Yes I agree. I do like it when an album has a consistent tone and feel and sounds like it was recorded by the same set of musicians as opposed to simply being a collection of songs thrown together to make up the numbers. You may lose a bit of variety with this approach, but more often than not, it makes an album more than the sum of its parts such that it doesn't rely on a couple of hit singles.Thoughtful review as ever.
On the memorable song front, Rocks is more about the overall feel and consistency. The songs run into one another and it's almost like one long song on each side. However, when you have played it as many times as I have, the individual songs do seem memorable.
My daughters are (just) 23 now and I never pushed them over football (my wife hates football) but they caught the bug when they watched a certain QPR game that Daddy had gone to. One of them goes to pretty much every game I go to and the other is an avid armchair supporter, both of City, naturally.It's fascinating to watch your children's music tastes evolve and really nice when at least some of it overlaps with your own, hopefully by osmosis rather than enforced listening!
I've watched my eldest's favourite song go from being "Hello, hello, who's your lady friend" (don't ask me why but he would literally chuckle himself to sleep when I sang it to him in his cot) through to 'Rat in mi kitchen' as a 4 or 5 year old to 'Cake by the Ocean' (worrying period that) to 'Voodoo Chile' to the point where he now oscillates between various songs off Low Life and Brotherhood. My youngest started on the Makka Pakka song from In the Night Garden and now it's probably a toss up between Transmission and That's Entertainment.
I can actually cope with the fact that one of them has no interest in City whatsoever but if either had said they weren't fussed about music beyond a bit of tiktok I'm not sure how I'd have coped!!
I suppose it depends where the review is going to be published.I really enjoy Fogs reviews and anyone else’s that put the time and effort giving honest opinions, great way to learn about what makes the album tick and where I can hopefully find inspiration to feel the same.
I suppose it depends where the review is going to be published.
On an internet forum or high end magazine there's the room to write 1000 plus words and go into history, influences and comparisons.
Plus, the reader will usually take more time to actually wade through it.
For the casual reader a long-winded review is too much trouble. Look at reviews in the daily press and general interest mags and they will be a couple of paragraphs long.
I'm not meaning to have a pop at @FogBlueInSanFran or the others that put their thought down on here. When i have a spare week i even read them and have got some good snippets of info.
Don't worry, they didn't -- KISS did on "Destroyer" with "Beth" six weeks prior to this record's release :). As I believe I noted when we reviewed that one :)8.5/10 for me and if they hadn’t half invented the power ballad in the last track (which in itself wasn’t that bad but has spawned myriad egregious offspring) then I might have gone a bit higher still!
Aerosmith - Rocks
Have to admit when this was nominated my heart sunk a bit as though I’d heard a handful of their songs that I liked, it’s not really my territory and for everyone I’d thought OK there seemed to be another that I really didn’t care for at all.
So it’s nice to be pleasantly surprised and I’d go as far as to say this is the most surprised I’ve been by a nomination.
Even Tyler’s screaming stopped winding me up in the end as it occurred to me you’d can’t expect Perry and Whitford to be balls-out and Tyler not to be; even if his version does sound at times like they are trapped in his zipper :-)
I concur with most of what OB1 and Rob have written. I’ve already said the main reason I like this is the overall sonic effect and that continues to be the case. It’s been a while since just the general sound coming out of the speakers has impressed like this did.
I had a big old read over the weekend about the details of the recording of this album and they are very interesting. Won’t go down that rabbit hole but I will say that there’s a bit of self-deprecation in Jack Douglas’s blithe statement that basically it’s simply down to the distortion. Any clown with access to a Big Muff and a Tube Screamer can make a racket (something I have proven to myself on multiple occasions) but it won’t sound anything like the racket on this album!! The tones are just so enjoyable, and they have lots of slightly contradictory elements to them to the extent that in the end I gave up trying to come up with the right adjective to describe the sound. As a recording I think this is quite special.
In terms of songs, I think OB1 nailed it on the head in talking about it as a whole rather than the parts, Back In The Saddle is a big big song on it’s own but I found myself listening to this album as a 30 odd minute single piece rather than a series of songs. In that sense it reminded me a bit of listening to the different movements in a classical piece.
In light of Fog’s comments about Toys I did have another good listen to that too, and though I get where he’s coming from, as a whole I remain much keener on Rocks as a listening experience.
I had a very brief mooch around their later catalogue and it really isn’t my cup of tea, but I will happily return to this album, and I can see how it’s seen as a bit of a touchstone for later artists.
8.5/10 for me and if they hadn’t half invented the power ballad in the last track (which in itself wasn’t that bad but has spawned myriad egregious offspring) then I might have gone a bit higher still!