The first part was good, second part was more experimental which would usually be my preference, but the drone/synth mashup didn't reach its full potential imo. It's still a solid album, loved the production. Gotta listen to it some more. _________________ Overall chart Fake overall chart
Black Snake Diamond Role offers a worthwhile series of pop tunes where the singer boasts his decent range of vocal deliveries and the many influences behind them. Certain levels of Beatles, Tom Petty, The Velvet Underground and David Bowie can be easily found. This is especially true due to Robyn's vocal delivery which changes a little bit every song. Sometimes his vocals are deep and moody, sometimes they have a vivid air of poppiness, and sometimes they're mellow enough for folk music. This is true for the range of styles as well. "Acid Bird," for example, has a psychedelic sound similar to Harrison's sitar. There are even noisier and more melodic moments that ring of Robyn's album with The Soft Boys that was released the year before, Underwater Moonlight. Even though most of the songs are very different because of this experimentation, the songs create a great and adventurous whole. The lyrics are also very odd but easy to get invested in. That was made very clear at the opener, The Man Who Invented Himself, through lyrics like: "And he landed right on target, but the target rolled away and it left him pointing nowhere." The lyrics demand attention, and an album should have something that requires specific demands for attention.
However, the album feels almost too "cute" to stand out like other psychedelic pop albums because the tracks and the featured melodies are pretty simply structured. The instrumentation doesn't stand out to me even though the presence the band behind Hitchcock creates is very true to the psychedelic approach. I understand that both the approach and the simplicity can be expected from a post-Beatlemania psych-pop album but even The Flaming Lips have taken the odd route with their pop-oriented albums like Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, my favorite neo-psychedelia album album.
It's clear that Robyn Hitchcock has a healthy imagination and his debut shines with it. The presence of the album is fine and the sound is poppy enough to get attached to very quickly. And the best part of the album is that all of the tracks have a strength about that that doesn't drop or raise too high in quality between two tracks. But when paired with the familiarity of Hitchcock's reputation, it's obvious that Black Snake Diamond Role doesn't present Hitchcock's skills at their full power and that he had some maturing to do before he made his signature album, I Often Dream of Trains. BSDR is a great album by virtue of delivery and imagination, but it needed a little work.
Exactly what I needed on a gloomy quarantine day, a series of upbeat and out-there pop gems. After the first few seconds of The Man Who Invented Himself, I knew I was in for a good ride. Almost ELO-style 70s pop rock, with fine verses and even better hooks. The first half was great, I was a bit distracted during the last 3 songs, but overall the weird combination of Robyn's lovely voice, catchy tunes and my current mood was perfect. Favourites include the opening track, Brenda's Iron Sledge, The Lizard, Acid Bird. And the lyrics of Meat were... yeah. Looking forward to his other albums, cause this one is not even top 5 on BEA. _________________ Overall chart Fake overall chart
I've never dug into Robyn's solo discography much, so I was also happy to give this a listen. And, while I still prefer the two Soft Boys albums over this, it's a well-crafted bit of alternative pop with witty lyricism and catchy hooks. The songs here still carry the edge of the Soft Boys while adding in some more melodicism and less jagged guitar work.
Pretty much what I would expect from one of the more underrated songwriters of his generation. Although, I think I find myself saying everybody I like is underrated nowadays, which isn't very insightful. 😐
baystateoftheartNeil Young as a butternut squashProfile Massachusetts
I really enjoyed this album. It gets a lot of comparisons to Syd Barrett, which I can see (although I've only heard his songs with Pink Floyd). The songwriting is good to great, with the best track probably being Acid Bird. He really has a great ear for pop song structures. The lyrics are more often the weaker part of the songwriting, like on Meat as LedZep already pointed out. On the whole, I'd put this about on par with Underwater Moonlight, despite the fact that I prepare jangle pop sonically to the styles here. I have just added A Can Of Bees to my library to try soon due to his bandmate's passing. Final verdict: more of the songs are good than great, so this earns a 3.5/5. _________________ Join us in the canon game :) / Add me on RYM
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
LedZep
Tha1ChiefRocka
Repo
Spyglass
baystateoftheart
