Kylie Minogue

Meltdown [1980s]

X [Parlophone, 2007]
a special happy birthday to our favorite Aussie ingenue, who is turning 40 and can somehow still sing ("2 Hearts", "Speakerphone") *

Living In The Material World [Apple, 1973]
If you want to call this living. George sings like he's doing sitar impressions and four other people in the room, including a little man in my head I'd never noticed before, expressed intense gratitude when I turned the damned thing off during "Be Here Now." Inspirational verse: "The leaders of the world/They're acting like big girls." C

Come On Die Young [Matador, 1999]
Young Glaswegians extolled by those weary of verse-chorus-verse as "radical," "beautiful," and other things that would never occur to the rest of us, they mutate the forgettable mess of their debut into something altogether more deliberate and kempt-occasionally tuneful, invariably slow. Only on the oceanbound land mass where acid house was Beatlemania would anyone sit still for such earnest post-rock tripe. C

Yvonne Elliman [Decca, 1972]
Clean production, tasteful song selection, winsome singing. Bleh. C+

Blind Man's Zoo [Elektra, 1989]
Natalie Merchant has her own prosaic prosody, with off-kilter guitar accentuating its eccentric undertow. The whole second side makes politics not love, and sometimes--like when the lottery-playing mom of "Dust Bowl" rubs her fevered youngest down with rubbing alcohol--she brings you there. But somehow I knew that when she got down to cases she'd still be a fuzzy-wuzzy. This is a woman whose song about Africa (called "Hateful Hate," now there's a resonant phrase) brushes by slavery on its way to elephanticide and ends up condemning "curiosity"--again and again. No wonder she won't listen to "common sense firm arguments." B-

First Night [Columbia, 1976]
The three biggest selling record albums of all time are The Sound of Music, Bridge Over Troubled Water, and Tapestry. The proof of how un-monolithic mass culture is is in how few prospective consumers are likely to own all three. And as proof of how numbing Jane Olivor is, it's a safe bet to assume she not only owns all three, but would put them in her top albums of all time. She may as yet succeed but if so it will only be by abandoning the part of Barbra Streisand that Bette Midler put in the garbage. C

Time and a Word [Atlantic, 1970]
I delayed judgment on the weedy harmonies and genteel virtuosity of their debut, mostly because they covered the Byrds and the Beatles, who flirted with weeds and gentility themselves. This time they cover Richie Havens, synopsize Kahlil Gibran, and insert orchestrations that cry out of the fine hand of Dmitri Tiomkin. Answer to title quiz: "now" and "love." C

Pieces of the Sky [Reprise, 1975]
Abetted by Brian Ahern, who would have been wise to throw on some Anne Murray schlock, Harris conducts herself with a pristine earnestness that has nothing to do with what is likeable about country music and everything to do with what is most suspect in "folk." Presumably Graham Parsons was clever enough to play off these tendencies or ignore them altogether, but as a solo mannerism it doesn't even ensure clear enunciation. I swear, the chorus of the best song on here sounds like: "I will rub my asshole/In the bosom of Abraham." C-

Link Wray [Polydor, 1971]
The inventor of a feedback experiment titled "Rumble", who must have beaten the Yardbirds to it by six or seven years also appears to have turned hippie on his own, although his headband reflects loyalties to the Shawnee Nation. These days he runs a four-track in a recording shack in rural Maryland where he and a couple of kindred spirits put together this blues and country-rooted document. The playing is better than the songwriting is better than the singing and on the whole it's pretty dumb. But hey, you have to give him credit where it's due. Any rocker who can sing about being persecuted by the Man almost as un-self-consciously as a back porch bluesman sings about trains has gotta be worth something. Right? C+

Chinese Democracy [Geffen, 2008]
Story of the year: Notorious rock recluse spends ten years and a vast chunk of his ill-gotten fortune crafting the perfect album. Succeeds (sort of) on his own irrelevant terms. Since he can no longer lead young white males astray, I find the effort not just pleasurable on a personal level, but actually touching. Didn't think he had it in him. B+

Where It All Began [Chess, 1972]
Just how bad can a Bo Diddley album be? Well, a lot worse for one--it might feature strings or Bo's cover versions of the latest top 20 hits but fortunately he and his handlers Johnny Otis and Pete Welding know better. On the other hand, just how good can a Bo Diddley album be? Unlike Chuck Berry, who must also transcend a certain musical homogenity, Bo hasn't written a whole songbook full of great lyrics and his musical homogenity, such as it is, is a whole lot more homogenous than Chuck's. C

Carly Simon [Elektra, 1971]
Since affluence is an American condition, I suppose it makes sense not only for the privileged to inflict their sensibilities on us, but for many of us to dig it. Too bad, though. It's OK for "That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be" to voice a cliché, but not with that calculated preciosity and false air of discovery. If Carly's college friends are already old enough to have alienated their children, her self-discovery program is a little postmature anyway. C-

Ironman [Sony, 1996]
The most street of the Clan--not comic like Ol' Dirty Bastard or mack like Method Man, not deep like Raekwon or Genius either. In a word, gangsta--East Coast-style, reflective and observant, only he doesn't vow to go straight all the time. By his own account, he's done a lot of bad things, and within five minutes he's spewing some of the vilest woman-hate in the sorry history of the subgenre. But the detail is so vivid and complex that for once we get the gripping blaxploitation flick gangsta promises rather than the dull or murky one it delivers. True crime tales like the vengeful "Motherless Child" and the unstoppable "260" are gritty and action-packed, and even the spew plays out as exactly what a long-dicked knucklehead would want to say to the young thing who done him wrong. Then there are moments like "Camay," in which social-climbing crew members move on a legal secretary and an assistant manager at Paragon, and the social-realist family reminiscence "All That I Got Is You." Most decisive of all, RZA's music is every bit as literal as Ghostface's rhymes and rap, giving up tunes, even hooks. As soulful as Tony Toni Toné--maybe more. A

Sanctuary [Reprise, 1971]
Armed with an acoustic guitar and a wire-rimmed smile, Dion has been projecting the aura of the quintessential Bronx rocker ever since reviving his career in clubs three years ago. On this LP he applies his sweet, sliding, blues-based style to both quintessential Bronx rockers and acoustic-guitar specialties, though his good-humored stage patter seems coyer every time it repeats. Still wish he (or Warners) would put "Your Own Back Yard," his song about him and heroin, on an album. And forget "Abraham, Martin, and John." B-

Broken Blossom [Atlantic, 1977]
So she can transform Billy Joel into Phil Spector. She's just another pop singer now, albeit one with a few interesting gimmicks. Ask yourself: Is the redemption of Billy Joel really fitting work for a cultural heroine? C

Love Will Keep Us Together [A&M, 1975]
One expected a lousy album but not this lousy. The record takes off from an unused Neil Sedaka hit arrangement (admirers of the single may wish to purchase a copy of Sedaka's Back). Outside there they spread the middle-of-the-road so thin they make "Rainy Days and Mondays" sound like "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting." D-

Back To The Egg [Columbia, 1979]
Whew. Sixteen titles on an untimed LP that must run forty minutes if not fifty--or seventy-five. When he's on, Paulie's abundant tunefulness passes for generosity. Here he's just hoping something will stick. C

Chuck Mangione

Meltdown [1970s]

LL Cool J: Bigger and Deffer [Def Jam, 1987]
Like the pop-metal egotists he resembles every which way but white, J proves that there's something worse than a middle-class adolescent who's gotta be a big shot this instant--the same adolescent the instant he becomes a big shot. Overrated though it was, the debut had guts, spritz, musical integrity, and Rick Rubin. Breakthrough though it may be, the follow-up has a swelled head, a swollen dick, received beats, and quotes from Berry, Brown, and the Moonglows that confuse me. Could it be that the planet existed before he brought it to fruition? C+

Boys Don't Cry [PVC, 1980]
The sound is dry postpunk, with touches of Wire's spare, arty melodicism, more Pink Flag than 154. Never pretty, it's treated with a properly mnemonic pop overlay--scan the titles and you'll recall a phrase from all but a few of these thirteen songs. Intelligent phrases they are, too. Yet what are we to think of a band whose best song is based on Albert Camus's "The Stranger", a book that was holy writ for collegiate existentialists before Robert Smith was even born? The last thing we need is collegiate existentialism nostalgia. B+

Brand New Eyes [Fueled by Ramen, 2009]
Hayley, girl, it's ok to rock out, it's ok to agonize sometimes, but you really don't have to scream so much ("Careful", "Ignorance") *

Hot [Big Tree, 1977]
Vocally, this group can't match the Emotions, and the music for some of these songs is undistinguished, but I'll take their hit ("Angel in Your Arms," not to be confused with "Undercover Angel") for its modestly articulate modern moralism, a virtue many of the lyrics here share. Recommended: "Mama's Girl," "You Can Do It." B

Living in the Material World [Apple, 1973]
If you call this living. Harrison sings as if he's doing sitar impressions, and four different people, including a little man in my head who I never noticed before, have expressed intense gratitude when I turned the damned thing off during "Be Here Now." Inspirational sentiment: "the leaders of nations/They're acting like big girls." C

Shakedown Street [Arista, 1978]
The title cut is the first anthem any of these rabble-rousing necromancers have come up with in many a moon. But even there Jerry Garcia warns against "too much too quickly" and this album ain't the miracle they need. B-

Back in the U.S.A. [Capitol, 2002]
The sweeping gestures and broad arena rock of expert nonentities robs the Beatle songs that adorn this tour merch of all their precision and power. Yet the Beatle songs still dwarf the proofs of his solo existence, which gets lamer the older he gets. Still, his winsome smile and cloying stage banter are irresistable. And when he whips up some "First the gals, now the fellas" during the chorus of "Hey Jude", it is to cringe with dismay at the survival of a generation. C

Glow [Gordy, 1985]
Rick James was never Mister I.Q. to begin with but this record is so stupid--not just stupid but stoopid. All of which makes his continuing failure to conquer MTV all the more bewildering since between his dance moves, fop coiffure, and relentless sexual self-aggrandizement that's clearly where he belongs--he may be smarmier than Billy Idol but hey, what's a little grease among professionals? C

Britney [Jive, 2001]
hardly the first not-terribly-bright teenager to approach self-knowledge via the words of others ("Overprotected," "Cinderella") **

The Diary of Alicia Keys [J, 2003] *bomb*

Mariah Carey [Columbia, 1990]
I swear I didn't know her mama was an opera singer but then I'm embarrassed I didn't guess. She gets too political in her brave young attack on war and destitution ("There's gotta be a way/To unite this human race/And together we'll bring about a change.") Elsewhere she sticks to what she doesn't know--love. Debbie Gibson come back, all is forgiven. C

SMiLE [Nonesuch, 2004]
There are many things I don't miss about the '60s, including long hair, LSD, revolutionary rhetoric, and folkies playing drums. But the affluent optimism that preceded and then secretly pervaded the decade's apocalyptic alienation is a lost treasure of a time when capitalism had so much slack in it that there was no pressing need to stop your mind from wandering. Brian Wilson grokked surfing because it embodied that optimism, and though I considered the legend of Smile hot air back then, this re-creation proves he had plenty more to make of it. The five titles played for minimalist whimsy on Smiley Smile mean even more orchestrated, and the newly released fragments are as strong as the whole songs they tie together. Smile's post-adolescent utopia isn't disfigured by Brian's thickened, soured 62-year-old voice. It's ennobled--the material limitations of its sunny artifice and pretentious tomfoolery acknowledged and joyfully engaged. This can only be tonic for Americans long since browbeaten into lowering their expectations by the rich men who are stealing their money. A+