★★★★★
Back in the mists of time Jefferson Airplane were one of the more overtly political of the San Francisco bands and a great deal of their music bordered on folk as well as the psychedelic sounds they were famous for. When they 'evolved' into Jefferson Starship and then into Starship they lost much of the political and social bias they had started out with...
- www.music-news.com
2010-11-02
★★★★★
When last heard of, Grace Slick put acid in Pat Nixon's tea. This live double-CD is a marvel, covering the 'Plane's Somebody to Love, White Rabbit, Wooden Ships and so on, as well as Starship's Miracle. Who woulda thought they would have any synapses left to conjure anything bearable let alone a hot live concert? The show dates from an indeterminate ('90s?) gig at the House of Blues in Hollywood, and two CDs and two hours later I'm scrounging for some blotter to be at one with...
- www.hour.ca
2010-11-02
★★★★★
Though their biographies suggest no special expertise in the subject, these aging romantics sing only about love. To put their generation in kinder perspective they encourage young Craig Chaquico to play his stupid guitar. Perennially poignant Marty Balin, now departed once again, dominates this compilation like a matinee idol squeezing another year out of his profile; perennially unpredictable Grace Slick, now also departed, sounds less and less interested in providing point or counterpoint...
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-17
★★★★★
I still respect this group, I really do. Their apparently random yet inexorable evolution as a collective entity (not just Grace & Paul Plus) resonates in their deepening textures. They seem to have ideals. You might even say they keep '60s notions of communality alive. Or are they just accommodating '70s notions of corporate identity? They're so vague--they meaning the people, the ideals, and on this album even the textures--that it's hard to tell. Or care.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-17
★★★★★
Hawkwind-goes-commercial leads off one side, Foreigner-hurries-home the other; both cuts are catchy, both sexist tripe. The rest of the album is a familiar muddle of fixations: space travel, good-time, the deluge, the possession of pretty girls. Personal to Mickey Thomas: ain't nobody gonna boogie to the moons of Saturn.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-17
★★★★★
This is indeed their most significant record of the decade, but what does it signify? It's their first number-one album, but it sells to an audience that refuses to distinguish between production values and musical ideas. While the returned Marty Balin is the most soulful folkie ever to set voice to plastic, he remains a mushbrain--the paragon to whom he addresses "Miracles" is actually compared to both a river and a stringed instrument...
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
The truism is that their history matched the counterculture's from optimism to visions to anger to dissolution, and this compilation devotes more than a disc to phase four. I really tried to pin down some overarching theme I'd missed at the time, but dissolution seems to be it--not only did they have nothing to say, they didn't have much to say it with...
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
This is slightly better than Spitfire (not to mention Baron von Tollbooth) and rather worse than Red Octopus (not to mention Crown of Creation). Its only ambitious lyric seems to equate skateboarding with sex with (male) hubris; its expertness conceals neither schlock nor shtick nor strain of ego. It is leading the nation in FM airplay.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
The key cut here is Grace Slick's gnomic "Hyperdrive," in which supertechnology (spirit-powered, perhaps?) cuts through "corners in time." If in 1973 you'd been responsible for Baron von Tollbooth and the Chrome Nun (Jefferson Jitney), Thirty Seconds Over Winterland (dead live), and Bodacious D.F. (Marty's party), you'd want to think you'd turned a corner in 1974 yourself...
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
Loading...
