Howling At The Moon - The Punk Panther's Album Reviews

  While still hanging around as part of  Roxy Music  for a few more months at least, oddball keyboards genius  Brian Eno  brought along Roxy members  Phil Manzanera  and  Andy Mackay  to help him record this completely leftfield album that slipped under the radar in 1973, despite the Roxy associations.  King Crimson's Robert Fripp  is on the album too.  The songs are quirky and downright weird at times, but they are always catchy and poppy. Eno is on vocals and he doesn't have the best voice, you have to say, but it has a reedy, whiny punky quality that was way ahead of its time. Yes, it is an avant-garde creation, but a very accessible one. Its sound, however, despite remastering, is decidedly muffled at times, however. Maybe that adds to its strange appeal.  The album didn't do very well in 1973. It was just too bizarre. It may well have been more successful in 1981 but that is the thing with works that were ahead of their time.   You have to listen to it a few times to a

Upon this album's release, in late September 2024, many reviewers were seemingly falling over themselves to slag off this album, which contains fifteen jazzy re-workings of (comparatively) lesser-known Van Morrison songs (he is also joined by guests on quite a few of them). Anyway, the professionals seem to think - using all their cupboard is bare clichés about Morrison having lost his songwriting muse - that no matter who you are or however many albums you have been continuing to put out on an almost yearly basis you should be coming up with an album of new material at this stage in your career. Yes, The Rolling Stones put one out last year and Bruce Springsteen released some new stuff back in 2020 but Van Morrison has been releasing albums of new material right up to 2022 so he owes nothing to anyone. If he wants to release this then he has earned the right to do so. Another thing that bugs them is that the previous two albums (Moving On Skiffle and Accentuate The Positive) were