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Tuesday, April 30, 2019

Album Review: The Darkness - Permission to Land (2003)

Any rock act since the turn of the millennium that dared to don leopard-skin tights and sing in a falsetto so high windows would shatter would under ordinary circumstances be advised to sell tomatoes, bags of gravel and pointy rocks at their shows in lieu of merchandise.  That shit went out in 1991 - well, that's what some people might've told you.  "Glam is dead", they said. "Give it up."  But nae.  One band decided to go one further and blend the stylings of bands such as AC/DC, Def Leppard and Queen together and mix it with the fashion sense of some obscure eighties hair metal band to come up with the most bold and audacious thing since Bob Dylan gave his folkie audience the ass and went electric.  And like Dylan, the Darkness found significant success in the gamble.  What could've easily have been mistaken for some silly comedy act (had we not known better) turned into a polished, fun, clap-your-hands-in-the-air set of surprisingly good singalong jingles that'd make you feel good about life more than a line of coke could ever hope to achieve.  Permission to Land could have been an even bigger flop than Johnny Holmes' flaccid pork sword, but to all our surprise, it was a hit.  And here's why - from "Black Shuck", "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" to "Givin' Up", its unabashed silliness and Pythonesque proclivities for overdoing things doesn't fly in the face of its otherwise serious attempt at being a legit rock album.  Which is a good thing too, because it is a seriously good album at that.  This album wasn't really "Growing on Me", because I took to it like a duck to water the very first time I heard it, which was a while ago now.  Noice.  A-


Monday, April 29, 2019

Album Review: Elton John - Made in England (1995)

My initial reaction to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was at best lukewarm. Sure, there were the hits like "Bennie and the Jets" and "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" that always got played, but the rest of the album I felt was tepid and often lackluster. That was the first time I heard the album, which was a while ago now.  Second time 'round was a different story altogether. Once I started to dig songs such as "The Ballad of Danny Bailey (1904-1935)" and "All The Girls Love Alice", I soon began to consume the rest of the record with ever-increasing fervor.  It's rare for me to take to an album the second time around - Avalon by Roxy Music is perhaps my best example, and incidentally, an excellent example of falling for an album the second time around that is evidently shared by many critics. Now that I'm reviewing Elton John's 1995 album Made in England, an album I've owned since 1997, I once again am finding myself in a similar predicament, with some slight differences.  I initially bought the album solely because of three songs - "Believe", "Made in England" and "Blessed" - all great songs, and of course, they were the ones you heard on the radio, and therefore the reason I purchased the album in the first place.  I had given the album a full play though a long time ago and at the time didn't think too much of it on the whole, bar the aforementioned trio of radio hits.  But now, I'm finding the album to be much more palatable, and often pleasant. "Cold" and "Pain" are remarkably good, and "Belfast" is still somewhat on the "Meh" side. "Man" isn't too bad, either.  Still, it ain't no Avalon or Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.  But I'm still glad that I decided to pay it another visit. Not bad, not bad at all. B+


Friday, April 19, 2019

Album Review: Electric Light Orchestra - Balance of Power (1986)

Come the 1980s many bands and artists were quickly cashing in on the new electronic, synthesized sound. Some pulled it off quite well, some pulled it off poorly, others got mixed results.  Electric Light Orchestra, a band whom we all know was no stranger to synthesizers, decided for their 1986 album Balance of Power to ditch the string section altogether and jump aboard the new wave bandwagon. The results are - well, depending on who you ask - oscillating between awful and mixed.  I myself tend to gravitate toward the latter. If there's anything that I would criticize the most about this album is the sporadic cheesiness and below par songwriting and less about the actual choice of equipment used. "Heaven Only Knows" the album's opening track, is musically very average but rather poor lyrically speaking. In contrast the second song "So Serious" improves markedly, and is perhaps what I might even term a "proto-Wilbury" premonition of sorts. This newfound momentum, however, is soon lost as song number three, "Getting to the Point" finds itself slipping back down into cheesy status.  "Calling America" is the only song here that would find itself appearing on the ELO greatest hits compilation records, and for good reason - it is by far the best song on the album.  In concluding this critique, would I recommend newbies listen to this record? Absolutely not.  Stick to A New World Record, Eldorado, Out of the Blue or even Discovery, but for most fans this is predominantly a collection filler.  My love of the eighties and subsequent tolerance for even its more cheesier moments spare this album from a far more harsh criticism. Meh, it could be worse.  B