Over what will likely be the next few years I’m going to be ranking and reviewing the top 5 albums - plus a whole heap of others - according to users on rateyourmusic.com (think IMDB for music) from every year from 1960 to the present. If you want to know more, I wrote an introduction to the ‘challenge’ here. You can also read all the other entries I’ve written so far by heading to the lovely index page here.

So before we take a look at the music of 1971, let’s look at a sprinkling of the year’s events. So, Nixon ended the US trade embargo towards China, the voting age in the US was lowered to 18, the Doors singer Jim Morrison died aged 27, Intel introduced the first microprocessor and the current decimalised currency replaced the old shilling nonsense in the UK.

Now onto the important stuff, music. What did our trusty rateyourmusic.com users vote as 1971’s top 5 albums?

#1 Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV
#2 Black Sabbath - Master of Reality
#3 Can - Tago Mago
#4 Pink Floyd - Meddle
#5 Marvin Gaye - What’s Going On

Regulars Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Black Sabbath are back, We’ve also got Marvin Gaye’s first appearance, and the first of a few entries from Can.

And let’s grab a few from further down the list to throw in too:

#6 David Bowie - Hunky Dory
#7 The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers
#8 The Who - Who’s Next
#9 Joni Mitchell - Blue
#11 Alice Coltrane - Journey in Satchidananda
#36 Carole King - Tapestry

Ok, that’s 11 to get through for 1971. Here’s my thoughts and ranking of the above albums.

MasterofReality — 11. Master of Reality

Black Sabbath

The Sabbath are back with their third album, a record which - according to Wikipedia - is ‘regarded by some critics as the foundation of doom metal, stoner rock, and sludge metal.’ Now generally seen as one of the best heavy metal albums of all time, it wasn’t received so warmly on its initial release in 1971.

One thing that’s immediately clear as the opening Sweet Leaf barrages its way into your ears is that Mr Iommi - it’s his coughing you can hear, shortly after Osbourne had given him a large joint - hasn’t lost any of the insane riff skills he demonstrated on the band’s last album Paranoid. The song is a love letter to marijuana, something the band were well acquainted with by the sounds of it. The following After Forever is notable due to its pro-Christianity standpoint, and was written as a response to the popular opinion that the band were all satanists. The band’s primary lyricist and bassist Geezer Butler was in fact brought up as a Catholic. The track feels a bit awkward to me - the lyrics aren’t the strongest - and is the album’s weakest link.

Besides the improved production - the guitars seem to hit harder here - there’s not that much different. We’ve got the familiar cascading riffs from Iommi, we’ve got Ozzy’s howling, slightly monotone vocals flying above them, all backed by Geezer’s sturdy bassing and Bill Ward’s reliable drums. Beyond this though the band have started getting more experimental with time signatures (see Children of the Grave), and Ward has gained a particular liking of the toms on his kit, using them to pound along to Iommi’s muddier riffs in a primal manner. The band have also added some gentle interludes (Orchid, Embryo) along with the gorgeously calm Solitude, which help the riffs hit harder when they arrive.

Lord of This World is the album’s highlight for me. Iommi starts with guitar part fit to crush armies as Ward rapidly and heavily makes his way around the drum kit. Then, Iommi settles into a groove before Ozzy begins his finest vocal performance on the album, singing about how the world’s multitude of evil people will be going to hell. Nice. It’s a pounding song certain to leave a mark, and perhaps my favourite example of Iommi’s riff skills which, considering how much I spend raving about them in Black Sabbath album reviews, is saying something.

Master of Reality is, as Alan Partridge would say, evolution not revolution, but it’s yet another great album from the band, and sees them maturing into a sound very much their own.

Song Picks: Sweet Leaf, Lord of this World, Solitude

8/10

One of the best-selling albums of all-time - selling over 25 million copies worldwide - Tapestry is Carole King’s second studio album. Though she only released her debut album in 1970, King had been in the music business for over a decade at this point, having written numerous hits with her then husband John Coffin for other artists including You Make Me Feel (Like a Natural Woman) for Aretha Franklin. The album was recorded in A & M’s Studio B while Joni Mitchell was recording Blue in Studio C next door.

Tapestry very clearly shows King’s songwriting talent, but it also shows her to be a great performer, performing a lot of her songs in a more understated manner than their often more famous covers. The production and instrumentation is equally understated, generally consisting of King on piano along with a bassist, drummer and acoustic guitar. Though other touches are tastefully sprinkled throughout, including Joni Mitchell’s glorious backing vocals on the gorgeous Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow, the definitive version of the song in my eyes - though I can’t claim to have heard all of the 7321 versions (ok I exaggerate). Joni Mitchell often called the song her favourite of all time and I can see why.

While we’re on Tapestry’s more famous tracks, we’d best talk about the lovely You’ve Got a Friend - no, not the one from Toy Story - a song King wrote for her co-workers on leaving. It’s a simple and heartfelt song about being there for each other and it features a wonderful chorus melody with backing vocals again provided by Joni Mitchell.

The album finishes with her own version of You Make Me Feel (Like a Natural Woman), and while I doubt anyone will ever be able to compete with Franklin’s version, this has plenty to add, with a superb vocal performance from King, and a less rambunctious and cosier feel than Aretha’s version.

Also worthy of note are I Feel the Earth Move and It’s Too Late which were part of a double A sided single that stayed at number 1 for 5 weeks. The former is one of the album’s happier songs, featuring a nice steady piano part and drum-beat as King sings a characteristically melodic song of love over the top. The latter is a song about the knowledge a relationship is over featuring a much sadder feel overall.

Tapestry is one of those albums you’d go to if you just wanted to show someone what good, simple songwriting sounds like. King wasn’t really pushing any boundaries but it’s her melodies, words, and gently brilliant and heartfelt performances that make the album such a joy to listen to.

Song Picks: Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow, You’ve Got a Friend, It’s Too Late, You Make Me Feel (Like a Natural Woman)

8/10

Bowie’s fourth album, and first to appear on these lists, was to mark his turn into art-pop. It was also the first of Bowie’s albums to be produced by Ken Scott, who was to produce his next three records. Hunky Dory was partially inspired by a tour of America - hence why it contains tribute songs to Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground - and contained more piano songs than guitar songs, something of a change for Bowie at the time.

The album opens with Changes, that famous stuttered chorus embodying so much of what Bowie was to be about, changing and evolving throughout his musical career. He was certainly never afraid to ‘turn and face the strange.’ The song didn’t chart well, which is surprisingly considering just how infectious it is, something only enhanced by the way the production makes the chorus seemingly pop out from the rest of the song. The following Oh! You Pretty Things features similarly full production during the chorus to contrast against its more sparse piano and vocal led verses.

The later Life on Mars? is perhaps as famous as the album’s opener. A song raised by Mick Ronson’s fabulous string part, which announces the imminent arrival of one of the finest choruses ever written. Life on Mars? is a masterpiece about someone’s trip to the movies, only for them to realise it’s a disappointment, showing things they’ve already experienced in their life. ‘Is there life on Mars?’ Bowie asks at the end of each chorus, Mars representing the escapism of art. You can tell Bowie deeply hopes that there is, and with this masterful piece of songwriting he pretty much answers his own question.

The gently jolly Kooks is written for David’s newly born son, and hopes that he’ll be happy to stay with ‘the couple of kooks’ that are his parents. It’s yet another catchy number, with Bowie’s engaging vocals and the production making its simple melodic framework all the more interesting.

The second half of the album is largely taken up by the tributes mentioned above, my favourite of which is the Velvet Underground inspired Queen Bitch, Bowie’s take on a rock ‘n’ roll bluesy track, which his characteristic vocals ensure sounds like nothing else in that genre. The lyrics, as pointed out by a contributor on the track’s Genius page, bear more than a little resemblance to those of the Killers’ Mr Brightside. As the dreamlike Belway Brothers - about Bowie’s relationship with his schizophrenic brother - closes out the album, it’s clear that Bowie has arrived in all his enigmatic glory.

Though he was to make better, more cohesive albums down the line, Hunky Dory was very much where he found himself, even if that idea of himself was to change numerous times throughout his career.

Song Picks: Changes, Life on Mars?, Queen Bitch

8.5/10

Tago Mago is the German krautrock - a genre of experimental rock from West Germany - band’s second album and the first not to feature the band’s original vocalist Malcolm Mooney after he was replaced by Damo Suzuki - who contributes all the vocals on this album. Online music publication Drowned in Sound called this ‘arguably the most influential rock album ever recorded’ which is quite the claim. Tago Mago was entirely recorded in a castle near Cologne, the band having been invited to stay there for a year without paying rent by an art collector.

Paperhouse opens the album, and sets up a large part of what the first few tracks are about. Pounding, repetitive, shamanic drums press the rest of the instruments along as Suzuki chants difficult to discern words over the top. It creates a weird atmosphere that opens up when the lovely guitar solo enters, before the tension builds as the drums and guitar create a bouldering - and yet strangely relaxed - mass of noise. Like much of Can’s work, it’s the repetitiveness and length of the tracks that draws you in, making you ultra aware of all the small changes and solos. It feels like a spiritual experience as well as a musical one, but in the more familiar form of rock, rather than the type of music you’d usually consider spiritual.

Mushroom is the album’s shortest song, coming in at just over four minutes. The slight echo on the drums makes them sound huge and they dominate the track along with that fabulously simple and ominous electric guitar part. You’d be forgiven for thinking the song is about magic mushrooms - it certainly has that sound to it - but in fact it’s about an atomic bomb. “When I Saw Mushroom Head/I Was Born and I Was Dead” he sings. As noted by a contributor on Genius, it’s a song about the duality of life, how there can be no good without bad, and how death is also a rebirth. Whether you believe all that is another matter, but the lyrics fit the spiritual sound the band creates. You can hear the atomic bomb go off just before the start of the next track, Oh Yeah.

The album’s fourth track, Halleluwah, is probably the album’s highlight, an 18 minute Krautrock odyssey propped up by the same beat throughout. Apparently the album depicts a descent into madness, and this is the first track ‘beyond sanity’, the song’s chorus perhaps perfectly depicting that:

Moon shadow coming down
While it's all a stormy, stormy night
Oh, the sound all above
Spinning me, hold me tight

The steady beat keeps things from going completely off the rails - unlike on later songs - and although there’s lots of dissonant additions coming in from everyone except the bassist and drummer, it’s still a strangely funky experience. Suzuki’s vocals are at their strongest here, every word sung like he’s never sung it like that before, and won’t again. It’s a vocal performance that is completely in the present, completely spontaneous. The words are hard to understand, but the feeling is not, as he chants the song’s name over and over again like a man freed from the bonds of existence - the prophetically jolly guitar solo leading him astray - you’re left feeling like you’ve just listened to something on Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew, only from a rockier universe.

But it’s then, as the album descends into insanity that it becomes a little challenging for me. Aumgn and Peking O are so full of howls, shrieks and dissonance that I find them downright unpleasant to listen to - which I realise is the point to some extent. Gone are the drums and bass to keep things in line, and what enters are a series of unpleasant, creepy, and downright horrid soundscapes. I very much admire their reckless abandon, and they certainly convey the insanity they mean to, it just doesn’t make for very enjoyable listening, and thus makes the album a very challenging one - considering both tracks add up to 28 minutes of its 1 hour 13 minute runtime. Peking O notably features some of the first electronic sounding drums we’ve had in this challenge, creating a mysterious and weird bat cave of sound, unlike anything we’ve heard before. A high pitched sound swirling around before the end of the song like some trapped siren, before slowly the drums come back as the light returns.

Bassist Czukay has described the album as a “an attempt in achieving a mystery musical world from light to darkness and return", and the final track, Bring Me Coffee or Tea, is undoubtedly a drowsy return to the light. Gone is the energy of the opening tracks and everything sounds more ploddy and gargled. It’s a perfect musical depiction of waking up after a strange experience, slowly trying to come to terms with what has just happened.

Tago Mago absolutely nails its mission, it’s a descent into madness, into the dark and back again. The tracks that represent the light, or the very first part of the dark, are some of the finest pieces of music ever, not just from 1971. However, the darkest parts are so dark that only the bravest will be able to make it through, while others will find their fingers hovering over the ‘skip’ button, wanting to eject themselves from that unholy cave. Plough on through though, and the reward of Bring Me Coffee or Tea is more than worth it, and it's made all the better if you’ve experienced all the dark.

Song Picks: Paperhouse, Mushroom, Halleluwah, Bring Me Coffee or Tea

8.5/10

Their ninth British album - 11th in the US - was their first studio album to not feature the band’s founder Brian Jones. The initial version of that famous cover included a working zipper that would reveal some underwear, but this was scrapped on alter editions due to the cost and damage it caused to the enclosed vinyl. Sticky Fingers was also the first record released under their label, Rolling Stones Records, which meant they had complete creative control of the project, from the album cover to the music. It’s also the first appearance of that famous ‘tongue & lips’ logo that the band still have today.

Sticky Fingers marks a return to slightly simpler instrumentation, the band having experimented a fair bit on their last couple of albums. While those two albums - Beggar’s Banquet and Let It Bleed - had opened with Sympathy for the Devil and Gimme Shelter respectively, songs that creatively used production to raise them from ‘great’ to ‘timeless.’ Sticky Fingers opens with the comparatively simple Brown Sugar, a song featuring some pretty controversial lyrics - even for The Rolling Stones. It’s very much become one of their most famous songs with a jubilant chorus, that pulsating riff, and Jagger’s exuberant vocal performance, as well as a sax solo all combining to create a musical jamboree of a track about interracial sex.

The third track, Wild Horses, is one of my favourite in the Rolling Stones canon. Originally written as a lullaby for his son by Keith, Mick took it on and it involved into this. The chorus was apparently uttered by Marianne Faithful after she recovered from a heroin overdose, horse being slang for heroin. Mick has denied that the song is about her, though it certainly makes sense in that context. The song is made by Jagger’s great, uncharacteristically calm vocal performance and that iconic chorus which gets bigger and bigger throughout the song.

Can’t You Hear Me Knocking is the Stones at their rock and roll best, featuring the type of sexy riff that Keith Richards must have been able to write in his sleep and a brilliantly unhinged vocal performance from Jagger, which I doubt anyone will ever be able to imitate. The second half of the track has a really jazzy feel to it as Bobby Keys rocks a saxophone over Charlie Watts’ gentle drumming, Mick Taylor’s guitar solo joining later on sounding like quiet tears. It’s a perfect demonstration of the loose playing that the Stones are so good at.

The Rolling Stones have always sounded like they’re from America, but that’s even more exaggerated here. Songs like You Gotta Move sound like they’ve been dug out of some lost musical archive in the deep South, but although there’s plenty of humour evident in Jagger’s performances - particularly on the drawled to high hell Dead Flowers - it never sounds fake.

The album closes with another favourite of mine, Moonlight Mile, a song given an atmosphere of importance by the addition of horns and violins. It tells the story of a train journey, and has a wonderful mystical quality to it only emphasised by its unconventional structure and instrumental sections, particularly that dreamy mix of guitar solos at the end.

Sticky Fingers is probably my favourite Stones record so far. It shows the band on top form, featuring just the right amount of additional instrumentation to not take away from the raw energy of these performances - the use of saxophone on riff driven Bitch is a prime example. It’s arguably their strongest album so far from a pure songs perspective too, I’ve not even got round to talking about classics like Sister Morphine and Dead Flowers in this review. In the end, Sticky Fingers is the Rolling Stones at their best, doing what they do best.

Song Picks: Can’t You Hear Me Knocking, Bitch, Wild Horses, Dead Flowers

9/10

WhasGoingOn — 6. What’s Going On

Marvin Gaye

Gaye’s eleventh studio is a concept album, it’s songs not only blending seamlessly into each other, but featuring lyrics from the perspective of a Vietnam war veteran returning home to see the issues happening there, as well as those that were happening in Vietnam. It was an immediate critical and commercial success.

The first thing I want to mention here is how lush this album sounds. It’s smooth as butter; the bass, percussion, lead and backing vocals all blending together like a beautiful, creamy musical soup. It’s glorious.

This sound is evident straight away as the opening notes of the title track make their way towards your ears. It’s a simple, gentle song about the futility of war, and how ‘only love can conquer hate,’ Gaye’s effortlessly smooth vocal and that sumptuous bass line creating an empathetic, warm atmosphere unusual for an anti-war song. The following What’s Happening Brother is inspired by Gaye’s brother, who spent three years serving in Vietnam. It continues the theme - and sound - of the opening track and alludes to how quickly Vietnam war veterans were forgotten about on their return, often ending up unemployed:

Can't find no work, can't find no job, my friend
Money is tighter than, it's ever been
Say man, I just don't understand
What's going on across this land

Gaye returns to his own lens on Flyin’ High (In The Friendly Sky) to tackle the topic of his own struggles with drug use, something that many veterans of the Vietnam war struggled with. We then meander into Save the Children, a song featuring an earnest spoken word part by Gaye, backed by his own melodic refrains as he laments the world we’re leaving for the kids, more than likely also a reference to all the young who’d protested the Vietnam war and been painted as ‘anti-American’.

Then, announced by a piano flourish, we finish meandering and find our path, as God Is Love begins. The bass locks in, the beat becomes more focused, Gaye sings of his love for god and his father, who shot and killed Marvin in 1983. The track feels like being pulled up on a rollercoaster, as you know instantly it’s building to something. That something, it turns out, is the album’s most iconic track - and one of the greatest songs of all time - Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology). The transition between the two tracks is one of my favourite moments on any album as God Is Love’s build up drops us into the gentle, smoooooth ride of Mercy Mercy Me. That bass bumble; the delicate percussion punctuated by a tuneful, highly reverbed beat; the guitar sauntering along and the piano dotting the sky with stars. And of course Gaye’s vocal, which could surely cut straight to even the coldest human’s heart, as he sings of how we’re destroying our environment. It’s a cry for help from the Earth, and it’s more relevant now than ever. A majestic, heartfelt and timeless piece of music that deserves its place in history.

Right On and Wholy Holy flow nicely into each other, the drums kicking in to give us a hint of structure towards the end of the former, before disappearing to leave us lost in a gorgeous vocal, twinkly and flutey soup on the latter. The final track, Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler) features an irresistible combination of percussion and bass, as the sound turns noticeably darker. Gaye sings of the financial struggles of the poor and police brutality, “This ain't living, this ain't living” he laments around the half way mark, before returning to the same lyrics the album began with, as we come full circle.

What’s Going On is focused in terms of it’s theme, but indirect in terms of its music, as it floats from song to song, carrying you on its gentle cry for love and kindness. A little like Miles Davis’ In a Silent Way, it seems to morph and change shape, refusing to be defined, and every time you listen to it it feels different somehow. You can never really get a grip on What’s Going On, but then I suspect that was the point.

Song Picks: Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology), Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)

9/10

The Who’s fifth studio album is the first to make it onto one of these lists. Developed from the aborted rock opera Lifehouse written by the group’s songwriter Pete Townshend. Who’s Next is the first album to regularly feature synthesisers in this challenge.

Baba O’Riley was a big part of my teenage years. I remember a girl I fancied - to use the parlance of the time - sent me this song on MSN and I became obsessed with it pretty much instantly. It’s just such a great song; 5 minutes of high-drama that make you feel like you’re flying somehow. There’s that amazing Lowery organ intro that flurries in a contained but seemingly random way throughout much of the song, there’s the powerful bass stabs punctuated by drummer Keith Moon’s smashing of the cymbals, and then there’s Daltrey’s fabulously cathartic vocal creating what is - in my opinion - one of the finest songs ever recorded. I couldn’t think of a more perfect way to end it than that dramatic violin breakdown either, punctuated by Moon’s machine-gun flurry on the drum kit.

John Entwistle’s rumbling bass is present throughout the album, and a crucial part to the band’s sound. He famously said, “I just wanted to be louder than anyone else, I really got irritated when people could turn up their guitar amps and play louder than me,” Something very evident on Who’s Next. Whereas in most bands the bass plays a supporting role, in the Who it’s more front and centre, something particularly apparent on the simple but great Love Ain’t for Keeping, where Enwistle’s bass riffs are as tuneful as they are massive.

Another thing that deserves a mention is the production, which makes the band sound downright huge. Datrey’s vocals sound like they could fill even the biggest of arenas and the sound is befitting of the band’s histrionics, something that I don’t think Black Sabbath’s engineers had nailed as well up to this point. From the opening synth of Baba O’Riley to the closing of Won’t Get Fooled Again, you feel like you’re at a massive gig, the whole band to yourself.

The Entwistle penned My Wife is the album’s weak link, the rest of the band desperately trying to make a rather uninteresting song interesting, but it’s more than made up for by the album’s endless highlights. The final two songs: the endlessly covered and beautiful Behind Blue eyes, and the fabulously operatic Won’t Get Fooled Again, create the most memorable encore to this album, an album which draws plenty of influence from the past, but with a bigger eye on the future than most.

It’s also one of the finest drum records there is, Keith Moon having an insatiably energetic style very much his own.

Song Picks: Baba O’Riley, Love Ain’t for Keeping, Behind Blue Eyes, Won’t Get Fooled Again

9/10

JourneyIn — 4. Journey In Satchinadanda

Alice Coltrane

Alice Coltrane’s Ptah, the El Daoud blew me away in 1970’s post, so I’ve been rather excited to get to this, her fourth album, and the one rated most highly on rateyourmusic.com. The album is named after Swami Satchidananda, who became her spiritual adviser when she struggled with the grief of her husband John Coltrane’s death in 1967.

Her liner notes request that “Anyone listening to this selection should try to envision himself floating on an ocean of Satchinandaji’s love, which is literally carrying countless devotees across the vicissitudes and stormy blasts of life to the other shore.” As noted by Josephine Livingstone’s excellent review of the album on Pitchfork (you should go and read it here), it’s an album best listened to laid down with your eyes closed, consumed like a meditative experience.

The harp which Alice Coltrane became famous for was apparently ordered for her by her husband, but didn’t arrive until after his death. Alice had used the harp on Ptah the El Daoud in perhaps the album’s highlight Blue Nile, but it’s much more prevalent here.

The opening title track features a smooth, calm bass line by Cecil McBee (great name for a bassist) performed with minimal variation that rocks you like a baby as Coltrane’s harp shimmers across the soundscape like light beaming down from the sky, ready to take you above the clouds. Coltrane’s experimentation with a variety of instruments is already clear, the tanpura - a long-necked string instrument from India - played by Tulsi gives the song a particularly Eastern feel, with the bells and tambourine played by Majid Shabazz further adding to the atmosphere.

The next track, Shiva-Loka, starts with a greater intensity, Coltrane’s gorgeous harp playing there immediately, as the song dissonantly stutters into motion, finding a calm once Pharaoh Sanders’ warm, mellow sax playing enters the fray. At this point Coltrane’s harp playing becomes less shimmering, and more staccato, like she’s throwing out thoughts and ideas into the world. By the end the harp is shimmering again, as the double bass mumbles underneath it, it’s another beautiful journey with a soundscape full to the brim. This contrasts nicely with the following Stopover Bombay, a track where there’s more space, Coltrane dropping the harp and taking her place at the piano to combine gorgeously with Sanders’ sax.

The second side of the record starts with Something About John Coltrane, where her titular husband’s spirit can be heard in McBee’s chanted bassline. Coltrane once again sits behind the piano and reminds us just what a wonderful player she is. I said in my review of her previous album how I’d love to hear a solo piano album by her, and this song reiterates that. She skips effortlessly around, neither flurrying or creating long lines, but sprinkling a few notes here and there over Rashied Ali’s delicately brushed drums. Pharaoh’s sax takes the limelight in the second half of the song, seemingly possessed by some spirit from the beyond as he spontaneously weaves a magical thread around the whole piece, the bells and tambourine creating a gently simmering floor for the ideas to bounce off.

The closing track, Isis and Oasis includes an oud - a stringed instrument similar to a lute - played by Vishnu Wood which provides a lower pitched contrast in the right channel to Alice’s harp in the left. It’s like you’ve entered a magnificent tunnel, light sprinkling in from various openings, the sounds of the outside echoeing around. Reality itself dissolving, the tunnel bends to the sky as Pharaoh enters it with his sax and Coltrane’s harp goes from shimmers to dashes, propelling you forward. Wood’s oud continues to play in the background, giving the track a melancholy reflectiveness and then, finally, it all goes quiet.

You get up, move around, but somehow nothing’s quite the same anymore.

Song Picks: Journey In Satchidananda, Shiva-Loka, Isis and Osiris

9/10

LedZep4 — 3. Led Zeppelin IV

Led Zeppelin

Well, you certainly can’t say that Led Zeppelin weren’t consistent, their fourth album once again makes it onto one of our wonderful lists, as all their previous releases have. Unlike their previous albums though, which were numbered, this one is actually untitled, but generally gets called Led Zeppelin IV so as not to ruin the fabulous naming convention the band had come up with. It’s also their best selling album.

The album opens with Black Dog, named after the black labrador the often wandered around the studio as they were recording. It’s one of their signature songs, featuring breaks in instrumentation whenever Robert Plant sings a verse followed by one of the band’s most recognisable riffs. The following Rock and Roll has more momentum and sees Plant singing about how it’s been a long time since they rock ‘n’ rolled as the band does just that behind him. It’s a kind of hard rock take on rock ‘n’ roll featuring a particularly great solo from Page.

The folky The Battle of Evermore has more than a hint of Rumours era Fleetwood Mac about it, impressive considering that album wasn’t to come out until 1977. Fairport Convention member Sandy Denny’s vocals work beautifully with Plant’s to create something surprisingly majestic, not a word you’d have associated with Led Zeppelin after their first two albums.

But then we have the musical definition of majestic itself, Stairway to Heaven, one of the most famous songs ever recorded, and Led Zeppelin’s signature song. It tells of a woman ‘buying the stairway to heaven,’ or being too optimistic about what the future holds for her, in that way a lot of us are as kids. That famous picked acoustic guitar part accompanied by the flute create another folky atmosphere, one that’s complemented well by the folkloric lyrics. Bonham’s beat doesn’t kick in until the 4 minute mark, when the song jumps up a notch and Plant changes the verse melody, before that guitar solo from Jimmy Page. It sings, it soars, it’s not overly twiddly, but every note is perfect, it’s impossible not to smile at its brilliance, a fabulous crescendo met by Bonham’s increasingly frantic - though no less powerful - drumming. It’s a song that builds and builds and never disappoints, and at the end you just want to start it again, which considering you’ve no doubt heard it a million times already is quite the compliment. An 8 minute masterpiece.

The next three tracks are pretty great too, but it’s the final song When the Levee Breaks I want to talk about here. A re-interpretation of the song of the same name by Memphis Minnie, it’s probably my favourite Led Zeppelin song. The beat and delta blues style riff by Page are absolutely one of the best riff and beat combos ever recorded. Bonham’s pounding beat isn’t all that technically difficult, but damn does he absolutely nail it. The thing pulsates like it’s trying to wake all the dead in the ground, making you bob your head uncontrollably or - for people unable to sit still like me - has you bouncing around in your seat. Plant’s vocals are on point, the harmonica adds to the delta blues feel, and the whole thing is just unbelievably filthy, in the best possible way. Did I mention Page’s mini solos? Yeah, they’re great too, distorted to the cries of some dying robotic animal. The whole goddam thing just rocks.

Led Zeppelin IV is competing with III for the title of my favourite Led Zeppelin album so far, and probably just edges it.

Song Picks: Black Dog, The Battle for Evermore, Stairway to Heaven, When the Levee Breaks

9/10

Blue is the fourth studio album by the Candian singer-snogwriter, and generally regarded as her strongest album. Its songs are largely about relationships, and although Joni is joined by other musicians on some of its songs, it feels like a very naked telling of her feelings. As Joni herself put it in 1979:

“The Blue album, there’s hardly a dishonest note in the vocals. At that period of my life, I had no personal defenses. I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes. I felt like I had absolutely no secrets from the world, and I couldn’t pretend in my life to be strong. Or to be happy.”

Joni’s vocals are nothing short of beautiful on any of the album’s ten tracks. She has an ability to sing low and warm and jump to a high, pleading falsetto seamlessly, seemingly weaving melodies within melodies. It’s as if she’s not planned how to sing it, and she just lets it out how it feels in the moment, it feels so magnificently spontaneous. Combine this with her delicate guitar and piano playing, which is never showy, but also very much her own.

The album opens with All I Want, starting with a brilliant staccato guitar part that eventually flows into a perfectly percussive riff as Mitchell sews melodies in all sorts of vocal registers, at times audibly struggling for breath, intent on packing as much feeling into the song as possible. Later on, on the gorgeous Little Green, Mitchell spends longer in her lower register than ususal, only turning to her falsetto as she sings of having her baby adopted after she was born, ending with the gentle warning:

Just a little green

Like the nights when the Northern lights perform

There'll be icicles and birthday clothes

And sometimes there'll be sorrow

It’s a song that demonstrates just how much Mitchell is willing to share on this album, and just how openly she is willing to share it. The following song, Carey, is so upbeat it catches you off guard, telling of a holiday romance between her and Cary Raditz on a trip to Crete. It’s a fabulously happy song, perfectly capturing the feel of a holiday romance, with both parties submitting to the beauty of the moment, knowing - but not thinking - about the fact it won’t last. Later on, California is perhaps the best example of Joni’s stupendous ability to pluck melodies out of nowhere, sticking a whole host of them to the same pole, leaving us with songs where we’re not sure what the chorus is with each line catchier than the last. As the song fades out, you think surely there can’t be another melody? But as Joni casually hums a new one you’re once again floored by its beauty, its the kind of melody most artists would hang a whole song on, but Joni is content to just hum it once during a fade-out, to cast it away, clearly knowing there’s plenty to come.

The one thing I haven’t mentioned is just how original this album sounds, something that isn’t all that easy with just one instrument and your voice. The way Mitchell takes various ideas of songcraft and makes them completely her own is what, along with the raw honesty and gorgeously melancholy melodies, makes this album the masterpiece it is.

Song Picks: All I Want, Little Green, Carey, California

9.5/10

Meddle is Pink Floyd’s sixth album, it signals their transition from the Syd Barett stamped psychedelic rock era to the more spacey, progressive rock sound the band are famous for today.

Things start ominously on One of These Days with Roger Waters’ bass sending phased echoes from ear to ear before Gilmour’s guitar comes in. Things get bigger and bigger until we’re well and truly into the sound of space, with the bouncing bass effect sounding like some sort of space helicopter, and the brief gargled vocals like those of Jabba the Hutt. The song pounds to a close with Nick Mason smashing his cymbals with a primal recklessness before Gilmour comes back in to direct this pulsating spaceship home with a guitar riff straight from another galaxy. Gilmour’s ability to do so much with a just a few perfectly picked notes has officially arrived, and so have the new Pink Floyd.

A Pillow of Winds sees Gilmour singing so dreamily its hard to tell if he’s even there, or whether his voice is just coming from the stars, the lyrics are a perfectly untouchable series of vignettes, which evapourate along with Gilmours vocals as the song reaches its dreamy conclusion.

The sumptuous soundscapes continue on Fearless, a gentle riff entering to push things along after each drifted verse. The song’s lyrics, as with the rest of the album, were written by Waters, and again there’s a humble beauty to them, a sense that you know what’s going on, but can’t explain it. The song ends with You’ll Never Walk Alone sung by a load of Liverpool fans which somehow fits effortlessly.

San Tropez and Seamus are the album’ outliers, with a much more standard instrumental arrangements, though the vocals - by Waters on the former, and Gilmour on the latter - rarely go above a clear mumble. The latter features the prominent howls of a dog - who the song is named after - trying his best to interrupt the simple twelve-bar blues the band are playing.

And then, then it’s time for the party piece, Echoes. Starting with one sparse piano note repeated - reminiscent of Kanye West’s masterpiece Runaway - It’s a 20 minute journey through the most vivid and calm of underwater space worlds. The cover of the album depicts an ear underwater, and it’s on Echoes where it becomes clear why, the organ in particularly having a slightly muffled underwater sound to it. The lyrics are again sung in a wonderfully understated way, and seem to be telling a story of humanity, the opening verse beautifully setting the tone for what’s to come:

Overhead the albatross hangs motionless upon the air
And deep beneath the rolling waves in labyrinths of coral caves
The echo of a distant time comes willowing across the sand
And everything is green and submarine

I’ve always thought organs date music, and its why I think a lot of the bands that prominently use them - Deep Purple being a good example - sound a little dated. Here however Richard Wright’s organ playing seems to fit perfectly with the rest of the band’s melodic creations. It all sounds so effortless, so part of the same puzzle, so - dare I say it - timeless. Halfway through the song we’re interrupted by the noise of what sounds like whale song - though perhaps a little higher pitched - as it’s accompanied by some sort of low murmur from the very bottom of the ocean, and soon we’re joined by some seagulls squawking up above. Then they all disappear, replaced by a piano note dripped into the ocean - sparsely, quietly - as the organ whirls around it and the bass builds. Then, everything builds. Mason’s drums approach from the distance, perfectly picked tom fills and cymbal trickery build the tension, Gilmour’s guitar drones, before it all disappears again, the vocals entering one last time before everything gently explodes like an underwater star scattering slowly across the endless ocean. The piano and guitar twinkles over some sort of extra-terrestrial tannoy, announcing our arrival somewhere new, and we’re left contemplating the journey we’ve just had.

Meddle is a quiet masterpiece. It never calls for your attention, but you can’ help but stop whatever you’re doing and succumb to it’s beautiful, weary soundscapes. I’ll leave you with Chris Dahlen’s perfect description of it in Pitchfork’s top 100 albums of the 70s list:

“Meddle is striking because it is without ego. David Gilmour sings lead like a back-up vocalist, they play a side-long piece without a single flashy solo, and the most compelling motif is a single, sonar-like note on the piano. Other art-rock bands would have littered it with armadillo tanks or starship troopers; the Floyd refrained, leaving us to imagine what’s lurking in the fog.”

Song Picks: One of These Days, Fearless, Echoes

9.5/10