Record Reviews
📝 2096 reviews| Artist | Title | Review |
|---|---|---|
| The Meters | Cissy Strut | |
| The Nice | Greatest Hits | |
| The Nice | Rock Giants | |
| The Nice | Elegy | <p>Comprised of songs cut during the final 13 months of the Nice's existence, Elegy is a must-own title for fans of Keith Emerson, offering his best live performance on piano ("Hang On to a Dream") ever to get a legal release, showcasing his organ playing on unique and beguiling arrangements of Tchaikovsky and Dylan material, and ending with a live version of the Nice's showstopper, "America." CD buyers should be aware, however, that the British compact disc release from Virgin Records offers superior sound and a lot more music (albeit from their psychedelic era) by the band.</p>— <b>Bruce Eder</b> |
| The Nice | Here Comes The Nice: The Immediate Anthology | <p>There have been so many reissues and recompilations of the music that the Nice did for Immediate Records that it's difficult even for people who worked on those reissues to tell some of them apart without a scorecard. However, this set stands out, not only for its comprehensive nature but also for its sound quality, which is exceptional. The vexing aspect of working with the Nice's Immediate catalog was the lack of first-generation master tapes -- the record company's holdings were scattered to the four winds when it went bankrupt at the dawn of the 1970s, and the closest that anyone got on the early CDs was Sony in the early '90s, with the clean original production masters from the Columbia-distributed Immediate catalog. Castle Communications, however, has finally found what sounds like the real thing, and it makes a world of difference: no background noise, minimal tape hiss, each instrument loud and upfront, and all of the playing sharply delineated even in the busiest passages of the group's most complex works. What's more, the stereo separation is now sharp enough to enhance the music in a serious way -- the divided string section in the "Brandenburger" section of "Ars Longa Vita Brevis," for example, adds to the appeal of the band's playing in ways that were difficult to discern on earlier CD releases, as well as on most of the LP issues.</p><p>And the live cuts from the Fillmore East from the third album are now transcendent -- every note is right in your lap, from Brian Davison's rapid-fire drumming to Keith Emerson's dizzying keyboard flourishes, and the balance between Emerson's organ and Lee Jackson's bass on "She Belongs to Me" is finally set at a proper level on a CD, for the first time. Just as important as the research that went into locating the first-generation tapes is the producers' success in finding the group's complete alternate takes; every odd outtake that ever surfaced in the band's history is present on disc three of this set, along with a quartet of previously unreleased live tracks recorded in concert during 1968 and 1969, among them "America," the fourth movement of Tchaikovsky's Pathetique symphony, and the Troika from Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kijé suite (which was later adapted by Emerson, Lake & Palmer into "I Believe in Father Christmas"). This three-CD set comes in three separate narrow jewel cases in a slipcase with a full set of notes, and is bargain-priced at under $30.</p><p>—<strong>Bruce Eder</strong></p> |
| The Nice | Five Bridges | <p>Five Bridges is a delectable representation of early-'70s progressive rock. It's make-up contains all of the elements needed to complete a solid prog album: a heavy intermingling of synthesizer and electric guitar, strong punctuation of both bass and drums, a central concept, and the fusing of rock and classical music, which in this case employs the Sinfonia of London. The eight tracks, centered around Newcastle's urban structure and life in a blue collar society, are as colorful as they are intricate. "Intermezzo" from Sibelius' "Karelia Suite" and Tchaikovsky's "Pathetique" are marvelous examples of classical and rock commingling, with the spotlight focused on Keith Emerson's keyboard virtuosity. The second movement from "Fantasia" is a sparkling model of improvisational use containing various rock & roll rhythms and time structures, while the third track entitled "High Level Fugue 4th Bridge" was inspired by Guida's "Prelude and Fugue" and incorporates assorted jazz techniques and boogie-woogie styles into a classical recipe. "Country Pie/Brandenburg Concerto, No. 6" unites Dylan with Bach for a most extraordinary illustration of instrumental creativity. Each example of genre merging is pristine and fluid, making the actual overlapping of multiple styles completely transparent. Five Bridges may rank just a tad below The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack or Ars Longa Vita Brevis on the patience scale, but it does demonstrate how Emerson's work with ELP came into fruition. The reissued CD offers five bonus tracks, including the famed "America" and "The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack," taken from the Autumn 1967 - Spring 1968 album. The track titled "Diary From an Empty Day" is an archival addition.</p>— <b>Mike DaGagne</b> |
| The Pointer Sisters | The Pointer Sisters | |
| The Pointer Sisters | Priority | |
| The Pretenders | The Isle Of View | |
| The Red Hot Chili Peppers | Blood Sugar Sex Magik | <p>In 1984, the Red Hot Chili Peppers were a long shot to make it to the 21st century. They were a party band back then—too funky for hair metal, too cock-obsessed for college rock. (And that name, perfectly encapsulating the band's essence while being incredibly gauche.) They wrote songs about their dicks; they then stretched cotton socks over those same dicks and jumped around on stage without fear of gravity. They were revered as a potent live act__,__ and got some songs on the radio, but they'd yet to make a strong step forward—their own label balked at giving them resources. The decade passed with small successes—a gold record for 1989's Mother's Milk—and unexpected tragedies, such as the death of founding guitarist Hillel Slovak, with the hope of something better to come. In the music world, they were definitely not a big deal.<p>And then, the world changed. By now, the hagiography about Nirvana's Nevermind* *has been well-repeated: It terraformed the radio into new, unfamiliar shapes, it sparked a 10,000% rise in flannel sales; it broke pained groaning as a pop sound, etc. But it also set the tone for a decade more permissive of what a popular rock band could sound and look like, in ways that would reverberate far away from grunge or flannel obsessives. Their success allowed a fomenting alternasphere of bands who didn't adhere to existing mainstream norms to rise up: Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden… and suddenly, the Chili Peppers. Blood Sugar Sex Magik was released on September 24, 1991, the same day as Nevermind, a neat coincidence for historical records, and perfect timing for their attempt at fitting into a broader cultural milieu. In its title—a phrase as ridiculous as their name—were the irreducible elements of their previous records, distilled into a declarative statement.<p>Teenaged guitarist John Frusciante had been hired after the untimely death of Slovak, who passed away from a heroin overdose in 1988. Slovak rooted the band in their early sped-up punk-funk sound, a slurry molding of acts like Gang of Four, Jimi Hendrix, and Parliament-Funkadelic (George Clinton produced their second album, Freaky Styley). On those records, the Chili Peppers sounded like a live band trying to rein it in, with varying success. They'd never recorded two records with the same lineup, forcing them to continually jel on the fly. Frusciante changed all of that. His melodic instincts were languid and expressionist—a counterpunch to a rhythm section that wrote funk for moshing, allowing them to write open-hearted songs for the first time in their career. He found his footing following an up-and-down recording for Mother's Milk, which forced him to shed his identity as a kid playing with his heroes. "The first year or so I wanted to be in the band so bad, I wanted to do a good job so much," he said in an oral history of the group. "I was trying too hard to be like what I thought a Chili Pepper should be rather than just being myself… musically on guitar and in my personal life."<p>Part of this smoothing process was also due to their newly signed multi-million record deal with Warner, which pretty much necessitated they try to release something approaching a blockbuster. As producer, they brought in Rick Rubin, who by 1991 was already a monastic, perma-bearded guru with a reputation as band whisperer, having made high-profile career-best records with Slayer, the Cult, Danzig, and half the rap world. Unlike early producers, who gave the Chili Peppers specific direction and sounds to shoot for, Rubin allowed them to relax. Instead of recording in a studio, the band decamped to a spacious house in Laurel Canyon, where most of the members lived in between sessions. (Drummer Chad Smith commuted from his nearby Los Angeles home, because he was spooked by rumors the house was haunted; Frusciante reported once hearing a woman scream in some coital outburst, while Anthony Kiedis said psychic mediums had detected "sexual energy" in the house. Believe what you will.)<p>Funky Monks, a documentary capturing the whole operation, presents an interaction between Frusciante and Kiedis that sums up the pull-and-push between their newfound artistic focus and their irrepressible sophomoric fuckery. Frusciante, earnest and clean-shaven, is exuberant. "We're making an amazing, amazing, groundbreaking, revolutionary, beautiful, artistically heightened, incredible record," he gushes. Next to him, Kiedis suppresses an eye-roll, deadpanning: "If Baron von Munchausen had ejaculated the four of us, being the Red Hot Chili Peppers, onto a chessboard, I would have to say Rick Rubin would be the perfect chess player for that particular board." Frusciante, undone by his own guilelessness, grins like a dork.<p>But Kiedis was learning to be earnest, too. "Under the Bridge" might have remained a scribbled-down poem had Rubin not spotted it while flipping through Kiedis' notebook; he suggested he show it to the band, despite Kiedis' reservations that it didn't sound like it could be a Chili Peppers song. He was right, but that didn't matter: They worked out a tempo and key, and later, Frusciante came up with a lonesome chord progression for what would become their defining moment. The power ballad sounded wildly different than anything they'd ever recorded; the lyrics were completely unmuddled by Kiedis' rhetorical gesticulations, speaking plainly about an isolation felt after wandering the city in search of something your loved ones couldn't provide. Millions of MTV viewers didn't need to shoot heroin in order to connect with Kiedis' allusive plea to be freed from his demons: "I don't ever want to feel like I did that day/Take me to the place I love, take me all the way."<p>The video, which featured the enduring shot of Kiedis running shirtless in slow motion toward the camera, looking very zen-Danzig, played constantly on MTV, pushing their record sales even higher. It legitimized them as a "serious" band, for all their denuded giddiness, and became a mainstay of MTV's "Buzz Bin" section, which plucked out promising singles and pushed them toward greater success. "Buzz Bin" videos were explicitly programmed to play three times a day, seven days a week, for eight weeks, while also receiving tangential news coverage around the network—and the Chili Peppers had two of them in "Under the Bridge" and "Give It Away." In an era where MTV could still break new bands, that was no small tool in pushing their music to the mass audience they'd always craved. As they shared airspace with artful videos like "Losing My Religion" and "Jeremy," a band that had once written a song called "Party on Your Pussy" was suddenly meaningful.<p>The faded, tender spirit of "Under the Bridge" went with yearning songs like "Breaking the Girl" and "I Could Have Lied," both penned about Kiedis' doomed relationships. (The latter was allegedly inspired by a brief fling with Sinéad O'Connor—imagine *those *conversations.) They sounded sweeter, and somehow mature. For a long time, the Chili Peppers had been preoccupied with the grime and uninhibited physicality of sex. As Kiedis put it in his autobiography, which is punctuated every 15 pages with an X-rated anecdote: "You're young and you're not jaded yet and so the idea of being naked and playing this beautiful music with your best friends and generating so much energy and color and love in a moment of being nude is great. But you're not only nude, you've also got this giant image of a phallus going for you."<p>That says it all, as does the album's subject matter. A lot of songs are about what the boys liked to do best. The title track? It's about fucking. The Cretaceous oogie-boogie of "Funky Monks," in which Kiedis sneers "Every man has certain needs/Talkin' 'bout them dirty deeds"? It's about fucking. "Sir Psycho Sexy," an over-eight-minute wet dream defined by its burping bass tone and letter-to-Penthouse lyrics? It's about fucking. "Suck My Kiss," with its "Mr. Brownstone" flow and fighter's groove? Definitely about fucking—and by the way, one guess what the original title was supposed to be? The unapologetic attitude toward sex was reflected in the extended jams that dot the album. The Chili Peppers saw no need for a 30-second outro when two or four minutes might work, creating extra time for dancing and whoever-knows-what.<p>You don't have to read the Kiedis book to intuit that the Chili Peppers saw nakedness not just as lascivious romp—though, of course, there was that—but as pathway to a more unconscious, unrestrained state. They weren't total goons; they were into mindfulness, and all that. The album opens with "The Power of Equality," an explicitly anti-racist missive where Kiedis professes his love for Public Enemy and bellows "Say what I want, do what I can/Death to the message of the Ku Klux Klan." "The Righteous and the Wicked" intones about a forthcoming environmental apocalypse owing to man's selfish behavior, with Frusciante's guitar tone sounding like a dark cloud pumped through a smokestack. Their gestures toward social justice were hardly sophisticated, less a well-reasoned dialogue than a full-throated "Racism fuckin' sucks," but that was the point. They were the partially-clothed id, barreling toward the funk and stumbling across inclusiveness along the way. During their performance at Woodstock '99, they were asked by Jimi Hendrix's sister to cover one of the late guitar legend's songs as tribute; they picked "Fire," which they'd performed for years, and ripped into it right as real bonfires were spreading at the festival, leading to the not-inaccurate charge they were literally fanning the flames. They mostly meant well, but didn't always stick the landing.<p>They were also still sometimes prone to fratty, unjustifiable behavior: Kiedis was once convicted of indecent exposure, and Flea and Smith were charged with battery and sexual harassment after an incident where they spanked and yelled at a female fan present for an "MTV Spring Break" performance. Many more examples of inappropriate behavior are out there, and while it's easy to imagine their defense—"We were just having fun"; "we got out of control"; "we were too drunk"; pick one— it doesn't mean they weren't acting like assholes. This attitude found a home with a certain segment of listeners. In his book, Kiedis notes the label's concerns that "a large segment" of their fan base would be alienated by a shot in the video for "Warped" where he and Dave Navarro (who played with them in the '90s; it's a long story) briefly kissed. As they got older, the Chili Peppers never really grappled with the ramifications of all their bad behavior (like, say, the Beastie Boys). They were a classic Los Angeles rock band, a city where thousands of behaviorally repugnant transgressions have been ignored in the name of entertainment.<p>At their best, they folded their unbridled mentality into their burgeoning pop sensibility. "Give It Away" remains one of the memorable rock singles of the '90s. Led by Flea's hiccuping bass line, and filled out by Frusciante's chrome-plated guitar work, it split the difference between the lizard-brain rock of their early days and the blissed-out spirituality they would later adopt. Kiedis was extremely on one, waxing existential like a naked priest you find at Burning Man: "There's never been a better time than right now"; "Low brow but I rock a little know how"; "Reeling with the feeling don't stop continue." Gutter-minded it seemed, lines like "what I've got you've got to get it put it in you" weren't sly ways of suggesting he'd like to hug and kiss you. (It's a reflection on how love—the spiritual, not physical kind—has to be *given *away, taken from a life lesson gifted by the musician and artist Nina Hagen, with whom he was briefly involved.) Likewise, "Come and drink it up from my fertility" wasn't only a literal request to suck his dick, even if he grabbed his junk in the video.<p>For all the snark that Kiedis'—shall we say—unique lyricism attracts, he was nonpareil amongst rock singers at chaining solecistic, seemingly dada-esque thoughts into melodically effortless, rap-inspired verse. Though the Chili Peppers would inevitably inspire "rap-rock," that wallet-chained spectre haunting the conclusion of the '90s, Kiedis' rubbery delivery, filled with hard inflections to catch your ear, softened what could've been an ugly clash of styles. "Give It Away" was certainly the best example of that virtuosic talent. It was also aided by an instantly eye-catching video, directed by French photographer Stéphane Sednaoui, which must have been storyboarded simply: "We're gonna take you to the desert, smear you in silver paint, and let you Chi Pep the fuck out." The indelible image of the shined-up Chili Peppers edited together in the same frame, writhing and flowing in balletic motion, snapshotted their vibe better than a million magazine profiles could.<p>Generation-signifying album it might be, it's hard not to notice that a quarter of the record could be lost at no harm. "Mellowship Slinky in B Major" sounds like the worst of the limpid funk-rap they'd later inspire; "Apache Rose Peacock" and "Naked in the Rain" are redundant with other tracks; "The Greeting Song" is openly despised by Kiedis himself, who said he was pushed to write it by Rubin. (Here he is, unequivocal: "To this day, I hate that song. I hate the lyrics, I hate the vocals.")<p>Of course, no one is listening to the album 25 years later because of "Mellowship Slinky in B Major". It's endured as a document of the moment when the Chili Peppers went widescreen—when they suddenly seemed like a band that might last for another 25 years. In 2016, the Chili Peppers signify nothing but themselves. But unlike the surviving members of the 1991 alt-rock class, their new music gets on the radio, and they remain massively popular by conventional metrics. (Their latest album debuted at #2 on the charts; a worldwide stadium tour is ongoing.) *Blood Sugar Sex Magik *is also a lodestone for a brand of more aggressive, politically negligent rock music that would emerge by the end of the '90s. Their red-blooded punk-funk hybrid was the Beatles to a generation of misunderstood, aggro listeners who started bands like Korn and Limp Bizkit, and that sound was best exemplified on this record. Maybe that's a dubious legacy, but it still makes them a significant reference point for any serious look at how the decade would turn out.<p>Flea once praised Chad Smith's drumming by saying he kept them from "floating off into the sissy-boy ether," which explains their subliminal tilt toward jock rock. Nevertheless, a special mysterious something permeates the album. They were directly influenced by the darkened moods of Jane's Addiction, their closest peer in the alternative scene (which is part of why Navarro joined the band), who drove them to pull something unexplained from the fringes of their creativity. It's in the glitchy, lapping solo that plays in "Give It Away," the ghostly flute touches on "Breaking the Girl," the pyrotechnic outro to "Sir Psycho Sexy." It's in the album's mythology: "They're Red Hot," a cover of the apocryphally Satan-indebted Robert Johnson, was recorded outdoors on top of a hill, as though the band were communing with the dead. A cosmic weariness brought on by Kiedis' drug addiction, and the band's realization of mortality in the wake of Slovak's death, surrounds the songs. It's seen through the lens of antic cock rock, but it's there.<p>All of it set the stage for the whole mystical California thing that would define their later years, and allow them to grow into a legacy rock band. It unlocked their ability to write any type of song within the Chili Peppers framework, and enabled them to write their biggest album, Californication, upon Frusciante's reunion with the band due to a brief, exhausting separation. Frusciante would eventually leave again, and the band would struggle to reach the same creative heights, but it didn't matter. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, Super Bowl halftime performance, the bass solo at Kobe's last game—they slowly became iconic, known by their mononyms and their socks and the pleasure of trying to imitate Kiedis' inimitable flow off the top of your head. Not bad for some Cali yucks.<p>— <strong>Jeremy Gordon, Pitchfork</strong></p> |
| The Red Hot Chili Peppers | One Hot Minute | |
| The Red Hot Chili Peppers | By The Way | |
| The Red Hot Chili Peppers | By The Way (SP) | |
| The Red Hot Chili Peppers | Live In Hyde Park | |
| The Rolling Stones | Rolling Stones Now | <p>Although their third American album was patched together (in the usual British Invasion tradition) from a variety of sources, it's their best early R&B-oriented effort. Most of the Stones' early albums suffer from three or four very weak cuts; Now! is almost uniformly strong start-to-finish, the emphasis on some of their blackest material. The covers of "Down Home Girl," Bo Diddley's vibrating "Mona," Otis Redding's "Pain in My Heart," and Barbara Lynn's "Oh Baby" are all among the group's best R&B interpretations. The best gem is "Little Red Rooster," a pure blues with wonderful slide guitar from Brian Jones (and a number one single in Britain, although it was only an album track in the U.S.). As songwriters, Jagger and Richards are still struggling, but they come up with one of their first winners (and an American Top 20 hit) with the yearning, soulful "Heart of Stone."</p><p>—<strong>Richie Unterberger</strong></p> |
| The Rolling Stones | Live'r Than You'll Ever Be | <p>Live'r Than You'll Ever Be is a bootleg recording of the Rolling Stones' concert in Oakland, California, from 9 November 1969. It was one of the first live rock music bootlegs and was made notorious as a document of their 1969 tour of the United States. The popularity of the bootleg forced the Stones' label Decca Records to release the live album Get Yer Ya-Yas Out! The Rolling Stones in Concert in 1970. Live'r is also one of the earliest commercial bootleg recordings in rock history, released in December 1969, just two months after the Beatles' Kum Back and five months after Bob Dylan's Great White Wonder. Like the two earlier records, Live'r's outer sleeve is plain white, with its name stamped on in ink.</p><p>Live'r Than You'll Ever Be was recorded by "Dub" Taylor from Trademark of Quality using a Sennheiser shotgun microphone and a Uher "Report 4000" reel-to-reel tape recorder. It was the first audience-recorded rock bootleg to be mastered and distributed; some sources consider it the first live bootleg. Though the sound is not nearly as clear as the official release of Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out!, the recording is considered to be very strong for an audience recording, especially one of that era. The Rolling Stones performed two sets that night and it is the second concert that was more heavily bootlegged and has sharper sound. Bootleggers had collaborated to record Stones shows across the United States, recording them on two-track Sony recorders for months prior to the release of the album. At least one source claims that the recordings initially came from rock promoter Bill Graham's staff, who used the tapes for broadcast on KSAN and released their edit on Lurch Records in early 1970.</p><p>The recording was made available about one month after the concert, and it became popular enough to spur speculation that the Stones released Ya-Ya's as a response to the bootleg and the quality was high enough that it was rumoured that the band had even released the bootleg themselves. The recording has been released through several bootleg labels, including the original release by Lurch and shortly thereafter Trademark of Quality (catalogue number 71002), Swingin' Pig, and Sister Morphine, usually documenting only the second set. The Swingin' Pig release even replace performances of "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and "Under My Thumb" with different recordings from the band's 10 November performance in San Diego and their two-night stint in New York City and attempted to enhance the sound quality by using de-clicking technology—both changes have drawn criticism in comparison to the original Lurch Records release.</p><p>Live'r Than You'll Ever Be was favourably reviewed by Greil Marcus in the 7 February 1970 issue of Rolling Stone. He praised its sound and speculated that it may have been recorded from the stage; footage from this concert was recorded by ABKCO Records for the film Gimme Shelter. The album also received praise as a more authentic example of the Stones on stage because Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! was heavily overdubbed in many places. Richie Unterberger has noted that the recording is inferior to the sound quality of Ya-Ya's, but displays a spontaneity that the official recording lacks and this helps to explain its long-lasting appeal to fans. Reviewing the album in 1970, Wim Wenders called it "the best Rolling Stones record."</p><p>The album eventually sold enough to qualify for a gold record RIAA certification, with TMOQ sources claiming that it had sold 250,000 copies by November 1970; 150,000 of which were produced by other bootleggers. Although the album did not chart on the Billboard 200, the magazine included it in a list of best-selling bootlegs in 1971, noting that hard sales figures were impossible to confirm, but six-figure numbers had been routinely discussed. The sleeve's generic design was copied by The Who's 1970 album Live at Leeds.</p><p>—<strong>Wikipedia</strong></p> |
| The Rolling Stones | Rock And Roll Circus | <p>The most interesting archival release of the Rolling Stones since More Hot Rocks, 20 years ago, and the first issue of truly unreleased material by the Stones from this period. And the Stones have some competition from the Who, Taj Mahal, and John Lennon on the same release. Filmed and recorded on December 10-11, 1968, at a North London studio, Rock and Roll Circus has been, as much as the Beach Boys' Smile, "the one that got away" for most '60s music enthusiasts. The Jethro Tull sequence is the standard studio track, but the rest -- except for the Stones' "Salt of the Earth" -- is really live. The Who's portion has been out before, courtesy of various documentaries, but Taj Mahal playing some loud electric blues is new and great, the live Lennon rendition of "Yer Blues" is indispensable, and the Stones' set fills in lots of blanks in their history -- "Jumpin' Jack Flash" in one of two live renditions it ever got with Brian Jones in the lineup, "Sympathy for the Devil" in an intense run-through, "Parachute Woman" as a lost live vehicle for the band, "You Can't Always Get What You Want" as a show-stopping rocker even without its extended ending (no Paul Buckmaster choir), and "No Expectations" as their first piece of great live blues since "Little Red Rooster."</p><p>—<strong>Bruce Eder</strong></p> |
| The Rolling Stones | Beggars Banquet | <p>The Stones forsook psychedelic experimentation to return to their blues roots on this celebrated album, which was immediately acclaimed as one of their landmark achievements. A strong acoustic Delta blues flavor colors much of the material, particularly "Salt of the Earth" and "No Expectations," which features some beautiful slide guitar work. Basic rock & roll was not forgotten, however: "Street Fighting Man," a reflection of the political turbulence of 1968, was one of their most innovative singles, and "Sympathy for the Devil," with its fire-dancing guitar licks, leering Jagger vocals, African rhythms, and explicitly satanic lyrics, was an image-defining epic. On "Stray Cat Blues," Jagger and crew began to explore the kind of decadent sexual sleaze that they would take to the point of self-parody by the mid-'70s. At the time, though, the approach was still fresh, and the lyrical bite of most of the material ensured <i>Beggars Banquet's</i> place as one of the top blues-based rock records of all time.</p><p>[The Rolling Stones' London/ABKCO catalog was reissued in August of 2002, packaged in digipacks with restored album artwork, remastered, and released as hybrid discs that contain both CD and Super Audio CD layers. The remastering — performed with Direct Stream Digital (DSD) encoding — is a drastic improvement, leaping out of the speaker yet still sounding like the original albums. This is noticeable on the standard CD layer but is considerably more pronounced on the SACD layer, which is shockingly realistic in its detail and presence yet is still faithful to the original mixes; Richards' revved-up acoustic guitar on "Street Fighting Man" still sends the machine into overdrive, for instance. It just sounds like he's in the room with you. Even if you've never considered yourself an audiophile, have never heard the differences between standard and gold-plated CDs, you will hear the difference with SACD, even on a cheap stereo system without a high-end amplifier or speakers. And you won't just hear the difference, you'll be an instant convert and wish, hope, and pray that other artists whose catalog hasn't been reissued since the early days of CD — Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, especially the Beatles — are given the same treatment in the very near future. SACD and DSD are that good.]</p>— <b>Richie Unterberger</b> |
| The Rolling Stones | Exile On Main Street | <p>Greeted with decidedly mixed reviews upon its original release, Exile on Main St. has become generally regarded as the Rolling Stones' finest album. Part of the reason why the record was initially greeted with hesitant reviews is that it takes a while to assimilate. A sprawling, weary double album encompassing rock & roll, blues, soul, and country, Exile doesn't try anything new on the surface, but the substance is new. Taking the bleakness that underpinned Let It Bleed and Sticky Fingers to an extreme, Exile is a weary record, and not just lyrically. Jagger's vocals are buried in the mix, and the music is a series of dark, dense jams, with Keith Richards and Mick Taylor spinning off incredible riffs and solos. And the songs continue the breakthroughs of their three previous albums. No longer does their country sound forced or kitschy -- it's lived-in and complex, just like the group's forays into soul and gospel. While the songs, including the masterpieces "Rocks Off," "Tumbling Dice," "Torn and Frayed," "Happy," "Let It Loose," and "Shine a Light," are all terrific, they blend together, with only certain lyrics and guitar lines emerging from the murk. It's the kind of record that's gripping on the very first listen, but each subsequent listen reveals something new. Few other albums, let alone double albums, have been so rich and masterful as Exile on Main St., and it stands not only as one of the Stones' best records, but sets a remarkably high standard for all of hard rock.</p><p>—<strong>Stephen Thomas Erlewine</strong></p> |
| The Rolling Stones | Exile On Main Street - [Deluxe Version] Remastered | <p>Legendary as it may be, Exile on Main St. presents a challenge for deluxe remastered reissues. Much of its myth lies in its murk, how its dense, scuzzy sound is the quintessential portrait of rock stars in decadent isolation, the legend bleeding into its creation so thoroughly it is impossible, and unnecessary, to separate one from the other. Without this nearly tactile sound, Exile wouldn't be Exile, so remastering the record is a tricky business because it should not be too clean. The remaster on the 2010 reissue -- available in a myriad of editions containing variations of a single-disc remaster and a second disc expanded with ten unreleased tracks - doesn't quite avoid that trap. When “Rocks Off” kicks off the record, what was previously dulled like aged silver is now is too bright: Mick Jagger's vocals leap and the keyboards ring clearly. Because this is Exile on Main St., a record recorded in a decaying French mansion, it's impossible to scrape all the grime away from its layers, but the overall impression is that the original master tapes are now presented in high definition: it's possible to hear what most individual instruments are doing on each track, which may lead for a greater appreciation of the Stones' monumental musicianship, but it's somewhat at the expense of the album's mystique.</p><p>Another pitfall in the plans for this deluxe expansion: there aren't a whole lot of completed unreleased songs. The Stones had a habit of working leftovers from the prior album into a finished product, sometimes taking years to complete a song -- a practice that resulted in great songs but not much left in the vaults. Which isn't to say there was nothing left behind from Exile's sessions: the Stones were living where they were recording, so they produced an enormous amount of music, working out the kinks in a song (represented here by alternate takes of “Loving Cup” and a Keith Richards-sung “Soul Survivor”), or wholly reworking an existing song as they did with the loose-limbed “Good Time Women,” which was later revised as “Tumbling Dice.” On occasion, they completed a song that didn't make the cut, such as “I'm Not Signifying,” a heavily bootlegged shambolic blues that is just about as good as anything on the finished album, but usually they created instrumental beds designed to be completed later with vocals. In this particular case, a handful of these tracks were completed much, much later, with the band finishing up the songs some 38 years later for this deluxe edition. A great deal of attention was paid to making the new additions relatively seamless, with the band going so far as to bring in the long-departed guitarist Mick Taylor for some overdubs. If the end results don't quite feel as thick as Exile, they nevertheless do feel remarkably like the classic Taylor era. Apart from “Following the River” -- a drowsy piano ballad that tries to rouse itself to blues-gospel -- these are good, sometimes excellent songs, particularly the loose, hip-shaking “Dancing in the Light” and the charging “Plundered My Soul.” At first it's hard not to stare at these hybrid tracks with skepticism, particularly because they're eating up room that could have been used for other alternate takes, or perhaps the instrumentals themselves, or the occasional bootlegged song that didn't make the cut, such as “Blood Red Wine,” but once that suspicion fades, you're left with a handful of very good additions to the Stones songbook -- songs that don't hold a candle to Exile but are remarkable re-creations of Taylor-era rock & roll, songs that could easily have been slid onto It's Only Rock 'N Roll, when the group was easing into their grooves, confident that they were the greatest rock & roll band on earth.</p><p>— <strong>Stephen Thomas Erlewine</strong></p><hr/><p>Despite an absence of the band's best-known songs, the sweaty, grimy Exile on Main St. has grown into the Rolling Stones' most universally acclaimed record. Despite dozens of hits, putting together a cohesive album often seemed to be beyond the Stones, tripped up by either manager Allen Klein's publishing-rights parasitism or the band's 1970s hubris. That leaves a catalog in which only Exile is built not on hits but on vibe and: the album's singularly sleazy sound and making-of legend.</p><p>To create Exile, the band escaped Britain as tax exiles, decamping to a French villa. Paradoxically, the posh surroundings created the band's rawest effort. They were a heroin-ragged band, jamming late into the night with calloused fingers and vocal cords in a stale basement with sweaty walls. So the best thing a remastered reissue of the record can do is not give the production a bath, a shave, and a haircut. Happily, this new cleanup job doesn't Photoshop out the flaws and flubs, with the band's loose performances still presented in all its debauched glory.</p><p>Of course, like most treasured nuggets of rock history, that story is undermined by pesky facts. In Stones in Exile, the documentary released with this 38th anniversary reissue, producer Jimmy Miller talks about isolating each band member in a different room of the villa to make the impromptu studio work. That's a fitting image for the Rolling Stones at the time—while the band was musically at its peak, it was in practice at its most fractured, with singer Mick Jagger and bassist Bill Wyman barely involved for the bulk of the recording. The Exile we know and love is actually the hybrid product of two sessions, two bands really: the Keith Richards-led material from Nellcôte shotgun-wed to the Los Angeles gospel dabbling of Jagger and co-conspirator, keyboardist and former Beatles collaborator Billy Preston.</p><p>In a way though, Jagger's lack of involvement may have been the key to Exile's success (and probably explains his oft-voiced dislike of the record). With Richards at the helm, the record sounds closest to the American roots music the band relentlessly name-dropped. Vocally, Richards' nasal whine fights for space with Jagger more than anywhere else in their history, adding thrillingly imperfect harmonies. The rest of the supporting cast also gets more of the spotlight: the brilliant barrelhouse piano of Nicky Hopkins singlehandedly defines "Loving Cup" and "Torn and Frayed", Mick Taylor adds counterpoint leads and the toodling bassline of "Tumbling Dice", Al Perkins' pedal steel and Bobby Key's sax contributes soul and country cred.</p><p>But despite his relative absence, Jagger's contributions on the back half of the record give Exile its dramatic arc. Though the album's concept record status has always been somewhat oversold, the plot does chart a rough path from drunken late-night revelry to next-day regret: The last third of the record looks back on the first two-thirds with a wince and a headache. "I Just Want to See His Face", "Let It Loose", "Shine a Light"—there's a profound need for redemption here unique to the Stones, an odd moment of guilt for a band known for consequence-free sexual bluster. As the last complete sentence of the album says, "you're going to be the death of me."</p><p>Unlike the album proper, the bonus tracks are given a clean scrubbing, and it's blatantly obvious in places that Jagger's vocals are circa 2009, not 1972. That added grooming offers the experimental results of an Exile sans Nellcôte—still a band in the zone, but more Jagger-dominant and sterilized. Still, many of the unreleased songs work: "Plundered My Soul", wins on the merits of its falsetto backing vocals, and "So Divine (Aladdin Story)" is like a pastiche of Aftermath-era Stones played by an older, saltier band.</p><p>If allowing Jagger to touch up those vocals was the price to pay to allow Exile receive the tribute it deserves, it's still a bargain. All the same, it's a bit strange to see the Stones, somehow still alive, on the talk show circuit celebrating the product of their darkest years, treating their addictions, tax evasion, and near-breakup as just a colorful set piece on Rolling Stones: The Ride. The true thrill of Exile on Main St. is that it doesn't require all that backstory to be dramatized and Ken Burns-ed—all the pain, fun, joy, and regret of being the biggest rock band on Earth, kinda loving it and kinda hating it, is right there in the filthy grooves of the record. Oh, what a beautiful buzz.</p><p>— <strong>Rob Mitchum, Pitchfork</strong></p> |
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