easycure

Indeed, something completely useless and self-serving, which might also seem "philosophical" as long as there's at least one study to that effect... but when you play at all costs to constantly find the one number one, it's inevitable that it all leaves something to be desired... In any case, it’s true that before Hot Space you could always find some interesting insights, but I remain of the opinion that after ANATO there hasn't been an album that can be considered recognizably interesting... However, "Tie Your Mother Down" seems like a leftover from Queen 1, "Somebody to Love" tries to repeat (and I believe it’s impossible to succeed) the same dynamic flourishes of "Bohemian Rhapsody"... I don’t see much qualitative continuity, and on the other hand, the fact that Queen had up to that point released very different albums, while from then on they seemed to repeat themselves more (or simply become increasingly more "pop") says a lot...

because ADATR is a feeble attempt to replicate the winning style elements of its predecessor, inevitably resulting in something rather outdated. It's as if they have become a hollow mirror of themselves, retracing their career up to that point with little sense. News of the World has something that isn’t bad, spread your wings is there if I'm not mistaken.. but it’s also impossible not to notice that up until ANATO, Queen’s career was focused on the search for a style, for expression; afterwards, it simply aimed to sell, and in a blatantly cloying way, which becomes such precisely because it’s not style but a stylistic element, an effect.. the fact that at least Freddie Mercury managed to make the lackluster production of his band "likable" is true, but the '80s, precisely because they were the eighties for everyone as you say, were also REM, Cure, Police, Jesus and Mary Chain, this limiting ourselves to the very tight circle that falls under the definition of "pop" :-)

well... did I perhaps say that I don't like Queen? No. I said that Queen post Night at The Opera (which is a good album, I reiterate for lux) are simply a farce, read carefully, orione is a bit different from what you attribute to me: pop at wholesale, whose sole purpose is clearly to be marketable; a few discreetly more creative peaks like, I don't know, Under Pressure, Bicycle Race... for the rest, it's just embarrassingly bad taste, useless baroque excesses, technical exercises (yes, because May and Taylor showed off their skills brilliantly, unlike lux).. Innuendo from this perspective is indeed a decent albeit inconsistent comeback, the titular track is perhaps the best song by Queen since Bohemian Rhapsody, although there are certainly missteps, like I'm going slightly mad.. guys, I adored Queen at 13 :-) and I really don't think you can be older than 13 to appreciate atrocities like Invisible Man, Princes of the Universe, Miracle, and the enormous string of nonsensical crap that they produced from '76 onwards :-D

Damn it! The Queen, the most blatantly overrated group in the universe.. the first production is undeniable: for me, even Queen 2 is a great album.. but after Night at the Opera they were simply embarrassing: syrupy pop, pompous, artificially inflated, absolutely meaningless, inconsistent, the pure commercial product, the PROTOTYPE of the commercial product.. sure, Freddy Mercury is dead etc. etc., and so everything he did must be beautiful, sure the Queen are great musicians etc. etc.. but from the second half of the '70s onwards, they make me sick: no creativity, pure exercise of glamorous style stuffed with pop rhetoric, not to mention the '80s: overwhelming bad taste ad absurdum, from the pointless rhetoric of Kind of Magic to the embarrassing trendy electronic attitude of Miracle.. a truly obnoxious band.

very, very interesting

Well, the album is as aggressively troglodytic as one can imagine in music.. a mix of clichés stolen from the best bits of 30 years of rock, the classic album of the classic “good musician,” the one who in school learned all the possible schemata of musical performance from the teacher, who learned, in short, to be a tourist, and to be a tourist you have to know how to do everything and not invent anything, that’s clear. However, it’s truly an irritating album in its being blatantly, explicitly, and deliberately conservative: it doesn’t accept, admit, or consider at all research, originality, evolution, or expression as uniqueness. No, Dream Theater claim that form can say everything, but then they miserably contradict themselves because they can’t even achieve the intention of creating a metalinguistic work, which at least has the courage to think about language without demanding a vision of reality. I mean, they even lack the awareness (and the ability) to assert that art is pure language, as Godard said. The worst of the worst. The review, however, is well written.. even if, as if trying to justify itself a priori (who knows why!), it emphasizes more than once that the DT are never an end in themselves and that the continuous convolutions are always functional to expression.. but I don’t read any examples or evidence to support this :-)

I don't know, a bit at the beginning... sometimes it wouldn't post my comment... but now it's fine.

The review is nice, but a bit exaggerated.. I hated and still hate the arrogant bravado of Verdena, but musically speaking, I reassessed them with "solo un grande sasso," which is not as derivative as you claim and, in my opinion, has a perfectly fitting production. This alone doesn’t make it a masterpiece, of course.. but Verdena don’t seem worse or more outdated than many foreign bands praised by the lazy fans you mention, but also by others—bands that are similar to Verdena in attitude/genre (Pseudo-stoner/psycho/grunge/wave, just to be clear).

Jim, is your future wife a fan of the Cure? :-D Just know that I’m expecting you at one of my concerts sooner or later, okay?

I only heard "la caffettiera" on the radio and I really liked it a lot.. I just downloaded the album, I'll let you know in a bit..