1972 - Clive's Top 5 Albums of Every Year Challenge
Over what will likely be the next few years I’m going to be ranking and reviewing the top 5 albums - plus a whole heap of others - according to users on rateyourmusic.com (think IMDB for music) from every year from 1960 to the present. If you want to know more, I wrote an introduction to the ‘challenge’ here. You can also read all the other entries I’ve written so far by heading to the lovely index page here.
And so we march on into the 70s. As is customary now, let’s have a look at some of the year’s main events: Britain took over direct rule of Northern Ireland in a bid for peace, Nixon ordered the ‘Christmas Bombing’ of North Vietnam, the US Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional, and the Watergate scandal began. Oh, and the CD was developed by RCA.
Here’s what our trusty rateyourmusic.com users rated as the year’s top 5 albums:
#1 David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars
#2 Nick Drake - Pink Moon
#3 Yes - Close to the Edge
#4 Can - Ege Bamyasi
#5 Neil Young - Harvest
Only one new artist entering this year, in the form of prog-rockers Yes. As usual, five isn’t enough so we’ll throw some more into the mix from further down the list:
#6 The Rolling Stones - Exile on Main St.
#8 Curtis Mayfield - Super Fly
#9 Milton Nascimento & Lô Borges - Clube de Esquina
#12 Lou Reed - Transformer
#16 Miles Davis - On the Corner
#18 Charles Mingus - Let My Children Hear Music
#61 Catherine Ribeiro + Alpes - Paix
#67 Aretha Franklin - Young Gifted and Black
That takes us to 13 albums battling it out for the number one spot. Here’s my thoughts on, and rankings of them all. Spoiler, it’s one of the strongest selections yet…
13. Harvest
Neil Young
Harvest, the best selling album of 1972 in the US, is Neil Young’s fourth and features a fair few famous guests, as well as the London Symphony Orchestra on a couple of its tracks. When reflecting of the mainstream fame the album got him, Young wrote: "it put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there." It was recorded on his farm while he recovered from surgery, and Young attributes the album’s mellow sound to the fact he recorded it all in a brace, and was unable to play the electric guitar.
The album’s opening track Out on the Weekend, immediately lets us know Young’s lyrics and melodies are as strong as ever. A simple, beautiful song that features a similarly simple and beautiful harmonica solo. It’s breezy and sets things up nicely for the album’s aforementioned mellower sound. The London Symphony Orchestra makes its first appearance on A Man Needs a Maid, adding a whole heap of drama to a song about Neil’s insecurity with requiring companionship and yet being scared of said companionship ending. I think the orchestra works in general, especially when the song is listened to on its own, but the huge sound of that orchestra that chugs away as Young laments about needing a maid doesn’t really fit with the generally lower key nature of the recordings on the album. I think a more intimate version, like the version he performs live simply on his piano, would have fit better. The version here just takes me out of the gently breezy atmosphere the album generally creates, which is a shame.
Heart of Gold is the album’s most famous track, and undoubtedly one of Neil Young’s most iconic songs. A simple, acoustic guitar led song about struggling to find his love, again featuring a gorgeous harmonica solo which sings like a migrating songbird that knows they’ll get to their destination eventually. James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt provide the backing, which adds plenty of punch to the parts of the song Young wants emphasised, without making the whole thing sound overly massive like on Man Needs a Maid. Later on we’re blessed by the the irresistible Old Man, a song that’s chorus bounces like an inflatable castle thanks to James Taylor’s jaunty banjo and the catchy vocal melody. It’s an affectionate ode to the foreman on Young’s farm.
There’s a World suffers from the same overly grandiose production as Man Needs a Maid, again hurting the albums cohesiveness for me, while the closing three songs Alabama, The Needle and the Damage Done and Words end things on a high note. The first being particularly notable for featuring the album’s only distorted guitar, and the second being a particular highlight, a song about the perils of heroin addiction, said to be about Crazy Horse member Danny Whitten.
Harvest is another album demonstrating Neil Young’s skills as a songwriter, both melodically and lyrically. Unfortunately it ends up being more of a songs album for me than a cohesive piece, something that wouldn’t be the case if the London Symphony Orchestra - great though they are - hadn’t been included on those two tracks mentioned, somewhat taking away from an otherwise intimate record.
Song Picks: Heart of Gold, Old Man, Out on the Weekend
7.5/10
12. Let My Children Hear Music
Charles Mingus
I promised I’d talk about this album back when we seemingly had a new Charles Mingus release every year back in the early 60s. Mingus himself called it ‘the best album I have ever made,’ and when our man Mingus says something like that, we listen. It consists of songs that in many cases had been bouncing around Mingus’ head for a while, just waiting for the opportunity to be recorded with a full orchestra. When Mingus finally got this opportunity, he took it with both hands.
Let My Children Hear Music is a mix of jazz and symphony. There’s the unmistakable bass walk and swinging drums of jazz - only the solo instrumentalists are mentioned in the sleeve so I’m not sure who plays them - combined with a feeling of musical narrative that you’d expect in a symphony, though Mingus already has experience of this from The Saint and the Sinner Lady.
On the opening track The Shoes of the Fisherman’s Wife things open with the melody and drama of a brass orchestra. A timpani approaches and announces a more relaxed section as we hear our first flutes arriving like small flock of birds. And then the jazz arrives. Delicately skittered drums, a walking bass line, and a variety of brass solos are surrounded by the larger sounds of the orchestra, creating the image of a four-piece jazz band surrounded by a whole host of other brass musicians. Around the three minute mark we have a piano solo that gets stuck on certain notes, bouncing off them only once the next idea has arrived. It’s an intimate moment before the orchestra kicks back in. The song continually switches between more orchestral parts and jazz parts with an effortless ease, the larger brass orchestra producing the sweeping narrative of the piece, while the soloists and rhythm section provide the colour.
Let My Children Hear Music sounds like the soundtrack to a film, the start of Adagio Ma Non Troppo wouldn’t be out of place on an Ennio Morricone soundtrack for example, the distant brass like wolves finding their way across the desert. The music creates a spectacular scene as all the instruments wake up sporadically as the wolves seemingly find something, before the lonesome cries of a variety of brass instruments suggest they’ve failed again. Like the whole album, the piece has a strong narrative, one which your mind will fill creatively as you drift along in its musical stream.
The album continues in a similar vein, with added ambience - such as on Don’t Be Afraid, the Clown’s Afraid Too - and even spoken word on The Chill of Death performed by Charles Mingus himself. Mingus tragically died of a heart attack in 1979, and this beautiful, engagingly mysterious album is a worthy final entry to these lists for a man that’s become one of my favourite artists since the start of this challenge. I prefer his less orchestral albums, but Let My Children Hear Music is yet another experiment from Mingus that succeeds.
Song Picks: The Shoes of the Fisherman’s Wife, Adagio Ma Non Troppo
8/10
11. Super Fly
Curtis Mayfield
Curtis Mayfield’s third album was the soundtrack to the film of the same name. It stands as one of the few soundtracks to have made more money than the film it was for and is widely considered a classic of 70s soul and funk. Super Fly was also one of the first examples of, along with Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, a soul concept album.
Lyrically, the album is about innercity neighbourhoods, and particularly drug dealing. Pusherman - which Curtis Mayfield appears in the film performing - is the most obvious example of this, telling the story of a neighbourhood drug dealer who’s clearly making plenty of money, but asks how long it’ll last, and seems resigned to a fate he doesn’t really want: ‘Been told I can't be nuthin' else/Just a hustler in spite of myself/I know I can break it/This life just don't make it.’ The track is funky, and Mayfield’s almost whispered vocals give the impression of someone not too proud of their status as a ‘Pusherman.’ Freddie’s Dead was the most successful single off the album, reaching #4 on the Billboard Charts. An anti-drug song, it tells the story of Freddie, a character in the film who die after being hit by a car. It finishes with the warning ‘if you wanna be a junkie, well remember Freddie’s dead’ and contains the rather poignant verse about America’s eagerness to fly to the moon and yet reluctance to sort out the issues in their own country:
We're all built up with progress
But sometimes, I must confess
We can deal with rockets and dreams
But, reality -- what does it mean?
Like a lot of the album, the song is gently funky, and accompanied brilliantly by Curtis Mayfield’s vocal, which is quieter and gentler than you’d perhaps expect for the genre - there’s no James Brown style ‘waaaaauuuuu’ here - and has soul for days.
Super Fly continues in this fashion, continually critiquing the drug-dealer life, particularly on Eddie You Should Know Better, which is as judgemental as its title suggests, closing finally - via the brilliantly infectious No Thing on Me - with the perhaps the album’s best track Superfly, a song that reached #8 on the Billboard charts. The song plays over the film’s closing credits and its off-beat bassline has been sampled by numerous artists including the Beastie Boys and the Notorious B.I.G.
Super Fly creates a relaxed, funky atmosphere perfect for Mayfield’s political discourse. It’s an album that feels very cohesive, a commentary on drug-culture in inner city neighbourhoods, which is likely as pertinent today as it was in 1972.
Song picks: Superfly, Freddie’s Dead, No Thing on Me
8/10
10. Transformer
Lou Reed
Transformer is Lou Reed’s second album and was produced by David Bowie, who was a big fan of Reed’s band The Velvet Underground, and Mick Ronson.
Transformer works as a nice double act with Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, it feels like a calmer version of the sound on that album. Reed’s vocals are gruffer, there’s less instrumentation in general, and everything is slower, but they both share a certain energy.
Transformer contains many of Reed’s most famous songs, including Walk on the Wild Side, a song named after a novel by Nelson Algren, which Reed was supposed to be doing the soundtrack for the movie adaptation of - though this never happened. The song starts with, and is largely defined by, Herbie Flower’s cigarette fuelled double-bass line which is accompanied by an acoustic guitar that is seemingly caressed as softly as possible as well as Lou Reed’s almost talked vocal. Reed slowly rambles his way through oral sex, drug abuse, prostitution and the rest, interspersing it all with probably the most iconic ‘du, de, du’ part ever. The backing vocals and especially Ronnie Ross’ tenor saxophone help to add some great flavour to what is a truly great and unique song.
Satellite of Love and Perfect Day features probably the only Bowie-esque choruses. The delay on Reed’s voice in both making him sound metallic, slightly ethereal even. The finger clicks and other interesting percussion that start the build to the former’s crescendo ending are a great touch. On the latter, the chorus is perhaps one of the most impactful in a love song ever. It’s ominous melody defying the more positive lyrics. It is of course not a traditional love song, but one about heroin. “You’re going to reap just what you sow,” Reed repeats at the end, knowing full well this ‘perfect day’ won’t last.
Even the songs that could have worked well as punchy punk songs have a laid back feel to them. Look at the opening track Vicious, where the drummer’s earth plate is somehow louder than the distorted guitars. The bouncy riff sitting surprisingly in the background as Reed barely pushes his vocal past a loud chatter. The electric shock guitar parts that buzz over the top of the track help to add a smidgen of chaos, reminiscent of the Velvet Underground.
Transformer is a great late night listen. It feels like the comedown after Reed’s more boisterous affairs with the Velvet Underground. The reckless abandon has been stripped away, though specks of it surface now and again, but Reed’s talent is still clear, crafting some of the decade’s most iconic songs.
Song Picks: Satellite of Love, Perfect Day, Walk on the Wild Side
8/10
9. Ege Bamyasi
Can
The krautrockers are back after 1971’s Tago Mago. Having made some dosh with the success of their single Spoon - which was the theme tune to a popular German TV show at the time and is included on this album - the band was able to rent out a disused cinema to live and record in, seemingly incapable of recording in normal conditions. Hilariously, things almost didn’t work out because progress was "frustrated by keyboardist Irmin Schmidt and vocalist Damo Suzuki's playing chess obsessively day in, day out" according to guitarist Michael Karoli. The aforementioned Spoon was added to make up for the lack of material because of this.
At 40 minutes, the first thing that’s evident is that this is a much tighter affair than Tago Mago, there’s no 18 minute epics here - though they’re still not afraid to go over ten. It seems that this is more based on necessity - thanks to Suzuki and Schmidt’s chess obsession - than an artistic decision as such, but I feel it helps the album regardless.
The albums opens with Pinch, a drum-driven song featuring Suzuki’s nonsensical, scratchy, barely understandable screaming and mumbling over the top. It’s a fine example of Can messing with your expectations, an elaborate, spontaneous, primal sounding melange of sound ending in a screech of guitars and the energetic rolling of drums. Sing Swan Song will be familiar to any Kanye West fans as it was sampled on Drunk and Hot Girls, with many of the lyrics and the main chorus melody being pinched too. Though this song never refers to 'drunk and hot girls,’ only ‘a drunken hot ghost.’ Suzuki’s rambles - though still by no means easily understandable - are a little less difficult to decipher here and the song is a little more accessible due to it’s more prominent and consistent guitar parts and at least slightly familiar structure. It’s a haunting piece, something made even more evident when the comparably light sounding One More Night starts with its jazzy synth, slightly off beat and yet metronomic drums, and Suzuki’s calm mumbles. It soon becomes more sinister when he starts whispering though. The more you listen to Can, the more you realise how Suzuki uses his voice as an instrument, the lyrics aren’t important, it’s the feeling and expression that comes with them that can change the entire feel of a song from one minute to the next.
Vitamin C is the album’s highlight for me. A surprisingly catchy song punctuated by Suzuki’s fabulous screams of ‘You’re losing/You’re losing/You’re losing, your Vitamin C!!’ above instrumentation that’s more restrained than you’d usually associate with accompanying such passionate vocals. The bass and drums plod along until the end of each of these screams, when they momentarily wake up into a relaxed flurry to accentuate the fact that you’re losing your vitamin C and that you really should go and eat an orange. It’s weird, wonderful, completely hypnotic, and a great - relatively short - example of just how singular Can are.
Soup very much lives up to its name, you feel like you’ve been thrown into some strange soup, gained gills and are swimming to the bottom of a bowl of weird and wonderful ingredients you can’t quite make out. When the drums kick in the vocals distort and tangle around your ears, and the song becomes a strange collection of opposites. It’s calm and yet angry, it’s completely new and yet also strangely familiar, it makes no sense, and yet it does. By the time you get to the end of the song - which contains the only part even close to being as challenging as Tago Mago’s darker sections - you really do feel like you’ve been dunked into the greenest, weirdest musical soup, and yet you kind of want to jump straight back in.
The album closes with I’m So Green and Spoon, two short and snappy songs which are again - like Vitamin C - surprisingly catchy. I’m So Green in particular sounds like the result of putting a catchy 70s pop song through a blender.
Ege Bamyasi is singular, a strange trip, perfectly depicted by that cover of a soup can. It’s a tighter experience than Tago Mago - and perhaps even more inventive - although it lacks the infectious groove of the opening tracks from that album.
Song Picks: Vitamin C, Soup, I’m So Green, Spoon
8.5/10
8. On the Corner
Miles Davis
Miles had already re-invented himself and his sound who knows how many times by now, but he wasn’t done, taking a sharp turn into jazz-fusion and particularly funk, which had played a part on Bitches Brew, but is much more evident here. Jazz critics hated it on release, Stan Getz - of Getz & Gilberto - famously said of it: "That music is worthless. It means nothing; there is no form, no content, and it barely swings," while Bill Coleman rather harshly described it as "an insult to the intellect of the people." Nowadays though, it enjoys plenty of acclaim, being rated as the 30th best album of the 70s by Pitchfork and often being talked about as a big inspiration for a whole load of genres including the obvious jazz-funk, and rather less obvious electronica and hip-hop. On the Corner was Davis’ last formal studio album of the 70s, though there were numerous compilations and live albums to come.
The first thing evident is the arrival of that quacking guitar that was to take over funk, and become a big part of Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters album in 1973. It’s particularly evident on the album’s third track where it waddles along like a pompous duck as the drums play disjointed beats accented by percussive congas and some sort of noisy tambourine. It feels much less fluid percussively than anything from Bitches Brew, but there’s an undeniable groove to it.
Other highlights include the closing track Helen Butte / Mr. Freedom X, a track that consistently has me bopping my head along to its mad, messy soundscape of funky bass, skittery and yet solid drums, that strange instrument making a noise like a dying bird, and Davis’ trumpet magically tying it all together, allowing it all to make sense like some sort of trumpeting translator. The opening track’s grated guitar solos from John McGlaughlin are pretty splendid too, mixing with the percussion and scattered, scratching notes of the other instruments in a blend of almost industrially funky jazz.
On the Corner is an album of space, of pauses, of parts that repeat, but seem to jitter as they do so. Much like Bitches Brew, there’s repetition creating a trance like sound, but here it’s a bit less joined up and more sporadic. Where Bitches Brew feels like the inspired march of the most talented musicians who’ve taken just the right amount of stimulants, On the Corner sounds like the morning after they’ve all taken too many. There’s a ruggedness to proceedings here. The way your voice feels after a night of heavy drinking, when you can’t quite hit the notes right - but it somehow has more character than when you do. And there’s some soul in that you know? I don’t think On the Corner is anywhere near as cohesive and downright revolutionary as Bitches Brew, but it’s still pretty damn great, and a clear influence on a lot of jazz and funk to come. I also think it’s one of those that will rise even higher in my estimations the more I soak up its whisky drenched grit.
Song Picks: One and One, Helen Butte / Mr. Freedom
8.5/10
7. Paix
Catherine Ribeiro + Alpes
The fourth album by French artist Catherine Ribeiro + Alpes marked the change of her musical direction to a more progressive folk sound.
Paix opens with the largely instrumental Roc alpin, where the progressive elements such as synth are evident from the start, while the second half features prominent la laaas from Ribeiro in her characteristically free vocal style.
It’s only on the following Jusqu'a Ce Que La Force De T'Aimer Me Manque where the extent of Ribeiro’s vocal talent becomes clear however. Her vocals are expressive, and full of importance and atmosphere. The heavy reverb helps them blend seamlessly into the song’s gorgeous instrumental bedding, created by Patrice Moullet’s constantly churning acoustic guitar, the twinkling synths, and the long, held organ notes. It’s a song that, although my lack of French stops me from understanding it lyrically, has a similar size and power to something like The Times They Are A-Changin’ by Bob Dylan.
The album’s final two tracks are lengthy folk experiments. The title track comes in at over 15 minutes and features one-note percussion that sounds like it’s being performed on the deadened strings of a guitar, giving a slightly modern sound. As the guitar and organ build and build we end up in a frenzy of fuzz, patters, and organ scrambles, the organ very much dating the piece as something from the 70s, though the rest of the instrumentation has a more timeless quality to it. That relentless percussive tap continues throughout the whole song, tying it together like some bassy ticker-tape. Once Ribeiro’s vocals enter, they’re characteristically unbound, expressive, and free of melody. Although I can’t understand a word of the poem that Ribeiro is acting out, it’s hard not to be moved by the piece. Ribeiro’s melodic cries which end the song cementing it as one of this list’s most transcendental pieces of music.
The closing track Un Jour... La Mort is over 24 minutes long and again creates a memorable soundscape. A tremolo sound ebbs and flows, with guitarring not unlike that of a more stuttered David Gilmour from Pink Floyd. Once again it’s Ribeiro’s wordless vocal that really stands out though, sounding like the howl of a wolf drifting over a huge but shrinking forest. The organ melodies are accompanied well by the plucked guitar part and once Ribeiro starts singing in French I’m reminded of Lana Del Rey, a comparison that fades once she gets more passionate. The fact is it’s difficult to compare Ribeiro to anyone, her unique expressive ability transcends language and is hard to forget. As the song reaches a close, that slightly electronic sounding percussion and the soaring organ notes are accompanied by Ribeiro’s increasingly frantic vocal, the guitar chugging along, the forest turning to dust, the camera launching to the sky as the Earth howls and growls a final goodbye. You might think I’m being overly dramatic, but just listen to the thing and I think you’ll know what I mean.
Paix is a superb piece of progressive folk, an album of unbridled atmosphere, all tugged along by Ribeiro’s singular vocal performances.
Song Picks: Paix, Jusqu'a Ce Que La Force De T'Aimer Me Manque
8.5/10
6. Young, Gifted and Black
Aretha Franklin
Aretha’s 18th studio album takes the name from the Nina Simone song, an interpretation of which is included on the album. It features a whole host of musicians spread across its 12 tracks and covers of songs by John Lennon & Paul McCartney, Otis Redding, Nina Simone, Elton John, and more, as well three compositions by Aretha herself.
On Young, Gifted and Black, Aretha seems to blend into the music more than on the previous two albums of hers on these lists. On the opening Oh Me Oh My (I’m a Fool for You Baby) Aretha’s vocals are sung with a pinpoint accuracy and a tone as warm as an electric blanket. However, though she’s very much belting them out, they never dominate over the drums, and even the backing vocals are at times louder. It’s the extra importance given to Aretha’s supporting cast that makes Young, Gifted and Black my favourite album by Franklin so far.
On the chilled-as-a-day-at-the-beach Day Dreaming we’ve got the addition of some lovely flute, and the guitar and drums are grooving together like a young couple completely in-tune on the dance floor. It’s a sumptuous track, everything combining to perfectly complement Aretha’s vocals.
On Rock Steady the band is so infectiously funky it’s hard no to get up and start gyrating around the room. Chuck Rainey’s bass and Bernard Purdie’s drums grooving together like they were meant to be. The organ and percussive touches complete a sound palette that is just fabulous, and that’s before we even mention the - of course - iconic vocals.
The album proceeds much in this vein, with thoughtful production creating a sumptuous soundscape for Aretha’s vocals to exist among, with songs like The First Snow in Kokomo being particularly irresistible. The title track is perhaps the album’s best however. It begins with Aretha leading her backing vocalists in rousing gospel style, accompanied only by her occasional chords on the piano. Then the band comes in, the bass and drums again grooving along beautifully to the gospel theatrics of Aretha and her backing vocalists. They’re well accompanied, and never overpowered. To be fair, I’m unsure a performance as powerful as the one of Aretha on this track could ever be overpowered, if you could turn it into electricity, we’d have enough power to last the whole world for eternity. Understandably, the song became an anthem for both the civil rights and Black power movements.
It’s always been clear that Aretha Franklin is one of the greats, you only have to listen to her sing one phrase to know that, but I feel like this is the first time I’ve heard her backed in such a consistently effective manner on an album. Young, Gifted and Black is a resplendent record of warmly and powerfully performed songs. It’s an album with an effortlessly warm glow that few will be able to resist.
Song Picks: Day Dreaming; Young, Gifted and Black; Rock Steady; First Snow in Kokomo; Border Song (Holy Moses)
9/10
5. Pink Moon
Nick Drake
Pink Moon is Nick Drake’s third and final album before his death in 1974, aged 26. Unlike his previous two albums, it features no backing musicians except on the title track. Lyrically, the content is largely thought to be about the battle with depression that eventually took his life. As with all of Drake’s work, it didn’t sell well during his lifetime, but has since become an album that you’ll see on most all-time lists.
The album opens with the ominous title track, informing us that “I saw it written and I saw it say/Pink moon is on its way/And none of you stand so tall/Pink moon gonna get you all.” As with a lot of Drake’s lyrics, it’s unclear what the ‘pink moon’ is, but in his hushed, tuneful, nearly mumbled vocal, you can tell that he’s already surrendered to it. The simple, two minute song features the album’s only accompaniment, a gentle piano part during the bridge.
Characteristic of the whole album, Place to Be is short and features few words - 2 minutes and three short verses respectively to be precise. The song clearly shows Drake’s struggles with his mental health at the time, as beautifully outlined in the second verse:
And I was green, greener than the hill
Where flowers grew and the sun shone still
Now I'm darker than the deepest sea
Just hand me down, give me a place to be
It’s a song, and very much an album about isolation, the last line above being particularly heartbreaking. Coming after Road, which perfectly demonstrates Drake’s notable skill on the acoustic guitar, comes one of the album’s more affecting songs, Which Will. A song of delicate questions, hummed into existence by Nick’s desperately quiet vocals. It’s the creation of a man lost - with a million more questions than answers - left plucking delicately at his guitar and singing to the floor. Even in the album's instrumentals, Drake expertly conveys a feeling of sad acceptance. On Horn, a sparsely plucked melody is accompanied by the odd quietly droning bass part as the notes seem to fly through the window like elegant, melancholy swallows.
The second side of the album opens with the record’s simplest song, Know. It features only four lines: ‘You know that I love you/You know I don't care/You know that I see you/You know I'm not there,’ delivered over probably the simplest guitar part on any Nick Drake song. It’s the type of thing he probably wrote in a matter of minutes, and yet his vocals make it ghostly, bewitching and delicately confusing. On the following Parasite, Drake sinks deeper into depression, Free Ride sees him at his most cryptic - but also at his most singable - mirroring the soothing melody expertly with his plucked guitar part, and on the final From the Morning he’s at his least introspective, singing instead of the beauty of nature.
Pink Moon is a sad, sad record about feeling isolated and lost. This sense of isolation is emphasised by the album’s sparse production. It’s like Nick Drake has decided to record the whole thing in his bedroom, without telling any of the backing musicians who appeared on his last two albums, unable to deal with the thought of interacting with them. The short songs and less traditional structures convey that he’s done trying to please others. This was an album written for him. A place for him to spill his soul, one last time.
Song Picks: Pink Moon, Which Will, Free Ride
9/10
4. Exile on Main St.
The Rolling Stones
The band’s 10th UK album was released as a double album and is the Stones album with perhaps the most interesting story behind it. It’s tempting to say Exile on Main St. is the result of the band’s tax exile in a French villa where they recorded the entire thing in the basement while doing too many drugs, having far too good a time, and generally living a hedonistic existence. Now, sure, the album very much sounds like that, but that’s not quite the true story.
In fact, many of the songs were recorded during the sessions for Sticky Fingers, at Olympic Studios or Jagger’s country house. It was only in 1971, when the band escaped the UK to avoid having their assets seized - they’d spent all the money they should have paid in taxes - that the villa recording phase began. It was Richards who rented the villa and, on struggling to find a suitable recording studio, the band decided to use the basement of said residence instead. They already had the Rolling Stones Mobile Recording Studio that I’ve mentioned in previous posts, so they just needed some space. There’s a documentary about the creation of this album - Stones in Exile - which I really need to watch, but the general thrust seems to be that the sessions were a mess. Jagger and Wyman were generally missing, Richards only appeared when his worsening heroin addiction allowed him to, and there was all sorts of musicians appearing and disappearing from one session to the next. Although the basics to a lot of the songs were recorded in these sessions, lead vocals, and endless other overdubs such as horns and such were added at Sunset Sound Recorders in Los Angeles, a distinctly less bohemian affair than that of Richards’ basement in Nellcôte.
By all accounts this is more a Keith Richards album than a Mick Jagger one, or as drummer Charlie Watts puts it, "A lot of Exile was done how Keith works, which is, play it 20 times, marinade, play it another 20 times. He knows what he likes, but he's very loose." However, that’s not to say Mick Jagger didn’t play a crucial role, and it’s the sessions that he led later at Recorded in Los Angeles that resulted in much of the album’s boisterous, almost party atmosphere. Jagger himself, who isn’t the biggest fan of the album, has said, “I had to finish the whole record myself, because otherwise there were just these drunks and junkies," something which, based on what I’ve read, seems rather true. One - probably oversimplified - way to look at it is that Richards provided the soul and foundation to the record while Jagger later added his characteristic energy and sparkle.
The album’s 18 songs aren’t as devoid of hits as is sometimes claimed, the album does contain Tumbling Dice, Sweet Virginia and Happy, all of which were hits and featured in the band’s set-lists for years to come. I’m not going to go into details on each song, but I do feel a need to talk through the album’s opening track, Rocks Off, which I feel perfectly encapsulates the raucous chaos of the record.
The track opens with the whisky drenched guitar of Richards and a gargled ‘oh yeah!’ from Jagger, who sounds like he’s battered and lying on the sofa. Before long the drums come in and we’ve got some delightfully bouncy piano accompanying Jagger’s vocal. It’s muddy, the vocals aren’t as loud as usual, and the whole thing just sounds like a debaucherous, drunken party. The horns blare for the first time just a minute into the song, and continue to accompany the song’s choruses like a messy rabble of drunks. Halfway through the song it sounds as though everyone’s been dunked underwater - or more likely beer - before everyone comes back out ready to party and bounce some more. The song, like the whole album, is an energetic, raw delight.
Exile on Main St. is the Rolling Stones’ best album, and that’s not because it contains the band’s best songs - it doesn’t - but because of the atmosphere the whole thing creates. The whole band have never sounded as free and loose, as energetic, as fun. The album is perhaps the only one by the Stones where Richard’s bohemian messiness dominates and - although the whole thing would be nowhere without Jagger’s additions - that’s a prime reason it works so well. There’s flaws and the performances aren’t perfect, but they’re there, ever present and immediate, and they’ve got endless soul. It captures an energy and feeling that hasn’t been repeated since, and that’s what makes it such a rock ‘n’ roll masterpiece.
Song Picks: Rocks Off, Tumbling Dice, Happy
9.5/10
3. Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
David Bowie
Bowie’s fifth album is his only as Ziggy Stardust, and is backed by his backing band the Spiders from Mars. A lot of its material was written at the same time as his previous album Hunky Dory. Although often described as a concept album about Bowie’s titular character Ziggy Stardust’s arrival on planet Earth to save the planet from an impending disaster, most of the album’s concept was drawn up once the songs had already been recorded. After Hunky Dory’s heavily piano led sound, Ziggy Stardust returns to a more guitar dominated one. The cover, although it looks like a painting, is in fact a re-coloured photograph.
Ziggy Stardust starts with Five Years, a song that sets the stage for Ziggy’s entrance, detailing the end of the world in a frantic cramming of detail that crescendos and crescendos as Bowie performs some his most ‘shouty’ vocals, building and building to the outro as if he’s got so much to say he’s going to explode. By the time the outro comes, the payoff is huge, “We've got five years/what a surprise/We've got five years, stuck on my eyes/We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot” he sings in a variety of tones, his mind audibly at breaking point. It’s one of the finest album openers out there, a perfect scene setter, building to a splendid crescendo of agitation.
Soul Love is a song about love, a bit of an outlier when it comes to the narrative of the album, but fitting in perfectly in terms of its sound. The song starts with percussion and then guitar with the cleanest of clean production on it. So clean I want to bathe in it. Soul Love is a great introduction to Bowie’s uncanny ability to write strange, catchy choruses on this album, and the choice of added instruments like Trevor Bolder’s trumpet is just perfect, the distorted electric guitar giving the track plenty of oomph, while never drowning out any of the other instruments. Moonage Daydream introduces Ziggy Stardust, describing himself in the song’s iconic opening verse.
I'm an alligator
I'm a mama-papa coming for you
I'm a space invader
I'll be a rock 'n' rollin' bitch for you
Keep your mouth shut
You're squawking like a pink monkey bird
And I'm busting up my brains for the words
The song ends in a howl of laser like guitars and high pitched alien sounds announcing the arrival of our titular saviour before Starman, one of Bowie’s most iconic songs, gently drifts into our ears, filling them once again with catchy melodies, creative lyrics, and seemingly endless charm. An interpretation of Ron Davies’ It Ain’t Easy is followed by an ode to androgynous glam-rockers everywhere, but in particular Marc Bolan, Lady Stardust. Neither of these fit the album’s narrative as such, but again, sonically they’re right at home. On Rock & Roll star our saviour Ziggy realises the best way to change the world might be as a rock ‘n’ roll star.
Hang on to Yourself is one of my favourites, and a clear influence on the punk rock to come in the 70s and beyond, with its fast and infectious guitar riff - rather than the vocal - containing the hook. It tells of the attraction Ziggy is now getting from a fan, something that gets out of hand on the epic Ziggy Stardust, when he gets too big for his boots, causing friction with the band. The song features one of the world’s most iconic guitar intros and perhaps Bowie’s best vocal performance on the album. The infinitely danceable and infectious Suffragette City is followed by the final track, Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide, beautifully charting Ziggy’s demise, Bowie’s vocal rising from a gentle mumble to a chaotic scream as Ziggy Stardust falls into the abyss, never to return.
Ziggy Stardust is one of those albums where every song is great, even when taken out of context of the album. However, it’s when they’re all put together and performed by Bowie’s creation Ziggy Stardust that they become something truly magical, something greater even than the sum of their notable parts. Together they create an album that sounds like it’s dropped down from space, written by an alien who’s spent their life in a moonage daydream listening to our music.
Song Picks: Five Years, Starman, Suffragette City, Hang on to Yourself
9.5/10
2. Close to the Edge
Yes
The fifth album by English prog-rockers Yes is largely seen as one of the key recordings in the genre. It’s also probably the most electronic sounding album we’ve had on the challenge so far, with plenty of synth action going on.
The album opens with the 18 minute masterpiece and title track, Close to the Edge, which opens with the twittering of birds and the gentle sound of water, as a synth builds and builds in the distance. Before long the whole band arrives in a blaze of glory, Bill Brufford’s busy drums perfectly accompanying the buzzing bass - which sounds a hell of a lot like Muse’s bass and was clearly a big influence - and chirping guitar. Jon Anderson’s aaaaaahhhs stop the band who are able to dip in and out perfectly. The following breakdown is a perfect demonstration of Yes’ instrumental skill, and we’re over 4 minutes into the song by the time Anderson sings any words. Lyrically, the song is so full of metaphor it’s hard to decipher, or alternatively, it’s easy to put your own meaning onto it. It’s apparently based on the book Siddartha. Anderson’s vocals are distinctly thin, and sung at a pitch that makes them sound strikingly fragile and yet also incredibly powerful, like a knife so sharp it’ll break if you don’t use it quite right. The song is made by its dips, which are so varied and atmospheric that the piece feels like a story, a symphony even.
Those dips are interspersed with the same powerful chorus, which only plays a few times over the song’s 18 minute duration and ends with Anderson belting out “I get up/I get down” at the top of his lungs, a moment of such musical force it stops you in your tracks. The song has a magnificent sense of importance, and yet lacks the pomposity of a lot of prog-rock thanks to its less pretentious lyrics. The moment when Anderson once again ends a chorus with a wail of “I get up/I get down,” followed by an organ that sounds as if it’s announcing the end of the world has to be one of my favourite musical moments on any album, ever. The organ cuts back out, comes back in, playing tag team with Anderson’s heavily reverbed and melodic vocal before a synth comes in and marks the song’s final stage. A stage that takes us full circle, back to the frantic, controlled chaos of the band’s entrance, only with the dial turned up to 11. The band jumps from idea to idea like a hyperactive cat, by the time that chorus crescendos one last time in a triumphant, glorious explosion, you’re left picking your jaw up of the floor, aware you’ve just heard one of the finest and most powerful pieces of music ever written. I literally have to hold back the tears of joy every time I finish the song.
Now, asking the two remaining tracks of the album to match that would be completely foolish, and yet, they follow it brilliantly. Track two, And You and I again features pretty cryptic lyrics, but they’re sung with such conviction by Anderson that it barely matters. Like the opening track, it’s a song of complex structure, chopping and changing constantly, a particular highlight being the entrance of a flowing synth and organ part around the four-minute mark, which evolves into an even lusher soundscape once the weird guitar effects enter the fray. Then, just as you think the song couldn’t get any better, Anderson - predictably - belts out another chorus that is so massive it seems utterly ridiculous that the extra-terrestrials we no doubt share the universe with haven’t heard it yet.
Siberian Khatru doesn’t have an Earth-shattering chorus like the first two tracks, but it does feature some of the band’s best instrumental sections culminating in a bass buzzing groove-fest splattered with organ and chattered guitar before the band are faded out, seemingly carrying on with their jam into eternity.
Closer to the Edge, perhaps more than any other album I’ve ever heard, understands that crescendos are relative. It’s the mood you put the listener in a song’s more reflective parts that makes that crescendo all the more effective. The verses and instrumentals on this record are varied, gorgeous, and thoroughly unpredictable. The choruses, though they may only appear infrequently, are among the most emotionally powerful I’ve ever heard, and yet if you took them out of the context of this whole album they wouldn’t be. That’s the beauty of it. You need to listen to the whole thing to get the most out of its cloud busting peaks.
Song Picks: Closer to the Edge, And You and I
9.5/10
1. Clube de Esquina
Milton Nascimento & Lô Borges
Clube de Esquina was a Brazilian music artist’s collective from the Southeastern state of Minas Gerais, of which Milton Nascimento & Lo Borges were two members. Although they contribute most of the vocals and songwriting to this album and are the members credited with this release, many others were involved in its recording. Now considered an important record in the history of Brazilian music, it features string arrangements by Eumir Deodato and Wagner Tiso, conducted by Paulo Moura.
Listening to Clube de Esquina for the first time is like being teleported to Southeast Brazil, you can practically smell the exotic fruit, the ocean, the dry, dusty cities, and the colour. On the opening Tudo Que Você Podia Ser the Spanish guitar combines with the soft vocal in a way that immediately pulls you in, and then the instruments explode into tens of bright tones led by that rapid, high guitar part. The album continues to soar like a grain of sand in the wind for its 74 minute duration, not letting go until the echoed final notes of Ao Que Vai Nascer, a song that sounds like it’s coming to us from the bottom of some ancient well. The whole thing is full of moments of breathtaking beauty: when the vocal in Cais fades and turns into a staccato piano part; when the guitar on O Trem Azul perfectly foreshadows the gorgeous vocal melody that is to appear in the song’s chorus, one of the most uplifting on the album; that long falsetto note held on Nuvem Cigana; and the moment in Um Girassol Da Cor De Seu Cabelo when the ominous strings come in and the song seems to multiply itself by 1000, turning into something unrecognisable from its gently tuneful start. I’m only up to track 8 of 21, I could go on.
Elis Regina once said that ‘if god sang, he would do it with Milton’s voice,’ and well, I’d have to agree. Nascimento’s voice can be melancholy, it can be wistful, but there’s always more than a flicker of hope there, and the overwhelming feeling is one of an optimistic fatalism. Milton can do falsettos, he can transport melodies for miles, he can hold notes, he can do it all. And yet his voice is one of the most humble you’ll hear, he is not interested in proving his vocal talents, he is only interested in serving the songs and the melody.
I don’t know Portuguese, so I can’t get to the bottom of any of the lyrics, but that takes nothing away from the album for me, and adds to it a nice layer of mystery, a humbling knowledge that I’ll never fully grasp it. It’s hard to find much information on Clube de Esquina, and certainly how it was recorded, but the whole thing feels like a very communal effort to me. It feels like the studio equivalent of a bunch of amazingly talented musicians getting round a fire and performing to themselves. The fact it’s named after and performed by many members of a musical collective would suggest that maybe, just maybe, this is true.
Clube de Esquina is probably one of Brazilian pop’s - often called MPB - most famous albums, but I certainly hadn’t heard of it until I started this challenge, and that’s a crime. There’s a mystical uplifting quality to it unlike anything else I’ve heard. The Latin American rhythms, melodies and guitar playing immediately make it stick out among the plethora of western releases we have on this challenge, and that certainly works in the album’s favour and helps to make it stand out. But there’s more to it than that, Clube de Esquina is full of gorgeous melodies, both uplifting and sad. It sounds like the moods of someone’s life, without being able to distinguish the individual events. There’s ups and there’s downs, all sung in a language I can’t understand. But cheesy as it sounds, moods and emotions are universal, they go beyond language. This album is a fabulous reminder that we’re all experiencing the same feelings, and that those are presented in a whole host of different flavours, ones that are influenced by whatever corner of this wonderful planet we were born on. I have no reservations in saying this is one of the most beautiful albums I’ve ever heard, and one that sees new parts flower every time I listen to it.
Song Picks: Tudo Que Você Podia Ser, Cais, Ao Que Vai Nascer, Um Girassol Da Cor De Seu Cabelo, San Vicente
9.5/10
