#329: James Taylor - Sweet Baby James (1970)

Zack: Apparently James Taylor went through a phase where he was so depressed that he would sleep 20 hours a day, checked himself in to a hospital for mental instability, and got hooked on heroin. All BEFORE he got famous as a folk musician. Somehow, none of that comes across in his music. Sweet Baby James isn’t anything particularly fancy. It’s pleasant, folk music that sounds like it should be playing in the background of a driving/road trip montage in a movie. I didn’t have many impressions from it. I thought it was just generally pretty solid on all the fronts. It didn’t have the lyrical complexity of Dylan, the emotional vulnerability of Nick Drake, or the general musical excellence of Neil Young. But it had all of those components in satisfactory quantities. There were a number of songs that I just found boring, but I’d imagine a more dedicated folk music listened would have no problem swaying to them. In general, I enjoyed Sweet Baby James, but it wasn’t the type of album that stood out.

Favorite Tracks: Fire and Rain; Country Road; Sweet Baby James

Emily: My family was a bit late to the CD game. Until my parents bought a new car with a CD player in 1999, we subsisted on car and home stereos with a cassette deck and a radio. With this not-so-new technology in our lives, though, it was time to buy some CDs. Since my mom was the one who would be driving the new car most of the time, she got a few of her favorites for long drives. One of those early CD purchases was James Taylor's greatest hits. Taylor is one of my mom's favorite artists, and we listened to that greatest hits CD once in a while on long drives. I'm sure if you go through the crate of records in my parents' basement you will find Sweet Baby James in there too. Having only been exposed to the mix of Taylor's whole career, however, I wasn't super familiar with this early album. The folk elements are definitely there, but a few are infused with more rock and roll than I would've expected. The combination makes sense, though having a calm, more purely folk song like the title track juxtaposed with the live folk-rock guitar solo on Steamroller is a bit of an odd juxtaposition. I know that Taylor went more towards folk has he progressed through his career, but it's definitely cool to hear how that sound all started.

Favorite Tracks: Steamroller; Sweet Baby James; Country Road

#328: The Stooges - The Stooges (1969)

Zack: I really want to become a big fan of The Stooges. I just feel like that’s a really cool band to say you’re a fan of. So I was really pumped to listen to this album. I loved Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life and still play it pretty often, and I’ve already obtained the complete Stooges discography for when I can officially consider myself a fan. But I haven’t jumped in to listening to anything else yet because I wanted to get through the classics first. So no matter how bad I wanted to listen to Live at the Whiskey a Go-Go (and I wanted and still do want to listen to it very badly), I reconciled myself to waiting until we at least listen to their debut album and Raw Power. I certainly haven’t backed down from my plans after officially crossing the former off. The Stooges was an awesome album, serving as an amazing halfway point between garage rock and punk. Even when the album got kind of weird (We Will Fall), there was a certain charm to it. I didn’t think any of the songs were quite as good as Search and Destroy, but the album was filled with really solid songs that were packed with energy. I still hesitate to call myself a Stooges fan, since there is still a few more albums to listen to before I think I can speak about them intelligently. But I’m on my way and very excited about the process.

Favorite Tracks: No Fun; I Wanna Be Your Dog; Real Cool Time

Emily: The Stooges occupy such an interesting place in the rock music timeline. They come at a time when the hippies were on their way out, garage rock was just settling in, and punk was still a few years away. At that time, I don't think there was a clear way to be cool in music. The best strategy was just to do what you want and see what happens. I think that's what makes The Stooges so cool. They're definitely tied to a scene and an era, but they're the ones who made that scene and era happen with their unencumbered sound and style. They took what was new and made it even newer, foreshadowing the evolution of punk late in the next decade. The only other exposure I've had to The Stooges is Iggy Pop's solo Lust for Life, so I'm curious to hear what he and the band did in between. No matter what it is, though, I'm sure it's just as cool as this debut.

Favorite Tracks: No Fun; 1969; I Wanna Be Your Dog

#327: Anita Baker - Rapture (1986)

Emily: I've written on here before about my dad's love for Smooth Jazz 106.1, the jazz radio station that was here in Philadelphia for most of my childhood. It went off the air a few years ago, but until then it was pretty much all my dad would listen to in the car until my brother or I protested. Well, usually it was me doing the protesting, but still. For a kid/preteen/teenager, smooth jazz radio filled with the likes of Kenny G was not what I wanted to hear when I was getting a ride to the mall. As I've gotten older, and exposed less often to smooth jazz, I have somewhat more of an appreciation for it. I'm not about to go out of my way to listen to it, but when a smooth jazz artist like Anita Baker comes up on this list I'm always willing to give it a chance. I recognized Sweet Love, the lead single from Rapture, almost immediately. It was a staple on 106.1, and even when I was younger I didn't particularly hate it. That's probably because it's more than your standard, boring smooth-jazz fare. Baker's singing has more soul and R&B style along with the jazzier instrumentals, a blend that shines throughout the album. Smooth jazz radio needs more music like this - maybe then it'll get a better rep than it has had so far with the annoyed children and teenagers of the world.
Favorite Tracks: Sweet Love; Same Ole Love; Been So Long

Zack: I don’t really have much to say about this album, which I think makes it the first of its kind. Anita Baker had a combination of the smoothness of R&B with the up-tempo of jazz. It was a nice mixture and was certainly nice on the ears. There wasn’t anything that really stood out, other than how coherent everything felt. Every song seemed to flow right into the next, like a seamless stream of silky songs. Overall, I’d stop short of saying Rapture felt heavenly, but it definitely wasn’t a hell on Earth.

Favorite Tracks: Sweet Love; Caught Up in the Rapture; Mystery

#326: ABBA - Arrival (1976)

Emily: My mom absolutely hates ABBA. She was a teenager in the '70s, and I'm pretty sure she yelled at her radio to turn off Dancing Queen every time a pop station played it - which in 1976 was approximately every other song. ABBA comes up on the radio significantly less often now, but I'm sure she'll do the same thing. Even when the '90s neo-ABBA pop group A*Teens came along to Radio Disney with covers of Dancing Queen and Mamma Mia and equally sugary pop confections like Upside Down, she would turn the songs off immediately unless I protested. Yes, despite my mom's hatred, I liked A*Teens as a kid. Now, does that translate to liking ABBA now? Not quite. Arrival is brainless pop music meant to be danced to in 3-minute intervals, not savored as a full-length album. I'll take the shimmery Euro-disco fun that is Dancing Queen once in a while, but I didn't really need a half hour of it.
Favorite Tracks: Dancing Queen; Money, Money, Money; Dum Dum Diddle

Zack: I’m not sure I could turn the volume low enough on my iPod and still be able to hear enough that I could, in all good faith, write a review. I spent my morning walk to school nervously glancing over my shoulders every six seconds to make sure no one knew I was listening to ABBA. Hopefully everyone just thought I was being followed or was an escaped convict instead of what would have truly elicited judgment form my peers. I mean, it’s ABBA. Even if this albums sold several trillion copies (all numbers approximate), it still made a music journalist write “By reducing their already vapid lyrics to utter irrelevance, lead singers Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha Fältskog are liberated to matter on in their shrill voices without regard to emotion or expression,” Reread that quote. And know that, even if you like this album (which I’m already 100% positive Emily will), that statement is completely and obviously true. The songs are designed to be as shallow, repetitive, and uncomfortably upbeat as possible. I’m almost a little ashamed to admit that I’m kind of impressed by it. I have a longstanding hatred for The Black Eyed Peas for doing the same thing, but here it kind of feels at least a little sincere, as opposed to a concerted effort to make music for commercials and bar mitzvah royalty checks. I may not have liked this album. I may be moments away from scrubbing it out of my iTunes with digital bleach. But I respect that ABBA made the exact album they wanted to make in as unabashed a fashion as they could.

Favorite Tracks: Dancing Queen; Money, Money, Money; Why Did it Have to Be Me?

#325: Big Star - #1 Record (1972)

Zack: I’ve wanted to listen to this album forever now. I kept nominating it like every time it was time to pick a new batch, and it always got looked over. Honestly, I couldn’t think of a single Big Star song I’d ever heard, and all I’d ever read about the band or this album was that it was the epitome of critical darling, commercial failure. It gave it an air of mystery. Now that I’ve actually listened to it, I have to say that it didn’t quite live up to my lofty expectations. I was really expecting to be blown away, but instead I got a very consistent, very enjoyable album. My life remains unchanged. But it was definitely an album that I want to listen to a few more times, and I’m hopeful that more realistic expectations for a second go around will help.

Favorite Tracks: The Ballad of El Gordo; Watch the Sunrise; My Life is Right

Emily: I think the reason I apparently passed over Big Star so many times is because I had absolutely no idea who they were. Zack put them in the "classic rock" genre, but how could they be classic if I didn't even know their name? Turns out their cult following and critical acclaim, as well as emergence in the '60s and '70s, rightfully places them in the category of classic rock. That, and their power-pop-rock stylings that Wikipedia describes as drawing "on the vocal harmonies of The Beatles, as well as the swaggering rhythms of The Rolling Stones and the jangling guitars of The Byrds," which is a super-accurate description if you ask me. This album didn't really do anything new, but it definitely did it well. Plus, In the Street was later covered by Cheap Trick and used as the That '70s Show theme song. As That '70s Show is both one of my favorite sitcoms and favorite sitcom theme songs, that's totally a plus in my book for Big Star.

Favorite Tracks: In the Street; Watch the Sunrise; When My Baby's Beside Me

#324: Beth Orton - Central Reservation (1999)

Emily: I turned on this album and about 30 seconds in, I really wondered why Zack stuck it in the electronic category. Central Reservation is primarily an indie-folk album, with acoustic guitar and Beth Orton's smoky-sweet singing voice that reminded me of another singer-songwriter woman whose name still hasn't come to me. It's far from a dance record, or a chillout record, or a house record, or pretty much anything that I would normally classify as electronic. As I listened more, I kinda understood the electronic bit. The Wikipedia page for Central Reservation classifies it as "folktronica," which I guess is like the 2000s version of being a little bit country and a little bit rock & roll. Even so, the electronic elements are minimal and mostly in the form of synthesized percussion tinkling in the background. The less-than-even split between the genres totally works, though I would drop the combo-genre label and just call it folk - albeit with a modern, unique twist.
Favorite Tracks: Stolen Car; Couldn't Cause Me Harm; Stars All Seem to Weep

Zack: Central Reservation sounds like it could be the soundtrack to some indie-ish romcom featuring a quirky, but overall shallow female lead, most likely starring Michael Cera. Which is fitting, since the album cover looks like a still of any one of the multitude of movies with a manic pixie dream girl. Beth Orton works in one of those weird portmanteau genres (this time it’s called folktronica) that I have so often expressed mild loathing for. Consider Central Reservation one of the exceptions. I found the album different enough that it avoided the pratfalls of being generic that so often accompanies the first adjective that came to mind once I finished listening: pleasant. The quirks to the blending of two genres that really don’t seem like they should get along were there, but the mixture was overall smooth. I couldn’t imagine diving in to the album, but it was fitting for background music.

Favorite Tracks: Central Reservation; Stolen Car; So Much More

#323: Merle Haggard - I'm a Lonesome Fugitive (1967)

Zack: By far the biggest change this endeavor has created in my musical tastes is my somewhat reluctant appreciation for country music. If someone had asked me back when I was just a wittle bitty freshman what type of music I listen to, I would have said “I listen to pretty much everything, except country. Country music blows.” Now, I actually do listen to everything (although I don’t have all that much say in the matter), and I wouldn’t levy a blanket statement like all country music blows. I’ve begun to not only appreciate some of it, but also understand what types I like and dislike. For example, Merle Haggard is a prime case of what’s known as “outlaw country.” Other notable exemplars include Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson, both of whom I listen to semi-regularly. I even have a Johnny Cash Pandora station and absolutely love it. The reason I like the outlaw variety of country is because it trades it almost all of the twang (which I know now is a key feature of the old Nashville style of country music) for a more bluesy feel. The songs tend to be about crime and redemption, along with the other usual suspects of women and booze. In short, I find albums of the outlaw variety to have a bit more character to them. I’m a Lonesome Fugitive certainly fit into that category. It was a country album through and through, but one that never felt repetitive or corny like, say, Tiger by the Tail. The songs featured real storytelling to accompany slick guitar playing. It was a beauty to behold. One of my favorite albums from 2014 was Sturgill Simpson’s Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, and you could really hear the Merle Haggard influence. The next time I need a country fix, you can bet this album will be one of the first I play. And don’t be surprised if a lot more Merle shows up on my iPod sometime soon.

Favorite Tracks: I’m a Lonesome Fugitive; Somebody Told My Story; Drink Up and Be Somebody

Emily: Although I'm not quite as enthusiastic as Zack about this album, I liked it more than some of the other country albums we've listened to. In my country taste I tend to skew more modern, but I also like the storytelling element of some of the more classic artists like Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton. I'm a Lonesome Fugitive is on the older side of things, so it definitely has a lot of blues-influenced twang going on. That's not my favorite, but his lyrics make up for it. Each song tells a story and captures a mood, whether it's anger, sadness, or hope. That emotion and honesty is the hallmark of country music, and Merle Haggard captures it with aplomb.

Favorite Tracks: Drink Up and Be Somebody; All of Me Belongs to You; House of Memories

#322: Tom Waits - Nighthawks at the Diner (1975)

Zack: For those of you who don’t know, here’s a beginner’s guide to Tom Waits: his voice sounds like he does vocal warm-ups by gargling gravel, he’s the only man in the world that can wear a fedora without looking like a jackass, and he sang the second best version of the intro for The Wire. Oh, and for the sake of everyone living in the Northeast, we are never listening to another Tom Waits album after this one. Not because it is bad and everyone in the Northeast lives vicariously through us (while the latter may be true, Nighthawks is awesome, as I will get to), but because both times we were due to listen to a Waits album, inclement weather has happened. For those of you who haven’t dedicated our entire blog to memory, we listened to Rain Dogs during Hurricane Sandy (the appropriateness of which I’m only now seeing), and I got to this album the day after a blizzard put life from New York up into a standstill. I’m disappointed that we have to have this policy done, even if it is for the greater good, because I really did enjoy this album. Whereas Rain Dogs was an eclectic mix of several different genres into something that our hyphen-obsessed music journalists would undoubtedly dub Tom-Waits, Nighthawks is a more pure jazz album. It’s recorded in a small jazz club, which really helps give the appropriate feel of what I assume seeing Tom Waits live would look life (i.e. obscured through a thick cloud of tobacco smoke). He spends a decent amount of time introducing each song by rambling and cracking inappropriate jokes while the band keeps a steady pace behind him. Normally, a lot of banter is annoying on a live album, but here it’s the second best part of the album. The absolute best part is all the music, which is fantastic. While I love songs like Clap Hands on Rain Dogs, I’ll admit there are a few songs on there where Waits goes more experimental and I’m not as big a fan (Cemetery Polka being the biggest one). None of those are here. Nighthawks is just really solid all the way through, and I can’t recommend it enough.

Favorite Tracks: Putnam County; Eggs And Sausage (In A Cadillac With Susan Michelson); Nobody

Emily: I didn't get the chance to listen to this album straight through, as I normally like to. I started at school, stopped when it was time to leave the library, started up again when I got home, took a break when my roommate made dinner, and then came back to it while reading a patent application for class tomorrow. Needless to say, this is not how Nighthawks at the Diner should be experienced. As a live album, each track flows seamlessly into the next like a live performance. When you're starting and stopping and taking breaks in between, it's hard to really get the rhythm going. However, one of the great things about Nighthawks is that no matter where you are or how you're listening, Tom Waits transports you to an underground, smoke-filled jazz club. Every quip to the audience, every saxophone solo, every character built out of words and notes - each piece works together to take you back to that night in 1975 when Waits and his band performed this wonderfully creative jazz set.

Favorite Tracks: Spare Parts I (A Nocturnal Emission); Nobody; Better Off Without a Wife