Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven (1999)

Steve:

Around the late 2000s I spent a lot of time on the forum for ProgArchives.com. It was here that I first became aware of a genre known as "post-rock". As I understood it, post-rock was characterized by elongated song structures, but relatively static music. In this style, mood, texture, and the building and release of tension over otherwise simple music was paramount. It was analogous to soundtrack music, where the film in question was inside the listener's mind. 

I was surprised to learn that one of the formative albums often cited as giving rise to this genre was Spirit of Eden by Talk Talk, an album I had owned and loved for nearly 20 years by that time. So I was definitely curious to learn more. A forum post cited Godspeed You! Black Emperor's Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven as a key album in the post-rock genre. I had heard the name before but mistakenly assumed they were a dark metal band because of their name.  

Godspeed is a 9-piece band from Montréal featuring a large array of instruments. Each player is simply described as a "musician," not as a specialist on a particular instrument. The photo reveals violinist Sophie Trudeau, two bassists (electric and acoustic), a drummer, and a kneeling person. And that's less than half the band.

Lift Your Skinny Fists spans four vinyl sides, with one continuous program of music occupying each side. Each program consists of separately named movements, but the complete pieces are commonly known simply as "Storm", "Static", "Sleep", and "Antennas to Heaven". The two CDs are indexed as just four tracks. 

Godspeed's general strategy is to take simple ideas and develop them symphonically, gradually building tension to reach a deafening climax before breaking down and starting again. Often, as on the introduction to "Sleep", they use spoken word tapes to set the scene (in this case, an old man reminiscing about how people used to sleep on the beach in Coney Island, but not anymore). The voice recordings help to underscore the political undercurrents beneath the surface of their music.

The insert on the LP and CD offers a written diagram of how the band imagined each side progressing, giving some insight into the band's composition strategy. 

My first experience listening to Skinny Fists was quite memorable. I had just purchased the album on CD, and while driving back home, I heard the opening track, "Storm".  Somehow, my imagination merged with the music, and the uplifting opening theme (like a theme from an imaginary western, to borrow an idea from Jack Bruce) actually caused me to choke up and shed a tear or two on that drive. The other three sides are less immediately poignant, but also raise emotional peaks like those on "Storm". "Sleep" in particular builds gradually from quiet beginnings with a musical theme incorporating crying guitar notes akin to a musical saw or a theremin, eventually peaking in volume and intensity.  

As I recall, Dan was not particularly impressed with this album when I first thrust it upon him, but I nonetheless thought it important to include on this blog, both for its influence on the direction of my post-millennium prog interests as well as the album's stature within the progressive rock scene. For this blog entry, Dan was amenable to giving it a fresh listen to see what his reaction would be today. For me at least, this Godspeed album may not be an all-time favorite, but it helped introduce me to a new strain of progressive rock that continues to captivate me.

Dan:

Steve is correct about my first encounter with Lift Your Skinny Fists. In my defense, it was my practice at the time to audition new music on headphones while working out at the gym. I had a nice pair of headphones and a digital media player capable of playing lossless files. Even so, I remember struggling to hear the quiet passages of "Storm" and the other songs, only to have the crescendos blow out my eardrums. Lesson learned: don't play anything with a wide dynamic range in a noisy gym (or while driving a car). 

Another lesson learned through our blogging project is to listen carefully enough to new music so as to inform some intelligent remarks about the selected album. So I listened to all four suites again five months ago and once more before writing these comments. As I discovered with my jazz blog MORE FAVORITES: Reflections on Jazz in the 1980s (jazzinthe80s.blogspot.com), writing about music is a great way to become more intimate with records, both new music and those that I have owned for decades. In fairness to the performers, the details that distinguish the character of their music shouldn't be missed.

At home with my hi fi, many significant details of Lift Your Skinny Fists are revealed, from the prerecorded voiceovers to the burbling interplay during the quieter passages. The sad rant on "Static" and the Coney Island remembrance on "Sleep" leave the most lasting impressions, but all of the prerecorded voices shape the music in peculiar ways. 

I'm also getting more comfortable with the deafening climaxes; Godspeed know what they're doing so I prepare to embrace the climaxes as their artistic statement. (That's the same approach I take when listening to large jazz orchestras playing freely for extended minutes - e.g., von Schlippenbach's Globe Unity and Coltrane's Ascension). I also remind myself that loud music won't hurt me. That said, I feel that the climaxes on Skinny Fists are too long in duration to count as true climaxes, which normally are not sustained over long durations. I would call them uncomfortably long crescendos, with the understanding that discomfort is the artists' objective (as it was with von Schlippenbach and Coltrane).

As a result of my newly found intimacy with Lift Your Skinny Fists, I'm happy to reverse my previous blowoff. Godspeed are comparable in approach, if not intensity, to two other groups I like - Green Room and Zaum - which are marginally classifiable under jazz. Godspeed have a wider dynamic range due to the crescendos and consequently more diversity within the post-rock genre. 

Bruce Cockburn - The Charity of Night (1996)

Dan:

I first learned about Bruce Cockburn (pronounced Co-burn) from my friend Rafael in Miami. Rafael lived in Canada for a while before moving to Florida. Cockburn was born in Canada in 1945 and began releasing folk albums on the True North label in 1970. He is known for his political stances but also as a great musician and songwriter. Through Rafael I discovered his albums In the Falling Dark (1976), Dancing in the Dragon's Jaws (1979), Humans (1980), and Stealing Fire (1984). Dancing and Humans became lifelong favorites that I still listen to frequently. 

The Charity of Night was released in 1996, a dozen years after I had stopped following Cockburn's albums. It came to my attention by way of Gary Burton, the celebrated vibist who plays on the album. The core instrumentalists are Cockburn on guitars, Burton on vibes, Rob Wasserman on bass, and Gary Craig on percussion. Backing vocalists include Bob Weir, Johnathan Brooke, Patty Larkin, Ani DiFranco, and Maria Muldaur. Additional guests include Bonnie Raitt (slide guitar), Janice Powers (keyboards), and Joe Macerollo (accordion).

So now we have a couple of jazz greats (Wasserman and Burton) playing on a folksinger's album listed in a prog blog. How could that be? To my ears, there is not much distinction between this album and many of the others in the blog. It's unique, just as many of our other posted albums are. It's obviously eclectic, as reflected in the musicians' bios, superbly performed and produced, and extends the language of folk well beyond its acoustic origins. The songs are socially conscious, focusing on the plight of the world ("Strange Waters," "The Mines of Mozambique"); ennui ("Pacing the Cage);" and love ("Live on My Mind"). Lyrics are poetically obscure, and all are worth mulling over.

Several of Cockburn's songs combine a "spoken word" approach to the verses, punctuated by lyrically ecstatic choruses, which are the lines I respond to most. The title track, "Live on My Mind," Birmingham Shadows," and "The Whole Night Sky" all employ this pattern to great effect. To wit, the latter's chorus is short but powerful:

And look—see my tears—

They fill the whole night sky

The whole night sky

Gary Burton's role is key on six of the eleven tracks. He was one of the first jazz vibes players to adorn country music with his ringing sound, and he has also recorded tango albums, added color to numerous rock and soul albums, and here provides luminous textures in just the right places. In addition, "Mistress of Storms" is a duet between Burton and Cockburn on acoustic guitar. 

I thank Gary for turning me on to Bruce Cockburn's superb album. 

Steve:

I was not familiar with this Bruce Cockburn album before Dan's inclusion of it on the blog, but getting to know this album has been a rewarding experience. I have some limited prior exposure to Cockburn's material (I've heard Stealing Fire and Humans once or twice), so this look into his 90s material was immediately interesting to me. Certainly the presence of Gary Burton rang a lot of bells (or vibes), as Gary's music resonated through our household frequently when I was a child. At one point Dan owned every album Gary ever played on, which is a lot of albums.

Cockburn's folk style is not a type of music I seek out often, but when such an album resonates with me, it tends to sink in deep. Richard Thompson's Rumour and Sigh is a good example of this, and I have reason to believe that The Charity of Night may join that excellent album's company. The album has great atmosphere, with a rich instrumentation (besides Burton, I can appreciate Rob Wasserman's bass work as well, familiar as I am with his work with Lou Reed), and the frequent spoken sections are always something I enjoy.

My favorite tracks include "Get Up Jonah", which has a lot of energy, and begins with a line seemingly designed to win me over, "I woke up thinking about Turkish drummers / It didn't take long, I don't know much about Turkish drummers".  "Mistress of Storms" is an excellent instrumental with lots of Gary Burton. "Birmingham Shadows" is likely going to get the most replays, as it has an inviting jazz groove and lots of great instrumental work in addition to more spoken bits. "The Mines of Mozambique" has a similar instrumental depth that I really enjoyed. Finally, the closing "Strange Waters" brims with intensity and anger, with a distorted guitar leading the way (including a cool electric guitar solo), and with sweet backing vocals lending poignancy to the chorus.

Porcupine Tree - The Sky Moves Sideways (1995)

Steve:

In the early 1990s, with the Internet in its infancy, large groups of fans of niche cultural phenomena suddenly found each other and were able to join together and communicate. Prior to that, magazines, radio and TV provided content for fandoms to bond over, but such outlets could only cover so much area. As a progressive rock fan without a computer at the time, I was amazed to learn of my friend Rob's discoveries of "newsgroups" (this was before web pages per se - just text) wherein progressive rock fans from all over the world shared their knowledge of long-forgotten bands. Concurrently, new bands emulating both the style and spirit of classic 1970s prog began to emerge, providing an alternative to the 80s prog-inclined bands who relied heavily on early synthesizer technology. It's funny how this movement happened around the same time that the pop landscape also moved away from synthesized pop and rock in favor of grungy guitars and good old punk attitude. Porcupine Tree came to my attention around this time as a new prog band that delivered the classic values I hungered for at the time.

I first heard Porcupine Tree on The Sky Moves Sideways, led by guitarist, vocalist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist Steven Wilson. Although the band began as a fully solo project, by 1995 Wilson he had assembled a fairly stable band: Richard Barbieri (formerly of Japan) on keyboards, Colin Edwin on bass, and Chris Maitland on drums. Theo Travis, a woodwind player with an impressive resume (including full time membership in the current lineup of Soft Machine), makes key contributions as well. 

As has been remarked upon by other reviewers, The Sky Moves Sideways is structured much like Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here - as one long composition (the title track) split into two parts to open and close the album, with a few shorter songs in the middle. The overall mood is similar to WYWH, although there is definitely a harder, more modern edge to the music that ensures it will never be mistaken for a Floyd rip-off.

The first 18 minutes of the title track begin the album with a slowly drifting guitar theme leading into the first vocal section, which keeps the slow tempo but adds dark hues and tension. The piece then kicks into a faster percussive section with electronics that betray a more modern flavor. The piece continues through a couple of sections before giving way to "Dislocated Day", an edgy bit of electronic rock that reminds me of Nine Inch Nails in spots. Two more atmospheric songs ("The Moon Touches Your Shoulder" and the acoustic "Prepare Yourself") set the stage for the gradual resumption of "The Sky Moves Sideways". The conclusion doesn't so much reprise the first half as it picks up where it left off. As before, the spacious sound and respect for classic prog traditions make the album very enjoyable to my ears, particularly the free and spacey first minutes of the concluding piece.

Despite this auspicious introduction, I lost touch with Porcupine Tree's output shortly afterwards, as my musical interests shifted to other bands and styles. Strangely, after becoming involved with an online music discussion group ten years later, I became re-acquainted with Porcupine Tree and discovered the albums I had missed in the interim. In this discussion group (we called ourselves "The Trainwreck"), classic rock fans started a lively thread about Porcupine Tree, which seemed like everyone's new favorite band.  

Beginning in the early 2000s, Porcupine Tree's sound evolved into a more straightforward rock sound not unlike Rush - still very progressive, but heavier and more song-based, even incorporating heavy metal sounds at times. I enjoy this later era of that band as much as I do the earlier material - the band was tighter by this time, and Wilson's production skills were second to none. But none of it would have happened without the success and quality of albums like The Sky Moves Sideways. It's an early chapter in the work of a band (and bandleader) that came to virtually define the sound of progressive rock in the new millennium.

Steven Wilson, incidentally, is well known outside of Porcupine Tree not only for his successful solo career but also his remixes and restorations of classic progressive rock bands' catalogs. He did wonders on Jethro Tull's Aqualung and ELP's Tarkus, two albums reviewed earlier on our blog.

Dan:

Like all of the albums that are new to me this year, thanks to our blogging project, I have the advantage of judging them as they are now, without much sense of the trajectory they were part of when they were made. The Sky Moves Sideways impresses immediately with its long, thunderous chords that increase in intensity as the long pieces (Phases 1 and 2) progress. I love stuff like this and was not expecting it. Almost none of the rather spacey lyrics seem to matter much; it's the instrumentals that rule my attention. Steve's track-by-track description is much more detailed than I could provide. For me, it's the overall impact of the album, not its pieces.

I think the Pink Floyd comparison, which always seems to be raised in posts about this album, somewhat diminishes Steven Wilson's accomplishment. Sure, The Sky Moves Sideways has a similar structure and loud guitar passages, but Pink Floyd did not invent those things. I'd be happier just to celebrate the originality of Porcupine Tree.

If I were labeling prog subgenres (and I usually don't bother), I would easily find "space rock" to be an apt description of what Porcupine Tree do on this album. 

Pink Floyd - The Division Bell (1994)

Dan:

I remember resisting the purchase of The Division Bell, Pink Floyd's 14th album. It came out at a bad time for me, as I was in the midst of a professional move from Miami to Atlanta. I questioned how much more could Pink Floyd have left in them. Wasn't A Momentary Lapse of Reason enough of an encore to a great franchise? Of course, anything Pink Floyd released sold like crazy; I just wasn't sure I wanted to be a part of it. But eventually I succumbed to temptation and now, with 30 years of hindsight, appreciate it much more than I did before. 

The Division Bell followed the same formula as A Momentary Lapse of Reason. The core trio of Richard Wright, Dave Gilmour, and Nick Mason was augmented by a large cast of contributing musicians and technicians. Roger Waters was again missing in action, replaced by Guy Pratt on bass.

Division Bell has a nominal theme of mutual understanding, signified by titles like "Poles Apart" and "Keep Talking." But the theme was not a straitjacket in the way the themes of The Final Cut and The Wall were. Indeed, my favorite track on The Division Bell is Gilmour's confrontation with his audience, asking "What Do You Want from Me?" It's a song whose lyrics perfectly fit the sound of the band, as Gilmour advises the audience to sort out their personal issues elsewhere: "I'm not the one you need." 

"High Hopes" is a song yearning nostalgically for days gone by when "the grass was greener, the light was brighter, with friends surrounded, the nights of wonder." This longing for a simpler past contrasts with the song's portrait of current challenges:

Encumbered forever by desire and ambition

There's a hunger still unsatisfied

Our weary eyes still stray to the horizon

Though down this road we've been so many times

Most of the songs on Division Bell address issues relevant to career success, relationships, and resilience in ways that earlier Floyd albums did not. The departure of songwriter Roger Waters is, of course, a main reason for the shift in content. Part of the reason is also the songwriting of Gilmour's wife, Polly Samson, who co-wrote several songs on the album with him. Gilmour's later solo albums - On an Island and Rattle that Lock - would include more of Samson's songs. Her contributions to the Gilmour legacy are similar to Susan Hoover's creative storytelling in Camel, the band led by her husband Andrew Latimer.

Gilmour and Samson's best co-written song on Division Bell is "A Great Day for Freedom." It reflects on the positive outlook following the fall of the Berlin wall and the liberation of countries formerly ruled behind Russia's iron curtain.

On the day the wall came down

The ship of fools had finally run aground

Promises lit up the night

Like paper doves in flight

But the optimism changes to resignation that oppression continues and personal relationships remain vulnerable despite the promises that lit up the night:

Now life devalues day by day

As friends and neighbours turn away

And there's a change that even with regret

Cannot be undone

Now frontiers shift like desert sands

While nations wash their bloodied hands

Of loyalty, of history

In shades of grey

As I reflect on such lyrics, I must express gratitude to Gilmour and Samson for the song and the whole album, which contains gems like this throughout. So much for discounting Pink Floyd!

Steve:

Much like Dan, I was slow to get into The Division Bell at first, for many of the same reasons. In retrospect, however, this is a much more fully realized album than its predecessor, A Momentary Lapse of Reason. Whereas the latter was essentially a Dave Gilmour solo album blown up to Pink Floyd proportions, The Division Bell provides as good an example as I can imagine of what Pink Floyd should sound like in the 1990s.  

Recalling both Wish You Were Here and the preceding Momentary Lapse, the album opens with a mood-setting instrumental, "Cluster One", an excellent piece in the "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" mode. Immediately following this with "What Do You Want from Me" seems slightly ironic in this context, as Gilmour tries to shake his audience out of their unreasonable expectations of him, all to a tune that somewhat resembles "Have a Cigar". It's a great song - very powerful music with potent lyrics.

My favorite piece comes next, "Poles Apart", a song directed at Gilmour's estranged ex-bandmate Roger Waters, giving a vivid account of Waters' final days with the band consumed by megalomaniacal alienation:

Hey you

Did you ever realize what you'd become?

And did you see

That it wasn't only me you were running from?

Did you know all the time but it

Never bothered you anyway?

Leading the blind while I stared out the steel in your eyes

The music has a compelling vocal melody, interesting musical contrasts (including a strange middle section), and an invitingly chiming guitar lick to frame the verses.

After that, the main highlights include "Wearing the Inside Out", Richard Wright's first lead vocal with the band since "Us and Them" (from Dark Side of the Moon, 1973). This song reminds me of Wright's solo album, Wet Dream, but with the full Floyd treatment including guest saxophone by Dick Parry, who had been so prominent on "Us and Them" all those years ago. Co-songwriter Anthony Moore provided the lyrics, which seem custom-made for Wright, as he wearily sings of his efforts to let himself be heard again after decades of silence.

In all, The Division Bell fully justifies its place in the Pink Floyd canon, regardless of your feelings for or against Roger Waters' place in the band. While I would have preferred Roger continue to work with the band, it wasn't in the cards, and Gilmour and company put out a strong final Pink Floyd album where the songwriting and  lyrics (Roger's forte) were up to the band's high standard. 

The story doesn't quite end there: The Endless River (2014) was comprised mostly of instrumental pieces realized in the rehearsals for The Division Bell. It served as a posthumous send-off for the departed Richard Wright.

R.E.M. - Automatic for the People (1992)

Dan:

I imagine that all fans of R.E.M. have opinions regarding their favorite albums. Some love the primitive Murmur; others have an affection for Up (1998) or Around the Sun (2004). I've declared my preference for Fables of the Reconstruction (1985) and Document (1987), based on their roles in my personal prog discovery journey. 

Favorites notwithstanding, I think it would be an oversight to omit Automatic for the People, which is R.E.M.'s most commercially successful album (with Out of Time (1991) ranked equally by Wikipedia). I'm not fond of Out of Time, which just goes to prove that it's hard to evaluate R.E.M. albums on anything but subjective criteria. That said, it's hard to argue against Automatic, unless you absolutely reject popularity as relevant. It yielded six singles, comprising half of the album's total. "Man on the Moon" is hummable by most people who may not even know of R.E.M.'s existence. "Everybody Hurts" is just as familiar.

A good portion of the credit for Automatic's success must go to producer Scott Litt who oversaw multiple recording locations and brought in John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin fame to arrange the orchestration of strings and a lone woodwind (oboist Deborah Workman). I wouldn't say that this puts R.E.M. in Steely Dan territory as far as production is concerned, but the band had obviously come a long way since Murmur.

Mainly I just like this album, even though part of me wants to rebel against commercial success, which is more how I felt in 1992 that I do now 31 years later. It's not that the album gets better with age, and it's not something I need to turn to very often. It's just an amazingly consistent album that deserves the attention it continues to receive. 

Steve: 

From what I've seen from reviewers who came of age on the world wide web, Automatic for the People is a consensus choice for best R.E.M. album among those who don't gravitate naturally to the IRS-label era (i.e., Murmur through Document). While I've always identified with the earlier era, I have familiarized myself with all of R.E.M.'s albums, even though few of them share characteristics of the IRS period that endeared me to the band in the first place.

I believe that the ongoing popularity of Automatic for the People has less to do with the prevalence of hits than it does with the overall sound of the album (which has aged very well) and the resonant themes that pepper the album. Contrast this to Out of Time, which had a similarly "unplugged" sound, and much bigger hits ("Losing My Religion" and "Shiny Happy People"), which in my opinion have now far outworn their welcome. Those hits always sounded too contrived to me, as though the band’s popularity was going to their heads a little too much. (Incidentally, R.E.M. was the first band I remember having an "unplugged" special on MTV around this time).

On Automatic for the People, popular songs like "Man on the Moon" and "Drive" have aged much better. "Man on the Moon," in particular, still tugs at the heartstrings, especially because I still associate it with the Andy Kaufman biopic of the same name. But the song isn't empty sentimentality - Pete Buck's slide guitar makes for some really nice coloring in the arrangement, and the chorus of the song resolves the questioning verses like a good song should. Likewise, although I was initially turned off by "Drive" because of its simplicity, closer listening reveals a gradual build in the instrumental base, hitting some grungy guitar bits that really help move the song along.  

Aside from the singles, one deeper cut that I find interesting is "Sweetness Follows", a quiet but ominous song, with lots of atmosphere and chilling harmonies. It's not the kind of song that will grab you on first listen, but give it time. On the louder side, "Ignoreland" provides a welcome injection of rock power on an otherwise subdued album. 

Following Automatic for the People, R.E.M. made further attempts to experiment with their sound, but not always successfully. Monster, with its loud distorted guitars, is often cited as the weakest link in their discography, and R.E.M. never truly regained the popularity they enjoyed in the early 1990s. But for a few years, they occupied that coveted space overlapping both commercial and critical success.

Paul Weller - Paul Weller (1992)

Dan:

As the founding member of two influential rock groups, The Jam and The Style Council, Paul Weller might have been content to rest on his laurels and collect his royalty checks. But at age 34 he decided to pursue a solo career, emphasizing a more soulful approach. He seemed to be working back through a gamut of earlier styles. The Jam had been one of the best early punk bands; The Style Council recalled early jazz and swing influences; so why not try soul music?

I'm not sure how I ended up with a copy of Weller's self-titled CD in 1992, but it has been in heavy rotation, as Michael Fremer might say, for the past 30 years. There are absolutely no duds on the album, which is unusual because I usually find a song that I avoid playing. The favorites are "Bull Rush," "Above the Clouds," "Into Tomorrow," "The Strange Museum," and "Kosmos." These are all original compositions, not Weller's take on soul favorites from the past. As such, his songwriting deserves as much praise as the performances. 

Weller has always had an excellent singing voice, but he's at his best on these solo albums. He's always on pitch, conjures up emphatic growls at just the right times, and manages his dynamics to bring out the best in the lyrics. Several tunes have clever instrumental effects, such as the fade out and fade in on "Kosmos."

As Steve Winwood was wont to do, Weller plays most of the instruments on the album: guitars, bass, and keyboards. Only drummer Steve White is enlisted as a fellow band member, although background vocals are supplied by Dee C. Lee, Camille Hinds, Carlene Anderson, and Dr. Robert on half of the tracks. The added vocals add variety and touches of soul, much as Roxy Music and Steely Dan sought to do. It all works to perfection; Weller's solo albums are all skillfully composed and cleverly arranged to keep the listener engaged. 

Weller's subsequent solo albums are just as good: Wildwood (1993), Stanley Road (1995), and Heavy Soul (1997) are all winners cast in the same mold as Paul Weller. 

Steve:

After hearing my friend Tim's copy of The Jam's single "Start!" in the early 80s, I was immediately interested in the band. I bought a used copy of The Jam's All Mod Cons (1978) for Tim's birthday present, and listened to it before giving it to him, further cementing my fandom. I was known to wear a Jam pin on my shirt in high school, and The Jam were one of the first few punk-related bands to hit my radar. Rarely has there been a band that had such incredible success in the UK yet was virtually unknown in the US. Their singles compilation album Snap! is a great introduction to the band - four full LP sides of total bangers.  

Soon after this discovery, I got wind of The Jam's breakup and Weller's subsequent project, The Style Council. This collaboration with pianist Mick Talbot (and later, Weller's wife, Dee C. Lee) seemed at first to pick up where the Jam's soul-inflected swan song The Gift (1982) left off, but soon spread in myriad directions, including jazz, orchestral pop, and even rap (c.f. "A Gospel" and "Right to Go" from Cafe Bleu and The Cost of Loving, respectively). Although I eventually came to love their ambitious if slightly overstuffed and unfocused albums, at the time The Style Council escaped my interest. With my focus on punk, I had other things I was listening to.

Paul Weller's solo debut came to my attention via Dan, who has effectively taken the baton from me as the family's resident Weller enthusiast. I have listened to most of Weller's solo albums (including this debut album) over the years but have yet to add any to my personal collection. Recently, however, my musical tastes have grown to include 70s soul and funk, particularly the smooth hits I remember from the radio in the 1970s. Relistening to Paul Weller for this blog finds it very much in line with the smooth, soulful, warm-sounding groove albums I listen to nowadays. The natural, earthy sound of the album is "old school"; 1992 was a time when the tech-saturated productions of 80s pop were out, and "unplugged" albums were in.

I was not previously aware that Weller handled all the guitar, bass, and keys on this album. If so, it's an incredibly "live" sound, and he clearly has the chops to play fluidly and confidently on multiple instruments. I also agree with Dan that his voice never sounded better.

Phish - Junta (1992)

Dan:

Steve had a 2-CD set of a recording called Junta with weird cover art, played by a band called Phish. He told me that the album was first self-released on a cassette tape in 1989 but finally Elektra had put it out on both cassette and CD. Technically, then, all but the original cassettes are considered reissues. It didn't take long for the fan base to widen and Phish became a touring phenom - a jam band, if you will.

For my personal use, I recorded the CDs on a C-90 cassette, which nicely restored the original format. (I chose not to record the three bonus tracks on the CD "reissue"). I mostly remember playing it in my car on my way back and forth to work. I enjoyed all of the songs and leader Trey Anastasio's guitar adventures. So I played it frequently.

On August 24, 1992, Miami was hit by Hurricane Andrew. Although our house was not breached, our neighbor's mango tree crashed through the screen over our pool and into the water. Mango tea, anyone? While our damage was nothing like the devastation a few miles to the south of us, fallen trees filled the roads and we lost electricity for 17 days. Repairs took another year to complete.

The university shut down for more than a week. When it finally reopened, I would try to find backroads to work because many roads were impassable. Traffic lights were basically inoperable, so drivers had to be self-regulating; sometimes that worked but other times it didn't. 

One of my most emotional moments (of many) during the hurricane's aftermath was approaching a busy intersection at rush hour, with Junta playing in the car. I think the song playing was either "The Divided Sky" or "David Bowie," which were together on one side of the 90-minute tape. I could see the traffic light was gone, but a young woman was standing in the intersection directing cars with a huge smile on her face. I was overwhelmed by her selflessness and her beaming face - the perfect embodiment of the spirit of "neighbor helping neighbor," which had become something of a mantra during the long recovery. 

We all experienced positive and negative emotions in the ensuing years, and I recall being unable to talk with colleagues about the hurricane for 5 full months. I'll forever associate Junta with Hurricane Andrew's aftermath. 

I later attended two Phish concerts, one at the Cameo Theater on Miami Beach and the other at an outdoor venue on Biscayne Bay. I convinced my friend Christos to go with me to the Cameo because he also liked prog rock. We were certainly an odd-looking couple - aging statistical outliers in a room full of 20-somethings. 

Coming to Junta fresh was a fascinating experience. I love the guitar jams, and Trey Anastasio has amazing technique and inexhaustible ideas worthy of long solos. I like the jams better than what I consider to be novelty numbers (e.g., Fluffhead or "Dinner and a Movie"), but they're also a big part of the Phish experience. I also like the fables like "Esther" and "Fee," which may seem ridiculous on first hearing, but after a while you find yourself humming the tune and remembering the lyrics. "Esther" also ends with a sublime series of guitar choruses that glide beautifully across a new set of chord changes.

I went on to collect the next four Phish albums (up through Hoist), and lost interest after that. I also did not gain much from the vast number of live shows that began appearing on CD. To me, Phish are not like The Grateful Dead even though they're often compared to them. 

Steve:

As I was getting heavily into the early 90s prog renaissance, which saw the appearance of new 70's oriented bands as well as the reissue of hundreds of previously obscure international prog releases from the 70s, Phish became my favorite band. I was living in Chapel Hill NC at the time, bumming around for a year after graduating college, when my friend Rob visited with an exciting discovery. In the car he put on "The Squirming Coil", the first track on Phish's Lawn Boy album. It sounded to me like a lost track from Genesis' The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. Then "Reba" started, and it called to mind the goofy Canterbury tracks like Caravan's "Golf Girl" before moving into an extended guitar solo over two chords (reminiscent of Frank Zappa's wonderful "Inca Roads" solo), reaching a climax before going back to the goofy verses. My introduction to Lawn Boy was a pivotal moment in my young life, and my fixation on Phish lasted the better part of the next decade.  

As with other "jam bands" (a term often used pejoratively nowadays), Phish encouraged tapings of their live shows, and before long I had several tapes of early shows that introduced me to key songs in the band's early repertoire: "The Divided Sky", "David Bowie", "Esther", "Golgi Apparatus", "You Enjoy Myself", and others. By this time, in addition to Lawn Boy, I had acquired the band's current studio album (and first on Elektra Records) A Picture of Nectar, a breakthrough that heralded the band's exposure to the general public.

One of the by-products of signing with Elektra was the official issue of Junta, the band's early cassette first distributed in 1988. Here, to my delight, were studio versions of many of the songs that formed the heart of the band's set list on early shows, and to this day most of these songs still constitute highlights of their shows. My favorites include "You Enjoy Myself", a song so iconic in Phish lore that it became the most frequently played song in concert (563 shows and counting, according to a quick Internet search). The strange, repeated lyric in the middle of the song was such a mystery amongst fans that "What are they saying in "You Enjoy Myself"?" became the Phish fandom's most frequently asked question. Even the question itself begat a frequently used anagram ("WATSIYEM?") frequently seen in discussion groups. Such are the whimsical joys of online life. Another favorite, the 10-minute "The Divided Sky", is entirely instrumental except for a brief recitation of the title near the beginning. The track has enough tension and excitement to keep a theater of kids on the edge of their seats throughout the entire song.

I can easily recommend Junta to any progressive rock fan curious as to what the fuss is about with Phish. Many of their most classic songs are here, from a time when they were most heavily influenced by classic progressive rock.

Robert Wyatt - Dondestan (1991)

Dan:

Robert Wyatt's presence and importance to progressive rock is hard to overstate. His recording history began in 1968 and he was a founding member of Soft Machine. He is a multi-instrumentalist and includes drums, keyboards, and trumpet in his bag (obviously each of these requires different skills). While his singing doesn't sound impressive or virtuosic, he's able to convey so much emotion within a limited range of pitch and volume. Whenever I hear his distinctive voice, I take immediate notice. 

Dondestan is essentially a solo album, but also a collaboration with Alfreda Benge, Wyatt's wife since 1974. She created the cover art, which I see as the two of them enjoying an oceanside view of the outside world. I thought at first that Dondestan was the name of the coastal village in the painting, but according to Wikipedia, "The title is a phonetic rendition of the Spanish expression "Donde están", i.e. "Where are they". Wyatt is obviously fluent in Spanish; his vocals on "Frontera," sung in Spanish and the first song on Phil Manzanera's Diamond Head album, is one of my favorite listening experiences.

Our review is of the original 1991 CD, not Dondestan (Revisited) from 1998, which I've never heard. Wyatt is credited with all sounds heard: voice, percussion, keyboards, and piano. Mostly the keyboards are electronic sounds that are processed to create glowing ambience to soften Wyatt's already understated vocals. The mood is wistful and nostalgic, bordering on sad. These are not dance tunes or rockers. Only "Shrinkwrap," "Left on Man," and the closing title track get into gear with a rhythmic backing for lyrics about hard work, hard times, post-colonial outrage, and a plea for recognizing the sovereignty of Palestine. The rest of the songs are like dreams, never fully revealing their meaning or seeking to impress.

Benge contributed the lyrics to five of the nine songs, and Wyatt wrote the rest save one. The legendary Hugh Hopper of Soft Machine fame earns a credit for writing the music to "Lisp Service." 

My favorite moment on Dondestan is the beginning of "CP Jeebies." The sound of Wyatt's organ is so pure and reassuring following the troubling "Shrinkwrap." Wyatt adds piano and melodica in the foreground along with the gentle wash of backing keyboards. Beautiful song!

As a largely solo project, Dondestan offers a great opportunity to hear Wyatt's drumming. I'm tempted to consider drums his main axe but obviously he knows his way around the keyboards and the melodica on Dondestan.  

There's a lot of prog history captured in Dondestan, one of Wyatt's and prog music's best moments. 

Steve:

Robert Wyatt is one of the most original and most beloved elder statesmen of progressive rock. After appearing as a drummer and lead vocalist on Soft Machine's first four albums, he formed a similarly inclined group called Matching Mole which released two albums He also put out his first solo album, the freeform (and admittedly hard to get into) The End of An Ear. A crippling accident in 1973 left Wyatt paralyzed from the waist down, precipitating the next, very different phase of his career, which continues off and on to this day.

Wyatt's 1991 effort, Dondestan, remains one of his most enjoyable and most focused albums. Its predecessor, Old Rottenhat (1985), had a similar sound - based primarily on stately organ chords, with Wyatt's gentle tenor and lyrics reflecting Wyatt's leftist political stance. Dondestan features the same sounds but adds more live drums (mostly brushed cymbals and snare, as Wyatt was no longer able to play a full drum kit), and acoustic piano. Sometimes, as on the closing title track, the piano takes center stage, and the arrangement is much more staccato and fast-paced than is typical of the album. The odd "Shrinkrap" (which uses a backwards percussion track) takes a similar approach. Being a fan of weird sounds, this track stands out as a favorite of mine.

Most of the album, however, is calm and thoughtful. The opener "Costa" is another favorite, as it combines the slow, droning melody with a busy (yet quiet) underlying drum track and some simple but effective bass that gives the track additional range. Wyatt's next album, Shleep (1997), would continue to favor fuller arrangements and use outside musicians. 

A beloved character whose integrity has never wavered an inch, Wyatt has made many friends from all walks of the pop/rock world, and to guest on one of his albums is worn as a badge of honor among his peers.

Hawkwind - Space Bandits (1990)

Dan:

As I wrote before, I only have room for two Hawkwind albums in my collection. Hall of the Mountain Grill is their masterpiece, but I have a soft spot in my heart for Space Bandits. Keeping in mind that I have barely scratched the surface of Hawkwind's huge discography, my comments are purely expressions of my own humble opinion. 

When I was vetting the half dozen or so Hawkwind albums that Steve had loaned me, Space Bandits grabbed my attention because of its first three tracks, which are honestly the only ones I listen to very often. "Images" leads off in rocking style but suspends the driving beat after two verses for a tempo-free interlude during which the voice of Bridget Wishart enters crying the anguished lyrics:

It's gone now

It's gone now

Twist the soul

Turn flesh to stone

The fear and the anger

Of the lost and alone

The song then resumes after a brief guitar solo, coming to a riotous end after the earlier verses are repeated. It's a wild ride lasting almost ten minutes. 

Without the interlude by Wishart, I doubt that I would have paid much attention to "Images." I know she only had a brief stay with the band (1989-1991), but it made a strong positive impression on me. 

The second song, "Black Elk Speaks," is even more intriguing. Over a steady tom tom 4-beat, the muffled voice of Black Elk (spoken by John Niehardt) recites a prayer to Grandfather, the creator. Black Elk was a true historical figure in the Oglala Sioux Nation, survived wars against the Whites, and died in 1950. The prayer beseeches Grandfather to:

Teach me to walk the soft earth, a relative to all that is! Sweeten my heart

And fill me with life. Give me the strength to understand, and the eyes

To see. Help me for without you I am nothing. Hetchetu aloh!

Hetchetu aloh translates as "It is so indeed."

Midway through the prayer the rhythm intensifies as Wishart takes over the narration, speaking what appears to be Grandfather's response to the prayer: 

So go on my friend

And sing with the healing spirit

With the magic of the ground

With the magic of the earth

And you will spring to life

Through the power of the words

Through the magic of the ground

Through the magic of the earth

There is every indication that the inclusion of "Black Elk Speaks" is sincere and free of irony or cynicism. This track is inspiring and stunning.

Track 3 follows with bassist Alan Davey's "Wings," a condemnation of the devastation laid upon birds by human pollution. It is also sincere and impactful.

I remember where they once flew

Where they sang to the morning dew

Now their wings are soaked in oil

Caged wings that can't unfurl

No longer do we hear them sing

No longer do we hear the fluttering

Of wings

A percentage of the royalties for the song were donated to The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. 

Call me "woke" if you like; I'm a proud sucker for socially conscious lyrics, especially when they're woven into albums by frenzied rock bands like Hawkwind. 

Steve:

I'm thankful that Space Bandits is among the first Hawkwind albums I acquired. It showed up in a used CD store (The CD Solution in Miami) and it was a frequent spin from the get-go, and I recall Dan getting into it fairly early on too. As a 1990 release, it stands well outside the supposed "classic era" of this 70s prog/psych band, and thus if I had discovered the band purely by recommendations and reviews by prog publications, I probably wouldn't have encountered it yet. Hawkwind have dozens of releases to their credit and it's easy for the post-glory-years albums to get lost in the shuffle. But as I've found through the years, now with a Hawkwind collection in the double digits, the band always delivers entertaining albums, even if they mostly repeat themselves.  

As with Dan, the first three tracks are also my main focus, though I was surprised to learn of the context surrounding "Black Elk Speaks" from Dan's review above. Yet another reminder that if I paid attention to lyrics more, I could enjoy a lot of this music on a deeper level. From my vantage point, "Black Elk Speaks" had always been an ominous and atmospheric mood piece with prerecorded voices. "Images" was always a favorite, with its energetic tempo, gutsy guitar chords, elongated structure, and Bridget Wishart's excellent vocal. Too bad she didn't do more with the band. The lyrics were definitely not lost on me with "Wings", Alan Davey's environmental lament with a touching lyric and serene instrumental arrangement, which always gives me the visual image of a sunset on the beach.

Albums like this have taught me that virtually any studio Hawkwind album is worth a listen. However, scavengers of the used CD racks should beware of any of a hundred cheapo compilation/live releases that are in circulation, some of which are of very poor quality. Do your homework on the band, and if it's part of the band's official discography, it's hard to go wrong with Hawkwind.

New Order - Technique (1989)

Dan:

I took some time to warm up to New Order, beginning with Low Life. I sampled the early albums via the useful compilation, Substance, but disliked much of what I heard from the earlier albums. The later albums were less dense and one song in particular, "True Faith," was irresistible. Steve's younger sister loved that song and so did I. She wondered how I could like it since I didn't have much in the way of dance / beat / synth music in my collection. At the time, I didn't really have an answer, but now I do. Amy, this post is for you!

The follow up to Low Life, Brotherhood, was an admitted disaster due to conflicts withing the band. Thankfully, Technique arrived near the end of the decade with a more coherent sound. It appeared that the band had resolved their stylistic differences and settled on synth-based songs with catchy hooks and unique lyrics. Technique charted to the top in the UK, thus reinforcing the stylistic choice for their next major album, Republic (1993). 

The song titles on Technique and other New Order albums don't offer many clues about the lyrics. Although I can remember each song on the album, I can never remember the titles. "Fine Time," "Run," and "Love Less" are typical examples. So I don't bother associating songs with titles; it makes no practical difference because I like all of the songs equally. I just listen and enjoy. 

The lyrics are memorable, and the melodies and rhythms are perfect for the band. None of them tell very deep stories, unlike some of the earlier songs (e.g., "1963," which was about a murder). There are undercurrents of self-deprecation and heartbreak but not enough to make Technique gloomy or morose. 

In terms of musicianship, this era of New Order was outstanding. They found a way to use electronic instruments, including "drums" to make actual music that supports the fine vocals. I don't know enough about the band to explain how they get around the limitations of synthesizers and drum machines; I just know that it works beautifully on the four New Order albums I have, among which Technique is the best.

Steve:

Although I had become a big fan of New Order with the Low Life album (reviewed elsewhere on this blog) and that interest had continued through Brotherhood, by the time of Technique I was in college and exploring other things (including a full immersion in classic prog). I never purchased a copy of Technique at the time, but Dan had. When I was home for a break from school, he played it, and track 1 ("Fine Time") scared me off at first - it was thoroughly electronic, and clearly in the "house music" genre which was anathema to me at the time. Although I listened to other tracks besides "Fine Time," it colored my feelings about the album for a long time, and it was many years before I finally bought my own copy.

As I've learned since, the majority of Technique continues in the same vein as Low Life and Brotherhood, and even improves upon it in terms of the easy flow of melodies and the band's full command of their instrumental arsenal. I'm even able to look past my earlier fear of electronic dance music (that's what "Blue Monday" was, after all) and appreciate the melodies and infectious songcraft that the band had developed by this time in their career.

The band's history since Technique has been riddled with stops and starts, as well as intra-band disagreements and eventually the departure of bassist Peter Hook. Hook took to touring on his own, bringing the classic sounds of both Joy Division and New Order to the stage. Technique sounds today like the last time the full band was on the same page, collaborating creatively, and having a Fine Time with it.