0405. John Lennon
John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band

Containing one of my favourite Lennon tracks, Working Class Hero, this almost-eponymous solo debut by John Lennon (parallell-recorded with the Plastic Ono Band as they recorded with Yoko in the same studio) is probably the most lo-fi album Phil Spector ever (co-)produced (a curiosity explained by him not actually being around very much).

The bad things first: I find it a bit annoying when he John into primal scream-mode (like the end of Mother and halfway though Well Well Well) it's not enough to make the songs bad, just a bit off at times [fact check: apparently he was going to primal scream therapy at the time. not that the knowledge of it makes it better]. Also: what the hell's the point of the Cookie Monster quote in Hold On?

Other than that, it's an album as good as you'd expect. Dealing with loss, autonomy and a super-sized ego (you don't believe me? listen to the end of Working Class Hero and God). The album also is a kind of suite of songs with the same start and end point as it starts with the parental abandonement in Mother and finishes with the explanatory My Mummy's Dead (the latter also in an almost naïvely rhymed no-fi recording, as if he'd regressed to a child with a guitar and a tape-recorder).