19th...Lyrical craftsmanship

For the Roses. Four stars.

1972s For the Roses was supposed to be Joni Mitchell's farewell to the music industry. Uncomfortable with her progressing popularity, she released this album and took a relatively short hiatus, returning in 1974.

So in my mind, this record marks her farewell more to the heart-on-the-sleeve singer-songwriter style she'd epitomized on Blue, and the groundwork for later obscuritantism. (I don't believe that's a real word)

Banquet is the uncompromising start-up, taking a simple metaphor of life as a banquet and expanding it into something just a titch more complicated. The beauty of much of the album is found in the structure. Joni knew how to arrange a song, even a simple piano ballad.

Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire is as impenetrable as the title makes it sound. Jazz inflections on a guitar track, a beautiful melody if one has the patience to tease it out, her voice turning hollow and spooky and a lyric far too deep on a thematic level for me to understand.

Barangrill is much easier, thematically and melodically. The denizens of a Bar and Grill are lovingly described, while woodwinds and reeds highlight a memorable tune. It is pleasant and easy to overplay, since there isn't a whole lot underneath the charm.

Back to piano with Lesson in Survival, and back to the seaside painted in Banquet. Journalistic free verse, set to a vague tune. It details the straining elements of a relationship. "I came in as bright/as a neon light/and I burned out/right there before him." Moving story, excellently crafted and immediately forgettable.

It shifts superbly into Let the Wind Carry Me, detailing the strain between a rock n roll rebel and her parents.

For the Roses moves back to guitar and is an informed, detailed song about life as a singer-songwriter. After the last couple, the melody is especially nice and the imagery proves how adept Joni Mitchell is with a lyric.

See You Sometime is a continuation of it. And it occurs to me that I'm not recommending her as being fun to listen to. In fact, the singer-songwriter genre is not replete with light-hearted self deprecation and absurdities. No, it's like art, recommended as thought-provoking material. It's just not good time music.

Where was I? Electricity; another simple metaphor, faulty wiring = a relationship. It's rather touching, just for that simplicity.

Harmonica! You know this one. It's You Turn Me On, I'm a Radio. Got into the Top 25, without benefit of a chorus, and it is a sweet little love song. It makes me smile. Oh, and it's Nash supplying the harmonica.

Blonde in the Bleachers is a vignette, brief but interesting. Stills gets on this one as the whole rock n roll band that invades the coda.

Woman of Heart and Mind is the most scathing song, though the delivery is merely contemplative.

Judgement of the Moon and Stars (Ludwig's Tune) is certainly the most ambitious of the lot. Obviously, the subject is Beethoven. It settles into a longish bridge, but the actual song is good, though it doesn't wrap up so much as pieter out.

Verdict? A good job all around. Not the study in excellence of Blue, nor her best collection of songs, since a lot of them only dimly register on a melodic level. Yet Joni's capability and strength of craftsmanship make it a splendid continuation record, though I wouldn't recommend it as a good starting point if you haven't heard any of her other work. She's got a good voice too.

18th...Some indie obscurity

For Emma, Forever Ago. Four Stars.

In 2006, having recently lost his band and relationship, Justin Vernon sped off to a hunting cabin in Northwestern Wisconsin and recorded this record over the winter. His nom de plume, incidentally, is an intentionally misspelled "bon hiver" (bohn ee-vair) which means good winter in French.

Once he got out of the woods in 2007, he did a little bit of extra recording, but this is mostly a one-man, one-time effort, and also a true indie album, as I've never heard of the publisher.

Flume sums up the entire style of Bon Iver. Driven by acoustic guitar and Justin's overlapping falsetto blurring an already vague, imagistic lyric. Neat effects in the overdub department, and a guest drummer.

Lump Sum pretty much repeats the formula, so one must accept the cohesiveness of the sound from song to song. What it lacks in variety is made up for with atmosphere. It forms a perfect compliment to a snowy day.

Skinny Love is the angriest track, one on which Justin ditches the falsetto to help accent the feeling. It's patched together and messy, like he'd only barely got the song together and then used the demo.

The Wolves (Act I and II) takes its sweet time, starting with repeated lines and pauses that reminded me of a gospel hymn. Then it stretches out into a long strummed refrain "what might have been lost don't bother me." With nowhere left to go, it eventually splinters apart, leaving just this little timid voice spouting an unfinished line.

Blindsided is more of the same; a confusing lyric married to a lovely melody with some interesting musical effects. Your mileage will vary. Heck, even mine does.

Creature Fear has a rousing chorus, but is in fact the most despondent, depressing song herein.

It blends seamlessly into Team, rendering the song by itself pointless. It's about a minute worth of drumming and a bass riff, with affects and whistling.

The almost title track, For Emma, is next. Feels like a hopeful finale, thanks to trumpet and trombone from the guest players.

But the last song is Re: Stacks. Longest, most coherent lyric settled on the least catchy melody by far. I always get lost on this song; it feels like a bonus track.

Well, I'm really rather ambivalent about this CD. I've been listening to it heavily this past week, trying to figure it out. Sometimes I think the whole thing's dull, at others it seems to possess a most extraordinary beauty. What is Justin Vernon trying to convey? It takes concentration for me to even begin to figure it out. I find that snow outside the window really helps the cause.

Oh, and a reviewer on Amazon recommended hearing it alongside Neil Young Live at Massey Hall. So I bought them both, and did just that. Yes, they do form a natural compliment to each other, sharing acoustics, falsetto and a predilection for loneliness.

Looking back, this does seem a tepid review. I simply don't know whether I like Bon Iver or not, let alone if anyone else would. The frost obscuring the window on the cover really tells you everything you need to know. Sometimes one accepts the obscurity with a philosophical nod; other times it's "get a windshield wiper and say what's on your mind already!"

17th...An elegie

Gone Again. Five stars.

Except for a brief return in the 80s, Patti Smith had retired from the music business, opting instead for a private life with her husband Fred "Sonic" Smith and children. But in the years leading up to 1996, several close friends (Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith Group pianist Richard Sohl) and her brother Todd all passed away. With the loss of her husband, to whom Gone Again is dedicated, she returned to the studio.

Gone Again is an incredibly organic, sincere record. Though themes of death and loss are dealt with in every song, it is neither morbid nor depressing; rather, the underlying emotion seems to be recuperation, renewal of strength and the attempt to make peace with death and also create an adequate tribute to life.

The title track is a powerful attention grabber, and therefore somewhat misleading (as the record afterwards is mostly in a quiet vein). It heralded at the time that after such a long hiatus, Patti Smith could still rock, still capture poetry and still draw on incredible emotional resonance.

Beneath the Southern Cross is acoustically driven, with John Cale on organ and Tom Verlaine on electric guitar, both of which form unobtrusive textures. The song is astonishingly good free verse, but takes time to appreciate, lacking hooks. And listen to the heavenly, pure vocal at the end...That is Jeff Buckley, within a year of his death, making the song chilling, in retrospect.

About a Boy is a lengthy eight minutes, full of atmosphere, washes of guitar far in the background. Patti's vocals are the centerpiece of the entire record. The subject? Kurt Cobain's suicide, and each verse grows more bitter, more angered, as is only fair in the case.

My Madrigal is made of piano, cello and the most emotional of all the lyrics. The refrain is simply "till death do us part" and Patti's voice is at its most beautiful.

Summer Cannibals is oddly placed, being even more abrasive than Gone Again. The catharsis of the take must have been incredible; she practically spits each word out. It's very strong, working on the surreal story of cannibals in Georgia, but (perhaps on purpose) it forms a harsh put down of the romanticism just prior.

Dead to the World is nearly a country song, and Patti adopts a rather severe twang for the telling of the tale, which I found annoying at first...But the sheer appeal of the song, and the fabulous whistling contributed by one Oliver Ray (who I know nothing about) soon won me over, and it is now one of my favorite moments on the album.

For all the shifts in tone and texture, the record is remarkably consistent in its vision. Wing, the only song written for it that does not clearly deal with death or absence, is almost entirely on acoustic guitar.

Ravens features a Spanish inflected mandolin (played by Kimberly Smith, who I can't believe isn't related) and the best poetry included, as it reads good on its own. "All the gifts that God had gave/and those by fate denied/gone to where all treasures laid/and where the raven flies."

At 55 minutes, the CD is longer than is preferable to me, and so we come to the only superfluous song, a cover of Dylan's Wicked Messenger, transforming it into hard rock and obscuring the lyric. Nothing wrong with it - she belts it out - but it is the only weakness to Gone Again.

Fireflies is the other long track, and could never run in any one's head, but the atmosphere conjured is breathtaking. Verlaine, Ray and Buckley are all on it, along with the regular band. The lyric starts in a gospel theme before Patti's muse reasserts itself in a haunting devotional ode.

"This little song is for Fred," she says softly, and lists the chords before playing Farewell Reel, an unaccompanied song that could very well be a first take. It's a fitting end, encapsulating the theme of life making its peace with death.

Gone Again is an essential Patti Smith recording. To me, it is her finest work. The price paid, the degree to which she rose above what must have been incredible pain and the statement hewn from the experience all point to her being on the highest tier available to artists of any order.

16th..."Bizarre"

(Sorry about the hiatus, folks. Will try to keep on top of things from here out, but everyone needs a vacation now and then)

Roxy Music. Four stars.

Fairport Convention. The Beatles. David Bowie. Bob Dylan. On the whole, debut records bear the marks of influences and the musicians' own uncertainties. Roxy Music is one of the exceptions. In 1972, they put this record out, already sounding like veterans. Supremely confidant, with a unique sound, watertight band and fabulous front man, Roxy Music already seemed to know the exact sound (slightly camp art-rock with a strange lack of choruses) and look (glam rock) they were going for.

Make no mistake, this is classic Roxy down to the cover art.

The only clue that this is their earliest effort comes from Bryan Ferry: lyricist, pianist and singer. Compared to the work to come out in just a year or so, his voice herein is pale and washed out. And don't just take my word for it; Ferry himself must have harbored some dis-satisfactions, as he reworked almost half of these songs on his 1976 solo record Let's Stick Together.

The other members of the band: Paul Thompson on obligatory drums, Graham Simpson for bass, Phil Manzanera on the electric guitar, Andrew MacKay playing oboe and saxophone and a man the reproduced liner notes refer to only as "Eno" playing synths and tapes.

The album starts and ends quite fittingly, with party sound affects. Then Re-Make Re-Model kicks off. It's the straightest rocker in the set, and the saxophone is even better than the guitar. Highlight is the "band introduction" where everybody gets their own 10 second solo. It comes across as a well-rehearsed jam (which it may well have started as).

Ladytron is quieter, with a haunting soundscape crafted from oboe and synth and an elegant, darker lyric. It finally implodes as a dense rocker, but Manzanera does not get a solo.

The campier elements of Roxy Music come to the foreground on If There is Something, a woozy forerunner to the more American sounds of songs like Prairie Rose. However, it won't be pigeon-holed and shifts into epic, heartfelt territory with Ferry belting out his cliched declaration of love ("I would climb mountains..." etc... though he'd also become a gardener, growing roses...and potatoes?!).

Virginia Plain, the single, made the Top Ten in the U.K. and was performed on Top of the Pops. It's purely ridiculous, full of weird little asides and what might be the most abrupt ending of any pop song ever recorded.

2 H.B. is a sophisticated ballad whose title is actually "To Humphrey Bogart," explaining the almost-chorus of "here's looking at you kid." It focuses on Casablanca, but makes a touching ode to his entire screen legacy.

The Bob (Medley) is naturally the most schizophrenic song, starting off with pure Eno invention before abrasive rock...war sound affects, smooth jazz and Eno glitter (best part)...and so on until it eventually pivots back to the starting point. Art-rock with a capital A.

Chance Meeting is a stripped down piano driven work. Ferry's speciality is lost love between glamorous, beautiful people, and it's on display here. Less is going on musically, but incredible, ominous noises come from Manzanera's guitar...

Would You Believe? Snazzy melody, percussion and sax and more campy takes on what strikes as California rock. This is the last swinging song on Roxy Music and it's a great tune.

Sea Breezes (yes, surf sounds are lovingly included) is evocative, haunting and well-structured at first. MacKay's oboe is fabulous for three minutes, then the song goes into a herky jerky faster tempo with lots of noodling from all involved. It loses coherency at this point and is the weakest track.

Bitters End is, as the backing vocals so aptly sing "bizarre, bizarre, bizarre, bizarre." Every thing's here: the pink gin, the parties and yet also the loneliness and nostalgia for bygone romances. And it is cloaked in eccentricity from the delivery of the lyrics ("too late to leap the chocolate gate"...?) to the nominal music backing it up.

The debut of album of Roxy Music doesn't really put a foot wrong. In hindsight, better things were to come, and I'd recommend a newcomer start with Country Life, but this is a good little CD for fans of unpretentious art-rock or who just want something different.

15th CD...

The Times They Are A-Changin. Four stars.

Okay, I am scared stiff. This is bearding the lion, phase 1. What could possibly be worse than describing this?

Answer: Highway 61 Revisited. So I should count my blessings.

Now Dylan's a bit of a cynic and pessimist on all his records, but I think this one takes the cake for surpreme downer. Almost every song is either a bitter ballad or written in protest of some form of injustice. Trust me, this is not the place for the uninitiated to start. His other records from around this time have far more humour and musical diversity, never mind when he went electric.

And for those who want to know, this album came out in early 1964.

Every line of the title track is solid gold. It is the bar-none classic from the record. Early Dylan consisted of him, his guitar and bursts of harmonica, and the sound of this track is the blueprint for all the others herein. Musically primitive, but the song itself hasn't dated an inch. Great statement.

Ballad of Hollis Brown is certainly memorable. Tense guitar lick, and an excruciatingly slow building murder ballad. After introducing Hollis and his starving family, the rest of the story changes to the viewpoint of "you." This stroke of genius forces empathy, as you listen in to every awful detail.

With God On Our Side is a still more obvious protest song. This one is rather stuck in its era, but it still makes some valid points. The nice thing about his protests: they don't offer any reform plans, he just says what he thinks and leaves the audience to make up their own minds. It's the reason this stuff still holds up after decades of changing ideals. Don't ask me about the melody though; it clunks at every note.

One Too Many Mornings is the shortest track (God was the longest) and the most beautiful, wistful and sad. It's an evocative vignette, not a statement of anything.

North Country Blues is the bitterest of the ballads. It's about the iron ore mining towns, the casualties they create when operating, and the ruin when they shut down. "They say it's much cheaper down in South American towns/Where the miners work almost for nothing."

Only a Pawn in Their Game. More protest, obviously. Better than God.

Boots of Spanish Leather is structured as leave-taking between two lovers. It's the lady leaving on a boat, though until the last verses you can't tell. It ends ambiguously, yet unhappily, and the entire song is hauntingly rendered.

When the Ship Comes In is positively allegorical, like the second coming of Christ. It is the only upbeat tune, and quite a welcome addition too. Great change, full of fantastical imagery that doesn't quite reach biblical in nature until the end.

The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll is an extraordinary ballad. Lovely melody, however simple it is. The story is of a 51 year old servant "killed for no reason" and it is surprisingly moving. The story catches you up just like Hollis Brown's did, and it's impossible not to feel insult and indignation at the absolute misplacement of justice depicted.

Restless Farewell is a fitting end. The narrator is moving on, and leaving a sprawling epitaph behind. Old-fashioned, poignant and a fine finish all around.

...Okay, how'd I do?

14th CD

After the Gold Rush. Four and a half stars.

In 1970, after his collaboration with Crosby, Stills & Nash (resulting in the extremely successful Deja Vu, which I still haven't heard), Neil Young went back to his solo career with another successful record. Keeping his backing band Crazy Horse, he also got Jack Nitzsche from the first album for piano and Greg Reeves (bass player for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young) on board. Oh, and Stills gets to do backing vocals.

So it sounds a lot like the hard rock/country and folk/country of previous efforts, with the difference of Bill Peterson (whoever that is) playing flugelhorns.

Tell Me Why. Neil starts singing almost immediately on a lovely acoustic number with harmonizing. It's everything I like about his music in one song.

After the Gold Rush is a piano ballad. The lyric makes no sense (that's probably because it's based on a screenplay for a film of the same name. The film never materialized, by the way.) The melody is nice; the horns get their first airing on the bridge. For some reason, I really haven't warmed to it.

Only Love Can Break Your Heart also leaves me cold. It's really quite fragmented, like he had something he meant to say, but couldn't find the words to say it. There's not much to it, but it got to # 33, so what do I know?

Southern Man makes up for these weaknesses. It starts seemingly right in the middle of an epic rock song. Most of it is taken up by guitar soloing, but the piano steals the show for me (that's an unknown Nils Lofgren, by the way). Anyone who played on this song can walk tall for the rest of their life, that's how good it is. Great lyric too; a stark, sweeping glance at the South's slave legacy.

Then, Side 1 finishes with Till the Morning Comes, an extra lavished with horns and harmonies that turn Neil Young into a barbershop quartet. It's treated like a real song, when in fact it is two lines and an infectiously good-natured piano riff. At one minute, its nearest relatives may be found on the Beatles' White Album.

Oh Lonesome Me is a cover of country artist Don Gibson. Harmonica! Pure country, of course. Neil's delivery is as sincere as it gets, which is good, as the lyric is a bit old-fashioned. It's a dirge, but rather nice.

Don't Let It Bring You Down is packed with vivid imagery, centered on the city (which is a bit of a scenic shift) and one of the most gripping songs herein.

Birds is a mercifully short piano ballad. It's pure heart-on-your-sleeve material. Just listen to him sing the line "It's over..." It is absolutely beautiful and sublime and chokes me up.

When You Dance, I Can Really Love is a rock song, and the other single. Rather low-concept, but a thankful change of pace from all the harrowing songs about lonely people.

We go right back to that with I Believe in You. It's an acoustic guitar partner to Birds and gets much the same reaction.

Side 2 wraps with another throwaway. Cripple Creek Ferry is one verse and a chorus. The simplicity makes it somewhat ridiculous, though the story it paints has a lot of potential.

I'm rubbing my hands in anticipation of Harvest and Live at Massey Hall 1971, though I must say After the Gold Rush is a little bit uneven.

Also, despite my lackluster readership, I have to say I'm enamoured of this job I've undertaken, and I have no intention to stop until I've reviewed everybody from Abney Park to ZZ Top.

13th CD

Treasure. Four stars.

The Cocteau Twins are one of those flukes, a band out of time. Brought together in the late seventies, when post punk and new wave were the sounds of the future, a trio in Scotland morphed from goth sensibilities into all-encompassing gauzy soundscapes.

In 1984 the lineup was Robin Guthrie on guitar, Simon Raymonde on bass and Elizabeth Fraser on all vocals. Strangely, I couldn't find a listing for other instruments; it was all production. That caveat aside...

The Cocteau Twins are built upon Fraser's extraordinary vocals. You'd swear she was two people the way her voice dips and soars in near operatic flights. Her range and ability of expression are also noteworthy for not utilizing lyrics. Her songs are based in pure sound; English and (maybe) others crop up, seemingly for the feel of the word. That such distance, such affectedness, results in such emotionally gripping work is a testament to the Cocteaus talent.

When I heard Ivo for the first time, I'd have sworn it was a 90s product. It opens with acoustic strumming and Fraser's voice - off putting for spouting nonsense in such a high pitch. It's like getting dunked in cold water, but the music, which is equally as affected as her voice, is full of bell like percussion and a cooling lushness. It sways.

Lorelei is playful and spinning. One of the unique elements of the record is its ability to capture the sound of movement. The song structure is out of the ordinary, yet not inaccessable. Typical pop structure is forsaken with the rest of normality.

Beatrix is absolutely beautiful, a pure cascade of jangling harmonies. It's almost a complete musical circle, but just as it gets predictable, it shifts gears and becomes a brand new song laid on the same foundation.

Persephone lifts the style of hard rock. It's grungy, yet still somehow delicate and Fraser adapts to the tone perfectly. She utilizes near-English, but it makes no snese anyway. The quality is turbulent and ominous. Her two vocals play off each other excellently (she always doubles her voice and sings on different scales, which is a neat touch).

Pandora sounds absolutely Spanish. It has a sultry quality, and instrumental interludes as gentle as lacework.

Amelia is the most emotional moment. The tone is similar to Ivo and Lorelei, only the playful strangeness has been replaced with lament and sorrow and a sense of space and grandeur.

Aloysius returns from the dark. It's celebratory, frivolous and life-affirming. The drum beat is oddly low and deep for the "song." Listening to the CD several times, I can only wish they'd been a little less repetitious. First time, it's so lovely you don't mind, but afterwards.... So this CD is not to be revisited with too much consistancy.

Cicely is nicely ambiguous and strange. It's a melting pot of the sounds and styles from the other tracks. It calls to mind Persephone and is consistently contradictory.

Otterley is the most mysterious moment. Fraser descends to a breathy whisper, the music mixes with the sound of the tide. Atmosphere in spades. High drama being acted out in an unknown language.

And then it botches it completely. Donimo, six minutes of the most aggravating tune imaginable. It grates on me from the word go, yet somehow this, which would still have been weak at two minutes, gets stretched to a painful six, and sounds proud of itself for it! I don't listen to it; I stop at Otterley. Forced to take the album as a whole, Donimo stuck at the end to ruin the experience knocks a whole star off the rating.

Other than that, the Cocteau Twins are worth a listen.