CD Odyssey Disc 1927: Iggy Pop

Welcome to the weekend and another edition of the CD Odyssey. Today we have some post-punk from a time when most people were still doing regular punk.

Disc 1927 is…The Idiot

Artist: Iggy Pop

Year of Release: 1977

What’s up with the Cover? Mr. Pop himself, decked out in what appears to be a ladies blazer stands on a dark…beach? Desert?

Iggy is holding his hands in a very deliberate and peculiar way. I’m going to assume that it is semaphore for “idiot” and then not look it up, because its funner that way.

Yeah, I said funner. You can use funner in a sentence where you are randomly discussing idiots and semaphore. It is – quite literally – an idiot word.

How I Came To Know It: Welcome to the first edition of the “Ross Records”. A few weeks back my good friend Ross was parting with his (very excellent) CD collection and gave me dibs on picking through before he went commercial. I got about 25 albums that day, including discovering some very cool bands I had not previously known.

I also got this Iggy Pop record. Anyway, huge thanks to Ross.

How It Stacks Up: This is my only Iggy Pop record, so it can’t stack up. I also have a Stooges record (Iggy’s band) but I’m making the call to keep that separate.

Ratings: 2 stars

The vast majority of the Ross Records are awesome additions to my collection. Sadly, “The Idiot” starts our journey in a more average fashion.

Iggy Pop’s first solo record shows the freedom of an artist out on his own, willing to do new things, but it also shows the self-indulgence that can happen when you don’t have other band members say, “that’s an OK groove, but let’s leave it off the record until we’ve workshopped it a bit.”

First the good news – Iggy Pop’s natural charisma survives the transition to a solo career just fine. He has one of those “everything I say is important” cult leader kind of voices, akin to Glenn Danzig or Patty Smith. These are the rock voices of a generation, able to compel you to wave a flag, or raise a fist, or storm a Bastille simply through the force of their tone and the presence behind it.

This quality is evident throughout the record, and on the band’s opening track, “Sister Midnight” I was hopeful for the future. Sure the song didn’t really go anywhere after establishing its groove, but the groove was a good one, and by the end I was fully ready to call Sister Midnight, despite lyrics indicating this would be a poor decision.

Another solid tune is the dramatic “Tiny Girls” which has Iggy’s vocals climbing into a vibrato and a bit more melodic structure than you might usually expect from a founding father of punk. There’s a saxophone at the end of the song, which is always a dangerous arrangement decision in rock and roll, but here it works.

The challenge with “The Idiot” is that most of the time the songs don’t achieve this level of interest. They start with a fairly cool groove, and a feel for dark streets and darker thoughts that will have you wanting to hear more, but then they don’t develop into anything. Iggy is content to let the songs be mood pieces, with a lot of repeated lyrics and repeated song structures, but absent the dynamic energy of punk. It is punk pushed under water and held there until it stops kicking.

This is irritating, because there are multiple occasions where things start out with great promise. “Nightclubbing” aims – and to a degree, captures – the hollowed-out world of going out to the clubs. There is a great start here, but it just walks along in the same moment, content to add strange bits of production (piano jangle here, strangled guitar solo there) rather than fully dig in.

Does “Nightclubbing” capture that numbing experience of being out too late, too drunk, and walking too far to find the impossible - a club with the perfect mix of cool vibe and short lineup to get in? Yes, it does, but it isn’t something I want to listen to. In the end it just fades away, an undeveloped melody that doesn’t know where to head next.

“Dum Dum Boys” is similarly tiresome. Great start, and Iggy’s vocals almost sustain the song all on their own, but at over seven minutes long, I was tired of hearing about it long before Iggy was tired of telling me.

The album features an early version of “China Girl” six years before David Bowie would release it on “Let’s Dance”. Iggy Pop cowrote the song, but his version while novel at first, ultimately is a pale comparison to Bowie’s.

David Bowie also produced “The Idiot” and it is fair to say that – as is not uncommon in my complex relationship with Bowie – I didn’t like the choices. The record sounds dull and flat, capturing the lo-fi sensibilities of punk but minus the visceral energy of it. While the production fits the vibe of the record, this is a sound you don’t want to be doubling down on.

This record has its moments, but it mostly had me wanting to go back in time and listen to the Stooges blast out “Raw Power” or dance to the synthy detachment of early eighties Bowie. The no man’s land between the two experiences did not appeal.

Best tracks: Sister Midnight, Tiny Girls

CD Odyssey Disc 1926: Clem Snide

I was a bit nervous about squeezing in two reviews this week with a late start after a long weekend. Fortunately, fate intervened with that shortest of listens…an EP. More on this later.

Disc 1926 is…A Beautiful EP

Artist: Clem Snide

Year of Release: 2003

What’s up with the Cover? A woman lifts her skirt in a playful but modest manner. Perhaps she’s dancing, or maybe just showing off her fancy shoes in anticipation of dancing.

How I Came To Know It: I have been a fan of Clem Snide since 2020 when they released “Forever Just Beyond”, but to my chagrin realized they’d already been around twenty years before I ever “discovered” them.

Even worse, a lot of their early albums which I now covet are very hard to find, and as a result I have lurked the “miscellaneous C” section of local record stores for years hoping for a score.

I’ve managed to land two more through this hunt and peck strategy (1999’s “Your Favourite Music” and 2009’s “Hungry Bird”) but five more LPs still elude me.

So when I saw this EP there I decided to buy it even though it wasn’t on my wish-list, all the while hoping it would overcome the EP curse.

How It Stacks Up: I have three Clem Snide albums, but this is an EP and therefore a different animal. As it is my only EP by the band, it cannot stack up.

Ratings: 2 stars

Not long after I got through my second of many listens of “A Beautiful EP” I realized two things. First, that it is objectively a solid record by a band I enjoy. Second, that much of what constitutes an EP tends to annoy me.

EPs can be great, but they are often dodgy by their very nature. They usually have half or fewer the number of songs from an LP, but they’re rarely half the price. Those songs tend to take a few well-worn turns best left unexplored, and “A Beautiful EP” is no exception.

First off, EPs love their cover songs. Sometimes you can get some real gems in the process – things the band might not put on a full record because it doesn’t suit the vibe or theme, but can work on an EP. Ghost covering the Eurythmics “Missionary Man” or Soundgarden doing the Ohio Players’ “Fopp” are two great examples. Bonus points if the band later combines a couple EPs into an album you can buy as a full length (as Soundgarden did this on “Screaming Life/Fopp”).

Clem Snide goes for a cover of Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” which is…solid. It isn’t as good as the Ghost and Soundgarden songs I noted above, but I don’t like the original as much, so it had less to work with. Anyway, I liked it, and Clem Snide indie pop it up with solid success. Lead singer Eef Barzelay can’t hold a candle to Aguilera’s vocal gymnastics, but he doesn’t go for that, sticking to a punk adjacent approach that lacks depth, but retains enough edge to see it through.

The band also does a cover of the Velvet Underground’s “I’ll Be Your Mirror” which is, again, passable but not a “must have” by any stretch. I prefer the original, as the cover drags just a bit.

EPs also like to recycle old songs with very similar new versions. Again, “A Beautiful EP” has two of these. “Nick Drake Tape” from their 1998 debut and “All Green” from “Soft Spot” (released earlier the same year). Argh. Both songs are OK, but knowing they’re recycled from earlier records is irritating. Despite it being many years later, I felt the echo of irritation of hard core fans having to buy these songs twice just to get the two covers.

This leaves us with only a single song that is 100% new and original material – “Mike Kalinsky” at Track 3. This song, about a high school outcast who doesn’t “do sports”, or score with girls but later goes on to be a successful musician is fine as narrative arcs go. However, the switch in styles from the slow folk pop of the main tune into a – surprise! – jump to Kalinsky’s punk rock styling at the end wore thin after multiple listens (which with an 18-minute EP you are going to get plenty of).

For all this, there aren’t any terrible songs on the record, and absent Aguilera’s powerhouse vocals I realized that “Beautiful” is a much stronger song structurally than I had ever given it credit for as a pop ballad. “All Green” is a lovely pastoral tune that makes you think of lazy summer days and iced tea.

But at the end of the day, I don’t need a bunch of re-releases, live versions and covers. If I wanted that experience, I’d buy a boxed set. So I’m going to part company with this record and do what I should have done in the first place: wait for the LPs that are actually on my list to show up in the record store and buy those instead.

Best tracks: Beautiful, All Green

CD Odyssey Disc 1925: The Tragically Hip

Today’s long weekend Monday finds our Humble Author confronted by a great many chores. Many a task lays before me, but none more important than to advance the CD Odyssey journey by one more record. Here it is.

Disc 1925 is…Phantom Power

Artist: The Tragically Hip

Year of Release: 1998

What’s up with the Cover? Some kind of industrial electrical panel. I’ve worked on lots of industrial sites where there are panels like this one and I can tell you one thing with certainty – I do not touch these buttons or dials. That’s for folks with proper training only.

Having said that, the one indicator light situated centre-right labelled “MALF” would sorely test my resistance. What does MALF do?

Then I realized that the entire row is dedicated to MALF. You can choose your synchro levels of MALF and pick a MALF between one and twenty (I would choose 11) and then flick that switch and then see what lights up out in the yard, baby!

And then be escorted out of the gate by the foreman, because there’s no room on a construction site for an untrained guy messing with the MALF settings.

How I Came To Know It: I know this album from when it was released, but I’ve only recently been filling out my Tragically Hip collection. I’ve been pretty cagey (you might even say…bobcaygey) about it, knowing there are more than a few copies of nineties Hip record floating around on CD.

Case in point: I bought “Phantom Power” at a thrift store for one lowly dollar. The CD looked a little bit scratched but I figured for a $1 it was worth the risk and sure enough, a quick clean and the whole thing played without a hitch.

How It Stacks Up: I now have eight Tragically Hip albums. When I wrote my first Hip review I only had four, so the rankings through time don’t make a lot of sense. All I can say is I recalibrate each time while honouring my original “what’s before what” determinations in earlier reviews.

“Phantom Power” is a good one, but the Hip have a lot of good ones. I put it #5 out of 8.

Ratings: 3 stars

Canada’s house band, the Tragically Hip, are a bit of a big deal up here in the true north, strong and free. The rest of the world may shrug, but when the Hip put out a record in Canada, the tundra quaked with excitement.

I like the Hip, but my journey to them was slower and more meandering, and so while I knew all the hits off of Phantom Power, it took a while for it to echo its way into my heart. Finding it for a $1 didn’t hurt either.

The Hip are a hard rock band and while “Phantom Power” has exceptional melodies and song concepts, they tend to be dressed up in the saturated arrangements and production of the mid-nineties treatment of that genre.

This should have immediately turned me off, but like so many Tragically Hip records, the complex layers of sound on each song are masterfully pulled together. It creates a three-dimensional soundscape where you can focus on a single instrument if you wish, but it is even better when you find that sweet spot in your focus where everything comes at you even in the mix.

Sitting at that nexus point, I dug down past Gord Downie’s high vibrato vocals (where I started) and found Rob Baker’s sublime guitar work, sometimes laying down a gentle bird song on the slow songs, and cranking out tsunami-sized riffs on the heavier tunes.

The record had a number of hits back in the day and won a bunch of awards (Canadians – I know you know this. That part was for the international audience). The best song is “Poets”. As a person who identifies as a writer all the time and a poet some of the time, “Poets” always gives me a good chuckle, with its narrator’s broad disparagement of the occupation. Best line:

“Don’t tell me that they’re antisocial
Somehow not antisocial enough.”

Yup – give that moody guy on the deck half an opening, and he’ll be reciting to you his latest effort in blank verse before you have a chance to say “sorry, my cab’s here”.

“Poets” has that early Hip sound, digging down in the grime of the blues and then blasting through it with rock and roll crunch. The Hip could stay in that space for a whole record and leave the audience satisfied, but instead they have a few songs that break can also break it down, and later on “Thompson Girl” Downie and the lads do just that.

“Thompson Girl” is a sweet tune, made sweeter by the addition of some timely mandolin, and Downie’s high head voice warbling. Downie approaches “Thom Yorke alien voice” in a couple of places here, showing his sneaky range that often goes unnoticed while the band is just rockin’ out.

In the end, there was nothing on “Phantom Power” that negatively pushed it down to fifth best in my Tragically Hip collection. Maybe just fewer “higher than high” points than some of the records in front of it.

This is a solid collection of songs, with an urgent lean in the delivery that is good for driving and some subtle fireworks of sound, arrangement and the evocative poetry of Downie that makes it just as fun on headphones.

But there I go again, telling you what the poets are doing. Go listen for yourself.

Best tracks: Poets, Something On, Bobcaygeon, Thompson Girl, Fireworks, Vapour Trails

CD Odyssey Disc 1924: The Devil Makes Three

This next album has been in my collection a long time, and yet I’ve never rolled it through my random selection process. Or maybe I did once and mistakenly thought, “I’ve already reviewed that one” and moved on without checking. If that has ever happened, I apologize to whatever Gods of Chaos might take offence at such an uncharacteristic rejection of the arbitrary.

Disc 1924 is…Do Wrong Right

Artist: The Devil Makes Three

Year of Release: 2009

What’s up with the Cover? A drawing of an old man.

Minus context I will assume from this man is adept at ‘doing wrong right’, and he’s been doing it that way for a long time. You could ask for details, but I sense from that settled scowl in his expression that this feller would see the question rising to your lips and slap it away before you uttered it.

Better to just mosey along and save yourself a fat lip.

How I Came To Know It: I don’t remember. It was either a) reviewed in a folk magazine I used to buy occasionally (maybe Penguin Eggs or American Songwriter) or b) from a list of “best obscure folk albums you’ve never heard of” or somesuch. I’m a sucker for a list as much as the next online surfer.

How It Stacks Up: The Devil Makes Three has made quite a few records over the past twenty plus years or so, but this is my only one, so it can’t stack up.

Ratings: 4 stars

A mix of old timey bluegrass, folk, and Dixieland, with a side of sin and damnation – that’s “Do Wrong Right”. This trio does up traditional music with a side of nasty.

The first thing that comes across with these guys is how raw their sound is. It feels like they’ve walked in off the back forty, dirt still under their fingernails and laid down a record for $30, a sandwich and a six pack of beer.

The production is so sparse you’ll think at times it was recorded in mono, but you don’t want it any other way. It gives the whole record a “sitting on the porch” vibe that is perfect for songs about regular folks living regular lives.

You won’t find lead singer and principal songwriter Pete Bernhard belting out an aria at La Scala, but his rusty saw of a vocal style is exactly what you want for this kind of music. Bernhard has the kind of voice that is welcoming enough that you’ll sing along with him when the spirit moves you, which is exactly what his two bandmates (Cooper McBean and Lucia Turino) do on many occasions. The effect is to generate a party atmosphere, even though most of the songs are about being poor, drunk, and maybe even ugly. Everyone’s welcome on this porch, but most of the guests stay too late.

There’s a Devil’s Carnival quality to these songs that give them a lascivious sway that reminded me of Tom Waits or the Bridge City Sinners. All those artists are partial to hard lives and bad choices, and the Devil Makes Three are no exception. The record is rife with songs of booze and poverty. Both themes coming together with self-destructive delight on “Gracefully Facedown” which celebrates such unwelcome but natural partners as bottom-shelf bourbon and blackout drunks.

“For Good Again” revisits what it’s like to be starving artists, couch surfing and trying to get ahead. Devil Makes Three’s old school musical approach reminds you this an occupational hazard of the artist as old as civilization itself, even while throwing in modern takes on sin with lines like:

“You’ll never understand the things my friend Aaron put us through
He had this power point presentation about this girl he wanted to do”

Yes, the album’s title is a recurring theme.

The record ends strong with “Car Wreck,” the story of a man who is born restless, cursed to always leave something good in the hopes of finding something better. One day he leaves the love of his life, but the decision haunts him and years later, drawn by the memory of the one thing he can’t shake, he races home to her. Except he dies in a car wreck on the way. The song is tragic and heart-wrenching and full of bad choices (case in point: he’s so drunk when he crashes that car that “whiskey soaks his bones”. One more bad choice transformed into immortality through the power of song.

Through it all, “Do Wrong Right” maintains a frantic energy, careening from one poor soul to another, and making every cautionary tale a toe-tapper of a time. You wouldn’t want to be these folks, but the Devil Makes Three will make you want to hear their stories.

Best tracks: All Hail, Do Wrong Right, Gracefully Facedown, For Good Again, Help Yourself, Working Man’s Blues, Car Wreck

CD Odyssey Disc 1923: Green Lung

I should be getting ready for a spirited game of Ulti on this fine Saturday morning, but it was cancelled and besides, I am not feeling well. So it is a “housing” day for me, starting with the best of all possible in-house activities – enjoying music.

Disc 1923 is…Woodland Rites

Artist: Green Lung

Year of Release: 2019 (although my copy is a 2025 re-issue)

What’s up with the Cover? Looks like some keen young witches and warlocks have headed out into the woods for some dancing and revelry with Satan and some demons. The woods ringing this glade are filled to the brim with forest critters both mundane and magical. Search carefully and find them all! My favourite of these is the owl-demon playing drums in the top left, but the regular owl beside him is also lovely.

The witches and warlocks are no doubt wondering, “will we have sexual congress with the devil?” and judging by the meaningful glance being exchanged between the couple in the bottom left of the dance circle, I am going to say, “signs point to yes”.

What they are probably not wondering is, “at the end of the night will some of us be eviscerated, murdered, and left to feed the creatures of the forest?” Based on those skulls piled up in the lower right corner I’m going to once again say “signs point to yes”.

How I Came To Know It: I got into Green Lung through the release of their third album, 2023’s “This Heathen Land,” and found “Woodland Rites” by plunging into their back catalogue. I’m like a pig chasing truffles once I’ve got the scent of a new band.

How It Stacks Up: I have three Green Lung LPs. They’re due to release one later this year but for now, that’s all of them. They are all great, and “Woodland Rites” is in a dead heat for #1 with the aforementioned “This Heathen Land”. I’m going to side ever so slightly with my first love and put “Woodland Rites” in at #2.

Ratings: 4 stars but almost 5

Green Lung are a riff-driven stoner metal band from England who like to write songs about the devil. A lot. I’m not sure if they like to sing about the devil more than say, Ghost, but they’re in the conversation. Papa V Perpetua be warned – there’s a new antichrist in town.

Well, actually, that new antichrist is not in town, he’s in the forest. As you might expect from an album named “Woodland Rites,” this record is heavily themed to the whole ‘witches cavort in the woods with Satan’ trope. There’s also crossover with “ancient forest demon” vibes that lean into a more non-denominational evil.

OK, so that’s the theme established, but how is the music? Amazing, that’s how. “Woodland Rites” is eight tracks of furious guitar crunching glory. You will have thrown your neck out from moshing by the end side one. Every one of these riffs has a timelessness to it that makes it feel like it could have been on Black Sabbath’s first record or released yesterday. This is horns up, hair down, controlled aggression from start to finish.

Don’t mistake “controlled aggression” for being tame. This is the kind of controlled aggression akin to shaking a can of beer for forty minutes. Pressure rising and rising with explosive energy with nowhere to go, just quivering and ready to go off at any moment.

Vocalist Tom Templar sings in a high head voice with an otherworldly quaver in his tone. It is a bit Ozzy and a bit Rev. Maynard with a “far from the mic” kind of echo to it. His phrasing perfectly matches the mid-tempo thump of the song structures, each word deliberate and loaded with fell and sorcerous intent.

And what does Mr. Templar have to say? As noted above, the record is heavily themed to covens and devil worship. The title track (and the best riff on a record with a lot of great riffs) is about just that. Set on the pagan festival night of Walpurgis, our story opens early with someone approaching an event likely best left alone:

“At the gloaming on Walpurgis night
In the forest you saw our fires alight
The trees were talking, they whispered your name
Darkness was falling as you walked toward the flames”

From here, as you might expect, things get serious. The next track, “Let the Devil In” is about that fell invitation in every tale of this type you’ve likely read or heard around a campfire. The melody (and the best riff on the record…wait, did I already pick one? Damn it…) is triumphant and enticing just like the dark invitation the song describes. Of course, this being Green Lung, poor choices are made and things continue to go south.

At this point I should note that this is all just pretend. A Green Lung record is best enjoyed like a horror movie – delightfully scary and transgressive, but explored from the safety of literary and artistic devices. Of course, if you don’t like the thrill of a horror movie, or you find the very notion of creepy satanic woodland rituals abhorrent (a perfectly understandable response) then this record is not for you. You’ve been warned.

On their later records, Green Lung has explored a broader range of sound and song structures, making those records a bit more dynamic to listen to. I like the evolution of their sound, but while “Woodland Rites” is more of a “singular sound” kind of record it is done so exceptionally well you are happy with forty-two minutes of more of the same.

In an era where a lot of modern metal bands are exploring the genre’s early origins, you can get some very derivative outcomes, but not so here. “Woodland Rites” is a love letter to earlier forms, yes, but more like a flower that has fully bloomed than a copy.

If you’re OK with being a little horrified – or maybe excited by the danger of it all - and you like classic riffs played with exceptional skill, then this record will not disappoint. If songs that “let the devil in” (even for-pretend) make you nervous, best move along and leave that flickering light in the forest for those more brave or foolish.

Best tracks: Woodland Rites, Let the Devil In, The Ritual Tree, Templar Dawn, Into the Wild

CD Odyssey Disc 1922: Gwen Stefani

This next record is a thrift store special. Sometimes that works out and sometimes it don’t but it usually doesn’t cost you much to find out.

Disc 1922 is…Love.Angel.Music.Baby

Artist: Gwen Stefani

Year of Release: 2004

What’s up with the Cover? Gwen Stefani’s so hot she’s melting that throne.

As for this record – is it hot or a hot mess? To know the answer to that you’re going to have to do more than look at the cover, my friends.

How I Came To Know It: This record was culturally unavoidable in the day and was loaded with monster hits. As for actually buying it, that never crossed my mind until last year when I saw it in a thrift store for the low cost of three dollars. Sign me up for that bargain.

How It Stacks Up: This is my only Gwen Stefani album. I also have a single No Doubt record (reviewed way back at Disc 1223). These two albums came out one after the other, but while they both feature Stefani, they’re not by the same band, so there’ll be no stacking up.

Ratings: 2 stars

I find Dance Pop a dangerous genre to court. It lives dangerously in the Land of the Single, where radio play is king, club play is queen, and cohesive records are often an afterthought. Yes, you can find all-round great records in the genre like “Electra Heart” (Disc 1639) and “The Fame Monster” (Disc 747) but you are much more likely to get a loss-leader experience with a couple of killer club bangers at the front end, and a whole lot of filler thereafter.

For this reason, I tend to responsibly engage one full listen before taking this style of music home to meet the wife, but for the low price of $3 I figured it was worth it just for the singles.

Let’s start there, since the record (wisely) does so. While this record’s early oughts dance vibe is very of its time, that doesn’t make “What You Waiting For?” even remotely less of a full-blown banger. This is a song for blowing out your hair, then blowing out your wallet at a club and then blowing kisses out of the cab to strangers on the way home.

What’s this song actually about? Reader, I don’t care terribly. It is a vibe and that vibe is get out there and live a little. Maybe even a little of Stefani pumping herself up for going solo (sorry, the English Literature degree in me made me pay some attention to even these lyrics).

Then we get “Rich Girl” which I wanted to hate, since the song’s main hook is straight up stolen from Fiddler on the Roof’s “If I Were a Rich Man.” Only, I couldn’t. It’s a pretty great hook, and Stefani dresses it up nicely. Also the bridge where hip hopper Eve drops a bar or two of dope raps is a lot of fun. Like most great pop songs, it has a bunch of cool sounds, strung together in a way that makes you like it on the first listen, and then like it even more in the anticipation the third or fourth listen. Is Stefani tricking us here with some empty bubble gum? Reader, she is, but you won’t mind. Shut up and dance.

And then, rounding out our trilogy of underpriced and gaudily packaged goods at the front of the store we get… “Hollaback Girl” – another club banger, built to chant along with friends, while pointing with two fingers on the downbeat and showing off your sexiest sneer. Stefani goes to the deepest well in vacuous but fun pop music with hand claps and foot stomps. Visceral and rhythmic? Sign me up.

But even three songs in, the cracks are starting to show. “Hollaback Girl” opens with empty lyrics that are fun but things start feeling forced. Is this song just playing off Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust”? No – actually you’ll find references to other Queen songs in there as well (I felt a distinctive Highlander vibe, but that’s just me).

I should like it just for that, and I do, but following so directly after our fiddler-adjacency I started to feel a little…empty. Like I’d found a stash of delicious candy and overindulged, and now my mouth felt dry from the sugar dust and my stomach hurt.

After one more hit that I just didn’t like to pad the multi-platinum landing zone (“Cool”) it was a steep cliff to…filler town.

The rest of this record is just a bunch of dance beats strung together with all the artistry of Emily Gilmore on a shopping spree – ruthlessly efficient but lacking all joy.

Sure, Stefani tries on a lot of different versions of vacuous beats but they all just bounce around restlessly, like background beats that clear a dance floor while the DJ takes a bathroom break. A good time to get a drink, or more likely to wish you had left earlier when the buses were still running.

These songs go on without respite or purpose. At each turn you’ll realize Stefani is “paying homage’ to a dance style of yesteryear, but she doesn’t add anything to the experience. The bright and brilliant star of those first three tracks are like a sparkler. Fun at first, and good to move around with, but then later just a burned-out memory that melts the garbage bag when you try to throw it away.

I’m not mad at Stefani. If anything I regret all this late-review shade I’m throwing, which virtually guarantees I will not get invited to the amazing parties I imagine she throws on a regular basis (album aside – Stefani is cool).

But I gotta keep it real, and this record is fast food – good at first, but not good for you. I’m glad I got it on a discount and will be providing the same opportunity to someone else very soon.

Best tracks: What You Waiting For?, Rich Girl, Hollaback Girl

CD Odyssey Disc 1921: Benjamin Tod

I buy a lot of music by a lot of artists, but every now and then something new comes along that I fall for at another level. That’s how it is with this next artist.

Disc 1921 is…I Will Rise

Artist: Benjamin Tod

Year of Release: 2017

What’s up with the Cover? Benjamin Tod walks on the wrong side of the tracks, or at least the wrong side of that fence with a sign that reads, “Keep Out of Rail Yard – No Admittance”.

How I Came To Know It: I discovered Benjamin Tod in 2024 through his album “Shooting Star” (reviewed back at Disc 1789) and I’ve been digging backward through his discography ever since.

How It Stacks Up: I have five Benjamin Tod albums (including his latest, bought earlier today). “I Will Rise” comes in right in the middle at #3.

Ratings: 4 stars

Authenticity is a rare gift, and never more important than in folk and country music. On his first solo album away from the Lost Dog Street Band, singer-songwriter Benjamin Tod is as authentic as it comes.

“I Will Rise” is ten songs that wring every drop of heartache, regret, and anguish of out Tod’s hard-lived experience. While you listen you will both feel connected viscerally to these stories, and at the same time unworthy of them. Yes in one way we live through Tod’s artistry but in another it is only a shadowy reflection on the cave wall of the true event.

Take “Using Again”, where Tod describes falling off the wagon and the miserable self-loathing that emerges from it. Opening with:

“I'm living low down and I am using again
I'm hating my name cause I am cursed like my kin
And if I should see you before I am condemned
I hope you're deceived by the webs that I spin

“I wish I was who I appear
'Cause I despise the man in the mirror”

The song offers no respite from beginning to end, its final chorus a recognition that death approaches, and hell soon thereafter – its final notes an unresolved melody offering no surcease.

Without Tod’s authentic delivery songs like “Using Again” wouldn’t work, but his tortured warble that peals out of Tod like he’s been cursed by the gods to be chained to a rock and forced to shout his doubts and sins into the wind.

The arrangements could not be simpler, with nothing but Tod’s exceptional vocals and a single steel-stringed guitar, played with a heavy pick that twangs and twists through the song’s chord progression. Tod plays like he sings, with a deliberate and profound honesty.

On “I Will Never Be Around” Tod doubles down on hopeless, noting that he “would pick a shallow grave over an empty cell”. Yeesh, and the way he sings it makes you feel like either or both outcomes are imminent. Great stuff, but not exactly Gilmore Girls.

On a record like this, you take your joy where you can find it. There are plenty of songs where Tod’s romantic side comes out. Yes, even here he often comes at his subject matter from a dark place, (“Hungry For You Blues”, “Busted Love” and the classic road-trip argument, “Gasoline”) but at least we find an opportunity to explore the parts of our heart that hurt in a good way.

The record’s final track, “I Will Rise” is an anthem to the downtrodden, and while continuing to pull no punches, the record’s final salvo is one of hope and endurance. Here, Tod brings it all together. He sings of lost love and heartache, of hands shaking from alcohol withdrawal and the weariness of burning the candle at both ends; I expect a nod to the “all-in” approach to his songwriting, which leaves no stone in his troubled soul unturned.

And yet, at each admission of struggle, or depression, almost every other line is the refrain of “but I will rise.” This song is just as dark as any on the record, but we are left with a mantra of stubborn resilience, a call to rise above challenges, no matter how profound. If – like me – you like your messages of hope to be unvarnished and maybe even a little negatively motivated, then this song – and this album – are for you.

Best tracks: Using Again, Out of Babylon, Who I Am Ain’t Who I’ve Been, I Will Never Be Around, I Will Rise