Jerk Music Critic: The Best of The Free Design

A delightful yet inexplicably obscure late '60s band that had a remarkable brief resurrection in 2000, to call them merely "sunshine pop" would probably be unkind and certainly unsatisfactory. Entirely a family affair for eight core albums between 1967 and 1972, this exceptional collection of their brightest and most beautiful outings hits almost all the high points of their surprisingly large discography. Don't write off the band's airy ambience as insubstantial; even for lyrically uncomplicated songs like "Kites Are Fun" and "Bubbles," the soul-soothing feeling of gentle innocence can penetrate the heart of even the most cynical listener, while solid and mature pieces like "Never Tell The World," "Love Me," "Tomorrow Is The First Day of the Rest of My Life" (a song that went endlessly through my head on my wedding day) and — the album's peak — "Butterflies Are Free" inspire delight and melancholy in equal measure with their complex harmonies, moving lyrics and impeccable production. An unerring musical talent on par with Brian Wilson at his best, but far more consistent, this album is nevertheless not for everyone: listeners desiring a harder edge in particular from their music will find this indefatigably smooth album exasperating, the flower and rainbow stylings don't always age well, and the track selection is also occasionally suspect with lesser works such as "Love You," "Daniel Dolphin" and the flatly meandering "Love Does Not Die" maintaining the same level of quality but failing to reach the emotive value of the other, more superior tracks. Their inadequacy is merely by comparison, however, throwing the witty words of the band's frustration in "2002 A Hit Song" into sharp relief: "We’ve done it all right and sealed it with a kiss/There’s just one fact that we can’t quite shirk/We did all this last time, and it did not work!" Unfortunately it still didn't work in the real 2002, and the saddest thing about their lovely music gems is that no one seems to remember their brilliance. (Content: no concerns.)

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Express Yourself

The Jerk Music Critic is a collection of amateur music reviews I wrote largely non-professionally between the 1990s and today. Some of these reviews are contemporary and some are retrospective, and a few are rather dated, but all are intended to be free-standing and permanent records of my completely worthless musical opinion. They are presented in no particular order and "new" reviews that occur may actually be simply prior ones I've only now transcribed. Older reviews have been edited to hopefully remove inaccuracies later revealed, as well as add brief content advisories (see "Smash the PMRC") and, where reissues exist with different tracks, brief commentaries on these later additions (the actual star review was not altered).

If you're looking for a specific artist, or just interested to see what I really liked (or really didn't), "When I Break Down" indexes reviews by artist and by number of stars awarded (see "Star Chart" for an explanation).

As we move deeper into the Internet music age where the album format might seem hopelessly antiquated, there is still some artistic value in the LP to those artists who still take advantage of it, and some of these recordings can only be properly appreciated in that context. I hope you enjoy these reviews and recommendations, and don't take them too seriously. — Cameron Kaiser

Star Chart

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An instant classic. Substantially advances/d the state of the art, either technologically, stylistically, or (preferentially) both, and is outstanding music besides. Buy it.

🌟🌟🌟🌟
A excellent album. Nearly every song is a gem; nearly every piece is a winner. Falls short of 5 stars for want of that certain special something, but the difference is in impact, not in musical quality. Buy it.

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Solid. Mostly good songs with a few clinkers. Salvageable with a good playlist. Buy it cheap.

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Mixed. Some good songs stand out, but not enough to make it listenable as a whole. Buy the good songs on iTunes.

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Bad. One or two tracks of even decent quality. Buy the good songs cheap on iTunes.

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How did this get released?

Smash the PMRC

I don't advocate for censorship or unnuanced black and white stickers, but I do advocate for parents being able to raise kids in the way they see fit, which might include introducing albums of controversial yet artistic merit at a point in their child's life when they can better appreciate it. The content summaries are intended to be a very general guide, reflective of only my own personal sensibilities and mine alone, and do not substitute in any way for a parent actually sitting down and listening to the album themselves. If you excessively rely on my content advisories, then I'm the one raising your kid, and you really don't want that.