music reviews

For some reason (well, sale prices helped) I’ve gone on a compilation-buying binge lately, having grabbed the following greatest hits/best of collections:

• Elton John, Diamonds
• Madonna, The Immaculate Collection
• Neil Young, Greatest Hits
• Elvis: 30 #1 Hits
• Don Henley, Actual Miles: Henley’s Greatest Hits

A bit of an eclectic mix and my first purchases of anything by Madonna, Elvis or Don Henley (if you exclude The Eagles). The songs collected on these albums span 60 (!) years, from 1956 to 2016. All of Elvis’s output alone is more than 40 years old, what with him having died in 1977 and all.

I suppose I truly became a gay man when I bought the Madonna collection. I’d come across both “Live to Tell” and “Papa Don’t Preach” on YouTube recently and remembered how catchy those old songs were and then I suddenly owned them. The whole album is a confident, concise set of well-crafted pop songs. Even “Like a Virgin” doesn’t sound as dirty as I remember it. Maybe I’m thinking more of the video, where Madonna writhes around on the floor in a wedding dress. She’d probably put her back out doing the same thing now.

The Elvis collection is a paean to how short singles used to be, with the majority of the songs clocking under three minutes and some under two. The delivery, especially on some of the earliest tunes, is still delightfully saucy more than half a century later.

Neil Young’s collection is alternately beautiful, angry and heartfelt. The ending tracks of “Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World” and “Harvest Moon” is like getting punched in the gut, then being gently kissed after.

Henley’s music is a bit disappointing in how much it’s a product of its time, with the tracks heavy on the 80s synths. Some genuinely good work, though, even if the sound is dated (does not include “The Garden of Allah”).

John’s collection is massive and sprawling, covering 46 years on its own. That he is still able to write solid songs nearly five decades later is kind of amazing. I wonder if he ever goes, “Neener neener” to Billy Joel when they tour together (Joel released less than half as many albums over his career).

Anyway, maybe I’ll buy something this year that is actually recorded this year. In the meantime I’ve got nostalgia up to the armpits.

This is an incomplete ranking as it doesn’t include any of Joel’s live albums nor does it feature his first three releases, Cold Spring Harbor (1971), Piano Man (1973) and Streetlife Serenade (1974) or his classical album, Fantasies and Delusions (2001). That still leaves nine studio albums, spanning the years 1977-1993.

I discovered Joel when a lot of people did, when he hit it big with The Stranger in 1977. The first album of his I owned (back when vinyl wasn’t cool, it was just the format every record store sold) was 1978’s 52nd Street, which went on to win a Grammy for Album of the Year. I loved what I heard and bought every album after until he retired from recording new music in 1993.

Billy Joel knows melody. He knows hooks. He knows how to write super-slick pop songs that can transcend that slickness to become something more. He also indulges himself regularly, a veritable Renaissance Man on some albums, shifting from Broadway-style show tunes to smoky ballads to jazzy riffs and effervescent pop. Sometimes it feels like he’s gleefully showing off and it works. Sometimes, less so. Here’s how I rank those nine albums, from best to worst.

First, let me say this is trickier than it seems because while I definitely think there are weaker albums in this mix, the better ones are fairly consistent, meaning the top five are almost interchangeable (while being quite different from each other, a nice trick).

1. The Nylon Curtain (1982). After his divorce, Joel channels The Beatles and gets serious. He stretches out vocally and writes on weighty topics, covering the Vietnam war, the collapse of the industrial economy in the U.S. and more. It’s an album filled with anxiety and regret, of faint hopes and dashed dreams. It’s not exactly feel-good material. But at its best the music shimmers and soars and Joel moves from one style to another with purpose. The first half particularly stands out, with “Allentown”, “Pressure” and “Laura”–another one of Joel’s poison pen letters to a demanding, damaged and imaginary (I hope) lover.
2. Glass Houses (1980). This is almost the literal opposite to The Nylon Curtain, a big arena-friendly album in which Joel tries to rock out. I say try because this is still pop, but it’s meatier than usual. There’s usually a little filler on every Joel album, but Glass Houses is incredibly tight, its scant 35 minute run time moving quickly from one song to the next. There are a few ballads here and they are lovely, but the album is driven by propulsive songs like “All for Leyna” and “Sometimes a Fantasy.”
3. 52nd Street (1978). The first half is particularly strong, starting with the in-your-face “Big Shot” and ending with the jazzy tones of “Zanzibar.” The second half features some fine music, too, but the epic “Until the Night” is undercut by Joel’s lyrical weaknesses. His musings on women feel dated or old-fashioned if you’re feeling charitable.
4. The Stranger (1977). In some ways this is a better album than 52nd Street but it’s hurt by having several weaker songs padding it out. Some might call it heresy but I have never liked the schmaltzy “Just the Way You Are” and the closer “Everybody Has a Dream” is probably the least memorable finale on Joel’s albums. On the plus side, the Broadway-style production of “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” is great fun and “The Stranger” is a perfect blend of music and lyric, right down to the creepy whistle that opens and closes the song.
5. An Innocent Man (1983). A love letter to his then girlfriend Christie Brinkley, this throwback to the sound of the late 50s and early 60s is Joel at his most joyful and relaxed. The songs are like a bowl of candy, sweet little confections, from the rousing “Uptown Girl” to the somewhat preachy yet undeniably catchy “Tell Her About It.” My favorite is probably the wistful title track.
6. Turnstiles (1976). There are a number of good songs on this album and I happen to find the cynical tone of “Angry Young Man” amusing specifically because of Joel’s delivery (which I think was deliberate) but a number of the tracks are also featured on the live “Songs in the Attic (1981) and they are more vital in their live versions, notably “Say Goodbye to Hollywood,” which benefits from the string section being excised and “Miami 2017” (whose doomsday vision of the future only has one year to become reality).
7. River of Dreams (1993). His last pop album of new material and coming 22 years after his first, River of Dreams finds Joel angry in “The Great Wall of China” and “No Man’s Land” then showing a tender side as father in “Lullabye.” There’s more filler than usual here but as a send-off, it’s not bad at all.
8. Stormfront (1989). I rank this lower than River of Dreams simply because more of the songs are less memorable and it’s rather dated now. “We Didn’t Start the Fire” is catchy but superficial and “When in Rome” is one of my favorite Joel songs to skip. For some reason it just grates.
9. The Bridge (1986). A number of songs here are quite catchy but the album is rife with affectations, mostly in Joel’s vocalizations. He performs a duet with Ray Charles and mimics Ray Charles. He adopts a falsetto in “Big Man on Mulberry Street” because he can and “Modern Woman” is a song I simply can’t stand. The whole album feels indulgent, further brought down by weaker tracks that surround the set pieces.

Some of the music I jog to is over 50 years old. Does that seem weird?

If someone in 1940 could have jogged to music, would they have jogged to music from 1890? Did they even have music back then? Maybe they just beat sticks on rocks or rocks on other rocks. Perhaps these rocks sometimes rolled away, leading to the birth of rock and roll.

Anyway, it occurred to me that I have largely entered the phase of life where nostalgia and seeking comfort in things from olden times begins to dominate, and this is reflected in my recent music purchases. I will point out I have at least moved from purchasing my music on 8-track cassette to digital format. Here are my last three purchases, the newest of which was released 28 years ago, predating the birth of some of my co-workers.

Breakfast in America – Supertramp (1979). My defense is I never previously owned a Supertramp album, this one is considered a classic, and there’s something about the sweep of the Wurlitzer electric piano and guitar in the chorus of “The Logical Song” that I find especially groovy. But yes, the album is 36 years old. Carter was still president.

Kick – INXS (1987). My defense is I never previously owned an INXS album. I never particularly wanted to, either, but Kick is one of those albums where a band, through some combination of luck, circumstance and talent, manages to put together a collection of songs that are nearly perfect in achieving what the band wanted. The album is loaded with pop gems and is a lot smarter than you’d expect from such a slick bunch of songs. The videos, most of them recorded in Prague, are just as confidently-shot as the music was produced.

In the Eye of the Storm – Roger Hodgson (1984). The first solo album from Supertramp co-founder and co-lead singer. The album and lead single “Had a Dream” were both hits in Canada and the single is what drove me to pick up the album. The whole album is quite good and feels like Supertramp with some of the art rock sensibilities sprinkled back in. “Had a Dream” builds through a long effects-laden intro and is as cynical as it is catchy. The video ponderously delivers its message, perilously toeing the line between “serious” and accidental self-parody. At one point a fetus is floating in space, 2001-esque, and then, matching Hodgson’s scream on the song, there’s a flash of lightning and the baby suddenly becomes Hodgson, floating naked and screaming in space. It’s possibly even worse than it sounds. Other parts of the video feature Hodgson fake-running while wearing nothing but a loincloth. I don’t know, either. Maybe it was a dream he had.

Between 1976 and 1987 The Alan Parsons Project released ten albums, not bad for a band that was never really a band. As so often in my youth I was late to the scene of this prog rock outfit that featured catchy pop songs often backed by a full orchestra, coming in on their seventh album, 1984’s Ammonia Avenue (thanks to the video for “Don’t Answer Me”.) I bought their next three albums and then the project broke up, with Parsons going off to actually tour the songs he’d been recording for the past decade and his partner Eric Woolfson turning to musicals. I always kind of hoped they’d reunite one last time for another project but that never happened before Woolfson’s death in 2009.

I’ve also been a sucker for pop music backed by an orchestra, but it can be done well and it can be done very badly. The Alan Parsons Project, thanks in large part to Andrew Powell’s orchestrations, managed to wed the two types of music together in a complementary manner. I’m not a musicologist so I can’t really describe it better than that.

In any case, here’s how I rank their ten albums.

1. Eye in the Sky (1982). The first half of this album is a seamless, perfect blend of every strength the project had, opening with the evocative (and to sports fans, very familiar) instrumental “Sirius” before moving on to the hit “Eye in the Sky” and closing with the semi-epic “Silence and I.” For an example of how effective Powell’s orchestrations were, listen to the guide vocal by Eric Woolfson of the same track on the remastered album, which doesn’t include the orchestration. The second half of the album is less substantial but still includes the excellent instrumental “Mammagamma” and closer “Old and Wise.”
2. The Turn of a Friendly Card (1980). This album serves as a kind of blueprint for Eye in the Sky, but the strengths of the albums are reversed, with the latter half of Turn being the stronger. There is a tone of melancholy and regret that flows through the songs, even if they are sometimes close to danceable (“Games People Play”). The opener “May Be a Price to Pay” opens with a stirring trumpet fanfare. How can you not like that?
3. Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1976). Many would consider it heresy to not put this at #1 (including Parsons himself) but I feel this album doesn’t quite line up all the pieces of the project as effectively as later albums would. Still, it carries the theme of Poe’s work effectively and the remastered version that restores Orson Welle’s narration and adds a bridging “cathedral organ” turns the effort into a whole rather than two halves. While the project would never mount an epic instrumental like “The Fall of the House of Usher” again, it’s interesting to have here, even if it doesn’t mesh overly well with the other more pop-oriented songs.
4. Ammonia Avenue (1984). This is more or less Eye in the Sky, Part 2, but it’s such an incredibly slick effort you can’t deny the attempt to recapture the previous album. There are standout tracks, from the wall of sound of “Don’t Answer Me” to the stirring title track. Maybe one of the strengths of the album is that none of the songs particularly feel like filler.
5. Pyramid (1978). Some consider this effort slight but I’m a sucker for the theme and like Ammonia Avenue, I don’t feel there are any weak tracks. Perhaps to its detriment there also aren’t any real standouts, either, but the whole album is less than 38 minutes long, so it’s never a major commitment. My favorite songs here are opposites: the dramatic (melodramatic?) instrumental “In the Lap of the Gods,” complete with shouting choir and the utterly silly “Pyramania,” featuring the project’s only tuba solo.
6. Eve (1979). This is an odd album in that most of the songs are openly hostile to women, yet the album ends with two sung by female vocalists that come across as apologies for everything before them. I doubt the album would be recorded with the same lyrics today. That said, the instrumentals are again excellent, with “Secret Garden” featuring an effervescent Beach Boys-inspired harmonizing and the opener “Lucifer” setting an appropriately dark tone for what’s to come.
7. I Robot (1977). More heresy, as this is often ranked as one of the project’s top albums but I’ve always found some of the tracks too meandering and unfocused, particularly the instrumentals (excepting the title track). “Don’t Let It Show” (later covered by Pat Benatar, of all people) and “Breakdown” are my favorites here.
8. Stereotomy (1986). By the mid-80s the project seems like it’s running out of steam. Powell’s orchestrations are minimal here and while the title track and instrumental “Where’s the Walrus?” are fine, a lot of the remainder, like “In the Real World,” feel by the numbers.
9. Gaudi (1987). Again the orchestrations are very light here, though deployed effectively, especially the horns on the closing instrumental “Paseo de Gracia” and the opener “La Sagrada Familia.” The theme of Gaudi’s work and life elevates the album somewhat but it feels more like flourishes here and there rather than part of a cohesive whole. Some of the songs are slick but forgettable (“Too Late”, “Money Talks.”)
10. Vulture Culture (1985). Andrew Powell was working with a number of project members on the music for the film Ladyhawke and as a result this is the only project album that features no orchestration. In its place is keyboards. Lots and lots of keyboards. The songs are solid but unspectacular, the whole thing feels nothing more than “nice.” The remastered re-release includes the acoustic track “No Answers Only Questions,” a song that would have rounded out the rest of the album on original release.

By happenstance I happened across a post in the Random Thoughts and Questions thread on Broken Forum where someone mentioned a song they had been listening to called “Papa Was a Rodeo”. They had linked the YouTube video (as I have below) and at first I gave it little thought. Most people on BF don’t post about music in the random thoughts thread because there is another dedicated to posting all about your favorite bands I’ve never heard of and will never listen to.

Papa Was a Rodeo is a song from a band that falls into this category, an indie group called The Magnetic Fields.

I returned back to the post because the name of the song did kind of intrigue me and I found the name of the band interesting.

The first thirty seconds of the song I was struck by how tuneless the singer’s voice seemed. Something kept me listening, though, and I realized the slow, stately rhythm of the song had hooked me. (I later found the frontman of the group Stephin Merritt has an untrained voice.)

One catchy song does not a great band make yet I still found myself buying the box set featuring “Papa Was a Rodeo”, a sprawling three disc album called 69 Love Songs. The nice thing about buying your music digitally is I don’t have to worry about losing any of the discs or misplacing the box.

I kind of miss having the box, actually.

The album covers a wide range of musical styles and features multiple vocalists, though Merritt dominates. The lyrics are dry, sardonic, bitter and even occasionally tender. This is a perfect example of having a hunch, taking a chance and having it pay off. I haven’t even gotten to the third disc yet and love this giant mess of songs about love (which is different than love songs, as Merritt would remind you). Definitely recommended.