Terrible blues with a terrible singer. 3/10
Inoffensive cocktail jazz. (Also: I have a thing about melodies that were originally sung, being played on an instrument. I find that that very rarely works. Here too, in Desafinado, for instance, you hear the saxophone doing melodic/rhythmic phrases that are there because of the lyrics and that just sounds awkward to me. Like the sax is trying to speak which I find quite unsettling). 5/10
Was expecting more from this. I used to have a Chic best of cd that I quite enjoyed. Was looking forward to exploring some deep cuts. But this is basically Le Freak (plus At Last I Am Free) and some filler. 5/10
Such a fun and joyous cacophony of found sounds. 9/10
Perfectly pleasant but bit plodding hour-an-a-quarter of blues-y Americana. Maybe you get more out of it if you listen to the lyrics? I am more of a song/melody/arrangement kind of person and I just don't think there's much happening here on that front. And the songs are so long. For me, maybe unexpectedly, the only thing that makes it stand out in any positive way is Dylan's voice. 6/10
Just 39 minutes but it feels much, much longer. This is the first album on this site that I played twice in a day. Not because I liked it but because I wanted to know if it made more sense with a bit more familiarity. Turns out no, the second time it still felt like lots separate bits of flashy rock of different levels of bombast stuck together in a random way. (And I am not particularly big on flashy, bombastic rock with a shouty singer to begin with). 4/10
Seeing Rocketman last year made me realize that there's more to Elton John than Nikita and the other schmaltz from the eighties I mainly know him from and made me eager to explore his earlier work. As a first step in that direction, this is a bit of a disappointment. Yes some of those punch-y songs from the movie are there - Bennie and the Jets, Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting - but also so much other stuff. A dramatic instrumental ouverture, seagull noises, a simplistic Beach Boys pastiche, a sort of ska-y(?) song and most of all too much florid piano playing for me to process on one day. 5/10
I get the feeling it's difficult to rate this 'objectively' because this set the standard for so much music to come. All funk bands still sound like this. It's easy to forget that Sly & The Family Stone were there first. I like it because it is punchy and heavy and to the point (well, except for that 14 minute track on side 2). 7/10
Fugazi is one of those 'just before my time' bands. I was too busy discovering Dinosaur Jr and Pixies in the early nineties to go back in time even a few years. I knew Fugazi were important and I can certainly see their influence on bands that I was into (especially something like At The Drive-In, much later) but I prefer 'my version' of this sound. Listening to it now I think I am enjoying the historical references more than the music. It certainly has it's moments but it's a bit too jazzy for me and I am not too keen on those muffled, indierock voices. 7/10
I largely ignored this one at the time. A bit strange, because I was a big fan of the breakout singles a decade or so earlier. Listening to it now I think I was right to pay not too much attention to it. Maybe you get more out of it if you listen to the words but it doesn't half go on a bit, does it? The production is nice. Bit Human League. Bit Bowie. But my god, those songs are long. 6/10
This was my second favourite album of 1999 at the time (yes, I have a Google doc with 20+ years of end-of-year lists) (number 1 was Blumfeld's Old Nobody). It really takes me back to that time, which is a bit strange because this is quite retro music. Electroclash. Daft Punk. Nik Kershaw. I liked Les Rythmes Digitales because it did both the dancefloor-y stuff and the beautiful pop songs. My relationship with the album is too personal to be able to say if it 'holds up'. Listening to it gives me a nice jolt of nostalgic feelings and Sometimes is still a banger. 8/10
I would hope that there is more to the genius of Ray Charles than singing a couple of big band standards. The ballads at the end are nice but overall I find this very meh. 5/10
It's okay, I guess? Not something I expected to say about a live album by one of the most exciting soul singers at the height of his powers. He does the hits and it all sounds very professional by which I actually mean that he sounds a bit like he knows his taxi is standing outside of the venue ready to take him to the next club where he will do the same set. 6/10
I remember this one. My (younger) brother had a copy. I probably was a bit too much of a music snob to admit that I liked it but even I can still sing along with the hits from it now. Great fun. Played it twice just because. 7/10
I really like the concept of Beyoncé. The hits. The memes. Love that photo of her with Jay Z in front of the Mona Lisa. And that one of her at the the Marfa Prada. Really enjoyed her headline set at Glastonbury (when it was on tv). But I guess I am not really interested in engaging with her output on an album level. This one is really really long and quite low on bangers tbh. 6/10
I know it's an important album/band and I can hear the influence on a lot of the (Britpop)bands I used to love in the 90ies but this just doesn't do much for me. Too jaunty. Too music hall. 6/10
Not a huge fan of Queen fan to begin with but turns out that I like the hardrock-y early Queen even less than the Queen I know from the radio/tv/greatest hits albums. 5/10
I remember their Life is Life/Leben Heißt Leben cover from back in the day. Sounds really rather tame in retrospect to be honest. Let's face it, Rammstein did this kind of thing much better (and funnier) later on. I am not sure if there's any value in being first with a particular sound if that sound is so ugly. 3/10
This is quite pleasant. Especially like the sound/the production. Not all of the songs are grabbing me but that's probably mostly due to unfamiliarity. Looking forward to going back to this one to get to know it better. 7/10
Confession time because it seems like one of those things you're not supposed to say in polite society but I don't particularly like David Bowie. He's got some great songs - more than a handful of them on this record - but it's that voice that I just don't get along with. He does too many things with it. It's too show off-y. I like understated voices. This is the exact opposite of understated. On the other hand, I played this record multiple times over the weekend. Without complaining. Maybe I could get used to that voice? 7/10
I know your supposed to dump on 80ies Leonard Cohen, but tbh this was the Leonard Cohen I got to know first - Manhattan was a bit of a radio hit if I remember correctly, Everybody Knows was on the Pump Up The Volume soundtrack - so it's got a special place in my heart. Yes, it's got lots of synths but it works with these songs. I wouldn't know how else you'd produce them. 8/10
This is a bit disappointing. I know Tom Petty mainly from his early nineties hits and I was looking forward to exploring his, presumably even better, earlier material, but this is a bit boring and unispiring. American Girl is a banger but the rest is quite forgettable seventies rock. 6/10
Suspicious Minds has always been my favourite Elvis song but I had never really realized that he'd done more countrysoul like that. And that it's this great. I mean, it's Elvis so there is quite a bit of unnecessary cheese here and I often find his voice a bit to smarmy but yes I will definitely come back to this one. 9/10
First three tracks are classic U2 and even though I like them I don't think I ever necessarily will feel the need to listen to them again on purpose . The rest is immediately forgettable and made no impression whatsoever. 5/10
Very competent but also very boring live vocal jazz. Apparently one song is very funny? Lots of laughter after each line. Didn't get that. 4/10
Don't know why I hadn't heard this one before. I was a big big fan of Uh Hun Oh Yeh!, a couple of years earlier (never heard of the Jam or the Style Council at that time by the way). If I had tried it back then I would probably have found it very sophisticated and, well, a bit boring really. Listening to it now, I also think it's very sophisticated and a bit boring. 6/10
Wonderful, joyous stuff. 8/10
I don't like blues. I don't like singers who sound like they are acting out a role. I really really don't like Tom Waits. 4/10
Oh man, this is even worse than that other Tom Waits album you made me listen to. This is longer, less funny, the jazz is more generic and the singing/vocals/presentation is even more overacted and forced. 2/10
First thought: hey, I recognize this. Portishead sampled it. Second thought: wow, just four track in 45 minutes? Third thought (related to the second one): oh, man is this song still going? There's not an awful lot happening is there? Final thought(s): really liked the first song, the rest didn't really register much. 6/10
This album is for a big part responsible for the fact there is always a slight annoying buzz in my ears nowadays (together with that one time I saw Mogwai and I'd forgotten my earplugs). I played this album so much on my Walkman when it came out and so loud. And despite its negative effects all those years later I don't really regret doing it. This is an album best experienced loud. You need to feel that big wall of guitars, it makes those brilliant, catchy melodies even more impactful. This album is the perfect combination of aggression/speed/volume/punk and sweet/melody/harmony/pop. (A bit strange but, at the time, it didn't really make me want to seek out Hüsker Dü and I still vastly prefer this version of Bob Mould). 10/10
Of all the 'metal' bands in the 90ies Sepultura was the only one I kind of liked (I'm putting 'metal' in quotes because I don't know enough about the genre to be able to specifyy the correct (sub)genre). To be more exact I thought Roots Bloody Roots, which played on MTV a lot, was a bit of a banger. I'm usually not really looking for aggression in my music consumption but that song seemed to be able to channel aggression into a monster of a hooks and the addition of the Brazilian percussion elements made it musically more interesting (to me) than its peers. This sounds like the band that made Roots Bloody Roots but with a dozen or so songs that are not as interesting as Roots Bloody Roots. 5/10
This sounded very exciting when I was fifteen (tbh I don't think I heard this one back then, except for the hits. I definitely had Use Your Illusion on tape. I and II). It still sounds quite exciting but also bloated and a bit silly. 7/10
Yes, this is jazz. It does the tootling and the swinging and it's quite okay actually. Bit on the polite side. Feels cool to have on in the background but it's not particularly blowing (ha) me away. 6/10
I remember this one. Probably ended up on my end of year list that year. What I had forgotten is how non-dancey they sounded back then. It's got very little of the beats that they (and producer Jamie XX in particular) would be known for later. Minimalist, sometimes even quite lo-fi slowpop with some great atmospheric songs. I do kind of miss the beats. 8/10
The few songs I knew by Red Snapper beforehand - Snapper, The Sleepless - are bouncy, jazzy breakbeat-y things. This is quite different. Heavier. Lot of low end. Rather filmic as well. Quite a few songs sound like they could be used as a soundtrack to one of those scenes in Mission: Impossible where Tom Cruise is underwater and has only a few more seconds to defuse the bomb. I didn't mind having it on in the background but I think I prefer their more playful stuff. 6/10
