114. Leonard Cohen - Songs of Leonard Cohen

1. Suzanne*

2. Master Song*

3. Winter Lady

4. The Stranger Song

5. Sisters of Mercy

6. So Long, Marianne*

7. Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye

8. Stories of the Street

9. Teachers

10. One of Us Cannot Be Wrong

A-

This is a dark, pretty, and admirably strange album. Apparently Cohen was unhappy with the production, but the contrast between his simple classical guitar and restrained, deadpan vocals with the odd assortment of choral and instrumental overdubs gives the whole thing a sort of queasy beauty. The first thing anyone talks about when it comes to Leonard Cohen is his lyrics, but it's important not to overlook this album as a piece of music. The songs feature dark, spacey arrangements, anchored by minimalist guitar work. Some of the choices are quite odd - the backing vocals threaten to drown out Cohen on "Suzanne" and "So Long, Marianne", and then there's things like weird electronic skitterings, what sounds like a calliope doubling the vocals at one point, and the bizarre wordless crooning that wanders around the back half of "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong". The whole thing is an obvious point of departure for a whole host of singer-songwriters (I have a feeling it was a big influence on Nick Drake, for example). It's also worth noting that Cohen has a way with crafting off-kilter but memorable, understated melodies. 

But on to those lyrics. And, well - they're both the best and worst thing about the album. "Suzanne", for example, is the sort of poem set to music they should be teaching in university courses. "Master Song" is unrelentingly bleak. But the problem is that the lyrics are so bafflingly cryptic most of the time that I couldn't make head or tails of them. Possibly this is because I simply don't have the kind of life experience reflected in most of these songs. I've never been a drug-addled bohemian living and loving on the edge of society. Most of these songs are dark examinations of love, loss, betrayal and subjugation. In one song Cohen even says the duty of lovers is to tarnish the Golden Rule. That's just depressing, even if it does sort of ring true. In any case, the imagery and use of language is very beautiful, but I don't really know what Cohen is on about. Then again, when you can write a song as catchy and stirring as "So Long, Marianne", it probably doesn't matter.

Of the three Cohen albums I've heard - this, Songs from a Room, and Songs of Love and Hate - this is probably my least favourite. I think Cohen's song writing became more focused and intelligible as he went along, resulting in astonishing songs like "Hallelujah" and "Famous Blue Raincoat". But this is still a very good album. It's very dark and mysterious and pretty, and you could dedicate a lot of time and effort to trying to unravel its secrets. It's definitely the sort of album you have to listen to carefully the whole way through. It's also one of those albums that should come pre-packaged with half a pack of smokes and a cheap bottle of red wine. 

113. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Electric Ladyland

1. ...And the Gods Made Love

2. Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland)

3. Crosstown Traffic

4. Voodoo Chile*

5. Little Miss Strange

6. Long Hot Summer Night

7. Come On (Part 1)

8. Gypsy Eyes

9. Burning of the Midnight Lamp

10. Rainy Day, Dream Away

11. 1983... (A Mermaid I Should Turn to Be)

12. Moon, Turn the Tides... Gently, Gently Away

13. Still Raining, Still Dreaming

14. House Burning Down

15. All Along the Watchtower*

16. Voodoo Child (Slight Return)*

A-

It's inevitable that every great band at some point releases a self-indulgent double album. Sometimes this works out OK (Pink Floyd, The Clash, Smashing Pumpkins), and sometimes not so much (Yes, Led Zeppelin, Outkast). Thankfully, Electric Ladyland skews a bit higher on the bell curve. Unfortunately, while there are some truly brilliant songs here - songs that stand amongst the greatest achievements of popular music, I'd say - there are also a lot of... well, not "stinkers" exactly, but songs that aren't particularly good. 

A good example of the problems with this album is "Gypsy Eyes". Apparently this song took about forty takes to accomplish. But, honestly, aside from a cool riff it's basically disposable. Why would anyone waste several days trying to nail such a pointless song?

This album is also pretty poorly structured. I realise the double album was a novelty at this point, but opening with a weird sound effects pastiche, segueing into a ballad, then slamming into puerile rocker "Crosstown Traffic" and closing side one with the (admittedly brilliant) lengthy blues jam "Voodoo Chile" just shows a complete lack of understanding of how to structure an album. Although this album was originally released in a format designed for automatic record changers, so I guess the whole thing would have flowed smoothly. But what am I saying? I listened to this on Spotify. It does no flow smoothly. 

Ultimately, this is a killer single disc album expanded to double album status because Hendrix couldn't let go of his babies. It's also much muddier in sound than Axis, which was a beautifully produced album, and doesn't contain anything as lyrical and beautiful as "Castles Made of Sand", "The Wind Cries Mary", or "Little Wing".

But enough griping. This is still a pretty good album. I have to give it a high rating if only for the final two tracks. "All Along the Watchtower" and "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" are two of the most astonishing pieces of music ever recorded - the former an astonishing rocker, the later a bluesy explosion of primal awesomeness that sees Hendrix wringing every possible variation out of one of the greatest riffs ever devised. 

I also quite like "Come On", which shows Hendrix absolutely nailing a high energy blues number, and "Little Miss Strange", which takes one of Noel Redding's disposable pop numbers and drapes it with Hendrix's wonderful lead guitar work.

In the end, I guess this is a party album. It makes sense less as a cohesive set of songs than as a lengthy soundtrack to stoned debauchery. I have a fever and I'm a bit tipsy, so I got it more this time than the other times I've listened to it, but really this is very much a stoner album. Not much will change my view that it would have worked better as a single album, but I don't really care since this is my blog and I can say what I want.

112. Os Mutantes - Os Mutantes (June 1968)

1. Panis et Circensis*

2. Ah Minha Menina*

3. O Relogio

4. Adeus, Maria Fulo

5. Baby

6. Senhor F

7. Bat Macumba

8. Le premier bonheur du jour

9. Trem Fantasma*

10. Tempo no Tempo

11. Ave Gengis Kahn

A

You only have to listen to a Sepultura album to know Brazil has had its problems. Of course I didn't really realise how severe some of those problems were until I decided to read up on the background of this album. Thankfully, Os Mutantes (their name means "The Mutants") decided to react against the oppressive military dictatorship established in Brazil in 1964 by releasing an album of flamboyant psychedelic rock and pop guaranteed to piss-off the largest number of people possible without actually doing anything that might land the band in a concrete cell. Really, this album has to be heard - words cannot do it justice.

Of course, as I've mentioned before, I don't speak Portuguese. However there is a very handy website which provides translations of many of the songs. I was glad to find it, as I've been fond of this album for many years but had no idea at all what the lyrics were. As it turns-out, they're mostly surreal and oblique critiques of contemporary Brazilian life, or else psychedelic love songs of the somewhat melancholy variety. But in any case, the main reason this album is remembered is for the fearlessly "out there" nature of the music. You don't really need to understand the lyrics to enjoy this album - it's a bizarre mixture of psychedelic rock and pop, Brazilian music, tape effects, homemade guitar effects (the fuzzed-out descending riff on album highlight "Ah Minha Menina" will stay with you till you die), and music concrete, all held together by a great sense for a catchy song. 

There are also quite a few covers - Caetano Veloso's "Baby", a reworking of a Mamas and the Papas song into "Tempo no Tempo", and a truly off-the-wall version of "Le Premier Bonheur du Jour" sung by Rita Lee that loses none of the melancholy prettiness of the Francoise Hardy original. But one of my favourites here would have to be original composition  "Trem Fantasmas", which starts with Brazilian flutes and drums before slowly morphing into a warped, drawn-out, harmonised groove that gets stuck in my head for days every time I hear it. And now I know what the lyrics mean I like it even more.

I really can't explain the mix of borderline-excessive studio trickery and downright catchy songs that is this album. It's obvious that Os Mutantes had heard and absorbed a huge amount of different music, and wanted to try and put everything they loved into an album, along with a few ideas of their own. Sometimes this doesn't work, but the acid-tinged, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach holds together perfectly. Even if you don't much enjoy it, it's worth listening to this album just because it's highly unlikely you'll ever hear anything else quite like it.

111. Ravi Shankar - The Sounds of India (1957)

1. An Introduction to Indian Music

2. Dardra

3. Maru-Bihag

4. Bhimpalasi

5. Sindhi-Bhairavi*

B+

Well this is another cock-up by Dimery and Co. This album was released in 1957. And really, it would have been nice for it to have been placed back then in the book, to provide a bit more context for all the Indian pastiches and raga rock that I've been wading through since the mid-60s.

And frankly I'm out of my depth with this one.

That said, this is a nice album. It seems like it would be a good introduction to Indian music, because it features traditional ragas, all well-played, broken up by explanatory introductions by Shankar about how the music is structured and played. One thing I find interesting is that the music is mostly built around tambura drones on single chords (a trick the Beatles pinched for "Tomorrow Never Knows"), with the tabla and sitar players improvising according to specific rules while playing off and occasionally mirroring one another. And yet, as Shankar notes in the introduction, this is not the free improvisation of jazz, and comparisons should be avoided. 

 The songs are also a lot more rhythmically adventurous than in most Western classical music - for example, there's the use of ten beats to the bar, broken up into groups of three and two, as opposed to the Western tendency towards a symmetrical eight beat bar.

That said, ten minutes of explanation by Shankar was nowhere near enough for me to grasp this music, and if I'm being honest I'd be hard pressed to even tell these tracks apart. This is interesting, and I enjoyed listening to it, but it's also noodly and rather samey. Possibly people who are more knowledgeable about Hindustani music would get more out of it, and back in 1957 when this was released it had the advantage of being of considerable novelty for western audiences. As it is, I quite like it as background music but I found it difficult to sit and listen to the whole thing. So a B+, which is my official "Quite good but I don't understand it" grade. Also I just really enjoy the tabla, so there's that.

110. The Kinks - The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society (November 1968)

1. The Village Green Preservation Society*

2. Do You Remember Walter

3. Picture Book*

4. Johnny Thunder

5. Last of the Steam-Powered Trains

6. Big Sky

7. Sitting by the Riverside

8. Animal Farm

9. Village Green

10. Starstruck

11. Phenomenal Cat

12. All of My Friends Were There

13. Wicked Annabella

14. Monica

15. People Take Pictures of Each Other*

A

This is an interesting album. There's nothing here of the quality of "Shangri-La" or "Waterloo Sunset" (although the title track comes close), but this is made up for by TKATVGPS being a remarkably consistent album. Ray Davies took over production for this album, and the result is a far cleaner and more polished sound than on previous Kinks records - you might even call it understated. Musically, it's a sort of muscular rock/pop/folk hybrid, with flourishes of psychedelia here and there (the largely mediocre "Last of the Steam-Powered Trains", for example, launches halfway through into an incredible guitar breakdown). This is a pretty, gentle album. Davies is still a smart-arse, but his lyrics are more nostalgic and introspective than before. The concept for this album was the idea that "Englishness" was fading, with the influence of America in particular coming to dominate the culture. As an Australian, I can certainly understand the anxiety that comes from watching your country gradually turn American - although, if I'm being honest, there are a lot of aspects of traditional Australian culture that could stand to go. And Davies isn't some racist conservative - as he sings in the title track, "Preserving the old ways from being abused/ Protecting the new ways for me and you/ What more can we do?".

As I get older, I both find myself getting seduced by nostalgia and growing more and more suspicious of it. This album is something of an antidote for that - Davies seems to feel that same mixture of reverence and distaste for his culture and his country. I think this was best explored in the brilliant "Victoria", but he does a good job here. Of course, this sort of lyrical, nostalgic approach was completely at odds with the times, and the album sank without a trace, only to be rescued years later by the Indie crowd (who would mine this album's sound mercilessly throughout the 90s). And it seems obvious to me that acts like the Beatles were still taking notice, and that David Bowie's early 70s work owes a massive debt to the Kinks. 

So, there are a few tracks here that manage to stand with the best of the Kinks' pop songs - "Picture Book" and "The Village Green Preservation Society" are gorgeous sing-along classics, for example - and the rest of the album is good in a sort of gentle, whimsical way (well, except for the freak-out that is "Wicked Annabella"). I'm probably in the minority in preferring Something Else..., but so what. This is a lovely album. And the actual sound of it is just massively influential.

109. The Incredible String Band - The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (March 1968)

1. Kooeeoaddi There*

2. The Minotaur's Song*

3. Witch's Hat

4. A Very Cellular Song*

5. Mercy I Cry City

6. Waltz of the New Moon

7. The Water Song

8. Three Is a Green Crown

9. Swift As the Wind

10. Nightfall

A

I can't help but imagine this album being rather polarising. Either you'll think it's a genius work of psychedelic folk and world music, or that it's a formless bundle of noise. I tend towards the former view, although even though I love side one of this album, I admit that by the time the album as a whole is finished I've definitely had enough.

It's kind of impossible to describe the sound of The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (incidentally - what a great title). The really clever thing about it is that the Incredible String Band manage to draw from so many different styles of music, find the commonalities between them, and work their vast range of influences into a cohesive whole. So, in the course of one song, you'll hear snatches of Celtic folk, Mediaeval balladry, nursery rhymes, Indian classical, North African singing, rock music, and Bob Dylan. "The Minotaur's Song" is a musical hall number in which the titular beast lives in a labyrinth under the sea and grinds bones for his porridge, complete with call and response vocals. "Kooeeoaddi There" is a beautiful, wandering evocation of childhood. "A Very Cellular Song" mixes Caribbean spirituals, baroque harpsichords and Middle Eastern-style vocals to tell a complex epic about faith that at one point detours into a segment sung from the perspective of an amoeba.

Suffice it to say that this album is the last word in hippie nonsense. But it's the kind of hippie nonsense I like, with wide-eyed spiritualism and loose, strange music and a quintessentially British obsession with surreal fantasy, childhood, and nonsense verse. Eastern Mysticism 101 by way of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. And musically, it really is great. Mike Heron and Robin Williamson aren't really the world's greatest singers or musicians, but they make up in versatility what they lack in skill. Their slightly rough approach also gives the album an earthy, mysterious and, for lack of a better word, "real" quality that conjures up (for me, anyway) memories of childhoods spent wandering through rainy paddocks, exploring the properties on which my grandparents lived. I think a large part of my weakness for this sort of thing comes from 1) having an English mother, and by extension spending a lot of time around my English grandparents with their comical Mancunian accents, and 2) spending a lot of my childhood living in the country, where we were forced to go play outside, and dividing my time between doing as such and reading a lot of fantasy novels. Throw in a small but consistent interest in philosophy and Eastern spiritualism, and I'm very much this album's target audience.

I would suggest, I suppose, that if you're unsure about this album you just listen to "A Very Cellular Song". It's a world in miniature, really quite beautiful, and as the strangest song on the album probably a good indicator for whether you'll like the album as a whole. I personally really enjoyed the whole thing, and will probably seek out more of the Incredible String Band's music.

108. Traffic - Traffic (October 1968)

1. You Can All Join In*

2. Pearly Queen

3. Don't Be Sad

4. Who Knows What Tomorrow May Bring*

5. Feelin' Alright*

6. Vagabond Virgin

7. 40,000 Headmen

8. Cryin' to Be Heard

9. No Time to Live

10. Means to an End

B+

I really wasn't expecting to enjoy this as much as I did. My only real experience with Traffic up to this point was the overproduced John Barleycorn Must Die. Thankfully, Traffic is a much more grounded album. The sound is blues rock, mostly, with obvious nods to Hendrix, Cream and the Who. Traffic also had an interest in jazz, though, so the songs have a looseness and expansive quality at odds with the claustrophobic production and composition common in rock music of the time. Steve Winwood is a brilliant guitarist and singer,  and Jim Capaldi is an excellent and innovative drummer. So musically, this album is pretty damned impressive.

What isn't really impressive is the lyrics. They sound cool, but they're largely pointless. A good example is "40,000 Headmen". It's a pretty cool psychedelic number, with lots of long pretty passages and flute accents and lilting keyboards. It also makes zero fucking sense. I guess if I were stoned I would think the imagery was cool, but I'm not high. It's 10:30 in the morning. I haven't even had a drink yet. 

Much more successful are the Dave Mason compositions "Feelin' Alright" and "You Can All Join In". The first is a pretty ballad about depression. The second is a jaunty sort of hoedown-come-country reel the title of which really says it all. 

Not to disparage Winwood and Capaldi. There are lots of great moments here. Like the so-so "Pearly Queen", at the end of which the drums kick in and it wanders into a sort of hypnotic psychedelic territory. Really, the whole first half of this album is great. It's just that, as is so often the case with albums, most of the best stuff is loaded onto the front end and it starts to get a bit weak after a while. Although to be fair, I think if you view this as a drug album then if you started when you put the record on, you'd be pretty into the music by the time side two wrapped up.

So I guess doing this project is a good thing because it's caused me to reassess my views on a lot of bands I'd written off over the years. It will be interesting to see what happens when I get to Billy Joel's The Stranger.

Also I'm doing quicker reviews and such from now on because I did the math and at my previous rate I'd still be doing this project when I was 45. The main point was just for me to listen to these albums and think about them a bit, after all.