New Music Review

Kris Kristofferson

Closer to the Bone
New West Records

CD (Deluxe Edition)

It was only a couple weeks ago that I got wind of a new Kris Kristofferson album. As a matter of fact, I was completely oblivious to the fact the he put out an album called This Old Road in 2006. To be perfectly honest, I hadn't really given much thought to the man in quite some time. I thought of him as a legendary singer-songwriter who was essentially retired, but still acts in movies sometimes. That changed one afternoon when I was listening to WMLB on my ride home. I heard a song that for the first time in a while made me wonder: "this is great; what the fuck is it?" I was rather surprised to hear that it was new material from Mr. Kristofferson. Ever since that moment, I had been anxiously awaiting this release until yesterday afternoon, when I was finally able to pick it up.

And it didn't disappoint.

Closer to the Bone is, in many ways, a tremendous piece of work by an old master of his craft. Kris Kristofferson is one of the most prolific songwriters of all time, and he's only released new material sporadically for the last couple of decades. I don't know if this has been because he's lacked inspiration, if he felt a desire to self-edit, or he was just too busy making Blade movies. He hasn't made anything this good in quite a long time.

Ever since Rick Rubin struck gold with Johnny Cash in the 90's, it seems like every producer out there has been trying to do a stripped down record with an aging Country star. It's a classic example of throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall to see what sticks. Don Was isn't going to see anywhere near the record sales or critical acclaim that Rubin had with the man in black, but when this year is in the books, he may have been the man behind the board for the best album of 2009. He made one that sticks to the wall, and he played the bass on it, to boot.

Closer to the Bone opens with a titular track, and it's one of the best cuts on the disc. It features backing vocals by Stephen Bruton, longtime Kristofferson guitarist who passed away not long after recording finished, and multiple media outlets mistook it for an uncredited Bob Dylan. "Closer to the Bone" does a great job of setting the tone for the album that bears its name. It's raw, it's personal, it's musically minimalistic, and lyrically it's better than 99 per cent of recording artists could ever dream of being.

This record contains songs about love ("From Here to Forever", "The Wonder", "Starlight and Stone), songs about loss ("Hall of Angels", "Love Don't Live Here Anymore"), songs about friends ("Good Morning John", "Let the Walls Come Down") and a very well written song about Sinead O'Connor ("Sister Sinead") of all people. My favorite on this record is "Tell Me One More Time"; a bluesy number with a hint of gospel influence to it and the best lyrics on the whole album:

Girl I guess I've been forgiven

I've acquired a taste for living

Just when I was close to giving up the ghost

That pretty much sums the whole record up. In many ways, this is an album about growing old, written by a man who's growing old. The only downside to this record, if it has one at all, is that there is only so much you can do with a 73 year old man's voice. Maybe the music and the melodies are simple because they needed to be. Whether or not that was the case, it seems to work just fine on this record, at least for my tastes.

Kris Kristofferson proved on this record that he's still better than most as a songwriter. And he may not have a youthful set of vocal pipes anymore, but he can still sing well enough to get the job done; that's probably because, unlike most singer-songwriters, he actually has something significant to say. If he wants to call it quits and never put anything else out, I would understand and respect that. But Closer to the Bone is definitely a record that has left me wanting more, and moments like that are hard to come by these days. I think we need all of the Kristofferson we can get, and we need it in the form of new albums of original material, not Blade sequels.

P.S. - I would highly recommend the Deluxe Edition of this CD, if you're able to get your hands on it. It comes with a bonus disc of a live concert from Dublin that occurred in 2008. It has a great rendition of "Sunday Mornin' Comin Down".

New Stuff!

I went to Criminal on my lunch hour and picked up the new Avett Brothers LP, a 7-inch that coincided with the release of that LP, and the deluxe CD version of Kris Kristofferson's new one, which includes a bonus disc of a live recording from Dublin last year. I'll start posting about this stuff ASAP.

Records

Last weekend turned out to be rather disappointing. It rained the whole time, and the usually fun (annual) East Atlanta Strut was extraordinarily lame because of it. I couldn't really think of anything else to do except drink. I did manage to stagger into Reactionary Records a couple of times to pick up some vinyl, though. Here is what I wound up procuring:

Peter Stubb

Selected Cuts, Vol. 1

Family Night Records

LP

Peter Stubb has been around for years, but he's a relatively new discovery for me. I saw him play a set at the Fringe Binge at the Star Bar earlier this summer, and it was incredible. I see a very lengthy post exlusively about Mr. Stubb in the future. For now, suffice it to say that he possesses the savant-like genius of Wesley Willis, but with actual songs, and musical ability. He also possesses a self-destructive streak reminiscent of G.G. Allin; but his is authentic, not bullshit theatrics. Again, he is a real songwriter who can sing pretty well and has pretty good guitar chops. Check some of his stuff out at http://www.myspace.com/peterstubb. Better yet, pop into Reactionary Records and pick this LP up for yourself.

The Maytals
Do the Reggae 1966-1970
Trojan Records

LP

This is a fantastic compilation of early Toots and the Maytals that I just couldn't resist picking up. It sounds great from start to finish. In this purchase, I also learned that "54-46 is My Number" is not the same song as "54-46 was my number". I now need to find a 7" or LP that has the latter on it, because I prefer that song. Goddammit.

New York Dolls

New York Dolls

Mercury Records

LP

Not much needs to be said about this one. This is one of the best and most influential albums of all time. I've never owned this on vinyl before, and I'm kind of ashamed to say that. This particular copy of it came sealed with red colored vinyl. Now I can satisfy my Johnny Thunders fetish in style.

D.R.I.

4 of a Kind

Metal Blade Records

LP

This is another one that I've never owned on vinyl before. I got a hold of this cassette in '88 or '89, and I wore out all the lettering on it. This was my introduction to D.R.I., a band that I still dig very much to this day. This will always be my favorite D.R.I. release because of it, in spite of the fact that Dealing with It and Crossover are undeniably better. This one really takes me back.

Madness

Work Rest & Play

Stiff Recordings

7" EP

This one takes me back even further. When I think of the band Madness, I think of two things. First, I think of a trip to England that I made with my family when I was about 9. At the time, "House of Fun" was a really big hit in the U.K. and I heard it shitloads of times during that trip. I remember loving that song to death and thinking how much better it was than what was getting played on the radio on my side of the pond. The other thing I think of when I think of Madness is the two appearances they made on BBC's The Young Ones, which is pretty high up on my list of favorite tv shows of all time. If I understand it correctly, the reason why they made two appearances on the show (which consisted of just 13 episodes over two series) is that the BBC was considering giving them their own sitcom. I suspect it would have been something like the Monkees, but a lot better. You'll notice in that last clip that Suggsy was a lousy lip-syncher. I wonder if that was the deal breaker. At any rate, 5 bucks for a 7" containing "Night Boat to Cairo" was too good to pass up.



That's all for now. I haven't had much to write about in the last week or so. I may or may not go to the Butthole Surfers show at Masquerade on Saturday (I really don't know why I'm not completely enthused about it, actually), and there are a couple of smaller club shows that might be worth checking out. New releases from The Avett Brothers and Kris Kristofferson drop next Tuesday, so that may be the next time you hear from me. See ya.

A Quick Rant

The shitty folk bands on Sub Pop are starting to get highly irritating. 1690 AM is still my favorite radio station, but lately they're playing way too much of this shit. Fruit Bats suck. Anybody who doesn't agree with that statement should either a) kill himself/herself, or b) shut the fuck up about music, because he/she obviously don't know he/she is talking about.

Besides having to hear entirely too much of that shitty Sub Pop band, I've heard the song "Furr" by Blitzen Trapper what seems like every day for the last two weeks. These guys are actually not that bad of a band. They mostly have songs that are ok, and a couple that I would call pretty good. "Furr" is not one of them. The album version sounds like a really bad Elliot Smith song. Unfortunately, it's not possible to leave bad enough alone and there is a live version of it being played that makes my fucking skin crawl. It sounds to me, and I'm not kidding here, like Townes Van Zandt getting raped in a prison shower by Gram Parsons.

Sorry for the imagery, but I had to get that off my chest. If I hear this fucking song again on my drive home, I'm going to stab myself in the ears.

New Music Review

Manic Street Preachers
Journal for Plague Lovers
Columbia Records
MP3 Album download









When I got up this morning, I decided that come hell or high water, I was going to purchase some new music this afternoon, listen to it, and then write about it tonight. Being that it's Tuesday, I headed over to Criminal Records on my lunch hour to see what they had available. I looked at the list of today's releases, and the only thing that really piqued my interest was the latest release by The Dynamites. Alas, Criminal had yet to receive that particular shipment, so that was not meant to be. I perused their selection of newer vinyl and decided that Dinosaur Jr.'s latest effort wasn't new enough, and that Yo La Tengo's new one, although still pretty new at one week old, would probably bore the shit out of me. Although the prospect of giving them a shitty review was fairly enticing, the fact that it would have cost me roughly 20 bucks for an LP I would never listen to again was the dealbreaker. I left Criminal Records empty-handed this afternoon, and let me tell you that does not happen very often.

I got back to the office and decided that I was still going to listen to some new music today and write about it later this evening. I got on Amazon, and started looking at their list of MP3 albums that went on sale today. Digital downloads really aren't my bag, but I was a man on a mission, so I wasn't about to let medium preference dissuade me. There was very little that struck my fancy, but I did see that the latest album by Manic Street Preachers, Journal for Plague Lovers, was now on sale. My uncle Bob (from the U.K.) was the first person to turn me on to these guys; that would have been around 1992, if memory serves. If you're not familiar with this band, it's another one of those situations that eerily mirrors part of the plotline from the film Eddie and the Cruisers. Basically, the guitar player and primary lyricist for the Preachers, Richey Edwards, mysteriously vanished on February 1, 1995 and never resurfaced. He was declared 'presumed deceased' late last year. The reason why you probably haven't heard about this before is because these guys are from Wales, thus nobody in the U.S. gives a shit.

I read a brief description of the album and saw that this album consisted entirely of songs built around lyrics that Edwards had given to bassist Nicky Wire shortly before his disappearance. That sounded interesting enough, so I went ahead and pulled the trigger. Shortly after doing so, I realized that the album was actually released in May, and it was the digital version that saw it's release today.

Goddammit.

Okay, I don't care if it's brand new or not, I'm still reviewing it tonight.

Though I've never considered myself that big of a fan, I've always had some appreciation for Manic Street Preachers. The story is fascinating, and a lot of the music is good. They definitely sound like guys who all grew up listening to Slade, and I can dig that. The lyrics were always good, in particular the songs written by Edwards. Though never achieving much mainstream success, they did receive acclaim from many critics, and established something of a cult following.

Journal for Plague Lovers is a decent album. Primarily produced (or recorded, rather) by Steve Albini, it's starts off very strong with three good rockers: "Peeled Apples", "Jackie Collins Existential Question Time" and "Me and Stephen Hawking". This is classic Preachers, lots of crunchy hooks that remind me of Stiff Little Fingers, and really fucking bizarre lyrics. Unfortunately, it falls kind of flat after that. There are some boring ballads, namely "This Joke Sport Severed" and the hyper-strange "Facing Page: Top Left". James Dean Bradfield is an excellent hard rock singer, but his unmistakably Welsh accent doesn't lend itself very well to most ballads. In these instances, he sounds like Vince Neil being jabbed repeatedly with a number 2 pencil.

This record also includes some tracks that employ drum machines and other qualities from Electronic music, just enough that it's worth mentioning, but not enough that you can classify it as Electronica. This isn't new territory for the Preachers, but I never cared for it when they did it before. It works okay on one track, "Marlon J.D.", but it's the heavy part of that song that makes it go, and it probably would have been better without the drum machine. The rest of the album consists mostly of not great, but not offensive filler material, and closes out with the very good "William's Last Words", which sounds awfully like the suicide note of a very poetic man who desperately needed some help.

All in all, this is a pretty solid effort, and kudos to Albini (a guy whose work I have a love/hate relationship with) for doing a great job with the sound on it. It's a must have for fans, and a worthwhile purchase for people that like hard rock, and can't find anything new to listen to. Allmusic.com gave it 4 1/2 stars out of a potential 5. That's too high. Richdork gave it 7.8 out of 10. That is also too high, in my opinion, but I'm not a big believer in numerical rating or alphabetic grading systems for rock and roll records. What's the fucking point? If you're still around 20 years after you reviewed it the first time, you're going to re-review it when the 'anniversary remaster' version comes out, and it's going to get a different score.

I'll sum it up by saying this: it's a pretty good record by a pretty good band. In the pantheon of Cock Rock bands from the U.K., Manic Street Preachers are quite a bit better than Primal Scream, but not nearly as good as The Cult. Make no mistake, these guys are Cock Rock. They were lyrically superior to these bands, for sure, but if getting a political agenda across was the whole point, then playing cock rock was the wrong canvas for that painting. It's a cold harsh reality, but the reality nonetheless. The thought of Bon Scott doing Woody Guthrie is going to give me nightmares. But these guys are still pretty decent.

Live Music Review

Son Volt
Variety Playhouse
Atlanta, GA
September 11, 2009

We're All Living Proof That Nothing Lasts

I bet that Jay Farrar is a very good bowler. That probably sounds like a strange thing for somebody to say about a rock star, but he has the look of a guy who has rolls, on average, better than 180. Perhaps he's too slim, but he definitely has the face and haircut of a guy who wouldn't look out of place on a Friday at an alley in Roseville, Michigan; knocking over pins and kicking back Miller High Lifes all night. I think maybe it's this everyman quality that makes him such a great singer. It makes it possible for someone who probably isn't desperate (not anymore, anyways) to sing songs about desperation and pull it off flawlessly. Son Volt at the Variety has been a yearly occurrence for the last four years. It's always a Friday night, it always sold out, or close to sold out, and it's always worth the price of admission. It's always a good show. But on 9/11/09, Son Volt was fucking brilliant.

I've seen Son Volt three times in the last four years. It's always been good, but never like this. They tore through 25 or so songs in about an hour and forty minutes. The set list was a great mix of old and new, and they played most of the songs on American Central Dust. All of the new songs featured live arrangements that worked beautifully, particularly "Cocaine and Ashes" and "Dynamite". When it needed to be rough, it was rough. When it needed to be quiet, it was quiet. They played a version of "Windfall" that made me want to start bawling. When all was said and done and I realized that they didn't play "Drown" I was in such awe of what I'd just seen that I didn't give a shit.

I never saw Son Volt 1.0 with Mike Heidorn and the Boquist brothers, but I've seen pretty much every one of their band configurations since. The current one is by far the best. Bassist Andrew Duplantis, and drummer Dave Bryson (he keeps a really neat tour blog, which can be found here) are one of the most formidable rhythm sections I've ever heard, and it really brings a lot to the sound because many artists of this genre keep the bottom end too vanilla. That's kind of lame, and that ain't an issue with these guys. Keyboardist and pedal steel player Mark Spencer is always spot on, and Jay is Jay.

I often tell people jokingly that everything I know about life I learned from Mike Damone from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. It usually elicits a laugh, but the thing is I'm only half kidding when I say that. Sure, he was a fuck-up. But he was a pretty wise fuck-up who offers his protege sage advice throughout the entire film; things that still ring true today. One of the most accurate things that Damone tells Ratner is that a woman decides how far she will let a guy get with her within the first seconds. Most women will tell you this is true, and the ones that deny it are lying. The way I feel about live music is analogous to this axiom. Sometimes it takes a band a few songs to really hit its stride, but generally I can tell pretty quickly how the set is going to go. As far as Friday night went, I knew it was going to be special as soon as Son Volt's new lead guitar and lap steel player, James Walbourne, struck his first note.

James Walbourne, who I had never heard of before last Friday, is one of the best guitar players I've ever seen. That's kind of a loaded statement, but for this band, the guy seems to be a perfect fit. When he rocked out, he struck the strings on his guitars (a really neat looking Gibson Firebird which now has a busted headstock, and what appeared to be a Fender Custom Shop '51 Nocaster Relic) harder than Joe Louis ever beat on anyone from the bum-of-the-month club, and whenever it was time for some chicken pickin', I could have sworn he was channeling Don Rich. Walbourne's feel for this kind of music is nothing short of incredible. And the fucker's a limey. The Kinks may have invented the term by calling one of their records this, but James Walbourne has truly earned the right to be called a Muswell Hillbilly. And by the way, if this isn't already his nickname, it fucking needs to be.

The sound of this show was also phenomenal. Jay's projects have always had great tone, in my opinion. That's probably another reason why I enjoyed Walbourne's playing so much. The tone reminded me of Anodyne-era Farrar, but with a greater degree technical competency. Jay was his usual self, and as always at a SV show, I was thrilled/confused when he finally brought out his Epiphone Les Paul Special (the cheapest guitar that Epiphone makes). He played the first six or so songs with a gorgeous acoustic-electric, and then went straight to the Gretsch, so I thought the Epi didn't make it on the road this time. My fears were relieved, fortunately.

I was so happy that this show exceeded my expectations. If Jay Farrar never released another record, I would still go see him play every year. But he's on the heels of the best album that he's made in years, and he sure looked like he was having a great time on the Variety's stage. This wasn't Jay and a bunch of musicians. This was a real band. Now instead of the usual feeling I have after a Son Volt show, which is 'this was really good, I hope they tour again next year', I'm already trying to make plans to see them at the 40 Watt in November, and I'm anxiously awaiting the release of One Fast Move or I'm Gone, the Kerouac-themed project he recorded with Ben Gibbard. Maybe Jay Farrar isn't a good bowler after all, but he was only a couple pins short of a perfect game the other night at the Variety Playhouse.




P.S. - The opener was Sera Calhoune from Seattle. She has a fabulous voice, considerably better than average guitar chops, good songs, and a great pedal steel player accompanying her. I can't seem to find a web presence of any kind, but keep an eye out for her.

The Avett Brothers Cometh

The Avett Brothers major label debut, I and Love and You, is 18 days away. I'm looking forward to it with cautious optimism. I'm very excited that Rick Rubin produced it, and I think he's getting a hold of them at just the right time; but still I wonder how it's going to sound. As I see it, the biggest challenge they're going to face is the same one that most artists of the folk-rock genre face: making a record that can keep me interested from start to finish. I've heard two tracks from it thus far on the fabulous 1690 AM, both of them sweet, folksy and melodic and very good songs. But if this album doesn't do a good job of featuring their hard edge and obvious punk influence, I think it will be a big disappointment, and their run as a major label recording artist will be pretty brief.

Rick Rubin has his fair share of haters out there, but I am not one of them. Most of the things he's produced are 'Very Good' (The Cult Electric; Beastie Boys Licensed to Ill, Run DMC Raisin' Hell) at a bare minimum, with a good number of things that I would call 'Fucking Brilliant' (Slayer Reign in Blood; Public Enemy It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back), and only a small smattering of efforts that I would classify as "Shit Sandwiches" (Everything the Red Hot Chili Peppers have done since Mother's Milk, the entire System of a Down discography, Danzig 4). In particular, Rubin has shown a knack for bringing out the best in Country and Folk artists. Look, I'm sick of all of the Johnny Cash American Recordings albums too, but think about how much you loved that stuff before the hipsters ruined it. They were great albums. It'll be interesting to see how this shakes out. I'm certain that I and Love and You won't be a 'Shit Sandwich', but it may fail to live up to the band's potential, and that would be a shame.

Below is a clip that I copped from Spin.com. The band talks about its past, and you can hear some clips from a song off the new record called "January Wedding".




That's all for now. This weekend is a relatively big one for music in Atlanta. I'm definitely going to see Son Volt at the Variety tonight, thus foregoing a chance to see The Effigies, who are playing at the Earl. I'm planning on going to see The Howlies at the Earl on Saturday night, as they're just coming off a somewhat lengthy tour and are probably as tighter than a hangman's noose. That and they're just a great fucking band anyways. See you around.

New Music Review

Son Volt
American Central Dust
Rounder Records
CD
















I never make any excuses or apologies about my affection for Jay Farrar's music. The entire Uncle Tupelo discography, particularly No Depression and Anodyne, and Son Volt's debut album, Trace, are all phenomenal, timeless recordings. Call it Americana, or Alt-Country, or Roots-Rock, or anything you please. Whatever you want to call it, there's one thing you cannot deny: Jay Farrar got in on the ground floor of that shit. Nearly 20 years after Uncle Tupelo's first record, people are still trying to do what Jay was doing.

And in my opinion, nobody has been able to do it half as well.

One big reason for this is Jay's unparalelled vocal stylings. Not only is he a great singer, but he has a defining voice for his genre. He just needs to be singing this kind of music, like Hank Williams needed to be singing Country, Sam Cooke needed to be singing soul, and Muddy Waters needed to be singing the blues. No matter what's coming out of his mouth, the natural desperation in Farrar's voice conjures up imagery of the great depression, the dust bowl, or any rural tragedy you can think of. I sometimes wonder if the reason why Wilco decided to ditch Alt-Country in favor of a more experimental pop sound was because Jeff Tweedy knew he could never do this better than Jay. Obviously, Jeff found his niche, and he's much bigger than Farrar will ever be, but I sometimes wonder. Trace blows A.M. out of the water, and none of the rootsy songs on Being There sound as good as any of the early Son Volt stuff.

Unfortunately, such a blessing can sometimes be a curse. Often times, when you do one thing really well, the tendency can be to get complacent. Why take chances on something new when you have a reliable formula that works, and also makes you decent money? American Central Dust is the third Son Volt release since Farrar reformed the band in 2005. The first two are both solid records. But they both sound like attempts to recreate the magic of Trace. And that isn't necessarily a bad thing, but at least for me it makes me less enthusiastic about both them, because I would really rather just listen to Trace than an attempt to rehash it. I don't want to be overly critical about this; Jay has earned a pass from me for his previous greatness, and the live show is still great, so I don't want to imply that any of this is bad. It's just kind of boring. With its latest release, however, it appears that American Central Dust is a great step forward for Son Volt 2.0.

Instead of attempting a big studio sound, American Central Dust has a stripped down feel that makes perfect sense and accentuates the bands strengths. Jay's voice is the dominant instrument on this album, and that's the way it needs to be. The band is tight and tasteful, and each member does a great job with the space allotted to him. Lead guitarist Chris Masterson has a look straight from Look at this Fucking Hipster!, but he sounds like he was born to play country guitar, and although I never thought I would say this, is a better fit for this band than former Backslider Brad Rice was. Andrew DuPlantis (bass guitar) and Dave Bryson (drums) prove to be a dead-on rhythm section, and Mark Spencer chips in on keyboards, lap steel and pedal steel.

Where it hits:

All over the place. "Dynamite" is the leadoff track, and it's classic Farrar with what sounds like an accordion accompaniment. "Cocaine and Ashes" is a piano-driven ballad that sounds like it's probably written from the perspective of Keith Richards, and it's fantastic. "Dust of Daylight" is so catchy and earthy it may as well have been written by Gram Parsons himself. "Pushed too Far" is a slow number about genuine midwestern desperation that John Mellencamp wishes he could have written, and the closing track, "Jukebox of Steel" sounds just like some of the best country numbers from Uncle Tupelo's later years. The best song on this record is "When the Wheels Don't Move", which is percussive, haunting, and crunchy. Farrar sings lyric about lost jobs and lost hope like nobody else can, while a distorted steel guitar plays along. Somehow it sounds like a cross between folk and shoegazer. I know that probably sounds awful, but believe me, it works like a charm.

Where it misses:

There's only one bad song on this effort. The piano and violin driven "Sultana" recalls the tale of the steamboat disaster of the same name. It's bad. I mean really bad. My advice to Jay is to leave songs about maritime disasters to Gordon Lightfoot.


Overall, this is not only a great sounding effort from Son Volt, but it's one that leaves me optimistic about the band's future. I get the feeling that they can deviate from the norm enough to keep it fresh, while still retaining their best qualities and doing what they do best. Well done, Mr. Farrar.

Son Volt plays the Variety Playhouse next Friday, September 11th. I'm going to go and you should too. Hope to see you there.

Beautifully Mediocre - Volume II

Beautifully Mediocre is a feature dedicated to the idea that sometimes a record that only has one or two good tracks on it deserves some credit. Let's face it, the majority of records have zero good tracks, so one or two is better than what most bands can pull off.

The Rolling Stones
Goats Head Soup
1973










The first thing that we must do in this case is establish that the word 'mediocre' is a relative term. It's also not really a term that I would personally use to describe this album; it's more of the general consensus among most critics, including those of its day and many of them now. 1973's Goats Head Soup was the Rolling Stones follow-up release to the epic Exile on Main Street, which was released the previous year. Like Exile, it was panned by many critics when it came out. Unlike Exile, it is not slobbered all over by critics today. Some critics half-praise it as a sort of experimental funky record, while most give it a great big "meh". I have searched high and low and I can't seem to find anyone who agrees with me about what this album really is: yet another damn fine record by the World's Greatest Rock n' Roll Band.

Goats was recorded at Dynamic Sound Studio in Kingston, Jamaica beginning in late 1972. Why Jamaica? Apparently, because Jamaica was one of the few countries that would actually allow Keith Richards on its soil. This is the last Stones record produced by Jimmy Miller, who I think did a fantastic job on all of their albums, and the last one to feature Mick Taylor on all of its tracks (he left the band during the recording of It's Only Rock n' Roll, though he appeared on most of the songs on it). Its sound is all over the place, but in a much more chaotic way than Exile, which has a much more consistent flow. Fortunately, this is Rock n' Roll, and sometimes a little chaos is just what the doctor ordered.

Side 1 starts out effectively with "Dancing with Mr. D"; a classic Stones groove accentuated by Mick Taylor's slide guitar, and some brilliant clavinet work by Billy Preston. Mick Taylor is without a doubt, the best musician to ever be in the Stones, and his playing is front and center on this record. Maybe this was by design, maybe it just happened that way because everybody else was phoning it in, or maybe it was out of necessity because Keith was too fucked up to play half the time. Whatever the reason, it doesn't really matter. Taylor's leads and slide work on this record are the work of a technical genius with enough soul to make it sound like the Stones. Taylor's other highlights include his stellar usage of a wah-wah pedal on the album's two best tracks: "Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)" and my personal favorite "100 Years Ago".

The #1 hit "Angie" was this record's biggest commercial success, though I've never cared much for it. The rather obscure "Winter", however, is probably my favorite of all the Stones' ballads, even though it seems like filler on this record. I guess when you reach the level that these guys did in the early 70's, even your jab is going to be more powerful than most bands' uppercut. "Silver Train" and "Hide Your Love" are two more songs that sound like they were probably written in a matter of minutes, but still sound good. The whole thing builds up to a fantastic finish, closing out with the utterly perverse "Star Star", a song most people know by its original title "Starfucker". All I'm going to say about that song is that only Jagger could sing a lyric such as "Ali McGraw got mad at you, for givin' head to Steve McQueen" and not sound like a total jerkoff. If even someone as great as Lennon had sung that, it would have sounded about as sincere as a Poison song. Mick's sexual exploits are as legendary as the Loch Ness Monster; so much so that a 40-year-old rumor still circulates today about him getting caught eating a Mars bar out of Marianne Faithfull's box during a 1967 drug raid at Keith's estate. When Snopes.com is debunking the legends of your libido 40 years after a completely false rumor started, you can be as vulgar as you want and I'm not going to criticize you for it sounding inauthentic.

Goats Head Soup is not bulletproof. There are a couple of stinkers on this record, for sure. The penultimate track, "Can You Hear the Music", sounds like a pretty pointless experimentation with bizarre sounds and instruments, and it clocks in at an egregious five and half minutes. The obligatory 'let's let Keith sing one' track is "Coming Down Again", which is the probably the worst of its kind in the Stones discography, certainly out of everything up to and including Tattoo You. But two crummy songs out of ten isn't bad, that's an 80% success rate. Styx II also came out in 1973, and 100 per cent of that sucks.

I'm unable to find any record of Rolling Stone Magazine's original review of Goats. Their 1994 re-review of it begins: "History has proven it unwise to jump to conclusions about Rolling Stones albums", which leads me to believe they shit all over it and are trying to hide the evidence of such. That sounds like classic RS revisionist history to me; they do it all the time. Those jagbags over at Pitchfork didn't even include it in their top 100 albums of the 1970's. I guess they were too busy print-fellating Bowie to give Goats a listen. It must either be that or they were so mesmerized listening to The Monks, Kraftwerk and Can, all of whom have multiple entries on that list to the Stones' one. Not to take anything away from any of those artists, each one is very significant, but if a publication is making a list of great albums of a decade, nothing screams 'Trying Too Hard to be Relevant' than overloading said list with experimental German stuff at the expense of the Rock n' Roll band that owned the fucking decade. I guess the German tie-in (Neu! also made the list, incidentally) could also mean that the wankers at Rich Dork are actually Nazis. Either way, I'd like to punch them all in the face.

The review at All Music Guide, a source with which I rarely have any kind of beef, at least gives a decent rationale for giving it only three-and-a-half stars. In it, Stephen Thomas Erlewind, who I think is an excellent reviewer states: "This is where the Stones' image began to eclipse their accomplishments, as Mick ascended to jet-setting celebrity and Keith slowly sunk deeper into addiction, and it's possible hearing them moving in both directions on Goats Head Soup, at times in the same song." He makes a pretty good point, but this is Rock n' Roll, and quite frankly I think Keith shooting entire opium fields into his arm and Mick banging super models just kind of adds to the mystique.

The best part about Goats Head Soup is the fact that you're probably not burned out on it. Besides "Angie", there's not really anything on this record that receives any significant airplay. I mean, I can still hear "Brown Sugar" every day and not get sick of it, but I know it's not like that for everyone else. This album has a few real gems, and they're gems that you haven't heard very many times, or possibly not at all. The radio will not ruin this album for you, the way it might have ruined nearly all of Sticky Fingers. The only way this album will get played out is if you play it over and over. I've had it in heavy rotation for the last couple of years, and I'm still not sick of it.

So what have we learned? We've learned that Goats Head Soup is a damn fine album that a lot of critics have treated with indifference. We've also learned that I'm a long winded Rolling Stones fan. Most importantly, we've learned that the writers at Pitchfork are pretentious dickheads who are possibly nazis. Jesus, I feel like I just wrote a Hardy Boys novel.