Over what will likely be the next few years I’m going to be ranking and reviewing the top 5 albums - plus a fair few extras - 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.

And so we’ve arrived in 1974, the year that President Nixon was charged for a variety of things in the Watergate Scandal and became the only president ever to resign, and also when he got pardoned of everything by his successor Gerald Ford. It was also the year that Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia was deposed and replaced by a military dictatorship, India tested a nuclear device and became the sixth nuclear power, and regular entrant in our 60s lists Duke Ellington died.

In less momentous news, the following 5 albums are rated as the year’s best albums by our lovely rateyourmusic.com community, and thus get automatic entry onto my review pile:

#1 King Crimson - Red
#2 Neil Young - On the Beach
#3 Brian Eno - Here Come the Warm Jets
#4 Robert Wyatt - Rock Bottom
#5 Genesis - The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway

We have debuts to these lists for Brian Eno and Robert Wyatt, along with three returning artists. As is customary, I’ve grabbed a few albums from further down the list too to throw into the battle royale. Those are:

#6 Camel - Mirage
#7 Jorge Ben - A Tábua Esmerelda
#8 Miles Davis - Get Up With It
#11 Gene Clark - No Other
#12 Joni Mitchell - Court and Spark
#17 Richard & Linda Thompson

Plenty of returning artists there too, but a few newbies in Camel, Gene Clark, and Richard & Linda Thompson. That brings the total for this year’s showdown to 11, so let’s crack on and see who will emerge as the winner. And let me tell you, this might just be the strongest year of the challenge yet…

More prog rock, this time from the English band Camel. This is their second album, and was ranked at number 51 in a top 100 of the best prog albums of all time in a magazine called Prog.

The opening track, Freefall, is the heaviest on the album. Punctuated by drum stabs, changes of time signature and style - just listen to the many different styles Andy Ward gets through on the drums - it’s a piece that seems to be about getting stoned, or certainly high on something. There’s some impressively complex playing going on here, but I have to confess the overly simple lyrics aren't doing much for me.

Supertwister represents the album's cover pretty well with its gorgeous flute led, hazy, desert landscape as the album settles into a calmer mood that continues on the Lord of the Rings inspired medley Nimrodel/The Procession/The White Rider, a classic prog-rock storyline of a track ending in a deliciously heavy bass riff topped by spirited, nomadic guitar soloing.

The album’s highlight however is undoubtedly the closing Lady Fantasy, a song beginning with a synth like an alarm, some heavy riffs and a whole host of drum fills, before settling into a less heavy but no less frantic twirl of notes, before Andrew Latimer comes in with the kind of gentle melody that no one could do better than him. The song has its fair share of tempo changes - this is prog rock after all - but it never seems gratuitous, and always serves to drive the 12 minute song forward. Latimer’s guitar work is particularly great here, unleashing both solos full of attitude and those more melancholy. When he gently soothes us to sleep with another deliciously melodic guitar part around the 7 minute mark, there’s an ominous sense that something’s about to happen. And as our vocalist finally confesses his love for Lady Fantasy we launch into a rapid - almost punk - riff with the messiest, most glorious of frantic guitar solos over the top. Finally, the keyboards up their game before we’re lost in a slightly cheesy prog-rock frenzy. Glorious.

Mirage is some thoroughly enjoyable prog rock. The vocals don’t do that much for me - except on the final track - but instrumentally they create a soundtrack that’s refreshingly Eastern inspired compared to their prog-rock contemporaries. Want a sandblasted look at 70s prog-rock? Look no further.

Song Picks: Lady Fantasy, Supertwister

7.5/10

Gene Clark - a founding member of the Byrds - released his 4th studio album, No Other, to general apathy among critics and consumers. His record label didn’t promote the album despite the fact it cost a fortune - label boss David Geffen apparently threw a test pressing in the bin without even listening to it when he saw it only had 8 songs. Gene Clark never really recovered from this, or as was written in Record Collector in 2019, "The failure of No Other didn't just disappoint Geffen, it hurt Clark. According to [Gene's] brother David, '[Gene] put everything into that... everything. Heart, soul, money, everything he had he poured into that thing because it was going to be his reclamation, and when they killed it, it killed him.'” Obviously, because this is how things work in art, it got proclaimed as a lost masterpiece not long after his death in 1991, aged 46, his health having deteriorated after accelerated drug and alcohol abuse.

It’s perplexing now to listen to No Other and know that it was such a critical and commercial failure. It is pretty clear very early on that this is an example of a master at work, and though I have to confess I’m not much of a country music fan generally, this has to be one of my favourites in that category. The opening Life’s Greatest Fool makes it clear that the money poured into the album wasn’t wasted. The production is lush, with no expenses spared to fill out the sound spectrum. But production alone can’t make an album, and its Gene’s obvious songwriting talent, his ability to make verses as sing-alongable as the choruses, and above all his lyrics, which are some of the most engaging I’ve heard in the genre, that make this record what it is. We’ve got slide guitars, backing vocalists, additional guitarists, and more scattered throughout the album, making it sound on the surface like one of those albums that someone makes after they’ve got famous and run out of ideas, with nothing left but money to throw at the studio. However, this isn’t one of those albums, but rather combines studio polish with great songwriting as I’ve already stated.

Some of the additions are quite original too, the looming synth on the title track wouldn’t be out of place on a more experimental album, bringing to mind Head Hunters by Herbie Hancock for example. Its combination with a more straightforward country track makes for something new and exciting. Strength of Strings sounds like a bona fide classic, Clark seemingly singing to the end of the world, backed by gratuitously large backing choir. It’s the album’s longest song, Some Misunderstanding, where things get the most lavish however. We’ve got a choir, piano, violin, pedal steel, - the whole shabang - but as Clark sings the transcendent words of the chorus over the top of it, not one part of it feels gratuitous:

But I know if you sell your soul
To brighten your role
You might be disappointed in the lights
We all need a fix at a time like this
But doesn't it it feel good to stay alive

Clark wrote much of No Other gazing out at the Pacific Ocean, which some have claimed juxtaposes somewhat with the massive sound the album has. You won’t hear me saying this too often, but I think the grandiose production adds to this album, matching the sound more closely to the one that Clark likely had in his head as he wrote them on his piano or guitar. I’m not sure the above point about juxtaposition is true though. I think rather than look at his insignificance in comparison to the ocean in front of him, he wrote with the significance of the ocean itself, looking back at him, and in that regard, the ‘large’ sound of the album makes perfect sense.

Song Picks: Life’s Greatest Fool, No Other, Strength of Strings, Some Misunderstanding

8.5/10

I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight is Richard Thompson’s second album after he left Fairport Convention, a band he co-founded. It’s also his first album with his then wife Linda. Although largely ignored by critics on its initial release, the album has now been named as a masterpiece by many a critic, largely seen as one of highlights of either of their catalogues.

The album is beautiful, and as Kurt Older wrote in his review for Rolling Stone, there’s ‘not a single track that's less than luminous.’ Welcome to the Border tells of someone running away, hoping to leave all their troubles at the border and it features the perfect folk melody by Richard, with a sound heaped in tradition, but not sounding tired. Linda gets her first solo vocal on Withered and Died, and its absolutely glorious. Concise lyrics of the death of her dreams are delivered absolutely perfectly, with a vocal to warm the coldest of hearts. It’s a simple masterpiece of a song.

Down Where the Drunkards roll is a great example of how many of the album’s songs may appear pessimistic, but, as Richard himself says, they usually end with a message of hope:

You can be a gambler
Who never drew a hand
You can be a sailor
Who never left dry land

You can be Lord Jesus
All the world will understand
Down where the drunkards roll
Down where the drunkards roll

It also features another sumptuous vocal from Linda, it’s hard to think of a more perfect folk vocalist for this material.

It’s pretty hard to fault I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight. Sure, it’s not pushing any envelopes, but it is a shining example of a folk record made up of 10 beautiful, nostalgia inducing songs. Songs that glow like a halogen heater on a cold winter’s night when the heating’s broken. There’s something earthy about this album, you can imagine people singing many of its songs down the pub, clanking their beers, lamenting their imperfect lives, but grateful that they have others to share them with.

Song Picks: When I Got to the Border, Withered and Died, Down Where the Drunkards Roll

8.5/10

CourtandSpark — 8. Court and Spark

Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell’s sixth album remains her most successful album to this day, and was instantly commercially and critically succesful. So much so that Rolling Stone dubbed her the ‘Queen of Rock’ in the year of its release. The album is poppier than her previous entry to these lists, Blue, and features fuller arrangements. Her folk style and melodies within melodies are still very much present though.

The album is packed from start to finish with catchy songs performed with her distinctive - usually falsetto - vocal style. Track two, the single Help Me, was her most successful song, reaching #7 in the Billboard charts. It’s a song about her scepticism about getting into another relationship, ending each verse with the fitting lines: ‘we love our lovin’, but not like we love our freedom’. The song features a chirpy arrangement with gentle drums, woodwind and electric guitar as smooth as silk. Next, Free Man in Paris critiques the record industry and is believed to be written from the point of her producer David Geffen, while the poignant People’s Parties talks of a party where everyone is fake and Joni doesn’t feel like she belongs. The final verse is particularly moving, her singing of ‘away’ extended, as if blowing a memory away.

I wish I had more sense of humor
Keeping the sadness at bay
Throwing the lightness on these things
Laughing it all away
Laughing it alI away
Laughing it all away

Down to You is the album’s quiet star, a beautiful, piano led song where Joni’s trademark rushing to the end of lines in order to elongate the last note is still there, but it’s a little more gentle than usual. The instrumental and backing vocal arrangement that drifts along a lot of the song’s latter half is one of the album’s most beautiful moments.

The production of the album, while poppy, stops short of cheesy on all songs except the single Raised on Robbery where we’ve got wah-wah pedals and Red Leicester cheesy guitar licks emphasising lines. Mitchell’s melody and vocal performance carries the surprisingly lively piece, making it a natural choice as one of the album’s singles. It gets under your skin. It works.

Court and Spark was to be Joni Mitchell’s breakout album, before she took a sharp turn away from pop on her next record. It’s an album that displays her skill as a songwriter as finely as anything she ever recorded. Lyrically engaging and evocative throughout, her singular melodies are here in spades, wrapping the changes in pace of her delivery effortlessly. Most surprisingly though, the jazz-pop production works a treat, complementing rather than distracting from Mitchell’s performances. Court and Spark is Joni’s most approachable album and also perhaps her most downright enjoyable.

Song Picks: Help Me, Down to You, Free Man In Paris

9/10

Recorded after Tonight’s the Night but released before, On the Beach sees Young rejecting the polish of Harvest, and moving to a rawer sound, deliberately asking to use monitor mixes as his final mixes and infuriating recording engineers in the process. This is particularly interesting considering his recent tirade towards the sound quality of streaming platforms, though he’s clearly changed his mind on that as I’m sat here listening to this on one of those very streaming platforms.

Walk On perfectly sets up the album. Closest in sound to Harvest with a chirpy guitar riff, it outlines his struggles with fame and his walking of a new path, one which is explored in the rest of the album as things get substantially darker. I want to focus most of my review on the album’s second side, but I’d be remiss not to talk about the highlight of a strong opening side, Revolution Blues. A dark, haunting song about the murders of Charles Manson and his followers, it’s written from Manson’s perspective and serves as twisted lines of thought, all delivered in a particularly contemptuous manner by Young.

The aforementioned second side opens with the title track, where ‘the beach’ represents Young’s isolation following his fame. It starts with a desolate chord sequence backed by a djembe, setting the scene of an abandoned beach. Young considers his love of the fact he has an audience, with the isolation the fame they’ve given him has left him with. He also considers how small his problems really are in the grand scheme of things with the excellent couplet, ‘Though my problems are meaningless/That don't make them go away’. At the start of the song he mumbles a hope that the world ‘won’t turn away,.’ By the song’s end he’s accepted it will, but just hopes that he won’t see it do so, choosing instead to focus on his own problems. The song’s lyrics and music perfectly paint the bleak atmosphere of a conflicted man.

A simple love song written to his then girlfriend Carrie Snodgress, Motion Pictures provides some lighter relief before the album’s apocalyptic closer. Rusty Kershaw’s slide guitar gives a slightly Kurt Vile feel to proceedings as Young sings of his love the only way he knows how to, sadly. Young’s harmonica solo is a thing of beauty, like the lapping of warm waves onto his desolate beach.

The album’s final piece is perhaps its pinnacle. Ambulance Blues is a kind of patchwork of ideas. The chorus points a finger squarely at Nixon and his involvement in the Watergate scandal, “I never knew a man could tell so many lies / He had a different story for every set of eyes.” The song’s opening reminisces about his life and acoustic gigs before he was famous, “Back in the old folky days/The air was magic when we played,” and it finishes with his manager’s criticism of his lack of activity with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, directly quoting his claim that Young was ‘pissing in the wind.’ The track is hooked on a simple acoustic guitar part, some gentle djembe, and the perfect, melancholy harmonica solos that we’ve come to expect from Young by now. It’s a glorious and blunt look into Young’s depressed mind at the time.

On the Beach tells of Young’s broken dream: the house by the beach, the djembe in the front room, sitting with skilled musicians on the porch playing guitar, all ruined by the very thing that got him them, fame. The dream - represented perfectly by the djembe that taps along sadly and sparsely to many of the album’s tracks - tries to break through again, but has largely given up, resigned to the fact that this life isn’t all it was promised to be.

Song Picks: Walk On, Revolution Blues, On the Beach, Ambulance Blues

9/10

Robert Wyatt, who used to be the drummer in Soft Machine, recorded his second album Rock Bottom after becoming a paraplegic following an accident that involved him falling out of a 3rd floor window at a party. The album was produced by Pink Floyd’s drummer Nick Mason. It’s also worth noting that Robert Wyatt very much considers this his debut, considering his previous album juvenilia and has denied that the album is specifically about him becoming a paraplegic, noting that a lot of the album was written before his accident. Wyatt married Alfreda Benge - who painted the cover - on the day of this album’s release, and much of its content is in fact inspired by her, rather than Wyatt’s accident.

The opening Sea Song is one of the album’s most affecting pieces, an earnestly honest portrayal of someone, presumably Benge, is sung over the top of some primitive piano playing and laboured synth notes. The vocals bring to mind Daniel Johnston in their melancholy, slightly flat nature, while the lyrics bring to mind anti-folk in their blunt honesty. It creates an atmosphere of something that doesn’t sound at all like it was recorded in 1974, with Radiohead vibes coming from much of the song’s abstract production.

Wyatt’s unconventional phrasing is the highlight of A Last Straw, soaring above soundscape that again sounds like a looser Radiohead, with it’s unpredictable splashes of drums, out of tune guitar swirls, and a dissonant synth holding the whole piece together before a beautifully twinkling piano bids us goodbye.

Next, Alifib creates a sumptuous cloud of sound with Wyatt’s keyboard-work over the synth and breathing sounds, it is something that wouldn’t be out of place on a Brian Eno record, its nonsensical lyrics surprisingly moving when uttered by Wyatt’s fragile voice. The song finishes with perhaps its weirdest verse:

Burlybunch, the water mole
Hellyplop and fingerhole
Not a wossit, bundy, see
For jangle and bojangle
Trip trip pip pippy pippy pip pip landerim
Alife my larder
Alife my larder

It’s a surreal journey, and one as creative as anything from this year. It has a quiet, dreamy feel to it that gets more harrowing and sinister as we blend into Alife, which is essentially a second part to Alifib, built on the same nonsensical lyrics. A drum rattles, as a challenging, ominous soundscape builds, accented by Gary Windo’s saxophone as we ride the song’s finale into the fuzzing dark.

The album finishes with Little Red Robin Hit the Road, a callback to Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road which finished the album’s first side. Mike Oldfield’s riff sings like an angry space bird over the scattered drums and drones, at one point it plays what would be an absolutely stonking rock riff, but the rest of the musicians refuse to play ball, continuing to splatter their ideas across the song’s sound palette in barely controlled bursts. Poet Ivor Cutler’s bass concertina and spoken word stopped me in my tracks, the final verse plucks up some of the most free imagery I’ve ever heard, and when combined with the finale’s long, drawn out notes, makes for a simply breathtaking passage of music:

I lie in the road, try to trip up the passing cars
Yes, me and the hedgehog, we bursting the tyres all day
As we roll down the highway towards the setting sun
I reflect on the life of the highwayman, yum yum
Now I smash up the telly and what's left of the broken phone

Rock Bottom is not an album to decipher, it’s one to experience. Wyatt shows that dissonance can be beautiful, that weirdness can be wonderful, and above all, that sometimes melancholy can be happiness. A glorious work of art.

Song Picks: Sea Song, Alifib, Little Red Robin Hood Hit the Road

9/10

HereCometheWarmJets — 5. Here Come the Warm Jets

Brian Eno

Brian Eno’s debut solo album following his departure from Roxy Music marks the first of what was to become a revolutionary run of albums. It features various guest musicians such as Hawkwind, Matching Mole, Rober Fripp and members of Roxy Music.

Needles in the Camel’s Eye opens things in typically avant-garde fashion, the out of tune electric guitar whirring along with the bass and drum. Eno’s vocals are hard to decipher, he’s using his voice as more of an instrument than a poetic device, but they add a catchiness to the song and somehow make a track with such dissonant bedding poppy.

The album is musical at its core, with the emphasis on the sound of words rather than any lyrical meaning. Baby’s on Fire starts with another infectious, confident vocal from Eno, backed by a repetitive rumbling, thudding and hissing, before the track goes completely instrumental and Robert Fripp of King Crimson comes in with a stratospheric guitar solo, winding and grinding its way to the last vocal section like an unruly, tuneful jet-plane.

Brian Eno deliberately picked artists he felt would clash when recording the album, and it’s the resulting friction that makes the album so interesting. Most songs are downright enjoyable, but they always have something to grate against the track’s approachableness. On the infectious Cindy Tells Me it’s that electronic static that buzzes like an electronic fly throughout, on Driving Me Backwards it’s the fact that everything’s a little out of tune again, on On Some Faraway Beach it’s the way the whole thing seems so granular you wonder whether it exists at all.

The album finishes with the title track, and album’s highlight for me. A woolly melody plays repeatedly as drums and other instruments gradually join the fray, before vocals come in with the kind of melody that most artists would turn up to the max, and have several backing vocalists help to emphasise. Not Eno, he’s content to let it soak amongst the background, just another part of this gorgeous musical scene.

Here Come the Warm Jets is the cry of freedom from a man no longer pressed to top the charts, but able to push his musical creativity. It’s an album that’s a joy to listen to from a songs perspective, but also just from a sounds perspective. Eno paints a picture that’s full of fuzz and distractions, while making sure never to hide the treasure at its core.

Song Picks: Needles in the Camel’s Eye, Baby’s On Fire, Here Come the Warm Jets,

9/10

1974 seemed to be a year that everyone in prog rock was trying to out-prog each other, “What’s that Yes, you’ve just recorded an 80 minute prog album called something as pretentious as Tales From Topographic Oceans, well we, Genesis can be even more proggy than that, we’re going to record a 90 minute album that tells the surreal story of a Puerto Rican boy like some sort of prog-rock opera, beat that!” Thankfully - as otherwise I’ll still be here completing this challenge in 2072 - King Crimson decided not to follow this trend, making an album that is a comparatively humble 40 minutes long, and their last before disbanding - though they were to come back with a new lineup in 1981. Robert Fripp had decided that prog-rock was dying, and thus moved onto new musical ventures following Red’s release.

The album starts with the title track, a heavy 6 minute instrumental which was voted number 87 in Rolling Stone’s 100 best guitar songs of all time. It opens with a great guitar riff and drum fills tandem, setting the tone for King Crimson’s heaviest album yet. The only thing holding things back is the slightly thin sounding drums. Other than that, we’ve got a song that cascades from wave to wave like an epic storm, John Wetton’s bass rumbling along like a giant sea kraken. Kurt Cobain has cited the album as a huge influence and it’s easy to see the influences this album has had on metal, grunge, and a whole host of other heavy guitar based genres.

Fallen Angel begins dark and brooding before Wetton’s vocals come in and the soundscape gets remarkably relaxed, with some acoustic guitar pluckery and gentle drums. It soon turns into another massive Robert Fripp guitar riff as Wetton laments the titular ‘fallen angel’ - a member of the Hell’s Angels who has been stabbed. The song switches expertly from warm to the sound of a massive, ominous, impending iceberg, the arrival of which is announced by a swirling, bouldering guitar riff and the incessant screech of who knows what in the distance. Next, One More Red Nightmare features the album’s best sounding drums, and probably my favourite vocal as Wetton sings frantically and yet tunefully of a nightmare in which he’s crashing on a plane, only to wake up ‘safe and sound’ on a Greyhound bus. As a drummer, I particularly enjoyed Bill Brufford and Robert Fripp’s interplay on this one.

The penultimate track Providence begins with some improvised sounding violin, and continues to create a dark, menacing and sparse soundscape of screetches and scratches before the drums enter around the 5 minute mark and march us on. Fripp’s back with a riff and endless guitar twiddling, before we enter the album’s fabulous final track.

Starless is a spectacular goodbye from this iteration of King Crimson, and from their most influential period. A 12 minute odyssey beginning with a mumbling, crying guitar part kept afloat by some atmopsheric strings. Lyricist Richard Palmer-James has said it’s loosely about the break-up of two close friends, and it anchors on a Dylan Thomas inspired chorus. The screeching violin (I think?) circles and circles as the band get heavier and heavier, before some doppler effect guitarwork announces the jazziest section of the whole album, with a time signature that I can’t work out and some saxophone playing that wouldn’t be out of place on Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz. Obviously, it ends with another brooding riff, more than a little reminiscent of Arctic Monkeys.

Red is my favourite of the trio of King Crimson albums we’ve had on these lists. It’s technically brilliant, showing three instrumentalists on top form, but it’s also incredibly effective. I can’t listen to any of these songs without wanting to pick up my drum sticks and thrash along as it gets under your skin in the best possible way. It’s also quite probably the best guitar album we’ve had so far, featuring endless powerful riffs from Fripp, but also some inventive soloing and atmosphere adding layered playing. In a decade full of prog-rock that seemed intent on getting more and more pretentious as the years went on, Red was the angry, unsatisfied bull that blew a hole into conventions for others to follow.

Song Picks: Red, One More Red Nightmare, Starless

9/10

3. The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway

Genesis

Genesis’ sixth album, and their last with lead singer Peter Gabriel, was to be their most ambitious so far. A 90 minute double-album, it tells the story of Rael, a Puerto Rican from New Yok City who goes through a slightly surreal, and often dark journey of self-discovery. Peter Gabriel wrote the story, and insisted on writing all the lyrics. It’s classic competitive prog-rock, each band wanting to me more ‘progressive’ than the last. Only in this case, it works.

You’d be forgiven for thinking the album sounds impenetrable, and in some ways it is. 90 minutes is a lot to get through generally, never mind while trying to pay attention to a narrative weaved through its lyrics. However, I’d say the knowledge that the narrative is there - and trust me, it is (see the handy plot summary on Wikipedia) - is enough, and helps the album to flow seamlessly from one song to the next, even if you’re not quite sure what is happening to our protagonist. Peter Gabriel made it clear he wanted each song to work on its own, and not just as part of the narrative, and I think he succeeded in that. Although I’d say anything on the album is best listened to in context, there’s plenty of great musicianship, atmosphere building, inventiveness and unpredictability to make plenty of its songs work without that context. In the Cage for example, starts with a gentle heartbeat with a Peter Gabriel lullaby over the top, and goes through a whole host of thoroughly enjoyable and inventive sections over its 8 minute duration before ending in a frantic cacophony of - perfectly in time - instruments, with one of Gabriel’s prettiest melodies, sung with a great fragility guiding the way. Back in NYC features an irresistible spiralling part by what I assume is some sort of synth, giving the song a gravitas that really makes it stand out. Collins’ solid and yet infinitely dazzling drumming helps make the track a certified banger, even if you don’t pay attention to the lyrics.

Even the shorter pieces like the gentle, humming Heartless Heart and the grandiose The Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging are completely charming, and serve to bridge the more prominent pieces together. In the case of the former, leading us seamlessly into one of the album’s singles Counting Out Time, a delightful and unexpectedly jolly song about Rael’s first sexual encounter, ‘Erogenous zones I love you/Without you, what would a poor boy do?’ The song has such a humour and lightness to it that it’s quite impressive that it fits on the album so well and the song’s solo is so full of childish fun, its hard not to laugh. The album’s other single, The Carpet Crawlers, features a whirling keyboard part, seasoned with Gabriel’s murmured vocal, buried in metaphor as to make it rather hard to decipher. It’s a gentle piece that builds and builds around its mantra-like chorus creating the album’s most emotionally affecting track.

Lyrically, Peter Gabriel deliberately wanted to make this more American, to contrast with the English folk inspired lyrics on Selling England by the Pound. I prefer the lyrics here, they’re darker - if you’ve read the plot summary you’ll see what I mean - and despite their dense nature, they always seem to fit with the music accompanying them.

My favourite moments of this challenge have been when I’ve been bowled over by something I wasn’t expecting, and this is one of those moments. I have to confess I didn’t expect a 90 minute experimental prog-rock album to end up this high in my estimations, and yet it has. The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway is impenetrable, you’ll probably never get the story without reading a plot summary, its lyrics are often clouded in metaphor and sometimes so heavily reverbed they’re hard to understand anyway - the opening track being a great example of this - but in the end, that’s not the point. The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway is musicianship and creativity at its finest. It’s ludicrously ambitious, and manages to bewitch you for its entire 90 minute duration. Not once does it get repetitive or predictable and there are so many moments of sheer beauty - I’m listening to The Colony of Slipperman’s majestic opening right now, which is a case in point - that every listen is an incredibly rewarding experience. I haven’t got to the bottom of this album by a long stretch, it still teems with mystery, and yet that’s part of what makes it so magical. I know I’ll be listening to this in years to come, still discovering new lyrical and instrumental sections I love, which before had just drifted by.

Song Picks: In the Cage, Back in NYC, Counting Out Time, Carpet Crawlers, The Lamia

9.5/10

ATabuadeEsmerelda — 2. A Tábua de Esmeralda

Jorge Ben

Way back in my 1963 article I reviewed and very much liked Jorge Ben’s debut album, Samba Esquema Novo. He makes a re-entry to our lists over a decade later with his 11th album, A Tábua de Esmeralda. It’s title refers to the Emerald Tablet, a cryptic piece of Hermetica, and it apparently covers themes of alchemy and mysticism, though I don’t understand Portuguese so can’t confirm that. The album is seen as a Brazilian classic, coming 6th in Rolling Stones Brazil’s list of the best Brazilian albums of all time.

The album is testament to just how much Jorge’s sound has developed since that debut album. We’ve now got a full band backing him, and a much livelier samba sound. The opening Os Alquimistas Estão Chegando Os Alquimistas starts with a spoken exchange before Jorge’s guitar comes in with some spritely chords that are backed by a whole host of backing vocalists, a lovely atmospheric string arrangement and then the drum, guitar, bass and vocal line-up that takes up the majority of the album. It is clear very early on we’re in for an absolute treat, the way Jorge accents the backing vocalist’s jolly melodies by following them with equally charming riffs on his guitar is the first of many moments on the album where I just couldn’t wipe the smile off my face.

O Homem da Gravata Florida is a great example of Jorge’s fabulous vocals. The track opens with him displaying a throaty resonance that feels more wholesome than the most wholesome of breads, and before you know it he’s into an effortless falsetto, throwing gorgeous melodies around in every register like confetti, all the while accompanying it with a superb, infectiously energetic guitar part. Accompaniment is provided by an electric guitar and percussion, but it’s never overdone, the musicians weaving in and out of the piece like masters of knowing exactly how much is enough.

I’ve already harped on about the backing vocalists but they’re such a big part of why this album is so effective. The way they appear for the psychadelic beginning to Errare Humanum Est and then make way for another sumptuous vocal by Jorge Ben is magical, and in fact the whole album really knows how to hook you into its songs within the first 20 seconds. Whether it be the talking and laughing, followed by the rapid bouncy guitar part that starts Menina Mulher da Pele Preta, the flabbergastingly uplifting choir opening to Minha Teimosia, Uma Arma Pra Te Conquistar or the way Jorge matches the riff with his singing before diverting into more vocal magic on O Namorado da Viúva, I was completely hooked within the first 20 seconds of every song, which is quite a remarkable achievement.

A Tábua de Esmeralda is a bundle of positive energy. It’s impossible not to feel completely alive while listening to it and any of its 12 glorious songs. The thing speaks to all the happy parts of my being. Jorge’s melodies and those of his backing choir are perfect, the accompaniment is busy enough to add to the lively sound palette, but everyone also knows when to stop, and just how much to play, making it impossible to fault anything instrumentally here. The album is bursting with moments of such joy and magic that I found it pretty hard to wipe the daft smile off my face throughout all of my listens of it. Other than the English track Brother, which is highly religious, I can’t speak for the lyrical content here, but it doesn’t matter, and in fact I might even enjoy it less if I knew what the lyrics were. As it is, it’s an experience of pure music and melody, everything here has its place, and it’s hard to imagine any of the songs without any of their many components. It’s the sound of togetherness, of happiness, and of good times. Hell, I think A Tábua de Esmeralda just might be the sound of life itself.

Song Picks: Zumbi, Os Alquimistas Estão Chegando Os Alquimistas, Hermes Trismegisto e sua celeste tábua de esmeralda

10/10

Get Up With It is a compilation album consisting of 2 hours’ worth of recordings by Miles from 1970 to 1974. Although technically a compilation album, it is remarkably cohesive, which I guess is why it has ended up in such high esteem.

The albums starts with He Loved Him Madly, a tribute to Duke Ellington - who used to say ‘I love you madly’ to is audiences. It’s a 30 minute piece that’s sparse and dark, and features Davis’ first of many appearances on the organ on this album. Davis’ long organ notes sound like they’re coming from miles away as numerous electric guitars bounce sounds around a seemingly infinitely large hall. The drums sporadically roll and bump. The whole piece sounds like a load of wild animals’ cries around the central organ pillar that Miles erects. The piece has no melody line, no repeated percussion, nothing to latch onto at all until around the ten minute mark when a gentle drumbeat and the most minimalist of bass riffs carry the track forward. It is that bass riff that anchors the next 20 minutes of the track, gently throwing out a pulse wave whenever we’re close to getting lost, sucking us back into its irresistible, teasingly short groove. Brian Eno cites this piece as a massive influence on his pioneering work in ambient music and I’ve no hesitation in calling it an ambient masterpiece, before such a thing probably existed. It is the sound of slowly spinning into the abyss, hyper-aware of every sound as you plummet to your doom.

Side two ups the groove factor as the songs keep the dreamy ambience of the opening track, but feature more prominent bass and drum parts, as well as the addition of Jame Mtume’s delicately bouncy percussion. Mayisha is a masterclass in effective, simple bass playing featuring a whole host of moods created by the a wealth of instruments circling our bassline earworm. Honky Tonk features the return of John McGlaughlin on the guitar, and he’s as wonderful as ever, perfectly toying with Miles’ trumpet lines and unleashing probably the filthiest and heaviest riff to feature on a Miles Davis album. The side finishes with Rated X where we get to experience Miles’ dark, satanic organ playing. As described in the excellent Pitchfork review of the album:

“Dark arts arose from his [Miles’] keys, as Sly Stone’s bassist of the time recalled during one coke-fuelled night: “[Miles] got on Sly’s organ and started to voice these nine-note, ethereal crazy chords. Sly…came out yelling, ’Who in the fuck is doing that on my organ? Miles, get your motherfucking ass out…Don’t ever play that voodoo shit here.’”

Side 3 consists of another 30 minute plus piece, this time the percussion driven Calypso Frelimo, a swirl of noise and howls, spinning around Henderson’s central Super Mario-like bass riff. Anything Super Mario-like is a winner in my books, and this is no exception. It’s a sprawling 30 minute planet of sound to get yourself lost in, ending in a frantic cacophony of djembe, guitars, drums and a faster version of that central bass riff, as we’re seemingly running out of time in Bowser’s castle, shells, goombas and who knows what being thrown at us from all directions. Then an electric guitar riff comes out of nowhere to defy the chaos happening around it, showing us the light; Bowser’s this way.

On the final side, it’s Mtume that sticks out. Presumably named after the aforementioned percussionist James Mtume, the piece is dominated by his rolling congas that are so smooth it’s hard to believe this isn’t some sort of edited drum sample. As the track builds the percussion and drums snowball, before we’re seemingly riding a giant truck obliterating everything in its path, reminiscent of 1970 masterpiece Bitches Brew. The track ends with the perfect, god-awful death cry of a planet, perfectly presented by Miles Davis’ brash and blaring organ.

Get Up With It is another masterpiece from Miles. 2 hours of ear-bending, inventive, transporting, majestic, doomed, dark and bouldering music to get so lost in that when you come out the other side you feel as if you’ve just been on a two month holiday to some strange, completely inaccurately noisy space simulation. The amount of soul and creativity packed into these two hours is, quite frankly, so ridiculous I’m still struggling to comprehend it. Get Up With It cements Miles Davis’ place as one of my very favourite artists, and the only artist besides Bob Dylan that I’ve given three 10/10s to so far.

Song Picks: He Loved Him Madly, Maiysha, Calypso Frelimo Honky Tonk, Mtumbe

10/10