Joni Mitchell is something of a shape shifter. Starting out in the ’60s writing simple but sophisticated and beautiful folk tunes, she soon took to folk rock and then surprised many by turning to jazz in the mid ‘70s. Her albums Ladies of the Canyon and Blue are legendary for bringing the world songs like “Big Yellow Taxi,” “Woodstock,” and “A Case of You.” Her mid to late “70s output is not as instantly recognizable to the general public but still sold well and is revered by many. Mitchell signed to Geffen Records in the early ‘80s, along with her oft-compared to Canadian folkie genius Neil Young (I will be covering one of Neil’s albums from the Geffen era as well, Landing on Water, soonish). Her first album for the label, Wild Things Run Fast, showed Mitchell moving towards a contemporary pop style, but I don’t think anyone was prepared for what they would find on 1985’s Dog Eat Dog. Music critics were mixed with their opinions of the album: Robert Christgau gives it a B+, but focuses on the lyrics, not the music. Rolling Stone calls it an “unpleasant listen” music-wise and of the lyrics: “her social criticisms are merely the sort of bloodless liberal homilies you would expect from Rush.” Ouch. In terms of chart position, Dog Eat Dog made it to #63, the lowest since her 1968 debut.

Before dropping the needle on the vinyl, one can get a sense of what this album is going to sound like just by looking at the cover. We see Joni in a totally ‘80’s striped sleeves-rolled-up blazer and teased hair, either really groovin’ to a beat or infuriated about something. There is no better way to sum up what this album is about; Mitchell is completely immersed in the ‘80’s pop sound fashionable at the time, and she is mad as hell about everything going on in the world around her.

Let’s talk about the music first: with a whopping 4 producers working on the sound of the album including Mitchell, Larry Klein, who was also Mitchell’s husband at the time, Thomas Dolby of “She Blinded Me With Science” fame, and Mike Shipley, who has worked with artists as diverse as AC/DC and Shania Twain, Dog Eat Dog sounds unlike anything I could’ve expected to hear in a Joni Mitchell album. The production on this album is astonishingly perfectly horrible. It sounds so much like a stereotypical ‘80s synthesizer laden popfest, it’s hard to believe at times that the whole thing’s not a big joke, a satire of what popular music had become at that point in time. This is not the case, though; just another musical icon trying to keep up with the trends of the time. Listening to the first track, “Good Friends,” which is a duet with white soulster Michael McDonald, I can vividly see the opening credits to a cheesy ‘80s brat pack film or something being set to it. There are weird keyboard things going on all over the place; at times I couldn’t identify a single “real” instrument being played, other than maybe a highly processed bass. It’s awful, and yet these songs drilled themselves into my brain in a way that I have not experienced in a long time. The first time I listened to the album was on the bus heading to work, and as soon as lunch break rolled around, I needed to listen to this thing again. I probably listened to the whole album 5 times in the first 48 hours of being exposed to it, and several of the songs – “Good Friends,” “The Three Great Stimulants,” “Shiny Toys,” played on an endless loop in my brain for days and days afterwards. Something about the melodies or the instrumentation affixed itself to my little grey cells and wouldn’t let go.

Now let’s talk about the lyrics. Joni Mitchell is known as a vaguely political person who happens to be a musician – “Big Yellow Taxi” has some things to say about culture and big business, for sure, but that song is not representative of her songwriting at the time, or at any time in her career. Mostly, Mitchell writes about herself. She writes about her loves, her losses, her state of mind. She’s not a political songwriter, for the most part. On Dog Eat Dog, however, 8 of the album’s 10 songs are overtly political and not just in a general “I hate what the world has turned into, times have changed” sort of a way. “Tax Free” is about televangelists and their thieving ways; “Shiny Toys” is a pointed attack on consumerism; “Fiction” refers to the image conscious ways of the yippie-yuppies and the mixed messages being thrown at society from TV. Television is a definite leit-motif of this album, with 5 of the album’s 10 songs at least referencing the tube.

There are good political songwriters and bad political songwriters. The trick of writing a good political song is to weave your opinion or the point you’re trying to make into an interesting story, or to dress it up in such a way that the words sound good together. Bad political songwriters tend to spew their opinions forth with no regard to poetry or storytelling. Mitchell tends to purge her thoughts to the page with no attempts to clean up the mess. Take this, from “Tax Free”: “Preaching love like vengeance/preaching love like hate/calling for large donations/promising estates.” Yeah, it rhymes, but there’s nothing interesting there. Sometimes the lyrics made me laugh out loud, like this gem from “Shiny Toys”: “Party night/Good bands all over town/(good good good)/Mega lights and supersonic sounds.” When coupled with the ridiculously over-enthusiastic music, it is seriously comical. The worst of the worst in terms of lyrical content is the snail-paced dirge “Ethiopia.” I’ll give you one guess as to the topic – and the one word chorus. Also worth mentioning for their weirdness are the spoken word inserts that pop up from time to time. In “Shiny Toys,” every once in a while they (I’m guessing Dolby is the culprit here) throw in a clip of somebody saying “I love my Porsche.” In “Fiction,” a slowed down robotic voice says “TRUTH” in a Russian accent, followed by a screeching Mitchell singing “fiction.” Even though these bits and pieces seem out of place and random, it works to form the absolutely bizarre listening experience that is Dog Eat Dog.

OK, so in sum, the music is tacky and horribly produced, with none of the complexity we’ve heard from Mitchell in the past. The lyrics are obvious, hokey, and blatant as hell. So why do I think this album is brilliant in its own way? Well, I referenced it above, when I mentioned that I wished that this album was conceived as a satire of ‘80’s music and culture. But just because Dog Eat Dog was created with a straight face doesn’t negate its being a fascinating time capsule. If somebody awoke from a coma and missed the decade of the 1980’s, I would give them a copy of this and say, “that’s it in a nutshell.” I think they’d get a great picture of what was going on in politics and pop music. It’s so of its time, as Paul McCartney would say (see Press To Play review), that it’s fascinating when looking back at 25 years later. I also feel that this album has an appeal that many other Joni Mitchell albums don’t have: for one, it’s not about her! For those who are not interested in album after album about Mitchell’s love life, her dreams and desires, there’s this breath of fresh air. Also, it doesn’t have the trademark Joni Mitchell high-singing that puts off many. If you have any interest at all in revisiting ‘80’s pop culture, I urge you to pick this one up. You’ll probably hate it, but in a fascinating way.

I haven’t decided what I will delve into next – Neil Young’s Landing on Water, Frank Zappa’s Thing-Fish, and Liz Phair’s self titled album are all in the running.

Sonic Youth - NYC Ghosts & Flowers

Do I really have to write an introduction for this post? It’s fucking Sonic Youth, man! Formed in NYC in 1981; Thurston Moore was heavily influenced by the revolutionary guitar noise of Glenn Branca; Steve Ranaldo was a part of Branca’s guitar ensemble and joined with Moore and Kim Gordon. The band went through a couple of drummers until finding Steve Shelley, who has been with the band since ’85. SY is responsible for influencing bands that came after them, such as Pixies and Nirvana, and older acts like Neil Young to get in touch with his punky feedback-utilizing side. Sonic Youth are responsible for producing many masterpieces, from 1988’s Daydream Nation, to 1995’s Washing Machine, to this year’s The Eternal. One of the most controversial outings of the band’s career is 2000’s NYC Ghosts & Flowers. Lauded by some critics and completely trashed by others (Robert Christgau said that the album was “more beautiful than anything on Washing Machine” while Pitchfork gave it a brutal 0 out of 10), this was an album I HAD to look into.

NYC Ghosts & Flowers comes with a back story that may or may not be important to consider when trying to understand the music, but is always included in critiques or written histories of the album. In July of 1999, all of the band’s gear was stolen, leaving them to start from scratch with new instruments. Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo make such remarkable and otherworldly noises emanate from their guitars that it is abundantly clear they must have strong bonds with their instruments. Faced with the prospect of breaking in new equipment, it seems the band went back to its roots in some ways and started making greater use of “prepared instrument” techniques. This involves manipulating a guitar with foreign objects – screwdrivers, knitting needles, wire, etc, to change the guitar’s timbre. According to our good friend Wikipedia, this technique had not been used by the Youth so extensively since 1985’s Bad Moon Rising. That being said, what stands out much more than the guitar playing is the lyrics. While Sonic Youth’s lyrics have historically ranged from very pop oriented in style (“My Friend Goo”) to the more abstract and poetic (), this album takes the band’s passion for beat poetry to its extreme and manifests itself in all aspects of the album - the cover art is a William S. Burroughs piece, for example. On many of the tracks, the lyrics don’t sound connected to the music at all. Sometimes this works great, other times not so great. The album starts off with its best track, and one of my all time favorite Sonic Youth songs. “Free City Rhymes” fades in with some atonal guitar notes texturally intertwined, gradually building with drums floating in at one point. After it reaches a breaking point at about two minutes in, the song changes completely – kind of like going from black and white to Technicolor. The music is warm, soft and inviting, with Moore singing about ghosts passing time. Sonic Youth can do loud and howling like no one else can, but I am glad that they allow themselves to channel their softer side as well, because it produces masterpieces like this one.

Track two, “Renegade Princess,” doesn’t work nearly as well. Thurston and Kim spit seemingly nonsense 3 syllable phrases (“jet black hair/tangled hair/blood inside,” etc) in whiny, affected voices that irritate the hell out of me. After this first part, things get way more tolerable as the song evolves into a more recognizable Sonic Youth rockin’ sound. “Nevermind (What Was It Anyway)” has Kim speak/singing, eventually screeching the lyrics “Boys go to jupiter/get more stupider/girls go to mars/become rock stars.” Kinda silly and slightly out of place but she makes it work.

“Small Flowers Crack Concrete” is the album’s most explicit beat poetry reading set to music. I have never had the opportunity to see Sonic Youth play live, but I did go to a benefit in which Thurston Moore read some of his poetry and talked about the poets he has been inspired by. It was a very interesting performance; Moore’s passion for poetry was evident, but the crowd wasn’t having it. A young girl kept screaming “Where’s Kim?” and song requests were shouted out throughout his time on stage. At the end, he acquiesced and with an acoustic guitar performed “Psychic Hearts” and a few SY songs. “Small Flowers Crack Concrete” works; Moore is a good poet, and his words in this track are both affective and memorable. The music holds things together for this song but isn’t particularly interesting, and that’s probably the way it should be. He lays on the beat poet mythology pretty thick with lines like “narcotic squads sweep through poet dens…the narcs beat the bearded oracles /replacing tantric love with/complete violence.” If you can let yourself get into it, it’s pretty cool.

The next track, “Side2Side,” is not very cool. It’s not much of anything, and absolutely does not hold up when removed from the context of this album. Kim Gordon presents us with a ridiculously long list of things that appear random – binoculars, shoes, records, blah, blah, blah. They don’t bother to reproduce this list in the lyric booklet. My guess is they’re going for a mood piece, but it fails to elicit anything out of me. “StreamXSonik Subway” is a quick burst of energetic punky noise that is much more familiar to Sonic Youth fans’ ears, and it is a welcome switch-up at this point in the album. Then comes Lee Ranaldo’s songwriting contribution, with the album’s title track. Ranaldo’s songwriting style lends itself so well to this album, it’s a shame that he couldn't have contributed a couple more songs. On other SY albums where his spoken word tracks stand out like a sore thumb, like “Skip Tracer” on Washing Machine, (albeit a beautiful and enjoyable sore thumb) “NYC Ghosts and Flowers” fits in seamlessly here. The album ends with a lo gurgle in “Lightnin’,” with the simple lyrics “lightnin’ strikes me down” repeated by Gordon. On their 2000 tour supporting this album, “Lightnin’” was used as their encore, and I’ll bet it worked quite well.

Though the album has extremely distinct highs and lows, it works as a very cohesive whole and is digested easiest in one sitting. I think this is why my review took so long to be written. The more time I spent listening to these songs, the more I wanted to listen and let my opinions form. This also accounts for the tone of the critical reviews upon the album’s release. The Pitchfork reviewer reacted so negatively to the self-indulgent style some of the lyrics took on, while Robert Christgau fell in love with the beauty of “Free City Rhymes,” when in reality neither review is particularly accurate. Both of these aspects work in part to form an album that is experimental in ways no other Sonic Youth album has been before or since its release. In addition, the material is so dense; I have used over 1,000 words here and never managed to mention the introduction of Jim O’Rourke’s production and the electronic textures he brought with him for this release. I was so interested in the direction the lyrics took, I still don’t feel I have a firm grip on all that is going on with the music.

But I must sum this up. Most of these tracks would not end up on a Sonic Youth’s Greatest Hits album (please let there never be such an abomination!) and in general this album will never be listened to by me as much as Washing Machine or Sonic Nurse but I am so glad it exists, and hope that every SY fan will pick up a copy and listen with an open mind. It is a difficult and worthwhile trip.

Whoo! I am exhausted. Next up, Joni Mitchell’s Dog Eat Dog.

R.E.M. - Around The Sun

R.E.M. was one of the most important bands of the 1980s and one of the most popular of the 1990s. So what mark did they leave on the past decade, if any? Stipe & Co. have released 3 albums since 2000, starting with Reveal in 2001, following it in 2004 with Around The Sun and releasing Accelerate in 2008. Many say that the band slid steadily downhill following the departure of drummer Bill Berry. This mudslide to mediocrity reputedly started with 1998’s Up and ended with the soupy puddle known as Around The Sun. R.E.M. found their rock again for last year’s Accelerate, but the consensus is that the band still hasn’t regained what they had with fillintheblankwithyourfavorite80sor90sR.E.M.albumhere. Being a casual admirer of R.E.M.’s radio tunes and not much more, I was curious about how I would find Around The Sun. Horrifying disappointment? Boring throwaway? Misunderstood masterpiece?

The most interesting tidbit I found pertaining to this album was a quote from R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck: “ [Around The Sun] just wasn't really listenable, because it sounds like what it is, a bunch of people that are so bored with the material that they can't stand it anymore.” I found this quote to be only partially true – I would agree with the fact that you can detect some boredom in these songs, from the arrangements to the lyrics to Stipe’s voice. I strongly disagree that the album is unlistenable; in fact, if I had one word to wrap up my opinion of the album as a whole, I might use “listenable.” R.E.M. give us no surprises with this record, that’s for sure. But that’s not to say that this isn’t a pleasant album to have around. It’s good background music. I imagine all hardcore R.E.M. fans are now projectile vomiting on their computer screens. But all superfans expect more out of their favorite band then they have any right to.

Things start off with “Leaving New York,” a song very representative of the album: moderately paced, no one element standing out. The song is mildly depressing, about losing someone you love and being alone. This feeling of isolation is a theme that will reappear several times throughout the album. For me, things were at their worst with track three, “The Outsiders.” The song is about an unidentified upsetting event that the narrator learns of, and wondering about the aftereffects of said event. Rapper Q-Tip is here with a guest spot, sounding lamer and more uninspired than ever. I have talked here before about the role of the guest musician usually being to drum up publicity for the album, adding their name more than a musical mark. Here I am sure that Q-Tip participated because both parties were interested in collaborating, but the result just doesn’t work. Even if Q-Tip could’ve come up with something interesting to say, it would’ve been wasted on such a bland cheesy sounding track. I think this is a good time to bring up the keyboards peppering this album. Why is R.E.M. using a keyboard to fake string arrangements? Spring for a real string section if that’s what you’re going for. What’s with the intermittent blip-bloops? And if you want to use a piano sound for a song, find a piano!

The album has an interesting arc to it; tracks 4-7 are all at least decent and sometimes really great. “Make it All Okay” has a catchy lyric structure and sounds like a cross between folk rock and a power ballad. “The Final Straw” is the most overtly political song on the album, pretty much directed solely at then-president Bush and his oppressive regime. The song works, but the next song, “I Wanted To Be Wrong,” is a much more effective and interesting protest song in my opinion. The lyrics describe the phony flag waving SUV driving post-9/11 patriotism surge very accurately without being so blatant as to beat you over the head. Lyrics like “Salute Apollo 13 from the rattle jewelry seats” made me smile. Things continue to be enjoyable with the jaunty pop of “Wanderlust” and then get a little dreary with “Boy In The Well.” It’s too long and not too much happens, but it’s very easy listening with a chorus likely to get caught in your head. I really enjoy the lyrics to “Aftermath,” a song about just that, the aftermath of the loss of a loved one: confusion and pain making way for the rediscovery of self. From there on, things get pretty same-y sounding; the next three tracks tend to blend together, especially if you’re not paying close attention. The album closes with its title track, a decent but unmemorable tune.

One of my favorite rock critics, Jim DeRogatis, wrote a small article last year in response to his 2004 review of Around The Sun. The initial review was a positive one; he claimed the album was “better than anything R.E.M. has recorded in a decade. “ In his 2008 article, DeRogatis explains that while he stands by his assertions, even going so far as to say that Around The Sun was better than anything the band had released since 1992’s Automatic For The People, he now finds Around The Sun a “dreadfully dull” album and says that he would probably be okay never hearing it again. This is an issue that the majority of the most prolific and important bands face: living up to your back catalog. Sometimes a group or artist simply runs out of things to say or new musical statements to make; this is not to say that a band isn’t still producing good music, but if you’ve made 4 or 5 masterpieces, does good cut it? I guess there isn’t a clear-cut answer. For me, this album was a pleasure to listen to and although like Mr. DeRogatis I may not have the urge to take this album off the shelf and listen to it front to back, there are definitely songs I will return to. Check out “Leaving New York,” “I Wanted To Be Wrong,” and “Aftermath” for starters, and give the whole album a listen if you get the chance.

Next on my list: Sonic Youth’s 2000 NYC Ghosts and Flowers, followed by Dog Eat Dog by Joni Mitchell.

Paul McCartney - Press To Play

The first half of the 1980s were something of a roller coaster ride for Sir Paul McCartney. He started the decade by breaking off from his wildly successful second band, Wings, and put out a weird little album he recorded at home, McCartney II. Then came Tug of War, which included the hits "Take It Away" and "Ebony and Ivory," a duet with Stevie Wonder. The album made #1 in the US and UK. He followed it with the less popular but still profitable Pipes of Peace, which featured the duet with Michael Jackson "Say Say Say." Then came Give My Regards to Broad Street, the film Paul penned himself and also starred in. It was panned by the critics, and considered by the public and McCartney himself as a flop.

McCartney decided he needed a change, and wanted to update his sound, apparently. He enlisted the help of Dave Stewart of 10cc and they co-wrote 6 of the songs that ended up on Press to Play. The album was co-produced by Hugh Padgham, who had worked one David Bowie’s Let’s Dance and Genesis’ Invisible Touch. The album did worse than any other solo McCartney or Wings album in the US, not reaching gold record status and only making it to 30 on the charts. It was marginally better received in the U.K. Critics’ reviews are mixed; Rolling Stone’s Anthony Decurtis called the album “one of the sturdiest LPs of McCartney’s post-Beatles career” in his 1986 review. I poked around to try and find more recent reviews to see how other people felt this album held up and couldn’t find much of anything – so let me get down to it!

I should disclose that the Beatles have always been my favorite band. I own all of Paul McCartney’s albums in one form or another, and I have had a vinyl copy of Press To Play since I was in 4^th or 5^th grade. I have listened to bits and pieces over the years; mostly it has collected dust. The album is hard to approach, as it sounds so incredibly dated. All the songs have that awful gated drum sound (which Hugh Padgham is credited with creating, at least by Wikipeda!), the corny keyboards. Windchimes abound. If you are able to push past it and listen for the actual music, you come up with a couple interesting songs worth spending some time with. The first song, “Stranglehold,” is a fun rock song with a strong driving acoustic guitar part underneath everything else. This song would’ve been great if it had been arranged and recorded in a more straightforward manner. The next track, “Good Times Comin’/Feel The Sun” would’ve been an enjoyable throwaway track on an album like Venus and Mars or even Back To The Egg, but again, that production takes things down several notches and makes it less fun to listen to. “Footprints” was the initial standout track for me on this album. It is quieter, with some acoustic instruments and the words painting a portrait of a man nearing the end of his life, finding a kind of peace in quiet solitude. This is what McCartney does best, in my opinion – rich and vivid character sketches as in “Eleanor Rigby,” “Another Day,” and the more recent “Mr. Bellamy.”

“Press” was the album’s first and most successful single. A music video was made for the song, featuring Paul riding London’s “tube” system lip-synching the words to the unsuspecting commuters. It’s a cute pop song, catchy and harmless. It overstays its welcome, clocking in at almost five minutes, and has some pretty weird lyrics (what is “Oklahoma was never like this” supposed to mean, anyway?) but overall is an okay track.

Press To Play also contains some of McCartney’s most pretentious and awful songs ever put to tape. “Pretty Little Head” finds Paul singing about hillmen coming down from the lava and Ursas major and minor. Most likely an experiment in obnoxious electronic sounds of the time that was allowed to go waaaaay too far - the song was released as a single and had a music video made for it. The video was added as a part of The McCartney Years DVD set; McCartney says in a commentary track for the video something to the effect of “the song sounds very much of its’ time.” I suppose that’s one way of putting it. The low point of the album and probably my most hated Paul McCartney song of all time is “Talk More Talk.” I would almost advise you to purchase the album just to hear how bad this song is, but I am simply not that cruel. The track is peppered with the speeded up and slowed down voices of Linda and their son, James, talking about grey flannel suits and biodegradable spaceships. The chorus consists of the words “talk more talk, chat more chat” repeated several times. The sound of the song is so obnoxious, everything that is bad about ‘80s production pushed to its’ furthest extreme. Of course, it is the longest song on the album, clocking in at almost 5’30”.

Several guest musicians appear on the album, namely Pete Townshend and Phil Collins playing on the track “Angry.” The song is just O.K., the most interesting thing about it being that the aforementioned musicians are playing on it. As noted in my last entry for Bob Dylan’s Under The Red Sky, it seems like guest musicians are brought in often for their names, to make the liner notes interesting; such is the case here.

Press To Play was an album that sounded pretty good to some upon it’s release; Geoffrey Guliano in his book Blackbird: The Life and Times of Paul McCartney calls the record a “ten track opus” of “creatively intense soul searching,” and somehow finds it “well constructed and flawlessly produced.” For me without a doubt, the most flawed aspect of this album is the horrendously dated production aesthetic. In most cases the songwriting is not strong enough to hold its own against the grating arrangements, thus making for mostly bad music. I could’ve probably gone on for another thousand words with this entry, as McCartney is one of my top three favorite songwriters, and I can find something to love about each and every one of his tunes. But objectively, I can say this album is not very good. I wouldn’t recommend anyone purchase it unless you are a seriously diehard McCartney fan, in which case you probably already own it. You could download “Stranglehold,” as you will get the best of the songwriting along with a good picture of how the album as a whole sounds, as well as the video edit of “Press” if you can find it. To close, a quote from the man himself, from Guliano’s book: “It didn’t really work out as well as I wanted it to, although we did a couple of nice things. But it wasn’t a very successful album.”

Next up: REM’s 2004 Around The Sun.

Bob Dylan - Under the Red Sky

Bob Dylan is one of the most influential musical artists of the past century. His career has been quite prolific, releasing 33 studio albums, a handful of live discs and several greatest hits collections. His releases have been known to cause much controversy, and several of his albums are hated by most - Self Portrait, Saved, pretty much all the '80s albums besides Infidels and Oh Mercy. I may get to some of these other ones later, but I thought it would be interesting to first look at Under the Red Sky. More than being hated or the subject of controversy, this album tends to kind of just get forgotten about. This is surprising, as the previous album, Oh Mercy, is loved by most and was shocking upon release - many had given up on Dylan producing great and important music. So why did the follow up to a master work get swept under the rug in such a fashion?
I think that one reason this album tends to get lost in the shuffle is the production - Don Was produced, and put a glossy sheen over everything, including Dylan's raspy voice - who even knew such a thing could be possible? The album is all about the cameos, with Elton John, George Harrison, and Slash among the guests in the studio. None of the instrumentation particularly stands out, so I can only imagine that the reason these superstars were included was to generate publicity for the album. If only they had put the effort on showcasing Dylan's songs, the album would've fared much better. Dylan complained after making this album that here were way too many people in the studio, too much going on.
Dylan’s discomfort during these sessions was palpable – Slash complained that Dylan was “really impolite” and that he “didn’t really have a good time” during the recording. Al Kooper, responsible for the legendary organ part on “Like a Rolling Stone,” as well as lots and lots and lots of other stuff during his career, called Under the Red Sky “the hood album” because Dylan wore a sweatshirt with the hood up for the entirety of the sessions and pretty much completely closed himself off. Maybe that is why the arrangements are off; it is hard to say whether the blame should be placed on Was for interpreting the material thusly or Dylan himself, who may have felt pressure to put out another album to quickly follow up the success of Oh Mercy.
Several of the songs are nursery rhyme-ish, explained by critics as being inspired by or written for his then young daughter. “Wiggle Wiggle” is quite reminiscent of the “Wilbury Twist,” if you ask me. The title track could’ve been more interesting if he had used the nursery rhyme motif as a starting point and not sticking to it so much, or maybe if it had been played in the blues style it is written in. “2 x 2” is seemingly about something profound, but the “1, 2 buckle my shoe” lyric structure takes away from the poignancy, and lazy rhymes like “Three by three, they're turning the key, Four by four, they turn it some more” are kind of inexcusable. There are some highlights, though. “Unbelievable” has some fun word play and a nice feel to it. Interestingly, it is the only track on the album with no guest cameos. “God Knows” is a great song. Was, Dylan and the other musicians have got the sound just right, a cruisin’ Rock n’ Roll tune with a strong chord progression. So why do they fade out seemingly in the middle of the track? Look up the alternate version of this song found on Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs to hear how the song should’ve been. Other standouts include “Handy Dandy” which is a story song similar to the more recent “Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee” and “Cat’s in the Well,” a straight-up blues song that Dylan still pulls out in live performances.
Overall, the reason Under the Red Sky is often forgotten about today is that it’s not bad enough to be hated and not good enough to be interesting. If you ever see a copy in a bargain bin, I would advise you to pick it up and enjoy the stronger tracks on the album. Otherwise, head over to Itunes and purchase “Handy Dandy,” “Unbelievable,” and “Cat’s in the Well.”
Next up: Paul McCartney’s 1986 Press To Play.

The Concept

I came up with the idea for this blog and then did a little pokin' around on the net to find that there had been a couple of top 10 lists on the subject but no in-depth research and no blogs devoted to the topic that I could come up with, anyways. The idea was largely inspired (stolen?) by Nathan Rabin's AV Club feature "My Year of Flops." Kudos goes out to my sis for encouragement.
The idea is this: even within the most impressive musical catalogs, there are bound to be some duds. Any artist or band who manages to stick around for a while will occasionally miss their stride and put out a clunker, a bomb, a reviled piece of crap. My aim with this blog is to revisit some of the least liked albums by the most liked rock artists/bands.
I acknowlege that the pronouncement of a bad album is subjective. I hope to look not only at the absolute lowest point in an artist's career, like, say, Empire Burlesque, but also at the albums that had high expectations that fell flat - Under the Red Sky, for example. So when selecting an album, I intend to look at the album's expectations, critical opinion, album sales, and, if available, the opinion of said album by the artist. I have sat down and created a list of albums to ingest, and if anybody out there has suggestions for me, I would be glad to take them.
First up: the aforementioned Under the Red Sky, by Bob Dylan.