Twenty - Robert Cray

The 2005 release from Cray was special primarily for two reasons. There are 3 flawless gems that, frankly, make the album a keeper.

The first is the opening track "Poor Johnny", a Cray original that is one of the most memorable blues songs that I have heard in years. I first heard it - part of it - watching a chunk of a Clapton special in 2005 that cray was guesting on. He played one song and it soared. Not knowing the name of the actual song, it took some time to track it down, but track it down I did. The studio version on Twenty and a live version from Across the Pond are both fantastic. Tales of a rare degree sung perfectly by a man with an exceptional voice - is that too over the top, maybe, but its one of my favorite numbers from the last few years.

The second song are the title track, which is "pictured" on the front cover of the album. Not a happy song, by any means, but a worthy timepiece at a time when few solid artists took the time to write about the world they are living in today.

The final standout is a cover of Booker T's "I Forgot To Be Your Lover". Hard to argue with the treatment on this. Crays voice and guitar dexterity and tone are among the best in the blues world right now.

A solid album beyond these three songs and good edition to the Cray catelogue.

Before And After Science by Brian Eno

Art and experimental rock to a very weird and strangely accessible degree. To give an idea of what you in for with this one, note that the title of the album is actually aan anagram of the original title of the album: Arcane Benefits of Creed.

Its a trip, man. Released in 1977 and arguably the biggest bird that could be given to the punk, funk or disco that was rapidly beginning to dominate everything.


Its worth noting who plays on this wild ride of an album:
Brian Eno – voices, synthesizers (Minimoog, EMS Synthi AKS, Yamaha CS-80), guitars, synthesized percussion, pianos, brass, vibes, metallics, bell
Paul Rudolph – basses, rhythm guitar
Phil Collins – drums
Percy Jones – fretless bass, analogue delay bass
Rhett Davies – agong-gong, stick
Jaki Liebezeit – drums
Dave Mattacks – drums
Shirley Williams – brush timbales
Kurt Schwitters – voice
Fred Frith – guitars
Andy Fraser – drums
Phil Manzanera – guitars
Robert Fripp - guitar
Hans-Joachim Roedelius – piano
Dieter Moebius – bass, piano
Bill MacCormick – bass
Brian Turrington – bass


The first side begins energetically enough with No One Receiving. The song is like a funk song gone completely haywire. Imagine Earth Wind And Fire meets Pink Floyd and you have an idea of what's going on here.


Backwater keeps up the pace and replaces the funk with a Beatles-esq piano backing. The Floyd vocal stylings have been replaced with something that comes across far more like the Talking Head's (with whom Eno is closely associated) than anything. Tons of synth eventually replace the piano almost completely. Its just gets weirded and weirded... but tis very listenable and enjoyable - kind od liek Uncle Albert does. "Do what you do in a tiny canoe" kind of sums it all up, eh.


Kurt's Rejoinder begins in territory more often inhabbitted by Jaco Pastorius. A bass-line rhythm bounces along with a handful of nonsensical vocals and an ever elaborate amount electronic details. As usual the main riff gives way to synth and the song fades intot he distance.


Energy Fools The Magician slows everything down but keeps the goofy instrumentation coming. That's all it really is. A short instrumental track that is quite beautiful.


King's Lead Hat - an anagram Talking Heads and also a single in 1978 - sounds like a Talking Heads song. Punkish in that"80s" sounding way, but this is 1977, so its significantly cooler than all of the nonsense that tried to mimic it throughout the early 80s. A really fun tune.

Side two begins the pastoral and mellow stuff (yeah, I stole the pastoral line from Wikipedia, but its apt).

Here He Comes is gorgeous guitar rock with exactly the right amount of synth mixes in. Great vocals cap off a stunning song. This is the type of song that you always want your favorite band to cover, not just because its a somewhat obscure tune, but because its just such a satisfying listen and it'd be great to hear other versions of it. A perfect song.


Julie With ... delves into the mellower trend, but brings in a semi-psychadelic bent (lots of backward stuff!). This sounds like it walked out of a Pink Floyd session in 1971. Wow. Another perfect song. The song features stunning guitar soloing - indescribable. Its a sad and terrible song in the most wonderful way.


By This River continues the sad and terrible feeling, but with Piano. The opening words -"Here we are, stuck by this riven, you and I underneath this sky that's ever falling down, down down." - leave the listener stunned. A third perfect song. Vocal hamronies so sublime end the song far too soon.


Through Hollow Lands (For Harold Budd) somehow manages to find an even more depressing tenor. Its an instrumental that would fit any aweful moment in any movie. Picture the scene when Kong dies in the original BW King Kong, this fits. Picture when Vader dies and Luke burns him up... this fits. Picture when Homer ate the Fugu and spent the night listening to Larry King narrate the Good Book... this fits.


Spider and I is the song that, buying the album you wanted to hear most and it doesn't displease. The album closer is the arguably the best song on a fantastic album. It takes elements of the entire second side and sort of sums them up in an way that makes you feel like you are rising out of deep, dark water, one inch at a time.


Spider and I
Sit watching the sky
On our world without sound.
We knit a web
To catch one tiny fly
For our world without sound.
We sleep in the mornings,
We dream of a ship that sails away,
A thousand miles away.


Conlcusion: Over 100 (!!!!) songs were recorded for this album... 8 made it out of the box and onto wax. Beach Boys, eat your heart out. How many other perfect mellow & pastoral songs that are both sad and terrible never saw the lgiht of day? I totally recommend buying this album and playing it from start to finish as soon as possible. Obviously if you have never heard this, you ought to seek it out. It will open a whole new world of music to you.

Black Eyed Man by The Cowboy Junkies

Two albums removed from the ultra-chic, hip, spare and successful Trinity Sessions, Black Eyed Man sees the (Canadian born and bread) Junkies trying successfully to settle into themselves after the struggle to maintain impossible popularity. The vacuumlike arrangements of their previous work (recall their covers of Sweet Jane, Blue Moon, and Powder Finger) is suddenly abandoned for a fuller, richer and significantly more upbeat sound.

The album opens with some straightup rock and roll with Southern Rain and far more instrumentation than previous Junkie records. A very slowly escalating guitar riff peppered with fills and solos by guitarist and primary songwriter Michael Timmons serves as a platform for Margo Timmons ethereal voice. The song smokes.

The album dips significantly more hippy country with Oregon Hills. The evidence of a vastly different direction in production is everywhere. A great deal of musical instruments leave little room for the space so prevelant on previous releases by this band.

This Street, That Man, This Life offers a distinct return to form. Though beautiful and ethereal and very simple, the song sounds almost out of place at first on an album that clearly wants to go in a different direction. Is the band regressing? Though its a "beautiful song" my thoughts drift to what might come next. Will the new territory covered be explored more or not?

The heart of the album begins with A Horse In The Country, a strong country rocker that cantors along gracefully. The descending bridge is one of the more beautiful moments on any Junkies record. This is a great example of a band effort: the song speaks for itself without any excessive instrumentation or vocal stylings. And then it suddenly ends.

This band has always done covers well and their take on If I Were The Woman And You Were The Man with guest and friend John Prine is fantastic. A clarinet (?!?!) solo in the middle of the song fits perfectly. In fact, the sparity of past Junkie songs is clearly reminscent here, but the energy and mild experimentation seen on most of this album is evident. A (but not the) standout on the album.

Murder, Tonight, In The Trailer Park is easily the best song on the album. A stuttering skipper with dancing slide backs a dark tale of murder and darkness. Margo's voice draws the listener in only to be really kind of creeped out by what she's saying. Its at this point that you notice how fantastic the drumwork and guitars on the album have been. This family can play. The fills are fantastic.

The title track, Black Eyed Man, is an odd letdown after the last three songs - why is it that title tracks often do that. It is arguably the most country feeling tune on the record and its one of the few that lets the band members play around a bit - too much guitar and harmonica - too much "I'm riding a horse in a movie" feeling behind this song. At the end of the day, it doesn't really go anywhere.

Winter's Song seems to suffer from the same pointlessness at first: Margo's obvious domination of the song and far too much harmonica at the start allows for the "home on the range" feeling to fester a bit too long. However, a fiddle actually saves the song dramatically and it totally changes gear into a darker and far more effective tune.

The Last Spike features an almost inaudible banjo plucking beside an oppressive electric guitar riff which keeps the first-time-listener interested during the song, if for no other reason than to hear if the banjo is going to do anything interesting. Halfway through its evident that drums are not going to join in and the banjo isn't going to take on a greater role. A bit of tamborines added demonstrate that the song has peaked. This is the classic example of trying and failing to put a new twist on their classic spare sound. It doesn't work and its boring.

Cowboy Junkies Lament , written by Townes Van Zant for the band, brings the album somewhat back to life. This also suffers from stiffling production. The oppressive guitar remains is thankfully assisted by drums, but it like a loud version of the last song without a banjo. After the three previous songs, however, its not enough to save what appears be a not-so-wonderful second half of the album.

The penultimate song is Towne's Blues, a tribute to friend Townes Van Zant in thanks for his gift of the last song. The country swagger heard at the start of the album in back, thankfully. However, it is evident that the best songs were all piled high at the beginning of the album.

The album closes with To Live Is To Fly. This song works in every way. The opening sounds like a beautiful voice and a single guitar playing alone in a dark cavern. The band then kicks in steps into a mellow groove. This groove is bumped up to double time for the heart of the of the song, cappped by a fine fiddle solo. Suddenly, though not unexpectedly, the song drops back into the quite slow mood of the intro, only to jump again into the doubletime groove, featuring not only the fiddle but the banjo as well. A great closer which does a fine job summing up the album. A peice of pointless horn music is tacked on 20 seconds later for no reason whatsoever.

Conclusion: A very solid album is almost spoiled by three or four clunkers, beginning with the title track, in a row right in the middle of the album. There are definately some skippable songs on this record, but the good songs are borderline great. Perhaps the whole I-Tunes thing has its uses afterall.

Modern Classics: Gary Louris' Vagabonds

Gary Louris – Vagabonds
(Rykodisk)

In conventional rock & roll wisdom (if there can be such a thing), most prominent members of prominent rock bands find that they have a hard time finding their voice as solo artists. Even in the case of iconoclasts such as Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney, solo albums have alternately befuddled and alienated fans that came to love a certain artist as a principal contributor of a popular band. So it came as somewhat of a shock to learn that former Jayhawks frontman Gary Louris was cutting a solo album. Even more shocking was the news that the album would be produced by Black Crowes singer Chris Robinson, who himself had problems winning over his band’s audience to his own solo work.

In retrospect, though, it all makes perfect sense. Who better than Robinson, no doubt tempered by his own experiences as a solo artist, to help Louris wade through all of the expectations and baggage that come with being a band leader and cut to the essence of what the artist has to say? That is exactly what happened on Louris’ excellent Vagabonds, the type of singer/songwriter album that unfortunately seems only to get made a few times each decade, at least since the era of MTV.

Not that Vagabonds ignores the aspects of Gary Louris’ songwriting that made the Jayhawks one of the most influential bands of the 90s (Uncle Tupelo and Wilco didn’t just appear out of thin air). If anything, it outright embraces them. But gone are most of the fuzzy guitars and affected vocals that were so prominent in his work with the Jayhawks, and in their place are a more earthy assortment of instruments like pedal steel, Hammond organ, and harmonica, helping to reveal that Louris is still one of the most honest and imaginative songwriters in all of rock music.

But perhaps the most prominent instrument of all is the “Laurel Canyon Family Choir”, a collection of top-notch sit-ins assembled by producer Robinson via connections made from his infamous regular jam sessions said canyon with guitarist/songwriter Jonathan Wilson (who plays bass on the album). The chorus includes not only Robinson and Wilson, but also Jonathan Rice, Rilo Kiley singer Jenny Lewis and former Bangles frontwoman Susannah Hoffs.

It’s not that the Choir makes the songs that they appear on better. It’s that they make them beautiful in such a way that they will haunt your every waking moment – a brilliant juxtaposition of the oft-frail and vulnerable voice that is Louris’ trademark and the thick, angelic texture of the choir. When Louris sings on the title track “carry on, you vagabonds”, and the Choir joins him in delivering the line “everyone’s gone away”, the result hits you like a ton of the marijuana that Louris sings about being grown underneath the bridge during the song’s second verse.

The brilliance is that with the Choir present, Louris is under no pressure to oversing his way through the album’s bigger choruses. With Louris alone delivering the punch line, songs like “We’ll Get By” and “She Only Calls Me On Sundays” would either be simple-yet-charming life lessons about love and loss, or he might be tempted to oversing. With the Choir behind him – as well as stunning Hammond lines delivered by Adam McDougall (it’s really no wonder that he was later hired by the Black Crowes) – they carry the weight of sermons delivered by the Almighty him/her/itself. Even if you don’t believe in that sort of thing, after the Choir is done with you, you may be apt to reconsider.

This is not to say that the Choir dominates the album – far from it. The star of the show remains Louris’ ability to relate an earnest story without it feeling like he’s just making shit up to fill the space between choruses. The songs such as “To Die A Happy Man”, “D.C. Blues” and the aptly-titled “Meandering”, which feature the Choir either minimally or not at all, penetrate the deepest into the listener’s psyche, even though they might take the a few more listens to truly absorb.

So “conventional rock and roll wisdom”, be damned. After years of relative obscurity – contributing new material only to the alt-country “supergroup” Golden Smog – Gary Louris has emerged with what might well prove to be the best album released in 2008.

Random album review #4 - Adventure (a follow-up review to Marquee Moon)

There's a moment in the film version of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas that always makes me laugh. Thompson and Gonzo are flying down an empty highway, being chased by the police. They put the (left?) blinker on for a few minutes ... waiting ... waiting.... and then they turn the other way (right?). Its expected in that nobody would ever put their blinker when being chased by the police and acttually turn that way, but its unexpected in that the entire sequence is completely insane.

Television's second album, Adventure (released in 1978), feels like that to me. The first album lays out a clear trajectory, a clear and distinct sound, sonic bliss through guitar interplay... the second album shatters every expectation in good and bad ways. Its a the sudden and "unexpected" turn that you've been expecting... its just not the direction anyone saw coming... though they should have.

The album gets knocked for glossy production. Eh, that's not the problem. There's definately more revberb to the drums and more layering due to the keys and the simplicity of the song structures in comparison to the previous album is striking, but the guitar work is far from simple: its complicated in the exact same way the first album was, but there's something off about the entire enterprise if you are looking for a follow-up to Marquee Moon.

Glory (3:11)
Days (3:14)
Foxhole (4:49)
Careful (3:19)
Carried Away (5:14)
The Fire (5:57)
Ain't That Nothin' (4:53)
The Dream's Dream (6:45)

The album begins with Glory. This song doesn't sound like the same band that did Marquee Moon less than a year earlier. The song begins like some simple riffer tinged with repetive lyrics and ultra clean sound. It grows on you, not just with each successive listen, but as the song itself progresses. The guitars revel in the fact that you can barely discern the intricacies that are constantly thrown about. Great tune.

Days is gorgeous. Probably the single most accessible Television tune, this is a song that anyone would like to see their favorite band cover at any time. Its just wonderul. The song is all picking rhythm, even the solos just blend out of the main riff and back in again. Great tune.

Foxhole is sick. It centers around a very Stonesy main riff, big and bold and in stark relief to the beauty of Days. This is another guitar song. It, like Glory, is repetitive but just gets more and more interesting every second. Absolutely astounding solos just past the midpoint. The band goes into a bridge section and then just breaks into an entirely different groove for about 30 second. The song glides effortlessly back into the main riff again and continues back and forth with wild solos and lyric sections. Great tune.

The band seems to be channelling some combination of the Beatles and a TV commercial on Careful. The tune bounces too much, its too happy, its too carefree, and again, its totally disengaged from the songs it follows which, honestly, is really disconcerting. The guitar work of course is beyond flawless. Midway through the song the gorgeous solo brings it all home... and then like a puff of wind its gone. Great tune.

Carried Away feels like Days mellow little brother but with an Island twist. Keys on a Televsion song??? Marvelous. There is a certain sparsness to this band which is brought out nicely in this song. Verlaine's got a weird voice, but you can't immagine anyone else singing over these tunes. Their too clean, too strange, and his wacky way of singing really does do it. The guitar work on this song is delicate, very delicate. There's something ironic in the fact that nobody gets carried away on this tune which could easily have featured endless soloing and balladeering. Great tune.

The Fire is hard to pin down. Its super slow. Its incessant. Its kind of scary. This is the type of song that would make for a terrible song in a movie because you'd get none of the effect and its not a sound byte song, but a whole that can't be taken into parts, but imagine if you were walking through a burning house in slow motion... this is the sountrack for that moment in time. Not a fun song, but another great tune.

Ain't That Nothin' was the "hit" off this album. It like the other songs seems to have little or no associationg with anything else on the album. Another big riffer that just keeps building and building and building. The guitarwork just flows and flows. Oh one last thing, the jam at the end of the song is one of the coolest moments in jam history. Great tune.

The album concludes with The Dream's Dream. I think this is the coolest track (not necessarily the best, but definately the coolest) on the album. It was originally an instrumental dubbed Cairo and was supposedly supposed to recreate the feeling a Westerner would have had 100 years ago walking around Cairo. That's exactly right. What an odd concept, but its great. The song has a very sort of mid-east jammy feel to it - to the ears of a Westerner no less. Great tune.
Verlain's lyrics are obvious at times and at other times quite wrapped up in poetic mumblings. "The elevator called me up, she said you better start making sense"... what does that mean? It works wonders with the style of the music though. Its simple and completely intricate at the same time throughout, beginning with the song structures, but all through the individual instrument tracks, solos, lyrics, etc.

So what's wrong with Adventure? Nothing. All of the songs are great, but there is a huge disconnect factor from song to song and especially from Marquee Moon. The songs, the guitars, everything is there, but each song has a totally different sound. The effect is planned chaos. If that's your thing - and you dug Marquee Moon, this is a great album. Oh and the guitars are so good.

Wilco's Sky Blue Sky Is An American Classic

The most divisive art often turns out to be the art that forces those consuming it to use their imagination - if you want proof, just take a moment to examine the public reaction to HBO's The Sopranos. Weeks after David Chase ended the Sopranos saga with nothing but a cut to black, people are still debating about what ultimately became of Tony Soprano.

Wilco's magnificent sixth studio album, Sky Blue Sky, is not exactly the sonic equivalent to a cut to black, but it has gotten longtime fans of the band debating its merits in a similar fashion. In contrast to the band's prior two albums, A Ghost Is Born and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, founder/songwriter/vocalist Jeff Tweedy has settled into a more peaceful, organic groove this latest batch of songs. Nowhere to be found are the freakish loops and white noise found on Yankee, nor the schizophrenic mood swings and noodling that so often cluttered Ghost. In their place are a soothing, smooth sound, punctuated in nearly every track by peaks and valleys of two-guitar interplay by Tweedy and the very talented multi-instrumentalist Nels Cline.

In counterpoint to the album's cohesiveness, and often soothing sonic tones, Tweedy's poetic lyrics create nearly all of the tension out of which the guitar segues are launched. Where Tweedy's lines in the past were all direct and self-assured (even the most depressing among them), Sky Blue Sky is filled with uncertainty. "Maybe you still love me/maybe you don't/either you will/or you won't", he sings on "Either Way", a building tone-setter of an opening track that questions the devotion of a loved one. The uncertainty continues on "You Are My Face", perhaps the album's strongest track. "I have no idea how this happens," Tweedy rasps as the song launches into a McCartney-esque piano shuffle, "all of my maps have been overthrown/happenstance has changed my plans".

Aside from the sea change in lyrical tone, what really stands out about Tweedy's performance on Sky is the quality of his voice. Soothing in all the right places ("Impossible Germany", "What Light"), raspy and even strained in others (the impeccable "Side With The Seeds"), and sometimes all at the same time ("Hate It Here", "Shake it Off").

But even though, as is always the case with Wilco's albums, the songs on Sky Blue Sky center around its beloved founder, perhaps the most striking thing about the album is the prominent part that the band plays. This is not an album filled with obvious overdubs and a "Jeff Tweedy & The Wilcos" feel - this album rings with the vitality that only comes from a band playing live music in the same room, face to face, inspiring and pushing each other to create and explore. Sonic exploration here rivals that of even Wilco's acclaimed live shows, with multi-instrumentalist Nels Cline providing a mix of kickass lead guitar, pedal steel, with Tweedy and the band's other multi-instrumentalist, Pat Sansone, often providing guitar interplay that would make most jam bands envious.

As a whole, all of these things add up to make Sky Blue Sky an American classic, and easily Wilco's best, most cohesive effort since 1999's Summerteeth.

Happy Fourth Of July.

#4 of 13 Crowes DVDs you should own: El Gordo's Grugahalle DVD

The Black Crowes
15 November 1996 - Grugahalle - Essen, Germany [ EUR ]

S E T L I S T »

One Mirror Too Many
Bring On, Bring On
Evil Eye
Shake Your Money Maker
Ballad In Urgency ->
Wiser Time
Thick N' Thin
Nonfiction
She Gave Good Sunflower
Chevrolet
High Head Blues
Stare It Cold
Good Friday
Hard To Handle

S H O W L E N G T H:
90 minutes

Version: El Gordo Production
Tracklisting: Complete
Menus: Title & Song Selection
Authoring: PC
Video Quality: VG, multi-cam pro shot, from master VHS
Audio Quality: VG, from DAT audio
Notes: PAL format.


By some stroke of luck, all three of the Black Crowes’ late 1996 European performances (if you call the Bullet Sound Studios a “performance” – I do) we caught on video – and two of the three were pro-shot. Of them, this DVD gets the nod above the others.

This debut of the Three Snakes and One Charm tour in Europe is a harbinger of what was to come weeks later in early 1997. Right out of the gate, you get the one-two-Three Snakes punch of One Mirror, Bring On, and Evil Eye. All are relatively tight (in a good way), with Bring On soaring, even without the jam. While the Crowes pack 14 songs into 90 minutes, the performance doesn’t suffer.

The setlist continues with four of the strongest tracks from Amorica (Ballad > Wiser, Nonfiction, Sunflower, HHB) interspersed with the era-appropriate cover and a track from SYMM. The highlights here are the Ballad outro jam, which seems to feature more pronounced Marc/Rich interplay than other versions I have heard, the Nonfiction outro, which gives everyone in the audience a taste of what’s in store for February, and a searing HHB outro that everyone, especially Ed, just rips up.

Production-wise, El Gordo did an outstanding job. The master VHS footage is paired with a great DAUD recording that’s nearly SBD quality. The menus look great and visually reference the TSAOC packaging, and the menu transitions are unique for a Crowes bootleg DVD. I believe this was one of, if not the, first Crowes DVDs he put out, and he definitely threw down a marker with this one. A great piece of production befitting a great piece of footage and Crowes history at number 4 on the list.

Random Album Review #2: Television - Marquee Moon

Something about this album fits my day. The guy shows up at the door asking for a job. As I am responding, his phone rings, he answers it and start's talking! I said, "Look man, you get either me or the phone." He told me to hold on. I closed the door and went back up stairs.

People are very strange, absurd sometimes.

Listening to Marquee Moon provides me with a perfect back drop for the strange and almost storied way that life can come at you. It can be really out there and just make for great entertainment. Anyway, on to the review.

Television emerged from New York's chaotic scene of the mid-'70s. The group is sometimes mislabel a punk band. That's not really correct. Its a tight rock outfit that paves the way for a large amount of inferior 80s stylings - think the best and tightest moments of the Talking HEad's Cure and maybe even a dash of Oingo Boingo mixed with dueling guitar prowess that is rarely paralleled outside of peak era Allmann's (or for Crowes fans, those rhythmic jams that Rich and Marc occassionally groove into - not full of solos, but rather all about interplay), add in Velvet Underground attitude and a dash of Big Star pop sensibility. Imagine all of that distilled into a perfectly organized and very complex sonic attack that never goes where you expect it and you've got an idea what Television sounds like.

Television was guitarist/vocalist Tom Verlaine, guitarist Richard Lloyd, drummer Billy Ficca, and bassist Richard Hell. By 1974 their fan base was large enough that they began to play regular gigs at CBGB's. In 1975 Television recorded a demo with Brian Eno, that failed to get the band a contract. Hell left the band after recording the demo, and was replaced by Fred Smith. After a hit underground single, the band released a Bit EP in 1976. They then began recording their debut album, Marquee Moon, which was released in 1977.

Television released their second album, Adventure, in the spring of 1978. Months later, the group suddenly broke up, largely due to tensions between the two guitarists. Smith rejoined Blondie, while Verlaine and Lloyd both pursued solo careers. Television re-formed 1991, disbanded again in early 1993 and in 2001, reunited once again to play sporadic dates.

OK, that's the basic background, now to the music.

Marquee Moon has no bad songs. Actually, let me rephrase that. Every song on Marquee Moon is perfect.

1 See No Evil 3:58

2 Venus 3:54

3 Friction 4:45

4 Marquee Moon 10:47

5 Elevation 5:10

6 Guiding Light 5:37

7 Prove It 5:05

8 Torn Curtain 7:01

Its pretty impossible to do a song by song review because each song is unique yet sounds exactly like the previous song. The effect is a collection of perfect singles that collapse into a perfect album. Its like one endless song that constantly and dramatically changes gears if you have the album on repeat you suddenly realize you've listened to the entire album twice, enjoyed every second of it, but never noticed that it started again. The vocals and lyrics reflect a borderline insanity that is more than equally (and paralleled) by the endless guitar lines and interchanges.

The closest I can think of describing how excellent this album is is by comparing it to what might have been if Big Star's album "3rd" hadn't been intentionally ruined by Alex Chilton. Take away the darkness and the anger, take away the slow pain and despare, keep the craziness, keep the clarity, keep the pop, keep the hooks that grab you over and over and over... and (to me at least) you have very similar musical ideolgies - though not necessarily the same sound by any means.

This is guitar music. Its not "jam" music, though its all about the jam. This is the type of guitar music that is offended and insulted by jamband noodling and bluesy riffing. Its deep. Its complex. Its interesting. Its dynamic. Its over the top. Its New York.