Three worthy albums

Let me just say that 2011 has NOT been the year for new music that 2010 was. Don't get me wrong, there's still plenty out there worth listening to, but as far as album releases go, I haven't been all that inspired. Granted, last summer was a tough act to follow. The one-two punch of new Scissor Sisters and Kylie Minogue - and the fact that they actually delivered - started things off right. A handful of great singles from Marina & The Diamonds, Keane and Goldfrapp (among others) rounded out the edges.

I suppose it didn't help that the Stevie Nicks album was so anticlimactic. I keep thinking I'll go back to it and give it another try, but in so many places, it just doesn't sound like Stevie. Thankfully, there have been some album releases that have caught my attention. Here are three that are in heavy rotation right now.

Sophie Ellis-Bextor / Make A Scene
Let's get one thing out of the way - Sophie is not much of an album artist. Like Bananarama, I think of her more for memorable songs rather than albums. Yes, pretty much everything on Make A Scene sounds the same. Even though I've listened to it many times, I still have a hard time knowing what the song is without looking at my iPod. This, however, is not a bad thing when you make dance-pop music with as much reckless abandon as Sophie Ellis-Bextor. Even though she's one of those people that, when I'm listening to her, I find myself wondering "exactly HOW are you famous?" I don't really care.

This album doesn't deviate terribly from the formula that made Trip The Light Fantastic a damn fun listen back in 2006. Again, if it isn't broken, why fix it? I think the thing that endears me most to Sophie is her very pronounced British accent in her singing. It's not "Heartbreak Make Me A Dancer", it's "Heartbreak Make Me A DAHNCER." Any "-ance" word you can think of Sophie turns into an "-ahnce" word. Highlights for me are the previously mentioned "Heartbreak Make Me A Dancer", "Homewrecker", "Off & On", and "Not Giving Up On Love." She won't win any awards for variety, but for pure pop dance fun, you can't go wrong with Sophie.

Lady Gaga / Born This Way
The year's most hyped album was bound to disappoint, right? Well, it depends on your expectations. If you were expecting a masterpiece and piece of Very Important Work from Born This Way, then yes, you were probably disappointed. It's not your fault entirely though, because that's how Lady Gaga has been billing it since February. But if, instead, you were just expecting a very solid pop album, then your prayers were answered. Yes, the Gaga album is solid, with only a few throwaway tracks - and even some of those are growing on me. I initially liked the ubiquitous title track, and then really didn't like it very much. I've always kind of felt that the problem with "Born This Way" the song is its production. Too clunky, not sleek enough. It kind of broke under its own self-importance. Some of the remixes, the Grum remix in particular, took care of this little problem. "Judas" was kind of a misfire, but works better as the album track it probably should have stayed. But there are so many great pop songs on Born This Way. I'm not going to review it - many have done so much better than I ever could - but for me, the standout song is "Electric Chapel" in which Gaga channels Debbie Harry, the woman to whom all the female divas owe at least a small debt of gratitude. Other favorites include "Hair", "The Edge of Glory" (thumbs down from Heidi, though), and "Government Hooker." Even though Lady Gaga wanted it to change the world, it won't. But it is a great summer record.

Blondie / Panic of Girls
This was the most unexpected fantastic album so far this year. Panic of Girls has been gestating for over a year now. The cover art came out LAST summer. I figured that anything in the can that long has overcooked and won't be any good. It also doesn't help that I have only sort of liked the last two Blondie albums. No Exit was mostly good but befouled by a few really bad songs and I disliked more of The Curse of Blondie than I liked. Debbie's solo work has been equally uneven - 2007's Necessary Evil had some high points but was only okay in the end. So I was more than a little worried about Panic of Girls.

My worry was for nothing. Panic of Girls is easily Blondie's tightest and most focused record in ages. It's accessible pop but also has a touch of light reggae in it. Debbie, who is 66 freaking years old in a month, sounds just like she did in the late 70s and early 80s. Much like Dolly Parton, her voice has not aged a single bit. The first six songs are among Blondie's finest latter day work and for my money, there isn't really a dud track on the album. Not surprisingly, my favorite tracks on the album come from those first 6 tracks, with the best song on the album being "Love Doesn't Frighten Me." It's so fantastic when a band can come together and deliver an album like this, especially after so many missteps. It's especially reassuring because with Blondie and Debbie Harry (and so many of the artists that I like who are getting a bit long in the tooth), you never know when an album might be their last.

What we really need now is a new Madonna album. It's time for her to come roaring back and show everyone how it's done. But until then, I'm sure these three albums will get plenty of play this summer.

Any old music will do

I blew the virtual dust off of Tina Turner's 1984 comeback album Private Dancer this week. Private Dancer was the first of three albums Tina released in the 80s that I really love - the others being Break Every Rule - my sentimental favorite of the three - and Foreign Affair, which is noticeably inferior but still contains some kick-ass songs. What blew me away listening to to the album almost 30 (!) years is how on this album, they really captured lightning in a bottle. Bucking the trend at the time - and now, for that matter - that women over 40 couldn't have a chart hit, Turner knocked everyone's socks off and then some.

Private Dancer came into my life in much the same way it might have come into many people's lives in the mid 80s - via the Columbia House Record Club. Who in their right mind could resist 12 albums for one lousy penny? It was not one of our initial 12 albums. Rather, we were well into the bait-and-switch portion of the agreement, where you pay twice as much for an album than you would at the store. And who could forget all the selections-of-the-month that you would get that you didn't want because you forgot to return the card declining it? I recall a MAD Magazine article that referred to them as slightly more difficult to get out of than an Iranian jail. I think I was still a member of some form of Columbia House or BMG club well into the 90s. The other notable thing about Private Dancer is that it arrived from Columbia House in the same shipment as Madonna's debut album. Yes, Virginia, there was a time I didn't own everything that woman had produced.

Tina's gravelly voice is not for everybody, but it really did it for me. I didn't care much for "What's Love Got To Do With It" and Tina's mountain of hair. But in the summer of 86 I really dove into the pop music pool, and at the end of that summer, Tina put out her first single from the Break Every Rule album, "Typical Male," and I was very fond of that song. So retroactively, I ordered Private Dancer. Turner's voice is so well suited for the material. The amazing thing about the album is that it is a pop album that is also an R&B album AND a rock album. Turner was not about to be confined by genre. The album was a huge smash hit and spun off a shitload of singles and also fueled other Tina songs on other people's albums and soundtracks.

The song I love most on Private Dancer is "I Might Have Been Queen" - one of the few that was not a single. It's a perfect amalgam of pop and rock and I was glad when it was resurrected for the Tina Turner biopic What's Love Got To Do With It.



Like Stevie Nicks' "Stand Back" it has this energy that comes out of nowhere and just propels the song forward.

The last Tina Turner album I bought was the soundtrack to the previously mentioned What's Love Got To Do With It which featured re-recordings of the old Ike & Tina hits as well as a few new songs. After that, I really kind of tuned out. Even her attempt to Believe herself a la Cher really didn't interest me all that much, although I liked the single "When The Heartache Is Over." I admire the fact that Tina is still out there performing, even though she likely doesn't have to. But for me, I'm happy to remember Tina from the 10 year period in which I really enjoyed her music.

The mention of MAD Magazine made me think of this Tina related item from MAD. I believe the title of the article was "Badly Needed Warning Labels For Rock Albums."

LDS (Latter Day Stevie): The Other Side Of The Mirror

I'm fond of saying that being a fan of Stevie Nicks' solo work would be so easy if her solo output had stopped after three albums. If any set of albums really represents a trifecta, it's her first 3 solo albums: Bella Donna, The Wild Heart, and Rock A Little. While this is not strictly true - 2001's Trouble In Shangri-La came closer to the brilliance of those first three album than anything in the interim - there is something about that set of albums that just really hits the mark. There was a natural trajectory from the acoustic folk of Bella Donna to the synth-laden Rock A Little, with The Wild Heart being an amalgam of the two, almost as if it were the offspring of those two very different albums.

The trouble comes with the albums between Rock A Little and Trouble In Shangri-La. The Other Side of the Mirror (1989) and Street Angel (1994) are really hard to love. As a fan, I feel like I end up making more apologies for them than anything else. They have only a handful of good songs between them, but as albums they really miss the mark to the same extent that the first three hit the mark.

The Other Side of the Mirror is the first of Stevie's albums that I experienced in real time. I remember hearing about it while eating breakfast over MTV on January morning in 1989, with Kurt Loder reporting that it would be released "sometime this year." In podunk Iowa, our primary music retailers were K-Mart, Pamida and the local department store chain (now defunct) Sernett and none of them were ones that you could count on for accurate information on new releases. This was pre-internet and the information was not simply at your fingertips! It was eventually released in May of that year after great anticipation on my part.

Maybe it was the anticipation, but I have always been less than crazy about this album. It's WORK to like The Other Side of the Mirror. In a word, the album is overbaked, a victim of the worst of cliched 80s production. Whereas Rock A Little has aged well despite its completely 80s production, Mirror barely sounds like a Stevie Nicks record. She is spaced out and not really engaged in the songs at all. The lead single, "Rooms On Fire" is uninspired, buried underneath layer after layer of turgid production. Sub-par songwriting doesn't help her case either. And what in the world is Kenny G doing on a Stevie Nicks album? For me, TOSOTM is to Stevie Nicks as Hard Candy is to Madonna in that it's an album I really tried to talk myself into liking. Both albums have some strong songs but do not hold together as albums very well.

It's not all bad though. "Long Way To Go" rocks pretty well and despite the fact that it's relatively tuneless, I do still like the song "Juliet" which found a home on this album after being rejected from Fleetwood Mac's Tango In The Night. I think it's the reference to the blue lamp that pushes it over the edge for me. And I have a soft spot for "Fire Burning" even though it sounds like she's barely present.

Years later, we'd find out why she was barely present. Instead of being strung out on cocaine or some other illegal substance, Stevie was growing more and more dependent on the prescription drug Klonopin. She's on record as saying that she really has no memory of the Mirror tour due Klonopin use. As she herself said "The fabulous Stevie that everyone knew just disappeared."

But if you thought Klonopin colored The Other Side of the Mirror, just wait till you listen to Street Angel. You ain't seen nothing yet. But that's the next post.

(part one of a three part series)