Blossom Toes: We Are Ever So Clean

BLOSSOM TOES: WE ARE EVER SO CLEAN (1967)

1) Look At Me I'm You; 2) I'll Be Late For Tea; 3) Remarkable Saga Of The Frozen Dog; 4) Telegram Tuesday; 5) Love Is; 6) What's It For; 7) People Of The Royal Parks; 8) What On Earth; 9) Mrs. Murphy's Budgerigar; 10) I Will Bring You This And That; 11) Mister Watchmaker; 12) When The Alarm Clock Rings; 13) The Intrepid Balloonist's Handbook Vol. 1; 14) You; 15) Track For Speedy Freaks Or Instant LP Digest.

How many times have we heard the term «Sgt. Pepper rip-off» applied to album so-and-so, only to put it on and understand that «being influenced by Sgt. Pepper» or even «being recorded in the era of Sgt. Pepper» would be a more honorable definition? The truth is that real «rip-offs» of Sgt. Pepper, as a rule, have not survived — be it the Stones, the Hollies, the Moody Blues, the Bee Gees, Procol Harum, or any other band of any notoriety that we still remember as having produced LPs in 1967, each of them had their own voice, with Sgt. Pepper spurring them on to flash it rather than just serving as a role model that had to be imitated throughout.

From that point of view, I've always been interested in actually hearing a «genuine» Sgt. Pepper rip-off — just for curiosity's sake: were there really any bands who'd slobber so much at the sanctuary of the Beatles to try and mime to all of their production techniques and melodic lan­guage elements? If there were any such albums, they must have quickly sunk to the bottom of the ridicule pit, not least because originality and stylistic autonomy were far more valued in 1967 than they are today. Yet out of everything that I have heard so far, it is this quirky debut album by the Blossom Toes that arguably comes closest to winning first prize.

Indeed, the Blossom Toes came together in early 1967, just as the Beatles were putting the final touches on Sgt. Pepper, and were immediately assigned to Giorgio Gomelsky's appropriately titled «Marmalade Records» label. The LP that the band recorded was announced in Melody Maker as «Giorgio Gomelsky's Lonely Hearts Club Band» — and for once, the label was perfect­ly accurate: not because the album was as good as Sgt. Pepper, but because it basically used Sgt. Pepper (and a bit of Revolver) as its blueprint.

The two main songwriters in the band were Brian Godding and Jim Cregan, both of them singing and playing guitars, with some additional writing contributions from drummer Kevin Westlake and maestro Gomelsky himself (only bass player Brian Belshaw is left as the poor schmuck with no songwriting royalties whatsoever). To be fair, Godding and Cregan are not exactly gene-by-gene projections of Lennon and McCartney. Lyrically and atmospherically, they also take a lot of clues from the Kinks — in fact, We Are Ever So Clean, with its local imagery and whimsical ideas that are part-time redcoat marching music and part-time Mary Poppins, is such a quintes­sentially British album that its lack of popularity outside the UK is quite easy to explain (a simi­lar story later happened to The Cheerful Insanity Of Giles, Giles & Fripp).

It is in their electic approach to things and in their «anything-goes» approach to arrangements that the Sgt. Pepper idolatry really shows up. Backward tapes? Eastern-tinged vocal harmonies? Piccolo trumpet solos? Echo, fuzz, overkill overdubbing? The general feel of a freaky circus show? It's all here, even including a frenetic one-minute «recapitulation», at the exact same time, of all of the album's themes at the end. Yes, the lads are clever enough so as not to steal anything outright (the only time I caught them redhanded was during the call-and-response psychedelic harmonies at the fade-out of ʽWhat On Earthʼ — that trick is lifted directly from ʽShe Said She Saidʼ), but on the whole, there is no mistake: We Are Ever So Clean is a self-conscious, amusingly arrogant attempt to outplay the Beatles at their own game by raising the stakes in such departments as «extravagance», «absurdity», «eccentricity», and «vaudeville».

The good news is that the music really sounds as unpredictable, crazy, and all over the place as that description suggests. The bad news is that the album has no real substance: it is daring and risky, but what exactly is being gained by these risks remains unclear. Song after song, the Blos­som Toes are challenging our imagination, and I don't know about yours, but mine rather quickly gets stumped and disconcerted. Where the Beatles and the Kinks, even at their worst, were sort of goal-oriented and evocative, songs like ʽI'll Be Late For Teaʼ, even despite having the word tea in the title, are, instead, rather befuddling. "Look at me I'm you! Look at me I'm you!" goes the pounding chorus to the lead-in track, but it's not as if the decisiveness of that declaration were particularly convincing: not only am I perfectly sure that I am not any of the lead singers in the Blossom Toes, but I even have a hard time finding out what the Blossom Toes are as such.

Which is not to say that We Are Ever So Clean is not bizarrely fascinating in much the same way in which, say, the Animal Collective have re-defined «bizarre fascination» in the 21st cen­tury. If anything, there is simply so much going on here that, by probabilistic reasoning, the brain is bound to explode in a flash of white lightning sooner or later. Maybe it is not very likely to happen on catchy kiddie anthems like ʽRemarkable Saga Of The Frozen Dogʼ, but it just might come to pass on the weirdly orchestrated psychedelic love ballad ʽLove Isʼ, or on ʽPeople Of The Royal Parksʼ, which starts off like your average Kinks or Small Faces-style British march and then threatens to fall apart in a different manner every thirty seconds, or on the accordeon-led mini-saga of ʽIntrepid Balloonist's Handbookʼ, or anywhere else, in fact.

Unfortunately, neither Godding nor Cregan happened to have the true melodic genius of a Len­non, or a McCartney, or a Ray Davies, and ultimately, these songs may be «stunning», but they are not very memorable, except where the songwriters are relying on music hall clichés, usually the same ones that had already been exploited much better by said McCartney or said Ray Davies (or would be exploited — truth be told, I will take the simplistic melodic potential of a single ʽYour Mother Should Knowʼ over all the intricacies of We Are Ever So Clean). Or, if we wish to avoid mentioning the word «genius», it may simply be so that Godding and Cregan are only focused on being eccentric and whimsical, rather than trying to pack some deep, genuine emo­tion into the psychedelic box. Sgt. Pepper, after all, puts you, the listener, on a distant fantasy planet; the Blossom Toes hit much closer to their UK homeland, but reduce it to a rather clownish per­spective. We Are Ever So Clean attempts to be a little bit of everything, but in the end, is neither too deep, nor too funny, nor too beautiful, nor too evocative.

A thumbs up all the same, because I heartily recommend getting acquainted with this quaint little artefact — first, you might see something in it that I do not, and second, the workmanship is admirable per se, whether it contains substance or does not. Just the very sound that they get going, all of those layers of instrumentation, it actually feels very «modern»: dozens of 21st cen­tury retro-oriented indie-pop bands continue to milk this baroque whimsy tit, except that these bands aren't actually living in the middle of it, whereas the Blossom Toes are «the real authentic thing» from one of the greatest years in the history of popular music. At the very least, it was enough to warrant a recent CD reissue with a heapload of bonus tracks (outtakes, B-sides, live and BBC performances etc.), even including a live rendition of Bob Dylan's ʽI'll Be Your Baby Tonightʼ from early 1968 or so — by which time, so it seems, the roots-rock revolution was already catching up with the band.

Agnetha Fältskog: Wrap Your Arms Around Me

AGNETHA FÄLTSKOG: WRAP YOUR ARMS AROUND ME (1983)

1) The Heat Is On; 2) Can't Shake Loose; 3) Shame; 4) Stay; 5) Once Burned, Twice Shy; 6) Mr. Persuasion; 7) Wrap Your Arms Around Me; 8) To Love; 9) I Wish Tonight Could Last Forever; 9) Man; 10) Take Good Care Of Your Children; 11) Stand By My Side.

To be perfectly precise, the solo career of Agnetha Fältskog began as early as 1968 (yes, let us not forget that ABBA were ultimately another product of the late Sixties), and she had released a whoppin' four solo LPs before submerging her personality in ABBA's collective identity. From what I have heard, those records had their hits and misses, but since I am really not interested in carrying out a highly detailed survey of everything that the ABBA people did on their own, and also since most of these records were really only targeted at the local Swedish market, we will concentrate on the post-ABBA, internationally oriented products only.

People who are not major fans of the band, and are only willing to tolerate them for their melodic skills, but cringe at the production values, general aura, and visual image, will probably fall back in horror at the very idea of looking into the post-ABBA solo careers of any of its members, let alone the girls, who never did anything but sing and dance. To some extent, they may be right — but in reality, the worst thing about the international solo careers of both Agnetha and Frida is that they had the bad luck to sprout in the Eighties, a pretty rotten decade for commercial pop in general. On the other hand, both ladies had solid musical tastes, and knew well enough what it is that separates a well-written and creatively performed song from a hackjob.

Consider this: Agnetha's first post-ABBA LP was produced by Mike Chapman, the driving force behind such cheeseball artists as Sweet, Smokie, and Suzi Quatro, but also responsible for such late-1970s pop classics as Blondie's Parallel Lines and The Knack's debut — just the sort of guy you'd want by your side in order to put the magic touch on a bunch of catchy, harmless pop songs. And songwriting is all over the place: Agnetha herself takes credit for one song only (ʽManʼ), collecting «tributes» from all sorts of collaborators, the best known of whom is probably Russ Ballard (of Argent fame), and making sure that it does not all sound like ABBA. In fact, very few songs here sound like ABBA.

The big hit was ʽThe Heat Is Onʼ, which is a little surprising, considering that it was not all that differently arranged and sung from the original 1979 version by Noosha Fox — talk about the importance of public image and proper promotion, although Chapman's production does shed some of the disco-era gloss and goes instead for a slightly Latin-influenced carnivalesque atmo­sphere, which is kind of appropriate for a hedonistic tune about proper summer relaxation. Still catchy after all these years, I guess, though admittedly way too shallow even for the ABBA level; but if you have any feeling for «party music» at all, this one's for you.

Diversity is the key, though, as the party spirit of ʽHeatʼ is immediately followed by the slightly paranoid spirit of the Ballard-penned ʽCan't Shake Looseʼ, which even managed to chart in the generally ABBA-unfriendly United States. Its electronic production dates it fairly accurately, but the vocal melody is undeniably catchy, and the subject matter (unbeatable sexual attraction) has always been right up Agnetha's alley anyway. Melodic slide guitar serves as a solid heartstring-tugger on the dark pop of ʽOnce Burned, Twice Shyʼ; ʽMr. Persuasionʼ is a spot-on retro Motown imitation, with Agnetha doing a convincingly sexy imitation of young Diana Ross; and the pop reggae rhythms of ʽTake Good Care Of Your Childrenʼ also lay the foundation for a much better song than could be thought of based on the title — most such songs are just sappy crap, but here the bluesy harmonica, the occasional odd police whistle, and the deep background vocals add a pinch of suspense and even impending danger.

The straightforward ballads are a different kind of story: lacking the genius hooks of ABBA composers, they always run the risk of being little other than generic mush. The title track, written by Chapman himself, is way too deep in «Disney princess» territory; its vocal melody, journeying across a tricky, challenging path, has some merit, but should have been supported by something other than the old predictable «strings of paradise». Agnetha's own ʽManʼ is a sincere attempt to write something in the old ABBA style, and some of the vocal moves show that it may have been unfair for Benny and Björn not to ever let the girls partage of the songwriting credits; but the accompanying music, again, is completely non-descript.

Still, on the whole this is a pleasant surprise. Stereotypical male chauvinist thinking tends to regard Agnetha as the «dumb blonde» and Frida as the «risky redhead», and it is true that, artisti­cally, Frida's solo debut was a little bit more intriguing, but the question here is not whether these albums show you the meaning of life — the question is whether you are guaranteed to fall asleep on the third song, as it happens with so much generic pop muzak, and Wrap Your Arms Around Me, despite its generally uneven quality, is still very far from what I'd call a typically boring album. Besides, if you get the deluxe edition, one of the bonus tracks is ʽIt's So Nice To Be Richʼ, a tune recorded for a 1983 Swedish movie that has to count as one of the most hila­riously campy things to ever come out of the whole ABBA camp (sort of a spiritual successor to ʽMoney Money Moneyʼ, only adapted to the Eighties' style). Thumbs up, definitely.

Black Box Recorder: England Made Me

BLACK BOX RECORDER: ENGLAND MADE ME (1998)

1) Girl Singing In The Wreckage; 2) England Made Me; 3) New Baby Boom; 4) It's Only The End Of The World; 5) Ideal Home; 6) Child Psychology; 7) I. C. One Female; 8) Up Town Top Ranking; 9) Swinging; 10) Kidnapping An Heiress; 11) Hated Sunday.

One hell of a fun ride would be playing this album back-to-back with Springsteen's Born In The USA — another album that describes the uneasy relationship between the protagonist and his home country, but in a diametrically opposite manner. As someone born in the USA, the Boss is rowdy, hot, dynamic, willing to go to extremes in any given emotional state. As someone made by England, Sarah Nixey is... frozen. Black Box Recorder? More like Ice Box Recorder, if you ask me. With cockle shells and silver bells to boot.

Interestingly enough, the Black Box Recorder project was started up by Luke Haines before his main band, The Auteurs, folded its wings and went to sleep. In its deepest essence, the project pursued the same goals — a cynical, melancholic deconstruction of any life-asserting values that the surrounding society and culture might contain — but the execution was very different. All the songs were co-written by Haines with John Moore, formerly the drummer and guitarist for The Jesus And Mary Chain, and all the lead vocals were female, handled by the abovementioned Sarah Nixey, formerly a nobody, but as a member of Black Box Recorder — one of the most haunting figures in British indie pop. Consequently, Black Box Recorder explored a «softer», subtler, less rock-based approach than The Auteurs, and its combination of ingredients, even if it is not necessarily «better» than The Auteurs, seems much more unique.

The key ingredient of England Made Me are the vocal melodies that Luke and John are feeding to Sarah — and her interpretation of these melodies. Unlike, say, Beth Gibbons of Portishead, who typically sings out of a bathtub with razor blades fastened to her wrists, Sarah never lets her slightly childlike voice quiver with extreme emotion. Instead, she delivers those lyrics, usually full of gruesome, morbid, or cynically bittersweet imagery (the most often quoted line is the chorus to ʽChild Psychologyʼ — "life is unfair, kill yourself or get over it"), like a formerly sweet and delicate person that, after some particularly dreadful trauma, has pretty much lost all feeling, or fallen in an entranced state. Pinned to a background of quietly plucked guitars, inobtrusive backing vocals, occasional chimes and synthesizer strings, it makes for a great combination: simple, immediately hitting all the right nerve centers, and with no direct analogies.

The price to pay for this is monotonousness: the level of variation in between these 11 tunes is fairly low. But the tunes themselves are short, and each one has a little something going on to hook your attention, be it the decisiveness with which Sarah states that "my 18th birthday, I'll die of boredom" (ʽGirl Singing In The Wreckageʼ), or the gruesome conclusiveness of her "the kid is gone, he's not my son" (ʽNew Baby Boomʼ), or the freezing, ironically consolating tone of her "it's only the end of the world..." (meaning that the worst is yet to come, after all), or the depres­sing blues picking on ʽKidnapping An Heiressʼ, which leaves no hope for humanity even before the first bit of lyrics comes along.

The true wonder of England Made Me, though, is that it is one of those albums that does not really make you want to kill yourself — but rather to get over it. It wears its mourning clothes quite casually and stoically, neither commanding the listener to fight this gloom (because it can­not be fought against) nor, like Robert Smith or the aforementioned Beth Gibbons, inviting you to masochisti­cally gloat over it. It's only the end of the world — get it? It's not that serious. It just happens. One of the key songs, ʽIdeal Homeʼ, presents you with this mystical claustrophobic perfection ("in an ideal home, everything's safe... in an ideal home, nothing you do can go wrong..."), contrasting it with "miserable songs from the house next door, perhaps they're plan­ning to end it all" — you can take it as a blunt allegory of social segregation, of course, but you can also view it as a hymn to spiritual isolationism: the «ideal home» is a metaphor for simply locking out all feeling and barricading yourself from all the evils, disappointments, and different degrees of shit going on all over the world — an urge that may not be completely alien to quite a few of us, right? Especially when the ʽIdeal Homeʼ is set to such lovely music.

This is, of course, the quintessence of Luke Haines, the most cool-headed guy ever to write and sing about the world's evils, but Sarah here is a more perfect vehicle for his ideas than he himself ever was, and England Made Me, despite — or due to — painting a rather unsavory picture of England as a place where people trap spiders underneath glass and kill strangers at railway sta­tions just because people love a good murder mystery, is one of his finest contributions to the world of intelligent pop music. A humble masterpiece that deserves to be much better known, so here's hoping that this enthusiastic thumbs up might help it some.

Bettie Serveert: Oh, Mayhem!

BETTIE SERVEERT: OH, MAYHEM! (2013)

1) Shake-Her; 2) Mayhem; 3) Sad Dog; 4) Had2BYou; 5) Tuf Skin; 6) Monogamous; 7) Receiver; 8) LoserTrack; 9) iPromise; 10) D.I.Y.

Oh, bother. All of a sudden and out of the blue, Bettie Serveert come out with yet another LP that gets a whoppin' three reviews on RYM and a mind-blowing four reviews on Amazon (as com­pared to, say, 523 for Rihanna's latest). And guess what? They have released their best record ever, and nobody gives a shit. That's what justice is all about.

So what's the secret, and what's the deal? Nothing could be simpler: Oh, Mayhem! is the first album in Bettie Serveert's catalog that is completely, from top to bottom, written according to the principle «pop music first, indie philosophy later». It's not that the lyrics are dumbed down or anything — it's just that guitar hooks, symmetric melodic resolutions, and carefully thought out vocal modulation consistently takes precedence over the «message», so that not even the faintest grasp of English is required to fully enjoy this stuff. The Beatles and Blondie have ushered out Lou Reed and Neil Young as primary inspiration, and while this may have pissed off some of the old guard, yearning for another Palomine, I actually view this as a self-imposed challenge: can we, after all these years, carve out a solid, non-nonsense «power pop» album or can't we?

One listen to ʽShake-Herʼ should be enough to inspire confidence. Visser's slightly surf-inspired fuzz riff, Carol's intentionally de-personalized vocals, locked in a carefully overproduced despe­rate groove, that "yada-yada-yada" resolution, and the economic length — all of this makes the track a serious contender for best pure pop song of the year, all the more amazing considering they never really did anything like it before: too smooth, too well-rounded, and, most important­ly, too unpretentious — Carol's cherished personality seems to have been splattered against the me­lody, a gesture which I, personally, applaud very loudly, since I've always thought that if any­thing ever prevented this band from getting real good, it was that goddamn ego.

That ego is not completely erased (already on the second track, ʽMayhemʼ, it perks up a bit), but even at its perkiest here it is still subjected to obeying musical purposes. ʽMayhemʼ flaunts its trivial, power chord-based riff louder and prouder than Carol flaunts her voice, which is soon drowned in the soft, subdued, folky arpeggios of the bridge — and then joins Visser's guitar in all of its intonations on the loud chorus: that "oh no, not me, oh mayhem, oh mayhem!" bit is a pretty damn good imitation of a panic attack during a sleepless night. In recognition, Visser ends the song with a totally kick-ass overdriven solo (and it ain't the only one).

Amazingly, almost every song out of ten has something going for it, so I will only name some major highlights. ʽHad2BYouʼ, despite the awful spelling, has some lovely Beatlesque guitar / vocal moves. ʽMonogamousʼ interrupts the formulaic pop flow of the album for a quasi-mystical chant, adorned with roaring waves of feedback and various guitar effects, sort of a «Sinead O'Connor meets Led Zeppelin» impression. ʽReceiverʼ, in terms of fury and loudness, is probably the closest they come to the old Bettie sound, but even here a catchy chorus is in order, and the necessity to rise over the din of the rhythm spurs Visser on to deliver another set of ecstatic, punch-drunk solos. And ʽD.I.Y.ʼ closes the album with the best display of lead guitar techni­que on the entire album — there is a tricky break there around 2:10 where the rhythm shifts from funky to bluesy without disrupting the flow of the song, but giving it some extra dynamics.

In all honesty, I never expected this. It actually takes a lot of talent these days to deliver a no-frills power pop album and get away with it, without all or most of the songs sounding like weak, un­memorable, copycat creations. But Oh, Mayhem! delivers the goods in form and in spirit — it's loud, it's crunchy, it's filled with sympathetic, life-asserting guitar moves, it's brimming with life and energy, so what's not to like? The fact that it is not quite clear what they actually want to say and where exactly they are going with this? Maybe — but on a record as bubbling with life as this one, you don't really need any straight answers. Might as well just enjoy the ride, and admire all the shiny saddle ornaments. Thumbs up.

Björk: Gling-Gló

BJÖRK: GLING-GLÓ (1990)

1) Gling Gló; 2) Luktar-Gvendur; 3) Kata Rokkar; 4) Pabbi Minn; 5) Brestir Og Brak; 6) Ástartröfrar; 7) Bella Símamær; 8) Litli Tónlistarmaðurinn; 9) Það Sést Ekki Sætari Mey; 10) Bílavísur; 11) Tondeleyo; 12) Ég Veit Ei Hvað Skal Segja; 13) Í Dansi Með Þér; 14) Börnin Við Tjörnina; 15) Ruby Baby; 16) I Can't Help Loving That Man.

Although this album is usually regarded as a historic oddity, it deserves more than just a passing mention — and stimulates some curious thoughts, too. It was recorded by Björk somewhat «en passant», in the later stage of her serving as a member of The Sugarcubes, together with a local Icelandic jazz combo, Tríó Guðmundar Ingólfssonar, and is technically defined as a collaboration, but, naturally, 99.9% of the population were only aware of this album's existence in retrospect. I mean, as solid as the local Icelandic jazz scene might be, it is not highly likely that an inter­national audience might develop a strong taste for it. But Björk singing jazz? Now that actually sounds like a promising idea.

And indeed, this «historical curio» is a wonderful listen in its own way. Traditional jazz voca­lizing had al­ways been a big influence on Björk's style (although not nearly as direct as «avant­garde» vocalizing à la Tim Buckley), so it is quite refreshing to hear some of the oldies getting the quintessential «Björk treatment». All the material is actually being sung in Icelandic (except for two bonus tracks, taken from the rehearsal sessions and tacked on to the end), but even so, most of it is either translated from English, or is presented as «original» compositions that really just sound like variations on ye olde pre-war or early post-war material.

My simple and unoriginal stance on the «Great American Songbook» and its offshoots has always been that it does not matter as much whether the «song» is great in and out of itself (written by the same professional gang of songwriters, the sheet music tends to be of generally comparable quality); what matters is who sings the stuff — Billie Holiday or Barbra Streisand, that kind of thing. Now if you know Björk's classic material, you can make a pretty good guess that there is going to be a lot of breathiness, screeching, roaring, dissonant modulation, and, most importantly, high-pitched «childish» intonations. And in the context of a traditional vocal jazz setting, it all makes the material come alive like never before. «Vocal jazz» is being transformed into «vocal punk-jazz» before your very eyes.

The musicianship of the trio I am not prepared to judge. The pianist, whose name also labelled the entire combo, seems quite fluent and sensitive (eerily, he seems to have died just one year after the album's release), and the rhythm section swings just like the doctor ordered, but they all seem quite conservative in approach — which is good, because it allows us to fully focus on the contrast between predictable arrangements and Björk's thoroughly unorthodox behavior. There is no jamming whatsoever — a few solos here and there, but none of that usual attitude where the singer is being viewed as just one more lead instrument, and gets the same amount of time as the saxophone, or the piano, or even the bass: all the songs are relatively brief, and Björk is the shi­ning star on each and every one of them.

Searching for individual highlights is futile. More likely, some people will be more attracted to the slow, sensual ballads, some will fall for the kiddie Christmasy stuff like the title track; and the majority will hold on to the fast, swingin' tracks on which the little lady likes to practice her lionine roar. A couple of the songs may be too cute (like the final Icelandic number, driven by harmonica and shaped like a nursery rhyme for very small children), but that is not a big problem in the light of how vivacious, brimming with positive energy, optimism, and tasty traces of icono­clasm this whole thing is. In a way, I almost feel sad that Björk did not release something like this after achieving her «diva» status — a lightweight, unabashedly fun record like this would be a perfectly placed «breather» in between some of her heavier outings (imagine following Homoge­nic, let alone Medulla, up with such a hooliganish Irving Berlin tribute!). But certainly good or bad timing will never affect the ultimate thumbs up rating.

Black Sabbath: Heaven And Hell

BLACK SABBATH: HEAVEN AND HELL (1980)

1) Neon Knights; 2) Children Of The Sea; 3) Lady Evil; 4) Heaven And Hell; 5) Wishing Well; 6) Die Young; 7) Walk Away; 8) Lonely Is The Word.

So, is Black Sabbath without Ozzy Osbourne still Black Sabbath? Or is it really «Heaven & Hell», as this new incarnation of the band, with Ronnie James Dio on vocals, would actually start calling itself twenty-six years later? This is certainly a more difficult question than a similar one about, say, AC/DC — who, incidentally, were another great heavy rock band to reinvent themselves with a different singer the very same year. But where Brian Johnson, taking over the late Bon Scott, simply contributed to a slight change in the band's aesthetics (a little less irony, a little more working-class crudeness), the arrival of Dio seems to have revitalized Black Sabbath at the cost of completely shifting its ambitions in a different direction.

The difference between Ozzy and Ronnie is, of course, «heaven & hell» incarnated. Not only is Dio, technically, a genuine «singer» rather than just «vocalist» (albeit with a somewhat limited vocal range), but he was also a visionary — obsessed with escapist images of fantasy worlds, medievalistic values, and all sorts of dark romanticism. In addition to that, he was a really strong, charismatic personality who tended to eclipse everybody else: it is, in fact, amazing that he managed to survive with Ritchie Blackmore in the same band (Rainbow) for a mind-boggling four years (twice as long as his first stint with Sabbath). The idea to invite him over to Sabbath upon Ozzy's departure was a very weird whim: perhaps Tony and Geezer thought that a singer is, after all, only a singer, and can be molded into whatever the composers wish him to be molded into. As it happened, it was Dio who transformed Sabbath according to his masterplan, and not vice versa — and all the other band members could do was sit back and watch.

From the opening chuggy notes of ʽNeon Knightsʼ and right down to the epic fade-out of ʽLonely Is The Wordʼ, it is clear that the old Black Sabbath is gone for good. Of course, the band did go through a series of experimental transformations with Ozzy, but somehow, Heaven & Hell is an album that produces an immediate clear impression — finally, they have found a comfortable «genrist» niche in which they are going to stay (and indeed, this is where they ended up staying even after Ronnie was gone), and it's all because of Ronnie. Now, at last, with Tony Iommi being a far friendlier and milder chap than that Blackmore guy, Ronnie could find someone to make all his fantasies come alive — little wonder that he'd end up remembering the Heaven & Hell sessions as some of the most perfect moments of his life.

Musically, Heaven & Hell walks a line somewhere in between «doom metal», «art metal», and «power metal» — dark, heavy music that takes itself seriously and is also oriented at «retro» ideals (medieval, Gothic, romantic, whatever). Now that I think of it — although subsequent de­cades have seen zillions of albums in those genres, as late as mid-1980, did music such as re­corded here even exist? Some of it sounds like Accept (who were only just starting), some of it sounds like Iron Maiden (who were in the process of working out their sound), some of it sounds like Opeth (who would not form for another decade), the point being that Heaven & Hell is sort of a milestone, though certainly not a milestone that would be impressive for fans of «classic» Sabbath. Because this is where, in a way, the «classic rock»-era Sabbath ceases to exist, and what we are left with is «heavy metal»-era Black Sabbath, and I mean «heavy metal» as a narrowly defined genre that suits certain restricted conventions. An era which can produce its fair share of excellent songs, but has no space for ʽPlanet Caravanʼ, or ʽChangesʼ, or ʽSupertzarʼ, or any other such deviation.

Fortunately, even though the overall tone of the album is so monotonous, Ronnie's arrival at least refreshed the atmosphere and infused a new hope — and, riding on that new hope, the band came out with a solid, consistent set of songs. One thing that you are going to notice, though, is that Tony's riffs, which once used to be the begin-all-end-all substance of Black Sabbath, no longer are so. It's not even that there aren't any riffs — it's simply that they are much less prominent. Sometimes they only arrive at the time of the chorus (ʽChildren Of The Seaʼ), and Ronnie, singing across them, is stealing most of the attention for himself. Sometimes they only make brief appearances in between verses (title track). Most of the times, they are simply not too memorable, and work more as tough, brutal pedestals for R.J.D. to get on top of them and shower the audi­ence with his medieval metal opera arias. Rather convenient, given R.J.D.'s short stature.

But I would not count this as a big problem. We are here presented with a radically new ideology for the band, and for the time being, this ideology works — many of Ronnie's vocal melodies are quite catchy, and the man's passionate conviction for what he is doing is undeniable. Of all the pathos-drenched, pretentious, pseudo-operatic metal singers, Ronnie James Dio has always held my highest respect for one single, simple reason: he's actually got the right pipes to justify all that. Apart from sheer technique and audacious pomp, there is such a strong strain of animal vicious­ness in the man that even when he is spouting forth lyrical nonsense about "circles and rings, dragons and kings", the words are convincing and infectious. And as for Iommi, even though his playing here might not yield a lot of memorable melodies, it is tighter, more energetic and, in a way, more melodic than ever before.

The title track, which would quickly become the signature song for the Dio-led version of the band, is an obvious highlight — doom-laden, multi-part, music and lyrics all suggestive of an inescapable fate, and a «begin slow, end fast» principle that seems to suggest they were consci­ously or subconsciously trying to repeat the formula of ʽBlack Sabbathʼ, i. e. really start a new musical life. Okay, the words may be even clumsier than Geezer used to make them ("the devil is never a maker, the less that you give you're a taker"?), but only R.J.D. can bring the chorus down on the word "hell" with such a gloriously evil pharyngealized thud, and that prancing bass line goes so much better with Ronnie's delivery than in its original incarnation (ʽMainline Ridersʼ by Quartz, whose former member Geoff Nicholls brought it over with him once he was hired by Sabbath as a bass, and then a keyboard player).

Other than that, I am quite partial to the entire first side — the fast-and-furious opening with ʽNeon Knightsʼ; the slow-paced ʽChildren Of The Seaʼ, a song that began life with Ozzy still in the band but now seems thoroughly associated with Dio and his awesome "LOOK OUT! LOOK OUT!" coda; and even ʽLady Evilʼ, which is clearly the silliest tune of the lot but whose grin­ning, gleefully corny «evilness» I simply cannot resist — Tony, too, gets caught up in the game and comes up with all sorts of «nightmarish» wah-wah effects. The important thing is to learn not to have to take these songs too seriously — this is all part of a highly professional phantasmagoria; but there is some real grit to the singing and playing that makes it believable, like the high quality writing and erudition of J. R. R. Tolkien helps make at least some of The Lord Of The Rings believable. I mean, nobody is demanding you to shed tears over the tragedy of the lost ʽChildren Of The Seaʼ, but shouldn't we at least tip our hats to the way that tragedy is brought to its final apocalyptic conclusion?

The second side is not nearly as impressive, since it largely rehashes the ideas of Side A (ʽDie Youngʼ = ʽNeon Knights Vol. 2ʼ; ʽWalk Awayʼ = a poppier take on ʽLady Evilʼ, both songs being upbeat rants about evil bitches; ʽLonely Is The Wordʼ is yet another slow-moving epic ballad in the same vein as ʽChildrenʼ, etc.), but then the actual melodies are still different, and if you are okay with the overall style, you'll be okay with the second side as well. Heaven & Hell is not a «song-based» album, it is a «sound-based» album, and the Iommi/Dio sound is the sound of two metal titans at work. You can pigeonhole it, label it, jeer and sneer at it, but there is no get­ting around the fact that Heaven & Hell kicks the Devil's ass, and is right up there with Back In Black as one of the year's greatest heavy rock triumphs. Thumbs up (there should probably be some sort of pun here on Dio's «metal horns» gesture, but I'm sure I wouldn't be the first one, so it is perhaps more prudent to abstain).

Bloodrock: Bloodrock 2

BLOODROCK: BLOODROCK 2 (1970)

1) Lucky In The Morning; 2) Cheater; 3) Sable And Pearl; 4) Fallin'; 5) Children's Heritage; 6) Dier Not A Lover; 7) D. O. A.; 8) Fancy Space Odyssey.

Bloodrock got their biggest — in fact, their only — break with the rather unexpected (and rather tacky) popularity of ʽD.O.A.ʼ, or, rather, the heavily abbreviated single version of ʽD.O.A.ʼ as opposed to the eight-minute long «epic» version on the LP. In terms of «cheap thrills», it was probably the most Sabbath-style song they'd ever committed to tape — a story told through the dying brain of an airplane crash victim, experiencing his last moments on Earth, with heavy use of «intimidating» musical tricks and volume tricks that recall ʽBlack Sabbathʼ (the song) in matters of «setting» rather than musical substance.

Most people were probably perversely attracted to the tune because of the gory lyrics, with each single reference to blood, pain, and death articulated so slowly and gravely by Rutledge as if he were reciting from the Iliad. But even if your English is not good enough to allow you to under­stand what is going on, the tune is still appropriately moody, driven by an organ riff that cleverly emulates an ambulance siren and Rick Cobb's expert percussion work, as the drummer subtly prepares us for the chorus explosions. It certainly doesn't have enough original ideas to fill up all of its eight minutes — but then you can always have the short single version. And it does feel a little eerie; at the very least, one could always argue that its subject matter is much closer to home (Lee Pickens claimed that it was inspired by a real accident that he had witnessed) than the gro­tesque Satanic imagery of ʽBlack Sabbathʼ.

That said, ʽD.O.A.ʼ is hardly typical of Bloodrock 2 — it's just that, in their prime days, the band took special care that each album include at least one lengthy mood piece, so this one merely sits here in the same spot where they last had ʽFantastic Piece Of Architectureʼ. The rest of the music is almost strictly in the basic rock'n'roll scheme, heavily marinated in the «Americana spirit». In particular, John Nitzinger, another of their Fort Worth friends who had previously contributed three songs for the Bloodrock album, was now involved heavier than ever, and began supplying the band with expansive roots-rock anthems, such as ʽLucky In The Morningʼ, and novelty tunes, such as ʽFancy Space Odysseyʼ, which combines barroom boogie with seemingly absurdist lyrics (as it happens, they actually relate to the band's early days when they were called «Fancy Space» and played in a Fort Worth nightclub).

This bunch of new songs, while not at all bad per se, still indicates a downward slide in the curve, mainly because the heaviness and crunch of the first album are frequently downplayed in favor of a slightly more rustic — dare we even say «redneckier»? — atmosphere. The guitar tones are still low and distorted, but more in a «brawny» than an «evil» kind of way, and, in agreement with that, Rutledge's singing keeps generating a braggadoccio effect rather than the angry / snappy effect it had earlier on tracks like ʽCastle Of Thoughtsʼ. The absolute low point is ʽSable And Pearlʼ, the band's attempt at hitting it from the soulful side, where Rutledge overscreams in the bridge section (a "TEACH ME TO LOVE YOU!" that sounds more like a "get out of the kit­chen!", if you get my drift) to a very irritating effect — the rest, thankfully, is a little more restrai­ned, but still, a bit on the «flat» side of things.

Riff-wise, I feel partial to ʽFallin'ʼ and Nitzinger's ʽChildren's Heritageʼ (the former A-side of ʽD.O.A.ʼ), even though both tunes are essentially just fast-paced slices of blues-rock; and ʽFancy Space Odysseyʼ is catchy, but excessively silly — its somewhat carnivalesque riff suggests a comic tune, yet Rutledge sings all the lyrics in his usual grave voice, without any hints at irony, and the end result is confusing. Come to think of it, the whole album is confusing: lots of decent ideas, none of which are taken to their logical conclusions: the band is clearly stuck in the trea­cherous space between «cock rock» and «artsiness», afraid to push too hard in the latter direction but also a little embarrassed to root itself too deep in the former. Ultimately, Bloodrock 2 is a bit of a bore, and the presence of ʽD.O.A.ʼ in all of its stretched-out quasi-glory does not necessarily serve as a relief. But then again, it could have been so much worse — I mean, rough Texan hard rock? God only knows to what sort of lower depths that could descend, so let us all say thank you to the healthy musical climate of 1970.

Bill Withers: Watching You, Watching Me

BILL WITHERS: WATCHING YOU, WATCHING ME (1985)

1) Oh Yeah!; 2) Something That Turns You On; 3) Don't Make Me Wait; 4) Heart In Your Life; 5) Watching You, Watching Me; 6) We Could Be Sweet Lovers; 7) You Just Can't Smile It Away; 8) Steppin' Right Along; 9) Whatever Happens; 10) You Try To Find A Love.

No matter what the circumstances are, generic, unadventurous R&B from the Seventies will always be preferable to generic, unadventurous R&B from the Eighties — for the simple reason that in the Eighties, musicianship as such was pretty much exiled from the world of generic R&B, replaced by plastic electronics and robotic dance grooves. Consequently, the only good R&B to come from the Eighties is non-generic R&B, and the more it violates these standards, the more chances it has to be good.

I sure wish Bill Withers' last studio LP could have satisfied this hope, but alas, that was not to be. Produced and engineered by a bunch of hacks, this pathetic result of Bill's long-awaited return to Columbia studios is a stylistic disaster, and should rank, along with Naked & Warm, as one of the biggest disappointments in a formerly great artist — the distance between Still Bill and Wat­ching You, Watching Me is comparable to... well, then again, pretty much any great R&B artist ruling the public tastes in the Sixties or Seventies sucked in the Eighties. The difference is that Bill, at his best, was so much more than an R&B artist — and here, well, he ends up sounding like a roughly trained disciple of Luther Vandross.

Electronic drums, synthesizers, and ecstatic guitar wank-a-thons that plague Watching You are, however, only one half of the problem — the other half is that most of the songs are completely uninteresting. Bill's voice, always pleasant in and out of itself, is still in great shape, but it is applied to rotten melodies whose only purpose is to sound «uplifting». It's not as if the melodic structures of the songs got too simplified or ran out of inspiration — it is simply that the album is drenched in banality, and Bill's one-time ability to play this multi-faceted, almost perversely fas­cinating character, sweet and frightening at the same time, has completely evaporated. This end­less stream of superficially diverse, but substantially quite interchangeable love ballads and softly lukewarm dance rockers is instantaneously forgettable.

The only possible exception, which might not even reveal itself upon first listen, is ʽSteppin' Right Awayʼ, a slightly grittier groove that begins as an ode to the secret magic of love and then ends up incorporating The Lord's Prayer in the funkiest arrangement ever seen since the days of Jesus, when the Master, no doubt, used to get it on with his disciples on a daily basis. Nowhere near a classic, the song stands out simply because everything else is so forgettable — I am sort of interested in thinking what would somebody like Prince have made out of it, given the chance, because Bill, unfortunately, can put a groove under his control, but cannot develop it to any sort of climactic peak, if you know what I mean.

No other track here deserves even a brief mention. Everything is as glossy and sterile as the al­bum sleeve suggests — with its dashing white colors more suggestive of a stuffy hospital than of Paradise — and the result is a rather ignoble thumbs down and a pretty sad end for a career that began with so much promise. I do not know why Bill chose to retire from the music business (or, at least, from studio recording) almost completely after this album, but I would not be surprised if, deep inside himself, he actually understood that he had nothing left to say to the world, and that his life hours would rather be spent somewhere else than wasted on further impotent attempts at songwriting and recording. One might also suggest that here was just another victim of stupid musical fashions and cruel music business. Whatever be the case, you'd be much better off saving yourself the trouble and forgetting this album ever existed.

10cc: Live And Let Live

10CC: LIVE AND LET LIVE (1977)

1) The Second Sitting For The Last Supper; 2) You've Got A Cold; 3) Honeymoon With B Troup; 4) Art For Art's Sake; 5) People In Love; 6) Wall Street Shuffle; 7) Ships Don't Disappear In The Night; 8) I'm Mandy Fly Me; 9) Marriage Bureau Rendezvous; 10) Good Morning Judge; 11) Feel The Benefit; 12) The Things We Do For Love; 13) Waterfall; 14) I'm Not In Love; 15) Modern Man Blues.

For some reason, 10cc never got around to releasing a live album while still in their prime — not that, being a «pop» band by definition, they should have felt as obliged to do it as their colleagues in the heavy rock and prog rock departments. But with Godley and Creme out of the band, Stewart and Gouldman may have sensed a need for proving that «10cc still exists!» in as many ways as humanly possible — and so, with Deceptive Bends only six months away, they hurried­ly followed it up with a sprawling double LP of live recordings, made in June-July 1977 in London and Manchester. Another possible goal was to flaunt their newly reassembled band, showcasing Rick Fenn (who gets a bass solo on ʽFeel The Benefitʼ), new keyboardist Tony O'Malley, and no less than two different percussionists.

Unfortunately, even in their prime 10cc were not a particularly great band to enjoy outside of the studio — and in 1977, the only reason to buy this live album was to show financial support for the band. Deprived of contributions by its weirdest, riskiest members, the 10cc setlist was now al­most exclusively limited to Stewart/Gouldman material, which, of course, had plenty of winners, but this also means that Deceptive Bends is reproduced here almost in its entirety, so you are basically buying the same album twice — and it's not as if the live renditions had anything to prove that was not already proven in the studio.

Other than that, ʽShips Don't Disappear In The Nightʼ is stretched out to unreasonable limits with the addition of a slowed down part; ʽArt For Art's Sakeʼ is stretched out to include a jamming part at the end, with a passable, melodic, but rather out-of-place solo from Eric; and ʽWaterfallʼ fares better, since its desperate romanticism is perfectly compatible with guitar heroics — so Stewart adds an epic solo built along the same lines as Jimmy Page's solo on ʽStairway To Heavenʼ (in fact, one might actually state that they are trying to transform ʽWaterfallʼ into their own private ʽStairwayʼ). All in all, Stewart's guitar playing skills is more or less the only thing that distingui­shes these songs from their studio counterparts — and they are not nearly as unique or inventive as should be required to make Live And Let Live into a lead guitar lover's wet dream.

Nevertheless, the album still sold well, reflecting 10cc's general level of fame and prosperity: with Deceptive Bends still showing traces of the classic spirit, Stewart and Gouldman were only on the verge of squandering the band's artistic reputation, and the power and the glory of their hit singles still rang out loud and clear — enough to make people buy even something that nobody really needed. Besides, most of the songs are so good, why not buy them twice anyway?..

Bikini Kill: The Singles

BIKINI KILL: THE SINGLES (1998)

1) New Radio; 2) Rebel Girl; 3) In Accordance To Natural Law; 4) Strawberry Julius; 5) Anti-Pleasure Dissertation; 6) Rah! Rah! Replica; 7) I Like Fucking; 8) I Hate Danger; 9) Demirep.

For the sake of extra accuracy, I suppose this very short compilation, consisting of several A- and B-sides, as well as a four-song EP from 1995, deserves a brief mention. ʽRebel Girlʼ has already been discussed several times above, and without that song the entire compilation is around 17 minutes long — nevertheless, it still contains songs that are abso­lutely essential for any fan of the band.

In a way, ʽNew Radioʼ, the original A-side of ʽRebel Girlʼ, is much more ferocious and disturbing — not only does it feature the scariest Kathleen Hanna screeching on record (she almost literally spews her lungs out in little pieces), but its lyrics, suggesting something uncomfortable, unspea­kable, and almost certainly illegal, are a very far cry from the anthemic swagger of ʽRebel Girlʼ that sounds dang near comical in comparison.

The EP Anti-Pleasure Dissertation, released in 1995, already shows the beginning of the tran­sition to the «softer» sounds of Reject All American — the title track has certain melodic traces both in the guitar playing and in the singing, although the ideology remains the same (as usual, the song is directed against the sterotypical macho boyfriend looking for sexual conquests — "did you win that race, did you score that point?.."). But even sad stories like that do not prevent Hanna from proclaiming that ʽI Like Fuckingʼ — "I believe in the radical possibilities of plea­sure, babe!", she states at the end of the song (if you can call it a song, that is).

Musically, the best song is probably ʽI Hate Dangerʼ; its melody sounds like a slightly de-synco­pated variation on AC/DC's ʽDirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheapʼ, but that particular dangerous, grow­ling sound suits Bikini Kill to a tee — in a different world, I could easily see them as the female equivalent of AC/DC, counterattacking that band's aggressive machismo with their equally fiery brand of aggressive feminism (now if only they learned how to play those instruments...). On the other hand, their recording of the ʽMary Macʼ clapping game at the beginning of ʽDemiRepʼ is a rather silly novelty whose symbolism I am not able to decode, probably because there isn't any, they just felt like letting out ther inner child for a while.

To conclude these reviews, I just want to state that, although I am not and will never be a big fan of Bikini Kill, I do think that, had they managed to stay together, there were some actual chances of their gradual evolution into a band that might be taken seriously even outside of ideologically charged discussions. Fire and passion in art always deserve respect, regardless of whether they are used to express radical social ideology or not, and all they needed to learn was how to control and direct that fire — something that they had almost mastered by the time of ʽI Hate Dangerʼ and Reject All American. But then, of course, it became clear that the «Bikini Kill» brand was all about ideology first and musical impression second, so that any musical growth was a direct mortal threat to the band's existence. Too bad about that. But you can always check out Hanna in Le Tigre, her subsequent and much more «musical» project in the «electroclash» genre, rather naturally evolved from Bikini Kill and certainly easier on the ears of the average music lover — the wilder they start, the softer they get, eventually.

Bettie Serveert: Pharmacy Of Love

BETTIE SERVEERT: PHARMACY OF LOVE (2010)

1) Deny All; 2) Semaphore; 3) Love Lee; 4) Mossie; 5) The Pharmacy; 6) Souls Travel; 7) Calling; 8) Change4Me; 9) What They Call Love.

Say what you will, but it can be nice to admire the tightness of artistic bonds — absolutely no­body needs Bettie Serveert to stick around for another decade, yet on they plough, with the Vis­ser / van Dyk partnership stronger than ever; for all we know, they'll still be around by 2050, and that is when they will finally take their revenge on the musical community. In the meantime, Phar­macy Of Love at least remedies the flaw of their previous album — no more of that philosophi­cal acoustic shit, we are back to full-dressed electric arrangements, and not only that, but we've also pumped up the tempos quite a bit: Pharmacy Of Love is the band's fastest, loudest, angriest record since... ever? Maybe since ever.

The difference goes beyond the tempos, though, or maybe it is the tempos that are responsible for compressing the band into a much tighter format. Many of the songs, instead of relying on rela­tively free jangle-folk-pop strumming, are now either riff-based or follow punk / post-punk rhythm patterns that leave no space for rhythmic variation — I guess, from a certain point of view, you could call this «selling out», since ultimately Pharmacy Of Love has quite a few things in common with commercially oriented «pop punk» forms, groping for tightness, catchiness, and even some production gloss. (In fact, I think some fans did accuse the band of selling out, despite the fact that the album couldn't have sold more than a couple hundred copies).

But the issue of «selling out» is usually unrelated to the issue of actual quality, and I must say that some of the songs here seem unusually well-written for this band. The lead-in track, ʽDeny Allʼ, is a powerfully desperate rocker with expressive lead guitar work (particularly Visser's little «siren lines» in between the verses); but Peter gets to shine even better on ʽSemaphoreʼ and the title track, combining and merging all sorts of styles, from power-pop to dream-pop to acid psy­chedelia, whatever the moment calls for.

It is true that getting rid of the «endless imitator» status is a difficult task. It took me only a couple listens, for instance, to understand the heavy debt that ʽMossieʼ owes to ʽI Want You (She's So Heavy)ʼ, or that the "blame it on yourself, blame it on the state you're in..." part of ʽChange4Meʼ is fundamentally ripped off Radiohead's ʽBlack Starʼ ("blame it on the black star, blame it on the falling sky...")  — and I am quite convinced that a couple more equally meticu­lous listens would bring out more and more of these derivations. But the important thing is not that these songs continue to lack originality — the important thing is that they sound like crafted pop songs, not like spontaneous indie rock rants; and since Carol van Dyk is not Joni Mitchell and Peter Visser is not Van Morrison, I'd rather take crafted pop songs from them, any time of day, than raw, bleeding, boring confessions.

The album's centerpiece is the lengthy ʽCallingʼ, which alone occupies more than a quarter of this fairly short LP — with lengthy setups, effect-laden guitar drones, and slowest tempos all around, it wants to be some sort of anthemic-psychedelic masterpiece in the style of The Bends (which, incidentally, I have already mentioned in connection with ʽBlack Starʼ — somebody must have been on an early Radiohead kick), but there's no way Bettie Serveert would have been able to pull off a nine-minute track convincingly: Visser is their only instrumentalist to whom you might want to pay attention, and his function on this vessel, slowly sailing through the marmalade skies and tangerine oceans, is largely atmospheric.

Nevertheless, despite all the flaws, The Pharmacy Of Love still gets a thumbs up from me. The band's transition from «indie-ramblers» to «pop-rockers» has been carried out with style and in­telligence, and has managed to bring down the «boredom» and «pretense» parameters to tolerable levels. No, it probably will not earn Carol van Dyk any extra respect and admiration from you if you have not been able to generate that admiration earlier — but you know, if an indie rock album produced in 2010 does not cause irritation, it is already quite an achievement all by itself. And if an indie rocker makes his/her influences so utterly transparent, and it still does not cause any irritation... well, that sort of makes the album a masterpiece in its own way.

Björk: Björk

BJÖRK: BJÖRK (1977)

1) Arabadrengurinn; 2) Búkolla; 3) Alta Mira; 4) Jóhannes Kjarval; 5) Fúsi Hreindýr; 6) Himnaför; 7) Óliver; 8)  Álfur Út Úr Hól; 9) Músastiginn; 10) Bænin.

12-year old Björk Guðmundsdóttir is calmly, but warily gazing at us from the album cover, wrapped up in silks and surrounded by a background that seems to be coming straight out of somebody's not-too-imaginative visual idea of 1001 Nights. As you turn on the music, the quiet sounds of crickets and night birds are soon joined by mysterious sitars and sarods, almost like at the beginning of George Harrison's ʽLove You Toʼ. «Oh that sweet enchantress Björk», you think to yourself, «such an idealistic visionary already at such a tender age... sure this is manneristic and derivative, but to dabble in Indian and Near Eastern influences while most of her schoolmates were probably up to their necks in the Osmonds or ABBA...» And then it actually begins.

Not a lot of people have even heard of this album, let alone heard the actual music (for obvious reasons, it has never been officially released on CD), and they have not missed much. It was re­corded almost by accident: some people at a local Icelandic record label heard the girl singing Tina Charles' ʽI Love To Loveʼ on the radio and offered her a contract for a children's album. With the aid of her stepfather and a bunch of local musicians, they scrambled together a bunch of pop songs, translated them into Icelandic, so that even local kids who didn't excel at their English lessons could get into the groove, and put them out on a market targeted at... honestly, I have no idea who the people in that market are, and I would probably be afraid and embarrassed to socia­lize with any of them, anyway.

Nevertheless, all great artists eventually make people interested in checking out their history, and even if it is completely worthless on its own, Björk offers some educational value. The key as­pect is the singing, of course. As these ten songs show, Björk is a perfect natural: her range and tone here are already as strong as on her «mature» albums (they didn't offer her that contract just for cuteness' sake, after all), and all that is missing is the result of training — the punk attitude had not caught up with the girl yet, nor did the avantgarde jazz stylistics, so she is simply copying the note patterns of her favorite singers and sifting them through her childish, wildish, not par­ticularly well-disciplined soprano. Subtlety does not exist as of yet, as you can most clearly see in her take on ʽThe Fool On The Hillʼ (ʽÁlfur Út Úr Hólʼ), done technically well, but «oversung»: the girl simply has a bigger voice than she can properly handle at the moment, and the cover suffers from superfluous screechiness.

Musically, the arrangements are all over the place, but with a permanent emphasis on cuteness: «kiddie disco», «kiddie ska», «kiddie jazz-pop», «kiddie bossa nova», etc. The lyrics are not always direct translations: for instance, ʽBúkollaʼ, despite being based on Stevie Wonder's ʽYour Kiss Is Sweetʼ, has been turned into an ode to... a magic cow ("I took a hair from your tail...." and, apparently, mixed it with a good dose of Icelandic volcanic mushrooms). The vocal delive­ries generally have that annoying «giddy-up» drive to them which is a typical attribute of most «children's albums» — which makes it all the more amazing and exciting that, in a way, Björk has managed to retain it in her «mature» years.

In fact, there is no way that we could ever assess Björk the same way as the average Icelandic buyer could assess it back in 1977 — for us, hearing her lively «get-up-and-jump» notes on ʽAlta Miraʼ or ʽOliverʼ will always trigger associations with, at the very least, the Björk of ʽThere's More To Life Than Thisʼ or ʽIt's Oh So Quietʼ or any of those hell-raising romps of the early part of her adult career. Even though, other than the voice itself, the only thing that her adult career has in common with this tripe is diversity and unpredictability.

Speaking of which, the album also has two instrumental compositions, one of which (ʽJohannes Kjarvalʼ), dedicated to an Icelandic painter, is a simple, but effective flute-led folk ditty with a fast waltz bridge, with Björk herself playing the flute — deserving, I would imagine, an admiring pat on the head from Ray Thomas, whose Moody Blues style of playing could easily serve as a source of inspiration (probably not, but then there is no reason why Björk should not have had access to classic Moody Blues records); the second one, ʽMúsastiginnʼ, is also dominated by the flute but a little bit more «martial» and Brit-poppy. Both unquestionably show the beginnings of a serious composing talent, although their chief virtue is that of providing brief respites from the girlscout vocal model.

Ultimately, the best thing that can probably be said about the album is that, after it actually managed to sell some copies in Iceland, Björk found the inner strength to refuse the proposal to record a second one in the same vein — instead, she used the money to get herself a piano and begin to study on a more serious level. Although it does make one wonder how the girl would have fared if they'd managed to mold her into an early Icelandic role model for Britney Spears...

Black Sabbath: Never Say Die!

BLACK SABBATH: NEVER SAY DIE! (1978)

1) Never Say Die; 2) Johnny Blade; 3) Junior's Eyes; 4) Hard Road; 5) Shock Wave; 6) Air Dance; 7) Over To You; 8) Breakout; 9) Swinging The Chain.

This album has always had such an awful reputation, and this awful reputation has always con­firmed itself so efficiently upon first listen, that it took me quite a while to appreciate some of the record's redeeming qualities. Indeed, under a different set of circumstances it could have been shaped up into something much better — it has all the makings of a really intriguing, stylistically experimental album. Unfortunately, few of its original ideas managed to outgrow the embryonic stage, and for every such idea there is a swamp of boring dumbness surrounding it.

The thing is, Never Say Die! was originally to be something completely different — a «Black Sabbath featuring Dave Walker» album, conceived in the wake of Ozzy's brief departure from the band (of his own free will). Dave Walker was a veteran blues-rocker who'd probably only joined up with Sabbath for financial reasons (Tony invited him over as an old Birmingham pal); prior to that, he'd been a member of Savoy Brown, and then briefly a member of Fleetwood Mac, with whom, incidentally, he released one of the band's blandest albums ever (Penguin). Naturally, the «match» with Black Sabbath was a disaster, as were most of the songs that the band recorded with him — once Ozzy came back, he refused to sing on any of the Walker material, and not just because his pride was hurt or anything, but also because the songs sucked. A good example of just how badly they sucked is ʽSwinging The Chainʼ, a Walker-era leftover that was eventually given to Bill Ward — a lumpy slab of blues-rock with lots of socially conscious pretense but no subtlety or catchiness whatsoever. It does happen to be the first song after ʽThe Wizardʼ (I think) to feature a harmonica part, but it's a boring harmonica part, and it does not fuse well enough with Tony's distorted, mushy rhythm parts.

Anyway, once the Walker disaster was over and Ozzy was back in the band, they decided to recut the album in a hurry — and it feels hurried: nine tracks, most of them overlong, yet relatively low on ideas. Even the similarly structured titles, flashing before your eyes — ʽHard Roadʼ, ʽShock Waveʼ, ʽAir Danceʼ — convey a feeling of being rushed and undercooked. Worse, the primary flaw of Technical Ecstasy, namely, the attempt to cross over to a cruder, headbangier, more boogie-based platform, is still very much in action. As the title track kicks in with its power chords and «ass-kicking» airs, you suddenly realize that Black Sabbath have begun to sound like Thin Lizzy — ʽThe Boys Are Back In Townʼ, that sort of thing. But where Lizzy had a sort of natural street-wise attitude, with Lynott's quasi-working-class charisma doing its thing perfectly, Sabbath never had it in them. Even though their early years were spent close to the «slum kids» format, none of the band members had any good idea at how to become the champion of the blue-collar guy. This weird «social conscience» that you see in the title track and especially in the immediate follow-up, ʽJohnny Bladeʼ, a dark tale of an outcast underdog, feels wasted.

What is not completely wasted are some of the band's experimental ideas. Let the record sink in a little bit, and you will see that ʽJunior's Eyesʼ is the first time that Tony has cobbled together a riff that depends on a wah-wah pedal and an echo effect for completion, and it fits in well with Ozzy's almost tearful delivery of the lyrics that relate to the passing of his father. Skip over the yawn-inducing intro riff to ʽAir Danceʼ and see how Don Airey's keyboard work actually contri­butes to the song — there are some lovely passages here, both in the «ambient jazz» and even «jazz fusion» styles. Actually, jazz seems to have been this album's chief inspiration after boogie rock: ʽBreakoutʼ is a bona fide jazz instrumental with flashy saxophone solos and a big band arrangement orchestrated by Will Malone. It is nothing to write home about, but remember at least that bad post-Ozzy Sabbath albums do not have big band jazz arrangements on them, mea­ning that even at its relative worst, the pre-1980s Sabbath was still a band that regarded «risk taking» as a prerequisite for going into the studio — something that was gone for good once Dio came on board two years later.

Of course, stuff like ʽHard Roadʼ, ʽShock Waveʼ, ʽSwinging The Chainʼ, etc., is beyond redemp­tion — all these songs sound like they were written in about two minutes; their riffs are either non-existent or «unresponsive», since Tony probably did not have enough time to work on them. At least the title track has a catchy anthemic chorus, meaning that it worked well enough on tour during their last concerts with Ozzy, but I'd rather have the album end than start with it, because, as it happens, Ozzy-era Sabbath waves us its last goodbye with ʽSwinging The Chainʼ, which is probably in the Top 5 worst Sabbath songs ever put to tape (Seventh Star excluded, because otherwise the entire Top 5 would be occupied with songs off that one).

To top it all off, the album cover was once again provided by Hipgnosis, and this time it is even more ridiculous than in the case of Technical Ecstasy — all you want to say when glancing at those air pilots, perplexed and confused, is «...which one's Ozzy, I wonder?» The bottomline is that an album like this simply does not call for a symbolic / enigmatic cover; one might just as well have slapped those pilots on top of Back In Black or The Beach Boys' Party!. Just one more confusing detail to add to this pitiful disaster of an album — and yet I refuse to complete this critique with a thumbs down rating, since I believe it should at least be instructive to take a listen to Never Say Die! and try and figure out for yourself what, how, and why went wrong here and whether there might have been a chance of a different outcome.

Bloodrock: Bloodrock

BLOODROCK: BLOODROCK (1970)

1) Gotta Find A Way; 2) Castle Of Thoughts; 3) Fatback; 4) Double Cross; 5) Timepiece; 6) Wicked Truth; 7) Gimme Your Head; 8) Fantastic Piece Of Architecture; 9) Melvin Laid An Egg.

What kind of an association would you have with the word bloodrock? Any band that calls itself that should probably be imagined as some sort of particularly gory, trashy younger brother of Black Sabbath. There's even a couple horror flicks out there called Bloodstone, but, of course, the «stone» part should be swapped for a «rock» part — the band is American, after all. Actually, not just American, but Texan, which would naturally spruce up further associations with Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and when you look at the album cover, there's, like, blood on it, plenty of it, and even a rock for good measure.

In reality, though, the boys from Bloodrock were nowhere near that creepy. A bunch of honest rock'n'rollers from Fort Worth, they spent three years playing as «The Naturals» (indeed) and then three more years playing as «Crowd + 1» (because if you just call yourself «Crowd», people might suspect you of arrogant minimalism), before teaming up with Terry Knight, the producer of Grand Funk Railroad, who came up with the «Bloodrock» moniker for them. Knight, not fully satisfied by already having one big fat ass hard rock ensemble under his belt, decided to procure himself a Southern (Texan) counterpart to the Northern (Michigan) brand of GFR, took Blood­rock under his wing, secured them a contract with Capitol, and produced their first LP.

Testosterone-driven, sweaty, radio-friendly American hard rock is generally not my cup of tea at all — I can cope with the macho attitude, and I can cope with the family-friendly attitude, but combining them is bad for spiritual digestion. Fortunately, Bloodrock, especially on their first al­bums, went beyond that. They had a fairly testosterone-respecting lead singer, Jim Rutledge, with one of those grizzly voices that suggests pumping iron, and a crunchy guitar player, Lee Pickens, a big fan of thick, grumbly guitar riffs, of which he'd written a fair share for this album (more, I think, than Steppenwolf in their entire career). But they also had a streak of darkness and psy­chedelic esca­pism to their craft — Bloodrock is not any less inspired by the Doors and Hendrix than it is by Steppenwolf and GFR.

I think that nothing better illustrates this idea than the start of the album — ʽGotta Find A Wayʼ begins with a low, heavy, «macho» rhythm pattern, but five seconds later is complemented by a high-pitched, fuzzy, psycho-wailing «siren», and more space is given to the battling guitar and organ solos than to the vocal sections. Then ʽCastle Of Thoughtsʼ is the album's most directly Hendrix-inspired track, its rhythm being almost directly lifted off ʽStone Freeʼ, but Stephen Hill's keyboards add an extra layer of complexity, and the guitar/organ interplay part at the end is exciting in a purely «musical» way, putting the emphasis on melody rather than «power».

There may not be anything on Bloodrock that pushes it over the top: although the complete combination of ingredients is somewhat unique, it is not unique enough to turn them into prime league members overnight. But on a song by song basis, Bloodrock is intelligently written and effervescently well performed hard rock. The riffs on ʽDouble Crossʼ, ʽWicked Truthʼ, and par­ticularly ʽMelvin Laid An Eggʼ are all perfectly respectable even for the highest standards of 1970; the lyrics, fluctuating between absurdist, idealistic, and morbid, are unpredictable and not always laughable (ʽTimepieceʼ, after all, is about a prisoner's last minutes before the gallows); and the lengthy songs have enough of dynamics to them, including softer in­terludes and jammy bits. Towards the end, they even try to boldly overstep the boundaries by offering a little Gothic art-rock suite — ʽFantastic Piece Of Architectureʼ is a Poe-worthy tale of disillusionment and «time-conquers-all» sentiment, ceremoniously dressed up in solemn organs, Bach-inspired piano lines and echoey guitar tinkles, and it works surprisingly better than one could expect from a bunch of down-to-earth Texan rockers (although I can't help wondering how much better still it would have sounded in the hands of an Alan Parsons).

In fact, on a song-by-song basis there are simply no bad tracks on Bloodrock at all, which ulti­mately makes their debut record their greatest one (as it happens much too often with second-rate bands). I even like ʽFatbackʼ, despite its lack of a great riff (the song is cleverly driven by piano chords, giving it a little whiff of modern jazz), and ʽGimme Your Headʼ, despite the fact that its own riff deserved a thicker sound and a more prominent position in the mix. Even so, these two minor creations are actually the shortest ones on the album, meaning that Bloodrock were never above stretching out a good idea when the good idea deserved to be stretched out.

Do not expect a jaw-dropping masterpiece, but do expect an interesting combination of ideas. Turning on the «grumbly old-timer» mode, I will say that, had these guys come together forty years later, Bloodrock would almost certainly be a completely one-dimensional creation; back in 1970, though, being one-dimensional was a rather embarrassing perspective, so they gave us this rather oddball take on Texan rock instead. Thumbs up.