Jethro Tull - "The Jethro Tull Christmas Album" (2003)

Reviewed as part of the Only Solitaire group album reviewing project

Rating: 7/10

Best Song: "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen"

First off, I must admit that the Christmas album is not really my preferred genre of music. Sure, the basic Christmas canon has some strong melodies, but there are only so many times I can hear the same piece of music before it starts to become tiresome. What I'm generally looking for in music are original and unique ideas, not minor variations of the same old thing. 

Fortunately reviewers with similar biases as mine still praised this particular album, which gave me hope that Jethro Tull's Christmas experience would be the exception to the rule. And overall, I have to say that it is! On first listen to the album, I was immediately captivated by the opening flute/guitar riff to "Birthday Card at Christmas" and knew I was in for a rare treat - an original and engaging song that still maintains a clear Christmas atmosphere. Indeed, the combination of Ian Anderson's flute and Martin Barre's guitar sets the appropriate classical Christmas vibe throughout, and combine that with the strength of the tracklist - originals, reworkings of past Tull songs, and some more traditional Christmas instrumentals, and you get a Christmas album that actually stands up to immersive listening.

I also I admit I'm more of a Tull dabbler than acolyte, so several of the reworked tracks are new to me (e.g., the two 'Christmas Songs,' 'Jack Frost and the Hooded Crow') and I rather enjoy them. I also quite like the rearrangements of the songs I did already know ('Weathercock,' 'Bouree') as well as the new songs here. And since as a rule I'm inclined to dislike straight Christmas covers, I applaud Tull for managing to breathe new life into old chestnuts like "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen." In fact, that particular track is probably the standout of the album with the variation and complexity of its arrangement worthy of any strong instrumental track, Christmas or no, - from flute intro to laidback guitar to piano solo to an almost-metal electric guitar riff. 

If there's a flaw, it's that the sound is pretty similar throughout, so I do find myself starting to fidget a bit by the time this hour of Tull Christmas music starts to wind down. And since it's fairly limited in scope, it's hard for me to rate it as 'essential' in the context of all rock albums. But overall, I would happily recommend it to anyone in the mood for a Christmas album and it's certainly one of the best in its genre that I've ever heard.

Review also available at: http://tomymostalas.blogspot.ru/2015/12/jethro-tull-jethro-tull-christmas-album.html

Van Morrison - "No Guru, No Method, No Teacher" (1986)

Rating: 7/10

Best Song: "Tir Na Nog"

Confession: My knowledge of Van Morrison before listening to this album consists solely of "Brown-Eyed Girl." I've never listened to Astral Weeks, or any other Van Morrison albums. So of course I start with an obscure 1986 release, his sixteenth studio album. This wasn't an entirely arbitrary choice actually - this just happens to be one of the Van Morrison vinyls that I acquired a few years ago when I purchased a large collection of records from a co-worker.

Anyways, my basic impression of No Guru, No Method, No Teacher is this: we have here a powerful singer who roars with conviction throughout and does a fair job creating an immersive, emotional experience solely on the strength of his voice. The instrumentation is a pleasant surprise for 1986 - no synthesizers or drum machines to be found, instead we have acoustic guitars, horns, and strings all united to create a warm, pleasant background for Van's ramblings.

All of these things make the album basically a success, and I can see where someone could LOVE this album. The downside for me is the almost total lack of what I would consider 'hooks' - Van's vocal melodies tend to ramble almost to the point of being spoken word, and while the instrumentation is pleasant and tasteful, it's somewhat lacking in captivating musical ideas either. In other words, how much you like this album depends on how compelling you find Van's singing and words - and while I find them compelling enough to enjoy the album, I don't quite find them compelling enough that the album can avoid feeling a bit tedious at times.

On that note, it seems somewhat arbitrary as to which songs are the stand-outs, but the 7+ minute "Tir Na Nog" seems a pretty clear highlight to me - with its swirling, almost psychedelic strings and Van really delivering vocally. "In the Garden" is another track that stood out to me on first listen - part of me finds it a little boring, but it's hard to deny the power of lyrics that clearly aim for a simultaneous romantic and spiritual transcendence ("Listen, no guru, no method, no teacher/Just you and I and nature/And the Father and the Son/And the Holy Ghost in the garden wet with rain"). 

All said, this album is pretty clearly a grower and not a shower, and I've enjoyed it more with each successive listen, so who knows, perhaps there's room for further growth here?

Longwave - "The Strangest Things" (2003)

Reviewed as part of the Only Solitaire group album reviewing project

Rating: 4/10

Best Song: "Everywhere You Turn"

Well, I suppose when you review albums outside of what you would normally listen to, you're not always going to be that fond of what you hear. My initial Google search of Longwave suggested they would be a shoegaze group - I suppose this is true, but it's a very radio-friendly, polished version of shoegaze, and not really in a good way in my eyes. Admittedly, I don't have much familiarity with the genre outside of My Bloody Valentine. But where MBV at their best aimed to assault the listener with visceral yet eerily beautiful noise, Longwave's guitar drones are pushed into the background to emphasize the reedy voice of singer Steve Schiltz, who sounds like Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day. Between the production and singing, it can't help but sound like fairly generic alt-rock circa 2003 with shoegaze guitars added in.

Honestly, on first listen I thought this album was pretty dire and that I was going to be giving it a rating like a 2. The overall sound is just not one that really appeals to me. But although I still don't really like this album, multiple listens did bring some out of the positives. The first two tracks strike me as overall solid and memorable - "Wake Me When It's Over" has a fairly lengthy atmospheric build-up, but generally lives up to it with a catchy chorus, and "Everywhere You Turn" borders on being a cheesy anthem, but it has some energy and genuine sincerity with its falsetto chorus, so I think it's a keeper. 

From there, it gets a bit more dicey. "I Know It's Coming Someday" has another memorable chorus, but is a little too anthem-by-the-numbers for my liking. The other slower songs like "Meet Me at the Bottom" and the title track are busts - Longwave is much more listenable to me when they play uptempo. When they go slow, Schiltz's delivery is cringe-worthy to my ears, with the part in "Meet Me at the Bottom" where he sings "they've got you by the balls" being a particular low moment. The rest all follows the same basic formula of generic alt-pop songs with droning guitars added in and varying between pleasant decency to generic mediocrity. 

Overall, there are some things to like here, but this doesn't just seem like music that has stood the test of time to me. It takes me back to my early adolescent days before I discovered the Beatles and only listened to 'alternative' college radio that played lots of bands like Our Lady Peace, and I'd prefer not to be taken back to those days. I suppose if I'm being generous, I could say they were aiming for a poppier take on shoegaze, but the overall result to me is a bland, watered-down version that veers far closer to radio-friendly 'alternative' bands of ill repute than to bands like MBV.

Michael Jackson – “Michael” (2010)

Rating: 4

Best Song: “Monster”
       
            I probably should have known better, but I tried anyways. Michael is the first posthumous ‘studio’ album released after Jackson’s death in 2010. As it does consist solely of previously unreleased material and tracks he worked on post-Invincible, I decided it warranted a proper review. Yet after three listens, I don’t find that I really have a lot to say. I wouldn’t say that Michael is just a blatant play for record sales (that dubious distinction would go to the ceaseless procession of compilations and repackaging that Sony has been foisting on the public), as it does seem to be a legitimate look at what Jackson was working on prior to his death, but it’s the least interesting of any Michael Jackson album (perhaps excluding his career before Off the Wall). At 41 minutes, it’s at least mercifully short, and perhaps by virtue of that fact alone, of a higher quality than the album Jackson might ultimately have released if he had stayed alive. But it does little to dissuade my notion that Invincible marked the end of Jackson’s artistic relevance.

            Although released nine years later, Michael largely does feel like a shorter version of Invincible with about the same ratio of mediocre, but passable dance-pop to horrible ballads. I’d say about half the songs here are at least decent, but not more than that. I highlight “Monster” as the best song because it has the chorus that grabbed me the most, but it shares the problem with all of his 90s albums of adding a superfluous rap (this time by 50 Cent). The other dance songs are at least memorable, but the cluttered production and frequently Autotuned or whispered vocals ensure that they never move beyond mildly entertaining. Also continuing in the trend started with Dangerous, Michael’s attempts at sentimentality uniformly make me cringe, although at least there is only one truly vile song here (“Best of Joy”).

            Not much else to say here, besides to call shenanigans on any critic who applied the ‘best since X album’ label on this microwaved, days-old leftover of a Michael Jackson album that could never hope to match the peaks of HIStory, let alone an actual great album like Dangerous. In terms of average song quality, it’s about the same as Invincible, but I give it a slightly lower rating because it’s just so inessential, except to the true Michael Jackson acolyte. But what does it really matter anyways?

     

Michael Jackson – “Invincible” (2001)

Rating: 4

Best Song: “Butterflies”

            If Dangerous and HIStory signaled the beginning of the end of Jackson’s reign as the King of Pop, then Invincible is where he was finally deposed. For all the problems I had with HIStory, and even if it was no longer particularly innovative, it at least still had several songs where Jackson was still working at a level far beyond his contemporaries. Invincible is quite lacking in this regard, and for the first time, Michael Jackson could be any random pop artist.

            It follows the same basic template that he started with Dangerous in order to stay modern, which in hindsight, was more and more of a bad idea. It runs the entire length of the CD, employs a new, hip producer, features guest rappers for no discernible reason, and leans heavily on sentimental balladry. Yet where in the 90s he still had enough songwriting ability to make the formula work, it doesn’t here. The ballads are more numerous than on previous albums, and provide predictable low points, as there are several awful ones scattered through the second half of the album. Yet even the dance songs, normally where Jackson would be able to prop up the album, are fairly mediocre.

            The opening trio of “Unbreakable,” “Heartbreaker,” and “Invincible” should have been the section where Jackson could have established some goodwill with me before the inevitable onslaught of ballads I was destined to despise. Yet although these three songs aren’t terrible, and feature at least decently memorable melodies, I am struck by how stiff and non-danceable they feel. In new producer Rodney Jerkins’ attempt to create a modern sound, he somehow lost the funk and rhythmic drive that was always so crucial to making these types of songs operate. It also doesn’t help that Jackson’s vocals were severely diminished by this point. In the verses of all these songs, his voice is low and grumbly and his range lessened. Then when the choruses come, the harmonized Jackson background vocals, always present on his earlier albums, are here the focus instead of the counterpoint, indicating to me that either he or his team of producers were uncertain that he had the ability any more to have his voice as the main focus of the song. Although I rank Michael’s peak vocal abilities well below some of my R&B favorites like Stevie Wonder and Prince, his unique timbre and ultra-high range were part of what separated his music from the rest. When that’s missing and the beats and rhythms are just OK, there’s not a lot that makes this music feel like Michael Jackson, apart from the recognizable chord changes leading into the raps that are probably identical chord progressions to previous work (I could probably look this up, but I prefer to rely on my ears for this one). This all also applies to the more retro lead single “You Rock My World,” which for the first 30 seconds (ignoring the pointless spoken-word intro with Chris Tucker a la “Black or White”) of its thick bass and strings arrangement does sound like classic Jackson, but never quite gets there due to the weak vocals and the fact that it’s so desperately trying to capture his old vibe (witness the bridge that is a near identical replica of the bridge from “Remember the Time” melodically).

            Weirdly, the first few ballads on the album are actually not bad perhaps because they aim for a similar feel to songs like “Human Nature” or “The Lady in My Life” rather than “Heal the World.” They’re not great either, but I like both “Break of Dawn” and “Heaven Can Wait” just fine. On “Heaven Can Wait,” Jackson actually opens up in the last minute of the song with his singing and it’s clear that he was straining to sing at this time of his life, as his increasingly harsh delivery has now become almost a bark. Yet I actually prefer this to the smooth, processed vocals of most of the album. At least there’s a clear passion and energy here, and that was probably the one factor left that could still make him stand above his peers. The smooth “Butterflies” is one of two songs on the album that I rank as near-excellent, and although it’s strained, I love the fact that he goes into full falsetto for the second verse, adding some rare appeal to a Jackson ballad.

           So if I could take the first seven songs and add in a few others from later in the album (specifically “Privacy,” “Whatever Happens” and “Threatened,” particularly “Whatever Happens” with another one of the few examples where Jackson actually tries to sing on the album), I probably wouldn’t give it that bad of a rating. Unfortunately, tracks 8-14, excluding “Privacy,” a passable anti-tabloid rant that would have fit well on HIStory, are the worst stretch of songs of Jackson’s career and ultimately drag down the rating significantly. In fact, this section is so bad that it’s taken me a lot of listens to realize that the surrounding material was at least decent enough that this album should get a 4 instead of a 3 or even lower. The worst offenders are the self-penned “Speechless,” a ballad that starts out a capella but with a totally unmemorable melody, then gets progressively worse by adding in all sorts of gushy strings and of course, the Andrae Crouch choir, and “The Lost Children,” which I could probably have guessed I would totally abhor just by the title but once the inevitable choir of children comes in to sing the chorus, it really is sublimely awful, and if he really molested children, it probably goes well beyond being artistically repellent to actually being offensive. The ballads contributed by outside songwriters are not much better and much as I usually love R. Kelly’s megalomaniacal ballads, his contribution this time (“Cry”) falls short as well. The one dance song that breaks up this terrifying section of ballads (“2000 Watts”) is a bust as well, clearly trying to sound futuristic but really going nowhere.

            Ultimately, I have to say that Invincible deserves its bad reputation and rightfully marked the end of Michael’s commercial relevance. There are occasional glimpses of his previous talent, but rarely even for an entire song. Although plenty of artists besides Michael Jackson have found it difficult to keep up their quality 22 years after their first great album, given the evident weakness in his voice and increasing reliance on outside producers and songwriters, it’s hard not to think that his various health problems, both mental and physical, hadn’t contributed to the decline. Had he been more stable and less concerned about trying to make a big commercial comeback, I think he might have still had the potential to release some solid, if not great albums by revisiting the sounds of Thriller and Bad. Alas, that was never to be as Invincible was his final release before his death in 2009.

          

Michael Jackson – “Blood on the Dance Floor: HIStory in the Mix” (1997)

Rating: 4

Best Song: “Blood on the Dance Floor”

            A rating of 4 indicates an album that I see as a failure, but I don’t actually feel that strongly about Blood on the Dance Floor. The reason is that, perhaps in following the similar misguided marketing strategy of its parent album, he this time pairs his new material (just five songs) with eight dance remixes of songs from HIStory. From an artistic perspective, I could probably get away with blasting the whole concept and just giving it a 1. Even the five new tracks include previously recorded material and outtakes, so it’s obvious that the whole project existed solely for the purpose of selling more albums and promoting Jackson’s lengthy “Ghosts” video.

            Fortunately, the project is salvaged by the fact that I do enjoy the five original tracks that start off the album. None of them would rank in the upper echelon of his oeuvre, but still range from solid to excellent. The title track is basically in the HIStory/Dangerous style, which is unsurprising given that it dates back to 1991, and compares well to “Dangerous” with muttered verse vocals erupting into a melodic chorus. “Morphine” drew some comparisons to Trent Reznor with its clanging metallic beat, but I feel that is overwrought – the main section of the song is really just a slightly more abrasive version of the dance songs from HIStory. What intrigues me about the song is the mid-section where it breaks down into “Heal the World”-esque strings and gentle piano, except that this time Michael is singing about abusing Demirol instead of saving starving children. It actually works for me in this context, perhaps because of the contrast with the harsher verses of the song, or because the lyrics make it eerie instead of sentimental.

            “Superfly Sister” is probably the most generic of the quintet, but still is a perfectly passable funk track. “Ghosts” again touches on the basic build-up of the title track, but it’s hard to fault the formula when he nails it so perfectly, again steamrolling out of downbeat verses and into the chorus with melodic gusto. Actually, on both this track and the subsequent “Is It Scary,” it’s actually the lead-in section to the choruses that I find most compelling and capture a vintage Michael Jackson, also known as my nostalgic sentiment. For this was indeed the last Michael Jackson album of my childhood. I still remember the delight I felt when I randomly discovered it in Wal-Mart one day, having had no idea that it was released.

            Unfortunately that sentiment does not extend to the eight dance remixes, which severely drag down the rating of the album, given that they make up a majority of the running time. This is one of those times where I find it unnecessary to delve into the differences between the remixes because I find the whole idea completely pointless. I’m sure it’s possible to make a creative remix but none of these strike me as interesting. Instead, the primary goal of the remixers employed here appear to have been to add a monotonous dance beat and ensure that the tempo never changes. My enjoyment somewhat wavers based primarily on how natural the instrumentation is – thus the Fugees’ remix of “2 Bad” is at least more engaging than the appalling remix of “Stranger in Moscow” where somebody somehow had the idea that adding a generic techno drum beat to an introspective ballad wouldn’t turn it into a terrible song. But I’m not sure it really matters, because with zero exceptions, I would prefer to just hear the original Michael Jackson version to any of the remixes.

            So I’m not really sure what the right rating is to give to an album like this one. I settled on 4 because listening to it straight through, my overall enjoyment level is negative, based solely on the fact that the remixes outnumber the original material. But in the digital era, it’s easy enough to stream or download the first five songs and ignore the rest, making it not totally worthless. It certainly is an album that could be enjoyed by a fan if nothing else, which is more than I can say for Invincible…

Michael Jackson – “HIStory” (1995)

Rating: 6

Best Song: “They Don’t Care About Us”

(Reviewers’ note: I am reviewing the second disc of HIStory featuring all new material as it was packaged with a greatest hits album as the first disc.) My thoughts on the first disc are pretty simple: just get the original albums, there are only four of them! As for the second disc, it is more or less a sequel to Dangerous, but with all of the negative aspects exacerbated. Once again, it’s needlessly long, and not really in a way that makes any sense. In his attempts to appeal to all audiences, the result is totally incoherent as an album. There are several terrible songs that make me long for the relative charms of “Heal the World.” Perhaps predictably after the child molestation scandal, the paranoia in his lyrics is intensified, and not really in a way that redeems the man. Yet for all that, I still give HIStory a positive rating, and don’t think it entirely deserves its reputation as a disappointment.

Although they make up a smaller portion of the album than ever, there are at least several songs here that compare well to anything in Michael's back catalog. He finally gets the celebrity duet right with the opener “Scream” by de-emphasizing the significance of the duet with his sister Janet to the point where the song wouldn’t really have been affected either way if he had just sang the whole thing himself. That may make it seem pointless, but “Scream” is a perfectly fine single with a level of energy to match the spectacle of its $7,000,000 music video. I’ll avoid weighing in on the controversial lyrics of “They Don’t Care About Us" and instead offer my regrets that the critical focus on the lyrics marred what I see as one of his best songs ever, musically. Jackson delivers the simplistic, harsh verses with conviction and the melodic chorus provides the perfect contrast, giving the song an emotional momentum that it never relinquishes. The production, with its ghostly choirs of multi-tracked Michael Jacksons, also reminds me of the similar torment I felt Jackson captured with “Who Is It,” making me wish that he would sit in the producer’s chair more often.

As always, I feel the best songs here are generally the ones that Jackson wrote and produced himself, rather than the ones done in tandem. “Stranger in Moscow” is a rare ballad for him that avoids mawkishness and/or tedium, instead nicely evoking the isolated feeling of the lyrics with a sparse guitar arrangement before culminating in an impassioned coda. “Earth Song,” though relatively unknown, at least in the US, challenges “Man in the Mirror” as his greatest save-the-world ballad, and perhaps proving that these types of songs are either really great or really bad. But in this case, though the initial chorus veers towards the sappy, the song builds to a dramatic crescendo with Jackson screaming out things like “What about elephants?” “What about crying whales?” “What about forest trails?” over the backing vocals of the Andrea Crouch Choir, stalwarts in all of his humanitarian epics. It could be about llamas for all I care, but like “Man in the Mirror,” there’s undeniable power to it, and although I suspect he felt as sincerely about “Heal the World” as he did about this one, he was actually able to capture that sincerity and passion in his music here.

I don’t know that if Jackson would have been able to sustain creative momentum if he had written and produced everything himself (actually, the last 1/3 of the album is almost definitely a sign that he couldn’t have), but I do feel that the attempts to stay current with the latest trends in R&B/hip-hop by bringing in famous producers of the time (in this case, Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, and Dallas Austin) don’t entirely work. Theoretically, the generic HIStory track isn’t so different from the generic Dangerous track in this regard, but whether it’s just a greater level of nostalgia on my part, here I find myself dying for the melodic choruses to emerge from the over-compressed murk on songs like “Tabloid Junkie” and “This Time Around.” The thudding bass and pseudo-rap verses might have worked for some artists, but I don’t think they fit all that well with this particular artist, and these particular songs. That said, Jackson is guilty of the same sins on some of the songs he did produce himself (“D.S.” and “Money”), so I can’t exactly blame his producers. I do like all the songs mentioned (“Tabloid Junkie” and “D.S.” have particularly outstanding choruses) but compared to the best songs on the album, I feel that there are multiple visions for how the album would sound that openly conflict with each other.

Still, these are largely forgivable issues and if HIStory went on alternating prime Jackson material with more forgettable, but still decent attempts to stay modern, I would give it a rating pretty close to the one I gave Dangerous. Unfortunately, Michael had to go and prove that his creative instincts were starting to decay by including several truly, truly terrible songs. It all starts at track nine: “Childhood,” from the Free Willy 2 soundtrack, is a ballad in the basic “Heal the World” style, but one with no discernible melody, just copious amounts of string instruments in the standard Hollywood vein. I suppose the lyrics about him having lost his childhood could be construed as surprisingly self-aware, but that doesn’t make them any less banal as presented here. Worst, it doesn’t really make any sense in the context of the album up to that point, but instead seems like it was included solely to cross-promote his work with Free Willy 2. Still, the album recovers a little bit after that point, before ending on a truly noxious stretch over the last three songs. The title track was obviously intended as an epic, with the song both beginning and ending with historically significant news clips. But the combination of modernistic verses with a sappy, purportedly anthemic chorus just doesn’t go together at all, and in situations where a song is attempting to be some sort of grand statement, but is instead an incoherent mess, I can’t help hating it way more than if it were just trying to be a catchy pop song. I do like the bit leading into the chorus (“How many people must there be…”) but that’s not enough to save the song as a whole.

“Little Susie” revisits the song structure of “Will You Be There,” again sampling classical choral music for several minutes before leading into the actual song, which takes up only about 3 minutes of its 6 minute length. Although it doesn’t help that the main portion of the song is creepy, with lyrics, to paraphrase, about ‘a girl who fell down the stairs and nobody cared,’ it might be salvageable if the structure of the song made any sense at all. But the epic introduction and crashing strings are totally at odds with the fairly simplistic vocal melody. And sampling “Pie Jesu” for nearly half of the song does not automatically lend your song the somber atmosphere you’re hoping for. Instead, it detracts from it. Finally, the closing cover of Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile” is perhaps not as offensive as the preceding two songs, but is still pretty bad, due to the utter lack of creativity in the arrangement (pure Hollywood schmaltz).

So I do like it when musical artists take creative risks, and while some of Jackson’s risks do in fact succeed on this album, more of them fail terribly. Still, while four really bad songs is enough to drag down the rating of the album considerably, there are still eleven good to great songs here. His artistic decline was no doubt under way, but HIStory at least still spotlights the good if also the bad. Unfortunately, his next and final full studio release was destined to make me long for the relative charms of this album.