28. Muddy Waters at Newport - Muddy Waters

Muddy Waters is exactly why I started this project - a seminal artist who I know next to nothing about. I am aware that Waters influenced a whole host of Blues performers over the 60s and 70s, and he was one of the first commercial pop stars. Beyond this, my knowledge was limited, and whilst I am no fan of live albums (I may have mentioned this before), I thought this way I'd get a good introduction. 

This album records one of the first times that blues was played to a wholly white audience, and the crowd's response is part of what made the album so popular; quiet and cagey at the beginning, and effusive by the end. It featured amplification, with Waters playing a Fender Telecaster (not John Lee Hooker's electro acoustic as in the photo on the album cover), and this started the bridge from Delta blues to rock and roll. 

I got my Brand on You is slightly less creepy than that title would suggest; there is no suggestion that hot metal should be applied to signify ownership. It has a swagger to it, and Waters' voice is mellifluous, with a real depth to it. Hoochie Coochie Man is a very straight up 12 bar blues song, extended to 16 bars due to the available sustain on electric instruments, written by Willie Dixon. It is everything that I expected from this album, but possibly stays too tight for my liking; a real breakout would be much more fun. Baby, Please Don't Go features some astounding piano from Otis Spann, yet Soon Forgotten is a soulful, yet slightly lugubrious, trudge. Tiger in your Tank has a cracking bassline, and some belting harmonica by John Cotton, although it sounds like it should be on an advert, which takes the sheen off somewhat. I Feel So Good sounds like a song that James Brown would smash out the park, but the rhythm section keeps everything nice and aligned. I Got My Mojo Working seems to capture the moment when the band start to fully come out of their shell, enjoying the response from the crowd. Waters' voice is stunning in this song, and the individual instruments work so well together, especially the interplay between the drums and harmonica on the bridge sections. Part 2 of the song carries along with much the same rattle and enjoyment, although slightly less anarchically, and Goodbye Newport Blues is a pleasant enough wind-down at the end of the gig, which again shows off the richness of Waters' voice.

I enjoyed this album, but the nature of blues meant that it was more variations on a theme, than variety per se. I can completely understand that it is an extremely important piece of music, and can only imagine the impact that it had. The recording does capture some of the joy of the performance, and Waters' voice has a lovely quality to it that I wasn't expecting. However, I can't imagine coming back to it too often, as it sounds like the starting point of the music I love, rather than an example of it. I Got My Mojo Working is one of the few examples where the band seem to really let things run away with themselves, and if there was more of this it would have got a higher score. 

Chloe's album rating: 6
Chloe's favourite track: 5. Tiger in your Tank
Olly's album rating: 6 
Olly's favourite track: 7. I Got My Mojo Working 

Next week we have another Blues-y album, albeit from a lightly later time - 400. Dire Straits - Dire Straits. All hail the Knopfler.

984. Two Dancers - Wild Beasts

Quite how this band completely escaped my notice is beyond me; the only reasonable explanation is that I was listening to other music for the duration of 2009. Whilst self-evidently true, it is disappointing that I missed out on an arty British Indie band who have a falsetto singer and a penchant for not too subtle innuendo. Whilst this may allude to Queen, they certainly have a more modern sound than that parallel would imply.

Two Dancers, Wild Beasts' second album, was critically acclaimed, to the point of being on most magazines' best of 2009 album lists, and being Mercury Award nominated, Two Dancers sold in healthy rather than stellar numbers. Harking from Leeds, they never quite made the step to the mainstream that this album promised, where their local contemporaries Alt-J have gone on to global stadia filling tours. They are still producing albums to some acclaim, but they remain more cult classic than best-sellers.

The Fun Powder Plot has every element I look for in a song - a slow-building intro with each instrument joining in at regular intervals, a catchy riff, a falsetto singer, and a pun-based title. Ok, so I may be over-egging the pudding, but it really is an excellent start. The lyrics are pretty obscure in every sense of the word, but the separation on the recording works a treat, giving the track a feeling of magical coincidence that all of these elements should end up together. Hooting and Howling, the album's first single, took longer to grow on me, but was the chorus that most ended up on loop in my head. The percussion alone is superb, but is more than supported by the strong vocal variety from Hayden Thorpe, leading to a wonderfully meandering song. All the King's Men features a cracking refrain complete with a list of girls from slightly obscure British towns, creating the image of a slightly desperate Lothario (Chloe's term, not mine). When I'm Sleepy is a more overtly sexual track, with strongly suggestive lyrics, and a sultry melody. We Still Got the Taste Dancin' on our Tongues is probably the most complete song on the album, with wonderfully chiming guitars placing it somewhere between Bloc Party and Arcade Fire. Two Dancers (i) is an ominous track that overtly moves away from the more upbeat earlier tracks, and the follow up track takes the pace down a step further. This is Our Lot has a real insistence to it, with an urgency sometimes lacking elsewhere; the bridge near the end is one of the best moments on the album. Underbelly is a bit too lightweight for me, though it'll probably be a decent lullaby to play for the baby, as long as I remember to cut it off before the drums of Empty Nest kick in. Chloe really liked this song, but for me it lacks the big chorus that it hints at. Through the Iron Gate takes some Stone Roses-esque swirling guitars, and combines them with a pounding drumline, that sounds pretty good, until the album loops back into the opener, and you realise how much better this band can sound.

When listening to the album, I can't not think of Alt-J; the guitar sound, the arty feel to the compositions, the slightly surreal lyrics - they are remarkably similar. A couple of days in, I thought that I would end up loving this album, but it didn't really push on from there as I'd hoped. It's very good, and there are some sublime moments, but it just doesn't do enough to grab your attention throughout. Whilst there is clear variety in elements of the songs, the overall sound doesn't change much over the entire songlist, and the falsetto can wear a little bit thin, though it is done well. The good songs are good enough to carry the rest of the album, but it hints at something that could have been even more.

Chloe's album rating: 6

Chloe's favourite track: 10. Empty Nest

Olly's album rating: 7

Olly's favourite track: 5. We Still Got the Taste Dancin' on Our Tongues

Next week is our earliest album yet - 28. Muddy Waters at Newport; I'll leave you to work out the artist.

707. Vulgar Display of Power - Pantera

So, with only the respite of a week since the delicate tones of Slipknot were pumelling us, we have Pantera. Now this is a band who have been around since the 80s, with a guitarist who was asked to join Megadeth but turned them down after the group refused to take on his brother Vinnie on drums, so there is some real pedigree there. My main concern was that I'd reached heavy metal fatigue, alongside the fact that I'd never thought much of Cowboys from Hell, the predecessor to this particular album. 

Pantera were founded in the early 80s, and were originally a Glam/Hair Metal outfit, an era not featured on their official discography. Following limited success over the mid 80s, the original vocalist Terrence Lee left the band, to be replaced by the significantly angrier Phil Anselmo. Following a couple of albums that had some success, it was Vulgar Display of Violence that helped the band take off, reaching number 44 on the US charts upon release, and leading to tours that included co-headlines with Iron Maiden. The cover image on the album shows a fan being punched in the face - apparently it took 30 takes, and he was paid $10 a go; even accounting for inflation, that doesn't sound great. 

Mouth for War is an extremely accessible opener once you've grow accustomed to the hoarse delivery of Anselmo. It is powerful and percussive, but follows a fairly traditional musical form. Walk is one of the best known tracks off the album, and it's anthemic chorus would clearly go down a treat at festivals after a bingey weekend, where everything seems to smell of stale hops. However, I actually found this track one of the weaker numbers, with its repetitive nature becoming slightly galling on repeated listens. Following this with Fucking Hostile makes for a fairly abrasive combination, and the technical fretwork aside, it's a little bit "speed metal by numbers" for my taste. This Love, on the other hand, goes big on light-heavy-light-heavy combo, and comes up trumps. Whilst Chloe may claim it sounds like some shit Bon Jovi track, she's wrong on many, many levels. The call and response chorus and the delicate verses echo some of Metallica's finest work, complete with waves of tight yet distorted guitar, and then a cutting solo near the end, complete with vocoder. Ok, so that is a bit Sambora, but since when was that a bad thing? Rise has a bit more variety than some of the other tracks, with a tempo that never seems to settle. Live in a Hole sounds like Alice in Chains, from the song title through to the guitar sound - it is easy to imagine Layne Staley's voice over the top of it. The best shoutalong chorus award goes to By Demons be Driven, as it is just utterly belting. Darrell's guitar on this song shows his flexibility, holding the rhythm section together on the chorus, whilst squealing and squawking left, right and centre in the bridge. Hollow is similar in style to Live in a Hole, with a more meandering approach to the delivery, and ends the album on a less brutal, more reflective note.

I enjoyed this album a lot more than I'd anticipated. It shows significant;y more variety than I'd been led to expect, and whilst I would almost need to be in a certain mood to fully enjoy it (angry), the combination of Dimebag's extraordinary fretwork combined with the control Anselmo shows in his voice does make it really rather compelling.

Chloe's album rating: 5
Chloe's favourite track: 7. Live in a Hole
Olly's album rating: 7
Olly's favourite track: 4. This Love

Next week we have our newest album yet 984. Two Dancers by Wild Beasts. Despite it being on most best album of the year lists from 2009, I'd never heard of it. Oops. 

35. Live at the Apollo - James Brown

I bloody love a bit of James Brown, but I've never been a fan of live albums. I'd rather listen to studio albums at home, and see bands live. The sound quality can be hit and miss, and you don't get the cohesion that a great studio album gives you. Still, if anyone can show how great a live album can be, it should be the perpetual bundle of energy that is James Brown.

James Brown funded the recording of this album himself, as his label did not think it would be a success. It would go on to spend 66 weeks in the Billboard Top Pop Albums Chart selling over a million copies, and pushed Brown onto the next level of fame. Off the back of this success he launched his own record label "Try Me Records", although this venture petered out following a contract dispute with King Records. Brown would go on to make several more "Live at the Apollo" records over the course of his career, but none had the impact of this first one. 

There are some cracking songs on the album, but they have a tendency to sort of merge into one slightly generic soulful sound. I'll Go Crazy has a cracking bassline, and decent horns, and Think actually does a decent job of capturing James Brown's energy. The horn section on this album is actually one of the disappointments - I've no doubt that it would have sounded incredible live, but it lacks the explosive punch I'd expect on this recording. There are also moments where the levels don't sound quite right, with the vocals just fading mid-word. Some of the more ballady numbers like Try Me are a bit too croony for my tastes, and the shrieking girls just act as an annoyance. I Don't Mind is better, with the Famous Flames (Brown's backing vocalists) adding some terrific harmonies. Lost Someone has some enjoyable interplay with the crowd, and the opening few lines show Brown's breathtaking vocal range and control. It is a 10 minute sprawling opus, taking up a third of the albums length, and demonstrates the ebb and flow that allows a band to get the most out of a crowd. The medley of his biggest hits at this early stage of his career lacks the power of his output just a couple of years later, and not knowing them as individual singles means they merge together somewhat to my ear. Night Train is a cover of a Jimmy Forrest song, and frankly seems to peter out a bit. Compare that to the Intro by MC Fats Gonder, which manages to build things up with a combination of effortless politeness and a tight backing band - the excitement from listening to that was unfortunately one of the peaks, rather than just the warm up I'd anticipated. 

This album is utterly revered and adored, with every music magazine I could find awarding it a perfect score, and it is number 24 on Rolling Stones greatest albums of all time. However, it really didn't move me anywhere near as much as I'd hoped it would. I just don’t think the recording gets close to capturing what I imagine the energy in the room would have been like. Now this may be that hearing it in a modern context means I can't appreciate how groundbreaking this was, but if I take that approach, I may as well just copy and paste a Mojo article. As far as I'm concerned James Brown's best songs come out after this album was released, so that has to limit how good this album is, and whilst it has some great moments, the flaws are too significant to be completely forgiven.

Chloe's album rating: 6
Chloe's favourite track: 5. Think
Olly's album rating: 6
Olly's favourite track: 2. I'll Go Crazy

Next week it is 707. A Vulgar Display of Power by Pantera; I guess it's good that we're getting the heavy stuff out of the way before the baby comes.

894. Slipknot - Slipknot

I last heard this album about 17 years ago, soon after it came out. I bought it as friends' reviews were positive, but I never really got it. Wait and Bleed aside, it was all a bit too intense and loud. Given that I was very much the target demographic (teenage), and I am not so much now, I thought this would bypass me somewhat in a flurry of drums and screaming.

Slipknot either created, rode, or went beyond the nu-metal wave that broke in the late 90s, depending on whose opinion you trust. Whilst certainly heavier than Linkin Park or Limp Bizkit, their use of scratching DJs and the inherent teenage angst, and anger, of their songs made comparisons inevitable. Their large size also makes for quite the stage presence, with three drummers, two guitarists, a bassist, keyboard player, DJ, and vocalist. Their debut album, released in 1999, went on to sell over two million copies, the band's reputation having been forged on tours and particularly from their 28 appearances at Ozzfest across the US. Given how far outside the mainstream the group pitched themselves, to end up with all their albums going at least platinum, and with ten Grammy nominations, indicates a band with quite the following, both commercially and critically. 

(sic) introduces the album, following an unnecessary answerphone recording of a far from impressed woman, with a brutal display of drumming, and some slightly dated-sounding scratching. The relentless nature of the vocals and guitar make it a powerful manifesto for what is to come. Some of the lyrics "you can't kill me 'cos I'm already inside you" make Trent Reznor look like Leonard Cohen. Eyeless is a drum and bass song transposed into a Spartan war-cry, complete with incomprehensive lyrics. It is better than that makes it sound, but a bit too "everything-turned-to-11" for me. Wait and Bleed demonstrates that Corey Taylor is a pretty good singer, and uses the classic combination of slow-fast-slow-fast that is at the bedrock of the best metal, in my opinion. This track is the most accessible on the album, yet still sounds edgy; the drumming drives everything forwards with breathtaking speed, and the onslaught of guitars work well together. Surfacing starts like a siren before taking things up a notch, and has one of the catchier choruses on the album - a sort of Killing in the Name-esque breakdown, but even angrier and much faster. Spit It Out was the other single off the album, and again combines some unambiguously rage-filled lyrics with waves of distorted guitar and scratching. The call and response style chorus would work better if the response wasn't quite so whiny. Tattered & Torn, also the name of the band's clothing line, is more a series of sound effects overlaying a slightly lost-sounding guitar and drums combo. Purity adds some variety with a much slower, in many ways darker, song. The harmonies are spot on when they appear, and really make you wish there was more conventional singing on the album. Liberate is actually fairly conventional, the harsh vocal delivery aside, and Prosthetics shows the variation that the group are capable of, with a more stripped-back yet claustrophobic sound.  The song builds to the chorus, with a desperation in Taylor's voice that pushes the main emotion from anger to regret - until near the end of the song at least. No Life is a pretty forthright account of how the band view the world, delivered in a strong, straightforward track, whereas Diluted didn't really stand out for me at all over the week. Only One is the closest to a Korn track, with an almost rap-like delivery for much of the song. This doesn't work too well, but the chorus is pretty rousing. Scissors is the band's closest attempt at progressive or industrial metal, and is interesting in that regard, although it lacks the direction so apparent in their other songs.

Part of music's role is to capture and convey emotions. Whilst the majority of music focuses on emotions relating to love, or at least a variation of that, this is focused much more on anger. Now anger is a perfectly valid emotion, and we all experience it, so having an artistic response to it is reasonable, as long as it's done well. And this album is done well - indeed very well in places. I am not a particularly angry person, so I can find the intensity of it all a bit OTT, but I do enjoy the impressive technical performances alongside such a raw display of overt emotion, especially given the nature of young-ish men as emotional clams. If it helps people to experience, and to some extent have a positive experience of, feelings in all their forms, then that is to be applauded. I just wish they said 'fuck' fewer times.

Chloe's album rating: 5

Chloe's favourite track: 6. Spit it Out

Olly's album rating: 7

Olly's favourite track: 10. Prosthetics

Next week is 35. Live at the Apollo by James Brown from 1963; get on up indeed.