The concept is rather simple. Which critically acclaimed album is overvalued and therefore in need of a rating downgrade? I ask for only 1 album per Townsperson. In this case it will be for ’70s rock. I plan to roll out other genres and variation in the future, such as ’80s College, Dylan, etc. For this exercise you are free to use AllMusic.com, Rolling Stone Album Guide, Trouser Press Record Guide, or whatever resource material in your library as long as it rates albums up to 5 stars.
No easy targets. It would be too simple to pick on some band or artist that you don’t care for personally. Given the chance I could bore you all with personal dissection of why Steely Dan’s 5-star rating of Countdown to Ecstasy at AllMusic.com is jazz noodling nonsense. Too easy. The challenge is to pick an artist/band you actually tolerate.
AMG’s 5-star review of Nebraska it is me. That album is more overblown than anything The Boss has released. Reviewer buzzwords like “darker” and “pessimistic” abound. Critics love living on the edge – vicariously, that is. I’m so sick of critics living on the edge, vicariously. And too many critics fall for storytelling in songs. What are there, maybe 2 dozen great storytelling songs in rock? Rock songs are not an excuse for reading a story. Nebraska lacks almost everything that made Springsteen mildly enjoyable and interedting for me. A Terrence Malick reference from AMG is the telltale sign of an asshole music critic. But this is just my opinion.
Nebraska came out in 1982.
Trouser Press discusses albums, but they’ve never assigned stars, grades, or ratings to them.
As for classic ’70s albums, I think the Doors’ LA Woman is overrated, even though it’s been praised to the skies just about everywhere. I like the Doors but let’s face it – Jim Morrison was falling apart by this time. “Riders On the Storm” is a deserved classic and Morrison manages to keep it together but the solos and the extended ending sound like so much padding. “LA Woman” is little more than a jam that Morrison’s fading singing ability just can’t carry. His bellowing through the “Mr. Mojo Risin'” part is an embarrassment. There are some good and concise songs here (“The WASP” and “Love Her Madly” for starters) but the confidence and power of the earlier albums are hard to find here. LA Woman is a decent album that was unjustifiably boosted to legendary-masterpiece status by Morrison’s death.
My best answer is an 80s album…in part because I can very easily explain not only why it needs a downgrade but also why it is the absolute proof of the lowered standards of rock critics by that time, but…
I’m going to point to Stevie Wonder’s SONGS IN THE KEY OF LIFE, and album on which basically every song is way too long and which contains the song that annoyed me more than any song in music history (until 80s production began to rear its ugly head), the utterly endless “Isn’t She Lovely.” I think there are a lot of very good, if not great songs, on this album, but the cult of Stevie Wonder never seemed to pay attention to the dull bits between the good stuff on this or any of his albums.
Major sub on my part! Totally embarrassing. Sorry, folks.
High five!
Dylan’s “Desire.” Those songs tire me out with all their bells and whistles. I’m talking about over-instrumentation, but I’m also talking about the narratives (there’s your storytelling angle again, mod). Even the wordiness, which usually has its place in Bob songs, just feels arbitrary here. It’s too dense, almost for the sake of it, for my ears.
I suppose it’s this very abundance that made critics (who were desperate for a strong effort by Bob) hear this album as evidence of Bob’s “renewed commitment.”
I know I’ll get flamed for it…aren’t there lots of “Desire” lovers here?
Also, I’ll come clean from the start if we’re lacing up the gloves: it’s been a long time since I listened to the thing all the way through (mostly because I can’t make it through a song or two without feeling like I’ve had my fill). Thus, my lack intimate knowlege ofthe tunes makes me easy pickin’s for a take down.
LA Woman gets dragged down by all the faux blues (although I suppose that they evoke a nice mood on “Cars Hiss by My Window,” and they were having a good day when they cut “Been Down So Long,” but the latter doesn’t really need to be on that album, does it? And “Crawling King Snake” is just a bore. The nicest thing about these tunes is that there’s no organ on them).
And, yes, Morrison’s weakened presence is a problem on the tunes where he’s not up to the task. He stumbles on the peaks of “Changeling” too, which is a real shame because that song’s got a hot riff.
“L’America’s” an underrated gem and so is “Hyacinth House.”
Overall, the album’s not worthy of the mythologizing. However, aside from Morrison’s problems, I disagree with the notion that it lacks the “confidence and power” of earlier albums. “Waiting for the Sun” and “Soft Parade” are pretty weak.
Not to knock your commentary, which is legit, but this is hardly in need of a critical downgrade, since for the most part critics look at it as a major step down after BLOOD ON THE TRACKS and almost every review I’ve read has been mixed at best. I actually like the album a lot better than the critics do, except for the excruciatingly wrong-headed “Joey,” but that song is enough to knock the album down from great to good IMO.
This an interesting choice. Did you know that in a recent Cracked article they picked the title song as one of five rock radio “classics” that actually suck? I really dislike the Doors on a lot of levels and despise the cult of Morrison, so put my commentary in that context, but LA WOMAN has actually always been the Doors album I liked most. My favorite songs on it are the weird/obscure ones (“Changeling,” “L’America,” “Hyacinth House”), but I can live with an epic like “Riders On The Storm” and their attempt at a pop song (“Love Her Madly.”) I guess the blues songs are the major weakness here–I have to agree that there’s too much chaff to make this album a masterpiece–but don’t all of their albums have chaff on them? Isn’t the debut just as overrated?
You’re probably right, pudman. But I was under the impression that at the time, “Desire” was well received by critics.
One lazy wiki search later, my confidence is bolstered: though Christgau gave it a B-, Dave Marsh called it “one of the two best albums Dylan has made since John Wesley Harding.”
I’m probably in the minority, but I feel Morrison’s gift was the ability to overreach in a manly, slightly pathetic way. The title track carries the weight for a generation of manly sadsacks. The album itself, however, falls a little short of Morrison Hotel’s fulfillment.
Well, unless you’re a NASHVILLE SKYLINE fan, until LOVE & THEFT “one of the two best albums Dylan has made since John Wesley Harding” could be the equivalent of a B-.
I’m going to delight Mr. Mod and horrify others, but could someone explain the 5-star appeal of Wire’s Pink Flag without using the usual rock-crit cliches about minimalism, short song-lengths and art-college bona fides? I don’t hate it, but it feels like a triumph of theory, with very little entertainment value. (I mean “entertainment” in the broadest possible sense; even serious punk rock has to be enjoyable in some way to be worth my time.) Plus, a little of this stuff goes a long way. The album could’ve been even shorter.
I don’t see the phrase “major step down from Blood on the Tracks” or sentiments to that effect in any of the contemporary reviews I’m finding. Instead I’m finding that it’s a “very special,” album, “beloved,” that “only falters” when Dylan, who is “writing better than ever,” tries to revise history.
Good assessment of LA Woman! Meaning, I agree: some great stuff but the blues tunes are pretty drab.
Notice that I didn’t say all of the earlier albums. I agree that Soft Parade is really weak. I sort of like Waiting for the Sun but it is a spotty effort at best. But LA Woman doesn’t come close to the first two albums or Morrison Hotel.
I think Desire is pretty great. It is, indeed, a step down from Blood on the Tracks, and (stop me if you’ve heard this one before) it could have been much better. He left a couple of terrific songs off the record (Abandoned Love, which finally came out on Biograph in the 80s, and Golden Loom, which was on disc three of the first Bootleg Series set) and included Joey, which pretty much blows. A couple of songs (Isis, Romance in Durango) were given much different (and better) arrangements on the Rolling Thunder tour. Still, a worthy B+/A- record as is.
No.
No, you can’t explain the 5-star appeal sans cliches? Or no, my entire comment is wrong and Pink Flag is an unassailable masterpiece?
While the extended epics on the first two albums might have been groundbreaking in 1967, now they’re a chore to sit though. Perhaps that’s because I don’t get stoned these days. However, almost all of the rest of the songs on The Doors and Strange Days are good to great with hardly any clunkers (“Horse Latitudes” counts as a clunker).
I don’t get, never have got, and very much doubt I will ever get the veneration of Randy Newman’s “masterpieces.”
Just as an aside, “Abandoned Love” is a staggering song. I even love the lo-fi version recorded at The Bitter End,I think.
I think the Desire songs sound way better on the Rolling Thunder live albums. But most of ’em are still below par.
no.
Groove is in the heart.
At the time of release Desire was part of the whole Rolling Thunder hype. I was never enamored of the overblown sound of the album, and I found the gypsy violin thing tiresome. Back then people actually took the whole image of the rockstar as outlaw/gypsy/poet/etc seriously. I think the songwriting path he took on this album was kind of a detour, but it was a way of writing that eventually became just one of his bag of tricks.
No, I can’t explain. I’m with you on this. I like some of it but enough already. I am generally glad to encounter songs from the record on a comp or something, but have no real interest in listening to the whole thing.
I do agree with your assessment of Nebraska though. I know it’s supposed to evoke the dark side of the Midwest. However, Bruce without the E-Street Band is just another would-be folkie with “meaningful” words on top of numbingly-dull music. What little attraction Bruce’s classic albums had for me (and it is indeed little) is provided by the playing which doesn’t exist here.
Oats, if this were a sensible world and Dylan were a sensible person who properly released great songs, Abandoned Love would be a classic instead of an obscurity. But, there’s the world as it ought to be and the world as it is.
To quote Duke Ellington, “If it sounds good, it IS good.” I love Pink Flag because of the way it sounds.
Yeah. Songs gets placed with the great Stevie records that came before it–and they are great records–but you are right, there is WAY too much and God knows Isn’t She Lovely is an unfortunate harbinger of a lot of the mediocre stuff he would do in the years ahead.
Marsh reviewed it as a good but not great album in the March 11, 1976 Rolling Stone. He downgraded it because he felt that not enough attention was paid to the music.
No argument here. Triple-record sets (outside of live albums and collections) have a way of tripping up even the best artists because it’s just too hard to keep the momentum going. Wonder is no exception. I enjoy Key of Life for the most part, but it could have easily been left as a double.
Marsh is, can we agree, a dope?
It’s really hard to pick a five star album from a band I like (I kind of seem to like or hate music, not much middle ground), and decide against it. Especially with All Music stars. Don’t they say they compare the music of an artist with other music by that artist? So five stars means they think it’s their best album, but it may be a four star record in the grand scheme of things. I know some bands only have three star records (pretty much all my favorites), so they compare albums to others, but I always thought All Music tried to steer you to the best by a particular artist, not so much the best of a genre or anything.
To pick a band I love, and say I disagree with a classic is hard, but I’ll go with The Stones’ Sticky Fingers. Us die hards have a “Big 4” that generally consists of Sticky Fingers, Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed and Exile on Main St. Sticky Fingers always gets beat out by Some Girls for me, and I like Between the Buttons, Now! and Aftermath all better, too. I think it’s a great album, and it’s exactly what they needed when they stepped out on their own, but it’s just not my favorite. Partly because Mick Taylor is busy noodling around too much and partly because it’s got a lot of mellow songs on it. At least the production is crisp and punchy, where Goat’s Head Soup was mellow and sounds like all the mic’s had socks over them.
I just don’t think it’s a 5 star album. It’s a pretty great album, but it’s not as awesome to me as it seems to be to a lot of other Stones fans.
While I was looking at things, I found Pitchfork’s 100 best albums of the 70’s. The primary criteria appears to be that no one in the 70’s should have heard the album, it sould only be available as repressings. I mean, it’s not that bad, but it’s pretty out there.
I love the Beatles, but Let It Be is not a great album. I suppose there have been critical ups and downs with that thing, like Rolling Stone having it at three stars, but that’s about where I’d put it too.
Pitchfork and AllMusic have it at about 4 1/2 stars. One After 909 is a clunky arrangement of what was a driving number in a demo much earlier in the decade. Dig It is an embarrassing piece of crap John sounds like he made up over any old jam they happened to be playing. For You Blue might be my least favorite George song, this is even worse to take when you realize how many better songs by him were in the can. The Long and Winding Road really suffers from that string section and sounds like it should be in a tearjerker movie. They don’t even let Ringo sing something goofy.
Actually, since it was in the movie about the album, I guess it was featured in a tearjerker.
No, we can’t. Marsh is one of the few critics I like. He’s consistent enough that I can tell if I like something from how he feels about it.
I’m not sure that a clock that is consistently an hour off is a good clock, although you can tell the time by it if you compensate for its inaccuracy.
True, misterioso, but in the clock metaphor you assume an abundance of available accurate clocks.
Yeah, but Marsh isn’t a clock. At least he’s not Christgau, the self proclaimed “Dean of American Rock Critics.” That’s like being the nose on a dog chasing it’s tail, isn’t it?
Maybe, BigSteve! Or at least more or less accurate ones.
Wow…I dunno. I think it’s totally great, full of hooks, full of memorable songs, and it’s not really samey either: “Mannequin” and “Fragile” are pop songs, “12XU” and the title song mess with punk conventions. I guess you either connect with it or you don’t…it all depends on what kinds of hooks you like, I suppose.
worthy of a downgrade on all fronts.
My beef with Christgau is that if he doesn’t like an artist, the slightest non-PC or non-liberal thing on said artist’s part will evince howls of protest and outrage. He’ll give a pass to artists he likes with nothing more than the mildest of scoldings. Also, too often Christgau prefers a cute and clever quip over anything informative or useful.
Marsh might be a dope but he nails one of the biggest criticisms I have of Dylan and that is his too-frequent disregard for the music behind his singing (for what is is) and poetry.
tonyola, are you referring to how he’ll nail, say, Cat Stevens for sexism, but give the Stones a pass? That always irked me too.
But tony, if you read his original review, his beef is not with what he (idiotically, in my view) calls “Bob Dylan’s adamantly antimusical approach.” (For some reason he thinks the record would have improved if it had been recorded “with more care” even though the whole sound of the record is “seductive,” never seeing that perhaps too much “care” would have killed that “seductive” sound.) But, again, his beef with the record was primarily ideological, much as was Lester Bangs’. That may be fair: but the main issue I have with Joey is not so much its cozying up to a mafioso as its not being a very good song.
In the end, I think Marsh and other critics of that milieu could never forgive Dylan for not being the Dylan of 65-66, forever and ever.
I have the original review on the Rolling Stone DVD set. Read the second and third paragraphs of the review…
“Had the group been given the chance to record with more care, the record could have been the blockbuster the songs deserve.”
tony you may be right about Christgau (for whom I have no use, either). But ditto for Marsh. He disliked Queen (not that I am a big fan), so they got labeled “may be the first truly fascist rock band.” Pretty strong stuff from a guy who edited The Rolling Stone Record Guide, which promised, “If you want to own one record by the Beach Boys or the Rolling Stones, the Guide will tell you which to buy – and which to avoid.” (Say it to yourself in the voice of Conrad Veidt, who played Maj. Strasser in Casablanca.)
tony, sorry if I seem like I am splitting hairs. But Marsh gets far more worked up about, and devotes more space to, Dylan’s ideological lapses than his musical ones. “The record only falters, in fact, when it attempts to write or rewrite real history,” he writes.
I’ve read the Rolling Stone Record Guide and I can’t take it or Marsh very seriously. After all, it rated Atlanta Rhythm Section’s A Rock and Roll Alternative five starts. ARS? That was a joke, right?
Marsh’s artlessness has always been a major turnoff for me.
The first one is overrated. The second one is underrated. But I agree that Morrison Hotel is pretty hot shit.
This took real soul searching, didn’t it? I imagine you in a therapist’s chair working this stuff out for yourself!
I think the first NY Dolls album is over-rated. I much prefer the second one.
5-stars to A Rock and Roll Alternative? Wow. Maybe if it had been recorded with even more care it would have got six?
Goofed up when I thought Trouser Press gave out ratings. My bad. Also, I must have submitted this draft for preview before adding more criteria. Doesn’t matter, everyone is making excellent choices here.
Yes, yes, yes…it is much better remembered for it’s historical significance than it’s music. A solid 3 1/2 ,but no 5.
Neil Young’s Ditch Era (On The Beach, Tonight’s The Night, Comes A Time). My inner snob can’t believe I put those albums up there, but I have to admit that they don’t hit me on a gut level. Everything I read tells me that I should be able to absorb those dark and moody songs. I’m told these albums are pure heartache and passion. I just don’t hear the brilliance. I would give On The Beach 4, with Tonights The Night and Comes A Time getting a 3.
Anybody want to take on Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy (allmusic), or Led Zeppelin III (allmusic),
I think The Slider and Electric Warrior by T. Rex are over-rated. Maybe you had to be British and the right age to fully get them.
I feel like Electric Warrior just gets better and better with age. Nothing has ever sounded like it before or since.
I see that it has been downgraded to 4.5 stars on AMG, but though I’m a big fan of Jefferson Airplane, much to the frustration of some around here (and would give their final album, Volunteers, 5 stars), I’ve never understood why Jefferson Starship’s Red Octopus spent so many years as a 5-star album. Decently tuneful, semi-memorable pop with an annoying lead singer. 3.5 stars at the time, 3 stars now.
Just realized I broke my own rule of 1 album per Townsperson.
I’m having trouble with my messages loading properly (my computer, I’m sure)–that previous comment was not a response to Big Steve.
I just realized I broke my rule of reading the post before responding.
If it’s any help the early, Dave Marsh version of Rolling Stone Guide has not aged well. I’ve been using the 2004 edition with mostly Rob Sheffield doing lead reviews.
Oof. Tonight’s the Night is a thing all it’s own and worthy of 5. On the Beach and Zuma are nearly as good.
Eric Clapton’s Slowhand has got 5 in Rolling Stone. That album is a classic, only listen to side 1 LP. And even that reeks of 70’s malaise. “Cocaine” has to be the deadest song about a stimulant ever, “Wonderful Tonight” is a mouthful of saccharine. “The Core” kind of rocks and “Lay Down Sally” are passable.
461 Ocean Blvd gets 5 as well. I like that one better but it isn’t a classic by any means.
I like both those albums. T. Rex at their best made sly, decadent, and intelligent pop. I’m not sure they’re worthy of five stars but I’d give them a solid four-star rating.
I agree with you about it fitting the “usual rock-crit cliches” but I do find the album highly entertaining. Is every song great? Nope, and it may not warrant a 5-star rating, but I find something enjoyable about each of the tracks. The songs are short, sharp, energetic and have enigmatic lyrics.
I think a lot of Clapton’s output, though sometimes very good, has been overrated by those who would be rock and roll tastemakers. Is he a great musician? Of course. Is he a great album-maker? Er, I’ll get back to you on that. I’ll go as far to say that even Cream never put out a five-star album though Disraeli Gears came close. As for solo and semi-solo records, to me the one indisputable classic is Layla.
Led Zeppelin III, if anything, has been often underrated. Not only are there great rock crunchers on the first side, but even the blues excursion is quite passable with an unusual chord progression. The mellow and largely acoustic second side is quite effective too and shows an unexpected quality of Zep. Robert Plant once said that Zeppelin could have easily been a folk band instead of metal, and side two is strong backup for his statement. A solid four-star record.
I’d give Captain Fantastic three stars. Decent, but not Elton’s best.
Cream probably a classic album or two amidst their 4 releases.
Layla should be a 5 star anywhere, any way you look it.
I only like Breathe, Time, Us & Them, Brain Damage, and Eclipse from Dark Side of The Moon. I think the rest of that record is pretty annoying. I like every album Pink Floyd put out in the 70s better than Dark Side, yet it’s in the top 5 of Everybody’s lists from that decade.
I gotta say, I’m kinda not down with using as a measuring stick the strict criteria of what an album’s original critical reception by RS or allmusic was.
There are plenty of albums that may not have hit Christgau’s or Marsh’s gloryhole in just the right way, but are still highly regarded as critical successes.
I mean, so what if Marsh gave an album four stars, if we all know it’s beloved and hailed as an achievement these days? Does that mean we’re not allowed to downgrade it?
Yeah, I like those albums, too. A lot. But I like the example, because those albums were NOT well received when they came out. The general reaction at the time was just like the reaction to the tours: “WTF is wrong with Neil? Why doesn’t this sound like “Harvest?”
What does a song have to do to be “quite effective?” And how do we know that you’re right about that?
When I listen to those albums now, it’s like coming across a really fun old friend by accident on a great night out, and letting the good times roll.
And I marvel, actually, that there was an era when teenyboppers dug that stuff.
It’s so spacey and fun, but also raunchy.
I’ve never had a problem with it.
It has to sound good. Happy? Hope so, because this is going no farther.
What does a song have to do to be “a really fun old friend”? And how do we know that you’re right about that?
But after someone offers up an album as being worthy of a critical downgrade, ya can’t just say “no…these songs here are quite effective…they sound good” and expect that to be the end of it.
I think most of side 2 of Zeppelin III qualifies as the Zep tunes I’m least likely to ever listen to again (aside from the garbage on In Through the Out Door).
They’re effective alright: effective at making me lift the needle.
NOW we’re done.
How does it feel?
We don’t.
Read closely, Tone, and note the difference between my presentation of my response to T Rex as *my response to it* and your presentation of your response to Zep III as universally correct.
“Quite effective.”
Not like “a really fun old friend”.
Whatever, Satue.
You like almost the whole album, dude.
That’s the best you can do?
It’s the best I’m going to bother with.
I totally missed these albums when they came out, and I bought them within the last couple of years when they were remastered. So they’re not old friends to me, and I think what I mean is I was expecting more of them based on their reputation. On first listen I thought they were great, but I felt like I used them up pretty quickly, and subsequent listens felt kind of blah.
I can’t wait until we have a go at 60’s albums so I can unload on that nakedest of all emperors, Pet Sounds, yet again.
It’s hard to care about a 5 star review if it’s a bad I’m ambivalent about. The White Album gets 5 stars, which is three more than I’d give it, but I just don’t care. I think I’d be more likely to bitch about Revolver being less than 5 stars, but it’s not. That clutch of about 8 Stones albums are all so uniformly great that after Exile and Beggars Banquet, I really split hairs to put them in any kind of order, but if Exile and Beggars are 5 stars, then the others should be just a little lower.
Actually, other records should be measured with slices of the Exile cover, with five slices being just one slice shy of Exile itself. So the only way you could see the whole cover is to look at the review of Exile itslef.
Isn’t four stars damn good? I actually had a conversation with a guy on another board about a few things I was listening to and he compared them to some classic rock stuff I didn’t like anyway, and he actually said that most of the records I was recommending were only three stars, so I didn’t know what I was talking about. Wouldn’t it suck to have to look up your opinion on the Internet?
I’ve always felt that Electric Warrior gets worse with every listen. It starts out great, but the more I listen it seems like there’s no “there” there.
Agreed.
half
I’m neither British nor was I born when either Electric Warrior and The Slider came out, but I still love them, especially Electric Warrior. Part of what makes it hold up for me as an album is that it actually gets stronger as it goes on, particularly in the final three song run at the end.
Those Neil records are tremendous, but I wonder if you meant Time Fades Away (also tremendous) rather than Comes a Time? Not to whip out the pince-neils or anything.
arrghh, you’re right. It’s Times Fade Away. Does any no why it’s never been released on CD. There are some very good songs on it. I always heard that it’s because the album is way too personal for Neil.
Time Fades Away also has one my fave album covers of all time.
Supposedly, the album was recorded on some weird prototype of a digital recorder that has since rendered the master tapes unusable.
I think Neil is waiting for a new method of music delivery that is “warmer” than blu-ray. No, but as I recall it has something to do with how TFA was recorded live direct from the mixing board or something like that and therefore (?!?) it can’t be released on cd or blu-ray or as a microchip implant or anything else. This may make sense to someone but it certainly doesn’t to me.
Considering that just about every Neil Young album from “back in the day” sounds like it was dug out of a sewer, can’t he just let someone digitally gussy up a burn of a clean vinyl copy?
Man, I like a lot of Neil Young, but that guy sometimes rivals Lou Reed’s inflated image of his “recording technology.”