#1947 Foghat - Fool for the City

Maybe it's all the deadboring stuff I've been listening to, but I actually kinda like Foghat's goofy, half-baked experimental//pop indulgences right about now. The harmonies are goofy, the proto-hair-metal shrieks are goofy. Mark it: album cover, album name, band name - all goofy. It's overproduced and sloppy, like drunk Steely Dan, but dammit it kinda won me over. Plus, Slow Ride's an all time jam 3.5/5

#1946 Bachman Turner Overdrive - Bachman Turner Overdrive

The core sound's good enough: those forward-leaning drums, that Canadian-Skynyrd guitarwork. But man, for a band all about roads and gears and trucking this band is in no damn rush to get anywhere - every song goes on way longer than it should. I must have muttered "is this song still going?" 3 different times. Which is weird, because they're only 4-5 minutes long, but that feels long when the pace is so slow and there's only a GBV song's worth of ideas powering the whole thing. Plus, god! There's never any climax or anything - the song just churns and churns and stops.

Maybe it's all about that endless road hypnosis 2.5/5

#1945 Ride - Going Blank Again (Extended)

I usually go for the original releases, but I accidentally listened to the rerelease with 4 extra tracks, and I have to admit it made the difference. Some people were disappointed that this made some pop concessions compared to Nowhere, but I feel like those extra 4 tracks, especially the 11 minute closer, bring this back to epic scale. It's packed with shoegaze layers, sanded into aerodynamism but still jumbo-jet, still intimidating.

I'm still not a super big shoegaze guy, but this's more fun than most 3.5/5

#1944 Fuzz - II

The riffs are huge, and they rule. It's heavy and nasty: the fuzzed out bass juggernaut, the screaming guitar solos, the neckbreak dives into overpowering guitar noise maelstroms. But I feel like I don't like it as much as I should, somehow. Have we finally reached saturation on the Ty Segall sound?

There's something overstuffed and plodding about this, even as it's great, even as it's hooky, it's just so much, so loud, for 67 minutes - it's numbing. It makes me appreciate the great Ty Segal albums, which managed to give you room to breathe, in the mix and in the sequencing.

Possibly the perfect Segallsphere album to go to if you want pure dedication to riffage, but not my first choice overall 4/5

#1943 Free - Tons of Sobs

Heavy British blues revival rock, sticking pretty close to the master form, tearing off into something new here and there only occasionally. There's some ripping guitars, and inb4 Zepp, Sabbath, etc. if you're into history. But if we're talking about the actual listening - too much blues-debt for my taste 3/5

#1942 Bad Company - Bad Company

I don't know how these guys got off the ground. Their later stuff is a little better, but man, their first album is some real generic brand, cut-rate 70's rock and roll. Slow paced, unmoving, unimaginitive, unexciting. It's fine, but aggressively unspectacular - the kind of stuff I'd expect to hear some dads making on a Tuesday night at the eighth-best bar in town 2.5/5

#1941 Herzog - Cartoon Violence

God I love these guys - Weezery power-pop crunch + slide-laser guitar + too-old weariness + unexpected structural swerves. It checks [so] [many] [boxes] [for] [me]

Unexpected, lively, tuneful, hooky and fun, all railing against the pre-middle-age limpdickery I'm kicking my way through right about now. Young people music for old people that somehow makes you feel like you're not fooling yourself 4.5/5