Closing out the eighties with another five favourites. Honourable mentions to Live Skull (Positraction), Madonna (Like a Prayer), The Cure (Disintegration), The Stone Roses, Fugazi (Margin Walker), Neneh Cherry (Raw Like Sushi), Young Gods (L’Eau Rouge), Bob Dylan (Oh Mercy), Galaxie 500 (On Fire), Nine Inch Nails (Pretty Hate Machine), and NoMeansNo (Wrong).
“Electric Counterpoint” for guitar is an excellent three movement piece by Steve Reich, played superbly by Pat Metheny, but the main event is “Different Trains”, a composition for string quartet and tape. Steve Reich was a child during the war. His parents had separated and were living on opposite coasts of the United States, so the young Reich spent a lot of time on trains. At the time he was obviously unaware that his fellow Jews in Germany were being herded on to quite different trains. The three movement work juxtaposes the innocence of his American journeys with the horror unfolding in Europe. It’s brilliantly conceived, moving and engaging.
A groundbreaking album that led to the band being pigeon holed as ‘daisy age’ rappers, a label that stuck and hung around them like a curse for the rest of their career. With its sunny rhymes, silly sketches, and foot-friendly rhythms it was the perfect yin to Public Enemy’s yang. The samples were inspired, ditching the James Brown cliches for Steely Dan et al. It still sounds great, even if it became a straitjacket.
Surfer Rosa is probably as good overall, but Doolittle has the sharper pop. Both are essential.
Licensed To Ill was fun, but this was a whole different ball game. The raps are still a little brattish in places, but everything else has undergone a transformation. The production by the band and the Dust Brothers is sample heavy, but the samples are used in such a way that most are unrecognisable. This was in an era when most sample led tracks were more or less an old record with rapping on top (see the Fugees). It was never going to sell like its predecessor, but it stood the test of time far better.
It took five years to appear, which in those days was an age, but by Blue Nile’s standards was lightning fast. Like the first album there were seven tracks. Both had three on side one, with the big single in the middle (“Tinsel Town” vs “Downtown Lights”), and four on side two with the slow ballad also second (“Easter Parade” vs “From a Late Night Train”). Talk about inviting comparisons. Hats is the better record, I think, by a small margin. A track by track comparison gives it a 6-1 advantage (“Heatwave” trumps “Seven AM”). It’s another sublime, soulful, late night record that belongs in everyone’s collection.
Music Musings and Miscellany 