Best Cuckgau reviews

Fleetwood Mac [Reprise, 1975]
Why is this Fleetwood Mac album different from all other Fleetwood Mac albums? The answer is supergroup fragmentation in reverse: the addition of two singer-songwriters who as Buckingham Nicks were good enough--or so somebody thought--to do their own LP for Polydor a while back. And so, after five years of struggling for a consistency that became their hobgoblin, they make it sound easy. In fact, they come up with this year's easy listening classic. Roll on. A-

The Clash are such a boring band for douchebag boomer and gen x libtards. They have a handful of good songs and most of them are on their debut.

N.W.A: Niggaz4life (Ruthless, 1991)
This is supposed to be where they finally slam nonstop. In fact, however, the music's just like the lyrics--market-ready. Catchy, yes, and funky in its laid-back electro way, but never hard enough to scare off the novelty audience. Which might be fun if they didn't outpig the LAPD in the bargain. Can Chuck D really believe they mean what they say? Sure they really hate women, and anybody else who looks at them funny. But unless they're even sicker than they seem, they're too greedy to murder anybody as long as they can make so much money fronting about it. And so they've calculated every rhyme to push somebody's button--to serve up the thrill of transgression to ghettobound and merely ghettocentric young-black-males, and also to the big score, culturally deprived white boys seeking exotic role models. That kids will take them at their word obviously doesn't concern niggaz who'll be hard-pressed to contain their pent-up hostility after the bubble bursts. It'd be nice to think they'll off each other when that great day comes, but I doubt they have the balls. So in the interests of public safety, pray they don't get taken by their investment advisors.
C-

most of his shitty reviews are just bitching about the lead singer gettibg more pussy than him before admitting he liked the album and giving it a B

I like them best on the accurately titled Cut The Crap when they just decided to have fun and make an album of football chants.

The River [Columbia, 1980]
All the standard objections apply. His beat is still clunky, his singing overwrought, his sense of significance shot through with Mazola Oil. He's too white and too male, though he's decent enough to wish he weren't; too unanalytic and fatalistic, though his eye is sharp as can be. Yet by continuing to root his writing in the small victories and large compromises of ordinary joes and janies whose need to understand as well as celebrate is as restless as his own, he's grown into a bitter empathy. These are the wages of young romantic love among those who get paid by the hour, and even if he's only giving forth with so many short fast ones because the circles of frustration and escape seem tighter now, the condensed songcraft makes this double album a model of condensation--upbeat enough for a revery there, he elaborates a myth about the fate of the guys he grew up with that hits a lot of people where they live. A-

also Springsteen is boring schmaltzy shit for boomer libtards that nobody but critics and New Jerseyites likes

ZAGER & EVANS: 2525 (Exordium and Terminus) (RCA Victor) Zager & Evans make Simon & Garfunkel sound like Marx & Engels. The only reason this is not an E is that the title song has sold a million copies. That means they have to be doing something right. D MINUS

Cringe

It's a Beautiful Day (Columbia, 1969)
This is on the charts. Get it off. D

Attached: christgau.jpg (268x188, 10.65K)

Have You Never Been Mellow [MCA, 1975]
After checking out the competition--I've given up on Helen Reddy, Anne Murray repeats herself, and Loretta Lynn's latest is a bummer--I began to entertain heathenish thoughts about this MOR nemesis, whose mid-Atlantic accent inspired Tammy Wynette to found a country music association designed to exclude her. At least this woman sounds sexy, says I to meself, but Carola soon set me straight. "A geisha," she scoffed. "She makes her voice smaller than it really is just to please men." At which point I put away my heathenish thoughts and finished the dishes. D+

kek

2 Years On [Atco, 1970]
This is slightly better than the lps the Gibb brothers put out during their separation--Cucumber Castle, which at least sold some and the solo flop Robin's Reign. But "Lonely Days" sounded more distinctive on the radio than it does here among its epigones and the collective vibrato is turning into a grating affectation. Presumably they broke up because they sensed the formula was getting stale. Trying to recreate it now is the surest way to go from good pop group to bad one. C

shocked this hasn't been posted yet

Attached: Capture.png (1584x87, 19.19K)

Sheik Yerbouti [Zappa, 1979]
If this be social "satire," how come its sole targets are ordinary citizens whose weirdnesses happen to diverge from those of the retentive gent at the control board? Or are we to read his new fixation on buggery as an indication of approval? Makes you wonder whether his primo guitar solo on "Yo' Mama" and those as-unique-as-they-used-to-be rhythms and textures are as arid spiritually as he is. As if there were any question after all these years. C

Attached: 61B38BC3-26C0-4BF8-AE7E-EE097346723B.jpg (1200x1171, 170.98K)

Strange Little Girls [Atlantic, 2001]
"'97 Bonnie and Clyde" *choice cuts*

The Further Adventures of Larson E. Whipsnade and Other Taradiddles [Columbia, 1975]
A quarter century after his death, Fields is harder to deny in the contemplation than on the TV or the stereo. Sure, he was a great comedian, but that doesn't make his films or records compellingly funny. Poppy and The Great Radio Feuds, two companion discs, suffer from limitations of format and context (radio play, complete with ingenue at swimming hole for sex appeal, running gags about Charlie McCarthy's wooden legs) that seem quaint at best. This collection, however, is so wild that to call it surrealistic is to taint it with aesthetic respectability. Laugh first, appreciate later, I say. A-

Just Another Band From L.A. [Zappa, 1972]
You said it, Frank, I didn't. C

>Adjusted for inflation, $7.50 in 1980 is equal to $25.47 in 2021
Is that really such a great deal?

yeah, that was the price of a single lp, but you get twice as much music.

That was after he threw a bitchfit about a Queen album being sold for $7.90.

I would pay this for not having to listen to it

Attached: 76.png (1341x771, 183.44K)

It would be, if wages had risen in proportion to prices.

Black Sabbath [Warner Bros., 1970]
The worst of the counterculture on a plastic platter--bullshit necromancy, drug-impaired reaction time, long solos, everything. They claim to oppose war, but if I don't believe in loving my enemies I don't believe in loving my allies either, and I've been worried something like this was going to happen since the first time I saw a numerology column in an underground newspaper. C-

Paranoid [Warner Bros., 1970]
They do take heavy to undreamt-of extremes, and I suppose I could enjoy them as camp, like a horror movie--the title cut is definitely screamworthy. After all, their audience can't take that Lucifer bit seriously, right? Well, depends on what you mean by serious. Personally, I've always suspected that horror movies catharsized stuff I was too rational to care about in the first place. C-

Master of Reality [Warner Bros., 1971]
As an increasingly regretful spearhead of the great Grand Funk switch, in which critics redefined GFR as a 1971 good old-fashioned rock and roll band even though I've never met a critic (myself included) who actually played the records, I feel entitled to put this in its place. Grand Funk is like an American white blues band of three years ago--dull. Black Sabbath is English--dull and decadent. I don't care how many rebels and incipient groovies are buying. I don't even care if the band members believe in their own Christian/satanist/liberal murk. This is a dim-witted, amoral exploitation. C-

I mean, 1980 wasn't exactly a boomtime economically.

Fire of Love [Ruby, 1981]
Mix slide guitar with loose talk about sex, death, and, er, Negroes, and pass yourselves off as the Rolling Stones of the nuevo wavo. Wish I could claim absence of merit, but in fact it has its tunelessly hooky allure. No matter how seriously Jeffrey Lee Pierce pretends not to take it, though, I'll take it less seriously than that--and more. B

>drug impaired reaction time
top kek

>TES is a more serious, "I'm making my big statement" album and not as demented/silly as the first two
Tell us something we didn't know.

I honestly have no clue what he means by that or anything in those reviews, they're 90% word salad.

>Personally, I've always suspected that horror movies catharsized stuff I was too rational to care about in the first place.
this cunt is unbelievable, holy shit

So What [ABC, 1975]
No artist this inconsequential should risk such a title. C+

This retard has GOT to have at least an opinion, a review, something somewhere that validates his overblown perception of himself. The "dean of American music critics," can't write for shit for more than two full sentences without projecting onto the musicians he criticizes.

Bubbling Over [RCA Victor, 1973]
A better-than-average Parton album in many ways, but beyond the usual dull spots two cuts really bother me. Often her genteel aspirations are delightful--who else would pronounce it "o'er our heads," just like in poetry books, instead of slurring "over"? But when her sentimentality becomes ideological--"Babies save marriages," or "Stop protesting and get right with God"--you remember why most great popular artists have rebelled against gentility. B

Absolutely cutting music journalism.

Also what's his beef with D-12?

Ten [Epic, 1991]
in life, abuse begats melodrama. in music, riffs work even better ("Once", "Even Flow") *

Bio [Chess, 1973]
You know how Willie Mays was the greatest baseball player ever but just can't cut it anymore? He reminds me more and more of Chuck Berry each time out. D+

this album and band are absolute shit though

>nobody likes preachy artists
Surprise?

Broadcast [Virgin, 1986]
Hip, punky wardrobe, hip airline and very hip record label, generic pop dreck. The only good Brit is a good Brit. C-

To Pimp a Butterfly [Top Dawg, 2015]
Mmmm I love kissing black buttholes mmmm yesss I followed Kendrick to the bathroom during one of his show intermissions and I had sabotaged the flushing mechanism on purpose so it wouldn't flush, and I was able to scoop a baggie of his shit from the toilet. I love licking his turds and shoving them up my ass every night before I go to sleep. A++

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy [Roc-A-Fella, 2010]
Kanye is so awesome I am literally star struck whenever I hear about a black person. I have a shrine of Kanye in my closet that I furiously masturbate to while saying "Shit on my face massa Kanye, ooohhh massa let me lick the dirt off of your feet!" and flogging myself. A+++++

A Woman Alone With the Blues [Telarc, 2003]
Peggy Lee's boîte sex becomes Maria's juke sex--drawled, growled, vamped, and moaned ("Fever," "I Don't Know Enough About You") **

Through the Fire [Geffen, 1984]
Take it easy, it's just corporate metal. No need to get upset at these four grizzled dildos. Still, you'd at least hope their merger would provide a good name for a law firm. D-

Sittin' on Top of the World [Curb, 1998]
Not content to split the difference between Patsy Cline and Debbie Boone, this young teen and her in-it-to-win-it voice turn as grotesque as a mascaraed five-year-old in a beauty pageant. She begins by imagining a guy who "worships my body." Her Dad Rimes production and Carole Bayer Warren crossovers reveal Mutt Lange as the easygoing popster he is. She never cracks a smile, rarely revs a tempo. And in the only climax she understands, she colors in the "Purple Rain" so dark I'd say its purple was black if that metaphor weren't patently ridiculous. C+

Oh no no no no, say it isn't so.

Attached: 958787878.png (1558x403, 27.84K)

Can’t handle the bantz?

This made more sense when I learned she suffered from some skin condition that made her life pretty miserable for years.

Love To Love You Baby [Casablanca, 1975]
Did you come yet, huh, huh? Did you come yet? B-

Timespace: The Best of Stevie Nicks [Modern, 1991]
not a diva--a transgendered arena-rock god in all his/her grand self-regard ("I'm Ready", "Has Anyone Ever Written Anything For You?") *

>turn as grotesque as a mascaraed five-year-old in a beauty pageant
Is that a JonBenet Ramsey reference I see? I mean, it was the 90s.

>I like "Old Town Road" in the Billy Ray Cyrus remix. But I don't love it. As a song I think it tops Childish Gambino's "This Is America" but not Cardi B's "Bodak Yellow," two previous must-hear this-is-a-phenomenon singles I got on late because I'm so album-oriented in this phase of my life, but found none of the three as culturally or aesthetically compelling as I was supposed to. This may be because I'm 77 and may be because most current "memes," if that's what these are, are less intrinsically compelling than must-hears should be. More than, let us say, "Beat It" or "Hound Dog" (but maybe not the overrated "Heartbreak Hotel"), they are pure functions of an information system less universal than such information systems are credited with being. This is why so many "memes" would once just have been called "hypes." On the other hand, taking "Old Town Road" off the country chart strikes me as racist pure and simple, because country radio remains racist regardless of the Darius Ruckers and Kane Browns it makes room for. And of course, it's also sexist in an era when so many of the edgiest country singers are women: Miranda Lambert, Angaleena Presley, Becky Warren, Margo Price, Ashley Monroe, Mary Gauthier, even Kacey Musgraves, can I mention Lori McKenna, and I know I'm forgetting people.

His Hand in Mine [RCA Victor, 1978]
With its mawkish self-righteousness, the title epitomizes why we backsliders have permanent doubts about fundamentalist culture. As do the music's secular sellouts, overblown sanctimony, and simulated heavenly hosts--and the thought of RCA making money on two dead messiahs at once. C

Anthony Fantano [Conecticut, 1985]
Glancing over his Wikipedia entry he seems to have arrived at a plausible brand of 21st-century rockcrit taste that runs toward what I'll call dark prog--the godfathering Swans, this year's number one Daughters, on the rap end his beloved Death Grips. But clearly he's broader than that. Little apparent interest in the pop end or indeed tune or indeed fun, however--always a tragic and psychologically revealing lacuna. Nowhere near as insensible to hip-hop/r&b as dark proggers tend to be, but note that very few female artists crack his top 10s, which in 2018 was really missing the action. Fantano seems to have figured out a way to make some kind of living by disseminating his own criticism in the online age. That's an achievement. But until he starts putting it in written language, I'll live without. C-

>and may be because most current "memes," if that's what these are, are less intrinsically compelling than must-hears should be
This part was more-or-less accurate. As for the rest, is it that hard to imagine that black people by and large are simply not into country or interested in making it? Doit.

honestly I've never liked Fever no matter who does it

So witty but such horrible opinions

Mo' Ritmo [Interscope, 1990]
mocha ice--lick it good now ("Fandango," "Rico Suave") *

It's something that probably seemed like orgasm fuel in the 50s but just sounds painful to modern sensibilities.

apparently this dude is a minister now or something

Were you dropped on your heads as children

Duty Now For The Future [Warner Bros., 1979]
The evasive satire and not-funny-enough instrumentals on side one caused me to suspect they'd made their arena move before there was an arena on Earth that would have them. But "Secret Agent Man" and "The Day My Baby Gave Me a Surprize" on side two are as bright as anything on the debut and the arrangements are full of surprizes. B

Gerald hates the production on this one, he says it was flat as fuck compared to Are We Men.

Dolly [RCA Victor, 1975]
Another concept album, this one about--uh-oh--love. All that salvages what would otherwise be atrocious greeting-card doggerel is her singing, and it's not enough. C+

I don't think I've ever listened to anything on there except SAM.

I Am . . . Sasha Fierce [Music World/Columbia, 2008]
In truth, there are three good songs on this 11-track artifact, and deeply vapid though the split-personality bit is, the trick of dividing the album into two CDs does leave a 17-minute dance disc that can be played without gastric distress by any purchaser who isn't picky about diva gangstaism or videophone porn. But me, I'm a hater, and thus I'm something like outraged, by not just those two pimp-outs but an "Ave Maria" lacking even the dumbstruck literalism of Pink's rendition or the grotesque conversion of "Umbrella" into "Halo." Interpreted autobiographically, this halo seems to adorn Jay-Z, who elsewhere inspires little romantic realism or romantic bliss in his bride. In fact, two of the good songs are rather hard on Jeezy's gender, and mine. When in the third Be claims she's in love with her radio, you can only wonder at her determination to live in the past. B

Korn [Epic, 1995]
The cover art depicts a frightened little girl on a swing set cowering as the menacing shadow of a hook-handed rapist draws near. The band loves this image and flaunts it in their trade ads as Sony flogs their death-industrial into its second year. They also sing about child abuse--guess what? They're aggin it. But if their name isn't short for kiddy porn, then the band should insist on a music video where they all get eaten by giant chickens. C+

Honestly she should have just died in a grease fire in 2006.

>n fact, two of the good songs are rather hard on Jeezy's gender, and mine
Golly this is quite a statement to make coming from Mr. Male Feminist.

If it was my mom this would get an A+

>On the other hand, taking "Old Town Road" off the country chart strikes me as racist pure and simple,

Why did this notion ever take off? It's abundantly obvious that it's not a country song. It's trap through and through, sampling an acoustic guitar (from a NIN song) for its beat doesn't make it country any more than sampling a jazz tune makes jazz rap jazz, and its parody lyrics don't make it country either.

It was a (fairly) cute novelty song. No more than that though.

Yeah I mean it was a fun little song, I enjoyed it while it lasted, it just wasn't country.

Wtf

A Quiet Normal Life: The Best of Warren Zevon [Asylum, 1986]
Unlike so many songpoets, Zevon's a real writer, and as lyrics his ravers hold up better than his songpoems. So this is where Warren the Rocker kicks Warren the Poet's butt. Though the selection forgives more reveries than one might prefer, they function as a well-earned respite from dementia; only "Accidentally Like a Martyr" throws up the kind of tuneful fog Linda R. fell for on the tastefully omitted (again--maybe he knows something) "Hasten Down the Wind." Because he inhabits his tricksters, blackguards, and flat-out psychotics rather than reconstituting variations on a formula, he tops his boy Ross Macdonald any day. Thompson gunner, mercenary, NSC operative, werewolf, easy lay, he puts his head on the tracks for penance, and when the train doesn't come gets up and hurls himself against the wall of the Louvre museum. Really now, could Ross Macdonald imagine such a thing? A-

9 [Virgin, 1989]
Johnny's gotten so tired and cynical he can't cut to anywhere new: no matter how hard he tries (and as a working professional he does try), he's stuck with his own ideas. Stephen Hague is a tabula rasa--when he does the Pet Shop Boys he seems smart, when he does Spigue Spigue Sputnik he seems false, when he does Erasure he seems blank. So when he does PIL he seems blank with a few harsh cross-rhythms. And if you consider it corny of me to pick on Johnny's electrodance record, let me observe that if he'd gone to Iggy Pop or George Clinton things would be just as bad. Maybe worse. C+

Reformation: Post TLC [Narnack, 2007]
This does get weird, quiet and slack second half, although, really, why shouldn't his wife sing "The Wright Stuff"? In any case, the first half regales and/or lacerates with the mad purity and/or skeptical hilarity Mark E. Smith was put on the planet to take to his grave. Recorded with Los Angeles pickup musicians, although now I guess we just call them the Fall, immediately after his band of seven years ditched him in Phoenix, it states its business out of the box: "I think it's over now I think it's ending/I think it's over now I think it's beginning." Then it does its business with "Insult Song," a six-minute shaggy groove story about being stuck with ree-tards from the Los Angel-eeze district. A-

Attached: 1602495044108.png (775x442, 277.54K)

None of this makes sense

Unfathomably based.

>Johnny's gotten so tired and cynical he can't cut to anywhere new: no matter how hard he tries (and as a working professional he does try), he's stuck with his own ideas
so much projection

lmao he really was a proto-wokescold wasn't he
he's right about this one

How are any of those chicks "edgy?" And no just because you want to fuck them doesn't mean they have talent.

He said in an interview with Salon almost 20 years ago that male rock drama was played out and women were doing most of the truly interesting stuff in music. Which is just a poorly phrased way of saying I want to fuck them so I'll be a simp and pretend they have talent.

kek

>What the World Needs Now [PiL Official, 2015]
>There was always Peter Hammill guff behind the punk guff, and as long as Rotten-Lydon is excoriating busted toilets or corporate capital it's amusing enough--but not, please Jesus, when he's roaming the "Big Blue Sky" for eight minutes ("Corporate," "Double Trouble") *

kek

I'd give him this one if only he didn't jerk off XTC for making entire albums just like that track he's complaining about.

Good ol' Johnny being the 70s child he is with a track consisting of a >4 minute journey through the cosmos.

>dark prog

Attached: 1554174012385.gif (200x133, 1.69M)

>we learn punk was all a marketing schtick and the OG punks didn't actually hate progressive rock after all
Shock.

It's a strawman term for everything in music he hates.

Main Course [RSO, 1975]
Their most, in fact only listenable album in five years is marred by the sneaking suspicion that they're not doing it because they need to tell me this stuff but because it's the only way they can sell records in 1975. And I'm not entirely sure I buy it either. Best song--"All This Makin' Love", a frantic, Baroque simulation of compulsive sex. C+

Wisconsin Death Trip [Warner Bros., 1999]
horrorshow in stereo--they mean it, man ("Wisconsin Death Trip", "I'm With Stupid") *

Duets [Capitol, 1993]
He squeaks, he squawks, he clicks, he creaks, he moans, he groans. That's not the point--old guys with worse voices have sang better. Champion Jack Dupree prevailed in his 80s because he didn't stake his manhood on the technical impeccability of his instrument. For decades, Sinatra's sound was magnificent, spellbinding, irreproachable. Now, although he still sings better than the likes of Bono and Carly Simon, Luther Vandross runs rings around him in the vocal department while Liza Minnelli out-acts him now. Lesson learned--he who lives by the larynx dies by the larynx. C+

This album still wasn't as painful as Sinatra's last tour.

kys brah

lyl white males right? XD

Caught in the Act [Motown, 1975]
For three cuts--"Slippery When Wet", surrounded by "Wide Open" and "The Bump" (which more than earns its reprise) they make a case for their funk. I already believed but enjoyed the argument anyway. For the remainder of the album they make a case for their soul. I'd have been more inclined to believe if they hadn't bothered. B

yeah yeah funk is a singles genre and there's no reason to listen to the albums. we know.

Singing With The Big Bands [Arista, 1994]
Amusing though it might be to poke fun at reformed Halo of Flies fans going gaga for Tony Bennett, the wily old codger is certainly prudent about deploying his lovingly preserved pipes. But this guy's got a nerve. It's not quite as awful as some computerized nightmare where Manilow replaces Martha Tilton and Tex Beneke on classic swing records, but it's also worse--swing as '50s TV music, astounding chestnuts (Frank Sinatra and the Andrews Sisters, what taste), reconceived or reimagined arrangements by the original symphony orchestras (whatever that can mean after 50 years), all of course fronted by Manilow's uncompromisingly inoffensive voice--a voice that never once hints at history or sex or chops. Incomprehensible press quote--"I've found a funkiness and intelligence in this music that will last forever and I wanted to remind my listeners of what a hip era this was. C

>all of course fronted by Manilow's uncompromisingly inoffensive voice--a voice that never once hints at history or sex or chops
And cf. remarks in that other thread about Beyonce being unable to pull off soul in a believable way. Soul is something you live not something you imitate without having the background or context to pull it off.

yeah well, Manilow trying to do those WWII era tunes about love and longing when your lover is across the ocean and the war could mean you never see him/her again weren't something he could "feel" either.

I've listened to this. Is garbage.

I think my biggest gripe with statements like this, and poptimists have also taken up this shtick, is that you must hate fun if you're not into pop music, and no other type of music can possibly be fun, especially not things like prog or metal (nevermind that most metalheads just want riffs they can bang their heads to).

Exmilitary [Third Worlds download, 2011]

Death-metal hip-hop for El-P fans who secretly wish the Insane Clown Posse wasn't so dumb ("Blood Creepin," "Klink") ***

You have shit taste
End yourself

Honestly a really great take, DG fans owned

Melodic.

B.

He's not wrong about Sheik Yerbouti.
Where exactly is the humour in the songs? That people are gay and have sex? Not particularly rib tickling for any one above the age of 12.
Zappa has always been a dogshit lyricist, and to top it off we have to hear his smug self congratulatory purr.

You may be retarded.

Does he really make a living as a music critic?
Or as an image critic? Or an entrenched cultural gatekeeper for his idealistic zeitgeist? The latter are rhetorical but the first I'm really curious about.

He used to, for sure. Can't remember where but I read magazines used to oay him hundreds of dollars per review back in the 70s (and he did a lot of reviews). No clue what his income looks like these days.

Why did they pay him

Deserved or not, he was a well-respected music critic in an age where it simply made financial sense to read the reviews for an album before you drove down to a record store and spent your hard-earned money on it before you even got to hear it.

faggot

This guy is so obsessed with being perceived as a cool guy who listens to cool music

nothing triggers xgau like ”accidentally like a martyr”, he always brings it up

pseud take

How does he like Roland?

The Sheik review is the opposite of woke. Defending the average joes who Zappa hates with a passion

Eh, nothing in that album comes across as hateful except for Bobby Brown.

To be fair he's not wrong, it's a bad song that as he has said before relies on a vague Dylanesque statement to draw you in. Zevon was more than capable of writing great lyrics that did not rely on such trite formula

Tusk [Reprise, 1979]
A million bucks is what I call obsessive production, but for once it means something. This is like reggae, or Eno--not only don't Lindsey Buckingham's swelling edges and dynamic separations get in the way of the music, they're inextricable from the music, or maybe they are the music. The passionate dissociation of the mix is entirely appropriate to an ensemble in which the three principals have all but disappeared (vocally) from each other's work. But only Buckingham is attuned enough to get exciting music out of a sound so spare and subtle it reveals the limits of Christine McVie's simplicity and shows Stevie Nicks up for the mooncalf she's always been. Also, it doesn't make for very good background noise. B+

This is savage, but then he gave it a B.

The Magician's Birthday [Bronze, 1972]
Thirdhand heavy-metal fantasies borrowed from Led Zeppelin and hooked to some clean, powerful arrangements. Okay stuff. B-

>culturally deprived white boys seeking exotic role models.
Nailed

I mean, 50 Cent became a wealthy man indeed that way.