Ah yes, the arrogance of the middle aged: we’ve heard it all before and we were bored to death the first time, as you grow older you know what to expect before it happens.For instance, if you go into a bikers bar in a short skirt expect to be raped and if you are wearing high heels, expect to be raped on your way out as well.
Therefore in the same spirit of years of wisdom, here are the season’s biggest albums reviewed and graded before we’ve heard em! No, don’t thank me…
Title TBD – Adele – Big bombastic soul songs featuring “the Emily Dickinson” of pop Diane Warren who should sugar coat every dumb ass song in layers of treacle Adele roars through – C-
Higher Truth – Chris Cornell – After his disastrous hip hop album, here is a disastrous return to his roots – D-
A Headful Of Dreams – Coldplay – I loved the last one and this adds what it has learnt while returning to the big sound of their earlier work – B
Lost Time – Dave And Phil Alvin – Blast off soul inflected covers – B+
Introducing – Darlene Love – If this eagerly anticipated collaboration with Steve Van Zandt sucked from one end to another, it would still have Darlene Love singing rock songs. And it doesn’t suck in the slightest- A-
Rattle That Rock – David Gilmour – Stream of consciousness over an entire day, proggy and Floyd-y so don’t say you haven’t been warned – B
Caracal – Disclosure – EDM duo eagerly anticipated follow up. The Sam Smith track will be a hit where the Gregory Porter track hasn’t – B-
Cass County – Don Henley – Henley has never met a genre he couldn’t rip off, here he goes Americana and Americana should sue – D
Paper Gods – Duran Duran – Give Simon and crew this, they won’t go away however much you would like them to – D+
Title TBD – Grimes – Grimes wants to be a pop star but she can’t figure out how – C+
Title TBD – Janet Jackson – She has every right in the world to suck and does way too often – C+
Title TBD – Justin Bieber – Justin grows up on this EDM pop by numbers with hip hop curves thrown in. He’d like to thank the folks who stuck with him during his wild teen years – C
B’lieve I’m Going Down – Kurt Vile – As if one Neil Young wasn’t enough, here is the wildly overrated poster boy for the mild and milquetoast remainder of the rock critic establishment’s album of the year while the rest of the planet ignore a man who when he stumbles on a tune three times an albums plays it for ten minutes – C+
Swish – Kanye West – His first recorded misstep in his entire career, as he attempts to fuse his artistic and pop sentiments but suffers from tunnel vision and veers on the edges – B+
Honeymoon – Lana Del Rey – Lana gets stoned, mopes around, gets more stoned – C+
Title TBD – Macklemore And Lewis – White middle class well wishers instruct their kids, get their pop on, scavenge the history of hip hop, invite every MOR star in rap, in and try to reignite themselves after their breakthrough,,, and don’t pull it off – C-
Music Complete – New Order – They never recovered from Hooks departure – C-
Another Country – Rod Stewart – On the heels of his excellent 2012 Time, another album of new material and Stewart returns to find a middle ground between “Blondes Have More Fun” and “Never A Dull Moment” but not the songs – B-
