of Smith's approach to the pop music formula can sometimes baffle the mind more than it may be baffled by the likes of Zappa or Beefheart. But personally, I find it very difficult to «mentally visualize» 9 out of 10 of their ideas, or to make them come alive with meaning — admire and respect the form, yes, but failing to perceive (not to mention describe) the substance behind their tonal labyrinths. That said, I would agree that no Big Picture is complete without hearing and trying to digest at least one Cardiacs album; and they do get far more belated recognition these days than they did in their prime, so it's not just some obscure act from out of nowhere that you'd be producing to boost your indie credo. Possible starting point: A Little Man And A House And The Whole World Window (1988) arguably has the deepest and catchiest songs of their career (as well as the closest they ever came to a bona fide commercial pop hit), but on the whole, the band had remained highly consistent over two decades, and aside from the earliest cassette tape-only recordings that suffer from hideous sound quality (but still contain some of their best written material), it really makes no difference where to start. Actually, an even better choice might be Cardiacs Live (1988) from that same year — somehow, all those crazy songs end up sounding much better with doubled energy onstage, not to mention that it also works as a «best-of» package.

☺Cardigans: This Swedish band seems to be pursued by the post-ABBA curse: people are too wary around their brand of soft pop, centered around two male songwriters and (in this case) one female singer, even if the melodic skills of The Cardigans are quite favorably comparable not only to the ABBA songwriters, but to any non-Swedish pop band of the 1990s. With their early records, they pretty much invented a special subgenre, a sweet mix of lounge jazz and folk-pop, seasoned with intelligent and slightly surrealistic melancholia of Nina Persson's vocal delivery — and then they ended up doing Black Sabbath covers in that style! If that alone does not stimulate your curiosity, then how about there being three distinct stages to the Cardigans — the sweet early one (probably the best), the «commercial» dance-oriented middle one, and the «mature», more conventional-adult-pop-tinged one that still has its benefits? At the very least, in retrospect they honestly deserve to be better known and remembered than, say, Oasis. Possible starting point: Emmerdale (1994), their debut, already exposes all of their best sides — raise up some love for this one before moving on to the rest of the catalog.

○ Cat Power: This Georgian renegade with a flair for the mystical and the melancholic has plenty of admirers among the indie crowds, but I am not really one of them: for Chan Marshall, atmosphere always takes precedence over innovative or unusual melodies, and that atmosphere is almost always the same, suggesting some superhuman spiritual experience that most of us mere mortals will always be too coarse and shallow to understand. When she is in the mood, she can be a very talented songwriter and arranger, but that happens far too rarely for my taste; and her favorite hobby, that of taking other people's songs and turning them into completely interchangeable Cat Power broodings that bear no resemblance whatsoever to the original, while entertaining at first, pretty soon gets stale and even irritating. That said, as far as modernistic singer-songwriter patterns are concerned, she is certainly far from the worst out there, and at least she does vary her musical styles — from grunge to folk to country to electronica, she's done it all, refusing to be pigeonholed with any other pigeon than the Cat Power breed. Possible starting point: You Are Free (2003) is probably the one record where she experiments the most with melody, and, overall, the most accessible introduction to her world, although critics tend to prefer Moon Pix (1998).

○ Catherine Wheel: One of the innumerable bands to become popular in the wake of the grunge, alt-rock, and post-My Bloody Valentine explosion, these British fellows (with Iron Maiden Bruce Dickinson's cousin Rob at the wheel) began as a pretty respectable provider of psychedelic guitar fireworks and mopey romanticism, molding their shoegaze techniques into something a little more reminiscent of traditional pop structures, but still loyally placing otherworldly texture above pop hooks. Unfortunately, Rob Dickinson rather quickly fell in love with himself as a post-Freudian interpreter of the human spirit, and this led to a steady decrease of interesting elements in the band's music and a steady increase in its ego, until everybody just got bored with them and they did not survive the transition from the Nineties into the Noughties. Possible starting point: Ferment (1992) may not be their catchiest set of tunes, but still probably remains their most musically inspired, so this is one more case where you're probably better off starting at the very beginning and stopping as soon as you feel like it.

○ Charlatans, The: Jury still out.

1998-2016

☺ Camera Obscura: In limited dosage, this band (actually, more of a vehicle for the talents and personal charm of bandleader Tracyanne Campbell) is a kicker — delightful twee-pop and chamber-pop that comes across as a lighter, whiffier, a little less morose (though still pretty icy) version of Belle & Sebastian (no big surprise, since Camera Obscura also come from Glasgow and owe much of their popularity to Stuart Murdoch taking them under their wing). There is one problem, though: neither Tracyanne nor anyone else in the band have a good understanding of what it is that separates a «nice moody tune» from an «unforgettable classic». When they accidentally stumble upon a great hook (ʽLloyd, I'm Ready To Be Heartbrokenʼ or ʽFrench Navyʼ are prime examples), for that one brief moment they become the greatest pop band of the 21st century. Then it's back to pleasant boredom for the rest of the album. Life can be so unjust, but then, maybe God just didn't have it in his masterplan to let Glasgow take over the world in the 21st century. They're not ready. Yet. Possible starting point: No idea. This is one band that really doesn't need the LP as their medium of choice. Just find those songs I mentioned and start from there (although, most likely, you won't find any better ones anyway).

☺ Carbon Based Lifeforms: A couple of Swedes (Johannes Hedberg and Daniel Segerstad) who specialize in, arguably, a kind of electronic music that would be most pleasing to the ears of «old school» fans who'd rather have Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Vangelis, and Eno over more modern reinventions of the electronic paradigm. Described by the somewhat vague and misleading term «psy-bient», their music does indeed heavily lean into the direction of ambient soundscapes, but it is typically more complex and sonically deep than most ambient, and it can stimulate rather than relax the imagination as well. As well befits their name, the duo constantly strives for realism, painting musical equivalents of the living universe rather than completely imaginary worlds or geometric abstractions, and although they do not always succeed (and sometimes give in to more conventional ways of music-making, as when they add superflous danceable grooves to their compositions), on the whole they produce the impression of one of the more pensive and serious electronic acts of the 21st century. Possible starting point: They hit their stride with Hydroponic Garden (2003) and have not really produced a bad record ever since, although the more recent ones are kind of running out of fresh ideas.

☺ Caribou: A pseudonym for Canadian maverick Dan Snaith (who used to go by the name of Manitoba first, before another Manitoba — lead singer of The Dictators — threatened him with a silly lawsuit). The guy is really talented, with his music largely being a mix of electronica, jazz-pop, and sunny psychedelia; on his best albums, he does a great job combining the spirit of idealistic Sixties' art-pop à la Brian Wilson and Rod Argent with modern digital technologies, although the vibe can sometimes get a tad monotonous — typically of most modern artists, he is more interested in zooming in on one particular area and micro-managing it to exhaustion. That said, when he does try to branch out, the results may be underwhelming: after an initial «jazzy» period and what may have been his «golden years» of merging electronica with art-pop, recently he has gone too far in the direction of generic IDM, losing much of the original appeal in the process. Still, he's definitely not a phony or anything, and it's pretty safe to try him out regardless of whether you're hunting for Sixties nostalgia or live entirely in the 21st century. Possible starting point: Andorra (2007) is my obvious favorite, but it is also the most retro-oriented of his albums, with acoustic instrumentation taking precedence over the electronics and vocal melodies taken almost directly from the Love / Zombies / Beach Boys textbook, so if you want something a little more futuristic, The Milk Of Human Kindness (2005) might be a better place to start.

○ Carly Rae Jepsen: I have only tackled this young Canadian lady because the indie community went crazy over Emotion, insisting that here, at last, was a conventional mainstream pop album with soul and quality songwriting. Indeed, she is better than the average competition when it comes to factory-made teen-oriented dance-pop songs with conventional arrangements, and she's got plenty of reservations that might prevent her from going the way of Britney Spears or Miley Cyrus in the future. But that does not mean that she makes «great» albums — it's more like, a tiny ray of hope if you're one of those sour dudes over 30 (like me) who wants to find at least some common language with those darn kids these days. And I'm sorry, but ʽCall Me Maybeʼ sucks, no matter how many memes it managed to generate back in 2012. Possible starting point: Well, yes, Emotion (2015) is still probably the only album from her (so far) that might be listened to from start to finish, although I do find myself partial to a couple of tunes from her debut, as well (back when she was not so totally into the dance-pop scene yet).

○ Cass McCombs: A guy who may have set out to reinvent Californian singer-songwritership for the 21st century, but ended up as just another face in the large indie crowd of today's confused musical landscape. On the positive side, he has a beautiful singing voice, great taste in influences (everything from Brian Wilson to Leonard Cohen and beyond), a solid poetic gift, and genuine ambitions. On the downside, I'd hesitate to call him a musical genius: like Dylan, he relies way too often on the trick of using some simplistic traditional groove as the basis for expressing his own personality, but, unlike Dylan, he just does not have enough quirks in his personality to make such things endurable for the 5-6-7-8 minutes that his songs often go on for. He'd started out very strong, though, but then got progressively more boring as the years went by, and most of his albums seem to have more of an intellectual than emotional appeal. Possible starting point: Unquestionably, one should start at the very beginning — appropriately titled A (2003) — as it probably has the best musical textures (a lush baroque soundscape) of his entire career. In my opinion, he has never been able to top it, but everybody is free to proceed from there chronologically and choose the right moment to jump off (or back on).

○ Chairlift: Jury still out.

Part 1. Before The Rock'n'Roll Band Era (1920-1960)

CARL PERKINS

DANCE ALBUM OF CARL PERKINS (1958)

1) Blue Suede Shoes; 2) Movie Magg; 3) Sure To Fall; 4) Gone, Gone, Gone; 5) Honey Don't; 6) Only You; 7) Tennessee; 8) Right String, Wrong Yo-Yo; 9) Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby; 10) Matchbox; 11) Your True Love; 12) Boppin' The Blues; 13*) All Mama's Children.

Carl Perkins' only «original» LP from his four-year tenure with Sun Records, like most LPs from that period, is really just a chaotic compilation of A-side, B-side, and outtake material. But even in this form, or, actually, because of this form, it still counts as one of the most impressive and fun-filled LPs from the rockabilly era. Influential, too — which other single LP from the era could boast a whole three songs to be officially covered by the Beatles?

The important thing about Carl Perkins is that, of all the notorious rockabilly people of the era, he was the one to most tightly preserve the «simple country boy» essence in his music. Bill Haley probably came close, but Haley didn't have much of an individual personality, and his backing band, The Comets, was at least as important as its frontman, blending a touch of country-western with a Louis Jordan-esque big-band jump-blues entertainment approach. Perkins, on the other hand, wrote his own songs (or radically reinvented traditional ones), sang his own melodies, played his own lead guitar, and, overall, made it so that we rarely ever remember anything about his sidemen during the recording sessions. Quick, name the bass player and the drummer on ʽBlue Suede Shoesʼ without googling! Yeah, right. Not even Google can help that easily.

Thus, Carl is essentially a «loner», and in that status, gets the right to his own influences and no other's — and chief among those influences is The Grand Ole Opry, with Bill Monroe, Gene Autry, and Hank Williams as his major idols. The good news for those who, like me, feel a bit iffy when it comes to «pure» country music, is that Carl obviously preferred his country with a sharper edge, and if anything, his rockabilly style is a direct continuation of Hank's faster-paced, boogie-based material like ʽMove It On Overʼ. Although Carl's own spirit was never as tempestuous or torturous as Hank's (not a single Perkins song shows any signs of acute bitterness), he always had a thing for raw excitement, energy, speed, humor, good-natured irony — anything that would put a smile on your face and an itch in your feet.

Most importantly, Carl's «lonerism» is responsible for making ʽBlue Suede Shoesʼ into one of the coolest songs of its era — and the lyrics had a lot to do with it: "Don't you step on MY blue suede shoes...", sung in a friendly enough tone but with a very clear hint of a threat. This is really where all the Gene Vincents of this world come from: the «rebels» were inspired by the individualistic cockiness of a plain, harmless, friendly «country bumpkin» who inadvertently tapped right into the spinal cord of his era. ʽRock Around The Clockʼ was a good enough count-off for the rock revolution, but it was a general fun party song. ʽBlue Suede Shoesʼ takes us into one particular corner of that party, where one particularly self-consciously hip guy is busy protecting his own particular interests against the whole world, and backing them with sharp bluesy lead guitar licks that sound like a bunch of slaps in the face of whoever has been unlucky enough to step on the protagonist's lucky footwear.

There is a myth going around that Elvis «stole» the song from Carl while the latter was recuperating in the hospital after a car accident, and that this effectively put an end to Carl's career as a pop star. In reality, Carl never had the makings of a star, and the image of a «teen idol» would have probably never sat too well with him in the first place — he was, first and foremost, a songwriter and a guitar player — none of which, however, prevented ʽBlue Suede Shoesʼ from going all the way to the top of the charts, while Presley's version (a classic in its own right, no doubt about that) stuck at No. 20 (admittedly, RCA people agreed to hold back the release until Carl's version lost its original freshness — see, there was a time when record industry people could occasionally show signs of gentlemanly conduct).

Already ʽBoppin' The Bluesʼ, the folow-up to ʽBlue Suede Shoesʼ, did not chart as high (No. 7 was its peak) — and it wasn't Elvis that had anything to do with it, but rather the fact that the song was comparatively toothless in comparison, a fairly formulaic rockabilly creation describing the simple joys of rock'n'roll dancing with little challenge or defiance. In the hot, tense competitive air of early 1956, Carl soon lost the lead, and although the next three years would see him reeling between inspiration and repetition, the record-buying public pretty much wrote him off as a one-hit wonder and focused on Elvis instead. In addition, Carl loyally stuck with Sun Records through those years, meaning that he couldn't even begin to hope for the kind of promotion that Elvis got (on the positive side, Carl never got to have his own Colonel Parker).

It is a doggone shame, though, that such fate also prevented a great tune like ʽMatchboxʼ from charting — without the Beatles' support, it might have altogether sunk into oblivion, but really, few pop songs sounded as harshly serious and deep-reaching in 1957 as that particular reincarnation of an old, old, old blues song by Blind Lemon Jefferson. When those echoing, distant-thunder-like boogie chords start rattling around the room, it's as if you were being prepared for some important social statement, and, in a way, you are, since Carl preserves many of the original lyrics, infusing the song with a blues-based sense of outcast loneliness instead of the usual get-up-and-dance stuff. In a way, «socially conscious rock'n'roll music» starts somewhere around this bend, even if Carl himself probably never intended it to be this way.

On a personal note, I must say that ʽHoney Don'tʼ feels to me as one of the very few rock and pop songs by other artists that the Beatles did not manage to improve upon — and not because Ringo is a worse singer than Carl (he actually did a fine job to preserve the tune's humor), but because George Harrison never really got around to learning all the tricks in Carl's playing bag: as rough as the production is on the original, Perkins compensates for it with a series of improvised «muffled» licks that George did not even try to copy, playing in a «cleaner» style that left less room for rock'n'roll excitement. (On the other hand, George did get the upper hand on ʽEverybody's Trying To Be My Babyʼ by managing to raise the tension on the lengthy second instrumental break, whereas in Carl's version it pretty much stays the same throughout).

Of the twelve songs assembled here, only a couple are relative clunkers; ʽTennesseeʼ, in particular, sounds as silly as it is sincere, a heartfelt tribute to Carl's native state with a hillbillyish chorus and somewhat uncomfortable lyrics that, among other things, urge us to give credit to the fact that "they made the first atomic tomb in Tennessee" (a somewhat inaccurate reference to Oak Ridge, but even if it were accurate, I'm not sure I would want to boast about it even at the height of the Cold War). Pompous, vocally demanding ballads are also not one of Carl's fortes (ʽOnly Youʼ), but he can come up with a highly catchy homely, simple country ballad when he puts his heart into it — ʽSure To Fallʼ, with its melody almost completely based on serenading trills, is quite a beautiful little piece.

One of the most interesting things about comparing old rockabilly records from the mid-to-late 1950s is the relative proportion of their ingredients. Some veer closer to R&B, some to electric blues, some to «whitebread» pop, some are jazzier, some vaudevillian. From that point of view, Dance Album Of Carl Perkins is a curious mix of something very highly conservative with an explosive energy that is nevertheless kept under strict control, like a fire burning steady and brightly, but only within a rigidly set limit. Had all rock'n'roll looked like Carl Perkins in the 1950s, it would probably have taken us a much, much longer way to get where we are right now — but, on the other hand, maybe we wouldn't already be wondering where exactly is it possible to go from here. Ah well, enough speculation; here is the expectable thumbs up, and we will be moving on.

THE ESSENTIAL SUN COLLECTION (1999; 1955-1958)

CD I: 1) Movie Magg; 2) Turn Around; 3) Let The Jukebox Keep On Playing; 4) Gone, Gone, Gone; 5) Blue Suede Shoes; 6) Honey Don't; 7) Sure To Fall; 8) Tennessee; 9) Boppin' The Blues; 10) All Mama's Children; 11) Dixie Fried; 12) I'm Sorry I'm Not Sorry; 13) Your True Love; 14) Matchbox; 15) That's Right; 16) Forever Yours; 17) Glad All Over; 18) Lend Me Your Comb.

CD II: 1) Honky Tonk Gal; 2) Perkins Wiggle; 3) You Can't Make Love To Somebody; 4) That Don't Move Me; 5) Lonely Street; 6) Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby; 7) Somebody Tell Me; 8) Sweethearts Or Strangers; 9) Keeper Of The Key; 10) Be Honest With Me; 11) Caldonia; 12) Her Love Rubbed Off; 13) You Can Do No Wrong; 14) Put Your Cat Clothes On; 15) Roll Over Beethoven; 16) Only You; 17) Pink Pedal Pushers; 18) Right String Baby, Wrong Yo-Yo.

Sun Records' limited capacities were only enough to allow one LP record for Carl, right at the end of his tenure — everything else that he did for the label only came out as singles. Fortunately, the CD era has allowed for some convenient packaging: the double-disc Essential Sun Collection puts together approximately 90% of the officially released stuff (and, for that matter, works much better than the deceptively titled single-disc Complete Sun Singles, which actually omits at least three or four essential A-sides). All of Dance Album is here, along with most of the A-sides, B-sides, and some obscurities that never made it onto that LP — essential indeed, and more or less all the Carl Perkins that a regular rockabilly admirer would need to have.

In fact, maybe even a little more than necessary. With just a few exceptions, all of the songs here are fun, but if you rearrange them in approximate chronological order, there is very little development going on once the man hits his peak — never managing to go beyond the golden summit of the ʽBlue Suede Shoes / Honey Don'tʼ single from early 1956. Sam Phillips was a good guy, but once his protegés reached relative perfection with a certain formula, he showed little interest in pushing them to new heights, and thus, there is hardly any wonder in the fact that Carl's records sold less and less after the initial ʽBlue Suede Shoesʼ boom.

At some point, Carl even got stuck with a «songs about clothes» formula: ʽPut Your Cat Clothes Onʼ and ʽPink Pedal Pushersʼ are both thematically related to ʽBlue Suede Shoesʼ (the former even namedrops the shoes in question), but neither manages to hit as hard. ʽPut Your Cat Clothes Onʼ, with an unmistakable Jerry Lee Lewis sitting at the piano, is the fastest Carl ever played, but as fun as the song is, it is just fun — lacking the parent-scary swagger and defiance of ʽShoesʼ. ʽPink Pedal Pushersʼ goes in a completely different direction, trying to be sexy and even a little salacious, but the truth is, Carl Perkins has too much of that «innocent country boy» spirit within him to sound fully believable when singing mid-tempo rockabilly about a girl who "comes strutting down the street in her sophisticated style" and going "ooh woppa doo-dah" as if he himself were one of the cats who "started gazing and called her out". Again — fun stuff, but hardly a genuine knockover of the kind that Elvis or Jerry Lee could do in their sleep.

But do not get me wrong: I am only trying to put the tip of the finger on some of the reasons why Carl's luck ran out so quickly, even way before the first wave of rock'n'roll started getting thin around 1959-60. Other than that, his Sun records are quite consistent, although I am not a big fan of the country ballads like ʽForever Yoursʼ: they are done in Carl's usual «rough» style, with shoddy Sun-style production, but do not have the oddly minimalistic «from-the-bottom-of-a-well» feel of the same type of songs on Elvis' early singles.

Some of the lesser known oddities include ʽHer Love Rubbed Offʼ, an interesting, even somewhat innovative attempt at crossing rockabilly with a mambo beat and seeing what happens (the seams show, but the song still cooks up a voodooistic aura that is quite unusual for our country boy); ʽThat's Rightʼ, co-written with Johnny Cash around a nagging little riff whose repetitive ring works on the brain with an almost drone-style effect; and ʽSomebody Tell Meʼ, a previously unreleased outtake (I think) whose very length is staggering — 4:22! (other than that, it is a conservative piece of blues boogie).

Of course, each and every one of these songs features one or more guitar solos from the man, and they are almost always the main point of attraction: instead of fluent, uninterrupted lines, Perkins likes playing these ragged, broken-up series of licks that sound like flurry dialogs or trialogs, never repeating each other — no wonder he became one of Harrison's favorite players, even if George's playing style eventually drifted far away from this approach (not on the early Beatles records, though, where George's «Perkins licks» are easily recognizable even on quite a few non-Perkins covers — something like ʽCan't Buy Me Loveʼ, for instance). To the modern listener's ear, like most guitar solos from the classic rockabilly era, they could sound clumsy and feeble, but they do have that unbeatable advantage of an almost child-like, giddy exploration of the capacities of the instrument — which makes the whole experience far more precious than listening to many a modern player who has already had those capacities presented to him on a platter.

Overall, this is just another hour and a half of Sun Records greatness, with Sam Phillips' echoey, downhome, «lo-fi» production as an added bonus — in a sense, everything sounds like crap, but it's healthy, fresh, nutritious crap straight from the oven, a much better proposition than the glossy, synthetic, orchestrated pop crap of the big studios. And it was, after all, the only environment in which Carl Perkins actually found himself thriving, even if his records did not sell, so thumbs up all the way.

WHOLE LOTTA SHAKIN' (1958)

1) Whole Lotta Shakin'; 2) Tutti Frutti; 3) Shake, Rattle & Roll; 4) Sittin' On Top Of The World; 5) Ready Teddy; 6) Long Tall Sally; 7) That's All Right; 8) Where The Rio De Rosa Flows; 9) Good Rockin' Tonight; 10) I Got A Woman; 11) Hey, Good Lookin'; 12) Jenny Jenny.

Every Sun artist had to leave Sun Records sooner or later, just because that is the way of the world and all, but few Sun artists, upon leaving their alma mater, suffered as ignobly as Carl did. Although they still let him put out original compositions as singles, the one and only LP he cut in the 1950s for Columbia was this openly dreadful collection of covers — take one look at the tracklist and you will see that it consists of almost nothing but big, well-worn-out (already by 1958) rock'n'roll hits for Little Richard, Bill Haley, Elvis, and Jerry Lee Lewis. The last thing the world needed in late 1958 was yet another take on the classics from somebody whose chief asset was songwriting, not impersonating.

I wouldn't dare to say that it all sounds totally forced, and that Carl wasn't having himself a ball with at least some of this stuff — he may not have written these songs, but he obviously had to love them, since they are so right up his alley of interests. The problem is that he does not seem at all to be in real charge of the sessions. Although Columbia's production values are slightly (but only slightly) higher than those of Sun, the actual recordings are not at all beneficial for Carl. The sound is almost completely dominated by session players — a piano guy (Marvin Hughes) and a sax guy (Andrew Goodrich) — who are not bad, per se, but hardly outstanding, and end up drowning out Carl's vocals and guitar to the point that you are no longer exactly sure of who the hell is Carl Perkins and why we should bother with his brand of rockabilly in the first place.

The only curious, and somewhat successful, idea on the entire album was to turn ʽSittin' On Top Of The Worldʼ, formerly played as a slow country-blues piece by everybody from The Mississippi Sheiks to Howlin' Wolf, into a lightning-speed rock'n'roll number — giving it the same treatment that Carl gave to Blind Lemon Jefferson's ʽMatchbox Bluesʼ during his tenure at Sun. Except that ʽMatchboxʼ sounded «gritty», whereas this rendition is just a fun, forgettable frolick with nary a guitar solo in sight — just the sax. If they could get King Curtis at least...

Vocal-wise, Carl is in good form, but he never gives other people's songs the same kind of sly, sexy reading he gives his own — every now and then, he tends to overscream (sometimes getting out of tune in the process), and, worst of all, as long as you remember Little Richard, Elvis, and even Jerry Lee doing the same songs, Carl's relative lack of power and singing technique remains a constant problem. On the cover of Hank Williams' ʽHey, Good Lookin'ʼ, he doesn't even try — the original was all about drawing out those opening notes ("h-e-e-ey, good lookin', wha-a-a-t you got cookin'..."), whereas Carl just swallows them completely; strange, because it didn't used to be that bad, at least on songs like ʽSure To Fallʼ he could show some decent range.

At the end of the day, it does begin to feel suspiciously like a hackjob; I know the details not, but either Carl was pissed off at his new label for demanding that he cover other people's hits, or, if not, then something simply did not work out. Maybe he was uncomfortable with the new session band, or the new recording studio, or something like that, but one thing's for certain: Whole Lotta Shakin' is quite far from being the best possible introduction to the guy and explanation of his genius. In fact, it is one of those albums that sort of explains the beginning of the temporary decline of rock'n'roll in the late 1950s — with lackluster sessions like these coming from established icons, you'd want to think, sure enough, that rock'n'roll had passed his prime, and that it was high time to try out something truly new, like Chubby Checker, or Bobby Darin. Thumbs down; no need to hunt this down, unless you're on an epic quest to collect every single version of ʽReady Teddyʼ and ʽLong Tall Sallyʼ ever recorded.

RESTLESS: THE COLUMBIA RECORDINGS (1958-1969; 1992)

1) Pink Pedal Pushers; 2) Rockin' Record Hop; 3) Jive After Five; 4) Just Thought I'd Call; 5) Where The Rio De Rosa Flows; 6) Because You're Mine; 7) That's All Right Mama; 8) Pop, Let Me Have The Car; 9) Levi Jacket (And A Long Tail Shirt); 10) Honey 'Cause I Love You; 11) Pointed Toe Shoes; 12) L-O-V-E-V-I-L-L-E; 13) Sister Twister; 14) Hambone; 15) All Mama's Children; 16) Just Coastin'; 17) Restless.

For more than a decade, Columbia's degree of interest in Carl was such that they did not let him record even one proper LP (dismayed as they were, perhaps, with the failure of Whole Lotta Shakin', as completely predictable as it was). He did manage to keep on putting out singles, on a rather steady basis in the late 1950s, then dwindling down to a tiny streak in the 1960s, alternating between rockabilly and country, but hardly showing any big interest in all the new exciting developments in music — as this sampler, released in 1992 and containing a highly diagnostic, if far from complete, selection of those singles, amply shows.

The selection in question is at least a huge improvement on the disaster of Whole Lotta Shakin', and is far more recommendable for those who like Carl in particular and early rock'n'roll in general. Many of the songs are self-written, most of them are not as heavily obstructed by misguided production, and Carl's singing and guitar playing are generally in focus. Starting out with a new, «rockier» version of ʽPink Pedal Pushersʼ, and ending with the title track, released in 1969 and sounding every bit as if it could have been released in 1959 (with the possible exception of the backup singers and their slightly more modern touch of gospel-soul) — Restless rolls along at a restless pace indeed, and will be good clean fun for all those who just want to have fun.

Still, it seems perfectly clear to me why these singles, nice as they are, could never hold a candle to the Sun-era classics. All of them got Carl Perkins sort of «institutionalized» — the songs are not trying to delve into the subconscious, but are consciously written and recorded according to the set-in-stone rockabilly formula. Something like ʽRockin' Record Hopʼ, even if it tries to combine a rollicking Jerry Lee Lewis-style piano melody with a poppy, almost surf-like guitar solo to see what happens, still remains slightly «experimental» only in form rather than in the spirit — and most of the other songs do not have even that. The titles of the songs speak for themselves (ʽJive After Fiveʼ, ʽPointed Toe Shoesʼ, ʽLevi Jacketʼ etc.) — betraying them as doomed attempts to cash in on a formula that was quickly becoming outdated; and the lyrics, moods, and melodies have little chance of delivering the same amount of excitement as ʽBlue Suede Shoesʼ or ʽHoney Don'tʼ. In other words, do not expect to find anything here except for creative stagnation. This is «technically solid», «responsible» work, and I cannot rule out that Carl himself may have been proud of some of it, but it did not woo the public back then, and there is hardly any hope that these singles will be regarded as «forgotten gems» any time soon.

By the early 1960s, Carl could be occasionally budged to expand his horizons — Otis Blackwell's ʽSister Twisterʼ deals (somewhat ironically) with you-know-what, and ʽHamboneʼ is a satirical dialog on the perils of stardom, recorded in the style of Bo Diddley — but much of his stuff also sounds as if he was secretly envying his more successful Sun-era pals like Elvis and Johnny Cash. Unfortunately, he did not have the creative genius and «social foresight» of Cash, and certainly nothing even close to the Great Promotional Machine that was programmed for the eternal rule of The King — trying to compete with either of these two, instead of focusing on his own thing, was like trying to corner a tank with a wooden spear. No doubt, a sympathetic wooden spear, worthy of a small, respectable thumbs up, but even the most diehard Carl Perkins fan, I think, would have to eventually admit that all the promotion in the world could not have helped this kind of material conquer it all over again.

ON TOP (1969)

1) Superfool; 2) I'm Gonna Set My Foot Down; 3) A Lion In The Jungle; 4) Baby, What You Want Me To Do; 5) Soul Beat; 6) Riverboat Annie; 7) Champaign, Illinois; 8) Power Of My Soul; 9) Brown Eyed Handsome Man; 10) C. C. Rider.

This is fun! In the wake of Elvis' «comeback» triumph in the late 1960s, record companies suddenly decided that there may be some sort of market for the formerly out-of-fashion rockabilly veterans, after all, and few living rockabilly veterans were more out of fashion than Carl Perkins, so Carl Perkins was among the first ones to be given a chance to re-prove himself with a brand new LP. Titling it On Top was, perhaps, a bit of a stretch, but who knows? It might have helped it sell a few dozen more copies. Some people, as they walk into record stores, do feel themselves instinctively attracted to whatever seems to be «On Top», even if it really doesn't.

Top or bottom, though, the album is quite surprisingly good — and quite unpredictable, if you judge Carl's chances by the uneven and stylistically obsolete material he had been putting out for Columbia throughout the 1960s. The sound has been upgraded to match the times: you have electric organs, fuzz effects, even wah-wah pedals, and, of course, the entire arsenal of late Sixties musical production to help Carl get along. But, much more importantly, On Top introduces stylistic diversity and various modest elements of experimentation. In fact, apart from Carl's singing and some of his trademark guitar licks, the album is almost unrecognizable as coming from a «Perkins line of production» — and not at all in a bad way!

Original compositions here are few and far in between, but it does not matter: the idea here is not to prove that Carl Perkins can still dazzle the world with his songwriting, it is to prove that he can survive in the world of 1969, entertaining people by combining the usual fun Carl Perkins spirit with new forms of music-making. So he covers something like Chuck Berry's ʽBrown Eyed Handsome Manʼ, backed by a moody electric organ and playing a bunch of wah-wah solos, and it comes out all right — giving the song a gruffer, grumblier aura than the oh-so-happy original, but then, when you think of it, the lyrics of the song have always allowed for an «uncomfortable» interpretation of the message.

The true highlights of the album, however, are of a more recent origin. There is ʽChampaign, Illinoisʼ, another wah-wah-driven blues-rocker, co-written by Carl with Bob Dylan during the latter's Nashville phase; the hookline ("I certainly do enjoy / Champaign, Illinois") walks the line between silly, threatening, and phonetically irresistable, and may easily linger on in your head for weeks. There is Ronnie Self's obscure swamp-rocker ʽLion In The Jungleʼ, here adorned with an extra piano riff borrowed directly from the Beatles' ʽHey Bulldogʼ for extra «ferociousness», and sung by Carl in a delightfully insinuating tone. And then there is what could only be construed as Carl's own answer to Creedence's ʽProud Maryʼ — ʽRiverboat Annieʼ, which even uses some of the same chords, and packs every bit as much fun as the Fogerty song, though not as much of its stateliness and anthemic nature. ʽSuperfoolʼ, written by a friend of Carl's, is also a great rocker, once you get past its first-few-bars gimmick of incorporating the ʽEntry Of The Gladiatorsʼ theme into the organ accompaniment. And ʽPower Of My Soulʼ, an exercise in «minimalistic Memphis soul», as we might call it, is quite a touching number — much better, I'd say, than most of Carl's formulaic attempts at country balladeering throughout the decade.

All in all, these sharply restricted 25 minutes (and the people at Columbia are being generous!) are well worth your attention if you are at all interested in learning how all them 1950s rockers used to fare in the «past their prime» years, and why is it that we almost never know anything about those periods. Much of it has to do with non-musical reasons, such as lack of proper promotion and predictable prejudice — in all honesty, On Top, while nowhere near «cutting edge» for 1969, is still every bit as good as a whole swarm of second- and third-rate records by rock artists put out that year that we still remember. I mean, just off the top of my head, I'd take On Top any day over something like Steppenwolf's At Your Birthday Party or Mott The Hoople's self-titled debut. But who'd give it to me without my having to dig it out? Nobody. Which is why this particular thumbs up does really matter. Now you go and dig it out.

MY KIND OF COUNTRY (1974)

1) Help Me Dream; 2) You Tore My Heaven To Hell; 3) One More Loser Going Home; 4) Goin' To Memphis; 5) Lord I Sinned Again Last Night; 6) Just As Long; 7) (Let's Get) Dixiefried; 8) Honky Tonk Song; 9) Love Sweet Love; 10) Ruby Don't Take Your Love To Town; 11) Never Look Back.

I am not too sure precisely what this title is supposed to mean. If this is really his kind of country, then what exactly would be not his kind of country? A proper logical reading would suggest that, by 1974, the genre of country was dishonored and spoiled beyond recognition, and that Carl's honorable mission, undertaken against all odds, was to restore it to the glory that it used to be. Another, equally justified, logical reading would be that it really was Carl's and nobody else's kind of country — that he himself was reinventing the genre, like Hank Williams or, say, Willie Nelson, and promoting this reinvention in a not-so-humble manner.

Unfortunately, one single listen to this rather uninspiring set of songs is quite enough to let you know that neither of these readings applies, the title simply being a hollow PR gesture, probably imposed on Carl by the label (he was briefly hooked up with Mercury at the time) rather than his own invention. Yes, this is country music, played and arranged rather typically for the early 1970s. Yes, there is not a lot of fiddle or banjo here; slide guitars, keyboards, and subtle orchestration take their place, meaning that the sound leans more towards the roots-/folk-rock fashion of the epoch than «classic» «old style» country. But that does not make the songs more interesting.

The only thing that redeems the record is that several decades of performance have shaped Carl into a highly expressive, «mature» singer. His voice has deepened a little, gained more thickness and power, so that he fares much better now with sustaining notes and modulating the pitch in mid-air — singing these generic country tunes expertly, with feeling, and, most importantly, in a completely natural manner (no exaggerated Southern drawl or manneristic yodelling). In other words, the songs are generic country, but without any «arch-generic» country trademarks — perhaps from that point of view, after all, this is his kind of country.

Not all of this is sentimental mid-tempo / slow-tempo balladry, either. There is a fairly gritty rendition of ʽGoin' To Memphisʼ by Johnny Cash (arranged as if it were an R'n'B standard by the likes of Jimmy Reed), a rollicking, if rather superfluous, re-recording of Carl's own ʽDixie Friedʼ, and a fun resurrection of the old ʽHonky Tonk Songʼ. The covers do not add a lot to the originals, but it definitely makes more sense to hear these songs sung by Carl than, say, ʽWhole Lotta Shakin' Goin' Onʼ, since they do not require letting your hair down and Carl has always had that problem about letting his hair down (not having that much of it to begin with).

Still, compared to the genuinely promising self-reinvention of On Top, My Kind Of Country is a relative disaster — showing that the man was neither able nor willing to capitalize on that new sound, and preferred to retreat back to the tried and true. Lack of ambition is nothing to sneer at, of course, but art without ambition is usually boring (unless one is able to turn «lack of ambition» itself into the biggest ambition the world has ever seen, like J. J. Cale), and My Kind Of Country is a textbook example of that kind of boredom.

OL' BLUE SUEDE'S BACK (1978)

1) Rock Around The Clock; 2) That's All Right Mama; 3) Kaw Liga; 4) Tutti Frutti; 5) I'm In Love Again; 6) Blue Suede Shoes; 7) Be Bop A Lula; 8) Maybellene; 9) Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On; 10) Hang Up My Rock'n'Roll Shoes; 11) Shake, Rattle And Roll; 12) Rock On Around The World.

Right, like anybody really needed «Ol' Blue Suede» back in 1978 — at the height of the disco / punk / New Wave explosion — and with a bunch of well-worn rockabilly standards at that. At least he could have tried to give us another On Top, but for some reason, United Artists wouldn't have it, and we ended up with something stupidly labeled «Carl Perkins' Tribute To Rock'n'Roll» — stupid, because how can somebody who actually invented rock'n'roll (or at least, a significant part of it) pay tribute to rock'n'roll? Imagine «Bob Dylan Covering The Wallflowers: A Tribute To My Son Jakob Dylan», or something like that.

Adding injury to insult, Carl's backing band for the album is stiff and uninspiring; his guitar sound is a little weird, too, much of it sifted through a special «chorus effects» box that was probably intended to «modernize» the songs for a somewhat more techno-savvy audience of 1978 (Kraftwerk fans and all that jazz), but it does not look like Perkins himself was totally at home with it, or, at least, it is not altogether evident that this particular effect, responsible for a «glassy» tinge to the sound, is exactly what he's been waiting for all these years in order to prove that he can still cut it in an impressive manner.

There is exactly one new song, placed in the anthemic final spot: ʽRock On Around The Worldʼ (what else could we be expected to do?), a well-meaning, but quickly forgettable piece of echoey twist with the old gimmick of introducing the instruments one-by-one, as if to demonstrate the proper way a rock'n'rolling atmosphere should be cooked up. Speaking of demonstration, the original record, as well as some of its reissues, came packed together with bits of narration — Carl introducing each song with a brief story or moral, as one of several «rock'n'roll lessons», and, in fact, Ol' Blue Suede's Back does perhaps work better as a textbook, written by the old master for the youngsters, than a musical album as such. Except that even from that angle, it may have worked in 1978, being fresh and all, but who'd need a 1978 textbook on the music of 1956 in 2014? That's downright esoteric.

Luckily, in 2003 Sanctuary Records decided to re-release this long forgotten clunker as part of a 2-CD package (Jet Propelled) that also includes some fun live tracks recorded for the BBC as well as, most importantly, 13 additional songs from a follow-up album to Ol' Blue Suede that never materialized — even though, song by song, it is much more interesting than the «rock'n'roll tribute»: an actual new album with some country and folk oldies interspersed with some originals in an almost intriguing way. It even includes a corny, but totally heartfelt tribute to the freshly departed you-know-who — ʽThe Whole World Misses Youʼ is probably a bit too overtly sentimental and textbookishly-gallant to make you shed an honest tear for The King, but Carl was a simple contry boy at heart, and besides, he did probably want to record a tribute for Elvis that would sound like an overblown Elvis ballad itself. However, it is really all those newer country-rock tunes, adapted by Carl to his own stylistics, like Steve Earle's ʽMustang Wineʼ, that provide the bulk of the fun — and although the backing band remains stiff, it still sounds like he's actually interested in doing these songs, rather than having one more go at ʽTutti Fruttiʼ. In short, it is totally unclear why and unjust that Ol' Blue Suede's Back was officially released, while this untitled follow-up remained on the shelf — even if, judging from a charts-only point of view, they probably had more or less equal chance to cause a ripple among record buyers (none).

Consequently, if you see Jet Propelled, have a go at it — but don't bother with these rockabilly re-recordings; like 99% of «greatest hits» re-recorded by artists twenty to fifty years on, their only point of attraction was to prove to contemporaries that the artist was still alive and cookin'. Since Carl has not been alive and cookin' for quite some time now, Ol' Blue Suede's Back is no more than a historical curio.

BORN TO ROCK (1989)

1) Born To Rock; 2) Charlene; 3) The Rain Might Wash Your Love Away; 4) Hambone; 5) A Lifetime Last Night; 6) Cotton Top; 7) Baby, Please Answer Your Phone; 8) Till I Couldn't Stand No More; 9) Don't Let Go; 10) Love Makes Dreams Come True.

As the Eighties rolled about and rock music started to develop a historiographic tradition for the young 'uns, Carl Perkins was dutily enshrined, wrapped in plastic, and revered for his 1950s backlog, while at the same time politely prevented from putting out new material, lest the legend be soiled and tarnished by subpar additions. Admittedly, the man himself had little interest in catching up with the rest of the world, not to mention having to battle with personal problems, such as alcoholism, so it's not as if he had all that much to offer. In fact, most of his public presence at the time was linked to his far more famous disciples — he worked on a Tug Of War song with Paul McCartney (ʽGet Itʼ was quite a fun little number), and then took part in a 1985 rock show with George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Dave Edmunds (A Rockabilly Session, now available on DVD and quite a fun little concert).

Whatever albums he did release, though, were few and far in between; never charted; quickly went out of print; and more than often never went back in print again. Apparently, after the rather ridiculous 1978 «comeback» album he no longer stooped to recording collections of «golden oldies», aside from such oddities as 1996's Go Cat Go, which was really more of an all-star tribute to Carl than a proper Carl record; but it is not easy to ascertain what exactly he did record, given that most of his discographies are fairly messy, and some even contradictory.

Out of this mess, as one last cohesive nugget, I will fish out Born To Rock, a 1989 album that Universal Records actually released on CD, so you can find a digital equivalent somewhere out there if you put in a little effort. At that time, in the late Eighties, Carl did a little collaboration with The Judds (Naomi and Wynona, that weird country duo of mother and daughter where you couldn't really tell who was the mother and who the daughter), so, in retaliation for his services, he got their producer and bandleader to produce a new record all for himself. If you know what The Judds sound like — and you'd better not — you'll probably smell disaster in the air, but, fortunately, Carl never let those other guys get the best of him, and thus, Born To Rock sounds nothing like a typical Eighties' album.

If it doesn't quite sound like a typical Carl Perkins album, either, it is mainly because Carl does not play a lot of guitar on it, or, at least, a lot of lead guitar. I am not sure if this is due to health problems that he was going through at the time, or if it was a conscious decision on his part, but take heed, my friend: Born To Rock is a Carl Perkins album with very little Carl Perkins lead guitar on it (most of it found on the title track). He sings, he covers, he composes (a bit), but the days of jubilant six-string noises are mostly over.

But nevertheless, Born To Rock is a fun ride if you can get it. Carl Perkins can be boring when he simply re-records his old hits, or when he limits himself to generic country, yet whenever he puts his mind to the task of coming up with something a tad less predictable, his charm, humor, and subtlety always make it work. And work it does, particularly on the new songs co-written by Carl with his sons, Stan and Greg Perkins. The title track is in the man's classic rockabilly style, with anthemic, humorously self-aggrandizing lyrics to boot; ʽCharleneʼ is a re-write of some Chuck Berry number, accommodated to Carl's needs and riding on a simple, but effective pattern from piano player Bobby Ogden; and the two country ballads, although hampered somewhat by unnecessary backing vocals, still sound unusually heartfelt and «humanly» tender — perhaps because they were freshly written by the Perkins family rather than borrowed from the usual Nashville conveyer belt. ʽLove Makes Dreams Come Trueʼ, in particular, is the kind of song that I usually cannot stand because of all the corn syrup, but Carl's vocal delivery indicates that he really cared — it's one of those rare occasions on which he could rival Johnny Cash in terms of emotionality and direct human appeal, so to speak.

There are a few re-recordings of Carl's older obscurities as well (ʽHamboneʼ, ʽCotton Topʼ), and a couple new songs from outside songwriters that are relatively easy to forget, but on the whole, not a single tune here is unlistenable — if anything, the importance of Born To Rock is in showing that, until the very end, Perkins preserved a decent sense of taste, and, unlike many others, never allowed himself to be dragged into suspicious avenues. Synthesizers, drum machines, questionable technologies, pop-metal guitars, adult contemporary — forget about that. Cleaner production, sharper mixing, occasional straying away from the stereotypical rockabilly formula, that is allowed, but the man simply would not allow anybody to try and turn him into something he was not, and in the end, it paid off handsomely. Had he «sold out», he would probably not have actually sold many more records, but soiled his reputation. As it is, I am happy to say that I still have to hear a «bad» Carl Perkins album. Boring, yes, as the man pretty much let go of his songwriting skills past 1960 — but «bad», as in «embarrassingly» or «ridiculously» bad, never (well, Ol' Blue Suede Shoes comes close, perhaps, but still, even those re-recordings were «unnecessary» rather than «awful»). So take this last thumbs up as referring not just to Born To Rock as an album, but to Carl's messy, obscure, and sometimes quite gratifying post-1960 career in general. Sometimes charisma and integrity may actually mean more than songwriting skills and dazzling musicianship — I'd say Carl is a prime example to illustrate that statement.

CHAMPION JACK DUPREE

VOL. 1: 1940-1941 (2009)

1) Gamblin' Man Blues; 2) Warehouse Man Blues; 3) Chain Gang Blues; 4) New Low Down Dog; 5) Black Woman Swing; 6) Cabbage Greens No. 1; 7) Cabbage Greens No. 2; 8) Angola Blues; 9) My Cabin Inn; 10) Bad Health Blues; 11) That's All Right; 12) Gibing Blues; 13) Dupree Shake Dance; 14) My Baby's Gone; 15) Weed Head Woman; 16) Junker Blues; 17) Oh, Red; 18) All Alone Blues; 19) Big Time Mama; 20) Shady Lane; 21) Hurry Down Sunshine; 22) Jackie P Blues; 23) Heavy Heart Blues; 24) Morning Tea; 25) Black Cow Blues.

William Thomas Dupree was quite an interesting character back in his days — for one thing, it's not that often that a musician temporarily abandons his career to become a boxer, which he did in the late 1920s and from which he gained his "Champion Jack" nickname. Eventually, he got beat up, and since that happened at about the same time that he crossed paths with fellow blues pianist Leroy Carr, he seemingly decided that punching them keys was, after all, a safer job than punching faces — nevertheless, he was smart enough to keep the "Champion" moniker for PR reasons, even if there was hardly anything champion-like about his playing the blues.

Well, one thing that does look champion-like is the sheer quantity of recordings that the man had done: spanning the pre-war era of shellac 78"s and onwards all the way until his death in 1992, he kept pumping out product at a breathless pace, despite never having shown any compositional genius or truly outstanding musicianship. Hunting down all of his mammoth discography is a nearly hopeless and, most importantly, thoroughly ungrateful task. That said, there is nothing particularly unpleasant about his style either: in small doses, Champion Jack Dupree is always palatable, and his historical importance cannot be denied.

Most of the man's pre-LP-era output is now conveniently available in the form of a 4-volume CD package, released in 2009 on the JSP label and annotated by blues expert Neil Slaven; since these 4 volumes cover more than a decade of music-making, I will comment on each separately, even if you can probably guess that the Champion's style did not evolve too seriously over those years. That style is simple — blues and boogie piano playing, with minimal accompaniment: on the first 17 tracks here, the only additional player is bassist Wilson Swain, with guitarist Jesse Ellery joining the duo for the last eight. Dupree is a fun player, a decent entertainer, but with fairly simple technique (well, I guess you can't easily combine piano practice with a boxing career) and a nice, but unexceptional, singing voice, so there's not much difference between all these tracks, except for the base patterns — here he plays slow 12-bar, there he plays fast barrelhouse boogie, and here he... oh no, not another slow 12-bar?...

Anyway, there are a few tracks here that still deserve special mention. ʽCabbage Greensʼ, recorded here in two slightly different versions, is a variation on the old ʽCow Cow Bluesʼ boogie that most people probably know as Ray Charles' ʽMess Aroundʼ — and this gives us a good pretext to compare Dupree's playing with Ray himself, not to mention its more than obvious influence on a certain white guy named Jerry Lee Lewis: make the necessary chronological adjustments and you will see that this is as wild as it gets for 1940, just as Jerry Lee was as wild as it could get for 1956. In terms of fun and recklessness, he clearly beats Leroy Carr (who wasn't much about rompin' and stompin') and is closer in style to Pete Johnson, the notorious sidekick of Big Joe Turner, although I'd say that Dupree's playing is rowdier and more «populist», whatever that could mean under the circumstances.

More importantly, there's ʽJunker Bluesʼ here, written by Dupree's piano mentor Willie Hall (better known under the professional moniker of Drive 'Em Down) and, as far as I understand, originally recorded by Dupree himself. This one is particularly important for launching the career of Fats Domino nine years later — when he borrowed the melody wholesale and changed the controversial lyrics from "They call me, they call me the junker / Cause I'm loaded all the time" to the far safer "They call me, they call me the fat man / Cause I weigh two hundred pounds". If you had any doubts, the song goes on to be loaded with references to reefer, cocaine, needles, and feeling high, so god bless good old OKeh records for having the guts to release it in 1940, when, apparently, middle-class white audiences were not the target audience for this kind of stuff.

For that matter, the very titles of the songs alone show that Champion Jack was not the kind of guy to shy away from socially relevant topics and spend all his time on woman issues: there's ʽChain Gang Bluesʼ, there's ʽAngola Bluesʼ (referring to Louisiana State Penitentiary, not the African country), and there's ʽWeed Head Womanʼ (hmm, is this one more of a woman issue or a weed issue?). As time goes by (and the Champ's slowly rising popularity makes him more of a household name), these rough subjects do get more and more eclipsed by standard, polite-mouthed blues thematics, though, and ʽJunker Bluesʼ becomes ʽHeavy Heart Bluesʼ, with a slight accompanying drop in tempo and energy. Still, on the other hand, he gives Leroy Carr's ʽHurry Down Sunshineʼ a faster and rockier spin (as well as a completely different set of lyrics), meaning that, even if he was willing to tone down the scathingness of the words, the same did not apply to the boogie power of the music.

VOL. 2: 1941-1945 (2009)

1) My Cabin Inn; 2) Bad Health Blues; 3) Gibing Blues; 4) Dupree Shake Dance; 5) My Baby's Gone; 6) Jackie P Blues; 7) Black Cow Blues; 8) Jitterbug; 9) Slow Boogie; 10) Mexico Reminiscences; 11) Too Evil To Cry; 12) Clog Dance; 13) Rum Cola Blues; 14) She Makes Good Jelly; 15) Johnson Street Boogie Woogie; 16) I'm Going Down With You; 17) FDR Blues; 18) God Bless Our New President; 19) County Jail Special; 20) Fisherman's Blues; 21) Black Wolf; 22) Lover's Lane; 23) Walkin' By Myself; 24) Outside Man; 25) Forget It Mama.

In all honesty, the continuing life story of Champion Jack Dupree from 1941 to 1945 is far more interesting than the music that he recorded in between the rising and falling tides. In particular, in between the first batch of recordings on this disc (tracks 1–10, from late 1941 to early 1942) and the second one (tracks 11–25, from 1944 to 1945) Dupree was drafted into the Navy, where he spent time working as a cook before allegedly falling into the hands of the Japanese and spending two years as a PoW — just how true that part of the story is, nobody really knows. Whatever be the circumstances, May 1944 finds him back in New York City, and by April 1945, his studio routine recommences properly on a regular basis. Not only that, but in April 1945, he is laying down one of the most unique blues singles of his era: ʽFDR Bluesʼ, a 12-bar obituary, as the A-side, and ʽGod Bless Our New Presidentʼ, a 12-bar welcome for new guy Harry Truman, as the B-side. Talk about blending in with the times.

As for the actual music, the first seven tracks are just alternate takes of previously recorded tunes; marginally more interesting is the next one, ʽJitterbugʼ, where the Champ joins forces with the legendary duo of Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry — provided you can even hear Sonny's harmonica at all, since the sound quality of the 1942 session is atrocious; at least it is fairly evident that the three are having good danceable fun in the studio. From the same session, we have ʽSlow Boogieʼ, which seems more like a demonstration of Dupree's simple, but effective technique rather than anything else; and ʽMexico Reminiscencesʼ, a mish-mash of random Latin motives that the man possibly picked up on some short trip across the border — curious that this sort of homebrewed self-entertainment was even captured on tape, but I guess we all need to hear an old time urban blues pianist practicing Mexican melodies in the middle of World War Two at some point in our lives. The oddest track of 'em all, though, is the May 1944 recording ʽClog Danceʼ, where Dupree is rattling the old piano to the merry sound of some unidentified female «clog-dancing» (very loudly) and whooping like there was no tomorrow — nice to know that the Japanese imprisonment did not lower the Champ's spirits one bit.

From then on, the 1945 tracks are standard blues-and-boogie fare, and even the «presidential single» is mostly notable for its lyrics — mood-wise, there's no way you could tell the «sad» lament for FDR from the «happy» welcome for Harry Truman. "I sure feel bad, with tears running down my face / I lost a good friend, was a credit to our race" and "Stand behind our new President Truman, each and every one of you / Because you know that's what FDR would want us to do" are delivered with exactly the same emotion (codename «boy, I sure hope that paycheck is coming soon») and tag the offering as a hilarious historic oddity. Nevertheless, the very next recorded song is ʽCounty Jail Specialʼ, implying that the Champion is never going to turn into a pawn of the system — he just wants his paycheck, that's all — and will forever stay committed to being the true Champion of the underdogs and the dispossessed. Including sexually dispossessed, that is, since most of the other songs are about being cheated out of his woman, either directly (ʽWalkin' By Myselfʼ) or through seedy innuendos (ʽFisherman's Bluesʼ).

Unfortunately, little can be said about the musical side of these latter tracks — they all feature Dupree playing solo piano and singing, and even though the Japanese prisoner camp did not rob him of his piano skills, it sure didn't help improve them, either: same enjoyable, but predictable chords all over the place. We would have to really wait until the end of WWII before the guy started packing more meat into these arrangements.

VOL. 3: 1945-1949 (2009)

1) You've Been Drunk; 2) Santa Claus Blues; 3) Gin Mill Sal; 4) Let's Have A Ball; 5) Going Down Slow; 6) Hard Feeling; 7) How Long, How Long Blues; 8) Mean Old Frisco; 9) I Think You Need A Shot; 10) Bad Whiskey And Wild Woman; 11) Bus Station Blues; 12) Love Strike Blues; 13) Wet Deck Mama; 14) Big Legged Mama; 15) I'm A Doctor For Women; 16) Cecelia, Cecelia; 17) Going Down To The Bottom; 18) Fifth Avenue Blues; 19) Highway 31; 20) Come Back Baby; 21) Chitlins And Rice; 22) One Sweet Letter; 23) Lonesome Bedroom Blues; 24) Old Woman Blues; 25) Mean Mistreatin' Mama; 26) Featherweight Mama; 27) Day Break.

Nothing much happening on this particular volume, either, except that, after the first three tracks, the Champion is consistently accompanied on guitar by Brownie McGhee — sometimes as part of a trio, sometimes in a slightly larger band: a special landmark is ʽCecelia, Ceceliaʼ (sic!), where, for the first time ever, Dupree uses an ensemble of backing vocalists, a full rhythm section and a guest sax player. Reason? Well, the song itself is nothing but a lyrical rewrite of ʽCaldoniaʼ, recorded one year earlier by Louis Jordan, and, evidently, this was Dupree's first stab at imitating the big band jump blues approach of Jordan, which was quickly gaining ground as a replacement for the antiquated urban blues stylistics.

In fact, the liner notes do state that Dupree was finding life in New York particularly hard in the late 1940s, what with public interest moving away from strict blues (for which Chicago was becoming the main playground) and into the sphere of something more boogie-danceable. Nevertheless, the stubborn artist ploughed on, reluctant to move out of his favorite city, and even found occasional opportunities to make recordings, usually on small local labels. The «big band» stint with ʽCeceliaʼ was actually good for about four tracks — after that, it is back to small scale once again, with the same batch of similar-sounding blues and boogie tunes as always.

That said, some of these duets between Jack and Brownie rise notably above the average level: see ʽBad Whiskey And Wild Womanʼ (sic!), a reflection on the subject of "by the year 1963, I wonder what will become of me?" with Brownie echoing the singer's dark forebodings with some suitably grumbly lead lines in between some verse lines and allaying his worst fears with lighter, gentler, ripplier lines in between others — and also pushing Dupree as a pianist to try his best with a flourish-laden solo that seems to show off more than his standard technique. You do have to make an effort to sort them out from the chaff, though: much more often, it's just Jack boxing the keys over and over, concentrating on his verbal innuendos (ʽWet Deck Mamaʼ, ʽBig Legged Mamaʼ — the latter would soon turn into ʽBig Leg Emmaʼ and stay that way forever) rather than on varying his playing style, because nobody was buying his records anyway, so why bother?

The most unusual track on this volume is the last one — a moody slow blues entitled ʽDaybreakʼ, with Brownie playing a strangely distorted electric guitar and then, very soon, yielding the spotlight to the anonymous bass player, who plays a catchy, fluent, and, most importantly, loud jazzy melody, as if he were Willie Dixon or something. The weirdest thing is that we seem to know the names of the bass players for all the previous sessions (Count Edmondson first, and then Cedric Wallace of Fats Waller's fame), but not for this particular one. It's probably That Perfect Bass Player Who Came From Heaven, and then went back again after laying down this one perfect bass track. What made him descend upon Champion Jack Dupree, of all people, remains a mystery — just one more odd chapter in the already befuddling life story of this guy.

VOL. 4: 1951-1953 (2009)

1) Deacon's Party; 2) My Baby's Comin' Back Home; 3) Just Plain Tired; 4) I'm Gonna Find You Someday; 5) Goin' Back To Louisiana; 6) Barrel House Mama; 7) Old, Old Woman; 8) Mean Black Snake; 9) The Woman I Love; 10) All Night Party; 11) Heart Breaking Woman; 12) Watchin' My Stuff; 13) Ragged And Hungry; 14) Somebody Changed The Lock; 15) Stumbling Block Blues; 16) Highway Blues; 17) Shake Baby Shake; 18) Number Nine Blues; 19) Drunk Again; 20) Shim Sham Shimmy; 21) Ain't No Meat On De Bone; 22) The Blues Got Me Rockin'; 23) Tongue Tied Blues; 24) Please Tell Me Baby; 25) Walkin' Upside Your Head; 26) Rub A Little Boogie; 27) Camille.

The final volume in the series traces our Champion's adventures in the early Fifties, with at least four different small-size labels in New York City (Apollo, Gotham, King, Red Robin), each of which wasted no time in dropping the Champ after two or three tenaciously commercially unsuccessful singles — released under at least five different band names and pseudonyms (including «Big Chief Ellis & His Blues Stars», «Meat Head Johnson & His Blues Hounds», and «Lightning Junior & The Empires»), before finally giving it up and returning to using his original moniker for two sessions in 1953.

Now one might indeed argue that the lack of success was due to New York's general lack of interest in the blues at the time (jazz was really where it was at), but then again, let's admit it, all these sides that Dupree cut at the time weren't exactly the epitome of notability or originality, even though, with Brownie McGhee at his side for most of these sessions, Dupree had a good guitar backing, and on some of these tracks, they are also joined by Brownie's younger brother, Stick, the guy who, some say, was single-handedly responsible for inventing rock'n'roll with his classic recording of ʽDrinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-O-Deeʼ back in 1947.

As «Meat Head Johnson & His Blues Hounds», they almost came close to replicating that sound with ʽOld, Old Womanʼ, where, at the beginning, you will be hearing some angry distorted guitar chords coming right out of the (future!) Keith Richards chordbook; and it gets even better on ʽShake Baby Shakeʼ from 1953, with both Brownie and Stick on guitars and the Champ laying on a groove that would, of course, only three years later morph into the classic ʽWhole Lotta Shakin' Going Onʼ groove of Jerry Lee Lewis. If only the Champion could show the same punch that the Killer would show... but the days of true rock'n'roll wildness were still ahead, and these cats had to show some decorum, because even with all of New Yorkish tolerance towards black musicians, politeness in playing dance music was still a necessary prerequisite for not being run out of town. Still, there's as much rock'n'roll drive in these tracks here as you could only wish for 1953. Also, ʽShim Sham Shimmyʼ totally rules, with a bombastic drum beat, guitar more distorted than on any given Chuck Berry tune, and cool jazz-boogie runs from Stick that totally presage Alvin Lee of Ten Years After in tone and style, if not in flash.

Still, the majority of these tracks is not proto-rock'n'roll, but slow 12-bar blues, and here, there is nothing more to add unless you really want to start analyzing the lyrics — some of which are quite interesting from the point of historical studies in the evolution of political correctness (ʽTongue Tied Bluesʼ), or from the point of folkloristic studies of the evolution of text (the song that we usually know as ʽLouiseʼ, because this is the name under which it crossed the Atlantic and fell in the hands of The Yardbirds and others, is here called ʽCamilleʼ... come to think of it, the only words it shares with ʽLouiseʼ are in the chorus, but the chorus coincides completely). Also, if I am not mistaken, ʽAin't No Meat On De Boneʼ has a New Orleanian, Mardi Gras-like carnivalesque groove to it (think Professor Longhair), which makes it somewhat of an oddity in the Champion's New York-era material.

Bottomline is, none of this material ever sold much, despite a few of the tracks truly being on the cutting edge of the rock'n'roll movement for 1951-53, but you just gotta admire the guy's tenaciousness — he eventually spent almost fifteen years on the fringes of New York's musical life, jumping from label to label and making a living by any means he could. It was, in fact, nothing short of amazing that despite all his shortcomings, he was eventually able of securing himself a short-lived contract with no less than Atlantic Records themselves around 1959 (perhaps through the Stick McGhee connection?), at which point we end the story of this 4-CD package and move on to the next exciting (or not so exciting) chapter in the life of the Champion.

BLUES FROM THE GUTTER (1958)

1) Strollin'; 2) TB Blues; 3) Can't Kick The Habit; 4) Evil Woman; 5) Nasty Boogie; 6) Junker's Blues; 7) Bad Blood; 8) Goin' Down Slow; 9) Frankie And Johnnie; 10) Stack-O-Lee.

Probably the single best known album of the Champion's career — if only for being, well, the first album of the Champion's career: Blues From The Gutter, released at the tail end of the Fifties, opens a long, long, long, and largely ignored string of LPs, and back then it had the benefit of introducing Dupree to a fresh new audience, one that was actually interested in hearing him play, as opposed to all those singles from the 1940s, released in the face of a largely indifferent and highly limited New York public. Above all, it was his debut for Atlantic Records, and that in itself was a guarantee that the man would be heard world-wide — in fact, reliable sources state that Blues From The Gutter made a fairly deep impression on none other than Brian Jones himself, even if in the grand scheme of things it was probably not too significant.

Part of that impression was owed not to the Champ himself, but to his backing band, which here included such seasoned session players as Pete Brown on sax and Wendell Marshall (who'd played with Duke Ellington and a boatload of other jazz notables) on double-bass, and particularly Ennis Lowery (who later took the name of Larry Dale) on electric guitar. For those used to Dupree's near-solo performances, or his low quality recordings with Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, the image of the Champion recording with a full-and-willin' blues band under professional modern studio conditions must have been a revelation — in fact, it was probably a revelation to Dupree himself, who took the opportunity to re-record a couple of his old classics (ʽTB Bluesʼ, ʽJunker's Bluesʼ — the latter leaving all of its drug-related lyrics completely intact), throw in a few more time-honored standards (ʽFrankie And Johnnyʼ, ʽStack-O-Leeʼ), and introduce a decent level of variety, ranging all the way from slow soulful blues (ʽGoin' Down Slowʼ) to rollickin' boogie-woogie (ʽNasty Boogieʼ).

The addition of Lowery is indeed a good touch: the man is a disciple of B. B. King, well versed in the art of sharp, stinging electric blues leads (ʽTB Bluesʼ is a particular highlight), and he adds an element of «Chicago blues danger» to the relaxed, leisurely stroll mode of Dupree, even if the two do not look all that much like a match made in Heaven upon first sight; and he does not get to solo on the album's merriest piece, ʽNasty Boogieʼ, which is instead dominated by the piano / sax duet, and where even the bassist is allowed to take the spotlight for a few bars, but not the lead guitarist — who prefers to stick stubbornly to the slow blues idiom, and for a good reason, I guess: not every great blues player is an equally great boogie player, and vice versa. Then again, it's a sensible distribution of labor: get the sax guy to be your partner on the lighter numbers, and the guitar guy to be your foil on the darker ones.

As for Dupree himself, he is arguably at his best on the opening number, a simple New Orleanian shuffle called ʽStrollin'ʼ and featuring neither guitar nor sax — just the Champ taking his time, improvising a leisurely syncopated jazz rhythm and alternating it with a couple of brief ragtimey solos as he hums out whatever is on his mind. Not exactly the kind of sound you'd expect to come out «from the gutter», but then again, a gentleman like Champion Jack Dupree probably has to keep his cool even in the gutter — considering the dignity and reservation with which he narrates his protagonist's drug problems on ʽJunker's Bluesʼ and ʽCan't Kick The Habitʼ. And, by the way, the title of the album is fully justified if one simply counts the number of songs about drugs, decay, and death — cocaine, tuberculosis, and cold-blooded murder are the norm of day on this album, which certainly was not true about the average Chicago blues album in 1958, where themes of woman-hunting ruled high above everything else. All in all, even if the music as such is hardly exceptional here (just average even by contemporary standards), the very fact of an old pre-war urban blues piano man really making it in the nearly-modern era is quite admirable, considering that Dupree, on the whole, represents a blues-playing tradition that is older than that of B. B. King or, in a way, even that of Muddy Waters. Definitely a thumbs up, on the grounds of mild enjoyability amplified by strong curiosity.

NATURAL & SOULFUL BLUES (1960)

1) Seafood Blues; 2) Death Of Big Bill Broonzy; 3) Don't Leave Me Mary; 4) Rampart Street Special; 5) How Long Blues; 6) Bad Life; 7) Mother-In-Law Blues; 8) Slow Drag; 9) Dennis Rag; 10) Bad Luck Bound To Change.

The years 1959-60 saw some huge changes in Champion Jack's routine. Despite his stubborn clinging to New York's landscape ever since his repatriation from Japanese captivity, in 1959 he agreed to take part in one of those European blues revues that, in the late Fifties and early Sixties, had warmed the hearts of so many Chicago and Delta bluesmen (not to mention bringing to orgiastic heights of ecstasy all their young British fans like Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton). Among other things, this brought him face to face with Alexis Korner, the famous Kulturträger of Blues Incorporated, with whom he is said to have played a duo gig at the London School of Economics (presumably, Mick Jagger was not part of the audience, since he did not join the ranks of the LSE until 1961).

Fast forward a tiny little bit, and here we have this LP, recorded by Dupree as part of a trio that also involved Alexis Korner on acoustic guitar and Jack Fallon on bass. Details are scarce, but apparently, it was first released in the UK on London Records, then, one year later, in the US on Atlantic Records, with whom Dupree still had his contract. Either way, it is a milestone in the Champ's history: his first proper European release, after which he'd move to Europe permanently, and mostly record and release there, with whoever was ready to support him.

The minimalism works to a certain degree: Korner and Fallon are basically here just to fatten the sound a little, give it a bit of a bottom, but have all the attention focused on Dupree's piano playing and general artistism instead. And he seems to sense it, playing in a loose and relaxed manner, worrying more about making a charismatic impression than about producing a tightly structured 3-minute, 12-bar blues number — many of these tracks sound like little vaudeville miniatures, starting with ʽSeafood Bluesʼ (in which the Champion discovers signs of unfaithfulness in his humble abode, including a suspicious smell of seafood... hmm? oh, my!) and ending with the melodically identical ʽMother-In-Law Bluesʼ, in which the Champion tells us everything about his (hopefully, imaginary) mother-in-law that's been bothering him for those past twenty years (but now that he's safely crossed the Atlantic, he can finally unburden his heart).

Particularly touching is ʽDeath Of Big Bill Broonzyʼ, a humble obituary to his recently departed friend that begins with Dupree telling us how the two made each other a promise that whoever was to go first was to write a blues about the other. Ironically, this would become a regular thing for Dupree — for the next thirty years, he'd see them drop off one after another, and diligently compose formulaic, but sincere obituaries, gradually turning into Gravedigger Jack Dupree until it was his own turn. Musically, of course, there's not much to speak of, but who else would write a song about the departure of one of the most important bluesmen of the first half of the century? Not Alexis Korner, that's for sure. (Interestingly enough, the last track on the album, ʽBad Luck Bound To Changeʼ, is credited to Alexis Korner — and I am not sure of that, but he may have been the first bluesman to insert the line "someday baby, my bad luck is bound to change" in a blues tune, because normally, bad luck is not supposed to change for these guys. Or maybe he just wanted to wish the Champ some good luck in his safe European future).

Other than that, the record may be notable for one nice example of Dupree's boogie-woogie playing (ʽDennis Ragʼ)... and nothing else. Natural, soulful, and largely undescribable blues.

CHAMPION OF THE BLUES (1961)

1) I Had A Dream; 2) Roll Me Over Roll Me Slow; 3) Reminiscin' With Champion Jack Dupree; 4) That's All Right; 5) Daybreak Stomp; 6) House Rent Party; 7) Snaps Drink Woman; 8) One Sweet Letter From You; 9) New Vicksburg Blues; 10) When Things Go Wrong; 11) Johnson Street Boogie Woogie; 12) Misery Blues.

This next album founds the Champion in Copenhagen, where, so it seems, he feels himself right at home: at least, on ʽRoll Me Over Roll Me Slowʼ he acknowledges that fact with pleasure and gratitude to all the good Danish people who feel so hospitable towards an exotic blues piano player from the faraway swamps of Louisiana. The recording session was produced by local jazz and blues enthusiast Karl Emil Knudsen, who had recently launched his own blues label (Storyville) and seemed all too happy to make Dupree into one of his permanent clients. And this time, there is no Alexis Korner around: all twelve songs feature Champion Jack Dupree solo, with the strict warning that "the percussive sounds heard on several of the tracks are made by stomping of Champion Jack's feet". So there! The album was still picked up by Atlantic overseas — at least, Atlantic pressings of it do exist — but essentially, this stabilizes the Champ's status for a long, long time as one of America's most reliable exports to Europe.

Music-wise, of course, there is not much to discuss in such a setting. Since it is unlikely to expect the Champion to get influenced by Thelonious Monk or John Cage, most of the attention will be drawn to his behavior behind the keyboards — for instance, nostalgizing about the good old days with his deceased blues pals and explaining why he prefers piano over guitar, illustrating it with little flourishes (ʽReminiscin'ʼ), or getting adjusted to the new realities of his life in Denmark with songs like ʽSnaps Drinking Womanʼ, an old jump blues with new lyrics quickly re-written to fit the circumstances. Overall, it's just another predictable mix of regular slow blues, uptempo jump blues, and boogie woogie — ʽJohnson Street Boogie Woogieʼ is fun, but does not work all that well without a supporting band. I guess Danish audiences loved it all, though, and the Champ was happy to oblige, putting on one-man vaudeville shows like ʽHouse Rent Partyʼ, a simple illustration of the menu served at a modest house party deep down in Louisiana. Still, even if you keep your expectations to a bare minimum, it is pretty damn hard to put Champion Of The Blues in the class of «satisfactory entertainment», unless you put yourself in the shoes of a young Danish blues lover in 1961 who has just miraculously discovered the real thing playing in his local bar.

SINGS THE BLUES (1961)

1) Me And My Mule; 2) The Blues Got Me Rockin'; 3) That's My Pa; 4) Tongue-Tied Blues; 5) Sharp Harp; 6) Blues For Everybody; 7) Camille; 8) Walkin' Upside Your Head; 9) Harelip Blues; 10) Big Leg Emma's; 11) Two Below Zero; 12) Silent Partner; 13) Mail Order Woman; 14) Stumbling Block; 15) Failing Health Blues; 16) She Cooks Me Cabbage.

This one is not from Copenhagen: it is an American compilation that, if I understand correctly, largely consists of singles recorded by the Champion for the King label in the mid-to-late 1950s. All I know about it is the track listing, the date of release, and the gushing, but hardly informative liner notes on the back sleeve, so even though most of these tracks feature Dupree with a small backing band, I have no idea who is playing what and whether you should by all means grab this because of a unique guest appearance by some unique blues hero.

Still, it's worth owning or hearing at least for ʽMe And My Muleʼ, a comic piece of one-sided dialog between Dupree and his trusty pack animal on which the man barely plays his instrument, ceding it all to bass and harmonica — the former mimicking the animal's lazy trudge, the latter imitating its hee-hawing. It is not so much hilarious as it is «authentic», cementing Dupree's status as The Everyman's Bluesman, a teller of routine stories of realistic daily troubles, usually invented on the spot. And it is certainly more impressive than Dupree's Muddy Waters tributes such as ʽMail Order Womanʼ, most of which sound like flimsy shadows of far superior originals.

Minor highlights on this collection would include ʽStumbling Blockʼ, a simplified, «untwisted» variation on ʽRollin' And Tumblin'ʼ with a steady beat and a cool echoey guitar part (Dupree does not play any piano on this one); the instrumental ʽSharp Harpʼ, more of a showcase for George "Harmonica" Smith than for the Champion — if you like Little Walter, George Smith's playing is in quite a similar style; and the mock-your-local-disability-today number ʽHarelip Bluesʼ, with an artificially enhanced speech impediment (apparently, Dupree used to present himself as harelipped which he really was not, but it helped attract extra customers; he did come out with some ridiculously bad accents, though). A few other tracks have nice slide guitar parts, for instance, ʽShe Cooks Me Cabbageʼ — there's some Elmore James-level chops there, even though the lead guitarist never gets a chance to solo; that, however, is just about it.

Apparently, there are more complete packages that cover Dupree's mid-to-late Fifties career in the States (prior to Blues In The Gutter), but, naturally, only a diehard blues completist should be seeking them out, and only after having exhausted the hard-to-exhaust pool of Chicago blues recordings from the same period.

THE WOMEN BLUES OF CHAMPION JACK DUPREE (1961)

1) Ain't That A Shame; 2) Talk To Me, Baby; 3) Tell Me When; 4) Old Woman Blues; 5) Hard Feelings Blues; 6) Bus Station Blues; 7) Rattlesnake Boogie; 8) Black Wolf Blues; 9) Jail House; 10) Come Back Baby; 11) On My Way To Moe Asch.

Undoubtedly the finest thing about this album is its front sleeve, featuring a stylish retro photo by David Gahr that looks fantastically modern at the same time — I mean, what is it that dame is doing before the mirror unless taking a selfie? Well worth owning for that shot alone, if you ask me; and take no substitutes, hunt for the original LP on Ebay or something, because size definitely matters with this one.

Other than that, the details are not exactly clear. This is the only post-war LP recording of the Champ's that actually came out on Folkways Records, for whom he'd previously only recorded an occasional number or two; and this was clearly a single, cohesive, almost conceptual session, as evidenced by the album title and accompanying liner notes (all about them ladies, and how they continue to influence the life of a weathered old bluesman), and even the last track, which continues the Champ's «diary-like» approach to bluesmaking — a special musical post-scriptum to acknowledge the Moses Asch / Folkways connection for this piece. However, the album does not include any information about where, when, and with whom the whole thing was cut, so I have no idea, for instance, if Dupree had to temporarily return to the States to make it, or if he recorded the session in Copenhagen and then sent the tapes overseas, or if (most probable solution) he cut it in the States before moving to Europe, and Folkways simply took some time (a year or two) to put it into proper shape before marketing the results.

He is working with a full band here — there's at least a regular drummer, bassist, and guitarist in the same room with him — but I have no idea who they are. In any case, it's nobody great, or, if it's somebody great, the somebody in question is keeping humble, providing for a fuller sound but never threatening to overshadow Mr. Jack. Not that there's much to overshadow: as usual, the record is very straightforward, consisting of about half a dozen completely interchangeable slow 12-bar blues, and a few faster, but also interchangeable, pieces of boogie (ʽTell Me Whenʼ, ʽBus Station Bluesʼ) with no surprises whatsoever.

Relative (very relative) standouts here include ʽRattlesnake Boogieʼ, a percussion-heavy instrumental (and you can judge what the percussion sounds like by simply considering the title), and the already mentioned ʽOn The Way To Moe Aschʼ, not because it mentions Moe Asch by name, but because it features a nice bass solo to break up the overall monotonousness of the session. Also, if you are wondering by some chance, ʽAin't That A Shameʼ is not a Fats Domino cover, but just another one of those generic blues pieces. All in all, I don't think Folkways really got the best side of the Champion here — he seems fairly stiff and morose; but then, considering the label's almost religious attitude to American folk and blues traditions, they'd probably want him to be as stiff, morose, and boring as possible, leaving his humorous, vaudevillian side to all those corny, commercial record labels. Still, that photo...

THE BEST OF THE BLUES (1963)

1) Cabbage Greens No. 3; 2) Sporting Life Blues; 3) Mean Mistreater; 4) In The Dark; 5) You've Been Drunk; 6) Careless Love; 7) Tomorrow Night; 8) Fisherman's Blues; 9) Bring Me Flowers While I'm Living; 10) Everything I Do Is Wrong; 11) See See Rider; 12) Diggin' My Potatoes; 13*) Please Send Me Someone To Love; 14*) In The Evening; 15*) Rock Me Mama; 16*) I'll Bet My Money; 17*) Going To Copenhagen.

These Storyville titles for the Champion's albums gotta rank as some of the least inspired in music history, but The Best Of The Blues trumps them all — not only is this not a compilation, but it is not even, you know, the best of the blues. It is just a collection of tracks recorded by Dupree during two sessions in Copenhagen (October 3-4, 1961 and June 14-15, 1962), backed by Danish bass player Mogens Seidelin and Swiss acoustic / electric guitar player Stuff (Chris) Lange. In the CD era, it was expanded with several bonus tracks and released as Blues Masters Vol. 6, which is the edition I have.

In this installation, we see the Champion trying to expand his repertoire just a little bit, through the addition of a few classic «commercial» blues ballads, most notably ʽCareless Loveʼ and Lonnie Johnson's crossover hit ʽTomorrow Nightʼ. This may have had something to do with the growing popularity of blues-de-luxe crooners like B. B. King, but might just as well be a mere coincidence; after all, even such a rigorous self-repeater as Dupree would need a refreshing touch every once in a while, and it gives him a pretext to try out some new piano flourishes. Totally inessential, but nice, and delivered without any superfluous sentimentality.

At the same time, conversely, he also digs deep into his past, resurrecting ʽCabbage Greensʼ (and remembering correctly that he'd already recorded two of those in 1940, so this is ʽNo. 3ʼ) which may now, for the first time, be experienced in pristine sound quality; and ʽYou've Been Drunkʼ and ʽFisherman's Bluesʼ from 1945, both of which get themselves a whole stereo channel of (boring) electric guitar, yet somehow end up sounding slower, limper, and less decisive than their older counterparts. In the end, the whole thing is probably only worth it for the final bonus track ʽGoing To Copenhagenʼ, which continues the Champion's «musical diary», somewhat randomly alternating between the man's narration of his journey to Copenhagen and comments on how his baby cooks him turnips and calls them mustard greens, and seems to simply represent three minutes of total improvisation, with Dupree fumbling to find the right chords (and the right words) for the bass player's slightly jazzified rhythm pattern. It's a bit of fun, but nothing essential, just like this entire record.

CHER

ALL I REALLY WANT TO DO (1965)

1) All I Really Want To Do; 2) I Go To Sleep; 3) Needles And Pins; 4) Don't Think Twice; 5) She Thinks I Still Care; 6) Dream Baby; 7) The Bells Of Rhymney; 8) Girl Don't Come; 9) See See Rider; 10) Come And Stay With Me; 11) Cry Myself To Sleep; 12) Blowin' In The Wind.

It's too bad, I think, that the debut album of Cher as a solo artist does not include ʽRingo, I Love Youʼ — her first single, issued in 1964 under the rather hideous name of Bonnie Jo Mason and allegedly co-written by Phil Spector in person. It is such a silly Beatlesque pastiche (one out of hundreds, of course) that the only point of interest there are Cher's vocals, so unusually low for the time that, rumor has it, some radio stations refused to play it because they thought they were being duped. And although she probably had no say whatsoever in these early decisions at the time, the song still set a career pattern that would be rigorously adhered to for the next fifty years: if it ain't trendy, the dark-haired lady can't be bothered.

Fast forward a bit to October 1965, by which time the dark-haired lady had teamed up with Sonny Bono and became an international celebrity by means of ʽI Got You Babeʼ. No sooner had the duo released their first LP that Sonny put forward the idea of crafting a parallel solo career for the wife — a golden throne for her and a grave for himself, as it would later turn out, but seeing as how he, at the moment, was the only one of the two with songwriting talent, the poor guy obviously could not see it coming. And thus, with the release of ʽAll I Really Want To Doʼ as a single and the same-titled LP quickly following it up, the green light was given to one of the most, umm, let's say «predatory» careers in show-business, ever. A career as historically instructive as it is almost delightfully tasteless, and one well worth studying in detail, if only because it pretty much reflects the entire history of pop/rock music in its crooked mirror.

Anyway, it's October 1965, and the Byrds are one of the hottest things on that side of the American market that tries to be friendly to «mainstream» and «alternative» audiences at the same time, so, naturally, at this time Cher is a folk-rocker, singing pretty arrangements of Dylan (three songs), Pete Seeger and The Byrds themselves (ʽBells Of Rhymneyʼ), Jackie DeShannon, and a bit of British Invasion to round out the picture (a cover of The Kinks' ʽI Go To Sleepʼ which they never released officially at the time anyway). No expense was spared during the recordings, as a large part of The Wrecking Crew was recruited for the sessions, and Sonny's production, though not as masterful as Phil Spector's, still managed to come close to capturing the wall-of-sound effect — actually, considering that most folk-rock at the time was produced by young bands without much experience or simply with no desire to go beyond minimalistic arrangements, Sonny had the advantage of merging the «innocence» of the folk sound with Spectorian bombast, and at least in purely technical terms, he did it well.

Of course, Cher's voice at this time is both an asset and a problem. Asset, because if you care for low-timbred female vocals at all, there's just no way that at least some Cher songs could not appeal to you — when she's really on, she's a powerhouse, and as calculated as the whole thing (and the whole Cher career) is, I struggle to think of a 1965 album by a female artist (white, at least) that would better convey the idea of «woman empowerment». Problem, because one thing Cher has never had is subtlety — she rips through all this material, diverse as it is, as if she had boxer gloves on throughout the sessions, and while this is perfectly all right for some songs, it is definitely not all right (and, in fact, embarrassing) for others.

First, the highlights, though. ʽAll I Really Want To Doʼ, set to the predictable, but tasteful jangle guitar and chime keyboard, is a stunner — definitely a song more suitable for Cher than even The Byrds, taking Bob's tongue-in-cheek joking chauvinist jab at over-intellectualized females and turning it inside out in favor of the other sex. It is actually the only song on the album where the lady sounds like she's having fun — playing around with her limited range and sometimes arching out that "all I really wanna doooooo..." as if teasingly mocking the song's addressee — and it's kind of a pity that the other two Dylan covers here are ʽDon't Think Twiceʼ (a tune that is not intended to be screamed out, whatever the cost!) and ʽBlowin' In The Windʼ, done in a manner as grand as any national anthem and just about equally stultifying. Of course, it would have been too much to expect her to go ahead with ʽSubterranean Homesick Bluesʼ (although she'd probably do a great job with it), and there'd be gender problems with ʽIt Ain't Me Babeʼ, but... uh... ʽMaggie's Farmʼ, perhaps?

Other tunes where she is vocally spot on include ʽShe Thinks I Still Careʼ, a bitter-mocking rendition of Dickey Lee's ʽHe Thinks I Still Careʼ; and a rousing ʽSee See Riderʼ which manages to pack just enough brawn and arrogance to stand up to all the sprawling competition. Some others are just bizarre — for instance, a reading of Jackie DeShannon's ʽCome And Stay With Meʼ that should have honestly been retitled ʽCome And Stay With Me, Bitchʼ: where Marianne Faithful, who originally performed the song, sings the lines "I'll send away all my false pride and I'll forsake all of my life" as if she really means it, tender and on the verge of breaking, Cher's natural, never-shifting timbre makes it sound as if she's totally mocking the guy — probably giving him the finger behind the back, too. I do not doubt that the irony was unintended, and that, like so many other titles here, it was simply a matter of poor song choice, but the effect is still hilarious all the same, especially considering that this is one of her best-sung tunes here.

Specific downers, on the other hand, would include ʽNeedles And Pinsʼ — Sonny wrote it, yes, but not for her, and she just ploughs through the subtle hills and valleys of that song with a vocal bulldozer — and ʽBells Of Rhymneyʼ, where she seems to just lack the technique and even ends up singing awfully off-key in spots. And although the dreamy baroque arrangement of ʽI Go To Sleepʼ is a very nice alternative to the minimalistic piano demo accompaniment of Ray Davies, one thing Ms. Cherilyn Sarkisian will always have a very hard time to simulate is that feeling of late night loneliness without a loved one. (Oh, I mean, it might just be a matter of her voice, it's not as if I'm implying she never ever felt lonely without a loved one herself.)

Overall, this is just like it will always be from now on — there's material that lends itself to the Cher treatment, and then we're in for a hell of a treat, and then there's material that fights back, and then we're either in for a hilarious oddity, or, more often, for a corny embarrassment. But this is precisely what makes the exploration of her backlog such a fun thing — you find yourself in the position of an involved historiographer, describing the never-ending shift of balance between treats, oddities, and embarrassments, and isn't that what life's all about in the end?

THE SONNY SIDE OF CHER (1966)

1) Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down); 2) A Young Girl (Une Enfante); 3) Where Do You Go; 4) Our Day Will Come; 5) Elusive Butterfly; 6) Like A Rolling Stone; 7) Old Man River; 8) Come To Your Window; 9) The Girl From Ipanema; 10) It's Not Unusual; 11) Time; 12) Milord.

You'd think that with a title like this, all the songs on this album should have been written by Sonny, but just like on their duet records, he only contributes a few — in this case, ʽWhere Do You Goʼ, a slow folk waltz oriented at the «frustrated teen market» ("where do you go when you're too young?", asks the 20-year old Armenian diva who seems to have already figured that out for herself), and ʽBang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)ʼ, a slow Latin groove oriented at Nancy Sinatra, who later recorded her own version that was later made famous by Kill Bill, from which we draw the obvious conclusion that back in early 1966, Sonny Bono was the happy owner of a time machine (maybe that's why he decided to go into politics as well).

Anyway, both of these songs aren't too bad, and ʽBang Bangʼ is, in fact, melodically and lyrically quite awesome — the problem with both being the singer, who is simply incapable of delicately handling this sort of material. In fact, out of 12 songs on here, there's only one that fully appeals to her immanent vocal style: the English-language cover of Edith Piaf's ʽMilordʼ, where her deep, dark, sneering voice creates the perfect cynical atmosphere. This is where you realize that if the woman was born with the idea to sing anything at all, then the anything in question would just have to be the nonchalant-hedonistic cabaret style — French, German, English, whatever, as long as she's portraying the strong-hip-cynical female with, perhaps, a slight overdose of masculine hormones. You'd think she might extend that credibility to Dylan's ʽLike A Rolling Stoneʼ (after all, has there ever been a song more cynical than that one?), but unfortunately, it does not seem like she's properly understanding what the song is about, so no.

Everything else is a disaster — tender French, British, and American pop standards of the time, all of them given the same type of baroque-folk arrangement and all of them sung in exactly the same style. ʽThe Girl From Ipanemaʼ, supposed to be one of the lightest, springliest pop tunes in existence, an emblem of the happy flight attitude of the early Sixties, simply sinks under the weight of her voice — more like "the girl from Ipanema goes stomping", if you ask me. Good songs like ʽOl' Man Riverʼ and Bob Lind's ʽElusive Butterflyʼ get a Vegasy treatment in terms of vocals, and then there's fairly hokey songs like Michael Merchant's ʽTimeʼ (at least, it sounds hokey: I've never heard the original, if there ever was one).

Overall, there are two problems which you simply cannot work around: (a) weak source material, drifting way too far into the corny direction of mainstream pop rather than guitar-based pop-rock or folk-rock; and (b) inappropriate source material for Cher's one-trick voice, where attempts at diversity actually fail — be it Dylan, Tom Jones, Charles Aznavour, or Antonio Carlos Jobim, they all end up Cher-ified. The good news is — if she can only sing in one style, this means it's her natural style and she's being sincere about it. The bad news is, why do we even have to endure this in the first place? Bang bang, my baby gave thumbs down.

CHER (1966)

1) Sunny; 2) The Twelfth Of Never; 3) You Don't Have To Say You Love Me; 4) I Feel Something In The Air; 5) Will You Love Me Tomorrow; 6) Until It's Time For You To Go; 7) The Cruel War; 8) Catch The Wind; 9) Pied Piper; 10) Homeward Bound; 11) I Want You; 12) Alfie.

Same mistake again: Cher seems just about as interested in delivering most of this material as her passionate, emotion-torn, devastating facial expression on the front cover might suggest (I decode it if not as a "who am I?" sort of expression, then at least as a "what am I doing here?" variety). Instead of making her cover ʽSatisfactionʼ or ʽPositively 4th Streetʼ or at least the Stones' ʽStupid Girlʼ re-written as ʽStupid Boyʼ — songs that would have put her deep, aggressive vocals at an advantage — Sonny keeps saddling her with sentimental ballads that were never that good in the first place (although I must say that ʽYou Don't Have To Say You Love Meʼ makes me fondly re-appreciate the Dusty Springfield version), or with cleverly written, subtle folk-rock tunes whose magic is turned to mindless brawn (ʽHomeward Boundʼ).

I can only hope that the cover of ʽSunnyʼ here was not meant to read ʽSonnyʼ — considering the circumstances under which Bobby Hebb wrote the song, and its general atmosphere, you'd think it mighty strange for Cher to sing of Sonny Bono as a dead man 32 years before she put him on a radio-controlled pair of skis and drove him into a tree to mercifully spare him the agony of enduring the success of ʽBelieveʼ for the rest of his life. Actually, she gives a fairly convincing reading — ʽSunnyʼ works well as a strong statement of faith and power, rather than lyrical sentimentality, and that's one thing that Cher can give; in this particular case, I'd certainly rather have her cover the song than Paul Simon, Donovan, or Dylan. (Not that anyone could ever beat the Boney M version, but oh well. Disco days weren't quite there yet back in 1966).

Weird choice of the day: ʽI Want Youʼ as the Dylan choice, with Cher forgetting the lyrics ("I wait for them to read your looks, while drinking from my broken cup" — geez, lady, that doesn't even rhyme!) and nobody giving a damn about it. Sonny reference of the day: "The cruel war is raging / Sonny has to fight" instead of "Johnny has to fight" in Peter, Paul & Mary's ʽCruel Warʼ. As far as I know, Sonny was never drafted, so we should be taking this as a metaphor, but I'm pretty sure quite a few of Sonny's friends must have given him some anxious calls about the matter. The "Much Ado About Nothing" reference of the day: ʽAlfieʼ, the title track to the famous movie that made a star out of Michael Caine and whose hit status was disputed between Cilla Black, Cher, and Dionne Warwick — as far as I'm concerned, it's just another saccharine pill from Burt Bacharach, and the song sucks in any version.

The most «interesting» song of the lot is arguably ʽI Feel Something In The Airʼ, Sonny's only original composition here that is more intriguing because of its lyrics that deal with accidental pregnancy than the actual music (although it does feature a bold triple change of time signature, briefly becoming a waltz and a Motown girl group tune in the bridge section). Unfortunately, the tune did not manage to properly conquer the American charts — not because of the lyrics, but because of the lack of an instantly gripping hook — and the album in general became a commercial disappointment, heralding the establishment of The Great Cher Sinusoid, wobbling between success and failure with almost befuddling regularity. Well, actually, the regularity becomes less befuddling when you realize it simply took time for her to catch up, and in late '66, she had problems with that. I mean, even Donovan was already way beyond pallid Dylan imitations like ʽCatch The Windʼ in late 1966, so come on already. Thumbs down.

WITH LOVE, CHER (1967)

1) You Better Sit Down Kids; 2) But I Can't Love You More; 3) Hey Joe; 4) Mama (When My Dollies Have Children); 5) Behind The Door; 6) Sing For Your Supper; 7) Look At Me; 8) There But For Fortune; 9) I Will Wait For You; 10) The Times They Are A-Changin'.

I think this must have been the time when Sonny and Cher began dressing in ridiculous furs to boost their hip credibility, but also releasing anti-drug statements to bring it back down. Anyway, With Love, Cher is an important landmark — not only is its first side arguably the finest Cher side released up to that date, but it's almost as if Sonny finally found a style for her. With the exception of ʽHey Joeʼ (which is ridiculous, but isn't that bad, by the way — decent combo of bluesy lead guitar with orchestration), the first four songs, three of them written by Sonny and one by master songwriter Graham Gouldman, are interesting cases of not-too-banal art-pop, with sentimental stories told in the form of mini-suites, with actual musical development, unpredictable mood shifts and... well, intelligence.

The Gouldman song, ʽBehind The Doorʼ, is the most ambitious of these, and they dared release it as the first single, though it did not chart — too weird for Cher, people must have thought: a slow, melancholic, draggy lament, with mandolins a-plenty and the lead singer, apparently, wailing about all the evil things that go on behind locked doors, culminating in lines like "the people are awaiting... and still they go on mating!" Then, suddenly, it breaks into a quasi-Morriconesque Western theme for a dramatic moment, before reverting back to the original formula. If we did not know it was Cher, who really does not discriminate all that well between any kinds of material she is offered, we'd call the tune «emotionally resonant», but as it is, we'd rather exercise caution and just call it «weird», which is, after all, precisely what you'd expect from a soon-to-be 10cc member.

Sonny's songs are certainly less weird, but they're still good. The dramatic waltz ʽMama (When My Dollies Have Babies)ʼ is another of his attempts at monumentally pompous «Euro-art songs», but the multi-layered orchestral arrangements are nothing to laugh at, and even if one thinks that the song contains little of Cher's own soul, it is hard not to feel at least a bit of Sonny's, not to mention some pretty serious composing work. ʽBut I Can't Love You Moreʼ, for all of its Vegasy nature, is still catchy, and the brass / string / guitar arrangement is nothing less than excellent. The song that actually charted was the lightest of them all, ʽYou Better Sit Down Kidsʼ, and once you get used to the odd perspective of Cher singing this breakup tune from the father's point of view (then again, Wikipedia doesn't exactly have a «Cher as a gay icon» page for nothing), it's another cool tune, a bit of «progressive music-hall» with an odd funky-folksy mid-section. No, it hardly conveys all the pains and traumas of divorce, but it's a curious musical experiment.

Bad things wake up and go bump in the night on Side B, by which time Gouldman is no longer there, Sonny is getting tired, and Cher resorts to covering ʽSing For Your Supperʼ (nice try, but with Mama Cass in town, this is like John Lennon trying to battle Muhammad Ali), The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg (no, no, please no!), Phil Ochs (Freedom Fighter Cher on the horizon), and ʽThe Times They Are A-Changin'ʼ, even though the times have already changed, and there was hardly any need to keep rubbing that in our noses. All of this stuff is completely expendable and forgettable, and basically reduces the value of the album to that of a small EP. Still, a breakthrough is a breakthrough, and the record does establish a certain «Cher formula» that would last well into the early 1970s, and arguably represents the only things of some artistic worth that she (with a lot of help from her husband) brought into this world, so thumbs up.

BACKSTAGE (1968)

1) Go Now; 2) Carnival (Manhã De Carnaval); 3) It All Adds Up Now; 4) Reason To Believe; 5) Masters Of War; 6) Do You Believe In Magic; 7) I Wasn't Ready; 8) A House Is Not A Home; 9) Take Me For A Little While; 10) The Impossible Dream (The Quest); 11) The Click Song; 12) Song Called Children.

Whatever hope may have been gained with the relative success of With Love was just as easily scattered away with Backstage, the inevitable next dip in quality in this endless win-some-lose-some game. Honestly, it is not easy to understand what they were thinking: this album, in sharp contrast to the previous one, has no original material whatsoever, not a single new Sonny Bono composition, and its choice of covers generally ranges from the tacky to the ridiculous.

Admittedly, the opening cover of ʽGo Nowʼ (probable reasoning behind the inclusion: «The Moody Blues are no longer doing this, so let's grab it before somebody else does!») is surprisingly fine, with an almost dazzlingly complex arrangement of lead organ, brass, and strings, and with Cher herself rising to the challenge — apparently, her natural timbre is just perfect for all these "whoah-oh-oh-oh" bits, and besides, she usually sounds more convincing when telling somebody to go rather than stay, so it's okay. It's a powerhouse of a song that is well suited to her personality, even if it was a little strange to try and rekindle the old flame whose overall relevance had ended with the passing of the original Moody Blues.

But what follows next is misfire after misfire. The theme from Black Orpheus, neither properly Latin in nature nor passionate in execution. Tim Hardin's beautiful ʽReason To Believeʼ, performed by a well-meaning string quintet but sung without an ounce of real interest. Dylan's ʽMasters Of Warʼ, oddly reinvented as a sitar drone — I think Cher tried to think of herself as Joan Baez when doing it, but she still has a hard time mustering the tense hatred necessary to make this song work on the alleged gut level. The Lovin' Spoonful's ʽDo You Believe In Magic?ʼ, slowed and softened up — I'd never think that this song, one of the catchiest tunes of its epoch, could ever be murdered by anything short of being reinvented as a combo of generic synth-pop and hair metal, but apparently, all it takes is turning all the instrumental and vocal hooks into sonic mush, and that is precisely what is being done here.

Worst of all, if you really needed a perfect signal here of the «Not To Be Taken Seriously!» variety, she gives it in the form of a cover of Miriam Makeba's ʽThe Click Songʼ — why? The lady does her best to learn the few necessary lines phonetically, but, of course, she is unable to pronounce even a single click, and the whole thing is 1968's musical equivalent of amusing people by putting on blackface (in the same year, that is). The most amazing thing is that they actually put it out as the first single from the album — probably the single not just most tasteless, but also the most commercially suicidal decision in Cher's career up to that point. Of course, the single did not even begin to chart, and I would not be surprised to learn that it may have made a laughing stock out of the artist at that moment (this was, after all, before "Cher" and "Las Vegas kitsch" became near-perfect synonyms).

Overall, the only recommendable tracks remain the opener and the closer: Bob West's ʽSong Called Childrenʼ is another excellent example of baroque instrumentation — a small chamber ensemble combining neo-romanticism with neo-classicism and providing a great background against which Cher's melodramatic delivery, mechanical as it is, acquires a certain epic quality. (Unfortunately, not having heard the original, I cannot say just how original this particular musical arrangement is, but in any case, it has a breath of its own, regardless of whoever is singing on top of it — a saving grace for all these early Cher albums in general: some of the arrangements by the Wrecking Crew and other musicians stand the test of time much better than the singer's cool-calm-collected anti-emotionality).

In a way, Backstage closes the door on the first period of Cher's solo career — jamming a few toes in the progress. As long as Sonny could still write inventive baroque-pop ballads for her, the results could be at least mildly touching; once things were out of his hands, no amount of 18th century strings could save us from the schmaltz. Things were bound to reach nadir sooner or later, and there is nothing that could save Backstage from an embarrassed thumbs down, yet its critical and commercial success did some good at least inasmuch as they gave the lady a pretext to cast off some of her musical past, and open up the next, and arguably the most interesting and redeeming chapter of that strange career.

3614 JACKSON HIGHWAY (1969)

1) For What It's Worth; 2) (Just Enough To Keep Me) Hangin' On; 3) (Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay; 4) Tonight I'll Be Staying With You; 5) I Threw It All Away; 6) I Walk On Guilded Splinters; 7) Lay Baby Lay; 8) Please Don't Tell Me; 9) Cry Like A Baby; 10) Do Right Woman, Do Right Man; 11) Save The Children.

Common wisdom often rates this as the finest record in Cher's career, and that might not be far from the truth. According to Cher herself, she did not have any objections to hardening up her sound at the time — Sonny did, though, and as long as he at least compensated for that by writing good songs for her to sing, it was okay; but when he did not, the results were embarrassing, as on Backstage. So sometime in 1969, as their contracts expired, Cher finally took a break from Sonny's guidance, got herself a solo contract with Atlantic, and went to the Muscle Shoals Studio to make a brand new record with a brand new sound.

The result — a combination of the Muscle Shoals session band, easily the hottest R&B combo in 1969, and of Cher's iron-lady voice — may not be particularly stellar, but it did somehow bring out the best in Cher, as her singing suddenly becomes more self-confident, full of purpose, versatile, and, most importantly, well attuned to the music. As I already said several times, she is never at her best when playing vulnerable or sentimental, but she can really hit it off with aggression and power, and that definitely combines better with funky riffage and cocky brass blasts than gallant baroque-pop arrangements. So, even if it may be a rather banal choice to cover ʽFor What It's Worthʼ, right from the opening bars of syncopated acoustic guitar you get the feeling that "there's something happening here"; and when she sings "there's a man with a gun over there, telling me I've got to beware...", it's like "...telling ME I've got to beware? Does he have any idea who he's messing with in the first place?", and that's when you get The Click and the rest of the album rolls on smoothly.

Of course, not everything is perfect, and there'll always be some sentimental balladry to spoil the day, but the album will be remembered not for the sentimental balladry, but for really tough stuff like the cover of Dr. John's ʽI Walk On Guilded Splintersʼ, where the combination of the threatening hard rock riff with Cher's tough-guy delivery is honestly ravaging — I mean, she has absolutely zero of that voodoo angle of Dr. John's, and it's impossible to take her "Je suis le grand zombie!" literally, but as a general allegory of her toughness, well... "I wanna see my enemies on the end of my rope" hardly sounds like an empty threat. Too bad they did not include more tracks like this — it's totally the kind of swaggery stuff that the woman was born for, and one song she could really steal away from the originator.

Still, there's plenty of ballsy stuff on the rest of the record, and, amazingly, some of the best numbers are three Dylan covers, all of them from the recently released Nashville Skyline: solid rhythm section, tasty slide guitar licks, pompous brass fanfare, and powerhouse vocals transform ʽTonight I'll Be Staying Here With Youʼ, ʽI Threw It All Awayʼ, and ʽLay Lady Layʼ (the latter appropriately — semantically, if not phonetically — converted to ʽLay Baby Layʼ) into brazen anthems instead of quiet country ditties that they used to be, and they're all excellent, as Cher gets into all three tracks with verve, not to mention aggressive femininity. Even more curiously, she gets in credible renditions of Otis Redding (ʽDock Of The Bayʼ) and Aretha (ʽDo Right Womanʼ) that you'd probably never think her capable of in the early days — although one must always remember to give proper credit to the musicians, providing the ideal bedrock for her to rise to the challenge and pump out some extra voltage on those vocals.

I am almost embarrassed to admit that the last and most explicitly soulful track, Eddie Hinton's ʽSave The Childrenʼ, generates a genuine emotional response despite an aura of soapiness around it (no, it's not about Ethiopia, it's about putting off a divorce so as not to leave the kids without a daddy), even though Cher can still sound a bit wooden in places, and "pleading Cher" is nowhere near as convincing by definition as "threatening Cher". Still, they help her out with a turbulent string arrangement and the closest thing they can find to a grand finale on the whole, and besides, considering how much Sonny was (reportedly) cheating on his wife at the time (while she was pregnant with Chaz — oh look, we're going all tabloid here), you can understand how she might have easily identified with the song's sentiment.

Overall, it does not really matter how much control she had during the recording of 3614 Jackson Highway — even if Jerry Wexler had all of it, that would only be for the better, since the man found her the right band and the right songs to cover. Reportedly, Sonny, despite standing there together with everybody and grinning at us on the front cover, felt himself shut out and never liked the record all that much, but hey, serves you right, man — (a) don't cheat on your wife and (b) don't make her cover Miriam Makeba and Black Orpheus. Isn't this what "a little respect when you come home" was all about in the first place? Thumbs up.

GYPSYS, TRAMPS & THIEVES (1971)

1) The Way Of Love; 2) Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves; 3) He'll Never Know; 4) Fire & Rain; 5) When You Find Out Where You're Goin' Let Me Know; 6) He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother; 7) I Hate To Sleep Alone; 8) I'm In The Middle; 9) Touch And Go; 10) One Honest Man.

The Seventies started on a high note for Cher, what with the popularity of The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour — and, most importantly, with the release of Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves, an album very different from the rockier sounds of 3614 Jackson Highway, but, surprisingly, of as high quality as a Vegasy album of show tunes and ballads could possibly get. And it is not a matter of musicianship (fairly ordinary for its times), nor of particularly great songwriting (Sonny's songs are not featured on the original album at all, except for two bonus tracks on the UK release); mostly, it is a matter of getting Cher in good form, so that she can deliver some of these tunes as if her very life depended on it.

I mean the title track first and foremost, of course — written by Bob Stone and originally titled ʽGypsys, Tramps And White Trashʼ before the producer demanded something a little less offensive for the title. It's a nice pop song by itself, but something clicked, and Cher sounds even more powerful and angry here than she did on ʽI Walk On Guilded Splintersʼ: perhaps digging into her real (and quite troubled) childhood for inspiration, she is totally convincing when singing "I was born in the wagon of a traveling show" — then again, the song's chorus ("they'd call us gypsys, tramps and thieves / but every night all the men would come around / and lay their money down") could be said to allegorically describe Sonny & Cher's career up to that point, in a way, so it's not that surprising to witness her getting into the performance with such verve.

The same arrangement style («lush» production, steeped in acoustic guitars, strings, and woodwinds) is employed for almost all the tracks, but emphasis is never taken away from Cher's vocals, which are, as if by magic, liberated — for instance, she transforms James Taylor's quiet (and, honestly, quite plain and boring) ʽFire And Rainʼ into a powerstorm, with an awesome use of overtones that make that voice sound bass-deep and sky-high at the same time. ʽHe Ain't Heavy, He's My Brotherʼ does not work nearly as well as the Hollies' version (possibly because it's really more of a «male song», and Cher makes the mistake of singing it in her lowest register in order to sound more «male», which is a bit embarrassing), but she more than makes up for it with the upbeat-catchy cover of Peggy Clinger's ʽI Hate To Sleep Aloneʼ, and particularly with Ginger Greco's ʽOne Honest Manʼ — that one's almost as much of a keeper as the title track: "But I can't find one honest man / Why can't I find one honest man?" is a killer chorus, no doubt, once again inspired by real life events (curious that Sonny never raised a fuss about the song being on the record — then again, he wasn't that much in control by that point).

The only song that I actively dislike on the album is its second single — ʽThe Way Of Loveʼ, adapted from a 1960 French original (ʽJ'Ai Le Mal De Toiʼ), another one of those puffed-up French torch ballads that you either have a craving for or tend to dismiss because of their corniness. Personally, even despite the powerful singing, I'd throw it in the wastebasket along with all of her previous French material, and concentrate on the other nine songs, all of which are less pompous and do not come across as cheap tear-jerkers. In any case, they're generally faster, tougher, poppier, and snappier than standard Vegas schlock, so even if the arrangements on the album never go beyond orchestrated soft-rock, the album as a whole does not give the impression of being ready made for one of those glitzy Cher galas where she'd be dressed up like an Amazonian princess in heat.

UK listeners actually got an even better deal out of it: the US release was drastically short (just five short songs on each side), but the UK version had a Sonny song appended on each side — ʽClassified 1Aʼ, with a completely different, piano-based arrangement, was a ballad sung from the perspective of a soldier wounded in the Vietnam war (not one of Cher's best vocals, though: too operatic and leaden), and ʽDon't Put It On Meʼ was a percussion-heavy folk-pop song with curious key and time signature changes all over the place — melodically, one of the most experimental numbers ever written by Sonny. On the other hand, though, both of those tunes are totally incompatible with the overall style of Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves — it is clearly seen that they come from a different place and with a different attitude. In any case, either edition gets a very strong thumbs up. If you're up for a bit of soft rock with a hard-sung edge, give this one a try: it does not have the rocking power of its predecessor, but still manages to hit hard in quite a few spots — possibly the most «human» album of Cher's entire career.

FOXY LADY (1972)

1) Living In A House Divided; 2) It Might As Well Stay Monday; 3) Song For You; 4) Down, Down, Down; 5) Don't Try To Close A Rose; 6) The First Time; 7) Let Me Down Easy; 8) If I Knew Then; 9) Don't Hide Your Love; 10) Never Been To Spain.

With a title like that, you might be expecting a bunch of tight, hot, sweaty Hendrix covers, but no dice. Once again, the album was produced by Snuff Garrett, with only marginal involvement from Sonny, yet the results were much less satisfactory than on the previous record. Two reasons come to mind immediately. First, the arrangements have become much more schmaltzy, with excessive use of Vegasy orchestration overshadowing the basic melodies — and second, Cher herself has become much more schmaltzy. The entire record, for crying out loud, sounds like one big rehearsal for an upcoming Vegas gig.

The best song of the lot is probably the first one, ʽLiving In A House Dividedʼ; although written by corporate songwriter Tom Bahler, it was a totally appropriate choice for Cher to sing, considering her strained relationship with Sonny at the time. However, the arrangement is dreadfully generic, and the vocal performance is completely unconvincing — again, Cher finds it hard to express broken-hearted suffering, trying to compensate for this with a powerhouse screamfest, but ultimately she just ends up stuck somewhere between pain and anger, and the emotional potential of the tune ends up wasted. (Compare ʽGypsys, Tramps & Thievesʼ, where the anger mode worked to near-perfection).

And yet, the tune is still better than almost anything on this collection of mostly boring, hyper-orchestrated musical slush where everything goes wrong — mediocre songs, by-the-book arrangements, uninvolved singing. Leon Russell's ʽA Song For Youʼ is another possible exception, but the song has been covered by just about everybody on Earth, so why would you want to add a Cher version? At least somebody like Karen Carpenter could capture all of its nuances and make it sound like a dialog between her two inner selves — Cher knows nothing about nuances, and besides it's almost impossible to picture her being "alone now and singing this song for you", considering how natural it is for her to "act out my life on stages with 10,000 people watching".

There is no need whatsoever to comment on all the other schlock here; the main problem is not the songs, the main problem is the performer — she cannot even show a decent sense of humor on Hoyt Axton's ʽNever Been To Spainʼ, a cool demonstration of friendly ignorance and endearing nonchalance on which she ends up badly overacting and ruining the joke. (Granted, it's not as bad as the far more popular Three Dog Night cover, but only because Cher as a concept by which we measure our pain is vastly preferable to Three Dog Night in the same function in general). The only thing left to do, really, is just wonder at how they could miss the point so badly second time around — but then, the Sixties already showed us that the Cher story would always be a random lottery of many losses and few wins, and Foxy Lady, alas, initiates yet another losing streak, not to mention firmly cementing the dame's Seventies' image as that of a glam Vegas queen. Which worked all right for her at the time, to be sure, but now it's thumbs down all the way.

BITTERSWEET WHITE LIGHT (1973)

1) By Myself; 2) I Got It Bad And That Ain't Good; 3) Am I Blue; 4) How Long Has This Been Going On; 5) The Man I Love; 6) Jolson Medley; 7) More Than You Know; 8) Why Was I Born; 9) The Man That Got Away.

Surprisingly, this isn't that bad. Temporarily (actually, for the last time) under Sonny's productive control again, Cher retains the Vegas angle, but now it is applied to material that is more Vegasy by definition — the Great American Songbook — and the entire record is given over to lushly arranged, sprawling, time-taking covers of the Gershwins, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, and other Tin Pan Alley wonders. Of course, for a formerly «rocking» (to some extent) artist to record an album of golden oldies in the middle of 1973 was bound to be a commercial suicide, and so it was — prompting another rift between Cher and Sonny, and the eventual return into the hands of the more «modern-sensitive» Snuff Garrett. But nowadays, as we don't expect all that much from any Cher album by definition, it somehow manages to stand out as a particularly odd curiosity, for at least a couple of reasons.

One: it is curious to hear Cher's powerhouse approach applied to these songs — usually, you hear them as romantic and sentimental, or as melancholic and introspective if they're done by a Billie Holiday, or, you know, Sinatra-style, or Ella-style, but how about hearing them done in "I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in" style? Because most of these Tin Pan Alley creations are really only what the performer makes them — and Cher takes a big whip to all of them and makes them scale epic heights, as if, you know, she was some kind of Juno and the average male protagonist of every song was some kind of Jupiter, and we'd be sitting in the amphitheater and watching them sort it out on Olympus through a looking-glass. (Although that does not prevent her from having her little jokes — it is quite telling that the first song in the ʽAl Jolson Medleyʼ is ʽSonny Boyʼ: "Climb upon my knee, Sonny boy / You are only three, Sonny boy" — I do so hope the dynamic duo made good use of that line on the Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour).

Two: the arrangements. They are actually above the generic Vegasy level, because Sonny Bono, the great lover of complex, multi-layered sound, drags just about every instrument possible in the studio and produces really thick, lush, polyphonic tracks — listen to ʽWhy Was I Bornʼ, for instance, where, in addition to the strings, you have flutes, brass, piano, harps, electric guitar (actually, two electric guitars in a call-and-response session), and once Cher ceases singing, there's also a lengthy semi-psychedelic coda, with each of the instruments forming a gentle swaying wave of its own: honestly, it is hard to imagine the staggering amount of work that must have gone into this arrangement — and for what? Just so that the album could flop, because everybody would predictably concentrate on the a priori foolishness of the idea of Cher singing Tin Pan Alley material?.. Geez, Sonny boy, perhaps you were only three after all.

But on the other hand, it's really not that foolish. The combination of Sonny's production with Cher's Gargantuan vocals results in something that's somewhere half between kitsch and artistic bravery, and besides, you'd need Gargantuan vocals to rise above all the wall-of-sound ruckus created by a dozen or so musicians at once (listen to ʽThe Man I Loveʼ — strings, trumpets, guitars, and piano all compete with each other, caught in a wild bet on who of them, precisely, will be able to drown out Cher's voice... they all lose in the end, as she sustains that last note for about 20 seconds, which, come to think of it, comes a good quarter century before A-ha's ʽSummer Moved Onʼ, so, Morten, eat your Harket out!). So, in the end, there's something good about the idea, even if I can't quite put my finger on it. Really, I can't give the album a thumbs up because, honestly, I, too, couldn't care less about Cher doing the G.A.S., but at least they tried a highly unusual angle here, and it's up to anybody to decide if that angle really means something or if it's just a failed attempt at genre appropriation. In any case, worth hearing at least once.

HALF-BREED (1973)

1) My Love; 2) Two People Clinging To A Thread; 3) Half Breed; 4) The Greatest Song I Ever Heard; 5) How Can You Mend A Broken Heart; 6) Carousel Man; 7) David's Song; 8) Melody (Little Bossa Nova); 9) The Long And Winding Road; 10) This God Forsaken Day; 11) Chastity Sun.

Back into the arms of Snuff Garrett — once the idea of «The Great American Songbook As Reimagined By The Sonny Bono Orchestra And Re-Testosteroned By Cher» turned out to be commercially defunct, Cher decisively ditched Sonny as producer (and, less than a year later, would ditch him as husband) and returned to Mr. Garrett for yet another record of pure Vegasy schlock. On the whole, this one is a tiny bit better than Foxy Lady, yet still nowhere near a return to the moderately high quality of Gypsys.

You can probably sense the difference if you compare the title tracks — both pictured Cher as the abused protagonist in outcast fantasy scenarios, but where ʽGypsies, Tramps & Thievesʼ had a ringing note of truth to it, ʽHalf-Breedʼ is almost purely theatrical, relying more on its pop catchiness than on a nuanced vocal performance. Ironically, of the two, it is ʽHalf Breedʼ that should have struck closer to home — Cher does have some Cherokee ancestry on her mother's side, although I highly doubt it that "the other children always laughed at me / Give her a feather, she's a Cherokee" comes even remotely close to being autobiographical. Nevertheless, the proto-disco strings, the overall arrangement that gives the impression of a poor soundtrack to some blacksploitation movie, and the lack of a particularly striking vocal move prevents the song from being taken too seriously, and puts it too close to the territory of simple vaudeville entertainment.

Not that there's anything wrong with simple vaudeville entertainment, and I do like the song, written for Cher by master entertainer Al Capps — the real problem is that there's not enough of pure, healthily cheesy vaudeville entertainment on the record. Instead, the tracks that draw most of the attention are covers of hit ballads — two McCartney tunes, done decently but unspectacularly (ʽMy Loveʼ is sung well, but that pitiful guitar solo in the middle is a pathetic joke compared to the elegant solo by Henry McCullough on the original release; and ʽThe Long And Winding Roadʼ shouldn't be touched by Cher, who can't do «pleading» to save her life), and one Bee Gees tune, done unconvincingly (again, to do ʽHow Can You Mend A Broken Heartʼ, you have to at least create the illusion that you actually, like, have a broken heart — Cher's heart, meanwhile, always gives the impression of being encrusted with steel plate armor, and its 80-year guarantee has not expired yet).

Of the tracks that draw less attention, only one other is also a piece of bouncy, light-hearted cheese, but this time it pretty much stinks — Johnny Durrill's ʽCarousel Manʼ, another silly tale of outcast life in the Wild West, with not a shred of conviction; and the rest is still more balladry, this time obscure, but probably for a reason. Dick Holler, Jack Segal, pre-Toto David Paich... steady, reliable, sparkless composers as interpreted by a steady, reliable, sparkless singer. The only time she does sparkle is at the very end, when she takes a recent Seals & Crofts song and re-writes it as ʽChastity Sunʼ, dedicating it to her daughter (not particularly relevant now that the daughter is no longer a daughter, but it's fun how, what with Chaz Bono's sex change adventure and all, the words "When I look at you / In your eyes I see / The world that God meant to be" now take on a starkly progressive meaning) — anyway, that song is probably the only one on the whole album where Cher stops being Cher for a moment and becomes a genuinely loving mother, even finding it in herself to introduce a little falsetto during the tenderest moments.

Still, one sweet moment, scattered bits of cheesy entertainment, and a few (botched) megahits with originally great melodies do not earn Half-Breed a lot of respectability — on the whole, it's just one more generic early Seventies' LP, aimed at the target audience of the largely unfunny Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, and even the fact that it temporarily put Cher back on the charts again (album sales were much higher than for Bittersweet White Light, and ʽHalf-Breedʼ was a number one for her) does not mean much in the grand scheme of thumbs down.

DARK LADY (1974)

1) Train Of Thought; 2) I Saw A Man And He Danced With His Wife; 3) Make The Man Love Me; 4) Just What I've Been Lookin' For; 5) Dark Lady; 6) Miss Subway Of 1952; 7) Dixie Girl; 8) Rescue Me; 9) What'll I Do; 10) Apples Don't Fall Far From The Tree.

Cher's last album with Snuff Garrett is even campier than Half-Breed, but at this point in her life, the idea of Cher doing ridiculous camp looked more promising than the idea of her doing romantic ballads — if you're gonna go Vegas, at least do it burlesque style, rather than sink in boring sentimentalism (ʽI Saw A Man And He Danced With His Wifeʼ). The hit single, this time around, did not even pretend to seriousness: where ʽGypsys, Tramps & Thievesʼ and ʽHalf-Breedʼ gave thin hints at «autobiographic» potential (or at least could metaphorically relate to the singer's personal history in some way), ʽDark Ladyʼ is simply a tongue-in-cheek mock-murder ballad with corny gypsy overtones and a super-catchy chorus — total kitsch, exploiting every lyrical and musical cliché in the book, impossible to take seriously ("the fortune queen of New Orleans was brushing her cat in her black limousine" — the first two lines pretty much say it all), but with a strangely lively pulse through it all: enough to drive the single all the way to No. 1, giving the lady her second mega-success in a row after ʽHalf-Breedʼ... and then it would be her last No. 1 until ʽBelieveʼ opened a whole new wide world for her and Autotune.

There are a few tunes here that are honestly better than ʽDark Ladyʼ: ʽTrain Of Thoughtʼ, written by Alan O'Day, is a fine, fast-tempo R&B number, late Elvis style, with cool orchestral swoops and a genuine powerhouse vocal (while the story of betrayal on ʽDark Ladyʼ is just too crude to be believable, it's always great to hear Cher bawling at her adulterous man on general principles, and ʽTrain Of Thoughtʼ gives her a great opportunity to set her entire army on poor Sonny). ʽMiss Subway Of 1952ʼ is not half-bad if you like good old fashioned music hall (think Ray Davies and ʽShe's Bought A Hat Like Princess Marinaʼ), and the cover of Fontella Bass' ʽRescue Meʼ... well, the best thing about it is that it taught me about the original, which is better (although it is almost the same song as Otis Redding's ʽI Can't Turn You Looseʼ), but Cher's version here benefits from a well-expanded brass section that would probably have been impossible in 1965, so... OK.

Nothing else stands out, honestly: a bunch of plastic ballads from all ages (including Irving Berlin's ʽWhat'll I Doʼ, because it had just been used in The Great Gatsby, so why pass up on a good opportunity?) and some lackluster pop with titles like ʽApples Don't Fall Far From The Treeʼ that are the most memorable thing about the song. Altogether, in terms of consistency Dark Lady is perhaps a bit of an improvement on Half-Breed (one really good song, one decent cover, two guilty campy pleasures), but who really cares? Both of these records are decent restaurant level entertainment, nothing else. You know what is the most important credit on the entire album? «Dress: Calvin Klein». I don't even have any idea about who plays what, but they're totally right, it's all about the dress.

STARS (1975)

1) Love Enough; 2) Bell Bottom Blues; 3) These Days; 4) Mr. Soul; 5) Just This One Time; 6) Geronimo's Cadillac; 7) The Bigger They Come The Harder They Go; 8) Love Hurts; 9) Rock And Roll Doctor; 10) Stars.

This is a curious one. With Cher's divorce finalized at last, she became involved with David Geffen, who got her out of her old MCA contract and procured a new one for her — with Warner Bros., sort of implying that the woman should now be able to shake off her vaudevillian image and get serious. And for a while, she did: getting away not just from Sonny, but from Snuff Garrett as well, she teamed up with Jimmy Webb (a far more serious producer, not to mention songwriter) and, in the place of fluffy oldies and corporate corn, independently selected a bunch of serious material to cover. Just look at that track listing — Derek & The Dominos, Buffalo Springfield, Janis Ian, Little Feat, Jackson Browne (actually, ʽThese Daysʼ is even more associated with Nico, who recorded it first), Jimmy Cliff? That's some goddamn taste out there, even if the album sleeve still leaves a lot to be desired.

More importantly, there are some nifty touches that actually make some of these covers interesting — I do not know for how many of them Cher might be directly responsible, but this is of little significance, as long as she has a wise guiding hand behind her. ʽBell Bottom Bluesʼ, in particular, might be the best ever cover of this song — not only because the lead singer finds herself capable of genuine emotion (she shakes, quivers, screams, in short, does everything in her power to sound more like a real human being than a Dark Plastic Queen), but also because of the backing vocals singing "I don't want to fade away..." in a much more inventive and gripping manner than on the original — the second repeat, with a falsetto rise to imitate the "fade away" aspect, is just gorgeous. Throw in some classy lead guitar work, first time in ages (probably courtesy of Jesse Ed Davis, who is credited for lead guitar on the album in general), and there you go — something that the artist can actually be proud of; never in a million years would I have suggested on my own that she'd get away with this kind of soulfulness.

Next to this obvious highlight, the other choices are not as immediately striking, but in most cases, she gets the vibe right. ʽThese Daysʼ is, of course, more tender and less claustrophobic than the Nico version, what with all the strings and dawn-announcing horns and elegant, minimalistic steel guitar solos, but then, the song is about convalescing after an emotional breakdown, after all, and from that point of view, Cher might be truer to the original message of the song than Nico was (because for Nico, the process of «emotional convalescing» usually implies moving from a rougher to a slightly more comfortable coffin). ʽMr. Soulʼ, with its bitter, sarcastic tone, is just the kind of rocker almost custom-made for Cher to cover, and she gives a cool-as-heck performance (although, yes, we'd all probably love more feedback on the guitar riff). Even Little Feat's ʽRock And Roll Doctorʼ is a hoot, and you actually get to hear Cher in «barking» mode, probably feeling more alive during the recording that she had in years.

As for lush, bombastic orchestrated ballads, Webb's own ʽJust This One Timeʼ should probably be mentioned, not because it is a great song in itself, but because it features Cher in «diva mode», suddenly discovering a whole new octave to her voice and stunning us all with some proto-Mariah Carey falsettos (which, in 1975, were still nowhere near the same level of cliché that they became twenty – thirty years later). Not so clear about the title track, which, besides its author Janis Ian, is also typically associated with Nina Simone, and both of them did stripped-down (acoustic guitar and piano respectively) versions of it, whereas Cher, of course, gives it the full treatment, guitar and piano, and rhythm section, and lush strings — the thing is, this is one of those songs that is completely dependent on atmosphere and interpretation, and in Cher's version, I do not see any specific elements of interpretation that would rise above the average «lush-strings-and-deep-voice» type of seduction. But at least it doesn't suck or anything.

In any case, there's enough progress and depth on Stars to qualify it as a bona fide thumbs up type of album. Of course, it still flopped: fans of Comedy Hour were most likely disappointed not to find another ʽHalf-Breedʼ or ʽDark Ladyʼ on here, whereas people looking for serious art had given up on Cher a long time ago, and could not be coaxed into giving her one more chance just because, all of a sudden, she started selecting serious authors for her cover material — besides, 1975 may have been just a little too late to try and establish herself as an old-fashioned interpreter of singer-songwriter stuff, considering that «strong solo female artists for the demanding taste» were already beginning to look like Patti Smith rather than Janis Ian. Unfortunately, once again, just like the failure of Jackson Highway in 1969 had derailed her from the right path, so did the failure of Stars once again put her on the fluffy vaudeville track, and again it would now take another half a decade for another botched attempt at seriousness...

I'D RATHER BELIEVE IN YOU (1976)

1) Long Distance Love Affair; 2) I'd Rather Believe In You; 3) I Know (You Don't Love Me No More); 4) Silver Wings And Golden Rings; 5) Flashback; 6) It's A Cryin' Shame; 7) Early Morning Strangers; 8) Knock On Wood; 9) Spring; 10) Borrowed Time.

So, with the commercial failure of Stars, Cher was once again put in the hands of calculating craftsmen rather than people with a nobler understanding of music — for her second Warner Bros. album, the producers were Steve Barri (who'd previously worked with various bubblegum acts, mostly) and Michael Omartian (a session keyboardist and Christian disco-rock artist with album titles like Adam Again!); their main joint claim to fame up to that date was collaboration within the band Rhythm Heritage, remembered mostly for the ʽTheme From S.W.A.T.ʼ (of course, «remembered» is probably a rather strong word here).

The logical expectation here would be an all-out disco album, but apparently the time was not quite ripe yet — this was, after all, still a pre-Saturday Night Fever kind of world, and so there is really only one song that borders on disco, without yet embracing all of its stereotypes: ʽLong Distance Love Affairʼ, a surprisingly catchy and turbulent pop-rocker that aspires to conveying some genuine emotional turbulence — with a grappling instrumental string break and a pretty damn good performance from Cher himself: songs about adultery, even long-distance one, have always seemed right up her alley anyway. (Basically, she always sounds more convincing when she sings about cheating rather than when she sings about being cheated, even if in real life it was usually the other way around).

Most of the other dance-pop numbers on the record, curiously enough, are oldies: decent, but unspectacular covers of ʽI Know (You Don't Love Me No More)ʼ and ʽKnock On Woodʼ, as well as a take on the poorly remembered Gayle McCormick hit ʽIt's A Cryin' Shameʼ. She gives all of these a pleasant, listenable Cher coating, and the arrangements, replete with funky guitars, loud brass, and agile rhythm sections, all reflect good mid-Seventies craft. But the only other song that manages to stand out a little is ʽFlashbackʼ, a new composition by Artie Wayne that combines elements of pop balladry and funk with creative arranging touches (harpsichords? ghostly electric guitar sighs in the background? bring 'em on!) and a great chorus hook — Cher's "...and I flashback!.." with a meaningful pause after the two big beats is arguably the most attention-drawing moment of the album, and, on the whole, ʽFlashbackʼ is closer to «art-pop» than anything else on here, a classy song that could have gone down in history as a major highlight of the 1970s had it been done by any other artist.

Everything else, including the title track, is in the balladry camp, and not very interesting: ten years later, this stuff would have been presented in the shape of pop-metallic power ballads and sound disgusting — here, it just sounds okay, with strings, pianos, horns, and gospel background vocals creating a decent generic ambience. ʽBorrowed Timeʼ, concluding the album, seems catchier to me than the rest, but that's not saying much. They do not irritate, and that's the best I can say about all of them. Overall, I am surprised at how okayish the record is as a whole, and ʽLong Distance Love Affairʼ with ʽFlashbackʼ probably belong on any reasonable Cher anthology, even though, frankly speaking, they don't have that much to do with Cher as an artist... but then again, what does? Other than that, I'd rather believe in somebody else.

CHERISHED (1977)

1) Pirate; 2) He Was Beautiful; 3) War Paint And Soft Feathers; 4) Love The Devil Out Of Ya; 5) She Loves To Hear The Music; 6) L. A. Plane; 7) Again; 8) Dixie; 9) Send The Man Over; 10) Thunderstorm.

Much to Cher's honor, this seems to have been the only album of hers released so far to have a pun in the title, as endless as the possibilities are (off the top of my head: 10 Golden Cher-ries, Mon Cher Ami, Go Cher-ry Coupe Now, Cher-ade, and, of course, the queen of 'em all, Ochi Cher-nyje! Hmm, come to think of it, she wasn't saddled with all these songs of Cher-okee origins for nothing, either). But the title is not the only hint at desperation that seems to have gripped the Cher camp as two of her albums in a row flopped so badly — Snuff Garrett is back, obviously in a last-minute attempt to put her back on the track with another hit single of the ʽHalf-Breedʼ or ʽDark Ladyʼ caliber.

Unfortunately, it did not help this time. All faith was put in ʽPirateʼ, another soapy tale relying on romantic clichés from the pre-industrial past (and yes, the song even opens with the sound of seagulls — how fortunate for them that they did not have this idea three years back, or else we'd probably have ʽHalf-Breedʼ opening with an Indian war cry), and it is a dutifully catchy proto-power ballad with a nice singalong chorus (and a really silly accordeon part to boot — I'm not sure if Captain Flint or Henry Morgan were such big fans of the accordeon...), but, alas, it has neither the personal angle of ʽGypsiesʼ and ʽHalf-Breedʼ nor the fun aspect of ʽDark Ladyʼ; and although I'm fairly sure that there were much, much cheesier tunes to have charted in 1979, it is probably no accident that ʽPirateʼ ultimately did not make it, barely scratching the Top 100.

The second single was even less lucky: ʽWar Paint And Soft Feathersʼ is a shameless attempt to cash in on the fond memory for ʽHalf-Breedʼ by rewarding us with a literal pulpy Romeo-and-Juliet story in two Indian tribes. With awful lyrics and a cheap vaudeville flair, this must have been Cher's worst single release in a long, long time, and even Snuff Garrett should have been ashamed of that one, not to mention all the honest people in Indian reservations throughout the US, who should have probably barred Cher from their casinos for life.

Honestly, I don't even have any ideas about who most of those songwriters are — Steve Dorff? Gloria Sklerov? Gary Harju? Whatever. Warner Bros. may have had their reasons for being angry about Cher's albums flopping one after another, but they share the blame themselves: couldn't they find somebody at least marginally more talented to provide the lady with new material? The only songwriter here who looks like he's at least trying is Johnny Durrill, the author of ʽDark Ladyʼ: he is responsible for what is probably the best tune — the fluffy, but funny ʽLove The Devil Out Of Yaʼ, beginning like a slow boring ballad but then picking up speed and leading to a danceable, cuddly chorus with some endearing vocal moves (the accappella falsetto rainbow of "shine above ya this angel...", interrupting the discoish flow, is really endearing). And as much as I hate to admit that a Cher song called ʽDixieʼ and beginning with the line "Wish I was in the land of cotton..." could be any good, it is — the string arrangement in the chorus is quite unusual, with a tinge of psychedelia, and the build-up and resolution are quite... um... emotional?

The most «interesting» tune is probably ʽSend The Man Overʼ, co-written by Garrett himself: its tale of a struggling actress, stuck between stardom and whoredom, clearly sounds related (only tangentially, of course, but still...) to Cher's current predicament, and with each chorus concluding with a rather desperate appeal to "send the man over, I guess, with a script... and the cash!", you could almost find yourself empathizing for the poor thing. (Not that she was particularly striving for cash at the time — on the contrary, her glamorous extravagance was legendary — but hey, it does hurt when your albums do not sell, even if you're already loaded. A matter of hurt pride at least. We're all human, even if Cher may ultimately constitute a separate subspecies).

On the whole, despite the shortness of the LP and a few decent tunes, Cherished is definitely a thumbs down kind of record — the old Snuff Garrett albums could be redeemed by their kitsch, but this is like an unfunny parody on kitsch, and too much of the material just sounds like weak, half-assed imitations of contemporary sounds from ABBA or Olivia Newton-John (regardless of our critical opinion on these artists, they at least always sounded like they knew exactly what they were doing and where they were going, whereas Cher here just seems lost most of the time). Had she been more in control of her personal life in 1977, this may have been less of a disaster, but the times were confusing, and what can you expect from a glamorous vaudeville star marrying a technically incompatible Southern rock icon anyway?

TAKE ME HOME (1979)

1) Take Me Home; 2) Wasn't It Good; 3) Say The Word; 4) Happy Was The Day We Met; 5) Git Down (Guitar Groupie); 6) Love And Pain; 7) Let This Be A Lesson To You; 8) It's Too Late To Love Me Now; 9) My Song (Too Far Gone).

This was a significant commercial rebound for Cher, and I think I know why — if you were a hot-blooded young male back in 1979 and you went in a record shop and you saw that album cover and it said TAKE ME HOME on it, well, not doing so would be like disobeying a direct order from your superior. And you could actually get away with it because it wasn't porn, it was art, even though you'd probably still have to look away and whistle a merry tune while the clerk was checking it out for you at the counter.

An inferior hypothesis says that the album (and especially the title track as its lead single) sold well because it had Cher finally going disco, and yes, ʽTake Me Homeʼ (the song) is like the distant ancestor of ʽBelieveʼ, Cher's fully fledged introduction to the world of hot-sweaty dance-pop; but then, almost everybody was going disco in 1979, and not everybody was able to make it up the charts, so I still hold my ground that it was the Golden Butterfly outfit paired with the lady's usual ice-cold look that did most of the job. Never was so much flesh bared before, and even though in terms of raciness she'd outdo herself on the next album, there's something unique about this combination of Conan the Barbarian paraphernalia and the deadpan stare that must have fascinated pop culture addicts back in the day.

Oh, and once you're done, there's some music, too. Everything is contributed by contemporary outside songwriters; the first side of the album is completely given over to disco workouts, but the second side is more diverse, leaning heavier on older styles of funk and R&B and weaving in some balladry for a change. Amazingly, it's not as bad as one might think — if we judge disco by its basic fun quotient (and that's probably the only way to judge disco), the songs on the first side really try to entertain. ʽTake Me Homeʼ, agreeing with the trend, is stretched out to almost seven minutes, and the instrumental section in the middle shows some impressive musicianship — a steady, gritty rhythm track with formulaic, but captivating string swoops and flows. And although Cher's vocals seem to aim for a sentimental effect, this does not hurt the overall light fun atmosphere of the song. The same goes for everything else — decent rhythms, catchy choruses, and unpretentious carelessness is the word of the day: generic, but professional and almost never irritating (I think that the electronically treated «meet-your-subconscious» background vocals on ʽWasn't It Goodʼ are the only element here that transcends the permissible level of corniness, but we can all just pretend that we haven't heard them in the first place).

The second side, however, even goes as far as to feature a couple of really good songs: ʽGit Down (Guitar Groupie)ʼ trades in sentimentalism for a harsher, rockier sound, and Cher really gets into the atmosphere with her impersonation of a "lady from the valley / Coming out to check a band". It's a little sexy, a little sarcastic, a little silly, and everybody lets his / her hair down for a while, with frenetic (but not yet hair-metal-level) guitar soloing, wild piano banging, and a big step away from the over-glossed, no-risk-taking sound of Side A. And then there's Tom Snow's ʽLet This Be A Lesson To Youʼ, a funky, New Orleanian pop-rocker with a simple, but irresistible singalong chorus — not to mention that, as usual, Cher is always at her best when she is the dominatrix, not the love slave.

As for the ballads, we could all be very happy without ʽLove And Painʼ which goes as far as to rip off a whole complete line from Badfinger's ʽWithout Youʼ ("well I guess that's just the way my story goes" — well I guess we could call it an intertextual quotation, but the entire song feels like an inferior rip-off in the end), but at the end there's a little bit of enjoyable acoustic sweetness: ʽMy Song (Too Far Gone)ʼ is a completely autobiographical song about the end of her ill-fated alliance with Gregg Allman, with lyrics penned by Cher herself and melodic assistance offered by Mark and Brett Hudson of the Hudson Brothers (Mark Hudson would later go on to have a devil affair with Aerosmith, contributing to their artistic demise, and an angel affair with Ringo Starr, contributing to his artistic revival — go figure). It's touching because, technically, it's just another ballad in her usual story-telling vein, but this time you know it's all for real, and it almost redeems for how the album started out on such a completely artificial note.

Bottomline, never mind the album sleeve (or, rather, never mind it in terms of musical relevance; it must have had a special meaning for the ʽPictures Of Lilyʼ fanclub): the album itself is nowhere near as bad as it could have been, and, overall, it is definitely more fun than Cherished: Cher's personality does get dissipated behind the disco gloss, but, first of all, I've heard much worse disco gloss, and second, she never had that much personality in the first place to hold a mourning service or anything. And at least I'd be happy to have ʽGit Downʼ, ʽLet This Be A Lesson To Youʼ, and ʽMy Songʼ on any reasonable career overview.

PS. For a special review of the infamous «Allman And Woman» project, Two The Hard Way, you'll have to wait until I get around to Gregg Allman's solo career, since it's more of a Gregg project than a Cher one.

PRISONER (1979)

1) Prisoner; 2) Holdin' Out For Love; 3) Shoppin'; 4) Boys And Girls; 5) Mirror Image; 6) Hell On Wheels; 7) Holy Smoke; 8) Outrageous.

As ridiculous as it may sound, this album is actually fun, in its own sick demented way. The album sleeve takes us even further than Take Me Home — every time Cher makes yet another speech at some feminist rally these days, please don't forget to bring her an old copy of the record for an autograph — and so does the music, which is still essentially disco, but is now thoroughly mixed with elements of hard rock and bubbly-synthy New Wave. Some critics used this mixture as food for jabbing, accusing the lady of artistic confusion, and while they may have been formally right, I think that the main point of Prisoner is not to find a new musical direction, but to state, as brashly as possible, that «I'm crazy as heck and I want everyone to know it!».

Just look at this — there's not a single ballad on the album, not anywhere in sight. There are songs about ʽShoppin'ʼ (something that she really likes to do, and she's being brutally honest about it), about being ʽOutrageousʼ ("I'm gonna wear what I will and spend some" — you bet she is, even if what she wills consists of nothing but a set of chains and Lady Godiva hair), about representing ʽHell On Wheelsʼ ("Try me on for size at the roll-a-rama!" — yeesh...), and even when she gets around to a bit of tormented introspection, it is still set to a fast tempo and a punchy beat (ʽMirror Imageʼ). It's all about a flurry of rhythms, tempos, loud grooves, screechy solos, and non-stop energy — and, unlike the disco songs on the first side of Take Me Home, these tunes do not sound as if they were made exclusively for the sake of serving as dancefloor fodder. Even if most of them were written by the same songwriting team that served on Take Me Home (Bob Esty and Michele Aller).

ʽHell On Wheelsʼ, released as the first single and glorifying the lady's love for roller-skating (not biking!), is an honestly fun rock-disco hybrid, with several key changes, Van Halen-lite soloing (I think that Toto's Steve Lukather may be responsible for these parts, but not entirely sure), and a fabulous "LOOK OUT!" echoeing across the room as trendy synth explosions imitate the rocket-like propulsion of... well, it's all about life in the fast lane, and Cher does her best to deliver. She still did not manage to propel the song any higher than No. 59 on the charts, but at least it would be higher than anything else from her in the next eight years. And this kind of effort definitely suited her personality better than the second single, ʽHoldin' Out For Loveʼ, co-written by Tom Snow and Cynthia Weil — a somewhat softer, keyboard-based, discoified R&B tune with ugly synth tones for the main riff and an overall tepid delivery.

I mean, it's hilarious all the way, but about half of this record is directly autobiographical and very convincing. ʽShoppin'ʼ might be the best anthem to shoppin' ever recorded — at least, one of the most honest ones ("ooh, they're having a sale — my God, I love sales!"), a clever disco-era update of the decadent-sarcastic cabaret vibe; ʽBoys And Girlsʼ rolls on at an almost insane tempo, way too fast for disco, an exuberant party-pop-rock number with Cher spinning tales of wild, reckless living faster than you could process them; and even when she seems to be making some ecologically conscious statement on ʽHoly Smokeʼ, it is still not entirely clear if she is more concerned about mounting pollution or about mounting gas prices (I would think that in 1979, the latter was of far more concern to the lady than the former).

So, basically, you have to look past the first two tracks (ʽHoldin' Out For Loveʼ and the title track, a rather unremarkable and stereotypical dance number) so as to find a somewhat amusingly underrated and overlooked, superficially personal little record that was probably much more true to the inner state of mind and the casual lifestyle of late 1970s Cher than, say, something like Spirits Having Flown was to late 1970s Bee Gees. To recognize this fact, I give the album a thumbs up where most other reviewers tend to give it one star out of five — even if you are by nature prejudiced against «white disco», Prisoner is not really a proverbial disco album; it's a whacked-out stylistic hybrid that paints a curious, but wholly believable picture of a befuddled socialite on her own highway to hell. It is obviously cheesy to the extreme, but it is far more vibrant, alive, and amusing than most of the lady's best-selling, but lifeless creations that restored her to commercial favor in the late Eighties. Kind of like the equivalent of silly, but fun late 1970s Aerosmith versus... well, you know.

BLACK ROSE (1980)

1) Never Should've Started; 2) Julie; 3) Take It From The Boys; 3) We All Fly Home; 4) 88 Degrees; 5) You Know It; 6) Young And Pretty; 7) Fast Company.

Cher as an «anonymous» member of a fresh young rock band? Come on, you're not fooling anyone — in fact, in 1991, when the album was finally prepared for CD release, the Spectrum label recklessly slapped Cher's face and name on the front cover. But in 1980, somebody somewhere thought that it might be a good idea to re-model Cher after Blondie — a naughty girl fronting a band of dashing, hot-blooded young men: they provide the innovative modern music and she provides the... umm... atmosphere, or something like that.

The basic partnership was between Cher and Les Dudek, an aspiring guitarist who'd already had several unsuccessful solo albums to his name and had played with Boz Scaggs and Steve Miller, among others — meaning that, even though he was eight years younger than Cher herself, there was really no talk of any truly «modernistic» New Wave approach here. The rest of the «Black Rose» band were not that different, either — mostly some unknown session players, occasionally aided by the same players from Toto that had already contributed to previous Cher albums. Who knows, maybe if she'd bothered to find herself a less bland team, the project might have been more successful, or, at the very least, Black Rose might have become one of those «cult» records that certain types of people are fond of rediscovering and reevaluating.

As it is, it's not too bad, but heck, if you're risking your neck on a project like this, you really shouldn't be calling the first track on your first album ʽNever Should've Startedʼ, right? Most of the songs sound like relatively safe, family-friendly late 1970s pop-rock, far heavier on the keyboards than necessary and neither too heavy on the hooks (bad news for lovers of pop) nor on the anger / kick-ass aspect (not surprising, since Cher was never that much of a certified rocker). But on the positive side, there are hooks, and everything is surprisingly listenable, not to mention that it's kinda fun to see Cher loosen up: on ʽNever Should've Startedʼ, she goes from a perturbed falsetto in the quiet first section to a Debbie Harry-like wild cat as the song picks up steam, and that's probably more of a transformation within one song than on any other tune from any previous stage of her career. If only the guitar work were up to that level, and the synthesizers were not so obnoxious, this could have started something.

Arguably the main highlight is ʽJulieʼ, notoriously written by major glam-rock songwriter Mike Chapman with lyrics provided by Bernie Taupin himself (that is where you end when you temporarily suspend your relationship with Elton) — you can sort of tell this ain't no ordinary enterprise with lines like "Well now I know / Julie you're the shape of sin / But I can strut like Bowie / When the line dance begins", not to mention Cher openly calling the protagonist a "lying bitch" (yes, we all know how strongly Bernie feels about women). Throw in the most modern-sounding arrangement on the whole album, with big electronic drums, weirdly warbled guitars, and a subtle robotic effect on Cher's vocals — and you just might have something there. Why wasn't this track released as a single? If you're gonna go odd on your audience, you might as well go all the way.

The other songs all trot along nicely, but there isn't much I could say about them. Cher barks and snaps as best as she can to imitate a tough rock'n'roll girl (especially on ʽTake It From The Boysʼ), but this is never outbalanced with any sense of humor or irony; and when the best riff on the album (ʽFast Companyʼ), upon being turned over to your core memory department, turns out to be a minor variation on Mick Ronson's riff on Bowie's ʽHang On To Yourselfʼ, you know they just aren't doing a very good job nohow. The Dudek dude takes lead vocals on one song (ʽYou Knowʼ), dueting with Cher, but he's one of those deadpan-sincere-sounding romantic guys with a decent set of pipes that all seem like inferior clones of Lou Gramm, so no.

Not that, had they kept it up, this could not have turned into something more impressive... then again, they'd probably have to replace most of the players and start bringing in more daring and competent songwriters, and that would end up an impossibility anyway. Still, whatever be, kudos to Cher anyway for taking the wise decision to break out of the disco trap (an easy decision, considering the overall backlash of 1980) and to not go all electro-pop or «modern R&B» on our asses (a much harder decision, considering that would have probably been the most natural choice for her at the moment, following in the footsteps of many other «divas»). At the very least, this is kind of like a white stone instead of a black one in her career, even if it still does not deserve a proper thumbs up. But look up ʽJulieʼ if you have three and a half minutes of free time.

I PARALYZE (1982)

1) Rudy; 2) Games; 3) I Paralyze; 4) When The Love Is Gone; 5) Say What's On Your Mind; 6) Back On The Street Again; 7) Walk With Me; 8) The Book Of Love; 9) Do I Ever Cross Your Mind.

The only musical change that goes hand in hand with Cher dropping the «I'm just a singer in a rock'n'roll band» slogan is that there is a slight shift of melodic content from guitar to keyboards, but other than that, I Paralyze is pretty much a natural sequel to Black Rose — the lady is trying to adapt to new musical realities without selling out completely to the dance-pop scene. Once again, she has a new record label (Columbia) and a new producer — John Farrar, known for his work with Olivia Newton-John; and, maybe even more importantly, a recognizable songwriter partner amidst a sea of the usual unknown faces — Desmond Child, already established as a respectable money-maker due to ʽI Was Made For Lovin' Youʼ, but still way ahead of his glory years as a systematic cash generator for Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, and Alice Cooper (not to mention Cher herself, whom he would only take to financial heaven in her glam-rock phase).

This album was overlooked upon release and continues to be largely overlooked now, but in all honesty, it is a lot of fun, and it improves upon the formula of Black Rose by not trying so desperately to «rock out» in an environment crawling with members of Toto — and it goes without saying that it is much, much better than anything released by the woman in her big hair glam rock glory days to come. Short, tightly performed, relatively tastefully produced, it follows the ideology of a balanced mix between modernity and retro-ism, and most of the songs are surprisingly catchy, even if they never truly showcase Cher as an artistic individuality (but what does?).

Thus, ʽRudyʼ opens with a pompous piano riff that is highly reminiscent of ABBA and «Europop» in general — not surprising, since it is actually a cover (with a very inane new set of English lyrics) of Dalida's ʽQuand Je N'Aime Plus, Je M'En Vaisʼ from the previous year, but done in a rockier fashion, with a larger guitar presence and with Cher putting a little less gloss on her vocal performance than the French pop star. In contrast, ʽSay What's On Your Mindʼ sounds like an updated take on the classic Motown sound, with one of those upbeat, rhythmic, but tender choruses that used to build up positive vibes in a matter of seconds. And still in contrast, the title track, coming from Farrar's team, is thoroughly New Wave in mood, with cold synthesizers and electronically treated vocals a-plenty, but then it also throws everything else in the mix — soulful vocal harmonies, R&B-ish brass backing, jangly guitars, sound panning, whatever. Clearly the most experimental track here, it failed as a single, probably because the public did not expect this kind of sound from a woman who, only three years ago, was largely busy catching the public eye wearing nothing but gold bikinis or steel chains.

Child's contributions are also surprisingly decent: ʽThe Book Of Loveʼ is a funny attempt to make a New Wave rocker out of a traditional folk ballad melody (Cher even gets to retain a "hey-ho" in the lyrics), and ʽWalk With Meʼ, like ʽRudyʼ, is a good case of a «mammoth pop» arrangement in the Phil Spector tradition, but putting the main piano riff well above everything else in the mix so you don't get to miss the main hook. ʽWhen The Love Is Goneʼ, however, is the first taste of sad things to come — a prototypical slow power ballad with more emphasis on power than melody, though, fortunately, still relatively unspoiled by the worst excesses of Eighties' production. On the other hand, I actually prefer this cover of The Babys' ʽBack On My Feet Againʼ (here retitled as ʽBack On The Street Againʼ) to the original — she sings it with more verve and recklessness than The Babys (who were little more than a Journey clone anyway), and the synth player at least tries to use his instrument creatively, weaving a complex pseudo-baroque-like pattern throughout the song and strengthening its melodic base.

On the whole, this just looks like a fairly solid B-level New Wave pop album to me, not too risky and not too embarassing — a fairly good direction to follow for a few years, but it also seems that this sound as such was quickly moving out of style in 1982, with mainstream values turning to more and more synthesizers and more and more boom-'n'-echo on the production, and this, perhaps, would also go some way in explaining why the record flopped so badly; in retrospect, I do give it a firm thumbs up as Cher's finest offering of the decade. Not that it had much competition — Black Rose was the only thing that preceded it, and following the album's flop, Cher took a five-year break from her musical career, concentrating on acting, only to reemerge five years later as... well, you know, as the Cher that is remembered and treasured / abhorred by the MTV generation these days.

CHER (1987)

1) I Found Someone; 2) We All Sleep Alone; 3) Bang-Bang; 4) Main Man; 5) Give Our Love A Fightin' Chance; 6) Perfection; 7) Dangerous Times; 8) Skin Deep; 9) Working Girl; 10) Hard Enough Getting Over You.

I always thought The Witches Of Eastwick was a fun movie (thanks largely to Nicholson, of course, but the ladies were okay too), and even though I do not remember much about Moonstruck, I don't remember being particularly put off by that one, either. Both of them came out in 1987, and both plainly suggested that Cher could have a bigger future in Hollywood than in her sunken musical career: for five years straight, she had not bothered making a new record, and we could almost be so happy as to hope that she would sit out the rest of pop music's corniest decade just as well. Alas, this was not meant to be: 1987 had to be the year of Cher's final triumph as actor and musical performer, and we had to sit back and accept it.

As is often the case, a new self-titled album signifies a creative rebirth, and in this case, Cher is rebooted as a leather-clad, big-haired, power-puffed arena icon, stuck in between synth-pop and glam metal — whatever it takes for people to buy the record. Her corporate allies, in addition to Desmond Child (now solidified in his realm by having recently scored with Bon Jovi), now include Diane Warren (who else!), Michael Bolton (the long-haired Zeus of Eighties glam-rock to Diane's Hera), and a bunch of lesser figures who spend most of their time sucking up to the big ones. Her musician supporters include a list of approximately 100 different names — amazing, considering how almost every song here feels like it consists of about four different synthesizer notes and a robot drummer. And her attitude here can be described as "I don't really care how good it is, as long as it can kick ass across a football field".

I don't think it makes sense to even begin discussing any of these songs — everything here just sounds like completely generic radio fodder from the era (which it was): minimalistic, but annoyingly loud synth patterns, big drums, hystrionic guitar solos, and mildly catchy choruses that sometimes stick in your mind because of how many times they are repeated. The «hits» (ʽI Found Someoneʼ and ʽWe All Sleep Aloneʼ) sound no better or worse than the non-hits; also, ironically, even though it was ʽWe All Sleep Aloneʼ that was co-written by Child with Jon Bon Jovi, the one song that sounds the most like Bon Jovi is ʽGive Our Love A Fightin' Chanceʼ, co-written by Child with Diane Warren. But why should we care?

The worst offender is probably a re-recording of ʽBang Bangʼ, done pop-metal style, just because it is such a transparent statement of "that was way back then, and this is how it's going to be done now", because times change blah blah blah. Poor Sonny must have had a fit when he heard this; those of us who weren't tremendous fans of the early version in the first place have it better, but still, it is fairly hard to tolerate this mess of metallic basslines and piled-up synth overdubs. At least the original was a sentimental cornball with a sense of dark humor; the new version is a plastic, lifeless melodrama going straight to the garbage bin.

The only «stand out» on the record is ʽSkin Deepʼ, just because it ditches the arena-rock clichés for a second... only to engage just as heavily in dance-pop clichés à la Debbie Gibson or Tiffany or any of those other post-Madonna icons of the era. It's... danceable. Good enough for an aerobics stint, but it didn't even chart all that high upon release. For that matter, even ʽI Found Someone (To Write My Crappy Songs For Me)ʼ and ʽWe All Sleep Alone (No Matter What You Think About Me Having A Threesome With Michael Bolton And Desmond Child)ʼ never hit the top of the charts — although they did rise high enough, largely because of the captivating effect that the names of Bolton and Bon Jovi had on the public at the time, and made it perfectly legit to speak of Cher's musical «comeback» after almost a decade of floundering. But all this album really does is integrate the lady in the already established musical fashion of the late Eighties — and now, in the 2010s, it is high time we put the ugly baby back to sleep with a thunderous thumbs down, while at the same time, perhaps, resuscitating some interest in the early 1980s «flops» like Black Rose and I Paralyze that actually had at least a few sparks of genuine creativity.

HEART OF STONE (1989)

1) If I Could Turn Back Time; 2) Just Like Jesse James; 3) You Wouldn't Know Love; 4) Heart Of Stone; 5) Still In Love With You; 6) Love On A Rooftop; 7) Emotional Fire; 8) All Because Of You; 9) Does Anybody Really Fall In Love Anymore; 10) Starting Over; 11) Kiss To Kiss; 12) After All.

This is the one that made her big again — as in really really big, the size of the USS Missouri where they filmed the video for ʽIf I Could Turn Back Timeʼ (remember the fishnet stockings, the slavering sailors, the BIG BIG GUNS? — now those were the days, when REAL people ruled the world and made America great... oh, never mind). But even in terms of calculated marketing, there's hardly any real progress here, just some extra polish on the formula. Desmond Child, Diane Warren, Michael Bolton, and Bon Jovi continue to rule the day, and loyally deliver the canned goods for the average pop taste of 1989: glammy synth-rockers and overblown power ballads alternate with each other at regular intervals, smoothly sliding off the corporate conveyer belt and polluting both radio waves and Cher's reputation in years to come.

Ironically, the two big singles are not that bad. Despite being written by Diane Warren (who allegedly had to — literally! — claw into Cher's leg to get her to accept the song), ʽIf I Could Turn Back Timeʼ at least has a fun pop bounce to it: that chorus is seductively catchy in the good sense of the word, and if only the song could earn a traditional power pop arrangement (jangly guitars and all), I'm sure it could have had more staying power. Another thing is that it's not really a Cher-style song (she rarely does the pleading thing successfully), but then, its atmosphere is not really sad — it's like a confession dressed as a party anthem, and the melodic development is well suited to Cher's powerhouse build-ups.

ʽJust Like Jesse Jamesʼ is a neo-country ballad — with a power engine, too, but pretty much the only song here based on an acoustic arrangement and sharing something in common with Cher's early Seventies' past; in fact, some of the vocal lines closely resemble ʽGypsys, Tramps And Thievesʼ, and I'm pretty sure that Child and Warren did write it specifically as a retro number (amusingly, Cher herself stated later that she disliked the song because there was too much country and way too many words in it). But there's a good whiff of the strong, self-assured, sarcastic, empowered woman in it, and that's precisely the kind of stuff that has always been Cher's forte, so even if the final hook is still dumb (I mean, if her arrogant lover is Jesse James, is it really all that flattering to compare yourself to Robert Ford?), the gradual ascension / self-winding all the way up to it is handled perfectly. The only thing you have to do is get your mind off the boring arrangement, completely, and concentrate on the vocals.

Had the remainder of the record been like these first two songs, it would probably rank among the more tolerable relics of the Eighties' glam rock era. However, that's about it: everything that follows is pompous, hystrionic, monotonous muzak, choked with synthesizers and unimaginative pop metal solos, to the point where technical «ballads» (ʽLove On A Rooftopʼ, etc.) and technical «rockers» (ʽEmotional Fireʼ, etc.) only differ in speed and basic vocal intonation. Most of these songs could have been played by anybody, sung by anybody, and it does not even matter whether they were written by Jon Lind, Jon Bon Jovi, or any other Jon in existence since the Old Testament. The only visible standout is the final song, ʽAfter Allʼ (a.k.a. "Love Theme From Chances Are") , and it's only visible because, as a sentimental power duet with Peter Cetera, it is especially vomit-inducing — one of those generic pieces of crap romance that continued making our life unhappier throughout the Nineties, polluting bad and good movies alike and even video games (remember ʽGirl In The Towerʼ from King's Quest VI? GOD!).

In the long run, even these two opening songs shouldn't be worthy enough for your «Guilty Pleasures of the Eighties» collection if you limit it to the first Top 100, so the best I can say about the record is that it is at least not as overtly disgusting in spirit as, say, a contemporary Aerosmith sellout like Pump; but even a disgusting contemporary Aerosmith sellout like Pump at least sounds much less boring and monotonous than Heart Of Stone. Thus, inevitably, a thumbs down, and considering how people like to define this record as the best of her «Eighties / early Nineties comeback» era, it seems like there's even more trouble coming up ahead.

LOVE HURTS (1991)

1) Save Up All Your Tears; 2) Love Hurts; 3) Love And Understanding; 4) Fires Of Eden; 5) I'll Never Stop Loving You; 6) Could've Been You; 7) One Small Step; 8) A World Without Heroes; 9) When Love Calls Your Name; 10) When Lovers Become Strangers; 11) Who You Gonna Believe; 12) The Shoop Shoop Song (It's In His Kiss)*.

Third time's the charm? Not a general rule. The Eighties are formally over, but we are still living in the pre-Nevermind era, and so Love Hurts faithfully follows the formula that brought Cher back to commercial success — and why, pray tell, should anybody expect otherwise? Here we have eleven more anthemic glam rockers and power ballads, contributed by old friends and newcomers; no more Bon Jovi or Michael Bolton, but a whole three songs from Diane Warren this time, of which ʽLove And Understandingʼ, strongly echoing Olivia Newton-John's ʽMagicʼ in rhythm and melody, but updated for the modern dance-pop era, charted the highest — still nowhere near as high as the singles from Heart Of Stone, though. People were getting tired.

Strangely, the first song from the album, ʽSave Up All Your Tearsʼ, did not chart that high, even if it essentially repeats the formula of ʽIf I Could Turn Back Timeʼ — danceable, powerful, chorus-wise catchy, not particularly irritating, in short, probably the best song on the entire record (that's not saying much, though). Perhaps it was because people were already familiar with the original (and somewhat inferior in terms of singing, though equally generic in terms of musical arrangement) version by Bonnie Tyler, or perhaps it did reflect the trend of people getting tired of stereotypical glam-pop; whatever the case, it's a bit of a fun opener.

After that, though, it's just one bore after another. It does not help that Cher occasionally turns to classics (the title track is one of those old torch ballads that heavy rock artists take a liking to for some strange reason — I cringed when Nazareth were doing it, so why should I be enjoying a Cher version? this is not the kind of material she'd do convincingly even with a soft rock arrangement...), or hits upon a very strange idea, such as covering ʽA World Without Heroesʼ from KISS' Music From "The Elder" (I first thought this was due to Cher dating Gene Simmons, but apparently that was over by 1980, so the idea hardly counts as a loving memento) — and turning it into a crazy mess of synthesizer fanfares and booming drums, over which she looms large with her most tragic intonations, as if this really meant something.

But nothing really means anything on this album, except for the single permeating thought — keep on being relevant! be on (M)TV! get a hit! stay afloat! I am not saying that there are no decent melodic ideas anywhere in sight — it is simply not very interesting to hunt for these ideas when the album as a whole sounds so sterile, formulaic, calculated, and monotonous. When you get to the bonus track, a modernized version of ʽThe Shoop Shoop Songʼ, it's almost like a last merciful breath of fresh air in comparison — a much-needed reminder that simple pop music had not always been like this, and that, while it may not have been much smarter in the past, it used to at least sound more innocent, charming, and just plain fun. Now, instead, it's like you are required to take this synth-pop shit seriously — so please excuse me if I decide to "save up all my tears" and give the record another predictable thumbs down.

IT'S A MAN'S WORLD (1995)

1) Walking In Memphis; 2) Not Enough Love In The World; 3) One By One; 4) I Wouldn't Treat A Dog (The Way You Treated Me); 5) Angels Running; 6) Paradise Is Here; 7) I'm Blowin' Away; 8) Don't Come Around Tonite; 9) What About The Moonlight; 10) The Same Mistake; 11) The Gunman; 12) The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore; 13) Shape Of Things To Come; 14) It's A Man's Man's Man's World.

Stuck in between Cher's two triumphant eras (the ʽIf I Could Turn Back Time /And Bring The Fishnet Look Into The Sixties/ʼ one and the ʽI Believe /In Plastic Surgery/ʼ one), It's A Man's World is kind of an odd record, largely overlooked and forgotten, but not without its own special twist. By the mid-Nineties, glam-pop was dead and gone, so trying to release a follow-up to Love Hurts would have made no sense; however, latching on to some new fashionable direction did not seem to be an easy task, and was made even harder by a personal crisis she was going through at the time (diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, among other things). Going the alt-rock route would not be natural, yet neither would be turning into Celine Dion (what with Cher still sticking to a few crumbs of «rock authenticity» that she had always had in her).

In the end, signing up with Warner Bros. for this record, she went for a «soulful» approach: It's A Man's World kind of walks the line between neo-soul, neo-country, modern R&B and adult contemporary. I know, I know — sounds awful, right? Well, this is definitely no masterpiece: for starters, most of the songs are slow, lazy on the hooks, conventional in terms of arrangement, and there's fourteen of them, meaning that the record drags on for over an hour, when the typical length for a Cher record used to be 35-40 minutes. Add to this the usual reliance on corporate songwriters (though, fortunately, her love affair with Diane Warren, Desmond Child, Michael Bolton, and Bon Jovi has come to an end) and the unusually somber / introspective mood on many of the tracks (not the best emotional setting for Cher), and it is easy to see why the album was both a commercial and critical letdown at the time.

On the other hand, revisiting it in retrospect shows quite definitively that it is at least an attempt to make something serious — not merely a conveyer-produced glossy pattern like «The Trilogy», but a collection of songs somehow reflecting Cher's own state of mind at the time. Even the title, as well as the decision to cover the respective James Brown chestnut, reflects that, as she said something about the wish to sing a bunch of «men's songs» from a woman's standpoint. Granted, portraying herself as Eve on the front sleeve, snake-clad and ready to tempt her man with the big red one, is not necessarily as «self-empowering» an image as one might think, but then again, you never can tell with feminist / anti-feminist standpoints (was Eve the first «self-asserting woman» or the first «dumb bitch» in existence? Or both?...). Anyway, on the whole It's A Man's World is not an emphatic feminist statement — just a collection of pensive, occasionally intriguing, but usually rather languid and dull songs about... uh... relationships.

The first song already illustrates all that is good and bad about the record — Cher's take on Marc Cohn's ʽWalking In Memphisʼ stays fairly close to the original, retaining its Roy Bittan-ish keyboard melody and glossy production, and although the intention is good (a sincere tribute to the «Memphis feel» is always welcome), the realisation hardly ever makes it come across as something special. The line about "he said, ʽTell me, are you a Christian?ʼ, and I said, ʽMan, I am tonight!ʼ" certainly does not have that special appeal for Cher that it has for the Jewish heritage of Marc Cohn, but she delivers it with all the strength she can gather, and the desire to churn up a rootsy-spiritual aura is clearly felt — too bad that she and her backing band did nothing to actually make the music ring out with at least a bit of that good old Memphis vibe.

The second single from the album, and the only one that charted, was ʽOne By Oneʼ — not surprisingly, since it is one of the few songs here that would have fit in with the upbeat glam formula of the previous three records. Originally written by Antony Griffiths of The Real People and recorded by Eurovision hero Johnny Logan... okay, it's not really a musical horror: it's actually fun when it gets to the chorus, and it's also fun to see Cher aim for these falsetto notes in the verse while at the same time going for her bottom range on the chorus. She also does okay turning blues-rock into dance-pop (ʽI Wouldn't Treat A Dogʼ), and even some of the slower ballads have special touches of moodiness (ʽThe Gunmanʼ, with a mildly threatening funky guitar line), but in the end, there is only one song here that I would be taking home with me — ʽShape Of Things To Comeʼ, nothing to do with the old Mann/Weil classic, but rather an entirely new composition by none other than the Buggles' Trevor Horn and 10cc's Lol Creme.

That number is actually a mini-masterpiece of moodiness — fast, tense, paranoid, literate, and ambiguous (you can't even lay a definitive claim to the song being all about man-woman relationships — after all, no song whose hookline is based on the phrase "shape of things to come" can be centered exclusively around personal stuff). There was nothing like this on any part of The Glam Trilogy, and there would never be again — in musical and atmospheric terms, it is arguably the best thing to come out of the Cher camp in the past thirty years. And then she follows it up with a really good reading of the James Brown track — this time, adding in some extra layers of tragedy, with a rip-roaring guitar break and a hushed, husky coda that turns the tables radically against the song's protagonist: "He's lost in the wilderness... he's lost in the bitterness".

Ultimately, my rating shifted from a thumbs down to neutral as I was writing this review. Trim some obvious filler, replace some of the drum machines with normal drumming, get her a good guitar player, speed up one or two tempos, and it might be real close to a thumbs up — and, as it usually happens with Cher, this is precisely the album that nobody rushed out to buy, because nobody wants a Cher that's getting too serious for her britches: everybody just wants the glitzy pop diva of ʽTake Me Homeʼ and ʽIf I Could Turn Back Timeʼ. Three years later, she'd give them what they wanted, but this one, it seems, was made more for herself, and, fortunately, it still shows after all these years.

BELIEVE (1998)

1) Believe; 2) The Power; 3) Runaway; 4) All Or Nothing; 5) Strong Enough; 6) Dov'e L'Amore; 7) Takin' Back My Heart; 8) Taxi Taxi; 9) Love Is The Groove; 10) We All Sleep Alone.

Undoubtedly, the main question of 1998 was not "how do we stop the Congo War?" or "do we impeach President Clinton or not?" — the main question of 1998, which each of us who was old enough to have ears must have heard a million times, was: "Do you believe in life after love?". I'm pretty sure that more people on this planet of ours have pondered over this question than there are people for whom the name "Cher" means anything — I do believe myself that I lived through at least three solemn promises to find and strangle the singer before even learning who that was (I knew about the existence of Cher, of course, but it never occurred to me to equate this Vegas relic with the autotuned monstrosity that Genghis-Khanned its way all over the radiowaves).

Since the record-buying public would not want to pay serious attention to the slowly unfolding and ultimately not very rewarding soulful intricacies of It's A Man's World, it seemed inevitable that we'd soon begin the next loop — after a commercially failing «artistic» album, the world should brace itself for an artistically failing «commercial» album, what with retirement not being an option in an age where the triumphant march of female empowerment can always be bolstered with a little plastic surgery. And it's no big secret that the direction in which she went with Believe had everything to do with the success of Madonna's Ray Of Light — the advent of electronic techno-pop suddenly gave «Divas» all over the world a new style where they could succeed without breaking too much sweat and stay unquestionably modern and trendy. Of course, she'd never really worked in the electronic field before, but it's not about electronica, really: it's about a dance-pop groove, and how could somebody with ʽTake Me Homeʼ behind her belt fail at that, if she really put her mind to it?

Well, technically speaking, she does not fail. The record, masterminded by British producers Mark Taylor and Brian Rawling (whose clientele before and after has also included Enrique Iglesias, Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez, and One Direction, if you really want to know more) and with significant songwriting input from Paul Barry (also a wholesale supplier for Enrique Iglesias), became her largest success ever, and ʽBelieveʼ became her signature song — probably the only such case in pop history, when it took the artist more than thirty years in the business to produce a signature song (and I'm fairly sure that youngsters all over the world went into a state of shock upon discovering that the very same person who really didn't think we were strong enough now in 1998 had said that all she really wanted to do was to be friends with us back in 1965 — I mean, at least the ones who could actually be prompted to discover anything).

Grinding my teeth and cursing God's name, I have to admit that ʽBelieveʼ does display genius craftmanship — nothing else could explain its mystical hold over the world. Its main hookline is one of those anthemic-rhetoric questions that can hook up to your brain like a well-polished political slogan, and when combined with the techno beat, it probably does constitute the ultimate in clublife experience (not that I'd know much of that). Then, of course, there's the vocoding bit: as everybody knows, this is the first well-popularized use of autotuning on the vocals, and as heavily as the practice became abused immediately after that, this particular first time actually works — the vocal effect was not there because Cher needed autotuning (her vocal powers are still fairly intact at this point), but because the producers thought it would be fun to have her sing like a robot for a bit (alternately, it may have been hard for her to hit that little melismatic bit on "so sa-a-ad that you're leaving", except we never ever get evidence for that because there does not seem to be even one version of the song in existence, studio or live, without the effect). Just a little creative fun, and look at all the damage it did to the music industry.

The problem is, of course, that it will take at least ten thousand years for the song to return to a reasonable reputational level — the one of a fluffy fun dance-pop throwaway, rather than a «pop epic» of catastrophic proportions — and that the process of leveling has not even begun yet, as I still get shudders and shivers every time I hear the damn thing. And then there's another problem: most of the rest of the album, though consistently delivered in the same vein, is just crap. Techno crap, disco crap, adult contemporary crap — song after song of tasteless, meaningless, corporate-formulaic drivel that makes even the late-Eighties «glam trilogy» seem like a strong musical offering in comparison. Oh, it's catchy all right — the choruses are repetitive enough, so if you hold out for two or three listens, musical viruses such as "baby, it's all or nothing!...", "now I'm strong enough to live without you!", "love is the groove in which we move", and even the accursed "taxi, taxi, give me a ride" will infiltrate your DNA and begin a corrosive process of mutation that can only be stopped with a good cleansing (I recommend Metal Machine Music, if you're man enough to take some rough treatment). But taken as a whole, the album is perfect proof that you don't really need Autotune in order to sound like a crudely assembled robot.

The few non-techno songs on the album are even worse than the techno ones: ʽDov'E L'Amoreʼ, for instance, is the most clichéd take on the "Latin love song" that could be thought of, with restaurant-level flamenco guitar and horrid Italian-English lyrical hybridizations ("dov'e l'amore, dov'e l'amore, I cannot tell you of my love, here is my story" — bathroom, please), and ʽTakin' Back My Heartʼ almost mockingly starts out with a guitar lick copped from ʽStayin' Aliveʼ, as they try a generic old disco revival for a change, only to actually make us feel nostalgic for the real thing, when disco music could actually be creative and even feature excellent musicianship. Some are hideous hybrids — ʽTaxi Taxiʼ tries fusing an old disco bass line with a modern techno beat, but since the main melody consists of something like one synth note, the «experiment» goes very wrong from the beginning. And then there's the idea of fighting fire with fire — take an old glam-pop turd (ʽWe All Sleep Aloneʼ) and reinvent it as a new techno-pop turd, just, you know, to prove that the old flame can still burn bright in a new vessel. Which doth remind me of a great answer found on the Web to the important question "How well does poop burn?" — "If you find some month old elephant dung, it can be a great firestarter since they exclusively eat plant matter. However, if your dog's asshole is leaking diarrhea from that left over taco bell you gave him, it will most likely not ignite." Kind of reminds me of the current situation.

Again, it is, of course, all a matter of (good vs. bad) taste, and since the choruses are catchy and all, brings us back to the eternal question of whether there is such a thing as a «bad hook», or if a hook is a hook, and if you can get hooked up, that's a good thing in itself... but instead of having this discussion, let's all just be good boys and girls, agree that Believe is a thumbs down turd that has no place in the musical garden of Eden, and move on to a safe and happy future in which there is no life after love, and Cher is remembered more for Gypsys, Tramps And Thieves and even I Paralyze than for the amazing feat of trivializing the already not-too-complex musical values of Madonna.

NOT COM.MERCIAL (2000)

1) Still; 2) Sisters Of Mercy; 3) Runnin'; 4) Born With The Hunger; 5) (The Fall) Kurt's Blues; 6) With Or Without You; 7) Fit To Fly; 8) Disaster Cake; 9) Our Lady Of San Francisco; 10) Classified 1A.

In a perfect world... well, in a truly perfect world, Cher would have been the US ambassador to Armenia. But in a world just several notches below perfection, Believe would have not existed, and Not Com.mercial would be commercial all the way through — if only as a sign of respect for a modestly talented artist to go out there and actually do something. As the story goes, the majority of the songs on this album were written by Cher herself (still with a little help from the corporate people, of course) after she attended a 1994 songwriters' conference (I had no idea they held these, but then again, why not? I bet they hold Mick Jagger impersonator conferences, too!), and the bulk of the album was recorded the same year in France. She then offered the album to Warner Brothers, who turned it down, seeing it as «uncommercial», and had to shelve it for an indefinite period of time. However, once Believe truly hit its stride and brought her all the money she could ever need, she no longer needed Warners' approval — and simply released the album on her own, advertising it through her website.

In a way, this was a smarter decision: Believe, her most successful, yet also most plastic and artificial release in ages, followed by an undeniably personal and «artistic» album that purports to show the world the real Cher, regardless of whether it garners any sales or not — there was no serious promotion whatsoever, not even any singles culled from the sessions, and she never gave any live performances of these songs. Eventually, the album became the same kind of retrospective curiosity as 1980's Black Rose (Cher as a Serious Artist) and has even managed to gain a bit of a cult following; for some old-time fans, it might have even looked like a credible redemption after the intolerable crassness of Believe.

Unfortunately, the only way to make Not Com.mercial look decent is in the overall context of Cher's career curve; on its own, the record is just «listenable stuff» at its best, and «banal mediocrity» at its worst. If Cher really had what it takes to be an intriguing singer-songwriter, we would all be seeing that as early as 1965, and if you need to take lessons in songwriting in order to break out your dormant genius, a priori chances are that the genius will turn out to be a mechanical hack. Melodically, the songs are okay — a mix of generic folk rock and adult contemporary, with a bit of swamp blues thrown in for good measure; not tremendously different, by the way, from the style that would be dominant on It's A Man's World — but there's very little to grab and hold one's attention, unless it happens to be some element that is consciously or subconsciously lifted from some classic, e. g. the moody snowy organ introduction to ʽWith Or Without Youʼ which, naturally, evokes memories of ʽA Whiter Shade Of Paleʼ.

Message-wise, the songs are split between (predictably) stories of complex relationships and (less predictably) «social value» rants that go all the way from corny embarrassments (ʽOur Lady Of San Franciscoʼ, where she complains about a social system that turns people, herself included, away from helping poor old ladies in the streets — oh, my!) to not-half-bad statements on religious hypocrisy (ʽSisters Of Mercyʼ, with a tasteful steel guitar and harp arrangement and a particularly wicked-sounding vocal part that shows she really has a bone to pick with somebody on that issue; not a wise decision to give it the same title as that of a far superior Leonard Cohen song, though). Arguably the weirdest number on the whole record is ʽ(The Fall) Kurt's Bluesʼ: for some reason, Cher decided to write and record a tribute to Cobain, stating that she "understands his pain" and that "we're a heartless, Godless culture / we'd walk nowhere in your shoes". Now just imagine if she'd appeared onstage, all dressed up in the usual chic, at the MTV Awards or some ceremony like that, and delivered this tune instead of ʽBelieveʼ! She even thinks up (or lets her co-writers think up, I dunno) a proverbial killer two-liner for the end: "Our country kills its heroes / We just raise them for the fall". Excuse me for a moment while I break out those hankies, this is just too much for my nervous system to bear.

So, in the end, if you look at this from an optimistic angle, Not Com.mercial is an interesting, image-defying, sincere-sounding record, professionally and rather tastefully recorded by Cher with members of David Letterman's band, and delightfully shattering stereotypes. But if you choose the other angle, then it's a somewhat slick, manipulative, and ultimately bland and generic set of traditionally written roots-pop songs with unwarranted pretense at «depth» and «authenticity», sung by a veteran Vegas glitz-star who has been happy enough to corrupt public taste with cheap, brainless entertainment for several decades, and now goes on a rant about the injustices and the imperfections of that same society as if she had never had anything to do with them. So does she ever sit back and wonder, «Why the hell did those critics kick the crap out of my Not Com.mercial album? I know it didn't sell because it was not commercial, but how come it got all those mixed-to-negative reviews?..» And if she ever does, does she have enough intelligence (or bravery) to give herself the right answer?

LIVING PROOF (2002)

1) The Music's No Good Without You; 2) Alive Again; 3) (This Is) A Song For The Lonely; 4) A Different Kind Of Love Song; 5) Rain, Rain; 6) Love So High; 7) Body To Body, Heart To Heart; 8) Love Is A Lonely Place Without You; 9) Real Love; 10) Love One Another; 11) You Take It All; 12) When The Money's Gone.

I shall hitherto abstain from resorting to crudely offensive jokes based on unscientific correlation of the title of this album with the photograph of the artist on the front cover. We take civility very seriously here at Only Solitaire — it is impolite and tasteless to produce jokes on subjects that have already served as the basis for entire joke pools and countless running gags — and prefer to treat the issues of Cher discontinuing a certified existence as a real human being and of Cher's music discontinuing the right to be called «music» as two completely separate issues, unrelated until proven so by a joint commission of expert plastic surgeons, fashion designers, musicologists, sound engineers, and cocktail waitresses.

In the meantime, we are going to keep this brief and state that since Living Proof, a bona fide follow-up to Believe, is everything that Believe wanted to be and less, the only people who would be interested in this second libation to the Great Goddess of Techno-Pop are those who actually dug the hypnotic grooves and mesmerizing textures of the lady's 1998 spiritual masterpiece. For the rest of us, the inclusion of ʽSong For The Lonelyʼ, the agonizing terror song of 2002 that may have cost more people their psychic sanity than 9/11 cost people their lives, will be sufficient reason to stay away from this abomination. Of all the songs written and recorded in memory of the tragic event, ʽSong For The Lonelyʼ, with its awful lyrics and generic techno beat, may indeed have been the most gruesome. The only way "I'll be by your side" is through radio overkill, and, indeed, the song was all over the place in 2002, almost like ʽBelieveʼ before it, and boy, have I ever suffered in public places (yes, even in Mother Russia) — you had to run for shelter from its shrillness, loudness, and total cheapness.

Unfortunately, the rest of the album is hardly better. There's nothing here, really, but a steadily calculated attempt at repeating the success of Believe — one flat, forgettable, trivial techno-pop piece of garbage after another. The European hit ʽThe Music's No Good Without Youʼ, with its light acid overtones and computerized chorus (which sounds as if they were teaching a robot some pickup lines), is, at the very best, just danceable (like everything else on here), but has less emotion than a Pepsi jingle. The near-obligatory Diane Warren contribution is the faux-Spanish «flamenco ballad» ʽBody To Body, Heart To Heartʼ that continues the «Latin exploitation» theme begun by ʽDove L'Amoreʼ and does it in an equally embarrassing manner. And if you try to dig a little deeper, in faint hopes of discovering some minor accidental nugget, beware — it is far more probable to hit a hot stream of shit under heavy pressure, such as ʽLove One Anotherʼ, a techno anthem taken from Dutch singer Amber whose chief achievement is setting the mantra "love one another, sisters and brothers" to a techno beat.

Ugh, no. It was pretty hard for me to imagine a sequel to Believe that would be even worse, but yes, this here is a sequel to Believe that is much, much worse — and did I even mention the Autotune abuse that is now all over the place? No? Go ahead, listen to ʽReal Loveʼ: it's like she's making fun of Stephen Hawking or something. Thumbs down does not even begin to describe the true reaction to the album — «six feet under» would be much closer to the truth.

CLOSER TO THE TRUTH (2013)

1) Woman's World; 2) Take It Like A Man; 3) My Love; 4) Dressed To Kill; 5) Red; 6) Lovers Forever; 7) I Walk Alone; 8) Sirens; 9) Favorite Scars; 10) I Hope You Find It; 11) Lie To Me.

In 2002-2003, Cher conducted the highly successful Living Proof: The Farewell Tour, setting a record for the highest-grossing concert tour by a female performer ever — and even capped off with a live album, recorded in Las Vegas (where else?), but even in the face of the many embarrassing and dishonorable things that Only Solitaire Reviews have stooped to over the past few years, setting up a special review for a live album by Cher would be too much (I might as well be reviewing a Crazy Frog live album, I guess).

Upon concluding the tour, Cher did indeed retire from live performance and making new studio records — and since, as we all know too well, pop stars never ever lie and treasure their artistic integrity far more than they value their personal fortunes, the fact that somebody went ahead and assumed the identity of «Cher» in 2013 with a brand new CD release should be regarded as an act of musical fraud and identity theft. Indeed, whoever it was — and with Autotune masking half of the vocals, who can really tell these days? — left us some hints: Closer To The Truth implies a lack of truth, and the album cover features a blonde-haired Cher look-alike with so much symbolical white around her that you'd think she's really died and gone to Heaven... hey, wait a minute. Is the real Cher really dead? Have the cockroaches had the upper hand? Is this Christina Aguilera masking as Cher (we know she can do a mean Cher impression)?..

Thank God, though, Only Solitaire is all about the music rather than the people behind it, and so we can legitimately separate the good old conspiracy theories from the plain fact of how crappy the music is, no matter who in particular is standing behind it. Actually, if you really love formulaic techno-pop, it might not sound all that crappy — whether there is an actual human being called Cherilyn Sarkisian here or not, the «Cher business machine» is still churning like crazy, and the numerous corporate writers and producers ensure a certain standard. The vocal hooks are there alright — just a few listens, and without a proper antidote you'll be jerking spasmodically and singing "This is a woman's world!" and "You gotta take it like a man!" and "Baby I am dressed to kill!" and "For now I've gotta walk alone!" like there was no tomorrow. And we gotta give this «past-farewell Cher» what's due — even without the special production effects, she can still belt these hooks out like she means it, in tune and with sufficient power.

Unfortunately, the «business machine» is not designed for any sorts of creativity, though: other than the vocal hooks, everything else is reduced to the most pedestrian types of techno beats and acid-drenched synth patterns. Well, almost everything: every once in a while, they pull some ridiculous retro-trick, like countrifying ʽI Walk Aloneʼ with a banjo rhythm pattern — it is very quickly drowned out by the beats and electronics, but still battles on bravely until the end of the song, because this is, like, the only thread that still ties this innovative artist to her roots in the old folk tradition. She came from California with a banjo on her knee, after all.

Towards the middle of the album, the endless stream of techno dance numbers begins to alternate with slower balladry, even including one or two tracks with potential (I think that with a better arrangement, ʽSirensʼ could turn out to be a really pretty and uplifting statement — and there's actually a first-rate shoegaze-style guitar solo in the middle, too!), but never really detracting from the «core value» of the record, which is to send you mindlessly spinning through the crammed confines of the local nightclub while at the same time empowering you (if you're a woman) or disempowering you (if you're somebody else).

Naturally, I give the album a thumbs down, although, strange enough, I feel no specific «hatred» for it or anything. Maybe there's some subconscious feel of respect, after all, lurking somewhere very, very deep — after all, it's not every day that you come face to face with a 67-year old reigning queen of mainstream techno, as ridiculous as that might look in theory, and witness her singing like a fresh 30-year old (yes, I understand that the mind-blowing prolonged notes of "surrender to me now" on ʽLovers Foreverʼ are most likely artificially extended, but they still had to have their roots in a natural strong voice). Essentially, at this point, it no longer matters what she is singing — it is only a matter of setting a personal record. Will she still be able to do it when she is 70? 80? 90? Will the business machine still hold? You probably won't live to witness it yourself, but maybe your grandchildren will — on the other hand, what with all the recent successes in tissue regeneration and genetic engineering, you never can tell...

Part 3. The Pop Art Era (1965-1970)

CACTUS

CACTUS (1970)

1) Parchman Farm; 2) My Lady From South Of Detroit; 3) Bro. Bill; 4) You Can't Judge A Book By The Cover; 5) Let Me Swim; 6) No Need To Worry; 7) Oleo; 8) Feel So Good.

If you have no idea why this band named itself Cactus despite none of the members being from Arizona State, take one look at the album cover and you will see why (and if you need an extra hint, you must be a sexless saint from Heaven itself). Musically more relevant, though, is the fact that Cactus were formed out of the ashes of Vanilla Fudge (if fudge can even be reduced to ashes in the first place), when that band's rhythm section, Tim Bogert and Carmine Appice, recruited guitarist Jim McCarty and vocalist Rusty Day and began realizing their evil plan to become the American Led Zeppelin. Originally, they wanted to have Jeff Beck, but that did not work because Beck had a car accident — besides, he wasn't exactly American, so the experiment wouldn't be pure enough. (To be fair, a few years on they did get to play together for a while, but it still did not work out: Beck never could stand longtime partners).

Anyway, if you are not all that much into second-rate or third-rate hard rock bands, there is little reason for you to bother checking out this one. However, as far as ballsy-bluesy heavy rock with no experimental vibe whatsoever is concerned, Cactus is a good bet. Musically, it is not even Vanilla Fudge so much whose tradition they are inheriting here, but Blue Cheer — same brand of loud, arrogant, alcohol-fueled rock, although in between all four of them, there is definitely a higher level of skill involved. Songwriting here is just about level zero, but these guys can play, for sure: in fact, the Bogert/Appice rhythm section may be just one notch below the Jones/Bonham section, and only because Appice is somewhat overdoing it (he wants to out-Bonham Bonham so much that he nearly blows his drum set to bits even on the ultra-slow blues numbers like ʽNo Need To Worryʼ, which is really confusing).

Appropriately, Jim McCarty is a very good guitar player as far as not-particularly-inventive guitar players go: he has no mastery of, or no interest in various tones, effects, and gimmicks, so he is neither Beck nor Page in that respect — but his phrasing is clever, his fluency is admirable, and he can do it in a variety of styles, from basic boogie to blueswailing to garage hooliganry without sounding too boring in any of these. The vocalist, though, is just a well-spirited (with a passion for the spirits, that is) gentleman with good barroom standing: no more, no less.

The «highlight» of the album is their cover of Mose Allison's ʽParchman Farmʼ; the idea is to take Blue Cheer's reinvention of the track as a heavy rocker and pump it up even further, speeding up the tempo to insanity and going all-out crazy. The effect is rather facetious — this is one kind of thing for which the real Led Zep would never fall, no matter how much they liked covering old bits of rock'n'roll in their live sets — but as a bang-your-head-against-the-wall musical joke, it works, and in fact, provides the finest three minutes of excitement on the entire album. I mean, say what you will about lack of taste and stupidity, but good old speed counts, especially when it's pumped by professionals.

The problem is that next to the flamboyant opener, everything else sounds like one major disappointment after another. The anti-climactic follower is ʽMy Lady From South Of Detroitʼ, a very generic country waltz that's neither too sentimental nor too humorous; and the follow-up to that is Leiber & Stoller's ʽBrother Billʼ, done in a fun, but way too slow manner (for a twice-as-fun version, check out Eric Burdon's passionate reading on the 1977 Animals reunion album); and the follow-up to that is Bo Diddley's ʽYou Can't Judge A Book By The Coverʼ, where, actually, the point is that they do it slow, slow, slow, expanding it to six and a half minutes of your time, much of which is wasted on predictable repetition. The other point is that sometimes they also show you how they respect contrast — launching into brief fiery sections of distortion madness, only to slow down to an acoustic bluesy crawl 15 seconds later. Aaargh.

On the second side, there is one more ultra-slow blues (ʽNo Need To Worryʼ, which is like their answer to ʽI Can't Quit You Babyʼ, but they don't know how to make this thing interesting) and an additional bunch of semi-originals that are either semi-stolen (ʽFeel So Goodʼ lifts its verse melody from Steve Winwood's ʽI'm A Manʼ) or would be semi-stolen (I think Lynyrd Skynyrd's ʽI Ain't The Oneʼ may have at least been influenced by ʽLet Me Swimʼ — although probably they should just both be traced to a third party. Damn those three-for-a-penny chord progressions). They are at their best when they just lay down all pretense and boogie — ʽOleoʼ, with a nice barroom chug and a good bass solo from Bogert, is probably the best track on the second side. Oh, did I mention yet that ʽFeel So Goodʼ has a lengthy drum solo? Not that you wouldn't guess if I didn't. An album like this can't do without a drum solo.

One thing I will say for these guys — when they are at their best (which is not too frequent), they do lay down a thick, brawny, scruffy, rambunctious sound that is not very easy to come by (although they did have plenty of competition from Slade on the other side of the Atlantic). You'd have it either too «artsy» and experimental, like with Led Zep or even Deep Purple; or you'd have it much too serious, like Grand Funk Railroad. These guys are just perfect for a small evening adventure with a six-pack.

ONE WAY... OR ANOTHER (1971)

1) Long Tall Sally; 2) Rockout, Whatever You Feel Like; 3) Rock'n'Roll Children; 4) Big Mama Boogie, Pts. 1 & 2; 5) Feel So Bad; 6) Song For Aries; 7) Hometown Bust; 8) One Way... Or Another.

If the band's first album at least had its share of dumb fun, then the second one is not even fun any more. Stiff, lumpy, humorless, and hookless, these guys make me feel that I have really underappreciated KISS for all these years. It is not a crime to set your artistic ambitions real low and just make a danceable rock'n'roll album for the sakes of partying all night long; however, it takes some true «anti-talent» to make a rock'n'roll album that would not only be completely dispensable the morning after the party, but would also cost you at least half of your party guests.

Because, honestly, no respectable party goer would ever agree to accept the fact that ʽLong Tall Sallyʼ is now to be played about three times as slow as the original — trying to retain the enthusiasm and hysteria of Little Richard, but slowing down to a veritable crawl. It's as if some nasty schoolmaster snuck into the party at the last minute and told them to go slow, under threat of expulsion — forgetting all about the other parameters because they were more difficult to formulate. It's innovative, for sure... and utterly ridiculous. As is the equally slow and stiff ʽFeel So Badʼ, which was far sexier when a post-army Elvis did it in the early Sixties.

It is not altogether clear to me who'd fall for this stuff in 1971: the best heavy metal bands were busy trying to peer into the future, whereas Cactus here clearly remain chained to the standards of 1969. The only detours from the formula are on ʽBig Mama Boogieʼ, which does try to boogie, John Lee Hooker-style (but on an acoustic guitar!) for about four minutes, without too much confidence, and then makes the plunge into true kick-ass electric boogie for about one more minute, by which time, however, we are probably way too bored to pay any attention; and then there's the never-ending ʽHometown Bustʼ, a long, dreary, overdone complaint about the ongoing drug busts (as if this could help where even Steppenwolf could do nothing). Oh, and a three-minute pastoral instrumental (ʽSong For Ariesʼ) where the guitarist experiments with echoes, Leslie cabinets, and overdubs, balancing somewhere on the edge of prettiness but never quite getting there.

Ultimately, this just sounds like a very, very, very boring record to me. If it were at least «comically bad», as in the case of KISS, if they went nuts and posed as Gods of Thunder or as Lord Protectors of Cock-and-Balls Music, you could be in it for the cheap thrills. But listening to ʽLong Tall Sallyʼ being played that way is like... well, like having to attend a ninety-minute lecture that could be summed up in thirty seconds. Maybe they're taking their cues from Led Zeppelin alright, but Led Zeppelin were never Led Bathyscaphe — they did know how to soar and zap through the atmosphere despite all the heaviness. These guys just lumber on. No fun whatsoever. A totally depressed thumbs down — and I like simple, stupid rock'n'roll music when I can get it. But this just ain't it.

RESTRICTIONS (1971)

1) Restrictions; 2) Token Chokin'; 3) Guiltless Glider; 4) Evil; 5) Alaska; 6) Sweet Sixteen; 7) Bag Drag; 8) Mean Night In Cleveland.

If the idea of the album title is that Cactus really knows no restrictions, I am sorry to say that they do, and that they are the exact same restrictions that made their first two albums look idiotic even in their most listenable moments. There are no attempts to change the formula here: we are presented with a third platter of stiff, lumpy, leaden hard rock where thickness of guitar tone, ferociousness of percussion attacks, and loudness of lead vocalist matter much more than memorable melodies or, God help us, spiritual depth.

When the experience is over, you will probably want to ask yourself two questions: "Whatever made them rearrange Howlin' Wolf's ʽEvilʼ as a Led Zeppelin II-style rocker with a time signature that makes a confused mess out of the vocals?", and "Is the idea of setting the lyrics of ʽSweet Little Sixteenʼ to the melody of ʽRollin' And Tumblin'ʼ supposed to mean something, or were they just randomly pulling out song titles out of a hat for a fortuitous mash-up?" Not that it's important to know the answers, of course: ever since the days of Vanilla Fudge, Bogert and Appice were the indisputable champions of the «50,000 Ways To Ruin A Good Song» game, so why should Restrictions be an exception?

As for the original songs, there is not a single one here that would be too memorable. The title track and the never-ending ʽGuiltless Gliderʼ, taking up most of Side A, are the obvious candidates for top pick, but ʽRestrictionsʼ refuses to come up with a decent riff, and ʽGliderʼ is just too busy riding one rhythm chord for most of its duration (interrupted by a drum solo, which is hardly a consolation). ʽAlaskaʼ quiets down a bit for a jazzier take on the blues, some harmonica solos, and lyrics like "I hear six months a year you get night time all day / I had to practice my harp to keep the polar bears away", and it still sounds silly rather than funny; and the final two minutes, called ʽMean Night In Clevelandʼ, are just slow, simple acoustic blues.

The only thing that could redeem the whole experience is the overall sound: the Bogert/Appice rhythm section is impeccable, so much so that I would probably enjoy this record much more if all the guitars and especially the vocals were deleted. Truly, this is one of those moments when you start lamenting over the absence of corporate songwriting — where the hell was Desmond Child when these guys needed him so much? He probably could have helped them out even while still in high school. Thumbs down.

OT 'N' SWEATY (1972)

1) Swim; 2) Bad Mother Boogie; 3) Our Lil Rock'n'Roll Thing; 4) Bad Stuff; 5) Bringing Me Down; 6) Bedroom Mazurka; 7) Telling You; 8) Underneath The Arches.

If you thought this could not get any worse, you were wrong. By 1972, all that remained of the former spiny glory of Cactus was the Bogert-Appice rhythm section, yet somehow this did not deflate their ambitions — and the «band» plowed on, recruiting new guitarist Werner Fritzschings (I'm sure everybody must have called him Wiener Schnitzel out of desperation, but who'd ever acknowledge that?), an extra keyboardist (Duane Hitchings) and a new vocalist called Peter French, who'd apparently done a short stint in Atomic Rooster before that, but was largely hired because it's kinda hard to distinguish his bawl from Rusty Day's bawl.

The new lineup persisted well into 1972, eventually releasing this album, a total mess whose only appeal is in how many things go wrong at once (sometimes intentionally). The first side was taken from a live show in Puerto Rico, either because the band did not have enough new studio material or, more probably, because it was high time to demonstrate the Live Power of the Mighty Cactus — which, next to a Live At Leeds or a Made In Japan, honestly gives the impression of a deeply drunk Little John with a quarterstaff against a pack of knights in full armor. Not that you wouldn't shed a tear at the fate of the kind fellow with his good motives and all, but a no-win situation is a no-win situation, especially considering that Cactus do not try to do anything except demonstrate sheer brutal boogie power. They cover ʻLet Me Swimʼ from their first record, and then they do two half-improvisatory pieces of boogie, and it hardly matters where they stop and where they start; all that matters is the lumpy dinosaurish swagger, for 17 minutes.

On the second side, they get off to a decent start with ʻBad Stuffʼ, a riff-based blues-rocker with a bit of real bite provided by the scrunchy guitar/bass tones — and if Skynyrd's ʻI Ain't The Oneʼ was not influenced by ʻLet Me Swimʼ after all, then it couldn't have been not influenced by this one at least — the verse melodies are practically identical. But even if we agree that ʻBad Stuffʼ is a bit of a good influence, then ʻBringing Me Downʼ is this band's totally non-sequitur take on rootsy soulfulness, with sentimental keyboards, gospel harmonies, and ecstatic lead vocals, as if the ghost of Leon Russell suddenly visited them in their sleep, or maybe they were inspired by one of Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs & Englishmen shows or something. I cannot even honestly state that this is a bad song — it is simply hard to take seriously, sitting there all alone among their drunken antics. The next two songs safely bring us back to more familiar, less shocking, but quickly forgettable territory, although at least ʻBedroom Mazurkaʼ is kind of a special song title (no musical references to Chopin, though — imagine that).

The best thing I can say about the album, and the band in particular, is that the All-Music Guide describes the style of the record as «rambunctious», «rowdy», «celebratory», «boisterous», «freewheeling», «brash», «rousing», «aggressive», «rollicking», «confident», «raucous», and «energetic», and every word of it is absolutely true, so if these are your core values in listening to music, 'Ot 'N' Sweaty should be a pre-defined masterpiece. Maybe with just an extra pinch of melodic invention, subtlety, or individuality, it could even have been a half-decent record. As it is, I think I'll just stick to my Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out — the Stones may not have been so loud and «boisterous» on stage as these guys, but they went out there to play actual songs, rather than simply demonstrate how good they were at generating «rambunctiousness». Thumbs down.

CACTUS V (2006)

1) Doin' Time; 2) Muscle & Soul; 3) Cactus Music; 4) The Groover; 5) High In The City; 6) Day For Night; 7) Living For Today; 8) Shine; 9) Electric Blue; 10) Your Brother's Keeper; 11) Blues For Mr. Day; 12) Part Of The Game; 13) Gone Train Gone; 14) Jazzed.

Look who's back. Seeing as how the 2000s are so totally open to everything, and how there were plenty of youngster bands around playing heavy Seventies-style music, Bogert, Appice, and Jim McCarty came back together — not just for some nostalgic touring, but to record new music as well, with the same old swagger as if the thirty years in between never happened. Of course, the original vocalist was murdered in the interim (Rusty Day was shot to death in 1982 by some drug dealers), but they hire a new one, Jimmy Hunes, who sounds almost exactly like Rusty — and the band plays on precisely the same way that it used to.

Of course, it also sucks precisely the same way that it used to: the fourteen songs recorded here all share the same classic aesthetics — loud, bulgy, brawny, perfect for a dinner party that also involves some mudwrestling and some TV-tossing. The old boys in the rhythm section have not lost a bit of that old power, the guitarist tosses out the same old derivative leaden blues-rock riffs and screechy blueswailin' solos, and the vocalist... well, I do believe he got the contract only under the condition that he'd exclusively do the things that Rusty used to do. Oh, and they also have an additional member on harmonica — Randy Pratt, usually playing with the New-York based Lizards, another one of «those» bands that I mentioned in the last paragraph.

Amusingly, I do not feel nearly as bored by this record as I was by all the other Cactus records (except maybe for the first one). There's a humorous side to some of the tunes, including a rather tongue-in-cheek fast boogie anthem to themselves (ʻCactus Musicʼ); a couple of the songs, like ʻYour Brother's Keeperʼ, are pleasantly funky, mildly reminiscent of classic Aerosmith (who themselves owed a certain debt to Cactus originally); the last track almost borders on artistic-experimental (the instrumental ʻJazzedʼ, which does not have much to do with jazz, but is an inventive synthesis of metal and funk, with a whole bunch of riffs from both genres spliced together, sometimes to cool effect); and a few of the vocal melodies are even catchy in a way — ʻMuscle And Soulʼ makes me want to sing along, as does ʻDoin' Timeʼ.

The biggest flaw of the record is its length — sure it's been a long time, but no time is long enough to make anybody want to sit through a whole sixty minutes of «Cactus music», especially when it includes one too many superslow blues tunes (ʻDay For Nightʼ — why don't you leave this kind of stuff to Buddy Guy?) or power-chord based anthemic screechers (ʻShineʼ). The tiny acoustic tribute to the late Rusty Day is a nice gesture, but unless you are well acquainted with the situation, it's just an extra minute and a half of generic blues plucking. And did they really have to bring back the ʻHow Many More Yearsʼ groove for yet another faceless try (ʻThe Grooverʼ)? All these numbers are completely expendable.

Okay, so the entire album is expendable, but at least if you really loved the old Cactus, there is no reason for you to stay away from the new (old) Cactus — in terms of consistency and stubbornness, the record gets an A++, easy. I do thank them, however, for staying away from the studio ever since, even if as a touring outfit they seemed to be active at least as late as 2012.

BLACK DAWN (2016)

1) Black Dawn; 2) Mama Bring It Home; 3) Dynamite; 4) Juggernaut; 5) Headed For A Fall; 6) You Need Love; 7) The Last Goodbye; 8) Walk A Mile; 9) Another Way Or Another; 10) C-70 Blues.

SET FIRE TO THE NIGHT! BRING ON THE BLACK DAWN! SET FIRE TO THE NIGHT! BRING ON THE BLACK DAWN! Hmm, not a bad message for the last day of 2016. The song's lyrical message mostly has to do with ecology, but it does not take a great leap of imagination to give it an overall apocalyptic interpretation — ecology, economy, politics, whatever — and with that opening near-thrash metal riff, this is one heck of an apocalyptic tune, far heavier than anything on Cactus V or, for that matter, pretty much anything this band ever put out in its prime. Simple, brutal, tense, melodic, and catchy, it's, like, the perfect song to summarize 2016, and the only question is: how come it had to take a band like Cactus, of all people, to bring it out?

Particularly since I was hasty enough to thank this new line-up for staying away from the studio — which they did for ten years, but the temptation to say something new must have been too hard, and here they are again, with the notable exclusion of Tim Bogert, still present on two of the tracks but essentially replaced by new bass player Pete Bremy, who currently performs the honors for both the resuscitated Cactus and Vanilla Fudge. In situations like these, you can never really guess the odds, but there is always a higher-than-zero chance that the musical revenant will hit upon something vital, and Black Dawn at least makes sure to correct certain mistakes that were committed with their previous comeback effort. Namely, it is shorter, which always helps with one-trick ponies like Cactus; it is heavier, which always helps with brawny bastards like Cactus; and it is more riff-centered, which always helps with anybody in the hard rock business.

That still does not make it any sort of masterpiece, but throw in some fast tempos (the band really sounds on a high energy kick here) to complete the picture and somehow, defying all expectations, this 21st century Cactus ends up with their best studio album ever — in forty-six years, that is. No other track has the same level of intensity as ʽBlack Dawnʼ, probably the first and last Cactus song that I might actually be tempted to take seriously, but ʽHeaded For A Fallʼ is a fast-going, fun-loving romp, sewing on a poppier chorus to a riff that feels like a variation on AC/DC's ʽWhole Lotta Rosieʼ; ʽYou Need Loveʼ honors the legacy of Rod Stewart's ʽYou're My Girlʼ, with similar stuttering exciting interplay between the guitars and the drums; and ʽMama Bring It On Homeʼ is an exercise in copping the precision and tightness of the New Wave of Heavy Metal-era bands like Judas Priest, though McCarty still cannot resist the temptation of drowning everything in excessive thick distortion.

The slower, bluesier tracks are predictably less impressive, although ʽC-70 Bluesʼ is probably as close as they come to recapturing the absurdly feedback-choked sonic textures of their early slow blues — completely impossible to distinguish, in fact, from the way they used to play in 1970, right down to the most minute details of the drum patterns. The acoustic guitars are brought out only once (ʽAnother Way Or Anotherʼ) as an element of contrast to the aggressive wah-wah guitar; and the album's other instrumental piece, ʽThe Last Goodbyeʼ, is a life-threatening blues jam that takes the Beatles' ʽI Want Youʼ as a reference model, with similar doom-laden descending chord sequences and hell-borne hystrionic solos on top — slow, but still fun.

All in all, Black Dawn seems to succeed where its predecessor failed; and it does so, first and foremost, because Cactus have no high standards to match — where something like Black Sabbath's 13 sounds like such a tremendous disappointment because it aims at bringing back the magic of 1970 and fails, Cactus had no «magic» to begin with, and it is far easier for them not only to bring back the atmosphwere of their 1970, but even to top it, provided they show some discipline and capitalize on their strongest points. And they do. And, as the title track shows, they clearly have a bone to pick with society today, and it helps, too: at least in the studio, they never really used to sound as pissed off as they do on some of the tracks here. Not that this signals a rebirth for classic hard rock or anything (I've long given up believing in «rebirths» anyway), but it is a good hard rock record, the likes of which in 2016 you can only encounter among living fossils like these. Thumbs up.

ADDENDA

FULLY UNLEASHED: THE LIVE GIGS (2004)

CD I: 1) Intro/Long Tall Sally; 2) Bag Drag; 3) Evil; 4) Parchman Farm; 5) Alaska; 6) Oleo; 7) No Need To Worry; 8) Let Me Swim.

CD II: 1) Big Mama Boogie; 2) Heeby Jeebies/Money/Hound Dog/What'd I Say; 3) No Need To Worry; 4) Parchman Farm; 5) One Way... Or Another; 6) Bro. Bill; 7) Swim; 8) Bad Mother Boogie; 9) Our Lil' Rock'n'Roll Thing; 10) Bedroom Mazurka.

Okay, as absurd as it may sound, this almost comes close to a great album. See, even though by and large Cactus totally sucked as a studio band with an obligation to come up with original songs and shit, live they could, indeed, get «fully unleashed». The live side of 'Ot 'n' Sweaty never did proper justice to their capacities — not only because it already lacked the original guitarist, but also because there were physical limits on the length of the tracks that downplayed their jamming skills. However, with this sprawling 2-CD mammoth, presenting an entire 2-hour long show (the original lineup's last gig at Memphis, Tennessee, on December 19, 1971) plus an assorted selection of other live tracks (including, for some reason, the entire live half of 'Ot 'n' Sweaty as well!), Rhino Records have made the nearly impossible — made me re-appreciate the band's talent and re-assess their status.

Formally, the classic Cactus line-up on stage did not do much of anything that they did not do on the studio records, except stretching out the songs (sometimes to really absurd, Zep-worthy lengths: ʻNo Need To Worryʼ goes on for 20 minutes, all solos included). But either they really went out on a limb that night, trying to make their last show as memorable as possible, or, if that was their usual style, then it must be assumed that (not unlike quite a few other hard rock bands) they held back in the studio, whereas on stage all four players, all the time, tried to be louder, wilder, more frantic and hysterical than anybody else. It does not get much better than on the opening ʻLong Tall Sallyʼ — in the studio, slowing down the Little Richard original never made sense, but here you won't even have to remember that this is a Little Richard original. It's not at all important what this is in the first place! That is, as long as the guitarist guts his guitar like a screeching pig, the bassist lays it on so thick you'd think he had steel cables for strings, the drummer pounds like Bonham's younger brother, and the vocalist knows no other mode than ripping his voice to shreds (and he still has something left by the end of the 2-hour show).

Essentially, this is pre-Spinal Tap-era, «everything up to eleven»-style stuff, but this is precisely how they manage to add excitement to their generally clumsy-lumbering manner of playing. In the studio, their Godzilla just wandered around, mindlessly bumping into corners, but here, it actually breathes fire and demolishes skyscrapers, sometimes at a frantic pace (despite the presence of some super-slow blues, the overall pace of the show is much quicker than the average pace of any of their studio records). Check out the final wild romp of ʻBig Mama Boogieʼ, or ʻParchman Farmʼ, or McCarty's feedback stunts at the end of ʻLet Me Swimʼ — crude, tasteless, brainlessly violent, and perversely awesome.

Of course, nearly three hours of material is overkill, but the re-release of the Puerto Rican material from 1972 really does not count, and an extra live ʻParchman Farmʼ is quite welcome. And I suppose that Cactus cannot be appreciated any other way than in «total sprawl» mode: anything less than completely-over-the-top and killer boredom sets in. But frankly, I am really surprised at how much I enjoyed most of these 15-to-20-minute live tracks — even the medley of rock'n'roll oldies, although it is performed in the silly-lumpy-glammy way that most people were doing them in the early Seventies (think Uriah Heep or Queen), is appealing in their unsophisticated, unpretentiously rustic mode of performance. Even that ultra-slow ʻNo Need To Worryʼ: the guitar solo that McCarty plays at the beginning is so utterly ridiculous, it must have served as a basic inspiration for all introductory solos by Angus Young.

In brief, if you do want to hear Cactus, this is the album to hear, and the most ridiculous thing is that we all had to wait more than thirty years to hear it. Not that it could have withstood competition with Live At Leeds or Made In Japan, had it been released in 1972 as a triple live LP, but I'm fairly sure it could have endured at least as a cult classic. Anyway, even if the music is dumb, I still love me an album that pulls all the stops, and on December 19, 1971, these guys were on some rich barbecue fire, so a thumbs up, by all means. As far as I know, there's also a sequel out there (Live Gigs Vol. 2), but since the material predictably overlaps, Vol. 1 is everything a sane music listener really needs from these guys.

CAN

MONSTER MOVIE (1969)

1) Father Cannot Yell; 2) Mary, Mary So Contrary; 3) Outside My Door; 4) Yoo Doo Right.

Technically, the first album recorded by Can was called Prepared To Meet Thy Pnoom, and was supposed to be released in 1968, but no label would accept it at the time, and ultimately, it was only issued in 1981 under the appropriate title of Delay 1968. Ironically, it was far more accessible than their next album, for which they did manage to find a label one year later — apparently, the degree of record label boldness rocketed sky high after the release of stuff like Trout Mask Replica, so that for a while some people could adopt an anything-goes mentality.

Yet despite all the weirdness, I do have to say that of all the bizarre Krautrock ensembles that Germany gave us Can have always been the most conservatively and traditionally oriented. Behind all their experimentation and craziness and psychedelia really rests a competent blues-rock band whose major passion was simply to jam, jam, jam all day and all of the night. The four-man war machine of Michael Karoli on guitar, Holger Czukay on bass, Irmin Schmidt on keyboards, and Jaki «Human Metronome» Liebezeit on drums must and will appeal not only to (and maybe even not as much to) those who look to Krautrockers for blowing our minds and expanding our horizons, but simply to those who respect and enjoy strong, sharp, cohesive playing — the same audiences who are willing to sit through lengthy sonic journeys by Cream or the Dead.

Case in point: ʻYou Doo Rightʼ, stretched over the entire second side of the album, is really but a 20-minute excerpt out of a jam that is said to have gone on for about six hours, and resulted in men outlasting machines as the band had to cut it short because the amps started to smoke. And the way it is handled here, I'm pretty sure they were only getting warmed up by the end of the sixth hour: Can's fanatical devotion to their craft meant that, when they were on, time ceased to exist. And this is why good Can jams (and most of their jams were good) are so easy to tolerate. It is easy to get bored by a lengthy piece of jamming when you sense that the players are simply going on because they're following a trend (such as «your song does not matter at all if it is anything shorter than 20 minutes»). Can, however, were not following trends: upon locking themselves into the groove, they simply lived that groove.

I mean, listen to Jaki Liebezeit pounding out those complex polyrhythms on ʻYou Doo Rightʼ without ever faltering — you'd think drumming, to him, was like air: stop drumming, and you stop breathing. Twenty minutes into the track, the entire band is going every bit as strong as they were at the beginning... and, as it turns out, these twenty minutes by themselves were only the beginning. The jam's somewhat lazy pacing and the diminished role of both guitar and keyboards might turn people off, but it is all about the rhythm section: it is the African drums and the droning bass that make it into what it is — a tribal ritual that needs to go on at 100% efficiency all the time, lest contact is lost with the respective deities. I actually think the jam does not hit its peak until somewhere around the 12th minute, when Jaki and Holger settle upon a mutual lock that seems inescapable, so they have no choice but to go on forever and let those amps take all the punishment they can stand.

That said, if your organism is too weak to take in even 20 minutes of that jam (and I can get that: mine was fairly weak, too, when I first submitted myself to the experience), the shorter tracks on the first side might be a better initial proposition. ʻFather Cannot Yellʼ is faster, has a far more prominent guitar and keyboard part, and occasionally threatens to burn up the entire world with those feedback blasts from all the melodic instruments. ʻMary, Mary So Contraryʼ is built upon a dirge-like drone where Schmidt's and Karoli's shrill, high-pitched, wobbly tones knock your brains out as efficiently as any imaginable chemical substance, and at no expense to physiological health. And the shortest track, ʻOutside My Doorʼ, is a four-minute garage-blues-rock romp that would not have been out of place on Nuggets — short, adolescent-style aggressive, rhythmically simplistic and full of kick-ass guitar solos that go for devastating emotional brutality right away, without taking much time to build up.

You might notice that so far, I have not said one word about the fifth member of the band: the African-American vocalist Malcolm Mooney — first of the two «accidental» vocalists that the Germans would recruit during their glory years. Although he did have some experience, singing in a vocal band while in high school, at the time he befriended Can he made a living as a sculptor in New York, so basically he was the first one to prove Can's strange point that «anybody can be a singer in a band like ours». Neither what he sings nor whether he can sing at all makes much difference — Can do not really need singers, they just use them up as sonic material to make the tunes a little more accessible and a little more crazy at the same time. Most of the time, Mooney screams his way through the music, or, as it is in the case of ʻYoo Doo Rightʼ, scrapes his way through it, making himself sound like a homeless person on the brink of insanity. The creepy thing is that working in the band actually drove him to insanity; soon after the release of Monster Movie, he took his doctor's advice and fled to America to avoid going completely crazy — and you would, too, if you had to provide improvisational vocals for six-hour long jam sessions.

That said, in the context of Can songs being «tribal rituals», Mooney's vocalizations, as would Suzuki's a year later, make perfect sense — this is a «speaking-in-tongues» component, stretches of shamanistic delirium that show us how effectively the man is possessed. If anything, his vocals on ʻYoo Doo Rightʼ are too normal for the band — much of the time, you can actually make out what he is singing (which is not right at all), and some of the singing even follows a clear melodic pattern, which is even less right, implying rationality and a search for structural elegance. So you might say that Mooney was an essentially normal character whose work in Can drove him to madness, whereas Suzuki would be an essentially mad character whose work in Can drove him to become a Jehovah's Witness — and so the stakes go up.

Clearly, Monster Movie is not the best Can album. At this stage, they are still putting their shit together, and the band's love for jam magic is not yet tempered with the ability to add vision, scope, and massive tape splicing to the proceedings. But on the other hand, this here is as «raw» as it gets, and the band's four-piece gears are in complete working order. They have not yet been graced with the presence of a perfect vocalist, and the grooves are more enjoyable than memorable, but one thing's for certain: no other band in 1969 sounded that tight over the course of an interminable live improvisation — something to remember for all those critics who like to point out the (hard-to-deny) influence of the Velvet Underground, but forget that the adorable Moe Tucker would stand no chance in a drum battle versus Herr Liebezeit, and more or less the same goes for all the other instrumentalists. Of course, this does not make them a better band (and we will not get into any apples vs. oranges types of discussion here), but it does make them one of the greatest, if not the greatest band at the time who could combine experimental/psychedelic inclinations with phenomenal instrumental technique, all the while resting comfortly in an easy-to-understand zone of the blues idiom. Thumbs up for sure.

SOUNDTRACKS (1970)

1) Deadlock; 2) Tango Whiskyman; 3) Deadlock (version 2); 4) Don't Turn The Light On, Leave Me Alone; 5) Soul Desert; 6) Mother Sky; 7) She Brings The Rain.

Next to Tago Mago, this album always gets a relatively bad rap as a «transitional» effort, and, well, objectively it is «transitional» — not only is this a fairly non-conceptual mix of various pieces of music that Can composed for contemporary movie soundtracks to make a living, but it also features both their old vocalist and the new one, Damo Suzuki, literally recruited from the street in Munich where Czukay and Liebezeit found him busking outside a cafe. Clearly, it is hard to approach this stuff from a completely unbiased perspective.

And yet, somehow I'd say that Soundtracks has the unexpected benefit of encapsulating, in but 35 minutes, just about everything that Can were capable of. By being pulled together from a variety of different sources, it is more diverse than any other record of theirs. It does not let you get sick of either Mooney or Suzuki, whose incessant mumblings may fairly quickly lose their artistic power and become an irritant (I am definitely not sure that his presence all over Tago Mago is always beneficial). It shows the band as masters of the trance-inducing jam and the occasional unusual pop hook. And the only thing on which it goes easy is their experimentation with arhythmic noise... which is actually fine by me, because to me, Can is all about rhythm; whenever the rhythm section takes a break, they lose God status immediately.

Anyway, bias and prejudice notwithstanding, nobody in his right mind ever says a word against ʻMother Skyʼ, a track with which the Can truly arrives — and blows away all jamming competition, with 14 minutes of the most badass sound in the history of jam music, ever. No buildup, no «search for the right groove»: out of nowhere, they immediately jump into the right groove (of course, the track may have been cut out of a much larger session), with two minutes of a shrill, sharp, unrelenting assault on the senses — Liebezeit kicking like an overpaid slave driver, Czukay playing little enticing melodic phrases on top of his own aggressive pounding, and Karoli soloing like a demon, keeping the guitar at high-pitched ecstatic heights without a single break between notes. All of which serves as an introduction to the many subsequent sections, focusing on Suzuki's vocals, guitar solos that alternate between Eastern drone and blues-rock, and just one brief «soft» interlude where bongos replace standard percussion, to let you catch your breath.

The main attraction of ʻMother Skyʼ is that it is actually quite simple — it's not as if Karoli were playing some chords or scales that had not been previously thought of, and the beat is standard, even minimalistic 4/4 (reflecting the so-called Motorik aesthetics). What puts it over the edge is the sheer force and intent invested in the effort — it's as if the musicians believe that the fate of the world is resting on their shoulders, that the universe remains stable only for as long as they carry on their task with complete and utter commitment. On the other side of the English Channel, only Hawkwind were committing themselves with comparable dedication to the same kind of ritualistic primitivism — but Hawkwind came with an atmosphere of corniness and could be laughed off (shouldn't, but could be), whereas Can come with something stranger and spookier.

That strangeness and spookiness manifests itself in quite a few other bits on the album, of course, starting from the very first seconds — the distorted guitar intro to ʻDeadlockʼ, sirening across the living room, swirling around and finally crashing down into the mumbling desperation of Suzuki's probably-epic vocals. ʻDeadlockʼ was the theme to a spaghetti-western movie of the same name, so they were most likely going for a Morricone-like effect, and there's plenty of echo, desperate shrillness, and dangerous tones all right, but the song is based primarily on drone, so it's like crossing Morricone with The Velvet Underground — to awesome results.

Then there's ʻDon't Turn The Right On, Reave Me Aloneʼ (reflecting Suzuki's predictable struggle with pronunciation, though he does make an effort to master the liquidity), which somehow succeeds in conveying his characteristic «madness» without having to resort to wild screaming or gibberish; and do not forget the creepy acoustic licks, the deceivingly becalmed flute bits, and the unnerving funky beat. ʻTango Whiskymanʼ is probably the weakest of the Suzuki tracks, because its «tango» rhythmics, in the context of everything else here, sounds somewhat parodic; however, hearing Suzuki try to sing a melodic pop melody, come to think of it, may be the weirdest experience of 'em all.

Of the two Mooney tracks, ʻSoul Desertʼ would have fit in very well on Monster Movie, being the same kind of funky repetitive groove with heavy emphasis on over-excited blabber — like a soul man gone crazy (which was more or less the case); but ʻShe Brings The Rainʼ, which they used to close the album after the thunderstorm of ʻMother Skyʼ, is a completely normal-sounding lounge jazz number, with a completely normal (perhaps even too normal) vocal delivery; it only begins to go slightly psychedelic towards the end, when the song's jazz rhythm chords are complemented with a quiet, but persistent acid guitar solo (something that all vocal jazz records could benefit from quite heavily, methinks!). On its own, perhaps, ʻShe Brings The Rainʼ would never be a Can classic, but its positioning next to ʻMother Skyʼ is a classic move, and somehow it feels like precisely the right missing piece to complete the puzzle and turn the whole record into a small, elegant, 100%-efficient kaleidoscope of sound.

Anyway, best or not best, Soundtracks is totally essential Can, as well as a merciful introduction for those who like to test their waters before wading in chest-deep: once you get used to ʻMother Skyʼ, you're pretty much ready for most of Tago Mago (which has its fair share of great grooves, but, in my opinion, still has nothing on the sheer all-out ferocity of ʻMother Skyʼ). The «soundtrack curse» may have unjustly condemned the album to forever hanging in the shadow of its successors, or in the shadow of all those other innumerable rock classics from 1970, but as long as we still have time to savor all the classics, be sure to keep this one firmly on the list, and here's some major thumbs up from me as an incentive.

TAGO MAGO (1971)

1) Paperhouse; 2) Mushroom; 3) Oh Yeah; 4) Halleluwah; 5) Aumgn; 6) Peking O; 7) Bring Me Coffee Or Tea.

Acknowledged almost everywhere as the ultimate Can masterpiece, Tago Mago is indeed the most uncompromising, relentless, brutal exhibition of the Can aesthetics that money can buy, which should also register a warning for the not-so-extreme-minded: four LP sides with but seven tracks worth of material, and two of them with very little rhythm support to speak of, can be quite a heavy burden on the unitiated, who should rather start out with Soundtracks.

As far as kick-ass statements go, I'm pretty sure Can never made a stronger one. Tago Mago is a dark-'n'-brooding piece, exploring the world of insanity and brutality that is so wonderfully encapsulated in the sleeve photo: see how it seems to picture an infra-red portrait of an individual spitting out pieces of his own brain, but that same portrait also has the shape of a nuclear mushroom cloud? Well, you could dream of something like that just listening to some of this music, without taking a single look at the cover.

Technically, Tago Mago completes the transformation of Can from a jam-based outfit into a «jam-splice-based» unit: most of the songs here have improvisational studio jams as their foundation, but all of them are then taken by Czukay and «treated» with additional overdubs, shortened and spliced with artistic purposes, as if Holger knew very well which moments of the sessions «meant» something, which ones had to be embellished to mean something, and which ones were senseless and had to be cut. You could, perhaps, call that a waste of time if most of the material did not indeed sound so awesome — a great lesson for so many psychedelic bands who thought that the very fact of a group of free people freely experimenting in the studio should necessarily result in great art. Amazingly, despite all the doctoring, all the tracks still preserve a certain raw, visceral quality to them, which we should ascribe to Czukay's absolute professionalism.

When I'm talking about raw/visceral, I, of course, mean primarily the rhythm section. If ʻMother Skyʼ used a simplistic 4/4 beat and could still put you in a trance any second, then Tago Mago shows how they can do the same thing with slightly trickier means. In particular, ʻHalleluhwahʼ, stretched over the entire second side of the LP, rides on an absolute monster of a groove, captured so brilliantly you can almost feel Liebezeit's entire drumkit rattling and wobbling on its platform, while the bass is pumping up a feeling of inescapable doom. Honestly, the rest does not even matter all that much — there are some fine, diverse guitar solos in all sorts of styles and tonalities, there's Suzuki spewing crazy desperation ("searching for my brother, yes I am!") all over the place, but my attention (and spirit) just remain chained to that groove all the way through (there's a very short bit early on in the song where the groove disappears for a moody piano interlude, and it almost makes me sad — fortunately, it's just a thirty second splice). How the heck is it even humanly possible to play that sort of stuff so unfalteringly for such a long time? Must be far more difficult to get yourself that disciplined than going all-out crazy a la Keith Moon.

The shorter tracks on the first side are not quite that powerful, but they also form the emotional center of the album — the slow, trudging ʻPaperhouseʼ is like the soundtrack to a funeral ceremony in a madhouse; ʻMushroomʼ, naturally referring to a nuclear strike, is particularly poignant given its vocalization by a Japanese singer ("when I saw mushroom head, I was born and I was dead"); and ʻOh Yeahʼ, into which ʻMushroomʼ transitions after an actual nuclear blast, is the album's fastest bit of music, but also one of the most psychedelic, with backward vocals and synth notes that morph into gushing wind as they fade away. This is not «just jamming» — this is every bit the equivalent of the Stooges' Fun House, only substituting a more complex and disciplined approach in the place of Iggy and Co.'s untamed infernal energy. The message is the same, though — music can symbolize and convey the collective madness of humanity better than any other medium.

You have to keep that message very firmly in mind when listening to the second LP, because I vividly remember myself hating ʻAumgnʼ and ʻPeking Oʼ — why on earth, thought I, when we have here easily the best rhythm section of 1971 bar none, do we have to waste so much time on two astral freakouts that feature no rhythm section whatsoever? But even the cavernous echoes and keyboard escapades of ʻAumgnʼ are quite a step up from anything in the same style done by, say, the Grateful Dead — just because there's a fascinating tension to every single bit of the track, and because you can visualize it as a dangerous journey through the corridors, winding paths, and precipices located inside somebody's brain; if the first LP was completely «external», now the sensations are being «internalized», and where you first had access to the outward manifestations of insanity, now you are being put inside, where it sure ain't pretty but sure is suspenseful. ʻPeking Oʼ is not quite as impressive, largely because there's too much emphasis on outdated electronics (the drum machine stuff is particularly flimsy) and because Suzuki's speaking-in-tongues on that particular track veers into the comical; but it is also shorter, and it does actually succeed in bringing the rhythm section back towards the end, so it's not a big problem.

Like Soundtracks, Tago Mago also ends with something relatively close to a «normal» moody tune, the drone-based ʻBring Me Coffee Or Teaʼ, where things sort of calm down after the storm, but clearly indicating that this is just a pause, as the madness dies down because the madman has temporarily run out of energy and is now quietly rocking back and forth in a dazed, depressed, zombie-like state, his mind quietly preparing for psychotic phase two. ʻShe Brings The Rainʼ was not exactly a happy song, but it reflected a certain mode of inner peace and quiet; ʻBring Me Coffee Or Teaʼ ends Can's alleged masterpiece with a musical cliffhanger, or, at least, a clear indication that this disturbed state of mind is here to stay for a long, long time.

Paradoxically, perhaps, Tago Mago is far from the most «typical» Can album. The band's flirt with musical insanity would go on for a brief while, but overall, future releases would become more and more disciplined, more concentrated on the groove than the atmosphere; and if the atmosphere were still present, it would rather be an otherworldly atmosphere than this horrid feeling of being trapped inside a madman's mind. Since rock music and rock criticism has this long history of flirting with darkness and insanity, it is not surprising that Tago Mago has become, for so many people, the Can album par excellence; yet in reality, it represents but one particular stage of evolution for the band, although for Damo Suzuki, it was certainly his shining hour of glory (his vocal presence on the following two albums being far less important). That said, on the «Great Mad Albums» shelf that was so densely populated in the late Sixties and early Seventies, Tago Mago has itself quite a place of honor — thumbs up, totally.

EGE BAMYASI (1972)

1) Pinch; 2) Sing Swan Song; 3) One More Night; 4) Vitamin C; 5) Soup; 6) I'm So Green; 7) Spoon.

This follow-up to Tago Mago is frequently hailed as a shorter, less ambitious and more accessible masterpiece — yet while it is indeed listenable and impressive, it has always seemed to me as a bit of a letdown, a «lite» version of its monstruous predecessor. Aesthetically, the focus remains fixed on the same elements — jam power, tape splice, rhythm section tricks, Suzuki madness — but the tracks get shorter and occasionally even poppier, and the atmospheres, except for a brief bit in the middle of ʻSoupʼ, rarely go to the extremes of Tago Mago.

Curiously, the album may have beeneven more influential on successive generations of musicians than Tago Mago — with Sonic Youth, Pavement, and Portishead all going on record with their expression of specific admiration, and the band Spoon even adopting its name from the album's first single. And if you go earlier, it is hardly a coincidence that the main groove of Talking Heads' ʻOnce In A Lifetimeʼ is essentially the same as in ʻPinchʼ, the lead-off track from the album. My guess is that this adoration has something to do with Can trying to «can» their wild sound in these easier-to-assimilate musical forms, with extra hooks and all. Another reason may be purely technical: ʻSpoonʼ was the first Can song made available to a mass audience, being released as a single on the United Artists label, and its three minutes are a pretty captivating synthesis of pop catchiness and spooky weirdness, often provided by the same means. It was also one of the first uses of the drum machine on a commercial single, sounding fairly unusual for 1972 (as difficult as it is to transport yourself back in time for that parameter).

Still, the record does work fairly well as a lighter, humbler, and a bit more humorous companion to its big brother — with an oddly symbolic fixation on the greens, beginning with the album title (the Turkish equivalent for Aegean Okra) and cover and ending with song names like ʻVitamin Cʼ, ʻSoupʼ, and ʻI'm So Greenʼ, as if the band somehow intended to make a conceptual record about the pleasures of vegetarianism, but then forgot to reflect this in the music (in some twisted way, Damo's desperate "hey you, you're losing your vitamin C!" may be interpreted as a bit of advertisement, but only according to the rules and laws of the madhouse). Accepting this status as a fact makes it easier to come to terms with the observation that they are re-using quite a few of last year's ideas — for instance, ʻVitamin Cʼ is actually a poppy variation on the groove of ʻHalleluhwahʼ, and the ten minutes of ʻSoupʼ do not add any new insights into jamming magic when compared to Tago Mago's ecstatic rituals.

The «harnessing» of the unrestrained power does result in some unique pop weirdness, of course. ʻSing Swan Songʼ and ʻOne More Nightʼ are like a pair of perverse-erotic siblings — the first one is a psychedelic elegy that could be directed at some Lady of the Lake or other, beginning with the sounds of rippling water and then using Holger's bass as a steady rudder as the boat smoothly glides across the sonic surface, and Karoli's guitar imitates the sound of bagpipes; and ʻOne More Nightʼ busily hustles about, methodically weaving a spider's web around your object of desire, as Suzuki grins and cackles, Dr. Evil-style, in anticipation of something juicy. On the other hand, ʻI'm So Greenʼ sounds so not unlike some Brit-pop creation from the late Sixties (think Small Faces, perhaps?) that I actually find it hard to understand what exactly makes it a «Can» song, other than Czukay's overpowered bass. It's nice, but not necessarily something I'm looking to in a Krautrock tune, you know.

On the whole, it's still very much a thumbs up, and I can easily see how it could be used as a concise manual for all aspiring «avant-pop» songwriters, but I seriously miss the sharpness, shrillness, and pull-all-the-stops attitude of the previous two records; and I do not think that the serious change in direction that would occur with Future Days was coincidental — I'm pretty sure they must have been worried themselves about getting caught in a rut, as impressive and idiosyncratic (but not inimitable) that rut might have seemed to be.

FUTURE DAYS (1973)

1) Future Days; 2) Spray; 3) Moonshake; 4) Bel Air.

There is a very important, but subtle dividing line between Ege Bamyasi and Future Days, the band's last album with Suzuki and, frankly speaking, also the band's first album where the very presence of Suzuki feels a little... out of place. Prior to 1973, there were lots of things you could call Can albums — psychedelic, mind-blowing, spooky, disturbing, nightmarish, psychopathic — but «beauty» and «atmosphere» would hardly be at the top of the list, unless you have your value system all mixed-up and highly individualistic. Now, for the first time, Can set themselves the challenge of creating a sonic world that seduces with its prettiness, not with its ability to align itself with the darkest strains of your soul. A record that is, in a way, a very direct predecessor of (and almost unquestionably an influence on) Brian Eno's Another Green World — without clearly being a successor of anything, because very few, if any, albums up to that time were made with the overall purpose of creating an ambience. Even in the progressive genre, most albums had a «plot» of sorts; Future Days is purely impressionistic, from top to bottom.

Although the tracks are still long, with ʻBel Airʼ occupying a whole side's worth of vinyl, it is pretty hard to call them «jams» now — there is very little sense of improvisation, and the emphasis is on droning group interplay rather than solos of any kind. The stripped-down musical structures of the tunes have lots of fairly common elements — for instance, the title track is pinned to a fairly generic Latin groove; at the beginning of ʻSprayʼ you can notice a surprisingly retro boogie bass line; and the album's only short piece, ʻMoonshakeʼ, structurally seems like a cross between ʻOye Como Vaʼ and ʻShakin' All Overʼ. However, the rhythm section of Czukay and Liebezeit still manages to remain one of the most inventive combos on Earth, and any «generic» elements here only exist in unpredictable combinations.

Most importantly, it makes no sense to discuss any single instrument outside of the overall context — it is only when the rhythm section is properly integrated with the guitars and keyboards that the record begins to make any sense at all. ʻFuture Daysʼ (the song) is made to sound like a wobbly journey on a magical carpet, its hems flapping around you as synthesized clouds chuck electric guitar raindrops on your head. With ʻSprayʼ, you find yourself on the ground, somewhat frantically running through an unfamiliar landscape as guitars and keyboards alike transform themselves into alien mosquitoes, carnivorous frogs, and other ghastly creatures. And ʻBel Airʼ's distorted guitar sound is clearly volcanic, so apparently by that time you find yourself out of the swamps and jungles, but gradually descending into the vortex of hellfire (despite the track's deceptively quiet and calm beginnings).

Describing these musical paintings in detail is rather futile, since not a lot of different things actually happen — while this is not really «ambient» music, due to its lack of minimalism and highly dynamic rhythm section, it is, now that I think of it, about as «post-rock» as they come, largely achieving the goals of bands like Godspeed You! Black Emperor decades before they'd even formed (and, might I add, without raising suspicions that this music is being made as compensation for the fact that the people involved do not really know how to play their instruments: even at their most «static», each of Liebezeit's drum patterns or Czukay's bass lines here is precious). However, each of the band's members is equally important for the overall effect, with the already mentioned possible exception of Damo — his vocal parts are even more quiet than they were, and although he sings at least one very pretty melody (the "spinning down alone..." bit on ʻBel Airʼ), and generally shows himself capable of subtlety and even a sort of crooning, his presence is never integral to these songs. No wonder he left in between Future Days and Babaluma: his mission was almost officially ended.

I would not call Future Days as glaringly great as the 1970-71 recordings, though. There are quite a few stretches here that can easily try your patience, and on the whole, I would think that a bit of diversity wouldn't hurt: even if somebody argues that a tight, gritty three-minute funk-pop tune like ʻMoonshakeʼ disrupts the album's harmonic flow and feels out of place, it at least helps you put the disjointed pieces of your brain back together before the big one comes. The soundscapes are impressive and mildly evocative, but way too kaleidoscopic to stick in memory — where a master manipulator like Eno would always have a bunch of creepy riffs or emotional keyboard phrases to pick your attention, Future Days places too much trust in the whole and too little in the individual parts. In the end, its historical importance probably matters more than its pure enjoyability; but this is not to say that it is not enjoyable, or that repeated listens do not bring out, clearer and clearer, all sorts of tasty nuances in Karoli's guitar playing or Schmidt's ambient keyboards. It is, and they do; it is simply that «Can genius» is a bit more directly associated with the likes of ʻHalleluhwahʼ than ʻBel Airʼ.

On the other hand, Ege Bamyasi had already shown that if the band were to go on making Tago Mago-lite clones for the rest of its life, they would very quickly become a parody of themselves; and if they do not deserve our admiration for such a radical change of direction while still near the top of their game, what do they deserve? Well, at least a pretty strong thumbs up, for one thing.

SOON OVER BABALUMA (1974)

1) Dizzy Dizzy; 2) Come Sta La Luna; 3) Splash; 4) Chain Reaction; 5) Quantum Physics.

I think that I might actually prefer Can's first post-Suzuki album to Future Days, even if this means going against the average consensus. Essentially, they are continuing to develop in the same direction, once again abandoning pure jam power in favor of otherworldly ambience with occasional touches of beauty — but, while the sound of this album is a little more conventional, perhaps, it is also sharper, and there's just basically more going on than there used to be.

The album title is a spooneristic distortion of Moon Over Alabama, but, for some reason, to me it always suggested an association not so much with Kurt Weill's ʻAlabama Songʼ, but with ʻStars Fell On Alabamaʼ — there's a distinct shadow of midnight jazz lying over much of the record, and it does have a nightly, ghostly, slightly mystical aura to it, especially the first half which could be thought about as the logical nighttime state of the same world that we'd explored on Future Days during the daytime. ʻDizzy Dizzyʼ, the first song in the band's catalog to be dominated by Michael Karoli's violin rather than guitar (which he plays Stephane Grappelli-style), is particularly impressive in that respect — it's all about ghostly apparitions, as personified by the wobbly, echoey, ephemeral character of all the instruments: drums, bass, violin, keyboards, vocals, they all sound like they're there and they're not there.

ʻCome Sta La Lunaʼ and ʻSplashʼ complete the first side of the album with perky Latin rhythms, the former one more of a cha-cha-cha and the latter more of a samba, but aside from the rhythm tracks, nothing about the tunes is specifically Latin American — ʻLunaʼ is distinguished by oddly processed vocals (note: many of the technical effects on vocals are probably best explained as the result of Karoli's and Schmidt's shyness, as they had to manage without a separate vocalist), dissonant violin runs and avantgarde piano rolls that all converge in a ball of weirdness, like a naked midnight dance on the beach supposed to help the dancers find their inner self. On ʻSplashʼ, the tempo is accelerated, the violin and guitar solos become crazier (including violin tones so distorted that I almost mistook them for saxes), and the moonlight madness becomes more pronounced: the only thing that's lacking is a bombastic climax, instead of which we get a rather unsatisfactory fadeout just as things are beginning to really heat up.

The second side of the record takes us in a different direction — with titles like ʻChain Reactionʼ and ʻQuantum Physicsʼ, you know you're moving away from psychedelic nocturnal scenery and into the realm of the micro-cosmic. ʻChain Reactionʼ itself is probably the closest they came to recapturing the nightmarish atmospheres of Tago Mago, with acid guitar solos, chicken-scratch funk guitar borrowed to symbolize the unstoppable onslaught of particle movement — and, most curiously, the track's several crescendos always inevitably descend into sections that I'd call «ʻDead Man's Tangoʼ Variations», such morbidity and coldness emanating from those passages. As for ʻQuantum Physicsʼ, the lengthy and nearly rhythmless piece of keyboard ambience, it sounds almost frustratingly modern — draggy, minimalistic, bleary-eyed, pretty much the blueprint for the vast majority of Boards of Canada albums.

As you can see, the album is somewhat journey-like — with a more «naturalistic» first side like a three-movement suite on exciting, but dangerous nighttime life in an alternate universe, and the second side a two-movement exploration of the «dynamic» and «static» states of the little bits and pieces that form the alternate universe in question. In other words, I find it even easier to conceptualize than Future Days, and I certainly find it more evocative: darker, creepier, more prone to transporting my mind to distant places than its predecessor. (For some reason, many people tend to really put down ʻChain Reactionʼ, but I think the abrupt signature changes alone justify its presence, and the only real complaint I have about the aggressive jam parts is that the soloing instruments are kept way too low in the mix).

In any case, it is important to clear away the perpetrated misconception that «this is the beginning of the end for Can» which is still being retranslated all over the place. It is, at the very least, a worthier spiritual companion to Future Days than Ege Bamyasi was to Tago Mago, capitalizing on its ambient/impressionist achievements rather than sounding like a pale copy of them. Yes, it may be argued that 1973 was the last year for Can to introduce «revolutionary» ideas in the world of music, but even revolutionary ideas may be improved upon with non-revolutionary nuances, and for a few additional years, the band still wrote and released worthy music that was in no way boring, let alone «commercially oriented». Thus, thumbs up all the way.

LANDED (1975)

1) Full Moon On The Highway; 2) Half Past One; 3) Hunters And Collectors; 4) Vernal Equinox; 5) Red Hot Indians; 6) Unfinished.

As public enthusiasm slowly dissipates over Can's gradual slipping into «accessible» patterns, my hope that eventually these mid-Seventies' albums will get their due only increases. Nowhere near as groundbreaking as Tago Mago or Future Days, sure; but in some special way, Landed still gives you a unique sound — Can crossing their experience, inborn talent, and experimentation with more conventional rock and funk rhythms of the day. Don't let brief lazy descriptions like «Landed marks the band's turn towards glam rock and early disco» form an incorrect impression before you even hear the album — if all glam rock and disco sounded like ʻFull Moon On The Highwayʼ and ʻHunters And Collectorsʼ, we could just as well eliminate any formal difference between nightclubs and highbrow art colleges.

Actually, Can were part of the common progressive trend that few people back then managed to (or even tried to) avoid — they just happened to be less lucky than, say, Kraftwerk, who'd also went from frenetic avantgarde experimentation to «catchy pop» in a matter of several years, but somehow managed not only to preserve, but even to enhance their critical reputation in the process. It was easier for Ralf and Florian, though, because with records like Autobahn and Man Machine they were creating a completely new sub-genre of pop music, whereas Can found themselves in a more difficult position: any sacrifice of their «excesses» (track length, tape splicing, crazy vocalizing, complex time signatures, etc.) would inevitably bring them back to their well-tattered roots — good old blues-rock. Would there be any fun in that?

Well, I'd say that Landed is still a lot of fun. ʻFull Moon On The Highwayʼ makes this album the first one in Can's catalog to be introduced with a «potentially commercial» three-minute pop-rock song, but it is still unmistakeably Can — largely due to scorching acid fire guitar solos from Karoli, because the rhythm section of Liebezeit and Czukay prefers to exercise restraint (although I still like whatever Holger is doing with that bass, especially in the coda where he seems to be turning that «disco» pattern inside out). The vocals, handled by Czukay on this track, are louder and more self-assured than anything sung on Babaluma, and the sped-up chorus vocals sound less like the proverbial chipmunks than like a pack of merry sprites levitating over the proverbial highway. If you ever wanted to put together a rock opera on highway travel, make sure to put this one right after Deep Purple's ʻHighway Starʼ — there's no cooler transition from bright daytime, with the protagonist exuding self-confidence and arrogance, to creepy nighttime, when spirits take flight and driving becomes a test for the spirit.

The other tracks also have that night-time sheen to them, much of this having to do with the band's final mastering of state-of-the-art recording technologies (for the first time, they had access to 16-track recording!), so that some of the action is taking place «in the background» and some «in the foreground», creating cool sonic dimensions — not to mention that ʻHunters And Collectorsʼ "all come out at night", and ʻVernal Equinoxʼ has the root nox in the title. ʻVernal Equinoxʼ, in particular, is a highlight, the album's busiest instrumental with lots of wailing pleasure from Karoli's guitar (no less than three different tones, too) and occasional ultra-speedy bursts from the rhythm section (although the electronic drums are probably programmed, but Czukay's bass zoops are most certainly not).

On the whole, even if the individual songs aren't nearly as catchy as they should be, I love the atmosphere — Landed sounds like one big supernatural dance party around some sort of elemental bonfire, and as much as it borrows from contemporary R&B, it ends up converting everything into ritualistic wildness, largely due to clever mixing techniques. This makes the transition into the final track, honestly titled ʻUnfinishedʼ, all the more natural — this is where rhythm dies out, but ritualistic wildness remains, as the track begins similarly to one of the spooky freakouts on Tago Mago and eventually, after a long and dangerous journey through sonic tornadoes, earthquakes, and beastie-infested underground caverns, ends up somewhere in the otherworldly domain of Future Days, populated with Yellow Submarine characters. Okay, so maybe this description makes the composition more interesting than it actually is, but as far as Can noisefests go, this one is pretty inspired — and has a gorgeous little impressionist coda that old man Debussy would probably have thumbed up for me.

In the meantime, I'm going to have to do on my own and issue this an autonomous thumbs up all by myself. Actually, maybe the best thing about these mid-period Can albums is that they are rarely boring — you'd think that the band should have gotten less superficially exciting and stuck in its own juice as it went on, but they never forget about the fun quotient, unlike some of their stuffier Krautrock contemporaries like Faust, for example. And when fun and experiment go hand in hand, it's the best kind of fun and the best kind of experiment that may be had.

FLOW MOTION (1976)

1) I Want More; 2) Cascade Waltz; 3) Laugh Till You Cry, Live Till You Die; 4) ...And More; 5) Babylonian Pearl; 6) Smoke (Ethnological Forgery Series No. 59); 7) Flow Motion.

This is where the fans really went nuts — Can scoring a commercial dance hit on the UK charts? Perfidy! But in fact, Flow Motion is quite a chivalrous and tasteful continuation of the band's search for a compromise between musical experimentation and public acceptance. Had most of these tracks appeared on a David Bowie record, they would probably be encountered with praise by the critical community, since Bowie was a «pop» artist by definition, and his embracing of «progressive» values within a pop context was always welcome; on the other hand, Can, who with these albums were sort of meeting «pop standards» halfway, were scolded not because of the actual quality of the music, but because of their trajectory, which is frankly unfair.

The trick is that Can are not simply playing funk, reggae, and pop on Flow Motion: they are playing Can-style funk, reggae, and pop, which means that they will do everything possible to populate these conventional musical structures with odd sounds and strange atmospheres. Take the hit itself, ʻI Want Moreʼ — it's odd from the very start, with the first rhythm guitar part sounding like an old Bo Diddley part from ʻMonaʼ, and the second, joining in ten seconds later, sounding like a contemporary Talking Heads funky groove. It's a simple combination, but somehow from the very first start it adds a bit of a psychedelic dimension to the track, where your mind gets trapped between the two interlocking rhythms and tossed to and fro like a basketball. And that's just the beginning, because then you get a New Wavish synth hook, ghostly echoey vocals, additional layers of distorted guitars and keyboard loops — again, if your average dance track were produced with that much care and creativity... well, it wouldn't be too good, because most people would be too entranced to actually do much dancing.

Or ʻCascade Waltzʼ — it actually is a waltz, playing in diligent 3/4 time, but the rhythm guitar is chopping out... reggae chords, making this arguably the first instance of an actual reggae waltz on record. With the cascades in question probably symbolized by the slide guitars, which give the whole thing a bit of a Hawaiian feeling, I am not even sure any more what it is I am listening to: a bizarre stylistic combo with an atmosphere of lazy, dreamy, colorful relaxation. For ʻLaugh Till You Cryʼ, Karoli picks up a Turkish baǧlama, but the band carries on with a Caribbean stylistics, playing an equally relaxed slow ska pattern that agrees very well with the song's slogan — "laugh till you cry, live till you die", and when people tell you that, if you call yourself Can, then you're supposed to keep on producing tracks that turn your subconscious outside out and expose to the world its darkest, smelliest corners, just let them know how much you care by writing more songs like ʻBabylonian Pearlʼ (which sounds like the band's tribute to Roxy Music).

All right, if you do want some darkness, there's always the title track, which seems to also have begun life as variations on a ska/reggae groove, but is more in line with Can's traditional ways of jamming. Largely instrumental, it builds upon the interlocking patterns of Schmidt's keyboards, faintly resonating from some faraway corridors or deep waterholes, and Karoli's heavily processed guitars, for some of which he uses the wah-wah and the phasing effect at the same time, producing some fairly devilish sounds. There's a Hendrix vibe here, too, and a Funkadelic one, perhaps, but all in a nice shroud of Teutonic darkness; and whoever would want to ask questions like "what are these Germans doing covering black people's music?", well, just remember that the band's first vocalist was actually black, and that the band's actual musical roots had always been in the blues rather than in Bavarian folk songs or The Ring.

If there's one single complaint I'd have to voice, it's that for the first time, I do not notice the rhythm section all that much. It's there, for sure, and doing a good job, but I do not feel a great deal of involvement on the part of Czukay, and there's not a single jaw-dropping rhythm pattern from Liebezeit, either (perhaps he was just getting the hang of that whole reggae thing, and remained content to be relegated to quasi-apprentice status for the time being). That is not good, because ultimately Can is first and foremost about the rhythm, and only later about everything else; and it is hardly a coincidence that Czukay's duties would only diminish from then on, until his complete resignation from active player status in 1978. But whatever might have been the reason for this change, Flow Motion has plenty of cool things going on to compensate, and remains indispensable listening, I'm sure, for everyone who does not spend half of one's lifetime standing round the corner and waiting for a nice occasion to shout SELLOUT! as if it really mattered. Most definitely a thumbs up.

SAW DELIGHT (1977)

1) Don't Say No; 2) Sunshine Day And Night; 3) Call Me; 4) Animal Waves; 5) Fly By Night.

At this point, Can got caught in Traffic, and they sure saw so much delight in this that Holger Czukay was relegated to handling the «wave receiver» and «special sounds», whereas Rosko Gee, a Jamaican bassist who'd played with Traffic on their last album, replaced Holger on his native instrument — and at the same time, Ghanaian percussionist Rebop Kwaku Baah, from the same Traffic lineup, complemented Liebezeit as the band's second (and some disappointed fans might even say first) drummer. No wonder, then, that Saw Delight is sometimes presented as Can's first serious exploration of «world music», even though the band was really mixing all sorts of musical traditions as early as the late Sixties, and had a Japanese vocalist with strong ties to his native culture for about four years.

In reality, Saw Delight is a very natural and logical continuation of the overall evolution of Can's sound — the difference from Flow Motion is that they are now living in the New Wave era, and so much of the record is influenced by contemporary rhythms, inherited from the funk tradition but tightened up and brought up to the required standards of nervousness and paranoia. Rebop's percussion does add some «tribal / primal» flavor, for sure, making the first several tracks here into a direct spiritual predecessor of Talking Heads' Remain In Light (but without the same level of catchiness in its grooves, which meant that Remain In Light could bear hit singles and Saw Delight couldn't, and wasn't even supposed to), but even with all those samba beats it is merely another step along the path that began with Future Days («otherworldly ambience» → «otherworldly rhythmic ambience» → «funky atmospheric nighttime journey» → «funky reggae voodoo shit» → WORLD MUSIC!).

And despite the fact that in 1977, Can weren't exactly on the cutting edge, or at least weren't supposed to remain on the same cutting edge with so many new creative artists breathing down the necks of «progressive dinosaurs», Saw Delight is yet another excellent release from the band. They are still capable of holding down a simple, mesmerizing groove (ʽDon't Say Noʼ, with Karoli throwing out not one, but two new guitar tones, soloing with the same grim determination with which the groove is being propelled); finding a «cute» instrumental hook to which they could pin six minutes of studio jamming (ʽSunshine Day And Nightʼ is dependent upon a small acoustic phrase that wouldn't be out of place on a bluegrass album, giving the whole piece a decidedly sunshiny look); playing around with disco basslines so that they are only slightly changed to give the whole tune a scary, apocalyptic sheen (ʽCall Meʼ, with some particularly crazy guitar workouts from Karoli that presage Adrian Belew's work with King Crimson by almost half a decade). And, last but not least, they can still take a pop formula and adapt it to their own purposes — ʽFly By Nightʼ, with a little bit of imagination, could be an Olivia Newton-John number from Xanadu, with a «soaring» hook produced by guitars and synthesized strings that offers you magical salvation. But not even Jeff Lynne could procure such strange guitar tones, or agree to have all the attention drawn to the music rather than the vocals — Karoli's singing on the track is barely audible, and is really only there to give you a few hints as to what sort of visualization they'd like you to accompany this with ("fly with me through space and time till we reach forever" — sure thing, it's one hell of a smooth, silky flight).

The mammoth centerpiece of the album is ʽAnimal Wavesʼ, a 15-minute long jam that sounds like Santana, Tangerine Dream, and a Sufi musician from Morocco having a good time together (ex-Traffic members provide the Santana part, Schmidt is invoking Tangerine Dream, and Karoli's electric violin sounds very «muezzinish» — not nearly as muezzinish as the wordless vocals in the middle of the track, which is the only passage on the album that makes me actively want to strangle something). I have to admit that I find it overlong — there's just not enough happening to keep up my interest for 15 minutes, and although Karoli's solos still rule (and due to all the Near Eastern overtones, are also significantly different from everything he'd played earlier), he takes too much time to let rip. But length issues aside, it is a very moody instrumental — don't forget to bring it along for your next scheduled ride on a magic carpet, although it probably works better in tempestuous weather rather than in times of smooth sailing. (For this, please choose ʽFly By Nightʼ, which by itself makes a great atmospheric counterpoint to ʽAnimal Wavesʼ).

As you can tell, this is yet another thumbs up for yet another unjustly overlooked record; I am seriously hoping that, with time, they will come to be regarded with as much respect as contemporary Kraftwerk material, even if their charm (and innovation) are subtler and take more time to note and appreciate than something like The Man Machine.

OUT OF REACH (1978)

1) Serpentine; 2) Pauper's Daughter And I; 3) November; 4) Seven Days Awake; 5) Give Me No Roses; 6) Like Inobe God; 7) One More Day.

Well, so much for any further extensions of good will. The problem here is not even the total absence of Czukay — that is more of a consequence than a cause. The problem is that Can simply lost the magic, now confined to but a few thin strands among a sea of unfocused, pointless confusion. As late as Flow Motion and Saw Delight, Can were still Can, and their grooves pulsated with that classic Can mystique, sounding like sincerely performed religious rituals for communication with the spirits. At first, the addition of Rosko Gee and Rebop did not hurt this mystique too much — on the contrary, they «Africanized» the music to just the right degree. But as their role in their band expanded, and Holger's decreased, out came the inevitable: Can began a quick drift towards becoming just a normal jam band.

Out Of Reach has about as much excitement to it as a generic second-rate fusion album, even if it is not fusion (most of the tunes are funk- and disco-based). The players get into position and begin jamming, without bothering to come up with an emotionally resonant theme. The result is ʽSerpentineʼ, probably the most disappointing album opener on a Can record ever — other than the tightness (but not ferocious tightness) of the rhythm section, there is nothing here to be recommended. The instrumental mix is messy, with no instrument ever taking the risk of stepping into the limelight and all keyboard and guitar solos playing at low volume, muffled and timid, so that the track never achieves any transcendental heights. Stuff like ʽNovemberʼ and ʽSeven Days Awakeʼ is only marginally better, with shriller, more harshly distorted Karoli solos that still do not rise to the ecstasy of days gone by, and essentially sound like Can on autopilot — let alone the fact that Rosko is constantly trying to sneak a disco bassline in ʽNovemberʼ for no apparent reason other than, well, playing what everybody else was playing at the time.

In addition to that, Rosko also steps forward as a songwriter, contributing two vocal numbers: ʽPauper's Daughter And Iʼ is a dull disco number, only slightly elevated by Karoli's psychedelic guitar solo, and ʽGive Me No Rosesʼ is a surprisingly straightforward pop song with echoes of ska — if you think it combines well with Can's acid guitar overdubs, feel free to take it, but the way I see it, Rosko and Karoli are going against each other's grain here, and the result is an incoherent mess where a potentially fun pop song is messed up with a rambling arrangement, and a potentially cool psycho jam is dissipated within an imperfect pop song.

That said, both of these tunes are God-given masterpieces compared to ʽLike Inobe Godʼ, which is probably the worst thing ever committed to tape under the Can moniker. The backing track sounds like a theme for a low-budget blacksploitation movie, a fluffy soft-funk jam that goes nowhere in particular and does nothing interesting (and totally wastes Schmidt's talents on the piano) — and in the foreground, Rosko and Rebop add chaotic scatting vocals that, according to one review of the album, sound like «two rastas in the loo», a description with which I could not agree more. If you thought Mooney was too looney, and Suzuki was too spooky, then upon hearing ʽLike Inobe Godʼ, you will want to rush back to both as if they were Moses and Aaron in the flesh, because this is just... ridiculous. The track has as much to do with Can as a Mick Jagger/Lenny Kravitz collaboration has to do with The Rolling Stones.

If not for this disaster (and it goes on for six minutes! six minutes of your time not simply wasted, but raped and humiliated!), I might have refrained from a thumbs down — I mean, «boring» is not quite the same as «offensive», and even the boring stuff still has those Karoli guitar solos. But the thing is, this record really has no reason to exist. They are not even settling into some kind of predictable-acceptable formula — they are trying to modify the formula in such a way that it loses all possible effectiveness. Even Saw Delight, when you play it back to back with Tago Mago, has its own special charm; Out Of Reach just sounds like a band that, once upon a time, knew it all, but ended up forgetting everything. And don't blame this on Rosko and Rebop: those guys were just doing their Caribbean thing. It's the band's original creative management that is ultimately responsible for this travesty.

CAN (1979)

1) All Gates Open; 2) Safe; 3) Sunday Jam; 4) Sodom; 5) A Spectacle; 6) Ping-Pong; 7) Ethnological Forgery Series No. 99 ("Can-Can"); 8) Can Be.

This is unquestionably a step up from Out Of Reach, but much too late anyway. Actually, it is not that much of a step up — all it does is correct that album's most blatant mistakes, such as letting Rebop and Rosko write their own songs and sing them, or dabbling too much in African and Caribbean musical textures with which the (still) predominantly German team cannot really do a lot of exciting things. Instead, they prefer to expand on the legacy of tracks like ʽNovemberʼ and ʽSeven Days Awakeʼ — moody instrumental jams with tightly controlled grim attitudes instead of shrill, passionate build-ups.

Already on the first track, ʽAll Gates Openʼ, Karoli returns as the band's primary vocalist, declaring rather than singing the sparse lyrics in a semi-robotic voice, trying to feed the aura of mystery wih it — and almost succeeding, considering that the aura is also helped out with bits of swampy-bluesy harmonica (is this the first and only appearance of a noticeable harmonica part on a Can album, or what?) and strange swings between ominous bluesy «verses» and psycho-pop guitar flourishes on the «chorus» (or maybe «bridge», I can never make head or tails out of these convoluted structures of theirs). Rosko and Rebop are downgraded here to providing a basic funky setup, and that's the one thing they do real well, so on the whole, the track is a success, even if it is still way too quiet and humble to make much of a lasting impression.

The problem persists through most of the record — all of these jams sound good while they're on, but never leave any strong aftertaste. ʽSafeʼ, for all of its eight minutes, is dominated by the oscillating electronic groove in the background that resembles the orbital circulation of some noisy alien device — it's impressive, but it pretty much neutralizes the effect of whatever it is they're playing or chanting in the foreground. ʽSunday Jamʼ is a tight quasi-disco groove with juicy rhythm and lead guitar tones, but no memorable riffs or exciting solos. ʽSodomʼ slows down the tempo for a sterner, more threatening groove, but still does not come close to justifying the title: as a reflection of the activities of Sodom's inhabitants, the atmosphere is too lazy, and as a reflection of their (upcoming) punishment, it doesn't have enough bombastic echo or other special effects to make it worthy of the Old Testament. And ʽA Spectacleʼ, once again, sounds like a preview of the Afro-European grooves of Remain In Light, but the rhythm section and the funky guitars never seem to settle upon a specific perfect note pattern, and the results are messy.

The final two tracks are a big surprise, of course — it's almost as if the band members listened to everything they just recorded, and had the same reaction as myself: "Hey, we sound pretty good, but there's really no kick to all of this!" So they went ahead and, feeling unable to come up with something real hooky on their own, decided to make the weirdest thing possible — generate a Can-ified version of Offenbach's Galop Infernal from Orphée aux Enfers, better known to all of us laymen, of course, as the «Can-Can Song» — get it? Can-Can? Well, it was only a matter of time before Can would have to capitalize on the pun, as inavoidable, I guess, as the Rolling Stones eventually having to do ʽLike A Rolling Stoneʼ. Shamefully, I admit that the result is sort of hilarious, and that Karoli in particular does a tremendous job finding just the right guitar tones for all of the tune's separate melodies (although I think he should have gone all the way and used the «agonizing pig» talkbox effect on the main galloping part). It's even better when they then offer their own variation, in the form of ʽCan Beʼ where Karoli just goes off his rocker and begins Chuckberrying all over the place. But yes, of course both parts are just a desperate musical joke, no matter how professionally and humorously it is carried out.

That the band just faded away, without any official announcements of splitting, after the self-titled album (later also appearing under the title Inner Space) failed to impress anybody, is hardly surprising. The worst thing about Can is not even a lack of progress as a whole — more like a lack of conviction and passion: this is the sound of a band that is no longer genuinely interested in this thing they're doing together, no longer trying to get the best out of themselves. Oddly enough, no matter how much Can helped usher in the New Wave era, they themselves felt at odds with that era — their strongest and most genuine connection was really with older styles of playing, such as blues rock and funk, and unlike, say, King Crimson, they did not express a strong desire to fit in with the new crowds. (I mean, if they did have any such desire, why the heck did they want to team up with two old geezers from Traffic when they could have easily picked some of the talented youngsters? Even Fripp had to have Adrian Belew to make him feel young again).

So all we have to console ourselves is the knowledge that at least they left behind a decent enough swansong (I am leaving the reunion record out of this, for the moment) and, keeping in touch with their regular sense of humor, checked out with an elaborate musical joke. Which is a fairly tasteful way to end a career, but hardly makes for a rewarding listening experience — no subtle epiphanies here, trust me.

RITE TIME (1989)

1) On The Beautiful Side Of A Romance; 2) The Withoutlaw Man; 3) Below This Level (Patient's Song); 4) Movin' Right Along; 5) Like A New Child; 6) Hoolah Hoolah; 7) Give The Drummer Some; 8) In The Distance Lies The Future.

Maybe the best thing about this record is its title — while we could certainly question the idea of 1989 really being the right time for a reunion of the original Mooney-era Can, there is no question whatsoever that most of Can's music always represented a musical rite, and unless you take it as such, you probably lack the full potential of getting into the groove. The good news, then, is that this reunion, which really took place in 1986 somewhere in the southern side of France (where, as ʽHoolah Hoolahʼ tells us, they don't wear pants), fully complies with the «rite» thing and largely consists of danceable grooves presided over by a mad shaman (Mooney) who is, at least formalistically, still capable of sounding in deep communication with the spirits.

Nevertheless, the record was largely either ignored or reviled upon release, and critical opinion has not warmed up to it in recent decades — maybe because nobody really bothered: «reunion» albums are typically looked upon with suspicion, and, unlike «forgotten masterpieces» from a band's long-gone golden age, once condemned to oblivion, they can never be redeemed. The thing is, Rite Time is thoroughly retro-oriented: most of it sounds like the idea was really to make Monster Movie Vol. 2, and the very approach, for a band known for its relentless exploration of pathways into the future, must have seemed like heresy. When people heard it, and it sounded like Monster Movie without being as good as Monster Movie, well... people had plenty of far more relevant stuff to listen to in 1989.

Listening to Rite Time in retrospect, though, with the fields of time now compressed and flattened so that the chronological gaps of the 20th century are no longer as huge as they once seemed — the album is mighty pleasant. It does sound like classic Can a lot: same wild and complex work from the rhythm section, same bizarre mix of electronic and acoustic keyboards from Schmidt, same array of psychedelic guitar tones from Karoli, and not a single teeny-tiny indication that this was recorded in a completely new decade: apparently, the guys never placed much trust in either the digital synthesizer epidemics or the pop-metal guitar tone (for which, now that we look back at it, they really should be commended). Nor are there any signs of continuing passion for their late Seventies' excesses: Rosko and Rebop were not invited (well, Rebop could not even if they wanted to, having been dead since 1983), and neither disco grooves nor Caribbean dance rhythms are any longer part of the masterplan.

The actual grooves range from decent to occasionally excellent: ʽOn The Beautiful Side Of A Romanceʼ, for instance, is built upon a convincingly grim interaction between Czukay's «earthquake» bass rumbles and Karoli's responses, with further keyboard and guitar overdubs like sets of dark clouds gliding across the sky, periodically ruptured by bass thunderbolts. ʽLike A New Childʼ uses the guitar only sparsely, for thin supportive lead lines and occasional gentle pings, as life largely takes place at the intersection of the steady rollin' bass and (this time the white rather than dark) clouds of Schmidt's keyboards; the result is almost an ambient soundscape that kind of gives an idea of what Future Days may have sounded like had they thought of doing something like that in 1969. And while I cannot say that the title of ʽGive The Drummer Someʼ is completely justified (Liebezeit is really no more active there than everywhere else on the album), the groove, completely devoid of any memorable theme as such, still creates magical tension — Czukay's overdubs of isolated guitar lines and keyboard bits, where anything might jump out at you at any given moment of time, show the old master's hand as efficiently as anything.

Mooney's contributions remain the most questionable elements — I do not mind the aging or weakening of his voice, since he almost never used it for conventional «singing» in the first place, but it does occasionally come across as grating, particularly on ʽRomanceʼ, where the stereotypically «Jamaican» lamentation bits do not mesh well with the music. Something like ʽThe Withoutlaw Manʼ will produce different impressions depending on how much you are ready to not take this deconstructed tale of a well-known gun seriously — Mooney sounds more like a babbling village idiot on that one than a diplomated shaman, but ignore him or come to terms with him, and behind that there's still a cool groove and a great «twirling» guitar line from Karoli that's got some of that «bluesy slyness» to it, for no particular reason but still feeling good.

Perhaps the critics were mostly appalled at the idea of such an obvious musical joke as ʽHoolah Hoolahʼ, whose music and lyrics really fit in better with the likes of Weird Al than one of the world's most revolutionary musical bands. But even as a musical joke, it still got a hell of a poisonous guitar tone and a hilariously «Near Eastern» dance melody executed on Schmidt's organ, and besides, musical jokes had been in Can's repertoire for quite some time now; did ʽCan-Canʼ fail to already prepare you for this? Plus... it's catchy. Sort of.

Anyway, by the time we get to the somewhat ambiguous conclusion of ʽIn The Distance Lies The Futureʼ (a musically and vocally confused track that pretty much indicates nobody has any real clue as to what that future might be, and I concur), I feel convinced that there was a point behind the reunion. I'm not sure what that point was, exactly (other than the obvious «we still Can»), but the album never feels like a bunch of washed-up has-beens desperately trying to rekindle the old unrekindlable magic. It never feels like a totally self-assured and contemporarily relevant bold musical statement, either, but it... well, in the overall context it also gives this feeling of well-roundedness, where the band has come full circle, and its long, strange trip eventually brings them back on the same platform from where they skyrocketed twenty years back. Now they can really pack it up and go home with one last reassuring thumbs up — and, indeed, there's never been any attempt at another reunion ever since (not that it would have been even technically possible since Karoli's demise in 2001, but that's actually a different matter).

ADDENDA

UNLIMITED EDITION (1968-1973; 1976)

1) Gomorrha; 2) Doko E; 3) LH 702 (Nairobi/München); 4) I'm Too Leise; 5) Musette; 6) Blue Bag (Inside Paper); 7) E.F.S. No. 27; 8) TV Spot; 9) E.F.S. No. 7; 10) The Empress And The Ukraine King; 11) E.F.S. No. 10; 12) Mother Upduff; 13) E.F.S. No. 36; 14) Cutaway; 15) Connection; 16) Fall Of Another Year; 17) E.F.S. No. 8; 18) Transcendental Express; 19) Ibis.

Can had originally opened their vaults as early as 1974 — with an LP called Limited Edition that was, appropriately, limited to a few thousand copies and targeted at the hardcore fanbase they had developed. Two years later, the collection was expanded to the size of a double album and re-released as Unlimited Edition, even though the fanbase did not exactly double in size over the 1975-76 period. However, in May 1976 Can were no longer on the cutting edge of experimental pop music, and were probably thinking in earnest about the systematic preservation and protection of their rich legacy... and so, here you go.

Frankly speaking, much of this record is crap. But what can you expect of chaotic odds and ends, salvaged from years of hunting after inspiration in the confines of a recording studios? Some days there's plenty of game (and it usually ends up on your regular albums), and some days it's just a bunch of meaningless, emotionally uninterpretable sound collections (and that's what usually stays in the vaults). And even if something there does make sense, it is still going to sound inferior compared to all the stuff that you trusted far enough to polish for official release.

Many of these snippets come branded as parts of «Ethnological Forgery Series», whose ironic title suggests that these are parodies / avantgardist imitations / deconstructions of various genres of world music — thus, ʽNo. 27ʼ, with Suzuki on vocals, is built around quasi-deep-folk-Japanese singing; ʽNo. 7ʼ and ʽNo. 11ʼ are quasi-Near Eastern pastiches; ʽNo. 36ʼ is a take on New Orleanian jazz; and ʽNo. 8ʼ is a percussion-only bit of pseudo-Caribbean fun. These are all short, fun, usually pointless, and always harmless — but I couldn't say the same about the 17-minute long ʽCutawayʼ, where similar and other snippets have been sewn together into one large and totally incoherent sheet of short grooves, mood pieces, and studio hooliganry. Without any central unifying theme, mood, or purpose, the very title ʽCutawayʼ certainly surmises ʽThrowawayʼ, which should have been its real title, even though I'm sure there must be people out there who'd swear by this as the ultimate Can experience. (I'd take the amateurish, but sincere experimentation of the studio half of Ummagumma over it, though, any day).

So is there anything here of real worth? Actually, yes: several tracks represent more or less complete experiences, and could make respectable companions to regular albums from the respective era. Namely, from the Monster Movie period we have ʽThe Empress And The Ukraine Kingʼ, an absurdist funky rave with Mooney at his fussiest and some kick-ass guitar overdubs from Karoli; ʽMother Upduffʼ, a bizarre spoken tale of one family's unforgettable European adventures that sounds like a cross between similar tales by the Velvet Underground and The Cheerful Insanity Of Giles, Giles & Fripp; and two perfectly reasonable pop songs (ʽConnectionʼ, with a Stonesy vibe, and ʽFall Of Another Yearʼ, with some truly autumnal-mood interplay between Holger's bass and Karoli's acoustic guitar).

The Suzuki era is represented less adequately; from the peak years, only ʽTV Spotʼ, with its relentless paranoid groove and one of Suzuki's most comprehensible vocal performances, stands out, but I don't really see any place for it on Tago Mago. However, ʽGomorrhaʼ from 1973 would definitely have fit on Future Days, and I am actually sorry not to see it there — with those sad, distant, ghostly slide guitar wails and echoey crescendos it is as otherworldly evocative as the best stuff on that album, and might indeed be the best composition here (which is probably why it serves as the album opener — to lure you into a sea of ultimately broken promises). Finally, the album ends with two later tracks that are at least intriguing: ʽTranscendental Expressʼ, completely dominated by a lead banjo part, sounds like psychedelic deconstructed country-western, and the lengthy ʽIbisʼ from 1975 shares the creepy nighttime mystique of the best tracks on Landed, even if it's a bit of an overkill at its nine minutes.

The best spots for these individual tracks, though, would have been bonus slots on the respective albums — taken together, they do remind us of the vast scope of this band's interests and of its refusal to be strictly tied to any conventions, but they do not exactly kick the ground from under your feet; and as for all the short snippets in between, it is not clear to me if they add to the aweinspiring brilliance of the Can kaleidoscope or simply act as irresponsible nuisances, preventing you from dedicating your complete attention to the good stuff. In any case, I suppose that this is pretty much what anybody would expect from an album of Can outtakes — diversity, unpredictability, and a total and utter lottery when it comes to spiritual impact.

DELAY 1968 (1968; 1981)

1) Butterfly; 2) Pnoom; 3) Nineteen Century Man; 4) Thief; 5) Man Named Joe; 6) Uphill; 7) Little Star Of Bethlehem.

It would have been more fun if they'd dared to release this under its original title — Prepared To Meet Thy Pnoom, but I guess they thought it might be bad luck to put it out under the same name under which it was originally rejected by every label they tried to peddle it to back in 1968. Curious, really: just two more years and they got no less than United Artists to distribute Monster Movie, a record that was no more accessible (and in terms of track length, even more extreme) than Delay 1968. By all means, though, this here is an essential album that honestly deserves to be proudly placed at the beginning of Can's official discography — a complete experience in its own rights, with a fully-formed sound by a band that already knows very well what it is doing and a frontman who never really knew what he was doing at any place or time.

The skeletal structure of these early tracks is not that much different from Monster Movie: for the most part, they are blues-rock and funky jams with plenty of droning, but not a huge lot of psychedelic effects or guitar tones — together with Mooney's rants and raves, this makes the whole thing very similar to what Captain Beefheart was doing at the time with the Mirror Man sessions across the Atlantic. There is, however, already an atmosphere of grim determination, a ferocity, passion, and precision to the playing that suggest meticulously orchestrated ritualistic frenzy rather than Beefheart's diligently rehearsed insanity.

The very first track, ʽButterflyʼ, is, in fact, more strung up and tense than anything on Monster Movie — an eight-minute jam on one chord that can nevertheless take your breath away as it ploughs on and on and on, while keyboards, lead guitars, and occasionally pirouetting bass lines slowly build up tension; all over this a clearly exalted Mooney, half-madman, half-little kid, vocally follows the proverbial "dying butterfly" who nevertheless "begins to fly" because what's a good Can track without a little koan to help pass the time? In any case, that good old Can magic is already here, right from the very start, even if technically, the individual members had not yet fully hit their respective strides.

They did have a knack for finding great grooves, though: I don't think there's really a single dud among these tracks. ʽNineteen Century Manʼ (sic!) is a nice early showcase for Karoli as a funk player, taking a good lesson from James Brown, but also effortlessly sliding from funk into a flurry of blues-rock slide guitar soloing. ʽMan Named Joeʼ is a fast-moving R&B groove that shows how much of an influence the African-American scene exercised over them at the time, and ʽUphillʼ already presages the likes of ʽMother Skyʼ, moving at a fast tempo and featuring the most sonically insane bits of soloing on the record.

The real two highlights, besides ʽButterflyʼ, though, are ʽThiefʼ, a bitter-melancholic elegy that brings some sentimentality and vulnerability to the sessions — so much of them, in fact, that even Thom Yorke would later go on to cover the track, although I think that he must have been more impressed by Mooney here, singing "oh Lord please won't you tell me why must I be the thief?.." in the most miserable (yet totally non-whiney) voice that a human being might be capable of. If you want to laugh Mooney off as a silly annoying lunatic, just listen to ʽThiefʼ and get ready to drown in the man's misery — I honestly want to give him a hug each time I hear that "far too late, far too late, far too late..." (and it's kind of amazing that as of 2016, the man is still alive, but I guess that the switch back to painting and sculpting eventually helped a lot).

Then there's ʽLittle Star Of Bethlehemʼ, which has little to do with Nativity, but a lot to do with the absurdist story of Froggie and Toadie... actually, it begins like an absurdist story, but then turns into vocal improvisation because, apparently, Mooney just didn't have enough original lyrics to last him through the entire jam. Where ʽButterflyʼ is aggressively intense and ʽThiefʼ wallows in misery, ʽLittle Starʼ is more like an ironic mockery of the blues jam paradigm, with Karoli engaging in small-scale guitar pyrotechnics (switching between jagged, broken-up Neil Young-like rhythm playing and psychedelic howling) and Mooney checking how many different variations on the same "verse" he can produce without completely repeating himself. There's something so delightfully silly, and yet at the same time disturbing about this experience that I'm kind of sad they decided to fade it out after seven minutes — I could have stood at least twice as much, because this thing deserves real EPIC treatment, like a ʽSister Rayʼ or something.

In the end, the whole thing is quite short, but holds together well, and when it was finally released from the vaults (two years after the complete demise of Can), it must have indeed played the part of the Great Lost Can Album for true believers, as well as somewhat reinforced Malcolm's role in the band's history — not to suggest that its release had anything to do with the somewhat later reunion attempt, but he did tend to get lost against the titanic reputation of the Suzuki-era albums, which is somewhat unjust. Like Suzuki, he largely played his own game and wrestled with his personal demons in the studio rather than paid much attention to the actual music, but that was the whole point of «vocal Can» — we play our stuff, you vocalize your stuff, we put 'em together and say that's how it was always meant to be. Thumbs up.

RADIO WAVES (1971-1973; 1997)

1) Up The Bakerloo; 2) Paperhouse; 3) Entropy; 4) Little Star; 5) Turtles Have Short Legs; 6) Shikaku Maru Ten.

As with many similar jam bands whose moments of stupendous inspiration could come at any time and who always liked to keep them tapes running just in case, Can's dust-covered vaults used to be (and still are, I suppose) pretty huge, and before the Internet era at least it used to be pretty hard distinguishing officially sanctioned releases from bootlegs. Radio Waves, it turns out, is ultimately a bootleg, its closest official analogy being 1995's Peel Sessions, also covering the band's live-in-the-studio output from their peak years. However, since I am not even going to try and accurately cover every release that covers their radio sessions, these Radio Waves, released in 1997 on the German boot label "Sonic", will have to do as an example.

The package, as befits a proper boot, is a glorious mess: three tracks that actually represent live recordings made for radio broadcast, one track that seems to be nothing but a sped up version of ʽLittle Star Of Bethlehemʼ from Delay 1968, and two short studio tracks that were the A-side of ʽHalleluwahʼ and the B-side of ʽSpoonʼ, respectively, back in 1971. The two tracks in question can also be found on various compilations, but since they're included here, let us just briefly mention that ʽTurtles Have Short Legsʼ is a humorous combination of honky tonk piano, folk singing with a Japanese accent, and a mock-singalong chorus in the form of a variation on ʽWe Can Work It Outʼ; and ʽShikaku Maru Tenʼ is a soft groove that might well have been inspired by ʽThe Girl From Ipanemaʼ — although Damo Suzuki's impersonation of Astrud Gilberto has certain cultural and individual limits, as you might imagine. Anyway, both tracks are nice reminiscences of how Can essentially mocked the idea of «commercial single»: most likely, they only thought of these things as throwaways, but they made them so bizarre anyway that they get by on the strength of all those dadaistic vibes.

Still, these are just brief appendices to the main attractions of the album, and chief among them is the very grossly titled ʽUp The Bakerlooʼ (damn the Internet, because now I know what it really means and I wish I could un-know it) — a monstrous 35-minute jam recorded during the Ege Bamyasi era and featuring the band in top form, even if the piece suffers from lack of editing and can hardly hold you in its grip for the entire 35 minutes. The groove is not very tight, there is no specific main theme, Suzuki frequently gets annoying, but everything is forgiven whenever Karoli picks up the guitar and begins switching between blues, funk, and psychedelic noise. The track actually fades out after 35 minutes — I have no idea how long they carried on afterwards, but the fascinating thing is that they keep it intense all the way through: in fact, some of Karoli's craziest soloing, accompanied with a rise in intensity on the part of both the bass and the keyboard player, takes place during the last couple of minutes.

Next to ʽBakerlooʼ, the album's second live jam, called ʽEntropyʼ and recorded sometime in 1970, suffers from worse sound quality, but allocates more space for Schmidt, whose piano playing pretty much dominates the entire track — minimalistic avantgardist lines, mostly, but very energetic, alarmist-paranoid style. Again, though, the basic rhythm groove suffers from being underdeveloped: Liebezeit's drumming is a little insecure and undetermined, which would make both of these jams unfit for inclusion on Tago Mago. Finally, the live performance of ʽPaperhouseʼ, although also poorly recorded, is even more frenetic than the studio counterpart — once the fast section kicks in, they never go back and just boogie the entire way through to the end.

On the whole, despite the mixed-bag approach, this is actually a fun, diversified sample of Can's powers in their peak years — with the exception of the obvious mistake of ʽLittle Starʼ (surely they could have picked up a better Mooney sample if they really wanted to?), we have the serious side of Can fully exposed in the first three tracks and their humorous, lightweight side perfectly portrayed in the last two. Being a bootleg and all, not to mention being rendered somewhat obsolete by later and more accurate handling of the vaults, culminating in Lost Tapes, neither Radio Waves nor The Peel Sessions can any longer be considered essential stuff, but I still have a soft spot in my heart for these rough shards, carried over from a more chaotic era.

LIVE MUSIC 1971-1977 (1999)

1) Jynx; 2) Dizzy Dizzy; 3) Vernal Equinox; 4) Fizz; 5) Yoo Doo Right; 6) Cascade Waltz; 7) Colchester Finale; 8) Kata Kong; 9) Spoon.

This one is somewhat more official. This double CD compilation first came out as an integral part of the Can boxset in 1999, but later on became generously available as a separate archival album in its own rights — although, clearly, it should be not be a part of any collection that does not already include all of the band's principal studio recordings.

As usual, the track listing is a bit of an (intentional) mess. Even though the title says 1971 (probably to lure in ardent fans of Tago Mago), the earliest recordings here are from 1972, and the entire first disc is assembled from performances in the UK and Germany in 1975 and 1977; additionally, the quality of the sound varies significantly from track to track, predictably worsening for the early dates and improving for the latter ones (an aggravating matter for Suzuki fans, but then Suzuki always sounds like crap even on the studio recordings — seems like he regarded singing directly into the mike as a way-too-binding procedure).

Still, the almost 40-minute long ʽColchester Finaleʼ, a lengthy improvisation that was, indeed, recorded at Colchester (University of Essex), is well worth any serious fan's money. Non-serious fans will not find any major surprises, and some might even complain about a lack of focus as reflected in the often chaotic rather than metronomic drumming on Jaki's part, but my only complaint is the acoustics at the University of Essex, which prevents me from savoring all the tasty nuances of the band's guitar and bass players. The band is totally in Tago Mago mode here, not quite as ferocious as on ʽUp The Bakerlooʼ, but, fortunately, the last third of the performance is nothing other than ʽHalleluhwahʼ, on which Liebezeit really comes to life and the band culminates in a noisy, explosive climax that sounds as if it might have been fatal for some of their equipment (though probably not — Who-style destruction was not one of their trademarks).

On the other hand, the entire ʽColchester Finaleʼ has nothing but its impressive length factor on the 14-minute version ʽSpoonʼ from Cologne, with much better sound quality and a throbbing intensity that just goes on and on — they almost literally play it according it to the «stop when you drop» principle. The original pseudo-pop three-minute single is taken here as merely a pretext, or, rather, it is the single version that should be now regarded as a «taster» of the real ritual to come, because no self-respecting supernatural spirit is going to reply to a meager three-minute summon — but the ruckus they raise with these 14 minutes, on the other hand, suffices to make everybody who matters crawl out of their graves.

The real good news is that the 1975 performances, despite the lack of Suzuki and the general feel of the band having already outlived its «peak period», are every bit as musically strong: the non-album improv ʽJynxʼ, the extended version of ʽVernal Equinoxʼ from Landed, and the unexpected return of the old Malcolm Mooney warhorse ʽYoo Doo Rightʼ, but with next to no vocals this time, all qualify as powerful voodooistic rituals in their own right. ʽJynxʼ is the more avantgarde of the three, with heavy emphasis on percussion and psychedelic / industrial sound effects, but it still has enough funky bottom to it to be considered a proper musical groove, and Karoli's blues / funk / classically-influenced soloing on ʽYou Doo Rightʼ is just wonderful to observe — an effortless flight of the imagination that shifts direction every 15 seconds or so.

Only the two tracks from 1977, with Rosko Gee on bass, predictably pale next to everything else, but they are (a) short, (b) well-recorded, and (c) still moody enough to act as breathers between all the hard, hot stuff. Besides, ʽCascade Waltzʼ is actually from Flow Motion, and ʽFizzʼ is dark and spooky enough to fit on Saw Delight, so it's not as if they didn't fit in here somehow. It might have made more sense to correct the track listing and shift them towards the end, but I guess the idea was to save the best for last — so that, once you begin to think you can't have any more, ʽSpoonʼ would come up and bury you six feet under.

Anyway, I am honestly not sure about just how many live albums like these the band could shake out of its vaults — considering the sheer amount of hours they spent playing with the recording equipment on — but I do suppose that these tracks were not selected randomly, and that they truly represent the band at its live best (questionable and vague as that notion is when so much of your music is improvised), so there's hardly an option here not to give it a major thumbs up. But do remember that, for the most part, this is Can at their most extreme: a 40-minute long jam from these guys is not the same thing as a 40-minute long prog-rock epic à la Thick As A Brick, and unless you are a strong believer in the healing powers of long, repetitive, hypnotic jamming with no post-production treatment, you'd better go back to the «doctored» studio tracks, where momentary inspiration was always tempered with symbolic reasoning, and a pair of scissors.

THE LOST TAPES (1968-1977; 2012)

CD I: 1) Millionenspiel; 2) Waiting For The Streetcar; 3) Evening All Day; 4) Deadly Doris; 5) Graublau; 6) When Darkness Comes; 7) Blind Mirror Surf; 8) Oscura Primavera; 9) Bubble Rap.

CD II: 1) Your Friendly Neighbourhood Whore; 2) True Story; 3) The Agreement; 4) Midnight Sky; 5) Desert; 6) Spoon (live); 7) Dead Pigeon Suite; 8) Abra Cada Braxas; 9) A Swan Is Born; 10) The Loop.

CD III: 1) Godzilla Fragment; 2) On The Way To Mother Sky; 3) Midnight Men; 4) Networks Of Foam; 5) Messers, Scissors, Fork And Light; 6) Barnacles; 7) E.F.S. 108; 8) Private Nocturnal; 9) Alice; 10) Mushroom (live); 11) One More Saturday Night (live).

A whole can of Can here — actually, three cans of Can, which is way more than can be canned in one can-sitting session. Apparently, these tapes were not so much Lost (because nobody ever really missed them) as they were Found, covered with dust somewhere in the depths of studio cabinets, after the original Can studio was sold and dismantled in the early 2010s. Thirty years ago, nobody would probably have bothered, but these days it's a bit different, and besides, it's not like Irmin Schmidt probably had a lot on his hands, either, so he set out to clean them up, digitally remaster the best of the 30-hour-plus recordings, and ultimately came up with about 3 CDs worth of material largely from the «prime» years of the band: actually, the earliest track here dates from 1968 and the latest one from 1977, but the main bulk comes from 1969-72, and in any case, the whole thing is just one big Eldorado for the loyal fan. (I assume that, since the tapes were «lost», they weren't even bootlegged, but I am not too sure).

Reviewing the whole thing is quite a challenge, though: on one hand, there's so much, yet on the other hand, nothing here reveals anything particularly new about Can. As it always happens with their archival releases, chronological sequencing is considered to be an insult and the different tracks are spliced together in a seemingly random fashion — not to my liking, because the best thing about such retrospective collections is usually the «historical curve», yet here we travel back and forth in time as if the driver were under some serious intoxication. Since I have no knowledge of Schmidt and Co.'s masterplan for this sequencing and wouldn't agree with it even if I did anyway, here's a few random notes on various tracks grouped together by chronology.

(A) 1968-1969, the Mooney years. This has the single worst track of 'em all — ʽBlind Mirror Surfʼ, a proto-early-Kraftwerk sonic experiment with electronic tones, feedback, and atonality that my ears cannot stomach: if you ever thought the second half of Tago Mago could sound ugly, wait until you hear this mess (honestly, it sounds like it was rather inspired by John and Yoko's Two Virgins than anything Cage-ian or Stockhausen-style in origin). Yet it also has ʽMillionenspielʼ, a fast, tight, choppy R&B instrumental with a fascinatingly grim bassline (I think it has pretty much the same chords as Metallica's thunder-riff for ʽFor Whom The Bell Tollsʼ), flute and sax interludes, a whole bunch of different acoustic and electric guitar tones, and, on the whole, sounds not unlike something that Booker T. & The MG's would be quite willing to play. There's also two massive jams, the vocal-accompanied ʽWaiting For The Streetcarʼ and the wordless ʽGraublauʼ, that are every bit as good as anything on Monster Movie (ʽGraublauʼ is actually noisier and heavier than almost anything from that period — there's few tracks on which you will hear Schmidt torturing his keyboards Keith Emerson-style. Maybe they did not officially release it because they did not want people confusing them with The Nice).

(B) 1970-1973, the Suzuki years. There's actually almost nothing from 1970-71, for some reason, except for a somewhat disappointing ʽOn The Way To Mother Skyʼ — perhaps the title means that it was the first part of the jam that eventually resulted in ʽMother Skyʼ, but although the track features frantic tribal drumming from Jaki and a great guitar solo from Karoli, it is too hysterical and does not have the calculated coolness of ʽMother Skyʼ proper. The bulk of the material comes from 1972, and includes probably the highest point of the collection — a magnificent 16-minute long live rendition of ʽSpoonʼ, which begins with a rather loyal reproduction of the single (unlike the highly mutated version on Live 1971-1977) and then is transformed into a super-tight jam that simply becomes more and more aggressive and intense with every minute. Another highlight is ʽDead Pigeon Suiteʼ, which incorporates soft «folk-prog» passages, with gentle piano, chimes, and jangly guitars, only to blow 'em up around the 6:30 mark by suddenly turning into a James Brown parody, and then into the polyrhythmic groove that would eventually separate itself from the rest of the track and become ʽVitamin Cʼ on Ege Bamyasi. Come to think of it, had they included the entire suite on that album, it might have done wonders for its diversity factor.

(C) 1974-1977, the post-Suzuki years. This is the smallest, but not the most insignificant part of the collection, as long as we agree to not discriminate against the «silver age of Can».There's at least one mega-monstrous jam here that sometimes, in terms of volume and production, reaches almost orchestral proportions (ʽNetworks Of Foamsʼ); much of its quieter section is wrapped around the interplay between Karoli's wah-wah guitar and Schmidt's «bubbling» keyboards, creating the effect of taking place underwater, so that it is easy to visualize the entire suite as the brief life, underwater exploits, and eventual catastrophe of a brave little submarine, or something like that. The chronologically final track, ʽBarnaclesʼ (from 1977), is a dark funky jam that would have easily fit on Saw Delight, but they may not have found it atmospheric or catchy enough.

The important things to remember are this — the collection is diverse, the collection is well representative of most of Can's sub-styles, the tracks are marvelously mastered for a bunch of tapes that spent more than thirty years gathering dust, and the whole thing is clearly a must-have if you know and love your classic Can. Yet, on the other hand, it opens no additional universes (not surprising — the tracks weren't, after all, left in the cabinets just because somebody forgot where he put them), it's got some real filler (especially some of the shorter ditties and links that I was too lazy to mention), and the entire package may not be worth all that money if you buy it at the regular price. Then again, I suppose that the grumbling is just the usual kind of grumbling that I grumble out against 90% of archival releases — but the appraisal, on the other hand, is the unexpected and unpredictable part, and the highest compliment that The Lost Tapes could technically get from me is that I sat through all of them twice, without interruption (that's more than 3 hours of music, to be sure), and, except for occasional brief bits and ʽBlind Mirror Surfʼ, honestly enjoyed all of it.

So, obviously a thumbs up, although I am not sure I will be so pleased when The Lost Tapes Vol. 2, comprised of leftovers, or, God forbid, The Complete Lost Tapes (Deluxe Expanded Special Edition), containing all 30 hours, will end up on the market — which is probably inevitable in the long run.

CANNED HEAT

CANNED HEAT (1967)

1) Rollin' And Tumblin'; 2) Bullfrog Blues; 3) Evil Is Going On; 4) Goin' Down Slow; 5) Catfish Blues; 6) Dust My Broom; 7) Help Me; 8) Big Road Blues; 9) The Story Of My Life; 10) The Road Song; 11) Rich Woman.

It is interesting that, despite all the creativity going on in late '66 / early '67, it was precisely that time that also saw the last big wave of «blues purists» before Electric Blues Revival finally gave way to Semi-Original Blues Rock once and for all. In the UK, this period brought about such big figures as Ten Years After and Fleetwood Mac; and on the other side of the Atlantic, arguably the biggest figure to appear on the scene were Canned Heat, the proud Topanga Canyon follow-up to Chicago's Paul Butterfield Blues Band — a bunch of young white amateurs and blues collectors, who'd spent the early Sixties soaking up influences and eventually grew up into admiring imitators, rather organically at that.

The band's first recordings were produced (by Johnny Otis) already in 1966, but they didn't get to release a proper album until they'd met their lucky star at the Monterey Pop Festival and were hailed by some critics as one of the finest blues-based performers of the entire event. Sticking to their guns, they went into the studio to record (or re-record) much of their current repertoire — all covers of blues classics, sometimes reshuffled and spliced together from different ones in the good old folk-blues tradition. A few of the tracks were credited to Canned Heat, but do not believe that for a second — every bit of lyrics and/or melody here is pilfered from them black guys (most of them dead, so they won't need the cash anyway; the ones that were still alive, like Willie Dixon, are properly credited — then again, take pity on starving white kids, too, as they obviously needed themselves some pocket money).

Anyway, Canned Heat's debut is a pretty decent collection of electric blues tunes, but hardly amazing even for the still not-too-demanding standards of early '67. The biggest flaw, which would be diminished, but not eliminated on subsequent albums, is a painful lack of personality: all the members of the band are competent, yet they lack that particular single spark that could set them aside from all the rest. The greatest blues purists of the time had star figures as frontmen or sidemen, people who made it clear that their interpretation carried more significance than the source material itself — Mike Bloomfield in the Butterfield Blues Band, Alvin Lee in Ten Years After, Peter Green in Fleetwood Mac — but Canned Heat, at least in their earliest days, were a pure blues democracy with everyone sitting at the same trench level.

Thus, the band's primary vocalist Bob Hite ("The Bear"), the proud owner of a rough, rowdy voice and a «300 pounds of joy»-type body, is a competent blueswailer, but his limited range and inability to come up with a fresh style of singing leaves no chance for «competence» to cross over into the realm of «awesomeness». Rhythm guitar player Alan Wilson ("The Owl") has not yet begun to mature as a songwriter, and his main talent on this album lies in his harmonica playing: he blows a very mean, dry, creaky harp on ʽGoin' Down Slowʼ and a few other tunes — also, his oddly childish, high and shaky singing (ʽHelp Meʼ) makes a nice contrast with Hite's far more powerful, but far less subtle vocalizing. And lead guitarist Henry Vestine can play some sharp solos every now and then, understanding the value of a good juicy guitar tone and all, but, well, he ain't no (insert the name of your favorite mid-Sixties blues guitarist here, like Clapton or Bloomfield): I really like the things he's doing on ʽThe Story Of My Lifeʼ, but Freddie King could do all of that with his eyes closed — and with even more power.

Because of all that, Canned Heat's self-titled debut is more of a historical curio, just so that you could see how it all started, and check out the many ways in which it is possible to recombine Elmore James, Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Howlin' Wolf, and a half-dozen other blues greats and adapt them for... one's pleasure, really: there's no silly talk here about «making black Chicago blues accessible for white auditories», because those particular auditories for whom Canned Heat were playing were perfectly capable of accessing the original stuff themselves. No, it's all just for the fun of it — and also for the improved mix and production, because, at the very least, Canned Heat has a far more «modern» sound.

Although Canned Heat were already positioning themselves as a jam band at the time, the debut album is quite cautious in that respect: only ʽCatfish Bluesʼ is stretched out to nearly seven minutes — a mistaken decision, I'd say, because they entrust the entire instrumental section to Vestine, and he delivers a rather disjointed, absent-minded solo without any interesting build-ups or climactic peaks (not to mention that Hite's overdoing his Muddy impersonation). Everything else is thankfully kept in the 3-4 minute ballpark, and I by far prefer the brief, tasteful, polished bottleneck solos on ʽRollin' And Tumblin'ʼ and ʽDust My Broomʼ than the meandering dryness and distortion of the ʽCatfish Bluesʼ jam.

One thing I do not quite understand is the intentional mix-up: for instance, ʽRich Womanʼ, originally credited to Canned Heat and then later re-credited to Dorothy LaBostrie and McKinley Millet, is really ʽI Wish You Wouldʼ by Billy Boy Arnold; and ʽThe Road Songʼ, also credited Canned Heat and then later re-credited to Floyd Jones, is really ʽSmokestack Lightningʼ. Either there must have been some mix-up at the record plant, or they were generously trying to feed some unjustly forgotten blues heroes at the expense of those who'd already gotten their dues. In any case, the titles of these two songs are quite strangely matched to their contents (Side A, on the contrary, seems fixed up fairly well).

Anyway, on the whole I have about as much use for this album as I do for Fleetwood Mac's self-titled debut — maybe even a little less, because Peter Green at least tried from the very beginning to use the classic blues idiom to placate his own demons, whereas Canned Heat just sounds like a simple blues party thrown on at a moment's notice by sincere blues aficionados. If they had not gone on to slightly more ambitious projects, the record would probably have sunk beyond any possibility of redeem or recovery.

BOOGIE WITH CANNED HEAT (1968)

1) Evil Woman; 2) My Crime; 3) On The Road Again; 4) World In A Jug; 5) Turpentine Moan; 6) Whiskey Headed Woman No. 2; 7) Amphetamine Annie; 8) An Owl Song; 9) Marie Laveau; 10) Fried Hockey Boogie.

Unlike Ten Years After or Fleetwood Mac, or even their American predecessors, the Butterfield Blues Band, Canned Heat were unable — or unwilling — to properly cross the line from imitation to originality. But at least they got tougher, and, second time around, the music has enough power, menace, and mystique to hold the listener's attention. Songwriting is pretty much non-existent — just about anything that is not properly credited to somebody else is still based on classic blues patterns. Thus, ʽMy Crimeʼ is really ʽHoochie Coochie Manʼ; ʽAmphetamine Annieʼ is ʽThe Hunterʼ; and ʽTurpentine Moanʼ is something by Elmore James that is not quite ʽDust My Broomʼ, but close. These things do not bother the big boys one bit, as they diligently supply their own lyrics, and by doing that, loyally imitate the behaviour of their own Afro-American idols, so to hell with anachronistic copyright prejudices.

The good news: the sound gets real fat. Thick, distorted basslines, gritty distorted guitars, and an uneasy premonition in the air — this is the coalesced Canned Heat, and they're ready to do it right this time. Actually, they are so smart now they don't even need to get all that heavy to generate uneasy premonition — cue the band's first big hit, ʽOn The Road Againʼ, where they take the standard John Lee Hooker ʽBoogie Chillenʼ line and use it as the foundation for a truly hypnotic groove — there's something about that combination of monotonous bass, trebly E/G/A guitar riff, soft, «lulling» harmonica, Wilson's trembling, childish falsetto, and buzzing tambura in the background for extra psychedelic effect. Each single ingredient is simple as heck, but together they create a truly sinister sonic mix, as if old man Hooker were caught up in a real bad trip.

That said, normally the band goes for a heavier sound, and if you really want to catch them at the peak of their game, head straight for the last two tracks — the instrumental 12-bar blues ʽMarie Laveauʼ, five minutes of grinning distorted soloing from Vestine with Dr. John lending a major hand on the piano and throwing on some New Orleanian brass for support; and then the lengthy jam ʽFried Hockey Boogieʼ, which gives you even more of the ʽBoogie Chillenʼ riff, this time under a real heavy sauce, and then goes on to showcase the individual talents of the players with funny introductions from The Bear. Nothing too special, no, but there's something untangibly tasteful about the way they kick your ass all over the place with this stuff.

Surprisingly, I find myself enamored with the band's lengthy jams more than I find myself appreciating their shorter songs. With the exception of the haunting trance of ʽOn The Road Againʼ, and the acceptable humor of ʽAmphetamine Annieʼ ("this is a song with a MESSAGE!", The Bear announces at the beginning, and yes, the message is that "SPEED KILLS!", says lead singer in a band where two principal members would die from overdosing, including himself), every other non-jam tune is just okay: Larry Weiss' ʽEvil Womanʼ, for instance, would be very soon available in a ripping monster version from Spooky Tooth that would completely obliterate the Canned Heat cover, and then there's a bunch of other blues-rock tunes that come around, sound nice, and go away without regrets.

But the jams — oh boy, the jams, and it's all about the combinations: Vestine's sizzling guitar tone works delightfully well together with Dr. John's piano on ʽMarie Laveauʼ, and before there ever was ZZ Top, Larry Taylor and Alan Wilson were doing the ʽBoogie Chillen / La Grangeʼ groove with as much passion and verve as any Texan for miles around. They just seem to find that perfect balance between «letting their hair down», not being afraid of feedback, volume, and (occasionally) primal chaos, but at the same time also caring about sheer professionalism and musicality — this makes their jams more rock-'n'-roll-style-exciting than those of their psychedelic contemporaries, but also more intelligent and restrained than the Blue Cheer / Vanilla Fudge / Cactus-style heavy bands. Only thing I can say is that having John Lee Hooker among your top influences really helps with the vibe (and I'm sure Billy Gibbons would agree as well) — oh yes, and even despite its more boring moments, the album still gets an enthusiastic thumbs up.

LIVING THE BLUES (1968)

1) Pony Blues; 2) My Mistake; 3) Sandy's Blues; 4) Going Up The Country; 5) Walking By Myself; 6) Boogie Music; 7) One Kind Favor; 8) Parthenogenesis; 9) Refried Boogie.

Everybody knows ʽGoing Up The Countryʼ, right? Everybody who is somebody saw the Woodstock movie, and it's up there — the studio, rather than the live, version, the perfect soundtrack to the sights of Children of Nature gathering for their peaceful-harmless rituals in the back of the woods to the peaceful-harmless sweet sweet sound of Jim Horn's flute (yes, that is the famous Jim Horn himself — unfortunately, nobody in Canned Heat itself could actually play the flute; there's a couple videos where they're lip-synching and The Bear is imitating actual flute-playing, but he can't even hold the instrument properly). Be sure to check out Henry Thomas' original version, called ʽBulldoze Bluesʼ and recorded way back in 1928 with a wonderful quills solo of his own, but the Canned Heat version does have the added benefit of the band's tight rhythm section, and then there's Alan Wilson with his childlike voice that is such a perfect match for the flute, all of this is like Paradise Found in the flesh.

Other than that, though, there are no major stunners on the first side of this album — just more of the band's generally enjoyable, occasionally boring, occasionally ass-kicking blues rock. Best of the lot is probably ʽBoogie Musicʼ, credited to a mysterious «L. T. Tatman III» (probably a local fantasy born out of one too many Budweisers) and featuring the always-welcome Dr. John on piano — it's a rich, fat, groovy piece of funky New Orleanian R&B with great brass / guitar interplay and an inobtrusive lecture on the essence of boogie in the coda. Other than that, Charlie Patton's ʽPony Bluesʼ is unrecognizable, but features some really whiny lead guitar licks from Vestine; and ʽSandy's Bluesʼ is a seven minute long super-slow blues-de-luxe, a genre that any band that does not have B. B. King in it should probably avoid.

But anyway, Living The Blues in general is not about the short songs — it is the band's most experimental album, with most of Side B given over to the ʽParthenogenesisʼ (ʽBirth Of The Maidenʼ) suite. Here we have psychedelic posturing (Alan Wilson's fuzzy Jew's harp solo in the intro), harmonica-driven boogie, honky tonk piano boogie, drum solo, feedback-drenched noise rock, swampy harmonica mixed with Indian raga, and a fiery blues-rock jam — all rolled in one. Honestly, none of it makes sense, and if you want to look for any thematic connections between all these pieces, be my guest. Yet somehow, the suite manages to be fun: no particular part sticks around for too long, and the guys are clearly enjoying all this absurdity. If anything, it's just a harmless celebration of the many different kinds of music that folks produce around the world, and I like this freedom of imagination and appreciate that the track still has plenty of entertainment value. It's not really trying to make some major philosophical point, despite the Greek title; it might even be a parody of suites trying to make a major philosophical point. In any case, it's quite a fun listen, despite the 20-minute running time.

What makes things more complicated is that it ain't over yet: here comes a whole second LP, and it only has one track, split in half — ʽRefried Boogieʼ, whose title indicates it is an «update» of ʽFried Hockey Boogieʼ from the previous album, is a 40-minute long jam, and this time, it actually is a real live jam, based on the exact same ʽBoogie Childrenʼ line as always, and with even more of those bass, guitar, and drum solos. As much as I like the band's jam power, I am not sure why they do not want us to believe that they already were at their best with ʽFried Hockey Boogieʼ, and insist on extending it to more than twice its original length for our pleasure. On a good day, I really do not mind, because a good take on John Lee Hooker can really work wonders and induce trances, and the boys were on fire all right; but on a bad day, I'd at least need a version of this that cuts out Larry Taylor's and Adolfo de la Parra's solos. That said, I do believe it is a record of sorts — I don't think anybody in 1968 (at least, outside of jazz) put out 40-minute long live tracks, so if they just wanted their bit of Guinness, I can understand that.

In any case, tedious or not, ʽRefried Boogieʼ does not stop the record from getting a deserved thumbs up. Everything that is here is at least not bad, and no record with ʽGoing Up The Countryʼ on it can be slandered — on the whole, Canned Heat were clearly peaking here, and if anything, the album gets by on raw enthusiasm and the fun quotient alone. They weren't talented songwriters, but they were happy to be involved in The Thing while it was Happening, and that happiness kind of trickles over from the speakers while the music is playing. So join in all the fun, and don't forget to boogie!

HALLELUJAH (1969)

1) Same All Over; 2) Change My Ways; 3) Canned Heat; 4) Sic 'Em Pigs; 5) I'm Her Man; 6) Time Was; 7) Do Not Enter; 8) Big Fat; 9) Huautla; 10) Get Off My Back; 11) Down In The Gutter, But Free.

Not necessarily what we're looking for. The last studio album by the original classic Canned Heat, released just prior to Henry Vestine leaving the band and being replaced by Harvey Mandel, suddenly sees them stepping away from the world of lengthy improvised boogie sagas and again restricting themselves to relatively short, concise, and surprisingly mild blues-rock numbers. For whatever reason, not only are there no more 20-minute tributes to John Lee Hooker (in fact, there ain't even a single track here reprising the bass line of ʽBoogie Chillen!ʼ), but there are no more attempts at crazyass experimentation like ʽParthenogenesisʼ, either. Perhaps they thought they were really no good at such experimentation, or perhaps they viewed it as a phase that naturally came and went for good, but the fact remains that Hallelujah is straightahead blues-rock, a bit heavier and wilder than their disappointing self-titled debut, but, in my personal opinion, a serious letdown after the relative wildness of the previous two records.

Nor does it have even one short song with magical qualities, be it the bubbling menace of ʽOn The Road Againʼ or the pastoral bliss of ʽGoing Up The Countryʼ. «Blind Owl» Wilson, in particular, is a big disappointment: all four of his pseudo-originals are merely passable this time, no matter how nice or weird his childlike falsetto still sounds. ʽChange My Waysʼ is just a fast-paced 12-bar blues with no haunting sonic combinations (there's an interesting echoey flute solo in the middle, but it's so short you barely notice it anyway); the country blues ʽTime Wasʼ tries to use a solo bass break gimmick between verses to give you the impression that it is at least slightly above generic level, but the best thing about the song is still a bit of fiery soloing from Vestine; and ʽGet Off My Backʼ is a decent back-and-forth alternation of simple boogie with psychoblues soloing in the vein of Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, but, again, nothing to speak of in terms of songwriting. It's almost as if the guy hit total writer's block; pretty sad considering how little time he had left on this planet.

Fortunately, the band still has a few funny gimmicks in store to keep the listener's interest at some level. ʽSic 'Em Pigsʼ, for instance, is a hilarious reinvention of Bukka White's ʽSic 'Em Dogsʼ in the form of probably the most vicious (downright mean, in fact) anti-cop musical statement of the year — culminating in a mock-advertisement voiceover ("if you're big, strong, and stupid, we want you... remedial courses are available for the culturally deprived") that might have earned them some broken ribs, were police officers a little better informed of the very existence of this band. Elsewhere, they finally get to the stage of covering the Tommy Johnson tune that gave the band its name (ʽCanned Heatʼ), even though the ancient original, all crackles and pops included, would still be preferable to this decent, but rather lazy-sounding electric revival. Bob Hite's ʽI'm Her Manʼ has what might be Wilson's finest, wildest, tightest harmonica solo in the opening and closing bars (everything else about the song is completely forgettable, though). And on the last number, another super-slow blues-de-luxe called ʽDown In The Gutter, But Freeʼ, they conduct an «experiment in freedom» by switching around and getting Vestine to play the bass (not a very generous decision) and Taylor to play the lead guitar (surprisingly Vestine-like!).

So it's not a total waste — in fact, as long as you are able to just lay back and enjoy some unpretentious blues-rock, it's hardly a waste at all — but for an album released in 1969, and following up on a clear artistic progression over three LPs in a row, Hallelujah is clearly a disappointment on both counts. It did not hurt the band's reputation: they were still invited to Woodstock, where they got to play ʽGoing Up The Countryʼ and strut their stuff and all, but it did make clear that, unless some things were to drastically change, the name Canned Heat would pretty soon be wiped off the roster to make way for artists more daring and less formulaic. Well, actually, some things did change pretty soon, and quite drastically, too... but not necessarily in a way that could be beneficial to the band's fame, fortune, and even physical health. To put it mildly.

FUTURE BLUES (1970)

1) Sugar Bee; 2) Shake It And Break It; 3) That's All Right, Mama; 4) My Time Ain't Long; 5) Skat; 6) Let's Work Together; 7) London Blues; 8) So Sad (The World's In A Tangle); 9) Future Blues.

The first significant change to affect the band was the departure of Henry Vestine, who apparently had a falling out with Larry Taylor and, for that reason, missed the chance to appear at Woodstock. His replacement was Harvey Mandel, "The Snake", who had previously made his name by appearing on Charley Musselwhite's Stand Back! album in 1966 and, for a few years, enjoyed the fame of one of America's best-kept secrets in the sphere of wonder guitar playing (for that matter, he was also the only member of the band in the Woodstock movie who did not look like a bum picked fresh off the street — probably didn't have enough time to assimilate). And while I would not necessarily call Harvey a better player than Henry, one thing's for sure: a bit of fresh blood, for a short while at least, helped get the band on the right track, and produce an album that was at least more... interesting than the steamless Hallelujah.

Although they do not reintroduce any 40-minute jams here, they get close enough with ʽSo Sad (The World's In A Tangle)ʼ, a 7-minute blues boogie that is not ʽBoogie Chillenʼ, but has the same grim, kill-'em-all attitude. Lyrically, they are concerned with the sad state of the modern world, so thoroughly deprived of brotherly love and stuff (this was, after all, recorded already in the wake of Altamont rather than Woodstock), but essentially, the words are just a front for two excellent solos — I'd imagine the first one, consisting of almost nothing but wobbling arpeggios, like a musical equivalent of an unexperienced tight-rope walker, is played by Wilson (who was never a technically endowed lead guitarist, but would always try out bizarre sound combinations when soloing), and then the second one (and the third one after the last verse) is Mandel, culminating in a very different set of distorted psychedelic arpeggios, very different from your average blues soloing. The song is a guitar lover's paradise, far more interesting than the generic 12-bar ʽLondon Bluesʼ, although that one, too, has some incendiary Mandel solos and an always welcome falsetto vocal from Wilson (the lyrics are total tripe, though, probably improvised on the spot, about some unhappy experiences the band had in London Town).

The short songs, this time around, tend to be diverse and marginally inventive or at least gimmicky: ʽShake It And Break Itʼ is a complete reconstruction of the old Charley Patton tune in the form of (another) light boogie, but preserving the playfulness of the original (and it's a good thing that they didn't have The Bear singing on it to crash it to the ground); ʽSkatʼ, with Dr. John-arranged horns, is a bit of silly New Orleanian fun with Wilson trying himself in the role of Ella Fitzgerald (somehow, it's endearing rather than embarrassing); Wilbert Harrison's ʽLet's Work Togetherʼ (the same song that is otherwise known as ʽLet's Stick Togetherʼ, but with a different set of lyrics) makes great use of «distorted woman tone» from Mandel and is precisely the kind of material that The Bear was born to sing (half-drunk rousing anthems); and the guitar overdubs on ʽMy Time Ain't Longʼ sound like a pack of ghosts looking for fresh meat, because, well, his time ain't long and all that.

There's not a lot of interesting stuff going here, but you can clearly see the rejuvenated band trying to make almost every single number sound slightly more interesting than just playing it by the book — which is why this is Future Blues, after all: even the title track attempts to be inventive by playing around with a stop-and-start structure. It doesn't really work (there's no point in cutting off the rhythm section after each line, because there's no true suspense in that), but it's still better than nothing. And when it does work, it is far more satisfying than the technically more expert, but substantially much less interesting modern school of electric blues that, for the most part, does not care about innovation and development at all. So, thumbs up.

VINTAGE (1970)

1) Spoonful; 2) Big Road Blues; 3) Rollin' And Tumblin'; 4) Got My Mojo Working; 5) Pretty Thing; 6) Louise; 7) Dimples; 8) Can't Hold On Much Longer; 9) Straight Ahead; 10) Rollin' And Tumblin' (with harmonica).

Just as the band seemed to be getting its shit back together (Mandel and Taylor quit, but Vestine returned, and the new reinvigorated band guest-starred on the double album Hooker 'n' Heat, backing their primary guru and idol, without whose ʽBoogie Chillenʼ they wouldn't have been able to handle their 40-minute long jams), anyway, just as things were beginning to get back to right, all of a sudden they went as wrong as they could ever go: Alan Wilson died on September 3, 1970, from a barbiturate overdose. Just to clarify things: this was about two weeks before Jimi and a whole month before Janis, but yes, the man was 27 years old at the time, and his death did set up a regular string of Woodstock hero deaths, so...

...anyway, I'm not altogether sure if this Vintage album was released before Wilson's death, as a separate vault-cleaning activity, or after, which would make more sense — as a hastily assembled tribute from all his friends in the band. Because, honestly, this is not a good album. What we have here is a set of predictable blues and R&B covers, all recorded way back in 1966, unimaginative, poorly produced, and played with as much energy, technique, and interest as you'd expect from any band of total beginners. Although, apparently, Wilson and Vestine are already handling all the guitar duties themselves, at this point they seem to be simply emulating their Chicago heroes, with the guitars simply reproducing all the licks from those old Fifties' records rather than trying to update them to newer standards. (Clearly, this is a sound of a band that had yet to witness God... uh, I mean, Jimi, in action. Come to think of it, in 1966 they probably hadn't yet had the chance to hear the original God, i.e. Eric, either).

Really, all the material is quite weak, «and such small portions», to quote Woody — the whole thing is over in less than 25 minutes, including two early versions of ʽBig Road Bluesʼ (one of them surreptitiously retitled ʽStraight Aheadʼ), and two versions of ʽRollin' And Tumblin'ʼ (with and without harmonica). And no, they don't do this stuff better than Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Elmore James, Bo Diddley, and John Lee Hooker. But, once again, as a quick on-the-spot memorial to Alan Wilson, I guess it sort of works. The record still gets a thumbs down, though, because, as sorry as I am for the early death of Mr. Wilson, I don't think any of these tracks could hold a particularly sentimental value to anybody other than the actual band members.

LIVE IN EUROPE (1970)

1) That's All Right Mama; 2) Bring It On Home; 3) Pulling Hair Blues; 4) Medley: Back Out On The Road / On The Road Again; 5) London Blues; 6) Let's Work Together; 7) Goodbye For Now.

I have learned not to trust any datings for Canned Heat albums past 1969 (due to the band's convoluted history combined with their relatively «minor» status, they tend to be quite contradictory), but it does look like this concert record was indeed released in 1970, though it is not quite clear if that was still before or already after Wilson's death. Regardless, he is definitely here on the album, along with Harvey Mandel, and some sources state that it was largely recorded at the Royal Albert Hall in April 1970 (more likely, in January 1970, because from The Bear's announcements at the end it ensues that they were headlining after Deep Purple and Renaissance, and Deep Purple only played the RAH in January), along with other venues (not sure which ones), so I suppose that, unlike the next live album, this one was probably at least in the plans before Wilson's passing.

What was also in the plans, I guess, was to present the band as one with the audience: a pretty good chunk of the record is taken over by Hite's and the other members' friendly chat with front row enthusiasts, sometimes in a manner as innocent as The Bear asking "you got any acid?", or proposing to do his Jim Morrison impression (hard to tell from the level of laughter if the impression really made much of an impression or not), and sometimes while bringing strange guests up on stage (no idea whatsoever who "The Rag Queen" is, appearing right before the final number), you know, just to show that it's more than just about the music and the band and all.

But while I do appreciate the brotherly spirit (a glimpse of which you can actually catch in the Woodstock movie, when a fan climbs up on stage in the middle of the performance and nabs a pack of cigarettes right from The Bear's front pocket — not something that either Keith Richards or Pete Townshend would tolerate, I guess), the music still means more to me, and this particular bunch of performances is not that great, unfortunately, even by the band's own modest standards. Mandel, in particular, seems relatively tame throughout, digging his slow-burning psychedelic tones but almost never stepping out in front; and Wilson is brought to the forefront only on two generic 12-bar blues numbers, which does not allow him to make great use of his voice.

It does not help matters much, either, that ʽPulling Hair Bluesʼ is a nine-minute drag where the only instruments are Larry Taylor's bass and Wilson's harmonica (perhaps John Entwistle could hold your attention with nine minutes of pure bass guitar, but Larry Taylor is just not that good); that ʽOn The Road Againʼ is recast here as a rather wimpy funk jam with none of the ominous rattle and hum of the studio original; or that their brave take on Sonny Boy Williamson's ʽBring It On Homeʼ may feel far more loyal to the original than Zeppelin's version, but is far less deserving of a special memory cell. In the end, strange enough, the best performance on the entire album turns out to be the show-ending rendition of ʽLet's Work Togetherʼ, elongated in comparison to the studio version with some extra and far more badass soloes — Wilson plays a beautiful slide part, Mandel counterattacks with nasty distorted electric stuff, and the whole thing plays out its part to perfection as a final anthem to complete the unification process between audience and band, without forgetting the individual talents of the band's members either.

Other than that, it's all perfectly listenable, but somehow the level of energy is simply not the same as it used to be with Vestine — I'd take a single 40-minute ʽRefried Boogieʼ over this album in its entirety, easily. It is also hardly coincidental that their next live release, despite being clearly pulled from the archives, would turn out to be far superior. It is also ironic that at that date, they could still be the headliners in a show that included Deep Purple as an opening act — a situation that would be reversed very, very soon...

LIVE AT TOPANGA CORRAL (1971)

1) Bullfrog Blues; 2) Sweet Sixteen; 3) I'd Rather Be The Devil; 4) Dust My Broom; 5) Wish You Would; 6) When Things Go Wrong.

Another weird discography adventure here. Apparently, Canned Heat still wanted to release a live album that had both Wilson and Vestine on it, and they had the tapes to do it, but there was a catch: after the commercial failure of the previous live album, their label (Liberty Records) had no wish to issue another one, so they took the tapes and claimed that they were from their live shows at Topanga Corral in 1966 and 1967, when they were not yet under contract — when, in fact, the recordings were really made at a 1969 show at the Kaleidoscope in Hollywood. This allowed them to release the album on a different label (Wand Records), at the expense of a little bit of dishonesty, perhaps — but every bit worth the ruse.

The thing is: maybe Harvey Mandel is the better known and the more inventive one of the two guitarists, but Vestine actually belonged in Canned Heat: a straightforward blues guitarist with a rocking heart — with very few special tricks, yet an ability to get to the heart of the matter where Mandel would more often get stuck in a psychedelic haze. You get this exactly one and a half minute into the record, when Vestine takes over from The Bear on ʽBullfrog Bluesʼ and strikes out a solo almost on the same level of fire-and-brimstone as Clapton on the famous Cream version of ʽCrossroadsʼ — too bad the rhythm section is nowhere near Cream in terms of intensity, because Henry is totally in the zone here: fast, fluent, precise, ecstatic, everything you'd need from a generic, but heartfelt fast-paced blues-rocker. Later on, Wilson comes in with his usual «I'm gonna play some simple, pretty, slow riffs and we'll call that a guitar solo, okay?» approach, and Vestine waits with impatience to break out from under The Owl's lead and kick some more ass, and it's really more fun to observe the contrast between Wilson and Vestine than between Wilson and Mandel.

Unfortunately, the album never quite lives up to that explosive start. The old blues covers are either way too predictable (ʽDust My Broomʼ? Not again!), or way too ambitious — it's one thing when they update really old acoustic classics, but the attempt to outdo B. B. King on ʽSweet Sixteenʼ is certainly misguided: Vestine does a good job, yet he cannot even begin to hope to capture all of King's subtle overtones, and it is hard to think of the track as completely detached from its King association. ʽI Wish You Wouldʼ is rather poorly mixed, with the repetitive riff groove rising way over everything else, so, even if there's some nice harmonica playing and another excellent solo from Henry with a razor-sharp tone, eight minutes of constant "cham-CHOOM-cham, cham-cha-CHOOM-cham" is a bit too much (at least the ʽBoogie Chillenʼ riff is aggressive, whereas this one is just nagging). On the other hand, Elmore James' ʽIt Hurts Me Tooʼ (here renamed ʽWhen Things Go Wrongʼ, but nobody's fooling anybody), suddenly recorded with plenty of echo, unexpectedly becomes a feast of plaintive, lyrical solos that take the song way beyond the scope of the original — I think that Wilson is responsive for the weeping, whereas Vestine delivers the angrier solos, and in between the two (and the odd echo that seems to feed Wilson back all of his complaints in a very psychedelic manner), they generate a great feel.

So, kick-ass start, mind-blowing finish, and some nice, unexceptional blueswailing in between — the record pretty much lets you see everything that made Canned Heat so cool in their heyday, and everything that prevented them from becoming a first-rate act both in the short and the long run; in particular, the work of the rhythm section here is fairly pedestrian, and, with all due respect for The Bear, he never ever was that great a singer: he just honestly does his job, but most of the time I just wait for him to move over and let Jimi, uh, I mean, Henry, take over. Still, the highs are high, and the lows are in the middle, so it all works out to a thumbs up in the end.

HISTORICAL FIGURES AND ANCIENT HEADS (1972)

1) Sneakin' Around; 2) Hill's Stomp; 3) Rockin' With The King; 4) I Don't Care What You Tell Me; 5) Long Way From L. A.; 6) Cherokee Dance; 7) That's All Right; 8) Utah.

Canned Heat's first album without Wilson was, by all means, a disaster — a band that struggled plenty while its top songwriter and (arguably) most charismatic member was alive had little choice but to flounder when he was dead. The man's original replacement was Joel Scott Hill, a decent guitar player (he is immiediately given a chance to shine in that capacity on the fast boogie piece ʽHill's Stompʼ), but a very ordinary blues singer — his whiteboy soul-blues deliveries on ʽSneakin' Aroundʼ and ʽThat's All Rightʼ sound like pale parodies on pre-war urban blues and jump blues, and you could easily get vocals like these in ten thousand random barrooms and saloons all across the USA.

Worse than that, the album is simply filled from top to bottom with bad or poorly executed ideas, little sparks that fail to light any reliable fires. Even the «gruff blues» formula that used to work so well for them is now wasted on ʽUtahʼ, eight minutes of the generic ʽMannish Boyʼ groove, for some reason, recorded in a lo-fi standard, with lots of reverb on The Bear's vocals (did he have laryngitis or something?) and a lengthy, chaotic, meandering, and just plain boring solo from Vestine (or is that Hill?) that tries to set a personal record for the number of trill sequences one can squeeze out of the guitar in five minutes.

The one track that will probably draw the most attention is a guest spot by none other than Little Richard, who, coming totally out of the blue, graces the band with his presence, bringing along a new song and an old sax player (Clifford Solomon) — and although he does duet with The Bear, this is essentially just Little Richard, backed by Canned Heat, doing an impersonation of Little Richard that does not work one bit, because Canned Heat are too stiff to be doing breakneck maniacal rock'n'roll, and because Little Richard is too out of place and time to recapture the genuine youthful flame of the Fifties anyway. Not to mention that, in the context of the time, singing a merry happy ditty about "the king of rock'n'roll" just when none of the band members could genuinely synthesize merriment and goofiness in their hearts was probably not the right choice — and where «authentic» Little Richard performances make you want to drop everything and headbang like crazy, this whole experience just feels fake from the start.

In the end, the only tracks that make sense on the album are the aforementioned ʽHill's Stompʼ (not very imaginative, but incendiary guitar playing for three minutes, in a style reminiscent of Albert Collins) and yet another instrumental, provided by a much more suitable guest star than Little Richard — famous flute (and sax) player Charles Lloyd, whose perfectly composed melody gives a weird pastoral feel (with a touch of psychedelia) to the blues groove. In comparison, all the vocal-based numbers are downers: The Bear is clearly in no shape to contribute anything worthwhile, Hill is mediocre, and... well, bottomline is, they should have really taken a much longer holiday to get in shape. As the matter stands, Historical Figures And Ancient Heads really does turn Canned Heat into what it states it is — an unhappy, but probably inevitable development. Get the Charles Lloyd track for a good experience, and thumbs down for the rest.

THE NEW AGE (1973)

1) Keep It Clean; 2) Harley Davidson Blues; 3) Don't Deceive Me; 4) You Can Run, But You Sure Can't Hide; 5) Lookin' For My Rainbow; 6) Rock & Roll Music; 7) Framed; 8) Election Blues; 9) So Long Wrong.

The only reason why this album remained in history was that, apparently, this was the album that finally got Lester Bangs fired from Rolling Stone after he had allegedly written a review of it that was «disrespectful» to the musicians, in Jann Wenner's opinion. Well then — here's another review of the same album that will strive to be as disrespectful as possible, even if there's hardly any hope that it will dare match the original, and I also share the advantage of not working for Rolling Stone, either. Plus, at least Lester Bangs wrote his review when the record had just come out, and now that it's more than forty years old, who really gives a damn about the fact that it fuckin' sucks? Not even Jann Wenner, that's who.

Anyway, by 1973 guitarist Joe Scott Hill of ʽHill's Stompʼ fame was out, and in his place we had James Shane on guitar and Ed Beyer on piano. Nobody knows them, and nobody should; there's absolutely nothing special about the playing of either, yet, for some mysterious reason, they are credited for five out of nine songs on the album — the other three credits going to Hite and one more to Leiber/Stoller (but we do know that «Hite songwriting» usually consists of setting stolen melodies to different lyrics — ʽRock And Roll Musicʼ, for instance, is... no, not an appropriated Chuck Berry cover: rather, it is an appropriated cover of ʽLawdy Miss Clawdyʼ with new lyrics about the niceties of rock and roll music).

The direction in which Shane and Beyer are pushing the struggling band is clear enough: it is roots-rock with a strongly pronounced country-rock and «The-Band-rock» flavor. Instead of John Lee Hooker, Canned Heat now go after Robbie Robertson — a real disaster, considering that none of the group members are even remotely as talented as the average member of The Band, and where The Band, at their best, win the listener over with clever melodic moves and subtle performing nuances, Canned Heat just sound like bland, humorless hillbillies.

Seriously now, I have no need whatsoever for something like the generic country waltz ʽYou Can Run, But You Sure Can't Hideʼ, with ugly, directionless guitar soloing and silly spoken voiceovers from The Bear; or the barroom shuffle ʽHarley Davidson Bluesʼ that has not a single moment that would make it worth your while. The cover of Leiber & Stoller's ʽFramedʼ, expanded with some new verses that add a «moral» part to the original tragicomical tale, would be mildly entertaining if not for the fact that just a year before, The Sensational Alex Harvey Band had their version out which literally wipes the floor with Canned Heat's rendition — heavier, glammier, funnier, and with the musicians giving it their all. Beyer's ʽElection Bluesʼ is a very boring six-minute exercise in slow acoustic blues, largely just a pretext to throw in some political lyrics; and Shane's ʽSo Long Wrongʼ is a somewhat heavy blues-rocker, the likes of which had been produced hundreds of times before.

Unfortunately, of the two main remaining band members, neither is at his best here — The Bear seems to have been having health issues, as he almost never sounds imposing and massive on anything he sings; and Henry Vestine seems to have been succumbing to drugs or something, because there is not a single example of a really stunning guitar solo anywhere in sight (okay, maybe ʽFramedʼ could be an exception: with a thick, crunchy guitar tone, Vestine tries his best to kick ass on the solo break, but it still comes out fairly generic, and not free of some mistakes and "not-really-sure-where-to-go-from-here" moments). Essentially, this leaves Shane and Beyer in command, and with that move, the band just plain ceases to be Canned Heat — they seem to have forgotten about everything that was at least remotely good about this band in the first place, and are going somewhere where I flat out refuse to follow. Thumbs down, in loving memory of Mr. Lester Bangs.

ONE MORE RIVER TO CROSS (1973)

1) One More River To Cross; 2) L. A. Town; 3) I Need Someone; 4) Bagful Of Boogie; 5) I'm A Hog For You, Baby; 6) You Are What You Am; 7) Shake, Rattle And Roll; 8) Bright Times Are Comin'; 9) Highway 401; 10) We Remember Fats.

A marginal improvement here, but one that probably came too late: this was Canned Heat's one and only album recorded for Atlantic, before the industry people took a good look at the awful state in which the band had put itself with too many drugs and way too much personal discord and disarray for such a quintessential peace-and-love outfit, and dissolved the contract in horror. But they did have enough time to produce this record, for which purpose they moved from California to Alabama and were rewarded with some precious studio time at the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio — sure enough, with the Muscle Shoal Horns for comfort and assistance.

The shift in sound is immediately obvious: instead of sounding like a third-rate clone of The Band, the title track makes them sound like a B-grade contemporary R&B outfit, with a strong, assured groove, uplifting brass fanfare, and focused piano and guitar parts that almost seem to be suggesting, in the wake of the New Age disaster, that we have cleaned up our act, toughened our defenses, and ready to make a brand new start here at Atlantic. So the country-rock sound didn't work out — well, life is not always a rose garden, but now, with the generous support of our friends in the R&B business, here we are now, in the passenger seat of The Soul Train (sorry we couldn't afford 1st class, though), making a hot, sweaty dance number out of this Daniel Moore song. Hey, life is good if you really really make yourself believe in it!

On the whole, the record still retains the laid back, lazy-friendly atmosphere of The New Age: the only time it goes for something a lil' more snappy is on James Shane's ʽYou Am What You Amʼ (yes, a good eight years before Zappa's You Are What You Is — an earlier chapter of the miserable adventures of the verb ʽto beʼ in popular music) — a mid-tempo funk rocker with echoes of Funkadelic, with perfect coordination between bass, drums, guitar, piano, and horns, and I mean it: I have no idea if all the resident band members are actually involved in the groove, but it totally gets you going. Four minutes of total precision and friendly aggression, and although you can still sense a bit of stiffness compared to how any true giants of funk would have done it, I am still honestly amazed at how well they managed to pull it off, given that Canned Heat and funk music seemed to be incompatible entities all that time, due to their preference for Hooker-style boogie and rigid Chicago blues.

Most of the other tracks are merely okay, saved by an honorable level of diversity (slow soulful blues on ʽI Need Someoneʼ, a revisiting of rockabilly on ʽShake, Rattle And Rollʼ, a fast-tempo boogie with hysterical electric guitar soloing on ʽHighway 401ʼ) and a higher level of energy than last time around, although it is still quite a shame to see Henry Vestine, once a beacon of hope for Canned Heat's average instrumental powers, now largely reduced to the part of a bit player — I guess the drug issue affected him as much as everybody else. Still, it all goes smooth enough until they get to the last track, which is where the Shitwave of Cheap Embarrassment finally reaches the shore: ʽWe Remember Fatsʼ is a stupid-beyond-belief medley of most of the major hits of Fats Domino, one verse or so at a time, lumped in a five-minute cornball with the intended (actually, explicitly stated in the intro) goal of making all the fans of Chuck Berry and Little Richard remember Fats Domino as well.

I mean, you'd think, from that introduction, or that title, or the "goodbye fat man..." outro at the end, that Fats were dead or something — when, in fact, he is still alive and kicking well into 2016 (well, not sure about kicking, but still, he's in a better state, I guess, than most of the original members of Canned Heat, and that says a lot). Nor does it make that much sense to say he was not remembered by anybody outside of Canned Heat or the Muscle Shoal Studios in 1973; and to actually think that somebody's effective introduction to the sound of Fats Domino could be via a five-minute medley by a barely functional, minimally popular Canned Heat would be sort of preposterous. So, blame it on substance abuse and that annoying «educationalist» mentality that often accompanies B-level bands who think that if they cannot be geniuses, they can at least stake their claim as schoolteachers.

Still, at least the revitalized sound of the band on the title track and their totally unexpected mastery of the funk idiom on ʽYou Am What I Amʼ could perhaps have pointed out a way to a better future — if only they'd succeeded in overcoming their problems, getting their heads properly re-screwed on their shoulders, and concentrating on all their primary strengths. Unfortunately, adaptation to new rules of life past the Flower Power age proved impossible in the end; after a failed attempt to produce a second album for Atlantic, they found themselves without a record contract, and then, after one particularly scandalous gig in 1974, where The Bear is said to have gone crazy on the crowd — without half of the band's members. Accordingly, 1974-75 should have been the end of the road for Canned Heat; surprisingly, it was only one more catastrophe over the course of a long, strange, endless journey, so read on.

HUMAN CONDITION (1978)

1) Strut My Stuff; 2) Hot Money; 3) House Of Blue Lights; 4) Just Got To Be There; 5) You Just Got To Rock; 6) Human Condition; 7) She's Looking Good; 8) Open Up Your Back Door; 9) Wrapped Up.

In between 1973 and 1978, there were about fifty thousand lineup changes in Canned Heat, so, God willing, we will skip most of these and fast forward to the peak of the disco era, by which time the band miraculously still had two of its original members — The Bear on vocals and Fito De La Parra on drums — plus younger bear Richard Hite on bass, Chris Morgan on guitar, Mark Skyer on second guitar, and then in walked Harvey Mandel for a spell, providing some fuel for the studio recordings as a guest star. Somehow this ragged outfit managed to get itself a record contract with the Takoma label, and proceeded to make some more music that not a single soul probably cared about in 1978.

Yet in retrospect you just gotta admire those valiant, prematurely aging hippies — apart from some production effects on the guitars (which, unfortunately, detract from the overall raw sound of the band), there is not a single sign of their having paid even the slightest bit of attention to the big musical changes that were going around at the time. What we have here is nine tracks of blunt, straightforward, brawny boogie-rock — picking up right where One More River To Cross left off, but even less diverse, with no incursions into funk territory (and since most of the old school funk had mutated into disco by that time anyway, they could hardly be blamed). Boogie, blues, and bluesy boogie with a barroom breath; there's not even much of that Woodstock flavor left, because very little, if anything, here has to do with peace, love, and moralizing — almost everything that is left is the smell of beer dregs on The Bear's T-shirt.

And it's okay, really. It's nothing great or particularly endearing in any subtle way, but it's thirty-plus minutes of thick, honest, energetic entertainment — the new guitarists select grumbly guitar tones (which always shine through even the craziest phasing effects that they decide to throw in the pot), The Chambers Brothers provide cheerful backing vocals, and even The Bear seems to be in grizzlier shape than he was last time around. It's practically impossible to resist headbanging along to ʽThe House Of Blue Lightsʼ, or feeling some sexy satisfaction from the ol'-time party spirit of ʽStrut My Stuffʼ, and even the totally formulaic Chicago blues of ʽOpen Up Your Back Doorʼ is delivered with such amazing instrumental precision (is that Mandel blazing away on the electric slide? sounds like him, anyway) that you can't help but suspect that, perhaps, the band's troubles of the time were somewhat exaggerated: as a cohesive musical outfit, this lineup shows nothing but the finest form throughout the sessions.

The alleged «gem» of the album is the title track — an old Alan Wilson-era outtake that they unearthed and resuscitated for the record, sounding not unlike a sped-up, extra-syncopated version of ʽOn The Road Againʼ or at least sharing the same slightly paranoid atmosphere, only this time in boogie rather than blues format. The Bear does a decent job softening and «murmur-izing» his voice to resemble Wilson's, and even if the glossy production does not quite allow you to mistake this for a 1969 recording, the overall gesture is still nice. However, «gem» is, of course, an exaggeration: in the context of all these other pieces of boogie, ʽHuman Conditionʼ hardly has any hidden nuance, hint, or threat to it. The original version (available on various compilations), with Wilson actually on vocals, is actually worth locating — the band seems to be going for a CCR-type sound on that one, and Larry Taylor's bass playing is far more phenomenal than Richard Hite's on the re-recording.

On the whole, the album is so unremarkable that it cannot possibly be recommended to anybody (in terms of preferences, you would not only have to make a detailed analysis of the entire Little Feat catalog before making such a recommendation, but you'd probably also have to plow through the entire Doobie Brothers discography). But it is far from being a bad album — in all honesty, they hadn't sounded that energized and ready for a fight since at least Future Blues, and I did have fun listening to all those boogie romps.

KINGS OF THE BOOGIE (1981)

1) Kings Of The Boogie; 2) Stoned Bad Street Fighting Man; 3) So Fine; 4) You Can't Get Close To Me; 5) Hell's Just On Down The Road; 6) I Was Wrong; 7) Little Crystal; 8) Dog House Blues; 9) Sleepy Hollow Baby; 10) Chicken Shack.

Still more lineup changes; by the time they got around to recording this one, The Bear and Fito were still in, and the lead guitar position once again miraculously shifted from Harvey Mandel to The Amazing Disappearing (And Reappearing At Will) Henry Vestine. Unfortunately, an even more serious problem than a quantum-state lead guitar sound struck them this time: before the album was completed, Bob Hite happened to miscalculate his heroin dosage (allegedly, they say he mistook cocaine for heroin), collapsed on stage, and died on April 6, 1981, somewhere in Hollywood; I think he was the last of the Woodstock heroes to have the hand of fate catch up with him in such an ironic manner.

Somehow the band still carried on, though, and the album was completed with three of the recent members contributing vocals where necessary: Ernie Rodriguez on bass, Rick Kellog on harp, and Mike Halby on guitar. There are still plenty of Hite-sung vocal tracks, though, so do not believe them who say that Human Condition was the last Hite-led Canned Heat album: if you have enough love/respect for him as a lead figure, be sure to check out Kings Of The Boogie, because he actually sounds a little more loose here (or maybe it's just better production).

The overall style is not that far removed from Human Condition's, though: basic fast-tempo boogie and generic, but mean-wishing blues-rock constitutes the bulk of it, and where there are exceptions, I'd rather there wasn't any — for instance, the band's cover of Johnny Otis' ʽSo Fineʼ is amazingly stiff and sung without the slightest bit of emotion. Technically, ʽDog House Bluesʼ is also an exception, because it is credited to two members of Devo (and no, it has nothing to do with the Devo outtake ʽDoghouse Doghouseʼ that would surface later from the archives); however, it fits in so naturally with the other blues-rock tracks here that you could never suspect foul play without checking the credits.

Anyway, the best tracks on the album are the fast-paced ones: they close the record with a merry revival of the old Amos Milburn jump blues classic ʽChicken Shackʼ, energized harmonica and guitar solos and all, and open it with their own modern day take on jump blues — the title track probably has the best guitar riff of 'em all, with a nice mix of syncopation and sustain, and the rhythm section is so tight that even if you still wish to deny them the title of Kings of the Boogie (or, at least, continue to insist that they lost that title a decade ago), it would be unfair to strip them of a lifetime board membership at least.

Guitarist Mike Halby contributes much of the original songwriting where it is present, and turns out to be a modestly competent riffmeister with a knack for a decent variation: I think that ʽLittle Crystalʼ reuses and embellishes the more Spartan riff pattern of CCR's ʽBootlegʼ, and although ʽStone Bad Street Fighting Manʼ has nothing to do with the melody of Stones' ʽStreet Fighting Manʼ, the title of the song is amusingly delivered in the same melodic way as it was done by Mick — coincidence?.. Little things like these add a much-needed pinch of amusement to what otherwise would be a completely unremarkable set of barroom tunes. Well, frankly speaking, it is still a fairly unremarkable set of barroom tunes, but then, it hardly aspires to any higher status. The whole thing, bar the totally out-of-place Otis cover, is fully adequate to the purpose, and I might even consider recommending it with a thumbs up, if not for the production, which might on the whole be even worse than Human Condition's — almost lo-fi in places (and I am not sure if it is just my copy, but you can actually sense the engineer adjusting the volume level right in the middle of the title track... what the heck???).

If there's any place left for real amazement, it has to be outside the music — with the death of The Bear, you'd think the team should have finally thought about calling it a day: what is the sense of retaining a mediocre brand name anyway, after two of the band's chief symbols had left this world, and the only original member left was the drummer? But then again, never underestimate the drummer (even if his name happens to be Phil Collins) — especially in the case of Canned Heat, where, somehow, the drummer eventually managed to make a difference.

REHEATED (1988)

1) Looking For The Party; 2) Drifting; 3) I'm Watching You; 4) Bullfrog Blues; 5) Hucklebuck; 6) Mercury Blues; 7) Gunstreet Girl; 8) I Love To Rock & Roll; 9) So Fine (Betty Jean); 10) Take Me To The River; 11) Red Headed Woman; 12) Built For Comfort.

Yes, that is just the way it is: this late Eighties version of Canned Heat, much like Fleetwood Mac, retains only the rhythm section from its original incarnation — Fito de la Parra is on drums, and Larry Taylor is on bass. Completing the lineup is James Thornbury on slide guitar and harmonica, and, most importantly, Junior Watson on lead guitar. In case you don't know who that is, Junior is a professional «jump blues» guitarist — his preferred stylistics seems to be the early electric playing style of guys like T-Bone Walker, or, at best, the early white rock'n'roll entertainers like Bill Haley's Franny Beecher. Consequently, it is no surprise that most of this album sounds like one large 1940s / 1950s revival, strange as that might seem coming from 1988, and coming from a band that still willed to be billed as «Canned Heat».

With all objective reservations made, though, Reheated sounds cool. Like the late period Hite albums, this music is no longer trying to prove anything — all it does is provide you with a bit of retro-sounding entertainment. But it has a nice balance between clean, steady production and rawness / edginess of sound — you can tell that the production is sufficiently perfected for this music to have been recorded as early as it tries to sound, but there are no diagnostic features of the Eighties whatsoever — and both Thornbury and Watson know their idioms to perfection. Even if this is only a tribute to an epoch long gone by, it still makes sense to listen to such covers as Eddie Boyd's ʽDriftingʼ and re-recordings of ʽBullfrog Bluesʼ just to learn how it is possible to reintegrate the spirit of early electric blues into a modern blues record without it sounding too glossy, too serious, and too boring.

It does help that Junior Watson is an excellent guitarist, as seen best on the long, but all-the-way mesmerizing instrumental ʽHucklebuckʼ, where he entertains us with a seemingly endless barrage of jazz / blues / country / folk licks, pilfering from all over the place and sewing it all together quite seamlessly. I am a big fan of the T-Bone Walker style of soloing — a meticulous, accurate, and always humor-ful style of stringing notes together — and this is a cool modern way of upgrading it by speeding things up just a bit and diversifying the phrasing assortiment, without losing (well, maybe just a bit) the humor that goes along with it. It's not always that fun and lively on the vocal tracks (most of the vocals, by the way, are handled by Thornbury, who has a fairly neutral bluesy voice), but it's consistently listenable and enjoyable.

Not everything works: for instance, their rendition of Al Green's ʽTake Me To The Riverʼ is pointless — the song is primarily a vocal soul number, and Thornbury has neither the sinful seductiveness of Al himself, nor the paranoia quotient of a David Byrne; their stripping the song down to bare essentials only draws the attention ever closer to the vocals, and there it is quickly dissipated. The idea to take ʽGun Street Girlʼ from Tom Waits' Rain Dogs and trace it back to its boogie-woogie roots would be fun if its boogie-woogie roots weren't so obvious on the original: it was Tom's innovative approach to textures and melodic flow that made the song special, so it's a bit... banal, I guess, to make it un-special again. But still curious to a degree.

And I do have to admit that at least on the fast numbers, the Taylor / de la Parra rhythm section sounds very cool — Taylor has never been a genuine bass wizard, but the few styles of holding down the instrument that he does know, he masters to perfection, and something like ʽMercury Bluesʼ really gets all your inner rhythms going (I also love his «velvety» bass tone on the song, no idea how he gets it, though). I may not know what I'm talking about here, but it still seems as if the two were all set to prove that they could still carry the Canned Heat logo loud and proud, and now that they were no longer in the shadow of Wilson, Vestine, and Hite, they did their best to stress that they were Canned Heat, and as good as Junior Watson might be, he is still just passing through on this long, strange journey during which an old bassist and an old drummer encounter every second guitar player in the world for a one-night stand.

So it's not so much Reheated as Retrofitted, but that's okay — I'm not sure if «reheating» whatever was left of the old band was at all possible, so retrofitting was probably the best solution there was. ʽHucklebuckʼ gets my thumbs up; the rest of the album does not (it probably makes more sense to just seek out the solo albums of Junior Watson if one is truly interested in his playing style), but, you know, for an album produced by two of the least remembered members of one of the least remembered Woodstock bands, this one's nearly a sudden masterpiece of an unexpected surprise.

INTERNAL COMBUSTION (1994)

1) I Used To Be Bad; 2) John Lee Hooker Boogie; 3) Remember Woodstock; 4) (You'll Have To) Come And Get It; 5) The Heat In Me Is Up; 6) It's Hot; 7) Vision Of You; 8) Nothing At All; 9) 24 Hours; 10) Gamblin' Woman; 11) I Might Be Tempted.

It's nothing short of amazing that this LP sounds like a fairly cohesive piece of blues-rock product, considering that it is apparently spliced together from at least three different sessions — four tracks still feature Junior Watson on lead guitar, but two feature Vestine, and four more feature Harvey Mandel (and, as far as I remember, Mandel and Vestine never really work together). The rhythm section remains the same (although on a few of the tracks Larry Taylor is replaced by Ron Shumake for some reason), and James Thornbury is still in place as the new band's chief singer, harmonica, and rhythm guitar player. Additionally, Ira Ingber is playing second (third?) guitar throughout, and Ronnie Baron is credited for some piano on the opening tracks... whew. And who of them exactly was formally a member of Canned Heat at the time when the new album came out in 1994? That's, like, a good billion dollar question.

But the music here is mostly good, if unexceptional. With Junior Watson's presence much reduced and new guitarist Ira Ingber's much increased, the sound is no longer as defiantly retro as it was on Reheated — this here sounds like Chicago blues and Chicago-blues-derived blues-rock in the modern era, with a more polished guitar sound and an overall glossier style of production. This does not outcancel the good-time vibe and the occasional attempt to throw in an original riff or two, and Ira Ingber turns out to be a talented songwriter — at least two out of three songs that he co-writes here with Gary Tigerman are relative standouts (ʽVision Of Youʼ is a funky-swampy rocker with some subtle menace to it, and ʽI Might Be Temptedʼ has a snake-like little riff connecting its simple boogie verses that simply refuses to go away). On my personal scale of experience, this is all slightly above the average «modern blues-rock record» — there's a bit of the old nostalgic Heat vibe, a bit of modern talent, a bit of diversity, but not enough by way of any interesting new collective personality for the band.

The nostalgia vibe is pumped to the max on ʽRemember Woodstockʼ, a track that diligently mimicks the original atmosphere of ʽOn The Road Againʼ, right down to featuring the drummer on vocals — and, surprise surprise, he seems to be sporting the same kiddie falsetto as the late Alan Wilson! But it almost works, unless you begin to pay serious attention to the worthlessly predictable lyrics ("Remember Woodstock, it made history as we know..." etc.): at least that atmosphere is recaptured flawlessly, and Vestine gets in the best solo on the album. And then, of course, Fito contributes ʽJohn Lee Hooker Boogieʼ, with a bit of Hooker himself sampled on the opening segment, and yes, you asked for it — the ʽBoogie Chillunʼ line is back, after all these years, although it's been slightly straightened out and masked with a scraping, broken-up riff. Again, Vestine takes the lead here, and for a short while, it's like we're really all the way back in 1968 (except that Mr. Thornbury on vocals ain't no Bob Hite).

As for the generic stuff (lots and lots of melodically predictable Chicago blues covers and rewrites), it's okay — they still have some humor and irreverence to go along with it, so it doesn't sound nearly as bad as when a Sheryl Crow or a Robert Cray take over the blueskeeping duties. Nothing to write home about, but the rhythm section is sufficiently sharp and forceful to get you toe-tappin', and that's about as much as you could ask at the moment. I am a little disappointed in the quality of Mandel's soloing — technically impeccable as usual, and he still has a good selection of nasty guitar tones at his disposal, but never even once does he properly go crazy on the instrumental breaks; I'd say Vestine, who only has two leads on the record, has him solidly beat quality-wise, if not quantity-wise. Then again, Vestine had always been the true soul of the band (along with Wilson), so that should hardly be a surprise.

BLUES BAND (1997)

1) Stranger; 2) Quiet Woman; 3) Iron Horse; 4) Jr.'s Shuffle; 5) Creole Queen; 6) Keep It To Yourself; 7) Boogie Music; 8) Goin' Up The Country; 9) See These Tears; 10) One Kind Favour; 11) Oh Baby; 12) Gorgo Boogie.

We're going to speed up a bit with these ever-closer-to-our-days reviews, considering that with each new album, there's less and less Canned Heat and more and more stereotypical modern blues rock playing — the kind that sounds great together with some pulled pork and gumbo in B. B. King's Blues Club on a relaxed New York weekend, but has little use in anybody's record collection, apart from the most diligent blues aficionados. And I'm just saying that only because I have seen a few positively glowing accounts of these post-Canned Heat incarnations — as if, you know, these guys not merely managed to pull it together, but actually succeeded in putting a new, outstanding angle on traditional material. Well — no, not that I've really noticed.

On this 1997 Europe-only release, the band's triple guitar lineup consists of Vestine, Junior Watson, and relative newcomer Robert Lucas, who seemingly takes over the duties of James Thornbury, including lead vocals (which are quite similar to Thornbury's) and some of the songwriting, uh, I mean, song-doctoring (as usual, the «originals» are just slight melodic and lyrical modifications of traditional blues numbers). Larry Taylor remains attached to acoustic bass, and Gregg Kage replaces Ron Shumake on electric.

Again, the main lowlights are those cases where they try to re-record old Heat classics — in this instance, ʽBoogie Musicʼ, done very closely, but predictably inferior-ly, to the original, and, in a moment of bizarre, totally uncalled for blasphemy, a version of ʽGoin' Up The Countryʼ done as a generic acoustic blues with gruff vocals. The only two reasons why anybody paid any attention to the song in the first place were Alan Wilson's falsetto and the flute playing, and now that both of these are gone, it's a good exercise in humility — that is, making something very ordinary out of something quite extraordinary.

Other than that, the rocking numbers are predictably pulled off without a hitch: I think that ʽStrangerʼ, opening the album on a riff copped from ʽI Wish You Wouldʼ, features all three lead guitarists, with Lucas playing the slide, Junior Watson playing the first, «softer», solo, and Vestine on the second, «harsher» one, but I may be totally wrong about that — in any case, the track alternates between three very different styles of playing, two bluesier ones and one rockier one, and that makes it a standout. Unfortunately, the only other standout is the final instrumental ʽGorgo Boogieʼ, an overdriven fuzzy vamp with minimal rhythm support — spotlighting Robert Lucas doing flamenco hand-picks in a rather unique style and making that guitar sound like a highly drunk police siren taking on a life of its own.

Actually, Robert Lucas is a very good guitarist — not that Canned Heat ever hired any bad ones — and if you manage to let down your «who the hell listens to generic blues-rock in the 1990s, let alone the 2010s?» safeguard, every track here is nice and cool. But if you don't, you don't, and that's okay, too. The saddest news of all is that this happened to be the last album to feature anything by Henry Vestine — the last really-mattering musician of the classic Heat lineup passed away on October 20, 1997. Said to be heart failure, but I'm pretty sure drugs must have had something to do with this, too. Every member of Canned Heat is supposed to die from drugs, it's, like, in the Scriptures out there somewhere.

BOOGIE 2000 (2000)

1) Wait And See; 2) Last Man; 3) World Of Make Believe; 4) Dark Clouds; 5) Searchin' For My Baby; 6) I Got Loaded; 7) Too Much Giddyup; 8) She Split; 9) 2000 Reasons (Y2K Blues); 10) Road To Rio; 11) Can I Come Home?; 12) I'm So Tired.

If you only want one reliable taster of what it was like to call yourself «Canned Heat» after everybody who ever made a difference in the original band had passed away, you might just as well go along with Boogie 2000. It's just such a nice little record — nothing particularly special, nothing whatsoever to make you raise an eyebrow, but it's just done so damn well, I couldn't really think of where to begin to voice any specific complaints.

Sure, just as always, it's just straightahead blues and blues-rock, with not a single original melody in sight. They can write «Music by A. de la Parra and friends» for all they like, but we know, don't we, that ʽLast Manʼ is simply ʽLet's Work Togetherʼ with new lyrics, and that ʽToo Much Giddyupʼ rides the blues train of ʽMilk Cow Bluesʼ, and that ʽ2000 Reasons (Y2K Blues)ʼ is just a mix of ʽSweet Home Chicagoʼ with ʽDust My Broomʼ, and the list goes on. There's no new music written here — period, end of story. But above and beyond that, this particular lineup of late period Canned Heat, reduced to a hardcore quartet of de la Parra, Taylor, Kage on bass and Lucas on guitar, gives arguably the tightest, leanest, and most energetic show of blues-rock fun, grit, and (a little) nostalgia that could ever be expected.

There's just something about the way they crash-boom-bang into the album with ʽWait And Seeʼ, a Fats Domino number with a guest flautist and a guest saxophonist, the former bringing on inescapable echoes of ʽGoing Up The Countryʼ and the latter laying on a good New Orleanian vibe. The rhythm section is tight as a tick, Lucas gives a soulfully humorous vocal performance, and Skip Taylor's production delineates and emphasizes each instrument to perfection. It's like a textbook case of how to treat a cover song if you lack imagination, but compensate for this with verve and dedication. The only thing that is missing is a great lead guitar part — but this comes with the next track, where, on ʽLast Manʼ, Lucas throws his slide playing talents into the pot: the solos here are even more fluent, ecstatic, and note-perfect than on the previous album, putting the man (almost) on the level of... Dickey Betts, for instance — he'd be a good competitive addition to The Great Southern at least, if not necessarily to the Allmans.

Another bit of saving grace is the ongoing diversity. They have a bit of comic blues (Harrison Nelson's ʽI Got Loadedʼ), a bit of real old school jump blues (ʽShe Splitʼ), a soul cover (ʽSearchin' For My Babyʼ), an odd jump into Latin territory (ʽWorld Of Make Believeʼ), and at least one track with more of a ZZ Top-style Texan rock sound (ʽRoad To Rioʼ, where you almost expect Billy Gibbons to crop up at any moment). No, no baroque pop or death metal, but let us not be pushing it — these guys would be the first to admit they're happy with clinging to a formula, yet even within that formula, there's plenty of ground to cover, and they are not interested in merely doing one stereotypical 12-bar tune after another. Instead, they're laying down all the stereotypes, and having their way with each of them.

I guess the record peters out a little near the end: instead of the slow, harmonica-heavy ʽI'm So Tiredʼ, they should have had another kick-ass rocker to wind things down on the same exuberant note on which they started it (and ʽI'm So Tiredʼ doesn't even sound all that tired!). Also, I am not at all fond of Greg Kage's singing voice — next to Lucas', it's kinda colorless in comparison, and detracts from the overall enjoyment of such powerful tunes as ʽToo Much Giddyupʼ (which is still heavily recommendable because of more top-notch sliding from Lucas). But there can only be so much nitpicking about an honest, no-bull record like this, one that essentially hits all the right spots. It might not be raising any false illusions about the future vitality of blues-rock, but it does make a good case for why people are still making blues-rock records after all these years. So, a modest, but honest thumbs up here.

FRIENDS IN THE CAN (2003)

1) Same Old Games; 2) Bad Trouble; 3) Black Coffee; 4) Getaway; 5) It Don't Matter; 6) Let's Work Together; 7) 1,2,3 Here We Go Again; 8) That Fat Cat; 9) Home To You; 10) Never Get Out Of These Blues Alive; 11) Little Wheel.

Okay, let's see who these guys were in 2003... Fito on drums, ensuring the «right» to be called Canned Heat; Greg Kage still on bass, as well as lead vocals and songwriting for one track (ʽThat Fat Catʼ — an anti-capitalist rant that does not work too well when the proletarian protagonist introduces himself as "a fine-lovin' bitch-chasin' hound dog"); Dallas Hodge and John Paulus on guitars; Stanley Behrens on wind instruments and harmonica. Any of these names ring a bell? Only to remind us that Robert Lucas is out of the band, and since he was pretty much the best thing to happen to the post-Wilson, post-Hite Heat ever, this means that we're quite inevitably back to square one. In fact, you can tell that from the title: the minute you begin subscribing to the «...And Friends» ideology, it's as if you've officially put yourself on the barroom circuit, regardless of whether you have already been cruising it surreptitiously or not.

And who are the friends, by the way? The eerie thing about the list on the back cover is that some of these people were already dead in 2003 — like John Lee Hooker (died 2001), or Heat's own Henry Vestine (died 1997). Others are not so much friends as legitimate past members (Harvey Mandel on a re-recording of ʽLet's Work Togetherʼ; Robert Lucas on... another re-recording of ʽLet's Work Togetherʼ, appended as a bonus track — was this a sort of «let's get all of Canned Heat's guitarists to re-record one song for us» game?), and a few members of John Lee Hooker's band. This is sort of ridiculous — surely they still had at least one or two friends left in the big leagues? Where's Eric Clapton with ʽFurther On Down The Roadʼ? Where's Buddy Guy with ʽMary Had A Little Lambʼ? This is more like Old Ghosts And Sidemen In The Can.

Anyway, musically this is indeed a big letdown from the tightness of Boogie 2000: a mish-mash selection from several different sessions that had no reason to be released, since most of it consists of very basic, very perfunctory blues-rock — professional, but never exciting. Only three tracks stand out: the aforementioned ʽThat Fat Catʼ, mainly because of the hilariously bad lyrics; ʽNever Get Out Of These Blues Aliveʼ, with Taj Mahal on guitar (the coolest moment comes at the end, when the band stays around to jam a little bit and they overdub a piece of an interview with John Lee Hooker where he uses his deepest bass rumble to share a few memories about how great it was for him to be backed by Canned Heat in the old days — a bit creepy); and ʽLittle Wheelʼ, from an older session with John Lee Hooker himself on vocals and Henry Vestine on lead guitar — rougher sounding, almost lo-fi quality, but ten times as passionate as almost everything on the rest of the album (I think it was 1989, when Hooker was making his own «...and friends» album, The Healer).

Of course, one or two tracks are hardly enough to make a recommendation, so just stay away unless only for completism' sake — focus your efforts on locating Boogie 2000 instead, if you want decent proof of blues-rock not yet being completely dead at the turn of the millennium. These Friends In The Can are quite a sorry lot in comparison: not exactly thumbs-down worthy, since everything is kept clean and professional, but instantly forgettable.

CHRISTMAS ALBUM (2007)

1) Deck The Halls; 2) The Christmas Song; 3) Christmas Blues; 4) Santa Claus Is Coming To Town; 5) I Won't Be Home For Christmas; 6) Christmas Boogie; 7) Santa Claus Is Back In Town; 8) Jingle Bells; 9) Christmas Blues; 10) Boogie Boy (Little Drummer Boy); 11) Christmas Blues (live).

And so we end (or at least I really hope so) this long, strange journey — on our strangest note yet, as the final flourish of Canned Heat in the recording business seems to have been this special Christmas album, just exactly the kind of thing that billions of Canned Heat fans around the world had been fighting for ever since, way back when, Bob Hite did a joint number with Alvin and the Chipmunks that forever changed the course of humanity. That number (ʽThe Christmas Songʼ), already available as a bonus track on the CD release of Future Blues, is reproduced here in all its glory, as well as an old version of ʽChristmas Bluesʼ from around the same time, mixed in with a bunch of completely new recordings so that you all may see Canned Heat just the way they are: «protecting the old ways from being abused».

At least they have Robert Lucas back in the band, playing, singing, and having one last good time before expiring from a drug overdose about one year later — another solid Canned Heat tradition, you might say, but the irony is certainly mixed with sadness, since of all things that happened to this headless band since 1980, Robert Lucas was arguably the very best one. It is only because of him that one or two tracks on this Christmas Album approach the overall fun level of Boogie 2000, even if in terms of singing Christmas carols he isn't exactly a prime time Santa Claus; but in terms of playing, he can effortlessly transform ʽDeck The Hallsʼ and ʽJingle Bellsʼ into uplifting jazz-blues grooves that replace the generic party spirit with genuine appreciation of a good musical spirit.

I mean, what could be the point of a classic blues-rock band doing a Christmas album? Only if the Christmas songs suit the tastes of a seasoned blues-rocker, and I'm pretty sure that seasoned blues-rockers with wide-reaching tastes will be all too happy to have a record like this for a soundtrack to their Christmas dinner. Be it the completely instrumental ʽSanta Claus Is Coming To Townʼ, with a pretty-clean guitar solo (one third jazz, one third folk, and one third... surf?), or the reworking of the classic Heat / Hooker / ZZ Top ʽBoogie Chillenʼ line as ʽChristmas Boogieʼ (which almost explicitly suggests that Christmas might be the best time of the year for some wild carnal fantasies and Holy Spirit-assisted procreation activities), or the album-closing third version of ʽChristmas Bluesʼ, recorded in front of a live audience with special guest Eric Clapton on guitar, it's all part of a harmless fun send-up of the predictable Christmas spirit.

One lonesome odd surprise on the record is the band's reinterpretation of ʽLittle Drummer Boyʼ: although the song is retitled as ʽBoogie Boyʼ, it is not at all a boogie, but rather an «art-folk» mood piece with echo-laden guitars and a «deep rumble» effect on vocals that preach the virtues and efficiencies of The Boogie. It's a mildly hypnotic piece that contrasts sharply with the general upbeat tone of the record and, in the light of both Lucas' death the following year and the fact that we have not seen a new Canned Heat album since then, could be interpreted as an unintentional musical testament to the greatest force that kept the band afloat and kicking for such a ridiculously long time — indeed, you could say that all this time they were the dutiful keepers of the boogie flame, and if there was one thing at which they truly excelled on the precious A-level, it was how to generate genuine sonic heat around that bearly one-chord vamp. And even if this record is merely a last minute curio / trifle, it is still somewhat reassuring to see them loyally sticking to that spirit even at Christmastime — with The Bear himself rising out of the grave to join his younger colleagues in one last celebration of The Boogie...

CAPTAIN BEEFHEART

SAFE AS MILK (1967)

1) Sure 'Nuff 'n Yes I Do; 2) Zig Zag Wanderer; 3) Call On Me; 4) Dropout Boogie; 5) I'm Glad; 6) Electricity; 7) Yellow Brick Road; 8) Abba Zaba; 9) Plastic Factory; 10) Where There's Woman; 11) Grown So Ugly; 12) Autumn's Child.

Don Van Vliet has always been mad, he knows he's been mad, like the most of us are, but it always takes time to properly assess your madness, and sometimes you have to earn the right to becoming truly mad — you really have to work for it, you know. Thus, if you take the very first single by Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band, a cover of Bo Diddley's ʽDiddy Wah Diddyʼ, what you will find will simply be a garage amplification of a classic blues-rock number (no wonder it ended up on the Nuggets boxset), with some great fuzz bass and a raspy black man's voice, which, upon close scrutiny, turns out to be white, but you'd need a band photo to certify that anyway. But already the second single, ʽMoonchildʼ (ironically, written by David Gates, soon to be of Bread fame and as far removed from Beefheart weirdism as possible), is garage rock with psychedelic rather than bluesy overtones, reveling in blasts of conjoint fuzz bass, screechy slide guitar, piercing harmonica, and wild echo. Still relatively normal, though, at least, by the common standards of psychedelic experiments circa 1966.

By the time The Magic Band recorded enough demos for a complete album, though, it became clear that «garage rock» and «psychedelia» were mere stepping stones for Don Van Vliet — training material upon which he could cut his formative teeth as he prepared to launch a musical genre that would be his and his only. The general motto of beefheart-rock as we know it would be something like «Acknowledge authority only to challenge it», and Safe As Milk is the best place to perceive it, because on subsequent records, the huge influence of various respectable predecessors on Van Vliet would already be much less discernible (though no less important). Safe As Milk, however, could probably be called by some a «formative» record, one that still sounds like a cross between the traditional-conventional and the crazy-innovative — although I would rather reserve that word for the early singles, because as far as I'm concerned, Beefheart never really made an unequivocally better record than Safe As Milk. More challenging and stupefying, for sure; more influential, without a doubt; but more «meaningful» or «emotionally stunning» — well, I am not too sure about that.

Let us begin by stating that Safe As Milk is wonderfully eclectic, reflecting The Magic Band's healthy mastery of just about every style of American popular music in existence. Chicago blues (ʽSure 'Nuffʼ), Detroit-ish garage-rock (ʽZig Zag Wandererʼ), deep southern soul and R&B (ʽCall On Meʼ, ʽWhere There's Womanʼ), Nashville country (ʽYellow Brick Roadʼ), folky psychedelia à la Jefferson Airplane (ʽAutumn Childʼ) — they have it all worked out, but they are never content to merely offer passable imitations of all these genres. High above the solid musicianship (not exceptional, but always competent, which is really something when you think about how many different styles they have to master), including, for the record, the slide guitar talents of a very young Ry Cooder, reigns supreme the personality of the Captain, which, at this time, consists of three magic strands: (a) a highly flexible voice that can go from Howlin' Wolf to Wilson Pickett and back at a moment's notice; (b) totally crazy lyrics that can have a strong foundation in traditional blues and R&B clichés and then shoot away from them twice as fast as in the hands of Robert Zimmerman; (c) a splice-and-deliver vision that can, within the same song, take you in a completely unpredictable direction at any given moment.

In the future, point (a) is the only one of the three upon which the man couldn't possibly outdo himself — his singing, snarling, crooning, raving, ranting, and panting on this record is as far out as it gets — whereas the lyrics would certainly get crazier, and the melodies would get so complex that this initial set would, in comparison, look like Doris Day. Yet it is a level with which I am perfectly comfortable, and so, no doubt, would be any general fan of the «golden middle», not spoiled and misled by the constant heralding of Trout Mask Replica as the Captain Beefheart album par excellence — a trick that, as I suspect, has caused more people in history to turn away from the artist in horror rather than embrace him. The thing is, Safe As Milk is already a record that gives you a totally unique musical vision. Where Dylan showed how traditional musical forms may be revived and modernized with words, tones, and arrangements that are relevant to the 20th century, Beefheart goes one step further — he shows how they can all be driven to heights of insanity. If it's blues, it's got to be hellfire-demonic. If it's soulful pleading, it's got to be pleaded from a straitjacket. If it's nasty garage-rock, it's got to be nauseatingly nasty garage-rock, the musical equivalent of pulling your pants down and delivering a steamy one right in front of the old lady. Even if it's country, you still gotta giddy up, horsey.

On the very first track, the dashing Captain tells us that he "was born in the desert, came on up from New Orleans... came up on a tornado sunlight in the sky" (I'm pretty sure he used to tell things like that to interviewers, too — Dylan's bizarre nonsense that he spouted at press conferences in 1965-66 is the acumen of truth compared to some of the things Don Van Vliet told journalists, and, creepiest thing of all, it is never known how much of that stuff he actually believed himself at the time of telling). He does it to the tune of ʽRollin' And Tumblin'ʼ, and, of course, the tradition of inventing one's own epic mythology is a long-standing one in the blues world — but "I went around all day with the moon sticking in my eye" may be a bit too much even for Muddy Waters. (Ultimately, it proved a bit too much even for Ry Cooder, who here is perfectly happy to carry across the slide guitar melody with plenty of color, taste, and fluency — but apparently the poor guy never truly understood what exactly it was that he was stepping into, thinking that this was going to be some sort of post-Paul Butterfield thing...).

Then there's ʽZig Zag Wandererʼ, which rolls along like one of those sexually charged, arrogant garage-rock nuggets, but instead of featuring a snotty, sneery, finger-giving teenager, it gives you an R&B-influenced howler, sounding like a man driven to paranoid insanity by the world closing in on him: "You can huff, you can puff, you'll never blow my house down..." ...because I'm loaded with dynamite and I'll take you and everybody else with me as I go. Musically, this track is very close to Zappa's style on Freak Out!, but where Zappa was all about sarcasm and satire, Beefheart takes this image very seriously — there's relatively little humor on Safe As Milk, as could probably be expected from the difference between a man who liked to feign and dissect insanity (Frank) and a man who was quite genuinely insane (Don).

Yet for a genuinely insane man, he does offer a staggering lot of psychologically and emotionally different insights and perspectives. There's the cocky, braggy, blues-influenced posturing of ʽSure 'Nuffʼ; the paranoid hysteria of ʽZig Zag Wandererʼ; the almost cartoonish cruelty and mockery of ʽDropout Boogieʼ, which is like a lyrical sequel to Dylan's "get born, keep warm, short pants, romance", only this time set to a ʽLouie Louieʼ-like riff-hammering for a stronger effect; the mystical appraisal of ʽElectricityʼ, done Howlin' Wolf style and combining both poetic admiration and deep fear of that supreme force of life (the way he carefully drawls out those syllables in the classic «sandpaper» style — "eeeh-laaae-ktreeee-citeeee..." — sounds like an evil magician casting a spell all by itself). There's some place for love in all of this, too, although good luck finding yourself a lady with a song like ʽWhere There's Womanʼ: Beefheart's howling delivery offers exquisite praise for the female sex ("where there's woman, honey wine, where there's woman, lovin' time"), but the psychological instability of the howling character is so well on display that you never really know in what way he truly sees the female ideal. It might be in the form of a beautiful wedding and living happily ever after, or it might be in the form of keeping her severed head locked up in the freezer — for the sake of eternal worship. (Fortunately, as it so happened, Don and his wife Janet spent 40 years happily married, but as far as I'm concerned, that was just a lucky coin toss).

It is important, though, that Safe As Milk is never as far removed from reality as we could think upon first hearing it. Most of the lyrics make some sort of sense — there's plenty of social commentary around, be it on the teenage state of mind (ʽDropout Boogieʼ can easily be pictured on a single concept album with Alice Cooper's ʽI'm Eighteenʼ), or on, ahem, the working class conditions (ʽPlastic Factoryʼ, with one of the most convincing "boss man let me be!"'s you'll ever hear), and even a piece of jungle-boogie nonsense such as ʽAbba Zabaʼ makes more sense when you learn that Abba Zaba is the name of a real Californian candy bar — apparently, here it is used more as a metaphor for drug-addled vision, but blame it on the manufacturers who gave that kind of name to a candy bar. (And, for the record, it has never been clinically proven that Beefheart never took drugs — he said that he didn't, but then he also said that he went a year and a half without sleeping, so...). The issues that are tackled and the answers that are given are always ambiguous and clouded, of course, but that's just the trademark of a good work of art — feet on the earth, head in the clouds — and that's the way I personally prefer it, rather than having to admire the consequences of a complete blast-off.

The only criticism one could make of the album is that it is nowhere near as musically inventive as Beefheart's future endeavors. The base melodies are often either «primitive» (ʽDropout Boogieʼ) or directly lifted from traditional sources (ʽSure 'Nuffʼ), and composition as such seems to have been far from Beefheart's first worry here — at best, he delights in splicing together various dissimilar melodies to form a progressive mini-suite like ʽAutumn's Childʼ, but there are still very few signs of the evilly twisted time signatures and head-bursting dissonances that would make him the cherished darling of the avantgarde movement. Naturally, this makes Safe As Milk less interesting for musicologists and daring musicians; but, sure 'nuff, this makes it easier for simpler people to assimilate and empathize. At least in terms of grabbing my attention and lifting up (and shaking out) my spirit, Safe As Milk is as good as it gets, and gets as high a thumbs up rating as is technically possible for a Captain Beefheart record.

STRICTLY PERSONAL (1968)

1) Ah Feel Like Ahcid; 2) Safe As Milk; 3) Trust Us; 4) Son Of Mirror Man - Mere Man; 5) On Tomorrow; 6) Beatle Bones 'n' Smokin' Stones; 7) Gimme Dat Harp Boy; 8) Kandy Korn.

Only The Magic Band's second album, and things are already beginning to fall apart. The original plan was to push forward by entering full-on psycho-jam mode, and record an album titled It Comes To You In A Plain Brown Wrapper, but apparently the results were seen as way over the top by even the progressive dudes at Buddah Records, who declined to release them (although they still laid contractual claim to them, and, once Beefheart's reputation was firmly established, eventually released some of the sessions as Mirror Man in 1971). The only person to remain loyally impressed was producer Bob Krasnow, who took this as an excuse to break away from Buddah, found his own label (Blue Thumb) and get Beefheart to re-record a large part of the sessions for the new label.

On the positive side, breaking away from Buddah did permit the brave Captain to retain his artistic integrity and pursue the «never compromise» agenda — but there were negative sides, too. The most frequent complaint about Strictly Personal has an aura of objectivity, considering that it was shared by the artist himself: apparently, Krasnow got too heavily involved in the production, and «spoiled» the submitted tapes with all sorts of psychedelic effects, including echo, reverb, phasing, reversing the tapes, etc., so that Beefheart's original vision of the album got corrupted and trivialized — like Zappa, Beefheart obviously viewed his art as transcending the hippie conventions of the late Sixties, aiming for a very different kind of weirdness from abusing trendy studio technology. Another problem might be the departure of Ry Cooder, replaced by the somewhat less dazzling Jeff Cotton; however, that lineup change may have been necessary in order to steer the band away from the more conventional blues idiom, to which Cooder strongly subscribed at the time, and into the realms of the avantgarde, so not a problem, really.

Personally, I would suggest that the main issue with Strictly Personal is not the post-production effects: had the material been great from the start, a few stretches of phased tapes wouldn't do all that much harm, and besides, it's not like the entire album is corrupted that way — there's plenty of passages that have a completely live, un-manipulated feel to them. Much worse, I believe, is the situation where Beefheart actually had to return to a project that, in his own view, should have already been completed and done with. The Captain's mind, see, is one of acute restlessness, and the Captain does not much like to polish the unpolishable... which is why the original Mirror Man sessions, even despite the crazy length of those jams, have always sounded more energetic, sharp, and altogether inspired to me.

But in 1968, the public at large was hardly aware of all these happenings in between Beefheart's first and second albums, and we, too, have to remember the correct chronology and take Strictly Personal as a direct sequel to Safe As Milk — whose title track, by the way, ultimately ended up on the second album, in one of those strange, but not unprecedented, historical accidents. Funny enough, the album starts out fairly innocently, as if it were going to be Safe As Milk Vol. 2: discarding the frigged-up title ʽAh Feel Like Ahcidʼ, those first three minutes are the same modernized Muddy Waters as ʽSure 'Nuff 'N' Yes I Doʼ — choppy syncopated slide guitars, harmonica blasts, and a bluesy guy raving and ranting over the minimalistic arrangement. There is, however, a difference: this time, there's no true sense of structure, as the guitar melody comes in and goes away whenever it pleases the players, and the lyrical flow shows no signs of being arranged into neat verse structures, not to mention the lyrics themselves, which have more in common with beat poetry than with ye olde blueswailing.

The problem is, there's no sign here of the players and the singer actually understanding what it is they are trying to do — okay, so they are obviously deconstructing a blues pattern, but why? It's not nearly as weird as it would need to be to truly shake up one's foundations, nor is it particularly funny or entertaining, and it does not showcase the honed musical talents of The Magic Band, either. Even the Captain sounds like he's groping around, sacrificing his mind to delirium in search of divine inspiration but not properly finding it. This is particularly evident on the interminable ʽTrust Usʼ, probably the weakest thing on the album — a series of bluesy/jazzy patterns with psychedelic overtones (this is also one of the most heavily Krasnow-treated tracks) and an overall muddy sound that never really goes anywhere: slow, prodding, low on energy, and hardly standing any competition with the typical psychedelic sounds of 1968's America — such as the Grateful Dead — and the biggest mistake is that it even begins to compete on that turf, because that just ain't Beefheart's turf anyhow.

Another particular lowlight for me is ʽBeatle Bones 'n' Smokin' Stonesʼ; the track is already a spiritual predecessor to the style of Trout Mask Replica, but, again, suffers from a really sluggish flow, lack of interesting musical lines (there's one regular electric riff and one slide counterpart running through it, and both sound as if they are played by a couple guys whose amphetamines had just worn off), and a really silly vocal hook — the Captain insists on signing off each «verse» with a triumphantly whiney "...strawberry fields forever!" as if this were some sort of meaningful response to the Beatles, which it is not.

When the band sticks closer to its original blues guns, the results are notably better: ʽGimme Dat Harp Boyʼ is a relatively ferocious jam, seemingly growing out of the basic chord sequence for ʽSpoonful Bluesʼ and then taking on a life of its own — but even so, a brief comparison with the as-of-yet-unreleased Mirror Man version makes this one sound as if the entire band were sleepwalking through the process of re-recording. Maybe this is all Krasnow's fault, but surely it was not Krasnow who pretty much deprived the re-recording of a proper «bottom» — the bass on the Mirror Man is ferocious, and here I can't even properly hear it. Same goes for ʽKandy Kornʼ, which is here presented as a barely listenable murky mess.

Overall, unless you are a really big fan, I would strongly suggest ignoring Strictly Personal as a misfire, reflecting some poor production decisions and a lack of proper interest on Van Vliet's own side, and getting Mirror Man Sessions instead — the true «lost link» between Safe As Milk and Trout Mask Replica; in all honesty, Strictly Personal hardly deserves more than the status of a bonus disc, tacked on to some limited-edition special release of Mirror Man as an act of historical mercy. And yes, you guessed it already — thumbs down, because even certified musical madmen are not fully exempt from inducing boredom.

TROUT MASK REPLICA (1969)

1) Frownland; 2) The Dust Blows Forward 'N The Dust Blows Back; 3) Dachau Blues; 4) Ella Guru; 5) Hair Pie: Bake 1; 6) Moonlight On Vermont; 7) Pachuco Cadaver; 8) Bills Corpse; 9) Sweet Sweet Bulbs; 10) Neon Meate Dream Of A Octafish; 11) China Pig; 12) My Human Gets Me Blues; 13) Dali's Car; 14) Hair Pie: Bake 2; 15) Pena; 16) Well; 17) When Big Joan Sets Up; 18) Fallin' Ditch; 19) Sugar 'N Spikes; 20) Ant Man Bee; 21) Orange Claw Hammer; 22) Wild Life; 23) She's Too Much For My Mirror; 24) Hobo Chang Ba; 25) The Blimp (Mousetrapreplica); 26) Steal Softly Thru Snow; 27) Old Fart At Play; 28) Veteran's Day Poppy.

Trout. Was there ever anybody out there before who'd thought of using the word «trout» for the title of an LP or any significantly large musical composition (bar Schubert, perhaps, and even then he was not the inventor of the title)? The word has an odd flavor all by itself, and if you have a personage named Captain Beefheart who has an album with the word «trout» in it, that's oddness squared. But wait, we're not over yet — apparently, there's a «trout mask». So the guy's name is Beefheart, and he is impersonating a trout. Or is it a trout that is impersonating a guy called Beefheart? And who'd wear a trout mask, anyway, and for what symbolic purposes? And now comes the deadliest part — it's not even an actual mask, it's a replica of a mask. A fake image of a fake disguise of a guy called Captain Beefheart as a trout. That's at least three different layers of self-containing, straightforward, unfunny and un-ironic nonsense staring us right in the face, and we haven't even begun listening to the music yet.

The story of Trout Mask Replica has long since passed into legend and is easily discoverable in zillions of books and Web resources, although, as time goes by, it becomes harder and harder to verify which parts of it are documentally true and which ones are not — for instance, I have always been fascinated by stories of how Beefheart allegedly acted as a tyrannical guru for the members of his band, bordering on hypnotism as he «subdued them to his will», locking them up in his house until they'd learned to reproduce his crazy musical ideas on their instruments. Apparently, though, they were convinced that he was a musical genius, and were willing to endure this physical and emotional torture just to add their names to the roster of heroes who would change the musical world forever — without much hope of any financial gain in the process. But, again, just how many of the particular anecdotes about The Magic Band in mid-'69 are documentally true and how many are due to the legend feeding off itself, remains unclear.

What is perfectly clear is that, whatever charm and fascination the music of Trout Mask Replica may have in store for humanity, nobody ever has managed to be perfectly clear about explaining it. If you are a neophyte, have just taken your first swipe at this thing, and are running around the Internet, trying to find explanations, suggestions, and medical support, you are most likely to end up frustrated, because the typical amateur review of TMR goes like this: «Oh, I really hated this at first. It made me sick and disgusted. But then I wanted to experience the sickness and disgust some more, and I listened to it again, and again and again... and upon the n-th listen, it really clicked. Now I think it's just great. Such a great album. So weird, so unlike everything else, so great. Great, great, great. It has completely changed my life. Beefheart forever! Such a great masterpiece. I even threw all my other records away, because I can't listen to them anymore without getting bored. Give it a try... heck, give it five, six, sixty tries, eventually you'll realize it's the greatest of the greatest just like I did. Fast and bulbous — that's the key!»

So, for a change, it might interest you to read a few words from a guy who actually gave TMR quite a bit of a fair chance — been revisiting it occasionally, once a year or so, over the past 15 years of my life — and whose life, believe it or not, still remains to be changed by the experience. In my original review, I gave it an 11/15 rating, which, I now realize, was sort of an insult: TMR just cannot be considered a «middle ground» rating. You either love this record or you hate it; you either respect it with admiration or despise it with the utmost contempt. My attitude is one of admirable respect — yet at the same time I still «hate» it in that I have never, ever experienced the slightest emotional attachment to it, and blame that quite explicitly on the boldness of the Captain's musical decisions.

Indeed, TMR marks the peak of Beefheart's adventurousness. A very telling fact is that, although the record is a double LP, the length is achieved not through long-winded jamming improvisations (which would be the obvious thing to expect from 1969), but through an overabundant excess of individual musical ideas — the longest track on the album barely runs over five minutes, and, on the average, few tracks cross the 2:00 – 2:30 mark. The man's creative juices were overflowing, as he wrote a ton of new poems / lyrics and set each one to a distinct «melody» that seemed to challenge every conventional standard ever made. Of course, he didn't go as far as invent all the new rules completely from scratch, but he did «deconstruct» and completely subvert the harmonic structure of pop, folk, blues, and even jazz idioms in ways that made even Zappa sound like a teen pop idol in comparison. It is not for nothing, of course, that the man put ʽFrownlandʼ as the first track: "My smile is stuck / I cannot go back t' yer Frownland... / I want my own land / Take my hand 'n come with me / It's not too late for you / It is not too late for me". Well, it might be too late for me, after all, but that does not mean I have to so thoroughly refuse to take the brave Captain's hand for a brief while, anyway.

If there is one thing that could be considered disappointing, it is how predictable the record eventually turns out to be in its unpredictability. As ʽFrownlandʼ begins, we witness the major secret of TMR unveiled: each of the players is playing a slightly — or seriously — different melody that is slightly — or seriously — out of key with every other one. The trick is in not making the final result sound like a complete cacophony, and indeed, the tracks have some sort of weird logic of their own: always on the brink of falling apart, yet in reality held together quite tightly by hours and hours and hours of thorough rehearsals (as most of you probably already know, nothing here is said to be improvised — all of these parts were diligently learnt by the musicians in advance). Enjoying this music, though, is a feat for true weirdos of the Beefheart order, because, let's face it, as decent as those musicians were, they had too much trouble learning to play the odd parts and keep in relative sync with each other to actually invest much feeling into these parts. Every time I listen to any of these songs, I can almost feel the tremendous strain on everybody's brains, ears, eyes, and hands — I can't say that those guys were having as much fun recording this stuff as, say, some of the better improvisational free-form jazz artists, or even King Crimson, for that matter. They get the machine going, and it goes on without stalling or falling apart — that's more or less enough for them.

Something like the instrumental ʽHair Pieʼ (both of its «bakes»), as complex as it is, essentially follows the formula of «take a straightforward blues jam, and make it slanted on all sides». The results are easy to admire — it takes a lot of work to play everything slightly out of tune, slightly discordant, slightly un-harmonic, and keep that steady wobble up for several minutes — but difficult to interpret in an emotional / spiritual dimension. So yes, they do everything a little bit wrong, and they do it on purpose, and they practice for this, and it takes time and effort, and... what for? Merely to show us how it can be done, to shatter the walls of the conventional? But if anything, this shattering proves that the «conventional walls» weren't established by some evil tyrant to bind and rob us of our creativity — they were established based on certain natural laws, just like our human bodies. (This reasoning has made me, more than once, dream of an experiment in which a newly born child, for the first several years of his/her life, would be continuously exposed to nothing but Trout Mask Replica — although I sure hope no parent would ever be that cruel in real life. But if you do happen to have a toddler, you can probably at least check out the toddler's reaction to ʽDachau Bluesʼ. Would the toddler be willing to prance around to the happy sounds of that, or any of the other, tracks on here?).

On the other hand, if we do accept this for an answer — yes, they are just doing that to shatter the formalities and the foundations — it is at least a legit excuse for the existence of TMR. For one thing, it is impossible to deny the influence of this platter. Numerous avantgarde and semi-avantgarde bands took the album as their banner in order to produce music that was, perhaps, somewhat less arrogant and more conventional, but could actually be enjoyed on a subconscious level, and, most importantly, it showed the world that you could stay in a «pop» format and be vastly experimental without having to embrace the droning, Eastern-influenced psychedelic trappings of contemporary bands. Instead of going around looking for different sets of rules, you could stay with the ones you already had, but just tweak them around a bit — and see what happens. The only catch was that, in order for it all to look legit, you'd have to have a madman in charge: Van Vliet fully qualified, but many of his successors in the field were not.

And speaking of madmen, it's a whole different thing when the Captain actually establishes his presence on these songs. ʽHair Pieʼ-like instrumentals are one thing, but otherwise, you can just treat the backing tracks as a sort of white noise accompaniment for a beat poetry recital (not too far from the truth, considering that Beefheart actually heard very little of the music while overdubbing his vocals). Sometimes, the poetry is sheer surrealist nonsense, but otherwise, it makes plenty of sense, beginning with the individualistic manifesto of ʽFrownlandʼ and all the way to the metaphoric loneliness of the ending ʽVeteran Day's Poppyʼ. ʽDachau Bluesʼ is an almost too straightforward tirade against World War III (although anti-Zionists might have a field day with the song, too, if they offer a personal interpretation of the line "those poor Jews... still cryin' 'bout the burnin' back in world war two..."); ʽMy Human Gets Me Bluesʼ is the madman's equivalent of a heartfelt serenade to a loved one ("You look dandy in the sky but you don't scare me / Cause I got you here in my eye"); ʽElla Guruʼ is the madman's take on the «put down a female socialite» garage genre; and all over, all over the place you get clear signs of a deeply felt frustration and desperation at the sorry state of humanity, perhaps best summarized in one line from ʽSteal Softly Thru Snowʼ — "man's lived a million years 'n still he kills".

As a result, one thing I can feel on the record — against all of its quasi-musical noise, rather than aided by it — is the big, beefy heart of the brave Cap'n. Even if he is being hysterical all the time, and making very little use of God's greatest physical gift to him (that four-and-a-half-octave range), I have no reason to doubt the sincerity and honest motivation of that hysteria; if there is one thing TMR does exactly right, it is presenting Don Van Vliet as a sensitive, humanistic human being whose surrealistic manners are not just masking his lack of substance — in that respect, it is a very clear advance on the two previous albums, where music took clear precedence over the lyrical and personal content (and, at least in the case of Strictly Personal, a very poor precedence it was). Even something like "I don't wanna kill my china pig", despite being rather, um, allegorical, still sounds like a fairly benevolent statement.

Perhaps the biggest support in favor of the argument that I am putting here comes from Beefheart's subsequent career itself. With the possible exception of Lick My Decals Off, not a single one of his future albums would even dare come close to the craziness of the musical structures of TMR — the lyrics of his subsequent albums, though, as well as the vocal moods into which he prodded himself during the sessions, would often remain similar. Which, in a sense, makes TMR an intellectually fascinating musical dead end: a collection of «anti-tune-like tunes» for those who'd like to experience, if only for a brief while, what it is like to step out of the spaceship without a spacesuit on. To that end, it remains a unique curiosity; but I still hesitate to call it «great», if only because using such a lazy, trivial term for such an arduous, non-trivial record would be an insult by itself. I do suppose that everybody — yes, even including Britney Spears fans — could find it useful to sit through this record at least once. But anybody who honestly finds himself addicted to this record (and I do mean honestly, rather than merely doing the cool thing to do) is probably in serious need of psychiatric help. And no, that's not a condescending remark or anything — after all, wasn't the record itself created by one of the biggest madmen in the business? Fast and bulbous, man. Fast and bulbous. Thumbs... oh wait, I do believe that my thumbs are stuck, I cannot go back t' yer Thumbland.

LICK MY DECALS OFF, BABY (1970)

1) Lick My Decals Off, Baby; 2) Doctor Dark; 3) I Love You, You Big Dummy; 4) Peon; 5) Bellerin' Plain; 6) Woe-Is-Uh-Me-Bop; 7) Japan In A Dishpan; 8) I Wanna Find A Woman That'll Hold My Big Toe Till I Have To Go; 9) Petrified Forest; 10) One Red Rose That I Mean; 11) The Buggy Boogie Woogie; 12) The Smithsonian Institute Blues (Or The Big Dip); 13) Space-Age Couple; 14) The Clouds Are Full Of Wine (Not Whiskey Or Rye); 15) Flash Gordon's Ape.

This relatively short album, whose public fate also happened to be somewhat undermined by a very long period of being unavailable on CD (due to technical legal issues), is actually every bit as essential for the Captain as Trout Mask Replica — yet even today, judging by such telling observations as the ratio of amateur reviews on various websites, it regularly continues to be snubbed in favor of TMR. Even Beefheart himself admitted that Lick My Decals came much closer to realizing his true vision, but with the mainstream critical consensus on TMR as the representation of his artistic peak, its fate was sealed. 90% of the people who learn the name «Beefheart» head straight for Trout Mask Replica, and since 90% of these 90% never want to hear another Beefheart album for as long as they live, its equally important follow-up does not stand a chance — not until the time comes when we all begin wearing trout masks to work because of a strict dress code requirement.

Anyway, in many ways Lick My Decals Off is simply a shorter sequel to its more expansive and ambitious elder brother. Once again, we have a set of short tunes based on bizarro time changes, avantgarde chord sequences, discordant musical parts, and evil-grinning half-spoken lyrical recitals with no mercy for the common music listener. In certain other ways, however, it is significantly different from TMR. For one thing, it seems more influenced by contemporary avantgarde jazz and even modern classical — which may have to do with such personnel change as the departure of guitarist Jeff Cotton (who originally joined the band to substitute for the bluesy talents of Ry Cooder) and the arrival of percussionist Art Tripp, a former member of the progressive Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, as a full-time member of The Magic Band. This makes some of the music even more complex and challenging, as you'd expect from any band where at least one of the members holds an actual Bachelor of Music degree.

But what seems to me even more important is that at the same time, there is a rather conscious effort on Beefheart's part to return to his blues roots — if not always in form, then at least in spirit. The record is far more seriously loaded with dark sexual overtones, Howlin' Wolf- and John Lee Hooker-style, than TMR, where the surrealism was more of the psychedelic / absurdist type, and Beefheart's lyrics are full of salacious innuendos, even if they are still heavily «modernized»: the very title of the album, in fact, comes across as a salacious innuendo — although Beefheart himself explained it as a general call to «get rid of labels», for some reason, the image of Captain's baby licking his decals off seems a bit dirtier than that. Especially when the composition is so thoroughly soaked in dirty blues riffs and dirty blues vocals. There are other lyrical themes here as well, of course — some of the songs, like ʽPetrified Forestʼ, tangentially deal with environmentalism, for instance — but the overall impression is that on Lick My Decals, Beefheart is really embracing the image of an avantgarde Howlin' Wolf, as if Chester Burnett himself got tired of all the conventional ways to express his essence, and switched to all the unconventional ones. I mean, "Mama, mama, here comes Doctor Dark!" — isn't that the kind of lyrical line that a Willie Dixon would always have been on the brink of coming up with?

Some of the tracks are, in fact, very light deconstructions of traditional blues patterns — ʽI Love You, Big Dummyʼ, for instance, with its harmonica blasts and all-pervasive signature blues riff, almost verges on the fully conventional (predicting some of the stylistic «regression» on The Spotlight Kid). Most of the time, however, the deconstruction process goes all the way, with basic meters sometimes shifting every several bars, instruments playing in different signatures and tempos at the same time, percussion and bass going in opposite directions, etc. etc., which is cool, but will not be appreciated by just about anybody: in particular, I feel that the atmosphere of extra «darkness» and «sexuality» gets disrupted by the experimental approach more often than it gets assisted by it — and, even worse, that the musicians get too concentrated on getting those harmonic shifts and overdub coordinations right to equally concentrate on making the riffs sound powerful, energetic, and properly insinuating.

There are a couple very interesting instrumental tracks on here — I would definitely recommend the flowery-titled interludes ʽPeonʼ and ʽOne Rose That I Meanʼ higher than ʽHair Pieʼ. The two bakes of the latter were rather messy avant-blues jams; these two are more in the avant-folk territory, consisting of two overlaid guitar parts, playing complex sequences in unison (acoustic guitar and bass on ʽPeonʼ, acoustic and electric on ʽRoseʼ) that sound like a folk troubadour desperately banging upon the doors of perception. Whether he succeeds in smashing them open or not is up to you to decide, but I somehow feel that it is because of the stripped nature of these instrumentals that they somehow show more poignancy and individuality than the rest — just a subjective impression, of course, but how could one ever retain the chance of warming up to a record like this without resorting to subjective impressions even of the silliest kind?

The closest this album gets in spirit to free-form jazz is on the tracks where Beefheart himself plays the brass instruments — he is credited for both clarinet and tenor/soprano saxes, and they are all over the last and longest track on the record, ʽFlash Gordon's Apeʼ, winding things up with a mighty ruckus, although, to be honest, I am not sure why anybody who is already a fan of Eric Dolphy or, say, Alexander von Schlippenbach (to make things a bit more esoteric) should be interested in the same kind of music spiced up with the Captain's evil-bluesy vocal declamations. Still, I guess we can say he at least passes the test — to my ears, these chaotic spasms of windy ugliness are no better and no worse than the average free-form jazz composition.

Yet both the avant-folk and the avant-jazz experiments are still subdued to the main task of the mission — avant-blues — and that may be a good thing, because deep down at heart, the blues is the core of Captain Beefheart, ever the yearning, dissatisfied searcher for peace, love, and understanding, even if this comprises finding a woman who will hold his big toe until he has to go (and he does proclaim it with such conviction that you begin to wonder if he wasn't secretly in love with a female podiatrist). If you manage to enjoy the things his musicians do to the blues here — then it's great, because you may have just upgraded your conscience to the «post-Howlin' Wolf» level. I, unfortunately, do not: as is the case with TMR, I respect and endorse the effort, but am incapable of listening to this stuff «for fun».

One thing, however, is certain: any person who owns and claims to like Trout Mask Replica, but has no knowledge whatsoever of Lick My Decals Off, is a rotten poseur, and unless proper atonement has been made, will have to suffer the punishment of listening to nothing but the Backstreet Boys and One Direction for one hundred thousand years. Because if you really enjoy TMR on a level where you seriously begin empathizing with the Captain and entertaining the fast and bulbous way of thinking, then not finishing the experience with Lick My Decals Off will be like prematurely pulling out, if you pardon my metaphor. Safe, perhaps, but... no fun.

MIRROR MAN (1971)

1) Tarotplane; 2) Kandy Korn; 3) 25th Century Quaker; 4) Mirror Man; 5*) Trust Us; 6*) Safe As Milk; 7*) Beatle Bones 'n' Smokin' Stones; 8*) Moody Liz; 9*) Gimme Dat Harp Boy.

Well, here go the magic words: This is the album that Strictly Personal should have been three years earlier. These are the original tracks that were recorded in late 1967 for Buddah Records and went down together with the band's respect for Buddah Records. Yet for all their displeasure with the results, Buddah executives did not erase the tapes or anything, and after the Captain got all solidified in his status of a living legend, they ultimately went ahead and released some of them in 1971 as Mirror Man; the entire package did not, however, see the light of day until well into the CD age — although bootleg versions probably circulated around, it was only in 1999 that the world got to properly experience the Captain's «original vision» for It Comes To You In A Plain Brown Wrapper, this time entitled Mirror Man Sessions and containing enough material for a bona fide double LP.

Not that it comes loaded with a double-LP-quota of great musical ideas, mind you. On the contrary, it is the direct opposite of Trout Mask Replica: instead of dozens of short, carefully preconstructed tunes, Mirror Man consists of a small handful of super-long bluesy jams that act as an arrogant challenge to contemporary Cream and Grateful Dead — ʽTarotplaneʼ alone, opening the album, clocks in at over 19 minutes, and the other three jams from the 1971 record collectively occupy another 33 minutes (bonus tracks on the 1999 release are generally shorter). And this is not some kind of over-the-top avantgarde jamming, either: this is relatively standard blues-rock jamming, without any psychedelic overtones. Even Ry Cooder could have joined in the fun, had he not already had his full share of the Captain's antics and left the band in favor of Jeff Cotton.

So why do I find it, despite all these hideous time lengths, every bit as engaging as TMR and maybe even more so? Part of the issue is contextual: after the (largely meaningless) excesses of the Captain's 1969-70 period, almost anything more «normal» sounds like a relief. But another part is that I really, really like whatever it is that Beefheart is doing in this genre — he is for Chicago blues what Bob Dylan was for folk music in 1964, a respectful adept intent on catapulting tradition into the future, and here he finds himself untampered with time limitations, free to carry on a particular idea or groove for as long as he thinks necessary, even if occasionally he tends to overthink it. But this kind of modernist shamanism does look more logical when it comes in the form of ritualistic, groove-based improvisation than when it comes in the form of brief chunks of inverted and distorted chord sequences — in other words, I can let myself go and float on the rough, but natural current of Mirror Man, whereas Trout Mask Replica is more of a convoluted labyrinth where you have to stay alert and watch your step every minute, unless you wanna end up with a bloody nose and stubbed toes in a matter of minutes.

As I already said, the sheer strength of these grooves totally trumps the much less inspired re-recordings on Strictly Personal — not to mention the awful production of the latter, with its poor mixing that somehow manages to downplay the role of every player, and its psychedelic effects that try to amplify the already present weirdness of the tracks but instead detract from it. Here, the bass and the interplay between Cotton's and St. Clair's guitars are perfectly audible, and you can actually groove to the funky sounds of ʽMirror Manʼ rather than just sit there and try to make sense of what is going on. Beefheart himself, with his sandpaper-voice declamations and swamp harmonica playing, is an integral part of the sessions, but there are long periods of time when he almost disappears from sight, letting the musicians carry on without his participation, and so he seems more of a general conductor and overseeing spirit rather than the be-all-end-all motor of the sessions, and that's okay by me, especially on tracks like ʽKandy Kornʼ where there's more of an overall structure to the proceedings, and the musicians alternate between two distinctly different melodies (the «bluesy suspense» and the «pop resolution»).

ʽTarotplaneʼ may be harder to tolerate due to the ridiculous length, but it is also the roughest track on the album, closer in spirit to pre-war Son House-style blues rituals than anything else, and there are patches of sensual delight when the straightahead electric guitar, the slide guitar, and the Captain's swampy harmonica weave their magic together. Another track that has no equivalent on Strictly Personal is ʽ25th Century Quakerʼ, compiled around a strange musical figure that is alternately played by the slide guitar and the bass and sounds like an African-Indian hybrid, part time blues riff and part time sitar drone — like one of the great blind bluesmen offered to write a soundtrack for a snake charmer. Call me too conservative (and I wouldn't even deny the charges), but somehow most of these melodic themes seem to make much more sense (and generate much more fun) for me than almost any of the twisted themes on the 1969-70 albums.

I will not pretend that the long jams justify their existence through players exploring all possible corners and branching out in all possible directions — they most certainly do not, and if you have a tendency to be bored by any theme that goes on longer than five minutes, the brevity of TMR will probably have more appeal to you. But when all has been said and done, and when all the praise has been lavished, I stick to the simple statement that behind all the madness, the Captain had always been a great bluesman at heart — and that Mirror Man is the one record in his catalog where he is more than happy to both acknowledge and deconstruct all the clichés and formalities of the genre. In fact, while I have no evidence to properly suggest this, I wouldn't be in the least surprised to learn that it was this chance to reacquaint himself with his own legacy and refreshen that blues sound in his mind, upon the (unauthorized?) release of Mirror Man in 1971 that ultimately led to the «re-blues-ification» of his music on The Spotlight Kid a year later, and, personally, if that were so, I'd consider that a healthy stimulus. Thumbs up.

THE SPOTLIGHT KID (1972)

1) I'm Gonna Booglarize You Baby; 2) White Jam; 3) Blabber 'n' Smoke; 4) When It Blows Its Stacks; 5) Alice In Blunderland; 6) The Spotlight Kid; 7) Click Clack; 8) Grow Fins; 9) There Ain't No Santa Claus On The Evenin' Stage; 10) Glider.

By all accounts, The Spotlight Kid marks the beginning of the era of Artistic Compromise for the Captain — his «going commercial», allegedly in order to at least somewhat alleviate the dire straits in which he and his Magic Band found themselves at the beginning of the new decade. Of course, the word «commercial» cannot be referred to here unless in the most ironic of all possible senses: compared to the real commercial music of 1972, such as Harry Nilsson and T. Rex and The Carpenters, The Spotlight Kid could hardly be believed to attract fresh new crowds of easy-going music listeners. In fact, although I lack any precise figures, I'm pretty sure it could not have sold a significantly larger number of copies than any of its predecessors — even in an era when Close To The Edge and Thick As A Brick could become megahits.

Essentially, what happens here is that the Captain takes one step back, into the era of Mirror Man, when the Magic Band still worked in a more overtly blues-based paradigm. The rhythmic grooves are normalized, returning to more traditional forms and with notably fewer unexpected shifts throughout the song — but the gruffness, darkness, and «avant-sexuality» of Lick My Decals Off are all retained, so, if anything, the results now sound closer to Howlin' Wolf than they ever did before. The only area in which there is very little compromise involved are the lyrics, but as long as the Captain keeps using that spooky tone, it hardly matters what he sings anyway (and besides, if Jon Anderson was able to sell plenty of records with his cosmic gobbledygook, why shouldn't the Captain with his bluesnik fantasies?).

Coming off the uninhibited sonic escapades of 1969-70, the record was clearly a disappointment for the hardcore fans operating on the principle of «the weirder, the better», but as far as I'm concerned, it returned Beefheart to the golden middle standard — as the songs become overall more comprehensible, yet still totally far out if compared to either classic electric blues or contemporary blues-rock. Sure, Zoot Horn Rollo would later state that he hated what they did on that record; but he sure as hell does not sound disinterested or uninspired on the guitar tracks of ʽI'm Gonna Booglarize You Babyʼ — as the Magic Band discovers the joys of funk, the guitarist is not content to simply play the same syncopated lines all over; instead, he begins by having one funky part in the right channel, then supplements it with a slide lead part in the left channel, then has the left lead part gradually taking over the funky rhythm duty while the right part gradually evolves into a trance-inducing grumbly buzz, hovering over your head like one big fat bumblebee with a particularly nasty hangover. Over this exciting cloud of noise (that honestly gets me going far quicker than anything on Trout Mask Replica), the Captain keeps mumbling how "if you keep beatin' around the bush, you'll lose your push!" — an aphorism worthy of either a sexual and a spiritual interpretation, but we will settle for nothing less than both.

The track forms a terrific opening; the problem is that few of the remaining performances match its gruff force, inventiveness, and humor. A few walks down the line, we find ʽWhen It Blows Its Stacksʼ — slow and ominous rather than fast and bulbous, but a great showcase for the Captain in ultimatum-delivering Old Testament mad prophet mode, announcing the coming of a modern age Messiah: "better watch out, there's a man eater around". Again, Zoot Horn Rollo spins angry rings around the rhythm (I really have no idea how he could have hated his work on these tracks), while Art Tripp is fighting to enlighten the atmosphere with playful marimba interludes. Still later, they return to scary-swampland atmosphere again with ʽThere Ain't No Santa Claus On The Evening Stageʼ, but it is even slower, and the «transform your guitar from rhythm to noise» trick does not work as efficiently the third time around.

Of the remaining tracks, the one closest in spirit to TMR is the instrumental ʽAlice In Blunderlandʼ — starting out with some tricky interplay between drums, marimbas, and guitars, with expected signature changes and all sorts of «blunders» involved; however, one minute into the song the rhythm becomes streamlined, and the composition turns into a normalized jam, with the guitarist stuck somewhere in between Clapton mode and Hendrix mode, something that would have never happened on TMR. Nevertheless, the combination of psychedelic guitars and marimbas is fun (not unlike something you'd easily encounter on a classic Zappa record), and just about satisfies my personal «weirdness quota».

Some of the material is oddly lightweight, bordering on what might be called «schizophrenic vaudeville» — the title track is an absurdist narrative set to a poppy marimba rhythm, and the whole thing is so carnivalesque, you'd almost expect Alice Cooper in his top hat jump out of the bushes at any moment and do a little tap dance with the Captain. ʽClick Clackʼ, with its train whistle-imitating harmonica and blues-rock riffage, reminds me of next year's ʽSilver Trainʼ by the Stones — but completely unfocused, starting out as an experiment in non-trivial time signatures and ending as a half-assed attempt to ignite jam mode. And on songs like ʽWhite Jamʼ and ʽBlabber 'n' Smokeʼ the Captain just sounds sick — confused and whiny instead of being The Wolfman — hardly top pick material, but it is interesting to hear him in such a «vulnerable» state of mind all the same.

Perhaps I used to overrate this album a bit, just because it made me so happy to hear Beefheart return to more sense-making middle ground — in retrospect, The Spotlight Kid suffers from quite a bit of meandering filler, as if the group «got it» that it was supposed to play slightly more acceptable chord sequences, but did not really get what it was supposed to do with them. Clearly, there was no intention whatsoever to do a «normal» blues-rock record, but in this middle-of-the-road mode, for certain winners like ʽI'm Gonna Booglarize Youʼ you get a monotonous, repetitive correlate like ʽGliderʼ. Still, I insist that the band here is more often on fire than on autopilot, and they would do even better next time in the same mode. To me, this record makes sense, and that's reason enough to give it a thumbs up.

CLEAR SPOT (1972)

1) Low Yo Yo Stuff; 2) Nowadays A Woman's Gotta Hit A Man; 3) Too Much Time; 4) Circumstances; 5) My Head Is My Only House Unless It Rains; 6) Sun Zoom Spark; 7) Clear Spot; 8) Crazy Little Thing; 9) Long Neck Bottles; 10) Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles; 11) Big Eyed Beans From Venus; 12) Golden Birdies.

This follow-up to The Spotlight Kid, which it ends up somehow resembling even in name (and for a long time now, both albums have been available commercially on a single CD), represents the Captain's next step in marrying weirdness with accessibility — now with the aid of producer Ted Templeman, who'd previously worked not only with Van Morrison (who might have some common artistic and spiritual ground with Beefheart), but also with the Doobie Brothers (who probably don't have any). The band's lineup remains the same (plus the brief addition of Zappa veteran Roy Estrada on bass), but there's an additional brass section appearing from time to time, and even, oh God help us, some backup female singers («The Blackberries») as if we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of a true soul-searching session.

Regardless, the songs are still strange and curious, and the mix of old and new influences works well — also, there is a bit more speed, power, and heaviness to the material, so that, unlike Spotlight Kid, it never really gets a chance to sag. Honestly, it is like an attempt to re-do Spotlight Kid, correcting some of its mistakes, but also clinging to the formula where it worked — and so ʽLow Yo Yo Stuffʼ establishes almost the same vibe as ʽI'm Gonna Booglarize You Babyʼ: another funky beat, another Howlin' Wolf-style vocal performance, another pair of sick-twisted blues riffs attacking the listener from both channels, only the Captain sings in a higher range this time around, choosing an active-aggressive rather than passive-aggressive strategy, but he' pretty scary both ways. Musically, these guitar parts aren't quite as uniquely mesmerizing as the dialog between his two inner halves that Zoot Horn Rollo conducted on ʽBooglarizeʼ, but the sexually charged voodoo ritual atmosphere is still generated perfectly.

Perhaps, with the onslaught of the loud glam-rock sound in 1971-1972, the introduction of brass support was no coincidence — but the Captain had his own interpretation of glam-rock anyway, best illustrated on the second track, ʽNowadays A Woman's Gotta Hit A Manʼ, which charges on with the energy and drunk fervor of a Slade or a T. Rex track, but still has all the instruments playing in slight dissonance with each other, so the track couldn't be called «catchy» unless all the different zones of your brain were functioning like arpeggiated chords. Its fascination is more of a chameleonesque one — starts out as a swampy blues-rocker, then goes on to wobble between T. Rex-like glam, Otis Redding-style soul groove, and more swampy blues-rock (when that stinging guitar break comes along). And it's got a pro-feminist stance, too! Good old progressive Captain with his progressive spirit.

Actually, while we're on the women issue, this record has arguably the best sentimental love ballad that Beefheart ever had the bravery of recording — ʽHer Eyes Are A Blue Million Milesʼ is an awesome chunk of psychedelic blues-pop (okay, I just googled it and people have occasionally used such a noun phrase before, so I'm cool) whose guitar melody actively suggests both loving admiration and panicky tension, just the kind of mixture you'd probably expect to get from Don Van Vliet when he really fell in love (which he didn't do too often, by the way, at least not since marrying Janet Van Vliet at the end of 1969). I even think that the guitar guy intentionally throws in a bit of Lennon-esque phrasing in the bridge section, to reflect that they also go for the same mix of roughness and tenderness that should characterize the most honest and psychologically convincing ballads — but then again, I also have a nasty tendency to overthink things.

Not every song has its own individuality, and a few might be on the filler side, but I'm sure that no two people would completely agree on what constitutes the highlights and the lowlights here. For instance, I am no big fan of ʽToo Much Timeʼ, which takes us a little too close to comfort into «sunshine soul» territory (and those backing vocals border on corniness), but others might like its relaxed and friendly nature as a bit of relief from the overall harshness. On the other hand, I seriously dig the funk groove of ʽCrazy Little Thingʼ, but others might grumble that it is merely a half-assed attempt to cop the sound of James Brown and the like — and I wouldn't really know what to answer if it seemed like a problem.

I'm almost sure that most Beefheart fans would at least agree on ʽBig Eyed Beans From Venusʼ as a major highlight — a song that takes Fleetwood Mac's ʽOh Wellʼ as a starting point and then turns blues into raga, raga into psychedelic noise, and noise back into blues without blinking. "Mister Zoot Horn Rollo! Hit that long lunar note, and let it float!" commands the Captain one minute and a half into the song, confusing himself with Kirk for a while, but Mister Zoot Horn Rollo had had plenty of obedience training to do exactly what was required, and throws extra fuel on Beefheart's last psychedelic masterpiece in a long, long while. Overall, the guitar work on that track, combining the finest traditions of the Grateful Dead, Cream, and the Velvet Underground all at once, seems far more emotionally charged and stunning to me than anything on TMR or Lick My Decals Off. Maybe that is what they mean by «going commercial»?

Because they clearly cannot mean sales: Clear Spot charted and sold much lower than The Spotlight Kid, probably because there was even less promotion and because it had no particular soft selling spot like ʽI'm Gonna Booglarize Youʼ — not a happy piece of news for the Magic Band, who were beginning to feel angry at having to compromise the «purity» of their artistic vision without even being financially rewarded for it. But, once again, do not get it wrong: almost everything on Clear Spot remains «experimental» to some degree, and every single track totally retains the Beefheart spirit. I used to think of it as a slight stepdown from The Spotlight Kid, but not any more — it's really got more highlights and more diversity to it, so here's another well-earned thumbs up, concluding the Captain's second mini-period of creative bliss.

UNCONDITIONALLY GUARANTEED (1974)

1) Upon The My-O-My; 2) Sugar Bowl; 3) New Electric Ride; 4) Magic Be; 5) Happy Love Song; 6) Full Moon Hot Sun; 7) I Got Love On My Mind; 8) This Is The Day; 9) Lazy Music; 10) Peaches.

1974 was unquestionably the strangest year in the history of Captain Beefheart — the year in which he came out with a pair of albums that turned out to be his most «normal» recordings ever, and that, in itself, makes this the most bizarre and unpredictable turn of events for the man. Other artists could be expected to go «commercial», perhaps, and genuinely sacrifice the search for new sounds and experiences to boring, but financially rewarding, conventionalism: Don Van Vliet, however, seemed like one of the few select artists for whom «going commercial» was as easy to do as it would be for a fish to walk on land. Not because he was so vehemently and ideologically against it, but because he'd spent so many years not speaking that language at all.

His failure in 1974 was not in «selling out», but rather in the fact that he had no idea whatsoever how to sell out. Apparently, the slightly more accessible grooves of The Spotlight Kid and Clear Spot failed to increase public interest in his music: if the former did very briefly put him on the charts, the latter only brought back the plunge, and something more drastic had to be resorted to if the poverty-eliminating strategy remained in place. And so, with a hint of self-irony on the album sleeve where the Captain is holding some crumpled dollar bills with a semi-stupefied look of total incredulity, Unconditionally Guaranteed arrives as a fully normal record of contemporary pop-rock, blues-rock, and roots-rock songs — genre-wise, probably standing closer to mid-Seventies «pub-rock» than anything else.

The results are nowhere near as bad as they are usually advertised: had this album been recorded by anybody but Captain Beefheart, the typical reaction would probably vary from mild pleasure to absent-minded indifference, rather than disgust and horror. The worst thing, however, is that even if this somehow happens to be the first Captain Beefheart album in your life, it will still not take long to understand that something is very wrong — that this is either a mediocre commercial artist feigning artistic madness, or (as was actually the case) that this is a formerly mad artist trying, but not knowing how to sound «normal». Where his previous two records observed the balance between craziness and conservatism quite loyally, here the craziness is largely restricted to some of the lyrics (occasionally) and some of the vocals (many of which suffer from what seems like a bad case of laryngitis, though perhaps it was merely an effect of suffering from supreme depression at the idea of what he was doing). And that's a piss-poor balance — if you ask me, the only choice to make this record good would be to go all the way, and take proper care of all the arrangements, inflections, and modulations.

At least it begins nice enough: ʽUpon The My-O-Myʼ is a mean-'n'-lean funky workout in the tradition of ʽBooglarize You Babyʼ and ʽLow Yo-Yo Stuffʼ, though with less interesting and complex guitar work — but a nice flute and sax interlude from guest musician Del Simmons to compensate. The self-addressed question, "now tell me, good Captain, how does it feel / To be driven away from your own steering wheel?" sort of gives you a first hint at whatever is coming up, but the groove as such still has plenty of snap, and Beefheart's vocal performance is probably his best on the record. Skip ahead, though, and the next track is ʽSugar Bowlʼ, a pedestrian country rocker with exactly one musical phrase to make sense of — and not even a phrase that was invented by Beefheart or any of his musicians. But if that song is simply «nothing special», then ʽNew Electric Rideʼ is a monotonous, repetitive groove whose lyrics suggest an air of joyful exuberance — "here we go again, baby, on the New Electric Ride... I could barely hold my pride..." pride in what? the fact that it is possible to sing in some sort of a dying croak and still manage to stay on key? The problem is that the music, the lyrics, and the vocals on this song just do not belong together — you might as well invite Pavarotti to sing on a Clash track, or, more to the point, Stephen Hawking to sing ʽHey Judeʼ, or maybe forget it, because the former would at least be novel, and the latter disturbing. ʽNew Electric Rideʼ is just pathetic.

With song titles like ʽHappy Love Songʼ and ʽI Got Love On My Mindʼ, it is as if the befuddled Captain were hopelessly lost somewhere in between the art of parody and the desire to generate a bunch of genuine generic love ballads — the results being equally unpalatable to his old fans and to the general public. Weirdest of all, he is not totally incapable of creating a good love ballad: ʽThis Is The Dayʼ, on which he sings with an unusually clean and convincing voice, and graced with a very pretty lead guitar melody, is a really good track whose lyrics do not try to make use of commercial clichés, and ʽMagic Beʼ almost comes close, although his voice is still too shaky on that one to normalize it completely (and, like I said, only total and utter normalization would allow these songs to have a proper emotional effect). But for every track like that, there's one or two silly «happy-exuberant» numbers like ʽFull Moon Hot Sunʼ that simply feel sick.

I do not deny the catchiness of the melodies, but it would be shameful to call Unconditionally Guaranteed a good album just because the Captain took care to insert some earworms — which were never his preferred specialty in the first place. The closing ʽPeachesʼ, a musical variation on Wilbert Harrison's ʽLet's Stick Togetherʼ, is kind of a guilty pleasure to me, but it would still work better with a different vocal performance. Otherwise, the best I can do is not condemn the record: it is essentially listenable, and there is something deeply intriguing in its artistic failure that still makes it an unexpendable part of Beefheart's total legacy, much as the Captain himself would want all of us to forget it.

It is said that upon hearing the final results, the Magic Band was so shocked of its own wrongdoing that it simply stood up and left the good Captain — and that the good Captain subsequently disowned the record himself and, once his contract with the Mercury label ran out, urged everybody who bought it to return it for a proper refund. Even so, there is no getting away from the fact that Don Van Vliet wrote these songs, and the Magic Band recorded them (and later on, the Captain even took a few of the better ones on the road), and it wasn't merely to placate the record industry bosses. There is also no getting away from the fact that this record is not boring — if you want boring American music from 1974, try Kansas or, I dunno, Carly Simon. It is an artistic disaster, but when the artist is of Don Van Vliet's caliber, disaster has its own special fascination that can even be more memorable than success.

BLUEJEANS & MOONBEAMS (1974)

1) Party Of Special Things To Do; 2) Same Old Blues; 3) Observatory Crest; 4) Pompadour Swamp; 5) Captain's Holiday; 6) Rock'n'Roll's Evil Doll; 7) Further Than We've Gone; 8) Twist Ah Luck; 9) Bluejeans And Moonbeams.

Maybe I'm going too soft or too crazy, but I see more signs of life on Beefheart's second «faux-commercial» album of 1974 than on the first one — even though, by that time, the entire Magic Band had deserted him and was replaced by a bunch of really obscure musicians (Dean Smith on guitar, Micheal /sic/ Smotherman on keyboards, Ty Grimes on drums, Ira Ingber on bass, if you like names and all that), earning the popular moniker of «Captain Beefheart's Tragic Band». But... despite that, or because of that? In a way, replacing your loyal apostles, trained in the ways of the avantgarde, with a bunch of nobodies might have been the right way to go if you truly wanted to make a conventional record — at least, that way you would reduce tension in the studio.

And as a conventional record, Bluejeans is better than its predecessor because it does not sound so painful — not only is Beefheart in healthier vocal form throughout, but fewer songs sound like misguided, clumsy attempts of a deranged innovator to change his train at the speed of 200mph. Case in point: there's a cover of J. J. Cale's ʽSame Old Bluesʼ, and it's a good one — a normal dark blues song, done by the Captain with his usual growl and every bit as convincing as the original, though, perhaps, not very necessary. But there's some confidence here, and a suggestion that, perhaps, Beefheart would have fared better at the time if he had simply switched to standard blues or blues-rock. Something like an album of Howlin' Wolf covers, for instance.

As usual, he insists upon starting the record with an evil-grin of a nasty funk-rocker, and as usual, the opening number is one of the best things here — ʽParty Of Special Things To Doʼ holds its own against not only ʽUpon The My-Oh-Myʼ, but against ʽI'm Gonna Booglarize Youʼ and ʽLow Yo-Yo Stuffʼ as well. Surrealist lyrics ("the camel wore a nightie"), evil cackle, nasty riff, what's not to like? I do miss the fascinating guitar interplay between left and right channel, but if you can cope with the simplified approach, it's a good, reliable groove — unfortunately, the only one of its kind on the entire record.

The Captain also gets more sentimental than he's ever been, with three surprisingly decent tracks. ʽObservatory Crestʼ has a certain meditative aura about it — a song about really doing nothing except watching the city from an observatory crest, to the sound of quasi-psychedelic chimes and relaxing slide guitar phrases; ʽFurther Than We've Goneʼ suffers from an unfortunately hysterical vocal delivery (dear Captain, if you're trying to be soulful and sentimental, please do not scream about it on one of those laryngitis-stricken days!), but makes up for it with a surprisingly good extended guitar solo; and best of the three is the title track, melodically and emotionally stuck in somewhere between James Taylor and Blood On The Tracks-era Bob Dylan, but with an exceptional vocal performance this time — in fact, this is a tune that would not have sounded out of place on the funeral day for the Captain, what with its peacefulness and a feeling of finally accepting life as it is ("I'm tryin' in all ways and learnin' in between"). Yes, it's fairly generic mid-1970s soft rock, but it does work, together with the supporting guitar work and almost Emersonian Moog synth solo from the keyboard man.

On the down side, ʽRock'n'Roll's Evil Dollʼ is a fairly lame attempt at learning the «dance-rock» moves of the day (the Captain treading on Bee Gees territory? certainly not the right thing for him), and then there is what might be the total nadir for Beefheart — the incredibly lame, New-Orleans-meets-German-cabaret, nearly instrumental ʽCaptain's Holidayʼ, which might have been the perfect welcoming music for a whorehouse if the Captain ever bothered setting one up ("ooh captain captain, lay your burden down"). It is a fairly tight groove, but one that sounds sleazy, pimp-wise, without being intelligent, and it has been rumored that Beefheart does not even play his own harmonica on that one, so it remains to be understood if he has any relation to the track whatsoever, or whether it was just a stupid joke played on him by «The Tragic Band». Not that he'd noticed — apparently, he was in such a daze at the time that they could have invited Neil Diamond to guest on a couple of tracks and he'd probably be all right with that.

Regardless, the record is not a total waste — it's just that there is no reason whatsoever to go for it if you are interested specifically in Captain Beefheart, rather than just a few examples of decent, emotionally resonant mid-Seventies soft-rock that could just as well have been delivered by Jackson Browne or somebody even less individualistic. And, objectively, it does mark a particularly low point in the man's artistic career, because he'd pretty much stopped being Captain Beefheart: in all actuality, this record should really have been credited to «Don Van Vliet & The Tragic Band». It's no big crime to dissolve your artistic identity — it might even be a useful exercise in humility — but it's no good, either, if you don't stand to gain anything in return, and this album flopped even worse than Unconditionally Guaranteed. Still, yet another curious chapter in the Captain's history, there's no denying at least that.

SHINY BEAST (BAT CHAIN PULLER) (1978)

1) The Floppy Boot Stomp; 2) Tropical Hot Dog Night; 3) Ice Rose; 4) Harry Irene; 5) You Know You're A Man; 6) Bat Chain Puller; 7) When I See Mommy I Feel Like A Mummy; 8) Owed T'Alex; 9) Candle Mambo; 10) Love Lies; 11) Suction Prints; 12) Apes-Ma.

By late 1974, I think, music lovers worldwide must have given up on the Captain, who'd seemed to guide his ship into the rocks — losing his loyal Magic Band, his artistic integrity, and any signs of respect from the formerly receptive critical base. The only reason for optimism was that, even at his least adventurous, Beefheart had always followed his own muse and nobody else's: «simplistic» and «commercial» as they might be, even the 1974 records sound like they could not have been produced by anybody else. Of course, the man had his original set of influences, all the way from Chicago blues to free jazz, yet once his musical vision had solidified, he seemed to pay very little attention to whatever else was going on in the musical world around him — interested in doing his own thing and nobody else's, and even if he was going to «sell out», he'd still do it the Beefheart way, rather than take a cue from The Doobie Brothers.

A good boost of confidence came from Frank Zappa, with whom Beefheart spent a lot of time together in 1975-76 (including an appearance as vocalist and occasional songwriter on Bongo Fury from 1975), and by 1976, the Captain felt resuscitated enough to put together a properly assembled new Magic Band and begin recording again — the result was Bat Chain Puller, an album of completely new material that was to see the light of day in 1976, yet ended up on indefinite hold after a conflict between Zappa and his manager Herb Cohen resulted in all sorts of legal difficulties. Fortunately, this did not suffice to destroy the good spirits of the Captain once again, and by 1978, he was back on his feet, with a new deal with Warner Bros. (you know, the most avantgardist record label in the world) and a new album, consisting partly of re-recorded songs from Bat Chain Puller (hence the double title) and partly of completely new material.

And it is like 1974 never existed. No, scratch that — it is as if the Seventies never existed as a decade altogether: Shiny Beast picks up precisely where Trout Mask Replica and Lick My Decals left off, and feels like a superb reboot of the Captain Beefheart franchise. Basically, Beefheart returns to the idea of «continuing to make weird music, but making it more accessible»; however, instead of steering his musicians towards more blues, more funk, and (ultimately) more pop, he remains more closely attached to the original idiom of TMR, except that certain angles get smoothed — less tricky time signatures, musicians seemingly playing more in tune with each other, grooves that take sufficient time to develop and sink in the mind: often catchy without ever sounding simplistic, and fairly adventurous without ever sounding irritating and pointless. Not to discriminate against The Spotlight Kid and Clear Spot, but this is probably the kind of sound that the Captain should have had going for himself in 1972 — although, this being 2017 and all, who really should care about a decade-long delay now? Particularly since the Captain always preferred to live in his own time anyway.

From the most basic point of view, we have our Captain back showcasing his insanity, paranoia, otherworldly creepiness, and, occasionally, «alternate sentimentality». The very first song, subtly hinting at the dawn of the computer age as Beefheart happily exploits the many meanings of the word ʽbootʼ, is a post-modern cartoonish apocalyptic vision in its own rights: with the Captain's new guitarists, Jeff Morris Tepper and Richard Redus, playing bluesy rings around each other and drummer Robert Williams playing complex polyrhythms with the verve of a good Keith Moon disciple, ʽThe Floppy Boot Stompʼ is not one of the album's most melodically memorable numbers, but it is all that it takes to immediately ascertain — yes, the Captain is back, and it looks like he hasn't been that excited about being back since ʽFrownlandʼ, gleefully painting meltdownish pictures of how "the sky turned white in the middle of the night" and "hell was just an ice cube melting off on the ground". (Essentially, it's about a battle of characters between The Farmer and The Devil... spoiler: The Farmer won. But that shouldn't be a surprise; after all, Don Van Vliet is a plain old God-fearin' man at heart).

From then on, the record never lets go, and each new song is brimming with ideas. If it is a Latin-style dance number (ʽTropical Hot Dog Nightʼ), it will come equipped with a slightly dissonant trombone lead part (courtesy of Bruce Fowler), an overloud marimba part (courtesy of Art Tripp III, the only member from the old band who came back for these sessions), and a message that the Captain is "playin' this song for all the young girls to come out to meet the monster tonight" — sure, what else? It wouldn't be fun any other way. ʽBat Chain Pullerʼ rides a groove that actually gives the impression of somebody or something (a bat?) being rhythmically pulled by its chain, apparently with great difficulty, and the song keeps adding more and more layers as it goes on, descending into an ocean of controlled psychedelic chaos at the end. And as silly as a title like ʽWhen I See Mommy I Feel Like A Mummyʼ might sound, musically the song sounds like a cross between a New Orleans funeral march, a Black Sabbath riff-rocker, and a free jazz improvisation — but with a basic groove to which you could toe-tap if you wanted to, and with a couple of highly melodic riffs that you could whistle if you needed to. As for the title, well, it is not the first time that the Captain sings to us about his inborn fear of women; personally, I think that whoever «Mommy» is, she should be proud of causing such a complex bunch of emotions to be encoded in such a bizarre musical synthesis.

Somewhat simpler pieces also rule — ʽCandle Mamboʼ is indeed the Captain's personal interpretation of what a proper Latin dance number should sound like (and the solution is: more marimbas!); ʽLove Liesʼ has distant melodic ties to Ray Charles' ʽI Believe To My Soulʼ (and, transitively, to Dylan's ʽBallad Of A Thin Manʼ as well), but the Captain's take on melancholic soul-blues has to have much more Mardi Gras-style brass in it; and just for diversity's sake, ʽHarry Ireneʼ is an almost completely normal music hall number that sounds more Ray Davies than Captain Beefheart, but it is a totally charming interlude, a well-placed moment of sad sentimental calm in between all the madness. Predictably, there are a few instrumentals as well, and they all rule: ʽIce Roseʼ may be a little too derivative of Zappa (I think everybody can hear echoes of ʽPeaches En Regaliaʼ in there), but ʽSuction Printsʼ is totally Beefheart, a crazy blues-rocker that actually manages to rock in between all the complex rhythmic patterns.

I should probably mention as well that production values for the record are much higher than they used to be — despite the near-cacophonous melange of instruments on most of the tracks, every single guitar, every brass part, each puncturing of the marimbas remains perfectly distinct, and there's tons of replay value here as you can trace all the cool flourishes of one guitar, then concentrate on the one in the other speaker, then try to assimilate the marimba melody... somehow, these songs turn me on in ways that Trout Mask Replica never could, and as unqualified as I am to discuss the musicological aspects of both records, I will just have to ascribe the difference to a smart type of compromise that Beefheart achieves here, as well as the dense nature of the arrangements — who knows, perhaps what TMR really needed for success was more horns, marimbas, and a cleaner mix.

Then again, no: it may well be possible that it simply had to take Beefheart several more years to understand properly how that ideally-visualized, but not ideally-reproduced alternate musical world of his could come to emotional life. And I wish I could ascribe his success to the dawning of a new musical age — but the fact is, Shiny Beast sounds absolutely nothing like any New Wave record at the time, and thus, remains absolutely timeless. It ends on a depressing note (the forty-seconds long ʽApes-Maʼ is one of Beefheart's most pessimistic bits of declamation, especially if he is referring to himself, which I think he is), but then, it's not as if the entire record were contrastively uplifting: there's plenty of melancholy and desperation hiding in these grooves, they are just not openly «whiny» or «hysterical», and that's a good thing, because in order to succeed, Shiny Beast had to show some teeth, first and foremost — otherwise, people would just say «oh, he's bitching about being down on his luck and out of talent». Nope: Shiny Beast is all set to kick your ass, then give you a friendly pat on the head, then kick your ass some more, and only then retreat in the corner and let out a few hard-to-hold-back sighs... "Apes-Ma, Apes-Ma, you're eating too much and going to the bathroom too much... and Apes-Ma, your cage isn't getting any bigger, Apes-Ma". Don't we all feel like that sometimes? Thumbs up.

DOC AT THE RADAR STATION (1980)

1) Hot Head; 2) Ashtray Heart; 3) A Carrot Is As Close As A Rabbit Gets To A Diamond; 4) Run Paint Run Run; 5) Sue Egypt; 6) Brickbats; 7) Dirty Blue Gene; 8) Best Batch Yet; 9) Telephone; 10) Flavor Bud Living; 11) Sheriff Of Hong Kong; 12) Making Love To A Vampire With A Monkey On My Knee.

For his last two albums, Beefheart once again settled on a sound that brought him as close as possible to the spirit of Trout Mask Replica — so, predictably, you can tell that there will be less enthusiasm on my part for both of them than there was for Shiny Beast. Although the bulk of his band stays the same, there are some important lineup changes: Art Tripp is no longer here to provide his characteristic marimbas, and Richard Redus has been replaced by a returning John French, who, for some reason, switches from his usual drums to guitar — and with guitar prodigy Gary Lucas also contributing some parts, this brings the total to three guitarists, so that the Captain could now compete with Lynyrd Skynyrd if he wanted to.

As a result, the overall sound is quite removed from Shiny Beast — with less emphasis on percussion and brass (Bruce Fowler is still a member of the band, but his trombone is quite subdued here), Doc is a totally guitar-groove-oriented album, much like TMR, following similarly jagged, angular paths, with a crisp, bone-dry sound from everyone involved — so much so, it makes me feel thirsty as hell before even reaching the ten-minute mark. It is also much less diverse, without any vaudeville distractions like ʽHarry Ireneʼ or Latin experiments: really, we're back to Beefheart-rock full-time, except that the tunes sound a little bit more like real tunes (but only a little bit; reading up on the details of the sessions shows that the overall atmosphere was the closest that Beefheart ever got to reproducing the original conditions of TMR).

Of course, by 1980 this kind of sound was no longer as far ahead of its time as it was in 1969. With a miriad intelligent post-punk guitar bands in action, the Captain now sounded like a member of the pack — his Magic Band could be an opening act for Pere Ubu, for instance, or vice versa. This does not, however, mean that the Captain was now taking his cues from the likes of Pere Ubu: as usual, he is following nobody's path but his own, and the album's complete and total failure to chart anywhere arrogantly and defiantly proved that. I mean, who the heck would use a Mellotron on an album in the age of total synthesizer rule? (Actually, use of the Mellotron on tracks like ʽAshtray Heartʼ and ʽMaking Love To A Vampireʼ is one of the more brilliant touches on the record — giving them a certain dramatic flair that at least partially alleviates the excessive dryness and geometric formality of the sound).

As your brain re-adjusts to that old paradigm, the music eventually begins to flash its own twisted, but paradigmatic logic — in the coordinate system of Beefheart, ʽHot Headʼ would count as a kick-ass cock-rocker, for instance, the Captain's idiosyncratic answer to AC/DC's ʽYou Shook Me All Night Longʼ: "she can burn you up in bed just like she said cause she's a hot head", he sings in his finest Howlin' Wolf tone to a mean, funky guitar riff that probably reflects one of the Kamasutra's trickier positions. ʽAshtray Heartʼ would be the equivalent of an angry «bitch-dumped-me» punk rocker — in fact, "you used me like an ashtray heart, case of the punks!" is precisely the way Beefheart starts it off — except that no true punk rocker would dilute the emotions with brief Mellotron interludes, or support them with a percussion part that sounds like Bill Bruford imitating Keith Moon. And ʽRun Paint Run Runʼ is terrified escapist garage rock, except it sounds as if all the running is done on the spot... then again, this is probably exactly what you'd expect from running paint.

Unfortunately, even with all the adjustments adjusted, eventually the record begins to get a wee bit boring. No matter how many of the tunes we can explain away as «twisted projections of normal situations», the overall sound is fairly monotonous, and as the tracks get longer and longer (ʽBest Batch Yetʼ says everything it has to say in two minutes, then drags on for three more; ʽSheriff Of Hong Kongʼ is six and a half minutes of the same brief guitar groove repeated over and over), I begin to get the feeling that the Captain actually has far less to say than he thinks he has — to the extent that I end up enjoying the short, minute-long instrumentals acting as «breathers» in between the long vocal tracks much more: ʽA Carrot Is As Close...ʼ and ʽFlavor Bud Livingʼ don't have a shred of memorability between them, but at least they do not overstay their welcome, and the latter is a dynamically evolving solo that sounds like a cross between Spanish flamenco and free jazz, which is kinda cool.

Perhaps this should have worked better if the Captain did this in Wire format — you know, with one to one-and-a-half minutes as the average length of each track; this would have given him the opportunity to rattle off as many musical ideas as possible (and it wouldn't have been hard, because he was clearly on a rejuvenated roll at the time) without running any of them into the ground, swamping critical listeners like me with the sheer quantity of imagination outbursts rather than making us be all like, «yeah, cool idea, but cool enough to groove against the grain for 3-4 minutes? not really...». Then again, considering that the album marks the man's triumphant return to his native turf, who am I to tell the artist how he is supposed to behave on his own property? I'm still happy to shut up and give the record a respectable thumbs up, even without necessarily having to warm up to it all the way — he's doing his thang, he's happy about it, the band works up a solid sweat, and unless you can provide satisfactory proof that you, too, have made love to a vampire with a monkey on your knee and are therefore qualified to issue an informed judgement on the record, you can't really be sure that you have successfully cracked this record and found it lacking it spirit. I know I'm not sure at all.

ICE CREAM FOR CROW (1982)

1) Ice Cream For Crow; 2) The Host The Ghost The Most Holy-O; 3) Semi-Multicoloured Caucasian; 4) Hey Garland, I Dig Your Tweed Coat; 5) Evening Bell; 6) Cardboard Cutout Sundown; 7) The Past Sure Is Tense; 8) Ink Mathematics; 9) The Witch Doctor Life; 10) '81' Poop Hatch; 11) The Thousandth And Tenth Day Of The Human Totem Pole; 12) Skeleton Makes Good; 13*) Light Reflected Off The Oceans Of The Moon.

The Captain's «swan song» is probably one of the least swan-song-like swan songs in existence: in fact, his decision to retire from his musical career came as abruptly and unpredictably as most of his other decisions — the really amazing thing being that he (unlike so many other phony «quitters» with their «farewell tours») actually delivered upon that promise, and spent the next thirty years of his life at a safe distance from any musical activities, as a painter, poet, and family man. But do not even try to search for any signs of a musical testament or lyrical goodbye on Ice Cream For Crow, a record that stays firmly committed to the artistic values of Doc At The Radar Station and is usually regarded by critics as a fine companion piece to the latter, albeit slightly less energetic and exciting.

It is hard not to share that judgement, and since I was not overwhelmed with Doc, you won't find a whole lot of passion for Crow in this review, either — but some polite admiration is still in order. To accuse the record of a «lack of focus» would be like accusing a rat's tail of a lack of hair, but what makes it harder to sit through is that it also lacks the energy of Doc: with one exception, these songs almost never rock hard — if Doc was Beefheart's warped equivalent of a kick-ass garage rock album, then Ice Cream is more like his equally warped interpretation of an unassuming collection of roots-rock tunes. A bit jazzy, a bit folkish, a bit bluesy, and, of course, always on the verge of falling apart.

The exception in question is the title track, probably the most accessible number on the whole record, based on an old idea of a boogie-rocker going all the way back to 1971 (and yes, it would have made a great addition to The Spotlight Kid). Fast paced, with a steady beat, a tightly controlled, gritty slide guitar riff, and some nice lead work from another slide guitar in the right channel, it starts things off in a compromising, but cool style, and will leave you forever guessing about the symbolism of giving "ice cream for crow" (Van Vliet said something about the opposition of ʽblackʼ and ʽwhiteʼ, but it all makes no more direct sense than his painting on the front sleeve). The funniest thing is that, according to the liner notes, when released as a single, Gary Lucas tried to market the song for gay clubs on hardcore nights — so now you have a legitimate reason to claim that Beefheart's music is «gay». Then again, it sure ain't straight.

Anyway, I cannot really get too far into the rest of it. I don't mind the usual problem of Beefheart's melodies refusing to stick around — as long as he is in his TMR mindset, you have to be ready for it — but most of these grooves are too slow, draggy, and, I'd say, almost pensive, as if the band recorded them in a relaxed, meditative state of mind: cue the instrumental ʽSemi-Multicoloured Caucasianʼ, with one guitar chopping out funky chords in the right speaker and another one swirling Grateful Dead-like ragas in the left one. Sounds maybe cool on paper, but too much abstract sonic geometry for my taste, and with hardly any development, although they do change keys for a couple bridge sections.

And, actually, ʽCaucasianʼ is still a highlight next to stuff like ʽCardboard Cutout Sundownʼ, a piece of broken blues that does nothing but break the blues, and many other tracks that sound like its younger brothers. I do admit with the sometimes expressed point of view that there is an aura of depression to many of the tunes — that the whole album sounds sad and tired next to the somewhat more energetic and uplifting sound of Doc — but I probably have to work long and hard to learn to empathize with that kind of sadness, and without any guarantee of success. It feels like there might be something deep, grim, and scary hiding at the bottom of avantgarde debaucheries like ʽThe Thousandth And Tenth Day Of The Human Totem Poleʼ, but it's hard to scoop out from under all the dissonance and broken rhythmic patterns and, above all, this stuff drags — granted, that might have something to do with all the lineup changes (apparently, new drummer Cliff Martinez and new bass player Richard Snyder complained about not having enough time to gel with the rest of the band), but it also might have something to do with the fact that the process was no longer nearly as fresh or exciting for the Captain as it used to be.

The legend goes that he quit music to capitalize on his painting — wanting to be taken seriously as a visual artist, rather than some spoiled rock star engaging in hobbies — but listening to Ice Cream For Crow and occasionally getting bored with it, rather than befuddled as usual, makes me suspect that he got bored with his own music himself. It is hardly a coincidence that a lot of these tracks represent completed (or semi-completed) ideas that go all the way back to the early Seventies and even the late Sixties (ʽWitch Doctor Lifeʼ was originally conceived in 1968, which is why it also sounds moderately more conventional than almost anything else here) — the Captain wasn't particularly interested in developing new ideas, and if it is true that the only completely new tracks here were ʽCardboard Cutout Sundownʼ and ʽSkeleton Makes Goodʼ, I can get that because I actively dislike both (two sonic messes in the worst traditions of TMR).

Of course, fans of TMR should feel free to disagree with this assessment — but even repeated listens could not swerve me from the impression that Ice Cream For Crow is Don Van Vliet loyally playing the role of Captain Beefheart, giving his small fanbase precisely what they want, but not necessarily giving himself precisely what he wanted at the time. Too much of this just sounds dull and predictable, and certainly no longer as stunning for the poor ear caught unawares as it used to be in 1969. Do not take my word for it (after all, most of the critics usually give the album the same acclaim as they give its two predecessors), but do not ignore the huge differences in style between it and Shiny Beast (a total masterpiece in comparison, as far as I'm concerned), either. Aw heck, perhaps it was an intentional swan song, after all. I mean, who are we to define the concept of a swan song for somebody like Van Vliet? ʽSkeleton Makes Goodʼ is as good a title for a final musical testament from the man as any.

ADDENDA

GROW FINS: JUST GOT BACK FROM THE CITY / ELECTRICITY (1965-1968; 1999)

CD I: 1) Obeah Man (1966 demo); 2) Just Got Back From The City (1966 demo); 3) I'm Glad (1966 demo); 4) Triple Combination (1966 demo); 5) Here I Am I Always Am (early 1966 demo); 6) Here I Am I Always Am (later 1966 demo); 7) Somebody In My Home (1966 live); 8) Tupelo (1966 live); 9) Evil Is Going On (1966 live); 10) Old Folks Boogie (1967 live); 11) Call On Me (1965 demo); 12) Sure Nuff N Yes I Do (1967 demo); 13) Yellow Brick Road (1967 demo); 14) Plastic Factory (1967 demo);

CD II: 1) Electricity (1968 live); 2) Sure Nuff N Yes I Do (1968 live); 3) Rollin' 'N' Tumblin' (1968 live); 4) Electricity (1968 live); 5) Yer Gonna Need Somebody On Yer Bond (1968 live); 6) Kandy Korn (1968 live); 7) Korn Ring Finger (1967 demo).

Since the idea of «self-discipline» was about as alien to the Captain as it was so totally integral for Zappa (may have been the one chief distinction between the two of them after all), his vaults were predictably left in a much less user-friendly state than Zappa's, and the stream of archival releases after his retirement from music has been notably thinner than Frank's, even if, judging by the sheer number of various bootlegs produced over the years, there's a huge amount of goodies there for poor starving fans.

On the official circuit, the single largest dig into the vaults consists of the 5-CD set Grow Fins, lovingly prepared by fans with the assistance of John French (who also wrote a lengthy history of The Magic Band for the liner notes) and released on the Revenant label that normally focuses on retrospectives of various old blues and folk artists — and thus, accepts Beefheart into the same pantheon with Charley Patton, Doc Boggs, and John Fahey; then again, who's to say the Captain was not an American primitivist when it comes to understanding American pritimitivism? He certainly preserves and carries on the spirit of Charley Patton far more loyally than oh so many «polite» blues-rockers who think they cover Charley Patton when in fact they do not.

Anyway, even though, technically, the entire boxset should count as one single album, its 5 CDs logically fall into three (maybe even four) distinct subdivisions, and it would make sense to comment on them separately. The first CD, subtitled Just Got Back From The City, covers outtakes, demos, and occasional live performances from the Captain's formative years (1965-66) and all the way to the sessions for Safe As Milk; thematically, it is barely separable from the second CD, subtitled Electricity and containing primarily live performances of Safe As Milk and Magic Man material from 1968, so we will talk of them together, and leave CDs 3-4 (TMR-era outtakes) and CD 5 (a messy mix of later era live performances) for later.

The first disc here is clearly the most surprise-laden and instructive for all those who have not had that much experience with Beefheart in his pre-Safe As Milk days, barring maybe a brief acquaintance with ʽDiddy Wah Diddyʼ from the Nuggets boxset. You might have guessed that in those early days he may have started out as a blues singer — but the first ten tracks here actually confirm that guess with solid musical evidence, such as, for instance, the Captain not just being inspired by Howlin' Wolf, but actually covering Howlin' Wolf, live from the Avalon Ballroom in 1966, where you could really confuse him with the real Howlin' Wolf for a moment, except that, once you put two and two together, Beefheart's voice is still too high and thin to perfectly match the thickness and depth of the Wolf's delivery. He also does a great John Lee Hooker on ʽTupeloʼ, four minutes of dark, sludgy blueswailing that's probably as good as the best white boy blues effort in America circa 1966 — well, not exactly blowing away the Paul Butterfield Blues Band (Beefheart was never as obsessed with his harmonica-blowing skills as Paul, and none of his early guitarists were Mike Bloomfield), but still doing a good job of conveying the creepy menace of hardcore electric blues.

In fact, the opening number, an unreleased self-penned demo called ʽObeah Manʼ, introduces us to the beginnings of Beefheart as a swaggery blues-rocker just dying to make a flashy introduction — much like Paul Butterfield on ʽBorn In Chicagoʼ, which introduced the world to the Butterfield Blues Band one year before; leave it to the young aspiring Captain, however, to make things a little more complex by introducing us to the Igbo word "obeah" that was probably unknown even to the likes of Muddy Waters. There's also ʽJust Got Back From The Cityʼ, a wannabe ʽI Wish You Wouldʼ imitation with lots of squeaky harmonica, and some strange attempts at Stonesy pop-rock songs (ʽHere I Am I Always Amʼ) that at least show you how Beefheart was no sworn enemy of accessible pop stuff, and how, in a way, what he did in the unfortunate year of 1974 could be seen as a sort of «return to childhood». (For some hardcore childhood, you can go all the way back to the 1965 demo ʽCall On Meʼ, a folk-pop ballad that is so sweet, you'd swear it was commissioned from Sonny Bono — unfortunately, the sound quality on that one is about as bad as on your average Charley Patton track from 1929, so you'll have to press your ear real hard to be able to laugh all the way to the bank).

As we advance towards the «official» Beefheart years of 1967-68, things become less interesting: the Safe As Milk demos, besides also being featured in bootleg sound quality, disclose no new secrets, and the live performances from 1968 never reach the intensity of the Magic Man jam sessions, more like the wobbly muddiness of the re-recordings on Strictly Personal. In particular, there's an 11-minute jam version of ʽRollin' 'N' Tumblin'ʼ which Beefheart uses as an excuse to practice his atonal soprano sax — I don't know, it just does not seem to me a good idea to mix Muddy Waters with Albert Ayler, as brave as it might seem on paper, because if I want psychotic sonic mess, I pick Ayler, and if I want a rollickin' piece of blues, I pick Muddy, and do I want to have both at the same time? Not sure. Much the same happens with ʽYer Gonna Need Somebody On Yer Bondʼ, except there he does the same stuff with harmonica, and it's even messier. Then again, it might just be the sound quality — all these tapes sound flat and bootleggish. So I'd say that the only track on the second disc that should be of considerable interest is the studio demo ʽKorn Ring Fingerʼ from 1967, a psychedelic waltz with nicely seductive slide guitar work, although taken at a very slow tempo for the Captain — but at least you get to hear it in superb sound quality, with a clear stereo separation of the instruments.

This is a bit disappointing, because while inferior sound quality is always to be expected of the earliest recordings, you'd think that by 1967, once the Magic Band really went professional, those problems could have been overcome. But then again, I guess nobody ever took any serious care of the tapes anyway — safeguarding Beefheart's dirty underwear was on no record label's top shelf of priorities, so don't expect Beatles Anthology sound level for any of these demos; as for the live performances, I guess people were too terrified to record the Captain much in 1968 — one of the few exceptions being Frank Freeman's Dance Studio in Kidderminster, UK (according to one source, The Magic Band was "pleased the venue did not sell alcohol, as this meant there were no beer bottles that could be thrown at them" — more than that, somebody was kind enough as to bring a tape recorder along). So, basically, you just get what you can get, and ain't no use complaining.

GROW FINS: TROUT MASK HOUSE SESSIONS (1969; 1999)

CD I: 1) Untitled 1; 2) Untitled 2; 3) Hair Pie: Bake 1; 4) Hair Pie: Bake 2; 5) Untitled 5; 6) Hobo Chang Ba; 7) Untitled 7; 8) Hobo Chang Ba (Take 2); 9) Dachau Blues; 10) Old Fart At Play; 11) Untitled 11; 12) Pachuco Cadaver; 13) Sugar 'N' Spikes; 14) Untitled 14; 15) Sweet Sweet Bulbs; 16) Frownland (Take 1); 17) Frownland; 18)

Untitled 18; 19) Ella Guru; 20) Untitled 20; 21) She's Too Much For My Mirror; 22) Untitled 22; 23) Steal Softly Through Snow; 24) Untitled 24; 25) My Human Gets Me Blues; 26) Untitled 26; 27) When Big Joan Sets Up; 28) Untitled 28; 29) Untitled 29; 30) China Pig.

CD II: 1) Blimp; 2) Herb; 3) Septic Tank; 4) Overdub.

I am not that much of a Beefhead to guess correctly whether this second volume of Grow Fins would have pleased the seasoned fan or offended him. Normally, an entire CD of outtakes from the Trout Mask Replica sessions would be considered a godsend — the problem, however, is that this CD offers no truly new material whatsoever. It is quite likely that there was no new material, since everything that Beefheart wrote for the sessions ended up being on TMR (indeed, I am not sure myself what exactly it would be that could separate a «good» TMR composition from a «bad» TMR composition): you create it, you hum it, you indoctrinate it in the players, you record it, you move on. Even so, a set of alternate takes could be interesting at least for historical purposes, as well as psychological ones: it might always be instructive to understand how weirdness takes shape under a set of erratically driven chisels.

Problem is, unless you are really really dedicated to sorting out the nuances, the entire CD simply sounds like an instrumental version of TMR. Yes, these are slightly different takes from the ones that ended up on the final album, but I am in no way prepared to discuss the specific ways in which they are different, having a life and all. Ultimately, once you weed out all the "Untitled" tracks (most of which just consist of barely audible conversations, bits of tuning up, random noises and, occasionally, even nature sounds), you are just getting a good glimpse at what TMR would have sounded like if Beefheart had, for some reason, decided that the record would do just as fine without his presence. I do not think that many people will find that glimpse enjoyable, but there may, of course, be some people out there who really love the twisted textures of the Magic Band, yet find the Captain's Howlin' Wolf-meets-Allen Ginsberg persona annoying and hindering proper musical enjoyment, just like some people, for instance, could claim to enjoy the Rolling Stones but hate Mick Jagger's guts. Who knows?

There's also a second CD here which is even worse — a few extra tracks of barely audible banter, including one on which you can hear parts of the telephone conversation in ʽBlimpʼ. As it turns out, the audio tracks on the second disc were a mere pretext to include some video files as well: rather poor quality, though certainly priceless, amateurish footage of some of Beefheart's live shows from 1968 to 1972, and in VCD format at that (ugh).

On the whole, I'd characterize this part of Grow Fins as a tremendous disappointment — as slim as the pickings probably were, they could have certainly done a better job with them, cutting out most of the «noodling» and concentrating on those particular takes that differed the most from the final versions (ʽPachuco Cadaverʼ, for instance, has been noted to have a different bassline here, if it really matters to you). Then again, I guess negative evidence is just as important as positive one in certain situations, and this might be one of them.

GROW FINS: VOL. 3 (1969-1982; 1999)

1) My Human Gets Me Blues (1969 live); 2) When Big Joan Sets Up (1971 live); 3) Woe Is Uh Me Bop (1971 live); 4) Bellerin Plain (1971 live); 5) Black Snake Moan (1972 radio phone-in); 6) Grow Fins (1972 live); 7) Black Snake Moan II (1972 radio); 8) Spitball Scalped Uh Baby (1972 live); 9) Harp Boogie I (1972 radio); 10) One Red Rose That I Mean (1972 live); 11) Harp Boogie II (1972 radio); 12) Natchez Burning (1972 radio); 13) Harp Boogie III (1972 radio phone-in); 14) Click Clack (1973 live); 15) Orange Claw Hammer (1975 radio); 16) Odd Jobs (1975 piano demo); 17) Odd Jobs (1976 band demo); 18) Vampire Suite (1980 worktapes/live); 19) Mellotron Improv (1978 live); 20) Evening Bell (1980 piano worktape); 21) Evening Bell (1982 guitar worktape); 22) Mellotron Improv (1980 live); 23) Flavor Bud Living (1980 live).

The last volume of Grow Fins is as messy as they come — an assortment of mostly live post-TMR performances, roughly arranged in chronological order and interspersed with occasional demos and snippets of radio interviews (usually involving Beefheart briefly tapping into his blues roots with an acapella Howlin' Wolf imitation or a short harmonica solo). It is an interesting mess, for sure, and could have been quite awesome if not for the awful sound quality on the absolute majority of the tracks — hiss, crackle, pop, and lo-fi audience recording are the norm of the day here, so the entire experience is really for those who like their unlistenable Captain to sound even more unlistenable; I mean, what can be better than dissonant cacophony, other than dissonant cacophony that sounds like total lo-fi shit?

That said, it's a bit of a pity, because the live recordings from 1971-72 are quite energetic and inspired. For one thing, this was the height of Beefheart's involvement with free jazz, and so you get an even longer, wilder, more hysterical version of ʽWhen Big Joan Sets Upʼ — and a nine-minute long drums-and-sax improv called ʽSpitball Scalped Uh Babyʼ, the likes of which you will not find on any studio Beefheart album (whether it's any good, though, is up to seasoned connaisseurs of free-form jazz to decide). For another, it gives you a good chance to verify that The Magic Band did indeed rock harder live than in the studio — the guitar riffs on ʽWoe Is Uh Me Bopʼ are crisper, and the lead lines far shriller than the marimba-soothed studio version, and ʽGrow Finsʼ gets a red-hot fuzz cloud all over its rhythm guitar and bass, approaching, if not heavy metal, then at least the classic Stones sound in terms of heaviness.

Once the ferociously flogged-on live version of ʽClick Clackʼ from 1973 is over, the chronology predictably takes a break (nothing from Beefheart's Annus horribilis of 1974), and the latter day material is not nearly as tough. A lot of space is taken over by the Bat Chain Puller number ʽOdd Jobsʼ — first in the form of a monotonously looped, brain-beating, piano demo version, then in the form of an equally looped and brain-beating early band demo, with guitars replacing piano but not much of an overall change. And the live material from the early 1980s is mostly confined to bits of «Mellotron improvisation» (where the best bits come from Beefheart vocally taunting the audience rather than the actual rape of the Mellotron) and a couple guitar solo bits from Gary Lucas that add little to what we already know about the man's skills from the studio records. This really sounds like barrel-bottom-scraping.

In conclusion, I must restate that on the whole, Grow Fins is a disappointment, and as bad as the situation with Beefheart's vaults might have been, I feel that a much better job could be made out of it — but it is most likely that the whole thing was done on a shoestring budget anyway, because one thing that never stuck around for too long around the Captain or his pals was money, and as noble as that sounds, it also has certain drawbacks. Still, given the choice between this kind of selection with this kind of quality production and nothing, even I, not the world's biggest Beefheart admirer by any means, would go along with the project. As Zappa says in his introduction to this volume's first performance, "Listen, be quiet and pay attention to this man's music, because if you don't, you might miss something important, and we wouldn't want that to happen to you, because you need all the friends you can get". Seems like the thirty years that elapsed between that pronunciation in 1969 and the release of Grow Fins in 1999 didn't make that message any less relevant.

I'M GOING TO DO WHAT I WANNA DO: LIVE AT MY FATHER'S PLACE (1978; 2000)

1) Tropical Hot Dog Night; 2) Nowadays A Woman's Gotta Hit A Man; 3) Owed T'Alex; 4) Dropout Boogie; 5) Harry Irene; 6) Abba Zaba; 7) Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles; 8) Old Fart At Play; 9) Well; 10) Ice Rose; 11) Moonlight On Vermont; 12) The Floppy Boot Stomp; 13) You Know You're A Man; 14) Bat Chain Puller; 15) Apes-Ma; 16) When I See Mommy I Feel Like A Mummy; 17) Veteran's Day Poppy; 18) Safe As Milk; 19) Suction Prints.

Well, I guess it's a free world after all, one in which, if a man says he wants to live at his father's place, nobody should have the right to prevent him from doing what he wants to do, regardless of currently established social conventions and free from psychologically traumatic social pressure. Besides, Captain Beefheart does look like somebody who wouldn't mind living at his father's place, right? In fact, in a certain figurative sense, this is precisely what he'd be doing from 1982 and right up to his own death in 2010 — retired to his father's place to plant cabbages, fish for trout (let alone the mask replicae), and live in his own world, impenetrable to outsiders, so...

...oh, hang on. This is not «[lɪv] at my father's place», this is «[lʌɪv] at ʽMy Father's Placeʼ», a music venue in Roslyn, New York, where The Magic Band performed a full set on November 18, 1978 — with the entire show, for once, professionally recorded and mixed on a two-track tape, making this, at the moment, probably the only representative live Beefheart album that you can hear in more-than-decent sound quality; kudos to all the kind people at Rhino Records who took good care of the tapes and released the show as a nicely packaged 2-CD edition in 2000 (the second CD just has the two brief encores, but it was better than truncating the tapes).

Upon release, the album was universally acclaimed by all those 10-15 people who actually got around to listen to it, and I am happy to join this group — because, make no mistake about it, this is truly as good as live Beefheart can get, and should by all means be considered an essential part of the catalog now, rather than just an add-on for hardcore fans. For one thing, the recording captures The Magic Band at its latter-day peak: Shiny Beast had only been released one month ago, and both the Captain and his sidemen were clearly happy about this. Although the backing band lacks Ed Marimba, who had formally been a «guest» on Shiny Beast, that does not prevent the rest of the players from tearing as professionally and with as much feeling into those grooves as they'd just done in the studio, or to loyally devote themselves to recreating the madness and frenzy of some of the highlights of the Captain's backlog.

Second, the setlist is quite auspicious. You know there's gonna be very heavy focus on Shiny Beast (indeed, they do 10 out of 12 of its tracks, even including a recitation of ʽApes-Maʼ), but that's fine, what with the songs being so great and all. Meanwhile, the other half of the show gives you a brief overview of the Captain's (almost) entire career, starting off with the early days (kick-ass, totally convincing renditions of ʽAbba Zabaʼ and ʽDropout Boogieʼ that show how easily Beefheart could still slip into that spirit of '67 ten years later), paying respectful tribute to TMR (ʽMoonlight On Vermontʼ, ʽVeteran's Day Poppyʼ, and even a blazin-fire' resurrection of the album's poetry bits such as ʽWellʼ and ʽOld Fart At Playʼ), and briefly grazing the «accessible» era of 1972 with a tearfully soulful rendition of ʽHer Eyes Are A Blue Million Milesʼ and a version of ʽNowadays A Woman's Gotta Hit A Manʼ that is every bit as boogie-happy, hilarious, and socially insightful as the original. Leaving aside the disastrous year of 1974, this is perhaps not as thoroughly representative a retrospective as it could have been, but then again, this is not about churning out «top 40 material», as Beefheart himself jokes at one point — it's about acknowledging the relevance of the past without de-emphasizing the present. On an amusing note, despite the endless flow of requests from the audience (there's one particularly annoying guy who keeps asking for ʽI'm Gonna Booglarize Youʼ as if his life depended on it), the good Don never takes even a single one — ultimately stating to the audience, in a sort of fatherly admonishing tone, that "I'm going to do what I wanna do" and thus giving the album its title.

And this brings me to my last and most serious point: this is a truly great record in terms of, like, «getting to know» the Captain. It's not like he's got a personal rapport with the audience or anything, but it clearly invigorates him to be delivering his art directly to the people, and he seems even more on fire here than he does in the studio. Every vocal part is enunciated, intoned, injected with blues, jazz, and absurdist feeling as if he were fighting for top prize; even when he is simply reciting his poetic lines, he seems truly possessed — at the end of ʽOld Fart At Playʼ, when one of the band's members finishes it off with TMR's original "oh man, that's so heavy", you can all but feel the amazement in the guy's voice. On ʽAbba Zabaʼ, he extends and wolfishly howls the lyrics ("Indian dre-e-e-e-am!, tiger m-o-o-o-o-n!") like a werewolf caught in the middle of the transfiguration procedure — far less restrained than in the 1967 studio, but still totally in control of the situation. And in between the songs, or, sometimes, in the middle of them, he sometimes drops hilarious one-liners that help both instruct the audience and keep it at a distance (like "cut it out, man, this is not in 4/4 time! some things are sacred!").

Normally, I would probably call a live album like this expendable, because Beefheart's discipline principles involved sticking as close to the originals as possible — the show has virtually nothing by way of improvisation, respecting the «composer's wishes» attitude, and it is cool how the new Magic Band is ready to oblige the man, loyally studying all the nuances of the old songs. But the weirdness of the material is so strong that simply hearing it come back to life again in an environment like this is inspiring — and the environment does matter greatly, with the small audience infected by the band's enthusiasm and getting into the game (much as I miss the sound of empty beer bottles crashing on the stage: that would have been the perfect finishing touch). Perhaps if we had a smattering of live recordings like that, if we had to be subjected to «Beefheads» endlessly recording their own piles of Vliet's Picks or something, that would have quickly turned into unbearable overkill. But just for this once, a representative recording, in admirable sound quality, of the Captain once again at the top of his game is a real joy, and in a way, it makes me appreciate the man much deeper than his studio output, so, unquestionably, a thumbs up and a major recommendation for everybody here, not just for the top hardcore fans. Let the Captain woo you over with his over-the-top enthusiasm, if nothing else.

BAT CHAIN PULLER (1976; 2012)

1) Bat Chain Puller; 2) Seam Crooked Sam; 3) Harry Irene; 4) 81 Poop Hatch; 5) Flavor Bud Living; 6) Brick Bats; 7) Floppy Boot Stomp; 8) Ah Carrot Is As Close As Ah Rabbit Gets To Ah Diamond; 9) Owed T'Alex; 10) Odd Jobs; 11) Human Totem Pole; 12) Apes-Ma; 13) Bat Chain Puller (alternate mix); 14) Candle Mambo; 15) Hobo-ism.

The latest and, probably, the most arduously expected archival release from the Captain is this: the original Bat Chain Puller, recorded in 1976 but shelved due to personal and technical problems before being reborn in an entirely new coating three years later. In 2012, it finally got an official stamp of release on Gail Zappa's Vaulternative label, set up to handle Frank's archives — and, as it turned out, a little bit of Don Van Vliet's as well. Of course, veteran fans had already known all of this for a long time from their bootleg copies, but now, here's the Captain sending you one more gift from the grave without having you break the law or anything.

As you already know, most of the songs from Bat Chain Puller eventually became Shiny Beast, but a couple short instrumentals (ʽCarrotʼ and ʽFlavor Bud Livingʼ) and one vocal number (ʽBrick Batsʼ) had to wait until Doc At The Radar Station, and two more (ʽ81 Poop Hatchʼ and ʽHuman Totem Poleʼ) had to wait all the way until Ice Cream For Crow. Considering that ʽOdd Jobsʼ was already available on Grow Fins (albeit in demo form and very poor sound quality), the only song I do not recognize at all is ʽSeam Crooked Samʼ, another of Beefheart's beatnik recitations set to a background of gently noodling avant-jazz guitars. Additionally, the album is expanded with a few bonuses, such as an alternate mix of the title track and a lengthy improvised piece, ʽHobo-ismʼ — eight minutes of acoustic blues guitar, harmonica, and the Captain in Son House / John Lee Hooker mode, mumbling, growling, and howling out strings of neo-blues lyrics to an «authentic» dark country blues backing. Admittedly, it's fun for a couple minutes, but gets tedious very quickly if you're not too deeply into that kind of thing.

So what's the deal, anyway? Does this old recording still deserve its own place under the sun, or has it been rendered completely superfluous by Shiny Beast? From one point of view — given that the Captain was always very specific about preserving the compositional structure and arrangement details of his songs, and never really favored improvised variations on any of his songs once they were finished — it is superfluous: although the new recordings, considering both the complexity of the songs and the fact that everything had to be redone from scratch under new studio conditions, could not help but sound somewhat different, they are still exceptionally close, enough to make the comparison more interesting for the Beefheart historian than the average fan. On the other hand, the two albums were recorded by significantly different lineups of The Magic Band — for instance, Bat Chain Puller did not have Bruce Fowler on trombone, whereas Shiny Beast did not feature John French — and this makes the original version sound a bit more raw and less cluttered with extra instrumentation than Shiny Beast. So it's not like you aren't really offered a choice: some people did complain about a slight overproduction problem on Shiny Beast, and this gives them a chance to rejoice and pick a new intimate favorite.

I do have at least this to say: although I am still largely indifferent to ʽHuman Totem Poleʼ, this version of it here sounds far more tight and energetic than the one on Ice Cream For Crow, largely because John French is a better drummer (or, at least, a better Beefheart-style drummer) than Cliff R. Martinez, and is able to lock himself in a better coordinated groove with the two surrounding guitar players. Also, the track works better without the Captain's ugly sax blowing all over it (sorry, all you best friends of the Beefheart-'n'-saxophone alliance). The rest, well — I frankly don't care all that much, but since I like Shiny Beast, it's nice to be able to hear a few highlights in slightly edgier, though not necessarily better, versions. Anyway, no enlightening revelations here, but a pleasant souvenir for the fans and a useful piece of the Beefheart puzzle to put together with the rest.

CARAVAN

CARAVAN (1968)

1) Place Of My Own; 2) Ride; 3) Policeman; 4) Love Song With Flute; 5) Cecil Rons; 6) Magic Man; 7) Grandma's Lawn; 9) Where But For Caravan Would I; 10*) Hello Hello.

The earliest history of Caravan is inextricably linked to the earliest history of Soft Machine: both bands were formed out of the ashes of the legendary Canterbury band Wilde Flowers, which made no recordings yet served as a building pad for two of the most famous outfits of the «Canterbury scene». That said, from the very start Caravan and Soft Machine followed two very different paths — apart from the fact that both teams were progressive-minded, Soft Machine quickly adopted modern jazz and avantgarde as their prime sources of inspiration, whereas for Caravan, even in their «wildest» days, jazz was just one of the building blocks, and hardly the principal one. Above everything else, Caravan wanted sorely to be an English band, so that the word "Canterbury" could actually redeem that Chaucer association; and that Englishness already permeates and dominates their self-titled debut so thoroughly that, perhaps, it is no wonder that it did not sell all too well — in the same year when the same fate also befell the Kinks' Village Green Preservation Society, for instance.

Then again, maybe it was just because it was not such a great record. Recorded in London and released on Decca in the UK and on Verve in the US, Caravan was a collection of relatively quiet, friendly, introspective progressive pop songs whose closest stylistic predecessors would probably be The Moody Blues and Procol Harum (to a lesser degree, also Traffic) — and it might have been just a wee bit hard to understand what it was that made them special. The primary lead vocalist, Pye Hastings, sounded pretty, but clearly less gorgeous than Justin Hayward, and he wasn't much of a guitar player, either, certainly not when compared to Robin Trower. Richard Sinclair, on bass and occasional vocals, did not exactly lay on a ton of dazzling lines, taking more of a McCartney-style «concealed melodic approach» to the instrument. The most visible musician on the album is Richard's cousin, Dave Sinclair, whose organ is almost always the single loudest instrument of all, but even he ends up sounding like a slightly inferior partner of Rod Argent.

So what is the saving grace, then? Nothing but the simple fact that in between all of them, they form a pleasant mix, and that the lack of flash comes across as a sign of friendly humbleness. The entire album has a bit of an echoey, cavernous sound to it, further emphasized with the loudness of Sinclair's organ, so that when Pye sings, "I've got this place of my own / Where I can go when I feel I'm coming down", the automatic question in my mind is, "What place? Canterbury Cathedral?", and Pye does sound like a preacher on that song, except that the sermon is non-canon ("Why don't you live a bit today? / For tomorrow you may find that you are dead"). A friendly, non-intimidating preacher, though, one that won't piss you off even if you disagree.

Most of the short songs are catchy in their little ways. ʽRideʼ, propelled with a funny little cavalry trot from drummer Richard Coughlan, is a cute folksy ditty, gradually transforming into a vigorous drum / organ extravaganza. ʽPolicemanʼ is a wannabe-Traffic art-blues song, with Richard Sinclair throwing in a bit of a political angle, but in such a mildly pleading manner that no true revolutionary would accept this bunch of pussies as his trusted friends. ("Take the time to change our minds / We will pay our parking fines", Sinclair promises like he means it). And ʽGrandma's Lawnʼ, speeding up the tempo and harshening up the organ tone, kind of sounds like early (pre-Gillan) Deep Purple, only without the distorted guitar, mixed with a ʽDead End Streetʼ-like attitude of misery ("lost my plec, bloody heck, who's got my plec, break his neck" is a particularly precious line that even Ray Davies wouldn't have come up with at the time).

There are also some psycho experiments that are questionable — ʽMagic Manʼ is a lazy waltz where Pye seems to be trying a little too hard to convince us of the pleasures of a life of floating around in your own pot-enhanced imagination ("Soft Machines, Heart Club Bands and all, are welcome here with me" is a particularly cringeworthy line, too), and ʽCecil Ronsʼ might be their most embarrassing stab at psych-folk ever, since the song never seems to decide if it wants to be intimidating or enchanting, let alone the lyrics that deal with urinating under somebody's tree, if I'm not mistaken. It is well worth a listen just to learn how absurd things can get at times, but don't expect Monty Python quality or anything.

That said, «classic» Caravan is only previewed here by two tracks — ʽLove Song With Fluteʼ, a jazzy ballad with unpredictable time / tempo changes and, indeed, a lengthy flute solo delivered by Pye's brother Jimmy in properly pastoral mode (with more fluency than Ray Thomas, but far less aggression than Ian Anderson); and the lengthy ʽWhere But For Caravan Would Iʼ, bookmarked with more folksy preaching from Pye but essentially given over to proggy jamming in non-standard time, Pye holding things together with simple, but powerful guitar riffage and Dave pulling a Rod Argent / Keith Emerson on the organ as long and hard as he can (which isn't really that long, or that hard). Both tracks are passable exercises, but do not really answer the question of whether we need to have yet another young aspiring progressive act to add to the already existing diversity.

Despite that, Caravan still works as an atmospheric, melodic, friendly collection of art-pop songs: for what it lacks here in originality, it makes up in terms of hooks, good taste (other than "so we all go to wee in the garden"), and humility. I mean, with this kind of equipment and these particular musical goals, Caravan's debut could have easily been like Uriah Heep's debut — except that it wasn't, because nobody is trying to compensate for lack of musical virtuosity with annoying bombast and trumped-up epicness. So, even if this is just a brief taste of better things to come, I've always had the same kind of soft spot in my heart for it as for From Genesis To Revelation, and here it is reflected in a thumbs up rating.

IF I COULD DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN, I'D DO IT ALL OVER YOU (1970)

1) If I Could Do It All Over Again, I'd Do It All Over You; 2) And I Wish I Were Stoned / Don't Worry; 3) As I Feel I Die; 4) With An Ear To The Ground You Can Make It / Martinian / Only Cox / Reprise; 5) Hello Hello; 6) Asforteri 25; 7) Can't Be Long Now / Françoise / For Richard / Warlock; 8) Limits; 9*) A Day In The Life Of Maurice Haylett.

I would say this: Caravan's second album helps them pass, with flying colors and all, all the necessary qualifications for a legitimate prog-rock outfit — however, it does not do an excellent job in establishing them as, you know, Caravan, a band with its own unique and unmistakeable brand of prog-rock. All the technical requirements are there, as they place severe restrictions on their pop instincts (only ʽHello Helloʼ, specially recorded to capture a small share of the singles' market and landing them a spot on Top of the Pops, qualifies as a bona fide pop song), stretch out song length by gluing together separate parts, Abbey Road-style, and combine folk, classical, and jazz influences like the good King Crimson textbook taught us. The result is an intelligent, perfectly enjoyable and energetic album that, nevertheless, still shows the band in the process of searching for a vibe that best agrees with their personalities, rather than saddling and riding that vibe like there was no tomorrow.

One thing that I sense very acutely is the major influence of Caravan's closest competition — The Soft Machine. It shows up not only in such minor things as the twisted, enigmatic song titles (ʽWith An Ear To The Ground You Can Make Itʼ almost sounds like a response to ʽDedicated To You But You Weren't Listeningʼ), but also in the band's frequent excursions into psychedelic-tinged jazz (title track; ʽAs I Feel I Dieʼ), and in the overall feel of (intentional) chaos and confusion that permeates the album. In some ways, If I Could Do It All Over Again is the most experimental and risk-taking record that Caravan would ever produce — which would certainly make it the best Caravan album, period, in the eyes of those who think that taking risks and failing is always preferable to not taking risks and succeeding. But on the other hand, for a risk-taking album If I Could Do It All Over Again is not very risk-taking: they never really go all the way, like the Wyatt-led Soft Machine, and the result is an album that does not quite understand itself if it wants to present an experimental challenge or an emotional experience.

That said, what could one expect from a record that begins with the mantraic chant of "Who do you think you are, do you think you are?" and answers "I really don't know"? It might indeed be all about a search for one's identity in a world with rapidly changing values, so that Pye Hastings' pleading request "gimme that stuff, enough to slow me down..." can be understood almost literally (and agrees perfectly well with Pye's musical conservatism in the upcoming decades). The band has neither the chops nor the desire to go completely wild with their music-making, yet at the same time "slowing down" is really not an option, either — so most of the tracks are caught between two extremes, a slow, dreamy, balladeering section with Pye's vocals as the center of focus, and an energetic, often aggressive jam section where the lead is usually taken by Dave Sinclair and his frenetic organ work.

The best example is the suite ʽFor Richardʼ, which would go on to become a quintessential staple of the band's live repertoire — beginning as a slow, chilly, introspective mood piece, where Pye sings in tune with Dave's organ to produce the effect of a slightly ominous lullaby, and then crashing into a lengthy jam, where said organ begins to sound like Jon Lord at times (distortion ruling over all), but aggressive parts still alternate with relatively quiet moments, particularly when Pye's brother Jimmy takes over the saxophone and then the flute. The problem is that I do not feel much of an internal logic here — and although the same could be said about the Abbey Road medley, the individual constituents of ʽFor Richardʼ are not all that great on their own: a few good hard rock riffs here and there, a lot of pleasant, but unexceptional jazz-folk noodling in between, and a vicious finale that makes it seem as if we've just been on some cathartic Odyssey of sorts... but we haven't, really.

So I'm a bit torn about this, and the same feeling applies to everything else on the album, because mood-wise, everything is based on the same contrasts. Everything, that is, except for the Soft Machinian tracks and the ʽHello Helloʼ single — the latter, with its slightly childish and nonsensical lyrics, is a catchy folksy ditty that actually defines the general spirit of Caravan better than most of the long tracks (and could be qualified as a spiritual predecessor to ʽGolf Girlʼ). Oh, actually, there's also ʽDon't Worryʼ, the second part of the second track, an optimistic-melancholic pop song that would be right at home on In The Land Of Grey And Pink — the problem is that the messy structure of the album makes me feel disoriented and get lost in these intricate multi-part mazes without a set plan or a good sharp system of contrasts.

In the end, it is still a thumbs up, and I can perfectly understand those who would see it not only as a tremendous musical leap from the level of the self-titled debut, but even as the band's finest hour in general. Personally, though, I do not think Caravan had really hit their stride until they learned properly how to put that «Canterbury» essence in their music — which wouldn't really occur until the next album.

IN THE LAND OF GREY AND PINK (1971)

1) Golf Girl; 2) Winter Wine; 3) Love To Love You (And Tonight Pigs Will Fly); 4) In The Land Of Grey And Pink; 5) Nine Feet Underground.

Almost universally acknowledged as Caravan's masterpiece — and I concur. However, if you are a big fan of the intricacies and sonic risks of classic progressive rock, be warned: In The Land Of Grey And Pink is not about that at all. Yes, it does feature a 22-minute multi-part suite and long stretches of instrumental jamming with classical, jazz, and blues influences, but the album also marks a decisive break with the avantgarde-minded section of the Canterbury scene, opting for a melodic, sentimental, and quintessentially English atmosphere instead. Ironically, the bulk of the material here was written by Richard Sinclair, who would very soon leave the band to form Hatfield and The North — one of the most avantgarde-minded bands of the Canterbury scene, so go figure what it's all about with these damn musicians.

Anyway, In The Land Of Grey And Pink is really a mix of melodic, not-too-sophisticated prog with an early Brit-pop attitude: throw in the high, sweet, gentle voices of both Sinclair (who, nautrally, also takes most of the lead parts here) and Hastings (who only sings lead on his own ʽLove To Love Youʼ and on one section of the closing suite), and it is little wonder that most of the record sounds pretty much like what, say, the Kinks would have sounded like, had they ever decided to join the «progressive club» in the early Seventies. Consequently, the album suffers from the usual problem: pop music fans avoid it because it has been labeled as «prog», and prog fans leave it somewhat disappointed because they were hoping for Gentle Giant and Van Der Graaf Generator, and got ʽLouie Louieʼ instead.

That last remark is not a complete joke, by the way: Pye's ʽLove To Love Youʼ, released as the second single from the album, is based on a chord sequence that is eerily similar to ʽLouie Louieʼ, and only a tiny bit more complicated — a deliberately simplistic, both musically and lyrically, pop tune that still manages to sound disarmingly cute and romantically optimistic (which does not prevent Pye, the hooligan troubadour, from sneaking a dirty reference into the second verse: too bad they didn't get the chance to do it on Top of the Pops). It should be as much of an insult to the average prog rock fan as Phil Collins' ʽMore Fool Meʼ on Selling England By The Pound — but to those who like to lighten up every once in a while, it might be taken as a sign that the band, unlike many of its competitors, did not take itself too seriously.

The first single was ʽGolf Girlʼ, which, I guess, went on to become the quintessential Caravan tune just for being so... straightforward? We get references to golf balls, cups of tea, going for walks in fine weather, and just fancying each other (written about Richard's actual girlfriend), all set to a rock-steady acoustic-and-bass pattern that is at once simple, unassuming, and completely self-assured. Even more than ʽLove To Love Youʼ, this is Caravan's way of filling the world with silly love songs, and what's wrong with that, especially if you give the whole thing such a tastefully gallant English vibe? There's a subtle key change in the coda, where David Sinclair and Jimmy Hastings trade Mellotron and flute solos and the atmosphere becomes slightly more somber — like a patch of thin rainclouds darkening the golf course — but that does not really spoil the mood, just makes things a bit more intriguing, with a tiny hint of never-know-what-the-future-may-bring. Come to think of it, there's a tiny bit of surrealism mixed here, maybe with an echo or two of Alice In Wonderland rather than P. G. Wodehouse; and that atmosphere is even more acutely felt in the title track with its utopian escapist vision and strangely eccentric overdubbed sound effects (what's up with all that bubbling and blubbering?).

Escapism, imaginary nostalgia, and yearning for visions of transcendental beauty also constitute the fuel for the two long tracks — Sinclair's ʽWinter Wineʼ on the first side and the collective ʽNine Feet Undergroundʼ suite that occupies the entire second side. ʽWinter Wineʼ weaves a strange trance as the song's five verses cling to each other like a lengthy visionary monologue, with an odd mix of medieval, fantasy, and sexual imagery, until the final verse brushes it all away with a decisive "Life's too short to be sad / Wishing things you'll never have" and "Funny how it's clearer now, you're close to me / We'll be together all the time" — although the last lines are still delivered in the same tired, melancholic, given-up voice, implying that it may be easier to reject dreaming in theory than accomplishing this in practice. David picks up that same dejected tone in his lengthy keyboard solo, and the result is like taking a seven-minute ride along an arrow-straight highway of broken hearts. The song never rips, never flashes, never tries to break out of its lonesome shell; you have to knock on its door, but once it finally opens, it's a beautiful whiff of soothing balm for all you broken-hearted sentimentalists out there.

The worst thing that can be said about the epic ʽNine Feet Undergroundʼ is that it offers few new elements compared to what we'd already just heard on Side A. Like ʽFor Richardʼ, it is a collection of different, but similar segments, with few vocals and lots and lots and lots of keyboard soloing from David — an excellent player, for sure, but do it for too long and your quiet, fluent modesty might gradually slip into boredom. I do really like Pye's ʽDisassociationʼ part, where he shows himself just as capable of evoking moody, bitter nostalgia for I-don't-know-what as Sinclair was on ʽWinter Wineʼ; and the last section, after the band rocking you to sleep for so long, suddenly brings it all home with a vengeance, regurgitating a thick, monstrous guitar/organ riff from the ʽSunshine Of Your Loveʼ school of thought and leading our airplane to a fairly hard landing after all. Toto, we're not in the land of grey and pink any more. Oh well, I guess we needed a good shaking up after such a rosey dream after all.

How the record ended up not hitting any charts at all, right in the middle of the prog-is-cool era, is objectively beyond me, but I'd guess it might have to do with the fact that the record lacks flash and glam — Pye Hastings is no Steve Howe or Robert Fripp, and David Sinclair is no Jon Lord or Keith Emerson when it comes to glorifying your instrument of choice; and who knows, perhaps this brand of gentlemanly, five-o'-clock-tea progressive rock was simply not what the five-o'clock-tea gentlemen wanted in 1971 (much like what happened to the Kinks a few years earlier). In the long run, though, these speculations are meaningless and useless: what is important is that In The Land Of Grey And Pink seems to have stood the test of time well enough, and that it can be just as enchanting and entrancing to those who have absolutely no first-hand knowledge of English bourgeois culture — actually, even more enchanting. A definitive thumbs up.

WATERLOO LILY (1972)

1) Waterloo Lily; 2) Nothing At All; 3) Songs And Signs; 4) Aristocracy; 5) The Love In Your Eye; 6) The World Is Yours.

For some reason, this album tends to receive a colder welcome than its neighbors on both sides of the chronology, and I still can't quite figure out why. I can certainly see where a pop lover would dismiss it — what with the album taking such an odd turn for jazz-rockish jamming and all — but surely prog fans should be overjoyed seeing the group, if not exactly return to the style of If I Could Do It All Over Again..., then at least capitalize on the more challenging aspects of In The Land Of Grey And Pink. But apparently, no, Waterloo Lily finds relatively few defenders on both sides of the fence, so go figure.

The first of the major lineup changes happens here, as Dave Sinclair (temporarily) leaves the band and is replaced by Steve Miller, a former session player with a good taste for jazz, blues, and folk. Occasionally, one might encounter the opinion that it was Miller who steered the band in a jazzier direction, but the only pieces on the album that are explicitly credited to him are the folksy-bluesy ʽIt's Coming Soonʼ movement within the ʽNothing At Allʼ suite and the sentimental ballad ʽSongs And Signsʼ, delivered by Pye in his sweetest falsetto — it does feature some jazz chords in its base melody, but does not really feel like a significant departure from the band's overall sound of the past. Nevertheless, it is true that he has a bluesier side to his piano playing than Sinclair had — in fact, his extended solo passages on the electric piano are often eerily similar to Ray Manzarek: I have no idea if he was a fan or not, but there's a dark, murky passage in the middle of ʽWaterloo Lilyʼ that seriously reminds me of the "Mr. Mojo Rising" part of ʽL. A. Womanʼ, while the solo on ʽThe Love In Your Eyeʼ is reminiscent of ʽRiders On The Stormʼ.

Still, the significant shift in style must have been a collective undertaking of the band, and one for which they really should be praised — refusing to repeat the formula of Grey And Pink, they tried their hand at something slightly grittier and darker, in all respects. Where the previous album began with the soft, simple innocence of ʽGolf Girlʼ, here the title track apparently begins with an invitation to a friendly brothel, and the music, a mid-tempo blues-rocker with some magnificent bass work from Richard, is suitably bawdy and menacing, with both Pye and Miller choosing some thick-heavy tones for their instruments — before turning down the shades, bringing down the volume, and feeding us a bunch of sleazy wah-wah insinuations. Sinclair takes the vocals, too, and it's almost as if he is atoning for the angelic exuberance of ʽGolf Girlʼ, playing the devil's advocate here instead. With relative success, if you really put your mind to it.

Most of the rest of the album is given over, once again, to two extended suites, one of which (ʽNothing At Allʼ) is completely instrumental, and the other (ʽLove In Your Eyeʼ) went on to become a stage favorite and arguably the only track from here to survive for a long time in the repertoire. It is not difficult to see why the former was forgotten and the latter became revered: ʽThe Love In Your Eyeʼ is pure Pye Hastings, all friendly humility and sweet melancholy, whereas ʽNothing At Allʼ, theoretically at least, is a jazz-rock jam the likes of which could be produced by dozens of British and American bands at the time. But issues of originality aside, it is a fine jazz-rock jam — Sinclair gives an unusual variation on the boogie bass line, Hastings gets a chance to show how versatile he can be with the wah-wah (or, perhaps, that is guest player Phil Miller, Steve's brother and a future member of Hatfield & The North, too), and there's a fine soprano sax solo by another guest player, Lol Coxhill, to complete the picture. On the whole, it might seem less challenging than the more avantgarde jazz experiments in 1970, but it works better: they concoct a thicker, darker, sicker mood with this approach, which also contrasts nicely with the unexpected break into Steve Miller's melancholic piano interlude.

As for ʽThe Love In Your Eyeʼ, it is essentially a lush pop song (replete with an extremely clumsy set of lyrics — "drink it down and do yourself"?, "mind in hand you'll find a way"?, "in dreams of you I wish a song on everyone"?, you'd think these weren't really written by a native speaker; if this was on purpose, I cannot for the life of me figure out what that purpose was), eventually turning into another lengthy blues-rock jam. The first section is great; the second one might seem superfluous after an already similar passage on the first suite, but yes, that's Caravan for you — the same accusation is valid for their masterpiece as well. Here, though, the benevolent and loving spirit of the «pop» part is in sharp contrast with the darker instrumental movements, and the composition fades out on an aggressive, turbulent jamming part, as if to suggest that Pye's post-Lennon "all you need is love in your eye" advice is not really working. Or, more likely, they just didn't have the strength to give the tune a proper finale (which is why you will probably find the best version of the tune on the live album with the New Symphonia, where it is obligatorily given a grand ending).

As usual, in between the lengthy pieces we find shorter, more «commercial» chunks that were, for some reason, not released as singles — Pye's ʽAristocracyʼ could have made a good one, with its energetic tempo, catchy chorus, and, uh, Englishness; surely just as good as any contemporary Bowie hit, even if Hastings has never been able to make himself noticeable as a vocalist, unlike David. ʽThe World Is Yoursʼ is another nice folk-pop tune, a simple and bright conclusion to the album after all the anger and darkness in the longer suites.

All in all, I don't really see how this record «interrupts» Caravan's classic run with a weaker link. It was an attempt to try something a little different, and if, in the process, it neutralized the band's identity for a little bit, all the searching and diversification more than make up for it. Unless you really hate long instrumental jams, Waterloo Lily remains totally accessible and paints the band as a highly competent outfit that could have easily competed with the heavy rock scene of the time, had it wanted to; it just didn't want to. Perhaps it is not as focused as Grey And Pink on weaving a fantasy land enchantment spell, but these guys knew how to sound earthy, too, and if they felt the need to outbalance their Golf Girls with their Waterloo Lilies — hey, I can totally understand them. Subsequently, a solid thumbs up here, and disregard the naysayers.

FOR GIRLS WHO GROW PLUMP IN THE NIGHT (1973)

1) Memory Lain, Hugh / Headloss; 2) Hoedown; 3) Surprise, Surprise; 4) C'Thlu Thlu; 5) The Dog, The Dog, He's At It Again; 6) Be All Right / Chance Of A Lifetime; 7) L'Auberge Du Sanglier / A Hunting We Shall Go / Pengola / Backwards / A Hunting We Shall Go (reprise).

Good or bad, the Waterloo Lily formula just did not stick, and the new configuration fell apart pretty quickly — with new member Steve Miller leaving for good and taking veteran member Richard Sinclair with him (or, actually, vice versa), forming Hatfield & The North, a band with its own distinct agenda, very different from the Caravan sound. This essentially left Hastings in full control over the remains of the band; however, the rule «no Caravan without a Sinclair present» still managed to work, since Dave Sinclair rejoined the group in the wake of Richard's departure, bringing a much-welcome return back to the organ sound instead of Steve Miller's electric piano. Richard, in the meantime, was replaced by formerly unknown John G. Perry, and in order to expand and thicken the sound, Geoff Richardson was added on electric viola: an auxiliary musician at first, he then went on to become one of the most permanent fixtures of the Caravan sound for the next four decades.

Simple logical calculations should lead us to expect that the results would suck: without Richard's songwriting and musicianship and with Pye's well-known penchant for a softer, poppier sound, Caravan could have been immediately reduced to sappy-sounding generic mush. Well, that sort of did happen later, but in 1973, Caravan hit back with a vengeance — releasing what was probably their second greatest album, and on certain auspicious days, I'd even say that Girls is more fun and consistent than In The Land Of Grey And Pink, although the latter will, of course, forever remain their most... shall we say, «programmatic» artistic statement.

With all power concentrated in his hands, Pye goes here for a little bit of everything. From basic rock'n'roll (ʽMemory Lain, Hughʼ opens the record with a looped riff groove sounding not unlike the beginning of CCR's ʽRamble Tambleʼ) to elements of Traffic-style roots-rock to bits of spooky hard rock to sentimental pop to multi-part progressive suites, For Girls Who Grow Plump In The Night is truly a wonderful gift to all them girls who grow plump in the night (and take good care of the future eclectic musical tastes of their offspring while still in the womb), no matter how many crude sexual jokes Mr. Hastings might want to introduce in the lyrical content of his creations (if you ever wondered what the title ʽThe Dog, The Dog, He's At It Againʼ might be referring to, head straight for the worst possible hypothesis and you'll be hitting it). The reformed lineup sounds rested, refreshed, and energetic; the songs combine hooks and atmospherics in that classic British manner; and there are neither any signs of the band «selling out» to the commercial pop machine, nor any signs of their ambitions overclouding their capacities — the curse of being «too progressive for their own good», already applicable in 1973 to such bands as Jethro Tull or Yes, does not apply to this record at all.

The very first track, a merger of two heavily rhythmic, uplifting pop-prog compositions, seems to represent the wish for a new beginning — "I just want the chance to try and find me", Pye sings on the ʽMemory Lainʼ part, and although I have no idea whether he did it on this track or not, the devotion sounds sincere and powerful enough. Richardson's viola on the instrumental parts fits right in with Sinclair's returning organ and brother Jimmy's flute soloing, and on the faster ʽHeadlossʼ groove, is a good fit for Pye's own wah-wah soloing. There's no boundary breaking here, just a few good-natured vocal hooks and life-asserting, inspired jamming in between, seemingly shooing away the odd darkness of Waterloo Lily and ushering in a new wave of sunshine without too much sappiness.

The friendly atmosphere carries over to ʽHoedownʼ, a song clearly inspired by country-western stylistics (especially in terms of Richardson's fiddle-like viola solo) but essentially pop-rockish when it comes to the vocal melody; ʽSurprise, Surpriseʼ, one of Pye's best exercises in pure sentimental pop-rock; and, of course, the already mentioned ʽThe Dog, The Dogʼ, probably the single most controversial example in history when an essentially salacious matter would be presented as a sunny-sweet pop singalong, steadily moving to a vocal harmony-filled crescendo climax in ʽHey Judeʼ mode. The song clearly invites the listener to join in the angelic choir of "oh, medicine gone, it's coming on strong", experiencing a state of loving bliss over lyrics that might make even Howlin' Wolf reconsider, had he ever been offered a line like "legs and thighs, hellos and goodbyes it's all there". It's like Pye Hastings took a good look at Mick Jagger singing stuff like ʽStray Cat Bluesʼ and said, "oh, great goals, crude methods, we'll try it subtler". Of course, this didn't exactly help him gain a lot of teenage girl fans, but in the ideally comprehensive encyclopaedia of «sexuality in music», with tracks like these, Caravan have certainly deserved their own and nobody else's chapter.

In the middle of all the sunshine comes an unexpected blast of creepiness — ʽC'Thlu Thluʼ, clearly a jumbled homage to H. P. Lovecraft, is a horror-themed track, driven by a deep bass riff that sounds like Sabbath-lite and panicky lyrics that would be quite appropriate for Ozzy. Not that Caravan could really be capable of a genuine «the-Devil-is-after-me» atmosphere: the song's chorus, with a funky change of key and an excited rather than scared vocal performance, subverts the whole thing and makes it deeply ironic. But that does not mean that the track does not rule anyway — with its abundance of cool heavy riffs, Sinclair's medievalistic organ playing, and a crashing coda, this is as close to «metallic» as these guys ever got, and in the context of the record, it works great in between all the sunshine-oriented songs.

The «old school Caravan» is probably best represented on the final multi-part suite. With subtitles like ʽA Hunting We Shall Goʼ you'd probably expect to find some influences from ye olde British folk or at least court music from the Tudorian era, and, indeed, the suite begins with a medievalistic acoustic melody, but then quickly jumps into paranoid jazz-rock mode and finally settles on a slow tempo, grand orchestration (for which purpose they spared no expense and hired master orchestrator Paul Buckmaster), Wagnerian brass, and psychedelic swirling Davolisint hums. With a reprise of the jazzy ʽHuntingʼ section at the end, the suite, for once, sounds like a thematically oriented, smoothly flowing musical journey, sensibly organized from beginning to end rather than just being mindlessly pasted from several available bits and pieces. In fact, in a certain way the entire album could be taken for such a journey — beginning on a fairly light note, then picking up elements of deeper seriousness as it goes along, and finally culminating in the grand finale.

With Caravan's ongoing low-key profile and lack of stage flashiness, there was hardly any hope for the record to become more noticed than its predecessors — but in retrospect, it stands out humble-and-proud as one of the best progressive-themed albums of 1973. If we stick to chronologically based comparisons, I'd go as far as to call it the «high comedy» counterpart to the «high tragedy» of Selling England By The Pound: tackling some of the same matters (including the sexual obsessions of both frontmen), but substituting Peter Gabriel's melancholy and bitterness for Pye Hastings' warm irony and optimism. And if we don't stick to chronologically based comparisons, it is just a charming piece of British progressive rock, and Caravan's last great hurrah in an epoch that was already rapidly moving to a close. So, a big thumbs up before it's too late!

CARAVAN & THE NEW SYMPHONIA (1974)

1) Introduction; 2) Mirror For The Day; 3) The Love In Your Eye; 4) Virgin On The Ridiculous; 5) For Richard.

«Do it with an orchestra» was quite a heavy trend back in the days when symphonic rock was king, although, when you really think about it, not that many heavyweights actually went for this: Deep Purple in 1969, Procol Harum in 1972, and... well, ELP and Renaissance joined in somewhat later, I guess. Essentially, though, this Caravan album repeats the formula of Procol Harum's Live With The Edmonton Symphony Orchestra: use the symphonic potential of the orchestra to enhance the effect of originally non-orchestrated material, rather than blend it with the rock group format in some particularly innovative, genre-fusing way (like Deep Purple did, albeit with questionable results). Not that this is a bad idea: Caravan's highly melodic and already classically influenced melodies seem like a natural fit with symphonic orchestration, and, in fact, the whole idea seemingly came out not out of the desire to jump on the Procol Harum bandwagon, but out of the experience of working with a full orchestra on the Plump In The Night sessions.

I have not been able to uncover any additional activities of this «New Symphonia» orchestra, but I do know that it was essentially the creation of conductor Martyn Ford, who had already specialized in working with contemporary non-classical musicians, and that the orchestral ʽIntroductionʼ here was credited to Simon Jeffes, founder and leader of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra — meaning that, unlike Procol Harum, who could actually afford an authentic classical orchestra to work with them, Caravan went along with relative neophytes and barrier-breakers. Nevertheless, an orchestra is an orchestra, and you won't be hearing any classical musicians trying out rock riffs during this concert.

The recently released expanded edition of the album shows that the actual performance consisted of a short first set, during which the band played highlights from the Plump In The Night album on its own; a larger second set with the orchestra, all of which was released on the original LP; and an encore of ʽA Hunting We Shall Goʼ, for which the orchestra stayed on to reproduce the original arrangement (although, as the liner notes state with a whiff of reproach, not before a little blackmail-and-bluff took place backstage, since the musicians wanted their pay enlarged for the encore, and only went ahead after Pye threatened they'd do it without them anyway). The main set, apart from the already mentioned ʽIntroductionʼ, included two new compositions written specially for the concert, and two old multi-part epics, perfectly suitable for orchestration — not a lot, really, but I guess that budget concerns played a large part in this, too.

So, how well does Caravan work with an orchestra? I'd say that this is a good match on the whole, especially as far as the bombastic instrumental passages on the epic numbers are concerned, such as the martial brass fanfares in ʽThe Love In Your Eyeʼ and the last, hard-rocking, movement of the ʽFor Richardʼ suite, where the orchestra replaces Sinclair's distorted organ riffs. The new arrangements are not necessarily better, but the orchestra does lend extra romanticist power to the material without dumbing it down; in a way, one might even argue that The New Symphonia is really that one last crucial ingredient they'd always needed to evolve into a massively powerful music-making machine — the catch is, it's far from certain that they ever needed to evolve into a massively powerful machine, but if you thought they did, here is where they do, or at least come fairly close to doing. Pye's thin, frail, slightly effeminate voice almost feels a bit pitiful against this massive background, though — perhaps they should have hired Ian Gillan for this night... then again, perhaps not. At least his mike stayed in good shape.

Of the two new compositions I have to say that ʽMirror For The Dayʼ is a lush sentimental pop ballad in Pye's already fully-crystallized style (presaging more and more of this material on the band's next records), made somewhat more distinct by using a background vocalist choir with gospel overtones; and ʽVirgin On The Ridiculousʼ is mostly memorable for its self-explanatory title — otherwise, it is an even slower, longer, and more pompous ballad without any particularly notable musical ideas. However, in both cases the synergy between the band and the orchestra is well-balanced, and on ʽVirginʼ at least, much of the main melody is provided by strings in the first place (except for the instrumental bridge, dominated by the organ), so we can all just take this as rehearsal materials for Pye Hastings' Canterbury Oratorio.

Naturally, this is not an essential release to have in your collection, and naturally, it is atypical of the usual Caravan live sound — with which you can easily acquaint yourself on ten thousand archival releases from the BBC and various venues — but on the whole, it's an intelligent and resonant fusion, in which the power and the subtlety of the orchestra are anything but wasted. And I even like the ʽIntroductionʼ, especially the clever way in which the orchestra first introduces itself with an impressionist piece, then passes the baton over to the band for some blues-rock jamming, then smartly fills in the gaps around the band to become one with them: that Simon Jeffes is one darn fine fella when it comes to synthesizing rock with classical. So, overall, this is a very easy thumbs up for me, and a moderately tasteful success for Caravan in the year when clouds began seriously darkening around the pillars of the symph-rock movement.

CUNNING STUNTS (1975)

1) The Show Of Our Lives; 2) Stuck In A Hole; 3) Lover; 4) No Backstage Pass; 5) Welcome The Day; 6) The Dabsong Conshirtoe; 7) The Fear And Loathing In Tollington Park Rag.

While the band's obsessive attraction to sexual jokes and innuendos seems to have become a permanent fixture — as witnessed by the current title — the musical direction that the Hastings-led Caravan was taking clearly took a sharp turn in between 1973 and 1975. Technically, Cunning Stunts is still a progressive rock album, what with most of the second side being given over to yet another complex, multi-part suite, and some of the other songs still showing a strong classical and/or jazz influence. But in reality, the whole thing sounds more like «art pop» now, hook-based, potentially radio-friendly and mass-accessible songs without anything particularly unpredictable, bizarre, or musically challenging about them.

Part of the blame could be lifted off Pye's shoulders and placed on the new band member, bass player Mike Wedgwood, who is, for instance, guilty of bringing with him arguably the least Caravan-like song so far in their catalog — the soft funk-rocker ʽWelcome The Dayʼ, which, honestly, sounds more like The Average White Band than anything Canterbury-related, and is only salvageable due to Geoffery Richardson's viola accompaniment (it is not every day, after all, that you hear a viola take an integral part in a funk rocker) and Hastings' inspired wah-wah solo, which he somehow manages to deliver with suitably hard rocking fiery aggression, though, unfortunately, the rest of the band still sleepwalks through it while he is kicking their asses. Also, for that matter, Wedgwood's vocals are quite a heavy blow for all those accustomed to Sinclair's and Hastings' sweet, disarmingly childlike tones — Wedgwood introduces a belt-it-out arena-rock component, bringing on unnecessary associations with Foreigner way before Foreigner even formed, so there's definitely something evil going on.

Still, it was Pye who okayed Wedgwood in the first place, and it is Dave Sinclair who is responsible for much of the songwriting on the album, so blame it on the new times, not the new people. And, besides, why should one necessarily talk in terms of blaming? So now the band does sound, occasionally, more like Elton John than Caravan: this is particularly evident on Pye's muscular pop-rocker ʽStuck In A Holeʼ, which (perhaps, quite subconsciously, as a result of too much radio listening) borrows the rhythmic pattern from Elton's ʽPhiladelphia Freedomʼ, and on Wedgwood's second contribution, the slow, power-chord driven ballad ʽLoverʼ, where some of the vocal moves instinctively echo Elton's tragic-redemptional intonations on ʽSomeone Saved My Life Tonightʼ (is it really a coincidence that we are talking about two back-to-back Caravan songs here reflecting the possible influence of two back-to-back Elton John singles released in the same year?). But while ʽLoverʼ certainly drags, and its orchestral climax also comes out as meandering and muzak-y rather than properly climactic à la Buckmaster, ʽStuck In A Holeʼ is fun and catchy, and I am not ready to count an Elton John influence on a prog-rock band as necessarily denigrating — hey, as long as you are cleverly ripping off Captain Fantastic-era material, you may have any pedigree you like without dishonoring yourself.

At other times, they sound like the pompous, anthemic symph-pop of Argent — ʽThe Show Of Our Livesʼ, for the first time in Caravan history, tries to introduce them grandly and ceremoniously, with a slow celebratory march and a genuine wall of sound. It's done with taste, and Pye, in particular, contributes fabulously melodic guitar passages; as the multi-tracked choir steps in with the final "ring the bells and sing, gather 'round and sing" incantation, we enter ʽHey Judeʼ mode, not as boldly and full-heartedly, perhaps, as should be done for full cathartic effect, but to some effect, sure. Is this «commercialization»? From a certain point of view, most naturally: a bit of straightforward grandioseness, in the age of arena-rock and AOR, could be regarded as a gamble for extra popularity. On the other hand, just how legitimate a prog-rock band could be without having at least one Big Universalist Anthem to its name?..

As to the oddly titled ʽDabsong Conshirtoeʼ, it is far from the best Caravan epic, but it's a good piece of work all the same. It has far more lyrics and vocals than their usual epics, and could, in fact, be construed as merely a sequence of autonomous ballads and rockers, but it still finds some space in the middle to incorporate a waltzing jazz-rock jam, and it also features an unusual ending: the last part is a lengthy, repetitive vamp centered around a loud, paranoid hard rock riff with quasi-chaotic walls of sonic noise gradually rising against it, before the stormy rumble ends up drowning itself in a reprise of the "ring the bells and sing" part of ʽThe Show Of Our Livesʼ. I guess this symbolizes the ultimate triumph of Harmony over Chaos — well, it would be strange to expect anything less than that from a band as naturally optimistic as Caravan.

Upon some deliberation, I'm still inclined to call Cunning Stunts a thumbs up-worthy success. It's a little slow and draggy in places, and a little out-of-their-league in others, and a clear dropdown off the Plump In The Night level, but overall, they are in good shape to survive the crisis of the mid-Seventies if you grant them the permission to move one step away from the classic Caravan spirit and incorporate all these other influences. On the other hand, it is also a transitional album, suffering from a lack of clear understanding of what exactly it is that they want to be at the moment: Blind Dog At St. Dunstan's would soon be spelling out the new status in a far more transparent manner. Still, no reason whatsoever to ignore this work — as far as I'm concerned, it still forms an essential part of the band's «classic streak».

BLIND DOG AT ST. DUNSTAN'S (1976)

1) Here Am I; 2) Chiefs And Indians; 3) A Very Smelly, Grubby Little Oik; 4) Bobbing Wide; 5) Come On Back; 6) Oik (reprise); 7) Jack And Jill; 8) Can You Hear Me?; 9) All The Way (With John Wayne's Single-Handed Liberation Of Paris).

The first Caravan album to completely drop all pretense and be qualified as a pure pop record is naturally despised by large amounts of progressive rock fans, judasing it for all it's worth, and just as naturally ignored by the majority of pop fans — unlike Genesis, Caravan were unable to adapt sufficiently well to the new reality and find themselves an entirely new base of support. Bypassed by main audiences for being too unattractive and lambasted by critics by being too slick and commercial, Blind Dog At St. Dunstan's fell through the cracks and sank like a stone. Never mind the unimportant fact that it incidentally happened to be one of the best pop albums released in the small chronological interim between the Golden Age of Art Rock and the radical change in musical fashion arriving with punk and New Wave.

There is no conceptuality here (other than four songs on Side A joined together in a single suite, but this time they are not even listed under any single title), no musical innovation, no lengthy instrumental passages, no avantgarde influences, no spiritual messages — only a bunch of pop songs with influences from music hall, folk rock, funk, R&B, and even a bit of proto-disco. But now that the transition is made complete, the band happens to embrace the new light style with verve. Dave Sinclair is once again temporarily out of the band, replaced by Jan Schelhaas, a new guy with good technique and few ambitions, being perfectly happy to simply be one of the boys and, for the most part, keeping out of the spotlight; but his playing agrees very well with Hastings and Wedgewood, and Richardson's viola and flute, though applied now to seriously different types of material, are still vital to the overall sound.

The only non-Hastings song on the entire record is Wedgewood's ʽChiefs And Indiansʼ, and it is a major improvement over his contributions on Cunning Stunts. A simple tale of discord between two lovers, it begins as a soft British music hall piece, somewhere in between Ray Davies and Alan Price, then launches into an angry funk-rock escapade with all the band members taking short, snappy solos (Wedgewood's bit of bass, eventually sliding down into a pool of nasty fuzz, is the best one, but everybody else shines as well) before returning back to music hall mode for the outro. What really sells the song, apart from all the snappy energy, is that it actually manages to sound cool — not too serious and pathetic, like ʽWelcome The Dayʼ on the previous record, but not straightforwardly comical, either. The lyrics, the vocals, the instrumental passages all have this air of sharp, witty sarcasm, and it is a defining feature of the album in general.

Take a seemingly silly, superficial funk-pop song like ʽJack And Jillʼ: its very title places it in the ʽMary Had A Little Lambʼ category, and its lyrics are, indeed, a modern-day expansion of the old nursery rhyme with its potential sexual innuendos (well, leave it to Pye to find the subtext of physical romance in virtually everything — and, for that matter, the very title of the album is also a masked allusion to physical romance, spelled out in more detail during a well-audible bit of dialog at the end of the song: "what are those two doggies doing over there?" — "well, the first one is blind and his friend behind is pushing him all the way to St. Dunstan's!"). But really, the song is made by Wedgewood's spinning bass line and its interaction with Richardson's syncopated viola (how often do you hear funky bits played on a viola, anyway?), implying a sort of «trickster» atmosphere, friendly and mischievous at the same time. As simple as the song is, it's got some bottom to it — both in the direct musical sense (cool bass!) and in the artistic one.

Each song has its fair share of hooks and attractions. ʽA Very Smelly, Grubby Little Oikʼ has not only enriched my knowledge of non-literary English language (next time somebody offends you, just call him a "grubby oik" in response and watch him spend the rest of his days in confusion), it also gave me a fun pop-rock riff and a catchy chorus — which then makes a masterful transition, by means of the vocal-synth merge, into the slow atmospheric instrumental ʽBobbing Wideʼ and then back into the realms of catchy soft-pop with ʽCome On Backʼ. Now ʽCome On Backʼ could be thought of as a pretty straightforward and «bottom-less» tune (although it really depends on which way you want to interpret the line "only when you come, you know that we'll be one"); but the real fun thing about it is that as soon as it is over, it is immediately reprised in the form of a gospel-pop coda, combining the melody of ʽCome On Backʼ with the lyrical subject of ʽGrubby Little Oikʼ with guest-starring Chanter Sisters providing the vocals. So is this really a four-part thematic suite about the adventures of a representative of the lower classes, or is it rather an exercise in sarcastic absurdism, firmly placing melodic fun over serious content?..

I have mentioned Ray Davies and Alan Price, but I think an even more substantial comparison here would be with Wings — the album shares a lot in common with McCartney's style in the Seventies, what with all the soft keyboards, sweet vocals, stylistic variety, and preference of humor over seriousness; no wonder, then, that it tends to get underrated in exactly the same ways in which people still like to criticize Wings At The Speed Of Sound or London Town, and that I, personally, find myself fond of it in much the same way I am fond of those records. In fact, the last and longest song, ʽAll The Wayʼ, starts out with Pye sounding almost like Macca at his most sentimental (think ʽMy Loveʼ?) — and then transitions into a perfectly McCartney-esque chorus, simple, instantly memorable, and so sincere and touching that looping it for a very lengthy coda just seems like the most logical decision to take (especially because it's hard to think of a perfect resolution for the rising line "better than before, better than all after", so the only thing to do is just let it roll on and on and slowly fizzle away into a quiet whistle pattern). For the record: the reference to John Wayne in the subtitle is completely gratuitous (actually, ʽAll The Wayʼ is the only song on the album that begs to be taken completely seriously, with no signs of tongue-in-cheek attitude anywhere in sight).

Overall, the correct approach here is not to get worried about the lack of challenge or experimentation and simply to let yourself get carried away by the waves of vocal hooks and instrumental sharpness — the music, that is, and not the supra-musical ambition, for which we also have a time and a place, but different ones. Pretty soon afterwards, Caravan would finally start losing their way in a world of rapidly changing fashions; but just for this once, their fine-tuned pop instincts worked out perfectly. Big thumbs up.

BETTER BY FAR (1977)

1) Feelin' Alright; 2) Behind You; 3) Better By Far; 4) Silver Strings; 5) The Last Unicorn; 6) Give Me More; 7) Man In A Car; 8) Let It Shine; 9) Nightmare.

Okay, so if you want a proverbial example of what a «major drop in quality» truly means, look no further than the alarming gap that divides Blind Dog At St. Dunstan's, an energetic, inspired, and emotional pop album with progressive overtones, from Better By Far, a limp, mechanical, openly boring exercise in radio-friendly MOR music with no overtones whatsoever. It is always a puzzle to me how the exact same band can go from exciting to insipid in the short span separating one record from another, but yes, these things do happen.

First, this record does not rock, not in the slightest. Where Blind Dog gave us some nifty funky grooves, nicely steeped in a sharp, sarcastic attitude, Better By Far is almost completely given over to quiet, inoffensive soft-rock workouts, with completely conventional musical skeletons, generic (and heavily synth-based) musical arrangements, and energy levels that often sound pitiful compared to The Eagles, let alone the new blood of the punk movement of 1977. The opening number, ʽFeelin' Alrightʼ (not a Traffic cover), should be getting me up on my feet, cheering and clapping and welcoming a brand new day — instead, despite all the formal upbeatness, it feels drab and colorless, most of the «excitement» provided by Schelhaas' ugly and boring synth tone, and Pye's vocals inexplicably drowning in the sea of lackluster instrumentation instead of soaring on top of them. And that chorus? Other than a slight, predictable, pitch rise on the "feeling alRIGHT" bit, it does not even try too hard to separate itself from the pedestrian march of the verses. Awfully disappointing.

And it never gets better — all of these songs sound as if Pye and the others wrote them in about half an hour. The second song, ʽBehind Youʼ, rests on the same melodic foundations as ʽFeelin' Alrightʼ and tries to produce the exact same mood, except that it also incorporates a funky mid-section, again, dominated by ugly keyboards. The title track leads us into balladeering territory and ends up sounding even more like contemporary Bee Gees than like contemporary Wings, Pye's sweet voice being pretty much the song's only saving grace as it finally manages to elevate itself above the MOR arrangement. But all of that is nothing compared to Richardson's ʽSilver Stringsʼ, which actually seems to intentionally sound like modern Bee Gees — disco basslines, falsetto harmonies, and a silly artistic gimmick where the "let me hear the silver strings" refrain is followed by some lazy mandolin plucking.

Some of the (usually just as bitterly disappointed) reviews of the album single out the last track, ʽNightmareʼ, as the LP's high point — most likely because it is the longest, most complex, and most «progressively oriented» song of the lot (and also features the most enigmatic, introspective, and noticeably troubled lyrics on the album). My impression, however, is that it is just as boring and mushy as everything here — a slow trotter, all atmosphere and very little proper melody, not to mention zero energy: even the violin and guitar solos, though technically melodic, mostly just meander on the spot and never end up going anywhere. I mean, you'd think a song called ʽNightmareʼ should have something nightmarish about it, right? Well, there's hardly anything more «nightmarish» about it than there is about, say, an Elton John ballad from Blue Moves.

Vainly do I try to find anything here that would even remotely repeat, for instance, the triumph of the chorus of ʽAll The Wayʼ — now there, too, was a slow, sentimental, conventionally written epic ballad, but it did sound epic: it was an anthem, played out with a winning mix of tenderness and determination, gaining more and more strength and spirit as it went by. Strength and spirit are sorely lacking on this sucker, though — and, okay, if you don't have strength and spirit, give us bleakness, weakness, and chaos, show us a shining example of depression, but do not feed us with this gray blandness. Better By Far? «Better by far» than what, I wonder? The title alone is so irritating that I have no choice other than to give the record a thumbs down — the first truly bad record in Caravan history; yes, this is definitely one of those albums that may be counted as «one of the reasons punk had to happen», except the commercial fortunes of Caravan were so low at the time that most punks probably never heard it in the first place.

THE ALBUM (1980)

1) Heartbreaker; 2) Corner Of My Eye; 3) Watcha Gonna Tell Me; 4) Piano Player; 5) Make Yourself At Home; 6) Golden Mile; 7) Bright Shiny Day; 8) Clear Blue Sky; 9) Keepin' Up De Fences.

By the early Eighties, Caravan were in a total state of flux: their Arista contract fizzled out, some of the band members quietly quit, and so it was almost by accident that somehow, in 1980, they found themselves in the studio once again — and with Dave Sinclair in person returning for the third time, no less. Now they found themselves signed exclusively to Kingdom Records, the small label of their former manager Terry King (which used to distribute their recordings in Europe), they had three of the original members, and they split the songwriting three ways, with Hastings, Sinclair, and Richardson each taking a near-equal share. Perhaps one could hope for a slight improvement over the mediocrity of Better By Far?

Well, look no further than ʽHeartbreakerʼ, the opening single (no relation to Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones), for the revelation. It opens with a broken-hearted (yeah right) bluesy riff, so muffled, so glossy, so tight-wedged in the hum-hum-humming of the synthesizer wraps, that it is clear from the first fifteen seconds: whatever melodic potential there is here, it is going to be smothered by awful production, and once again what used to be the strong side of Caravan — a sense of sentimental humility — is going to work to their absolute disadvantage. But that is only the beginning of our problems: by the time we get to the chorus, it is clear that Caravan have pretty much mutated into Air Supply, or America, or any of those limp soft-rock outfits who thought that the more shallow they made their tenderness, the more appeal it would find among those people for whom even ʽHere, There And Everywhereʼ was too deep. The hookline of ʽHeartbreakerʼ — "while with you was a heartache, without you is a hell" — is not only barely grammatical and barely pronounceable, but is also unsingable with a straight face.

Still, at least Pye's other two contributions are arguably the highest points of this sorry mess of an album: ʽBright Shiny Dayʼ has him in solid McCartney mode, with a sunshiny chorus that makes good use of his high-pitched modulation and heavier emphasis on catchy guitar licks than on the synthesizers, and ʽKeepin' Up De Fencesʼ — if you can make peace with the idea of disco basslines on a Caravan song (and we all knew it was coming, sooner or later... in 1980, though? what a bunch of retards!), it is the only song on this album that genuinely rocks, with a fine flashy guitar solo at the end and true proof that Richard Coughlan can keep a fast, steady, tight beat and ornate it with expressive fills at the same time.

I wish I could be just as empathetic to Richardson; but ʽCorner Of My Eyeʼ is just another one of these taking-itself-too-seriously soft-rock cornballs, not helped much by the surprising transformation into rollickin' pop-rock in the bridge section — and ʽClear Blue Skyʼ is Caravan's first and last foray into the distant world of reggae, a track that they try to make more psychedelic by adding «cloudy» synth swirls all over the place, but Richardson's strained vocals are awful, his scat singing over the syncopated rhythm chords is even worse, and at six and a half minutes, the song tries to present itself as something epic when in reality it seems to simply follow the guideline of "hey wait, we've never done a reggae song yet? come on now, everybody's done at least one reggae song! this will be fun, like a ʽBob Marley goes to Canterburyʼ kind of thing!"

Which leaves us with the Dave Sinclair songs, and I don't remember much about them after three or four listens, except that they kinda sounded like a mix of Elton John and Billy Joel (heck, one of them is even called ʽPiano Playerʼ, for Chrissake!). ʽMake Yourself At Homeʼ is ʽHonky Catʼ-like funk-pop that could really benefit from a strong singer like Elton, but has absolutely no future with these totally disinterested vocals (is that bass player Dek Messecar singing? he has no personality whatsoever).

I would not say that The Album is a significant drop down from the level of 1977 — the only difference is that here, there is not even a single superficial attempt to retain the «progressive» legacy of classic Caravan, but then, this is not necessarily a bad thing: from a certain point of view, it makes them more honest about what they are trying to do. The problem is that Caravan as a bona fide pop band, with no additional ambition, is a suicidal proposal — they never had the cockiness, the energy, the great guitar tones, the vivaciousness that should go along with a great pop band. They almost succeeded with Blind Dog, though, but then they ran out of inspiration and sheer power altogether, and now all we have is utter blandness. Thumbs down.

BACK TO FRONT (1982)

1) Back To Herne Bay Front; 2) Bet You Wanna Take It All / Hold On, Hold On; 3) A. A. Man; 4) Videos Of Hollywood; 5) Sally Don't Change It; 6) All Aboard; 7) Taken My Breath Away; 8) Proper Job / Back To Front.

Look — a reunion! The band may have folded after The Album, but in less than two years, they are back, and look at the lineup: Pye Hastings on guitar! Richard Coughlan on drums! Dave Sinclair on keyboards! Richard Sinclair on bass! All songs written by Hastings, Sinclair, and Sinclair! It's 1968 all over again — or, perchance, even 1971?..

The most interesting thing about Back To Front is that it is heavily nostalgic. For most prog veterans, the early Eighties were not yet a time, usually, when they would look back with sadness and yearning on their glory days. Many were too busy tripling their hair volumes, learning drum machine programming, or finding other ways to compete with the new romantic youngsters on the charts (usually unsuccessfully, but at least it seemed to keep them alive at the time). With Back To Front, you can certainly sense by the production that it probably belongs in the early Eighties — but mostly it looks as if they are trying to recapture the inspiration of the days of Grey And Pink. There is even an epic track with instrumental jamming (ʽProper Job / Back To Frontʼ), although they do not dare to launch into full-scale multi-part suite mode.

I am not sure, however, that the final result would genuinely appeal to veteran fans of Caravan at their peak. Admittedly, the two-part finale is a grower, particularly the ʽBack To Frontʼ part, an ominous riff-based jam shaped as a crescendo, with the doom-struck bass groove gradually enhanced by more and more layers of keyboards, and then finally evaporating into nothing and leaving you in a state of dark anxiety — just like in the old days, when they used to end their records on suspenseful notes rather than landing them softly with some soothing Pye Hastings lullaby. Even so, the entire thing hardly holds a candle to the classic suites, since the overall sound is somehow too close to generically tepid jazz-fusion grooves: Sinclair's bass lines on ʽProper Jobʼ seem taken out of the fusion textbook, and Dave's synth tones are... well, too synthetic for my tastes at least.

The biggest problem is that everything else is, at best, trying to hold up to the level of ʽBack To Frontʼ, and, at worst, not even trying. The presence of Richard adds extra spice if you like his above-mentioned fusion-esque bass playing on the album (polished and perfected due to years of playing with Hatfield & The North), but hardly so if you have high hopes about his songwriting: ʽBack To Herne Bay Frontʼ is a rather non-descript exercise in nostalgia, and the wannabe-arena-rocker ʽA. A. Manʼ is really just another mid-tempo pop song with a boring anthemic chorus that cannot seem to decide if it wants to be soft and tender or powerful and angry. Dave, meanwhile, is credited for the writing of the closing suite, but he is also responsible for ʽVideos Of Hollywoodʼ, a draggy rhythmic ballad that seems to share the sentimentality, but not the charm of the Kinks' ʽCelluloid Heroesʼ, and for ʽSally Don't Change Itʼ, an even slower ballad that sounds... well, like an unfunny parody on a Billy Joel ballad, I'd say.

This leaves us with Pye, and Pye is the same Pye as he's been on the previous two albums. An oddly out of place tender rockabilly number (ʽBet You Wanna Take It Allʼ), seguing into a slow R&B ballad (ʽHold On Hold Onʼ), and a couple faceless pop numbers on the second side all seem to be rather jello-like — not hopeless choruses, perhaps, but everything sounds so silky, so fragile, so muffled and cuddled that whenever I try to concentrate on this stuff, I find myself figuratively drowning in some imaginary viscous fruit drink. Fun bit of trivia: the near-rapped mid-section on ʽTaken My Breath Awayʼ has the same vocal melody as Suzanne Vega's ʽTom's Dinerʼ — almost certainly a coincidence, since I cannot imagine Vega taking cues from a nearly unknown Caravan album. But what's up with the spelling of that title? Is ʽTaken My Breath Awayʼ an implicit tribute to AC/DC's ʽGiven The Dog A Boneʼ? That might not be a total coincidence.

Overall, the record is still a major improvement over the previous two albums — at the very least, there are no obvious embarrassments (like trying to do a reggae song or going disco at the wrong time), and that final suite is surprisingly better than I could have guessed. But it is also easy to see why the reunion did not hold up: trying to revive the classic Caravan vibe in the early Eighties was a bit like setting up a pro-Britain party in 1783. Absolutely nobody needed this at the time, and the reunited Caravan quickly split up again, even before it became obvious that the album would not sell, I believe — which, might I add, was a very good thing, because I shudder to think what the fate of a slightly cohesive Caravan could have been in the mid- to late Eighties. As it is, the Caravan finally took enough time to unpack, rest its weary legs, take a long drink, and sit out the rough times without getting into the heart of the shitstorm.

THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS (1995)

1) It's A Sad, Sad Affair; 2) Somewhere In Your Heart; 3) Cold As Ice; 4) Liar; 5) Don't Want Love; 6) Travelling Ways; 7) This Time; 8) If It Wasn't For Your Ego; 9) It's Not Real; 10) Wendy Wants Another 6" Mole; 11) I Know Why You're Laughing.

The Battle of Hastings, fought on October 14, 1066, is generally considered a key event in the political, social, and cultural history of England, leading to a decisive victory on the part of Norman forces led by William the Conqueror and initiating a major period of transformation for the entire English society. Precisely one year later, in 1067, the old cathedral of Canterbury was completely destroyed by fire, and starting in 1070, rebuilt under the supervision of the first Norman archbishop; the new marvels of Norman architecture, along with the subsequent murder of Thomas Becket on the steps of the cathedral, led to a major increase in its popularity and, consequently, the popularity of Canterbury as such, directly reflected in such artistic highs as the works of Geoffrey Chaucer (The Canterbury Tales), Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (A Canterbury Tale), and English progressive rock bands such as The Soft Machine, Gong, National Health, and, of course, Caravan. In addition, the Norman conquest led to major changes in the English musical tradition, with new styles of court, sacred, and even folk music complementing and sometimes replacing older Saxon traditions — echoes of which still survived in English popular music in the 20th century, and were merged by progressive and experimental artists with African and American elements to form the basis for progressive rock music, including the Canterbury school, in the late Sixties and early Seventies. All of these connections are brought back to us with the front cover of the album, a partial reproduction of the monumental Bayeux Tapestry, depicting the key elements of the Ba...

...wait a minute, what? You're telling me it is all just a lame pun on the last name of Pye Hastings, the de-facto leader of Caravan since at least 1973? Oh. Bummer. Could we please get Mr. Hastings on the phone here, to confirm this? What's that? He's got no memory of making this album, so he can neither confirm nor deny? Double bummer.

Admittedly, it is true that The Battle Of Hastings, released 929 years after the epochal event and 13 years after the last attempt at a Caravan reunion, sank to the bottom even quicker than Back To Front, and continues to be largely ignored by prog and pop fans alike: in 1995, it was hard to imagine a style less out of touch with the times than Pye Hastings' brand of «soft prog», and good luck to anybody wishing to find a comprehensive and serious review of the record. And yet, it was a serious record. Most of the songs were indeed composed by Hastings, but the band also included Coughlan on drums, Dave Sinclair on keyboards (he is also credited for at least one song, ʽTravelling Waysʼ), a returning Geoff Richardson on viola and 50,000 other instruments, and even brother and long-time sideman companion Jimmy Hastings on the usual flutes and saxes. The only new member is bassist Jim Leverton, and even that guy is a true veteran (of Noel Redding's Fat Mattress, Juicy Lucy, Hemlock, Savoy Brown, and whoever else's fame).

Naturally, the lineup alone does not matter: what matters is whether the songs, the production, and the level of energy/inspiration makes the record any better than the lackluster works by the 1977–1982 versions of the band. According to a few disappointed fans whose opinions may be gathered from various prog review sites, the answer seems to be a firm «no». The Battle Of Hastings is, indeed, a collection of acoustic-based pop songs, with very little by way of «listening challenges», very low-key in execution, rather monotonous in atmosphere, and sort of embarrassing when it comes to the occasional quirk such as that ʽWendyʼ song. So it would seem that if you were bored stiff by Better By Far and The Album, the same should be expected of this record. And yet, this is not how it works for me.

Two things in particular make enough of a difference to make me want to embrace and recommend the album. The first and lesser one is the production: everything here sounds a ton better than the muffled, hollow production of the 1977–1982 albums. This is obvious from the opening lively acoustic guitar chords and old-fashioned background organ hum on ʽIt's A Sad, Sad, Affairʼ — a good sign that even if the songwriting will not be up to par, at least the overall sound will remind you more of classic Caravan than of the late-period plastic Caravan. It is not always like that (occasionally, the ugly synth tones and the silkbox-enclosed guitar echoes will come back to haunt you), but it is the rule rather than the exception.

The major difference, however, is that, apparently, Pye Hastings had grown himself a few demons to exorcise in the 13 years that we hadn't heard from him. Most of the songs here do not sound like commercially-oriented sentimental pop songs: this is more of a gloomy, melancholic, nostalgic singer-songwriter record, formally dressed up as a collection of pop tunes. There is indeed a «battle» fought here, and I do not know how personal it was (information on Pye's personal life is quite scarce to come by), but most songs are about cheating, rejection, bitterness, reproaches — I mean, just look at the titles: ʽIt's A Sad, Sad Affairʼ, ʽCold As Iceʼ (no, not Foreigner!), ʽLiarʼ (no, not Argent!), ʽIf It Wasn't For Your Egoʼ, etc. It might not necessarily be about one's love life as such — might be a general allegory for the bitterness at feeling forgotten and rejected, which had pretty much been Caravan's ordeal for the past 15 years. Regardless, it feels very sincere when you really get into it, and, oddly enough, I find myself returning to some of these songs far more often than I'd expect myself to, usually in times of trouble.

Describing the individual songs is hard, though, because they are really all unified in terms of style and substance. Some are a little slower, some a little faster, most float by on a double-layer bed of acoustic guitars and keyboards with whatever additional instrumentation Richardson and Jimmy Hastings decide to throw in for fullness' effect (flutes, mandolins, accordions, etc.). Probably worth singling out is that opener, ʽSad, Sad Affairʼ, slightly more upbeat and precisely shaped than the rest (what with Pye playing and singing the exact same catchy folk-pop melody); the sax-embellished waltz of ʽCold As Iceʼ; and the squint-eyed, stop-and-start menace of ʽLiarʼ (which was probably influenced by the old Argent song after all — at least, the stop-and-start trick, followed by the massive eruption of "LIAR!", follows the same formula, and I do not believe this is a coincidence).

The only «objective» standouts, however, are the last two tracks. ʽWendy Wants Another 6" Moleʼ is the specially incubated ugly duckling — a song that sounds more 10cc than Caravan with its vaudeville-pop rhythmics and caricaturesque vocals, not to mention grotesque (though not very funny) lyrics, although even 10cc would probably have never dared to end any of their tracks with a bunch of raspberries (literally!). Apparently, Pye remembered at the last moment that he had neglected to imbue enough of his sick humor into the songs, and synthesized it all within a single short track. It's okay to feel offended, though I'd guess that for some people, it would at least be a nice breakup of the overall monotonousness.

The real kicker, however, is the last song, ʽI Know Why You're Laughingʼ. It begins by skilfully deceiving you into thinking of it as a lazy adult contemporary ballad of a conclusion, then quickly kicks into high gear and becomes the fastest, catchiest, and most grim-faced pop-rocker that Pye had ever written up to that point. I really mean it — the song rocks, and at 3:36 it goes into genuine hard rock mode, with a fluent, furious, and perfectly constructed guitar solo that may remind one of Lindsey Buckingham (think ʽGo Your Own Wayʼ and suchlike). It is the kind of song that I would never in a million years expect out of Caravan, and it's been one of my favorites of theirs ever since I heard it — a criminally underrated pop-rock masterpiece that could have gotten its due were it released in 1975 rather than 1995... but it is never too late to make amends.

So, is this really the «comeback» we'd been hoping for? Certainly not for those who expected long-winded progressive structures, and probably not even for those who hoped for the bright, shining fun of Blind Dog. It is a monotonous, morose, autumnal record, good for the mood on one of those days where the rain just won't stop, but it is authentically atmospheric and perhaps even subtly allegorical, so much so that I could easily see it becoming the favorite album of the defeated King Harold Godwinson, had he had the (mis)fortune to survive the battle of Hastings and live into his late 920s. Thumbs up.

ALL OVER YOU (1996)

1) If I Could Do It All Over Again, I'd Do It All Over You; 2) Place Of My Own; 3) The Love In Your Eye / To Catch Me A Brother; 4) In The Land Of Grey And Pink; 5) Golf Girl; 6) Disassociation (Nine Feet Underground); 7) Hello Hello; 8) Asforteri 25; 9) For Richard; 10) Memory Lain, Hugh; 11) Headloss.

Re-recordings of your own classics are not just pitiful: as a rule, they brand you very concisely as a «second-rate» artist — I think Page and Plant were the only ones who could properly get away with this shit, because most of the stuff they did was re-inventions rather than re-recordings, but other than that, Caravan here are joining the league of Blue Öyster Cult and The Animals, for no reason whatsoever — of course, it is understandable if you want to nostalgize in the confines of a studio, but what good are the results for even a dedicated fan? This is not a bad album, just utterly pointless. Unless the point is just admitting defeat: «hey guys, none of you bought The Battle Of Hastings when it came out — so I guess you like the old shit more, here's an acoustic version of ʽThe Love In Your Eyeʼ for you, enjoy».

As you can see from the track list, this is a representative retrospective of the classic years of Caravan, covering every album from the self-titled debut and up to Plump In The Night. The sonic structure is a little weird: about two-thirds of the record is almost completely acoustic (except for a few lead electric parts every now and then), up to the first part of ʽFor Richardʼ — after which the distorted guitars kick in with full force, and the album continues as an electric appearance until the end. The musicianship remains strong through the entire album, and Hastings continues to be in fine voice — and these are all great songs, so, formally, one cannot complain. But I struggle to find any specific points for which these arrangements should be recommended. If anything, there are some weak points — namely, the production, which sounds strangely cluttered and disorienting: lots of gratuitous percussive overdubs, special effects, echoes, sometimes giving the songs a cavernous feel that they really do not deserve.

Additional odd ideas include, for instance, the overdub of fake stadium audience cheer and applause over the last two tracks — well, sure, those Plump In The Night tracks could be played in an arena setting, but why should we be told that? Is it some sort of poorly hidden envy on Pye's part, that he never got to play in a proper arena? Anyway, those crowd noises splattered all over ʽHeadlossʼ are really very annoying and distracting and, might I say, in poor taste.

Thus, unless you are interested in a couple of nice jazzy acoustic solos here and there (with a Spanish touch on ʽThe Love In Your Eyeʼ), it is probably better to just forget this record ever existed. Apparently, that was not the end of the story: a couple of years later, Hastings and Co. followed it up with All Over You Too, featuring a second batch of re-recordings, this time from 1973 to 1976; and that one, according to rumors, was even more tasteless than the first one, so I have not bothered to search it out. All in all, a very silly decision.

THE UNAUTHORISED BREAKFAST ITEM (2003)

1) Smoking Gun; 2) Revenge; 3) The Unauthorised Breakfast Item; 4) Tell Me Why; 5) It's Getting A Whole Lot Better; 6) Head Above The Clouds; 7) Straight Through The Heart; 8) Wild West Street; 9) Nowhere To Hide; 10) Linders Field.

The Battle Of Hastings, with its subtle, but special atmosphere of cold melancholy and nostalgia, could have been a highly appropriate and intelligent last goodbye for Caravan — one of those nice turns of events when a formerly great and then degenerated band comes together for one last statement; not a huge one, but reflecting a certain degree of wisdom and experience. Too often, however, the temptation to mistake a successful «last goodbye» for a sign of self-permission to go on recording new stuff, so to speak, becomes impossible to overcome. And thus, at the turn of the new millennium, Caravan come together once again — to make a record that, to me at least, sounds completely superfluous.

Again, this lineup only includes Hastings and Coughlan from the original band, although Dave Sinclair was still a member when they went into the studio: he contributes and plays on ʽNowhere To Hideʼ. Reportedly, though, he split with the band again over «creative differences», and all the other tracks feature Jan Schelhaas, the band's old keyboard player from the Blind Dog At St. Dunstan's period. Richardson and Leverton reprise their roles from The Battle Of Hastings, and an extra lead guitarist, Doug Boyle (who'd previously played with Robert Plant's band) is brought over to lend a hand. With the Hastings / Richardson / Schelhaas core, you might faintly expect them to deliver another Blind Dog — unfortunately, instead of this they deliver another Better By Far, albeit with some technical flaws that were typical of the late 1970s corrected and replaced with some technical flaws that are typical of the early 2000s.

If you have heard the opening track, ʽSmoking Gunʼ, you have already assessed the overall sound of the record — grimly optimistic pop music created by prog survivors and released in a world where neither distorted guitars nor cosmic-sounding electronic sounds no longer make anybody bat an eye just because they are, you know, distorted and/or cosmic-sounding. It's a nice sound, but it no longer has the added bonus of The Battle's world-weariness, because these guys have survived their mid-life crises and seem fairly happy now to occupy their parliamentary seats in the post-prog world of elder(ly) statesmen — making professional, but pizzazz-free music. The production is marvelous: all the most subtle guitar overtones reveal themselves instantaneously. There is hardly anything substantial behind that production, though. The second track, ʽRevengeʼ, sounds almost exactly like the first one, and that is just the beginning.

Eventually, after about four numbers that are completely interchangeable, they arrive at a point where they remember that they used to be a progressive band with long-winded epics, and begin to pump out 7-8-minute long epics that, unfortunately, fall more into the «adult contemporary» pattern than into the «progressive rock» scheme (amusingly, something very similar had earlier happened to Genesis, with their pseudo-prog monsters like ʽDriving The Last Spikeʼ, etc.). ʽIt's Getting A Whole Lot Betterʼ, for instance, is an unmemorable chunk of smooth blues-jazz with Kenny G-style sax solos; ʽHead Above The Cloudsʼ is at least speedier, but essentially it's the same smooth jazz taken at a faster tempo. One might have hoped that ʽNowhere To Hideʼ, the only track left behind by Dave Sinclair (and sung by Jim Leverton rather than Hastings), would be better — but its first half is exactly the same jazz-pop as everything else, and its second half largely consists of a fusion synth solo from Sinclair that sounds like... well, I have no idea why I should be listening to any of this instead of, say, Al Di Meola. At least Al Di Meola had pyrotech

nics. Why should you need Al Di Meola-like music without pyrotechnics?

In the end, the only track that has shown a few signs of life to me was the instrumental finale, ʽLinders Fieldʼ, mainly because they hit upon a different kind of sound here — multi-tracked folksy jangle mixed with smooth, ambient-like keyboards. It's a pretty and unassuming coda with a curious (probably unintentional) psychedelic effect on the brain. But having to sit through 50 minutes of professional, clear-sounding, thoroughly monotonous, humorless, and essentially meaningless adult pop to get to it? Honestly, I'd much rather live my life knowing that the door on Caravan was slammed with the last power chord of ʽI Know Why You're Laughingʼ. Recommended only for major Pye fans and hardcore sentimentalists; for everybody else, definitely a thumbs down.

PARADISE FILTER (2013)

1) All This Could Be Yours; 2) I'm On My Way; 3) Fingers In The Till; 4) This Is What We Are; 5) Dead Man Walking; 6) Farewell My Old Friend; 7) Pain In The Arse; 8) Trust Me I Am A Doctor; 9) I'll Be There For You; 10) The Paradise Filter.

Ten more years and another attempt to get back in the saddle. The funds for this, apparently, were raised through crowdfunding, and the recordings took place at the same time that Richard Coughlan was fighting his last battle — his passing and the release of Paradise Filter both happened in December 2013. And whether it was Coughlan's state of health or just the usual aging process for everybody, Paradise Filter is quite obsessed with issues of health and dying. In 1975, a song with the title ʽTrust Me I Am Your Doctorʼ could have only had one meaning, and quite a salacious one at that. But considering that all of the band's members are well in their sixties now, who knows, maybe it is a song about how you should trust your doctor. (Well, not really, but then again, the album comes without a lyric sheet, and I'm too lazy to make it out on my own).

The lineup for Paradise Filter is the same as for the previous album, with the obvious exception of Coughlan, replaced by newcomer Mark Walker; Jimmy Hastings is not involved, either, nor is Dave Sinclair, so most of the extra instrumentation is provided by Richardson (viola, cello, flute, mandolin, you name it), while the bulk of the material is written by Pye. Fortunately, there is no attempt to repeat the «limp-prog» formula of Breakfast Item — once again, this is a straightforward pop-rock album, with a bit more emphasis on rock this time around: after a brief organ introduction, ʽAll This Could Be Yoursʼ kicks in with a colorfully distorted guitar that immediately makes it more likable, if no less stereotypical, in a power-pop mode, than ʽSmoking Gunʼ. Do these guys show renewed energy? Probably not, but at least the upbeat melodic fun is back, and Richardson's viola solo gives the song a nice lightweight classical edge in addition.

Not that the whole album is amusing: like I said, there is a clear fixation on death and all sorts of problems that usually lead to it — apparently, Pye is not growing happy as time goes by, and from a musical standpoint, I actually welcome the fact that he is becoming more grumbly and leads the band in a darker direction, that is, back to the disposition he showed on Battle Of Hastings. This is not to say that blues-rocky songs like ʽI'm On My Wayʼ and ʽPain In The Arseʼ have any staying potential: their riffs are dusted off from fifty-year old stock or so, their atmospheric effect is undermined by excessive restraint, and even a thoroughly pissed-off Pye Hastings is never quite as convincing as a sunshine-radiating happy Pye Hastings. But it all feels sincere — enough to make me vaguely interested in hearing what a sixty-year old Pye Hastings has to say about the state of the world, or, rather, how he is saying that.

The darkest songs are in the middle: ʽDead Man Walkingʼ and ʽFarewell My Old Friendʼ need no special explanation and trigger no special endorsement — a dark acoustic folk-rocker and a mournful piano ballad with predictable effects, although Richardson's viola always makes things a tad more exquisite than they could be. As things roll by, the mood eventually lightens up and Pye starts throwing some of his stock sugar around (ʽI'll Be There For Youʼ — the song sounds exactly as its title could suggest), before winding things down with a yawn, on a completely adult contemporary note with the title track (ironically, this is the only non-Pye song on the album).

As of 2017, it is quite possible that this is going to be the last new Caravan record: the guys are not getting any younger, there has been very little activity from them since 2014, and Paradise Filter gives off an even stronger impression of a musical testament than Battle Of Hastings did (come to think of it, these guys seemed really old in 1995, and there's almost twenty years lying in between these two albums!). If it is, at least it is definitely a better bet than Breakfast Item: it feels more true to Hastings' real state of mind and less bent on trying to «recapture the magic» that can no longer be recaptured by any means. With a modest thumbs up, I can recommend the record to any major fan of Caravan — its mix of elderly grimness and cheerfulness is a useful last brushstroke to the life picture of Pye Hastings. And if it happens not to be the last, well, I'd be happy to be proven wrong in my predictions.

Part 4. The Age Of Excess (1970-1976)

CAMEL

CAMEL (1973)

1) Slow Yourself Down; 2) Mystic Queen; 3) Six Ate; 4) Separation; 5) Never Let Go; 6) Curiosity; 7) Arubaluba.

There is, and would always be, a lot of Pink Floyd influence in the music of Camel — but it is still instructive that their first album was recorded in August '72, that is, well before the release of Dark Side Of The Moon, so at least you couldn't accuse them of merely jumping on the nearest and most obvious bandwagon. Besides, minor keys and gloomy moods are not all it takes to count as a Pink Floyd rip-off.

Stemming from Surrey (every once in a while, you may see Camel listed as representatives of the «Canterbury school» of rock, which couldn't be farther from the truth — at least, not until Dave Sinclair joined the band, but that would be much later), Camel was largely the brainchild of guitarist Andy Latimer and keyboardist Peter Bardens, who are responsible for most of the songwriting and singing (although bassist Doug Ferguson takes a couple lead vocals, and drummer Andy Ward is co-credited for writing the first song).

Although all four members were honing their musical talents already circa 1969-70, they only gelled together in late 1971 and got a recording contract with MCA in 1972, so they have to count as «second generation prog», a tough fate for all those who followed in the footsteps of Floyd, Jethro Tull, King Crimson, Yes, and ELP. As much as Latimer and Bardens loved all that music, they would never truly be capable of forging their own unmistakable and unmimickable personality — while both of them are excellent musicians, and Latimer has a very nice singing voice, their styles are simply too derivative of earlier heroes.

That said, as long as the band hits the energy pedal, all of Camel music is eminently likeable. Although the seven compositions on this album present no real breakthroughs, they are amazingly adequate — not too complex, not too simplistic, not too pretentious, not too humble, a sort of middle-of-the-road combination that manages to please rather than bore. They share the overall humanistic-but-pessimistic musical philosophy/vibe of Floyd — most of the songs are mournful or melancholic — but they have plenty of chops and musical ideas to make you believe that they are not here just to rip off a vibe or two. Above everything else, they have style, which is the one thing, probably, that makes them so attractive for me where bands like Kansas or Styx sound so irritating most of the time.

If you are not new to progressive rock, but new to Camel, I would suggest beginning with the last track here — the instrumental ʻArubalubaʼ is the easiest one to swallow, featuring the record's most instantly memorable doubled guitar-organ riff as the main theme, and rocking all the way to the bank, faster, tighter, and sweatier than anything in the Floyd catalog. The guitar and keyboard solos of Latimer and Bardens are not exceptional, but they succeed in maintaining tension all the way without resorting to excessive gimmicks, and last just enough to make you long for the return of the main theme, which dutifully kicks back in with a vengeance. Note, though, that this is rather an atypical composition for Camel (the album) and Camel the band in general — typically, their instrumentals tend to be softer and subtler, like ʻSix Ateʼ, which begins in waltz tempo, then slows down even further before becoming a quieter version of King Crimson's ʻMirrorsʼ for a few bars and then finally settling down into a steady mid-tempo guitar/keyboard jam. Again, no great shakes, but a little bit of magical mystery atmosphere is still present.

One reason why Camel, provided they were spotted by prog-hating critics in the first place, still largely avoided their venomous spit, is that they kept the «lost in fantasy land» thing to a minimum — like everybody else, they loved their Tolkien and shit, but were cool-headed enough not to try and make their albums sound like bona fide Lord Of The Rings soundtracks. Here, for instance, there's only one suspicious track (ʻMystic Queenʼ), and they immediately shoot the fantasy interpretation in the back by singing "have you seen the Mystic Queen / riding in her limousine", although if you don't pay sufficient attention to the lyrics, the song may still come across as a hymn to the Lady of the Lake or any such character — no matter, really, because it is made by carefully constructed Latimer and Bardens solos (the lyrics are minimal), slow, dreamy, a little bit psychedelic, and humbly restrained.

The best known songs from the album are arguably the opening number ʻSlow Yourself Downʼ and the single ʻNever Let Goʼ. The former is a grim blues-rocker that establishes Camel's vibe from the start — quiet, compact, concise music made by loners for loners, sung by Latimer in his lowest range and including a fast mid-section that, too, seems strangely intro- rather than extravert: if there is at all such a thing as «Anti-Arena Rock», this song, and Camel in general, is it. As for ʻNever Let Goʼ, which went on to become a permanent stage favorite, this is probably the album's most pretentious moment ("crazy preachers of our doom / telling us there is no room" — hmm, isn't that a kind of line that Ozzy would be supposed to sing?), but, again, leave it to Camel to deliver a pretentious message to humanity as if they were all standing with their noses in a corner. Do not, however, forget to turn the volume up really loud for the last minute — Latimer plays a killer solo, but with such a thin tone and buried so deeply in the mix that you really have to make yourself notice it. Didn't Mark Knopfler take a few hints from that guy?

On the whole, although Camel never achieved proper critical/commercial success until their third album, this debut is by no means «tentative» or «formative» — if you do not like it (and it is theoretically quite easy to perceive it as too cold, too sterile, or too limp), you will probably not get easily warmed up to the band in general... granted, «warmed up» is probably not the right word, seeing as how their music is always so cold. It is definitely lacking in flashiness, but it is moody and tasteful, even if it hardly sounds like anything a truly intelligent camel would have written. Well, maybe only a very Sufi camel. Thumbs up.

MIRAGE (1974)

1) Freefall; 2) Supertwister; 3) Nimrodel; 4) Earthrise; 5) Lady Fantasy.

I have never really been satisfied with Camel's second album. Prog fans tend to praise it, but it seems to me that most of the praise is for reasons that are all too obvious — the songs get longer, the solo/jam passages more technically challenging, and there is at least one Tolkien-inspired tune (maybe more, because even though ʻLady Fantasyʼ does not drop any direct references, it works well in tandem with ʻNimrodelʼ).

The problem is that such an approach by itself could hardly surprise anybody in 1974 (not to mention today) — the question is not whether Mirage is more «complicated» than Camel, but whether it manages to preserve and develop the band's own identity, to have a face of its own that would distinguish it from all the other faces. And from that point of view, too much on Mirage sounds like rather unconvincing imitations of Yes, Genesis, ELP, and even some of their more ancient predecessors (for instance, the first keyboard solo on ʻLady Fantasyʼ is uncannily reminiscent of the Doors' ʻLight My Fireʼ).

Most importantly, a crucial vibe is missing here — the melancholic mood, that quiet desperation which is so much the English way, has dissipated, as the band embark on a flight of colorful fantasy. There's nothing wrong with flights of colorful fantasy in general, of course, but for Camel, this is a somewhat uncomfortable detour: epic songs about wizards and love ballads to mystical fantasy ladies is not something for which they have any special knack. The two long suites sound tasteful enough, but there is not a single melodic line or twist there that would really capture my attention. Signature changes, polished guitar solos, pretty harmonies, alternations between loud and quiet; only the «magical», echoey slide solo at the end of ʻNimrodelʼ really sounds like nothing we'd previously heard before — good find, that; not enough to grant masterpiece status to the entire song, though.

Of the shorter tracks, Bardens' ʻFreefallʼ is quite an energetic opener, but, again, just seems way too much like an inferior Yes tribute; the instrumental ʻSupertwisterʼ is a cute little waltz with some flute work from Latimer; and the other instrumental, ʻEarthriseʼ, exists somewhere on the border between classically influenced prog and jazz-fusion, without properly making its mind about which side of the border it wants to stake a real claim on. Honestly, I do not know what to say about them. They rock, but not too hard; they're pretty, but not beautiful; they have well thought out melodies, but they're not catchy. Generic second generation prog, in short.

Consequently, I am one of the few who feels tempted to dub this a «sophomore slump» — a half-decent, but misguided and forgettable attempt at aping the founding fathers of the progressive genre without adding even a drop of their own personality. Had they persisted in this direction, the world might have already forgotten all about Camel; fortunately, the mistake would not be repeated again, at least, not on the scale of an entire album.

THE SNOW GOOSE (1975)

1) The Great Marsh; 2) Rhayader; 3) Rhayader Goes To Town; 4) Sanctuary; 5) Fritha; 6) The Snow Goose; 7) Friendship; 8) Migration; 9) Rhayader Alone; 10) Flight Of The Snow Goose; 11) Preparation; 12) Dunkirk; 13) Epitaph; 14) Fritha Alone; 15) La Princesse Perdue; 16) The Great Marsh.

I confess that I have not read anything by Paul Gallico — I also confess that the basic plotline of The Snow Goose does not impress me nearly enough to seek it out, nor do the occasional critical slashes at the sixty-four page novella that accuse it of excessive sentimentality. Nevertheless, I would also think that a profound acquaintance with this literary work is not totally necessary in order to enjoy Camel's third album for what it is: the quintessential, if maybe not the best, Camel album that only Camel could have made.

Ironically, it was the success of the lengthy suites on Mirage that led the band to considering making a record that would be fully based on a piece of literature; but that piece of literature was not a Tolkien epic, but a modern time fairy tale with a sad ending, sort of a cross between Hans Christian Andersen and Erich Maria Remarque. The fairy tale has three characters — the loner Rhayader, the innocent girl Fritha, and the symbolic Snow Goose — who are so self-sufficient, it seems, that the entire world, from the marshlands of Essex to the beaches of Dunkirk in 1940, just acts as a canvas for their triangularity. That was exactly what Latimer and Bardens needed to set them back on the right track and recreate the atmosphere of dark-beautiful loneliness that they originally generated on Camel, but sort of dissipated on Mirage.

The album is completely instrumental, and its full title is, in fact, Music Inspired By The Snow Goose; both of these things are due to Gallico's disapproval of the project and the necessity to avoid copyright infringement lawsuits. The lack of vocals does make the experience a bit more demanding: the tunes are generally very similar in mood, and the emphasis is on texture rather than flashy, distinctive hooks. But The Snow Goose really has to be assimilated as one 43-minute suite with a bunch of separate movements, even though some of the songs had to be pulled out as singles; in concert, they tended to play it complete whenever possible, and even the titles clearly hint that they're all part of a whole — I mean, ʻFlight Of The Snow Gooseʼ, when issued as a single, probably made people not-in-the-know think it was a parody on ʻFlight Of The Bumblebeeʼ or something.

The music in general is fairly typical for Camel, incorporating elements of jazz fusion, folk, «art-pop» hearkening back to Sixties' psychedelia, and first generation symph-prog. Everything is handled very delicately: despite the sentimental potential, this is not really the kind of music that will tear and rip you apart with sonic passion — most of the themes are played quietly, without rising to breathtaking heights or plunging to abysmal depths. For instance, ʻRhayaderʼjust hops along at a moderately fast tempo, with pretty flute and keyboard melodies creating a cheerful atmosphere (too cheerful, I'd say, for a loner like the title character); ʻRhayader Goes To Townʼ slightly increases tempo and fuss, throws in some shrill guitar solos, then becomes a blues jam for a few minutes, then just sort of fizzles away. Always pleasant to hear, rarely memorable.

In my opinion, this «pleasantness» only becomes to gradually evolve into something grander with ʻFlight Of The Snow Gooseʼ — all those short bits when Rhayader and Fritha save the bird and help it to convalesce are cute, but it is only when the main theme of ʻFlightʼ emerges out of the synth bubbles that the album starts building a bit of epic muscle. ʻDunkirkʼ is the second big success, though probably not as big as it could have been: the jazz-rock interpretation of the big event is quite furious for Camel, but surely Yes or ELP would have raised even more tension. And then there is the stately finale of ʻLa Princesse Perdueʼ, built around a simple, but beautiful «friendly-sad» guitar figure from Latimer, reminiscent of either Harrison or Gilmour, depending on your immediate associations. The musical ideas contained in these three tracks are like pillars on which everything else is resting.

That said, I would not have given the album a thumbs up for just three tracks. In reality, it is the kind of record that I like more when I am not listening to it too closely. When I try to do that, I usually get bored quickly; but if I do not, eventually it grows into something bigger and more mysterious than simple background music. Believe it or not, it does feel like some strange and sentimental happening, taking place somewhere in a far away marshland: lonely place, lonely people, spiritual isolation, the works. You might have to wait a little for the humble magic to start happening, but eventually it will, maybe with a little active help from the imagination. And maybe it is a good thing that this album was not made by the likes of Yes or ELP, because they would have made it all on a grand grand scale, which would be all right for ʻDunkirkʼ but certainly not for any other tracks. The subject, the atmosphere, the vision — this all perfectly suits the talents and characters of Bardens and Latimer.

MOONMADNESS (1976)

1) Aristillus; 2) Song Within A Song; 3) Chord Change; 4) Spirit Of The Water; 5) Another Night; 6) Air Born; 7) Lunar Sea.

The last album to be produced by the original lineup, Moonmadness does bring on some lunar associations, but not much by way of madness, which is just not a state of mind that comes naturally to Camel music; Moonsadness or Moonmelancholia would have been a far more apt description. In many ways, this is a return to the stylistics of Mirage, but it sounds more original and «Camel-native» than Mirage, without so many blatant Yes-isms or Crimson-isms and, fortunately, without such an explicitly stated Tolkien influence. If anything, it represents the symphonic progressive ambitions of Mirage tempered with the «secluded loner vibe» of Snow Goose, so that some of the tunes come across as bold and humble at the same time.

Most of the record is taken over by five multi-part compositions, with the vocals making a slight, not triumphant, return — the focus remains on instrumental passages and their capacity of being woven into dynamic suites with constantly, though not too quickly, changing keys, tempos, and vibes of whose nature the band members themselves are often not too sure, so they just name the songs ʻSong Within A Songʼ and ʻChord Changeʼ to avoid a painful search for verbal interpretation of their own musical ideas. And indeed, how would one describe the seven minutes of ʻSong Within A Songʼ, other than «tastefully pleasant»? It goes through a slow nocturnal-pastoral section, with moody keyboard and flute solos, then through a «solemn» transitional phase with a repetitive guitar riff that never seems to find a proper resolution, and finally through a fast blues-rock, almost boogie, section with «astral» synth solos all over the place. It's a nice thing to have, and it is all much more restrained and less «rockish» than any given instrumental passage by Yes, but this also means that it does not affect the senses too heavily.

Things get quirkier and/or more focused later on, though. ʻChord Changeʼ is one of their best efforts in the jazz-fusion sphere, with some terrific guitar work from Latimer, sometimes playing «spiraling» descending scales that turn him into a less flashy Santana. ʻAnother Nightʼ employs grimly distorted power chords and psychedelic pedal effects to convey the feel of panicky desperation creeping up on you in the night — a well-known feel, for sure, but somehow they manage to transmit it by means of arena-rock tricks without making it sound like cheap arena-rock, if you follow me at all. ʻAir Bornʼ, for a change, has a really dainty vocal melody that agrees well with the synthesized string background. And ʻLunar Seaʼ, as follows from its title, sets itself the challenge of combining «maritime» and «astral» atmospheres — and then rises up to the challenge by squeezing everything that is possible from Bardens' synthesizers, although I am not quite as sure if the song's sped-up, jazzier, more tempestuous passages truly evoke the feeling of a storm taking place in the middle of a «lunar sea».

Anyway, choosing between Mirage and Moonmadness to answer the question «which one of Camel's albums from the symph-prog shelf should be our first pick?» is very much a question of subtle and fickle taste; I vote for Moonmadness because my personal intuition detects faint traces of gentle sorrow and intelligent gloominess, many of them «felt» rather than properly «heard», which were sacrificed on Mirage to make way for a little more rockin' energy so that the guys could classify as true prog-rockers, with emphasis on the second part. On the other hand, it's not as if this here was some particularly breathtaking collection of superior prog rock melodies, either — too few of the themes rise above «nice» as far as their ability to rattle one's nerve strings is concerned. Thumbs up it is, after some deliberation, but still a small step down from the vibe of Snow Goose — although without Snow Goose in between, this would probably have been Mirage Vol. 2, so here's to maturity and continuous self-discovery.

RAIN DANCES (1977)

1) First Light; 2) Metrognome; 3) Tell Me; 4) Highways Of The Sun; 5) Unevensong; 6) One Of These Early Days I'll Get An Early Night; 7) Elke; 8) Skylines; 9) Rain Dances.

At this point, members of the Progressive Club usually begin having reservations about Camel's alleged loyalty. Not only does this period initiate the break-up of the original band, as Doug Ferguson is replaced on bass by Richard Sinclair (formerly of Caravan) and ex-King Crimsonian Mel Collins is added on sax, but it also initiates the drift towards a more commercial sound, as experienced, first and foremost, on the lead single ʻHighways Of The Sunʼ — with its straightforward rhythmic punch, anthemic catchy vocal, and joyful-optimistic atmosphere. Actually, there is little to distinguish the song from contemporary arena-ready soft-rock; it could have been produced by anybody from Chicago to Styx, and it sure as hell did not need to be produced by Camel, a band to which sunny optimism comes as naturally as reggae comes to AC/DC.

However, outside of the radio-oriented single (which did not seriously chart anyway), Rain Dances is actually not that much of a sellout. More accurately, it is a somewhat blander, limper companion to the atmospheric soundscapes of Moonmadness, with a similar mix of symph-prog, pop, jazz-fusion, and ambience, only more flaccid hooks and an even stronger promise to never erupt from the cozy comfy background. Not even Brian Eno, when invited to contribute on the most ambient of the tracks, ʻElkeʼ, can do much to break the quiet, uninvolving pleasantness: he may have been concocting mindblowing sonic panoramas for Bowie at the same time, but for Latimer, he just dishes out a standard synth canvas that merely serves as support for Andy's lazy, pretty, unmemorable flute solo. Did they really need Brian for that one? Gee, I hope he at least got underpaid for this hackjob.

I think the only track here that consistently gets respect from «serious» fans is ʻUnevensongʼ, because it, like, shifts keys and gears several times from beginning to end. But it sounds too fragile and fluffy for me to like it because of its energy, and too unfocused in any of its sections to like it because of its beauty or melodicity. Too much sunshine and not enough rain — too much tenderness that is not properly supported by outstanding hooks, and the dynamics is wasted, too, because the tricky time signature section in the middle, which the syncopated bass and the grumbly synthesizers would probably want to present as a disturbing counterpoint, is not played with enough feeling. In fact, very little on the album is played with enough feeling — you almost get the impression that the entire band was suffering from a severe vitamin deficit at the time.

The entire band shares credits on ʻOne Of These Early Daysʼ, a funky fusion track, almost bordering on disco in spots — with a series of keyboard, sax, and guitar solos that should qualify as «easy listening» (Latimer goes for a Santana kind of sound... but why?). Again, it is the kind of music that would be perfect as the theme for a mid-Seventies TV talk show, but it is pretty hard to acknowledge it as an actual work of art... and since pretty much the same goes for everything else here, I would like to just cut the review short and say that, of all Camel albums in the 1970s, this one is arguably the least essential — although the Progressive Club predictably rates it higher than Breathless, I profoundly disagree, because I by far prefer this band abandoning all progressive ambitions and going all-out pop than hanging in between, loosening and softening the complexity and energy of their music, but still refusing to make it catchy. Therefore, feel free to just skip Puddle Dances as a misguided transitional album, and see them reinvent themselves with a vengeance on whatever followed.

BREATHLESS (1978)

1) Breathless; 2) Echoes; 3) Wing And A Prayer; 4) Down On The Farm; 5) Starlight Ride; 6) Summer Lightning; 7) You Make Me Smile; 8) Sleeper; 9) Rainbow's End.

Finally, a certified sellout! With the same lineup as on Rain Dances, Latimer and Bardens take Camel on a relaxed journey that combines traces of their «progressive» past with pure pop, simple balladry, and even a few escapades into the corny world of contemporary dance music (ʻSummer Lightningʼ borders on disco). With so much evidence in hand to make a perfectly winnable case, prog fans usually say that this is the point at which Camel finally sheds its hump and ceases to exist as a means of transporting the listener to magical musical worlds.

Despite this, and despite the even more suspicious fact that Breathless is also a fairly «happy» record for Camel, I have always felt attracted to it — perhaps because the songs harbor some sort of bright collective innocence. Even the two syrupy ballads, ʻYou Make Me Smileʼ and ʻRainbow's Endʼ, which usually receive the lion's share of hatred, are well-written and lack some of the cheesier trappings typically associated with such material — ʻYou Make Me Smileʼ may be riding a simplistic danceable bassline, but Latimer's tender vocal delivery still wins over with its quiet humility; the intonations and hooks put it closer to contemporary pop material by the Kinks and Fleetwood Mac's Christine McVie rather than Styx or Foreigner or Chicago. And even if the falsetto vocal harmonies on ʻRainbow's Endʼ are a cringeworthy misstep, overdone to irritating point, the basic vocal melody itself is quite nicely modulated.

There's some really odd stuff, too, like Richard Sinclair's ʻDown On The Farmʼ, which begins quite deceptively with some huge power chords, like a monster Boston-style arena rocker — then, in one single whiff, turns into a quiet rural Brit-pop ditty that would not feel completely out of place on The Cheerful Insanity Of Giles, Giles & Fripp (a bit of extra humor and absurdity wouldn't hurt, though). ʻStarlight Rideʼ, with its smoothly sustained keyboard parts and gentle harmonies, sounds like London Town-era (i. e. contemporary) Paul McCartney with an extra baroque touch. And ʻSummer Lightningʼ basically just commits the crime of employing a dance signature, otherwise fully preserving Camel's aesthetics of quiet, unassuming, melancholic jazz-pop (it also features Latimer's most energetic-aggressive solo on the entire album).

The conservative spirit rules on two «prog leftovers», the seven-minute semi-epics ʻEchoesʼ (no relation to Floyd) and ʻSleeperʼ, of which the former has a pretty main theme in the guise of a psychedelic waltz, and the latter is an unremarkable exercise in fusion, truly the «sleeper» of the album. Essentially, it is as if you had a choice here — do you want the old Camel with its tired prog vibe, or the new Camel with its fresh ideas? The new Camel may go disco on your ass, but at least it's got the benefit of unpredictability. The old Camel will not betray its sense of taste and dignity, but it's never going to expand on Snow Goose and Moonmadness. Now it is all up to you, music lovers with an interest in the year nineteen hundred and seventy eight.

Personally, I think that Breathless is one of the better executed «compromises» of the time, and at the very least I'd definitely take it over stuff like Yes' Tormato or Genesis' And Then There Were Three: when Latimer and Bardens go pop, they are brave enough to go all the way that it takes to reach a proper hook, selling out for an actual purpose rather than just selling out and making music that is unsatisfactory from all points of view (not catchy enough to constitute good pop, not complex enough to make up for decent prog). As a result, we have this oddly optimistic record, full of good, friendly vibes presented without too much sentimentalism and without any unwarranted pathos whatsoever; a record that I not only find impossible to hate, but endorse with all the strength of a firmly fixed thumbs up rating.

A LIVE RECORD (1978)

1) Never Let Go; 2) Song Within A Song; 3) Lunar Sea; 4) Skylines; 5) Ligging At Louis'; 6) Lady Fantasy; 7) The Great Marsh; 8) Rhayader; 9) Rhayader Goes To Town; 10) Sanctuary; 11) Fritha; 12) The Snow Goose; 13) Friendship; 14) Migration; 15) Rhayader Alone; 16) Flight Of The Snow Goose; 17) Preparation; 18) Dunkirk; 19) Epitaph; 20) Fritha Alone; 21) La Princesse Perdue; 22) The Great Marsh.

This is quite a long album, but the review will be very short. Instead of concentrating on a single show, the band took a selection of recordings from various points in their career, spanning the 1974-77, interval, and capped it off with a complete live recording of The Snow Goose at the Royal Albert Hall in October 1975, accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra (which must have been on a real tight budget that year). Only one of the tracks, Bardens' instrumental ʻLigging At Louis'ʼ, was previously unreleased; everything else is quite familiar... and played almost note-for-note the same way as it was in the studio.

Not that this is somehow atypical of prog bands, but it does place Camel in the category of those of them who were usually happy just reproducing the complexity and the atmospheres of studio material (like Yes or Genesis) rather than those that used the stage as a pretext to fire up some improvisational creativity (like King Crimson, or even ELP on a good day). And it pretty much renders any «review» of such a live album pointless once the reviewer has stated the obvious — yes, they do a very good job reproducing it all on stage. Even the lonely melancholy of Snow Goose is carried over so flawlessly that it almost feels weird to hear the occasional round of applause — like, you're not saying there are actually people out there to witness the proceedings?

Serious Camel fans will, of course, notice minor differences and maybe even take delight in savoring some of them (like, there's a short extra bass solo on ʻNever Let Goʼ, and Latimer's guitar solo is more distorted and fusion-esque), but then they might also get mad at some of the others (like, the synthesized string tone on ʻSong Within A Songʼ is so much cheesier than the melodeon-like tone of the original), ultimately spending a lot of time and emotions on mutually outcanceling flaws and advantages. Even the addition of the orchestra for Snow Goose — on one hand, it's a nice distinctive touch, on the other, they pretty much shush it much of the time so that it doesn't overshadow the band. So why bother in the first place?

If you do wish to bother, know that the 2002 reissue of the album has made it even huger, adding about 6-7 additional tunes (mostly from Moonmadness) to completely pad out the storage capacity of 2 CDs; I have not heard that one, but I have no high hopes for pleasant surprises. Not that it hurts or anything to hear Snow Goose one more time, but ultimately, this is just more proof that classic progressive rock rarely makes for treasurable live records.

I CAN SEE YOUR HOUSE FROM HERE (1979)

1) Wait; 2) Your Love Is Stranger Than Mine; 3) Eye Of The Storm; 4) Who We Are; 5) Survival; 6) Hymn To Her; 7) Neon Magic; 8) Remote Romance; 9) Ice.

Just by glancing at the album cover and title, you'd think that Camel's last album of the decade would be some sort of sci-fi extravaganza — maybe a Gargantuan tribute to the lonesome genius of ʻSpace Oddityʼ, or a Tangerine Dream-influenced escapade into cosmic ambience. Turns out that nothing could be further from the truth: the whole setup probably owes more to marketing strategies and Star Wars-era futurism-in-the-past than actual musical content. Instead, what you really get here is Camel's most mainstream and poppy piece of product so far, an album even more «commercial» in nature than Breathless, but hopefully we are all sufficiently grown-up here to not let this detract us from an objective and adequate assessment.

The sessions marked what was probably the single most significant line-up change in Camel history: the departure of Pete Bardens, temporarily replaced by not one, but two keyboardists: Jan Schelhaas, formerly of Caravan, and Kit Watkins, formerly of Happy The Man (so third-generation prog they even named themselves after a Genesis song!). In addition to that, Richard Sinclair also left, replaced by Colin Bass on, appropriately, bass; and, although Mel Collins still blows his sax on a few of these tunes, he'd also quit soon after the sessions. And, as if that weren't enough, rumor has it that Phil Collins himself adds his percussion skills somewhere, but I could not locate any individual song credits, and I am too unworthy to take a guess.

Anyway, with all these major changes we might expect major musical twists as well, but, as it happens, the transition between Breathless and its follow-up is fairly smooth — probably because already the former was largely dominated by Latimer, and it was that dominance that ultimately caused Bardens to throw in the towel. Here, too, almost all the songs are either written exclusively or co-written by Latimer; the only exception is the instrumental ʻEye Of The Stormʼ that Watkins brought over with him from Happy The Man, a moody, leisurely stroll that slowly takes on a bolero-like form while not producing much of anything, except for the intertwining crawling patterns of two synthesizers — "eye of the storm" indeed.

As you can understand, this is the most «progressive» bit on the album, although it is seriously challenged by the final track, ʻIceʼ, which is even slower, features just as many vocal bits (none), and is really used as a simple trampoline from which Latimer unleashes an epic guitar solo, again showing us how well he can challenge Dave Gilmour at romantic bluesy desperation (actually, I'd say that the typical romantic bluesy desperate Latimer guitar solo from the 1970s sounds like a later, rather than earlier, Gilmour solo — think Division Bell era or something like that). The mechanics of that emotional manipulation are well understood, but Andrew still manages to stay on the other side of cheesiness, with what I'd call «realistic» tunings and tones as opposed to extra-flash-and-pomp you'd encounter on, say, a Gary Moore record. Simply put, I'll never be capable of crying my heart out to the sounds of that solo — but I'd gladly recognize anybody else's right to do that.

Most of the other material is poppy, ranging from the opening Seventies-style hello-sunshine upbeatness of ʻWaitʼ and ʻYour Love Is Stranger Than Mineʼ to the more contemporary, New Wave-influenced ʻRemote Romanceʼ that sounds like 10cc trying to write a Cars song (granted, I probably made it sound more interesting than it actually is). Oh, and how could we forget ʻNeon Magicʼ, the very title of which probably dates the song to a specific period? Featuring probably the very worst vocal delivery on any Camel album ever, it's not a disco song, but still one of those dance numbers that supposedly sound like parodies of dance numbers and end up being... just dance numbers. It's one of those pitfalls that are so very hard to avoid when you're trying to carry out an intelligent, critically appreciated sellout.

There's even a sentimental pop song here disguised as a prog epic due to its length — 7:51 for ʻWho We Areʼ is overkill, possibly inherited from Caravan, who had also by that time completed the transgression to pop, but sometimes allocated unreasonable spans to their ballad material. The good news is that all this soft-rock stuff is quite catchy, and most of the songs breathe with a very natural gentleness, never spoiled by excessive operatic oversinging, abuse of orchestration or synthesizers, or any uncomfortably cloying moves. There might be a bit too many falsetto vocal harmonies, and, most importantly, there might be an overdose of sweetness, but even something as simple as "we were meant for each other, we will love one another" can be forgivable if it is arranged as a captivating earworm.

On the whole, the album is a bit of a letdown after Breathless: the band takes fewer chances and goes for a generally more cohesive and monotonous approach, making even their «proggier» titles more poppy and accessible. But from a purely melodic point of view, it actually shows Latimer becoming a certified master of the form — and for doing that with very few lapses of taste (ʻNeon Magicʼ notwithstanding), the record certainly deserves a thumbs up.

NUDE (1981)

1) City Life; 2) Nude; 3) Drafted; 4) Docks; 5) Beached; 6) Landscapes; 7) Changing Places; 8) Pomp & Circumstance; 9) Please Come Home; 10) Reflections; 11) Captured; 12) The Homecoming; 13) Lies; 14) The Birthday Cake; 15) Nude's Return.

A curious and almost brave move here: just as Camel's transformation into a «pop» band was nearly complete, Latimer suddenly rebounded and came out with his second «tone poem» (I'd hesitate to use the term «rock opera»: unlike Snow Goose, Nude does have several sung parts, but there's certainly not enough of them to qualify) — and, once again, the subject is loneliness and seclusion in the face of war, the whole thing being a musical retelling of the story of Hiroo Onoda, stranded in the Philippine jungle for thirty years after the end of World War II, refusing to believe that the fighting has ended.

Admittedly, the suite never gets the same kind of respect from fans as Snow Goose, largely for the reason that it shares quite a few simplified pop values with its two predecessors, and is on the whole far less adventurous and «progressive». This may be true, but it's not as if Snow Goose was a genuine prog monster, either — except for occasional heavier emphasis on jazz-fusion elements, it seems that its main advantage was the lack of vocals, which always makes any musical work seem superficially more «serious». Nude, on the contrary, opens with ʻCity Lifeʼ, a bona fide soft-pop song bordering on adult contemporary — and even if its tone and message fits in very well with the rest of the album, by way of a happy-sad introspective look back at one's «odd» past from the point of view of the «normal» present, it can certainly warp the general perspective, because, you know, first impressions do matter.

However, on the whole Nude is a success, because for the first time in years Latimer finds himself fully immersed in his most natural state — melancholic introspection. Most of the tracks, bar story-demanded interludes like the triumphant-martial ʻHomecomingʼ, set the same autumnal mood that, as some listeners have cleverly stated, sounds like post-Waters era Floyd before post-Waters Floyd was even invented — but without the same kind of emphatic wallowing in one's own misery that often irks people away from A Momentary Lapse Of Reason. Besides, some of the mood-shifting interludes are actually quite good, like the «action-packed» ʻDocks/Beachedʼ, illustrating Nude's arrival and combat action in the Philippines — the former with its scary, echo-laden thunder-and-lightning slide guitar lines, and the latter being the only trace on the album of the band's former jazzy glories.

More typically, the instrumental pieces shift between minimalistic New Agey ambience (ʻLandscapesʼ, ʻReflectionsʼ), obligatory tribal beats representing Nude's «exotic» surroundings (ʻChanging Placesʼ), and occasional outbursts of retro-progressive activity to illustrate shifts of circumstances (ʻCapturedʼ, whose melodic shifts might remind you of Gabriel-era Genesis). No individual piece is remarkable on its own, but in between all of them they certainly tell a coherent and interesting story, albeit probably not the kind of story that Onoda himself would have told (and, for that matter, even though Latimer is credited for playing koto on at least a few of the tracks, I did not specifically notice any Japanese motifs — not that it's a crime or anything).

Only one track in particular has always stood out for me, and struck a far more aching chord than just about any other Camel song in existence — ʻLiesʼ, representing Onoda's initial exhausted and heartbroken reaction to his return to society ("Tell me no lies, has peace arrived, or is this some kind of joke?"). It's not too complex, and its main active weapon, Latimer's angry-depressed Gilmour-style guitar work, may seem all too predictable, but there is still something special about its bluesy ambience. It just sums up so well everything that must be going on in the soul of somebody whose whole world has just crashed and crumbled around him and who has to gather all his remaining strength to start anew, yet is unsure if he can make it. It's honestly one of the most depressed tracks I've ever heard — and I've heard quite a few — although it probably works better in the context of the album than all by itself.

The record still cops out with a «Hollywoodish» happy ending — ʻNude's Returnʼ, where sadness and exhaustion are ultimately shown as trumped by optimism and hope in the future, a quietly rejoicing finale that may be true to real life (seeing as how the real Onoda did not commit suicide or anything, but lived to the ripe age of 91) but is less loyal to great art; my response to this is that I usually stop the album right at the abrupt ending of ʻLiesʼ and imagine that the protagonist takes his own life at this precise moment. That way, Nude becomes a slow-paced, quietly-intensifying atmospheric masterpiece for me, and even if many of its individual ingredients may suffer from limping, there's no other Camel album that would steadily and inevitably lead the way to such a snappy coda.

Although the record was recorded in 1981, this is the one that truly puts a stop to «Seventies' Camel» — not only would The Single Factor herald the departure of the last original member of the band, bar Latimer, but it would also signify Camel's transition into the new reality of the new decade. And, oddly enough, if there is one other album in the band's catalog that could be seen as a spiritual companion to Nude, it is the first one, the self-titled one — they have really gone full circle with their brooding, starting out with almost a manifesto of lonerism and eventually ending up with Hiroo Onoda as an even more authentic mascot for lonerism than Philip Rhayader (who at least had Fritha and the goose to keep him company). And no matter how much criticism people may fling at the «softness», «simplicity», or «boredom» of these individual bits and pieces, on the whole I really enjoy the way Nude reaches out to the sad loner in all (or at least most) of us, if you're ready to connect, so — thumbs up, most definitely.

THE SINGLE FACTOR (1982)

1) No Easy Answer; 2) You Are The One; 3) Heroes; 4) Selva; 5) Lullabye; 6) Sasquatch; 7) Manic; 8) Camelogue; 9) Today's Goodbye; 10) Heart's Desire; 11) End Peace.

Existence of this record is often attributed to pure contractual obligation: by 1982, Camel were pretty much defunct as a band, with the next-to-last remaining founding member, Andy Ward, leaving Latimer's company due to personal problems, yet Decca still expected Andrew to fulfill the contract and hand them another LP — and, moreover, a «commercial» one, rather than yet another morose semi-instrumental suite about some crazy Japanese soldier. With no place left to run, Latimer concurred, and, allegedly unwillingly, produced the next «Camel» album all on his own, deserted, disillusioned, and dissatisfied.

Actually, not nearly on his own — as a matter of fact, The Single Factor «boasts» the single largest number of guest musicians on a Camel album so far. Out of the old friends, Bardens makes a brief appearance on the instrumental ʽSasquatchʼ, and keyboardist Duncan Mackay, who played on Nude, reprises his duties on another instrumental, ʽSelvaʼ. Elsewhere, you get to feel the vibe of such diverse talents as former Genesis member Anthony Phillips (here mostly playing keyboards rather than guitar, despite being much better known as a guitarist), Fairport Convention drummer Dave Mattacks (one track), Pilot's and Alan Parsons' bass player David Paton, and about half a dozen other less well-known musicians.

With a chaotic soup like this replacing a virtually defunct band, and with industry demands spiling the joy of artistic creation, and the overall times not being particularly auspicious for old school progressive rock, it is, in fact, amazing that The Single Factor is not such a complete disaster as could be predicted. It is fairly bland, unadventurous, unfocused, and self-plagiarizing, yes, but things could be much worse — it would be all too easy to see Latimer plunge into synth-pop or electrofunk, for instance, conforming to popular demand and embarrassing himself to no ends. This he does not do, even if the songs are mostly «pop», and there's quite a few synthesizers on them. Nor does he go all cheerful and life-asserting on our asses, betraying his natural melancholy — which ends up showing even on the «positive» songs like ʽYou Are The Oneʼ.

The problem with Single Factor is that, despite all the various guests, it sounds very monotonous and mono-mood-like. Layers of acoustic and electronic keyboards, sometimes merging into one with Latimer's guitar parts, all give a constant feel of something very smooth, pretty, sad, and utterly uneventful, no matter how involved the rhythm section is or at what tempo they play the song. ʽSasquatchʼ is a rare exception, distinguished by a well-composed Latimer lead melody and benefiting very much from Phillips' 12-string guitar part and Bardens' mini-Moog solo — and some of the guitar overdubs give a really weird psychedelic effect, too. But stuff like ʽSelvaʼ and ʽEnd Peaceʼ has little to distinguish it from a thousand contemporary or later New Age instrumentals, unless you find yourself specifically moved by Latimer's minimalistic bluesy solo on the former (I cannot say that I am, because he is trying to hit us in the soft spot that's already been occupied by the likes of Santana).

Of the superficially catchy pop songs, there is not one that actively irritates me (although the fast tempo and overall tempest-in-a-teacup attitude of ʽManicʼ comes close), but not a single one that would beg for replay value, either. It is bizarre that the verse melody of ʽCamelogueʼ begins exactly the same way as AC/DC's ʽLet Me Put My Love Into Youʼ (should that be interpreted as proof of Latimer being a closet fan of Back In Black?), but that's about the most profound observation I could make about this bunch, alternating between odes of admiration and nostalgic laments but never reaching any solid musical heights. There's even a song called ʽHeroesʼ, but David Bowie has nothing to be afraid of — it's slow, instrumentally hookless, and completely dependent on its whiny plea of "heroes, I call for you!" that no hero could take seriously, unless it would be to promptly arrive on the scene and put the pleader out of his misery.

In short, I am quite tempted to give the record a thumbs down — it is truly the first Camel album that has nothing new or interesting to say — but as long as Latimer maintains that low profile and that humble façade and does not pretend to be a master of musical forms that he does not understand or love, there's nothing discretely «bad» about this music, and it can work okay as a background mood setter. However, in terms of the overall trajectory, it is a fairly mean blow to be presented with something like this right after the relative artistic triumph of Nude.

STATIONARY TRAVELLER (1984)

1) Pressure Points; 2) Refugee; 3) Vopos; 4) Cloak And Dagger Man; 5) Stationary Traveller; 6) West Berlin; 7) Fingertips; 8) Missing; 9) After Words; 10) Long Goodbyes.

I imagine that after the blatant «sellout» of Single Factor, this was Latimer's attempt at repentance — another concept album on the issue of feeling lonely, oppressed, and rejected in a hostile world, only this time neither rooted in fantasy, as Snow Goose, nor in exotic reality, like Nude: Stationary Traveller deals with the everyday routine and escapist dreams of East Berliners, just five years before the demolition of The Wall, but still in a period when most people could hardly even dream about this event. A pretty decent topic for a Camel album, for sure, but the lineup assembled by Latimer for the sessions is questionable from the beginning — Ton Scherpenzeel on keyboards, a Dutch player who was the founding member of the occasionally pretty, but often bland and boring «soft-prog» band Kayak; and drummer Paul Burgess, whose main claim to fame was playing for the Godley-less and Creme-free version of 10cc.

Not that we should exclusively blame the keyboardist and the drummer for the fact that Stationary Traveller, for the most part, is a tedious, lifeless bore — a record that, dare I say it, is much worse than The Single Factor, because it pretends to a higher level of spirituality and a deeper level of, uh, depth, while at the same time fully embracing the safe, predictable, and sonically limp values of «adult contemporary». The sound has been compressed into a single monotonous texture of plastic synthesizers and Latimer's out-of-new-ideas weepy guitar solos, and all the songs produce absolutely the same emotional effect. Unfortunately, I just can't take any of this seriously — certainly not when even a Mel Collins guest spot on ʽFingertipsʼ takes on the characteristics of jazz muzak à la Kenny G.

What really kills the album is that its ultra-serious tone came at a very inopportune time. Take a song like ʽVoposʼ, which is supposed to brew up an atmosphere of fear, nay, dread at the perspective of being taken at night by the Volkspolizei — the atmosphere in question being represented by a dark synth-bass line, a couple simple overdubbed synth loops, and a distorted power metal riff added in climactic moments. Not only do all those tones sound plastic and dated in the modern age, but the effort seems lazy and amateurish compared to emotionally similar work from, say, The Cure: Latimer is simply incapable of handling all that technology without making it obvious that he is doing it just for the sake of trendiness. Or ʽCloak And Dagger Manʼ — that's a classic example of «dinosaur prog gone pop», a steroid-muscular rocker that sounds more like post-Howe Asia than anything truly respectable... and, by the way, why is it trying to be so furious when it's about secret KGB agents?

It gets no better with the instrumentals, which uniformly lack memorable themes and just feature one dull keyboard or guitar solo after another. ʽPressure Pointsʼ is arguably the most interesting of these, compositionally, with Latimer taking after Mike Oldfield and delivering a strongly Celtic-influenced rather than blues-based passage — but the effect is still almost nullified by the awful backing synthesizers. As for stuff like the title track, it's largely conventional blues balladeering (ʽHotel Californiaʼ style) with equally awful arrangements.

By the time we get to the grand finale of ʽLong Goodbyesʼ, your main concern might very likely be about how to make the actual goodbye shorter — at any cost possible. You were supposed to be drawn into a realistic atmosphere of fear, depression, and solitude, but the means chosen to express it all were so inept that, of all Westerners alive, I can only think of Barclay James Harvest as an even worse speaker for the freedom and happiness of German people. I have no idea of how well the album did on Western German charts at the time, but I do know that Decca never expressed any desire to go on with Camel's contract after it was released, and for once, I couldn't really blame them; so here we go, with the first definitive thumbs down in Camel history.

DUST AND DREAMS (1991)

1) Dust Bowl; 2) Go West; 3) Dusted Out; 4) Mother Road; 5) Needles; 6) Rose Of Sharon; 7) Milk 'n' Honey; 8) End Of The Line; 9) Storm Clouds; 10) Cotton Camp; 11) Broken Banks; 12) Sheet Rain; 13) Whispers; 14) Little Rivers And Little Rose; 15) Hopeless Anger; 16) Whispers In The Rain.

Isn't it a bit too predictable that, upon moving to California in the late Eighties, Latimer got the idea to make his new album into a conceptual suite based on The Grapes Of Wrath? Maybe he, too, liked to imagine himself as an outcast, broken down by the capitalist system (as personified by Decca Records) and further battered by unfavorable circumstances? Oh well, at any rate he must have been well off enough so as not to resort to baling cotton or picking peaches — instead, inspired by his new beginnings and supported by his wife, Susan Hoover (who wrote a large part of the lyrics), he set up his own minor label (Camel Productions), got the Stationary Traveller band back together, and besieged his muse for comfort.

Theoretically, a Camel-style musical / rock opera / oratorio / whatever, based on The Grapes Of Wrath, could have been a humble masterpiece — had it been recorded an era ago. The problem with Dust And Dreams, though, is that in terms of overall sound it is exactly like Stationary Traveller. The two main ingredients are still Scherpenzeel's «adult-approved» synthesizers and Latimer's clean, tasteful, and all-too-polite electric guitar; in between the two, they keep on generating the exact same soft-pretty-melancholic mood on every single track, and the result is yet another record whose appeal will largely be restricted to fans of post-Waters era Pink Floyd and very late Alan Parsons Project.

It might seem like a very good idea that most of the tracks are instrumental: the first two thirds of the album shift between vocal and instrumental compositions, and the final third, beginning with ʽStorm Cloudsʼ, is a completely instrumental suite, with several movements illustrating different moments from Tom Joad's timeline. After all, Camel's best albums had always been associated with instrumental music, and the vocals were one of the major reasons why Stationary Traveller had that safe-and-bland adult contemporary look. Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple. While the final suite does sound unmistkably «Camelish», the instrumentation is too monotonous, and the melodic themes are too unimaginative, for it to even begin to match the peaks of Snow Goose or even Nude.

The most bold and «progressive» part of the suite is ʽHopeless Angerʼ, which does try to be louder, more dynamic and, indeed, angry than the rest of the compositions — and even goes as far as to incorporate some non-standard time signatures and multiple theme changes. But everything is just way too predictable — the big drum sound, the synth textures, the melodic guitar solos that always stop right on the brink of becoming exciting. There's no true memorability to these themes, and there's almost no personality; in fact, I think I'd easily pick contemporary Rush product over this, because at least Rush have always had the advantage of technically more impressive musicianship (well, Latimer might probably hold his own against Alex Lifeson, but the rhythm section on Dust And Dreams is not even worth talking about).

As for the vocal songs, well... I guess the only true low point is ʽRose Of Sharonʼ, which sounds like a cross between an ABBA ballad (courtesy of guest vocalist Mae McKenna, who is sometimes compared with Enya but here sometimes dips into Frida's style) and a Disney musical number, but I am not really impressed with stuff like ʽMother Roadʼ (a MOR rocker with the usual boring pop metal rhythm guitars) or even with potentially poignant lyrical tracks like ʽGo Westʼ that seem to be trying way too hard to woo the listener with their «deep» sentimentality. Too clean, too polished, too Spiritual for a band that did not even have the budget to hire a proper orchestra, and had to model all of its Spirituality on awful plastic keyboards. (Okay, so one cannot really blame them for lack of budget — but, I dunno, one single classically trained cellist could have made more of a contribution than Tom Scherpenzeel and his array of electronics).

Overall, this is not a disaster — there's enough intelligent guitar playing here, and enough of reasonable musical ideas to at least let you know that this is no contract obligation we're talking about. But in terms of general sound, this record was frickin' dated before its time: production values are totally hickey for the likes of 1991 — more like 1987, when even Bruce Springsteen succumbed to such cheesiness on Tunnel Of Love. If Stationary Traveller was an odd conceptual idea degraded to the level of total embarrassment, then Dust And Dreams is an improvement, as it's a fine conceptual idea degarded to the level of passable mediocrity. But that, unfortunately, is still not much of a recommendation.

HARBOUR OF TEARS (1996)

1) Irish Air; 2) Irish Air (instrumental reprise); 3) Harbour Of Tears; 4) Cybh; 5) Send Home The Slates; 6) Under The Moon; 7) Watching The Bobbins; 8) Generations; 9) Eyes Of Ireland; 10) Running From Paradise; 11) End Of The Day; 12) Coming Of Age; 13) The Hour Candle.

Honestly, there's not much to say about Harbour Of Tears after what has been said about Dust And Dreams. Here is another concept album about people going out West — this time, not from the Dust Bowl to California, though, but from the coasts of Ireland to the American shores: a voyage more remote in time and more extensive in space, and thus, liable for a bit more graveness and epicness. Expectedly, we add some Celtic overtones here, most noticeable on the opening ʽIrish Airʼ — a theme first sung accappella by Mae McKenna, then performed by Andy on the flute, and finally, with a mighty opening howl, reproduced by him on electric guitar. It's a nice gradual transition from tender prettiness to wailing desperation, but it doesn't seem to have much of an original melody, and so, from the very start, you have everything that is right and everything that is wrong about this record in its first three minutes.

Right: the whole thing is permeated with quintessential Camel gloom, expressed in guitar tones, keyboard tones, chord sequences, build-ups, guitar solos, and vocals that sing about little other than toil, trouble, and grief caused by family separation rather than joy at the perspective of finding better life in a faraway country. Particularly good is that the sound is dominated by Latimer's acoustic/electric guitar and flute rather than keyboards (although Andy's new keyboardist, Mickey Simmonds, is not much of a step up from Scherpenzeel).

Wrong: the overall level of energy seems just as low as on the previous few albums, and the monotonous mood leaves little space for surprises. The Celtic flavour is a nice touch, but you will hardly surprise anyone with a traditional Irish air in 1996, and besides, the flavour itself is really limited to only a few tracks — in addition to ʽIrish Airʼ, there's ʽEyes Of Irelandʼ, a stereotypical waltz that could just as well have been Lennon's ʽWorking Class Heroʼ, and a few brief instrumentals that are really more New Age than Celtic folk. The rest is standard fare late Camel dirge-rock. The most «progressive» of the tracks is arguably ʽComing Of Ageʼ, a multi-section composition with some tricky time signatures, but even that one culminates in a «Camel wail», with a howling two-chord riff as its culmination.

The biggest problem is that the album presents itself as a gut-wrenching emotional journey, but by that time, it had become such a typical routine for Latimer that you'd have to forget everything you ever knew about Camel to have your guts truly wrenched out. Burn down all context, and you might actually want to shed some tears in the harbour. Put all the context back, and you might feel yourself too jaded and weathered to spare even a single drop of salt water, because everything here is so strictly formulaic and predictable — predictable to the point that even after three listens, I cannot single out a single song in my memory. Okay, I guess ʽWatching The Bobbinsʼ has that suspenseful pause before the final line in each verse, that sort of makes it a little special. What else is new? Nothing.

Granted, if you are a big fan of Latimer's guitar playing, ʽThe Hour Candleʼ and a few other instrumentals here are a must-have. I'm not sure how many chord sequences he uses that have not appeared on earlier Camel songs, but the blues soloing on ʽHour Candleʼ is tasteful and wonderfully showcases his skill with sustained notes. Still not a match for ʽLiesʼ, though: too anthemic and pompous to really cut to the bone, if you ask me.

RAJAZ (1999)

1) Three Wishes; 2) Lost And Found; 3) The Final Encore; 4) Rajaz; 5) Shout; 6) Straight To My Heart; 7) Sahara; 8) Lawrence.

Rajaz is an Arabic poetry meter that has traditionally been associated with the slow, regular pace of camel hooves across the desert — meaning that, all of a sudden, Latimer must have woken up from a prolonged dreaming period and thought, «Hey! Last time we actually justified the band's name was on the album cover for Mirage! Why do I keep calling this outfit Camel if all I do is sing about the Berlin Wall, the Dust Bowl, and Irish immigration?» And there you have it — after years, if not decades, of detours, Rajaz is a conscious attempt to (a) explain why the band was originally named Camel after all and (b) get back to its (Camel's) original roots, or at least provide some reasonable facsimile.

Of course, this is not really a nostalgic revisit of the styles and sounds of Mirage or any of those early records. Once the initial positive reaction of the «wow! finally something different and attention-grabbing!» is over, you begin to realize that this is still very much a solo Latimer album, and that he is still relying on the same chords and moods, and that Ton Scherpenzeel is back on keyboards, and that Latimer's wife is still writing the lyrics, and that the best tracks are all grouped in the record's first half, and that it still tends to slip back into moody, draggy, Harbour Of Tears-like inoffensiveness every now and then, and...

...and none of it really matters when the album opens with ʽThree Wishesʼ, a multi-part instrumental that employs complex and frequent tempo changes, for once, and even incorporates elements of jazz fusion — first time in how many years? Even the keyboards, which had been Camel's weakest link ever since Bardens' departure, have been diversified, with Scherpenzeel using a whole array of organs and synthesizers instead of stubbornly sticking to the plastic string-imitating tones of yesterday. The track has a nice buildup, gradually evolving from a desert-like atmosphere of solitary blueswailing lines over a dusty synth horizon to a pretty art-pop gallop through said desert and then to bits of tricky jazzy time signatures and, eventually, even a mystically-magically distorted pseudo-Eastern guitar solo which is probably the closest Latimer ever came close to sounding like Steve Vai in his entire career.

That is just to give you the general idea that things are on the move — like I said, do not expect too much change, but expect just enough to feel a new surge of life after the seemingly endless rut of the past fifteen years. When the vocals enter the picture on ʽLost And Foundʼ, the impression is disappointing — the same kind of tender hookless ballad that we already know so well — but once they go away, it's back to jerky-jazzy signatures and tonal diversity, with no less than three different approaches to guitar soloing, the last of which, heavy on sustained notes, seems to be taking a serious (and efficient) lesson from Robert Fripp. More stellar guitar work awaits on ʽThe Final Encoreʼ, and then, of course, there is the title track — yes, the one allegedly composed «on the camel meter», and while it does not exactly conjure visions of camels all by itself (probably because it shows no Eastern influence whatsoever in the melody), it's still a good example of «sick and tired blues», culminating in a drawn-out slide solo that helps make the accompanying four-note «camel riff» even more hypnotic.

As we get to the second half, things begin to get less and less exciting, with more languid balladry like ʽStraight To My Heartʼ and fewer of these exciting jazzy interludes. Still, ʽSaharaʼ is largely similar in structure to ʽThree Wishesʼ (same mish-mash of New Agey ambience, happy art-pop, and Eastern overtones), and if only the grand finale of ʽLawrenceʼ weren't so stretched out — Andy, come back to your senses, you're no David Lean! — it would have made for a more convincing conceptual conclusion; but it's a little too slow, too repetitive, and too scarce on ideas that weren't already musicalized on the first three tracks. In other words, sixty minutes of music is overkill: by all means, Latimer should have restricted himself to the usual running length of the LP era. We know he's a first-rate guitar player already.

Still, there is no denying it: Rajaz is the best Camel record since Nude, and although I am sure it could have been even better (if, for instance, Latimer had bothered bringing in a more refined keyboard player, or if he'd made it completely instrumental), it's one of those reassuring moments when you know that you have not waited around for nothing — the moment when cobwebs are shaken off, the sleeping giant awakens (or at least bats an eye), and suddenly you distinctly remember why you used to single out the band in the first place. A definite thumbs up.

A NOD AND A WINK (2002)

1) A Nod And A Wink; 2) Simple Pleasures; 3) A Boy's Life; 4) Fox Hill; 5) The Miller's Tale; 6) Squigely Fair; 7) For Today; 8*) After All These Years.

Apparently, the idea of once again writing pretty, life-breathing music stuck with Latimer for a while, because this slightly belated, but logically continuous sequel to Rajaz (formally dedicated to the memory of Peter Bardens, who had died in early 2012) sounds every bit as lively as its predecessor, and sometimes even livelier. Again consisting of a few lengthy «progressive» tracks rather than a big bunch of short pop ones, A Nod And A Wink features two new band members (Guy LeBlanc on keyboards and Denis Clement on drums), plenty of musical ideas, and all of that uniquely Camel-esque melancholic atmosphere provided by a variety of Latimer guitar tones (rather than a single howl-at-the-moon one), flutes, acoustic and electronic keyboards.

The biggest difference from Rajaz is that this record is much more noticeably «English» in nature — where Rajaz took its inspiration from Arabian deserts, A Nod And A Wink has a subset of tunes very specifically loaded with British imagery, such as ʽFox Hillʼ (which wouldn't sound completely out of place on a classic early Genesis album like Nursery Cryme or, for that matter, Foxtrot) and ʽSquigely Fairʼ, a near-instrumental with alternating folksy / Elizabethan themes and even a very Jethro Tull-ian flute solo in the middle. This is not necessarily a good thing (immersing himself in Irish motifs did not help save Harbour Of Tears from being boring), but with the entire positive retro vibe going on, these influences are not ruined by stuffy production or too much dull instrumentation, so it's okay.

Like on Rajaz, the individual tunes do not seem to be too memorable; it is more important that they keep mutating, never letting a particular mediocre groove overstay its welcome before replacing it with an aggressive guitar solo or a pensive acoustic part or a jazzy interlude or something else — and that the tones, tempos, and moods constantly shift between tunes as well. ʽA Boy's Lifeʼ alone goes through an acoustic introduction, a heavenly anthemic theme with Andy on rainbow slide guitar, a gentle folksy waltz section, and a grand climax with a thick, juicy psychedelic solo: a prog lover's dream come true once more, in other words. The only bad news is that the band does not use enough tricky time signatures — but then again, think back on the old times: Camel were never really that big on 15/8 or 21/4, preferring to leave that side of the business to King Crimson, Genesis, and Gentle Giant.

As it is, it's fairly hard to explain why A Nod And A Wink sounds so good — its compositions do not linger too long in memory, its innovative potential is close to zero, and it does not even have a proper concept, let alone all the fox-hunting and village market references that are only valid for parts of the record. But somehow it just does. Even the slow, ponderous, anthemic ʽFor Todayʼ that ends the album with a choral sermon of "never give a day away / always live for today", somewhat echoing the old "never let go, never let go", sounds good, with Andy's «Gilmour-lite» bluesy soloing beginning in deeply tragic mode and then merging with the regal choir in an oddly uplifting-depressing symphonic sound, leaving us somewhat confused as to whether that admonition about never giving a day away is to be understood sincerely or ironically.

Still, if I truly had to single out one track, it would be ʽFox Hillʼ, for its ability to take the Camel sound and drag it out of its typically sluggish shell — the song is quite an agitated, spirited romp through several distinct musical parts, culminating in one of the most fabulous slide guitar solos I've ever had the pleasure of hearing from Latimer: catchy, yes, but most importantly, almost fox-like sly in execution. It is the kind of epic that was so sorely lacking for the previous twenty years, flexing a little muscle and sporting a bit of an ironic smile; essentially, there's always hope for any artist who, in the twilight years of his career, is still able to put out something like that.

Naturally, the album as a whole gets another thumbs up, and it is quite regrettable that Camel were not able to continue this winning streak — largely due to Latimer's own health problems, as he found himself battling bone marrow cancer and only managed to somewhat recover in the early 2010s. (The latest official «new» Camel release is a 2013 studio re-recording of the entire Snow Goose, which I have not heard and have very little intent to do so). And although this long break may be fatal, A Nod And A Wink definitely does not sound like a proper swan song record may be expected to sound — because, of course, it was never meant to be Camel's last album, and we might yet get to hear another report on another day in dromedary life, provided there's any audience left in the 2010s to want to hear it.

CANDI STATON

I'M JUST A PRISONER (1970)

1) Someone You Use; 2) I'd Rather Be An Old Man's Sweetheart; 3) You Don't Love Me No More; 4) Evidence; 5) Sweet Feeling; 6) Do Your Duty; 7) That's How Strong My Love Is; 8) I'm Just A Prisoner (Of Your Good Lovin'); 9) Another Man's Woman, Another Woman's Man; 10) Get It When I Want It.

The «First Lady of Southern Soul» (for about a few days in the early 1970s) was first discovered by the notorious soulster Clarence Carter, for whom she was first his backing vocalist, and then his wife, for about three years. In personal terms, that was improvement over her first husband, who beat her up — the second one merely cheated, which meant that the marriage also did not last long. But at least in professional terms Carter did good for her: recognizing that she had what it takes to step out as a solo artist, he set her up as such, getting her to Fame Studios at Muscle Shoals and even writing some songs for her.

Although there is nothing particularly original or unusual about this debut record (not to mention how small it is — ten short songs that are over in a jiffy), Clarence's instincts did not fail him: I'm Just A Prisoner is required listening for any serious fan of old school soul music. The songs have mostly been written specially for the artist (Carter is joined by other established songwriters such as George Jackson and Ronnie Shannon, and Staton herself gets at least one co-credit); the arrangements, given that we find ourselves in Muscle Shoals, are sonically impeccable; the backing band is tough and knows how to set itself on fire at all the right moments. But most importantly, right from the get-go Ms. Staton establishes an awesome presence and keeps it up right until the end.

Her earliest experience was gospel singing, which explains why it looks like she's taking Aretha Franklin as her role model — the power, the passion, the self-assertion, the fight for your right. She cannot scale the same heights as Aretha, yet, on the other hand, there is a gritty "bad bitch" vibe to her singing that you cannot find in Aretha's singing, either, and the whole slant of the album is on aggressive resistance — just look at these song titles: there are, at best, one or two songs with sentimental values, and even these are delivered with a flaming sword (ʽSweet Feelingʼ is a song of rescue and loyalty rather than one of tender love). Much more often it's about infidelity and treachery, though: the very first song states that "I'm just someone you run to, I'm just someone you use", even if it is set to an R&B-pop hybrid melody that one usually associates with chivalrous serenades from the likes of Sam Cooke.

The best effect is reached, however, when gritty words rub against gritty music — ʽEvidenceʼ sets up a cool mid-tempo funky groove as a foundation for two and a half minutes of fervent rants and verbal slapping in such a pissed-off way as you'd rarely, if ever, get a chance to hear on an Aretha album. Where Franklin fights for the right to earn "respect when I come home", Staton makes accusations instead of demands, with little in the way of reconciliation. It's a hot, infuriating, involving performance, and the only problem is that the song fades out just as it begins to hit its stride — which, by the way, is a common problem with most of the material on here (each of the songs could have benefited from a little extra jam power). The most extreme case is probably ʽI'd Rather Be An Old Man's Sweetheartʼ, rolling on a bit faster and explaining how stability in life is more important than getting it on with young men who'd all rather "do the camel walk", so, Romeo, take a hike. In theory, this point is debatable on several levels, but Candi's delivery is so tense, fast, fluent, and powerful that you barely have the opportunity to retort — she emerges here as a true master of «artistic flooding».

Accordingly, there's this real powerful gospel take here on ʽThat's How Strong My Love Isʼ, for some reason featuring a completely new set of lyrics (compared to the classic Otis Redding version) and a completely new attitude — one of iron-willed loyalty rather than insane devotion, all the more ironic seeing as how the song is surrounded on all sides with tunes complaining about mistreatment and deception. But the irony does not really matter as long as everything is delivered with credibility — and it is, enough for the lady to have placed three singles from here in the lower ranges of the US pop charts and in the higher ranges of the R&B ones. (The biggest R&B chart success was ʽSweet Feelingʼ, a song melodically reminiscent of Aretha's ʽI Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)ʼ, but more rhythmically conventional). Were this released on the Atlantic label, we'd probably be hearing much more about it than we usually do — but a technical inconvenience like that should never stand in the way of a well-earned thumbs up.

STAND BY YOUR MAN (1971)

1) Stand By Your Man; 2) How Can I Put Out The Flame?; 3) I'm Just A Prisoner (Of Your Good Lovin'); 4) Mr. And Mrs. Untrue; 5) Too Hurt To Cry; 6) He Called Me Baby; 7) Sweet Feeling; 8) To Hear You Say You're Mine; 9) What Would Become Of Me; 10) Freedom Is Just Beyond The Door.

You just gotta love the irony in a record that begins with "But if you love him, you'll forgive him... cause after all, he's just a man" — and then, less than half an hour later, still ends in "But oh, I'm leaving you for good, baby, and I'm never comin' back no more". What can be said? Guess that Tammy Wynette recipe just doesn't work that well, after all, with a fiery black lady from the same Deep South. Of course, Candi Staton still had her several seconds of fame with the cover of ʽStand By Your Manʼ and not with ʽFreedom Is Just Beyond The Doorʼ — but that just goes to show what sort of material was still seen as preferable to male record-buying audiences (black and white alike, I'm sure) in 1971, because in retrospect, ʽFreedomʼ is clearly the superior number here, with a stern bass groove and a defiant, in-yer-face vocal delivery that is not afraid to offend and disturb if it sees itself in the right.

On the whole, though, the album is a bit of a step down, and not just because they seem stumped for new material (there's this dirty trick of mixing two previously released songs with ten new ones, in the hope that nobody would notice), but precisely because, with the Wynette cover and a few other songs, the record dips a bit towards the sentimental side, downplaying the raw anger of the vast majority of the material on I'm Just A Prisoner. Most of the new songs are either simple love declarations, or broken-hearted confessions (ʽToo Hurt To Cryʼ, ʽMr. And Mrs. Untrueʼ); ʽFreedomʼ is the only red-hot statement of self-assertion, and it comes in just a little too late to dissipate the odd feeling that, perhaps, Stanton's spirit was broken and subdued to the standards of polite inoffensiveness.

Still, even so, there is no denying that the regular levels of songwriting, musicianship, and vocal aptitude have all been kept up — because of that, there is not one unpleasant second on the album, and even when she is calling upon ladies to "stand by your man, give him two arms to cling to", she manages to come across as totally believable; there's no attempt whatsoever to show irony or ambiguity (although she does amend the line "keep givin' all the love you can" to "he's giving you all the love you can", to make it seem less of a one-sided commitment), and she gets away with it by putting on that old gospel air and pretending that standing by your man is not that spiritually different from standing by your God. The problem is, with an approach like that, there are virtually no standout tracks on the record — just one lazy, lush, longing R&B ballad after another — and, consequently, nothing much to write about, unless you'd want to expand the review to the size of a lengthy treatise on racial and gender issues just because, you know, it so happened that R&B covers of Nashville hits were financially profitable at the time.

CANDI STATON (1972)

1) Do It In The Name Of Love; 2) Darling You're All That I Had; 3) Blackmail; 4) In The Ghetto; 5) Wanted: Lover; 6) The Best Thing You Ever Had; 7) Lovin' You Lovin' Me; 8) I'll Drop Everything And Come Running; 9) You Don't Love Me No More; 10) The Thanks I Get For Loving You.

Another solid-to-boot offering, a little longer this time and without any cheap tricks like re-running two songs from the previous album (now they re-run only one, ʽYou Don't Love Me No Moreʼ, but at least they had the good sense to remix it) — which isn't to say that there's a lot of interesting observations one could make about the record. Everything here is about as plain and straightforward as its title and its cover photo. Her name is indeed Candi Staton (at least, I trust that information), and this is her, with a serious look in her eyes and a lot of Afro-American hair on that photo (I trust that information, too). And then we have ten more examples of early Seventies' deep Southern soul, bearing the usual Muscle Shoals seal of quality. What else is there to say?

Well, there's a really good version of ʽIn The Ghettoʼ, perhaps the definitive cover version as performed by a black artist (no offense to Elvis, but the image of him performing the song in posh Las Vegas venues has seriously undermined my capacity of enjoying his version). With minimal string participation and mournful rather than angelic backing harmonies, it manages to inject a bit of grittiness into the tenderness, and there's a special poignancy in Candi's singing of the line "and his mama cries". There's even a rumor that Elvis himself sent her a congratulatory telegram, but the song is highly recommendable to all regardless of whether this is true or not.

Other than that, the album shares the same issue with its predecessor — it continues the plan to soften up and commercialize Candi's sound, concentrating more on sensual balladry than on her kick-ass, stand-for-your-rights side: the latter is only represented by ʽBlackmailʼ, which is more sorrowful and melancholic than fiery, and a couple songs about cheating and lying on the second side. The best of these is probably ʽThe Best Thing You Ever Hadʼ (no pun intended), just because it is funkier and heavier than most of its surroundings, but not in any sort of unique manner or anything. The other grooves are all just about equally pleasant and equally interchangeable. Every once in a while a hook stands out sharper than the rest — for instance, the massive push on the chorus line of ʽDo It In The Name Of Loveʼ — but it would still be a matter of nuance.

Curious bit of trivia: the only two songs for which Candi herself shares songwriter's credits are two of the bitterest ones — ʽYou Don't Love Me No Moreʼ and ʽThe Thanks I Get For Loving Youʼ. You could probably suggest they reflect her own personal experience with Clarence Carter, but the irony is that ʽYou Don't Love Me No Moreʼ features Clarence himself as co-writer, so there's some kind of Fleetwood Mac-style shit for you there. (Then again, scratch that, because that's the one taken from the first album, so it must have been written even before Candi and Clarence became properly romantically engaged). Nevertheless, it is impossible to tell which songs are more credible and convincing — the ones where she swears that "I'll drop everything and come running" or the ones where she gets no thanks for that — and this kind of consummate artistry makes the whole thing both befuddling and intriguing at the same time. If only the songs had a few more twists and turns to them — but even as they are, what's wrong with a little bit of raw love-and-hate material, set to generic, but well-performed R&B melodies? Count this as a no-thumbs-up recommendation.

CANDI (1974)

1) Here I Am Again; 2) Your Opening Night; 3) A Little Taste Of Love; 4) Going Through The Motions; 5) Stop And Smell The Roses; 6) We Can Work It Out; 7) As Long As He Takes Care Of Home; 8) But I Do; 9) Can't Stop Being Your Fool; 10) Clean Up America; 11) Six Nights And A Day.

For this album, Staton switched to Warner Bros., yet the recording sessions were still held at Muscle Shoals, so, technically, very little has changed, except for a divorce with Carter, meaning that the man was also removed from her professional life as well. (She did not repeat the mistake of mixing personal and professional, but allegedly she did marry an even bigger bastard in 1974, a promoter by the name of Jimmy James, who would torture her for about three years). Substantially, though, Candi continues a gradual slide into the realms of smooth soulful pleasantness, where everything sounds just about equally neat, tasteful, and interchangeable.

The only in-yer-face standout on the album is ʽClean Up Americaʼ, a lone statement of demand for social justice that is so thoroughly ambiguous in its demands, I'm frankly surprised why it forgot to be used in Trump's presidential campaign ("we gotta pitch in, and clean up America!" just sounds like such a perfectly Trump-ready slogan, and delivered by a black woman, no less) — sure it's a far less familiar song than ʽYou Can't Always Get What You Wantʼ or ʽRockin' In The Free Worldʼ, but with such a passionate, anthemic hook it would have caught on in no time. In the context of Candi, however, its major problem is that it stands alone — and gives the impression of a last minute addition, to inject some social value, because Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder are doing it and if you, a female Afro-American performer, are not doing it, then you are compromising The Cause. Please be reasonable about it and observe the correct quotas, though. You are expected to deliver 1 song about social injustice and 11 songs about personal relationships — that's the expected female quota.

Speaking of personal relationships, I find it funny that (a) there is a song here called ʽWe Can Work It Outʼ, a lush piano ballad with string and brass support that has nothing to do with the Beatles' song of the same name; (b) the very next song, ʽAs Long As He Takes Care Of Homeʼ, is driven by a looping riff that is very similar, though not exactly coinciding, with the riff of ʽDay Tripperʼ — which, as we know, was the B-side to the original ʽWe Can Work It Outʼ! Coincidence, or a subtle joke on the part of the producers, with no deep meaning behind it whatsoever? Oh well, at least this gives us something to write about, because other than that, Candi stimulates no individualistic emotional reaction whatsoever. A few decent ballads, a few soft funk-rockers, well played and convincingly sung, but nothing new, and for each song you can find a sharper equivalent elsewhere.

For instance, ʽSix Nights And A Dayʼ, lifts the funky riff directly from ʽSuperstitionʼ, but the song does not even begin to approach the tension level achieved by little Stevie — remember, kids, it's not all about just the melody, it's largely about killer performance, and here, I am sorry to say, the musicians rallied behind Candi consistently let her down even when compared to the raw-gritty sound of her first record, let alone contemporary standards of some of the bigger names in the R&B industry. But on the positive side, there are some energetic numbers with cool syncopated guitars and brawny brass — which is a good thing to have in an era when even some of the bigger names in R&B (like Aretha Franklin) were beginning to drown in soft-rock mushiness and schlocky sentimentalism. So, by the average standards of 1974, Candi is doing quite fine, even as she finds herself ʽGoing Through The Motionsʼ.

YOUNG HEARTS RUN FREE (1976)

1) Run To Me; 2) Destiny; 3) What A Feeling; 4) You Bet Your Sweet, Sweet Love; 5) Young Hearts Run Free; 6) Living For You; 7) Summer Time With You; 8) I Know.

It is a little unlucky that Candi's big break had to come with the onslaught of the disco era, but at least she got her big break, unlike many less lucky souls — with a little help from producer and professional songwriter David Crawford, who ended up writing almost everything on her second LP for Warner Bros. The shift in tone is abrupt — while, technically, most of the songs here are «proto-disco» rather than proper disco, without the diagnostic basslines, Young Hearts Run Free is clearly a club-oriented dance record; and even if, at the time, this shift could be regarded by Candi herself as a fun change of image, in retrospect it joins the large number of similar shifts that ended up completely eroding the artist's personality and making him/her just another faceless face in the exuberant, carefree dance-pop crowd.

Yet, as it also often happens, it was not half bad the first time around. Crawford might be just a commercial hack, but he hacked out plenty of fun hooks for this record — mood-wise, 70% of these songs are interchangeable, yet some of them could stand their ground next to contemporary Bee Gees material. First in line is, of course, the title track, which seems to be pretty much the only thing that people remember about Candi Staton today — I'd much prefer her to be remembered by something like ʽI'd Rather Be An Old Man's Sweetheartʼ, but it's hard to fight the appeal of a well-polished proto-disco groove when it is combined with a good vocal hook and a message of youthful optimism rather than bitter pragmaticism. (Actually, the song is pretty bitter — sung from the perspective of an abused wife envying the young people their freedom — but on the instinctive level, the only thing that matters is the anthemic "young hearts!... run free!" slogan).

Next to that one, ʽRun To Meʼ, ʽDestinyʼ, and ʽI Knowʼ sound like weaker clones of the big hit, but the vocal hooks are different enough to simply offer the people more of what they want without directly self-plagiarizing oneself. Slower ballads like ʽWhat A Feelingʼ are less exciting, but decently recorded — as is the cover of Al Green's ʽLiving For Youʼ, for which a pleasant bedrock is built out of tonally similar brass lines and slide guitars. The only properly corny song in the lot is ʽSummer Time With Youʼ, where they seem to be intruding on the Europop turf with dubious results (or maybe it's just that Candi tries too hard to be subtle, sensual, and seductive, with too much sexy breathiness — hardly the style of a gospel-bred R&B belter who once used to be a minor competitor for Aretha's crown).

Outside of all context, I would probably pass the record by in the end, but in the framework of her overall life trajectory, Young Hearts Run Free is a bit of a rejuvenating step forward — she may not be too responsible for the songs or the sounds, but Crawford seems to have been working in her interests, and gave her all this energetic, uplifting material to both alleviate her personal problems and get her out of the rut she'd settled into by 1974. And while I can't properly put my finger on it, or explain what it is exactly that makes these party-ready romps a tad more spiritualized than the average run-of-the-mill party-ready romps, I still trust that old intuition and give the record as a whole (not just its title track) a moderate thumbs up.

MUSIC SPEAKS LOUDER THAN WORDS (1977)

1) Nights On Broadway; 2) You Are; 3) A Dreamer Of A Dream; 4) Music Speaks Louder Than Words; 5) Cotton Candi; 6) Listen To The Music; 7) When You Want Love; 8) One More Chance On Love; 9) Main Thing; 10) Before The Next Teardrop Falls; 11) Music Speaks Louder Than Words (reprise).

Seeing as how the first track to be listed on Candi's Saturday Night Fever era record was a cover of ʽNights On Broadwayʼ, I expected the results to suck seriously; all the more surprising was the discovery that this is far from the least exciting albums of the disco period — in fact, even the Bee Gees cover is quite welcome, replacing the original groove with a slightly more synthetic, but also slightly more complex tapestry of synthesizers, strings, and brass; the tempo is a little sped up and the slow bridge omitted altogether to adapt the song even better to the contemporary club atmosphere, and Candi's lead vocal is a fine replacement for the Gibbs (anyway, the single catchiest thing on the song is the falsetto quickie of "blame it on the nights on Broadway!" in response to the lead vocal, and that one is preserved with all due respect), so this sort of explains why the single performed respectably on the UK charts (ironically, the original Bee Gees version was never released as a single in the UK, so perhaps British audiences were just too happy to catch up on their forty-fives).

But even beyond the obvious hit, there are quite a few niceties about the album, largely because of the songwriters behind the music — ʽYou Areʼ is credited to George Clinton, and it is appropriately funky, with a multi-layered bubbly wah-wah groove and triumphant brass; and ʽA Dreamer Of A Dreamʼ comes from the stock of Allen Toussaint, a fine chunk of disco-pop arranged in the «light musical phantasia» style of the likes of Olivia Newton-John, but with a smart enough orchestral arrangement to be tolerable. The strangest thing is the inclusion of an instrumental track, whose only link with the artist is its title (ʽCotton Candiʼ) — no idea what producer Bob Monaco was thinking, but apparently, a lot of control was in the hands of horn and string arrangers like Rick Kellis and Ron Stockert, and maybe they wanted to have their efforts appreciated on their own for once, without any annoying disco singers on top of their «body music art».

Weirdest inclusion of all, no doubt about it, is Paul Kelly's ʽMain Thingʼ — a more blatant rip-off of ʽSuperstitionʼ, right down to the funky clavinet rhythm track and the descending brass riff, could not even be imagined, except that they pin it all on a disco bass line this time; the only reason Stevie never sued is because he couldn't expect to reap any serious financial benefits from an album that was doomed to commercial failure from the start. That said, you have to listen right to the very end — bass player Dennis Belfield eventually gets tired of laying down the same chuggin' disco chords, and goes on a bit of a rampage.

Throw in a few gospel-tinged ballads with a high level of energy (ʽBefore The Next Teardrop Fallsʼ), and the overall result is a respectable follow-up to Young Hearts Run Free, at least, as respectable as could possibly be expected of a disco album with no ambitions, gimmicks, or dazzling feats of playing technique. I'd give it a thumbs up, but it is kind of against my principles to formally endorse non-outstanding disco records, and besides, behind all the grooving and all the body heat and all the brass/string/keyboard razzle-dazzle, the one thing that is lacking is the lead artist's personality — here, she is being sucked into the whirlwind even tighter and faster than on Young Hearts Run Free: «music speaks louder than words» indeed, and not in a sense that could be favorable to Candi herself.

HOUSE OF LOVE (1978)

1) Victim; 2) Honest I Do Love You; 3) Yesterday Evening; 4) I Wonder Will I Ever Get Over It; 5) I'm Gonna Make You Love Me; 6) So Blue; 7) Take My Hand, Precious Lord.

We know very well that not all disco albums suck as a matter of principle — but, strange enough, every now and then one is liable to come across a disco album that is perfectly ordinary and conventional, just a collection of very straightforward disco grooves without any experimentation or ultra-hot passion to singe your whiskers, yet somehow it feels surprisingly right: enjoyable, honest, devoid of special irritants. Candi Staton's second disco album, inauspiciously titled House Of Love and featuring the performer in her sexiest posturing ever on the front cover (still looks a bit like your mother, though), is a major improvement on her first one, even if the man behind it, Dave Crawford, retains full control over production and songwriting.

The highlight is ʽVictimʼ, an unexpectedly serious eight-minute disco rant where Candi complains how "I became a victim of the very song I sing", and then goes on to namedrop ʽYoung Hearts Run Freeʼ — formally, the song is about not following her own advice on the issue of commitment, but it can, of course, also be figuratively interpreted as a complaint about getting pegged as a one-hit wonder. Musically, the accompanying groove is smooth, polite, based around a fun, non-canonical disco bass riff played by Scott Edwards, and some playful and tasteful keyboard and brass overdubs (keyboards in question including vibraphone and clavinet, rather than generic synthesizers), with a lengthy instrumental interlude that is every bit as engaging as the vocal sections — basically, the kind of material that fully justifies the art of the extended disco groove: «intelligent dance music» way before the term was hijacked for something completely and utterly different.

The rest of the tracks are neither quite as catchy nor as inventive in terms of arrangements, but I'd still have almost any of them over your average Olivia Newton-John of the same time. ʽHonest I Do Love Youʼ has a catchy and captivating vocal hook (even if it may get repeated way beyond any rational measure), accentuated by sharp slide guitar licks and even something that sounds like a... sitar? Whatever; plucked strings give the tune a bit of a psychedelic sheen, as opposed to the more conventional bowed strings. ʽI Wonder Will I Ever Get Over Itʼ is a pretty rhythmic ballad; ʽSo Blueʼ skips disco overtones in favor of a more traditional doo-wop approach, but still with plenty of tension; and only the old classic ʽI'm Gonna Make You Love Meʼ, on which Candi actually duets with Crawford, functions here like generic corny disco — let alone the embarrassing moment where Candi has to sing "every minute every hour, I'm gonna SHOWER!", and it takes at least a second or so for the listener to understand that this is not the end of the line (the correct lyric is "I'm gonna shower... you with love and affection!"). (She does look like that front cover photo was taken in the shower, though, so there might as well be something to it).

As a final surprise gesture, the last song is neither disco nor doo-wop, but a traditional gospel number: just Crawford at the piano, and Candi behind him, belting out ʽTake My Hand, Precious Lordʼ like she'd just gotten a huge kick out of Aretha's Amazing Grace, or, better still, a pack of old Mahalia Jackson records. She's not exceptional, but she's real good; allegedly, she just did that bit of gospel as a vocal warm-up, but Crawford decided the results were too good to miss, and thus, perhaps, inadvertently set her up on the road that would eventually lead her to a full-time career in gospel several years later.

The real good news here is that Candi seems to have found a way to «restore» a bit of her personality, and reintroduce some serious soul into the material — without making any particularly wrong moves, such as oversexing it, pulling a Donna Summer when such a thing would quite obviously lead to fake posturing and embarrassment. She succeeds in being herself here, firmly planted on top of all the disco bells and whistles, and the bells and whistles ring and whistle their reverent praise of the artist, rather than overshadow her with shallow entertainment. A very decent effort on the whole, well deserving of a thumbs up; too bad that in the commercial sphere, if it was disco and it wasn't about sex or at least about not needing any education, it had few chances of selling. (ʽVictimʼ did get pretty high on the R&B charts, but that was it).

CHANCE (1979)

1) Ain't Got Nowhere To Go; 2) When You Wake Up Tomorrow; 3) Rock; 4) Chance; 5) I Live; 6) Me And My Music.

Well, here's your oh-so-obvious answer to the question about what it is that makes a good or a bad disco album — the difference between House Of Love and its follow-up, Chance, pretty much says it all. For some reason, Dave Crawford is out, both as producer and songwriter, and the album ends up being nominally self-produced by Candi herself, with the supervising of Jimmy Simpson — the brother of Valerie Simpson of Ashford & Simpson fame. Meanwhile, the songwriting is largely taken care of by Candi herself, or by a bunch of corporate donors who clearly have neither any interest in Candi Staton as an artist, nor in doing anything except supplying a steady stream of body-oriented grooves.

The result is an album as uninspired and stupid as House Of Love was inventive and supportive of the artist's personality. The only song worthy of some attention is ʽI Liveʼ, contributed by Ashford & Simpson in person — a slow, funky ballad rather than a straightahead disco groove, with a chance for Candi to burn some authentic soul, even if the arrangement still leaves much to be desired (no instrumental parts deserving of special attention). Everything else ranges from passable to ridiculous: ʽAin't Got Nowhere To Goʼ is at least reasonably short and reasonably complex, but the single ʽWhen You Wake Up Tomorrowʼ is completely dependent on its single musical phrase, never brought out of stasis due to the lame sound of the synthesizer — and then there's ʽRockʼ, which might just be the nadir of Candi's entire career. Here is a representative sample of the lyrics: "Why? Not? Rock? Rock! Rock! Why ? Not? Rock!", and it does not get much better when the lead vocal comes in, especially since the song has nothing whatsoever to do without «rock» in any possible meaning of the term, unless you really stretch it out to cover «corny disco shit» as well.

Neither the title track nor ʽMe And My Musicʼ on the second side make much of a difference: in fact, pretty much everything is interchangeable and never goes one step beyond the simple «give 'em a good vibe» message. And that smart touch of having Candi wrap things up with a strong gospel number? Apparently, it never caught on, even if it is precisely little things like that which make a world of difference. The less said about this Studio 54 blandness, the better; thumbs down without any further questions or comments. And you gotta love how they gave her that hip urban look on the photo, but never forgot about showing some cleavage all the same: trying to sell music like this without a bit of boobs is a marketologist's nightmare.

CANDI STATON (1980)

1) Looking For Love; 2) Halfway To Heaven; 3) One More Try; 4) If You Feel The Need; 5) The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game; 6) It's Real; 7) Betcha I'm Gonna Get Ya; 8) Living Inside Me.

Usually the appearance of an album titled after the artist's name in the middle of the artist's career symbolizes a reboot of sorts — but there's nothing rebootable whatsoever in this record, a stereotypical dance-pop successor to Chance, so I'm guessing this rather reflects a complete lack of inspiration. Yes, it is sad when the album's best track turns out to be a 14-year old cover (ʽThe Hunter Gets Captured By The Gameʼ), and, furthermore, one that adds practically nothing to the original — at least when Blondie covered the same track two years later, they completely reworked the arrangement, but this here is a fairly loyal reproduction, weakened only by sterile touches of early Eighties' production.

Candi is a little more involved than usual this time, writing three of the songs and even self-producing a part of the album, but it does not help. Of these three songs, two (ʽHalfway To Heavenʼ and ʽIt's Realʼ) are generic ballads, one «modern» and one «retro», but both equally forgettable; and one (ʽBetcha I'm Gonna Get Yaʼ) is a dance-pop number so bland and faceless, it would probably make even the elevator cringe at the idea of having it played in it. For the single, they chose a composition by Andy Schwartz, the part-time keyboardist of Chic, ʽLooking For Loveʼ, and the best I can say about it is that it has a memorable-through-repetition chorus, oh, and disco bass king Norbert Sloley slaps up some cool lines, but that's about it. The single charted very modestly on the US R&B charts, then disappeared without a trace.

Supposedly this is the absolute nadir of Candi's career — here, her gradual reduction from a nice human being with a sharp sense of taste to a simplistic «musical roach» is complete, and even such a nice gesture as transferring some control over the creative process into the lady's own hands does not work: her songwriting talents are insufficient to overcome the bland standards of commercial R&B in 1980, and as a producer, well, she's no Prince for sure. At least the album cover photo does not strain so heavily to «sexualize» the artist, but then again, boring songs and not even any cleavage to make up for that? This is an insult for male chauvinist pigs worldwide, so clearly, a thumbs down is the only possible reaction.

NIGHTLITES (1982)

1) Love And Be Free; 2) Suspicious Minds; 3) In The Still Of The Night; 4) The Sunshine Of Your Love; 5) Hurry Sundown; 6) Tender Hooks; 7) Count On Me.

I am unaware of the details, but seeing the name of Dave Crawford, once again, as producer and occasional songwriter for this record, obviously suggests that he may have been brought back in one last, desperate attempt to revive Staton's career — maybe bless her with another ʽYoung Hearts Run Freeʼ or something like that. Unfortunately, it was too late, and not even a return to seductive sleeve photos could help. For sure, the return of Crawford means a slightly more subtle and inventive touch in the production department, but this time, he seems to have too many other things on his mind, and there are no particularly outstanding grooves or unusual approaches to instrumentation — in other words, nothing even close to the quality of ʽVictimʼ.

For one thing, the entire album stays way too bogged down in the already discredited disco idiom: the nadir is a straightforward disco arrangement of ʽSuspicious Mindsʼ, a song that I have never been a huge fan of, but in the light of this travesty, I will probably have to thoroughly re-evaluate the Elvis performance — the song is totally deconstructed here, stripped of its orchestral flourishes and reducing its formerly complex gospel-pop backing vocals to a much more simple (and poorly recorded) female choir, and Candi Staton is no Elvis anyway. When released as a single, the song totally flopped in the US (amazingly, it seems to have charted at No. 31 in the UK), faring even worse than the first single, the uplifting funk-pop anthem ʽCount On Meʼ.

Crawford's two songs are nothing particularly special either: ʽIn The Still Of The Nightʼ has a thick, growling groove provided by bassist Doug Whimbish (best part of the song is his mini-solo in the middle), but little else in its favor, and ʽThe Sunshine Of Your Loveʼ (nothing to do with the Cream song — see, they even put the definite article there to mark the difference) has nothing in its favor at all, other than, if you think about it long enough, you might appreciate the smartness of putting a «nighttime» and a «daytime» disco tune back-to-back (hint: the «daytime» song sucks with far more verve).

A few of the choruses have the catchy-through-repetition effect (ʽTender Hooksʼ), but the only song on the entire album that got me interested in its overall sound was the album opener ʽLove And Be Freeʼ, with its tricky mesh of effect-laden guitars and electronics — seems like Crawford had a lot of fun producing that one track, but then, apparently, he just lost interest in the rest of the album, so, despite a tiny increase in quality from Chance and Candi Staton, I still have no choice but to give it another thumbs down.

And that was the end of the line for Candi: after the record bombed once again, she decided that she'd had enough, and with her next album, Make Me An Instrument, declared (in the very first song) that ʽSin Doesn't Live Here Anymoreʼ, switching to a nothing-but-gospel career in the same fashion that Al Green did several years before — and spending the next twenty-plus years loyally and faithfully putting out a new gospel album every one or two years. I have no interest writing about any of these — reviewing a string of gospel albums by a B-level performer is way too much even for the standards of Only Solitaire completionism — but I've heard a few of those songs, and at least she sounded more comfortable singing them than she did trying to find life in all that generic disco crap, so more power to her.

WHO'S HURTING NOW? (2009)

1) Breaking Down Slow; 2) Who's Hurting Now?; 3) I Feel The Same; 4) Mercy Now; 5) I Don't Know; 6) Lonely Don't; 7) Get Your Hands Dirty; 8) Dust On My Pillow; 9) Cry Baby Cry; 10) I Don't Want For Anything; 11) The Light In Your Eyes.

But no, the story does not really end with Nightlites. Like Al Green, Staton spent nearly two decades doing nothing but gospel — enabling her to stay away from all the detrimental developments in contemporary R&B — and like Al Green, she eventually re-emerged in the early 2000s: rested, rejuvenated, and behaving like the last two decades simply did not happen. In fact, neither did the later half of the Seventies, and that entire disco period was just a bad dream — as long as we can still remember Dave Crawford with a good word, this attitude suits me just fine, too. Her first new stint with secular music occurred on His Hands, recorded in 2006 for the British indie label Honest Jon's Records (founded with the assistance of Blur's Damon Albarn, no less), but the full-fledged comeback was Who's Hurting Now three years later, made at Abbey Road Studios with a bunch of American musicians, including Tony Crow from Lambchop on keyboards and Candi's own son Marcus Williams on drums.

The material here is mostly, if not all, modern, contributed by various contemporary songwriters who usually provide standard fodder for blues and country bands — so one shouldn't really expect anything groundbreaking from this batch. What matters is not the melodies, but the sound of the whole thing: the record is executed strictly in late Sixties / early Seventies style, with a soul / gospel / funk / blues-rock vibe that defiantly ignores all the sonic advances of the modern century and reinstates faith in live musicianship over computer programming. Not that the musicianship is stunningly great or anything: all these Nashville cats that Candi brought over to London are good, but generally sound as if they were just working by the hour — and yet, even without exuberance and excitement, it is still a pleasure to hear this sound in 2009.

Candi herself has audibly aged, sounding huskier and duskier than she used to, but there is still plenty of soul and conviction in her voice — well evident already on the opening number, the slow soul waltz ʽBreaking Down Slowʼ that points you in the main direction this music is going to take, that of the Tensely Aching Heart. Funky R&B grooves begin to arrive with the title track (cool weaving textures between two well-synchronized guitars and a well-mechanized brass section) and ʽI Feel The Sameʼ (funk-blues in the style of the dear departed Albert King), but the focus always resides on the singer, which is both a blessing and a curse: she's good, but not that good, and sometimes I quietly wish that the backing musicians had been given a more open chance to shine — there's hardly a single guitar solo anywhere on the album.

The overall reaction is a little mixed, because the main vibe seems confused: on one hand, the album relies a lot on personal tragedy and depressed nostalgia ("I've only just lost the best years of my life", she sings in a genuinely moving manner on ʽDust On My Pillowʼ), yet, on the other hand, this seems just like the kind of record she'd secretly dreamed of making ever since the early hits — one of those «I finally get to do things my way and my way only» moments of triumph, where the artist is clearly elevated by just the mere understanding that she is no longer being exploited by anyone and no longer has to conform to any particular fashion. These two emotions sometimes cancel out each other, confusedly disallowing for a proper sharpening of the feelings; but ultimately, it still comes together with a few nice personal anthems of contentment — ʽI Don't Want For Anythingʼ and ʽThe Light In Your Eyesʼ mix together her secular and gospel experience in subtle ways that make these numbers, clichéd as they are, relatable; the way she delivers that final piece of advice, "don't ever lose the light in your eyes", is quite endearing.

I give the record a thumbs up for totally irrational reasons — had all these songs been recorded by, say, Bonnie Raitt, I'd probably pass them by completely, but somehow Candi just has this hard-to-explain charisma that makes them all seem deeper than they probably really are. Roughly speaking, she seems to believe in this stuff, and she seems willing to inject her personal experience in it, and so, even in the absence of solid, original hooks, when you have a backing band with such a good sound, and a front singer with such a great heart, well, how would it be possible not to recommend this? And I haven't even thrown in the obligatory «hey, at least it's better than all that Rihanna crap» retort yet...

LIFE HAPPENS (2014)

1) I Ain't Easy To Love; 2) Close To You; 3) Commitment; 4) For Eternity; 5) Even The Bad Times Are Good; 6) Beware, She's After Your Man; 7) Treat Me Like A Secret; 8) Where Were You When You Knew; 9) Three Minutes To A Relapse; 10) Never Even Had A Chance; 11) Go Baby Go; 12) My Heart's On Empty; 13) Have You Seen The Children; 14) A Better World Coming.

This is an even more ambitious comeback statement than Who's Hurting Now: with 14 tracks running over an hour, many of them self-penned, and featuring an even tighter and musically sharper band than last time, Life Happens is far more than anybody could expect in 2014 from a former B-grade R&B star that spent three decades in a restricted gospel niche. I have no idea how a «masterpiece» of traditional R&B could sound these days, even in theory, but when you are on nostalgic trips like these, what matters above everything else is devotion — and all these tracks are as fanatically devoted to bringing back the old soul vibe as Candi's albums from those past three decades were fanatically devoted to praising the name of the Lord.

I really don't know much about these musicians (except for Candi's son Marcus, who still helps her out with the drums on about half of the tracks), but they do a damn fine job with the grooves, although in terms of memorability it is the repetitive vocal hooks that will always come first. The best sound is on the tough funky numbers — ʽBewareʼ, ʽMy Heart's On Emptyʼ — but even the slowest ballads that come closest to feeble adult contemporary, like ʽWhere Were Youʼ, are never spoiled by excessive production, with acoustic guitars, electric slide, bass, and organ always taking priority over any synthesizer backup (if it's there at all). And, most importantly, Staton sounds like she really means it — whether it is a nostalgic love song she sings, or an angry social statement she makes, there is no doubt that it all comes straight from the heart this time.

Sure enough, the social statements may seem to be a bit of a joke: Desperate Anthems like ʽHave You Seen The Childrenʼ, lamenting the terrible fate of the younger generation, are lyrically shallow (yes, she does put all the blame on "video games and movies", if you can believe it), and even if the pain, anguish, and fear behind the performance are sincere, it is a little hard to empathize unless you happen to be an ex-PMRC member or something. This fear of the modern age even occasionally makes its way into the more personal Man/Woman tunes: on ʽBeware, She's After Your Manʼ, Candi reminds us that "we're living in the digital age" — somehow, that is supposed to make your man easily fall for the first camwhore he encounters — but do not judge the lady too harshly: she just has a fairly tight moral code, and if it helps her to make a damn fine record, so be it. Besides, no matter how bad things seem to be in The World According to Candi Staton, there is ʽA Better World Comingʼ anyway: the last track is written in the classic tradition of "everything sucks, but things are going to be better somehow even if there's not a single shred of evidence for this at the moment", even if we all have to die and go to Heaven to witness this (actually, I do believe that is the precise message of the song).

The majority of the songs, however, are about him and her (me and you), reflecting a certain degree of turbulence in the life of the singer — not too surprising, considering that she had just divorced her sixth husband (baseball player Otis Nixon Jr., 19 years her younger, if you want some yellow press details), so songs like ʽCommitmentʼ, a tight, Eighties-style pop-rocker along the lines of ʽEvery Breath You Takeʼ, have a very genuine ring to them — "what I'm searching for is a man who'll stand by me", she sings after six unsuccessful attempts, but the fun thing is, she is clearly not losing hope, though, as she admits herself on the very first track, "I ain't easy to love". Without making any judgements of character whatsoever, I must say that Candi's turbulent love life at least made for an interesting musical reflection — with the exception of some of those thoroughly faceless disco albums, there's a little bit of her personal story in every record she makes, and now that she's way past 70, that story has not ceased to be interesting.

Not to mention that for a 72-year old singer, she sounds awesome: I've always held the opinion that singers with «unexceptional» voices truly reap the benefits as they manage to outlast singers with «exceptional» ones, and this case confirms the rule — these days, having to choose between Candi and Aretha, I'd go for Candi without blinking: where 21st century Aretha sounds like a sorry shadow of her former self, Candi Staton goes on sounding... just like Candi Staton. Of course, that voice did sink about one octave lower, but that just added gravity and maturity, and she never tries to sing outside of her new range (unlike Aretha, who still likes to demonstrate how she can hit these high notes if she reaches up all the way on the very tips of her toes).

I do believe the record deserves a thumbs up, after all. Most likely, if she keeps on going like this, she is bound to lose it sooner or later, but as of 2014, there's taste, style, genuine feeling, power, an occasional catchy chorus — solid counterevidence to the statement that an old man (woman) ain't got nothing in the world these days.

CAROLE KING

WRITER (1970)

1) Spaceship Races; 2) No Easy Way Down; 3) Child Of Mine; 4) Goin' Back; 5) To Love; 6) What Have You Got To Lose; 7) Eventually; 8) Raspberry Jam; 9) Can't You Be Real; 10) I Can't Hear You No More; 11) Sweet Sweetheart; 12) Up On The Roof.

Popular perception of Carole King: Nice lady composer, wrote some cool hits for (mostly) Afro-American singers in the Sixties, then sang most of them herself in 1971 on her only album Tapestry, spent the rest of her time living somewhere in California raising a family and stuff. It was so nice of the President, too, to get her out for the Kennedy Center Awards in 2015, where she spent most of the time smiling at Afro-American performers singing Tapestry almost in its entirety. Oh yes, and she's besties with James Taylor, too. They sing ʽYou've Got A Friendʼ together and all that. Was he there at the ceremony as well? He must have been.

There is little reason to doubt, of course, that Tapestry is King's highest point, just out of sheer consistency, but somehow the popularity of that record has eclipsed everything else — most importantly, that for a short, but significant period in the early 1970s, Carole King was one of the leading figures in America's «singer-songwriter» movement. In the 1960s, she had neither the self-confidence nor the proper opportunity to emerge as a self-sufficient artist in her own rights: her voice was considered weak, her looks were way too unglamorous, and her «stage image» was non-existent. But as standards began to shatter and shift, and as a small, but stable market demand was formed for «sincerity» and «integrity», Carole finally took the opportunity to go public — an opportunity made easier by her divorce from husband-lyricist Gerry Goffin and subsequent relocation to California — and, after an unsuccessful attempt at working within the framework of an actual band («The City», whose only album will be taken care of in an appendix), finally emerged as a solo recording artist in 1970.

On Writer, she is backed by the same musicians who formed «The City» (Charles Larkey on bass and Danny Kortchmar on guitars), with the addition of a couple keyboardists, drummer Joel O'Brien, and some backing vocalists. With two exceptions, no new songs were written for the record — almost everything is credited to Goffin/King, as the lady is struggling to take back possession of all the hits, semi-hits, and non-hits that she earlier wrote for other people; only a very few of these tunes come from the vaults, like the album opener ʽSpaceship Racesʼ, which I do not think was covered by anybody prior to this release (although one year later it was successfully covered by folk-rocker Tom Northcott). However, it's not as if we could or should blame her for this decision — imagine, say, a Bob Dylan prevented from releasing his greatest songs under his own name for more than half a decade, and having to watch helplessly as The Byrds and Manfred Mann reap all the glory!..

Anyway, most people's reaction to Writer will probably depend on what they value most about art — deep feeling and sincerity or immaculate professionalism. When you listen to ʽUp On The Roofʼ as performed by The Drifters, and then compare it to this version, the difference is striking: the 1962 recording is bouncier, the brass and string overdubs perfectly emphasize all the vocal hooks, and although lead vocalist Rudy Lewis was no Clyde McPhatter or Ben E. King, his technical abilities were still way above Carole's weak, trembling nasal delivery. But on the other hand, for The Drifters singing the song was just business — the 1962 tune had one overriding purpose, to make a shiny optimistic statement to brighten the record buyer's day, and everything there, including the fantastic string solo, is focused on that statement. For Carole, though, the song is much more than that — it is a psychological tour-de-force, a confession of shyness, lonerism, and humility where "there's room enough for two", but there most definitely wouldn't be enough room for three or more (which is why entrusting the song to a vocal band was an odd decision in the first place, ensuring that its full potential could never be realized). And in this context, her vocals are a perfect match for her personality as expressed in the song — as long as she does not hit any bum notes or anything, the «weakness» of the voice emerges as the strength of the song, and I'll take King's version over The Drifters without blinking an eye.

On the whole, there isn't a single true clunker on Writer, because of the awesomeness of Carole's backlog — and there's another point, too, which speaks very much in its favor: compared to later, post-Tapestry albums, which would lean too far in the direction of corny sentimentality and mushy MOR arrangements, Writer has a bit of a rock bite to it. After all, ʽSpaceship Racesʼ does open with a distorted electric guitar lick and is ruled over by an intense, almost hard-rocking bass line — not to mention a sarcastic, almost sneering vocal delivery as the singer jabs her imaginary boyfriend for "spinning around in a Busby swirl" and "living off dreams stored up in film cans": it's almost like a feminist reversal of some typical Rolling Stones misogynist slam, and we get to see a cool rational angle of somebody who, not so long ago, was "made to feel like a natural woman", probably by the exact same guy who she now wants to "take to the Spaceship Races".

Another forgotten, but totally real highlight is ʽRaspberry Jamʼ, one of the two compositions that were specially made for the album with the lyrical participation of Toni Stern. It is not so much a pop song as it is a jazzy waltz whose title is a pun — the mid-section is a jam, with brief guitar and keyboard improvisations; certainly not a masterpiece of jazz-pop, but a very nice, moody, soothing piece of music all the same, and I am very glad it's there, because it introduces an element of complete spontaneity — breaking away from the image of Carole King as a calculated, smoothly running hit machine. She would rarely, if ever, allow anything like that on her records again (probably because she rightfully felt improvisational music would not be playing to her major strengths), but there's nothing like a little extra freedom of flight for somebody who is only just beginning to secure one's position as an independent artist.

Elsewhere, she bravely recaptures her own subtlety from The Byrds (ʽGoin' Backʼ) and Bobby Vee (ʽSweet Sweetheartʼ, one of her catchiest upbeat pop-rockers); shows great depth of feeling on the ultra-slow soul ballad ʽNo Easy Way Downʼ; and flashes a bit of idealistic political creed on the equally slow folk ballad ʽEventuallyʼ, all of which, as far as I'm concerned, are every bit as poignant and memorable as almost anything on Tapestry. Top prize, however, goes to ʽChild Of Mineʼ, a McCartney-style piano ballad (or would it rather be accurate to call all McCartney piano ballads Carole King-style? he did take quite a few songwriting lessons from the lady in his youth, you know) that extols the joys of motherhood with endearing and totally disarming simplicity — and just a small, barely noticeable, drop of melancholy and lonerism in the "oh yes, sweet darling, so glad you are a child of mine" refrain, a drop that is still enough to wrench the song out of the generic corny ballpark and put it in the realm of true artistry (although we could certainly live without the tune being appropriated by hundreds of people on YouTube who just want to use it as a background for photos of their toddlers).

All in all, there may not be enough «cumulative hit power» on Writer to match the impact of Tapestry, but in all honesty, owning a copy of the latter without complementing it with a copy of the former should be considered a gross violation of the ethical code (on RateYourMusic, for instance, Tapestry currently features 168 user reviews, while Writer is graced with a measly four: imagine the same proportion for, say, Revolver vs. Rubber Soul, and share my indignation). As far as singer-songwriter albums from 1970 are concerned, this is one of the strongest, and it does have the distinction of positioning Carole King as an independent, self-sufficient solo artist in her own right, taking back what's hers and, even more importantly, bridging the gap between commercial pop of the corporate Brill Building variety and introspective musical artistry (whereas with Tapestry, you could say she actually took a few steps back towards the Brill Building as such). In any case, my verdict is a very, very strong thumbs up — and if we all really respected woman artists as much as we claim to do, I'm sure somebody would have the guts to play a 15-minute version of ʽRaspberry Jamʼ for President Obama at the Kennedy Center ceremony.

TAPESTRY (1971)

1) I Feel The Earth Move; 2) So Far Away; 3) It's Too Late; 4) Home Again; 5) Beautiful; 6) Way Over Yonder; 7) You've Got A Friend; 8) Where You Lead; 9) Will You Love Me Tomorrow; 10) Smackwater Jack; 11) Tapestry; 12) (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.

I think that ʽI Feel The Earth Moveʼ is probably the single greatest Carole King song in existence. Inarguably, it is her most rocking tune — for all the softness of the arrangement, it rocks really, really hard: the syncopated piano/bass rhythm creates unbelievably strong tension, usually reserved for songs that tell stories about how bad it all goes, rather than declarations of sincere passion. It's one of those "love is a drug and I need to score" moments, even if Carole herself might not necessarily mean it that way, but from the opening chords and through all the instrumental breaks it sounds like she's crying for help — "I just lose control, down to my very soul" should at the very least be addressed to a psychiatrist, if not a police officer. The only «tender» part of the song is the "oh darling, when you're near me..." bridge, but it offers merely a few brief moments of relaxed tenderness before the shivers start again. (There's a somewhat similar function of the bridge section in ʽWhile My Guitar Gently Weepsʼ, I think). The similarity between the wobbling rhythm and an actual earthquake has been commented upon plenty — but what is really thrilling is this equation of loving feeling with a panic attack, always a refreshing way to revisit the age-old subject.

And that is just the first song on what is unquestionably Carole King's masterpiece — like I said, reducing all of Carole King to Tapestry is humiliating, yet there is no question that this record and no other has (a) the highest concentration of unbeatable pop hooks and (b) some of the grittiest, least cliched-sentimental moments in C. K. history. Every song here is at least good, most of them are great, and the lady really shows those mushy singer-songwriters the gold standard, although few of them ever came close — James Taylor and Carly Simon only wish they could have even one LP as consistent as Tapestry. In part, this is due to Carole still milking her backlog (ʽNatural Womanʼ, ʽWill You Love Me Tomorrowʼ), but this time, more than half of the songs are newly written, and they still show the songwriter at the top of her game.

At least James Taylor is said to have been the reason for ʽIt's Too Lateʼ, written after Carole's breakup with the fellow (she still got a friend, but something inside has died anyway). The song eventually overtook ʽI Feel The Earth Moveʼ in radio popularity, possibly because its emotional scope is simpler and more easily understandable, but «simpler», in this case, means «even more sincere»: it's a good example of the Big Breakup Song that, instead of blowing the sad aspects of what's happened up to ridiculously disproportional heights, simply puts an equation sign between the tragic and the mundane. The verses are quiet, introspective Latin jazz with one small drop of melancholia — the chorus is uptempo pop that says it like it is ("something inside has died" is delivered as if the "something inside" were a dead gerbil), but leaves the melancholia droplet in the chord change on the "I can't hide and I just can't fake it" bit. It's a quiet, dignified farewell where the protagonist bares just a tiny spot of emotion, and your imagination does the rest.

The album is not «conceptual» as such, but its title, and the first line of the title track — "my life has been a tapestry of rich and royal hue" — is quite telling, because it has such a wide emotional spectrum. Optimism here, pessimism there, love confession on the right, breakup lament on the left — selfless sacrificial devotion of ʽWhere You Leadʼ replaced with the tormenting self-doubt of ʽWill You Love Me Tomorrowʼ, anguish and desperation of ʽHome Againʼ adjacent to the martial optimism of ʽBeautifulʼ; and in the middle of it all, just so you don't end up bored with all the love songs, comes an Elton John-ian (think Tumbleweed Connection) joke-pop-epic ʽSmackwater Jackʼ that advocates for gun control, justice, and lynch mobs in the most upbeat manner possible (Carole King was never much about American history or politics, which is probably why I find it so fun when she writes a song on one of these subjects). Anyway, the best thing about all these changing moods is how it all rings true — the melodies, the arrangements (heavy on piano and guitars, very moderate on strings), and especially the voice, technically flawed in any genre but capable of expression in any of them, be it folk, pop, gospel, or rock.

At the end of it all, the little woman experiences such a leap of confidence that she even sets out to reclaim ʽ(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Womanʼ from the clutches of Aretha — and in a way, she is better suited to sing the song than Aretha ever was: Aretha sang it like a powerhouse, which was somewhat at odds with the decidedly «anti-feminist» nature of the song — Carole sings it the way she originally intended, a song of... well, let's be kind and say of gratitude (not of submission, much as any militant feminist would probably like to condemn lines like "if I make you happy I don't need to do more"), and it also fits in well with the similar message of ʽWhere You Leadʼ. Both takes are classic, but the readings are very different, and my personal preferences lie with Carole's (the same way I usually prefer Dylan's originals over covers that are more elaborate technically, but may easily miss all the ambiguous subtleties).

It's all a kind of sonic magic, of course — if I ever saw "you got to get up every morning with a smile on your face and show the world all the love in your heart" linked to in a Facebook post, I'd be hitting the Unfollow option faster than you could share, but when I hear it sung at the beginning of ʽBeautifulʼ, I can't actually help smiling: I mean, I might be doomed forever already, but here's a person that clearly believes what she sings, and even if she does not precisely practice what she preaches, the strong determination in this song — coming from such an obviously weak body — is admirable. As is, well, just about everything about this record, including even its front cover: fat tabby cats (especially when they're called Telemachus, adding either a Homeric or a Joycian note to the proceedings, you choose) agree very nicely with sweaters, bare feet, self-stitched tapestries, and showing the world all the love in your heart. Thumbs up.

MUSIC (1971)

1) Brother, Brother; 2) It's Going To Take Some Time; 3) Sweet Seasons; 4) Some Kind Of Wonderful; 5) Surely; 6) Carry Your Load; 7) Music; 8) Song Of Long Ago; 9) Brighter; 10) Growing Away From Me; 11) Too Much Rain; 12) Back To California.

The major problem with Music, as it is, in fact, with most of Carole's subsequent output, is that it is simply much too mellow. Tapestry struck a perfect balance between softness and toughness: ʽI Feel The Earth Moveʼ actually rocked, ʽBeautifulʼ was a real power anthem, ʽWhere You Leadʼ had uplifting energy, and ʽSmackwater Jackʼ was a ridiculously fun stomper of a throwaway, cleverly sandwiched in between the ballads. Conversely, with Music Carole upsets the balance: as good as any individual song here is (and most are really good), the album overdoses on tender sweetness, and even though, by inertia, it also rose to No. 1 in the charts, sales would be nowhere near as strong as Tapestry's — and today, the record, along with the entirety of Carole's ensuing career, is comfortably forgotten.

Which is unjust, because if taken in small doses, Music gives you exactly the same Carole King: a talented composer, an honest and emotional singer, and an adorable human being. At this point, she is pretty much running out of oldies to cover («re-cover»?): the only such oldie here is the old Drifters' hit ʽSome Kind Of Wonderfulʼ, predictably re-introverted from the Drifters' luxuriously extravert performance, but not necessarily a highlight on this album — in fact, two minutes into the song it becomes a lazy, pleasant lullaby, putting you to sleep with its tasteful, but generic singer-songwriterish arrangement (two criss-crossed acoustic guitars, piano, silky bass, congas, pretty girl backing vocals, the works).

She is still capable of upbeat pop — ʽSweet Seasonsʼ, smartly enough released as a single, is the bounciest and catchiest tune of the lot here, and it should be able to put a smile on your face as easily as anything on Tapestry; the falsetto twirl on the "...like a sailboat a-sailin' on the sea" is marvelously head-spinning, and the entire band seems energized (listen to Charles Larkey really «sailing» on his bass during the fade-out). ʽBrighterʼ seems a little cornier, and its happy beat is like a preview of the nonchalant disco attitude of the mid-Seventies, but that does not take away the catchiness of the chorus or the delight at more of Larkey's impressive bass zoops. And I wonder if the lady herself realized, consciously or unconsciously, that her ʽBack To Californiaʼ was stylistically and musically ripping off the Beatles' ʽGet Backʼ — right down to the message, as now, instead of "Jojo left his home in Tucson, Arizona, for some California grass", we have "take me to the West Coast, daddy, and let me be where I belong"? The tempo, the beat, the banging piano chords, the electric piano solo... coincidence? Can't be. But cool tune anyway.

The majority of Music is, however, quite mellow... well, actually, even the upbeat songs are mellow, because she simply refuses this time around to let anger, nervous tension, or depression into the picture: sadness, yes, but always colored with optimism. The most unusual song is ʽBrother, Brotherʼ, which seems to have been written under the influence of, and maybe even as an indirect response to Marvin Gaye's What's Going On — a piece of slightly funky soul with a message of feeling one with the (presumably Afro-American) underdog: for some reason, though, it does not work too well, perhaps because she is trying too hard to write and sing in somebody else's style rather than her own — but surely we can appreciate the gesture. There's also the title track, a waltzy continuation of the soft jazz jamming she'd already explored on ʽRaspberry Jamʼ, but again a little more mellow and a little too relying on a rather boring sax solo this time.

As for the ballads, they suffer from sharing precisely the same type of arrangement over and over again (acoustic guitars, piano, bass, congas or soft percussion), even if choruses for ʽGrowing Away From Meʼ and ʽCarry Your Loadʼ are as catchy as anything she'd ever done. The big misfire, however, is ʽSurelyʼ, a slow, ponderous, meandering soul jam that seems to take ʽNatural Womanʼ as its starting point, but fails to provide a proper build-up or climax; Aretha, perhaps, could make the song come alive with a big booming delivery, but Carole's vocal powers are not enough to compensate for the lack of interesting melody.

Still, the record gets a thumbs up anyway, because all the main ingredients of King's magic are here — she has forgotten a few of them, but at least the arrangements never take away from her disarming humanity, and I can even stand the James Taylor duet on ʽSong Of Long Agoʼ (although only barely so). If you are an admirer of the balladeering side of the lady, do not pass this by: Music has plenty of soul-baring introspection that cannot be spoiled by generic soft-rock arrangements. But do not, indeed, expect another installment of Tapestry.

RHYMES & REASONS (1972)

1) Come Down Easy; 2) My My She Cries; 3) Peace In The Valley; 4) Feeling Sad Tonight; 5) The First Day In August; 6) Bitter With The Sweet; 7) Goodbye Don't Mean I'm Gone; 8) Stand Behind Me; 9) Gotta Get Through Another Day; 10) I Think I Can Hear You; 11) Ferguson Road; 12) Been To Canaan.

Whirling Dervish Robert Christgau summarized this album thusly: "The melodies retain their overall charm, but because the lyrics continue their retreat, the hooks, such as they are, never jolt the expectations", and gave it a pitiful C rating. Of course, this judgement was made several years before I was born and has to be respected at least out of general respect for antiquity, but I could never bring myself to believe that Carole King got more boring just because she replaced Gerry Goffin as her chief lyricist with Toni Stern, and, ultimately, with herself. There simply has to be some other reason, considering that we are, after all, dealing first and foremost with one of the most beloved composers, not lyric writers, in pop music.

It is most certainly true that lyrics like "It's a gray gloomy day / A strange and moody blues day / Gotta get through another day" are a little embarrassing even for a non-professional in the verbal department (and maybe just one notch higher than "It's Friday, Friday / Gotta get down on Friday / Everybody's looking forward to the weekend"). But the worst thing about ʽGotta Get Throughʼ are not the words, but the incomprehensibly bland and lazy melodic flow — its monotonously thumping piano chords never gel into a memorable hook, and its vocal melody never rises above a tepid, unenthusiastic self-admonition: remember the sheer energy and determination of ʽBeautifulʼ, a song that could really give somebody a great kick-start for the day, and compare it with this mushy piece — pleasant enough, but hardly rising above the average level of a typical theme for some third-rate talk show or soap opera.

Horrendously, every single song on Rhymes & Reasons is like that. The only difference is that a few of the tunes are slightly more upbeat and give some work to the rhythm section (besides ʽGotta Get Throughʼ, there's also ʽBitter With The Sweetʼ, which is at least great to hear because of some more of that first-class funky work from the wonderful, totally underrated Charles Larkey), but most are slow, sentimental ballads, and the rot that began to surreptitiously creep in at the time of the still good Music, has now settled in decisively. Everything is pleasant and «tasteful»; nothing is memorable or outstanding. Above everything else, the energy level may be described by a near-flat line for all of the album's 35 minutes — not a single peak, outburst, climax etc. anywhere in sight. It's almost as if she took the refrain of the first song ("so come down easy, let it come down slow") for granted, and the entire album does nothing but come down slow and easy. All the arrangements are the same (piano, acoustic guitars etc.); instrumental passages are nearly non-existant, replaced by streams of boring lyrical images that contain their share of rhymes, but I couldn't say the same about reasons.

I mean, you definitely have a problem when you have a song called ʽFeeling Sad Tonightʼ, yet there is nothing whatsoever in the song's mood to suggest a feeling of sadness — then, of course, you realize that the words really go "feeling sad tonight, but everything's alright", and that is precisely what's happening, because everything's definitely alright, and there's no reason to get emotionally riled over anything. Essentially, this set of songs is just completely devoid of inspiration: on ʽStand Behind Meʼ, she asks us, somewhat en passant, "Should I create today / Or let it be?" Guess what the answer should be. In this context, the last song, ʽBeen To Canaanʼ, allegedly expressing deep longing to revisit a long-lost earthly paradise, could be metaphorically construed as the author's implicit lament at this uncomfortable sterility — "though I'm content with myself, sometimes I long to be somewhere else... I won't rest until I go back again". She even released that song as a single, but it is just as sterile melodically as everything else, and I'm pretty sure people were just buying it out of politeness — yes, dear Carole, please go back again!

In short, as curious as it is, here we do have ourselves a situation when an artist, in less than two years' time, goes from producing the perfect model of a singer-songwriter pop album to producing the most generic and yawn-inducing model of a singer-songwriter pop album ever. And it has nothing to do with the lyrics — it is the music that is a real letdown, a slipshod application of the formula that captures the artist in a mellow, self-content, emotionally stable mode and is essentially the musical equivalent of some pretty landscape painting in the local three-star hotel. Curiously, it still managed to sell real well in the US, but trans-Atlantically, sales totally plummeted and marked the complete end of Carole King as a (still relevant) international artist — because, it may be presumed, this kind of music (muzak?) could only interest the local market, and even then, only for a short while longer. Thumbs down, by all means; I don't think even a single song from this lot should be making it over to anybody's best-of collection.

FANTASY (1973)

1) Fantasy Beginning; 2) You've Been Around Too Long; 3) Being At War With Each Other; 4) Directions; 5) That's How Things Go Down; 6) Weekdays; 7) Haywood; 8) A Quiet Place To Live; 9) Welfare Symphony; 10) You Light Up My Life; 11) Corazon; 12) Believe In Humanity; 13) Fantasy End.

A singer-songwriter without a genuine concept album to his/her name can never properly advance to the next level of artistic recognition; and as great as Tapestry was, it could only be called a «concept» album in the broadest possible sense (where, for instance, any album written by one artist based on his/her sincere feelings about the world would automatically be «conceptual»). So, as 1973 came along and the world as of yet showed no sign of getting out of the «progressive grip», Carole King took what was arguably the biggest gamble of her career — releasing a conceptual suite, in which she would try on several different masks and explore a wide variety of subjects (social, political, and personal), without, however, trying to genuinely conceal the Carole King stamp on all the addressed issues. To further ensure the conceptual unity of the whole thing, there would be no breaks between songs other than the Side A/Side B transition — and the album would begin and end with a thematic intro and outro, briefly explaining and justifying the concept: "...I may step out outside myself / And speak as if I were someone else". Oh, and all the lyrics would be self-penned this time around.

One thing that is definitely true is that Fantasy is a big departure from Rhymes & Reasons — and a big brave departure, really, because as boring as that album might seem today, it still sold very well in 1972, based both on the continuing strength of the reputation of Carole in general and Tapestry in particular and on the overall popularity of sentimental singer-songwriterish soft-pop at the time. There was no transparent need to change the formula, and yet change it she did, no doubt, while still under the heavy influence of Marvin Gaye's What's Going On and a strong nagging feeling that music should «make a difference» and stimulate people, rather than merely provide passive entertainment. So far, so good; the real question is — would she be up to the task? After all, (a) most of her music had always stayed in the love song ballpark and (b) ever since Tapestry, her writing skills seem to have been steadily declining. Getting a genuinely soulful and moving reflection on the state of humanity from her right after being stuck with a conventional-clichéd collection of simple love songs on Rhymes & Reasons would seem quite a «fantasy» indeed, under the circumstances.

And indeed, the gamble did not pay off. Fantasy sold OK enough, again, still riding on the strength of the songwriter's name, but stalled at No. 6 on the charts anyway, and all three of its singles fared even worse. The critics had, at best, tepid words to say about the results, and at worst, ended up ridiculing the poor woman for biting off far more than she could chew — successfully preventing her from trying anything like that again. (Incidentally, and maybe not even co-incidentally, a similar thing happened to Carole's most notorious song recipient in the same year: Aretha's Hey Now Hey (The Other Side Of The Sky), which also came out in 1973, was her most experimental and risk-taking album to date, and it was also panned by critics, neglected by fans and pretty much quenched her desire for musical adventuring once and for all). Occasional recent attempts at re-evaluation have not proven successful, either, and overall, the record continues to be regarded as a curious failure, at best.

The problem is, Fantasy is a somewhat ambitious album, and from such albums, by definition, we instinctively expect a kind of ground-shaking reaction — whereas Carole can really only operate in a «homely» mode: neither her technically weak voice, nor her approach to melody writing, nor her experience with multi-layered arrangements would ever allow her to rise to truly epic heights. And when you have this nearly epic drive without being able to provide an epic realization... well, the obvious thing to do is mention this as a major problem, say «this is no What's Goin' On» and move on.

Which would be the solution of choice for me, too, were I a major admirer of What's Goin' On: however, I do believe that, first of all, Carole King is no worse (and in some respects, better) composer than Marvin Gaye, and, second, that she feels just as strongly about all these issues and all her invented characters as Marvin feels about his — it's just that her approach is always on the shy and humble side. She's essentially an introvert making a brave, if a little terrified, attempt here to venture out into extroverted space — and even if the individual songs rarely rise to the heights of Tapestry, I'd say that as a whole, the album still works, even if some of the transitions between the tracks could have been handled much less crudely (actually, the problem is that there are no transitions — most of the time, the first song is just cut off abruptly and the next one barges in. Somebody had obviously missed her Thick As A Brick homework).

Anyway, as far as the socially-conscious part of the album is concerned, the tracks are (softly) poignant. ʽYou've Been Around Too Longʼ, alternating between paranoid funky verses, somewhat more triumphant verses with brass fanfare hooks, and ominous orchestrated breaks, is as good a civil rights anthem as any. Another funky highlight, opening the second side with terrific bass work (as usual) from Mr. Larkey, is ʽHaywoodʼ, where the lady amicably reprimands a drug addict — it's not really much of a song, but kudos to Carole for getting the essence of «dark funk» just right, and the atmospheric combination of bass, brass, and orchestration on the final jamming bit eventually gets under my skin quite efficiently. ʽBeing At War With Each Otherʼ, despite the nice message, is a little too slow and mushy for my taste, but ʽBelieve In Humanityʼ, which essentially reprises the same message on the second side, is Carole's musical answer to Stevie Wonder's ʽSuperstitionʼ, with a similarly tense gradual build-up through a long verse to a final chorus explosion, followed by more fanfares from the «released» brass section — and it's a fairly catchy and involving song, and far more playful, musically, than its title would suggest.

The most daring number on the entire record is ʽWelfare Symphonyʼ, which probably could have been expanded into a much longer epic number; as it is, with less than four minutes of music, it could hardly hope to make much of an impression on the «progressive» world — but its mix of pop and jazz motives, as it eventually forgets all about its social message (lamenting about a mother struggling on welfare) and plunges forward into experimental jazz territory, is as far out as Carole would ever venture in the area of composing. Of course, it would be ridiculous to compare the work to that of jazz-fusion pros, but then, this is not «Carole King trying to sound like Soft Machine» anyway — this is Carole King trying to apply, in a very simple way, some of the achievements of modern jazz music to an allegorical conveying of the state of mind of someone who "had so much trouble all her time", and even if I cannot say that she totally succeeds in this (after all, «broken» jazz chords like that are hardly my musical trick of choice when it comes to symbolically representing toil and trouble in music), the effort is still unique and admirable.

Of course, it would be futile (and irrational) to expect a complete album of nothing but sociopolitical songs from Carole — and while I could not state that these simple love songs are a big step up back from the blandness of Rhymes (ʽYou Light Up My Lifeʼ is the kind of stereotypical ballad I could easily live without), stuff like ʽThat's How Things Go Downʼ reprises a certain childish freshness that was still abundant on Tapestry and Music but was almost completely replaced by James Taylor-isms on the 1972 disaster. And although most critics hate and dismiss ʽCorazonʼ as a silly cash-in on the Latin style that shows zero understanding of it on Carole's part, I think that the track, with its catchy keep-it-simple-stupid seven-note bass/piano riff, still has a certain charm — it's not so much of a «failure» to work in a certain genre as, rather, yet another attempt to borrow a bit of that genre and adapt it to the Carole King style. The fact that the lyrics are reduced to a measly "Corazon, mi corazon, yo te quiero, mi corazon", certainly does not mean that she cannot succeed in the genre — it is more of a subtle-ironic reminder of how little the words, compared to the music, tend to matter in this sort of songs (although it is true that the chances of encountering a popular Latin American song without the word corazón in it are very close to zero, so she does know about and respect this convention at least).

Overall, Fantasy is not an overwhelming success, but it does work as a special «homebrewed concept album», and it did help pull the songwriter out of a rut, if only for a brief while. Of course, I am not saying that we should throw out thumbs up ratings to any album that «tries», just because it does (or else I'd be forced to positively rate all those Kansas records, yeeewgh); but when you have an artist as innately charismatic as Carole King, then sometimes even a relative «risk-taking failure» like this is emotionally preferable to playing it safe and sound by the book, like she did on Rhymes & Reasons. Fantasy is not great, but it is curious and it is touching — especially if you try to approach it with minimum prejudice, and more from a «little person's perspective on big problems» angle than a «Marvin Gaye rip-off!» one.

WRAP AROUND JOY (1974)

1) Nightingale; 2) Change In Mind, Change Of Heart; 3) Jazzman; 4) You Go Your Way, I'll Go Mine; 5) You're Something New; 6) We Are All In This Together; 7) Wrap Around Joy; 8) You Gentle Me; 9) My Lovin' Eyes; 10) Sweet Adonis; 11) A Night This Side Of Dying; 12) The Best Is Yet To Come.

Here it is, the album that Rhymes & Reasons should have really been if Carole hadn't suddenly felt the need to wrap around pure mellowness instead of joy...ful pop hooks. With the relative failure of Fantasy (or, more accurately, with the world's refusal to acknowledge her as a bona fide progressive artist), she returns here to the simpler pop song format, as well as (temporarily) abandons her lyrical ambitions — all the words here are credited to David Palmer, the original singer of Steely Dan. (Some people use this as a criticism, but who really listens to Carole King songs for the words? It's usually enough to just get a general message of what the song is about, and that's that — I like the tone of something like ʽBeautifulʼ far more than the actual words of ʽBeautifulʼ, which are just an ordinary form of bedroom psychotherapy).

The difference is that there's more upbeat and truly joyful (rather than melancholic) stuff; the songs, on the whole, are better written, with more sharply delineated and emotionally filled choruses, and although even the best of these tunes cannot stand comparison with Tapestry (maybe because this album is just a bit too happy in comparison?), almost everything is memorable in one way or another, not to mention endearing as usual. Basically, if you are looking for a very straightforward, very romantic and peaceful, but still very well-written, album of Carole King songs, Wrap Around Joy is precisely what you should be doing.

The big hit was ʽJazzmanʼ, an ode to saxophonist Curtis Amy, predictably replete with lengthy sax solos itself (from notorious sax player Tom Scott) and therefore blending well into the epoch (it might not be a coincidence that Lennon's ʽWhatever Gets You Thru The Nightʼ, also heavily dependent on blaring saxes, rose to #1 in the same year — actually, in the exact same month, November '74, as Carol's song hit #2). It's catchy, joyful, uplifting, and almost becomes proto-disco in the chorus without losing that typically C. K. warmth, even if there's no particular depth to the message. Even better, though a little less successful on the charts, was ʽNightingaleʼ, a tight piece of soft funk with a really beautiful chorus of friendly melancholia and an inventive arrangement (there's an odd recorder-like — nightingale-like? — lead part throughout the song that adds an odd spirit of pastoral peacefulness to the tune).

But even apart from the hits, there's plenty of goodies in store. The title track, for instance, with its stuttering rhythmics, honky-tonk piano, and over-joyful harmonies, is the closest she'd ever come to «pub pop» at the time, with intentional musical similarities to ʽRock'n'Roll Fever & The Boogie Woogie Fluʼ — and the chorus, expectedly, is all but impossible to get out of your head. Perhaps it is more of a musical joke for her, like ʽSmackwater Jackʼ, but so much the better. ʽSweet Adonisʼ explores the good news theme from a power-pop side, while ʽMy Lovin' Eyesʼ is more in the soul/R&B vein, but both songs have melodic twists in the lead vocal part that remind you of Carole King's genius far more efficiently than anything from the previous two albums. Even the slower ballads do the job — ʽYou Go Your Way, I'll Go Mineʼ (nothing to do with the similarly titled Dylan song) is a really sharp-edged song about separation, where the verses convey desperation (I shiver every time she raises her voice on the "with sharp and angry lies..." line, with all the determination of a sentenced prisoner speaking her last piece) and the chorus, with an abrupt "well all right!", pushes the song into a more self-assertive direction; and even though ʽChange In Mind, Change In Heartʼ «wastes» four and a half minutes on a single vocal hook, it still makes sense to wait for it; it's a really touching ode to mutual tolerance and reconciliation, and the «mind / heart» dilemma is handled in quite a special way.

Of course, none of this should efface the fact that the record is stylistically monotonous and emotionally simplistic — despite sharing its occasional moments of subtle sadness, it's largely a very happy album, as suggested by its title, reflecting a fairly peaceful period in Carole's life (she wouldn't be divorcing Larkey until 1976), and, like all very happy records, will never be as exciting and stimulating as albums about pain and suffering. But there's enough intelligence and simple, tasteful beauty behind the proverbial shine and gloss, and I dare say that with a more inventive approach to arrangement and production, Wrap Around Joy could have easily become and remained a critical favorite. As it is, it merely returned Carole to commercial success for a brief while, but that, too, was a pretty happy happening for 1974. Thumbs up.

REALLY ROSIE (1975)

1) Really Rosie; 2) One Was Johnny; 3) Alligators All Around; 4) Pierre; 5) Screaming And Yelling; 6) The Ballad Of Chicken Soup; 7) Chicken Soup With Rice; 8) Avenue P; 9) My Simple Humble Neighborhood; 10) The Awful Truth; 11) Such Sufferin'; 12) Really Rosie (reprise).

Not having had the honor of growing up as a kid (or growing kids as a parent) in mid-Sixties America, I have missed the opportunity to become closely acquainted with the work of Maurice Sendak — however, as far as I can see, at least the verse part of his picture books (The Nutshell Library series) was fairly faithfully adapted by Carole King, and the lyrics are pretty cool: at the expense of being perhaps a bit too complicated for the average toddler, they have «family entertainment» value in that they may engage both kids and adults, and, of course, they have that «unsettling», «dark» angle that is so much all the rage today, as long as a particular author of children's literature wants to get a pat on the back from sophisticated critics and readers.

But truth be told, there's really no denying the talent of the writer, and it's twice as awesome that a melody writer as talented as Carole King agreed to put some of those lyrics to music. It may have been quite natural, too, seeing as how she had kids of her own who probably were growing up on that stuff (in fact, daughters Louise and Sherry are here in person, providing backup vocals throughout), and, as a progressive mother who is not afraid of a little bit of scary imagery, she herself is totally getting into the spirit of the thing. More importantly, it provides her with a great opportunity to get away from the too overtly mellow, wishy-washy structure of her emotional balladry and concentrate almost exclusively on those pop hooks that had pretty much died out after Tapestry (although Wrap Around Joy wasn't too bad in that respect).

The proper way to do this, actually, is (a) keep the tunes as snappy and upbeat as possible and (b) keep the arrangements to a minimum — most of the time, it's just a piano-bass-drums trio, with husband Charles Larkey and Andy Newmark keeping up the beat. In a few cases, there's also some guitar, usually in the appropriate contexts — for instance, ʽThe Awful Truthʼ, where the protagonist discusses her chances at "playing Mrs. Dracula", is accompanied by some histrionic distorted electric soloing; and, curiously, Carole herself is credited as the only guitar player on the album, so it's somewhat hilarious to think that her first experience playing distorted electric guitar may have taken place on an album for kiddies.

Anyway, if your toddler likes the books, he or she would probably be happy to recite the alphabet in the ʽAlligators All Aroundʼ order, empathizing with the I-don't-caring Pierre and the lion who had to eat him in order to cure him from an annoying attitude, crying at the terrible fate of Chicken Soup (Carole gets into this one with a particularly theatrical flavor, with probably her wildest bit of screaming ever captured on record), or learning the differences between the twelve months of the year, all of which have only one thing in common — ʽChicken Soup With Riceʼ. And if you are the parent of that toddler, you might (brushes sentimental tear off face) be happy yourself to provide him or her with that entertainment. Besides, if you just stick to the books, you'll never be able to recite them as effectively as Carole, so, you know, better leave it to the professionals.

No, honestly, it's not one of those rare records that «masquerades» as a children-oriented piece of entertainment, while at the same time containing hidden depth — Really Rosie is purely shallow fun-oriented stuff. But it is infested with Carole King charisma from top to bottom, and when the charisma is combined with a clever mix of cuddliness, sentimentality, humor, and macabre spookiness... well, the overall result is far more enjoyable on a gut level, even for an adult, than quite a few «dead serious» albums in my memory. So, thumbs up: my only complaint is that it will now take at least a couple of weeks for my brain to clear out that "chicken soup, chicken soup, chicken soup with RIIIICE!" bit. Particularly painful, that one, given how much I hate the very idea of chicken soup with rice. (For a change, try humming "chicken soup with mice" or "chicken soup with lice" instead — I assure you that it won't spoil the spirit of the book or of the musical one little bit).

THOROUGHBRED (1975)

1) So Many Ways; 2) Daughter Of Light; 3) High Out Of Time; 4) Only Love Is Real; 5) There's A Space Between Us; 6) I'd Like To Know You Better; 7) We All Have To Be Alone; 8) Ambrosia; 9) Still Here Thinking Of You; 10) It's Gonna Work Out Fine.

The end of an era: Carole's last album for Ode Records, last album produced by Lou Adler and the last one to reflect precisely the same old, sunnily conservative production stylistics, associated with Carole's house band (Kortchmar et al.), as well as Crosby & Nash (both of whom appear here as background vocalists), James Taylor (who also appears here as background vocalist), and riding a thoroughbred horse on the beach without a care in the world. Which does not mean that there actually were no cares in the world — husband Charles Larkey, woe and alas, is no longer credited as the resident bass player (replaced by Leland Sklar), because of domestic troubles that were tearing the house apart.

Instead, however, of going the easy way and converting domestic problems into tempestuous art, Carole went the hard way and preferred to make another sunny album — this was, after all, what the people expected of her. And now that she was no longer bound by the catchiness parameter (grown-ups can stand hookless, after all — you can't fool the kids, but you can work your way around the grown-ups), the result, once again, is disappointing. There is virtually nothing about Thoroughbred, bar Carole's usual ability to come across as friendly and likeable, to make it stand out — like Rhymes & Reasons, this is just an okay collection of mediocre ballads and smooth, formulaic pop-rockers.

"So many ways, so many ways to show you love someone" — a promising start, perhaps, but just one question: where are these many ways? The only way I hear is a piano ballad that rides the same chords we have already heard a hundred times, and the worst way possible to present it, when the transition from verse to chorus is marked only by a surge in volume, nothing else. And even worse than that, there are signs of fakery aboard: on the closing number, ʽIt's Gonna Work Out Fineʼ, she sings: "We've been hurting each other through a hard time / And it's a mighty good feeling to know it's gonna work out fine" — the entire song rings as untrue as the combination of these two lines: if you've really been hurting each other, how the heck do you even begin to get the feeling that "it's gonna work out fine" (and it really won't)? She tries hard — yes, she even delays the resolution of the second line, turning it into a climactic outburst, with some heavy artillery thrown in in the form of an uplifting brass riff. It does not help: the song is formally positive, but hardly the strong uplifting jolt that is needed to convince the listener.

Of all the songs here, I can vouch safely only for one — ʽAmbrosiaʼ, with lyrics by Dave Palmer, has a certain stately majesty, coupled with melancholy and nostalgia. There's nothing particularly outstanding about its melody, but there's a sort of mix between gospel-soul and country-pop here that tugs at heartstrings which none of the other songs manage to irritate. Repeated listens show that the whole thing is not hopeless (there are at least some attempts to produce memorable pop phrasing on numbers like ʽDaughter Of Lightʼ and ʽWe All Have To Be Aloneʼ), but most likely, by the time you get used to the very subtle nuances that distinguish these tunes from one another, you will already have completely lost interest. Yes, ʽHigh Out Of Timeʼ does sound a lot like Crosby & Nash, not the least because Crosby & Nash sing background vocals, but in basic musical terms this is a non-entity — like a deconstructed ʽLong And Winding Roadʼ, devoid of its genius musical decisions and turned into slow background balladry muzak. And it's even more painful to listen to something like ʽOnly Love Is Realʼ start out with almost the same melody and atmosphere as ʽIt's Too Lateʼ, only to realize a few bars later that it has none of that awesome contrast between the ominous verse and the angry-sad chorus.

In short, while not an embarrassing disaster, Thoroughbred is a serious disappointment after the previous two records: Wrap Around Joy had given us a promising transformation into a jazz-pop hookmeister (even with a few glam elements thrown in for good measure), Really Rosie proved once and for all that «inborn pop instinct» is a reality that requires at least a lobotomy to go away completely, but with this album, she once again tried to put «substance» before «form», and, honestly, Carole King is not the deepest or the most unusual thinking artist in existence, so her falling back on the thrice recycled formula of Tapestry was doomed from the start. The album did chart for a while, but the formula had clearly run out of gas, as, for that matter, did almost the entire sunny Californian style by the end of 1975. And even if the record is still much better than Carole's post-Ode output on the average, I do not see myself revisiting it any time in the future — cut out ʽAmbrosiaʼ, perhaps, and leave the rest of this «thoroughbred»'s carcass to the dogs, with a decisive thumbs down.

SIMPLE THINGS (1977)

1) Simple Things; 2) Hold On; 3) In The Name Of Love; 4) Labyrinth; 5) You're The One; 6) Hard Rock Cafe; 7) Time Alone; 8) God Only Knows; 9) To Know That I Love You; 10) One.

The start of an era: Carole's first album for Avatar Records, with a completely new team of musicians and a seriously different sound, even if, from the very first track, it is quite obvious that most of the change has been external and superficial. Her voice and piano, fortunately, are still at the core of the sound, but on the whole, the arrangements become tougher and more electric: strings and horns are still in, but acoustic guitars are mostly out, largely because of Carole's new partner, Rick Evers, who sort of steered her in a slightly heavier direction.

Critical reception for Simple Things was frigid at best: common consensus seemed to imply that Carole King had become a stubborn dinosaur, refusing to evolve and adapt to the times — allegedly, Rolling Stone dubbed it «the worst album of 1977» (with Kansas and Uriah Heep still on the prowl? you sure ain't no gentleman, Mr. Wenner!), and the bad reputation still persists, seeing as how all of Carole King's pre-Avatar record catalog still remains in print, whereas some of those later albums seem to have never even been released in CD format. Indeed, like most of the American soft-rockers of the first half of the decade, Carole was in trouble — it would have been very hard to imagine her as a disco dancer, let alone a punk rocker, and her natural shyness and reclusiveness was becoming less and less convenient in an epoch that was placing more and more emphasis on flashiness and visual imagery. In a way, it is quite amazing that she still had enough credit left for the album to go gold, by pure inertia...

...especially if you also take into consideration the arch-ridiculous decision to take the worst track off it and release it as a single. See, not only does Carole King have no business writing a track called ʽHard Rock Cafeʼ — a bit like seeing Judas Priest at the local Renaissance Fair — but even if it is just business and she was paid by the Hard Rock Cafe for promotion or something, why write and arrange it like a friggin' mariachi band number? All of a sudden, in the middle of this still very personal and intimate bunch of ballads and soft-rockers, you get the artificially «happy» and utterly generic atmosphere of a banal carnival. As a corny B-side outtake or a publicity jingle, it would be okay, but as the first public announcement of The New Carole King, it was a highly predictable embarrassment, a serious lapse of taste that could only alienate the critical community — most of the members of which were far too busy in 1977, anyway, to listen to a new Carole King album from top to bottom.

Which is too bad, since there are at least some good songs here, and overall, I would consider it a significant improvement over the consistent mediocrity of Thoroughbred — on the first go, at least, the change of creative environment did Carole some good. First and foremost, we gotta give some credit to the guitar players — particularly Robert McEntee and Mark Hallman (I am not sure how much credit should be actually given to Rick Evers, who is co-credited on three songs with Carole and also listed as a guitar player). On two of the album's most uptempo numbers, the guitars kick up a real storm. ʽYou're The Oneʼ is a dark and melancholic song, a little reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac's ʽYou Make Loving Funʼ in terms of tempo, basic rhythmic structure, and the impact that the sharp, intrusive guitar licks make on the rest of the song — but this one's more disturbing and, at times, even more desperate, in strange contrast with Carole's former peace of mind. The other number is ʽGod Only Knowsʼ — not a cover of the Beach Boys song, but a completely different and, this time, bouncy and uplifting song, with a ʽRunawayʼ-ish "I wonder..." hook.

Both songs are decent as far as composing goes, but the real reason I am singling them out is that both are extended with an unusually long (for Carole) coda, where the guitarists are given complete freedom, and they are not afraid to use it. On ʽYou're The Oneʼ, the two players battle each other, contrasting a sharp, shrill tone with one muffled by a talkbox effect; and on ʽGod Only Knowsʼ, one of the soloists (no idea who exactly) delivers a fluent, super-melodic blues-pop solo that Dickey Betts might have envied. Really, this marks a first — never before did Carole allow her supporting players to carry on with their guitar solos for so long, and she couldn't have chosen a better opportunity to start: the electric guitar on both these songs is as perfect a companion for her and her piano as the sax solo was on ʽJazzmanʼ.

As for the less guitar-dependent songs, I'd say that the title track is quite lovely, despite the unnecessary overreliance on synthesizers, and gets its programmatic message ("simple things mean a lot to me") across quite convincingly. Little else stands out (although, other than the abysmal ʽHard Rock Cafeʼ, little else is openly irritating), until she gets to the very end and delivers one of the most ambitious songs she ever wrote: ʽOneʼ is a micro-macro-cosmic anthem that somehow manages, over a measly five minutes, to touch upon everything, using the magic number as a starting point — a song about being "one" as a person, as a family unit, and as "one" with the universe, and about all the emotions that go with it, from joy and amazement to bewilderment and confusion (the pertinent refrain is "what am I gonna do?... what am I gonna do?..") Perhaps it is far from her best in sheer melodic terms (although I really like the structural games she plays with the bridge section, going from super-quiet "I am one" to super-loud "WE ARE ONE!"), but it really pays off to see her combine deep personal honesty and vulnerability with sonic bombast in this manner, and in any case, it's a fresh approach to finalizing the album, after three nice, but generic-predictable straightforwardly optimistic codas in a row — this time, the ending is more ambiguous and intriguing.

Bottomline is, the critics were wrong: in a world that does not necessarily expect each and every one of its master songwriters to adapt to new trends, but allows them to follow their own path of spiritual and artistic evolution, Simple Things should have been as welcome as any other B-level Carole King album, and it does have more high points than either Rhymes & Reasons or Thoroughbred, to name but a couple of truly middle-of-the-road albums for her. I am not sure that three very good songs (two of them mostly because of the guitar work), one awful song, and 5-6 unremarkable tunes are really worthy of a thumbs up, but don't let me discourage you from trying the record out anyway — if you see it in a corner, give it a spin, just to be assured that as late as 1977, Carole King did not betray and abandon her muse, even if she still left her going around somewhat underfed and unwashed behind the ears.

WELCOME HOME (1978)

1) Main Street Saturday Night; 2) Sun Bird; 3) Venusian Diamond; 4) Changes; 5) Morning Sun; 6) Disco Tech; 7) Wings Of Love; 8) Ride The Music; 9) Everybody's Got The Spirit; 10) Welcome Home.

Okay, now this is an album that can hardly be saved by even the most objective and unprejudiced analysis. Even if it was produced by pretty much the same team (including the same couple of guitarists, although husband Rick Evers is only credited for cowbell this time — given his drug problems, this somehow does not look surprising), Welcome Home seems to take everything about Simple Things that was problematic (weak hooks, banal lyrics, generally unimaginative arrangements), discard everything that was good (such as classy guitar solos and progressive ambition on songs like ʽOneʼ), and throw in a few additional problems — most importantly, copycatting, as Carole now seems almost resigned to «follow where you lead», even if that makes her sound like a laughable third-rate imitator at times.

Clearly the greatest embarrassment, and one of the worst ever experiences in King's catalog, is ʽDisco Techʼ — the title alone should be enough to die on the spot from an overdose of bad taste, but, yes indeed, this is Carole King going disco, heavily laying on all the clichés of the genre. Considering that Carole King and funk are about as compatible as Shostakovich and hip-hop, lyrics with lines like "rhythm is our way of communication, you won't ever want to take a vacation" (Mike Love, eat your heart out!), and especially "Disco Tech — let me be your teacher!" (no thank you), simply point out the sad fact that, as generally lovable and talented Carole King is as a human being and an artist, she is a bit lacking in the basic intelligence department: even in the sweaty disco climate of 1978, with everybody losing their heads and all, this song could not pass even the lower rungs of the quality test for Whiteboy (Whitegirl) Disco Fodder.

And, unfortunately, that ain't all. On a less overtly embarrassing, but still highly disappointing note, a song like ʽEverybody's Got The Spiritʼ seems clearly copped from Fleetwood Mac's ʽDon't Stopʼ, from the basic rhythm pattern to the fade-in build-up of the introduction to the friendly anthemic chorus — except that it is much weaker in every respect, be it the lyrics, the thin arrangement, the lack of energy, and a complete misunderstanding of the ascending melodic pattern that made ʽDon't Stopʼ so great, as it captured the listener's spirit and pulled it upwards along the melodic stairway. In the place of the invigorating "don't stop thinking about tomorrow", we here have "everybody's got the spirit, yeah you know what I mean" (do we?), delivered in such a way that it seems clear that the only person who's really got the spirit is Carole herself, and even she might be just faking it, too.

Other «highlights» include ʽVenusian Diamondʼ, an oddly «psychedelic» song with Vocoder-treated vocals, circa-1966-Beatles vocal harmonies, two sections that make a transition from slow, lazy, Lennonesque psychedelia to bouncy McCartney-style pop, and sitars a-plenty — the best thing about the song is that it at least does not try to adapt to contemporary trends, and is not as openly annoying as the previously listed two, but it does show that retro psychedelia is no more Carole's forte as is disco music; and two ballad collaborations with Rick Evers — ʽSun Birdʼ (is this, too, inspired by Fleetwood Mac's ʽSongbirdʼ, by any chance?) and ʽWings Of Loveʼ, featuring some of the most inane lyrics of Carole's entire career ("You fill me with love I can give / You fill me with life I can live / You fill me with song I can sing / And truth that makes the kingdom ring" — did they make a journey through time to the 21st century to have a computer write that for them?).

Ultimately, the only song here that rises half an inch above mediocrity would be the album opener ʽMain Street Saturday Nightʼ, a simple pop-rocker with the only example of good lead guitar work on the album and a tiny bit of vocal grit that sounds authentic. Other than that, just about everything is a heavy letdown, and it honestly seems that with Simple Things, Carole was on a positive roll, but less than one year later, she was once again in full turbulence, probably more busy with her (once again) deteriorating family life than with making good music: unlike the aforementioned Fleetwood Mac, who could find artistic inspiration in their troubles by pulling them out in public and perversely feasting on them, Carole always seemed to value her social role of Good Mood Muse, stubbornly stuffing her problems inside of her or only vaguely hinting at them in the good-time melodies she wrote — and with Welcome Home, it feels quite strongly that she is not being honest with us at all, producing insincere, underwritten fodder with no direction whatsoever. Is it any wonder, then, that where Simple Things still went to No. 17 on the charts, Welcome Home did not even make it into the top hundred? No wonder at all. At least with such weak records as Rhymes & Reasons and Thoroughbred, we could hardly doubt the sincerity of the writer's motives: Welcome Home is the first genuinely rotten artifact in the writer's history, reason enough for a rather vicious thumbs down.

TOUCH THE SKY (1979)

1) Time Gone By; 2) Move Lightly; 3) Dreamlike I Wander; 4) Walk With Me (I'll Be Your Companion); 5) Good Mountain People; 6) You Still Want Her; 7) Passing Of The Days; 8) Crazy; 9) Eagle; 10) Seeing Red.

The best thing I can say about Touch The Sky, recorded in the wake of yet another tragedy in Carole's life (Rick Evers' death from overdosing), is that it at least avoids any explicit embarrassments like ʽHard Rock Cafeʼ or ʽDisco Techʼ. It is just a plain, normal little record in Carole's usual pop-rock style, alternating between balladry, country-rock, and R&B and about as exciting as having to sit through a musical lesson with an obedient, hard-working, but sparkless student. Without Evers, Carole now once again writes all the music and all the lyrics (I think the last time this happened was on Fantasy), but retains most of the playing team from the previous two albums, including her talented guitarist Mark Hallman (but not Robert McEntee). This helps her get a good sound going on, but there's only so much a good sound can do when you're running real low on inspiration — honestly, the album title should have come with a question mark.

The first two tracks on the album were released as singles, probably just because they were the first two tracks — not a single selection could be identified as an obvious highlight. ʽTime Gone Byʼ is a melancholic-optimistic hymn to the past ("I remember time gone by / When peace and hope and dreams were high"), of the grass-was-greener kind, but with keeper-of-the-flame elements as well ("We followed inner visions and touched the sky / Now we who still believe won't let them die"). The sentiment is cute, but melodically, the song is a soft-rock bore, and the chorus, though definitely louder than the verse, does not gather the necessary energy to infect us with Carole's "inner visions" and stuff. ʽMove Lightlyʼ, in contrast, is a «suspenseful» piece of dark R&B, with an ominous atmosphere — grim bassline, spooky snippets of echoey guitars and organs jumping out at you from the shadows; a first for Carole in this department, not too bad, but not really a style that could be seen as fully appropriate for her. Maybe she should have donated the song to the Rolling Stones instead.

Everything else that is at least vaguely memorable usually is so due to the return of pleasant guitar work, whose absence was so much felt on Welcome Home. The barroom rock of ʽGood Mountain Peopleʼ, a weirder-than-weird attempt at a lyrical reconciliation between hippies and hillbillies ("it's quite a sight to see rednecks and longhairs / After years on the opposite sides of the fences" — WHA?...), is made far more tolerable with an excellent, colorfully distorted power-pop guitar tone; and, likewise, the best thing about the power balladry of ʽYou Still Want Herʼ is the beautiful use of sustain on the bluesy guitar solo. Where these instrumental decors are absent, the songs usually just degenerate into banalities, like ʽEagleʼ, a deeply clichéd allegorical story about Freedom and Independence whose intended audience is probably even younger than Really Rosie's, except Carole's lyrics have neither the inventiveness nor the humor of Maurice Sendak, and the melodic background for the song is totally unremarkable.

It helps at least that there are quite a few upbeat, toe-tappy numbers here, because with one unterminable ballad after another the results would have been completely untolerable — as it is, we at least have stuff like the generic country-rocker ʽPassing Of The Daysʼ and the generic pop-rocker ʽCrazyʼ that increase the simple fun factor without cheapening the proceedings any farther than they have already been cheapened. This all makes for a record that is perfectly listenable, if also perfectly forgettable afterwards — at least, if you're really running short on inspiration, try to make a good uninspired mix of various styles, which is a lesson that was not learnt either on Rhymes & Reasons or Thoroughbred. But no, I am not recommending this for anybody except for completists or strange sophisticated lovers of Mark Hallman's guitar playing.

PEARLS: SONGS OF GOFFIN AND KING (1980)

1) Dancin' With Tears In My Eyes; 2) Locomotion; 3) One Fine Day; 4) Hey Girl; 5) Snow Queen; 6) Chains; 7) Oh No Not My Baby; 8) Hi De Ho; 9) Wasn't Born To Follow; 10) Goin' Back.

Behold, this is a wonderful record — ten amazing songs with nary a single moment of filler, probably the single most consistent and potentially mind-blowing new album produced by Carole since Tapestry, and, in fact, the consolidated power of these songs might even outweigh the collective power of Tapestry. There is a catch, though, and it will be quickly understood with a single glance at the track listing: most of these songs are re-recordings of old classics, written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin in the Sixties for other artists. In other words, a desperate last-minute scramble for a commercial resuscitation — an implicit admittance of the fact that Carole has all but run out of songwriting stamina, and has no other choice but to resort to the cheap trick that forever brands the artist as a «washed-up has-been».

It does serve as an impressive testament to the immeasurable former powers of the Goffin/King duo — after two major flops in a row, Pearls made it all the way up to No. 44, and gave Carole her last success of any importance on the singles chart (in the form of ʽOne Fine Dayʼ, formerly recorded by The Chiffons). Considering that Brill Building material was about as far removed from the trends and fashions of 1980 as Renaissance music, it just goes to show how the best-of-the-best of commercial pop music is capable of transcending all chronological borders — not to mention that it is actually a very nice experience to hear Carole King sing her own song with her own charismatic voice. But ultimately it is still a one-time experience that belongs in 1980, and nothing can alter the status of The Chiffons' version as forever set in stone.

There are almost no attempts here to make the songs significantly different from what they were in the first place — on the contrary, the intention is to capture the original vibe as best as possible, to ensure that nothing gets lost in the attempt to gain something else. ʽLocomotionʼ twists with the same verve as in the Little Eva version; ʽChainsʼ has the same youthful perkiness as the Cookies version (maybe even a bit more, what with the sped-up tempo and an accappella take on the first chorus); ʽHi-De-Hoʼ has the same pleasant, lazy, nonchalant attitude as the Blood, Sweat & Tears version; and ʽWasn't Born To Followʼ, with a loud and proud banjo in the lead, has the same mix of earthiness and romanticism as it has in The Byrds' interpretation.

A few of the included songs merit this more than others because their original incarnations may have faded out of memory — ʽHey Girlʼ, for instance, was the only big hit for Freddie Scott; and the stuttering waltz ʽSnow Queenʼ, originally released by Carole for her long-forgotten «The City» project in 1968, is also encountered rather unfrequently, although it is more of an introspective and atmospheric tune than a catchy pop hit in essence. And if I understand this correctly, ʽDancing With Tears In My Eyesʼ, opening the album, is actually a new song by the two — an interesting one at that, incorporating bits of disco into what is essentially a very traditionally-oriented R&B number and showing that there were at least a few tiny sparks of songwriting left, though not enough to kindle a proper fire. On the other hand, while I totally understand the logic of closing the album with a rendition of ʽGoin' Backʼ ("I think I'm goin' back to the things I learned so well in my youth" — why, sure you are!), I do have to remind everybody that Carole had already recorded this song on her first proper solo album, so it's a bit of overkill.

Anyway, an official thumbs up for this album is impossible — it isn't even live, and nostalgic / customer-baiting re-recordings of classics without at least a reinterpretation angle are the equivalent of thriving on cheat sheets. The best thing I can say is that the arrangements and the production are tasteful, and that Carole sounds as if she was having real fun with the idea, rather than just lifelessly sitting it out because somebody else hoisted it on her. But even strict completists should probably first ensure that they have all the originals in their collections before moving on to this palliative record.

ONE TO ONE (1982)

1) One To One; 2) It's A War; 3) Lookin' Out For Number One; 4) Life Without Love; 5) Golden Man; 6) Read Between The Lines; 7) Boomerang (Love Is Like A); 8) Goat Annie; 9) Someone You Never Met Before; 10) Little Prince.

In retrospect, this record managed to receive some accolades — largely for its lack of embarrassing moments, I guess, and a stark adherence to the classic production style of the Seventies: in fact, it is quite notable that not only Danny Kortchmar from her own band returns to play guitar, but even former husband Charles Larkey is back on bass, while at the same time Mark Hallman is retained as both player and co-producer. Furthermore, with her Capitol contract expired, Carole now allies herself with Atlantic Records, and reconnects with both former-former husband Gerry Goffin and with Cynthia Weil for some of the lyrics. I mean, this is as good an arrangement as could ever be thought of for 1982, right?

Well, the album does have a fairly nice sound in the end, but as far as Carole's songwriting form is concerned... not really sure. Too many recycled chord sequences, too few fresh ideas: the title track, for instance, tries to impress us with an unexpectedly cool melodic shift in the middle, but once you understand that the pattern is mostly just taken over from ʽStand By Meʼ, it's just not so cool any more. The single, by the way, was the last time any single from Carole managed to get on the charts (although, granted, she did not put out any singles again until 1989, by which time her old fans had probably readjusted to the modern adult contemporary market).

With a little effort, I could single out ʽIt's A Warʼ as a cut above the average, although the alleged «anger» of its lyrics (Ms. King complains about people being cruel to each other on an everyday basis and about how "people I had never met were out to get me", now who could any of these people be?... oh wait a minute...) does not agree very well with the generally cozy and friendly melody. But at least it has a chorus that is (a) catchy and (b) does not directly rip off any other song I know, and when multiplied by Carol's charisma (she even mentions to sing about her enemies and "people thinking mean" with compassion rather than hatred), that's reason enough for keeping us happy on a record where most other songs, in comparison, sound about as inspired as you'd expect yourself to be merely from looking out of your window on the ten thousandth rainy day of your uneventful life.

I mean, I just cannot help mentioning the amazing coincidence that both Carole King and Cheap Trick put out a song called ʽLookin' Out For Number Oneʼ in precisely the same year of 1982, but apart from that, the only thing I can say about the King song is that it is written in the funk-pop genre, completely inappropriate for Carole's personality (not that the Cheap Trick song was much better, but at least it was more in their usual rocking style). And as much as (not that much) I enjoy the quiet, tepid flow of ʽBoomerang (Love Is Like A)ʼ, I also cannot help mentioning that the idea of love as a boomerang was already polished to pop perfection by ABBA in their ʽBang-A-Boomerangʼ seven years earlier, and they did their best to bring out the ʽboomʼ in the ʽBoomerangʼ part, whereas Carole's song here might just as well have been called ʽTerrapin (Love Is Like A)ʼ or ʽEndorphin (Love Is Just A)ʼ.

Towards the end, Carole remembers that she used to be a rocker, too, and lets rip with ʽGoat Annieʼ, a blues-pop-rock combo with a «hard» angle and a heart-tearing story about a 75-year old goat herder refusing to let herself be driven off her land — a cool anthem to personal liberty that even Ted Nugent would have appreciated, but not much by way of creative songwriting. Come to think of it, this sounds more like typical Bonnie Raitt material, and should have featured a couple awesome slide guitar solos. Anyway, «rocking Carole» is forgotten fairly quickly, with two unmemorable ballads to finish the album (one of them called ʽLittle Princeʼ, ugh) and an overall impression of... well, just another day in the life. I'd say I get about as excited about this music as I get about the album cover — far be it from me to request a «glamorous» look from Carole, but come on now, she looks like somebody who's never ever left Queens on that photo, even if we all know that she was actually born in Manhattan.

SPEEDING TIME (1983)

1) Computer Eyes; 2) One Small Voice; 3) Crying In The Rain; 4) Sacred Heart Of Stone; 5) Speeding Time; 6) Standin' On The Borderline; 7) So Ready For Love; 8) Chalice Borealis; 9) Dancing; 10) Alabaster Lady.

The less said about this one, the better. In an almost desperate last attempt to refresh and revitalize her sound, Carole teams up with Lou Adler, the producer of Tapestry; enlists Goffin to co-write four new songs with her; retains Danny Kortchmar, while at the same time hiring a whole new team of players; and records her own ʽCrying In The Rainʼ, which we mostly knew earlier from the Everly Brothers cover (but apparently, Tammy Wynette had turned it into a hit once again as late as 1981, so Carole probably thought the time was ripe).

And none of this helps, because Speeding Time is a bland, dull, and tired album — more precisely, an album chockful of bland arrangements, dull playing, and reflecting a deeply tired artist. For some reason, Adler must have thought that it was time to move on and adapt, and so, in the place of the somewhat old-style, but generally tasteful arrangements of One To One, we get entire fields of synthesizer weeds and electronic drums, laid out in the nascent adult-contemporary style, against which King's echoey vocals have to do battle.

The title of the first track is telling — "Computer eyes / It hurts to tell you I don't really want you", she goes as prompted by Goffin's lyrics, "...don't want to program making love / I like it real and with feeling". Perhaps the plastic bubbling keyboards and the hollow electronic boom of the drums are actually supposed to reinforce the point of the lyrics, but the lyrics are over sooner or later, and the bland production is not. As beautiful a song as ʽCrying In The Rainʼ is in its original incarnation, you will have to wait several more years for A-ha to show you how to reinvent it real creatively in the synth-pop era (not to mention that even then, it would hardly have worked without Morten Harket's God-like vocals). This sped-up arrangement with apprentice-level dinky keyboards just cheapens the sentiment.

I suppose that not all the songs are really bad, but the production hackjob sucks all the life out of them anyway. All I can remember is the exact same plastic keyboard texture all over the place; no outstanding work from the rhythm section, no poignant guitar solos, and, of course, this is not what Carole needs for support as a vocalist, as she sounds lost in this electronic pomposity and overwhelmed by studio trickery (which may have seemed dazzling at the time but now just seems rote and dated). The only song where she is able to recover is at the very end — ʽAlabaster Ladyʼ, where the synthesizers give way to a dense set of piano overdubs, and once the song begins to expand and build up, even the electronic additions no longer mar the overall effect. But... it's too late baby now, it's too late. Something inside has died, and it smells.

It is hardly surprising that Speeding Time would be Carole's last album in six years — it was a good thing, I suppose, that she preferred to sit most of the decade out, even if she did not seem all that embarrassed about the record, going on to work with Adler even more on the soundtrack for the 1985 movie Murphy's Romance (I've heard a couple of songs from that, and they are every bit as hopeless as anything on Speeding Time). Still, I love and respect Carole King's legacy way too much to ever grieve about the fact that she did not put out an LP in 1986 or 1987; I do not think it would have merited a stronger thumbs down than this flop (unless she began investing in hair metal or something), but you do have to stop if you're out of inspiration, or if you find yourself in a strange new world of technology about which you do not really care.

CITY STREETS (1989)

1) City Streets; 2) Sweet Life; 3) Down To The Darkness; 4) Lovelight; 5) I Can't Stop Thinking About You; 6) Legacy; 7) Ain't That The Way; 8) Midnight Flyer; 9) Homeless Heart; 10) Someone Who Believes In You.

A six-year break from a hitherto diligent recording career meant that, by the grace of God above and lenience of Devil below, we have been deprived of that one «1986 Carole King album», with guest appearances by Rod Stewart and Jon Bon Jovi, six songs co-written with Desmond Child and Diane Warren, and produced by Phil Collins, that could have been the final agonizing scream of her reputation. Instead, she preferred to go for a (barely noticeable) acting career for a while, and remain in seclusion until her muse came rapping at the door.

And so, in the place of a hideously awful synth-pop album from 1986, we get a pleasantly boring adult contemporary album in 1989. Co-produced by Carole herself and a little-known guitarist called Rudy Guess (who would later support Carole on some of her tours and passed away in 2010), City Streets is... well, probably what you'd expect a 1989 Carole King album to be: a cozy collection of glossy, overproduced rhythm-heavy ballads, with synthesizers and electronic drums a-plenty, a solid amount of cavernous echo to give the artist the edge over the listener, and the actual music serving as little more than backing track for the vocal melody. Despite, that is, the plethora of good musicians on the record, including an unduly wasted Max Weinberg on drums, two lead guitar contributions from Eric Clapton (who, frankly speaking, was not in his best shape at the time either), and sax solos from Branford Marsalis and Michael Brecker... not that I'm a big fan of either... well, you are probably beginning to see where this is all heading.

The old charisma is still in place: Carole's voice, with all of its technical flaws, is compensated by being incapable of getting weaker with age, so whether she is singing songs about new love, old love, lost love, found love, or social injustice, she always gets her point across. The problem is that her songwriting techniques have not budged, and she has shown no interest in trying to approach the new technologies creatively — she simply takes these synthesizers and compressed guitars and electronically enhanced drums at face value, as humanity's new default means of making the same old music, and none of her musicians seem interested in directing her towards new shores. So it all just sounds like bland adult contemporary, slightly sweetened by the sound of her ever-lovely voice, but not by any genuine musical hooks.

It's too bad, because there are some potentially strong artistic statements here — I have no idea if ʽLegacyʼ is a farewell ode to Ronald Reagan (both the lyrics and the year 1989 make this a very realistic guess), but she manages to wrestle an unusually high level of intensity out of her voice for the performance, almost bordering on punkish anger, and I'd think the song deserved much more than just a wimpy accompanying acoustic rhythm track and a lax electronic piano solo. The title track, with Clapton on lead guitar, could also have been handled much better: the chorus ("oh city streets, the stories that they tell...") is a touching show of amazement and compassion, but those synthesizers, and even that mid-to-late Eighties tone of Clapton's poor Blackie, as if somebody stuffed the two of them in a sewer pipe... oh, don't get me started.

Overall, if this kind of production does not bother you too much, I'd say that City Streets is worth investigating — if anything, Carole does sound a bit refreshed, and altogether this is much better than either of the albums that bookmark it from both sides of the chronostream. But if you were expecting a comeback along the lines of Paul McCartney or even the Stones (yes, Steel Wheels at least made some musical sense back in 1989), then no, this is not this kind of comeback — not that it was even vaguely possible, considering that Carole's songwriting gift had been sorely depleted already by the mid-Seventies, and also considering her almost total dependence on mainstream production standards. Still, at least the years have not taken any toll on her natural charm, and maybe that's the best thing of all.

COLOUR OF YOUR DREAMS (1993)

1) Lay Down My Life; 2) Hold Out For Love; 3) Standing In The Rain; 4) Now And Forever; 5) Wishful Thinking; 6) Colour Of Your Dreams; 7) Tears Falling Down On Me; 8) Friday's Tie-Dye Nightmare; 9) Just One Thing; 10) Do You Feel Love; 11) It's Never Too Late.

This is quite a sad story, really. The early Nineties saw plenty of (at least temporary) comebacks by veterans, revitalized by the general «shredding of the excesses» of the previous decade — and one could have sincerely hoped that Carole King could fall in that category. Unfortunately, it did not happen: Colour Of Your Dreams (yes, the full British spelling is quite explicit on the cover) is about as inspiring and coloUrful as its album cover, which, like City Streets, seems to be making yet another point of Carole as «tough street girl», sort of the female equivalent of Bruce Springsteen in his «tough street guy» incarnation. But it looks fake and cheap, and so does the overall style of the songs.

Bad news arrive immediately — the first five seconds of the record, when a few seemingly Casio chords boink against a thin cobweb of cheap drum machine beats, may be enough to turn you off immediately, «now and forever», to quote one of the song titles. And while it does get better than that eventually, this is still a true sign that production issues have not been normalized — much of the record remains inescapably stuck in plastic adult contemporary mode (no surprise, really, considering that Rudy Guess is retained as co-producer from last time). In 1983 or even 1989, this could have merely meant yielding to fashionable pressure; alas, in 1993 this means that the artist is not sensing any problem with such an approach, and what could be technically forgiven several years back (horrible production back then could still somehow agree with decent melodies, see Fleetwood Mac's Tango In The Night, for instance), is now a crime against humanity.

Not that the record is particularly lazy or anything. Carole tries her hand at several different styles, alternating between quiet piano ballads (or synth ballads), loud idealistic anthems (ʽHold Out For Loveʼ, with Mr. Slash himself making a guest appearance), soft-pop-rockers (title track, fast tempo and tough attitude attached), odd Dylanesque blues-rock tell-tales (ʽFriday's Tie-Dye Nightmareʼ), and then there's even a couple of nostalgic pushbacks with ex-husband Goffin, resulting in ʽStanding In The Rainʼ (supposedly a follow-up to ʽCrying In The Rainʼ?) and ʽIt's Never Too Lateʼ, whose title clearly echoes ʽIt's Too Lateʼ, yet the song itself is like a carbon copy, mood-wise and style-wise, of ʽNatural Womanʼ, what with the tempo, the broken piano patterns, the musical ascension, the gospel harmonies — everything.

But I don't feel as if any of that stuff really works. The Goffin/King numbers are precisely what they are — faint, unconvincing echoes of former glories, way too self-conscious and too bent on looking into the past for inspiration. The pseudo-Dylan song is an embarassment — she is trying to throw up a heap of nonsensical lyrics as if she were Bob circa '65, and she might just as well be trying her hand at a Handel-style oratorio. The title track is bland and inoffensive at best. And the most recognizable tune of 'em all, ʽNow And Foreverʼ, may only be so because it was used in A League Of Their Own, a corny baseball melodrama with Tom Hanks and Geena Davis with Billy Joel and James Taylor on the soundtrack to complete the curdled milk effect.

The only good thing I can say is that the voice is still intact, along with the overall radiance, idealism, and charisma: spiritually, Carole King never grows old, and that's adorable — and on a personal basis, probably more important than still being able to come up with unforgettable melodies. However, this does not save the album from a thumbs down assessment. The least she could have done in this situation was to make all the record sound like ʽIt's Never Too Lateʼ — even if the genius has departed, this might have been a tasteful, if still forgettable, trip down nostalgia lane. As it is, it's a rather glum mix of nostalgia with banality and corniness, hardly forgivable for a songwriter of Carole's stature even in her later years.

IN CONCERT (1994)

1) Hard Rock Cafe; 2) Up On The Roof; 3) Smackwater Jack; 4) So Far Away; 5) Beautiful; 6) Natural Woman; 7) Hold Out For Love; 8) Will You Love Me Tomorrow; 9) Jazzman; 10) It's Too Late; 11) Chains; 12) I Feel The Earth Move; 13) You've Got A Friend; 14) Locomotion; 15) You've Got A Friend.

I like how this was officially called The Colour Of Your Dreams Tour, yet a grand total of one song from that album actually made it onto the accompanying live album — perhaps she did perform a bit more on stage, but I doubt it, because, well, it's Carole King, and if Carole King goes on stage, she has to do Tapestry in its entirety (8 out of 12 songs, to be accurate — the other four they don't play on the radio that often), plus a few of the lively golden oldies like ʽChainsʼ and ʽLocomotionʼ, and before you know it, you're running out of time and nobody wants to hear the crap you've been writing of late anyway. Who we're kidding?

Time has pretty much rendered this record useless, particularly now that the vaults have been opened and you can listen to a young and fresh Carole singing the same songs at Carnegie Hall in 1971 — but she does have the advantage of preserving her voice and charisma in an immaculate state, so as long as she and her band do not tamper too seriously with the songs, it doesn't make that much difference whether you're listening to a 1971 or a 1993 performance: the lady carries that classic vibe with her in her pocket wherever she goes, and she'll be sticking to her guns even if we all turn into a bunch of grinning post-modern nihilists overnight.

Unfortunately, from time to time they do tamper with the songs, and as hard it is to spoil a great Carole King tune when Carole King herself is performing it, they almost succeed with ʽBeautifulʼ, which is given a smooth and soulless adult contemporary sheen — apparently, as a «pleasant surprise» for the audience, which sits in befuddled silence as it is treated with several bars of a milk-curdling «atmospheric» intro, then feebly cheers at the sounds of "you gotta wake up every morning...", with most of the people probably feeling duped rather than pleasantly surprised. A less serious misfire is the new glam-rock setting for ʽChainsʼ, with distorted guitars and fiery solos — the song does not exactly lose its fun quotient, but the fun does seem cheapened.

If it's any consolation, lead guitar duties are consistently handled by none other than Slash, who now takes it to the stage after collaborating with Carole on ʽHold Out For Loveʼ — yes, that is the one and only song from Colour Of Your Dreams that made it onto here, with a dutifully extended lead guitar break from the man, and Carole also encourages him to let his hair down (as if it already weren't) every time she does a «rocker», which leads to odd results. Then again, you just might be interested in Slash's take on ʽLocomotionʼ or ʽJazzmanʼ (ʽJazzmanʼ actually works very well, with inspired solos from all of the band members, including short, energetic breaks from the bassist and drummer), because, after all, we're not talking about some completely generic hair metal guitar player here... aren't we?

I could certainly do without Carole choosing one of her worst songs ever to open the concert (ʽHard Rock Cafeʼ — no, Ms. King, not even the presence of Slash legitimizes any part of this as a «hard rock» show, even if it does kick ass from time to time), and while I have nothing against backing choirs or Crosby and Nash, it was hardly necessary to include two versions of ʽYou've Got A Friendʼ, one of them with a young choir and the other one with two aging hippies. Why not do ʽRaspberry Jamʼ as an encore instead? Surely her band is capable of building up a beautiful not-altogether-pop vibe — they do it well enough on ʽJazzmanʼ.

But in the overall context of these 73 minutes of live performance, that is nitpicking; and as much as these echoes of Carole's insipid early 1990s style jab and sting the senses from time to time, I cannot agree with the occasional assessment that on this album, Carole redoes her classics «in Nineties' fashion». Most of the arrangement details and accompanying vibes really stay the same, so, if anything, this album works as proof that if you wanted to go to a Carole King show in 1993, you needn't be afraid that she'd fuck it up too much. Does it prove anything else? Well, it does offer hope that any Carole King show, as long as she's alive, will always be enjoyable to a large degree — actually, I have the Living Room Tour DVD from 2005, and it's even better than this one (no bad songs whatsoever), though probably not worth a separate review. The only important thing is never to let her remember that it's not 1971 anymore. — you do that, and you're in for a huge embarassment, almost inevitably.

LOVE MAKES THE WORLD (2001)

1) Love Makes The World; 2) You Can Do Anything; 3) The Reason; 4) I Wasn't Gonna Fall In Love; 5) I Don't Know; 6) Oh No Not My Baby; 7) It Could Have Been Anyone; 8) Monday Without You; 9) An Uncommon Love; 10) You Will Find Me There; 11) Safe Again; 12) This Time.

Every once in a while you might come across a warmly positive mention of this record as a «return to form» for Carole King in the new millennium — so let this review serve as a warning, because while we all have the right to love and cherish Ms. King as a 21-st century relic of a great age in popular songwriting, and her radiance and optimism (and voice, for that matter) show no sign of decay even as she is pushing 60, this should not be an excuse to give a truly insipid, by-the-book collection of poorly written and generically arranged adult pop tunes anything more than a passing glance. In fact, there's so much commonplace saccharine here that it almost makes City Streets seem like tough punk-rock in retrospect.

Not a lot of people (at least, not a lot of people whose musical opinions I'd be interested in) would regard it as a good sign that the «biggest» song here is ʽThe Reasonʼ, originally written by Carole for Aerosmith and having since then become a big hit for Celine Dion — with Celine herself reprising her part and singing a duet with the songwriter. Not a lot of people would find comfort, either, in hearing K. D. Lang support Carole on the even more insipid Disney-style ballad ʽAn Uncommon Loveʼ — and these are some of the biggest guest stars on the album, whose rather predictable cast also includes Steven Tyler on the upbeat pop rocker ʽMonday Without Youʼ (one of the few enjoyable numbers here), Wynton Marsalis on ʽI Wasn't Gonna Fall In Loveʼ (he may be a talented musician for all I know, but boy does he like to lend a hand to all sorts of schlock by other people), and Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds as producer on most of the tracks, which might just be the root of all the other problems, but I don't feel much like investigating.

In short, when your first song sounds like Mariah Carey (without the smallest sign of redemption in the form of a powerhouse vocal) and your second song sounds like The Backstreet Boys (without the smallest sign of redemption in principle), the only remaining question is: «Is there anything worth pulling out of the wreckage?» Well, other than ʽMonday Without Youʼ, which at least gets a good physical groove going on... no, not really. The saddest thing of all is that within such a bland context, even a remake of an old classic like ʽOh No Not My Babyʼ sounds toothless and just as unexciting as everything else.

And here, I think, lies the answer to the question about why Carole did not put out even one LP of completely new material since 2001 — not to mention performing only one song from this one (the title track) on her ensuing Living Room tour; she may not confess it in public, but I'm pretty sure that deep down inside herself she knows very well that she has had nothing whatsoever left to say since at least the early Eighties, and all she can do in terms of creativity is depend on the kindness of babyfaced strangers. Which is actually worse than it could have been — at the very least, she could have chosen «retro» arrangement and production values for her new stuff, making it sound at least superficially like Tapestry. Instead, she is now trying to emulate the corny «Divas» who owe her much of their own existence in the first place — and ends up in the same ditch as Aretha Franklin, with their late-era careers having quite a bit in common. Anyway, in case you were wondering, no, this is not a comeback. Her live shows at the time were still wonderful, but this new studio material — terrible, just terrible. Thumbs down, definitely.

A HOLIDAY CAROLE (2011)

1) My Favorite Things; 2) Carol Of The Bells; 3) Sleigh Ride; 4) Christmas Paradise; 5) Everyday Will Be Like A Holiday; 6) Chanukah Prayer; 7) Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas; 8) I Got My Love To Keep Me Warm; 9) Christmas In The Air; 10) Do You Hear What I Hear; 11) This Christmas; 12) New Year's Day.

Come to think of it, it is weird that Carole had to wait until she was nearly seventy years old to release a Christmas album — with her cozy domestic attitudes and pure love for sentimental simplicity with a touch of the patriarchal (matriarchal?) spirit, this should have happened several decades earlier; then again, the «Christmas album virus» does tend to typically infect people only after their immune system has been severely ravaged by multiple bouts of writer's block, and now that the lady has little, if anything, left to lose, it's exactly the same question of «why not?» as it is for, say, Jethro Tull or Aretha Franklin.

So we've got some bad news and some good news for you here. Starting off with the good: in terms of instruments and arrangements, this is Carole's best-sounding record in almost, let's see... thirty years, I guess — the last time her songs sounded that natural and unsuffocated by studio gloss was on 1982's One To One (not that it was a masterpiece or anything, but the basic sound stayed true to the genuine C. King spirit). Other than the piano sound (why do they really have to use these electronic keyboards in the studio when they could easily go for a nice Steinway?), we have a real band backing the artist, acoustic drums, guitars, winds, strings, real live harmonies, and practically no traces of the «new R&B sound» that made her last two attempts at a comeback so painfully contaminated with something that was so much not Carole King. Christmas or no Christmas, I felt really at ease while listening to this.

The bad news now: alas, it is that time when the lady should be taking a break from singing. The aging has finally taken place, and if Love Makes The World still sounded (vocal-wise) much like the same old Carole, the next ten years finally took their merciless toll. She has lost a part of her higher range (occasionally making it real painful for the ears when she tries to hit a high note, e. g. on ʽI Got My Love To Keep Me Warmʼ), and the rest of it has developed a crackle — not stereotypically senile (in all honesty, you still wouldn't be able to precisely tell the age of the singer), but just a grating crackle that makes the whole «saved-by-charisma» thing of the past... well, more or less a thing of the past.

With the bad and the good news outcanceling each other, A Holiday Carole would be completely and utterly useless if not for the fact that the record was largely a product of Carole's daughter, Louise, who co-produced it, sang some harmonies (I think), co-wrote several of the new songs, and seems to have even been the author of the idea. And she does offer a curious touch every now and then, like the slow jazz arrangement of ʽChanukah Prayerʼ where she joins her mother in said prayer along with her own son — three generations of Kleins remembering their roots in a non-totally-boring-predictable manner. She's not that good a songwriter, though: ʽChristmas Paradiseʼ is an admirable, but not very exciting attempt at diversifying the proceedings with some Latin rhythms; ʽChristmas In The Airʼ is family-oriented funk-pop with no interesting twists; and ʽNew Year's Dayʼ is a well-meant try to write a piano ballad in her mother's trademark style, but about as memorable as mother's latter day out-of-steam writings — apparently, just one more case of the parent's talent not being transmitted to the child; I cannot blame Louise Goffin for lack of taste in production or poorly chosen direction, but a genius like her mother she sure is not.

Still, like most of these projects, the purpose of A Holiday Carole is not to make a brand new artistic statement, but more personal — to remind the world that the artist is still alive, and, I guess, to prove to herself that she is still capable of something. And she is — vocal crackle aside, she is still a warm and kind human being who can hardly generate negative emotions even when operating within a fairly banal framework. And, after all, it is at least nice to see her, on what is probably the last serious studio project of her life, to reject trendiness and just go for some good old eternal values, no matter how old-fashioned, conservative, retrograde, or generic they might seem to anybody under 50 at the moment. (For that matter, why is it so that the UK / European release of this record came out under the title A Christmas Carole, and the US album was titled A Holiday Carole? Is this a solitary case of the American market displaying more political correctness than the British one?..)

ADDENDA

THE CARNEGIE HALL CONCERT (1971; 1996)

1) I Feel The Earth Move; 2) Home Again; 3) After All This Time; 4) Child Of Mine; 5) Carry Your Load; 6) No Easy Way Down; 7) Song Of Long Ago; 8) Snow Queen; 9) Smackwater Jack; 10) So Far Away; 11) It's Too Late; 12) Eventually; 13) Way Over Yonder; 14) Beautiful; 15) You've Got A Friend; 16) Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow / Some Kind Of Wonderful / Up On The Roof; 17) (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.

It was probably deemed excessive to release this show officially in its own time, what with Tapestry already riding high on the charts and Music almost in the can by the time the show was played (June 18, 1971), but it is still a shame that the world at large had to wait 25 years before the tape was finally restored, remastered, and put out in CD format, because this is not just a very special concert, historically, but it is fairly unique on a personal level as well — the Carnegie Hall Concert was literally Carole King's first serious live appearance ever, and it is not every day that you get to witness a musical genius opening him/herself up to an admiring, but demanding public for the first time in his/her life.

Carole did not yet have a firmly put together backing band at the time, although I am not sure if the first part of the concert was completely solo out of necessity or because it was an intentional decision on her part — «if I'm really gonna do it, I should go all the way!» Eventually, she is joined on the stage by some musicians — first by Larkey on bass, then by Danny Kortchmar on guitar, then even by a small string section — but essentially this is just Lady Writer challenged to step into the shoes of Lady Performer, because whoever heard of a number one pop star without a concert agenda? This is not 1966 and you are no John Lennon, so show yourself.

This is precisely what makes this archival release so very special — with Carole's In Concert record that came out two years before this one, you get her as a seasoned professional, but here you get her as a nervous, evidently insecure, but still deeply enthusiastic «beginner» whose only chance of winning over the audience is being as natural as possible. You might find yourself rooting for her, intensely, as you sense the nervous tremble of the voice on the early songs (particularly the drawn-out ballads — ʽChild Of Mineʼ is just barely held together), but then, after a few tunes, there comes a realization that everything is going along smoothly, and we can finally relax a bit. Predictably, there's quite a bit of stage banter, too — little details and not particularly funny jokes that help break up some barriers and alleviate some of that tension — but Carole is such a lovable person in general that whatever she does for a giggle is fine by me.

Naturally, the setlist (as any Carole King setlist ever played) is stuffed with Tapestry songs (10 out of 12), plus four songs off Writer and three previews of songs from Music, so there will be few surprises here. The biggest «surprise», explicitly announced by Carole as "Surprise!", is the appearance of James Taylor, who duets with her on ʽYou've Got A Friendʼ and the ensuing three-song medley — well, what do you want, it's James Taylor, and in situations like these you can treat him as just another piece of reliable furniture that Carole needs to step upon in order to achieve the desired effect. (I wish there were a less crude metaphor to express just how ordinary and bland I find the guy's singing, but I refuse to strain my brain over James Taylor). At least he has the decency to disappear while Carole sings ʽNatural Womanʼ for the encore, because that would make us think that it is James Taylor who makes her feel like a natural woman, and that would be strange, because I'd say the only thing that James Taylor is able to make one feel like would be a 2-year old.

Anyway, this is not about James Taylor, this is about some great, great songs that are well worth hearing in these stripped-down arrangements — she can still make ʽI Feel The Earth Moveʼ rock quite a bit with just the voice and the piano, and ʽSmackwater Jackʼ, propelled only by Larkey's bass and the audience's enthralled handclapping, ends up almost as fun as it was on the original record. On ʽIt's Too Lateʼ, after Kortchmar has joined the group for lead guitar support, Carole makes some meyowing noises, mimicking his guitar tone and bringing some levity to the mournful atmosphere of the song; and on songs like ʽNo Easy Way Downʼ, she serves as her own backing vocalist, preserving the soaring-and-descending modulation of the vocal melody as best as possible — this is not rigid professionalism, but it's a well-meaning attempt to keep things exciting and interesting through the whole show. By the time she's done, you'll want to pin a medal on her, for a first job well done; and although I wouldn't have expected it from myself, I do find myself occasionally revisiting the album instead of Tapestry — particularly when I'm in the mood for a bit less production slickness and a bit more of that elusive «raw edge».

I will not say that this is the only Carole King live album you will ever need: 1994's In Concert and the Living Room Tour both had their own charm as well, not to mention a more diversified setlist and an angst-free, self-assured vocal performance. But this here stuff goes so hand in hand with Tapestry that I do believe that at some future point they might want to delete it from the catalog as an independent album and just stick it together with Tapestry, as a bonus disc, for all eternity. It's just one of those «well, we've just finished polishing some of the best songs ever, now all we have to do is make them come alive without any makeup on» moments that you have to experience, sooner or later, even at the expense of a flesh-and-blood James Taylor completing the picture. Totally a thumbs up here.

THE CITY: NOW THAT EVERYTHING'S BEEN SAID (1968)

1) Snow Queen; 2) I Wasn't Born To Follow; 3) Now That Everything's Been Said; 4) Paradise Alley; 5) A Man Without A Dream; 6) Victim Of Circumstance; 7) Why Are You Leaving; 8) Lady; 9) My Sweet Home; 10) I Don't Believe It; 11) Hi-De-Ho; 12) All My Time.

To round things out with Carole King, it is more than appropriate to include a mention of this record in her section — because it is only a pure technical formality, actually, that prevents one from including this, the first and last ever album of «The City», as the first entry in her regular discography. Indeed, before she went completely solo with Writer, there was this rather curious attempt, perhaps driven on by humility and shyness, to pass as just a piano-playing and singing member of a rock trio, with future husband Charles Larkey on bass and Danny Kortchmar on guitar. (Incidentally, the guest drummer here is Jim Gordon, of future Derek & The Dominos fame, though he hardly gets to swing and shine as efficiently here as he would there).

Actually, the only significant difference between Now That Everything's Been Said and Writer is that Danny gets to sing a couple of the songs — other than that, the sound is pretty much identical, and all the songwriting comes from Carole and her lyrical co-writers: mostly Goffin, but also Toni Stern and David Palmer, all of whom would contribute words for Carole's music in the future as well. Importantly, this is where you will find Carole's first recorded versions of ʽSnow Queenʼ, ʽWasn't Born To Followʼ (already done by The Byrds), and ʽHi-De-Hoʼ (soon to be appropriated by Blood, Sweat & Tears); but even more importantly, this is the only place where you will find a small bunch of quite exquisite King originals that cannot be found anywhere else, and each of which is worth far more than any complete post-1982 Carole King album.

One is ʽParadise Alleyʼ, a simple-innocent pop rocker with an intricate arrangement of vocal overdubs in the chorus — from a time when heart-tugging moves came to the lady's imagination more naturally than earthquakes come to the Ring of Fire. Another is ʽWhy Are You Leavingʼ, with equally poignant vocal work on the chorus (the task is to sing the line "why are you leaving?" in as many different ways as possible, and it is accomplished). And still another great vocal move is found on the closing ʽAll My Timeʼ, where she plays around with her own echo: few people can just take a single line like "all my time, all my time belongs to you" and make it sound like an inspiring religious mantra, but this is exactly what is happening here, with a little help from that echo, of course.

That said, none of these songs is great from top to bottom: mostly we are dealing with a beautiful idea enclosed in a merely-okay setting. Although the record was already produced by Lou Adler, which means that the overall sound is tasteful and pleasant, Carole does act fairly shy, and there are no tracks where she and her piano would be in primary focus — most of the time, the «camera» tries to put her in the context of her musician friends, yet the musician friends, too, try to keep it humble in order to give the piano lady her due, and so in the end it all comes down to a set of «after you, sir»'s and «after you, Ma'm»'s that is not highly satisfactory. In addition, what with Carole's writing style being so personal, it simply made no sense in the first place to not behave as a full-fledged solo artist, and I guess the public must have sensed that, too — «The City» never really managed to get decent publicity or to sell a significant amount of records. Heck, it even took more than thirty years to get it released on CD, and good luck trying to find a physical copy these days: if it weren't for the digital era, Now That's Everything Been Said would simply be forgotten. As it is, hopefully we will still remember it as a timid, but important first step in King's self-realization, and treasure it lightly for its share of proverbially heart-warming, oh-so-Carole King moments, so a thumbs up all the same.

Part 5. From Punk To Hair Metal (1976-1989)

CABARET VOLTAIRE

MIX-UP (1979)

1) Kirlian Photograph; 2) No Escape; 3) Fourth Shot; 4) Heaven And Hell; 5) Eyeless Sight; 6) Photophobia; 7) On Every Other Street; 8) Expect Nothing; 9) Capsules.

It doesn't take much more than Cabaret Voltaire's debut album to understand why they are a band that is mentioned in every single account of the history of New Wave — and, at the same time, a band that people very, very rarely actually listen to. Like many of their contemporaries, they have fallen victim to the «why should I listen to this if it's not 1979 any more?» curse; unlike most of these contemporaries, they suffer from the curse even more strongly because at least other people would come up with melodies, and then clothe them in gimmicky electronic arrangements that sounded fascinating upon first listen, irritating upon second listen, and ridiculous upon the third one. Cabaret Voltaire did not bother coming up with melodies. I mean, you don't call yourself Cabaret Voltaire just to go on being a pop band, right?

On the other hand, Cabaret Voltaire weren't about making experimental chaotic noise, either. From the very beginning, they respected the groove, so much so that, no matter how strange, all of Mix-Up is eminently danceable, and the best way to approach this material is to look at it as a sort of electronic-shamanistic ritual — exorcism muzak for the new age. It is no coincidence that the first track refers to the art of «Kirlian photography», a widespread practice in parapsychology and freak pseudoscience: had they formed in 1969, the band would probably worship Aleister Crowley, but in the post-Star Wars era, who'd want spiritual elevation without futurism, technophilia, and hissing tape loops?

Ideologically, they take their cues from The Velvet Underground: rhythm is treated as merely a compromising measure that helps you ease into the repetitive, evil weirdness of the sound, even if guitars, pianos, and violins are largely replaced with even more cold, gray, and merciless electronic devices (although Richard H. Kirk's rough, droning guitar sound is usually an integral component). One important element of that ideology that is almost missing, though, is improvisation: most of these tracks are produced with a lot of overdubbing, and the atmosphere of spontaneity that was so important for classic VU is nowhere to be found.

Another thing is «depersonalisation» — the entire album is completely faceless, dehumanized; again, this approach may have been all the rage in 1979, but today, when you turn towards the past in search of impressive faces, this seems to have a disheartening effect. Vocalist Stephen Mallinder does not have to resort to the antiquated practice of singing — he intones at best, and usually lays so much reverb and echo on his vocals that he ends up sounding like a semi-organic alien over a real bad radio transmission. Chris Watson's synthesizers hiss, hum, and rattle rather than vibrate in a musical fashion, and the guitars, as I already mentioned, are usually just there for a droning effect. At the same time, I would hesitate to call this «industrial» music, like many people do: it is certainly very different from the likes of both Einstürzende Neubauten and Throbbing Gristle, if only because relatively little importance is being attached to percussive effects (most of the drumming here is represented by fairly simplistic drum machine patterns), and also because the band's worship of the groove is stronger than their worship of the «factory hum» principle. But who cares about the words? Let's call this «industrial dance music», like a distant ancestor to Björk's ʽCvaldaʼ.

Individual tracks are not worth commenting upon — other than, perhaps, the band's sci-fi cover of The Seeds' ʽNo Escapeʼ, on which the original garage rock guitar part is substituted for a «sci-fi garage» duet of hoarsely distorted guitar and synth. Again, though, its importance is more of a symbolic nature — with this song, they proclaim themselves as inheritors of the entire «caveman rock» tradition of the previous decade, except now they have more advanced technology to develop it (ironically, in 2015 that advanced technology sounds even more antiquated than The Seeds' crappily played/recorded electric guitars). Other than that, it is just one shrill, somber, nasty, dull-gray musical landscape after another, curious to look upon but not all that enchanting. Or scary, for that matter — Joy Division, with their suicidal vibe, were scary; Kraftwerk's ʽRobotsʼ, so vivid and complete in their technofascistic imagery, were scary; these guys, however, did not have a complete vision, they were just actively searching for one.

Nevertheless, Mix-Up is not nearly as boring as this review would seem to picture it. Due to the band's relentless experimentation, there is a wide variety of tempos; the same groove never repeats itself twice; Kirk likes to drift from one guitar tone to another, and sometimes makes fairly amusing guitar noises (on ʽCapsulesʼ, for instance, his guitar tries to croak its way through the same frequencies as Mallinder's vocal «melody»); and even during the worst moments you can still toe-tap to the rhythms (only ʽPhotophobiaʼ loses it for a while). Repeated listens will bring out many subtle nuances as well. The biggest problem, in fact, is that the record really is much less experimental and innovative than it seems to proclaim itself — even in 1979, the only way people in Sheffield could be really stunned would be if they never previously heard Can's Tago Mago or anything by Faust. Which, I'm guessing, admittedly comprises the majority of the population of Sheffield — but then again, Cabaret Voltaire never really played for majorities, did they?

LIVE AT THE Y.M.C.A. (1980)

1) Untitled; 2) On Every Other Street; 3) Nag, Nag, Nag; 4) The Set Up; 5) Expect Nothing; 6) Havoc; 7) Here She Comes Now; 8) No Escape; 9) Baader Meinhof.

The Prince Of Wales Conference Centre YMCA, London, England must have been a pretty somber public location back in 1979 — this murky Cabaret Voltaire performance was recorded there, on a scrumpy cassette player, barely two months after both Joy Division and Throbbing Gristle had played some historically important shows there. But these were exciting times indeed, so that even the Young Men's Christian Association had no choice but to indirectly lend their support to artists providing strong doses of suicidal sounds to the general public. Or, if not suicidal, then at least those that appeal to the beast inside.

The sound quality here is predictably appalling, and the whole experience looks and feels seriously bootleggish, despite counting as a thoroughly official release — but then again, you couldn't expect anything different from a band whose main point was to join the guitar and the synthesizer in an unholy union of eternal gray ugliness. At least this time around they are not attacked by their audience (which seems to have been a common thing in the early days of their career), who politely sit back, spend most of their time chatting about the final independence of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (well, probably not, but it was October 27, 1979), and sometimes respectably clap their hands when they think a certain song is over (meaning, of course, that fairly often they clap in the wrong place, or do not clap when they are supposed to clap).

In the meantime, Mallinder, Watson, and Kirk are busy doing their thing, playing stuff from their most recent LP, from the less recent Extended Play EP, or from nowhere in particular, creating a sonic environment that goes best with black and white photography, lots of cigarette smoke, post-structuralism, and dull razor blades. Comparison with the studio equivalents shows that they stick fairly close to the grooves, atmospheres, and even to the subtle developments of the originals — but without the smallest amount of production gloss, these atmospheres sound even wilder, murkier, and nastier, especially Kirk's guitar tones, resonating more deeply and making use of all that extra distortion. Which is interesting, because it really puts these guys more in line with the underground / proto-punk scene of The Velvet Underground and The Stooges, after all, than in with subsequent generations of electronic artists. But then, they'd probably take offense if you called them electronic artists.

Actually, there is even a whole new Velvet Underground cover here: ʽHere She Comes Nowʼ (originally recorded for Extended Play), which you could probably only recognize by the distinctly pronounced lines "ah, she looks so good, ah, she's made out of wood", since everything else is mutated and converted to the usual gray textures (distorted droning guitar, distorted white-noise-choked organ, deep trance-inducing vocals, simplistic-tribalistic drum machine, etc.). But even if it is changed beyond recognition in form, it totally retains the mean spirit — I'm sure Lou would appreciate. In fact, he'd probably dig this entire show more than anyone.

They do also demonstrate, however, that they are not altogether above the art of the pop hook: not only do they do ʽNo Escapeʼ in all its primal Seeds glory, but there is at least one new song, ʽNag Nag Nagʼ, that also sounds like a modernized version of some old garage rocker, with a shrill, irritating, but catchy little keyboard riff that goes along with the appropriate "nag nag nag" chorus and an amusingly vivacious set of drum machine rolls. Somehow, the audience does not exactly latch on to this, and rewards the band with the usual flimsy applause at the end, but that's what you get after masking your rock'n'roll heart with an industrial sarcophagus for so long.

Towards the end of the show, the arrogance gets out of control and the last track is ʽBaader Meinhofʼ, where they simply retransmit Red Army Faction messages to isolated blasts of feedback and electronic hoots and howls, get a final round of applause from all the young anti-Thatcherites in the audience, and retreat into their dim spider webs for some deserved rest. All in all, this is a somewhat fascinating piece of history, though I can hardly imagine a lot of people getting inspired by it today; but come to think of it, this re-grafting of decade-old garage rock values with the futuristic coldness of Krautrock may well have sounded as bizarre and mind-opening at the time as, say, Pink Floyd's experiments at the UFO Club circa 1966. But you'd probably still rather listen to a nicely produced copy of Piper these days than to a bootleg recording of any of the UFO sessions — and the same applies to this performance as well.

THE VOICE OF AMERICA (1980)

1) The Voice Of America / Damage Is Done; 2) Partially Submerged; 3) Kneel To The Boss; 4) Premonition; 5) This Is Entertainment; 6) If The Shadows Could March; 7) Stay Out Of It; 8) Obsession; 9) News From Nowhere; 10) Messages Received.

A little better produced than Mix-Up, perhaps, but not much different in mood, style, or effect, The Voice Of America is a fairly distorted idea of America, I would say, as seen from the perspective of this ever-so-English band. If we are to believe in this, «America» in 1980 was a post-apocalyptic half-bore, half-nightmare, a gray, desolate place populated almost exclusively by robotic mutants communicating through digital signals and tape loops. There would hardly be any place for a Prince or a Michael Jackson or even an Olivia Newton-John in such an America — then again, we could always make the argument that Cabaret Voltaire, with their eye in the sky, were able to see right through all these skins and quickly get to the essence.

Anyway, The Voice Of America is not nearly as unlistenable as some sources would have you believe. Ever so often, a track will start out with a blast of noise that seems to be coming out of a freshly bombed electrical substation — but then it quickly subsides in favor of yet another cozy little robotic groove, going pssht-pssht (that's «C.V. soft rock») or thwack-thwack («C. V. hard rock») or twang-twang (that's «C.V. impersonation of Australian aboriginal music»), with enough diversity to keep you believing that it is not the exact same psycho-image that never stops flowing through their brains while they're busy getting on tape. Whether this is a correct belief, I am not sure — in the end, all these recordings still seem to serve the same purpose.

The band only becomes truly unlistenable when it abandons its rhythmic base to make room for some free-form improvisation — ʽPartially Submergedʼ sounds like a rusty old see-saw swinging back and forth, while a pair of aspiring, but tonedeaf sax players are practicing like mad within the confines of the same abandoned playground. Not as nasty as it could be, but I can promise you some fairly ugly sounds here; the rest of the record is far more musical, sometimes even hummable, even if you have to wait to the very end to get to the only actual «song» — ʽMessages Receivedʼ. That one would seem to be a conscious imitation of classic Joy Division style, but with shitty distorted guitar noise replacing discernible melody.

Everything else is mildly cool — somewhat tame by the old Krautrock standards, and frequently spoiled by the vocals (I think the album would have worked better as a completely instrumental set, but I guess those brutal «young punk» intonations were very much a genre convention around 1980), but not without its own bit of decadent-robotic charm. However, you can still feel they are in their boot camp stage at the moment: they have the style all figured out, but none of the compositions have any sense of purpose — mostly, it's just experimentation for the sake of it, a useful, but not too artistically relevant exploration of new studio possibilities. For instance, on ʽNews From Nowhereʼ they discover that they can imitate racing cars with their instruments, and then proceed to do exactly that for two and a half minutes, like little kids who just discovered a bunch of awesome buttons. Kinda cool, but that's what the word «dated» is for. Another short track is called ʽIf The Shadows Could Marchʼ — to be honest, sounds more like ʽIf The Shadows Could Trotʼ, but there's no sense in arguing over associative thinking; the important thing is, it's fifty-five seconds of not-too-threatening electronic pulses, and that's that.

The good news is that most of the stuff, as usual, is danceable, and even today you could safely use this stuff at any electronic rave party with a retro fetish. But the bad news is that even with all the grooves and the toe-tapping, they are still boring, and their appeal is at best purely intellectual. Unless you make a point of collecting early Eighties' electronics and avantagarde stuff, The Voice Of America is perfectly skippable.

1974-76 (1980)

1) The Dada Man; 2) Ooraseal; 3) A Sunday Night In Biot; 4) In Quest Of The Unusual; 5) Do The Snake; 6) Fade Crisis; 7) Doubled Delivery; 8) Venusian Animals; 9) The Outer Limits; 10) She Loved You.

Now that the band was a firmly established underground act, the time was deemed ripe for digging into their back catalog — they'd made their first recordings in the mid-Seventies, but had neither a proper distributor back then nor a lot of people who'd listen. Actually, even in 1980 the only label that'd carry this stuff was the Throbbing Gristle-owned Industrial Records, who only released it in cassette form; not until 1992 did it get a CD release.

And I don't have to tell you the reason why — this stuff is far more hardcore than even Mix-Up, let alone everything that followed. These, indeed, are industrial experiments that predate the band's fascination with dance music, meaning that you are going to get the same bleeps, beeps, bells, and whistles, but with a «factory setting» rather than «club setting». Actually, there is a rhythmic base to most of the tracks, either provided by a very faintly ticking drum machine or by the synthesized «melody loops» themselves — the only thing that provides some structure and order — but it does take a fairly wide understanding of music to agree that this is music (not that it is in any way more hardcore than Throbbing Gristle, but it does make everything they'd done after that look like a pathetic sellout program by comparison).

A few of the tracks do dig into the musical past, posing as sneery deconstructions or futuristic tributes: ʽDo The Snakeʼ plays like a robot-engineered parody on an early Sixties dance craze (although the mock-idiotic vocals are more in the vein of the B-52's: apparently, at that early hyper-experimental stage Cabaret Voltaire still had a lighter sense of humor than in the classic days to come), and ʽShe Loved Youʼ recites the lyrics to ʽShe Loves Youʼ in a slow, dark whisper, as the electronics hum and whirr around you with the predictable reliability of old, creaky equipment in an antiquated factory.

Does it all make sense? Not to my ears, it doesn't. But it does sound like a logical precursor to Autechre and all those other trendy Nineties' electronic bands — whose main achievement, let's face it, was to simply harness the technology in a way in which Cabaret Voltaire in the mid-1970's could not have harnessed it, without all that comfy digital software. They do try their best: many of these tracks are quite inventive, with lengthy stretches of attempted development as synthesized tones pulsate, grumble, burp, whine, explode, implode, chase each other and fade away on some of the ugliest frequencies you've ever heard (ʽIn Quest Of The Unusualʼ — indeed; ʽThe Outer Limitsʼ — two minutes of shrill ear-destruction and six more minutes of either a rusty metal fan twirling around or broken automatic doors closing and opening). But, as usual, there may be problems afoot when you start thinking of this as Art, and looking for those particular doors of perception that may or may not have been opened by your exposure to it.

At least on a purely objective basis this stuff seems innovative in the context of the time, when electronics were still largely used as a replacement for traditional instruments rather than a means to completely redefine our approach to music — something in which Cabaret Voltaire had a very active hand. But they didn't even hold on to this style for very long: much like Kraftwerk, whose least accessible records were their earliest ones, by the time they'd gotten a record deal they were already willing to compromise. And although I am not quite sure this made their music «better», I am at least grateful to them that they decided to make «dance-oriented» (sort of) tunes out of these factory puffs and huffs, instead of retaining their throbbing gristly integrity for the remainder of their career.

RED MECCA (1981)

1) A Touch Of Evil; 2) Sly Doubt; 3) Landslide; 4) A Thousand Ways; 5) Red Mask; 6) Split Second; 7) Black Mask; 8) Spread The Virus; 9) A Touch Of Evil (reprise).

Prior to Red Mecca, the band had released an EP called Three Mantras — a musical representation of their views on religious fundamentalism, Christian and Islamic, by means of a ʽWestern Mantraʼ and an ʽEastern Mantraʼ respectively (the liner notes jokingly apologized for the lack of the promised third mantra and explained that the record was underpriced to make up for that). However, even though each of the tracks ran for twenty minutes, they felt this wasn't nearly enough, and eventually followed it up with a longer, more «comprehensive» album, aptly called Red Mecca so they could offend everybody. Frickin' hatemongers.

This is often seen as one of the highest points in the band's career — probably because it is the first Cabaret Voltaire album which feels like a self-assured statement, rather than just another incoherent bunch of some-of-it-works-and-some-of-it-oh-me-oh-my experiments. It also feels better produced than before, even though they were using the same studio in Sheffield as always (maybe they got better insulation on the windows or fixed some of the wiring, I have no idea). Other than that, though, it's just another Cabaret Voltaire album, meaning that its sounds, at best, are interesting and curious rather than «grappling».

The record symbolically opens with an industrial/avantgarde reworking of Henry Mancini's opening theme for Orson Welles' Touch Of Evil — a movie that did not deal with religious issues as such, if I remember it correctly, but did dabble around in various sick corners of the human nature; and it is good to have that hint, because the band's drab, morose soundscapes aren't exactly reminiscent of «evil caused by mankind» on their own. If I knew nothing about the sources of the recording, I would have regarded it... well, I still regard it as essentially the musical equivalent of taking a slow, uncomfortable, stuffy ride on some creaky underground train through a long row of caves, tunnels, grottoes, and mines populated by freaks, mutant dwarves, and methadone-addled incorporeal ghosts of Nazi criminals.

The «danceability» is faithfully preserved and even enhanced by a more musical than ever before use of brass instruments, but this still is no music to dance to: ten and a half minutes of ʽA Thousand Waysʼ ultimately sound more like an incessant, nerve-numbing «musical flagellation», with the percussive whips making as much damage to your body as the incomprehensible vocal exhortations do to your soul, than something to dance to (and besides, it's pretty hard to dance while being whipped). The bass groove of ʽSly Doubtʼ is as funky as anything, but when it is coupled with a synthesizer «lead melody» that resembles airplanes flying over your head, your sense of rhythm will be confused and shattered anyway. Same thing with the antithetical pairing of ʽRed Maskʼ and ʽBlack Maskʼ, except that guitars and keyboards on the former sound like malfunctioning electric drills, and on the latter like the soundtrack to an arcade space shooter.

Unfortunately, in one respect Red Mecca remains undistinguishable from any other Cabaret Voltaire release: it is hard to get seriously excited over any of these tracks, even if they sound cleaner, tighter, and imbued with sharper symbolical purpose. Memorable musical (or even «quasi-musical») themes are absent (the shrill, whining riff of ʽLandslideʼ is probably the closest they get, but even that one is nothing compared to what a Joy Division or a Cure could do with such an idea), «energy level» is not even a viable parameter, and there is almost no development — ʽA Thousand Waysʼ, after ten minutes (years) of that flagellation, leaves us exactly where it found us, and so do most of the shorter tracks as well.

This is why, in the end, I cannot permit myself to give out a thumbs up rating here: important as this album could be upon release, it does not seem to have properly stood the test of time. Even its symbolism has to be properly decoded with the aid of additional sources, and even if you do decode it, it is hardly a guarantee that from then on you'll be wanting to stick the CD under your pillow every night. It's interesting — but it's also boring. Which is a very basic characteristics of the band as a whole, of course, but since Red Mecca is often highlighted as «the place to start» with these guys, be warned: it's not too different from everything else they've done, and unless you've heard no experimental electronic music whatsoever post-1981, it's not highly likely to provoke a revelation. For historical reasons, though, it's worth getting to know.

2x45 (1982)

1) Breathe Deep; 2) Yashar; 3) Protection; 4) War Of Nerves (T.E.S.); 5) Wait And Shuffle; 6) Get Out Of My Face.

Actually, this, rather than Red Mecca, may be the band's most interesting contribution to the musical scene of the early Eighties. On this splice of two recording sessions, which was also the last CB album to feature Chris Watson as a member, the band shifts the balance over from the industrial / experimental shadings to the dance beats — this is a very club-oriented recording — without, however, toning down the overall gray weirdness of it all. The result is a return to their «shamanistic ritual» schtick, but in a more accessible and grappling way than ever before: six lengthy «art-dance» grooves which throw everything into the melting pot (funk, jazz, drone, Eastern influences, post-punk, industrial, you name it), and sort of get away with it.

Like Red Mecca, this here is the sound of a self-assured band that has, by and large, already found what it was looking for — and is now trying to prove to us that the search has not been in artistic vain. ʻBreathe Deepʼ has the skeleton of a modern electrofunk groove, but the shrill, dissonant wail of electronically treated guitars and wind instruments (not just saxes, but even a clarinet part!) is inherited from the band's avantgarde past and does a good job of creating an atmosphere of insane hustle-bustle: think Panic At The Factory or something like that. Totally danceable, but sonically ugly and depressing, even if the band's traditional weaknesses still show through (namely, any of these tracks would have had much more impact if they tried building up these atmospheres rather than spilling everything out at once).

There is a substantial element of diversity, too: after ʻBreathe Deepʼ, ʻYasharʼ crosses the Cabaret Voltaire aesthetics with Near Eastern rhythmic and melodic elements, then ʻProtectionʼ goes into a happier sort of dance music where funk-pop guitar riffs are being offset by mad sax wailings, then ʻWar Of Nervesʼ slows things down to allow for some fairly poisonous avantgarde-guitar pyrotechnics, and eventually it all culminates in the 13-minute long ʻGet Out Of My Faceʼ, the loudest and most brash part of the ritual, sort of this band's equivalent of the Velvets' ʻSister Rayʼ, only with a larger pool of equipment and a little more compassion for people's ears. All of these tracks are united by a single aesthetic style, but they have different sub-atmospheres, and this helps make the record cooler, though, honestly, it is still hard to get truly wowed by the experience. But at least with all these blaring saxes and guitar/synth interplay, you can't really argue that they are doing something that has since been rendered obsolete — 2x45 is a fairly unique mash-up of electronics, drone, and (not-so)-avantgarde jazz that is not afraid to cross genre borders without properly belonging to any of them.

Honestly, I believe it's difficult not to be at least somewhat impressed by the results achieved here. As dance music, 2x45 can only be of interest nowadays for retro-futuristic, steampunkish parties; but I think it still has a bit of «mind-opening» potential, particularly in the way it mixes live instruments with tape manipulation. And this is the first time, I believe, where I would actually grant a thumbs up rating to a Cabaret Voltaire album — not because I was emotionally and intellectually rewarded for making an effort, but rather because I didn't have to make too much of an effort to not be emotionally and intellectually rewarded, if you get my meaning here.

HAI! (1982)

1) Walls Of Kyoto; 2) 3 Days Monk; 3) Yashar (version); 4) Over & Over; 5) Diskono; 6) Taxi Music (version).

The strange fascination of Cabaret Voltaire with live albums is explainable in two ways: (a) much of their material was actually developed on the stage, and some of it even never left the stage (Hai! is a good illustration — three of its songs would only be released in studio versions after the album, and two more are only available on the album); (b) they actually believed that music properly «happens» as interaction between performer and audience, so that it's better to release a poor quality live album than a glossed-up studio tape. Well, sometimes, at least.

Stylistically, Hai! is very close to 2x45, but with one major difference: in place of Chris Watson, the band now features Alan Fish, trading in their «tape manipulator» for a real live drummer. The difference is impossible not to notice — particularly when you listen to the old and the new ʻYasharʼ back-to-back; the song now features fewer electronic effects, but a wild tribal beat all the way through. What is better? What is closer to the «true» Cabaret Voltaire spirit? Impossible to tell for me, since my connection to the band is not really on an emotional level; but at least for the sakes of a live show, I'd say the choice of a live drummer is a wise one.

All the other songs, too, feature expectable danceable grooves with dark-gray overtones, similar in mood, tempo, and tone; the only standout is ʻ3 Days Monkʼ, because of the wah-wah enhanced bassline — letting out an angry croak that is different from (and somehow feels a little more personal and communicative than) all the regular dance grooves. I guess that ʻTaxi Musicʼ is also a standout due to its sheer length (although the studio recording would be even longer), but since it does not depart too much from its starting points, 11 minutes is just asking for trouble.

The bass groove can even be poppy if they wish: ʻWalls Of Kyotoʼ opens the album with a part that could be usable for every fast-moving song from Joy Division to U2, and maybe even well beyond that particular time span. But that does little to change things, as the guitars and keyboards still continue to churn out «sonic muck» more than anything else, and the only reason why Mallinder spits out those bits and pieces of broken vocals is to raise the aggression/paranoia bar. Nevertheless, the rhythm section is so tight throughout that your innate sense of rhythm might eventually placate your confused sense of melody. I do know at least this about myself — that every time ʻDiskonoʼ comes on, that simple, repetitive bassline gets me every time. In short, I give the record a thumbs up — not on an emotional level, but on some sort of primal level it has that old shamanistic charm, only this time the shamans exercise a bit more self-discipline.

JOHNNY YESNO (1983)

1) Taxi Music; 2) Hallucination Sequence; 3) D.T.'s/Cold Turkey; 4) The Quarry; 5) Title Sequence; 6) Taxi Music Dub.

An interesting diversion — supposedly these tracks constitute a soundtrack to a short movie by Peter Care, one of two little-known quickies he made before establishing an alternate career in the music video business (mostly for R.E.M., but remember, uh, Bananarama's ʻVenusʼ? Apparently that's him, too...). The album itself is probably longer than the movie, though, and functions as a completely autonomous Cabaret Voltaire release, significantly different in style from their usual stuff. It is also the last proper CV album with Chris Watson (who had already quit the band when the record was released, but apparently worked on all the tracks).

I have no idea what the movie was about, or whether this shift in style was caused by the movie or something else, but fact is, Johnny YesNo is a little softer, a little more mysterious, and much better produced than the average Watson-era CV album. Unlike the usual releases, which largely focused on bass/guitar interplay, here the keyboards take a much more prominent position, and the bass grooves are largely absent or reduced to just one or two pouncing notes, like on ʻTaxi Musicʼ — you can dance to it if you want to, but you'll probably end up looking stupid. Kirk's guitar sound remains grumbly and murky as usual, but because of the incessant chirping of the keyboards (main riff is poppy, «lead» melodies are free-form jazzy), the atmosphere is not as depressing as could be expected. Indeed, one could picture oneself taking a slow taxi ride through some desolate cityscape, populated with cyborgs and mutants going around their business. Inoffensive, but entertaining. Entertaining, but overlong — a fourteen-minute taxi ride like that can really wear you down after a while, especially considering that the landscape stays more or less the same throughout.

The shorter tracks are even stronger bent on atmosphere rather than rhythm: ʻHallucination Sequenceʼ places its faith in sonic oscillations that put your mind in some creepy alchemist lab; ʻCold Turkeyʼ is a bunch of gruesome guitar feedback that tries to reproduce the feeling as authentically as John Lennon's song of the same name (ugly, but for a reason); ʻThe Quarryʼ is the usual hustle-and-bustle set to the metronomic punch of some mighty earth-burrowing machine; and ʻTitle Sequenceʼ is basically a wild electronic Jew's harp tap-dancing on your spinal cord. No amazing sonic discoveries here, I'd think, but some pretty creative ideas, and even despite the paucity of the tracks, the diversity of these atmospheres could easily compete with the diversity of any regular CV release.

Final verdict — this does belong in the proper discography; it's not merely an auxiliary detour, but quite a serious, autonomous project, not to mention one of the best produced Cabaret Voltaire albums of the early Eighties. But it will hardly be remembered as a milestone in the history of electronics, industrial music, or movie soundtracks.

THE CRACKDOWN (1983)

1) 24-24; 2) In The Shadows; 3) Talking Time; 4) Animation; 5) Over And Over; 6) Just Fascination; 7) Why Kill Time (When You Can Kill Yourself); 8) Haiti; 9) Crackdown.

Oh, looks like someone's tired of being unjustly confused with a guitar band. Taking their mission one step further, Cabaret Voltaire now place severe restrictions on guitar-based melodies, and plunge into the seductive waters of electronica. The Crackdown is far less noisy than their previous releases — still dark gray, still a disturbing weight on your conscious, but «cleaner» and more polished than it used to be. More sterile, too, you could say.

The opening track, ʻ24-24ʼ, sounds like something Prince could have come up with — the same electrofunky type of rhythm, same drum machine sound, same approach to the mechanics of the groove to get you up and dancin' in that early Eighties style. Except Prince would have made the number all pretty and optimistic, whereas in the hands of Cabaret Voltaire all such grooves become zombie rituals, so we have unsettling lyrics ("turning out, beggars to eat me"), hushed creepy voices, keyboards that sound like marinated church organs, and an atmosphere of total coldness and detachment. These here are the roots of IDM — because if this ain't «intelligent dance music», then what is? (Then again, so was Kraftwerk, so the term is really useless).

Most of what follows is the same: groove after groove, constructed out of dark electronic textures, sometimes peppered with extra ingredients (the brass section on ʻTaking Timeʼ), but always setting the same mood. Actually, mood-wise this new style may be said to work better than the old one: Mallinder's out-of-the-shadow vocals are now higher and cleaner in the mix, and throughout the entire album there's a sense of some magic eye, benevolent or malicious, watching over your shoulder, as you make the journey through the twisted alleys of evil electrofunk. Melody-wise or hook-wise, though, I am not even sure where to begin in an attempt to single out any highlights or simply to talk about the points and effects of any particular track.

The closest thing to a potential «hit» on the record is probably ʻJust Fascinationʼ — as Mallinder moves one step closer to singing than hissing and hushing, the track begins to sound uncannily like classic Depeche Mode, and suddenly, Cabaret Voltaire get access to associations of deep dark sexuality that they never really had before. Bad news, though — they don't know very well how to exploit that, nor do they seem to really want to, so essentially the effort is wasted: not too many horny teenagers would probably make use of The Crackdown in 1983, as compared to Construction Time Again. Then again, Cabaret Voltaire would never stoop to becoming a real pop band, would it? To ensure that nothing of the sort ever happens, they name one of the tracks ʻWhy Kill Time When You Can Kill Yourselfʼ, setting themselves up for lawsuits of suicide propaganda — except, since this record never sold that much, nobody bothered.

Actually, speaking of selling, the album did reach No. 31 on the UK charts — their highest position ever, signifying that the change in style did appeal to the masses to a certain degree. They would quickly rectify this mistake with the follow-up, but whether they were rooting for the money or not, the decision to make a dash for the trendy dance scene of 1983 was clearly conscious, and at least it did not result in them making yet another carbon copy of Red Mecca — even if I cannot say that the new results were any more exciting.

Note also that most of the recent CD editions come with an attached bonus EP, called Doublevision — featuring a studio version of ʻDiskonoʼ and three other tracks that, in stark contrast to this album, are more of a noise-ambient nature (including one called ʻMoscowʼ, with resonating church bells as a distinctive feature — other than that, it seems to represent a post-nuclear war Moscow, which, come to think of it, would be quite an appropriate evil fantasy for 1983). Again, nothing too special, but curious to have as such an ardent counterpoint to the cold dance rhythms of The Crackdown proper.

MICRO-PHONIES (1984)

1) Do Right; 2) The Operative; 3) Digital Rasta; 4) Spies In The Wires; 5) Theme From Earthshaker; 6) James Brown; 7) Slammer; 8) Blue Heat; 9) Sensoria.

If you have not had the chance to grow up with the Three Stooges (and how could I, a simple Soviet kid, ever have had such a chance?), you might find it hard to get adjusted to their crude brand of humor later on in life. Consequently, even if Micro-Phonies, their 87th short produced in 1945 with an already ailing Curly, tends to be highly rated by veteran fans, nothing guarantees that it will be equally warmly embraced by a new gen...

...oh, hang on, we're actually talking Cabaret Voltaire here, not the Stooges. So anyway, if you have not had the chance to grow up with Cabaret Voltaire (and although I, a simple Soviet kid, might have had that chance if my parents were huge New Wave fans, they were not, so I hadn't), you might find it hard to get adjusted to their rough brand of electrofunk later on in life. Consequently, even if Micro-Phonies, their 6th proper LP produced in 1984 with three new percussionists replacing Alan Fish, tends to be highly rated by veteran fans, particularly those reared on the video for ʻSensoriaʼ, nothing guarantees that it will be equally warmly embraced by those of us who tend to be curious about Cabaret Voltaire rather than giddily excited.

But yes, ʻSensoriaʼ is a pretty damn good «spooky dance-pop» number for 1984, maybe one of the most successful updates of Kraftwerk's Man Machine vibe for the Age of Dance. Mystery bassline, disturbing synth bubbling, and Mallinder's breathy vocals singing about sin, temptation, and "senses reaching fever pitch". Frankly, this is not a very good line: Cabaret Voltaire are a cold band par excellence, and no matter how many paranoid overdubs they make, "fever pitch" is never a thing I could associate with any of their songs. Across these six minutes, something is clearly being reached by the senses, but it ain't fever pitch. I'm still trying to figure it out.

One of the tracks carries the name of ʻJames Brownʼ, as if to acknowledge the debt that these guys owe to their funky forefathers, but yet again, James Brown makes hot music, whereas this song, like everything else in the catalog, is freezing cold, so we should all agree to retitle it ʻAnti-James Brownʼ and then play it simultaneously with ʻSex Machineʼ so as to annihilate all sonic matter in the world. It does feature the catchiest bit on the album — the mantra of "everything devoured, I learn to hold my will power" repeated over and over against a cheerful brass riff — but I have no idea what it means or how it relates to The Godfather Of Soul.

However, my personal favourite track on the record is ʻSpies In The Wiresʼ, maybe one of the most atmospheric things in the CV catalog — and I mean successfully atmospheric, on a true sensual level rather than on the level of intellectual analysis. Subjective opinion, yes, but somehow it all clicks together, particularly the cavernous synth overdubs and the "like spies in the wire, dark eyes in the wire" chorus. This track, I think, could actually spook away impressionable little kids, so keep that in mind. Other people have their own favorites, like the faster-paced ʻOperativeʼ or the perverted vibe of ʻBlue Heatʼ, but in the end it does not matter, because all the songs end up using the exact same vibe — now completely updated and refined for the general dance environment, without sacrificing an ounce of the band's ideology. Even the aptly titled ʻDigital Rastaʼ, which, as you can guess, is an attempt to synthesize their standard sound with elements of reggae, still ends up sounding like the soundtrack to a movie about chasing innocent bystanders in dark corridors and sucking their souls out. (But don't worry, the chase is always better than the catch for Mallinder and Co.).

I have no idea if this is «better» than The Crackdown, but at the very least, Micro-Phonies is not any less inspired — which does not imply that either of the two is a work of genius, but yes, at least as late as 1984, Cabaret Voltaire continued to be on some sort of cutting edge. And the album title might suggest that they weren't taking themselves too seriously, either, which is always a good thing.

THE COVENANT, THE SWORD AND THE ARM OF THE LORD (1985)

1) L21ST; 2) I Want You; 3) Hells Home; 4) Kickback; 5) The Arm Of The Lord; 6) Warm; 7) Golden Halos; 8) Motion Rotation; 9) Whip Blow; 10) The Web.

And here comes another partial reinvention of the Cabaret Voltaire sound / aesthetics. First they were a theatrically spooky avantgarde outfit, then they became a theatrically spooky dance-pop band, and with The Covenant, they become a hilariously surrealistic dance-pop band. Never mind that the title of the album is taken from the name of a recently demolished white supremacist organisation (which is why in the US the record had to be renamed simply The Arm Of The Lord to pass censorpship), or that some of the songs are spiked with excerpts from Charlie Manson's speeches — there are even fewer shivery / creepy moments here than on previous CV albums, and a lot of instrumental color instead.

Personally, I find it totally non-coincidental that the record was released approximately one year after Art Of Noise made a big impact with Who's Afraid Of The Art Of Noise?, because a lot of what's going on here sounds as if Trevor Horn and Anne Dudley were involved with the project (apparently, they were not, but I would totally not be surprised). Bubbly synth bass, as if belonging to kiddie show themes; blasts of synthesized brass instruments, as if coming from sensationalist B-movie soundtracks; spliced, sliced, and mashed vocal overdubs jumping out like jack-in-a-boxes at predictable or unpredictable moments; paranoid percussion — sometimes all of it within the confines of the same track.

Of course, Cabaret Voltaire still retain too much darkness to sound like newly emerged clones of the Art of Noise — Mallinder's vocals, in particular, have not changed much, as he still consistently sounds like a shadow on the run, out of breath but not out of a burning desire to save his life and his sanity despite overwhelming odds. However, there's something controversial in these paranoid vocals now surrounded by bubble synths and occasional stuttery oi-oi-oi vocal overdubs that belong in a post-Monty Python world rather than in the dusty underground of the original Cabaret Voltaire. If you know what I mean.

Unquestionably, they reach the end of that rope with ʻWarmʼ, a track heavily loaded with sexy female moans that you will have problems playing in public — one thing Cabaret Voltaire had never been up to this moment is aggressively erotic, and for a good reason: it is hard to concentrate on erotic thoughts when you are running for your life in dark underground corridors. If the track were at least musically interesting, it might have worked, but its interlocking synth patterns don't sound any different from the average boring synth pop melodies of the time — which, in turn, makes the aahs and oohs seem even more ridiculous. And yet, sexual themes now occupy the band more than ever before: ʻI Want Youʼ, regardless of its title, is said to be about masturbation, for instance (not that any sane person could masturbate at that tempo for an entire four minutes, but who knows? Mallinder and Kirk may have had plenty of experience).

As usual, individual tracks are rather non-descript here: the «Art of Noise aesthetics» is adopted throughout, meaning that no two songs are completely different, and the album as a whole is... well, I am not sure the merger truly works. In their attempt to combine sarcastic darkness with playful absurdism, they sort of downplay the former without justifying the latter — think the same dusty dark corridors as usual, but now they're lighted with bright shiny Christmas ornaments. Why? Well, it just so happens that there's a heavy demand for bright shiny Christmas ornaments these days — it's Christmas season, you see, and you gotta give the people what they want, even if they don't have any intentions to celebrate Christmas at all. I wouldn't go as low as a thumbs down, because this is not a proper «sellout» or anything, but I really don't see much of a point in this album. And it certainly is not made any scarier just by the inclusion of some Charles Manson mumble — most people won't even know it's Manson, and those who will are not going to lose much sleep over it.

CODE (1987)

1) Don't Argue; 2) Sex, Money, Freaks; 3) Thank You America; 4) Here To Go; 5) Trouble (Won't Stop); 6) White Car; 7) No One Here; 8) Life Slips By; 9) Code.

This, I believe, is where it makes all kinds of sense to jump ship. If The Covenant made at least superficial efforts to preserve Cabaret Voltaire's psycho atmosphere, Code just drops it all in favor of a completely redesigned, rebranded, glossed-up sound that makes Cabaret Voltaire no different from dozens, if not hundreds, of artists in the electro-pop genre. Their reliance on «Art Of Noise aesthetics» continues unabated, but there are no signs of a newly found sense of humor, and there is nothing offered to truly delight the senses.

Track after track, everything on Code sounds the same: thick synthetic bass, electronic percussion, ornamental synthesizers, and Mallinder's "peril's-always-round-the-corner" vocals that we would love to hear resolve themselves in a mighty scream at least once — suspense is fine, but not when it lasts forever; eventually, it ceases to be suspense and becomes routine. If Mallinder and Kirk were masters of the pop hook, things could be brighter; they are not, though, and neither do they qualify as masters of the electronic groove.

It does not really get any better or any worse than the first track. Like the Manson-soaked tracks on Covenant, ʻDon't Argueʼ tries to brew up a feeling of danger and paranoia by sampling dialog from Your Job In Germany, Frank Capra's «training» movie for GIs who occupied Germany in 1945, with stern "you will not be friendly... you will be aloof..." warnings scattered all over the track. Problem is, the remaining parts of the track are simply too emotionally weak to be compatible with Capra's genuinely serious overdubs. What are they trying to scare us with — the bubbly bass? The thin, wimpy, string synths? The hushed multi-tracked vocal melody? Yes, it is objectively «paranoid-sounding», but for all these much-clichéd tricks, you can clearly feel that the major focus is on the danceable rhythm, not the atmosphere that goes with it. In fact, remove the film overdubs and it's like... third prize in the local «create-your-own-Prince-groove» high school competition or something. Useless, really.

And with that heavy feeling, you discover the second track (ʻSex, Money, Freaksʼ) and you find out that its vibe is pretty much the same. All the ingredients are the same — and the final effect is the same: danceable, for sure, but artistically bland. Third, fourth, fifth track... all the same, all the way to the end. Honestly, I have not the faintest idea why anybody should have listened to this back in 1987, let alone now. Thumbs down, and let's be done with it, because other than a bunch of expletives, I cannot think of anything else in the constructive vein.

GROOVY, LAIDBACK AND NASTY (1990)

1) Searchin'; 2) Hypnotised; 3) Minute By Minute; 4) Runaway; 5) Keep On (I Got This Feeling); 6) Magic; 7) Time Beats; 8) Easy Life; 9) Rescue Me (City Lights).

I must say that I am a tiny bit fascinated with how Cabaret Voltaire's transformation took place so slowly, meticulously, and at such a smooth rate — from The Covenant, with its emotionally neutral substance set to Charles Manson spookiness, to Code, with its purely formal darkness over unassuming dance rhythms, and finally to this record, which completely discards all traces of the band's seedy past and, in fact, in select places sounds like Phil Collins.

Okay, so actually some sources suggest that the album may have been influenced by the acid house genre. Me not having had much interest towards trendy electronic developments in the late Eighties (I was kind of more into Creedence Clearwater Revival at the time), I'm still not entirely sure what «acid house» is, but if it's, let's say, 808 State, then this album is definitely not even close to «acid house», because the only thing «acid» about it is how it eats away my ears with its bland, stupid-sounding rhythms. As far as I can tell now, twenty-five years after the fact, this is just run-of-the-mill dance music, without any serious hooks (which is normal for CV) and without any captivating atmospheric twists (which is not normal).

The opening number, ʻSearchin'ʼ, is fairly typical of the record as a whole: house rhythms, simple repetitive piano notes, disco strings, and unexpectedly high-pitched, sentimental vocals from Mr. Mallinder — it's nice to finally see him introduce some diversity into his singing, but not at such a terrible cost, because this here is not true Cabaret Voltaire, nor is it any other sort of decent music. Track after track, you get bales of club fodder whose only purpose (get you dancing to those hot new rhythms) outlived itself a long time ago. A little bit of rapping (ʻRunawayʼ) does neither harm nor good, but for the most part the tracks are remarkably monotonous.

I am pretty sure that only a major, major fan of generic late Eighties' dance muzak could still hold some love in his/her heart for this stuff. It is not even clear to me if this was an intentional sellout or more of an «experiment» — possibly the latter, considering that already the next album would bring back a little of that true CV essence. Regardless of whether they did this for money purposes or out of a crazy artistic whim, Groovy, Laidback & Nasty is very clearly the nadir of the band's career. Even the album title is like a self-parody. It's a good thing nobody was interested, though, or we might have ended up with a whole series of such turds. Thumbs down.

BODY AND SOUL (1991)

1) No Resistance; 2) Shout; 3) Happy; 4) Decay; 5) Bad Chemistry; 6) Vibration; 7) What Is Real; 8) Western Land; 9) Don't Walk Away; 10) Alien Nation Funk; 11) What Is Real.

A correction of sorts: this next installation of The Continuing Saga of Mallinder And Kirk's Journeys In Confusing Electronic Worlds of the Next Generation brings back the spookiness of classic Cabaret Voltaire, if not the rest of the atmosphere. This does not mean that we have to like the album or even waste more than a tiny modicum of time on it, but at least you will not emerge from the listening experience feeling deceived, stunned, and stupid.

This album, unlike its predecessor, probably could be qualified as true «acid» house, since many of the tracks have true psychedelic vibes, mostly generated through creaky, squelchy synth tones and their interaction with the overloud bass lines. Whether it should be qualified as respectable or awesome acid house is a different matter — to me, it still sounds like they are essentially trying to emulate their new teachers, with consistently mediocre results. Any 808 State release from that period, such as Ex:El from that same year, kicks Mallinder and Kirk's ass all over the place in terms of energy and excitement, because these guys have learned the basic trade, but they can only establish the groove: they lack the imagination required to properly ride it.

Of course, this is how they always did it: even in their best period, any five-or-more-minute composition of theirs would sound the same throughout. But now that they no longer sound like a bunch of living ghosts wandering through bombed sewers, and now that the gray, depressing, but at least somewhat exploratory guitar drones have been completely replaced by repetitive synth loops, the atmospheres become thinner, feebler, and far more prone to boring you to death on the very first minute (although at least they are not embarrassing you the way they did on Laidback, Groovy & Nasty). Occasionally they pin the track to a very sharply defined, catchy keyboard riff and some repetitive vocal mantra (ʻDon't Walk Awayʼ), slapping «commercial potential» on the song, but then I am not quite sure of the emotional content of the hook. It's still far more «body» than «soul», you understand.

I am a little partial towards the first track, ʻNo Resistanceʼ, which seems to betray more work and inspiration than almost anything else here — a nice combo of overdubs, with paranoid bubbly synth bass, Latinized percussion, «magic room keyboards», Mallinder's disturbed whispers, and occasional avantgarde piano breaks almost succeeding in restoring the classic old paranoia by entirely new means. However, everything that follows feels either inferior in execution or following some entirely different (and boring) purpose other than letting you know how confused and scared of the ways of the world these guys are (which is, after all, their only legitimate reason for musical existence). Nice bass on ʻShoutʼ, ʻHappyʼ, and other tracks, but no instrumental hooks, and the endlessly repeated vocal mantras get annoying real quickly.

Every once in a while, they interrupt the never-ending paranoid-dance party with either a message of atmospheric astral noise (ʻDecayʼ) or a piece of blissful ambience (ʻWestern Landʼ, which sounds as if Eno were hiding around the corner), but those interludes are really only there to give you a break from toe-tappin', foot-stompin' obligations; the last time Cabaret Voltaire were systematically engaged in the production of noise was even before the release of their first LP, and the last time they were systematically interested in beautiful-sounding ambience was... never, so the probability of their making a mark on the genres here is about the same as if Paul McCartney, way past his prime, suddenly decided to tread on the turf of death metal (which would at least be far more novel).

As it is, by the time we get to ʻWhat Is Realʼ, terminating the experience with seven minutes of a continuously looped six-note keyboard riff eating your brains out, all you have learned is that switching to «proper» acid house did not automatically transform Mallinder and Kirk into songwriting geniuses. However, for objectivity's sake I do have to add that I am no expert on house music, much less acid house music, and occasionally find even alleged masterpieces dull and pointless, so be independent, try ʻNo Resistanceʼ for starters and feel free to allow yourself to get all wowed and awed by the rest — perhaps I just «don't get it», classic style.

PLASTICITY (1992)

1) Low Cool; 2) Soul Vine (70 Billion People); 3) Resonator; 4) Inside The Electronic Revolution; 5) From Another Source; 6) Deep Time; 7) Back To Brazilia; 8) Neutron Factory; 9) Delmas 19; 10) Cooled Out; 11) Invisible Generation; 12) Soulenoid.

One thing I got to say in favor of those late-period albums by Mallinder and Kirk: at least they brought the darkness back. By the late Eighties, they had almost turned into a pretty shallow, pure-dance-oriented techno band, with just enough electronic quirks and smirks to be (sometimes way too undeservedly) classified as «acid house», but still taking the I out of IDM at every opportunity. With Plasticity, they managed to at least partially revert the process, and return to making music injected with the proper paranoia virus — joining the club of dark-minded electronic wizards with a penchant for using the extremes of technology to warn us humans about the extremes of technology. There is no talk here of being on the cutting edge, but as far as early Nineties' electronic music goes, this record does not seem particularly out-of-touch or ridiculous to me.

Not that I'm all that interested in discussing it. One ambient techno track after another, sometimes harsher, sometimes softer, usually with a few vocal overdubs — however, for the first time ever Mallinder does not sing at all, letting the music and the vocal samples do all the talking, which is at once good (because we're all kind of tired of his paranoid whispery declamations already) and bad (because it was an integral part of their identity), so that's one less detail to discuss. A typical track is ʻSoulenoidʼ, which completes the record: steady rhythm, pulsating acid bass, one atmospheric synth part forming a grey sonic cloud in the background, a six-note alarm-triggering synth riff responsible for all «movement», and some dialog sampled from some sci-fi movie or other to raise the level of tension. Seems cool, right? But the formula is reused way too often, and almost each of the tracks is like six or seven minutes long.

That said, I'm fairly sure you could play about half of these tracks back-to-back with Aphex Twin, and most people wouldn't know the difference — that's the big problem with electronic music in general, because these textures make it pretty hard to package a part of your spirit with them. As I said, the «return to the dark side» is most welcome, but the fact is, a huge lot of electronic artists create «dark» music (many more, in fact, than those that create «light» music), and there's no wonder in the fact that Plasticity simply sank to the bottom in an instant, without making anybody raise an eyebrow. The very fact of me not getting too irritated by the record (except for its horrendous length) should probably be a compliment, though — it is neither original nor memorable, but neither is it stupid. They are definitely still looking for something, and working their twin asses off, and so let us show at least a bit of critical respect by not saying "they should have retired and left us in peace by now".

INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE (1993)

1) Everything Is True; 2) Radical Chic; 3) Taxi Mutant; 4) Let It Come Down; 5) Afterglow; 6) The Root; 7) Millenium; 8) Belly Of The Beast; 9) Other World.

More sophisticated techno from the now-obscure couple who just refuse to quit. There are some significant differences from last time around: apparently, «international language» means saying goodbye to some of the more «acid» excesses and concentrating upon grooves, loops, and samples of a smoother, softer variety, with high-pitched, chime-like frequencies largely replacing the squeaky-squelchy burps of Plasticity. In layman terms, this means that International Language is not so much going to kick your ass as it's going to pat you on it, although the whole thing is still much too dark and grumpy to bring in the «sexiness» of Groovy, Laidback And Nasty (and thank God for that!).

On the grand scale of things, this changes nothing: as background muzak for huge electronica fans, there's no problem with the album, but miracles are not going to happen, and chances of any of these tunes to linger on in your head once they have performed their applied function seem rather ephemere. I like the attention to detail — for instance, the mechanism of slowly «breeding» the techno groove of ʻEverything Is Trueʼ as it grows out of some musique concrète, generating all of its overdubbed samples before the rhythmic base is properly established; however, once it is properly established, it just becomes a generic techno dance number. I also suppose that ʻRadical Chicʼ might be an actual tribute to Chic — I'm not sure if they sample any Chic material here, but the track sure sounds the way a proper techno cover of Chic should sound — and that is probably creative, but techno reinventions of disco oldies are not really my thing (I usually have to come up with excuses for why I like this or that particular disco song, and I'd have to come up with twice the number of said excuses for a disco-techno hybrid).

ʻLet It Come Downʼ is a little reminiscent of the old days, with a very thick, very grumpy-sounding bassline, rhythmic industrial clanging in the background and a pseudo-brass riff from a spy movie rotating in the background — if not for the relentless techno punch and the lack of depressive guitar drones, you'd almost mistake it for a leftover from the old days, and I'd love to see it torn out of this context and placed on a more impressive album as a moody instrumental interlude. However, apart from it and maybe the cute combination of the surreptitious-subtle funky bassline and «hooting owl» gimmick of ʻBelly Of The Beastʼ, nothing else truly stands out. So when we get to the finale of ʻOther Worldʼ, and the rhythmic base falls out, leaving us with nothing but pure New Agey ambience of electronic swirls and distant echoes, the effect is a bit baffling — you mean to say that this was an artistic statement all along, not merely a collection of well-wrought grooves to help the blood flow?..

I suppose there should be an inevitable crack at the title here — something along the lines of «if this kind of techno is indeed supposed to represent ʻinternational languageʼ by default, I sure wish Mallinder and Kirk stuck to all things national» — but the album, like most of their late period efforts, is really not too bad, and it manages to preserve a tiny pinch of their unique identity. I'm pretty sure it could even appeal to major fans of electronic music, like a Susan Tedeschi album might appeal to major blues fans. I just can't get rid of the feeling that ever since CV switched over to electronics completely, they found themselves locked in this compromised state, where everything they'd do would work to some degree, but never to the degree of leaving a lasting imprint on the music genre. But who knows? Maybe in twenty years' time you'll see International Language reappraised as a lost masterpiece, and people will be ready to donate all of their Aphex Twin collection for a used copy. The Grand DJ works in mysterious ways.

THE CONVERSATION (1994)

1) Exterminating Angel (Intro); 2) Brutal But Clean; 3) The Message; 4) Let's Start; 5) Night Rider; 6) I Think; 7) The Heat; 8) Harmonic Parallel; 9) Project80; 10) Exterminating Angel (Outro).

Although this is still credited to Cabaret Voltaire, the liner notes explicitly state that the album was "composed, programmed, arranged, and sonically orchestrated by R. H. Kirk", so apparently Mallinder's involvement here was minimal at best — not that you'd really notice, considering that his trademark vocals had been completely absent on the previous two records as well; and truly, there is not a lot of stylistic difference between all three, except for maybe this Conversation showing an even more claustrophobic spirit than ever before.

What the album is really most notable for, though, is its duration — spread across two CDs, with the second one largely consisting of a single 53-minute long collage, ʻProject80ʼ, featuring long samples of movie dialog interpolated with industrial clang-a-bang. The track actually sounds closer in spirit to «classic» Cabaret Voltaire than anything they'd done in a long time, except that there are no signs of returning to a guitar sound — but the effort is on gray dirty noise rather than danceable patterns, with the atmosphere changing from industrial to militaristic to post-stormy ambient and back again several times. It's a bit of an excruciating listen, but perhaps it is acceptable as a last testament of sorts, a pompous reappraisal of the Cabaret Voltaire legacy and all the emotional turmoil it represents for easily impressionable people.

Neither its individual parts, though, nor the much shorter tracks on the first CD lend themselves any easier to description than any bits and pieces on International Language. The two-part ʻExterminating Angelʼ may own its title to a Buñuel movie, but it is neither as suspenseful nor as bizarre as its filmed counterpart — just a set of cloudy tape loops generating a mixed atmosphere of serenity and faraway ominous danger, with percussion overdubs added in the «outro» part so you can dance to the atmosphere of serenity and faraway ominous danger. Likewise, everything else works like smooth, inobtrusive, barely noticeable background muzak that seems to gravitate towards «chill-out» now out of its original «acid» inclinations. Occasionally, there's a touch of something different (ʻThe Heatʼ reworks a reggae groove; ʻHarmonic Parallelʼ lazily stutters along to a relaxed trip-hop beat), but some of the keyboard loops are downright cheesy — the one on ʻBrutal But Cleanʼ sounds like something Modern Talking could find some use for. In other words, the small highs are balanced by equally small lows, and most of the time you get bland background neutrality.

In fact, considering that Kirk's solo albums from the same period, recorded for Warp, are more adventurous on the whole, it is somewhat of a relief that he and Mallinder finally pulled the plug on the Cabaret Voltaire thing later that year. Let's face it — the CV spirit got old and debilitated by the late Eighties, and despite a few last-minute shots of darkness that they tried to administer for Body And Soul, this whole techno thing that they got going in the Nineties was not proper Cabaret Voltaire — and proper Cabaret Voltaire was so tightly bound to the New Wave and mid-Eighties era that there was no way they could artificially stimulate it for a long time anyway. Obviously, if there's something they are going to be remembered by, it will be those albums where Kirk is grinding out his creepy-nasty guitar cobwebs and Mallinder is running from phantom dangers through smelly underground sewers. Anything that comes later, no matter how inoffensive or even mildly creative, will be superfluous.

CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN

TELEPHONE FREE LANDSLIDE VICTORY (1985)

1) The Day That Lassie Went To The Moon; 2) Border Ska; 3) Wasted; 4) Yanqui Go Home; 5) Oh No!; 6) Nine Of Disks; 7) Payed Vacation: Greece; 8) Where The Hell Is Bill?; 9*) Wasting All Your Time; 10*) Epigram #5; 11*) At Kuda; 12*) Epigram #2; 13*) Cowboys From Hollywood; 14*) Colonel Enrique Adolfo Bermudez; 15) Vladivostock; 16) Skinhead Stomp; 17) Tina; 18) Take The Skinheads Bowling; 19) Mao Reminisces About His Days In Southern China; 20) I Don't See You; 21) Balalaika Gap; 23) Opi Rides Again; 24) Club Med Sucks; 25) Ambiguity Song.

Those unfortunate (or fortunate) souls whose youth was not spent in Eighties' America would probably, in retrospect, think of «college rock» as represented by either leftist hardcore bands or leftist folk-rock bands (of the more subtle variety, like R.E.M., or of the more straightforward one, like 10,000 Maniacs). As one begins digging a little deeper, though, all sorts of oddities begin to come out — including acts that are fairly hard to categorize, since one of their intentions was to avoid becoming easily pigeonholed, at all costs. And among such acts, few can boast a higher level of oddball-ness than the oddball-some-titled Camper Van Beethoven (originally — Camper Van Beethoven and The Border Patrol), founded by a bunch of eccentric Californians with guitar player and singer David Lowery at the core center.

Unlike the abrasive, avantgarde-influenced young noisemakers dominating the underground, Camper Van Beethoven did not seem to care much about pushing forward musical boundaries (being largely content with however wide they'd already been pushed) or about making their music as basically «inaccessible» and «unlistenable» as possible. With minimal exceptions (only a tiny handful of these tracks experiment with dissonance, e. g. ʽNine Of Disksʼ), all the music on this album is well within certain established traditions — Camper Van Beethoven like various forms of pop, punk, punk-pop, pop-punk, and country-western, though their major love spot is reserved for the venerable musical form of ska (or polka, if you'd rather like an Eastern rather than Western hemisphere analogy, although Campers don't exactly huddle the accordeon).

The ska-based tracks on the band's debut largely seem to function as instrumental interludes — but do not make the mistake of writing them off as insignificant, because if there's anything truly exciting and original about Camper's musical agenda, most of it is concealed in these instrumentals. With two guitarists and a talented multi-instrumentalist (Jonathan Segel on violin, mandolin, and various keyboards) involved, they present humorous and inventive twists on just about every musical genre that ends up on the roulette wheel. Beginning fairly innocently with some pop electric guitar on ʽBorder Skaʼ; they follow it up with a country twist on ʽYanqui Go Homeʼ; go Near Eastern on ʽAt Kudaʼ; zip into Mexico for ʽColonel Enrique Adolfo Bermudezʼ (there are some spoken vocals on that one, but it falls in the same ska-based category); try to summon a Russian vibe — in my opinion, somewhat unsuccessfully — on ʽVladivostockʼ; later try to do it again, with slightly more satisfactory results, on ʽBalalaika Gapʼ (that's a mandolin, though, hardly an authentic balalaika); and reach an absolute climactic peak on ʽMao Reminisces About His Days In Southern Chinaʼ — a less smart band would probably just slap a title like this onto any random piece of improvised shit, but the Campers actually make an effort to play a doubled guitar/violin melody that is reminiscent of a Chinese folk melody. It's catchy, it's funny, and, strangest of all, it is actually touching in some way — I'm still trying to figure out why, though.

It would be very easy to just write off this «jamaicaization» of various music genres as a cheap gimmick, and I cannot, in fact, exclude that, given the band's general penchant for satire and irony, all of this was essentially performed as a tongue-in-cheek parody of the «world music» scene that was shaping up in the mid-Eighties. But there's too much thought and genuine feeling behind it all to reduce all the spectrum to just humor and parody — you might as well say that the band breathes new life in these clichéd old genres by grafting them onto an ʽOb-La-Di Ob-La-Daʼ kind of stock. And although there is not a lot of complexity involved, the performances are surprisingly diligent and well-rehearsed: these guys took the DIY ethics seriously — if you really have to do it yourself, you might as well do it fuckin' good.

In between all the instrumental fun, you have the actual songs — also with a fairly wide range, though not nearly as all-encompassing as the ska bits. As could be expected, most of these are written in an absurdist paradigm, but not a particularly nonsensical or dadaist one: this is an American band, and the situations they invent are more Saturday Night Live than Monty Python, be it Lassie's self-sacrificing journey to outer space (ʽThe Day That Lassie Went To The Moonʼ), the brainless spasms of youth rebellion (ʽClub Med Sucksʼ), or lazy indignation at the absence of a band member for the rehearsals (ʽWhere The Hell Is Bill?ʼ, referring to the original drummer Bill McDonald, who actually left way before these sessions even started — "maybe he went to see The Circle Jerks!"). Musically, they sound strangely more rugged and amateurish than the ska pieces — almost as if this were a completely different band playing at times — but no less odd, particularly when they cover Black Flag's fifty-second hardcore classic ʽWastedʼ as a slow roots-rock number with a prominent fiddle part; and the best of these tunes also happen to be insanely catchy and even uplifting — ʽTake The Skinheads Bowlingʼ is rightfully considered a classic not because it deals with skinheads, but because it is a terrific piece of jangle-pop, and once again, Segel's violin work is highly commendable.

Things are neatly tied together with the closing number, ʽAmbiguity Songʼ, something that would not sound out of place at your local hoedown, but whose main point is to deliver, in condensed form, the main message of the entire album: "Everything seems to be up in the air at this time / One day soon, it'll all settle down / But everything seems to be up in the air at this time" — delivered in an ever so slightly worried, but ultimately calm and ironic fashion. All the more ironic, that is, considering how it was all baked way back in 1985, yet still seems so relevant at the end of the distantly futuristic 2016: the album sounds every bit as charming now as it did back then, and I am absurdly happy to render a well-deserved thumbs up verdict.

(Technical note: the 24-track CD issue of the album is actually much longer than the original due to the insertion in its middle of the entire contents of the contemporary EP Take The Skinheads Bowling, including an early version of the classic ʽCowboys From Hollywoodʼ. Another technical note is that the album itself was supposed to be named Telephone Tree Landslide Victory, but apparently the label guys messed up and got Free instead of Tree — which, in my as well as the band's opinion, actually improves on the original proposition.)

II & III (1986)

1) Abundance; 2) Cowboys From Hollywood; 3) Sad Lovers' Waltz; 4) Turtlehead; 5) I Love Her All The Time; 6) No Flies On Us; 7) Down And Out; 8) No Krugerrands For David; 9) (Don't You Go To) Goleta; 10) 4 Year Plan; 11) (We're A) Bad Trip; 12) Circles; 13) Dustpan; 14) Sometimes; 15) Chain Of Circumstance; 16) ZZ Top Goes To Egypt; 17) Cattle (Reversed); 18) Form Another Stone; 19) No More Bullshit.

The title of this album is first and foremost intended to look cool, but also reflects some objective truth, considering that about half of it was recorded while drummer Anthony Guess was still in the band (and new guitarist Greg Lisher had just joined), and the other half was made after the drummer's departure, with Molla and Lowery splitting the drum work between themselves (permanent replacement Chris Pedersen only arrived in time to record one track, the rough garage-rocker ʽ(We're A) Bad Tripʼ).

In all honesty, though, Camper Van Beethoven is more about the collective spirit than individual personalities, and we are not going to be seriously tracing all the complicated comings and goings here — the only thing that matters is whether they affect that spirit or not, and II & III, by all accounts, remains unaffected. Not that it sounds like a copy of the debut: on the contrary, there are some serious changes made, as the band largely abandons the «remake everything as a ska groove» principle, and branches out into additional directions; anything goes, as long as it's got good rhythm and as long as you can put a slightly weird spin on it.

The only problem is that this time around, there's no seeming conceptual unity to the recordings at all — all you can do is fondly enjoy its light-hearted attitude and fish out occasional moments of musical brilliance. Two songs only go for some sort of social message, one of them doing so brilliantly (the abovementioned ʽBad Tripʼ, a sneering putdown of those who "live such bright and flashing lives" with top-notch energy and a classic neo-garage riff) and the other not so brilliantly (ʽNo More Bullshitʼ — a last-minute outburst of sloganeering is not going to save the day, even if you happen to agree with the song's sentiments such as "no more MTV, no more rock stars... Elvis Presley died and no one knows why!"; musically, the song sounds like somebody took a sonic experiment off Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica and normalized it — well, okay, but it does not agree so perfectly with the verbal message). The rest is a smorgasbord of pop, folk, country, psychedelia, punk, and yes, just a little bit of ska... actually, more of a Slavonic dance, as corroborated by its prominent «mandolaika» lead part and the telling title ʽ4 Year Planʼ (I guess 5-year plans were too much to handle for a band with this much impatience).

Again, though, the most musically brilliant pieces are those instrumentals on which Segel's violin gets top billing — ʽNo Krugerrands For Davidʼ is a mad send-up of Jewish dance music, but my personal favorite is ʽZZ Top Goes To Egyptʼ, where near-Eastern violin lines are psychedelically spiced up with echo effects and placed on top of a bluesy vamp that, honestly, does not sound much like ZZ Top, but then I'm not really sure who the hell it sounds like, so might as well be ZZ Top. Other instrumentals are not nearly as interesting; for instance, ʽDustpanʼ is sort of what you'd expect a basic punk-rock song to sound like if the chainsaw buzz was replaced with bursts of acoustic jangle — an idea that seems intriguing in theory, but turns out boring in practice. However, check out the excellent ʽTurtleheadʼ: seventy-five seconds of a crazyass country-punk-noise hybrid with unexpected time, tone, and mood shifts around every corner, a track that even ends up having a distinctly King Crimson-ian feel to it while it lasts.

Of the remaining vocal numbers, Sonic Youth's ʽI Love Her All The Timeʼ, remade as a rollickin' bluegrass number, deserves some attention for the novelty factor; ʽChain Of Circumstanceʼ is an attempt at twee-pop, ruined by bad vocals; and ʽForm Another Stoneʼ might be an overlooked psychedelic masterpiece from these guys — parodic as it is, the violin parts, laced with echo and phasing effects, wind themselves around the guitar jangle in a decidedly mind-blowing fashion. But even so, brilliance and senselessness go hand in hand on the album: for every winner, there's a relative loser, and overall, a bit of quality control probably wouldn't hurt. I appreciate, for instance, that the violin on ʽSad Lovers' Waltzʼ occasionally ends up reproducing the violin lines on the Beatles' ʽDon't Pass Me Byʼ, but the song as a whole does nothing for me, either as a sincere country number or as parody, whatever.

In short, II & III might as well be subtitled The Brilliant & The Pointless, a record that, far more so than the debut, highlights the band's virtues and flaws. Listening to this, you get the feeling that they could have easily done a great «serious» album in some sort of country-punk style — but chose the humble-pretentious path of self-deflation and reckless branching out with no particular place to go instead. If they were the Beatles and this was their White Album, they might get away with it, but I'll still take ʽWild Honey Pieʼ over ʽDustpanʼ, because the art of painting evocative musical pictures with musical trifles is a dang hard art to do well, and Camper Van Beethoven do it well... well, about 45% of the time. Which is still darn impressive for a mid-Eighties Californian band, so an honest thumbs up it is anyway.

CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN (1986)

1) Good Guys & Bad Guys; 2) Joe Stalin's Cadillac; 3) Five Sticks; 4) Lulu Land; 5) Une Fois; 6) We Saw Jerry's Daughter; 7) Surprise Truck; 8) Stairway To Heavan (Sic); 9) The History Of Utah; 10) Still Wishing To Course; 11) We Love You; 12) Hoe Yourself Down; 13) Peace & Love; 14) Folly; 15) Interstellar Overdrive; 16) Shut Us Down.

On their third album, Camper Van Beethoven continue to «normalize» their sound, in this particular case, «normalization» being the equivalent of showing how much they love rock music from the late Sixties and early Seventies (and hey, who doesn't? Oh, okay, today some people don't, but what else could those intelligent college-rock kids from the Eighties choose as the main source of inspiration? Barry White?). More often than not, the inspiration is indirect: for instance, they take Led Zep-based song titles (ʽFive Sticksʼ, ʽStairway To Heavanʼ) and use them for psychedelic freakouts — the former is ʽThe Ambiguity Songʼ backwards, the latter is ʽMao Reminiscesʼ backwards (and somehow not completely losing its original charm in the process). Or, for instance, they express their reverence for the Grateful Dead by poking gentle fun at Deadheads (ʽWe Saw Jerry's Daughterʼ, which, incidentally, is also one of the album's fastest and catchiest pop numbers — although it doesn't sound much like a Grateful Dead song at all).

But just so you know that you can never properly predict the Campers' next move, they go out on a limb and introduce a faithful, as-note-for-note-as-possible rendition of Pink Floyd's ʽInterstellar Overdriveʼ — somewhat stripped down compared to the original, but still with tremendous attention to detail. Needless to say, a cover like that really only works in the context of the album: it adds nothing to the classic ʽInterstellar Overdriveʼ experience, but it matters all the world to us that it is done here by the same guys who, in their regular hours, produce sarcastic deconstructions of all the musical genres in the world.

There is also more emphasis on the lyrical message and the surrealist stories behind the music, fortunately, not at the expense of musical ideas. ʽGood Guys & Bad Guysʼ and ʽJoe Stalin's Cadillacʼ start things off with some political flavor — the former addresses the Russian issue from the point of view of an easy-going redneck (or college dropout, whatever) lazily basking in the sun, and the latter somehow jabs and stabs at all the dictatorial powers in the world, though I am still not exactly sure how; I guess that "Well my cadillac is Johnson's cadillac, is Stalin's cadillac, is Somoza's cadillac..." implies that dictators only become dictators because we allow them to, but then again, maybe it does not imply anything at all, and the whole thing is just an excuse for some reckless boogie fun. (And again, there's a completely ad hoc Led Zeppelin reference at the end of the song — purely by association, led on by the word "bridge" in the line "gonna drive my cadillac off a bridge". What do you think when you hear the word "bridge"? You must not be a true Led Zep fan if you think something different).

On a slighter note, ʽThe History Of Utahʼ tackles you-know-what, presenting a very alternative history of the establishment of the Church of Latter-day Saints to the sound of a droning psycho-boogie with a penchant for abrupt tempo changes; and ʽWe Love Youʼ is a variation on ʽThe Devil Went Down To Georgiaʼ, with a notable change in the theme (the Devil becomes a member of the band rather than taking the souls of its members). Still, both songs do reflect certain problems that the band members seem to have with religious practices — and their irreverence extends even to the very psychedelia that seems to fuel this record (ʽLulu Landʼ, a parody on the mind-opening, transcendental nature of flower power era psychedelic anthems).

On the whole, though, as fun as the record is on a first-come, first-serve basis, the remaining impression is, well, not quite as impressive as before. Too many of the songs just sound like jokes, made tastier through the factor of unpredictability — but jokes all the same. As far as actual songs are concerned, ʽGood Guys & Bad Guysʼ is arguably the only number here that qualifies: everything else is either a parody, or a brief freakout, or a passable, but straightforward genre experiment (ʽHoe Yourself Downʼ sure sounds good, but its meaning here is only gained in the context of other songs — normally, if you want this type of fast country dance by itself, you go to Nashville, don't you?), or, well, ʽInterstellar Overdriveʼ. Still a thumbs up, of course, but I find myself pining for all those ska instrumentals.

OUR BELOVED REVOLUTIONARY SWEETHEART (1988)

1) Eye Of Fatima (pt. 1); 2) Eye Of Fatima (pt. 2); 3) O Death; 4) She Divines Water; 5) Devil Song; 6) One Of These Days; 7) Turquoise Jewelry; 8) Waka; 9) Change Your Mind; 10) My Path Belated; 11) Never Go Back; 12) The Fool; 13) Tania; 14) Life Is Grand.

Always, always comes that day when the miserable reviewer, hungry for words, subjects and hooks, finally gets the chance to write: «Major changes on band so-and-so's most recent album! Finally, they have been able to secure a major label contract and professional recording quality, and so...» ...then you allow yourself a few seconds to take the decision whether it made them great or it made them suck (usually the latter), and from then on it's a fairly smooth ride.

The problem is, I did not even notice anything that would suggest Camper Van Beethoven had such a bout of fortune. And it's not like I couldn't have noticed — on second listen, you do notice a much louder drum sound than before, and a denser, yet cleaner mix than before, courtesy of producer Dennis Herring, assigned to them by Virgin Records. And it's not as if I haven't noticed some stylistic changes, either, as the band takes on a slightly more serious face than before, and comes up with a much larger number of «normal» songs than before. But never for the life of me would I want to ascribe that change to a commercial urge — Lowery and friends normally act as if the division between «commercial» and «non-commercial» never existed for them in the first place. It's not as if they began largely playing free-form jazz and then slowly migrated to pop formats; there was nothing self-consciously «weird» about their music, other than a never-ending drive to freely translate stuff from one musical idiom into another.

And so, on this first album for Virgin, the band simply gives us more of the same, except that the selected musical forms are now almost completely restricted to whatever was en vogue a good fifteen years ago — retro pop-rock, retro folk-rock, retro prog-rock, with a bit of glam and proto-punk thrown in for good measure. All too often, Lowery's guitar and Segel's violin combine to give things a definite country-and-western slant, but whenever that happens, psychedelic effects and melodic overdubs, as well as surrealist lyrics, are added to make sure that the band properly sounds like "cowboys on acid" (ʽEye Of Fatimaʼ), combining hillbilly paraphernalia with a hippie attitude: I'm sure somewhere out there, off some lonesome cloud, Hank Williams is surreptitiously eyeing them with fondness in his heart.

A few songs would suggest that the band is taking a darker turn — early on, their slow country dance take on the traditional ʽO Deathʼ sounds both ironically irreverent and a bit creepy, because you never can tell with these guys if they are doing a parody or a parallel-universe reinvention; and the fact that they took this old Appalachian dark folk number and turned it into a catchy folk-pop tune somehow makes it creepier. But there is no generally underlying dark current to the album — in fact, the final song explicitly states that "and life is grand... and I will say this at the risk of falling from favor / With those of you who have appointed yourselves / To expect us to say something darker". Behind all of these gestures really lies the same old — a stark desire to never be pigeonholed: considering that «college rock» or «underground rock» is typically associated with a punkish or at least just a generally mopey attitude towards life, Lowery and Co. feel like they have to present themselves as optimists, even if ʽO Deathʼ might seem to suggest the opposite. Why they never went out with a passionate cover of ABBA's ʽDancing Queenʼ, though, I have no idea.

That's all fine, though; more questionable is their decision to include some instrumentals where the emphasis is not on genre-mashing as it used to be, but rather on pure atmospherics — the second part of ʽEye Of Fatimaʼ is not unlike some pseudo-Led Zeppelin folk-metal experiment, with a mix of acoustic picking and blazing electric guitar god soloing, and later on they pretty much repeat the same thing with ʽWakaʼ; still later, ʽThe Foolʼ is a psycho-metallic waltz that you could probably hear from the likes of Jeff Beck in one of his particularly eccentric periods. It's okay, but Greg Lisher, responsible for lead guitar, is hardly a great guitar virtuoso, and if I am not all that tempted to play air guitar on these songs, then I am not sure what they really are there for — I'd rather go back to my Led Zep and Fairport Convention records.

Less questionable is the decision to just write some nice, fun songs — ʽNever Go Backʼ, ʽOne Of These Daysʼ, ʽChange Your Mindʼ, and the somewhat mysterious ʽTaniaʼ (whose messy lyrics seem loaded with the Jean-Luc Godard spirit) are all friendly, catchy and just sound cool on those front porches where Garth Brooks would not fit in. There's nothing too deep or pretentious concealed in them — merely an attempt to create conventional, but not boring roots-rock that could be palatable to the highly demanding listener. I'm really not sure how to follow this with an inappropriately deep-sounding conclusion, so I'll just leave you with another thumbs up, though perhaps a less excited one than on the band's debut, where it did look like they wanted to subvert conventional musical rules — here, all they want to do is to follow them creatively.

KEY LIME PIE (1989)

1) Opening Theme; 2) Jack Ruby; 3) Sweethearts; 4) When I Win The Lottery; 5) (I Was Born In A) Laundromat; 6) Borderline; 7) The Light From A Cake; 8) June; 9) All Her Favorite Fruit; 10) Interlude; 11) Flowers; 12) The Humid Press Of Days; 13) Pictures Of Matchstick Men; 14) Come On Darkness.

With this album, the first stage of the existence of Camper Van Beethoven comes to a — rather somber — close. Apparently, the group began to splinter even before the recording started, with the loss of Jonathan Segel being a particularly heavy blow: they do their best to mask his absence by hiring non-member Don Lax and, later still, temporary member Morgan Fichter to play the violin, but it is, perhaps, not so much the presence/absence of the fiddle sound as it is a certain intuitively felt disappearance of one shade of rainbow that is the main problem.

Every review of Key Lime Pie that you read is going to focus on two aspects of this record: (a) it is noticeably darker and less idealistic than before (as if you couldn't tell, what with the very last track being named ʽCome On Darknessʼ and all); (b) it is less musically diverse, with most songs molded in a relatively traditional Americana pattern, with heavy folk, country, and blues influences. Throw in a bunch of politicized lyrics every now and then, and you'd easily get the impression that Lowery and his pals are trying to get «serious» and «make a statement», essentially betraying Camper's original un-ideology, either in the vain hope to score extra financial success (which they actually did, since Key Lime Pie sold noticeably better than they used to), or because they have outgrown their adolescent phase and are no longer so obstinate about making «art for art's sake».

Certainly this impression is at its strongest with the album's first song, ʽJack Rubyʼ, which uses the title character as an abstract allegory for the mess we're in ("now we think it's a virtue to simply survive / but it feels like this calm it's decaying / it's collapsing under its own weight"). It's a long, repetitive, gloomy folk-rock ballad, one that probably begs to be covered by a Joan Baez or, who knows, even a Bob Dylan (certainly wouldn't feel out of place on one of his late period albums like Modern Times). With a sparse arrangement, largely reduced to a ringing rhythm guitar and an angry distorted lead guitar track with a penchant for sustained notes and whammy bar abuse, this is as close to an apocalyptic mood as the Campers ever get.

Skip ahead several tracks, though, and songs like ʽJuneʼ will show you that essentially, it's just David Lowery in a really, really bad mood. "Are you weary of the lengthening days?", he asks, "do you secretly wish for November's rain?", and goes on to conclude, "there is nothing in this world more bitter than Spring". Musically, this is probably the album's most interesting and innovative number, a dark waltz that shifts keys and becomes even darker midway through, all the time staying very heavy on the strings, with a psychedelic chamber arrangement somewhere in between country-western and modern classical — but its words and its basic mood suggest, first and foremost, that something just went really rotten on the inside. It's like the band just doesn't feel like having fun any more — not some sort of conscious decision to «get deeper and darker», but merely an instinctive reflection of some nasty virus eating up the soul.

The only track on the album that is not altogether infused with this nasty feel is (in yet another nod to the great god of unpredictability) the band's cover of Status Quo's ʽPictures Of Matchstick Menʼ, with the slide guitar riff lovingly recreated by Morgan Fichter's violin, but otherwise fairly loyal to the original. However, in its lonely position, stuck in between a bunch of morose tracks, it sounds more like a melancholically nostalgic tribute to long gone days of hippie happiness than an idealistic attempt to bring those days back. And how could it be taken with a light heart, really, after all these songs that deal with pissed-off loser dreams (ʽWhen I Win The Lotteryʼ — "when the end comes to this old world / the rats will cry and the rest will curl up"), venting frustration accumulated at the bottom of the social ladder (ʽI Was Born In A Laundromatʼ), the impossibility of getting satisfaction even from blessed escapism (ʽBorderlineʼ — ska rhythms return with a gritty, snappy vengeance and conclude that "on the borderline everything is empty, even you and I"), and the uselessness of romance (ʽAll Her Favorite Fruitʼ, said to be based around a love line from Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, but applicable to any situation in which a pair of lovers feel like "we are rotting like a fruit underneath a rusting roof")?

All in all, this was clearly not a happy period in the band's life, but the album on the whole still qualifies as a good one — there's plenty of catchy choruses, enough tracks like ʽJuneʼ that can still grab your attention with unusual and beautiful textures, and Lowery is as good at transmitting the aura of weariness and dissatisfaction as he is at being a smartass cynic with a sharp sense of humor. Not every band that started out with such effective absurdity as ʽThe Day That Lassie Went To The Moonʼ could bring it to such a convincingly morose finale as ʽCome On Darknessʼ, even if it does make you wonder if there's a certain natural law that inevitably leads The Joker on to becoming The Undertaker (then again, so far it hasn't really worked on Weird Al Yankovic, to say the least). I give it a thumbs up, but beware — you will only enjoy it if you did not dig all those previous Camper records merely for being «hilarious».

CAMPER VANTIQUITIES (1993)

1) Heart; 2) Never Go Back; 3) Seven Languages; 4) Axe Murderer Song; 5) SP37957; 6) Crossing Over; 7) Guardian Angels; 8) I'm Not Like Everybody Else; 9) A. C. Cover; 10) Porpoise Mouth; 11) We Workers Do Not Understand Modern Art; 12) We Eat Your Children; 13) Six More Miles To The Graveyard; 14) Ice Cream Everyday; 15) Processional; 16) Photograph / Om Eye.

Naturally, with the band no longer existing, what a better time to start digging in the vaults? From the loving hands of bassist Victor Krummenacher comes this odds-and-ends package that included, in its entirety, the EP Vampire Can Mating Oven, originally released in 1987, along with ten previously unreleased tracks from various sessions. Considering that the EP is also available today on the expanded CD issue of the self-titled third album, and that the non-EP odds-and-ends do not add any startling surprises to what we already know about the Campers, this is not a very essential release, but still a nice one.

Actually, Mating Oven was a damn fine EP that is well worth having in any configuration. It has some of the band's catchiest tunes — Lowery's ʽHeartʼ is a very ʽOb-La-Di Ob-La-Daʼ-esque piece of guitar-based ska-pop, with an almost unnoticeable tongue-in-cheek attitude; ʽNever Go Backʼ is also ska-pop, but this time with a swampy slide guitar lead and a folksier vocal melody, ironically admonishing us all to "never go back" (nice to hear from a band that always went back... then again, to be fair, it's more like they were all walking forwards while looking backwards); ʽIce Cream Everydayʼ is one of their few stabs at synth-pop, with cold electronic patterns matching the "ice cream" lyrics — not great, but amusing; and leave it to Camper Van Beethoven to resort to «oblique strategies» and pull a Ringo Starr cover out of their sleeve — ʽPhotographʼ remains as cool as the day Ringo and George put the final touches on it, though there's hardly anything of importance that the band adds to it here (unless you are so seriously biased against Ringo as a singer and as an artist that you only agree to listen to his good stuff when it's being done by somebody else — in which case, shame on you).

The one true masterpiece on the EP, however, is ʽSeven Languagesʼ, one of Camper's most blissfully arranged tracks — funky, with a threatening, serpentine, «poisonous» wah-wah lead line driving the song, light-Gothic keyboards, and lyrics that could, for once, relate to most of us as we bumble through life without really managing to do anything worthwhile. If only there were some space left for hooks in the vocal melody, it could be a great classic of the decade — as it is, it does not quite amount to, say, the level of mopey Cure classics, but it comes fairly close.

As for the rest of the tracks, it's mostly generic CvB rootsy stuff — sometimes with really cool titles like ʽWe Workers Do Not Understand Modern Artʼ (seems like an early version of or a variation on the ʽMao Reminiscesʼ instrumental, actually), sometimes with really incongruent titles (ʽWe Eat Your Childrenʼ is a bit of Mexican folk, with prominent acoustic lead parts — unless we're talking real tender, playful, soothing cannibalism here), and sometimes with shocking lyrics (ʽAxe Murderer Songʼ is like Lennon's ʽWorking Class Heroʼ, only with a completely new set of existentialist questions such as "why do axe murderers only attack when we're making love?"). Hiding somewhere in the middle is another randomly gratuitous cover of a classic — this time it's ʽI'm Not Like Everybody Elseʼ by The Kinks, a song that could certainly serve as a household anthem for Lowery and Co., but hardly one which they could sing in a more defiant and aggressive manner than Dave Davies.

So, overall, this is essential for completists, and a few of the tracks from Mating Ovens are essential for best-of compilations; the stylistic world of Camper Van Beethoven is so large and diverse that even here you can still discover some sorely missing pieces of the whole puzzle. But, of course, odds-and-ends will always be odds-and-ends.

CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN IS DEAD, LONG LIVE CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN (2000)

1) Broadcasting Live From The MCI; 2) L'Aguardiente; 3) Tom Flower's 1500 Valves; 4) All Her Favorite Fruit (orchestral version); 5) Closing Theme; 6) Loose Lips Sink Ships; 7) Who Are The Brain Police?; 8) Stayin' At Home With The Girls In The Morning; 9) Klondike; 10) S.P. 37957 Medley; 11) Balalaika Gap (demo); 12) The Perfect Enigma Machine; 13) We're All Wasted And We're Wasting All Your Time.

Leave it to Camper Van Beethoven to make an ideal mess out of a comeback-reunion album. After a decade of independent projects, such as Lowery's Cracker, Lowery, Krummenacher, and Segel come together to see if there's still any future left for the good old Camper — the proper test being the ability to produce a record of unpredictable, but controlled chaos and see if it holds water. (Spoiler: if it does hold water, it's probably not worth a damn. Who needs a Camper Van Beethoven that holds water, rather than spills it all on your pants?).

Many of the song titles here are recognizable from past records: in fact, upon first glance one might actually take this for a live album, but only a few tracks seem to come from actual live performances, with the others being an eclectic mix of old demo versions, outtakes, and some newly recorded material, all purportedly tangled together with the aim of not letting you properly distinguish between «vintage» CvB and «modern» CvB. Accordingly, I'm not even going to try to sort this out or focus on minor details, such as, for instance, ʽBalalaika Gapʼ being almost the same track as the original, only a little bit slower, or ʽWasting All Your Timeʼ being exactly the same track as it used to be on the Take The Skinheads Bowling EP, for some reason.

Of the new, or, at least, previously unheard material, some relative highlights are: (a) ʽS.P. 37957 Medleyʼ — a six-minute mash-up of Led Zeppelin's ʽDazed And Confusedʼ with ʽHava Nagilaʼ, because, I mean, what two songs in the world could be spiritually closer to each other?; (b) ʽL'Aguardienteʼ, a cool acoustic-and-violin instrumental (featuring Morgan Fichter and actually played live) that, technically, is also a mash-up, with Iberian flamenco motives seamlessly flowing into Balkan dance music and vice versa; (c) ʽKlondikeʼ, a long, morose, dreary country waltz with quite a bit of a Leonard Cohen vibe to it.

Curiously, all of these excellent tracks are quite lengthy, whereas shorter tracks tend to float by as relatively unnoticed, or relatively unimpressive — thus, there's really no point in Camper Van Beethoven covering Zappa's ʽWho Are The Brain Police?ʼ, an originally mega-weird track that could not be made any weirder by anybody; and brief instrumentals such as ʽClosing Themeʼ, an exercise «progressive blues-rock», are simply boring, because nobody in the band could play the guitar at the level of «guitar hero» anyway (incidentally, the song was at one time available under the tongue-in-cheek title of ʽGuitar Heroʼ). They still get by on the strength of diversity — almost every single track is in a genre of its own — so, ultimately, it's still fun, and the orchestrated version of ʽAll Her Favorite Fruitʼ even adds a bit of a baroque-pop flavor which, so far, has not been noticed on any CvB record at all.

Like Vantiquities, this is primarily a record for completists, but its release at the turn of the century may have been somewhat symbolic — a reminder that there will always be a place for a bit of post-modern surrealism in the new millennium as well, even as, with all these covers of Zappa and Led Zeppelin, it is obvious that Lowery & Co.'s primary influences are still firmly rooted in the past: be it a resurrection of old recordings or work on the new ones, there is no attempt to recognize any of the «progress» that the musical world went through in the Nineties, and you certainly won't find me complaining about this.

TUSK (2002)

1) Over And Over; 2) The Ledge; 3) Think About Me; 4) Save Me A Place; 5) Sara; 6) What Makes You Think You're The One; 7) Storms; 8) That's All For Everyone; 9) Not That Funny; 10) Sisters Of The Moon; 11) Angel; 12) That's Enough For Me; 13) Brown Eyes; 14) Never Make Me Cry; 15) I Know I'm Not Wrong; 16) Honey Hi; 17) Beautiful Child; 18) Walk A Thin Line; 19) Tusk; 20) Never Forget.

The liner notes to the album will inform you that the idea of covering Fleetwood Mac's Tusk in its entirety goes back to 1987, when the band recorded an original set of demo tapes but then decided to lay off the project. However, since no well-documented evidence exists for the fact, it is commonly assumed by the wise ones that this is just one of the many self-concocted myths around the band — and anyway, who cares? There is no doubt that Camper Van Beethoven, a band that lives in its own time frame, could have done this in 1987, in 1997, in 2017, heck, any place in time (would be a little hard to do it prior to 1979, but with these guys, nothing is ever completely impossible).

Anyway, while this particular move for the reassembled band was naturally unpredictable, it is not as totally «unnatural» as if they'd wanted to, say, come out with a bunch of Aphex Twin covers. Their penchant for surrealistically re-inventing old school material, from Floyd to Zeppelin, was already well known; and when you think of it, there's quite a bit they have in common with Lindsey Buckingham — the inborn pop instincts, the diverse bag of influences ranging from pop to hard rock to folk / country / bluegrass, and the experimental drive that never allows these influences to drag the music down to the level of bland imitation. Even the choice of Tusk over all the other Fleetwood Mac albums is logical in a way — just as nobody expected an odd, chaotic, experimental, and ultra-long record from Fleetwood Mac after Rumours, so did nobody expect the new CvB to cover all of it as their first «proper» new album in twelve years.

Of course, a post-modern take on an album that already had its share of post-modern moments in the first place is never going to make the annals in the status of a masterpiece. Understanding and even enjoying this new Tusk is hardly an autonomous task — it is useless to try and listen to it not only if you are unfamiliar with the original Tusk, but even if you are unfamiliar with Camper van Beethoven's classic period albums: it simply does not exist outside of its context. But even in context, it is not easy to understand what it is. It is not a «tribute» — many of the songs have been mutated almost beyond recognition — but neither is it a «parody», because they obviously love the source material, and besides, CvB were never a parody act. Mostly, it is about breaking as many rules as possible, and replacing them with one simple rule: Change The Vibe!

This rule is most evident when it comes to covering songs that were written and performed by Christine McVie (the starry-eyed sentimental ballads) and Stevie Nicks (the Ice Queen quasi-Goth doom-laden epics). With McVie, they go easy on the little moments of deep beauty (such as the desperate "could it really, really be..." melodic plunge on ʽOver And Overʼ), but take her to task hard on everything else — ʽThink About Meʼ is transformed into a pop-punk screamfest, ʽBrown Eyesʼ is made to sound like an industrialized Cabaret Voltaire number, ʽNever Make Me Cryʼ is now a lethargic psycho-folk dirge, ʽHoney Hiʼ is the product of a balalaika busker playing at a busy street intersection, and ʽNever Forgetʼ is turned into a lo-fi outtake from a fictional Neutral Milk Hotel recording session. In other words, we love your songs, Christine, but they could use some transplanting — it's just too boring when all of them are delivered in the same style. Don't you know that punk rockers, industrial grinders, street buskers, and batshit crazy indie kids have sentimental feelings, too?

With Stevie, it actually looks as if they don't like her songs all that much — most of them are as close as the album really comes to parody level. On ʽSaraʼ, they lay on so many sonic overdubs and so much echo on the vocals that it is clear — they are taking every precaution so as not to give the false impression that they are taking any of those lyrics seriously. ʽStormsʼ is dominated by a seriously out-of-tune violin track (we are verbally warned about this in the intro to the song) that makes it hard to focus on any other aspect of the song. The most hilarious surgery is being done on ʽSisters Of The Moonʼ, though, transformed into a synth-pop dirge with «robotic» female vocals delivering the lyrics in a thoroughly perfunctory and impassionate manner — in fact, towards the end of the song the «robot» actually breaks down and begins spouting broken bits from various quotations (ranging from "call me Ishmael" to "this one goes to eleven" to "fuck me harder"), implying that you probably wouldn't feel the difference anyway. I would sure love to learn Stevie's reaction to that one — there was a time when her performance of ʽSistersʼ took on quite a religious aspect on stage, but then, she always did have a sense of humor.

Working their magic over Buckingham's songs is a bit more difficult, considering how distinctly weird many of those were in the first place — and try as they might, they are not going to make songs like ʽThe Ledgeʼ or ʽI Know I'm Not Wrongʼ any weirder. All that's possible is to add a few more extravagant touches here and there — use some bagpipes on ʽI Know I'm Not Wrongʼ, some lazifying vocal distortion and a bit of trombone on ʽSave Me A Placeʼ, or insert a surreptitious lyrical reference to the B-52's ʽRock Lobsterʼ in ʽNot That Funnyʼ (is this an implication that the B-52's were «not that funny» or what?). The only spot where they pull all the stops is the title track — here, gloriously extended to a whoppin' ten-minute length and made into something much bigger than the original; in fact, this is probably the only song here that would merit inclusion on any representative CvB anthology, as it turns into a bombastic psychedelic jam with a chaotic noise section (at times, calling to mind ʽRevolution #9ʼ rather than any Fleetwood Mac track) and an extended series of drony guitar solos, all tied together with the classic dance-style ʽTuskʼ bass line. If you ever thought that the original ʽTuskʼ fizzled out way too soon (and I know I did), this interpretation of it might be right up your alley.

So what would be the final judgement? I think that as an idea, this track-for-track cover of Tusk is a cool one — despite the inevitable flaws in the individual realizations of particular tracks. As a «meta-artistic» gesture rather than an actual platter of emotional entertainment, this is hardly an album that you will want to listen to more than once unless you have "I'm not like everybody else" engraved in chicken shit over your front door, but it is a stimulating gesture all the same, and it is fascinating to observe all the huge effort that went into it — plus, as an obsessive completist, I actually find myself fascinated with the determination to cover every single song on a double album (when they could have easily stuck to just their favourite Buckingham tunes, for instance, not necessarily just from Tusk). So, a thumbs up it is, after all, but now, if you excuse me, I feel a craving for the original coming on, and so should you, probably.

NEW ROMAN TIMES (2004)

1) Prelude; 2) Sons Of The New Golden West; 3) 51-7; 4) White Fluffy Clouds; 5) That Gum You Like Is Back In Style; 6) Might Makes Right; 7) Militia Song; 8) R'n'R Uzbekistan; 9) Sons Of The New Golden West (reprise); 10) New Roman Times; 11) The Poppies Of Balmorhea; 12) The Long Plastic Hallway; 13) I Am Talking To This Flower; 14) Come Out; 15) Los Tigres Traficantes; 16) I Hate This Part Of Texas; 17) Hippy Chix; 18) Civil Disobedience; 19) Discotheque CVB; 20) Hey Brother.

Camper Van Beethoven's «proper» comeback album must have been one of the most interesting albums of 2004 — although, apart from a few politely positive reviews in major outlets, not a lot of people ended up noticing it: the price you pay after spending your most creative and productive decade as an underground semi-joke act and then disappear off the radars and stay off them while the musical world around you dies, resurrects, and forgets that you ever existed in the first place. But for those few true heroes still willing to listen, Lowery and Co. scramble together a project that has got to count as their most serious undertaking ever.

See for yourself: New Roman Times, referring not so much to the serif typeface that I am using to write this review as to the idea that with the election of George W. Bush, humanity may have regressed two thousand years back in its evolution (hey, not my idea — address all your indignation to David Charles Lowery, San Antonio, Texas!), is a concept album... nay, actually, is a full-fledged rock opera that tells you the story of a disintegrated United States of America, in which the protagonist finds himself fluctuating between the gung-ho Republic of Texas and the free-thinking, but predictably decadent and wobbly Republic of California — now serving as a fervent volunteer in the Texas army, now seduced by the easy-livin', drug-heavy lifestyle of the West Coast, and finally going nuts over the whole thing and becoming a religious fundamentalist (the last song is allegedly about his self-indoctrination for suicide bombing). Rich enough for you?

And if the storyline itself does not suffice, then how about the music — eclectically drawing upon all the different strands of CvB's past, from country to ska to punk to pop, and throwing in some additional inspirations as well, such as progressive rock and heavy metal that they had largely shunned before 2004? The album is fairly long, but not at the expense of constantly recycling the same ideas — no two tracks, except for occasional reprises of themes, really sound alike, and most reflect a good deal of thought process and studio work invested in them. Of course, CvB were never a «lazy» band, but everything they did so far since their reunion had a certain throwaway flavor to it; well, no more — you can listen to New Roman Times six or seven times in a row and still have certain things left undiscovered about it.

Diverse, intelligent, unpredictable, humorous, well-produced, so what is there not to like? Well, as far as I am concerned — that seems to be just the problem. Camper Van Beethoven were many things in their lives, but they were never Pink Floyd, and this record is just too Floyd-ian for them, or, if you want a comparison that would be a tiny bit more accurate from a musical point of view as well, too Rush-like. In theory, these songs are well-written and professionally executed, but they aren't fun. It's as if the boys are so deeply driven by the concept that they take things far more seriously than they should, and this reflects badly on the music, because the band members are neither instrumental virtuosos nor melodic geniuses, and the best CvB material had always relied on nonchalance, nihilism, humor, and hooks to get by. New Roman Times, in comparison to that, tends to drag and sag far more often than could be deemed acceptable.

Things go bad already on the first track, ʽSons Of The New Golden Westʼ, which sounds like a cross between Larks/Red-era King Crimson (same tricky time signatures, guitar-violin interplay, general doomy heaviness, etc.) and modern brands of art-metal (especially in terms of guitar solo work). I mean, it's not bad, but... do we really need that? It sounds like a tightly focused, seriously disciplined, almost math-rock-compatible piece of work, but focus and discipline at the expense of fun was never an ideological concern for CvB, so why start now? And there's much more of the same ilk, even when the vocals arrive — ʽWhite Fluffy Cloudsʼ, for instance, is a full-fledged prog-metal workout, again, not a bad one, but these guys are too professorial to deliver a proper ass-kicking attitude.

They can still do some interesting things, even by reviving disco (ʽDiscotheque CVBʼ) and crossing it with drum machines and lyrical lead guitar, but they all sound more interesting on paper than in reality. Meanwhile, their classic ska schtick, as they rewind it on ʽMight Makes Rightʼ and the near-instrumental ʽLos Tigres Traficantesʼ, is reduced to the role of an old friend that still pops in for a drink or two, but has nothing new to tell you anyway.

In the end, the only song that properly «gets» me is the album-closing ʽHey Brotherʼ. Beginning with a "hey..." that you half-expect to be followed by "...Jude", it quickly becomes a moving soul number, only for you to discover, horrifyingly, within half a minute that it is the anthem of a suicidal terrorist — making this the only example I know of a tune where the "soul brotherhood" idea is cruelly turned on its head; but then again, why not? They make a great point here, namely, that deeply felt religious fervor that fuels so many great soul and gospel tunes can just as easily be associated with violence and the destructive side of religion, rather than the peace-and-love aspect. I have no idea if they ever do the song live — it is very inviting to sing along, but you'd be basically singing along to a declaration of faith by a 9/11 plane hijacker. Had something like this been released by a major band, there'd probably be a huge PC scandal all over the world — but I guess there are certain advantages to holding on to your underground status for decades.

That said, the audacity of ʽHey Brotherʼ does not redeem the album as a whole. It is just too heavy, and I don't mean the musical sound — I mean, it sounds as if it all came from the brain of a mathematics / social science professor (I guess Lowery is one, in a sense, given his math credentials), and everything is too detached and clinical for my tastes. I give it a thumbs up without hesitation — the concept is interesting and somewhat original, and there's so much stuff here that I will probably want to revisit the record again, and, most importantly, this is one of those comeback efforts where the artist is dead set on pushing boundaries rather than settle into a comfortable rocking chair. But ultimately, it's like an anti-utopian novel set to music where the message and the symbolism are more important than raw feeling — and so, a modern day Quadrophenia this daring rock opera is not. Good smack in the mouth of the American society circa 2004, though, and every bit as relevant in 2017.

LA COSTA PERDIDA (2013)

1) Come Down The Coast; 2) Too High For The Love-In; 3) You Got To Roll; 4) Someday Our Love Will Sell Us Out; 5) Peaches In The Summertime; 6) Northern California Girls; 7) Summer Days; 8) La Costa Perdida; 9) Aged In Wood; 10) A Love For All Time.

If you like your Camper Van Beethoven slow, serious, nostalgic, melancholic, and soulful, this one's for you. Now that the band members are in their fifties, chances of them reigniting the old hooligan spirit are fairly low — but it is almost as if they are consciously accelerating the maturation-aging process. Like New Roman Times, La Costa Perdida is another conceptual suite, but this time, it has nothing whatsoever to do with politics: most of the record reads like a symbolic love letter to their native California, soaked in nostalgia for the old days — you know, when la costa was not yet quite perdida, so to speak. The band members themselves stated that their chief influence for the record was Holland by The Beach Boys, an album whose serene, naturalistic spirit does have something in common with what they are trying to do here. Whether they succeed in this is a different matter: most of the critics who still remembered CvB from the old days resorted to comparisons with Key Lime Pie, the most serious, thoughtful, and potentially boring release that they had in those old days. And these comparisons weren't always friendly.

To be perfectly honest, I like the idea and respect the attempt, but the album does bore me. It is really slow-moving (except for ʽPeaches In The Summertimeʼ, played at such a ridiculously frantic tempo that it sounds like they are seriously trying to compensate with just this one track for all the slowness around), really monotonous (introspective, brooding nostalgia permeates all the vocal and instrumental parts), and not too big on catchy hooks. Throw in the fact that Lowery is quite far from the most hypnotic performer when it comes to wearing your intellectual heart on your college suit sleeve, and what you get is something that works much better in theory than on practice — much like Key Lime Pie.

It is easy to illustrate on the example of the very first track, the country-rock waltz ʽCome Down The Coastʼ. Lisher's lead lines are colorful and sweet, Lowery's sentimental lyrics are delivered sincerely and friendly, but nothing ever rises above «adequate» — and when they get to the repetitive "come down and see me sometime" chorus, it quickly becomes too predictable and boring: how many times can you chant "[Insert four-syllable-long girl name here], come down and see me sometime" before you begin to sound like an obsessed whiner? And, needless to say, the backing harmonies are quite a far cry from the Beach Boys. Word-wise, Lowery may be getting his point across (all things may come and go, but girls and the sea shore will be here for ever), but atmosphere-wise, the song does not make much of an impression.

The same judgement, I guess, gets extrapolated over everything else here. ʽToo High For The Love-Inʼ does have a lovely set of female vocals reminiscent of certain strands of lush Europop from the Sixties, and a few pretty guitar flourishes to boot, but still overstays its welcome. The psycho-blues anthem ʽSomeday Our Love Will Sell Us Outʼ rides the same stiff groove for five minutes, briefly plunging it into pools of chaos during the coda, but its potentially mesmerizing mix of slide guitars, violins, and sitars is really so simplistic and repetitive that no true magic comes out of it. And the album's alleged centerpiece, ʽNorthern California Girlsʼ, takes on ʽHey Judeʼ-ian proportions, slipping into an anthemic coda whose two most notable features are: a distorted psychedelic lead guitar part, sounding exactly like a million distorted psychedelic solos before it, and a choral chant of "Northern Califor-nia girls, Northern Califor-nia girls" by a pack of hypnotized zombies who have long ago forgotten the meaning of that noun phrase but have been cursed to go on chanting it forever because they do not deserve any better. At least, you know, the da-da-da part on ʽHey Judeʼ was delivered with some genuine excitement.

In short, I am touched by Lowery and Co.'s feelings for their homeland, and I'm pretty sure the record will have a special appeal for all those who also happened to grow up between Stinson Beach and Arcata in the Sixties and Seventies (and maybe even later), seagulls included. But in terms of a more universal appeal, this is no Holland, and there's way too much subordination of the music to the concept. "We're old tigers / Sleeping in the sun / Dreaming of the hunt", Lowery sings on ʽSummer Daysʼ, and I guess this is really what the whole thing is about. Except that some old tigers still manage to have more vivid dreams than others, and this particular batch of old tigers sounds like it at least needs a bit more vitamins to hold your attention.

EL CAMINO REAL (2014)

1) The Ultimate Solution; 2) It Was Like That When We Got Here; 3) Classy Dames And Able Gents; 4) Camp Pendleton; 5) Dockweiler Beach; 6) Sugartown; 7) I Live In L. A.; 8) Out Like A Lion; 9) Goldbase; 10) Darken Your Door; 11) Grasshopper.

Announced as a quick thematic follow-up to La Costa Perdida, this time focused on Southern rather than Northern California, El Camino Real is in some superficial ways similar to its predecessor — the basic theme, the Spanish title, the cover art — but in other ways quite different: shorter, tighter, faster, poppier, sprightlier, and, on the whole, far more efficient. Apparently, churning out rootsy pop hooks is much easier for the band at this time than weaving atmospheric soundscapes of longing and yearning. Or maybe it's just that Southern California happens to ignite and inspire them far more than Northern California, for whatever reason.

In any case, El Camino Real is simply a very good pop album — perhaps the most straightforward pop album they ever made, with almost every song featuring an assortment of vocal and / or instrumental hooks that matter much, much more than the words, whether those words be nostalgic, traditional, satirical, or surrealist. Even a few songs done strictly in the generic country-western style, like ʽDarken Your Doorʼ, are funny, upbeat, and catchy; and on the whole, there's plenty of diversity, with some tracks having a punky edge, some having a blues-rock one, and some just giving you a tasty slice of the good old power-pop — like ʽCamp Pendletonʼ with a chorus line that was born to be whistled over and over, even as the song hits you with an odd case of «dark-cheerful ironic nostalgia», or the album-opening ʽUltimate Solutionʼ, shifting between muscular, stomping garage-rock riffs and lighter, violin-driven verses.

If there's a problem here, it is precisely inverse to the problem of La Costa Perdida — this time, the songs are so much pop fun, you never really get to feel any concept behind them. Perhaps the natives of South California will inadvertently have their ears glued to the lyrics, but anybody else will simply have to enjoy the music. Here's ʽDockweiler Beachʼ, kinda sounding like what would have happened if The Smiths decided to sound like The Ramones, and throw in a bit of a musical reference to the Batman theme along the way. There's ʽI Live In L. A.ʼ, kinda sounding like what would have happened if The Pogues decided to sound like The Eagles, and throw in a bit of Dylanesque harmonica to boot. There's ʽIt Was Like That When We Got Hereʼ, one minute putting its trust into an anthemic chorus and the next minute staking it all on a nagging blues-rock riff in the old Alvin Lee tradition. It's fun!

By the time they reach the slow, languid, folksy coda of ʽGrasshopperʼ, you might realize that each and every song has something to offer — yes, the hard-rocking songs are too deeply steeped in irony to truly kick ass, and the soft songs aren't distinctive or soulful enough to guarantee an unforgettable experience, but there's an intelligent and/or a kind-hearted sentiment in each track, a hook or two in almost each track, and, of course, the usual CvB attention to colorful detalization. I'm not sure I could or even would like to spend a lot of time describing these details, so just take my word for it: this is a really, really fun record, with a classy attitude behind it. This time, these guys aren't even trying to make something unpredictable: they just went ahead and wrote and recorded some good music for you, instead of, say, doing some ska covers of Frank Sinatra or trying to record a death metal album with nothing but cellos and violins. Bottomline: if it's any indication, I'm definitely choosing Southern over Northern California. Thumbs up.

CANDLEMASS

EPICUS DOOMICUS METALLICUS (1986)

1) Solitude; 2) Demon's Gate; 3) Crystal Ball; 4) Black Stone Wielder; 5) Under The Oak; 6) A Sorcerer's Pledge.

I confess that I have never read any interviews with Leif Edling or any other members of Candlemass, let alone any official or unofficial biography of the band — and therefore, I have no idea of how deeply serious they are themselves about their music. But whatever they have to say about it, it would be very hard for me to accept that anybody who names their first album Epicus Doomicus Metallicus could do it without a tongue-in-cheek attitude. Really, this is within the same sphere as «Biggus Dickus» or something like that. And it makes me happy, too, because a solid healthy tongue-in-cheek attitude is the only thing that can save Candlemass from a massive facepalm, all of their historical importance notwithstanding.

Apparently, the entire genre of «doom metal» owes its formalization to the title of Candlemass' debut — and when it appeared, it did sound significantly different from earlier purveyors of the style, such as Saint Vitus and Pentagram. They were one of the first Scandinavian (in this case, Swedish) bands to open up the floodgates for Valhalla-Ragnarök-inspired heavy music, and, like every pioneering outfit, might sound a little crude, unpolished, and naïve in comparison with their followers — much like Black Sabbath, their chief source of inspiration, might also seem in comparison with the general heavy metal scene that followed. But they have their advantages, too, a chief one being driven by the excitement that accompanies trying out a new formula.

A formula it is, of course, as bassist Leif Edling (who writes most of the music) and his pals capitalize on but one aspect of Sabbath — the slow, solemn, earth-shattering brutality of impending doom — and expand it to forty-three minutes of dungeon-crawling music for your paganistic pleasure. Since the songs are slow, they are also long (just six tracks in all), and mood-wise, their goal is always exactly the same, making it understandably hard to come up with separate judgements for individual tracks. Differences include the presence/absence of acoustic intros and interludes; the presence/absence of slightly sped up parts; increased/understated presence of lead guitar; increased/diminished function of the synthesizer (yes, a few tracks are marred by Queensrychian keyboards, but, thankfully, not all of them, and I do believe that the credits do not even include a special listing for keyboards).

Typically, the weakest link in Candlemass is the vocalist: in their minds, the style calls for a pompous screamer rather than a vulnerable-street-guy like Ozzy, but they couldn't lay their hands on anybody of at least Ronnie James Dio caliber, either, so they had to settle for a Tony Martin look-alike instead and go along with Johan Längqvist, a large-piped loudmouth who is trying to deliver the apocalyptic / medievalistic lyrics with as much pathos as his pipes allow him, but also happens to be endowed with below-zero charisma and personality. Unfortunately, there's a lot of the lyrics on the album: were they to simply confine him to singing one opening and one closing verse and then devote the rest of the time to instrumental magic-making, things would get more tolerable and interesting — as it is, he happens to be all over the place, and it's bad.

What is good, then? The riffs. Edling's melodic skills are not directly comparable to Iommi in his prime — there is not a single passage here that would come close to the immediate visionary brilliance of an ʽElectric Funeralʼ or an ʽInto The Voidʼ — but he is still close to a perfect adept of the Iommi textbook, and rhythm guitarist Mats Björkman is able to reproduce that metal-melting, Hell-raising tone that, for some reason, had all but vanished off the Earth's surface after Sabbath's peak years. Meanwhile, lead guitarist Klas Bergwall, although kept amazingly quiet most of the time, occasionally erupts with new-generation metal solos that try to combine old school fluency and melodicity with a more technical, post-Van Halen attitude. The result is an interesting update on the Sabbath sound that is nowhere near as memorable as the original, but does not sound like mere slavish imitation, either.

If only one song needed to be singled out of the overall sludgy mass, I'd probably go for ʽUnder The Oakʼ, which is melodically as close to (slow) thrash metal as they ever get here and, because of that, gets an extra aggressive angle — most of these tunes just growl and grumble under your feet, but the opening riff of ʽUnder The Oakʼ actually snaps at your feet. If it weren't for the necessity to somehow erase the vocal track from the corresponding channel in your brain ("MY HEART! BLEEDING FOR MY RACE!" — don't worry, they actually mean ʽmankindʼ under ʽraceʼ here, there are no traces of Aryan supremacy or anything like that, but it still sounds very, very ridiculous), this would be close to the perfect Candlemass song... unfortunately, since most of the vocals on Candlemass songs are dorky, there is no such thing as a perfect Candlemass song. As for the Iommi-style riffs, the best ones are probably on ʽSolitudeʼ (which is not a cover of the Sabbath tune, but the fact that they have a song by that name is probably not a coincidence) and ʽDemon's Gateʼ, but really, most of these slow sludgy monsters are interchangeable.

For all its alleged importance, still, Epicus is hardly the best possible Candlemass album. For one thing, even if the formula is established here 100%, it suffers from mediocre production values: the drums sound too tinny, and the guitars sound oddly distant, as if they had microphone problems — worse, in fact, than those fifteen-year old Sabbath albums on which they were modeling themselves. Strangely, it may have something to do with the shittiness of Stockholm's studios at the time: Bathory's debut, recorded two years prior to this, suffered from the same problem. Eventually, they'd get it straight, but for now, Epicus Domicus is more like Crapicus Sonicus in certain respects. Oh, and I can't really remember a single song, either, but for that one, I was fully prepared. Just as I was for brilliant lines like "The dawn was to come with the sunrise" and "Cursed be the sun / The women will weep for his fun / In the name of his magic so strong". What I was not prepared for was how oddly «homebrewed», in a way, this whole thing sounds: a problem that would not be overcome for quite some time yet. Still, I guess that the combination of an overall cool sound and historical importance should account for a mild thumbs up, despite production issues, lyrics that make Geezer Butler sound like Keats in comparison, and a vocalist whom I would very gladly "let die in solitude" if he'd only let me. Why shouldn't he? Death is his sanctuary, he seeks it with pleasure, his lifeblood is exhausted anyway...

NIGHTFALL (1987)

1) Gothic Stone; 2) The Well Of Souls; 3) Codex Gigas; 4) At The Gallows End; 5) Samarithan; 6) March Funebre; 7) Dark Are The Veils Of Death; 8) Mourner's Lament; 9) Bewitched; 10) Black Candles.

Only their second album, and already they have a new record label (Axis Records), a new drummer (Jan Lindh), a new lead guitarist (Lars Johansson), and a new vocalist (Messiah Marcolin; and no, "Messiah" is not his real name, just a sacrilegious substitute for the much more difficult to pronounce Bror Jan Alfredo). And has this changed anything? Heck no! This is still Leif Edling's band, and its primary purpose is still to craft an atmosphere of theatrical doom, because there's no better way to distract yourself from the mundane apocalypse of your own universe than to immerse yourself in a magical mystery apocalypse of a universe where old men in crypts of despair form circles of magic and prayers, where your life will be put to the test as you drink the chalice of divine ambrosia, where the Devil's fingers dance upon the strings like fire, where only the vultures will come to see you hang... well, you get the picture.

As far as the technical and personnel changes are concerned, I would not define these as drastic. The new vocalist is rather a change for the worse — Marcolin is a higher-pitched quasi-operatic screamer without the tiniest speck of grit to his voice; Längqvist was cheesy enough, but at least the man could shoot out a good growl or bark, whereas Marcolin seems dedicated to the idea that Candlemass are producing a doom metal version of Tristan, and that his task is to get into character. On the other hand, the new lead guitarist is a good acquisition: they are still quite parsimonious with their solos, but Johansson, coming from the Van Halen school of thought, has a good way of combining first-rate technique with melodicity, and on those rare occasions when he is given full rein, I like what he is doing (for instance, the solo on ʽDark Are The Veils Of Deathʼ). However, the production still largely sucks: the new drummer gets the same tinny tone as the old one, and the guitars still have a «lo-fi» feel to them that does not allow to fully appreciate the good old Crunch worked out by Björkman.

The riffs, as usual, alternate between leaden-slow doom and thunderous mid-tempo doom, of which I far prefer the latter (ʽDark Are The Veils Of Deathʼ, which sometimes develops into chuggin' thrash) and am somewhat indifferent towards the former (ʽWell Of Soulsʼ, ʽMourner's Lamentʼ, whatever). The overall number of tracks here is higher due to the presence of short instrumental interludes, sometimes decent (ʽCodex Gigasʼ, where they seem to try to recreate the atmosphere of a Gregorian chant with heavy metal guitars) and sometimes not (ʽMarch Funebreʼ: whoever said it was a good idea to make a doom metal arrangement of Chopin?), but the overall makeup of a Candlemass song remains the same — five to seven minutes of a leaden riff, a tale of medieval woe, a couple of short solos, and maybe a nice key change or two in the middle. And again, Eidling and Björkman demonstrate that they are no Tony Iommi when it comes to crafting a nicely thunderous doom metal riff — they have the tone right, they have learned their Devil's interval, but it does not work nearly as well. I believe one reason for this might be that they are too influenced by classical music: some of these melodies, if you mentally transpose them to orchestration, almost seem like Wagnerian leitmotifs, and it never does anybody any good to play Wagnerian leitmotifs with heavy metal guitars.

Still, once they get in a bit of speed and energy, the results are decent — ʽDark Are The Veils Of Deathʼ, for instance, is a really cool song as long as the wounded Tristan keeps his mouth shut (and he does not do it for too long), with a howling doom riff sliding into a funkier one and then into a chuggin' third (gotta love the mood shifts). And on the whole, I do appreciate the musicianship — I just find it hard to get excited about it even on a cheap fantasy level. (Also, the lyrics are atrocious, but that kind of goes without saying; once again, I miss the deep poetic level of Geezer Butler).

ANCIENT DREAMS (1988)

1) Mirror Mirror; 2) A Cry From The Crypt; 3) Darkness In Paradise; 4) Incarnation Of Evil; 5) Bearer Of Pain; 6) Ancient Dreams; 7) The Bells Of Acheron; 8) Epistle No. 81; 9) Black Sabbath Medley.

My reaction to this album will probably show how deeply out of touch I am with professional Metal Mentality. According to most of the metal critics and metal fans, Ancient Dreams is where Candlemass took their first faltering step — in fact, even the band members themselves were allegedly not very happy about it, particularly with the mix of Rex Gisslén, calling it a rushed job and all; meanwhile, fans typically complain of recycled riffs, overcooked vocals, and needlessly stretched out song lengths. A few dissenters here and there, but overall, the consensus seems to be that this is where the Candlemass formula gets a bit «stale».

I even took the trouble to relisten to this back-to-back with Epicus (partially), and all I can say is, well, wasn't the Candlemass formula seriously «stale» from the very beginning? Let's face it, all they did was surgically extract one side of Black Sabbath's personality, zoom it 250%, add operatic vocals and flashy solos, and repeat the same principle on every song. So how come it took them three albums for fans to start taking notice? If anything, I see a slight improvement in production values here — for instance, the drums do not sound quite as cardboardishly-tinny as they did on the first two albums — and perhaps even a few improvements in terms of riffage.

After a brief Gothic-Gregorian introduction, ʽMirror Mirrorʼ opens the album at a slightly faster tempo than usual — and with an attractive alternation of a Sabbath-style roaring riff with a chuggier pattern, trying to marry classic school metal values with the thrash paradigm in a meticulously calculated manner that, in my view, succeeds better than any such attempts on Nightfall. The same principle is then applied to ʽA Cry From The Cryptʼ, except that the chuggy pattern there is quite similar to ʽChildren Of The Graveʼ, while the slow brutal riff shares common chords with ʽSweet Leafʼ, making this one of the most blatant Master Of Reality rip-offs ever — with the exception of the flashy trills of the guitar solo, all Van Halen and Judas Priest in nature.

The rest of the songs are even more non-descript, differing in between themselves only in terms of including faster parts (ʽDarkness In Paradiseʼ) or concentrating exclusively on slowness (ʽAncient Dreamsʼ); by the time the record nears the end, the band begins sounding more and more like contemporary Black Sabbath — the riffage on ʽThe Bells Of Acheronʼ is similar to the kind of sound Iommi had on The Eternal Idol, but I guess you have to catch up with your idols if you are really set on idolizing them. To remedy that, the CD edition adds a sycophantic ʽBlack Sabbath Medleyʼ — consisting of minute-long clips of classic Sabbath covers, converted to the Candlemass sound (with only minor amendments); an intriguing recording, actually, since somehow they manage to make even the classic Sabbath songs sound less exciting — making me wonder if I'd actually be capable of loving an album of Sabbath classics, were I to first hear them all played by Candlemass? Does it really depend that much on the barely noticeable subtleties of the guitar tone? Or is it all because of the unbearably crass operatic singer of theirs?

Anyway, perhaps the real flaw of Ancient Dreams is a total lack of diversity — devoid of brief acoustic interludes, and very monotonous, to the point that, for instance, ʽDarkness In Paradiseʼ opens on pretty much the same looping riff on which the previous song, ʽCry From The Cryptʼ, had only just faded away. But taken individually, each song is still a perfect realization of the Candlemass schtick — you have the big fat doomy riff, the massive sonic attack, the screaming operatic guy, the wailing lead guitar, and the rest is, after all, just subjective judgement.

TALES OF CREATION (1989)

1) The Prophecy; 2) Dark Reflections; 3) Voices In The Wind; 4) Under The Oak; 5) Tears; 6) Into The Unfathomed Tower; 7) The Edge Of Heaven; 8) Somewhere In Nowhere; 9) Through The Infinitive Halls Of Death; 10) Dawn; 11) A Tale Of Creation.

I have just skimmed through the All-Music Guide review for this album, which, under the pressure of some very simple logical analysis, reads as follows: «Every original idea on this album (of which there are two) sucks; most of the non-original ideas on this album rule, but since they are non-original, we have no idea whatsoever about what it is we could say about them, so we will simply say that they are good». That is, actually, quite a respectable attitude; I only wish it were stated more explicitly, so I'm more than happy to re-state it for them.

I will, however, object that the three-minute speed metal instrumental ʽInto The Unfathomed Towerʼ — indeed, the most surprising discovery about the Candlemass catalog so far — is nowhere near as awful as that review would have you believe, comparing it to Yngwie Malmsteen and all. Wedged in between all the slow doom epics, it has a bit of a cocky and tongue-in-cheek attitude to it: «Oh, so maybe you think we only play it slow and sludgy because we can't play it fast and furious? Well, take that, non-believer!» It wouldn't work at all by itself, but here, it gives you a jolt, and anything that gives you a jolt in the middle of a Candlemass album is welcome. Well, okay, not everything. A Celine Dion-style ballad probably wouldn't be welcome. But a kick-ass speed metal interlude — why not?

Formally, the album is a conceptual suite about one human soul's journey through Earth, Heaven, and Hell, which is why we have all those short spoken interludes (ʽThe Prophecyʼ, ʽVoices In The Windʼ, ʽDawnʼ) that are too short anyway to cause any major trouble; also, apparently some of the songs were dug out from the band's very early vaults, including a re-recorded version of ʽUnder The Oakʼ from Epicus (with an even crisper guitar tone, though not necessarily improving on the original as a whole). Overall, though, our appreciation of Candlemass stands in direct proportion to the amount of kick-ass doom riffs on their songs, so here goes:

ʽDark Reflectionsʼ — kick-ass gallop tempo doom riff; ʽUnder The Oakʼ — one of their best songs altogether, but a re-recording all the same; ʽTearsʼ — too slow, too plodding, too operatic, too Marcolin-filled, no kick-ass riff; ʽInto The Unfathomed Towerʼ — see above; ʽThe Edge Of Heavenʼ — kick-ass riff, but comes in too late and goes on for too long (Iommi would never have let a great Sabbath song ride on a single folk-based riff for five minutes); ʽSomewhere In Nowhereʼ — seems like they took the verse riff of ʽElectric Funeralʼ and extended it for the entire duration of the song, bo-o-o-o-o-oring; ʽThrough The Infinitive (sic!) Halls Of Deathʼ — finally, some nice, fast tempo zooping and chugging, gotta love the old ʽChildren Of The Graveʼ vibe; ʽA Tale Of Creationʼ — back to slow, plodding, uninteresting riffage.

Overall, this is not better and not worse than any other «classic period» Candlemass album, I guess, and I do believe that it has a generally strong reputation among metal fans, who like to talk about it as a strong comeback after the relative failure of Ancient Dreams (I see no substantial difference whatsoever, but hey, somebody has to create the illusion that some doom metal albums are notably better than others).

LIVE (1990)

1) The Well Of Souls; 2) Dark Are The Veils Of Death; 3) Bewitched; 4) Solitude; 5) Dark Reflections; 6) Under The Oak; 7) Demon's Gate; 8) The Bells Of Acheron; 9) Through The Infinitive Halls Of Death; 10) Samarithan; 11) Mirror, Mirror; 12) At The Gallows End; 13) The Sorcerer's Pledge.

Live heavy metal albums are usually a waste of time, with two exceptions: (a) metal bands that still preserve a lot of that old kick-ass rock'n'spirit, like Judas Priest, may follow the old principle of compensating for studio slickness with raw live energy; (b) mediocre metal bands that sound way too monotonous from album to album may have live albums that simply work as decent introductions / summaries of their overall sound, usually concentrating on the better stuff and leaving out the crap. Candlemass Live is a typical representative of group (b) — if you are interested in the band, but not enough to explore them in detail, this is a really good place to start... and, perhaps, to end.

Recorded on their native ground (in Stockholm), the album finds the classic lineup in as good a form as possible, with fine production (better than on the early studio records, actually), a rather tepid reception from the audience (which is okay, since it only helps the songs to sound better) and, most importantly, a near-perfect setlist — at least, all of my favorite Candlemass songs are here, and the energy level leaves me with nothing to complain about. ʽDemon's Gateʼ, ʽSolitudeʼ, ʽSorcerer's Pledgeʼ — these live versions totally correct all the original studio murkiness, with normally sounding drums and real deep rumble-crunch from the guitars, as compared to the almost lo-fi production quality of Epicus; honestly, even if you are a certified metalhead, I can't see how you'd like to go back to the 1986 values after hearing these versions.

Other than these two important details — great sound quality and intelligent setlist — there is really not much to say. Marcolin live is just as obnoxious as he is in the studio, but not that much more obnoxious: the obligatory audience-baiting is kept to a relative minimum (a few oi-oi-oi's here and there to get them a-clappin' and a-stompin', but nothing even close to Ozzy's trademark "let me fuckin' see your fuckin' hands, come on!"), and his treatment of Längqvist's material would probably have completely satisfied Längqvist himself (but not me). Johansson's leads are as fluent and technically perfect as they are in the studio, sometimes with a bit of extra flash. And structurally, the songs are played as close to the originals as possible.

I understand that there are several different versions of the album floating around — for instance, my version adds ʽThe Bells Of Acheronʼ, and then there's a 2-CD version with a separate show from 1988 as a bonus — but this is already in the sphere of trivia, useless for casual fans, so let's just top this off with a thumbs up and close the book on this first stage in the life of Candlemass, ending with the departure of Marcolin, and bringing on an image renovation for the new decade.

CHAPTER VI (1992)

1) Dying Illusion; 2) Julie Laughs No More; 3) Where The Runes Still Speak; 4) Ebony Throne; 5) Temple Of The Dead; 6) Aftermath; 7) Black Eyes; 8) End Of Pain.

It seems to me that standard critical reaction to Candlemass albums follows a pretty simple block diagram, consisting of just one question — «Was there any bad shit going on with the band at the time of recording?» — and, depending on yes or no, the album is judged as good or bad. With Chapter VI, there was most definitely some bad shit going on: after some dispute with Marcolin whose details I am not interested in, Messiah left the band (or should the correct phrasing be «ascended away from the band», in this case?) and was replaced by Thomas Vikström, another relative newcomer to the world of metal — who lasted for only this one album. And since this was not perceived as an obvious change for the better, many people bypassed alternate logical choices and declared this as an obvious change for the worst.

As in the case of Ancient Dreams, I desperately fail to see what is so clearly wrong with Chapter VI. First, the new vocalist is in no way inferior to Marcolin. Technically, he can hit all the right notes, he can growl and scream, and his overtones fit right in with the band's music. Substantially, it's all just overblown metal theater, and it's not like either of them are expected to genuinely awaken your sleeping emotions and bring out your undercover instincts — but here, too, I will say that at least Vikström has a bit of that snarly rasp in his voice that brings him closer to «metal punk» Dio or Bruce Dickinson territory: at his best, he is less of a pompous operatic screamer than Marcolin and more of a brutal warrior type, even though you'd probably expect the opposite, given his origins (apparently, he is the son of a real Swedish opera singer).

More importantly, Chapter VI is generally faster than all previous Candlemass albums. There is a bit more thrash and power metal vibe here than usual, which is one reason why it might not appeal to serious doom metal aficionados. ʽDying Illusionʼ, after a brief atmospheric intro, opens with the same flying punch as Sabbath's ʽNeon Knightsʼ (perhaps, given the arrival of a new lead singer, they also felt the need to switch from an Ozzy-like Master Of Reality vibe to a Dio-like Heaven And Hell vibe?), and is a pretty impressive song on the whole, with numerous time and tempo changes, going from speed metal madness to funeral march and back in a surprisingly smooth and credible manner. It definitely does not sound like an Epicus-style track — but so much for the better, I'd say.

Elsewhere, there are quite a few decent riffs as well, such as the ones that open ʽEbony Throneʼ, ʽBlack Eyesʼ, and ʽEnd Of Painʼ — a bit more complex than usual, a bit less crazy about sounding like the Hand Of Doom closing in on you, more intent on simply sounding menacing and foreboding in a somewhat more abstract manner. Actually, I would say that it is the most traditional Candlemass-style songs that suck the most on here, a particular nadir being ʽWhere The Runes Still Speakʼ — now that is one truly miserable ode to the magical mysteries of their mythical Teutonic past; nothing but a leaden guitar tone churning out the same repetitive slow chords over and over, and tons and tons of overblown mock-Wagnerian sentimentality. ʽTemple Of The Deadʼ, another lengthy epic, is at least marginally better due to a faster tempo and a more agile and complex riff; however, the overall rule of thumb here is that the shorter the song is, the more chances it has at being successful.

It's not as if I insist that the album deserves a thumbs up, but I think it will appeal to all those who really really really love their metal riffage, and I certainly disagree with all those who accuse Chapter VI of low energy or lack of inspiration (one could certainly accuse Candlemass in toto of a lack of inspiration — or, at least, originality — but not of low energy). Certainly not the worst chapter in their history, even if, at the time, so many people believed this, apparently, that the band had no choice but to break up soon afterwards.

DACTYLIS GLOMERATA (1998)

1) Wiz; 2) I Still See The Black; 3) Dustflow; 4) Cylinder; 5) Karthago; 6) Abstrakt Sun; 7) Apathy; 8) Lidocain God; 9) Molotov.

I have no idea why Edling would want to name an album after cock's-foot grass (last I heard, it did not have any Satanic associations, so maybe he just accidentally mixed it up with Cannabis sativa), but as long as a bit of refreshing change is introduced, he can call it anything he likes. In fact, the record was not even supposed to be issued in the name of Candlemass — the band had been inactive since 1994, leaving Edling busy with his new project, called Abstrakt Algebra and featuring a seriously different metal brand, one that combined doom and thrash influences with elements of heavy prog and even math-rock (before it was called math-rock). They'd already recorded their second album when, suddenly, Edling decided to fire all of the band members except for the drummer, recruit new ones, call the revamped band Candlemass, and re-record most of the songs. Because commercial thinking and all that.

This all sounds like a recipe for disaster, but, strange enough, it isn't. Most everywhere you go, you will find a sharp decline in interest on the part of the fans, for obvious reasons. There's a new lead singer (Björn Flodkvist), there's a fully paid keyboard player (Carl Westholm), and the guitar work on the album is handled by none other than Michael Amott, of Carcass and Arch Enemy fame — a solid metal warrior in his own rights, but hardly a great match for the classic slow, dreary, stoned-out Candlemass vibe. (Not sure how well Candlemass and Arch Enemy fans see eye-to-eye, but I wouldn't be surprised to find the two groups largely non-intersecting and accusing each other of hyper-ridiculous drama and cheesiness). Anyway, for those interested in doubling, tripling, and quadrupling their stocks of Epicus Doomicus clones, none of these elements should look inviting, so people are perfectly within their rights to brand Dactylis Glomerata with a decisive «this is not Candlemass! this is sellout crap!» judgement and walk away.

I like quite a bit of it, though. The vibe on the opening track, ʽWizʼ, and many that follow it, is somewhat less Sabbath-ish, leaning more towards sludgy stoner metal (the kind that would enjoy a luxurious revival in the 21st century) and featuring, in my opinion, more memorable riffs on the whole than any of the «classic» Candlemass records. The new lead singer is as far away from the operatic pomp of Marcolin as possible — belonging rather to the grunge / nu-metal school of ragged-raspy warriors of the light; combined with awful music, it only helps to emphasize its awfulness (Nickelback, etc.), but combined with decent riffs, it is preferable to bullshit pathos. And the keyboard player — I was afraid that the album would be swamped in ugly synth tones, but the keyboard work here is actually cool! Instead of synthesizers, Westholm generally uses the organ, well heard in the mix but never drowning out the guitars; and sometimes, as in the quiet interludes on ʽI Still See The Blackʼ, he thinks up little music-box melodies with spooky overtones, giving the whole thing a sort of Stephen King-like atmosphere. (The brief instrumental ʽCylinderʼ, made to sound as if it were really recorded on a wax cylinder, is an autonomous example of the same approach). And on ʽDustflowʼ, they even bring in an extra keyboardist to contribute a Theremin part for the intro.

All of these changes, in my mind, are very welcome, even if the final results do not sound like classic Candlemass at all. The average tempo of the record is «mid» rather than «slow», and some of the songs are tremendously tempestuous compared to how it used to be — ʽDustflowʼ, for instance, culminates in a sea of guitar overdubs, creating an angry psychedelic spectrum that is more Bardo Pond than Candlemass, with Michael Amott showing off his talents in a way that, for some reason, he could never allow himself in Arch Enemy. Another highlight is ʽAbstrakt Sunʼ, fluctuating from guitar-based walls-of-sound with a martial flair to slower, atmospheric passages where Westholm does shift to synthesizer, but uses it in a pensively Gothic manner, generating dark melancholy rather than plastic synth bliss favored by various average power metal teams. And it all ends with ʽMolotovʼ, a short instrumental based on a thunderous ʽFor Whom The Bell Tollsʼ-style riff adorned with minimalistic lead vibrato lightning bolts — brief and efficient.

Naturally, we're not talking about a masterpiece of music making, but we are talking about an album that has more diversity to it than anything previously issued under the name of Candlemass, and also one as thoroughly purged of straightforward cheese elements as is technically possible on a heavy metal album (which means there's still plenty of cheese, but nothing as directly embarrassing as the mock-Teutonic bombast of ʽWhere The Runes Still Speakʼ). It's too bad this version of the band did not last, what with Amott going back to his duties with Arch Enemy and the fans' irritating, but predictable displeasure with the new twists — I think the new style had some future to it, if only they'd managed to find a proper fanbase in its time. Anyway, I do give the album a thumbs up in retrospect; hope that helps.

FROM THE 13TH SUN (1999)

1) Droid; 2) Tot; 3) Elephant Star; 4) Blumma Apt; 5) ARX/NG 891; 6) Zog; 7) Galatea; 8) Cyclo-F; 9) Mythos.

«This album is dedicated to the greatest band of all time — Black Sabbath». YOU DON'T SAY! And here I was honestly expecting Candlemass, after all these years of undercover worship, to pay tribute to their one true favorite act — Tiny Tim. Goodbye, nurtured expectations, hello, crushingly disappointing surprise. Who would have guessed?..

Seriously, though, From The 13th Sun is indeed a record that is more than just directly influenced by Black Sabbath — it is a straightforward attempt to make a new Black Sabbath album, before the recently gathered imposter band that included such wannabe Sabbath members as Tony Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward and had the gall to release a live record called Reunion, would have a chance to put out their own product under the sacred name of Black Sabbath. (Fortunately, this cowardly and sacrilegious act would not take place until 2013, giving Candlemass ample time to savor the fruit of their own labors).

With Michael Amott out of the band, replaced by a largely unknown guitarist by the name of Mats Ståhl, the remaining lineup of Dactylis Glomerata get to business like there was no tomorrow. Trying to write riffs like Iommi's, trying (not always, but often) to sing like Ozzy, trying to fully mimick the guitar and bass tones of the classic Sabbath, trying to go for the same loud vs. quiet dynamics — probably the only thing that is stylistically divergent from classic Sabbath is the heavy (but not obnoxious) presence of synthesizers, and even that is not altogether a problem, since Sabbath used keyboards as an essential part of the sound at least since 1973.

Direct references to Sabbath moments can be spotted on almost every track. ʽTotʼ, for instance, begins with the same rain, thunder, and church bells that we know from ʽBlack Sabbathʼ, and has the same alternation of quiet, ominous, tritone-dependent parts and loud, heavy, devilish resolutions with evil-grinning guitar trills (also punctuated by the bell toll). ʽElephant Starʼ chugs along at a beastly pace, alternating choppy riffage with power chords the same way as you have it on ʽSymptom Of The Universeʼ. ʽBlumma Aptʼ is a crude variation on ʽElectric Funeralʼ, and the first part of ʽCyclo-Fʼ is close to the sound of quietly sarcastic blues workouts on the second side of Black Sabbath, like ʽWarningʼ. Or maybe ʽHand Of Doomʼ. There's even a brief drum solo somewhere in there, like ʽRat Saladʼ. Basically, you get the picture.

The most astonishing thing about it all is that somehow, it works — not always, but this is the first time ever when I feel that Edling and his people have really managed to tap into something a bit deeper than their usual theatrical cornball stuff. In fact, I actually enjoy this record quite a bit more than Sabbath's 13, and that is saying something. The key track for me is the next to last one, ʽCyclo-Fʼ, where Flodkvist really gets into the sneery early Ozzy vibe, and then the last four minutes are given over to a slow, almost acid jam with ghostly feedback howls flying back and forth over the slow-trudging dragon monster riff — and then there's a cool, genuinely Sabbath-y moment when the dragon monster eats up all the feedback and emerges loud, fattened up, triumphant, all-encompassing. This is the moment where I have to admit that these guys really get it.

But even apart from that, the overall vibe of the album is successful. Utterly and unashamedly derivative — and, in a way, far more honest than all those «classic» Candlemass albums that pretended to do their own thing while still trapped in the shadow of their superiors. Apparently, all that Edling had to do was abandon his attempts to convince us that he had been doing his own thing, and admit that he had always simply wanted to do exactly the same thing as Tony Iommi. And then there will be ʽElephant Starʼ, which rocks with almost the same power as ʽSymptom Of The Universeʼ, and there will be ʽGalateaʼ, which has some of the most evil guitar tones ever used by mortal man, and there will be ʽARX/NG 891ʼ, which infuses just a tiny bit of Hawkwind and their heavy sci-fi sound into classic Sabbath to good effect, and...

...okay, I do not want to create the impression that From The 13th Sun is some sort of metal masterpiece: its official status as that of an imitative tribute to somebody else objectively prevents it from being hailed as Candlemass' finest hour. But not from getting a thumbs up, because, after all, the main rating criterion is how much I enjoyed the experience, and this experience, honestly, was more fun to me than any previous Candlemass studio album. I think Tony and Ozzy should be proud of this one, even if they had no hand in making it... then again, who knows?

DOOMED FOR LIVE (2002)

1) Mirror Mirror; 2) Bewitched; 3) Dark Are The Veils Of Death; 4) Demon's Gate; 5) Under The Oak; 6) At The Gallows End; 7) Samarithan; 8) Dark Reflections; 9) Mourner's Lament; 10) Black Stone Wielder; 11) The Well Of Souls; 12) A Sorcerer's Pledge; 13) Bearer Of Pain; 14) Ancient Dreams; 15) Somewhere In Nowhere; 16) Solitude; 17) Crystal Ball.

Har har har, it's 2002 and the world still has not run out of lame puns for live album titles. More than that, the world still has a place for good old Candlemass — as Edling's interesting, but somewhat atypical fiddlings with the name of the band come to a close, the classic Nightfall lineup finally reunites as Messiah Marcolin realizes that no other metal project brings so much fame to his name as Candlemass.

The first result of this reunion is more of symbolic than genuine importance: a live record (and video), to show the world that the old school of 1987 is still around and that it kick any of those metallic youngsters' asses at a moment's notice. But that's about all it does, really. Eleven out of seventeen tracks are the same songs that already were present on the Live album — apparently, the band does not care much about hunting for dark horses, or, perhaps, in this case they thought that it was far more important to whip up the classics, for any potential new fans. Thus, we have all of Epicus Doomicus reproduced here (although ʽBlack Stone Wielderʼ is seriously shortened and serves mostly to illustrate the cheese-opera powers of Marcolin's voice in the acappella opening); predictable selections from the next three albums; and nothing whatsoever from Chapter VI onwards, because... no Messiah.

Scrutinizing the actual performances is a task / delight for radical Candlemass fans only; as far as I'm concerned, the record is completely expendable — the lead vocalist and the instrumentalists remain technically irreproachable, so that it is almost impossible to tell the difference between the versions here and on Live. If you disliked the studio production on Ancient Dreams and Tales Of Creation, you have a chance to hear a couple more of those tunes, like ʽBearer Of Painʼ, with a rawer, heavier guitar tone, and that's that. It might be more fun to catch a glimpse of some of these songs performed live — Marcolin tries to cut a dramatic figure, dressed in a Benedictine monk robe, and the entire performance is sort of structured like a multi-part exorcism ceremony; but even that, I'd say, becomes rather boring after a while. Doomed for, indeed.

CANDLEMASS (2005)

1) Black Dwarf; 2) Seven Silver Keys; 3) Assassin Of The Light; 4) Copernicus; 5) The Man Who Fell From The Sky; 6) Witches; 7) Born In A Tank; 8) Spellbreaker; 9) The Day And The Night; 10) Mars And Volcanos.

Apparently, this album almost did not happen due to old tensions quickly reignited between the original band members as they gathered in the studio; in the end, though, they managed to override them for at least this one LP, before the Messiah re-ascended into the void once again, this time for good. They did make the album self-titled, though, which usually symbolizes a «reboot», in this case, a new Candlemass for a new millennium — a fairly complicated task, considering all the difficulties of getting the Nightfall lineup in the studio and not making another (inferior copy of) Nightfall in the process.

Surprisingly, the result is quite satisfactory. Of course, this is not too different from «classic» Candlemass, but in some ways, I think it actually improves upon it. If you are a purist, deeply in love with this band and treasuring its first years of output as the most inspired and innovative ones (although «innovative» is really a strange word to use in relation to these Sabbath adepts), you will not share this opinion; I, however, think that Candlemass, above and beyond everything else, are professional deliverers of «Sabbath-brand product», and that, as «product», their first albums suffered from too much pomp and too little technical care. By the mid-2000s, after twenty years of soaking and steeping, they seem to have learnt to deal with that problem: Candlemass is their first album that (a) features awesome production standards and (b) avoids sounding too ridiculous or annoying, most of the time.

Taking ʽBlack Dwarfʼ, the album's kick-ass opening song, as a good example, what do we see? The opening riff, decidedly unoriginal as usual, finally sounds thick, deep, crushing, and massive, and is propelled forward by a great drum sound — also thick, bass-heavy, without any electronic echoes or general tinny overlays that so plagued their Eighties albums. The lead guitar part is fluent, melodic, and perfectly audible over everything else (not to mention quite expressive and actually reminiscent of some cataclysmic astral processes). And, finally, Marcolin adds a layer of angry beastliness to his vocals, still relying on his operatic potential but sounding much better in the capacity of a threatening Old Testament prophet of the apocalypse than in his typical Freeshooter / Dr. Faustus image from the classic records. (And by «much better» I mean that I don't have to go "oh no, gimme a break already" every time he hits a high note).

After ʽBlack Dwarfʼ, the record predictably slows down (we know by now that Candlemass can handle fast tempos, but they have no desire to turn into Accept, after all), and the songs become more and more interchangeable. However, the corrected problems remain corrected — the production never turns to shit, and all the riffs on all the songs retain that «massive» effect, even if there is still hardly a single riff here that I would judge as immediately efficient on the classic Iommi level (more like decent/acceptable on the post-1980 Iommi level). The usual copycat problems persist: the lengthy ʽCopernicusʼ features clear echoes of ʽBlack Sabbathʼ in its slower parts, while ʽBorn In A Tankʼ presents yet another variation on ʽChildren Of The Graveʼ (just how many millions of times has that song been ripped off in the world of heavy metal?). But as long as you are not forced to memorize this stuff note-by-note, I like the overall sound: seems as if Edling's direct emulation of Sabbath on that previous album left some traces behind, and now, by injecting better produced Sabbath overtones into the classic Candlemass formula, he is able to achieve somewhat more credible results.

Special mention must be made of the lyrics, which are slightly less ridiculous than they used to be (this, at least, is an area in which they seem to have made some genuine progress: I actually catch myself pondering over the message of stuff like ʽSeven Silver Keysʼ and ʽAssassin Of The Lightʼ, and even if it is the same old devil-gonna-get-me stuff, it is at least presented in a vaguely veiled manner). On the down side, the song lengths... well, that's what you get for choosing «slow» as your default tempo — something that, given the success of ʽBlack Dwarfʼ as the lead-in track, they could have easily changed, but doom metal is doom metal. Still, a modest thumbs up. If you can only coax yourself into listening to one Candlemass album, you should probably pick up something from the Eighties, but if you want something that is actually listenable (if not necessarily enjoyable), this reunion gig is a better choice.

KING OF THE GREY ISLANDS (2007)

1) Prologue; 2) Emperor Of The Void; 3) Devil Seed; 4) Of Stars And Smoke; 5) Demonia 6; 6) Destroyer; 7) Man Of Shadows; 8) Clearsight; 9) The Opal City; 10) Embracing The Styx.

Arguably, this album introduces the best thing that has happened to Candlemass since they learned to produce their albums outside of the figurative toilet — lead vocalist Robert Lowe, the former frontman of Solitude Aeturnus, an epic doom metal band from the heart of American Texas (yes, apparently such a thing as Texan doom metal does exist, although it's probably heavily influenced by ZZ Top, I'd imagine). This guy has got all the power of Marcolin without his operatic wailing: style-wise, he is more reminiscent of Dio, balancing the pomp and pretense with an angry snarl that brings the performance closer to earth and agrees far better with the aggressive kick of the music. In fact, sacrilegious as it seems, I actually enjoy the re-recorded versions of ʽSolitudeʼ and ʽAt The Gallows Endʼ, appended as bonus tracks to the digipak edition of the album, far more than the originals!

Add to this that Edling continues to be relatively inspired, with the songwriting level not dropping down from the standard of Candlemass even one bit, and you get an album that is just as enjoyable as its predecessor — more so, in fact, if you agree with me on the vocalist (but I think that even big fans of Marcolin grudgingly had to acknowledge Lowe's worthiness; not that Edling ever made any truly big mistakes hiring lead vocalists for the band). Production standards have stabilized, and there are even a few tracks that feature awesome riffs — the best of these probably being in ʽClearsightʼ, which mixes the chugging gallop style with Iommi-like «deep-heavy» bending, creating the impression of a speedy Satanic roller coaster; but stuff like ʽEmperor Of The Voidʼ, with its double-tracked metal / wah-wah guitars spiralling around at frisky tempos, or ʽMan Of Shadowsʼ, does not lag too far behind.

Non-metalheads should not get any false illusions: King Of The Grey Islands is still as stereotypically formulaic as they come, with each song following more or less the same formula. If your attention span is strong enough to follow the nuances, somewhere in the middle of these songs you might fall upon elements of diversity — for instance, the odd acoustic interlude in the middle of ʽMan Of Shadowsʼ that comes in for only a few seconds to introduce a brief moment of tender sentimentality before the flames of Hell re-ignite once again; or the echoey, near-industrial bass solo in the middle of ʽEmbracing The Styxʼ (a title I keep hearing as "embracing the stiff", which would probably make the song acceptable for Cannibal Corpse's repertoire).

Every now and then, the record creeps up a little too close for comfort to the standards of grunge-metal and nu-metal — and Lowe's delivery may have something to do with this, since, after all, he doth come from the home country of Korn and Limp Bizkit rather than the homeland of the Vikings. But I try to brush those associations away and just keep myself convinced that this is every bit as good as Candlemass, only a little bit better because the vocalist is trying to position himself in the middle of a spooky B-movie rather than that of a Shakesperian tragedy, raising the adequacy level to acceptable heights. This is a healthy, crunchy popcorn formula that they have settled upon here, even if I would personally prefer more numbers like the infectious ʽClearsightʼ and fewer like the draggy ʽOf Stars And Smokeʼ. But they are still formally a «doom» band, aren't they? Thumbs up for making me forget about that for a moment.

LUCIFER RISING (2008)

1) Lucifer Rising; 2) White God; 3) Demons Gate; 4) At The Gallows End; 5) Solitude; 6) Emperor Of The Void; 7) Devil Seed; 8) Mirror Mirror; 9) Under The Oak; 10) Of Stars And Smoke; 11) Black Dwarf; 12) Samarithan.

This three-song EP, with two new compositions and one re-recording of a classic (ʽDemons Gateʼ), would probably not even deserve a specific mention, had it not been for the decision to expand it with nine extra tracks culled from a 2007 live performance in Athens — which essentially transforms a tiny EP into a lengthy live album, their third one overall and the first with Robert Lowe as the lead vocalist. In fact, it can be suspected that the only purpose of the release was to somehow legitimize Lowe's standing with the band in the eyes of all the veteran fans still continuing to deplore the second break with Marcolin.

If you have no specific bones to pick with Lowe in the first place, though, then this is just another quality live recording from the band. Lowe himself introduces a distinctly American flavor to Candlemass: instead of playing the theatrical role of God's / Satan's pawn à la Marcolin, he takes the time in between songs to adress the audience with the friendliness and nonchalance of your next door neighbor or barroom companion — with a sweet mix of politeness and familiarity; and somehow, this attitude even rubs off on the songs, which come off as more natural and earthy than operatic and pretentious. This may or may not be to one's tastes: if you believe that Candlemass classics only work when they function in 100% «metal theater» mode, I am not going to argue with you. The doom-laden guitar power is fully preserved, anyway.

As for the new songs, I guess they're okay. ʽLucifer Risingʼ itself continues to abuse the ʽChildren Of The Graveʼ pattern, but at least they speed up the tempo to mask that, so the main problem with the song is that the chorus is way too repetitive — just how many times do we need to hear that Lucifer is rising before we get the urge to shut off the track in disgusted disbelief? And ʽWhite Godʼ seems to be a musical variation on the theme of ʽDemons Gateʼ, which makes it all the more strange that ʽDemons Gateʼ is the one song from their old catalog that they decided to re-record in the studio and place immediately after ʽWhite Godʼ. Maybe it's one of those «what do you like more, the old shit or the new shit?» moments — personally, I don't care all that much, because the old shit was not all that inspiring in the first place.

Anyway, bottomline is, I can only recommend this for huge supporters of Robert Lowe as the new face of Candlemass — or for those who collect everything and anything with the name of Lucifer on it. Oh, and ʽLucifer Risingʼ is actually available now as a bonus track on the digipak edition of Death Magic Doom, so there's one more argument to skip.

CARCASS

REEK OF PUTREFACTION (1988)

1) Genital Grinder; 2) Regurgitation Of Giblets; 3) Maggot Colony; 4) Pyosisified (Rotten To The Gore); 5) Carbonized Eyesockets; 6) Frenzied Detruncation; 7) Vomited Anal Tract; 8) Festerday; 9) Fermenting Innards; 10) Excreted Alive; 11) Suppuration; 12) Foeticide; 13) Microwaved Uterogestation; 14) Feast On Dismembered Carnage; 15) Splattered Cavities; 16) Psychopathologist; 17) Burnt To A Crisp; 18) Pungent Excruciation; 19) Manifestation Of Verrucose Urethra; 20) Oxidized Razor Masticator; 21) Mucopurulence Excretor; 22) Malignant Defecation.

If you ever had any problems with the Liverpudlian accents of the Fab Four, try this for comfort: anybody capable of deciphering even a single word on Carcass' debut album without peeking into the lyrics sheet should probably be burned at the stake for serious witchcraft. Likewise, if you can commit even a single «melody» on this album to an individual memory cell, you should probably take immediate action to get yourself committed before the shit hits the fan.

Meet bass player Jeffrey Walker, guitarist Bill Steer, and drummer Ken Owen, three friendly and (according to most sources) perfectly normal guys that, one day, set out on the quest of making the most disgusting rock album ever. The immediate influence here is the pioneering grindcore of Napalm Death, for whom Steer also played guitar (and Walker designed the art of their first album, Scum, just to indicate the sort of symbiotic relationship between the two) — but while Napalm Death concentrated more on the laconic-minimalistic side of things, Carcass took it into an, ahem, somewhat more anatomical direction. As you can see, you do not need to go further than the song titles — and a thorough study of the lyrics with a medical encyclopaedia by your side, accompanied by some unflinching staring at this and the ensuing album covers, will make you perfectly qualified for a job as morgue assistant without any real need for a college degree.

The only thing in favor of this record is total commitment — but its totality is, in fact, so overwhelming that it translates to a certain kind of hip charm even in the minds of perfectly sane people (in fact, perfectly sane people are its base audience — it's not as if Carcass had a small, but loyal fanbase of mass murderers and necrophiliacs in mind). The band is unquestionably very tight and professional, but here it completely sacrifices skill to the idea of heaviness, speed, and «melodic blurriness», making Slayer sound like ABBA in comparison; and the vocals are an incomprehensible slurred growl all the way. For 37 minutes in a row, the record operates in two modes — fast and very fast, where all fast parts sound the same, all very fast parts sound the same, and the only difference between fast and very fast is... uh... tempo.

One does have to somehow «accept» the whole package — music, voice, song titles, song lyrics, album art, etc. — for the experience to work. Of course, it's essentially an «anti-musical» joke, whose only serious point is testing the limits of personal and artistic freedom, something that John Peel must have understood very well when he called Carcass his favorite new band of 1988 and got them to appear on his show. Later on, the songs would become longer, more melodic and «musical», not to mention the production, which is pretty bad here, and, apparently, the band members themselves were unhappy with it, but with this kind of approach, lo-fi, dirty, and mean actually works best: I mean, when you name a song ʽVomited Anal Tractʼ, it better sound like a vomited anal tract, or else what's the frickin' point?

It would hardly make sense to condemn the album with the «anybody could produce this kind of shit» argument, either. First, it takes some serious practice to become a top level grindcore artist. Second, it takes real guts (or, perhaps, in the spirit of the album, it takes some really fermented innards) to come up with such an uncompromising concept. Third, once you get around to reading the lyrics, they are really hilarious — probably some of the most verbose, poetic, inventive texts centered around complex human anatomy ever thought of by living man (not that I'm mentally prepared to analyze any of them here). Fourth, the sheer contrast between the personalities of the band members (who are nice-behaving vegetarians) and the «atrociousness» of the whole concept is somehow quite comforting — I'd certainly rather have that than comparable work of an actual madman like G. G. Allin.

But clearly, there's no need to actually discuss the music; unlike later Carcass albums, the basic point of these songs is that even if they start out with actual chord sequences, the insane tempos mash them together in a grinder and the muddy production finishes the job. The idea is not to «hum» these songs, but to participate in a deranged, macabre dance of death — a fun thing to do, provided you do not accidentally blast these songs out of your car when passing near a hospice (and even if you do, you'd still have to drop leaflets with printed lyrics in the yard to achieve the necessary sacrilegious effect) or send out a complementary version of the CD to victims of nuclear meltdown accidents. I am not, by any means, giving this album a proper «thumbs up», but I certainly acknowledge not just its right to existence, but its actual artistic purpose. Besides, you could probably get an M.D., easy, with just a cursory analysis of the lyrics — or, at the very least, vastly expand your anatomical vocabulary.

SYMPHONIES OF SICKNESS (1989)

1) Reek Of Putrefaction; 2) Exhume To Consume; 3) Excoriating Abdominal Emanation; 4) Ruptured In Purulence; 5) Empathological Necroticism; 6) Embryonic Necropsy And Devourment; 7) Swarming Vulgar Mass Of Infected Virulency; 8) Cadaveric Incubator Of Endoparasites; 9) Slash Dementia; 10) Crepitating Bowel Erosion.

Already they are beginning to evolve. Arguably the best thing about Carcass is that, while the basic ideology of the band remains consistent throughout their career, (almost) no two albums by them sound the same — unlike so many of their metal peers, these guys could apparently get bored with formula real easy, and found it more fun to keep on experimenting with various ways they could get their Coroner's Message through to us.

Here, we have the songs putting on some fat, sometimes expanding to gigantic, five-minute running time periods, and, more importantly, a huge quantum leap in production values, so you can occasionally distinguish rhythm from lead guitar, and — oh horrors! — ever so often, even discern a necrolyrical bit or two. And while this makes the experience somewhat less extreme and grotesque (a danger in itself, because the only way to take Carcass seriously is to lack the bare means to take them seriously), you actually get to appreciate their skills a bit more. There are passages here that are individually memorable — for instance, the slow, riff-based introduction to ʽRuptured In Purulenceʼ, one minute of intense thrash brutality with clever alternation of continuous and «ruptured» (sorry) melody. Eventually, they pick up speed and launch into the usual messy pandemonium, but the introduction has already managed to plant a seed of respectability.

Or, if you take the opening number ʽReek Of Putrefactionʼ (add this to our ever-growing collection of song titles that did not appear on the album with the same title), you will find it introduced by a spooky guitar intro that borrows the Tony Iommi vibe, especially in that little vibrato bit that seems directly copped from ʽBlack Sabbathʼ. Later on, the riff reappears doubled with a high-pitched doom-laden lead guitar part — well worth waiting for as your ears are treated to the usual slash-and-burn speed gallop in the interim. And although not all the tracks feature these melodic elements, and none of the tracks are «melodic» through and through, we are still clearly dealing with a desire to add a little bit more individuality and expressivity to the tracks. You'd think that ʽEmpathological Necroticismʼ and ʽEmbryonic Necropsyʼ should sound completely the same, but they don't. Well, not quite completely.

That said, Symphonies Of Sickness is clearly a transitional album, and that's a risky state of affairs where, if the stars were lucky, you could satisfy everybody — or, if they weren't, nobody. The melodic bits really sound more like «teasers», sometimes entertaining you for very short bits as elementary separators of the sludgy verses; and the increased song length only rarely works for the better, because they aren't really expanding them into Metallica-style multi-part thrash anthems or anything like that, and there is still no way that they can make the speed-based grooves too distinct from each other. Eventually, even though the record is only slightly longer than its predecessor, it wears me out a bit faster, and the last three or four songs become just a tedious blur. But I can also see where hardcore fans of extreme metal would call this their favorite — because it does completely retain the insane-grotesque-evil aura, while seriously improving on the production; already the next record could be judged as a serious betrayal of faith by some of these people. In short, this is their «cleanest dirtiest» album, if you need a really brief summary.

NECROTICISM - DESCANTING THE INSALUBRIOUS (1991)

1) Inpropagation; 2) Corporal Jigsaw Quandary; 3) Symposium Of Sickness; 4) Pedigree Butchery; 5) Incarnated Solvent Abuse; 6) Carneous Cacoffiny; 7) Lavaging Expectorate Of Lysergide Composition; 8) Forensic Clinicism / The Sanguine Article; 9*) Tools Of The Trade; 10*) Pyosified (Still Rotten To The Gore); 11*) Hepatic Tissue Fermentation II.

This is where they finally realized that a proper metal band has to have two guitarists in order to achieve real respectability — and at least one should preferably be of Scandinavian origin, cuz there's nothing like a shot of thick Viking blood to add that authentic berserk component to your metal riffage. Thus, enter Michael Amott, a natural choice since his own recently formed Swedish band was called Carnage, and was essentially the Swedish equivalent of Carcass. The result was obvious — a more «melodic» (so to say) form of the music, with a separate lead player capable of adding colorful flourishes to the brutal riffs and dutifully churning out speedy-flashy classical-influenced solos where deemed necessary. Now the band was finally set up to produce their equivalent of Slayer's Reign In Blood, if it really wanted to.

Indeed, the record is far more ambitious. The songs are lightly adorned with special effects (including occasional voiceovers that are probably sampled from obscure B-movies, or an occasional atmospheric synthesizer backdrop, or even a tiny bit of acoustic guitar now and then), the song structures become even more complex and now regularly alternate between Sabbathy slow and ultra-fast, and then there's all that lead guitar. If not for the lyrics, this would have been just a regular speed-thrash-whatever-mash-up — the lyrics, however, stubbornly persist in this grotesque fascination with the morgue, as the album is formally organized around the concept of finding various ways of dispensing with corpses (both out of practical necessity and as a hobby).

The problem is that it is completely impossible to seriously praise the record in «layman» terms. The musical structures of these tunes, some of which now run for as long as six or seven minutes, clearly seem «progressive» — the band is now approaching their music as actual music, rather than mere noisy backdrop for staged offensiveness, and all the compositions work as compositions; in fact, sometimes I think I'd much rather listen to the instrumental versions without having to divert attention towards the growling vocals that really sound the same all the way through, not just in style and timbre, but even in simple phrasing. Compared to the vocals, the instrumental work is far more demanding — the riffs are more complex than Metallica's and the shifts between multiple sections are flawlessly executed. But the riffs also do not lend themselves easily to «visualization» — for the life of me I couldn't even begin to explain in what way the emotional impact of ʽPedigree Butcheryʼ differs from that of ʽCarneous Cacoffinyʼ.

At the same time, we should also keep in mind that Carcass were far from the only metal band experimenting with the limits of the genre — and if they did not have that particular anatomical-pathological schtick of theirs, chances are serious that Necroticism would have been completely lost in the sea of high-profile, technically accomplished metal releases from around the year 1991. So perhaps the best news here is that the original «spirit of Carcass», despite all the increased complexity, is still loyally preserved, and that it adds the necessary shade of theatrical gore to the music. No, scratch «gore» — it adds the necessary shade of macabre fun to the music, which is the perfect aural equivalent of indulging in your dark side when splattering your opponent's brains (or other parts) against the wall in a fighting video game. Of course, it goes without saying that, in the light of this, Necroticism should only be recommended for people with good mental health — so, if you happen to have Charlie Manson in your family history, please disregard this thumbs up and submit yourself to preventive therapy in the form of my Avril Lavigne reviews or something like that.

HEARTWORK (1993)

1) Buried Dreams; 2) Carnal Forge; 3) No Love Lost; 4) Heartwork; 5) Embodiment; 6) This Mortal Coil; 7) Arbeit Macht Fleisch; 8) Blind Bleeding The Blind; 9) Doctrinal Expletives; 10) Death Certificate.

This is where opinions begin to split, skulls commence to crack, and symposia of sickness start degenerating into pedigree butchery. For some people, Heartwork is the absolute pinnacle of the shivery art of Carcass; for others, it is an unforgivable betrayal of the primary values for which this band had so affirmatively stood up in the past. What's up with the sissy title? What's up with the symbolic, but generally inoffensive album cover? What's up with Carcass songs called ʽNo Love Lostʼ and ʽThis Mortal Coilʼ, titles more suitable for Celine Dion and, uh... This Mortal Coil? What's up with the lyrics being almost free of new anatomical terminology? What's up with the clean, almost sterile production? Where have all the gory times gone?

Of course, you cannot blame an artist for wanting to break out of a stereotype — and, let's face it, by 1993 the band's «gore-grind» schtick was getting old, not to mention that it had been successfully picked up by quite a few newcomers, like Cannibal Corpse, whose primary point was to outgross the old masters, whatever it takes. Reasonably, Steer and Ammott must have decided that they had no real interest in competing with others in the grossness department, and that they would try something different — namely, to «clean up» their act a bit and go for a synthesis of grindcore brutality and melodic heavy metal, where the individual songs would have more individuality while still being conjoined by a general atmosphere of viciousness.

Thus, only a couple of tunes here truly remind of the Carcass of old (ʽCarnal Forgeʼ is the best «retro» example), while the rest are strictly in the «melodic death metal» vein, with distinct, often seriously slow riffs from Steer and the usual classically-influenced leads from Amott. The vocals remain in incomprehensible growl mode throughout, which is a minus — I think that stuff like ʽNo Love Lostʼ calls for cleaner singing, but perhaps they were too afraid to bring in clean vocals, thinking that it would make them sound like Queensryche or something. Also, in terms of instrumentation and arrangements, the album is surprisingly less diverse than Necroticism: there's no special effects, no sampled overdubs, no acoustic interludes, absolutely nothing to draw your attention away from the basic riff — solo — riff — solo patterns.

Although the vocals go so far in the mainstream direction as to sometimes arrange themselves in verse/chorus patterns, it is pretty hard to apply the term «catchy» to any vocal «melody» that sounds as if it were delivered by Satan suffering from acute constipation. However, the riffs are fairly strong and could easily withstand competition with any sophisticated classic thrash or death metal band — ʽNo Love Lostʼ, ʽEmbodimentʼ, the stop-and-start tricks on ʽDoctrinal Expletivesʼ all qualify, and these are only the slower ones; the faster ones, like ʽBlind Bleeding The Blindʼ, add breathtaking excitement without abandoning the melodic angle. From a technical standpoint at least, the general quality of the tunes — complexity of chord patterns, smoothness of transition from fast to slow sections and back again, thoughtful construction of lead parts — leaves little to be desired.

That said, it would be useless to deny a certain amount of disappointment: now that Carcass are no longer really an «extreme» band, they do fairly little to make the music stand out from the rest of the competition. This is just normal, high-quality melodic death metal with faint echoes of the band's original grotesque identity; in fact, we could probably go as far as to state that this was the beginning of the end — particularly with Amott quitting soon after the album's release to form Arch Enemy. The fact that the band retains its penchant for morbid song title puns like ʽArbeit Macht Fleischʼ (good name for a B movie about zombie-infestated concentration camps) and ʽBlind Bleeding The Blindʼ does little to conceal the fact that they are attempting to get serious, and maybe the last thing this world needs is Carcass being serious. Still, as long as the riffage is that good (although I couldn't even begin to describe the particular ways in which it is good without turning into a certified metalhead), and as long as they sound so excited about finding new ways to upgrade their image, thumbs up are in order.

SWANSONG (1995)

1) Keep On Rotting In The Free World; 2) Tomorrow Belongs To Nobody; 3) Black Star; 4) Cross My Heart; 5) Childs Play; 6) Room 101; 7) Polarized; 8) Generation Hexed; 9) Firm Hand; 10) R**k The Vote; 11) Don't Believe A Word; 12) Go To Hell.

Well, I totally agree with the fans that Swansong can hardly even begin to be considered a proper Carcass album. Where are the insane tempos? Where's the guitar/bass/drum madness? Where are the gory lyrics? Pretty much the only thing that somehow ties this record to everything that was before are the growling vocals, and even these are constantly in danger of becoming comprehensible — this is arguably the first Carcass album where you can generally make out what the songs are about, and many of them are about... social protest and disillusionment... oh wait... are these guys turning into Bad Religion or what???

Not surprisingly, the album often gets negative marks from metalhead fans and critics alike, because, well, those who want their Bad Religion can have it, and those who want their kick-ass melodic heavy metal à la Accept can have it, but this is like a total frickin' sellout — and, in fact, it was almost going to be official, since after the success of Heartwork Carcass, with new guitar player Carlo Regadas replacing Michael Amott (who went off to start Arch Enemy), were all set to go big, signing up with Columbia. Eventually, much to the relief of the indie metal crowd, the deal fell through, and they returned to Earache records; but in the meantime, the band members managed to spoil their mutual relationship, Bill Steer kind of got bored with the whole metal business, and by the time they mopped up the sessions, the group was pretty much finished.

That said, if you look at the general evolution of Carcass music, Swansong seems like a perfectly logical conclusion. Arguable as it is, I'd still say that it contains their most «naturally-sounding» and memorable set of tunes, even if it comes at the expense of downplaying the shock factor almost to zero level and dropping the search for innovative production techniques and melodic layerings. A single example may suffice — the main riff of ʽBlack Starʼ, sounding like a nasty shrapnel run from a low-cruisin' airplane, seems far more evocative to me than anything on Heartwork, let alone all those earlier and messier tunes. It may be a minus, yes, that the track quickly begins to sound like a solid, but derivative imitation of Iron Maiden; but this will only lead us into the uncomfortable depths of discussing what matters more — quality/memorability or innovation/individuality — and I'd like to avoid that discussion in a set of Carcass reviews.

Anyway, at least they do not lose their sense of punny humor (ʽKeep On Rotting In The Free Worldʼ, ʽGeneration Hexedʼ), and at least these good riffs and melodic solos keep coming, even if I could totally see ʽGeneration Hexedʼ sung cleanly by Accept's Udo Dirkschneider and its riffs cracked out by Wolf Hoffmann — and most other songs are like a mish-mash of various metal substyles, from Metallica-Megadeth thrash to the British New Wave (the band themselves mentioned Thin Lizzy as one of the influences at the time, although this is certainly not the first association that is going to jump into your head). Actually, at this point the growling vocals in general are an unfortunate atavistic compromise — songs like ʽRoom 101ʼ, with its mad prophet tale, were made to be sung cleanly: I close my eyes and try to imagine what would Ronnie James Dio have done with it, and once I do, the actual version begins to sound like a death metal parody of an unpreserved Dio track.

In fact, with a cleaner approach, Swansong would have made for a very impressive collection of «protest-metal» tunes — the melodies of songs like ʽTomorrow Belongs To Nobodyʼ have enough thunder and snap to them to sound convincing, and I cannot for the life of me regard Steer's and Walker's songwriting here as throwaway songwriting (well, apparently while they were writing the tunes and making the original recordings, nobody thought as of yet that this would be the band's last album). Blame it on the general narrowness of the metal formula that the record, stripped of the band's traditional grossness, sounds monotonous and devoid of individuality — a flaw that would have been more forgivable on an old school pop record, perhaps. But as long as you're cool with that general formula, Swansong should be a thumbs up all the way, and a perfect way to switch off one's career: now that the band has «matured» to the state of complete adulthood, there's no way further but down, and disbanding was the most natural thing to do.

SURGICAL STEEL (2013)

1) 1985; 2) Thrasher's Abattoir; 3) Cadaver Pouch Conveyor System; 4) A Congealed Clot Of Blood; 5) The Master Butcher's Apron; 6) Noncompliance To ASTM F 899-12 Standard; 7) The Granulating Dark Satanic Mills; 8) Unfit For Human Consumption; 9) 316L Grade Surgical Steel; 10) Captive Bolt Pistol; 11) Mount Of Execution; 12*) A Wraith In The Apparatus; 13*) Intensive Battery Brooding.

Legendary bands never really die — they just build up anticipation for a reunion tour. In the case of Carcass, this happened as early as 2007, and they even got Amott to take a break from Arch Enemy and rejoin. However, by the time they were ready to re-enter the studio, Amott left once again, so the resulting album was made by the trio of Steer, Walker, and new drummer Dan Wilding, whose style, it is said, reminded the band very much of original drummer Ken Owen's (Ken was debilitated by a hemorrhage and could not play, but, in a carcass-sweet gesture, they still invited him to provide some backing voc... uh, grunts).

Asking the common question of «can they still cut it?» is commonly senseless, because of course they can — had they not been able to keep up with past standards of loudness, speed, heaviness, and grossness, this album would have never been made. A better, and tougher, question is «is there still any reason left for them to cut it?», because the entire (relatively brief) career of Carcass had been about evolving, and unless they convincingly show that they can pick up from where they left off with Swansong and show new paths of activity for the 21st century, Surgical Steel is pretty much bound to find itself in the used instrument bin.

Adding up the style and quality of the riffs, the production values, and the ambiguous nature of song titles and lyrics (which has more than a few nods to the early goregrind values, but also hearkens back to the sociopolitical angle of Swansong), Surgical Steel finds itself closer to Heartwork, I'd say, than any other Carcass record — which is hardly surprising, considering how Heartwork has emerged as the most fondly remembered album of 'em all. Elements of almost perverse melodicity shine through beginning with the very first track (ʽThrasher's Abattoirʼ), where Walker growl-sings strings of polysyllabic words to a sped-up Sabbath-style riff, concluding that "Hipsters and posers I abhor / Welcome to the thrasher's abattoir" — a nice amalgamation of the band's morgue grossness and social stance all in one. (So now you know who was actually pictured on the front sleeve of Putreficiation — hipsters and posers!).

That said, like on Heartwork, any perceived melodicity here serves one and only one purpose, and by 2013, we should have all learned that purpose by heart. That all the songs immediately merge into one big ball of thrashing riffs, histrionic solos, and werewolf growls, is a self-understood limitation of the genre. Problem is, there's hardly anything else to it: the band's sense of humor is not very efficient, the social message is not working, and they have not really developed any new musical ideas — all that «now we're playing fast... and now we're playing very fast without losing the melodic edge» schtick is already so familiar that only a total novice could be properly amazed at the way they're doing it.

The last track, ʽMount Of Executionʼ, is their first (I think) attempt at a massive epic, a sort of revision of Biblical history where the events of Golgotha are perceived as the signal for a "dark mobilization" (well, it's Carcass, what do you want? not exactly the house band for love, mercy, and forgiveness), and it's got an acoustic introduction, some old school metal riffage, and on the whole sounds more like a mix of Sabbath and Amorphis than a band that once vied with Napalm Death for supremacy on the grindcore field. Repeated listens turn it into a clear favorite, but it's still just one track, and, unsurprisingly, the least Carcass-ish of 'em all. The rest all sound kinda cool while they're on, but fade into oblivion exactly fifteen seconds after they're gone.

Incidentally, one of the bonus tracks on the Japanese edition, called ʽIntensive Battery Broodingʼ, sounds almost exactly like Sabbath — in fact, they could have done a generous deed and donated it to Iommi for his 13 project (on the other hand, it lifts a crucial chord change from ʽInto The Voidʼ, so maybe they'd be too embarrassed to hand Tony a variation on his own music). This just goes to show how much the band has «regressed» back to heavy rock values of the 1970s, which is indeed in line with their development in the 1990s — but also suggests that this is sort of the natural way to go, as you just cannot keep chugging out the same radical thrash / grindcore riffs forever, if you think of yourself as a musician rather than a sonic entertainer. Unfortunately, it's way too hard to be just a heavy metal musician and retain your own unmistakable identity, and lack of identity is what Surgical Steel suffers from the most, even as it keeps kicking your putrefying, suppurating, crepitating, virulently ruptured ass all the way through.

ADDENDA

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE... CARCASS (1996)

1) Edge Of Darkness; 2) Emotional Flatline; 3) Ever Increasing Circles; 4) Blood Splattered Banner; 5) I Told You So (Corporate Rock Really Does Suck); 6) Buried Dreams; 7) No Love Lost; 8) Rot 'n' Roll; 9) Edge Of Darkness; 10) This Is Your Life; 11) Rot 'n' Roll; 12) Tools Of The Trade; 13) Pyosified (Still Rotten To The Gore); 14) Hepatic Tissue Fermentation II; 15) Genital Grinder II; 16) Hepatic Tissue Fermentation; 17) Exhume To Consume.

An essential compilation for the band's loyal fans: released one year after Swansong, it collects most of the stuff that was only previously available on EPs and a bunch of outtakes and BBC Radio 1 performances that were not available at all. A couple of the songs repeat themselves (which is a little annoying, because the live versions are predictably hard to tell apart from the studio takes, except for worse sound quality), and a few more have since been added as bonus tracks to the remastered CD edition of Necroticism, but even so, with a total running length of 75 minutes, this is as much prime fresh rotten Carcass as one can stand.

Curiously, the tracks are sequenced «backwards», beginning with a bunch of outtakes from the Swansong sessions that I like much more than a true fan probably should — I think the basic riff of ʽEdge Of Darknessʼ, for instance, is one of the most terrifyingly melodic things they ever did, but, of course, it sounds way too much like Tony Iommi or any «regular», old-school-influenced metal band, so hardcore fans would give it the cold shoulder. ʽBlood Splattered Bannerʼ (a song about the old Dixie, with all of Carcass' grindgore imagery fanatically applied to the conservative South) is another relative highlight that could have benefited from cleaner vocals to go along with its political message, but even so, the riffage (a fun kind of wobble which you'd pretty much expect from a blood splattered banner, I guess) is impeccable. ʽI Told You So (Corporate Rock Really Does Suck)ʼ is a little less memorable, and besides, I am not sure if this particular track, which sounds fairly acceptable for MTV standards, really has the most convincing musical structure and texture to count as a true anti-corporate anthem.

Skipping the four live tracks, we arrive at EP material — Tools Of The Trade from 1992 and the two additional tracks on the Heartwork maxi-single. Of these, ʽRot 'n' Rollʼ is probably the most fun, alternating between military-martial mid-tempo and speedy metal-boogie (and "let's ROT!" should have always functioned as the band's prime slogan — if I find out they never tossed this into the crowd at any of their shows, I'd be much disappointed), whereas all the songs from Tools Of The Trade pretty much sound like anything on Necroticism — fast, ravaging, ridiculous, and not individually memorable. Finally, the last three tracks, taken off some obscure «various artists compilations», seem to date from even earlier periods (Symphonies Of Sickness era?) and remind us of the good old times when making out even one single word without the aid of a lyrics sheet would make you a genius of a practicing phonetician.

For the record, ʽExhume To Consumeʼ is a different version here from the one on Symphonies: slightly cleaner, and featuring a thirty-second necro-psychedelic intro with various weird threatening guitar noises — also, that unexpectedly melodic guitar solo in the middle is brought much higher in the mix. Maybe the idea was that they had to show themselves off a little bit more in terms of musicianship on a compilation, surrounded by such worthy competing acts as Cadaver, Carnage, Godflesh, Hellbastard, and Terrorizer (can you distinguish between all these bands?), or maybe I'm imagining things, but in any case, this one comes across as slightly «artsier» than it used to be. Nothing like an atmospheric intro to sweeten the impact of goregrind brutality.

In any case, for an outsider like myself the most «fun» part about this whole disc is that it rolls the tape backwards, and lets you revisit once more, over a short time period (especially if you throw out the somewhat superfluous Radio 1 tracks), the (almost) complete evolution of Carcass: now, however, in a mode of «backwards degradation» from an almost normal, classic-influenced metal band to the formless-nameless-dyslexic monster they used to be. Whatever one might think of heavy metal's formulaic limitations and its tendency to fall back upon self-parody, Wake Up And Smell The... is an obvious demonstration of how it is possible to evolve even within a rigidly set paradigm — and how it also makes total sense to break up once no further evolution becomes possible, instead of persisting within the same repetitive formula for decades.

THE CARS

THE CARS (1978)

1) Good Times Roll; 2) My Best Friend's Girl; 3) Just What I Needed; 4) I'm In Touch With Your World; 5) Don't Cha Stop; 6) You're All I've Got Tonight; 7) Bye Bye Love; 8) Moving In Stereo; 9) All Mixed Up.

The fate of this album is decided in two seconds flat. Two seconds! One — and you have yourself a dry, distorted guitar tone playing a classic old school blues-rock lick that would sound perfectly at home on a T. Rex or a Stones record (in fact, it's pretty much the same chord sequence that Keith Richards plays in ʽStop Breaking Downʼ). Two — and you watch as it contrasts with a robotic synth tone and a wobbly astral pulse that seems to come directly from a Kraftwerk tune. And there you have it: a simple, immediately effective, and amazingly symbolic synthesis of traditional rock'n'roll with an entirely new type of music. For all of New Wave's diversity, did any artist ever succeed in getting his point across in a matter of two seconds?

Not that the charm of ʽGood Times Rollʼ does not expand to the rest of the song. The melody keeps developing, but always with this strict preservation of a democratic balance between the «old» (as represented by the rhythm and lead guitar work of Ric Ocasek and Elliot Easton, respectively) and the «new» (as represented by Greg Hawkes' smoothly, but mechanically flowing rivulets of synth phrasing). And then there's the lyrics — the song title takes up a well-worn R&B / rock'n'roll cliché and sends it up in an ironically modernist way: we all remember Ray Charles telling us to "let the good times roll", but we could hardly imagine him adding "let them knock you around", much less "let them make you a clown". That's The Cars for you — vapor-headed and optimistic on the surface, bittersweet and acid-tongued half an inch under the surface.

You can rarely, very rarely understand what sort of emotional reaction these songs are supposed to extract — mixed reaction, for sure, but one thing that was there from the very beginning is a certain sense of fatalism, acceptance of life as it is, together with the fact that, no matter what you do, you will commit stupid and dangerous things, and you might just as well relax and enjoy them before they inevitably drag you to your doom and stuff. The entire album is drenched in that attitude, a mix of hedonism and apocalypticism that The Cars obviously inherited from one of their biggest idols, Roxy Music (together with the penchant for brutally sexy + intentionally tasteless album covers) — except they're nowhere near as «artsy» as Roxy Music, with the melodies more simple and straightforward and the vocals not even beginning to approach the exaggerated mannerisms of Bryan Ferry.

They're really quite simple lads with no puffed-up ambitions — if that much is not yet made obvious by ʽGood Times Rollʼ, then ʽMy Best Friend's Girlʼ, an unconcealed tribute to the songwriting style of Buddy Holly, clinches the case. If not for the robotic synths popping in every now and then, and if not for odd references to "nuclear boots" and "drip dry gloves", nothing would indicate that the song could not have been written in 1958, and when the chorus is followed up by that little Carl Perkins / Buddy Holly / George Harrison rockabilly line, it's like the twenty years in between 1958 and 1978 never happened. Yet, when you think about it real hard, Ocasek's vocals are very much 1978, with that subtle melange of idiocy, paranoia, and irony — and the contrast between the exaggerated happiness of the melody and the overall tragic message is starkly modern. Like, there's nothing about the song, really, that suggests tragedy except for the surprising resolution of the chorus (Ric's "...but she used to be mine!" comes across almost as if he were too embarrassed to admit it before a judgmental world), and yet it's all about the same kind of resigned fatalism as we just had in ʽGood Times Rollʼ.

Once the formula has been established, The Cars do not see any reasons to depart from it, but the album remains melodically diverse enough to not let us mind it in the least. For ʽJust What I Neededʼ, which they probably selected as the lead single because its thick-robust riffs were as close to commercially viable Boston-style arena-rock as this album ever gets, bass player Ben Orr is selected as vocalist, and he is indeed a better choice for carrying a muscular song like that, but the mood and message remain the same — where Boston would sing "I guess you're just what I needed" with the presupposition of «it's such a miracle that I got just what I needed», The Cars sing it with the presupposition of «well, uh, it's kind of lucky that I probably got just what I needed, but, you know, if I didn't, it wouldn't be much of a problem, really, because, like, you can't always get what you want and stuff». It should be ascribed to a certain level of musical genius that they manage to sound terminally bored and exciting / energetic at the same time.

As the record goes by, our interest is further kept up by means of quirky sonic experimentation (ʽI'm In Touch With Your Worldʼ, crammed with as many fun sound bites as these guys could get from their month in the studio), occasionally increased tempos (ʽDon't Cha Stopʼ, a sex song that neatly separates the rest of the record into two equal parts — pre-copulation frustration and post-copulation depression), and, finally, what should be the album's best song once you get fed up with the big hits on all the A-sides: ʽMoving In Stereoʼ, whose cold synths, doom-laden bassline, and lengthy instrumental coda make it straightforwardly grim, unmasked by uptempo rhythmics or merry singalong vocal choruses. It also contains a great, often overlooked verse, that I believe is essential to understand The Cars and their understated awesomeness: "It's so easy to blow up your problems / It's so easy to play up your breakdown / It's so easy to fly through a window / It's so easy to fool with the sound" — precisely the kind of things that so many bad artists exploit in their music, and precisely the kind of things that The Cars preferred to avoid even when they were being at their most psychological. ʽMoving In Stereoʼ is no exception — it's a fairly depressing tune, yet it achieves that effect without resorting to any of the usual clichés associated with depression (well, except for maybe that booming bass, but you'd never accuse the song of having a stereotypical «Goth» sound anyway, with or without the bass).

Such a simple-sounding record, on the whole, and yet so perfect in its intelligent humbleness that no «simple pop-rock» album from the era, with or without New Wave trimmings, can truly compete with it: everything else is either too obsessed with musical innovation and serious message (which is not at all a bad thing, but leaves the niche of pure intelligent entertainment uncomfortably empty), or too drowned in primitive emotions and genrist clichés, or is simply less interesting from a musical standpoint (like Tom Petty, for instance). An obvious thumbs up, the worst thing about which is that the band's subsequent career could not hope to live up to the debut — having pretty much said it all in all the ways they knew across these nine tracks, Ocasec, Orr, and company would never again conquer another peak of comparable height.

CANDY-O (1979)

1) Let's Go; 2) Since I Held You; 3) It's All I Can Do; 4) Double Life; 5) Shoo Be Doo; 6) Candy-O; 7) Night Spots; 8) You Can't Hold On Too Long; 9) Lust For Kicks; 10) Got A Lot On My Head; 11) Dangerous Type.

The «carbon copy» principle does not necessarily lead to failure — one need only mention the classic example of Strange Days doing everything that The Doors did and more — but with The Cars, we have a classic example of the opposite: Candy-O is just like The Cars, featuring all the same ingredients, but completely missing the magic of its predecessor. It's such a direct slap in the face, and, strange as it is, so many people have noticed this and commented on it that a detailed, professional-musicological comparison of the two records could probably lead to major scientific breakthroughs on our perception of music in general, and I'm dead serious.

As an incentive, just take the case of the opening tracks. ʽLet's Goʼ is a good pop-rock single that also opens with the juxtaposition of old-school rock guitar and new-school futuristic synthesizer, also has a catchy singalong chorus, and also has some of that detached, ironic cool. It's a nice song to brighten up your day — but it just ain't ʽGood Times Rollʼ, because ʽGood Times Rollʼ had a certain amount of sonic depth to it. The guitar lick was snapping and barking, the synth counter-response went kick-ass, kick-ass, the vocal was bitterly desperate, the post-chorus keyboard flourish was an anthemic fanfare. There, you had a feeling like something was really happening. ʽLet's Goʼ, in comparison, is just a bit of light-headed fluff — there's no double bottom to this song, no intrinsic bite to the guitar or keyboard melodies, and even the lyrics, come to think of it, are just a 1979 take on ʽI Saw Her Standing Thereʼ ("and she won't give up 'cause she's seventeen" is, after all, a dead giveaway).

Alas, the same relative disappointment applies to just about any song on the album — everywhere you go, you are greeted with the same simple, endearing, fluffy synth-adorned power-pop, decently composed, arranged, and performed, but with very little lasting value, and very little, in fact, to distinguish it from any similar New Wave pop from the era. Some of the choruses are fabulously catchy, yes, mainly through being so repetitive (ʽIt's All I Can Doʼ), but it is only on the guitar-heavy title track, with Orr's almost Kraftwerkian robotic vocals, the relentless mechanistic punch of the rhythm guitar, and the weird alternation of power chords and pseudo-classical arpeggios in the guitar solo, where I am reminded that this is indeed the same band that made The Cars into one of the epoch's most symbolic albums.

I wish I could say that the main problem of Candy-O is that it focuses too much on «silly love songs», but so did The Cars — it's not as if these songs are really that much «sillier» by definition. In fact, repeated listens bring out favorable points almost everywhere. ʽNight Spotsʼ has a classy guitar riff, and it's fun to see it clash with Hawkes' keyboards as they occasionally imitate the sound of equipment heating up and ready to explode. The "it's all gonna happen to you" chorus of ʽDouble Lifeʼ is elegantly attenuated by Easton's slide guitar licks, giving it a touch of class. ʽGot A Lot On My Headʼ is frantic fun, opening with a power-pop riff that lesser bands would kill for, and you just gotta love how it explodes right before the beginning of the verse, scintillating in little flaming fragments away in the stratosphere. In fact, not a single song even begins to approach «bad» — I am not exactly sure about the function of the brief echoey experiment of ʽShoo Be Dooʼ, which sounds like a psycho-New Wave impersonation of Gene Vincent, but at least it's a curious experiment, regardless of whether it succeeds or not.

Overall, it's just like this: imagine an album like Rubber Soul immediately followed, rather than preceded, by a... Please Please Me, then imagine your reaction at such a twist. In time, you'd probably learn to fall under the charm of both, but the first feeling of disappointment (especially if this had really happened around 1965-66 and you were there at the time) would probably stay with you for the rest of your life. And this is pretty much what happened here — Candy-O has the same pretty face as The Cars, but there's no teeth in that pretty mouth once it begins to smile at you. Perfectly enjoyable, but I never ever even get the urge to sing along to any of these songs because I don't feel like they have enough soul in them, and it's hard to empathize. Maybe it would have been better to have them all as instrumentals? Anyway, still a thumbs up for all the cool melodies, but a major relative disappointment that certainly does not deserve getting a Roxy Music-inspired album cover — where's the appropriate decadence, goddammit?

PANORAMA (1980)

1) Panorama; 2) Touch And Go; 3) Gimme Some Slack; 4) Don't Tell Me No; 5) Getting Through; 6) Misfit Kid; 7) Down Boys; 8) You Wear Those Eyes; 9) Running To You; 10) Up And Down.

Perhaps Ocasek and Orr, too, had a suspicion that the magic did not work as efficiently with Candy-O as it did with The Cars — that the album gave too much of an impression that they were trying consciously and somewhat artificially to recreate what used to come so naturally and effortlessly. Either that, that is, or someone in the record business just slapped them around and said, «So you think you're some hot New Wave stuff? I'll tell you who's really New Wave — Gary Numan is! He's not even using any guitars now, that stuff's so on its way out!» And thus, as the Eighties rolled in, it was decided that the sound had to modernize.

Do not be misled, however, by the frequent descriptions of Panorama as a dark, experimental, less accessible album than the usual Carfare — sure it is somewhat darker, mainly because it relies more on bass-happy keyboards than colorful power-pop guitars, but there's nothing particularly «experimental» about it compared to the general post-punk boom of 1980, and as for less accessible, well, The Cars were always oriented at the pop market, and even at their most deviant they had to look for instrumental earworms and catchy singalong choruses. And they were never a bunch of shiny happy people anyway — feeling miserable, if not on the surface, then deep down in the core at least, was always an obligatory component of even their biggest hits.

Anyway, I do not support the school of thought according to which, in basic quality terms, The Cars took a huge dip down with Panorama, and later had to go through a period of convalescence and atonement with the more traditional Shake It Up. At least in the overall context of their career, Panorama introduces some fresh change — and, for what it's worth, the general quantity and quality of the hooks is hardly below the same parameters for Candy-O. I can certainly live with the relative lack of guitar (relative — it is still an integral part of the sound, and most of the solos are guitar-based), and I can understand the sometimes questionable stretching out of song lengths: the band is getting a little bit artsier, and that means requiring a little more time for the build-up or for the groove to achieve the proper hypnotizing effect.

For some reason, I used to really dislike the title track — probably because the nearly six-minute length got to me in the wrong way, but I eventually grew accustomed to its paranoid groove, not to mention that, finally, we have a proper album opener for a band named The Cars, as its tempo and atmosphere are so perfectly compatible with a nighttime drive on a lonely highway. At the heart of what begins as a sort of proto-Depeche Mode synth-pop runner really lies a desperately frantic classic rocker, and it's worth waiting for the climactic moment at about 3:55 into the song when Easton finally breaks through with a crazy-aggressive rock solo, unfortunately, spliced into several small bits rather than allowing the guitarist to stretch out and spill it all in one mega-burst. It is their only attempt at properly doing that «bitter-fast post-punk wail song» that everybody else was doing at the time, and there's enough atmospheric tension and individual guitar / synth hooks here to stand the competition.

The three singles from the album weren't too bad, either: ʽTouch And Goʼ is melodically astute, going from a tricky polymeter structure in the verse (that creates quite a confusing feel) to a «relieving», bouncy ska-like chorus resolution; ʽDon't Tell Me Noʼ is the album's most robotic number, with a dark (generic, though) arena-rock riff and a mechanically soulless keyboard part that agree perfectly with Orr's half-human, half-machine vocals dropping lyrical lines that eerily resemble a modern chatbot ("It's my party. You can come. Don't tell me no"); and only ʽGimme Some Slackʼ seems somewhat silly in comparison, probably because the chorus is based on a really dumb-sounding hook (bad synth tone, too), but it's still catchy.

The non-singles, largely stuck on the second side, range from ironically catchy declarations of insecurity (ʽMisfit Kidʼ) to pissed-off rockers with increased guitar presence (ʽDown Boysʼ may have Easton's angriest guitar riff ever on a Cars song) to slow, smoky ballads stuck somewhere between old-school psychedelia and new-school adult contemporary (ʽYou Wear Those Eyesʼ: not a great song, but that's one great wobbly guitar tone Easton is using for the lead parts). Not everything is equally memorable, but, really, not a single song is openly bad — the craft and light experimentation that went into every one of them seems obvious to me.

It's not as if I were heavily recommending Panorama over Candy-O, even if my tone for the previous review may seem distinctly bluer than for this one. In Spartan terms of melody and hooks, the two are quite on the same level — the only difference is that here, they are trying to construct a different atmosphere, in which they sometimes succeed and sometimes fail, but at least it provides a feeling of artistic growth, and that's good enough for me. It wasn't good enough for the public, who weren't amused and pretty much humiliated ʽTouch And Goʼ in the charts (none of that depressed shit for the US of A in the happy summer of 1980 — not at a time when we have Olivia Newton-John singing ʽMagicʼ, at least!). But it's good enough for me to confirm another thumbs up and insist that, even if one hates it, one has at least to admit that Panorama proved that The Cars were not merely a well-oiled, perfectly programmed, finalized, and locked hit-writing machine operating on one single algorithm.

SHAKE IT UP (1981)

1) Since You're Gone; 2) Shake It Up; 3) I'm Not The One; 4) Victim Of Love; 5) Cruiser; 6) A Dream Away; 7) This Could Be Love; 8) Think It Over; 9) Maybe Baby.

Back to basics — after the somewhat exaggerated gloominess of Panorama, The Cars return with arguably their most lightweight and unpretentious release to that point. If The Cars were all about a smooth, symbolic transition from the age of «classic rock» into the modern era, Candy-O was all about how to handle girl problems in that modern era, and Panorama was about finding a good balance between hooks and atmosphere, then Shake It Up is just a collection of pop hooks, period. The album has almost no personality whatsoever, as Ocasek and Orr either deliver the lyrics without any particular vocal expression or, for some reason, borrow elements of alien vocal styles (on ʽSince You're Goneʼ, Ocasek seems to be giving us a Dylan impersonation — with all that rising pitch on the shouted parts), not to mention how the vocals are regularly obscured in the mix, starting a tendency that would eventually reach its peak on Heartbeat City.

With albums like these, writing reviews is no fun because it all ultimately comes down to the overall number of hooks per song — these tunes are catchy all right, but so slight that it's easier to come up with useful insights about a jar of mayonnaise. The title track, which was also chosen for the album's first single, truly does nothing except incite you to "shake it up" (or, if you need more detail, "dance all night, play all day, don't let nothin' get in the way"), with a fun guitar melody and an appropriate set of woo-hoos to carry the day; its B-side, ʽCruiserʼ, is much better, particularly its odd two-part riff that begins with brawny arena-rock power chords and ends with a lighter bluesy flourish (people usually prefer the reverse order), but there's little else to the song: it does somehow manage to convey the grimy atmosphere of nighttime cruising through the seedy parts of the big city, but that is hardly enough for a great song — decent, nothing more.

As far as sonic evolution is concerned, Shake It Up clearly pushes forward into the electronic age, although in 1981 mainstream production standards had not yet propelled bands high up in the air: electronically enhanced drums, with elements of drum machine programming, and synthesized dance-pop loops reflect the possible influence of Prince (something like ʽThink It Overʼ could, in fact, very easily have fit in on Controversy), but the sound is still very much «in your face», with a high quotient of pure fun. On the other hand, it does hurt with the occasional ballad like ʽI'm Not The Oneʼ, where Easton's melodic lead guitar lines are almost wasted on a bleepy melody that seems more suitable for a soundtrack to some early Japanese hentai game than for your respectable speakers — meaning that the then-fresh, now-ridiculous sonic textures of the decade are already beginning to corrode the musicianship.

In the middle of it all comes ʽA Dream Awayʼ, a tune that is seriously out of place on the album: a grim, slightly industrialized soundscape, with Ocasek's voice run through some serious effects and now somewhat similar to Lou Reed's in its gloomy commentary on a world that cannot satisfy the protagonist, because "the good life is just a dream away". The song is almost like an outtake from Panorama, and although thematically it is not too far away from the many other pessimistic statements on this record, musically it is far darker than the title track or ʽVictim Of Loveʼ — showing that, once the initial impression is over, there's at least a little more to the album than just the hook-stuffed singles.

But still, not enough to shake off the feeling that Shake It Up is about as lightweight a record as its cover suggests — as The Cars return to the old tried-and-true practice of putting glitzy supermodels on their slightly decadent album sleeves (and this time armed with a cocktail shaker at that). A nice listen if you like simple and direct early Eighties pop, and a well-earned thumbs up all the way, but the fact that the title track actually earned them their first Top 10 hit on the Billboard charts (ʽGood Times Rollʼ only hit No. 41, in comparison) is hardly a positive testimony in the face of humanity.

HEARTBEAT CITY (1984)

1) Hello Again; 2) Looking For Love; 3) Magic; 4) Drive; 5) Stranger Eyes; 6) You Might Think; 7) It's Not The Night; 8) Why Can't I Have You; 9) I Refuse; 10) Heartbeat City.

I must say, it still feels good to be so completely free of Eighties nostalgia that it is possible to openly state — Heartbeat City sucks from start to finish, despite being such an immaculately crafted product. I can enjoy some of the individual songs, and I can sometimes find things of deeper value behind the superficial pop gloss, but on a general, simplified scale Heartbeat City is a musical disaster. All of the Cars' records have «dated» to a certain extent, but none of them more so than this collection of bright, shiny mid-Eighties pop nuggets, fashioned so exclusively for the sake of commercial success and nothing else.

The band took a lengthy break after Shake It Up, during which Ocasek and Hawkes released their first solo albums and also had themselves plenty of free time to take a good look at the world's trending directions. Two trends that seemed obvious were: (a) «guitar bands are on their way out» with synth-pop and digital technology on the rise; (b) MTV power. Consequently, once they finally got together for the next effort in mid-1983, enlisting Robert "Mutt" Lange to produce the album (you can't go wrong with a producer who was able to cover even AC/DC and Def Leppard in gold!) and relocating to London for the sessions (European flavor!), the two most important things were — get rid of most of the guitars in favor of synthesizers and electronic drums; and produce as many videos as possible, most of which, it has to be admitted, were far more innovative and fun than the songs they were supposed to accompany.

Oh sure, Heartbeat City has plenty of hooks — cold, mechanical, robotic ones; not cold enough to be Kraftwerk-icy and haunting, though, but simply cold enough to feel as plastic and lifeless as the opening ghostly vocals that greet you with their "hello... hello again". The entire track is a mix of several different, but equally simplistic synth parts (the main eight-note synth riff sounds like two robots vomiting in sync), toughened up with power metal guitar chords in the chorus, and no amount of tragedy in Ocasek's voice can salvage the garbage melody (which is garbage not because it is synth-pop, but because it is bad synth-pop: where Depeche Mode could tune their electronics to convey sadness, disillusionment, or even horror, ʽHello Againʼ and its ilk just sound like repetitive beeps and bleeps).

Uptempo pop songs like ʽLooking For Loveʼ and ʽYou Might Thinkʼ simply sound awful, and I would never accept arguments like «well, The Cars sounded like everybody sounded back in 1978, and now they just sound like everybody sounded in 1984 — what's the big deal?», because not everybody sounded like this in 1984, but only everybody obsessed with capitalizing on the latest trends, and the latest trends were «more synthesizers, less intelligence»: ʽYou Might Thinkʼ rides almost entirely on one five-note keyboard sequence (once you've heard the first two seconds of the song, believe me, you've heard pretty much everything), and relates to ʽGood Times Rollʼ in about the same way in which a Britney Spears «pop» song would relate to a Beatles one. Why the heck did it chart? Simple — because of the video, which was one of the first videos to use computer graphics, and combined computer effects with sleaziness to perfection. And don't even get me started on ʽMagicʼ, with its three-chord power riff and arena-rock chorus that sounds like very bad Boston. Was it really that hard to invest just a little more time and energy in such a thing as composing?

Ultimately, I count two out of ten songs that still have a magic touch to them after all these years. I should be hating ʽDriveʼ as a synth-heavy adult contemporary ballad, deeply derivative from 10cc's ʽI'm Not In Loveʼ; truth is, I have always been enchanted by Orr's vocal part — and the synth textures and ethereal overdubbed harmonies agree with it very well. Unlike most of everything else here, this track actually has soul, and plenty of psychologism: somehow, it just captures that «late night depression» vibe to perfection, and if you're ever in need of a little seance of self-pity, locked all alone in your room and stuff, ʽDriveʼ should be among the first tracks on that mixtape. Alas, Orr never replicates that success — already on his second ballad, ʽWhy Can't I Have Youʼ, he sounds plastic, manneristic, and theatrical in comparison.

The only other track that redeems the record is ʽHeartbeat Cityʼ itself (a.k.a. ʽJackiʼ on the original US edition of the album). Uptempo and electronic like everything else, it is actually a deeply melancholic ballad that takes the «fun side» of the album and turns it on its head — the lyrics are somewhat enigmatic (nobody really knows who Jacki actually is, and why is it that everything depends on her presence or absence), but the feeling is quite unambiguous: one of being trapped, without hope of escape or change, in «Heartbeat City». You can just think of it as a song of lost love, or, like I like to do, you can expand it to include a bit of that old Roxy Music-influenced melancholic decadence — looking for true feeling and passion in a hedonistic-materialistic world ("there's a place for everyone under Heartbeat City's golden sun", etc.). In any case, this is the only track on the entire record where the looped synth pattern actually conveys emotion and perfectly agrees with Ocasek's sorrowful vocal part.

It would be useless to give the album a thumbs down — it has pretty much passed on to legend, and it will take yet another wave of general disgust (this time, retrospective, which is much harder) for generic Eighties production and commercialism to give it a proper spanking, which a single negative rating could hardly hope to trigger. More importantly, I find it hard to condemn an album which still contains occasional flashes of inspiration and even genius: ʽDriveʼ and ʽHeartbeat Cityʼ are unimpeachable, and show that The Cars certainly did not «run out of talent» by 1983 — they just let themselves be sidetracked with the temptation of getting back on that elusive cutting edge. But «great album»? Come on now, it's a frickin' sellout — look the word up in encyclopaedias, and eventually you'll find a certain Peter Phillips art piece illustrating it.

DOOR TO DOOR (1987)

1) Leave Or Stay; 2) You Are The Girl; 3) Double Trouble; 4) Fine Line; 5) Everything You Say; 6) Ta Ta Wayo Wayo; 7) Strap Me In; 8) Coming Up You; 9) Wound Up On You; 10) Go Away; 11) Door To Door.

Conventional wisdom says that Heartbeat City, with its mega-popular singles and ground-breaking videos, was a very good record — then the same conventional wisdom goes on to say that Door To Door, released after yet another break for solo projects, was a tremendous drop down in quality, and the record is consistently rated as the band's worst ever. So poorly produced, so uninspired, so boring, that the only way they could excuse themselves was by breaking up, which they did. One and a half stars, tops.

For some reason, I have never felt this opposition. To me, this is basically Heartbeat City Vol. 2, perhaps a wee bit heavier on (bad) guitars, but also a tad darker and more mysterious — on my own, I would never have guessed that I was supposed to love the former and hate the latter. It even has about the same ration of songs I really have a feeling for and songs I couldn't care less about never hearing again; my only explanation is that the overall «style» of Heartbeat City, which felt fresh and exciting in 1984, had become so clichéd and stale by 1987 that the same songs that used to be adored were now abhorred. But as time becomes compressed and we now look back at both records from a faraway point, I suppose it's high time the oddly polarized reactions began to be corrected.

I mean, ʽYou Are The Girlʼ is essentially a follow-up to ʽYou Might Thinkʼ, maybe a bit more sentimental, but essentally the same type of simple upbeat catchy pop song that does not mean much in the grand scheme of things, but is worth a chuckle or two while it's on. Granted, the second single, ʽStrap Me Inʼ, may be one of the worst things they ever did (three power chords is not the reason why they brought back more guitars, right?), but the third one, ʽComing Up Youʼ, is a soft synth pop tune for kids that has plenty of inventive «symphonic-electronic» overdubs to suggest they actually still cared at the moment, so?..

Anyway, the two songs I really like have nothing to do with the singles. ʽFine Lineʼ is a moody follow-up to ʽDriveʼ, this time with a smoky, melancholic atmosphere created by solemn sustained organ notes, and even moodier overdubs by Hawkes and Easton — this time there's no optimism, as in ʽDriveʼ, and although the lyrics are enigmatic, the feeling is one of acknowledging the inevitability of alienation ("there's a fine line between us, all the way"), and it's working. The second favorite is ʽGo Awayʼ, another Orr-sung number that's actually closer to ʽDriveʼ in spirit, but now it's fast and energetic, and the escapist chorus, highlighted by a bitter-tender jangling guitar line, really stands out as an emotional outbreak. Both songs are dark in essence — uneasy broodings by people who feel trapped in a rut and do not have a good idea of how to break the circle, but are able to at least encode that desperation in melody.

Perhaps it was, after all, the element of thick distorted «quasi-punk» guitar that pissed off critics and fans alike: the title track begins with such an insanely fast drum beat that if it weren't the last track on the album, fans might have suspected their favorite band to have gone hardcore on their asses. But it's only there on three tracks — title song, ʽStrap Me Inʼ, and ʽDouble Troubleʼ, the last of which is actually moderately catchy, so not that much of a problem. There's also one of the earliest songs they wrote, ʽTa Ta Wayo Wayoʼ, another fast and merry pop-rocker that they rehearsed in the studio and eventually loved so much they decided to finally cut it — silly decision, perhaps, yet there's nothing that should make us think of, say, ʽWhy Can't I Have Youʼ as a masterpiece and this song as a comparative throwaway.

In short, Door To Door isn't half as bad as they tell you: chances are that if you honestly like Heartbeat City, you'll find plenty of things to like on this belated follow-up as well. It's a different matter entirely that The Cars, as a band, found themselves ultimately dissatisfied with each other and chose to break up — not at the end of their rope (Ocasek went on to have quite a successful career), but rather just because they felt like it: "we left on a good note, a high note", says Ocasek, and while the note could certainly have been higher, there was plenty of room in musical Hell well below Heartbeat City (becoming a collective Bryan Adams, for instance!), and they never went there, and that's okay by me.

MOVE LIKE THIS (2011)

1) Blue Tip; 2) Too Late; 3) Keep On Knocking; 4) Soon; 5) Sad Song; 6) Free; 7) Drag On Forever; 8) Take Another Look; 9) It's Only; 10) Hits Me.

In the 1990s, Ocasek stated in interviews that The Cars would never ever run again, but, of course, that was just an artistic lie: all it took was the death of Ben Orr from cancer in 2000, and then a ridiculous experiment with Hawkes and Easton forming «The New Cars» (with no less than Todd Rundgren as a participating member!) for touring purposes, to get Ric to realize that (a) you only live once, (b) no matter what he does, he is still going to be remembered as the frontman for The Cars rather than a solo artist. Consequently, it is not amazing that The Cars eventually reunited; it is amazing that they had to wait more than twenty years to reunite. On the other hand, one should never underestimate the «been so long...» factor — with the band having passed into legend so long ago, the appearance of Move Like This, for many fans and critics alike, was akin to the second coming of Christ (or should we say, of Chrysler? no, not really funny).

While some reunion albums actually try to give you the impression that the artist is moving along with the times, Move Like This is not dicking around one iota — it is a straightforward attempt to recapture the vibe of The Cars, although, frankly speaking, the final result sounds more like Shake It Up, at least if you compare the respective roles of the guitar and the synth. Technically, it all works: Hawkes, Easton, and Ocasek still remember to choose the correct instrumental tones and pick the proper pop notes, while Jacknife Lee, an Irish musician who used to dabble in both punk rock and electronica, and is also substituting here for the deceased Orr on bass, assists the band in producing the album as if it were a time capsule. No wonder hardcore fans and critics were delighted — on the surface, it all sounds like a classic Cars album.

Beyond the surface, though, it's a little underwhelming: essentially, the record feels strangely purposeless. The opening single, ʽBlue Tipʼ, combines rough guitar riffage with technobleeps just like ʽGood Times Rollʼ, but the emotional atmosphere is different — instead of the old «confused-lamenting» vibe, we get something more accusatory and angry (apparently, the song has a social message — "you believe in anything, they tell you how to think" etc.), but the message is not supported by the relatively weak pop hooks. There's nothing particularly wrong about the technobleeps, and I suppose that the fanfare-like riff of the chorus is kinda catchy, but the song on the whole is neither mindless fun nor an angry diatribe — something that's nice to listen to once or twice and then forget forever.

Unfortunately, the same feel applies to all the other nine tracks. It's The Cars-lite, pleasant and pointless; quite monotonous (I think about half of the songs share precisely the same mid-tempo beat) and without even a single stand-out number. Ah, if at least one of the album's two or three ballads had the magic of a ʽDriveʼ — but instead we get stuff like ʽTake Another Lookʼ, whose chorus is entirely predictable, no better or worse than any adult contemporary ballad ever written. And the uptempo stuff is just six or seven ways for Ocasek to tell us that he still can't get no satisfaction, but now he just resorts to minor variations on the same groove to get his point across, and this quickly becomes tedious.

Consequently, I can hardly stand it when people write mildly positive reviews of the album, saying «well, at least it's better than Door To Door, that's for sure». It is not frickin' better than Door To Door, because I'd at least take ʽFine Lineʼ and ʽGo Awayʼ over every single track on Move Like This — back then, The Cars were a struggling band caught in a web of internal contradictions, but the music still reflected living, vibrant feelings. Move Like This, in comparison, gives the impression of an impeccably dressed corpse, with everything intact and polished except for, you know, soul. And it would be an insult to The Cars to insist that they had never been much more than a plastic, glossy, superficially catchy pop band. Personally, I'd rather prefer to insult this one album than their entire career — by giving it a thumbs down and stating that this stillborn reunion should never have happened. (And, just for the record, not all reunions by legendary New Wave heroes were stillborn — Blondie's No Exit, for instance, sounds a dozen times more alive in comparison).

CHEAP TRICK

CHEAP TRICK (1977)

1) ELO Kiddies; 2) Daddy Should Have Stayed In High School; 3) Taxman, Mr. Thief; 4) Cry, Cry; 5) Oh Candy; 6) Hot Love; 7) Speak Now Or Forever Hold Your Peace; 8) He's A Whore; 9) Mandocello; 10) The Ballad Of TV Violence (I'm Not The Only Boy).

If you find it strange to see a band that released its debut album in 1977 sound so close to the glam-rock style of the first half of that decade, rather than be seriously influenced by the punk and New Wave styles of the present — do keep in mind that the band's guitarist and primary songwriter Rick Nielsen began playing in local Illinois bands as early as 1961 (being just 13 years of age), and that his first record, cut when he and Cheap Trick's future bassist Tom Petersson were still playing in a band called Fuse, was released in 1967. Furthermore, as I began relistening to their stuff a while ago and asking myself the question, «so who could really have been the biggest influence on these guys?» — eventually an inner voice called out SLADE!, and lo and behold, the next thing I re-learn is that the very name Cheap Trick actually comes from their going to a Slade concert and thinking that they used «every cheap trick in the book» while playing. New Wave? Post-punk? Forget it. You don't have to resort to chainsaw buzz or futuristic electronic bleeps and bloops if you want to be a rock star — not in 1977, you still don't.

Image was of serious importance to Cheap Trick in the early days of their popularity: the well-described contrast between the «two pretty ones» (blonde rhythm guitarist and lead vocalist Robin Zander and black-haired bassist Tom Petersson) and the «two nerdy ones» (baseball-cap-clad, five-neck-guitar-wielding lead guitarist Rick Nielsen and bookkeeper-turned-drummer Bun E. Carlos) did the job fairly well, not to mention Nielsen's additional antics on stage. On the other hand, one should not overestimate that popularity, either — Cheap Trick's studio albums did not chart too high until the success of Budokan, and in those early days, they did not chart at all, because the band's sound was almost anachronistic for 1977. (Curiously, they pretty much repeated the trajectory of KISS — who could not make commercial headway with their studio records, but finally broke it big with a live album).

So carry yourself back all the way to February 1977 and witness the birth of the underground power-pop band Cheap Trick — loud rock guitars and catchy vocal pop hooks all the way. What was it that made them special after all those years of guitar-based pop-rock bands? No single element, but a clever combination that allows to easily identify all their influences, but cannot be judged as a simple sum of all of them. Melody-wise, they'd sworn complete allegiance to the Beatles that they would carry through all the better and worse days of their career (and even on this debut, there are at least two totally blatant tributes to the Fab Four — ʽTaxman, Mr. Thiefʼ is quite transparent, but there's also the way Robin yells out "anytime at all, anytime at all" on ʽHe's A Whoreʼ that seems to be quite intentional); but sound-wise, they're suckers for a thick, crunchy hard-rock sound that owes much more to Slade, T. Rex, and other glam outfits of the early 1970s, and this really makes them the primary torch-bearers for the term «power pop» (which can be reasonably well applied to such earlier acts as Big Star and Badfinger as well, but neither Big Star nor Badfinger ever had even half as much pure power as Cheap Trick).

To this we should necessarily add a pinch of intelligence and witty sarcasm: unlike KISS, Cheap Trick were interested in rising above the level of Lusty Caveman, and although the self-titled debut does have its share of straightforward love ballads (ʽMandocelloʼ) and libido blast rockers (ʽHot Loveʼ), the majority of the songs either address social issues (ʽELO Kiddiesʼ, ʽTaxman, Mr. Thiefʼ) or complain of general personal insecurity (ʽSpeak Now Or Forever Hold Your Peaceʼ). And even ʽHot Loveʼ, when viewed in the overall context — for instance, as a precursor to the maniacal ʽBallad Of TV Violenceʼ — can hardly be taken without an ironic grain of salt. (Then again, it's all in good tradition: somebody like Marc Bolan, for instance, would always retain an ironic angle to his «sex idol» image, rather than playing it straight and stupid).

For Cheap Trick fans, the self-titled debut often has a special relevance, since it was produced by Aerosmith's producer Jack Douglas — and, consequently, is viewed as «less polished» and, therefore, «more authentic» than the rest of their Seventies' output, produced by Tom Werman. This may be objectively right — there's a little more crunch-and-rip to the guitars here, perhaps — but it is not necessarily a plus: Cheap Trick were a composition-based pop band first, and a rock'n'roll beast only second, so what really matters is how well written the songs are, and in that respect, I'd say that Cheap Trick has a larger share of underdeveloped filler than its two nearly-flawless follow-ups (no wonder, actually, that none of the songs from Cheap Trick made it to the original Budokan album, and only two appeared on the complete edition of the concert).

That does not mean that the band had to «learn» songwriting craft after this album, but it did learn more discipline — while a song like ʽDaddy Should Have Stayed In High Schoolʼ (not because daddy has always been a moron, but because daddy is still hunting for young flesh) certainly looks less «safe for work» than the band's later, less titillating, stuff, musically it is little more than a forgettable mess of distorted chords that can never come together into a solid riff. If you want yourself a really scary pedophile anthem, go back all the way to the Stones' ʽStray Cat Bluesʼ: this one's pretty sloppy in comparison. I am also not a fan of the lumbering slow blues trot of ʽCry Cryʼ (seems like an attempt to write something in late Beatles-era Lennon style à la ʽYer Bluesʼ, but Zander is too theatrical a personage to ever match John) — and not only do I not have the vaguest idea why ʽMandocelloʼ shares that title despite not featuring either a mandolin or a cello, but I also think it is their least effective ballad from the «golden period». Too slow and lumbering for a rocker, too harsh for a ballad, and the bassline seems to have been lifted from AC/DC's ʽHigh Voltageʼ, which is quite confusing.

But even with all the imperfections, more than half of Cheap Trick is stellar. ʽELO Kiddiesʼ is a brilliant introduction to the world of the band — the heaviness of the rhythm guitar and the pop melodicity of the lead line, the ambiguity of the lyrics (and the title — nobody really knows why ʽHello Kiddiesʼ eventually turned into ʽELO Kiddiesʼ and what it is exactly that Jeff Lynne has to do with kids who "lead a life of crime"... unless, of course, one thinks it a crime to buy a brand new copy of A New World Record), the lead pipes of the lead vocalist (that "you haven't got much TIIIME!... you know they're out to get you!!!!" is one of the greatest bits of white-guy scream on record the other side of Roger Daltrey) — it's, like, welcome to a radical reinvention of what «power pop» can be all about. Likewise, ʽTaxman, Mr. Thiefʼ brilliantly alternates between the paranoid distorted guitar lines of the verses and the Beatlesque chorus that delivers its simple message that nothing much has really changed in the last ten (eleven) years.

Arguably the single most ass-kicking moment of the album is the guitar punch that opens ʽHot Loveʼ, a song that hair metal bands of the next decade would probably kill for, but how many of them would be able to do it just right? Raw, rioting, restless rhythm guitars and a psychedelic lead guitar tone, the tightest rhythm section imaginable, lyrics that avoid unnecessary hypersexual clichés, and a lead vocalist that can scream at the top of his lungs and somehow not come across as a pompous imbecile? And just a few steps down the road, followed by ʽHe's A Whoreʼ that pretty much does it again, but with a bit rougher language? (The desperation in Zander's voice as he yells "I'M A WHORE!" as if he were being cast for The Exorcist is priceless).

Hilariously, ʽThe Ballad Of TV Violenceʼ opens with a five-note riff that is pretty much lifted from Uriah Heep's ʽGypsyʼ — except Cheap Trick are actually a good band, and instead of hanging the entire song on one riff, they quickly depart from it into the direction of an eerily danceable boogie that tells the story of a mass killer, with Zander going into full-scale Charlie Manson mode and the whole band doing sort of a ritualistic dance on the skulls of the fallen. Probably the most provocative track of their career, even if rock musicians have always tended to be fascinated by serial killers (from ʽMidnight Ramblerʼ to ʽGary Gilmore's Eyesʼ), but Cheap Trick work extra fine in «dark clown» mode, so this is a particular highlight. All in all, a magnificent debut, even despite some rough songwriting edges, and, I might add, one of the brightest beacons of hope for the «old school of rock'n'roll» in an era when conservative heavy rock riffage was going out of fashion, eclipsed by punk rock and the New Wave of heavy metal — so, naturally, a thumbs up without any reservations.

IN COLOR (1977)

1) Hello There; 2) Big Eyes; 3) Downed; 4) I Want You To Want Me; 5) You're All Talk; 6) Oh Caroline; 7) Clock Strikes Ten; 8) Southern Girls; 9) Come On Come On; 10) So Good To See You.

All right, so this album is neither as crunchy and raw as its predecessor (because they changed producers) nor as subtly deep as its follow-up (because they temporarily ran out of truly titillating subjects) — but it is still the perfect Cheap Trick album, simply because it has no filler whatsoever. This is where Nielsen's songwriting powers reach a genuine peak, as does his art of genre-hopping (and no, it's not nearly true that Nielsen only knows two subgenres of pop music: the «Lennon Pop» and the «McCartney Pop» genres, even if they do get unfairly superior coverage on this record — he also knows all the subgenres that are derived from those two!!)

For starters, there's probably no single other song that would explain all the essence of Cheap Trick more effectively than ʽHello Thereʼ does in one and a half minutes. On the surface, it is a silly, generic arena-rock winding-up of the fans — "would you like to do a number with me? would you like to?.. WOULD YOU LIKE TO?..." — but the use of "hello there, ladies and gentlemen", hardly an appropriate turn of phrase for a rock'n'roll arena, inverts the message and places the whole thing under heavy irony: it's like they're a Las Vegas act that accidentally ended up on a much bigger stage, and now they have to address the rock'n'roll crowds in the «proverbial» rock'n'roll manner. That's the band's double nature in a nutshell — they're formally respecting the arena-rock cliches, but they're also mocking them at the same time — in the same way that some of the more intelligent hair metal bands, like Extreme, would do this with their genre a decade later. And if I am not mistaken, that brief guitar solo at the end is lifted almost directly from Bowie's ʽHang On To Yourselfʼ, which is just as symbolic: a retro-nod from the current generation of ironic glam-rockers to the Grand Deity of ironic glam-rock himself.

But just so that you do not forget that Cheap Trick have a real musical heart behind all the irony and all the «cheap tricks», the next song is ʽBig Eyesʼ, which, on the guttest of gut levels, is my personal favorite Cheap Trick song of all time. Yes, it is obviously far from the most intelligent one, or the most sophisticatedly arranged one, but there are few, if any, things in the world that beat the absolute MONSTER of a riff that kicks in right after the brief arpeggiated guitar intro, and then loyally reappears, doubled by the vocals, in each chorus, the "I keep falling for those big eyes..." riff. God, what a monster — this is basically Tony Iommi borrowed for power-pop usage, a caveman declaration of voodoo lust that screams «bewitched» and «brutal» at the same time. The contrast between Zander's angry screechy vocals in the verses and the group's collective «dazed and confused» harmonies in the chorus is priceless by itself, but it is largely the riff that turns the song into the single Top Headbanging moment of the band's career. And, believe you me, only very few hard rock acts in the world are capable of such instantaneous magic.

Cheap, simple, delectable thrills like these are the word of the day — if ʽHello Thereʼ and ʽBig Eyesʼ are not enough for you, then we will close the deal with ʽI Want You To Want Meʼ, Nielsen's intentional attempt to write a very lightweight pop song that would send the genre up, pretty much like ʽHello Thereʼ sends up the crowdpleasing rituals of the arena. People like comparing it to McCartney, but McCartney took those simple love songs more seriously and he'd probably never write anything quite as simplistic, not even in 1977 — this is more like, I dunno, Osmonds territory or something, and yet, still unbeatable, largely due to the "didn't I see you crying?" bridge where you have the first phrase as tender and caring, the second one as worried and fearful, and the third one as determined and heroic (only the fourth one, reprising the first, kind of breaks the flaw — I always keep thinking of the last one as slightly underwritten. Mail the whole thing to Macca for some perfection polish?). So, classic rock radio overplay aside (and who listens to these stations nowadays, anyway?), that makes the single best pure pop hook in Cheap Trick history closely following up on the heels of their single best heavy rock hook. Everything's delightfully insincere, of course, but who cares?

The other big hit was ʽSouthern Girlsʼ, Cheap Trick's personal contribution to the series of anthems to collective female attraction that already included such obvious influences as ʽCalifornia Girlsʼ and ʽSeptember Gurlsʼ: Trick's song manages to resemble both of them in spirit (and a bit in form) without being obviously derivative of either, but also, as could be expected, a little ironic in nature (after all, the sincerity of a bunch of Illinoisans' love for «Southern girls» might be put under doubt, not to mention that they hadn't even been more to the South than Oklahoma by early 1977). It is still a near-perfect power-pop creation: a puffed-up musical march that builds up a stereotype and then proceeds to demolish it — not that any actual Southern girl would be happy if she were addressed with "Southern girl, you've got nothing to lose!"

But that's just the hits anyway, and then there's everything else, never letting down the quality angle. ʽDownedʼ? One of their finest early quasi-psychedelic numbers — Zander's "downed, out of my head...", arching out of your speakers, really feels like he means it. ʽYou're All Talkʼ? It's like Stevie Wonder's ʽSuperstitionʼ gone hard rock and sped up: cool, angry, funky bass and guitar interplay, not to mention the hilarious contrast between Zander's pleading "please don't go... please don't go away from me" and pissed-off "you're all talk! you're all talk!" — more of the «confused caveman» emotional angle. ʽOh Carolineʼ? Perhaps the most Foreigner-like of the lot, but in the general tongue-in-cheek context of the album, even its falsetto "go to the end of the world... FOR YOUR LOVE!" feels like a post-modernist deconstruction of the arena love ballad rather than «the real thing». ʽClock Strikes Tenʼ? Their fastest, head-spinningest piece of rockabilly gone heavy and mastodontic. ʽCome On Come Onʼ? Until I bothered to listen to the lyrics, I thought it was one of those "people get together" anthems that stimulate the listener to action, like breaking a few chairs or pulling a hunger strike on the White House lawn, but it turns out that the song is actually an instigation to copulation, which makes those "come on, come on... yeah yeah, yeah yeah..." group harmonies even more hilarious (and gross), though I can, like, totally envision Rick Nielsen in his checkered suit and baseball hat as a perverted voyeur.

By the time the album tells you that "I want you to stay" in Zander's most seductive falsetto on the last track, you might just be tempted to follow the admonition and play it from the beginning all over again — at the very least, it is clear that In Color has fully capitalized upon the promise of the self-titled debut, and that Cheap Trick have pretty much saved the day for old school classic rock. They may have been too derivative for their home country to want them: the album sold significantly better than Cheap Trick, but still barely charted, and neither did any of the singles. Yet they did gain enough prominence to earn plenty of bookings in Europe and in Japan, and time only worked in their favor: these days, it's even hard to guess that the record was produced in 1977, with not a single trace of the contemporary punk sound (sure sounds a lot like the New York Dolls in places, but in 1977 that was yesterday's news already), let alone disco. What really matters, though, is how great those pop hooks are, song after song after song: these guys sure knew how to be consistent, if only for a brief while, and that particular lesson that they most likely did learn from The Beatles really separates them from the majority of their contemporaries. So, quite an exultated thumbs up here.

HEAVEN TONIGHT (1978)

1) Surrender; 2) On Top Of The World; 3) California Man; 4) High Roller; 5) Auf Wiedersehen; 6) Takin' Me Back; 7) On The Radio; 8) Heaven Tonight; 9) Stiff Competition; 10) How Are You; 11) Oh Claire.

You know what's a creepy song? ʽHeaven Tonightʼ is a creepy song, and the fact that it's placed right in the middle of an album of typically tongue-in-cheap-trick tunes, or even the fact that Nielsen himself called it a «parody» on anti-drug songs is able to do anything with the creepiness. I would be the first to agree that Cheap Trick is essentially a «B-level» band, one whose inherent sense of humor always prevented it from descending into the true depths of human psychology and emotionality (and when they'd lost that sense of humor in their Eighties shit period, it was too late to go deep anyway) — but no first-rate B-level band can exist without at least one or two A-level tunes, and ʽHeaven Tonightʼ is simply it.

The song has been compared to everything, from the Beatles' ʽI Want Youʼ to Led Zep's ʽKashmirʼ, with both of which it does share melodic properties, but the vibe is different — it is distinctly funereal, a more-than-perfect soundtrack to the death of a junkie. Just a few transpositions, and the magical-mystical-Sufian ʽKashmirʼ vibe becomes a funeral march... but the most shiver-sending moment is, of course, when Zander lowers his voice down to that ominous whisper — "would you like to go to Heaven tonight? would you like to go to Heaven tonight?"... where ʽHeavenʼ signifies both the heavenly delight of a really solid dose of the stuff, and its direct consequences. A parody? This should be played at frickin' drug rehab centers — the only song I know that could compare to this directly in impact is the Stones' ʽSister Morphineʼ. Oh, and did I mention the instrumental banshee wail in the coda? I am still not completely in the clear what instrument that is — a musical saw? Or just a synthesizer imitating one? Regardless, it's as perfect a symbolization of the poor soul finally getting on its way to Heaven as possible.

And no, the rest of the album is nowhere near that heavy on the senses, even if it is very frequently heavier on the guitars. For many, Heaven Tonight remains the absolute peak of the band, and I almost concur, except I think that In Color may be just a tad more consistent, if, on the whole, lighter in tone. In a way, Heaven Tonight synthesizes the «rawness» and «titillation» aspects of the self-titled debut with the tightness and pop hooks of In Color, so its greatest songs (title track apart, that must be ʽSurrenderʼ and ʽAuf Wiedersehenʼ) are true pop masterpieces, and both of them sound as fresh and relevant today as they did nearly 40 years ago. In particular, ʽSurrenderʼ, with its theme of «hip unity» between teens and parents, has, in fact, only become more relevant with age, as parents and grandparents these days can often give their kids lessons in hipness ("Mom and Dad are rolling on the couch... got my Kiss records out" almost sounds sentimentally naive these days!).

And ʽAuf Wiedersehenʼ — now there's a tongue-in-cheek song for you! If you ever contemplated suicide, this song could actually present a cure: the very concept of suicide is sent up so brutally by these guys (basically, the message is "you want to kill yourself? no, really? wait, lemme just grab the popcorn!") that the very act of suicide, through this angle, becomes a moronic theatrical gesture rather than a true solution to your problems. Cue solid Dylan lyrical reference (not that ʽAll Along The Watchtowerʼ ever endorsed suicide, but it was a dark tune all the same), an Alice Cooper-ish riff brimming with swagger and contempt, and some of Zander's wildest screaming ever captured on record, and you got yourself a kick-ass positive social statement (which, I have no doubt, quite a few idiots in their time may have mistaken for propaganda of suicide).

The rest of the record lags and sags a little bit in between the three big babies, although, truth be told, there is not a single bad tune — some are just okay, like ʽHigh Rollerʼ, a slow catchy cock-rocker based on a riff with AC/DC chords played Grand Funk style; or ʽOn The Radioʼ, which lifts its fun ascending melody from the Kinks' ʽPicture Bookʼ and goes for the same style of light-hearted nostalgia; or the music hall influenced ʽHow Are Youʼ, which is even more McCartney-esque than ʽI Want You To Want Meʼ — a fun, catchy, friendly song, but one that would pretty soon disappear off the radar (because who the heck would want to have to perform two ʽI Want You To Want Meʼs in a single show?). One song that did go on to become a show stopper, surprisingly, is a loyally performed cover of The Move's ʽCalifornia Manʼ (with a bit of ʽBrontosaurusʼ thrown in for good measure) — a perfect barrelhouse boogie for the boys, but certainly a bit unoriginal; Nielsen's glam-rock guitar soloing in the middle, with almost every single rock and roll cliché thrown in, is probably the high point.

In any case, even the least of the lesser numbers is still perfectly enjoyable thru and thru, and the album thrives on quirky little hooks and gimmicks that keep the interest up and running — even the final track (ʽOh Claireʼ), a one-minute arena-rock screamer with "oh, konnichiwa!" as the only lyrics: it is, at the exact same time, a send-up of their «tradition» of recording an ʽOh C...ʼ song on every album (ʽOh Candyʼ, ʽOh Carolineʼ), made even funnier by the fact that it is a pun on "Eau Claire, Wisconsin" — and an odd «preview» of the Budokan concert, perhaps recorded in the anticipation of the upcoming Japanese tour. (Actually, the song was not listed at all on the LP cover, being one of those ʽHer Majestyʼ-style little surprises... alas, it is impossible to write a single Cheap Trick review without a bunch of Beatles references, is it?).

Yes, Heaven Tonight is a monster of an album — and the last in the classic trilogy to work wonders with pretty much the exact same formula. It's almost a pity that already on the next album they'd start tinkering with the formula — and initiating their downfall in the process — but in 1978, there was still no end in sight to the power and the glory. An enthusiastic thumbs up: this is absolutely required listening for all lovers of heavy pop music.

AT BUDOKAN (1979; 1998)

1) Hello There; 2) Come On Come On; 3) ELO Kiddies; 4) Speak Now Or Forever Hold Your Peace; 5) Big Eyes; 6) Lookout; 7) Downed; 8) Can't Hold On; 9) Oh Caroline; 10) Surrender; 11) Auf Wiedersehen; 12) Need Your Love; 13) High Roller; 14) Southern Girls; 15) I Want You To Want Me; 16) California Man; 17) Goodnight; 18) Ain't That A Shame; 19) Clock Strikes Ten.

US audiences really love their pop rock LIVE! and kicking, don't they? Two years after the toils and troubles of KISS were rewarded with their commercial breakthrough as a live band, the same thing happened to Cheap Trick who, ironically, opened for KISS in the early days: what could not have been achieved with the three classic studio albums (although, truth be told, each of those charted higher than its predecessor, so that the groundwork was laid well), was achieved with a live album — which, even more ironically, was never even intended for domestic release in the first place, so that the first US buyers got it as a Japanese import.

Nostalgic reasons aside, At Budokan remains great fun after all these years, but neither in its original form as released in 1979, nor in its expanded form (the complete concert, first released on CD in 1998 and since then having become the default version) does it really «destroy» the studio versions of the songs, as is so often claimed. The thing is, Cheap Trick are most certainly a «pop rock» band in the truest sense of the word, combining catchy pop hooks with dirty rock energy in brotherly proportions, but when it comes to the sacred question of «Beatles or Stones?», there's no getting out of it, and the Trick do love the Beatles more than the Stones — and this sets the predicament: unlike the Stones or the Who, Cheap Trick are studio creators first and live entertainers second. And even when they are live entertainers, the emphasis is very much on «entertainment» rather than «live rocking» — Rick Nielsen's baseball caps, checkered jackets, wild faces, and poly-necked guitars matter as much for the Cheap Trick show as does his ability to produce grumpy distorted tones.

This is why I normally prefer to listen to the studio versions of all these songs — yes, even the famous live performance of ʽI Want You To Want Meʼ, with the music hall piano replaced by Nielsen's rock'n'roll guitar, does not make nearly as much sense as the studio version, where the climactic bit of "didn't I, didn't I, didn't I see you crying?" is properly followed by the echo of another "crying", rather than the echoing yell of several thousand Japanese fans. And every time that Nielsen or Zander make a playing or singing mistake — and it does happen occasionally, although, to give them their due, much less frequently than after their fame had finally gone to their heads — it makes me cringe much more than any time the Stones or the Who make mistakes during their shows. The curse of the pop hook, yes indeed, sir.

Nevertheless, all of this criticism should be taken lightly — all I'm saying here is that it might be wise to begin your enjoyment of Cheap Trick with the holy trilogy of 1977-78 before assessing them as a live band, and only then proceeding to see how, at the expense of muddying up their sound and occasionally sacrificing the sharpness and subtleties of the pop hooks, they compensate for this with extra wildness. Needless to say, everybody is working their ass off, not the least of all «bookkeeper drummer» Bun E. Carlos, cracking at the snare with an amount of brutality worthy of the (not yet late) John Bonham; even if he cannot get quite the same «depth» of the sound, the power and melodicity of his drumming is enough to make him feel like a perfectly equal member of the band, and, perhaps, more vital to its overall live sound than both the bass of Tom Petersson and Zander's rhythm guitar.

Meanwhile, Nielsen lays on the distortion real thick — not in a nasty metallic way, no, rather in the naughty glammy «gonna raise hell» kind of way. For this release, he does not get any particular spotlight (in the 1970s, at least, he used to have a very lengthy «masturbatory» section as the introduction to ʽBig Eyesʼ, Angus Young-style, but you won't find it here), the closest probably being the extended solo in ʽNeed Your Loveʼ, a preview of the track that would eventually be recorded for Dream Police; however, that solo is clearly experimental rather than self-aggrandizing, and the whole thing, with Zander's dreamy falsetto and its odd contrast with the almost «slowed down proto-thrash metal» riffage of the song, is arguably the most complex and psychedelic performance of the show, a definite highlight largely due to Mr. Nielsen's making his guitar screech, squirm, and grumble in half a dozen different ways.

And then, of course, there's the whole «show» thing which, these days, can be fully enjoyed with pictures (if you do plan on getting Budokan, by all means get the edition that contains the DVD of the concert — it's trimmed, but still worth every minute of it), but is still very well felt even through just the sound. The show begins with ʽHello Thereʼ (of course) and ends with the reprise ("it's the end of the show / now it's time to go"), which naturally brings on to mind the concept of Sgt. Pepper, and even though nobody in the band is wearing uniforms, all of the members represent certain artistic and actor-like stereotypes, with Zander as the prototypical «rock idol», swaying the audience with excitement ("I... want... you... to want... ME!"), Petersson as the black-haired evil twin / mirror image of the white-haired Aryan god, Nielsen as the mischievous trickster ("the first thing I did when I got to Japan... WAS BUY A JAPANESE GUITAR!"), and Bun E. Carlos as the «working guy turned rocker» (well, you probably can't really hear that last one, but still, there's something about Bun E.'s drumming that suggests an «office guy gone all eccentric on us» style).

In any case, there is absolutely no denying that not a single «classic rock-style» band around 1979 could seriously compete with these guys in terms of generating arena-rock excitement — not only did they retain and amplify all the power of early glam rock, but they were able to throw in the tongue-in-cheek element, with plenty of humor, which would make At Budokan much better suitable for the modern listener, I think, than, uh, Peter Frampton, for instance. They do all the stuff that cheesy rock entertainers are supposed to do — like, for instance, trading brief solo passages between each other in the coda section of ʽAin't That A Shameʼ — but all the clichés are executed with an ironic angle to them. There's so much humor and irony here, in fact, that it really makes you wonder how on earth they managed to lose it all so quickly in the accursed Eighties — here, at Budokan, it seems as if they simply could do no wrong.

Just for the record, some songs here cannot be found on regular studio LPs: the oh-so-Beatlesque merry pop rocker ʽLookoutʼ was a B-side, and the slow shuffle of ʽCan't Hold Onʼ is a parody on the broken hearted blues genre that does not work too well, I think. ʽNeed Your Loveʼ, as I already said, would soon be recorded in a definitive version for Dream Police, and the encore features a rousing version of Fats Domino's ʽAin't That A Shameʼ that's right up their alley: just as old man Fats never fooled anybody with that whole "my tears fell like rain" stuff, neither do Cheap Trick, concentrating on the humorous side of rock and roll rather than its sentimental overtones. In fact, there's not a single shred of genuine sentimentality on Budokan, Zander's beautiful blonde hair notwithstanding. And they end the show with a mammoth version of ʽClock Strikes Tenʼ which, for a change, I do prefer to the original studio track — if only because it does not choose to end on the silly kiddie "imagine what we're doing tonight..." repetition, but rather on the manly-rambunctious "gonna get on down, gonna get on down" part.

A major thumbs up, of course, even if I probably wouldn't place this into the Top 10 of my favorite live albums (I think that the only «pop» band with a guaranteed spot on that Top 10 could be Fleetwood Mac — and, for all of Nielsen's wonderful qualities, he was never even half the guitarist that Lindsey Buckingham could be). But really, the worst thing that could be said about the record is that it made Cheap Trick into superstars — and, as superstars, they would very quickly begin to transform into an ordinary superstardom machine, behaving in accordance with the laws of the music market. Who knows? Without Budokan, there may have been no The Doctor, or no collaborations with Diane Warren, or none of those other unspeakable evils of the Dark Age of the Cheap Trick era. But then again, in the 21st century we're free to ignore the evils and focus on the good stuff, so enjoy this bit of Japanese magic and forgive them their later transgressions, or, rather, just forget about them.

DREAM POLICE (1979)

1) Dream Police; 2) Way Of The World; 3) The House Is Rockin' (With Domestic Problems); 4) Gonna Raise Hell; 5) I'll Be With You Tonight; 6) Voices; 7) Writing On The Wall; 8) I Know What I Want; 9) Need Your Love.

Apparently, The Holy Trinity of classic Cheap Trick albums was meant to be a quaternity, but the unexpected success of Budokan led to the label delaying the release of the fourth studio album, and now it always gives off the impression of a «transition» between classic Trick and broken down Trick. It does have its own flavor, of course — namely, the addition of loud keyboards and strings that puts it more in line with mainstream arena-rock and dance-pop of that period — yet essentially, Dream Police still gives us the Trick we have grown to love, just the way they are: loud, reckless, humorous, sarcastic, and generally hooky.

So it may be a bit of a step down: there's nothing here that gets under your skin the way ʽHeaven Tonightʼ gets under it, and there is no blatantly successful generational anthem like ʽSurrenderʼ — the closest thing to a generational anthem would probably be the title track, which went on to become the band's last commonly recognized classic hit. Stylistically, it sounds not unlike Alice Cooper circa Billion Dollar Babies, a gruesome Orwellian nightmare story with Zander pulling a paranoid type to the best of his ability (I do have to say that he does much better when impersonating homicidal maniacs) and perfect climactic bits from Nielsen's synthesized strings. It's lots of theatrical fun, to be sure, but not really on the level of the band's top pieces — you don't get to feel true paranoia here, more like a funny caricature of it.

On the other hand, this is a pretty caricaturesque album in general, and I'll certainly take the joking nature of it over the band's Eighties' «seriousness» any time of day. And sometimes the goofiness really pays off well — ʽThe House Is Rockin'ʼ plays out like a straightforward headbanging rock'n'roller alright, until you remember the subtitle ʽ(With Domestic Problems)ʼ and understand that the song actually impersonates being pissed-off at the breakdown of a family relationship. Alternating between hilarity in the chorus ("oh boy, oh boy") and moments of seemingly real anger (exacerbated every time Nielsen takes to soloing — it's not every day that he gets to being that batshit crazy on his solos, and if the studio version is not enough for you, there's an early live version appended to the CD reissue where he's even crazier), it's one of their greatest pure glam-rock songs, with the entire band at its tightest (Bun E. Carlos gets a special medal of honor for keeping that complex beat throughout, unflinching), angriest and funniest at the same time.

Other times, the goofiness takes some getting used to: ʽI Know What I Wantʼ used to irritate the crap of me before I understood that they gave it to Tom Petersson to sing for a reason — there was no way Zander could have sung it in such a dorky manner. Clearly, it's a parody of a cheap arena-rocker, performed in such a way that it should be impossible to take the lead singer seriously as he wheezes his way through "it was love at first sight, when I looked in your eyes, I was blinded by the feelings in my heart..." like Don Kirshner with a clothespin around his nose. Of course, then the joke eventually wears thin, and unless you have new neighbors to irritate, you probably won't want to be enjoying it forever and ever.

The actual «progression» on the album comes in the form of large epics — each of the album's two sides ends with an extended number, and I'm guessing that this was not due to a lack of new material, but rather to Nielsen's desire to try and experiment with his guitar playing and the arrangements in various ways, stretching out like an art-rocker, but without any exaggerated virtuosity. I must say that it works, both times. ʽGonna Raise Hellʼ incorporates elements of disco (one more reason why it is so long — typical of dance-pop numbers of the era), both in terms of rhythm and orchestration, but Nielsen really shoots in all directions here, with hard rock riffs, blues licks, funky syncopation, and Beatlesque stretches of melodicity, and as repetitive as Zander's chorus seems to be, I have to say that few rock vocalists are capable of bellowing it out with as much conviction as the man does — you really do get to feel like the overtly patient bartender who'd like nothing as much as to toss that guy out the door, only he's a little afraid to do that...

And I do like this version of ʽNeed Your Loveʼ more than the even longer Budokan rendition. Zander's vocals, benefiting from the studio mix, sound even more psychedelic here, whereas the rhythm and lead guitars sound even scarier, especially as the song kicks into overdrive in the middle, and the whole thing becomes a pseudo-improvised jam with Nielsen trying out a new riff or solo every minute, almost like a tribute to a live Who track circa 1970. What is the song even about? Another psychotic outburst — the hero torn between maniacal pleading tenderness and a mad killing spree on which he embarks once the object of his passion has fled his grasp? Seems like it, in which case Nielsen's extended solo is a shooting spree, and Zander's final "need... your... love..." are the protagonist's last words before he puts the last bullet in his own head. There, I think that's all the enticement you need to go listen to that one again.

Putting it roughly, the album's not that serious, but all the songs are fun — and I haven't even mentioned the catchy (and sometimes deliciously trippy, particularly on the "world goes round... world goes round..." bit) ʽWay Of The Worldʼ, the psychedelic love ballad ʽVoicesʼ and those two other songs, I think one's poppier and the other's rockier, but both are good. So perhaps there's just fewer truly outstanding moments, but there can be no denying that this is still classic Cheap Trick classically doing what they do best — tossing off pop hooks, rocking their heads off, and putting a witty, humorous touch on all sorts of everyday situations like there was no tomorrow. With the fourth studio LP in a row delivering the goods, it's as if they just couldn't fail, right? No matter what happens? Thumbs up for eternity guaranteed? Oh boy, if only we could have foreseen what the Eighties would bring... then again, we'd probably either have to shoot ourselves dead, or everybody else dead. But then, it might not just have been the Eighties — see, Dream Police was essentially the last Cheap Trick album that the band made before they became megastars. And mega-stars, as it happens, no longer belong to themselves.

ALL SHOOK UP (1980)

1) Stop This Game; 2) Just Got Back; 3) Baby Loves To Rock; 4) Can't Stop It But I'm Gonna Try; 5) World's Greatest Lover; 6) High Priest Of Rhythmic Noise; 7) Love Comes A-Tumblin' Down; 8) I Love You Honey But I Hate Your Friends; 9) Go For The Throat; 10) Who D'King; 11*) Everything Works If You Let It.

The Eighties are upon us, and this is the beginning of the end, right from the very first track. "Well I can't stop the music, I could stop it before...", Zander flings at us accappella-style, in a perfectly serious, quasi-operatic tone — something far more suitable for Foreigner's Lou Gramm or some other vocally endowed brawny, but sentimental arena-rock hero than for Cheap Trick, the (former) kings of friendly irony and muscular intelligence. As the instruments kick in, the whole thing gets no better — a stiff pop-rocker, largely dependent on keyboards and simple, straight-jacketed power riffs. Throughout, Zander yells, bawls and weeps as if he were totally serious about this exploding love affair, the vocal harmonies sound like underpaid extras in a power metal ballad, and the guitar sounds like a complete waste of Nielsen... and he wrote the song! And they released it as a single! And it charted super-low! And it was totally justified, because it was honestly the weakest Cheap Trick single to date.

The horrible thing about the album is that, alas, it does not get much better than that. It does get better, occasionally, and much worse things were around the corner, but the sober truth is that somehow, in some way, the evil fairy visited Rick Nielsen in his bedroom one night (probably on the very night that he forgot to take his ward-off-evil baseball hat and bowtie to bed with him), and he lost most of his songwriting talent overnight — not all of it, charging the unfortunate fanbase with the need to filter out the small bunches of gems from the large pools of dreck, but most of it, for sure. How the heck did that happen, so quickly?

The blame is sometimes transferred onto the producers — nowhere more so than on All Shook Up, which was produced by George Martin, no less. Now it may have been inevitable that Cheap Trick, Beatles admirers extraordinaire, would eventually team up with Martin, but the thing is, Cheap Trick music was really midway between the Beatles and the Stones, combining Beatles-style pop hooks with raw rock'n'roll energy, and it should have been clear from the beginning that Martin's production would suck out most of the raw rock'n'roll energy. I am not aware of any particular animosity between Martin and the boys during the sessions for the album (most likely, they were just way too awestruck by the opportunity), but Martin's «clean» production certainly does not agree with what the boys do best.

That said, no amount of sterile production could explain the fact that on All Shook Up, what we have is Cheap Trick 2.0 — but, as I already began to say in the Dream Police review, their newly found superstardom sure can. It is almost as if the band now saw themselves burdened with a new «responsibility» for their fans, and dropped a large part of its too-smart-for-its-own-good act in favor of a simpler, more straightforward approach; and the simpler it got, the less true it rang. Simply put, Robin Zander as a heart-on-sleeve lyrical troubadour, or, vice versa, Robin Zander as the basic, brawny, KISS-style cock-rocker just does not work after four albums in a row where we had Robin Zander, the demolition man for pop music clichés. Or was it his original intention to demolish all the clichés just so that he could immediately start rebuilding them from scratch and dust? And don't even get me started on Nielsen, who pretty much betrayed himself on this album — just how many good, let alone great, riffs can you count? Or, in fact, how many tracks that are distinguishable by some above-average guitar work in general? On Dream Police, one could complain that ʽGonna Raise Hellʼ and ʽNeed Your Loveʼ overstayed their welcome, but at least it was for a reason — so that Mr. Nielsen could have ample time to toy around with his instrument, and every once in a while, get a brand new, awesome noise out of it. On All Shook Up, experimental guitar playing is replaced by professional sterilization.

Some lines of critical or fan defense have been put up around the album, claiming that it was simply more «quirky» and «experimental» than their previous releases. Well, the only «quirky» thing about ʽStop This Gameʼ is that it seemingly fades in on the same piano chord on which Sgt. Pepper had faded out thirteen years earlier — which is a fun idea in theory, but a disgrace in practice: ʽStop This Gameʼ relates to ʽA Day In The Lifeʼ in about the same way in which a Dimitri Tiomkin soundtrack would relate to a Beethoven symphony. Other «quirky» elements include: (a) symmetric sound effect overdubs in the bridge section of the otherwise generic glam rocker ʽBaby Loves To Rockʼ — "in the morning!" accompanied by cock-a-doodle-doos, "in the evening!" by chirping crickets (for some reason, "baby loves to rock" everywhere but "not in Russia!" — which, I daresay, is a blatant lie!); (b) robotically encoded vocals on the chorus section of the dark sci-fi rocker ʽHigh Priest Of Rhythmic Noiseʼ, one of the few songs here, perhaps, that could feel at home — with different production — on earlier records; (c) an obvious parody on the mid-Seventies sound of Rod Stewart (ʽHot Legsʼ, etc.) called ʽI Love You Honey But I Hate Your Friendsʼ, a little out of time since Rod Stewart's sound had already deteriorated even way beyond that barroom boogie level by 1980; (d) a ridiculous mash-up of Fleetwood Mac's ʽTuskʼ and Queen's ʽWe Will Rock Youʼ, called ʽWho D'Kingʼ and possessing neither the humor and menace of the former nor the true stadium power of the latter.

It's not all bad — there are still some fast 'n' catchy power-pop numbers like ʽEverything Works If You Let Itʼ (actually, a bonus track on the CD re-issue, from the soundtrack to the movie Roadie starring Meat Loaf — fine, healthy company for the boys!); a cleverly built-up power ballad (ʽWorld's Greatest Loverʼ) with Zander at his absolute vocal best — even if you generally hate the bombast of power balladry, you still have to admit that the man shows a master class in self-winding-up here; and if you ever wondered what it would have been like to take a circa-Flick Of The Switch AC/DC rocker and run it past the magic hands of George Martin, ʽLove Comes A-Tumblin' Downʼ will give you the answer — I'd still take AC/DC's ʽLandslideʼ over this any time of day, but it is a curiosity, and it's at least fun. (For the record, the connection is not spurious: lines like "From the cabaret to the highway of hell / Had a monkey on his back it was easy to tell" clearly suggest that the song was intended as an obituary — and the fun thing is, Flick Of The Switch hadn't even come out yet, so you could say AC/DC themselves were influenced by Cheap Trick in 1983. Also, the song sounds much better in concert without the George Martin production).

But even with all the excuses, there is no denying it: Cheap Trick are trying to go way too serious on our asses, and this is a negative influence on their songwriting. A major part of the band's charm was precisely in the fact that they could take the popular genre conventions of the mid-Seventies and play around them with sly wit and intelligence — now, it seems, they are beginning to succumb to them, and the arena-rocker masks are beginning to stick to their faces way too seamlessly for comfort. Simply put, I don't need Robin Zander to educate me that "everything'll work out if you let it / Let it in your heart"; I'd rather prefer him to spoof that banal premise. And somehow it seems to me that, perhaps, he'd prefer that, too — but now they had this moral responsibility for all their post-Budokan fans, you know, or at least that's what they (and/or their recording industry superiors) thought at the time — ironically, the more serious they got, the fewer records they sold.

ONE ON ONE (1982)

1) I Want You; 2) One On One; 3) If You Want My Love; 4) Oo La La La; 5) Lookin' Out For Number One; 6) She's Tight; 7) Time Is Runnin'; 8) Saturday At Midnight; 9) Love's Got A Hold On Me; 10) I Want Be Man; 11) Four Letter Word.

A temporary, if not completely satisfactory, rebound, with the band going through some significant changes. First was Tom Petersson leaving the group, replaced first by Pete Comita and later on, by Jon Brant, arriving just in time for the early sessions for this album. More importantly, not being worthy of two albums in a row produced by George Martin, they were teamed up with Roy Thomas Baker, who at that point was mostly famous for producing the majority of Queen's albums, but also heavily invested in the New Wave sound — his hand is right there on all four of the The Cars' first albums, as well as on Alice Cooper's Flush The Fashion, one of the funniest and overall most successful criss-crosses between Seventies' glam rock and New Wave production techniques, and it is quite possible that this was precisely what Cheap Trick had in mind when they entered the studio with him at the end of 1981.

Production values aside, One On One was decidedly less innovative and experimental than All Shook Up — I guess you could qualify it as «a return to their rock'n'roll roots», with most of the songs being loud, braggartly, and often quite vulgar, as if the band were consciously afraid that All Shook Up made them look softened and sissied up, and now, before it was too late, they just had to do some serious penance at the altars of KISS and AC/DC. Unfortunately, this was not exactly a way to recapture the magic of In Color or even of Dream Police: not only did Baker's production tone down the former raw power of Nielsen's guitar, no matter how frantically the guy still tore at the strings in the studio (and let's not even talk about the obligatory electronic effects on the drums, reducing poor Bun E. Carlos to the same cyborg status as... well, almost everybody else at the time), but, aside from production issues, the band's mentality itself seems to have suffered — One On One relates to the 1977-79 records more or less the same way as The Stones' It's Only Rock'n'Roll relates to their 1968-72 records. Something, some of that barely tangible vibe that separates inimitable class from crafty professionalism, was irrevocably lost in the transition between 1979 and 1980, and no conscious effort could help regain it.

Nevertheless, in terms of consistency and gut level enjoyment One On One is still a big improvement over the stiff seriousness of All Shook Up. At its core lies a series of brash, sex-crazed musical explosions that are at least closer in spirit to classic feel-good Trick than songs like ʽStop This Gameʼ or ʽCan't Stop It But I'm Gonna Tryʼ. We got back some noise, some catchy choruses, some headbanging fun — at the expense, however, of a serious headache from too much headbanging: track after track, the roof is brought down with so much verve that you can't shake loose the feeling that these guys actually stormed the local tavern with a straightforward intention of raising hell... well, that's what they promised us on Dream Police, wasn't it? With songs like ʽI WANT YOU!!!ʼ, ʽOO LA LA LA!!!ʼ, ʽLOOKIN' OUT FOR NUMBER ONE!!!ʼ, and especially the anti-grammatical apeman anthem ʽI WANT BE MAN!!!ʼ (and yes, they just as well might have been spelled in all caps on the original release), we are given a whole lotta Zander at his most throat-tearin', though, I am afraid, not a whole lotta Nielsen at his most guitar-lovin' — he doesn't solo all that much, and the riffage is way too often reduced to hard rock, rockabilly, or punk clichés. Again, you could blame Baker's production for the «plastic» sound of Rick's guitar playing, but essentially, it's a matter of Nielsen not trying too hard. Even the best melodies sound oddly derivative — for instance, the opening riff of the title track is basically a variation on AC/DC's ʽWhole Lotta Rosieʼ! The song is still fun, but the downside is that it will never be half as fun as ʽWhole Lotta Rosieʼ anyway.

Of the two singles that charted, ʽShe's Tightʼ was just one more of these rockers — okay, but insubstantial, a mix of Ramones-like guitar chords with Cars-like bubbly synths whose title can't help reminding me of contemporary Stones songs like ʽShe's So Coldʼ or ʽShe Was Hotʼ, girl-crazy material, high on testosterone, but strictly B-level. The bigger hit was ʽIf You Want My Loveʼ, the album's only ballad where they try to invoke the Beatle muse with moderate success; I wouldn't exactly call the song «magic», but it is hard not to get infected by Zander's exuberance, and a few well-placed falsetto wooooohs never hurt anybody. Besides, it is probably the best composed song on the album — several sections, ascending-descending patterns, a mix of simple romance, desperation, and anthemic catchiness: everything a decent power ballad needs to be, even if they would very soon forget about all these ingredients.

On the other hand, the record is not entirely gaffe-free: ʽSaturday At Midnightʼ is not only a weird leftover from the disco era, but its chorus fairly openly and directly rips off ABBA's ʽSummer Night Cityʼ, and the tune in general is a messy oddity — when Nielsen hits you with that guitar break in the middle, it sounds like basic rock'n'roll, but the rest of the song is crude dance-pop, and rather obnoxious at that. I, for one, much prefer ʽTime Is Runnin'ʼ, with its subtle nods to Roy Orbison in the harmonies, and the pop-punk stride of ʽLove's Got A Hold On Meʼ that surround ʽSaturday At Midnightʼ on both sides — each of these songs could have made for a much better single. The last two tracks also leave something to be desired: the mantra-like "I wanna live in your body! I wanna live in your body!" at the end of ʽI Want Be Manʼ is not as bad as you could think it is (it's a song about robots who want to be people and about people who want to be robots), but the entire tune is too loud and brawny to qualify as a sci-fi parable and ends up sounding stupid; and ʽFour Letter Wordʼ (L-O-V-E, in case you're worried) ends the album on a really dumb cock-rock note with fake arena applause, «guitar hero» steroid riffs and way too much overscreaming.

Altogether, this is a weird proposition — pushing the balance so far in the direction of the rocking side that for every real good track, there's one another that teeters on the brink of self-parody. Still, as far as unreasonable disbalances go, I certainly prefer a rockier version of Cheap Trick to a poppier version of Cheap Trick, and the album does get a thumbs up: ʽSaturday At Midnightʼ, ʽFour Letter Wordʼ, and the awful dumb vocalise on ʽOo La La Laʼ aside, you can still have a light-headed fun romp through most of the other tracks.

NEXT POSITION PLEASE (1983)

1) I Can't Take It; 2) Borderline; 3) I Don't Love Here Anymore; 4) Next Position Please; 5) Younger Girls; 6) Dancing The Night Away; 7) You Talk Too Much; 8) 3-D; 9) You Say Jump; 10) Y.O.Y.O.Y; 11) Won't Take No For An Answer; 12) Heaven's Falling; 13) Invaders Of The Heart; 14) Don't Make Our Love A Crime.

Ironically, what is probably the best Cheap Trick album of the Eighties does not sound that much like Cheap Trick — courtesy of the band's third «one-guy-per-album» producer in a row, Mr. Todd Rundgren himself. Although Todd Rundgren is no stranger to heavy rock, with which he had toyed around sufficiently over the previous decade and a half, his typical preferences are for a cleaner, more polished and controlled sound; unlike George Martin, however, he had a better idea of how to make that sound actually work for Cheap Trick, rather than simply destroy them as a meaningful musical entity — and over the course of twelve songs (fourteen if you count the two extra tracks on the CD version), that idea is applied so consistently that, for the first time since Dream Police (and, unfortunately, for the last time in a long, long time, if not ever), what you get is a Cheap Trick album that is enjoyable all the way through.

This is really electric guitar pop — thick, brawny, distorted guitar tones have been removed almost completely, with maybe two or three exceptions (like ʽ3-Dʼ), and the cock-rock flavor of One On One has been generally replaced with a more romantic attitude; however, neither Nielsen nor Rundgren ever allow that romanticism to run over into exaggerated dramatic sentimentality, with nary a single power ballad to be found anywhere. And best of all, the melodic hooks are back for a while — with Rundgren stripping the band's sound down to bare essentials, refusing to succumb to generic synth-pop or pop-metal coatings, there's nothing to offer the listener but sheer melody, and this implies a last-minute effort from Rick, who rises to the task so admirably you'd almost be ready to apologize for the disparaging assessment of his remaining pool of talent on the All Shook Up disaster.

Unfortunately, they made a wrong move with their first single — instead of releasing a Nielsen original, they went ahead with a cover of The Motors' ʽDancing The Night Awayʼ, a pop-punk nugget from 1977 that they slowed down, de-punkified, and «aggrandized» so that the entire group ended up sounding like a bit of a parody on the E Street Band (as in, «I wonder how Bruce Springsteen could have covered this tune? Maybe like this?»). Not coincidentally, it was the only track on the record that Rundgren refused to produce (since it was forced on the band by the label rather than by himself), and Ian Taylor's production makes it sound closer to the sound of One On One and to the sound of their next album, Standing On The Edge, at the same time. It's not really awful — the original was so good that it would take much more than bad production to spoil it completely — but the public seems to have smelled signs of fakeness, and the single did not chart (besides, it's rarely a good idea to release originally British nuggets as potential hit singles on the US market, and vice versa).

I suppose the disappointment instinctively carried over onto the reaction to their second single, ʽI Can't Take Itʼ — which is a completely different story, a spirited, uplifting power-pop ditty with lots of jangly, Townshend-esque electric guitar and a passionate vocal build-up all the way to the last line of the chorus. Interestingly, it is one of the very few songs in the Cheap Trick catalog that is credited solely to Zander, and indeed, the song gets by largely on the strength of the pulse of the rhythm guitar and the passion of the lead vocals — and as much as I hate to admit that Cheap Trickers could sometimes write great pop songs without a trace of smarmy irony in them, ʽI Can't Take Itʼ makes for one of the strongest cases. Why the hell did it flop as a single? It even had one of their most hilarious MTV videos ever, with people sticking pins in Zander's voodoo dolls and weird zombie/vampire references all over the place. Go figure.

Once we move past the obvious general complaint — yes, the songs are generally lightweight, straightforward, not too ambiguous, not too funny, and largely relate to «classic» Cheap Trick the same way, say, that post-1972 Ray Davies records relate to the classic Kinks period — there's very little by way of specific accusations that I could fling at specific tracks, because I like most of them. Melodic-romantic power-pop à la Roy Orbison? You have this in the form of ʽBorderlineʼ, an escapist anthem whose verve makes it perfectly credible (hey, wait a minute — is this why they are parodying the cover of Born To Run on the front sleeve photo?). Odd mixes of lushly harmonized Europop with British pub-rock? That is more or less what they do on the title track, one of the album's few returns to pure sarcasm ("I wanna be the biggest gun in the world, I wanna see the tits on every girl!" roars Zander while impersonating the average exploited slob) that cleverly drifts between cocky verses and pleading choruses. Likewise, ʽYounger Girlsʼ offers a good way of glueing a generic blues-rock verse with a singalong pop chorus, and this juncture is actually more interesting than the song's salacious lyrics — hedonistic odes to group sex with teenage females may be a trademark of the Eighties, but it is the melodic structure of the tune, not its verbal message, that has a better chance of survival into the 21st century. (Not that I'm implying that group sex with teenage females has become completely irrelevant in the 21st century, mind you, but at least people tend to use different language to describe it now).

Even the album's lonely ballad, ʽY.O.Y.O.Yʼ, is a standout in their balladry catalog of the time: the emphasis is not on the «power» aspect, but on the melodicity of the lead vocal — Zander's "why oh why oh why can't I... be in love forever?" has a beautiful drawl to it, more of a combination of satisfied purring and hazy laziness than operatic bombast, and somehow all the guitars and keyboards are wisely minimalized and restrained in the background, placing 100% emphasis on the echo-tinged vocals (and yes, Zander's vocals can be beautiful when handled properly). And the album's only song that was actually written by Rundgren, ʽHeaven's Fallingʼ (and sounds not unlike pop-era Utopia), is suitably anthemic and catchy, though, again, perhaps a little too idealistic for a band like Cheap Trick.

Anyway, I do have to keep all the gushing in check: Next Position Please is highly consistent, but this does not necessarily mean that it is consistently great — much like Todd Rundgren's entire career, it is extremely solidly written pop, but it reflects craft rather than genius, and it is not often that you can instinctively perceive that the guys are really living out these songs or having fun with them. In fact, Rundgren's production precludes them from having fun: it goes in the opposite direction from One On One, where all the wildness sometimes seemed too exaggerated and standing in the way of a good pop hook — and now that we've got pop hooks a-plenty, I'm starting to miss some of that wildness! You could say that some people are never satisfied, yet somehow they didn't seem to have a problem harmoniously merging the two sides on four albums in a row in the previous decade. And now they have it — still a thumbs up, for sure, but once your magic wand is broken, there's only so much you can achieve with duct tape.

STANDING ON THE EDGE (1985)

1) Little Sister; 2) Tonight It's You; 3) She's Got Motion; 4) Love Comes; 5) How About You; 6) Standing On The Edge; 7) This Time Around; 8) Rock All Night; 9) Cover Girl; 10) Wild Wild Women.

Truest album title ever — this is a huge letdown compared to Next Position Please, but if we keep in mind the horror that would follow on its heels, then 1985 does present the band as truly «standing on the edge», before taking the final plunge the following year. Ironically, they are turning back to Jack Douglas here for production, so you'd think the idea was to try and recapture the spirit of their very first album. But in 1985, that just wasn't meant to be. The musical values had changed, the atmospheric demands had changed, and the production standards had «progressed» towards the point when, during the final stage, mixer-extraordinaire Tony Platt came in, mixed the plastic keyboards higher than Nielsen's guitar, put a whole load of ear-splitting electronic effects on Bun E. Carlos' drums (so much so that Carlos allegedly asked to be credited for «acoustic drums» to preserve his reputation), and made it all sound like a bunch of loud, chaotic, and essentially tuneless party-rock with a hair metal flavor.

Of course, we should never place all the blame on the producer. Nielsen and Zander still co-write most of the songs — and they also allow them to be «doctored» by a guy called Mark Radice, who plays the awful keyboards and shares the credits for 8 out of 10 numbers here; considering that his previous work expertise included collaborations with Michael Bolton and Barry Manilow, you can probably understand what that means even without assessing his contributions for the Tricksters. As for the «spiritual content» of the songs, it is largely confined to the same two styles that, although directly contradicting each other, formed the bulk of any popular rock artist's repertoire at the time — cock-rockers and power ballads.

I am not saying that the songwriting is totally abysmal. If you can stand the production long enough to submit yourself to 3-4 listens, it becomes clear that the guys are still inspired by classic pop and R&B: ʽHow About Youʼ, for instance, hops along to the beat of ʽEverybody Needs Somebody To Loveʼ (been watching a tad too much of The Blues Brothers, eh?); ʽLittle Sisterʼ borrows the verse melody of the Stones' ʽ19th Nervous Breakdownʼ; and ʽCover Girlʼ is — theoretically — an exuberant power pop anthem whose roots lie in the classic singles of The Who; the problem is that you have to adjust your ears past several layers of glossy noise and noisy gloss to understand this, and with this kind of derivativeness, the playing style, the arrangement, and the mix are super-important. And they're awful.

The most bombastic and sentimental track on the album, ʽTonight It's Youʼ, was chosen as the lead single, and it even managed to temporarily put them back on the charts — at the expense of drying the last drops of irony and intelligence, leaving behind a completely straightforward serenade, capable of waking the neighbors for miles around by way of the electronic drum cannonade and hideously overdriven acoustic guitars that merge with the synthesizers in one silky-glossy whole. It's got a solid construction, for sure, rising from a slow start to a desperate mid-section to the bombastic knight-in-shining-armor chorus, but everything is so obviously calculated that I am not sure how it would be possible to praise this song and put down any given Aerosmith power ballad at the same time — and since I have already done the latter, I am obliged to refuse the former. Which is, by the way, quite easy for me, because I have yet to experience a real tear flowing down my cheek as Zander's voice, singing "all I want is a place in your heart to fall into!", cuts me to the bone and presents the very idea of romantic love in a completely new light. (Also, doesn't Zander have to reduce himself to microscopic proportions in order to achieve this?)

Ultimately, I'd rather go with the playful stuff like ʽLittle Sisterʼ and ʽCover Girlʼ and ʽHow About Youʼ, all of which could be very decent tracks with less obnoxious production. But sometimes they go decidedly over the top with the playfulness — ʽShe's Got Motionʼ, somehow forgetting about the romanticism of ʽTonight It's Youʼ, plunges into the joys of totally casual sex and features one of the most absurd musical imitations of the love-making process ever recorded in the history of poodle-metal; and then there's ʽRock All Nightʼ, which was probably the band's worst song recorded up to that point — both of these tunes are a good preview of the sonic nightmare of The Doctor, and the most horrible thing about it is that Nielsen and Zander probably thought that with this crap, they were essentially doing their usual loud-and-ironic schtick. Loud, yes, but any sense of irony is completely lost — atmosphere-wise, this stuff is indistinguishable from your average Def Leppard or Mötley Crüe: really, what is the difference between ʽGirls, Girls, Girlsʼ and ʽWild Wild Womenʼ? Okay, so there's probably no need to hate either, but they're all just leftover curios from the AIDS decade.

No thumbs down, though, for a couple of reasons — they go real easy on the power ballads for now, and I like it how even through all the sonic muck you have these echoes of traditional Sixties-style melodicity every once in a while. Indeed, I can easily imagine at least half of these songs done really well: maybe if they'd thought about re-recording them during or after their period of musical convalescence, the results would be more impressive than with the actual new material they penned in the 21st century. But instead, I think they ultimately just forgot this record ever existed — ʽTonight It's Youʼ seems to be the only song from here that keeps cropping up in their live shows. Too bad, I'd rather it be ʽLittle Sisterʼ or ʽCover Girlʼ.

THE DOCTOR (1986)

1) It's Up To You; 2) Rearview Mirror Romance; 3) The Doctor; 4) Are You Lonely Tonight; 5) Name Of The Game; 6) Kiss Me Red; 7) Take Me To The Top; 8) Good Girls Go To Heaven (Bad Girls Go Everywhere); 9) Man-u-Lip-u-Lator; 10) It's Only Love.

A more appropriate title for the album would be The Doctor From Hell, which is precisely the kind of function that Tony Platt, now officially promoted to the position of the band's producer, is (largely successfully) trying to exercise for Cheap Trick here. You know what is the most viciously sadistic part about it? These songs, most of them still written by Nielsen and Zander, aren't really all that bad — once you get past the initial sugar-shock, two or three listens are enough to prove that the boys still have not completely lost their pop instincts. In fact, with a little stretch of imagination, I could see the album turned into a... well, say, a halfway decent Duran Duran record (although you'd still need to color it a little darker).

The principal problem, on which I agree with popular / critical opinion, is the awful, awful sound: 1986 in all its glory, with all the three main textural elements (Nauseous Synthesizers, Steroid Pop Metal Guitar, and Ridiculously Loud Electronic Drums) taken to the extreme — no, the boys have not yet mastered the art of the tear-jerking power ballad to complete the picture, but they have completely adapted to The Age of Excess, and almost everything that could be declared «good» about The Doctor is instantaneously drowned in such a raging sea of electronic-metallic noise that it makes Standing On The Edge sound like Woody Guthrie in comparison.

Case in point: ʽRearview Mirror Romanceʼ. Strip this song of its ludicrous drum, synth, and ecstatic vocal overdubs, and I can totally see it as a fine, enjoyable power pop anthem — roll the tape all the way back to 1977 and give it to Blondie. But as the song goes on, the level of noise and chaos only increases, with more, more, more sonic idiocy (ever louder drums, ever more synth overdubs, ever more stupid tape manipulations with Robin's vocals), leaving you with little more than a confusing headache in the end. And, mind you, this is one of the better songs on the album — relatively catchy, relatively inoffensive, and even with a bit of acceptable humor.

The sleaziness quotient is also increased, with song titles that speak for themselves — ʽMan-u-Lip-u-Latorʼ? ʽGood Girls Go To Heaven (Bad Girls Go Everywhere)ʼ? And ʽThe Doctorʼ sure as hell ain't about lobotomy, which is the only thing that could have truly helped the album: no, it's about "making house calls in the middle of the night" (listening to this song and realizing that there actually may have been impressionable human beings of the female sex in 1986 to feel aroused by this mating call just makes me feel dirty all over, and not even in a good way). This combination of cheap sexual aggression with horrible sonic ideas lands the band square in the same field with contemporary Rod Stewart — not even contemporary (let alone classic) KISS, who at least were consistent enough to keep up a «dirty» visual image along with the «dirty» musical core; whereas hearing this crap from pretty boy Zander and nerdy freak Nielsen leads to nothing but an endless series of facepalms.

Since most of the rockers are so deeply infected with cocky crap-ola, it is no wonder that the sentimental songs stand out as the finest on the album — in particular, the single ʽIt's Only Loveʼ, based on a sad little riff that I think these guys pinched from solo McCartney, though the name of the song escapes me at the moment; and I'd also have to mention the triumphant chorus of ʽTake Me To The Topʼ, which is really a cool melodic find and even contains a bit of emotional catharsis (no, really). That is not to say they are wonderful or anything, but they are a wee bit less cluttered and obnoxious than the rockers. And, for honesty's sake, I must also tip the proverbial hat to Zander's falsetto hook on the "take each and every day as if it is your last" line from the opening moralistic number ʽIt's Up To Youʼ, which basically invokes us to shake awake and enjoy The Doctor with all the strength of our hearts because, who knows, maybe the next thing happening is a brick falling on our head, and do we really want to end our life overcome with such negative emotions? It's a good chorus anyway — too bad you have to chop your way through an electronic jungle to get to it.

The bottomline is — contrary to rumors, The Doctor is so goshdarn awful not because Nielsen and Zander have completely run out of talent (which is what the record executives thought, and saddled them with corporate songwriters for the next album), but because they have completely run out of taste. For classic Cheap Trick, irony and multi-layered composition were their regular trademarks; by the time we reach The Doctor, «straightforward stupidity» is the word of the day. Thumbs down are inescapable here, but the record is worth hearing at least once as a strong purgative — and if your stomach is strong enough, hearing twice or thrice to understand what it really means to take some potentially decent songs and spoil them so thoroughly that no self-respecting person of good breeding would ever want to marry them.

LAP OF LUXURY (1988)

1) Let Go; 2) No Mercy; 3) The Flame; 4) Space; 5) Never Had A Lot To Lose; 6) Don't Be Cruel; 7) Wrong Side Of Love; 8) All We Need Is A Dream; 9) Ghost Town; 10) All Wound Up.

Oh boys, you've got me all wound up — this is one really messed-up Cheap Trick album, with quite a few good things and bad things going on at the same time. On the positive side, as you can quickly see from the album cover, this is where they happily reunite with their original bass player: Petersson's solo career never took flight, his attempts to get other bands going all flopped, and it took him half a decade to understand that his only viable future was with Cheap Trick (or peddling shoe polish). They also got rid of Tony Platt, although his replacement in the producer's seat, Richie Zito, was not much more of a blessing (his future credits would include Bad English, Heart, Cher, Poison, Ratt... you get the picture), but at least he did not make such a big point about covering the band's guitar sound with a ridiculously thick synth coating.

On the other side, this is where Epic Records came up to them and threatened to dump their contract unless they agreed for a bunch of outside songwriters to take over the lion's share of creative duties — the result being that only one song out of ten here belongs exclusively to the band, everything else being either completely written by corporate craftsmen, or «doctored» to the extent that you never ever know where Nielsen and Zander end and the big Eighties songwriting machine begins. There are altogether a whoppin' ten contemporary writers co-credited (of course, that's nothing compared to, say, a Britney Spears album from the 2010s, but in 1988, it was not yet common practice to co-credit a songwriter for contributing one vocal harmony line or modifying one chord sequence), which is kind of an insult for a band once known for penning some of the finest power-pop anthems in the business.

Nevertheless, next to the overall sound of The Doctor, Lap Of Luxury does feel like a comeback. In fact, if the average level of the songs here were up to the level of the enthusiastic opener, ʽLet Goʼ, it could easily qualify as their best record of the decade — of course, it does have those booming Eighties drums, and its jangly guitar opening is directly lifted from George Harrison's ʽIf I Needed Someoneʼ, but... it's, like, a Beatles rip-off! On an Eighties Cheap Trick album! A real Beatles rip-off, right off the heels of The Doctor — fascinating. With psychedelic Revolver-style vocal harmonies, too. The chorus, though, ain't Beatles at all — much more modern, screamy, and muscular, but still well-constructed. Really good song, thanks to co-writer Todd Cerney (his other contribution, ʽWrong Side Of Loveʼ, however, is a generic glam-pop load of crap, with boring tough guy riffs and ugly synth punctuations).

Other halfway decent pop-rockers include ʽNever Had A Lot To Loseʼ (this is the one and only completely original tune, by Zander and Petersson), fast-paced, playful, and featuring some more Beatlesque harmonies; ʽAll Wound Upʼ, co-written by Hall & Oates associate Janna Allen (so it does sound kinda like Hall & Oates, but not the bad kind of Hall & Oates) — it's fairly hard for me to resist the "you've got me all wound up — we're ready to go — hey hey hey!" combination, and even if they weren't actually having fun, it still sounds like they are; and as corny as it is, I still have an affection for their cover of ʽDon't Be Cruelʼ, if only because it is a throwback to the good old days, when Nielsen would perform his wild antics and pull his crazy faces to ironically reinterpreted retro stuff like ʽAin't That A Shameʼ — and he does pull off some classy lead licks and a good solo, in addition to generally reinterpreting the song as a glam-rock number while at the same time retaining all its hooks and that subtle innocent charm.

Alas, none of this is sufficiently enough to atone for one of the greatest sins of the 20th century. As far as the general public is concerned, Cheap Trick's greatest song — greatness, of course, implied by the fact that it was their only single to rise to the top of the charts — is ʽThe Flameʼ, a slow, soulful, hyper-tear-jerking power ballad that none of the band's members had anything to do with in the first place. As hideous as it sounds, I actually prefer the Diane Warren-co-written ʽGhost Townʼ — you know that I usually regard Ms. Warren as Satan incarnate, but in this case, I am almost ready to make an exception, because ʽGhost Townʼ is a ballad written rather intentionally in the style of Roy Orbison (and faithfully sung by Zander in the same style), and it is hard not to be taken in by the gradual build-up from verse to bridge to chorus, and the gentle fall-down to the "until you come back to me" resolution. Even Nielsen, turning his guitar into an emulation of the Hammond organ, delivers a poignant solo.

ʽThe Flameʼ, however, has none of that retro cuteness: it is as straightforwardly Eighties as they come, and very similar in style to that other equally nauseating power ballad, the Bangles' ʽEternal Flameʼ — what is it with 1988 and this «flame» idea? Big drums, big synths, big acoustic and electric guitars, grand operatic vocals, visions of knights in shining hairdos, plastic hearts on plastic sleeves, the works. Everything about it is just so outrageously bombastic and formulaic that it seems incredible how it could work that cheap magic on millions, but then, 1988 was all about puffed-up sentimental bombast; too bad Cheap Trick had to fall into that trap. (For that matter, I'd even take Aerosmith power ballads over this stuff — at least with Steven Tyler's voice, you get that «nastyness» angle that, even so obviously manufactured, is still preferable to Zander's dead-on chivalrous delivery).

So, as you can see, this one's totally a mixed bag. It got them out of one bunch of troubles (ridiculously overwrought electronic production splattered over embarrassing cock-rock posturing) at the expense of getting them into another one (faceless corporate songwriters providing them with bland and boring «adult» material). Fortunately, the peak of that second bunch was yet to come: Lap Of Luxury is their transitional record from the cesspool of glam-rock into the cesspool of adult-pop, and in between, they (almost accidentally) managed to gulp a few breaths of fresh air for a life-saving change.

BUSTED (1990)

1) Back 'n' Blue; 2) I Can't Understand It; 3) Wherever Would I Be; 4) If You Need Me; 5) Can't Stop Fallin' Into Love; 6) Busted; 7) Walk Away; 8) You Drive, I'll Steer; 9) When You Need Someone; 10) Had To Make You Mine; 11) Rock'n'Roll Tonight; 12) Big Bang.

Foreword/spoiler: I do indeed fully and completely conform to the general consensus that Busted is the worst Cheap Trick album, ever — with one important addition: most of the time, it does not even feel as if I'm listening to a Cheap Trick album here. This is more like a Bon-Jovi-meet-Michael-Bolton album, for some unexplained reason given to Cheap Trick to record. Where The Doctor was at least «rambunctious» — loud, cartoonish, irreverent, kicking up the dust, even if it did it all in a sonically disgusting manner — Busted is well-combed, sterile, polite, one hundred percent predictable adult pop. For all I know, these guys could get behind Celine Dion on one of her «rockier» nights out and nobody would even notice.

Of course, it all has to do with the success of ʽThe Flameʼ. The music industry saw that it was good (because it sold), and wasted no time in moving in for the kill, saddling Cheap Trick with tons of power ballads and sentimental rockers to confirm and expand the suave image — and no matter how much they would complain about it in the future, at the time they seemed happy to oblige, because much of that schlock was written by the band members themselves. Outside songwriters still remain involved on a casual basis, though, including Diane Warren, who gets the chance to rectify her silly mistake with ʽGhost Townʼ (i. e., writing a decent retro-pop song) and come up with a solid, bullet-proof, totally reliable musical atrocity called ʽWherever Would I Beʼ (amazingly, it didn't sell all that well — probably needed a brain-numbing Hollywood blockbuster to go along with it, with Rick Nielsen starring as Bruce Willis).

The boys themselves turn out to be strong competitors for Diane the Terrible, contributing ʽCan't Stop Fallin' Into Loveʼ — never mind that "falling into love" is not wholly grammatical, but any romantic power ballad that begins with the line "hey little ladies, there's some cool young dude" is guilty before it has a chance to get to the bridge, let alone the chorus. That said, the chorus is an overblown nightmare in itself — bringing on visions of the National Football League singing it in unison at the Super Bowl rather than anything subtle and emotional. Not that subtle and emotional had ever been Cheap Trick's forte, but this is the first album where their understanding of «love» completely eludes both subtlety and irony, leaving only power. If you were a girl and you had to marry Zander in 1990, I'd bet he'd never let you out of the gym.

Other notable details: (a) the first song is co-written with Taylor Rhodes, who later went on to co-write ʽCryin'ʼ with Aerosmith and some other shit with Celine Dion; (b) the fourth song is co-written with Foreigner's Mick Jones, who also plays guest guitar so that it would sound even more like Foreigner; (c) the ninth song is co-written with Rick Kelly, whose musical talents are described on his own website in the following words: "Rick Kelly has the kind of voice and a knack for melody that is both richly and warmly familiar, ranging from the pop styles of Adam Levine to John Mayer to Billy Joel". In case you might be wondering, the track itself (ʽWhen You Need Someoneʼ) does sound «warmly familiar» — as in, when you've just finished barfing and whatever you puked up is still warm on the floor... okay, sorry, got a bit carried away there.

So, anything good here? Well, if you put a gun to my head and demanded to extract at least one track for a comprehensive anthology or something like that, I would probably go along with ʽI Can't Understand Itʼ, free of outside songwriters and basically functioning as a normal power pop song, still spoiled by production (the drums are too loud, the guitars too out of focus, etc.) but at least upbeat, catchy, and mildly funny. Their cover of Roy Wood's ʽRock'n'Roll Tonightʼ, rounding out the record, is also OK, although, unfortunately, it comes round way too late to save the day — it's in the vein of ʽCalifornia Manʼ, and it shows that the boys can still have moderately tasteful fun when they put their minds to it. Also, ʽWalk Awayʼ is sort of an okay ballad, with that nostalgic chord progression and retro-pop harmonies, arguably the only one that you can listen on here without getting the urge to... well, you know.

Interestingly, one of the guest stars is Sparks' Russell Mael himself, but his presence is largely wasted on the glam-rock swaggerfest ʽYou Drive, I'll Steerʼ (admittedly, this particular period was not the hottest one in the history of Sparks, either). All I manage to remember about the song is that every time Zander and Mael duet on the line "I'm in the lap of luxury", I always hear "I'm living at the grocery", which, if it were true, could, perhaps, partially explain the abysmal quality of the album — at least, you'd really have to give it away as a freebie at the local grocery to get anybody interested. Anyway, a complete and total disaster here, critical, commercial, and artistic, best summed up in the band's own words in the prophetic title track: "Busted, busted for what I did / I didn't think it so wrong". Thumbs down with a vengeance.

WOKE UP WITH A MONSTER (1994)

1) My Gang; 2) Woke Up With A Monster; 3) You're All I Wanna Do; 4) Never Run Out Of Love; 5) Didn't Know I Had It; 6) Ride The Pony; 7) Girlfriends; 8) Let Her Go; 9) Tell Me Everything; 10) Cry Baby; 11) Love Me For A Minute.

Ugh, no wonder this album was a total commercial disaster — I mean, just look at that album cover: looks like a perfect one for a fetish porn movie soundtrack. Who the hell would buy something like that in a music store? It's okay to opt for a little change after the last two records, where the boys' looks always reflected the degree of the musical inspiration, but not at such a terrible cost — just by looking at the sleeve, one already might experience visions of dusty, tattered, cracked CD cases in used bins with fifty-cent stickers on them.

Pitiful, that, because the record was actually an attempt at a fresh start. After Busted showed that ʽThe Flameʼ was really a fluke, and that the world was not particularly interested in putting Zander and Nielsen on the regular payroll for power balladeers — and after the grunge revolution happened and burst the bubble of the hair metal era in general, the band gradually began coming back to its senses. For their next producer, they chose Ted Templeman (of Van Halen fame); the number of outside songwriters was seriously reduced, though questionable figures like Survivor's Jim Peterik still wound up on the list; and the emphasis was placed squarely on the heavy rock sound again, with adult contemporary overtones limited to an absolute minimum. Oh, and the keyboards are out — for good.

The problem is, having breathed so much poison over an entire decade, it's hardly possible to get it out of your lungs all at once, and the album still suffers from two serious problems. First, even despite the sparse and familiar instrumentation, the production is fairly shitty. Nielsen's electric guitars sound either overcompressed or just too glossy much of the time, and his sprightly acoustic sound, reserved for the more sentimental tunes, consists of dull, bombastic power chords that anybody could have played — and Zander's vocals are often buried so deep in the mix, you'd think they were expressly interested in squashing his personality. (On the other hand, this might have been a good idea for some of the more sexually explicit numbers: the less lyrics of ʽRide The Ponyʼ you manage to make out, the better for your digestive system. Is it even grammatically possible, let alone sexually, to "satisfy your funk"?).

Second, in Cheap Trick's endless battle of Irony vs. Sleaze, Woke Up With A Monster is still firmly on the Sleaze side — in a way, that album cover does reflect the fact that too much of the record still presents the band as intentionally «anti-intellectual» cock-rockers, pandering to an AC/DC-type audience but without the Spartan qualities of AC/DC that make the Young brothers such a delightful un-guilty pleasure for certain intellectual types as well. And I'm not mentioning AC/DC just like that, out of the blue: ʽGirlfriendsʼ, one of the record's hardest-rocking tracks, is basically just a minor rewrite of ʽBad Boy Boogieʼ (although the way they play the opening riff also reminds me that ʽBad Boy Boogieʼ itself had copped its riff from ʽRoute 66ʼ), so much so that, when after the guitar break Zander begins to sing the exact same vocal melody that Bon Scott does, the words "ain't the same old line from a rock'n'roll song!" have to be taken quite literally. The tight little number, with Bun E. Carlos kicking away like a trusty old packmule, is still fun — but when the very next one, ʽLet Her Goʼ, opens with a riff that is a minor variation on ʽDirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheapʼ, it's like, «No way! They can't be that obvious, can they?»

The one and only number that steps a little beyond the formula of the sentimental ballad and the cock-rocker is the title track — slower, moodier, with disturbing lyrics and a bit of creepy vocal acting from Zander; most memorable, of course, is the combination of its chorus riff with supporting vocals, sort of like a mix between the Beatles' ʽI Want Youʼ and a middle-Eastern ʽKashmirʼ-like epic. The last time they tried something like that was probably with ʽHeaven Tonightʼ, although ʽWoke Up With A Monsterʼ is, of course, a far cry from the inspired melody and arrangement of their creepiest song — among other things, it suffers from the same overcompression as everything else here, and it could certainly use a denser arrangement, maybe with some cellos thrown in for good measure. Still, as a conscious attempt to write an art-rock song, it is clearly a standout here, and how long has it been since we were able to talk about «standouts»?..

Other than that, well, bad lyrics aside, the album is generally listenable and occasionally enjoyable. The upbeat power-pop tracks like ʽMy Gangʼ and ʽYou're All I Wanna Doʼ (ugh, that title!) work well, and even the few power ballads here are a big step up from the level of Busted — ʽNever Run Out Of Loveʼ has a thoughtfully crafted vocal melody with perfectly placed falsettos, a living-and-breathing rhythm section, and a gritty rather than pompous lead guitar part, and ʽTell Me Everythingʼ once again returns them to Roy Orbison mode, which is much better than the Michael Bolton mode anyway.

So, if anything, this record is in bad need of a complete re-recording — maybe throw away some of the worst lyrical offenders like ʽRide The Ponyʼ, correct production issues, and somewhere within this package lies a perfectly normal Cheap Trick album (much like The Doctor, although that one could only be salvaged with some top-level surgery). At the very least, there seems to be a near-common consensus that this was a major step up from Busted at the time, and I fully concur — too bad that the album flopped so badly (the band blamed Warner Bros. for lack of promotion, but I think there were deeper issues as well... then again, there's always that matter of the clown and the tattooed lady), although at least the flop did serve its purpose: it taught the band to finally stay away from big labels, corporate songwriters, and fickle contemporary trends.

CHEAP TRICK (1997)

1) Anytime; 2) Hard To Tell; 3) Carnival Game; 4) Shelter; 5) You Let A Lotta People Down; 6) Baby No More; 7) Yeah Yeah; 8) Say Goodbye; 9) Wrong All Along; 10) Eight Miles Low; 11) It All Comes Back To You.

Yes, it's that time of the year — exactly twenty years after you had first appeared on the screen, go back, refresh, renew, and reboot yourself by trying to recapture that old vibe. It certainly took them longer than one could expect, what with the synth-pop and hair-metal trends effectively reversed around 1991 or so, but better late than never, and with a new producer and a new (small) record label, Cheap Trick '97 is able not only to capitalize on the faint promise made by Woke Up With A Monster, but, in fact, to finally take this band off life support.

Definitively objective fact: at the very least, this is the best-sounding Cheap Trick album since 1979. Each and every song builds upon the original, most efficient components of the band's sound — crisp and crunchy electric guitars from Nielsen; crackling, punchy, serviceable acoustic drums from Bun E. Carlos; sneering lionine roar from Zander; occasional piano and cello overdubs to introduce an art-poppier texture — and new producer Ian Taylor (with whom they'd already worked briefly during the One To One sessions) is clearly such a big fan of the classic 1977-79 records that he does not lift a finger to make the sound more «modern», at the risk of making these guys lose momentum. In this particular respect, this is as strong a comeback as could ever be expected.

Whether the songwriting is up to par with the sound is a much more difficult question. Whatever we might feel or think, those guys did get older in twenty years, and furthermore, when you have been through a ten-year period of relentless yellow fever, you can hardly expect it to go away for good without leaving any lasting side effects whatsoever. These side effects are tricky, though: we cannot blame Cheap Trick '97 for any embarrassing power ballads (there are none!) or disgusting wear-your-cock-on-your-sleeve exercises in loud and tuneless salaciousness (instead, there are just a couple fast-paced old-style garage rockers with misogynistic overtones). We can only say that, perhaps, these new songs are not as immediately captivating or as brimming with youthful passion and snotty sarcasm as it used to be — yes, Cheap Trick's songwriting skills have been somewhat irrepairably impaired, but then, frankly speaking, twenty years of scooping ideas from your well of thoughts might do that to anyone, regardless of whether you have been to The Doctor in the interim or not.

Thus, the opening track ʽAnytimeʼ has a great sound: the guitars roar with just the right degree of menace, Zander goes from «evil clown» vocals in the verse to an all-out roar in the chorus with gusto, and the good old need-your-love-so-bad-it's-driving-me-crazy vibe is honored throughout with the highest honors. But as a respectable composition that should take its rightful place next to ʽHot Loveʼ or ʽBig Eyesʼ... well, it would at least need a great riff, or a more interesting chorus than "I need your love, I need your love". As it is, it is hard to get rid of the feeling that they are simply exerting their craft to the max in order to sound like they did in 1977... well, apparently, which is what they really do, but sometimes you can make it seem very natural (like you've really been visited by your muse again, first time in ages), and sometimes not, and this is one of the sometime nots. But if you love that overall sound — and I do — you'll pardon them anyway.

Plus, there are much better songs here than ʽAnytimeʼ: if not in terms of great guitar riffs, then at least in terms of singalong choruses. ʽHard To Tellʼ is a great example — the way "it's not that easy, baby, it's not that hard to tell..." resolves into "life is hell — but I do it well!" is a good setup for an ecstatic reaction, because few people can scream the word "hell" with such a good mixture of pain and anger as Robin does, and then he contrasts it masterfully with the optimistic swerve of "I do it well", and you get a good charge of frustration and hope in one package. It might all be a little more serious and introspective and «grounded» than the lighter, funnier stuff on the classic records, but hey, that's how human beings usually get as they grow older.

In terms of creativity, ʽCarnival Gameʼ combines Revolver-style vocal harmonies with a cool wah-wah solo; ʽYou Let A Lotta People Downʼ sounds like a trademark pissed-off solo Lennon number, with Zander borrowing quite a few of John's classic vocal moves (well, maybe that's not all that creative, but it's been so long...); and ʽEight Miles Lowʼ is the album's most experimental-psychedelic number, though certainly not in a Byrdsey way — its main point is the curious "dream the dream the scream the scream" chorus, a modest, but successful experiment of giving a falsetto voice to the darker undercurrents of your subconscious.

And then there are the ballads, all (both) of them tastefully arranged and pleasantly delivered — ʽShelterʼ, an acoustic song adorned with some cello and steeped in self-misery and self-irony; and ʽIt All Comes Back To Youʼ, which is not about successfully recapturing the musical vibe that once used to inspire and support you, but rather about one last recollection of your meaningless life before kicking the bucket — sung with just a small pinch of pathos and plenty of humility, as Nielsen quietly picks the acoustic and tiny splashes of pianos and strings punctuate Zander's trembling vocals at the right intervals: a perfect finale for an album that seems so perfectly well aware of its limitations, yet still honestly tries to work them to best effect.

All in all, even though neither the LP nor its lead single (ʽSay Goodbyeʼ, another pretty, but not instantly memorable power pop single with a touch of nostalgia and a touch of Lennon) managed to properly chart, we don't need to pay much attention to that circumstance in 2016 — instead, I am just glad to give the record a well-deserved, if modest, thumbs up and heartily recommend it to anybody who loves the classic era of Cheap Trick so much that he/she'd gladly welcome a somewhat inferior, but fully effective imitation for the collection. Besides, who knows, you might even like it better than the old stuff as you grow older — there's all this nostalgic vibe here that don't work that well when you're twenty, but whose chances of hitting you right in the guts increase with each passing year. I'm not quite up to that stage yet, but let me revisit this in a decade or so and then we'll see clearer.

MUSIC FOR HANGOVERS (1999)

1) Oh Claire; 2) Surrender; 3) Hot Love; 4) I Can't Take It; 5) I Want You To Want Me; 6) Taxman, Mr. Thief; 7) Mandocello; 8) Oh Caroline; 9) How Are You?; 10) If You Want My Love; 11) Dream Police; 12) So Good To See You; 13) The Ballad Of T.V. Violence; 14) Gonna Raise Hell.

Nobody really needs more than one Cheap Trick live album in the collection, and I don't need to tell you what live album that should be — but it is also true that Cheap Trick hadn't released a follow-up to Budokan in twenty years (although they did release the previously unreleased second part of the concert separately in 1994 as Budokan II), and since we probably have to thank them for not doing this in the Eighties, it does make sense to give this one at least one spin to check how well they were faring in their «modest comeback» era.

Apparently, this is not a reflection of a fully typical show — these fourteen selections are culled from a special live extravaganza in Chicago, where they were giving themselves a huge 20th anniversary celebration, and marking the re-release of the early catalog on CD by playing each of the first four albums in its completeness on four consecutive nights. And since the prospect of putting together a huge 4-CD set seemed too terrifying at the time (although it is highly likely that at some time we might be getting a Music For Hangovers DeLuxe as a limited-time download offer, because we have so little music to listen to in our spare time), well, they just took a few selections from each show, shuffled them randomly, and released a «sampler» of sorts.

As a result, this is a highly nostalgic affair (the only two post-1979 songs are ʽIf You Want My Loveʼ and ʽI Can't Take Itʼ, which they probably played for their encores), and the only question worth asking is — does this kick any sort of ass that would be comparable to Budokan? Well, I have to admit that, agist bias aside, it does: on the whole, the band sounds every bit as invigorated and ready to blow the roof as it did twenty years ago. The biggest worry could probably be Zander, but no need to wonder, really — just throw on ʽGonna Raise Hellʼ and you will see that he is still not only capable of the rabid bull-roaring attack, but he is still capable to deliver it seemingly effortlessly. In fact, he does it so well that, as it seems to me, the engineers see to it that his voice is consistently driven a little bit higher in the mix than it was on Budokan — playing the old and the new live versions of ʽSurrenderʼ clearly shows the difference, and since Robin's pipes and enthusiasm show no signs of wearing down, this might be one small argument why at least some of the tracks here might even be more fun to listen to than the Budokan ones.

As for the musicians, there is no deterioration in quality in Nielsen's guitar pyrotechnics or Bun E. Carlos' steady drum support either (I guess Petersson is doing all right as well, but the bass in Cheap Trick was never anything special in the first place). There's only a tiny bit of guest support, with Billy Corgan playing extra guitar on ʽMandocelloʼ and then D'Arcy Wretzky singing backup vocals on ʽIf You Want My Loveʼ (I had no idea that Smashing Pumpkins were such big fans of the Trick, but apparently they are, as Corgan also wrote some gushing liner notes for the album), but perhaps the band sensed that they did need it, since their own fanbase had already dwindled, and they definitely needed some public support from the younger generation (the concept would be further advanced on Silver).

It is important to note that the band did consider the possibility that the album would be unfavorably compared to Budokan — and for that reason, there is as little overlap as possible, with worn-out hits and classics largely ignored (on record) in favor of less overplayed tunes: the only three tracks that do overlap are ʽSurrenderʼ (because what's a live Cheap Trick album without ʽSurrenderʼ?), ʽI Want You To Want Meʼ (repeat question with substituted object), and ʽOh Carolineʼ, the latter quite legit because they do it in a revised acoustic arrangement. The good news is that we get to hear the mad live jamming on ʽGonna Raise Hellʼ, and a guitar-based rather than synth-based version of ʽDream Policeʼ (but why didn't they include ʽThe House Is Rockingʼ? That was, like, the most stage-ready number on the Dream Police album!). The bad news is that, for some reason, each performance fades in and fades out, giving that nasty «greatest hits live» scent — I guess they were honestly letting us know that these were cut-and-paste performances, but it's no great fun to endure moments of absolute silence when sitting through a live album.

Aside from that, though, it makes no sense to have anything but very minor quibbles with the record (such as its title — I mean, is a decibel-heavy, guitar-crunch-choked power pop album really the appropriate kind of music to treat a hangover? Shouldn't they have at least gone all MTV Unplugged on us to validate that title?). It can even provide a minor companion piece to Budokan, due to that minimal overlap; but it certainly played a bigger role in 1999 (proving the world that the Trick «still got it») than it does now.

SILVER (2001)

1) Ain't That A Shame; 2) I Want You To Want Me; 3) Oh, Candy; 4) That 70's Song; 5) Voices; 6) If You Want My Love; 7) She's Tight; 8) Can't Stop Fallin' Into Love; 9) Gonna Raise Hell; 10) I Can't Take It; 11) Take Me To The Top; 12) It All Comes Back To You; 13) Tonight It's You; 14) Time Will Let You Know; 15) World's Greatest Lover; 16) The Flame; 17) Stop This Game; 18) Dream Police; 19) I Know What I Want; 20) Woke Up With A Monster; 21) Never Had A Lot To Lose; 22) You're All Talk; 23) I'm Losin' You; 24) Hard To Tell; 25) Oh, Claire; 26) Surrender; 27) Just Got Back; 28) Day Tripper; 29) Who D' King; 30*) Daddy Should Have Stayed In High School; 31*) On Top Of The World.

Two live albums in a row? The easiest thing is to interpret this as a sign of senility, but, in all fairness, post-Budokan Cheap Trick only really put out live albums for special occasions — thus, Music For Hangovers celebrated the re-release of the «classic four», and now, a year later, comes this posh, almost luxurious celebration of the band's 25th anniversary, staged by the band in style, as they return to their native town of Rockford, Illinois (probably the only place in the world where they can still sell out the largest venue without any problems) and, local royalty-style, not only surround themselves with a pack of illustrious (and not-so-illustrious) guests, but also insist on presenting a panoramic view of the band's entire 25-year old career.

Among other things, this means revisiting every single Cheap Trick album ever — yes, even including The Doctor and Busted. With thirteen studio albums behind their belt already, this is not an easy task, and even given the mammoth duration of the show (almost two and a half hours), they are unable to tackle all the highlights, especially since they are so obsessed with completism here, they even perform one song from Robin Zander's solo career (ʽTime Will Let You Knowʼ), as well as the theme song from That 70's Show (a reworking of Big Star's ʽIn The Streetʼ), and two Beatle-related tunes: ʽDay Tripperʼ, which they sometimes did in concert in the old days, and even Lennon's ʽI'm Losing Youʼ — a song on which they almost got to back John back in 1980, even though their version ultimately did not make it onto the final cut of Double Fantasy (but you can still hear it on Lennon's Anthology boxset: I like its hard-rocking crunch, but I can also see how the sound would be considered too harsh and too «retrograde» for John's New Wave-leaning tastes circa 1980).

The good news: this ensures that Silver is at least not completely expendable, coming right off the heels of Music For Hangovers — this is an entirely different concept, and although there is, inevitably, some overlap with the old numbers, there is a whole ton of live stuff here that you have never heard before unless you were an avid concert goer or bootleg collector. (Even in terms of the old Seventies' stuff, you still have performances of ʽVoicesʼ, ʽI Know What I Wantʼ, ʽYou're All Talkʼ, and, tacked on as bonus tracks on the 2004 re-release, ʽDaddy Should Have Stayed In High Schoolʼ and ʽOn Top Of The Worldʼ that were never previously available live). The bad news: do we really want to sit through an endless set of reminders of how subpar the band's 1980s — 1990s material was, compared to the classics? Even if they really go all the way to weed out the embarrassments and concentrate on the decent stuff, there's no way you could shove Silver into somebody's face as an introduction to Cheap Trick. It may be historically truthful and all, but it just isn't really that fun.

There does seem to be a certain ideological point here: it's as if with this release, Nielsen and the boys are trying to officially legitimize and redeem all of their past. Case in point: having carefully back-scrutinized The Doctor and extracted what is almost certainly the best-written song on there (ʽTake Me To The Topʼ), they perform an exuberant acoustic performance of the tune to a seemingly enthusiastic audience, upon which a cockily satisfied Nielsen goes, "now who said The Doctor was a bad album? Only every critic in the United States, but what do they know?" Some rather crude revisionism out there, Mr. Nielsen — now go ahead and stun your listeners with a kick-ass version of ʽMan-U-Lip-U-Latorʼ, I dare you. But the illusion cannot be held forever even by the band members — at one point (right after the conclusion of ʽThe Flameʼ, a song that Rick himself never seemed to have much love for), Nielsen states that "okay, we've had enough of these ballads", and eventually the band gets back on track with some real good stuff.

The guest stars do not make that much of a difference: many are just relatives (like Robin's daughter, Holland, and Rick's son, Miles), some are old friends and colleagues (Petersson's former replacement on the bass, Jon Brant, makes a guest appearance on two of the songs he originally played on), and then there's the ever-present Billy Corgan (ʽJust Got Backʼ) and Art Alexakis of Everclear (ʽDay Tripperʼ). The biggest star of 'em all is Slash, who gives a dutifully ecstatic solo turn on ʽYou're All Talkʼ, but I am not sure that Cheap Trick done Guns'n'Roses style is a particularly thrilling idea — serious generational gap out there. Now if only they could get Angus Young, we'd be talking! But it's a long way from Australia to Illinois.

Other than that, what is there to say? The band remains in very good form (ʽGonna Raise Hellʼ is especially diagnostic for all members of the band, from vocals and guitar to bass and drums, and here they pass the test with flying colors), Nielsen's sense of humor is intact, and, after all, it does make sense to give those subpar songs an extra chance when they are separated from crummy Eighties' production and transferred to a healthy live environment (also, despite the hoarse overtones, Nielsen turns in an impressive vocal performance on ʽWorld's Greatest Loverʼ). There is also a DVD release of the concert, but I'm not sure if you should go for this — Nielsen was still in his ridiculous braided beard and dark glasses stage at the time, and it just don't work that well without the bowtie and baseball cap delivery body image. If it ain't broke, don't fix it — good title for a potential Cheap Trick hit, by the way.

SPECIAL ONE (2003)

1) Scent Of A Woman; 2) Too Much; 3) Special One; 4) Pop Drone; 5) My Obsession; 6) Words; 7) Sorry Boy; 8) Best Friend; 9) If I Could; 10) Low Life In High Heels; 11) Hummer.

So, having just summarized the first quarter-century of their career, Cheap Trick are left free to turn over the page, clean up that slate, and embark upon the difficult journey of proving their ongoing relevance to the 21st century — something that is hard enough to do even for Radiohead, never mind a band that had always preferred to look back to the past rather than forward into the future for inspiration. And how do they fare?

Judging by contemporary reviews, not too good: most critics viewed Special One as a serious disappointment, bombarding it with one bad rap after another, and as I am quickly browsing through the various assessments, I find myself a little stumped, because, as far as my ears tell me, the worst thing that can be deduced about Special One is that there is nothing particularly special about it — and that might be a good thing, too, since we don't really want Cheap Trick to be influenced by Radiohead or the Beastie Boys or Godspeed You! Black Emperor; we just want them to turn out juicy, crunchy, reliable, old-fashioned power pop if they still can. And that is precisely what they do here, for forty-six minutes.

Make just one little amendment: we want power-pop with just a few subtle deviations from a narrow formula every now and then, so that we can slap a «creativity» label on the record, and in that regard, Special One does deliver. There's electric pop and there's acoustic pop; there's faster and slower tunes (maybe with a little too much emphasis on slow); there are tinges of psychedelia, there are violations of the classic pop structure, there's some humor, and there are no power ballads whatsoever. Throw in decent production standards and the fact that all the band members are still in good shape (Zander's roar is as roar-ish as it ever roared), and what else do you want?

What I believe is that few reviewers ever really made it past the opening track. ʽScent Of A Womanʼ is not the worst Cheap Trick song ever written, but it takes its subject way too seriously, and it does make Zander sound a bit like Roger Daltrey, as suggested by some of the reviewers, only while singing lyrics that were sure as hell not written by Pete Townshend: "A man don't add up to much next to a woman / A man can't ever forget the taste of a woman" — silly and gross, especially when it is sung without the least bit of irony in the singer's voice. You'd think these words and that exuberance would fit in just all right on any of their pompous glam-Eighties albums, but now it is not clear what they are doing at all in the middle of a perfectly valid power pop track, other than prove that when Cheap Trick are committed to show themselves as old-fashioned, they go all the way, warts and all.

Really, though, Special One is much more than just ʽScent Of A Womanʼ. The acoustic-based tracks, for one thing, are quite lovely — and, for that matter, Cheap Trick are rarely ever remembered for the beauty of their acoustic melodies. But the title track has an excellent slide lick cutting across its gentle stomp, and the song has an aura of gallant delicacy, rather than blunt crudeness of the past; and ʽWordsʼ is arguably the best imitation of Lennon's balladry style that they had managed to turn out at that point.

On the noisy rocking front, ʽPop Droneʼ, ʽSorry Boyʼ, and ʽBest Friendʼ all qualify, but pay special attention to ʽBest Friendʼ — foregoing the verse/chorus structure, this song gradually unfurls as a nasty egotistic paranoid crescendo, vocals and instruments going hand in hand, until, for the last two minutes, it simply becomes a hail of grinning "yeah yeah yeah"'s and Zander's hysterical screams of "leave me alone, I'm my best friend!". If you let yourself caught up in this, it's one hell of a way to disperse frustration, and as for the lyrics, even if they give the impression of being largely improvised on the spot ("I can't slow down cuz down we'll go / Where I step you don't wanna know"), they do generate an atmosphere of mean, sickly craziness of a thoroughly confused and pissed-off mind, which seems so welcome in 2016. And although some probably find the slow, murky, distortion-drenched progression of ʽSorry Boyʼ a disappointing example of alt-rock influence on the boys, I hear echoes of genuine ruthless cruelty (of course, in a thoroughly ironic presentation) in the song and think that it passes the basic quality test.

The funniest, if not necessarily the best, is saved for last: nobody ever pays any attention to ʽLow Life In High Heels / Hummerʼ, probably brushing it away as a 7-minute long musical joke that overstays its welcome to the point of aural cruelty, but I love it. It's one of those ʽWhy Don't We Do It In The Road?ʼ thing throwaways, where the success/failure of the joke crucially depends on the quality of its underlying groove, but this here groove is flawless — the band tightens itself up to AC/DC level and somehow makes the repetitiveness of Zander's ʽhmm-hmmʼ seem cool all the way. Along which way Nielsen hits upon quite a few extra cool riffs (the six-note pattern which he runs through four different octaves is priceless!), and Cheap Trick's rhythm section earns an extra star for making even a dead man tap his toes. It might be the silliest thing they ever did in their career up to that point — but it's actually surprising that it took them so long to get around to it, considering that the Beatles always were their main idols, and the Beatles were always game for some delightful silliness.

Probably a few of the songs still qualify as filler, and probably none of the good songs are on top level when it comes to sharpness, poignancy, relevancy, and depth for these guys; and maybe this is not quite up to the level of middle-age maturity that they displayed on the 1997 album. But it should, by all means, qualify as a solid, thoughtful entry into the catalog, and for what it's worth, I actually like it more than the somewhat overrated Rockford, so thumbs up it is.

ROCKFORD (2006)

1) Welcome To The World; 2) Perfect Stranger; 3) If It Takes A Lifetime; 4) Come On Come On Come On; 5) O Claire; 6) This Time You Got It; 7) Give It Away; 8) One More; 9) Every Night And Every Day; 10) Dream The Night Away; 11) All Those Years; 12) Decaf.

Finally, Cheap Trick score one with critics and veteran fans alike. Returning to their home base to write and produce their next album, they simply decided to cut the crap and give the people what they want — an «authentic», no-frills, classic-style power-pop Cheap Trick album, all balls and energy and catchy anthemic choruses and raw distorted guitars and even an album cover that pictures all four band members just the way they are supposed to be, smartly disguised through a cartoon perspective that successfully hides their age from inquisitive minds.

Everybody fell for this: where critical reception for Special One was lukewarm at best, Rockford was hailed as a true return to form — and it does not take long to see why, because upon first listen, it really sounds like the good old Trick has returned, and that long, strange, embarrassing trip they'd been on since 1980 is finally over. The album truly bursts with energy, as most of the songs are taken at moderately fast tempos, and all four band members, despite any potential age issues, sound just as youthful and enthusiastic as if it were 1977 all over again. The production is excellent — just the right balance of sound between guitars and vocals, and Bun E. Carlos' mule-kicking drumming is completely free of any distracting post-production effects (granted, neither did we have any problems with the production on Special One). And, like most veterans, they have that elusive «authenticity bonus» — unlike the youngsters of today, they can allow themselves the luxury of keeping it simple, idealistic, and Beatle-copping, and feeling all happy and glowing about it rather than embarrassed.

And yet, as much as I actually enjoy listening to these twelve songs (and I do, really), I would have to insist that, in terms of the general curve, Rockford is a serious slide down in substance, if not superficial quality, after the modest comeback of Cheap Trick '97 and even Special One. The reason is simple: neither of those two records felt like a conscious effort to go back to being the Cheap Trick of '77. What they did was try to make things right by returning the music to those styles and values that justify Cheap Trick's existence — but the first one of those also made allowances for the band's age, sounding a bit more mature and introspective than usual, and the second one at least tried to branch out a bit, experimenting with moods and textures on ʽPop Droneʼ, ʽSorry Boyʼ, ʽBest Friendʼ, and yes, even the ʽLow Lifeʼ joke.

More precisely, Rockford suffers from two pervasive (and somewhat connected) problems. First, the music is downright lazy. We may enjoy the kick-ass energy all we want, but is there even a single classy, original guitar riff from Nielsen? 90% of the time he is relying on simplistic guitar patterns, each and every one of which has probably already been used up dozens of times by power-pop and punk-pop bands around the world. I think that the only guitar melody on the entire album that got my ears perked up was the funny funky weave on ʽOne Moreʼ, which reminded me a little bit of the various ways these guys used to fool around in the past (especially on tracks like ʽGonna Raise Hellʼ). Everything else had a cool sound, but lacked memorability.

Second, there's just too much emphasis on the «having a good time» vibe. Classic Cheap Trick could turn into wild (but benevolent) party animals and rock'n'roll shamans at a moment's notice, but they also had that adventurous, cynical, dangerous side to them — the edgy side that produced such classics as ʽBallad Of TV Violenceʼ, ʽHeaven Tonightʼ, ʽYou're All Talkʼ, ʽGonna Raise Hellʼ, etc. The Cheap Trick of Rockford, in comparison, is a big, burly, friendly beast that can smother you in a well-meaning hug, but is incapable of trampling you under its hooves. The above-mentioned ʽOne Moreʼ is the only thing on the album that spices it up with a little aggressive negativity, but even that one is disappointing — first it cons you into thinking that Zander is going to throw one of his classic tempers, impersonating a "gonna raise hell" type of a guy, but then it merely turns into a timid variation on the subject of ʽI Can't Get No Satisfactionʼ (subject-wise, not musical). Everything else, song after song after song, is imbued with the optimistic spirit — which would be fine if the songs were at least easily distinguishable from each other in terms of melody, but no. Half of these tunes begin and I'm all like, "Wait, you just sang about that in your previous number, do you think I was dumb enough to not get it the first time?"

It does not help life much that there are numerous intentional self-references here, along with unintentional rip-offs of their own and others' musical moves. ʽWelcome To The Worldʼ was described by Nielsen as an update of the message and structure of ʽHello Thereʼ (except that it replaces the funny irony of ʽHello Thereʼ with a much more straightforward and optimistic greeting), but it also cops a part of the ʽDream Policeʼ solo. ʽCome On Come On Come Onʼ clearly references ʽCome On Come Onʼ (now you will spend the rest of your life trying not to confuse the two), but its chorus lacks the call-and-response excitement and aching yearning of the classic oldie. ʽO Claireʼ is a Lennon-style ballad with some delicious falsettos in the chorus, and it has nothing to do with the self-mocking ʽOh Claireʼ joke of Heaven Tonight, but, naturally, the title was intended to look as if they'd finally gotten around to turn that one into a real song. (And now they've also loaded you with the responsibility of remembering the difference between ʽOh Claireʼ and ʽO Claireʼ — they could have at least come up with another C-name).

Speaking of titles in general, they are really running out of imagination: anybody who has four songs in a row titled ʽGive It Awayʼ, ʽOne More Dayʼ, ʽEvery Night And Every Dayʼ, ʽDream The Night Awayʼ should probably be forced to memorize Ulysses in its entirety as adequate punishment. And they hunt for Beatles-related inspiration so avidly that eventually they do not even notice themselves that they begin sounding like Jeff Lynne's ELO instead — the "lonely lonely lonely lonely night" bit on ʽAll Those Yearsʼ, for instance. (For that matter, the "it could happen to you, it could happen to you" bit on ʽDecafʼ is exactly the same as it is on Paul McCartney's ʽTo Youʼ from Back To The Egg, but let's chalk this one up to coincidence).

Cutting a long story short, Rockford is superficially enjoyable — you can headbang to it, you can sing along to it, you can even try to forget how derivative and forced it is if you are a big, big fan of the band — and despite all the harsh criticism, I still give it a thumbs up because relatively well done nostalgia for a great past is still better than a poorly done, embarrassing attempt at harnessing a progressive future. But this is precisely what it is: an age-defying attempt to bring back a 1977, polished and updated for a 2006. I will never be the biggest fan of that, and would not advise anybody to frantically search for a justification of why Rockford is «simply a little different» from In Color. It is different, and not in a satisfactory manner.

THE LATEST (2009)

1) Sleep Forever; 2) When The Lights Are Out; 3) Miss Tomorrow; 4) Sick Man Of Europe; 5) These Days; 6) Miracle; 7) Everyday You Make Me Crazy; 8) California Girl; 9) Everybody Knows; 10) Alive; 11) Times Of Our Lives; 12) Closer, The Ballad Of Burt And Linda; 13) Smile.

Hmm, this does not at all sound like Rockford. One point off for the way too careless album title (which became completely false in 2016), but other than that, the record, being just as nostalgic as Rockford, actually sounds lovingly nostalgic — it's not so much about «let us go back to being the circa-1977 Cheap Trick because this is what everybody expects of us» as it is about «let us ignore all trends and fashions and make some music in those styles that inspired and influenced us in the first place, because we don't really owe anything to anybody». With a few exceptions, Rockford was a balls-out rock'n'roll album, disappointing because they did not quite have the energy and inspiration for it. The Latest, also with a few exceptions, is a psychedelic pop album that should have been dedicated to «The Two JLs», John Lennon and Jeff Lynne; and it succeeds where Rockford failed because (a) it does not actually require as much energy as a rock'n'roll album to be convincing, (b) it finds the writers and the players in a more inspired state of mind, and thus, features slightly more creative melodies and arrangements.

There are only two or three Rockford-style fast tempo pop-rockers, which means they have a better chance to stand out among the crowd, and ʽCalifornia Girlʼ does stand out a little — although it may simply be due to the title's analogy with ʽCalifornia Manʼ, with which it shares some irony (but not the outstanding hook — this one's more of a generic rockabilly pastiche). But the bulk of the record places its trust in handsome vocal melodies and lush arrangements, sometimes bordering on «symph-pop» and often featuring psychedelic overtones, taking you all the way back to the age of Revolver and Sgt. Pepper. Sometimes it goes a little too far with the adoration — a song like ʽTimes Of Our Livesʼ literally sounds like a variation on several of Pepper's themes, including direct musical quotations from ʽWithin You Without Youʼ, etc. But I'd still rather have their expert take on this idiom than watch them churn out monotonous (non)-riff-rockers for the rest of their lives.

On ʽSick Man Of Europeʼ (a title that goes all the way back to those days when Cheap Trick were not called Cheap Trick yet), they seem to be issuing their own local manifesto — "This ain't the new, it's the old generation / It's all real, not a cheap imitation" — and almost gleefully reveling in their own nostalgic stubbornness; but in all honesty, after two decades of some of the most horrendously embarrassing sucking up to fashions, they have nothing left to do but to look up to the distant past for future inspiration. And God bless them for that, because an anthemic ballad like ʽThese Daysʼ, had it been written around 1990, would have born the Diane Warren seal of approval — here, even though it is still set to a muscular power-chord guitar backing, the rhythm section sounds alive, the lead counterpart is represented by electric jangle rather than corny synths, and the chorus has a wonderful melodic lilt where Zander shows how he can still be maddeningly passionate without drowning in vocal bombast à la ʽThe Flameʼ.

If, after the speedy onslaught of Rockford material, you find yourself initially bored by the preponderance of loud, slow, dreamy ballads, don't give in — a couple listens into the record was all it took to convince me that they have really nailed this vibe, even if there is so little originality or freshness about it that memories of these songs will not hold for long. But while the material is playing, it sounds awesome — ʽThe Ballad Of Burt And Lindaʼ, for instance, with these ʽRainʼ-style vocals (the Beatles' ʽRainʼ, I mean), really makes you want to close your eyes and gently rock to and fro in sync with the vibe. Just a perfectly balanced sound, guitars, keyboards, strings, vocals, the works.

Let nobody be fooled by the fact they are covering a Slade song here — ʽWhen The Lights Are Outʼ is a power pop classic from 1974, representative of the sunny-side-up facet of Slade rather than their gritty barroom attitudes, and it perfectly fits in with the Beatlesque vibe of the album. And although it is the Lennon part of that vibe that they adore the most, the record still ends with a lovable McCartney-style ballad (ʽSmileʼ); again, they may go a bit too far with these lyrics (come on now guys, you're not that idealistic under your skins to invite us to "take a look around the world, it's a wonder" — leave that to Paul and put some barbs on it, woncha?), but in this case, old age works in their favor, because Zander's sentimentality feels more natural and «excusable» as he grows older, and there's nothing like a bunch of Magical Mystery Tour-like string arrangements to make it seem even more authentic, too.

Yes, I do believe that I won't remember much about this record when I wake up next morning, but as long as the dream is not over, let me still fix a thumbs up here, because I really dug the experience: every single song had something to offer by way of pure emotion. Bottomline: when Cheap Trick in 2006 want to sound like Cheap Trick in 1977-78, they fail, but when Cheap Trick in 2009 want to sound like the Beatles in 1966-67, they sort of succeed. So what exactly does this prove?..

SGT. PEPPER LIVE (2009)

1) Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band; 2) With A Little Help From My Friends; 3) Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds; 4) Getting Better; 5) Fixing A Hole; 6) She's Leaving Home; 7) Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!; 8) Within You Without You; 9) When I'm Sixty-Four; 10) Lovely Rita; 11) Good Morning Good Morning; 12) Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (reprise); 13) A Day In The Life; 14) Medley: Golden Slumbers / Carry That Weight / The End.

Okay, so this is the weirdest one yet. As if the innumerable quotations, periphrases, hints, and other types of Beatles influence (along with the occasional direct cover like ʽDay Tripperʼ) did not suffice; as if they needed something very direct, very blunt to confirm the title of «American Beatles»; as if work on The Latest stimulated their nostalgia glands to the point where itching gets dangerously close to bursting — Cheap Trick went ahead and did it, climbing up on stage and pulling a one-time Phish on us by covering Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in its entirety, in commemoration of the 42nd anniversary of its release, because who the heck cares about round dates? The urge is all that matters.

Actually, we learn from the liner notes that they were doing this as early as 2007 (when there was a round date after all), first with the LA Philharmonic Orchestra, then with other orchestras in different venues — the liner notes do not specify when and where this particular recording was made, but the orchestra is the New York Philharmonic — including a two-week run at the Las Vegas Hilton in September 2009: a royal venue for a royal album! Curiously, they did not follow it up with a medley of Elvis hits, as much as some of the regular patrons would love to hear that, I'm pretty sure.

The choice of Sgt. Pepper was probably quite deliberate — apart from continuing to exist as the quintessential Beatles / quintessential art-pop record in the communal mind, it was also the one album that most glaringly symbolized rock music's transition from stage-based to studio-based: all the innumerable studio tricks that gave Pepper its otherworldly, psychedelic sheen could not be replicated on stage, even if somebody had solved the screaming girl issue. At the same time, Sgt. Pepper was the first Beatles album that was put together as a continuous, quasi-conceptual suite of songs, with an intro and an outro, and thus, deserved to be performed as a single piece. And so here we are — who but Cheap Trick, these reputable «American Beatles» who'd worked so much out of the direct shadow of their UK predecessors, to try and realize that dream? Particularly now that they have already realized theirs, and are left with nothing much to do?

And yet, there's a problem. If they are doing an «authentic» Beatles-like vision of Sgt. Pepper, then this record has to be considered a failure, because, honestly, it does not sound that much like the Beatles (see below on the major discrepancies). But if they are doing a «Cheap Trick interpretation of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper» — then, in my opinion, they are not offering enough Cheap Trickery to make it significantly different. In other words, the performance may have been fun to attend in person, but as an album release, it kind of slips through the cracks, and does not intrigue me all that much to warrant subsequent listens.

The songs are, indeed, played as close to the original as they can be — but within the context of a standard four-piece rock band, expanded with an additional keyboardist, a couple extra backing vocalists, and an orchestra. (I don't know who plays the Indian instruments, but maybe a few members of the orchestra were switching between Western and Eastern ones); there is no specific goal of perfectly recapturing the Sgt. Pepper ambience, so you don't get much by way of weird effects on the guitars, and there are no backing tapes whatsoever, either, so you don't get the kaleidoscopic dazzling patterns on the instrumental parts of ʽMr. Kiteʼ. In other words, the classic colorfulness of Sgt. Pepper is here, if not exactly turned to monochrome, then at least greatly reduced, which only goes to confirm the legend of the album's irreproducibility (is that a word?) in a live setting (unless you do use backing tapes, but that's cheating).

Another problem, from that angle, is Zander's performance. He has to take on the roles of both John and Paul, and while he's largely doing alright as John (and even as George on ʽWithin You Without Youʼ), his impersonation of Paul fails quite miserably — he consistently oversings and adopts a more «rocking» tone than necessary, even for such songs as ʽWhen I'm Sixty-Fourʼ, and as a crooner, he is not particularly fit for ʽShe's Leaving Homeʼ, either. I'm not saying that Paul himself always does a great job on these songs when he is performing them live, but come on now, you just can't have the exact same person be John and Paul at the same time. They should have really found a different vocalist for those songs.

Now if you look at it from a different angle — imagine that this is Cheap Trick's reinterpretation of Sgt. Pepper as would be more fit for, say, a late Seventies audience (the same one who was instead cruelly tortured by the Sgt. Pepper movie back in the day) — then the whole thing makes a little more sense, but only a little. Here the chief point of interest would be Nielsen and his guitar work, as he transforms the majority of Pepper's guitar (and not only guitar) styles into variants of his own screechy rock'n'roll idiom. You get that screechy rock'n'roll style in the coda to ʽLucy In The Sky With Diamondsʼ, you get it in the jumpy, echoey finale of ʽLovely Ritaʼ, you even get it on soft numbers like ʽWith A Little Help From My Friendsʼ, with plenty of distorted block chords, 100% Cheap Trick rather than Lennon/McCartney. Does it work? Well... maybe, but it's not as if we're adding to the depth of the original here — rather, we're subtracting from it by reducing too many different things to the same common invariant. As much as I like the basic power pop format, it is only when you begin honestly applying it to music like Sgt. Pepper that you truly begin to dis-appreciate its sonic limitations.

Still, I think we should be generous and rank the results as at least a tiny notch above the level of «ridiculous one-time curiosity». At the very least, Cheap Trick's long history of Beatle-influenced work guarantees that this is not just a posh cash-in, but a truly heartfelt tribute to their idols. To be fair, I think they could have done a much better job with an album like Revolver, which was much more oriented at heavy guitar rock than Sgt. Pepper and which, on the whole, was far more influential on Cheap Trick's entire career (beginning with ʽTaxman Mr. Thiefʼ) than Sgt. Pepper, but I guess «Revolver Live» would have sounded less appealing to people who only remember the Beatles by their #1 album as per the average mainstream rankings. (They do, however, offer us the final part of the Abbey Road medley as an encore — so why not throw in ʽTaxmanʼ and ʽShe Said She Saidʼ?). Anyway, they do have a very close affinity with the material, although, dear friends, there is no need to rub it in our noses so bluntly — for instance, by boasting that, this time around, they were privileged to work with Sgt. Pepper's recording engineer himself, Geoff Emerick, to ensure further «authenticity» of the experience. Really, guys. The only thing missing was to pull out those Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts' Club Band uniforms out of the moth closet — for some reason, they didn't even bother to have their own copies made.

BANG, ZOOM, CRAZY... HELLO (2016)

1) Heart On The Line; 2) No Direction Home; 3) When I Wake Up Tomorrow; 4) Do You Believe Me?; 5) Blood Red Lips; 6) Sing My Blues Away; 7) Roll Me; 8) The In Crowd; 9) Long Time No See Ya; 10) The Sun Never Sets; 11) All Strung Out.

And the story goes on. In one of the most crass acts of nepotism in rock history, Zander and Nielsen kicked Bun E. Carlos, the one and only «Bookkeeper-Drummer» of all time, out of the band, replacing him with Rick's son, Daxx Nielsen. Allegedly, this might be part of a far-reaching plan to ensure the immortality of the band (Ian and Holland Zander should probably be getting ready, too, once their father's vocal cords finally give way), but in the short term, this was a rather nasty story, rife with lawsuits and shattered friendships... and what for?

Honestly, Cheap Trick's latest record (more precisely, the one that replaces The Latest as, well, the latest) is not all that drum-dependent, as they return once again to the overproduced style of Rockford. It seems as if they have developed this alternating pattern, late in their lives — one album Beatles-style, one album Stones-style — and this, once again, puts us into non-stop headbanging mode, just to assure the population that no energy has been dissipated since Rockford brutally kicked our asses exactly ten years back. No more psychedelic excursions, no more orchestration, just bombastic, glam-tinged rock'n'roll and power pop all the way.

Consequently, everything grumbly that I have said in reference to Rockford applies to this album as well. It is one half fun and one half an attempt to prove to the world that they still got it, and every once in a while the second half obscures the first half with its obnoxiousness — but if you get it out of your mind and trample on the context, then it's just another set of big, brassy, brawny rock'n'roll for those who can't get enough of it. They can still play, Robin can still sing (although I sure wish they gave him a little breathing space every now and then without clogging all the frequencies with fat, distorted guitar overdubs), the new drummer can keep time — what else do you need for happiness? Psychological depth? That was last year's model.

As a little bit of nostalgic surprise, another veteran hero, Wayne Kramer of the MC5, joins the band on ʽDo You Believe Me?ʼ for some hystrionic guitar pyrotechnics — just in case 2016 came along and erased your last memories of what it used to be a «guitar hero» — and, as an even odder nostalgic surprise, they do a hard rock version of ʽThe In Crowdʼ, a song originally performed by Dobie Gray but possibly even better known to audiences through the Mamas & Papas cover. No idea whatsoever about the motivation — but the song's sarcastic tone and ridiculing of trends and fashions agrees perfectly fine with Cheap Trick's conservative ideology, and Zander gives a spirited, tongue-in-cheek performance. He can still sound cocky and smart at the same time — too bad this here album usually puts cocky first and smart last.

Everything else basically sounds like a mix of... well, I'd say AC/DC (ʽLong Time No See Yaʼ), Slade (ʽBlood Red Lipsʼ), T. Rex (the album closing ʽAll Strung Outʼ is a dead ringer for Bolan's ʽ20th Century Boyʼ), and even Bowie — ʽWhen I Wake Up Tomorrowʼ has a tinge of that old Ziggy melancholia lurking in the back of Zander's voice. Once or twice, we still get psychedelic vocal harmony overdubs (ʽThe Sun Never Setsʼ), almost like a leftover from the previous album, but this does not upset the prevalent party spirit. If you do not set your expectations too high, Bang, Zoom, Crazy, just like Rockford before it, will be perfectly enjoyable and one more proof that you can still produce «authentic» 1970s style glam-rock in 2016 (well, you can pretty much produce anything in 2016), but I couldn't swear that the record made that much of an impression on me as a whole, and somehow I hope that they still have it in them to come up with a less slight swan song for their career, unless they really plan on gradually passing on the banner to successive generations of Zanders and Nielsens.

Part 6. The New School (1989-1998)

THE CARDIACS

THE OBVIOUS IDENTITY (1980)

1) The Obvious Identity; 2) Visiting Hours; 3) Pip As Uncle Dick But Peter Spoilt It; 4) To Go Off And Things; 5) Rock Around The Clock; 6) Leaf Scrapings; 7) Unknown; 8) A Game For Bertie's Party; 9) Cameras; 10) Bite 3/a; 11) Piff; 12) Let Alone My Plastic Doll; 13) A Balloon For Bertie's Party.

Technically, this is not yet proper «Cardiacs» — in 1980, the band was still called Cardiac Arrest; and also technically, this is not a properly available debut album — it was recorded in a tiny amateur studio, located in some crappy basement in Kingston upon Thames, then copied onto 1000 old tapes and sold at the band's concerts. In the analog era, laying one's hands on this rarity would be a stroke of collector's luck; in the digital era, scooping up a bunch of MP3 files becomes little problem, but, of course, the awful sound quality is inescapable. And it is pretty awful, even way too awful for something that was copied and re-copied several times on magnetic tape; I'm guessing that the original recording equipment was no great shakes, either.

Nevertheless, this is a complete long-playing record, in some way, and most importantly, it presents Cardiac Arrest, soon to be simply Cardiacs, as a band that has already worked out its personal style and a clear understanding of what it wants to do — subsequent recordings would obviously kill it in terms of pure listenability, but not necessarily in terms of revolutionary ideas. At the same time, although many of these songs would later be included on various compilations, only one (ʻTo Go Off And Thingsʼ) would be properly re-recorded in the studio; however, the band never really disowned the material, sometimes performing it live, so for the sake of completeness it does deserve at least some mention.

For the record, the players here are listed as «Philip Pilf» (band leader Tim Smith on guitar, synthesizer, and vocals), «Patty Pilf» (his ~~sister~~ brother Jim Smith on bass), «Duncan Doilet» (Colvin Mayers on keyboards and vocals), «Little Bobby Shattocks» (Mark Cawthra on drums), and «Peter "Zip" Boker» on vocals (the band's original singer Michael Pugh, although by the time they got around to recording these tracks, he was already on the way out, and so his lead vocals are featured only on two of the tracks). This is the first clue you get as to the Cardiacs' penchant for absurdism, theatricality, and unpredictability, but then there are plenty more within the music itself, which is fairly unique for 1980 even despite the abysmal sound quality.

One thing that Tim Smith abhorred was pigeonholing; when somebody coined the term "pronk" (a condensed "progressive punk", that is) to define the band's music, he violently refused it, preferring instead older diffuse terms like "psychedelia" or "pop". But "psychedelia" would probably obscure from our view the inevitable influence of punk and New Wave bands, and using the exact same term to describe the music of Cardiacs and the music of, say, the Knack would be a terminological disgrace. Anyway, to hell with terminology. Some things deserve lengthy descriptions to be understood rather than short terms.

The Cardiacs play loud, brash music here that makes equal use of crunchy distorted guitars, played in chainsaw buzz mode or in more traditional rock mode, alternating at will, and of pip-squeaky synthesizers that usually like to be playful (as in a Sparks song) rather than cruel and robotic. But sometimes these synthesizers are used instead in Mellotron mode, providing lush (well, as lush as you could get in a dirty basement) orchestrated backgrounds, which sounds particularly strange when you combine these «progressive keyboards» with punky guitar chords: see ʻA Game For Bernie's Partyʼ, which for a couple of minutes sounds as if your local punk band has invaded your local Catholic cathedral during a Mass service. Oh, and did I mention that at any given time the band can erupt into (a) ska, (b) Zappa-like crazyass structural changes every few bars, (c) hysterical Rock God guitar solos, the likes of which seem to have gone out of style with the passing of the early Seventies' glam icons, but make revenant guest appearances here (ʻLet Alone My Plastic Dollʼ) just for some good ol' times' sakes?

If this all sounds like a recipe for the best damn album of 1980 (too bad it had to be limited to 1000 old tapes), I must state, for balance, that the actual songs sound too much like overdone brain products of people who had too much talent to burn — there's too much of a desire to show off here for the tunes to make real good sense. The lyrics certainly do not make much sense, even if you manage to decode them, which is hard to do given the circumstances — loud, brash songs sung in Estuary English on muffled tape; but that is nothing compared to the confusion of the music, which really does try to integrate elements of punk rock with elements of progressive (even, dare I say it, «symphonic») rock. Listen to ʻLeaf Scrapingsʼ — one minute they sound like Yes, with a tricky time signature outlining a mystical world populated with astral noises, and then the next minute they sound like the Adverts or the Damned. I can't even say if I like this or not: the best I can say is that they make a brave effort to synthesize something thought to be unsynthesizable, even if the effort carries more of a symbolic than a proper meaning.

In any case, no judgement can be pronounced on an album that sounds this much like shit; I do believe that it is essential listening for any Cardiacs fan, but in this world of free-flowing music, any attempt to make it your proper introduction into the bizarre world of Tim Smith may lead to unfortunate consequences.

TOY WORLD (1981)

1) Icky Qualms; 2) Over And Over And Over And Over; 3) Dead Mouse; 4) A Big Noise In A Toy World; 5) Trademark; 6) Scratching Crawling Scrawling; 7) As Cold As Can Be In An English Sea; 8) Question Mark; 9) Is This The Life; 10) A Time For Rejoicing; 11) Aukamacic; 12) Nurses Whispering Verses.

The Cardiacs' «debut» — since this record was the very first to sport the band's final name change — is yet another cassette-only release, cut and mixed in the exact same shithole (Crow Studios) and featuring equally piss-poor sound quality that reduces even the finest-written songs to tragic sonic muck. There is one significant addition to the line-up: Sarah Cutts (soon-to-be Sarah Smith) on keyboards, sax, and clarinet, further contributing to the band's genre mix-up with a jazzy vibe. But the sound is so bad, really, that you barely notice.

Actually, to be honest, I do not like this one at all. Not only does it no longer have the novelty benefit, but it almost seems to be comprised of inferior leftovers from the previous sessions (gut feeling, mainly; however, the recording dates do give you June 1980 as the start, which is the exact date of the Obvious Identity session). The main ingredients all remain in place, but the song structures are not nearly as interesting, and too many of the songs, like ʻDead Mouseʼ, just sound like run-of-the-mill post-punk, without any of the mind-shocking twists that made the first bunch of songs so bizarrely fascinating.

There are a few classics here all the same, most notably the final number ʻNurses Whispering Versesʼ that would later be re-recorded for Seaside — not that it is more complicated than the rest, but it is certainly sharper and more desperate than the rest, with a hard-to-forget squeaky guitar line running for its life along the highway, like a scared bunny pursued by a jeep, and Smith rattling off incomprehensible lyrics that are probably about madness (incomprehensible lyrics do tend to be about madness, you know) and generating a nice little atmosphere of paranoia. Another highlight that would also make its way to Seaside is ʻIs This The Lifeʼ, which is essentially a slower variation on the same topic — and also featuring the best guitar work on the entire album, in the form of a glum doom-laden riff and some first-rate soloing.

Unfortunately, the rest of the tunes just fall flat due not only to the abysmal sound quality, but also to the repetitiveness — ʻAs Cold As Can Be In An English Seaʼ, for instance, has no business going over seven minutes, and ʻOver And Over And Over And Overʼ... well, with a title like that, you can probably guess for yourself (although, to be fair, that song does consist of two very distinct sections — one fast, martial, and jovial, the other slowed down and more epic; problem is, neither is particularly inspired). At the other end of the axis, the short links between songs are pointless, the silly looped laughing sounds at the end of ʻTrademarkʼ are annoying, and ʻA Time For Rejoicingʼ is two minutes of vocal-and-organ hooliganry that seems to invoke the spirit of Syd Barrett but fails, if not for the hideous sound, then for the off-key singing.

In short, if you do want to make a select acquaintance with the band's early cassette-only material, The Obvious Identity is a far better choice — actually, better than Archive Cardiacs, a 1989 compilation of select tracks from the two albums which, unlike the albums themselves, would later be reissued on CD (but presumably with the same lo-fi sound, since the master tapes were either lost or completely unfit for re-mastering). As good as these guys could be, they weren't always good, and there's not enough interesting music here for anybody to tolerate the torture of unintentional lo-fi.

THE SEASIDE (1984)

1) Jibber And Twitch; 2) Gena Lollabridgida; 3) Hello Mr. Sparrow; 4) It's A Lovely Day; 5) Wooden Fish On Wheels; 6) Hope Day; 7) To Go Off And Things; 8) Ice A Spot And A Dot On The Dog; 9) R.E.S.

Finally! A Cardiacs album that does not sound as if coming to you out of the depths of a concrete bunker — despite also having originally been produced only in cassette form. The original track listing contained 13 titles; however, when the album was finally released on CD in 1995, four of them were omitted under the pretext that the master tapes were lost. More likely, since three of these four songs would later be re-recorded for other Cardiacs albums, the omission was intentional (assuming Smith may have thought of the earlier versions as inferior). In any case, the real early versions of ʻIs This The Lifeʼ and ʻNurses Whispering Versesʼ can be found on Toy World, in all their lowest-fiest glory.

Anyway, 9 tracks with a total running length of 35 minutes seems quite appropriate for a record like this, because The Seaside is far from the best that the band has to offer. A key problem here is monotony: most of the tracks are speedy ska-punk ditties with similar-sounding keyboard tones and similar-sounding hysterical vocals, distinguished only by the number of different unpredictable interludes that Smith and co. throw in seemingly at random. And while the speedy delivery makes things superficially fun, sometimes the songs zip by (even the long ones!) in such a flurry rage that you find it very hard to concentrate on the melodic aspect.

As you slowly get adjusted to the «jibber and twitch» (name of the first track, but I wouldn't mind if it were the title of the entire record), the fun aspect eventually prevails over the monotony, but the album remains a pretty lightweight affair — like an incessant ping-pong game with occasional detours into other sport areas, or like a corny vaudeville show locked in a state of hyperdrive. I have no idea what the songs are «about» (lyrics are not included, and there's little hope of ever making out Smith's words), but in any case, words are clearly much less important here than the music, and the music does not lend itself to inspired description.

Even when you come across something that could be defined as a «catchy riff», for instance, the little bouncy organ phrase that drives ʻR.E.S.ʼ, its catchiness does not matter much on its own, because you could very well encounter any such phrase on Sesame Street or the opening credits to a comic TV show. What matters is that within the same ʻR.E.S.ʼ you also have a couple of tricky jazz interludes with varying tempos and a slow-moving progressive rock part with a moody guitar solo that sounds right out of Steve Hackett's textbook. By the end, as you go into drunk waltz tempo, there's hardly anything left in the world that could surprise you.

Essentially, it's all fun, but it's all also rather shallow — once you get over the amazement at how nifty these guys are (and they are still no niftier than Frank Zappa, whose Absolutely Free album from as far away as 1967 could be called a distant ideological forefather), the tunes do not prove much of anything, except that there's, you know, a reason why people do not usually combine ska, punk, jazz, and classical influences within the same track — just as there's a reason why you rarely put meat, fruit, vegetables, and chocolate in the same dish. It's curious and instructive to take a taste, but eventually you'll probably just have to accept that some things don't click too well when forcefully synthesized.

That said, there are different ways to synthesize stuff, and The Seaside is, after all, the Cardiacs still in their original stage, youthful and enthusiastic and overdriven and experimental beyond measure. In addition, this is also a transitional album, with Marc Cawthra on his way out and William D. Drake on his way in, so some of the fussiness may be explained by a generally confused state of the band at the time — although, granted, that is a flimsy excuse, because Cardiacs are by their very nature an eternally confused and confusing band.

SONGS FOR SHIPS AND IRONS (1991; 1986-1987)

1) Big Ship; 2) Tarred And Feathered; 3) Burn Your House Brown; 4) Stone Age Dinosaurs; 5) Plane Plane Against The Grain; 6) Everything Is Easy!; 7) There's Too Many Irons In The Fire; 8) All Spectacular; 9) Blind In Safety And Leafy In Love; 10) Loosefish Scapegrace; 11) All His Geese Are Swans!.

The title of this LP is an amalgamation of Big Ship and There's Too Many Irons In The Fire, a mini-LP and an EP that were both released in 1987. In 1991, the band put them together on one CD, added a few extra rare B-sides and one archive track, and ended up with a fairly weighty addition to the catalog. And I mean «weighty» in an almost literal sense, because this is where Cardiacs finally begin to capitalize on the «progressive promise» and add epic scope, pomp, and symphonism to the still rather lightweight ska-pop-punk exercises of the previous albums. Not consistently so, but enough for symph-rock fans to take proper notice.

The very first song, ʻBig Shipʼ, sounds like a cross between classic Queen and some big, brawny arena rock band with a penchant for stomping power chords. Loud, martial guitars, organ a-plenty, vocals that get in your face with a vengeance, and plenty of stops, starts, and tempo changes in between the oratorio-like choruses to ensure that this is Inventive Art. Unfortunately, the song itself just isn't very good: the bombastic sections are too simple and repetitive, relying on hugeness of sound rather than a classy chord sequence. I wish I could get inspired by it, but neither the lyrics nor the melody lend themselves to coherent interpretation.

So I start feeling more at ease with the ensuing songs that tone down the seriousness and bring back the playfulness, craziness, and ska-punkish spirit, while at the same time continuing to explore all sorts of novel ideas. ʻTarred And Featheredʼ and ʻBurn Your House Brownʼ leap along like mad, with vaudeville piano rolls alternating with avantgarde dissonances, no melodic section lasting uninterrupted for longer than a dozen bars (10cc said hello), and your head having serious trouble assimilating it all. My only problem is that they are less capable than, say, Zappa to knock all these things together into some surrealist musical — the lyrics make too little sense, and the band shows a very limited sense of humor.

As we go on and on, relatively short crazyass romps like these multiply in number, sometimes interrupted by slower and statelier pieces of the ʻBig Shipʼ variety — such as ʻStone Age Dinosaursʼ, a slow, brass heavy hymn; and the instrumental ʻAll His Geese Are Swans!ʼ, which just acts as a foothold for some guitar and keyboard soloing, some of it very psychedelic, but most of it rather uninspired. Also, at least one track, ʻLoosefish Scapegraceʼ, combines both approaches, starting out as eccentric vaudeville and becoming almost a requiem midway through.

Nevertheless, even if this may all be a technical advance over The Seaside, emotionally these songs are not much of a departure: still too much of a band that simply wants to be eccentric without presenting enough reasons for this eccentricity. Once the initial wave of amusement or amazement at how effortlessly they weave in elements of symphonism and music hall is over, you might want to ask yourself, "so what was that all about?" and realising that you don't even know in what direction the answer might lie. There's plenty of energy and a lot of fuss, but way too much ado about nothing, if you ask me — «form over substance» in the flesh. Then again, maybe it's all about reaching that other plane of consciousness.

A LITTLE MAN AND A HOUSE AND THE WHOLE WORLD WINDOW (1988)

1) A Little Man And A House; 2) In A City Lining; 3) Is This The Life?; 4) Interlude; 5) Dive; 6) The Icing On The World; 7) The Breakfast Line; 8) Victory Egg; 9) R.E.S.; 10) The Whole World Window.

Apparently, this album came out at a very wrong time — even though ʻIs This The Life?ʼ ended up being the band's highest success on charts, the album as a whole was critically panned for its attempt to «revive progressive rock». Had the band waited at least a decade longer, after Radiohead inadvertently melted the ice with OK Computer, the critics may have been somewhat more benevolent — but in 1988, it was all about Sonic Youth and Pixies, and Tim Smith's mix of the carnivalesque with the symphonic just sounded like an irritant to most people's ears. Even if direct comparisons to ELP or even to Marillion (!!) that appeared in contemporary reviews were all just blatant idiocy.

Not that the record is above criticism, of course. It continues and, it could be argued, brings to the highest possible peak the band's personal relation with unpredictable absurdism — one reason why all these «prog» comparisons fail utterly, because unlike ELP or Marillion, Cardiacs never for one second take themselves literally-seriously. By now, Tim Smith sounds like a helium-inflated quasi-parody on Peter Hammill, and the music alternates between «symphony orchestra» and «circus» modes at will, defying all musical logic, sequencing expectations, and simply common sense. There's but two possible ways one can react to this. You can either prefer to have your mind blown — «wow! what was that I've just heard?» — or to have your mind insulted — «oh no, why did I have to waste time on this meaningless shit?»

I will try to combine both ways, because in a relative universe they're both right. On one hand, this is not even an album about madness — this is an album that is meant to make absolutely no sense in our reality. On the other hand, this album invents a new reality of its own, which has certain intersection points with our reality, but largely inverts it. Major is minor, minor is major, happy is sad, funny is bitter, dark is light, black is white and so on. So whenever these guys start whirring and flurring about in a carousel waltz or one of their merry ska interludes, remember that they bleed. Whenever they start playing a shrill, stormy, delirious guitar solo, keep in mind that they thrive. It's an Alice-style mirror world, and you either adapt to it or throw up.

It is a little funny that the most popular song on the album, ʻIs This The Life?ʼ, was actually the third recorded version — as you remember, it made its debut already on Toy World, and it really represents an older stage in the development of the band. Granted, this version is at least expertly produced, with the sax, guitar, and keyboard parts in the climactic instrumental passage perfectly separated from each other; but I do believe that the song's modest success, after the single began to be played on UK radio, was largely due to its similarity with contemporary Cure — not only does Tim Smith sound as bleeding-desperate-romantic as Robert Smith here (well, they don't share that last name for nothing; aren't all Smiths a gloomy breed?), but the overall «depth» of the production and the howling guitars are quite Curish as well.

This hardly applies to stuff like ʻA Little Man And A Houseʻ or ʻIn A City Liningʼ, though, whose music is way too upbeat, keyboard-depending, and quirky to invite comparisons with The Cure or with just about anybody else in 1988. If there is one serious influence from the classic prog era that the music brings to mind, it is Peter Gabriel in early Genesis — a band that also liked to turn comic into tragic and backward in the blink of an eye (think ʻHarold The Barrelʼ or the "you play the hobbyhorse" section of ʻDancing With The Moonlit Knightʼ), although never taking it to the hyperdrive level of Smith and Co. However, behind all of Gabriel's clowning lay an attempt to create meaningful art rather than mysterious dadaism.

Even when, after all the odd clowning, the band winds things up with a slow, stately finale (ʻThe Whole World Windowʼ), all grand piano chords and solemn sax soloing, it is hard to understand what the solemnity is all about. As much as I'd like to identify with the protagonist's emotions, it is hard to do because either the protagonist is from a different planet or he's just a bullshitter. I'd still take this sort of finale over, say, anything stately, anthemic, and utterly trivial by Freddie Mercury, but I'd have to take it on probation — this grandiose soundscape seems to pretend to celebrating beauty, but I am not even sure if we are on the same plane with Cardiacs when thinking about beauty.

Essentially, the record is an unlockable puzzle — melodic and listenable all the way through (at least you will not have to struggle with ugly chords and unhygienic rhythms à la Trout Mask Replica), but an emotional conundrum which, for most people, will at best result in an "I don't get it, what do they expect from me?" reaction, and at worst, in a "stop bullshitting me" outburst. But even if occasionally I begin to tend towards the latter, I still cannot help admiring all the creativity, energy, and total dedication; and since even bullshitting can be raised to a form of weird art, I give the album a thumbs up all the same — not to mention the balls it took to release something like that in 1988, when negative critical reaction could be so easily predicted.

CARDIACS LIVE (1988)

1) The Icing On The World; 2) To Go Off And Things; 3) In A City Lining; 4) Gina Lollobrigida; 5) There's Too Many Irons In The Fire; 6) Tarred And Feathered; 7) Goosegash; 8) Loosefish Scapegrace; 9) Cameras; 10) Is This The Life; 11) Big Ship.

This is possibly the best Cardiacs album available on the market, and I'm not joking. Following a first attempt at a live presentation (Rude Bootleg from 1986), which was somewhat shorter and slightly inferior in quality, the band hit it just right on their second live album, recorded at the Paradiso in Amsterdam on May 15, 1988 with first-rate equipment and capturing the band in all of their visionary-demented glory.

Like most pop or progressive bands, Cardiacs tend not to stray away from the original versions of the songs in live performance; at best, they may add a brief atmospheric intro, never allowing themselves to break away into free-form jamming or even a mighty drum solo (this is why the review will be brief, because there are no specific details to discuss). However, they also have that punkish streak, and this means throwing themselves into battle with fiery gusto, pounding the shit out of their instruments and straining the vocals to breaking point where necessary. So, true to the «pronk» moniker, they implement it on stage by combining technical precision and accuracy with increased energy — if you thought the studio recordings were already crackling with electricity, these live performances will blow them away in terms of sheer power.

The other major benefit of the album is the high quality of the setlist, making it essentially a «best-of» package without turning it into a compilation. Most of the catchiest highlights from the 1984-88 period make the list, which is as emotionally and stylistically diverse and entertaining as it could possibly get; it is possible to get a very representative overview of what the Cardiacs were really all about from the album — all except the accompanying stage show, uncapturable on an audio record (and the stage banter is also cut surprisingly short, limited to just a tiny handful of quips, jokes, and announcements).

Normally, I tend to shrug such records off, as they tend to be cash-grabbers or time-fillers; but much of the band's reputation (and most of their money, I suppose) was really based on live playing, and the total dedication with which they throw themselves into each of these songs is the best proof that they actually took themselves seriously — that their mix of pop-punk energy and progressive complexity was more than just a sarcastic put-on. It does not make the overall enigma any easier to crack, but it brings them a tiny bit closer, and makes them feel a little bit more humane and friendly. An important record, well worth a thumbs up.

ON LAND AND IN THE SEA (1989)

1) Two Bites Of Cherry; 2) Baby Heart Dirt; 3) The Leader Of The Starry Skies; 4) I Hold My Love In My Arms; 5) The Duck And Roger The Horse; 6) Arnald; 7) Fast Robert; 8) Mare's Nest; 9) The Stench Of Honey; 10) Buds And Spawn; 11) The Safety Bowl; 12) The Ever So Closely Guarded Line.

Listening to this album, which many regard as the band's ultimate masterpiece, is pretty much the aural equivalent of going, at irregular, but immediate, intervals from 40mph to 80mph to 120mph to 80mph to 40mph to 80mph... you get my drift, and I have serious vestibular problems, too. In other words, it's cool, but... could you slow down, please? Oh, that's right, not slowing down is an integral part of being cool. Well then, like John Lennon said, "count me out... in".

No matter how many times I listen to this stuff, I cannot properly tell one song from another, for the simple reason that almost each of these songs is, in itself, three or four songs, cut up, mixed about, and re-spliced at random (or so it seems to the poor, undefended, naked ear). This is not something they invented on this album, of course — but this is where their song-twisting craft truly reaches its peak, and they juggle these melodies around with such energy and ease as if they all really understood the deep meaning of such juggling.

Unfortunately, this achievement of total perfection in the art of «pop trigonometry» has a nasty trade-off — the songs all collapse together in a flurry, blurry kaleidoscope of craziness that leaves little, if any, place for emotionality. Not even surrealist emotionality, where black is white and wrong is right — these songs are just convoluted hysterical blasts, awesome when taken in in small portions but really wearying down the potential listener (or the actual me) when swallowed all together in one go. Something like ʻThe Duck And Roger The Horseʼ, for instance, gallops along with tremendous force and makes great use of the collective power of hard rock chords and organ barrages, but when placed in between half a dozen songs on both sides that also tax your nerves to the extreme, the typical reaction might just be «enough, already!»

Exhausted and nerve-wracked, I find myself instinctively searching for something simple, repetitive, unpretentious... and I kind of find it with ʻArnaldʼ, a triumphant power-pop tune that is almost too repetitive, with an eight-note martial refrain and a brute hard rock riff to bounce it off; and then, maybe, with ʻThe Ever So Closely Guarded Lineʼ, the obligatory «grand finale» that closes the curtain with slow tempos, majestic keyboards, and a (feeble) attempt at an epic crescendo. Apart from that, the songs just daze and daze and daze me with insane numbers of costume changes from bar to bar, which sometimes make Frank Zappa and Gentle Giant come across as pathetic failures. Then again, it was up to Tim Smith to beat their records, not vice versa, and he seems to have done nicely — coming out with probably the most complex pop record of 1989.

Would it be justified to say that On Land And In The Sea makes absolutely no sense? One probably shouldn't be rushing to give an answer, but I am pretty sure I will never like it more than A Little Man, if only because it has no equivalent of ʻIs This The Life?ʼ — a straightforward, understandable, tumultuous song that stood out very sharply from the rest — and because sometimes too much is too much. I cannot even comment on any of the individual songs because it would have to be a lot of comments on each, and then they would all be the same in the end. To say that this record is «crazy» or that it is a «document on insanity» or anything like that would be too cheap and stereotypical, yet I have no idea of how to expand on that. I totally admire the effort, and as far as «achievements» go, the album totally deserves its thumbs up — especially since I can sense the dedication and the energy sweating from every pore. But then again, you can also go out in the mountains and dedicatedly crush rocks with a sledgehammer until your arms fall off, too, and sometimes I get the uncomfortable feeling that this is what Cardiacs were doing, too, on land and in the sea.

HEAVEN BORN AND EVER BRIGHT (1992)

1) The Alphabet Business Concern (Home Of Fadeless Splendour); 2) She Is Hiding Beneath The Shed; 3) March; 4) Goodbye Grace; 5) Anything I Can't Eat; 6) Helen And Heaven; 7) Bodysbad; 8) For Good And All; 9) Core; 10) Day Is Gone; 11) Snakes-A-Sleeping.

The Cardiacs suffered a few setbacks in between 1989 and 1992, mostly in the form of gradual loss of band members: saxophonist Sara Smith, percussionist Tim Quy, and keyboardist William Drake had all left in the interim, leaving the band so shaken that Tim Smith did not even bother looking for replacements. Instead, he hired an additional guitarist, Jon Poole, and opted to record the next album in a traditional four-piece format: two guitars, bass, and drums... well, not really. Most of the songs are still chockfull of keyboards and brass, with Sara contributing guest sax and somebody else providing the keyboards (not listed in the credits).

So I would not say that in terms of the overall sound, Heaven Born sounds any sparser or, in fact, all that different from the «classic» releases. Certainly this is not the impression that you get at the outset, when ʻThe Alphabet Business Concernʼ invades your room like a massive choral anthem, with the same level of ironic pomp and playful pretense as always. However, as the songs progress, you do get a gradual feeling of tiredness — could it be that the band is beginning to run out of ideas? Or, rather, not out of specific ideas (there's still more going on inside a single Cardiacs song than on a complete LP by zillions of less inventive bands), but out of The Idea itself: somehow, if you reach this album in chronological order, this is, for the first time, where they seem to be hitting a brick wall. Objectively, the energy is still there, but they are not really saying anything they didn't say before.

As always, there's a bunch of fast, crazy, mad-organ-and-guitar-led prog-punk anthems with furiously fast, incomprehensible vocals (ʻAnything I Can't Eatʼ, speeding along like a friendly, more psychedelic sibling of Deep Purple's ʻHighway Starʼ); some overdriven power-pop with a hysterical edge (ʻDay Is Goneʼ); some echoes of classic British psychedelic pop with music hall and martial overtones (ʻMarchʼ); and some songs that combine all that in various manners. The main problem with that is that more than ever before, the basic mood behind each song is pretty much the same — a state of somewhat random exuberance, when the protagonist wishes to share his strong emotions with a world that is too busy trying to understand the reason for these emotions to partake of them. Tempos and tonalities may shift, but the drive remains the same, as well as the lack of hooks — because the melodies are way too twisted and unstable to ever sink in.

For some reason, Tim Smith has later stated that Heaven Born remains one of his own special favorites, because, to him, it had some special mystery to it. This opinion was not shared by the band's fans in general, who tend to see the record as a letdown, and unless we are all missing something, this does ring true: I fail to notice any special distinctive marks here (except for maybe a more pronounced guitar sound, which is hardly an asset in itself — who could ever be seduced by a «prominent guitar sound» in 1992?), and compared to the previous two albums, the songs basically sound like self-repetition where the band, instead of keeping it natural, has to whip itself into a frenzy to artificially demonstrate that they have not really lost it. Well, technically, they haven't, but you know the drill: «progressive» has the obligation to progress, and if it does not progress, it just rings hollow.

SING TO GOD (1996)

1) Eden On The Air; 2) Eat It Up Worms Hero; 3) Dog-Like Sparky; 4) Fiery Gun Hand; 5) Insect Hoofs On Lassie; 6) Fairy Mary Mag; 7) Bellyeye; 8) A Horse's Tail; 9) Manhoo; 10) Wireless; 11) Dirty Boy; 12) Billion; 13) Odd Even; 14) Bell Stinks; 15) Bell Clinks; 16) Flap Off You Beak; 17) Quiet As A Mouse; 18) Angleworm Angel; 19) Red Fire Coming Out From His Gills; 20) No Gold; 21) Nurses Whispering Verses; 22) Foundling.

If you want a really gushing, salivating, over-the-top-laudatory review of this record, go read this glowing account by Sam Shepherd, who either genuinely believes that Sing To God is one of the greatest records ever made, or must have been so heavily bribed by Alphabet Business Concern that all past and present members of the band should have been left penniless. Granted, the man is not alone in his judgement: the sheer sprawl, scope, loudness, epicness of the record was enough to convert many fans, and there is no denying that a huge mass of creative ideas and painstaking work was involved in its preparation.

I am, however, not impressed — at least, not from a general chronological perspective. First and foremost, if I wanted to make a case for Sing To God as the band's magnum opus in anything other than length terms, I'd need to see what sort of advanced level it represents. Has Tim Smith, on this particular occasion, managed to expand the borders in a clearly perceivable manner? Is he providing any new insights? Are the songs ostensibly improved since last time, or the time before last? I do not get that feeling; as far as I can tell, there may be more of them, yes, but they are still typical Cardiacs songs that share all of the Cardiacs' virtues and vices.

And honestly, with four well-produced, well-pronounced, idea-filled records under their belts, a double album that gives you the same old shit — no matter how complex and technically unpredictable that same old shit is (and, actually, at this juncture the Cardiacs' unpredictability is itself becoming almost boringly predictable), it is rather hard to go on being amazed by it. How many times can you shuffle a kaleidoscope (getting different results every time) before the process becomes monotonous and irritating? The worst thing about Sing To God is: I have listened to it four times, all of its ninety minutes, and I was never once amazed or astounded — yet, clearly, like everything the Cardiacs did, this is an album that is supposed to astound you, and if it does not, and the magic does not work, then it is a failure.

Or maybe not; maybe the worst thing about it is how it presents itself as far more ambitious than anything they did before. From the pretentious title, to the pretentious opening (chimes! soft waves of electronic tinkle! choral harmonies! trying to find the perfect piano chord!), to the 22-track length, they do seem to be telling us, "this is the Cardiacs like you've never heard us before; this is the meaning of life in ninety minutes; this is our Lifehouse and SMiLE all in one, only we succeed where the ancestors have failed". And to me, it just sounds like one big senseless put-on: an album that's 100% style, 0% substance. The songs come and go, deconstructing and intermingling genres like bits of chopped liver, but never bothering to make a proper point.

It's not like there aren't any cool ideas — it's that the album suffers even more than its predecessors from excess, not knowing when to stop and explore the full potential of a good idea before surrounding it with half a dozen mediocre ones. It's almost maddening: a tune like ʻDog-Like Sparkyʼ, for instance, which has a couple really cool, Sparks-style lines in the chorus, but they are always over before you can properly enjoy them, and on the whole, the song is just a quick succession of different disconcerting tempos and time signatures that represent complexity for complexity's sake, and I will not pretend for a single moment that I enjoy any of it. At least a band like 10cc had some sense of measure.

When the band goes into fast-'n'-furious rocking mode (ʻEat It Up Worms Heroʼ, ʻFiery Gun Handʼ, etc.), they are not doing anything new, either, and they are not generating any true rock'n'roll energy, because it's all tongue-in-cheek, and because it can all stop and become a waltz or a ska piece or an oratorio at any given moment. These songs have literally no purpose other than masturbatory — oh how clever! this is punk, but this is not really punk! we'll let you figure out what it is, or, rather, let you wonder all about it until the end of your days, in stupefied amazement never ending. But what if it is... nothing?

I mean, something like ʻDirty Boyʼ off the top of the second disc sounds like it's poised to be sung on top of Mount Everest, addressed to any of our alien friends if they happen to float by. With big, thunderous bass riffs, screechy lead guitar, wall-of-sound production, and a fin-du-siecle feel that could put Radiohead to shame, it could be the decade's biggest anthem... but there is one thing that it lacks: a killer chord sequence or vocal line that could be endowed/imbued with its own infallible meaning. But its lyrics are undecipherable, its vocals are neither triumphant nor lamenting, its atmosphere neither celebratory nor apocalyptic, neither friendly nor hostile. When it all comes together in the final "over and out!", with vocals artificially enhanced and stretched over at least a minute-long coda, I am almost inclined to fall under the song's mammoth spell, but some little voice in the back of my head keeps telling me that I've been had, and I have a nasty habit of trusting that little voice.

Technically, we could discuss all the complexities and twists of the individual songs until dawn, with occasional detours into the area of mutual influence (ʻManhooʼ sounds like classic Blur circa ʻFor Tomorrowʼ, etc.) or self-admiration (ʻNurses Whispering Versesʼ is an old, old song from the era of shit quality cassette tapes — maybe that is why I find it the most memorable of all the tunes here?), but I do not believe it will do much good, because if there is a «strength» to this record, it is exclusively in its piecemeal nature. Dissect these songs and put them under a microscope and there will be no evidence of any significant musical discoveries, since all of these elements can be found scattered across a million pop, prog, and punk records. Tim Smith's scavenging nature can be admired, yes, but even the seams are too crude, and ultimately, «dementia» and «narcissism» are the only generalizing terms that come to mind.

As of now, I tend to view this whole thing as the turning point where the Cardiacs lost their collective mind — not so much their SMiLE, really, as their Tales From Topographic Oceans, a record that has its sturdy army of fans, too, of course, so if excess and sprawl is your cup of tea, feel free to indulge. Maybe one day when I encounter somebody's positive description of the album that goes beyond trivialities like "oh, there's so much going on here, it must be great!" and actually tries to explain what about it is so great (particularly in comparison to earlier, more restrained Cardiacs albums), I will want to reconsider. Currently, I'm just bored to death, and the album gets a certified thumbs down.

GUNS (1999)

1) Spell With A Shell; 2) There's Good Cud; 3) Wind And Rains Is Cold; 4) Cry Wet Smile Dry; 5) Jitterbug; 6) Sleep All Eyes Open; 7) Come Back Clammy Lammy; 8) Clean That Evil Mud Out Your Soul; 9) Ain't He Messy Though; 10) Signs; 11) Song Of A Dead Pest; 12) Will Bleed Amen.

I wish I could say something like «on the last Cardiacs album, Tim Smith comes to his senses and delivers a meaningful, resonant swansong where all of the band's strengths combine in logical rather than narcisitically irritant ways». But Guns was never ever intended as the band's swansong, and even though in terms of complexity and accessibility, it is clearly an intentional step back from the brainkill of Sing To God, very little had truly changed on the main segments of the Cardiacs' front over those three last years of the Nineties.

With the same lineup and the same stylistics, Guns is Sing To God's little underdeveloped brother — another energetic, psychotic, overblown celebration of God-knows-what for God-knows-whatever-reasons. Tracks like ʻThere's Good Cudʼ or ʻWill Bleed Amenʼ are excellent representatives of their prog-pop-punk hybrid, with the distorted riffs taken from punk, the ditzy keyboards and vocal harmonies from pop, and the constant tempo and structural changes from prog — meaning that all the good sides of all these genres generally get neutralized by each other, and leave me feeling neither angry nor joyful nor even too perplexed at what I have just heard (and the exact same thing goes for the lyrics, which, by and by, seem to have been written based on a purely aleatory principle — "there's good cud, there's dead good sticker sing mercy alive hot dog love's a-winnin'" is a typical example — could we please alert the Bullshit Police?).

I count one track here that is really interesting and could be recommended to a wide audience: ʻJitterbugʼ, after a few minutes of the usual Cardiacal mess (mutually counteracting indie-rock guitar and New Wave keyboards, each of them existing in its own autonomous world), suddenly transforms into some sort of medieval-inspired «psychedelic Mass», with Tim's spiralling vocals adorned by coherently spiralling kaleidoscopic keyboards and the whole thing acquiring an «alternative angelic» quality. When I compare this with the climactic resolution of ʻDirty Boyʼ on the previous record, I can't help but think that maybe Tim Smith missed his true vocation — reviving and reinventing the chorale form for a new age. Because once it's over, they get back to their usual tricks — playing rock music that does not have the feel of rock music, brewing a «delicious» stew of musical fish, pickles, and chocolate for those few select palates that can taste it and stomachs that can digest it.

Oddly enough, for the next eight years the band pretty much stopped releasing new material, concentrating instead on live performances (including focused revivals of their earliest songs from the cassette tape epoch and even before that) — before Tim Smith collapsed from a heart attack and stroke in 2008, from which he is still slowly trying to recover even now; so, for all we know, Guns may have to remain the last Cardiacs album for eternity. But since there is nothing about the album, either objectively or intutitively-subjectively, to suggest a «conclusive» nature, so too will I refrain from any conclusions and end this section on a «to be continued...» note. I mean, regardless of my attitude towards Tim Smith's music, there's no denying the unusual nature of his brain or the adventurousness of his spirit, so here's hoping for an eventual recovery and more of those awfully frustrating Cardiacs albums for us to argue about. In the meantime, I will try to leave this one unrated — at least it does not try the listener's patience for so much time, and I can add ʻJitterbugʼ to the small «best-of» collection that this band deserves, despite all the criticism.

THE CARDIGANS

EMMERDALE (1994)

1) Sick & Tired; 2) Black Letter Day; 3) In The Afternoon; 4) Over The Water; 5) After All...; 6) Cloudy Sky; 7) Our Space; 8) Rise & Shine; 9) Celia Inside; 10) Sabbath Bloody Sabbath; 11) Seems Hard; 12) Last Song.

It is a little hard to believe that a band naming itself after such an essentially British piece of clothing, and naming their first album after such an essentially British piece of soap opera, would be so utterly Swedish — but yes, at the core of The Cardigans are Swedish musicians Magnus Svenigsson and Peter Svensson, who not only play, respectively, the bass and the guitars, but also compose most of the songs, and then, in good ABBA tradition, hand them over to Swedish singer Nina Persson for the vocal treatment. Completing the lineup are Lars-Olof Johansson on guitar and piano, and Bengt Lagerberg on percussion — both of them good Swedes, too.

The oddest thing about The Cardigans is that, by all accounts, Svenigsson and Svensson originally came from a heavy metal pedigree — not surprising for Scandinavia, and indirectly still reflected in the band's inclusion of ʽSabbath Bloody Sabbathʼ on their debut album. However, it is unlikely that the average metal fan will be much pleased to hear what they ultimately did to the song (and, in fact, it is quite a hoot to browse through all the irate, blood-thirsty YouTube comments on the tune). You know something's not quite right when the instrument selected to introduce the melody of one of Iommi's crunchiest songs ever is... a vibraphone — and then, in a matter of seconds, the song takes shape as a «twee-lounge» ditty, with soft jangly guitars, jazzy percussion, a guitar solo that's more Donovan than heavy metal, and, most essential of all, vocals that are more Astrud Gilberto than Ozzy. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how one could possibly do a better job remaking ʽSabbath Bloody Sabbathʼ as ʽThe Girl From Ipanemaʼ.

Of course, all that metalhead anger could be easily tempered if people would just stop to remember that behind all the heaviness, Black Sabbath were very much of a pop band — and there is no better reminder of this than the way The Cardigans launch into the "nobody would ever let you know..." bridge section, which was always extremely poppy from the beginning. (To somewhat redeem the Sabsters, Svensson and Svennigsson omit the heaviest part of the tune in the mid-section, possibly because its mountain-crumbling riff was too hard to transpose to vibraphone.) The remake is glorious in its own right, taking our mind off the crude heaviness of the song and reminding us of its melodic, and even psychological, complexity — and in this stylistics, it sounds like Nina is offering a gentle consolation for the poor deluded addressee of the song, rather than lambasting him with heavy scorn, the way Ozzy and Tony do.

Besides, the remake totally fits into the overall style of the entire record; people unfamiliar with Sabbath would never even begin to guess that Emmerdale took a «weird turn» by the time of its tenth track. It's all stylized like that — a musical candy-house, one part baroque, one part pastoral, one part Sesame Street, one part midnight jazz, with Svensson's and Svennigsson's first-rate melodies as the base and Nina's «melancholic kitten» delivery as the coating. Yes, that voice can come across as too irritatingly oversexed, but it shouldn't be much of a problem for anyone who likes vocal jazz (or twee pop, for that matter) on the whole, and it fits the music to a tee. Besides, it's not as if we were dealing with «vocal sexploitation» here — if there's any general associations that these songs truly evoke, it would be the colorful sunshine supermanry of Donovan, with a bit of Wizard of Oz thrown in.

Emotionality here runs the gamut from mild depression and disillusionment (ʽSick & Tiredʼ, led by a folk-poppy flute part and tremendously «toe-tappish» despite the overall gray mood) to upbeat optimism — ʽRise & Shineʼ is one of the best twee-pop songs ever written, riding an awesome wave of internalized joy before it bursts out in a genius chorus (that "rise and shine... rise and shine, my sister" bit sounds awfully familiar, probably because it is so simple, but I can't quite put my finger on any exact possible source). Curiously, ʽRise & Shineʼ was actually an early song, written and released as early as 1992 (its success secured Nina's status with the band, since it was Svensson himself who used to handle lead vocals before that); ʽBlack Letter Dayʼ and ʽSick & Tiredʼ would follow later as additional singles from the album, but on Emmerdale, the sequencing is reversed, and the record begins with «darker» songs before moving on to the more positive ones, gradually brightening your day.

Come to think of it, there is not a single bad song on the album; every track has something to offer in the way of a great vocal hook, a moody twist, or an attractive instrumental riff. The style and instrumentation may be cohesive and perhaps even monotonous at times, but this is well compensated for by the inventiveness of the writers and arrangers. The gently waltzing ʽBlack Letter Dayʼ, other than the vocal seductiveness (could the lines "I drank all that I could, more than I should" ever sound more sweet and innocent?), has a brilliant jazzy bassline whose melodicity may well remind you of McCartney's use of the bass as a magic pop wand on Sgt. Pepper. ʽIn The Afternoonʼ is a really great song about winter boredom that manages to poeticize said boredom like nothing else (this is, like, Cinderella's song on a chore-free day).

Even the few songs where they completely dispense with the rhythmic base are excellent: ʽAfter All...ʼ is straightforward lounge jazz, with jazz piano chords, a jazz guitar solo, and a dreamy, lullaby-like vocal melody, and it's as lovely as any vocal jazz can be (not to mention the weird ambiguity of the words, which can jump from love-struck giddiness to love-scared fright and confusion within the same verse). ʽLast Songʼ concludes the record in stern, somber chamber-pop mode, with a string quartet backing Nina as she sings about the death of a friend — a little too stiff, perhaps, but without any traces of corniness. It is actually a perfect final flourish for a record that, at first, may sound fluffy, but in the end, demands to be taken seriously; and it wouldn't be, for that matter, until Arcade Fire's Funeral that we'd have another finale like this (not that it's anything but sheer coincidence, but I thought that a mention of Funeral in a Cardigans review could help drive their stock prices a bit, along with that of Paul McCartney).

Anyway, the style of the album may be doing it a disservice among the hip crowds who like their stuff harsher, harder, and less retro-oriented, but the music is uniformly excellent, and although the band went on making albums that acquired far more popularity (Emmerdale was, in fact, not even released internationally until several years lately), to my mind, they never made a more consistent or complete package than this one. Thumbs up without question. Also note that newer releases throw on an extra four tracks that, although excellent in their own rights, were actually taken from the original release of Life, their second LP, because its original international release replaced them with five tracks from Emmerdale (yes, confusing story worthy of the discographic horrors with UK bands in the mid-Sixties, but there you go — in 1994, conceptuality and integrity in some parts of the world continued to be spat on just as they were in 1964. Music business as usual again).

LIFE (1995)

1) Carnival; 2) Gordon's Gardenparty; 3) Daddy's Car; 4) Pikebubbles; 5) Tomorrow; 6) Beautiful One; 7) Traveling With Charley; 8) Fine; 9) Sunday Circus Song; 10) Hey! Get Out Of My Way; 11) Closing Time.

Although in most respects Life seems to be a fairly predictable sequel to Emmerdale, it takes a fairly more upbeat and optimistic tone than its predecessor. The idea is that "life is a carnival", so, naturally, the first song is titled ʽCarnivalʼ, the last song is ʽClosing Timeʼ, and in between you also have ʽSunday Circus Songʼ, ʽGardenpartyʼ, and other tunes that seem to be about having fun and feature mostly positive titles (ʽBeautiful Oneʼ, ʽFineʼ). Of course, it's all about subtext and irony: most of the verse lyrics and melodic overtones are still complaining and melancholy. This is not the kind of band, after all, which you'd expect to suddenly turn around and go all freaky-happy on you in hopes of expanding its teenage audience.

Whether they are frowning or smiling in their melancholy, though, matters nowhere near as much as whether they can maintain the same level of appeal in their hooks and the same level of taste in their arrangements — and in that respect, Life is easily as strong as its predecessor. In fact, it is usually rated higher than its predecessor, but that is mainly for publicity reasons: Life was their first LP to truly go international, and it also went international in a bastardized version, with three or four (differently in US and European editions) of the songs replaced by five songs from Emmerdale. So, for most critics, this was their first glimpse of the band, and they received a representative mix of happy-sad Cardigans with sad-sad Cardigans.

We here are looking at the original Swedish version, though, which is mostly all happy-sad, and maybe a little more monotonous, but also a little more consistent as a result. ʽCarnivalʼ kicks things off with a little bossa nova, as befits the title; however, it is used more like a background setting for the main theme, reflected in the chorus — "I will never know, cause you will never show, come on and love me now", this is Euridice turning tables on her own black Orpheus, with unclear results. Then we get a change of the scene, and instead of the carnival, we have ʽGordon's Gardenpartyʼ with its vaudevillian, but slightly funkified atmosphere, and Nina in her Marilyn Monroe emploi — there is not a single word in the lyrics that would suggest anything but a party atmosphere, and yet the past tense, the sighing, the flutes, and the chimes all make it clear that the whole thing either never happened, or will never happen again.

Yes, the irony of the Life title is that nothing here is about life, really — it's either all about a certain life that was (but we are not sure), or a life that could be (but we will never have it), or a life that couldn't even be (but no one can stop us from dreaming about it a little). ʽDaddy's Carʼ is a gloomy little travelogue-in-the-past, namechecking European cities with as much abandon as the musical transition from chorus back to verse suddenly quotes the desperate chords of ʽI Want You (She's So Heavy)ʼ. ʽTomorrowʼ is a beautiful combination of upbeat electric pop with a psychedelic chiming melody and more ruminations on the issue of loneliness and how to overcome it. And only ʽPikebubblesʼ is just a piece of giggly absurdism, throwing you off your guard with a whacky time signature (like a really hobbling waltz) and di-diddley-dums.

The record only seriously changes tone once: ʽHey! Get Out Of My Wayʼ, like the title suggests, introduces a pinch of anger and aggressive feminism, as if, for once, the band decided to take its cues from Blondie rather than Julie London — although even here, Nina cannot make herself sound really pissed. Instead, her "get out of my way!" treats the ex-lover as more of an annoying housefly than anything, and she sounds too bored and disgusted to even bother picking up a swatter. It's funny, and a nice extra touch to complete the psychological portrait of Life's heroine before we launch into the epic ʽClosing Timeʼ — which, instead of playing it safe and being a two-minute little goodbye, goes through several different sections with different tempos and different stories and ends in ʽHey Judeʼ mode... not really, because after the last tinklings of the acoustic riff fade away, there's a few more minutes of muffled noises, complete silence, The Lost Chord, and an acoustic coda. If that ain't creativity, no hopes for Sweden.

I do not feel that the songs here are as consistently amazing as the ones on Emmerdale, but the reaction would probably depend on which of the two you hear first — or maybe it's just that this atmosphere of intentionally-fake happiness sometimes gets to me. But with every next listen, they become more and more endearing, and ʽClosing Timeʼ could arguably be described as the peak of their songwriting powers — so another major thumbs up here anyway.

FIRST BAND ON THE MOON (1996)

1) Your New Cuckoo; 2) Been It; 3) Heartbreaker; 4) Happy Meal II; 5) Never Recover; 6) Step On Me; 7) Lovefool; 8) Losers; 9) Iron Man; 10) Great Divide; 11) Choke.

This is the one that has ʽLovefoolʼ on it — the song that made the band in the eyes of mass European and American audiences, because, let's face it, if there is a pop-rock band that consists of several male musicians and one blonde female singer, it's Blondie, right? But no band is really Blondie until it has a genuine Blondie mega-hit, and so ʽLovefoolʼ was selected by mass tastes as their ʽHeart Of Glassʼ, with which it does share some things in common: the light-headed, bitter-hearted attitude, the disco danceability, the funky riffs, the sweet sweet catchiness. And it's a nice song alright, but for someone like me, who totally missed it in the Nineties, it is not even the best, or the most memorable song on this album, let alone in the Cardigans songbook as a whole.

Even without ʽLovefoolʼ, you could tell that the band is trying to modernize its sound here: ʽYour New Cuckooʼ opens things up with a strong neo-disco beat, and throughout the album there are plenty more signs of moving away from the relaxed, folk- and jazz-influenced atmospheres of the first two albums and into more dance-oriented, contemporary territory. However, this troublesome «commercialization» is only superficial. Not only are the actual melodies as strong as ever, but the band's bittersweet romance attitude, as personified by Nina's singing technique, remains exactly the same as it used to be. Consequently, this is one of those rare cases where a sellout is not really a sellout — it is simply a matter of becoming able to sell precisely the same thing that, earlier on, you were not able to sell. For technical, unimportant reasons.

Besides, other than ʽLovefoolʼ and ʽYour New Cuckooʼ (whose saccharine disco chorus is admirably turned into a tongue-in-cheek expression by Nina's sarcastic "let's come together, me and you... your new cuckoo" delivery and the grumbly guitar riff), the only number presented as a modern dance track (slow trip-hop style) is, would you know it, another Black Sabbath cover. Unlike ʽSabbath Bloody Sabbathʼ, which they really nailed — unveiled, in fact — as the sentimental pop song that it had always been in the first place, this take on ʽIron Manʼ is less successful. They do a good job jazzifying the classic riff, and Nina's scat singing on the outro is hilarious (especially when she does that little «scratching turntables» routine), but the lyrics just don't fit in. More like ʽGingerbread Manʼ than ʽIron Manʼ, if you know what I mean. No purpose to it, really, other than a "let's really go down in history like that crazyass Sabbath cover band" sort of statement. Which, on the other hand, is also respectable in its own strange way.

But then there's just lots and lots and lots of other good songs on top of this. ʽNever Recoverʼ is a fast, upbeat, snappy post-Beatles / post-Bangles power-pop gem, with a resplendent chorus full of energy and sunshine. ʽBeen Itʼ should be primarily respected for the sexy-seductive instrumental and vocal melody of its chorus, and only secondarily for the lyrics ("ooh, she calls herself a whore! that's so Madonna! this is, like, disturbing!") — actually, she makes bitter fun of former lover boy rather than degrading herself, and all the guitar riffs sound like whips across poor unfortunate male skin and flesh. Did I ever use the word "misandrist" yet in a review? Probably not; well, 1996 seems like the right time to start.

Slow, moody, haunting tunes? Yes, still plenty of them. The pretty moonlight waltz of ʽHeartbreakerʼ. Lounge sounds still pursue us with ʽGreat Divideʼ (chimes, strings, treated guitars, tempo changes, mood changes — there's quite a lot going on in these three minutes). ʽChokeʼ, closing the album, is impossible to describe in genre terms: it combines elements of alt-rock, R&B, and jazz, and on top of it, there is the riff from ʽIron Manʼ! Somehow, it slipped and fell through the cracks, landing on top of the final track and finding it comfortable enough to stay there. Gee, these whacky rover riffs.

As you can understand, this is yet another major thumbs up: the band's third melodically strong, atmospherically captivating, technically inventive album in a row. And I'm sure that, as long as you do not associate it exclusively with ʽLovefoolʼ, you'll be all right.

GRAN TURISMO (1998)

1) Paralyzed; 2) Erase/Rewind; 3) Explode; 4) Starter; 5) Hanging Around; 6) Higher; 7) Marvel Hill; 8) My Favourite Game; 9) Do You Believe; 10) Junk Of The Hearts; 11) Nil.

Well, things change. Although the band's fourth record was made in the same Stockholm studio and produced by the same Tore Johansson, the sound has definitely... evolved. There is a clear drive here to make it more modern, by shifting a lot of emphasis over to electronics, drum machines, and trendy trip-hoppy rhythms — forget the lounge jazz and retro-pop of yesterday, here we are trying to peep through the window of tomorrow. Does the music suffer? Hell yes, it does, although it also has to do with the overall mood in the studio: it's as if they all spent way too much time listening to Portishead, and now all they can think of are these slow, smoky, electronically enhanced grooves where atmosphere counts more than melodic hooks. (Not that Portishead did not have their fair share of melodic hooks — but if you are influenced by someone like that, first thing you're gonna try to emulate is the texture, not the chord progressions).

Anyway, upon overcoming the initial disappointment, once the bitter fog has cleared, it was quite a consolation to understand that on the whole, the melodic skills of Svensson and Svenigsson did not truly deteriorate (although, curiously, Svenigsson is credited only on two of the tracks; most everything else is co-written by Svensson with Nina), and that Nina's potential for seduction may be fully realized in an electronic setting just as well. Maybe that unique Cardigans magic is really no more, but this is still high quality pop music. I think most of the attention in 1998 was diverted to the controversial music video for ʽMy Favourite Gameʼ (ooh, road violence! blood! car crashes! censorship! real scary!); however, 1998 is long past us and we are now free again to just enjoy the music without the outdated MTV perspective.

ʽMy Favourite Gameʼ is actually a good song that does not forget to incorporate a strong hook, in the form of a nagging, «whimpering» three-note guitar riff that agrees beautifully with Nina's melancholic vocals — although behind that generall melancholy, there are few secrets to discover. The second single, ʽErase/Rewindʼ, with a funkier, more danceable groove and an intentionally more robotic vocal performance, was a slightly bigger hit in the UK, but it's actually less impressive because it's so monotonous.

Actually, the best songs here tend to be the slowest ones: they also take the most time to grow on you, but it is worth the wait. ʽExplodeʼ, for instance — what a fabulous vocal part, where each accented syllable is drawn out with so much eroticism, even if the lyrics do not formally have much to do with sexual tension (more like "explode or implode" is a metaphor for a drug addiction, though the lyrics are deliberately ambiguous). Not much else by way of melody, but the somber organ and the jangly guitar (or is that a harpsichord part? hard to tell with those production technologies) provide a nice sonic blanket for the vocals. ʽHigherʼ is formally classifiable as adult contemporary — but that's a really soulful, sensitive adult contemporary chorus out there. It takes a special talent to sing a line like "we'll make it out of here" so that it combines both the optimistic hope of getting out of here and the firm knowledge that we will never get out of here at the same time, and Nina Persson does have it.

Electronics and adult contemporary aside, they even managed to sneak a song here that would later attract the attention of the Deftones — ʽDo You Believeʼ is not exactly nu-metal, but it rocks harder than anything else on here, with industrial-style distortion of the riff and a «brutal» coda where the soft-psychedelic echoing of the chorus contrasts with the riff put on endless repetition. The lyrical message is the simplest on the album — "do you really think that love is gonna save the world? well, I don't think so" — and, as if in self-acknowledgement of the fact, it is also repeated twice: yes, this whole record is about tragic endings, disappointments, and disillusionments, and sometimes they are going to shove it in your face quite openly. It's not very original, but it's honest, and as long as they still got musical ideas to back it up, it's okay with me.

So yes, Gran Turismo might essentially be qualified as Portishead-lite, but even if «lite» rhymes with «shite», this does not mean they're identical. The downfall of The Cardigans as a band with its own voice probably starts here, and as they add ʽErase/Rewindʼ to their hit collection, the number of people who know them for being providers of catchy, but faceless dance tracks begins to outnumber the number of people who know them for being wonderful musicians. But album-wise, in 1998 they were still playing a respectable game, so here is another thumbs up. And as far as combinations of guitars and electronica in pop music are concerned, this is still a lighter (and better) experience than, say, Madonna's Ray Of Light.

LONG GONE BEFORE DAYLIGHT (2003)

1) Communication; 2) You're The Storm; 3) A Good Horse; 4) And Then You Kissed Me; 5) Couldn't Care Less; 6) Please Sister; 7) For What It's Worth; 8) Lead Me Into The Night; 9) Live And Learn; 10) Feathers And Down; 11) 03.45: No Sleep.

Five years between albums may not make such a long time now as they did thirty years ago, but in the case of the Cardigans, they were crucial — Long Gone Before Daylight gives us an entirely different band, with that dreadfully punched-up word «maturation» flashing blue, red, or green, whichever you prefer. No more jazzy Black Sabbath covers, no more cheerful Beatlesque pop, and not even any more trip-hoppy or disco dance numbers. With Svensson now providing all of the music and Nina all of the lyrics, this is a slow, unexciting, introspective record that comes as close to generic «adult contemporary» as they ever did. It's not as if they are getting more psychological on your ass than before — it's just that your ass gets the gist of it far more sharply when it's sitting in your chair than when it's being distracted by all those chuggy-funky or giggly-pastoral dance rhythms of yesterday.

Of course, this still comes on as somewhat of a shock — unlike the classic «young» stage of the band, the songs no longer jump out at you with the same immediacy, and, in fact, the album would most probably sink on a purely instrumental level, because music-wise, it seems to be riding on a fairly straightforward alt-rock and alt-country foundation. Where it eventually catches up with you (me) is on the vocal level. A few listens into the whole sucker, it emerges as an extremely intelligent and sentient record on the love-and-hate issue — the real thing, that is. It has all these subtle connections to the past (ʻAnd Then You Kissed Meʼ hearkens back not to one, but to two of The Crystals' hits, because there is a reference to ʻHe Hit Meʼ as well; ʻFor What It's Worthʼ does not accidentally coincide with the title of the Buffalo Springfield classic — although it actually includes the song title in the lyrics, unlike its predecessor), but it is an utterly modern record at heart, and the best thing about it, it is modern, clever, emotional, convincing, and it does all of that on a very humble, unassuming, unprovocative level. Which means, of course, that it did not seriously chart anywhere but in Sweden.

It is very easy to write the record as too long, too slow, too boring, and too clichéd, but... do me a favor and don't do this, okay? Instead, give Nina a chance, and she'll eventually turn this into a masterful soulful show for you. ʻCommunicationʼ starts off with the most ABBA-esque song on here, and the verse-chorus build-up is a perfect mix of tender sentimentality with quiet desperation (is the Swedish way, after all) — one might quibble that it is not very inventive to follow the call of "I don't know how to connect" with the response of "so I disconnect", but she's got such a... disconnecting way of saying that last word, it's pretty hard to think of a better ending.

The second song, ʻYou're The Stormʼ, amuses me to no end, because stylistically, it is precisely the kind of material that would soon win Taylor Swift her fame and fortune — sort of a neo-country rocker, starts out soft and slow, becomes loud and anthemic in the chorus, and even the lyrics, all based around a somewhat crude geopolitical love metaphor ("and if you want me, I'm your country"), kind of fit the bill. Except that ʻYou're The Stormʼ actually has an enthralling chorus, where modulation matters much more than loudness — the pitch change from "I like the sweet life and the silence" to "but it's the storm that I believe in" is true pop brilliance. It is true that lyrical lines like "come raise your flag upon me" or "come and conquer and drop your bombs" sound a little crude (not to mention that the song's timing, coming out right at the start of the Iraqi War, couldn't have been worse), but it's no hard crime to get a little carried away with a metaphor, and, after all, we don't cherish The Cardigans because of their lyrics (even if, word-wise, they are typically several notches above the ABBA level).

Everything after that comes on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, but the more I listen, the more I'm ready to take. Here's just a few moments: the plaintive vibe of "my heart can't carry much more" (ʻCouldn't Care Lessʼ); the quiet razor-sharpness of the "help me, I'm not feeling... okay" chorus conclusion (ʻPlease Sisterʼ); the way "for what it's worth I love you, and what is worse, I really do" moves up an octave from first chorus to last; the believable stubbornness in the "I live and I learn, yes I live and I learn" mantra; the sarcastic-tragic finale of "come to me, let's drown... come baby, let's drown in feathers and down" — it's all touching, inventive, and meaningful.

Nothing remains, really, except to reiterate the old fact about no musical genre being good or bad on its own, but everything depending upon the personalities behind it. Singer-songwriters come fairly cheap these days, and far more often than necessary, but Persson would probably make an excellent one (in fact, Long Gone Before Daylight is far more of a «singer-songwriter» record, genre-wise, than a «pop» record); and this is precisely the kind of album that manages to avoid both the «cheap thrill» pitfalls of fluffy country-pop à la Taylor Swift and the «musical boredom» pitfalls of, say, an Ani DiFranco. Yes, our acquaintance started out on a sour note, but in the end I'm perfectly happy to award it a strong thumbs up — and all you reviewers who panned it when it came out, well, you probably didn't even respect the three-listen rule.

SUPER EXTRA GRAVITY (2005)

1) Losing A Friend; 2) Drip Drop Teardrop; 3) Overload; 4) I Need Some Fine Wine And You, You Need To Be Nicer; 5) Don't Blame Your Daughter; 6) Little Black Cloud; 7) In The Round; 8) Holy Love; 9) Good Morning Joan; 10) And Then You Kissed Me II.

I may be the only person left to like this album, but even I have a hard time defending it — it's quite similar to the previous one, but even slower, drearier, and (at least superficially) duller. At least Long Gone Before Daylight reinvented the band, for better or for worse; but Super Extra Gravity merely persists in that image, with yet another series of dark personal broodings over not particularly impressive pop melodies.

By this time, as we can already see from the Roxy Music-influenced album cover, it's really all about Nina — if her charm still works on you, you might forgive the uninventive arrangements and recycled chord sequences; if it does not, Super Extra Gravity will simply crush you to the ground, like it's supposed to, and bore you to death with its depressive formula. Personally, I am a believer, and I am still willing to take at least some of these songs at face value and see them as deeply personal and, occasionally, even unique artistic statements. But that's just me.

At the very least, ʻLosing A Friendʼ is a beautiful tune, and it's all Nina, meticulously building up passion from the quiet, pensive first verse to the tempestuous coda — she is a rare singer who can package anger and desperation in one go, and that final "oh no, oh no, I'm losing you... oh look at you look what you're wasting" is a perfect example of that double package. Instrumentally, the tune is just nice — pretty guitars and keyboards, rough electric guitar solo, everything tasteful but nothing too special. The voice part, however, is something else.

The problem is that it's just one song, and although Persson is consistently energetic and involved in these tunes, she rarely gives us that much «character development», if I may be allowed to use a stock banality. ʻI Need Some Fine Wineʼ, the first single from the album, once again sounds like any other alt-pop guitar-based song ever written, and I do love the lady's sarcastic aggression and all, but it is not enough to make the song really stick — unless the "good dog, bad dog" metaphor somehow seems impressive to you, it's just one more attempt to say something meaningful on the issue of complicated personal relations between two ex-lovers. The second single, ʻDon't Blame Your Daughterʼ, was even slower and preachier, and its accusatory spirit is wasted on me; in fact, it sounds whiny, and that's never a good thing.

In fact, the worst thing with this record is that I simply have no wish to discuss any of the individual tunes. I still like how it all sounds (a very nice balance between acoustic and electric guitars, atmospheric electronics, natural percussion, etc.), I like to hear the sound of Persson's voice, always so reliable and so deep-reaching, and I can understand how they would want to put «soul» and «depth» before experimentation and unique personality, but the songs are simply not good enough to merit discussion.

To the best of my knowledge, the album was not intended as a swansong, and, in fact, after a long break the Cardigans eventually came back together in 2012, even if they have yet to write or record anything new. But maybe they needn't, because Super Extra Gravity does work well as a swan song — in fact, that is probably the only capacity in which it works well, by letting us understand that the band has nothing left to say (there's even a song called ʻAnd Then You Kissed Me IIʼ!), even if it still has enough strength to say it with grace and dignity. It was a jolly good ride, though — through at least three different stages of existence, all of which had their own charms, with not a single genuine stinker in the lot. Then again, I guess 10-12 years is close to the optimal limit for a good band before it stagnates or goes artistically bankrupt, so here's hoping that these clever Swedes take their cue from their ABBA compatriots, and won't ruin it with their latter-day equivalent of something like Sur La Mer.

CAT POWER

DEAR SIR (1995)

1) 3 Times; 2) Rockets; 3) Itchyhead; 4) Yesterday Is Here; 5) The Sleepwalker; 6) Mr. Gallo; 7) No Matter; 8) Great Expectations; 9) Headlights.

"If you want money in your pocket, top hat on your head, hot meal on your table, and a blanket on your bed — come to New York City..." The cover of Tom Waits' ʽYesterday Is Hereʼ was certainly not included by Chan Marshall, a.k.a. Cat Power, on her debut record by accident — that was precisely the kind of advice she took, moving out of the stifling confines of Atlanta, Georgia, and relocating to New York where her muse would be nurtured under more suitable conditions. Sonic Youth took note of her there, and their drummer, Steve Shelley, eventually got her to sign for the indie label Runt Records, and found her some recording space in a basement on Mott Street — the classic indie setup.

She did sound a lot like a one-woman Sonic Youth in those early days, to be sure. Most of the material recorded for those sessions (divided between 1995's «tentative» release Dear Sir and the much longer 1996's Myra Lee, which she would consider her proper debut) shares certain definitive features with the band — namely, free-form poetic self-expression riding on a bedrock of dark, grim electric guitar lines inherited from the Velvet Underground, but completely stripped of any resemblance to «pop» textures. On the other hand, words and vocal attitude matter even more for Marshall than for Sonic Youth — here, she clearly and boldly presents herself as a poet first and a musician second, so think Patti Smith, too. Patti Smith backed by Sonic Youth — there, that's a pretty good analogy.

In other words, if you're looking for an interesting melody to take home in a doggy bag, or for a vocal hook that might stick to your brain like a burr to a dog's ass, this record would be about as useful for this purpose as The Natural Sounds Of Wilderness, Vol. 5: Pig Frogs. The only way to enjoy and worship this is a pledge of allegiance to CAT POWER as the new spiritual current that will efficiently spring clean your chakras. Chan Marshall sings like a possessed woman (I get the impression of somebody sitting in a completely immobile position and staring without blinking at the same spot on the wall all the time while the recording is on); writes lyrics that confirm her status as the second coming of Mad Ophelia; and uses those guitars only as black atmospheric accompaniment for the words and nothing else (in which she is aided by second guitarist Tim Foljahn, who adds slightly cleaner and higher lead lines to her gruff rhythm work).

Not surprisingly, Dear Sir is one of those albums where it is hard to imagine any kind of middle ground — you either fall under its spell and give it an A+ or you don't, and give it a Z-. To avoid extreme lines of thinking, I will take the cowardly way out and say that it is, after all, only a first attempt from a beginning songwriter (although she was already 23 years old when it was released, and had already been playing, singing, and writing for a good five years or so, first in Atlanta and then in NYC). This makes it easier to forgive the sometimes annoyingly cryptic or pretentious nature of her poetry, although it does not make the «tunes» more enjoyable — the biggest problem is that, unlike Patti Smith, Chan rarely goes for any brutal, hit-'em-with-all-you-got frontal assaults on the listener. Most of the lyrics are either mumbled or strung out in shrill, whiny overtones; and even when she is deliberately being punkish and going all Bikini Kill-ish on our asses (ʽItchyheadʼ), well, the effort is respectable, but the effect is underwhelming — lo-fi production being one reason for this, of course, but also I don't truly feel as if the singer herself is really sure of what it is she is trying to communicate. I can understand she had a pretty tough Georgian childhood, and that her attitude towards the world is anything but friendly ("If I got myself a gun / Then I could shoot down everyone / Maybe I've just invented some religion", she sings four years prior to the Columbine massacre), but it is never made quite clear what really is the problem, or the supposed remedy.

Anyway, bottomline is: these days, Cat Power is largely respected for her musical achievements, but the musical achievements of Dear Sir are practically non-existent — above all, this is a set of atmospheric soundscapes where a seemingly not very unhappy and not very frustrated artist is trying to evocate feelings of extreme unhappiness and frustration. Curious, but I'd still take Patti Smith's Horses over this any time. Or maybe I just don't get serious American street poetry of the past quarter century, period.

MYRA LEE (1996)

1) Enough; 2) We All Die; 3) Great Expectations; 4) Top Expert; 5) Ice Water; 6) Still In Love; 7) Rockets; 8) Faces; 9) Fiance; 10) Wealthy Man; 11) Not What You Want.

From a brief preliminary introduction, welcome to the full-length presentation of Cat Power, symbolically named after her mother, who, according to some accounts, may have been even whackier than her daughter — which accounts for some of the album's weirdness, but far from all of it. As I already mentioned, these tracks were recorded at the same time as the ones for Dear Sir, and there is even some redundancy (ʽRocketsʼ is found on both albums, and ʽGreat Expectationsʼ would later be appended to reissues of Dear Sir, although it was not present on the original pressing), but this here is a larger and slightly more diverse collection, giving you a more comprehensive portrait of Chan Marshall in her early days, provided you're really interested.

In all fairness, though, there is not much to add to the review of Dear Sir: the thing that matters most about this record is still atmosphere and attitude, and they are predictably the same — Chan Marshall is still walking the nighttime streets of a post-nuclear-apocalyptic city in a state of complete trance and mental meltdown, singing songs that feel like barely regulated streams of conscious and are just as memorable as any such stream. Some people fall for that very easily, but I remain spoiled by great women in music who could drive themselves to similar states, yet remain either far more intriguing and unpredictable in terms of melody (Joni Mitchell), or far more impressive as emotional powerhouses (Patti Smith). Marshall, unfortunately, does not do either: her melodies here are replete with boring Sonic Youth-isms, and her personal charisma is... well, on the level of «passable» when she is mumbling and «annoying» when she is screaming.

Nevertheless, at least a few of the tracks at least stand out against the general background, which is more than could be said about Dear Sir. In particular, ʽWe All Dieʼ, based on a fatalistic descending guitar/bass riff and a sonic arrangement that brings to mind Tom Waits' Bone Machine, has a gritty punch that helps the song's frozen chorus of "hell, we all die sometimes, hell, we all try somewhere" get under your skin, rather than just sit there as one more of those pretentious and ultimately useless statements. (The only other track that has a loud, tough rhythmic base is ʽTop Expertʼ, but there the musical backbone is quite unexceptional). And as a fun gimmick, you have an «expressionist singer-songwriter deconstruction» of Hank Williams' ʽStill In Love With Youʼ — a first-rate example of how one can take a super-catchy country tune, suck all the hooks out of it, and transform it into «pure feeling» because the notion of catchiness is, you know, so ugly and anti-artistic. See, she is doing Hank a big service — we all know Hank was a genius, but he happened to write songs that intentionally got stuck in your head, which is very anti-life-like, because, see, you usually go through life without its experiences constantly sticking in your head, so what Chan is doing here is, she's preserving the genius but she's also making it more life-like and spontaneous and honest. Fuck form, just save the spirit. (By the way, she sings it so low that I'm almost dying to learn if it couldn't make a bigger impression on me if it were sung by the late Nico, who must have been a big influence on Cat Power anyway).

Further individual comments on particular songs would make no sense — it's all about droning repetition and half-sung, half-mumbled repetition of poetry that I find highly questionable and, what is worse, devoid of genuine magic. The whole thing reaches an absolute nadir on ʽNot What You Wantʼ, a stripped-down performance (just vocals and acoustic guitar) recorded in abysmal lo-fi quality and featuring all the trademark qualities of generic indie shit (poorly tuned and barely played guitar; rough singing that regularly turns to off-key screaming; and a message of self-assertion that apparently tries to seduce us with the «realism» of what is going on). Fortunately, the rest of the album is much better produced, played, and sung, so we'd have to assume that the song was a last-minute addition of some unfinished and unpolished demo, to give the album a rougher edge (I'd recommend just stopping it at the end of ʽWealthy Manʼ, though).

In brief, Myra Lee runs on «honesty» (that is, if you accept the whole vibe as honest, which is your personal choice) and «spontaneity» more than anything else, so proceed at your own risk; I do not condemn the record for the same reasons I did not feel disgusted about Dear Sir (and one key point here is the near-complete lack of wallowing in self-pity, which, to me, is an immediate turn-off in the case of such records — see Conor Oberst for an extreme case), but I certainly do not regard it as much of an improvement, either.

WHAT WOULD THE COMMUNITY THINK (1996)

1) In This Hole; 2) Good Clean Fun; 3) What Would The Community Think; 4) Nude As The News; 5) They Tell Me; 6) Taking People; 7) Fate Of The Human Carbine; 8) King Rides By; 9) Bathysphere; 10) Water & Air; 11) Enough; 12) The Coat Is Always On.

Well, I certainly cannot vouch for the community, but I think that Chan Marshall's third album is a definite improvement on the first two — unfortunately, still not nearly enough to make me experience it as a piece of music rather than a series of dramatic monologues delivered in quasi-musical form. She's almost getting there: the production is cleaner, the musical influences get more diverse, and a small bunch of the tracks show signs of distinguishable melodies, although there's nothing particularly curious or outstanding about them. However, it's really not about the music, it's more of a «okay, for this particular text and mood I'd need some country flavor», «this is a pissed-off manifesto that requires a bit of grungy guitar», «here I'm being icily somnambulant, so just a few quiet acoustic chords will do» etc. sort of a thing.

The progression is most obviously sensed when you compare the original recording of ʽEnoughʼ with the new version on this album — the acoustic melody is more complex and focused, the drums add extra punch, the vocals are more disciplined and singing-oriented; the essence, however, stays precisely the same, so essentially the difference is simply that we're moving into the world of hi-fi from the world of lo-fi, which is almost always a plus in my opinion (I'd say that in indie rock, there is maybe one case out of a hundred when the lo-fi approach truly works better than a hi-fi one), but compositional progress is still non-existent.

As for the atmosphere, well, extra cleanness of sound has not influenced it one bit. Remember, in the previous review, I'd already said that the simplest impression that Cat Power music gives us is that of the last survivor walking around the ruins in a post-nuclear world? Well, that feeling certainly does not dissipate once you hear the femme fatale muttering "After this there will be no one, after this there will be no one" to the sound of a dark folk acoustic guitar on ʽGood Clean Funʼ. Of course, when you start drilling the lyrics, you realize that she is really singing about a breakup (not a surprise), but honestly, I'd rather not start drilling the lyrics. The good news is, she manages to conjure a kind of gothic atmosphere without formally sounding gothic, and as for the lyrics, either I'm too culturally backwards to get their greatness or they are, in fact, merely a stream of conscious where a small handful of brilliant lines has to be picked out of a huge amount of meaningless, association-less verbal chaff ("after this there will be hats on different bodies, after this there will be no more beautiful dresses" certainly sounds like chaff to me).

The most «important» track on the album, chosen for release as a single and also accompanied by the singer's first ever music video, was ʽNude As The Newsʼ, apparently dealing with memories of an abortion she had in 1992 — another good subject to wrap up in a desensitized post-nuclear atmospheric blanket. The song does have arguably the most memorable chorus on the album — the plaintive "Jackson, Jesse, I've got a son in me!"; apparently, «Jackson» and «Jesse» are the names of Patti Smith's children, so the ensuing "he's related to you, he's waiting to meet you" is supposed to emphasize the spiritual closeness between Chan and Patti (yes, as if we needed yet another confirmation of the obvious fact that Chan Marshall worships at the altar of P. S.). The overall sentiment is one of sorrowful guilt, though she never blames herself explicitly, and there's a kind of strained tension in the song that really puts it on top of everything else — yet, at the same time, something still turns me off. Maybe it's the generic whiney overtones that appear in her voice every time she raises it to a painful scream; in such moments, she's not that different from your average Courtney Love, I'd say.

The voice may actually be a bigger problem — now that the production is cleaner and overall muddiness of the sound is no longer an acceptable excuse, tunes that rely almost exclusively on the alleged hypnotic qualities of the lady's voice (like the two-chord folk-blues vamp of ʽThey Tell Meʼ) will depend on whether you are ready to forgive her rather ordinary timbre, her complete lack of vocal training, and her impaired ability to sustain high notes because of the, you know, verbally undescribable magic in the way she strings those corrupted notes together. Personally, I confess to occasionally cringing when she bums one of these high notes (ʽWater & Airʼ is particularly awful in that respect), and actually prefer those tunes that are more fully arranged, so there's at least something between her «raw» vocalizing and my ears (as in the peaceful alt-rocker ʽTaking Peopleʼ, with its loud rhythm section). Even that does not always help: ʽWater & Airʼ, for instance, has an experimental scrapy cello part in the place of a lead counter-melody, but the screechy vocals still ruin the song whenever they can — and on the cover of Bill Calahan's ʽBathysphereʼ, there's a weird bleeping synth pattern superimposed on the acoustic rhythm (why? does it have anything to do with the functioning of the bathysphere?), which throws in a novelty component, but when she goes falsetto (actually, crack-hiss-falsetto) on "set me free", I just don't care any more. Novelty or not, lady, but with dirty tricks like these, you're not really fit to step into the shoes of Patti Smith.

Overall, there's definitely some progress here, but it's a bit like trying to improve on an old B-movie by remastering it in high definition — so now you have all its pluses and all its minuses in much clearer focus. A record that shows potential, sure enough, and space for improvement, and some talent and some creativity and some genuine atmospherics, yet certainly not the masterpiece of contemporary sonic art that the trendy hip people would have been looking for in 1996. Again, the only thing that really makes me happy here is that she could have very easily remained fully wedged in this formula — surely there'd be enough happy people to lap it up for half a dozen more times with exactly the same ingredients — yet she did not, and so on we go.

MOON PIX (1998)

1) American Flag; 2) He Turns Down; 3) No Sense; 4) Say; 5) Metal Heart; 6) Back Of Your Head; 7) Moonshiner; 8) You May Know Him; 9) Colors And The Kids; 10) Cross Bones Style; 11) Peking Saint.

This is it, the moment of truth — if you don't like Moon Pix, you're probably more of a dog power than a cat power person; and if you like, but don't love Moon Pix (like I do), you must have serious problems with quite a lot of modern musical art, because Moon Pix is really it: a record that is modern-artsy to the extreme, a set of semi-improvisational, stream-of-consciousness-like rambling confessions that sound like they were recorded in a hazy trance. In fact, I don't know about «recorded», but legend has it that many of the songs were written by Chan in one night under the influence of a disturbing nightmare, involving dark spirits and demons and all sorts of stuff that, you know, can sometimes happen to a girl from Georgia overdosing on New York City. Perhaps that is why the album is called Moon Pix, even if the only song on the album with a direct reference to ʽmoonʼ is ʽMoonshinerʼ, and that's a different kind of moon.

Anyway, if I were a mean, evil person, I would have certainly taken the chance to mock the songwriter on account of a lyric like "It must be the colors / And the kids / That keep me alive / 'Cause the music is boring me to death". Honestly, when listening to Moon Pix, this is precisely the feeling I get — the music is boring me to death, but the colors of the album are what saves it from mediocrity. ʽColors And The Kidsʼ is basically just three piano chords put on repeat for about six and a half minutes, and her voice, fading in and out of the picture, sometimes cracking from excessive emotionality and sometimes dissipating from lack of training, is no great shakes either — but the first thing you realize with surprise is that somehow, this does not annoy your aural nerves (the only thing that does annoy me a bit is the sound of the piano lid closing at the end: cheap trick! cheap trick!), and from there, you can slowly build up appreciation for the odd atmosphere that she constructs, that good old optimistic pessimism, or pessimistic optimism, whatever, with just a touch of laziness and apathy because, you know, the universe is expanding or something like that, so what does everything else matter?

My biggest problem is that, even though she is now in Australia and recording with a completely different band, and the production is relatively hi-fi and the instrumentation relatively diverse (there's even a separate flute player), the music is still not up to par — mostly standard folk and blues patterns without any innovative or personal touches — and that, for all her talent, Chan is still refusing to take singing lessons, metaphorically speaking. I know I should be falling over my head with songs like ʽMetal Heartʼ and ʽCross Bones Styleʼ, but I am unable to perceive them as «magical», like so many fans do — pleasant, yes, mildly disturbing, yes, but nothing that would cut across the heart like a razorblade. Even ʽCross Bones Styleʼ, which is supposedly a dark folk lament over the horrible fates of diamond miners in South Africa (impossible to tell from the lyrics, but you can tell the song is mournful and disturbing), basically just rolls by like a chilly breeze — some jangly drony acoustic chords, some double-tracked folksy harmonies with high-low modulation, nothing too flashy and absolutely no secrets to come undone over the course of repeated listens. And repeated listens are necessary, because eventually you come to realize that the only source of real dread and creepiness would be the normality of it all — the total lack of any sort of flashy sonics or production gimmicks. Not that this wasn't the case with her previous records as well; it's just that Moon Pix is a clear step forward in terms of sonics and production, and since there are more instruments and some actual musicians backing her this time, you'd think you could expect something different, but no! You can't, really.

Actually, you know, I'm not exactly right when I speak about a lack of gimmicks — every reviewer of Moon Pix feels it necessary to remind the reader of the backwards drum loop on ʽAmerican Flagʼ that was, believe it or not, sampled from the Beastie Boys' ʽPaul Revereʼ (but why?); or of Belinda Woods' flute work on the folk ballad ʽHe Turns Downʼ (pretty, but quite low in the mix, and not really making much of a difference); or of the thunder bursts on ʽSayʼ, which make you feel locked up for safety in the room with the artist while nature is having a wild ball on the outside... but then again, almost every song on the album feels private and intimate anyway. So, essentially, the gimmicks are there, but they just don't matter.

What matters is the combination of largely predictable, though tasteful, folk and blues patterns, hookless vocals, ambiguous lyrics, and morose atmosphere. The one album that somehow springs to mind in connection with this is not even by a female artist — it is Nick Drake's Pink Moon, and guess what, I didn't even realize when I thought of it that it also had the word "moon" in the title. The difference being that Nick played a better guitar, had a better singing voice, wrote better songs, and could work that "don't-mind-me-I'm-just-humming-this-tune-in-the-corner" vibe much more efficiently than Chan Marshall, who can still occasionally come across as too narcissistic. Still, she's got one on him at least — she sounds a bit more human and relatable, whereas Nick was basically a Christ-like figure: you didn't really have a good idea of how to approach him, how to address him, whether he shits rose petals etc. — tons of mystery. This is where Marshall's «ordinariness» in terms of playing and singing really works well for her.

I give the record a thumbs up because I appreciate the rugged charisma, the lyrical originality, and the unquestionable progress in «formal» terms (more stylistic diversity, better production, interesting bits of studio experimentation), but I do wish that something more would remain in my head than the line "Yellow hair, you're a funny bear" that somehow got me trapped in a love-hate relationship — moving, yes, but also sounding a bit like the blueprint for everything that I hate about SIKC (Sentimental Indie Kid Culture), you know, that part of the universe where you have to get sad only because it's a sin to be happy, or, even worse, when all the bad things around you are only used as a pretext to get sad, because Sad is Cool. In other words, color me unconvinced — on a scale of 1 to 10, I'd rate the sadness of Moon Pix about 4 or 5 («not irritating because the person sounds nice, not genuinely moving because the feel is an artificial one»). But that's just because I'm fairly jaded on sadness, I guess.

THE COVERS RECORD (2000)

1) (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction; 2) Kingsport Town; 3) Troubled Waters; 4) Naked If I Want To; 5) Sweedeedee; 6) In This Hole; 7) I Found A Reason; 8) Wild Is The Wind; 9) Red Apples; 10) Paths Of Victory; 11) Salty Dog; 12) Sea Of Love.

You can probably already see from the preceding reviews that I am in no hurry to join the circle of adulators when it comes to Ms. Marshall and her ideas on how to use up her talents. And this is too bad, because when next it comes to The Covers Record, it is pretty damn hard to feel anything but hateful numbness unless you already are an adulator. Apparently, the «success» of Moon Pix (a fairly relative one — it's not like it made a Madonna out of her or anything) led her to thinking that now she had to perform one of those classic «artistic suicides», like Dylan's Self Portrait, to take the attention away from her persona and draw it to something else, becoming an interpreter for a while, instead of an artist.

To that end, The Covers Record does indeed consist of 12 covers, ranging from old folk and blues numbers to such Sixties' classics as ʽSatisfactionʼ and obscurities such as Moby Grape's ʽNaked If I Want Toʼ; most of them are transformed beyond recognition and often symbolically castrated by the removal of chorus hooks (which she'd already actually done much earlier, e. g. with Tom Waits' ʽYesterday Is Hereʼ), and to say that the arrangements are sparse would be saying nothing — most of the guitar-only and piano-only tunes are reduced to two or three chords, placed on endless repetition. Carrying the Pink Moon analogy over from the previous album, I'd have to say that Pink Moon, in comparison to this, sounds like a Mahler symphony.

Some, indeed, will find this approach as haunting, mysterious, chilly, and grappling as anything Cat Power ever did — and I do agree, in principle, that a reinvention of ʽSatisfactionʼ as an introspective, almost dark-folkish ballad with only the verse lyrics preserved sounds cool in theory, and even in practice... for the first thirty seconds or so. But the joke gets predictable and boring very, very quickly. The formula is always precisely the same: take any song (sad, happy, angry, lyrical, whimsical, whatever), deconstruct and strip its melody to the barest of bare essentials (simple enough to play for anybody with a couple weeks worth of musical training), and sing its lyrics in that icy-tender, husky, back-from-the-dead tone that leaves no doubt about it — here's a human being who's been through much more than you (sucker).

Problem is, this does not exactly tie in with the stated goal of the record: instead of humbly diverting attention from her own Moon Pix persona, she reinvents these songs so drastically that they no longer retain any of the original spirit and simply become another bunch of Cat Power songs, only this time, very poorly written ones. Apparently, her shows at the time included a projection of Dreyer's Passion Of Joan Of Arc while she was playing and singing the songs — which, if you ask me, comes across as a fairly arrogant gesture, rather than a humble one (a truly humble gesture would probably be to simply replace the concert with the film: I, for one, would much more love to see another screening of Passion than sit through Chan plink her way through all twelve of these «covers»).

It is not even the minimalism as such that drives me nuts — it is the idea of using this fatalistic moroseness as the single common denominator to which everything is reduced. When the formerly pissed off ʽSatisfactionʼ, the formerly triumphant and inspiring ʽPaths Of Victoryʼ, the formerly dangerous-romantic ʽWild Is The Windʼ, and the formerly facetious ʽSalty Dogʼ all become the same brand of ʽStill I'm Sadʼ, I just fail to see the point. Are we supposed to think that at the bottom of all these tunes there is indeed endless sadness, and that it was not until Chan Marshall opened our eyes to this that it became so evident? Or should we take this as a metaphoric statement of the «when you're overwhelmed with one emotion, you tend to view everything in the world through that emotional state» variety? But even if this is so, was this really sufficient to justify using an average of 2-3 notes for each song? And if this symbolizes the extremity of sadness, why not just pull a Cage on us and release nothing but silence?

In short, I'm not getting this and certainly not pretending to get this. A curious idea in theory that outlasts its welcome in less than two minutes, and is far more pretentious than it is humble. In the long run, the cover of ʽSatisfactionʼ is good enough to serve as a chuckle generator for unsuspecting friends, and the last two tracks are surprisingly listenable (on ʽSalty Dogʼ, she sings to the guitar playing of Matt Sweeney — you can tell, because there are many more than two notes here; and ʽSea Of Loveʼ, which sounds as if she's playing it by plucking open piano strings harp-style, is at least slightly livelier and perkier than the rest), but that's about it, and a thumbs down reaction, alas, seems inevitable.

YOU ARE FREE (2003)

1) I Don't Blame You; 2) Free; 3) Good Woman; 4) Speak For Me; 5) Werewolf; 6) Fool; 7) He War; 8) Shaking Paper; 9) Babydoll; 10) Maybe Not; 11) Names; 12) Half Of You; 13) Keep On Runnin'; 14) Evolution.

The album sleeve, frankly speaking, reads You Are Cat Power Free, and I am not sure what that means — it is not likely that the LP was ever supposed to be her last, but perhaps one should understand that figuratively, as in, «this is my first album that does not sound like quintessential Cat Power»? Because that would not be too far from the truth, or, rather, it does announce a new approach to songwriting that I, for one, could only welcome: Chan Marshall embraces the pop format, at least inasmuch as she begins to introduce recurrent hooks in her compositions.

I do not know what happened — perhaps the awfulness of The Covers Record struck the artist herself as too overtly egotistical and pointless, but it is a definite fact that You Are Free, despite the title, is the first album in Cat Power history where she agreed to let go of some of her freedom, adopting a more precise, tight-cut formula that was still true to her post-nuclear melancholic spirit, but gave her the advantage of actually planting her mood swings deep in the listener's braincells, rather than just spinning them around like fluctuating satellites. Perhaps we should be thanking Adam Kasper, the producer of Pearl Jam and Queens Of The Stone Age, for helping Chan with selecting the songs — or Dave Grohl, who is playing bass or drums on some of these songs (and no, there's no threat of turning Chan into a Foo Fighter, although that could be interesting). Anyway, whatever the reason, this is Cat Power's most musically interesting album since... well, probably since one of her past lives, when she must have been High Priestess of the Temple of Bastet and wrote depressed prayers to feline spirits.

In terms of arrangements, not much has changed: for the most part, it is still just Chan and her acoustic guitar or solitary piano. Every once in a while, she is joined by Grohl, or by some strings (master orchestrator and Beck's father David Campbell lends a hand on two tracks), or by some background vocals (including a couple of turns by Eddie Vedder), but none of that suffices to take away the impression of yet another «quiet» album. The difference is that this time around, «quiet» is complemented by «tight» and «energetic», and you can see that from the very first track, ʽI Don't Blame Youʼ — it is just as minimalistic as anything on Covers Record (five notes piano riff, yes), but somehow it is also a bit more playful, and it has got a cool transition between verse and chorus — apparently, the song is dedicated to Kurt Cobain, and while its verses sound like a stern reprimand from an overbearing psychiatrist, the chorus rushes to reassure the patient that "I don't blame you", and what do you know? it looks like she really does not. But the song does not come across as a propaganda of suicide, either: in contrast to her earlier, proverbially depressed material, ʽI Don't Blame Youʼ is just full of empathy and compassion. It's not a great song, but it's a song (rather than just a musically enhanced stream of conscious), and it is completely free of potential irritants.

Everything else is at least good, and sometimes quite inventive and at times, even funny in its own way — ʽFreeʼ, for instance, sounds like a cruelly deconstructed dance tune, maybe from the synth-pop era, only with acoustic guitar replacing synthesizer and an atmosphere of bizarre paranoidal apprehension replacing the «pseudo-original» atmosphere of cheesy romance. In addition, the line "don't fall in love with the autograph" should probably go down in history as one of the smartest and catchiest lines she's ever written. However, genre-wise, ʽFreeʼ is an exception: most of the tunes are still either bluesy or folksy in nature, and that's okay, since these genres come to her more naturally. It's just that before, she was unable to to anything particularly interesting with them — but now, with a little help from her friends...

...well, just listen to ʽGood Womanʼ: this is essentially a gospel-soul number about how "I don't want to be a bad woman / And I can't stand you to be a bad man" (I can easily see somebody of Aretha's caliber doing this), but she finds a cool combination of sounds to go along with it — distorted «grunge-folksy» guitar, David Campbell's string arrangement, and a couple of kids with ghostly effects for backing vocals. Again, no single great hook per se, but the arrangement gives the whole thing a multi-voice impression (guitar gruffness + string painfulness + kid voice ghostliness), so put a check mark next to «intrigue» at least, not to mention huge progression since those days when such a song would simply have been recorded with distorted guitar and nothing else and would have ended up as «dead boring indie schlock».

Most of the tunes that follow have one or more quirky elements — ʽSpeak For Meʼ has several Chans bouncing off each other and a tense build-up from verse to bridge to chorus (I think it's a song about confusion and chaos in the modern world, but could just as well be about indigestion, whichever matters more to you emotionally); the cover of Michael Hurley's ʽWerewolfʼ is embellished by yet another of Campbell's imaginative orchestrations, so that simple folk is turned into subtle baroque pop; ʽFoolʼ is her take on alt-country, with two vocal tracks (one normal and one falsetto) superimposed on each other in a lovely sweet way which almost completely overshadows the bitter words with which she stabs her compatriots ("it's all that we have, the USA is our daily bread / And no one is willing to share it"); ʽHe Warʼ is an odd mix of grunge, avantgarde, and maybe even hip-hop — a song that refuses to conform to any genre, while at the same time retaining an odd catchiness, not to mention the overall message that needs no lyrical confirmations, given the song's title and the year of the album's release (2003); and so on.

Amazingly, there's something good to be said about every single tune here — I still feel that the melodies are way too minimalistic and the arrangements not stupendous enough for this stuff to reach, you now, the Brian Eno level of bliss or something, but the most important thing has been achieved: You Are Free sounds like light, naturally flowing, not overcooked melancholia that can be sensually enjoyed even without understanding a single word of her lyrics. Who knows, maybe she just had to hit that 30-year boundary to reach genuine artistic maturity; in any case, now she is able to make use of just four notes and just one Eddie Vedder to bring the album to a tender, hypnotic conclusion (ʽEvolutionʼ), and it must take absolute artistic maturity to be able to put Eddie Vedder to good use, so a big thumbs up here indeed.

THE GREATEST (2006)

1) The Greatest; 2) Living Proof; 3) Lived In Bars; 4) Could We; 5) Empty Shell; 6) Willie; 7) Where Is My Love; 8) The Moon; 9) Islands; 10) After It All; 11) Hate; 12) Love & Communication; 13*) Up And Gone; 14*) Dreams.

Yes, I totally agree that Cat Power makes unpredictable records — the only thing you can always predict is that the next one will be just as sad and introspective as the previous one, but as to the melodic content, arrangements, influences, they will be constantly reshuffled, as befits the proverbial Artist In Constant Search Of The Grail. The only problem is, you can also be sure that not every such combination will work. The many ingredients on You Are Free made it work better than anything she'd ever done before — and for her next album, she would make an even less predictable move: to Memphis, of all places. Considering that she was born and raised in Georgia, and allegedly traveled a lot through the South in her younger days (including a brief schooling period in Memphis, among other locations), this «back to roots» thing may not seem too surprising; but whether it did her any good is not clear.

The entire album, named after its first track (and I bet most people mistook it for a best-of compilation originally, which could at least partially account for the drastic increase in sales...), is a collection of generally slow, moody, piano- and acoustic-based country (or is that country-soul?) ballads — perfectly normal singer-songwriterish balladry, although Chan still hates the idea of a repetitive chorus, normally sung (with Chan's pretty, raspy, crackling voice rarely rising above or falling below mid-level volume) and normally played, as she enlists some local Memphis pros to assist her with the arrangements (the most famous of these is arguably Teenie Hodges, the long-time collaborator with Al Greene and the co-author of ʽTake Me To The Riverʼ). As unpredictable as the decision is in general, you can still feel it ties in with her aesthetics — here we take old school R&B, soul, and country music, and reroute them to match the Cat Power vision, just as we did that with Delta blues and ʽSatisfactionʼ years ago.

Unfortunately, it also means a return to general boredom. Where You Are Free was an album of songs, The Greatest is an album of moods, or, rather, of one mood — the Cat Power mood, set up on the title track and gently (with just a subtle bit of turbulence) floating you all the way to the end. The pianos tinkle, the guitars punctuate, the strings glide, the rhythm section is underpaid, and, once again, there is not much beyond basic atmosphere, charisma, and «psychologism» to make the music linger on longer in your brain than the time it takes it to float by. For consistency's sake, if I rarely have a good word to throw in about «commercial» country-tinged singer-songwriters with little musical talent, but a pretty face (and other body parts) to gain traction through video imagery, I honestly don't see how I could generate good words about an album like this — no better and no worse than literally thousands of such records, with the only difference being that «commercial» singer-songwriters at least try to write actual songs and fail, whereas Chan does not even try. Not this time, at least.

I suppose that the underlying artistic theme here is «humility», as we learn from the title track (formally a tale of an aspiring boxer, but an allegory is always an allegory): "Once I wanted to be the greatest... and then came the rush of the flood... Melt me down, into big black armour, leave no trace of grace, just in your honour...". I assume that "greatest" here does not imply simplistic fame and fortune, for which she never struggled in the first place, but rather just the basic desire to stand out from the rest — and now, it is as if she is acknowledging how wrong that was, and how preferable it is to be "melted down". This is nice, but, just like before, there is a contradiction, or, at least, an impasse: if this is so, I am automatically cleared of all responsibility for writing a negative review, because there's nothing like a negative review to help stabilize a sense of humility, and besides, if she no longer wants to be "the greatest", then how could a record of hers be "the greatest"?

With this logical problem on my mind, I find it hard to concentrate on any of the individual songs. There are tunes about loss, betrayal, and loneliness; a few about hatred; one grungy Neil Young-ian epic that could have been decent if it made at least a little effort to evolve and develop itself (ʽLove & Communicationʼ); a few deconstructions of classic folk and country patterns (for Cat Power, deconstructing a song is always understood literally — as in, when instead of transporting a boombox, you take all of it apart and carry all the individual parts and bolts in a bundle, for no reason other than you like being all encumbered and messy); and maybe just a few sonic gimmicks here and there (the brass fanfare on ʽCould Weʼ, the nonchalant whistling on ʽAfter It Allʼ) that can serve as delimiters between tracks, just because your tired mind cannot seek out any others. And, of course, if you really so desire, you can burrow deep inside and feast on subtlety after subtlety — but then be sure to make room for those hundreds of singer-songwriters, cruelly bypassed by critical fame, who would very much like to claim that they can be just as subtle, only they never thought about claiming to be the carriers of Cat Power.

In short, she's back to her usual tricks, except this time, doing it in such an accessible manner that using the album as background muzak would be a perfectly easy task for just about anybody living in the quiet world of easy listening / adult contemporary / neo-country etc. Conversely, this is the reason why I don't give it a thumbs down — the album raises no negative emotion whatsoever, and with all this professional musicianship, and with Chan using her voice in a wise and restricted manner, it is pleasant and, dare I say this, intelligent background muzak. But it does not succeed in involving me on any serious emotional level, and its amorphousness is quite a bitchin' disappointment after the tight focus and shapefulness of You Are Free. Oh well, at least I hope those Memphis musicians were well paid for their work, however aimless it may have been.

JUKEBOX (2008)

1) New York; 2) Ramblin' (Wo)man; 3) Metal Heart; 4) Silver Stallion; 5) Aretha, Sing One For Me; 6) Lost Someone; 7) Lord, Help The Poor And Needy; 8) I Believe In You; 9) Song To Bobby; 10) Don't Explain; 11) Woman Left Lonely; 12) Blue; 13*) I Feel; 14*) Naked, If I Want To; 15*) Breathless; 16*) Angelitos Negros; 17*) She's Got You.

You can probably tell that if I had few kind words to say about Marshall's first album of cover tunes, the chances of these kind words multiplying tenfold for her second album of cover tunes would seem to be pretty thin. But at the very least, you couldn't blame her for completely repeating herself: whereas The Covers Record was totally minimalistic, consisting of little other than Marshall and her guitar or piano, Jukebox features Cat Power at the head of the «Dirty Delta Blues Band», consisting of several professional musicians assembled from various outfits (such as guitarist Judah Bauer of Jon Spencer's Blues Explosion), and, consequently, offering mostly bluesy reworkings of the usual near-random assortment of both golden and forgotten oldies.

Yet the album is still dominated by her usual tricks — take a certain song's lyrics, throw out the repetitive elements, destroy the original melody, and offer some atmospheric sonic brooding in its place. Maybe few of us are huge fans of the original ʽNew York, New Yorkʼ as done by Liza Minelli, and would not mind see it so viciously deconstructed (essentially, turned into a slow, funky blues jam), but even if the move works as an artistic statement (take a joyful ode to moving to the big city and turn it into a grimmer-than-grim hangover reaction to the whole thing), it hardly works as an autonomous atmospheric performance in its own rights — the music that they play, actually, is boring as heck.

And then, rinse and repeat twelve times in a row — seventeen, actually, if you consider the expanded two-disc edition that throws on five more outtakes from the same sessions (and I do believe there's also an additional EP out there that adds even more). If you like this underground lounge atmosphere, with dark, quivering basslines and wobbly, subconsciously dangerous electric pianos all over the place, good for you, but I'm still looking for melody and not finding it anywhere. Dylan's ʽI Believe In Youʼ arguably gets the royal treatment, with a very heavy drum sound and a good mix of distortion and echo on the guitar, so it is a bit of a standout, but I still cannot take it any more seriously than anything else on here.

Like all the rest of her failures, Jukebox fails because even if the artist herself believes that she is making some sort of strong statement, she cannot impress that feeling on me. These arrangements are simply not interesting — maybe this is not generic adult-oriented sterile blues playing, but it's the next worst thing: «tasteful» blues jamming without any spark, where you just have the blues ambience, but not the blues technique or the blues punch. And the idea of converting everything to the same common denominator of this blues ambience is never properly cleared up. I can't even tell if she likes Hank Williams or Billie Holiday — it's just that the idea of treating them this way reeks of pointless pretentiousness and presumptiousness.

And then there is the album's only original: ʽSong To Bobbyʼ, an acoustic folk ballad about you-know-who, clearly patterned after his own ʽSong To Woodyʼ on his debut album. When Dylan did that, it was sure as hell presumptious (in a way, you could surmise that he was appointing himself as Guthrie's successor), but the presumption, as everybody could see quite soon, was justified. So is Chan Marshall now appointing herself as Dylan's successor? The lyrics of the song seem so worshipful and fanboyish that no, this is more of a case of here saying "I'm not worthy!" But is there a point in saying that, either? We already know, more or less, that Chan Marshall is not the next Dylan, nor is she the first female Dylan (Dylan-ess?). So... either it's arrogance or it's pointlessness, I really don't care.

To recapitulate — there is nothing here but a meta-concept that is as old as Chan Marshall's career on the whole (ʽYesterday Is Hereʼ from the debut album could have easily made it to this collection as well), and a lot of fuzzy, soporific bluesy atmosphere; honestly, I'd rather go listen to Susan Tedeschi. She's boring, too, but at least she's a goddamn musician, and she wouldn't dare eviscerate the blues idiom in order to stuff her Artistic Personality in its smelly carcass and make people pay money for it. Thumbs down.

SUN (2012)

1) Cherokee; 2) Sun; 3) Ruin; 4) 3,6,9; 5) Always On My Own; 6) Real Life; 7) Human Being; 8) Manhattan; 9) Silent Machine; 10) Nothin But Time; 11) Peace And Love.

I don't really know what it is that makes so many analog-reared artists these days to convert to electronica sooner or later — apparently, there's this idea floating around in the air that playing guitars and pianos is «so 20th century», and that there's no way you can avoid electronic sound generation and programmed patterns if you want to stare into the future rather than stagnate in the past. Apparently, this idea is much stronger than the reminder that electronic music is a product of the 20th century, and that way too many «electronic escapades» of modern indie artists end up sounding even more retro (for instance, hearken all the way back to 1980's synth-pop) than whatever they were doing prior to that. In other words, electronic music as the key to the future is no longer a win-only option — these days, it's just another way of preserving the status quo.

Still, I guess that in the case of Cat Power anything works that can lead the artist away from another puddle of depressed, minimalistic, unmemorable streams of conscious and towards a more concise melodic shape for her compositions — and, luckily for us all, her embrace of electronic beats and pulses managed to put her back on the same track that made You Are Free such a satisfactory experience. Most of these songs she recorded all by herself, only utilizing musicians from Jukebox's «Dirty Delta Blues Band» on a couple of tracks; but there are quite a few acoustic overdubs as well, clothing the electronic skeletons, and the mix is very tasteful. Honestly, she is not just embracing electronics because it is the trendy thing to do — or if she does, she at least manages to coax such sounds out of all her synthesizers and computers so as to agree with her emotional constitution: dark, paranoid, psychic textures all around.

A good example is the title track — uninteresting drum machine beat aside, the harsh, grey synth canvas, reminding of an endless cloud front swooping across the sky, make a cool contrast with the opening "here comes, here comes, here comes the Sun", clearly an allusion to George Harrison but with the meaning reversed: in this song, the coming of the Sun seems to rather mean "the end of the world" than the hope of redemption and salvation, as she sings about the distant period in time when the Sun is expected to expand and burn down all life on Earth. The song's quietly dramatic flavor is enhanced with several layers of electronics and overdubs of background vocals, and it works in a Dead Can Dance sort of way, even though the overall sonic combination is much simpler (after all, Chan Marshall is not really a studio tech wiz, and for her first serious experience in harnessing complex studio technologies, this is a great success).

Elsewhere, she relies on electronics as the backbone for a dance-oriented experience: ʽ3,6,9ʼ combines elements of trip-hop and hip-hop (as well as a bit of a nursery rhyme for the chorus), but everything is still infused with the Cat Power atmosphere, as she (fortunately) makes no effort to get into tough street rapping, but simply applies her usual tired, brooding, "been-to-hell-and-back" voice to the new pattern — and it ain't great, but it works. ʽReal Lifeʼ also features her half-singing, half-rapping, but without betraying the usual vocal timbre and intonation, although I am not sure if I like the somewhat «preaching» attitude she takes on here, energized with all the heavy beats ("sometimes you gotta do what you don't want to do / to get away with an unordinary life" — really?). But somehow these things never sound irritating — on the contrary, there's something enchanting about how she manages to marry these conventional dance practices with closeted, introspective brooding.

The songs that got most of the attention, having been released as singles, are actually the ones that are least dependent on electronics and feature her backing band — ʽRuinʼ and ʽCherokeeʼ. The former is a universalist Cassandra-style lament about the ultimate fate of human society, spinning atop an enticing piano riff that sounds as if it was sampled from a ballroom version of ʽLa Cucarachaʼ and then, in the chorus, riding a good old disco bassline, which, of course, makes the repetitive chorus lyrics ("what are we doing? we're sitting on a ruin!") even more ironic. Likewise, ʽCherokeeʼ is also built on a contrast — a song of love and death, all echoey pianos and high-soaring wailing guitar trills, with an unforgettable chorus of "bury me, marry me to the sky" (an invocation where both parts have to be understood as semantically equivalent — thus, love and death are actually the same thing, if it's sexy enough for you). I think we could all have a good grin at the deadly seriousness and pretentiousness of the song, but it pulls me in by means of sheer craft — I really like how the guitars, pianos, and vocals mesh together, and the impression can be interpreted as romance or mourning or both at the same time, and the bottomline is, if the music totally matches the lyrics, everything about the lyrics is forgivable.

The album's conceptually simplest song also happens to be its longest — ʽNothin But Timeʼ, a song of unexpected hope addressed to the younger generation ("you ain't got nothing' else but time, and they ain't got nothin' on you... your world is just beginning"), strolls on for 11 minutes at the same tempo and on top of the same two-note piano melody. I am not sure why (particularly about the instrumental coda — for some reason, after the song fades out around a still reasonable seven-minute mark, it just has to come back again and drive that riff even deeper in your skull for an extra four minutes), but I do like the arrangement and the surprising optimism in the chorus: it is almost as if, after having preached about the end of the world as we know it and her own mortality and the impossibility to resolve any problems for so long, she wants to leave us with one big "Well, it's all curtains for me and for you, but let's at least leave some hope for the little children" — and I'm fine with that. The amusing extra note here is that she invites Iggy Pop to help her out with the chorus harmonies, and he makes the best of his melodic baritone to join her in a fit of tenderness. Yes indeed, there's no one out there like old Iggy to wish for a brighter future for our children.

The record does end on a more grown-up note, though: ʽPeace And Loveʼ, another piece of paranoid, half-sung, half-rapped electronic rock, seems to push forward an agenda of "grown-up, progressive hippieism" ("I'm a lover but I'm in it to win"), and, again, it does this in a musically intelligent way — the hookline is a repetitive string of "na-na-na-na"'s, just the kind of thing you'd expect from some old Flower Power band, but they're sung in a minor key and the whole thing sounds like a troubled warning to mankind... as does this entire album, as a matter of fact. It may be called Sun, and there might be a rainbow coming through that front sleeve, but it is still only trying to break out from the darkened sky, and the expression on that face is anything but conventionally «sunny». The good news is, this is one more of those few albums in her catalog where she really comes across as a musician with a strong personality, not as a personality with weak musicianship — so if electronics continues to be this good to her, bring it on. For the record, it did take me a few listens to get warmed up to this new twist, so the thumbs up rating is a bit hard-earned; but it does feel good, you know, when repeated listens eventually lead to satisfaction of the senses, rather than dumb frustration.

CATHERINE WHEEL

FERMENT (1992)

1) Texture; 2) I Want To Touch You; 3) Black Metallic; 4) Indigo Is Blue; 5) She's My Friend; 6) Shallow; 7) Ferment; 8) Tumbledown; 9) Bill And Ben; 10) Salt; 11) Balloon.

Here's an odd coincidence for you: Rob Dickinson, one of the two primary founding members of Catherine Wheel, was the cousin of Bruce Dickinson, lead vocalist of Iron Maiden. See that? Iron maiden? Catherine wheel? What's up with these British bands and medieval torture devices? (Allegedly, the band did not call itself that because of the torture device itself, but rather because of the spinning firework named after it — yet that does not destroy the coincidence anyway).

Granted, the music of Catherine Wheel will only sound torturous to people with an inborn aversion to the wall-of-sound principle. Raised and nurtured on the shoegazing scene, Dickinson and the band's second guitarist Brian Futter seem to have subscribed to the My Bloody Valentine and the Nirvana fanclub at the same time — their sound is a mixture of shoegazing hypnotism and grungey harshness, which, in the wrong hands, could seem like a suicidal recipe for boring alt-rock sludge. Fortunately, on their debut album they also have the good sense to combine these influences with decent pop hooks and a certain spiritual lightness that makes the songs really touching when they're good, and tolerable even when they're boring.

The two biggest singles from here are also the best tracks. ʽI Want To Touch Youʼ, with a Stone Roses / Madchester echo, is a perfect introduction to the band's early sound — a fluently spinning, sparkling lead guitar part floating over the distorted rhythm vamp; clever use of the wah-wah pedal for extra psychedelic effect; Dickinson's «ethereal» vocals and their repetitive hookline that somehow agrees so well with the hazy, multi-layered arrangement... it's as if the singer is truly prevented from the temptation of touching you because there's a magical forcefield between the subject and object of touching. Yes, it's a very derivative song (if you really wanted to offend, you could easily call it a Stone Roses rip-off), but unlike many other derivative songs, this one is totally cool in its atmospheric flow.

Then there's the much longer and more complex ʽBlack Metallicʼ, where we turn from the tactile temptation to surface analysis — apparently, "your skin is black metallic", whatever that might mean (not sure it's a compliment!), and to drive that message home, they make use of slow tempo, gradual build-up, stormy solos, loud-to-quiet-and-back-to-loud dynamics, and whatever it takes, essentially, to share an epic feel. I don't know why it works, really, but it does. The lyrics suggest a reading of the «cruel beauty» variety, and the music reflects a sense of cruelness and beauty at the same time — with an additional tinge of sadness (which, I guess, is precisely the kind of thing that happens when you mix cruelness with beauty) coming from Dickinson's vocals. Apparently, the public felt the same, because the song even managed to chart (on the «Modern Rock» chart only) in the US, despite the long-windedness and the ambient feel.

That's pretty much all that needs to be said about the record's meat-'n'-potato layer: repetitive, helium-fueled vocal hooks over a bedrock of shoegrunging guitar textures (hey, even the very first song here is simply called ʽTextureʼ, and its motto? "I need more texture!.. You need to give me more texture!" Come on, Rob, you're nothing but texture already!). Sometimes they speed up and become a little funkier and more Madchester-ish (ʽShe's My Friendʼ), but there is never really any essential deviation from the formula, and all the songs set the same mood. The good news is, they are willing to really work on the tunes, and additional listens bring out different riffs and also make you really appreciate the lead guitar skills of Futter, who seems to have made Robert Fripp and Robin Guthrie his prime teachers, and although I couldn't say that he has overcome them on any single point, he is still a worthy disciple (and his technique is really excellent even when it is heavily masked by the production — on songs like ʽBill And Benʼ, for instance, he delivers terrific kaleidoscopic fireworks through the wah-wah pedal).

In fact, Ferment works as an excellent introduction into the «atmospheric alt-rock» scene of late Eighties / early Nineties Britain to those who want their shoegazing with a little bit of rocking energy and a little more song-like shape. Arguably, it is the band's best offering (at least, compared to the next few records) because after this, they would tip the balance way too much towards the metallic angle; here, the balance between harshness and romanticism is close to perfect. Funnily enough, the record that Ferment reminds me of the most, from my somewhat limited experience, is Blur's Leisure — except that on the latter, all atmospheric textures were strictly subjugated to the pop hook, whereas on Ferment it is strictly the opposite. I guess it just goes to show the overall popularity of this type of sound back in its day, but it was a good sound when the song structures and arrangements behind it weren't too lazy, and Ferment, if anything, demonstrates to you all the hidden dynamics and inventiveness behind the art of sleepy daydreaming — and yes, it's probably taken best in a hammock during siesta time, but it still gets a thumbs up even if I never had the chance to listen to it under proper conditions.

CHROME (1993)

1) Kill Rhythm; 2) I Confess; 3) Crank; 4) Broken Head; 5) Pain; 6) Strange Fruit; 7) Chrome; 8) The Nude; 9) Ursa Major Space Station; 10) Fripp; 11) Half Life; 12) Show Me Mary.

In most of the ratings I've seen, either Ferment or Chrome emerge as the listener's choice for Catherine Wheel's artistic peak. My own choice is quite clear: Chrome is a letdown to my ears, because what they hear is the beginning of a drift away towards the restrictions of heavy, distorted, tormented alt-rock from the relative freedom of psychedelia. I'm not saying this sounds like proto-Nickelback — Dickinson and Futter are not that dismissive of musical creativity — but simply that, for instance, when the loud section of the very first track (ʽKill Rhythmʼ) kicks in, it just sounds like any slow, heavy, loud, draggy section on any record produced by an artistically driven band with amplified guitars. And, if anything, And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead would do this kind of thing with more dedication at the beginning of the next decade.

Try as I might, I can neither distinguish too well between these songs nor memorize them; everywhere you turn, it is the same wall-of-sound blur that is neither riff-a-licious enough to qualify as perfect hard rock nor atmospheric enough to qualify as effective heavy psychedelia. It hangs somewhere in between these two extremes, satisfying neither of the two fans in me, but still commanding a good dose of respect for the effort. Without a doubt, though, Catherine Wheel are at their best here only when Dickinson clams up, and the two guitarists (including some of their overdubbed clones) begin directing all of their strength to the generation of sweet melodic noise. Any song here hits its peak then and only then when the guitars begin to rip: for instance, ʽI Confessʼ sucks me in around 2:31, when a grim metallic riff erupts out of nowhere, and after a few bars a shrill banshee solo is laid across its back... too bad it's only for about thirty seconds.

The formula is betrayed only once, on the aptly called ʽFrippʼ: the song is not so much a tribute to King Crimson as it is a conscious carry-over from Ferment — more quiet, subtle, and atmospheric. The guitar melodies are more Gilmour than Fripp, to be honest, but the combination of distortion, echo, and jazzy angularity (especially when the wall of sound production is not there to distract our attention) is admirable anyway, and fully convinces me that these guys could have been masters of complex melodicity, had they not been so held back by this strange adherence to the «shoegrunge» sound — which, frankly speaking, begins to get on my nerves 5-6 minutes into the album... and this one is almost an hour long.

The heavy, noisy sound deprives them of personality even before they'd managed to properly establish it. It does not help, either, that the first single off the album was a self-demeaning melancholic brooding called ʽCrankʼ — and don't try to tell me that the similarities with Radiohead's ʽCreepʼ are just a coincidence. The song, relatively short by the standards of this album and focusing more on a singalong chorus ("call me crank, my idea...") than on the guitar interplay that justifies Catherine Wheel's existence, is clearly market-oriented, but these guys have serious problems working the market — likewise, the second single, ʽShow Me Maryʼ, actually speeds up the tempo and makes you want to dance, with no memorable guitar parts to speak of but with yet another repetitive chorus, this time building on what looks like a creepy sexual innuendo (it is never explained what exactly Mary is supposed to show, but if I ever learn that Mary is actually supposed to be the Virgin Mary... well, I'd not buy that anyway). Both of these tunes can be pleasing, but if Catherine Wheel built their entire reputation on this kind of material, I'd have to think of them as C-grade, rather than B-grade artists.

Anyway, if it were up to me, I'd have cut out most of the vocals (they are nominally pretty, but take too long to get to the juicy parts), omitted the short singles (they don't do this band any real justice), concentrated on guitar jamming (most of the tempestuous passages with multiple guitar overdubs are capable of psychedelic magic, particularly in headphones), and slightly toned down the metallic sheen — then Chrome would really come out all black and polished. As it is, I'm not sure that the lasting value of this record will easily allow it to stand out of the mid-Nineties alt-rock muck in decades to come.

HAPPY DAYS (1995)

1) God Inside My Head; 2) Waydown; 3) Little Muscle; 4) Heal; 5) Empty Head; 6) Receive; 7) My Exhibition; 8) Eat My Dust You Insensitive Fuck; 9) Shocking; 10) Love Tips Up; 11) Judy Staring At The Sun; 12) Hole; 13) Fizzy Love; 14) Kill My Soul.

As the first guitar chords of ʽGod Inside My Headʼ appear on the horizon, the horrible thought enters your mind — «Christ! They must have swapped my copy with a bootleg of Metallica outtakes!» Relief will come pretty soon, but the chugging opening is fairly symbolic: it represents Catherine Wheel's ultimate denial of the atmospheric shoegaze ideology and their further advance into the realm of modern heavy rock. Thrash influences are actually quite thin here, compared to the power-chord based grunge / alt-rock legacy, but overall, it is clear that they want to try their hand at «brute force psychedelia» now, rather than simply «distorted guitar psychedelia».

Veteran fans and critics, as far as I can tell in retrospect, despised this decision, but honestly, it was just a fairly logical continuation of the evolution that had already started on Chrome. Perhaps they really were trying to sell out, taking after Bush rather than My Bloody Valentine, but the most important element of the Catherine Wheel sound, the Dickinson/Futter guitar interplay, remains firmly in place, so all they really did was take some focus off the atmosphere and invest it in riffage and power. Admittedly, I cannot insist that it was a correct decision: Dickinson is no heavy metal riffmeister, and I have a hard time trying to remember if there was at least one heavy guitar pattern on this entire record that rocked me to the bone like a Nirvana or an Alice In Chains song can often do. (ʽHoleʼ probably comes closest, but still not close enough).

But let us begin with the singles. ʽJudy Staring At The Sunʼ was the first one, with a title more fit for a Belle & Sebastian record, perhaps, and very little of the band's usual sonic inventiveness — the song puts far more trust in the romantic repetitiveness of its title, where Dickinson is joined by Tanya Donelly of Throwing Muses in the quest to raise a little band of angels in support of the world's latest imaginary spiritual martyr ("Judy's day passed out of sight, Judy will be suffering tonight", because it serves you right to suffer, as John Lee Hooker told us earlier). It's not a bad song, except that one or one dozen or one hundred more or less like it was probably written by every British guitar band in the 1990s, and this one, I must admit, does not even make good use of the Dickinson/Futter combo (just the same predictable distortion / jangle pairing throughout, without any attempts to change direction).

The real low point was probably the second single, only released briefly for promotional purposes: ʽLittle Muscleʼ is about... no, it's not about what you probably think (you pervert! I thought about it earlier than you anyway!), it's about, hmm, licking a letter to one's lover with one's tongue, which is sort of the most natural thing to do for a Catherine Wheel song protagonist. The song is short, silly, alternates between quiet and loud passages just like Blur's ʽSong 2ʼ, but without any shades of irony or parody. I suppose that if we really start judging the merits of the album by this kind of song, all criticisms are justified... then again, it was one of the singles. And so was ʽWaydownʼ, which really sounds like a weak attempt to ape the structural and emotional style of Nevermind — loud, quiet, loud, quiet, scream, desperation, noisy guitar break, post-teen angst, but they still can't nail it with as much conviction as Cobain could, maybe perhaps, unlike Kurt, Mr. Dickinson really does not have a gun (fortunately for him, in the long run).

Yet again, this does not mean these loud, short, and totally non-outstanding songs are completely typical of the album. Its centerpiece, for instance, is an eight-minute Talk Talk-ish epic (the least Talk Talk-ish thing about it is its offensive title — ʽEat My Dust You Insensitive Fuckʼ) that's all atmosphere, alternating between soft and subtle guitar/organ textures and squeaky-swampy harmonica breaks with dark side overtones. Another highlight is ʽHealʼ, with a beautifully modulated vocal part from Dickinson: fulfilling the «power ballad» role on this album, it knows when to tone down the grinding distortion and place its faith in the old-fashioned Hammond organ, and the quiet "everyone needs someone" coda has that soulful-melancholic Peter Gabriel / Mark Hollis vibe to it; I wish there were more moments like these on the record, because if you're going to copycat anyway, why not choose the right models?

Besides, it's not as if the album is simple enough to fit into the «if it's long, it's atmospheric and mesmerizing; if it's short, it's stupid and boring» formula. I really like ʽHoleʼ, for instance, which sounds nothing like the real Hole, but is a shapelier alt-rocker than most of the other ones, funkier and with some sneery arrogance in the chorus melody to add to the generic paranoid / pissed-off alt-rock feel. And elsewhere I just wait for the instrumental break, because Futter still dutifully solos like a beast every now and then, saving the band's reputation as best as he can (ʽEmpty Headʼ, for instance). On the whole, you know, I couldn't really bet my head that Happy Days is an objective letdown, in terms of composition, after Chrome — and Catherine Wheel were never about pure atmosphere from the very beginning, either. It does, however, place them in the rather insecure and risky position of diluting their identity, which was never all that outstanding in the first place — and, of course, once we shake the cobwebs away and realize that 1995 was also the year of The Bends, well... there's only so much space in one's head that one should feel free to allocate to music like this, and for 1995, Radiohead occupy most of it anyway.

LIKE CATS AND DOGS (1996)

1) Heal 2; 2) Wish You Were Here; 3) Mouthful Of Air; 4) Car; 5) Girl Stand Still; 6) Saccharine; 7) Backwards Guitar; 8) Tongue Twisted; 9) These Four Walls; 10) High Heels; 11) Harder Than I Am; 12) La La Lala La; 13) Something Strange / Angelo Nero / Spirit Of Radio.

I guess if you are a mildly popular rock band and you feel the need to release an entire album of B-sides, outtakes, and other rarities, one way to go about is to put out one of those Hipgnosis album covers where one guy is supposed to ask the other, "So, just how many cats are there on the photo?", and the other is supposed to answer, "Cats? What cats?". (By the way, the back cover actually has dogs, but if you are a straight male, it is nowhere near as interesting).

Nevertheless, with this bit of a Roxy Music touch out of the way, this is an almost surprisingly strong collection. Since it gathers leftovers from several phases of the band's career, it has the added bonus of diversity — and the band's B-sides were not much weaker than their A-sides anyway. Dressed in the same wall of sound, yes, but the songs do range from drawn-out atmospheric panoramas to mid-tempo alt-rockers to concise pop tunes, with a few covers thrown in for good measure: Floyd's ʽWish You Were Hereʼ, done with organ and harmonica over acoustic guitars, is totally respectable (Dickinson's vocals seem a bit overdone to me, but then, they aren't specially overdone for this tribute — it's his natural way of blowing out emotion), and Rush's ʽSpirit Of The Radioʼ is just bizarre, because, unlike Floyd, Rush just does not seem to be the kind of band too likely for such ambience-lovers as C. W. to cover. Indeed, it does not work too well (then again, I'm no huge fan of Rush, so I'm not likely to be a huger fan of Rush covers), but a surprise is a surprise anyway.

It is interesting, actually, that their B-sides in the era of Chrome sounded more like the dreamier stuff from Ferment — relating particularly to ʽCarʼ and ʽGirl Stand Stillʼ, two tracks appended to the short and upbeat single ʽShow Me Maryʼ and illustrating the «static» side of the band for a change; and I do prefer both of them to ʽShow Me Maryʼ. ʽCarʼ creates a soothing-lulling pillow of sound, as the bass takes responsibility for main melody, and a variety of electronically treated regular and slide guitars zoom in and out with micro-melodies of their own — a soft, fragile pattern that goes along very well with the introductory "if I touch you will you break?.." ʽGirl Stand Stillʼ is even better in all of its 8-minute glory, a Talk Talk-ish «pre-post-rock» slowly winding its way up a steep path until all hell breaks loose and then taking extra time to calm down — not as if this weren't a formula that Pink Floyd had already been following two decades earlier, but I just like the execution: there's something faintly mesmerizing about the way all their droning overdubs flow in and out of each other.

The shorter and poppier songs aren't nearly that good, but ʽBackwards Guitarʼ has one of their wildest solo parts ever, and ʽThese Four Wallsʼ is arguably one of their best slow grungy rockers, largely because of the unusual mix of desperation and determination contained in Dickinson's voice as he lashes at the microphone with the chorus — it's as if there's a clenched fist here added to the fuzzy psychedelic mix, and, strange enough, it works: maybe because the band does not generally abuse the «teenage battle scream» principle, on this particular track it comes across as convincing, an odd statement of anthemic determination in a sea of semi-conscious uncertainty. Although the semi-conscious uncertainty can be cool as well — ʽLa La Lala Laʼ, whose title (and especially the way it is chanted throughout) could almost align the band with the likes of Blur, is accompanied with one-liners like "nothing's good, nothing's clear", "don't know what I really fear", and waves of screechy psychedelic guitar to illustrate the confusion.

Despite the record's unhealthy length (70 minutes of Catherine Wheel is quite a chore to sit through in any setting), I give it a thumbs up, because who could resist those pink nighties... uh, I mean, because there's enough high points here to compensate for the monotonousness of the previous two LPs, and also because my idea of what works best for this band may not necessarily be the same as the band's own idea — I like them when they're building up quiet atmospherics out of a half-dozen guitar overdubs, and I like them when they're raging over an instrumental break, and there's plenty of both on Cats And Dogs, whereas both Chrome and Happy Days try too hard to promote them as brilliant songwriters, which they are not.

ADAM AND EVE (1997)

1) Intro; 2) Future Boy; 3) Delicious; 4) Broken Nose; 5) Phantom Of The American Mother; 6) Ma Solituda; 7) Satellite; 8) Thunderbird; 9) Here Comes The Fat Controller; 10) Goodbye; 11) For Dreaming.

Not something I would be consciously looking for. The record does happen to be a fan favorite and all that, but now that they have cut down on the «metallic» part of the sound, they did not do that much to return the «ambient» part of that sound — and what we are left with is a mope-rock album, kind of a proto-Coldplay but with a very strong Pink Floyd influence. The acoustic introduction, in fact, sounds like a demo version of ʽMotherʼ, which might not be coincidental, considering that Bob Ezrin was brought into the producer's seat; and at one point they even have a direct lyrical quotation from ʽShine On You Crazy Diamondʼ, which is not irritating at all, but it does result in reminding us one extra time of just how derivative this band is.

The songs are not bad, but they largely get by on the strength of the choruses, and they truly require you to appreciate the charisma of Dickinson — who, in my opinion, just does not have as nearly an achingly beautiful voice as this music is supposed to require. And by shifting the balance over to these vocal hooks, straining with p-p-p-pain and all, Catherine Wheel move from the cosmic plane to a much more personal sphere, where I am not sure that they really belong. Or, at the very least, they have ten times as much competition there than wheverer it was that they used to float around on their first two records.

Besides, one should not forget that the album was released two months after the Big One — in July 1997, we were already living in a post-OK Computer universe, where any new big statement of personal fatigue, disillusionment, and fear of existence in a modern world would have to stand up against the musical innovations and emotional personality of Abingdon School; yet the melodic content that we have here is still way too derivative of the shoegazing drone, only without the shoegazing mesmerism — and just about every song sets the same mood: at the end of each one, you get the urge to come up to Mr. Dickinson, give him a gentle hug and say, "It's alright man. Pull yourself together. It was not me who strangled your cat and abducted your wife. It just happens. You just have to mix with the right people."

Of the three singles (ʽDeliciousʼ, ʽBroken Noseʼ, ʽMa Solitudaʼ), I might try to single out ʽBroken Noseʼ for its able alternation of low and high vocals and a specially increased level of personal bitterness that could border on punkish anger, if it weren't so deeply soaked in desperation like everything else. Or perhaps it should have been ʽMa Solitudaʼ, just because the former two are both hard-rockers and this one is more like a moody art-pop song, with cellos and stuff? Forget it. They all give off the same vibe — and it's a nice vibe, but it never gets sharp enough to truly hold my attention. As affected as they were by Pink Floyd, they never ended up learning the main lesson — if you want to infect others with your emotions, you have to give it all you've got. But Rob Dickinson is never as pissed off and determined as Roger Waters, and Brian Futter is never as tightly wound-up and aggressive as Dave Gilmour.

The result is that I have nothing to say about these songs, good or bad. They simply exist. If you like your fifty shades of mope, I guess Adam And Eve could easily be the fifty-first one, but there's too much pop here for me to truly enjoy the atmosphere, and too much atmosphere (and still way too many distorted guitars playing one-chord patterns) to catch myself up on the pop hooks. Respectable, ultimately, but... boring.

WISHVILLE (2000)

1) Sparks Are Gonna Fly; 2) Gasoline; 3) Lifeline; 4) What We Want To Believe In; 5) All Of That; 6) Idle Life; 7) Mad Dog; 8) Ballad Of A Running Man; 9) Creme Caramel.

Catherine Wheel's last album always gets a pretty bad rap from fans and critics alike; to me, however, the blow to music lovers' sensitivities that was dealt by Wishville does not feel nearly as crippling because I never fell under their original enchantment in the first place. What it does is smoothly and logically finalize their transformation from a psychedelic art-pop band into a moody alt-rock band — not in a revolutionary manner at all, merely putting the final touches on a trajectory that they began laying out already on Chrome. Maybe the hatred was partially due to all the new happenings in the band: they signed up with Columbia (sell-out!), fired their old bass player, and had Rob Dickinson produce all the sessions himself. Neither of these things per se is criminal, but taken together, they give some cause for premature alarm.

Still, the main single from the album, ʽSparks Are Gonna Flyʼ, is not too bad. Its revolving one-chord melody may well be accused of monotonousness, but then again, this was never a band known for super-complex riffs anyway, and the song's relentless pounding, coupled with the desperation in Dickinson's voice, makes for some decent morose headbanging fodder. At least there's some sort of daring, genuinely aggressive melodic minimalism here, and it still manages to coexist with a massive wall of sound, like in the old days. This is not something that can be said about the second single, ʽGasolineʼ, which sounds as if they were trying to produce one of those creepy, trip-hoppy, Freudian masterpieces Peter Gabriel-style (ʽDigging In The Dirtʼ), but failed because of insufficient musicianship and not enough ideas to make the atmosphere truly creepy (tiny bits of eerie laughter here and there in the corners don't really count). In addition, there's not much to be said about a chorus that consists of just one line, "I love gasoline", which your brain probably refuses to process in a logical manner; personally, I have no idea what Dickinson means by "gasoline" here, and I'm not sure I even want to know.

After that, the record simply goes on to fulfill its original promise — track after track of slow, distorted, melancholic alt-rock where each song sets the exactly same tone as its predecessor, with the main emphasis placed almost exclusively on Dickinson's soulful choruses. That, actually, is the primary problem of Wishville: the near-complete lack of kaleidoscopic guitar patterns courtesy of Brian Futter, who seems content to contribute simple, unadorned lead guitar parts to Dickinson's more-and-more generic alt-rock riffage. Where the vocals on the band's first two albums were more like a cherry on top of the polyphonic guitar explosions, here it's all about the vocals — and too many of these vocals just sound like your average hard rock whiner, paralyzed by spiritual laziness and unable to convert his general dissatisfaction with everything and everybody into anything remotely constructive or properly destructive. Either of the two would work well for me, but nothing is truly delivered.

All in all, it's a fairly sad case of «self-betrayal», when you gradually let go of the things that constitute your strength in favor of doing something where you just can't compete with the best of the competition. Dickinson has a decent voice that can carry a good amount of soul, but when you stare it right in the face, it's fairly monotonous and colorless — certainly nothing like a Robert Smith, for instance, with his capacity of making it ring, rise, and fall, but nothing like a Michael Stipe, either, with his soothing, almost priestly, peace-be-with-you-son murmur. Turning the dial away from the psychedelic guitar sound and into the direction of these vocals was a rather prideful and completely unwarranted development, a gamble that did not pay off, and a sorry finale for Catherine Wheel as a bunch of musicians wanting to leave their own trace in this world — and while I don't know the details, I'm pretty sure that the band split not because Wishville got poor reviews and sold few copies, but because it simply did not make any sense to keep the band alive once the transformation had been completed.

I am not giving the record a thumbs down, though; like I said, acute hatred towards it is a little unwarranted, because technically, it is still several inches above the generic alt-rock waterline — Dickinson is a monotonous, but never truly irritating singer, and there are still enough tasty guitar bits here to last you through at least one listen. But returning to it after your own desire? You'd have to be a real St. Augustine to do that.

CARBON BASED LIFEFORMS

THE PATH (1998)

1) Intro; 2) Behind The Corner; 3) Rain; 4) Rise To Tomorrow; 5) Hold; 6) Machinery; 7) And Contact; 8) Sinful Things; 9) Dreamshore Forest; 10) Submerged; 11) Contaminated Area; 12) Last Breath; 13) Station Blue; 14) Or Plan B.

Okay, so properly speaking, this is not quite Carbon Based Lifeforms yet: this is credited to «Notch», a band that, in addition to Johannes Hedberg and Daniel Ringström, also included a third musician, Mikael Lindqvist, credited here for at least three of the tracks. The music itself is also significantly different from that of CBL proper, which, according to the musicians, was originally formed as a side project for just the two of them and then became a full-time occupation — Notch sound more chilly and transcendental, generally go easier on the bass and have a more New Age-like feel on the whole. But still, the connection is more than obvious, and it is no wonder that many «loose» discographies of CBL have this as their first entry, so we might as well start our carbonated journey right here.

The Path, self-produced and self-released by this bunch of laborious Swedes, is no great shakes, but I'd still rate it as a fairly accomplished and pleasant electronic experience for background listening. Despite the length (and subsequent CBL releases would only become longer) and the relatively static nature of its tracks, it is surprisingly diverse, tempo-wise and style-wise, and takes in about equal proportions from minimalistic ambient, modern (or not so modern) classical, and various types of «soft» dance music. Besides, they actually got a retro vibe going on: either it is the choice of instrumentation or an intentional return to traditional analog-era harmonies or both, but there are plenty of moments here that remind me of classic 1970s electronics — Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Cluster, Bowie/Eno's Berlin Trilogy, you know the drill. Something like that, instead of becoming yet another bunch of Aphex Twin or Autechre clones.

A track like ʽRise To Tomorrowʼ would be quite telling. Steamy industrial intro, mechanical vocal overdubs, psychedelic synth clouds dripping acid droplets, out of which gradually emerges a simple, but steady bassline and, one after another, several lead keyboard loops chasing each other by the tail. Melody, complexity, atmosphere, the works. Something is lacking, though, to make the whole thing properly «otherworldly»: the warp engines splutter and try to kick in, but in the end, you get vague glimpses of a parallel universe without being transported. Maybe it's because we know these recipes from past decades all too well, and they have yet to learn how to add a secret ingredient that would make you want to relive it all over again.

Likewise, ʽMachineryʼ, which spends its eight minutes running on a busily rotating set of electronic pistons, does sound like a working machine, but a very smooth, humble one — steam exhausted in the background, piston running in the foreground, and tiny kaleidoscopic gurgling taking place on a micro-scale. Never relenting, never stopping, never experiencing any technical problems, just quietly doing its thing, whatever it is, while you are either busy doing something else or trying, out of fun / curiosity / boredom (pick whichever you like), to adjust your brain pulse to the rhythm so that you, Notch, and the universe can all tune in to the same wavelength. (Didn't really do that much to my brain, but maybe I'm just too old and cynical).

Sometimes they get almost too modern, though: ʽLast Breathʼ is an exercise in trip-hop, with a croaky wah-wah synth line making an «instrumental rap» bit on the side, and while I find the track amusing on its own, it is somewhat out of place on a record like this, especially when you find it jammed between the creepy chill of ʽContaminated Areaʼ and the subliminal bass pulses of ʽStation Blueʼ. On the other hand... diversity!

Anyway, what is really the most pleasing here is the density of sound: for a couple (or even trio) of guys self-producing their first record, The Path is exceptionally rich in texture, right from the opening «quasi-orchestral» bit (ʽBehind The Cornerʼ) and until the very last track. If you are a major electronica fan, there's enough detail here, and endlessly shifting nuances, to keep you occupied for a long time. If you're not, you probably won't be planning to return to it any time soon, but even so, it is precisely this attention to layering and nuancing that inconspicuously plants seeds of respect for The Path into one's mind. That said, I will not succumb to the temptation of calling this «the lost CBL masterpiece» or anything like that — the music's debts to its ancestors are way too huge, and they wouldn't really start paying them off until the impressive, but still inanimate Notch evolved into Carbon-Based Lifeforms.

HYDROPONIC GARDEN (2003)

1) Central Plains; 2) Tensor; 3) MOS 6581; 4) Silent Running; 5) Neurotransmitter; 6) Hydroponic Garden; 7) Exosphere; 8) Comsat; 9) Epicentre (First Movement); 10) Artificial Island; 11) Refraction 1.33.

There is nothing particularly revelatory about this album, but for once, this actually works in favor of the music rather than against it — Hydroponic Garden is not an exercise in technical innovation, where the listener spends more time trying to «get» the music rather than enjoy it, but just your old-fashioned attempt at creating a vibrant musical landscape. No wonder the opening bassline of ʽCentral Plainsʼ immediately reminds you of Pink Floyd's ʽOne Of These Daysʼ: Hedberg and Ringström persist in drawing more influence from classic progressive rock and «vintage» electronica than from their modern day inheritors.

The record has been described as belonging to the «psybient» genre, whatever that means, because, honestly, if that's a contraction from «psychedelic ambient», then most ambient music is psychedelic to some degree; and beyond that, there is nothing particularly «psychedelic» about Hydroponic Garden — «psychedelia» essentially means opening up an extra dimension of perception, usually through various studio trickery, and there's very little actual trickery here, just the standard array of tape loops and samples, all of them handled in a very straightforward manner. But the results are actually better than psychedelic — they're just... beautiful. Well, at least some of them are.

ʽCentral Plainsʼ is constructed out of that relentless bassline, which sounds like a thick, crackling electric wire caught in an eternal wind blast, and a limitless wheat field of synthesizers stretching across the horizon, with breezes and crickets and an occasional snow shower and no signs of man's presence — not a lot of ingredients, really, but the ones present suffice to build up an atmosphere of lonesome natural elegance and ominous tension at the same time. I could actually do without the percussive trip-hop rhythms that «enliven» the track towards the end, but I guess the genre somehow demanded that, even if it somehow detracts from the general ambience, unless you want to picture a robot-driven combine harvester rolling across the field as well.

Everything that follows largely falls in two classes of soundscapes — slightly dryer sci-fi abstractions like ʽTensorʼ and ʽNeurotransmitterʼ, clustering around staccato blips and bubbly bass, and warmer «naturalistic» panoramas like ʽExosphereʼ or the title track, with cloudy synthesizers, ghostly vocal harmonies, and nature sounds a-plenty (wind, water, chirping birdies, you know — everything in one's power to produce a convincing balance between manly digital and godly analog). My personal preferences clearly lie with the second kind of tracks, but even the first kind has its merits — particularly impressive is the expert way in which they build stuff up and tear it down, so that the music is static and dynamic at the same time: ʽNeurotransmitterʼ is a great example, with an exciting bass crescendo that gradually rolls upon you and then just as gradually fades away, like you've been lying on an imaginary railtrack and a steamroller was passing above you, inches away from crushing your skull into the ground.

There is, of course, the length issue — 76 minutes of this stuff might seem like overkill, but then we should all be accustomed by now that there is nothing unusual about a modern album sounding like a small chunk from some classic album thrown under a microscope and stretched as wide as it can be stretched. It's a perfectly acceptable length for contemplators of the minuscule and admirers of the little pimples and pustules on the belly of each individual note. It's not really «minimalistic»: despite the lengthy running times of individual tracks, most of them have themes that undergo development, usually by means of additional sound rings slowly penetrating the mix (ʽRefraction 1.33ʼ) or the appearance/disappearance of rhythm tracks. Which is nothing new under the sun, but Hedberg and Ringström make this «sonic plant growth» the primary focus of their art — indeed, the whole album is like one huge hydroponic garden, where meticulously generated artificial conditions cause luxuriant natural growth.

It's not immediately gratifying, and most people will hardly want to spend so much time trying to focus on all the minor details — but even as background muzak, Hydroponic Garden will still be creating a certain atmosphere of classiness, and, furthermore, this is the kind of electronic music that you can very safely play around people who have little tolerance for electronics, so ultimately traditional and emotionally accessible are its melodies and harmonies. For the lovers of microsound degustation, it might turn out to be a masterpiece; for everyone else, it might turn out to be boring, but not in the boring kind of boring, more like a moody, «there's-still-something-to-it» kind of boring. Personally, I prefer this by far to, say, almost anything by the far more popular, far more overrated Boards Of Canada, and give it an unflinching thumbs up (not that there's any real reason for flinching — the whole experience is as aurally smooth as can be).

WORLD OF SLEEPERS (2006)

1) Abiogenesis; 2) Vortex; 3) Photosynthesis; 4) Get Theory; 5) Gryning; 6) Transmission / Intermission; 7) World Of Sleepers; 8) Proton / Electron; 9) Erratic Patterns; 10) Flytta Dig; 11) Betula Pendula.

No, I'm really not comfortable with this «psybient» term. Or, tell you what: let us keep it, but let's spell it differently — let it be «sci-bient», because this is what these guys really are: they are using ambient landscapes to promote various (but connected) scientific concerns. Look at the track titles here — the very first one is ʽAbiogenesisʼ (a term that I personally abhor as a linguist, because it should literally translate to "birth of non-life" rather than the surmised "birth of life from non-life"), where the music is supposed to serve as a metaphor for... well, you know. (It's a little odd that life had to originate to such perfectly programmed trip-hop beats, but then again, you weren't there, and certain carbon-based lifeforms already were. It's also odd that Nature gave signals to "wake up" in perfect English, transferred over imperfect radio waves, but that's what you get when Anglo-Saxon revisionism of natural history eats up the minds of even the starkest Scandinavian resistants).

Birth and various ways of functioning of life, as seen not from a religious, but from a fully updated modern scientific perspective — and all the attached ecological concerns as well — this is what constitutes the «philosophic core» of World Of Sleepers, and it's all fine and dandy, but if you only had the music and no titles (or occasional vocal samples) to proffer any guidance, I am not certain that the symbolism could be so easily decoded. With a stronger rhythmic base than last time, but without any ominously overwhelming bass lines, most of the tracks here are just soft synthesized sound patterns over potentially danceable beats; sometimes pretty, sometimes suspenseful, but not particularly suggestive of monumental natural processes.

Thus, I suppose that ʽBetula Pendulaʼ, for maximum authentic effort, should probably be listened to on a nice, warm, slightly cloudy day, within the confines of an actual birch grove, illustrating the slim, elegant grace of nature (rather than the artificial consequences of a slash-and-burn approach to agriculture that usually results in the appearance of birch colonies, but that's sort of beyond the point). In this setting, the interaction between clouds, birch leaves lazily swaying in the breeze, and CBL's slowly overlapping synth loops, gradually pushing each other out of existence without any malicious intent, is bound to achieve its double purpose — make you unconsciously eco-conscious, and become analogously charmed by digital software.

Likewise, the best way to enjoy ʽPhotosynthesisʼ is get yourself a textbook, learn all the details of the process, and then try to correlate them with the various stages of the composition, which gradually builds up from the same soft waves of keyboard ambience to a dynamic groove with «acid» elements, while a concerned male voice keeps asking the question "what about the forests?", probably sampled from some environmentalist documentary or other (doesn't really matter). ʽVortexʼ must have your mind spinning around as the main keyboard line is looped around the usual electronic windwall, creating, if not a real vortex, then at least a spiral; with ʽProton / Electronʼ, you probably have to think of yourself as a neutron, caught without a charge in between the negative high-pitched pipsqueaks of the electron and the positive satisfied bass grunts of the proton; and as for ʽErratic Patternsʼ, I honestly have not been able to notice any, so I guess this must be some sort of hint — maybe the erratic pattern is you, as opposed to the perfectly sequenced mid-tempo groove of the track.

In the end, even if common opinion usually selects World Of Sleepers as CBL's peak, my own impression is that the album is slightly weaker than its predecessor — the atmosphere is just too soft and snoozy throughout, with nothing to really shake you up like that Floydian bassline at the beginning of ʽCentral Plainsʼ; and also, it seems to be making much more of a compromise with contemporary electronics than they used to, which somewhat dulls the impact. On many of these tracks, they could have made the electronic veils more thick and imposing, rather than sticking to the same kind of thin, ghostly sound that makes everything sound the same in the end. But all that said, the results are still impressive — a long, humble ode to Life as an accumulation of patterns that organize system out of chaos and then, through ever-increasing complexity, create the subjective impression of chaos once again. I sort of get that, even if it takes a trip of reason rather than an impulse of the heart to do so. In any case, a thumbs up.

INTERLOPER (2010)

1) Interloper; 2) Right Where It Ends; 3) Central Plain; 4) Supersede; 5) Init; 6) Euphotic; 7) Frog; 8) M; 9) 20 Minutes; 10) Polyrytmi.

I forgot to mention that, apparently, not only are all those album covers geometrically and stylistically similar to each other, but even the tracks run in completely continuous order: thus, ʽInterloperʼ here is numbered 24, implying that the LP is to be understood as the third part of a complete whole — and, as it turned out later, the last part, although there's nothing here to instinctively indicate any sort of grand completion of one's purpose. But if The Artist tells you so, then The Artist must be right, because there's nothing more sacred than The Original Artistic Intention. Even the almighty gods cower and recede before the stunning power of the OAI, so what's to be said of a simple humble reviewer?

Nevertheless, the simple humble reviewer will try to gather all the nastiness he can muster and state that Interloper brings no surprises to the table — it is still masterful, but it seems that the duo's grasp is weakening, as the sonic-emotional effect of most of these tracks becomes restricted to almost dangerous levels of subtlety. The title track features a single delay-treated electronic loop played out against a background of stately, but shallow-sounding Eno-esque synth tapestries: well-constructed, I admit, but so effortlessly sliding through the senses that I cannot, for the life of me, visualize it or emotionally experience it in any way. Not too pretty, not too ugly, and not even representative of an exciting parallel universe. I mean, if those were the sounds of a parallel universe, I might consider settling there (it's always a good perspective to settle down in a place where "nothing ever happens"), but go there as a tourist? No way.

The only track where something does happen is ʽRight Where It Endsʼ, with its more sharply expressed trip-hop rhythms, acid keyboard lines, and evil whispers. Incidentally, fans of the album often complain of this very track as disrupting the flow — I understand them perfectly, but the complaint can only register if you are really taken in by the flow; if you don't think the flow's too cool, then a little bit of disruption is actually good for the health. At least there's a definite feel of suspense and concealed danger here, and that's a good thing, because what's a parallel universe, really, if it's all safer than a mother's womb?

Everything else, well... my biggest beef is that it's way too long and way too even. The best masters of ambient, like it or not, still have ways to shift the mood from track to track, or at least to capitalize on a few brilliantly selected chord sequences. On Interloper, tones and overdub structures matter far more than chord sequences, and when there are discernible chord sequences, they sound way too much like adult contemporary (for instance, the melody of ʽ20 Minutesʼ could have very easily be encountered on a Phil Collins solo album, although he'd never bother to wrap it up in so many additional layers, of course). Or, when they hit upon a good one, they can spoil the moment with a totally unnecessary and generic percussion track (ʽInitʼ, which starts out beautifully, but do they really want us to slow-dance to it or what?).

With repeated listens, you can probably get used to the softness of it all, and, most importantly, Interloper preserves the warm human spirit that has always characterized CBL, but I have to confess that I thought better of them when they were drawing their influences in about equal measures from Eno, Tangerine Dream, and Floyd, than now, when they seem to be so much concentrated on «light» rather than «darkness» — because light always shines brightest in contrast with darkness; and these guys are good, but not good enough to become absolute Gods of Light — the more they try to be, the more boring the results become. So, not a thumbs down, but definitely a step down from the quality of the previous two albums, although I think we really saw it coming (with music like this, holding on to an exciting standard for very long is downright impossible — not even a musical genius like Eno could boast a decade-long uninterrupted career of ambient masterpieces).

VLA (2011)

1) VLA.

Short for Very Large Array, apparently, a radio astronomy observatory in New Mexico, known for important observations on black holes, protoplanetary discs, and other stuff that makes great fodder for young aspiring artists of the «sci-bient» variety. There's not much to describe — it's just one hour-long track consisting of a steady hum, recurrently shifting pitch back and forth. If you listen very closely, you will hear occasional additional sounds: some distant cling-clanging, a few lines of faraway electronic pulses, faint echoes of what may or may not have been voices... basically, you will find yourself in the role of a SETI specialist desperately searching for anything that might pass for a sign of extraterrestrial life. And failing, of course.

It would be too easy to call the experiment CBL's Thursday Afternoon — no matter how minimalistic, Eno's hour-long static panorama could still qualify as music, whereas this here is just sound, with no melodic component whatsoever. Nevertheless, both are similar in that (a) you can basically play them starting at any point and shut them off whenever you like to and (b) the parts are actually very subtly different, but the difference is purely formal unless you agree to study the data under a microscope, and who'd want that? Also, strange enough, VLA actually works as a background setting — that hum certainly isn't «emotionally rewarding» in any sense, but I have listened to it all the way through while being busy with other matters, and it never got on my nerves, which might just be the point of the album. See, the whole thing represents the Vastness of Space, and if the Vastness of Space gets on your nerves, you probably don't belong in it.

I am certainly not going to go head over heels about it and spew nonsense about how listening to this record should expand our mind and enhance our conception of space and perceive our own limited, minuscule, and totally insignificant existence in this universe as merely a random blip in the overall immanent texture. (I mean, it's all true, but why not read a good book on cosmology instead?). But if you have an hour-long important job to do and you want to get a little bit of that «me so importantly locked up in my ivory tower with a telescope and stars for companionship» feel to help you get the job done, VLA might just be the perfect recipe for such an occasion. At the very least, it will make the time pass quicker... or slower, depending on the circumstances.

TWENTYTHREE (2011)

1) Arecibo; 2) System; 3) Somewhere In Russia; 4) Terpene; 5) Inertia; 6) VLA (edit); 7) Kensington Gardens; 8) Held Together By Gravity.

For the weak-willed and feeble-minded, the very same day upon which Carbon Based Lifeforms introduced us to the sonic monumentality of VLA (July 23, 2011) also saw the release of a «normal» album — so, if you are spiritually baffled and morally destroyed by the sixty minutes of ʽVLAʼ, here is a nice little compromise for you: ten minutes of ʽVLAʼ (in the form of an edit), plus seven other seven-to-ten minute tracks that pretty much do the same thing — only in several different ways. It's kind of like spending your time in a museum: would you want to spend one hour of your time staring at one fabulous landscape, or divide that time between eight different ones? Actually, the correct answer would depend on many circumstances (starting with the individual quality of the pictures and ending with the individual quality of your soul), but here we won't be getting too pretentious about that, and just admit that VLA is an extreme, and Twentythree feels quite accessible in its company.

It also feels somewhat more pleasing to me than its two predecessors — despite the stark minimalism and a complete shift to the hardcore ambient paradigm. The major reason is that the silly electronic beats are gone: they never really needed them anyway, and now that the music no longer pretends to invite you to dance, you can just tune in with the cosmos and stuff, because, you know, The Creator has a Masterplan and it doesn't necessarily involve all the living things getting into a trip-hop groove or anything. It does involve various atmospheric shifts and transitions, though, and there's plenty here, from track to track.

Again, the composers are jumping from macro- to microcosm here: ʽAreciboʼ, with its obvious reference to the Arecibo Observatory, is clearly influenced by planetary movement, whereas ʽTerpeneʼ should probably induce you to feel the smell of conifer resin (at the very least, there is definitely something sticky-liquid-like about the wobbly flow of its programmed loops). ʽInertiaʼ brings you back to the world of intertwining underground caverns, with gentle gurgling streams trickling through and harmless night owls and bats hooing off echoes (although why it is called ʽInertiaʼ, we'll never know); ʽSystemʼ is the closest they come to transmitting the idea of being lost in space.

ʽSomewhere In Russiaʼ, one of the few tracks with the very, very faint presence of an underlying beat, probably means Chukotka rather than Moscow — somewhere, in short, where temperatures are quite low and human presence is scarce. In direct contrast, ʽKensington Gardensʼ are lively, replete with tolling bells, singing birds, and echoes of what seems to have once been noises made by children and other visitors — yet now there's a certain ghostliness to it all, and, in fact, many of these tracks could be thought of as coherently conceptual, like it's a record about a universe that suddenly, for no particular reason, found itself devoid of people. I mean, most ambient albums give off an air of total solitude, but Twentythree quite specifically feels like an odd deconstruction project, where you have a soundscape that is densely populated by actual people, and then, whoosh, all human presence has been erased and only faint echoes remain.

It probably wouldn't have hurt them to find at least a few strikingly impressive melodic lines for some of these tracks, rather than resort to the usual «glide one note into another so that nobody even notices» technique — but the music still works, and the tracks seem alive and meaningful in the vein of all those old Klaus Schulze records. At least I can say that it made me feel like the only living man on Earth for a brief while, and I'd rather get that from music than from a VR headset, so while I'm still hesitant to move my thumbs in the presence of hardcore ambient, let us count this as an endorsement of sorts.

REFUGE (2013)

1) Rca (+); 2) Birdie; 3) Rca (-); 4) Leaves; 5) Lost; 6) Escape; 7) Marauders.

CBL's output rates seem to have slowed down considerably since Twentythree — the only complete album in five years has been this soundtrack for an obscure indie movie that allegedly tells some sort of macabre story about one family's survival after a mass catastrophe and is usually pigeonholed in the «survival horror» genre. You'd think that CBL, of all people, would be the most uncanny choice for composer — but I guess this was precisely the point, to have a couple of people known for making some of the most serene music in the universe to lend their hand in the creation of a disturbing, suspense-based movie. Then again, you don't really need to go farther than ʽCentral Plainsʼ to be reminded that these dangerous Danes (Swedes, really, but «dangerous Danes» rings so much cooler) can also be fairly threatening and suspenseful once they get the opportunity to saddle that vibe.

That said, there is not much about Refuge, an uncharacteristically short (less than 45 minutes!) collection of ambient soundscapes very much in the vein of Twentythree, that would suggest danger or threat — at least, not immediate ones. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised at all to learn that the artists simply used up some of the outtakes from previous sessions: most of the tracks sound like less elaborate little brothers to their far more thoroughly polished elders. Everything sounds nice, elegant, melancholic, but without too much depth: ʽLeavesʼ, for instance, floats on a shiny, multi-layered, but common bed of synth tones with a repetitive two-note drip-drop landing on them at regular intervals — well, we've heard that kind of «look at how elegant the universe is in its static mode and how all life is just a regularly ordered icing on top» musical metaphor so many times now that it is futile to expect some new epiphany. But it's pretty, all the same.

The best track is arguably ʽRca (-)ʼ, with a steady, carefully orchestrated electronic crescendo that Godspeed You! Black Emperor might well have appreciated — it's a little lost out there in the middle, but it well deserves your undivided attention for about four minutes, with layer upon layer of synth added until you really start getting the impression of climbing the proverbial stairway to heaven, as the air becomes sharper, the temperature colder, and the intuitive feeling of a supernatural presence more and more distinct. Unfortunately, even GY!BE would probably complain that the track is much too short, and the climax is over way too quickly, for the track to become truly cathartic. The soundtrack curse, striking again and again!

The only time the record actually comes close to becoming «scary» is, amusingly, on its most optimistically labeled track — ʽEscapeʼ, structured as soft techno with a deep, almost subconsciously planted, bassline and, on top, populated with what sounds like a series of alien explosions, coming from faraway but powerful enough to resonate all over your living room. That sound is so atypically harsh for CBL that the track really stands out, and in quite a respectable way at that, although eventually it morphs into full-scale danceable techno, and the explosions are almost lost against a foreground of much less interesting loops and effects. And then, for the last track (ʽMarauders"), we return back to the same predictable world of static serenity (well, dark serenity this time — sounds like all those other «out there in space, watching faraway nebulae» tracks of theirs), lightly sprinkled with electronic chirps from interplanetary-flying birds on their way to the nearest warphole.

In short, nice and, like almost everything from these guys, perfectly listenable, but a soundtrack is a soundtrack — or, rather, a soundtrack is a collection of second-rate material that you wouldn't normally want to include on a «proper» LP, especially when you're a loyal disciple of Tangerine Dream. (Okay, not that loyal. Being loyal to TD necessarily implies a schedule of at least three albums per year, proportionally increasing at the same rate at which the artist is running out of new ideas.) For major fans only, I'd say; others will just have to wait and find out if there is still another Taoist way left for CBL to tell us how wonderful and mysterious can a world be in which, for all it's worth, nothing is really happening.

CARIBOU (+ MANITOBA)

START BREAKING MY HEART (2001)

1) Dundas, Ontario; 2) People Eating Fruit; 3) Mammals Vs. Reptiles; 4) Brandon; 5) Children Play Well Together; 6) Lemon Yoghourt; 7) James' Second Haircut; 8) Schedules & Fares; 9) Paul's Birthday; 10) Happy Ending.

I know relatively little about the thing called «jazztronica» or «nu jazz», but if the most typical artists in that style happen to be Amon Tobin and Flying Lotus, whose works are quite familiar to me, then I'm happy to say that on this album, Mr. Dan Snaith, a 23-year old artist hailing from Dundas, Ontario who used to call himself Manitoba before cruel life forced him to change this to Caribou — anyway, on this album Mr. Dan «Manitoba» Snaith sort of invents his own subgenre of jazztronica, which we might just as well call «kiddie-jazztronica».

Yes, he would go on to far more accessible and seriously different things, but he did start out as a self-made electronic composer, and one with a vision all his own, even if that vision remains on a scale so humble that «nice and pretty» is probably the strongest reaction that may be honestly experienced when listening to this stuff. Snaith's primary tool throughout is a softly tuned, warbled synthesizer — producing muffled, Fender Rhodes-like electric piano sounds, as well as various chiming textures, so that the entire record has a bright, sunshine-like feel, enhanced by occasional usage of equally soft and calm acoustic guitars and harps; as for percussion, he is normally content to stick to the most «primitive» of drum machines, often imitating jazzy brush technique or Indian tablas, and sometimes probably sampling Snaith's own drumming.

If all of this were played as «normal» jazz, the album would hardly hold any interest for anybody; it is the astute combination of analog and digital elements that makes it what it is — a series of impressionistic musical paintings that combine jazzy vivaciousness with friendly hi-tech and a certain childish innocence. The whole thing is a hustle-bustle, but one that seems to take place right under your nose, without any attempts to separate the background from the foreground or create additional sonic depth through echoes, tricky mixing, and rich layers of overdubs. What you have is simple, loud, but inobtrusive melodies — playful and careless in tone, but not altogether insubstantial. Why they should necessarily be associated with Canada (the first track is ʽDundas, Ontarioʼ — Snaith's homeland) remains somewhat of a mystery, as does the album's title, because there is absolutely nothing heartbreaking about the music: but chalk it up to the necessity of the Artistic Enigma, quite forgivable in the face of the overall loveliness of the sound anyway, and let us just evaluate the music on its own terms, regardless of whatever the artist wants, because now it is out of his hands anyway.

So, in this alternate unreal reality, ʽDundas, Ontarioʼ is a place symbolized by several meditative «electric piano» lines criss-crossed with a toe-tappy xylophone part — two voices, one pensive and intimate, another one playful and arrogant, a Florestan and a Eusebius of sorts. This trick is later reprised in different varieties — for instance, the interplay between the somewhat dreary, continuous keyboard parts and the jumpy folksy acoustic guitars of ʽChildren Play Wellʼ, or the dreamy psychedelic synths and the jerky jazzy bassline of ʽSchedules & Faresʼ — and provides the bulk of sheer entertainment. In any case, this is a very active record: there is not a single track that would not have a lively rhythmic base or at least a second, dynamic, voice that stands out in stark contrast to the more ambient/static loops of the first one.

The most active track is ʽLemon Yoghourtʼ, which somebody on RYM aptly called "a great track to jerk off to", not because it has the word "lemon" in it, but because the music itself does sound like it invites you to, ahem, «squeeze your lemon» for about two minutes, with a very insistent multi-channel keyboard loop that might just sound like the speedy dripping of lemon juice, but who knows... anyway, sexual innuendos aside, it's a fun sound, and the track is quite strategically placed at the middle of the album, guaranteed to wake you up if you accidentally fall asleep on one of the longer tracks, like ʽPeople Eating Fruitʼ (which does not at all sound like people eating fruit, unless you take all the crackly glitching in the background to be symbolic of gnashing teeth and suckling lips — but it does sound like a joyful morning prayer-ritual conducted by a bunch of shiny happy people who probably do eat a lot of fruit).

Longest of all is ʽPaul's Birthdayʼ, a track that could probably act like a perfect sampler for the rest of the album, because it's got it all — a cute combo between digital and analog (there's a nice harp glissando acting as the track's main hook), all of the man's beloved synth tones, jazzy basslines and bits of modal brass soloing, and even a surprisingly funky arrangement of digital glitches replacing the bass groove for a period of time. I have no idea who the heck is Paul, but I do know that he got himself a fairly unique birthday present here.

The closest vocal analogy to this record would probably be something like contemporary Broadcast albums, but even those would either have more «depth» or more «grief» to them — the advantage of Start Breaking My Heart is its total and complete cuddliness, which never gets sickening due to the technical mastery of the artist, and provides you with yet another charming advertisement for the paradisiac qualities of Canada (an imaginary Canada, one should always add before the charmed listener actually starts packing). There might not be enough memorable melodic themes here to assert compositional greatness, but the overall sound of the record, once you let it seep in, is unforgettable, and definitely deserving its thumbs up.

UP IN FLAMES (2003)

1) I've Lived On A Dirt Road All My Life; 2) Skunks; 3) Hendrix With KO: 4) Jacknuggeted; 5) Why The Long Face; 6) Bijoux; 7) Twins; 8) Kid You'll Move Mountains; 9) Crayon; 10) Every Time She Turns Round It's Her Birthday; 11*) Cherrybomb; 12*) Silver Splinters; 13*) Olé; 14*) Thistles And Felt; 15*) Seaweed; 16*) Cherrybomb Part II.

Ambition begins to bubble here — Manitoba's second album is even louder and more colorful than the first, and goes on to spread its tentacles in even more directions. By 2003, Dan Snaith had staked his claim somewhere midway between Sufjan Stevens and The Animal Collective, although I would guess that the major influence on Up In Flames was neither, but rather an older artist — My Bloody Valentine, whose psychedelic production techniques Dan must have studied at length, because some of this stuff (such as ʽKid You'll Move Mountainsʼ ) often tends to sound precisely like MBV at their most trippiest: woozy, delirious grooves with interlaced ghostly overdubs and whiffs of vocals that are sometimes felt more than heard.

As derivative as the overall style tends to be, it is still Dan's own: there's not enough somnambulant guitar drone here to qualify as «shoegaze», way too much non-electronic instrumentation to count as «electronica», and way too many borrowings from all sorts of musical genres to conform to the already poorly understood definition of «folktronica». «Psychedelic» is the only term that fully applies, largely due to its inborn vagueness — this is music from another dimension, although, in nice contrast to much competition, it does not brag about its origins, but rather just behaves in an orderly, ordinary manner, humbly inviting you to try out the rabbit-hole instead of pulling you there by force.

The musical skeletons of these songs are less jazzy than before, and owe more to folk, classic Brit-pop, baroque pop, and even dance-pop — but really, the skeletons should be of more interest to musicologists than simple music listeners, because the sonic textures clearly take precedence here over basic composition. Once the groove is set up (and this is usually done quickly: Snaith is no lover of overlong intros), Snaith opens his mid-size bag of tricks and pulls stuff out largely at random — bombastic percussion bursts, pastoral flute passages, avantgarde jazz brass blows, angelic vocal chants, astral noises, and sometimes all of it at once (ʽBijouxʼ). Although it does have the unfortunate effect of making all the songs sound the same, the soothing countereffect is that Up In Flames is a pretty short record, and we could all stand fourty minutes of a same-sounding universe that could be best described as «trying to interpret the Animal Collective for a five-year old kid», or «a cross between Loveless and Sesame Street».

My only real problem with the record is the old «middle-of-the-road» problem: it all sounds very, very nice, but it never blows the mind in quite such a decisive way as its influences or the best of its contemporaries. Even when the man goes for a really large, quasi-epic sound, like on the supposedly climactic grande finale of ʽEvery Time She Turns Roundʼ, it still seems quiet and cloudy and a little too messy. All these sounds — the electronic blips, the sax farts, the chimes, the bells, the whistles — seem like packs of scurrying ants and other tiny insects under your feet, a hustle-bustle that is nice to observe from a certain vantage point, but hard to get into. Like I already said, at times this seems to be an advantage (humility, lack of emotional manipulation, etc.), but at other times you feel like he's gone too far in the other direction and does not give a damn about properly involving the listener at all. And that can be a little maddening.

Nevertheless, on the whole this is a major step forward from Start Breaking My Heart — more complex in almost every respect, and positioning Snaith in the respectable camp of people with a floating, rather than fixed, formula of self-improvement. And if you like this at least as much as I do, and definitely if you like this more than I do, go for the more recent expanded 2-CD edition that adds seven extra tracks: some of these, like ʽCherrybombʼ, go heavy on samples and dance beats and could work well on the floor, while others, like ʽSeaweedʼ, are more firmly rooted in the baroque-pop soil, merry chimes and all. Essentially more of the same, but focusing almost exclusively on the instrumental side of things. Thumbs up.

THE MILK OF HUMAN KINDNESS (2005)

1) Yeti; 2) Subotnick; 3) A Final Warning; 4) Lord Leopard; 5) Bees; 6) Hands First; 7) Hello Hammerheads; 8) Brahminy Kite; 9) Drumheller; 10) Pelican Narrows; 11) Barnowl.

This is Snaith's first album recorded under the name of «Caribou», but the name change was triggered by the threat of a legal suit rather than any artistic reasons — Snaith's musical essence stays precisely the same. Well, not precisely: third time around, there's even more vocals, and it kind of becomes obvious that the man is trying to gradually shape his imaginative textures into pop hooks, moving from amorphous abstractionism into discrete abstractionism. This is kind of like a kids' room in MoMA now — happy colors, odd shapes, friendly disposition, psychological manipulation. You sure feel safe and warm in a world like this, but you don't even begin to truly understand it, because... well, just because.

The very first track is called ʽYetiʼ, but it neither features Tibetan musical influences nor is in any way related to the dark psychedelic jamming of Amon Düül II. Instead, it is a very lightweight soft techno-pop number, dominated by a shiny electronic riff and overdubbed with various silly sound effects. If it is indeed supposed to be a musical portrait of a yeti, it is quite a politically correct one — in quasi-real life, an actual yeti would hardly seem to be the ideal playing companion on the Sesame Street playground, but this one is almost cuddly. Later on, the sudden infatuation with East Asia reoccurs on ʽBrahminy Kiteʼ, another techno romp, very drum-heavy this time, but still very similar in atmosphere — "descending all the time, pretending all the time, pretending to be free" is Snaith's way of describing the bird, but the slightly cynical lyrics are not even one bit reflected in the feather-thin, electronic-baroque melodies.

Occasionally, stuff gets louder and crazier, like on the multi-part ʽFinal Warningʼ, a speedy, monotonous groove sprouting various bits of samples, backward tape recordings, distorted wordless vocals and every once in a while erupting in walls of noise, but they are friendly walls of noise, too, like large waves that periodically reach the electronic surfer and provide an incentive for fun rather than fear. ʽBeesʼ starts out very unusually, with a blues-rock-style twin guitar interplay that even sounds somewhat snappy in the overall context of the record, but very soon, the guitars are complemented with Dan's mellow vocals (half-Beach Boys, half-Nick Drake), a folksy acoustic guitar part, then a pastoral flute part, and eventually, one more friendly noisy climax that hardly seems to mean any harm.

I do not care much for the brief instrumental links that join the tunes, but I do care that the man is also demonstrating some major folk-pop talent — for instance, ʽHello Hammerheadsʼ is a bit of a folk-pop gem with a smooth-as-butter merge between Dan's ideally delivered vocal lines and the two-part acoustic guitar overdubs. That's just one song, but it is of essential importance to the record because it provides some insight into the personality of this «Caribou» guy (at least, his artistic alter ego), confirming our suspicions that he likes to posit himself as a melancholic, but idealistic loner, taking after Brian Wilson and Nick Drake to the best of his 21st century man abilities. But for what he lacks in depth compared to those guys, he makes up with scope: the repetitive blues-rock of ʽBarnowlʼ takes its cue from Krautrock à la Neu! and even Can, with all that metronomic repetitiveness and all those psychedelic guitar tones. Only, once again, it's all nowhere near as disturbing or frightening as classic Can could be in their prime — because we don't want to scare off them kids.

Overall, as long as Snaith continues to make cautious progress, he's okay by me, and on this record he's at least made progress by shedding some of his artistic anonymity and showing a trifle of personality — and it's a nice, intelligent, and creative personality alright, so thumbs up once again.

ANDORRA (2007)

1) Melody Day; 2) Sandy; 3) After Hours; 4) She's The One; 5) Desiree; 6) Eli; 7) Sundialing; 8) Irene; 9) Niobe.

I suppose that some time in the distant future, when man's memory will be sufficiently enhanced to enlarge the artistic pantheon to astronomic sizes, this album will go down as Snaith's masterpiece. On the other hand, if at the same time man's capacity for emotional abstractionism also happens to be increased, so that the halls of MoMA and Beaubourg begin to resonate with sincerely shed tears of joy and wonder, Andorra's status might be challenged — because in 2007, it was the most «retro-sounding» and «sonically conservative» album that the man had produced to date. It was probably bound to happen, eventually, as artistic growth and evolution stimulated Caribou to embrace them good old values of late Sixties' / early Seventies' art-pop and symph-prog — without forgetting to integrate them with modern electronic technologies and production values, of course, but make no mistake about it: at the core of Andorra you find melodic content with a collective stamp of approval from Brian Wilson, Arthur Lee, Rod Argent, and even Jon Anderson (I hope they don't mind me speaking for them in this case).

The man pulls no punches whatsoever with this shift of style: without any atmospheric build-ups or warm-ups, ʽMelody Dayʼ opens the album crash-boom-bang style, with a driving rhythm, a bass-guitar-keyboard baroque-pop melody, and dreamy melodic vocals whose only purpose seems to be to recreate the tender idealism of 1967-68 right here and now. It's bouncy, it's tasteful (watch out for them flutes and quasi-Mellotrons!), it's melancholic, it's well performed and produced, it's catchy — yes, it's a ghola of a song instead of the real thing, but you wouldn't even know that if you took it out of its context. In any case, it reflects perfect craftsmanship that Dan's previous output only hinted at, and it would be very impolite to state or even suspect that his heart was not properly in it.

The amazing thing is how he manages to crush the wall of biased scepticism — just as you think, «okay, he made this one good song and put it in the beginning to stun us, the rest will probably be boring soulless facsimiles, haven't we seen enough of these retro-freaks who honestly love old time music but lack the talent to properly recreate it?», he strolls on with ʽSandyʼ, a slower, but equally pretty upbeat love ballad that does not simply mimick the atmosphere of some Zombies masterpiece, but cares about intricacies and subtleties of vocal modulation: just listen to the way lines like "you can't believe me... like all of the others who leave me..." aim for your attention with a delirious falsetto flourish delivered in one heavenly swoop. Damn, that's seductive!

There's no way that the "and you and I will follow down the street" opening line of ʽAfter Hoursʼ is not a subtle reference to "and you and I climb over the sea to the valley", either, even if the song itself is too drone-based to properly sound like classic Yes — but no matter, the overall psychedelic-idealistic vision of some perfect world beyond regular human experience remains the same. If there's one thing that genuinely separates this music from its faraway ancestors, it is that little bit of shoegazing quasi-ambience that Snaith adds to many of the songs — like the chorus to ʽShe's The Oneʼ, jolting on one chord and one repetitive vocal phrase, something that both the Zombies and Yes would have probably found too tedious — but then again, if you are amalgamating the Zombies and Yes in one package, you might as well throw in some Cocteau Twins and some Slowdive, why not?

If there's a possible problem to be found, one could look for it in the general similarity of the tone and the arrangement details on most of the tracks — not that the same problem cannot be conjured for Pet Sounds or anything — but even that is somehow taken care of in the last track: the 8-minute «epic» ʽNiobeʼ is based on a soft techno groove, with Snaith's electronic arsenal finally unleashed on us in all its might, and just about every synth tone at his disposal partaking in the melee. It's not the best track on the album, but it is the most experimental, and although I fail to see what exactly this bunch of stylistically diverse synthesized sonic comets whooshing past the main body of the groove has to do with Niobe (do they represent her 14 dead children, or Apollo's and Artemis' arrows, or what?), I cannot deny the buzzing psychedelic effect, especially when you play this real loud in headphones. And even then, the vocals ("I fall so far, I fall so far...") are still old school art-pop to some extent.

Actually, it is not the instrumental monotonousness that worries me but the emotional monotonousness — all of the tracks being dominated by the same flavor of «optimistic sadness», like a never ending goodbye with faint hopes of saying hello once more in the distant future. To Dan's honor, he is able to escape the common trap of optimistically sad indie-pop sung by bearded men in furry hats — simply by being a better composer and arranger than most. But you do have to accept that he will be communicating pretty much the same mood, differing by the subtlest of subtle nuances, over and over and over; the fact that, for me at least, upon the third listen this ceased to be boring only goes to show how much real talent he has. I do hope the record was a big hit in Andorra, because there's hardly any reason to be called that unless the man wanted to conquer an additional 85,000 head strong market — but even though I'm no citizen of Andorra myself, I am glad to throw in my thumbs up as well, for extra international endorsement.

SWIM (2010)

1) Odessa; 2) Sun; 3) Kaili; 4) Found Out; 5) Bowls; 6) Leave House; 7) Hannibal; 8) Lalibela; 9) Jamelia.

Bad move, brother. Somebody must have heard Andorra and said, «Hey Dan, I like what you're doing and all, but this is frickin' granddad-pop here, surely you're not willing to forget that the world has moved on a bit in the last fifty years? And didn't you used to be like an electronica guy and stuff like that? What's up with this quasi-Zombies shit?» And for all we know, the «somebody» in question could have been Dan himself.

Anyway, the fact is that Swim sounds nothing like Andorra, but neither does it return properly to the stylistics of Snaith's Manitoba period, when he was wondering what would avantgarde jazz sound like if you programmed it into computers. Instead, Swim straightforwardly plunges into dance-pop territory — almost everything here is in the soft house / techno ballpark, even though some non-electronic instrumentation is retained (electric guitars, harps, bells, whatever) and the vocals reflect Dan's usual psycho-folk sweetness instead of being suitably robotized for the electronic palette. In other words, this is truly the sound of somebody who suddenly awoke to the fact of «slipping into the past» and is now desperately scrambling back to catch up with the present.

And I feel really torn about this. On one hand, Swim is not entirely «anti-Caribou»: all the tracks reflect a very high level of craft — they build up, they look for unusual instrumental combinations, they really want to synthesize classic elements of art-rock and psychedelia with modern electronic rhythms and produce a sort of «art-dance-pop», think a Pet Shop Boys collaboration with Rod Argent. But on the other hand, all of this is done at the expense of the heart-gripping hooks of Andorra — it's a record I could learn to live and respect, but I could never ever have any «intimate» relationship with it, if you do know what I mean.

I will not go any further than the first (and, apparently, one of the most revered by the album's fans) track here, which is called ʽOdessaʼ for some reason, even though it brings on no associations whatsoever with either the Black Sea or the Bee Gees. It's funky, ruled by over by a thick burping bassline and further populated with ghostly high-pitched wails, bell sets, and a vocal part that tries to evoke feelings of sadness and compassion for the female protagonist — "she's tired of cryin' and sick of his lies". It's a technically impressive piece of work, and it could work, but... somehow, I don't believe that it does. It's not «creepy» — the entire atmosphere is too bouncy, light, inoffensive for that. It's not «melancholic» — melancholic moods aren't usually associated with funky dance rhythms. It's not «tender» — the synth wails and the bells and the deep bass prevent you from mellowing out properly. So what is it? I'm not sure. At least Andorra exuded a definite aura of kindness and warmth, but here this aura seems to have been corrupted and dissipated, as if he wanted to make a track that sounded warm-friendly-optimistic and dark-hostile-pessimistic at the same time, but in the end the two sides simply outcancel each other.

Unfortunately, it just does not get better: all I experience while the record is on is a sense of confusion and disorientation. Some tracks lend themselves easier to interpretation — ʽSunʼ, for instance, where the vocals are limited to a single endlessly swirling sample of "sun, sun, sun...", is like an electronic prayer to the light, accompanied with a dance ritual routine; even so, I feel routinely bored with its electronic psychedelia which, despite all the painstaking overdubs, does not sound like anything I have not already heard a hundred times before done better by «legitimate» techno artists. Other tracks seem to operate on the one-idea principle: ʽLeave Houseʼ, for instance — take this single flute phrase and loop it to infinity, then throw on whatever comes into your head at the moment. Very modern, very spontaneous, very tiring.

On a particularly good day, I could just express my usual respect to the level of craft and leave it at that; but I do tend to work in context, and it really pisses me off how, upon having released a near-perfect synthesis of modern sensitivity and ancient influences of Andorra, the guy just had to go ahead and spoil it all to hell. Feel free to disagree in this case (I can actually try to understand people who get their full set of kicks from this kind of music), but as of now, this is such a disappointing downer that thumbs down seem like the only possible option.

OUR LOVE (2014)

1) Can't Do Without You; 2) Silver; 3) All I Ever Need; 4) Our Love; 5) Dive; 6) Second Chance; 7) Julia Brightly; 8) Mars; 9) Back Home; 10) Your Love Will Set You Free.

Please to witness yet another strong proof of how much the reviewer is falling out with the times (again!) — apparently, Our Love got the strongest, most raving reviews of Snaith's entire career, and even made it all the way to No. 46 on the Billboard charts, yet I can barely bring myself to sit through half of it (and several relistens have only made the torture worse), so here's a very brief verdict and hopefully I'll never have to do this again.

In a nutshell: where Swim could at least still be called a psychedelic dance album, Our Love is just a dance album, period. It's probably far from the worst IDM album ever released, but it is precisely that — an IDM album. And I am no enemy of IDM when we're talking classic Aphex Twin or other people who have the proper guts to export our conscience into outer space or to orchestrate a robotic apocalypse, but Snaith, with his «sunshine attitude» that was so à propos when dabbling in abstract electronic jazz on his first records, or when going retro-Sixties on Andorra, is just boring as hell when he goes for straight house music.

Of course, he still mixes it up, and there is, for instance, a strong streak of R&B running through the album. ʽCan't Do Without Youʼ, opening the album, samples a bit of Marvin Gaye, combining the sample with Dan's own falsetto, but I've always thought that the primary power of R&B is always locked in live grooves and spontaneously generated power, whereas here we are locked within a robotic, sterile arrangement, and the complex overdubs of several waves of synth noise do nothing to save the situation. If this is an ode to happiness, there is nothing to confirm this except for Dan's looped sample — and even though there is quite a lot happening, as on every Caribou track (read here for an almost over-detailed deconstruction), the track leaves me completely uninvolved on an emotional level, which is a catastrophe.

Everything that follows is essentially more of the same mood: soft dance grooves with complex, but bland and generally predictable series of overdubs. ʽSecond Chanceʼ, with Jessy Lanza on vocals, melodically sounds like some lost Aaliyah outtake with a minimalistic synth trot providing the bulk of the instrumentation — very, very boring. The title track is simply horrible, almost completely undistinguishable from generic club muzak, and I don't care how many extra textures he throws in — the combination of that bass pulse with the man's falsetto aah-aahs shoots the lights out from both, and the results just sound stupid.

And I could go on, but I won't: let's just say that I fail to get the point of this kind of music — it's no less danceable, of course, than any other piece of music with a steady beat, but its artistic content is completely compromised by the «applied» nature, and I would go as far as to say that its relation to genuinely gripping electronic dance music is about the same as Chubby Checker's relation to Chuck Berry; keeping in mind, of course, that there are plenty of people who'd actually prefer Chubby to Chuck, and, by analogy, there might be people around who will like Our Love more than Selected Ambient Works. In my personal paradigm, though, this counts as a generic sellout from yet another guy who decided that sounding «trendy» and «modern» should do more for his carma than investing his talent into creating true beauty. (Let alone the fact that I am not exactly sure in what way these beats, loops, and overdubs are «modern» for 2014, when all this and more has already been done in electronica many times over). A near-disgusted thumbs down. Bring back those Zombies rip-offs once more, comrade! Viva la Revolución!

CASS McCOMBS

A (2003)

1) I Went To The Hospital; 2) Bobby, King Of Boys Town; 3) What Isn't Nature; 4) AIDS In Africa; 5) A Comedian Is Someone Who Tells Jokes; 6) Gee, It's Good To Be Back Home; 7) Meet Me Here At Dawn; 8) When The Bible Was Wrote; 9) My Pilgrim Dear; 10) Bedding Down Post-Xmastime; 11) My Master.

Oh no, not another modern day American singer-songwriter. Having stuck around both the West and the East Coast for several years, and eventually being picked up by some tiny record label in Baltimore or somewhere, and having also had the distinction to be one of the very last discoveries by John Peel before the radio waves went silent, Cass McCombs finally got around to recording his first LP in 2003 — one that he called A, out of humble respect either for a twenty-three year old record by Jethro Tull or the anonymous creator of the Latin alphabet. As far as I understand, nobody even noticed it back at the time. How could they? With a title like that, it'll easily slip through even all the most advanced search engines.

Fortunately, now, in retrospect, we are all entitled to its pleasures, because it does indeed happen to be one of the finest singer-songwriter albums of the year 2003, and maybe even of the entire decade, and, heck, who knows? it's getting darn hard and darner harder for anybody to come out with an amazing singer-songwriter album these days. But somehow, McCombs, with the help of his largely unknown backing team (the only player I know is guitarist Chris Cohen, formerly of Deerhoof), has succeeded in crafting quite a formidable experience. Clearly influenced by several generations of previous songwriters, he has amalgamated many of their strengths, and still managed to put his own scent marks all over the place.

The base magic is simple. McCombs writes «spells» rather than songs: most of these tracks, 3 to 5-6 minutes long in duration, reveal their complete structures very quickly, and then simply spin the same yarn for several cycles — the Dylan/Cohen manner of functioning. Nor is there anything particularly challenging or innovative about these cycles: sometimes it's just one musical / vocal phrase, taken out of the folk / country / pop woodpile, which in most contexts would indicate laziness and lack of talent. But with McCombs, somehow, it is different, and the answer lies not even in the lyrics (honestly, for the first couple of listens I did not even begin paying attention to the actual words), but in the sphere of personality.

First and foremost, the guy's got a beautiful voice. Not as technically accomplished, perhaps, as those of the late great Buckley family, but with a clear, fresh ring vaguely reminiscent of Jeff's, and with an added humorous twinkle of his own, which makes all the difference. The songs range from deeply soulful to ironically playful, but there's a seed of soulfulness in the playfulness and vice versa: he is expressive, he is caring, and he has a sense of humor. Unlike so many broken-hearted songwriters who have threatened to lower the broken heart value to near-dumping levels, McCombs is not whiny or hysterical — if any of these songs could be called manipulative, they are subtly, rather than cheaply so, and the man is able to achieve a great balance between classic starry-eyed romanticism and a modern day attitude without making himself look too pompous or too hyper-intelectually cynical.

The musical arrangements are also subtle, not amazing per se, but working very well to his advantage. Instead of sticking to acoustic guitar or going defiantly lo-fi with noise and sludge, he goes for a loud, but clean electric sound, with wall-of-sound elements, big crashing drums, several guitar parts, old-fashioned organ, and plenty of echo. Oh, and did I mention the slow tempos? Most of the tunes really take their time, sometimes dragging down to a mortally wounded crawl (ʽA Comedian Is Someone Who Tells Jokesʼ), yet it all works out to his complete advantage — on ʽComedianʼ, for instance, it helps him to gain even more power over the listener with lilting arches of vocal modulation; the way he intones that particular title makes me think of the song as the 21st century's ʽDeath Of A Clownʼ, and it might even go deeper than the Dave Davies tune.

No song better illustrates how little do the actual lyrics matter than the closing number, ʽMy Masterʼ — four minutes of simplistic strum and mono-dialog that goes like this, "I heard my Master... spoke with your Master... I wonder what for?.. was it in commerce?.. very odd, isn't it?.. very odd indeed", and on and on and on. It's literally a song about nothing about nothing, but it manages to entrance me for four minutes, like some mystical lullaby where all that matters is the tone of the voice... and, oh, what a perfect tone for a lullaby.

If the album closes with a lullaby (that is as sweet as it is formally meaningless), it opens with a big soulful splash — ʽI Went To The Hospitalʼ is a great way to make your solemn peace with God without saying a single word about this directly. It's a big risk, really, to open your career with such a solemn gesture, but in this case it is more of a risk that none of your subsequent career will match the awesome opening rather than you are going to fall flat on your face with your very first step. Again, you might tear out occasional bits of cool lyrics, like "is it dying that terrified you, or just being dead?", but the song might as well have been wordless — what matters is the wave-form of each verse and how the guy is steering his sonic ship on top of each wave and then gracefully bringing it down. Beautiful.

Almost every song on here works at some level. He may be pleading and vulnerable and doom-sensing (ʽMeet Me Here At Dawnʼ), or he might sound like an Everly brother stuck in a loop and loving it (ʽBobby, King Of Boystownʼ), or he can give the impression of a resigned sage sitting on top of the hill and watching the world go to pieces (ʽAIDS In Africaʼ — much of the song consists simply of chanting its title, as a symbolic representation of everything that went wrong, and it's totally enthralling), or he can slow the tempo even further down to give a chilling portrait of an individual striving to make an emotional difference despite all of his vital systems having ground down to a near-complete halt (ʽBedding Down Post-Xmastimeʼ — that's the way I hear it without delving too deep into the actual lyrics, anyway).

By the end of it all, you probably won't have a clear idea of how all these pieces assemble together in a cohesive portrait; but if you are left unimpressed, or, at least, without a definite understanding that you have just heard something special, just try to keep listening — I cannot guarantee a spiritual connection for everybody, of course, but as far as I'm concerned, this guy's got ten times more spirituality in him than Conor Oberst and Justin Vernon combined, and the fact that the modern world would rather choose those two as their role models than the much less known Cass is... well, it's just one of those facts. The worst thing I can say about A, now, is that the artist would have a hell of a hard time trying to top it in the future, but, naturally, in this particular case it merely translates into an even stronger thumbs up.

PREFECTION (2005)

1) Equinox; 2) Subtraction; 3) Multiple Suns; 4) Tourist Woman; 5) Sacred Heart; 6) She's Still Suffering; 7) Cuckoo; 8) Bury Mary; 9) City Of Brotherly Love; 10) All Your Dreams May Come True.

Already he is moving away from the formula established on A — only a few songs here, such as ʽCuckooʼ and the closing ʽAll Your Dreams Come Trueʼ, give us the same dreamy tempos and repetitive verses... and I sort of miss it. The general idea here is that if you speed up the tempos, pump out a bit more energy, throw in even more instruments (often bringing the atmosphere to Phil Spector kind of standards), and make your vocal melodies more similar to Roy Orbison pop than to Leonard Cohen balladeering, this gives you an entire new face. And it does, but somehow it does not feel as uniquely enchanting as it did on the first record. Maybe because deep-booming dream-pop with lush overtones is something that is constantly on the market, be it courtesy of British Sea Power or Sufjan Stevens, while something as ridiculously simple and entrancing as "I heard my Master, spoke with your Master..." is not. Or maybe some people are born for captivating simplicity and some people are born for challenging complexity. I have no idea.

Anyway, that is not to say that Prefection, or, rather, PREfection, as they prefer to stylize it, is bad or boring. In fact, Cass is good at carefully preserving his essence while pouring it into a new bottle — one offered to him by the 4AD label, to which he was now signed, and given 4AD's emphasis on all things dreamy, from Cocteau Twins to Dead Can Dance, the shift in style may have come automatically and subconsciously. ʽEquinoxʼ greets us with big bashing drums, deep echoes, a subliminal synth river tone that runs through it, and vocals that are just as beautiful as they used to be, but are now so echoey and delicate that sometimes you almost feel them rather than hear them. Meanwhile, the lyrics become even more cabbalistic than they used to be ("deep in the heart of Fontainebleau / the marriage of a whore and a Jew"? which hidden episode in French history have I missed?), and I prefer to distance myself from them altogether and simply enjoy the sentimental mysticism of it all. If there's black magic involved, I don't want to know, but the melody certainly suggests nothing of the kind.

On ʽSubtractionʼ, he takes the base rhythm of ʽYou Can't Hurry Loveʼ and, again, adapts it for his own purposes, as he does with a lots of things subsequently — except that ʽSubtractionʼ has no catchy chorus; instead, just as the prolonged synth tone colored ʽEquinoxʼ, so is ʽSubtractionʼ colored by equally long-winded organ notes, giving the song a religious rather than amorous aura and culminating in a howl of "please leave me alone!" that subtly suggests, like ʽA Comedianʼ on the previous record, that the artist does have painful concerns of his own, and is not always resigned to the role of outside observer.

The musical experiments, rooted in accumulated experience, continue with ʽMultiple Sunsʼ, spun around a martial bassline and prog-rockish synthesizers in the background; ʽTourist Womanʼ, the man's first attempt at a really fast song, with hideously distorted guitars, a frantic rhythm track shamelessly appropriated from The Jam's ʽPrivate Hellʼ; ʽSacred Heartʼ, all jangly-like and soulful and sounding like The Smiths with extra Mellotron; and ʽShe's Still Sufferingʼ, with the biggest wall-of-sound on the album, largely due to the overpowering drums and the keyboards and vocal harmonies now completely taking over the guitars — with wave-like / veil-like psychedelic textures that sound like My Bloody Valentine with keyboards.

Sorry, that might just be one too many references out there, but this is also what constitutes the record's problem — it brings on too many outside associations instead of focusing squarely on Mr. McCombs and his own distillation of reality. Where A had the balance just right, on PREfection he sometimes ends up lost in his own songs, trying, perhaps, too hard to gain respect as a musician at the expense of standing his own ground as an artist. Oh, and one obvious influence I still have to mention (sorry) is Wilco — that mix of surrealist electronics with a country-pop sensibility that was so lauded in the case of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is evidently inspiring the introductions to ʽSacred Heartʼ and ʽAll Your Dreams May Come Trueʼ, the latter of which melodically sounds inspired by ʽThings We Said Todayʼ. Okay, I'll shut up now.

I like each of these songs — am not enthralled by any of them, but they're tasteful, original, and deep enough to earn an unquestionable thumbs up. But I guess they also illustrate how doggone hard it is for an obviously talented artist to make a mind-blowing record in the 21st century, and, perhaps, explain why for so many talented artists of the 21st century their first album turns out to be their best — it is the one album that comes to them totally naturally; as they begin to force themselves to come up with something that expands on the beginnings, though, they immediately fall upon well-trodden paths and become less «themselves» and more of a pale mix of themselves with somebody else. Still, let us not allow too much theorizing to distract us from the simple melancholic beauty of ʽCuckooʼ or the grandiose scope of ʽCity Of Brotherly Loveʼ (a song where I do not understand even a single line, except for "yes I've read my Plato, too", which, however, does not make life for you any better even if you've also read your Plato).

On a final note, be sure to turn your player off right at the end of the musical part of ʽAll Your Dreamsʼ, because, as a bonus, you get six minutes of street noises dominated by a car siren that will not go off. Apparently, six minutes of a car siren making hell in the middle of a busy street is supposed to symbolize something, and you are welcome to spend the rest of your life decoding that symbolism, or debating the issue of whether you are more partial to dumb artists or intelligent artists... and thinking about the thin line that separates ones from others.

DROPPING THE WRIT (2007)

1) Lionkiller; 2) Pregnant Pause; 3) That's That; 4) Petrified Forest; 5) Morning Shadows; 6) Deseret; 7) Crick In My Neck; 8) Full Moon Or Infinity; 9) Windfall; 10) Wheel Of Fortune.

I do not think this was the right way to go. I loved A — it was essentially an album of mantras, and it hypnotized me to a point, depending on how well the singer was able to fine-tune his voice to find that one perfect pitch for the mantra in question. Now, by the time he gets around to his third album, Cass McCombs presents us with his first indisputable collection of pop hooks, and, unfortunately, that just does not work too well.

ʽLionkillerʼ opens the album with a couple of seconds reprising the annoying car siren at the end of ʽAll Your Dreamsʼ — implying, allegedly, that Dropping The Writ has to be taken as a direct sequel to PREfection, but this is not really the case. ʽLionkillerʼ itself is a three-chord grunge-folk rocker, with an endlessly spinning wash cycle that seems to promise some thunderous resolution, but never really does — and, what is even worse, McCombs himself is reduced to the role of a boring murmurer, spinning some figuratively autobiographical jumpin'-jack-flash-in-reverse-like tale about his safe middle class upbringing, but without even once making full use of his beautiful voice. Essentially, the song's ominous atmosphere is wasted.

As we proceed further, it becomes obvious that the age of mantras has passed, and that we have entered the age of art-pop instead. That would be okay if we had outstanding musicianship, original and memorable melodic lines, or gorgeous vocal hooks — instead, we have tasteful musicianship, traditional melodic lines, and such timidly understated vocal hooks that it's almost like having no vocal hooks whatsoever. First time I sat through the record, I believe the melodies just managed to slip through my perception centers altogether; second time, I had my mind nets all polished and ready, but still ended up with slim pickings. I mean, something like ʽMorning Shadowsʼ is really nothing but dream-pop atmosphere: falsetto sweetness, soft guitar jangle, brushed percussion, light summer breeze that fades away as quickly as it comes. Pleasant, but definitely not the reason I'd endorsed Cass McCombs in his original artistic campaign.

Honestly, I do not think this album can seriously catch anybody's eye until the seventh song: ʽCrick In My Neckʼ is the first one to have a silly, but fun chorus, focusing on the protagonist's «body problems» preventing him from floating away in his imaginary psychedelic world. At the very least, this tune actually conforms to what we expect of a pop song — all the previous ones, while also pretending to be pop songs, do not. It helps that the song is propelled by a strong beat and plenty of Townshend-esque power chords, but it is the "brother, could you wait a sec? crick in my neck, crick in my neck!" climactic bit that makes all the difference.

From there on, the songwriting seems to take a turn for the better — ʽFull Moon Or Infinityʼ has an exciting contrast between low-key verses, falsetto choruses, and folksy acoustic picking with a troubled message; ʽWindfallʼ is a welcome return to ultra-slow waltzing tempos where Cass' vocal powers are finally laid out for all to see; and ʽWheel Of Fortuneʼ at least has sonic depth, with several layers of instrumental and vocal overdubs, to provide a good finale. I could not describe any of these songs as «outstanding» on any level, but at least they sound like compositions that care about surprising the listener, which is far more than I could say about the first half of the album, with all those telling titles like ʽPetrified Forestʼ (yes, much of that stuff really does sound petrified).

On the whole, Dropping The Writ is an even bigger disappointment than PREfection. Part of the blame, I guess, lies on the strange decision to de-individualize the vocals — there's so much echo, reverb, and other effects placed on them throughout the record, often quite gratuitously, that you almost get the impression of an artist intentionally sabotaging his greatest asset (like Eric Clapton renouncing the status of a guitar god or something like that). Obligatory kudos for trying to branch out, of course, but branching out at the expense of losing something precious without gaining anything is hardly a smart move.

CATACOMBS (2009)

1) Dreams-Come-True-Girl; 2) Prima Donna; 3) You Saved My Life; 4) Don't Vote; 5) The Executioner's Song; 6) Harmonia; 7) My Sister, My Spouse; 8) Lionkiller Got Married; 9) Eavesdropping On The Competition; 10) Jonesy Boy; 11) One Way To Go.

Okay, this may not be the worst pun on one's family name either, but the very fact that Cass now has to rely on puns to spark additional interest in his music is not a good sign. And, unfortunately, the decline continues. Some of the changes might seem auspicious: in contrast with the previous two records, Catacombs moves Cass away from straightforward «pop» or «rock» territory, where he never felt perfectly at home, and back to the original formula of A — meandering, potentially hypnotic singer-songwriting with charm and soul. The bad news, however, is that the magic that I felt so strongly on A is all but lacking on this release, and without the magic spark, everything that Cass does runs the risk of being deadly boring.

One reason behind this might be the musicianship: by now, Cass has a completely different backing band behind his back, and somehow, they don't seem capable of weaving a sonic tapestry that could effectively enhance and amplify McCombs' singing. Actually, they are not even invited to try, because the idea this time seems to be to keep it as stripped down as possible. Where ʽI Went To The Hospitalʼ perfectly introduced A with a dense mix of jangly guitar, omnipresent organ, and fussy percussion, ʽDreams-Come-True-Girlʼ is restricted to a choppy jazz-meets-early-Beatles rhythm pattern and siren-style background cooing from guest star Karen Black, while Cass himself delivers a pleasant, but unexceptional vocal serenade that is not melancholic enough to make you feel compassion and not sweet-tender enough to make you feel warm all over, ʽHere, There And Everywhereʼ style. Just a five-minute long slice of nicety without a sharp chorus, forgettable almost as soon as it over.

Alas, the same judgement applies to almost every other song here. The stripped-down approach to arrangements and the relaxed-nonchalant approach to vocal melodies results in a warm, lazy-day record that might, perhaps, click in some fried-brain-psychedelic manner on a particularly hot afternoon, but even then, only in a slumber-inducing way. The fact that he is back to his repetitive mantras alone is insufficient — stuff like ʽPrima Donnaʼ is basically just dissipated mumble-mumble over three repetitive acoustic chords. And you'd think that a song called ʽYou Saved My Lifeʼ should sound just a wee bit, well, livelier than this creepy-crawly snailish neo-country piece whose only memorable element is an awful adult-contemporary bassline that should have never crept out of the Eighties where it properly belongs.

Perhaps he thinks that, as a singer-songwriter, he may now be excused for writing lazy melodies with lazier arrangements because we should all be concentrating on the words? Well then, I have to say that I'd rather have those old enigmatic lines, open to all sorts of ambiguous interpretations, than stuff like ʽThe Executioner's Songʼ, a typical lyric from which goes "I'm a pretty lucky guy / I love you and I love my job" — and a typical melodic or vocal hook from which does not go at all. And these boring songs just get longer and longer: ʽHarmoniaʼ is, like, six minutes of boring acoustic strum and country slide guitars that rolls along with all the excitement of riding an aged burro through some interminable cotton field.

Tiny signs of life begin to appear towards the end: ʽMy Sister, My Spouseʼ, besides a somewhat controversial title, finally has Cass adopting a sharper, nastier vocal tone, for the first time reminding me of why I'd fallen for his spell in the first place — there's a sense of mysterious menace in the song, and since it is as sparsely arranged as everything else (just drums, acoustic guitar, and a few ghostly backing vocals), I have to conclude that, after all, it is not so much the fault of the musicians as it is the fault of Cass himself that the record on the whole sounds so lethargic. But then, once again, he decides to sound not like himself but rather like Leonard Cohen (ʽEavesdropping On The Competitionʼ) or, God knows why, like The Band (ʽJonesy Boyʼ), before turning into The Avett Brothers for a last goodbye (ʽOne Way To Goʼ). Why? God only knows. Perhaps somebody just hypnotized him and put him on autopilot for these sessions.

Thus, unfortunately, we observe a clear case of «losing it» — one or two decent tracks among a sea of throwaways that give no reason whatsoever for the recognition of the well-deserved autonomous existence of Cass McCombs, a creative artist in his own rights. (Writing a follow-up to ʽLionkillerʼ called ʽLionkiller Got Marriedʼ is not a reason, either — it's a fine pretext to remind you of a Cass McCombs predecessor from long ago and far away, called Buddy Holly, but in this case, it's hardly a flattering comparison, because Buddy Holly's songwriting was never as lazy as McCombs' is on this album). Of course, the PitchforkMedia reviewer wasted no time in calling this record McCombs' «best ever», but apparently, he was seduced by the directness and sincerity of the album — reportedly written as a tribute to Cass' wife — whereas I, on the contrary, am almost offended by these same qualities. See, a serenade is always a nice gesture in theory, but it shouldn't be a given that if you write a serenade to your wife, it should instantaneously bump you up a notch in the critical conscience. My position is firm and simple — Cass McCombs sucks as a lovey-dovey acoustic troubadour, and deserves a thumbs down for this shift.

WIT'S END (2011)

1) County Line; 2) The Lonely Doll; 3) Buried Alive; 4) Saturday Song; 5) Memory's Stain; 6) Hermit's Cave; 7) Pleasant Shadow Song; 8) A Knock Upon The Door.

In 2011, Cass McCombs released two complete albums — one that, according to him, was thought out slowly and meticulously, and another that was punched out more or less instantaneously. And I do believe that with the first notes of Wit's End, it becomes easy to guess which one was which without having to listen to the second one — the words «slow» and «dreary» do not even begin to describe the lethargic coma that it is capable of inducing.

Now, of all people, I shouldn't be the one to be complaining about lethargy in reference to a Cass McCombs record. I mean, I was totally seduced by the multi-layered, aching, almost transcendental lethargy of A, and all through the next three albums I kept complaining how any attempt to introduce some energy, speed, and classic pop hookiness into his songs only detract from his strongest talents — so nothing could be more fine than a full return to the slowcore formula of A, right?.. Well, turns out it depends on certain conditions.

Take the second song here, ʽThe Lonely Dollʼ. It's five and a half minutes of a slow, never-changing acoustic waltz, accompanied, I believe, by a soothing celesta, so that you could be plunged into a bit of a «dollhouse magic» state — and with quasi-autobiographical lyrics that tell of the protagonist's relation with "a singing doll and her grievous call". Nice? Nice. But five and a half minutes? If anything, the song sounds like a minimalist version of Dylan's ʽ4th Time Aroundʼ, borrowing the same vocal arrangement (in fact, I'm almost sure Bob could sue if he wanted to), but with less attractive lyrics, less intricate musical texture, and set at an even slower tempo. And the worst thing about it is, it does not cast a magic spell. It simply feels too obvious, and Cass' vocals have become so sweet and smooth by now, you could almost mistake him for James friggin' Taylor — who needs it?

The whole record is a collection of similar lullabies, some of them crossing the seven minute border: ʽMemory's Stainʼ is a particular offender, being also set to waltz tempo and eventually just settling down into a snail-paced ambient instrumental, where a piano and a bass clarinet duet with each other in some parallel universe where five seconds of their time is one minute in ours. And wherever you go, you find McCombs singing in the same quiet, semi-whispered manner, intentionally avoiding anything that could be construed as emotional sharpness. This could be legit if the songs weren't so lazy — but McCombs is not a great composer, and all of these chord sequences you've already heard millions of times before, and now that he is focused on keeping his arrangements as sparse as possible, always centered around a simplistic piano or acoustic guitar part... really, whenever this album is at its worst (and that happens quite often), it is simply impossible to treat it as anything more than background ambience.

I count exactly two songs here that I wouldn't mind hearing again. The opener, ʽCounty Lineʼ, shares the typical flaws of the album — slow, lethargic, criminally underarranged — but, perhaps by accident, it falls upon a great descending chord change right at the beginning: "on my way to you, old county", he sings, and then plunges downwards: "...hoping nothing's changed", with an air of bleakness and a sense of black depth from which you know that everything's changed, and few of it for the better. Later on, he continues adding great touches to the performance, using all of his typical range tricks, from baritone to falsetto, and that proverbial heart-tug is there all right. Alas, the next six songs have absolutely none of that — and in order to get to the album's second relative success, you have to allow for a 30-minute nap on the couch.

That second relative success is once again Dylan-related, because it's sort of an attempt to create his own equivalent of ʽDesolation Rowʼ. Yes, you guessed right: the song goes on for almost 10 minutes (and wouldn't you know it, it's another waltz!), with eight verses (should be ten — the Dylan song has ten), each of which ends with the declamation of the song's title, ʽA Knock Upon The Doorʼ. The lyrics are just as impenetrable (maybe even more impenetrable), but there's some sense of humor here, and a whiff of intrigue and mystery as opposed to nothing but somnambulance on the previous six songs. Needless to say, the 10-minute length is still excruciating for such simplicity and such slowness, and it is all the more frustrating when you think that, had he only brought back the multi-layered baroque arrangements of A, he might have totally gotten away with it (remember that with Dylan, for instance, much of the saving grace of ʽSad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlandsʼ was provided by the energetic and dense backing band). Still, perhaps it is precisely the song length that at least makes certain there's some impression of the song back in your head once the album is over.

On the whole, how could I defend this? It's almost as if the guy got so totally self-confident, he now believes that an album without interesting melodies, without creative and complex arrangements, with intentionally lazy singing, with ridiculously outstretched song lengths, and with arrogantly obvious Dylanisms will suffice to get fan support and rave reviews in the indie press (and it did: "the enigmatic singer-songwriter returns with a dark set of songs backed by spare instrumentation and crafts what might be his best LP yet" — our friends from PitchforkMedia), mostly centered around the lyrics and their sad sad sad tales of loneliness, depression, and nostalgia. And hey, I love sad sad sad tales of loneliness, depression, and nostalgia, but goddammit, there's so many of them on the market already... and just as we'd finally found a guy who could seemingly tell them in a fresh, unconventional manner, he goes all lazy and generic on us. And no, scattered lyrical references to Abelard, Admiral Byrd, and Memphis-huckster-Hitler-hustler do not really count as redemptive factors, so a thumbs down it is. Talk about a self-referential LP title — what a bummer.

HUMOR RISK (2011)

1) Love Thine Enemy; 2) The Living Word; 3) The Same Thing; 4) To Every Man His Chimera; 5) Robin Egg Blue; 6) Mystery Mail; 7) Meet Me At The Mannequin Gallery; 8) Mariah.

McCombs' second album, in his own words, was "just punched out", and it certainly sounds like that. If the ultimate keywords for Wit's End were «slow, draggy, and atmospheric», then Humor Risk clearly tries to restore the balance with «upbeat, loud, and energetic». Unfortunately, that does not make it much of an improvement over its more pensive and serious older brother. It only makes it more obvious how annoying McCombs can get when he is not really trying.

Let us keep it clean and precise. Cass has always had and still has his way with words. You take a song like ʽLove Thine Enemyʼ and just look at the lyrics — and there are some sharp contrasts there, like "Every idiot thing you say speaks of pain and truth / Because of the beautiful way your tongue can seduce". He walks a nice thin line between the mystical sarcasm of Dylan and the heart-on-sleeve attitude of simplistic indie writers, provoking and challenging at least a little bit in almost every song. But his singing, so magical at times on A, has all but deteriorated to a monotonous murmur; and as for the music, the song has little going for it other than a distorted three-chord rock riff. Does that suffice to count for «enchantment»? Sorry, no.

Some people have compared his attitude on this tune to the classic sounds of The Velvet Underground — this is very, very silly, in my opinion, but since the comparison has been made, it makes sense to make use of it and remind everybody that on classic simple VU rockers, as monotonous as they could be, the atmosphere was generated by the total unity of purpose between all of the song's elements. You had a nasty guitar sound, a nasty vocalist, and some nasty lyrics that, taken together, generated Rebel Art like crazy. But in ʽLove Thine Enemyʼ, the primal power of the distorted riff is wasted — it does not really click in perfection with the lyrics or the vocals or the rest of the arrangement. It's just there because Cass likes to give us a bit of simplistic rock riffage from time to time, to establish a connection with the old punk spirit despite not having a punk spirit himself.

It gets worse, much worse on ʽMystery Mailʼ. At least ʽLove Thine Enemyʼ is short, but this other song, riding a half-century old chord sequence without any variety whatsoever, goes on for eight minutes. I don't know if the story about «Daniel» and his unfortunate experiments with drugs and the law is autobiographical, or allegorical, or culled from real or fictional sources, or is just some homage to a Springsteen or a Tom Petty ballad, and I certainly do not care to know: all I know is that the whole thing is mind-numbingly boring. (It also rips off its vocal intro and outro from Blondie's ʽThe Hardest Partʼ — bet that is a bit of exclusive trivia you won't find anywhere else in the world other than on Only Solitaire). Is this art? Is this entertainment? Is this meaningful self-expression? Is this a triumph of freedom, when you can just walk into the studio, record any tripe that comes into your head on the spur of the moment and release it publicly, knowing full well that, no matter what you do, out of 7 billion people on this planet, there's bound to be at least a couple hundred thousand who will fall for it?..

I will admit that ʽThe Same Thingʼ, ʽTo Every Man His Chimeraʼ, ʽMeet Me At The Mannequin Galleryʼ and the creaky lo-fi album closer ʽMariahʼ all have some pretty vocal moments. ʽThe Same Thingʼ has a Lennon-like aura to its echoey, double-tracked vocals, but I'm talking of one phrase here — one vocal phrase repeated over and over and over for six minutes (except for the bridge sections that are nowhere near as moody). ʽTo Every Manʼ has one lovely chord change that you will already hear around 0:40 during the instrumental introduction — to get them in the vocal version, you will have to endure about a minute of super-slow, super-sparse indie-bluesy lethargic playing for each one. (As a consolation bonus, you will be pleased to learn that "California makes me sick / Like trying with a rattlesnake your teeth to pick" — a bit of Latin poetry syntax here, but quite expressive imagery all the same). And ʽMariahʼ manages to turn this particular proper name into a seductive vocal hook, rhyming it with ʽdesireʼ, ʽthe fireʼ, ʽnever tiresʼ, ʽtake me higherʼ, and even ʽinside herʼ, but even this really pretty acoustic ballad is spoiled by the idiotic lo-fi production, burying it in white noise just because we somehow have to go on and simulate the lack of access to a normal studio environment.

As far as I'm concerned, this is not a case of a talented artist suddenly (or gradually) deprived of his talent by illness, dementia, or commercial pressure. This is a case of a talented person intentionally wasting his talent on adaptation to the stereotypical image of an «indie artist» — you know, one for whom «sincerity» and «telling it like it is, but from your own and nobody else's individual perspective» means everything, while everything else (original melody, fresh arrangement, musicality as such) means nothing. In other words, a case of crapola that deserves a very harsh thumbs down, and serves as a good example, I believe, of the overall unhealthy influence of «artistic expectations» on people who could do much, much better.

BIG WHEEL & OTHERS (2013)

1) Sean I; 2) Big Wheel; 3) Angel Blood; 4) Morning Star; 5) The Burning Of The Temple, 2012; 6) Brighter!; 7) There Can Be Only One; 8) Name Written In Water; 9) Joe Murder; 10) Everything Has To Be Just-So; 11) It Means A Lot To Know You Care; 12) Dealing; 13) Sooner Cheat Death Than Fool Love; 14) Satan Is My Toy; 15) Sean II; 16) Home On The Range; 17) Brighter!; 18) Untitled Spain Song; 19) Sean III; 20) Honesty Is No Excuse; 21) Aeon Of Aquarius Blues; 22) Unearthed.

I wonder if I should or should not go the «ambitious is always good» route here? After all, it is not true that this last decade is completely free of grand, larger-than-thou musical gestures: from Arcade Fire and all the way to Kanye West, people are still trying to bite off more than they can chew, even as natural selection causes their jaws to keep shrinking with each new generation. And after a string of serious musical disappointments, could it be the right decision for Cass McCombs to gamble it all on a sprawling, two-disc collection of twenty songs in half a dozen different musical styles, presenting his own, contemporary mega-take on Americana?..

As usual, the absolute majority of other people's positive opinions that I have seen focus almost exclusively on the lyrics. And they are really good lyrics, yes: the man is now capable even of finding a non-clichéd way to deliver a sermon on the age-old problem of peace, love, and mutual understanding (ʽEverything Has To Be Just-Soʼ), let alone continuing to find fresh metaphors to lay on the age-older problem of him-and-her (ʽSooner Cheat Death Than Fool Loveʼ) or, incidentally, deliver some of the most viciously offensive anti-religious (anti-clerical, to be accurate) chastushkas to come out of the progressive camp (ʽSatan Is My Toyʼ), though you have to listen really carefully to get it. And you have to listen even more carefully, sometimes, to understand if he is using redneck imagery directly and scornfully, or as a metaphor for something completely different altogether (ʽBig Wheelʼ). Anyway, the guy continues to be a good poet...

...but does he continue to be a good musician? That's a far more difficult question. Despite the sprawling length of this collection, it manages to avoid both the unending lethargy of Wit's End and the simplistic repetitive crudeness of Humor Risk. With a couple tolerable exceptions, the songs do not seriously overstay their welcome, run along at steady, energetic rootsy tempos, and occasionally feature vocal and instrumental pop hooks, so it's not really much of a chore sitting through all of this in one go. And, as somewhat inferior, derivative resuscitations of age-honored musical styles, they work all right. ʽBig Wheelʼ will appeal to anybody who'd like to know how Chuck Berry would sound when played by Fairport Convention (but with musicianship that would probably make Richard Thompson cringe). ʽAngel Bloodʼ and a whole bunch of other country-tinged tracks here will warm the heart of all Gram Parsons fans (on the whole, I'd say that Gram Parsons could all but be proclaimed this record's mascot). ʽJoe Murderʼ is Joy Division bleakness peppered with avantgarde sax blasts à la original King Crimson. ʽDealingʼ and a couple more acoustic ballads recycle the old Donovan / ʽDear Prudenceʼ chord sequences... all in all, these reworked influences are okay, and it is clear that Cass is not interested in pushing any boundaries — he just wants himself some tasteful backdrops for his statements.

Which, much as I am trying to fight this, inevitably brings us back to the lyrics and the whole conceptual shenanigan — especially since the album is introduced (and then twice more interrupted) with bits of dialog sampled from the 1969 documentary Sean, a series of dialogs between a filmmaker and a 4-year old kid raised by his hippie parents in Haight-Ashbury (apparently, Cass had been a fan of the documentary for quite a long time, since some of his songs were used for the soundtrack of a follow-up, Following Sean, as early as 2005). Given that the dialog reveals the little boy to be a grass smoker, a police-hater, and a God denier, you could say that Big Wheel & Others revolves around some sort of anti-establishment frame, but Cass is too smart and too hip to come out with any unambiguous judgements... too smart and hip, really, so much so that, ultimately, the record still suffers from a certain emotional vacuum. Is he angry? Is he sad? Is he from another planet? Is he just telling it like it is? Does he agree with Sean on all the philosophical points the boy makes? Does he eat grass, or smoke it? Who knows?

Anyway, I'd be totally wasted if I started waxing philosophical over all these songs, so let's just skip over to the last one — you know, the coda, the finale, the denouement, the unveiling of The Truth, whatever, and hey, it's called ʽUnearthedʼ, so it might really reveal something. What have we got here? Acoustic, slightly lo-fi, slow ballad, "it won't be too long, it won't be too long", so there's some sort of blind prophet apocalypse vibe... "I moved 75 thousand tons of earth with my teeth... I met a toad that belched up a bottle" (this is sung a bit close to the motif of ʽA Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fallʼ), "and in the bottle was a note, a note I knew you wrote... how come you keep your true feelings so well hidden?". Uh... that's it? This is how our long journey ends? This is why I had to sit through nine minutes of ʽEverything Has To Be Just-Soʼ and seven minutes of ʽHome On The Rangeʼ? Boy, what a downer.

The biggest problem with the album is that it is long, it is meandering, it is trying to tell us something important — and it never really seems to understand what it is trying to tell us. It's one of those respectable, but wasted efforts where the smart artist outsmarts himself by focusing too much on his own enigma. On the bright side of things, it is a sort-of-timeless statement that is in no way bound hands-and-feet to the year or decade in which it was released, so who knows? perhaps, in fifty years time or less, critics will dig it out, dust it off, and declare it a major masterpiece that was way ahead of its time, a time when reviewers either praised it without understanding it (like the Pitchfork people) or simply confessed to not understanding it (like yours truly). But my guess is that even fifty years from now, Big Wheel & Others will, at the very best, be one of those albums that everybody tips a hat to for the effort but nobody really listens to because it all kind of seems more impressive on paper than in the air.

MANGY LOVE (2016)

1) Bum Bum Bum; 2) Rancid Girl; 3) Laughter Is The Best Medicine; 4) Opposite House; 5) Medusa's Outhouse; 6) Low Flyin' Bird; 7) Cry; 8) Run Sister Run; 9) In A Chinese Alley; 10) It; 11) Switch; 12) I'm A Shoe.

Still padded to some extent, but on the whole, Mangy Love is probably the single most coherent and straightforward body of depressed pop songs in McCombs' entire career so far. The most striking thing about it is how evenly balanced it is — not too fast, not too slow, not too hooky, not too hookless, not too ravaging, not too lethargic, not too lyrically obscure, not too verbally simplistic. Under different circumstances, this might have meant a very boring, ordinary, white-noise-like experience. But Cass spent so much time trying to «distinguish» himself with rub-it-in-yer-face minimalistic gimmicks that it all sounds good now. It's like a, «what, you mean there's not a single eight-minute long, two-chord wide, totally lyric-oriented ballad on the album? Oh, blessed be the ways of the Lord!»

There's plenty of darkness, for sure, but darkness is hardly a gimmick in an era where more and more people begin to realize that darkness never really went away, it simply camouflaged itself for a while. The first song on Mangy Love is about unstoppable bloodshed; the last song is about getting out of this place and lying low; and in between are ten more odes to depression, repression, oppression, and suppression. (I think that ʽSwitchʼ is the sole attempt to write something a little more cheerful, like an homage to romantic Eighties' pop à la Duran Duran, but in the context of the album, even that song feels dark and cold). Since, as usual, the arrangements are quite low-key, and the lyrics require an almost philological degree of analysis to be decrypted, there is no chance whatsoever of mass success, but at least he won't be pissing off people with low attention spans for repetitive simplicity masked as poignant art.

Genre-wise, he still hops from one corner to another. We have some rough, distorted blues-rock (ʽRancid Girlʼ, with a nasty Seventies-style distorted riff and oddly retro-stylized misogynistic lyrics); an attempt to put bossa nova rhythmics at the service of political paranoia and aggravation (ʽRun Sister Runʼ — this one, on the contrary, contains explicit feminist elements, culminating in "between me and my brother stands our sister, don't shoot!"); what sounds like a bona fide tribute to the classic Smiths sound (ʽIn A Chinese Alleyʼ — the only thing missing is Cass adopting the vocal mannerisms of Morrissey); and a lite-jazz / folk-rock hybrid with arguably the loveliest vocal melody on the whole album — ʽLow Flyin' Birdʼ has a gorgeous chorus that has me wondering, again and again, why McCombs does not resort to that falsetto more often.

In a way, the record feels like a short musical summary of several distinct styles popular in the late Seventies and early Eighties — on one song he sounds like a jaded, sold-out prog-rocker trying to survive in a new world, then on the next one he sounds like a young aspiring musician trying to take an active part in the dance or synth-pop revolution. Actually, the first description probably applies to more songs here than the second one: much of Mangy Love gives me the same intuitive impression as late-period albums from bands like Camel or Caravan, tiptoeing on one foot across the border of miserably empathetic and smoothly boring. The saving grace is that Cass really bothers about his hooks this time: almost every song has something to offer in the area of vocal hooks, even dance-pop numbers such as ʽCryʼ and ʽSwitchʼ.

The main problem, however, never goes away: the album clearly wants to make a big statement, but there seems to be no other way to make it than run it through some complex cloaking mechanism that makes protest songs into invisible protest songs and anthems into un-anthems. A song like ʽItʼ, for instance, is slow, ponderous, employs big gospel-like vocal harmonies, and even opens with lines that come dangerously close to clichés (at least, by McCombs' own standards): "It is not wealth / To have more than others / It is not peace / When others are in pain" (DUH). But if it is an anthem, and if it seems to be directed at arousing our emotions and empathies, why the hell is it so lethargic? Why are the main vocals sung as if he were dictating a paper to his secretary? Where are the bombastic guitar breaks? Why does the gospel choir never ever come out of the shadow? It's a good, melodic piece that would not have lost any of its charm if it were a little... you know... amplified. As it is, it is not likely to replace George Harrison's ʽIsn't It A Pityʼ in my «Cry For The World» playlist any time soon.

Nevertheless, it, and the rest of it, is good enough to warrant a thumbs up from me — I'd really go as far as to say that it is his second best album of all time, though still a far cry from the stroke of luck that was A. Apparently, as long as he stays away from the temptation to keep on pulling off a 21st century Dylan, and remains content to pull a 21st century mix of Andy Latimer and Morrissey, it'll work.