Imagination [Giant, 1998]
Brian Wilson's genius was never as indelible as worshippers believe. Cambered by Van Dyke Parks or stripped by Don Was, he was magical, crafting visions of eternal sunshine or 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 and knows even less about the world than when he was. C

Perfect Machine [Columbia, 1988]
Unlike Kraftwerk's, definitely a reference and a rip, Bootsy/Laswell's beats bite but not so as to tear anybody limb from limb. Sometimes vocalist Sugarfoot should stick with the Ohio Players. As for Herbie's contributions, I know fusion when I hear it and so does he. Guess he actually likes the stuff. C

The Best of Leonard Cohen [Columbia, 1975]
I've always found "Sisters of Mercy" unnecessarily and uncharacteristically icky--"You can read their addresses by the light of the Moon"--really? But if you're like me and you admire Cohen's albums more than you play them, then this will be the one you find yourself pulling out and playing the most. B

Blood Sugar Sex Magik [Warner Bros., 1991]
they've grown up, they've learned to write, they've earned the right to be sex mystiks ("Give It Away", "Breaking The Girl") *

Moontan [MCA, 1974]
The single almost made number one on the billboard until its radar ran out of love down the stretch and it got knocked off by Grand Funk's "The Loco-Motion." Yah yah, our stupid-rock is better than your stupid-rock. Especially when yours comes from Holland. C

Aretha Franklin: Amazing Grace [Atlantic, 1972]
Because I don't think God's grace is amazing or believe that Jesus Christ is his son, I find it hard to relate to gospel groups as seminal as the Swan Silvertones and the Dixie Hummingbirds and have even more trouble with James Cleveland's institutional choral style. There's a purity and a passion to this church-recorded double-LP that I've missed in Aretha, but I still find that the subdued rhythm section and pervasive call-and-response conveys more aimlessness than inspiration. Or maybe I just trust her gift of faith more readily when it's transposed to the secular realm. B+

Supa Dupa Fly [The Gold Mind, Inc./EastWest, 1997]
Like a lot of young black pop artists, Missy deals in aural aura rather than song, which means that even after you connect--as I did with "Izzy Izzy Ahh" well before "The Rain" hit MTV--she can take awhile to absorb. Innovative though it is, the video obscures the musical originality of "The Rain," its spacing and layering simultaneously sparer and busier than anything ordinarily allowed on the radio, and without Ann Peebles hooking you in, the rest of the album poses the same kind of congenial challenge. Sooner or later its pleasantness reveals itself as erotic--explicitly sexual enough to establish an atmosphere in which pleasure is something that happens simply and spontaneously between friendly free agents. There's no sense of conquest or surrender, humiliation or ecstasy or sin. It's summertime, and the living is easy. A-

Dreamboat Annie [Mushroom, 1975]
As far as spontaneous pop phenomena go, a hard-ish folk-rock group led by two women is a moderately interesting idea, especially when their composing beats that of the twixt-Balin Starplane, which they otherwise vaguely recall. Note I said moderately. C

You're Gonna Get It! [ABC/Shelter, 1978]
". . . might sound strange/Might seem dumb," Tom warns at the outset, and unfortunately he only gets it right the second time: despite his Southern roots and '60s pop-rock proclivities, he comes on like a real made-in-L.A. jerk. Onstage, he acts like he wants to be Ted Nugent when he grows up, pulling out the cornball arena-rock moves as if they had something to do with the kind of music he makes; after all, one thing that made the Byrds and their contemporaries great was that they just got up there and played. Thank God you don't have to look at a record, or read its interviews. Tuneful, straight-ahead rock and roll dominates the disc, and "I Need to Know," which kicks off side two, is as peachy-tough as power pop gets. There are even times when Tom's drawl has the impact of a soulful moan rather than a brainless whine. But you need a lot of hooks to get away with being full of shit, and Tom doesn't come up with them. B

Grave New World [A&M, 1972]
An acoustic-gone-electric work about cosmic verities, many of them glum. It even comes with its own woodcuts . . . they're not really woodcuts, but that only goes to prove how plastic everything is these days. I should bless those who cause me pain, it says here, but that surely doesn't apply to a record that gives me the blahs. D

Filthpig [Capitol, 1996]
As a joke about disco and a joke about heavy, Al Jourgensen's dance-industrial had some wit to it. Here the motherfucker realizes that metal fans will throw money at you long after your hip cache has gone the way of your hard-on. Result: Aside from the funnier-than-shit "Lay, Lady, Lay", a grindcore album worth hating. C

Ready to Die [Bad Boy, 1994]
As a white person in an integrated, how do we say it, nabe, I should breathe a sigh of relief that pithy Christopher Wallace seems content to exploit his own people--"I been robbin' motherfuckers since the slave ship," or, if you prefer, "I be beatin' motherfuckers like Ike beat Tina." As a male person, I should be grateful he doesn't want to pimp my kind either. But because I live a lot farther from the edge, these things don't make me feel better at all--I'm outraged when anyone gets robbed, beaten, or pimped, descendants of slaves especially. Hence I'm not inclined to like this motherfucker. But the more I listen the more I do. Wiping the cold out of his eyes at 5:47 a.m. or pulling his gat as the wrong guy comes down the street, he commands more details than any West Coast gangsta except carbetbagging Ice-T. His sex raps are erotic, his jokes are funny, and his music makes the thug life sound scary rather than luxuriously laid back. When he considers suicide, I not only take him at his word, I actively hope he finds another way. A-

Graham Nash David Crosby [Atlantic, 1972]
Supporters will doubtlessly hear two human beings expressing themselves but all I can make out is 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

Against The Wind [RCA Victor, 1980]
Slow songs about love alternate with medium-rocking songs about sex. Title and concept: Slow song about the futility of life, just in case you think he's "sold out" or some such. C

The Record [Slash, 1982]
I know why Belushi liked this band--Lee Ving sings like a Punk Brother. And in the tradition of Belushi, who was such a great actor he convinced me he really was a childish glutton, Ving convinces me that he really does hate (and fear) "queers," "sluts," etc. As a moralistic square, I protest--especially given music that at its most original echoes either Mars or the Dead Kennedys. C+

Sucking in the Seventies [Rolling Stones, 1981]
C'mon fellas, it's not that bad--you didn't really _suck_ in the '70s. Made a number of, er, classic albums, in fact. Sucking them dry for this hodgepodge is what sucks. As I'm sure you know as your lackeys laugh all the way to your Bahamian tax shelters. C+

Graham Nash: Wild Tales [Atlantic, 1974]
The title's as phony as the rest of the album--which despite the bought-and-paid-for goodies--an intro here, a harmony there, even a song someplace or another, is mostly a tame collection of reshuffled platitutes. Especially enervating is "Oh, Camile," in which Graham lets us know he is morally superior to a doubt-ridden Vietnam vet. C-

Business as Usual [Columbia, 1982]
They call Australia Oz because it's about as exotic as Kansas upside down, and these five sturdy-sounding, fragile-down-under blokes make the most of it. Ten thousand miles from the heart of darkness they're free to project honest, ordinary, low-level Anglo-Saxon anxiety, with enough transpositions of key and meter to establish that they've thought about it some. Call the music auxiliary Police, with more players and fewer dynamics. The words aspire to a bland compassion that sings its origins in the vaguely rebellious "Be Good Johnny," about a schoolboy who "only like[s] dreaming," and justifies its universalism by finding Australians everywhere from Brussels to Bombay. B+

Hollywood Be Thy Name [United Artists, 1975]
In which M. Rebennack's gris-gris jive is revealed unmistakably for the schlock it's always been. Granted, it was often very good schlock, but not on this record--with its in-jokes, its cronyism, its sloppy copies, its fuzzy simulated-club sound. Nadir: the 253rd recorded version of "Yesterday." C-

America (The Way I See It) [Curb, 1990]
Even known assholes don't come up with concept albums slavering to send our "top guns" after Saddam (sounds like "Satan"), complaining to Lincoln about "nuisance suits," and advocating the freelance murder of miscreants who beat the rap (he claims). Take it as proof that Monday-night football is a rightwing plot. And ask the RIAA why his guns 'n vengeance don't rate a warning sticker. C-

History of the Grateful Dead, Volume One (Bear's Choice) [Warner Bros., 1973]
This is really a Pigpen memorial album although the Dead would never be so mundane as to put it that way. Recorded live at the Fillmore East February 1970 and you had to be there. I know because I was. C+

5150 [Warner Bros., 1986]
Those who thought Eddie's face-melting guitar pyrotechnics and balls-to-the-wall hooks equalled Van Halen will find themselves wondering now that video star David Lee Roth has been replaced by one of the biggest schmucks in the known business. No one with something to say could stomach Sammy Hagar's call and this album proves it. C

Slip It In [SST, 1985]
The title cut is someone who learned about sex from movies. "Black Coffee" takes this whole antidrug thing too far. "Wound Up" could be tighter. "Rat's Eyes" cries out in agony for Sabbath's chops. "Obliteration" is an ace accompanyist's solo turn. "The Bars" isn't about prison or saloons. "My Ghetto" is an outtake from the rant side of Damaged. "You're Not Evil" is right on. C+

Fearless [Big Machine, 2008]
"You have to believe in love stories and prince charmings and happily ever after," declares the 18-year-old Nashville careerist. You can tell me that's worse than icky if you like; I believe in two of the three (prince charmings, no), and I think it's kind of icky myself. But I'm moved nevertheless by what can pass for a concept album about the romantic life of an uncommonly-to-impossibly strong and gifted teenage girl, starting on the first day of high school and gradually shedding naiveté without approaching misery or neurosis. Partly it's the tunes. Partly it's the musical restraint of a strain of Nashville bigpop that avoids muscle-flexing rockism. Partly it's the diaristic realism she imparts to her idealized tales. And partly it's how much she loves her mom. Swift sets the bar too high. But as role models go, she's pretty sweet. A-

This is virtually a hits-plus-filler job, but at such a high level it's almost classic anyway, with the three Michael-composed songs on top. "Beat It," in which Eddie Van Halen wends his night in the service of antimacho, is the triumph and the thriller. But while I'm for anything that will get interracial love on the radio, playing buddies with Paul McCartney is Michael's worst idea since "Ben," and I expect to bear more of "Wanna Be Startin' Something" and "Thriller" on the dancefloor than in my living room. A-

Unleashed [DreamWorks, 2002]
With America lighting up one too many places like the Fourth of July, I went back and tried to hate "Courtesy of the Red White and Blue" like I oughta, but it was still too pithy and heartfelt, and the album still gave up a colloquial aptness and easy masculinity I'd overlooked. But obscured by the uproar is a piece of work as immoral as "One in a Million" or "Black Korea"--no, worse. I can forgive duet partner Willie Nelson almost anything, but I'm appalled that he lent his good name to "Beer for My Horses," which not only naturalizes lynching but makes it seem like fun on a Friday night. True, the horses the mob rides evoke Hollywood westerns. Right, there is "too much corruption," though somebody should tell these yokels that "crime in the streets" dropped in the good old days when we had an economy. But the racial coding of the "gangsters" the song sends to their maker needs no explanation. And those "evil forces" who "blow up a building" ain't bomber pilots, now are they? B/E

Uptown Lounge [The Right Stuff, 1999]
Rarely have more black singers I dislike been gathered in one place. Billy Eckstine and Arthur Prysock, Lena Horne and Carmen McRae, Nina Simone and Sarah Vaughan, Lou Rawls and Nancy Wilson, Bobby Short and Sammy Davis Jr.--the grand and the genteel, the expressionistic and the arty, the smarmy and the pop pop pop. But after dozens upon dozens of hi-fi "lounge" comps, at least three of which I tried my damnedest to get through, they all do justice to old songs worth hearing. It's a credible, likable, and enjoyable rendering of the pseudosophistication young ginheads have been promoting since the second coming of Esquivel. The secret is that for once even Short and Horne sound comfortable in their bodies. This is not something I'd ever say about Esquivel or most ginheads. And comfort, ladies and gents, is supposed to be what lounging is about. A-

Raw Power [Columbia, 1973]
In which David Bowie remembers the world's forgotten boy long enough to sponsor an album and then proceeds to slim the mix down thinner than an epicurean's waist. The side openers "Raw Power" and "Search and Destroy" voice the Iggy Pop ethos more insanely and furiously than anything since "I Wanna Be Your Dog." But James Williamson's guitar aside, the rest disperses in their wake. B

Reinventing The Steel [Eastwest, 2000] *bomb*

Houses of the Holy [Atlantic, 1973]
I could do without "No Quarter," a death march for a select troop of messenger-warriors, perhaps the band's road crew, that you can tell is serious because of the snow (when they're working up to big statements it only rains) and scary sound effects. But side two begins with two amazing, well, dance tracks--the transmogrified shuffle is actually called "Dancing Days," while "D'Yer Mak'er" is a reggae, or "reggae"--that go nicely with the James Brown tribute/parody/ripoff at the close of side one. Which is solid led, lurching in sprung rhythm through four tracks that might have been on II, III, or IV, or might not have been, as the case may be. A-

5150 [Warner Bros., 1986]
I wonder what guitar mavens who thought Eddie's face-melting pyrotechnics and balls-to-the-walls hooks equaled Van Halen will think now that video star David Lee Roth has been replaced by one of the biggest schmucks in the known business. No musician with something to say could stomach Sammy Hagar's call and this album proves it. C

Pharaohization! [Rhino, 1985]
Junk miners like to believe that every garage classic has an album buried underneath. With "Wooly Bully," always as primal as "Louie, Louie" by me, this turns out to be true. Domingo Samudio was no pimple-faced jerk: a 25-year-old Chicano navy vet bandleading his way through college when he had his stroke of genius, he followed up with numerous strokes of talent. His solid formula was no more repetitive than Jimmy Reed's or the Supremes', his secondhand drawl as sly as Dr. John's if not Lee Dorsey's. And his lyrics were to the point even when they didn't have one, which wasn't always--check out "Black Sheep" or "(I'm In With) The Out Crowd" or "Green'ich Grendel" (as in Vill'ge, not C'nnetic't). A-