Jethro Tull - Passion Play

A Passion Play

Well let me start by saying that if you're sick of the music that's popular, uninspired, predictable, overplayed, and safely within the skill level of any old musician, then A Passion Play is your cure! It is the opposite of all these things. On the other hand, if you are perfectly happy just hearing "Honky Tonk Women" 5 times a day on the radio then stay AWAY from A Passion Play.
As a continuation of their parody of concept albums, Ian A. and Co. created this piece with the obvious intent of challenging themselves and their listeners to the utmost extent. It is brilliant and ridiculous, triumphant and melancholy, satisfying and disappointing. The music will lead up to what you hope will be a thrilling climax, and then completely die. It is easily one of the most densely inaccessible albums ever recorded. However, it is also ingenious. Another reviewer was right in saying that basically all the other rock & roll innovators combined could never have concocted such a ludicrously awesome creative masterpiece as this. The playing here is completely off the hook; the best you'll ever hear on a rock album, especially considering the extreme difficulty of the music. The lineup of Anderson, Barre, Hammond, Evans, and Barlow was, in my opinion, the best in Tull history. Ian's singing is so rich and full that his vocals on earlier albums just seem thin and tinny in comparison. The saxes and tastefully utilized synths are a nice addition, giving it a very distinctly different flavor from Thick as a Brick. In fact, I would say that the segment subtitled "The Overseer Overture" contains one of the saxophone's defining moments in rock music (not to mention that's the best part of the album too).
You won't find a lot of long instrumental solos here, as one might expect from more quintessential prog like ELP's Tarkus. It's all very tight and well thought-out. There are virtually none of the trippy, boring organ solos and white noise stuff often found in prog, which is a testament to Ian's strict no-drugs policy with band members. The lyrics are just nuts. Don't even try to make sense of them on the first time listening. I've listened to it like 20 times and I'd still be in the dark if not for the helpful online forums dedicated to deciphering its meaning.
I also find APP to be very funny. The music sounds like it would be perfectly at home during some kind of deranged circus act, and the lyrics contain endless oddities and wordplays. Everyone complains about the pointlessness of Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond's The Hare Who Lost His Spectacles. It's just a bit of fun, really, and it is pretty funny in a Monty Python sort of way. All in all, I'd say that this should not be your first Tull album, but fans should have it. Just remember: if you don't end up liking it at first, don't write it off as shit. Give it some time and you may just find it to be a very rewarding piece of music after all.

Doors- Soft Parade

Soft Parade

"The Soft Parade", The Doors' fourth album, struggles to be musically inventive. What made the first two albums so wonderfully successful is their very unique sound, and that sound encapsulated the growing, revolutionary thought processes that were spreading throughout America's youth at the time of the 1960s. The Doors were both original and very much of their time, although those first two records never feel dated. Then The Doors released "Waiting for the Sun", which has several good songs, but only approaches the quality of the first two records in isolated moments. After the wake of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and all the psychedelic music that was coming out at the time, The Doors decided to do their own version of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". By this, I mean they decided to totally reinvent their sound and style and popular music in general, giving the world a radical look how high rock and roll can really climb on the artistic ladder. Unfortunately, The Doors were never as consistently good as The Beatles, and instead of turning in an amazing LP, we end up with the weakest set of songs The Doors ever put to tape.

To understand the state of "The Soft Parade", it helps to look at the album before that, "Waitng for the Sun". The Doors seem to operate in twos, with their first two records brilliant, their middle two rather mediocre, their last two good blues albums, and then there's the two (out of print) records The Doors made after Morrison's death ("Other Voices" and ""Full Circle"). "Waiting for the Sun" was little more than a holding action, product put out because they had to, although there are some great songs on it. At least on "The Soft Parade" they were trying to do something different, even though it ends up being just as mediocre an album as its predecessor.

The Doors talk about the `third album syndrome' effecting "Waiting for the Sun". They had handpicked their best material for their debut, then the rest went onto "Strange Days". At the third album, they were in a quandry, because all their best material had already been issued. The Doors found it difficult to write compelling, commercial songs, and so turned in their rather lackluster third album. What really hurt "Waiting for the Sun" was the decision to cut "Celebration of the Lizard," which would have been a very long opus taking up the majority of the second side of the song. So when it came time to record "The Soft Parade", The Doors wanted to strike out in a different direction.

While not wholly a failure, "The Soft Parade" turns out to be, along with "Waiting for the Sun", The Doors' weakest album. By this time, Morrison was so out of control Kreiger wrote half the tracks on the album, and it shows. (Also, Morrison didn't want to be credited with calling people to get their guns on the first track). Because the third album didn't have a real tangible identity as far as sound goes, The Doors wisely decided to reinvent themselves and broaden their musical horizons.

While we must admire them for this ambition, the end results are very mixed. Taking over eight months to record, the album proved a difficult record to make. In the end, Morrison described the album the band trying to do something new but that it got bogged down. How true.

Trading in their psychedelic sound they so successfully displayed on their first two records, we get a big band sound instead. The reason they turned from this sound was by the third album the well was clearly running dry. On several of the songs this new sound works, especially the first three tracks. If the rest of the songwriting had been as strong as it was on the first three, then "The Soft Parade" would stand proudly among The Doors' best work. Unfortunately, this is not the case. "The Soft Parade", quite simply, boasts the weakest set of the original six albums. "Do It," "Easy Ride," and "Running Blue," simply don't gel, though "Running Blue" is a very funny song. The title track I really like for about the first four minutes. I find the last (and longest) musical section gets rather monotonous as the song [goes on for over eight minutes] [ploughs onward,] lurches toward its closing eight minute running time. And where is "Who Scared You?" Had "Do It" been deleted and that included in the running order, the album would be much stronger. "Shaman's Blues" is a masterpiece, and "Wild Child" harkens back to that dark, careening undercurrent of their first two albums. Very good song. "Wishful Sinful" is nice as well.

By this point in their career, The Doors were rather falling apart artistically, no thanks to Morrison's increasingly difficult behaviour. After turning in two rather lackluster LPs after two great albums, The Doors seemed headed on a downward spiral. Fortunately, The Doors went into the blues after this album, producing two good albums (even though they couldn't touch the first two's quality) before Morrison died.

Overall, I admire The Doors for their ambition in trying to come up with a highly artistic, progressive record. I just wish they had done a better job at it.

 



Kraftwerk -The man machine

The Man Machine

 

1978's 'The Man Machine' is Kraftwerk's most focused, and strongest album to date. Although short, clocking in at just over thirty minutes, the six tracks that comprise 'The Man Machine' are of high quality and filler-free. The album can easily be listened to straight through several times without boring the listener.
The album kicks off powerfully with 'The Robots'. It's pulsating bassline, machine-like rhythms and heavily processed vocals set the tone for the rest of the album. I actually prefer this version of 'The Robots' to the one on Kraftwerk's 1991 release 'The Mix'. I find 'The Man Machine' version to be a lot more robotic than 'The Mix''s more human, organic reworking.

Next is the first of the two almost completely instrumental tracks on `The Man Machine', `Spacelab'. `Spacelab''s weightless, dreamy synth lines say more to the listener than any vocals could ever describe. The only vocals that enter the mix are the vocoded words "Space-lab". A very relaxing, beautiful track.

Third up is the other vocally minimal track on the album, the dystopian `Metropolis'. This track is the most ominous of all of the tracks on `The Man Machine', perhaps the most ominous of all of Kraftwerk's songs (`Radioactivity' would be a close second). Likely drawing from Fritz Lang's 1926 masterpiece of the same title, `Metropolis' invokes the listener with the feeling that this futuristic city may not be the utopia we would all like it to be.

`The Model', the album's fourth track is a strange, somewhat poppy, but very catchy song. The lyrics are very simple and the synth sounds are very dated, but that is what is so charming about this song. "Charming" could very easily describe the appeal of all of Kraftwerk's work, as a matter of fact.