888. She’s Having a Baby soundtrack (1988)

The nineteen-eighties was the era of soundtracks, and John Hughes was one of the great impresarios of the form. Despite the accuracy of that statement, Hughes didn’t actually preside over all that many films that boasted notables soundtracks, but especially with Pretty in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful (both of which he wrote, but neither of which he directed), he was credited with setting one of the templates for the form, transferring the modestly successful acts from college radio into the upper reaches of the Billboard album and pop charts.

In 1988, it was time for John Hughes to grow up. After spending most of the decade establishing himself as the auteur of the high school experience (with a diversion into travel-related farce that echoed his most significant introductory step into the movie biz), Hughes wrote and directed She’s Having a Baby. The film addressed the challenges faced by young adults as they shifted from more carefree days into the weightier responsibilities of adulthood, represented most clearly by the family-building noted in the title. Perhaps accordingly, Hughes tried bring a little more thoughtfulness and maturity to the soundtrack, too.

As usual with such efforts, the soundtrack is a decidedly mixed bag, but the lineup is choice, leaning heavily on U.K. acts. Dave Wakeling’s title song has an intro that sounds like it should provide the the background for chatty morning news show’s opening sequence, but it’s hard to deny that the overall track is ridiculously catchy. The requisite covers are provided by Bryan Ferry and Kirsty MacColl. Most impressively, Hughes and the music supervisors coaxed new tracks from the likes of XTC and Everything But the Girl. The soundtrack’s most significant coup is the introduction of Kate Bush’s haunting, elegant “This Woman’s Work,” which was the centerpiece of the film’s most memorable sequence.

 

 

887. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Kicking Against the Pricks (1986)

It’s perversely fitting the Nick Cave album title that is surely most immediately provoking came straight from the Bible. In the King James Bible, acts 9, verse 5 reads, “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.” Cave’s bible study group has to be a real gas.

The third album from the iconoclastic Australian troubadour and his band the Bad Seeds, Kicking Against the Pricks is comprised entirely of cover songs, which Cave said were essentially selected in a wild melee, with the band honing down to a final track listing based largely on whether or not they were able to sufficiently master the works. The multiple motivations behind the choices — sentiment, a mild disdain for the original versions, an indefinable allure that amounts to an itch Cave and his cohorts felt compelled to scratch — naturally leads to a fairly discombobulated finished product. That probably suits Cave just fine, but it can make for tough sledding as a listener.

Without fail, Cave dominates the songs stylistically rather than lets them guide him. It can lead to bizarre but intriguing scrambles of sensibilities, as when “Hey Joe,” the nineteen-sixties song made famous by Jimi Hendrix, is turned into a dramatic dirge, or the same era’s country ballad “Sleeping Annaleah” winds up sounding like it should only be performed on a haunted carousel. The Velvet Underground’s piercingly beautiful “All Tomorrow’s Parties” becomes a modern pirate shanty peppered with odd sonic squalls. Sometimes Cave’s sense of pronounced irony becomes overwhelming, as on “Jesus Met the Woman at the Well.”

Amid the sporadically engaging tomfoolery, Cave offers reminders that he’s a master rock showman at his core. The folk song “Muddy Water” becomes a weary march of grand drama, and Cave’s anxious vocals on “I’m Gonna Kill That Woman” (originally by John Lee Hooker) are a thrilling feat. But the effective tracks largely argue that Cave is simply too distinctive and ferocious to devote his energy to anyone’s songs other than his own, tailored to his significant strengths.

 

 

886. The Selecter, Too Much Pressure (1980)

The Selecter formed in the English city Coventry in the late nineteen-seventies, taking their name from the Jamaican term for a DJ. Playing jaunty ska music, the group’s timing couldn’t have been better. Just as the band’s lineup solidified — with the crucial addition of lead singer Pauline Black — and they were ready to start recording music, Jerry Dammers founded 2 Tone Records, with a planned specialty in the very sound the Selecter was playing. The label’s first single was “Gangsters,” from Dammers’s band the Special AKA. The Selecter’s eponymous track was on the flip.

One year later, the Selecter’s debut full-length arrived. Too Much Pressure is a perfect expression of the ska genre, certain to enliven the faithful and set the skeptics complaining about a numbing redundancy to the sound. Personally, I have more of a kinship with the latter camp, but I have to admit that the Black goes a long way towards alleviating the album’s problems. The singer brings a welcome brashness to songs, with even a touch of punk punch on “Three Minute Hero.”  On “Time Hard,” when she sings, “Every day/ Things are getting worse,” she sounds pragmatic, certain, and just a little resigned, carrying the song past the pat simplicity (if current high pertinence) of the sentiment.

Although ska is often distinguished by carousing horn blast of energy, a large chunk of Too Much Pressure adheres to an easygoing vibe, which is charming on “My Collie (Not a Dog)” and a dull rut on the title track. “Out on the Streets” tries to pick up the pace with its spirited wanderlust (“Let’s go somewhere, I don’t know where/ Lets go somewhere exciting/ White lies and amber lighting/ Try to seduce me”), but it simply locks in and stays in a slightly more rumbly idle. The looseness occasionally results in unexpected bursts of amusement, as when the album closing cover of the main “James Bond” theme is flavored with added calls of “Thee killahhhhhh…James Bond!”

The Selecter didn’t last long. After a sophomore release, Black split for a solo career. The remaining members quickly realized there was no point going on without her, and the group folded. But, of course, reunions happen.

 

 

885. Devo, Shout (1984)

By at least one account, the album that basically ended Devo as the prime ongoing concern for its members was done in by a single instrument. The band had just gotten their hands on the relatively new Fairlight CMI synthesizer, which aggressively married a keyboard to a computer. They became so immersed in the strange possibilities of their new toy that no other sparks of inspiration could enter the creative process. Gerald Casale, who joined with Mark Mothersbaugh as the creative core of Devo, later conceded Shout represented the greatest regret of his tenure with the band, saying the instrument took over.

“I mean, I loved the songwriting and the ideas, but the Fairlight kind of really determined the sound,” he later explained.

Devo was built on pop abstraction, but Shout often sounds like it was written and recorded by a nineteen-eighties mall arcade that became sentient after a magical lightning strike. Despite the album’s dire reputation, I don’t think that’s always so bad. “The Satisfied Mind” is an agreeable bit of bounding robotic pop, and “The 4th Dimension” has glimmers of an approachable tune behind the the cacophony of sonic trills, though that might be chalked up to the melody line pilfered from “Day Tripper.” More typical is “C’mon,” which is a fetid stew of video game pings, blips, and trills.

It’s not only uncharitable retrospection that tags Shout as a failure. The album was savaged at the time and was enough of a miserable experience that it was credited with driving drummer Alan Myers to quit the band. Warner Bros. dropped Devo from their roster, and it would be several years before the band had the stomach to again step into a studio together.

To learn more about this gigantic endeavor, head over to the introduction. Other entries can be found at the CMJ Top 1000 tag. Most of the images in these posts come straight from the invaluable Discogs.