The Clash (1977)

(Epic)

!!! A+ RECORDING !!!

This will never happen again. It was too much of a miracle to begin with. That Mick Jones, Joe Strummer, Terry Chimes (soon replaced by Topper Headon) and Paul Simonon found one another at all required a series of coincidences and the strange fusion of scenes and circles in the mid-'70s London punk scene. This isn't the magic, though. The magic we can no longer have is the cultural monolith for a band like the Clash to raise a sucker punch against -- and that was all a big image anyway, some frilly neon Way Things Are to kick down. Who knows if it was any truer then? Crucial to the Clash was their commercial intelligence, their awareness of the power of illusion, the illusion to create an enemy. To be working class would've been one thing, and not wholly relevant; fuck, the Rolling Stones were prep school boys. Strummer would talk in later years about the Clash being boot camp. You dropped everything, you threw your identity away, and everything would become the band, all of yourself a party to it and a participant.

We don't have time to reveal the history of the Clash, but suffice to say it's got the Dickensian intricacy of some Pulitizer prize winning epic novel, the very thing you can pretend Marcus Gray's biography of the band (Last Gang in Town) is. What matters to us is the knockdown drag-out relentlessness of one specific iteration, idea, theory of the Clash. Let's even disregard punk for a moment; what's punk turned out to be aside from one more buzz word? In their all too brief prime, the Clash may have been the definitive rock & roll band -- restlessly creative and intelligent but remaining committed to the basest of base impulse in their work, the Bo Diddley beat and the blasted-out soundsystem, so much more than the One Chord Wonders public image limited of "punk." An upending of pop is what this is ("phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust"), a documentarylike capturing of the frenetic within a galvanizing and hard-working band thoroughly dedicated to craft. Such an intrinsic understanding of impact, of how this lively protest music is so much more than a pretty voice against some bastard tide. And wit, above all. "London's Burning," they said, with boredom. How can something be so well defined and so appealing by these reductive definitions? But if "Janie Jones" is compressed Beatles, Ramones rivalry, why's it so humongous and exhausting? The Clash were about essence, about altering, about seriousness. Seriousness and wit, a miracle (oh, that word again) of the time.

Do we want to run down the list of all these instances of directness and electricity? Let's have a bit of levity, or not, like when Joe Strummer breaks into a giggle on "(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais" that turns out to be itself a put-on when he chases it harshly with the cockeyed accusation "Ho, you think it's funny? / Turning rebellion into money." In that meantime, that's reggae you're hearing (repeated on the masterpiece cover of "Police & Thieves"), an expression of both solidarity and virtuosity -- disparate influence as a mere inflection, something else the Clash shares with the Beatles. It's the Troggs I think of on the cheerily hammering "Hate & War" though, the Troggs tackling something important. What's important to the Clash? Poverty, racism, alienation, commercialism, anger playing as hard as you can -- the usual punk shit, sans apathy. The Clash are apathetic about nothing. Ever. Everything matters. Everything will continue to matter.

We're talking about the U.S. album here, and we're aware this is a copout and one more instance of Seppo decadence and myopia: I grew up with this LP, therefore it is the LP. CBS didn't think there'd be a market for the Clash here in America where we were only interested in heavy and overblown things, but they had to import so many copies they finally relented... but not until 1979, by which time history had passed. The result is actually a compilation record of sorts, gathering most of the early Clash singles and lopping off about half their actual debut album and to boot throwing in a brand new recording (issued on the EP Cost of Living over there), a weaving and unexpectedly grand take on Bobby Fuller's "I Fought the Law," with glorious guitar and arrangement. Like The Beatles' Second Album, this unabashed piece of product that everyone knew was a ripoff accidentally stacks together some of the greatest rock recordings of all time, which is saying a lot because nothing is greater than the greatest rock & roll, and some people even voice the belief that it's the best slab of vinyl ever pressed, this. Still... fucks. Meddling of this sort led the band to publicly denounce their label back in 77 Present Day because they released the comparatively feeble "Remote Control," intended just as an album cut, as a single. That pissed them off so much they wrote a song about it, mocking the fact they'd been told that "complete control" was theirs (containment wasn't), but here we were. A humiliation for CBS Records.

A humiliation, and one of those "greatest recordings" aforementioned. Fucking A, "Complete Control," the very title twisting the knife, is an act of heroism. Closeness, fury, a towering conclusion, the slap in the face of Capricorn Records coke rock: "you're my guitar hero!" shouted during a primitive solo. The bent sophistication really kicks off here, something that really extends far beyond the brutish infectious beginning "White Riot" and points the way forward to a band so eclectic you could program a night's worth of their songs without much trace of repetition. Fast forward to "What's My Name" to reveal their way with both a crushingly personal lyric about depression and madness, and the menace and apocalypse of built-up production and layered guitars. It's so loud, it has to be loud! You only get the richness of it when it's loud. They're explosive, and it's not like when the Pistols were scary which they could be, it's something more in the head, less to make an impression, personable in its insanity.

There's a little bit of the Lydonesque sneering abandon here and the Clash is plenty good at it -- "I'm So Bored with the U.S.A." is one of the definitive collisions of menacing riffage and sarcasm since the Stones' heyday, while the brash humor in the lyrics of "Career Opportunities" is so appealing and well-written you almost miss what a bit of pop pleasure the song is -- but their interests lie elsewhere. One happy fixation is the guitar, the things you can do with it in the most courageously nonchalant and unembellished context. The Sex Pistols were pretend amateurs; the Clash didn't see much point in acting like they didn't want you to think they cared, which they so! obviously! did!, even if that behavior marked a clear inspiration. "Clash City Rockers" tries to hold up the brash badass image but the bridge reveals the real sophistication underneath. More clues are on the deeply detailed hard rock of "Jail Guitar Doors" and "Garageland," the former full of interacting if thrillingly basic guitar lines, the latter melodic and rife with emotion, a statement of purpose -- I just want to stay in the garage all night and not hear "where the rich are going," we're a garage band.

This record is fucking staggering, still, it's like fireworks and no distraction -- all good stuff, the true instant greatest hits (far better than Never Mind the Bollocks). It's not everything the Clash could be but it's the definitive and most lasting idea of the Clash, the instant when just playing their loudest angriest most revealing tunes was enough. You feel it all over you, and it's never forced or dumb or insincere. Totally alive, as alive as anything gets, as alive as your Gene Vincent and Chuck Berry 45's. It was overexcitement to say no one else matters, but it's easy to see why such a thing was done, because you hear the stuff the Clash did in 1977 and it's like oh, fuck everything else. On first pass, they emerge to the very top of the British punk heap -- where they remain to this day. But legacy is nothing. Pedestals are nothing. This is immediate, bare, now, direct. If you're not in its path just forget recorded music, it ain't fer you.

Leonard Cohen: Old Ideas (2012)

(Columbia)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

On the follow-up to 2004's underrated Dear Heather, North America's finest songwriter sounds cursed by his pedestal. Once an outlier in his slate of mid-'80s apocalyptic warnings you could dance to, "Hallelujah" has become his signature tune, and an impossible foundation: you get the sense that every new Leonard Cohen song that dissects desire, wickedness and sin is designed as a hymn, an open hand risen up to the heavens.

He knows he's good at such hushed, spiritual material, particularly as his voice wears down and cackles with knowing irony. Is it wrong, though, during an LP that embodies some of the strongest songs and lyrics in his four-decade career, to miss the unhinged moments? The beats? The menace?

The calm resignation of aging on Old Ideas is moving, but it's hard not to feel regret when he expounds and seduces but almost never bites, as though he's holding back out of professionalism. Kinkier oddball selections "Amen" and "Different Sides" provide some relief, and when Cohen sneers "Come on baby, give me a kiss/Stop writing everything down," this record suddenly seems worth the seven-year wait.

[Originally published in Metro Times.]

Since submitting the review above, I've come to feel I underrated this record a bit, even though I was already somewhat smitten with the majority of it after my first pass. The only parts really subject to the named criticisms come later on in the second half, picking back up for a glorious finish. This is certainly second-tier Cohen for me, but it's sobering and humbling all the same.

[SEE ALSO:]
Dear Heather (2004)

Handsome Boy Modeling School: So... How's Your Girl? (1999)

(Tommy Boy)

!!!!! AVOID !!!!!

Big mistake of the year so far was devoting time to this because of a long-running admiration of Prince Paul and something that I guess could be termed "not exactly distaste" for Dan the Automator. This Get a Life-inspired oddity was their college radio-approved collaboration, and it... it... it sounds like the kind of hip hop record that college radio stations would approve of. Profoundly inoffensive and insipid, it's a chestnut of a time when it took more trip than hip to appeal to purportedly edgy gatekeepers of the "alternative" universe.

The lame sitcom premise of this bland record isn't much worth considering here; the big issue is that this pair's production talent doesn't translate at all to any great skill as performers. They seem aware of this, bringing in a hefty number of guests (including Del tha Funkee Homosapien and Mike D) who can't lift up the deadweight of the album's flimsy humor and flat beats. It's a testament to the dated anonymity of the music and lyrics that we're repeatedly asked to "check it out" when the question inevitably is, what are we checking out? There isn't anything! Other verses go on about computer viruses and DVDs against awkward sampling of classical music and AM soul hits, none of which are any less off-rhythm and stupid than the rapping.

This is all very much of its time, so it sometimes translates -- as on "Metaphysical" -- to astonishingly diluted Fugees; when you can see past the schoolboy performing and conceptual pretensions, there are some pleasant enough grooves. "The Truth" is perfectly passable until the whiny cringeworthy rhyming comes in. Usually, though, songs like "Sunshine" come off as parodies of sincere and skilled soul music, as though a mockery of things the Handsome Boys aren't gifted enough to duplicate, and that's bullshit. I have more to complain about, but I ain't even gonna finish this song; it's too long.

Hot Chip: Made in the Dark (2008)

(astralwerks)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Suppose you had a really great night. Doesn't matter what you did, eating out or having sex or clubbing or going to a Revolutionary War battlefield or watching Fantasia on a shag carpet, at the end of it you felt almost dizzy with magic-hour energy and you knew it was a time you'd remember permanently, and it might have covered just a scant three or four hours but you'll turn every minute over forever in your mind. If you could package that night, whether you've enjoyed such an experience or not, a credible theory holds that it would sound like Made in the Dark.

This blistering, crazily fast-paced pop potpourri of every dressed-up sonic impulse that ever befitted modern dance music, disco down to synthpop down to drum & bass ("Bendable Poseable" tackles it by way of U2's "Numb," all menace), was criminally misunderstood at the time as a somewhat empty refinement of Hot Chip's prior record, The Warning, a great one by all means and one with a heavy drift of melancholy and anxiety that's hard to locate on the sequel. But there's more than that; the Hot Chip of this record is lipsticked and drunk and ready, determined perhaps above all else to permanently bury the notion that synth and beat-driven music is a necessarily cold and moody affair. Taking cues as much from Donna Summer as OMD, this is a record that seems primed to explode from sheer liveliness, its every second well-crafted, entertaining, relentlessly banging, and occasionally as moving as "Boy from School" or "No Fit State"... sometimes even more so.

For those of us who joined Hot Chip at this point, it can be tough to admit that the album is mostly a refinement; being perfectly honest, I've thought of it that way for a long time now. After initially discovering it shortly after its release, I ended up putting it away for a very long time and concentrating on The Warning and later One Life Stand. But when I broke Made in the Dark from its dormancy, it seemed to jump up and all about in three dimensions thoroughly dedicated to taking me back to its world and its time, beckoning and then pulling and then running alongside. The 5000 Volts rollerdisco factory that opens the album, "Out at the Pictures," opens with the perfect nasty slow burn until its robotic relentlessness gives way to "Shake a Fist," a jungle-force dance floor subversion with high-level funk on its falsetto vocals. The heroic intensity of both songs is offset by the band's waning habit of simply playing around, here with a nonsensical interlude about "sounds of the studio." (Later on, an entire song about watching TV wrestling, and a tick tick time delay.)

But they get all that out of the way fast, because "Ready for the Floor" is pretty serious business: "do it do it do it now," chants the opening groove -- killer disgusting of course, before we're ready for a fall: a hellish beat, a polite Pet Shop Boys breakdown, a wonderfully fragmented pop song. When singers Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard start really trading their lines back and forth and that joyous sense of mutual creation takes over, you're in heaven, which incidentally is the subject of "Hold On," an insistent follow-on from both the insistence of "Ready" and the tricky undercurrent of "Boy from School" all colliding with Camouflage and early Depeche Mode, but it's a grand moment because it's the kind of hedonistic anthem that indie-courting dance music so doggedly loves to avoid. As zen messages go, you could do worse than the apt "Don't Dance," which of course is actually a totally reckless dance cut, in stop-start half formation; when it suddenly breaks in, it's breathtaking and it tastes like caramel.

The unique seating of Made in the Dark among the Hot Chip catalog might be its full integration of their modern Maximum R&B. There's still synthpop infection on "We're Looking for a Lot of Love," but at a deeper level it's pure slow jam: those perfect vocals, that bass line, that crazy chorus and whether it matters to you or not, the sly lyrics that add on to the unexpected rush of emotion. The title track's a hushed and beautiful showstopper, the short and perfect heartbreak anthem evoking the lover's pulse at closing; don't hit me with a chair for saying it, but even the novelty bit "Wrestlers" is Prince minimal and funkily repetitive, with supreme Whispers bridge -- and hey, the jokes work, even the listing of wrestling moves that gradually loses coherence. And if you said enough's enough, "Touch Too Much" may win you back, a classicist synth-funk concoction almost involuntary in its celebratory encitement of bodily movement, but the soul music remains, a debt that in the end seems far more interesting than all that the group shares with forefathers DM and PSB (they even end the album along the same lines as Very, with a short ethereal instrumental piece).

A model of pacing, Made in the Dark propels along at a clip for eleven tracks, every song a morsel. Then at the finale, it stops short a bit, it seems intentionally: with the artificial Mr. Mister slow one "Whistle for WIll" and the semi-gospel piano balladry of "In the Privacy of Our Love," which is in some ways a fitting conclusion -- the retreat back into normalcy and reflection after the grand time out. The effect is the same, anyway; you know you'll love them always now. It could be just romance, I guess; Taylor had just gotten married and the whole album's written about that experience. For me it's something more singular, something about the way all of the various things that might affect you emotionally are what they are, and it's the emotions themselves that linger and shape the narrative of your life, color it.

But we've missed talking about "One Pure Thought," because it's special. An army of exclamation marks would seem insufficient. This is the epicenter of the triumph, the moment when the adrenaline rushes most of all -- especially in memory. The song's too good, too much of a perfect fusion of confusion and melody and dance, probably the best song of its kind since the New Order days, to grab ahold of all at once. It has to endure in the mind, perhaps along with the vague suggestion of some peak of life, some real determination of living it. (All the lives of these people stopping long enough to dance, etc.) I don't know what it's really about. I won't be on my way, or I will? The yearn in Taylor's voice at the chorus, that's what it's about. But you think about being somewhere when it's on, and as soon as that cacophonious guitar intro starts, you're completely there.

[SEE ALSO:]
One Life Stand (2010)
We Have Remixes EP (2010)

Albert Ammons: The Boogie Woogie Man (1936-44)

(ASV)

RECOMMENDED

Albert Ammons was one of the pioneers of boogie woogie as a commercial music, a pianist who legendarily backed Joe Turner at Carnegie Hall in 1938 and successfully sold the world on a new sort of dance music, one of the major building blocks of rock & roll. He played the blues for his entire life, but his career was kick started after he met fellow pianist Lux Lewis while working as a cab driver in the '20s. His bending, funky variation on the sort of material Fats Waller was playing at the time would catapult his career; he'd ultimately collaborate with Benny Goodman, among many other legends, and would play at Harry Truman's second inauguration in 1949. Sadly, that same year he'd succumb to failing health and die all too young, meaning he'd never live to see his innovations vindicated as a crucial element in a new force of artistic expression, his improvisation and style set to shadow the decades to follow.

Fortunately, he left behind a treasured body of work, and this budget-line CD is a fantastic sampler that remains entertaining and propulsive for more than seventy minutes (though I'd advise you to divide it in half for comfortable listening). It's jazz with a cheeky kick, dance music with impeccable craft and enthusiasm. Ammons is a top-level piano player, and his work takes center stage against some formidable collaborators here, from Lewis and Turner to Pete Johnson and trumpet player Harry James. The occasional tinge of melancholy to "St. Louis Blues," "Sixth Avenue Express" and "Chicago in Mind" only enhances the utter joy in "Bass Goin' Crazy," "Boogie Woogie Stomp," and the million seller "Swanee River Boogie." They're all a blast, and the groove's never dated. Introduce yourself to Ammons now if you haven't already.

Joanna Newsom: Ys (2006)

(Drag City)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Here's an instance of an artist I love taking me on a journey I'd probably be unwilling to travel under most circumstances. Two years ago in this space, I spent a lot of time attempting to gauge and interpret the conceptual meaning of Newsom's Have One on Me, a record I cherish immensely -- but when I imagine doing the same for Ys, despite its relative brevity, I'm too intimidated and a little sleepy. It's fascinating to journey back four years in time to arrive at this, this strange figure encased in something for an otherworldly and intimately sprawling experience that seems so far removed from the earthy, funny Newsom of Have One or the young smart melodicist of The Milk Eyed Mender. This record is meant to be art, to mean something, and I can't pretend I feel qualified to speak to all that. But I love it just the same.

Newsom seems distant, cautious here; the music's more precisely arranged than on her other two albums, and the tracks tend to be immersive and wandering. There are only periodic injections of what now seems her typical vocal warmth, but those moments are the key to the record. And what is the story of this album? I went and checked at SongMeanings to see what I could find out and came away disappointed; instead of debating about the imagery in "Emily," the fans there would prefer to question whether it's even a "song" or is in fact "so much more." I blush when I read Newsom rhyming "see" with "thee" and mixing up astronomy terms in her high-minded poetry. The lyrics are felt, but throughout this record there's a creative distance, an absence of the kind of personal spark and messy emotion that bleeds through on her best songs, "Occident" to "This Side of the Blue," so that I tend to want to ignore these lyrics with the overly practiced hint of the artfully protective. The clues to what Joanna Newsom is thinking are in her voice, and it's the voice that makes these words moving, not so artificial, not so writerly and impersonal.

Musically, Ys is her most ambitious effort so far, which in some ways should brand it a piece of arts & crafts folky prog rock, and admittedly there's a touch of that -- I'm not convinced pop songs should have movements, nor do I really feel that any song that's not "Sister Ray" has much business prattling on for a quarter hour. But I also feel hypnotized by this music in a sense that flags only a couple of times during the fifty-five minutes. There are only five songs here, each with moments that seem as stirringly beautiful as any kind of modern American music gets, helped along by two crucial contraditions: that between the cerebral and the heartfelt, and the unadorned versus the meticulously arranged.

Ys, as proven on the tour Newsom went on to promote it, owes a good deal to Appalachian folk music and benefits from a stark instrumental setup. Newsom forgoes the piano for the album's duration, lingering at the harp from start to finish. In an alternate version released the following year of "Cosmia," you can hear what the songs sound like in the banjo-driven getup she took out on the road. The song seems more personal but somehow less absorbing and beautiful; is the surface-level florid gloriousness of the album preferable, or is the feeling (so prominent on the other two albums) that Newsom is exorcising something? Either way, there's no denying that Steve Albini's clean, crystal-clear approach to the sonics of Newsom's performance is a cut above the aural quality of what we've heard before and since from her, and the dream collaboration with Van Dyke Parks here with his constantly twisting and unpredictable strings and perfectly complementary ideas is a good fit for these songs, actually a far better fit than his more famous joint venture with a pop A-lister.

The best Newsom moments for me, as implied, are not just gorgeous but smart and witty and deeply affecting. After a fresh listen to Ys, I find that my issues with it (the prog flatness of "Monkey & Bear" despite its irresistible Andrews Sisters intro, the audacious overlength of "Only Skin" despite its fine lyrics and dreamlike conclusion) have deepened over the years... but so has my appreciation of those moments on which something really felt and moving bursts through, almost always in the vocals. The small moments are rewarding: the way she sings the line "being a woman" on "Only Skin" redeems all sixteen minutes; her gradual transformation from whispering respectability to fuck-all abandon on "Emily," the drama that gives that song its loving thrust. But the big ones are, well, huge. "Sawdust & Diamonds" sounds like a Leonard Cohen song but with an undercurrent of optimism he wouldn't allow, and there's never been a better showcase for her voice. She purrs and bites like Björk (uncannily at times) and the song lets her really break, really get lost in a moment like nothing until "Occident" in 2010 would allow for so extended a time.

And is "Cosmia" the best Joanna Newsom song? I'm extremely partial to "This Side of the Blue," which rescued me in more than one dark moment, but there's something about the seductive spirit in this song trying to embrace enormous concepts of life and death and flittering toward the light -- it's her best melody, her best and warmest pure expression of an idea, and during its seven minutes nothing can convince you that Ys isn't incredibly valuable. "Sawdust & Diamonds" and "Cosmia" alone transcend every quibble about the record, with "Emily" serving as a backup. No matter how you feel about the lofty and sometimes oversized ambitions of this album, it's likely that something about it will win you over and keep you returning. It's unquestionably the most difficult and flawed of the three LPs, but hey, there's value in that too.

[SEE ALSO:]
Have One on Me (2010)

James Brown: In the Jungle Groove (1969-86)

(Polydor)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

I've really got to call my friend Anthony and ask him how he feels about James Brown these days. We used to sit around talking about girls and listening to old soul music and our favorites were Ben E. King, Otis Redding, and especially Sam Cooke. I was surprised to hear him somewhat dismissive of Brown the first time we talked about him, and remember him focusing back on Cooke to demonstrate a belief that by exposing a greater emotional range, by actually exhibiting containment and artful calculation, he was a true artist of considerable depth and Brown just flew off the handle, a boy busting out with vague snatches of pounding funk all strung together. Though I couldn't deny that Cooke and Redding stirred some pretty deep shit in me that no one else did necessarily, I did counter by saying that JB too was capable of documenting desperation and need, which seemed to be what moved us both about the others' best records, on "Please, Please, Please" and "Try Me" and "It's a Man's Man's Man's World." My larger defense of Brown, though, was that his brand of catharsis was really no less valid and sophisticated than what you hear on "Hawg for You" or "Chain Gang," just expressed differently and all the more like something from a plane beyond what most of us can really explain -- a kind of avant garde burst of feeling.

Those three songs didn't change his mind and I left it alone, but later Anthony heard me playing "It's a New Day," included as the opening track on this watershed compilation, and it messed his theory up a little bit. In the Jungle Groove was getting a lot of play from me around that time; I was in one of my heavy Beatles bootleg phases and I think it was the only non-Liverpudlian thing I was listening to frequently right then. Sometime after processing it once or twice I could tell Anthony started to turn around, and the revelation came in one stilted word: "band." James Brown wasn't a phenomenal singer, he was a phenomenal bandleader, and his psychological playground was the body. Yours, mine, everyone's -- which is no less deep or important or resonant than those "honest you do" refrains on "You Send Me." "It wasn't just about him," Anthony mused, "it was about all of the group. He was channeling things for them."

At the time of its release in 1986, Jungle Groove was basically a cash-in. Brown had some commercial success in the '80s but certainly faced a growing reputation as a sort of novelty or nostalgia act. In the same way that Endless Summer represented a canonization of a band that was growing artistically stale, Groove is a reconfiguration of the entire idea of James Brown and his career. It's hard to say how much his legacy today owes to this collection, but it's not unthinkable that this reactionary move to the increasing popularity of Brown's work as sampled material in hip hop is still reflected in the way that people think of James Brown.

Certainly, as a sampler of the turntable-ready beats-and-grooves within Brown's canon, In the Jungle Groove is unbeatable. The centerpiece would be the hypnotic "Funky Drummer," twelve full minutes (including reprise) of this once-rare holy grail of funky, dirge-like rants. The nine tracks here are focused upon cohesion rather than chronology or any comprehensive aspirations -- there are plenty of other CDs for that -- jumping around between classics and far-flung obscurities, original recordings to outtakes to remixes. As an introduction to the depth of Brown's catalog, you'll find it wanting; it doesn't even touch his best music -- but as a rundown of his appeal and an instantaneous fan-maker, it soars, as I learned myself when accidentally converting my friend.

Best of all, Groove offers the perfect dosage of Brown as the dancing machine and the outsize personality; he's often buried on these songs by the band interplay that made these late '60s / early '70s sessions such dangerous magic, and when he bursts through and grabs your attention it's like he's just one of the instruments. And whereas the idea of circa-1986 remixes of Brown's work might sound like something that would've dated horrendously by now, this is actually the rare instance of such a notion done correctly. The massive sound of "Give It Up or Turnit a Loose" here, the insanity of the augmented dropout that introduces the outtake "I Got to Move," and above all the flight of groove ecstasy -- as irresistibly transportive as any piece of cascading shoegaze or conventional R&B -- that is touched most divinely by this version of "Talkin' Loud and Sayin' Nothing," well, authenticity ain't nothin'. After Brown goes off on the crazed tangent in which he urges the engineer to "keep the tape runnin, we gonna do somethin' funny" and then proceeds to chant or rap or half-sing or something a cappella for nearly a full minute, holding the tension with godlike William Castle dramatic flair, before he lets it go and the pregnant moment just explodes -- just nothing else seems relevant after that. And when In the Jungle Groove is over, no urge or need however trite or heavy seems pressing enough except the one that tells you to play the fucking record again, right now.