Customer Reviews

Creator

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a great album. This is back in the days when Lemonheads were a bit more Husker Du than R.E.M. It's catchy hardcore punk with a fair dose of melody thrown in. The soft songs are good too. Your Home is where your happy has to be my personal favourite here. This is one overlooked 80's album, good stuff

Throughout rock history, there are a lot of examples of frontmen retaining a band's name after all other original members have departed or been dismissed, and this is probably the worst. The Deily/Strohm/Peretz/Dando Lemonheads were an awesome band. Creator is probably the best recorded representation of that lineup, but live they were just an untouchable punk rock force. Dando's insistence on dragging the name through the mud with the dreck that he foisted on the public after 1989 was inexcusable.

That being said, you should all pick this up and bow down at the altar of one of rock's best tunesmiths... Ben Deily.

I completely disagree with the other reviewers. I've always felt that the Lemonheads died when Ben Deily left, and this album showcases some of his strongest songs ("7 Powers" on Lick notwithstanding). Evan Dando has always seemed too contrived, too eager to offend, to be anything more than a novelty. Deily, on the other hand, had the goods: he could write songs as heavy and image-laden as "Burying Ground" (which seems to draw heavily upon Black Sabbath, not to mention W.B. Yeats) as well as nostalgic acoustic numbers like "Postcard," which, to me, ranks right up there with "Unsatisfied." Granted, everyone and their brother will tell you "Hate Your Friends" is a better record, and maybe it is. All I know is Deily's songwriting really progressed (musically at least) from "Friends" to "Creator." While still able to churn out amazingly literate lyrics, Deily successfully moved past the standard three-chord punk songs he sang on "Friends." Witness "Live Without" and "Falling" if you don't believe me. And that, friends, should be enough to warrant a closer look.

THE best album released that year. Starting with the very first
song, you'll hear ALL their influences, from Black Sabbath, the
Psychedelic Furs, Kiss, the Replacements...hell, Ben Deily's
guitar bridge in the middle of "Come to the Window" will remind
of early Hot Tuna. At this stage (and with this "once in a
lfetime" line-up) the 'Heads were an unstoppable, untouchable
supergroup. After Ben Deily's departure and Evan Dando's descent into the "abyss", they were never the same. Just think
kids-Dando/Deily up there, along side, hmmm...let's say...
Jagger/Richards...Lennon/McCartney...Mould/Hart. Who Knows?
Forget the haphazardness of "Lick" or the rawness of "Hate
Your Friends", on this disc this is one MAJOR force to be
reckoned with.

This album has been described as early Husker Du meets REM and that's a perfect description of it. If that's the sort of thing you go for (like me), you'll love it. On the other hand, if you don't, I have absolutely no idea how you'll take this.

Creator really isn't anything special. Some songs are good, and others are just there. The album is really only going to be worth the money for diehard Lemonhead fans. I suggest listening to Lick, if you are interested in their earlier stuff.

Before the Lemonheads shuffled lineups and learned the arts of making corporate A & R people happy, these Boston kids (well, they looked young) mixed the angry, teenage punk rock of Hate Your Friends with the strong songwriting and, yes, "pop sensibilities" of Lick. However, the band peaked at this 1980s gem (the CD was released in the 1990s) and fell quickly after the departure of Ben Deily. Sadly, they never recovered. I recommend this record, along with Hate Your Friends and Lick, as the essential Lemonheads trio.

This album was so powerful so hard so tingy that when i first heard it,it gave me goose bumps.thats how you can tell a good album when you listen to it, is a must own!!!!!!

Other reviewers are correct: there is no comparison between this and later Lemonheads' albums such as IASAR. But their reasons are wrong: Creator is the effort that is sorely lacking. Merely OK even for a couple of youngsters, production quality is not so good, as the vocals are not clear on some tracks, and that is a shame because Evan Dando's voice reminds me of Elvis Costello. Furthermore the bass playing cannot hold a candle to Juliana Hatfield's on IASAR. Most of these songs were written by Ben Deily and they just don't hold a candle to Dando's later work. Comparisons of Deily-Dando to other song writing duos are ludicrous; Dando can be reasonably compared to Paul McCartney especially in terms of "pop sensibility" but Deily is NO John Lennon. This is of historical interest only, unlike some other band's overlooked early works, such as Green Day's Kerplunk which is indisputably excellent.

I think the Lemonheads did by far the best version Charlie's song "Home Is Where You're Happy" that I have heard so far by any band. The Beach Boys messed up his song "Cease To Exist" and Guns-N-Roses ought to be shot for stealing Charlie's song royalties. They were a great band in their time but not only did they do a real [bad] version of Charlie's song but they gave the profits to someone Charlie NEVER killed. To me that is not justice. That is a royalty shame.