1)Rush, Counterparts: I would have called this the fifth or sixth best Rush album back when I first heard it (sometime between 10-15 years ago) but in retrospect, that was due to a crucial factor that’s always irked me about this band: the production. Rush heard Pearl Jam and other alt-rock bands and decided to get with the times, mostly dumping synthesizers for good and trying to sound grungy and 90s, and I think they really pulled it off, resulting in their first album since Moving Pictures where the sound of the album wasn’t in some way an issue. The thing of it is, I’d barely revisited any actual songs from it, besides the two huge classics, “Animate” and “Cold Fire,” which I’ve been relistening to repeatedly in the last four or five years. Aaaaand…yep, this album’s going to have to be downgraded a point or so. It still sounds great, but the only other song besides the two aforementioned gold nuggets that really approaches classic status is “Alien Shore,” which I remembered as being better than it was; it still manages a nice rising guitar/vocal hook in the chorus. Elsewhere, you have…oh, I dunno, “Stick It Out,” “Between Sun & Moon,” “The Speed Of Love,” the pleasant filler instrumental “Leave That Thing Alone” and if I’m being real nice, “Everyday Glory” for the cheap positive note at the end. Oh, and “Nobody’s Hero” is no longer one of their worst songs, IMO–it’s only an embarrassment lyrically, not musically like “Roll The Bones,” “Tai Shan,” “Jacob’s Ladder,” etc. It’s very unlikely that barring the one in a thousand chance that I buy this CD to play in my car that I’ll listen to these songs again, though. Leaving this as a mid Rush album where they did a decent job of getting with the times.

2)The Move, Looking On: Looks like Jeff Lynne really makes all the difference, eh? In the middle of Roy Wood pulling off a miracle by dressing up a bunch of weird covers and rewrites as lumbering heavy proto-prog rock on Shazam while his band disintegrated all around him, Lynne shows up and writes the wonderful “What?” and “Open Up Said The World At The Door,” which are the two biggest classics here; Roy Wood is no slouch, mind you, and probably never would be (at least not while he was still trying to innovate music–I maintain that Wood might be the single most talented person to come out of the British Invasion, if not the best!) but his best efforts are “Turkish Tram Conductor Blues,” “Feels So Good” (which should’ve been shorter), “Brontosaurus” and the novelty doo wop track “Duke Of Edinburgh’s Lettuce” that he cowrote with Lynne. Seriously though the two big Lynne numbers are glorious and I can’t believe I forgot them, let alone that Shazam seems to have a greater legend surrounding it than this album. (Wood has not helped matters in pushing that legend, saying that he was already getting sick of The Move by the time Jeff Lynne showed up and both were more interested in getting Electric Light Orchestra off the ground, if you didn’t know.) “Lightning Never Strikes Twice,” written by Rick Price and not Lynne nor Wood, is a cool bonus track, the rest of the bonus tracks are interchangeable with the wonderful bonus tracks from Shazam. But this album I’d rank a point higher than that one, maybe even on par with the Move’s debut.

3)The Birthday Party, Junkyard: This isn’t my first time relistening to this, but it’ll certainly be my last–I know now beyond the shadow of a doubt that I’m never going to get into this album. Yeah, it’s filthy and evil and crazy and sleazy and dirty and psychotic, an off-putting post-punk album that will surely appeal to anyone looking for that sort of thing, but I was looking for that sort of thing, and this is the biggest Cave “classic” besides maybe The Boatman’s Call that I’m not going to ever appreciate. It has no classic songs whatsoever, and God knows I’ve listened closely, though a few numbers could perhaps be salvaged–“Dead Joe” (DEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAD JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOEEEEEE!), “The Dim Locator,” “6 Inch Gold Blade,” maybe “Several Sins” or “Junkyard” if I’m being really generous. But none of those are even really great deep cuts. Maybe I should listen to this while crawling through a sewer or dying or something? I should note one thing I hadn’t noticed before: Tracy Pew, the band’s cowboy-hat-and-gay-mesh-shirt-wearing bass player, seems to anchor all of these songs with really standout basslines, but the rest of the band just makes a big mess around them. The good stuff from The Birthday Party thus stands as follows in my book: almost all of the Hee-Haw compilation, the first four or five songs from Prayers On Fire, “Jennifer’s Veil,” “Deep In The Woods” and “Wildworld” from 1983, and the rest you can have.

4)Swans, White Light From The Mouth Of Infinity: I only ever relistened to one classic song from this Norville Barnes favorite: “Song For Dead Time,” an eerie, cold, chilling, dead-sounding song indeed, that sounds like a heartbroken guy wandering through a dead empty Castlevania city while Jarboe wails in the background. Most of the rest of this aims for a kind of bizarre uplift by Swans standards: crystalline early-90s keyboards, ethereal acoustic guitar notes, pleasant synth pads and choirs (real? fake? don’t know), martial drumming, and lots and lots and lots,and lots (and lots!!!) of Jarboe going “ohhhhhhh,” “aaaahhhhh” and “oooooh” in the background. It’s a kind of Epic Angelic Apocalypse, paired with Michael Gira’s usual deathly lyrical concerns. The problem is, I just don’t think this sound works for them, and since it’s like 70 minutes long, with EVERY SONG between 5 and 7 minutes long (seriously, go look!) and repetitive as hell, it’s really not an album for me much at all. If I were being nice, I’d name “Song For The Sun,” “Miracle Of Love,” “You Know Nothing” and maybe a couple others to pick out of the angelic morass as being bearable, but odds are I’m only going to bother with “Song For Dead Time” again. This gets a negative rating; I can already tell my relisten to The Great Annihilator will go better.

5)The White Stripes, Icky Thump: I forgot that the Stripes basically broke up after this one. I dunno–I never thought they sucked, but they were only sporadically great. It isn’t a problem with their sound either (of which they explored more sides than they were probably supposed to), nor do I feel like holding it against the White Stripes that Jack White was not only miserably overpraised by the Jann S. Wenners of this world but has come across like a total pud much of the time in public (Prindle’s word for him.) They’re just okay. I always liked “Icky Thump,” “300 MPH Torrential Outpour Blues” (whatever it was called), “Little Cream Soda” (stomping with guitar harmonics! cool…) and “You Don’t Know What Love Is,” and to that list you could maybe add “Rag And Bone” (despite being an obvious rewrite of “Let’s Build A Home”!) and the closer “Effect And Cause.” They did this Scottish folk song halfway through followed by a Meg White monologue song (ack!) that everyone blasted them to pieces for, I don’t think I found a single review that didn’t rip on this track. So maybe they weren’t experimentalists, and that might have been why this had to be the last Stripes album? I dunno–I basically liked three of their albums, but was never addicted to them besides five or six songs, so I have no idea whether they would have been good if they’d stayed together. Whatever, Jack White is 50 and has blue hair and grown kids now. I don’t know what Meg’s up to.