reviews

Just the hits, please

     Confession: I have a love/hate relationship with greatest hits compilations. I think it’s because I stumbled into adolescence during the tail end of the Vinyl Era, when it was generally believed that the vehicle for artistic success in music was the studio album. Sure, singles are a great way to lure the newbies in, and live albums are a nice treat for the diehards, but it’s the album meticulously crafted in the studio that gets all the accolades and ultimately creates an artist’s audience. And greatest hits albums? At best, they’re a gimmick. At worst, they’re cynically designed cash cows, a way to satisfy a record contract while separating the gullible consumer from a few of his/her hard earned dollars.

     Fair to say none of the above is true anymore. In today’s streaming age most listeners just play the hits, clicking on their favorite tracks again and again, like dopamine-crazed mice in a lab experiment. Now the studio album only holds appeal for the middle-aged and nostalgia fetishists. I so happen to be a member of both camps, and can therefore count the number of greatest hits compilations in my post-streaming collection on two hands.

     So…when is a greatest hits collection a good thing? Moreover, when should you be tempted to pick up an artist’s greatest hits package as opposed to one of their studio offerings? Looking at my own collection, I was able to come up with seven rationales that fit every greatest hits album I had bothered to purchase. As a bit of a public service, I will present them here:

  1. The band in question is essentially a singles act. 

            Best example from my collection: The Carpenters—The Singles: 1969-1973

     I love The Carpenters. As a child of the 70’s I grew up on “Close to You,” mooned over “Rainy Days and Mondays,” and felt sad and lonely while listening to “I Need To Be In Love.” I have fond memories of watching the TV biopic of Karen Carpenter starring Cynthia Gibb, and sought out Todd Haynes’ delightfully weird Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story on YouTube. But I have never, ever, spent as much as one minute poring over deep cuts on A Song For You. I bet nobody else has, either. The Carpenters strength was not the breadth of their work, but the greatness of their singles. They were made for a greatest hits collection, and The Singles 1969-1973 is a damn good one1. Other artists that you can buy a singles compilation and feel you’ve got the best of their work: Commodores/Lionel Ritchie, K.C. and the Sunshine Band, Little River Band, Ambrosia, and to a lesser extent, Neil Diamond2.

  1. The band in question doesn’t have one or two classic albums that I’m dying to buy, so it makes more sense to have a representative sample of their work.

            Best example from my collection: The White Stripes— Greatest Hits

     I discovered The White Stripes via a dubbed cassette of White Blood Cells my sister gave me. I thought the whole thing swung pretty hard (I especially liked the manic intensity of “Hotel Yorba”) and followed the band through the early oughts, enjoying most of what I heard. I had a couple of their albums on compact disc, but when I started collecting vinyl a few years ago, I couldn’t settle on an album I really loved more than the others. Jack White made it easy for me when The White Stripes released Greatest Hits five years ago, a two-disc compilation that is one-stop shopping for all but the most ardent fans. There are several songs included from all six of the Stripes studio albums, along with a couple non-album singles. The only song that didn’t make the cut I really miss is “Black Math,” an especially primal piece of garage rock off Elephant. Another artist who fashioned a greatest hits compilation that effectively surveys their career is New Order, whose Substance gathers all of the high points from the first six years of their existence3 in 12-inch versions that improve on those already excellent tracks. 

  1. I’m not sure what the band in question’s best albums are, so I’ll buy a greatest hits compilation for my collection until I figure it out.

           Best example from my collection: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers—Greatest Hits

If you grew up in the 70’s and 80’s, I would assume you find Tom Petty at least mildly enjoyable. You couldn’t escape him— Petty had ten Top Twenty hits in his career, and 48 singles that made the Mainstream Rock charts (the only one with more is U2). I have appreciated both singles and album tracks from up and down his discography, and feel he is the best purveyor of that “heartland rock sound”4 this side of Springsteen. However, I have no idea what his best album is. Wildflowers is the critical favorite, and Full Moon Fever is also well loved by both fans and critics, but I haven’t listened closely to either of them. Petty has a large discography— 17 albums! — and I need to spend some time with it before I decide what studio albums I want to add to my collection. In the meantime, I’m really glad Greatest Hits is on my shelves. There’s a reason it has sold almost four times as many copies as Wildflowers (Petty’s best selling studio album); it’s remarkably consistent, and has enough guitar licks and singalong choruses to keep even the casual Tom Petty fan happy. It even appends two then-new songs, one of which, “Mary Jane’s Last Dance,” became a hit (#14 on the Billboard chart) and a Petty classic. The only drawback to the collection is what it can’t include, as Petty released seven more albums after Greatest Hits, including Wildflowers. I’ll eventually do a deep dive into Petty’s work and figure out which of his studio albums to prioritize for future purchase. 

  1. The greatest hits albums is a placeholder.

Best example from my collection: Steely Dan—Greatest Hits 

Steely Dan’s run in the 70’s was incredibly impressive. I think every album from 1972’s Can’t Buy A Thrill through 1977’s Aja has its champions, and no one was doing jazz-influenced rock during this period as well as the Dan did. I will eventually have to get several of their albums for my vinyl collection— no one Steely Dan album adequately tells their story—but when I found a used copy of Greatest Hits online for cheap, I snapped it up. Greatest Hits was how I first came to Steely Dan, via an extended play cassette I listened to so much I wore it out. Ostensibly a singles collection, it includes a gaggle of songs that never made the Top Forty, as well as a number of important deep cuts like “Any Major Dude” and “Doctor Wu,” which is my favorite Steely Dan song. It served as a great introduction to the band and whetted my appetite for more of their work, which is what any good compilation should do. For now, it will suffice whenever I’m spinning records and need a Dan fix.

  1. The band in question had a large number of great songs that weren’t on their studio albums.

Best example from my collection: Joy Division—Substance

I already mentioned this album in the footnotes (you do read the footnotes, don’t you?) but it’s worth bringing up again: the Joy Division version of Substance not only catalogs two discs of essential singles you can’t find elsewhere, it presents a version of the band that is much more poppy and accessible than is displayed on their studio albums. Nearly half of the most-streamed songs on Spotify by the band are from Substance, and when I hear a Joy Division song in a movie or on television, it’s invariably from this album. “Love Will Tear us Apart” is the catchiest song the band ever recorded and “Atmosphere” is the prettiest; both are a far remove from the dark dirges and angular rockers that fill up most of Unknown Pleasures and Closer. I love Joy Division’s studio work but appreciate the band was multifaceted enough to create a singles comp that undermines (if only a bit) their brooding mythos5; it is therefore a treasured member of my collection. 

  1. The greatest hits album has a unique conception that makes it appealing.

Best example from my collection: Hits Are for Squares— Sonic Youth

I am as susceptible to a clever gimmick as the best of them, and that applies to greatest hits collections, too. Hits Are for Squares was originally released by the coffee chain Starbucks as one of those cds you could buy while picking up your latte, and was intended, supposedly, for the casual consumer. I can’t imagine Sonic Youth appealing to too many casual listeners, but I do like how the tracks for this album were selected—all of the songs were hand-picked by different celebrities (writers, musicians, and actors) who provided a blurb about why they loved the song they chose. It’s a fine collection, and the method of track selection makes it both accessible and surprisingly quirky, including some of my favorite Sonic Youth songs (such as “Shadow of a Doubt” and their cover of The Carpenters “Superstar”). The band Spoon used a similar trick when they assembled the songs for All the Weird Kids Up Front (Mas Rolas Chidas)—they had fans vote for which songs made the compilation. And it works—I found it a much more interesting collection than the conventional greatest-hits album Spoon released at the same time.

  1. The greatest hits album in question is so iconic it is irresistable.

Best examples from my collection: Decade— Neil Young 

                                                           Chronicle— Creedence Clearwater Revival

If you have any interest in classic rock, I’m betting you have a copy of Chronicle in some physical format. The ultimate party record (and a great road trip album), Chronicle lovingly assembles 20 singles that range in quality from very good to great, including such classics as “Fortunate Son,” “Have You Ever Seen the Rain,” and…really, I don’t need to list these— Creedence released six albums between 1968 and 1970, and most people won’t be able to name one song on any of those albums that wasn’t on Chronicle. The two-disc compilation never flags, and would be my favorite greatest-hits album of all time…if Decade didn’t exist. Decade was how I first experienced Neil Young. I remember watching a movie that had  “Mr. Soul” on the soundtrack, being knocked out by the song, and buying the three cassette comp at the local Sam Goody a few weeks later. I was immediately struck by how good the collection was, and how expertly it was designed. Young pulls tracks from all over—songs from his time in Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young as well as solo album tracks and b-sides and seven(!) previously unreleased tracks— and weaves them into the definitive release of Neil Young’s entire career. Decade is where I would send the Neil Young newbie to start, and would be surprised if it didn’t make them a lifetime fan. I may be far from the biggest apologist for the greatest-hits album, but this is the gold standard, and the reason compilations of this sort still matter.

  1.  Even better is Love Songs, which I still have a cassette copy of. But even that is missing “Touch Me When Were Dancing,” the best of Karen’s later vocal performances, and an ace cover of Klaatu’s “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft.” ↩︎
  2. I admit: I’m curious to check out the Rick Rubin produced 12 Songs when I have time. I love what Rubin did for the tail end of Johnny Cash’s career, and would like to see if he had similar results with Neil. ↩︎
  3.  The same can’t be said of the companion collection by Joy Division (also called Substance) —which is also excellent, and does a nice job of gathering all the great non-album singles Joy Division recorded—because there are only two studio albums you have to buy, and they are both essential. You can buy two albums, can’t you? If you have to choose, I prefer Closer over Unknown Pleasures, probably because it’s sadder and lonelier than its predecessor, and on a couple songs (“Isolation,” “Decades”) points the direction the band would take as New Order after Ian Curtis’ death. ↩︎
  4.  I know Petty is from Gainesville, Florida, but he has much more in common musically with John Mellencamp than he does The Allman Brothers or any other southern rockers of the era. ↩︎
  5. Another compilation that partially attempts to redraw a band’s established image is the recent vinyl release Nine Sevens by Wire, which I picked up on Record Store Day. On the first disc Wire picks the catchiest songs off their first three albums and adds a couple of hummable non-album tracks; if this was the only thing you ever heard by the band, you’d never buy they were sometimes considered experimental or challenging. Disc two, on the other hand, has enough weird sounds and amorphous song structures to make you think you are listening to an entirely different band. ↩︎

My Favorite Songs of 1982

     I love the 80’s. Well, not living through it—that kind of sucked, actually—but the movies, television, and especially the music of the 80’s was all pretty wonderful. There was a study years ago that postulated that the music you are exposed to between the ages of 11 and 21 will forever be deeply tied to your identity, so it makes sense that the 80’s still matter to me, all these years— hell, decades—later. 

     You know what I love even more than 80’s music? Lists! I’m probably the reason those clickbait articles—the music related ones, anyway—are littering your search engine feeds, because I find headlines like TEN ROCK BANDS THAT DIDN’T HAVE A DRUMMER almost impossible to ignore1.

     All of this is preamble for a list of some of my favorite 80’s songs from the half-remembered days of 1982. Why 1982? It serves as a nice halfway point between when I first became seriously aware of music and started religiously listening to the radio (around 1976 or so) and the end of the 80’s. Besides, 1982 was essentially when MTV was born (it debuted four months earlier), and MTV is to the 80’s as tariffs are to our current president.  

     I tried to keep my list relatively concise—ten songs—but that was really damn hard, so I included a handful (okay, maybe two handfuls) of honorable mentions. You’ll quickly notice not all of these songs were singles, as I tend to prefer album tracks or deep cuts to songs that were played endlessly when I was growing up. Still, there were a few hit songs from the year that were undeniable and I had to include. 

     Now let’s return to the days of suitcase-sized boomboxes, video games with lousy graphics, and some of the best music ever pressed to vinyl: 

Honorable Mention—Three creepy songs: Lou Reed’s The Blue Mask is widely considered to be one of his best albums, and it includes The Gun, one of my favorite Reed songs. Reed’s deadpan delivery over minimal instrumentation (with one vital lyrical omission) makes this song about a gun-toting sociopath truly chilling. Pornography is the title track off The Cure’s fourth album, and it’s a doozy. Garbled vocal samples, icy keyboards and tribal drums anchor the track, gradually increasing in intensity while Robert Smith shrieks about “the sounds of slaughter.” Smith never wrote a darker song than this. Time Bomb doesn’t sound like anything else on Beatitude, an underrated solo album by The Cars’ front man Ric Ocasek. It’s cold, stark, and odd, as Ocasek lists off pairs of seemingly unrelated items (ex: “I live in a world/of blather and godfear”) that grow in menace as the song progresses, culminating in a searing guitar solo. It should have been a new wave classic.

Honorable Mention—Three great songs by 70’s rock dinosaurs: Signals might not have been one of Rush’s best albums, but Subdivisions is a great Rush song. Rush updates their classic sound on this keyboard-heavy track, with guitarist Lifeson relegated to fills and a relatively restrained solo on the bridge. Geddy Lee sings about alienation and isolation here, which is very 80’s. King Crimson in 1982 sounded nothing like their incarnations in the previous two decades. They managed to integrate a postpunk sensibility into their prog framework starting with 1981’s Discipline, and continue with this years Beat, which starts off with Neal and Jack and Me, a nod to the beat writers of the 50’s. Newcomer Adrian Belew is a welcome addition to the Crimson sound, and his unique guitar stylings here and on all the King Crimson 80’s albums are another weapon in the band’s arsenal. He’s not a bad vocalist, either. Eminence Front may well be my favorite Who song. Sacrilege, maybe, but the song is just so damn catchy. The keyboards have a Tangerine Dream quality that I love, and Roger Daltrey’s vocal is one of his very best.

Honorable Mention—Four shots of new wave goodness: Love Plus One was the only song by Haircut 100 to hit in the U.S., probably due to the fact the band fired their lead man and sole songwriter after their first album. Still, this is one groovy song, with lots of bright saxophone, an understated guitar riff, and some vibraphone (which is always welcome). A Flock of Seagulls did some fine work in the beginning of the 80’s, especially on their debut album. Space Age Love Song is my favorite— the vocal is earnest, the guitar/keyboard bits are simple but propulsive, and the whole thing is so damn pretty. I could have picked a half dozen songs off of Duran Duran’s Rio—it’s that good—but I went with The Chauffer, which is the band at their coolest and most atmospheric. A bank of keyboards, some sound effects, a well-programmed drum machine, and Simon LeBon’s soaring vocal make for a winner. The Psychedelic Furs are one of my favorite bands. If pressed, I prefer the harder edge of the songs off their 1981 album Talk Talk Talk, but Love My Way is a wonderful song. Richard Butler is an excellent vocalist and lyricist2, and here you also get Todd Rundgren playing a marimba and backing vocals by Flo and Eddie.

Honorable Mention—Every song on Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska: Nebraska was my entry point into Springsteen fandom3, and is on my list of the ten best albums ever. Springsteen’s mournful acoustic masterpiece doesn’t have one bum track on it, and “Atlantic City,” “State Trooper,” and “Highway Patrolman” would easily vie for spots on this list. However, I would rather listen to all those songs in conjunction with each other, as part of a perfect album.  

Honorable Mention—One song my wife loves: There is no way a list of music from 1982 would be complete without at least mentioning Eddy Grant’s Electric Avenue, one of my wife’s favorites. Grant’s expert blend of rock and reggae is definitely one of the funkiest protest songs ever written (there’s one that tops it later on this list), and is perfect summer driving music, preferably with the windows down and a breeze blowing. Grant didn’t let any of his music hit streaming services until January of last year, but “Electric Avenue” is available now. Go listen to it before Eddy changes his mind.

#10. Billie Jean—Michael Jackson: It’s hard to assess Michael these days. The shadow of scandal and bad behavior blots out his legacy for many; I tend to focus on the part of his career before his sudden ascent to fame (like 1979’s Off the Wall) where I can enjoy the music without being forced to address the person Jackson would become. That being said, I don’t have to make excuses to enjoy this song—”Billie Jean” is undeniable. It is actually a simple song held together by two things: that amazing, hypnotic bassline, and Jackson’s vocal. Michael sings this song like it’s the only song he’s ever going to sing— he yelps, he squeals, he takes exaggerated breaths between lines-but nothing feels forced or out of place, as if each vocal tic and trick is predestined. The lyric is a take on the same sort of theme Eminem would explore in “Stan”: fans are crazy, fans will bring you down. Jackson’s inspired performance suggest that he believes it; you can practically feel his paranoia and anxiety seeping between the beats. It was just the start (of course) of a slew of hits for Michael, but his career could have ended with this, his greatest song. Maybe it should have4.

#9. 867-5309 (Jenny)–Tommy Tutone: A nostalgia pick, certainly—few people would readily assert this one-hit wonder is one of the objectively best songs of any year, let alone a year as clotted with great songs as 1982. Musically the song is almost inconsequential: a nervous slice of rock and roll, competently played, borrowing equally from Elvis Costello and Eddie Money. But Tutone manages to imbue his tune with a sweaty desperation that appealed to a teenaged me, probably due to my longing for connection with a member of the opposite sex as much as Tutone did, if you believed his lyrics. Speaking of lyrics: these are ridiculous and more than a little sleazy, but they speak to the selling point at the heart of pop music—fantasy, mystery, the potential for danger or escape. And love, of course, which Tutone hopes to get from the anonymous girl with the phone number scribbled across the bathroom wall. We were content to settle for singing along, miming the phone digits with our hands when we got to the chorus.

#8. Seconds—The Human League: 1981 is the year The Human League actually transformed from a icy robot5 to a dancy robot, but 1982 is when the move brought them chart success. “Don’t You Want Me” hit number 1 on the Billboard charts in July of 1982, and will always be a) a great little earworm of a tune, b) a very strange choice for an album closer6, and c) a song that instantly reminds me of my first summer job as a busboy/dishwasher at a country club restaurant, a job I failed spectacularly at. “Don’t You Want Me” is not, however, my favorite Human League song of 1982. That would be the hit single’s b-side, “Seconds”. A stark piece of synth pop, “Seconds” manages to be both eerie and catchy. Phil Oakey intones about the Kennedy assassination while piercing keyboard notes soar above him, the insistent drumbeat burrowing beneath the song and proving this incarnation of The Human League was a dance band, even at its darkest. Few songs better capture the mixture of kitsch and angst that was the early 80’s like this song did, and it may well be the highest point in the band’s catalog.

#7. The Message— Gradmaster Flash and the Furious Five: I didn’t hear this song in 1982. Most of my early exposures to hip-hop were through MTV, and they notoriously avoided most black artists in the early days of the channel. A few years later the video for this song was in heavy rotation, and I can’t hear the song without seeing the blurry herky-jerky footage of New York City and Melle Mel rapping-in-place about being young and black in the early Eighties. The music here is skeletal funk, yet also so memorable and catchy it has been sampled in other songs 331 times. And the lyrics? Basically a litany of the horrors of ghetto life: drugs, pimps, gangs, violence, poverty, prison. I didn’t have to live through any of that, but I could completely relate to Mel’s internal emotional state, neatly communicated in the following couplet:

Don’t push me cause I’m close to the edge

I’m trying not to lose my head

And that laugh— a half-chuckle that manages to express equal measures of incredulity and exasperation, ridiculousness and rage. It too was influential, inspiring Phil Collins’ bark in “Mama,” another song about desperation. “The Message” is considered the first prominent socially-concious hip-hop song, but I always loved it as much for how it made me feel. Like Mel, I’ve often wondered how I kept from going under.

#6. Capital (It Fails Us Now) —Gang of Four: Gang of Four is my favorite “issues” band. They always had a lot to say, sure, but they did it with ferocious intensity and a barbed melodicism that made their songs so damn memorable. I especially loved their rhythm section—Hugo Burnham is an underrated drummer, and Dave Allen’s bass playing on the early Gang of Four albums is among my favorite guitar work of any punk (or early postpunk) band7. Here, they provide a menacing bottom while Andy Gill’s lead guitar skitters over the top. Jon King (not the CNN anchor) wails about his struggles to avoid drowning in credit card debt and his need to buy, buy, buy, which hasn’t changed one iota in forty plus years: from the first day I was born/I reached out for my credit card. King rants about wanting a freezer and a “hi-fi” while the guitars screech, but it’s Gill who gets the best line as a nervous aside: “I’m still in credit…just.” I think of this song often and how prescient it is—usually when I get my credit card statement in the mail.

#5. Shock the Monkey—Peter Gabriel: 1980 to 1982 is my sweet spot for Peter Gabriel. Gabriel left Genesis in 1975, but it took him a couple of solo albums to get his musical bearings and figure out his sound; after 82’s Security, Gabriel got poppier and more accessible, and for me, a little less interesting. “Shock the Monkey” is poppy, in a way—it reached #29 on the Billboard Top 40—but it also (as AllMusic noted) sounded like nothing else on the radio that year. This was the first Peter Gabriel song I ever heard, and it struck my teenaged ear as cold and alien…but also incredibly funky, riding on the thrum from bassist Tony Levin’s Chapman Stick. I loved the timbre of Gabriel’s voice—he always sounds tense or unsettled, even when he is singing a love song—and that anxiety bleeds into the snatches of guitar, the programmed drum beats, the periodic stabs of keyboard. I figured the lyrics were about animal testing or somesuch, but what stuck out to me were lines like cover me when I breathe and I can’t take any more, wrapping the song in a sense of claustrophobic dread I found appealing. By the time Gabriel hiccups over the word “shock” 4 minutes and 40 seconds in, I was hooked. Security was one of the first cassette tapes I ever bought, and even on my tinny little cassette player, this song always sounded imposing…and amazing.  

#4. Gypsy—Fleetwood Mac: If someone pressed me against a wall and demanded I tell them who my favorite Mac is, well…it would be Stevie. It was always Stevie. Oh, I loved Lindsey, all of his guitar wizardry and his studio tricks, trying to get Brian Wilson to meet Brian Eno by way of David Bryne. And I loved Christine McVie formerly Perfect, who had been in the band forever and knew how to survive it better than any of them8, always good for one amazing song for every three she penned. But Stevie…wow. She is easily my favorite creator of rock ballads in music history9, and this is her last great one with the band10. That being said, this might be the ballad where Stevie gets the most help to make the song great. John McVie deploys what may be my favorite bass line of his outside of “Dreams,” I love McVie’s repeating keyboard riff, and Lindsey’s backing vocals are superb. And when Stevie is done pouring her heart out about her early days when she was happier, Lindsey provides a beautiful guitar outro that gets me in the feels every, every time.

#3. Gardening At Night—R.E.M. I didn’t hear this song in 1982. Athens, Georgia was a million miles from the midwestern hinterlands where I was growing up, and R.E.M. were years from playing on radio stations I listened to. I discovered R.E.M. in college through a friend, but even then this song remained a mystery— the Chronic Town EP was out of print at the time (despite every critic within a stone’s throw gushing over it), and it was years before I was able to snag a cassette copy when it was reissued. Many white whales don’t turn out to be worth the effort to chase them, but Chronic Town did, and especially this song, sandwiched between two other winners on Side One. “Gardening at Night” starts with a little acoustic guitar riff repeated four times quickly before the jangly guitars kick in— much cleaner sounding than anything on Murmur (the band’s album-length debut), which wouldn’t be released until April of 1983. I love Peter Buck’s sitar, I love Stipe’s vocal (which isn’t as mumbly as he’d be accused of later on), and I love the obtuse lyrics, which were inspired by the habit some had of urinating by the side of the road at night (hence, night gardening). I have gone through periods of my life where I loved R.E.M. and others where I was indifferent to their charms11, but I have never grown tired of this song. This is where the magic first happened.

#2. I Dreamed I Dream—Sonic Youth: Consider this a paragraph-long plug for Sonic Youth’s criminally out-of-print collection Screaming Fields of Sonic Love. A likely attempt by record label DGC to cash in on Sonic Youth’s new-found critical success, Screaming goes backward, Memento-like, through the band’s career to that point, starting with the more accessible songs on Daydream Nation, getting increasingly more drony and dissonant, and ending with “I Dreamed I Dream.” This song starts with a thudding bass line that never changes through its over five minute running time, then adds the strum of oddly-tuned guitars. The guitars continue to churn while Kim Gordon talks about impotence and drops f-bombs in a disaffected monotone, while Thurston Moore harmonizes…sort of.  I know many prefer Sonic Youth’s later, poppier music, but this is where I like them best—edgy, dark, experimental. I have loved many songs and albums throughout the breadth of Sonic Youth’s career, but this is the one I prize the most.

#1. Something in the Water (Does Not Compute) —Prince: There was a time where I didn’t really like Prince. Oh, I liked “Little Red Corvette” and “When Doves Cry” —I can’t imagine having the gift of hearing and not appreciating those songs—but “Purple Rain and “Let’s Go Crazy” were everywhere in 1984 and 1985, and I was tired of it. Yawn, I thought. Then I saw the video for “Dirty Mind” on Night Flight12 one evening, and decided my opinion needed revising. I quickly bought Dirty Mind and Controversy…and 1999, where “Something in the Water” is on Side Three. I loved all of it, but “Something in the Water” trumped everything. I loved the skittering drum track, the keyboards that sound like they were beamed down from space, and Prince’s vocal, which comes across as incredibly haughty and totally vulnerable at the same time13. There’s a minimalism and sense of space in this song that Prince would utilize again and again (to great effect, I would add) during his career, but never as good as he did here. And it climaxes14 with my favorite scream in the history of recorded music. This is my favorite song by one of my favorite artists. There is no way any other song could be my #1 song of 1982.

  1. I’m tempted to write a book comprised of interesting music lists with attention-grabbing titles like you’d find on the internet called Rock and Roll Clickbait. ↩︎
  2. Butler is responsible for one of my favorite lines of all time: “Words are all just useless sound.” ↩︎
  3.  Nebraska is the only album I own in all three physical formats: vinyl, cassette, and CD. ↩︎
  4.  I cannot think of  “Billie Jean” without seeing images from the music video in my head—it’s the way I first experienced the song, back when Friday Night Videos was still a thing. I’m sure the video is horribly dated today, but it was a revelation in 1983, a surreal tone poem that had the added advantage of Michael dancing, something he did better than, well, everybody. Michael was a wonderful singer, but it’s doubtful he would have become the superstar he was without the videos. ↩︎
  5. Prior to changing their style and becoming a new wave dance machine, The Human League made stiffly mannered synth rock with no bite and few hooks. It didn’t sell, so Martyn Ware and Ian Marsh left in 1980 to form Heaven 17. I’ve always liked their song “Let Me Go.” but haven’t really explored their catalog. ↩︎
  6. Dare (1981) is a very backloaded album, as the best three songs—”Love Action (I Believe in Love,” “Seconds,” and “Don’t You Want Me” are the last three songs on Side Two. Side One has 1.5 good songs and achingly clumsy lyrics. ↩︎
  7. It’s no surprise the band got less interesting when Gill left in 1981. He’s still present on this song, though, as it was recorded a year earlier. ↩︎
  8. It’s ironic, therefore, that she was the first of the band members to pass away. I will always treasure McVie’s work on Tusk (especially “Over and Over” and “Brown Eyes”), one of the two main reasons I’ve always ranked that album higher than Rumours (the other being Stevie’s amazing “Beautiful Child”). ↩︎
  9. Although Brandi Carlisle in gaining on her, year by year, and I am slowly learning to appreciate Joni Mitchell. Check back in a couple years. ↩︎
  10.  I’m sorry if anyone’s a big fan of the ballads on Tango in the Night, but…no. “Seven Wonders” is too slick and shiny, “Welcome to the Room…Sara” sounds rote and exhausted, and “When I See You Again” is too maudlin even for me, Mr. Yacht Rock. ↩︎
  11.  I didn’t like Out of Time when it was initially released, and quit paying attention to R.E.M. for awhile. I when back and listened to a big chunk of the band’s catalog about five years ago and realized I was hearing them differently. I now appreciate them more than ever, and would rank them in my ten favorite bands of all time. ↩︎
  12. Anybody out there remember USA Network’s Night Flight? I learned more about music and oddball movies from that late night program than just about anywhere else. ↩︎
  13.  Favorite line: “Why in God’s name do you want to make me cry? Why?” ↩︎
  14. Pun intended. This is Prince, after all. ↩︎

Under the Radar: Five Artists Worth Discovering

     Here’s a guess: most of my favorite music is stuff you like too. Iconic artists get their stature because they create art that pleases a lot of people, that resonates in some way with a large audience. Hell, even cult artists have rabid fan bases. But there is not a 1:1 correlation between popularity and quality, and there are plenty of talented musicians who never get the audience they deserve. I feel one of the goals of music journalism is to elevate underappreciated artists, to keep them from getting lost in the morass of streaming options available to the average listener. 

     To that end, I present five of my favorite artists that deserve more attention. I’ve tried to avoid focusing on obscure artists from yesteryear (with one exception), and four of the five have released an album in the last two years or have one scheduled in 2025. They run the gamut from indie singer/songwriter to new wave to edgy postpunk, and all are worth your attention:

The Comsat Angels: Let’s start with the oldest artist of the bunch. Despite being critic’s darlings, Comsat Angels were already pretty obscure twenty years ago when I first heard of them— I had to buy a bootleg box set just to be able to hear the band1, as all their albums were out of print. Things aren’t much better now: none of their albums are on streaming services, save a lousy compilation of demos that doesn’t give you an accurate picture of the band’s chops. You can listen to their entire discography on YouTube, thank goodness, especially their incredible first two albums. Waiting For A Miracle (1980) is one of my favorite debut albums ever, a moody offering that sounds a little like early Psychedelic Furs (think “Sister Europe”) or a less funky, less political Gang of Four2.  Waiting does not have a bum track on it, and is just as sonically interesting as Unknown Pleasures or Entertaintment!, if not as musically groundbreaking. Among many highlights is the nominal single “Independence Day,” which includes a chorus so catchy my children could sing along:

But I can’t stand up, and I can’t sit down

‘Cause a great big problem stopped me in my tracks

I can’t relax ‘cause I haven’t done a thing

And I can’t do a thing ‘cause I can’t relax

The Angels second album, Sleep No More (1981), gets gloomier the longer you listen to it, approaching Pornography-era Cure levels of mopery. Lead vocalist Stephen Fellows has an arresting voice that doesn’t sound like any of his contemporaries, and the band is incredibly tight, leaning a bit more towards soundscapes than the edgy new wave of the debut. These are genuinely great albums, and it’s a shame they aren’t better known. Later albums were less consistent or ambitious3, but good songs are sprinkled throughout their catalog. I don’t know why so little of the Angels discography is unavailable on streaming or album reissue, but I hope this is rectified; this is a band that’s too good to be a musical footnote.  

FACS: FACS is a relative newcomer to the scene, their first album coming out only seven years ago. Named after the numbering system for Factory Records releases, the band doesn’t sound much like Factory’s most famous clients, Joy Division. Instead FACS come across like an unholy alliance between Slint and a proggier Sonic Youth, with a little Wire and Radiohead thrown in for good measure. I first became aware of the band when I caught their enthralling live set at Riot Fest in 2021, and became an instant convert. FACS are experts at creating space in their music, both between the individual instruments and (sometimes) between the band and the listener. Many of their songs have an icy, detached vibe that appeals to me. They are also remarkably consistent, despite various members joining and leaving the band since its inception. Every one of their six albums are a variation of their signature sound, so if you enjoy the band’s over-arching aesthetic, their entire discography is worth checking out. FACS’ latest, Wish Defense, which was released this month, may be my favorite of the bunch, and was the last project Steve Albini worked on before his untimely death.

Hayden: Canadian singer/songwriter Hayden Dresser started as an indie folkie who showed up briefly with a music video that got some rotation on MTV in 1996, then receded from mass attention.  I bought his debut, Everything I Long For, based on that video single (“Bad As They Seem”) and a stunning performance of my still-favorite Hayden song, “Skates”4. I kind of lost track of his music after that (see above), but rediscovered him a few years ago when doing a deep dive on some of my favorite artists from the Nineties. Turns out Hayden had released eight(!) albums in the interim, each filled with smart, thoughtful, folk-tinged rock. Hayden reminds me a little of another Canadian-Neil Young-but with more of a pop sensibility and no guitar theatrics5. His most recent album, Are We Good (2024), is another success, its eleven tracks rarely raising their voice (you could play most of them in a coffeehouse on a Saturday morning), but still showing off how catchy and deftly arranged they are. The album’s closer, “Can’t Happen Now,” is a pretty plea to not end a relationship, and was co-written by another kindred spirit, The National’s Matt Berninger. In today’s Americana-soaked music scene, I think Hayden is ripe for a resurgence.

Mclusky: I think everyone needs a snotty, post-hardcore band in their life, and Mclusky is mine. I first discovered them at the tail end of 2003, when my brother-in-law threw a couple of tracks off Mclusky Do Dallas (2002) on a mix cd he made for me. I was immediately taken with their raw energy, their in-your-face lyrics, and their caustic wit6. Frontman Andrew Falkous has one of the great voices in rock, able to slide effortlessly from sneer to bark to scream, spitting out sarcastic asides and vicious putdowns while the band careens around him. It’s hard to believe Mclusky is a trio— this band is loud—and they’ve mastered mitigating the noise by being so damn catchy. Third album The Difference Between You and Me Is I’m Not on Fire (2004) contains my favorite Mclusky song, “Support Systems,” the album’s closer. Over nearly eight minutes, Mclusky gradually builds from a quietly repeated guitar chord with a hushed vocal to a wall of apocalyptic noise that is a beautiful assault on the ears. Mclusky broke up shortly after this album’s release (Falkous went on the form Future of the Left and Christian Fitness, both of which are worth checking out) but they reunited a few years ago as a touring venture. They have recently recorded a new album which is set to be released this May. There are few bands working today who capture the old punk spirit like Mclusky, and I eagerly look forward to their new work.  


Andy Shauf: Another Canadian singer/songwriter! I didn’t even know Shauf existed until I read a review of his most recent album Norm (2023) on a music website. The write-up and accompanying video made the album look intriguing, so I gave it a listen. I now own three of Shauf’s albums on vinyl, and played his song “The Magician” more than any other in 2024 (according to Spotify). Three things immediately spring to mind when I think of Andy Shauf. One: There is a fair amount of clarinet woven through his music— Shauf frequently plays all the instruments on his albums, and clarinet is one of the instruments he knows how to play. It’s a welcome sound, and adds a texture to Shauf’s music that’s quite effective. Two: Shauf writes concept albums—his last four albums have all had a unifying idea threaded through the songs, and Norm even employed a story editor to make sure the narrative hung together correctly. The Party (2016) is about what the title says, Neon Skyline (2020) is set in a bar over the course of an evening, and Wilds (2021) is about an ill-fated vacation. Norm is even more audacious, a story cycle about a hapless loner, his romantic conquest, and er…God. It works like gangbusters, and was probably my favorite album of 2023. Three: Shauf writes with such empathy and insight that it elevates his music above your standard singer/songwriter. Whether he’s singing about quarreling couples or murderous stalkers, Shauf is able to get inside the skin of his characters, to make them come alive. To me, Andy Shauf is the kind of artist so in my musical wheelhouse I should have been listening to him for years; instead, I had to stumble on him almost by accident. Shauf, like all the artists heralded here, have flown under the radar for far too long. Give them a listen; I am certain they will merit your interest.

  1. The box set was It’s History, a compilation of Comsat Angels’ first three albums with previously unreleased b-sides. It remains one of my most prized musical possessions. ↩︎
  2. This is not a slam on Gang of Four, a band I adore. “Anthrax” off their incredible first album is one of my ten most favorite songs ever. ↩︎
  3.  Third album Fiction— which is much poppier than its predecessors—is probably the best of the rest. ↩︎
  4. “Skates” is an early showcase of Hayden’s songwriting ability. Over an ominous acoustic guitar strum we get a tale of a meeting between a young store clerk and a sad older man, told in clipped lines that read like laconic poetry: when I was younger/a part-time job worker/department store center/I saw a man enter. The man is buying ice skates, see, but it’s summertime, and the man seems distraught…We eventually get a startling revelation in the final verse that solves our mystery as the song builds to a crescendo, Hayden’s voice howling over the guitar. I found the song chilling when I first heard it on MTV all those years ago, and it still packs considerable power now. ↩︎
  5. The one exception is “Dynamite Walls” off Skyscraper National Park, which has a extended guitar solo on its bridge that sounds exactly like something Neil Young would write. It is easily my second-favorite Hayden song. ↩︎
  6. A couplet as supporting evidence: my love is bigger than your love/we take more drugs than a touring funk band. ↩︎