All Over The Place - The Bangles (1984)

 


All Over The Place was the Bangles first full length album and the first album with new bassist Michael Steele (who had actually been a founding member of The Runaways.)

The Bangles maybe aren't as respected as I think they should be, probably because their massive late eighties success created a backlash -- though I will eventually argue that, as late eighties commercial groups go, they were actually one of the greatest. 

But be that as it may, this debut album is something different than the massive synths and programmed drums of later albums would indicate: almost completely self-contained, with all of the songs penned by Susannah or Vicki and not a session muscian in sight, All Over The Place sounds like a lost record from 1966: jangly, sunshine,  driving pop rock songs with gorgeous harmonies and great vocals from all four (Debbie, Vicki and Susannah all sing lead. It's very L.A. sixgties retro, but in a good way, like a mash up of Beatles, Byrds and the Monkees; and the whole retro sixties thing was pretty novel in the year of Purple Rain, Born in the USA and Like a Virgin. Yet it never feels forced or unoriginal or that particularly pastiche:  you get the sense that these girls make this music because it's an honest expression of who they are and what they like. What a great, underrated group!

It's very much a Vicki Peterson dominated album songwriting wise, and she sings almost as many songs as Susannah does. And that's fine becaus Vicki is a great songwriter! From the strength of this album, I want to call her one of the greats, but I guess this was her most shining moment in retrospect. These songs are really, really really good. And the two covers (written by Emmit Rhodes and Kimberly Rew) are just the kind of effortlessly cool nods to obscure but brilliant musicians that tip this over into classic territory.

Vicki, Susannah and Debbie are all fantastic singers, though (so is Michael, but I think she was more of a hired hand at this point and didn't sing any leads.) And that's fine becaus Vicki is a great songwriter! 

Another band this reminds me of is The Smithereens: another band that started off doing a kind of blatant sixties things (albeit amped up mightily in their case and with poorer vocals). More on them later. 

All Over The Place is pretty much a perfect album in a year full of perfect albums. 

5/5


Coming Up:

A.M. Wilco

A.T.O.M. - Carbon Silicon

ABBA - ABBA 

ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits

Abbey Road - The Beatles

Achtung, Baby! U2

Actually - Pet Shop Boys

Adult/Child- The Beach Boys

Aerosmith's Greatest Hits

After The Gold Rush - Neil Young

Afterglow - Crowded House

Aftermath (UK Version) - The Rolling Stones

Against The Odds: 1974-1982 Blondie (three disc version)

Aimee Mann Live at St. Ann's Warehouse

Aiming For Your Head - Betchadupa

The Album -- ABBA

The Album That Never Was - The Kinks

All Four One - The Motels

All Over the Place - The Bangles

All Summer Long -- The Beach Boys

All the Great Hits -- Diana Ross

All Things Must Pass -- George Harrison

All This Useless Beauty -- Elvis Costello & the Attractions

All-Time Greatest Hits - Neil Diamond

Alluvium -- Eddie Rayner

Almost Blue -- Elvis Costello & The Attractions

Almost Summer - Celebration

Alpha Mike Foxtrot -- Wilco

The Alphabetchadupa - Betchadupa

Altitude - ALT

American Idiot Green Day

American Prayer -- The Doors

Amnesiac Radiohead

And I Feel Fine...The Best of the IRS years (1982-1987) - R.E.M.

Animals - Pink Floyd

Anodyne - Uncle Tupelo

Another Life - Another Life

Another Music in Another Kitchen: The Buzzcocks

Another Side of Bob Dylan - Bob Dylan

Anthology: Diana Ross & The Supremes

Anthology: Smokey Robinson & The Beatles

Anthology 1: The Beatles

Anthology 2: The Beatles

Anthology 3 The Beatles

Anthology: North South, East West - Tim Finn

Apple Venus: Volume One -- XTC

Apollo 18 - They Might Be Giants

The ArchAndroid: Janelle Monae

Are Well-Respected Men - The Kinks

Armed Forces -Elvis Costello & The Attractions

Around the World in a Day - Prince

Arthur (or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) - The Kinks

At My Piano - Brian Wilson

Autoamerican - Blondie

Automatic for the People - R.E.M.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Become What You are - The Juliana Hatfield Three (1993)

Image
  Despite the fact that  Become What You Are   reminds me of a rather dreary time in my life -- the year and a half or so when I came back to Springfield Missouri after college to live -- I think this is one of my favorite albums of 1993 -- and 1993 was a really good year for my taste in music.  Juliana Hatfield has a way of telling stories and fleshing out ver complex characters and defining complex emotions in amazingly simple terms, with a few lyrics as possible -- she's sort of, like, the Hemmingway of singer/songwriters. And that's a compliment. But to be clear, this music is not one woman alone with an acoustic guitar; this is a real rock band and Juliana Hatfield herself is quite a formidable hard rock guitarist. This is kind of in the grunge era; I wouldn't call it grunge, but it's from  the brief period of time when singer songwriters could rock in this way that was somewhere between The Stooges, Kiss, and Big Star. See also some of Aimee Mann's cu...
Read more

Arrival - ABBA (1976)

Image
  Arrival was Abba's fourth album, which was long labored over, to good results: it was a huge seller, even going gold in the stubbornly resistant American market, thanks to the giganto-hit "Dancing Queen", still in it's one of the most perfectly written pop songs of all time. The immortal image of the 17 year old girl awash in the first innocent glow of her full physical and sexual power dancing alone under the blue lights strikes tears in my eyes every single time I hear it. I'ts so perfect. .. Like their previous self-titled album  Arrival  runs through a lot of styles and moods, but the the album overall comes off as even more adult and overtly sexual: while the first two songs celebrate innocent girlhood: (girlish fantasies of kissing teacher, the innocent abandon of the 70s teen disco,) the themes seem to progress from innocence to materialistic and sexual cynicism. But the album never breaks a sweat doing this: it all still goes down like ice-cream. The de...
Read more

Beggar's Banquet - Rolling Stones (1968)

Image
Beggar's Banquet was The Rolling Stones' first post-psychedelic album, in which they went back to their roots as a blues rock band, a place which they have decided never to leave again, perhaps due to the disastrous reception of Their Satanic Majesties Request. A pity, in my opinion, but this is not the place to go into it. It's also probably the last great gasp of original guitarist/multi-instrumentalist colorist Brian Jones, although he would play on a few songs on the next album, he was rapidly descending in a tragic downward spiral.  Personally I prefer the rissks the 1965-1967 era Stones took to the Blues Rock phase (though with the addition of Mick Taylor they definitely recorded a pair of their finest albums) and I find the relentless roots rock of  Beggar's Banquet to be a tad bit disappointing. Like, where are the harpsichords, horns, dulcimers and sitars of yesteryear?  Having said that, there are definitely no bad songs here: no ten minute long jams or lame M...
Read more