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Health & Fitness

Local Music Blog: What's New at Kiss the Sky—Oct. 25 Releases

A music lover reviews the weekly new music releases you can always find at Kiss The Sky in downtown Geneva.

Florence + the Machine burst on the scene with the perfect two minute power punk song, Kiss With a Fist, an ode to taking a dysfunctional relationship to its obvious extreme. Despite those dominating power chords, the unorthodox juxtaposition of Florence Welch’s silky smooth voice still worked.

Though the rest of Lungs was a stark melodic contrast, it remains one of my top 20 albums of 2009

But whenever a great new group issues a second effort, one always opens the album, with closed eyes, quickly flings the vinyl on the turntable, and then raises their arms to the heavens in a plaintiff plea to the muse who rarely wards off that sophomore jinx.

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Ah! But this time, that chronically aloof Greek goddess actually listened! Ceremonials takes up right where Lungs left off. There’s nothing remotely close to kiss with a fist (sigh!), but these satisfying tracks surely showcase Welch’s alarmingly wide vocal range.

Now, I don’t normally buy the deluxe CD versions because it means paying four or five bucks more for an additional three to five songs that didn’t make it on the basic version of the album for good reason. But this time, I’m glad I did. There isn’t a clunker in the bunch.

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Ceremonials certainly gets a high end highly recommended rating.

Now we have an album so horrific, I had to invent a new rating to accurately convey exactly how bad it really is.

You’d think a collaboration between aging punk poet, Lou Reed, and those masters of metal mayhem, Metallica, would be one for the ages. It is, but not in the way we all had hoped. Lulu has to be the worst album I’ve heard in the last 20 years. It’s so bad, I’d rather be forced to listen to Justin Bieber for 24 straight hours than have to endure hearing Lulu a second time.

Throughout his career, Reed hasn’t as much sung as talked his way through songs. Walk on the Wild Side is a perfect example. Though some important folks love to fawn over his poetic skills, he generally comes up with juvenile stuff that has some minor shock value.

Reed is at his best on straightforward power chord songs like Sweet Jane and Dirty Boulevard. So you’d think by bringing in Metallica as the world’s best backup band, he’d have stuck to that recipe.

But no, this abomination is nothing more than an old white guy reciting really bad verse completely out of sync with Kirk Hammett’s thrashing guitar. And just when you it couldn’t get any worse, you realize it’s a double disc set.

I don’t understand how this one ever saw the light of day. Since there’s nothing even remotely redeeming about this unholy alliance, I’m bestowing a new “avoid at all costs” rating. Lulu actually made me want to beg Congress to ban rock ‘n roll.

To cleanse our pallet, let’s move on to the vastly overdue release of the best pop album never made, Brian Wilson and the Beach Boy’s legendary SMiLE. This intended follow up to the seminal album Pet Sounds was a victim of Wilson’s perfectionism, deteriorating mental state and his band mates eventual rebellion. After more than 80 recording sessions, the album was seemingly relegated to the dustbin of history.

Songs like Good Vibrations and Surf’s Up eventually made it onto subsequent Beach Boys efforts and Wilson finally did release SMiLE in 2004.

The three iterations of this box-ish set, aptly titled, The SMiLE Sesssions, provide the listener with a plethora of rare insights into a pop genius’s specific brand of madness.

Though some might say a single CD with 25 versions of Good Vibrations is a bit much (they also might say a $160 price tag for the 5 CD/2 LP super deluxe version is a bit much), but when you get to hear things like the conversations between the band and the booth it makes it all well worthwhile.

It’s like being a 1966 fly on the wall. Since life is the journey and not a destination and I’m always more interested the process, I can heartily and highly recommend any version of The SMiLE Sessions.

And finally, we have the remastered reissue of the week, the 20th anniversary edition of U2’s masterpiece, Achtung Baby. Recorded in Berlin in 1990 as the band was questioning their relevance and on the verge of breaking up, this magnum opus defiantly stated they weren’t about to go anywhere.

Who can listen to One, Bono’s plea for peace in the band, without getting goose bumps? And whoever did the remastering did a really good job. Once again, there are more versions of this reissue than you can shake a stick at, and while the additional songs, remixes and outtakes don’t add all that much, they do offer a window onto a band that tends to keep the creative process to themselves.

Ironically, as this album was released last week, U2 once again finds themselves facing significance suspicions. Let’s hope these renewed doubts lead to something as fascinating as Achtung Baby turned out to be.

I highly recommend this reissue.

Next week! Brian Eno, Atlas Sound, Kurt Vile, and the remastered reissue release I’ve really been waiting for, Pink Floyd’s ode to Syd Barrett, Wish You Were Here.

Until then, I’m sure you’ll find me discussing just how bad Lulu is with Mike and Steve at Kiss the Sky.

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