Last year I did one hundred mini-record reviews from my collection, and I had quite bit of fun doing it. I’m going to continue poking through this year as I get the time (when I’m not listening to NPR or audiobooks in the car, mostly), as long as it stays fun. I like talking about music, and revisiting the music of my youth, as well as new stuff I discover combing the cut-out racks of music stores and the shelves and tables of thrift shops.

<>Here’s the first batch of the second decade – a bit of the old and a bit of the new:

♦Evan McHugh – From The Second Chair: My wife picked this one up at the Indigo Girls show a couple of years ago I didn’t get to go to; this fine folky fellow was the opening act that got whined about by snooty Richmond concertgoers who wanted to just hear “Closer to Fine” and then go home. I don’t know much about the guy, but the record is kind of mellow; almost too mellow for me. A good description might be Jeff Buckley by way of Coldplay, interesting folk polished into a poppy package, but never quite going full pander the way a band like Train does. It’s folk in soccer-mom pandering clothing. Lots of lyrics about coffee shops and umbrellas and whatnot – the title track is pretty good, and “Catching Fire” has a pretty neat little keyboard/organ thing going on that I quite like. Then there’s “To The King” which is catchy, but kind of smacks you over the head with the CCM vibe, which kind of ruins the mood of the rest of the record.

♦”Weird” Al Yankovic – Alpocalypse: I’ve had this for months, and it gets requested an awful lot by the kids, so it gets a lot of spins. It’s a pretty damned good Al Record, though suffers from a lot of the same problems everything since “Off the Deep End” does – there’s just not that much really good pop music to parody any more – the best of the parody bunch on this one is “Party in the CIA”, which unsurprisingly, takes Miley Cyrus and runs to a clever, darkly comic place. The GaGa parody is note-perfect (including the Madonna nod), though it suffers a bit due to being a meta-parody of the artist herself, rather than some other subject. The originals shine, as usual – I rather love “Skipper Dan”, a sad portrait of a failed actor cursed with doing the Jungle Cruise ride at Disney World. And “Craigslist” is a little too topical, but is also a dead-on “style parody” of the Doors, and has that bit about styrofoam peanuts, which never fails to make me laugh.

♦KISS – Alive III: If you’re only going to go buy one of the “Alive” records, make it II. That was KISS at their theatrical peak, all greasepaint and innuendo. That doesnt’ mean that Alive III, recorded during the final tour before the band re-hired Ace and Peter (briefly, then fired them again, then hired them, etc…) and put the make-up back on, isn’t worth a listen. It’s probably the best sounding of the “Alive” records, largely due to modern amplification and recording techniques. The classics like “Rock and Roll All Nite” and “Detroit Rock City” sound better than ever before, but it could be argued that it lacks the soul or energy of the earlier live experiments. That doesn’t mean that it’s not worthy – it’s got a kick-ass live version of non-makeup staple “Heaven’s on Fire” and there’s something exhilarating about *hearing* huge-ass pyrotechnics go off in an enclosed hockey arena. I think most of my affection for this record comes from the fact that this was the only KISS tour I ever saw live, and I had great seats, maybe five rows back on Gene’s side. When he did the fire-breathing thing, I felt the heat on my face. Even without the makeup, these guys put on a first-rate rock show, as long as you’re not expecting much in the way of lyrical depth or meaning.

♦The Bangles – Different Light: This was actually one of the first records I ever owned, and in using the word “record”, I’m speaking literally – I had this one on vinyl. A recent expedition to the thrift store turned up a copy on CD among the rest of the spoils, so I’ve been revisiting it a bit lately. This is the Bangles record with all the hits – “Manic Monday”, “Walk Like an Egyptian”, and “If She Knew What She Wants” among others, and still holds up twenty years later as a solid pop record. It’s also the record that proved to be the beginning of the (first) end, given the focus of the videos on Susanna Hoffs to the exclusion of the other members of the band. The Bangles sound, though, is really a fusion of all four women’s voices – For me, the archetypal Bangles songs feature a “wall of voices”, with the lead kind of disappearing into the whole. on this record, that’s the title track or “Angels Don’t Fall In Love” (though if you want the best sounding Bangles tune ever, you need their cover of “Hazy Shade of Winter” from the soundtrack to the film Less Than Zero). My favorites on this record are actually the two Michael Steele tracks, the cover of Big Star’s “September Gurls” and the haunting “Following”.