Here is an album I criminally underrated and overlooked for years. Perhaps due to my mood in the moment, or maybe because this is an album that rewards a close listen, but the first time I heard it I was underwhelmed. I was told it was the next Astral Weeks in his discog. And that is quite a claim to live up to indeed.
Well, this isn’t Astral Weeks. Nothing is. But this is its own thing. It’s an album that sorta floats along and take you with, inspecting these various emotional and spiritual detours and details. It’s a record straight from some sadly peaceful or contentedly morose space. It is imbued with an honesty and touch which few albums have.
The songs here are untraditional in structure, they go off in unexpected directions, they find a groove and a feel and they explore those grooves and vibes completely. The instruments, whether flutes, or guitars or strings, sound like they are feeling out the scene before they land on that sound. When they find that sound which they were poking around to find, they stay there and build it up from there. It’s really a stunning and mesmerizing kind of search which you as the listener are coming along for.
And Van’s vocals as per usual are the star here. So seductive, mercurial, sad, spiritual, and impossible to predict. Van was one of the greatest vocalist of all time. And he’s at his peak arguably here. More mature and world-weary than on Astral Weeks. Yet not yet at all cynical or defeated. It’s incredible how well he can express himself.
I haven’t had a chance to dissect and evaluate the lyrics like I have with other Van albums. But I imagine they are stunning as usual.
Anyway, this is an essential 74 release. Moving it to number 3 I think. 3 or 4. _________________ -Ryan
Here is an album I criminally underrated and overlooked for years. Perhaps due to my mood in the moment, or maybe because this is an album that rewards a close listen, but the first time I heard it I was underwhelmed. I was told it was the next Astral Weeks in his discog. And that is quite a claim to live up to indeed.
Well, this isn’t Astral Weeks. Nothing is. But this is its own thing. It’s an album that sorta floats along and take you with, inspecting these various emotional and spiritual detours and details. It’s a record straight from some sadly peaceful or contentedly morose space. It is imbued with an honesty and touch which few albums have.
The songs here are untraditional in structure, they go off in unexpected directions, they find a groove and a feel and they explore those grooves and vibes completely. The instruments, whether flutes, or guitars or strings, sound like they are feeling out the scene before they land on that sound. When they find that sound which they were poking around to find, they stay there and build it up from there. It’s really a stunning and mesmerizing kind of search which you as the listener are coming along for.
And Van’s vocals as per usual are the star here. So seductive, mercurial, sad, spiritual, and impossible to predict. Van was one of the greatest vocalist of all time. And he’s at his peak arguably here. More mature and world-weary than on Astral Weeks. Yet not yet at all cynical or defeated. It’s incredible how well he can express himself.
I haven’t had a chance to dissect and evaluate the lyrics like I have with other Van albums. But I imagine they are stunning as usual.
Anyway, this is an essential 74 release. Moving it to number 3 I think. 3 or 4.
Nice review. Totally agree.
MercuryTurn your back on the pay-you-back last callProfile St. Louis
Another day, another new appraisal, another newfound appreciation, another moment of clarity as only a great album seems to do for me.
It’s hard to express fully what makes this album click. It’s all so shadowy, austere, deeply emotional with no pyrotechnics. For every sweet and savage guitar lick from Richard or for every lyric emitted from the lips of Linda and Richard and with every somber melody, I feel the power tenfold. It’s like the album is an efficient, dovetailed musical tour of the deepest human fragility.
Also the context of what I know about this act and their history and even the cover photo, everything sorta fits together in wildly effective ways. The fact that this newly married couple could come together and spit out a masterpiece. And then throughout the 8 year run of their albums you get to hear all this sad creativity, climaxing with one of the most haunting “break up albums” ever made. It almost seems wrong to get to go on this journey with these 2 amazing musicians.
Okay, but enough on that. Let’s get to a little more on the music. It’s subtle, it’s melancholy, and maybe I’m crazy but it sounds ahead of its time. One of the coolest things about this album is how much it seems to have laid the groundwork for decades of folk rock artists to come. I hear A LOT of Magnolia Electric Co/Songs:Ohia on this album (Calvary Cross especially). I hear shades of what you’d hear with Cat Power or even Gillian Welch albums - austere and very very dark folk at its finest here. Etc. I don’t know, but as I listened I was blown away by how this album sounds like a perfect synthesis of all the great folk music being made in the earlier part of the 70s, but also as a blueprint for how to put together a detailed, unshowy, emotional, folk Rock album for years to come.
The song are all gorgeous, the melodies, the tracks, and especially the lyrics all coalesce into this wholesome sound which for each song works well In the extreme. On the title track when the horns come in I’m floored. On the opener when there’s that back and forth instrumental part I am in heaven. When the stripped down rhythm and atmosphere of Calvary Cross comes in I’m 100% invested. In the closer I feel like I’m staring straight into the dark abyss ... and I like it. Etc etc.
This album is just as deeply free of cheer as Songs of Love and Hate. I mean this song is rough. At times there are moments of rest from the futility of life, such as the title track or the proto-Pogues-y “Little Beggar Girl”. But by and large this album pulls no friggin punches.
I fucking love this album. That’s the main thing. And as is predictable a folk rock singer songwriter type album is yet again shooting straight up to #2 ... with the potential to go to number 1 in repeated listens. (Gram and Emmylou and Linda and Richard would be a fascinating double date, wouldn’t it be?).
“Life seems so rosy in the cradle
But I'll be a friend I'll tell you what's in store
There's nothing at the end of the rainbow
There's nothing to grow up for anymore” - The End The Rainbow _________________ -Ryan
here is my top 10 of 1974 as of now:
#1 - Grievous Angel - Gram Parsons
#1a - I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight - Richard and Linda Thompson
#3 - Phases and Stages - Willie Nelson
#4 - A Tábua de Esmeralda - Jorge Ben
#5 - Veedon Fleece - Van Morrison #6 - Relayer - Yes
#7 - On The Beach - Neil Young
#8 - Get Up With It - Miles Davis #9 - Luther's Blues - Luther Alison #10 - Rock Bottom - Robert Wyatt
italicized ones mean they need to be revisit as I either haven't heard them in awhile or I don't feel I know them or recall them super well.
Lots of singer/songwriter love, as is expected.
1 and 1a, as their ranks would suggest, are just about equal in my mind and are the only 2 on my overall chart.
The major classics that I either need to relisten to or listen to for the first time: (in some cases I'm really not that intrigured by them and would much rather listen to a bunch of interesting and less famous albums, but anyway, that's the truth)
Here Come The Warm Jets - Eno
Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy - Eno
Mirage - Camel
' - Frank Zappa
Court and Spark - Joni Mitchell
Crime of The Century - Supertramp
Radio City - Big Star
Secret Treaties - Blue Oyster Cult
Starless and Bible Black - King Crimson
Peace and Love - Dadawah (Tilly demands it)
Pretzel Logic - Steely Dan
Country Life - Roxy Music
Phaedra - Tangerine Dream (AM Demands it)
Kimono My House - Sparks
Sheer Heart Attack - Queen (dadrockers demand it)
Köhntarkösz - Magma (my heart demands it)
...etc etc... those are perhaps the most glaringly missed or super dim in my memory albums from the year...
I will get on it soonish with something. Knowing me, its likely to be none of the above listed or italicized. we shall see. _________________ -Ryan
Jorge's still kickin it (mid 70's or so, he performed at the Rio Olympics).
Glad you dug the release. I've heard (I dunno... 9?) of his albums, and there hasn't been a dud in the bunch. Some better than others sure, but nothing not worth giving a spin. Dive into his self titled... there's an English track on that called Take It Easy My Brother Charles that's killer.
skynyrd kicks ass. great rock band. And this album holds up as one of their best if not maybe theri best album. The hit at the start helps but from there they cover all the bases, a dash of respect for the old bluesmen, a rebellious record company jab which was a must, a great drink o' southern pride, that southern soul horn section, some almost Hopkins-level rock piano stuff, a touching song or 2 about drugs, etc. Itrs just an solid af rock album which is badass as all the best straightforward rock of the era was.
in some ways this is an album which more than any other serves as a cautionary tale against those 1 disc, 2 albums releases. I mean, they're great values, and if you are already familiar with the artist and you want to wrap up 2 birds with one throwing object, its probably not a problem. And maybe its just me, but I have found that those 2 albums in one releases are terrible. Why? Cuz unless you're packaging 2 very distinct albums together (which is usually not so much the case as they are usually similar and back-to-back albums in a discog), the result is by about 2/3s through, or 50 minutes, I personally feel bored. The a;lbums blend together.
High Low and In Between/The Late Great Townes Van Zandt, Circle Jerks' Group Sex/Wild In The Streets, Gram's GP/Grievous Angel, Gang of Four's Entertainment/Solid Gold and this one of #1 Record/Radio City are some notable 2 in 1 packages I have had. There are deozens more, but those are the ones off the top of my head. And you know what I notice personally in all cases? 1. I always always remember and "like" the first album far more than the 2nd, and 2. Unless I'm really really paying attention, I honestly don't know where one ends and another begins. Untril I disticntly seperated GP from Grievous Angel, I for the longest time overlooked the latter album. Same with Solid Gold, and, alas, same with the above pictured album from 1974, Radio City.
I finally listened to this album as an album start to finish a few days ago. And it was the first time I wasn't somewhat tired already of the power pop sounds oif Big Star when I started Radio City. The result as that I finally actually liked the album. I mean, I don't know what my thoughts were before. I thought Watch the Sunrise was a Radio City jam. I was stupid and unattentive, yes, that as well.
So, yeah, this is good and I respect the hell out of the influence it had on The Replacements and other indie and alt and power pop bands for the decades to come, And I am sympathetic to their disappointing story of would be rock star relative obscurity and struggle.
Do I love this album? No. I at least recognize it as a something seperate from their debut something. But I don't particularly love their debut either. And Third also isn't my jam. I guess this band's pop chops and so forth just don't hit me on any level deeply. There does exist a surface enjoyment in their melodies, their delicate balance of musical chops and a distinct ramshackle offhand nonchalance, and Alex Chilton is a really fascinating front man (who created a legendary Replacements track) etc. But yeah Its good not great in my life.
okay, and that's all for now... _________________ -Ryan
skynyrd kicks ass. great rock band. And this album holds up as one of their best if not maybe theri best album. The hit at the start helps but from there they cover all the bases, a dash of respect for the old bluesmen, a rebellious record company jab which was a must, a great drink o' southern pride, that southern soul horn section, some almost Hopkins-level rock piano stuff, a touching song or 2 about drugs, etc. Itrs just an solid af rock album which is badass as all the best straightforward rock of the era was.
in some ways this is an album which more than any other serves as a cautionary tale against those 1 disc, 2 albums releases. I mean, they're great values, and if you are already familiar with the artist and you want to wrap up 2 birds with one throwing object, its probably not a problem. And maybe its just me, but I have found that those 2 albums in one releases are terrible. Why? Cuz unless you're packaging 2 very distinct albums together (which is usually not so much the case as they are usually similar and back-to-back albums in a discog), the result is by about 2/3s through, or 50 minutes, I personally feel bored. The a;lbums blend together.
High Low and In Between/The Late Great Townes Van Zandt, Circle Jerks' Group Sex/Wild In The Streets, Gram's GP/Grievous Angel, Gang of Four's Entertainment/Solid Gold and this one of #1 Record/Radio City are some notable 2 in 1 packages I have had. There are deozens more, but those are the ones off the top of my head. And you know what I notice personally in all cases? 1. I always always remember and "like" the first album far more than the 2nd, and 2. Unless I'm really really paying attention, I honestly don't know where one ends and another begins. Untril I disticntly seperated GP from Grievous Angel, I for the longest time overlooked the latter album. Same with Solid Gold, and, alas, same with the above pictured album from 1974, Radio City.
I finally listened to this album as an album start to finish a few days ago. And it was the first time I wasn't somewhat tired already of the power pop sounds oif Big Star when I started Radio City. The result as that I finally actually liked the album. I mean, I don't know what my thoughts were before. I thought Watch the Sunrise was a Radio City jam. I was stupid and unattentive, yes, that as well.
So, yeah, this is good and I respect the hell out of the influence it had on The Replacements and other indie and alt and power pop bands for the decades to come, And I am sympathetic to their disappointing story of would be rock star relative obscurity and struggle.
Do I love this album? No. I at least recognize it as a something seperate from their debut something. But I don't particularly love their debut either. And Third also isn't my jam. I guess this band's pop chops and so forth just don't hit me on any level deeply. There does exist a surface enjoyment in their melodies, their delicate balance of musical chops and a distinct ramshackle offhand nonchalance, and Alex Chilton is a really fascinating front man (who created a legendary Replacements track) etc. But yeah Its good not great in my life.
okay, and that's all for now...
Nice reviews even if i (vehemently) disagree with your take on Big Star who I LOVE LOVE LOVE.
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Mercury
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