Having already asserted their dominance on their first two hard rocking, raunchy records, Led Zeppelin takes a step back on their third outing to flex their compositional chops.
And that means a surprising amount of ballads.
Reviews
Record #488: Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin II (1969)
By the end of the 1960s, the peace and love of the decade had started to wear a little thin.
The Nixon Administration rose to power in the United States. The Troubles dominated headlines in the United Kingdom. The Vietnam War raged on.
And out of this chaos came a band whose sound was as fiery as the world around them.
Record #487: LCD Soundsystem – This Is Happening (2010)
Electronic music is often dismissed as cold and emotionless—a monotonous musical form that is too sleek to let any real humanity in. And it’s not like it requires any real skill to perform.
Those criticisms are rarely levied against LCD Soundsystem though.
Record #486: Larry Coryell – Spaces (1970)
The interesting thing about jazz is that the albums are just as much about the side players as the bandleaders. And if you listen to enough jazz, you start to notice who the major players are.
And while you might not readily recognize Larry Coryell’s name, you might recognize some of the people playing with him on Spaces.
Record #485: Lantlôs – Melting Sun (2014)
Every once in a while, I’ll hear a record that ushers me into new revelations, that shift my musical center within the moments of the first song.
Albums like Sunbather, Panopticon, and Palms self-titled album.
Melting Sun as firmly among them.
Record #484: The Besnard Lakes – The Besnard Lakes are the Dark Horse (2007)
The Besnard Lakes claim to be a dark horse. And while the cooing harmonies that open the album might seem to suggest otherwise, they quickly prove themselves to be a few shades more menacing than most of their indie rock counterparts.
Record #483: La Dispute – Rooms of the House (2014)
Jorden Dreyers, lead singer of La Dispute, is a bit of an enigma. He masquerades as a hardcore frontman, thrashing across the stage as he screams his lungs out.
In actuality, he’s a writer, through and through, showing more kinship with Ernest Hemingway than Henry Rollins.
Record #482: La Dispute – Wildlife (2011)
In the great scheme of music history, it’s near impossible to talk about La Dispute without mentioning mewithoutYou. And I’m as guilty as anyone in that regard—mewithoutYou has been my favorite band for around thirteen years, and they were the first band to mix hardcore conventions and spoken-word (shouted-word?) vocals that La Dispute also uses.
It was this very relationship that kept me from La Dispute. I dismissed them as derivative—runners-up that sought to usurp of the throne mewithoutYou abdicated when they had their folky phase.
But then, I actually started listening to La Dispute. And brother, they don’t deserve my dismissal.
Record #481: Kurt Vile – Smoke Ring For My Halo (2011)
Among the masses of hipsterdom, the pantheon of Americana has long been dismissed as “dad rock.” Uncool, out-of-touch, and pedestrian. It’s to be expected: indie rock has always been rooted in a sort of iconoclasm. It’s imbued with a rejection of establishment practices and the conventions of commercial music.
Then, like a bolt of lightning across the night sky, a two-headed beast reached out of Philadelphia and grabbed Dad Rock by the shoulders and pulled it toward itself.
The beast’s heads were Kurt Vile and Adam Granduciel.
Record #480: David Bowie – Let’s Dance (1983)
By the beginning of the 80s, David Bowie had been through enough career turns to make the most accomplished musicians dizzy. He had cut his teeth with Dylan-esque space folk before moving onto theatric art pop, glam rock, plastic soul, sci-fi disco, and harrowing Krautrock.
There wasn’t a lot of space that Bowie hadn’t already explored. So he set his sights on the best dang pop a man could create.