The Chambers Brothers: The Time Has Come

THE CHAMBERS BROTHERS: THE TIME HAS COME (1967)

1) All Strung Out Over You; 2) People Get Ready; 3) I Can't Stand It; 4) Romeo & Juliet; 5) In The Midnight Hour; 6) So Tired; 7) Uptown; 8) Please Don't Leave Me; 9) What The World Needs Now Is Love; 10) Time Has Come Today; 11*) Dinah; 12*) Falling In Love; 13*) Love Me Like The Rain.

By mid-'67, the brothers' tenaciousness had paid off — they landed a contract with Columbia, who put them under the supervision of young and aspiring producer David Rubinson, not too well known at the time but far more familiar from his subsequent work with Moby Grape, United States Of America, and Herbie Hancock. Essentially this meant that, for the first time in their life, the Chambers Brothers could quit dicking around, lay off the novelty acts and gimmicks, and concentrate on trying to make their own mark on the world of progressive pop music.

This may not be a great album, but this is their first proper album (not counting the Barbara Dane collaboration) that does not sound like a shit, and properly reflects all of their talents — as arran­gers, songwriters, performers, and wannabe cultural heroes. No fewer than half of the tracks are self-penned, and the rest are a respectable mix of groovy R&B, funk, soul, and balladry. Since the brothers seem to insist upon playing all the instruments themselves, the level of tightness, inten­sity, and energy is incomparable with the average quality of contemporary Atlantic records, or of James Brown's or Sly Stone's backing bands; the brothers have to compensate for this less capti­vating sound with diversity and pure entertainment value — thus, Rudy Clarke's ʽAll Strung Out Over Youʼ, a song whose melody would later be appropriated for Sweet's ʽBallroom Blitzʼ (I had to all but crack my head open to realize that), is a tight and speedy pop-rock romp where not a single element is outstanding per se, but the overall combination is a great anti-boredom kick delivered from the very outset. And then there is no better way, from a contrastive perspective, than to follow it with another, cleaner and subtler version of ʽPeople Get Readyʼ than the old live version — even if this one, too, is hardly preferable to the Impressions.

The brothers' originals, too, are getting more ambitious. ʽI Can't Stand Itʼ is a hybrid of R&B groove, blues-rock, and pop hooks (the latter mainly reflected in the falsetto backing vocals), allegedly reflecting the brothers' interest in the British scene, since the bass / drum / guitar inter­play is rather reminiscent of The Who or Small Faces than the American acts by whom the Brits were influenced themselves. ʽSo Tiredʼ generally follows the standard Fifties' progression, but the lush, nearly operatic vocal delivery is more Tom Jones-like. On the other hand, something like ʽPlease Don't Leave Meʼ, a colorless Jimmy Reed rewrite, shows that there is, as of yet, no question about trying to eliminate filler.

But none of this is really why we are here, right? The real reason is, of course, the title track, unquestionably the Chambers Brothers' signature song — though just how much it would be re­membered remains a question, had it only been released in its truncated single release. The main part of the song, after all, is a rather monotonous vamp, not unlike the Stones' ʽGet Out Of My Cloudʼ with less prominent rhythm guitar. The real fun starts when the main melody disappears and is replaced by a psychedelic freakout, with echoey vocals, dark spooky basslines, and fuzzy, Eastern-influenced guitars that were probably the very last thing anybody would expect to hear on a Chambers Brothers record — this is way more like Jefferson Airplane in nature. Later on, the guitar freakout dissipates as well and is replaced by just a general freakout: leave a steady beat and let everybody except the rhythm section go crazy.

I would be lying if I called this a quintessential psychedelic track or anything: next to Hendrix or Pink Floyd, hell, even next to the Stones' much-maligned ʽSing This All Together (See What Happens)ʼ the craziness of ʽTime Has Come Todayʼ is quite restrained, not to mention secondary in origin. But it has plenty of appeal as a symbol of creative liberation: it works much better if you bear in mind that all of this was the creative product of four brothers from rural Mississippi who, in another age, would have probably spent all their lives recycling same old blues formulas. The track really works far better in context — not only the context of The Chambers Brothers' overall career, but in the overall context of African-American popular music; in fact, this track may have been the single biggest creative breakthrough for it all after Hendrix. And you can cer­tainly hear, say, the seeds of Funkadelic planted somewhere in the middle of this crazy romp. For this alone, the album deserves a thumbs up. Whether it actually transcends the basic level of historical importance and moderate enjoyability — that is your choice to make.

Allen Toussaint: Southern Nights

ALLEN TOUSSAINT: SOUTHERN NIGHTS (1975)

1) Last Train; 2) Worldwide; 3) Back In Baby's Arms; 4) Country John; 5) Basic Lady; 6) Southern Nights; 7) You Will Not Lose; 8) What Do You Want The Girl To Do?; 9) When The Party's Over; 10) Cruel Way To Go Down.

Third time's the charm: reading whatever you may find of the brief, scant accounts of Toussaint's Seventies output might give the impression of a fairly even career, but listen to these records just a wee bit closer, and it is difficult not to perceive a little something «extra» on Southern Nights, an album that tries to make a difference where its two predecessors sounded more like technical attempts to accommodate the artist's presence in a musical decade so different from those in which he'd originally emerged and thrived as «Creative Assistant» to everybody.

Well, it's a subtle difference, actually: all Southern Nights does is explore a slightly larger num­ber of musical styles and employ a few extra production techniques — yet, somehow, what emerges in the process is an album that also feels deeper, more serious, even more soulful than it used to be. If anything, Toussaint here seems, if not directly influenced, then at least indirectly inspired by Stevie Wonder and his brilliant successes in transcending the conventional formula of R&B with his technical innovations and individualistic approach; although the music is still largely groove-based, the melodies on the whole are much more elaborate, and everything is marked with special touches — a piano or organ flourish, an odd cross-fade, a weird sound effect, a particularly melancholic brass riff, whatever gets your goat — that suggest treating the album as an actual art piece, rather than just thirty more minutes of modest entertainment.

The record's central piece is, of course, the title track, which most people probably know from Glen Campbell's 1977 hit version — distilled into a rather one-dimensional, near-disco romp that is far more danceable and perhaps even catchier than the original, but completely devoid of the odd magical flavor that Toussaint gets from slapping a few simple effects onto the piano track and, most importantly, his vocals which he runs through a Leslie speaker, so that the question of "have you ever felt a southern night?" sounds sort of vaporized, as if coming from some friendly water demon. Eulogizing the beauties of the South is nothing new per se, but this here is an entirely different approach, putting more emphasis on the dreamy atmosphere than on the more usual «earthiness» and «soulfulness» in doing so — and then, as Toussaint throws the line "wish I could stop the world from fighting" into the mix, it turns out that admiring the attraction of South­ern nights is actually just a pretext for something decidedly bigger.

I cannot say that any of the other tracks go for a similarly ambitious goal, but they all have some­thing to offer. ʽLast Trainʼ is Toussaint's ʽLocomotive Breathʼ — not as tense or apocalyptic, but still comparing the mad life of today's world to a choo choo train, suitably backed by huffing and puffing percussion and steam-blowing backing vocals. ʽBack In Baby's Armsʼ features one of his weightiest arrangements — slow, solemn, with a full gospel choir to stress the importance of said baby's arms — and while the track may have needed a Phil Spector to fully realize its potential, it is still more memorable, or, rather, more noticeable than the ballads on his earlier albums. ʽCountry Johnʼ, while not having the snarly syncopated snazz of a ʽSuperstitionʼ, still has plenty of power to entrance you with its rhythm section, particularly when the brass section and the looped backing vocals start spiralling, dizzy-dizzy, around Toussaint's chorus.

And so it goes all the way to ʽCruel Way To Go Downʼ, which, surprisingly, sounds not unlike one of those semi-depressed Dylan tunes circa Planet Waves — slow, brooding, melancholic roots-rock with a surprising lyrical and vocal twist, as the singer-songwriter whom we'd generally known as a strong, wilful, sarcastic character, suddenly plunges into darkness and vulnerability: "Lost and found in a sea of love and tossed around / Loneliness must be a cruel way to go down". After nine songs in a row that had their share of irony, bitterness, social critique and personal troubles, but still showed a largely optimistic and fun-loving spirit, this last song is a shocker, as Toussaint employs every trick in his book to weave an aura of inescapable grief. Guess those baby's arms ultimately did not help — yet, in any case, this is a final crowning touch that, along with the title track, really gives the record its individuality.

All in all, Southern Nights is clearly Toussaint's peak as a solo artist: the closest he has ever come to becoming an «accomplished» singer-songwriter, with lots of personal, confessional touches that could easily be missed on his other records due to all the extra humility, and that were certainly absent from the catchy, but alienated material that he penned for other people. If you only need one record from the guy, this is clearly the one to get; if you only have time for one song from the guy, ʽSouthern Nightsʼ is the one to cherish. In any case, the final verdict is an irreversible thumbs up; too bad that the times hindered him from capitalizing on its strengths, as the disco age forced its own rules on the man.

The Yardbirds: Little Games

THE YARDBIRDS: LITTLE GAMES (1967)

1) Little Games; 2) Smile On Me; 3) White Summer; 4) Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor; 5) Glimpses; 6) Drinking Muddy Water; 7) No Excess Baggage; 8) Stealing Stealing; 9) Only The Black Rose; 10) Little Soldier Boy; 11*) Puzzles; 12*) I Remember The Night; 13*) Ha Ha Said The Clown; 14*) Ten Little Indians; 15*) Goodnight Sweet Josephine; 16*) Think About It.

I believe that conventional wisdom puts most of the blame on Mickie Most — like, here is the only Yardbirds album recorded when they had Jimmy Page himself in the band, and instead of sounding like early Led Zeppelin, they end up sounding like a mix of Manfred Mann with Her­man's Hermits, and whose fault is that? Why, the producer's, of course! What on earth was EMI thinking, hiring the Herman's Hermits guy to mold an album by one of Britain's heaviest and most hallucinatory musical outfits?

To some extent, this might be true — but, truth be told, for the most part the band's slide into novelty territory took place on their single releases, which were just as embarrassing for 1967 as the 1965-66 series was groundbreaking and revelatory. One look at the titles is enough: ʽLittle Gamesʼ, ʽHa Ha Said The Clownʼ, ʽTen Little Indiansʼ — not even The Monkees at their, um, dangliest could boast a series of titles like that. And the music is adequate to the titles: ʽLittle Gamesʼ sounds like a fruity throwback to the era of bubblegummy Merseybeat — a triumphant guitar-cello duet belatedly makes its way to the mid-section in order to throw on a bit of that psychedelic flavor... but it really seems more like a last-minute attempt to save some face than a thoughtful addition to the song. Tony Hazzard's ʽHa Ha Said The Clownʼ is a speedy pop romp more fit for Tom Jones than The Yardbirds; and the decision to cover Harry Nilsson is under­standable — Harry was one of the hottest young songwriters of 1967-68 — but Keith Relf and the boys add nothing to his cute joke about the Ten Commandments that he did not say himself on his Pandemonium Shadow Show original.

If all these had been simply the latest batch of, say, Manfred Mann musical bones thrown to loyal fans so that the band could have enough improvisational freedom on its albums, it would have been understandable. But The Yardbirds, up to that time, had been a singles band almost by defi­nition — and in the year of ʽStrawberry Fields Foreverʼ and ʽWaterloo Sunsetʼ, releasing this kind of stuff as their banners was artistic suicide; and, quite plainly, it was evident that such a thing could only happen to a band that was completely deprived of any sense of direction. Which, I suppose, they were, with Beck and Samwell-Smith already out of the band, Page already thin­king about a project of his own, and the other three clearly insufficient to carry on in the same old way (in fact, when you think that Relf's and McCarty's next move would be to found the folk-prog band Renaissance, it becomes fairly clear that they must have been free of the «Yardbirds spirit» for quite some time before).

In light of all this, it is surprising that Little Games, as an album, is quite listenable on the whole. The bulk of the album, unlike the singles, is not pop — psychedelic, folk, and blues influences, most of them inherited from the band's past, are still rampant here, it's just that they are unable to move forward on any of them. Thus, for instance, the «original» ʽSmile On Meʼ is a loud and crunchy blues-rocker with a nicely fried guitar solo from Page — except that the song is essen­tially a re-write of Otis Rush's ʽAll Your Loveʼ, and even the opening of the solo sounds unhap­pily ripped off from Eric Clapton's performance of it on the Bluesbreakers album. Even worse, ʽDrinking Muddy Waterʼ is a somewhat overproduced version of ʽRollin' And Tumblin'ʼ with slightly new lyrics (all of them taken from blues stock phrasing anyway), credited to Dreja / McCarty / Page / Relf even if the reference to the author is semi-insultingly concealed in the song title (yes, I know that "drinking muddy water" is one of the stock phrases, and that Muddy him­self did not really «write» ʽRollin' And Tumblin'ʼ, but still, a travesty is a travesty). But in the end, Page still makes it worth your while with his array of guitar tones and frantic soloing.

The band's penchant for psychedelia and Gregorian chant flashes once more with ʽGlimpsesʼ, the only track here that actually sounds like a leftover from Roger — quasi-sitars, dark monk chorals, gloomy moods, but the whole thing is more of a stoned, absent-minded groove now than a focused raid on a previously unknown dimension. Really, it is all so confusing that it is hardly a coincidence that the album's poppiest original composition, ʽTinker, Tailorʼ, poses the album's most important and pertinent question: "How can I know just what to be? Please stop and give advice to me". It is even less a coincidence that the album's second poppiest original composition, ʽLittle Soldier Boyʼ (in which they dip into the same pool of British cutesiness that produced some of the Kinks' and Small Faces' contemporary successes), ends the record on a self-destruc­tive note: ʽHe gave a last triumphant cry / And fell into the fireʼ.

If there is one non-suicidal triumphant cry on the album, it belongs to Jimmy Page, whose little exercise in gluing together British and Indian folk elements on his solo acoustic spot ʽWhite Summerʼ is the record's most innovative and artistically valid bit, presaging ʽBlack Mountain Sideʼ and the rest of his acoustic work with Led Zeppelin (indeed, ʽWhite Summerʼ itself became a staple of Zeppelin's early shows). Saying that this is definitely not The Yardbirds, but rather Led Zeppelin, is somewhat harsh, since there is no reason why The Yardbirds, a band that was always open to new influences, could not have made this sound a part of their regular baggage; but on Little Games, it definitely sounds out of place — far more intimate and introspective than anything they'd previously done. (There is one more acoustic ballad here, Keith Relf's quiet, slightly Zombie-like serenade ʽOnly The Black Roseʼ, but it is much less impressive musically, with a standard rhythmic pattern that could be produced by anyone).

On the whole, though, it is much more of a wonder that The Yardbirds had managed to last for so long than that they finally failed to crash the 1967 barrier. In a way, their survival (and not just survival, but triumphant artistic success) had been largely due to sheer luck: a rotating series of Britain's finest guitar talents, plus collaboration with all the right people in the songwriting, pro­du­cing, and managing business (up until Mickey Most, that is) — despite the clear lack of some strong «pivot» in the band, a Ray Davies or a Pete Townshend to drag their mission through fire and water and musical revolutions. Sooner or later, though, that luck had to end, and once they found themselves in the hands of a misguided (and misguiding) producer, it all crashed fairly quickly. Perhaps if Page had been as concerned about making his mark on the band as Beck had been before, things would have turned out differently; but clearly he was not, and besides, as a relative newcomer, he couldn't have routed things his way anyway.

Despite all this, I still recommend the record — it has its fair share of entertaining moments, and at least as far as messed-up swan songs go, this one is fairly diverse. Not a single song, ʽWhite Summerʼ excluded, is a masterpiece on its own, but together they form an oddly grotesque puzzle that, perhaps, should still be judged as quite an intriguing curtain call. At the very least, there is still an aura of helpless, but desperate experimentation here, which is sometimes preferable over cold-hearted calculated formula.

Bent Knee: Land Animal

BENT KNEE: LAND ANIMAL (2017)

1) Terror Bird; 2) Hole; 3) Holy Ghost; 4) Insides In; 5) These Hands; 6) Land Animal; 7) Time Deer; 8) Belly Side Up; 9) The Well; 10) Boxes.

It is quite surprising how there is only one year of difference between Bent Knee's third and fourth album. Most contemporary bands like to take their time between records — the more they go on, the longer it usually takes, yet Bent Knee have been visibly accelerating, and at this rate they should be reaching a Frank Zappa style of pumping product by 2018. At the same time, they show no signs of tiredness or wear, and their art remains consistently challenging... or does it?

Truth be told, Land Animal is the first Bent Knee record that has openly bored me. The novelty has worn off by now, the factor of surprise is no longer there, and despite all the predictable complexity, the band has stalled, lapsing into expectable formula. Yes, here we have ten more math-art-rock packages, exploiting the usual tricky time signatures, out-of-the-blue melodic shifts, tempestuous vocal exercises, and loud/quiet alternations. That's all very well: Bent Knee preserve their own style and continue to weave together new sonic patterns. The problem is, this kind of music only truly survives as it evolves, and on Land Animal, they have ceased to evolve. Even on Say So, where stagnation had already set in, they showed occasional signs of making tiny jumps over their heads — be it the sarcastic exuberance of ʽCommercialʼ or the questionable, but bold attempt to merge their art-rock with «commercial» R&B on ʽHands Upʼ.

Here, though, they stick to a set formula so closely that the entire album really feels like one big song. The perfect setting for a Bent Knee rock opera is the Titanic, or at least the Pequod: every­thing that is going on takes place during a huge storm, now lulling, now coming back to full strength — and this is an admirable setting, if only one weren't condemned to some sort of Flying Dutchman eternity on that ship. Land Animal, despite the title, makes me feel precisely the same way: bored with unending crashing waves, darkness, and well-calculated foreboding of the end that never comes. Drown, already! Just frickin' drown, won't you?

As I relisten to the opening verses of the first song, ʽTerror Birdʼ, I have to confess that I now find Courtney Swain's vocal style downright irritating. Sure, it has not changed much since the beginning, but now that the freshness of the approach has worn off, her timbre and phrasing are positively underwhelming for a style of music that suggests some sort of Sybil-like presence. The lyrics suggest something truly evil outside the window: "Terror bird, please eat me out / I want to live with the murder... tiny bodies piling up, blinded by the cries for help..." — but the music and the vocals are so hollow and theatrical that the effect is wasted. I mean, that «big» heavy riff that swallows us during the chorus could just as well be found on an Ayreon record, and here I thought that this band was not about popcorn entertainment.

Perhaps there is a slightly jazzier atmosphere to some of these tracks than before — or, at least, to some of Courtney's vocal parts — but this does not help things much, because combining modern jazz with apocalyptic visions is almost bound to miss the gut level: apocalyptic visions are all too realistic these days, and nothing will beat the relative simplicity of ʽGimme Shelterʼ or even of OK Computer when it comes to making music that fills you up with genuine dread at the thought of what might be lying ahead. Bent Knee, on the other hand, continue to make the mis­take of wanting to appeal to both camps at the same time — the one that expects seriousness out of music, and the one that does not expect anything out of music, other than, perhaps, an opportunity for getting your mind blown one way or another.

But maybe, after all, it is simply the music that sucks. Whenever I succeed in getting my mind off Courtney and concentrating exclusively on the band, I simply do not hear anything particularly interesting going on here. Very simple guitar lines, whose main attraction lies in how frequently one simple part replaces another; melodies that echo Radiohead, King Crimson, or Beyoncé (yes indeed) but could hardly stick in a head already occupied with Radiohead, King Crimson, or Beyoncé. Maybe it's just simple as that: the band has ceased to write good music, to the extent that it has got me thinking now if they ever produced good music in the first place. Well, no, I will definitely cherish the memory of hearing their first album for the first time: unfortunately, Land Animal shows every sign of «landing» their career in a dull bog. I have no problem listening to somebody's vision of the end of the world — as long as the vision is sufficiently picturesque — but, in my opinion, Bent Knee have hit a wall here, though I do fully acknowledge the subjectivity of that opinion, and of the accompanying thumbs down.

Chelsea Wolfe: The Grime And The Glow

CHELSEA WOLFE: THE GRIME AND THE GLOW (2010)

1) Advice & Vices; 2) Cousins Of The Antichrist; 3) Moses; 4) Deep Talks; 5) Fang; 6) Benjamin; 7) The Whys; 8) Noorus; 9) Halfsleeper; 10) Bounce House Demons; 11) Widow; 12*) Gene Wilder; 13*) Move; 14*) You Are My Sunshine.

There is one simple reason why Chelsea Wolfe's first-and-forgotten album is less irritating than her officially-first-and-remembered album. By the time she got around to recording The Grime And The Glow and releasing it on an indie label, she was already committed to Art — as in, «go into this and try to make a difference» rather than simply do what everybody else is doing. And in the fervor and ardor of this commitment, she decided that the «difference» would consist of making a dark, atmospheric, melancholic record in a lo-fi setting.

I have personally expressed my feelings about lo-fi in many reviews, so just a brief reiteration: as far as I'm concerned, there is one reason and one reason only to produce in lo-fi — if you really don't have the money to produce in hi-fi. In 2010, good studio sound might be a problem in Zimbabwe, perhaps, but in New York or California, this kind of sound is a travesty. Granted, Chelsea's songwriting skills here are not (yet) fully developed, and she may have needed a little something special to mask the simplicity and repetitiveness of the melodies; but if you take a mediocre song and make it sound like total crap, where is this really going to get you?

As long as the songs themselves are fully arranged and feature contributions from additional musicians, things aren't too bad: ʽAdvice & Vicesʼ, despite all the distracting white noise in the background, has a nice weaving thing between the bass and the wailing lead guitar going on, with the overall atmosphere reminiscent of the early Eighties' Goth scene. But as soon as we are left on our own with just Chelsea and her guitar, on the dashingly titled ʽCousins Of The Antichristʼ (why «cousins?» who's the brother?), it all goes down — the strum is generic, the vocals creak and croak with the aim of making her sound like a disembodied spirit, but instead of contrasting with the backing vocals, they all blend in to create a caterwauling effect. At the very least, she is not straining her voice to make it sound particularly freaky; but the song itself is not good from the start, and placing the singer at the bottom of a damp well does nothing to improve it.

On the slow, leaden, and seemingly desperate ʽMosesʼ ("Moses, can you help me carry the bur­den?" — why «Moses»? is it because «Jesus» would sound too banal?), she drives a simple blues-rock riff into the ground, assisting it with an equally minimalistic organ part; the desired effect is probably to make you experience visions of the protagonist slowly and painfully making her way through some underground tunnel, and again, under different circumstances I can see how it just might work, but here, it does not (spoiler for the long road ahead: the version on her next album would be a vast improvement).

But if you want to hear the most representative track on the album, I suppose you have to turn your attention to ʽDeep Talksʼ — three minutes of overdriven, border-on-the-industrial guitar clanging accompanied by a vocalize effort that Yoko Ono (no doubt, one of the influences) would have appreciated. No doubt, some people will like this, or, at least, will want to spend a few hours of their time explaining why this is Art and why this Art is so particularly relevant for the year 2010. Unfortunately, this is more of a «gesture» than an «epiphany», and since we already live in a post-Sonic Youth universe, it is not unless we restart our life with a totally clean slate that I can free some space for this on my own mindshelves.

Sometimes it borders on funny, for instance, when on ʽNoorusʼ her minimalism drives her on to borrow the riff from AC/DC's ʽDirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheapʼ (with a few modifications, perhaps, but the song does have an AC/DC flavor to it — except, of course, the Young brothers would never stoop to such cruddy lows of production). Sometimes it is almost pretty — ʽHalfsleeperʼ has all the makings of an enchanting dark folk ballad, but it desperately needs something instead of that background hiss to make it work. And I would love to join her in her little demon-exorci­sing exercise (ʽBounce House Demonsʼ), but... well, if you want to make something in the style of Steve Albini, why not go directly to the source? I'm sure Steve would find it difficult to say no to a girl with bounce house demons all around her.

Bottomline: as far as I'm concerned, this is a rather glaring false start to a career, and what makes matters worse is that this, unlike Mistake In Parting, is a pretentious album — it tries to con­vince us that the artist is actually trying to communicate with the spirits or something, but it uses fairly simple, predictable, obsolete, and boring means to do this. Thumbs down; I would recom­mend skipping this altogether, since it honestly does not even have a lot of historical interest (well, in the sense that it is, perhaps, way too early to get genuinely interested in the long and winding artistic biography of Chelsea Wolfe).

The Chameleons: Dali's Picture

THE CHAMELEONS: DALI'S PICTURE (1993)

1) Everyday And Crucified; 2) Monkeyland; 3) Dreams In Celluloid; 4) Love Is; 5) The Fan And The Bellows; 6) Looking Inwardly; 7) Dali's Picture; 8) Nostalgia; 9) Less Than Human; 10) Things I Wish I'd Said.

Another archival release, and a good case could be built for it actually being the single best Chameleons album out there. Although precise details on the package are lacking, these ten tracks all seem to predate the sessions for Script Of The Bridge, going back to 1981-82 when the band did not yet have a stable recording contract and, more importantly, no connection to Colin Richardson — meaning that the production on this sounds all late Seventies post-punk rather than early Eighties gloss. Just as it was with Peel Sessions, the one band member to really benefit from this is the drummer; but on the whole, there is far more punkish anger and energy here than even on Script, let alone all the later records.

Indeed, in the beginning The Chameleons were quite a tight, vicious little outfit, and you can easily see this by comparing ʽSecond Skinʼ with its early prototype, here named ʽDreams In Cel­luloidʼ. Where the final product ended up more like a dream-pop song, with ambient keyboards, cavernous guitars, and romantic vocals, the original was all guitar-based, and those guitars sounded sharper and deadlier, and all of the song's melodic elements were fully on the surface rather than buried deep in the mix, to be more felt than heard. Without denying the benefits of the final version, I insist that both have to be heard in order to appreciate this band more — and that the old version lets you form a positive impression of the band's songwriting abilities more quickly than the new one.

The band did have some fabulous guitar riffs in their inventory — ʽThe Fan And The Bellowsʼ, combining vicious punk verses with romantic pop choruses, is a great example of how they could kick as much ass as The Jam one minute and then serenade as sweetly as The Smiths the next one, in between lyrics about masturbating Cupids and manipulating bitches. ʽEveryday And Crucifiedʼ is one of the most paranoid and tense tunes they ever did, even if its debt to Joy Division is all too obvious (but whose isn't?). On the other hand, the title track and ʽNostalgiaʼ are spiky little power pop numbers, particularly the latter with its truly nostalgic chorus — as good as anything that, say, The Bats and their like ever recorded.

One cannot escape certain limitations of format, of course, and the band's total dependence on «chugging» rhythm guitar, which was already a little boring on Script Of The Bridge, is even more noticeable in this stripped-down format — now you could actually argue that Colin Richardson's production techniques were precisely a well-calculated scenario to distract attention away from these limitations. But if you like this style of music, there is no denying that every single song on here has its own melody — plus all that energy of youth and excitement of disco­very, one that would very soon whittle away as the band became studio pros. Heck, in a way, this might be the only Chameleons album you'll ever need in your collection, unless you are a big fan of Eighties' overproduction. Thumbs up, totally.

Chicago: Chicago Transit Authority

CHICAGO: CHICAGO TRANSIT AUTHORITY (1969)

1) Introduction; 2) Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?; 3) Beginnings; 4) Questions 67 & 68; 5) Listen; 6) Poem 58; 7) Free Form Guitar; 8) South California Purples; 9) I'm A Man; 10) Prologue (August 29, 1968); 11) Someday (August 29, 1968); 12) Liberation.

Chicago (or, rather, Chicago Transit Authority, as they were called until the silly mass transit operator without a sense of collective humor threatened to sue) cannot lay claim to inventing «jazz rock» as such — even if one separates «jazz rock» from «fusion» and defines the former as «white guy rock'n'roll with a brass section», Blood, Sweat & Tears came well before them and laid down all the necessary blueprints. But for a few years, when it came to defining the quintes­sential spirit of this musical style, nobody did this better than Chicago: in terms of ambition, diversity, playing technique, and even that old elusive restless rock and roll spirit, Chicago Transit Authority blows everything that BS&T ever did out of the water. (With the possible exception of those BS&T tracks that were completely dominated by the artistic personality of Al Kooper, but we are talking collective spirit here, not individual).

Naturally, that legendary gap between «classic Chicago» and «horrible Chicago» that typically serves as a classic example of artistic greatness mutating into corny embarrassment was prede­termined from the start: Chicago Transit Authority positioned themselves from the very outset as a good-time band, more bent on generating happy vibes and giving the good people a cause for optimism — rather than a band that was specifically bent on exploration and tapping into the mysterious and the unknown. The major, if not the only, innovation of their debut LP was an attempt to cross Cream and Jimi Hendrix with Duke Ellington: an attempt that succeeded admi­rably, but nothing about it was particularly challenging or innovative. Even Terry Kath's ʽFree Form Guitarʼ, a seven-minute long investigation of guitar tones and feedback, comes across more as a polite and almost mainstreamish tribute to Hendrix than a daring statement; and, of course, not a single of these Hendrix-inspired tunes shares the breakthrough vision of their inspirer.

But — blame it on a Sixties bias if you wish — such was the musical magic of 1969 that even such a whitebread-bourgeois-conformist-you-name-it outfit as Chicago, when swept into the general maelstrom, was capable of producing large chunks of inspired and inspiring music. From the opening notes of ʽIntroductionʼ, with the rhythm section of Peter Cetera and Danny Seraphine grimly counterbalancing the lively brass riffs of the trumpet / trombone / saxophone section, you know you are going to be entertained. "This is what we do / Sit back and let us groove / And let us work on you", Terry Kath addresses his audience, and who could resist these grooves? The first half of ʽIntroductionʼ does indeed sound somewhat like late Duke Ellington transposed to a rockier setting; then, once the guitar properly settles in, the rhythm section becomes a reincarna­tion of Cream, and the guitar player assumes a middle-ground stand between Clapton and Hen­drix. In these six minutes, you get a perfect understanding of what «classic Chicago» is all about, so you could just as well dump the rest of this behemoth altogether...

...joking, of course, because at this point Chicago (or, more accurately, Chicago's keyboard player Robert Lamm, to whom most of the original tunes are credited) were also quite accomplished songwriters. On the whole, Chicago Transit Authority is more about the grooves than the hooks, and the album did not even generate any hit singles at first; but ʽDoes Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?ʼ, for instance, seems to me like a transparent attempt to write an uplifting pop song that echoes McCartney's ʽGood Day Sunshineʼ and ʽGot To Get You Into My Lifeʼ at the same time — it does not rise to the same levels of catchiness and sharpness, but it is reasonably nice (and has a very pretty piano intro that might actually be the best part of the song). Same with ʽQuestions 67 & 68ʼ, which sounds more like a folk-pop ballad, fattened up with a brass section, and with ʽSomedayʼ, the fastest of the three that almost screams for a disco rearrangement (for­tunately, it never got one — not to my knowledge, at least). All of these are good pop songs that one could never find on a Cream, Hendrix, or Duke Ellington record, and all of them benefit greatly from the tightness of the rhythm section and the versatility of the brass section, because the hooks on their own are rather flat, and neither Lamm nor Peter Cetera can rank among the great pop singers; they have more of an R&B color to their voices, and even in that respect they could hardly compete with most of the R&B greats.

As I said, though, the heart of this album lies in its grooves, not its hooks, and even out of all the songs credited to Lamm, I would always take ʽListenʼ, ʽPoem 58ʼ, and ʽSouth California Purplesʼ over the pop stuff. ʽPoem 58ʼ, in particular, starts out as quite a beastly groove, with Kath and Cetera battling each other in a fashion that would make Bruce and Clapton proud, before slowing down and settling into a bluesy-hallucinatory-sunny-psychedelic pattern à la ʽSunshine Of Your Loveʼ, «woman tone» and all. Again, that riff is nowhere near as deep and disturbing as the ʽSunshineʼ riff, just like Lamm's pop hooks are nowhere near as sweet and touching as Paul McCartney's — but on the other hand, Cream did not have a brass section, now did they? And the slow, heavy riff of ʽSouth California Purplesʼ is no Black Sabbath when it comes to slowness and heaviness, but it is the contrast between the gruffness of the riff and the cockiness of the brass fanfare that matters (and while we're at it, I'm pretty sure Black Sabbath nicked the riff for ʽBe­hind The Wall Of Sleepʼ from the mid-section of ʽSouth California Purplesʼ, so there). All in all, it's just wicked fun to hear a song that predicts both Sabbath and Deep Purple ("since I lost my baby, I been losing my mind") while at the same time quoting from ʽI Am The Walrusʼ — pro­bably for no reason other than somebody thinking, "hey, we have been carried by the current into ʽI Am The Walrusʼ territory, why don't we just acknowledge that?".

Sometimes the band's feel of a good groove betrays them, most notably at the end of the other­wise very uplifting and HeyJudean ʽBeginningsʼ — with two minutes of a forcedly enthusiastic percussion-only Latin jam that should have much rather been left to the likes of Santana (a.k.a. people who really have that in their blood). But more often, it works, and I can even endorse the nearly side-long jam, ʽLiberationʼ, which ends the album: this is where the brass section largely fades out, and the rest of the band simply becomes a four-headed jam monster, with Terry Kath leading the way. Jimi Hendrix was being modest and polite when he spoke of Kath as being a better guitarist than himself (provided he even said that at all: there's at least half a dozen urban legends about Jimi endorsing various guitarists), but that does not mean we should not give credit where it is due: if you get blues-rock jamming at all, it is hard to admit that Terry is not genuinely possessed during the first lengthy wah-wah solo, and on the wildness scale he should be rated higher than Clapton, though Eric himself might have already written that style off as too flashy and self-indulgent. To me, though, it's fun.

Which gets us to our last question: should this — or, in fact, any other — Chicago album not have been trimmed to the length of a single LP? With so many tracks running over 6-7-8 minutes, it is clear that there is a lot of pure sprawl. Yet the band did not record a double album simply because they thought that double albums were all the rage: they recorded it because they did not want to condense the songs to three-minute hit single lengths, and because they instinctively understood that their major power was the power of their collective groove, that the songs had to play out for as long as they played out, and not a minute less — an ideology that I understand perfectly, though with some reservations as to drum solos (I'd rather hear more Terry Kath goodness on their extended cut of Steve Winwood's ʽI'm A Manʼ than another percussion groove: apparently, though, if you're really a man, drum solos are obligatory). In terms of sheer numbers, Chicago Transit Authority is actually pretty short — just eleven compositions in all, it's just that they do not really work as songs, they work as those slightly bombastic guitar-brass extra­vaganzas. As it is, the album is one of the many unique artefacts of 1969 — and, unquestionably, the best record that this band ever produced, though in light of their future discography this comes off as an almost abysmal conclusion. But for now, just steer clear of dark thoughts for the future ahead and join me in my thumbs up rating.

The Chambers Brothers: Barbara Dane And The Chambers Brothers

THE CHAMBERS BROTHERS: BARBARA DANE AND THE CHAMBERS BROTHERS (1966)

1) It Isn't Nice; 2) You've Got To Reap What You Sow; 3) You Can't Make It By Yourself; 4) Pack Up Your Sorrows; 5) I Am A Weary And A Lonesome Traveller; 6) We'll Never Turn Back; 7) Come By Here; 8) Freedom Is A Constant Struggle; 9) Go Tell It On The Mountain.

Both technically and substantially, this is a Barbara Dane album rather than a Chambers Brothers album — all the material is chosen (and some of it written) by Barbara, she takes lead vocals on all the tracks, using the brothers largely for backup, and the record was released on the Folkways label, with which Dane had already had an association. However, since this is one of the best albums ever to feature The Chambers Brothers anyway, and also because I am unlikely to ever separately cover Barbara Dane — not because she does not deserve it, but because her disco­graphy is such an utter mess — I might as well drop this short, but grateful evaluation along the way, as a reasonable detour before continuing along the main road.

Apparently, Barbara Dane, of whom I'd never even heard before digging in the Brothers' disco­graphy, had been a permanent fixture on the jazz/blues/folk circuit since the late Fifties, perfor­ming solo as well as in various liaisons with everybody from Louis Armstrong to Muddy Waters and beyond, earning much critical praise but fairly little publicity — mass audiences were not particularly interested in listening to a white girl putting on the shoes of Bessie Smith, even if most had to admit that they fit her fairly well. On the social side, though, she was more akin to Nina Simone than to Bessie — constantly revitalizing old blues and spirituals with new lyrics, making her sound thoroughly relevant back in the day, but somewhat dated today, now that even American audiences will probably have trouble remembering who McGeorge Bundy and Robert McNamara were in the first place.

Regardless, what does not sound dated is the voice: Barbara Dane was an admirable singer, and the nine tracks here, more or less evenly spread between light folk, dark blues, and multi-colored gospel, are more than enough to prove it. Without trying to engage in a discussion of just how close to «authentic African-American» her voice is, I will just state the simple and obvious — it is a strong, rich, energized sound that she delivers, with a great sense of phrasing and just a small touch of humor and irony and irreverence, to ensure that the listener be not obliged to treat the songs as sacred vessels of the divine human spirit (looking at you, Joan Baez). It is even pleasant to listen to her brief spoken introductions to some of the songs on the first side, with an ever so slight Arkansas accent and a subtle aura of bittersweet wisdom; and as for versatility, there is quite a distance from the friendly, but still troubled optimism of the Appalachian upbeatness of ʽPack Up Your Sorrowsʼ to the doomed self-resignation of ʽI Am A Weary And Lonesome Travellerʼ (a particularly harrowing number of the kind of which I sure wish there'd been more on here: one too many gospel stompers can seriously distort the picture).

The Chambers Brothers, though relegated to purely secondary services, still provide them loyally on every track. The first side of the album features instrumental backing, usually in the form of a quiet rhythm section and one or two electric (always electric, although Dane herself sometimes strums an acoustic in addition) guitars, sometimes with extra harp thrown in by brother Lester; the second one, however, is completely a cappella, with the brothers' harmonies providing the only support for Dane's lead, and this is where they really become inexpendable — their harmonization with Dane is perfect, and the sound engineer also has to be thanked for near-perfect channel separation, so that, by slightly adjusting your ear, you can concentrate either on each individual pitch, or on all of them together. The effect is so cool that, with only a few people present at the mikes, you still get an «all the people» feel from the performances, much stronger than from quite a few gospel choirs.

Commenting on the melodies or on the meanings of the songs is rather pointless — one look at the titles is probably enough to make you realize you've probably heard it all before, with the possible exception of the lead-in track, Barbara's self-penned ʽIt Isn't Niceʼ which is a fairly catchy folk protest tune of the Peter, Paul, & Mary kind. What matters is not the source material, but the sound of it, and it all really works — ironically, The Chambers Brothers' first truly out­standing service to mankind is in the capacity of a support act. This is why the predictability of the melodies, or the dragged-out length and repetitiveness of the tunes is never a big bother: as long as they got this great groove going, with Barbara as the inspiring leader of the pack and The Chambers Brothers as the inspired members of the back, nothing else really matters. Thumbs up, for an album that may have never properly transcended its time but is still worth revisiting just to remind yourself of the rather unique type of fun that time was capable of.

Allen Toussaint: Life, Love And Faith

ALLEN TOUSSAINT: LIFE, LOVE AND FAITH (1972)

1) Victims Of The Darkness; 2) Am I Expecting Too Much?; 3) My Baby Is The Real Thing; 4) Goin' Down; 5) She Once Belonged To Me; 6) Out Of The City; 7) Soul Sister; 8) Fingers And Toes; 9) I've Got To Convince Myself; 10) On Your Way Down; 11) Gone Too Far; 12) Electricity.

The formula of Toussaint stays in full force for this follow-up, another collection of pleasant, low-key, restrained soul and funk grooves with his New Orleanian flavor. The biggest difference is that all the numbers are vocal this time, and everything is allegedly composed by Toussaint himself, so you might as well call this a «singer-songwriter» record, except that this term is very rarely applied to groove-dependent collections of tunes — this is, after all, «body music» first and «mind music» second, much as some people would like to convince us that there is no clear-cut distinction between the two (and I agree with the «clear-cut» bit).

On a couple of these numbers, Toussaint actually goes as far as to add a tint of menace to the sound: ʽOut Of The Cityʼ, in particular, is a gritty standout, with a threatening guitar riff and a subtle social undercurrent, symbolized in its "I don't wanna run no more" chorus, distorted through something like a Leslie cabinet — although Allen's vocals are so naturally friendly that he is unable to properly capitalize upon the menace and despair potential of the song. There's also ʽVictims Of The Darknessʼ, a sort of a warning song against, well, all sorts of evil in general, but it does indeed play out as a warning — subtly suspenseful, with mildly disturbing syncopation, never spilling out into anything truly moving.

On the whole, though, the songs rarely depart from standard love-and-heartbreak topics, are no­where near the level of catchiness of Allen's Sixties' hits, and rarely feature any outstanding mu­sicianship — the best I can say is that the album never gets proverbially «dull» due to the overall number of styles: there's happy, up-tempo R&B (ʽAm I Expecting Too Much?ʼ), mid-tempo swampy funk (ʽGoin' Downʼ), passionate, tempestuous soul balladry (ʽShe Once Belonged To Meʼ), and... well, maybe it's not so much about the actual genres as it is about the instrumental diversity, with some songs being more driven by brass, some by piano and organ, some by guitar, and some by everything at once.

But it is easy to see why an album like this could be entirely overlooked in the era of Stevie Wonder, Al Greene, and Curtis Mayfield — like its predecessor, this is an album that you turn to only at the stage when you are tired of genius, and intentionally want to go for something that would be very much middle-of-the-road: 100% tasteful, directly unassailable from any position, but also completely unremarkable in any possible aspect. Essentially, there is nothing I can say about any of these songs that would make a difference.

The Hollies: Evolution

THE HOLLIES: EVOLUTION (1967)

1) Then The Heartaches Begin; 2) Stop Right There; 3) Water On The Brain; 4) Lullaby To Tim; 5) Have You Ever Loved Somebody; 6) You Need Love; 7) Rain On The Window; 8) Heading For A Fall; 9) Ye Olde Toffee Shoppe; 10) When Your Light's Turned On; 11) Leave Me; 12) The Games We Play; 13*) Carrie Ann; 14*) Signs That Will Never Change.

The Hollies did not manage to either properly adapt to the psychedelic revolution, or even to sur­vive it. They endorsed some of the formal trappings — just look at the album cover, designed by «The Fool», who were also the regular providers of psychedelic visual gimmicks for The Beatles; but nobody in the band ever had the gumption to plunge into the proper spirit. Clarke was a pop­ster, Nash was a folkie, Hicks was the portrait of Dorian Gray, and the rhythm section never developed any ambitions of their own; thus, even if the sessions for Evolution were literally taking place a few doors away from those for Sgt. Pepper, what the band did on this album was altogether not very different from what they'd been doing in 1966.

The problem is that they were still a bit confused about it, and the final results, though definitely not bad, were a step down from the smash quality of For Certain Because. Not so much because the band was derailed by psychedelia — this resulted in only one small specific disaster, to which we will return in a moment — but rather because, not being ready to fully embrace it, they hesi­tatingly fell back on the old formula, and produced too many tunes that sounded like inferior variations on what they'd done previously. The album's title is really misleading: Evolution does not feature the band evolving at all, other than adding a few superficial touches that actually show The Hollies being notably afraid of evolution.

A good example would be the song ʽRain On The Windowʼ, a rather pathetic attempt to write another ʽBus Stopʼ — the tune borrows not just the gray melancholic mood of the original, but even some of its vocal phrasing, rhythmics, and arrangement details. It is still kinda cute, and the French horn solo is a nice touch, but the vocals are so limp in comparison that there can be abso­lutely no competition. On the more anthemic songs, the old build-up trick — start out soulful and slow, gradually rise to a bombastic chorus — is no longer as effective on new songs such as ʽYou Need Loveʼ as it used to be on, say, ʽPay You Back With Interestʼ. And some of Nash's folkie stuff is beginning to get too cloying and cutesy for its own good (ʽStop Right Thereʼ), as if he'd already forgotten that his potential audience could consist of somebody other than small toddlers ready to be tucked into bed.

The record is still eminently listenable, because The Hollies are still playing energetic pop-rock rather than submitting to easy listening standards — and at least a small handful of the tunes should be eligible for classic status. ʽThen The Heartaches Beginʼ is an excellent album opener, for instance, and one of the few songs here that did benefit from psychedelic innovations — Tony Hicks has an excellent raga-influenced distorted guitar part here, and it forms a dizzying combi­nation with the band's falsetto harmonies. ʽLeave Meʼ is an outstanding angry rant of the kind that Clarke is really good at, except that he was doing fewer and fewer of those as time went by. And I'm pretty sure that any of the other songs could become a personal favorite for anybody: hardly any of them, however, could hope for well-earned collective popularity — because, really, there's a superior song from the 1965-66 period for each of them, and this is where it becomes obvious that The Hollies have not simply lost the race to The Beatles (something they did way back in 1963), but that they fell out of the race altogether.

Still, they carry on, and the only song here that could make me reconsider the thumbs up rating is the above-mentioned disaster — ʽLullaby To Timʼ (yes, more toddler stuff: allegedly written by Clarke for his son, but still given over to Nash, because, you know, it's his game). Not because it is a bad song, but because of the horrendous distorted effect that they put on Graham's vocals to make them sound «psychedelic». Hit up the explanation of the concept of «datedness» in any textbook on art, and chances are you'll get a soundbite of this — what might have sounded super­ficially curious in the early days of recording technologies is impossible to perceive these days as anything but an accidental penetration of «chewed tape» onto the studio master. Honestly, if I were in charge, I'd spit on respect for artistic legacy, recover the original tapes, and delete that effect from all remasters of the album; but I guess they lost the original tape anyway, because that is the only humane explanation of why this travesty has not been remedied. Of course, this is only one song, but it is fairly symbolic — as if for this band, «going psychedelic» simply meant «pick out a random song and put some shitty effects on it».

At least the CD edition is kind enough to throw on ʽCarrie Anneʼ as a bonus (a song that should have been ʽMarianneʼ, since Nash planned to dedicate it to Marianne Faithfull but chickened out at the last moment) — the single from May '67 that is better than almost all of Evolution com­bined, a song that combines catchiness, kiddie innocence, marimbas, and the bitter irony of what would be condemned these days as «slut-shaming» (yes indeed!) in one excellent little package, and temporarily restores the band's reputation as providers of intelligent British pop-rock that could at least compete with the catchy sarcasm of the Stones and the Kinks, if not necessarily with the mind-blowing progressions of ʽStrawberry Fields Foreverʼ. And, if anything, the next LP would show that the band was handling the Era of Change better than most of their B-grade com­petitors from the early days of Merseybeat. But the Golden Age of the Hollies was irretrievably over with this album, even if, commerce-wise, it surprisingly managed to chart higher than For Certain Because. Perhaps The Fool made a difference, after all.

Blondie: Pollinator

BLONDIE: POLLINATOR (2017)

1) Doom Or Destiny; 2) Long Time; 3) Already Naked; 4) Fun; 5) My Monster; 6) Best Day Ever; 7) Gravity; 8) When I Gave Up On You; 9) Love Level; 10) Too Much; 11) Fragments.

Okay, I am going to assume that the album title is a simple reference to Debbie Harry's interest in beekeeping (something that was also reflected in the accompanying tour)... because if it is not, some very disturbing implications are on the way. Then again, we certainly live in a world when the ripe age of 72 is by no means a rigid impediment on the way of, um, some good old pollina­tion, or is it? Anyway, let us not forget that, for all of Debbie's legendary sexuality, the songs were always much more about emotional than physical proximity, and Pollinator is no exception. The important question is not how Debbie handles her sexuality at this time — it is whether, after two disappointing albums in a row, there is any reason at all to be concerned about yet another album from a band that almost ridiculously refuses to die.

Of one thing I am totally sure: Pollinator is a surprising improvement over its two predecessors. Surprising, yes, but perhaps not unpredictable: one could have guessed that after a long period of trying to «adapt» to current fashions, the band would eventually just fuck it and return to their roots — good old pop-rock with steady Seventies' beats. For the first time since No Exit, they seem fully content to simply sound like themselves, with one questionable exception: their new keyboard player, Matt Katz-Bohen, who still seems bent on not only privatizing the band's sound, but also on turning them into as much of a 21st century synth-pop ensemble as possible. Perhaps if he had a knack for extracting simple, but emotionally effective patterns from those keyboards (something like Arcade Fire's ʽSprawl IIʼ, for instance), it would have been okay, but too many of these synth barriers just sound like formulaic techno-pop, and end up robotizing Harry's presence as well. But yes, it is also true that his keyboards are the only thing that put the music squarely into the modern age — that, and the singer's aging voice.

Once again, very few songs are written by Blondie members themselves. The Harry/Stein duet is represented on only two tracks, the first of which, ʽDoom Or Destinyʼ, opens the album on a par­ticularly retro note — they even feature Joan Jett on backing vocals! — with big Clem Burke drums, fast chugging guitar, and Debbie's vocals ever so slightly cosmetized to get her back that sardonic, spitfire flavor of youth. It does not really work, of course: the chorus hook is just an endless repeat of the question "is it doom or destiny?", and there is no way that the enthusiasm of youth could be properly rekindled now, but already the fact that they are able to run through it without falling flat on their faces speaks for something. The second one, ʽLove Levelʼ, is also a stand out due to its heavy dependence on brass fanfare, which still has to clash with Katz-Bohen's bubbling electro-pop synth brew, but is fun nevertheless.

On the other end of the spectrum is the album's most, if not only, modern-sounding number: ʽFunʼ, provided for Blondie by a bunch of corporate songwriters and the producer of TV On The Radio, sounds like a 2010s take on Modern Talking and could be done by just about any dance-pop outfit in the world. Forty years ago that vibe, though it always sounded silly, was at least novel; these days, it no longer has the benefit of starry-eyed innocence. But I can understand, somebody told them that they still had to grind out a hit single and they obliged — in fact, they did make it into a hit single, their highest charting one since ʽMariaʼ, making the idea of Hot Dance Rhythms For Young People all the more ironic. Can't help admiring the achievement, though: even Cher was only 52 when she recorded ʽBelieveʼ.

Personally, I am much more a fan of the B-side, ʽMy Monsterʼ, written by none other than Johnny Marr himself, who also contributes his trademark guitar to the recording (unfortunately, it is once again all but swallowed up by the synthesizers). This is a much more Blondie-like song, from the steady 4/4 beat to the opening "human beings are stupid things when we're young" to the oh-so-well-known Blondie ability to go from bitter irony to gentle romanticism and back at a moment's notice. There are several more songs like that here — ʽBest Day Everʼ, co-written with Nick Valensi of The Strokes; ʽWhen I Gave Up On Youʼ, written by YouTube resident musical comedians The Gregory Brothers specially for Blondie in Blondie style (but also featuring their trademark Autotune tricks on Debbie's voice); ʽLong Timeʼ, co-written by Debbie with Dev Hynes of Blood Orange with obvious echoes of ʽHeart Of Glassʼ embedded in the rhythmic patterns and in the keyboard melody. None of this is great, but all of it is more fun than ʽFunʼ, and the textural diversity is quite refreshing.

Above and beyond everything, I am very happy about how Debbie sounds throughout this, even when they are torturing her voice with unnecessary autotuning. Unless you concentrate very hard upon comparison with classic Blondie songs, complaining about how much of her former range she has lost, there are really very few indications of how old that voice is — there are, however, plenty of indications that the fire of life is still very, very bright within the old girl. Those catfight dramas, those emotional turmoils, those fits of ecstasy or ire that made the original records so much more than just a collection of empty hooks — they are all here, even if the hooks them­selves are far less stronger than they used to.

It all comes together on the final track, ʽFragmentsʼ, taken by Blondie from an unknown song­writer, Adam Johnston: ironically, the songwriter was 17 years old when he wrote the song, yet its message — "you can't create more time, you just make it" — agrees more than perfectly with the mindset of the aged diva, and the frantic chorus-question, "do you love me now? do you love me now?", sounds as if it is really addressed to all of us rather than some imaginary lover figure. Don't worry, Ms. Harry: you could have done a lot worse than this, we do love you still, and here's a thumbs up to "fucking prove it". (But could you please bring back Jimmy Destri for your next album? This Katz-Bohen guy is just untenable).

Chelsea Wolfe: Mistake In Parting

CHELSEA WOLFE: MISTAKE IN PARTING (2006)

1) Inside A Girl; 2) Nothing, Noone; 3) Sleeping; 4) Mistake In Parting; 5) Your Name; 6) Hallelujah; 7) No Luck; 8) Lay Me Down; 9) Winter; 10) Dreamer.

Ever since achieving dark-stardom, Chelsea Wolfe has been trying to erase the memories of her first album from public conscience — deriding it as a "shitty singer-songwriter breakup album" made by a 21-year old, the sooner forgotten, the better. Then again, you know, Adele made a "shitty singer-songwriter breakup album" and actually called it 21, and God saw that it was good (so good that he made her do a really shitty one four years later, to compensate), so why couldn't Chelsea Wolfe's? Moreover, she does admit that the songs she wrote for the album were quite personal — too personal, in fact, for her own tastes — and this inevitably means that any fan of the lady should lay hands on it sooner or later, if only in order to understand where this particular idol is coming from.

In all honesty, this is not nearly as bad as Chelsea herself makes it out to be — though, probably, I'd be angrier at these songs if I did not hear the artist in person get angry about them. Much of the record is just harmless (and usually boring) acoustic folk, the kind that aspiring young ladies and gentlemen like to film themselves playing in their bedroom and then hanging out on YouTube for their five minutes of glory — «sincerity» probably being the most, if not the only, interesting part about it. From time to time, she goes electric, and then it is like your average alt-rock crunch, though, fortunately, not drowning in Nickelbackish distortion. The lyrics and vocal intonations suggest a heavy Radiohead influence — which, unfortunately, never translates to compositional complexity or catchiness: most of the songs are atmospheric poetic rants that very rarely have any dynamics, usually just going round and round until the tape runs out.

In this context, the somewhat colorless voice hovering above the arrangements is a good thing, because, despite my confessed bias against "singer-songwriter breakup albums", somehow the record still manages not to cross the line from «boring» to «irritating», even when the artist's Big Ego is placed square in the center of everything, as it is on the opening number — ʽInside A Girlʼ, a fairly provocative title in its own right. She just uses a few impressionist keyboard lines and some strings here to tell her own story of seduction and betrayal, and there's nothing particularly wrong with that: everybody has a right to that story if it's the truth, or, hell, even if it's not the truth. I cannot remember anything about that song once it's gone, but while it was playing, it did not make me want to go, «who are you to be manipulating me with your bullshit». It sounded fairly natural — as does everything else here.

The downside is that there is really nothing to write about, as most of the songs are strictly neither good nor bad. The arrangements are okay (she would later complain about the album being over­produced, but I don't really hear it — I mean, pianos? strings? chimes? alt-rock guitars? what exactly is the source of complaints?), the voice is okay, the melodies offer no surprises, the lyrics show that she can come up with a pretty decent analysis of both her own and her ex-boyfriend's problems... end of story. Only one track, ʽWinterʼ, shows brief hints at the future developments of her sound, with a slightly doomier guitar tone than usual and lyrics like "lay in my grave with me my love / we'll die side by side, hand in hand" foreshadowing the morbid veils of her mature career (and no, these lines are not among the album's finest, but if you're young and you have your whole life ahead of you, hell, why not include them anyway?), yet even that is just a solitary foreshadowing. But now at least we know why Chelsea «Joy» Wolfe has such a grim vision of the universe at large: her boyfriend dumped her, and things would never be the same. This is, you know, where Batman begins and stuff.

One technical reason why this record could be wiped from discographies is that it never had a real label, being self-released in CDr format with only a few hundred copies or so. But then, 2006 is not like the underground Eighties: she had herself the luxury of a properly equipped Californian studio, a professional backing band, there's, like, album art and all — and it is very cleanly pro­duced, so that the songs never give the impression of raw demos. And I do not think this record is something that she'd need to be particularly ashamed of: at least this way, her fans have this nice little opportunity to get a quick peek inside her real soul, rather than always have to deal with her «alien» artistic persona. Not that you'd find anything particularly outstanding there, but... well, anyway, I do not want to create the impression that Chelsea Wolfe is a genius, let alone that Mistake In Parting is some sort of underappreciated, heart-wrenching spiritual masterpiece. In fact, it might have been more fun if it turned out to be some campy embarrassment, like the early dance-pop records of Alanis Morissette, or Y Kant Tori Read. As it is, it's largely just a blank.

The Chameleons: John Peel Sessions

THE CHAMELEONS: JOHN PEEL SESSIONS (1990)

1) The Fan And The Bellows; 2) Here Today; 3) Looking Inwardly; 4) Things I Wish I'd Said; 5) Don't Fall; 6) Nostalgia; 7) Second Skin; 8) Perfumed Garden; 9) Dust To Dust / Return Of The Rednecks; 10) One Flesh; 11) Intrigue In Tangiers; 12) P. S. Goodbye.

As befits every second-rate band, The Chameleons have a huge number of live albums out, most of them released in semi-official status on various tiny labels, and trying to trace them all down and discuss each one separately would be taking this completism thing way too far. But this reasonably concise and high-quality package from the ubiquitous John Peel is worth mentioning, especially because it came before everything else and could be regarded as a comprehensive summary of the band's legacy — put out at a time when there was no talk of a Chameleons come­back, and the fans could hardly hope for anything better.

In brief, there are two things about this compilation that make it particularly attractive for me. First, the setlist: these tracks are taken from three separate sessions — four songs from 1981, way before they got around to recording their first album; four from 1983, promoting Script Of The Bridge; and four more from 1984, promoting What Does Anything Mean. At this point, the sessions stop, meaning that there is nothing from Strange Times, which is quite a relief. But it also gives you a couple of early songwriting attempts that cannot be found elsewhere (well, they can now, but not back then): ʽThe Fan And The Bellowsʼ, a good punk-pop romp with a healthy dosage of youthful protest energy, before it began mutating into acid depression already on their first LP; and ʽThings I Wish I'd Saidʼ, which sounds, well, like any other fast early Chameleons song, but at least it's better than any slow late Chameleons song.

Second and maybe even more important, the fact that these takes were recorded live for radio broadcast means — yes, you guessed it right: a relative liberation from the confines of glossy Eighties production. The biggest beneficiary of this is drummer John Lever (and his predecessor Brian Schofield, captured on the first four tracks), who is here able to fully and openly participate in the ritual, now that his fills are less robotic and you actually get to feel the effort he puts into every bit of his pummeling. The performances themselves are not at all different from the studio versions, so, for future reference, I'd simply take these versions of ʽHere Todayʼ, ʽDon't Fallʼ, etc., over their regular studio equivalents.

Other than these two points, there is little that could be added to this brief evaluation. Given the spotty record of The Chameleons, it is nice to see a package that managed to concentrate on all their good sides and largely avoid the bad ones — it is nice, in fact, to be able to say anything good about a live album by a band whose live shows were seemingly not all that different from the way they played in the studio.