WARREN ZEVON - Transverse City (1989)
Unlike pretty much everything that came before it, which has a bit of a reputation ( Sentimental Hygeine as the one with R.E.M., the sober record, the revival after a down period, etc.) I didn't have any particular expectations coming in to Transverse City other than some off-peak Zevon. We're fully mired in the period that's only for the die-hards, where Zevon just wasn't on the world's radar. He still made music, though! Track One: "Transverse City" I'm not much of a fan of a lot of things about the '80s, and although some great music happened there, the decade-specific pieces of the overall audio aesthetic rarely fail to make me cringe. * To me, "Transverse City," both the song and the record, get off to a bad start with the first sound being synthesizer. Sure enough, synths soon envelop everything, with the analog instruments struggling to get heard. That type of sound, which I guess once sounded slick and futuristic (especia...