This album is super important for what it is and also what it isn't. What it is is one of the most pure distillations of prog rock and rock's musical excesses (if not necessarily the chemical excesses). But its overwritten, ornate Baroqueness helped to inspire punk music as a reaction against this brand of complex-for-the-sake-of-complex tryhard bullshit. Prog and punk happen to be my two favorite subgenres, so this one is extra meaningful to me. Beloved for three perfect songs (out of a possible three, hah!), if not any semblance of brevity. One more thing before I hit submit: early on in the title track there is a happy, sweet guitar melody that could have been a lead on a Queen song. Much later the same motif returns as a more sinister and dissonant version with ugly-sounding harmonics from a ring modulator. It's fuckin sick and it demonstrates my favorite joke about prog rock. If you don't like what you're hearing, wait five minutes.

"So Real" is pretty good at least.

This album is super important for what it is and also what it isn't. What it is is one of the most pure distillations of prog rock and rock's musical excesses (if not necessarily the chemical excesses). But its overwritten, ornate Baroqueness helped to inspire punk music as a reaction against this brand of complex-for-the-sake-of-complex tryhard bullshit. Prog and punk happen to be my two favorite subgenres, so this one is extra meaningful to me. Beloved for three perfect songs (out of a possible three, hah!), if not any semblance of brevity. One more thing before I hit submit: early on in the title track there is a happy, sweet guitar melody that could have been a lead on a Queen song. Much later the same motif returns as a more sinister and dissonant version with ugly-sounding harmonics from a ring modulator. It's fuckin sick and it demonstrates my favorite joke about prog rock. If you don't like what you're hearing, wait five minutes.

I definitely prefer eclectic genre-shuffling upbeat Beck (Odelay, Guero) to Sadboi Breakup Beck (Sea Change) but this is still really darn good!

The best

OK we get it, you're a sadboy.

The androids find life, love, and oblivion all at once.

US version with Paint it Black, but I'd probably give the same rating to the UK version. Hard to rate because there's some truly great garage rock and bluesy songs on here with some genuinely interesting instrumentation, and also some of the nastiest misogyny I've encountered on this journey. It probably deserves a strong 4 on musical merit and a 1 for Mick being (at best) a pissy little emotional abuser who was mad that his girlfriend wasn't choking him the way Brian Jones' girlfriend was.

This is probably my favorite album of the last 15 years, and I don't say that lightly. Kendrick is the best lyricist working today and this is his finest work in that area by far. My favorite tracks on this are "i", "Wesley's Theory", and "How Much a Dollar Cost", but the quality is so consistent across the nearly hour and a half album that I'll probably pick a different three the next time I listen.

Also highly recommend Mdou Moctar if you like this stuff!