1978 - Clive's Top Albums of Every Year Challenge

March 04, 2021 by Clive in Clive's Album Challenge, Music

It’s good to be back, having taken a month off to partake in February Album Writing Month. I’m looking forward to continuing to move through the years.

So, 1978, the year that Jim Jones’ cult followers committed mass suicide in Jonestown, the Panama canal treaty was signed agreeing to give possession of the canal to Panama by the year 2000, Sony introduced the first Walkman, and the first transatlantic balloon flight was made.

As for music, the following are rated as the top five albums of 1978 according to our lovely rateyourmusic.com users.

#1 Steve Reich - Music for 18 Musicians
#2 Kraftwerk - Die Mensch-Maschine
#3 Wire - Chairs Missing
#4 Sun Ra - Lanquidity
#5 Bruce Springsteen - Darkness on the Edge of Town

We’ve got our first entries from Steve Reich and Sun Ra, and three returning artists. I’m also throwing this lot into the mixer from further down the list:

#7 Rush - Hemispheres
#8 Elvis Costello - Next Year’s Model
#9 Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings and Food
#18 Kate Bush - The Kick Inside
#19 Blondie - Parallel Lines
#25 Brian Eno - Ambient 1: Music for Airports
#62 Rolling Stones - Some Girls

Let’s see which of these 12 heavyweights comes out on top in probably our tightest contest yet.

Die Mensch Maschine (The Man Machine in English) is the seventh album by the German electronic band. As stated on Wikipedia, ‘it sees them moving to more danceable rhythms and less minimalistic arrangements’.

The album kicks off with Die Roboter (The Robots), the album’s first single. “We’re charging our batteries / and now we’re full of power” the song repeats, along with very few other lines, creating a slightly sinister, industrial feel. The track is repetitive and features the usual simple synth melodies following the almost spoken word vocals. What’s particularly notable is how the synthesised bass pounds in a way that I’ve not experienced from anything electronic up to this point. It’s a good indication of what’s to come.

I prefer the tracks that don’t rely as heavily on the slightly cheesy sounding synth melodies present on the first track, and that create more interesting soundscapes. Spacelabs is such an example, where the synths combine with electronic drums to create something that wouldn’t have been out of place on a 70s sci-fi film. An intricate, and still very danceable track that is both memorable and haunting.

As with Trans-Europe Express there’s definitely an industrial beauty in the simplicity to the songs here, and their influence on future electronic music is evident. The pulsating electronic lines repeat over and over creating a trance-like atmosphere, punctuated with simple melodies by a variety of synth sounds and vocoder infused, metallic vocals. In Das Model Kraftwerk came up with the first purely electronic banger, and in Die Mensch Maschine they came up with an album that seemed like a distillation of everything they’d been creating up to that point. I can’t see myself coming back to it all that often, but it’s an enjoyable look into the birth of electronic music.

Song Picks: Spacelab, Das model

7.5/10

Costello’s second album, and first with the Attractions, made it to number 98 on Rolling Stone’s top 500 albums of all time. The English singer-songwriter was born out of the pub rock scene in the early 70s, which was to be a major influencing factor - due to its emphasis on cheaper recordings and independent labels - on the punk rock movement of the later 70s.

This Year’s Model is full of catchy, high energy songs that bounce along with an infectious happy-go-lucky attitude. Instrumental touches such as the spritely organ on You Belong to Me and the futuristic sounding vocoder vocals that kick off Hand in Hand make the album just as much as Costello’s saturated, catchy vocals and his simple and yet effective lyrics.

(I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea, written in the office Costello worked at once everyone had gone home, is a great demonstration of everything Costello and the Attractions do so well here. They pick one instrument to drive the track, in this case the bass; Costello keeps his melodies within a small range; and uses lyrics with few adjectives, forcing you to fill in the blanks somewhat in a way that changes the songs a little each time you listen to them.

The album’s closer Radio, Radio is, well, an absolute banger. The perfect bass part and celebratory organ punctuations accompany Costello’s drawled vocals like cheese complements wine as he rants about Radio’s unwillingness to play many of the era’s punk rock tunes, and their ‘anaesthetise(d)’ take on music.

It’s hard to imagine anyone disliking This Year’s Model, it sounds fresh, fun, was clearly influential on a lot of British music and yet, at a time when many bands were pushing for more complexity, revels in the simple.

Song Picks: (I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea; Radio, Radio; Pump it Up

8.5/10

10. More Songs About Buildings and Food

Talking Heads

Talking Heads’ second album is their first of three produced by our man Brian Eno, seeing them shift to a more danceable style, driven largely by Tina Weymouth’s superb bass playing. You might expect the addition of Eno as producer to have led to a more atmospheric and dense production, but in fact it leads to a more focused, bass and rhythm oriented sound which massively plays to the band’s strengths.

The album opens with Thank You for Sending Me an Angel, a song about a parent who is grateful for their child. It’s a great opener, building with it’s repeated drum shuffle and guitar part to a sudden ending, before Tina Weymouth’s tour de force starts on With Your Love, where her fluttering bass riff defines the verse. Throughout the album, her fun, simple, melodic, and clearly Motown inspired bass parts combine perfectly with Chris Frantz’s on the beat drumming to create a very danceable and bouncy rhythm while David Byrne’s nervous bursts of vocal help add some unpredictability.

This combination works a dream on all the album’s tracks, but peaks on a few tracks in particular. On The Good Thing, the rhythm guitar plays beautifully with Weymouth’s bass and Byrne’s melodies are some of the most relaxed on the record, including a chorus that has an almost anthemic quality created by the backing vocals. The bass in the bridge leads the ragged guitar skitters beautifully, like a straight flying bird guiding scattered butterflies.

Found a Job is perhaps the album’s most popular song - besides the great Take Me to the River cover, and as soon as you hear Weymouth’s iconic bass riff which sounds like the life of the party, it’s clear why. The song is essentially about a couple being bored of what’s on TV and thus creating their own show, which makes them happier. The final verse gives a direct instruction to the listener, and it’s undoubtedly an oversimplified message, but it’s a nice one to hear now and again, particularly when coming from a band making music as fun as this.

So think about this little scene, apply it to your life
If your work isn't what you love, then something isn't right
Just think of Bob and Judy, they're happy as can be
Inventing situations, putting them on TV

In fact many of the album’s lyrics are refreshingly honest, I particularly love Byrne’s cries of “I don’t have to prove I’m creative” on Artists Only, a song where the bass has an almost haunting quality to it. I’m Not In Love is almost moshable anti-love song with its speed and bounce, and again features some great, on the nose lyrics.

More Songs About Buildings and Food is as unpretentious as its title and as straight and grid like, yet odd and creative as its cover art. It’s a great advertisement of just how inventive and singular the Talking Heads were.

Song Picks: The Good Thing, Artists Only

8.5/10

Rush’s sixth album is another prog rock tour de force, and perhaps the most prog-rock of any of their albums I’ve heard so far - which is saying something. We’ve got arrangements that have clearly been thought out to the finest detail here, and one of those arrangements is a whopping 18 minutes long.

Said 18 minute whopper is the opening track CygnusX-1 Book II: Hemispheres (quite the catchy title). The song, in classic prog rock fashion, is about the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus and is a journey through endless cleverly thought out sections of music. Starting with a few heavily reverbed guitar stabs and bass drum thuds, it soon evolves into a flowing cascade of impressive musical skills. Lee hums along on his bass guitar, with that classic Rickenbacker grit, while drummer Peart is so unable to be thrown out of time by even the smallest margin that you’d be forgiven for thinking that he’s a super hero who’s origin story involves him swallowing a clock and becoming time itself. Lifeson’s phased and reverberating guitar is the prime driver for the song’s massive sound, though the minimalistic synth parts also help. I lost count of how many different sections the song had after only 4 minutes or so, but I will say that they were all a delight. Geddy Lee’s dramatic rendition of an impressively ambitious lyric fits among its musical surroundings perfectly, cutting through the mix with his high pitch, while never getting irritating. The song is the constant to-ing an fro-ing between sections that seem to glide along like a magic carpet, and others that stab like lightning from the sky. It keeps you on your toes, never gets boring, and, most impressively of all, builds to an incredibly satisfying conclusion, a rather touching and unexpected acoustic guitar outro.

Circumstances, at a mere 3 minutes and 40 seconds, feels like a ditty in comparison. It crams an un-standard amount of sections into its fairly standard running length and depicts Neil Peart’s struggles to make it as a drummer in London. Something that is rather perplexing considering how stupidly good he is, switching between tempos, time signatures, and styles with an ease I’m not sure anyone has ever replicated since. This is followed, in classic Rush style, with a song about trees. The Trees was chosen as a single along with Circumstances - probably because they’re the only ones short enough to be played on the radio - and is a particularly great demonstration of Lee’s talent for vocal melody as he sings about a conflict between oaks and maples, centred around the oaks taking up all the light. Only Rush could pull it off, and I mean that in the best possible way.

At this point, we’re left wondering why we’ve had two songs in a row that are a reasonable length on a Rush album. But this is soon rectified with the nine and a half minute closer, La Villa Strangiato, the band’s first instrumental song. Once again the band are unable to sit with a concept for more than 20 seconds and dart from section to section until they seemingly exhaust themselves around the halfway mark, where we’re blessed with relaxing bass decays and a scintillating guitar solo from Lifeson. Things build again to a riff led melee of noise so pounding it’s easy to forget that it’s being created by only three people, before we finish with bass and drum solos.

Hemispheres is another testament to Rush’s prog-rock brilliance, pushing the boundaries of how many time signatures a song should contain, but in a way that is still thoroughly enjoyable to listen to.

Song Picks: CygnusX-1 Book II: Hemispheres, The Trees

8.5/10

prallel lines.jpg — 8. Parallel Lines

Blondie

Blondie’s third album reached number 1 in the UK charts, and led to their breakthrough in the US, where it reached number 6. The album features many of the group’s most famous songs, including Hanging on the Telephone and Heart of Glass.

Debbie Harry’s vocals are superb throughout the album, going seamlessly from a growl on the punchy One Way or Another; to more gentle and melodic on Picture This, where her trademark rasp appears during the song’s rather massive climax, aided by some great guitars from the group’s co-founder Chris Stein; to almost dreamy on the country inspired Fade Away. She even goes slightly Patti Smith in the opening of the Brooke Shields inspired Pretty Baby.

The band gets rather heavy at times, Stein’s cataclysmic riff on I Know But I Don’t Know wouldn’t be out of place on a Black Sabbath album, and Harry’s glassy vocals juxtapose well with the din created by the rest of the band while Clem Burke’s cymbal averse drumming - until the bridge - helps stop it leaning too much into ‘metal’. Stein’s guitar solo is a delight of chaotic, careering fuzz.

Before we get to the jewel of the album’s second side we discover 11:59 and Will Anything Happen, two songs that again demonstrate the band’s talent for catchy melodies, and the way they’re able to fill out the sound spectrum with a fairly straightforward rock sound that’s somehow much more interesting than that. The stair-like jitters on the latter are a good example of how the band know exactly when to mix it up to keep things interesting without overdoing it. Sunday Girl is a rare song where they seem to fail to do this and the piece sounds a bit more formulaic than other tracks on the album, though it’s still well written and enjoyable enough.

The jewel of side two is, of course, the masterpiece Heart of Glass, the band’s most famous song. Opening with a bass and guitar riff as iconic as anything ever written, things reach even headier heights once Harry’s perfect glassy vocal enters. It feels like the first real ‘club banger’ we’ve come across in this challenge. It sounds massive, with that iconic melody worming it’s way into your brain via Harry’s vocals and that mountainous synth in the bridge. The production on the piece is some of the best I’ve heard on anything so far, with tastefully added double-tracks, hummed sections, vocal ad-libs and that prophetic synth adding to what is already a tune with a whole lot going for it. 5 minutes and 50 seconds hardly seems enough time to contain something so brilliant.

Parallel Lines is a truly great and influential pop album. Harry’s happy to try her hand at a whole host of vocal styles, sometimes within the same song, and the band follows suit with performances and ideas that help make sure things never grow stale. It has a bit more of a ‘collection of songs’ feel than an album to me, which is what holds it back slightly, but when the songs are this good, that’s not much of an issue.

Song Picks: I Know But I Don’t Know, Hanging on the Telephone, Heart of Glass, One Way or Another

8.5/10

7. Darkness on the Edge of Town

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce is back with his fourth album, and first since 1975’s masterpiece Born to Run. While 1975’s effort usually outshines it in terms of popularity, Darkness on the Edge of Town was ranked by Rolling Stone as the 91st best album of all time, and received pretty much only positive reviews on its release. It continues to be a fan favourite, and features songs that remain mainstays of Bruce’s live sets today.

The album is less commercial than its predecessor, and also less energetic in general, though plenty of Born to Run’s vivacity is evident in the meteoric opener Badlands - a perfect segue from Born to Run’s messages of escape, to Darkness on the Edge of Town’s more introspective tone. Springsteen explores the characters that don’t fit in - as he has during much of his career - and nowhere is this clearer than on the ‘ballad of the black sheep of the family’ Adam Raised a Cain, which features one of Springsteen’s rockiest backdrops. Something in the Night takes a gentler turn, and seems to be referencing Bruce’s lawsuit with his manager in the verse:

Well you're born with nothing
And better off that way
Soon as you've got something they send
Someone to try and take it away

It’s another song about a freedom, with plenty of car imagery as you’d expect. In an album full of captivating vocal performances, this is perhaps one of the best, full of long notes and seemingly performed straight from the soul, it sounds like the crumbled American dream itself is singing to you. The chorus rings with both despair and the triumph of having finally hit the bottom from where there’s no way but up. The same could be said for Racing in the Street, another affecting song of freedom hung on a simple piano part that’s one of the most beautiful things on the album, or indeed on any of these albums. Springsteen’s vocals are as sad as a lonely night, but with the melody of someone who sees the beauty in it all.

It’s not until Promised Land that Bruce regains some energy, which he combines with perhaps his most powerful hook “Mister I ain't a boy, no I'm a man, And I believe in a promised land” to create another powerful anthem of escape, and one I’d argue is perhaps his most brilliant. Clemons’ sax solo is as free as a migrating bird, and harkens back to his meteoric performances on Born to Run.

The title track, which closes the album, is one of Springsteen’s masterpieces. A song that meditates on how we spend our lives distracting ourselves from dealing with the darkness in ourselves, in a similar way that society ignores the ‘darkness on the edge of town’. The laboured way the song’s title is sung in the chorus contrasts perfectly with the more explosive vocal parts in the song, representing, to me, how our dreams and thoughts are often so far detached from the dark reality.

Darkness on the Edge of town is another great album about the existential struggle of the working man, something Bruce has made a career out of. And when you see the artistry, poetry, and earnest performances that grace this album, it’s easy to see why.

Song Picks: Promised Land, Badlands, Racing in the Street, Darkness on the Edge of Town

9/10

Created by layering tape loops of differing lengths, Eno’s sixth album sees him moving firmly into the ambient genre he was to pioneer. As the title suggests, this was designed to be played on a loop continuously in airports, an environment Eno felt could do with becoming less stressful. Eno himself described the idea of ambient music as being “as ignorable as it is interesting” and that it would “induce calm and a space to think”.

As someone with a busy brain that isn’t always my friend, I’ve always had a soft-spot for ambient music as a way to ‘induce calm’ as Eno says above. Though this isn’t the first release that could be described as ambient music, it is the first album to explicitly label itself as that, and thus to me is undoubtedly the birth of the genre.

1/1 opens the album with soft and slow interweaving piano lines that are repeated throughout, backed by gentle atmospheric synths. It’s minimalistic in the extreme, but it’s ability to relax you is quite something, and despite its simplicity, there’s enough gentle creativity and beauty in the track for it to work both when listening intently, or when half-listening. The following 2/1 features vocals backed by a synth. Again, the piece is just a series of loops repeating themselves to a timescale that means they never come back into sync. With that, it continuously feels very familiar and safe, while never sounding the same. A masterstroke that again tricks the brain into feeling completely at home, while never getting bored. The second side continues much like the first, with gorgeous repeating melodies being played out at different times creating a cloudy, dreamy atmosphere.

Ambient 1: Music for Airports, is remarkable in that it achieves exactly what it sets out to do, and proves once again the amazing effect music has on our brains. It’s an audio version of a port in a storm, and they really should start playing it in airports.

Song Picks: 1/1, 1/2

9/10

The title of Wire’s second album apparently refers to the British expression “he’s got a few chairs missing in his front room”, one which I’ve never heard but that reminds me of the Swiss expression “he’s missing a few glasses in his cupboard”. The album sees the band experiment with more developed song structures and adds synth and keyboards to their arsenal.

There’s a darkness to the songs here, something evident from the opening track Practice Makes Perfect, which the bass tries its best to make jolly, but is made rather haunting by the reverberated laughter that appears in the second half of the track. Lyrically, the song is about waiting to go up to Sarah Bernhardt’s - a French actress from the 19th century - room. The following French Film Blurred is more difficult to decipher, and sets the tone for an album that is both rather weird, and yet completely fascinating. Glimpses of the punk from their debut re-appear at times. Such as the catchy bass part on Men 2nd and the bouncy guitars on Sand in my Joints, but they’re generally blurred by the dark, ambient soundscapes the band is now creating.

Marooned features probably my favourite lyric, one that seems to portray a complete loneliness that is perfectly emphasised by the distorted guitar that sounds as if it’s coming from miles a way and the bumbling bass that seems like it’s trying to comfort our singer, who mumbles his way through the pretty and desolate word picture he’s built. Being Sucked in Again is the perfect mix of the more catchy nature of their debut, and the darker, more intriguing nature of this effort. The riffs and chants of ‘being sucked in again’ worm their way into your ears, while some of the effects on the instruments create an atmosphere that makes the song endlessly more interesting than the simple one it is on the surface, with that almost underwater bass sound being particularly brilliant. The album’s highlight though is perhaps Mercy, a six minute tirade of blaring, crunchy, guitars that make Colin Newman’s vocals almost inaudible, finishing with a Robert Gotobed (what a surname) smashing the drum kit with some robotic quarter notes as the guitars threaten to swallow him whole. It’s probably the most ‘post-rock’ track I’ve heard so far on this challenge.

Chairs Missing is a mood; dreamy, dark, mysterious and untouchable in equal measure. It’s not often I describe an album as fascinating, but I think Chairs Missing is just that.

Song Picks: Marooned, Being Sucked in Again, Heartbeats, Mercy, Outdoor Miner

9/10

Sun Ra was a bit of a character. He abandoned his birth name in the 1940s, taking the name Le Sony'r Ra, shortened to Sun Ra (after Ra, the Egyptian God of the Sun). He also claimed to be an Alien from Saturn on a mission to preach peace and denied any links with his previous identity.

Musically, he’s known for avant-garde, jazz inspired music with extensive use of his synthesiser playing. A prolific artist, Sun Ra had already released well over 30 albums by the time Lanquidity was released in 1978.

Lanquidity opens with the suitably sci-fi title track. The horns gently breathing like an alien life-force as nostalgic twinkles and echoes accompany them to create an otherworldly, mysterious, and slightly gloomy atmosphere. The album comes back to planet Earth with the groovy Where Pathways Meet, a song that’d make a perfect companion to marching elephants in a grittier remake of the Jungle Book, with it’s clunking percussion, and broad brass lines accompanied by some virtuoso guitar twiddling. That’s How I Feel continues the more accessible feel, built on a simple rumbling bassline that grounds the otherwise relaxingly free sax, piano and guitar parts that sound as if they’re discussing world peace in the language of music.

Sun Ra’s synth work on Twin Stars of Thence is probably the album’s most magical moment; playing perfectly off Richard Williams’ bass walk he scatters notes into the ether like an unstoppable, gentle firework as the piece builds slowly to John Gilmore’s solo, and finally Disco Kid’s superb guitar twinkles. It’s 9 minutes of pure jazz bliss. Everything closes with the infinitely weirder, but also strikingly pretty There are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of), which puts you back on the planet we visited in track one, filling out some of the details. Sketching the wind with warm saxophone blasts, and the stars with subtle xylophone taps. The spoken words whisper in either ear, absorbing you fully into this weird world as surprisingly calm screeches and creative synth sounds fill out this rather magical sound experiment.

Lanquidity is surprisingly accessible for how experimental it is, and it’s one of those rare records that creates a mood very much its own.

Song Picks: Where Pathways Meet, That’s How I Feel, Twin Stars of Thence

9/10

The Stones’ 14th British, and 16th American studio album is the first to feature Ronnie Wood as a full time member and sees them take a more disco direction, inspired by Mick Jagger and their decline in popularity since 1972’s Exile on Main Street.

The turn to a disco influence was a good one in my books, as Jagger’s energy, Wyman’s grooving bass lines, and the more rock ‘n’ roll nature of Richards’ guitar work and Wyman’s drumming make for an infectious blend of the two genres.

The album is injected with a great playfulness and fun that is evident from the first bass notes of Miss You - quite probably one of my very favourite bass parts. The “oooh oooh oooh” parts glide perfectly over Wyman’s impossibly groovy bass as Jagger energetically talks of feelings of longing. It’s the kind of song that immediately gets me dancing about, much like the following When the Whip Comes Down - which features yet another infectious bass part from Wyman, and which has a bouncy feel despite it’s rather dark and tragic story of a gay drifter. Just My Imagination features some classic Keith Richards noodling before his blurry riff helps create yet another winner of a chorus.

Some Girls saw the Stones getting rather controversial again. Their label wanted them to cut the song, which essentially talks about what women of various nationalities and races do. Jagger refused, saying that the song was a parody of racist attitudes, something he’d have probably had an easier time selling if his delivery didn’t sound so frolicsome in most of their other songs too. Far Away Eyes is a personal favourite of mine. A perfect tongue-in-cheek country song with lines like the below that always make me laugh:

And the preacher said, "You know, you always have the
Lord by your side"
And I was so pleased to be informed of this
That I ran twenty red lights in his honour

Some Girls is very Rolling Stones, Jagger hasn’t grown up, but he continues to give vocal performances that are as engaging as any from the time, with a bristling energy and immediacy to them on every song. Combine that with great melodies, groovy as hell bass parts, and the general feeling of a band having a good time - similar to that on the classic Exile on Main Street - and you have a winner of an album. You can’t take it too seriously, but then I doubt the Stones want you to.

Song Picks: Shattered, Far Away Eyes, Miss you

9/10

The English singer-songwriter’s debut album includes her number one hit in the UK, Wuthering Heights, and reached number 3 in the albums chart. It was critically acclaimed across the board on release, and has continued to receive universal praise since. The album was produced by David Gilmour’s friend Andrew Powell, and executive produced by David Gilmour himself, who funded Bush’s very first demos having been impressed by them in 1972, when Bush was just 13.

Things kick off with some whale song on the opening track, Moving, which was a hit in Japan. The song is a perfect introduction to Bush’s considerable talent. Her vocals start impossibly high and perfect, gliding over the soft piano like some ethereal being. The chorus melody is gorgeous and elevated by a production that doesn’t have too much going on, but is still very full sounding. Bush’s floating vocals - which probably have the largest range I’ve ever heard in a vocalist - are certainly the hallmark of the album, bringing to life the angelic melodies of Strange Phenomena and many more, but let’s not forget the rest of the music shall we? David Paton’s bass guitar on Kite provides the perfect counterpart to probably Bush’s highest vocal on the album, and it’s as if it’s mumbling agreement with Bush’s calls to “come up and be a kite”. The song is fun, bouncy, and impeccably performed on all fronts, with variations in tempo keeping things fresh.

It’s hard to listen to the album without getting the feeling you’ve been blessed by some angel from the heavens, and songs that could easily have been a bit boring, like The Man with the Child in His Eyes are elevated to being wondrous because of Andrew Powell’s dramatic arrangements and Bush’s soaring vocals.

Wuthering Heights is, of course, the album’s most famous song and it’s now rather perplexing that Bush had to press for it to be released as the first single, as her record company were pressing for Jesus and the Cold Gun. Kate Bush turned out to be right obviously, and it remains Bush’s most successful single to this day, spending 4 weeks at number 1 on the British chart. The song features one of the most recognisable and unique chorus melodies ever written, one that sounds as if it was composed by some musically talented birds longing for the return of the sun. Ian Bairnson’s understated guitar solo is the perfect ending. A song about the novel after which it’s named, it’s one of the best songs ever written, completely incomparable to anything that has come before or since.

The second side opens with perhaps the album’s most by the numbers track, the aforementioned James and the Cold Gun. The vulnerable, and beautifully simple retelling of a sexual encounter on Feel It is particularly memorable, and is followed quickly by the fun and endlessly interesting Oh to Be in Love, featuring rare male vocals, which provide a great foundation to Bush’s, in a chorus that’s one of the most enjoyable on the record. The album’s final four tracks continue to display Bush’s endless vocal talent and the tasteful and interesting arrangements, maintaining the feeling that you’re listening to something that’s just dropped from the sky.

Song Picks: Kite, Wuthering Heights, Strange Phenomena, Oh to be in Love

9/10

Music for 18 Musicians, a work of instrumental minimalism first premiered in 1976, but a recording of the piece wasn’t released until 1978. Reich’s first attempt at writing for larger ensembles, the piece is based on a cycle of eleven chords, with pieces of music based on one chord effortlessly flowing into a short piece based on another etc.

The album is made up of the single 56 minute title piece, which swells and sparkles from chord to chord putting you into a relaxed trance state. It feels like a quicker, livelier version of something like Eno’s Ambient 1: Music for Airports, with repetition creating a homely familiarity within the subtle, slow changes in the piece. Although there’s a whole host of instruments playing here, such as pianos, marimbas and xylophones, there’s rarely more than 2 of each instrument, creating a sound that maintains its intimacy, something the fact nothing is electronic here also helps add to. The real masterstroke however is Reich’s decision to focus on the breath of his musicians, instructing them to create pulses present throughout the piece by repeating breaths in the same time intervals for as long as their lungs would let them. This makes the piece feel like a living, breathing entity, and it becomes more than just music, but something you swear you could touch. When this idea reaches its climax with a female voice creating pulses using the same idea, I could have sworn I entered a parallel universe for a fleeting moment.

I’ve always been a big believer in certain albums coming to life in certain situations, and Robert Christgau’s claim that the album ‘sounds great in the evening by the sea’ has me rather excited to try that one day. For now though, I’ll just have to listen its intricate pitter-patter melodies and gorgeous minimalism and imagine the waves lapping the pebbles by the sea, the wind pressing my baggy shirt against my skin, and the seagulls nesting noisily in the cliffs, all given new vibrant colours through the lens of Reich’s magnificent creation. It’s all rather easy to imagine when listening to something so majestic.

9.5/10

1977 - Clive's Top Albums of Every Year Challenge

December 18, 2020 by Clive in Clive's Album Challenge, Music

In what will likely be my final post of 2020 (don’t panic, I’ll very much be carrying on with this cahllenge into 2021 and beyond) we’re going to take a look at 1977. The year the nuclear-proliferation pact, curbing the spread of nuclear weapons was signed by 15 countries, Star Wars hit theatres for the first time, and British Public sector trade unions including firefighters undertook a strike for wage increases.

As usual, here’s what rateyourmusic.com’s users rate as the year’s top 5 albums, using their fancy new algorithm which seems to give a little less credence to how many reviews an album has, meaning less reviewed releases have a better chance of coming high up the lists.

#1 Pink Floyd - Animals
#2 David Bowie - Low
#3 Television - Marquee Moon
#4 Fleetwood Mac - Rumours
#5 David Bowie - “Heroes”

So returns from Pink Floyd and Bowie and first time entries from Television and Fleetwood Mac. Bowie achieves the rarest of things by managing to release two albums in one year that make it onto the list. As usual, five just isn’t enough, so I’m grabbing a few from further down to compete for the coveted title for 1977, including a shameless dip quite far down to grab an old favourite.

#6 Trans Europa Express
#7 Fela Kuti - Zombie
#8 Wire - Pink Flag
#11 Bob Marley & the Wailers - Exodus
#12 Brian Eno - Before and After Science
#25 Martha Argerich - 24 Préludes, Op. 28
#85 Sex Pistols - Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols

Plenty of artists we’ve not had before there, so let’s get these 12 albums reviewed and see who comes out the victor. I know I’ve said this a few times already, but this is absolutely a contender for one of the strongest years we’ve had yet.

Trans-europaexpress — 12. Trans Europa Express

Kraftwerk

Kraftwerk’s sixth album ‘saw the group refine their melodic electronic style, with a focus on sequenced rhythms, minimalism, and occasionally manipulated vocals. The themes include celebrations of the titular European railway service and Europe as a whole, and meditations on the disparities between reality and appearance.’ (Wikipedia). Their Previous album, Radio-Activity, had been their first entirely electronic one, moving away from their earlier krautrock style. Trans-Europa Express is regularly seen as a massively influential album on modern music, and was in fact called ‘the most important pop album of the last 40 years’ by the LA times.

Europa Endloss (Europe Endless in English) is a simple, dreamy song about the band travelling across Europe by train. It’s lyrics are simple and repetitive just like the electronic musical backing. The electronic percussion and synths lull you into a beautiful and yet musically primitive sleep. The simplicity of many of the arrangements was likely born out of how early this was in the development of electronic music, but it is also part of the album’s charm, lending it a slightly post-apocalypitc and industrial feel that is only added to by haunting vocals on songs such as Spiegelsall (Hall of Mirrors in English). “Even the biggest stars, don’t like themselves in the mirror” the vocals say in German repeatedly, with a reverb large enough to make it sound like an observation from god.

The songs on Trans- Europa express tend to hinge on a repeated vocal line and simple synth melody and drum beat. The title track is a great example. ‘Trans-Europa Express’ is repeated regularly through some sort of Vocoder to turn the vocals to mercury, and the skittering electronic drum beat is repeated throughout the six and a half minute track, while the synths fill the gaps with large, almost organ-like chords. It’s another strangely haunting piece, like an abandoned factory with the machinery left on. The beginnings of many electronic genres are here, and the influence Kraftwerk had is undisputable. The record has certainly aged, and its sounds are particularly primitive when compared to all the fancy stuff we can do now with electronic music. But it has aged gracefully, thanks to the musicality and atmosphere at its core, and it’s simplicity really is rather beautiful.

Song Picks: Europa Endloss, Spiegelsaal, Franz Schubert, Endloss

8/10

Chopin’s 24 Preludes, Op.28 were first published 1839, and contained 24 short piano pieces, one in each major and minor key. A Polish virtuoso pianist of the Romantic era, Chopin apparently never performed more than 4 of the 24 pieces in a single performance, and there is still debate as to whether they were intended to be played in order, or indeed written as 24 separate pieces to use as possible introductions to other works, as Preludes generally were. The fact that Chopin ordered the songs using the circle of fifths rather than simply moving up the keys in semitones suggests to me that he had thought about the ordering a little too much for the pieces to be designed for consuming independently however. The 24 Preludes, Op.28 have been recorded and performed by a whole heap of pianists, but it’s Martha Argerich’s version, released in 1977 that makes it onto these lists.

Martha Argerich is an Argentine-Swiss concert pianist, and widely regarded as one of the greatest pianists of all time. Born in 1941 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, she began playing the piano aged 3, eventually moving to Europe in 1955 and later gaining Swiss citizenship. Despite her incredible talent and rather impressive list of accolades (see her Wikipedia page here), Argerich has generally shied away from the spotlight, which would explain why this is the first I’ve heard of her.

Argerich’s performance here is masterful. Though I can’t claim to have heard these pieces played by anyone else, it’s hard to imagine them being performed more beautifully than they are here. Argerich can put dizzyingly fast lines together in a way that still feels very human, while making them sound just as effortless as the slower pieces. Those slower pieces have a delicate wonder to them, like the notes from some sunken ship resurfacing as bubbles on the ocean’s surface. There’s a whole world to get lost in here, and Argerich’s mastery of the instrument coupled with Chopin’s gorgeous compositions has absolutely become one of the piano albums I’ll point people to when they ask for my favourites, sitting proudly alongside with Keith Jarrett’s The Köln Concert.

8.5/10

Fela Kuti’s second album to make it onto these lists caused quite a stir. Hugely popular in his home country of Nigeria, the record angered the government there, which it criticised heavily. It angered them so much that they attacked his commune, murdering his mother by throwing her out of a window, severely beating Fela Kuti, burning the entire commune and destroying his studio and master tapes. Though the re-issue added an additional two tracks, I’ll be reviewing the original 25 minute 1977 release here, which featured just two tracks.

The album opens with the title track, a scathing attack on the Nigerian military, describing them all as zombies who just follow orders without thinking, “Zombie no go think, unless you tell am to think”. The sound is similar to the one on Expensive Shit, but perhaps larger. We’ve got a whole host of driving percussion, a scatty strummed electric guitar, and the two talking saxophones that form the centrepiece of Kuti’s afrobeat sound. Once Kuti starts chanting his political lyrics, it’s not hard to see why he had such a big impact in his home country. The music draws you in with its infinite danceability, and soon has you chanting its simple and yet astute political message along with him.

The second and final track Mr Follow Follow has a similar message, “Some dey follow follow, dem close dem eye”, but is a little calmer in it’s instrumentation, with the bass, guitar and saxes laying down an irresistibly smooth groove like the light-hearted march of a cartoon army. Fela preaches about how everyone follows instructions without questioning them by closing their ears, eyes and ‘sense’. A master of setting a theme or mood before introducing any lyrics, it takes Kuti around 7 minutes to start singing here again, and by the time he does, you’re so entranced by the groove that you’ll agree to anything he says, thankfully his message is one that we could all do with hearing.

Zombie is musically and thematically cohesive, an album that is incredibly enjoyable in itself, but which becomes even more remarkable when you know the context of its recording. It’s difficult to imagine how Kuti feels about the album that inadvertently led to the death of his own mother, but to me, this is a perfect example of the power of music to unite, to spread a message by both being accessible and revolutionary.

Song Picks: Zombie, Mr Follow Follow

8.5/10

The English band’s debut album was received well critically, but didn’t sell well. Widely seen as one of the most influential albums of the 70s, its footprints can be seen on many hardcore, punk and alternative albums since. The record features 21 songs over its 35 minute duration, focusing on short, punchy songs that get to the point quickly and never outstay their welcome.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned a lot of times how big a fan of Guided by Voices I am, I’ve always loved their immediacy, how their songs seem to be captured at the point of inspiration, rather than when they’ve been thought out endlessly in the studio, and there’s something attractively raw about that to me. Pink Flag gives me the same vibes. Many of these songs could quite easily have been turned into 3 minute radio hits, but they’d have lost something. There’s a real magic to the rawness here.

With so many songs to talk about, it’d be folly to try and cover them all, so I’ll just talk about some of my highlights. Here goes. Ex Lion Tamer seems to have single-handedly invented Brit-pop, well before that genre was to dominate the charts. The chorus is as catchy as a song about sitting in front of your TV waiting for things to change could be, an anthem for the procrastinator. Lowdown is a great example of how great Colin Newman’s vocals sound when he throws caution to the wind, while Brazil’s guitar sound is so filthy you feel as if you’re being dragged backwards through a rubbish dump. So Obvious features the kind of major chord riff that could have easily been turned into a rock classic, but was instead seemingly played into a washing machine for 50 seconds, recorded, and then left there. Surgeon’s Girl features the lines “Said you weren't a tuna fish, put in a tin / They're very big, ha-ha” while Straight Line includes another fabulous riff that gets played for 44 glorious seconds and is then cut short. Mr Suit is the perfect anti-establishment punk song, something it achieves in only 1:25 seconds with a chorus that says ‘fuck the system’ like no other, “no, no, no, no Mr Suit”. On the grungy Strange, the band decide to play for a whole 4 minutes, with a riff so fuzzy and brilliant that you feel like you’ve just stuck your head straight into the world’s warmest tube amp. The lyrics are simple but performed by Newman in a way that makes them bounce against the guitar riff gloriously. The album’s final two track end things in a blaze of glory, Gimme Love is so drawled you can barely understand what’s being said and 1 2 X U is the ultimate bounce around punk song, but with drums that sound so thin it’s like they’re being played on a load of plastic cups, and guitars that are so loud they’ve gone full circle and ended up quiet again. Chaos.

In a genre that often gets repetitive, Pink Flag is an outstanding album that’s unpredictable, inspired, has the attention span of a gnat, and is completely brilliant.

Song Picks: Strange, Ex Lion Tamer, Lowdown, So Obvious, Gimme Lov

9/10

Beforeandafterscience — 8. Before and after Science

Brian Eno

It’s been quite the decade for Brian Eno, both in terms of his own albums and his contributions to those of others, and his fifth release is another remarkable one. As usual, a whole host of musicians collaborated with Eno on the album’s material, and the it also includes Eno’s final examples of rock music, before he was to head in a more ambient direction. Notably, over 100 songs were written for the album with only 10 making the cut.

Once again, Eno’s lyrics are more about a mood than meaning, which is clear on the opening No One Receiving, where they paint a bleak, industrial picture perfectly backed by the machine-like and yet gently funky backing of the plethora of percussion driven along by the song’s ever-present guitar riff. It’s another perfect example of Eno’ ability to create a world very much his own, something that he was to excel at in his later solo ambient recordings. Backwater displays Eno’s perhaps underrated ability for simple and infectious melody, sounding like Eno’s interpretation of a light hearted sailor’s song. Once again the synths and instrumental create a musical palette that’s both unique and infinitely interesting. Eno’s emphasis on the sound of words rather than their meaning is further explored on the enigmatic Kurt’s Rejoinder, inspired Kurt Schwitters, a prominent figure in the dada movement, which you can read more about here. We see Eno’s ambient work begin to creep in on the eerie and beautiful Energy Folls the Magician and the opening side ends with King’s Lead Hat, a song inspired by the Talking Heads, who Eno would go on to produce multiple albums of, and who’s name the title of the song is an anagram of. For me, it’s one of the album’s highlights, with it’s bopping bass line and drums, topped with an irresistibly catchy melody performed in Eno’s characteristic style. It’s a track that screams ‘fun’, and fills me with joy whenever it comes on.

Side two takes a more introspective turn, with Here He Comes setting the tone nicely with its slightly withdrawn and mumbled vocal backed by some gorgeous lead guitar work. It’s a late night drive kind of a song, sparkling gently like the stars as you exit the air pollution of the city. The gorgeous, twinkling guitar work continues on Julie With… and the gentle night-time ride continues until the album’s end with Spider and I, a song that makes you feel like you’re floating into the most beautiful cosmos, with nothing but your best friend in company.

Before and After Science is very much an album of two halves. The first half perhaps more perfectly encapsulating what Eno had been trying to do with rock music than any of his previous work, and the second half beautifully slides us into his more ambient catalogue. It’s a perfectly documented turning point.

Song Picks: No One Receiving, King’s Lead Hat, Here He Comes, Spider and I

9/10

Bowie’s twelfth album and second of 1977 continues in similar vein to Low, which we’ll get to later in this list. The middle album of Bowie’s ‘Berlin Trilogy’, Heroes was the only one actually recorded in Berlin. Bowie rejoined Tony Visconti and Brian Eno, who he’d worked with on Low, and much of the other personnel remained the same, with the notable addition of Robert Fripp on guitar. The majority of the tracks were recorded spontaneously in the studio and, perhaps most remarkably, Bowie had no lyrics written before he started recording. It continues the theme of having the opening side dedicated to to more conventional songs, with the second side being given over to predominantly instrumental tracks. It was commercially successful, and the most well received of Bowie’s ‘Berlin Trilogy’ initially, though Low is now largely seen as his masterpiece.

The album comes storming out the gates with that familiar insdustrial sound on Bowie recordings since Station to Station, including the brutal machine-like drum sound, which pounds along as the rest of the musicians bounce energetically and Bowie’s lyrics remain largely impenetrable. It combines haunting and dancy in a way that only Bowie can. On the following track Joe the Lion, a tribute to Chris Burden, Fripp’s influence becomes obvious, his riff is another corker, making this one of Bowie’s best rock songs in my books. Fripp effortlessly switches between riffs and solos as Bowie’s howls create another cataclysmic song to lead us into the more gentle Heroes. There are songs that become so famous that they become very much their own thing, and can sometimes stick out when listening to an album purely because of how much more familiar you are with them than the rest of the record. Heroes could easily be such a song, and yet it fits in seamlessly, yes I’ve heard it 3000 times more than any of the other songs here, but this very much feels like the song’s home. Fripp’s guitarwork is yet again what raises the piece from great to amazing, adding in endless depth and texture to a song that could easily have become boring with its simplicity. Bowie’s vocal performance is singular, metallic, and brilliantly unrestrained, getting more shouty as the song progresses, and as Visconti moved the mic further and further away from Bowie. The song tells of a doomed relationship, enjoying it “just for one day” inspired by an affair that producer Tony Visconti was having at the time. Sons of the Silent Age is essentially about ‘average Joes’ living lives that Bowie clearly thinks are rather boring. The first side closes with Blackout, a return to the dancy, industrial sound of the opening track.

The largely instrumental second side is dominated by the three tracks that flow into each other at its core, Sense of Doubt, Moss Garden and Neuköln, the former has a similar dark, haunting and desolate atmosphere to the instrumental tracks on Low, perhaps with some added menace, while Moss Garden is beautifully relaxing, apparently written to recreate the feeling of sitting in some moss gardens in Japan. It makes me want to go and do that immediately. Neuköln brings us back to a slightly darker mood, and features Bowie on saxophone before we finish with Secret Life of Arabia, a warm disco inspired tune, topped with a dusky vocal.

I find Heroes quite hard to separate from Low, and I give the edge to Low purely because it was more groundbreaking, while Heroes was very much a continuation of what Low had started. I think Heroes does everything just as well, there’s just a little less of that intangible magic there that I can’t explain. It may simply be because I listened to Low first.

Song Picks: Beauty and the Beast, Joe the Lion, Heroes, Moss Garden

9/10

Marqueemoon — 6. Marquee Moon

Television

Television’s debut landed to widespread critical acclaim. The band had grown in prominence following their residence at the Lower Manhattan Club and Brian Eno, who seems to have his fingerprints on so much music of the 1970s, produced the band’s first four demos in 1974. The band were eventually signed to Elektra Records, who released their debut.

I’ve mentioned a few times now how one of my favourite things about this listening challenge is discovering an album that seems to invent a genre out of nowhere, this is especially remarkable when that genre is one that played such a big part in my own youth, the 2000s indie-rock revolution of The Libertines, The Strokes et al. Marquee Moon, to me, is the birth of that movement, as well as so many more closer to its date of release.

The album opens with See No Evil, a song propelled by a snake-like guitar riff in one channel accompanied by a basic off-beat chord riff in the other channel. This is all backed by some great jazz inspired, and yet straight, drumming and a vocal that cuts right through the mix with a high frequency, nasal quality that forces you to pay attention to the lyrics. Lyrics that, in this case, are about knowing one is being controlled by desires, and yet seeing the beauty in those desires. It’s the perfect indie-rock song, catapulting the album onto the scene with a number that’s both accessible and revolutionary.

Televison stand apart from other acts of the period for their mix of genres. There’s elements of punk rock, particularly in Tom Verlaine’s deliberately unrestrained vocal, of jazz in Billy Ficca’s intricate drumming, and of a combination of rock and jazz in the guitars, which use more interesting chords in one song than Status Quo probably did in their entire career. It’s a remarkable meld of musicality that’s progressive not for the sake of being progressive but because the sound created is so damn enjoyable. There’s a breeziness to it, an irresistible energetic Sunday morning feeling, a feeling that all is right with the world while music like this is being created.

The album is full of great moments. Among them the great off-kilter guitar work on Friction, which gives Mac DeMarco a run for his money - indeed the competing guitar solos throughout the song belong to the album’s many highlights. The great title track is another one, an 11 minute jam which was apparently the first take, and the engineer initially thought was a rehearsal, testament to just how well well these musicians gel, it sounds perfect. A perfect mix of instrumental intrigue, interspersed vocals, and lyrics that keep you engaged. Not least the majestic closing couplet:

I was listening
Listening to the rain
I was hearing
Hearing something else

By the time you reach the closing track Torn Curtain, which contains perhaps the album’s most affecting chorus and a cracking guitar solo by Tom Verlaine, you’re left feeling like you’ve been blessed by something completely fresh sounding, a refreshing musical shower under a mountain waterfall.

Song Picks: See No Evil, Marquee Moon, Torn Curtain

9/10

5. Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols

The Sex Pistols

The band had already been banned from playing in various parts of Britain and fired from two record labels by the time their only album was released by Virgin Records, and the controversy didn’t end there. The title meant many stores refused to stock it and some charts refused to display its name. Regardless, and probably because of this, it debuted at number 1 on the UK album charts. If you were to somehow measure which albums have influenced the most music since their release, I suspect Never Mind the Bollocks… would end up near the top. Sure we’d had punk before, notably with Ramones in 1976, but it had never been this chaotic, this free, this simple and giving this few fucks.

The album opens with Holidays in the Sun which explodes into motion following the marching bass drum and an explosive riff from Steve Jones on guitar (he also plays bass on most of the album). It’s important to note that the Sex Pistols achieved their sound not by using some sort of amp designed for distortion, oh no, they turned up the gain and volume so high on a predominantly clean amp so that it lead to the distorted racket they’re famous for today. Rotten’s lead vocals are pretty much the birth of the kind of half-sung half-shouted, theatrical vocal that became common on the punk scene after this album was released. It’s sneering, loud, bursting with a cocky attitude, and just generally bloody fabulous. The song also shows their often underrated ability to come up with a catchy hook.

Bodies, the only song to feature Sid Vicious, has a chorus that is so jubilantly cathartic it juxtaposes with the fact the song tackles abortion in such a head on and unflinching way that it appalled many people at the time. It’s probably the heaviest, most gut punching song on the record.

God Save the Queen is obviously monstrous too. Rotten shouting “God Save the Queen - fascist regime!!” and sarcastically belting out “we love our queen!” is quite probably the single most influential punk song of all time, along with the equally boisterous Anarchy UK later on, which a generation of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 fans (me included) have seared into their brains. It’s these two songs which perhaps influence in a foundational way, 50% of my own music. The Sex Pistols taught me to shout my head off, to make my thoughts heard, and to not care whatever anyone else thought. The Sex Pistols taught me freedom

Never Mind the Bollocks… says “We’re the Sex Pistols, and this is what we sound like. Deal with it.” and it’s the best statement of individuality, not caring what anyone thinks, and freedom that there’s probably ever been.

Holidays in the Sun, Bodies, God Save the Queen, Anarchy UK

9.5/10

Bowie’s 11th album is the first of his so called ‘Berlin Trilogy’. A trio of albums produced by Tony Visconti on which Bowie collaborated with Brian Eno. Though recorded after Bowie’s move to West Berlin following the drug addiction that had been apparent throughout the recording of his previous album, the album was actually mostly recorded in France. Low divided critics on release, and received little promotion. Nowadays though, it’s pretty hard to find any greatest album of all time list without Low near the top.

The album delves further into the electronic approach toyed with on Station to Station and is also probably Bowie’s least vocal album, with it’s entire second side featuring instrumentals, and the opening side featuring songs that don’t have much singing either.

Speed of Life bursts into an infectious guitar riff backed by synths and a distinctive punchy drum sound achieved by Visconti using a Eventide H910 harmoniser. It’s a relatively simple electronic track that puts Bowie’s knack for catchy melodies perfectly into an electronic context. Carlos Alomar’s serpentine lead guitar opens up Breaking Glass, on which we have our first Bowie vocal, which sparsely calls to the listener in three short verses over the top of a buzzing bass line, more gated drums, and the aforementioned guitar part that very much makes the song. It’s only on Sound and Vision that we reach our first Bowie ‘hit’. One of my very favourite Bowie songs, it’s once again lifted by a brilliant lead guitar part, this time by Ricky Gardiner, in what has to be one of the simplest and catchiest riffs ever written. Bowie’s vocals speak of an isolation in his blue house, or as Bowie puts it, “I was going through dreadful times. It was wanting to be put in a little cold room with omnipotent blue on the walls and blinds on the windows.” Bowie duets with himself, one version singing in his characteristic melodic tone, the other mumbling with a vocal that has been saturated so much it sounds like your own conscience. It’s a masterpiece of infectious mystery, and perhaps the closest song to what we had on Station to Station.

Always Crashing in the Same Car is a humble song about always making the same mistakes and never learning from them. The vocal performance is a resigned mumble, the guitars a fatalistic hum, and the synths try to break through the wall of sound like a sparkle of that good habit you should probably start cultivating. Be My Wife, the album’s second single is thought to be a final plea to his wife at the time to save their crumbling marriage, they divorced in 1980. It’s a classic, catchy Bowie number that’s followed expertly by first side’s closing track, A Career in a New Town. A song that contains some of the most heartbreaking harmonica ever cut to tape, like a cry for help from someone curled up on the floor.

As mentioned earlier, the album’s second side features purely instrumentals which open with the haunting, chilling Warszawa, a song that brings to mind a post-apocalytpic hell-scape of a city with empty houses, broken windows, crumbling walls, and faded dreams. Art Decade and Weeping Wall create similarly cold atmospheres. The latter hinting at some warmth with a percussive xylophone part that has a lovely intimacy to it. The synth melodies, however, are crushing. We finish with the masterpiece Subterraneans, its layers of synths like ages of man lost to the wind, which closes out a side of music that is as transcendental as anything I’ve heard in this challenge so far. We’ve already learnt that Brian Eno and David Bowie both made some of the best music of the 70s, but here they combine to create something untouchable, a desolate landscape of destroyed beauty, from which a flowering phoenix rises. Astounding.

Song Picks: Sound & Vision, Speed of Life, Subterraneans, A New Career in a New Town,

9.5/10

The band’s 11th studio album was famously recorded during a tough time for the band members’ personal lives. To summarise the atmosphere in which it was recorded, Christine (keyboard player and vocalist) and John McVie (bass guitarist) had divorced having been together for eight years and were strictly not talking to each other except for matters of music. Vocalists Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham were in a rather intense on/off relationship that led to lots of heated arguments and drummer Mick Fleetwood had just discovered that his wife and mother of his two children - who was not in the band - had had an affair with his best friend. Essentially, Rumours is the work of a band not really getting on, but making it work for the sake of getting some music out.

Anyway, onto the music, which is glorious. Second Hand News opens the album and very much sets the tone, you’d be forgiven for thinking the song is a happy one based on the sing-along melody and marching bass and drums. However, listen in to the lyrics and it’s clear that this is about a breakup between Nicks and Cunningham, who seems to be singing their thoughts at each other, and it’s that tension which makes this song, and the whole album, so great. Dreams was written by Nicks in a room built for Sly Stone while some more technical things were being done to the album - mixing I presume. Apparently she entered the studio and said “I’ve just written the most amazing song”. That song was Dreams, a perfect breakup song to Buckingham. The acoustic Never Coming Back Again is Buckingham’s response, where his vocals soar beautifully over the picked guitar that is so clear it sounds like it’s being plucked by diamonds. Don’t Stop moves onto the McVie’s divorce, written by Christine McVie and sung by her and Buckingham. It’s a song about moving on, plodding on intently with a straightforward bouncing bass and drum part which the other instruments embelish perfectly. It’s another fabulous pop song before we arrive at the most perfect of pop songs, Go Your Own Way, which, though infinitely overplayed, retains its initial magic when listened in the context of the album. The first side is closed by Songbird, a song that is a completely timeless, beautifully performed, and delicate meditation on love. Has there ever been a more perfect chorus than:

And the songbirds keep singing
Like they know the score
And I love you, I love you, I love you
Like never before

I think not.

I’m finding it rather difficult to not continually use the word perfect in this review, but I’m going to have to use it again here. The Chain perfectly opens the second side with an opening acoustic guitar part as recognisable as anything ever recorded. The song is once again a melodic masterpiece, and the famous finale has to be one of my very favourites featuring a guitar solo that threatens to escape the realm of sound and turn into some swirling snake, I just wish it wasn’t faded out so quickly. I’ll stop gushing now, but the final four tracks of the album, though perhaps less iconic, are still generally pop gems, though I’ve never enjoyed Oh Daddy as much as the rest.

Rumours is an album that I’ve always liked, but never loved, perhaps because all my experiences of it were of other people playing it to me and telling me I had to love it. It often takes listening to an album by myself for me to fully feel it, and that was the case here. I can confirm I’ve been completely wrong to not to absolutely adore it up to now, Rumours is probably the most perfect pop record ever recorded, certainly up to this point in the challenge. Out of endless tension within the band flowered the most brilliant, affecting, and just downright enjoyable record.

Song Picks: Songbird, Second Hand News, The Chain, Never Going Back Again

9.5/10

Exodus is Bob Marley’s ninth album, and was recorded in London after he was exiled from Jamaica following an assassination attempt on him there. Often seen as Bob’s masterpiece, it’s the album that features most heavily on Legend, the Bob Marley greatest hits collection released in 1984. Bunny Wailer and Pete Tosh had left by this point, so this has more of a solo Bob Marley feel to it, though he continued to use the Wailers name on his records. Time magazine named Exodus the best album of the 20th century.

It opens with Natural Mystic where we hear Marley’s reggae stabs and Carlton Barrett’s bass walk fade in gently. It’s a groove that cuts right to your soul, very much like the ‘natural mystic' Marley sings about. There’s a touching tiredness to Marley’s vocal, and his ability to weave a catchy melody and sing it beautifully is as good as ever. So Much Things to Say gets characteristically political, and while referring to specific events it’s essentially about his tiredness of those in power with ‘so much to say,’ while they remain ignorant to what matters. Guiltiness talks of those same people, this time focusing on how many they’ve stood on to get to the top, and how they will one day get their comeuppance, “Woe to the downpressors / They will eat the bread of sorrow”. Marley’s backing singers add a wonderful depth to the melodies on the track, which are once again gorgeous and impossible to resist.

Exodus, one of Marley’s most famous compositions, closes out the political first side of the album, and is one of the most remarkable pieces of music ever recorded. Over seven and a half minutes of music are built over only one chord, with a perfect sense of the march of millions symbolised by the walking bass lines, swirling guitar parts and the odd stab of brass. It’s the march from slavery to freedom of an entire people in musical format, and it’s glorious.

Side two gets much less political and opens with Jammin’, a song which is essentially about having a good time, and the gorgeous Waitin’ In Vain, a personal Bob favourite, which is about waiting for love while not knowing if it’ll work out. The Wailers create a sumptuous bed of music, with Junior Marvin’s warm guitar playing feeling like a hug as Marley spins a web of melodies. I’ve gone on and on about Marley’s vocal ability in a previous review, but it’s particularly evident on this song, where he often provides his own backing vocals, and everything just sounds perfect. Turn Your Lights Down Low is Bob’s Sexual Healing and the album’s two closing tracks Three Little Birds and One Love/People Get Ready are perhaps his most famous of all. The former preaches positivity in the face of adversity and is bursting with so much sunshine it’s a wonder it doesn’t burn to ashes every device that plays it. The latter is another masterpiece preaching togetherness, ‘Let’s get together and feel alright’. As that chorus fills your head, you’re left wondering why something so simple is so difficult.

Exodus is Bob’s mainstream masterpiece, the pinnacle of both his political songwriting as well as his songs of love and acceptance. It shines and preaches in equal measure, and it fills your very soul with an unparalleled humanity.

Song Picks: Waitin’ In Vain, Three Little Birds, One Love/People Get Ready

10/10

Pink Floyd’s tenth album focuses on the socio-political conditions in the UK in the 1970s and continues their liking for long songs, with only 5 of them over its 41 minute duration. The band released no singles from the album, but it was commercially and critically well received. Very much a concept album, the concept is best described by the album’s Wikipedia page:

Loosely based on George Orwell's political fable Animal Farm, the album's lyrics describe various classes in society as different kinds of animals: the predatory dogs, the despotic ruthless pigs, and the "mindless and unquestioning herd" of sheep. Whereas the novella focuses on Stalinism, the album is a critique of capitalism and differs again in that the sheep eventually rise up to overpower the dogs. The album was developed from a collection of unrelated songs into a concept which, in the words of author Glenn Povey, "described the apparent social and moral decay of society, likening the human condition to that of mere animals".

The album is bookended by two short pieces, Pigs on the Wing part 1 and 2, love songs written by Roger Waters for his wife at the time. They’re simple acoustic compositions, with the same melodies and pretty lyrics. They provide a certain contrast to the 3 longer, denser songs that make up the meat of the album.

The first of those longer songs is Dogs, a 17 minute masterpiece about the trying to find your place in world that is essentially ‘dog eat dog’, where those dogs are businessmen, perhaps most darkly summed up by David Gilmour in the second verse:

You gotta keep one eye looking over your shoulder
You know, it's going to get harder, and harder, and harder
As you get older
Yeah, and in the end you'll pack up and fly down south
Hide your head in the sand
Just another sad old man
All alone and dying of cancer

Featuring numerous instrumental breaks that get darker as the song goes on, the piece is also yet another testament to David Gilmour’s majestic guitar playing. His first solo on the song is quite unforgettable. Roger Waters’ final verse couldn’t be more perfect, performed with a detached anger:

Who was born in a house full of pain
Who was trained not to spit in the fan
Who was told what to do by the man
Who was broken by trained personnel
Who was fitted with collar and chain
Who was given a pat on the back
Who was breaking away from the pack
Who was only a stranger at home
Who was ground down in the end
Who was found dead on the phone
Who was dragged down by the stone
Who was dragged down by the stone

Having critiqued capitalism, Pink Floyd moves onto politics in Pigs (Three Different Ones), which tells the story of people caring more about holding onto power than helping those they are there to serve. The catchy repeated line of ‘haha, charade you are’ is endlessly powerful, laughing in their faces as a picture of greed, gluttony and corruption is built up over a soundtrack that includes a whole host of pig noises clearly meant to represent the waffle these frauds are coming out with. It’s a powerful, angry and atmospheric piece of music that crushes the political façade like a giant tank dressed in a clown costume.

Finally, introduced by some gorgeous electric piano and a rumbling, approaching bass line, we enter the last of the epics, Sheep, a song about those that blindly follow commands without question:

What do you get for pretending the danger’s not real.
Meek and obedient you follow the leader
Down well trodden corridors into the valley of steel.

Sheep packs a punch, finishing this pessimistic look at society with a perfect crescendo of guitars and drums that echo off into the distance, replacing the dark synths that dominated the song earlier, before we enter the aforementioned dreamy Pigs on the Wing (Part II)

Animals is a pretty spectacular look at the dark parts of the society and systems we have built. which is just as relevant today as it was in 1977. It broods, preaches and dazzles in equal measure, and it might just be my favourite Pink Floyd album.

Song Picks: All of them

10/10