One of the things that confuses me about hipster music snobs (pot and kettle, I know. Shut up) is how they can use “dad rock” as an insult while pointing to the picture of Dire Straits next the dictionary definition (”dad rock” is in the dictionary, right?).
The War on Drugs (who are excellent) have been pejoratively compared to Dire Straits for using the same sort of atmospheric new wave/roots rock mixture, and I’m so confused about why the hell that’s a bad thing.
I don’t really like the Eagles. That is to say, I love a lot of their earlier songs–Witchy Woman, One of These Nights–but by and large, the longer the Eagles wrote songs, the more I disliked them (the Hotel California album is pretty deplorable). However, back in 2003, I was a young punk kid with a new drivers license and a copy of the Ataris’ So Long Astoria stuck in my car’s CD player. One of my favorite songs on that album was the Henley penned Boys of Summer, and as I grew to adulthood, I have come to prefer the original version. And to be completely honest, if I needed to pay money for this album on the strength of that single, I wouldn’t have ponied it up. But when you raid your parents’ vinyl collections, you take chances.
Historically, I have ignored most of the Beach Boys’ pre-Pet Sounds output, regarding it as juvenile and cheap pop. However, the Endless Summer compilation I recently picked up has opened my eyes a little to the genius in potentia resting in the group (read: Brian Wilson).
I’ll admit: in the several years I’ve owned and loved it, I never realized that Out of the Blue was not ELO’s most acclaimed record. Longest, most ambitious, and most impressive, undoubtedly. But best? This is a question I never knew I had to ask before, but A New World Record, their breakthrough, is bringing that to the forefront.
Strange that as long as I’ve loved ELO’s Out of the Blue, I’ve never considered looking into any of their other albums. What a fool I have been! While not as refined as the symphonic pop of Out of the Blue, Face the Music showcases a Jeff Lynne with an absolute mastery of pop songcraft in a variety of genres.
You said it, Bender.
I bought this record when I first started my collection in college for two reasons: it was twenty-five cents, and the cover was cool.
And after a disappointing listen, I kept it on the merit of its artwork and never listened to it again. But now, six years later, the record doesn’t sound as terrible as it did when I first heard it.
The very first thing you notice about Invisible Touch is just how poppy it is. Which isn’t too surprising–the two records before it had some great pop numbers with prog flares thrown in to keep things interesting, like Abacab’s great No Reply At All or the Home by the Sea suite from Genesis, reflective of what groups like The Police and Talk Talk were doing around the same time on Ghost in the Machine and The Colour of Spring (which are both masterpieces).
I find it very ironic that the album named Genesis is the Genesis album that sounds the most like Phil Collins’ solo material. Not that that’s a bad thing. Continue reading
My understanding of Genesis’ place in rock history is a little fuzzy, but if classic rock radio is any indicator, Genesis mostly served as a breeding grounds for two of the most dynamic and exciting solo artists of the 80s. And given that this is the group’s eleventh full length (released after Phil Collins’ debut solo record at that), it tells very little about the ideas that either Collins or Peter Gabriel were wanting to explore that couldn’t do so within the confines of Genesis. And given that everything I’ve read on Wikipedia states that it showcased the band continuing toward radio-friendly rock, it tells even less about their prog rock tendencies.