Category: Reviews

Metallica’s 1991 self titled album, dubbed “the Black Album” by fans for its iconic black sleeve, thrust Metallica and heavy metal into the mainstream. At the time it served as a critical counterpoint to the cock rock that dominated the charts, led by the likes of Bon Jovi and Def Leppard. Metallica’s previous four albums had set the metal world on fire, a series of thundering thrash metal records that helped revolutionise the genre, however in order to achieve the commercial success that they had sniffed with their previous record …And Justice For All, their creative process would need to shift. To facilitate this change, Metallica enlisted the services of producer Bob Rock – previously the fastidious producer of Bon Jovi and Mötley Crüe. As one might imagine, this decision drew a considerable amount of controversy from Metallica’s core fan base. Would Bob Rock dilute the mighty Metallica into another flouncy commercial rock band? Were they selling out? While the Black album did mark a shift away from speed metal and prog-influenced arrangements, the muscular riffs and powerful grooves that had always defined the band remained very much intact. The songwriting here is more succinct and Bob Rock’s sonic contributions make the album feel huge. Metallica compromised just enough to storm the pop charts while retaining their heavy metal DNA. The album was an enormous commercial success. It is currently the highest selling album ever in the United States and debuted at number 1 all over the world. Album highlights include Enter Sandman, Nothing Else Matters, Sad But True and Wherever I May Roam. Did Metallica sell out? As then-bass player Jason Newsted once quipped, “Yes, we sell out: every seat in the house, every time we play, anywhere we play.”

A year after the release of their debut Definitely Maybe in 1994, Oasis released their sophomore offering (What’s the Story) Morning Glory to much fanfare, hitting number one on the album charts in ten countries, garnering fifteen platinum certifications from the British Phonographic Industry and eventually becoming the highest selling British album of the Nineties. Following this outrageous success came daily tabloid appearances for the Gallagher brothers, frequent comparisons to the Beatles, the crystallisation of the Britpop genre and the explosion of independent rock n’ roll. Underneath all this hype and bravado, though, is a meticulous and heartfelt album that is built on great songwriting. Noel Gallagher’s ability to write melodic, soaring chorus lines made Wonderwall, Don’t Look Back in Anger and Champagne Supernova into anthemic, monster hits that are tender and introspective but not at all out of place in a drunken pub singalong either. The production is certainly more polished and nuanced than Definitely Maybe, giving Gallagher’s songs the depth and size that they need to soar. Underneath the mammoth ballads on this record it’s easy to forget that Oasis are a great rock n roll band too – Hello, Roll With It, Hey Now and She’s Electric all sizzle with urgency and electricity, taking cues from T Rex, the Rolling Stones and of course, the Beatles. Oasis have always worn their influences on their sleeve but rock has long been a culture populated by musical bowerbirds. So much on this record is shaped by what came before it, but conversely, Morning Glory also shaped everything that came after.

“Don’t you know there ain’t no Devil? That’s just God when he’s drunk.” Rasps Tom Waits in Heartattack and Vine’s title track. Here we find Waits deep in his element, hollering and spitting barroom melodrama that boils over with tough-guy bravado, lounge lizard cool and more tall tales than you can poke a drunken piano at. Waits’ bluesman-meets-hobo-meets-beatnik routine seems cliched until you realise that there is nobody quite like him – he is a master of constructing environments and subverting expectations – perhaps the greatest bullshit artist rock n’ roll has ever known. On Heartattack and Vine we find one of Waits’ biggest hits, Jersey Girl, a ballad written for his then-sweetheart, now wife and collaborator Kathleen Brennan. Jersey Girl caught the ear of a young Bruce Springsteen who covered it as a B-side to his top ten hit Cover Me and has since used it as a staple of his live performances, exposing Waits to a mainstream audience – Heartattack and Vine would become Waits’ most commercially successful album until 1999’s Mule Variations. Album highlights include the scowling title track, the freewheeling abandon of Mr. Siegel, the sentimental lilt of Jersey Girl and the laid back sleaze of the instrumental In Shades. This record is the soundtrack to an evening in a smoky bar and all of the strange and beautiful possibilities that await within. If you’re new to Tom Waits this is a great place to start.

By the end of the 70’s the Stones, for the first time since they debuted, found themselves with something to prove. Disco and punk had exploded into the mainstream and the music press was increasingly branding the stars of the 60’s and early 70’s as dinosaurs. The band hadn’t released a cultural milestone since 1972’s Exile on Main Street and the departure of guitarist Mick Taylor had left a hole in their sound, the distinctive brand of musical alchemy that he had brought to the band unable to be replicated by the parade of guest players featured on their albums since. Mick Jagger’s fascination with the cult of celebrity and frequent appearances in the tabloids had begun to tarnish the band’s outlaw image and Keith Richards’ arrest for possession in Canada saw him facing seven years in prison, throwing the future of the band into question. Somehow, instead of being the Stones’ death knell, Some Girls gave them their first classic album since Exile, returned them to cultural relevance and managed to crystallise all that had beset them into a fresh sound that kept their blues rock roots at its core. Miss You, the album’s monster hit, fused the pulsing groove of disco with the grinding blues harmonica and slinky guitar that was so key to the band’s sound. Beast of Burden saw the band pen their first hit ballad since Angie and Far Away Eyes revealed that the Stones could really play country music when they wanted to, albeit in a tongue in cheek way. The full time addition of ex-Faces guitarist Ron Wood revitalises the arrangements, his counter-rhythms and stinging lead fusing with Keith Richards’ playing to fill the album with luscious, full guitar textures. Some Girls was a huge hit, asserted that the Stones still had plenty to say and began a new chapter in the sordid history of the world’s greatest rock n’ roll band.

Unplugged in New York was released shortly after Kurt Cobain’s death in 1994. Their label DCG and the surviving members of Nirvana had originally planned to release a live anthology called Verse Chorus Verse, however the mammoth task of sifting through years worth of live performances so soon after Kurt’s death proved too emotionally taxing a prospect. Instead, the group offered Unplugged in New York to a mourning public. The stripped back, intimate nature of the set and Cobain’s easy candour between songs serve to highlight the intense bursts of emotion scattered throughout, the most electrifying of which ends the version of Leadbelly’s Where Did You Sleep Last Night, the final song and unquestionable emotional climax of the record. MTV were reportedly unhappy with the set list because it was too light on Nirvana’s hits – instead the band played an eclectic set heavy on covers – David Bowie’s The Man Who Sold the Wold, a handful of Meat Puppets tunes and the aforementioned Where Did You Sleep Last Night. Retrospectively, the set list seems apt – a thoughtfully curated selection of songs that many speculate offered a glimpse into where Nirvana’s sound was heading. Sadly, we never got to find out. Rolling Stone wrote that Cobain could have “revolutionized folk music the same way he had rock.” Unplugged in New York is a fitting epitaph to Cobain’s legacy – full of light and darkness, offbeat humour and gut-wrenching sincerity. It is a remarkable album by a remarkable artist standing at the crossroads between life and death.

In 1956, rock n’ roll was still very much an unknown quantity in the world of pop music. A young Elvis Presley had been setting the Country Western charts on fire with a red hot series of singles for the legendary Sun Records, but when Sun founder Sam Phillips sold Presley’s contract to RCA for the bargain sum of $35,000, nobody knew if he was going to make much of an impact in the world of pop. Luckily, he did – Elvis would go on to become perhaps the top selling artist of all time – and it all starts here with his self titled debut for RCA. Elvis’ television performances of lead single Heartbreak Hotel all but assured the success of the album – his electrifying, sexually charged style of performance was like nothing the world had seen before. Accusations of satanism, screaming hordes of teenagers and other general hysteria soon began to follow Elvis wherever he went. The album hit number one and sold a million units in 1956 alone – Elvis was a made man. Elvis’ debut features a lot of great covers – Tutti Frutti by Little Richard, I Got a Woman by Ray Charles and Blue Suede Shoes by Carl Perkins all became staples of the King’s live set and his interpretation of Blue Suede Shoes has become the definitive version for many. Other album highlights include Blue Moon, Shake Rattle and Roll and Trying to get to You. Guitarist Scotty Moore’s searing guitar work and Elvis’ explosive vocal stylings seamlessly coagulate all over this album, creating the template for rock n’ roll as we know it today and inspiring bands like the Beatles, Bob Dylan and Led Zeppelin to follow their dreams. Elvis’ first outing was as good as he ever got. All hail the King.

(l’ve Had) the Time of My Life has probably been played at every high school dance since a sinewy Patrick Swayze shimmied into the public consciousness in 1987. Dirty Dancing was a pop culture phenomenon, cleverly challenging the oppressive comfort of a conservative late 80’s America with the sinuous rhythm and primal sex appeal of dance culture. Such a film lives and dies on the strength of its soundtrack and this one certainly delivers. Like the film, the Dirty Dancing soundtrack is a perfect slice of saccharine 80’s pop that evokes a nostalgic sensibility but it also shimmies, shakes and grinds at the same time. Even if it wasn’t connected to the film it would stand on its own as a great compilation. Highlights include Be My Baby by the Ronettes, Hungry Eyes by Eric Carmen and Patrick Swayze’s surprisingly good vocal turn, She’s Like the Wind. But you probably know that already – when a record sells 32 million copies (and spends 18 weeks at #1) its track listing has a tendency to tattoo itself into the popular imagination. The Dirty Dancing soundtrack is 32 years old but continues to walk the line between fun and schmaltzy, between goofy and sexy. The secret to its evergreen appeal (and what separates it from other soundtracks) is its unwillingness to be background music. After all, nobody puts Baby in the corner.

Patti Smith has called her 1975 debut record Horses “three-chord rock merged with the power of the word” – a merger that would ultimately allow Patti to distinguish herself from the burgeoning New York CBGB’s scene and reshape punk in her own image. Legend has it that Smith auditioned guitarist Lenny Kaye by asking him if he could play a car crash. He really can! The snarling, garage primitivism of his guitar is gilded perfectly by Smith’s fevered wail, unflinchingly inspired and sincere. Patti wears a lot of different hats on this record – poet, punk, revolutionary and high priestess – and the band wax and wane accordingly, building the songs into cathartic freakouts awash in straining guitars. John Cale’s (the Stooges, the Velvet Underground, Brian Eno) production lets the band breathe, never feeling intrusive but rather a steady hand pushing the band firmly over the abyss. Smith’s background as a performance poet allows her to breathe life into every word which, although surely carefully considered, feel spontaneous and heartfelt every time. Finally, Horses’ iconic cover is a stark photograph of a wry and androgynous Smith snapped by renowned photographer Robert Mapplethorpe (also the subject of her excellent memoir Just Kids). Her expression reads just like this record sounds – fearless, hopeful and ready.

In 2001 the Strokes found themselves in difficult position. After the release of a three track EP (The Modern Age) they had become the subject of a multi-million dollar record label bidding war and endlessly hyped by the British music press as the band that was to save good old fashioned rock n’ roll from the sea of hip hop and nu metal that had supplanted it on the pop charts. Miraculously, the Strokes overdelivered on the staggering hype that had beset the recording process of Is This It and delivered a record that crystallised their ultra hip New York City rock n’ roll lineage (Television and the Velvet Underground in particular) and laid the groundwork for a new kind of rock music that didn’t belong to grunge and didn’t consider pop to be a dirty word. After September 11 the world had transformed overnight into a different place and the Strokes, whether they liked it or not, were the soundtrack of the future. Vocalist Julian Casablancas plays the role of the Lou-Reed-esque sneering romantic perfectly while the glassy stabs of Albert Hammond Jr and Nick Valensi’s duelling guitar laid the groundwork for the sound that was to become known as indie rock. Is This It entered the UK charts at no. 2 and breakout singles Hard to Explain and Last Nite electrified dance floors all over the world. The people had spoken: by all accounts, This Was It. The Strokes had arrived.

Pixies are a hard band to nail down and their 1988 debut Surfer Rosa exemplifies this. On one hand, this record could easily be described caterwauling, riff driven punk rock. Conversely however, it is also characterised by its offbeat sense of humour, nostalgia for Dick Dale-esque surf guitar and a thread of strange sweetness that runs through songs about incarceration, loneliness, insanity and obsession. The ability of songwriters Frank Black and Kim Deal to write songs containing these idiosyncrasies is one thing, but to perform them with such alternating vigorous energy and laid back California cool is a whole other trick. The Pixies emerged on their debut as a fully formed beast – loud/quiet/loud recipe fully loaded – and began to transform the alt rock landscape instantaneously. Like the Velvet Underground, they found mainstream success mostly after their initial implosion but the handful of people who were hip to them from the beginning all formed their own bands, including a young Kurt Cobain. Surfer Rosa doesn’t follow any blueprints – it is a new kind of rock n’ roll percolated in the fevered minds of Pixies. It is sometimes surreal and sometimes sweet, sometimes loud and sometimes quiet – but it is always brilliant.