AM Review

The sonic idea is simple and it works completely. Take the swagger of a heavy rock band, play it at the tempo of a west coast rap record, put the drums and the bass at the very front, and stack the falsetto backing vocals until they sound like a choir of one man. Do I Wanna Know and R U Mine are two of the most efficient rock singles of the decade, and the sequencing holds the mood for forty two minutes without ever going slack.

Reviewers were close to unanimous at the time and several called it the best thing the band had done. The reservation has grown a little with distance and it concerns Turner. He is a very good writer performing the role of a man who no longer needs to try, and the album's recurring subject is a late night message that does not carry the weight the arrangements imply. Held against the specificity of the early records the lyrics are thin. As a mood and as a piece of production it remains one of the best sounding rock albums anyone made that decade.