Buzzcocks: Flat-Pack Philosophy

BUZZCOCKS: FLAT-PACK PHILOSOPHY (2006)

1) Flat-Pack Philosophy; 2) Wish I Never Loved You; 3) Sell You Everything; 4) Reconciliation; 5) I Don't Exist; 6) Soul Survivor; 7) God, What Have I Done; 8) Credit; 9) Big Brother Wheels; 10) Dreamin'; 11) Sound Of A Gun; 12) Look At You Now; 13) I've Had Enough; 14) Between Heaven And Hell.

Can't we just say that this is another late period Buzzcocks album and leave it at that? Please? I'm not even stating that it sucks or anything — it probably sounds as good as it can possibly sound, given Diggle's and Shelley's self-imposed limitations. I just can't think of anything interesting to say. Okay, let's try ramble-scramble mode for a bit, see where it gets us:

— ʽCreditʼ begins with an automated voice system instructing you to spend your virtual financial resources in the correct manner, and soon transforms into an old geezer's rant about "videophones with all the latest ringtones" that cause a "pile of debts" for nothing, because "wish I could get something I really need". Well thanks, guys, for warning us about the 2008 crisis and all two years in advance. Who knows, maybe if you had made the underlying melody more interesting, people would take heed and all trouble might have been avoided... nah;

— ʽSound Of A Gunʼ: hey, this is one song I really like and would not, in fact, mind taking home with me. The riff's only advantage is one single chord change, but it makes a big nasty difference, and I am not sure I've ever heard it before, simple as it is. It's probably about gun violence, or it takes gun violence as a metaphor for other kinds of violence, or it takes other kinds of violence as a metaphor for non-violence, whatever. The point is, it's short, it's tough, it's nasty, it's catchy, I wish there were more songs here like this one, but life's a bitch;

— ʽBetween Heaven And Hellʼ: ends the album with atmospheric electronic noises (apparently, they hold regular synthesizer sales in limbo, to make time pass quicker) and a moody vocal har­mony session where the title is being bounced around from lower to higher harmonies. This way, nobody can say that Flat-Pack Philosophy has no art-pop elements, and the Buzzcocks become eligible for The Beach Boy Hall Of Fame and The Brian Eno Hall Of Fame at the same time. If only for a few seconds, that is.

Then there are eleven other songs on the album, but fuck 'em. They all sound the same anyway. My biggest problem, however? I still have no idea what «flat-pack philosophy» is supposed to mean, even after re-reading the lyrics to the title track several times. If it's a hint that modern era Buzzcocks music is assembled from pre-packaged pieces, I'm in. But somehow I doubt that.

The Byrds: Fifth Dimension

THE BYRDS: FIFTH DIMENSION (1966)

1) 5D (Fifth Dimension); 2) Wild Mountain Thyme; 3) Mr. Spaceman; 4) I See You; 5) What's Happening; 6) I Come And Stand At Every Door; 7) Eight Miles High; 8) Hey Joe; 9) Captain Soul; 10) John Riley; 11) 2-4-2 Fox Trot (The Lear Jet Song).

For some reason, the general critical consensus seems to have had a bone with the Byrds' third album from the very beginning, and even today it is usually described as an «uneven», «transi­tional» record that lacks both the freshness and inspiration of their first two efforts and the art-pop perfection of Younger Than Yesterday. I have never seen it that way myself — not only am I still enjoying the absolute majority of the tunes here, but in a way, Fifth Dimension is the Byrds album for me: that one collection of musical ideas where they really showed the world that they could not only invent a successful musical formula, but they could also transcend it, and par­ticipate in the «great progressive race» of the mid-Sixties along with the best of 'em. This is their Revolver, if you wish, and it actually came out before Revolver, so there.

The high quality of the music is all the more astounding considering that it was recorded in the wake of the band's first (but far from the last) great cataclysm — the departure of Gene Clark due, among other things, to his fear of flying (as a mocking parting gift, this is reflected in the band's decision to finish the record with ʽThe Lear Jet Songʼ). His only contribution, ironically, is yet another song about the strangeness of flying (ʽEight Miles Highʼ), with McGuinn and Crosby both taking additional credits, even if no one really knows how justified that was (well, I guess at least McGuinn deserves plenty of credit for the famous guitar solo). This explains the continuing high ratio of cover material — but the covers are mostly good, and beyond that, Clark's departure did stimulate McGuinn and Crosby to develop their own songwriting talents.

Most importantly, though, Fifth Dimension simultaneously takes The Byrds in more direc­tions (dimensions?) than any other of their albums. Word of the day is diversity, as if they themselves looked back in horror at the clonish nature of Turn! Turn! Turn! and said, «if we go on this way, we'll never catch up with them Beatles», and now they are firing all the cannons at once. There's still some of the old trusty jingle-jangle folk-rock vibe, of course (title track; ʽI Come And Stand At Every Doorʼ), but there's also lushly orchestrated art-pop (ʽWild Mountain Thymeʼ), psyche­delic rock with jazz and Indian influences (ʽEight Miles Highʼ, ʽI See Youʼ), speedy, catchy, quirky country-pop (ʽMr. Spacemanʼ), Booker T.-influenced R&B with jagged edges (ʽCaptain Soulʼ), and even a pre-Hendrix version of ʽHey Joeʼ so that they could always say that they were first, and pout their lips to the max.

You could join the chorus of disappointed grunts and point out individual problems with these songs — the sound is too thin, the grooves are too repetitive, Crosby overacts like an idiot while singing ʽHey Joeʼ — but instead of picking at minutiae, I recommend simply embracing this uni­verse as a whole, and getting the most of it. See Jim McGuinn invent the motif of the «space cowboy» with ʽMr. Spacemanʼ, a song that sounds as if it should have been a hit for Buck Owens, but is actually a ten-years-early theme for Close Encounters Of The Third Kind! Watch him set a poem by Nâzım Hikmet to a morbidly slow-waltzing theme and reimagine the lyrics as coming from the ghost mouth of a 7-year old victim of Hiroshima! Revel in the wind-gusty string swoops of ʽWild Mountain Thymeʼ as they smash into the guitar jingle-jangle that bravely withstands each new assault! And look, David Crosby can actually write a song that has a steady, fast rhythm and a catchy vocal melody to go along with the famous «lost in time and space, and loving it» Crosby vibe. Even Yes would admire it to the point of covering the song on their first album — something they'd probably never dream of doing over the likes of ʽAlmost Cut My Hairʼ.

It is probably the towering awesomeness of ʽEight Miles Highʼ — eight-mile towering, right? — that forms this impression that the entire album is centered around one song, and everything else is just filler in comparison. (Much the same way people like to dismiss Sgt. Pepper as an album that really only has one great song on it — you know which one). Naturally, ʽEight Miles Highʼ is a classic and a milestone: with its Indian raga and Coltrane influences, it invents The Velvet Underground before there was a proper Velvet Underground, and the combined effect of hard-rocking rhythm guitars, droning leads, and stratospheric lyrics unequivocally makes this one of the defining tracks of 1966, along with ʽTomorrow Never Knowsʼ (a song that seems to pursue much the same goals, albeit in a totally different manner). However, it is just because the song's innovative gamble is thrust straight in your face here — the tasks that are accomplished on the other songs are more subtle and humble, and may take a little time to appreciate.

I even hold a high opinion on ʽCaptain Soulʼ, a jammy blues-rock instrumental that should not normally be associated with the likes of The Byrds — but I've always admired the energy level on it, as two lead guitars and one wailing harmonica compete for attention like a trio of brawny, unrestrained kids. Were this a real Booker T. & The M.G.'s jam, they would only let one instru­ment solo at a time, and the solo would be all restrained and dignified and potentially quite boring. These guys, on the other hand, make it feel like a garage happening — all the more exciting coming from a bunch of «softies»... in a way, you can almost feel the seeds of the classic Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young live electric jams planted on this track, or at least understand why Stills and Young even bothered letting ol' Cros' in on their little games.

Of course, Crosby can be a weak link at times — the band's version of ʽHey Joeʼ is dramatically overwrought and rushed, never even hoping to be as doom-laden and imposing as the Hendrix cover; and ʽWhat's Happening?!?!ʼ already goes over the top with psychedelic «Indian» guitars, a process that would reach rather an ugly culmination on next year's ʽMind Gardensʼ. But even so, ʽWhat's Happening?!?!ʼ is hardly worse than, say, any random Love track from 1966-67, and at this point, Crosby is still conservatively writing structured songs rather than impressionist fantasies which would eventually become his primary, if not only, style of writing. Moreover, he had not yet grown his walrus moustache yet, so there's really no need to worry.

Maybe a few of the idealistic / psychedelic touches here have dated rather poorly — particularly the lyrics of the title track, with its clichéd references to "my two dimensional boundaries" and "scientific delirium madness" — but only a few, and they are no more than cute bookmarks of a time when child-like earnestness in popular music could be a source for inspiration rather than immediate derision. In their own way, The Byrds were doing here the same thing that The Beach Boys were doing with Pet Sounds (I mean, if I already mentioned Revolver, it was only a matter of time before a reference to Pet Sounds would show up, right?), although their vision was more expansionist and «macrocos­mic» at the time — even boy-girl relations are seen here as requiring the mediation of an extra dimension. After all, what kind of square loser would want to have sex in 1966 without the added benefit of certain chemical substances?..

Even the bonus tracks on the CD release are excellent — an early version of the dreamy pop rocker ʽWhy?ʼ, an electric pop reimagining of the traditional ʽI Know My Riderʼ with a riff that sounds sus­piciously similar to the Beatles' ʽDr. Robertʼ, and Crosby's talking psychedelic blues ʽPsychodrama Cityʼ with another bunch of those messy, chaotic, avant-jazz solos. But why is that final track dubbed as an «instrumental» version of ʽJohn Rileyʼ? It sounds nothing like ʽJohn Rileyʼ. Just a fast groove with even more jazzy guitar playing. (Could have been a nice move, though, if it were spliced with the actual ʽJohn Rileyʼ, speeding and jazzifying it up after three original minutes of electrofolk prettiness).

As far as I'm concerned, Fifth Dimension is the ultimate Byrds experience — not a «perfect» album (the Byrds don't have a perfect album), but one that gives you everything they could do well, shows you how much of a vision they had, and never ever creates the impression of this band as a one-trick pony. Diehard fans of the jingle-jangle, who think the band lost its strength as long as it stayed away from the jingle-jangle, will indeed prefer 1965 or 1967 to 1966; but those who really think that The Byrds are worthy of their own legend, and that in their prime they were able to rival the scope of The Beatles, at least in «mini-mode», will just have to agree that Fifth Dimension is really where it's at, and accept the significance of this particular thumbs up.

Brian Eno: Drums Between The Bells

BRIAN ENO: DRUMS BETWEEN THE BELLS (2011)

1) Bless This Space; 2) Glitch; 3) Dreambirds; 4) Pour It Out; 5) Seedpods; 6) The Real; 7) The Airman; 8) Fierce Aisles Of Light; 9) As If Your Eyes Were Partly Closed...; 10) A Title; 11) Sounds Alien; 12) Dow; 13) Multimedia; 14) Cloud 4; 15) Silence; 16) Breath Of Crows.

So apparently this guy Rick Holland is a «poet and independent artist», as Wikipedia tells us (but really, isn't «independent artist» sort of a pleonasm? I always thought that the more «dependent» you are, the less you are of an artist), and his first book, Story The Flowers (how deliciously de­lightfully ungrammatical!), was published in 2010 and was constructed in the tradition of psycho­geography. Up to now, I thought «psychogeography» meant getting naked, taking acid, and wrapping yourself in a world map, but oh boy was I ever wrong about that.

Knowing what we know of Eno, it was only a matter of time before he'd enter into a collaboration with an expert on psychogeography — besides, he'd had joint albums with all sorts of musicians before, and written music for all sorts of artistic installations, but this is the first time that he tried out a symbiosis between ambient music and recited poetry, and if anything, the album was at least instrumental in introducing yet another word to the oversaturated English language: poet­ronica, the ingenious art of hybridizing verbal textures with digital sounds and breathing new life into two established forms of artistic expression.

Immediate disclaimer: I am almost totally desensitized to any form of modern poetry — conser­vative, innovative, English, Russian, whatever — and leave it to you, much more sensitive or much more pretentious reader, to decide for yourself whether the words of Rick Holland elevate you to a new level of consciousness or degrade you to the state of thinking really bad thoughts about people. One sample, I believe, is enough: "Bless this space / In sound and rhyme / As we suspend it / Arrested from the race / For meaning / By these slices / Of cityscapes / Each one / To the site of a thousand Londoners / The reburied and reborn / Brought together / In one life". Per­sonally, I think the word ʽLondonersʼ does not belong, but then I'm not an editor or anything.

However, somewhere deep inside I nurture a hope that Eno did not really choose Holland as a collaborator for the unfathomable beauty or deeply hidden meaning of his words — but rather just because the rhythmic basis of that poetry was eccentric and diverse enough for him to ex­periment with various ways of not only setting it to music, but also of playing around with the words themselves. Besides himself and The Poet, there are five extra ladies and one extra gentle­man delivering the words in a variety of silver-and-gold vocal tones, to which Eno may or may not add psychodigital processing, depending on his mood, the weather, and stock market values. And it works! Some people have said that they liked the completely instrumental version of this album better (it is available as a separate CD in the Deluxe Psychogeography Edition), but I dis­agree — the music here is not jaw-dropping on its own, but is made more fun and less predictable by the addition of this varied set of vocal overdubs.

The record begins in «clubby» mode, with a couple rhythmic tracks (ʽGlitchʼ, in particular, comes close to acid house, and has the most robotic-sounding vocals on the album), but then switches over to a more comfortable ambient mode, with recitations accompanied by minimalistic piano (ʽDreambirdsʼ), Lanois-style guitars (ʽPour It Outʼ), cloudy synth hum (ʽThe Realʼ), industrial grumble (ʽFierce Aisles Of Lightʼ), and... well, suffice it so say that, amazingly, no two tracks here sound the same — there's 15 of them here, and each one is a separate autonomous part of the sonic kaleidoscope. In a way, it is almost as if Brian took this concept as a pretext to run a con­densed retrospective of everything he made so far — you will find echoes of Thursday After­noon, of Apollo, of the Budd collaborations, even of Brian's vocal pop glories (ʽDowʼ, where his merry listing of Holland's groups of objects somehow reminds me of ʽKurt's Rejoinderʼ). So even if the album does not have a specific point to make, at least it's never truly boring.

Two of the tracks, ʽThe Realʼ (near the middle) and ʽBreath Of Crowsʼ (the finale), take nearly seven minutes to wind down to a close, but there's got to be something on an Eno album to put you in trance, right? A bit too much Autotune on ʽThe Realʼ for my tastes, making the lady singer sound like a chromium clone of Björk, but ʽBreath Of Crowsʼ is a fine, stately conclusion, all chimes and deep bass vocals, like a mourning song without dread/desperation or a last lullaby before the inevitable apocalypse. The sort of stuff you'd expect from a Dead Can Dance on a dark day, or from Current '93 on a bright day.

I do urge you, even if it runs against your modernistic / futuristic / nihilistic attitude to A-R-T, to ask the question «what the hell does this whole thing mean?» every once in a while, if only for psychological sanity reasons. The album title, actually, does sound meaningful to me — remin­ding me of The Bell And The Drum, a classic monograph on ancient Chinese poetry with which Brian may very well have been acquainted and whose major point was to seek out the origins of the poetic form in ritual music and dance; and what we have here is a reverse merger of the poetic form with ritual music, so that's hardly a coincidence. Let's be real stupid, then, and say that Eno's major purpose here is to generate magic through the marriage of spoken word and played sound. Whether he succeeds in that or no depends on whether, upon playing this record in its entirety, you are able to uncover a hidden portal in your wardrobe. If you're not, this probably means that your faith was insufficient, so go on and do it once more, this time with feeling. But if you are not floating in space third time around, Rick Holland will be happy to return your money and go back to coal mining, panhandling, and ghostwriting for Dr. Seuss.

The Butterfield Blues Band: In My Own Dream

THE BUTTERFIELD BLUES BAND: IN MY OWN DREAM (1968)

1) Last Hope's Gone; 2) Mine To Love; 3) Get Yourself Together; 4) Just To Be With You; 5) Mornin' Blues; 6) Drunk Again; 7) In My Own Dream.

By the time this album came out, nobody really cared any more, and only the most astute listeners and critics may have noticed how desperately The Butterfield Blues Band was trying to rebrand itself. Running on covers, it seems to have been agreed, was pretty much equivalent to suicide; but neither Butterfield nor Bishop had a lot of songwriting talent, and so it is up to new bass player Bugsy Maugh to fill in the glaring gap and steer the Butterfields away from interpretation and improvisation and into the treacherous waters of creativity.

The big problem with this is that Bugsy was apparently a major fan of contemporary R&B, and his songs basically sound like sincere, but never outstanding imitations of Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, and whoever else was riding the Atlantic wave of success at the time. Jazzy rhythms, poppy choruses, lots of brass and vocal exuberance (and, what's more, the vocals were to be pro­vided by Bugsy himself — Paul either did not want to mess around with other band members' songs, or found them unsuitable to his own style). And yes, the problem is not that this does not at all sound like classic BBB (who'd really care?), but that the songs only barely stand competi­tion. ʽGet Yourself Togetherʼ, for instance, takes the old and well-worn ʽCan I Get A Witness?ʼ groove, but adds nothing particularly new to it — probably the most «novel» aspect is the way their brass section crosses paths with Butterfield's harmonica, but then I'd rather just see the whole thing turn into a fast, punchy, harmonica-driven instrumental (much like the Stones had originally done with this groove, turning it into the awesome — for 1964, at least — ʽNow I've Got A Witnessʼ). Actually, Bugsy is not a bad singer: he does quite alright on ʽMornin' Bluesʼ, a snappy chunk of whitebread soul, showing good range, fluent modulation, and respectable re­straint. And still, I cannot get rid of the feeling that something is just not there. Probably because they take all these familiar structures, refuse to populate them with extra hooks, yet do not have enough balls to make them sizzle and kick proper ass in performance.

There are altogether two songs on the album that rise above the likes of «nice» and «okay» and «wish I'd had an extra ninety years to my life». The opening number, ʽLast Hope's Goneʼ, is a moody, subtle piece of blues made special by a very unusual bass «zoop» at its core and a chao­tic mish-mash of brass and woodwinds at the edges; it is hardly a coincidence that the rising star of David Sanborn is credited here as one of the co-authors. And Bishop's only contribution to the record, ʽDrunk Againʼ, is a hilariously realistic example of how to make an authentically «drun­ken blues», with a large part of it taken over by a loosely coherent rant of the «protagonist walks into a bar...» variety. Not much to do with pure music (although Butterfield does a pretty good job on the harmonica in the background), but hits home all the same.

Butterfield's only solo composition here — the title track — is featured at the end and was pro­bably supposed to be the climactic finish, what with all those gospel harmony overtones, but it is stunningly weak: musically, just sort of a ghostly shuffle, limping along like a three-legged dog, and vocally, with nothing but the pure power of one man's soul to guide it to its conclusion (and it doesn't even have a conclusion — it just indecisively fades away after almost six minutes of try­ing to understand what it is supposed to do).

So yes, I respect that the fact that they at least tried to change, and even develop some sort of hybrid musical genre, wobbling between blues, jazz, and R&B, rather than just throwing in a few more mediocre Albert King covers. But there's really nothing here that couldn't be done better by either Traffic, or Grateful Dead, or Blood, Sweat & Tears in their prime — and there's no­thing but sheer curiosity, I think, that might make you want to check it out. Oh well, at least it's all over in just 36 minutes — very respectful of them, since it wouldn't have been too difficult to shove twenty more minutes of comparable mediocrity into the pot, and then I'd really have to hate 'em.

Buddy Guy: Damn Right, I've Got The Blues

BUDDY GUY: DAMN RIGHT, I'VE GOT THE BLUES (1991)

1) Damn Right, I've Got The Blues; 2) Where Is The Next One Coming From; 3) Five Long Years; 4) Mustang Sally; 5) There Is Something On Your Mind; 6) Early In The Morning; 7) Too Broke To Spend The Night; 8) Black Night; 9) Let Me Love You Baby; 10) Rememberin' Stevie; 11*) Doin' What I Like Best; 12*) Trouble Don't Last.

A quarter century later, it is a little hard to understand what all the hoopla was about, but back in 1991, Buddy Guy's «comeback» album (or «breakthrough» album, to be more accurate, since he didn't exactly have a ton of hit records to be eclipsed) caused quite a bit of excitement. The entire music industry was rolling backwards a bit, after the oversaturated futurism and technocracy of the previous decade, and in a way, Buddy here became one of the symbols, or maybe even the sym­bol for the revival of raw electric blues. After all, most of the pioneers were dead, and those that were still alive didn't give much of a damn, or were way too prone to selling out whenever their record labels dropped a hint (B. B. King, for instance, had quite a few smelly duds through­out the Eighties). And here was a guy of stark integrity, who'd rather record on a minor label with no promotion, or not record at all, than go for pop choruses and electronic drums.

That said, Damn Right, I've Got The Blues still had to come out in England, on the small Sil­vertone Records label, where Buddy got signed up after having luckily partnered up with Eric Clapton for the latter's 24 Nights engagement at the Albert Hall (and some of Eric's backup team, including backing vocalists Tessa Niles and Katie Kissoon, are also playing here). The album was produced by John Porter, who was before then mostly known for working with The Smiths — which really meant that nobody would be truly getting in Buddy's way. And, just so that the sales could be boosted a bit and proper respect be paid, the man procures guest appearances not only from Eric himself, but from Jeff Beck and Mark Knopfler as well.

The result was... well, not exactly a smash hit, but the record did sell far more assuredly than any of Buddy's previous work, and attracted quite a bit of critical attention, going as far as to win the Grammy for best blues album. Finally, after all those years, the blues paid off, and the best thing about it was no need to compromise — well, maybe only a little bit, if «overproduction» counts as «compromise». Other than the backup girls and the guest stars, the sound is considerably beefed up by The Memphis Horns, and then there are two additional keyboardists and two more guitar players. But that is really not that different from the early records: Buddy always favored a big band sound, and he was always a «better with horns» kind of person. It's not his fault he was put on such a tight budget in the early Eighties.

Of course, the music here is not significantly better or worse than anything he recorded in the lean-hungry years. The songs are mostly old blues standards, occasionally interrupted by some contemporary writing (John Hiatt's ʽWhere Is The Next One Coming Fromʼ) or an old R&B cover or two (the inescapable ʽMustang Sallyʼ). The playing has plenty of energy and feeling, but not a lot of creativity — clearly, this here is not a man searching for new sounds, but a man un­loading his precious baggage, accumulated over the years, all in one place. Too many songs sound the same, and the arrangements never focus on outlining potential hooks: in just a few years, Clapton — who was quite likely motivated himself to do a straightahead blues album by Buddy's success — would really show the world how this thing can be done right with From The Cradle, where the inidividual touches on the songs and their sequencing made for an involving, surprise-filled journey. Damn Right, I've Got The Blues is not that kind of record.

And yet, it is a damn right good record all the same. It's as if this man here were given this one chance to do it right and succeed, and he totally throws himself in on that, throttling his guitar on every song and throwing a desperate vocal fit on the title track: "I can't win, cause I don't have a thing to lose" — just change that can't to a can and that's what it all is about. He is still being the hooligan of the blues, changing his tone from «clean» to «dirty» at will, embracing dissonance and off-rhythm playing when the heart calls for this, sending catcalls and wolf whistles from his six-string whenever his brain begins smouldering from too much excitement and complex, finger-flashing strings of notes become hard to concentrate upon. And he can be sentimental, throwing in a lengthy vocal-free serenade called ʽRememberin' Stevieʼ — of course, the best way to re­member Stevie is not through sheer sadness and melancholy, but through a mix of sadness with ferociously ass-kicking blueswailing of the ʽHave You Ever Loved A Womanʼ variety. (In fact, come to think of it, ʽRememberin' Stevieʼ is ʽHave You Ever Loved A Womanʼ with all the vo­cals safely stored over in the closet).

Although this is not the best album of Buddy's «comeback» period — more like a taste of even more exciting things to come — its sheer historic importance, in addition to general enjoyability, demands a thumbs up. I must say that I am somewhat dismayed by the guest star talents largely being wasted (unless you listen very hard, you won't even suspect that Knopfler, Clapton, and Beck are in the same building), but then it would certainly be impolite to subconsciously wish for them stealing the mat from under the guy's feet: they are quite expressly here to add to the mar­ket value, not to steal the black man's blues for the white man's gain one more time. Other than that, I couldn't complain of any unpredictable disappointments.

Budgie: Budgie

BUDGIE: BUDGIE (1971)

1) Guts; 2) Everything In My Heart; 3) The Author; 4) Nude Disintegrating Parachutist Woman; 5) Rape Of The Locks; 6) All Night Patrol; 7) You And I; 8) Homicidal Suicidal.

Apparently, the distance between Birmingham, England, and Cardiff, Wales is smaller than 120 miles — no wonder, then, that the stylistic difference between early Budgie and early Black Sab­bath is so tiny, your first and fully legitimate reaction should be: «Rip-off! Inferior rip-off!» Of course, this is actually better explainable by the fact that all these early albums shared the same producer, Rodger Bain; having just completed work on Sabbath's Master Of Reality, he clearly had little strength or desire left to search for a different sound when faced with the task of producing ano­ther hard rock-oriented bass/drums/guitar combo.

Indeed, when that low, rumbling, carnivorous seven-note riff of ʽGutsʼ breaks through the audio channels, then gets augmented by the rhythm section several bars later, then finally gets comple­ted with another, more high-pitched but even more mean and hungry second guitar overdub, dif­ferentiating this sound from classic Sabbath is downright impossible without prior knowledge. This is, in fact, precisely the same type of sonic buildup that Bain had just engineered on ʽSweet Leafʼ and a few other Sabbath songs. And since that sound was clearly in high demand at the time, we can hardly blame the band for embracing it. The question is: does it hold up? After all these years, is there a safe place for Budgie on your shelf next to Paranoid?

My own answer would be a definitive yes, because behind all the superficial similarities, Budgie are actually quite a different band from the Sabs. Although not exactly a «thinking man's heavy metal group», their heaviness was not so much due to their fascination with B-movies and the occult, but was rather inherited from the psychedelic excesses of Vanilla Fudge and Blue Cheer, to which they added a tongue-in-cheek attitude and a sense of irony that presaged and predicted Blue Öyster Cult. Oh, and let us not forget the thin, nerdy, bespectacled countenance of bass player and helium-voiced lead singer Burke Shelley — the earliest prototype for Mr. Geddy Lee, with whose four-letter band these guys also share occasional similarities (particularly if you think of Rush's first couple of albums, before they went all-out Ayn-randian on us).

None of that would matter, though — we could just keep treating these guys as second-rate imi­tators or pale predecessors of their betters — if their songs weren't so well-written. The key to enjoying Budgie is the same as the key to enjoying the Sabs: if the riffs are good, the songs are swell, but if the riffs are boring, the songs are shite. And in Tony Bourge, the band had the great luck to own a riffmeister who, while not quite on the same level with the other Tony (Iommi), still had a God-given knack for simple, meaningful, powerful note sequences delivered in delici­ously fuzzy «earthquake tones». Like the one in ʽGutsʼ, yes — a giant mutant mole burrowing through your back yard regardless of any obstacles. Just run for your lives.

Like Sabbath, Budgie prefer drawn-out, multi-part compositions, where slow parts alternate with bits of boogie (and, for what it's worth, they're actually better at boogieing than their occultist Birmingham brethren); in between we may find a few short acoustic «links», but they are really not necessary here — minute-long snippets of Burke Shelley romancing the band's potential girl fans before turning his full attention to the band's potential boy fans: "yes, you are everything in my heart", even repeated four times, is not nearly as convincing as the protagonist's psychosleazy visions of a ʽNude Disintegrating Parachutist Womanʼ, descending upon him on the clouds of yet another classic early stoner rock riff. That song, by the way, with its nearly nine-minute running length, is the clear central point of the album, and a fabulous ride it is — first in its hazy slow part, then in the lengthy speedy boogie escapade, probably influenced by the Amboy Dukes' ʽBaby Please Don't Goʼ (which they would later cover directly) and Deep Purple's ʽWring That Neckʼ in equal degree. Bourge gets a good solo on that part, but really Budgie sound their best when the guitar and the bass player are galloping along in complete unison — for one thing, Budgie could be really incredibly tight, far tighter than the Iommi/Butler/Ward combo ever got to be.

My only gripe is that at this early point, the Budgie formula is not quite ripe yet; they'd polish it to near-perfection on the next two albums, but here, they are sometimes too obsessed with the ly­rical message over the musical substance (ʽRape Of The Locksʼ, a stereotypical rant in defense of long hair as part of one's ego — heavy on accusations, low on A-level riffs), and have not yet learned to seamlessly integrate soft acoustic and heavy electric parts (ʽThe Authorʼ seems like a mere warm-up to similar numbers on Squawk). But in the face of classics like ʽGutsʼ, ʽParachu­tist Womanʼ, and ʽHomicidal Suicidalʼ, this is but a minor gripe.

Derivative as hell, Budgie is still instantly likeable — which is far more than I could say about similar «derivative» albums by modern day acts like Black Mountain, to whom you still have to warm up for quite some time. Just goes to show that you can't kill the vibe — back in 1971, there was this special something in the air that allowed you to put out a really solid album in somebody else's style (styles), even if you had no truly groundbreaking ideas of your own. Well, other than naming your grizzly Welsh band after a pet parakeet, of course. That alone could be worth a thumbs up, but fortunately, there's also a bunch of kick-ass songs here as a bonus.

Beat Happening: Dreamy

BEAT HAPPENING: DREAMY (1991)

1) Me Untamed; 2) Left Behind; 3) Hot Chocolate Boy; 4) I've Lost You; 5) Cry For A Shadow; 6) Collide; 7) Nancy Sin; 8) Fortune Cookie Prize; 9) Revolution Come And Gone; 10) Red Head Walking.

And the growth process goes on and on, and here is where we reach a stage where there is almost nothing left that could rekindle those old feelings of endearing cuteness. The primitive guitar melodies stay strictly primitive, while the lyrics strive towards increasingly meditative, introspec­tive, impressionistic poetry — which creates an unpleasant imbalance: you'd think that more so­phisticated wordplay exercises deserved a songwriting jolt as well, but no, these guys are just too lazy or too stubborn to come up with better melodies.

At least Heather gets to sing three whole songs, two of which sound exactly the same and one of which (ʽCollideʼ) sounds like an early Sonic Youth demo. Her twee-ness makes it easier to sit through Calvin's usual deconstructed surf-rock stuff, which shows no progress whatsoever from the previous album. Only one tune somehow stands out, both because it's longer than the rest and because it is the closest so far that they have come to amateur-emulating the Velvets: ʽRevolution Come And Goneʼ, a song not about any actual revolutions, but rather about a love-and-hate re­lationship with strong sexual implications — however, the rhythm guitar work and the inflection-free vocals are so mind-numbing that I'd rather have me 17 minutes of ʽSister Rayʼ than have to listen to yet another four minutes of this song.

In fact, fourth time around it is clear that the formula has finally «locked in», and that Dreamy is a proposition strictly for those who have already been converted. Yes, these songs are still catchy in the same way that early Beach Boy songs like ʽSurfin' Safariʼ were catchy, or Jan and Dean, or Link Wray, etc., but these are not freshly invented hooks (fans of early Sixties rock will probably find no new melodic moves whatsoever), and their execution leaves everything to be desired — so there's really nothing except for an abstract «lo-fi aesthetics» left to defend them. And there is nothing I can say about songs like ʽMe Untamedʼ, ʽHot Chocolate Boyʼ, or ʽNancy Sinʼ that I have not already said about their earlier tunes, so why say anything? My limited time subscription to this aesthetics ran out with Jamboree anyway.

Bottomline: if you are a fan of running once fresh, but eventually quite stale artistic jokes so deep into the ground that nobody except you can even see them anymore, Dreamy is there for you. I, however, feel more bored by its thirty minutes than if I'd had to spend all that time listening to a Grateful Dead jam. You get similar reactions from late period Ramones, but at least late period Ramones didn't have to harbor an irrational pride for shitty production, poor playing, and offkey singing. Which is too bad, because Calvin's lyrics are actually getting better — he's got quite a unique way of looking at relationships now, and with a slight change of aesthetics, I could see how something like ʽCry For A Shadowʼ might have been reworked into a really efficient, even therapeutic love song. Unfortunately, I cannot at all stomach this approach to «being different»: when your music makes Lou Reed seem like the Jascha Heifetz of electric guitar, you know you're taking huge risks, and I believe that, if you think in context, Dreamy is where they reach the end of the line. Thumbs down.

Buzzcocks: Buzzcocks

BUZZCOCKS: BUZZCOCKS (2003)

1) Jerk; 2) Keep On; 3) Wake Up Call; 4) Friends; 5) Driving You Insane; 6) Morning After; 7) Sick City Sometimes; 8) Stars; 9) Certain Move; 10) Lester Sands; 11) Up For The Crack; 12) Useless; 13) Don't Come Back; 14) Not Gonna Take It.

At this point, very few people should actually care already, but for formality's sake, let us admit that this is somewhat different. Entering the 21st century with a self-titled record (usually a sym­bol of «artistic rebooting»), Buzzcocks seem clearly influenced by the «neo-garage» Strokes-led explosion, and this prompts a serious change of style — harsher, louder, dirtier, angrier, and with­out a single trace of whatever made Modern so irritating for hardcore veterans (like the cautious and largely useless toying around with electronic instruments). There's a higher level of social awareness here, too, and far fewer happy pop choruses than there used to be.

If that alone doesn't sound like good news already... nothing else will, I'm afraid. These new songs really aren't much better written than whatever there was on the past three albums. If any­thing, the good news are also the bad news: there are some powerful, impressive bits of riffage here, but it's mostly second- and third-hand riffage borrowed from hard rock, metal, and punk legacy of the previous two decades. And I don't just mean routine stuff like the ʽBlitzkrieg Bopʼ chord sequence: ʽDriving You Insaneʼ, for instance, rips off Deep Purple's ʽHighway Starʼ rather blatantly, while a few other songs sneak inside Lemmy's backyard.

That said, original (and good) melodies on 21st century rock albums are scarcer than hen's teeth anyway, so the question about whether Buzzcocks is of any value should be rephrased thus — are they capable of breathing any sort of new / exciting / modern life into these old melodies? Of this, I am not sure. As an example, take ʽMorning Afterʼ. Its chorus is catchy, especially if you hear it one too many times (not a difficult task: "wake up, and face the morning after" is hammered in your brain at a very steady rate). But its emotional impact is less clear — is it anger? Is it an ex­hortation? Is it humor? So it's a song about... a hangover. How exactly does a furious punk-rock tempo and an anthemic refrain connect to the idea of a hangover? Normally, when somebody shouts at you to "wake up!" in a loud rock song, it's about changing the world, feeding starving African children, booting Republicans out of the office, or at least buying the collected works of William Blake and a pair of leather pants. What sort of a jerk would do that to you if you were the victim of a "switch to double brandies"? Something does not add up here.

And that's just one of the many examples — these songs, by all means, should get me all riled up, but they do not, because it is hard to believe that the guys really believe in this stuff themselves. The album gets caught in a deadly gap between seriousness and parody, and there's nothing I can do about that: the songs are perfectly listenable, but boring. Maybe they're angrier, but they don't seem to have any genuine reasons for being angry. Which is why I'd rather dump this and recom­mend you some Art Brut instead — at least those guys never pretended not to be tongue-in-cheek post-modernists. Or, if you want a really old punk band that still has it (or had it), take the Ado­lescents — their anger had never abated, and resulted in a series of late period albums that weren't too great, but far more empathetic than this stuff. Bottomline: if you want to toughen it up, that's fine by me, but first you gotta find out why exactly you're toughening it up. I mean, find a god­damn reason, like the Iraq War or Britney Spears or something. Complaining about hangovers? Gee, you guys must really be getting old.

The Byrds: Turn! Turn! Turn!

THE BYRDS: TURN! TURN! TURN! (1965)

1) Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is A Season); 2) It Won't Be Wrong; 3) Set You Free This Time; 4) Lay Down Your Weary Tune; 5) He Was A Friend Of Mine; 6) The World Turns All Around Her; 7) Satisfied Mind; 8) If You're Gone; 9) The Times They Are A-Changin'; 10) Wait And See; 11) Oh! Susannah.

The Byrds' second album is a classic example of «the sophomore slump» — rushing somewhat prematurely back into the comforts of the recording studio to capitalize upon the success of Mr. Tambourine Man, they had not the time, strength, or will to think about «where do we go from here?», and ended up with what is essentially a weaker twin brother of the debut. More Dylan; more covers; older songs from the bottom of the barrel; no creative advances whatsoever — if this band were of a slightly lesser caliber, the album would have been a resounding suckjob. For­tunately, even a subpar Byrds album circa 1965 was still a Byrds album.

If there is one single defining difference, it is that this record is far more objectively «folk-rock» than its predecessor. There are only two Dylan covers this time (another one, ʽIt's All Over Now Baby Blueʼ, was also recorded, but ultimately rejected), and all the included covers are, one way or another, «traditional» (in fact, I almost forgot initially that ʽLay Down Your Weary Tuneʼ was also a Dylan song — considering how it was directly influenced by some Scottish ballad). This is not necessarily a good thing — it means that, for a while at least, The Byrds were only too happy to fit in the image created for them by the musical press, and conform to stereotypes where their major idol, Mr. Zimmerman, would be only too happy to break them. Then again, it is easy to forget that even Mr. Zimmerman had to play his cards with care in the early years, and that his post-breakthrough album (The Times They Are A-Changin') was even more stereotypical than Turn! Turn! Turn!; so who could blame these lads? It takes some financial and public image stability to grow some clout.

Anyway, the real problem is not that this is «too much folk rock», but that there are no obvious standouts — the album flows smoothly and steadily, consistently pretty and engaging to a degree, but hardly cathartic or mind-blowing. The title track is the only one that has endured as a radio classic, due to its high ambitiousness — a folk-rock anthem for peace with connections to Pete Seeger and Ecclesiastes is, after all, no laughing matter, and it became the band's second and last #1 hit on the charts, not to mention King Solomon's greatest moment of glory. But I have never liked it as much as ʽMr. Tambourine Manʼ — the Byrds instinctively understood the seduction powers of the latter, and used their harmonic gift to bring them out in full, whereas ʽTurn! Turn! Turn!ʼ is a sermon that lacks intimacy, and though the verse melody ("a time to be born, a time to die...") is harmonious and formally beautiful, it does not connect on that deepest of deepest pos­sible levels. It's also overlong. Four minutes? Why wasn't ʽMr. Tambourine Manʼ four minutes? They could have included a whole other verse!

It is, however, observable that Gene Clark is maturing as a songwriter. Not deviating from the folk rock formula, he contributes three tunes that all go a step or two beyond the still relatively simplistic pop numbers on Mr. Tambourine Man. ʽThe World Turns All Around Herʼ is melo­dically and lyrically more complex than ʽI'll Feel A Whole Lot Betterʼ, to which it could be con­sidered a logical and ironic sequel (as the protagonist finds that, curious as it is, he is not feeling a whole lot better when she's gone). ʽSet You Free This Timeʼ seems simple and repetitive, but oh that vocal part — out of nowhere, you have this bittersweet, quivering-but-struggling vocal that has to be sustained through the long winding verse melody, and makes the song seem like the first truly serious «breakup song» of the young rock band era. My favorite is ʽIf You're Goneʼ, with another stunning vocal and... how the hell do they have that weird hum going on while Gene is singing? Sounds like vocal harmonies recorded from the bottom of a well or something. Do they have deep wells in Columbia Studios? In any case, I'm pretty damn sure that these effects on backing vocals had never been used previously, not by any major artist, at least.

(Two more Clark songs did not make it onto the LP, but are available as bonus tracks on the re­gular CD edition — ʽShe Don't Care About Timeʼ is another romantic classic, but ʽThe Day Walk (Never Before)ʼ seems largely to get by on the strength of copping the ʽSatisfactionʼ riff, and is noticeably inferior to the rest of Gene's songs, which is probably why it was left off; no need to suspect envy or sabotage on this particular occasion).

McGuinn still languishes far behind in comparison as a songwriter (his two originals here are fairly lackluster), but not as a visionary — the decision, for instance, to reinvent ʽHe Was A Friend Of Mineʼ as an obituary to JFK, though clearly naïve in retrospect, is one of those «why folk music still matters today» moves that kept the whole thing alive and vibrant at the time. And ʽOh! Susannahʼ, this time around, closes the album on a joke note, even if McGuinn couldn't really sing in joke mode to save his life, so there's a bizarre desperation to his vocals on the verses, you just want to lend him a helping hand or something.

In a way, it may be so that Turn! Turn! Turn! captures the essence of the early Byrds tighter than Mr. Tambourine Man — by purging away some of the more obvious Beatles influences, and focusing more sternly on the American side of business. But then, of course, you can always make the argument that by purging those influences they tipped the balance a bit too far in the «folk» direction of «folk rock», and this made the songs less memorable and the whole experi­ence less fun. (I know I could certainly have been made more happy with something like ʽIt's No Useʼ on this record). And ultimately, it's one of those mood swing things, I guess. The record clearly deserves a thumbs up and a solid place in the canon, but in the context of the times... well, just remember the distance between Help! and Rubber Soul, or between Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited, and against that top level background, the Byrds weren't really doing all that great in late '65. Fortunately, they had the intuition to understand it.

Brian Eno: Small Craft On A Milk Sea

BRIAN ENO: SMALL CRAFT ON A MILK SEA (2010)

1) Emerald And Lime; 2) Complex Heaven; 3) Small Craft On A Milk Sea; 4) Flint March; 5) Horse; 6) 2 Forms Of Anger; 7) Bone Jump; 8) Dust Shuffle; 9) Paleosonic; 10) Slow Ice, Old Moon; 11) Lesser Heaven; 12) Calcium Needles; 13) Emerald And Stone; 14) Written, Forgotten; 15) Late Anthropocene; 16) Invisible.

Chocolate milk sea, that is, if there is any significance in the album sleeve; but perhaps Eno thought that an extra word like that would make the whole thing seem too childish, particularly for an album that marked his formal entrance into the world of Warp Records — the sanctuary of Aphex Twin and other IDM geniuses. Not that Eno hadn't tried (mostly unsuccesfully) to tread on that turf for years now: he'd capitulated before the army of Modern Electronics as early as 1992, with Nerve Net, and there was hardly any reason to expect that, since he was now with Warp, this would somehow enable him to put out product that would be totally on the level.

Then again, in 2010, who the hell can tell what's on the level when it comes to electronica? It's more of a fluctuating fashion thing now than of anything having to do with indisputable break­throughs, and this works fine for Brian — where those Nerve Net-era pieces sounded tentative and half-hearted against contemporary cutting edge artists, in 2010 he already knows this stuff on the same level as decade-old formerly-cutting edge artists, and these albums seem far more self-assured and reasonably meaningful. And above all, Eno is still Eno, an artist with a love for well-organized beauty, rather than flashiness and coolness.

On this record, Brian is assisted by Leo Abrahams and Jon Hopkins (co-credited for all the tunes), the former mostly contributing guitar parts, the latter more commonly responsible for piano; this does not mean that this is not primarily an electronic record, but it is very «naturally textured» on plenty of the tracks, sometimes hearkening back to the days of collaboration with Harold Budd and sometimes to Daniel Lanois. The compositions themselves are split between «soft / atmos­pheric / ambient» and «hard / groove-based / IDM-ish», the latter mostly concentrated in the middle of the record, so that the whole milk sea journey seems to consist of three complex move­ments — the serene set-up, the shaky-stormy climax, and the dark-mystical denouement; this promises more spiritual excitement than you've had in years.

The opening pieces, in fact, feature quite a few lovely passages — ʽEmerald And Limeʼ is more like a 19th century romantic piano ballad with floating electronic overtones than mere sonic wall­paper; ʽComplex Heavenʼ places Heaven at an intersection between serenely Budd-ian minima­listic piano chords and an echoey stairway of acoustic guitar notes, while Eno's synth clouds and winds occupy all empty space; and the title track has probably the most chime-dependent imper­sonation of a milk sea that you've ever heard (not that it sounds much like a craft crossing a sea, but perhaps milk seas behave in their own milky ways?).

Once the synthesized drums kick in and we find ourselves in techno / house territory, though, things get predictably less seductive — this is not Eno's forte, and his collaborators aren't exactly making much of a mark on such rump-shaking tracks as ʽBone Jumpʼ or ʽDust Shuffleʼ, either. It's all just one forgettable IDM panorama after another. ʽPaleosonicʼ tries to make a difference by throwing in bits of finger-flashing jazz-fusion guitar solos (!), but it's more like a «let's be dif­ferent» post-modern trick than a sincere, well-placed tribute to Alan Holdsworth.

On the other hand, if you think of that 12-minute sequence as a slightly overextended bookmark, separating the warm atmospherics of the album's start from the cold atmospherics of its finish, then it's not that bad — beginning with ʽSlow Ice, Old Moonʼ, we enter familiar, but still haun­ting territory, where spirits of black nights, cold winds, subterranean caverns, and aquatic depths come back to do their, you know, spiritual schtick. Our small craft makes it through the calm, but subtly threatening zephyrs of ʽLesser Heavenʼ, wobbles through the weird wind-and-bone rattle of ʽCalcium Needlesʼ, and eventually ends up in the age of ʽLate Anthropoceneʼ, which, accor­ding to Eno's musical philosophy of humanity, sounds like subtle organic processes within a well-isolated cocoon — I'm not sure if Eugene Stoermer, who allegedly invented the term, would agree with this futuristic interpretation, but we'll just have to come back in a couple thousand years and see whether Eno was right after all.

On the whole, this might just be the best instrumental Eno album since Apollo — not as «shock-oriented» as Thursday Afternoon or Neroli, not as catch-up-with-the-times-oriented as Nerve Net, not as static as Shutov Assembly, not as filler-clogged as Drawn From Life, etc. It is not, and probably could not be, formally «innovative», but it is still a fresh update on Eno's concep­tion of the musical form, and it's got enough pure loveliness to just enjoy it out of any particular context. The journey continues, even if you have to invent yourself a milk sea to keep it challen­ging and imaginative.

The Butterfield Blues Band: The Resurrection Of Pigboy Crabshaw

THE BUTTERFIELD BLUES BAND: THE RESURRECTION OF PIGBOY CRABSHAW (1967)

1) One More Heartache; 2) Driftin' And Driftin'; 3) Pity The Fool; 4) Born Under A Bad Sign; 5) Run Out Of Time; 6) Double Trouble; 7) Drivin' Wheel; 8) Droppin' Out; 9) Tollin' Bells.

If I ever had a nickname like «Pigboy Crabshaw», I'd probably have to join the Church in re­pentance, but Elvin Bishop seemed okay with it, and his pals in the band liked it so much that with the departure of Bloomfield they put it in their album title to commemorate the beginning of Bishop's brief rule as the Butterfield Blues Band's only guitar player. Brief and, may I add, some­what inessential. Elvin was neither the band's frontman nor its stuntman — he just played that guitar and never seemed to think all that much about leaving his mark on the world.

It would be cool as hell for me to say something important like «There was so much more to the original Butterfield Blues Band than Mike Bloomfield», and follow it up by saying «and this is effectively shown on the band's third album, where they effortlessly demonstrate how they can get by without Mike's talents», and then justify this further by pointing out that «Bloomfield was, after all, 50% talent and 50% showman flash — without him, Butterfield, Bishop, and Co. are finally able to concentrate directly on the music and sacrifice their egos for the benefit of the mu­sic». But hey, what can I do? All said and done, I'm a fan of egos. And the most successful sacri­ficers of egos are, in a way, the biggest egotists of them all — like J. J. Cale, for instance.

The Resurrection Of Pigboy Crabshaw is just a regular electric blues album now, abandoning all the genre-crossing, tradition-marrying pretense of East-West. To «compensate» for Bloom­field's departure, Paul brings in a whole new brass section — a good one, to be sure, including none other than the soon-to-be-legendary David Sanborn on alto sax; but the big band approach to their source material is neither new nor revelatory. Furthermore, the album title seems to sug­gest that previously, Bishop's talents were at the least undervalued and underused, and that now is his chance to shine; but the guitar parts are very subdued throughout the album, and when it is over, it will most likely be remembered as a sonic field dominated by Butterfield's harmonica and the brass section, never the guitar. And maybe it's logically cool, but most of the arrangements leave me cold, bored, and almost amazed that they would dare offer something like this in the middle of 1967 — what with Cream and Hendrix setting completely new standards.

The record consists almost entirely of covers, with just two short Butterfield originals for an ex­cuse: ʽRun Out Of Timeʼ, co-written with sax player Gene Dinwiddie, is a playful fast R&B groove ruled by nimble brass flourishes, but it fades out way before it could evolve into anything mind-blowing; and ʽDroppin' Outʼ, co-written with songwriter Tucker Zimmerman, is... a playful fast R&B groove ruled by nimble brass flourishes? Okay, it's soulful enough, but Butterfield is still unconvincing and unexceptional as a vocalist.

The covers are hardly any more exciting — particularly the unterminable, mindnumbingly slow ʽDriftin' And Driftin'ʼ, whose tortoise tempo and thick brass layers attempt to build up an atmos­phere of solemnity, but don't do much in that respect other than the fact of their existence. Butter­field and Bishop do deliver a couple of harmonica and guitar solos where it seems like they are really trying, but by the time they get around to them, the song has already long since outlived its usefulness. ʽDouble Troubleʼ is unworthy of both the shorter, far more focused and ten times as bleeding Otis Rush original and a later Dire Straits-style reinvention by Eric Clapton; ʽBorn Under A Bad Signʼ is totally expendable in between the Albert King original and the grizzly Cream cover; and the list may be continued.

Bottomline is that this record, while not stereotypically «bad», is just very, very boring. You have to have a really subtle appreciation for Butterfield, one that goes deep beyond the surface and maybe even adds an imaginary touch or two, or a very rigid, academic type of respect for electric blues to truly enjoy The Resurrection as something above background music; and I have neither, so I just have to rate it as a thumbs down. Especially in the overall context of 1967, when, you know, it was almost shameful to release a record of such profound mediocrity.

Buddy Guy: D.J. Play My Blues

BUDDY GUY: D.J. PLAY MY BLUES (1982)

1) Girl You're Nice And Clean; 2) Dedication To The Late T-Bone Walker; 3) Good News; 4) Blues At My Baby's House; 5) She Suits Me To A T; 6) D.J. Play My Blues; 7) Just Teasin'; 8) All Your Love; 9) The Garbage Man Blues; 10) Mellow Down.

The last of these semi-obscure Buddy Guy albums before he once again went into hiatus is usual­ly listed as having been recorded in Chicago in December 1981 and released on the JSP label in 1982; the 10-track edition is a 1987 CD reissue that originally went under the title of Complete DJ Play My Blues Sessions. Featuring Mike Morrison on bass, Ray Allison on drums, and se­cond guitarist Doug Williams, this is once again a stark, uncompromising affair that completely refuses to recognize or respect the progressive advancement of the musical world — in fact, if anything, it's a «regressive» album on Buddy's own terms, since it pretty much abandons the cool-tone-based personality of Breaking Out and returns to a far more standard, conservative electric blues paradigm.

The title track is a good indication of what's at stake — searching for a good pretext to enter one of his blue moods, Buddy finds a suitable one in the fact that blues went out of fashion, so the song, instead of pleading for baby to come home, as it normally should, pleads for Mr. D.J. to play some T-Bone Walker (instead of all that New Wave crap, one has to assume). Of course, the D.J. has no answer to that, so there's nothing left to do but to play some T-Bone Walker on one's own (ʽDedicationʼ, which is indeed played very much in classic T-Bone Walker style, even if Buddy never attaches as much importance to each individual note as the late T-Bone did — the speed curse hits the man even in slow mode).

A somewhat shadier side of said conservatism is the sheer amount of «mutated» songs by classic artists that Buddy includes here in only very slightly modified versions — most likely, so that he can get his own songwriting credits (on an album that wouldn't sell anyway, but I guess that when you're so down on your luck, every penny counts). For instance, Otis Rush' ʽAll Your Love (I Miss Loving)ʼ becomes simply ʽAll Your Loveʼ; Little Walter's ʽMellow Down Easyʼ becomes simply ʽMellow Downʼ; ʽShe Suits Me To A Tʼ is an Elmore James number with new lyrics; and ʽGood Newsʼ is a strange hybrid of ʽMemphis Tennesseeʼ (melody), ʽGood Rockin' Tonightʼ (lyrics) and an ad-libbed mish-mash of old rock'n'roll clichés.

People interested in musical family ties should check out ʽThe Garbage Man Bluesʼ, a duet be­tween Buddy and his brother Phil Guy, who takes lead vocals and adds his own guitar leads — as a singer, his talents are quite comparable to Buddy's, but as a guitarist, this is just nepotism in action. Overall, there's nothing here to make the record stand out from the average pool of pro­fessional electric blues-rock, and while I fully concur with Buddy's pleading on the whole, he does not exactly build as much of a strong case for himself here as he provides a good pretext for brushing the dust off all those T-Bone, Elmore, Otis, and Little Walter records to which D.J. Play My Blues is nothing but a humble, uninventive tribute.

Adele: 25

ADELE: 25 (2015)

1) Hello; 2) Send My Love (To Your New Lover); 3) I Miss You; 4) When We Were Young; 5) Remedy; 6) Water Under The Bridge; 7) River Lea; 8) Love In The Dark; 9) Million Years Ago; 10) All I Ask; 11) Sweetest Devotion.

"Hello. It's me. I was wondering if after all these years you'd like to meet, to go over everything". Kind of a humble start for a mega-star whose millions of fans have been dying for years to see just where Adele's journey of spiritual growth would take her next. And if press release stuff and Wikipedia rumors have anything to them, this journey was actually in danger of coming to a premature end — she had expressed a desire for early retirement, either due to pressures of family life or because she had an inclination that, perhaps, 21 had her at the top of her game and that it would have been so much cooler to go out on top.

And yes, it would. Most good stories in the 21st century tend to have crappy sequels, and with 25, our little fairy tale, too, seems to have exhausted the limits of good taste and creativity and turn into its own crooked mirror image. Honestly, I was not expecting that any follow-up to 21 could match the cohesive greatness of that record — but neither was I expecting such a direct, express jet trip to Crapsville. And what makes matters so much worse is that 21, like it or not, had a great educational value: through those songs, millions of people had access to solid melodies, real soul, and genuine instrumentation, not to mention a chance to get interested in Time Out Of Mind and Disintegration. For a brief moment out there, it seemed like here was a really strong-willed, independent woman artist that could lead the masses — or even, with a stroke of luck, dictate her own terms to the corporate music industry.

But no dice. Enter 25, a thoroughly disappointing, bland, formulaic record of big «adult contem­porary» ballads, produced by no less than eleven different producers, co-written by Adele with no less than the same number of different songwriters, and featuring no real spiritual growth what­soever. The only new emotional strand is that of nostalgia and forgiveness — the Adele of 21 seemed preoccupied with her current troubles, the Adele of 25 seems to be looking for artistic in­spiration largely in past troubles ("they say that time's supposed to heal you, but I ain't done much healing"); no wonder, since it does not look like she'd had a lot of troubles for the previous four years. A happy marriage, a son, a well-secured financial present and future, plenty of charity work — no wonder that now, in order to keep up the broken-hearted image, she has to turn her mind back on the past.

And it does not work. We could, of course, put most of the blame on the producers, who did their best to dress all of these melodies in the most generic rhythms and sonic textures; but I believe that no one is more to blame than Adele herself, who just so clearly did not need to put out this album — it is so utterly unnatural, so strenuously pushed into unnecessary existence, that the only frickin' question is: WHY? Goddammit, if you are so obviously content with your life, why do you consider yourself obligated to put out a collection of dark, morose, monotonous ballads with conventional frameworks and clichéd hooks (or «non-hooks»)? Just because you are «Adele, the Queen of the Dark Heart-Tug?» and people would not buy your records if you preferred to cover ʽBanana Boat Songʼ instead?

The opening piano chords of ʽHelloʼ may aspire to genius simplicity, but I wonder just how many by-the-book balladeers have already made my ears insensitive to their effect — and the «depth» that opens up when the powerhouse chorus hits you is phoney, a well-rehearsed production trick more than a genuine reflection of one's state of mind. By the time the song kicks into full gear, electronic hums and drum machines and cavernous echoes dominating the waves, you don't seem to remember the difference between Adele and Celine Dion any more. Is this it, then? That «maturity» by the age of 25 means completing your transformation into a generic «Diva»?

It does not get much better when the songs get upbeat, though. ʽSend My Loveʼ starts out with a quiet, but well-audible "just the guitar!" instruction, which turns out to be a ruse — fairly soon, we get a trip-hop backing track of the teenybopper variety, aerobic backing vocals à la Beyonce, and an annoying synthetic chorus — "we gotta let go of all of our ghosts, we both know we ain't kids no more", on a track that has the most kiddyish arrangement of 'em all. No wonder, that, since it was co-written with Max «I Fucked 'Em All, Figuratively Speaking» Martin, the man to whom you turn when Mephistopheles is unable to hold up his end of the bargain.

There is only one song on the entire album, as far as I'm concerned, that strives to break out of the plastic carcass — the gospel-influenced ʽRiver Leaʼ, produced by and co-written with Danger Mouse; although the arrangement is still spoiled by a robotic rhythm section, the organ adds a nice touch, the chorus is catchy, and the main hook is wond'rously found, with Adele hitting a compassionate note on the "blame it on the River Lea, the River Lea..." passage. Which makes me wonder if, at this point, she couldn't have made a fine 21st century Mahalia Jackson — at least singing about going back to the river seems to bring out the human in her far more effective­ly than trying to rile herself over some forgotten past lovers.

Alas, one such bit of success does nothing to alleviate the «dull aching pain» from listening to one forgettable ballad after another — sometimes exacerbated when the song in question is ʽMillion Years Agoʼ, a truly awful acoustic «tear-jerker» that sounds as if it's been pulled directly from one of those whip-out-yer-hanky Euro musicals like Notre Dame De Paris: listening to Adele crooning "I miss the air, I miss my friends, I miss my mother, I miss it when life was a party to be thrown..." just makes me cringe in its absolutely cheap corniness.

How the heck did this happen? How and when and why did the master songwriter and performer of 21 turn into this replaceable Kelly Clarkson-meets-Vanessa Carlton type plastic doll? Sure, we still have «The Voice», but it's obviously not just the voice that made 21 such an outstanding achievement. My natural guess is simply that the artist... has nothing more to say. That's just it. She said what she had to say — she made a wise decision that she would not be saying any more — she was forced to come back because she has no other profession, because the fans and the record executives cry for more, she placed herself in the hands of studio pros, she wrote those songs without properly feeling them, she delivered them because that was what she was expected to do. Oh, and she even got plenty of rave reviews — «style instead of substance» is all the rage nowadays, and when you're a big star with a properly run publicity campaign, naturally there'll be plenty of people falling over your lyrical clichés and thrice rehashed Serious Chords. But hey, you can always rely on good old Only Solitaire to cut the crap.

In other words, here is one more case of an artist metamorphosing into a pseudo-artistic machine. If your reaction is, "well, she was never all that good anyway", I respectfully disagree: 19 was nice and human, warts and all, and 21 was as close to a genuine, sincere masterpiece as commer­cially-oriented «serious pop music» ever gets. But this — this is as good a pretext as any to change that old adage of «never trust anybody over thirty» to «never trust anybody over twenty five», as more and more artists these days flash by like the one-album wonders (two-album won­ders at best) they are. Oh sure, there's always some fickle hope that the next album (31, if that particular arithmetic progression continues to be respected?) will make things right, but who wants to spend the next six years in fickle hopes? Thumbs down, case closed.