"The guitar and bottle kings of Kenya"--sometimes charming, sometimes too charming ("Esiesi Siolle," "Elira Yesu Ndayanza")
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f you believe the true sound of life on planet earth is now worse than bombs bursting midair or runaway trains--more in the direction of scalpel against bone, or the proverbial giant piece of chalk and accoutrements--this CD transfigures the music of our sphere. Some may cringe at the grotesque distortions they extract from their guitars, others at the soprano murmurs that provide theoretical relief. I didn't much go for either myself. But after suitable suffering and peer support, I learned. ... read more

So much more fun than Eno these days ("Little by Little," "Bloom")
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Developed in concert, hence more jammy, less songy and less Yorkey, which is good ("Jigsaw Falling Into Place," "Bodysnatchers").
**

https://robertchristgau.com/xg/rock/radiohead-03.php
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Four from Kid A, three from they forget, and one minor new love song add up to a slightly unhinged live remix album ("National Anthem," "Everything in Its Right Place")
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Makes a lot more sense if you're already feeling down in the mouth ("Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box," "Knives Out")
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I guess the fools who ceded these bummed-out Brits U2's world's-greatest-rock-band slot actually did care about what bigger fool Thom Yorke had to say as well as how he made it sound. Why else the controversy over this bag of sonics? Me, I'm so relieved Yorke's doing without lyrics. Presaging too damn much but no more a death knell for song than OK Computer was for organic life, this is an imaginative, imitative variation on a pop staple: sadness made pretty. Alienated masterpiece nothing--it's ... read more

My favorite Pink Floyd album has always been Wish You Were Here, and you know why? It has soul, that's why--it's Roger Waters's lament for Syd, not my idea of a tragic hero but as long as he's Roger's that doesn't matter. Radiohead wouldn't know a tragic hero if they were cramming for their A levels, and their idea of soul is Bono, who they imitate further at the risk of looking even more ridiculous than they already do. So instead they pickle Thom Yorke's vocals in enough electronic marginal ... read more

Admired by Britcrits, who can't tell whether they're "pop" or "rock," and their record company, which pushed (and shoved) this follow-up until it went gold Stateside, they try to prove "Creep" wasn't a one-shot by pretending that it wasn't a joke. Not that there's anything deeply phony about Thom Yorke's angst--it's just a social given, a mindset that comes as naturally to a '90s guy as the skilled guitar noises that frame it. Thus the words achieve precisely the ... read more

✄ "Creep"

Hip hop intellectuals hype the aesthetic of the new like Harold Rosenberg gone funky, so of course they snort at this dumb loser. It's not that he was sent up for check passing rather than some manly crime like assault (I hope), but that he favors samples everyone recognizes--especially everyone who's memorized the complete works of Tom Browne, either back in the day or by ingesting every rap record in the universe. Me, I'm glad Coolio did that job for me. Nor does it hurt that his smile is ... read more

These boys are learning a trade in record time--even the sludgy numbers get crazy. Too bad the two real whompers are attached to rockstar lyrics, albeit clever ones, because Steve Tyler has a gift for the dirty line as well as the dirty look--anybody who can hook a song called "Adam's Apple" around the phrase "love at first bite" deserves to rehabilitate a blue blues like "Big Ten Inch Record."

These prognathous New Englanders are musicianly (all things are relative) inheritors of the Grand Funk principle: if a band is going to be dumb, it might as well be American dumb. Here they're loud and cunning enough to provide a real treat for the hearing-impaired, at least on side one. Have a sense of humor about themselves, too, assuming "Lord of the Thighs" is intended as a joke. With dumb bands it's always hard to tell.

💣 (Dud)

A career downhill--hear Martin Fry turn into the disco whore he begins by parodying so lovingly ("The Look of Love," "S.O.S.")
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✄ "Got to Give It Up"

😐 (Neither)

Tough-guy sentimentality is an old story in American culture, but self-pity this rank is usually reserved for teen romances and tales of brave avant-gardists callously rejected by the mass media. His I-love-Mom rings true because Mom was no saint, and his respect for old G's seems genuine, probably because they told him how smart he was. But whether the metaphor be dead homies or suicide threat, the subtext of his persecution complex is his self-regard. What's doubly galling is that these are ... read more

Not Afrocentric enough to hear this indubitably progressive pastiche as a groove album, I cut-by-cutted it, and I'm glad I did. Though most of the second "side" remains subtler than is by any means necessary, it has more good songs on it than any neutral observer will believe without trying: the Afrogallic "Luck of Lucien," the slumming "After Hours," the cholesterol-conscious "Ham 'n' Eggs," the lustful "Bonita Appleburn," the safe-sex ... read more