Van Morrison 48: Three Chords And The Truth

The seemingly relentless progression of Van Morrison albums could be tough to follow, especially when they weren’t always worth hearing. And when he names an album after a phrase many people associate with Bono—even though he didn’t coin it—we deserve to be wary. But Three Chords And The Truth did offer more than three chords, and presented mostly original compositions as well as a similar typographical approach to his most recent collection that wasn’t all covers.

His weather-related titles usually mean a profound meditation, and “March Winds In February” is a lovely start. Of course “Fame Will Eat Your Soul” retreads other familiar territory, this time abetted by Bill Medley, who shows his age. While not the smartest display of sequencing, “Dark Night Of The Soul” is more like it, a good song as well as performance. “In Search Of Grace” seems tossed off, and “Nobody In Charge” is more complaining, but at least he plays a fine sax solo on that one. He continues to brood on “You Don’t Understand” for six annoyed minutes, and we get it already, making the more succinct “Read Between The Lines” easier to digest.

“Does Love Conquer All?” isn’t the only question he asks in that song, but they’re good questions. “Early Days” celebrates the music of his youth lyrically and instrumentally, but he still finds time to whine about today’s music. “If We Wait For Mountains” is another collaboration with occasional lyricist Don Black, and he’s usually a good influence. The good feeling pervades into “Up On Broadway”, an almost gentle wish. While it doesn’t say much, the title track sparkles, and even “Bags Under My Eyes” provides a more wry take on weariness complete with a yodel at the end. And he actually has the decency to credit “Days Gone By”—a lengthy rewrite of “Auld Lang Syne”—as a traditional composition.

When Three Chords And The Truth is good, it’s very good. But he wasn’t likely to start editing himself now.

Van Morrison Three Chords And The Truth (2019)—3

Elton John 25: Leather Jackets

In the interest of full disclosure, we never knowingly heard a note of this album before writing this review. We remember seeing it in stores, but it wasn’t all over the radio like everything else he did before or since, and which we heard in real time. In our defense, Elton himself doesn’t remember much about it either.

Leather Jackets follows the template of his previous album, arriving almost exactly a year later. He and Bernie Taupin wrote most of the songs, Gus Dudgeon produced, and most of the two dozen musicians returned, with only Davey Johnston representing the classic Elton John Band. Yet that recipe created his most generic sounding album since Victim Of Love.

It’s a lot like Ice On Fire, which is good if you liked it, but there isn’t anything approaching something you’d want to hear again. The title track is dopey enough without the cringey back cover, which was probably an attempt to be funny. At least “Hoop Of Fire” changes the mood quickly, and could be a lot better with a more straight arrangement, but it still sounds like he’s singing about a “football fire”, whatever that is. “Don’t Trust That Woman” was written with Cher, of all people, and we’d love to know who decided the first line should be “she’s a real ballbuster”. As much as it sounds like a soundtrack refugee, “Go It Alone” is even more processed. Even though “Gypsy Heart” is slow and not slathered like everything else, it’s still something of a retread of the far superior “Blue Eyes”.

“Slow Rivers” is notable for being a duet with Cliff Richard, and not much else. “Heartache All Over The World” was the single—again, not that we recall hearing it anywhere, ever—and attempts to update the rhythm of “Philadelphia Freedom” with too many bad synthesizers. According to the credits, “Angeline” features John Deacon and Roger Taylor of Queen—not that you’d notice, given the “whoa-whoa” hook and car effects—suggesting it was left over from the last album. “Memory Of Love” tries to be a sensitive ballad, but for the fake harmonica all over the place. The acrobatic chord changes throughout “Paris” actually make the song interesting, but “I Fall Apart” sounds too much like it to stand out.

Throughout Leather Jackets he sounds like he’s trying to sound soulful and dramatic but coming off more hammy. The raspiness in his voice is more noticeable without his other mid-‘80s hits to provide context, and ultimately, it’s all a waste. Unlike most of his catalog, it has never been expanded.

Elton John Leather Jackets (1986)—2

Jellyfish 2: Spilt Milk

The Bellybutton album and videos certainly created a buzz for Jellyfish boys Andy Sturmer and Roger Manning. They got a chance to write some songs for the first Ringo Starr album in ten years, and were even courted briefly by Brian Wilson’s team. Certainly their label wanted the band to keep going, except that they weren’t really a band anymore. Chris Manning never wanted to be a bass player anyway, and Jason Falkner realized the other two weren’t going to let him do anything but play guitar at their direction, so he bolted.

Undaunted, the dynamic duo hunkered down in the studio in their Scooby Doo-inspired wardrobe with the guys who produced the debut, tapping Lyle Workman and the soon-to-be ubiquitous Jon Brion for the lead guitars and T-Bone Wolk to handle the better bass parts. The result was Spilt Milk, which doubled down on their quirky touches and daddy issues in the lyrics by piling on religious commentary and ceaseless references to cake frosting and other sugars, delivering a tour de force in album production. Some have suggested there is a rock opera in there, which may or may not be true; perhaps the song titles written in Alpha-Bits cereal in, yes, spilt milk on the back cover were intended to deflate any pomposity.

Whatever the real intention, we do seem to be dealing with a series of dreams. “Hush” perversely starts us off with a lullaby, the layered vocals an overt homage to Queen. The orchestral touches are misleading, as “Joining A Fan Club” jolts everyone awake with straightahead rock, the snide lyrics alluding to both pop stars and televangelists. Roger gets to open “Sebrina, Paste And Plato” (the latter word likely used to avoid paying the Play-Doh manufacturer any royalties), one of the most elaborate songs ever to depict grade school at its most garish, kinda like “Getting Better” filtered through the Muppets. The silliness abates with the sublime “New Mistake”, another master production that pulls out all the stops, complete with key change for the bridge and Harrisonian guitar solo, all the while relating a playlet about a surprise pregnancy that spans generations. “The Glutton Of Sympathy” most resembles the songs on Bellybutton, loaded as it is with haunting melodic phrases, and so does “The Ghost At Number One”. The heaviest track the Beach Boys never recorded, complete with a nod to “Cabin Essence” over the fade, it had a truly dark video to match, and predicted even more dead rock stars. While it was written back before the first album, “Bye, Bye, Bye” melds Oktoberfest with “Those Were The Days” by way of Supertramp. The best parts of the song are still the vocal motif used as the intro and after the instrumental break.

It’s back to loud angry rock (and more Queen references) with “All Is Forgiven”, its dense sound burying some very delicate musical lines, escalating into a wash of echo that abruptly cuts off with the next mood switch into “Russian Hill”. Based around a dreamy approach derived from Nick Drake, it occupies a similar palate-cleansing mood-changer slot as “Bedspring Kiss” on the last album, but it’s a much better song and arrangement, the pedal steel guitar the perfect touch. Then it’s off to Nilsson territory with “He’s My Best Friend”, a not-too-subtle ode to onanism with an even more overt steal in the title. It’s a joke that wears thin, but the majestic kiss-off “Too Much, Too Little, Too Late” redeems it. (This is a good place to remind the listener that what sounds like a big band—anywhere on the album—was actually pieced together instrument by instrument and expertly mixed.) Another Harrisonian solo bookends the tune, to the point that we don’t always realize “Brighter Day” has started. The “Cabin Essence” banjo returns, in between carousel sounds and circus effects used to illustrate more of the horror than fun of life in the big top. Andy goosesteps toward the increasingly plodding denouement, and another Hollywood flourish brings us right back to where we came in on track one.

For the Split Milk tour, they drafted bass player Tim Smith to wear a hideous green corduroy suit with odd lapels and matching Prince Valiant haircut, while young Eric Dover was brought in to shred on guitar and leer at the girls in the front row. The stage was decked out with tinsel streamers like a high school dance and a working Lite-Brite displaying the band’s logo. Roger would occasionally come out from behind his rig to bash a guitar, particularly on their cover of Badfinger’s “No Matter What”. (Sadly, this was not included among the demos and live recordings added to the album’s eventual expansion.)

But it wasn’t enough to keep the band together, and rather attempt to make an even better record, Jellyfish dried up on the sand. Andy Sturmer was clearly happier making music than promoting it, and went on to a successful career working with Japanese musicians and scoring animated television, giving absolutely zero interviews in the time since. Roger Manning tried continuing as Imperial Drag with Eric Dover (who’d just finished a stint with Slash’s Snakepit) and eventually ended up in Beck’s touring band. While there he crossed paths with Jason Falkner, who was in the brief supergroup The Grays with Jon Brion before embarking on a prolific solo career of his own in between sessions (including one Paul McCartney album). Most recently, Manning, Dover, and Smith put out a series of three four-song EPs as The Lickerish Quartet, all released during Covid, and eventually compiled onto a CD in Japan, after which the project ended.

In the absence of a highly unlikely band reunion, Jellyfish endures as one of those bands who knew how to fill up both sides of a Maxell 90 with melodies that will stick in your brain. Some bands can barely fill one. (Those seeking even more from the band’s brief arc will want to look out for 2002’s mega-rare Fan Club box set, which includes much of the Omnivore bonuses and then some, the Radio Jellyfish compilation and Live At Bogart’s set, and the double-disc Stack-a-Tracks, which took the lead yet again from the Beach Boys by presenting predominantly instrumental mixes of both studio albums.)

Jellyfish Spilt Milk (1993)—3½
2015 Omnivore reissue: same as 1993, plus 25 extra tracks

Jellyfish 1: Bellybutton

Nostalgia for the Summer of Love was barely over when kids too young to remember it started forming bands and making albums. These people came of age at a time when their biggest musical influences were the Partridge Family and the Banana Splits, and embraced as much day-glo plaid and corduroy they could find at thrift shops. For a couple years at the start of the ‘90s this scene was dominated by Jellyfish, four photogenic guys who probably wished they could’ve tried out for 1987’s New Monkees failure of a TV show. They could easily have been found guilty of completely ripping off Redd Kross if more people knew that band, and if their own music wasn’t so good.

Most of the music came from the collaboration of Andy Sturmer, standing drummer and lead vocalist with cheekbones, and Roger Manning, who mostly stuck to electric pianos onstage and shrugged his dreadlocks out of the way. Guitarist Jason Falkner played some of the bass on the band’s Bellybutton debut; the rest was handled by jazz boy John Patitucci or Steve MacDonald of the aforementioned Redd Kross. Once they started touring, Roger’s brother Chris took the bass gig in true Johnny Bravo fashion. All four went on the promo trail, and were interviewed wearing floppy hats while blowing soap bubbles and licking giant carnival lollipops.

Their image was a shoebox out of which the album spilled. After a MacGuffin of a churchy organ, the dark tale in “The Man I Used To Be” shuffles in all angry and tense. This is not power pop by the numbers, and neither is the harmonica solo from the guy who played on the Sanford And Son and Rockford Files themes—as well as “Good Vibrations”—but maybe that’s why they chose him. The hook-laden “That Is Why” is similarly edgy, but breaks free during the choruses for a better pop song. “The King Is Half-Undressed” is where most people would have heard them first, via a striking video that depicted the band members among pinwheels, hula hoops, and bubble gum, when objects weren’t flying in or out of the top of a magician’s hat. Even without that, the tune kicks, with lots of little touches, even if it does meander in the middle. “I Wanna Stay Home” veers on adult contemporary, but it still fits with everything else here. Footsteps lead into a room where a sumptuous piano ballad is getting support from a Hammond organ for a track we’d love to hear the rest of someday. Instead, it shifts abruptly to the swampy suburban horror of “She Still Loves Him”, wherein Jason gets to stretch. (His touches are terrific throughout the album.)

A lot of these songs were certainly made with the intention of sounding great on a stereo, but things heat up on side two. The frenetic “All I Want Is Everything” was made for the stage, complete with big crashing ending. It’s a fine Cheap Trick-style rocker, despite the keyboard trumpet lines. It segues quickly into the Beatlesque “Now She Knows She’s Wrong” (via harpsichord, bass, harmonies, and firebell right out of “Penny Lane”, but the resemblance stops there), which is also short enough to be a hit single but wasn’t. “Bedspring Kiss” is the furthest departure, incorporating bossa nova beats and strings, a Coral sitar, that harmonica again, and a cocktail interlude for five long minutes. Besides being super-catchy, “Baby’s Coming Back” is also notable for its video, wherein the boys briefly got to be their own Saturday morning cartoon. And if you still don’t hear the Partridge Family influence, check out the harpsichord tag over the coda. “Calling Sarah” pulls in lots of influences, particularly the Beach Boys and the Zombies in the choruses, for a strong finale. They display some wonderful detours and dynamics here, and just when it starts getting good, the album ends.

Bellybutton remains a unique grab-bag of toe-tapping pop-rock. In addition to the songwriting, much credit should go to co-producers Albhy Galuten, who’d gotten gold records with the Bee Gees, and Jack Joseph Puig, who would get lots of work throughout the ‘90s and beyond. And despite its obvious retro touches, it doesn’t sound dated. For the most part. (We’ve stated how visual image was a big part of their brand. The album’s cover built on a landscape most recently used by Prince, while the longbox—remember those?—went for a more literal approach. This last touch was not carried over when the album was expanded some 25 years later by adding live recordings plus a second disc full of fully fleshed-out demos.)

Jellyfish Bellybutton (1990)—3½
2015 Omnivore reissue: same as 1990, plus 26 extra tracks

Queen 10: Flash Gordon

Most major bands were excited when they were tapped to provide a full soundtrack for a film, and Queen got their chance with the mega-budget cult classic Flash Gordon. They even took time out while making The Game to work on it.

When the soundtrack album came out, fans may have been disappointed to find it was just that: music for the background of the movie, used as counterpoints to the onscreen action, and not meant to swamp the dialogue. And this album has lots and lots of dialogue. While each band member gets credit for the tracks they spearheaded, and worked on individually, the orchestral touches were not provided by any of the band, and don’t sound like them anyway.

The album is bookended by the two closest things to actual songs, being that they have distinct sets of lyrics, sung by Freddie Mercury. “Flash’s Theme” was the basis for the single, and probably the one piece most people have heard from the album. The chorus is fairly obvious, but unfortunately the slower “just a man” section isn’t exploited more throughout the rest. “The Hero” is the closing piece, loaded with guitars and drums, which of course goes back to repeat most of “Flash’s Theme” before ending with, yes, an explosion.

But in between, there is just music that would probably resonate more with those who’ve seen the movie more than once. Timbales and space effects abound, and the band certainly got over their earlier stated disdain for synthesizers. Most of these tracks are fleeting, less than two minutes apiece, and run seamlessly together with few noticeable gaps. There are a few standouts, like the very new-wavey “Football Fight”, which accompanies the scene in which our hero picks off the enemy’s minions with his gridiron skills (not really much of a stretch, as Flash was a polo player in the original comic strip). “Execution Of Flash” is a brief guitar theme, played not by Brian May but John Deacon, yet there’s no mistaking Brian’s touch on his arrangement of Wagner’s well-known “Wedding March”. “The Kiss” is very much a movie theme, with impossibly high vocals from Freddie. “Flash To The Rescue” and “Marriage Of Dale And Ming” recycle the familiar parts of “Flash’s Theme”, as does the reprise, of course, while “Battle Theme” is a precursor to “The Hero”. (Halfway through that, we hear a character intone, “Who wants to live forever?”—which would become another movie song one day.)

The Flash Gordon film failed to launch a franchise, so this relatively short album remains part of that failure. The 1991 CD added just a modern hip-hop dance remix of “Flash’s Theme” that was pretty stupid, but the bonus disc in the expansion twenty years later at least tried to put the emphasis back onto the music. The single version of “Flash” is shorter than the album track but includes dialogue not on the album, yet still manages to encapsulate the whole thing. The “revisited” mix of “The Hero” puts more emphasis on the vocal and instrumental parts, and while there are still some sound effects, it’s a better track overall. The early version of “The Kiss” is simply wordless vocal and piano, followed by a piano-driven “Football Fight”. Live performances of “Flash” and “The Hero” from the following year are good, and should sate anyone who really needs to hear the songs again.

Queen Flash Gordon (1980)—2
1991 Hollywood reissue: same as 1980, plus 1 extra track
2011 remaster: same as 1980, plus 6 extra tracks

Neil Young 71: Early Daze

Way back in 2017, when the Neil Young Archives launched as an interactive streaming website, the timeline feature included virtual Post-It notes as placeholders for various projects that would, we would presume, be someday released. One of those notes read simply Early Daze, which we knew from his 2012 memoir Waging Heavy Peace was a collection of recordings made with Crazy Horse in 1969. This is basically what Neil was up to after Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere came out, and right around the time Ahmet Ertegun suggested that Crosby, Stills & Nash add him as a second guitarist, which was only one reason why the project changed. And it only took him twelve years to get it out of the pipeline and into the world.

All of these songs have been heard before, but not all in these versions. For starters, “Dance Dance Dance” was already on the first Archives box, as was “Everybody’s Alone”, said to be an alternate mix, but that’s negligible. “Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown” doesn’t quite have the bite of the live version, just as “Winterlong” would be improved onstage as well as in a later recording. Both still sound excellent here. Yet another stab at “Wonderin’” was likely left aside because Neil botched the lyrics. “Cinnamon Girl” is the mono single mix, which favors Danny Whitten’s vocal, but has the familiar guitar coda tagged on.

The biggest surprise is Danny’s “Look At All The Things”, with Neil harmonizing and not quite at the level of the perfect take on the first Crazy Horse album two years later. It turns out “Helpless” was tried first with the Horse before CSNY got it, and has a slightly faster but still laid-back lope. “Birds” is the same take as the alternate B-side version, but here includes the second verse skipped on the 45. Then it’s back to the beginning of the year for the first take of “Down By The River”, this time with supposedly the original scratch vocal.

The music on Early Daze is not incendiary; there are a lot of acoustic guitars, some country influence, and Jack Nitzsche on electric piano. While everything has been freshly mixed—as opposed to done and dusted in 1969—there’s a rehearsal vibe to a lot of it, as opposed to sounding like polished album tracks. But if you take these songs, and replace “Down By The River” and “Cinnamon Girl” with “Oh Lonesome Me” and “I Believe In You”, you’d have a pretty decent second Neil Young and Crazy Horse album. (You can even leave the studio chatter in.) But then we wouldn’t have Déjà Vu and After The Gold Rush as we know them. Of course if Danny had lived, things would have been completely different. This album is a testament to him, as he sings with Neil on nearly every track.

Neil Young With Crazy Horse Early Daze (2024)—3½

Grateful Dead 20: Built To Last

In the late ‘80s the Dead were arguably bigger than they’d ever been, and largely hadn’t changed much of their business plan in the decades thus far. So when they decided to record a follow-up to their smash hit of two years before, they didn’t dip into the well that had built up over the previous gap between studio projects. Built To Last consisted of songs that had been written since that last album and, in keeping with tradition, were subject to questionable mixing that didn’t do them any favors. Part of the problem was the embracing of MIDI technology, which combined with synthesizers for a very cold, non-organic sound. Also, for the first time Brent Mydland’s songs outnumbered both Bob Weir’s and Jerry Garcia’s, and one of our favorites, “Don’t Need Love”, wasn’t among them.

Confusing things quite a bit, the cassette and CD versions of the album had an extra track not on the LP, and all three running orders were different. Now that the CD has become standard, that’s the sequence we’re going to explore here, and frankly, it’s the one that works best.

“Foolish Heart” was the first single, and more enjoyable than the production would suggest. Even with that, it sets a low bar the rest of the album doesn’t always meet. To wit: Brent’s “Just A Little Light” is just a little too adult contemporary, not helped by a vocal that resembles that of Dan Hill. A raspy Jerry sings the title track, something of a continuation of the theme of “Touch Of Grey”, but it works. “Blow Away” is a better Brent song, with a cool hook on the keyboards and guitars that complement the vocal well. Bob finally turns up with “Victim Or The Crime”, written with the guy probably best known for playing Beef in Phantom Of The Paradise. This one is tough to unpack, as the last half is slathered with effects too cliché for an album released on Halloween, but there’s a good song in there somewhere.

“We Can Run” was left off the vinyl version, which is mind-boggling because it’s not only one of the better songs here, and it’s one of Brent’s. Jerry (with Robert Hunter) goes three-for-three with “Standing On The Moon”, an affecting meditation on humanity, history, and legacy. While it only follows on the CD, the placement of “Picasso Moon”—another challenging Bob construction—is odd. Interestingly, both of Bob’s songs here seem patterned on his winning pair on the last album, and pale in comparison. And while “I Will Take You Home” is a lovely sentimental lullaby, the windup music box theme and fake strings jar with the rest of the album. It does not belong here.

Save the occasions where they simply played—Workingman’s Dead, American Beauty, even In The Dark—the band clearly never learned how to work in the studio. Certainly from the ‘70s on, “production” just didn’t work for them. But that didn’t matter. They promoted Built To Last by going on tour like they always did, where the songs breathed and sounded better. There was, however, a unique promotion in the form of Dead In A Deck, which packaged your choice of the album on CD or cassette with official Dead-branded playing cards. And as it turned out, this was the last studio album they would complete. (Rather than provide a peek into the recording sessions, the bonuses on the later expanded CD were all live tracks: twelve-minute takes on “Blow Away” with an extended rap and an off-pitch “Foolish Heart”, and a cover of Rodney Crowell’s “California Earthquake”.)

Grateful Dead Built To Last (1989)—3
1989 CD: same as 1989, plus 1 extra track
2006 expanded CD: same as 1989 CD, plus 3 extra tracks