What's a Listening Log? Well, the idea is quite simple. It's a weekly segment that consolidates all the mini-reviews Dozens Of Donuts has given on RateYourMusic over the past week, split between the Past and Present. A straightforward grading scale has been put in place, ranging from A+ to F-, with C acting as the baseline average. There is no set amount of reviews per week, just however many I get around to reviewing. And don't expect week-of reviews. I wait one month - with at least three listens under my belt - before I rate and review an album. Enjoy!
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1991 | Psychedelic Rock | Listen
GIFTING ALIENS AND ANGELS HUMANITY'S TIME CAPSULE
After wading through the refuse of Legendary Pink Dots' early career I finally made it to the presumptive peak; The Maria Dimension. Though long, arduous, and filled with potholes I prefer to ignore, one could say the trek here was worth it. Rather than enabling the tongue-in-cheek tomfoolery of Edward Ka-Spel, the Legendary Pink Dots strafe to the unknown of space where fantasies aren't bogged down by reality. The setting does wonders to embolden the band's Psychedelic Rock, setting aside screwy Dark Cabaret for Space Rock that drifts around debris, reflects on time without humanity, and gets intercepted by aliens disguised as angels. Though still too long, eking out Crushed Velvet Apocalypse by six minutes, Maria Dimension manages to present a litany of curiosities without doubling up on foolish side shows as we've come to expect on such atrocities as Curse and Any Day Now.
Maria Dimension also begins with Legendary Pink Dots' strongest sequence of songs to date, as the first 23 or so minutes encapsulates Space Rock by elongating background synthesizers and thrusting primitive drums to the forefront. Promising hooks and melodies come out in 'Pennies For Heaven' and 'Third Secret,' though not quite to the extent of the band's best effort; 'Princess Coldheart.' Other moments provide savory, Prog-Rock excursions like 'Grain Kings' and 'Evolution.' At times it feels like a precursor to .O.rang's style of elevated Tribal, and can even be felt in 2020 with Prizes Roses Rosa's The Kinspiral. A 74-minute album composed of these sounds would break under the weight no doubt, which is why delicate diversions like the Nick Cave-esque 'Bella Donna,' the gnomish gambol 'Fourth Secret,' and the 'Expresso Noir,' which is reminiscent of Ka-Spel's days of yore, sever the overarching mold whilst simultaneously adhering to it. Maria Dimension is undoubtedly Legendary Pink Dots' best effort to date, draping classy attire over the disheveled Halloween costume that was their early career.
B
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It's interesting, the leverage Rhymefest was bestowed before ever dropping a single - and the subsequent cold-shoulder reaction towards his music - actually establishes Blue Collar as quite the peculiar time capsule. Essentially an industry plant, thrust into the limelight in hopes of clutching the coattails of Chicago's burgeoning Hip-Hop scene, Rhymefest's downfall can centrally be pinned on one person: Kanye West. Appearing here twice, on 'Brand New' and 'More,' the infamous rapper who once hailed Chicago with impassioned determination, would depart for stardom soon thereafter Blue Collar's release in 2006. Graduation-era Kanye didn't just spell the end of Rhymefest, but the entire Chicago scene which, let's be honest, was quite flatline without him in the first place. Hence where Blue Collar's position as time capsule comes into play. It's a reflection of the average, working citizen. A fun, humorous exposé on what it means to be human, with faults and all.
Truth be told, I had heard about Blue Collar all the way back in 2006. Which is why a full-fledged review in 2020 provides such a peculiar lens. Five songs from the LP - 'Brand New,' 'Devil's Pie,' 'Bullet,' 'Tell A Story,' and 'Build Me Up' - all got modest runtime on my original, 16 GB iPod classic. Years later, experiencing the breadth of what Blue Collar has to offer, and guess what my five favorite songs are? 'Brand New,' 'Devil's Pie,' 'Bullet,' 'Tell A Story,' and 'Build Me Up.' Their placement, with four of the five coming at the tail end of the LP, draw in questions as to how much input J Records had on the tracklist. Why? Because the first ten or so songs provide an exquisitely-mundane view on inner-city struggles and the frivolous lengths one would go to avoid them. Tracks like 'Dynomite' and 'Fever' prime Rhymefest for stardom, with braggadocios lyrics foretelling, ironically, a celebrity lifestyle away from Chicago. It's also the plight of 'More,' which one can't help but see as a parallel to Kanye's savage quest for fame.
Other moments, like 'All I Do' and 'Chicago-Rillas,' inflate with masculine energy. Your typical language about owning the streets, demeaning the haters, and pilfering the poor around you run laterally through these efforts, as decisively misogynistic tracks like the stripper anthems 'Get Down' and 'Stick' (the latter a straight rip-off of Ying Yang Twins' 'Wait') drive home that superiority complex rampant in 2000's Hip-Hop. As I said, it's all representative of that shameful era of Hip-Hop, where true talent was bought on by labels intent on perpetuating stereotypes that keep that poor, working class in place. I will say, the most dubious track of all, 'All Girls Cheat,' actually redeems itself thanks to Mario and his swooning vocals. But man, those lyrics are contentious. Thoroughly accepting your tendency to cheat, yet feeling the need to make an insult song about the other sex for doing the same thing.
While it's not an especially enjoyable album - apart from those five aforementioned songs which, more than anything else, I enjoy for their nostalgic factor and provocative sampling - Blue Collar is a fascinating case study in Chicago, 2000's Hip-Hop, the ruthless record industry, and the stereotypes penetrating those being used and abused by the powers that be. In other words, nothing Rhymefest himself initially philosophized.
C
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2017 | Art Punk | Listen
LOSING STRENUOUS GRASP ON FAMILIAL BONDS
How does Relatives In Descent stack up to 2015's Agent Intellect? I couldn't tell you, because I remember nothing from that forgettable, middle-of-the-road attempt at revisionist Post-Punk. Though standards are low, that alone places Relatives in higher standing as the hooks featured on 'A Private Understanding,' 'Don't Go To Anacita,' and 'Night-Blooming Cereus,' amongst others, last longer and hit harder. Qualms abound as to the paltry level of creativity - with comparisons to The Twilight Sad feeling most applicable - Protomartyr's fourth LP still feels like an improvement as the emotional descent feels more imperative, more damning, more guttural. That, or my taste buds have evolved over the past five years, which is the more likely culprit.
However, Relatives struggles to eschew normality, for the album's daring high comes during the first five minutes. Nothing else tops 'A Private Understanding,' with its unsettling trudge, imposing drums, and lumbering ascent to a more hopeful place. Though there's a handful of redeeming tracks afterwards, in 'My Children,' 'The Chucker,' and 'Windsor Hum,' the stale nature of Protomartyr's style and Joe Casey's singing, mixed with the fact that the intro showcases the album's most creative and ambitious draw, causes Relatives to never gain momentum. It kind of just exists as a boilerplate Post-Punk record, with a litany of average to above-average tracks, recouped modestly by 'Half Sister' which does so, in large part, by repeating the cooing coda from 'A Private Understanding.' For fans of Post-Punk, it's an enjoyable experience. Just don't expect anything new.
C
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Purebred Britpop, no question about it. Released at the peak of the movement made, in large part, popular by Blur, Parklife seems - to me, a relative outcast of the genre - to embody the middle-class vitality and general carelessness of the 90's to a tee. It isn't overly happy, like many one-off songs we've come to associate the decade with, but that consistent playfulness and near-callow behavior does a better job defining first-world contentment than the 'Steal My Sunshine's,' 'Mmmbop's,' or 'You Get What You Give's' of the world. In other words, Parklife is quite pointless, is it not? It's music for the sake of drawing a crowd, of heightening that urban, communal atmosphere, of ignoring the problems stewing by relishing the present. Frolicsome fun, it has loads of. Anything else? Not so much.
However, for the first time I can genuinely say I enjoy a scroungy Blur single for the merits by which it presents itself. Unlike the opening songs off Leisure ('She's So High') and Modern Life Is Rubbish ('For Tomorrow'), 'Girls & Boys' hits with uproarious tenacity, boosted tremendously by a complex, yet equally-as-playful back-and-forth chorus. A far cry from the cheap bores of the two aforementioned songs. It's also the best song off Parklife, which would be more of a downfall if the LP was the laborious length of Modern Life, but gladly it is not. Short, essentially useless tracks are interspersed throughout ('Debt Collector,' 'Far Out,' 'Lot 105'), curtailing the duration while only contributing a strange, non-sequitur carnival aesthetic that only comes out - brilliantly, I might add - on Parklife's second best song; 'To The End.' That song somehow manages to effortlessly merge Britpop with merry-go-round music, and that kaleidoscopic nightmare is a treat.
Also if not for that single song, the middle portion of Parklife would sour any hopes of the latter third regaining the notably-lost momentum. 'Bank Holiday' and 'London Loves' are abysmal, with the former's falsified pandemonium and privileged lyrics, and the latter's poor attempt at rekindling the worst aspects of 80's New Wave and Pop Rock (think: David Bowie's Tonight and Never Let Me Down). Thankfully, 'Magic America's' cheeky demeanor, 'Jubilee's' highly-animated Pop Rock, and 'This Is A Low's' total tonal shift steadies Parklife's sinking ship, with more variety and saturation than should ever be expected on songs normally referred to as "deep cuts." I can't say I'm all that surprised with Parklife's commercially success, though the critical acclaim - much like Modern Life, but to a lesser degree - should be drawn into question.
C+
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