701 albums into this project and this is the least sure I've been that this was my first time hearing this album. So many of the songs are so familiar, the album is so remarkable and essential, and yet... I don't own the disc, I don't have the mp3's, I haven't heard it in the last couple of years according to thishere blog, and there were at least a few songs that didn't ring a bell. Upon coming to the conclusion that today was my first list, this is certainly the biggest "embarrassed to post that I just now heard this" album in a while.
Because JESUS. This album. I know the songs, but I've never just put the damn thing on somehow, and I'm an album guy and this is a legitimate album album.
I go through a lot of "are they overrated" games when I think about music and its context, and the hardest bands to consider are often the biggest names. Is Led Zeppelin overrated? Maybe? The Rolling Stones? Yes and no? The exceptions in this stratum are those acts that are so goddamn good that you can just say that they're un-over-ratable. That more or less any claim, up to including, best ever, is acceptable. Therefore: not overrated. Done. Hooray! However, the only ironclad members of this particular sub-pantheon are The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix*
Every time I listen to Jimi Hendrix I know more about the history of rock and roll than I did the last time. And every time I'm reminded, nobody else was doing it quite like this. The feedback, the thunderous riffs, the alternately wistful and apocalyptic guitar lines, the galloping maniac drums and bass, the shitripping rock power on a monumental scale, all executed with a singular combination of technical dexterity, wild spirit, and boundless imagination.
This album is wall to wall with riffs, with moments that knock you off your feet, with twists and turns and wrenching curves. This is rock and goddamn roll, sounding more like a force of chaos than any of the other major acts of the era. This is pure garage rock, and garage rock practitioners are traditionally destined for obscurity as punishment for defiance of well-established taste, but this is just too damn good to go unheralded.
Of course, the heralds have all already heralded. I was mostly just here to apologize for never actually hearing this album before now, and to mark the rectification of that disaster. Let's face it, by now, as with the Beatles, its all been said 5/5
* and maybe The Kinks, but only because they're so regularly so criminally underrated
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