Thread 127511387

Pornography [A&M, 1982]
"In books/And films/And in life/And in heaven/The sound of slaughter/As your body turns . . ."--no, I can't go on. I mean, why so glum, chum? Cheer up; look on the bright side. You got your contract, right? And your synthesizers, bet you'll have fun with them. Believe me, kid, it will pass. C

>>127511387 (OP)
he's right, this album is interminable.

The Cure were never a band I felt super compelled to listen to.

Pornography isn't this glummy album, it is simply a realistic album

>>127511387 (OP)
he's right. fagness whiners

>>127511387 (OP)
What the fuck is his problem?

>>127511387 (OP)
>You got your contract, right? And your synthesizers, bet you'll have fun with them. Believe me, kid, it will pass.
legitimately made me laugh out loud the first time i've red this
christgau is the definition of based, even if I don't really share his music taste

>>127511387 (OP)
He has 2 pet peeves:
- he hates metal
- can't stand turbo-depressive music, like Portishead, Cure, though he seems to occasionally make an effort to get past the reflex

>>127511913
he also seems to dislike sleek clean production

>>127511913
>>127511923
as somewhat of xgau fan i think his taste is based mostly on thinking that pop/rock has to be fun and has to actually "rock" and disliking pretentious music
if he didn't like sad/depressive stuff There's a Riot Goin' On wouldn't get an A+
And with pretentious stuff, he just thinks that most prog/metal is both cringe and adolescent and not actually progressive
He's a big jazz fan, so it's not like he actually dislikes "complex" music
ITCOCK gets a D and is dismissed as "ersatz shit" because it's both faux progressive and dorky and not fun
Meanwhile what he thinks is actually progressive rock music (Henry Cow) gets high ratings

>>127511913
false in regard to both. don't generalize

>>127511387 (OP)
why do you guys care so much what Christgau thinks? You have ears of your own, don't you?

>>127511913
>he hates metal
it's more like he hates metal that goes at slow tempos or at least he thinks is slow, he was more ok with eg. thrash because it was fast.

why does this guy always stroke out over pretty white girls with acoustic guitars?

>>127511808
I don't know if I'm finally old enough but christgau makes me laugh with every interview and the cherry ontop is it always ends with C or maybe B- for many of my favorite records.

>>127512038
most prog is indeed super corny and it was for D&D nerds.

Peter Gabriel [Charisma, 1977]
Even when he was Genesis, Gabriel always seemed smarter than the average art rocker--the music, although mannered, had substance beneath the surface, the lyrical ideas, although received, were easier to test empirically than evocations of spaceships on Atlantis. This solo album seems a whole lot smarter than that. But every time I delve beneath its challenging textures to decipher a line or two I come up a little short. C+

>>127511387 (OP)
Kek, that's my fav Christgau review

>>127511923
>sleek clean
Would you consider Exile on Main St. sleek clean production?

It's a quite strange thing how he somehow connected metal with the orchestral pop goo of his childhood in the 50s and got the idea that it was a "retrogression" back to forms of music rock and roll was supposed to destroy

>>127512038
Damn this is actually based. I like xgau and bangs. The only modern critic i like is spectrumpulse and thats just because he actually listens to country music.

>>127517184
I've been trying to look for that bit, do you remember what he wrote it for

>>127517302
it was probably when he reviewed Running With The Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music and said "it never occurs to metal's faithful that the melodramatic, reverb-drenched strain metal represents is for many of us what rock-and-roll was put on Earth to save us from."

now i don't see how he heard Doris Day - Secret Love on the radio once when he was a child and somehow mentally connected that with Iron Maiden but somehow he did

>>127517184
Even worse was his multiple wtf did I just read rants about how Billy Joel was a sinister conspiracy to revert pop to the days of Hoagy Carmichael.

>>127517358
It was specifically about rock virtuosos drawing from the classical tradition. I keep trying every manner of ELP and Rick Wakeman but I can't turn up anything.

>>127517394
that wasn't wrong btw, everyone knows that Joel was a Mafia plant to push loungecore in opposition to the NYC critics in the 70s who were dickriding punk and New Wave

dude's a longtime big pusher of the blacks invented everything meme

Reminder that this guy was so terrified of Priest, Maiden, and Pantera that he didn't even review them at all.

>>127517508
Sort of. he has a hateboner for black singers who do crooner or nightclub singing.

When your jazz-entrepreneur husband buys you Nashville's finest for your 44th birthday, you might start thinking unliberation paid yourself. C-

>>127517649
>Yeah sorry honey you don't get to be like "Fuck that, I don't need feminism" when your husband is footing the bill for your crummy albums.

>>127517669
The C minus grade was accurate even if you don't subscribe to feminist theories.

There's more talent in this sixty-three-year-old's large intestine than passes through Sunset Recorders in a month. You think Steve Stills or one of those guys could come up with something as clever as "Coon On The Moon" and then turn it into an ironic cry of pride? The Wolf hasn't been in this fine a form in years. Suggestion: Get rid of the electric piano. A-

>>127517705
why did he hate Stephen Stills so much anyway?

>>127517731
he thought only Neil Young was legit and the other guys were lightweight phonies

>>127517767
another case of unimpeachable xgau clockage, though you're a rube if you needed steven "nonentity" stills' utter inconsequence pointed out to you in the first place

>>127517854
he was a good guitarist but had no songwriting abilities to speak of

>>127517669
Without Bob Thiele's money she would have been busing tables in a diner somewhere after her chart relevance ended in the 60s.

>>127517168
No, which is why he loves it. Useless post

Supporters will no doubt hear two human beings expressing themselves but all I can make out are a couple of stars trapped in their own mannerisms, filtering material through a style. Even "Blacknotes" and "Stranger's Room", fine melodies that look good on paper, sound completely flat. C

>>127517922
catalog filler designed to fulfill a recording contract

>>127517767
They knew it too which is why CSN albums were always just non-serious goofing around and they saved all the big political statements for CSNY albums.

As Joel's craft improves (I can recall at least 3-4 of these songs from their names) he becomes more obnoxious. The anti-idealism of "Angry Young Man" isn't any more appealing in tandem with the pseudo-ironic sybaritism of "I've Loved These Days." I do however catch myself in moments of identification with the three place name songs on side two, "Say Goodbye to Hollywood" moreso than the overrated "New York State of Mind." C

>>127518058
>sybaritism
cracked the thesaurus for that one didn't we bob

I had this filed as unlistenable until the amazing tune-out power of "Roll Me Away" piqued me to find out why. The music is ok enough--adequate melodically with moments of good writing here and there. But Seger's romantic individualism is suffocated by overstatement, more late-outlaw than Bruce. Just about any country singer could teach him how to approach a cliche kind of easy like. In fact with Seger's connections he could get lessons from Willie himself. But knowing his tastes, he'd probably choose Waylon instead. C

>>127518459
honestly he's right. RMA is a song that promises this epic grandiosity that it never delivers on and falls on its face.

>>127518459
Waylon Jennings lived rent free in this guy's head.

Brian Wilson's genius was never as indelible as worshippers believe. Cambered by Van Dyke Parks or stripped by Don Was, he was magical, generating visions of eternal sunshine or of crackpot solipsism or both. Yoked to adult contemporary tyro Joe Thomas, however, he's just one more pro who's proud he's no longer crazy as he makes futile gestures towards past glories from a failing high end and knows even less about the world than when he was. C

>>127518931
this is accurate btw Thomas did nothing but turn Brian into bland 90s AC slop here

Return of the Real [Priority, 1996]
then again, what is reality? ("I Must Stand", "Rap Game's Been Hijacked", "The 5th") *

Freddie King's status as the inventor of electric blues guitar is a reward for his shameless Anglophilia, here documented on "Palace of the King." Forget what Anglophiles claim of his recent work, the man's been coasting for years. The r&b sides he cut in the '60s for (of all things) King Records are acute. Here he makes do with a bunch of Leon Russell and Don Nix boogies, the vocals blurred, the guitar all fake-and-roll. C

how much did he get paid per word?

>>127519474
bout tree fiddy

>>127519405
he saying FK sold out to the white rock audience

I was all set to call my man Giddins and ask whether this two-CD set could possibly be as unerring as I thought when I learned that most of the choices had been put forward by Gary himself, for the Voice's Rollins issue. So moan all you want about conflict of interest. This is the shit--funny, tortured, profound, romantic, carnivalesque. Surprisingly for a modernist of fabled young alienation, Rollins adds to the easeful, virtuosic majesty of his mature sound an enlightenment that takes the entire vocabulary of the saxophone, from follow-the-notes melody reproduction to squeaks and blats that know no tonal referent, as a sound-palette that is its own reason for being. Hence he may come off too well-adjusted for the what-you-got rebels of rock's supposedly alternative nation. But if you feel about rock and roll the way Rollins does about the saxophone--that it's all one structure of feeling from howl to croon, bubblepop to jungle, Mariah to Polly Jean--you should forget your singing habit and sign on for one hell of a ride. A-