Category: Reviews – Classics
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The Chemical Brothers – Surrender (2LP reissue)
Then as now, the conventional wisdom is that Dig Your Own Hole was the biggest of The Chemical Brothers‘ entries into the mainstream but, for this critic’s money, the greatest creative triumph of the group’s storied career is their third full-length, Surrender. With Surrender, the group had the mainstream’s attention and knew it, but rather than…
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The Chemical Brothers – Dig Your Own Hole (2LP reissue)
… And then, with the release of Dig Your Own Hole, The Chemical Brothers became a pop culture phenomenon. Now, it could be contended that the arrival and immediate public embrace of Dig Your Own Hole was the result of several different factors intersecting. After grunge, Brit-Pop overtook both the charts and popular imagination thanks…
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Cat-Iron – Sings Blues and Hymns LP
In my life, I have had three perception-altering experiences with the blues. The first was when I heard Howlin’ Wolf; when I first heard the guttural moan and growl which came off songs like “Smokestack Lightning,” it rattled me to the core and hooked me with the inherent danger of it. The second time the…
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Boston – self-titled LP (40th anniversary reissue)
How does one attempt to celebrate the release of an album like Boston? To date, the record has sold twenty-five million copies worldwide. The breakthrough single from the album, “More Than A Feeling,” has attained a status which makes it rank among some of the most instantly recognizable songs of all time; the average Joe…
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David Bowie – Let’s Dance LP
To begin with, I have to confess that I disliked Let’s Dance from the time I first heard it until early 2016 – right around the time I first saw the Five Years documentary. In Five Years, both Let’s Dance and the album’s producer, Nile Rodgers, played significant roles and seeing that presentation was what…
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David Bowie – David Live 2LP
It’s incredible how good, interesting, revealing and even informative an album can be, while simultaneously being critically abhorred. How such things happen is anyone’s guess, but they do – a perfect example is the live album that David Bowie released in 1974, David Live. David Live was Bowie’s first official live album. The album compiled…
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David Bowie – Diamond Dogs LP
While it might not sound like the greatest endorsement of an album’s quality or of the creative foresight possessed by an artist on the surface, the adage that Diamond Dogs exemplifies first is “Just because an idea doesn’t work out in its intended manner does not mean it should be thrown away and forgotten.” The manner…
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The Psychedelic Sound of The Thirteenth Floor Elevators LP
It’s unlikely that anyone would disagree that The 13th Floor Elevators are a really important band in the evolution of rock. Most would cite the band’s debut album as all the proof anyone could need to make the point: “What is it which makes The Psychedelic Sound of The Thirteenth Floor Elevators a classic album?”…
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Rush – Grace Under Pressure LP
Perhaps the most important thing that Rush proved when they released Grace Under Pressure is that (to paraphrase what George Orwell wrote in 1984) the best albums are those which reiterate those things of which people were already aware. In this case, fans already knew that Rush had been the greatest and best-kept secret in…
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Circle Jerks – Group Sex
At this point, six years after the band that Keith Morris, Steven McDonald, Dimitri Coats and Mario Rubalcaba started took off (ahem – no pun intended) and brought hardcore punk into a much brighter and broader spotlight before a much larger audience, the history of where OFF came from and the circumstances which got them…