Fun plus exhaustion minus interest. There are touches of dynamic range, neat solo work, and strangeness throughout, but it's truly an undifferentiated bag of directionless jams. Notable as a seminal recording, I guess, but long long long.
There are multiple ways to read the boiling down of the music herein, attach something to -ness and file the record as precursor. At worst, think of the decent video game of the middle stretches; Otherwise, consider at least two label catalogs I could name, or motorik beats on a machine, or synths that bite back. Really, though, krautrock remains rarefied air, and Cluster master a pop expression of it in still-expansive form.
The second-time-around to this duo comes at the same time as a similar visit to bebop. Appropriate, but comic book colors are something easier to describe. Madvillain sidesteps the pitfalls of DOOM's supervillain shtick by jumping forward a few generations. That is, there's no linear narrative, just panels as form, a kind of post-post-anti-shtick. Character still totally there. And dipping back into jazz, as the sampler does deftly, Madvillainy is more bebop than name-dropped Sun Ra, words and songs following each other less than nesting inside one another. The album's legendary: It's easy enough to pick out the well-known lines. But pay attention to the arrival deeper and deeper over the course of the listen.
The start to Peasant is slow, or at least stripped-from-modernity for a bit, but hits a full weird stride which it's then able to stick to. The characterization is less interesting than the meta-character plucking strings and sending his words out long and short. Disjointed in just the right way; Entirely in control if not under it.
Appropriate choice, as this is as long-form as Cameron gets in his hyper-modern crooning. The songs all have a wonderful sleazy LA patina; The turns of phrase that come but once will make or break the record. The kind of album to sit with a cup of coffee spiked on the sly.
Sundfør is completely off my radar, so this record is a grower for now, close in time and to its likely worse contemporaries. But there's plenty about which I can speak glowingly. A big part of me likes to spice up science fiction - ahem, putting away childish things speculative fiction - as really about ideas, really about the present, a real source of potential and not mere entertainment. And there are two instruments which apply a space schema to country music: Synths and steel. Plenty of the former here, but understated; Music for People in Trouble time-travels, is timeless, ventures out by dabbling back. Melancholy, but there's hope in its complexity.
Fun plus exhaustion minus interest. There are touches of dynamic range, neat solo work, and strangeness throughout, but it's truly an undifferentiated bag of directionless jams. Notable as a seminal recording, I guess, but long long long.
Even in compilation delivers in breadth. Harmony's the main thing transferred: Foundation. No shape in the sequencing, but the very beginning of jazz was hardly provincial, that's clear.
The guitar has a funny history, from sharing a body with instruments handcrafted to resonate against human flesh to electric squeal at the limits and back again. Sympathetic strings reduced to simple diagrams and mass-production, well-loved and impossible to escape. It's no surprise that Continuum traffics in natural metaphors. Mayer is not interested in the border with the unmusical, but with success elsewhere and older. The result is a bit plastic, still with heart: A thoroughly modern and easy album, hit fakeouts with twins ultimately not annoying.
Heynderickx's all-too-brief thesis reveals itself, this time, as about groups. Folk music, it turns out, in its small ensembles, is a member of large-group genre club. Elements of the natural and home world symbolize relationships on this record, with touches of jazz, classical, and band tunes the musical reminders.
Zappaese is the language of anti-music, on Apostrophe verbal on the pedestrian domestic. Why should sex get a special carve-out for music? The seamlessness thus takes the flavor of soul, with proggy composition and solos with fusion characteristics. The mix is all about voices and guitars, smothers the keys, unapologetic rock. Mighty compelling, but sadly to a limit, I think, as an exercise in negation.
Spanish music - as in Spain - is truly behind a veil as far as Anglo America is concerned. But I've liked poem-focused music before, so it's a shame to have no way to penetrate that quality of Poesía Básica. There's certainly an arc from reason to exploits to celebration; More than that I can't say. As rock music it has quite a bit of character, always growly.
Dogrel's city is one colder and more lively than the one I'm used to; Should be a winner. The vocal attack owes much to punk, and proceeds in jagged time over the more complicated, less repetitive instruments. The album soundtracks a journey, not as compelling as, say, the Arctic Monkeys, but more honest and less drenched in nostalgia.
Not only do Type O go for broke in length, they keep it seamless. The project's uniformly campy, but everything else is dynamic goth bliss.
This lively new wave would be far too easy to miss without help; Thanks! With tongue firmly in cheek, the Sports barrel forward with a vocal affect which predicts Nick Cave.
No evidence yet but that Godspeed are genius. The debut's long, and was clearly assembled in parts. Digital division into three tracks is strange, as one hears the gaps, players changing, "hidden" tracks (where really all are hidden). The record's style and title and cover suggest place, and you get that, but there's also a journey, management of time making the end easy. Nice use of strings, too; They draw the sound away from rock as such, a great trick.
Strange to end in, indeed, the closest to dream of Weezer's ten tracks. Any description would argue against the choice, leaving a curl at the end of the tail. The impression cannot be both true and dreamlike. Instead, esteem for Weezer's nostalgic, but its immediacy is necessary, too. Read the record as about records, bands, music; None of it's in the text.
Now it's possible to add carillon to the verbal impression of First Aid Kit. The Lion's Roar is mighty melancholy; I remember seeing a live performance of Emmylou, must have viewed it from Utah, but not with that emotion. Clearly, sadness can be generative. Blue, following, is on the nose lyrically, music nearly saccharine.
The second-time-around to this duo comes at the same time as a similar visit to bebop. Appropriate, but comic book colors are something easier to describe. Madvillain sidesteps the pitfalls of DOOM's supervillain shtick by jumping forward a few generations. That is, there's no linear narrative, just panels as form, a kind of post-post-anti-shtick. Character still totally there. And dipping back into jazz, as the sampler does deftly, Madvillainy is more bebop than name-dropped Sun Ra, words and songs following each other less than nesting inside one another. The album's legendary: It's easy enough to pick out the well-known lines. But pay attention to the arrival deeper and deeper over the course of the listen.
El Circo is absolutely rollickin', and gets a lot of mileage out of the sublime sound of complete contemporaneity; Not easy when you include this much ska. As circuses go, less polished acrobatics but more value for the price of admission at that. The only thing dating the record is a bit of sounds-like-rap, an attempt at hipness maybe fifteen years back.
I bought into Nonagon's gimmick for the year it was in heavy rotation, starting on a new track each time. It doesn't add much to the record. Gizz pull from infinite energetic musics to make this record, making it probably the most interesting starting point in their discography. Can't decide whether I would quibble about particular albums' inclusion in a list like this; Like all the projects, this one is a uniform more-than-solid.
As a proud holder of sometimes-anonymizing long hair, I am entitled to mock the cover a bit. Because it's truly all anonymous longhair. The band foolishly saves their liveliest performance for last. Nothing about Piledriver is bad, but it is entirely paint-by-numbers British blues (oh, how I wish for an alternate spelling there) and recorded middling to boot.
It's all but impossible to have a blast with the Kaizers, and reading about Maestro's concept puts it in perspective. Treats the impulse to read scattered English words into syllables. I get the distinct sense that the band, not only the character, enjoys cheeky quotation. Is noisy extension a rejection of alt-rock tradition or embrace?
Whatever narrative and language live within Control, the album is utterly effective in its sadness. It's all a bit too real over 21st century America, inside indie. Which is a tricky container to define, however easy it is to sense. Geography can have a paradoxical bigness-smallness, and Control does, too, and the right way for a concept album. That is, the runtime does not bloat.
An invitation into the museyroom has certain inevitable weight. Tally Hall branded maximalism has its charms in assault, not walking sounds or soft-spoken explanations. Though the album lacks a particular narrative thread, it avoids going off the rails in lingering; Excess in style is rather appealing.
How or why Kick is distinct is unclear. It's a run-on sentence of tropes, starting with grunted ad-libs. Hutchence's voice lacks the Australian grit, which is one thing parting the band from country. I got a lot of whiplash, listening to something so totally un-serious, and that persona worked. For Kick really is a persona, loud and too concerned with parties as the one thing, but a fun hang.
The image, overprompted, persists: A man following you more-or-less obvious, protesting innocence pain & contrition. After Hours puts musical effort into the not-dance, creating quite a contrast with the singles. When they enter the mix, they complicate. A less extravagant project, a promising direction, a record that pulls the last punch.
Tasteful guitar here, tasteful vocal layering here... De Augustine's arrangements have all the benefits of our century, though the songs feel as likely assembled on tape as digitally. There are no huge stylistic or formal leaps, just spacious folk music which elegantly evades a temperature.
The concept ends up light, in positive and negative senses. None of Gambino's movements are particularly tight, but they do add flow to a record with plenty of it already. Most interesting is the pulling-in of the noisy and disturbing; As soundscapes, they're less of a shock and more of a capsize. But Because the Internet maintains pop appeal through, and has no drop-offs beginning, middle, or end.
An American 90s Queen album; Hardly an original take on Spilt Milk, but blinding. The music surpasses pastiche, leaving the loudness of its context behind while preserving something or other essential. Jellyfish is among the Stateside groups who turn the studio into something unopposed to rock and roll.
The impression of end-of-century electronic music is reasonably broad; The pop connective tissue blunts any edge. Contrary to much deep production, the music puts you in a tape or film space, not any kind of sphere.
There are nice melodies in here, especially bookending, which is to say that the real "in: falls limp. Neither spirited nor reaches out to mine.
Stromae proves as interesting at least as many of the French artists featured on the main list. This album lost a bit of steam in the second half, I found, though there's the language barrier and unfamiliarity with international dance music (hah! all dance music) scenes. Brings energy without the cliché of certain French rap.
Kinda the point, one gathers, but this style of music is perfectly represented by its productions, disco string sections singing among other tunes and the always-expected ever-happy vocals. Late enough in the form, Rock That! drops the voices and apes fusion, with periodic rhythmic reprieve so you don't forget where to dance. The mood's not multiple, and it's not deep, but it sure is pleasurable.
It's a generational predisposition, or one of the epoch, or something about the west coast of this continent: Praise the Californian vocal harmonies. Blink-182s is more boyish than the Beach Boys, or more pasty, any color from ink and not the sun. The band sounds only a little skatey here, but the spin on punk stretches out just a bit in length and in breadth.
Gimmicky tottering toward the millennium this absolutely is. And I have a soft, soft spot for that. In not committing to the more industrial rock bits (Dare I say Manson? Dare I admit to early Skillet?) Garbage proves that those neo-instruments can be good, actually, without art-school pretension. A bit of sadomasochism, though, is apropos.
Masters At Work produce a nice not-so-little mix. The turn into disco is surprising but not shocking and certainly needed: If anything, the record is still a bit stiffer than the jazz creds suggest. Jazzy Jeff's there, a name I'd never considered literally before. The juxtaposition of mostly-rearward looks with what quickly became avant-garde hip-hop production is neat from today.
I was trained against beach vacations and grew up without Buffett strains in my ears. So what conclusion to make about the tropicality or non- of the way A-1-A flew by? Can't be sure, but I had trouble getting into the record. "Life Is Just a Tire Swing" is a heck of a line, though, more than halfway to country which is what most of this ends up as.
Essential to Aeroplane are its asymmetries: The strange loading of the instrumentals; The too-late shift away from indie-punk-scream; The too-familiar instruments devoid of joy. It's all totally necessary for the project, which in fact flows seamlessly, not even broken by the early invocation of Jesus Christ. The album's devastating. It also manages to be a positive blueprint, impossible to copy except maybe with exquisite care.
Much of this album was (and probably is) in heavy CCM rotation, and for good reason. It's a shame that Switchfoot moves to purely worship team-able for about three songs since the semi-ambiance of some of the slower cuts really works with the electronics of this album. Lyrics are a bit clipped, emphasizing the lesser U2 appeal.
I thought I liked dub, so was sad to have this largely slide past me. Very soundscapey, which means a revisit is in order. No particular hooks but also no predictable groove.
Appropriate choice, as this is as long-form as Cameron gets in his hyper-modern crooning. The songs all have a wonderful sleazy LA patina; The turns of phrase that come but once will make or break the record. The kind of album to sit with a cup of coffee spiked on the sly.
Discosis sure is a Canadian album, in the globe connection sense as much as in the way it makes you guess about its seriousness. The topping's been smoothed to a mirror sheen. Below, though, is some kind of avant-dance piece. Feels like daring a probably-square audience to throw you out of the theater.
The Postal Service represent a simple brand of highly-competent collaboration. Gibbard's voice holds the thing together and gives each single commercial cutting edge, while the soundscapes consistently widen the record. Feels like the trimming of the tracklist could have resulted in a different ordering. The blueprint for a delicate, less-jangly indie was dearly needed.
Approaching from the other side of pop-punk, Bad Religion worms into the smoothbore American psyche. The leftovers are ultimately unsatisfying, a saccharine residue of what-ifs on the trinity of religion, killing, and the political dance. Regional and with nothing (musical) to offend, the latter the ultimate taste test.
Bandstand introductions earn quite a few points by default. As for the rest... There really was a time when you could slap the opera label on anything. Gantry's is seamless, but a rather bluesy set, light on characters, further into the garage.
There are multiple ways to read the boiling down of the music herein, attach something to -ness and file the record as precursor. At worst, think of the decent video game of the middle stretches; Otherwise, consider at least two label catalogs I could name, or motorik beats on a machine, or synths that bite back. Really, though, krautrock remains rarefied air, and Cluster master a pop expression of it in still-expansive form.
Despite the electrification, Dimanche à Bamako has a folk feel about it, Sunday morning indeed, rather grassy. Manu Chao provides the membrane covering all, but there's really no concept connecting the internals. The cast is hardly minimal, but maintains a small-kitchen aura, voices entering without apology and never letting go.
How this juggernaut aged was the question in mind as I revisited it. We've been in hyperpop's tail, more or less, since 2018, and each of Oil's singles still rings absolutely true. The structure of the record is nearly flawless, two halves separated deliberately. First, shattered - shattering - glass, next fully-formed club pieces. The conclusion is in skull-exploding noisy long-form. It's a dizzying shame we never heard the next step.
The deepest green fading to black is meaningfully different than the night. Trees keep the world in them, are kept by the string instruments on display here. A great and alien sound swells into quiet, even quotidian. A high measure of cozy yet dangerous folk music.
No. 1's a particularly immaculate showing by sparks, with gargantuan songs on the same old basis. Their best I've heard was curled around loops; Tempo is the pit on this record. The characteristic attitude shines through more than a flow per se, hands pulling you back onto the dance floor again and again.
Ancestral was the easy track highlight. The other tunes contain some shredding and thematic material, but without going all in on the latter Wilson refuses to try in a certain way. Even in failure that style can "succeed". Instead, we get a non-jagged but muted waveform.
Funky projects often rely on instant energy to start the flywheel and hold the contraption together. Chucklehead delay their concept by just a track and a minute, which does much to close the opening of Fuzz while leaving the back of the album open. It's a neat trick, not quite carried by the second half songwriting. It's a friendly introduction to a band with chops and without docs, just the kind of thing you like to discover about a time and place not far away.
Humor as required in a sea album is present, while the record remains generally calm and less than rough. There's much clear energy in the recording - really the recording side of things. Adds up to softly interesting prog, not a singularly arresting record.
The more I listen to Chromatics the less pretty sure I am that I dig the approach. Healer highlights, and the Bush cover is more typical; Not bad, but a flat ambientfied take on the material. Nothing wrong with vibes, but mere invocation of nighttime does not draw out a concept as time so easily can.
The causes between indie music, transcendental sadness, and time feel complicated in Eelsworld. The middle term comforts, as either an everyday or a just-at-the-right-time. The record explicitly plays with the clock as well: "Angry little whore" is a new archetype, even as aspiration, and infancy bookends.
Currents has the individual earworms and also plays like a mix. Parker's a studio genius, of course, so the funk has no burrs on it. If there was ever a record to get you properly excited about a group in fractal, it's this one.
This is a valuable listen, more about Jóhannsson than anything general, because it shows a genius working with a problem he can't quite solve. That problem is the narrative of his own material. Englabörn starts plaintive, with a question mark, raw material for an infinite garden of music. That space is explored in all these beautiful vignettes, but it's not until Karen býr til engil that there is any sense of leaving the treadmill. So it's hard to circle anything in one's mind as work or works. That might be the point; Recording may just not have served the project in my mind as well as it could have. Certainly worth spinning as it's not in any was disappointing.
My only TBHC regret is that I liked it right away and the project isn't a great grower from there. The album does a lot of character work, though it's hardly a solo effort with the band's characteristic turn at three-quarters. The listed experiences are out there and familiar enough to feel by turns, and this time out there is literal space.
Rather toothless as fusion goes, the album certainly has a sense of humor about itself. The length feels less annoying and more silly. Before These Crowded Streets is worth considering and unlikely to convince.
Deeply grooved and seemingly resistant to the usual methods of choosing deep cuts. Absolutely earns it length as an example of 'teens pop for thinking twenty-somethings. The record's impact remains to develop; Men I Trust with their indie dodge avoid the means of musical brute force.
Blink devote themselves to angsty miniatures on Enema, and the middle stretch boasts a trio of songs as good as anything out there. After that, the landing feels a little underwhelming, the aftertaste simplified. Still, every melody has a place, electricity courses, there are snatches of what, telling on oneself, one could even call wisdom.
Hazards lacks some of the titular hazards as it rounds the generational line and covers the wide American musical landscape. The twangle achieves full body as country music at the end, something that may have been a more complete feel for the album.
I must be careful not to cross over into glibness, but there's a review which captured Relatives perfectly but in which I come to exactly the opposite conclusion. Yes, it's a sad record, and yes, it has some nice drum recordings. In fact, the compositions feel led by the drums into a crashing city. The rubble thundering is from buildings tall enough to collapse eternally. Joe's writing is apocalyptic, funny, perfect for a lazy listener like me. Just this time around I found myself ready for the Flann O'Brien reference. This record is always a cathartic listen; It's also brutal. Couldn't have been a fun adventure recording, exactly, but I imagine I'll always be grateful to Protomartyr for doing it.
Firmly in the as-piece tradition, contrasted with the as-record. Well-played, the music goes down easy, doesn't leave a particular scene or sensation. That is, similar enough to the other early Floyd material, just less oriented to song.
The disjunction ends up delicious. Reading notes has you expecting ska from the jump, and when it finally arrives it's hardly the encouraging stuff worth pressing play for. Santeria has just enough name-unrecognition to sneak into my ears, and the album capitalizes in simply musical music. There's a middle stretch of diminished strength, but that's diminished from mighty.
If Come and Get It was delayed for ten years, nothing would have kept me from discovering it during my college poptimism years. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it today. Though a historical shame, the fact that Stevens's discography is shallow is convenient.
The Song is dead. Justin Vernon is still alive, apparent and there as sculptor. Which is to say that 22, A Million never bends its sound to architecture, a strict and intentional limit less a shame for pain's sake than beauty's. Can't live within modernity, the squeeze of the literally digital.
Mostly straight-ahead West Weird Rock, Emotional Mugger can hardly be called buttoned-up but suggests an atypical relationship to the narcotic. Happy as I am to see the scene represented, the music's not definitional - Explicitly flies apart eventually, operates as life soundtrack in full.
The volume division is pretty clean: Tight vs. loose, album vs. jam. There are hints of the avant side of Krautrock, but really the thing reads more like interesting metal. Off the rails the skronks are free jazz anyway. Double LPs make hefty bookmarks.
Pre-"Door" the Posies sure enough need a way to find their way in. The band possesses a lot of vocal sugar, deployed across the songs fetchingly. Understand the user selections as grunge-friendly to the book canon's Britishness and it all falls into place.
TOOL are expert architects of strange temples. That much is clear when Maynard's voice resonates from behind an edifice, or we find ourselves in atria neither suited for nor inhabitable by humans. That isn't the whole record, but whether the sensory organ is ear, heart, or third eye, it sees what it sees, not polyrhythm ratios. Sex is about angles; Doesn't make it math.
Kick Drum Heart's fx are perfectly placed to do away with any lingering goodwill. With Rubin's production to pull back the veil and that downward slope, it's nice of the band to avoid becoming their own circling vultures.
While Nurture grew to not offend, it never outgrew those initial, weak artificial sounds. Overreading the feature on Unfold, it's artist typography which doesn't break up the record's energy in any way. Could go either way. The other songs cover a wide range, often slightly glitched, to uncertain ends.
The start to Peasant is slow, or at least stripped-from-modernity for a bit, but hits a full weird stride which it's then able to stick to. The characterization is less interesting than the meta-character plucking strings and sending his words out long and short. Disjointed in just the right way; Entirely in control if not under it.
Whatever my conclusions, the Hold Steady are honest about some aspect of life in this country. The quote that frames it comes from On The Road, which - fair enough - I had a similar ambiguous reaction to, preceded by anticipation. I guess there is an emotional problem, and a structural one, cooperating. Bleakness need not ruin an album concept, but it is challenging to work into the Song. And that craft arrives, tacked-on and ultimately not satisfying; not dissatisfying either. An amusical experience I'm grateful enough to have had.
Lahai sounds real nice. Somehow each and every part sits far back in the mix; Owen Pallett's name in the credits was the biggest thrill he supplied. Where the record sits between influences is clear-ish, the case young and less so.
Even after listening I have approximately no clue how to mix Dutch and the funky. Gotcha! feels the same way, and their choice to avoid certain forms of juxtaposition is probably wise.
Just short of sui generis, the music is kind to itself by getting better and even providing a sort of conclusion for itself. Even if the cop-out feels as worthless as throwing a clumsy pin, the sensation of listening is of one of the deeply ambiguous zones of the continent, which may simply be one of its arbitrary places.
When Smoke Rises is delightfully full. When All hits, the song could cap the album, but doing so would abridge the already baffling length. "Slowly grows" feels like a strange way to describe a twenty-minute disc; Nonetheless.
Welcome is nearly perfect, shyly buried in the slower tracks, notable rhotics spread all around. At nearly twenty, the artifice flakes; Some of it's bound to be admirable, though, any way through.
Live, Thee Oh Sees bury Dwyer behind walls; Recording, the same decision is made about banter as for mix. So the record becomes an exhibit of how the band's thinking: A little loose, very much with fingers. They're deep deep deep in the groove, surface weirded a little more than a studio record allows.
The cracks to Bruce as a younger man are the exceptions to the norm. No one has better control than the E Street Band over songcraft like this, and the two hours are songs stretched out unglamorous and strong. Anything without painful composition is painfully felt instead.
Hard rock is a kind of practice for the dust of Oz. Koritni lay down a respectable record here, one that stays on the road and is thus clean inasmuch as the jalopy holds together. The closing words from boozing skeletons are disarmingly encouraging: Sunlight falls on the hills outside the rotting house and friendship survives the land of the dead, I suppose.
Thin Blue Flame is epic, bona fide. The rest of Animal Years's conceit is sneakier, an approach to America which works reliably from inside or out. Instruments varied and old and new work through the tapestry of the songs, never artificial but significantly less enigmatic than Ritter's word choice.
Retrospect is easy with a crew like Alexisonfire, but this second album, consistent in gimmick, easily avoids the flash-in-a-pan label. Each track a justified variation on the multivocal multivolume setup, the LP doesn't really do anything with the softer emotional material within. Get it out there for joy and music and catharsis: Fair enough.
Misplaced Childhood certainly has a timelessness about it. The transitions are expert, with only the slightest elevation change between tracks and suites. It's nice to hear a fully pop-oriented album in this vein, committed to staying on a single LP; Without rough edges, there's little to stick in the mind, a rush of colors, a pleasant word.
Korn's debut is far stronger than the really-listed album, all off-kilter funk and less ill-advised genre blending. Funny to avoid the edgier material given that we had to hear early Eminem, but who's counting. The band's not going for faux-hip, just setting down their ideas - a bunch of 'em - with verve. The album's very close to guilty-pleasure, modulo a handful of the gimmicks.
The city pop titles are highly apropos and fairly modernized as well: The album has its hooks - Cigarette for me, evidently - and flows in its multiplicity about as well. Promising start; A shame to look back on the band and see, I assume, the pandemic gap bite and bite hard.
Blue is a kind of self-conscious indie record before its time; Not surpassing that, it gets points for creativity. The songs refuse to lock in place and the universality is first-order. Bad move: sacrifices almost all of it. I can easily imagine it as one's first Beautiful South record, don't have to imagine in fact.
Funeral Dress rides and dies in dissolution. A debut record clearly the product of a single band, the use of different voices suggests theft or war. There's just enough noise to still play on the radio, enough discomfit to turn away a few. Obviously fine American rock.
Ha-ha-funny band proves that power-pop is sincerely packable. The quality of music never drops off as such; It's not the kind of album to maintain interest across all eighteen; Neither does the record come off as one of deep cuts.
My ears met Thirlwell in more literally cinematic environs. Scraping the 90s, this record demonstrates craft and remains a particularly accessible instance of dark cabaret aesthetics. Implied are the traditional industrial obsessions and a wide embrace of the musical non-traditional. Stylish and an odd companion, lacks the raw impact of certain contemporaries.
One of the great virtues of the list is the blacklight on my simple enjoyment of this brand of music. Certainly, the Arctic Monkeys follow through on the promise of the beginning better, but the blend ends up perfectly rocking. A little shiny-atavistic turn, fair fair.
I'm more than happy to add a real-time concept to the project, though the implications of the four-o-clock hour are unclear. Waters operates very much in the singular-theme prog mode, with welcome Americana.
The earlier tracks are better exemplars. And the gecs are producers par excellence; 10,000 is closer to a sizzle reel than an album in length and breadth. Not here does wider genre play translate to a superior sophomore effort.
The dance-rock goodness clearly goes back right to the early 2000s. It's all here: accented vocals, bit of irony, hooks piled on crunchy hooks. At fifty minutes, the LP starts to fold over itself entirely uncalculated. Lyrics are functional in very much the same way.
Sufjan's voice admits no good material analogy; Carrie & Lowell, though, reflects the age-delicacy of its subject matter. Deeply contemporary as it's deeply Christian, the album is a personal hymnal that demands a kind of community. Its earworms are themes as well as tunes.
Seger's project sounds like television, not the high art kind but a deserved classic. While you can taste the Los Angelefication, classics outweigh gloss. Nine tracks can interact fairly simply, and still fill a record out.
"Awaken" forces a decision: Meaning or pleasant sounds? It's a weird choice in a tradition where flimsy concept ought to be granted. The album is more of a door than a destination; It's also middle-loaded. Rating-misgivings aside, it sounds great.
There's a level of camp which, even late, produces no cringe. Here it's birthed by relentless funk baselines and no sense of seriousness. Glancing nautical punk is as satisfying as always, a genre to raid ships for notes without making them the Point. Band stays pretty tight, harmonic language and vocals are reasonably varied, what's not to like in this slightly-not-music?
The guitar inclusions are this record's highlights. The rest of the music is soulful and, as a body, directionless. Nothing sticks out as bad just as nothing sticks together. Forgettable for non-blues-heads.
Gold-standard AOR of its time, hard rock style surrendered totally to a pop LP costume. Squier even feels like a character, playing what he says instead of believing it. The few peaks are nicely packaged in their respective songs.
The significance of Burt Lancaster and/or that cover is totally lost. On the other hand, just the sound - pop-rock, slightly beachy, with just-incongruous vocals - works well. The Hombres don't demand much space; There can always be room for light punned tunes.
Speaking of beachy... The B-52's followup leans toward post-punk and is better for it. This planet lacks some dimensionality; It's also appropriately short. A stumbling dance with the necessary edge of the ridiculous.
The new crop of post-punkers tend to create impossible - audio-only, that is, not Escher - spaces and Savages are no exception. Silence Yourself is bicameral, two half-albums fairly. The first has plenty of room to grow as the second turns personal. Anthems to shout along to, with a mix that cuts the texture open to expose the vocals. Quite an intense listen by the end.
Transatlanticism may not have the hits I recall, but it's immediately a standout object. Death Cab's writing - lyrical and melodic - is as always, and the music lines sit in the weird middle ground between Gibbard's voice and the low end. That makes them not quite basslines, not quite jangle pop. Déjà vu guitar lines, thematizing time and its loss.
All kinds of people make a world indeed; Multiply by time and you might arrive at the Burning Hell proximate Norse sagas. That is, I was primed for People: A little knowledge of the band, a little preparation for a highlight if not the highlight. The music here ranges, though it stays objectively on the twee side. The band takes to its loose concept, weaving stories into something more than novelty. Outlook's only a little world-weary. Strangeness-in-form is appropriate to the time, and looks backward to the more-weird.
The reading on Afraid of Sunlight deceives. The production is lush, sure; At the same time, the record starts with three reasonably different productions then slides into diet U2 space. Nothing wrong with that; The vocals only get a little bit annoying on the second half and the sound is entirely appropriate for a wistful radio-prog venue. It's not an affect to dazzle. Doubling down on variety or majesty would have, ironically, produced a more dynamic listen.
Home Sweet Home's a generous and simple slice of cake, and not just because there's one in my fridge I regret not ordering for myself. Kano flows over quite a few decades, stamping them with titular locational flair without trying the capital-letter concept emboss in a debut. The LP, then, basically bounces with energy, reasonably in-time. A promising baseline that really does stay fresh for the hour: Nice bonus decision.
Gemstones brings much silliness, in a fashion that reads as trying hard much of the time. On the other hand, craft also implies just-long-enough songs and packing-it-in. Head-raising moments keep the record interesting; The content and extent could hit or miss. More of the latter than I like.
Harlequin-act albums tend to require a turn somewhere to save the length, and Re's arrived around La pinta. This is an - emphasize - happy member of the too-many-ideas club, a maximalist piece which inspires emotional understanding while resisting the mathematical form. The balancing feat promises new highlights each spin around.
The Society made the call to copy the studio not the beach and kept the lushest brand of pop alive into the millennium. Lyrical referents are twee and local, rounding out the record and making the package feel a bit overstuffed.
A fading ending cops out, but also leaves the taste for the record just experienced. Nightbirds is entirely tight, even the most simply joyful moments retain a psychedelic spark. The record has plenty of momentum compared to its peers, with less telos or center. Name aside, though, a plural center is the right configuration for this band.
Many good vinyl records will reveal some of their character to the light at a lucky angle. Dynamic range allowed by plastic and managed by master becomes texture; Formal boundaries unevenly stripe. Piñata has the organic protrusions of that kind of object, thanks I think to Madlib. Gibbs swaggers over the beats, but he doesn't show up in the skits as some kind of character. Thus, it's a record - and not a short one! - in a totally classic mode, still the right amount of surprising, a true collaboration.
Whatever else there is to say about Goat, the "there comes" is rendered as literally as it possibly can be in stereo. The band's affect is rather blunt, though vocal insanity and hypnotic melody lines are also in evidence. Bonus tracks contribute to one evaluation and not another: The Jesus Lizard seems to track back over the pop songs in their midst before releasing music full-formed. The band sounds fascinating; This particular record is less-favored by my snap judgement.
Igorrr in this list is a brilliant placement; First exposure to the project conveys a distinctly non-album impression that emphasizes the pitfalls of the compositional approach. At length, the music succeeds where contemplation of Baroque music and its place in modern ears fails. Savage Sinusoid bets everything on the technology-afforded maximal. Unfortunately, the bricks of the final stretch are less than placed. Music is immediate; It also can create multiple layers of impression; This album tries pressing every button at once.
The double album's plenty going for it technically, but the core will remain melodrama. I read Gang of Youths as an alternate exvangelical strand: Identification with the music is the price of admission to it. While I want to see the project as perfect again, seams do show at this age. Uneven weighting isn't in conversation with the nods to Lacan; The end is the same basic idea as the beginning; The only place to contemplate is the same loud register. For all eighty minutes, though, strings tug on strings and the clichés are universal enough to avoid the trite.