album reviews
James Brown
Get On The Good Foot Polydor
There was a time when James Brown really was Soul Brother Number One. Though it was only six, seven, eight years ago, it seems like a lot longer. Back in the early and mid-Sixties, Brown's shows had the same mythical stature for soul audiences that the Stones now have for the rock audiences. His influence on the developing soul artists of the time — Wilson Pickett, Otis, later Aretha — was immeasurable. It was not only the emphasis on hard rhythms over melody, but the concept... | More »
Big Star
No. 1 Record/Radio City
#1 Record In the late Sixties, a Memphis teenager named Alex Chilton won moderate fame and fortune as the lead singer for a sometimes inspired, sometimes insipid recording unit known as the Box Tops. The group was a vehicle for the ideas of producer-writer Dan Penn, and Chilton's raspy, young punk voice was the focal point. After several erratic albums and a couple of downright classic singles, "The Letter" and "Cry like a Baby," Alex tired of being just a mouthpiece. The final Box Tops... | More »
Jimi Hendrix
War Heroes Reprise
Days after Hendrix's death, Eddie Kramer, head engineer at Electric Ladyland Studios, was quoted as saying that there were two albums worth of studio cuts and a live Albert Hall gig that would be released soon. However, "associates" were quoted as saying that there were lots more Hendrix tapes that nobody would hear – "It wouldn't be fair to his memory to release them" was the way the rap went. Nevertheless, this is the fourth posthumous album to be released by Hendrix's... | More »
James Taylor
One Man Dog
There is a "patrician arrogance" to James Taylor that accounts in part for his popularity while it at the same time explains the critical resistance to his work. Those who see themselves championing mass tastes can't accept the individualized point of view — the supremely autobiographical quality of his work — even while the audience they presume to speak for has made his modest output of albums among the best sellers ever released by his record company. One group loves him b... | More »
Joni Mitchell
For The Roses Asylum
Her appeal is in the subtle texture of her toughness, and her readiness to tell secrets and make obscure and difficult feelings lucid and vocal. She breaks your heart and makes you tentatively smile. She is the leading lady in a personal pageant of Heavy Duty, tension-bound romance. The poetry of her love songs sets her almost on some other planet, some separate plane where there are no inhibitions about divine arrogance, no compunctions about laying the inside of her on the line. And then th... | More »
Stevie Wonder
Talking Book Tamla
Stevie Wonder's second album this year is in many ways a reprise with variations of the first, Music of My Mind. Both are ambitious, richly-textured, almost entirely the work of Wonder himself, who produced (with assistance, primarily on the Moog work, from Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff), composed the music and all but a few of the lyrics, plays the bulk of the instrumental tracks (aided here and there on Talking Book by eight musicians including, on one cut, Jeff Beck and Buzzy Fe... | More »
Lou Reed
Transformer RCA Records
There's good fake Bowie (you remember Al Stewart's "Year of the Cat"), and there's bad fake Bowie (you don't remember Spacehog), and, of course, there's transcendent fake Bowie (you could probably hum "Rocket Man" right now). But Lou Reed's Transformer is one of the A real cockteaser, this album. That great cover: Lou and those burned-out eyes staring out in grim black and white beneath a haze of gold spray paint, and on the back, ace berdache Ernie Thormahlen po... | More »
Elvis Presley
Burning Love
That Elvis sure is a card! Just when you think he's cashed his last chip and sold so low he can't get no crasser, he comes along with something like this and proves that he and Colonel Bogey are still one jump ahead of the rest of us would-be Barnums. You gotta love him for it; it makes him matter, and even if that don't matter, his exploi-expertise is his charm. Since the Big EP had just cut his most gutsy single in a skunk's age, causing some fools to drool on spec ... | More »
The Grateful Dead
Europe '72
I am convinced that God made the Grateful Dead so that they could be heard in concert. Besides the tremendous amount of music which the Dead plays at a date (usually they will play until they are stopped), the band exudes a laid-back, happy confidence that puts a flame in the soul and a smile on the face; yes it does. The group is a living sense of security and contentment for pop music watchers, and it is probably our most important band still functioning. This three-record set is the resul... | More »
Carly Simon
No Secrets
Carly Simon's third album comes handsomely dressed by super-producer Richard Perry and boasts many illustrious helpers. In the degree of its intelligence and forthrightness it is the equal of its predecessors. Regardless of the quality of her songs — they range from fair to excellent — everything Carly does is likable for her radiant vocal personality. She has the whitest of white voices and uses it well, singing full throat with faultless enunciation. Her almost literal note... | More »
Music Reviews
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