1976 - Clive's Top Albums of Every Year Challenge

November 13, 2020 by Clive in Clive's Album Challenge, Music

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.

Well, hello there 1976. As usual, let’s look at some of the year’s main events. Pol Pot became President (well, dictator) of Cambodia, the 19 month civil war ended in Lebanon, Jimmy Carter was elected US President and Viking I landed on Mars.

In terms of music, here’s what rateyourmusic.com’s users rate as the year’s top 5 albums:

I note here that rateyourmusic.com seems to have undergone an update which significantly changes the algorithm used to rank albums on the site , so this order has changed quite a lot if you go to the site now. I’ll be sticking to the ranking that was there when I started on this post however, but will of course be following the new rankings from now on (as the old ones are no longer available). For what it’s worth, the new algorithm seems to pay less attention to number of reviews, which means less well known stuff is generally getting higher up the charts.

#1 David Bowie - Station to Station
#2 Stevie Wonder - Songs in the Key of Life
#3 Ramones - Ramones
#4 Bob Dylan - Desire
#5 Rainbow - Rising

We’ve got returns for Stevie Wonder, Bowie and Jorge Ben, as well as a couple of new entrants: Judas Priest and Rainbow. As usual, I’ll be grabbing a few from further down the list.

#6 The Modern Lovers - The Modern Lovers
#7 Rush - 2112
#8 Judas Priest - Sad Wings of Destiny
#10 Joni Mitchell - Hejira
#13 Jorge Ben - África Brasil
#23 Patti Smith Group - Radio Ethiopia

And there we have it. 11 albums to review. Here’s my ranking and thoughts on the above.

The second album by the British heavy metal band received a positive reception when released in 1976, but had poor sales. It’s now seen as a cornerpiece of heavy metal history, and the point where Judas Priest found their sound and image. Interestingly, the band were struggling with their finances before its release, apparently restricting themselves to one meal a day and working part-time jobs during its recording.

The first thing you notice, is that this is the first appearance of the ‘heavy metal album cover’ made famous over the years by bands such as Iron Maiden. I’ve never been a fan of the look personally, but you can’t claim it wasn’t influential!

The album opens with its longest song, the almost 8 minute Victim of Changes, which serves as a pretty great introduction to what the band can do. There’s the bombardment of Black Sabbath-esque riffs, high-pitched howling vocals from Rob Halford and solid but occasionally flourishing drums from Alan Moore, but there’s also some more prog-rock elements in the song’s gentler end section. Halford demonstrates his considerable vocal range, singing in a calmer, lower tone that makes you wonder if he’s been swapped out for another vocalist before he goes into full 70s high-pitched death howl mode for the song’s conclusion. This is quickly followed by a phased solo that wouldn’t be out of place on a Hendrix album. Impressive stuff.

The Ripper is sung from the perspective of Jack the Ripper, and it’s here that the twin guitar sound of Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing is particularly evident, one riffing away as the other adds interest by sprinkling notes in various sections.

Generally speaking, I enjoy their heavier sections more than the more proggy calmer ones, where they have that overly dramatic and self-important sound that I’ve never been that much of a fan of. Dreamer Deceiver serves as a pretty good example of what I’m talking about, though the guitar solo at the end is majestic and the way it flows into the chugging Deceiver is also rather fabulous.

Sad Wings of Destiny is undoubtedly an important heavy metal record, and it contains some brilliant riffs, production, guitar solos and notably impressive vocals from Halford. I can hear a whole heap of influences in their playing, as well as a load of people they clearly influence further down the line, which is impressive. It’s just not something I’ll be reaching to listen to again.

Song Picks: Victim of Changes, The Ripper

7.5/10

Rainbow are a British rock band led by Ritchie Blackmore, previously of Deep Purple. Their second album is often cited as one of the most influential metal albums, and was ranked as the 48th best metal album of all time by Rolling Stone in 2017.

A 33 minute feast of 70s hard rock, the Deep Purple influence is obvious and marching riffs like those on Starstruck would have been completely at home on Deep Purple’s In Rock. Ronnie James Dio’s vocals are fairly generic 70s hard rock, although he’s refreshingly more restrained when it comes to falsetto howls.

What strikes me most about Rising is how tight everything sounds. Cozy Powell’s drums are seemingly tied to the guitar, and the whole thing sounds remarkably perfect considering this is before the age of convenient digital editing. The stops and starts on Do You Close Your Eyes are perfectly timed, and it really helps them to hit home. Once we’re into the 8 minute epic Stargazer the band have completely hit their stride, Blackmore unleashing a riff that should be far more famous than it is, in a song that sounds prophetic in its grandiosity. It tells the story of a wizard who believes he can fly, so he gets loads of people to build a tower for him to jump off (many of them die in the process) before jumping off and falling to his death. Dark. Ronnie James Dio’s vocals are sublime, and it sounds like the song he was born to sing. It’s one of my favourite songs in a genre that I don’t feel has aged all that well. The album closes brilliantly with another of the speedy-riffs that Blackmore does so well, in the pacey A Light in the Black.

Rising is a powerful recording of a hard-rock band on top form. Meaty riffs, tunefully thundering vocals, and drums that sound thick with force, its influence on the more obsessively polished metal sounds to come is obvious.

Song Picks: Stargazer, A Light in the Black

8/10

The punk juggernauts’ self-titled debut was recorded for a paltry $6,400 over seven days on the eighth floor of Radio City Music Hall in New York. In lead singer Joey Ramone’s own words (all members adopted pseudonyms with the surname Ramone, they weren’t related): "Doing an album in a week and bringing it in for $6,400 was unheard of, especially since it was an album that really changed the world. It kicked off punk rock and started the whole thing—as well as us." Although punk had certainly appeared before with bands such as Iggy and the Stooges this is the first time where there’s an album featuring entirely the ‘three chords and the truth’ simplicity of punk rock as we know it today.

The album comes storming out the gates with the famous opener and punk rock anthem Blitzkrieg Bop, Johnny Ramone’s crashing guitar riff erupting through the speakers like a call to arms. Joey Ramone’s vocals are less shouty than what add been associated with punk up to now, such as Iggy Pop’s growling and screaming, and you could almost say they juxtapose with the aggressive sound of the rest of the band, chanting catchy melodies over the top like an excited kid.

The album sounds rough, but by no means thin, with Dee Dee Ramone’s bass providing some very punchy bottom end. The drums are nearly lost in the crash of guitars, but it works, creating something that’s very restrained in its musicality - I doubt many songs have more than three chords here - but chaotic in its sound.

Once you’ve heard the opener, you know what you’re getting (except for the slightly unexpected love song I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend). These are simple, catchy and punchy songs that you can imagine crowds bouncing around aggressively to in sweat filled rooms, singing along and bouncing off each other. It’s brimming with energy, enjoyable and undoubtedly influential, if a little one-note.

Song Picks: Blitzkrieg Bop, Down to the Basement

8/10

Having so far failed to create a particularly profitable record, the Canadian prog-rock band’s label, Anthem Records, gave them one more chance. 2112, Rush’s fourth album, is the result of that. It quickly outsold all their previous releases, and remains their second best selling album to this day.

The album opens with the 20 minute title track, which is suitably prog-rock, telling a science-fiction story of a city where creativity is banned and no one knows what music is. It’s massively pretentious - as you’d expect from Rush - and reading its lyrics is akin to reading a very long poem. The song introduces the band’s spacey sound which has aged much better than a lot of the prog-rock of the era, with drummer and lyricist Neil Peart, guitarist Alex Lifeson and vocalist/bassist Geddy Lee creating an expansive sound that defies their numbers. The song is at times pounding, at times calmer, but always massive, with Geddy Lee’s vocals displaying a remarkable range and ability to go from a high pitched growl to a calmer, more resonant style. Everything is absolutely bang in time, which is remarkable considering how complex the whole arrangement is, and to be honest, it shines as a great example of just how epic music can be. As Lee howls out his final verse it feels like nothing else matters right now except for this ridiculously over-dramatic song. I was left nodding my head along, my thoughts in the stratosphere.

The Twilight Zone is written about two episodes of the titular program, one which Rush were clearly big fans of as they dedicated parts to the show’s creator Rod Sterling in numerous of their album sleeves. It’s a calmer song than the one which opens the album, and a good example of the more standard song structures that are present through the rest of the album’s material. Songs like Lessons (which is a rare example of Lifeson providing lyrics) and the ballad Tears are essentially pop songs with a prog-rock flavour. The album closes out with Something for Nothing, a return to the proggier nature of the opening track, featuring some impressive guitar fiddlery from Lifeson and Lee’s characteristic vocal style as he regularly matches the cadence of the guitar and bass riffs.

2112 is an example of a band on top form instrumentally - and we’ve had plenty of those in this challenge - but also one unwilling to sacrifice its mission for the sake of more sales. Opening with a 20 minute epic paid off though, largely because that 20 minute epic was so damn good, and while you could absolutely say it carries the album, the rest of the songs are rather entertaining too, if not as groundbreaking.

Song Picks: 2112

8.5/10

RadioEthipia — 7. Radio Ethiopia

Patti Smith

Patti Smiths’ second album was a move by her to become more commercially successful, which was what drove the decision to have Jack Douglas produce the album. The album, in something that seems overly harsh to me, was criticised as being Patti Smith selling out. I’m unsure how something so punk and abrasive (just listen to the title track) can be described as selling out, though I do accept the backing musicians are a little more restrained in general.

The album opens with Ask the Angels, a bouncy number which hops along thanks to an offbeat bass and guitar riff. There’s a celebratory feel to the song and Smith’s vocals, particularly as she and the band stutter through the chorus of “wild, wild, wild”. Ain’t it Strange features one of Smith’s most remarkable vocal performances on the album as she holds notes so long, she seems determined to bring them with her to the afterlife she sings of in the song. The drums are scattered with Ivan Král’s (he co-wrote much of the album’s material) bass holding it all together. Poppies is another example of the rambling vocal Smith does so well before we get to Poppies, a song that the author Nick Hornby has mentioned as one of the 31 songs that provided a soundtrack to his life. I can see why, it’s a song where the dark mood created by the screeching guitar solo, the walking bass and Smith’s vocal perfectly accompany the even darker lyrics, “My bowels are empty excreting your soul/What more can I give you baby I don't know”. It’s another demonstration of just how much Smith can push boundaries within the template of a rock song.

The rest of Radio Ethiopia continues in much a similar vain, with a free rocking and yet generally fairly restrained band backing Smith’s vocals, which are completely unrestrained and free just as they were on the excellent Horses. Much of what you think of the album will probably hang on your thoughts on the title track, which apparently divides critics who either think it’s display of boundary pushing brilliance, or an over-indulgent mess. I’m in the former camp, to me it’s a brazen 10 minute mass of noise that epitomises Smith’s artistic immoderation, her vocals finally backed by an instrumental melange that screams as much chaos as her vocals always have. She’s broken out the cage of song structure, and it’s rather glorious.

Song Picks: Ask the Angels, Ain’t it Strange, Radio Ethiopia.

8.5/10

Bob Dylan’s 17th album is notable for being one of his most collaborative. Not only do many of the songs feature backing vocals from Emmylou Harris and Ronee Blakely, but much of the album was co-written by Jacques Levy. It also sees Dylan returning to a political narrative with its famous opening track, Hurricane, which covers Dylan’s belief that boxer Rubin Carter was framed - his conviction was in fact later overturned in 1985. It is one of Dylan’s bestselling albums, and was named number 176 in Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

Recording sessions for the album began with a whole heap of musicians and were unsurprisingly chaotic, but numbers were gradually cut until Bob Dylan ended up with much of the band that would accompany him on the Rolling Thunder Revue tour and who are responsible for the album’s unique sound. The album has a sound which is notably darker than most of Dylan’s previous output, largely due to Scarlet Rivera’s haunting violin, something which is prominent on the aforementioned Hurricane, a track which marches along with Dylan telling a story with an anger reminiscent of his mid-60s acoustic albums. His vocal performance is as engaging as ever, and the out of time backing vocals give the ramshackle feel of a spontaneous live performance.

An album of stories, the next one is about a man’s search for meaning, as Dylan weaves a tale over twelve verses in one of the album’s most famous songs, Isis. The narrative is surprisingly followable (perhaps Levy’s influence) and is expertly accompanied once again by Rivera’s violin and Dylan’s charmingly shambly harmonica. This is followed by the slightly odd Mozambique, which was apparently inspired by Dylan and Levy’s quest to see how many words they could find to rhyme with ‘-ique’. It’s a simpler song, and has a particularly bouncy groove when compared to the rest of the album, providing some restbite to the generally darker content. It’s One More Cup of Coffee that’s my personal favourite though. Rivera’s violin singing sadly, the snare drum echoing like the drummer has got lost somewhere in a cave, and the bass adding beautiful flourishes when the other instruments and vocals leave a gap. The lyrics are beautifully mystical (this is notably one of the few songs not co-written by Levy) and Emmylou’s accompaniment on the chorus is irresistible, giving the song the gypsy feel that Dylan was apparently going for. “The valley below” mentioned in the song, “could mean anything,” Dylan asserts.

Side one is closed out by Oh Sister, a lovely duet where Dylan and Emmylou Harris’ vocals work together brilliantly, but the album’s second side, which begins with the overly long Joey, is not as strong as the first. Joey’s chorus melody is quite affecting - largely thanks to Emmylou’s accompaniment again, but Dylan’s story of the deceased gangster Joey Gallo - who he was accused of glorifying in the song - just isn’t interesting enough to keep my attention for its 12 minute duration. Romance in Durango thankfully provides some light relief with its Latin feel, and even features Dylan singing in Spanish.

I’ve always been a fan of penultimate track Black Diamond Bay’s jaunty melody and instrumentation, and Dylan’s vocal performance is one of the strongest on the album. The album closes with Sara, a song about his then wife, and probably the most honest and candid of all Dylan’s songs. He doesn’t hide behind metaphors or pseudonyms, and thus it’s quite a harrowing listen, the chorus seemingly letting you into his very soul, which isn’t a comfortable place to be.

I really love Desire, and have grown even more fond of it having seen Martin Scorcese’s excellent Rolling Thunder Review documentary. It has a mystical, dark quality to it that differentiates it from other Dylan albums, and Rivera’s violin is a masterful addition. Though the lyrics are still great and visually evocative, I don’t think they’re up there with his best output, and it’s also brought down by the fact that Joey isn’t really good enough to account for its 12 minute running length. Nevertheless, Desire is another great album from Bob, and certainly one of his best albums of the 70s.

Song Picks: One More Cup of Coffee, Black Diamond Bay, Hurricane

8.5/10

ModernLovers — 5. The Modern Lovers

The Modern Lovers

An album with a story far too complicated to get into here in much detail, but I’ll give you a short summary. Essentially, all 9 of the album’s songs were actually recorded in 1971 when the band couldn’t decide which record label to sign with and eventually broke up due to artistic disagreements. Lead singer, songwriter and lyricist Jonathan Richman eventually signed as a solo artist with Matthew Kaufman’s new Home of the Hits label in 1976, where Kaufman put together this release from their original 1971 recordings, six of which were produced by John Cale. So it’s the debut release of a band that had already broken up.

The Velvet Underground influence is evident from the off on Roadrunner, with messy guitars, almost talked vocals, and lyrics that have a very spontaneous spur of the moment feel to them. It’s a song about Richman’s love for Massachusetts - bandmate John Felice recalls he used to get ‘almost teary eyed’ looking out over it - driving around in his car with the radio on. It’s a simple idea, executed simply with just two chords, and it works.

The album’s light-heartedness is refreshing, and this is something that crops up again with Pablo Picasso, a song about how Pablo Picasso can get a way with acting like an ‘asshole’ because he’s famous, but you can’t. It bounces in a way not dissimilar to the opening track, with scattered, messy guitar and piano reminiscent once again of the Velvet Underground’s more experimental phase, while always remaining accessible due to the simple vocals, and bass part carrying the song structure. In She Cracked, the infectious bounce continues as Richman tells of the end of a relationship of a girlfriend who presumably succumbed to drugs. He sums it up with his trademark simplicity:

She cracked, I'm sad, but I won't
She cracked, I'm hurt, you're right
Alright

On Hospital, we see Richman showing some sadness, as he sings of an ex-lover being released from the psychiatric ward (perhaps the one he described in the previous track). The verses are slow and sombre, but the chorus has an energy similar to the rest of the album, Richman’s vocals mirroring the staccato rhythm of the guitar part.

The Modern Lovers is remarkable for its love of life, and also its ‘straight-edge’ lyrics - Richman regularly talks against drug use and smoking (see She’s Cracked and Modern World) - which goes against a lot of the music from this era. “Well the modern world is not so bad / Not like the students say” Richman sings on the album’s last track, and after listening to this upbeat gem of an album, it’s quite hard to disagree with him.

Song Picks: Roadrunner, She Cracked, Modern World, Someone to Care About

9/10

Jorge’s back with his 14th album, and his first on electric guitar. It incorporates both Afro-Brazilian and African-American pop styles and sees a significant steer towards funk. It’s considered one of his essential albums along with 1974’s A Tábua de Esmeralda (see my 1974 post for how much I loved that one).

Ponta de Lança Africano (Umbabarauma) opens with Jorge unaccompanied on his fancy new electric guitar, but it’s not long before the band enters and we’re into the familiar, happy and energetic space that so dominated the fabulous A Tábua de Esmeralda. It tells the story of a fictional African striker, and is often regarded as one of the finest songs about football ever written. To anyone, like me, who doesn’t understand Portuguese however, it’s just an infinitely positive sounding track notable for its more present groove than anything I’ve heard from Jorge before. The pattering percussion drives the track along as Jorge’s melodies are as catchy as ever. This infectious grooviness continues on Hermes Trismegisto Escreveu where Dadi Carvalho’s bass is the star of the show, bumbling along like that guy lost in his own world at a party, oblivious to the fact that everyone is staring at his carefree dance moves.

The musical palette is constantly interesting on Africa Brasil, with O Filósofo being a particularly fabulous example. I’m not sure what is making that ‘cuckoo’ noise in the song, but it’s brilliant, sprinkling a humorous joy all over the track, which is reinforced by the quacking wah sound that emphasises the end of each phrase. Jorge’s melody swirls gently again, as if he’s just coming up with catchy line after catchy line on the spot, and the whole thing has a Bob Marley produced by Scratch Perry feel to it, which is pretty much the highest compliment I can pay anything.

The backing vocals prevalent throughout the album are blissful, and help to frame Jorge’s choruses as on O Plebeu, or indeed emphasise them as on the splendid Taj Mahal, a song that’s so catchy I reckon you could throw a CD of it in the sea and empty the ocean - please don’t though Jorge, there’s too few fish as it is. Taj Mahal is quickly followed by perhaps the album’s catchiest track Xica da Silva, a song that again uses that cuckoo sound - though less prominently - and features a chorus that you just have to sing along to, even if you have no idea what he and his backing vocalists are singing about.

I could go on, but essentially what you have here is another album from Jorge Ben that’s full of life, energy, inventiveness, humour and above all, melody. With enough new instrumental palettes to make it remarkably different to A Tábua de Esmeralda, while still possessing the same soul, it’s an album so bursting with happiness that it’s hard not to smile for its duration.

Song picks: Taj Mahal, Xica da Silva, Ponta de Lança Africano (Umbabarauma)

9/10

StationtoStation — 3. Station to Station

David Bowie

For his tenth album, Bowie took on the persona of the ‘Thin White Duke’ and recorded in Los Angeles under such a haze of cocaine addiction that he claims to recall almost nothing of the recording and production. It came 52nd on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time in 2020, and is widely seen as one of Bowie’s most important works.

The 10 minute opening title track is a perfect introduction. It starts with what sounds like a helicopter approaching, before a guitar screeches and some flimsy chords build ominously. The funk influence is immediately obvious, as is the German techno influence from bands such as Kraftwerk. The bass pounds and the melodica, guitar and ambient noise create an industrial soundscape fit for a character as seemingly detached as the Thin White Duke as he sings of his uncertainty of whether what he feels is love or just the cocaine - most likely the latter. By the time the song launches into a bouncy disco groove with the second chorus, as David Bowie sings “it’s too late to be grateful / it’s too late to be great again,” you’re left bopping and singing along, absorbed into Bowie’s cocaine fog, a fog taken to new levels by Earl Slick’s unruly lead guitar and George Murray’s irresistible bass. It’s a masterpiece.

This is followed by Golden Years, another display of bountiful bass from George Murray (one of the unsung heroes of this album). A funky disco number where Bowie’s ability to mix a whole host of vocal styles and catchy melodies combines perfectly with backing musicians creating a sound that hovers somewhere in-between electronic and the sound of a band, in a way that once again feeds the detached feeling of the album. The track was the first completed for the album, and was originally going to be the title track.

Word on a Wing is a slower, almost ballad-like song, which sees Bowie at his most intimate on the album until we reach the final track. Written about the ‘spiritual despair’ he went through on the set for the film The Man Who Fell to Earth. Bowie’s vocal performance is perfect once again, and particularly affecting, especially when he sings the beautifully melodic line “Sweet name, you're born once again for me”. It’s another highlight on an album of highlights.

TVC15 was reportedly written about an acid trip that Iggy Pop had at Bowie’s home where he thought the TV was swallowing his girlfriend. It’s another infectious, funky romp, this time with a slightly ramshackle and drunken feel thanks to Bowie’s vocal, despite the industrially precise musicianship on display. George Murray dials up the funky bass to 11 on the rambunctiously brilliant Stay before we reach the final track, a gorgeous cover of Wild is the Wind, a song Bowie was inspired to write after he met Nina Simone, who also covered the song on her album of the same name. Like Word on a Wing, the song features a particularly delicate Bowie vocal, which is particularly up front in the recording due to the more acoustic and stripped back sound of the rest of the band. It still has that detached industrial sound to it, likely because of the metallic reverb on Bowie’s voice, and it reeks of a man desperate to feel something.

Station to Station is one of Bowie’s masterpieces, and although I know it’s not a funk album as such, it’s still probably my favourite funky album, with the band working together brilliantly to create a whole host of infectious grooves. The fact these are led by Bowie’s unique vocals, lyrics, and just general feel, makes for a record unlike any other, one that is both intimate and yet completely cold, and one that is both authentic and fake. It’s the kind of album that could only have been written by Bowie while off his nut on cocaine, and it’s glorious.

Song Picks: Station to Station, Golden Years, Word on a Wing, Wild is the Wind

9.5/10

Joni Mitchell’s eighth album sees her continuing her journey away from pop and towards more jazz inspired arrangements, this time featuring Jaco Pastorious on the fretless electric bass. Regarded by many as one of the greatest bassist of all time, he died in in 1987 following a fight outside a bar. The album was largely written on a long trip from Maine back to LA in the car, something that’s clear in its sound as well as its lyrics. Though the album didn’t sell as well as its predecessors, it is regularly regarded as one of her strongest works.

The opening track, Coyote, was written while on tour with Bob Dylan and the Rolling Thunder Review. It’s the perfect opening song to the album, coasting along with Mitchell’s trademark guitar flourishes put through an electric guitar and phaser, gentle percussion dotting the soundscape like houses appearing on the horizon, and Mitchell’s vocals as free and melodic as birdsong. I’ve talked about Mitchell’s lyrical talents before, but this is another great example of it. A mystical tale of roadside events full of brilliant imagery, each majestic verse ends with the lines, “You just picked up a hitcher / A prisoner of the white lines on the freeway,” which is probably my favourite line of the year.

Joni’s electric guitar decorates each song perfectly, on Amelia it flies along like blurred lamp posts out the car window in the dark as Victor Feldman’s vibraphone adds the loveliest of cries to the soundscape. It’s all so damn pretty that you’d be forgiven for letting Mitchell’s lyrics wash over you, lost in her delicate melodies. But if you catch them, there’s a whole new world to explore.

While Joni’s gorgeous electric guitar playing is the centrepiece to most of the songs here, the variety of instruments that provide added sparkle is great and gives each song a unique feeling. Whether it be the previously mentioned vibraphone, or Neil Young’s gently unfettered harmonica playing on Furry Sings the Blues, or indeed Jaco Pastorious’ trademark singing bass on four of the album’s tracks, what’s created is an enchanting atmosphere, that perfectly backs Joni Mitchell’s tales of the mystical road.

Hejira is yet another superb album from Joni, and while I confidently said The Hissing of Summer Lawns was my favourite Joni Mitchell album when I reviewed it in 1975’s list, confident at the time that nothing could top it, I think Hejira is very much its equal. It’s an album that I’ll continue to discover new things with, where the lyrics have a wonderful depth, and yet even when you don’t pay attention to them the whole thing just sounds so beautiful. I’ve always loved solitary travel. The feeling of peace that exists when there really is nothing else you could be doing other than sitting there and staring out the window, watching the world go by. I’m not sure an album has ever got me closer to that feeling than this album and perhaps Ben Howard’s Noonday Dream. Joni sums it up best on the title track, where Pastorious’ bass glistens like happy thoughts sprinkling through your brain:

There's comfort in melancholy

When there's no need to explain

It's just as natural as the weather

In this moody sky today

Song Picks: Coyote, Amelia, Hejira

9.5/10

SongsintheKeyofLife — 1. Songs in the Key of Life

Stevie Wonder

Stevie Wonder’s 18th album came at a time when Wonder had seriously considered quitting music, but changed his mind to sign another seven album deal with the record label Motown. The first album of this deal was Songs in the Key of Life, a huge album of 21 songs (if you include the bonus EP included with the original release), and spanning over 104 minutes. It became Stevie Wonder’s best-selling and most critically acclaimed album of his career.

It’d be foolish to try and cover all of an album of such striking breadth and length in a review, so I’ll forgo my usual song by song orientated approach here, and try to talk about the album as whole, wile pointing to examples of what I’m talking about now and again.

I’ve talked a lot about albums being ‘tight’ this year, but Songs in the Key of Life is the tightest of them all. Every song is performed with a perfection that makes it hard to believe this wasn’t digitally edited at all. Wonder’s vocals are quite literally perfect at all times, tenderly singing more delicate songs like Knocks Me Off My Feet in a way that is absolutely food for the soul, while belting out more energetic numbers like I Wish with an infectious power that flows through your bloodstream like a drug.

Songs in the Key of Life is so influential it’s quite frankly ridiculous. Not only is it clearly a massive influence on R&B with it’s grooving soulful bass lines and impeccably recorded instruments that have a clarity absolutely not heard up to this point, but its melodies have been used and recycled all over the place. On a listen through you’re constantly recognising things, whether it be the fact that I Wish is essentially identical to (but better than) Will Smith’s later Wild Wild West, or the fact that Pastime Paradise was pretty much used in its entirety for Gangsta’s Paradise, one of the most famous rap songs out there. These are the most obvious, and credited examples, but I swear every melody on this thing has been used elsewhere, whether knowingly or not. When I first listened to it it was as if someone had just handed me a CD and said “here Clive, this is what influenced all the pop music you hear today, go listen to it”. It’s absolutely remarkable.

Songs in the Key of Life is exactly as its title suggests, full of life. Its an album full of all those things that make music so great: heart, joy, soul and passion. Over its 104 minute duration, I’m always overcome with an overflowing sense of joy where I just want to go and hug a a load of humans and maybe dance around the streets like Gene Kelly in Singing in the Rain. Wonder’s otherworldly and yet humble vocals; the perfect, sparkling piano lines; the bass - primarily by Nathan Watts - is easily my favourite bass work on any album so far, perfectly embellishing these intricate compositions in a way that isn’t just an accompaniment, but that takes centre stage with its warm flourishes at numerous points in pretty much all the album’s songs. The backing vocals are majestic, and brass is used sparingly, to really punch and bring home a sense of jubilation when it is there.

This album is absolutely now one of my very favourites, and one that I’ll return to time and time again in the future, whenever I need reminding of just why I love music so much. I can’t pick a single fault with it, and I’ve quite often said that giving an album a 10 doesn’t necessarily mean it’s perfect, but in this case, I think it means exactly that.

Though of course nothing will replace listening to the whole of this majestic thing, I think if there’s one song on the album that embodies its boundless optimism, positivity, and melodic brilliance, it’s Isn’t She Lovely. A song that is so ‘lovely’ I feel like crying with joy every time I hear it.

Songs in the Key of Life is a perfect album. There, I’ve said it.

Song Picks: Isn’t She Lovely, I Wish, Sir Duke, Pastime Paradise

10/10

1973 - Clive's Top Albums of Every Year Challenge

September 07, 2020 by Clive in Clive's Album Challenge, Music

Well, hello there 1973, let’s have a look at what happened in your fine year. A ceasefire was signed ending the involvement of American groundtroops in the Vietnam war and the US also stopped bombing Cambodia, ending 12 years of conflict in Southeast Asia. Pablo Picasso died and Marlon Brando rejected his Best Actor Oscar for The Godfather in protest of the US Government’s treatment of Native Americans. TCP/IP was also invented, which a decade later would become the chosen communication method for computers over the internet.

Rateyourmusic.com users rate the following five albums as their top 5 of 1973:

#1 Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon
#2 Can - Future Days
#3 Stevie Wonder - Innervisions
#4 King Crimson - Larks’ Tongues in Aspic
#5 Led Zeppelin - Houses of the Holy

So, we have Led Zeppelin with yet another entry, along with returns from Pink Floyd, Can and King Crimson. Stevie Wonder on the other hand, makes his first appearance. Of course, as usual. I’ll take a look further down the list and throw some more into the mix:

#6 Genesis - Selling England by the Pound
#7 Iggy and The Stooges - Raw Power
#9 Herbie Hancock - Head Hunters
#10 David Bowie- Aladdin Sane
#11 Faust - Faust IV
#16 Tom Waits - Closing Time
#19 Bob Marley & The Wailers - Catch a Fire
#51 Renaissance - Ashes Are Burning
#97 Betty Davis - Betty Davis

And that’s 14 to get through this time, quite the battle royale. Let’s see who emerges the victor, and then I really should start reviewing a few less every year or I’ll never get this thing done. Anyway, here’s my reviews and ranking of the above 14 albums.

AshesAreBurning — 14. Ashes are Burning

Renaisannce

The fourth album from the English prog-rock band was the first of theirs to make it into the Billboard 200, peaking at 171. It’s also the album where they made a conscious decision to distance themselves from the more electric guitar led progressive rock bands that were starting to clog up the musical landscape and head in a more acoustic guitar led direction. Interestingly, most of the songrwiting was handled via post. Dunford, the band’s composer, who was later to join the band more fully, would send his melodies to Betty Thatcher, the group’s lyricist, before the whole thing got passed onto the rest of the band to come up with the arrangement.

Can You Understand opens the album with a dramatic piano led start backed by staccato drum and bass stabs before the whole thing explodes into motion. Once Annie Haslam’s choir-like vocals come in the whole thing has a distinctly more acoustic feel, which closes out the track and continues until the end when the soundscape expands somewhat again. Let It Grow is a gentle love-song about taking it slow and appreciating one another. The arrangement is strikingly simple for a prog-rock band and Annie’s vocals are quite wonderful, particularly the flawless falsetto she demonstrates in the chorus. Tout’s piano lines provide the perfect emotional follow-up to each chorus, twinkling like a drizzle of rain on a sunny day. It’s a lovely song. On the Frontier again demonstrates Renaissance’s main strength, their ability to craft pretty melodies, and in this particular instance creating an uplifting rallying cry for us to join the frontier. The frontier for what? Well you can decide that for yourself.

Side two opens with Carpet of the Sun and again Annie’s melody is so perfect it makes you wonder if you’ve heard this song before as it all sounds so strangely familiar and timeless. The violin, gentle percussion and of course the piano all provide luscious backing for the melodies as Annie sings a load of philosophical ideas, wrapped in the imagery of nature. The penultimate track, At The Harbour has what I’d call the album’s most ‘prog-rocky' melody, and thus is probably my least favourite song, though I do like the gentle twinkle of the plucked acoustic guitar and the evocative imagery of Thatcher’s lyrics. The album closes with the title track, an 11 minute journey through a beautiful sonic environment evoking that of a mythical forest as Haslam’s vocals seem to sing of passing into the afterlife. If the beautiful finale of the song is any indication, it seems we’ve got something pretty great to look forward to.

Ashes are Burning isn’t massively pushing any boundaries, and presents a fairly well-trodden folky sound, but it does contain some beautiful peaks and melodies. Though at times it borders on being a little cheesy, it remains an enjoyable, evocative listen throughout.

Song Picks: Let It Grow, On the Frontier, Ashes are Burning

7.5/10

13. Larks’ Tongues in Aspic

King Crimson

The fifth album by King Crimson sees a dramatic change in the band’s lineup, with only Robert Fripp remaining from the original one, and introducing four new members including drummer Bill Brufford - who left Yes after Close to the Edge, an album I loved from 1972. It draws more on Eastern European classical music, and the most striking change in sound is perhaps the removal of flutes and saxophone, and the addition of violin.

The opening 13 minute Lark’s Tongues in Aspic (Part I) is a song of contrasts. It starts with a James Muir percussive soundscape building up a tropical atmosphere before a thumping Robert Fripp riff smashes through the tropical feel like a bulldozer through a holiday resort. The atmosphere changes dramatically from then, and it becomes a haunting piece of peaks and troughs, building to Fripp’s devastating riff again before Brufford moves things along with a rattling beat accompanied again by Muir’s extravagantly varied percussion. This frantic middle-section is followed by a slow section, which sounds as if it’s coming from a mountain village, the violin having a charmingly amateur feel to it. It could easily have finished with another Fripp barrage, but it doesn’t. Building instead to an eerie soundscape of synths and ambient chatter.

Book of Saturday is a chilled, if slightly unremarkable song, the band creating a luscious, rather light-hearted landscape to back John Wetton’s vocals. Palmer-Jones’ lyrics depict the struggles of adapting to life in a new place on Exiles, a song that uses a mellotron for much of its instrumental impact, and features a typically drifting melody from Wetton. Easy Money sees the band grooving before another crescendo of percussive craziness from Muir - who seems keen to just pick up anything lying around and use it as an instrument by hitting it. Indeed he is credited as playing ‘allsorts’ in the album’s sleeve. The melody gives me slightly Pink Floyd feels, but the soundscape shows a much more Eastern feel. Talking Drum builds things very slowly back up to a rockier feel before the final track and pièce de résistance Larks’ Tongues in Aspic (Part II) dials the rock up to 10 with a whole host of weird time signatures, off-beat drumming and inventive sections. Some of the distorted guitar parts have clearly been incredibly influential and you can hear descendants of that sawed riff scattered through music over the next few decades, and even today. It’s a song that builds and builds to its riff based crescendos, ending in one that features some of the most scattered, chaotic drumming I’ve ever heard, before the guitar just swarms the soundscape like a terrifying horde of locusts, eating away everything and leaving us with silence. It’s one of the year’s best pieces of music and perhaps the first example of progressive metal.

Lark’s Tongues in Aspic has some of the highs of In the Court with the Crimson King, but it doesn’t quite have the consistency, containing some more fillery sections and songs - e.g. Talking Drum.

Song Picks: Larks’ Tongues in Aspic (Part II), Easy Money

8/10

SellingEngland — 12. Selling England by the Pound

Genesis

And the first Genesis album to grace our list is their fifth. An album about the decline of English folk culture in the face of American influence - as referenced in the title - it spawned the band's first top 30 UK hit with I Know What I Like. The album itself made it to number 3, and features many of the band’s most popular songs.

Dancing With the Moonlit Knight sets the tone for what's to come and is a pretty good indication of how much you'll like the rest of the album. The song combines folk with prog-rock as the whole album does. It starts with a folky, slightly cheesy start lamenting the loss of his country. Peter Gabriel's singing of the album's title followed by some a lovely folky soundscape seemingly straight from some band of elves. The end of the song turns to much more intense prog-rock as the organ ups the drama and Phil Collins racks up a whole heap of technically skilled beats, fills and stops, setting the tone for what is one of the finest drumming albums we've had so far on the challenge. Yep, there's more to him than that fill on the Cadbury's advert.

I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe) is a song very much depicted by the album’s cover - a painting by Betty Swanwick that the band asked her to add a lawn mower to. The song depicts someone being persuaded to change in a multitude of ways and do more exciting things, but our protagonist just wants a simple life doing what he does best, mowing the lawn. The song features a strikingly anthemic chorus, a spoken word section, and plenty of that prog-rock keyboard sound that was so loved in the early 70s. The following Firth of Fifth starts with a keyboard solo that seems to spiral in on itself repeatedly, played by the group’s keyboard player Tony Banks, who wrote the song. It’s a pretty straight example of prog-rock with it’s switching of time-signatures, intensities and moods, all ridden by Phil Collins like he’s physically tied to the ideas of the rest of the band. The guy switches from complex section to complex section like he’s been doing it since birth. Hackett’s guitar - which is a reworked version of something Banks had written - is a majestic finale to the track, and competes with some of Pink Floyd’s best solos for sheer effective, emotionally affecting simplicity.

More Fool Me is the album’s only song to feature Phil Collins on vocals, a role he was to take up permanently in 1975 when Peter Gabriel left the band. Uncharacteristically for the album, the piece is a simple love song, reportedly written by Collins and bassist Bill Rutherford in a short time while sat out on the steps outside the front of the studio. It shows Collins’ talent for a stadium filling chorus that was to become a big part of his solo career later on.

Side two opens with the 11 minute Battle of Epping Forest, a song written by the Gabriel about the gang wars in East London. It’s my least favourite track on the album, held back by the fact the lyrics seem a little squashed in and forced, which to me reduces the impact of what is some very solidly performed prog-rock otherwise. After the Ordeal is a nice enough if slightly unremarkable instrumental with a nice climax. The albums’s final epic, the 10 and a half minute The Cinema Show has lyrics imspired by T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land. The song ends in a 4 and a half minute keyboard solo by Tony Banks, accompanied by the drifting of the rest of the band culminating in perhaps Collins’ best drum work on the whole album. The two minute Aisle of Plenty serves as a bookend to the album, reprising the opening track’s melody and lyrical themes, featuring a vocally intense outro that is both haunting and great.

Selling England by the Pound is 70s prog-rock through and through, it loves getting all complicated with time signatures and mixing things up constantly within songs. I have to confess to not being the biggest prog-rock guy, but despite that I still think this is great. The vast majority of the songs are interesting, well crafted, and the whole thing fits together cohesively. Phil Collins’ breathtaking performance on the drum kit throughout is probably the thing that’ll keep me coming back though.

Song Picks: Dancing With the Moonlit Knight, I Know What I Like, More Fool Me

8/10

Aladdin Sane (a lad insane - geddit?) is Bowie’s sixth album, and the first he wrote and released from a position of stardom. Bowie was by now huge in the UK, and Aladdin Sane was partly inspired by his keenness to be a big deal in the states too. Aladdin Sane was Bowie’s follow up character to Ziggy Stardust, and described by Bowie as ‘Ziggy Stardust in America.’ The album cover was the most expensive ever up to that point and has become one of his most iconic images. The text also looks charmingly like some WordArt from Windows 98.

Aladdin Sane sounds a bit more extravagant and a smidge heavier than the previous The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, but it’s still very much glam-rock. The album opens with Watch That Man, which is about an after-party put on by the New York Dolls’ lead singer David Johansen - ‘that man’ being him. The song has an exuberant party atmosphere and introduces Mike Garson on the piano, who’s playing adds bright colour to many of the album’s songs and features a guitar riff at the end by Mick Ronson that must have been stolen endless times in the years to come. Aladdin Sane introduces our protagonist in an anti-war song which features a piano solo from Garson that wouldn’t be out of place on a boundary pushing jazz album, it’s dissonant chord stabs giving a dark edge to the otherwise bouncy feeling instrumentation.

Drive-In Saturday features one of the album’s catchiest - and perhaps Ziggy Stardust-like - choruses, and it unsurprisingly reached #3 as a single. In Bowie’s words, ”it’s about a future where people have forgotten how to make love, so they go back onto video-films that they have kept from this century,” as you’d expect from Bowie, he builds this future world with aplomb, both lyrically and musically. We move onto the world percussion fest of Panic In Detroit, about the 1967 Detroit riots before moving onto the brilliant Cracked Actor - a song about an aging actor’s encounter with a prostitute which begins with a particularly Oasis-esque riff to close out side one.

Time opens side two with more Mike Garson piano wizardry, which provides much of the song’s burlesque, cabaret atmosphere. Bowie’s melodic “we should be home by now” that opens the chorus helps raise the song from an inventive piece of brilliance, to an inventive piece of brilliance that is also infectious, and perhaps my favourite track on the album. The Prettiest Star is a gentle saxophone led song written for Bowie’s first wife, Angie Barnett and Let’s Spend the Night Together somewhat recreates the party atmosphere of the opening track, once again largely thanks to Garson’s honky-tonk piano chords. The album is closed out by the infectious romp The Jean Genie - given a real backwoods blues feel by that amplified Harmonica sound, and the less known, but quietly beautiful, piano ballad Lady Grinning Soul, featuring yet another brilliant performance from Garson, who swirls along creating ribbons of notes to cocoon yourself in.

Aladdin Sane more or less continues the trajectory of 1972’s Ziggy Stardust, adding some heavier and fuller production, as well as Garson’s brilliant piano playing. The song writing isn’t quite up to the consistently great standard of Ziggy Stardust though, and that’s why it ends up slightly lower in my estimations. Though it has to be said, Ziggy Stardust is an unfairly high bar to judge anything by.

Song Picks: Watch that Man, Time, The Jean Genie, Lady Grinning Soul

8/10

Betty Davis’ debut album is filthy, funky as all hell, and absolutely one of the sexiest albums ever. Davis was married to Miles Davis for a year and also a close friend of Jimi Hendrix’s - who Miles accused her of having an affair with. She’s featured on the cover of Miles’ 1968 album Filles de Killimajaro - which also includes a song about her - and is also believed to have introduced Miles to a lot of the music that influenced his late 60s material and beyond. Now, prepare yourself for a review that features the word ‘funk’ so often, it should probably get a Guinness world record.

Betty Davis pulls no punches, and starts with the funktacular If I'm In Luck I Might Get Picked Up. We’ve got a groovy, skipping drumbeat, a heavy guitar riff and the addition of a variety of percussion as well as an organ all creating an endlessly grooving, funky atmosphere. And then we get to Betty Davis’ voice, which is gravelly, expressive, breathy, and suggestive as she sings confidently of wanting to be taken home.

Your Man My Man features the band on top form, the guitarists, and particularly the bass bouncing around the drums like a noisy off-beat pogo stick. The clean backing vocals remind you just how much character Davis’ vocals have. There is so much energy and immediacy behind them, it’s hard to imagine her being anything but an exceptional live performer.

Stepping High in Her I. Miller Shoes tells the story of someone who comes to the city with talent and dreams, only to have them crushed. It’s based on the life of Devon Wilson, a onetime girlfriend of Jimi Hendrix’s. The song sees a change in the usual off-beat bass drum patterns you usually hear in funk, replaced by a much more straightforward beat. It gives the song a more straight hard-rock feel, one which the Jimi Hendrix-esque guitar riffing only aids. This break in funk helps the beat hit hard again when we get to the following Game is My Middle Name, featuring perhaps Davis’ most extravagant vocal performance backed by a Creedence Clearwater Revival style guitar riff, which turns an otherwise straight-rock arrangement into a surprisingly funky one.

Betty Davis’ extravagant vocals are as energetic and sexually powered as Mick Jagger’s, and it’s a heavier, tighter, and funkier version of the Rolling Stones that I’d most compare the sound of this album to. Betty Davis is the powerful arrival of one of funk’s pioneers, an irresistibly funky 30 minute package.

Song Picks: If I’m In Luck I Might Get Picked Up, Your Man My Man, Game is My Middle Name

8/10

ClosingTIme — 9. Closing Time

Tom Waits

Tom Waits’ debut album is perhaps not what you’d expect for fans of his later albums. It’s tuneful, accessible, and not at all as experimental as his later material. It is however beautiful. The album cover was apparently inspired by how Waits wanted the album to sound. He’s pictured with beer, a shot of whisky and a pack of cigarettes by a bar-piano. I’d say the cover nails it.

The album opens with Ol’ 55, one of Waits’ first songs, and one which was covered by the Eagles - a band Waits was less than keen on. It’s a simple song telling the story of a guy who only has a limited time to see his girlfriend because of a curfew. Waits’ piano is beautifully backed by some gentle drums, bass and piano, but it’s the piano itself that is the star of the show. That opening twinkle is particularly gorgeous. Waits is a convincing storyteller, with vocals that are interesting enough to add depth to the simple melody.

I Hope That I Don’t Fall In Love With You is an intriguing reverse love song about a man who sees a woman at a bar and hopes they don’t fall in love as that would only cause him to ‘feel blue,’ presumably when she inevitably left him. It again shows Waits’ ability to tell a simple story, hooking you in with a repeat of the song’s title at the end of each verse to a catchy hummable melody.

The album is packed with well-written and engaging songs like the above - with jazzier instrumentation mixing things up on songs like Midnight Lullaby - but there’s a couple of times when it goes beyond that. Martha for example is a straight up masterpiece. It tells the story of an old man calling up an old lover over 40 years after they’ve broken up. Tom’s vocal is notably more ragged, convincingly passing for a man many years older than his 23 years, which helps to sell the performance. The song is minimally backed by some strings and sparse backing vocals towards its ending as Waits sings sadly of wanting to rekindle an old, old flame. The song’s melody soars and combines with the poignant lyrics to create something that only the coldest of hearts would fail to be moved by.

Tom Waits was a regular at a bar called ‘The Troubadour’ in LA, and it was there where a performance of Grapefruit Moon floored David Geffen and got Waits signed to Asylum Records, eventually leading to this release. Grapefruit Moon is included on this album and it’s easy to see why the song had such an effect on Geffen. Waits sings his way through three gorgeous verses with a ragged vocal similar to that on Martha and a melody equally as moving. It’s unclear exactly what it’s about, but to me it’s the story of an old man - Waits’ vocal style seems to back this - looking back on his life with more than a little regret.

Never had no destinations
Could not get across
You became my inspiration
Oh, but what a cost
And every time I hear that melody
Something breaks inside
And the grapefruit moon, one star shining
Is more than I can hide

Closing Time is a humble telling of familiar stories of love and loss - and ice cream. Waits’ performances are completely present, relatable, and affecting. I’m excited to get to Tom’s more famous releases, but this is a quite remarkable debut.

Song Picks: I Hope that I Don’t Fall In Love With You, Martha, Grapefruit Moon

8.5/10

Head Hunters_Herbie Hancock.jpg — 8. Head Hunters

Herbie Hancock

Herbie Hancock’s twelfth album saw him turning to funk, and a more accessible style of music. Or in his words, ‘I was tired of everything being heavy. I wanted to play something lighter.’ It is one of the defining moments of the jazz-fusion movement, and one of the first examples of jazz-funk.

Chameleon kicks things off with a quacky bass part played by Hancock on an ARP Odyssey synthesiser, and its marching groove dominates much of the track’s drive, along with Harvey Mason’s syncopated, funky beat with an infectious hi-hat shuffle. As Mason and Hancock march on Hancock splatters clavinet all over the track, creating a 70s sci-fi vibe as he plays the thing like a saxophone. The breakdowns - at 7:21 for example - are a sublime, offbeat and syncopated dream, filling your bloodstream with ‘the funk,’ leading to seriously restless limbs. I’ve already mentioned Mason’s drumming but I’m going to mention it again as it’s him who keeps the whole thing grooving along with the synth bass - and later Jackson’s actual bass, driving it for the full 15 minutes like a lively train with an impeccable sense of timing - a Swiss train if you will. By the time conga wizard Bill Summers comes in you’ve started bopping round the room like a pigeon, hypnotised by this music. It’s got soul, man.

Watermelon Man, a song that was already a jazz standard by now having been recorded numerous times - is back with an all new funky version. This one begins with an intro by Bill Summer blowing into a variety of beer bottles. The groove laid down by Mason’s bopping drums and Jackson’s bumbling bass is so relaxed its an absolute miracle a hammock doesn’t just appear out of nowhere when you listen to it, something that is only emphasised in its cool-as-a-cucumber breakdowns. Sly is, as the name implies, something that would be a fitting soundtrack for a spy, or indeed the Pink Panther. The bass footsteps along gently, as the rest of the band provide moments of panic, as our spy is about to be caught. Somewhere in there we’ve got the groove of safety before things all get a bit hectic as our agent has presumably got themselves into an inevitable car chase. The congas skitter like the vegetables in that market stall he’s just driven through and the Benny Maupin’s sax bends like the tight alleys he’s trying to lose his pursuer in. It’s a bit of a journey this one but it’s still got that infectious dance-able quality to it that is splashed all over this record.

The album ends with the brilliantly named 9-minute Vein Melter, which relaxes things significantly, rolling on like a walk through an empty town with a loved one. There’s the un-nerving echoes of eerie instruments in the distance, but you needn’t be too concerned because Mason’s bass is always there for a comforting hug, should you ever need one.

Head Hunters is a marvellous jazz-funk odyssey, and shows yet again Herbie Hancock’s ability to create worlds and stories with sound. Here he’s managed to pave the way for a whole new genre, while still making a downright accessible piece of music that pretty much anyone can enjoy. Remarkable.

Song Picks: Chameleon, Watermelon Man

8.5/10

Faust IV is - predictably - the German krautrock band’s fourth release. It was the last album by this incarnation of the band, though the band is still active today with a different lineup. The album was recorded after they were dropped from Polydor Records - largely due to them being rather hard to classify or market - and were taken up by Richard Branson’s then new label, Virgin Records.

The album opens with Krautrock, a track of distorted brilliance, creating an industrial, echoed atmosphere that’s central ‘melody’ is rather accessible. It builds and builds but takes around 7 minutes just for the drums to come in, by which point you’re in an industrial German trance. If anything, the drums add some comfort to the intimidating din, as the robotic R2D2-like noises begin to get more frequent and jumbled. It’s an 11 minute piece that is difficult to describe as anything else other than a fall into a distorted abyss where everything fragments and crumbles, much like the room of abstract thought in Pixar’s masterpiece Inside Out - if you’ve ever seen that. Once the waves of distortion bleed into The Sad Skinhead you’re already sold to the album’s intriguing sense of mystery. The Sad Skinhead only serves to increase this mystery by being the absolute opposite of what you’d expect to follow that song, a jolly, bouncy song that owuldn’t be out of place on the Nintendo 64’s Banjo Kazooie soundtrack. Lyrically it’s somewhat darker than that, something which you only have to pay attention the first verse to notice.

Apart from all the bad times you gave me
I always felt good with you
Going places, smashing faces
What else could we do?
What else could we do?

Jennifer takes us back to the distorted and echoed sound of the opening track, but this time it’s used to create the bedding for perhap’s the album’s catchiest track, featuring only two lines which are repeated throughout: ‘Jennifer, your red hair's burning, Yellow jokes come out of your mind.’ The song’s end is a distorted explosion, followed by a completely unexpected jingle on a variety of instruments seemingly preceded by a shout of ‘everyone only play happy notes!’

Side two opens with Just a Second, a song featuring an infinitely weird twittering like skitter of synthesisers, underlaid by what sounds like a UFO turning on its engines. But you’ve heard nothing yet, as Giggy Smile / Picnic on a Frozen River, Deuxieme Tableau is probably the weirdest of the bunch. Driven by a rattling drum beat and the melody of that ridiculously nursery-rhyme-like vocal which sings lyrics that could only have been written while under the influence of a variety of recreationals. The song mashes together a whole host of genres that probably shouldn’t work, and comes out the other end as something rather fantastic, with a Dan Deacon like feeling of joy to its climax, inspired by a chirpy melody line seemingly played on a toy, over and over again. It stops completely abruptly, leaving you thinking you’re about to receive a call, every goddam time.

Läuft...Heißt Das Es Läuft Oder Es Kommt Bald...Läuft starts with two band members conversing - the title a transcript of their conversation - before launching into a song that when described would sound overly complicated, but is actually just a simple guitar plucked number containing two lines in French which translate as ‘I’m not afraid of wasting my time, I’m not afraid of losing my teeth.’ The second half prominently features the organ, and what it plays is quietly beautiful, touching, and as always, completely unexpected. It slowly distorts - obviously - gently pulsating before the organ seemingly breaks, creating a swirling crescendo which fades back into the beautifully simple part from before. Quite honestly, it’s one of my favourite musical passages of the year.

Things finish with the dry It’s a Bit of a Pain, a song featuring the brilliant lyrics, ‘it's a bit of a pain, To be where I am, It's a bit of a pain, To be what I am’ sung with the utmost seriousness. The melody is simple, but the accompaniment features some Velvet Underground levels of dissonance and madness, particularly the chattering, garbled robot that seems to be trying to convey something rather simple that we’re just too dumb to understand.

Faust IV is quite unlike anything I’ve heard before. It’s unpredictable, completely mad, weird, disjointed, and yet it’s also strangely accessible. It sounds like a band trying to thoroughly deconstruct a pop framework, rather than one completely off the leash. And in the end that catchy heart is still there, it’s just been blown to a million infinitely interesting pieces.

Song Picks: Krautrock, Läuft...Heißt Das Es Läuft Oder Es Kommt Bald...Läuft, Giggy Smile / Picnic on a Frozen River, Deuxieme Tableau

8.5/10

HousesoftheHoly — 6. Houses of the Holy

Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin are back with their fifth album, and their fifth to have made it on these lists. Quite the record. This one sees them actually putting some thought into the album’s name, though interestingly the title track - which was recorded for this album - didn’t appear until their next release.

The album’s cleaner and less distorted guitar led nature is clear from the off on The Song Remains the Same where - although the song definitely still rocks with a boundless energy - it’s less of a aural barrage than the heavier tracks on previous albums. Rain Song is a rare ballad from the band and features Robert Plant’s favourite vocal performance. Track three, Over the Hills and Far Away is a song about the hippie lifestyle and starts with a delightful acoustic guitar part that’s a wonderful mix of twiddly notes and solid strums. The second half is perhaps the heaviest the album gets, as the distorted guitar makes a brief return before everything disappears into the bottom of a well to be replaced by a soothing goodbye, leading us nicely into the John Bonham written The Crunge. Bonham wrote The Crunge’s funky drumbeat which Jimmy Page sings over in the style of James Brown - something that gets more exaggerated as the song goes on, emphasising the song’s not entirely serious nature. Page’s ‘where’s the bridge?’ joke at the end of the track takes this yet further. Rather unsurprisingly, the piece began its life as an on stage jam.

A lot of the album was written in a jovial atmosphere on Stargroves - Mick Jagger’s estate that he’d purchased in 1970. The estate cost him a massive £55,000 (£857,202.46 in today’s money). This jovial atmosphere is yet again evident on Dancing Days, a song with a clanging guitar riff and optimistic lyrics. Producer Eddie Kramer particularly remembers the band dancing around to the final mix in the garden at Stargroves, which is a lovely image. Now, before we talk about D’yer Mak’er we’ve got to talk about that name. Well, it’s based on the fact that ‘did you make her’ said in various British accents (e.g. Cockney) sounds like Jamaica, and the song is reggae inspired, geddit? Anyway, it’s one of my favourite Led Zeppelin songs. That riff like sunshine, Plant’s silly vocals, Bonham’s bouncy beat. D’yer Mak’er is absolutely delightful, a musical trip to a beach full of people being daft and having a good time.

No Quarter features one of my very favourite Led Zeppelin riffs - and there’s plenty of competition - as Jimmy Page saws his way over Bonham’s pounding beat. The riff magic is interspersed with Plant’s I’m-stuck-down-a-large-echoing-hole-please-help-me-out vocal that breaks up the pulverising riffs. An instrumental section towards the end sounds like a trip through some mysterious tunnel, and the whole thing is remarkably dark, Plant’s vocal sounding like that of a dying man by the time the last onslaught comes around. It’s another Led Zep favourite for me. Dark, brooding and mysteriously handsome. The album’s final track The Ocean probably sounds like a gentle sweeping epic to finish the album, but this is Led Zeppelin we’re talking about. The Ocean is in fact an AC/DC-esque celebration of their fans - ‘the ocean’ referring to the ocean of fans at their concerts. It’s the perfect way to finish an album that is strikingly optimistic and happy sounding, an album full of the gratitude of a band happy with where they’ve got to.

Houses of the Holy continues the band’s remarkably consistent run of albums and the second half is probably my favourite side on any Led Zeppelin album. It’s an album made by a band having a lot of fun, and that shines through.

Song Picks: The Song Remains the Same, D’yer Ma’ker, No Quarter

8.5/10

Future Days marks the third year on these lists from the German krautrockers. It’s their fourth album, and the last to feature vocalist Damo Suzuki. There’s no crazy story about its recording this time, which is a shame, but the album is interesting in the more ambient direction it takes. Focusing on as, critic Anthony Tognazzini puts it, “creating hazy, expansive soundscapes dominated by percolating rhythms and evocative layers of keys.”

From the start of the opening title track this dreamier atmosphere is clear. There’s less abrasiveness to the sound here and even Damo’s vocals have taken a chill pill, leading largely to quiet mumbles that fit effortlessly into the gorgeous musical soundscapes of the band. The song builds slowly on a syncopated drum beat, off-beat percussion and the repetitive picking of a guitar following an ambient start. The piece never crescendos - it doesn’t want to - and simply drifts along like the most pleasant of clouds on a calm Summer’s day. The guitars, keys and synthesisers add twinkles here, Damo appears now and again to talk about saving things for ‘future days’ before disappearing into the sky again. Around the 6 minute mark we’re launched off a ramp, the abyss looming below as things get darker and a guitar echoes from the bottom of the world’s largest pit, but it’s not long before we reach the other side of the ramp, breezing along again with Suzuki’s enigmatic ramblings. We’re launched again towards the song’s end as a synth helicopters loomingly above before everything fades out, Suzuki’s shouts of ‘for the sake of future days’ distorted and fading. It’s a gently funky, beautifully realised piece of music that’s strangely infectious.

Spray again relies heavily on the percussion to drive the track which takes a while to settle into its groove, but once it does there’s a wonderful clarity to everything. In particular the aforementioned percussion, which marches along in a way that brings to mind Miles Davis’ 1970 masterpiece Bitches Brew. Remember though on Bitches Brew there were three drummers and a percussionist, here we’ve just got Jaki Liebezeit who is clearly a master at creating percussive soundscapes. His drums blending seamlessly with the percussion - presumably overdubbed after - that colours it. Suzuki appears only rarely to add some variety to the musical soup, and the rarity of his appearances only makes his bizarrely brilliant rambles more effective.

Moonshake is that unusual beast, a 3 minute song by Can. not only this, but it’s one of the funkiest things I’ve ever heard. The bass and drums plod along as Michael Karoli’s guitar grooves around it like some funky alien around a pole - ok, that’s a weird image. Suzuki whispers along some characteristic nonsense in a way that’s somehow catchy. It’s a fabulous 3 minute example of just how singular, inventive and goddam effective Can are.

The entire second half f the album is taken up by the 20 minute sweeping epic Bel Air, which starts with the lapping of waves and a gentle chugging of a guitar. The organ darkens things somewhat but Suzuki’s vocal melody is remarkably twee. It sounds like a stroll on a beach as the sun is at the cusp of setting. Holger Czukay’s great basswork is particularly evident here, and its his quietly pulsating bass line that takes the song forward from the four minute mark, as the drums rattle on and the vocals get more and more distorted. The drums however remain so clear it sounds like you’re playing the things yourself. It all stops around the halfway mark to the sound of birds and mosquitoes before the guitar comes in with a new rhythm, this time perhaps more tropical. Suzuki continues to weave repetitive and happy melodies before he vanishes again, never to be heard again. There are points where it sounds chaotic, the drums frantic, the guitars and synth clashing in high pitched echoes, and yet miraculously it remains calming. There’s always that warm, chugging bass to return to, and although there is certainly some chaos around it, it feels like quiet chaos. The type of chaos that happens in your brain when you have a lie down and try to shut your brain off as various threads of thought try to quietly weave themselves into obscurity. Bel Air isn’t really a song as such, it’s a musical painting.

Future Days is my favourite Can album so far, it builds an atmosphere that’s impressively complex and chaotic for something so calming, and I don’t think there’s anything out there much like it. Suzuki’s last appearance on an album for the band is a restrained one, but it’s his measured, unexplainably catchy appearances that lift the sound perfectly every time it needs it. Future Days is an exercise in complex minimalism, if that is indeed a thing.

Song Picks: Moonshake, Future Days

9/10

4. Catch a Fire

Bob Marley & The Wailers

Bob Marley and the Wailers had just finished touring the UK and didn’t have enough money to return home to Jamaica. They approached producer Chris Blackwell, who agreed to advance them the money for an album so they could go back home and record it. Bob Marley returned with the tapes to London and - with the addition of some overdubs from Wayne Perkins to ‘westernise’ the sound a little - Catch a Fire was born. It’s now considered one of the greatest reggae albums of all time and began a successful period for the band under Chris Blackwell at Island Records. The album’s title is another way of saying ‘burn in hell’ and features on the song Slave Driver, Marley’s song of contempt about the slave trade. The cover above was only on the first 20,000 pressings, and opened like an actual zippo lighter, it was also used for the 2001 CD re-release.

To me, Bob Marley is one of the best vocalists of all time. His high and always perfectly in tune and characterful vocals can cut through any mix, and are the perfect companion to the concrete rumblingThe album starts with Concrete Jungle, a song perfectly demonstrating the abilities I’ve just outlined above. It jumps from gorgeous melody to gorgeous melody as Aston Barrett’s bass gently rumbles along and Bob Marley’s lyrics talk of his move to the US from Jamaica. I’ve already mentioned Slave Driver, which bounces along with a certain jolliness that defies its darker lyrics, featuring the particularly prescient couplet, ‘Today they say that we are free/Only to be chained in poverty.’ Few ever mastered the art of political lyrics without making them sound overly self-righteous quite as well as Bob. 400 Years - a different version of which appeared on the earlier Soul Rebels - is the first of two compositions by Pete Tosh on the album. His hollow, deeper vocal contrasting nicely with Bob’s as he sings sadly of 400 years of slavery and oppression. This is followed by Tosh’s second contribution, the more spritely Stop that Train, a song featuring a melody that you can’t help but song along to, and a song that perfectly demonstrates The Wailers’ ability to repeat lyrics and yet somehow never make them tiresome. Baby We’ve Got a Date sees the introduction of Bob’s backing vocalists Rita Marley - his wife - and Marcia Griffiths who complement Bob’s sumptuous melodies beautifully, and only help to increase the sunny atmosphere of the song.

Side two features more of the same, and not in a bad way, as the Wailers’ sun-drenched-concrete sound continues to transport you through classics such as the straight love song Stir it Up, Kinky Reggae and the slightly darker No More Trouble and Midnight Ravers. The latter shows the Wailer’s ability to groove along to just one chord, Bob’s melodies keeping things engaging, something they were to master on the song Exodus in 1977. The 2001 re-release saw the addition of High Tide or Low Tide (one of my Bob Marley favourites) and the jangling All Day All Night, but I won’t cover those here.

Although my favourite Bob Marley era will always be the productions Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry led - particularly Soul Revolution - this is undoubtedly one of the many highlights of his time with Island Records. Chris Blackwell changed their sound to one more accessible to Western audiences with the addition of Wayne Perkins’ guitar twinkles while maintaining the roots of what Bob’s music so engaging - and is no doubt largely to thank for Marley’s worldwide fame now. The gentle and yet dominating dubby bass lanes, those crisp off-beat guitar strums, and Carlton Barrett’s musical drums all create an atmosphere like no other, and one that was to drive Bob Marley’s career for years to come. Catch a Fire features one of music’s most powerful figures on top form, weaving gorgeous melodies for fun, and never losing touch with the strong political message of love and acceptance that his career was built on.

Song Picks: Slave Driver, Stir it Up, Baby We’ve Got a Date, Stop that Train

9/10

Considered one of the forerunners of punk-rock, Raw Power is the third album by the Stooges and sees a turn into more anthemic songs, led by the fact that the new guitarist James Williamson co-wrote much of the material with Iggy Pop. The Stooges were largely in disarray following the release of their previous album Fun House and on relocating to London Iggy Pop put together a new band to back him. He also mixed the first version of this album, which was rejected by the label for some dubious choices - particularly related to the stereo nature of the mix. Bowie was drafted in to re-mix the entire album in a day for its 1973 release. Iggy Pop was then invited to remix the album himself in 1996 for a re-release, and although I know it’s probably cheating, it’s this mix I want to review. Bowie’s mix is fine, and it’s worth mentioning it’s only the 1989 CD version I’ve heard, which I gather Iggy Pop hated, and so the original mix in 1973 may well have been better. The 1989 version I have access to just sounds a bit quiet, it doesn’t smash you in the face like Iggy Pop’s later mix does. Sure, technically I think Bowie’s mix is better and Iggy’s is compressed to within an inch of its life to make it pulverisingly loud, but I think that fits the album better. The guitars are also WAY more forward in Iggy’s mix which, again, serves the album well.

Onto the actual music. The album opens with Search & Destroy, an aural assault of the best kind. James Williamson’s guitar is an absolute force of nature. Iggy roars lyrics about a soldier’s experience in Vietnam and by the time we get to the last chorus the guitars are so loud and compressed that the whole things sounds like an unholy mess, and it’s aboslutely glorious.

James Williamson’s influence cannot be underestimated on this album, and I think the riffs are superior to those on the Stooges’ first two albums, an improvement he is wholly responsible for. Gimme Danger again features a great riff, which benefits from being pushed way to the front in Iggy’s mix. Pop’s distorted shouts have no issue being heard among the din, and it just gives the whole thing a whole load more power, which is what this album is all about.

The title track opens the second side of the album, again featuring a pulsating power-chord riff from Williamson, it’s a song about heroin, something that seemed to be a must for any wannabe edgy 70s band. There’s some rather interesting percussion on the track, including a tambourine and what sounds like a bell of some sort, which juxtoposes somewhat with the menacing, distorted guitar riff to create an atmopshere of fun and abandon. The screeching guitar solo at the end is a messy, drug fuelled cry for anarchy. It’s another piledriver of a track.

Columbia Records demanded the album have at least two ballads that could be played on the radio, one of those was I Need Somebody, a song where Iggy’s vocal is so distorted it sounds like the Strokes. It has a surprisingly catchy chorus, and a slightly calmer atmosphere than much of the album. I probably don’t need to say at this point that Williamson - who liked to write his songs on acoustic rather than electric guitar - provides yet another excellent guitar part. The calm precedes another storm, the dancy Shake Appeal, which pretty much dares you not to get up and dance as it’s gallant riff and vocals run through your veins. Iggy has stated it’s his favourite song from the album, and it might just be mine too.

The final track is Iggy’s message about how he knew the band was doomed to failure - none of their three albums sold very well during their existence - and seems an appropriate way to end their last album. He does seem to know that the band will be appreciated later on though, “we’re going down in history/we’re going down,” he shouts above another distorted barrage. How right he was.

Raw Power is my favourite album by the Stooges. To me it’s the culmination of what they were about, the final realisation of their sound, both in terms of the performance and the mix - as long as you listen to Iggy’s 1996 mix. The production does the material justice, creating a sense of anarchy, abandon, and just raw power, man.

Song Picks: Search and Destroy, Gimme Danger, Raw Power, Shake Appeal

9.5/10

Stevie Wonder’s 16th album - yep, I know that’s a lot - sees him transitioning from romantic ballads to more complex compositions. As with Herbie Hancock’s Head Hunters, the album features the ARP synthesiser prominently. Stevie Wonder also plays the vast majority of the instruments on the album, being perhaps the first example of a ‘one-man band’ we’ve had on the challenge. Most songs feature him on the piano, bass moog, synthesiser, and drums while other musicians accompany him on a couple of other instruments.

Too High is a dominated by a funky ARP synthesiser line, bumbling along accompanied by a very technically proficient drum part. Wonder plays every single instrument on this thing, which is stupendously impressive when you listen to it. It’s complex, catchy and groovy, stopping and starting effortlessly with the tightness of a well knit band. it still perplexes me that he could overdub his own playing so effectively and in time. Lyrically, the song is a bit of an anti-drug warning. Visions sees Wonder joined by a bass, acoustic guitar and electric guitar which all create a sumptuous, gently twinkling atmosphere to he warmly sings of inner and societal peace before we head into the album’s first mega-hit, Living for the City.

Now, Living for the City is a masterpiece, a tale of a Black man who dreams of life in the city, only to find its just a new flavour of inequality, leaving him disillusioned by the song’s end. A poignant commentary on race-relations in the USA, it’s also a perfectly crafted song instrumentally and melodically. Wonder’s vocals are gruff and rock ‘n’ roll and his melodies as catchy as a really big fishing net. The backing vocalists give the chorus a wonderful boost, catapulting Wonder’s cries of ‘Living just enough/just enough for the city’ into the realms of musical magic.

You’d think something so brilliant couldn’t possible be followed by anything even remotely comparable right? Well, you’d be wrong. Golden Lady is a simple love song, lifted again by Wonder’s golden syrup vocals and a chorus melody that seems to have dropped down straight from the heavens. Then we segue into Higher Ground, a song famously covered by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I’d probably go as far as to say it’s the funkiest song to appear so far on the challenge, that synth quacking along like Donald Duck on the funk juice as Wonder sings of reincarnation and second chances, seemingly unaware of his effortless genius. As you make your way through Wonder’s balanced look at modern religion in Jesus Children of America, you’re once again left pinching yourself when you find out he is playing every instrument on the song.

All is Fair in Love is another of the album’s true masterpieces, and one of the most affecting songs written about love I’ve ever heard. I mean just read this first verse:

All is fair in love
Love's a crazy game
Two people vow to stay
In love as one they say
But all is changed with time
The future none can see
The road you leave behind
Ahead lies mystery

Couple the song’s brilliantly evocative lyrics with Wonder’s cataclysmic vocal performance; going from gentle, to vibrato, to belting out notes at the top of his voice, and you have yourselves a powerful, powerful song. The album ends with the positively tropical Don’t You Worry About a Thing and the possible shot at President Nixon He’s Mr Know It All, another song driven by a melody that flows like lava through the chorus

3 days after the release of Innervisions, Stevie Wonder was involved in a car crash that involved a log smashing through the car and squarely into his forehead. Amazingly, he didn’t die, and was reportedly too scared to try and play an instrument while recovering in hospital, afraid he’d lost his musical skill. When he did eventually try a clavinet and realised he could play it, singer Ira Tucker noted, ‘man, you could just see the happiness spreading all over him. I'll never forget that.’ Innervisions is the work of a man for whom music very much was his life. Blind since shortly after his birth, Wonder was signed to a record label ever since the age of 11. Only someone who had been so absorbed in music from such a young age could have made Innervisions. The words musical genius are overused, but i have no hesitation in using them for Stevie Wonder, an this album is indisputable proof of that.

Song Picks: Living for the City, Higher Ground, All is Fair in Love, He’s Mr. Know It All

9.5/10

Pink Floyd’s eighth album, The Dark Side of the Moon, is probably one of the most famous albums out there, and one you’ll hear repeated many times if you ask people what their favourite album of all time is. It’s an album that’s almost impossible to listen to outside of its almost mythical place in the zeitgeist. It’s also Pink Floyd’s best selling album, and one of the bst selling albums of all-time, with over 45 million copies sold. A concept album about ‘greed, time, death and mental ilness’ according to Wikipedia, it well and truly put Pink Floyd on the map.

The album opens with Speak to Me, a one minute introduction track that begins with a heartbeat and recordings of the band talking, before the sound of a helicopter hovers in and we drop into track two, Breathe (In the Air). Gilmour’s ‘uni-vibe’ pedal makes his axe sound like a futuristic slide-guitar, and we have the album’s first lyrics, an imagery dense poem about going with the flow. The last verse sums it up nicely:

For long you live and high you fly
But only if you ride the tide
And balanced on the biggest wave
You race towards an early grave

The following On the Run is another soundscape piece, that whirling sound created by a Synthi AKS synthesiser, and the rest of the spacey soundscape was created in a whole host of interesting ways. The sound of a variety of vehicles flying around in an empty black night on another planet is quickly stopped as we hear an explosion, followed by the gradual introduction of a ticking clock, leading us into one of the album’s highlights. Time begins with a clatter of pendulums and other metal, which fades into an ominous ticking and booming of what I’m assuming is a synth. Pink Floyd continue to hammer home the fact they really are the masters of soundscapes with the rumble of a conga from ear to ear, before a more traditional rock arrangement enters alongside David Gilmour’s vocals. The song returns to the theme of Breathe, of making the most of now. It does so in a much darker way than Breathe though, something evident in the song’s last four lines:

“Far away across the field/The tolling of the iron bell/Calls the faithful to their knees/To hear the softly spoken magic spells.” The song fades effortlessly into the epic The Great Gig In The Sky which features Clare Torry’s spectacular, traumatised sounding worldess vocal, which I used to find rather irritating but has now grown on me. The song’s title refers to heaven, and the soundscape underneath Torry’s vocal is rather heavenly, the soft piano chords are accompanied by the odd bass note, seemingly gliding across the cosmos. Torry’s vocal is angelic and cataclysmic all at once.

The we reach the first single on the album, Money. It opens with an incredibly innovative use of the sound of coins and a cash register to introduce its 7/4 time signature. It is the only song on the album that made the top 20, and in fact the only song in history to do so containing a 7/4 time signature. The song is a pretty blunt critique of commercialism, and features David Gilmour on absolute guitar god form when the song switches to 4/4, with solos that light up the piece like a Swiss firework display - go watch a firework display in Ascona and you’ll know what I mean.

Ok, we’ve critscised capitalism and the root of all evil, money. Now it’s time for war to come under the microscope in Us and Them, a song that for some reason is rarely in the conversation when talking about the greatest anti-war songs, but probably should be. We’re all just ordinary humans, the song emphatically dictates, and thus all war is senseless. Torry is back with backing vocals in what is one of the album’s hugest sounding songs, the end of each verse crescendoing into a burst of tuneful anger.

The album moves onto the keyboard an guitar solo led Any Colour You Like, which sparkles like a million possibilites, followed by Brain Damage, another song about former frontman Syd Barrett’s mental instability, before we end with Eclipse, a wholehearted list of how nothing really matters in the end, ‘for even the sun is eclipsed by the moon.’

The Dark Side of the Moon is a magnificent album. Even today, in 2020, the thing does not sound like it was recorded on this planet, the musical paintings it weaves belong to another universe. The Dark Side of the Moon is a timeless piece of art, it’s themes as universal as the stars.

Song Picks: Time, Money, Us and Them, Breathe (In the Air)

9.5/10