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These Are My Records: “I Predict 1990” by Steve Taylor

I have thoughts and feelings about a 35-year-old album you have probably never heard of.

I never understood Christian rock. The conceptual underpinning of the entire genre just doesn’t make sense to me. Even when I was young and suffered frequently-recurring incidents of direct exposure to it, I could never quite figure out what it wanted to be. I’ve always suspected its practitioners had the same problem.

If you grew up white and agnostic in the 1980s South like I did, someone almost certainly tried to get you into Christian rock at one point or another. Maybe it was one of your churchier friends. (We all had them, even us heathens.) Maybe—and I’m just speculating here—that friend suckered you into going to a youth group meeting at First Baptist or wherever one Wednesday night, and the Dockers-wearing youth pastor with acne scars and a fuzz mustache slipped you a totally rad Petra tape, which you accepted out of politeness even though you realized it meant you’d have to come back next week to return it.

These Are My Records: “Today!” by Skip James

Some real folk blues here. Languid and ethereal, James’ high-pitched voice brings a powerfully mournful feel to the sparse arrangements (James accompanies himself on either guitar or piano; only one track features a sideman, Russ Savakus on bass). It’s the perfect record for a Sunday morning spent reflecting on – and probably regretting – those things you did the night before.

These Are My Records: Lou Reed’s “New Sensations”

Released in 1984, this album would have been a lot better if it had been recorded four or five years earlier. Dreadful ’80s production techniques wash out most of the impact of a pretty solid, if not spectacular, collection of songs. It’s not just the synthesizers, though: it’s the backup singers, constantly inserting themselves where they don’t belong, who are the problem more than anything else. A more austere guitar / bass / drums / vocals approach would have done much to bring out the life of songs like “I Love You, Suzanne,” “My Friend George”—which still manages to bop along contentedly and stick in your head for a little while after the record’s over—or “Down at the Arcade,” a fun little closer. File this under “missed opportunities.”