On this single’s A-side, George Benson combines his soulful singing with some synthed-up disco flavor, putting a big burst of energy into the choruses. The groove hits firm, and the multi-tracked vocals give each other good reinforcement, but aside from the main hook, it ends up not being too memorable. The cover of “Nature Boy” on the B-side applies the same electrodisco style, but lets the melody take the lead, resulting in a more engaging and funky piece. Neither song is really great, but both are enjoyable.
Leading with his biggest hit, this single collects two tracks from Gary Numan’s first album dropping Tubeway Army from the name. “Cars” runs on droning synth tones and drum machine kicks, with Numan’s nasal voice intoning the benefits of automobile isolation. The slick rhythms and ramping frequency of the low-punch percussion keep the track moving right along despite the spacy whine of the synths, with the chorus riff bringing a sharp hook for memory. “Metal”, on the B-side, swerves into a slower, near-industrial groove for a story of AI experimentation, taking a straight ride from start to finish, with few bridges to slow the ride. A nice pair of cuts from one of Numan’s high points.
The third album from Jane’s Addiction is a mix of single-friendly grungy alternative rock (“Stop!”, “Been Caught Stealing”) and psychedelic prog (”Three Days”, “Classic Girl”), with the mixtures shifting freely across the nine tracks. Spurting ethical positions, ruminating on personal memories, reacting to outside interests, and spinning focused stories, the lyrics are taken wherever front-man Perry Farrell feels like going, and the sprawling coverage fits together with an uncanny ease, thanks in no small part to the unifying and distinctive personality he projects over it all.
On the musical side, the band makes thorough use of studio production possibilities, with multi-tracked and overlapping vocals, sharp mixing (deployed to excellent high/low contrast in the ~11-minute “Three Days”), lush and varied treatments of the guitar timbre, shifting of the bass prominence in the mixing, and playful twists of the percussion. Through all of the layering and escalations, the emotional core is kept earnest and clear, if a bit sardonic at times, and it aims for just as wide a range as the surrounding instrumentation. A keystone album of the ‘90s, and the best of the band’s LPs.
Here’s the alternate cover art, used for stores which wouldn’t stock the original.
Curating cuts from just over two decades of musical work by composer Carl Stalling on (primarily) Looney Tunes cartoons, this compilation provides an informative tour through his creatively playful approach to scoring the animations. From evocatively conveying characters and their movements through to the instruments, to riffing on standards and popular songs of the time (including the employment of ‘musical puns’, tying in a couple of bars from a song with a title that could be linked to the on-screen action), Stalling’s work is lively, innovative, and downright fun.
The inclusion of uncommon instrumentation (like the incorporation of studio sirens into musical passages, a ‘singing’ kazoo for a chicken, or rhythmically-staggered laughter) makes for even more distinctively outré arrangements, though it always feels earnestly in service of the music, rather than just being there for extra energy or weirdness.
A few moments of background studio chatter add some sense of the recording atmosphere for the musicians and conductor,
and while some of the cues meant to evoke world regions (e.g., “Chopsticks” for China) haven’t aged as well as the rest of the music, the large majority of the scores hold up fantastically, even removed from the context of their cartoons.
On The Grateful Dead’s second album, the group indulges in rambling psychedelic rock with strong folk flavoring, leading with a three-part opening track that dips and weaves around its main riffs before finally giving way to the rest of the song. Despite the large size of the band (at over half-a-dozen members), they find ways to make room for quiet focus on one or two instruments at a time within the sprawling tunes, which leads to sections that often feel more engaging than when all of the players are used simultaneously. The end song “Caution (Do Not Stop on the Tracks)” provides a solid counter-point to this, with the group going as full-out psychedelic as they get on the album while omitting vocals, and though there’s some odd pacing through the course of it, the album comes together with its idiosyncrasies and oddities just fine.
Scrambled Brains 