Albums for Eternity with Bottle, the Curmudgeon

I shared my real Halloween album this morning, but as i'm sitting here now enjoying the post-atmospheric jazz rock of Komorebi, it dawns on me that we can do something truly terrifying. We can go listen to Taylor Swift's version of Ryan Adams's version of Taylor Swift's 1989. Oh gawd, that intro is bad, even for crappy synth pop. Why am i not just listening to a Ke$ha album? Ok, is this any different than the original? Nope, at least not the first track. Or the second. Or any of them. Yes, there's some tweaking and knob fiddling, sonic expansion, different filler tracks "from the vault," but absolutely nothing about it is reimagined or new. It's purely a behind the scenes, quantifiably provable in court, copyright reassertment and if you know anything about me then you know i'm 100% ok with that. It's her music, she should get to be the biggest millionaire from it. Plus, it's not bad. The melodies are catchy, the songs aren't stupid, i ...

This year, i have the perfect album for Halloween. Here's All Hallows Eve by Elixir, a delightful romp through the woods filled with witches and faeries and an antichrist on the Celtic New Year, Samhain. Check it out here:   https://elixirnwobhm.bandcamp.com/album/all-hallows-eve Elixir was a bit late to the original NWOBHM party, and they are woefully obscure compared to Judas Priest or Iron Maiden, but they are amazing. Definitely check out more of their stuff if you like your Metal Heavy and theatrically British. I do have a brand new copy on vinyl if you're interested, or just enjoy it over on their bandcamp page from the comfort of your favorite listening chair this cold, haunted evening.

I haven't reviewed any albums lately because i'm spending all my time learning to code the new Bunker of Beef website from scratch.  Fun fact, i despise javascript. In spite of that i'm slowly getting there, but i just picked up the new Black Pumas album and that's infinitely more exciting. Their self-titled debut is a masterpiece of upliftingly psychedelic neo-soul, and i expect no less from Chronicles of a Diamond.  Ooooh yeah, spectacular. The recipe is foolproof. You take straight up lofi hip-hop beats, bleep bloop on the synths and crank up the dripping wet distorted psych-rock guitar solos, then just stand out of the way while Eric Burton croons through a megaphone connected directly to your central nervous system. It's spine tinglingly delicious. I don't know what else to say, Black Pumas is 2 for 2 on the astonishingly enjoyable album front. In lesser hands this could easily turn out to be complete cheese, but the chemistry between Quesada's eclectic...

Here's one that might surprise you. I've never heard the entire Hotel California album. I mean, yes i've heard every song on it, but no i've never experienced the brain damaging oscillation between Rock Rock and Country Rock from start to finish.  I'm predisposed to dislike these kind of Faro Shuffled schizophrenic albums, but i'll accept it here because the concept is clearly various rooms inside the eponymously fictional metaphor that is the Hotel California. I do, however, very much like the orchestral reprise of Wasted Love to start Side B. If absolutely nothing else, this is an album designed to live on a record. Now, there are a couple reasons why my standard dislikes aren't relevant here. First, i don't know if you're familiar with just how insane a thing it was that Joe Walsh joined Eagles. Like, they literally argued back and forth about it before finally deciding it was too good to not let him Joe Walsh all over everything. Second, in terms...

What makes an album good? I've listened to thousands of them, and i've come to the conclusion that it isn't the songs or the artwork or the people or even the physical medium. The short answer is simply that its contents express its concept.  The long answer is, well, longer. The concept of an album isn't necessarily the title or the story or anything technical; the concept is the answer to the question "why is this an album?" Some albums exist because people want to make an album, some exist to tell a story, some exist merely because the people involved were in some way obligated to make them. None of that is inherently good or bad, so we have to reach deep into the human psyche for some unquantifiable yet undeniable truth. That truth is this:  An album that purports to tell a story should in fact tell it, and an album that wears the uniform of Random Crap should contain exactly said random crap. Examples might help.  Say you have an album entitled Soundtrack...

Just in case you're totally oblivious, Bob James titled his 6th album Touchdown because that's how many points kicking a homerun is worth. He avoided the whole record execs "invested" my revenue and stuck me with the tax liability thing by having his own personal label from the get go. I think it's named after a bridge that isn't named that anymore, or something. He's also, as you surely know, the godfather of Hip Hop, because somebody has to make smooth jazz before you can sample and rap over it, so why not Bob James?  Fun fact, he wrote the title track Touchdown as the original theme for Taxi, but after the show execs heard the track he wrote for an incidental 3rd episode character named Angela, they decided to use that as the theme instead. Who cares as long as they're paying you for something, am i right?  If i had the brainpower to spare i'd ressurect my imaginary HR manager Sandra for some delightful innuendo, but i don't, so insert your ...

To continue the theme of things that look like EPs but end up being full concept albums, here's Love Over Gold by Dire Straits.  Fun fact, Private Dancer was originally intended for Love Over Gold, but Mark Knopfler thought it made more sense if a woman sang it, so he gave (which i jadedly assume means sold) it to Tina Turner. Once you listen to the title track companion piece and the album closer It Never Rains, you'll hear how that all makes sense.  Telegraph Road literally stretches from Toledo Ohio to the northwest corner of the  Detroit metropolitan area. It's a long-ass road, and it sets the album up as a gloss of the life cycle of a modern industrialized city (more on that later).  Then we zoom in on the stereotypical jaded/cynical private investigator.  Zoom back out for Side B, a look at "industrial disease." It's much less unnerving than SPK (the band or the crazy German philosophical movement), but all the salient points are there.  Then the titl...

Is Wish You Were Here my favorite Pink Floyd album? It certainly could be, but not because i agree with Gilmour's feeling that Dark Side Of The Moon lacked the musical "magic" its ideas deserved. I'll also argue that the concept means something different for the band and the listener. For the band, Wish You Were Here is about a dichotomy, the critique of the business of music and the missing Syd are separate things happening at the same time. For the listener, however, we can plainly hear that they are one singular problem.  Absolutely, i'm unfairly psychoanalizing the band, but we're right smack in the middle of Waters's bipolar pendulum swing toward mania. After all, it's not Waters wishing Syd was there, it's Gilmour wishing Syd was there in the form of an overarching 9-part meditation on rememberance. No, he didn't really want it to structure the entire album the way it does, but i don't think you can argue with the result. Post Syd Bar...