Samstag, 21. Apr 2012, 19:25
1
Low
David Bowie
Low (1977)
Released in January 1977, Low was the most potent and encompassing hybridization of pop music's many modes to that point, an album that continues to resonate as a syncretic masterpiece three decades later.
Still fascinated with the urban funk rhythms he'd employed less subtly for Young Americans and Station to Station, Bowie was increasingly drawn to the synthetic novelties Can, Neu!, and Eno were positing, particularly Eno's Discreet Music, which informs most of Low's second side. This gorgeous quartet of dramatic instrumental pieces started out as the soundtrack for The Man Who Fell to Earth, an 1975 film by Nicholas Roeg starring Bowie, at the apex of his cocaine addiction, as an extraterrestrial Übermensch. Unbelievably, Bowie's compositions were rejected; brought through to Low, they provide a grave emotional counterpoint to the record's self-exploratory A-side, proof positive that Bowie really was out to wipe the mirror clean in Berlin.
The kaleidoscopic opening salvo "Speed of Life" tests our willingness to come along, staring out like Johnny Rotten, but– crucially– not caring if anyone follows. "Sound + Vision" and "Breaking Glass" are our most immediate rewards, more familiar in their funk stutter-steps and sultry crooning. The latter owes everything to guitarist Carlos Alomar in the left channel, who delivers the lead with a swagger to rival Mick Ronson and T.Rex. Obstinate, rueful and reckless, the album's first side is a collection of seven short "fragments," whose brevity is at once a knee-jerk reaction to the meandering Station to Station and the end result of a bad case of writer's block.
To correct an injurious and carelessly repeated claim, Brian Eno did not produce Low (or "Heroes" or Lodger). While his presence and influence are uncontestable– especially in the aching instrumental "A New Career in a New Town"– producer Tony Visconti and Bowie shaped the analog onslaught heard here. For their fine ears, there's also a principal debt to the Eventide H910 Harmonizer, the first commercially available pitch-shifter, which through doubling lends Low its signature distorted snare drum, one of the most ingenious production advances you can point to in the 1970s, and a sound producers still reach for today.
Politically, Low is a singular and brutal indictment of the only thing Bowie's native England cared about in January 1977: punk rock. To a man who lived through Iggy and– let's be honest– designed Johnny Rotten, punk's brief lifespan and predominantly societal (rather than musical) impact were foregone conclusions. That Bowie could see past the flames to paint this horizon is irrefutable evidence of his solipsistic genius. Balancing process art, experimentalism and rock 'n' roll tradition, Low is Bowie unrefined, the most captivating effort from the decade's most-watched man. –Chris Ott
2
London Calling
The Clash
London Calling (1979)
In a 2000 interview with George Plimpton for The Paris Review, gonzo overlord Hunter S. Thompson explained: "An outlaw can be defined as somebody who lives outside the law, beyond the law and not necessarily against it." William Faulkner, in an interview with the same magazine conducted nearly a half-century earlier, offered this: "The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life… and hold it fixed so that 100 years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again."
Deeply and fervently preoccupied with revolutionizing both the political and artistic standards of their time, The Clash opted to dedicate themselves to cross-breeding an entirely new kind of artist-outlaw, as violent as it was cerebral. 1979's London Calling became the ultimate expression of that collective fascination, a double album both intensely unsettling and undeniably clever, full of mouthy indictments and unbridled celebrations. That most contemporary "punk" music actually sounds nothing like The Clash is not surprising; by the late 1970s, principle songwriters Joe Strummer and Mick Jones had been mining musical traditions (reggae, dub, rockabilly, roots) so diverse that to recreate The Clash's specific recipe circa London Calling has become nearly impossible. 25 years later, the record still moves– an astoundingly diverse, ambitious and inspired bit of politically-charged punk rock, as relevant and revolutionary today as it was in 1979. –Amanda Petrusich
3
Marquee Moon
Television
Marquee Moon (1977)
Its title track is over 10 minutes long. Its lengthy and numerous guitar solos are individually credited in its liner notes. But at its core, Television's Marquee Moon is shockingly economical– a tightly wound web of simple guitar parts wrapped around Tom Verlaine's straightforward and impressionistic songwriting. Taken out of context, the guitar solos on Marquee Moon aren't just unimpressive; they're downright illogical. Everyone who plays guitar will, at some point, learn the solo from "Stairway to Heaven", but it's practically impossible to sit down and actually play anything from Marquee Moon. Like The Velvet Underground before them, Television's songs focus on interplay and exploration, rather than individual melodies and chord progressions.
This, of course, is just icing on what is unquestionably the finest release from one of the most talented bands to be nurtured by the scum-soaked floors and paint-chipped walls of 1970s CBGB's. The subtle buildup of "Marquee Moon", the nervous energy of "See No Evil", and the melodic tension of "Guiding Light" are all songwriting masterstrokes, articulated perfectly by able and adventurous players. The punk scene from which Television emerged is often cited as discarding the concept of musicianship entirely. And in a sense, this is exactly what Television did with Marquee Moon, recasting virtuosity as a function of the brain, not the fingers. –Matt LeMay
4
There's a Riot Goin' On
Sly & the Family Stone
There's a Riot Goin' On (1971)
Taken along with the quick mudslide from Woodstock to Altamont, the drug deaths of Janis, Jim and Jimi, and the piling bodies in Vietnam, Sly & The Family Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On is a telling indication that the utopian 1960s were really a bad trip. After four albums of uplift party plans on which Sly sang, "You can make it if you try," his sing-alongs now went: "Look at you fooling you." Sly and his rainbow-coalition band crumbled during these recordings, leaving him and a few of his drug buddies to lay tracks to a tape made thin from constant erasing and re-recording (the story going that Sly would lay groupies to tape, then lay the groupies, erasing their voices afterward). No one who was there quite remembers who played what, and to even further muddy the mud, it was wrapped up in a warped, alien American flag (what sort of stars are those?) and a messy photo collage of faces, bereft of credits.
All of There's a Riot's pleasure centers and nerve endings are frayed from coke, dope, flesh, flash and, above all, disillusionment. Every single sound is weary, wasted, creaking, cracked and sleep-deprived, like a somnambulant zombie stumbling through the graveyard of ideals on the pavement of good intentions. The singles ("Family Affair", "Running Away") exude a façade of empty positivity, a bitter resignation to the darker forces bubbling underneath. Chicken-scratch guitars claw at caskets, human drummers meld with undead drum machines, and frightened voices fissure with the crisp horn lines, yet it all sounds incredible, prescient. Listen to the paradoxical 0:00 of the title track, to how hip-hop took that stripped drum sound and furthered Sly's bleak music, to how Miles got his groovebox back, to how the wasted Brits– from Primal Scream to Julian Cope– copped their dope from the grooves. Listen close, because there's no way in hell a major label will ever again let out this much horrible truth. –Andy Beta
5
Blood on the Tracks
Bob Dylan
Blood on the Tracks (1975)
Plenty of critics and fans blame the relative lifelessness of Bob Dylan's early 70s work for the quasi-religious codification of 1966's Blonde on Blonde, which, by 1975, was widely considered to be the last of Dylan's "great records"– the massive and untouchable creative apex of a career presumably destined for prompt disintegration. It's possible to argue that all of Dylan's post-Blonde records had the exact same mystifying effect on Blood on the Tracks– namely, allowing Dylan to stage his next reinvention, and to glibly position himself as the much-anticipated "next Dylan." Blood on the Tracks is arguably Bob Dylan's most personal record: less surreal and more self-conscious than anything he'd ever done, emotionally charged, and impeccably sung.
Blood on the Tracks was famously re-recorded in two deviant sessions– first in New York, and then in Minneapolis. The New York sessions (widely available as the Blood on the Tapes bootleg) saw Dylan acting especially protective of his new material, refusing to explain his unusual open-tunings to Deliverance, his backing band. Deliverance guitarist/banjoist Eric Weissberg later noted that Dylan was not particularly concerned with "correcting obvious mistakes" (check Dylan's fingernails and coat buttons scraping against his guitar strings on both New York versions of "Tangled Up in Blue"), and plainly admitted that "if it was anybody else," he "would have walked out." Unsurprisingly, Deliverance can only be heard, in their entirety, on "Meet Me in the Morning."
Three months later, Dylan opted to re-record a handful of cuts at Studio 80 in Minneapolis. Deliberately thwarting the stark intimacy and sparser instrumentation of the New York versions, the Minneapolis sessions saw questionable lineup changes (an entirely new band, culled from local players) and considerable lyric revision, with Dylan seizing his last chance to retract, fudging the original lyrics to pad his songs with trademark detachment. The resulting record is stunning in its diversity: sentimental but clever, impressionistic but specific, confessional but confounding– and unbearably easy to love. –Amanda Petrusich
6
Trans-Europe Express
Kraftwerk
Trans-Europe Express (1977)
The day will soon come, if it hasn't already, that Trans-Europe Express joins the ranks of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Exile on Main Street as a record that simply cannot be written about. Like those two, Kraftwerk's masterpiece not only represents a high point of its era– delivering on pop promises years in the making and establishing a voice theretofore unheard– but contributes to an archetype informing almost anything released afterwards. It quickly became impossible to ignore what the German quartet had accomplished, in both artistic and technical terms. That its breakthroughs actually managed to filter into the popular music arena relatively quickly was a rare bonus.
Twenty-seven years later, we're given the task of explaining what's so great about a record that, by most accounts, is not only a primary color for pop producers and electronic musicians, but somehow still seems ahead of the curve. When in doubt, fall back on the music: The cold, sleek synth textures and disaffected vocals might seem robotic (and of course, Kraftwerk nurtured that image), but they are also perfect realizations of the same minimal, streamlined tension that colored punk and new-wave. The spacious motorik of "Europe Endless" and stark, industrial funk of "Metal on Metal" both reveal a band perfectly at home in the 21st Century decades before it began, and serve notice to anyone within earshot that the Digital Age was upon us. And it would be fantastic. –Dominique Leone
7
Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin (1971)
We must be lying to ourselves: There is no way this album should not be #1. If my fellow PFM writers could go to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind's memory-erasure clinic and wipe out everything related to this record and band– the radio overplay, the Spinal Tap jokes, Robert Plant asking, "Does anybody remember laughter?"– and hear IV again for the first time, it would be at the very top of this list. Because when the riff from "Black Dog" hits you for the first time, you come face to face with God. Nothing is bigger than Led Zeppelin IV. It tears your skin and grinds away your doubt and self-hatred, freeing the rage and lust and anger of cockblocked adolescence. Listening to this album is like fucking the Grand Canyon.
Some people call "When the Levee Breaks" the album's true epic, because it sounds like the blues while "Stairway to Heaven" sounds like druids. But that was the fucking point. Zeppelin understood that you spend your days under the weight of shit, so they show you the way out with a moronized stewpot of myth, Tolkien and California daydreaming, a place where you can pray for greatness from battles you'll never fight. Zeppelin spanned it all, because they knew sometimes you wield the Hammer of the Gods and sometimes you just get the shaft. –Chris Dahlen
8
Entertainment!
Gang of Four
Entertainment! (1979)
The first time I heard was Gang of Four was in high school when I purchased their reunion travesty Mall for 99¢. I listened to it and filed it away, writing the band off as just another overrated hype. But even with "Colour from the Tube" and "Don't Fix What Ain't Broke" swept into forsaken corners of my memory, something about the band pulled me back to them, and eventually the gravity of fate forced me to blindly shell out for an import copy of Entertainment!. And there, in the musty air of the old hotel I called home, it became clear there were hundreds of musical possibilities that had never crossed my mind.
Entertainment! may have been a sarcastic title, but it wasn't inaccurate. The album is caustic and bursting with disgust for unethical capitalism, opportunist politicians and consumer society, among other things, but it's also crafted with amazing pop sensibility– and is, of course, remarkably danceable. Dave Allen's wild bassline on "Damaged Goods" spills over with hooks; "I Found That Essence Rare" subversively lays lines like, "See the girl on the TV dressed in a bikini/ She doesn't think so, but she's dressed for the H-bomb," into an insanely catchy melody barked by a manic Jon King over Andy Gill's airless guitar and Hugo Burnham's frenzied drumming. Like any defining record, Entertainment! seems doomed to be the source of an unceasing stream of copies and copies of copies, but even as the pale imitations pile up, Gang of Four's debut remains singular, a powerful call to arms and out of apathy. –Joe Tangari
9
Unknown Pleasures
Joy Division
Unknown Pleasures (1979)
One of the best– and worst– aspects of Catcher in the Rye is that so many people feel they can relate to Holden Caulfield. J.D. Salinger created a character who found himself at odds with the values of the world– problems so germane to everyday life that empathy seems the natural reaction. Because people gravitate toward reflections of their own distress, this empathy somehow lightens our burden, but to reduce someone's troubles to a known quantity and equate them to our own also cheapens them, doesn't it?
Decades after Ian Curtis' suicide, he's frequently discussed as barely more than a caricature of depression and death. He has made a transformation from a real person to a Caulfield-esque everyman. Curtis' work with Joy Division is the catharsis that lets his pain become our pain, and we relate. Or we think we can. It's unfair, both to him and his music. Many, including myself, have written about Curtis' songs in the context of his own tribulations as a tool to leverage some kind of insight. For once, I had hoped to write about Joy Division from a different place, but I can't. To do so feels negligent.
I will say this: Unknown Pleasures was the second CD I owned, having been improbably drawn in by only the bandname and cover. I feel fortunate to have experienced the urgency, foreboding and perfection of this album– from the distance of Martin Hannett's production, to the driving smack of Stephen Morris' snares, to the grim pulse of Peter Hook's bass, to Bernard Sumner's brittle guitar– having never seen the name "Ian Curtis" outside of the liners. All I knew was that his alienation seemed impossibly close and more earnest than any music I had ever heard. And, yeah, I– like so many others– felt I could relate. –Eric Carr
10
Another Green World
Brian Eno
Another Green World (1975)
After taking two strides away from Roxy Music with Here Come the Warm Jets and Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), Eno finally created an album that crystallized his delicately subversive relationship to pop music. As Chris Ott put it in his recent review of the remastered edition of this album, "Eno ripped rock and roll apart, never losing sight of its precepts. No one could mistake Another Green World for anything other than a pop album, but at the same time, it is unrecognizable as such."
This paradox is a very real one, and as listeners, we feel the intensity with which Eno combines his potent pop sensibilities with their very deconstructions. Obviously standout tracks "Sky Saw", "St. Elmo's Fire", and "I'll Come Running" take part in this paradox to a degree, but the essential Eno character lies most in the album's unassuming (but very human) sinews. When these pockets of vulnerability are forced to bubble over– as does the almost sheepishly virtuoso guitar work on "Golden Hours", or the warm washes of beautiful synthesizer melody on "Becalmed", or the swaying guitar line that grows in confidence with repetition at the end of "The Big Ship"– it's hard to imagine moments in pop music so authentically real, and so simultaneously spiritual. –Nick Sylvester