User Albums Journey
Exploring beyond the book, one album at a time
401
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3.35
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1960s
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Soul
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6
5-Star Albums
1
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You Love More Than Most
Albums you rated higher than global average
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eye | 5 | 2.68 | +2.32 |
| The Best of The Hot 5 & Hot 7 Recordings | 5 | 3.35 | +1.65 |
| Nail | 4 | 2.42 | +1.58 |
| Excitable Boy | 5 | 3.43 | +1.57 |
| Pony Express Record | 4 | 2.51 | +1.49 |
| World Of Echo | 4 | 2.52 | +1.48 |
| Sing To God | 4 | 2.52 | +1.48 |
| For Emma, Forever Ago | 5 | 3.55 | +1.45 |
| Watch Out! | 4 | 2.62 | +1.38 |
| We Rock Hard | 4 | 2.64 | +1.36 |
You Love Less Than Most
Albums you rated lower than global average
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|
5-Star Albums (6)
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Popular Reviews
Yoko Ono
1/5
I am pretty firmly in the camp that Yoko Ono has gotten a bum rap from a lot of quarters, and deserves recogition as an important artist in her own right.
However.
This largely sucks and I'm not going to hedge that with any mealy-mouthed codicils to protect my art sophistication cred. Unmitigated vocal vomit and the music is mostly lazy blues inflicted rock and dull prog noodling. My inclination was to rate it 2 stars... right up to the nearly 1,400 second decanting of diarrhea into my ears that was Fly, at which point I decided it would receive my first one star rating. I normally feel kind of bad bagging on people's offerings to this list but I'm pretty sure anyone who claims to like this will view my disdain for it as a badge of honor. Though I also entertain the possibility that it was actually added as an intentional act of aural terrorism... in which case touché I guess.
15 likes
Nuyorican Soul
4/5
This one is my upload pick, so obviously I like it a lot. I Am the Black Gold of the Sun/It's Alright, I Feel It are among my favorite things in music. I'll allow that it is a little uneven, with some dull patches, and that in its eclecticism it doesn't totally come together as a unified album. Still a ton of iconic music that has found its way into a whole lot of samples and remixes.
12 likes
Koritni
3/5
Well executed hard rock, but I couldn't really find anything special in it. This is a sound that was more or less settled in the 1980s, and no particular innovation here 30 years on. Similarly the lyrics are perfectly functional and fit to purpose but pretty meathead.
7 likes
TOOL
4/5
This is, I think, the 4th TOOL album on the Finishers Club list and I know, the people who love them just really love them, but give it a rest please. Dig up something obscure, everybody knows TOOL exists. I've got nothing new to say about this music.
Having written all that before actually listening to this I'm compelled to address that I think this is my favorite offering from this band so far. Overly long and with some material towards the end I found to be self-indulgent twaddle but I'll even boost it an extra star for taking things to some interesting places lyrically, vocally, and musically.
7 likes
4/5
Kind of primed to dislike this - the overlong, cryptic title and whimsical pencil sketch cover art. But I liked most of it and some very much. A vocal style I feel is kind of limited, though it held surprisingly well up at considerable length. A lot of the music was kind of nondescript folk guitar, but some really interesting stuff interspersed. Lyrics were the strongest point to me evwn if theybdid get a little too cute at times. Overall felt the good very much outweighed the merely OK.
7 likes
1-Star Albums (1)
All Ratings
Neutral Milk Hotel
4/5
In the post folk lo-fi kind of world this is minor royalty and I own it and like it a lot. I can see where some will find it pretty intolerable, and I've slammed entries in different genres for similar issues - the affected singing style and baroque and cryptic lyrics. But it works for me.
Men I Trust
3/5
I think I get the concept - kind of ultra-smoothed down, edgeless pop. But although I'm assuming the sound is intentional, I had a hard time hearing much of the production as anything other than extremely muddy. The extended sections that sounded uncannily like the cheap department store cassettes I used to own in the dozens as a teen - when they started to wear out - were a particular slog. Still, I was wondering over by several songs.
The Postal Service
4/5
Heard about this one a lot and some of the songs but never actually sat and listened to through. It mostly lived up to the hype for me, musically engaging and lyrically interesting.
Garbage
3/5
Garbage has mostly seemed like straight ahead rock and roll - good and I don't mind listening to it, but I'm not sure it was distinguished by much more than syle.
Switchfoot
3/5
Strong Pearl Jam vibes, particularly in the vocals which are delivered sincerely but a little lacking in emotional range. I liked it well enough but didn't feel like it brought anything particularly notable to its grunge/heavy rock genre.
Type O Negative
3/5
Kinda peak self-important Goth, so dark, so serious. I don't mind it as music, though.
Angelo De Augustine
3/5
Started out strong for me (definitely in my wheelhouse as a Bon Iver, Sufijan Stevens fan) but feel like he doesn't find enough range and it all sort of fades together. The vocals only come in one tone and temperature and the music is so understated as to almost vanish at times.
Cluster
2/5
Couldn't come around on this one, just synthesizer noodling.
Steven Wilson
4/5
Someone I'd never heard of, and really interesting. A lot of Prog DNA but shades form Rush to CSN&Y. Didn't do a ton for me lyrically but they did the job.
The Weeknd
3/5
I enjoyed this, but it's hard not to compare it to similar-vein greats like Prince and find it lacking.
Jimmy Buffett
3/5
I don't know that I ever sat down and listened through a Jimmy Buffet album before and it was a congenial experience. Not really my genre but he definitely carves his own niche somewhere along the axis of Country and Southern Rock.
Susanne Sundfør
4/5
This odd phenomenon of Scandanavians sounding like some variety of American pop singers... still I liked this a lot, other than the spoken word bits that felt a little pasted on and pretentious to me.
Dave Matthews Band
3/5
I haven't actually listened to much of this group, aside from the singles that hit true cultural saturation. I always felt the purist hate Matthew's sometimes attracted was unnecessary, though I will allow the particular affectation of his vocal style wears very thin for me at length. This went wierder and darker than Id have expected, both to its benefit.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor
4/5
I knew this band name but I can't remember why. It's always encouraging that something this wierd can exist and even thrive. I don't know I'd pull this our every day but listening was a worthwhile experience.
Weezer
4/5
Weezer gets some hate but 30 years on I have to say the hits hold up (as insubstantial as entries like the Sweater Song are) and the deeper tracks on this aren't filler. Solid Pop.
Kaizers Orchestra
4/5
As always with music in a language I can't speak I feel limited in judging it. Are these lyrics rad or super dumb? Who knows? (Norwegians). I liked the sound anyway, interesting elements of rockabilly and even surf.
First Aid Kit
3/5
More Norwegian country/folk with the signers sounding remarkably like they came out of the American Midwest. An enjoyable listen, though the lyrics came across a little clunky for me.
Frank Zappa
3/5
My usual issues with Zappa- you can't argue with the musical ability but it fails to engage me at some emotional level. I'm happy to accept my sonic palate is insufficiently refined for it. The writing is so unserious though, but not quite hitting the true quill craziness of similar acts like Captain Beefheart at their best.
THE SPORTS
3/5
New to me. Stylistically kind of all over the map - I found all of it reasonably enjoyable buy as an album it didn't quite come together.
Haley Heynderickx
3/5
I liked this. It felt to me like the product of an artist still in formation, but a lot of talent and potential. I think she would benefit from some collaborators to fill out the sound.
Chucklehead
4/5
I liked this pretty well, I think it needed some slower jams to round it out. Even the mellower stuff had a pretty frenetic pace. Extra point for ending so strongly though, the last song is a banger.
Ty Segall
3/5
I liked this better than I expected to given the genre descriptors (garage + noise being a Venn intersection I rarely enjoy). It did descend into the side of noise rock I find less tolerable toward the last couple of tracks.
blink-182
3/5
I don't think I ever listened to this band at length before. I've got nothing against this, it's fast, it's polished. Whenever I tuned into the lyrics they seemed pretty superficial.
Bran Van 3000
4/5
Something new to me and definitely worthy. Something of a mixed bag - start out with Curtis Mayfield and you've set an awfully high bar - but all interesting, all worth hearing.
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
3/5
Interesting and fairly unique, some of it gave me Stereolab vibes. A little repetitious in tone though maybe that's supposed to be more design than flaw given the idea that it is meant to be one continuous loop.
The Lumineers
3/5
I didn't dislike this but it didn't really distinguish itself for me from a lot of similar neo-old timey acts.
Tally Hall
3/5
A little too high of a quirk factor for me, about consistent for a band with two ukulele credits. I'm also not convinced many of the lyrics meant much of anything, though I'm willing to entertain I'm too dumb or too lazy to figure them out. I can't fully trash it given the high technical acumen on display and I didn't hate it or anything.
Sparks
3/5
Solid entry in the electronica/disco vein, very much of its era. The more theatrical presentations aren't really my thing but I can appreciate it.
Childish Gambino
4/5
Started on the fence with this, feeling like it might be mostly derivative, and if the lyrics were saying all that much, fast and failed though the flow might be. By the final triptych I'd it had brought me around though.
Louis Armstrong
5/5
What's there to say, really: it's iconic for a reason. Peerless in its style and genre.
3/5
Pretty solid alt rock, but didn't rise particularly above the pack for me.
Protomartyr
3/5
Noisy post-punk rock with aggressively muttery vocals, I didn't hate it but found it hard to really focus in.
Stromae
3/5
Starting out I was feeling this activated my main gripe with so much on the kind of EDM spectrum in that I just find the music boring. It grew on me throughout the album though and finished strongly. As always being unable to appreciate the lyrics due to my language barrier makes it hard to fully assess.
Extrechinato y Tu
3/5
I've often written on this list about the challenge of albums in languages I don't speak, a whole dimension of the music lost. It's almost worse in Spansish, the closest I get to a second language, but nowhere near fluently enough to get more than a fraction of this fast paced and presumably heavily idiomatic writing. It sounded good anyway. The music ran a gamut - I liked a lot of it very well but there were also a lot of pretty cliché rock chops in there.
Garmarna
3/5
Interesting, I think I was expecting something more traditionally folky sounding, this had a definite modern framing. I enjoyed it but I kind of all sounded the same?
Jellyfish
4/5
I remember this (and the preceding album) being big for a while in my college radio scene in its original era (just to date myself). Hearing it now I'm not sure I'd ever actually listened to it. Not sure what I was expecting- typical alt rock of the 90s I guess- and this definitely isn't that. The kind of cabaret glam vibe isn't generally my thing but this is objectively good, if maybe a little derivative of its influences.
Status Quo
3/5
Seemed like pretty straight-ahead blues-adjacent rock of its era. Is it the real foundational stuff better known acts are actually derivative of? Somebody knows, not me. Some interesting musical detours among the standard blues with extra drums and distortion. Lyrics nothing to merit much attention.
Amadou & Mariam
4/5
Really liked this. Eclectic but centered, I wish I could understand the language but beautifully sung regardless.
King Tubby
3/5
I don't feel like I have a very knowledgeable or sophisticated ear for dub and reggae but even I can tell this is the real original business of this era. I felt like it lost me in the back half with its many stripped down, mostly instrumental pieces and heavy-handed reverb and delay effects.
Alex Cameron
3/5
Found this a little perplexing... the sort of 80s yacht rock/new wave feel of the music, periodically jarring in combination with the casually profane lyrics. Not the strongest singer, though his vocals get the job done. It was unique, I didn't dislike it, but I'm not sure it's something I'd seek out.
John Mayer
3/5
I would listen to any of this any time without complaint. I do think he puts his limitations on display in the cover of Bold as Love. In spite of having by many measures a better overall signing voice, he just can't match the emotion and subtle inflection Hendrix brought to the original. Likewise Mayer's perfectly competent, serviceable lyrics don't have anything to match the wild imagination of Anger's "shiny metallic purple armor". Very good, but a little basic.
Procol Harum
4/5
I don't listen to Procol Harum a lot but when I do I'm always struck by how singular the sound is. Nothing else quite like it. Lyrically very interesting as always.
Maldita Vecindad Y Los Hijos Del 5to. Patio
4/5
Very interested in the blend of influences like punk and Ska in a Mexican idiom. Was even able to pick up a fair amount of the lyrics with my mediocre Spanish, a rare treat with these non-English selections.
Fontaines D.C.
3/5
Post-punk hit a whole lotta years before 2019 and I'm not sure this is bringing anything much new to the table. The music was decent, the lyrics interesting, but I had a hard time getting past the vocals - that nearly monotone UK Oy Oy Oy yawp.
Madvillain
4/5
DOOM fan going a long way back (thanks to my brother, as is the case with almost all my hip hop exposure), but I'd actually only heard bits and pieces of this. The density and intricacy of lyrics makes it a tough nut to crack without repeated listening as usual but great regardless.
Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera
4/5
Another interesting band from this era and strata of English rock I'd never heard of. There was a lot of it in this album and I thought it was a little patchy and all over the map stylistically, but the best of it was very good.
Ian McDonald
3/5
I'm generally a King Crimson fan but my reaction to this was fairly lukewarm. I didn't dislike it, it had some solid high points but also some places where it lost me entirely.
Phish
3/5
Never actually listened to any Phish at length. I've got nothing against this, solid jam-bandy rock, and some interesting material in the lyrics.
blink-182
3/5
There was a blink-182 album on the official list and I feel like that was a sufficient amount. Why not pony up some less mainstream post punk material, something in the vein of Operation Ivy or Bad Religion I hadn't heard of already? Aside from that I certainly don't hate this - musically it is very adept, the lyrics are serviceable if not particularly deep. A surprising amount of it is pretty standard love or breakup songs, and the title and cover photo are kind of the edgiest thing about it.
3/5
A lot of talent here (cut depressingly short from following the Wiki links), but the music really lost me as it went on, a sort of glam-industrial Electronica that just isn't for me.
Chromatics
3/5
I liked this pretty well in its solider moments. The cover of Running Up That Hill did highlight the limitations in the singing. Serviceable but no Kate Bush. And then there were some extended intervals of really intolerable BS noise.
Jóhann Jóhannsson
4/5
I liked this a lot, neo-classical electronic in the vein of Meredith Monk.
Nuyorican Soul
4/5
This one is my upload pick, so obviously I like it a lot. I Am the Black Gold of the Sun/It's Alright, I Feel It are among my favorite things in music. I'll allow that it is a little uneven, with some dull patches, and that in its eclecticism it doesn't totally come together as a unified album. Still a ton of iconic music that has found its way into a whole lot of samples and remixes.
INXS
4/5
First of the user-selected albums I was really surprised was not on the official list (though I think the band did feature there, presumably in an album more favored by the critics than the hoi polloi). This isn't all killer but it's all good, and what is killer are some pretty damn iconic rock hits.
The Posies
3/5
Another band recalled from my college radio days of the early to mid-90s, that I'd completely forgotten about. Surprised to discover the stuck around so long, only to be Me-Too-ed out of existence. Found most of this inoffensive but not that impressive, kind of a slacker, grunged-up Byrds vibe with pretty weak singing. The last song is very strong though.
Bad Religion
4/5
Getting hit hard with the college radio days nostalgia lately. I actually saw them touring this album at First Avenue in Minneapolis - opening act none other than pre-breakout, scrappy up-and-comer punk band Green Day. I always like Bad Religion, my only objections being the range of their sound is a little narrow (always solid but kind of much the same) and Graffin's lyrics sometimes sacrifice lyricism for smarty-pantsness.
Amon Düül II
3/5
I feel like I'm always struggling with this Krautrock whether it is actually self-satire. I liked this OK and some of it very well but a little too much faffing around for me.
Pedro The Lion
3/5
I couldn't get past the consistent downbeat tone of gloom. It needed some variety to move the down around. I could see myself being into it in some moods - but I wasn't in that mood yesterday.
Tame Impala
3/5
No real objection to this other than like most music that is entirely produced by a single person, there is a manufactured feel to it - lacking something of the dynamic energy of the a collective effort. I'd be interested in hearing some live versions with his touring group.
TOOL
3/5
Never a big Tool fan... Maybe that staticky ancient com system microphone voice wasn't a huge cliché back in 1996, along with many other kind of hacky dark rock tropes. Not terrible, not half bad really but not something I need a lot of in my life.
Sublime
3/5
I like Ska, though I don't choose to listen to it a lot, but I've long felt like it is a kind of limited (and limiting) genre. The added punk flavoring and laid back California thing helps it break out of that mold a bit. A lot of the lyrics are pretty puerile and the political-ish stuff is laughable but it does that punk trick of refusing to wear out its welcome, and overall it lands.
Daniel Bélanger
3/5
The hitherto unknown world of platinum selling Canadian francophone pop? A little on the easy listening side though maybe if I could understand the lyrics I'd find out it's hard AF. I liked it pretty well overall.
Rachel Stevens
3/5
Very much the example of heavily produced mainstream Pop. Which is fine but not particularly, you know, special. Can this person really sing? Did they have anything to do with these lyrics or were they written by one of these teams of Swedish savants? Not quite interesting enough to bother looking into.
Earth, Wind & Fire
4/5
Just solid soul and funk, nothing to complain about here
The Decemberists
4/5
My general issue with the Decemberists has been finding them too faux old-timey and leaning too heavy on affectation and quirk. The lyrical and musical leitmotifs and harder rock edges in this album did a lot to temper those tendencies, though my eyes still rolled a bit at some of the more bombastic murder-ballady stuff.
Bon Iver
3/5
I have a great fondness for the first three releases, I kind of had stopped following at this one. Some of this seems verging at (I think intentional) self-parody, certainly it seems a rebellion of sorts. I don't hate it and like some of it pretty well but overall it doesn't quite seem fully baked. In all though I'd rather see someone forging into new territory, even if not fully successful, than circling over the same oground.
Arctic Monkeys
3/5
A band I just have not been able to get into. The lyrics are a little too clever (sometimes at the expense of metrical rationality) and too trending into "the woes of being a great big star" territory. While this neo-lounge music is a departure from what else I've heard it still didn't do a whole lot for me.
The Avett Brothers
4/5
This was one of those kinds of albums, I listened to it a ton when it came out and then it just dropped fully out of my rotation. I'd forgotten some of the interesting musical curves the deeper cuts took. Still very good.
Porter Robinson
3/5
Some interesting stuff here, but for me somewhat afflicted by the one-man-band syndrome that happens when the full product is generated electronically by a single artist. A little overly manufactured and uniform. Some collaborators and real instruments wouldn't go amiss.
Sampha
4/5
I liked this a lot, an artist I'd probably never have heard of outside this. Interesting lyrics, some unusual and subtle stuff going on with the music. Admittedly pretty arty, but we'll executes art and attracting a lot of talent. To me it was perhaps mellow and low-key to a fault, and could some faster paced intervals of funk or jazz or something elements.
The Hold Steady
3/5
I always like this band just fine but it does seem like very much a Springsteen shtick with not as talented a vocalist.
That Handsome Devil
3/5
I can see how someone could love this. It put me in mind of some of Tom Waits - that gritty burlesque - or Reverend Horton Heat (but without the frenetic rockabilly speed). It did not quite land for me, but I think that's a matter of personal taste. Certainly unique and not boring.
Richard Dawson
3/5
Something about this very reminiscent of something but what? Vic Chesnutt? Neutral Milk Hotel? Something else, something English. I wish he'd do the sound but with less of the faux old-timeyish thing in the lyrics.
Gotcha!
3/5
This was pretty good, but there is a distinct danger in wearing your influences so much on your sleeve - when those influences are absolute titans in the genre. Also not sure the hip-hop elements really added much.
Mustafa
4/5
Some strong Bon Iver vibes, which I have nothing against, and it asserts its own distinct sound. Really interesting and promising stuff.
Thee Oh Sees
4/5
Above average garage-y West Coast rock and roll from a band I hadn't listened to before. Though not universally true by any means, I feel like live rock tends to be a blunter instrument, and I may check out how the studio product compares. No complaints anyway, it was a good workout jam.
My Chemical Romance
3/5
On paper it seems like this band would be a good match to my tastes but I just can't get into them. The musicianship is good, I don't doubt they're doing just what they're intending to do, but I'm not a fan of the lyrics or singing.
Bruce Springsteen
4/5
I'm a big Springsteen fan going a long way back but interestingly I don't think I ever sat down and listened to a live album before. Found this good but not amazing, I suspect this band's lightning being of a particularly "difficult to get in a bottle" variety. Happily listened to a bunch of classics though, and the cover fragments scattered through some renditions and medley toward the end were interesting.
Alexisonfire
4/5
I cringe a little when I spot the "screamo" tag but this kept a decent balance, seemed like just solid hard-core to me.
Koritni
3/5
Well executed hard rock, but I couldn't really find anything special in it. This is a sound that was more or less settled in the 1980s, and no particular innovation here 30 years on. Similarly the lyrics are perfectly functional and fit to purpose but pretty meathead.
Josh Ritter
4/5
A little on the fence on this one. Well crafted and performed but to me dull in parts. The stronger material sustained it though.
Boy Azooga
3/5
Solid, energetic indie pop - nothing particularly groundbreaking but I listened happily and would again.
Korn
2/5
Way too edgelord for me. They certainly rock hard but whole lyrical package is super skeeze.
Marillion
4/5
Heavy Pink Floyd vibes (a little too much if I'm finding faults) and that operatic, declamatory vocal style wears thin for me - but it pulled out from that as it went along, and the music overall was strong and inventive enough to bring me around.
They Might Be Giants
3/5
Never a big fan of this group, though some of my college friends were, and so I heard a whole lot of them in the early 90s. I think we also had the science-themed kids album when my child was of an appropriate age. I liked this fine, the novelty act aspect toned down a lot, clearly they've settled into a solid workable sound. Nothing here really reached out and grabbed me personally but I would listen to more without complaint.
The Beautiful South
4/5
I liked this pretty well, interesting lyrics. The music was very competently performed, a little too soft a touch for me though, it needed some more edge and texture.
Scraping Foetus off the Wheel
4/5
I kind of expected to hate this but found it to be very good and interesting. Misses a top rating for me because I just really couldn't get into the vocals.
Courteeners
3/5
Serviceable rockalong jams but kind of low on variety throughout.
Wussy
4/5
Not sure this adds much musically to 90s era indie rock sound, but it's solid, and gains point for variety and the effectiveness of the dual vocals.
Roger Waters
3/5
I listened to The Wall a ton in a certain phase of life and the similarity of vibe with this sort of overshadowed it as a standalone object. This more pedestrian lyrical material doesn't suit that operatic sound so well as The Wall's tour through history, politics, conformity and madness (the fact that it's become one of my least favorite phases of Pink Floyd overall doesn't help). There are some strong moments but it didn't quite gel for me. I don't regret having listened to it though.
100 gecs
3/5
Amiable frenetic pop with all modern trimmings. The reviews led me to expect something a little more over the top. The dopiness of some of the lyrics detracted from the overall quality for me.
Bloc Party
4/5
Pretty interesting. A bit much of that British post-punk vocal affect that I just don't dig, but at least quite a bit of variety in the vocals.
Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band
4/5
Classic-est of Classic Rock. I can't help but feel a little that the Muscle Shoals R&B rock sound was SO dialed in it renders things a touch generic, especially in the deeper cuts. But I can't drag too hard on something with this many iconic classics of the era/style.
Childish Gambino
4/5
I'm a fan of Glover in general but sometimes feel like the music trends to style over substance, though maybe I haven't given the lyrics sufficient scrutiny. And the style is very stylish indeed.
Sufjan Stevens
4/5
Huge Sufjan Stevens fan going way back and no complaints with this offering. Very understated but of course that suits the material.
Primus
3/5
Heard to a lot of this around when it came out, courtesy of bass-playing college friends. Primus always came off a little too stunt-act for me, though with that Zappa complication of doing it all with extremely competent musicianship. Maybe a little more tolerable to me as their lyrical shtick had more of Beefheart's madcap zany energy than Zappa's aggressive absurdist sneer (the rather serious American Life coming in as something of a non-sequitur amidst it all). The vocals don't do much of anything for me though, and now, as then, I find it overall a little exhausting.
Billy Squier
3/5
This is so utterly exemplary of this era/genre/vibe, yet none of these hit me as true instant-recognition ubiquitous hits. It's all just too played out for me to be into it much. Nothing against it but I don't really need to listen to any more of this kind of music for this lifetime.
The Marcus King Band
3/5
A very amiable listen. Some interesting things going on musically - while country rock influences like Skynyrd and Allman Brother were evident, I detected shades of Zeppelin, Eagles, even Steely Dan in some of the jazzier sections. The lyrics, though functional, were kind of basic and leaned heavily into cliché.
Hombres G
3/5
Fine, but didn't particularly grab me. Not getting much out of the lyrics with my very rusty high school/college Spanish. Otherwise the music seemed like pretty straightforward pop, and I wasn't a big fan of the lead singer's vocal stylem
The B-52's
4/5
Introduced to this band in the early 80s, again courtesy of my brother's precocious (for growing up in a small Midwest town pre-internet) musical tastes. I guess this is considered part of New Wave, though they have always seemed like a genre unto themselves to me. The heavy affectation of the male vocals is the kind of thing I usually complain about and I guess it's what's worn thinnest for me. But it holds up, the unabashed wierdball lyrics over engaging lyrics jangly mutated pop rock.
Savages
4/5
Never heard of this and came in with no expectations (or maybe low expectations sheerly on the genre label: a lot of "post punk" is not to my tastes). But I liked it a lot. The influences come thick and diverse, but it manages to stay ahead of becoming just a pastiche or mash-up. The lyrics were a little too uniformly Dark and Serious.
Death Cab for Cutie
3/5
Always aware of this band as a thing without any sense of what they're about or sound like. Pretty sure I had this same experience with them with an album on the main list and clearly didn't make an impression that stuck. It's decent music but it feels too studio-assembled to me, layered and sweetened and punched up into the typical post-rock sonic sludge. Happy to listen to it but it just doesn't leave a lasting imprint.
Marillion
3/5
I think there was another album by this band, I can't recall I'd it was on the main list or contributor submitted. I also think my reaction was similar. Clearly a lot of talent here but a dominant ratio of it lands in this kind of zone... proclamatory, almost operatic vocals, music on a kind of rising swell... like it's all climax. It wore me out.
The Burning Hell
3/5
Lyrics about 2X too clever for me, and delivered in that alt-dude near monotone not quite sung style that rarely does it for me. I didn't hate it but not for me.
Café Tacvba
3/5
Definitely interesting, eclectic maybe to a fault. The vocals intermittently got on my nerves, getting into some caricaturish modes, too much nasal sawing, not enough melody.
Adam Green
3/5
Kind of actively disliked this lyrically for the most part. Sort of absurdist stream of consciousness when it wasn't being casually dirty, but not in an interesting way. Musically solid enough if frequently kind of dull. The faster, harder driving numbers worked best for me.
Kano
3/5
Good lyrics and flow - the music though felt very generic, functional but dull. Better beats and some creative use of samples could have bumped it up a star.
Mull Historical Society
4/5
Strong start, a real interesting sort of melange, though I feel like it got bogged down in the middle. Ended well though, and merits an extra point for being such a strong debut.
LaBelle
4/5
This one could easily have replaced a number of selections in the "official" list. Rock solid, soulful, tons of stellar musicianship.
The Jesus Lizard
3/5
Somewhat notorious band I've been hearing about for years but never really listened to. Seemed like pretty straightforward hard-core kinda dirt bag rock. Not completely my cup of tea but I didn't mind it at all.
Freddie Gibbs
3/5
There's an easy flow here to groove to though I lost a lot of the lyrics with the loose, mumbly rapping. The relentless crudity wore thin. I didn't dislike it but doesn't hit the standard of other Madlib collaborations like Madvillain.
Igorrr
4/5
After several years this list is still exposing me to things I'd likely not hear otherwise. Certainly interesting, not exactly my thing, and throughout I was pondering whether this was really synthesizing its various styles or just mashing them up. Worth the listen though. An extra point for being so unabashed about its wierd ouerve.
Gang of Youths
3/5
Strong Springsteen vibes, it benefitted when it diversified beyond that sound. Quite a bit of it followed kind of a monotonous vocal/metric pattern that wore thin. I liked it generally but not quite great for me.
Vampire Weekend
3/5
Clever and well-executed, but I always find this band a little too precious too me (particularly with its deep inflection of that New-Yorkiest of white hipsterism).
The Upsetters
4/5
Just deep, foundational reggae.
Snarky Puppy
3/5
I enjoyed this, it seemed well-executed though I'm not much of a judge of jazz quality. As always with heavily improvisational jazz it drifts sometimes into what feels like kinda just busy noodling, but I might just be a low brow.
Hikaru Utada
3/5
Very pop, with that particular Japanese flavor. Strong vibes of watching anime opening sequences, except when she switches to the English parts you can tell that she understands what she's singing. I didn't dislike this.
Graham Parker
3/5
Representative of a very particular genre of English bloke-rock. Typically the vocals are the weakest link. An amiable enough listen but nothing really stood out for me.
Oingo Boingo
4/5
Another band with an immediately familiar name that I realized I'd absorbed zero information about previously (didn't know it was a Danny Elfman project, or that they made the Wierd Science song). Pretty solid alt-new-wave fare.
Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass
4/5
Actually have an old LP version of this to pull off the stacks. A bit of a cultural artifact but you know, all good fun.
Debbie Gibson
3/5
Wikipedia says this went triple platinum and when it came out I was smack in the middle of high school in the rural Midwest so it must have been UBIQUITOUS but I have to say nothing was really familiar - I mean the sound and style were all immediately familiar, and I certainly remember Debbie Gibson being A Thing, but none of these songs had that instant recognition factor for me like a lot of songs of similar provenance would (Walk Like an Egyptian, I Wanna Dance with Somebody, I Think We're Alone Now...).
I've got nothing against this, but nothing particularly for it either, it is highly polished white girl pop of its era. It was a very peppy jam for my evening workout. After this I listened to somel late-stage Nico, so that was a contrast.
The Alan Parsons Project
4/5
I don't want to listen to something like this every day but I miss there being stuff this wierd in the at least semi-mainstream. The musical theater/operatic bombast side by side with the rock chops and occasionally cheesy effects, all worked for me.
Valerie June
3/5
Something fully new to me, which is always nice. I sort of vacillated over whether I felt like the old timey vocal style was too much of an affectation. It seems like she probably came by it honestly and I ended up feeling like I generally liked it, but that it might wear thin at length. The instrumentation did the job but a lot of it felt fairly nondescript.
Robyn Hitchcock
5/5
This one meant everything to me in some stretch of the middle 1990s. I'm sure Hitchcock's peculiar arch-wierdery will not be for everyone. But for me, in a narrow alt-rock genre, it is about perfection, and in my opinion Hitchcock's masterpiece.
The Tragically Hip
4/5
Another band with a very familiar name that I don't recall ever really listening to, though I must have crossed paths with them given their era's intersection with my college radio days. I liked this, alt rock in somewhat in the vein of Hüsker Dü or Trip Shakespeare. It's got a bit of that male alt-rock vocal issue, but overall better than most.
MF DOOM
4/5
Always down with some St. DOOM. This is pretty much pure fun.
The War On Drugs
3/5
Reminded of this line in Neuromancer about a character's plastic surgery-constructed face being a "blandly handsome blend of pop faces". Didn't really find the added value on its influences for me. I did listen to it at length without particular complaint. Not one of those songs needed to be longer than 4 minutes, though.
Freestylers
4/5
Very late 90s UK break beat fare, and enjoyable listen though as typically with this kind of thing I find the repetetiveness wears thin at length. Guest artists and some credible rapping kept it on the brighter side of that flaw for me.
Ani DiFranco
3/5
Recall this being huge in its scene in the mid 90s which were my just-post-college era. I could never quite get past the particular perpetual relationship angst tone of all of her work. Forgot how much kind of almost rap-adjacent stuff was going on in a lot of the vocals, a common sin of those times.
Salif Keita
4/5
Couldn't find the full album readily, leaving me with an album of remixes and questionable YouTube playlists, so maybe I just got the flavor here. Kind of a broken record on the Afropop, I like it but of course can't understand any of it, so it kind of drifts into the background.
Nik Kershaw
3/5
I thought this was actually pretty wierd for what was apparently a successful pop album. New wave adjacent but kind of its own thing. I liked it OK, it was a good workout jam, but a little too far on the soft side for me and certainly dated.
Chet Baker
4/5
I could just paste in any of a half dozen of my micro-reviews of jazz albums: I like jazz but don't feel like I have the sophistication to really "get" it. I liked this. Guy had a tough life. Heroin is the worst.
3/5
This was fine but to me sounded like a whole lot of post-punk/hardcore fare (Hüsker Dü, Dinosaur Jr., Pavement and so forth) without adding much anything new.
The Mountain Goats
4/5
I'm all about Mr. John Darnielle, going way back to the mid 90s - though with the common caveat that I'm not that cool, this is another one I was introduced to by my brother. Saw him perform in a tiny bar venue in Uptown Minneapolis around '95, '96 (with Rachel Ware on bass) and just a couple years ago with the band, packing the First Avenue mainroom with an impressively cross-generational crowd from Z to X and probably a few Boomers in the mix.
The home recording on the early stuff has its charms though it is ultimately limited, and as a musician at that point his playing served its purpose but was nothing to write essays about, but as a lyricist in the modern idiom he has few peers in my opinion.
Gurrumul
4/5
Another very interesting thing I likely would never have encountered without this project. The combination of classical and traditional aboriginal signing and instruments really worked for me.
Damien Rice
3/5
I have never quite meshed with the vibe of this guy, though on paper the music mostly checks my boxes. I didn't dislike this at all but it never really grabbed me.
Joan As Police Woman
3/5
This didn't do a lot for me. I didn't dislike it but it's a female vocal style I'm not particularly inclined to and the whole chanteuse thing has never been a genre I favored.
Arthur Russell
4/5
I likes this a lot, though it was swinging the Art stick pretty hard (some numbers like The Name of the Next Song getting into full performance art territory - though I also found it pretty funny). I like it though - unabashed wierdo art, pretty ahead of its times. The artist's young death a sad coda when researching this. I'm in my 50s so I lived through it, but it can be easy to forget (now that it is mostly tamed if not outright cured... if, I suppose, you can access and afford and manage the care regimes) those bad year when AIDS was cutting a horrifying swath through a generation.
GAS
3/5
If I was dropping acid in a German forest I'm sure I would be vibing outrageously with this. Listen: minimalist art is always challenging and there are things in the visual realm anyway I feel like I developed a real regard for and pleasure in by educating myself about their deeper context. So I'm open to the possibility that there's more to this. But my experience of it was of a (admittedly, not unpleasantly) abstract monotony that quickly receded into the background of whatever I was doing.
The Amazing Devil
4/5
I liked this as music, though I remained on the fence about the sort of combination of a Folk Epic sound with twee cell-phone era romantic travail lyrics. I'll slide it an extra star for oddity and singularity.
4/5
Kind of primed to dislike this - the overlong, cryptic title and whimsical pencil sketch cover art. But I liked most of it and some very much. A vocal style I feel is kind of limited, though it held surprisingly well up at considerable length. A lot of the music was kind of nondescript folk guitar, but some really interesting stuff interspersed. Lyrics were the strongest point to me evwn if theybdid get a little too cute at times. Overall felt the good very much outweighed the merely OK.
Sunny Day Real Estate
3/5
This might be a case of having become too familiar with the descendents without ever learning about the progenitors but I couldn't pull much distinct out of this over a pretty broad swath of the post- whatever (hardcore, punk, The rockier side of new wave) - through to emo. Pretty heavy guitar rock, mumbly introspective lyrics. I didn't dislike it or anything.
Mogwai
3/5
This didn't do a lot for me. A lot of electronic noise drone ambient meandering, a lot of vocals in the "mumbling through a bad intercom" vein (and even some real stale tricks like running them backwards). I didn't hate it but I wouldn't seek more.
Killswitch Engage
3/5
I listened to this during the evening workout and the driving beat certainly kept things moving along. I don't mind some speedy guitar either but the scream-growl vocal thing just never does anything for me, and the dark-portentous lyric vibe that seems mandatory in this genre tends to make me roll my eyes. The elements of more melodic singing and lighter instrumental interludes helped with this album. At the end of the day the metalcore is just not my thing.
Mary Chapin Carpenter
3/5
Like a lot of new country this feels indistinguishable from whatever light rock/pop. Musically solid if not particularly inventive. Some of the lyrics go interesting places though.
Khruangbin
4/5
I liked the vibe and energy with this, an enjoyable listen. A lot of that noodley jazz/jam band thing that does leave me wondering how much there is really there... but I feel like I want to check out more from this band.
Stars
4/5
I liked this a lot. Musically and lyrically interesting and the play between the two vocalists really worked. The music went in some unusual directions in the back half, particularly the last few songs, which were great as individual pieces but I'm not sure quite gelled with the album as a whole.
Jai Paul
3/5
Not uninteresting, but I don't find the level of some of the accolades for this a little perplexing. It seems pretty fragmentary and unpolished to me. Admittedly I'm not the biggest fan of this sort of super-synthetic constructed music. Still happy to have been introduced to an artist I'd never heard of before.
Streetlight Manifesto
4/5
Ska has never really been my thing. Big band punk is such an peculiar, specific remit to hang a whole genre on. But even if I would not seek more of this out, it is clearly a cut above, in the composition and execution of the music and in the smart and well-constructed lyrics.
The Hold Steady
3/5
People love this band and I certainly never mind listening to the music, but I do find it overly derivative without being particularly innovative. The drunk and druggy lyrics also do very little for me at this point in my life.
Jimmy Eat World
3/5
Straight ahead modern rock, nothing wrong with that, and certainly well executed. A little too slickly constructed for my taste, and under the gloss not a huge amount of substance, lyrically or musically.
Touché Amoré
3/5
Pretty much hardcore? Well performed, and I appreciate they are taking on serious subject matter - for once appropriate to the genre's generally self-serious tone. Just not my thing though.
Crash Test Dummies
3/5
One of these where I'm torn - on one hand I believe these are talented musicians making exactly the sound they are aiming at. I just don't personally care for it. My appetite for the quirk-folk/rock subgenre has never been great. Scale-tipping demerit point for abuse of T.S. Eliot, and for the line "I wonder if my seed will find purchase in your soil".
Shania Twain
4/5
4/5
I'm a Minnesota guy so these are my people, and I always liked Low. I last saw them live in the early 2000s, actually might have been touring this album? Very sad to hear Mimi Parker's lovely voice and be reminded of her absolutely tragic, far too early death. This goddamn world.
Anaïs Mitchell
4/5
I liked this pretty well. I'm not surenit needed to be well-versed an hour, or that it brought anything much new to this well-travelled myth, antlers it was leaning on Tom Waits pretty heavily throughout. But the music was very nice and it generally held up.
Pink Floyd
3/5
As Pink Floyd (who I like) goes I feel like this is one of their lighter-weight entries, though it certainly has its moments.
Calibro 35
4/5
I really liked this a lot. It hits its mark of evoking a certain kind of cinematic music. One small gripe is it came off for me a little too much like a soundtrack album - all the parts didn't quite come together as a coherent whole. But those parts are pretty sweet nonetheless.
Faith No More
4/5
This album cover and band name were immediately familiar but beyond that I could not dredge up the slightest recollection of what they were about. Nothing sounded familiar. Rooting around some greatest hits video playlists I figured out that Epic was literally the beginning and end of what I knew about Faith No More. I've got a pretty big soft spot in my heart for wierdo metal-adjacent hullabaloo so I enjoyed this. The vocal styling aren't so much my thing, but there was enough variety there that none of it became too grating. I'm not sure this needed to be a solid hour. But I'll give it an extra point for the wacky energy and operatic flair.
The Dear Hunter
3/5
I found this pretty odd, and while it was skillfully executed by clearly talented people it didn't do it for me. The tone veered from evoking the kind of classical compositions that are favored for cartoon soundtracks to kind of standard folk-tinged alternative to rock-operatic somewhere on a spectrum between Jesus Christ Superstar and Pink Floyd's The Wall. I gather there was a story but none of it got through to me, and it was very long.
Cardiacs
4/5
Always fun to see something described as polarizing in the pre-listen research and wonder which side I'll fall on. Pretty skeptical early on but it brought me around fairly quickly, and grew on me. Wielding metal tropes with real ability, plus some of the nightmare darkscape vibes of The Residents, and a gamut of broad influences. It grew on me too although in the last say fifth it was wearing on me too at significant length. Requires active listening. But thumbs up overall.
Chappell Roan
3/5
I don't consume much media outside my self-curated selections and the occasional oddball project like this, so I'd actually had minimal exposure to this artist I've been hearing so much about. After the hype I'm honestly a little surprised how much it came off for me as pretty straightforward pop. It was fine, I listened amiably enough, but it just didn't particularly distinguish itself. Lyrically yes there is racier and more societally fringe content but even there mostly it was good old fashioned 20-something dating angst.
Biffy Clyro
3/5
Never heard of this band before, seems like pretty run of the mill millennial rock with some very domesticated thrash pedigree. Didn't dislike it, didn't really stick with me.
The National
3/5
The National is one of those bands - I never find the music objectionable, all very competent. It's got that Gen-X male roots-adjacent alternative vocal thing which gets old for me and I find works better in a lower-fi, see e.g. Smog. Just fine.
Shudder To Think
4/5
Pretty cool on this originally, as it settled into a kind of vocal/music patter I thought was pretty monotonous. It grew on me though and I'll give it points for blatant wierdness and smarter than average (for musical on the hardcore spectrum) lyrics. The Atlanta Rhythm Section cover was kind of my favorite part though.
Transvision Vamp
3/5
I thought this was alright, pretty standard new wave adjacent pop of its era, more interesting lyrical choices than much of a similar vein. The apparent critical hate it got in its times seems baffling.
The Chats
3/5
Yeah, that's punk. I tend to feel like this genre said pretty much what it had to say forty-plus years ago. Still this had plenty of good-naturedly aggressive goofball energy and as usually with punk it keeps everything brief and to the point.
Harmonium
4/5
The language barrier is always a challenge, if this really had a sense of narrative scope I think that probably impeding my grasping it. As it was it seemed a bit of a prog mishmash. Bump it a point for just sfong musicianship on all fronts.
Avicii
3/5
This kind of thing doesn't generally do a while lot for me; this wasn't an exception. Pleasant enough listen, interesting range of vocalists, felt more like a compilation than a cohesive album to me.
Screaming Females
3/5
I listened a lot to bands this group toured with back in my college days so it's certainly adjacent to my tastes. I thought it was all right but the uniformly dour tone kind of dragged it down.
Kayo Dot
3/5
My first thought reading the Wiki page on this was "uh oh, John Zorn has a record label". A little too avant for me probably, with the periodic urge to declare "this is just noise". I'm willing to entertain the argument that I'm just not ready for it. And it brought me around somewhat by the end and if nothing else it wasn't dull and felt like a cohesive whole despite the dramatic shifts in tone.
The Sound
4/5
Shades of a lot of post-punk music I already liked pretty well. Dark without being gloomy. I wasn't really focused in on the lyrics and my instinct is they might be worth spending more time with. Bump it a point for the main artist's undeniable struggles.
Tori Amos
4/5
I certainly felt very familiar with this, which had to have been through various women in my life because she's not an artist I sought out. Not quite my thing, though her ability in composition, performance and lyrics is undeniable. I do feel she falls too much into a narrow vocal groove - that singsong lilt - and benefits greatly when she pushes out of that. Very strong ending to this which I always appreciate.
Vulfpeck
4/5
I don't feel like a live album is usually the best introduction to a band - they are (very rightly) playing to their crowd, who are already fully there for it. For the new listener, not yet converted, it can come off as self-indulgent, and this suffered from a fair bit of that for me. As well, the band's general schtick, the "fictional German funk band" name and some of the cuter lyrics, feel a little precious. But I can't fault the energy, the good-hearted spirit, or the musicianship (as a long-ago failure at the clarinet I'll never fail to be impressed by woodwind mastery). Extra point for pulling off credible a-capella harmony from a sold-out M.S.G. crowd. Interested in hearing what the studio work is like.
Jeff Rosenstock
4/5
Solid post punk with a muture lyrical outlook and sophisticated music for its genre. I'm a little on the fence because I feel like it started really strong then fell into a groove that while still good, didn't ever come back up to that starting level for me. On the other hand I'm a sucker for pulling off 17 songs in well under 40 minutes. What can you say, punks just work harder.
John Martyn
3/5
A very credible outing for this genre of British soul, not a record I'd encountered before though I knew ew of the artist through association. Nothing against this, but it also did not ascend any particular heights for me.
Pigeons Playing Ping Pong
3/5
The second funk jam band live album in close succession... This was just fine but quite a bit longer than I needed it to be. The lyrics were pretty lightweight and the signing was a weaker link, though not bad. High energy and I'm sure they were very fun shows.
Roky Erickson
4/5
As with with so many artists on these lists I encountered Erickson (13th Floor Elevators specifically) through tracks my brother included on mix tapes in the decade straddling the turn of the century. Laterally I encountered his newest music by way of the 2000's documentary with its rare (in the rock-n-roll walking wounded category) uplifting redemption tale. His life a real dark side contrast to the partly mythical "born on 3rd base" narrative of the Boomer generation: the authoritarian father trying to discipline him out of counterculture, followed by weaponized mental health "care", then weaponized drug laws, then that mixed up with the mental health system again, all striving after the same conformist agenda. Which broke him to a fair degree but never managed to beat the music out of him. At his most lost lows he never went all that long without putting out an album. I haven't got much into the alien and horror rock era and I'm glad to encounter it here. Mostly hit me like good old rock and roll but it has his signature flare in spades.
Charli xcx
3/5
Obviously I'm aware of what a anachronistic old curmudgeon this makes me sounded like (and hell, maybe if the shoe fits, wear it), but my heart always kind of sinks when I look at the credits of an album and only see one singer along with 17 different flavors of mixers, masterers, and engineers. As long as I'm grousing about the kids these days I'll also out serve that I have no idea how well this person can sing because everything is autotuned to hell and back. That being said, for this kind of fully programmed music this is high tier product, and with a lot of the lyrics there is something more substantial than usual there. The singing works well - to be fair in spite of my prior comment autotune can't make a bad singer good (though it can make a weak singer sound a lot stronger than they are), for all I know she may be a great singer, since the effects are clearly intentionally obvious and part of the composition. Solid material, not so much my thing.
Death
3/5
This flavor of metal just isn't my thing... instrumentally it always seems to be about speed uber alles, the vocal style does nothing to me, and the lyrics are usually so portentious and self-important. I appreciate the artistry, this represents the genre creditably, but not something I'd seek out.
Teenage Fanclub
3/5
I don't know, nothing particularly against this but I thought it was a little dull. Pop basically, nothing much to differentiate it from a U.S. band, and the vocalist not particularly strong.
The Cure
4/5
Every band has its peak and the latter day product rarely (if ever?) meets it. As a person who never remotely had "it" in the first place and still engages in creative pursuits for, you know, art's sake, I certainly can't begrudge the impulse to persist. And honestly this is pretty good - about as good as the 30 years later thing ever gets. I can vibe with the darker tone and the lament of the aging not-so-gracefully. But it gets a little gloomy at length: I miss that reeling, madcap abandon that would flash through in songs like Just Like Heaven. Extra nostalgia point for 90s college radio days memories.
Joe Cocker
3/5
Certainly conveys the sense of a fun concert. It's old-school, blues-heavy rock and roll and no complaints about that really, though none of the many covers are destined to be my favorite versions.
Operation Ivy
4/5
I heard some tracks by this band in the mid 90s, and liked it, though I did not seek out more and kind of forgot how ska- it leaned. This feels like original recipe, straight-ahead material on the hardcore/post-punk/ska spectrum. Smarter than average lyrics. I do feel like this is another one that suffers from its first song - Knowledge - being so strong that although there are tons of solid bangers after this, I didn't like anything quite as well.
Björk
3/5
Yeah, that is Björk doing her Björk thing. I respect the artist and the art but I've never been able to get that into her. The stridency of the vocals gets challenging to listen to at times. And I'm not sure I find all that much to differentiate it from the others of her albums that have made this list.
Karnivool
3/5
Interesting, new-to-me heavy/alt rock, a lot of Pearl Jam DNA, but shot through with shades running from Pink Floyd to Radiohead. Overly self-serious as this genre tends to be, but a cut above the general pack musically.
Les sheriff
3/5
The language problem as usual. Punk comes off a little strange in French, though it's not a bad fit. I didn't need an hour and ten minutes of this.
TOOL
3/5
TOOL lovers love their TOOL, and I don't mind it honestly, just solid heavy rock. As I commonly find in that genre it takes itself a little too seriously. The last item on this album also felt like a basic FU to my ears but at least it was short.
The Stooges
3/5
Strucknas I was the last time I listened to Stooges (also through this project) by how clearly it slots into the blues to rock to punk continuum... from Muddy Water to Stones to Sex Pistols and honestly, musically more akin to the former entries. Punk attitude and sensibility preceeded punk music? Probably not any kind of fresh revelation, my knowledge of pop music history has no sophistication.
Anyway... pretty slack and sloppy, the recording/mix quality doesn't do it a lot of favors and doesn't give much sense of a live show other than Pop's constant sparring with the audience. I can recognize it as an important proto-punk artifact but I definitely didn't need near an hour and a half of it.
Margot & The Nuclear So And So's
3/5
Very much in a particular genre what we used to just all alt rock and now always seems to require a handful of genre descriptions. The brainchild of some hipster intellectual, probably gen-xer? Maybe early millennial, has a chip on his shoulder in the interview arena about the scope of his success and recognition, of course a dude, lot of drama in the band/label department... it comes with a vocal style that's serviceable but to me gets dull at length.
For all that some pretty interesting things came in musically around the last third. I'm on the fence but intrigued enough I think I will check out the other, what I gather to be the band's preferred version (? if I read the Wikipedia page right) version of this material.
Joe Jackson
4/5
A familiar (though for me kind of forgotten) album that in my opinion could have bumped several entries on the "official" list. Slight objections to a bit too much of a cynical bite to many of the lyrics, and for ending on a kind of subdued note. Still, great music, great singing, smart and funny lyrics.
Titus Andronicus
3/5
Another of these regional indies that never quite broke through. GBV and Pavement adjacent but with more hardcore and post-punk DNA. A little over-clever for me and longer than it needs to be but I generally enjoyed it.
Nightwish
3/5
As "Metal" goes, I have to say this comes across a little Disneyfied. I didn't hate it and it is executed with great competence, but too highly polished, any edge sanded a little too thoroughly down.
Bob Mould
4/5
Gen X college radio hour again... I owned this on CD and listened to it near obsessively in the early 90s for something like half a year, then not much after that. I think i sold it at some point. At this late date I find some of it has that flattened affect I often see in the single artist production album, a product I think of too uniform a point of view. But I still liked it very well. Fort Knox, King Solomon and Thumbtack remain two of my favorite things in this genre of music.
HELLYEAH
3/5
Pretty much what I'd expect from a metal supergroup of this provenance. Nothing particularly new but solid fare in this idiom, a good driving beat for the evening workout and about the length I'm up for in this genre.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor
3/5
We'll it's got that overly long pretentious title thing which I generally consider a bad sign but I actually liked it a lot, up until the fourth act which went full arthouse wankery, and not the interesting kind.
Modest Mouse
3/5
This eariler stuff feels more adjacent to bands of a similar vein and era (Pavement etc.) though with a harder rock sound and a wierd edge (reminding me of more out there acts like Residents) that seems more pronounced in later albums I've listened to. I like this, I'm not sure that material here needs two album's worth.
The Angelic Process
3/5
Sure, compress the everloving f-k out of everything and you definitely end up with a sound... It sort of turns all sounds into percussion or at best a minimally tuneful ambient wash. Lyrics are incomprehensible, whichis a shame as it seems.like he had something to say. For all these gripes there is something there, but the methodology here nearly wipes it out.
Yeasayer
4/5
I thought this was interesting, and very good. The album felt like a complete composition with direction and intent. I wish they'd work a little harder to make the lyrics comprehensible.
Polvo
3/5
Very much in the Pavement/GBV type indie line. I liked it well enough but the muddy mix and (what's becoming a repetitive complaint with these lesser known alternative acts) hard to understand vocals didn't do it any favors.
Courtney Barnett
3/5
Nothing too next-level going on musically, but effective and straightforward rock on the lighter side. She has limited range vocally and that wears thin at length. Mostly catchy and engaging lyrics though they drift into monologuing. Generally I liked it.
Slowdive
3/5
Amenable enough listen but whenever I listen to this genre I find it quickly fading into the background. Not a clue what they were singing about at any point.
Avenged Sevenfold
3/5
Metal is not my top genre though I don't mind d a little time to time and admire the technical prowess required. I was introduced Teresa's reading about the vocal training the lead did for a different vocal style - but found the results a little hit and miss. Too much Axle Rose nasal whine on a lot of it. Overall solid though and generally enjoyable.
Jimmy Eat World
3/5
This didn't not do a whole lot for me. I didn't dislike it but I found it a little too soft, and frankly bland.
Great Big Sea
3/5
Pretty standard sound for this flavor of nouveaux traditional and on the lyrical style much of it a little soft and basic. I didn't mind theblisten but it didn't really wow me.
CAKE
4/5
I recall hearing a ton of this when it was huge, I don't think I ever owned it. I think this is great musically. Lyrically clever and with a winning flow but is there much any substance there? Still if it's all style it's pretty impeccable styles. The covers don't do a lot for me, and bunch of dudes belting out female power anthem I Will Survive is particularly meh.
Mylène Farmer
3/5
A little too Euro-synthpop for me, not an edge in sight. Anime music comes to mind. Inoffensive, and she has a nice voice; I don't have even a little French so the lyrical side is lost on me.
The Caretaker
3/5
Intrigued by the description of this but strongly tempted to call utter BS on the actual product. It's really pretty much just the music, innit? Modified mostly by a lot of scratch and hiss, some reverb and delay, and repetition. At its best generating a vague and maudlin ambiance, reminiscent perhaps of what is playing at dwindling volume in the back of Jack Torrance's mind as he freezes to death in the hedge labyrinth. The more starkly modified I found less tolerable. Narrowly scrapes better than two stars by virtue of sheer barefaced audacity and because his Wikipedia bio sounds like a fictional artist from a William Gibson novel.
Amyl and The Sniffers
4/5
I liked everything about this except I do get tired of this vocal type - that near-monotone yawp, though I know it's the style of this kind of rock. Unfailing energy behind it though, solid lyrically, and rocked very hard with some actually stellar guitar work. And kept that punk trick of keeping almost everything brief enough that nothing has the chance to wear that thin.
Jack Johnson
3/5
Had this CD in the family collection at some point, along with the Curious George soundtrack album which got played a lot while I was at home with a young child. He's a little, you know, nicey-nice but these days maybe the softer side deserves extra play. And fond memories.
Carly Rae Jepsen
3/5
Sure, it's purest strain mainstream engineered pop, down to the roster of Scandinavian dude names on the lyrics credits and song structure straight out of the KLF manual: it's top product for what it is. I can't deny a perfectly enjoyable listen channeling 14 year-old girl crush energy (though I don't see myself coming back for more), and at least it includes a bunch of actual instruments played by actual people.
Boards of Canada
3/5
Too art forward for me maybe. I feel like I've heard a lot of this kind of electronica - the repetitive synth lines, the found audio snippets that don't add much for me. I don't hate listening to it, but I also don't feel like I get all that much out of it. It is maybe a genre I just don't get.
Chloe x Halle
3/5
Strong vocals if typically overprocessed, the music is that popified R&B/Soul that doesn't do a ton for me. Does it really measure up at all to the old greats? It was an enjoyable listen anyway with some strong highlights and offbeat moments, just a little manufactured.
Fontaines D.C.
3/5
I liked this passably well, it was musically solid and lyrically interesting. The near uniform "low and slow" tone throughout needed moving around more I thought.
Wishbone Ash
4/5
Clearly some foundational rock here, and no complaints - good signing, virtuoso guitar work (perhaps a little too tighly controlled, it never quite cuts loose). Lyrically much of its times and genre, which is Getty pretty creaky at this late date. Overall thought it very solid.
Backstreet Boys
3/5
You know, it's more precision manufactured mainstream pop. I don't disdain this kind of thing and it was generally a decent listen with some cringey interludes. There's undeniable talent here both in the singers and in the faceless team of artists, engineers and business types crafting the whole simulacra of intimate human connection. But as always for me this kind of thing is a little too slick overall, a little too edgeless and superficial.
Chris de Burgh
3/5
Real strange vibe on this one. The music was peasant enough but the lyrical delivery - bordering on cabaret throughout and sometimes falling firmly into it - never quite won me over. Seemed like an oddity more than anything. I appreciate the unabashed wierdness though.
Ornette Coleman
4/5
I consider myself pretty clueless when it comes to jazz, which also certainly merits a whole 1001 essential albums list of its own. So it comes to whether I connect to a particular album or not. I definitely connected with this one, but I don't have anything smart to say about it.
Martha
3/5
I didn't mind this, didn't love it either. For all the counterculture cred suggested by the band description and history, I thought the sound was pretty mainstream alternative, without much vestige of supposed punk influences.
Bon Iver
5/5
Someone gave my wife a burned CD of this in its word of mouth phase, before it really broke through. I recall I liked it well enough but wasn't over the moon, and took the lyrical side to be kind of mumbly word salad. It turned out to be a slow burn for me though. As a flyover state former country boy myself the origin lore has always amused me a little - how it glosses over the fact that having access to a plumbed and wired family cabin on tens of acres of land is pure economic privilege, or that its remoteness is pretty relative in terms of how we reckon distances in these parts - its not like a bar, restaurant meal or throwing in a few loads of laundry at Mom and Dad's house would have required more than a drive millions of Americans wouldn't blink at as a commute. For all that, there is a sense of isolation, and transformation, that is undeniable. I came around as a full partisan on it (I like most of the rest of Vernon's catalog very well too) and I think in its genre it's the best of its decade - a true album, carefully composed, not a speck of filler in it, bookended by and shot through with absolute bangers. Staying truly independent in the face of what must have been avid courting by the major labels tips it into the realm of the greats for me.
TOOL
3/5
Yep, that's some TOOL. I don't hate it, I respect the talent and execution of it, but the uniformly dour tone and lyrical self-importance of this genre of music puts me off. This one was also egregiously over-long, particularly considering several extended non-musical interludes that did nothing for me.
The Tragically Hip
3/5
I like how aggressively Canadian this is. Lyrical choices are occasionally a little ugh, and some it it falls into kind of monologuing over a beat. But as country-tinged rock goes I like it just fine.
Daft Punk
4/5
The remix/dance spectrum is not a main genre for me, but there's a reason Daft Punk were crown princes in this arena for decades and I'm always down to spend an hour in their world.
Daft Punk
3/5
I'm sure being at this concert (or concerts I didn't read up on the production) would have been a five star experience but as a recorded experience it was fine but not extraordinary and very long.
Arca
2/5
Really not for me. Just seemed like gloopy over-processed vocals over tuneless beats.
The 1975
4/5
I liked this. Little bit of an odd vibe, shades of folk adjacent American indie in the Cloud Cult vein, Yacht Rock, Prog Pop a la Peter Gabriel. Still had its own definite voice and interesting writing.
The title is pretty stupid so that's a poor start. The music I found to be pretty middle of the road pop with a lot of faux-orchestral vibes and lyrically it has a bit of that Scandanavian ESL thing. I didn't hate it but thought it merely OK.
The Vaccines
3/5
Not sure what I expected with this - something more on the punk end of the spectrum I guess. But I liked it OK. Well performed and decently smart lyrics but maybe a little musically unambitious.
Alexisonfire
3/5
Never thrilled to see Screamo on the genre list. I just don't like the vocal style. At times this does some interesting things blending in clean vocals, though the spoken word bits did nothing for me. The music is fast, competent, nothing much new here.
Songs: Ohia
4/5
I liked this a lot. Sad bio on the principle artist, a reminder if any such were needed that while all kinds of drugs can mess you up in all kinds of ways, when it comes to killing the body, pound for pound it's still hard to beat a serious alcohol addiction.
Times New Viking
3/5
I didn't dislike this, it had a lot of energy and charm. That much fuzz and distortion covers a multitude of sins though, and filters out a lot of nuance. In particular I didn't get much out of it lyrically, whatever might have been there. A bunch of noisy indie lofi pop influences came to mind, from Hüsker Dü to Pavement to Sebadoh to Guided By Voices.. not bad company in my book but also already a whole lot to choose from in that bag. I wouldn't object to hearing more of this, not sure I'd make the effort though.
System Of A Down
3/5
Not really my thing. Mostly I'm just not digging what is going on vocally, and even though I agree with the general sentiments the strident preachy tone is grating. Scrapes a bare 3 stars for instrumental competence with some decent variety.
Talking Heads
5/5
An amazing set of live recordings by a band I really love. Although it doesn't quite convey a single live performance (which I dont think is really its intention anyway), it has everything else I could hope for from a live album: true live performance energy, almost every version measuring up to the studio versions (or more), but with fresh perspective. Rare five star live album in my book.
Olivia Rodrigo
4/5
Interesting, haven't encounters this person before. Very talented, a lot of variety. A little heavy on the young romance angst angle but I guess if the shoe fits, just can't relate so much these days. Excellent writing and I'd like to see more of it turned to other topics besides bad boy did me wrong. But that's pop, and still great.
Screeching Weasel
3/5
Heard a lot of this kind of thing (including this band) during time spent with a roommate and good friend who was a skateboarder and freestyle bike rider. I don't dislike it, and this is top tier product for the genre, but I do feel like it's a pretty limited sound. But as usual it kept things very snappy and gave a nice nostalgia hit.
Sufjan Stevens
4/5
Big Sufjan fan going way back, especially after seeing him live at one of Justin Vernon's short-lived
Eaux Claires music festivals. This doesn't top any my list of his work and collaborations but is still great.
David Baerwald
3/5
Something completely new to me. Generally I'd say I liked it, but was on the fence about how much throughout. A little too clever, or maybe the word is sophisticated. I generally agreed with the sentiments but a lot of it was fairly preachy and heavy handed - the whole bloody hands imagery on the cover art was apt. Musically very competent, not really innovative.
Sports Team
3/5
Packaging and the initial musical presentation put me much in mind of 90s lofi acts like Pavement... A couple minutes in I was thinking that the vocal styling was going to get old quick. Thankfully it toned down pretty quickly from the full-on, early-Eno, sing-song yawp, but old it did get. I didn't actively dislike this at all but it was coding some kind of British slacker bloke vibe that my American brain can't quite slot into.
Unwound
3/5
I generally liked this - I spent a lot of the time while listening to trying to figure out what it reminded me of. Pavement, Minutemen, and Sebadoh all came to mind, not bad company as far as I'm concerned, though a harder edge on this. As is so often the case in this genre, it loses me somewhat in that I cant make heads nor tails of 90% of the lyrics. And without being able to distinguish the words, my ear can only interpret the vocals as another instrument - and as an instrument they're not that great nor expertly wielded.
Manchester Orchestra
4/5
Really very good, although there is a vocal style going on here that I get tired of at length. The lyrics sound good but I'm not certain they mean a lot. But the overall package is something I think would be worth giving more time to.
Refused
3/5
Real rollercoaster, I liked some of it pretty well and really didn't care for other parts at all. Generally the metal-adjacent screamo stuff was not my bag, but it moved around and got into some interesting territory.
Crystal Castles
3/5
Didn't get a lot out of these gothy diva vocals over what felt like fairly run of the mill chiptunes. The gross Me Too conclusion of the band's tale didn't help. Slightly more interesting than average still.
Emicida
4/5
I thought this was pretty great, even with the inevitable language barrier (with my poor college Spanish creating a false sense that grasping the Brazillian Portuguese is almost within reach). So I feel like I was missing out on a big piece of this but still really enjoyed the music.
Portishead
3/5
This band intersects with my tastes on paper, but I can never quite get into it. Emotionally I find the music very monotonous.
Noname
3/5
Very interesting, though it felt to me like someone in the process of becoming something. Not quite fully formed, and musically a little sparse and uniform. Super strong debut though and Im curious where this artist has gone with it.
Guy Clark
4/5
Just solid outlaw Country here. Good writing, well performed and great, understated use of backing vocals. A lot of the lyrics are maybe a little on the nose - typical of this idiom there is not much subtlety. But I can be there for perfectly straightforward for an LP.
Talk Talk
3/5
A little heavy on the Art for my tastes, but decently interesting anyway.
3/5
I didn't like this as much as the band's prior entry I heard on the list (which was a couple albums further along in their discography). I thought this less clever and less experimental than it appears to find itself, and have zero appetite for rockstar junkie shit - which it sounds like the lead singer was starting to eschew in this album's era. To the benefit of the music it appears to me. Aside from that it's serviceable post-modern rock.
Bon Iver
4/5
The debut album has that energy of an outpouring following a decade's build-up which is hard to beat, though I think this is in some ways a more mature and consciously realized album. Regardless it's a very strong sophomore offering. Holocene is one of my absolute favorite songs of the decade.
R.E.M.
3/5
I feel like I might be repeating myself (occupational hazard of these lists, and I can't be bothered to look up past reviews) but my REM fandom peaked at Life's Rich Pageant and the last thing I actually purchased was Green on cassette. I don't dislike this, but my interest in the band had pretty well waned at this point and revisiting it now I feel the same way. After being bombarded by radio play and the videos at the time I sure don't feel a need to ever hear Shiny Happy People or Losing My Religion again. I'd also forgotten they'd turned in a fine example of that awkward 90s phase epidemic "we don't have any idea how to integrate hip hop into our white rock" numbers in Radio Song. Adequate but not inspiring.
Johnny Winter
4/5
Kinda forgot about Johnny Winter. If I have one negative thing to say about this, it's that a lot of the lyrics (particularly inclined the first half) are about as close to empty of content as it's possible to be. Rockin' and a rollin' and the boogie and blues. This improves on the album's flip side. But the flawless construction and virtuoso guitar (and overall rock solid musicianship) carry it all, and after all not all rock has to be smart. For this era of hard rocking bluesy pop this is first tier product.
TOOL
4/5
This is, I think, the 4th TOOL album on the Finishers Club list and I know, the people who love them just really love them, but give it a rest please. Dig up something obscure, everybody knows TOOL exists. I've got nothing new to say about this music.
Having written all that before actually listening to this I'm compelled to address that I think this is my favorite offering from this band so far. Overly long and with some material towards the end I found to be self-indulgent twaddle but I'll even boost it an extra star for taking things to some interesting places lyrically, vocally, and musically.
The Breeders
4/5
I like the Breeders going back ti the beginning. This goes a lot of different places and its mostly strong though there is some that I'd call filler. I like Pod a bit better but this is solid alt/indie rock I'd happily give a listen any time.
Os Mundi
3/5
I was primed to dislike this (Kraut rock with only a German language Wiki page, clearly some deep cut business in a genre that often irritates me). But it had a playful sensibility that tempered the usual heavy execution. Some of the mix, very lopsided on the high end, made it tough listening at times. I never know how much of that thing is really down to the particular set of software and electronics I'm consuming it through.
Lo Fidelity Allstars
3/5
Initially disliked this quite a bit. I thought the spoken word/skit components were sort of dumb and the music had the same issues I always have with this genre, repetition repetition repetition of someone else's work or dull rhythm textures. It got me back some heading into the middle third but I wouldn't go looking for more.
Al Stewart
3/5
I enjoyed this but the style does feel very dated. Some things survive and they just feel timeless, other things hold up but more as museum pieces, and this seems trending to the latter side to me. I also kind of spent the whole time trying to decide if the lyrics were really saying all that much or were just very artfully constructed. On the whole positive though.
Spose
3/5
From reading the description I expected to be annoyed by this, but it really wasn't what I expected, and though it's not really my kind of thing, it had some interesting things going on musically and lyrically.
Enter Shikari
3/5
Who knew all it took for me to hate screamo more was an English accent. Generally I didnt hate this (well I hated the more metalcore parts some) but eh. Wierd tonal shifts throughout that didn't really feel coherent.
New Model Army
3/5
Solid heavy metal, reminiscent of maybe a littlenearlier era, better than average vocals. Didn't really feel like any serious innovation but hey if it ain't broke.
Ween
3/5
I kind of prefer Ween's earlier lo-fi/home recording era, college radio memories of spinning The Pod on vinyl, but there's still a lot to like in this studio era, and a very respectable ratio of their wierdness survived the major label transition.
Sam Fender
3/5
Shades of yacht rock, Springsteen (or modern day followers like The Hold Steady), and late era singer-songwriter bros like John Mayer and Dave Matthews. A few standout songs in this though on the whole I thought it was a little too soft and clean. It needed some more edge in the vocals, and something to dirty up the music, at least time to time.
Dead Boys
3/5
It's punk. Not my favorite genre by a mile but this is well done and a bit smarter than averave.
Ex-Easter Island Head
4/5
After reading up on this, how I would feel about it was a real coin toss. Terms like avant garde and experimental can be harbingers that you're about to get a whacked with the Art stick. But I ended up liking this pretty well. For me reminiscent of some aspects of Laurie Anderson, Brian Eno, Meredith Monk - not bad company in my book. The very analog starting point of the sound gave it some interesting texture in a genre that tends these days to the pure electronica. A little on the fence on the score as I didn't feel like it all held up - never offensive but some of it just faded into the background - but I'll slip it an extra, possibly over-generous point just for being a real lft field inclusion.
The Chameleons
3/5
I didn't despise it or anything, but it felt like pretty run of the mill British alternative pop of a certain era. The vocalist was not strong.
Jason Isbell
3/5
A respectable entry in this genre of Country adjacent singer-songwriter fare. Well performed with decent singing and very solid finger-picked guitar. The lyrics, while well-constructed, lean a little heavily on cliché and a pointedly homespun vibe that I felt got laid on a little thick at times. Happy to give it a listen nonetheless.
Yo La Tengo
3/5
Can't recall if this band has made the list before. Certainly they are are profoundly foundational players in this genre of indie rock, carving out something less heavy and post-punk than similar contemporaries like Dinosaur Jr. I always liked them.and I liked this. I'm not sure its anything remarkable and a lot of it is rendered intelligible by typical muted vocals, but I'd happily listen to more any day.
Tosca
3/5
Found this pretty dull. The vocalized parts mostly didn't do it for me - for once the language barrier didn't make me feel like I was missing much of substance. I didnt hate it or anything, it passed an hour amiably enough, but they was plenty.
Beyoncé
4/5
I certainly recall the media buzz around this when it came out but while listening realized I hadn't ended up consuming much of it. I tend to consign Beyoncé to a certain strata of extremely competent but ultra processed pop but there is a very real raw edge on this that takes it well above that. It's really very good.
John Coltrane
4/5
I'm no sophisticate of Jazz but I always liked Coltrane. This had an odd mix I had a little trouble with... the sax seeming to play directly into my left ear, the rest of the backing hovering somewhere over my right shoulder. It made for a melancholy workout but I liked it overall.
Psyche Origami
4/5
A lot of clever and easygoing flow. This style to me sometimes gets mired in an engaging and genial but somewhat flattened and monotonous groove. And this suffers some of that but generally kept things smart and funny enough to keep from dropping into the background. Some strong reminiscence of Handsome Boy Modelling School, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Medeski, Martin & Wood
3/5
I said in reference to a recent Coltrane offering that I'm no Jazz sophisticate, and I'm even less so when it comes to modern stuff. I liked this OK though some of it seemed kind of gimmicky. Never really blew me away.
Lady Gaga
4/5
Never listened to that much of this artist other than whatever megahit was dominating some channel of pop media I happened to intersect with. Now that she's made the full transition to cultural icon up to and including real deal movie star it's interesting to reflect how much I'd forgotten this early version, more visibly hungry and a little lower rent. I like it, though it still feels very manufactured for the star-maker machine.
Final Fantasy
4/5
Another Canadian I'd never heard of before. A lot of talent here. A little high toned and rarified maybe, and the lyrics didn't really stick with me, though they seemed smart while I was listening to them. Made for a surprisingly sprightly workout. Extra point for being unabashedly non-pop.
Frightened Rabbit
3/5
I liked this pretty well, though it put me much in mind of that Tall Dwarfs line I've quoted before about how "Leonard Cohen used to bend his words this way... to try and make a song out of a speech." Musically it was effective but not terribly inspired. I appreciate that the vocals actually sounded Scottish. Another sad tale as far as the founder and lead is concerned.
Vangelis
4/5
I've seen the movie maybe a half dozen times, in a variety of cuts, never occurred to me to listen to the soundtrack. It manages to be something timeless while still very much reflecting the era of its creation. I'm not sure the bits of incorporated movie dialog really add anything though.
Neil Cicierega
2/5
This pretty much annoyed the ever loving out of me throughout. I just think the whole mashup thing is pure gimmick, whatever virtue is present is boosted from the source material. It's also not half as clever as it thinks it is. I get it, the recurrent theme is All Star. I get the joke. There were a few brief transcendent moments when I felt like it turned into something more than the sum of its parts, and I guess I learned that the lyrics of Chocolate Rain, a song I heard about but never listened to, are actually sort of interesting. Otherwise no thanks.
Magdalena Bay
3/5
I found this to be a pretty congenial listen but felt like the group still needs some development. This particular vocal affect, with its sort of little-girl diva thing wears thin, and the music could use some more analog structure to broaden the tone. But I liked it, and found it promising. I'll likely seek out more.
Electric Callboy
3/5
Not really my genre in a couple of respects. I didnt hate it, but it seemed pretty much just, well, techno... with some Teutonic growl-shouting.
Duncan Dhu
3/5
Seemed like pretty conventional pop on the lighter side. Of course I wasn't getting much out of the lyrics with my terminally rusty high-school/college Spanish, but what I was picking up seemed to fit the same bill. Well performed and sung. It was a pleasant listen.
Rita Ora
3/5
Very respectable entry in the romantic diva kind of pop genre. While well-written most of the lyrics hew fairly close to the standard tropes of that genre, some self-empowerment curveballs are a welcome contrast. A littlendifficult not to get distracted by the thought that all these effusive declarations of romance are about Taika Waititi?
Deltron 3030
3/5
I like all the people involved in this sort it's no surprise the musical product is good. I guess the story such as it is seems pretty flimsy, yeah the corpos rule this bad old world, fight the power. No revelatory insights into the class struggle here.
Jon Batiste
4/5
I thought this was very good. Strong performances throughout. I thought perhaps it was a little disjointed - I didnt quite find the throughline of it as an album. But it's a minor quibble.
The Who
4/5
It's Quadrophenia, after all, a source of an inordinate percentage of the greatest hits album that first exposed me to the band. I saw the movie eons ago, not totally certain I ever actually sat down and listened to the whole thing straight through. It holds up, obviously, though Im not sure it totally coheres as an album quite as well as it does as a soundtrack - heresy, I'm sure.
Yellowcard
3/5
Some vague recollection about this band... maybe one of those ill-considered iTunes ventures where they put music in your library without being asked to? Anyway. Seems fairly typical of the honestly somewhat watered down territory a lot of pop-oriented post-punk/hardcore went, other than the mild innovation of the fiddle player. I didn't hate it, probably wouldn't seek out more.
The Groundhogs
4/5
Completely unfamiliar with this, started listening before I looked it up and wasn't sure at all whether it was actually old or aggressively retro. Reminded me of a lot of things, generally I guess British blues rock not surprisingly, though it had a certain twist, shades of Beefheart maybe and other things I couldn't quite put my finger on. Jammier portions even reminiscent of Velvet Underground. Taken altogether rather unique, and very good.
Pearl Jam
4/5
Never a huge fan - I don’t dislike the band, but found them.always to be on the more dark/self-serious side of the grunge spectrum, while I preferred the funnier, more oddball product. But it can't be denied that the musicianship, writing and performance are all very high tier. I'll bump it a point above my strict preference for showing up early and sticking it out for the long haul.
ISIS
3/5
Pretty solid metal. Generally just not a fan of the vocals in this kind of music but found the style on this less grating than some. Started out my day frustrated by some ill turns of chance so a little dark thrash wasn't unwelcome.
Cat System Corp.
3/5
The concept behind this certainly hits... the 9/11 terrorist attacks came weeks after my 30th birthday, a few months after my getting married. My spouse was supposed to be flying out of Oklahoma on business that morning: disruption of cell communications kept me out of touch with her for hours. It was a genuinely gorgeous fall morning in the Midwest U.S.
Now that the always sinister invocation of the "homeland" that arose in its aftermath seems to be flowering into its full form at last in America (with disturbing echoes around the world) - mainly in the service (to my reckoning) of propping up the last gasps of petroleum wealth dynamics long enough to lock in global warming as a 5 century civilizational disaster - the melancholy dream of a world where it never happened is more enticing than ever.
But does the product truly convey the message? I certainly don't think I'd ever have arrived at that interpretation if I had gone into this listen with no background information. Probably would have intuited a much vaguer meditation on 80s/90s era capitalism. Listening to it was amenable enough, though the microgenres around vaporwave are not really my thing and I assume, perhaps unfairly, a certain intellectual smugness in its devotees. Odd enough to keep it out of negative ratings, plus the nostalgia hit, whether earned or not.
Not without its charms, but I find this particular vein of pseudo old-timey, rootless roots music pretty played out, particularly in the vocal style, which was especially monotonous here and too clever by half. Not to be overly harsh though, it was generally good enough fun and didn't overstay its welcome.
Kashmir
3/5
With a Bowie and a Lou Reed appearance I was ready to be all in on this unfamiliar-to-me band, and it was certainly all right, but did feel to me like something of an amalgam of turn of the century mainstream alternative acts. There may have been more going on lyrically than I picked up on in one not terribly attentive listen. I wouldn't be averse to hearing more from this band.
Reincidentes
3/5
Solid punk rock. I feel like it's a musical idiom that the romance languages don't really lend themselves to, and I wasn't picking up much of the lyrics, but they sounded good nonetheless.
Aesop Rock
3/5
Generally easy to listen to, voluble rap. The density of the lyrics though can cause the meaning to get lost in the sauce.
BABYMETAL
3/5
The whole concept and execution of this thing feels super produced, with great talent and competence to be sure, but very much a product generated for consumption. I'm a fickle fan of metal at best and no fan at all of Idol music, so it doesn't exactly land for me. Didn't hate it, found it generally fun though silly, most of it felt like music playing behind some anime battle scene.
Baroness
3/5
I like the music quite well, though I wouldn't exactly call it metal. Lyrically it didn't do a lot for me (but I appreciated the vocal style).
Ozzy Osbourne
4/5
I was a little on the young side to partake when this came out (indeed in my preteen years found this and music of similar ilk to inspire a certain genuine and unironic dread, alongside horror movies, as if the "bad art" could somehow get me). Half a dozen years later it featured prominently in the rotations of my stoner friends, though I was always more on the Zeppelin end of the early metal spectrum, along with 60s -70d era psychedelic rock. I came to be a fan of early Sabbath, but never got much into Ozzy's solo career. I doubt I ever intentionally listened to this straight through, though I'm sure I heard it all a good few times courtesy of said friends. Listening now it strikes me as quite fully realized. I still prefer old Sabbath, and my honest personal rating would probably be around 3.5, but I'll round up if for nothing else as a nod to Randy Rhoads, surely a strong contender for the dumbest, most arbitrary far-too-early deaths in rock and roll.
Floating Points
3/5
Although there is a heap of talent far surpassing my puny mind behind this I'm honestly not sure there is all that much there. Maybe I'm not refined enough for it, maybe it required more dedicated and active listening. As it was I found it to be just fine.
Yoko Ono
1/5
I am pretty firmly in the camp that Yoko Ono has gotten a bum rap from a lot of quarters, and deserves recogition as an important artist in her own right.
However.
This largely sucks and I'm not going to hedge that with any mealy-mouthed codicils to protect my art sophistication cred. Unmitigated vocal vomit and the music is mostly lazy blues inflicted rock and dull prog noodling. My inclination was to rate it 2 stars... right up to the nearly 1,400 second decanting of diarrhea into my ears that was Fly, at which point I decided it would receive my first one star rating. I normally feel kind of bad bagging on people's offerings to this list but I'm pretty sure anyone who claims to like this will view my disdain for it as a badge of honor. Though I also entertain the possibility that it was actually added as an intentional act of aural terrorism... in which case touché I guess.
Bruce Hornsby
3/5
I thought this was all right - very well executed for what it is, though the smooth jazz thing isn't so much for me. But it made for perfectly enjoyable backing music for a morning of chores.
BABYMETAL
3/5
Two instances of Babymetal showing up in the same smallish cohort of listener-submitted offerings seems odd, maybe it is just coincidence. Not sure the list needed to double up on this particular band. And I don't have much to say beyond my last review: this seems to have divested much of the babygirl vocal style which is a positive shift in my book, and also tended to a little more mainstream sound. I was satisfied enough to rock out half an hour on this but still don't feel like it's all that.
"Weird Al" Yankovic
4/5
Real oddball cohort of completionists in this round, but OK. Instant nostalgia - I'm old enough to remember older kids of friends of the family buying 45 singles of Larry Groce's "Junk Food Junkie" back in the 70s (my prototype of the parody/novelty song). I was just the right age for the material when this album came out and I distinctly remember it becoming a cultural phenomenon.
It feels like the era of a nationally relevant parody song is pretty well past, such goofs still exist but their targets have narrowed to fandom niches and they live almost exclusively in the realms of social media. Objectively this is three star material - Al's songwriting was underdeveloped and there's a fair bit of forgettable filler. But it's an easy extra point for what an undeniable nice guy Al is, a nod to the wholesome fact of how the silly kid's fantasy in the cover cartoon of playing his accordian to adoring arena crowds actually became a reality, plus an RIP for Rick Derringer.
Agalloch
3/5
Interesting musically, lyrically didn't really get me there. The monster vocals were as usual not my cuppa and rendered the lyrics largely incomprehensible. What I could parse seemed like a typical pastiche of high fantasy, pseudo-mythology and old time religion of some under-specific sort. For all this I didn't dislike it at all, especially the more conventionally sung parts which fit the music well.
Fall Out Boy
3/5
Another band with an immediately familiar name that I had no sense at all of what their sound was. I browsed a handful of what a quick search suggested as their hits and nothing was particularly familiar. No idea why I know about this band. The album was immediately appealing, but then a whole lot of it fell into a pretty uniform groove. Pop, and nothing against it, well performed and decent lyrics, but a little shallow.
Boredoms
3/5
My tolerance for noise rock is generally not robust, so I went in dubious. I feel like I've heard of this band before but can't think of where or when. No love for a real release on YouTube music, I ended up listening to a community playlist of presumably pirated vids that they somehow get away with offering as alternatives in such situations, which always feels unfortunate, but Im not going to scour the world looking for a legit source. Very art forward, I found it more tolerable than much of its ilk I've encountered, by the end though I was left with a familiar sense that - in a world as stuffed with cacophonous noise - both literal and metaphorical - as the one I inhabit, I don't really need my music adding more of the same.
Harry Styles
3/5
Very good for what it is - very much a product of the Machine, its manufactured pop star hoisted on the shoulders of an army of aggressively talented usual suspects, produced within an inch of its life, and mixed too loud (but what isn't in modern pop?). It manages to retain a surprising amount of soul despite all this, and I enjoyed listening to it, though I don't expect it to leave a very deep impression.
of Montreal
3/5
I generally liked this pretty well, it falls into an alternative genre I generally get into. A little too clever for its own good - a failing I can identify and sympathize with - and the electronica aspect of the music works well with the overall composition sometimes, but for me missed the mark pretty often as well.
Dream Theater
3/5
This kind of baroque metal (though this has a lot of shades of prog rock and frankly just pop) doesn't do a lot for me. Musically very competent. Less strong lyrically - simultaneously grandiose in attitude while being pretty basic in execution. Overall a nice e enough listen but not something I'd seek out.
Charly García
4/5
I should probably study up on the whole artistic disidence surviving an era under a neo-fascist bureaucratic-authoritarian state thing, for... no particular reason, just something I've become interested in lately.
Anyway I liked this, I like its vibe despite not being able to understand more than the occasional phrase. It put me in mind of the gritting side of 80s alternative, stuff like the Suburbs that navigated a line between post-punk/hardcore and the crystalline brittleness of synth-pop new wave. Extra point for, you know, surviving an era under a neo-fascist bureaucratic-authoritarian state.
David Allan Coe
3/5
Even before it goes full meta before the final verse of the final song, this is leaning just a little too hard on its self-aware clichés for my tastes, starting with that absolute clunker of a title. It's good old country obviously and I'm not against it. But I detect more than a little cynicism peeking out of that sleeve its heart is dangling from.
The Tragically Hip
3/5
This Canadian favorite has made the fan list once or twice before - and I never remember exactly what they are about. Which turns out to be pretty straight ahead rock and roll in my book, smart lyrics without being pretentious, the singing nothing life-changing but fit to purpose. Some of it gets into a little monotonous riffing around stock progressions, some of it runs a bit long, but enjoyable overall and I'd happily listen to it any time.
Shihad
3/5
Solid hardcore rock. Not sure it's all that much beyond that, but I enjoyed it, and it facilitated the slog through another workout.
The Heads
3/5
I never listened to any of the post-Byrne band's stuff and came in skeptical since I'd gathered this one hadn't been well-received. But I actually liked this pretty well, although it's all over the place and doesn't quite come together as an album for me. I thought there were quite a few weak links in the collection as well. But overall solid, and the array of guest performers was an interesting novelty. I do think they would have been better off (in several respects) dropping all the unsubtle allusions to the Talking Heads brand and just launching it as something completely itself. There doesn't seem to be much disputing that David Byrne was a pretty big dick about how he unilaterally ended the band, and the other members' sense of ownership in that identity was well-earned. But I think Byrne apprehended correctly that the thing was on the cusp of turning into a kind of amiable but not innovative fixture (like REM spent the latter two decades of its career). And though he could have navigated that endpoint with much more grace, his partners would have done well to follow his lead.
Various Artists
3/5
I know I watched the film through at least once... On VHS I think, to put a very rough date frame on it. Never caught one of the modern screenings. I was surprised by how well the music had stuck with me. It holds up for what it is - campy musical theater - and you have to admire the production generally for going way out there for its time. I'm not the type to listen to musical soundtrack, and the tropes of the genre can get annoying to me, but this was an amiable enough trip down memory lane.
Deafheaven
3/5
Not sure about the "blackgaze" thing, sure it has quieter melodic interludes, but so does Metallica. Anyway this stuff always falls apart for me on the shrieky vocals, I just don't like it. It renders lyrics meaningless, making the vocals just a type of instrument, and one I don't care for the sound of. Which is a shame since for the most part I liked it musically.
Stray From The Path
3/5
Strongly (overly, in my book) reminiscent of Rage Against the Machine, while leaning more into the metal/hardcore side rather than rock and rap. Generally agree with its political leanings but the content is pretty light on anything aside from shouty energy. Serviceable but slight.
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
4/5
Pretty sure there was a prior offering by this band, and I can't remember how I felt about it. I liked this a lot anyway, very fully realized, prog-ish psychedelic rock. I couldn't make much out of the lyrics (I gather there's an active subreddit full of people trying to unwind their meaning so maybe that's not so surprising), but it certainly sounded interesting and I liked the oddly choral singing. Reading up on the band their extremely prodigious output was also impressive, especially if it's generally on par with this.
Amália Rodrigues
4/5
Despite not grasping a word I can recognize a classic. Not something Id always be in the mood for but when I was I'd definitely be up for more of this.
Turnpike Troubadours
3/5
It occurred to me as I was reading up on this band that the word turnpike has no resonance with me at all. I know it's some kind of road. Anyway, this hit me like pretty straight-ahead roots rock/country. All extremely competent, the lyrics well-constructed and fitting. I found it a little on the bland side I guess. But a decent listen.
3/5
A bunch of this felt very familiar to me and I can't figure out why. It was fine, didn't really wow me and I thought the overall sound was a little monotonous.
Dolly Parton
4/5
Bluesgrass-heavy country, straight down the middle - even the format, just under 45 minutes, only a couple songs over 4 minutes... And of course it's all consummately professional - top level craft across the board. It is Parton herself that elevates it above being just a very sickly produced modern country album with a bit of extra roots spin on it: there is just something fundamentally real and sincere about her performances. I'm not a huge country music person but I'd listen to more of this any day.
Paramore
3/5
Another band I keep hearing about but hadn't really listened to. Seemed like pretty standard alt-rock tinted power pop, more pop than alt to my ear. Good solid musical performances all around. Lyrically pretty much boyfriend/girlfriend problems fare as far as I could make out. Perfectly fine, not particularly special.
Metric
3/5
Pretty solid alt rock, with some interesting shades of like 80s New Wave? Didn't get much out of the lyrics and the sound a little low on variety, but I liked it.
Descendents
4/5
Oh classic hardcore. 15 songs, just under 23 minutes. I feel like this represented a limited sound that pretty much played its hand in a few years and what didn't move on to broader fields sort of calcified. But these were the OG heirs of Punk and must be given their due.
Living Colour
4/5
Not listened to any ton of this band but t always liked what I heard. Feel like this was more challenging, both musically and conceptually. Not pulling punches or sugar coating anything. But in a good way. Demanded and rewarded attentive listening. Glad for the recommendation.
The Church
4/5
Under the Milky Way was the sum of my knowledge about The Church up to now - surprised to find they'd been at it this whole time, and apparently outting out material at a quite high and fully realized level. This is right up my alley.
Chuck Berry
5/5
What can you say - though I don't spend a ton of time listening to this kind of music, this stands in the pantheon of the ur-rock that all modern rock and roll - as well as its reactionary offshoot like punk, metal, haedcore, new wave, etc. - owe their existence to. Berry was an amiable old pervert some of whose transgressions are tough to look past - but, that was a long time ago and this remains about perfect.
Jaco Pastorius
3/5
The ultimate toll exacted on so many young stars of Rock and Roll is legendary, but man - jazz gives it a run for its money. Sad tale on this guy. The music.. virtuoso to be sure, but a lot of it is a side of Jazz I find difficult. To me it just feels like frenetic noodling improv. Listening was kind of exhausting.
Comus
3/5
Engagingly wierd and ahead of its time, but also uneven overall and frequently crossing the line into pretty demented territory. I can see this working very well as the soundtrack to some Wickerman-esque British pastoral horror film. As an album to sit and listen to for musical enjoyment... I don't regret the time spent with it, but doubt I'll be seeking out more.
Nic Jones
3/5
Very solid, pretty straightforward folk. Another very tough story with this fellow. I liked it but didn't find it particularly special within its genre.
Kenny Wayne Shepherd
3/5
Listening to the blues at this point feels to be approaching the territory of something like listening to chamber music; it may be a fine and traditioned thing but you're not likely to hear anything new. Of course not everything needs to be new. This was very good for what it was, and of course had a deep roster of featured singers and players. Just solid blues.
Shpongle
3/5
Oh, the subgenres of subgenres of festival edm type whatever. I don’t hate it but I do feel like vibes, locales, and drugs have a lot to do with the appeal. Fine.
Brand New
3/5
Musically solid if mostly conventional within its genre. The lyrics were sometimes quite good, but veered into eye-rollingly self-serious territory too often.
Alabama 3
3/5
I couldn't really get into this band's schtick, the whole satirical-religious southern fried honkytonk by way of, you know, pan-British Londoner house-music rave-up types. The music was fine, the constant "is that supposed to be an American/Southern accent?" thing in the vocals was distracting and off putting. One trick pony.
Modern Life Is War
3/5
That's definitely some more hardcore. I don't know. Like punk, I think it is fundamentally anachronistic past a certain point, and that point for hardcore is, you know, the Eighties. Thrash thrash, shout shout. Within these constraints this is very solid, and as a bonus very succinct.
Savatage
4/5
I'm telling you right now before listening to a note, I'm giving this an extra star no matter what for album art straight out of the 80s Advanced D&D book cover portfolio. Hell yeah buff mountain god, electrocute those giant smoking chalices.
OK, I'm back and this did not dissapoint, the music is basically the cover art. Which is a solid 3 out of 3 classic 80s metal on the proggish side. It put a smile on my face: no notes.
Paul McCartney
3/5
I don't really listen to the Beatles members' solo career stuff much. Don't listen to the Beatles all that much anymore. I liked this fine, it didn't blow me away, it felt very much in line with late-stage Beatles' McCartney-forward output.
Mac Miller
4/5
Never listened to this guy. It's good: heavily haunted, of course, by the sad ending preceding its release. The older I get the more utterly void of romance I find this ugly and commonplace tale. Bonus point for featuring Wendy.
Barenaked Ladies
3/5
Started out wondering why this band's name was so familiar when the music wasn't at all. Then, Brian Wilson and If I Had $1,000,000 were vaguely familiar. I had to look it up to make the connection - oh right, Big Bang Theory opening theme. Oh yeah, One Week. So, clever enough and well-performed, just a little too... soft rock and whimsical for my tastes. I liked it pretty well just the same. I can see how someone could be way into it.
Depeche Mode
3/5
In the venn diagram of my teen years' musical taste development, 80s New Wave intersects heavily, though only the more rock-oriented side of it (Police, Talking Heads) really stuck. I actually found this a very amiable listen, no complaints. It is a little too thoroughly of its time and genre, which I think largely didn't age perfectly. Too soft-centered and synthetic. But I enjoyed my hour in the museum.
DARKSIDE
3/5
Not sure I quite got this. I liked it OK but it didn't exactly feel like music you sit down and listen to. It felt like the part of the soundtrack where the guy drives silently across country at night, or the closing credits of a noir anime. Moderately perplexed.
Future Islands
3/5
Synthpop feels to me like something that resides firmly in the 80s and early 90s so I was dubious of this. But the vocal and percussive elements in this gave it a harder edge that seemed to plant it in its own century. I liked this, though I didn't manage to pull much out of the lyrics.
Lift To Experience
3/5
Didn't really do it for me. The pseudo religious lyrics didn't convey any narrative arc I could discern, and if it was meant to be satirical, then of what? Southern religiosity? No objections to it musically but I didn't need tow albums of it.
WHY?
3/5
Although very cleverly written and musically well constructed, I was a little put off by this throughout. The sort of teen angst plus edgily profane lyrical tone, under the wierdly They Might Be Giants reminiscent music, as a hip hop offshoot was a bridge too far for me.
Nujabes
4/5
Another sad tale... I like this a lot, this kind of jazz-hip hop fusion feels like an underrepresented missing link on that side of the pop spectrum. Lots of mid-2000s Adult Swim nostalgia.
Hamilton Leithauser
3/5
Pretty much in line with a flavor of post-millennial alternative rock that I don't dislike but also don't really seek out. Mostly failed to fully capture my attention.
Espers
4/5
I dug this though it made for a wierd and ominous workout session. I am there for New Wierd Americana neo-folk.
Tom Misch
3/5
I suspect that this, both lyrically and musically, probably merited more active listening than I was able to give it at the time. Superficially a kind of light, jazz-adjacent vibe. It didn't quite grab me but I feel like I'll circle around and give it another pass eventually.
Malibu
3/5
That is surely some ambient. I actually liked this kind of thing, I'm just not sure it belongs in precisely the same category as music. I would listen to more though.
Quicksand
4/5
I must have encountered this in my college radio days in the early 90s - it seemed to have hit pretty well in that market, and we had a hardcore-loving contingent among those running things. The album cover does seem familiar. Nothing jumping out as familiar in the music though, aside from it being very typical 90s hardcore. This is very well done in its genre but I can't get away from the feeling that it is a limited sound. It’s not just a Fugazi clone or whatever though, they do have a distinct sound and style, and this probably merits a place among the top tier product of that genre and era.
Mr. Bungle
3/5
Not sure what I expected here but it wasn't this. I'm sure its very clever and everyone involved is clearly very talented, but the sort of avant-Elvis groove just did not do it for me.
Pink Floyd
3/5
Pink Floyd was kind of a big deal in my musical life for a lot of years and then pretty much faded. I can't really do The Wall anymore, and I have little interest in the post-Waters band. So this is another awful lot of live Floyd with a fair chunk of it outside of even my waning interest zone. It's meticulously performed anyway, and I generally felt fine about the listen, but none of the versions really wowed me.
Various Artists
3/5
As the soundtrack of a whimsical and unconventional videogame classic (that, full disclosure, I never got around to playing), I'm sure this works great. As music to sit and listen to for its own sake, not to my taste. The quirk factor dialed about 8 clicks too high, and shading consistently into outright irritation. 3 stars is generous.
Robyn
3/5
More of this super-engineered Swedish pop. It's fine but sort of reminds me of those videos where some Japanese restaurant turns out an obsessively detailed but weirdly askew version of some American comfort food.
Tom Petty
4/5
Petty's work is so generally low key and amenable that its masterful construction and execution can be obscured. In the genre to American rock this is about as good as it gets.
Black Devil Disco Club
3/5
This was an odd little artifact. Another with no proper version available on YouTube music, just a dubious, untracked, half-hour video on the 'Tube itself. Very much ahead of its time. I liked it, but thought it a little underformed.
Everything Everything
4/5
I liked this a lot, heavy shades of Radiohead plus maybe some Alt-J? But more rock-and-rolly. Some of the middle stretch felt like filler, and it feels like a sound I might tire of at length depending on how they evolve over time. Still really liked the listen and intending to checknout more from this band that hadn't been on my radar previously.
Chico Science
4/5
Felt the language barrier acutely on this one. Sometimes vocals are mostly another instrument but here it was clear the meaning mattered. Lacking that my ability to judge this is limited but the music was great.
Ween
3/5
I was an early adopter on Ween (riding the coattails of my brother's acumen as usual), having introduced The Pod to my college radio's playlist prior to the major label debut. I'd mostly checked out on them after Chocolate and Cheese.
The first several tracks on this had me scratching my head, feeling not that far outside pretty straight alternative rock. From "...Neighborhood" on it got distinctly more Weenish. Also bogged down some in the latter third, a lot of watery guitar and synth-scapes under vague overprocessed vocals. I still enjoyed it. For me though Ween is about the super-wierd, lo-fi DIY of the early cassette releases and the first two minor label albums, with notable bright stars but diminishing returns thereafter.
Eric B. & Rakim
4/5
This kind of thing is bordering on classical music by now. Not much for me to say, pretty foundational material of a significant stylistic shift in hip hop.
Denzel Curry
3/5
Going from the Eric B. and Rakim selection to this is interesting - 35 years of hip hop in one step. And generally I'd conclude that hip hop is doing all right. This has a certain musical monotony that I found myself a little less willing to absolve than the classic scratch and beats of the prior selection. Lyrically very smart though again without all the features I think the delivery of the main artist might get a little stale. Overall I liked it.
Warren Zevon
5/5
Zevon is another artist I have known of forever but knew very little about (other than then few highly visible hits). Reading over the bio he feels like a musician's musician as the expression goes: the wild roster of cover artists, admirers, and collaborators he accumulated (including the personnel of this album) speaks for itself. This album is a pretty odd fish - the intermixing of conventional relationship ballad stuff with totally off the reservation historical/political fiction alongside whatever the hell Werewolves is. A little too wierd for a conventional 5 star rating but I'll bump it an extra point because fuck cancer.
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band
3/5
The music was solid but the particular affectation of the vocals grated on me some. Odd vibe on this one.
Weezer
4/5
My feelings about Weezer is that they’re generally OK. A lot of much better “indie rock” bands never gained near such prominence. The album felt like a look at a frankly better if less mainstream band.
65daysofstatic
3/5
Post- Rock asks: what if Ambient wasn't chill? I liked quite a bit of this actually, but found some of it grating.
Crass
3/5
More 70s British punk. I guess this is getting pretty close to the original recipe but it's a sound I've gotten pretty tired of. As far as the politics are concerned I guess I'm more or less a partisan at least somewhere along the same spectrum but honestly, what did this sort of counterculture agitation ever accomplish? All this kind of ideology remains in a deep and ineffectual minority.
Ornatos Violeta
3/5
I liked this pretty well musically, not a huge fan of the vocals style and of course could not understand a word.
Matthew Good Band
3/5
Pretty run of the mill, lightly alternative rock to my ears. Unobjectionable listen but I don't see myself seeking out more.
Spinvis
4/5
Pretty interesting overall, it's nice to have a someone from this particular of the world (which I think of as Scandanavian-adjacent though I know it's not really the same) eschew the market-friendly choice of singing in English, though of course I couldn't understand a word ad a result. Extra point for the whole middle-aged guy swing at the Art-grail.
Q65
4/5
So... late 19th to early 20th century American proto-rock and blues, interpreted by white Brits who landed in it after they glanced off 50s teenybob pop, twisted back through American early pre-metal and psychedelia and all redone (pretty nearly in real time) with a Dutch accent. I don't hate it... but I'm not sure its adding much to that long-defunct dialog. Over an hour was also a bit much (though you gotta represent that the egregious almost 14 minute Bring It On Home beats Zeppelin's similar foray to the punch by around 3 years... good on ya, Dutchmen). Anyway I'm being overly hard on it, it's an interesting tour through an era of early-ish rock through the lens of a culture I know very little about and that's a perfectly cool way to spend an hour. This list was a wild project I started in the very belly of The Pandemic and emerged startled and blinking 3 years later (a nice analogy to the whole crazy societal interlude), but this user submission annex is turning out maybe even more interesting... for which I grant a pretty unearned extra point.
Daft Punk
3/5
It's a little bit of a bummer to see Daft Punk credited underneath that Disney logo (and now Nine Inch Nails!). But hey, who am I to begrudge anyone a big paycheck? This sounds like soundtrack music and I won't deny it made my session of cleaning and detailing my car's interior feel very epic. I don't think it's the band's best or most important work but I liked it OK.
The Notwist
3/5
Indie rock vibes that were amenable enough but didn't make a deep impression on me - a day later I'm kind of struggling to draw out any particulars of the listen.
Foxing
3/5
I liked this all right. Stayed pretty much in a particular lane of indie rock that maybe owes a bit more to U2 than it might care to own up to, the falsetto vocals needed more variety but fit the purpose. Nothing hooked me deeply but it was solid.
Wet Leg
4/5
I liked this, maybe a little more than it deserved. That kind of slack, jangly post-hardcore indie rock vibe, Pavement and such, and the whole whispery girl vocal thing. Some of it lyrically very clever, some of it "you're so woke - diet coke", uh, whatever. But what the hell, it was doing it for me.
Charles Aznavour
3/5
Very French. This is a style of music I can enjoy but don't seek out that often. The music is essentially an armature presenting the main attraction, the voice. Without the ability to understand the lyrics a lot of the potential is lost. Probably better than I'm able to give it credit for.
Bohren & Der Club Of Gore
3/5
Frequently asked question, is this a new song yet? Ambient with sax I guess? Fine but it just faded into the background for me. Maybe more active listening or a more sophisticated palate on my part would have revealed a greater depth.
Auri
3/5
There was an earlier offering by related band Nightwish and my review there works well enough for this. That didn't strike me much as metal and this doesn't strike me much as folk. Nothing against it but I find it a little too dolled up and glossy.
Beyoncé
4/5
Super strong entrance, though solid throughout I didn't feel like it kept the same intensity throughout. The last Beyoncé offering on this list I c9mplained of it being overproduced in that way mega-superstar pop (of whatever genre) tends to be, this I felt less of that. She's the real deal, no doubt of that.
Blackalicious
4/5
Really good, put me in mind of other more cerebral and melodic hip hop acts like PM Dawn. Amazing lyrical flow.
Swans
3/5
Not without interest, but on the balance not for me. The vocals didn't do a lot for me and the protracted noise events wore thin. I don't regret the listen though.
Ookla The Mok
3/5
I never heard (or at least never absorbed) the term Filk before this, but recognized what it was immediately on reading up on the topic. Frankly the genre name and its origin very much exemplifies a key pet peeve about fandom: being way too enamored for way too long with an inside joke that wasn't that funny in the first place.
I'm the precise age for the bandname reference, having watched said cartoon unironically during its original run, and have been at least strongly adjacent to the nerd culture that produce this kinf of thing all my life, but I could never get into the true fandom scene and this is fandom stuff all the way. As side hustle musicians they are very competent, and it's lyrically clever - though I'm not sure that cleverness ends up saying much and they depend overly on that trick you see some rappers pull of just stringing together references fast and facilely but with dubious point. A full hour is a bit much for "theme is munky". Still, generally unobjectionable.
No Doubt
4/5
I think I wrote about this before but there are a couple of distinct eras during which I watched a lot of MTV back when - history lesson kiddos - they played many hours-long blocks of music videos. Periods of a yearish, across a couple years each, one in the early 90s and one in the mid 90s, both with a combination of cable access (ask AI what the hell I'm talking about there, kiddos) and certain fixed, dead intervals in my schedule that were long enough to need some time killing but not long enough to invest in anything meaningful. And in there are a bunch of albums by artists I wouldn't have been listening to otherwise that I got massively overexposed to whichever hit singles blew up in video. This one in spades - Spiderwebs, Just a Girl, and Don't Speak in particular. I don't think I ever heard one of the other songs on this album before today. Never been a big Ska guy and have always been slightly bemused that what feels like it should be such a niche genre to me has has had such legs in pop music culture. This is pretty popified though the Ska roots are still very prominent. Stefani definitely has It, as does the rest of the band, that rock star thing. I liked this just fine. The big hits, I can say having finally listened to the whole thing, were the big hits for a reason - it's all solid but not quite at that level. Those hits though are absolute bangers.
Current 93
3/5
I really did not care for what was going on vocally or lyrically with this. Affected, pretentious, wilfully obscure. For the general quality of the music (occasional high-pitched screeching overtones notwithstanding) and the sheer balls of unloading an hour-long invented lore-dump I'll keep it on the positive rating side - barely. Better than more ultraprocessed pop pap anyway.
Rodríguez
4/5
I remember hearing about the documentary when it came out, but never got around to it. A lot going on in my life at the time, I missed a bunch of stuff. I should look up where it's streaming. I liked this pretty well - I don't think I'd rate it above a three without the story though - it is pretty dated, more in the sound than in the singing and lyrics which hold up better. Have to bump it an extra point for a pretty extraordinary life. It does make you think how much gets lost out there - the ones who never get rediscovered, or never get recorded in the first place. Tears in rain, man.
The Brian Jonestown Massacre
3/5
Eh. Mopey, maundering, Brit-influenced pop with a front man overly enamored of his own (mostly self-inflicted) suffering. I also dislike the Dandy Warhols, so. At its core exceedingly average.
Zamilska
3/5
Man, if I'd been born in Poland I could have gotten a degree in "social and cultural animation" instead of dumb science. It wasn't really clear to me what was going on with most of this, very art-forward. Not an unenjoyable experience.
Porcupine Tree
3/5
More gloomy Joes. I mean, I'm pretty much on their side ideologically but the lyrical tone is so uniformly dour and humorless, and with a generous pinch of that holier-than-thou vibe that prevails in this particular marketplace of ideas - strong "I don't even OWN a teevee" vibe. Musically I didn't mind its kind of techno-Bolero, though it needed more variety.
Billy Strings
4/5
Solid bluegrass, and the ventures into less traditional territory hold up and fit well with the rest. I don't know that the lyrics are destined to become timeless classics but they do the job.
Vampire Weekend
3/5
I feel like there was another album by this band before and I was pretty cool on it. I liked this pretty well. It's riding a line with the quirk factor in danger of tipping over into distraction territory but mostly kept on the right side of it. The vocal delivery was a little slack and muddy and I couldn't pull much out of the lyrics. I'd listen to some more.
Pop Will Eat Itself
3/5
Another band with a familiar name that I've never consciously listened to. Don't know what I was expecting but it wasn't this - very odd vibe, very English sense of humor. I liked it but I wouldn't see myself listening to a ton of it. Very distinct personality to this.
Powderfinger
3/5
I enjoyed this, although I felt like the sound was maybe a little lacking in cohesion. Elements of 60s psychedelia and 70s rock and early metal over mostly straight down the middle alternative rock. It seemed lyrically smart though I did not dig very deep there, and well sung.
STARSET
3/5
I feel like there's a genre label on this sound that I haven't encountered yet. I don't quite mesh with it - just wall to wall "it's epic". A little baroque.
Gerry Cinnamon
3/5
Solid singer-songwriter fare, mostly pretty pop-oriented but folk inflections.
Danny Brown
3/5
I liked what was going on lyrically and musically here a lot, but really had trouble getting behind the primary vocal delivery - that kind of hectoring, high pitched, kind of nasal rapping. I think they are delivering exactly what they intend to here and I can see how it corresponds to the general attitude but I just find it so grating to listen to at length.
Soul Coughing
4/5
I feel like this is probably one of those love it or hate it bands for most, the particular style and quirks of the music and lyrics profoundly irritate some people I know who's musical opinions I value a lot. But I always liked it and at one time listened to this album quite a bit, and I feel like there is some real substance behind the laid-back style.
Glass Animals
4/5
I really liked this a lot. While it's a sound with a lot of precedent and fellow travelers, it blends indie rock with more electronica/trance/trip hop kind of elements in a really interesting way, and they kept taking it in directions I didn't expect.
Bo Burnham
3/5
I was... disliking this pretty heartily as I was listening to it. The sort of increasingly rapid oscillation between self-loathing and smugness feels like the epitome of post-modernism barreling up its own ass. Certainly he's clever: is he funny though? I'm not sure I think he is. Maybe it all works better in the context of the full show. Beyond the content, I've written before of the pitfall I see in the completely solo musical composition - it's prone to a certain thinness of the single point of view, and this lacks the producer chops to evade that. I'm not giving this the score that review sounds like it merits, I think I'm being overly harsh on it. My head was definitely not in the space for appreciating this when I listened to it. The realest moment in this is when he briefly touches on struggling with panic attacks and it would have benefitted by being more heavily salted with that kind of reality.
The Weakerthans
3/5
I liked this OK, I wasn't over the moon about it. It is certainly in the wheelhouse of things I like - some strong Mountain Goats vibes for instance. The lyrics sometime trying to hard I think, and the music needing some bit more of a hook or distinctiveness.
3/5
I can see the band's objection to being boxed into punk (or post-punk and hardcore for that matter) As the music is more genre-stretxhing than that. Vocals are mostly pretty locked into the Brit-punk model, which I'm not a superman of. This was good but one of those bands with a super-seriois and uniformly dour outlook.
Michael Hurley
3/5
Getatchew Mekurya
4/5
This was pretty fire, though occasionally getting into that free form jazz territory I'm not sophisticated enough to appreciate. Interesting to experience on headphones while walking in the dark through a moderate Minnesota snowstorm.
Cindy Lee
3/5
Clearly a lot of people really love this and I can see an appeal. On the other hand quite a lot of it sounds like it's being played through a metal trash can stuffed with lint. At better points, dreamy lounge music floating through some dim country bar off hours. Early in I thought I was likely to get very sick of it at length and to its credit that didn't really happen, but it did largely fade into the background of whatever I was doing. Interesting, but a triple album is a really aggressive way to introduce a band to a general population.
Built To Spill
4/5
Built to Spill is about the quintessential Indie Rock act in my book and this is a fine example of their work with an absolute peak level album title to boot. You Were Right is probably in my top five indie rock classics.