656. Pixies - Doolittle (1989)
















Track Listing

1. Debaser
2. Tame
3. Wave Of Mutilation
4. I Bleed
5. Here Comes Your Man
6. Dead
7. Monkey Gone To Heaven
8. Mr Grieves
9. Crackity Jones
10. La La Love You
11. No. 13 Baby
12. There Goes My Gun
13. Hey
14. Silver
15. Gouge Away

Review

Ah, the other great Pixies album, after the amazing Surfer Rosa, the Pixies tone it down slightly for Doolittle their second masterpiece, and that it is. The sound isn't as heavy as in the Steve Albini produced Surfer Rosa, but there is still plenty of noise in the more pop sheen of the thing.

Then all the songs are memorable in their own right and that is what makes for a truly great album, nothing to skip, nothing to say "eh" it is all good, all fun and incredibly all quite different. In fact this album is a showcase of what the Pixies can do, and that is quite a lot of styles. The only thing that annoys me is Black singing Chien Andalusia in Debaser instead of Chien Andalus which is the name of the film he is referring to.

I might still like Surfer Rosa slightly better than this one, and I like these two definitely better than any other Pixies albums, but the difference in quality is quite small, they are both 10s, only Surfer is possibly a more perfect 10, even if this is the more accessible album of the two and probably the album a newcomer should start with.

Track Highlights

1. Wave Of Mutilation
2. Here Comes Your Man
3. Hey
4. Mr. Grieves

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

However, Doolittle received mixed reviews from several music critics. Time Out said that "Gil Norton's toy theatre production makes a drama out of what should have been a crisis." Spin ran a hundred-word review of the album, including critic Joe Levy's comment "the insanity less surreal and more silly, and the songs themselves more like songs and less like adventures." Rolling Stone, reviewing the album in July 1988, gave the album three and a half stars. Doolittle appeared on several end-of-year "Best Album" lists; both Rolling Stone and The Village Voice placed the album tenth, and independent music magazines Sounds and Melody Maker both ranked the album as the second best of the year. NME also ranked the album highly, placing it fourth in their end-of-year list.

A range of music magazines have since acclaimed Doolittle as one of the quintessential alternative rock albums of the 1980s. Rolling Stone, reviewing Doolittle again in 2002, gave the album five stars out of five, remarking that it laid the "groundwork for Nineties rock." Doolittle has received a number of international accolades and is consistently noted as one of the best albums of the 1980s in any genre. The band's later albums have failed to attract the same level of retrospective critical praise.

Rolling Stone is soooo shit.

Here comes Your Man:

655. Aerosmith - Pump (1989)

















Track Listing

1. Young Lust
2. F.I.N.E.
3. Going Down/ Love In An Elevator
4. Monkey On My Back
5. Water Song/ Janie's Got A Gun
6. Dulcimer Stomp/ The Other Side
7. My Girl
8. Don't Get Mad, Get Even
9. Hoodoo / Voodoo Medicine Man
10. What It Takes/Hidden Instrumental

Review

Pump is probably the best Aerosmith album of them all, that is of course a mixed compliment, as it is still an Aerosmith album. At least there is plenty of variety here and even if you don't like the songs there are a couple of good instrumental intros and outros.

In this Aerosmith try to mimic Led Zeppelin, but they lack the sheer quality of Zeppelin to be able to pull it off successfully. Nonetheless it isn't as bad as you might think at first.

Still, it's peppered with cock-rock pearls such as Love In An Elevator that make you not take it seriously. But compared with their previous and later efforts it is their Magnum Opus.

Track Highlights

1. Water Song/ Janie's Got A Gun
2. What It Takes/Hidden Instrumental
3. Going Down/ Love In An Elevator
4. Dulcimer Stomp/ The Other Side

Final Grade

7/10 (but slightly higher than Rocks)

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

It is argued to be among the top tier of Aerosmith's most successful albums, and has certified sales of seven million copies in the U.S. to date. It produced a variety of successes and "firsts" for the band. It produced the band's first Grammy award ("Janie's Got a Gun"). "Love in an Elevator" became the first Aerosmith song to hit #1 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. Additionally, it is the only Aerosmith album to date to have three Top 10 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 and three #1 singles on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. The album was the fourth bestselling album of the year 1990.

Janie's Got a Gun:

654. Barry Adamson - Moss Side Story (1989)

















Track Listing

1. On the Wrong Side of Relaxation
2. Under Wraps
3. Central Control
4. Round Up the Usual Suspects
5. Sounds From The Big House
6. Suck On The Honey Of Love
7. Everything Happens To Me
8. The Swinging Detective
9. Autodestruction
10. Intensive Care
11. The Most Beautiful Girl In The World
12. Free at Last
13. Alfred Hitchcock Presents
14. Chocolate Milk Shake
15. The Man With The Golden Arm

Review

So a soundtrack to a non-existent film noir set in Moss Side, I have been to Moss Side and this album makes it feel more glamorous than it actually is. Not so much Film Noir as a mix between Spike Lee and Mike Leigh.

That aside there are a lot of interesting things, the main one is that I'd like to see the film that would fit this soundtrack, and if that was his objective he was pretty successful. Then there is a crazy mix of styles, from Vangelis circa Blade Runner to Morriconne and John Zorn they all make a mark here, as does Adamson's own past as a post-punker.

Unfortunately it still sounds like a soundtrack would, slightly disjointed and a bit too varied for its own good. If you take it as a jazz album it would probably be better, but then it would be too cinematic. Still an interesting listen.

Track Highlights

1. Under Wraps
2. Round Up The usual Suspects
3. Everything Happens To Me
4. The Man With The Golden Arm

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Adamson left school and shifted into graphic design but quit shortly after, favouring to venture into the exploding punk rock scene of the late 1970s. He joined ex-Buzzcocks singer Howard Devoto's band Magazine, playing bass guitar, scoring one chart single, "Shot by Both Sides". He played on all of Magazine's albums, and contributed to Devoto's solo album and his next band, Luxuria. He also contributed to the studiobased band Visage, playing in the ensemble's first two albums, Visage and The Anvil.

After Magazine broke up, Adamson worked with another ex-Buzzcock, Pete Shelley, before joining Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. He appeared in four of that band's albums: From Her to Eternity, The Firstborn Is Dead, Kicking Against the Pricks and Your Funeral, My Trial. After his stint in the band, he released his first solo album, Moss Side Story.

Everything Happens to Me:

653. Coldcut - What's That Noise? (1989)




















Track Listing

1. People Hold On
2. Fat (Party And Bullshit)
3. I'm In Deep
4. My Telephone
5. Reportage
6. Which Doctor
7. Stop This Crazy Thing
8. No Connection
9. Smoke 1
10. Doctorin' The House
11. What's That Noise

Review

This is probably the only album of originals to have collaborations by Lisa Stansfield and Mark E. Smith in the space of three tracks. That goes to show what a mixed bag we have here, actually it is a mixed bag of very good and pretty bad, and a lot in the middle.

There are some tracks here that are great, the one with Mark E. Smith, I'm In Deep is an obvious example, but My Telephone composed almost completely of telephone noises is another great one, prefiguring the whole 8-bit movement thing.

Then there are real turkeys, and Doctorin' The House and People Hold On are the big stand outs in turkeydom, they are also curiously the most popular songs in the album, just goes to show how shit people's taste is. The collage work here is what is really interesting and it is the sound collages that make this album above mediocre.

Track Highlights

1. I'm In Deep
2. My Telephone
3. Stop This Crazy Thing
4. Which Doctor

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Coldcut first came together in the autumn of 1986. Computer programmer Matt Black carried a tape recording that featured the inception of "Say Kids, What Time Is It?", a track he had made for a Capital Radio mix competition, browsed in the Reckless Records store on Berwick Street, in London. Ex-Art teacher Jonathan More, who worked in the store at the time, listened to the mix, suggesting a separate edit be made of the Jungle Book's "King of the Swingers" - Black had mixed this with the break from James Brown's "Funky Drummer". Using his contacts from his Meltdown Show on Kiss FM and his club night, in January 1987 this mix was released on a white label and "Say Kids, What Time Is It?" became their first single.

My telephone, sorry for the crappy video:

652. 808 State - 808: 90 (1989)





















Track Listing

1. Magical Dream
2. Ancodia
3. Cobra Bora
4. Pacific 202
5. Donkey Doctor
6. 808080808
7. Sunrise
8. Fat Shadow

Review

Time has done absolutely no favours to this particular album, it sounds extremely dated and it sounds so much like the stuff you would hear on a night out in the early to mid 90s that it becomes boring.

This kind of dance music has saturated the ears of everyone who was around for the 90s, but if we try to listen to it with fresh ears there are some not bad tracks, and the stand-out is definitely Pacific 202.

Other than that particular track, there is nothing particularly worthy here, it is however an historical album and pretty representative of the Ibiza influenced stuff going on in the very late 80s in Manchester. Not particularly interesting, but historical.

Track Highlights

1. Pacific 202
2. Anaconda
3. Donkey Doctor
4. The Fat Shadow

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

It was released in the US as Utd. State 90, without "The Fat Shadow," but with other bonus tracks.

Video for Pacific 202, ecstasy optional: