Thumbs DOWN to all three.
The new Eric Clapton is safe and dull. I personally don't think he's done anything great since 1977, and he's stuck to a really safe-and-dull route especially since that godawful Unplugged album featuring that rendition of 'Layla', to which Pete Townshend once commented
"if I ever hear that bossanova version of Layla once again, I think I'm gonna fucking scream!"This is the funny thing about Clapton - he's best-known for his period with Cream, but both he and Ginger Baker were well-known for DESPISING heavy and psychedelic music - the basis of Cream's sound!
I've been listening to tonnes of The Yardbirds lately, but it wasn't until Jeff Beck took Clapton's spot that the band actually made anything really cool and interesting. Prior to Beck, they were just your regular British rhythm & blues band. They had a massive hit with 'For Your Love' which Clapton hated, and left because of the melodic pop direction they were taking. Then Jeff Beck came in and took them on some groovy new directions, especially pioneering feedback on recordings as a musical and creative tool - like this one done in 1966, a whole year before Hendrix -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAVuOQ7Z4WU There's no way they could've done that with Clapton still onboard.
With Paul Simon, it's like with every review for any Paul Simon album post-2000, it's always like:
"Paul Simon is using brave new textures and sounds, creating music in a way no one has ever heard before" - and you hear it and it's just the same old souffle from the same old cafe, reheated with a pinch of added salt to momentarily disguise the bland shite taste in your mouth.
The new album unfortunately is the same boring songs overlaid with the same nonchalant pitter-patter percussion thing he's been obsessed with ever since the likes of Graceland. And when the song isn't percussion-driven, it's some dreary acoustic guitar thing. The reviews always say that he's going on some 'bold new sound' (I remember the initial reviews for The Rhythm of the Saints were like that) but the fact is, his songs in 30 years have simply not measured up to what he did with Art Garfunkel.
And the new Garbage album has one FANTASTIC song - 'Empty' -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSa_hbutFt0 - easily right up there with the best songs they've ever done. The rest of the album - unbelievably dull and lacks a varied timbral palette. After falling in love with 'Empty', I was expecting something right up there as great as their 1995 debut.. but it's just a swampy concoction of string pads song-after-song.
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Topic: The NEW Releases Thread (Read 3012 times)