I sometimes wonder about these music reviews I spend so much time reading on other sites, and thinking about writing myself (most of which have never seen the light of day). One of the reader comments at John McFerrin's Yes reviews gives us his review of Tales From Topographic Oceans as a picture - the album cover to Yesstory. He tries to describe how the picture captures his feelings about the album and the songs contained, and does a somewhat convincing job of it; at the very least, he is able to awaken a part of me that totally agrees with him, and wants to say "Yes*!! How can you possibly attempt to explain the worth of music with words? You can't really tell me if this album is good or bad! This is all just wallowing in the mire!" (quite an excitable voice, no!?). This is no doubt fuelled by my own frustrations on the few times I've actually sat down and tried to review albums. I remember spending lots of time at the end of last year trying to come up with words to describe why I adored "Waiting For The Sun", but what I came up with ("a soft synth-propelled opening is shattered by a monstrous riff") sounded very feeble compared to the amazingly powerful feelings the song seemed to invoke in me; I seemed to have reached a problem where merely pouring on more adjectives wasn't going to solve anything.

I then started wondering whether the mistake was singling out individual songs. My Transformer review is structurally uninspired, because all it does is go song by song. This works sometimes, but some of the more interesting albums are where you can't look at it as a direct function of the songs it has**. When I tried to write my thoughts on Plastic Ono Band, this became quite clear to me; out of context, quite a few of the songs might not strike one as being particularly powerful. But it just seemed to me that taken as a whole, the whole atmosphere was somewhat overwhelming, and this was something I had no chance of exploring if I were to just list each of the tracks and go through them step-by-step. I tried to move towards the holistic review style in my most recent efforts, in the hopes it would provide the answer to what I was searching. But looking over my review of Forever Changes, I still feel unsatisfied. And I can't even begin to think how one might review Another Green World. I've often thought about whether it's impossible to properly describe the charm of "St. Elmo's Fire", but even more daunting is "The Big Ship" - I dare say it's near impossible to explain what that's about. I saw a RYM user call it "spiritually cleansing", which is pretty close, but it's almost impossible to give a clear reason. One can describe it perfectly step-by-step, but the end result will always be crushed when you play the song the next time - that final synth will hit, and you exclaim "What the heck was I going on about, that's not why it's great at all"!

The obvious question to ask is whether this is all a reflection of a lack of skills on my part. Well, to a large extent, yes, but it's also interesting to read some of the reviews by people who actually do have such talent, like George Starostin and John. They more or less go for the "overall picture" approach to album reviewing, but even their high-quality reviews don't seem to always be on the money. In terms of expressing some of the wonder of the music, that is, not the mirroring of my own opinions! (Let It Bleed gets a 15? I still can't figure it out!). Why then did I look up so much to these two reviewers? Surely if they couldn't express the wonder of "Editions Of You", I had no chance? As I see it, it comes down to the question - what is the point of the review/reflection? Therein I think lies the answer. One can't approach the it with the mindset that I possessed (and still do to some extent, unfortunately) - that it will be able to convey an equivalent feeling as listening to the music would. I think that's my hang-up, and what has stopped me in my tracks; the feeling of inadequacy when I read over what I've written, only to go "No, no, no! That's not it at all! That doesn't explain why I love "Watching Alice", I've made it sound so drab and unappealing!" - this is followed by me asking "Well, why do I like it anyway?", leading to much frustration, and eventually, submission to the fact that I probably can't do what I want to do with the review.

Perhaps with all this out in the open, I can try to write again, but I fear old habits die hard. I think I will probably have to settle for musings I give on RateYourMusic, rather than the drawn out reviews of yore. Funnily enough, my RYM musings are usually far more potent than most of the lengthy reviews/rambles! Part of the problem is that it's so much fun just thinking about things one likes, so any effort put into them, wasted or not, is usually far beyond healthy doses - which makes it doubly disappointing when the end-result is so limp and uninspired!

Now, with all that said and done, maybe it's as good a time as any to take a deep breath and try not to get tied up about albums in future. Lou Reed was asked what he thought about Transformer in the Classic Albums documentary about the albium: whether it was a personal favourite, whether he thought it deserved all the praise it got, and so on. I'll never forget the way he matter-of-factly said, "It's just an album. You make it and then you go and make another one". Heh, I ought to take a leaf out of Lou's book (and maybe even create a classic underground album in the process).

* Believe me, no pun intended at all

** There's a bit in one of the more esoteric record review sites, Steve And Abe's Reviews, about how the attitude of wanting to hear a song with the album it's contained in confuses rock with a novel, and that compilations shouldn't be looked down upon! It felt good to see someone put this view forward, because I think otherwise I'd have lost my way entirely; it's good to get an injection of common sense sometimes. I certainly fell head first into this trap, not even looking at compilations because I saw them as somehow inferior to the original albums. Stupid, stupid. Or, at least, sometimes stupid. There are places where it certainly does apply, for like I said, sometimes it is quite important to have the album as a concrete entity, and extracting individual songs from it can be somewhat detrimental. It shouldn't come as much of a surprise, though, because I've always bounced from one extreme to the other. Before this period of elitism, my music listening strategy was deadly simple. Play the CD once in the background. If some song leaves a residual effect, make an MP3. If it doesn't, too bad, maybe next time (which, of course, would probably be never; hey, I already had the best songs, right?) It's obvious then that I would have an extreme backlash against this practise, so much so that I wouldn't listen to a song outside of its context to the album it was in. I'd start humming "Peace Frog", and say "Gee, what a great song. I wouldn't mind hearing that one more time. Ah well, maybe next time I feel like hearing the whole of Morrison Hotel". But as I've mellowed, I've realized that I began applying this restrictive practise far too much, in places it clearly didn't belong. Now I've been set free to find a new illusion.