Animal Collective: ODDSAC

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE: ODDSAC (2010)

1) Mr. Fingers; 2) Kindle Song; 3) Satin Orb Wash; 4) Green Beans; 5) Screens; 6) Urban Creme; 7) Working; 8) Tantrum Barb; 9) Lady On The Lake; 10) Fried Camp; 11) Fried Vamp; 12) Mess Your House; 13) What Happened?

Technically, Animal Collective's next project after Fall Be Kind was not a proper «album» — it was a joint visual/audio product, with AC providing the music and director Danny Perez provi­ding the spectral hallucinations on the screen. Since the whole thing was made in tandem, it might be reasonably asserted that the music is no good here without the visuals, and that the visuals are worthless without the music. However, anyone familiar with the whole story of Ani­mal Collective will immediately realize that the music is not that different from typical AC so as not to work without the accompanying imagery — and, personally, having watched several of the psychedelic sequences filmed by Perez, I can safely state that this is indeed so. If we can listen to, enjoy, and get inspired by ʽI Am The Walrusʼ and ʽFlyingʼ without necessarily having to watch the Beatles running around in funny suits on the former or delirious rainbow coloring of the sky on the latter, we can do the same with ODDSAC (speaking of which, I do have a suspicion that the experience of Magical Mystery Tour might have been one of the inspirations here).

So I'm just going to say a few words about ODDSAC (whatever that title deciphers to — I pro­pose Over­blown Demented Delirious Stories by the Animal Collective) as a collection of new music, free from any sort of ties to any sort of visuals. (Besides, with the aid of proper substances, anyone is probably capable of conjuring one's own visuals here — why should you feel chained to somebody else's artistic vision?).

In a way, the whole project might have simply been a clever ruse. With Merriweather Post Pavil­lion and its alarming success that almost (but not quite) put the band on the brink of main­stream acceptance, they must have felt an acute need to remind the world that they were, first and foremost, a bunch of musical crazies, not a school of musical gurus. Listen to ʽMy Girlsʼ and ʽNo More Runnin'ʼ long enough and, who knows, you might start discerning the meaning of life in their basic structures (just as your parents did with Pet Sounds a whole wide world ago). In other words, they got too serious, and the emotionality in their music got way too similar to normal hu­man emotionality. One step further and you turn into Radiohead. Two steps, and you turn into Prodigy. Three steps, and whoah, you're the Backstreet Boys...

...all right, that was really a joke, but the idea is clear enough. Hence, a change in direction, slyly motivated by technical reasons — being interested in adapting the music to a set of modern post-post-post-impressionist visuals. This gives the AC a good pretext for turning away from the «nor­malized» melodicity of Pavillion and for returning to their roots — chaotic psychedelia with no limits or boundaries. More than half of ODDSAC is closer in spirit to AC's earliest albums, only with much better production.

A few of the tracks are still made in their trademark psycho-folk style — with acoustic guitars, sprinkly chimes, falsettos, criss-crossed vocal harmonies, and a certain sentimental elegance; I mainly refer to ʽScreensʼ and ʽWorkingʼ here; plus, Beach Boys-like harmonies additionally crop up from time to time, for instance, on the closing track (ʽWhat Happened?ʼ). Atmospheric and re­specting the legacy of Pavillion, but nowhere near as memorable as the best stuff on their «main­stream masterpiece», they do an important job — providing some relief from all the weirdness — but they are not what ODDSAC is really about.

But what is it about? Overcrowding, I guess. With all the jungly overdubs, all the animalistic and totemistic vocalizing tracks, all the tribal beats and nature sounds, ODDSAC is probably their best attempt, so far, to emulate the living soul of a parallel universe. Not a sci-fi universe, mind you, of the kind usually preferred by their colleagues in the electronic department — quite an or­ganic one, with busy street life (ʽMr. Fingersʼ), ghosts spooking lonely wanderers in the woods (ʽSatin Orb Washʼ), collective celebrations on feast days (ʽTantrum Barbʼ), large swamps spew­ing out poisonous, hallucinogenic fumes (ʽLady On The Lakeʼ), and whatever else you'd like to extract from your own mind to substitute Danny Perez's unnecessary fantasies.

Even the album's lonesome attempt at emulating an «industrial» mood (ʽUrban Cremeʼ) never attains the icy, mercyless, robotic cold of, say, Autechre, as the busy, static sonics of functioning equipment are still accompanied by «organic» sounds. Scary robotic equipment can never be that scary when it is humming, beeping, and clanging against a background of chirping birds and croa­king frogs. Or, to be more precise, of chirping-croaking frogbirds, because the world of AC is full of non-trivial species whose evolution path followed the same individual mutations as the brain cells of Avey Tare and Panda Bear.

What makes this stuff better than, for instance, Here Comes The Indian (this early AC release is probably the closest in spirit to ODDSAC) is — apart from extra complexity, improved pro­duction, and shorter length of the individual tracks, all of which helps — the fact that in between the two, there was Merriweather Post Pavillion, a demarcation line, having crossed which the band could never really be the same again. Yes, they are making a different album here, but they are not fascistic purists, and they retain all the gained experience, and this concerns not just the lovely vocal harmonies, but also the use of «light» electronic tones — chiming, jingling, sprink­ling, such as the sonic kaleidoscope of ʽMess Your Houseʼ, a track that is way too chaotic to fully match my tastes, but still sounds bright and optimistic, even despite all the jarring explosions and screams with which it is bombarded on a regular basis.

My only — minor, but real — disappointment is that, to a large extent, all of this stuff is some­how «nostalgic». It's as if they have grown up, matured, learned a lot, and now are returning back to base to «do it all over again» from scratch, so that you can now throw away all of their pre-Sung Tongs records and replace them with ODDSAC. But then again, who am I to com­plain?... seeing as how I am pretty much doing the same thing with my own reviews. Thumbs up, that much at least is for certain.

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Autechre: Untilted

AUTECHRE: UNTILTED (2005)

1) LCC; 2) Ipacial Section; 3) Pro Radii; 4) Augmatic Disport; 5) Iera; 6) Fermium; 7) The Trees; 8) Sublimit.

No news may be good news, but not for the unhappy reviewer. How am I supposed to stress this record's individuality over that of Draft 7.30? Am I really supposed to make good friends with these beats, measure their individual pulses, check their individual temperatures, and tuck each one inside his individual bed of a one-two phrase description? This is definitely not something I remember myself signing for on that unhappy day when I broke my «no electronics!» vow by acquiring the entire Tangerine Dream catalog.

All I can really say is that Untilted is, once again, closer in spirit to Confield: with Draft 7.30, it might have looked like Booth and Brown were taking one step back and reintegrating some mini­malistic melodicity into the package, but now the domain of the computer blip has won this next battle, so prepare yourself for seventy more minutes from the life of the microchip. And it does not even look like the microchip is leading an interesting life these days. No, just the same old routine — get up at 7:00 AM, a bath, a shave, some quick breakfast with the wife, commute to work, get installed, operate, calculate, lunch break, back to work again... everything happening in a rather fussy way, of course, but it's all normal, predictable, everyday fuss.

On second thought, some of these beats are indeed programmed in almost ridiculously complex ways. Something like ʽIpacial Sectionʼ or ʽAugmatic Disportʼ could never even remotely be app­roached by a human being — the same way no human being could ever beat the machine at coun­ting out chess move combinations. But this does raise the question of whether electronic music that may not be replicated or interpreted by a human being can actually be enjoyed by one. These robotic pulsations neither follow our natural rhythms (be it any standard pattern of the 4/4 or 3/4 types), nor do they provide sick deviations to which, after a bit of training, we can attune our rhythms (in a Captain Beefheart fashion). They are simply too much for the nervous system to handle — and end up as «curious intellectual achievements» with no purpose other than showing off one's professionalism.

The only track here which barely hints at a human touch is ʽFermiumʼ, where the beats suddenly become less complex and a little more «trance-inducing» in the good old sense of the word (al­though it still gets way too messy towards the end). And I only write this because, once its cycles started rolling in, it was the only moment on the album that actually made a brief swipe at my at­tention center. Everything else was just totally non-descript. What used to be «magical» is now perfunctory and boring; what used to be «curious» is now predictable.

Hence, one more thumbs down. I used to wonder how the heck these kinds of albums mostly get 5-star ratings and rave reviews on Amazon and other such sites — before realizing, of course, that nobody will ever get interested in a new Autechre album outside of the duo's hardened, de­voted, but very, very small handful of admirers, those who have done a fine job of rewiring their brains towards «The Future» or «The Alternate Reality», as they see it. For me, though, the big­gest problem is that this alternate reality, once you have already broken through, unpacked your tent, and are now beginning to hang your family's portraits on the wall, is pretty damn hard to keep yourself excited about.

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Bad Religion: Suffer

BAD RELIGION: SUFFER (1988)

1) You Are (The Government); 2) 1000 More Fools; 3) How Much Is Enough?; 4) When?; 5) Give You Nothing; 6) Land Of Competition; 7) Forbidden Beat; 8) Best For You; 9) Suffer; 10) Delirium Of Disorder; 11) Part II (The Numbers Game); 12) What Can You Do?; 13) Do What You Want; 14) Part IV (The Index Fossil); 15) Pessimistic Lines.

Imagine Woody Guthrie taking a crash course in modern sociology, plugging in, speeding up, and throwing on some distortion, and there you have it — one of the most famous hardcore albums of 1988. For Suffer, Graffin and Gurewitz, coming back together, managed to squeeze out the last traces of the Clash and the Ramones; this here is a natural «folk-punk» album, turned into hard­core only on a formal level. Behind all the fuzz, loudness, and vocal barking really lies the equi­valent of ʽThis Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Landʼ.

It is sort of fun to realize this, enough to forgive the stark, mercyless monotonousness of the fif­teen songs on here — ultra-short as they may be, the riffs, tempos, and moods are so similar that there is genuinely less diversity here than on Back To The Known, which was a five-song EP, if you remember. No guitar solos, no stops and starts, only a couple songs at best that sew together faster and slower sections, and permanent bombardment by «socially relevant» lyrics that occa­sionally sound like a complicated philosophical thesis set to rudiments of music. Prepare your­self for embracing some bombastic minimalism.

Normally, I should be hating an album of this kind, but, surprisingly, I enjoy Suffer quite a bit. Most of the thanks go to Graffin. By now, he is able to establish just the perfect balance between punkish bark, intellectual sneer, and — most importantly — distinct enunciation, and even if his lyrics add very little to what we already know about the flaws of society, they still cut a little dee­per than yer average leftist propaganda. (Besides, one thing that all the hardcore movement has always sorely needed , were good lyricists, capable of ennobling the genre). And it is mostly his singing that helps — not always, but often enough — to draw differentiating lines between songs. After a few listens, ʽ1000 More Foolsʼ, ʽGive You Nothingʼ, and the title track finally sink in as songs that actually have vocal melodies — rising and falling, falling and rising, sometimes resol­ved in a fascinatingly slap-in-yer-face way ("I give you me, I give you nothing!", to me, sounds like the album's absolute peak here).

The band's two guitarists, old warhorse Gurewitz and not-yet-veteran Hetson, mostly play in uni­son, without straying far from the base; this is probably not the easiest thing in the world to do even when you are playing these simple riffs — but at what speed! — and it gives the music a thickly scrumptuous coating, the notes under which still manage to sound distinct: you can hum these riffs quite easily (unlike, say, something by Agnostic Front) — not that you'd probably want to, but it is possible.

The record takes an almost fascist approach to «gimmickry»: the only «out-of-line» bit on the en­tire album is a distorted, slowed-down recording of Graffin (or somebody else) robotically into­ning "delirium of disorder, delirium of disorder" at the beginning of said track. Consequently, there is no sense in extending this review — describe one song and you have betrayed 'em all — but it might be useful to stress, once again, the main reason why I am giving it a thumbs up when, normally, records of this kind get negative ratings.

Basically, Suffer is a hardcore album that respects all the formal requirements of hardcore (short length, fast tempo, distorted heavy rif­fage, angry anti-social mood, etc.), yet dispenses with the true spirit of hardcore — playing the whole thing out with much more precision, collectedness, melodicity, and lyrical complexity than one usually expects from the genre. Even set against How Could Hell Be Any Worse?, Suffer is the well-printed hardcover equivalent of the former's ex­citing, but carelessly glued paperback. Monotonous, repetitive, not at all inventive, it's far from a «masterpiece for the ages», but the limited task that it sets out to accomplish — that one it accom­plishes to complete perfection. And, for that matter, where else on a hardcore album are you go­ing to meet brave lines like "When will you try to change the logarithmic face of kissing things good-bye?" Oh, you just wouldn't believe all those tricky things we do to impregnate all those young punks' minds with the joy of mathe­matics...

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Badfinger: Say No More

BADFINGER: SAY NO MORE (1981)

1) I Got You; 2) Come On; 3) Hold On; 4) Because; 5) Rock'n'Roll Contract; 6) Passin' Time; 7) Three Time Loser; 8) Too Hung Up On You; 9) Crocadillo; 10) No More.

Badfinger's last album was recorded throughout 1979 and 1980 with more lineup changes: no Joe Tansin, a new guitarist in Glenn Sherba, a new drummer in Richard Bryans, and a new keyboard player in ex-Yes member Tony Kaye. Since the band was quite heavily touring at the time, the lineup turned out to be a bit more stable, tight, and focused, and Say No More certainly sounds much more like a «rock'n'roll band» product than the shiny gloss of Airwaves. But this is where the good news ends (provided this is good news at all).

Because, honestly, Say No More must have been designed as a conscious «antidote» to the gloss, sweetness, and poppiness of Airwaves. Everything here is loud, upbeat, more often fast than not, and usually relying on keyboards and guitars battling it out in a melodic, but «aggressive» man­ner. In other words, this is Badfinger trying to be what Badfinger never were — a muscular, an­ti-sentimental, sweat-pumpin' pop-rock band and just about nothing else. Not a single ballad in the pot. Not that Molland and Evans were inept at rocking out, of course; it's just that their melody skills rarely stood out whenever they began to «crank it up».

Here, for instance, despite the relentlessly bash-it-out attitude, there are next to no memorable rock'n'roll riffs, apart from a few basic chord sequences nicked off past experiences: everything that could be worth something is invested in the pop choruses. The rock'n'roll attitude seems to be all-pervasive here for one reason only: to prove Badfinger's ongoing «authenticity» — none of that commercial shit, none of those New-Wave-style gimmicks, just good old power-pop straight out of 1971 and forget about the last ten years. (Renegade Tony Kaye does manage to slip in a few new-fangled synthesizer solos and effects from time to time, but never long enough to make the listener suspect «relevance in a modern world» within even a single song).

The vocals are sweet enough, though, and Say No More is never a total waste. The single ʽHold Onʼ, a last-minute collaboration between Evans and Tansin, even made a tiny bump on the charts — for a good reason, since Tom's singing here is excellent; it captures a shade of Badfinger's trademark romantic chivalry with some nifty mood-sequencing (going from calm, unexciting se­renading to the heated-up passion of the chorus and then to the seductive falsetto resolution of "baby hold on..." — quite a respectable example of songwriting as far as I am concerned). ʽToo Hung Up On Youʼ is also a nice love confession, but with nowhere near as much personality as there is on ʽHold Onʼ (maybe it's all the double-tracking that spoils the effect).

The basic rock'n'roll stuff, in comparison, just sounds tasty for 1981, a year in which basic rock'n'roll stuff mattered about as much as Doris Day (maybe even less); thirty years on, there is little reason to listen to ʽI Got Youʼ or ʽCome Onʼ if you can just throw on some vintage Stones or T. Rex in­stead. Still, even despite the garage rock clichés of the former and the wannabe-Slade attitude of the latter, the only real failure is the ridiculously titled and ridiculously delivered ʽCro­cadilloʼ, which they try to do with a bit of a «pop-metal» flair: a big mistake on Evans' part, since playing it really down-and-dirty is a no-go for these guys.

There is also a remake here of ʽRock'n'Roll Contractʼ which, as we now know, was originally re­corded in 1974 for Head First; as could be expected, the song is tightened and sped up, and now features longer and leaner guitar solos, yet its gloomy pathos still feels a bit out of place on this generally cheerful record. As we now know, too, it wasn't really out of place, given that, in two years time, Evans would be joining Pete Ham in the noose; but on the whole, Say No More is even less indicative of the tragedy to come than Wish You Were Here and Head First were in­dicative of the upcoming suicide #1.

Fact is, as troubled as Badfinger's life was, they rarely let their everyday personal problems in­fluence the atmosphere of the music — unlike, say, Fleetwood Mac, theirs was the old-time ide­o­logy of keeping their «routine» feelings apart from the artistry, and leaving most of their troubles behind the doors of the recording studio (even on Wish You Were Here, most of the real-life in­spiration they brought with them was based on positive, not negative emotions, ʽGot To Get Out Of Hereʼ being the major exception). Of course, some would condemn this as artistic insincerity, while others might praise it as a sign of lack of vanity («ain't it just grand, the way I can make myself suffer and show it so well on my recordings?»).

But, in reality, it's just whatever works for you that really matters. And Say No More does not work all that well, I'm afraid. Not a bad album by any means, but doomed from the start by the wrongly chosen direction, it now has to formally count as the band's «swan song» while quali­fying more for a sparrow rather than swan level. It's one of those moments where I wish time would loop the wrong way and let Say No More be the first, «tentative» effort of the two reunion albums and Airwaves be the second — because, despite all the gloss and Joe Tansin, Airwaves has more of the old Badfinger spirit in it.

On the other hand, who knows how Molland and Evans would have fared in the future, had Tom not been driven by fate to the same level of insanity as Pete. Fantasizing about a whole string of Say No More-like albums throughout the 1980s actually makes me feel happier than listening to one single Say No More — the way these guys went about their music in 1979-81 makes one suspect that they might have withstood the synthesizer / drum machine onslaught, had they ma­naged to hold on to a record contract. But maybe that was impossible even in theory, and with the Eighties upon us, Badfinger just had to finally go down, once and for all. Maybe, had they not reunited to take this last chance, Evans would still be alive and well. Maybe it was all a very bad idea. Still, something deep inside me says that it is a nice thing, after all, to have these two al­bums as a last-minute, half-hearted souvenir — Badfinger have always had this simple magic aura about them, such that even their worst records can still sound endearing... under certain cir­cumstances, at least.

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Arthur Brown: The Voice Of Love

ARTHUR BROWN: THE VOICE OF LOVE (2007)

1) Love Is The Spirit; 2) Gypsies; 3) Kites; 4) I Believe In You; 5) That's How Strong My Love Is; 6) The Voice Of Love; 7) All The Bells; 8) Shining Bright; 9) Birds Of A Feather; 10) Devil's Grip; 11) Safe Now &... .

First thing to be noticed about Brown's latest studio venture is that it is now credited not to the crazy, but to «The Amazing World Of Arthur Brown». Sure enough, modesty and humility were never an integral part of this guy's artistic image, but there is still an even bigger contradiction here, because The Voice Of Love is, in fact, arguably the most modest and humble album ever released by the God of H.F.

On here, Arthur returns back to the acoustic environment of Tantric Lover: he is accompanied by much-talented, little-known multi-instrumentalist Nick Pynn, proclaimed by Brown to «play every string instrument on the planet» or something to that effect — however, the choice of ins­trumentation is generally quite simple: about 70% guitars, and the rest divided between violins, mandolins,  harps, whatever... nothing too exotic as far as my ear can tell. Furthermore, about a half of the songs are recycled from the past — be it very recent past, such as ʽAll The Bellsʼ and ʽVoice Of Loveʼ from Tantric Lover, much older past, such as yet another rearrangement of ʽLove Is The Spiritʼ, or pre-deluvial past, such as ʽDevil's Gripʼ, which was the very first single put out by Crazy World in 1967. In addition, there is a cover of Hal Hackady's ʽKitesʼ, a song first turned into a hit by Simon Dupree and the Big Sound (the original Shulman brothers band before the emergence of the most awesome Gentle Giant) also around 1967. Sweet, sentimental, a bit tangoish compared to the original, and — nostalgic, of course.

Yes, the whole album is drowned in nostalgia this time. Most of the tracks, formally, are ballads: Arthur pouring his soul out to tasteful arrangements of romantic-natured songs, all firmly rooted in mid-1960s and early-1970s R&B (yet another cover is the old Otis Redding chestnut ʽThat's How Strong My Love Isʼ, which Arthur approaches here like a master archaeologist would ap­proach a freshly unearthed relics — almost literally dusting off and professionally polishing each syllable, with such great love and respect for the object that the care shown in his singing ends up more lovable than the cover itself). True enough, there is very little «craziness» here, at least not until ʽDevil's Gripʼ comes along at the end of the album and shakes us up a little bit with some of the old maniacal frenzy (yet there is only so much maniacal frenzy one can conjure with just a couple acoustic guitar tracks and some screeching violin passages. Say what you will, electricity does matter when it comes to these matters). But still, it would have been more honest to call themselves «The Shadow World Of Arthur Brown» at this juncture.

Of the new stuff, meticulously mixed with the oldies and thoughtfully levelled with them in style, ʽGypsiesʼ is probably the standout track — make sure you neither confound it with ʽGypsy Es­capeʼ off Galactic Zoo Dossier or with ʽGypsyʼ off Journey; yes, Arthur doth love the word — if only because it deviates from the general «love is the spirit» standard and digs into a darker, Mid-Easternish, violin-dominated pattern, before picking up speed, fury, and frenzy and leading us to a climactic conclusion (by the way, Arthur's screampower has not decreased in awesome­ness one small bit — at this time in his life, he can probably do better than Ian Gillan, which just goes to show that you never really know your luck until you hit sixty).

Generally, though, there are no standouts. For you and your grandmother, this is a wonderful pre­text to simply lower some barriers and bask in the excellence of Brown's intonations, modulations and manifestations. This is still theater, replete with exaggerations and mannerisms, but a very stripped down, life-like, and meaningful sort of theater — and maybe quite a turn-off for the adventurous fans of Kingdom Come and the Requiem era, or even those who got a minor kick from the ab­surdist minor extravagance of Vampire Suite. Personally, I tend to favor Arthur Brown, the evil clown, not the paternalist-sentimental one — but at this time in his life, he might actually be doing better as the latter rather than the former. A pleased, if not too excited thumbs up — and [obligatory old fart addendum] needless to say, Voice Of Love still shows more genuine soul than any given starry-eyed indie market record from 2007.

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Billy Fury: Halfway To Paradise

BILLY FURY: HALFWAY TO PARADISE (1961)

1) Halfway To Paradise; 2) Don't Worry; 3) You're Having The Last Dance With Me; 4) Push Push; 5) Fury's Tune; 6) Talkin' In My Sleep; 7) Stick Around; 8) A Thousand Stars; 9) Cross My Heart; 10) Comin' Up In The World; 11) He Will Break Your Heart; 12) Would You Stand By Me.

This marks the end of Fury's transition from «wannabe-rocker» into the «lite entertainment» ca­tegory: the cover of Goffin & King's ʽHalfway To Paradiseʼ, originally recorded by Tony Orlan­do, sent him to the top of the charts, lost him a squadron of devoted hardcore fans but gained an army of newly evolved softcore ones. But was he really to blame? The British Elvis, after all, had to follow in the footsteps of the American one, and now that the real Elvis, back from the army, was softening up his act, the UK shadow had to follow suit — no serious alternatives. «Guitar bands are on their way out», after all.

Even worse, Billy is no longer willing to (or allowed to) write his own songs — apart from a little semi-nostalgic, semi-comic number (ʽFury's Tuneʼ), a folk-poppy ditty where he amuses himself by quoting as many titles of his own past hits as possible. Everything else is just stuff by contem­porary US and UK professional songwriters, writing for the lite-pop scene: I mostly do not recog­nize the titles, other than ʽYou're Having The Last Dance With Meʼ, which, for some reason, in­vents new lyrics for the recent Ben E. King classic ʽSave The Last Dance For Meʼ.

Still, if you have nothing against early 1960s «soft-rock» per se, Halfway To Paradise is as nice and elegant a ride back into the epoch as anything. There is only one syrupy, orchestrated ballad, floating along at a slow waltz tempo (ʽA Thousand Starsʼ); most of the rest is upbeat, catchy pop with occasional echoes of blues and R'n'B, and if only the arrangements were relying a little less on keyboards, strings, and girlie harmonies, than on a well-recorded guitar sound, the whole thing could have been a cool, tasteful example of pre-Beatles pop.

For starters, ʽHalfway To Paradiseʼ, want it or not, is a Carole King classic (perfect melody reso­lution and all), and Billy, with his Elvis-like style, does a grittier, less manneristic job with it than Tony Orlando. Then there's some piano-led country-pop stuff like ʽDon't Worryʼ and ʽTalkin' In My Sleepʼ (imagine Elvis guest singing lead on a Jerry Lee Lewis album from his «country» pe­riod, but do remember to dim the lights a little — this is Billy, after all, not Elvis or Jerry), some bossa nova influences (ʽHe Will Break Your Heartʼ), some further cuddlifying of the sentimental approach of Buddy Holly (ʽStick Aroundʼ)... nothing jaw-dropping, that is, but still a respectably diverse bag of styles, created with a modicum of intelligence, arranged with a big nod to catchiness, and, for the most part, delivered without any signs of overt «sweetening» or theatrical exaggeration.

Of course, all of it is way too smooth — the addition of even a single track that would have a faint hint at going a little deeper (such as ʽWondrous Placeʼ) would have helped a lot, but no dice. Still, this is just the kind of album that would get one of those «slanted» thumbs up — mildly plea­sant, «average» with a positive-rather-than-negative shade, etc. Historically, it helped make Billy a national star while at the same time forever burying his hopes of artistic growth — but the same could, indeed, be said about Elvis' early 1960s records, and we do still enjoy them from time to time. Seems like there is more to life than artistic growth, after all.

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Bo Diddley: Bo Diddley Is A Gunslinger

BO DIDDLEY: BO DIDDLEY IS A GUNSLINGER (1960)

1) Gun Slinger; 2) Ride On Josephine; 3) Doing The Crawdaddy; 4) Cadillac; 5) Somewhere; 6) Cheyenne; 7) Six­teen Tons; 8) Whoa Mule; 9) No More Lovin'; 10) Diddling; 11*) Working Man; 12*) Do What I Say; 13*) Prisoner Of Love; 14*) Googlia Moo; 15*) Better Watch Yourself.

The first of several «Bo Diddley is a...» type of records, starting out in an almost «conceptual» manner and then proceeding in whatever non-conceptual directions the original concept might have pushed the music. In other words — a nice pretext here for Mr. Bo to show off in some nice Western gear on the front cover. But whaddaya want, The Magnificent Seven came out that year, after all, and why shouldn't Afro-American rock'n'rollers have loved it, too?

The good news is: Ennio Morricone was not yet working with Sergio Leone, so there is no dan­ger of hearing Bo try out his own interpretation of ʽThe Good, The Bad, And The Uglyʼ. The bad news is that the proposed scenario might have been — who knows? — more exciting than hear Bo slap on a lyrical, attitud-inal, and, sometimes, musical country-western sheen on everything we'd already heard before. The ugly news, then, to dispense with the trio, is that this album con­tains what might be the worst cover of ʽSomewhere Over The Rainbowʼ ever recorded by a hu­man being. (At least, in the pre-1980s era.)

But cheer up: in the end, Bo Diddley Is A Gunslinger is a pretty funny concept, and a fairly ex­citing musical ride. What I mean is, anybody who appreciates, say, Weird Al Yankovic's bag of parody tricks, has no reason to cringe at the idea of Bo Diddley expropriating other people's ideas, adapting them to his own playing style, and coming out with something that is a shameless rip-off and a hilarious parody at the same time. The most important thing, though, is the humor and the playfulness of it all. If you have something against playing with Uncle Bo, stay away. If you're willing to accept the Gunslinger's rules, though... excitement awaits, crude as it may be.

The title track ever so slightly modifies the Bo Diddley beat (actually, the drums play without syncopation, whereas the guitars still syncopate, and this creates a slightly irritating, but clever  aural effect) to give us another episode of ʽThe Story Of Bo Diddleyʼ, this time set at the «O-K Corral». After that, Western references float away, only to resurface on ʽCheyenneʼ, which is ba­sically a synthesis — literally! — of the Coasters' ʽAlong Came Jonesʼ (again!) and LaVern Ba­ker's ʽJim Dandyʼ, taking the "and then?"s from the former and the "waaah-oooh"s from the latter. Both are classics of the comedy-R'n'B substyle, and the synthesis works much better than a sepa­rate cover of each would have had — and what is that «bubbling» percussion? Sounds just like certain patterns of electronic drums circa early 1980s. Later on, it reappears on ʽWhoa Mule (Shine)ʼ, a stop-and-start blues-pop account of a Southern mule, where its clippity-clop does re­semble a mule's slow, steady pace, instead of the light horsey gallop on ʽCheyenneʼ. Clever!

The most often covered songs on the record would probably be ʽRide On Josephineʼ (George Thorogood had a version) — a Diddley-style rewrite of Chuck Berry's ʽMaybelleneʼ, with a dif­ferent chorus but essentially the same verses; and ʽCadillacʼ, done by the Kinks on their debut al­bum — here, with a saxophone-adorned arrangement, which Gene Barge contributes in well-imi­tated King Curtis style. Again, though, it is not the saxophone itself that matters (we can all just go listen to the real King instead), but its interplay with the distorted lumps, shards, and splinters of sound spluttered by Bo and his second guitarist (Peggy Jones) in all directions. And then there is ʽSixteen Tonsʼ by Merle Travis, a track that Ed Sullivan, for some reason, once expected Bo to perform on his show, and got pretty upset when the man played ʽBo Diddleyʼ instead. Don't wor­ry, Mr. Sullivan — Bo Diddley takes his responsibilities seriously. A five-year wait period is ac­tually quite a sign of respect. And it's a nice cover, too.

Overall, the only true misfires are the ballads — once again, Bo proves that he's no ladies' man when it comes to wearing your heart on your sleeve: ʽNo More Lovinʼ is clumsy, rotten doo-wop, and ʽSomewhere...ʼ ... oh my God. (Then again, I never even liked that song in the movie — and I never really liked the movie — and I never ever liked a single cover of that song — and for some reason, Eric Clapton performed it live during my only live Eric Clapton experience — okay, I'm probably not the right person to pronounce judgement in this case).

But apart from that, Gunslinger is an oddball of an album in that it is not all that different in scope or freshness from the two that precede it, but somehow, is still hammered together in a more concise, exciting, and intriguing manner. Not surprisingly, unlike those two, Gunslinger has been remastered and issued on CD, with a bunch of bonus tracks (of which the wannabe-ancient road workin' song ʽWorking Manʼ is the finest), and is well worth locating. Thumbs up.

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British Sea Power: Valhalla Dancehall

BRITISH SEA POWER: VALHALLA DANCEHALL (2011)

1) Who's In Control; 2) We Are Sound; 3) Georgie Ray; 4) Stunde Null; 5) Mongk II; 6) Luna; 7) Baby; 8) Living Is So Easy; 9) Observe The Skies; 10) Cleaning Out The Rooms; 11) Thin Black Sail; 12) Once More Now; 13) Heavy Water.

From the enchanted misty coastlines of the Aran Islands, here we go back into well-charted wa­ters once again. What else can I really say? There is very little, if any, quantum difference be­tween this record and Do You Like Rock Music?, nor could we have justifiedly expected any, given Yan and Hamilton's firm indie stance: «we found our Muse early on, and one does not easi­ly commit adultery and get away with it». But I gotta admit, the album title is a good find — cer­tainly nowhere near as cringeworthy as when they ask you a stupid question, the answer to which is completely irrelevant for the music, anyway.

The experience of soundtrack brewing did leave some traces — the album steps away from the policy of continuously bashing your head into pulp with an endless stream of fast, furious, monotonous rhythms, and reinjects lots of atmospherics: starting with ʽGeorgie Rayʼ, continuing with ʽLunaʼ and ʽBabyʼ, and ending with the obligatory mammoth-length epic (ʽOnce More Nowʼ), we are exposed to lots of echos, dreamlike late-era Cocteau Twins-ish ambient-psychede­lic guitar pirouets, and even «angelic cooing», mostly courtesy of Abi Fry, credited not only for vocal effects and viola, but also for musical saw passages — you get the drift: we no longer like rock music that much. Who ever makes rock music with a musical saw?

In fact, the long list of «influences» now, apart from the perennial Arcade Fire, would probably also have to include at least Beach House — ʽBabyʼ (eat this, Justin Bieber!) moves at a slow, stately pace, weaves an aura of melancholic beauty, populates it with chivalrous lyrics ("I pow­dered rhino horns for you and I'll serve it on a plate to you" — where's the Animal Rights Watch when you need one?), then fades away like the remnants of a relaxating hot bath down the drain. Probably never to be remembered again, just like any given hot bath. If anything, the vocals are just too non-descript, compared to Victoria Legrand's cold-and-warm stimulation.

But even though each of these «moody» tracks, taken individually, is no great moody shakes, collectively they do a good job of slowing down and speeding up the record to move it through different emotional fields — technically different, at least. Who knows, maybe if there had been no ʽBabyʼ before it, I would have remained untouched by the impact of ʽLiving Is So Easyʼ — probably the album's best track, and a good choice for a single. Driven by electronics instead of guitars, it is a cool, intelligent «Anti-Party» type of song, whose simple, catchy chorus ("living is so easy, shopping is so easy, dying is so easy, all of it is easy") could easily be mistaken for pro­pagating a «don't worry be happy» attitude. In reality, it is a light-hearted indictment of the «easy living» attitude to which I wholeheartedly subscribe — and fun to sing along to.

Of the rest of the tracks, «tuggers» would probably include ʽGeorgie Rayʼ (not too transparently dedicated to Orwell and Bradbury), urging us all to beware of anti-utopian future with a few well placed, rousing "why don't you say something, won't you say something"s; and ʽObserve The Skiesʼ, where they finally manage to hit the Springsteen-ian bullseye, I think (yes, growing up with Born In The USA blasting from the radio will eventually do that to a man) — anyway, great piano parts, high-in-the-sky guitar solo, and another anthemic chorus that is fun to sing along to. Only problem — I don't think Yan's «whispering scream» suits the mood here. They really needed someone of The Boss's caliber to rip it up 100%. What's a fuckin' loud anthem with­out a fuckin' loud screamer, anyway?

Overall, I do find this one somewhat more consistent, diverse, and generally intelligently crafted than Rock Music — never by a long shot, for sure, but enough to raise the final count to a half-hearted thumbs up. Maybe the main problems these guys have is that they want this music to be stadium-wise anthemic and intellectually challenging at the same time, and you know how hard it is to intellectually challenge an entire stadium. But, regardless of that overall judgement, you can always succeed at different degrees, and Valhalla Dancehall succeeds at least as often as it fails, which makes up for about thirty minutes of genuinely good music and about thirty more minutes of a nutritious, but tasteless sonic bouillon. But maybe that's just the way they go about it up there in Valhalla. Come to think of it, they used to say the same things about Wagner, too.

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Autechre: Draft 7.30

AUTECHRE: DRAFT 7.30 (2003)

1) Xylin Room; 2) IV VV IV VV VIII; 3) 6IE.CR; 4) TAPR; 5) Surripere; 6) Theme Of Sudden Roundabout; 7) VL AL 5; 8) P.:NTIL; 9) V-PROC; 10) Reniform Puls.

The most revolutionary thing about Autechre's seventh LP is probably the song titles. Where they used to read like ordinary words garbled through electronic malfunctioning, these already look more like random strings extracted from sequences of machine code. And yet, at the same time, lo and behold, one of the titles is a noun phrase in ye good old plain Aenglisc, even though the sonics behind it sound no different from everything else. Ah, say what you will, but this duo simply re­fuses to be pigeonholed. Predictable stereotypes? Leave them for unimaginative suckers like the Beatles or Frank Zappa.

Other than the letters, though, Draft 7.30 should not come across as a major revelation to those who already know the whole story. It regresses a bit from the standards of Confield — once again, notes, tones, and hums get louder and fussier, drawing attention slightly away from the beats, as if they'd realized themselves that with the percussion paradise of Confield, they let their boldness carry them a bit too far. But in doing that, they are really «going back», losing their grip on the art of radical innovation. Scramble these tracks and the ones from LP5, and the only im­mediately felt difference is that Draft 7.30, like Confield, is «hoarser» and «hissier», generating a strictly «computer» ambience rather than trying to expand into outer space.

And I am afraid that difference no longer plays into the hands of Booth and Brown. There is only so much whooshing, scraping, dialing, ringing, pinging, and plinging that one can eat up before the inevitable question — «and...?» If Confield could have got you a-thinking about whether or not this could be the music of tomorrow in an alternate, post-Heat Death reality, Draft 7.30 will only get you a-thinking once more about what you have already a-thought before, presumably more than once. Where are the new sensations? Bring on the new sensations already! Why should it take us more than a decade to study this sub-atomic zoo?

In all honesty, this album is neither emotionally seductive nor intellectually provocative: it is sim­ply boring. Yes, the rhythms are still complex and diverse, but you'd think that, with the kind of creative experience these guys have accumulated, they'd be able to come up with a bunch of those in a matter of several hours or so. Worst thing about it, the individual tracks no longer have any individuality — lower your attention a bit, and you won't be able to tell where one stops and the next one begins, except for maybe a jarring change of rhythmics from time to time. They all just sort of roll along, at the same tempos, with the same gloomy attitude. Ever been a fan of standing in front of a large anthill and stubbornly watching them ants run along in all directions? Well, just replace the ants with electrons, and you have yourself your Draft 7.30.

Not that there is anything criminal about that — it was fairly clear that it would be tremendously hard to follow Confield with something equally puzzling or provoking. As usual, long-term fans with appropriately wired brains and a good deal of loyal patience will find plenty of opportunities here. But for those of us who would rather like to nibble on different pebbles of the musical kaleido­scope, Draft 7.30 might be easy to skip. Thumbs down for a lack of imaginativeness, which, I think, is the most offensive accusation one can throw at Autechre (I tried!).

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Bad Religion: Back To The Known

BAD RELIGION: BACK TO THE KNOWN (1985)

1) Yesterday; 2) Frogger; 3) Bad Religion; 4) Along The Way; 5) New Leaf.

I do not normally review brief EPs — as important as the format used to be for most of the «un­derground» artists with no opportunity for / an aversion to serious record contracts, it usually pro­vides very limited grounds for a full-fledged review. But every now and then there are vital ex­ceptions. This particular release, for instance, although it clocks in at a measly ten minutes (alle­gedly, Side A of the EP was left mirror-blank for obscure artistic purposes), is one of the most important albums in the Bad Religion catalog — and besides, isn't ten minutes sort of the ideal format for a self-respecting hardcore artist?

Basically, it is a bit odd to be reviewing Into The Unknown without saying a few words on its quintessential antipode — Back To The Known, released a year later and firmly returning Bad Religion to its feet on familiar territory. Not only that, though: «back to the known» it may be, but the songs do not sound much like the ones on Hell. In fact, they are seriously better.

First of all, they got themselves a cleaner production style. All the guitars now sound like they be­long on a major label speed metal album rather than on some lousy bedroom tape. Does that com­promise the spirit? Hardly — because everything else, the speed, the riffage, the lyrics, the vocal aggression all remain at the same level; should we blame the recording engineer for a simple hu­man wish to capture more of the frequencies and cut down on the noise levels? Second, all of the tunes have clearly been designed as «melodic songs» rather than «punkish rants» — not only do they try to make the riffs more distinctive, but Graffin actually tries to sing, including attempts to sing poppy hooks, some (most? all?) of which actually work. No limits to miracles!

In addition, there have been important lineup modifications: in particular, Circle Jerks guitarist Greg Hetson re­pla­ces Gurewitz as the new-look band's chief guitarist (although Brett is still credited as the album's co-producer), and new bass player Tim Gallegos replaces Paul Dedona. Not sure just how much of an influence these particular shifts had on the overall sound, though, so let us just turn to the actual songs.

ʽYesterdayʼ, far from being a hardcore deconstruction of Paul McCartney, could have easily been written by the likes of The Easybeats two decades earlier — but it wouldn't have kicked so much ass without this raging bull of a guitar sound, nor would it be allowed to contain the classic line "kiss your ass goodbye with a shadow dream of yesterday". ʽFroggerʼ inserts a fun lyrical and mu­sical reference to the 1981 arcade game as a one-minute metaphor for life in general. The title track is a «cleaner» remake of the band's anthem, originally released on their first EP (Bad Reli­gion) in 1981 — and I think it improves on the early take, due to a clever use of the stop-and-start technique and somewhat more restrained (and hence, more subtly dangerous) vocals.

ʽAlong The Wayʼ slows down the tempo for a «hard-folk» anthemic march, spiced up with a healthy dose of wah-wah blabber and a less healthy dose of moralizing, including Tommy, of all things, as its point of reference ("Like Tommy, you are free, and you will not follow me"). Finally, ʽNew Leafʼ goes as far as to feature some wannabe-melodic backup vocals (and a barely audible guitar solo to wrap things up). Neither of these two songs is a real smasher like the title track or ʽYesterdayʼ, but they do inject a nice shot of diversity.

Not all the fans loved this — most were pleased to see the band drop its heretical «progressive» attitudes, but many would have loved to see them really get back to the actual «known», that is, release a clone of Hell: these five songs, in contrast, were seen as too «tidy» and poppy. But, like I said, the whole thing still sounds completely authentic and credible, and it takes talent and hard work to make a «clean hardcore» record, kicking your ass in not just a brutal, but a subtly brutal manner. I wouldn't hesitate to count this among their very best offerings, and a thumbs up is firmly gua­ranteed.

Badfinger: Airwaves

BADFINGER: AIRWAVES (1979)

1) Airwaves; 2) Look Out California; 3) Lost Inside Your Love; 4) Love Is Gonna Come At Last; 5) Sympathy; 6) The Winner; 7) The Dreamer; 8) Come Down Hard; 9) Sail Away; 10*) One More Time; 11*) Send Me Your Love; 12*) Steal My Heart; 13*) Love Can't Hide; 14*) Can You Feel The Rain.

Slay me on the spot, but I am really somewhat fond of this one, in spite of all the objective pres­sure that pressures me into stoning it together with the rest of the critically-minded crowds. Yes, the obligatory first impression is that this is a «Badfin­ger» album in name only, one of those suspicious cases when a brand is resus­ci­tated mostly for commercial reasons. The whole thing was not intended to be a reunion — it just so happened that Joey Molland, in yet another of several failed attempts to assemble a new band, hooked up with Evans, among other guys who never had anything to do with Badfinger, and when Elektra Re­cords saw two of Badfinger's principal songwriters working together again, guess what the reac­tion was? Never mind the fact that, by 1979, most of the public's memories of Badfinger had been completely erased — here was at least a little something to latch on to.

It is true that Badfinger was not exclusively Pete Ham's backing band: both Evans and Molland contributed mightily to the original music and image, and one could theoretically imagine the two trying to resuscitate and preserve the original spirit. That is, however, not the case with Airwaves. First, much of it was done with the active participation of a third creative member, guitarist and vocalist Joe Tansin, whose songwriting and arranging techniques were seemingly raised not on the Beatles, but rather on mid-1970's dance hits, ballads, and MOR «classics».

Second, Molland and Evans themselves are trying to bring their sound more in line with late-1970's «standards» of power-pop. They completely ignore any punk/New Wave innovations of the past few years — the backbone of ʽLook Out Californiaʼ, opening the album, is so defiantly Chuck Berry-esque that it ain't even funny — and that may be a plus, because a Badfinger taking lessons from Blondie or the Cars sounds like a miserable idea. But, on the other hand, this does not prevent the cur­rent Badfinger incarnation from taking extra lessons not only from Cheap Trick, but maybe even from... Billy Joel? At any rate, it all sounds very much like clean-shaven, well-meaning, slick, glossy, generic mid-1970s pop.

Worst of all, I like it. Behind all the gloss lies a bunch of well-crafted hooks, memorable melodies and even some genuinely resonating emotional content. Joe Tansin is responsible for the two weakest numbers — the «heavy» rockers ʽWinnerʼ and ʽSympathyʼ, combining gruff distorted riffs with dance beats, keyboards, and strings in a loud show of nothing in particular (although even under these conditions, there is still some nice jerky tension in ʽSympathyʼ). But Evans and Molland manage to stuff this new formula with plenty of fresh meat.

Molland's ʽLove Is Gonna Come At Lastʼ was the right choice for a single, and it even made a brief chart appearance (#69 on the US charts wasn't so bad, considering the band's past reputation of «commercial poison») — dominated by a fabulous slide guitar riff on top of an old-timey jangle pattern, but with a modernistic-mainstreamish hook in the chorus (so it sounds a little like ABBA, what's really wrong with that?). Evans' sentimental piano ballad ʽLost Inside Your Loveʼ is even better — it's as if he took the whole «Badfinger reincarnation» thing really seriously, and tried here to compensate for the lack of Pete Ham by coming up with something comparable in sheer vulnerability: his "what can I say, what can I do..." is a genuine tugger and ranks among the band's finest moments of soulful purity, whatever that might mean.

Then, on side B, Joey contributes the excellent ʽThe Dreamerʼ, a big lump of power chords, lush piano, and romantic strings, and the mediocre ʽCome Down Hardʼ, an even bigger lump of power chords that uses the mean trick of double-tracking its rhythm guitar parts to imitate brawn and hooks; and Evans brings things to a close with the cozy McCartney-esque piano balladry of ʽSail Awayʼ... yes, eight songs in all, not counting the brief acoustic intro (title track), but for a «B-quality» record like this, thirty minutes seems just all right anyway.

At the end of the day, Airwaves still is, in some way, a Badfinger album — just as it was with the band's output in the early 1970s, they are modifying their sound to «suit the times», but they still never end up suiting the times because they never go all the way. Behind all the production gloss we still see Tom Evans, the charming, idealistic small town bumpkin, and Joey Molland, the slightly snub-nosed street punk, not having altered their original personalities one bit. As usual, there are hits and misses — hardly atypical for even the best Badfinger records — but the hits are strong enough to keep the album in a modestly respectable position in the catalog. Thumbs up.

PS. Please keep in mind that the five bonus tracks, even though they do a fine job of beefing up the album's length, should be kept separate — all of them are Joe Tansin songs, with the first three recorded by the man solo in the mid-Eighties (the only reason they are here is that they were allegedly written, not recorded, during the Airwaves sessions). Most are power ballads or synth-pop tunes, and ʽSend Me Your Loveʼ sounds bit-by-bit like something off a Christine McVie solo album, if you need a guideline. Skippable.

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Arthur Brown: Vampire Suite

ARTHUR BROWN: VAMPIRE SUITE (2003)

1) Introduction; 2) Vampire Club; 3) SAS; 4) Africa; 5) Maybe My Soul; 6) In This Love; 7) Confession; 8) Vam­pire Love; 9) Completion; 10) Divers; 11) Re-Vamp Your Soul; 12) Isness Is My Business; 13) Stay.

Arthur's fascination with vampires comes as a surprise, and perhaps a disappointing one. He'd ne­ver expressed tremendous interest in the subject before — or have I missed something? — yet there he is now, once again crediting «The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown», this time, for a com­plex, relatively plotless story of the fates, characters, and habits of vampires in the modern world: the story itself comes as a fifty-minute «audiobook» reading on the bonus CD (which I, honestly, had no will or patience to sit through), while the first and main CD acts as a «rock musical» loosely ba­sed on the story.

But I mean, vampires? Isn't a concept album about vampires a bit too kitschy even for the likes of Mr. Brown? Shouldn't it be relegated to the likes of Alice Cooper? (And, speaking of Alice, the Vegasy glitz of the opening number, ʽVampire Clubʼ, quickly brings on memories of ʽWelcome To My Nightmareʼ). Moving away from all those concept albums about space travel and huma­nity's post-apo­calyptic fate into the realm of bloodsucking, garlic strings, and silver bullets?

I must admit it is a little anticlimactic, what with the vampire subject beaten so firmly into the ground and all. But at this point in his career — come to think of it, at any point in his career — Arthur couldn't really care less about the particular referential topic of his creativity. His meager sales and near-negative recognizability (how many people in the world would know or remem­ber that he was still alive in 2003, let alone making records?) would not increase or decrease depen­ding on whether he was writing and singing about vampires or about superstring theory. And if the guy likes vampires, well, why not garner a bit of inspiration from vampires if it helps make some decent music?

The project is no longer acoustic — a serious musical needs more than an acoustic guitar and some aboriginal Australian woodwinds, after all — but neither is it «rock'n'rollish»: pianos, elec­tronics, and a heavy brass section matter much more on this album than distorted electric guitars. It does, indeed, in many respects recall different stages of Alice Cooper's career (be it from the Welcome To My Nightmare period, the DaDa period, or some of his recent records), but the bluesy and R'n'B-ish shades are all unmistakably Brownian.

Curiously, the best stuff here are the soulful numbers — songs that make me forget all about the context and just freely enjoy the music. ʽMaybe My Soulʼ, for instance, is one of the most up­lifting R&B anthems in the man's career — with a glorious buildup from verse to chorus, excel­lent «old-school» brass parts, and a totally triumphant vocal delivery for a sixty-year old eccentric white male with a complicated medical history. And then, immediately after the exuberant op­ti­mism of ʽMaybe My Soulʼ, on comes the cold shower of the desperate soul-blues ʽIn This Loveʼ, an equally impressive stunner. Vampires? Maybe if you tune in to the lyrics very closely, but all I hear is exuberance in number one and desperation in number two.

The «kitschy» numbers do not work quite as well, but ʽVampire Clubʼ is still a nice and catchy Vegasy romp; ʽVampire Loveʼ is supposed to tele-transport you to 1997, the age of "those syn­thesizers and drum machines", Arthur gleefully ironizes in the introduction to the song (but why 1997, I wonder? the track does sound somewhat 1997-ish, but wouldn't 1987 be a better bet for such a «nostalgic» trip?) — and it is a cool mix of rhythmic catchiness and absurd theatricality, not to mention Arthur's old penchant for combining the uncombinable, such as modernistic synthesizer loops and very old-school organ solos. And the retro-funk of ʽAfricaʼ is quite hard to get out of your head once it gets around to the "Africa, the cradle of civilization" chorus (even if "Afr-EEH-ca", with the accent on the second syllable, gets a bit annoying after a while).

The only true misstep comes at the end: Arthur has a long and dubious tradition of recycling his old (or not so old) material, and ʽStayʼ here is a remake of ʽGabrielʼ from the last album, with the precise acoustic rhythms replaced by mushy keyboard atmospherics, the steady drums replaced with machines and «tribal percussion» scattered all over the place, and the grinning, sarcastic vo­cals of the original forgotten in favor of a sterner, less humorous delivery. Not a very good ending for an album that does have its fair share of strong moments.

The whole thing never sounds as «unusual» as Tantric Lover, and does not look nearly as con­vincing — a half-labour of love at best, compared to its predecessor. But the well-balanced mix of humor and seriousness, the stylistic diversity, the never-ending freshness of the vocals, the re­fusal to bow to modern terms and conditions, all of this means one thing: The Crazy World of Arthur Brown is still alive and well, and you do not need to be a loyal follower of this guy for thirty-five years in order to enjoy it. Yes, a thumbs up by all means — I am glad, though, that the record never had a werewolf sequel (although, come to think of it, the idea of Arthur Brown howling at the moon should be quite natural).

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Billy Fury: Billy Fury

BILLY FURY: BILLY FURY (1960)

1) Maybe Tomorrow; 2) Gonna Type A Letter; 3) Margo; 4) Don't Knock Upon My Door; 5) Time Has Come; 6) Collette; 7) Baby How I Cried; 8) Angel Face; 9) Last Kiss; 10) Wondrous Place.

Billy's second LP seems to have been mainly a «recent singles scoop-up», which is why, unlike most of his early 1960s records, it never got a CD release, and I had to do a little reconstruction from a variety of sources (including some extremely poor quality recordings). It is relatively im­portant, though, since it contains both the A- and B-sides to his first two singles from 1959, the stuff that made him a star in the first place.

Interestingly, both of the A-sides are sweet ballads, with the rocking material relegated to the B-sides: apparently, British marketeers were not willing to take chances and counted on Billy's po­tential lady fans to be a more stable source of income than the masculine, rowdy rock'n'roll riff-raff rabble. The ballads are syrupy enough, but not hopeless: ʽMaybe Tomorrowʼ is an attempt to write something in the Everleys' style, with a vocal part that finds a good balance between pathos and humility (it also helps that no strings are involved), and the somewhat denser ʽMargoʼ, re­plete with echoey female backups and woodwind flourishes, is more in the Roy Orbison vein (it also features the wonderful lyrical line "Oh please be mine / Most of the time" — I'm sure the author never noticed the ambiguity, but I wonder what the BBC radio services must have thought of it). Anyway, could have been worse.

Of the rockers, ʽDon't Knock Upon My Doorʼ is the more important one — one of Billy's fastest and raunchiest tunes, a straightforward Elvis homage in the spirit of ʽHard Headed Womanʼ, but a little less «dangerous»-sounding due to all the have-a-good-time cheerleader harmonies (you'll be getting those sexy visions of early 1960's girls in tights in a jiffy) and the lack of any sharp lead guitar work (even the solo is handed over to the bass edge of the piano). Still, it's as fun as any second-tier rockabilly number, and so is ʽGonna Type A Letterʼ, although the latter is, unfortu­nately, marred by a rather inept brass backing (whatever these wind blowers were doing in the studio on that day, they surely weren't prepared for a rock'n'roll number).

Most of the other tracks are ballads, ballads, ballads, ranging from the easily tolerable (the bluesy waltz ʽBaby How I Criedʼ) to the questionable (ʽColletteʼ, way too hard trying to become the Everleys here, even double-tracking the vocals so as to sound like Phil and Don at the same time) to the awful (an overtly-sickeningly sweet attitude on ʽAngel Faceʼ, sadly, presaging many of the disappointments to come). But the album does get a modestly-excellent conclusion with ʽWond­rous Placeʼ, a moody Latin/Western hybrid with a melancholic flair that Billy pulls off real well, even if, once again, it is just one of several of Elvis' incarnations that he is modelling here.

Overall, the album does sound significantly different from The Sound Of Fury — more echo, more atmosphere, less rockabilly, more balladry — which is curious, considering that most of this stuff was recorded at approximately the same time. Recommending it is beyond my abilities (not to mention that this would require setting up an Ebay search), but putting it down due to cheesiness is not something I'd like to do, either: most of the ballads are well within the adequacy limits, and some even have original hooks. It is pathetic, though, just how few rockers they let him place on the LP, despite his obvious attraction to the bawdy side of the business.

Bo Diddley: In The Spotlight

BO DIDDLEY: IN THE SPOTLIGHT (1960)

1) Road Runner; 2) Story Of Bo Diddley; 3) Scuttle Bug; 4) Signifying Blues; 5) Let Me In; 6) Limber; 7) Love Me; 8) Craw-Dad; 9) Walkin' And Talkin'; 10) Travelin' West; 11) Deed And Deed I Do; 12) Live My Life.

Frankly speaking, only one song on this album is in an undeniable spotlight — a grim contrast with Bo's fabulous run of highlights two years ago. ʽRoad Runnerʼ not only features one of the most famous special effects in guitar world history (how many guitar strings have been killed by ardent teenagers trying to master it?), it is also quite a serious milestone in the development of the hard rock sound — just listen to that low bass grumble; whoever had a sound like that in the 1950s? No wonder all the Brit bands loved the song like crazy, particularly the Animals, who were among the lucky few to actually understand how Bo does the «speeding up» trick, and the Who — Pete Townshend loved to capitalize on the heaviness of that riff in his live shows (and you can even see him doing a silly duck walk to it in The Kids Are Alright as late as 1975).

ʽRoad Runnerʼ is probably the last one of Bo's «seminal» classics, and the best of all of his «mas­culinity-asserting» tunes (ʽI'm A Manʼ is, after all, a bit too blunt, too slow, and certainly not as inventive). Unfortunately, the rest of In A Spotlight never even begins to come close. For in­stance, the only other track here that was a single is ʽWalkin' And Talkinʼ, which begins like an uninspired, slow­ed-down rip-off of The Coasters' ʽAlong Came Jonesʼ, with comparable melodies, waa-oohs, and even lyrics — before going into a rather boring chorus that Leiber and Stoller would probably find way below their level of acceptability.

And most of the album tracks either go on to show the formulae digging in, or represent half-hearted, usually failed experiments. The main charm of ʽThe Story Of Bo Diddleyʼ is in its bright, tinkly, adventurous piano part. ʽSignifying Bluesʼ is basically just ʽSay Man Vol. 3ʼ. ʽCraw-Dadʼ is a local variation on the Diddley beat, completely forgettable. ʽLive My Lifeʼ is a bastard bro­ther of ʽBefore You Accuse Meʼ... you get my drift.

The «experiments» are at least occasionally intriguing: ʽScuttle Bugʼ, for instance, is mostly a piano-dri­ven instrumental shuffle, a little New Orleanian in spirit, as if Fats Domino decided to move to the colder climate of Chicago all of a sudden. ʽLimberʼ shows a sudden interest in the ʽBanana Boat Songʼ, but Bo Diddley and the Caribbean do not mesh well together — the man is just too fussy by nature to achieve the proper level of relaxation. And ʽLove Meʼ is Bo's first excourse in­to the world of «deep soul»... if only he weren't so vocally challenged for the purpose. (Sam Cooke would probably throw up on the spot).

Of course, it is still fun to see him try, and Bo Diddley's failures can sometimes be more exciting and involving than other people's successes. But it is the album's structure that deals it the worst blow of all — like I said, few things can withstand the force of ʽRoad Runnerʼ, and even fewer when they catch our hero in a general state of creative confusion. The only other song here to feature an original melody, a sense of completeness, and an aura of freshness, is ʽDeed And Deed I Doʼ, a nice mix of folk-pop and twangy surf, but it is (almost literally) child's play next to the opening monster. No album with ʽRoad Runnerʼ on it deserves being humiliated with a thumbs down, but know that you are more or less safe if you just own it on a compilation. Well, on se­cond thought, get ʽScuttle Bugʼ, too, for all the nice piano work.