ITT: /mu/ in 1989
ha ha remember the brief funk metal fad in 89-90?
Goddammit Taylor Swift is born this year.
>>127922823kind of an off year tbqh
>>127923043Do you think she likes Kate Bush's new album?
Go A's!
>>127922973Hair metal was dying but grunge hadn't yet arrived so the industry was looking for something to fill the hole.
With rap, funk, hardcore, and falafel-joint rai seasoning their metallic stew, a new front man thinks hard about life and horror comics while under the influence of I hate to think what. "Epic," which old people will think is about the terrors of sex though it's really about the terrors of everything, and "Zombie Eaters," a jaundiced if not jealous view of a baby's world, delineate their generational chauvinism, and art-AOR keybs establish the depths of their cultural deprivation. Not as stupid as they sound--but do they sound stupid. B-
>>127922823Listening to Gowan
>>127923335you lads erd of the stone roses?
>>127923414KICKSTART MY HEART AND HOPE IT NEVER STOPS
If fried brains are your idea of a rock-and-roll dream, then side one of this album will do you nicely. Of course this group's idea of a rock-and-roll dream is also the traditional "Love In An Elevator", ok stuff as it goes but I could do with more of "Janie's Got A Gun" in which an abused teenager offs her dad. B+
>>127923556their best post-85 album and the most rocking one
>>127923363YEWWW WANT IT AWWLLL BUT YEWWWW CAN'T HAVE IT
>>127923256yay another all Crapifornia World Series. can hardly wait.
>>127923256I tried this out on Tecmo Baseball at my cousin's house and the Giants buried them. Guess sports vidya is still in its relative infancy.
This AOR reclamation job isn't retro because so many of their culturally deprived boho contemporaries have pretty much the same idea. It isn't Led Zep because they're interested in (good at?) noise, not riffs. Covertly conceptual, arty in spite of itself, and I bet metal fans don't bite. C+
holy fucking shit guys
Punks who loved Hendrix and P-Funk, they've decided to cash in on their excellent tastes. Problem is, they didn't have the chops to pull it off before and now that they've pushed the guitar up front they sound even cruder. But I'm sure they're nice guys and all, even mention compassion in the first verse of the first song. C+
>>127923746why does the FNM singer sound like he blatantly copied the vocals on here?
>>127923775i see you Anthony
Donny listened to the radio for a couple of days and said to himself, "Why should all these professional no-talents make the money? I'm a professional no-talent myself, and I've got a name and connections." And in Donny's life the ability to create standard-issue pop-funk is a genuine liberation--he's Hollywood hip at last, and what a long hard road it must have been. But he sounds anonymous anyway, standard-issue, and corporate. After all, the best pop functions as a liberation even when it's formally received--celebrates a formula in ways that are audible, and infectious. The last time this bozo managed that trick was "One Bad Apple." D
Dylan is Bob, the influential singer-songwriter who's resurfaced as the brains of the Traveling Wilburys; the Dead are Grateful, and not just because charismatic guitarist-antileader Jerry Garcia survived an offstage coma--they're rich men, and they sound it. Like Dylan, Garcia plays hardest and works most playfully when somebody pokes him a little--Ornette Coleman, say. But unlike Ornette, Dylan's not forever young, and what he makes of his catalogue here is exactly what he's been making of it for years--money. C-
She's still Janet Jam-Lewis to me--Quincy Jones's natural bodily rhythms are nothing like Thriller's, but every Flyte Tyme production has showed off these angular beats. Not so smashingly is all--if the P-Funk pretensions of "nation" are a little much from somebody whose knowledge of the world is based on the 6 o'clock news, the "rhythm" is real, and I give her credit for it. Her voice is as unequal to her vaguely admonitory politics as it was to her declaration of sexual availability, but the music is the message: never before have Jam & Lewis rocked so hard for so long. Best slow stuff: the murmured moans and irregular breathing of the sexually available "Someday Is Tonight." A-
For years it seemed pointless to wait till he found his bearings--his bearings in relation to what? Maybe he still had terrific albums in him, but history had passed him by--his saving eccentricity was no longer an effective weapon against the industrialization of pop, which had to be ignored altogether or taken to the mat. So apropos of nothing he comes up with a classic Neil Young album, deploying not only the folk ditties and rock galumph that made him famous, but the Nashvillisms and horn charts that made him infamous. In addition to sad male chauvinist love songs, it features a bunch of good stuff about a subject almost no rocker white or black has done much with--crack, which seems to have awakened his eccentric conscience (though I bet a Yalie as opposed to cowboy president helped). Does this terrific album mean he's found his bearings? I doubt it. But I no longer put it past him. A
How 'bout that--"an equity partner" "returns to the foundations of kids' street music," with well-known former expert Nile Rodgers guiding her every note. Which song means the most to her personally? Is it the well-named "Workin' Overtime"? The even better-named "Bottom Line"? Perhaps the revealing "Going Through the Motions"? The answer is "Take the Bitter With the Sweet." Comments Ross: "Every person and every moment is a combination of bitter and sweet, and that is what makes life so rich and surprising." Thanks for letting us in on this secret, equity partner. C+
>>127924002How do you do fellow kids?
Frank Farian's great Eurodisco experiment Boney M didn't go over Stateside for the simple reason that it was too Euro. His Eurorap is hipper, sexier, even a teensy bit soulful--in short, indistinguishable from the highest quality Amerischlock give or take some snazzy sound effects. The title cut is the best cut. The remix of the title cut is the second-best cut. C
>>127924049nobody knew yet, nobody knew...
>>127923363dude sounds like Bugs Bunny
Having gained her precious country credibility, she promptly released a live acoustic best-of. Now she asks the never-say-die Glyn Johns to . . . what? Turn her into Suzanne Vega? I don't know. But I expect she thinks it has something to do with art. C+
Can you believe she's talking this one up as a triumph of self-expression (meaning "personal" songs, like that Kodak ad) over spiritual adversity (meaning commercial shortfall)? How embarrassing to have placed hope in this woman. And how sad to compare the bold finds and off-the-wall vulgarity of the only good album she'll ever make to this bigtime pop--a parameter stretched not an iota by songs about one's very own breakup, not to mention strokes as prudently defiant as the lyric about not being a pet, which was probably Christina Amphlett's idea anyway. C+
Holy Fucking shit. I thought they were just gonna be a flash in the pan, but this is a game changing album. Boston is back>>127922973I love funk metal>>127923363Fair>>127923414Good album, big improvement i thought they were going downhill with Girls Girls Girls. Their best work yet, if they keep this up they'll have an even better future ahead.>>127923556Fair>>127923700Honestly too Fair, Soungarden really is gonna be aone album wonder. This is a huge downgrade from Ultramega OK, the seattle bands around them are just floundering too
>>127924103any album with that cover is going to be so pretentious it hurts
>>127923746Fuck this band.
Beyond Aretha, forget the cameo attractions--Billy Vera (wan), Joe Cocker (rough), and Robert Palmer (compared by JB to Elvis, Otis, and Jackie, and don't you sometimes wish he was just as far out of the way?). Also, the band's not improving, and even at that it's sharper than his voice, which you probably figured and which sinks his umpteenth de facto best-of once and for all. Is this what he's showing his parole officer? Poor guy. C
Johnny's gotten so tired and cynical he can't cut to anywhere new: no matter how hard he tries (and as a working professional he does try), he's stuck with his own ideas. Stephen Hague is a tabula rasa--when he does the Pet Shop Boys he seems smart, when he does Spigue Spigue Sputnik he seems false, when he does Erasure he seems blank. So when he does PIL he seems blank with a few harsh cross-rhythms. And if you consider it corny of me to pick on Johnny's electrodance record, let me observe that if he'd gone to Iggy Pop or George Clinton things would be just as bad. Maybe worse. C+
>>127924247>Johnny's gotten so tired and cynical he can't cut to anywhere new: no matter how hard he tries (and as a working professional he does try), he's stuck with his own ideasso much projection
Casting about for a clue to this cipher, I found a gem in the bio: "My mom and dad took me to literally thousands of auditions, lessons, and performances." Making her a showbiz kid manque who immersed her perfect pitch and competitive Chopin in disco and Billy Joel, with every pop dream supported by doting parents who didn't want to raise a rebel and got their wish--so far. Unable to fall back on even an alienated childhood for inspiration, her music is synthesis without thesis or antithesis. A mimic and nothing more, she emits banalities about relationships and life choices that are no doubt deeper than anything she's actually experienced--so far. C+
All rancor and bad vibes, Dirty Work was the Stones; all impartiality and bad boys grown up, the reunion is an amazing simulation. Charlie's groove enlivens--and IDs--the mature sentiments while gibes at "conscience" and "reason" hint obliquely at self-awareness. But for Mick, self-awareness means above all accepting one's status as a pop star. Maybe he thinks "So get off the fence/It's creasing your butt" saves "Mixed Emotions" from its own conventionality. Probably he thinks giving Keith two vocals is democracy and roots. Certainly he thinks he needs the money. Wrong, wrong, and wrong again. B-
Q's ecumenicism stands as a beacon to the narrow-minded. Jazz, pop, rap, schlock, anonymous divas he's got a piece of, choruses going doo-doo-doo--they're all black music to him. The superrap with Zulu chant is a crossover worthy (also reminiscent) of Michael J., and Kool Moe Dee and Big Daddy Kane's "Birdland" lets Joe Zawinul into the canon while setting up a scat connection that further twists the eternal is-rap-bop-or-dozens? debate. As for Barry White, he's done worse. But he's also done better. B+
>>127923209at risk of wearing a normie jacket, this album has to be in the top 10 musical works of all time for me. just super foundational, melody after melody and genius atmosphere.picrel too but not as great
Instead of going Broadway with his cautionary tales and cornball confessionals, he hires the man from Foreigner. And it makes no difference--even in arena mode he's a force of nature and bad taste. Granted, the best songs are the ones that least suit the mold--the tributes to Montauk and Leningrad, the lament for the working couple, the quiz from Junior Scholastic. And even the worst maintain a level of craft arenas know nothing of. B
wonder when GNR ever come out with another LP? it's been two years already.
Go 49ers!
His seventh studio job of the decade is the third he didn't just churn out and thus the third to get hyped as a turnaround, but really, there is a difference. Daniel Lanois's understated care and easy beat suit his casual ways, and three or four songs might sound like something late at night on the radio, or after the great flood. All are modest and tuneful enough to make you forgive "Disease of Conceit," which is neither. So I forgive him. B
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emuI41leul8
What did you expect him to call it? Hack? Layla and 461 Ocean Boulevard were flukes--he has no knack for making records. So instead he farms the songs out, sings them competently enough, and marks them with his guitar. Which sounds kind of like Mark Knopfler's. C
The longing for contact and obliteration are themes grand enough to support a little grandiosity, and because she's smarter than the average art-rocker, she brings something worth telling to them--even something worth "expressing." She knows herself better, too; typical that her roots move is Trio Bulgarka rather than some Afro-source having nothing to do with who she is. Just wish she convinced me the Trio Bulgarka had more to do with who I am. The title song could give Henry James a boner. The one where her beloved turns into Hitler is art-rock. B
May he remain a protest singer in perpetuity, and not just because I wish his love songs were history. But n.b.: the two standouts are "My Personal Revenge," a pledge of forgiveness by Sandinista hardliner Tomás Borge, and Little Steven's--yes, Little Steven's, his stock always improves when he doesn't sing--"I Am a Patriot." You think the secret flaw of the archetypal singer-songwriter might be songwriting? B
Success didn't lighten them up, but failure straightened them out--this is the hard-driving stuff preferred by all but the true gloom addicts in their target audience, with the gloom taken care of by lyrics about drugs, death, or both. It's as if they live in the glam-metal netherworld, only ever so much more tastefully--they flaunt no groupies, solos, or stupid fashion statements. If you've always had your doubts about their shtick, chances are you'll find the loss of aural mystery fatal. B-
GHOULS ATTACK THE CHURCH
this band is gonna be huge. it's only a matter of time
This would've been considered /mu/core in 1989
>>1279258301989 /mu/corehttps://open.spotify.com/playlist/4tUTgsptmSqBcENV5mtztL?si=_1qB1toCSH2mMl4moy1CfQ
>>127925835Don't discuss anything until you listen to all 16 hours.OK? thanks. And..Don't Be a Dick About It
>>127922823Is your little brother home?
Three times I've mistaken her polymorphic promo and gross ambition for standard-issue lowest-common-denominator pandering, and three times her audience has disabused me in the months and years that followed. But though I swear I won't get fooled again, it's hard to hear an icon in the privacy of your own home, especially if you don't believe in her, and I won't sink that low or fly that high--I can't. So say the kiddie psychedelia is ick, the side-closers are over when they're over, and everything else sports some little touch to remember it by, Prince or musique concrète or broken quote from the Association. The cocksucker's prayer is anybody's classic, but coming from, I don't know, Suzanne Vega, the declaration of filial independence and the recommendation of romantic independence would be uncharacteristically catchy cliches. Coming from an icon they're challenging, thrilling--and they'll get more thrilling. B+
>>127927502>Hooked by two Hispanic/Asian working girls uttering rhythmic fuckwordsit's a sample from Full Metal Jacket. did he even see the movie?
"And when I say I'm `Queen' Latifah, it has nothing to do with rank. It has to do with how I feel spiritually." That's her claim, and I'm a believer. It's a relief to hear a woman grab onto the mother-worship that's an unhonored subtext of male rap Afrocentrism--the feminist instincts of "Ladies First," a duet with Brit sister Monie Love, and "Evil That Men Do," with KRS-One's music underpinning the budding matriarch's message, are years overdue. Her Afrocentrism is beatwise, too--eager reggae, deep house, "Chicken Scratch." De La Soul, Daddy-O, and her steady mixer Mark the 45 King prove they're good enough for her by playing consort for a track apiece. A-
Like a good rapper, Greg Graffin is once again singing his own tune--no matter how the three chords play themselves out on the (probably nonexistent, but never mind) lead sheet, the natural drone of his voice adds a music of its own. And he's still finding naive new truths in disillusioned hardcore truisms. "Culture was the seed of proliferation but it has gotten melded into an inharmonic whole" is bad writing; so's "Prescience was not lacking and the present was not all." Yet propelled by the drone and the three chords, they clobber you with the life-probe that's always been rock and roll's secret, excuse, or reason for being. B+
The ACLU may not want it advertised, but this record is pornographic; that's one of the few good things about it. Hooked by two Hispanic/Asian working girls uttering rhythmic fuckwords, the number-one rap single "Me So Horny" packs the gross eroticism of a good hard-core loop. Romance isn't an issue; liking women isn't even an issue. Thus there are few distracting rationalizations about how this or that bitch did them wrong--these Miami knuckleheads are just normal red-blooded American misogynists. They like it "rough and painful"; they tell men how to "give her more than she wants"; they never touch a woman anywhere but between her legs. And only rarely do their raw samples generate the heat of the single. So in the long run, they're almost as unlikely to inspire good sex as a sermon by Donald Wildmon. They don't belong in jail. But remember John Holmes: he who lives by the dick shall die by the dick. C
"A lot of people were probably wondering when they heard about the pairing whether I was going to make a funk record like Was (Not Was)," Bonnie surmises. Right--loyalists were shaking in their boots, I was licking my lips, and now the suspense is over, unfortunately. She deserves respect, not the obeisance she gets from career sicko Don Was, who fashions an amazing simulation of the El Lay aesthetic she helped perfect and we all thought he hated. Bonnie being Bonnie, it sounds perfectly OK, but most of the songs are so subtly crafted they disappear under her tender loving ministrations, and though Was lets her play guitar for the whole first side, his studio pros could just as well be Peter Asher's. B
Natalie Merchant has her own prosaic prosody, with off-kilter guitar accentuating its eccentric undertow. The whole second side makes politics not love, and sometimes--like when the lottery-playing mom of "Dust Bowl" rubs her fevered youngest down with rubbing alcohol--she brings you there. But somehow I knew that when she got down to cases she'd still be a fuzzy-wuzzy. This is a woman whose song about Africa (called "Hateful Hate," now there's a resonant phrase) brushes by slavery on its way to elephanticide and ends up condemning "curiosity"--again and again. No wonder she won't listen to "common sense firm arguments." B-
For a black Jewish Christian married to Lisa Bonet who overoveroverdubbed his Hendrix-Beatles hybrid himself, not bad. But that's a lot of marketing to live down. B-
>>127927651>This is a woman whose song about Africa (called "Hateful Hate," now there's a resonant phrase) brushes by slavery on its way to elephanticidethat's just women being women
>>127925835INCREDIBLE
ok
>>127928613i can't help but feel this cover was a Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders reference and someone was playing a lot of computer games back then.
>>127923746back when John could _play_ before he destroyed his body with drugs
>>127924557>VULTURES moaning a FUNERAL dirge>WALLS await to CRADLE YOU and RIP your SOUL APART
Bolton's impression of Joe Cocker's Ray Charles impression is almost ok but usually he differs from pop metal only in the wattage of his guitar and the shamelessness of his hired song doctors. Name to remember: Diane Warren. Give her a writing credit and she'll give you a hit and a bad album. C
DID YOU EVER KNOW THAT YOU'RE MY HERRROOOO
why is some autist writing paragraphs and giving notes to albums?
>>127928858worst album of the entire year. zoomers won't remember the horror of...
>>127922823Got Damn people. The Allman Brothers BAnd just reformed and they are smokin'. they just put out a box set with all sorts of unreleased material and are currently touring and tearing it uphttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRDtY6JbK4w
>>127924412the album where Dylan gave up on the modern world and decided to LARP as a 1930s ghost for the rest of his life
Paula Abdul is hot.
With the transmutation of junk a species of junk itself, an evasion available to any charlatan or nincompoop, it's tempting to ignore this patent arena move altogether. But by pumping his bad faith and bad relationship into depressing moderato play-loud keyb anthems far more tedious than his endless vamps, Robert Smith does actually confront a life contradiction. Not the splintered relationship, needless to say, although the title tune is a suitably grotesque breakup song among unsuitably grotesque breakup songs. As with so many stars, even "private" ones who make a big deal of their "integrity," Smith's demon lover is his audience, now somehow swollen well beyond his ability to comprehend, much less control. Hence the huge scale of these gothic cliches. And watch out, you mass, 'cause if you don't accept this propitiation he just may start contemplating suicide again. Or take his money and go home. C+
>>127927630its funny to see christgau agree with my dad on something
>>127929672Which was that Don Was sucks and made the lamest AC slop?
>>127927612zoomlennial rappers only wish they could make anything this hard
https://thequietus.com/opinion-and-essays/anniversary/kate-bush-the-sensual-world-anniversary-review/
From self-centered teenager to man with a mission: "I hope to prove to the world that I can reach all materialistic goals and be young, black and legal." On the cover he and his panther wear gold while his three women sport tight dresses and Moet, with not an Africa medallion in sight, but call it part of a larger strategy: justifying conspicuous consumption with conspicuous production. His output totals 16 tracks for 68 minutes on a single vinyl LP, with three extra on CD and the superhard B-side "Jack the Ripper" completing an 85-minute, 20-track cassette. Though one of the ballads is a killer, the other two are, well, changes of pace; the (vinyl) side-closers make "Jack the Ripper" sound slow; the arrogant sense of humor comes with a snide, irritating, completely original laugh. My standard response to such overkill is to wish someone had boiled it down to the great album it contains, but with this egocentric, hedonistic, workaholic materialist, I'll take it all--definitely including the nonvinyl "Change Your Ways," which preaches compassion to the young, black, and legal competition. A-
>>127923043How is that possible??
Sucked into the business when their girlfriends took them to see This Is Spinal Tap, they're the most physically unprepossessing glam boys in history except Kiss, and beneath the red satin and airbrushed navels are workaday attitudes, riffs, and yowls. The Ian Hunter-penned hit puts their artistic achievement in perspective--closest they come to a detail like "And the heater don't work" is "Hiway lights/Freeway sights," closest they come to a metaphor like "Before he got his hands/Across your state line" is "Let the small head rock her." No smaller than the one on your shoulders, dude. C
these guys fell off hard after D. Boon died
They've gotten lucky and they don't intend to let go. With fast-hand-for-hire Steve Vai manning all guitars and God knows what other assorted geegaws, they've consolidated the essence of arena--flash, pomp, male sentimentality. This is now the worst band in the world. So you just move over, Journey. (hey? where is Journey anyway?) D
>>127929200gay nigga reads the village voice lmao
>>127929647What kind of dickhead doesn't like Disintegration?
>>127923746how could you guys do this to Stevie Wonder? seriously wtf man.
>>127930134Stevie got paid for the cover so I doubt he cared.
Packaging this as a soundtrack is as ridiculous as complaining that there's only six minutes of Prince in the movie, because the movie it's designed for exists only in Prince's head--his six minutes of soul are a distraction from Tim Burton's nostalgic ominoso futurism, which Danny Elfman's otherwise useless score expertly evokes. "The Future" is Prince's most visionary piece since "When Doves Cry," and as aural objects, all the others are more than passable. Yet they are really designed for a movie, and all of them--especially the received "Partyman" and the subpoignant "Vicki Waiting"--cry out for the focus of Prince's unrealized alternate version. Hence, what "Batdance" deconstructs is mainly itself. B+
>>127923862This is what I like to call for lack of a better word hairdresser pop.
This is certain to become a legend on rarity alone, and if you believe mad guitar is all he's good for, you may even think it's worth a buck a minute at the $25 it cost me. I think it's versions and/or work tapes, with two otherwise unavailable songs and mad guitar that ends too soon. I'm glad to own it. But I get reimbursed. B+
Travis doesn't get lucky on this one, which is dragged like most country albums by its quota of ordinary--maybe "Singing the Blues" should be ceded permanently to Guy Mitchell. But after kicking off with a Richard Perry-produced "It's Just a Matter of Time" that apes and aces Brook Benton's original, side two reminds us why Travis is currently the genre's ranking pro--the tunes and turns just keep on coming. B+
>>127930283>Travis doesn't get lucky on this one, which is dragged like most country albums by its quota of ordinary--maybe "Singing the Blues" should be ceded permanently to Guy MitchellNashville sure loved them some 50s nostalgia in that period. The Forester Sisters should have left Sincerely to the McGuire Sisters too for that matter.
>>127922823I love the year that is today which is of 1989 one, yes
Believe it or not he's writing blues for AA: "Wall of Denial" and "Tightrope" fall into ex-addict jargon like it was natural speech, which for ex-addicts it is. If the music was preachy or wimpy this would be a disaster, but not till I perused the lyric sheet did I even notice where his homilies got their start. Essential that the leadoff "House Is Rockin'" keeps on boogieing on--and that on the mood-jazz closer he escapes the blues undamaged for the first time in his career. A-
I kinda wanna dig through some cassette tapes again.
>>127929687i meant the score idgaf about that
Fuck yeah, Roxette!
Supposedly a combination of their two 1988 albums (a mirage omelet, thanks a lot), this is really the guitar-god record Curt Kirkwood always had in him--on all but a couple of cuts the arena-rock bottom that's an interview fantasy for those who haven't caught them on a ZZ Top night powers his chunky riffs and psychedelic axemanship. What'll keep them from turning into plutonium is the utterly unmacho vocals, brother harmonies making even "Party Till the World Obeys" and the one that begins "Tie me up/Get it right" seem like critiques of power, which is what they are--psychedelic in the nicest way yet again. A-
