Mindfulness

SGR that's another great review!
I am still jamming to the album! I did check out that Joey song from another album since that's the song my stepfather knew of them when I mentioned I was listening to this album.

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February 28th, 2024

SGR

Thank Mindy! Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Mindfulness

Concrete Blonde


“Still in Hollywood”, that is the best song on the album in my opinion. “True”, song is sort of bland and boring, didn’t have much replay value. “Your Haunted Head”, I like the fast drum beat and punk rock vibe but with “Still In Hollywood” being so good, lots of these songs don’t vibe as much as that song. I basically just looked for the song with the most Spotify plays and it’s been on repeat since. “Dance Along The Edge” is a nice song, probably my 2nd favorite off the album, catchy hook and just has a 1986 vibe. These drum beats are 1986 vibes, I wasn’t even alive but my family was probably jamming to this album. My stepfather liked this album when I told him we were reviewing it. “Still In Hollywood” though; what a freaking jam, the way the lead singer sings over this type of drum beat is very rock n roll-ish I think. “Song for Kim” a bit slower vibe and drum beat very 80s, this song isn’t that good too. The slower vibe on “Song for Kim”.

“Beware of Darkness” is a boring song, and overall most of this album is a slower vibe than “Still In Hollywood”. I think for an album to be great every song has to stand out, not just one popular song. The singer Johnette Napolitano has a nice voice for the screaming-yelling vibes but when she does slower songs it just isn’t there for me. “Over The Shoulder” is a song I like, faster pace and the singer is yelling with an attitude rather than trying to bore us with a slower singing song. The guitar in the faster pace songs should have been the sound they use for most of the album. I understand that if every song sounds the same then it’s a crappy album but I think they should have tried that. This was their debut album and I honestly never heard of them before this review too. I really like a few songs but as a whole album, I’m going to have to score low. “Little Sister” has a slower vibe where she's singing and not yelling, I think the yelling fits well for this band. The album should have had more punk and fewer pop sounds. The singer gives off an emotionally charged performance on all the songs but I just think since I listened to “Still in Hollywood” first and I liked it so much, the rest of the album was a letdown.

Overall, the songs with energy are a win for me but the others put me to sleep. The lead singer is badass but just for 1/3 of the album.




6.75/10

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Lisnaholic

Still reeling from Paul's Boutique, my first reaction to Concrete Blonde was one of delight when I heard the ringing guitar at the start of opening track, True. It's a great track, with some good lyrics. Faster tempo Haunted House has a nice aggressive guitar solo, but then the intensity suddenly dropped on the third track, Dance Along The Edge which I felt was a bit mediocre. But things bounce back up again for Still In Hollywood:I loved the lyrics and the wild, biting guitar throughout this track.

Song For Kim is another so-so song, imo, and although it has an interesting new tone for the brief guitar solo, the song sets a kind of base-line for the album, which the band keeps coming back to: short songs that are ok, but not outstanding. While these lesser songs were playing, my mind turned to two questions: (i) is the female vocalist reminding me of Blondie or the girl in The Pretenders? Or perhaps Kim Carnes, given that song title. (ii) why have they stuck so firmly to the three-and-a-bit minute format for their songs? Minutes are to music like bricks are to buildings: it's what you use to create something. To make a cathedral, you need a lot of bricks, but Concrete Blonde keep building songs with only a few bricks: they manage to squeeze in a verse or two, middle 8, chorus and quick guitar solo, then wrap things up as if to meet their self-imposed time limit. Next song, same as previous: assemble the essential components and then stop, instead of trying for something longer and more ambitious.

Well, those minor grumbles took longer to explain than I expected, so to redress that impression and get some perspective back, even the lesser songs are pretty good. I liked Little Sister and even more so Make Me Cry, with its strummed acoustic guitar. One minute it sounded like a nice retro nod to The Beatles, then made me think of The Eagles. In its soft way, it's an album highlight for me, while the rocking highlight is Still In Hollywood . Instrumental True is good, but too short.

8.5 is my vote for this album, Rubber Soul: thanks for introducing me to a band that I will definitely explore furthur.

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Lisnaholic

I've just gone back to read the reviews-so-far for this album: very interesting as always to see someone else's take on an album That's a very perceptive comment, SGR, 100% agree, and likewise with your comment about the instrumental True being in the wrong place. It should've been in the middle of the album to give us just a short break from the singer.

Also thanks for looking at the lyrics, which are better than I imagined (takes me quite a few plays to actually work out lyrics usually). So I was wrong about Song For Kim - I might go back and give it another listen.

I always like reading these details about how people are approaching the music because its usually so different from my perspective, for example, 1986 is not looking back to before I was born, but instead was a year when I'd pretty much given up on rock and pop, feeling that the young 'uns just weren't up to the standard of the 60s/70s bands I'd grown up with. Still, different directions or not, we agree on one thing, Mindfulness: Still In Hollywood is a real stand-out!

Time for me to check out this Joey song that is getting mentioned, replay Song For Kim, and why not, replay the whole album to see if I experience the SGR effect and have to come back to bump up my rating of Concrete Blonde.

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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953

rubber soul

From Bloodletting (1990)

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Trollheart

Concrete Blonde - s/t

Somewhat like Lisna, I was delighted to hear music I could really get into, after (sorry SGR) the disappointment of the Boys who are somewhat like Animals, and as this album went on I just got happier and happier. For some reason, I assumed this might be a punk/rockabilly kind of thing, but if I had to characterise CB I might consider an amalgam of Blondie, Dire Straits and the Pretenders. I don't think there was any track on this I didn't love, and it just got better from the first to the last. Their version of Harrison's "Beware of Darkness" has just the right amount of angst and moody brooding with a heavier, almost metal guitar line, while "Cold Part of Town" has a great hook in it. Okay, it looks like my YouTube has the tracks screwed around but bear with me. Great guitar sound on this one.

Next one I got is "Dance Along the Edge", which gives me a sort of Springsteen vibe for some reason along with Simple Minds and has a great bass line with some pretty cool drumming too. I really feel the singer here is very Chrissy Hynde-lite, and that's not a criticism. This is one of my favourites on the album I would say. Then again, there's "Song for Kim (She Said)" which has a real lowdown funky feel to it, the bass thumping like a heartbeat, and "Your Haunted Head", which just goes for it, heads-down, kicking over tables and causing all sorts of trouble.

The vocal is an odd spoken one at times; I'd say this is the closest the album comes to straight-ahead punk, but stili with an edge of restraint, "You're the Only One" is a cool acoustic bopper with a slice of country in it, then back to the high-energy rock for "Still in Hollywood", another standout. The exuberance in the chorus is to die for. Powering along then for "Over Your Shoulder", bit of an unexpectedly abrupt ending, and on to "Little Sister", where the rhythm section really come into their own, though the vocalist seems a little lost in the mix at first, though she does find her feet, or I should say her voice. The instrumental version of "True" is nice, and then there's a different version of "Still in Hollywood", called "I'll Chew You Up and Spit You Out." Yeah. Probably didn't really need that.

Overall though, a highly entertaining album with mostly great tracks, fine musicianship and a decent singer. Very catchy, and well worth listening to.

Rating: 8.9/10

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Lisnaholic

Trollheart is a busy man, and I hope he won't object to me helping out the Album Club with a quick update:

I) the latest "Done and Dusted" albums:

II) Both those albums above were only reviewed by 4 members, and I don't think rs has reviewed the album he nominated, which seems an uncharacteristic oversight.
I hope you're ok, rs.

III) this is the album we are scheduled to be looking at right now:

"From Spain To Spain" by Vox.

This album isn't very search friendly, because search terms "Vox" and "Spain" tend to drag the results away from the cd. Here's a YouTube link to the full album:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIIA...nnel=Vox-Topic

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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953

rubber soul

Almost forgot, Lisna, sorry.

CONCRETE BLONDE- CONCRETE BLONDE

I was torn as to which album to pick for my turn. I ended up going with this one because of one song mainly, Still in Hollywood to me rates as one of the underrated punk anthems.

And it makes sense too as Concrete Blonde came out of the LA Punk scene, albeit a little late (the debut album is from late 1986). It’s not a perfect album to be sure. Except for a solid George Harrison cover, I don’t see why side two is necessary.

But side one is as good as any album side I’ve listened to. It starts out with the jangly True, my other favorite track on the album. Dance Along the Edge probably got the most radio airplay since Still in Hollywood features a naughty word (tsk, tsk.). That too is one of the more solid tracks.

I’d like to say that Concrete Blonde is one of the great punk albums but, alas, only Still in Hollywood rates as a punk song. The other tracks are mostly solid late eighties rock. You could even imagine Dance Along the Edge on some movie soundtrack circa 1987. One would think John Hughes would have loved them.

As for me, I find this to be a well above average album that I like to listen to once in a while. Concrete Blonde would go on to record eight albums in total with varying results, the most successful being their next two albums, Free, and Bloodletting, both very successful commercially and critically. No more punk classics though unless you count the heavy God is a Bullet off Free.

Thanks to those who reviewed the album. Glad I found something you could really get into, SGR. I think you like the album even better than I do. (As do some others )

And my rating…



8/10 (The Word has spoken )

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Trollheart

Thanks for keeping tabs, Lisna. A lot of the time I'm the one who needs a


OP has been changed to reflect the new album, and congrats to Mindfulness, who is now a Full Member.

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