My Amazon Reviews: David Bowie "Low"

When Bowie Met Brian in Berlin
4 Out Of 5 Stars

Executing a course change that was extreme even by David Bowie's madcap standards, the first of his trio of albums with Brian Eno turned Bowie into a cold man-machine working against often dissonant electronics and half the time without even singing a note. "Low" gave Bowie the space to swing as hard towards an avant-garde as he could, with Eno more than happy to pave the way.

Bowie, when he does sing, operates more as a song-speaker than his traditional rich singing. Only "Low's" single, "Sound and Vision," has the shimmer of music that matches the voice, other times, like "Warszawa," he's just chanting. (Is it any wonder Phillip Glass based a whole album around "Low" and this song in particular?) Even "Sound and Vision" tests the limits of Bowie's audiences, the jangle of the guitar hook goes on for about 90 seconds before Bowie chimes in.

"Low" is definitely a collaboration and, of the 'Berlin' period of albums with Eno, the one that weighs heaviest towards Eno's solo album soundscapes. The second half of the CD is mainly that sort of sculpting, until the very end when Bowie coos for Shirley briefly on "Subterraneans." It's a chilly underground Bowie was searching for, and although "Low" doesn't hit the heights the following "Heroes" did (and that album is an unabashed classic), it still has the ability to evoke a deep resonance among those divided on how Eno and Bowie propelled each other towards a creative apex.

     

My Amazon Reviews: John Grant "Pale Green Ghosts"

The Haunting of Pale Green Ghosts
5 Out Of 5 Stars

Blessed with a coffee-cream baritone and cursed by crashing relationships, "Pale Green Ghosts" finds John Grant striding an emotional chasm that keeps one foot on acerbic sarcasm and the other on a wit that turns both inward and outward. You're unlikely to hear any album more self confessional in this year. I've been listening for a couple of months and just can't shake the way Grant delivers a blow by blow account of both his break-up and the tiniest touch of optimism by the album's end.

And what an ending "Pale Green Ghosts" comes with. "Glaciers" comes to a conclusion that even with the slow motion pain driving through his life, in the aftermath of the agony will come "beautiful landscapes" and "precious metals." All of which follows recriminations about hypocrisy and theocracy. Or there's the wicked sense of humor of "GMF" (aka Greaest Mother Youknowwhat)

"Half of the time I think I'm in some movie.
I play the underdog of course.
I wonder who they'll get to play me.
Maybe they could dig up Richard Burton's corpse."

Add that the harmony is provided by perennial emotional depth charge Sinead O'Connor (who provides harmonies on three other songs) and it just adds to the bitter joke. There's also the deft confession of his HIV+ status on "Ernest Borgnine" where he wishes that 'Ernie' would call him up and offer him some life advice.

The album is carried by minimalist beats and synthed out production that accents Grant's whiplash lyricism, mainly directed at the ex in what must have been one of the all-time worst breakups in history. "You got a black belt in BS" he accuses over what could almost be a danceable single if it weren't so wickedly cruel and absurdly funny. "Pale Green Ghosts" may depend on its laptop underpinnings, but the man is not background music. It demands that you step into a place like "I Hate This Town" where everyone, including you, get to share his view of the world. Trust me, when the music is this good, you'll want to.

     

My Amazon Reviews: Various Artists "I'll Scratch Yours - A Tribute to Peter Gabriel"

Mutual Scratching Society
3 Out Of 5 Stars

Although it took him three years to pull it together, Peter Gabriel at last put his "Scratch My Back - And I'll Scratch Yours" out as a whole piece. Initially designed to be a collaborative project, Gabriel gets 10 of his "Scratch My Back" artists to add their voices to a select Gabriel song, with varying results. (You may also quibble about Bryan Eno subbing for David Bowie, but it does up the collabs; the missing links are Neil Young and Radiohead.) If you don't already have "Scratch My Back," I highly recommend getting the limited edition two CD issue.

One of the things that held my rating back of the initial album was that Gabriel had set all his choices to orchestral arrangements (he did the same to himslef on "New Blood"), which kept the album's pace to a crawl. Fortunately for "I'll Scratch Yours," the collaborators had no such imposition. It varies the album considerably and offers a few surprises. For starters is the realization that anything Randy Newman touches sounds like Randy Newman, from the dry wit of the vocals to the piano playing, and he turns "Big Time" from the ironically pop MTV hit into the biting commentary that the lyrics had posited all along.

My other favorite here is Lou Reed turning "Solisbury Hill" from Gabriel's gathering of courage in a pastoral setting into a dingy echo laden guitar look into the mean streets of New York City (and may be one of Reed's last recordings). The criminally underrated Elbow take one of my all-time favorite Gabriel songs, "Mercy Street," and do an uncanny sound-alike version. Stephin Merrit (Magnetic Fields) stamps the paranoia out from underneath "Not One Of Us" and makes it sound like a bubbly synth-pop record from the 80's. And finally, Paul Simon turns "Biko," a song I thought I was tired of, into an acoustic folk anthem.

Those are the hits. There are a couple of misses; Brian Eno doesn't do anything to make "Mother Of Violence" interesting. Bon Iver tries as hard as he can to sound interesting, but remains a bore to listen to. David Byrne uses his falsetto on "I Don't Remember" to make you remember what nails on chalkboard sounds like. But that's only three real duds. The remainder of the songs, from the likes of Feist, Arcade Fire and Regina Spektor at least show that Gabriel hasn't lost his taste for new artists and that his songwriting transcends formats. Taken together, "Scratch My Back and I'll Scratch Yours" is a good pair of bookends and a fine tribute to Gabriel's multi-decade career.

     

My Amazon Reviews: Soft Cell "20th Century Masters Collection"

Soft selling Soft Cell
3 Out 5 Stars

David Ball and Mark Almond came from the school of synthesizer does that came of age in the 80's. That was a category that encompassed everything from the avant-garde Suicide to the easy listening of Naked Eyes. Soft Cell, on that sliding scale was closet to Suicide than any of the others, as Almond's sleazy vocal delivery and Ball's penchant for gothic keys made Soft Cell on of the darker sounding bands of the time.

As the first track on this "20th Century Masters" set, if they'd just made their cover of "Tainted Love" a hit and quit there, they'd have a spot in the history books. But they couldn't stop there. Adding camp to the creepy, they made a dance single of the hit by attaching a breathy cover of the Supremes' hit "Where Did Our Love Go?" of top of it. They may have been trolling the gutter for some of their original songs (like "Sex Dwarf" and Memorabilia"), but they also did so with a wink. It was all a façade, but a really fun one. Thus, with the aforementioned songs, you get another cover attempt at a hit ("What!"), the sweet "Say Hello Wave Goodbye" which was ironic enough that David Grey did a cover if it. Or the controversial "Numbers," which was banned on the BBC for its depiction of gay hustlers.

Ball pretty much went underground when the duo split, but Almond still cuts the occasional solo disc, and they're often very good. The sound here is better than the original albums, and since all most of folks want is "Tainted Love," this is all the Soft Cell you'll likely need.

     

My Amazon Reviews: Pet Shop Boys "Electric"

Feel the energy
4 Out Of 5 Stars

Showing nothing if not incredible resilience, Pet Shop Boys continue their third decade with "Electric," an album pointed directly at arty dance floors. Coming of the mostly down-tempo chill of "Elysium," "Electric" should thrill old fans who weren't quite sure what to make of the more introspective point of view on that particular disc. Forget that for now. Spinning with the electronic chill of producer Stuart Price (who helped Madonna mine this same field) and the always dry wit of Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, they just keep the beat pumping and toss in reminders of past glories and all-night parties to come.

So when you hear reminders of earlier songs in the likes of "Love Is A Bourgeois Construct" while Tennant sardonically tells an ex that he's "Talking tough and feeling bitter," you know that the Boys are feeling old juices flowing. Even more so, there isn't a slow-down number here. This could almost be mistaken for one of the "Disco" series of albums in that the pace never lets up. I do miss that moment of reflection that many other Pet Shop Boys albums would sneak in, like "Happiness is an Option" (from "Nightlife") or "To Speak is a Sin" (from "Very"), which always felt like a moment of deeper thought slipped in between the moments of ecstatic dancing.

Where "Electric" makes up for that in a stunning manner is the album's cover song, "The Last To Die." Maybe back in the "Born In The USA" days, when Springsteen's singles were remodeled into dance mixes would this seem possible, but The Pet Shop Boys take a protest song about the Irag/Afghanistan wars and whip it up as a dance anthem. It is the most subversive thing on the entire album and proof that Neil and Chris have not forsaken the brilliant irony that made classic albums like "Very," "Actually" and "Behavior" (to this day, "Being Boring" can bring a tear) on an album that all but dares you to get on your feet.

"Electric" is something of a triumph. It became the Pet Shop Boys' highest American charting album in nearly twenty years (hitting #26, with "Very" coming in at #20, and their last album, "Elysium" peaking at #44), and only three other albums charting higher in their whole discography. They've never really gone away, but when you get hit with the line in "Vocal," exuberantly proclaiming "everything about tonight feels right and so young," it's enough to make you glad that they've stuck to their guns for so long.

     

My Amazon Reviews: The Flaming Lips "The Terror"

In our hearts there is evil that wants out
4 Out Of 5 Stars

Engrossing. That's one of the few ways I can describe The Flaming Lips' psychedelic downer of "The Terror." Weaving synthesizers and electronic sounds back and forth into a soundscape that will not let you escape its trauma, this is an album that has an equal only in the likes of Pink Floyd or Radiohead's "Kid A." But where Radiohead broke their minimalism into separate songs, "The Terror" plays all the way through like a whole piece, and a black hole of a piece it is.

It's hard to believe the Flaming Lips have been around for almost 30 years and are still capable of surprising their devout audience. The fuzzy fun of "At War With The Mystics" or the space opera of "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots" were adventures that were often punctuated with oddball pop, but you'll find nothing like that on "The Terror." "Love is always something, something you should fear" is one of the first lines on the album, and things get even more despairing from there. Pain and unhappiness are the major themes of this bleak album, with death and anger at almost every corner.

Yet, despite that anger, the music never rises beyond anything but a meandering riff here and there (like on the ear snagging "You Lust") and lead Lip Wayne Coyne's falsetto repeating hypnotically sad choruses like "you're not alone, you are alone." "The Terror" is not an album for the seriously depressed, or someone looking for the dizzy bliss you'll find on other Flaming Lips CD's. It's a great headphone album, because of all the mixed texturing, but that only draws out the overall unhappiness of hearing a disembodied voice telling you "you will see how long it takes to die." Bordering on a masterpiece. "The Terror" is a depressant that, once you listen to it, you'll have a hard time escaping.