Desolation Boulevard, Sweet

Desolation Boulevard, Sweet, 1974, :43

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The third and, apparently, best-loved album by Sweet, a band I previously knew only through the greatest hits.  This album offers a wide variety of sounds, a whirlwind of rock from full-on metal ("Sweet F.A.") to glam to proto-punk to almost disco.  It's like Queen and Black Sabbath got together to make an album.  There are three huge standout songs, but the rest of the album manages to keep the toes tapping.  Favorite tracks: "Ballroom Blitz," "The Six Teens," "Fox on the Run," "No You Don't."

Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J., Bruce Springsteen

Currently doing one album for each year, 1960-2020. Today: 1973. 

Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J., Bruce Springsteen, 1973, :37

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

I've always been a lukewarm Springsteen fan. He has some undeniably brilliant songs, even two or three on each one of a long spate of consistently good albums, but... his down-home, working-man earnestness has typically left me indifferent.  In this, his first album, he comes out swinging, young and brash and voluble.  These songs sound like Lou Reed and Bob Dylan had a baby and he was raised by steelworkers in a small town he couldn't wait to get out of, just as soon as he memorized this rhyming dictionary.  These songs come in a flood of words, of characters and scenes, stories of the street and of disaffected youth.  I mean, come on, "I had skin like leather and the diamond-hard look of a cobra / I was born blue and weathered but I burst just like a supernova." A debut like this pays a lot of debts forward.  Maybe a five-star album?  Favorite tracks: "Blinded By the Light," "Growin' Up," "It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City."  I'd heard all three of these in various forms or via covers (I love Bowe's "Saint").  Favorite tracks I hadn't heard: "Spirit in the Night," "Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street?"

Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd

It's Finally-Got-Around-to-It-Friday!  Wherein I discover a classic that everyone else already knows about.

Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd, 1973, :42

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Being a Classic Rock Guy from a young age, I’ve heard most of these songs at one time or another (I'm sure "Time" and "Money" are played on the radio at any given point on the globe 24 hours a day), but not all at once, in this order, and probably I’ve never heard the last three tracks. I started listening thinking I knew what my reaction would be: oh, Pink Floyd, not my thing, shoe gazing noodling, this album does have some great songs but it’s way over-hyped. Turned out I was wrong. I revise my opinion. Listening to it all at once, on headphones, in order? This blows your mind, man. I like the spoken word pieces that fade in and out, the chopped and scattered sounds, the way the songs segue into one another — everything, all the “concept album” features that have become so commonplace and trite since. Yes this is a five star album. It definitely sets a mood. “Any Colour You Like” is guitar noodling, yes, but not dreamy, indulgent, psychedelic noodling. It’s an energetic sort of noodling. Don’t forget the headphones! Favorite tracks: “Time,” “Money,” “Us and Them.” Favorite unheard tracks: “Brain Damage,” “Eclipse.”