April 2021 Anniversaries
SUPER
Pet Shop Boys
"I am H.A.P.P.Y; I am H.A.P.P.Y; I know I am I'm sure I am; I am H.A.P.P.Y". Thus begins PSBs latest offering (sort of). I was all ready to criticize them for being unoriginal and reverting back to an earlier style with this, but I've listened to it a lot and now realize that it would be like criticizing Alex Ferguson for continuing to the win the league by virtue of being a great manager. I was very unsure about first single 'The Pop Kids' since in the early nineties they were clearly not trendy students but instead were packaging their product in Lego and road-testing streamlined cycle helmets as stage-wear. I thought the lyrics were a bit arch, even for Tennant, the arch-archmeister. But of course, this is all part of PSBs genius, they are story-tellers, not autobiographers. Going back to the opening 'Happiness', it's got a Western/line-dancing feel to it. Tennant's repeated "It's a long way to happiness...." liyric is delivered in the lightest western drawl, kind of like a cool version of Steps doing '5,6,7,8'.
This is very much a pop album though. 'Groovy' could be a Kylie track, but whereas we would all agree that Ms. Minogue really means it when singing "Look at me, I'm just so groovy", you have to take Tennant and Lowe with a pinch of salt. Tennant chucks in some weird low key introspection with 'The Dictator Decides', apparently a commentary on Kim Jong Un (I'll admit here that the recent Radio 'documentary' series has helped me understand some of the nuance of this album). 'Pazzo!' is in the tradition of Daft Punk and Giorgio Moroder. I assume that the deep throated interjections of 'You're crazy' is a distorted version of Tennant's voice, like he's been on 200 Marlboro a day for the last 30 years. 'Inner Sanctum' feels like a continuation, but the religiosity of the idea comes through in Tennant's whispered choral vocal. As I sit in bed on a wet Saturday morning writing this, it sends me into a brief Big-Fish-Small Fish-Cardboard Box dance. Weird pronunciation news. Tennant says "want" so that it rhymes with 'ant'. Listen to 'Say It To Me' Still, it's better than ex-Prime Minister John Major, who rhymed it with the c-word. The penultimate 'Burn' is very rave-y. What is it about discos that brings out the arsonist in everyone?
The closing 'Into Thin Air' is a bit disjointed, but I'm happy to report that The Pet Shop Boys (I noticed a tendency to drop the definite article in the aforemention radio doc) are at the top of their game.
Happiness
The Pop Kids
Twenty-something
Groovy
The Dictator Decides
Pazzo!
Inner Sanctum
Undertow
Sad Robot World
Say It to Me
Burn
Into Thin Air
HOLD ON, I'm COMIN'
Sam And Dave
In his recent 'From My Home To Yours' radio show, Mr Springsteen often cited Sam and Dave as being a huge influence on him. You can see it in the energy and delivery
The title track is one of those you'll know even if you don't recognize the title. It's one that is beloved of the sampler and advertising man in the modern age with its strident brass intro.
We must address the giant tortoise in the room, or at least I would if I could find a decent explanation. When you consider the single entendre of the title, making it look like it might be a collection of children's nursery rhymes might be considered a mis-step.
Hold On, I'm Comin'
If You Got the Loving
I Take What I Want
Ease Me
I Got Everything I Need
Don't Make It So Hard on Me
It's a Wonder
Don't Help Me Out
Just Me
You Got It Made
You Don't Know Like I Know
Blame Me (Don't Blame My Heart)
THE VILLAGE LANTERNE
Blackmore's Night
Stick an 'e' on the end of any word and you instantly grant it an air of authentic age. For example, if I wrote "I lystenede to thys on the waye to Tescoe in my carre' you would know instantly that the event described took place in around 1586 without needing further context. Ritchie Blackmore sticks a musical 'e' on the end of everything he does with this project. However this is no bad thing and follows in a long line of rock/folk fusion involving the likes of Jethro Tull, Mike Oldfield and the Wurzels.
Blackmore indulges in some fan service by including by sticking in a version of The Purps' 'Child In Time', and they pay due respect to the folk guv'nor that is Ralph McTell, with a nice reworking of 'Streets Of London'. Some of it goes a bit Eurovision, but I can't deny I loved it from beginning to end.
25 Years
Village Lanterne
I Guess It Doesn't Matter Anymore
The Messenger
World of Stone
Faerie Queen / Faerie Dance
St. Teresa
Village Dance
Mond Tanz / Child in Time
Streets of London
Just Call My Name (I'll Be There)
Olde Mill Inn
Windmills
Street of Dreams
ANIMAL MAGIC
The Blow Monkeys
When I made my much aniticipated announcement of what albums I'd selected for April 2021 listening, none of my selections elicited more excitement from my British contemporaries than this by the Blow Monkeys. For me, it's about giving Dr. Robert and co a fair hearing, they are just one of a number of pop acts from the mid-to-late eighties who adopted an air of sophistication to lure in the post-punk generation who had no time for their older siblings wailing guitars and scraggy denims. See also Hue And Cry, Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, and, if you were really going for it, Julia Fordham (Wikipedia's impenetrable music categorization system puts this in 'sophisti-pop' along with the likes of Sade, Prefab Sprout and Swing Out Sister - you get the idea). The Blow Monkeys seemed particularly transient and I was suprised that they soldiered on to 1990, let alone resurrected themselves in 2007.
I mean, this is all fine, the musicianship is great and there's a deal of variety, they even use a bit of backmasking in the barbershop-styled 'I Backed A Winner (In You)', but no exhortations to embrace Mephistopheles alas, it's just "I backed a winner in you baby", however they didn't grab me then and they failed to do so now.
Digging Your Scene
Animal Magic
Wicked Ways
Sweet Murder
Aeroplane City Lovesong
Walking the Blue Beat
I Nearly Died Laughing
Don't Be Scared of Me
Burn the Rich
I Backed a Winner (in You)
Forbidden Fruit
Heaven Is a Place I'm Moving To
IN THE LAND OF GREY AND PINK
Caravan
Here's one of the reasons I do this. I fondly remember the track 'Golf Girl' but could never quite pin it down and didn't know who did it. Of course I could have typed 'golf girl song' into the internet and solved the problem, but it wasn't an itch I'd ever felt the need to scratch. I had assumed it was a Bonzo's song. The vocal has a Viv Stanshall feel to it, and I like the Englishness and even the quaint early seventies sexism of the need for "golf girls" serving tea. The phrasing is rather prim too, "to see if she fancied me'.
This is authentic, committed English prog too. Side 2 is one piece of music in 8 movements called '9 Feet Under. Mostly instrumental too. What better way to spend a Thursday afternoon?
Golf Girl
Winter Wine
Love to Love You (And Tonight Pigs Will Fly)
In the Land of Grey and Pink
Nine Feet Underground
Nigel Blows a Tune
Love's a Friend
Make It 76
Dance of the Seven Paper Hankies
Hold Grandad by the Nose"
Honest I Did!
Disassociation
100% Proof
MOSELEY SHOALS
Ocean Colour Scene
What's your nu-Zep act of choice? Personally I favour The Cult, but Ocean Colour Scene tried appropriating a few riffs in the mid-nineties too. Actually OCS are the Stones to Oasis's Beatles. At least they'd all like to think so. '40 Past Midnight' is a pretty straight 'Let's Spend The Night Together' "tribute" and Simon Fowler works hard on his Jagger roar. Chris Evans liked them and used the Riverboat Song for TFI Friday, which is not really a recommendation at all.
The Riverboat Song
The Day We Caught the Train
The Circle
Lining Your Pockets
Fleeting Mind
40 Past Midnight
One for the Road
It's My Shadow
Policemen & Pirates
The Downstream
You've Got It Bad
Get Away
PAPER AIRPLANE
Alison Krauss and Union Station
Krauss's crystalline voice is lovely as always and she fits in a Richard Thompson cover, 'Dimming Of The Day'. She shares the lead vocals with Dan Tyminski. For once, Wikipedia is absolutely sure that this is Bluegrass, pure and simple.
Paper Airplane
Dust Bowl Children
Lie Awake
Lay My Burden Down
My Love Follows You Where You Go
Dimming Of The Day
On The Outside Looking In
Miles To Go
Sinking Stone
Bonita And Bill Butler
My Opening Farewell
VICTORIALAND
Cocteau Twins
Yesterday I was listening the glassily delicate voice of Alison Krauss. Here there are similarities, but the style is much more abstract. You've got to hand it to them for the song titles, 'Fluffy Tufts', 'Whales Tails' and 'Little Spacey' all set the tone.
Lazy Calm
Fluffy Tufts
Throughout the Dark Months of April and May
Whales Tails
Oomingmak
Little Spacey
Feet-Like Fins
How to Bring a Blush to the Snow
The Thinner the Air
AFTERMATH
The Rolling Stones
Still two versions, but I'll concentrate on the US issue since it includes 'Paint It Black'. As an opening salvo on a new album it pushes the Rolling Stones in a disturbing direction. Depression or some kind of deeper psychosis? "I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes, I have to turn my head until my darkness goes". That, my friend, is a dark side.. There used to be a recurring sketch on the Fast Show in the 90's in which a middle aged couple were painting a picturesque landscape and chatting amiably until the man suddenly decides to add a touch of black to the picture and then immediately descends into a cycle of destructive daubing "Black, black, black! It's all BLACK". It was a funny, and slightly sad, idea, but it always felt like they had just based it on this song.
'Stupid Girl' is less clear in it's meaning and intentions but seems quite misogynistic. At least I don't think we are witnessing the earliest use of the word "sickest" in the modern way to denote a positive sentiment. They go for women again in 'Under My Thumb' which at least has the virtue of being irresistibly catchy. A bit more respect is shown in 'Lady Jane' I guess although Wikipedia suggest some less edifying interpretations of the title.
Everything on here is Jagger/Richards, so this counts in some ways as the first 'proper' Rolling Stones album from a creative viewpoint. There's a funny little piano snatch of 'Let's Spend The Night Together' at the start of 'Flight 505'. It may not even be intentional. To round it all off we get the 11+ minute long 'Goin' Home' a blues ramble of the first order. The longest song they ever did apparently and perhaps a sign of nascent experimentalism.
Paint It Black (UK Version - Mother's Little Helper)
Stupid Girl
Lady Jane
Under My Thumb
Doncha Bother Me
Think (on Side 2 on UK Version)
Flight 505
High And Dry
It's Not Easy
I Am Waiting
Goin' Home (On end of Side 1 on UK Version)
Take It Or Leave It (UK Version only)
What To Do (UK Version Only)
AUBERGE
Chris Rea
Not really one of his best, but the title track bowls along nicely and the opening sounds of a milkman doing his job is a good test for your stereo system. I think my Mum bought this for me because she liked the song too. She did ask me if I wanted it first.
Trivia: Chris has used an old Father's Day card for the artwork.
Auberge
Gone Fishing
You're Not a Number
Heaven
Set Me Free
Winter Song
Red Shoes
Sing a Song of Love to Me
Every Second Counts
Looking for the Summer
And You My Love
The Mention of Your Name
Released 19th April 1971
LA WOMAN
The Doors
Are The Doors actually just a blues band with a good keyboard player? This is Jim Morrison reputedly washed up and certainly on the brink of immortality, but it's that that beard really adds the pounds. It's unfair to give Manzarek all the credit, Morrison's voice and delivery are distinctive and menacing.
They managed some of their best work before he departed too. Love Her Madly and Riders On The Storm are both here.
The Changeling
Love Her Madly
Been Down So Long
Cars Hiss by My Window
L.A. Woman
L'America
Hyacinth House
Crawling King Snake
The WASP (Texas Radio and the Big Beat)
Riders on the Storm
TWANGIN'
Dave Edmunds
A straightforward title for a straightforward album. It's Edmunds' album, but it's also Rockpile, so Nick Lowe, Terry Williams and the other Billy Bremner are all in attendance. There are also a few Stray Cats hanging around, including Brian Setzer.
Pub Rock 'n' Roll covers with Edmunds' distinctive voice, just like all the bands that used to turn up on a Thursday night in The Borough in Sunderland at the fag end of the eighties while I was working on thickening my waistline with several pints of Vaux Samson. Edmunds put's his own shine on 'Singin' The Blues' but does appear to be attempting an Elvis impersonation on the final 'Baby Let's Play House' and the production on the song is a tribute to Sun Studios too.
Something Happens
It's Been So Long
Singin' the Blues
(I'm Gonna Start) Living Again If It Kills Me
Almost Saturday Night
Cheap Talk, Patter and Jive
Three Time Loser
You'll Never Get Me Up (In One of Those)
I'm Only Human
The Race Is On
Baby Let's Play House
TINDERBOX
Siouxsie and the Banshees
Siouxsie was way too outre and dangerous for me when she was at her height, although I did always like Peek-A-Boo and Hong Kong Garden. Despite being at the core of the early days of punk (she was leched over by Bill Grundy in that interview), she clearly set the pace for pretty much all of the eighties indie music scene. The single, 'Cities In Dust' could be the perfect Sioxsie and the Banshees track, spiky and swooping. Not sure I'm converted though.
Candyman
The Sweetest Chill
This Unrest
Cities in Dust
Cannons
Party's Fal
92°
Land's End
Released 23rd April 1976
TOO OLD TO ROCK AND ROLL, TOO YOUNG TO DIE
Jethro Tull
Anderson seems to attack this album with an astonishing level of commitment and confidence. Yet another concept album, and at the more comprehensible end of that spectrum too. His protagonist, Ray Lomas, is a rocker past his sell-by date, punk is coming and he's becoming obsolete. The video of the title track is quite a production (rather like the song) and features Anderson and the band playing the lascivious old geezers against a young punkette. It's also notable for some terrible miming, especially as they sing the chorus while slurping from teacups.
Musically they run a thread of a simple pizzicato hook throughout. The opening three tracks set the pace for the rest of the album, 'Quizz Kid' and 'Crazed Institution' are good catchy songs and Salamander returns to the acoustic style of 'Fat Man' (although not with the South Asian instruments) and 'Skating Away'. There's a sad tone to 'From A Dead Beat To An Old Greaser'. I have a theory that Fish had the opening two lines of 'Big Dipper' on his mind when he was writing Marillion's Misplaced Childhood, mist rolling in and trains all feature in 'Bitter Suite'.
That last bit of 'Too Old....' where they abruptly change the song from a slow ballad to a quick rocker really shouldn't work, but it does. Back to the video and the band transform into their modern personas for that part, which unfortunately in Anderson's case means some kind of mock-mediaeval tunic, jodhpurs and presumably a cuke down the pants. Not sure about the cover. Very much of it's time I suppose. Next up, some kitchen prose and gutter rhymes.
Quizz Kid
Crazed Institution
Salamander
Taxi Grab
From A Dead Beat To An Old Greaser
Bad Eyed And Loveless
Big Dipper
Too Old To Rock And Roll: Too Young To Die
Pied Piper
The Chequered Flag (Dead Or Alive)
STICKY FINGERS
The Rolling Stones
It has taken me a good while to get my head around Sticky Fingers. At first it just didn't grab me, but now I've been listening to it for about a week non-stop and it eventually becomes apparent that beneath the superficial nastiness (a contender for the first punk album, especially with the vinyl-damaging Warhol artwork) is an astonishingly complex and important album. Because, I put it to you, that while others may claim to have invented Rock Music, on this album, the Stones, take it, mould it, polish it and hone it into, well not even the prototype for everything that came after, but the finished, straight-to-market final product. You can break this down into a number of genres and cultural phenomena.
They mine their natural tendency to controversy by opening up with 'Brown Sugar' and chucking in bleak echoey tales of drug taking with 'Sister Morphine'. They invent the Power Ballad with 'Wild Horses' - my favourite track from an album with no bad ones. Richards buzzes and fuzzes the riffs on 'Can't You Hear Me Knocking' before it develops into a purer sound and wanders off down a jazzier musical route. Charlie Watts clearly letting his influence show. If you had to pin them down to a style, then it's predominantly southern country blues - at it's most extreme on 'You Gotta Move', but even then they mix it up with the harrowingly goofy C&W styled 'Dead Flowers'.
It must have been easy to dismiss the Stones as being rather coarse and, overall, a bad influence, but some of their lyrical themes show a sharp knowledge and intelligence at play. A song called 'Bitch' might well give you a low expectation, but "When you call my name, I salivate like a Pavlov dog" is a superb lyric (sung over the dirtiest blues riff you're ever likely to hear). And they have form too. See 'Sympathy For The Devil'. That's I'll-turn-up-on-every-major-artist's-work-unless-Rick-Wakeman-is-about Billy Preston giving it loads on the organ on 'I Got The Blues'.
At the very last, they even find time to show all those MOR acts that came after how to do it with 'Midnight Mile'. If you ever end up contemplating the prospect of winding up on a desert island and need to pick one quintessential rock album to take with you, then you could do a lot worse. Mind you, I haven't heard Exile On Main Street yet.
Brown Sugar
Sway
Wild Horses
Can't You Hear Me Knocking
You Gotta Move
Bitch
I Got The Blues
Sister Morphine
Dead Flowers
Midnight Mile
BLACK AND BLUE
The Rolling Stones
OK. I'm going to stop waiting for a bad album to come along. It may never happen. I'm indebted to a friend for pointing me to this interview ( (https://www.mixcloud.com/.../uk-radio-bbc-radio-6-music.../) which was carried out just after the release. The interviewer, Jeff Griffin is manfully fighting against his good diction by upping the glottal stop quota and comes across as both somewhat chippy and matey at the same time. Wyman, Jagger and Wood all interview well. They aren't lairy and seem happy to discuss whatever Jeff brings up, including a little bit of politics around playing in post-Franco Spain and communist-lite Zagreb. The recent Leicester gig was clearly a stormer, but Jeff seems overly concerned that the stage in Glasgow was cramping their style. Wood's voice is yet to have gained the 'character' that forty years of Jack Daniels, Capstan Full Strength and possibly more serious forms of self-medication confers.
The album is strong from start to finish. 'Hot Stuff' is, as Wyman asserts, an upbeat disco-funk strut which has Watts tapping away subtly in the background. My favourite on the album is definitely 'Hand Of Fate', an accomplished rock song of the highest order. There's some reggae with a cover of Eric Donaldson's 'Cherry Oh Baby', which does feel a bit unnecessary to me. Incidentally on the Radio 2 early breakfast show this week, hosted by Vanessa Feltz, her song on weekly feature 'David Rodigan's Roaring Reggae Friday' was Jagger and Peter Tosh doing 'Don't Look Back', so I don't think we can accuse Mick of being a reggae dilettante. And he achieves a level of authenticity without ever having to resort to mimicking a Jamaican accent.
The centrepiece is the magnificent 7 minutes of 'Memory Motel'. Billy Preston is all over the keyboards on this album and a good thing too. 'Melody' is a cool, rolling piece of jazz-rock which was led by him. He imposes quite a lot of structure over the Stones usual controlled chaos. And there's some ear-grabbing horn arrangements in it too. But it's Mick himself who takes to the electric piano for probably the best known song on this, 'Fool To Cry'. Tender and sad. Maybe not what you'd expect from the Rolling Stones. However reassurance is at hand in the closing track 'Crazy Mama'. As Stones-ish a thing as you are ever likely to hear. I've put up the opened gatefold sleeve (see comments), which shows Charlie looking like he could be Jools Holland's dad.
Hot Stuff
Hand Of Fate
Cherry Oh Baby
Memory Motel
Hey Negrita
Melody
Fool To Cry
Crazy Mama
WE SHALL OVERCOME: THE SEEGER SESSIONS
Bruce Springsteen
I didn't include this in the original odyssey, although you could argue that it qualifies. It's mainly studio recorded material but the version on Spotify does also have some live performances (the American Land edition). They are all traditional songs popularised by Pete Seeger. I viewed it more as a side project than a full Bruce album last year, which is why I left it out.
It's all pretty joyous stuff, although the actual themes can be a bit grim. 'Old Dan Tucker' is a good piece of folk doggerel and is followed by Bruce pickin' his way through 'Jesse James' as he denigrates James' killer Robert Ford. 'Mrs McGrath' features a nice bit of too-rye-aying and feels quite epic. 'O Mary Don't You Weep' is what I am hoping it is still OK to call a negro spiritual (Reg Holdsworth would know), the kind of song that helped hold slaves together before the American Civil War. 'John Henry' is about a steel driver - he made holes for the explosives, and Bruce bawls it out. 'Erie Canal' is also known as 'Low Bridge'. Bruce does his singing-without-moving-his-lips thing. 'I'm pretty certain we used to sing 'Jacob's Ladder' in Sunday School, maybe it involved hand movements (?) but I know we didn't have Bruce and a whole brass section banging away in the vestry at St Andrew's Methodist Church. I'm guessing 'My Oklahoma Home' dates back to the dustbowl as all the protagonist's possessions have been blown away, with the exception, of course, of his mortgage. 'Keep Your Eyes On The Prize' was, according to Wiki-sometimes-reliable, an adaptation of an older song that was updated for the Civil Rights movement in the 50's and 60's. He does infuse it with a good dollop of southern gospel style.
'Shenandoah' featured in Richard Thompson's 1000 Years Of Popular Music, which we saw performed at the South Bank centre in London a few years ago when he was curating the Meltdown festival. Thompson finished the set with Britney's 'Oops I Did It Again', converting it into an agonised self criticism. Springsteen adds in his own lyrics for some of 'Pay Me My Money Down'. "I wish I was Mr. Gates". Well I expect the feeling is reciprocated Bruce, you're not short of a bob or two either. He goes a bit Dylan on 'We Shall Overcome' before finishing off with 'Froggie Went a Courtin'.
For the extra tracks on the American Land edition, we start with what is presumably his tribute to Malcolm McLaren - 'Buffalo Gals'. Then again, maybe not. 'How Can I Keep From Singing' features a gospel choir and has a really charming ramshackle quality which is probably a lot harder to produce than it sounds.In contrast, the production is a bit too lush on 'How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live'. 'Bring Em Home' is an actual Pete Seeger composition, and its relevance today is as strong as when he wrote it.
The whole thing closes with 'American Land', which I have to say became a bit of an irritation in live shows as Bruce insisted on finishing with it every night and going on and on and on. We all know that he regularly clocks in at 3+ hours but when you're in the middle of London and the last train is at five past midnight, you sometimes want him to get on with it. However, it is pretty uplifting. This version was recorded in New York, so it's being consumed by its target demographic. I actually think the studio version on 'Wrecking Ball' is better, the backing singer here gives it a few too many grace notes.
Old Dan Tucker
Jesse James
Mrs. McGrath
O Mary Don't You Weep
John Henry
Erie Canal
Jacob's Ladder
My Oklahoma Home
Eyes on the Prize
Shenandoah
Pay Me My Money Down
We Shall Overcome
Froggie Went A-Courtin'
Buffalo Gals
How Can I Keep from Singing?
Buffalo Gals
How Can I Keep from Singing?
How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?
Bring 'Em Home
American Land
CASANOVA
The Divine Comedy
Neil Hannon, when he's good ('Something For The Weekend'), he truly is divine, but a lot of the time he can be rather annoyingly arch and too clever by half. The Viv Stanshall-isms of 'Theme From Casanova' goes too far, but he seems like a nice chap and at least he's not dull.
Something for the Weekend
Becoming More Like Alfie
Middle-Class Heroes
In & Out of Paris & London
Charge
Songs of Love
The Frog Princess
A Woman of the World
Through a Long & Sleepless Night
Theme from Casanova
The Dogs & the Horses
UNION
Yes
Risky. In a brazen proverb-defying experiment, the many cooks of Yes come together (in a 'Union', d'you see?). So this consists of Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe, Squire, Rabin, Kaye, White. Or to put it another way, One main vocalist, two drummers, two guitarists, one bassist and two keyboard players. Actually when you think of it that way, it doesn't seem too over the top. Probably more than enough percussion though.
This and the next album, 'Talk' are not available on Spotify so I had to turn to a friend for copies. Not sure why they are omitted. Reputedly many of the horde of members don't rate this one and the fans aren't keen either, indeed, my album providing saviour curled his lip as he handed the disks over, but it isn't so bad as to be shameful. The whole collective were never in the same recording studio at the same time and the songs themselves are a mish-mash of ABWH and latest Yes lineup compositions.
It's fairly middle of the road. Both of the openers 'I Would Have Waited Forever' and 'Shock To The System' are quite anthemic. Kinda liked Howe's solo guitar 'Masquerade'. The title 'Without Hope You Cannot Start The Day' is a bit bleak isn't it? Not a great song either, an Anderson effort. The overall impression is that the whole thing is an exercise in coasting, using up some leftover songs and essentially just seeing who blinks first in the inevitable deadwood-cutting that would follow. 'Silent Talking' probably sums up the whole album, a horrible mess of styles all rubbing up against each other.
The saving grace is that each song is the brainchild of just a few of them, so within themselves, the songs are fine, if a little bland at times. You know me, I'll leave no metaphor unextended, so I'll say that this broth is not so much spoiled as over-cooked. The Roger Dean cover is a good one, lots of nice curves.
I Would Have Waited Forever
Shock to the System
Masquerade
Lift Me Up
Without Hope You Cannot Start the Day
Saving My Heart
Miracle of Life
Silent Talking
The More We Live – Let Go
Angkor Wat
Dangerous (Look in the Light of What You're Searching For)
Holding On
Evensong
Take the Water to the Mountain
HIGH VOLTAGE
AC/DC
When I did Back To Black last year I suggested that it was probably the only AC/DC albuum you'd ever need. Turns out I was right and this is just more of the same. Which is fine if you like that sort of thing. One good thing, that yellow lightning bolt reminded me of the giant pencil on the cover of The Incredible Shrinking Dickies, so I think I'll go and listen to that now.
It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)
Rock 'n' Roll Singer
Th Jack
Live Wire
T.N.T.
Can I Sit Next to You Girl
Little Lover
She's Got Balls
High Voltage