#608 The Hollies - In the Hollies Style

Very much a product of the time, seemingly taking the Beatles' exact same tack on harmony-heavy versions of early rock and roll from the likes of Buddy Holly (who they named themselves after) Chuck Berry (who they cover here). Everything is a bit too Love Me Do smooth, providing a limp version of a style that was already done pretty well, and that didn't have a lot of room for exploration.

There's a very slightly different flavor here, a certain twangy oddball quality to the original tracks that evokes The Mint Chicks and Of Montreal in a way that The Beatles don't. And Set Me Free has a rollicking, too-fast energy that I'd love to heard more of - instead things are pretty predictable, buffed to too much of a familiar shine to be all that interesting 3/5

#607 The Flaming Lips - With Lightning Bolt

This, compared to the Prefuse collaboration, shakes with the impact of the two bands, sounding like something beyong what either would create on their own. In short, it sounds the way an EP like this should.

It's a natural pairing, especially as the Flaming Lips have become willing to get denser and heavier and more out there and more generally like worldcurshing meteor, and Lightning Bolt have sent the occasional quizzical tentacle out of their murky underworld.

The Flaming Lipsiest track is the heavy, strangely brilliant (and brilliantly-named) I'm Working At NASA on Acid, which booms and whoops and wobbles out of space and time, one of the first truly adventurous new prog songs I've heard in ages.

The I Wanna Get High / I Wanna Get Damaged pairing splits the same too-heavy-for-Lips/too-human-for-lightning-bolt balance pretty evenly, the latter adding an extra layer of dissonant guitar noodling that somehow sounds borne of both bands, the former panning out better thanks to its singular focus on the car crash lope of a bassline.

And on the far end of the spectrum we have NASA's Final Acid Bath which really just sounds like a Lightning Bolt track shined up a touch, altogether skipping the tunefulness that the Lips attach to even their strangest tracks.

And that's about the level of success of the collaboration, in decreasing order. Lightning Bolt only really works in small doses and draws most of its strength from its unflinching brutality, but The Lips benefit from the kick in the ass they get here. The result is still mostly unlistenable, but undeniably compelling in its deep dark deep space way 3.5/5

#606 The Flaming Lips - With Prefuse 73

Those approaching this EP expecting to hear Prefuse's signature manic chopped beats underneath Flaming Lips will be disappointed. Instead what we get is Only She Chapters-era prefuse, applying ambient layering and smearing to wishy washy guitar washes and Conye croons. The only exception is the Convinced of the Hex buzzy-bass of *ahem* Supermoon Makes Me Want to Pee, but even that does little to evoke the microcut master that theoretically guests here.

Frankly, these sound like they could just be Flaming Lips b-sides, packed in some kind of Aphex Twin remix bait-and-switch. Which isn't such a bad thing, and is a testament to how wild the Lips have gotten, but I can't help but be disappointed. Then again, Prefuse reads the Books was disappointing too, maybe he's just not a really assertive collaborator, but rather a behind-the-curtain producer? Anyway, judged for what it is, this is a fairly interesting, mostly tuneful set of songs, but nothing that will blow you away as much as either artist's best stuff 3/5

#605 Mr. Bungle - California

The word for this album is bent. Musically it's detuned, rhythimically it's desynched, thematically it's deranged, nothing is a straight line, nothing done without extra angles and approaches.

The sound is generally loungey, with Mike Patton crooning in a way that kind of puts your teeth on edge, over sounds that just sound like they're coming from a dimension near ours, trying to mimic ours, but landing in some phase-shifted uncanny dissonant realm.

There are moments of true beauty, as Pink Chreschendo swirls and swoops towards heaven. But then, of course, in comes an arrhythmic beeping over the coda, effectively ruining the moment. It's as if Patton just can't help himself. He's like a kid at a ballpark when the PA announces a moment of silence, and everyone bows their heads. And the kid realizes, I can ruin this. I have that power, it would be so easy! And the kid hesitates. But then mistakes the will to overcome that hesitation as a marker of courage, and yells "poop!"

That's an overstatement - Patton isn't childish, in fact he's really talented. But he seems to make strange shit just for its own sake, and I'm not sure that that constitutes bravery. This album is really and truly headache-inducing, for no good reason.

Golem II works best, since it's nothing but playful noise, arranged gleefully, rather than used to subvert music.  And there's Ars Moriendi, which swerves wildly from speed metal to soundtrack swoon to mariachi via klezmer, to everything in between so quickly that the seams blur to nothingness. It's a cool trick.

But when the album holds a note its almost always held against another note that it doesn't belong next to, grinding them together, hoping to sand them into place, to erode the listener's will to desire actual proper harmony and tunefulness. It's exhausting, and I can't hang with it except in the smallest doses 2.5/5

#604 The Meteors - In Heaven

Psychobilly progenitors present a sneering, horror-driven approach to rockabily, cranking up the menace and mania past even Gene Vincent's previous pinnacles. This is essentially punk with a driving backbeat, upright stumbledown bass and guitars that stab and romp and rollick right out of control, dipped in a strange, drive-in flicker of morbid panache.

It's a lot of fun, if a bit samey by the end, combining fuck-this, loose defiance with fuck-yeah, tuneful talent, always a tricky balance in punk rock 4/5

#603 Buke and Gase - Function Fails EP

Now with a newly minted spelling of band name! Presumably to emphasize pronouncability over smush-accuracy.

Once again, the focus is on the rhythmic crunch and unique electronic-via-organic textures of the eponymous hybrid instruments, with Arone Dyer's pretty/awkward keening leading the way. This is a solid, hooky collection of new songs, perhaps benefitting from the short running time though, allowing the band to put together some hooky, droney jams and move on without demanding an LP-length stretch of the sound. Even more so than on previous albums, there is a simplicity-in-macro-complexity-in-micro paradox that makes the songs fun to explore, wielding repetition to give you time to find the surprises in the crannies, nestled between notes.

The Blue Monday cover doesn't do anything to overcome the original, and sounds more or less like you'd like, not doing much to rise beyond the gimmick. That's not a problem with the rest of the album, which justifies its unique sounds with a unique sound, but I still feel like I wanted something more.

EP's are often teasers and testing ground for new sounds, and I hope that's not the case here. This is a bit too similar to their previous work, and I can't help but hunger for Arone and Aron to attempt a leap as big as the one they made with their initial choice of instrumentation 3.5/5

#602 Busdriver - Arguments with Dreams

Busdriver has had a hell of a couple of years, putting out a batshit mashup mixtape, a noisy Dibiase-produced collaboration with Nocando, and one of his greatest, weirdest albums ever. The first Computer Cooties mixtape in particular seems to have snapped the driver out of his middling-album funk, and now he's off out there just going for it, doing whatever weirdass thing strikes his fancy. The immediacy has been refreshing and exciting.

This follows the same basic line, with plenty of nasty 8-give-or-take-a-bit production and endless, effortlessly clever lines. The collision with Das Racist is unsurprising, and this has a bit of their carefree smartest-dumb-guys-in-the-room swagger. It's a fine line between Das Racist's winking irreverence and lazy churlishness for its own sake though, and hooks like "You're my bottom bitch!" "It's so squishy!" and "I'm the big dog you're the fire hydrant" dip into the later, evoking the flattest moments off of 10 Haters.

When Busdriver smarts up though he's unbeatable, so casual in his reference weaving, particularly on closer Werner Herzog. This misses the highs of his last full length, but is still solid enough to justify his new bluesky spitball crusade, sounding like he can keep em coming forever. Here's hoping 4/5

#601 Radio Birdman - Radios Appear (1995 Remaster)

Decidedly solid, shouty punk with great propulsive pacing and the occasional serious guitar chops, sounding like a faster, richer, more melodically-inclined Clash. The album pulls off a nearly-impossible punk move: sounding fun, smacking of effort, while still remaining completely credible as dontgiveafuck scuzzbuckets, working in hints of rockabily, surf, and more with a sneering smile.

Key detail, though: this album was recorded before The Clash had released a thing, so give em credit for that, arriving at a similarly legendary sound all on their own and pulling it off at least as well (sometimes better!) Not that this was altogether original (is anything in rock?): there are shades of KISS-esque fist-pumping rock, and the band doesn't hide its inspiration by similarly-talented near-punks like The 13th Floor Elevators and Iggy Pop, ending the album with a cover of each*, but this is not derivative stuff, full of inspiration and energy 4/5

* though only one of each of these appeared on the album's initial Australian and international respective releases.

#600 Otis Redding - Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul

An album of mostly covers*, this was recorded (mostly) in a 24 hour period. That fact is crucial to understanding the energy of this album, complete with Booker T. and The M.G.'s tight, punchy backing and sprightly horns, everything sounds immediate and alive.

The real star is, of course, Redding himself, who tears into each song with reckless aplomb, plowing into the original's intentions, overwhelming those not strong enough to survive. His cackling shouting compelling reaction, Otis pulls no punches: an approach that works better on the fast songs than the ballads.

Individually, the songs don't always better their sources, and the insistence of the vocals precludes any kind of atmospheric listening experience, but the whipcrack immediacy of the recording makes it all worthwhile 3.5/5

* and one of the few originals, Respect, was largely outshined by its Aretha Franklin cover anyway

#599 Roky Erickson and The Aliens - The Evil One

Lurking somewhere between the monster movie ghoulishness of psychobilly and the devil-obsession of lightweight metal, The Evil One goes for soaring, but mostly ends up plodding. The tempos are just behind a beat, Roky's delivery a little too uninspired, the lyrics a little to repetitive to anything more than simmer: the songs mostly, show their hand, let it play out, and then end without any twists or turns or surprises or changes.

Arguably, this simplicity and low menace and lack of flash is part of the appeal, but it mostly left me flat. The main exception is the Click Your Fingers Applauding the Play which has an understated, unnamable tunefullness that sounds right out of Guided By Voices, and If You Have Ghosts achieves a similarly hooky transcendence. But for the most part, there's simply not enough actually going on here, a compelling backstory and attendant cult appeal notwithstanding 2.5/5

#598 Royal Wedding - Transmigration

Somebody's been listening to The Fall!

Most of the same tricks are here: stark, taut, one-note (sometimes literally!) sheetmetal guitar jams, overlaid with distant-megaphone commands and complaints. Add a dash of Funhouse-era Stooges, a touch of Liars at their artiest and take out any concession in the direction of uptempo; you're pretty much there. Not enough here that hasn't been done 2.5/5

#597 Chuck Berry - Is On Top

Berry's 3rd album is basically a collection of his early singles, and it all comes together as a defiantly slapdash slash of rock and roll, doublefast tempos and missed guitar notes and strained vocals lending liveliness and life. There's also plenty of originality, particularly on the slithering menace of Jo Jo Gun, the pre-punk swagger of Anthony Boy, and the proto-surf rumble of Blues for Hawiians.

Also, easily forgotten is the fact that Johnny B. Goode is actually a crackerjack fucking track.

An aside about race: before this early rock and roll kick I was well aware of Elvis and other white rockers' leveraging of black artists' methods, but never gave much thought to other racial currents' effects on the music of the era. In particular, I'd never considered that Berry had overtly built upon country and folk, primarily white styles of music. As allmusic puts it, nothing got Berry's black audiences going like "the sight and sound of a black man playing white hillbilly music". Berry himself noted "Curiosity provoked me to lay a lot of our country stuff on our predominantly black audience and some of our black audience began whispering 'who is that black hillbilly at the Cosmo?' After they laughed at me a few times they began requesting the hillbilly stuff and enjoyed dancing to it." This is not to take away, in the least, from Berry's considerable talent, originality and influence, but it's another fascinating reminder of the complex racial, cultural, economic, and musical backanforths that combined to make rock what it is today.

Oh right 4/5

#596 Ray Charles - Ray Charles (1957)

A real two-parter.

The first seven tracks are downright down, rhythm and blues and outright blues with shades of mournful gospel, all the lord's grace and the woman's flight and the man's woe, with capable, cavernous howling from Charles over shuffle drums and piano runs.

And then suddenly, right at the halfway mark, everything comes to life, with the bouncy horn stabs of Hallelujah I Love Her So. It bops around for a couple of joyous moments and then, at the very end of the song, Charles mutters "I'm a little fool for you, little girl", harkening back to the title of the previous song that, by now, sounds an age away. Is this the same girl? Has he gotten her, changing everything? It's too perfect a pivot to be coincidental, and quite a neat trick.

Aside: there's a trend lately in hip hop towards two-half albums. It had been striking me strange, coming as I do from a rock album structure background, but maybe this bipartite idea has a longer history, via R&B, than I realized.

Continuing through the album we get into the peerless Mess Around and a whole slew of upbeat rockers, beats a-bristlin, horns a-stormin. Love has been found, and it saved us all. The latter half is definitely the draw here, and solid enough for 4/5

#595 Hank Williams - Beyond the Sunset (as Luke the Drifter)

Legendary country crooner (inspired by Roy Acuff, in case you were curious) does an album as his saintly, god-praising alter-ego, conversationally laying out one simply-structured rhyming ballad after another.

And, that's about it. There's not a ton of wit here, not a lot of musical wizardry or energy, just Williams laying out the tales, going on about the lord and morality and tales of warning and tragedy and woe. Some of it is done with a gallows-humor wink, as on the "my wife is gone, my dog is dead" style country wanderer Everything's Ok, but this is humor about as winning and the music as inspired as on Pixar's Boundin', surely the least-charming of their shorts.

I've been impressed with how well a lot of this old rock and roll and roots stuff has held up, how relevant and vibrant it still sounds in 2012, but this is an exception, sounding hokey and dated and well left behind 2/5.

#594 Bo Diddley - Go Bo Diddley

Diddley's soaring voice, playful guitar, and shuffledup beat are still here on this, his second album after the similarly-titled (and excellent) Bo Diddley. Some of the tricks backtrack over some pretty familiar territory: Oh Yeah apes I'm A Man, Willie and Lillie copies Hey Bo Diddley, You Don't Love Me steals the chorus hook from Bring it to Jerome, Say Man samples Hush Your Mouth, and Don't Let it Goes more or less outlines the platonic Bo Diddley song with its call-and-response backing, tinkling guitar and signature beat. The man had a sound and he rode it.

Its also a curiously adventurous album though, jaunty, sprighty, and generally more fun, wit more crooning and Do Wop gestures. Not to mention the weirdly prescient "Yo Mama" jousting on Say Man, portending hip hop's one-upsmanship to come and the bizarro, throwback violin solo on The Clock Strikes Twelve, giving the entire thing a foreboding, haunted house stomp.

In short, it may have come out in 1959, when albums were sometimes just loose song collections rather than unified statements, but this is the classic second-album album: tweak the sound that got you here just enough to be interesting without alienating your fans, copy your biggest hits, take a couple of chances scattered throughout the album and see how it fares.

For me, the moments of adventurousness are joyous, but the familiarity and lack of cohesion keep it from rising to the heights of Diddey's debut 4/5

#593 Roy Acuff - The Essential Roy Acuff (1936-1949)

Classic, old-timey country music, full of fiddles, plucked guitars, harmonies, sadness and resignation.

At the heart is Acuff's voice, a soaring, majestic, wind-wisp'd thing, an ancient eagle circling its range on its ever-last autumn day. There's an important detail about this era that's easy to overlook, but crucial to understanding its sound: as a country or blues singer, you had to be able to sing and be heard over a band, often without amplification. This gives rise to blues shouters like Big Joe Turner and country callers like Acuff alike, giving the music much of its desperation and urgency and power. Now, or course, much of this is music being made during The Great Depression; this was music of hard times and The Lord was just about the only thing keeping most folks going, so a certain amount of desolate, defiant reaching is to be expected. But that practical detail fostering such a blessed side-effect is one of rock and roll's most fascinating pieces of backstory.

For those wondering what to expect, this is decidedly in line with the well-regarded O Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack, but there's also shadows of Carey Mercer's hooting, swooping cries, Blitzen Trapper's dusty underbelly, and heck, The Beatles' Rocky Raccoon. You have to look to see the connections all the way into rock as we know it, but they're there, dusty and waiting 3.5/5

#592 Screamin' Jay Hawkins - At Home with Screamin' Jay Hawkins

You probably know I Put a Spell on You, and that's basically the one sound Hawkins has going for him, put on display again and again here, for better or for worse.

The man's voice is an imposing baritone when he chooses to sing, but mostly you get a chaotic, gutteral, sputtering rant, shout-sung out of a mouth as big as the world. The words are slurred, seemingly pulled out of the air: see in particular the free-association (and I Put a Spell on You carbon copying) on Hong Long and I Love Paris. This works especially well when the initial structure is in needing of some punching up, as on the I'm a Man / Bad to the Bone blues of Yellow Coat, which Hawkins heaves maniacally beyond good taste and right on to brilliant.

The unhinged delivery is fun, but the flipside is that the whole thing is kind of sloppy in a bad way too. This is especially true on the ballads, which generally don't work for me, the booming vocal power on display notwithstanding. What you end up with is at best a series of highlights that sound a bit like eachother, but at least together they sound like something you've never heard before 3/5

#591 Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps - Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps

We have a winner.

Studiowise, Gene Vincent is the quite possibly the greatest of the frontman of early rock and roll, and this album provides all the evidence you need. Youtube suggests that despite some charmingly raw rockabilly mayhem, these guys were not the strongest performers around, but this album beats out every other record of note from the era.

Some Little Richard energy, some Elvis cool, and a generous serving of uniquely Gene Vincent menace add up to a hell of a lot of swagger and allaround rock power. The beats are crisp, the guitars are fiery, and a chorus of hooting, hollering, and yelping from the backing band give this thing an unbeatable energy. This is all fronted by Vincent himself who effortlessly pours raw personality into every song, from the tension at the heart of Cruisin, the madness at the fringes of Red Blue Jeans and a Ponytail, and the unhinged energy that seethes and explodes from Cat Man, the most exhilaratingly terrifying rock and roll song of the 50's.

I put Red Blue Jeans and a Ponytail on a mix for Dan recently and he commented that it was a great song. I started to obliquely disagree and he headed me off at the pass, putting it perfectly "well, its a great recording". That nails it, with respect to that song and this whole album: its a perfect recording of some great songs, every missed note, every shriek, every muttered and cracked syllable essential for its singular vim and vigor 5/5

#590 John Lee Hooker - Plays and Sings the Blues

Bluesy stuff in the same vein as Muddy Waters, but without Waters' imposing voice. Still, Hooker's not a bad blues shouter himself, and has a more raw, angry guitar sound, and the stripped-down songs bounce with repetition over runs, riding more of a boogie feel. Speaking of boogie, dig that blownout distortion on Hey Boogie and Mad Man Blues.

Muddy Waters' Folk Singer had a comparatively extravagant backing band: this gets back to the og Son House scene, just a mouth on the mic, a hand on the guitar, and a foot beating out the beat on the ground. Solid, solid stuff 4/5

#589 Chuck Berry - After School Session

An interesting convergence of a lot of the trends sparking to life circa 1957: the swagger and guitar chops of Elvis, the shuffling rhythms and hot/cold cool of Bo Diddley, and the rollicking fire of Little Richard, all coming together for a heck of a good set of early rock and roll songs. Things are delightfully sloppy, full of energy; alive.

There's even some interesting stylistic turns that no one else was making. This is especially true towards the end of the album, where Havanna Moon and Down Bound Train combine dark atmosphere and dissonant chords to create something far more dark and subtle than I had any reason to expect from 1957. Brilliant lost tracks, a reason all on their own to track this down. Even Together (We'll Always Be) transcends the usual ballads with warm distortion and a loungy, jazzy slant.

It's an album that contains well-balanced combinations and truly new gestures, tough to beat 4.5/5

#588 Jerry Lee Lewis - High School Confidential

You might know the Elvis of Sun records circa '56: this is the other side of that coin. Same time, same place, sporting a similar balance of ballads and boogie blues uprockers, both of which sound similar, sung with a similar voice, Lewis is Elvis with a Piano.

That one detail does lend a different flavor, a bit more of a shuffled, raggy, honkytonk flair that would crop up again in rockabilly and Americana revivals alike in the years that followed. But the music is still largely a backdrop for the vocals and their alternately lovesick and rebellious messages.

I've said it before, Elvis isn't actually my favorite sub-sound of this era, and this falls in the same slot for me. Worth hearing, but mostly for historical reasons, or when I want something with a slightly different flavor after I've burned out on Bo Diddley and Gene Vincent 3.5/5

#587 Little Richard - Here's Little Richard

Now this is what I expect from Rock and Roll.

The epitome of rollicking, this is a lot more fun than Elvis, or just about any of the other rock howlers of the era. the vocals are the highlight, just unhinged and unrestrained, auguring James Brow's nonverbal ululations.The swinging boogie beats, bluesy structures, and energetic horns complete the package.

Here's the interesting thing about this though: I don't know that there's a single guitar on it. Bass, drums, and some rock-sounding singing sure, but its all horn filling in the crunchy textures, shreiking accents, and wild solos. Is it rock and roll? The case could be made that it's hard R&B or jump blues, and it might be those things also. But this is too rock not to be rock. Listen to Little Richard gasp for breath on Jenny Jenny and stammer out the hook on Long Tall Sally and tell me that's not a man making rock music.

It's sloppy, and so high energy to actually be kind of grating in long doses, but man, when you're up for it, its up for you 4.5/5

#586 Elvis Presley - Elvis

I learned very quickly during my trip back through rock and roll that Elvis might have been the greatest, but he was not the best. His cultural impact is unmatched, and he is decidedly a talented singer and personality, but as far as the actual sound he put on the record, I'd take (spoiler alert) Gene Vincent, and plenty of others if I was willing to get a slightly different sound back.

Elvis's songs are split pretty cleanly between fast and slow: I've never liked his ballads overmuch, and here his fast songs don't bristle and pop as well as his finest moments. For example, there's nothing here that touches the Sun Sessions' immediacy. The session was legendary, but I expected the early albums proper to come closer than this to matching them.

In some ways, Elvis was the first pop sellout, doing what others did better, but in a more palatable way, both musically, and, let's face it, racially.

All that said, this is a perfectly good entry into the canon of early rock and roll, with bassy crooning, punchy guitars, and jaunty beats throughout. I've just been a bit spoiled by finding it all in context 3.5/5

#585 Bill Haley & His Comets - Shake Rattle and Roll

A fascinating document illustrating the transition between not-rock and rock.

On one hand, its tough to make the case that Shake, Rattle, and Roll and Rock around the Clock aren't rock and roll songs, and they're certainly part of its history. And the album has plenty of rock's funtimes bounce and loose swagger.

But this also has swing and big band roots with its walked upright bass, backing horns, and to-and-fro dancability. In fact, there's a lot less guitar than you might expect: they're basically relegated to solos: later rock songs would use guitar chords to give the song its harmonic body, but here that role is filled by horn sections. At most, a few of these song employ proto-funk rhythmic guitar swipes. One of those things you take for granted in rock, the guitar backbone, but listen to Shake, Rattle and Roll some time: there's about 8 guitar notes on it; even the solo is a sax solo.

On the other hand, Haley had his start as a country singer, and his jaunty beats, occasional guitar licks,and slappy bass approach reflect that side.

It's role as history aside, the album's perfectly fun, full of ebullience and energy, expertly performed. The whole thing's a bit cleaner than I'd like, with scant few rough edges and nary a hint of danger; there's no urgency, but hey, these things take time.

The skulking swing of 13 Women is a surprising gem, enough to push this to the low end of 4/5

#584 Bo Diddley - Bo Diddley

On the surface, a samey album full of the same basic bum. bum. bum. bum-bum. beat, the same basic structure, but this is a strangely rich, cavernous album, hypnotic in its repetition and tones, full of wine-dark vocals and resonant, interlocking backing.

Diddley uses his simple toolbox to build some quietly wild inventions: Bo Diddley (completing the artist/album/track title trifecta) and Hey! Bo Diddley (and almost doing it again!) beat with energy, soaring on backing guitars and vocals. Meanwhile, the slower, lower tracks like Bring it to Jerome and Hush your Mouth drip with atmosphere and mystery and just the barest hint of menace. The production is simply unlike anything else going: it all sounds like an album from another dimension, retrofitted to avoid blowing 50's Earth minds *too* hard and arousing suspicion. The whole thing is just so damn *cool*, and not just in some retro-cool way, this is a timeless cool that has been cool in every year since it was ever made and will be for all those left.

I can't really get with I'm a Man, but I think that's my inability to get past hearing Bad to the Bone in it. Goddammit Thorogood.

Also, wow, this is a very different version of Diddy Wah Diddy than the one off the recent Ty Segall band album. That's a fun little comparison.

Brilliant stuff 4.5/5

#583 Muddy Waters - Folk Singer

Legitimate blues, done accoustic, but losing none of the fire. Its slow, deep, spare music, with call and response vocal and instrumental licks, the usual chords, the usual sway, but done up real good. It gets in your bones; it's good for you. This is the kind of thing that Jack White would do bigger and harder in the early Stripes years, and you'll recognize the influence immediately.

The guitar playing is unsurprisingly nuanced and soulful, and Waters's voice is hearty, heavy and worn, perfectly suited for this, the first snowy day in Boston. And yes, its true what they say about the audio quality: I'm no sound quality junkie, but it's perfect: clean and warm and intimate and subtle.

Yep, reviewing this Novermber 7th. Catching up! Never gonna let this happen again, all part of my recovery from the run for 500 in 2.

Oh right 4.5/5

#582 The Quintet - Jazz at Massey Hall

Fairly traditional (as far as I can tell, I'm juuust figuring this jazz thing out at all) solo-oriented jazz that I don't have a whole lot to say about. These guys all seem talented?

Also, Salt Peanuts is funky as hell, with its weird little shouted intro, punchy approach, and frankly one of the best drum solos I've ever heard, just propulsive.

Pretty good upbeat stuff you might put on at a good upbeat party 3.5/5

#581 Fats Domino - This is Fats

Part of my big move to understand early rock and roll, look for a lot of that around here for a while.

Swinging, piano-driven R&B-bleeding-into rock and roll, with a bassy swagger and similar, shamlbing goodtimes jaunt behind just about every song here, even the sad ones. You can still hear the pre-rock origins with the swaying horns, bluesy chords, and lilting structure, with Fats himself crooning ably over top. It's all a bit samey by the end, and for my money Little Richard does it bigger and better, I see this mostly as an important piece of setup for the truly exciting stuff to come 3.5/5

#580 The Happy Mondays - Bummed

Preceding even The Stone Roses as Madchester greatgrandaddies, these guys similarly truck in poppy, happy, more dancable synthy post-punk. The sound is cleaner than on The Stone Roses' album, a little less full-on shoegaze, a little more Gang of Four / The Fall angular, with a detached cool that makes the whole thing sound like more than it is. Frustrated and fun, underground youth music from an era bygone 3/5

#579 Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention - Uncle Meat (CD version)

Jesuschrist.

Zappa's weird, but this just takes it. More bent madness than We're Only in it For the Money, more demanding jamming than Hot Rats, and a double album running time to make sure you really mean it when you say you want to hear it.

It's inventive, occaisionally catchy, curiously brilliant, but mostly its just a goddamn mess, sounding like a mashup of Ween outtakes. Every once in a while it strikes gold (the curiously beautiful The Dog Breath Variations), but it feels like a bit of a stopped-clock-double-daily-correctness kinda thing.

It's post-music, even for Zappa, seemingly seeing how many filters they can remove, how many conventions of good taste they can betray. This impression was deepened by accidentally listening to the CD version, which includes a 40 minute piece of excerpts from the related batshit film this is all theoretically soundtracking. It's a testament to Zappa that I assumed this was part of the initial release.

Is this a soundtrack? Should it be judged as such and therefore be allowed to be a bit more formless? The film it was supposed to accompany wasn't finished at the time, hell, might not have been started at the time for all we know. This is the downside of constantly fucking with people's expectations, they can't frame your work and just have to take a wild stab at taking it at face value. In that sense, maybe Zappa has won, denying me the context I might use to understand this.

By the way, for those keeping score at home: 1969.

Good job? I do admire the man, even admire the album, but that doesn't mean its not pretty terrible 2.5/5

#578 The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses

Guitar-driven proto-indie from these Madchester godfathers, all jangle and swirl and longing in the singing, with ample copping of REM's vanguard moves, but with more of a beat, more noise, think My Bloody Valentine or The Jesus and Mary Chain with a dollop of restraint.

Its an album built on the back of dark, synthy, 80's post-punk, but taken to new, brighter places, strangely prescient with regards to shoegaze and buzzy indie rockers like The Dismemberment Plan. At times its undeniably joyous, especially that last track. No wonder all those kids wanted to take molly (sorry, mandy) and rock out 3.5/5

#577 Crosby, Stills & Nash - Crosby, Stills & Nash

1969! God! whatayear

Super solid folk-flavored rock album, full of great hooks, solid melodies, harmonies past the sunrise, and a great combination of sounds and textures that just work together.

A Proper Rock Album as we know and enjoy it, blueprinted by some combination of The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and The Beach Boys circa 66 or so, demands a certain amount of variety, demands ups and downs and arounds; narrative; geography.

I indulge the theory wonkery because this album's greatest strength is its ability to explore a Venn diagram of styles, using the overlaps to lay out a sensical musical map, with terrain out of the finest road trip, choreographed and unexpected. There's hardcore, mythical folk (Guinnevere) bleeding into poppier, hookier Simon and Garfunkel folk (You Don't Have to Cry), into a psychedelic turn (Pre-Road Downs), around to heavy Youngian rock (Wooden Ships) and back to a song called Lady of the Island, which, as you've probably guessed by now, leads us pretty much full circle.

Bookending this little roundabout are some of the album's most solid tracks, including the timeless Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, with threads of wistfulness, crunch, and lazy all throughout. I don't love the harmonies (I might not like harmonies in general, I'm learning), but the fact this works for me as well as it does in spite of that fact is something of an achievement.

The Proper Rock Album, for all its perfection, usually shows seams and buffed rivet dimples and signs of meticulous planning and effot. This is an album that comparitively feels like it just emerged into the world, everything in its right place, a vision of a voice with a vision, strangely effortless.

That said, after all that praise, this will seem stingy. But, man, fucking harmonies. Call it the very highest end of 4/5

#576 Dan Deacon - America

For years Dan Deacon was just a weirdo ripper, making music that people loved because it was so wildly, unabashedly insane, tons of fun, noisy, unpredictable and brash. It was, at least on the surface, mostly about the kinds of sounds and the attitude behind them.

It turns out that Deacon has ambitions for more than that though, ambitions to be taken seriously as a Serious songwriter. There were hints in the still-batshit Spiderman of the Rings, but the full on stab at artfulness came in 2009's hyperdense masterpiece Bromst, which invovled epic constructions meant to blow your mind through outright architecture rather than just some odd angles. Invented instruments, layers of sounds, and piles of unplayable melodies conspired in an apparent effort to make the busiest album ever, that, at its best, coalesced into a cohesive, crushing monolith.

America is the final step on that journey. The jokey names, squirrely vocals, and hyperactive hypermelodies are mostly gone, instead finding songs that sound purposeful. This isn't Dan Deacon playing around, this is a Statement.

Deacon used to play in all caps, now he just capitalizes the first letters of his words, like an adult.

This isn't hyper pop any more, this is possibly modern classical music, played with bent electronics.

That doesn't mean its boring: this is still wildly inventive, and full of legitimately unheard sounds and textures and approaches. Heck, Lots is about as outright rock as Deacon has gotten, evoking punk in intuitive ways that can't be convincingly justified in tangible terms. But you have to adjust your expectations.

How does this work once we've decided to take it as highly composed statement music? Pretty well? A lot of what we've head here we've heard on Bromst, and so that rush of the new that Deacon spoiled us with has worn off. The finest moments are the fast-paced first few tracks and scattered moments throughout the 4-part suite that makes up the album's second side (further evidence of evolution: do you think Spiderman-era Dan Deacon would have put out a 4-part song without winking?). The buzzy nuanced strings on the opener work, and the final track which uses some of Crystal Cat's best tricks to rival its standing as Deacon's emotional-impact high water mark.

On some level the album suffers from its restraint: it's not as shamelessly huge as Bromst, and nowhere near as fun as the earlier stuff. But I suspect that it has finer details to get lost in, and that what it lacks in bold slashes is makes up for in feathered brushstrokes and fine details. The fact that the paint is still neon is a distraction, and I suspect there's a lot to be mined with closer and closer and closer looks. Provisionally, for an album that decidedly needs a second look, and almost certainly eventually either deserves higher or lower, let's say 4/5

#575 Four Tet - Pink

Here Four Tet drops a lot of the angular strangeness that Rounds used to stir up indie circles in favor of repetitive, simmering house.

This is something of a singles collection, so the results are not wholly cohesive, but there's some common threads: every song is decidedly unnarative, not so much building as writhing in place, letting all of the angles reflect off eachother from every possible combination of angles and then fading into the distance.

The key then is the choice of samples and the ways they're woven. The best tracks find complementary tones that dance together in an appropriate atmosphere: Locked wields a jazz-rock warmth that somehow evokes Steely Dan and The Super Furry animals and a half dozen bands besides, while Peace for Earth, one of two new songs on this album, is the most successful at building something truly hypnotic. Hints of glitch are applied subtly, with little subbeat bups and pups, implied rhythmic skips, and vocal snippets that transcend voice and word to provide texture.

The problem with this much repetition is that just one sample out of place can ruin the groove and the flow and the song itself again and again and again. Lion is boring at best, and annoying every time its signature Cuica yelp imposes itself (which is often) and Pinnacles is seemingly built mostly out of sounds I don't much care to hear, whines and shakes and blunt wobbles.

There's generally something clumsy about this. Its adventurous, but clumsy; some of it works, some doesn't. Normally that'd be ok, but on an album like this where state of mind maintenance is the name of the game, you can't afford a lot of missteps 3/5

#574 Dr. John - The Sun, Moon & Herbs

By now Dr. John has settled into a pretty consistent sound and I've just about run out of things to say about him. The build towards Exile era Stones and Van Morrison vocals climaxes on Familiar Reality, complete with noodly Americana guitar flourishes - its actually a pretty catchy track though, I gotta admit, with ample soul, hooky horns, rollicking basslines, and borderline hiphop elements. Now that's a track I want to sample.

Elsewhere, tracks like Craney Crow and Pots on Fiyo manage to capture a bit of that loose, improvisational murkiness that made Dr. John's earliest work worth hearing, and now there's a bit more of an overt build, for better or worse.

Probably the best fusion of the old and new (as much as one can have two eras in the span of about 3 years, dude's prolific!) styles, I'm a little curious what came next, but good god I feel like I was born writing about this guy 3.5/5

#573 Dr. John - Remedies

I'm hatching a mythology around Dr. John's discography:
 - Gris Gris: a mysterious zombie rises from the bayou, terrifying the scant populace he shambles past.
 - Bablyon: the mysterious swamp man is revered as a god, and leads the people of New Orleans to a higher ground.
 - Remedies: the swamp man is just a man, Dr. John, who becomes a local musician.

By now much of the magic has burned off of Dr. John's persona and he's just making rock and roll albums, sounding a bit like the influences mentioned a couple of reviews down, now predicting the Rolling Stones' bluesy, soulful, horn-dusted Exile on Main Street.

The songs are tighter and more listenable than on Babylon, escaping that muddy middle ground of melodic and weird to come out the other side. The exception is the sidelong closer Angola Anthem, which tries to summon up that old Hoodoo magic, but can't quite get the pieces in place: Dr. John's hand has been tipped, he's just a man now, one with a fairly creaky voice that seldom really works for me, making perfectly servicable, swaying, soulful albums that can't be mistaken anything more transcendent 3/5

#572 Dr. John - Babylon

Jazzier, brighter, and more overtly messy than its predecessor, here the Dr's voice has come out of the mist and stands before its audience. Sometimes, that's not such a great thing: he sounds a bit like Randy Newman covering Bob Dylan when he gets himself worked up, and the result is harder to take seriously than the sum of its parts.

Musically, sometimes the move towards more overt tunefulness works: Black Widow Spider is legitimately headbobbable and The Lonesome Guitar Strangler smolders and ignites better than anything on either of Dr. John's first two albums. The rest isn't any better than anything on Gris Gris, and suffers without its flattering layer of marshy fog.

Oh, 1969, for those keeping score at home. 3/5

#571 Dr. John - Gris-Gris

A mysterious piece of bayou jamming, shambling zombic from the mist.

It's an album that works best when it lets itself stretch into atmosphere, working as sounds that creep from beyond composition: the least successful tracks are those like Mama Roux and Jump Sturdy that end up sounding like sub-Van-Morrison faux soul. Conversely, the mostly-instrumental tracks at the album's heart might be its most thoroughly haunting, melodic and effective songs, while the opening and closing raspy drawls split the difference.

There's actually a pretty clever palindromic structure at play here:
 * 8 minutes of weird, vocal-flecked jamming
 * 3 minute upbeat song
 * 2 wispy instrumentals
 * 2 minute upbeat song
 * 8 minutes of weird, vocal-flecked jamming

Its that kinda crap that turns my album-guy crank.

It's not the kind of thing I really care to listen to, but its a got a certain magic that I gotta respect 3.5/5