The Album Review Club - Week #120 - (page 1413) - The Lexicon of Love - ABC

[Bill Walker]

I went to see Kiss at the Free Trade as a mate had just bought ’Kiss Alive’
great visually but musically not for me.I never listened to much by them since
so I’d be interested to listen to ‘Destroyer’ if its on this thread for review.
I too was brought up on Glam Rock as my older brother was a Bowie freak.

I went to see a Kiss tribute band called Piss

 

[OB1]

I went to see Kiss at the Free Trade as a mate had just bought ’Kiss Alive’
great visually but musically not for me.I never listened to much by them since
so I’d be interested to listen to ‘Destroyer’ if its on this thread for review.
I too was brought up on Glam Rock as my older brother was a Bowie freak.

Still one of my favourite gigs. Alive was the soundtrack to my O-Level revision.

MCFCTrick went to that gig too and he didn't come away a fan either. We're all different.

 

[Saddleworth2]

The Album Review Club – Week #2

Let It Be – The Replacements (1984)

Selected by FogBlueInSanFran

View attachment 27561

Thanks, @RobMCFC, for starting this thread and selecting me for a review.

I love The Who’s Quadrophenia because it’s a story about a misfit kid trying to make his way in a world he feels is hopelessly stacked against him. When we were teenagers, I bet we almost all felt that way sometimes. We were also alternatively euphoric, depressed, weird, serious, ashamed, uncomfortable, embarrassed, brave, immature, goofy and introspective day to day and hour to hour.

The record I’ve chosen is a reflection of all those conflicts and mix-ups. It’s Let It Be by The Replacements, whom Rolling Stone once labeled as “the greatest band that never was.”

The Mats, as aficionados know them, were a ragged, semi-talented garage band who crawled out from under Minneapolis in the early 1980s. They were better known for their disastrous drunken stage performances than anything else. But in 1984, they released this complete U-turn.

Let It Be is, in a word, schizophrenic. It’s punk, then pop, then “classic” rock, then I-guess-you’d-call-it-country, then blues piano.

It's very much unlike The Lonesome Jubilee, which always knows where it’s going. This is a record with attention deficit disorder. It’s tight but messy; it has hooks and melody but it has noise; even its beauty has “rings around” its eyes. Tempos speed up, then slow down; instruments change mid-song. “We’re Comin’ Out”, for example, starts as thrash punk, then slows down to a lone piano and finger snaps, then speeds up again before devolving into cacophony.

But I love all the contradictions, conflicts and mix-ups here — they work because the record itself is about the contradictions, conflicts and mix-ups inherent in growing up. And The Replacements themselves were growing up.

All along, Let It Be maintains a sense of humo(u)r and never takes itself too seriously. And yeah — you can play it super loud. Really, really loud if you want.

“I Will Dare” sets up the tone of confusion right off — “How young are you? / How old am I?”, Paul Westerberg sings (warning: he only sort of sings) as he strums along, and then the record moves from age to age, topic to topic and style to style. I’m going to bounce around too, since The Replacements do.

There’s an ahead-of-its-time, and even touching, tribute to gender non-conforming kids. Before that, there's a fairly amusing song about a tonsillectomy told from the point of view of the doctor (“Let’s get this over with / I tee off in an hour”). Right afterwards, just to fuck with things more, they cover Kiss.

They diss “that phony rock and roll” on MTV (“Seen Your Video”) on the one hand, and complain about a girlfriend’s answering machine on the other (talk about relating!). There are two radically different paeans to sexual awkwardness: one for girls (“Sixteen Blue”) and one for boys (“Gary’s Got A Boner”).

In short — this is a record that always keeps you off balance.

But in the middle, crowning and cementing it all, is “Unsatisfied”, one of my very favo(u)rite songs of all time, and as important an anthem in tribute to young adults as “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. I see it as prophetic, a nod to the pro-Gen X, anti-baby boomer conflict that overwhelmed (white) American pop music seven years later when Kurt Cobain became a reluctant spokesperson for his generation.

Over the last few years, as I’ve watched my own kids become teenagers, and as I get older and my own teenage years fade hazily into the distance, this record speaks to me more and more and more. It barely missed the personal top 20 I submitted to @BlueHammer85 a number of months ago, but now I think it’s firmly there.

This is one of the all-time classics of alt/indie, groundbreaking, rightly adored by nearly every important music critic . . . yet it didn’t get enough votes from the great unwashed to displace the fucking Grease soundtrack.

Well, as The Replacements sing on “Favorite Thing”, “I don’t give a single shit.”

Happy listening!

PS. And yes — the band members picked the album name after deciding to title it after “the next song that comes on the radio” while they were sitting in their manager’s car. That just makes me love it all the more.

Cracking review mate.
I am/was always very ambivalent about Punk, I liked it in small doses, appreciated the raw energy of some of the bands, liked some of what the Stranglers and Jam did but most left me as cold as a gutted trout. "Put that shite off and play Close to the Edge" came the cry!
So your eloquent review did pique my interest and I approached the first listen with curiosity and an open mind. I was driving down to Northampton with a fishing buddy and we put it on the playlist and gave it a couple of times round and then I have played it a couple of times again today.
In 1984 when this was released, my most played albums will have been Born in the USA, Purple Rain, The Unforgettable Fire, Diamond Life by the lovely Sade. At 27, I had just been able to afford my own first decent hifi and I have to admit I had never heard of The Replacements.

So first thing to say is I didn't hate it. I liked some of the guitar and bass work, with some good changes of tempo and some sinuous melodies. Vocals were rough but good rough. Lyrics were above average for a punk band and I found 'Tommy gets his tonsils out' mildly humorous and thought the lyrics of Androgynous clever and prescient. I can see why you liked Unsatisfied, liked the melodic opening and thought it was probably the standout track on the album. Black Diamond had an excellent guitar intro.
Overall, if you hadn't proposed it I wouldn't have listened to it. I would have given it a 5 but your review I enjoyed a great deal so that bumps it to a 6.
Will I listen to it again? Maybe just to see if a greater number of plays unfolds more. Thanks for proposing it though.

 

[Saddleworth2]

I went to see a Kiss tribute band called Piss

they combined with Adam ants backing group to become Pissant.

 

[mancity2012_eamo]

I went to see a Kiss tribute band called Piss

Were they taking it.

 

[RobMCFC]

That's week #2 done, and thanks for everybody's votes and comments.

Let It Be by The Replacements had 14 votes and scored a healthy average of 6.86

Thanks to @FogBlueInSanFran for nominating what turned out to be a popular choice stirring plenty of debate. We're only two weeks into this but already I'm enjoying the debate and discussion and the side issue that all the posts throw up, so let's keep it going.

The floor's now open to @BlueHammer85 to tease us with a clue to his selection if he wants to, and we'll get to comment and vote on his selection from tomorrow.

An quick heads-up for next week - we're off to Valencia for the weekend so it'll be Tuesday before I get to do next week's changeover. @Saddleworth2 is selecting the album for week #4 so feel free to either wait until I've posted the total or post as early as you want on Tuesday, either way is fine by me.

 

[BlueHammer85]

oh blimey, i'm up to the gallows.

just to check, the album can't be in the Top 1100 right ?

 

[RobMCFC]

oh blimey, i'm up to the gallows.

just to check, the album can't be in the Top 1100 right ?

It can be if you want. A few people have said they'd specifically leave out Top 1100 albums so as not to "spoil" your thread, but you've got free choice - any album is fine.

 

[FogBlueInSanFran]

That's week #2 done, and thanks for everybody's votes and comments.

Let It Be by The Replacements had 14 votes and scored a healthy average of 6.86

Thanks to @FogBlueInSanFran for nominating what turned out to be a popular choice stirring plenty of debate. We're only two weeks into this but already I'm enjoying the debate and discussion and the side issue that all the posts throw up, so let's keep it going.

The floor's now open to @BlueHammer85 to tease us with a clue to his selection if he wants to, and we'll get to comment and vote on his selection from tomorrow.

An quick heads-up for next week - we're off to Valencia for the weekend so it'll be Tuesday before I get to do next week's changeover. @Saddleworth2 is selecting the album for week #4 so feel free to either wait until I've posted the total or post as early as you want on Tuesday, either way is fine by me.

Thanks Rob and thanks all of your for taking the time to listen and write.

@BlueHammer85 I look forward to whichever Morrissey album you select :) Not that you like or don't like him, but as a Yank I find the handbags that ensue whenever he or The Smiths are mentioned on bluemoon to be highly entertaining!

 

[crublue1]

Thanks Rob and thanks all of your for taking the time to listen and write.

@BlueHammer85 I look forward to whichever Morrissey album you select :) Not that you like or don't like him, but as a Yank I find the handbags that ensue whenever he or The Smiths are mentioned on bluemoon to be highly entertaining!

Twas a pleasure that record, a really great listen and a keeper for sure.
Thanks for nominating it, chances are I wouldn't have discovered it but for you.