#1090 Blue Oyster Cult - Blue Oyster Cult

BOC's first album is about as straightforward as hard rock gets: throw down that riff, that big backbeat, that groaning moaning vocal line, verse-chorus-verse-chorus-solo-chorus-maybesecondsolo, repeat 10 times, boom, done. Nothing surprising here, few real swerves, no real insights, 3-4 minutes at a time and done. The beats get skitterey, the guitars amble with occasional angles, but it's mostly meat and potatoes rock, Led Zeppelin without the pretention, Deep Purple without the power, just some dudes who made a band doing what dudes in a band do and doing it reasonably well 3/5

#1089 Marillion - Misplaced Childhood

Landing somewhere between Rush and Journey on the artrock-poprock scale, this has all the trappings of prog (long songs, a smattering of strange time signatures, preposterous imagery, general indulgence) without really committing to them, instead padding them in shinny production, accessible themes, and pretty, major-chord guitarwork. It sounds dropped from an alternate universe where Peter Gabriel left Genesis and went big-guitar pop instead of little-synth icy.

And while you might be a little embarrassed to be heard listening to it, not least because of Fish's sub-Gabriel British emoting, if you're honest, its kind of... good. Pretty in places, inventive in others, all fairly safe, but never quite boring.

The fact that it's all so proto-emo, somehow less cool than deeply uncool prog itself, is offputting to say the least. But the underlying music is so shifty, shimmerey, and downright melodic its impossible to disregard altogether 3.5/5

#1088 Quicksilver Messenger Service - Happy Trails

So John Cipollina wanted to do some guitar solos, so they they laid down some Bo Diddley-inspired backing and off he went. And sometimes it blow up (midway through When Do You Love), and sometimes it smolders effectively (the first minute or two of Where Do You Love), and sometimes it just plain rocks (the big bass on Which Do You Love), but mostly it's meandering noodling and obnoxious stereo moves, the kind of thing people picture when they think of Grateful Dead, acid rock folded in on itself and right on down the navel. Probably a solid soundtrack for tripping your balls off, but there's not enough structure to make this a satisfying journey the rest of the time 3/5

#1087 Smokey Robinson and the Miracles - Going to a Go-Go

Sweet little R&B songs of love and fun, sung with androgynous splendor by Smokey himself, the miracles drenching every note in counterpoint. It's swinging, snappable stuff, low on surprises, high on big rich production, as Motown as Motown comes 3.5/5

#1086 Willie Nelson - Stardust

Nelson croons and croaks out the kinda-classics, bringing country twang and modest improvement to his covers of a dozen songs. The breadth of songs and underlying authors prevents the albumlong listen from settling into any kind of realfolks dusty groove, this's a series of performances, the Nelson show. If you're into him, the man the myth, this is a treat. If not, its a cute novelty that won't do much to excite or inspire 2.5/5

#1085 Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires of the City

It's tough to talk about this album without mentioning Pitchfork's nail-in-the-coffin, grotesque overrating on its top albums list. Lindsay Zoladz tries to claim that the narrative of Vampire Weekend as pretentious twats is over, but I hear no evidence.

Let's concede, this is the band's catchiest record yet, packed with far more interesting ideas than their output thus far combined, with some really nice little production tricks peppered throughout. But it's still twiggy, reedy, effete, watery indie at heart, still readymade for target commercials and tearful Zooey montages. It's still by rich kids, for wannabe rich kids, even sounding like it was wildly expensive to make. That New York looms, a city in the clouds, on the album cover seems like a severe non-coincidence.

This still sounds like a rich kid's hobby put to tape, and no matter how many hooks and tricks and swerves you pack in, the album's still anathema to rock and roll, making it a cute trick at best, an intricate scale model of real music 3/5

#1084 The Fuzz - The Fuzz

Not to be confused with the girl group from DC, nor either of the two bands named Fuzz I reviewed last year, nor any of the other 8 bands you get when you google "the fuzz band". It's this album?

Whoever made this, they like the Stones via Supergrass, plenty of buzzy and (yes) fuzzy guitars, crunching along with impassioned calls from the frontman, with just a kick of propulsive, stompy adrenaline. Solid, sneering rock and roll without much left to say after the first 20 minutes or so, but agreeable enough that you'll let it thrash around your living room till it tires itself out anyway 3.5/5