1)Creedence Clearwater Revival, Green River: Listening to this was a huge relief–I was beginning to wonder if Willy And The Poorboys was the only CCR album I really liked above “okay.” But yeah, it’s all really good save maybe the mediocre “Sinister Purpose” and “Tombstone Shadow.” The title track and “Bad Moon Rising” are the totems, but hey, I hadn’t heard ‘em in awhile, and “Wrote A Song For Everyone” and “Lodi,” well those are totems too, and I like them MORE than I did before, beautiful songs. “Commotion” is a cool deep cut and I wish to God all the reviews would lay off “The Night Time Is The Right Time”–I LOVE those “wah-doo-day” backing vocals!! No commentary here–Fogerty just happened to have a better batting average than usual!!!

2)Talking Heads, More Songs About Buildings And Food: This is a really strong album pretty much all the way through, albeit one that I’ve almost never revisited, because many of the songs in the middle blend together, seemingly regardless of tempo. Thank God that idiosyncratic Heads style is cool, because otherwise it’d piss me off a lot more that I can’t remember which nervous, jittery New Wave song is “Stay Hungry,” which is “Warning Sign,” which is “Found A Job,” which is “The Girl Wants To Be With The Girls.” All these songs sound fine when they’re playing, then I rack my brains afterwards–dammit, how do I forget them so QUICKLY? It doesn’t help that I previously only considered there to be one real classic, “I’m Not In Love,” but that’s because it’s the fast one and I’ve listened to it a lot in the last few years while ignoring the rest of the album. Less surprising is the fact that the two songs I’d now rank as classics beside that one are the final two, “Take Me To The River,” because it’s kinda slow, and “The Big Country,” because it’s like the Heads version of a folky song. But thank God I rediscovered those. As for the whole album, it is really good but I’m starting to wonder if it isn’t sort of a mistake to start the Talking Heads with Remain In Light.

3)Jefferson Airplane, Crown Of Creation: The dark Californian prettiness that I so love from this band at their finest here mostly just refers to “Triad,” which isn’t even really their song, but that querulous, haunting guitar line really is worthy of David Crosby’s better work, like “Guinnevere.” And it’s the best song here. Aside from that, all I really care for is “Lather,” “Crown Of Creation” and maybe “In Time,” the latter of which is symptomatic of a lot of songs on this album–bleak, slightly meandering, over with pretty fast, and melodically kinda unmemorable. “The House At Pooneil Corners” is the most apocalyptic song here and consequently the butt-ugliest, I really kinda hated it this time. Other songs just lose me–“If You Feel” starts off nice and then falls apart fast, “Star Track” seems to have the same melody as that “see what condition my condition was in” song we’ve all heard (I know the Airplane song came first, but it’s like a bad prediction of the other song), “Chushingura” is a minute of lame noise, “Greasy Heart” seems to be like “Somebody To Love” with everything good about the melody removed…gah. This one’s definitely dropped a couple points, and I don’t think I was that wild about it to begin with, but I probably at least valued the whole apocalyptic vibe, as it would have tricked me into thinking the album was serious stuff. Well…not so much anymore, huh.

4)Of Montreal, Satanic Panic In The Attic: I like this about as much as I used to, maybe four stars out of five or so…which is shocking, because I was figuring I would completely hate it and think of it as cutesy crap from a Pitchfork-dominated era that has long since passed. But no, it’s honestly held up! Not just “Disconnect The Dots,” though that sure is a great Saturday morning kind of thing–I also really loved “Vegan In Furs,” “Your Magic Is Working” and “Rapture Rapes The Muses,” driving hooks in all. Most of the rest is a pretty nice candy coated swirl, and I can’t even name a flat-out turd. Kevin Barnes is all over the place stylistically, seemingly coming up with two or three ideas for each song. Nobody should really care what I think about this band because I like their dorky 1997 debut album the best and listen to it to this day while kind of forgetting to do most of the rest of their discography…but does anyone else sometimes wonder what the hell we were all thinking getting into that cutesy Pitchfork stuff between about 2001 and 2009 or so?

5)Sparks, Big Beat: This is just about their best album, meaning that it barely squeaks to a four-out-of-five star rating, mostly due to consistency rather than big highlights. I already liked “Everybody’s Stupid” the best, but that’s probably the only one I’ve really listened to much since first hearing the album in maybe 2016 or so. The other big rediscovery was “White Women,” where for once the band’s sicko nerd creep audacious lyrical conceit actually DOES raise my eyebrow rather than just making me cringe like Sparks lyrics usually do. That song also fits Russell Mael’s squealing vocal style really well. Elsewhere, I’ll cop to “Big Boy,” “Nothing To Do,” “I Want To Be Like Everybody Else,” “Throw Her Away And Get A New One,” “I Like Girls,” and oh, maybe “Fill-er-up” as having reasaonble hooks, plus a better guitar sound than they previously had. It’s probably between this and the disco album for top spot in their discography, which is really just a way of saying that I never quite loved a Sparks album. This is also probably the end of me relistening to their 1970s stuff.