Entries from September 2008 ↓

Brian Wilson albums are always something of a gamble.    Not counting Smile or I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times, his best solo album came out in 1988 and his other efforts have been just okay (Imagination) to downright bad (Gettin’ In Over My Head).  Every time he has a new release comes out I always have hope that it will be as good as his first solo album or even better.

He’s finally pulled it off with That Lucky Old Sun.  The songs all have a common theme of southern California with the song “That Lucky Old Sun” tying everything together.  The music itself is lush, reminiscent of Wilson’s work on Smile with a variety of different instruments on each track.  His backing band sounds a lot less stiff than they have in the past making this sound like a true group effort instead of Brian Wilson and his backup band.

One complaint though - the narratives that come up between the different sections are not good.  They sound clunky and really disrupt the flow of the overall album.  I never like spoken word interludes and this is no exception.  The words themselves are not bad - when reading over them in the CD booklet they don’t sound so bad, but the delivery just doesn’t work.

The portrait that this album paints of Los Angeles is interesting.  Brian Wilson describes a paradise where the sun is always shining, and place full of wonder and hope.  When I think of it, I see images of smog, traffic everywhere, and graffiti.  I wish the place described in the lyrics actually existed.

As an aside, I picked up the Best Buy version that has three bonus tracks, one of them a fantastic version of “I’m Into Something Good,”  a duet with Carol King.  It’s good enough to make the extra effort to pick up this version.

I have to admit that I like it.  I figured Metallica had lost it and would never make another good album, but I was wrong.  Death Magnetic is a huge improvement over St. Anger and Re-Load.  I even like “The Unforgiven III” even though I think “The Unforgiven II” is one of the worst things they every put out.  After listening to the album version, I was wrong about my complaints about “Cyanide.”  Great song, maybe the best one on the album.

People complained about the lack of guitar solos on St. Anger and I didn’t think that was a big deal, but after listening to this it’s obvious that was one of its big problems.  The guitar solos are great and there’s a sense of urgency in the music that makes it compelling.

The only complaint I have is with “Day That Never Comes.”  Although it’s not a bad song, the actual singing brings back memories of the worst songs off of Re-Load and St Anger.

I’ve listened to this a ton since I got it, which is rare given my short attention span.  I’m looking forward to hearing these songs live.

Whenever a band attempts to make a comeback after several years I worry that they’re going to try to recreate one of their past successes.  Fortunately this isn’t true for Extreme’s new album Saudades de Rock. The things you expect to find are there - Gary Cherone’s unique vocals, Nuno Bettencourt’s guitar - but it doesn’t sound rehashed which is refreshing after recent Journey and Motley Crue releases.  Just listening to the country twang of “Take Us Alive” was enough to convince me that this wasn’t them just going through the motions.

Overall it sounds like the logical follow up to Waiting for the Punchline, more subtle than their earlier releases.  Each song has its own sound, keeping the album from sounding like the same song over and over.  The only dud is the album’s closer, “Peace (saudade)”, which goes on for too long and has me bored about midway through.

The main frustration I have about this though is that while this is a really good album, listening to it makes me think that they’re capable of something great, even better than Pornograffiti.  I hope that this isn’t a one time reunion and the follow this up with something even better.