18. Sarah Vaughan - At Mr. Kelly's (1957)

Track: September in the Rain//Willow Weep for Me//Just One of Those Things//Be Anything But Darling Be Mine//Thou Swell//Stairway to the Stars//Honeysuckle Rose//Just A Gigolo//How High Is The Moon?//Dream//I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself A Letter//It's Got to Be Love//Alone//If This Isn't Love//Embraceable You//Lucky In Love//Dancing in the Dark//Poor Butterfly//Sometimes I'm Happy//I Cover the Waterfront

Ah! These things move in packs. Now we have another stripped-back set by an excellent interpreter of songs, albeit this time in the jazz and pop vein rather than country and blues. And damned if it isn’t good – this might well be the item for which the phrase “understated charm” was coined. See also: "deceptive simplicity"; "unselfconscious grace".

Sarah Vaughan’s voice is certainly gorgeous. She navigates the rhythms of her small backing band perfectly, and dips up and down her register with complete fluidity. There’s very much a sense here of the voice as instrument, with the lyrics a vehicle for the singer as opposed to being the point of the song. I’m sure the lyricists who authored Vaughan’s selections would appreciate your paying some attention to what’s being said, but I find with this album that I’m far less interested in the “what” than the “how”. Vaughan’s got phrasing that’d put a sax to shame, and she takes advantage of the fact that she’s mostly singing languorous torch songs to stretch out and let her voice go places. Not that she ever has any Mariah Carey moments, mind. You can hear Vaughan putting care and thought into each little twist of her voice, rather than indulging in spontaneous masturbation. It’s kind of an interesting contrast to Ella Fitzgerald’s album which is coming up tomorrow, where Ella has obviously tried to clearly and cleanly interpret the songs of Gershwin and has completely sapped them of individual personality in the process (although it’s still a good album).

And speak of the Devil (or the first lady of song, at least) – there’s actually a tribute to Ella on this album. You see, it’s a live recording, made at the Mr. Kelly’s night club of all places, and as a consequence there are quite a few muddles and missed notes. In “How High the Moon”, for example, Vaughan forgets the word halfway through and starts doing comical scatting a la Ella to fill out the time. And then you’ve got “Willow Weep for Me”, where she ends-up with a few bars to spare and starts cracking jokes. And then you have all the little bits of inter-song banter, none of it as fancy as the stuff on the Jack Elliot album, but still very charming nonetheless. Flirting with the audience and such. The thing that’s most fascinating is hearing the contrast between her singing voice, with it’s considerable range, and her small and squeaky speaking voice.

So, this is a very nice album. Maybe not a great album, I suppose, but a lovely antidote to all the over-orchestrated nonsense that we’ve been having lately. And then, what is a "Great Album" anyway? This makes me smile, damn it! It's pretty! And such a wonderful late night album! The tracks may blend into each other a bit at times, and sometimes the lyrics get lost behind the performances, but isn’t that at least sort of what you want from a late night album? I’ve listened to this half a dozen times, and never any earlier than ten o’clock at night. It’s an anodyne to worn nerves and a pick-me-up for the downtrodden. It’s, at base, just a woman with a pretty voice singing some silly love songs, but it’s also a really pretty voice. Hell it might even be the prettiest voice! It’s damn near perfect! You get the swinging tunes and the torchy tunes and it's all so happy and smooth.

So! This is a very charming, joyful album, and one that I am very happy to welcome into my library. It’s simple and simply wonderful, with every song a delicate little machine running its course into the next and so on till the end. Nothing much to say about it, nothing much to criticise. A blissful album! Sustenance for the soul. It makes you happy to be alive, I argue.

8.5/10

Download: Sarah Vaughan - Thou Swell Mp3

17. Ramblin' Jack Elliot - Jack Elliott Takes the Floor

Tracks: San Francisco Bay Blues//Ol' Riley//Bill Weevil//Bed Bug Blues//New York Town//Old Blue//Grey Goose//Mule Skinner Blues//East Texas Talking Blues//Cocaine//Dink's Song//Black Baby//Salty Dog

Another review, but hopefully a short one (it’s 12:45 AM on a school night, after all). This is a charming little album. It’s just Jack Elliott with his guitar, taking a swing at the American folk repertoire and managing nothing but hits. Elliot has a funny sort of voice – when he talks, he sounds like Ira Kaplin doing a cowboy impersonation, but when he sings he has a style which owes such a debt to the blues that at times it sounds like he’s stolen Skip James’ pipes by way of Hank Williams and hooked them up to an air-raid siren. At one point in “Mule Skinner Blues”, for example, Elliott actually holds a yodel for a full twenty seconds. It’s wonderfully expressive, and perfectly suited to his principle choice of subject matter – being funny little stories of the misfortunes of life. We are treated, for example, to just about the most resistant goose to ever be cooked, and to a farmer who strikes-up a friendship with a destructive bill weevil. You get little bits of regional history, and instruction on what the hell a Talking Blues is (basically, it’s folk-rap).

You might think, being just a guy and his guitar, that things could get pretty dull pretty quick. Thankfully, that’s not the case. “Ramblin’” Jack gets his name less from any roaming he might have done than due to a habit of letting loose with long and meandering stories. What this means is that most of the songs are introduced with a wry observation of some form, and in one case this even extends to a song in which Jack pretends to have Woody Guthrie in the studio with him, and the “pair” duet on a number.

It’s not all laughs, though. There’s a couple of prison blues (or rags, if you will), and “Old Blue” which tells the story of the narrator’s dead dog. It starts out quite jaunty, but by the end you can almost hear him crying as he sings “dear blue, I’m coming too”. Then “Black Baby” is the touching story of a guy going away, telling his gal not to worry and to take care. Bittersweet, more than anything. Utterly gorgeous vocal delivery. Of course, then you have "Salty Dog", which is, well, "salty".

Really, there’s not much to go on about here, but it’s all wonderfully done. Elliott’s guitar is very fine, and he busts-out the harmonica on a few numbers. You get some weepers and some up-beat party tunes and some stuff in between. Elliott himself is a curious character – a Jewish New Yorker and the son of a doctor, he ran away from home in his teens and remade himself as a cowboy in the mid-West. Well, he does alright by these tunes, and leaving questions of authenticity aside that is really all that matters. We don’t want to re-open the Mudrooroo debates, after all. It’s the music that matters, and Elliott is one hell of an interpreter of songs. This is one of my favourite albums so far. It’s at turns hilarious and touching. The links to early Dylan are pretty obvious (Dylan actually billed himself as “Son of Jack Elliott” for one of his first performances, and they hung-out a bit), but Elliott has a much better voice and, until we actually get to Dylan, will do just as nicely.

8.5/10 (maybe a 9? It's all arbitrary anyway... OK yes Jack Elliot you may have a 9)

Download: Ramblin' Jack Elliot - East Texas Talking Blues Mp3

16. Billie Holiday - Lady in Satin

Tracks: I'm A Fool to Want You//For Heaven's Sake//You Don't Know What Love Is//I Get Along Without You Very Well//For All We Know//Violets for Your Furs//You've Changed//It's Easy to Remember//But Beautiful//Glad to Be Unhappy//I'll Be Around//The End of a Love Affair

Review:

I’m tempted, rather than reviewing Lady in Satin, to instead quote a poster on Amazon who states that this album “appeals only to voyeurs of human tragedy and misery”. That may be a bit harsh, but it does sum up a lot of the problems I have both with this album and with many a consumer’s approach to art. You see, this is an album built around self-pity, and sold to people who care less about the music coming out of their speakers than the biographies of the musicians. Do people even talk about Billie Holiday's music anymore? Lady in Satin is an emotional rather than a musical experience, but as a person with little to no emotional investment in Holiday I am instead left with what is at best a fair-to-mediocre bit of orchestral pop.

So, let’s get down to specifics. At this point Billie Holiday’s voice was more or less fucked. It’s there for all to see. She keeps a level of control in her vocals which is impressive when taken in contrast with how raspy they sound, but that said, half the time they don’t even manage to stay in tune. In one instance she even resolves the song on the wrong note. But, I think we can blame this at least in part on the stunningly ill-conceived orchestral backing. It’s big. It’s really big, so big that half the time the instruments are so loud that they drown out Holiday’s voice, and it’s almost nothing but strings and big “woo-ooing” choirs of angels. Now, I actually happen to like big, sappy arrangements with woo-ooing choirs of angels, but they’d be out of place on a Minor Threat album and they’re out of place here.

This really is the crux of the problem. Holiday’s voice had been ravaged by drugs, alcohol and smoking, but it still had a certain slow flexibility and a heart-felt quality that would have worked marvellously with a smaller, les flamboyantly cheery band. While it must have sounded hideous and terrifying in 1958, fifty years of Punk music and Tom Waits albums have given us a world where the charms of such things can be a little better appreciate. I don’t see why Columbia didn’t give her the sort of spare treatment that had served her well previously. I guess they must have decided to try and push her as a slick pop singer and buried her vocals under the arrangements to distract people. Well, that’s all well and good, but it didn’t work. Ray Ellis’ arrangements are for the better part astonishingly tedious. So much is going on, with the warm-toned trumpet solos and swooping cellos and harps, and yet rather than become compelling the instruments instead weave together like the fibres of one big bundle of cotton wool. I tried listening through this twice and both times I almost fell asleep.

By this point you can probably tell that I don’t agree with the general assessment that this album is difficult to listen to. If this were a gut-wrenching emotional roller coaster I'd actually like it, but from poor song choices to bad performances, it’s not anywhere near challenging enough.

Ok, so now that I’ve finished savaging the thing I can tell you what I like about it. And I do like a few things. This isn’t an awful album, by any means. It’s never less than pleasant, and in a few songs everything comes together to even become down-right interesting. So! If you want to spare yourself a lot of trouble, and having to sit through the mumbled tedium of “Violets for Your Furs”, then you could do worse than pick-up “I’m a Fool to Want You”, “Glad to Be Unhappy” and “The End of a Love Affair”. None of these songs are spectacular, but the first is still quite beautiful, in a simple and guileless way, while “The End of a Love Affair” is the closest thing to an emotionally genuine moment on the whole album. Who, after sitting through this whole bizarre mess, isn’t going to feel a bit when Holiday hisses out “so I smoke a little too much, and I joke a little too much, and the tunes I request are not always the best, but the ones where the trumpets blare”. It’s actually affecting, and it goes a long way towards salvaging the album from pointlessness.

Well, that’s about it, and I hope I’ve made my point. Billie Holiday as encapsulated on this album is certainly a very pathetic individual, but I am not going to give any album top marks just for “authenticity”. I’ve always been a cynical bastard – I’m the kind of guy who gets put-off by novels or films which are described as “powerful”. I find something repulsive in the way that Kurt Cobain can off himself and suddenly he’s no longer just a pretty good pop-rock composer, but instead a tragic genius whose work finds absolute vindication in the act of his death. To suffer is not noble. To withstand and overcome suffering is noble.

I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve seen too many people get caught-up in the beauty of their own demise, and wind-up fucking themselves completely as a consequence. Billie Holiday you were a fine singer but this is just not all that good an album, and no amount of sadness in your life is going to change that. The self-absorbed, self-pitying, self-destructive artist is a bullshit construct. We make fun of Doors fans for buying it, and it wouldn’t be fair to let you off on this count. If this really was your favourite album, then it was obviously for deeply personal reasons. I respect that. I respect the bad situation you found yourself in. But yeah. The album's not much chop.

5/10

Download: Billie Holiday - The End of a Love Affair MP3

15. Tito Puente - Dance Mania (1958)

Tracks: El Cayuco//Complicacion//3-D Mambo//Llego Mijan//Cuando Te Vea//Hong Kong Mambo//Mambo Gazon//Mi Chiquita Quiere Bembe//Varsity Drag//Estoy Siempre Junto a Ti//Agua Limpia Todo//Saca Tu Mujer

Review:

Well, the cover more or less sums it up. It’s sexy! It’s cheesy! It’s for dancing! To be honest I know absolutely nothing about Tito Puente. He was in the “Who Shot Mr. Burns” two-parter of The Simpsons, where he performed that mambo about Mr Burns. I know that. And he wrote the oft-covered “Oye Como Va”, which is an OK song in both the original and the Santana version but which, to my mind, reached its peak with Amaral’s Trinidad Cavaliers Steel Orchestra and its bizarre steel-drum break-dance interpretation. So, I guess I know that, too. Um...

Oh! I also know that Tito Puente is considered El Rey, or the King of the Timbales, which is something that seems justified gauging by the contents of this album. I mean, I’m no expert when it comes to the timbales, but Tito Puente clearly knows his way around a drum kit. Which is good, since this is a dance album...

Honestly I don’t have much to say here. It’s a very solid album, but it’s not the sort of thing that demands deep analysis or extended descriptions. Well, maybe it does, but I don’t speak Spanish and as a consequence I can’t give a thorough reading of “Mi Chiquita Quiere Bembe”. According to Google that means “My babe wants Bembe”, but that’s not much help since I don’t really know what a Bembe is. Perhaps it’s some sort of beverage?

So what we have here is a lot of mambo, done very well, all quite danceable and integrated with numerous other styles about which I know nothing. You get extensive deployment of a great brass section, spidery piano and a killer vibraphone - and if there’s one thing I like it’s a vibraphone. Unlike the Machito album, this isn’t all instrumental – most of the songs are actually songs, you know, with singing. And sung well! There’s a lovely melancholy to the vocals that works as a nice counterpoint to the buoyant music. This is especially evident on the very sad-sounding and very pretty “Estoy Siempre Junto a Ti”.

Agh I really am having trouble finding things to say about this. “Hong Kong Mambo” uses the Chinese riff, but it’s pretty cool and very Les Baxter. “Mambo Gazon” is hypnotic and driving, built around layer upon layer of repeating horn figures and some mesmeric chanting that bursts out into a brief instrumental breakdown. It’s certainly the best song here, and maybe the only one that really lodges itself in your mind.

And there is the problem. Dance Mania is a lot of fun to listen to but afterwards I couldn’t really remember much of it. Although after a while, the grooves star to wear themselves into you. I found myself singing along to “Mi Chiquita Quiere Bembe” (which, incidentally, has a marvellous shuffling percussion break in the middle). Each of the songs manages to shift through a few distinct movements, and they’re all quite complex and interesting tunes. But, in the end, it’s just a sunny album to dance along to. You can bop along! It’s not overly confronting! It’s got understated charm. The ditties are catchy!

In the end, I quite like this. It’s not earth-shattering music, but there’s a level of skill and craftsmanship brought to these songs that I really appreciate. They’re really far better mad then they probably had to be. As a guy who owns more than his fair share of “Tango for Lovers” cocktail schmaltz LPs, it’s refreshing to here this done right. It’s actually swank! And I can’t not dance to “Agua Limpia Todo”, what with the little “la la la” chorus and all.

Ok, so final thoughts? It’s pleasant and friendly and it sort of sneaks up on you. I was considering writing this off as sort of vapid, but once you get into the swing of it, it’s a lovely listen. I want to strut about the Caribbean wearing a Panama hat and photographing missile bases. But I don’t know that I’d ever call this a particularly great album. It’s very, very good, however, and exceeds perfectly at being a fun little party record. I will admit, however, that I am a massive dork, and so if you don't count Doris Day among your musical idols you may not get quite as much mileage out of this.

So, yeah, this is pretty good stuff. Unlike my review, for which I apologise profusely. This is what happens when you haven't made-up your mind yet and find yourself listening to the album over as you write your post.

8/10

Download: Tito Puente - Mambo Gazon Mp3

Download: Amral's Trinidad Cavaliers Steel Orchestra - Oye Como Va Mp3

And! Los Simpsons en Espanol:

14. Little Richard - Here's Little Richard (1957)

Tracks: Tutti Frutti//True Fine Mama//Can't Believe You Wanna Leave//Ready Teddy//Baby//Slippin' and Slidin'//Long Tall Sally//Miss Ann//Oh Why?//Rip It Up//Jenny Jenny//She's Got It

Being born in 1986 as I was, I never had the opportunity to hear first-wave rock before it got defanged. I suppose that happened pretty quickly (Elvis Presley being the most famous victim), but still. Growing up with Flying Purple People Eaters and with Christina Ricci and Casper the Friendly Ghost dancing to spectral Bobby Day impersonators, it’s easy to lose touch with ones roots. I suppose this is in part a reflection of changing standards – what was shocking and frightening in 1955 is now just sort of pleasant. How many people listen to Swing and remember that at one point this sort of stuff was considered atonal, barbarous rhythm-mongering?

Which is all appropriate, given that today’s album is by Little Richard. I guess like everyone I knew about Little Richard. The guy was on Sesame Street. “Tutti Frutti” is a pop standard. But the lack of perspective which comes with close familiarity somehow numbed me to the fact that he is actually a demented homosexual in a sequined cape howling out frantic stompers that would give Napalm Death pause. It probably didn’t help that I always confuse him with Lionel Richie.

Anyway, this is a very loud and very wild album. If you ever find yourself wondering “Why is rock so loud, and wild?” then this is the album to check-out. Most of that can be attributed to the astonishing power of Mr. Penniman’s voice. The music here is well-written and well-performed, but it’s not really all that different from Fats Domino’s stuff – which is, I suppose, fair enough, given that a lot of these songs were actually recorded up to two years prior to the album’s release. Things chug along on barrel-roll piano riffs, and lots of groovy saxophone riffs keep things interesting and occasionally even funky. The lyrics aren't much to write home about and most of the songs use well-worn blues structures. The main selling point on these songs is the over-driven pace, the rough sound and the naked sexual aggression that fills most of these songs, and epitomised in the weird animalistic yowling of Little Richard. There’s a visceral punch to these songs matched only by the stompers on The Atomic Mr Basie. James Brown certainly owes something to this. Plus, they’re catchy! And about sex and drinking! If any album were likely to get you starting a band, this’d be it.

Having said all this, the hard-hitting punch of the album is also what makes it a bit wearing after a while. This is a problem with a lot of hard rocking albums, I suppose. Too little variety in the song structures, for one thing. I realise it was early in the game, but look at how many different styles Buddy Holly got into his album! I’m not saying all artists should be obligated to cram their albums with dazzling variety, but Here’s Little Richard needs something to shake things up a bit. And, to be fair, he does throw a few googlies now and then. The bizarre “Wop-bop-a-loo-ba” opening “Tutti Frutti”, most famously, but there are also the weird, funky back-up singers that sound like old men in “True Fine Mama”, and the Ray Charles-like “Oh Why”, which slows things down a bit for a pity of self-pity. And then it’s straight into the groovy little “Rip It Up”, where the backing track gets to shine.

I do like this album, but I don’t see why just because this stuff was pioneering it should be immune to criticism. Stuff improves! Who’s going to argue that the Hendrix version of “All Along the Watchtower” isn’t the definitive one? Only dickwits and nerds, that’s who. We have a Ray Charles album coming up, and if I give this a 9 then what the hell am I supposed to give that? A 12? This is good stuff, it’s fun stuff, and it beats-out Holly for consistency and Domino for thrill-factor. But, ultimately, it gets a bit wearing and I don’t like it quite as much as either. Some would argue that you’re really supposed to be drunk or dancing when this is one, and that’s probably true, but I don’t drink and I’m currently nude and lying in my bed, so both those options are out. I have the same complaint about Born to Run if that makes you feel better.

Anyway, I don’t want to waste my time apologising for my decisions. This is a very fine album the historical importance of which is difficult to overstate, and considering this sort of stuff was never really my thing the fact that I like it as much as do is a testament to, well, something. Look I don't know it's pretty good but there is just something about saxophones that makes me ant to mark things down

Incidentally, I should probably say a few things about "Tutti Frutti". Did you know that it was originally about anal sex? It was a joke song Richard played on the gay club set, but they had him change the lyrics to avoid controversy. The funny thing is that the replacement phrase, "aw rooty", sounds an awful lot when sung like "I wanna rooty". This is funny, to Australians at least, because in this country the word "root" is a milder form of "to fuck". And so, through some sort of cosmic justice, the explicit lewdness of the song has been allowed to shine through.

And there you go.

7.5/10

Download: Little Richard - True Fine Mama MP3

13. Machito - Kenya (1957)

Tracks: Wild Jungle//Congo Mulence //Kenya //Oyeme //Holiday //Cannonology //Frenzy //Blues a la Machito //Conversation //Tin Tin Deo //Minot Rama //Tururato

With spring in the air and the global superpowers on the verge of becoming banana republics, it seems only appropriate to welcome a little mambo to the blog. Not to imply by my introduction that Kenya is artistically impoverished. Machito is one of those rare few individuals to whom one could accurately apply the term “mambo visionary”, and his music displays a dazzling breadth of imagination; so much so, in fact, that half of his songs stop midway and change into different songs entirely. Thus, we get an album that comes across like the coked-up lovechild of Herb Alpert, Tito Puente, Esquival and Fela Kuti. Not that I’m complaining.

The title is accurate, anyway. Machito fuses American big-band styles and a sense of bop jazz improvisation with Cuban and African popular forms, and you end-up with a great dance album. On my personal favourite, “Oyeme”, you get a hypnotic hand percussion-and-bass introduction on a five note pattern that could be right out of a Lee Perry dub number. It suddenly bursts into what sounds like African High Life music, with a series of tense, escalating riffs on the brass section, and then a wonderful sax solo right out of bop comes squealing along in the right channel, basically preempting John Coltrane. It’s great. The overall impression is of the sort of music that James Bond might have had a car chase to in Dr. No. If you ever found yourself longing for more songs like Yoko Kanno’s “Tank”, this is the place for you. Well, actually “Frenzy” is the place for you, as the intro is more or less identical to “Tanks”. Aptly named number, too, and with one hell of a drum break.

However, not all of the songs are as good. The slowerer numbers tend to sound a bit syrupy. The title track is just sort of tedious, the sort of whimsical horn you’d expect to hear soundtracking a bad comedy Western, while “Holiday” is pleasant but very much in the tradition of the Tijuana Brass. None of the songs are outright bad, but they do tend to blend together after a while. What saves them are the interesting introductions to several of the tracks, and the tendency for the orchestra to cut out at points and lead into sudden, expansive Afro-Cuban percussion solos that must have set the dance floors on fire at the time.

So, a really good album. For a guy whose prior experience with Latin music of the 50s had mostly been Doris Day and the Grace Chang musical Mambo Girl, this was a pleasant surprise. It never really gets dull, although after the first listen the novelty might wear a bit thin. This is a party album and as a consequence not all th tracks bear great scrutiny. There are dozens of wonderful moments, however, which are more than enough to keep it interesting, and it benefits strongly from both having much better production than and being not quite like almost anything else on the list to this point. The arrangements are really quite interesting, hard hitting but lush and complex, and the way the horns and bass float over the watery drums is oddly precise, but wonderful. It's great stuff. I guess I was wrong when I said there wasn't much exotica on the list. I can't wait for the Yma Sumac.

8/10

Download: Machito - Oyeme Mp3

And for no real reason, here is Grace Chang singing a song:

12. Miles Davis - Birth of the Cool (1957)

Tracks: Move//Jeru//Moon Dreams//Venus De Milo//Budo//Deception//Godchild//Boplicity//Rocker//Israel//Rouge//Darn That Dream

Review:

Well, another review and we now welcome the wonderful Mr. Miles Davis to the blog. Unfortunately, this is not one of his best albums. Which is an unfortunate way of phrasing it I suppose, as it makes The Birth of the Cool sound like a bad album – and that it most certainly is not. It’s just, well, I don’t know – bop. I had never actually heard a bop recording by Davis before, having listened to anything prior to Kind of Blue. He does it well, I suppose, although even in 1949 he wasn’t playing by the rules.

As I understand it, Davis managed to get together a nonet, and Gil Evans to write arrangements. They set-out to do something, though I’m not sure what entirely. I do know that they wanted to smooth-out bebop a bit, and to introduce some of the more elaborate, carefully orchestrated arrangements and complex structures from both classical music and previous forms of swing, rather than the simple ‘verse-solo” sort of thing we saw a few albums back with Thelonious Monk. So, Davis had a deal to cut twelve sides with Capitol (these being pre-LP days), and used the opportunity to capture some recordings by his nonet. They were released to very little public interest or approval, and then seven years later when Davis’ star had risen they got a snappy reissue in LP format.

In terms of both historical importance and influence, this is a big deal as albums go. The title is a misnomer as this isn’t actually Cool Jazz, but it would go on to influence Cool Jazz. The more elaborate structuring, while still incorporating numerous solos, would lend itself to the development of the classical/jazz hybrid Third Stream, too (Davis’ own Sketches of Spain is a good example of this). Add to this that it was the first important role Davis played as leader, and his major recording (if I’m right) and you get a lot of reasons as to why someone should be interested. I mean, it’s not going too far to argue that Miles Davis is one of the most important figures in 20^th century music.

Having said all this, while the formal innovations of Birth of the Cool are interesting, and while it’s a pleasant listen and certainly a decent album by most criteria, this doesn’t do much for me. A treasure house of ideas it may be but that doesn’t mean I want to listen to it all the time. It’s nice. I especially like the sudden rising note two thirds of the way through “Moon Dreams’ that leads it away into what seems like another song entirely. But, in the end, I don’t care much for it. The songs are small and friendly and ultimately, just sort of... well, I don’t know. I can’t explain why I don’t much care for this. A lot of people seem to have similar reactions. I’ll put it on to listen to it. I like it. I just don’t love it.

Having said that, this is the sort of album that rewards repeated listens. It’s a good album for paying close attention to, and I can see myself loving it if I give it more time than the dictates of this blog allow. One exception to this, however, is the vocal number "Darn that Dream". It's atrocious. The singer is really quite awful. It makes me feel better about marking this down.

So, a mixed review! Still, as debuts go it's top stuff. Swings, too.

Actually, I changed my mind. It's great. I think the thing that throws you is that it's just sort of difficult to know exactly what to make of such a chimera. Anyway the potential click I was speaking of just happened. Get this! It grows on you.

8/10

Download: Miles Davis - Godchild Mp3