1984 in music. • Page 2

Listening to Heartbeat City now

 

Really liking the debut from Lyres. People channeling garage rock can bore me sometimes if they’re more interested in sounding retro than writing good songs, but these guys sound vital and passionate, not backward-looking. Also Boston, represent

 

This is sounding great today. It's weird seeing Dave Gahan so young, however - doesn't look like that voice should be coming out of him.

 

1. Billy Bragg - Brewing Up with Billy Bragg
2. Bruce Springsteen - Born in the USA
3. The Replacements - Let It Be

Billy Bragg's second album picks up exactly where he left of with his first, full of simple, extremely well written songs about life in Britain, and 80s politics.

Springsteen's Born in the USA is him fully embracing his pop instincts, but there's plenty of hidden darkness to the songs beneath the shine, with his always reliable storytelling ability.

Let it Be is the Replacements at their best, blending all that snotty punky instincts (Gary's got a boner), with big stadium rock esque songs like Unsatisfied. Naming the album Let It Be is also very funny.

Honourable Mentions;

Prince - Purple Rain: Prince's massive, go for broke smash of an album. Looking it up on Wiki, I see there was two alternate track lists / sequencing for it, which might be interesting to see how they feel.

The Smiths - The Smiths: Yeah, obviously Morrissey is what he is now, but The Smiths debut is a fantastic little collection of indie rock and the poppy side of post-punk.

Husker Du - Zen Arcade: Husker Du's very influential double album, stretching their wings and expanding their punk sound into new directions, with some powerful and impassioned songwriting.

Minutemen - Double Nickels on the Dime: Minutmen's also influential double album, with what feels like about 100 different songs and ideas. Hugely creative, and utterly exhausting to listen to. They also released a regular single album this year, The Politics of Time, so we've got a triple disc worth of material from Minutemen this year.

Cocteau Twins - Treasure: Beautiful shimmering dream pop from the Cocteau Twins, that feels like you're in a dream listening to it.

Bob Marley - Legend: A compilation, so considered not including it, but a superb and brilliant introduction to Marley, with a great collection of songs.

Reagan Youth - Youth Anthems for the New Order: Influential little hardcore EP, a handful of tracks, and full of anger.

KUKL - The Eye: Bjork's more experimental punk band, full of gothic rock influence, and general experimentation

Nick Cave - From Her to Eternity: I need to listen to more Nick Cave, I saw him live on Sunday and he was captivating. This is his debut with the Bad Seeds, a great post-punk record.

Black Flag - My War: I think Black Flag released three full length albums this year, and started quickly moving into more experimental directions. My War probably is the most palatable of their 84 releases.

 

1. The Smiths - The Smiths
2. Metallica - Ride the Lightning
3. Prince and The Revolution - Purple Rain

 

I feel like this year is going to be a horse race.



Other than a cheesy, misogynist closing track, Out of the Cellar by Ratt rules. Just an absolutely smorgasbord of great melodic metal riffs.

 

love your write ups so much

 

i prefer my war to slip it in but actually find slip it in to be more palatable. the experimental nature of my war can even be a bit much for me depending on the day

 

Not a first listen, but first listen in a long while to Black Flag's Family Man. Their third (I think?) record of this year, and pretty apparent at this point that this is a bit of a dysfunctional band here. First side is all Henry Rollins spoken word pieces, one of which is recorded live, and all of which are creepy or "edgy", but not a huge amount of substance to them. Rollins is an engaging presence that I like nowadays, but I'm not sure he's doing anything worthwhile here.

The second side is long instrumental pieces, slowing the sludgy metal influence that Black Flag had developed pretty quickly, and would go on to be a fairly big influence on bands that came after. In the middle between the two sides, there's a 9 minute long piece with Rollins spoken words over an instrumental, but the two do feel very disparate.

So, here we have one half without a band, and one half without a singer. On the one occasion they're both together, whatever they're doing separately doesn't mesh as a song. While I can (sort of) respect the ambition and boldness of this, I can imagine the confused reaction from any fans who bought this blind in a store.

 

if you removed damaged from the equation, i'd say rollins band is a better use of henry's talents than black flag. but that album is iconic for a reason.

 

There has not been a single year of this where I haven’t had an album I tried to check out that wasn’t streaming

 

Regan Youth’s ‘Youth Anthems for the New Order’ came out this year.

 

1. Bruce Springsteen - Born in the USA
2. U2 - The Unforgettable Fire
3. Prince - Purple Rain

A trio of masterpieces. USA is a lot darker, more complex, and more emotionally gripping than it gets credit for, The Unforgettable Fire turns U2 into the anthemic stadium band they are today (and has "Bad," which is a top five U2 song), and Purple Rain is a sprawling pop masterpiece with one of the greatest grand finales of any album ever.

Here's an essay I wrote about Born in the USA a few years ago, and about why it means so much to me: 33-45-78: Bruce Springsteen — Born in the U.S.A.

 

Meat Puppets - Meat Puppets II
Honestly kinda surprised how much I like this. The vocals are weird and the music is loose and messy, but it has some kind of x-factor I find really interesting. In particular the guitar and its country touches are really cool and I actually really liked the instrumentals.

Ruben Blades and Seis de Solar - Buscando America
Listen, I'm not expert in Latin music but this one seems thrillingly progressive for its time. And it still delivers the goods on the salsa front in spots, too, while throwing in rock and a capella and a bunch of other cool excursions.

Foreigner - Agent Provocateur
Not quite as amazing as 4, but quite good. They were much better as a keyboard pop band than as a rock band, where they were pretty damn weak. And "I Want to Know What Love Is" is basically a perfect single.

Los Lobos - How Will the Wolf Survive?
Genius blend of Mexican, blues, rock, and R&B influence into a really unique sound. Really glad it's survived all 3 editions of the Rolling Stone top 500. The title track rules.

 

Cobain really showed how A+ the songwriting on meat puppets ii is on unplugged

 

Yeah he's honestly the only reason I'd heard of them before looking at the 1001 Albums list.

 

Probably not a first listen, but I checked out Ride The Lightning this morning. I’m not 100% sure what I’ve heard in full from Metallica, definitely Master of Puppets, but can’t be for sure on anything else (and Kill ‘Em All, but that was last week).

I think I liked this less than Kill em All, I found that any point when the pace dropped it became a lot less interesting, whereas Kill Em All was just relentless. Lots of stuff that I did like here though, but I could start to hear the sort of stuff in here that I find irritating about 80s metal, but still an enjoyably listen

 

it’s the corniest song ever but i always have time for fade to black

 

Fade to Black is a perfect song.

 

“Fade to Black” was a monumental leap forward in the history of Metal. It’s not cheesy

 

Also whoever was in charge of finding material for Chaka Khan should get a hug. Covering “My Love Is Alive” by Gary Wright was genius and realizing “I Feel for You” was a Prince smash the world wasn’t ready for, too.

 

Celtic Frost’s debut album Morbid Tales came out this year. Next years album is their best though.

 

Not disagreeing specifically (as I’m extremely uninformed when it comes to metal), but what makes “Fade to Black” special? From the little I’ve heard of Iron Maiden, they were doing these power ballad esque tracks before 1984.

 

i think it's pretty great songwriting and the instrumentation is very good but the acoustic intro is extremely corny. there's nothing wrong with being corny from time to time. it's an A+ song still.