pretazzo

Scandal is a bit of the prototype of Show must go on... Rain must fall and My baby does me are just decent... anyway, yes, a nice album, all things considered. Davide, there's just one thing I didn't understand: ..... "RAIN MUST FALL", "MY BABY DOES ME", "HANG ON IN THERE" but also "SCANDAL" manage to be CONNOTATIVE, something that the Queen couldn't do anymore since 1976, that is with "A day at the races"..... What do you mean??!! :-)

Beautiful and essential as its illustrious predecessor (Surfer Rosa). 15 tracks, each more successful than the last, none bordering on banality; a treasure trove of ideas scattered throughout the album, with no trace of exhibitionism or intellectualism. So much humor, so much disillusionment, but also so much creativity. Between the thunderous and feverish power-pop of Wave of Mutilation, Gouge Away, and No13 Baby, the ferocity of Tame (pure heart-stopping!) and Debaser (THE OFFICIAL ANTHEM OF THIS SITE :-DDDDDD, featuring a Black Francis more beast than man and an unstoppable rhythm) emerges. But the more eccentric, more irregular Pixies can be found elsewhere, in the extravagant progression of Bleed (which starts off drunk and ends up agonizing) and in the sharp harmonic concentration called Dead. Then there's a whole "silly" front, borrowing (parodying) blues stylistic elements (the slide in Silver, filled with out-of-tuneness, siren songs on funereal cadences), tex-mex (There goes my gun), garage (Here comes your man), reggae (Mr Grieves, which then launches into a wild cow-punk dance), and awayani (Hey). If Crackity Jones makes you pogo hard, Monkey lets one fall into the resigned mood of one of the most beautiful indie-rock ballads (with a refined arrangement), jolted by Francis's scream after the famous words "If man is five...". The award for the most irrational track goes to La la love you, where whistles and crooning overlap under the banner of the most proverbial indolence...God, how much I've written!!! It's the Pixies' fault; they get to me big time! :-)

Ridiculous review, hitting its nadir with this horrendous remark: "Chuck Schuldiner (who died of brain cancer at only thirty, because the American system fills the pockets of dementia monsters like Reznor but does not provide public healthcare)." Really in bad taste. The album is a compendium of 90s industrial rock. A masterpiece of assembling disparate sound sources (acoustic, electric, electronic) into homogeneous musical forms. In albums like this one (and other masterpieces from the 90s, from this and other genres), what makes the difference is not what is performed "live," but the way it is manipulated and organized in the recording studio.

A seminal album for all 90s indie rock. The Pixies are one of those few bands that rewrote the DNA of rock, inventing a new song form, a new way to use the rhythm section, vocals, and guitar counterpoints. Perhaps the Pixies represent the "definitive" garage rock. (Kosmo, we're waiting for your comment for...uh...three years!!!)

Wild yet captivating review: for this, I forgive you for the jab at VU&Nico :-D "Come on pilgrim" deserves to be listed among the great EPs of the 80s American Underground, alongside the debuts of bands like Minor Threat and Squirrel Bait. My favorites are: "Isla de Incanta," which takes my breath away; "Nimrod Son," one of the masterpieces of cow-punk; "Holyday Song," which makes me think of vacation preparations; "Levitate me," one of their most intriguing compositions; "I've been tired," the first song by the Pixies I ever heard: I loved it immediately.

Jealousy, technically cheesy?! Let me entertain you, no pretenses??!! More of that jazz, classic hard-rock???!!! Oh my God... What can I say about this LP? As a die-hard fan of the Queen, I've always found the critics' attitude towards this sparkling album hysterical; it’s the band’s brightest record, an album that managed to give us the most eccentric AOR of the era, completely overshadowing the renowned self-titled debut of Boston (1976)... Let’s admit it: which other top-charting band has managed to gift us with extravagant, baroque, unpredictable tracks like Mustapha and Bicycle Race (the latter much closer to the world of opera buffa than rock'n'roll)? And a hard-rock sound that is tight, pyrotechnic, and sophisticated like that of Dead on Time would be nothing but a dream for any Van Halen!!! Then there’s the melancholic yet graceful Jealousy; an explosive, syncopated, uncontrollable Let Me Entertain You (where all of Mercury's compositional and interpretative genius shines in a hard context); a super cool vocal duet between Roger and Freddie in the funk-rock Fun It, a delightful leap into the past with the blues Dreamers Ball (exquisite and inspired guitar work by May), and then the most beautiful of all, DON'T STOP ME NOW, one of my favorite tracks, the best remedy against depression, a true burst of life, to say the least invigorating, in fact overwhelming... God bless the Queen!

It's always a pleasure to read with RegularJoan... especially when the '80s nostalgia operation kicks in (Algebra Suicide teaches us well)... I take this opportunity to compliment Regular for the profile and the blog (I don't usually like blogs, but this one is truly special, different from the others...).

So, where were we? Ah, the first two are amazing (especially Party), then there are four singles that are a bit scary: Miracle (you either love it or hate it); I Want it All (one of their latest classics, featuring an energized May); Breakthru (for me, the best track on the album); Invisible Man (iconic video for a song that sounds like it’s from Ghostbusters). The last part of the album is less convincing. This is one of the 18-carat Queen masterpieces: take it or leave it. Either it captivates you or disgusts you.

@Antonio: in my opinion, what appears as "elementary" in the Hawkwind tracks are the compositions (riffs, bass lines, etc...); their strength has been to develop these simple ideas into dense, chaotic, complex, layered constructs... I find myself agreeing, after all, that in certain aspects, their proposal had a touch of naivety (in the good sense of the term)...

Botanna, so much fluff in gray... Insults, controversies, clamor: and in the meantime, poor Alfredo is rolling in his grave... He knew how to charm... The album is overly redundant, there's everything! Hard rock, orchestra, synths, corozzi: a melting pot. The first part is really beautiful. The initial one-two takes your breath away (what do Sleeping on The Sidewalk and Spread Your Wings have to do with this??!! Who knows...)... I'll carry on after dinner is ready...