Category: classic review
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run the road vol. 1 – various artists (2005)
Brits, en générale, don’t tend to construct as many lyrical layers in their bars as The Americans. Run The Road is a fantastic exhibition of how that doesn’t have to matter: lines like “I’m famous like Lenny Henry” take on a self-aware directness when surrounded by grime production and massive beats. The compilation was siphoned […]
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the sundays – reading, writing and arithmetic (1990)
The Sundays weren’t doing too much differently. In the previous decade, The Replacements had their edgy jaunt, Rickie Lee Jones had their unashamed sentimentalism, The Smiths had their riffs. At the start of a new age, and a refreshal of the consumer market, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic was equal parts mournful and joyous. Its effect […]
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fausto – por este rio acima (1982)
On his back, Fausto carries the full weight of history, expanding beyond the palpable connections between the immediate past and present. The task of this master is to act as the diaphragm of Portugal—to exhale while overlooking the instruments. Por Este Rio Acima tells stories of spices, travel, and love between instruments that jangle in […]
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bobbie gentry – ode to billie joe (1967)
On an unusually tempoed record, Bobbie Gentry ticketed a safari of her hometown. Folk, soul, blues, and rock were cross hatched, exhibiting the oneness of context-heavy music. While Ode To Billie Joe is not blessed with the most natural flow, the tracks come to purr with Southern verve and the synesthetic particulars of Mississippi life: […]
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gorillaz – plastic beach (2010)
Plastic Beach is about capability: what can be held in the hands and what can only ever be reasoned with in the abstract. While nature can be held in the hands, it has been undermined as a conceptual anchor that prevents a certain idea of capitalist progress. Streams of rubbish have lined our shores since. […]
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