No Frills Reviews

Possibly one of the best songs of all time. The vocals, the lyrics, the arrangements, the production; it’s about as perfect as you can get in my eyes. The best feeling in the world is when this comes on in the van and you’re hurtling down a motorway, and everyone is pissed up singing it. The sort of ethereal tune that feels like it’s just always existed, I can’t even imagine it being recorded. Apparently, Springsteen and Cher were there just watching and there were three drummers playing at once.

One of my favourites of theirs. Spector held them at gun point sometimes when they were recording this album. There was an old grotty little Ramones museum in East Berlin where me and our guitarist Matt made a pilgrimage to. They had Joey’s TV Cabinet from his apartment in New York and his jeans and Converse, it was only tiny, but you got a free beer at the end. We were just razzing round the streets on electric scooters all night, on a proper buzz after we went. I can still remember the pink sunset. The place has relocated now but this tune takes me back to that time.

I could’ve easily picked five tunes off this album (Lennon’s 1970 solo debut, Plastic Ono Band) if I wasn’t doing one song per artist. He was into Primal Scream Therapy and just screaming at the top of his lungs at this time. This vocal is the sort of behaviour that gave him and Harry Nilsson permanent damage to their vocal chords, if the stories are real. It’s so raw and horrible as a move after the Beatles in comparison to ‘All Things Must Pass’ or anything Paul did. The album isn’t really Spector’s usual wall of sound thing at all, just raw emotion into tons of slapback delay. I saw the new film last year in the pictures about his ‘Power To The People’ gig and those versions of him doing this and ‘Mother’ absolutely blew my head when they came over the big speakers.

This sounds like heaven to me, or the closest you can imagine through music. It’s a slow build with all the parts about castles and flamingos and mountains but when that chorus hits, it’s one of them reminders that nobody else has really captured that sound quite right since then and all the best music might’ve already been made. I don’t think it was even a hit for them. The Ronettes had some of the best looks and voices of the 60’s, I’ve never heard a bad song from them.

Apparently, the gun came out again for these sessions when Spector didn’t see eye to eye with him, which seems so out of place when you hear the tunes. To be honest, it’s not my favourite or most listened to album by Leonard Cohen and I think the stories get lost a little bit at times in the production on this album, but they don’t in this one. I love long songs and if I want to switch off for 10 minutes at night this does it. I love the droning backing vocals right through and massive drum fills.

This tune kills me. The demo version on the ‘Get Back’ series as well when he leaves the band. It’s so good. I think it’s his answer to Paul’s big songs like ‘Hey Jude’ but it blows that out the water for me. I always like the saddest song, or the slowest, or the longest on an album best, and this is all three. He’s probably at his absolute peak here and I think Spector’s production suits the scale of it all. The repetitiveness and choral backing vocals across the album make all the tunes like sleepy mantras even when they’re not religious ones. One of the best heart-on-sleeve ballads from anybody.